Chapter Text
Karkat had never been so scared in his life. He looked around himself. In front of him there were four ectobiology devices with three tubes each and a Sgrub computer terminal with twelve screens. The ectobiology lab. Half a perigee ago in that same spot, he created 24 wigglers: 12 of them being himself and his friends, and the other 12 their respective ancestors. Presumptively. It had been a daymare back then; he had thought that it was for sure the worst moment in his life. Now it was an almost fond memory compared to his current situation. Past-Karkat was so naïve and self-centred.
Sollux was sitting on the floor near the terminal, probably still talking to Terezi. He was alive. He looked horribly weak and he was blind now, but he was alive. They had lost so many friends in such a short time, that Karkat didn’t know what he would have done if Sollux had died too. Less than an hour ago, Eridan had suddenly gone crazy and decided to kill everyone in a murder spree. If that alone wasn’t enough, moments later Karkat began getting horrible messages from Gamzee about murder and the dark carnival. He blocked him immediately, but the clown kept trolling him using the account of some of the other trolls. He had to block almost everyone else then, in fear of Gamzee finding another way to continue texting him. It was just too much. How many of them were still alive? Feferi and Kanaya were dead, he was sure of it, he saw it happen. And Equius and Nepeta had stopped answering his messages long before Gamzee used their accounts to bully him, so they were probably dead too. Who knew where Vriska was.
And now, apparently, Tavros was also dead and Terezi was obsessed on blaming Vriska for everything. She was probably right regarding Vriska killing Tavros, but Karkat had been there when Eridan killed Feferi and Kanaya. He stood there, doing nothing while someone he had considered a friend knocked out Karkat’s best hatefriend, murdered his own ex-moirail and matesprit interest, destroyed their only matriorb, and killed Kanaya. He was there, and he did nothing. He didn’t know why Eridan hadn’t culled him on the spot too, which by the way would have been well deserved. Maybe he had forgotten that Karkat was there at all. Because, as he already said, he did NOTHING.
What kind of leader stays there and does nothing while his friends and hatefriends are being murdered around him? What kind of troll does that? He had been so scared, he still was, but not doing anything and letting his friends die again was even scarier. Gamzee and Eridan were still out there while Terezi and Vriska were too busy fighting each other to realize the real danger. Vriska was crazy and she had a tendency for murder and revenge cycles, but for once it had not been her. She had probably killed Tavros, but they had a complicated past. It was not excusable, but it could be explained. However, she had nothing to do with Feferi, Kanaya, Equius, and Nepeta’s deaths. And Terezi was not listening to him, she was probably trying to cull Vriska for her crimes right now. It was a bad idea for a hundred of reasons, the most important ones that she was wrong, and she was going to get herself hurt or killed. Even if she ended victorious, that meant culling Vriska, and that alone was a really bad idea. Karkat didn’t know exactly what had happened in the past between them, but everyone knew that they had been best hatefriends for sweeps before the incident with Tavros and Aradia. Regardless of the reason, culling an old friend was hard. He didn’t want Terezi to suffer that. He would prefer to avoid more stupidly dead trolls, but he would kill Vriska himself if that would mean that Terezi wouldn’t have to.
“Sollux, I have to go,” Karkat said. “Stay here and block the transportalizer with something big when I’m gone, so you are safe.”
The ectobiology lab was hidden away in the section of the meteor that Karkat had declared as his. It was not the biggest area, but it was secluded and the only point of access was through a single transportalizer. There were a bunch of them everywhere in the meteor. Nobody understood how those worked, exactly, but they figured out pretty quickly that standing on the platform for too long would eventually result in being pushed away when the next troll transported into the block. Based on that, Equius realized that if there was something big enough on the platform that could not be pushed away, it blocked out teleportation from the other side too. That had been useful when needing private time. Everyone had chosen an sector of the meteor for their exclusive use and Karkat had been meticulous in his selection. He intentionally choose an area with only one entrance that could be easily blocked if needed. It was not the biggest sector, but as he already used to live in a small hive back in Alternia, it was more than enough. There was also a lot of big stuff in this room that could be used to block the transportalizer, and Sollux could easily use his psionics to move them. It could work.
“What the fuck, KK?” Sollux protested. “I’m not letting you go there alone.”
“Shut up, duchebag! I didn’t ask for your opinion,” Karkat answered. “I'm only telling you the reality of what is going to happen now: I'm going to leave, you will block the transportalizer, and then stay here until I tell you that it’s fine to go out.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are! I was not asking! It was not a question, there was no surprise noodle or any change in my tone to indicate that my sentence was a question at all!” Karkat insisted. “It’s not debatable, it’s a reality, a fact, an order from your leader if you prefer.”
“Bugwinged shit! Close up your fucking squawk gaper already! I am not staying here while you go there to play the idiot hero and fight the fish-face and the fucking crazy clown!” Sollux said while getting up from the floor. “They will murder you the moment they see you, what do you think you can do?”
“Terezi is out there and she doesn’t know what the fuck is happening!” Karkat screamed. “She is not listening to us, and she is convinced that she has to cull Vriska for her stupid justice!”
“Sounds good for me, let spider-troll die, I should have killed her myself sweeps ago!” Sollux refuted.
“She is wrong! She thinks that Vriska murdered everyone and that’s why she wants to cull her, but when she realises that she was an innocent all along she will feel horrible!” Karkat tried to explain. “You know how is Terezi with her stupid justice! I know that a lot of nasty shit happened since then, but they used to be best hatefriends and I know Terezi. She will regret it eventually and it will affect her terribly.”
Sollux looked away for a moment, apparently without any comment to refute that.
“What about Tavros? I’m sure that Serket was the one killing him, and even if she didn’t, she still deserves to die for what she did to AA.”
Karkat’s anger dissipated. Sollux was right, Vriska had done terrible, horrible things in the past, and she probably killed Tavros for real this time. Karkat had been tempted to kill her himself once for what she did to their group. For what she did to Sollux. She made Tavros jump out of a cliff, paralysing him. In response to that, Aradia used her powers to summon the spirits of the trolls murdered by Vriska and made them haunt her. That made the situation escalate to the point where Vriska mind-controlled Sollux and used him like a toy to murder Aradia as vengeance. Perigees after that, Terezi also tried to revenge her friends for her loved justice, managing to seriously hurt Vriska, but ending up blind in retaliation. Vriska was the one to begin that situation, but when anyone else tried to take revenge on her, she retaliated harder and more viciously every time. She was dangerous, true, but she was also hard to kill, and seeking vengeance on her never ended well.
“She might deserve it but there are so few of us now, I don’t want anyone else dead,” Karkat insisted. “I have to stop them before they kill each other, and warn them about Gamzee and Eridan.”
Sollux’s thinkpan turned to him again, probably trying to meet him straight on, but he failed and ended up looking at an empty space on Karkat's right. That, more than anything, reaffirmed Karkat’s determination to go alone. Sollux was in no shape to fight. He had been injured less than an hour ago and Karkat hadn't seen him use his psionics even once since he woke up blind. After the burnout of his fight with Eridan, he would not be surprised if Sollux was incapable of using his powers anymore. And without his psionics, Sollux was the weakest of them all.
“Sollux, you just got blinded and you are hurt. You probably can’t keep fighting, you need to stay here and heal,” Karkat tried again, using his calmest voice. “You are a liability right now.”
Oh, fuck! He realized instantaneously that he shouldn’t have said that, or at least not using those words. Sollux’s face turned shock pale for a moment before getting a yellow tint on his cheeks and around his glance nuggets. His lips moved back to show his teeth threateningly and an angry snarl sounded in the empty room. Even a bit of electricity jumped between Sollux’s fingers. Fuck, he was really angry.
“DON’T YOU DARE PITY ME, KARKAT!!” screamed Sollux with a growl in his voice. “I can destroy this meteor with you inside in a second! I can send you to the core of Skaia with a gesture! You are nothing next to me! DON’T. YOU. DARE!!”
