antionette | HOMESTUCK ᴥ i'm not your fucking babysitter

Skip to Main Content

Entry tags:

HOMESTUCK ᴥ i'm not your fucking babysitter

There were not enough stars in any universe for the Handmaid to count how many miserable tasks she had been assigned, but there were none more infuriating than the tasks in which she had to play the part of an ‘excellent host’.

Her master would chide that she was following in his footsteps, ohohoho, wasn’t that cute?

It was about as cute as it would be to manage to break away from him long enough to grab his broom and stick it up his puppet ass. Now, there was a dream worth holding onto. It was far more likely to be realized than any of her others -- freedom, death, a bedroom that wasn’t strictly a nauseating green.

Dreams aside, today was like any other day. She had a job to do, one that unsurprisingly involved traveling through time and space. Par for the course, really, save for her end location.

God damnit, and she wasn’t HOSTING anything. She was a guest, an excellent guest, really, if one considered kicking over a chair immediately upon her arrival as ‘excellent guest’ behavior.

“HEY!”

She shouted the greeting, despite being in a tiny room.

She was like 7 sweeps now, plus or minus several thousand sweeps of time travel. That was way too old for fucking playdates.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Or else. I'll make your life miserable. More. Than. Usual." He tells her this, breathless and honestly more excited than he should be, yanking her up by her hair. He always likes to thrash people, and he grins wide now.

His claws hook through and he yanks her needles out of the tight bun she's got it all wrapped up in. He thinks the blood suits her: castes mean nothing to him, but the knowledge that she is dirt there is satisfying. "Wear your hair down more. It's nicer. And we all know. You're only. As good as your looks."

And then he releases her, pushing her off in one direction and tossing the needles off to the next. He is then picking up his chair. He'd knocked it over in his haste standing up.

She growls low, the sound a click in her throat. He could hurl insult after insult at her and it wouldn’t make a difference. Words wouldn’t change what she was, or more, what she wasn’t. Where to anyone else a reminder might have been salt in the wounds, she had learned that retaliation was better than allowing the words to fester.

Using her telekinesis to get her needles back into her hands, she stood up defiantly, pulling on her long hair and holding it out. “Oh, yeah?” she snarled. “Well, then, it’ll be down forever now.”

With a twist of her wrist, her combination of psychic power and the needle sliced unevenly through her hair and she tossed the chunks that came off onto the floor. She stepped on it, turning her foot. “You can even pick it up if you’d like.”

He watches her, totally bewildered for a good moment. His surprise shows on his face. But it doesn't take more than a beat for him to get back on track. He looks from the hair to her head and then he throws his head back and laughs. And laughs. And laughs some more.

When he is breathless once more he sits back down. "This. Is why I like you," he tells her. "You are so. Fucking. Funny. Come on. Do you really think you will get anywhere like that?? Do you really think. That you can fight an eternity. Of working for me? And then. Dying miserably. Blood bubbling up. In your throat. And your lungs giving out. Filling with fluid. Bursting out your mouth. And--"

Caliborn looks pretty blissful as he details the way he thinks she should die.

In the grand scheme of things, her options were limited.

Options.

That was a generous term for it, she supposed. She had no choice but to stay and serve. Even death had been taken away from her, held up like a prize that she would fix her eyes on from the time they were yellow until she matured and they became the same rust as her blood.

In conflict, there was always the decision to make -- fight or flight. Flight had been stolen from her, and all the running in the world (or many worlds) wasn’t enough to escape Lord English. She could weigh the scenario again and again.

She may be trapped. She may be hopeless.

But that didn’t mean she was going to take it.

“Are you trying to fucking woo me now?” she sneered, shifting her stance. “You may think you got it all figured out, but you’re wrong about one thing. No death that you can give me will ever be miserable. You can make it painful. A living fucking nightmare if you want. Maybe I’ll scream. Maybe I’ll be so twisted in pain the only sounds I make will be strangled cries. But I can guarantee one thing -- I ain’t going to be crying for help. Torture the shit out of me, if you want, because so long as I’m dying, I got all the time in the world.”

