A Lullaby For Gods Chapter 43

[ s c r e a m s ] we back lads

XLIII. One For The Money

So.

Sleeping was a mistake.

Which, Karkat already knows since he’s been avoiding that for more than one reason lately, but he still fell asleep and none of the assholes he bunks with in this overcompensating tower thought it would be a good idea to wake him up, so he has to register all the bullshit that’s happening in one go.

Which, by the way, is not good for anyone’s psyche. Especially not when they’ve just woken up from a dead sleep.

He pinches the bridge of his nose, huffs, and then decides to forcibly yank on his new hoodie’s drawstrings when that doesn’t satisfy him.

“And you decided not to get me up when this was happening…” He makes a gesture with his hand, right as he says, “Why?”

“You needed the rest,” Davesprite says.

The elegant hand gesture quickly turns into his middle finger stuck up.

“You needed the sleep, Kar,” Roxy says, patting his shoulder softly as she passes by the back of the couch, having just come from the kitchen. She places a plate of something Karkat’s still trying to remember the name of beside him before sitting on the loveseat adjacent to him. “You haven’t had enough sleep and everyone needs to be in top shape for this mission.”

“Right,” he says. Mission. There was a mission. They needed to go to the hospital, and he needed to help someone named Cecil who was infected with a bloodleech. Dave was also in that hospital in a coma, last he’d heard. And he’s probably going to have to help with breaking out two more people –  

He rubs his eyes with the heels of his palms, groaning.

He shouldn’t have slept.

“One at a time, champ,” he hears Stark say.  

“How much time do we have?” he asks.

“About an hour and a half.”

Karkat nearly jumps from his seat at that news. He knows he shouldn’t have slept but at this point, someone should have had the decency to wake him up for this when they only have an hour and a half before they needed to go to the hospital.

“Seriously?” He lowers his hands to glare at everyone in the room, and he thinks it’s a pity he can’t glare at JARVIS since he’s disembodied, and at Hal, who’s currently stuck downstairs still learning how to move his arms and hands. “And you expect me not to panic.”

“There’s nothing to panic about,” Stark says, raising his hands and nearly swatting Eridan on the back of the head from how fast he moves. “It’ll be simple, we’ll take care of the rest.”

“You’re trying to calm me down and it’s not working,” Karkat says, breathes in and then lets it out in a sigh.

He focuses on a spot on the carpet, trying to will it to burn, but it doesn’t, not that he expected it to. Everyone is thankfully just waiting for him to clear his head and calm himself down, since he doesn’t seem to be receptive to any attempt to appease his nervousness right now.

He thinks it’s justified.

He’s about to go on a trip in which he’s supposed to be the only option in saving someone’s life.  

He’s done the leader schtick before, and in fact fought tooth and claw for it, and still technically didn’t get it since he never got to do any leading, so for him to suddenly have the spotlight actually on him feels like he’s being thrown in one of those gladiator rings he’s seen in a few human movies so far.  

Exactly like those gladiators: small, terrified – seemingly fully armed until the beast he’s supposed to take down comes slinking out the other side of the iron gate, and he finds what he’s been given is the equivalent of a toothpick, when faced against a force of destruction condensed into the form of something on four furry legs.  

Everything is a lot more terrifying when it stops being imaginary.

He takes in a deep breath, and tries to put his focus on something else.

There is someone out there named Cecil who’s got some disgusting worm latched onto their soul or whatever, or their very blood, because some guy who couldn’t mind his own business decided this would be a good idea. This person named Cecil only has him as his last hope against this infection, and in fact, this Cecil and their friends might not know they’re infected and would suffer a freak death if Karkat decided not to go to the hospital to help.

And he can’t let that happen.

Anxiety be damned, there is a life at stake.

“Karkat?” Kanaya asks.

“Yeah,” he says, making sure his focus stays on this motivation he’s pulled up to the forefront of his mind for himself.

Life over anxiety. To help over giving in to cowardice.  

“I’m fine. Let’s do this.”

-

“I don’t understand why he’s still not awake,” Rose says.  

