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Aside from the boredom involved, Sollux thought, dying really wasn’t so bad. The searing agony had been relatively temporary, as far as he could tell from the scattered fragments of memory his imploding brain had supplied to this new, fresh brain. Waking up with his head in the load gaper in a recollection of the time he had gotten a serious fever was embarrassing, but there were no witnesses and leaving the dreambubble had been easy enough. The infinite and lonely space afterward was even a little relaxing. It stretched in all directions and offered nothing to do, nothing to think about, no one asking for computer help. Blessed silence.
As it turned out though, burning green sphere notwithstanding, the setting was the issue. Having burned through his allotted lives, Sollux could think of nothing to do and, upon a quick shuffling-through of memories, nothing that was interesting or painless enough to bother reliving. Finding Aradia had been nice, though a small part of him continued expecting that she would vanish at any moment, explode, fade away; experience stifled the joy of it. Realizing that he could see the sun in a flat and two-dimensional sort of way was also well and good even if he was still a little hazy on the details of why one of his eyes was a burned-out socket and the other was milk-white and functional, but the main problem - worse than the boredom, worse than the anxiety of being left behind - was that the afterlife was more boring than anyone could have imagined. A system for the creation of endless tiresome echoes, endless time to get sick of any pursuit, a mechanism to generate infinite, irritating ennui. Sollux had been dead - at least, he thought that he was probably dead, although that point confused him slightly - for what he assumed was less than one day, and the concept was already tedious.
Conversely, Aradia had already thrown herself with gusto into planning for the corpse party she was invested in throwing, though most of her plans streamed past Sollux in a torrent of words for which he was slightly unprepared. Humans, she told him, buried dead bodies in little boxes without dismembering them or even letting lususes have a shot at retrieving some nourishment from them. There was no culling of weak, mutated human wigglers. It was more information than Sollux was interested in learning; he hadn’t understood Terezi’s fascination with the aliens, either, and Karkat’s insistence on engaging with them had been irritating. Aradia’s voice was good to hear, though, her enthusiasm washing over him like numbing balm, so when she trailed into thoughtful silence he struggled for something to say to keep her going.
“So what do they eat?” She shrugged, counting something off on her fingers. “What do they paint with?”
“I guess the hideous musclebeast arts, such as they are, are impoverished on Earth.” Aradia had been at the sun for some time, but the excess light and infinite space did nothing to dampen her mood. She smiled at the sun to prove the sentiment and fluttered her wings to enjoy the sensation of her muscles working. The feeling of physicality hadn’t yet lost its novelty, one muscle affecting other muscles as they stretched and contracted, breath expanding her lungs, the whole apparatus of her body elegantly knit together and working in a way almost entirely unlike her last form. The main problem, she thought, with the setting and the situation at hand, was coming up with a good spiel to greet everyone. She assumed the situation would be awkward. The job of fixing awkwardness would fall, she decided, to the party.
“What do you eat at a corpse party, then?” he asked, interrupting her private speculation about the dimensions of corpse boxes. “Not the dead, right? Because that would be weird. It’s me.”
“No! Different stuff. Snacks?” She cocked her head quizzically as he stared at her wings, cherry-red and shedding a faint, iridescent line of glitter into the abyss. He pushed back the urge to ask about touching them, worried about rudeness even though his remaining eye remained fixed upon the smooth arches of them more than he thought could be subtle. Her tone was relaxed, her chatter confident and easy, but the situation felt uncomfortable in a way Sollux felt too nervous to articulate. The time they had spent hacking together the game felt like it had passed in a different dimension featuring trolls that were strangers to him.
"I think you're throwing a secret pity party," Aradia said, pulling him back into awareness. "I mean, right in the middle of my planning for this corpse party. Which is no place for a pity party at all, by the way! Throw it on your own time, I'm disallowing it."
"It makes sense if it's my corpse," he protested. "It's my corpse party. I'll whine if I want to."
"Well, it IS your corpse party, I guess." Aradia paused, the green light bathing her face and arms, reflecting from her wings. She pondered the feasibility of streamers and possibly one of the spiny trees she knew were part of certain human celebrations. Finding a tree in space was, she concluded, improbable at best. Alchemizing a branch, a toilet brush, and an oversized pencil might work, but even those individual things would need alchemizing beforehand, and overall the plan seemed impractical. "Do you think there'll be punch?"
