Chapter Text
Dave doesn’t know how it starts, and he’s not thinking about how it’ll end.
When he’s young, the words are ‘refugees, immigrants’ and Alternians are little more than gray-skinned children running scared from an angry parent. Dave doesn’t understand yet that there’s more to the story, only that his school will dock a ship full of troll refugees as fellow students as part of their cultural exchange.
Dave’s young, only 10, but he knows bullshit when he hears it. The ships are full of scared kids his age, the refuse and rabble of a civilization that didn’t mind losing a few thousand unsavory members. There’s a caste system apparently, and these newcomers make up the bottom part in overwhelming numbers.
There’s lessons beforehand about trolls. Dave doodles in his notebook and doesn’t pay attention to the instructor. The words ‘bloodcolor’ and ‘psychic abilities’ reach him in a distant way as he makes up rap lyrics and sketches badly drawn crows along the margins of his paper. The existence of the aliens doesn’t bother him the way it does the adults. But Dave has sat on a rooftop looking up at the stars too many nights to be surprised by what he knew as a certainty. He’s never once looked up at the sky without knowing there was life up there, somewhere, so when the ships first appeared he’d taken it in stride.
The teacher drones on with the lesson. There’s other lessons he’s thinking about as the teacher talks, lessons about how to best act to make sure Bro doesn’t notice him, and lessons on how to dodge if he does.
Dave’s good at these lessons. He gets faster every day, smarter. Maybe soon he’ll be fast and smart enough to avoid Bro altogether, but the bruises hidden under his sleeves say he has a lot left to learn.
He isn’t doodling when they actually bring in a troll— a real live alien, gray skin and sharp teeth and all. She’s wearing a scowl more than anything else Dave can notice, speaks English like she’s threatening grammar itself and there’s a clicking, buggy accent to her words. There’s glasses on her face, covering eyes a blank, burnt-out red. She names herself Terezi.
After that, there’s more. A hundred trolls flood the school, too many to know, to name. Dave spends his time mostly ignoring them outside of class. It isn’t hard to. The trolls stick together, chattering away in their strange language that hurts his ears.
It happens during lunch hour, three hundred humans and over a three dozen trolls crammed together to have at it in a social crucible disguised as mealtime. There’s all shapes of horns and colors to their hatchsigns, but mostly the rusts, the yellows, the browns. One is bending spoons in the corner with brainpower alone, drawing a crowd of human admirers. The trolls roll eyes at what to them is a parlor trick. Dave’s still impressed though.
The sound of it is what draws him in. A fight. That classic, rising tide of childhood excitement that accompanies schoolyard violence. Dave might not know much in life besides how to take a punch, but somehow seeing this new troll feels worse than getting hit by Bro.
He’s short, for one, and yelling at the top of his lungs in broken half-English, every other word a curse. He’s impossible to ignore. The troll is angry, seething, claws out and blunt teeth bared in a snarl. “You fucking morons! What shit did you eat for breakfood to justify the shit you just projectile vomited out your mouth in my direction! I’ll kill you!” The rest of the threat dissolves into Alternian, but Dave doesn’t need to speak the language to know it’s every bit as scathing.
The threats are aimed at a pair of bigger trolls, both greens, both with a familiar look of cruelty in their grayed-out eyes. The short troll snarls threateningly at them, but Dave can read him enough to see the fear that lies beneath the bluster. His back’s to the cinderblock wall. His eyes are wide, flashing yellows like a cornered animal, and when he lashes out it’s out of fear and hurt and not rage for all that his screams sound angry. There’s green beneath his claws, but he’s cornered and outnumbered and that desperate look in his terrified eyes speaks to Dave.
He doesn’t stop to think before throwing himself headlong into the fight. Dave can scrap with the best of them, and it’s a schoolyard brawl for the ages. Another green joins the attackers, and suddenly Dave and Shorty are fighting side-by-side. It’s a thrill to battle something knowing he might win, and somehow, they win, Dave sporting new bruises but with a grin on his face. His nose is bloody and he can see the troll staring at it in wonder as the greens run off up the hall. The other kids are still chanting “fight fight fight,” loud enough to drown out the sound of his heartbeat pounding in his ears.
