AU where instead of saving Vriska, John’s change is to move the inhabitants of the golden ship to the meteor for those three long years.

(This is not our AU, but imagine.)

John, Hero of Breath, has five planets, a labyrinthine meteor, and the endless dreamscapes of the bubbles to explore. There are more friends (or potential friends anyway) than he can count. He doesn’t feel hemmed in or trapped or ignored. He lost his father, but now he has others who lost guardians recently to talk to instead of someone whose pain is scabbed over and well-hidden. He goes everywhere, talks to everyone, and sucks everyone back together into a group like a benevolent tornado. No one can slip away and lose connection when he’s on watch.

If Rose starts drinking, Davesprite has seen where this goes. It’s not cute or funny or a way to make her more charming. It’s something terrible. I don’t know if she gets that far, though. John has always been one to pull her out of her funks, and Jade’s the one who gets her to talk. They tease her about Kanaya. Jade draws pictures for her wizardfic novels. Stories are exchanged about childhoods, like pulling teeth at first but then easier, and “it’s not your fault” are the words she needed to hear. She hears them. They all do.

Dave and Karkat become friends faster, because whenever they start a spat John breeze in and defuses it with a friendly innocence that seems a lot less calculated than it really is. Can Town gets a movie theater. The films John and Dave make to fill it are High Art. You can tell this by the fact that certain other meteor dwellers are intent on destroying them. The Prospit kids move planets and summon windstorms, and Dave is forced to reassess his mental notes a little bit. It’s harder to maintain his ideas of them when they’re there actively working to tear them down.

Rose was always best at picking through Jade’s facade. On the meteor, she burrows in even more, determined. Plus, it’s hard for Jade to break her habit of verbal Karkat sparring, which draws a horrified yet fascinated audience. Little by little, the shields come down. She makes offhand comments about her childhood and realizes they’re not so offhand to anyone else. She’s allowed to get angry without people cowering in fear. Turns out speaking your mind can be fun, sometimes, and it gets you places. It makes you lighter. She looks at Rose’s stories at all the long words she never let herself say and tastes the syllables on her tongue.

Davesprite has convinced himself that the alpha is the superior version, that it means you’re in the right. Dave has spent a long time convincing himself that doomed Daves had theirs coming, that they’re not really real. Being stuck together forces them to reconsider this. There are some impressive squabbles. The trolls are used to this and wonder what it is about Knights, anyway. Eventually they settle on a truce involving a tacit acknowledgment that they must be the same dude (no one else could be that aggravating) paired with a stubborn desire to claw their way out of the other’s perceived shadow, which has recently gotten a lot smaller. Rose, who has had longterm experience with both, occasionally referees until her running psychological commentary gets too unwelcome.

Terezi still lost her sister, and she misses her desperately. Sometimes she and John talk to each other about the girl who was like the sun: bright and dangerous and beautiful. When she retreats from Latula’s radness, he decides they should learn to skateboard and laughs when the scratches fade so much faster from his face than hers. (”God Tier” he says, and she sticks her tongue out at him.) She and Davesprite avoid each other until they talk about inevitability, and choices, and the way you can make all the right ones and still feel like you’re losing. After that, it’s a little better. Gamzee lurks, but there are too many people on the meteor and not enough places to slip away. They’re not a crew that will leave a friend drowning, not anymore.

Kanaya and Jade burn through their grist allowance making dresses that trail and catch and tear in the uneven corridors. Things that break can be repaired or recycled into something new. The two Space players learn together how to stand up and speak without needing violence. You can be heard without a punch to the face or extended claws. “Friends are important” is John’s refrain, so Kanaya seeks out Karkat whenever he slinks off to sulk or glare at Terezi’s turned back instead of letting him stew alone. She’s a meddler, but she no longer sees that as a shameful thing. In the dream bubbles, she sees Porrim for the first time and goes up to her, literally glowing.

Karkat believes in a leadership where he must be in control or fail. John believes in a leadership where he is a friend and takes orders if necessary, even if part of him doesn’t like it. They bounce off each other, arguingjoking strategy until something emerges that’s a mix of both. He doesn’t get to fight with himself very much. There’s always something happening, always someone passing by, a whole network of relationships and interactions and ambitions blossoming in front of him that he can’t help but want to be involved in. The other girls aren’t impressed by his proposed ownership of Terezi, either. After another Jade tirade and Rose and Kanaya looking over the rim of a book, smirking and adding commentary, he decides he’ll stop glaring at Can Town and go make sure it has a decent general.

WV sees the boy who died on the screen alive and well and realizes that he did rise up when he asked him, after all.