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Spacetime, Sexuality, and Other Complex Conundrums

Summary:

After retconning the timeline, John Egbert wakes up at the beginning of the ship's three-year journey with his memories as well as his retcon powers intact. Now that he can travel anywhere in time and space, albeit with some caveats, he decides make the trip a lot less lonely and visit his friends on the meteor.

With all the kids able to see each other, and what with relationship dynamics such as Karkat's not-so-caliginous crush on John (as well as general confusion and self-reflection on the topic of sexual identity), things get very complicated very fast.

Notes:

another multi-chapter fic, hell yeah! hope you guys enjoy!

Chapter 1: a fresh start

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The world slowly comes into focus. It’s bright yellow and seems to swirl before you. Prospit-colored. You’ve been here before, haven’t you.

You blink, and drag your eyes upwards. All your motions are slow, as if a cursor on a lagging computer is controlling your body. The sky is a greenish darkness, and multicolored lights streak past at speeds you can’t begin to imagine.

Oh, you’re on the ship again.

Again? You’ve been here for days, haven’t you? Weeks? Jade went god tier and shrunk all your planets and punched a hole in a giant window with a stolen Prospitian ship. Right?

You stumble around, gaining more control of your body with every step you take. You’re getting the distinct feeling that you should be taller. Wasn’t your hair a little different last time you checked? That was… when was that? What’s the last thing you remember?

Uh… you were watching a movie with Davesprite, weren’t you? You came back up to the ship to see what Jade was up to? See if you could alchemize some cool new shit?

You recall a cool breeze, a clean planet, a multitude of fireflies, a warm hand in yours.

It all comes back to you, though with a fuzziness, as if it happened a few months ago. The three years on the ship. Sticking your arm into the goddamn glowing house thing. Meeting up with your friends. Fighting Caliborn. Watching Rose die. And then all the retcon shit, that you’re not even gonna try to sort out in your still-sluggish brain.

“John?” comes a voice from behind you. You spin around. Jade. She’s quirked an eyebrow at you, obviously realizing that something is off, but not being able to pinpoint exactly what.

“Yeah?”

“You good?”

“Uh.” You blink a couple more times. Recalling your newfound memories is something like looking back on a particularly vivid dream. “Just feeling weird.”

“Okay,” she says, and she doesn’t sound particularly concerned. That’s good, you suppose.

*

Over the next few days, you come to the conclusion that the events in your future memories didn’t actually happen. That’s not to say they aren’t real memories, whatever that means—you’ve tried to forget them, or let them slip into oblivion the way dreams do, but to no avail. They might be as real as your brain is, but they came from a timeline that never really happened, even if its effects are still felt.

Okay, maybe all of that is bullshit—you’re just a Breath player with weird extracanonical powers (is that a word? it seems the best way to describe your situation, even if you’re not entirely sure what it means) trying to wrap your mind around timeline intricacies that’d be best suited for a Time or Mind player. Who cares if it did or didn’t happen. You’re just going to see what happens now, in this timeline brought about by your own efforts, and maybe everyone won’t die this time.

The problem with that, though, is that however much you try to enjoy your time with Jade and Davesprite, you’re just doing things you’ve done before. Yeah, you remember seeing that movie with Jade before. You remember that she hated it. You show it to her anyway. Predictably, she hates it.

It takes you a stupidly long time to realize that, hold up, this is your chance at a do-over. A fresh start. You remember plenty of boring and frustrating moments on the ship trip of the pre-retcon timeline. What if you don’t have to repeat them this time?

Close to the end of the journey, last time, the two of you had begun to watch the original Star Trek series, with Davesprite popping up sometimes to offer snide commentary on the special effects. Both of you ended up loving it, but never got a chance to finish it, or watch any of the other series. This time, you suggest it earlier. It piques Jade’s interest just as much as you remember, and soon becomes a staple of the time you’ve allotted for movie-watching (which is most of the time). Victory #1 for post-retcon John!

You want to tell her about your memories. And you probably should. But you don’t, for a while. You’ve got no idea how you’d explain it all, for one thing. And how much does it even matter? Maybe you’re just worried, irrationally, that she’d see you differently if you tell her, that she’d think you’re not the “real” John, or something stupid like that.

A week or so after you first crash-landed in this timeline (or were you always here? your body certainly was, you’re very much thirteen years old), you do end up telling her.

“You know how sometimes, when a doomed timeline dies, you end up getting memories from that timeline?” is how you phrase it.

