[Fic] "Veritas vos liberabit" -- Homestuck
Feb. 2nd, 2014 12:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingSummary: Wherein Rose Lalonde, up-and-coming author and urban recluse, receives an unexpected telephone call from her friend Dave Strider to discuss a possible new ally in their struggle to unearth and publicize the shadowy danger that is slowly consuming their world. Alpha Timeline Fluff, set about a week after The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship. (1,750 words)
Note: This fic was written for Cotton Candy Bingo Round One in response to the prompt: keys.
[ETA: The ever-so-slightly revised final version is now up on AO3!]
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Veritas vos liberabit
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Red pulsed in the corner of Rose's vision, and she reached over to lift her telephone from its mount on her kitchen wall. "Hello, Dave. Have you missed my voice so badly that you're willing to risk extra contact, or is there some other reason for this call?"
"You know, just once you could pretend not to know it's me," Dave grumbled at the other end of the line.
Rose smiled, phone tucked neatly between her jaw and shoulder and spiral cord swaying in an aesthetically pleasing arc as she returned to stirring her half-cooked pasta. The elbow noodles tumbled around the pot in a swirl of simmering water, flavored by a dash of garlic, salt and oil. "Caller ID is rapidly gaining popularity. Get used to your lack of anonymity."
"Nah, I'll just shift even more onto the net," Dave said. "But I gotta point out that knowing the caller is one thing. Picking up before the phone gets out a single peep is a whole 'nother flavor of taco sauce. Let the ringer have a moment to shine once in a while, give it some lines, a chance at a supporting actor trophy."
"You have no respect for my aura of mystique," Rose said. "I'm hurt, Dave. Can't you let a woman practice her dark majjyyks in peace?"
"Somebody's gotta make sure you don't get hooked, slide down that slippery slope all the way into Fluthlu's warm embrace of tentacly goodness. Guess who got saddled with taking that hit. First two don't count."
Rose laughed. "Ia, Cthulhu ftaghn!"
"See, this is what I'm talking about. Put down the grimoire, step away from the spaghetti."
"Elbow noodles."
There was a moment of silence, broken only by the ever-present noise of street traffic four stories below her apartment. In the distance, a muted siren wailed: emergency services jostling their way through the organized chaos of Manhattan. Rose drew a line in the air, marking yet another point for herself in her ongoing quest to wrong-foot her best friend whenever possible. The world might be falling to pieces around them, with the majority too blind or befuddled to notice the descent, but that didn't preclude the little pleasures in life.
"Your taste in pasta isn't the point," Dave said eventually. "The point -- and stop making that face, I know you're making that face, you know which face I mean -- is you can get away with pulling this crap on me, who cares, we're in the same boat or at least the same armada, but you pull this on other people and you're gonna stand out in the bad way, and I'd fight like hell but I don't think jpeg artifacts are gonna cut it against whatever the fuck is actually in the shadows. Speaking of which."
Another pause. This time, Rose took pity and broke it herself. "I wasn't aware that we were, but if we must. I find 'which' a very useful word in both its interrogative and relative uses, though I confess I dislike the overly pedantic faux-rules which attempt to limit its use to nonrestrictive clauses."
"Unlike your usage just there, yes, I saw what you did."
"Heard."
"Now who's the pedant?" Dave sighed. "But yeah, anyway, speaking of shadows and things that go bump in the not-fun way -- you've heard of Jade English, right?"
A phantom impression of buck teeth, bass guitar, green text on a futuristic computer screen, flowers and rifles, snow and volcanoes, glasses and frogs, and secrets, secrets, secrets cascaded through Rose's mind. "I-- garden-- forge--" She blinked against the psychosomatic brightness obscuring her vision, then shook her head, trying to clear out the residue of her latest episode. They weren't epilepsy, weren't psychotic breaks -- they'd led her to Dave, which was proof enough of their non-hallucinatory nature -- but they struck without warning and nine times out of ten made less sense than Dave's comics. She was missing some vital key, some incantation to unlock their meaning and give her control, keep them from breaking through at inconvenient times.
Half the reason she avoided interviews, maintained an unlisted telephone, and conducted her business by mail despite living within easy subway distance of both her agent and her publisher was to minimize the possibility of a public episode -- not the constant little flashes, but the strong ones, like her reaction to Jade English's name, the ones that loosened her tongue and made her lose time. She didn't need that fracture in her image.
Rose turned off the heat under her pasta, just in case.
"Jade English is the founder, owner, and CEO of SkaiaNet," she said, dragging her voice back to its normal pitch and pace. "Engineering, computers, appliances, telecommunications, etcetera. Despite her genius, she has unfortunate taste in color schemes and worse taste in corporate rivals. What of her?"
