Work Text:
TT once saw god’s ass on the television. This was three weeks ago, when she had been knitting a new scarf for her cat. It was year one in the great After, once the gods of old had come back to them just as the prophecies had long foretold. The carapacian had never thought she’d live to see the day that the Players returned.
This was before, of course, she saw the god of Hope’s ass on TV, clad only in the shortest of tan cargo shorts. Then Life had taken over her role as the Eternal CEO of CrockerCorp 2.0, and the rest of the gods became kings of all the nations. It had only been a handful of months since the gods had appeared in the middle of a sunny, completely normal day, and the world had changed overnight into something a bit more magical and strange.
Since then TT had managed to live a fairly normal life. Her small business was stable, her cat Grizzly Girl healthy, and her rent paid for the next few months. The gods of old were back. There was food in her fridge. All was well.
And then the Heir of Breath knocked on her door.
TT thought she’d be able to guess it of one of the gods passed her by. She thought she’d have been able to at least sense the power in them, but she had no idea of who had been lurking on the other side of the thin wooden door before she’d opened it. A client perhaps, coming by early for a short session. It wasn’t unheard of for her clients to drop by unannounced. Not even GG her cat had shown the slightest sign of the god’s presence.
TT opened the door to her small office and saw a young man with black hair and eyes as blue as Skaia. He was dressed in blue jeans and a blue shirt with yellow sneakers but TT still recognized him instantly. She’d quickly memorized the faces of the gods, and even in commoner’s wear she saw the Heir for who he was.
“Hello,” Breath said, giving a small wave. TT stood frozen, her hand still on the door. “Is this the right place? I’m looking for a Dr. T Trainer.”
TT felt her heartbeat flutter with shock. Breath was looking right at her. She nodded mutely, aware that her throat had closed up.
The Heir’s face brightened. The change in expression made him seem considerable younger. “Great!” He said, “Look, I was wondering if I could have a moment of your time, that is, if you’re not busy right now.”
“Yes, of course,” TT squeaked out, throwing the door open to the god. “I have some spare time for the nest hour.” Her next client wasn’t due till after lunch; she had time— she’d make time. This was the Heir of Breath! If anything he deserved a bit of her time for creating the world she lived in and everything in it.
The god of Breath looked around her office. GG was grooming herself on the windowsill beside a pot of lilies, soaking in the sunlight with her black fur. The small office was cozy and well fabricated, the lighting muted and glowy from lamps strategically placed throughout the room. It was the picture of ease and relaxation apart from TT’s somewhat cluttered desk in the corner.
The god stood there, rubbing one shoe against the other in silence as she quickly organized her desktop into a semblance of order. “What is it that I can help you with?” She asked, eager to please the god.
Breath looked uncomfortable and uncertain. TT had gotten really good at reading people for her job and found his face an open book.
She tried again. “This is a therapist’s office, Heir. Is there anything that I can help you with today?”
His face changed when he realized he’d been recognized. He looked sheepishly at her. “You know?”
“I will always know your face,” TT replied simply, then she got to business. If he’d taken the trouble of looking up her office, then he must have come for a reason. “Can I guess why you’re here?” This was a bit of an unorthodox approach, but she too a stab at it. Clearly this wouldn’t be a by-the-book session in any case.
Breath looked interested. “Go ahead,” he said, grinning. His eyes flashed an unearthly shade of blue, a hint of something inhuman mirrored behind his eyes.
TT wasn’t afraid of him. She knew enough about the god of Breath to know that he was a trickster. “This is a strange world to suddenly find yourself in,” she started, keying for the feelings she knew he must be hiding. She’d given this topic some thought before when the twelve gods had initially reappeared, knowing above all others how difficult this must be for them. “Especially with not knowing that your arrival was prophesized for thousands of years. It’s a lot to take in.”
The Heir nodded enthusiastically, his chin tucked against his chest. “Yes, it is. It can be hard to handle.”
“Is that why you’re here?” She guessed. “Because you want to know how to make it easier?”
“Do you think that you can really help me?” He asked, somewhat sad. “I’m guessing that my problems aren’t ordinary.”
TT leveled a very frank gaze at him, tilting up her head at his much taller frame to stare directly into those ethereal blue eyes. “I think that I can handle it,” she said, shuffling the papers in front of her. “Now, where do we begin…”
…
The Heir of Breath came by once a week for his session. He always showed up in commoner’s clothes but as soon as the door was closed he’d switch out his drab outfit for the blue godhood that all of his idols and statues depicted him in. He’d hover above her couch, floating, on his back with his legs crossed and the long blue tail of his hood twisting gentle in a breeze only there for him, and talk about his day and about the other gods.
