FIC: Seeking by Moonlight (Ectobiology)
Creator: saiyako
Title: Seeking By Moonlight
Rating: No higher than the comic itself.
Trigger Warnings: None I can think of that wouldn't be set off by the comic anyway...
Summary: In a discarded reality, a clown once made a promise to a poet. But trapped in the Veil with a vicious subjugglator, his life rewritten and his team falling apart, can Karkat Vantas find his way along a path marked by dreams he can never remember?
The clouds swirl above you, black and red, and green with moonlight, and you don't know how long you've been staring at them when the man beside you breaks the long silence you've been sharing.
"See, best bro? I straight up told you about those miracles."
"Yeah," you admit grudgingly. "You did. So you were right for once, big fucking deal."
He chuckles, and twines his fingers through your thick hair, carefully avoiding your horns. "Told you about leaving so motherfucking long between breaks, too. We're gonna be out here all night."
You sigh, and shift a little closer, basking in the coolness of your moirail's skin. Combined with the hypnotic shifting of the colours above - pity it's the green moon, not the purple, it'd be nicely symbolic, but you can always write it down as the purple one later, it's not like anyone's going to care about a little artistic license - it's starting to make you drowsy, and your eyes flutter closed. "No need to fucking rub it in, asshole." You give up any pretence of trying to keep your distance, though, and turn over to lay your head on his thorax. If there's anyone (besides your yet-to-be-found matesprit) you can drop your guard with, it's this guy, right? But you still hate yourself when the word comes unbidden: "Stay."
"Always, Karkat," he murmurs. "In every world and every motherfucking lifetime, you're always my best motherfucker, I fucking swear."
Worlds and lifetimes? More of his nonsense - like you'll ever have more than one of either to spend with him - but when you wake up, you have to remember to write it down. There's got to be a play in that, and Her Condescension's been at you to come up with something new for the Galactic Rim Conference for perigees. For now you just settle for, "You're so fucking weird," and drift off to sleep, smiling as those long fingers stroke your hair.
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Your name is KARKAT VANTAS, and you don't know it yet, but you don't want to wake up. Your friends tell you of golden cities and fortune-telling clouds, of purple spires and whispering horrorterrors, but you don't care for the first, and you're so goddamn grateful you'll never have to worry about the second.
You could tell them your own dreams, about fields unstained with blood, about stars full of people who loved your kind instead of storing up reasons to dance on your graves, if you had them, which you don't, about prestige and safety and a boy who loved you almost more than you could stand.
You could tell them your dreams, if you could only remember them.
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You are Karkat Vantas and you are four sweeps old and you have no idea how this annoying highblood keeps getting through your block filter. You've already banned him and his stupid raps and his dumb alternating capitals and his even dumber mIrAcLeS from your chumproll a dozen times, but he keeps coming back, and the only thing keeping you from going to your hacker friend for help is your sneaking suspicion that Sollux is in on the whole thing and is just going to laugh in your face the moment you can manage to swallow enough of your pride to ask.
(When he senses your weakness, the highblood's probably going to do worse.)
So you'll just have to bluff it out and talk to him. Fuck.
-- terminallyCapricious [TC] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] --
TC: hEy, bEsT bRo, WhAt Is Up???
CG: A NEW BATCH OF MY BEST BUBBLING RAGE STEW IS WHAT IS UP, SHITSPONGE.
CG: WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU EVEN TALKING TO ME?
TC: aWw, I jUsT wAnTeD tO sEe WhAt My BeSt MoThErFuCkEr WaS AlL uP aNd DoInG oN a FiNe NiGhT lIkE tHiS!
TC: hOnK.
CG: IT'S NOT A FINE NIGHT. IT'S A SHITTY NOOKSNIFFING BULGESUCKER OF A NIGHT LIKE ALL THE OTHER NIGHTS.
CG: AND I'M NOT DUMB ENOUGH TO THINK ONE OF YOUR CASTE HAS ANY SORT OF INNOCENT REASON TO BE TALKING TO A GUTTERBLOOD LIKE ME, SO FUCKING SPILL, MAKARA.