"She just tripped your spidey sense, that's what," Dave said. "Don't even front, I heard you. And hey, guess what, she can sneak up on me just like you with your witchy voodoo hoodoo. You keep saying we're missing people, that's it's supposed to be four of us all back to back instead of only two. I will bet you my shades and a cameo in my next script that Jade's green in your little color wheel of fortune."
Rose wanted to argue on principle, but she found she couldn't. Dave was right; something about Jade English's name and that jumbled vision settled into the back of her mind as if filling a hole that had been empty so long she'd nearly forgotten how it ached.
"No bet," she said. "You'd win."
"Curses, foiled again. Someday I'm gonna sucker you into losing," Dave grumbled.
Rose blinked aside the familiar flash of Dave at her side, sword in his hand, needles in hers, blood on their clothes and skin, standing on the edge of a ruined financial district office building to face down a formless, shadowed power with no hope of victory or even survival. "Only if I choose to do so," she said. "But feel free to continue dreaming. My publishers tell me fantasy is big business these days."
Dave laughed. "Still planning that epic doorstopper beardy wizard porn saga, then? Harlequin glurge-fests and contemporary satire not enough to satisfy your muse?"
"It's a question of how to reach the largest and most receptive audience with the least interference," Rose said. "One can more easily be allegorical and allusive in fantasy, without the constraints of contemporary libel laws. You may have reacted by throwing aside all attempts at realism, coherent plots, consistent characterization, and other trappings of what is commonly known as narrative, but I prefer to build a more stable fictional world and that requires a certain remove from the here and now."
"Not to mention geriatric wizards get you hot," Dave said.
"Oh, we certainly mustn't forget that."
"Forget Nitwit and Fizzpan and their torrid, beardy embrace? Impossible. That shit is carved on the backs of my eyelids for all eternity, a never-ending instant replay montage. But seriously, Rose, let's talk Jade English. I've met her twice now, once when she ambushed me at a charity dinner and again yesterday for lunch, and I think..."
Rose waited him out rather than provide him any new tangents.
"Whatever flavor of fucknasty has its shadowy claws wrapped around the world, she knows about it. More than we do -- I'm pretty sure she has names and dates and all that jazz. And I think she's trying to fight back," Dave said eventually.
Black light bloomed behind Rose's eyes for a moment, cut through by worried green words and a sense of unconditional friendship, a tether offered against the storm. Red pulsed beside her, marking time like a metronome, but it couldn't break the darkness alone. Even the green might not be enough. But three were stronger than two, which were stronger than one.
And maybe, just possibly, knowing the truth would give Rose the key to unlock her sight.
"Give her my number," Rose said. "We need to talk."
"I'll do you one better. She's got a private jet. If you say okay, we'll hit Manhattan by midnight, sneak up your stairs for a little private conspiracy theory exchange. We'll bring the crazy. You bring the snacks."
"To my apartment--?"
"It's not like you're gonna fly out to Hollywood, and do you really trust the phone lines for this shit?" Dave said. "But hey, Central Park works for me if it works for you. Or anywhere else you wanna use as neutral ground."
Rose closed her eyes. The idea of a stranger in her private space was uncomfortable at best, and yet somehow Jade English already felt like an old friend, someone she'd known and trusted all her life. She'd felt the same way about Dave, once upon a time, and she'd never regretted her choice to accept that feeling rather than deny and fight.
"She's not an enemy. We don't need a truce. Bring her here. I'll have dessert waiting."
"And apple juice. You always forget the apple juice."
"Lies. I simply choose not to enable your perverse addictions," Rose said. "But I suppose, just this once, I'll allow you to indulge."
"Attagirl. See you in six."
"Likewise. Be safe." Rose hung up the phone without waiting for a response. She stared down at her pasta for a long moment, breathing in the scent of garlic and oil. Then she turned the heat back on and went to fetch a notebook and pen. She had a thousand questions to ask, and no intention of missing a single one.
---------------
When she unhooked the security chain from her door and a woman with long, iron-gray hair and a wrinkled, weather-beaten face strode in and wrapped her in a hug, all Rose's questions flew from her mind in a single flash of light. "Jade," she said, clinging to her long-lost friend. "Oh, Jade, I missed you."
She could see everything now. Her death and Dave's death remained the same -- necessary, inevitable -- but the years between lit up and spread out in sudden swathes of possibility. Where there was life, there was time and space for love, if she opened her eyes to see.
"Everything will be all right," Jade said as Dave closed and locked the apartment door and ambled over to join their hug. "We can fight anything together, I promise. Even in this universe where everything is wrong, we'll find a way to win."