Sollux found himself smiling and paused before answering, weirded out by the feeling. Dying was also like finishing a big project or a schoolfeeding module, it turned out. Stress coiled in his abdomen, pressure that remained even when everything else was done. "Do you want there to be punch?"
"I think there should be punch. It's my party too, my robot corpse will be there. Didn't think of that, did you?" She reached out to clasp his hand, swung her arm back and forth in a gentle arc. A little offbeat, he tried to swing his arm in time, shoulder joint moving smooth and clean in the unnerving way that new bodies always functioned. It was like getting a breath of fresh air after weeks of not leaving the hivestem, a reminder that the most natural thing to do was grow accustomed to subpar conditions, that every action and every motion generated a little more wear and tear. Somewhere in his mind a vestige of memory stirred, the sticky warmth of blood on his face and a crushing pain in his skull, but it dwindled and vanished even as he tried to focus on it. Her palm was warm and dry against his. Solid. He repressed the urge to touch some of the wild curls of hair cascading over her shoulders and back.
"No, it didn’t occur to me. Because your weird robot body exploded into metal gibs and fuckawful gross blue blood and not enough was left to launch into the sun anyway, so there wasn't any point. And it wasn’t you," he added quietly, lips pursed. “Not really.”
"I want balloons," she said, swinging her arms a little more vigorously, "and streamers. Rainbow streamers, actually."
"You should have those," Sollux said, and meant it.
"And I want gifts," she continued resolutely.
"For exploding? Like..." He faltered, glanced into the flat sun and then away into the darkness. "What do you like now? It's been a long time."
"Sollux," she said soberly.
"What?"
"Sollux."
"What," he repeated, turning his head to level the glare of his remaining eye at her.
"I like you," she said, then revealed her sharp teeth in a grin. “Even though you’re being dumb right now.”
"Oh," he said, coughing awkwardly and fighting back a nervous smile. "Okay, um, good, it was kind of not that obvious for a while. Before you exploded. Which was fucking horrible, it was the worst thing."
Aradia snorted, letting go of his hand to wrap an arm around his waist. He put up no resistance as she pulled him closer, hip to hip, an instant of familiarity and then uncanniness. Her hair tickled his upper arm; he almost moved to brush it clear of his skin before restraining himself, not wanting to push her away.
"I seem to recall,” she said, enjoying his coolness and the difference between his skinny frame and hers, “that someone couldn't tell a psychic ghost that he liked talking to her when she asked about it. Even though she knew," she added, poking his ribs and delighting in the way he squirmed and let out a weird snorting noise. “She objectively knew, and even told him about it, and he was all-” she cleared her throat, assuming a husky voice- “ahem, he was all ‘Maybe because we’re supposed to save the world together,’ like some kind of action hero, or ‘Because I’m a bluh bluh huge masochist’-”
“Oh, fucking awesome,” he snarled, regaining his composure. “Do you remember anything I said that wasn’t a humiliating experience or kind of an awkward thing to remind me about, that would be terrific-”
“And then later he was all ‘AA, I still can’t deal with saying nice things even though I’ve had perigees to think over all these complicated uncomfortable feelings so I’m going to change the subject back to all my thpeth - whoops, special Sollux problems again,’” she persisted, tracing her fingertips over the spot beneath his ribs that she knew from experience made him twitch and laugh. “Bluh bluh, I’m so tragic and doomed, you’re all dooooooomed!”
"God, okay, I did, stop it." He took a shaky breath. "I liked talking to you. Are you happy now, is that the special slice of humiliation cake you wanted at this corpse party."
“So why did you like it?” she persisted.
“Seriously?”
“No one else did. They didn’t think I could tell,” she said, more intrigued than hurt by the memory of their evasiveness, “but I could tell. I mean before what happened it was fine, but no one wanted to talk after that. Even Terezi didn’t want to, and we’re really good friends.”
“Maybe it was just nice to talk to someone who was almost as negative and passive-aggressive as...okay,” he concluded, “so maybe I do talk about my problems a lot. Shit.”
“Oh my god. You think!?” she laughed, kicking both legs and pulling him into an ungainly backward somersault in the air. “Really? News at eleven!”
“Fine,” he said irritably as he caught his breath, “so they were all sad, obviously. Terezi was sad and I was fucking sad. Talking to you made it feel like things were like they used to be.”
