28/11/2016 09:06:47 ¶ ●

## p1

earth c is flooded 2400s earth not unflooded normal earth and everyone ends up in dirks apartment, nobody is happy about this: GO! (it’s going to be dirkjake, bckgrnd davekat and roxy/calliope)

(warnings: drowning mentions, pov character dissociating, discussion of death, discussion of food/food rationing, implications of characters being triggered (dave w/ dirk’s apartment, puppets, and jake w/ the sendificator), sensory overload, and most importantly: painfully awkward interactions with ex-bf)

The world goes dark, and you wake up drowning. Water in your mouth, gagging on the taste, in your nose, eyes, burning, and you go on autopilot without a second thought. You kick, hard, forcing your eyes wide against the sting, following the glimpse of light until you float, choking and then just coughing, on the surface of the sea.

You turn your head to listen above the water, and there are many voices, calling out in shock. Quickly you snap your brain back online, and flip over to look around. Counting — there should be eight humans, you think, and four, five (?) trolls, Calliope hopefully, maybe some of the sprites — it’s hard to tell who’s who, in the water. You see nine heads, in the water, plus yourself, that’s ten, can trolls swim? There’s Roxy, towing Jane through the water with her. Not enough people. Someone is calling out something — a name. You dive below the surface again, chasing instinct and flashes of color and disturbance. There’s a body, and you grab hold. Claws dig into your skin and you have to fight them, whichever troll this is, drag them upward, kick them when they keep pushing you back under to breathe.

“Stop it—” you snap between breaths and struggling.

“You can fly!” the troll returns, and you mentally curse yourself and push both of you out of the water.

The other god tiers seem to have figured this out ahead of you. The troll is gasping for air and still clutching your arms too tight, despite the trickles of blood oozing down your arms. You count again. Twelve. No, thirteen, you forgot yourself.

Ahead of you, a structure sits, metal stilts and a building on top of it, and you grit your teeth. Fly forward with a violently trembling troll in your arms.

Dave nearly crashes into you and grabs ahold of the troll (Karkat, your brain finally informs you). He’s shaking nearly as badly.

“You can’t fucking swim,” he says, and it’s a question but his teeth are chattering and he’s holding on to Karkat hard enough to stifle his words. You let go and give them space.

This isn’t right, you think, staring up at your apartment. This isn’t the new universe Earth.

Roxy touches your elbow, trying not to startle you. “This is our Earth, isn’t it?” she asks. Soaked to the skin with her hair plastered flat on her skull, she looks different than she usually does. Smaller.

“Yeah,” you say.

“This is your home,” she says.

You nod, turning your gaze back to the apartment. “Let’s get everyone inside,” you tell her, instead of responding to the question you’re both wondering. There’s no sign that the Red Miles were ever there, and no drones, as far as you can tell without checking the roof. “There’s a hatch we can fly in through.”

She nods and starts rounding everyone up. You notice, distantly, that despite all odds, Calliope has made it through to the new universe. The new old universe. You unlatch the door and go inside your apartment. It’s almost exactly as you left it, except the things you knocked over in your hurry to salvage your friends’ ability to enter the medium are back in their places.

Dave isn’t going to like this, you think. You push a puppet behind the couch with a foot and cross to the kitchen. Your cupboards are as you left them, too: mostly empty. The voices of your friends and the other players start to chatter and bounce in your living room.

Twenty seconds, you tell yourself, and rest your head against the refrigerator. You only make it to seventeen before someone says your name.

It’s Jane. “Dirk?” she asks.

“Yeah,” you say. “I’m coming.” You follow her back to the living room and catalogue the faces that turn to look at you. Roxy, Jake, Jane, Dave, Rose, Jade, John. You all made it through. Four trolls: Karkat, Terezi, the glowing one named Kanaya who you haven’t really talked to yet, and Vriska, who you don’t think you like very much. One cherub: Calliope. None of the sprites.

“Jade, is this the right planet?” John asks. He’s the only one not currently dripping everywhere. Probably used his breath powers to dry off.

“Yes,” Jade says. “It’s just different than I expected!” She looks around at your walls, or maybe through them, out across the ocean. “But this is still Earth. Post-scratch, in the future.”

“It’s Dirk’s and my planet,” Roxy says. She still looks small and is huddled next to Calliope. “This is the world after the Condesce took over. It’s flooded.”

“There’s no land?” Terezi asks.

Roxy shrugs. “Not anywhere near us. I’d wondered about the Himalayas.”

“So this is our reward?” Vriska asks, glaring at Roxy. “A world only a seadweller could live on? Is there anything living on this planet?”

Calliope pats Roxy’s elbow when she just hunches over further under the weight on Vriska’s stare.

“Carapacians,” you say, to take the attention off of her. “The Condesce put carapacians on this planet. They adapted to live in floating colonies. That’s where Roxy grew up. This is where I grew up.”

“But there were no other humans left, right?” Jane asks at your side. When you look at her she looks back, unusually steady.

“None,” you agree.

“Could the Mayor have…” Dave breaks off abruptly when everyone looks at him.

