awakener | OK THEN

OK THEN

The Awakener had some acquaintance with being suddenly abducted from a planet's surface and whisked off into space by shady and probably illegal personages, so he would have considered himself relatively prepared for this, but last time it had been a lot more personal and he'd been told what was up pretty much as soon as he was conscious. This was just kind of worrying.

It seemed like they were rebels, which was pretty much a thing that he could get behind, but you could never really be sure with border-raiding rebel factions. These ones didn't seem particularly hostile – not now that they were done razing the hivestructures of the unjust oppressor, anyway – but in his experience people who didn't seem particularly hostile frequently tended to become pretty fucking hostile if, for example, his dark glasses got knocked off, even if they did oppose the cruel and unjust caste system that made that a problem in the first place.

He tugged his hood over his head a little more and did his best to make himself relatively inconspicuous amongst the little throng of similarly kidnapped trolls while he tried to take a few deep calming breaths and stock of the situation, but unfortunately he couldn't come up with much better than "Shit, shit, shit, I am trapped on a spaceship with no way off and I am probably going to die."

It wasn't a very confidence inspiring summation of events. He'd dealt with worse and got out okay, but, well, there was a first time for everything.

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Well, this was just about the opposite of reassuring. The Awakener got up anyway, a little surprised by how quickly this was all happening.

He noticed the leg – it was hard not to – but declined to comment, partially because he didn't know if Starfall was the kind of troll who'd be happy to talk about missing limbs at the drop of a hat, but mostly because he had more immediate concerns.

"What's the deal?" he said, as he followed her to the door. He kept his voice quiet, even though it seemed like, with the intercom off, they weren't being listened to any more. "Is he ..." He made an awkward gesture with one hand. From the way Starfall and Derjun were talking, it sounded like the pilot was kind of ... troubled ... but he sort of hoped he could help with that? If he really was the Psiioniic's descendant then they were probably meant to meet like this, after all, and presumably the reunion of their respective legacies could only bring some kind of resolution to them both.

That was what he was trying to convince himself of, anyway. The part of him that thought things like 'this is stupid you cannot actually be the second coming of the Sufferer you are Karkat Vantas and you suck' was gently reminding him that he had no idea what this guy was going to be like, especially considering he himself was basically nothing like the Sufferer was, and there was no reason to expect anything at all except that it pretty much sounded like the Psiioniic's descendant was certifiably bugfuck insane.

The troll Starfall had called Helion followed them out, gesturing to a few other guards to take their place. They started heading down the hall at a steady but no especially rushed pace. The moment they were more or less on their own, Starfall turned to the Awakener with an apologetic half smile.

"Hey, sorry about that," she said as they walked. "It's really not as bad as it sounds. He just...he's only been with us for a couple perigee at this point, and the kid's had a pretty rough time from everything he's told us."

The Awakener nodded, frowning.

"What has he told you?"

Despite his better efforts he was already forming a mess of expectations, among them the hope of, perhaps, the opportunity for something somehow pale. (He'd found himself abundantly pale for multiple trolls over the course of the last sweep or so, but he'd always had to keep travelling. Perhaps this would be different – perhaps their mutual heritage would mean this would be someone he wouldn't have to immediately leave behind.)

She exhaled quietly, as if preparing to talk a lot.

"Well...when we first found him, he was the only one alive on a ship full of rotted corpses. He'd been there alone for, fuck, I dunno he says it was probably a couple perigee but who knows if his internal clock got all messed up. Just zipping all over the middle of fucking nowhere, stuck in the goddamn engine room. It looks like they put a lot of work into his programming, so dealing with that must have been hell. We don't even really know how he managed to break out in the first place, but..."

She'd been staring ahead for most of that explanation, but she glanced at him now. "It doesn't take a genius to figure out what he had to do to get to that point even. Don't think he was ready for it."