He holds out his hand once the dust settles. “I’m Dave.”
The troll is still staring at him, squinting at the offered hand like he’s suspicious it’ll bite. “Karkat,” he says, and it’s foreign and clicky enough it takes Dave a second to realize it’s a name. The troll’s still staring at the blood that drips from Dave’s hurt nose.
He nods, but by then the teachers are there, dragging the students apart and zeroing in on Dave’s busted face, the three greens telling sweet lies in their ears.
Dave doesn’t give a shit about the detention or the broken nose. It’s a mark he’ll wear with pride. It’s different for Karkat though. The teachers say things like ‘difficulty adjusting’ and ‘too violent’ and ‘more structured environment’, and the troll is packed off to alternative school before Dave can say another word to him.
It’s over a year before he sees the troll again.
...
It’s been a year and Dave’s nose has healed slightly crooked. He’s picked up a few Alternian words, mostly swears, and Terezi sits with him every day at lunch. The girl’s blind but can sniff out the bruises on an apple from five feet away. Dave knows she can probably smell the places where Bro’s latest strikes broke skin to leave thick scabs behind, but as always she says nothing. It’s one of the reasons why Dave loves her.
She’s cackling to herself, typing away on that handheld device all trolls carried, chatting with another troll. Dave snoops a glance at the screen but it’s all colored gibberish to him. Saying fuck in alien is different from reading it, and Dave never picked up that particular talent.
“You’re going to love him,” Terezi tells him this like he has no choice but to comply. “I’ve known this one for sweeps! He was even on the ship with me. We go way back.”
Terezi liked to introduce him to other trolls she knows. Dave isn’t sure why. Most are okay enough. Aradia and her chill clashed with Dave’s chill in a way that inspired nothing productive, Tavros was pretty dope actually even if his rapping made Dave want to weep at the butchery of his art, and there was another troll Terezi raved about, an old friend, a yellow who wasn’t in school at all, who was too important for such things. The mastermind behind the troll’s exodus and a powerful psionic to boot. Hearing Terezi rave about Sollux Captor, Dave half thought the troll could shit gold bricks on command.
This new troll must be different though. With the rest she’s been loud, boisterous for days beforehand because Terezi wore her excitement as manic glee and lacked patience otherwise.
Dave raised one unimpressed eyebrow, digging a fork into an orange just because he knew she liked the citrus scent it produced. “Who?”
“You’ll see,” she gushes, licking the air in his direction. “In fact, I’ve set it up so that he’ll be in science class with us!”
Dave rolls his eyes and continues to mangle the fruit in his hands for Terezi’s enjoyment. That’s another thing that’s wrong. Terezi’s never sprung someone on him with so little warning. He tries, but he can’t read her expression. The juice drips down his hands, sticky.
...
Science class is a joke. Attempting to teach the water cycle to kids that engineered and flew spacecraft is a laughable offense from the start, so like always Dave stays by Terezi in the back.
“You could get a dog,” he says, poking her arm with a pencil. She swats him away with amazing precision. “I’m serious. Just play up the blind girl act to the right person and bam! Instant dog, in class and everything.” He spreads his hands like the words were a gift. “You should thank me.”
She licks his palm instead, momentarily distracted from her task of sniffing out which chemicals to make the biggest fire the fastest. Terezi always had hated labs. “A woofbeast? Why would I want one of those? It’s not even a proper lusus.”
“A chihuahua,” Dave declares proudly, prodding her again, bored. It’s a conversation they’ve had before. “A vicious little ankle biter, that’s what you need.”
Her laugh always sounds like it should hurt, raw and scratchy, but he’s come to like the harsh noise. There’s a human version of Trollian that’s come out, Pesterchum, and he types away under his desk at the app. It’s one of the few ‘technological advances’ the trolls promised on arrival, and it’s a piece of shit. Rose is online, so he pesters her with utter bullshit until Terezi gasps and grabs his arm tight enough to hurt. “He’s here!”
Dave looks up, and lo and behold it’s a short troll with blunt teeth and nubby horns. He’s got his arms crossed like shields across his chest and he’s already scowling. It doesn’t look like he’s grown an inch since Dave saw him last.
