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tiamatschild) wrote2012-02-24 10:16 pm
tiamatschild) wrote2012-02-24 10:16 pm
Fic: "The Fortitude I Forgot" (T) Homestuck
Title: The Fortitude I Forgot
Author: Tiamat’s Child
Fandom: Homestuck
Word Count: 1377
Rating: T
Characters/Pairing: Aradia Megido <> Sollux Captor
Summary: There are things it's hard to remember without a body to remind you.
Warnings: None.
Notes: Post Act Six, Intermission 1.
The Fortitude I Forgot
Aradia rode the rush of triumph and endorphins her ascension set cascading through her for three days before she crashed.
For three days it felt like nothing could hurt her, nothing could phase her – she had passed through death and life and the universe opened for her like a flower. Her body was her, grounded and integrated and alight to sensation. She wanted to laugh every moment, to dance instead of walk, to swing Sollux's hand in hers.
When she came down, she came down hard. She had forgotten how much it hurt to be a body. The robot body felt but she wasn't it. She and it were not a single function and it hurt. It was too loud. She was tired. She wanted what she had wanted when she'd last been a body, a full sweep ago – to hide her face in her lusus's soft wool until her shoulder girdle stopped locking together from how sad she was. But her lusus was gone and had been for a long time and -
Mourning is work, Kanaya had said to her during their session, while she pulled a stitch closed on the doll she was making for Tavros. Aradia understood. It was work she hadn't finished. She'd barely begun. She had been, for a sweep and more, hidden deep in the first empty valley of shock. All the plans she'd made and all the things she'd done and she'd still been there, somewhere horribly quiet and far away.
Aradia kind of wanted to throw up.
“Hey. Hey, Aradia,” Sollux said, when he came to find her. They were visiting a pretty dream bubble. It was Dave's. Orange rock and red earth sprawled out in front of them and behind them: below in front, where a cliff face plunged miles down to more rock and earth and above behind, the way Sollux had taken.
Aradia wasn't seeing it. She had her hands over her face, pressing tight, trying to hold in the noise she felt she was going to make and hide the sharp maroon prickling that wasn't really tears yet at her eyes.
“Aradia,” Sollux said. “Shit, Aradia, you are not okay.” He put his hand on her elbow.
She didn't move.
“Okay. Please don't gut me,” he said, and then he was holding her, firm by the elbow, all wrapped up in him with his other hand cradling the curve where her spine met her skull.
“I can't,” she said.
“No, no, shoosh,” he said.
“I can't.”
“Yeah, thought this might happen. You were kind of acting like me.” He paused. “Only more cheerful.”
“I don't want to be sad anymore!” she said, although she didn't know if it made any sense, because she was sobbing by then, and she hadn't remembered what that felt like either, the way your body took hold of you, dragged you through your anguish, forced you to gasp and shake. “I shouldn't! I can't!”
“Shoosh, shoosh, oh, shit, Aradia.”
“I snapped at you,” Aradia wailed. “And I. Feel. I - ”
“Hey, you were the one who'd been dead at that point.”
“I can't. I can't.”
He pulled her in, all wiry limbs backed by psiionics – he was so thin, he'd never had enough to eat, she'd never had enough to eat, of course they died young, they never got enough calories never mind anything else. If they weren't all dead she'd -
“I hate it, I hate it, I couldn't let them - ”
“Yeah.”
“Not you, not you, Sollux, Sollux, Sollux, I can't.”
“Shoosh, shoosh. Nobody'll make you do anything now.”
“I can't,” Aradia said, which seemed to be the only way she could say 'I want to hurt everyone who's ever hurt you and I want to rip the world open and put it back and none of it will ever, ever, ever fix anything and I don't want to feel this way.'
“You want to sit down?”
She went with him and found herself kneeling between his legs, hiding her face in his shoulder.
“It hurt so much,” Aradia said. “It hurt not hurting, but I forgot that hurt.”
“Yeah,” said Sollux, stroking her hair, pressing gently at the nape of her neck.
“I thought I was better!” she said, and had to pull away from him again, had to hide her face, feeling it twist against her skull, against the skin of her palms.
“Oh, AA,” Sollux said. He sounded so sad that Aradia cried without sobbing, just the open tears that his pain had always pulled from her when they were small. “I'm sorry.”
“It's not your fault!”
“I'm sorry anyway! Fuck, Aradia, can't I pity you without it being a guilt fest?”
“I don't know!” Aradia shouted. She moved – not time fast, but quick with a sudden burn of something chilly and bright – and caught his shoulders, leaned in so their bodies were braced together like two angles of an arc. “I don't know. Can you?”
