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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For a moment he looked almost offended that she was even suggesting that he might remember any less about any of the scripture than basically everything (even if it had been a pretty long time since he'd read the whole thing), but then the potential implications of what she was saying sunk in, and he sat up a little straighter, his ears pricked forward.

"Wait, do you mean – shit, you said it was part of the Imperial escort swarm, didn't you?" He boggled unashamedly. "Are you saying..."

"Not him," she said, leaning forward with the intensity of what she was going to say. "Not yet. But his descendant."

She almost bounced in her seat.

"Can you believe it? You and the Psiioniic's descendant are on the same fucking ship!"

That was, apparently, even more of a surprise, going by look on his face.

It had honestly never occurred to him that any of the Sufferer's followers would even have descendants – not that it seemed improbable or anything, but the thought had never once crossed his mind.

"Oh my god," he said. "I – holy fuck, are you serious? This is ..." He trailed off, staring. He wasn't sure what it was, actually. He was having trouble working out whether he was excited or terrified.

"Extremely serious," she replied, beaming. "Apparently he was drafted into military service a sweep or two ago. Makes sense that he'd be the one to do something totally fucking unprecedented, right? The Empress must have known - she had like this entire ship tailored to him."

Edited 2012-07-08 23:32 (UTC)

"Oh my god," he said again, eloquently. "This must be – destiny or something? I need to meet him. Can I meet him? You have to let me meet him."

"Well," Derjun started, opening his mouth to say something for the first time in a while, but Starfall roared on without him.

"Oh, totally. I bet he'll want to meet you too - I mean, we had no idea if it'd ever even happen and...well, it'll probably have to wait until he's been unhooked, but we've already dropped out of hyperdrive so that will probably only take a few hours once we're back to base camp..."

Derjun continued to look uncomfortable with the subject, before finally saying: "Starfall, please set your own enthusiasm aside for a moment and consider that this may not be something we want to spring on him on short notice based on his..." He glanced at the Awakener, unsure of how how much to say, and eventually opted for, "...his profile."

Starfall blinked, and all at once whatever Derjun was alluding to seemed to occur to her. She immediately bit her lip.

"...Right, fuck. Um. Well...Maybe Santoz hasn't told him yet and..."

But before she could even finish that sentence, the intercom had clicked on, a raspy but harshly computerized voice speaking from the other side.

"Is he there?" it asked.

"I can wait," the Awakener started to say, "if it wouldn't be –"

He broke off when the intercom cut in, though, startled into momentary silence by the interruption. He stared around the room, and then looked cautiously back at Derjun and Starfall.

"Is that..."

Derjun nodded tensely to the Awakener, and Starfall shrugged with a nervous sort of helplessness before turning to where the intercom ostensibly was.

"Yeah," she said, trying to sound casual and doing a decent job of it, considering the worry in her expression. "We totally picked up the Awakener, Aero, can you believe it? How are you holding up in there?"

Whoever was on the other side didn't seem to be paying much attention.

"I want to see him." The voice glitched at the end, sounds starting to blur over top of each other. "^{Bring him here.} _{Let me see him.}"

Starfall frowned, glancing over to the Awakener sort of guiltily. "Is this okay?" she mouthed.

The Awakener was pretty obviously unnerved, but he nodded firmly all the same.

"Is he okay?" he mouthed back, as much on account of how worried Starfall looked as how deeply bizarre the computerised intercom voice was.

Starfall chewed on her lip again, and raised her hand to waggle it uncertainly. "I'll explain in a second," she mouthed again, and then turned to the intercom.

"Yeah sure, Aero," she said. "We'll be right over."

The intercom fizzled indeterminately for a moment before shutting off. Starfall let out a sigh of relief.

"God. Okay, I'll take him to the engine room." She pointed to the remaining guard at the door. "Helion, you're with me. Derjun, you keep sorting through the newbies, we can't keep them waiting all night." She started to get up from the table.

"Starfall," Derjun said, with less spite than his complaints before, and with more genuine concern. "Are you certain about this?"

She groaned. "As if he isn't going to break the ship in half just as hard if we leave him to wait in there, man, come on." She glanced up to look at the Awakener, an then pushed herself up fully. "We should go," she said to him, and moved for the door.

It only became apparent then, but with the shorts she was wearing, it became abundantly obvious that one of her legs was entirely artificial, all yellowish synthetic biotech and maneuverable lengths of metal. She walked with a pronounced limp, but paid no heed to it.

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."

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