ex machina (last hearing coda)

So, paraTactician wrote us a dave/terezi coda to Last Hearing, and it was so beautiful I had to do an illustration for it and post it here! Enjoy!

—-

The alien visitors from another world arrive with appropriate ceremony. Two of them are riding a battleship. The other two are just floating, and somehow that seems even more impressive, but maybe it’s Terezi’s blood-clogged and battered nostrils talking. Everything’s gone faint and hazy round the edges, and orange and crimson stand out against the station’s dismal grey – she never thought she’d be sick of any colour, but God is she ever sick of this one – better than black and blue. (It’s a nice blue, though. Hopeful.)

The crimson smells particularly delicious, and a long time ago she would have split her face in a shark’s grin of pure delight, but it’s heading straight for her, and she can’t even think enough to smile. He’s moving too fast. He’s going to take a shot at her, and she’s going to deserve it. She killed him. Like she killed Vriska, like she killed Gamzee, but worse, because with him she wasn’t saving anything but time. He was only ever going to be wary or furious, and wary people don’t move the way he’s moving. Is he running? Coolkids don’t run. This is going to hurt.

The breath’s knocked out of her and arms are round her, and her face is crushed into soft crimson tabard and what feels like a nose is burying itself in her hair – bad place for a nose right now, the strands that aren’t stuck together with teal are gluey with indigo – and oh, yes, it hurts, it hurts a lot, much worse than she’d thought, and she starts to cry all over again. Shit! A thousand, individual shits of pure embarrassment! After all they’ve been through together, her silly bony little body betrays her at the last.

“TZ,” he says, and she likes his voice at once, it’s low and a bit drawly, “TZ, what the fuck, girl, you been playing with the poster paints again – ”

“Dave,” she mumbles into his increasingly soggy sternum, “don’t you dare make fun of me, I will bite you in places you’ve never been bitten before – ”

“ – gonna have to hunt, baby, I’m a man of the world – ”

“ – coolkid, please, please, everyone’s dead and I killed most of them, I can’t – ”

“Then they fucking had it coming,” he says, firmly, close to her ear, and she’s not sure she’s ever sounded that certain of something in her miserable hairsplitting life.

She closes her eyes and tests the arms around her carefully. Yep, they feel good. Serviceable. Quality Earth workmanship. Up to the task she has in mind, at any rate. She passes out.

* * *

When she wakes up she’s half-buried in a pile of soft bright candy colours, and she’s wrapped in a big fleecy crimson blanket which smells better than anything has ever smelt in the whole of Alternian history, she is quite sure of it. Pain starts to blossom gently at her various joints and hinges, but it’s dull, and she’s drooled all over an acid green furry thing with tentacles, and she can hear voices not too far away, and all of the above makes her profoundly happy. Karkat is shouting something in that extra-specially angry way that means he’s been caught totally off-guard. Another boy is laughing.

A god is sprawled next to her, his back against the same plush tumulus, reading a book.

“Troll literature,” he says reflectively, “is utter horseshit. I’ve just spent the last half hour reading baroque first-person pirate porn in a pile of Squiddles, and I honestly don’t fucking know what I’m doing with my life.”

“Dave,” she says weakly, “I made out with a Juggalo, then cut his head off.”

He doesn’t miss a beat. “No worries. I Frenched my sister for a good half minute in the centre of the sun. Some days life just throws you a curve ball.”

She manages to clamber halfway on top of him, still tangled up in his cloak, before she falls asleep again.

Notes

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  9. cometoid reblogged this from duedlyfirearms and added:
    damn
  10. amylnightlight reblogged this from duedlyfirearms and added:
    beautiful. also best coda...Last Hearing y/y
  11. hoactzin reblogged this from duedlyfirearms and added:
    “Dave? I made out with a juggalo and then cut his head off.”