Yeah, in normal circumstances he would be right. As much as pained Karkat to admit it, Sollux was the most powerful psionic of their generation. The fucker was probably one of the best psionics since the appearance of the first troll in history. But those were not normal circumstances. He was severely hurt, almost mortally, he was blind now which probably meant that he had no gander bulb lasers anymore, and he had problems with his psionics. Even in that exact moment Karkat could only see a small spark of energy jumping between Sollux’s fingers gently, not reflecting at all the intensity of his furious anger. If he had been really fine, Karkat would have been dead or at least injured by now.
Sollux didn’t have his psionics now or they were at least severely weakened, and he was nothing without them. He used his powers for everything, and he exclusively fought with them. He didn’t even walk most of the time! If Sollux went out like that he would be killed. Karkat pitied him, true, but not in the way that Sollux was accusing him of. It was purely a platonic kind of pity.
“It’s not like that! Of course, I don’t pity you like that!” Karkat protested. “I would have to be sponge-dead to pity YOU, you feculent shithole!”
“Fuck off, nook whiffer!” Sollux replied automatically. “At least I’m not a pale slut for everything that breathes, like you!”
“Take that back!” Karkat answered, feeling his blood beginning to boil with anger. “It’s not my fault if you have the social skills of a hard-shell reptilian land-beast in a deserted island in the middle of nowhere! The rest of us have the capacity to care for others without falling into a conciliatory quadrant!”
“Like you did with Gamzee and Eridan?!” Sollux argued. “Good job deciding to take care of the most deranged of our group for sweeps, only to let them go on simultaneous killing sprees at the end!”
“SHUT UP!!”
That… that had not been Karkat’s fault, right? Neither Gamzee nor Eridan had been his moirail, so he was not responsible for their acts. But it was true that Eridan pestered him constantly about his problems, and Karkat had something going on with Gamzee that could be similar to a moirallegiance. It was never official, they never talked about it in those terms, but they had been friends for sweeps and Karkat always felt that he could talk with Gamzee about anything. A small part of him had hoped that, once they met in person, they would end up validating their relationship, but in the end they never did.
Eridan, on the other prong, had a moirail already, so it wouldn’t have been appropriate of Karkat to even think of it. Even when Eridan thought of Feferi more as a matesprit than as a moirail, it would still not been correct if Karkat acted as his unofficial moirail. He knew that Eridan had been trying to talk with him about his feelings after Feferi broke up with him, but Karkat never had the time or the patience to deal with it. What would have happened if Karkat had talked with Eridan before the shit hit the fan? Gamzee going crazy was probably inevitable, but maybe if Karkat had talked to Eridan earlier he could have convinced him to not give up so easily. Maybe he could have stopped him before he went berserker on Sollux, Feferi and Kanaya. Maybe they would still be alive if Karkat had managed better his relationships.
“KK?” he heard Sollux calling him, but he was too busy remembering every conversation with Eridan, trying to see where he could have done things differently. “Come on KK, stop it, I know what you are thinking.”
“You are right,” Karkat whispered. “If I had taken Eridan’s situation more seriously I could have stopped him, this is my fault.”
“What?! No! KK, that’s not what I meant!” Sollux protested. "I didn't meant anything! I was just talking nonsense!
“It’s my fault. Feferi and Kanaya are dead because of me,” Karkat muttered, horrified. “It’s all my fault!”
“It’s not. My demise was absolutely not triggered by your acts in any way, Karkat,” replied a new voice.
Karkat jumped and turned back instantly to the source of the soft voice. Near the transportalizer in the far corner was Kanaya. She was standing on her strut pods with an elegant stance, a large violet scarf dyed green with jade blood bandaging the wound in her torso, and a strange light on her skin. She was alive, Kanaya was alive.
“Who is… ?” Karkat heard Sollux ask. “Maryam?”
Karkat didn’t even try to stop himself. Releasing a happy scream, he run to her with the vague idea of doing something ridiculously embarrassing like hugging her. She was alive, Kanaya was alive! He didn’t understand how was that possible, he had been so sure that she was dead, but he didn’t care. She was here now and that was the only thing that mattered. Just then, Kanaya disappeared from his sight in the blink of a gander nugget. He felt something pass near him on his right side, but he couldn’t see more than a flash of movement. He stopped and turned to his right. Kanaya was there, near the back wall, several steps away from him.
“Kanaya?” whispered Karkat.
Now that he had forced himself to stop, he could detect some things about his friend that he hadn’t seen before. He already noticed her serious injury and the strange luminescence in her skin, but somehow he hadn’t processed that information, too busy being happy about Kanaya being alive. Now, his thinkpan was screaming at him about those details, and he was detecting other subtle changes in his friend’s body. Kanaya had always been an elegant, composed troll that kept her body and face’s expressions polite, almost cold. Now, however, she looked frantic. Her glance nuggets were unusually bright, moving between Sollux and him repetitively, and she looked scared; almost feral. Karkat realized with a jolt that his friend had violet blood mixed with the green lipstick in her lips, and her teeth looked sharper than usual. Higher speed, bright glance nuggets, glowing skin, ferocity, blood, and the fact that she was very dead half an hour ago. There was only one possible explanation for that, even if it was ridiculous.
“Kanaya, are you a rainbow drinker now?” he asked, feeling stupid for even thinking of that irrational and impossible possibility.
“What the fuck are you talking about, KK?” Sollux protested, apparently lost.
“I… I think I am,” Kanaya answered in a low voice.
“Wait, seriously?” Sollux asked again, being ignored by everyone else.
Karkat breathed slowly and deeply. Kanaya was a rainbow drinker. She was a mythological undead creature that was supposed to only exist in trashy novel fantasies for stupid hormonal four-sweep old wigglers with no concept of quality books. Never mind that, he needed facts. Everyone knew that rainbow drinkers drank troll blood, that was the origin of their name after all, and in all those books it was stressed the dangerous blood-thirst after being transformed from dead to undead. Not that he had read any of those trashy, simplistic, horrible books, he would never fell so low. It was only common knowledge, everyone knew about rainbow drinkers, right? Right. Anyway, going back to the 'need blood' part. He wasn't sure if Kanaya had drunk any blood already, but, if not, that could become a problem later.
“Do you need… Kanaya, do you need blood?” Karkat asked from his position, far from her.
“I… I drank a bit before. I did not have the intention to do it, but I was starving and Feferi was right there, and before I grasped what I was doing I was already indulging myself with her blood in my mouth,” Kanaya confessed with a scared voice. “Did… did I kill her?”
“No! No, she was dead already, I checked. Eridan killed her,” Karkat quickly corrected. “I… I thought you were dead too. You WERE dead. I checked it and you were dead, Kanaya.”
Karkat forced himself to stop talking, trying to forget the pit of sadness inside him when thinking of that moment. A stressed sound came out of his chest before he could contain it. Oh, fuck, that was embarrassing.
“Oh, Karkat, I’m so sorry,” he heard Kanaya whisper, and he saw her moving a step towards him before stopping herself. “I’m so regretful you had to see that.”
“Holy fuck, you are serious,” Sollux exclaimed then. “For real? A fucking rainbow drinker?!”
“Sollux, you can’t see it, but her skin is glowing like a fucking lightbug,” Karkat explained.
“Sollux? What happened to you?” Kanaya asked. "Oh no, your lookstubs!"
“Oh, it's nothing. I just lost a duel against Eridan. You were there, right? The bastard knocked me out and now I’m blind,” Sollux summarized. “It’s a bit embarrassing actually, I totally underestimated him. I will kill him for sure next time.”
“Oh, I am afraid I already took that liberty myself,” Kanaya apologized. “I couldn’t absolve him for what he did to Feferi, and for annihilating the matriorb.”
Wait, what? Eridan was already dead? Karkat felt a bit guilty for the surge of relief that filled him at hearing that. What Eridan had done in the computer room had scared him, Karkat had looked at his glance nuggets the moment he killed Feferi and Kanaya, and he didn’t see anything more than coldness and disdain in them. However, he could still remember the silly, emotional, confused troll that had once been his hatefriend, and he felt horrible that he was gone. Yeah, Eridan was dangerous and he had done stupid, unforgivable things, but he had also been his hatefriend. Maybe Sollux was right, maybe he should try to stop platonically pitying everyone, especially the ones that didn’t deserve it.
“Eridan is dead, then?” Sollux asked. “Not that I'm complaining about it, he was a jerk and he murdered Feferi.”