Karkat finishes his sentence. “On the meteor, there was a carapacian called the Mayor,” he says. “Could he be here?”

“Maybe,” you say, to try and stop Dave’s expression from being any more crushed. “I don’t know. I never met a carapacian.”

“We’re not going to figure it out tonight,” Jane says abruptly. “This is your home, right, Dirk?”

You nod.

“Then, if you don’t mind,” she says, “we can wait here while we try to figure out what happened, or if we’re — still in the game.” She falters very briefly over that thought, looks at you. “If you don’t mind having guests.”

You almost feel like laughing at the suggestion and wave her on.

“Everyone’s exhausted,” she continues. “We just fought a battle. Let’s get some rest and try to piece it together tomorrow.”

“I need to check something,” you mutter to Jane, and, when Vriska looks like she might start arguing, abscond the fuck out of there.

Your room is intact. The rocket board and sendificator are back in their places (fuck, the sendificator, but you don’t have anywhere to hide it), and your rapbots are intact but shut down. God, the puppets, what are you going to do about Dave? You pry open the window above your table and climb out. Your ladder is still there, but you fly now, up, up, onto the roof.

The imperial drones that you’d fought before leaving were no longer there. Their broken bodies had been lying across your roof had disappeared. Could be good or bad, considering. You only let yourself take a few moments before going back in. It wouldn’t be fair to leave Jane to deal with everyone.

When you make it back to the living room, everyone seems to be dispersing and talking quietly. The sound reverberates around the room and you pull Jane into the kitchen to tell her that everything is as if the game never happened.

She frowns down at the sink, exhaustion written into the lines on her forehead. “Bad or good?” she asks.

“Good, if the Condesce is still dead,” you say. “Very bad if she isn’t.”

“I don’t want to fight her again,” Jane says. There’s a minute tremor to her hand when she braces herself against the counter.

“Let’s not worry about that yet,” you tell her, immediately regretting having increased her stress levels. “Can you help me clean up my bedroom for a minute? So we have more places for people to sleep.”

She nods, though looking a little confused, and follows you to your room.

“Can you just—” You break off, push your damp hair out of your face. It’s starting to frizz up as it dries. “Put the puppets under the table?”

“Sure,” she says, and starts gathering them up. You take the sendificator down and set Geromy on the cinderblocks instead. Maybe you can hide it under the desk? Or in your closet? Put Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff on the cinderblocks with Geromy. Maybe Dave will like that.

Cal’s gone, you realize, and someone knocks on the door.

Jane looks up from her armful of hats and puppet ass as Jake sticks his head around the door. You reflexively try to hide the sendificator behind you, then consider throwing it out the window. Making eye contact with him is physically painful, even though you talked briefly on the victory platform. Apologized the way you should have in the first place, even though he seemed blame himself for the things that were your fault.

“Do you have any linens?” he asks you.

Fuck. You try to unglue your mouth and respond clearly. “Linens?”

“Everyone’s still pretty damp…” He trails off, glances away at Jane uncomfortably.

“Oh,” you say. The sendificator is heavier than it looks. Every part of you is screaming. “Yeah. The bathroom’s just across the hall, check under the sink? Or, uh.” For fuck’s sake, why can’t you talk? “John could probably dry everyone off. With his. With the breeze.”

“Oh, that’s smart,” Jake says. You give up and stare intently at his shoes. They’re nice shoes. Right between red and orange in shade. His socks are as yellow as the rest of his god tier outfit. You keep your eyes on his shoes, and don’t look at his legs. Acting normal seemed to be impossible, but you could at the very least not make him uncomfortable. Ugh. “I’ll just…” He backs out of the room. You can’t bring yourself to say anything back.

“Smooth,” Jane says, like she can’t help herself.

“Yeah, yeah,” you say, and can make yourself move again. You drop the sendificator on the ground. You’re still wearing your stupid god tier clothes, too. The pants had gone sort of limp when you were really soaked, but they’re cheerfully getting poofy and annoying again.

“But you have talked to him?” she asks, a little more gently.

“I have. We’ve talked.” Maybe put the sendificator under the table with the puppets, and put down a sheet or something on top, like a tablecloth, to hide them?

Jane doesn’t push, to your relief. You mercilessly cram down the cacophony that started up in your brain when he walked in. Hush up, feelings. Move along. You triple-check that the sendificator is disabled entirely and cram it down under the table with the puppets. And the hats. Jane just grabbed all of it. You’re pretty sure that’s the worst of it, and you need to go make sure nobody’s started a bloodbath in your living room, so you grab the sheet off of your bed and prop it in place with some spare robot parts. Then, for good measure, you put two fancy Santas on top, too.

“Dirk?” Jane asks, watching you.

“Almost done,” you say, and relocate your Sweet Bro plushie next to Hella Jeff and Geromy. Good. Good enough. “Okay, time to make sure nobody’s bleeding out on my couch.”

Jane pulls a face. “Not really funny!” she tells you, which, yeah, fair enough.

“They can’t all be winners,” you say, in an approximation of yourself. You’re still about a step back, watching and tugging yourself into the right movements and actions. Except when Jake had walked in. That moment you’d been pretty damn present. Unfortunately. You follow Jane back out.

