ALFG Chapter 156

INTERMISSION - KISARAGI MIXTAPES - SIDE A: DAMARA MEGIDO

#03: (IT’S NOT ABOUT) RUNNING by TUVABAND

Despite the late hour, the city is alive with sound and light. Neon signs of pink and blue scream advertisements at Damara everywhere, traffic lights flash, a festival of sensory overload. Seven lowers his hood but keeps his glasses on, leading Damara to a plaza with the city map. How helpful for maps to be commonplace here.

The little infographic on the bottom of the map tells Damara that Hatsune city is Deimon's economic hub. The busiest and most profitable in the region, with its billboards and skyscrapers. Damara has no money, but if she's ever stranded here, this seems like a good place to start looking for a job or a place to live, especially with the aid of a god by her side.

"Anywhere in mind?" Seven prompts when she's a bit too silent, busy memorizing the street routes to important buildings like fire departments and hospitals. Never know when she could need them.

"Hm?" She turns back to him.

"You said you wanted to sightsee."

"I don't know what to see in Hatsune, I've never been here."

Seven shifts on his feet, tilting his head. He reminds her of one of those earth dogs, somewhat, with how he looks at people and his mannerisms. One of those mutts in S.H.I.E.L.D. that nearly tore her throat out more than once during her capture.

"What do you want to see?" he asks.

Places to lay low in, somewhere to stay, but she supposes she has that right now. She probably won't be able to get anywhere on her own, not without paperwork or money, in this highly urban city.

"What's there to see?" she asks.

There's a place by the bay called Musicland. It's part circus, part theater, and part amusement park, some bigshot's pet project two hundred years ago that continues to stay strong until now.

Seven gets them both passes and the ticketer waves them both inside.

"I would have thought most parks would be closed by now," Damara says, fiddling with the golden strip of cardboard in her hand that marks her a guest.

"Musicland opens at night," Seven says. "It's like a nightly carnival."

Musicland is made of sprawling pathways of cobblestone and grass, interspersed with tents that declare themselves to be cabinets of curiosities or something or another. There are multiple walkways that Damara can take, but as she's a stranger here, she sticks with Seven, who just hands her a pamphlet and tells her to choose because he's been to the park so many times he's not as taken with it as a newcomer would be.

Damara picks the path with the tents first, showcasing trapeze artists, opera singers breaking glasses with their voices, and illusionists. The performers are a mix of humans, trolls, and hybrids, as is proving to be the norm in this universe, and lends creativity to the way the performances go. One seadweller gets shot out of a cannon and lands perfectly in a water tank, waving to the audience as they applaud.

When they're done with the tents on this path, they end up at a small marketplace of food and trinkets, benches set beside lamp posts for visitors to take breaks at. Damara lets Seven grab them something while she sits and rests her legs.

This universe hasn't been terrible, so far. It's weird and new but not terrible, even if there is the promise of danger in the distance. But their First Guardian has not shown himself. One has been accommodating. Seven's playing tour guide.

And the entertainment has been…alright. Strange, but alright.

A little boy runs across the path in front of her, holding two paper cups of something steaming. Hot chocolate, maybe. His horns are still growing in, but his teeth are already sharp, overbite poking out his lips. His nails have begun to change into a deep fuchsia, the center of his irises similarly already beginning to change.

He nearly trips as he races towards another child. The cups in his hands go flying, but they never hit the ground as burgundy energy wraps around them and sets them back in his hold. Damara watches as another child, another little boy, this one with burgundy nails and eyes and curling horns, gently chides his friend for being reckless. They run towards where a pair of adults are in the distance, one human, one troll.

What a strange world.

"Here." Seven hands a bag of popcorn to Damara as he returns, finally.

"There are a lot of highbloods here," she says.

Seven blinks as he sits beside her. "High…oh. You mean blood color," he says. "We didn't have a mothergrub, we just had DNA samples to work with, and pretty much tried to make the same amount of specimens if it was possible."

"And the biological differences?"

"Well, of course, we had to place the seadwellers in the ocean, landdwellers on land, humans too," he says. "But I think we just fucked up in terms of, uh, natural rarity."

“The cross breeding, I meant.”

“Oh.” Seven stiffens. “Father…was good with Life stuff. It’s his genetic modifications.”

She nods. "I suppose that makes sense,” she says. “But then again, this whole place is already odd. To me, at least."

"How different is it?"

Damara pauses, picking at her food. "Friendships across the spectrum are more common, I suppose."

"Aren't they in yours?"

"I wouldn't know, Beforus is long dead."

Seven awkwardly falls silent.

"I'm sorry," he says.

"It's fine," Damara says. "It's been a long time."

“Still,” Seven says. “Grief follows you.”

“Don’t worry.” She snorts. “I promise you, there’s no love lost there.”

He stares at her again, in that annoying, searching way of his. Like he’s trying to rip her open and lay her out on a table, methodically turning parts of her over until he can find what he’s looking for. It’s presumptive. He’s a stranger.

“I’m sorry,” he says again.

Damara’s thoughts shut up.