"... Wow," he said, quietly, after an extended pause. "Wow, holy shit." He was much slower to look back at her, and when he did his expression was full of doubt and dismay. "And he's okay to be flying this thing after ... a couple of perigees?"

She blew out air between her lips, running a hand through her wild hair.

"I don't know? I think so, but..." She started staring at the floor in front of her as they walked. "Thing is, we always give the choice. Liberating helmsmen is kind of our thing, right? Like...it's a big deal. And we always give them the choice of whether they want to just...go somewhere safe, to just be able to live however they want, or whether they want to fly with us."

She looked sort of embarrassed by her own uncertainty.

"Ever since we finished the modifications, he'd been saying he wanted to help. He's the only one that can fly this ship right now and...I think if anything, feeling helpless was killing him more than doing this again ever could." She shrugged her shoulders. "I mean, what better way to feel in control than to like...pilot something like this, however you want to? I think there's a lot to be said by reclaiming this shit instead of just avoiding it."

He nodded, slowly. "No, I get it. I mean, I guess being told whether you could or couldn't do it would be, like, the last thing you'd need, after something like that."

He walked on in silence for a few moments, looking contemplative, and then straightened up a bit with a wistful little smile. "I'm glad," he said, "that someone is doing this. I mean, when I was still on Alternia, before I knew about – anything, before I knew anything at all, I had a friend who was basically a shoe-in for this shit, I mean ... really great at other stuff besides moving shit around with his brain, but in the end I don't think they would have cared. Like, he would have been more use to them other ways, and I used to think ... I used to be jealous – but that's not even the point, is it. They just want to make everyone think that this one thing is the only thing they're good for, and who even cares what a fucking waste it is, and –"

He shook his head.

"I guess what I'm trying to say is it's nice to think someone might get him out of there. It's not very often other people give me something to be hopeful about."

She looked up to watch him as he spoke, at first with something a little like awe - like the idea of having someone like the Awakener talk about his past regrets was too strange to comprehend - and then with a more real sort of pity. Towards the end of his story though, her eyebrows creased like she'd made some kind of connection in her head, and she bit her lip with a fang like she wasn't sure whether or not to say something.

Before it had a chance to last though, she shook it off, laughing weakly in the way one does when they don't know what else to say.

"Well, the bigger we get, the more it'll happen. We're getting pretty fucking good at this, you know. I like to think there's some hope for all of us."

Edited 2012-07-09 09:54 (UTC)

He didn't seem to have noticed her moment of uncertainty, apparently distracted by what he'd been saying; he pushed his hands into the pockets of his shabby coat and nodded, smiling a bit more broadly.

"Yeah," he said. "I think so. There's only so long things can go on like this – there's a lot of complacency with the people who could really make a difference, and, you know, there has been for a while, but... I think that can change."

She was just a little bit distracted in her reaction, a slightly delayed but still enthusiastic "yeah, totally," before she paused contemplatively.

"So you grew up on Alternia, huh? Maybe that shouldn't be surprising, but nobody really has any clue what your actual deal is." She glanced up and down his body, like she was trying to see something she hadn't before. "How did you even get off of that shitmine?"

"Yeah. I mean, I had to, otherwise I wouldn't know what it was like. But, I guess, instead of getting conscripted I just got smuggled offworld by Sufferists." He shrugged, lopsidedly. "It's kind of a long story, but it doesn't usually come up all that much. I don't think it really matters."

Starfall let out a puff of air like she was trying to relieve a weight. She gave a firm nod of understanding.

"Yeah, I dunno. You're still a troll, right, so I guess it's cool to hear like...how things actually happen." She shrugged back at him, before sprinting lopsidedly ahead a few steps, to what appeared to be an elevator.

The button compressed and the doors opened, without her ever having touched them and with little more than a flash of silver light in her eye. She hopped inside.

"Here, get in. This'll take us right to the engine block."