For one night, Rose let herself believe the lie.
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End of Story
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Ha, one more square down. :-)
I think I will go sign up for Round Two now.
Note: This fic was written for Cotton Candy Bingo Round One in response to the prompt: keys.
[ETA: The ever-so-slightly revised final version is now up on AO3!]
---------------------------------------------
Veritas vos liberabit
---------------------------------------------
Red pulsed in the corner of Rose's vision, and she reached over to lift her telephone from its mount on her kitchen wall. "Hello, Dave. Have you missed my voice so badly that you're willing to risk extra contact, or is there some other reason for this call?"
"You know, just once you could pretend not to know it's me," Dave grumbled at the other end of the line.
Rose smiled, phone tucked neatly between her jaw and shoulder and spiral cord swaying in an aesthetically pleasing arc as she returned to stirring her half-cooked pasta. The elbow noodles tumbled around the pot in a swirl of simmering water, flavored by a dash of garlic, salt and oil. "Caller ID is rapidly gaining popularity. Get used to your lack of anonymity."
"Nah, I'll just shift even more onto the net," Dave said. "But I gotta point out that knowing the caller is one thing. Picking up before the phone gets out a single peep is a whole 'nother flavor of taco sauce. Let the ringer have a moment to shine once in a while, give it some lines, a chance at a supporting actor trophy."
"You have no respect for my aura of mystique," Rose said. "I'm hurt, Dave. Can't you let a woman practice her dark majjyyks in peace?"
"Somebody's gotta make sure you don't get hooked, slide down that slippery slope all the way into Fluthlu's warm embrace of tentacly goodness. Guess who got saddled with taking that hit. First two don't count."
Rose laughed. "Ia, Cthulhu ftaghn!"
"See, this is what I'm talking about. Put down the grimoire, step away from the spaghetti."
"Elbow noodles."
There was a moment of silence, broken only by the ever-present noise of street traffic four stories below her apartment. In the distance, a muted siren wailed: emergency services jostling their way through the organized chaos of Manhattan. Rose drew a line in the air, marking yet another point for herself in her ongoing quest to wrong-foot her best friend whenever possible. The world might be falling to pieces around them, with the majority too blind or befuddled to notice the descent, but that didn't preclude the little pleasures in life.
"Your taste in pasta isn't the point," Dave said eventually. "The point -- and stop making that face, I know you're making that face, you know which face I mean -- is you can get away with pulling this crap on me, who cares, we're in the same boat or at least the same armada, but you pull this on other people and you're gonna stand out in the bad way, and I'd fight like hell but I don't think jpeg artifacts are gonna cut it against whatever the fuck is actually in the shadows. Speaking of which."
Another pause. This time, Rose took pity and broke it herself. "I wasn't aware that we were, but if we must. I find 'which' a very useful word in both its interrogative and relative uses, though I confess I dislike the overly pedantic faux-rules which attempt to limit its use to nonrestrictive clauses."
"Unlike your usage just there, yes, I saw what you did."
"Heard."
"Now who's the pedant?" Dave sighed. "But yeah, anyway, speaking of shadows and things that go bump in the not-fun way -- you've heard of Jade English, right?"
A phantom impression of buck teeth, bass guitar, green text on a futuristic computer screen, flowers and rifles, snow and volcanoes, glasses and frogs, and secrets, secrets, secrets cascaded through Rose's mind. "I-- garden-- forge--" She blinked against the psychosomatic brightness obscuring her vision, then shook her head, trying to clear out the residue of her latest episode. They weren't epilepsy, weren't psychotic breaks -- they'd led her to Dave, which was proof enough of their non-hallucinatory nature -- but they struck without warning and nine times out of ten made less sense than Dave's comics. She was missing some vital key, some incantation to unlock their meaning and give her control, keep them from breaking through at inconvenient times.
Half the reason she avoided interviews, maintained an unlisted telephone, and conducted her business by mail despite living within easy subway distance of both her agent and her publisher was to minimize the possibility of a public episode -- not the constant little flashes, but the strong ones, like her reaction to Jade English's name, the ones that loosened her tongue and made her lose time. She didn't need that fracture in her image.
Rose turned off the heat under her pasta, just in case.
"Jade English is the founder, owner, and CEO of SkaiaNet," she said, dragging her voice back to its normal pitch and pace. "Engineering, computers, appliances, telecommunications, etcetera. Despite her genius, she has unfortunate taste in color schemes and worse taste in corporate rivals. What of her?"