CG: WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH ME?
TC: sEeInG yOu AlL sUsPiCiOuSlIkE iS gIvInG mE tHe SaDs, KaRkaT. :o(
TC: cAn'T a BrOtHeR jUsT mOtHeRfUcKiN lIkE a GuY?
Oh fucking hell. You badly want to believe he's actually sincere, but even if you couldn't think of a dozen reasons off the top of your head to distrust him, you're just not that stupid. He's a highblood, and as soon as he finds out your secret, he'll be the first one howling for your blood, no matter how friendly he seems now. (Well, second. First'll be that blueblood douche Nepeta's taken up with. You'll never understand what's going through that girl's head, but you hope going along with her roleplay bullshit makes Equius as miserable as it makes you.) Hell, he'll probably hunt you down himself.
You still want to, though. Just another of your ever-growing list of reasons why you're an idiot.
CG: FUCK NO.
-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] signed off!--
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You're hunched over your desk, scribbling out a speech for the Empress - some hoofbeastshit about the Glory of the Alternian Commonwealth and the Beautiful Bonds of Friendship Between Species, and other nonsense that sounds good but has absolutely nothing to do with the problems this conference is supposed to fucking solve, but flowery shit like this comes easily to you, and working for Her Imperial Condescension - sorry, )(-ER IMP-ERIAL COND-ESC-ENSION, lousy stupid goddamn writing quirks, at least being a mutant means no one expects you to pollute your own writing with that absurd fuckery - is better than being stuck in Captor's lab, listening to him ramble excitedly about all the new things he's learning about your mutant physiology tonight, so you figured what the fuck - when your terminal beeps at you.
You wouldn't bother to answer, only you haven't seen your moirail for days, and you're starting to worry, so you shove away the pile of draft pages in front of the monitor and blink at the waiting message.
Fuck. The idiot's in trouble again.
"Sorry, Peixes, you'll just have to wait for your goddamn speech a few more hours."
Growling, you push your papers aside, and go off to rescue Gamzee's sorry ass.
After all, he's your responsibility.
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You hate how quiet the computer lab is right now.
You're supposed to be helping Jade with her boring frog duties, but you're having some trouble thinking about anything besides how many of your team aren't here. Equius dragged Nepeta off to their shared block without permission for some reason you don't want to think about because you're pretty sure it involves some feelings on her part that you definitely don't want to think about, Tavros is probably falling down stairs again, you can only hope Egbert's keeping Vriska too busy to do any more damage, Eridan is who-the-fuck-cares-where, you're actually beginning to wonder if you'd even mind anymore if he didn't come back, and Gamzee...
...is out there on his own with a pair of vicious psychopaths wandering about unsupervised. Oh god.
Jade's reassurances are vague, and you wish you could beg her for spoilers, but these ridiculous passwords are humiliating enough without lowering yourself even further.
You'd be off to look for him anyway, if your team didn't need you here. If Jade didn't need you here.
Please come back, you stupid motherfucker. Before something fucking happens to you.
Even after Eridan shows up and everything goes to hell, a small, treacherous part of you is relieved that the crazed subjugglator hunting you down wasn't in the prince's line of fire. As if you needed more reasons to hate yourself.
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You're five sweeps old and curled up on the couch, trying to pretend you don't have a stinging cut along your thumb where your hand slipped with the breadknife. It's stopped bleeding, but it makes a bright crimson line against your skin, and you just want the pain to stop reminding you why you can't go to the movie you wanted to see with Sollux, the 20th anniversary showing of "In Which A Hunter Of Illegal Robots Is Given An Unusually Dangerous Mission Concerning A Genius Robot Serial Killer Who Wishes To Extend His Artificially Shortened Lifespan, Their Caliginous Waltz Eventually Cut Short By A Tragic Death Scene In The Rain; In The Meantime, The Hunter Develops Flushed Feelings For A Robot Who Doesn't Know She's A Robot, And May Or May Not Actually Be A Robot Himself; Etc". (It's rare for the two of you to agree on movies, but Troll Phillip K Dick is bizarre enough for him, and sociologically interesting enough for you, and besides, it is an immutable fact that Troll Rutger Hauer's death scene is one of the most beautiful things in cinema history.)