Everyone’s dry now, and John quickly blasts both of you with heat like a hair dryer. Your hair probably looks like the lovechild of Roxy and Karkat’s hair at this point. You choose to spare yourself from knowing for sure, and don’t check.

“So there’s my room, too,” you say. “Or, if people want more space, you could sleep on the roof.”

“Thank you, Dirk,” Rose says. She looks an awful lot like you. It’s pretty disturbing. Dave and Karkat are still curled towards each other on one corner of the couch, but Roxy and Calliope have relocated to the kitchen.

“Dirk, there’s no food,” Roxy says. She looks a lot better now, just perplexed.

“Very little, anyway,” Calliope adds.

You drift towards them without really thinking it through. Terezi and Vriska have disappeared somewhere. “I only had enough to last until the game,” you say. “I was rationing it by the time we entered the medium. There’s the fish, though.”

The sad look is back. “You should’ve come to me,” she says.

“What, on the rocket board?” you laugh a little at the idea. “I was fine, Roxy, I only had to live until sixteen.”

Calliope puts a hand on her arm again. “We can make do while we figure something out,” she promises, and tugs Roxy closer.

Right. It’s not all about you. “I can help figure it out in the morning,” you offer. The sun’s getting low in the sky. “See what everyone has in their sylladexes.”

She nods. “Okay. We can do that.”

You escape that conversation as quickly as you can, trip over Kanaya and Rose in the hallway, wait for John to leave the bathroom and close the door behind you. Too many people. This fucking apartment, too. The walls are as solid and impenetrable as ever.

Ten breaths, you tell yourself. In the mirror you look like you’ve been electrocuted. Your hair is an angry cloud and under your eyes is bruised with exhaustion. There’s a new scar, too, that you can’t bring yourself to look at. Jane brought you back. You were dead, permanently, heroically dead, and Jane brought you back nearly intact. Maybe you can borrow Roxy’s scarf. You want to claw your expression out of the mirror. You don’t recognize yourself.

Three more breaths, and you open the door again. Rose and Kanaya are in your room with Roxy and Calliope. On second glance, you see Jade and John in the corner, talking quietly. Rose looks over at you and raises an eyebrow. You back away.

Jane is on the kitchen floor with some blankets and Vriska. You don’t want to hear that conversation. You don’t see Terezi. Or Jake. Dave and Karkat have only moved enough on the couch to facilitate sleeping. Karkat’s eyes have closed to only faint yellow slits, but Dave is staring at you, alert as a caged animal. His shades are on the couch’s arm. You hesitate, and he raises the same eyebrow Rose had.

You give in, and cross to crouch in front of them.

“Will you be okay?” you whisper, even though Karkat is clearly still awake and watching you from behind his mostly-shut eyelids.

Dave shifts a little, and Karkat readjusts his weight. “Close enough,” he answers, gaze flickering around the room, uneasy. His hands on Karkat’s back are spread protectively. “Lot more crowded than normal.”

You agree there. “I’d have cleaned up if I knew I’d be having company,” you say, and the levity does help a little, you think.

“If someone asks why Karkat and I are all cuddled up,” he says, “tell them to mind their own business for me, okay?”

“Okay,” you echo, dismissed, and retreat to the corner to examine your sylladex. You still have your sleeping bag from when you and Jake were still exploring your planets together. Hell no. You find a blanket instead, and rest your head against the wall. Despite everything, people seem willing enough to go to sleep. Everyone’s exhausted, apparently. You are, too, physically. Your body is heavy and stiff. Every sound in your hollow home jars you. Every breath Karkat and Dave take stabs your ears. You’re still wondering where Jake and Terezi are. The roof, maybe. That makes sense. You’d said that people could sleep up there with him in mind, honestly. The tension in you curls up another few painful degrees when Vriska reappears and steps out onto the fire escape. She curses under her breath when she hits her shin on something, and each clanging step she takes might as well be a plate smashed against your skull.

A door opens and shuts. Footstepfootstepfootstepfootstep footstepfootstep footstep footstep. Jade. She surveys the room, head and ears cocked, curls up by the doorway, scanning the room a few times before settling down. A third set of breaths to track. The water, slapping against the scaffolding. The odd rumbling of Karkat’s breathing, not snoring as you know it. Dave’s breath catching every so often when he wakes himself up, and then how it slows back into sleep. He wakes up an average of every 22 minutes. You deliberately don’t calculate it to the second.

Three more awakenings from Dave later, you carefully float yourself into the air and open a window as silently as possible. When you slide out Jade’s eyes open, watching you, dismissing you as not a threat.

The roof, occupied. You sink down, past each metal joint holding your apartment up. You nearly skim the water, still holding your blanket. You captchalogue it after a moment. It’ll only get wet. There’s the boat you built, four, five years ago. The sound of the water slapping against it is persistent and regular enough to drown your mind out. After forty more minutes you doze off.

(Wake, again, in four hours, creep back up to the window, but wait to let yourself in until everyone slowly begins to stir.)