Elizabeth Culmer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
edenfalling) wrote2016-05-14 01:09 am
edenfalling) wrote2016-05-14 01:09 am
Entry tags:
[Fic] "Almost at Odds with Morning" -- Homestuck
Note: Oh look, it's another ficlet in the Untimely Ripped AU! Contains mention of suicide and a friendship that fractured under the weight of untreated depression. I think the best description would be emotional hurt/comfort?
Also! Have some background notes! It's implicitly stated in "Untimely Ripped" that this version of North America contains more countries than ours does. One of those fictional countries is Ganonsyoni, which contains most of what in our world is western and upstate New York, plus a chunk of northwestern Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio. (I haven't mapped it exactly, but I'd estimate Pittsburgh and Cleveland as the far corners, roughly speaking.) Part of the international border runs along the Susquehanna and Chenango rivers, which has the knock-on effect of erasing Binghamton. (People do still live there, but in small and distinct towns on opposite sides of the rivers rather than a single city/metro area.) The Megidos and their friends live in an as-yet-unnamed town approximately where Conklin is in our world, a few miles upriver/southeast of not!Binghamton and right near the NY-PA border. The fictional reservoir in this fic has flooded out what would otherwise be the village of Conklin Forks. (2,100 words)
[ETA: The slightly revised final version is now up on AO3!]
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Almost at Odds with Morning
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"Damz at the dam, haha," Latula says, her nasal, put-on drawl so immediately identifiable that you don't bother to turn your head. You just stick up your middle finger and take another drag of your cigarette.
(You roll them yourself these days. The Lalondes say that works better for spiritual cleansing, since you put your own labor and intent into the product instead of just using mass-produced crap. You just like the way the motions -- lick the paper, lay it flat, tap out tobacco, roll, press, light -- are something you can control when the rest of your life feels five sizes too big and poised to crush you flat. Which is still a lot of the time.)
Latula vaults over the low chain-link fence that doesn't actually protect much of anything and drops down beside you with a little 'oof' of displaced air. After a moment she starts kicking her boots against the concrete watchtower that notionally monitors Little Snake Creek reservoir. A hundred feet below, the reservoir water ripples gently under the chilly fingers of a passing breeze, the motion barely visible in the thin gray light that precedes dawn.
"So. Why here?" she asks.
You shrug. "It's a good spot to think."
"Well, yeah, obvs. But, y'know, also real high up and pretty easy to miss the water if you jump. Just saying."
Latula has never been any good at subtle. That was one of the things you liked best about each other.
"People have been known to survive amazingly implausible falls. If I were going to kill myself again -- which I'm not -- I'd pick a more reliable method," you say. "Like I did last time. If you're going to do a thing at all, you should commit. And also try not to poison the town water supply in the process."
Latula snorts, a reflexive half-breath of laughter before she realizes it's socially inappropriate and cuts herself off. "Morbid as ever. But seriously, it's like barely two degrees above freezing and we won't see green for another month at the earliest. There's gotta be more comfy places to chat. Also more comfy times of day."
You finally turn to look at her, run your eyes from her fuzzy wool hat past her eyesore of a parka down to the bizarre legwarmers-and-boots combo that graces her calves and feet. "Well. Yeah. Obvs," you parrot back at her. "But who said I wanted you to be comfortable?"
She rolls her eyes. "Point taken. But like, you said this is a good spot to think, which means you've been here before. And that sure as shit ain't true in the summer -- too many drunk idiots out for a swim -- which means you've been coming here in even shittier weather to commune with dead leaves or whatever the fuck. I guess I just want to know why you'd share your private brooding platform with me after I bailed when you needed me the most."
You're surprised enough at her honesty that you give her the truth in return: "I come here every couple days to watch the sunrise. It's the best view in town. I don't care enough about you that sharing the ledge for one morning will ruin it for me."
Latula absorbs this for a while. Eventually she nods and says, "'Kay. Thanks for telling me. And I'm glad I'm not wrecking your meditation getaway."
"It's not meditation," you grumble reflexively -- because it isn't, regardless of what the Lalondes and your therapist keep prodding you to try. It's just... it's peaceful. Nothing but you and the intermittent rustle of wind through bare branches, the distant but steady rumble of water as the reservoir pours over the concrete lip of the dam and resumes its plunge toward the Susquehanna, and the pale smear of colors in the east as darkness bleeds into day.
"Eh," she says. "Details. But I really do want to talk. It feels like it's been ages, y'know? We missed last summer cuz you misfired all hardcore" -- gosh, look at that, there are still euphemisms for suicide you haven't heard! -- "and the one before that cuz I freaked about, like, a billion different things at once and figured the best way to handle them was to run like hell. And I've been wanting to do the olive branch thing since Terezi told me you were back, but. Y'know. I kinda suck at not running. I'm still half-thinking you're just a really vivid hallucination and I'll wake up back in Canajoharie still packing for spring break."
"Mmm," you say, blowing smoke out your nose along with the sound.
Latula sighs. "Sorry. What I meant to say was, I'm sorry. You were in a shitty place, and I bailed, and I didn't even tell you why."
"I was suicidally depressed, I wouldn't admit I needed medication or therapy, and neither of us was any good at setting functional boundaries," you say. "I don't blame you for getting out to protect yourself."
You don't quite manage a neutral tone. Dammit.
Latula sighs again and slumps sideways until she's leaning half her weight on your left shoulder. "Yeah, see, logically I know that's right but if emotions were logical, we'd all be robots. Also, you heard what happened to Mituna at New Year's, right? The car crash and all?"
You nod.
She straightens and adds, too fast to be anything but awkward, "I'm not, like, asking for magic help or anything! Even if you could, I'm damn sure Mitz wouldn't want anyone to pay the kind of price that'd take to undo. I just wanted to make sure you've got context."