You could have settled for watching it on DVD, but that would be giving in, so you decided to marathon Thresh Prince instead. You've got your husktop beside you so you can rant to Eridan when he comes online, but halfway through your favourite episode, you spot Gamzee's indigo icon light up first.
Ohhhh, yes, much better. Just as easy a target, and you won't have to put up with any pathetic whining about Vriska and Feferi into the bargain.
-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling terminallyCapricious [TC] --
CG: HEY DUMBASS.
CG: HOW ARE THINGS IN RETARDED RAINBOW CLOWN LAND?
TC: wHoA.
TC: dId SoMe MoThErFuCkEr Go AnD sTeAl AlL oF mY GoOd BrO's MiRaClEs? :o(
TC: HoNk.
CG: YOU COULD SAY THAT.
CG: IF I HAD ANY MIRACLES TO START WITH.
CG: OR BELIEVED IN THEM AT ALL, WHICH I DON'T, BECAUSE I'D HAVE TO GIVE MYSELF SEVERE BRAIN DAMAGE WITH THOSE RETARDED CLUBS OF YOURS TO REDUCE MY INTELLIGENCE ENOUGH TO BELIEVE PARADOX SPACE HAD EVEN THE SLIGHTEST NON-MALEVOLENT INTEREST IN ME AS A PERSON WHATSOEVER.
CG: SO THIS IS THE PART WHERE YOU SPOUT SOME RIDICULOUS RHETORIC ABOUT HOW EVERYTHING IN THE UNIVERSE IS A MIRACLE, INCLUDING SUBATOMIC PARTICLES AND SHIT, AND I SHOULD JUST WAIT FOR THINGS TO DARKEN UP, RIGHT?
CG: WELL FUCK YOU AND YOUR MIRACLES.
TC: oKaY, bRoThEr, I cAn UnDeRsTaNd ThAt YoU'rE uPsEt AnD yOu NeEd To GeT yOuR hArSh On AbOuT iT, aNd ThAt'S cOoL, cOs I kNoW mY mIrAcLeS aRe ReAl AnD tHaT's AlL i NeEd.
TC: So YoU jUsT bE aLl TeLlIn YoUr BeSt FrIeNd WhAt ThE mOtHeRfUcK iS eAtInG yOu AnD tHeN mAyBe We CaN rAp A lItTlE.
TC: hOnK hOnK. :o)
CG: OKAY YOU KNOW I THINK YOUR SLAM POETRY IS STUPID, BUT WHATEVER.
CG: I COULDN'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THAT RIGHT NOW.
You then proceed to give him a wildly exaggerated account of your injury, followed by a long session of extolling the virtues of "In Which A Hunter, Etc", which of course he won't appreciate, but no one ever does, so he can't disappoint you.
It's only afterwards you realise that he called himself your best friend - but Sollux is your best friend, isn't he? Even if he's never used the words, or ever seemed within lightsweeps of acknowledging that he actually likes you. And that stupid clown has to go and fucking beat him to the punch, and now you're pissed off at him all over again.
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It's not supposed to be like this.
You're cowering in a room you're certain shouldn't even exist on this meteor, but it's hard to argue with the brown wooden walls in front of you. You're cowering in this room out of a retro video game and saying your goodbyes, because once you log off, you're going to the roof, and you're not sure you'll come back. You're not sure it even matters if you come back, because this must be a doomed timeline, right? Aradia's going to come flitting back from the afterlife any moment and you'll have to tell her you failed again, and she'll fly off to hassle Alpha Karkat, and it won't even fucking matter anymore if he kills you.
Or if you kill him.
