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There's a chair that looks just distant enough to be out of arm's reach of the boy, and Roland leans on it. "I did," he says, crossing his arms. "I do. And you sound as if you've been in his company for more than five seconds. He did 'it'?" Of course Roland knows what 'it' usually means. At least among humans. Here, who knows. If Roland's lucky, it'll have nothing to do with whatever a braybeast is.

Edited 2014-04-03 11:53 (UTC)

"I've been in his company for nearly half-a-sweep," Karkat says grumpily. And then, for the old human's benefit, "About a human year. And yeah. It. Pailing." Yes, he said 'pailing.' "Fucking," he qualifies.

"I mean, I don't know for fucking certain, but we were arguing about human women and Bert was being a huge fucking moron as usual and claiming that human women were, like, super delicate compared to human men--which isn't true, I've met enough by now to see that they aren't--and then me telling him he was full of shit turned into him taunting me about how I haven't gotten any and so I told him he hadn't gotten any either and he implied that he had--and Nepeta's dating him, so it's just fucking logic that if he'd Done It he'd Done It with her--and then when I tried to ask him if he'd Done It with her he just started laughing his ass off at me, so I figured I should go check with her to make sure she was all right and he hadn't implanted her with his young."

He give the old human man a pained look. "He's my best friend here," he explains, "but he's a fucking shithead."

Roland's eyebrows rise slowly throughout the explanation, reaching what must surely be their greatest height at 'implanted'. But then that last takes his attention, and he ducks his head a moment to think it over. Hearing someone else - and a stranger on top of that - refer to themselves as Cuthbert's best friend takes a little time to process. His old friend having such close ties that he knows nothing about makes the whole situation feel even less real than it already does.

"That he is," Roland murmurs. "And he ever has been. If it helps, he'd never... 'implanted' someone in all the time I knew him."

"This girl," he adds, suddenly. "Does he care for her?"

"Yeah," Karkat says. "Yeah, he does." He looks at the old human man curiously. The way he's talking really makes it sound like he's known Bert for a long time. Is he someone from Bert's world? "She's one of my friends," he informs the old human. "Like, from before Panem. You know the grey girl with the horns on this floor? About my age? That's her. That's Nepeta. So--are you from where Bert comes from? Are you his human parent thing?"

Roland listens closely, matching the name with a face he's already seen and committing the match to memory. He's gotten much better with names than he had been in Cuthbert's day, and once noted he wouldn't have forgotten anyway. But this deserves the extra focus. She's important.

But, of course, then. "His father?" Roland's expression, for a moment, is a perfect picture of shock. The two fingers of his right hand pass slowly over the skin of his face. For the first time in a long time, his age has come as a surprise. "No. Bert remembers the face of his father, I'm sure. Remembers it well. And that face isn't mine. No matter that now I look it."

"Has he told you much about our world? About Gilead?" Perhaps he should answer the boy's question. But a best friend, and now a girl Cuthbert cares for. Deeply or not, Roland doesn't know, but there's a lot there. Quite a lot. Perhaps he should answer, but perhaps he'd rather learn more before he gives anything of himself away.

Karkat shrugs. "Some stuff. Like, basic stuff like paper and glass is really rare and people there have really stupid ideas about things like how only males can fight--which is totally stupid because everyone knows that females are scarier and meaner--and, like, only males can romance females and vice versa. And guns are way fucking important, which is why there's gunslingers like Bert and his friends Alain and Roland. Are you a gunslinger? Oh and there's things called tets and they're led by guys named dinhs and there's this thing called ka that I don't really understand which is way fucking important anyway. And the world moved on, but I'm not sure from what."

Another shrug. "It's probably just as well you're not his human parent. I don't know if Bert likes his very much."

Edited 2014-04-04 05:41 (UTC)

"Did he tell you so?" Roland slides back to sit on the arm of the chair he's leaning against, briefly grasping at the air above his left hip before shaking his head and extending the hand, instead. "Then I think we need to get to know one another, if he shared such a thing with you. I'm Roland Deschain, and a gunslinger still. I know well the pains of calling oneself the best friend of Cuthbert Allgood." His lips twitch into a brief smile. "I almost fear to ask what he's told you of his friend Roland. Bert's version of the truth can be... creative."