TT tried her best to keep up with the Heir’s ramblings, but there was just so much that she didn’t know that the smaller carpacian quickly found herself asking questions.
“Heir,” TT began.
“John,” Breath said quickly. “It’s just John.”
TT bit at her lower lip, blessed beyond words to possess something so sacred as the name of a god. “John, then,” TT nodded, swallowing. “Can I ask a question?”
“Go ahead,” he said.
“Why do you feel the need to change outfits once you’re out of the public eye?”
John looked at her and shrugged, still floating sideways in the air. “I guess I’m just more comfortable in this,” he said, picking at the godsign for Breath on his shirt. “I’ve worn this outfit for over three years. Normal clothes just don’t feel the same.”
“And as for the floating you’re more comfortable with it that walking?” TT Asked, vying to understand everything she could about this strange person who’d appeared asking for a help she didn’t know if she could offer.
“I am,” John confirmed. “I never had to bother with trying to hide who I was while in the game. That’s a new thing, this need for secrecy. Before, in the game, we were all running around in our godtier outfits and warping reality left and right as we fought the game. It’s hard to try and unlearn all of those bad habits.”
“Then why do you feel the need to hide?” TT asked. She was trying to understand. If the gods so wanted, they could be worshipped. The people would gladly build them temples and palaces and wait on them hand and foot, but instead the gods had chosen to live lives as normally as possible. Even as kings they didn’t take total power—they asked from their people, watched, waited, and listened to the petty disputes gods like them should have been miles above.
It was part of why TT was so fascinated with John. He was different than anything she would have thought before meeting him in person, and yet exactly as expected.
“I don’t know,” John shrugged again. “There was a big argument about it when we realized that the world we’d created knew us as gods. We hadn’t been expecting that at all. We just wanted to live normal lives after the game. We never asked for this sort of recognition.” John rolled over in the air then, his face panicked. “Not that all this adoration a bad thing, I swear, it’s just… not what we were expecting.”
“Is this world,” TT said, gesturing around to her office and beyond to the wider New Cantown. “Not what you were expecting?”
“Yes and no,” John answered, biting his lip. “I’d never given much thought to the new universe. I was too busy trying to keep everyone alive. But, when I did think of it, I imagined some lonely paradise planet just waiting for us to come along and fill it up.”
TT set aside that comment about keeping everyone alive for later. It went into a mental file she was assembling on the game and what must have happened during it. “And instead you found us,” TT finished. “A brand-new 10,000 year old society just waiting for you.”
“It’s a little disconcerting,” John admitted. “Especially when everything about the game that you know about seems to be wrong.”
What? “Care to explain?” TT asked.
“Rose, sorry, Light, says it’s simple to explain the discrepancies,” John said. “Ten thousand years is a long time to get the details wrong, and with miscommunication and mistranslations everywhere it’s no wonder that you guys ended up with next to nothing right.”
Was all of her theology really wrong? Did the theologians of this universe make a mistake? Was everything she’d been taught about the gods and the game a lie? Was history itself a sham?
“You look surprised,” John told her, and TT struggled to keep her expression neutral. “What do you know about the game?”
“Skaia chose twelve Players to play her Great Game and create a new universe,” TT said, summing it up before going into detail. “In the game each Player faced challenges and overcame obstacles in order to become stronger, eventually becoming gods and winning their right to enter the new universe.”
John grinned. “Nothing you just said is what happened,” he told her wryly. “For one, my version has a whole lot of dying in it.”
That was ridiculous. The gods couldn’t die. That’s not how things worked.
“What about Bec Noir?” John asked, prompting. “Lord English?”
“Who?” TT said, blankly.
“I think I need to fill you in on what went on before we can proceed,” John decided. “Patient’s confidentiality?”
“As always,” TT replied. “Nothing you say to me will ever leave this room.”
“Good,” John grunted, sitting upright in the air. “Those theologians have been pestering us about the truth since Day One. We all decided it was easier to move on if we put the past behind us and acted like the fairy-tale story was the version that had happened.”
There was a lot to unpack just in that statement, but TT let the god speak his mind.
“Alright,” TT said, choosing to believe the god’s words. John had no reason to lie to her, and the answer for his troubles might lie inside what had really gone on in the game.
“So, first off,” John said. “We all died in the game.”