It’s been about five hours since Dave’s started stirring, and in that time, the staff have been called to check up on him, and at first, everything had seemed promising. “He’ll be waking up soon,” they’d told them, and when Dave started to quiet down, they’d been told that was normal too, as he was probably still exhausted from constantly being in and out of surgery, but was dreaming, and that was probably what had made him stir, which is a good sign, because it means everything’s okay and everything’s normal.

Rose had cried out of relief, a bit, and Kevin had squeezed her shoulder in comfort and assurance, two children who both have brothers who’ve fought through something that would have caused immeasurable grief, finding solace and strength in the knowledge that they are not alone.  

John and Jade had been ecstatic and had run off to find the others to tell them the news, and Dave’s hospital room had been crowded, everyone waiting for something to happen, until the staff declared that Dave had gone back to sleep, and that they should all rest and perhaps not attempt to fit in the tiny room through sheer force of stubbornness.  

Rose had agreed to rest. Jade had gone out to get everyone food. John had gone back to Cecil’s room to make sure Khoshekh and Wilson (who were still hiding out and refusing to leave, and Loki had attempted to skywalk them home but Khoshekh had scratched him and made a show of sitting on Cecil’s lap and slow blinking at him like he’s supposed to understand what that means – and he does, he’s not stupid, but still, the scratching was unnecessary) are alright.  

Loki had slept, as had everyone else.  

And then Dave started to stir again.  

Rose had woken up immediately, and she’d woken up with a new energy in her eyes, the kind that comes with a renewed hope, and Dave started mumbling like one would during a particularly bad dream, but the doctors did say he was just dreaming, so this was normal. And Rose had just squeezed his hand, and Loki had woken up to her looking at her brother, just waiting for him to open his eyes and say he had a nightmare.

Until, of course, he started screaming.  

“What’s wrong with him?” Rose had asked, after shaking him awake hadn’t worked, nor had slapping him, and the nurses actually had to restrain him because he had started scratching at his own skin that he’d already made deep gashes on his forearms, which are thankfully healing at regular godtier rate.  

Dave had screamed, had cried, and his heartrate had spiked so much that Loki had illogically expected the heart monitor to break from how loudly it was wailing. His pupils were dilated, and his breaths were coming in short, but he was not waking up.  

“That’s not a seizure,” John had muttered when one of the doctors listed that out as a possible cause of Dave’s sudden fit, after about an hour of people trying to get him to stay down and stay still, and shot him with several syringes of sedatives. “You can’t tell me that’s any form of seizure.”

The staff, sadly, hadn’t had any other explanation for it.  

Rose had agreed when they said they were going to do tests on him, and it’s been about two hours since then, although they’re still scheduled to do an MRI on him tomorrow. Everyone’s tears have been exhausted, Jade has held her brother so tight while she cried on his shoulder, and Elizabeth has tried to get the others distracted from the current situation as ruminating on it isn’t going to do any of them any good.  

So now, Loki stands, right beside Rose, while she stares at her brother, who is finally back to being peacefully asleep.

She’s holding his hand again, squeezing gently, sometimes tracing the thin scars all over his palms and the puckered up flesh on his knuckles, injuries from a childhood of ruthless, abusive, training.  

“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know enough about human physiology, at least, not enough experience, to be able to tell.”

“It’s not a seizure,” Rose says. “John’s right. It’s not a seizure.”

“I don’t think the doctors know exactly what happened with Dave,” he says.

“We shouldn’t tell them,” she says, turning to him. “It’s...”

“A complicated matter, I know,” he says. “Do you think it’s that game of yours?”

Rose presses her lips to a thin line. “I don’t know. It may very well be,” she says, “But we’ve never encountered...whatever it was that possessed Cecil.” She turns Dave’s hand over and traces the ridges of his palm idly. “Whatever it was, it was something new. And the horrorterrors hate it.”

“The horrorterrors are creatures of old in this game, yes?”

“Yes,” she says, “You sensed them, before. I got tangled with them when I was angry at Jack Noir for killing my mother.”

