Rose arches an eyebrow at her wife, who is tending to the Mother Grub. Rose herself is sitting cross-legged on an outcropping over the lip of the breeding pit, knitting a series of tiny scarves for the grub clones that she and Kanaya have come to help hatch.

Kanaya laughs to herself, more fond than mocking. Rose turns over another row on her scarf with dexterous ease, switching the knit pattern without missing a stitch. From behind her knitting she watches Kanaya check the shell thickness on a batch of eggs. Her wife is luminous in the early morning light, her rainbow-drinker skin soaking in the pink light and reflecting it back like the inside of a snail’s shell.

Swifer Eggmop is Kanaya’s over-eager but well-meaning jade-blooded assistant. She talks a little like a parody of a 1920s newsboy archetype, which Rose can only theorize has to do with Jane’s influence on the culture.

Swifer is at the center of the breeding pit, knee-deep in birthing juice as she mops down the Mother Grub’s exoskeleton. The parturition of troll grubs is apparently an arduous and grisly task, one that has stained the Mother Grub’s shimmering white exoskeleton rainbow-dark with various secretions.

Rose takes a moment to feel grateful that her current relationship alignment leaves no chance for her to ever be “human pregnant.” Not that she has any particular distaste for motherhood. It might be nice to adopt a little troll grub once the whole ball on natural production gets rolling.

Swifer adjusts the rate of her swiffing to a more acceptable level of vigor. She shines up the last of the segment she’s working on, then twirls the mop over her wrist with a martial flourish that absolutely recalls the fact that she is from a natural-born warrior species. She then gets to work washing the Mother Grub’s horns.

There’s a third member of their social group who definitely hasn’t arrived at the conclusion that his power and influence should be meted out responsibly either. Neither of them speak his name, however. For some reason, it feels like a shadow passing over the sun. A brief spike of pain flickers through Rose’s head, a bolt that strikes between her eyes and splinters out. There is color and light behind it. A vision that tears through the material reality in front of her and gives her a brief glimpse into a parallel reality where things are very different.

It’s gone as soon as she notices it. The image never materializes. She ties off the last row of her scarf and unwinds her knitting needles from the wool, a serene smile tugging at her lips. Since waking up in the hospital, she has stopped worrying altogether about what might be happening in splintered timelines. She has stopped worrying, in fact, about almost anything at all. A pleasant breeze rustles through her hair, carrying the sweet scent of early spring from the mouth of the chasm. Rose closes her eyes for a moment and breathes it in: taken just one minute at a time, a day can be filled with hundreds of perfect moments.

Kanaya twirls on her heel, skin flickering bright as she lifts her skirt and jumps into the breeding pit. Rose sets down her needles and follows, walking along the edge of the pit to the place closest to the eggs. She crouches to watch the miracle of life begin.

She’s never taken the time to come down here before and see the grubs hatch. Probably because she’s been too busy diminishing melodramatically on the couch to take an active interest in her wife’s life calling. The grub is already chewing through the chitin eggshell with all its little legs moving sinuously in offbeat concert.

Swifer is sniffling. She makes the motion of wiping away a tear, somewhat cartoonishly.

Kanaya dips down to help the grub out of the shell. Her skirt trails through a puddle of birthing jelly, but she doesn’t seem to care. There’s an awed expression lighting up her face, in addition to the literal light emanating from her skin. She tears away the last chunk of the shell. It’s mottled and rough, like a rock on the outside, but has a layer beneath like mulched flesh. Kanaya’s hands are soaked blue with bloody yolk when she finally lifts the grub and holds it up to the light.

Rose looks. All troll grubs appear kind of samey, but this one has a familiar look about her. Asymmetric horns, one crescent, the other harpoon-like. A mussed mane of hair and a mischievous glint in her beady little eyes. Particularly the one with seven pupils.

Baby-Vriska wiggles her six talons. Kanaya cradles the little grub against her chest and pokes it in the nose. The grub reacts by blowing a bubble of bright cerulean yolk membrane out from between its lips. To her own surprise, the sight melts Rose’s heart in an instant. The emotion that hits her feels like one of her old visions. Suddenly she can see her and Kanaya’s future so clearly, like a map rolled out at her feet and stretching far into the horizon. Kanaya is right. Vriska is dead, and despite everything, she died a hero. Vriska was a complicated figure of contrasting extremes; her heroic actions were matched in scale only by her monstrous ones, and since no one had actually witnessed her end, it was impossible to say which side the pendulum swung and judged her death—Heroic or Just.

It would be a fitting memorial for her and Kanaya to raise a version of Vriska who would be given every chance to make good on her noble characteristics. A true, symbolic redemption arc. Something about the thought appeals to Rose’s taste for the dramatic flourish. It would be proof that this was all worth it in the end: the destruction of multiple universes, the death of Kanaya’s friends, the circuitous rites of suffering experienced by the nearly infinite splintered versions of every being to inhabit Paradox Space...

Rose loves her wife fiercely in this moment. The new Mother of her species, framed in a literal halo of light. She can’t contain her excitement. She leaps into the pit with Kanaya and runs to embrace her, not caring about the irreversible rainbow-colored stains that she’s smearing into her dress.