The comment's part banal pleasantry - the kind of thing diplomats used to tell each other, I hope you didn't believe anything you heard about me! and then laugh like it's some great joke, and the first time it's ever been told. But it's partly truth, and clearly this is someone he needs to meet. There're things still pressing at him, things about Cuthbert and this tower and this city and everything else and he'd still rather learn more before telling anything of himself, but if he let unease and stress decide his every action he could no longer call himself a gunslinger at all.

"But-- but you're old," Karkat says before he remembers himself. "I mean, okay, shit, they do grab people from anywhen, there's no reason you can't be old--I mean, fuck, there's like a thousand sweeps between me and Signless, but--"

And then he realizes he's making a braybeast of himself.

"Karkat Vantas," he says, sticking out his hand to shake Roland's. "And, uh, don't worry, it's not so bad. I think like the worst is that you don't have a sense of humor, but then he doesn't think I have one either."

"That's probably a point in your favor." He shakes the grey, clawed hand, grip firm and brief, and then sits back, seeming bothered not at all by the earlier verbal fumbling. If Karkat had voiced the braybeast comment Roland would have waved it away with no thought at all. As tired as his tet had gotten of hearing it, he is old, and aware of that fact. "What Cuthbert called humor, the rest of us usually called 'nuisance'. At best."

"You say you've known him a year? Half a sweep?" His gaze goes distant, and he mutters to himself a moment. "Maybe from further back than I thought, then. Did he tell you where he'd been before he came here?"

"Uh, Gilead," Karkat says, "but I think he was somewhere else not too long before that. I dunno if it helps, but Bert was, like, fifteen in human years when they first grabbed us. They got us both at the same time--and it was during an arena, so we just got dumped in there. That's how we met, we made an alliance together--him and me and Signless, who's my ancestor--and dug a pit trap and stuff. I'm--"

He hesitates for a moment and then says, "I'm glad you're here. I know that's a fucking awful thing to say, but I guess I'm glad for Bert's sake. I've had other trolls around me since I got here but there was only one person even sort of from his world and she wasn't even from there originally."

Edited 2014-04-06 06:43 (UTC)

It's not as if there's no way 'fifteen' and 'somewhere other than Gilead' couldn't describe more than one thing. Roland moves one hand slowly along his jaw as he thinks it over, then wraps his arms around his chest. He doesn't want to assume the worst right away, and it's clear that's more or less all about it Karkat knows. But hadn't Cuthbert said last they'd met that he was a boy no longer?

Nevermind. Never mind all that now.

He focuses again on the yellow-eyed face in front of him. "Susannah." Which means she'd been here longer than a year. He hadn't thought to ask. It hadn't seemed to matter. "Believe it or not, I'm glad too. The place I was before..."

The endless field of red, that darkness stretching out above him. He closes his eyes, feeling the old pull toward it. That old yearning. And something new, nausea that twists his features before he opens his eyes again and pushes it back. "I'll go back there again, surely, but for now I'm glad to be where my friends need me. And glad to see Cuthbert's had someone he so trusts to watch his back. Sometimes it needs watching."

"Yeah," Karkat says. "Later on. She got here, uh, halfway between when me and Bert got here and now."

He's looking down at his lap, worrying his lips with his fangs. "I'm-- I'm actually really shitty at that. Not the last time but the time before, when we were on that stupid island, we split up for like an hour and when I went back to meet up with him, one of the Sherlocks--stupid fluffy hair Sherlock--was stabbing him. I-- I was too fucking late. I mean I got Sherlock for him, but--"

He's not entirely sure why he's telling all this to Roland, except he feels kind of shitty at the idea of Bert's old friend thinking he was any good at keeping people from getting killed because actually he was complete shit at it.

Edited 2014-04-06 11:55 (UTC)

He watches Karkat closely, taking in the guilt and the details of it, and once the explanation's done his gaze goes distant with thought. "Splitting up always carries that risk," he says, absently. It's not that hearing about Cuthbert's death had no impact - it's that it did. If Susannah, who's been here half as long as Cuthbert, spoke of death upon death... then what of Cuthbert? And the boy in front of him, come to that.

Roland knows death, knows it well, but death followed by life, only to die again, it's something he still can't quite fit his thoughts around. That endless circle, different but always the same. "Only one thing I know that can do that," he murmurs. "Only one. Not even the Great Old Ones had such machines." He squints at Karkat. "When we live again. How does it happen?"

It's not that hearing about Cuthbert's death had no impact. It's only that the crater from that impact has turned his thoughts in an entirely different direction than maybe it should have.

