You knock on the door to your wife’s office, holding a dinner tray set for two. She’s been holed up there for days, ever since Vriska Serket crashed to Earth C, killed Gamzee Makara-Crocker, and changed the state of the war dramatically. Rose doesn’t answer, but the door isn’t locked, so you let yourself in. Rose is leaning back in a stuffed chair, mopping her forehead idly with a damp towel. The walls are strung up with purple yarn connecting what must be hundreds of reports and sticky notes, all trying to keep track of the changing political situation and potential futures.
You set the tray down on a stack of discarded reports on her desk, looking at two of the central pieces in her web of ideas, annotated in purple marker. ‘CROCKER VULNERABLE’ is one, and ‘JUGGALORATOR DECEASED – CONVERTS?’ is the other. You won’t pretend to know why exactly those are crucial keystones to a good future, but you get the general idea. Rose’s eyes are glazed over, and her pupils flit back and forth like she is paging through a book. You snap your fingers in front of her face.
You say this with a smirk on your face, but deep down, you worry. You worry that Rose will start to lose herself, like she did all those years ago. Like you can only assume the elder Strider did.
She looks up at you, eyes bagged, and face tired from the strain. There is a single gray streak in her otherwise platinum blonde hair – a holdover, from the stress of the game and then her burgeoning ascension.
She’s even more gorgeous than the day you laid eyes on her in person, birthed anew from a gigantic green sun.
It’s a miracle that either your wife or your moirail can take care of themselves without you around, but at least in the latter case, Meenah helps.
You sip your Alternian Bloody Mary as Rose picks at grubloaf and mashed potatoes. She doesn’t really need to eat, by virtue of being a god, and you only need to feed about once a week anyway, unless you are injured. That being said, sharing a meal is a necessary component of keeping your relationship intact, and Rose grounded in her humanity. After several minutes of comfortable silence, of Rose coming back down to the planet from her visions of likely futures, she speaks again.
You roll it over in your mind. You know what she is asking you, really. What do you value most?
You click your tongue in thought, thinking.
Rose’s mouth quirks into the barest hint of a smile, and your heart swells a little.
Her face falls, and what was for a second the girl you bantered with, two snarky broads and their ridiculous horseshit, all those long years ago, is back to the hardened tactician holed up in her room.
Her breath hitches. Tears slip down her face, and you wrap her in a hug. You didn’t know Dave nearly as well as either Rose or Karkat did, but he was a close friend in the same way Terezi and Vriska were, back on the meteor trip all those years ago. Rose would have felt a lot more alone without him. You’ll grieve, in your own way, when you get the chance. For now, you have to be strong for your wife and your moirail.
She sobs, silently, into your waiting arms. She isn’t really letting it all go, she never does, the type to always keep control, even if its only the slightest bit. You know she’s afraid that if she let herself break down completely, she wouldn’t be able to put herself back together, that some essential part of being Rose Lalonde would be lost in the process. You think that’s bullshit, of course, she is infinitely stronger than she knows, but this isn’t the time. If the situation is as critical as Rose says it is, you’ll need her. Not her foresight, not her power, not her tactical mind – her.
You rub her the small of her back, whispering gently when the tears subside that you’ll return shortly, and remove the cushions from the seldom-used couch in her office, pulling out the daybed hidden within. You decaptchalogue some of the pillows and blankets you always keep on your person, arranging them nicely for a nap, and pull your tired wife to the bed for some much-needed rest. She leans against your chest, breathing in tune with the gentle hum of an ancient Alternian lullaby, and soon falls asleep in your arms.
It is midmorning, the clock on the wall says, when you wake. Rose is already up, a coffee in her hands, flipping through files in the same rumpled clothes she slept in. Half the tacked-up reports have been torn down, and in their place, several more pieces have been moved. Arranged in a circular pattern are several slightly concerning notes. ‘VRISKA SERKET – THIEF OF LIGHT – AT COMBAT PEAK’ and ROXY LALONDE – ROGUE OF VOID – MAIN OBSTACLE TO BATTERWITCH – CAPTURE ALIVE’ are connected with purple yarn. Tacked up, as well, are the notes you noticed earlier, with a string connecting them to ‘TAVROS CROCKER – POTENTIAL DOUBLE AGENT / ASSORTED SUBTERFUGE’. You, Meenah, and Karkat’s names are also up there, connected to a satellite image of Crocker’s flagship that Dave and Jade captured from low orbit a couple years back. Also on the wall, unconnected for the moment, is the file of one Swifer Eggmop, although you haven’t seen her in years. In the center, radiating taped-up strands of yarn to almost every document, a massive inquisitive squiggle (the proper term is a question mark, you remind yourself) is drawn directly on the wall.
She looks at you, a renewed fire in her eyes that makes you shiver, and only partially in the good way.
She pauses, and the fire in her eyes dies down to something that looks darker. A look that restarts the little itch, the wonder always lurking in the back of your mind, that says Rose is seeing lives as chess pieces again, her immortal body and limited omniscience distancing her from the realities of her choices. Choices that decide who lives and who dies. Choices that were she not literally divine, one might have condemned as playing god.