“What about Gamzee?” Karkat decided to ask. “Have you found him?”
“Him, Eridan and Vriska were battling on the surface of the meteor a few minutes ago. I kicked Gamzee away, and he fell back into the meteor,” the rainbow drinker explained. “I needed to deal with Eridan first, and Gamzee was clearly just going to be a nuisance. I actually went back inside afterwards searching for him, but then I discovered a trail of golden blood and tracked it here. I was fearful that Sollux might have perished on us, too.”
“Wait, what about Vriska?” he asked, noticing how Kanaya had avoided that subject.
“I punched her out of the way before culling Eridan, she was still nearby when I went inside.”
“Seriously?” Sollux laughed. “I would have loved to see that, it’s a shame that I’m blind now.”
Eridan was dead, Vriska was fine but Gamzee was still on the loose. And Terezi was still unaccounted, too.
“Terezi is convinced that Vriska murdered everyone, she was looking for her, trying to ‘impart justice’,” Karkat said. “We have to stop her, there have been enough dead trolls already”
At that, Kanaya’s body went stiff, which made Karkat realise that his friend had been uneasy at the beginning but had relaxed gradually during their conversation. Well, she was probably self-conscious of not being a normal troll anymore. Not that Karkat gave two fucks about that, he hadn't been a normal troll since the moment he hatched from his egg.
“I came across Terezi on my path here,” Kanaya confessed. “I might have accidentally knocked her out for a bit. She will probably be on her way to Vriska by now.”
“Woah, wait a moment! What do you mean with ‘accidentally knocked her out’?” Karkat exclaimed. “How is possible to knock out someone by accident? Did you crash into her at lightspeed and hit her directly in her sponge? Did you appear out of nowhere and made her faint when she saw you? Nah, that one doesn’t make any sense, she can probably smell you faster than you move. Do you smell so bad now that she fainted? Is that a side-effect of being an undead?”
“Bugwinged shit! Shut your fucking seed flap for two seconds, KK! The multiverse will appreciate the opportunity to think quietly for two dammed seconds,” Sollux protested, putting a prong over Karkat's lips. He had somehow moved until he was next to Karkat without him realising it.
“I bit her,” Kanaya confessed.
That was new and weird. Karkat tried to say something, but Sollux still had a prong covering his talk blaster. He tried to move his thinkpan backwards to free himself, but the other troll put his second prong on the back of his thinkpan, preventing his escape. Karkat could probably free himself with pure strength, but he was used to fight against Sollux’s psionics, and didn’t want to overdo it now that his hatefriend didn’t have that automatic defense anymore. Karkat looked at him sideways and contemplated if it was a good idea to kick or elbow-punch him away. Sollux’s shirt still had yellow blood in some spots, and his glance nuggets were completely black. Yeah, probably better to not be too aggressive with the wounded troll for now. It wouldn't be fair. Kanaya was still speaking in a faster way than usual, so Karkat focused back on her.
“I did not mean to do it!” she excused herself. “I did not even realize what I was doing until it was happening. I could restrict myself with Vriska, but I realize now that I was still pretty thirsty, and the confrontation with Eridan did not improve the situation," she explained. "But Terezi was in good condition when I left! She was only unconscious, I checked! I even mended her neck before departing!”
Terezi was fine and out of the way for the moment. Which gave them some time, but probably not much. He looked at Kanaya, she seemed distressed about the situation, which was understandable. She had just died and transformed into something unknown, it would be strange if it weren't stressful for her. Maybe he should talk to her about it. Wait, no, he was doing it again, he was pitying someone unnecessarily again. Sollux was right, he was a pale slut and it had to stop. He licked the prong still over his talk blaster, and almost laughed aloud at the scandalized sound that Sollux made when he finally let him go. Karkat decided to count that round as won.
“It’s fine, Kanaya, I’m sure you didn’t hurt her,” he told her. “Don’t worry about it, you were starving, and your diet changed suddenly, it’s not like you could help yourself. It was an emergency, that’s all.”
Kanaya was looking at him with a strange expression in her face, she seemed almost surprised to hear him say that. Karkat began moving towards her. It was harder than it should, there was a part of his thinkpan that was screaming for him to go in the opposite direction, to run away from her, telling him how dangerous she was. He ignored the stupid, scared voice in his thinkpan, like always.
“Are you still hungry?” he asked. “Do you need more blood?”
“I am still a bit hungry, but I will survive, I believe.” she answered quickly before continuing with doubt in her voice. “Are… are you actually offering me yours?”
Karkat blinked. He hadn’t even really thought about the specifics, but it made sense, right? Kanaya needed blood and she could take it without killing anyone. And more importantly, she was his friend. He was not going to let her starve when there was an easy solution. There was also Gamzee to consider, he was still out there in a rage fit, and having a rainbow drinker at her peak power would be a great help if they ended up fighting him. If the legends about rainbow drinker's strength were true, at least.
“I guess I am, if it’s not too weird for you,” Karkat replied. “Not that I’m looking forward to it because, hello pain and bleeding out for no good reason, and there's also the thing with my blood that I don’t know if it will affect you somehow. I mean, is not that I don’t want to, but I don’t want to make you sick or something like that. Can rainbow drinkers get sick? Anyway, what I mean is that… “
“Aaaaargh!” Sollux exclaimed from somewhere behind him. “Will you shut up if I’m the one giving blood to Kanaya?" he asked, clearly exasperated with Karkat's rambling. "Thinking about it, probably it will be better if I’m the one doing it. It’s not like losing a bit more blood is going to make a difference at this point, and yours is too fucked up to be useful anyway.”
“What the actual fuck, Sollux?!” Karkat protested. “This is not a fucking competition! Scratch that out, it IS a competition, and I was the first one to offer, so it’s too late for you. I'm already at the final line, I won fair and square, so shut up and go back! And stop touching me!”
“I’m not trying to touch you, bulgeface, I’m trying to reach for Kanaya!”
“She is in the opposite direction, you fucker!”
“I’m BLIND, remember?”
“Are you serious?” Kanaya asked with a soft voice. “Both of you, you are being serious about this, right? You… you really do not mind what I am now.”
Karkat turned to look at Sollux and he found him shrugging and making weird faces to the wall behind him. The fucker was probably aiming for Karkat but completely failing. What a waste of space and energy.
“Kanaya, you know that I’m not normal, right?” he asked instead, turning to her. “I think I already mentioned to you before that I’m a mutant.”
“We talked briefly about this topic before, but this is an entirely different situation.” Kanaya protested.
“I should have been culled at hatching for the color of my blood.” Karkat kept talking, ignoring Kanaya’s complains. “This idiotic bastard is a weird one, too. His thinkpan is too stupidly fucked up to be accepted by troll society.”
“Hey!” Sollux complained.
“You knew that of us already, but you never treated us differently because of that,” Karkat concluded. “This is the same, what happened to you wasn't your fault and we are friends, of course we will help you. I’m really glad that you are alive, or undead, I mean non-dead.”
Those terms were confusing and not what he was trying to say, how could he made her understand how important she was to him?
“I just want you to be as alright as possible and if that means that now you need blood sometimes, I'm okay with that.” he concluded. “We will figure out everything else later.”
Nobody said anything for a few long seconds, not even Sollux was making fun of his ridiculous speech. Instead, both of them were looking at him like they couldn’t believe what they were seeing and listening. Then, Kanaya moved faster than the glance nugget could follow, and Karkat found himself being embraced by a very emotional jade-blooded troll. He hugged her back and felt another prong on the top of his thinkpan, tousling his hair. The owner of that prong let out a mocking chuckle on his side, and when Karkat looked at him sideways, he could read the words ‘pale disaster’ in his lips. He shot Sollux a venomous look, trying to convey his irritation with only his glance nuggets to a guy who couldn't see him. Well, it will have to do. He was not letting go of Kanaya to bicker properly with Sollux. She deserved better.