Either way, this isn't right. It isn't fated. You may not walk the paths of Time or Doom or Mind, but this knowledge is in your blood, as though you were hatched with it.
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You don't want to wake up, but you're going to. You don't know whether it's your confessions to Kanaya or the geyser of brown spraying across the lab that shocked your dream self awake, or if it was just that you sensed Jack approaching, Jack who you loved, Jack who you betrayed. Whichever it was, your first reaction when you saw the demon silhouetted against the golden walls was not fear or hurt, but merely... disappointment.
Then he killed you and none of it mattered.
You can't even remember what it is you're going to miss.
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You never tell the story of how you met him, especially not on a first date, but this girl's clever and persuasive and a little scary, and she's promised you a tale for a tale, and you may be a little drunk, so you give in.
You tell her how you entered the Imperial Poetry Tournament when you were six, with an original composition you'd slaved over for perigees, just to get one step closer to your dream of leading the Empress's Men, the most respected acting troupe on Alternia. You tell her how you watched the other entrants, all older and more talented than you, your confidence eroding as they spoke, until your turn came to pour out your heart to the crowd, with words that you realised only as you spoke them were lousy goddamn drivel.
You were about to flee, crimson with shame, when you felt a hand on your arm. "Let me take this, brother." Numb, you handed this wild-haired, painted-faced freak the pages - surely he couldn't make this any worse - but he tossed them away. "We don't need these dead words on dead paper. We're gonna go where our motherfuckin hearts are all up in, you know?"
And he started to... you're not even sure there's a word in your language for what he did, but it was the most terrible poetry you'd ever heard, and what was worse, it was convincing. It was like Hell's Poet Laureate just stepped up beside you and started calling for lost souls, and they answered, the audience chanting and cheering, and when at last he turned the floor back to you, the words that came from your mouth were pure and true and the best you'd ever written.
They loved you, and it was all because of him.
And you hated him for it.
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"He killed you all," Aradia says, and you nearly drop your sickle into the dark water below, and that's how you find out she's a doomed timeclone.
You don't ask why, but she tells you anyway, and you want to slap Past Karkat in his stupid face for not going to Sollux when he should have, so that Gamzee Makara would be left in the meteor-ridden wasteland where he belongs.
You still can't help but worry about him, left behind on Vriska's dumb pirate planet while you skipped ahead. After all, he's even more scared of her than you are.
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You're flushing like a motherfucker as you have to admit to the tealblood that you don't even know when you flipped from hate to love. It was just that one night, you needed a friend and when you turned around he was there, and you realised that he had been the whole time, ever since you were six, that you'd kept him from the threats in the darkness almost as long, that you could almost see the grooves in his soul where it fit snugly against yours.
Fuck.
This is stupid.
"No, Karkat, it's really not," she says, laughing, a quick and vicious "hehehe", as a shark might laugh if it could giggle like a schoolgirl. "My story's not nearly as adorable."
She proceeds to tell you how she lost her sight, and you have to admit that no, it's not.
You still think it's better than yours.
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You are Karkat Vantas and you are surrounded by the last five trolls in existence - fuck, make that four, with Vriska a crumpled mass of blue and orange on the floor - and you're about to do either the best or the most stupid thing you've ever done, and it's so much easier than you expected, because for the first time, you actually see him.
He's screaming, raging, covered in smeared paint and his own blood, and Kanaya offers her protection and Terezi offers to kill him and Sollux is, for some reason, ranting at a puppet, but all you can see is your best friend and he's...
...pitiful.
And you won't let them hurt him.
You don't take your eyes from him as you snatch the girls' weapons from their hands and throw them aside. You fly at him without a thought, sickle raised only to force the warhammer from his hands before you throw it down. And you don't know where the words come from as you put your hand over his mouth to still his honks, but you know they're the right ones.
"Every world and every motherfucking lifetime, Gamzee. You fucking promised. Now shoosh."
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You don't remember your dreams. Every other troll you know does, but not you, and you don't know why.
All you know is, sometimes you wake with a longing for peaceful green fields and shitty poetry, and your face is wet with crimson tears.