He went on to explain the teams, Derse and Prospit, Skaia, the Red Miles, frogs, carapacians, consorts, planets, and ectobiology. He explained the reason behind the impossible sylladex systems that each of the players possessed, and expressed relief that their lack of existence in the new universe meant that the game was really over. He explained about broken cycles, a dog god bent on bloodshed, Rings of power, Quest Beds and swords and three years spent lonely on a stolen battleship before he’d retconned his way out of a doomed timeline. He explained that there were once a full twelve trolls instead of three, and that the rest of that team hadn’t survived till the end. According to John, everyone had died. That’s part of how godtiering happened.
“Terezi even killed me once, I guess,” John said shrugging. “That was a different version of me though so I don’t really remember it. Then Jack stabbed me through the heart, twice, and a whole lot of other bullshit happened to everyone that also ended with them all dying painful deaths.”
“Calliope had a brother,” John said grimly. “Another Time player. He eventually become Lord English and we had to defeat him in a final battle for the fate of existence.”
This… this was a lot to take in. The game wasn’t supposed to be like that. TT might not have been a player herself, gods forbid, but she was still a carapacian. She knew of the great game and the will of Skaia like all of her kind did, dreaming dreams about pictures in the clouds. It had supposed to have been a challenge yes, but not a bloodbath. The realization changed TT, made her realize that John was less of a game Player and more of a soldier who’d survived a war of the likes of which she couldn’t quite wrap her head around. So much had gone wrong.
No wonder John needed help. At first TT had thought that he just needed an outsider to hear all he had to say, to unpack all his woes on and hear how normal it was to have feelings like this. Now TT wasn’t so sure. John needed more help than she could offer. She had her Masters in psychology, yes, but she specialized in romantic altercations, marriages and quadrants, not immortal PTSD war survivors.
But like John, TT knew the need for secrecy. What would the world do when it realized that the gods they served were nothing more than a group of children far more broken than anyone had ever realized?
So TT learned of the game and what happened during it. She learned all about John and Rose and Jade and Dave, the other human team they’d inadvertently created, the spare Cherubim from a session more mangled than even John could understand, and the three surviving trolls they’d drug along for the ride.
Multiple sessions colliding at once. It hadn’t been a single game with twelve mixed race Players, but at least five separate sessions mashed into some hellish amalgamate that refused to die much like John and his friends had refused to roll over and let the game win.
This realization happened around their fourth session, with John floating aimlessly around her office and petted GG, who remained curled up on his stomach as he drifted, spouting nonsense about dead planets and missing guardians.
TT just felt saddened. John had clearly been through so much, too much in her professional opinion, far too much for any single person to bear alone.
“And that’s just how I feel,” John admitted, on his back in the middle of the room with his arms laced behind his head as he floated. “Alone.”
This was John’s core problem—isolation.
“It’s just,” John said, trying to explain. “Dave had Karkat. Rose had Kanaya. Jane and Roxy and Calliope are together, and Jake and Dirk are… complicated, and Jade is always busy with Davepeta, and I’m… not. Busy, that is. I don’t really do much of anything anymore besides mope around and Pester my friends.”
“And they message you back?” TT asked.
“Always,” John answered, grinning. “And they visit all the time too. I know this is partly my fault and its all in my head, but I can’t seem to make it go away. I just keep isolating myself without realizing it and when I do its crushing, too crushing to handle.”
“You’ve never been alone before, have you?” TT asked, setting her clip board aside. She never wrote anything down on it, but she liked the feel of it in her hands. It made her feel more professional.
“Never,” John replied. He rolled over in the air, gently transferring GG into his arms to cradle the cat against his chest. TT could hear the purring from where she sat. “Do you reckon that’s part of the problem?”
“It could be,” TT said, struggling to find an answer for him. “Do you think that in part you’re isolating yourself out of a sense of duty?”
“How so?” John asked, sounding confused.
“There was so much you left undone in the game,” TT told him. “And it can be hard to let all of that go. It might be that subconsciously you’re still waiting to finish playing even though the game is over. It’s a hard transition to make, after all. Plus an unwillingness to believe in the freedom you now have might contributed to your ‘doing nothing’ that you complain of.”
“I do not complain,” John complained. He cut his slightly glowing eyes to the wall above her head. “And our time’s up for today.”
TT glanced at the clock on the wall and saw that he was correct. “Do think about what I said,” she prompted, straightening her desk. “Do some digging inside yourself. Try to find the answer in your heart.”
“Do you think that I can?” John asked, her literal nearly all-powerful god asking her if she thought that he could help himself.
“I know you’re capable of it,” TT answered, swallowing down her inborn awe that still rose up when he stared at the god in her office. She set down her clipboard to stare at him as he floated back to the floor and set her cat aside.
“Thank you,” John said, and then there was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” John called out, grinning, still wearing his godhood and obviously one of the gods as the door opened.