A few minutes later, Karkat was running along the meteor’s hallways, trying to keep a glance nugget on dark corners that could hide a sponge-deranged clown. Kanaya and Sollux were still in the lab while she fed on him. Once they finished, they would follow him together. Karkat would have preferred that Sollux stayed hidden a bit longer, but he was relieved that he was with Kanaya. He was sure that she was capable of protecting both of them on her own. They were safe, it was time to focus on other things. He had to stop Vriska and Terezi from fighting, and tell them that Gamzee had gone murder-crazy. It would be probably easy to convince them. Once Terezi realized that Vriska wasn't as guilty as she thought she was, she wouldn't feel the need to cull her. Or at least not immediately. And Vriska, well, despite any plans she had in mind, she would probably forget them and decide to go clown-hunting instead. She never liked Gamzee, after all. It was only a matter of time, Karkat just had to get to them before they began fighting. He sped up.
When he reached the meteor’s surface, out of breath due to all those shitty stairs, he needed to take a moment to assimilate what was in front of him. Vriska was somewhere on the floor, motionless in her orange God Tier clothes, and, in front of him, Terezi was in the middle of a scream fight with someone wearing blue clothes. Obnoxious, ridiculous, long blue clothes that he had seen before through his screen in the computers room.
“John??!” he exclaimed, because what the fuck was the human doing there?! How was he here in the first place?!
The hornless, pale-skinned alien turned to Karkat and put a god dammed huge smile on his face when he saw him. Behind him, Terezi looked in Karkat’s direction for a moment before trying to take something red from the human’s prongs. However, John avoided her and flew directly towards where Karkat was still standing.
“How in the contemptible name of my permanently hate-soiled jerkoff trousers can you possibly be here?!” he screamed when John landed near him, Terezi walking towards them.
“No, I'm not doing this!” the human protested. “I'm not explaining the retcon shit again!”
“Ret-what shit?” the troll asked before turning to Terezi. “And what the fuck happened to Vriska?!”
Then, he turned to his left, where he could see a purple figure on the floor, beaten up and tied up. That looked like Gamzee, but what was he doing there? What had happened? Was that John’s fault? And, again, how the fucking fuck of the fucking Green Sun was the human here?! He wasn't supposed to have been born yet and they were on their session, the troll’s session! How could a human be in a session prior to the creation of the human’s universe? Fucking time shenanigans!
“Is that Gamzee tied up on the floor there, with a horn shoved in his talk blaster?” he had to ask, he had to.
“Honk!” replied the mentioned stupid clown with his even stupider horn.
Karkat barely repressed a scared jump at that. He glared at Gamzee with all his hatred and fear of the last couple of hours. The highblood troll blinked at him and, if he hadn’t had a huge horn in his talk blaster, Karkat could have sworn that he would be smiling at him. Urg, creepy.
“Terezi,” Karkat repeated, because that sponge-fucking situation required repetition. “Why is Gamzee tied up on the floor? I was so worried about you, by the way, I thought he had gotten to you for sure.”
His friend smiled her huge, creepy smile and leant on her dragon cane. Wait a minute, what was she wearing? Wasn’t that her stupid red and teal raid suit?! The one she used for sweeps during her FLARP campaigns and in Sgrub during the final battle against the black king? He hadn’t seen it since then, and didn’t even know she still had it.
“That's sweet of you, Karkat, but there was no need to worry,” she told him. “I cracked the case. With investigation skills like mine, it was inevitable.”
Well, she had realized on her own that the murderer was Gamzee after all. That was a bit unexpected but good to know, maybe she truly had investigation skills after all. Who would have guessed? And why the fuck was Egbert laughing now?! Such a sponge incapacitated specimen.
“Um, ok?” he muttered while still looking at Egbert sideways. “It would have been nice if somebody told me what sort of preposterous shit was taking place up here. What happened to Vriska? Why is she passed out on the fucking floor?”
“I punched her in the face,” Egbert answered with a shrug.
Of course, she was unconscious because a mentally and physically feeble alien from a universe that still didn’t exist decided to pop out of nowhere in an otherwise impossible feat to punch Vriska in the face. Obvious, he should have known before.
“What?!” Karkat couldn’t stop himself from asking, still trying to assimilate the presence of the human there and then.
“You heard me,” was all answer he got from the dumbest of all dumb mammals that ever existed or will ever exist in all paradox space.
“Ok, John, listen,” he said, focusing all his attention on him. “First of all, shut your fucking ignorance tunnel. I don't even know where to begin addressing the globe numbing absurdity of your sudden presence on this meteor. Let's just awkwardly strafe along the perimeter of that humongous, stink-belching trunkbeast in the room, and let the violently uninhibited nerd-grilling commence,” there, he had established the bases of the absurdity of their situation, now it was time to get to the point. “Why did you punch Vriska in the face?! Not that I necessarily blame you for that, but still.”
“Karkat, take it easy. Here, read this.” John said while he showed him a nasty red scarf full of scribblings in what looked like teal colored blood.
“What the fuck is this?” he asked while he turned his thinkpan a bit to better check it out without actually touching that piece of shit. That was definitely not John’s prongwriting. Judging by the 413 quirk, it seemed to be something that Terezi had written. But that was impossible because she was right there and Karkat had never seen this scarf before.
“It's all on the scarf, buddy. It's all on the scarf,” John insisted while slapping his back softly in a gesture that was uncomfortably pale.
Karkat pushed down the need to scream and move away from the touchy mammal, reminding himself that humans didn’t have quadrants. It was only a friendly gesture for John, which was already weird. He focused on the scarf, taking a quick look without actually reading what it said. Terezi’s quirk was a daymare to understand, Karkat always needed a few extra seconds to translate it into a civilized language. He looked over the long text without really reading until he recognized a familiar word: ‘K4RK4T’.
“Wait, is that my name at the bottom?” he asked automatically while trying to grab the fabric to read what it said about him.
“What? Where?” John replied, pushing him away and taking the scarf with him. “Oh, fuck! I almost missed that one!”
“What the fuck, Egbert?!” Karkat protested and tried to take back the piece of cloth, suddenly invested on it.
John pushed him away again and flew up just enough to be out of reach while he read whatever Terezi wrote about Karkat. He had an expression of concentration mixed with annoyance in his face that told Karkat that the human also had troubles in understanding the troll’s quirk.
“John! Come back here and show me what it says about me!” Karkat insisted.
“Hey! That’s mine!” Terezi protested. “I should be the one reading it, it was future me that wrote it, so it’s mine!”
“No, I’m sorry Karkat, but I think it will be best if you don’t read this one,” John answered, shaking his thinkpan. “I don’t think that my dear departed friend, future Terezi, would want any of you to read this.”
Oh no, oh fucking no. There was some information in that piece of shit about Karkat, and he was in his right to know what it was. He hunched down to get impulse and jumped as far as he could. He managed to grab John’s long stupid hood and pulled down on it with all his weight.
“Good catch, Karkat!” Terezi exclaimed. “Bring him down!”
“Wait, no! Let go of my hood Karkat, you will end up tearing it up!!” John protested.
“What the fuck?! Who is talking?” asked a new voice.
Karkat didn’t need to turn to recognise Sollux’s voice, but John turned his thinkpan to see who had talked. Yes! He seemed distracted now, so it was the perfect opportunity. He pulled harder on the hood, hoping to grab the scarf, but the hood suddenly disintegrated into blue air and Karkat lose his grip on it. He fell to the floor on his butt and, when he looked up, John had completely turned into that blue air, which made him intangible. Fucking Heir of Breath fucking powers! Karkat watched the blue air move to where Kanaya and Sollux stood and transform back into a pink skinned alien in ridiculous blue clothes.
“Hi, is one of you Sollux?” he heard him ask them.
“Seriously, can someone please tell me who is asking?” Sollux protested.
Karkat got up from the floor with Terezi’s help and began walking towards the other three. He was NOT going to be left out. Not when HIS name was written there for everyone to see. He had a right to know about his future!
“Hi, I am Kanaya and this is Sollux,” the troll girl answered. “I know we did not talk a lot during your session, but I assume that you are John?”
“Yes, that’s me,” the human affirmed. “It’s nice to meet you Kanaya, Rose always talked very well of you.”
“Oh, well, thanks. It is also pleasant to meet you, I guess,” she replied, a bit flustered.
“By the way, sorry for pranking you from Rose’s account that one time,” John apologized. “It was just a silly joke in retrospect. I hope it didn’t change the way you see Rose now.”