“Ah,” he says, a memory coming up at the mention of that. “And it’s been a long while since you’ve encountered them again, yes?”

“Yes.”

“I see,” he says, “Whatever we’re dealing with, we’re going to have to do a lot of research on it, that’s for sure.”

“I can – I can maybe try to ask,” she says, “The horrorterrors, I mean. I can try to ask them what the thing they hate is, and why it’s after us.”

Loki nods. “That seems to be all we have at the moment. I don’t know if I want to press Cecil for answers right now when he’s just been possessed.”

Rose laughs, harsh and unamused. “Possession tends to leave you a little off-kilter, sometimes,” she says. “It makes you feel – I don’t know the right word for it. Used? Robbed? Made to feel as if the walls you’ve carefully built were made for nothing since someone can just destroy them in a completely new way you weren’t expecting and you’re left asking why this happened and why it had to. And it feels unfair.”

In another life, perhaps Loki would have had something to say to this. Perhaps he would have put a hand on her shoulder in solidarity, and Rose would know he meant, I know how you feel, and she’d look up to green eyes that might have been blue, at one point, when he wasn’t himself, when he knew exactly what she meant, about possession leaving you feel like everything you’ve strived for in order to protect the very core of you, your identity, was all for naught.

But this is not that life, and so Loki simply stays quiet and listens.

“But after, it also just makes you feel like something’s wrong,” she says, “Like, because you’ve gotten used to the brief time where something was there and taking up so much space that it feels like it was trying to push your soul out of its rightful place, you start to think there’s something there that’s missing. It takes something, I think. I don’t know what.”

“That doesn’t sound pleasant.”

Rose laughs again. “It’s not.”

Loki looks at Dave, shoulders slowly dropping in defeat. “I – Neither of them deserved this.”

“None of us did,” Rose says, “It’s unfair.”

“It always is.”

Rose snorts. “Yeah – yeah, it always is. I suppose all we can really do is just power through it, or fix it, if we can.”

“I hope we can,” Loki says. He watches the rise and fall of Dave’s chest, the skin in his forearm where he’d scratched deep enough to draw blood and scrape muscle under his fingernails earlier, and thinks, that might be too much to ask for but it shouldn’t be.  

Because it is unfair.

Because they’re just children, sitting in a hospital room, in a world that’s not their own, trying to rebuild their lives, only to have it torn away from them when all they wanted was peace.  

Rose sighs beside him.

“He’s a strong boy,” Loki tells her. “He’ll pull through.”

“I know,” Rose says, patting her brother’s hand lightly. “I know he is. He’s been through a lot and he’s still here. Whatever’s in his head right now, he’s fighting it.” She’s not looking at him when she says this, and when Loki turns to her, it looks like she’s not staring at anything in particular at all, too deep in her own head, trying to assure herself. “All we have to do is believe in him and wait.”

Loki looks at Dave, at his sleeping form, and he feels an idea kick at him, something he hasn’t done in a while and might be a little too much, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

“I can try to see what’s wrong with his mind,” he offers.  

Rose looks up at him.

“I understand it’s a breach in privacy,” he says, “But if there’s any chance of him waking up from me interfering with what’s going on – it’s not a seizure, you’re right; I don’t think it’s any human ailment at all – then I think it’s worth a shot.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“It’s certainly delicate work,” he says, “I have to do it carefully, and I have to not be disturbed – minds are fragile.”

Rose stares at him for a good thirty seconds, before letting go of Dave’s hand and hopping off the stool she’s on.  

“I trust you,” she says, and goes to the door to lock it, and to close the blinds on the nearby window.

Loki takes his place on the other side of Dave’s bed, and waits for Rose to sit back across him, as if judging the outcome of what he’s still yet to do.

“Let’s hope that’ll be enough,” he says, and closes his eyes as he puts a hand on Dave’s forehead.  

-

Rose isn’t answering. Again.  

Steve puts the phone back into his pocket and sighs.  

“No luck?” Tony asks.  