"You shouldn't. Have told me a lick of that." His grin stretches and stretches. He shrugs and sets up the chessboard once more. "Maybe I'll decide now. That you will live forever. Next to me, by my side. You will be eternally stuck. Chained. And I am not trying to woo. Your stupid self. Why the fuck would. I do something outright filthy like that? You're something to look at. That's it."

And with the pieces placed up from the floor, Caliborn looks her over very carefully. Gestures to the chair with one hand, the other curled around the arm of his chair. "Come on. Let's play a fucking game."

The Handmaid would have considered her words a mistake if she had truly believed that they had caused him to change his mind about anything. She knew her fate from beginning to end. Doc Scratch had made sure of that.

Besides, her death wasn’t coming any time soon. Nothing she said or didn’t say would change that fact. If her words had impact it would mean she controlled something.

She didn’t.

She has to fight the urge to crush one of the chess pieces under her shoe. She can already hear the satisfying crunch it would make, see the irritated look on Caliborn’s face, hear the scathing insults he hoped would harm her.

But what good would that do?

“A game,” she repeated, venom in her voice. It was a lot better than what they had been doing, maybe.

Actually, she probably would have preferred breaking a chair over his head as opposed to playing a boring, strategical game of chess.

"Yes, a fucking game. Did your hair get in your ears?"

His tone plays at annoyance but his face is another matter completely. He is just amused. Gleeful even. Maybe happy. He likes that she has nothing to say besides that. He likes that she falls silent. Just for a moment. Just for a beat. But she has nothing to say. A girl with infinite words and infinite time. He supposes they both do. But that's besides the point.

Caliborn is not good at chess if he is completely honest. Calliope is better at warlike strategy. And he thinks that he prefers checkers anyways. But he can take a loss. Kind of. He will try to take this loss gracefully. The act of actually playing is what matters, right? And then he realizes he's thinking as though he's already lost.

That's enough of that.

"I'll move first," he says, setting a pawn two paces forward. "Since my pieces are white."

She should flip the board over before they even get started, maybe even fling the pieces about the room. She owes him nothing. Not even something as simple as a game of chess.

Especially something as simple as a game of chess.

“Do you think I’m stupid?” she says as she reached forward, moving a black pawn one space forward. “Do you think I don’t know how to play a game of chess? What? Because I’m a pawn myself I wouldn’t understand how the pieces work? I don't care that you're a fool who has to take the first move.”

"I think," he says, all presumption and smug grins, "that you should shut the fuck up and play. It's not a fool who takes. The first move. But the superior."

He sets his piece down, seeming to pick at random.

"Superior doesn't mean shit," she growls defiantly, moving another pawn. “I could put you out at any minute.”

It’s the only fact that she has comfort in. She’s a pawn with a secret weapon.

A secret weapon that only delays her aggravations, but a weapon nonetheless. Unfortunately, it was a double-edged sword. She was able to witness a lot from the sidelines. Time and space meaning nothing meant that she could easily see everything, though rarely was she given the task to do so.

“The only reason you’re even awake right now is because I don’t need the fucking grating cheer of your sister in my ear.” She would have laughed bitterly, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. There was nothing humorous about being stuck in a room with technically two people that could easily drive her to the brink of insanity.

Assuming, of course, that she hadn’t crossed that line already.

"Yeah," he says, rolling his eyes. Twisting the piece he places. "Let's see you. Fucking try. What's that?? You can't? Fucking duh you can't. Dumbass. Do you seriously think. You can take on your master like that. And win? Your only hope. Of ever 'putting me out'. Is by beating me at a game. And always remember. For all your dislike. For all your goddamned distaste. My 'sis' is a thousand times worse. Than I will ever be."

Taking her turn, she stared at the piece she moved silently for a moment, as if thinking it through. She wasn’t. She didn’t give a damn about this game, didn’t give a single fuck if she won. Caliborn could say whatever he wanted -- that it would “put him in his place”, so to speak -- but the Handmaid knew that even a victory had still given the aggravating waste of space what he wanted.

Someone to play along.

“Hey,” she looked up, grinning. “I’ve got a new rule, fucker. You wanna play a game?”

She stood up then and flipped over the chessboard, letting the pieces tumble to the floor. “You gotta play 16 pawn pick up first.”

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only