“Pranking? When?” Kanaya asked, clearly confused.
Karkat got there and tried to grab John’s clothes, but he disintegrated again and appeared next to Sollux. The blind troll jumped a bit in response to that, even when he couldn’t see him. Or maybe precisely because he couldn’t see the blue air move towards him.
“How the fuck did you move here so fast?!” he exclaimed. “And what the fuck do you want with me?”
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. Didn’t you see me moving here?” John replied, oblivious of the situation, as always. Karkat counted backwards mentally until five before he saw John realize his mistake. “OH! You are also blind! I’m sorry, I didn’t know. Wait, I thought that only Terezi was blind? Did she pass it to you? Is blindness contagious?”
“Hey!” Terezi protested.
“What the fucking fuck, John?!” Karkat exclaimed, that was ridiculous, even for Egbert. “Yes, Sollux is blind, that's a fact that everyone here could see from a light-year distance. Or smell in the case of Terezi, whatever. And no, blindness is not contagious, you milk-sucking wiggler! What is the problem with you?!”
“Yeah, ok. Sorry again, I guess,” the human shrugged. “The thing is that I have a message for Sollux from future-Terezi. Here, check it out!”
And then John put the red scarf in front of Sollux and signalled something on it. Karkat facepalmed. John was fucking unbelievable. He had literally just said that Sollux was blind and the stupid human had already forgotten that the troll in front of him COULDN'T SEE!
“Seriously?” Sollux asked, incredulously. “Blind, remember?”
“Oh, right!” John replied while his face turned completely red, Karkat didn’t know that humans could do that. “I will read it to you, it says that no matter what, it's important that you stay in the meteor.”
“What? Of course I’m going to stay on the meteor, where else would I go?” the troll asked.
“I don’t know where you went last time, but you didn’t get to the new season with the rest of them.” John insisted. “So, I guess you skipped ship somewhere.”
What?! Sollux wasn’t in the meteor last time?! What happened to him? Karkat had a bad feeling about this. He hoped that it didn’t mean the worst-case scenario, he didn’t think he could stand someone else dying on him. Especially not Sollux.
“Why should I believe you? We have never even talked before!” Sollux complained.
“But it’s really important that you stay!” John insisted. “Terezi even explained why, it’s all here, see?”
“John, do you mind if I read those instructions?” Kanaya interrupted. “That way I can tell Sollux if what you are saying is true or not. I believe he will have more reasons to trust me than you, mostly based on the fact that you are a complete stranger to him.”
The human checked over his shoulder to where Karkat and Terezi were standing, sending him murderous looks from the distance, before turning again to Kanaya and nodding to her.
“Wait! Are you really showing Kanaya and not us?!” Karkat protested and took the couple of steps needed to reach the scarf in Kanaya’s prongs. John intercepted him and pushed him back from his shoulders, keeping him on place. Karkat pushed against John, trying to reach the scarf, but the human was stronger than he looked like.
“Believe me, Karkat, it’s better if you don’t know,” the human insisted. “I’m doing this for your own good, buddy.”
“Suck my bulge sidewise, dipshit!” Karkat argued. “I’m done with the fucking mysteries, the double fucked secrets, and the triple fucked passwords!”
“Yeah, I hear you, truly,” John agreed while still keeping him away from the scarf. “I’m tired of those too, but this is the last time. Next time I see you, I will explain everything, and I will let you ask me anything you want!”
“That’s not the point, Egbert!” Karkat argued.
“Are you sure?” Karkat heard Sollux ask behind John, he moved his thinkpan a bit to check over John’s shoulder and saw his hatefriend talking with Kanaya.
“It is Terezi’s prongwriting and quirk for sure,” Kanaya was saying at that moment. “And if what she wrote is true, I believe we should do what she says.”
Then Kanaya turned to look at Karkat and her expression softened for a few moments before she turned back to Sollux. Karkat realized that the other gold-blood troll had a pensive and worried expression on his face. What the fuck had just happened there? He had missed something again.
“Oi, human! I will do it,” Sollux decided, suddenly.
John disappeared again, leaving Karkat without any resistance stopping him from falling forward, ending up on the floor again. When he raised his face from the ground, John was a few steps away from him with the scarf in his prongs, thanking both Kanaya and Sollux. Fucker.
“Ok! My job here is done!” he declared. “I think I’m not forgetting anything: Vriska is alive, Sollux is staying and everything else on the list is done. Terezi, if you find my dad’s wallet you know what to do.”
“Yes, yes, Egbert. Get the fuck out of here already, you have messed enough with the timeline,” she complained.
“Yeah, you are right for once Terezi, I've messed with your timeline enough as it is,” he agreed easily.
Then, John walked up to where Vriska was still on the floor and crouched down to talk to her.
“Sorry for clocking you, Vriska, if you can hear me in your dreams,” John said to an unconscious troll before laughing of his own joke. “Haha, you probably can't hear me, but hey, I guess this means I get to meet alive-you soon, instead of ghost-you? So that's neat.
Oh no. The fucker was saying goodbye to Vriska, which meant that he was going to go without explaining anything to them. No, not on Karkat's watch!
“EGBERT, DON'T YOU DARE FUCK OFF!!” Karkat yelled, but the human was ignoring him completely.
“Please tell her I'm sorry for punching her in the face,” he kept rambling to nobody in particular. “But also, she's welcome for saving her life! Well, I'll see you guys later. Hum, in three years to be precise.”
“What?!” Karkat screamed. “No, don't! You stay the hell put, do you hear me?! You ugly, peejay packing, flapsniffing, shit infant!”
“Bye dude!” John replied with a smile. “Take care!”
He hadn’t even finished the sentence that he began shining in a strange blueish light and then, just like that, he was gone. Like he had never been there. Karkat let out a shriek and kept insulting the fuck out of fucking Egbert until he run out of air and had to sit down for a bit.
“I suddenly do not understand anything, and I am currently casting sincere doubt on the laughable insinuation that I or anyone else ever actually did for even a single moment,” he heard Kanaya saying aloud what everyone was thinking.
Karkat gave up. He let his back fall back until he was completely resting on the floor of the meteor’s surface. Next to them, Terezi was helping Vriska sit up. She looked confused. Well, welcome to the club, Vriska!
“Kanaya, don't be such a damn nob,” Sollux was saying at that moment. “The explanation for all the stuff I just heard is so obvious.”
Oh no, he could see where this was going. He begged mentally to Kanaya to not keep asking stupid questions. However, she didn’t seem to hear his pledge. Ok, definitively rainbow drinkers did NOT have the ability to read minds. That was good news, he supposed.
“What is the explanation,” Kanaya kept asking, naïvely.
Don’t. Sollux, don’t. Don’t fucking say it. Don’t you dare say it! Please!
“Mutha. Fuckin. Shenanigans.”
He said it. He had to go and fucking say it. Gods, Karkat had never hated anyone so much as in that moment. Fucking Captor!
Not long after John disappearance, a green point of light appeared suddenly in the black sky.
“I can smell it! Everyone, look!” Terezi exclaimed while pointing to the approximate direction of the green spot. “We need to go there before the light disappears!”
Karkat kept looking to the new green star for a moment. The humans did it, they really fucking did it! That had to be the Green Sun that Kanaya and Jade were talking about hours ago. He still didn’t know what would they accomplish going there, but it wasn’t like they were doing anything here. They were literally dying beakbeasts, sitting there waiting for Jack to find them and kill them. Sure, let’s go to the weird green sun! It couldn't be worse that their current situation. There was only one problem, though.
“How are we supposed to go there?” he asked to nobody in particular. “It’s not like this meteor can move on it’s own!”
“I can do it,” Sollux said, next to him.
Karkat turned to him. Sollux was now wearing his stupid bicolored sunglasses over his empty glance nuggets, but that wasn’t enough to make Karkat forget that he was blind and hurt now.
“Are you sure, Sollux?” he asked him. “You are still hurt and your glance nuggets… ”
“Stop underestimating me, KK! I don’t need to see to move this rock, I have done worse before!” his friend insisted. “Just point me in the correct direction.”
“Here, I’m pointing at it now, follow my arm,” Terezi answered. “Quick, we don’t have much time!”