“But I was dead!” Aradia said bluntly, looking more interested than angry or glum. “It was sort of a secret, but it’s not like-”
“I know,” Sollux snapped, “but you weren’t fucking gone. If you were gone we couldn’t make anything new, or talk about meaningless shit, and you couldn’t get into prying about feelings and pissing me off and not getting angry even when I was being a hideous shitsmeared nooklicker for no reason. And you weren’t gone.” One of his arms moved, wrapped hesitantly around her waist in return as he worried at his lower lip with the remains of his teeth. “You were there until the game started,” he began after a silent moment, picking up steam before trailing awkwardly into silence.
“I skipped to the end,” Aradia pointed out, “because I knew what was going on. Or I thought I knew what was going on, at any rate. Well, I mean I think I have a good handle on it now.”
“That’s sort of a theme. ‘AA knows the score while everyone else fucks around like useless assholes, news at eleven.’”
“That would be a really boring news report, Sollux.”
“If you did your whole ‘answer every statement using five words or less’ thing from back when you were playing a spooky drama ghost, yeah.”
“No, I mean watching everyone fuck around!” she exclaimed. “It’s all I did the entire time. All those robots popping back to warn people they were about to generate doomed timelines, always some weird harbinger of death and then explosions, I mean it wasn’t like I missed out on a lot of work or anything. It kind of sucked! And I was angry and sad all the time, or I didn’t feel anything, and feeling things now is actually a pretty great change!”
“Oh.” Sollux paused, stared at her strange slipper-shoes. “Yeah, okay. Okay. By the way, I thought the maid outfit would be, uh.”
“What?”
“Never mind, sorry.” He shuffled his feet uncomfortably in midair, looked around for a meteor. Aradia hummed something quietly, too quietly to make a clear melody. Her hip pressed against his, soft and hot. He had forgotten exactly how warm she was. “Sorry for being an asshole.”
Aradia nodded, long hair brushing loose and soft over her shoulders. "You know,” she responded, “we could relive things sometimes. Just to pass the time. Some of these bubbles are pretty fun."
"Oh, right. Yeah. Just like we established! Our lives were so fucking great that we need to see the highlights reel a few times just to make it sink in." He rolled his white eye, grimacing. "I’ll get to watch myself lying around clutching my skull in private agony, or sitting in front of a computer bitching at people like being doomed is special when, newsflash, everyone’s fucking doomed, or okay I’m going to stop with my problems-"
"Or,” she interjected, “that time we tried to FLARP together."
"-or, yeah, the time we tried that and we had to repeat a phrase twenty times to cast 'psionic magic' instead of using the abilities we both actually have while you oversaw someone else's game session, what the fuck is that?"
"That's roleplaying, Sollux," she said firmly, "and FLARP sessions need clouders. That's how it works when you‘re a mage, and let’s face it, you’re not going to work out in a melee class. I mean if we had an encyclopedia out here in space, a spaaace encyclopediaaa, and we looked up ‘glass cannon,’ there’d be a picture of you flipping the wingbeast.”
“No, that’s stupid, stop it. Why would you roleplay being something you actually are,” he said hotly. “It is absolutely the dumbest thing. It is like getting into the ablution trap and having to say ‘ablution’ twenty times before you can turn the emulsion handle, or saying ‘turn off’ at your weird human-shaped husktop twenty times before you can push the Mode Execute Ready button, that is how it is.”
"Oh my god, shut up. It was because we were practicing instead of playing seriously," she said, stamping her foot on nothing at all, “and someone got all whiny before we could move on to the game proper so we had to stop!” Sollux glared at her with his remaining eye and let out a snippy huff, but said nothing. "We could try again," she offered.
"Yeah, now that we're a fairy god angel monster and a half-ghost. So what are the stats for those classes?" he asked with obviously feigned interest, eyebrows rising. “Sounds fascinating, let’s write it all out on a sheet of paper so we don’t forget! Shit, wait, I think angel monsters are really nerfed in the latest edition-”
"Shut up! Oh right, we could relive that one night we went out flying," she prompted, ignoring his negativity in the same way she had once done without needing to think about it, "and you had to wear a blanket cape the entire time because it was so cold and you’re so thin and your nose was like this horrible snot fountain."
“Or that time,” he rejoined with an irritable note as his body tensed against her encircling arm, “when you got sick and I came by to drop off soup mix and tissues and shit for you because some of us aren’t jerks when other people don’t feel good-”
“And you left it on the lawnring while wearing a face mask to prevent the spread of germs, even though you wouldn’t get anywhere near me anyway, even though it was allergies!” she exclaimed, laughing her loud, snorting laugh and feeling the resistance go out of him. “I wasn’t contagious! Or, remember that time you went to the ruins with me and we climbed all those stairs?”