“No,” Steve says. He ducks his head a little and stares at the red light on the post ahead of them, before leaning back on his seat and sighing. “She’s probably busy again.”

“Guess we really are paying her a surprise visit,” Tony mumbles, and then turns to the group in the backseats, mercifully not pressed together even despite Davesprite at the very back attempting to winch in his wings as best as he can since Tony’s had the foresight to rent a van.  

Steve thinks about him being a soccer mom and tries not to snicker.  

“Who here knows Rose?” Tony asks. Everyone’s hands go up. “Oh, at least we won’t be worrying about her thinking you’re all strangers. Let’s see we got - ” He points to Kanaya, “ - girlfriend,” to Roxy, “ - ectobiological mother,” to Karkat, “ - brother’s boyfriend,” he points to Davesprite and then pauses. “You’re the brother, right?”

“I’m another version of her brother. I’m from another timeline.”

“Okay, I’m not going to think about that too hard because I’m going to get pissed off,” he says, “But weird, cross-dimension brother and uh, you…Eri?”

“We talked on Trollian, and don’t call me that,” Eridan says.  

“Hal says he should be counted even though he doesn’t have a hand to raise right now,” Roxy says, reading off the glasses on her face. “He’s her uncle.”

“Does she know she has an uncle?” Tony asks.

“Hal says they’ll cross that bridge when they get to it, but he’s happy to have a human niece,” she says.  

Tony laughs.  

“Are we really just walking in there,” Karkat says, fiddling with the drawstrings of his hoodie. “Aren’t there people looking for us?”

“That’s what the hoodie’s for,” Tony says, “And that’s why Roxy’s coming with you.”

“And us?” Kanaya asks.

“In the car – we’ll tell the others to go down to the parking lot, since there’s less people there and less cameras, but we can’t all march into the hospital without the possibility of being seen, even with Roxy’s – what do you do again?”

“I can take the void and put it over things, or living beings, sometimes,” Roxy says, “I haven’t had that much practice lately.”

“Yeah, that. You don’t become intangible, right?”

“No.”

“Yeah, at this hour, the hospital’s going to have at least enough people we’d bump into if we’re not careful,” Tony says.

“So just me and Roxy upstairs with you,” Karkat says.

“Yeah,” Tony says. He turns back to face the dashboard and put the car in motion when the light ahead turns green again. “It’ll be fine, kid, we’ll be there with you.”

Karkat says nothing, only turns to look out the window, taking advantage of the fact that it’s tinted and no one who doesn’t know what to look for is going to notice him.  

Steve tries Rose’s number again. The tinny recorded voice says the line is unavailable at the moment.

“Is there any particular reason a number wouldn’t be picked up?” Kanaya asks, worry lacing her tone.

Steve fidgets with his phone in his hands. “There’s a possibility that her phone battery might have died because she’d forgotten to charge it,” he says, “Or, she has important business to attend to, and she can’t answer right now. But last I checked in, she’s fine, and there’s been no major news about any attacks on the hospital again, so she should be fine.”

He sees Kanaya nod on the rearview mirror, trying to take in the explanation.

“Haven’t you been calling Jade?” Karkat asks.

“Not as often as I should have – her phone line’s busy too, and she’s texted a few times when she notices the missed calls, but she’s also been forgetting to charge her phone or forgetting it around the hospital rooms from the stress,” Steve says.

“Have you texted her today?” Karkat asks.

“Not yet,” Steve says, “You thinking we should tell her?”

Karkat turns to Kanaya, and she lifts a shoulder carefully.  

“We might as well,” she says, “She’s the only other member of the Safehouse you have a direct line to, right?”

“Yeah,” he says.  

“She might be able to pass on a message, if you can contact her,” Eridan says, “Calls first, since we still are worried about stuff getting tracked. If she doesn’t pick up until we get to the hospital, you might have to text them both.”

“Risky,” Tony says.

“We have nothing else.”

“I mean, we’re just going to show up at the hospital anyway, why bother texting?” Roxy asks. “We can let Steve go upstairs and say we’re here if no one picks up when we get to the hospital.”