Karkat followed her pointing arm and saw that she was a bit off to the right. Kind of expected from someone who couldn’t see, but they couldn’t afford to do a stupid mistake like that at this point of the game. He took her arm gently and moved it to the correct position without saying anything. Then, he put a prong in Sollux’s posture pole and helped moving him until he was facing on the direction they needed to take.
“Ok, here we go!” Sollux announced. “Pick up your wigglers and be prepared for the fastest ride of your life!”
Then, a wave of psionics went through all of them, wrapping the full meteor, and they shoot off at an incredible speed. Karkat fell back to the floor and couldn’t get up, their speed too high and the inertia keeping him down. He looked around and saw everyone else in the floor like him. Everyone was grabbing some part of the meteor’s surface, and Vriska had a strong hold on Gamzee’s binds, keeping him on the meteor. The only one still standing was Sollux. He had a fine layer of psionics around his body and he was in a shrunken position. The green spot in the sky was getting bigger at an astronomic speed, but there was something wrong in Sollux’s psionics. They were white with a bit of a yellowish tone instead of red and blue like they should be. Karkat realized then that Sollux was screaming and that something mustard-gold was dropping to the floor in front of the troll. Oh fuck, that was blood, Sollux’s gold blood.
Karkat tried to turn his body to the side but he had nowhere to hold on. He decided then to decaptchalogue a pair of his worst sickles, but one slipped his prong and almost hit Kanaya when it was flown away. He kept a solid grip in the remaining sickle and anchored it to the floor of the meteor. Then, he used that to turn his body until he was resting on his front and managed to lift his thinkpan a bit. Sollux was a few steps in front of him. He was still bleeding but he hadn’t released his psionics for a moment. In front of them, the Green Sun was now the size of a ball.
“Sollux! You are bleeding, you stupid airsponged!” Karkat screamed as loud as he could, trying to be heard over the sound of Sollux’s screaming. “Stop it already!”
“Not… yet!” he heard Sollux’s answering between grunts and pained screams.
Karkat used his free prong to grab an irregular spot in the floor, released his sickle from the hole it was on, and with an impulse he managed to anchor it again a bit further. He used it then to pull his body a step closer, fighting against the inertia created by their speed. He had to get to Sollux, he had to stop him before it was too late. The Green Sun was now the size of a waterfruit.
“You can’t keep doing it! You will kill yourself if you don’t stop!” Karkat kept screaming.
He released the sickle again and pushed himself a bit further before anchoring it again on the floor. His arms were hurting terribly, and he could barely keep his glance nuggets open without getting dizzy at their speed, but he was moving further step by step. He was almost at Sollux’s strut pods, stained by a pool of gold blood. The green sphere was the size of a moon by now.
“Better me… than all of you!” was Sollux’s only answer in a low voice. He had stopped screaming, now he was only grunting while his body was almost folded in half.
Karkat remembered the bad feeling he had had when John told them that Sollux had not been on the meteor when it got to the new session in his timeline. Did that mean that he was going to die now? He was supposed to stay in the meteor with them, John had told them that it was an important change. Sollux couldn’t die, Sollux was not going to die! He could almost touch his friend’s strut pod by now. In front of them there was more green than black now.
“DON’T YOU DARE DIE ON ME NOW, SOLLUX!!” Karkat screeched, desperate.
At that moment two things happened simultaneously: the meteor stopped abruptly and Sollux’s body collapsed to the floor. There was an intense green light surrounding them now, but Karkat didn’t stop to check their surroundings. He got up, now that there was no resistance, almost falling on his front and moved the few steps that separated him from Sollux’s body. He was lying down motionless on his front in a puddle of gold blood. Karkat fell on his knees next to Sollux and turned him around until he could check his face. There was blood spilling out of his glance nuggets and his talk blaster, and his face was covered in cracks originating from his thinkpan front. He was not breathing.
“SOLLUX!” he screamed while he tried to shake him awake. “Come on, this is not funny, wake up!”
Karkat felt his tears fall from his glance nuggets and for once he didn’t care at all that other trolls could see the reddish color in them. Sollux was dead. His best friend was dead. He remembered how he met him in an online forum, when they were only two sweeps old. He couldn’t remember what was the forum about anymore, only that he had been trolling some stupid people in there to pass the time when the most annoying douche began antagonizing him. Before he realized it, they were the only ones bickering on the forum for hours, until they were kicked out. He felt a bit sad afterwards when he realized that he had actually liked arguing with him, and he hadn’t even asked him for his trollian’s name. A perigee later, someone hacked into his computer, erased half of his files, changed his wallpaper to something hideous, added a new contact to his trollian, and left him with a virus that kept opening a window screen with the text ‘who ii2 an abhorrent column of 2marmy fiilth now?’
“Karkat?” he heard someone calling him, but he didn’t move from the filthy floor, with Sollux’s empty thinkpan on his lap.
After that first contact, he and Sollux spent hours every night bickering and arguing about everything and nothing for almost a full season. Then they moved to competing on games online, and after that, to multiplayers co-op games. He met Aradia through Sollux, and through her he met Tavros, Vriska and Terezi. Eventually he presented Sollux to his friends Gamzee and Nepeta, and through them they met the rest of the group. Their friends and social life expanded drastically in a sweep, which caused them to detach a bit. However, they kept being hatefriends through everything.
“Karkat, sweety, answer me,” he heard the soft voice again. It was Kanaya, he could recognise her now. “Come on, let him go.”
Things got complicated when they grew up, each of them falling in pity and hate with other people and getting over it when those relationships eventually went to shit. And then Aradia died and Sollux appeared one night on Karkat's door with a hollow expression in his face. He stayed with him for a few hard perigees, his mood changing from pure rage to self-loathing multiple times each night. He had to be forced to eat or clean up, and the daymares filled his sleep. It was during that time that Karkat confessed his own sin, the mutant blood in his veins. What happened during those perigees was too close to a sequence of consecutive emotional piles to be comfortable with, so when Sollux went back to his own hive, they both decided to never mention it again. However, it was during that time, while they were hiding from the world, that the circle of revenge by Vriska Serket went down on their group.
“Karkat, please say something,” Kanaya was saying now.
Their relationship went back to how it was before, bickering and gossiping about the stupid things their friends did. And then they all began playing THE game and everything went to shit town, where they did nothing but burn everything down, until all paradox space smelt of burned excrement and failure. From Karkat activating the virus that cursed them all and Sollux entering the game already dead, to everything that happened in the last eleven hours, it had all been a fucking daymare. And now Sollux had died again, helping them. They already revived him once, so this time it was for good. His best friend was gone.
“Hey KK, stop the melodramatic shit and look up already!!”
He knew that voice, but it was impossible, it couldn't be real. Karkat looked up immediately and saw someone with his dead hatefriend’s face, shape and clothes floating in front of him. He looked down to the body in his arms and up to the flying troll again, just to be sure that it was real. What the fuck?!
“Finally!” the second Sollux said with an arrogant smile. “I see you have missed me. I didn’t know you cared so much, KK!”
That was definitively Sollux, nobody was able to irritate Karkat as fast as the biforked bone bulged idiot of his best hatefriend. Karkat felt his cheeks heat up in embarrassment at being caught up crying, but refused to show it. On his side, he felt Kanaya touching his shoulder a moment before getting up and leaving them alone, but he barely reacted to that.
“Excuse me for having a fucking emotional reaction to my best hatefriend dying in such an heroic way!” he protested. “Pardon me for spending a few moments remembering the best moments spent with my recently departed best hatefriend! Not everybody can be an arrogant piss-blood, who is so full of himself that he gets anxious when he isn't the centre of all attention for two fucking seconds!”
“So, now you are bringing up my blood’s color into this?” fake-Sollux replied. “You are a fucking hypocrite, KK.”
“Don’t call me KK, you are not my hatefriend, he just died to allow us to escape a painful death!” Karkat interrupted. “You are a fake, a bad copy! I don’t even know who or what you are!”
“You can’t be serious,” was all the reply he got. “I thought it was clear to everyone that I am the half-ghost of the guy you keep petting like a desperate lusus with a dead wiggler.”