"It was on the front page of the paper and all over the radio for days," you say. "I have context."
Latula sets her palms against the cold concrete of the tower and lifts her weight into the air, hovers for a moment like she wants to negate gravity and disappear. Then she lets herself thump back down. "Like I said, I suck at not running, but I don't like the kind of person that makes me. So I figured, if I'm going to stick by him, I should probz get some therapy myself to make sure I don't dump my shit on top of his shit. And the more me and the doc dig into my shit, the more I realized I fucked up with you."
You bite down on the end of your cigarette to keep from saying anything. You don't even know what you want to say, but you're pretty sure any words would come out wrong.
"Like, I wasn't wrong to bail," Latula continues. "I felt like I was drowning, and that's not a good place to help anymore. But I should've talked to you first, or maybe if I'd been better at drawing lines I could've lent an ear once a week or something, instead of us going cold turkey on sixteen years of being besties, or even just told someone else you needed a hand. So I wanted to meet up and apologize."
You bite down so hard you chew right through the fucking cigarette. Great. Excellent work, Damara. Let's hear it for your amazing self-control.
You methodically grind the now ruined cigarette out on the concrete and let it smolder down to ash. Latula doesn't push you to speak.
(She would have, before. You're not sure you like the change.)
"I could've called you," you say eventually. "Except not, because if I could've done that, I would have been a different person. And if you could've stayed, you would've been a different person too. We can't hate us then for not knowing the stuff we know today."
"Get that from your shrink?" Latula says.
"Yeah. Which doesn't mean it's not true."
"Wow. Next thing you know, you'll be telling me there's a reason for those fancy diplomas and licenses my doc keeps on her wall," Latula drawls. She kicks sideways, knocks her boot into your shoe. "Hey, can I bum a paper off you?"
"These are no good for marijuana and you know it," you say, but you pull the packet out of your coat pocket and peel one flimsy sheet off for her. She fishes a plastic baggie from her own pocket and rolls the saddest joint you've ever seen.
"Light?"
You sigh and pass her your lighter.
You watch the gold-pink tinge seeping over the horizon as Latula grumbles and curses at the predictably recalcitrant joint. She seems to get some comfort out of the process, though, and the unmistakable smell slowly seeps into your own hair and clothes as she breathes out smoke. You'll need to shower again and douse your laundry basket in air freshener when you get home, unless you want your mom's patented 'I don't care if the law is stupid; while you live in my house you won't break it' lecture. Fortunately you keep a few cans around for when Hecate's litterbox gets particularly nasty. It's been a while since you used them for anything else, but it's not like you've forgotten the routine.
(It's kind of nice that this, at least, hasn't changed.)
"Hey, so," Latula says when her joint sputters out for the sixth time. "I know this is hella rude and you don't have to answer if you don't want to, but like. Are you a witch now? Cuz they say it runs in families, and your little sis obvs has major mojo going on."
You shrug. "I could be, if I wanted. I have the same affinities as Aradia."
"Yeah?"
"Time, death, a little bit of fire. Whether that's because I'm using half her life or whether it was true before, who knows. But I'm not interested, and since you can't call power by accident until after you call it on purpose, I don't have to sit through the same kind of training bullshit she does."
"Fair," Latula says. She flicks your lighter a seventh time, manages one draw, then exhales frustrated smoke when the joint burns out again. "Rrgh. Y'know, this is defeating the entire purpose of getting mellow."
"I told you it was the wrong paper," you say. "Here. Let me." You pluck the sad little would-be cylinder out of her hand, pinch your fingers around the charred tip -- a sorry excuse for a circle, but close enough for what you need -- and concentrate.
A tendril of smoke curls upwards and you hand the now-lit joint back.
Latula raises her eyebrows at you. "And this doesn't count as calling power how?"
"Stupid party tricks never count."
Latula punches your shoulder. "You rebel."
You let go of your straight face and shrug. "Yeah, well, I didn't say I wasn't sitting through any training. Just not the same kind Aradia's getting. She jumped right into the deep end and got a whole bunch of spirits and covens paying attention to her. Me, they treat like a footnote -- baby prodigy's first spell, not someone who might cast spells herself. I'm okay with that. I don't need to be flashy. I just want a few tricks up my sleeve for when somebody comes after her."
"Oh. Uh, has anyone tried...?"
"Not yet," you say.
"Gotcha. Let's hope they keep on that way." Latula pinches out the joint and flicks it over her shoulder to die on the grimy concrete roof of the tower. "Sun's almost up. You want to grab breakfast somewhere before we head home?"
You used to grab breakfast five days a week when you carpooled to high school in the godawful clunker she and her uncle bought out of some farmer's front yard and were slowly fixing into a recognizable truck. Drive through the McDonalds or Dunkin' Donuts, or run into the Hart Street diner to get hashbrowns and those little plastic cups of jam. It was a routine, a ritual, one thing you could hold onto when you started to feel like you were dissolving into blank gray goo.
This won't be the same. You can't make time run backwards -- not without magic whose price you don't want to imagine -- and even if you could, you don't want to. There was too much bad mixed in with the good, and like you told Latula, you're both different people now. Hopefully better people, or at least people with better tools to make your lives worth living.
You can't go back. But you can start again, a new beginning for a new day.
Latula holds out her hands.
"You're paying," you say, and pull each other up.
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End of Fic
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I'll probably do another editing pass before sticking this on AO3 -- maybe add some more description, maybe clarify a few emotional beats, that sort of thing -- but I have been fighting it for four days in a row and right now I just want to post and be DONE. *falls gratefully into bed*
(Title is, as always for this series, a quote from Macbeth.)
Costo Levitra In Chimica
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