Title: Seeking By Moonlight
Rating: No higher than the comic itself.
Trigger Warnings: None I can think of that wouldn't be set off by the comic anyway...
Summary: In a discarded reality, a clown once made a promise to a poet. But trapped in the Veil with a vicious subjugglator, his life rewritten and his team falling apart, can Karkat Vantas find his way along a path marked by dreams he can never remember?
The clouds swirl above you, black and red, and green with moonlight, and you don't know how long you've been staring at them when the man beside you breaks the long silence you've been sharing.
"See, best bro? I straight up told you about those miracles."
"Yeah," you admit grudgingly. "You did. So you were right for once, big fucking deal."
He chuckles, and twines his fingers through your thick hair, carefully avoiding your horns. "Told you about leaving so motherfucking long between breaks, too. We're gonna be out here all night."
You sigh, and shift a little closer, basking in the coolness of your moirail's skin. Combined with the hypnotic shifting of the colours above - pity it's the green moon, not the purple, it'd be nicely symbolic, but you can always write it down as the purple one later, it's not like anyone's going to care about a little artistic license - it's starting to make you drowsy, and your eyes flutter closed. "No need to fucking rub it in, asshole." You give up any pretence of trying to keep your distance, though, and turn over to lay your head on his thorax. If there's anyone (besides your yet-to-be-found matesprit) you can drop your guard with, it's this guy, right? But you still hate yourself when the word comes unbidden: "Stay."
"Always, Karkat," he murmurs. "In every world and every motherfucking lifetime, you're always my best motherfucker, I fucking swear."
Worlds and lifetimes? More of his nonsense - like you'll ever have more than one of either to spend with him - but when you wake up, you have to remember to write it down. There's got to be a play in that, and Her Condescension's been at you to come up with something new for the Galactic Rim Conference for perigees. For now you just settle for, "You're so fucking weird," and drift off to sleep, smiling as those long fingers stroke your hair.
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Your name is KARKAT VANTAS, and you don't know it yet, but you don't want to wake up. Your friends tell you of golden cities and fortune-telling clouds, of purple spires and whispering horrorterrors, but you don't care for the first, and you're so goddamn grateful you'll never have to worry about the second.
You could tell them your own dreams, about fields unstained with blood, about stars full of people who loved your kind instead of storing up reasons to dance on your graves, if you had them, which you don't, about prestige and safety and a boy who loved you almost more than you could stand.
You could tell them your dreams, if you could only remember them.
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You are Karkat Vantas and you are four sweeps old and you have no idea how this annoying highblood keeps getting through your block filter. You've already banned him and his stupid raps and his dumb alternating capitals and his even dumber mIrAcLeS from your chumproll a dozen times, but he keeps coming back, and the only thing keeping you from going to your hacker friend for help is your sneaking suspicion that Sollux is in on the whole thing and is just going to laugh in your face the moment you can manage to swallow enough of your pride to ask.
(When he senses your weakness, the highblood's probably going to do worse.)
So you'll just have to bluff it out and talk to him. Fuck.
-- terminallyCapricious [TC] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] --
TC: hEy, bEsT bRo, WhAt Is Up???
CG: A NEW BATCH OF MY BEST BUBBLING RAGE STEW IS WHAT IS UP, SHITSPONGE.
CG: WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU EVEN TALKING TO ME?
TC: aWw, I jUsT wAnTeD tO sEe WhAt My BeSt MoThErFuCkEr WaS AlL uP aNd DoInG oN a FiNe NiGhT lIkE tHiS!
TC: hOnK.
CG: IT'S NOT A FINE NIGHT. IT'S A SHITTY NOOKSNIFFING BULGESUCKER OF A NIGHT LIKE ALL THE OTHER NIGHTS.
CG: AND I'M NOT DUMB ENOUGH TO THINK ONE OF YOUR CASTE HAS ANY SORT OF INNOCENT REASON TO BE TALKING TO A GUTTERBLOOD LIKE ME, SO FUCKING SPILL, MAKARA.