"We're-- not quite sure," Karkat says. "I mean, we can sort of make guesses about it? We used to think that they just fixed up our bodies somehow, because they try to collect the bodies as soon as we die. But-- but then one time they killed half of everyone right away with poison and didn't collect the bodies, but all of those tributes went somewhere else--so now we know they just don't fix our original bodies up. They do something else. And we don't know for certain what it is."

He bites his lip. "I can tell you my theory, though. I think they have a bunch of copies of our bodies that they make or get when they first kidnap us and they're all asleep, but our mind is still connected to them. Like with Dreamselves. Those were a thing from a thing me and my friends were doing." He doesn't want to exactly explain Sgrub to people, it's way too fucking complicated. "But with Dreamselves someone has to kiss your corpse to make sure you wake up in your dreaming body and it doesn't look like that has to happen here."

It's not a surprise that such things are done, the mass poisonings, but it's certainly not good news. Not as if having to kill each other for sport is any better. Roland listens with narrowed eyes, his mind turning the words over and fitting them against anything he might know.

"In my world, before the civilizations I knew, there came the people we called the Great Old Ones. I've never seen one of their machines make perfect copies of a body, but I think it'd be within their reach. Before their fall, the Old Ones became... twisted. Tainted. It could be these Gamemakers are some twinner kingdom to theirs." He thinks on it another moment. "I wouldn't be surprised. But before we know more, this is all just talk. Who is this 'we' you mentioned? You, Cuthbert... This 'Sign-less'. Nepeta. I'd hear their thoughts on it, if I could."

"Uh," Karkat says, "Shit. By 'we' I sort of meant everyone who'd been around for the double arena. Everyone who was around then knows that they don't need to take the corpses away to bring us back."

He bites his lips. "But, shit, you'd probably want to know about who Bert's in cahoots with anyway? Because of your tet thing. And I dunno how much you know if he didn't say anything about Nepeta. So. Okay. There's me, who you've met, and that Susannah lady, who I guess you already knew, and Nepeta, who's that troll girl on this floor, she's pretty cool but she likes to pretend she's a purrbeast, uh, I mean cat. And he hangs around us trolls because we don't look at him funny for being proud of how good he is at killing people. Well, except for Kankri but Kankri's a shithead. And Signless is another troll. He's genetically related to me and he's really weird, but also pretty much the nicest adult I've ever met. He looks like me but bigger."

"He's proud of the deaths he's dealt for the gamemakers?" The other information was important, but this is the part that needs to be clarified. There's so much about Cuthbert's life Roland doesn't know now. So much, and this may be the most worrying of all of it.

Karkat shrugs. "He acts like he is, anyway. I mean, he doesn't like the Gamemakers any more than the rest of us, but he's good at killing people and he's not ashamed of being good. And where we come from--most of us trolls, except that shithead Kankri--being good at killing people really isn't something to be ashamed of because you usually have to cull someone to make it to adulthood, or else they'll cull you instead. I'd had to do it twice before they grabbed me."

Not to mention however many times he'd must have done it as a grub in the struggle to leave the brooding caverns. Grub stuff didn't count. It's not like he'd been even properly sentient or sapient or whichever it was until after his first moult.

"I mean, okay, I'm not proud of the people I've killed here but two of 'em were kids younger than me and the third was fluffy asshole Sherlock to make up for not being able to save Bert, so there's not actually anything to be proud of."

He doesn't include Sigma in the count because that was a group effort and anyway he'd been still alive when they'd run off. He doesn't count any of the times he'd helped Cuthbert in the double arena either, because Bert had done the actually killing and he'd mostly just helped restrain people.

"But Bert's really good at this. He's taken down adults and has made it to the final week twice." Karkat shrugs again. "I dunno, isn't surviving something to be proud of?"

Roland gives that question the thought it deserves. Spends a second remembering those long years when survival was all there was, and that just a means to the only end that mattered. He shakes his head back and forth, slowly. Frowns. "Only if for a purpose. And even then-- I don't know. Certainly not for amusement. Entertainment." His lips twist in disgust, but he controls the expression quickly. No need for the boy to think that disgust is meant for him, and especially not meant for Cuthbert.