Eridan pauses. Then, “That can work.”

Steve scrolls through his contacts and tries to find Jade’s number anyway.  

For half a minute, all he gets is her ringtone, and he’s about to end the call for a bit and try again, when he hears a click.  

“Hello, Steve?”

The surprised look on his face must be obvious, because Kanaya asks, “She picked up?”

“She did,” he says, softly, holding the phone away from him. He puts it back by his ear right after. “Hey, Jade.”

“What’s up? I’m at the Safehouse right now, I’m getting everyone a change of clothes.”  

Beside him, Tony mouths, ‘put her on loudspeaker’.

Steve mouths back, ‘everyone needs to be quiet then.’

Tony turns to the backseat as quickly as he can to hiss out, “Everyone be quiet!” and makes a slicing motion with his palm facedown and flat towards the ground, at which Eridan gives him an unamused look since none of them were even making noise in the first place.

Steve puts the call on loudspeak.  

“How’s everyone at the hospital?” he asks.

“We’re – we’re doing well,” Jade says, and Steve notices everyone in the back freeze at the sound of her voice. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since they’ve heard it. “You know Cecil’s awake. He’s been doing well, and he’s been told that he’s going have to spend a few more weeks at the hospital, and then he’ll have to go to therapy to relearn how to eat and how to talk. He’s fine, overall.”

“That’s good news,” Steve says, breathing a little easily. “Dave?”

Jade doesn’t answer right away.

Karkat meets Steve’s eyes in the rearview mirror.  

“He’s actually started stirring,” Jade says.

“He’s woken up?”

“...no.”

Steve pauses. Roxy looks away.  

“What?”

“He’s started stirring, and we thought he was going to wake up,” Jade says, “He didn’t. He just kept thrashing and hurting himself.”

Karkat nearly says something and Eridan has to reach across past Roxy and Kanaya to slap a hand over his mouth.  

“Did the doctors say what was wrong?”

“I remember one of them said it might have been a seizure,” she says, “Or a...very vivid nightmare, whichever. But at one point, they had to hold him down because he kept scratching himself.”

Davesprite rests his head on the back of the middle row seat.  

“How bad was it?” Steve asked.

“Very,” she says, “They’re going to do some tests on him, just to be sure.”

“And he really still hasn’t woken up?” Steve asks, “Rose hasn’t called you to tell you if he has?”

“No, she hasn’t,” Jade says, “It’s been – it’s been tough for her. If I’m a mess right now, she has it worse. He’s her brother. She’s good at keeping herself together, but even the stress from that is...”

She trails off. Steve lets the silence go on for a few seconds.

“Yeah,” he says, “It’s never easy.”

Jade sighs, over the line.  

Tony lets the car slow down as they reach near a turn. Steve raises an eyebrow, and then looks at the road when Tony points to it.  

“Never is. I just hope he wakes up, soon,” she says. There’s noises from her end, probably from the packing. “Anyway, what did you call for, Steve? Just checking in?”

“Yeah, just checking in,” he says. “Making sure you and your friends are alright.”

“We’re okay. We’ll get through this. Dave’ll wake up.”

Tony raises an eyebrow and taps his wrist. Time is of the essence. Steve looks at the road again.  

They can turn and floor it and go back to the Safehouse to pick Jade up, or they can go straight to the hospital.  

Steve looks at the backseat.  

“He will, he’s a strong kid,” he says, a little absentmindedly as he’s calculating if they’d fit one more person in the car.

Jade can probably shrink everyone else down to make room for her.

“Also, uh, I’m actually with Tony and we’re on our way to the hospital right now – we can pick you up and give you a ride, if you want.”

Jade doesn’t answer right away, and then she laughs.  

“Steve, I can teleport.”

He throws Tony a look back and Tony shrugs, mouthing, ‘I tried’.  

He has a point with where he’s going with this though, so Steve continues on.

“Yeah, but maybe a regular car ride would ease your mind a little,” he says, “Also, I’ll be honest, we have some friends who want to talk to you.”