CG: WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH ME?
TC: sEeInG yOu AlL sUsPiCiOuSlIkE iS gIvInG mE tHe SaDs, KaRkaT. :o(
TC: cAn'T a BrOtHeR jUsT mOtHeRfUcKiN lIkE a GuY?
Oh fucking hell. You badly want to believe he's actually sincere, but even if you couldn't think of a dozen reasons off the top of your head to distrust him, you're just not that stupid. He's a highblood, and as soon as he finds out your secret, he'll be the first one howling for your blood, no matter how friendly he seems now. (Well, second. First'll be that blueblood douche Nepeta's taken up with. You'll never understand what's going through that girl's head, but you hope going along with her roleplay bullshit makes Equius as miserable as it makes you.) Hell, he'll probably hunt you down himself.
You still want to, though. Just another of your ever-growing list of reasons why you're an idiot.
CG: FUCK NO.
-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] signed off!--
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You're hunched over your desk, scribbling out a speech for the Empress - some hoofbeastshit about the Glory of the Alternian Commonwealth and the Beautiful Bonds of Friendship Between Species, and other nonsense that sounds good but has absolutely nothing to do with the problems this conference is supposed to fucking solve, but flowery shit like this comes easily to you, and working for Her Imperial Condescension - sorry, )(-ER IMP-ERIAL COND-ESC-ENSION, lousy stupid goddamn writing quirks, at least being a mutant means no one expects you to pollute your own writing with that absurd fuckery - is better than being stuck in Captor's lab, listening to him ramble excitedly about all the new things he's learning about your mutant physiology tonight, so you figured what the fuck - when your terminal beeps at you.
You wouldn't bother to answer, only you haven't seen your moirail for days, and you're starting to worry, so you shove away the pile of draft pages in front of the monitor and blink at the waiting message.
Fuck. The idiot's in trouble again.
"Sorry, Peixes, you'll just have to wait for your goddamn speech a few more hours."
Growling, you push your papers aside, and go off to rescue Gamzee's sorry ass.
After all, he's your responsibility.
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You hate how quiet the computer lab is right now.
You're supposed to be helping Jade with her boring frog duties, but you're having some trouble thinking about anything besides how many of your team aren't here. Equius dragged Nepeta off to their shared block without permission for some reason you don't want to think about because you're pretty sure it involves some feelings on her part that you definitely don't want to think about, Tavros is probably falling down stairs again, you can only hope Egbert's keeping Vriska too busy to do any more damage, Eridan is who-the-fuck-cares-where, you're actually beginning to wonder if you'd even mind anymore if he didn't come back, and Gamzee...
...is out there on his own with a pair of vicious psychopaths wandering about unsupervised. Oh god.
Jade's reassurances are vague, and you wish you could beg her for spoilers, but these ridiculous passwords are humiliating enough without lowering yourself even further.
You'd be off to look for him anyway, if your team didn't need you here. If Jade didn't need you here.
Please come back, you stupid motherfucker. Before something fucking happens to you.
Even after Eridan shows up and everything goes to hell, a small, treacherous part of you is relieved that the crazed subjugglator hunting you down wasn't in the prince's line of fire. As if you needed more reasons to hate yourself.
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You're five sweeps old and curled up on the couch, trying to pretend you don't have a stinging cut along your thumb where your hand slipped with the breadknife. It's stopped bleeding, but it makes a bright crimson line against your skin, and you just want the pain to stop reminding you why you can't go to the movie you wanted to see with Sollux, the 20th anniversary showing of "In Which A Hunter Of Illegal Robots Is Given An Unusually Dangerous Mission Concerning A Genius Robot Serial Killer Who Wishes To Extend His Artificially Shortened Lifespan, Their Caliginous Waltz Eventually Cut Short By A Tragic Death Scene In The Rain; In The Meantime, The Hunter Develops Flushed Feelings For A Robot Who Doesn't Know She's A Robot, And May Or May Not Actually Be A Robot Himself; Etc". (It's rare for the two of you to agree on movies, but Troll Phillip K Dick is bizarre enough for him, and sociologically interesting enough for you, and besides, it is an immutable fact that Troll Rutger Hauer's death scene is one of the most beautiful things in cinema history.)