The Awakener watched in surprise as the elevator opened unprompted, but he figured he probably shouldn't look too startled or anything lest he make it too obvious how embarrassingly unused he was to the swish futuristic workings of any spaceship that had been constructed after he'd pupated; he followed her inside without comment.

"There's not much to hear about, really," he said. "They took me off Alternia and told me what I was meant to do, and then..." He sighed, not looking at her; when he did look back it was with a small, sad, apologetic smile. "It's not really that long a story, I'm sorry; it's just probably not the time."

He glanced round the interior of the lift, looking just a little apprehensive.

"...How long does this take to go down?"

"Yeah, that's fine," she said with some pointed nonchalance. "We've all got our shit. Just making small talk, really."

The guard that had been following them, Helion, stepped in after them and the door swished shut. Starfall leaned back with the boredom of someone had who taken this lift many times, and gave the Awakener an uncertain look as it started to move.

"...I dunno, I mean, technically I think we're going up right now - the engine block is a bit more centrally located. I think it goes pretty fast though. Why? Not big on ascenders?"

He winced a bit at that. He was fairly sure he was not, actually, supposed to have his shit, or at least any shit that was not the immense sadness brought about by possessing boundless pity for all trolls in a universe where they were nothing but cruel to one another.

Which wasn't to say he felt bad for being upset about what had happened to the cultists who'd lifted him from Alternia; anybody reasonable would be, but it shouldn't have happened in the first place. It didn't fit. He wasn't supposed to be contending with his own tragedies – other people had more than enough of them to keep him occupied.

He was fairly sure it was his fault, besides, and that if he hadn't been such an egregious little shit at the time then they wouldn't have died.

And that was why he was apprehensive – it had just sunk in that he was about to meet somebody who had even more grounds than most trolls to be disappointed by his essential inadequacy.

"Oh, no, it's fine," he said, laughing, because the ascender was if anything less cramped and claustrophobic than one or two of the spaceships he'd used over the last sweep or so. "I guess I'm just ... excited."

Starfall grinned at that, though there a flash of uncertainty that hadn't been there before. She seemed quick to shrug it off, though.

"Well, cool," she said. "From the sounds of it, Aero's pretty eager too."

The ascender, as promised, was suitably fast. The indicators above the door flashed by at an accelerated pace until it slowed at a level titled "engineering." The interface at the side of the door displayed an authorization prompt. Starfall pressed her fingers to the screen, and was greeted with a swift "access granted: captain starfall".

Once the door slid open, there wasn't much on that level to look at, besides a few doors of to the size, and a large gate straight ahead guarded by two trolls.

Starfall gestured for the Awakener to follow, and approached them.

"We're here to see Aero," she announced as they approached. "Can you ring us in?" The trolls immediate looked to the Awakener in an uncertain kind of awe.

"Uh, right," one of them, and touched what appeared to be a headset. He hesitated. "...Is this him?"

"Yeah," he said, smiling genially and trying not to seem too nervous about the idea of people knowing who he was without him having personally told them so. "I'm the Awakener. Hi."

The troll raised their eyebrows, apparently at a loss for words. A few moments later, he gave up on searching for any, tapping the headset with a finger.

"Hey," he said. "Captain Starfall and the Awakener requesting entrance."

There was no auditory confirmation - just a lingering, indeterminate pause followed by the soft mechanical click and slide of the doors opening on their own. The guards stepped out of the way, Helion joining their ranks. Starfall gestured for the Awakener to follow, and took the first steps inside.

"Hey Aero," she called out. "We're here."

It was dark, in there. Purplish shadow outlined the shapes of sleek metal machinery mingled with deep tyrian biotech, tendrilled wires extending out into the darkness. It was hard to take in the details, with the rooms center piece and main source of light at present hanging in the far center.

The red and blue lights of the troll's eyes cut through the shadow like a beacon, sparks of their brilliance radiating off of their body and up through the bio wiring that suspended them like webs. The column was more refined than the typical image of a helmsman - fewer connection points and more practical supports. But three of the limbs that could be seen were amputated stumps, biotech flowing straight out of their ends.