Sollux stared at her, close and solemn and still. “Never stopped,” he said. “Maybe it all got mixed up for a while there, but not now. I don't feel guilty about you anymore – however you are, you're Aradia.”
“Yeah?” Aradia asked. Her lungs felt heavy.
“Yeah. I can always tell, 'cause you're annoying as fuck.”
She tried to laugh and sob at once and wound up choking on it, a horrible little wounded animal sound.
“Sorry, babe,” Sollux said. “It's just the truth. First time you messaged me after I thought it couldn't be you. But I log back in and you've left me three pages of text. No one else is that goddamned persistent.”
“I had our codeword,” Aradia managed.
“Which is another thing – who the hell has a codeword in case they decide to haunt this vale of – what the fuck ever, there's no real word shitty enough and I am too tired to improvise. We are both insane.” He shifted, caught her face between his hands. “Let me talk you down? Shoosh.”
Aradia made a tiny movement against his hands, not quite nuzzling. “Calmer now,” she said, even though she still sounded breathy and hoarse, cracked, even though her shoulders and belly ached.
“But not calm.”
“No.”
“Let me talk you down.”
Aradia squeezed her eyes shut, held her breath, and nodded. “Okay,” she said.
“Okay,” he said, “Okay.”
She let him pull her in, forehead to forehead, and hold her for a long, long time, until she felt like she could look at the world again, and anyway they had to move to work a cramp out of his left calf.
“This always happens to me when I go exploring with you,” he grumped as Aradia pressed his foot up towards his body to stretch out the tendons and settle the muscle into the shape it was supposed to be.
She chuckled, and was surprised when it didn't hurt enough to make her cry again. “I keep telling you! It's only because you don't go exploring and run around and climb on things except when I make you.”
“That makes no sense.”
“And also you never stretch beforehand.”
“I'm mostly dead, how the fuck do I need to stretch?”
“...I don't know.”
“And you're bleeding. Damn it, Aradia, when you've got a sharp rock in your knee that is a sign you need to not kneel there.”
Aradia thought about saying 'I didn't notice,' decided that was a bad idea, and smiled at him instead. That still hurt, but right then it didn't matter. It was all right if she wasn't all better, if she was still sad and still angry, because she was thinking, and she was choosing, and she and Sollux had choices left to them, and they'd chosen to make them together.
That was good enough to go on. It was the best they'd ever had.
Author: Tiamat’s Child
Fandom: Homestuck
Word Count: 1377
Rating: T
Characters/Pairing: Aradia Megido <> Sollux Captor
Summary: There are things it's hard to remember without a body to remind you.
Warnings: None.
Notes: Post Act Six, Intermission 1.
The Fortitude I Forgot
Aradia rode the rush of triumph and endorphins her ascension set cascading through her for three days before she crashed.
For three days it felt like nothing could hurt her, nothing could phase her – she had passed through death and life and the universe opened for her like a flower. Her body was her, grounded and integrated and alight to sensation. She wanted to laugh every moment, to dance instead of walk, to swing Sollux's hand in hers.
When she came down, she came down hard. She had forgotten how much it hurt to be a body. The robot body felt but she wasn't it. She and it were not a single function and it hurt. It was too loud. She was tired. She wanted what she had wanted when she'd last been a body, a full sweep ago – to hide her face in her lusus's soft wool until her shoulder girdle stopped locking together from how sad she was. But her lusus was gone and had been for a long time and -
Mourning is work, Kanaya had said to her during their session, while she pulled a stitch closed on the doll she was making for Tavros. Aradia understood. It was work she hadn't finished. She'd barely begun. She had been, for a sweep and more, hidden deep in the first empty valley of shock. All the plans she'd made and all the things she'd done and she'd still been there, somewhere horribly quiet and far away.
Aradia kind of wanted to throw up.
“Hey. Hey, Aradia,” Sollux said, when he came to find her. They were visiting a pretty dream bubble. It was Dave's. Orange rock and red earth sprawled out in front of them and behind them: below in front, where a cliff face plunged miles down to more rock and earth and above behind, the way Sollux had taken.
Aradia wasn't seeing it. She had her hands over her face, pressing tight, trying to hold in the noise she felt she was going to make and hide the sharp maroon prickling that wasn't really tears yet at her eyes.
“Aradia,” Sollux said. “Shit, Aradia, you are not okay.” He put his hand on her elbow.
She didn't move.
“Okay. Please don't gut me,” he said, and then he was holding her, firm by the elbow, all wrapped up in him with his other hand cradling the curve where her spine met her skull.