“Shut the fuck up! I will pet the body of my dead friend as much as I want!” he replied, wincing in embarrassment at hearing himself say that but deciding to push through. “You are lying by the way! Sollux was revived once in the beginning of our session, so his ghost has been spent already. You must be a doomed version of him from a timeline when everything went wrong. Well, more wrong, wronger. And what the fuck is a half-ghost, anyway?”
“Wow, kinky,” fake-Sollux laughed. “Let me educate your inferior thinkpan about what is happening here. The first time, when I was revived, I woke up in Prospit. But this time I’m coming from Derse,” he explained. “So, I guess I had two ghosts all along or my soul was divided in two ghosts or something fucked up like that. It would explain why I can only see with my right glance nugget.”
Two ghosts. Sollux had two fucking ghosts, one for Prospit and one for Derse. It was ridiculous, egotistical even, but at the same time it made sense. Everything was double-teamed with Sollux.
“Of fucking course you would be the only existence ever to have two fucking ghosts, you narcissistic scumbag! Everything goes in pairs with you!” Karkat exclaimed, throwing his arms to the air.
He let himself fall back on the floor again and fixed his glance nuggets on ghost-Sollux. The edge of Karkat's shirt got wet with Sollux’s blood, but after everything that had happened in the last twelve hours, that was the least of his problems.
“You died twice and got blind. Didn’t you mention something like that before?” Karkat asked, trying to remember.
“Yes, is the fate of all prophets,” the ghost answered. “I always knew that I was destined to die twice, which made me a prophet and, as such, it was expected I would end blind too. All prophets do.”
That was weird, but something that Sollux had told him before. He also mentioned once that he could hear the end of the world. Karkat never believed him before, but maybe he should have done it. He had been right in the end.
“Wait, if you have two ghosts, does that mean that you can be revived twice?” Karkat asked while he sit up again, the idea suddenly popping up on his thinkpan.
“Hey, Karkat, I’m glad you finally snapped out of that crying party.” Someone interrupted with a monotonous tone of voice.
Karkat got up from the floor, looked around and saw three new figures that he had not realized where there before. He had been so focused in ghost-Sollux that he had omitted everything else. He could see Aradia, actually alive Aradia, wearing a red costume and pixie rust wings, chatting lively with Terezi and Vriska. Near them, Kanaya was talking to somebody with clear hair and pinky skin also wearing God Tier clothes the same color than Vriska’s. She was clearly human, but she couldn’t be Jade because Jade’s skin had a lovely dark brown color, and her hair was black and long. She was the other female human then, Rose Lalonde. Karkat turned his glance nuggets back to the human in front of him. Even if he couldn’t deduce who he was by elimination, a simple look at his white hair and the huge stupid sunglasses covering half of his face was enough to identify him.
“Strider,” Karkat said.
“Sup.” was all the answer he got.
Dave fucking Strider. The arrogant human that had been pissing him off in every conversation, no matter how short it was, and over whom Terezi was so obsessed. Karkat tried to check him out from an objective point of view, struggling to understand what she saw in him. He was skinny, his hair was even lighter than Lalonde’s and his skin was the lightest color he had seen in a human. He had a few darker spots in his face but most of it was hidden by his stupid sunglasses. Strider was also wearing God Tier clothes with a cape that were the red color of his mutant blood. There was a gear sign in the front of his clothes, and he was floating effortlessly next to ghost-Sollux. He was so fucking lucky that Terezi was blind because he was weird and ugly.
“Take a picture, it will last longer,” Strider recited with a blank face.
“Oh, fuck off! I was wondering how could you wear such horrifying clothes without dying of embarrassment on the spot,” Karkat replied, emphasising with his prongs.
“Hey, leave the God Tier pyjamas alone!” Strider protested. “These are magic clothes and are comfortable as fuck. I also got them during the explosion generated by two dying universes to create a huge, creepy green sun, so I fucking earned them!”
Right. The colossal green sun in front of them that the pair of humans were supposed to destroy and not create. The mystical Green Sun that was the source of Jack’s powers.
“What the fuck happened with that, by the way?” he asked. “I thought you were on a mission to destroy the Green Sun, but instead you created it! I’m not ashamed to say that I am confused.”
“Yeah, me too,” Strider replied with a prong touching his spine lump. “It seems that we were tricked, though.”
“The sun will never be destroyed, Karkat, or at least not by us,” Aradia interjected with a cheerful tone. “I’m sorry but all of you were misinformed!”
Karkat decided it was time to move away from the blood staining his shoes and get down into one of his well patented Vantas-tantrums.
“Ah! Well, now that we have that information, I can finally sleep! Everything will be fine guys, we were just hornswoggled and misinformed, carry on then!” Karkat repeated with exaggerated sarcasm. “Pardon me, but wasn't the whole point of this mission to take out the sun and neutralize Jack?”
“It shouldn't be a problem,” a new voice answered, Karkat turned his thinkpan and found that the one that had talked this time was Lalonde.
“I’m so glad to hear you saying that the failure of your last crazy plan doesn’t represent a problem for us,” he agreed, still in sarcastic mode. “I’m guessing you have a new, even crazier plan. What would it be this time?”
“It's simple,” Lalonde answered. “We travel to the new session, regroup with the new players, and then defeat him in person.”
“Nice, sounds interesting,” Karkat affirmed sarcastically, going so far as to even nod with his thinkpan. “Except for the fact that we already did that, and we failed! Future-John showed up a few minutes ago and told us that we all ended dying in his timeline!”
After hearing that, Lalonde’s ganderbulbs went huge for a moment before her expression transformed into one of complete concentration. Her glance nuggets went unfocused and she seemed to be looking to something that only she could see.
“Wait, John was here?!” Strider exclaimed from Karkat's side, but everyone ignored him.
“That’s strange,” Lalonde muttered, her glance nuggets focusing back on Karkat. “That’s still the only favorable outcome I can See. What did John say exactly?”
“He said that he had somehow got a new power that allowed him to time-travel and change things without creating a doomed timeline,” Terezi answered from the side. “Apparently, a future version of myself wrote some instructions of where to go and what to change.”
“Oh! Is that why Vriska is not dead?” Aradia asked. “I was quite surprised because I had expected the amount of dead troll bodies to be higher. I’m glad that at least we found yours, Sollux! We can still have a corpse party with it!”
Everyone turned to her at her comment. She was acting like she got one gift less than expected on 12th Perigee's Eve instead of one of her friends being unexpectedly alive instead of dead. Not that Aradia and Vriska were truly friends after all the mutual murder history between them, but even with that it was creepy.
“For fuck’s sake, Aradia!” Sollux exclaimed. “Will you cool it on the troll dead count shit for a minute?”
“What’s the matter?” she asked with an expression of total innocence.
“I mean,” Sollux continued. “Everybody here has just met, and I guess just went through a lot of really heavy bullshit, do you think that maybe this isn't the best thing to harp on right now? Frankly, it's all pretty fucking morbid, I just thought you should know.”
When Sollux was the one instructing someone else in being more sensitive when talking to others, it meant that something was really wrong. It was clear by her face that Aradia knew that fact, too.
“Am I really that bad?” she asked, looking at everybody else.
“Yes,” Terezi said, directly to the point as usual.
“Oh, sorry,” Aradia apologized. “I guess I’ve spent enough time here that I just don’t see death as the terrible thing the living make it out to be. I honestly feel like it’s a reason to celebrate!”
Nobody said anything for a moment, probably as creeped out by Aradia’s fascination with Death itself as Karkat was. Luckily, Lalonde decided it was time to change the topic.
“Ok, going back to our previous discussion. You said that John avoided Vriska’s dead,” the human said. “Did he do or say anything else?”
“He mentioned that Sollux needs to stay on the meteor,” Kanaya answered, clearly happy with the change of topic. “We were confused about that because our Sollux had no intention or method to leave the meteor, but on light of recent events…”
Karkat looked back to the corpse of his dead hatefriend. If that was something that had also happened last time, it meant that Sollux was already dead at this point. In that case, the only interpretation of John’s words was that ghost-Sollux decided to leave them. He raised his thinkpan to look at him and noticed that almost everyone was doing the same. Strider hadn’t moved an inch but with those glasses hiding his glance nuggets, who knew where he was looking at?