#

Seven lives in a penthouse, because of course he does. He’s related to some fuchsiablood, even if the blood is either very diluted or not present at all, if he’s adopted. The place is huge, with three extra guestrooms that tells Damara he expects a lot of visitors every now and then. Likely his siblings, when they visit, if they visit. That third one sounded like he had some problems to work through, being a shut-in.

He lets her pick one at random and shows her a small tour of the place. Since it’s an apartment, it’s smaller than One’s house and easier to navigate. She knows where the knives are, where the fire exit is.

“Do you still want to sightsee tomorrow?” Seven asks.

“Maybe,” she says.

They’re both sitting in the living room, watching the lights of the city outside of the penthouse’s glass walls. The whole set-up looks like a liability, but when you’re a god, very little must actually seem like a liability.

“Do you have a plan?” he asks.

“On?”

“Anything. What to do to get out of here. What to do if you’re stranded here for some time - time moves in this place, you know, you’re not gonna have the same luxury as Strider being able to stay somewhere that’s hit pause on everything.”

She leans back in her seat at that. That’s true. Whenever Strider decides to crawl out of the hole he’s staying in, he’ll be able to jump right back into the fray of trying to figure out how to get back to Earth. If the gods manage to find a way before that, he’ll be able to join right back without any time at all to him. All of his problems are on hold, inconsequential, for now. She’s mortal, and she’s in a place where time can pass her by and break her down, and eventually, she’s going to look at herself and wonder where all her time went.

“You can go back to Kisaragi, if you like. One would be fine with hosting you.”

One is the most dangerous out of all three of these gods. It’s a lovely suggestion, but she’ll take her chances here. Still, there is some irony to the fact that sticking close to the god of death would put her mortality on pause.

“How likely is it that we’re going to find our way back to the universe we were from?” she asks.

“Truthfully, I don’t know,” Seven says. “Depends on whether the lead on that alternate Strider can go anywhere. If it does, well, you can go back. If it doesn’t, it’s very likely our First Guardian will go behind our backs to try and seal up the rifts in our universe. It’s not worth endangering the lives of billions of people to get two people home.”

“So we’d be stuck here?”

“Yes.”

Damara lets out a breath, relief flooding her. And then she pauses, surprised that she’s relieved.

That’s something to be interrogated, something to be inspected, but for now, she lets it be. It’s late at night. Maybe that’s why she’s thinking weird, why she’s relieved to be in a new place where no one knows her name, her sins, her past. Somewhere far away from people she associates with the best times of her life and the worst of it.

“I’m going to bed,” she says.

“Okay.” Seven’s at least gracious enough to let her drop the topic.

That night, she tries her best to go back to sleep. She tells herself it’s the noise that keeps her awake.

#

Seven works as an online tutor, which is…hilarious. But it tracks, given how quickly and fluently he switches between languages, even if he sometimes fumbles because he can’t quite find the equivalent of a turn of phrase found in one in another. He rises earlier than she does (she doubts he actually really sleeps, but that’s godtier invulnerability for you), leaves her breakfast in the fridge with a note taped that she can use the microwave if she wants, and then locks himself in his study, softly speaking into a microphone while his students on the other end laugh and chatter about their day, as best as they can in another language. It clicks, suddenly, his patience and general calm demeanor. He works with kids a lot, and he’s probably got a lot of practice with them.

Damara wanders around inspecting the shelves in his living room, finding books in varying languages, some she can read and some she can’t. She assumes the ones unreadable to her to be human languages. At the bottom of one of the shelves is a photo album, which she cracks open to find photos of him and his family. There are kids in the photos, probably some of his students, or niblings, since he’d mentioned that One had kids over in their house at some point, the ones who left ice cream. In the second half of the album, however, there are familiar faces.

Damara frowns as she sees a photo of Rose Lalonde and Kanaya Maryam posing in front of the beach, wide-brimmed sun hats on. Behind them, there’s Strider’s little brother Dave, aiming a water gun at Karkat Vantas. The next few photos are of this beach vacation, all with people she recognizes - her friends’ descendants, Aradia, the humans that she met up at the island, with the exception of those who were native to their universe. There’s one of Jade Harley with a whole cooler of popsicle sticks, another of John Egbert close to the camera gesturing shhh with a finger while he had a plateful of icing in hand.

This universe had run into another version of Dirk Strider. Of course. They must have run into other versions of these kids too, which means -

She flips frantically through the album until she finds what she’s looking for. A burgundy blood troll with curving horns, and long, unruly, dark hair. Her.

And there is a photo of her, standing with the dark sea behind her, colored red with the sunset.  She has her hand up in a peace sign, a very human gesture that says she’s spent some time here in this universe, or perhaps landed on an Earth too. Her unruly hair’s been done in a clumsy braid with flowers sticking out, like her friends had fun doing it for her.

She’s smiling.

She looks happy.

Damara’s grip on the album tightens, so hard her nails dent the boards underneath. The lights above her flicker. The shelf shakes.

“Megido-san,” says Seven behind her. She doesn’t know if he teleported or if she was so distracted she didn’t hear him approaching. “Please don’t break my apartment.”

“You know me,” she says, so angry she slips into her mother tongue.