"To capture a gunslinger and make them kill for you... That killing's not something to be proud of. Only to endure." He looks at Karkat then, studying him. Cuthbert's no boy, and maybe this Karkat with is 'culling' isn't one either. But they seem it, suddenly. Children playing with their father's guns and sneaking back later to boast of it. Roland can't remember if he and Cuthbert had ever thought that way when it came to killing, thinks they did once, but now Cuthbert does and he doesn't and the years between them make him dizzy, and doubtful, and more than a little frustrated. That last probably shows in his voice as Roland plants a hand beside him and looks at the floor. "Gods, I don't know. Perhaps it doesn't matter what either of you think of survival so long as you do it."

Roland presses at the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. Well. There goes that effort at making an ally out of Cuthbert's closest friend. Did that need to be said? He has no idea. He wonders if he's thinking clearly enough to even figure that much out.

Karkat bristles, because for some reason he thought maybe people from Bert's world wouldn't be so stupidly holier-than-thou about killing as most humans. "Yeah, well, maybe some of us don't come from shiny fluffy wiggler-safe hugplanets like you do, shitprince."

He glares at Roland at first, but then looks away down at his feet because he knows, actually, from stuff Bert's mentioned that this guy's world is pretty dangerous on its own and really, he hadn't been as bad as some humans about this shit, he hadn't implied that Karkat was unredeemably shitty for having culled, he'd just said doing it for the Capitol's entertainment was nothing to be proud of.

Great. Now he felt kind of shitty for snapping at the old human.

"Back home," he says finally, in a quieter voice, "it really is a matter of survival. After we're hatched, we fight to the death as grubs for the right to leave the caverns and grow up. Once we leave, nobody cares if a bunch of kids cull each other. We're encouraged to, so that only the strongest are left by the time we reach Conscription age. We're expected to be good at killing once we're adults. We're supposed to be proud if we are. Because it means we're Good Trolls. A credit to the Empire."

He looks back up at Roland. "But killing for the Capitol's entertainment isn't killing for the Glory of the Alternian Empire. So, maybe you're right. I don't fucking know. Maybe you should talk to Signless. He's weird and doesn't think you have to be good at killing to be a good Troll or even cull at all. You'd probably like him."

Namecalling has never particularly bothered Roland, and this round of it actually surprises him out of a large part of his frustration. He lifts his face from his hand and stares, looking a little impressed before Karkat starts his explanation. How much of that friendship with Cuthbert was helped along by Cuthbert's appreciation for the creative vocabulary? A fair bit, probably. A lot's changed but probably not that.

"If I see him, maybe I'll seek him out. I'm sure 'weird' is the least of what either of us have been called." Roland twitches a corner of his lips up, thinking maybe he hasn't quite ruined things after all.

"You'll know him when you see him," Karkat says. "He looks like me, only bigger. Kind of like Bert and that mentor guy of his--which is kind of weird, actually--only more so." He peers thoughtfully at Roland before adding, "Hey, you've known Bert since you were both wigglers, right? So you'd know about all the stupid pancracked things he's done, right?" He examines his claws. "Except since he's come here. But I know those."

Roland watches the boy studying those claws of his, watches while he examines the sharp heat making its way through him and identifies it as jealousy. It's the way that last statement is said as much as anything else - so casual. Of course he he knows. Not even in question that this boy knows every detail of Cuthbert's life, while Roland himself is completely ignorant. Roland lets the feeling be, waits a silent moment for it to pass through and out of him. A little of the feeling still clings, but he senses a large part of it go with no hint of regret. Of all the different things swirling inside him at all he's learned, jealousy is a particularly unworthy one. This boy's stood with Cuthbert, protected him as best he can and stayed beside him when, apparently, few others would. It's a particularly good piece of luck - or maybe more, though his thoughts flit quickly away from that - that Bert's found such a person. All the other reactions inside him are more difficult to name, but even in the midst of that Roland does know that he is damned grateful.

He lets a breath go, slowly, and his wooden expression begins to soften.

"I'd know more about this mentor of his, but yes. Since we were in clouts." A corner of his lips twitches up. "Perhaps we can make an even exchange of it. Allies against Cuthbert for his own sake. Trade some stories." He doesn't know much about this boy yet, but that'd be a start.

"Yeah," Karkat says, "that sounds like a good ide-- shit, there's Nepeta. Look, we can talk later, okay? I'll see you around."

He hurries off in the direction of the troll girl with the horns like cat ears who's just entered the room.

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andddd i think we're done