Title: Repaying Old Favors
Fandom: Homestuck
Rating: PG
Length: 658
Content Notes: Terminal illness, references to canon character death
Summary: Having a short-lived lusus means that, one day, you will care for it the way it once cared for you.


Kanaya Maryam wakes from dreams of unknown worlds, and before she is fully conscious, she has already begun preparing breakfast. The process is mostly muscle memory now, a steady rhythm of chopping and mashing fruit into a sticky puree; for five perigees, her lusus has accepted no other food. Kanaya prepares a full mixing bowl of the fruit-mash, rather optimistically, before she heads outside.

Her lusus is lying halfway out of her burrow, and Kanaya chooses to believe that she chose that resting place willfully, to better greet the sun. The Virgin Mother Grub's wings buzz weakly as Kanaya approaches, and the effort she makes to lift her head is so great that Kanaya gestures her down again. "Save your strength," she says, trying her best to hide the rough tones that grief lends to her voice. "It's all right." They both know better, but such things are not said. Obediently, the Mother Grub rests, and Kanaya sits down to begin to feed her.

It's a very long process; the Mother Grub takes only a spoonful at a time, swallowing slowly, and waits for Kanaya to take a mouthful before she'll accept any more. The concoction is somehow cloyingly sweet without being flavorful, and Kanaya can barely manage to choke it down, but the taste conjures up something more powerful than disgust: memories. The first few seasons after Kanaya's molt, when she was too young to hunt or forage safely in the desert, her lusus would bring her back this same fruit and watch her while she ate. It didn't taste any better then -- Kanaya has never been built for sweet things -- but she knew that finishing would mean a trek into the desert together or a few hours in the library, working through the droid-stocked shelves as quickly as she could manage. That incentive was the only thing that had persuaded her to eat some days, and as she continues the lengthy, silent meal, she wishes she had something similar to use now.

There's nothing she can offer the Mother Grub, though, besides her company. They both know she'll be dead before the next dark season, and she barely has the energy to burrow, let alone fly. Desert journeys together are impossible... but stories aren't, Kanaya realizes. The stories that populate her library are worthless (better that her lusus not know about the rainbow drinkers), but she has her own stories to tell -- stories of her dreams, of the future that awaits her, the new worlds and the inevitable ascendance. Perhaps it might comfort her lusus now, or reassure her, or just distract her from her own pain.

The mixing bowl is two-thirds empty when the Mother Grub refuses her next serving; it's more than she's eaten in days, and Kanaya allows herself to be heartened a bit as she scoots closer. "I want to tell you a story," she says, watching her lusus's eyes for any hints of fatigue, but the Mother Grub's eyes are bright. "It's the story of my friends and me, and the journey we'll take soon, after... in the dark season. It's the story of my dreams..."

She doesn't know what she's saying, really, but she keeps talking, and the Mother Grub keeps listening. It's an hour or two before exhaustion begins to play on her face, and Kanaya falls silent as her lusus's eyes close. There's the whisper-faint sound of the Mother Grub's respiration, so this isn't the moment she's dreading, but soon, she knows, it will be. Today is better, though, better than most of them. Her lusus seems happy enough. Her lusus ate.

Kanaya picks up the mixing bowl and heads inside, finding herself strangely weary as well. Is this what it was like to raise her, back in those early days? The laborious feeding, the anticipation of disaster? There are debts she can never repay, not in the time they have left. She can only do her best to try.