“I can't,” she said.
“No, no, shoosh,” he said.
“I can't.”
“Yeah, thought this might happen. You were kind of acting like me.” He paused. “Only more cheerful.”
“I don't want to be sad anymore!” she said, although she didn't know if it made any sense, because she was sobbing by then, and she hadn't remembered what that felt like either, the way your body took hold of you, dragged you through your anguish, forced you to gasp and shake. “I shouldn't! I can't!”
“Shoosh, shoosh, oh, shit, Aradia.”
“I snapped at you,” Aradia wailed. “And I. Feel. I - ”
“Hey, you were the one who'd been dead at that point.”
“I can't. I can't.”
He pulled her in, all wiry limbs backed by psiionics – he was so thin, he'd never had enough to eat, she'd never had enough to eat, of course they died young, they never got enough calories never mind anything else. If they weren't all dead she'd -
“I hate it, I hate it, I couldn't let them - ”
“Yeah.”
“Not you, not you, Sollux, Sollux, Sollux, I can't.”
“Shoosh, shoosh. Nobody'll make you do anything now.”
“I can't,” Aradia said, which seemed to be the only way she could say 'I want to hurt everyone who's ever hurt you and I want to rip the world open and put it back and none of it will ever, ever, ever fix anything and I don't want to feel this way.'
“You want to sit down?”
She went with him and found herself kneeling between his legs, hiding her face in his shoulder.
“It hurt so much,” Aradia said. “It hurt not hurting, but I forgot that hurt.”
“Yeah,” said Sollux, stroking her hair, pressing gently at the nape of her neck.
“I thought I was better!” she said, and had to pull away from him again, had to hide her face, feeling it twist against her skull, against the skin of her palms.
“Oh, AA,” Sollux said. He sounded so sad that Aradia cried without sobbing, just the open tears that his pain had always pulled from her when they were small. “I'm sorry.”
“It's not your fault!”
“I'm sorry anyway! Fuck, Aradia, can't I pity you without it being a guilt fest?”
“I don't know!” Aradia shouted. She moved – not time fast, but quick with a sudden burn of something chilly and bright – and caught his shoulders, leaned in so their bodies were braced together like two angles of an arc. “I don't know. Can you?”
Sollux stared at her, close and solemn and still. “Never stopped,” he said. “Maybe it all got mixed up for a while there, but not now. I don't feel guilty about you anymore – however you are, you're Aradia.”
“Yeah?” Aradia asked. Her lungs felt heavy.
“Yeah. I can always tell, 'cause you're annoying as fuck.”
She tried to laugh and sob at once and wound up choking on it, a horrible little wounded animal sound.
“Sorry, babe,” Sollux said. “It's just the truth. First time you messaged me after I thought it couldn't be you. But I log back in and you've left me three pages of text. No one else is that goddamned persistent.”
“I had our codeword,” Aradia managed.
“Which is another thing – who the hell has a codeword in case they decide to haunt this vale of – what the fuck ever, there's no real word shitty enough and I am too tired to improvise. We are both insane.” He shifted, caught her face between his hands. “Let me talk you down? Shoosh.”
Aradia made a tiny movement against his hands, not quite nuzzling. “Calmer now,” she said, even though she still sounded breathy and hoarse, cracked, even though her shoulders and belly ached.
“But not calm.”
“No.”
“Let me talk you down.”
Aradia squeezed her eyes shut, held her breath, and nodded. “Okay,” she said.
“Okay,” he said, “Okay.”
She let him pull her in, forehead to forehead, and hold her for a long, long time, until she felt like she could look at the world again, and anyway they had to move to work a cramp out of his left calf.
“This always happens to me when I go exploring with you,” he grumped as Aradia pressed his foot up towards his body to stretch out the tendons and settle the muscle into the shape it was supposed to be.
She chuckled, and was surprised when it didn't hurt enough to make her cry again. “I keep telling you! It's only because you don't go exploring and run around and climb on things except when I make you.”
“That makes no sense.”
“And also you never stretch beforehand.”
“I'm mostly dead, how the fuck do I need to stretch?”
“...I don't know.”
“And you're bleeding. Damn it, Aradia, when you've got a sharp rock in your knee that is a sign you need to not kneel there.”
Aradia thought about saying 'I didn't notice,' decided that was a bad idea, and smiled at him instead. That still hurt, but right then it didn't matter. It was all right if she wasn't all better, if she was still sad and still angry, because she was thinking, and she was choosing, and she and Sollux had choices left to them, and they'd chosen to make them together.
That was good enough to go on. It was the best they'd ever had.