Terezi waves him over with glee. “Karkat!”
The troll walks over, still scowling. The expression doesn’t leave his face until he makes eye contact with Dave, then it freezes in place as recognition floods his gray eyes. A slow grin creeps up one side of his mouth.
Dave returns the look, secretly pleased that the troll remembered him.
Karkat shoves his backpack higher up one shoulder before falling into the empty desk beside Dave and Terezi. His grin grows wider. “I’m pleased to see you still looking like a delinquent, Dave. No wonder Terezi won’t shut up about you.” His English has gotten better, but there’s still a rasp to it, a buggy click that most trolls can make sound musical or like roughened silk, but Karkat just sounds scratchy.
It’s good. Authentic.
Dave shrugs, secretly pleased as he turned to Terezi, faking exasperation. “Man, girl, you never told me you were friends with the troll I got my nose broke for.”
Karkat scoffs, but he’s still grinning. “That was not my fucking fault.”
Class has started but Dave’s not paying attention. The back of the room shields him enough to talk. He extends his fist to the troll. “I hope you learned to fight sometime in the last year. Only kids who can throw a punch are allowed to hang with us.”
Karkat considers him, then reaches out to bump knuckles with him in rough agreement. “Don’t worry, I did.”
Terezi laughs like a jet engine taking off.
...
There’s a two year grace period before the end of the world begins. Dave isn’t sure if it starts here or at that first meeting, but those two years cement it in place.
After all this time, he’s still not sure why. He has other friends. Human ones. Rose, who he jokingly calls sister both behind her back and to her face, a girl equally as scary as Terezi but in a different way. John, who claims the role of best friend and guards it with good-natured jealousy against Terezi, lamenting that his job would be easier if he lived in Texas and not Washington. Jade, his even more distant bestie who was as lovingly eccentric as any troll and was the only human his age who understood things like space travel and time relative to light years traveled.
Up against genius like that, Karkat only really stands out because he’s loud enough no one can ignore him. He’s rough around the edges, brash, and moves with clumsy confidence like he has no idea what he’s doing but is determined to act like he does. It’s a different kind of mask than the one Dave wears, but like recognizes like.
Still, the realization happens slowly.
They spend every school day together, scheming to make sure they share classes and occupy neighboring desks. They flick notes back and forth behind the teacher’s back. They exchange trollian/pesterchum handles to keep in touch out of class, which matters because trolls don’t give out their handles to just anyone. It took Dave months to gain Terezi’s trust enough for hers, and yet Karkat hands his eagerly over within a week.
Dave and Karkat talk a lot. It’s mostly bullshit and back and forth bravado. There’s never much meaning behind it.
TG: so like i was saying mrs peters class is so easy i could sleep my way through the final exam and still ace it idk what your fucking problem is with english 101
CG: EVERYTHING! NOTHING ABOUT YOUR FEEBLE HUMAN LITERATURE COMES CLOSE TO THE MASTERPIECES THAT INHABIT ALTERNIAN SAGAS AND HOW YOUR SCHOOLFEEDERS FAWN AND RAVE OVER SUCH HOOFBEAST SHIT IS ENOUGH TO MAKE ME PHYSICALLY ILL.
CG: THIS ROMEO AND JULIET BULLSHIT WOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED ON ALTERNIA! HOW IS DYING TOGETHER SUPPOSED TO BE BEAUTIFUL?
TG: beats me but i still know enough about the concept of dying tragically young well enough to write a bomb ass essay on the subject
CG: AGHHHH!!!
Karkat’s grayed-out text and missing hatchsign should have been a hint, but Dave was desperate enough to ignore the warning signs. By the time he realized that yellow text he saw Karkat bothering and linked it back to Captor— it was too late. It was too late even when he saw the fuchsia that joined it, a rich, royal tyrian. Peixes. The rouge princess of their kind, and too high up the blood color totem pole for the likes of a shouty troll like Karkat who’s horns were small and rounded enough to fit below a ballcap.
All these little hints and Dave still doesn’t figure it out.
By the end of that first year, Dave could admit he was crushing hard on his friend but didn’t act on it. Troll romance was a complicated thing and he didn’t want to dance the foursquares until he knew where he stood.