“What?!” ghost-Sollux exclaimed, clearly uncomfortable with all the attention. “Does that mean that I need to stay?”
“So, you were really thinking of leaving,” Karkat muttered without meaning to.
It hurt a bit that his best hatefriend was ready to leave him with these strangers. Especially after everything that had happened. Well, ghost-Sollux had not been there so maybe he didn’t know what had happened?
“I don’t know, I’m truly tired of this sick adventure. I guess I just wanted to chill out and rest for a while,” his hatefriend explained. “You are not staying here, right, Aradia?”
“Oh, no, I was never going to stay,” she answered quickly. “There's a lot of work to do out there in the dream bubbles, and I’m itching to meet all the alternative versions of our friends!”
“That sounds nicer than staying in this doomed meteor,” Sollux protested. “Are you sure that I have to stay? I really don’t believe my presence or absence could be that determinant to the timeline.”
“Terezi was very explicit that someone would die if you didn’t stay in this meteor, Sollux,” Kanaya said before throwing Karkat a quick glance. “I saw the sentence she wrote myself.”
That was new information, so someone would die if Sollux decided to abandon them and go away with Aradia? Suddenly, Karkat felt a shiver travelling up his torso pillar. There had been another name written in that scarf.
“I saw my name in the scarf, on the last sentence,” he said aloud, feeling his prongs shake, but forcing himself to look straight at Kanaya. “I'm the one that will die, right?”
Kanaya’s glance nuggets turned to him, large and scared before shifting to look at the floor. Without looking up, she nodded. Oh. It was true then. He actually died in that doomed timeline and future Terezi thought that it was going to happen again. He was actually glad that Terezi had decided that he was worthy enough to risk changing the timeline only to ensure he survived. He was glad but he felt guilty at the same time. If she had wanted to, Terezi could have sent John back to make changes that would have avoided the deaths of Feferi, Nepeta, Tavros, Equius, or even Eridan. Instead of that, she had sent him to save only Vriska and himself. Were their lives that relevant to the timeline, or had Terezi used John selfishly to save those trolls that she appreciated more?
He raised his thinkpan and looked directly at Terezi, he was sure that she was asking herself the same question. He turned to look at Sollux then. He was looking at Aradia with such a sad and longing expression that Karkat felt it like a dagger in his blood pusher. He couldn’t do it. He didn’t have the courage to take Sollux away from her after all the suffering that Aradia’s death had caused him. Karkat didn’t want to die either, but what was his dead compared to the millions of alternate dead trolls in the vastness of paradox space?
“Well, it's clear to me that future-Terezi was messing with John with that one,” he made himself say with forced cheer. “There is no way that my death will cause a doomed timeline.”
“Karkat, I think she was serious,” Kanaya replied with a confused expression.
“Nonsense,” he insisted. “For all that I loathe her, I can see why saving Vriska could lead to a tactically beneficial outcome. But me being alive or dead won’t cause any beneficial or detrimental change. It's clear to everybody at this point that I'm not the strongest of us. I'm not God Tier either, and it seems that I even suck at leadership,” he elaborated. “In conclusion, we can all assume that Terezi was only using John to prank us both simultaneously for no apparent reason.”
Nobody said anything for a moment, but the hard expressions on Kanaya, Terezi, and Lalonde’s faces told him that they didn’t believe him at all.
“What are you…?” he heard Strider ask in a confused tone.
“What are you trying to do here, KK?” Sollux interrupted in a cold voice.
Karkat wanted to scream. He was trying to give Sollux an option, to give him an excuse to go with Aradia like he clearly wanted. Why couldn’t he go along with it for once instead of fighting him on it?! Doing what he wanted without arguing for once would have been so nice!
“I’m not trying to do anything,” Karkat replied with a shrug. “Only saying it as I see it.”
“Bullshit. You are being self-depreciating again!” Sollux said, calling him off on his bluff. “Do you think that saying that shit will made me leave you here to die?!”
And the first prize for most stubborn fucker in all paradox space goes to Sollux Captor!
“I’m not going to die! That was the whole point!” he protested. “And even if I do, it doesn’t matter! I’m irrelevant! There was a full explanation about this that concluded with a nice and well debated conclusion at the end!”
“The only thing you said was the same stupid self-hatred nonsense you have been saying since we were wigglers!" Sollux insisted. “You know how much I hate you when you do that!”
“I’m NOT self-hating myself! Not more than usual at least!” Karkat insisted. “I'm only saying that I'm not going to die if you decide to live and have fun for once! And, only for the record, I hate you even more!”
“What I do or not do with my life it’s not your fucking business!” Sollux screamed, for some reason he had descended until he was at the same height than Karkat.
“Why do you have to be such a sensitive heiress about everything?!” Karkat shouted. “I know how much you missed Aradia, I’m just trying to tell you that it’s fine for me if you want to go with her!”
“Fuck you! You can’t tell me what to do!” the taller troll yelled back. “I don’t need your permission to do whatever I want! If I want to come, you can’t do anything to stop me!”
“Fine! Do whatever you want but do it away from me!” Karkat exploded. “If I have to see your face regularly for a sweep and a half I will fucking kill you before we get to the new session! Or I will kill myself so that your ‘noble sacrifice’ will have been for nothing! Maybe I should do that! I will wait until the last moment and kill myself before anyone else could, just to show you how wrong you were with this decision!”
“As if you could! I won’t let you die until we have destroyed this fucking game and got our price!” Sollux counterattacked. “And then, when we are in front of the fucking door, I will push you away and leave you trapped here!”
“I prefer to die right now than to stay trapped here a second more than strictly needed! I will throw myself in front of Jack’s path if needed!” Karkat yelled.
“No, you won’t! Not on my watch!”
“Fine! Do whatever the fuck you want, like always!”
“I will!”
“Fine!”
“Fine!”
Karkat stopped screaming for two seconds, and realized that he was out of breath and his thinkpan front was almost touching Sollux’s. Apparently, both of them had been screaming directly in the other’s face. He was out of breath and all his body was vibrating with anger and tension.
“Wtf… ?” someone murmured behind him.
He didn’t know who had talked, but that made Karkat suddenly remember that they weren't alone. They were, in fact, the opposite of alone. He saw the moment Sollux realized that same fact, exactly when his glance nuggets opened huge and his face went pale. When they both turned their thinkpans to the origin of that voice, they found a group of trolls and humans looking at them with faces showing mixed expressions of confusion, disgust, amusement and embarrassment. Only then Karkat realized that he was still too close to Sollux, and how their last display of mutual hatred could be misinterpreted. He took a couple of steps away from the other troll, but refused to run away in shame. He wouldn't give Sollux that satisfaction. A quick check told him that Sollux face was suspiciously yellow, but he seemed as determined as him to do as if nothing had happened.
“Perfect, then!” Aradia exclaimed, cheerful as ever. “Decided! Sollux stays.”
The mentioned troll grumbled something and began floating further away from him. Rose took that as a clue and began talking again, explaining what they needed to do to get to the next session. Karkat used that distraction to move away from that spot, sliding near Kanaya, that smiled to him with a knowing expression in her face.
“Don’t say anything, please,” he begged, and she focused her attention back on Lalonde. Karkat had never been so glad for Kanaya’s discretion.
Lalonde told them that following her prediction they would be able to get to the next session in three human years riding over the path the light of the Green Sun would travel to reach the new Skaia. She talked about disturbances in time and space within paradox space that made it almost impossible to navigate, and Aradia contributed to that with her own experience.
Through all that conversation, Karkat hardly listened. He was repeating his last argument with Sollux in his mind. He still didn’t know how they had gone from him trying to push Sollux towards Aradia, to Sollux threatening to not let him kill himself just to spite him. Also, he wasn’t sure, but didn’t they exchanged a couple of ‘I hate you’ at some point? And they did that in front of everyone. Fuck, that was so embarrassing. At least the humans wouldn’t understand the possible implications of what happened there. Which were inexistent, no implications of any kind or form, only him and Sollux bickering like usual, as happened in a perfectly normal hatefriendship. Oh, fuck. Could the situation get more embarrassing?!
Just then, a bucket appeared out of nowhere and hit him directly on his face. And Karkat cursed the universe for not wasting a single fucking opportunity.