TT didn’t need to worry about John blowing his cover, because another god was at the door. Time was wearing a plain white hoodie and dark jeans, his iconic holy shades over his eyes. John flicked him off as TT blinked in astonishment.
“You’re late,” John said.
“I’m never late,” Time answered, smiling slightly. He looked interested as he looked past John into the small office. “This is her?”
“Yeah!” John said excitedly, his feet leaving the floor again. To TT he said, “I kinda told everyone about you and how you’re helping me.”
“You what?” TT said faintly, staring at the god of Time that stood on her doorstep. GG made a beeline for him and began rubbing against the Knight’s ankles, purring.
“Hmmm,” was all Dave said as he dipped down to pet the black cat, scratching behind her ears.
“No worries,” John said brightly. “Dave’s trustworthy.”
“And Karkat’s a fuckin saint,” Dave shot back, joking with his hands in his pockets. “Come on, let’s go. Jade’s waiting.”
For all of the god’s haste to leave, he kept staring at her like he was asking a question and expecting an answer. TT couldn’t see his eyes behind the shades, but she felt the god looking right at her with something akin to curiosity.
They left then to go outside and join the god of Space. But the next day TT received a letter written in red ink.
And so the Knight of Time joined TT’s growing repertoire of godly patients, because with Dave came Karkat as well, who in turn drug in Kanaya, who whispered to Rose about this dark-shelled carapacian therapist that knew their secrets.
Rose showed up at her door right as TT opened a letter from the Rouge of Void. They’d been penning each other back and forth but had yet to meet as Roxy expressed her concern over Dirk, who wasn’t adjusting well to ‘all this new bullshit’, as Roxy had put it.
“May I come in?” The Seer of Light asked her, hovering in her doorway.
TT had been somewhat desensitized to finding random new gods on her doorstep; they were showing up daily now, but seeing Light herself was something else. This was the god who had founded TT’s entire profession. Light was the therapist of therapists, the god of psychoanalysis. TT, a lowly couple’s therapist with only a Master’s in Psychology was unworthy of being in her presence.
“You may,” TT said, because she couldn’t refuse a god. GG meowed greetings at her from her spot on the window sill.
“The cat is a nice touch,” Rose complemented, drifting over to the sofa. “Very professional.”
TT stared at Light, resisting the urge to swallow her tongue. “Is there anything that I can help you with?” She asked cheerfully, a tremor in her voice.
“Yes, I believe there is,” the Seer told her. “You are the therapist that is helping several of my friends.” The way she said it was not a question.
“I am,” TT agreed. Much like Rose, TT didn’t mention the involvement of the gods. For that, they didn’t need words.
Rose tilted her chin at her. “What made you decide that therapy was the path for you?” She asked suddenly.
The unexpected question threw TT off for a second, but she recovered quickly. “In a way, you did, Light,” TT said, naming the god. “I was a young carapacian when I first read some of your work on the theory of psychoanalysis. Very intriguing theory. I was enraptured.”
Rose grinned wryly. “You know,” she mentioned. “I never expected my journal to be so publicized. At the time I was only taking notes for myself while on the meteor.” Rose shared a secret, sly glance with the carapacian. “It was never meant to become such an esteemed work. In truth I found it quite sloppy and self-centered. It’s a good thing the field of psychology and therapy developed correctly on their own even with my piss-poor first impressions.”
TT would have called such a notion sacrilege if it hadn’t been spoken directly from Light’s mouth.
“Do you want to know a secret?” Rose asked, leaning closer. Her eyes twinkled, the symbol of Light shining deep within them. “I was never trained as a therapist.”
What once would have come as a shock now struck with a dull blow. TT had begun to suspect as much the more she learned of John’s story, though she would never have been brave enough to speak it on her own.
“You don’t seem surprised,” Rose said, sighing. “May I extrapolate that this means that John has been telling you of our grand misadventure?”
TT sealed her lips lest she spill secrets like that. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But—”
“Patient confidentially, I’m sure,” Rose nodded, unsurprised. “Don’t feel pressured to answer, I’m fairly sure I’ve guessed, not that it matters in the grand scheme of things.”
“Then can I guess at the meaning of this meeting?” TT risked the question, egged along by her instincts.
Rose’s eyes flared. “You may,” she said, curious.
“You heard that I was treating several of you friends, but instead of digging into my credentials to make sure I’m worthy of such a task so far all you’ve done is spin the tale your way,” TT began, feeling the edge she was on. One wrong word and she’d lose the god’s interest. “I think, and correct me if I’m being too brazen, that you’re also interested in seeing what I have to say.”
