Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Your name is Vriska Serket and what the hell do you think you’re doing?

You are walking through the field of your latest Flarp session, where you have obviously blown everyone’s incompetence out of the water with how amazing you are, when you hear someone crying.

Your curiosity is aroused, and you go to see who it is. You pick your way through the rubble and turn a corner to find –

Two human grubs.

You have no interest in humans, especially not human grubs. Humans are just nasty little creatures that some trolls keep as pets – although why someone would want something as useless as a pet to be dependant on them is something you can’t quite understand. Besides, if these grubs are stupid enough to hatch in a place where a lusus can’t find them, then they don’t really deserve to be rescued. You turn to walk away – you have a lusus of your own to feed, after all – but hearing one of the grubs give a pitiful cry you turn back.

You glance around quickly to make sure no one is watching you, and you scoop up the two grubs.

Once you get back to your hive, you lay the two grubs down on your daybed and turn on your husktop. You ignore the flashing Trollian symbol and bring up your browser. With two human grubs sniffling quietly behind you, you start a search.

 

Such a basic search brings up way too many hits. You don’t even bother going through them. What do you need first … ?

 

 

A few less hits. You scroll down the first page and click on what looks like a credible site.

 

 

 

 

 

Your new pet human will eat lots of different things! It will eat a lot of milder foods that you would eat – just make sure it’s well cooked, because humans are much more delicate and susceptible to diseases that may be in raw meat.

That seems simple enough. You can just let them eat off your plate. Satisfied, you go back to searching for how to care for humans.

 

 

Huh. Twelve websites? That’s it?

 

 

 

 

 

Humans in wrigglerhood are very strange. There is no human mother grub – instead, humans develop their wrigglers inside the bodies of the females. After a third of a sweep, the human grub emerges from the female.

 

 

Humans do not have a clearly defined stage in their life when they pupate. Instead, they will continue to get bigger, and will begin a stage called “puberty” when they are approximately 6 sweeps old. “Puberty” will mature the human into a suitable candidate for another human to pail with. This stage finishes after about two sweeps.

Wow, humans are so weird. It’s hard to suppress the shudder you want to make at the thought of having to grow a wriggler inside your body. You take a glance over at the sleeping humans. Judging from the pictures on the website, your two grubs are about three sweeps old, and you have acquired both a male and a female.

As if it could feel you staring at them, the male wakes up. He sits up and stares at you with big blue eyes under a mop of black hair. You make a mental note to do an internet search about the human hemospectrum later.

“Do you speak Alternian?” you ask, making your voice as gentle as possible so you don’t scare the wriggler.

He nods.

“Okay … Do you have a name?” you try.

He shakes his head this time. You stand up.

“You must be hungry,” you tell him.

 

Damn, but the little things can eat.

The female had woken up, and although her hair was similar enough to the male’s that you had though they might share an ancestor, her eyes are a beautiful shade of green that reminds you of your friend Kanaya.

You had let them loose in your nutriblock and gone back upstairs to retrieve your mobile husktop, and in the ninety seconds you were gone, the two humans had raided your cupboards and cooling device and everything that had contained food, and a bit of cutlery too. There was no way you could keep both of them.

After a bit more of playing click-the-link on the internet, you felt confident enough to call yourself a human expert.

Humans, you had learned, were prized as pets because of how docile and small they were. Even woofbeasts, the tamest creatures to be domesticated before the discovery of humans, were ferocious in comparison. In physical stature, even the tallest adults would only come up to about your shoulder. As it was, you were fit and strong from your nine sweeps of Flarping and fighting, and you didn’t even notice when one or both of the grubs climbed on your back, pretending you were a hoofbeast. Not that you minded, really. They were adorable little things.

Strangest of all, you thought, was the lack of hemospectrum. All humans had bright red blood, a mutant colour that would get any decent troll culled on sight.

You smile as the female bit into a cherry, her dull little teeth breaking into the skin. You really should name the humans, calling them “the male” and “the female” was starting to get boring. You bring up a new tab in your browser.

 

 

The site that comes up is glittery and full of flashing gifs. It looks like someone had let Feferi have their way with it. You frown and squint at the assault on your eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

HUMAN MALE NAMES!

1. John!
2. Billy!
3. Jordan!
4. Harry!
5. Mike!
6. Thomas!

You just take the first name you see. John. You think it’s a good fit for the male currently clinging to your back and watching the gifs with those big, impossibly blue eyes.

You click a link and it takes you to a similar page, but with female names.

 

 

 

 

 

 

HUMAN FEMALE NAMES!

1. Annie!
2. Jade!
3. Katie!
4. Chelsea!
5. Megan!
6. Julia!

You glare at number one. Annie? It sounds like a weak name. You decide to go with the second one. Jade. The same colour as her eyes.

“Hey guys,” you say, and the male drops off your back and scampers over beside the cherry-stained female. “I think I found some names for you. John and Jade. What do you think?”

The male stares at you for a moment before poking the female. “Jade,” he says, and giggles.

The female pokes him back and starts laughing as well. “John.”

 

 

After clumsily refitting some of your clothes for John and Jade and playing with them until they got tired – damn, they are a handful – you put them to sleep in your daybed. The internet says that prolonged exposure to sopor is actually toxic to humans, and that sleeping on something soft like a couch or daybed is actually better for them. It seems a bit odd to you, but then, you’ve never really dealt with taking care of another species before. It was always your lusus who took care of you.

You’re thinking of how crazy it’s going to be in your hive now that you have two little wrigglers to look after when you hear Trollian ding on your mobile husktop. You reach over and grab it.

 

 

You bring up Trollian. Karkat is the only other troll online. You give a mental shrug and think “What the hell” as you open up a chat box.

 

 

In the morning, you are woken up by little fingers poking at your face. You open your eyes to see that, somehow, John and Jade have climbed up the side of your recuperacoon and are now poking at your cheeks.

“Vriska,” says John, “we’re hungry.” You growl and roll over in the slime. You are definitely not an evening person.

“You know where the nutriblock is,” you grumble, “and you sure as fuck know how to get around in it.”

You smile a bit as you hear the soft sounds of squishy human butts sliding off your recuperacoon and their little feet pattering away towards the promise of food.

You’ve just sent two little hell raising humans to your nutriblock. Alone. Without supervision.

Your eyes snap open, suddenly wide away.

Shit.

You jump out of your recuperacoon and peel off the dried slime and get dressed as fast as you can, grabbing your glasses and running your hand though your messy hair. You heave a sigh of relief when you get to the nutriblock and see that Jade has made John sit down and eat like a civilized troll instead of trashing the kitchen like they did last time.

After you’ve eaten as well, you clean up the nutriblock, and your heart swells with pride as John jumps up to help you. You’re feeling very un-Serket-like with this pride and maternal instinct towards the tiny human. You figure this is how lusii must feel, taking care of wrigglers, and you think you like the feeling.

After the nutriblock is clean and all three of you are presentable, you scoop Jade up and balance her on your hip and you take John’s hand.

Time to go visit Karkat Vantas.