Terezi was surprisingly no help at all. In fact, she actively resisted helping Dave figure this out, teasing him with this glint in her blind eyes that Dave couldn’t help but read as fear.
He called her a hypocrite since she was forever waxing pale on Sollux but she just shook her head at him, solemn. “You don’t understand,” she told him. “Not him.” Her claws poke holes into the wood of her desk as she spoke, knuckles ashy with the strain.
Whatever nerve he’d hit, Dave clearly didn’t understand. “Why not?”
Terezi clicks at him, something short and buzzing that wasn’t english.
“No fair,” Dave complains. “You can tell me. I can keep a secret.”
“If I tell you,” Terezi said slowly. “I’d have to kill you.”
It wasn’t a joke. There was no accompanying cicada’s laugh. Her gray face was grave and serious. Dave felt a hint of true uncertainty. “Terezi, what the fuck?”
“Don’t ask me again!” Terezi snaps and the wood under her claws splinters. She scrambles for control, playing the outburst off. “Your blood would be annoying to clean up.”
Dave says nothing. He’s thinking hard but coming up blank. There’s too much he doesn’t know. But he knows there’s something up, something about Karkat specifically, and that his troll friends are all in on it and for whatever reason have decided to exclude him.
Dave’s deeply offended but hides it well. He’s used to hiding how he feels but never from Terezi. The realization makes him sick.
“You don’t trust me,” Dave states, and it comes out as a fact rather than a question.
Terezi’s headshake is imperceptible. “This isn’t about trust,” she says, and the conversation ends there.
All night long, Dave wonders what this mess is about if trust can’t factor into it. He remembers the fear on her face and he doesn’t sleep well. It’s another year before he dares to ask again because he believes the troll girl may gut him if he does. Terezi is his friend but she’s still a troll. She still had to be taught that human friendship didn’t involve murder.
That last year is tense. Dave’s thirteen now and growing stupid with it, old enough to think he knew better than anyone else and still miring through his crush on Karkat, which has only grown stronger over time. In his mind they’re all but official, because it’s not like Karkat doesn’t clumsily flirt back. Together they tease Terezi mercilessly for all but throwing diamonds at Sollux until they come out as official. The celebratory lunch for the new moirails is the first time Dave’s met the yellow in person, a tall, weedy figure with enough heat cooking in his brain to fry a circuit board. Dave is suitably impressed and proud that Terezi managed to snag a troll so high up the social ladder in the new world the trolls were trying to create, and the psionic feats Sollux had achieved only added to the allure.
That wasn’t enough to stop Dave from needling at the troll, but Sollux snaps back with appropriate fire and snark that Dave judges that he’s good enough for Terezi. Watching her verbally berate the yellow with all but tiny diamonds floating around her head sweetens the pot, and Sollux joins Dave’s growing group of friends.
Watching Sollux and Karkat interact is like watching a play where all the actors are speaking a different language. Unsurprisingly, they’d known each other very well on Alternia and each time Dave is with them together is like third wheeling with whatever he’s not allowed to know. It’s even more frustrating because Sollux won’t let him in on whatever project he’s always obsessed with working on, even when he eagerly enlists Karkat to help.
Dave tries not to let the exclusion get to him, but it itches like a splinter beneath his skin and every passing day digs it in a little bit deeper.
…
It’s after school. Dave is hiding from Bro’s wrath in his room, mixing inelegant beats on his new turntables and working on the first part of a shitty webcomic he plans on fucking around with when he gets he messages on his cellphone.
They’re from Karkat.
CG: DAVE? ARE YOU THERE?
He answers back immediately.
TG: yeah whassup?
The opening is all wrong. Karkat’s normal greeting is an aggressive infodump in all caps, not this tentative questioning.
The next message confirms his unease.
CG: CAN I TRUST YOU?
Dave doesn’t have to think about his reply.
TG: always
CG: OKAY.
CG: DON’T TELL TEREZI OF SOLLUX OR FEFERI OR ANYONE ELSE THAT I TOLD YOU THIS, DO YOU SWEAR?
Dave swears it with his heartbeat drumming in his ears.
TG: i swear. no one else will know
CG: OKAY.