“Even though we could both fly, yeah, because someone needed the authentic legit experience of blistering her feet all to shit like a real explorer, and by the way did you know there were four hundred and seventy-eight stairs? I know this because I counted every grubfucking one of them on the way down-”
“So we actually had to camp in the ruins so your feet could recover because I wouldn’t let you give up and fly. Because flying really would have ruined the experience, you know, even more than a lot of complaining could have. That’s not even exploration,” she concluded, “it’s just reconnaissance. You weren't even trying to explore, Sollux.”
“Great, see? This just proves my point. What do all these things have in common?” he asked, mood swinging back to anger as he went tense again, golden light flickering around his horns as he pulled away. “I fucked them up, apparently! Why would I want to deal with this shit again, only with someone I give a shit about hanging out with me and laughing like all this emotional fucking ineptitude is like ‘Bipolar Goddamn Comedy Hour’ or something? Oh, right, I wouldn’t, because that would be a fuckawful thing to do!”
“Sollux,” she said intensely, turning to face him, “quit that, shut up.” She placed one hand on either side of his face, leaning over to stare into his remaining eye and the other’s hollow orbit, interested in the macabre look of it. “You didn’t ruin it. I had fun. It was cute.”
“What the fuck?” he asked uncomfortably, trying to shift away. Aradia frowned soberly and squeezed his face. “Nph.”
“I liked the camping. And the flying. If you’d stop being wrapped up in all your terrible new problems, you’d remember it wasn’t bad, which is the point! We can do it over and talk about it!” she exclaimed. “That's the good thing about this, all this being alive but out here, we can do whatever we want. I like flying and exploring. I had fun and I want to do it again,” she said pointedly. “I have some work I’d like to do, too, stuff I think is fun, and I'm looking forward to that. You can relive things or you can stay with our friends in the bubbles, or even fly around if you really want to, you can do any of those things, you don’t have to go with me. Quit complaining about it," she said, squeezing his face one last time before slowly withdrawing. Sollux rubbed at his jaw, his eye half-lidded. “And quit blaming yourself for things when it doesn’t make sense, it’s annoying.”
"I’m sorry.”
"Also, did you catch that you’re not actually dead, because you’re not. You’re half-dead at best, so deal with it. And what are you sorry about now?"
"For being a fucking bulgemunch about things the entire time we were alive,” he mumbled, “and most of the time when either of us were dead, or just half-dead, or dead and also a robot, or about five minutes ago when you were making jokes and I was a shit-smeared festering globe about it. But mostly for not wanting to go back," he said, looking at his feet in their familiar mismatched shoes. "Not wanting to play anymore. Because I don't. I'm tired and I just want to be with you and not fuck it up for once,” he blurted before falling silent for a long moment, worrying his lower lip with the teeth he had left. "Can we also pretend I sounded cool when I said that instead of like some desperate asshole with nowhere to go and a shitty life not worth reliving, that would be great."
"Sollux," she said, smiling as she impulsively grabbed his hand. "Obviously we can go together. This party is only the beginning, you know."
"So what are we doing? Or would this be another one of the times when everyone but me knows whatever shit's going down."
"Well, there's still a lot of work to do after we see them off, so for now I guess I just hope everyone gets to appreciate the downtime and meet everyone else. Not that there won't be more than enough time from their perspectives when they fly at a fixed speed for sweeps. And I'm going to be traveling through the bubbles," she continued, "not going along with the meteor. Because, really. I’ve had enough meteor. We’ve all had enough meteor. You'll agree."
“Yeah,” Sollux said hesitantly, his other hand quivering with anxiety in the empty air before reaching out to slide into hers. For a moment he allowed himself to think back on an entire life of headaches, nightmares, busywork, and the small, bright spots that were time he'd spent with others. "That's enough."
"See," she says, lacing her fingers with his. "It’s not so bad."
“Yeah, it’s...okay.” He paused, a nervous smile appearing on his face. “So, um, about that corpse party.”
"Yes!" she exclaimed, pulling him into a tight hug. "Now you're on track. So the punch is established. What kind of punch, that's what I want to know. Now, pay attention, it's got to be something with...fruit, for the humans."
"Mm-hm," he sighed, eye closing.