Rose was too good to look impressed, but she did offer a grin. “You’re good,” she said. “Better than I ever was.”
TT didn’t question it. She knew the truth when she heard it. “So what would you like to discuss?” TT said, drawing her clipboard towards her chest.
And so the Seer of Light herself joined the godly roster.
By the end of the week TT had eight of the gods joining her for sessions. Life, Hope, Heart, and Mind each stayed away, though TT spoke with Roxy often about Dirk, who resolutely stayed away until Jake dragged him in for couples therapy of all things, and after much screaming and cursing, flaying of hands, and slight altercations to the fabric of reality that TT wasn’t sure she remembered correctly, Dirk and Jake finally settled down and started talking to each other again.
Jane came over on her own. She just needed time to warm to the idea of seeing a professional for help, especially when she considered herself one of the least affected by the game, no matter how incorrect of an assumption that was.
TT began to take note of the individual idiosyncrasies of each other gods.
Sometimes Karkat and Kanaya dropped by, either alone or with their respective partners. Dave was never alone, he always brought someone else with him. Rose would drop by weekly, sometimes with Kanaya on her arm and sometimes dragging Terezi behind her. Calliope ghosted in once or twice but seemed unfamiliar with the notion of therapy as a whole, but there was still progress made with her. Jade would always skip knocking to warp herself directly into the middle of the room in a burst of green light, often when TT was least expecting it.
And then there was John, who this week came to the door alone. “Hi,” he greeted her meekly. “Do you have the time for a surprise session?”
“Always,” TT told him, getting down to business as GG beelined, purring loudly, for her usual spot on John’s lap.
TT quickly noticed that this time, John didn’t follow their usual lines for a session. For one he was smiling more, no longer drifting listlessly but actively floating. His eyes seemed brighter, his expressions more lively, and altogether the god of Breath simply seemed as if her were finally happy.
It was then that TT realized what she had done, what she had helped the gods to do.
“How are you feeling?” TT asked gently. “You seem better today.”
“I feel better,” john admitted. “I feel like that hole in my chest is closing up.”
TT retained her professional expression even as inside her heart gave a squeeze. This was exactly what she wanted to hear as she stared at the back of one black-shelled hand, resisting the urge to look up at John and smile.
“Actually,” John said, flipping over in the air, grinning, his eyes flaring blue. “I think I have you to thank for that. I think I’m getting better.”
“And the isolation?” TT asked, naming the core of John’s issue with settling into his new universe.
John set her cat down. “Why don’t you open the door and see?” He asked.
TT stared at her door with trepidation. She no longer trusted that something sane would be waiting on the other side, not after this stew of young gods she’d been entrenched with. There came a knock at the door.
“Come in,” TT called out, steeling herself. John’s feet didn’t touch the ground so she rationalized that it must have been one of his friends.
She was wrong.
It was all of them.
Jade, Jane, Jake, Dave, Roxy, Dirk, Rose, Karkat, Terezi, Calliope, and Kanaya funneled themselves into the small therapy office. They filled more than the space they occupied, likely thanks to Jade’s meddling, and somehow everyone fit inside of the small space with room to spare. Even the elusive sprites were there, floating on their colorful, ghostly tails.
“What are you all doing here?” TT asked, shocked.
“We wanted to thank you!” Jade yelled as Jane pulled a blue and red frosted cake out of nowhere.
“It’s for you,” Jane offered the cake out to her. “For all the help you’ve given us.”
TT’s throat closed up around any words she might have said as Calliope grinned at her, those beautiful green eyes sparkling.
“Yeah!” John said, hovering over them, the end of his windsock twisting in the breeze. “I was talking about how much better I feel since having started meting you with Dave, and he said the same thing back to me, and even Karkat admitted that he liked you, so we decided to get together and throw you a surprise party, you know, for helping us.”
“All of us,” Rose said, light shining behind her eyes.
“Consider this baked confectionery proof of my tolerance of you,” Karkat huffed out, looking embarrassed.
“The cake’s from all of us,” Jane told her, setting it down on the desktop.
“I hope this was alright?” John asked worriedly, his lip between his teeth.
TT stared at the god. He was floating above her and she was too short to consider hugging him like part of her longed to do. This was the kindest, best thing anyone had ever done for her. TT felt her expression lose its professional, detached edge and warm into something softer. “Thank you, John,” she said, gazing at all of the assembled gods that crowded her small office. Grizzly Girl wove herself around the gods’ feet until she found Calliope, who picked the black cat up in her arms.
And for once, everything was well.
Outside the sun shone down on a world a little bit more balanced with itself, its young gods at last healing.
The end.