CG: WELL, UH,
CG: YOU KNOW HOW—
CG: SHIT! FUCKSHIT FUCK! I CAN’T DO IT LIKE THIS, I CAN’T LEAVE A PAPER TRAIL OR ELSE SOLLUX /WILL/ FIND OUT.
CG: CAN YOU MEET WITH ME? TONIGHT? I NEED TO SEE YOU.
Dave doesn’t breathe.
TG: yes
TG: shoot me the address and ill be there soon
Karkat sends him the link. Dave screenshots it as he grabs his backpack and grits his teeth.
He knows he’ll get beat for this, but the pain will be worth it if it means finding out what his friends have been hiding. He’s out the door and down the hall before Bro can stop him. The entire time Dave’s nerves are jangling at a fast pace. He’s never broke curfew like this before, never disobeyed a direct order from Bro. The thrill of the rule breaking is almost heady as the freedom it offers.
He’s never really been out on the city at night. The streets are dark but brilliantly lit, the orange smog of the sky a roof above him as low-flying clouds dip between the skyscrapers. Downtown it’s almost too bright to be dark out, but here in the residentials the city retains its darkness like a shroud.
It’s easy to catch a cab. It’s more difficult to find one willing to take him to the troll encampment at the city’s edge, but some of the precious money out of his secret cash hoard does wonders to convince the driver. Another $20 goes to buy the guy’s silence for the duration of the ride.
It’s at least a thirty minute drive. Dave’s fingers tap nervous rhythms against his knee. He half expects the driver to carry him to the nearest child welfare house because his whole look screams preteen runaway, but the cab takes the trip truly. It’s amazing what money can do.
The trolls are under curfew as well, enforced by the city since they’re all parentless and only thirteen in human years. Karkat meets him at the gate anyway. The encampment behind him is clean and dark, without a single light to it. The troll’s pupils are wide when he greets Dave, swallowing up the scant starlight with ease. “Dave.”
“Hey,” Dave answers back. “You wanted to see me?” He does not ask what’s wrong but something clearly is.
Karkat sinks to the ground right there on the bare concrete and puts his hands around his knees. Dave sits beside him. The pavement is chill and slightly damp. He shivers.
“I don’t know how to start,” Karkat admits. He’s not looking at Dave. “How much do you know about us?”
Dave’s mind is full of the code words the system taught him, refugees, immigrants, but he remembers a time when the words had been invaders, enemy , before the ships had opened and scared children poured out. He knows they were running from something. “I know that I trust you,” he answers. “Whatever’s going on, let me help.”
Karkat shivers beside him, but the troll never gets cold. “It’s about Alternia, about the empire,” he says. “About us hiding here on earth. About why we did it… and about me.”
Dave has a feeling these are secrets not even the government knows, and he’s seen them hound Sollux for answers enough to know that. “What do you mean?”
“It was Sollux’s idea, the stupid bastard,” Karkat says this with a growl embedded in his voice. “Terezi helped with the logistics of it, but the actual plan was Sollux’s. And then Feferi jumped on the bandwagon with us taking everyone who wanted to leave the planet before Ascension because of her bleeding pumpbiscuit, and too soon we’re leading a fleet of 5 sweep old runaways across the stars on a fool’s dream, and now it’s just us trying to lead nearly five thousand trolls into a future that none of us knows will actually fucking happen.” Karkat scoffs, growling. “We were stupid and we weren’t thinking much beyond how to prolong our own shitty lives.”
Dave blinks behind his shades. “I don’t understand.”
“The Empire shouldn’t care about a few thousand missing lowbloods and a handful of midbloods. But they will. I know they will.” Karkat explained. He hugs himself tighter. “If they figure out we ran instead of just getting murdered on-planet, the very least the Empire will do is assassinate Feferi before she turns seven and probably Eridan too for being such an ugly fucking caste traitor, and that’s the best case scenario”
Dave is instantly uneasy. “What’s the worst case scenario?”
Karkat bites his lip. His teeth are blunt but strong. Dave can’t stop staring at them. Karkat doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t need to. Dave knows what the consequences will be for him running away tonight. He can only imagine how much worse it’ll be for the trolls.