"She just tripped your spidey sense, that's what," Dave said. "Don't even front, I heard you. And hey, guess what, she can sneak up on me just like you with your witchy voodoo hoodoo. You keep saying we're missing people, that's it's supposed to be four of us all back to back instead of only two. I will bet you my shades and a cameo in my next script that Jade's green in your little color wheel of fortune."
Rose wanted to argue on principle, but she found she couldn't. Dave was right; something about Jade English's name and that jumbled vision settled into the back of her mind as if filling a hole that had been empty so long she'd nearly forgotten how it ached.
"No bet," she said. "You'd win."
"Curses, foiled again. Someday I'm gonna sucker you into losing," Dave grumbled.
Rose blinked aside the familiar flash of Dave at her side, sword in his hand, needles in hers, blood on their clothes and skin, standing on the edge of a ruined financial district office building to face down a formless, shadowed power with no hope of victory or even survival. "Only if I choose to do so," she said. "But feel free to continue dreaming. My publishers tell me fantasy is big business these days."
Dave laughed. "Still planning that epic doorstopper beardy wizard porn saga, then? Harlequin glurge-fests and contemporary satire not enough to satisfy your muse?"
"It's a question of how to reach the largest and most receptive audience with the least interference," Rose said. "One can more easily be allegorical and allusive in fantasy, without the constraints of contemporary libel laws. You may have reacted by throwing aside all attempts at realism, coherent plots, consistent characterization, and other trappings of what is commonly known as narrative, but I prefer to build a more stable fictional world and that requires a certain remove from the here and now."
"Not to mention geriatric wizards get you hot," Dave said.
"Oh, we certainly mustn't forget that."
"Forget Nitwit and Fizzpan and their torrid, beardy embrace? Impossible. That shit is carved on the backs of my eyelids for all eternity, a never-ending instant replay montage. But seriously, Rose, let's talk Jade English. I've met her twice now, once when she ambushed me at a charity dinner and again yesterday for lunch, and I think..."
Rose waited him out rather than provide him any new tangents.
"Whatever flavor of fucknasty has its shadowy claws wrapped around the world, she knows about it. More than we do -- I'm pretty sure she has names and dates and all that jazz. And I think she's trying to fight back," Dave said eventually.
Black light bloomed behind Rose's eyes for a moment, cut through by worried green words and a sense of unconditional friendship, a tether offered against the storm. Red pulsed beside her, marking time like a metronome, but it couldn't break the darkness alone. Even the green might not be enough. But three were stronger than two, which were stronger than one.
And maybe, just possibly, knowing the truth would give Rose the key to unlock her sight.
"Give her my number," Rose said. "We need to talk."
"I'll do you one better. She's got a private jet. If you say okay, we'll hit Manhattan by midnight, sneak up your stairs for a little private conspiracy theory exchange. We'll bring the crazy. You bring the snacks."
"To my apartment--?"
"It's not like you're gonna fly out to Hollywood, and do you really trust the phone lines for this shit?" Dave said. "But hey, Central Park works for me if it works for you. Or anywhere else you wanna use as neutral ground."
Rose closed her eyes. The idea of a stranger in her private space was uncomfortable at best, and yet somehow Jade English already felt like an old friend, someone she'd known and trusted all her life. She'd felt the same way about Dave, once upon a time, and she'd never regretted her choice to accept that feeling rather than deny and fight.
"She's not an enemy. We don't need a truce. Bring her here. I'll have dessert waiting."
"And apple juice. You always forget the apple juice."
"Lies. I simply choose not to enable your perverse addictions," Rose said. "But I suppose, just this once, I'll allow you to indulge."
"Attagirl. See you in six."
"Likewise. Be safe." Rose hung up the phone without waiting for a response. She stared down at her pasta for a long moment, breathing in the scent of garlic and oil. Then she turned the heat back on and went to fetch a notebook and pen. She had a thousand questions to ask, and no intention of missing a single one.
---------------
When she unhooked the security chain from her door and a woman with long, iron-gray hair and a wrinkled, weather-beaten face strode in and wrapped her in a hug, all Rose's questions flew from her mind in a single flash of light. "Jade," she said, clinging to her long-lost friend. "Oh, Jade, I missed you."
She could see everything now. Her death and Dave's death remained the same -- necessary, inevitable -- but the years between lit up and spread out in sudden swathes of possibility. Where there was life, there was time and space for love, if she opened her eyes to see.
"Everything will be all right," Jade said as Dave closed and locked the apartment door and ambled over to join their hug. "We can fight anything together, I promise. Even in this universe where everything is wrong, we'll find a way to win."
For one night, Rose let herself believe the lie.
---------------------------------------------
End of Story
---------------------------------------------
Ha, one more square down. :-)
I think I will go sign up for Round Two now.