Jade blinks. “That’s an interesting thought. It’s never happened to me, though I guess merging with Jadesprite was a similar experience.”

“That happened to me last week,” you tell her quietly. Her eyebrows go up.

“Wow! What was the doomed timeline like?”

“Uh… we got to the other session, but stuff went wrong and everyone died.”

To your surprise, Jade laughs. “Sounds pretty doomed.”

“Then one of the trolls helped me go back in time and fix everything. It was really wild.”

“Yeah, sure sounds like it!” She seems pretty chill about it, as if you’re talking about a movie you saw, or a dream you had. Not something that actually happened to you, in some way or another. You guess it’s just something you can’t understand unless you’ve experienced it yourself.

How’s Roxy doing? you find yourself wondering frequently. Does she remember everything too? Or did paradox space glitch when it reset the game, forgetting to delete your previous save file?

You don’t suppose it matters all that much. It’s just memories, however intense and possibly traumatic they may be.

You soon find out that it’s not just memories. Not at all.

*

You couldn’t control the zaps when you first got the power. (spacetime jumps? spontaneous translocations? zaps is easier) Then you could control them very well—with help from Terezi and Typheus along the way, of course. Now? Well, you didn’t think you had to worry about it anymore.

Turns out you do. And you can’t control it anymore. (you are like a little baby. the baby is you.) One moment you’re sitting with a bunch of salamanders, discussing the fine points of fashion as pertains to rumpled head objects (and defending your fantastic hood against any slander), next you’re on top of some huge teal building, under a green and red sky that crackles with bright white lightning. It reminds you vaguely of Japanese architecture.

You look down, almost involuntarily, and—holy fuck, it’s really tall. Your nerves kick in instantly, and you cling to the top of the spire, willing your incorrigible retcon abilities to take you back to the comfort of Jade’s ship. They do no such thing.

Breathe in, breathe out. You stay there for a couple minutes, completely still. Maybe you just need to recharge for a second?

Sure enough, the next time you try, you focus your mind on the ship and the exact instant you were whisked away. There’s a flash of light, blue around the edges, and then you’re back where you started, slightly dazed and 100% more exhausted.

The second time it happens, you’re taken to Derse. Which session’s Derse? You have no idea. You duck behind one of the intricately patterned arches to hide from a crowd of black carapacians, and wait for your powers to take you back.

The third time, it’s a planet that’s definitely not Earth, yet also definitely not any of your friends’ in-game lands. Judging by the purple sky, the weirdly-shaped buildings, the unfamiliar script that’s everywhere, and the large portraits of a woman who looks like a troll crossed with a fuchsia fish, it’s Alternia. Not many people are out on the streets, fortunately. You hide behind a bush, watching the few passers-by.

This time, it takes a lot longer for you to regain control over your abilities. Jumping from place to place never used to tire you out so much. Maybe it’s because it’s a remnant of a timeline that never really existed, a gift you should’ve lost but stubbornly clung to.

You can’t help but stare at every troll that walks past. They’re all so different, yet all have the same grey skin, orange horns, and weird, colored symbols on their clothing. And then—hold on a second, is that a human in a bathrobe—?

You’re zapped away before you can properly analyze what you just saw. Oh well. It couldn’t have been a human, anyway. Just a troll with dyed hair and really short horns or something.

*

You’re lying awake in bed when a thought comes to you, startlingly clear. You have to figure out how to control this power, so you can see your friends on the meteor.

First, you try to zap from your bed to the other end of the room. You make sure to focus on the time aspect of it as well as space—you want to arrive as soon as you leave. Soon enough, after a couple attempts, you figure out the best way to do this.

Those couple attempts leave you exhausted, and you have to lie down on your bed for a few moments before you can attempt the big jump to the meteor. Travel in space, but not in time. You don’t want to turn up just as their journey is ending, or before it even starts.

You visualize the meteor. You’ve seen it, though Jade’s spacey portal thing which you used to send them the bucket and the note. Other than that one part, you’re not entirely sure what it looks like. But that should be enough.

You close your eyes, focus, and jump.

It’s quiet, cool, and dark. The floor is hard and smooth under your feet. You leave your eyes closed for a couple seconds, willing yourself to keep standing, to stay awake.

“John?? What the fuck???” comes a voice from behind you.

Notes:

spot the friendsim reference (hint: it's the person in the bathrobe on alternia)