They sit side-by-side for a while. Dave at last ventures, “My dad beats me,” he says simply. “He beats the living shit out of me. He’s broken bones before. The chances that I’ll live long enough to move out on my own are laughable.” He looks at Karkat, whose head had snapped up to stare at him. “I understand what it’s like to know the adults in your life want you dead.”
Karkat is staring at him like he’s peeling back Dave’s face to see what’s written inside his skull. “You could run,” he says like he doesn’t believe it.
“He’d come after me,” Dave explains, shaking his head. “Running won’t help me any more than it’s helped you.” He looks at Karkat, seeing him bathed in the faint light as if for the first time. “It really was you, wasn’t it? The entire exodus plan. It was you and Sollux and Terezi and Feferi.”
Karkat nods cautiously, like he’s scared the movement will scare him away. “There were twelve of us who planned it, originally,” Karkat said. “All of us slated for death by the Empire. Aradia and Sollux would have been helmsmen. Tavros, Vriska, and Terezi culled for disabilities. Nepeta for refusing to submit to the hemospectrum at all and Equius for supporting her. Kanaya for abandoning the calling of her caste. Gamzee for being hiveshit maggots half the time and ranting about gods and magnets, and Feferi for being the heiress and Eridan too because he can’t live in a world without her in it. We were all going to die and we knew it, so we ran.”
There’s a moment of silence. “Holy shit,” Dave says.
Karkat continues solemnly. His claws scrap along the rough pavement. “It was only supposed to be us who ran, but word got out and suddenly half the continent wanted to leave but we could only reprogram a few of the Ascension vessels to steal otherwise the empire would have found out sooner, so we only stole who we could carry, those like Tavros who wouldn’t survive until Ascension on his own otherwise.” Karkat’s voice is heartbreaking in it’s guilt. “But it wasn’t enough. We left hundreds behind to die, and thousands more who’ll have to face Ascension Day.”
Dave’s heard the term before but doesn’t really know what it means. But that’s not what he asks. “You left your name out of that list,” he points out. “Why do they want you dead?”
Karkat shrinks in on himself. He doesn’t answer.
Dave is thinking very hard. Whatever Karkat’s sins are, he doesn’t care. “How long do you have?”
Karkat shrugs miserably. “Maybe less than a sweep. Once the Empire readies itself for Ascension Day, they’ll discover the missing ships even if no one on-planet betrays us, which is a certainty in any case.”
“So then?”
“It’s borrowed time,” Karkat explains, gesturing around him. “All of this? This dream of peace here on this planet? It’ all borrowed fucking time.” He digs his claws into the concrete, a scraping squeal. “We’re still going to die.”
Dave leans into him, offering a silent support. Karkat accepts without hesitation, and he is a burning furnace at Dave’s chilled side. They sit together for a moment. Dave is burning up with all the words he isn’t brave enough to say.
Dave says, “Everybody fucking dies.” Karkat looks at him, his face only a few inches away. Dave continues. “We all die. That’s not what matters. What matters is what we do before that.” He stares back at the troll, at the literal alien before him and asks. “So, Karkat, what do you plan on doing before you die?”
Karkat’s slow smile is nearly identical to the first one he shared with Dave, except this one is edged with the promise of violence. “Me? I’m going to fight.”
They stay like that, side by side as the night passes quietly around them. They don’t say anything else. When the sun rises the next morning Dave joins the troll bus to the school, and when he returns to his apartment that afternoon Bro gets creative with his punishments. Dave nurses a broken hand that night as he outlines the end of the first chapter of his comic. The extra shake the injury adds to his pen only highlights the ironic beauty of the thing.
Dave is thirteen years old at the beginning of the end of the world, but for tonight he draws shitty comics and pesters Karkat on Pesterchum like that night in the dark wasn’t the first spark onto dry tinder, words of treason and promise that Dave doesn’t yet understand the meaning of.
It’s not for another year that the first message arrives from space. It’s from the Alternian Empire, all but postmarked by the HIC herself in all her Tyrion glory, like there might have been another alien empire out there beefing with Earth and the sender needed clarification to get the message across. The communication itself is simple. The world-wide chaos it causes is not.
I’m coming for you beac)(---Es.