You could have settled for watching it on DVD, but that would be giving in, so you decided to marathon Thresh Prince instead. You've got your husktop beside you so you can rant to Eridan when he comes online, but halfway through your favourite episode, you spot Gamzee's indigo icon light up first.
Ohhhh, yes, much better. Just as easy a target, and you won't have to put up with any pathetic whining about Vriska and Feferi into the bargain.
-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling terminallyCapricious [TC] --
CG: HEY DUMBASS.
CG: HOW ARE THINGS IN RETARDED RAINBOW CLOWN LAND?
TC: wHoA.
TC: dId SoMe MoThErFuCkEr Go AnD sTeAl AlL oF mY GoOd BrO's MiRaClEs? :o(
TC: HoNk.
CG: YOU COULD SAY THAT.
CG: IF I HAD ANY MIRACLES TO START WITH.
CG: OR BELIEVED IN THEM AT ALL, WHICH I DON'T, BECAUSE I'D HAVE TO GIVE MYSELF SEVERE BRAIN DAMAGE WITH THOSE RETARDED CLUBS OF YOURS TO REDUCE MY INTELLIGENCE ENOUGH TO BELIEVE PARADOX SPACE HAD EVEN THE SLIGHTEST NON-MALEVOLENT INTEREST IN ME AS A PERSON WHATSOEVER.
CG: SO THIS IS THE PART WHERE YOU SPOUT SOME RIDICULOUS RHETORIC ABOUT HOW EVERYTHING IN THE UNIVERSE IS A MIRACLE, INCLUDING SUBATOMIC PARTICLES AND SHIT, AND I SHOULD JUST WAIT FOR THINGS TO DARKEN UP, RIGHT?
CG: WELL FUCK YOU AND YOUR MIRACLES.
TC: oKaY, bRoThEr, I cAn UnDeRsTaNd ThAt YoU'rE uPsEt AnD yOu NeEd To GeT yOuR hArSh On AbOuT iT, aNd ThAt'S cOoL, cOs I kNoW mY mIrAcLeS aRe ReAl AnD tHaT's AlL i NeEd.
TC: So YoU jUsT bE aLl TeLlIn YoUr BeSt FrIeNd WhAt ThE mOtHeRfUcK iS eAtInG yOu AnD tHeN mAyBe We CaN rAp A lItTlE.
TC: hOnK hOnK. :o)
CG: OKAY YOU KNOW I THINK YOUR SLAM POETRY IS STUPID, BUT WHATEVER.
CG: I COULDN'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THAT RIGHT NOW.
You then proceed to give him a wildly exaggerated account of your injury, followed by a long session of extolling the virtues of "In Which A Hunter, Etc", which of course he won't appreciate, but no one ever does, so he can't disappoint you.
It's only afterwards you realise that he called himself your best friend - but Sollux is your best friend, isn't he? Even if he's never used the words, or ever seemed within lightsweeps of acknowledging that he actually likes you. And that stupid clown has to go and fucking beat him to the punch, and now you're pissed off at him all over again.
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It's not supposed to be like this.
You're cowering in a room you're certain shouldn't even exist on this meteor, but it's hard to argue with the brown wooden walls in front of you. You're cowering in this room out of a retro video game and saying your goodbyes, because once you log off, you're going to the roof, and you're not sure you'll come back. You're not sure it even matters if you come back, because this must be a doomed timeline, right? Aradia's going to come flitting back from the afterlife any moment and you'll have to tell her you failed again, and she'll fly off to hassle Alpha Karkat, and it won't even fucking matter anymore if he kills you.
Or if you kill him.
Either way, this isn't right. It isn't fated. You may not walk the paths of Time or Doom or Mind, but this knowledge is in your blood, as though you were hatched with it.