“No, I don’t,” he says. “I know a version of you. Not you. I don’t know you. You’re a stranger.”

He reaches over and carefully pries her grip off the album, closing it and taking it out of her hold. Damara fists her hands in her skirt instead.

“You’re safe. I don’t know you. I’m not in your head, Damara.”

“But you are,” she says, because he already had the jump on her when she got here. He knew a version of her, so when he saw her, he probably already knew everything she was, everything she did, everything that was wrong with her. Knows how she ticks, can use it against her, can hurt her. If whatever he’s playing at isn’t pity, then it’s something more sinister waiting to strike.

“I’m not.” She hears him sitting behind her. “Just because I know a version of you doesn’t mean I know you. We’re not interchangeable in the grand scheme of the universe, Damara. We’re each our own selves, even if we hold the same names and genetics and habits. There’s always something that will set us apart. The fact that we exist separately already proves that.” He pauses, as if letting her process that, and then sighs. “I have a friend who is a version of you, but I don’t know you.”

So he says. So he insists.

“But you do,” she says. “You know everything I’ve done wrong and everything that’s been done wrong to me.”

“Why does that scare you?”

That makes her stop. Slowly, she looks over her shoulder. Seven isn’t looking at her, instead focused on a point at the wall to her side, elbows leaned on his knees as he has them pulled up near his chest.

“I don’t care,” he says. “Because I don’t know you. I told you. I don’t know your story.”

“Didn’t she tell you?”

“She did, but who knows what’s different between you and her? All it takes is one thing to completely turn someone’s life on its head, you know.” He shrugs. “Who am I to judge? Not like I’m not a fucked up person too.”

She can’t imagine him to be, but then that just proves his point. Because it’s true, she doesn’t know him, only has vague impressions of him from their sparse interactions so far, from whatever she’s decided to perceive him as. He could be as she thinks of him, naive and complacent or careless. Or he could be whatever would breed those characteristics. Gentle because the world has been harsh to him and so he never wants to let other people go through that. Earnest and understanding, trying to see the best in everyone because he wants to be extended the same courtesy if he makes a mistake. Kind, because his life has been everything but.

“What did she tell you?” she asks.

“Why would you want to know?”

“Humor me.”

He frowns, but nods. The photo album in his hands floats into the air and back to its place on the shelf.

And he tells her.

#

From what he says, it’s a pretty close match to her own life. Beforus. Her friends. Rufioh. Meenah. At some point, there was a game, but he doesn’t know too much about how her session went, so his version must have never told him. Or, that was where the difference was. The Damara in his photo album looked plenty alive, after all, not a ghost. If this was a universe without the interference of the Heir’s team, then they wouldn’t have been revived. That must have been the point of divergence.

“Where is she now?” she asks.

“Our Damara?” Seven asks. She nods. “Back in her universe. It’s dangerous for two universes to be so close, especially if they’re not merged and stable.”

“Then when did you even go to the ocean?”

“Oh, before everyone went back,” he says. “We had one big party before they went home. It gets…dangerous if elements from one universe fall into another. Even if they aren’t malicious or doing a lot, if the universe doesn’t recognize the thing that fell in, shit goes off the rails.”

“So…that alternate Strider - ”

“We’d have to ask him to drop by, set up a bridge. He can’t stay too long if he does. But then again - ” He waves a hand. “There’s already a rift. Maybe poking around a bit to send you and your version back would be the lesser evil. Like corrective surgery.”

Damara nods. “Is it dangerous that I’m here instead of Kisaragi?”

“Only a little  bit,” Seven says. “Kisaragi’s advantage is that it’s at the edge of reality. But it’s also really stuffy.”

“I see.”

“We can go there, if it’s easier for you,” Seven says. “But staying another day in here won’t do too much, the rift you fell through is already above the city. It’s the same thing, being on Kisaragi at the edge of the universe, and being here that’s already at the precipice of a rift.”

That’s a relief, because he’s right. Kisaragi is stuffy.

“Were you close?” she asks.

“Who?”

“You and your version of me.”

“We were friends,” Seven says. “And I hope she’s happy.”

She looked like she was, in her photo. Damara does not remember the last time she smiled - genuinely smiled, not in mocking or false confidence or as a way to drive people away with her words and actions. She doesn’t understand how Seven could still befriend a girl so close to herself - she’d been horrible to Rufioh, and even though some part of her still absolutely hates him, she knows she’s been awful, because he was still her friend. The last time they’d talked, they’d been fairly friendly.

“Megido-san?”

“Nothing,” she says.

“You can tell me,” Seven says. He doesn’t say anything else, but Damara thinks she hears the implication. It’s nothing he doesn’t already know. Nothing that matters, anyway.

“It’s nothing,” she says.

“Okay,” Seven says, “But if you need to talk, I’ll be happy to listen.”

She bets he would. More ammunition to gather.

Damara nods jerkily and presses her the heel of her palms to her eyes. She needs to be alone. She needs him to go away. Thankfully, he picks up on the cue as he stands.

“I’ll be in the study, Megido-san,” she hears him say. And then his footsteps are receding, and a door shuts.

Damara sighs as she opens her eyes to an empty room. She needs to get out of here.