The helmsman hardly stirred as they entered, their expression obscured by their flight visor as their head hung, lungs panting with sustained exertion. Four horns poke through a mess of black hair and reddish connections.

But as the Awakener entered, the trolls face finally lifted, their breath catching in their throat.

The Awakener only took two steps past the doors before he stopped in total shock. Whatever he'd been afraid of before paled into insignificance next to what he was looking at now, but he couldn't even work out whether he was horrified or relieved.

Perhaps, he thought frantically, it was just a weird coincidence, the red and blue and the two sets of mutant horns, but even as the idea crossed his mind he realised it was laughable – and then the helmsman lifted his head, and the doubt he was trying in vain to make room for was ousted completely.

"Sollux," he murmured. He couldn't find the words for anything else.

Hearing his name like that sent a shudder through the troll's body, his breath suddenly coming in louder and shakier as the rest of his expression remained uncharacteristically flat. The air around the Awakening suddenly shifted, the subtle touch of psionics moving over his body, like the hands of a blind person's feeling the feature's of someone face.

He didn't say anything, his head shaking slowly to himself like he wasn't sure whether to believe his own eyes. In the end he just forced himself to look away, head turning away to what limited degree it could.

"You know him?" Starfall asked quietly, uncertain but somehow not surprised.

He nodded very slowly, but didn't look at Starfall – even when Sollux looked away, making him flinch, he couldn't seem to tear his own eyes away from him.

"Sollux," he said more loudly, and took another step forward, an edge of desperation in his voice that was slight but threatened that this was only the tip of a vast iceberg of embarrassing emotional wordvomit. "Sollux, it's me."

Edited (WOW ICONS WHOOPS) 2012-07-10 17:44 (UTC)

Starfall glanced at Sollux's reaction for a few moment and then nodded, stepping back and deciding to just let herself blend into the background for the moment. Whatever was occurring here seemed way too awkward to want to walk in on.

The energy flowing across the wiring sparked more violently now.

"Don't..." he said faintly, with his own lips instead of the harsh computerized voice he'd used before. He choked on his words, his breath becoming quicker, more panicked. "Okay, you can go," the computer voice picked up where his real one had faltered. "You can go."

Karkat almost took another step forward, but he seemed to think better of it. His face fell, and he shrank back. His look of confusion and dismay hardened, momentarily, into one of defensive anger very little like anything that had been on his face since he'd come on board; for a second it looked as if he might growl at the helmsman, but it faded before it could reach his throat, and he seemed to snap out of it – or perhaps just to press it down. He gathered a sort of miserable calm back to himself, but he was obviously only very narrowly suppressing a more emotional reaction.

"Okay," he said. He glanced at Starfall, eyebrows raised slightly, as if seeking some kind of explanation from her, but also just eager to leave.

Starfall perked up as he looked at her, just then realizing that her contributions were desired again. She took a step forward again, giving the Awakener her own inquisitive look, before turning her attention back to the helmsman.

"Uh, fuck, um," she started eloquently, apparently searching for shred of a dignified way for them to leave the situation. "Alright, man. We'll let you focus on your boat stuff. They're going to be in to take you down right away, okay? We can talk more later if you want."

Sollux didn't reply, but he did relax a little as if the knowledge that the confrontation would be over shortly was enough to start calming his panic.

She reached out to put a hand on the Awakener's shoulder and started ushering him out - but before letting the door close she turned around to face Sollux again, for a few short moments.

"It's cool, Aero. You're going to be alright."

Silence lingered for a few more seconds, and with a sigh Starfall exited into the hallway outside.

The Awakener waited outside for her, trying not to look too anxious or distressed for the benefit of the guards. He didn't manage to be very convincing.

"I'm sorry," he said, when Starfall rejoined him. "I'm sorry, I didn't know, I –" His voice cracked. "What happened to him?"

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