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You don't want to wake up, but you're going to. You don't know whether it's your confessions to Kanaya or the geyser of brown spraying across the lab that shocked your dream self awake, or if it was just that you sensed Jack approaching, Jack who you loved, Jack who you betrayed. Whichever it was, your first reaction when you saw the demon silhouetted against the golden walls was not fear or hurt, but merely... disappointment.
Then he killed you and none of it mattered.
You can't even remember what it is you're going to miss.
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You never tell the story of how you met him, especially not on a first date, but this girl's clever and persuasive and a little scary, and she's promised you a tale for a tale, and you may be a little drunk, so you give in.
You tell her how you entered the Imperial Poetry Tournament when you were six, with an original composition you'd slaved over for perigees, just to get one step closer to your dream of leading the Empress's Men, the most respected acting troupe on Alternia. You tell her how you watched the other entrants, all older and more talented than you, your confidence eroding as they spoke, until your turn came to pour out your heart to the crowd, with words that you realised only as you spoke them were lousy goddamn drivel.
You were about to flee, crimson with shame, when you felt a hand on your arm. "Let me take this, brother." Numb, you handed this wild-haired, painted-faced freak the pages - surely he couldn't make this any worse - but he tossed them away. "We don't need these dead words on dead paper. We're gonna go where our motherfuckin hearts are all up in, you know?"
And he started to... you're not even sure there's a word in your language for what he did, but it was the most terrible poetry you'd ever heard, and what was worse, it was convincing. It was like Hell's Poet Laureate just stepped up beside you and started calling for lost souls, and they answered, the audience chanting and cheering, and when at last he turned the floor back to you, the words that came from your mouth were pure and true and the best you'd ever written.
They loved you, and it was all because of him.
And you hated him for it.
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"He killed you all," Aradia says, and you nearly drop your sickle into the dark water below, and that's how you find out she's a doomed timeclone.
You don't ask why, but she tells you anyway, and you want to slap Past Karkat in his stupid face for not going to Sollux when he should have, so that Gamzee Makara would be left in the meteor-ridden wasteland where he belongs.
You still can't help but worry about him, left behind on Vriska's dumb pirate planet while you skipped ahead. After all, he's even more scared of her than you are.
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You're flushing like a motherfucker as you have to admit to the tealblood that you don't even know when you flipped from hate to love. It was just that one night, you needed a friend and when you turned around he was there, and you realised that he had been the whole time, ever since you were six, that you'd kept him from the threats in the darkness almost as long, that you could almost see the grooves in his soul where it fit snugly against yours.
Fuck.
This is stupid.
"No, Karkat, it's really not," she says, laughing, a quick and vicious "hehehe", as a shark might laugh if it could giggle like a schoolgirl. "My story's not nearly as adorable."
She proceeds to tell you how she lost her sight, and you have to admit that no, it's not.
You still think it's better than yours.
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You are Karkat Vantas and you are surrounded by the last five trolls in existence - fuck, make that four, with Vriska a crumpled mass of blue and orange on the floor - and you're about to do either the best or the most stupid thing you've ever done, and it's so much easier than you expected, because for the first time, you actually see him.
He's screaming, raging, covered in smeared paint and his own blood, and Kanaya offers her protection and Terezi offers to kill him and Sollux is, for some reason, ranting at a puppet, but all you can see is your best friend and he's...
...pitiful.
And you won't let them hurt him.
You don't take your eyes from him as you snatch the girls' weapons from their hands and throw them aside. You fly at him without a thought, sickle raised only to force the warhammer from his hands before you throw it down. And you don't know where the words come from as you put your hand over his mouth to still his honks, but you know they're the right ones.
"Every world and every motherfucking lifetime, Gamzee. You fucking promised. Now shoosh."
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You don't remember your dreams. Every other troll you know does, but not you, and you don't know why.
All you know is, sometimes you wake with a longing for peaceful green fields and shitty poetry, and your face is wet with crimson tears.