Her pause is a bit more wary this time. Tony turns and floors the engine, trying to weave through the traffic as best as  he can. In the backseat, Karkat hits the car door, squished into place by Kanaya, Roxy and Eridan. Davesprite mutters a little ‘ow’ when his wing gets pinned against the door when he hits it from his seat.  

“Who?”

“Not S.H.I.E.L.D., I promise.”

“Really building the suspense, huh, Steve?”

He laughs. “I just think it’ll be a nice surprise, especially with what’s going on right now.”

“Mm,” Jade says. Tony nearly clips a car overtaking it and there’s a loud honk. Steve winces, but he just hears Jade laugh. “Are you guys okay there – also, do you have dogs for me to meet?”

“Maybe,” he says.  

Tony snickers.  

“Is that Mister Stark I hear?”

“Yeah, it is, good morning, kid,” Tony says.

“Good morning, Mister Stark. How’s traffic?”

“Not too awful, but awful enough when you’re in a hurry,” he says, “Really though, just wait for us at the entrance of your building. We’ll pick you up.”

“Do you even know where my building is?”

“Who doesn’t,” he says, “I haven’t visited it yet, but I know where it is and I know this city like the back of my hand.”

“Fair enough,” Jade says, “They better be really good dogs or I’m going to teleport to the Safehouse and leave you two on the porch.”

“Deal,” Tony says.

Steve ends the call, amused, while Tony just grins at him.  

“Hey, your fault for coming up with an impromptu surprise,” Tony says, “You guys alright back there?”

“No,” Karkat says, straightening his hoodie indignantly, like he even likes it. “Do you have to drive this fast?”

“We have a friend of yours to pick up,” Tony says, “What better way to make an entrance than to have her open the door and we’re already there?”

“Is it worth getting flattened,” Karkat snipes, but without any real heat in his words. Beside him, the rest of the team is trying to arrange themselves, sending Tony dirty looks for the reckless driving.  

“You all don’t seem too excited,” he says, and then lets out a laugh.

“Well, we’re too mad at you to be properly excited,” Eridan says.

“I’m nervous, if it counts,” Roxy says, “I’ve never properly met Jade before.”

“God, this is going to be a mess,” Davesprite says.  

Karkat looks like he’s going to say something, and then he just puts his face in his hands and lets out a long, slow breath.  

“Very nervous, huh?” Tony asks.  

“Yes,” he says. “I think we all are.”

And they are. In the time it takes Tony to drive to the Safehouse, everyone slowly devolves from calm and great at hiding their anxiety to practically vibrating in their seats, with Roxy trying to check the houses they pass by every now and then, Eridan fidgeting with his sleeves, Kanaya crossing and uncrossing her arms, and Karkat chewing on the strings of his hoodie. Davesprite, in the back, keeps rearranging his wings. Steve doesn’t know what’s going on with Hal, though, since all he is right now is a pair of glasses.  

“Look at it this way,” Tony says, “When you get there, hide your nervousness by dishing out a one-liner from something you just saw.”

“That doesn’t help, Stark,” Karkat says.  

Roxy frowns as she spots the houses in this neighborhood. “This place looks familiar.”

“We might have been here before,” Eridan says.  

Up ahead, Steve can see the Safehouse building. He points to it, and even he notices that he feels nervousness and excitement mixing in his gut right now.  

“Right here,” he says.  

Time seems to slow as Tony pulls up to the curb and parks the car.  

Nothing happens, at first. Everyone just stares at the building, and Steve, as if he’s waiting for something and forgetting he has to get out, just does the same thing.

And then it hits him that he has to get out and maybe ring the doorbell, at the same time Eridan and Roxy try to say something, and right at that moment, the Safehouse’s front door opens to reveal Jade carrying several bags that look like she’s shrunk them and their contents down for easier carrying.

Time slows, again, and Steve thinks, waits, watches for someone to do something but none of the kids are talking and Jade has spotted the car and -  

Davesprite swings the door of the backseat open.

“Get in, loser, we’re going leech hunting.”