thecapitol | (OPEN) at least he's not dead now

Entry tags:

(OPEN) at least he's not dead now

Who| Karkat and whoever runs across him.
What| Now that he's out of the mini-arena, Karkat's exploring the place he has to live.
Where| All across the Training Center.
When| After his death in the mini-arena ~ a few days after. Anywhere around then.
Warnings/Notes| Karkat is pretty foulmouthed and irreverent, but nothing else. Feel free to use prose (whichever tense) or action; I'll adapt with you.

Of all the ways Karkat would wish to be welcomed someplace new, this was not one of them. Thanks to the arena, which they'd shoved him in with only minimal explanation, he'd suffered his second death in as many days. Wasn't it enough for Jane to fork him before he showed up? Did he really have to get...

He didn't want to think about it. Maybe it was better that it was something from the arena rather than a fellow tribute, but it didn't make being killed by an oversized, animatronic cartoon beast any better.

Even after, being alive was strange. Back during Sgrub and everything else before Panem, at least there were countless mechanics to explain why someone might revive. Here he didn't know what they did. Something technological? It wasn't unthinkable when they'd brought him here from another part of reality, and while he was glad to not be dead permanently, it was unsettling to think they had such technology at their disposal.

Now he was... not free, but at least somewhere safe. Not subject to the current edition of the Hunger Games, at any rate. He learned his district and what that meant. (District 6, transportation, here's your floor and your room.) He learned that the tower was host to tributes and the various mentors, escorts, stylists, and whoever else served part of this entertainment machine. Night would bring curfew, but days would be relatively open, giving him the chance to feel out his surroundings.

A.
One place he'd definitely find himself was the actual training center, the floor from which the building got its name. Being here would mean needing to be in shape and on his game, and while he had skills still left over from Sgrub, they would do no good if left unpracticed. If he could find a sickle amongst the weapons provided there, he'd be practicing with that. Otherwise he might check out the other stations. Learn knots? Sure. Learn edible plants? Worthwhile. And then there was regular old relief of frustration: he may not have been a fistkind user, but that didn't stop him from taking things out a punching bag.

B.
Night of course would leave him confined to the District 6 area. Unused to a bed, lacking sopor slime, and still rattled from the arena, he didn't sleep much. It didn't help that his species was naturally nocturnal, but even during the day he sought little rest. At least the common area had a TV and games to play, and the kitchen helped for hunger or thirst. It wouldn't be hard to spot the look on his face: tired and grumpy, with perpetual bags under his eyes.

C.
During the day again, he more than once found himself up on the roof. Here the atmosphere was less stifling, with fresh air and an actual sky to see, unlike the darkness or the void or luminescent shapes of dream bubbles back on the meteor. It wasn't his sky, not the one he knew from Alternia, but if it had been he wouldn't have been able to stand the sun. This was tolerable - relaxing, even - and it gave him a space from everything else.

D.
But beyond the rest, he wandered. The tower was big, and he knew well enough that people he knew had to be around. He'd heard mention, or seen a flash of horn in the arena he couldn't stop long enough to identify, and he had run into Eridan while he was still in there. It meant teammates or friends were here, and these above all else he sought out, carrying him through common rooms or the lobby or across hallways and elevators throughout the tower. Feasibly anyone could run into him; though short, most people weren't grey with horns, and it made him stand out.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"A little, yes," he agrees with the smallest hint of a smile as he settles to sit across from the other troll. At least Karkat hasn't just shut down the conversation entirely and left, and that means they still might be able to make something out of this whatever-this-is.

"There were a lot of things that lead to us quadranting and I think a good deal of them were circumstantial."

They both had no one else and were both still reeling from the shock of being brought to Panem in the first place. They were both meeting, for the first time, the only other troll in existence in the Alternian universe who could truly understand what it meant to be like them. They both needed someone and at the time it helped. He doesn't think it would now.

"Circumstances are very different now. I would much rather start over and get to you know you than I would want to assume anything, if you're open to the idea."

He doesn't return the smile, but he doesn't smile very often even in a good mood. Instead he rubs at his face, hands dragging down before his fingers set to rubbing his temples. No headache yet, but this place and this conversation feel like they're going to inspire one, even with Signless's good intentions.

He drops his hands to his lap.

"Yeah. I'm not jumping into anything. I'm not even in a position to think about a moirail right now."

He realizes he doesn't even know when his past self was from. Had Gamzee broken up with him yet? Were they still together, but enough time passed without him for something to happen? Had they not even become a thing yet? And if he was doomed - if they're both doomed, as worry nags him - what if the whole relationship went different? What if it never even happened for him? But that's not really going to help him understand the Signless.

"Start talking. Tell me about yourself. Basically all I know is snatches and Kankri's endless goddamn ghost lectures about why he doesn't approve of your methods, and I am not going to try to dredge up what if anything worthwhile he said in the literal hours of diatribe he shoved down my sponge clots."

It's a little daunting to be expected to succinctly describe himself, especially to someone he wants so badly not to scare off. He has to quickly decide what's important and what isn't and what if he chooses wrong?

"Ah -- well. I'm from Alternia a few thousand sweeps in your past. I was raised by a jadeblood who left her position in the brooding caverns, as no lusus would take me. We lived in the wilds for the most part because it was safer, until I started having visions of my life as Kankri -- I'm sorry, I don't know exactly how much of this you know already." His last Karkat had never even heard of him or Kankri when they first met, so he's already out of his depth.

"Through those visions I learned about Beforus and Sgrub and the Scratch. After that, after knowing my hand in making Alternia into the violent and hateful place it was, it felt only natural to want to make it better. I thought if I could just get people to listen, to realize there were other ways to think and act, things would change." He smiles ruefully. "And people did listen. They took what I said and made it into a far more angry and violent revolution than I intended, but how could I tell them not to try to make things better for themselves when that was all they wanted? So maybe your Kankri was right to question my methods. I let things get far too out of hand and all that really came of it was more suffering."

He hasn't really talked about this, at least not so frankly, in quite some time. This is something he's already come to terms with and moved on from. On Alternia, he failed. He failed miserably and sent everyone he cared about to even worse fates than the slow death he got.

That isn't going to happen here if he can help it. Here he isn't bound by that timeline and that means there's still a chance for him to do good.

"But I tried. I wanted very badly to make the world you came into -- because I knew you would, eventually, as per the conditions of the Scratch -- I wanted to make that world a good place for you. I'm sorry that I couldn't."

Edited 2014-11-24 05:51 (UTC)

Karkat's not exactly thinking about what's easy to explain, but he's not exactly expecting a full rundown all at once. The Signless surprises him in that department. But he does get what he wanted: a distraction from the central awkwardness, and something more to think about. Beyond that, it's more of a proper introduction to him.

He waves him off when he pauses for lack of knowing what he's familiar with yet. That's not important, and beyond the first rundown it's an expansion from what he knew. Visions and being raised by Kanaya's ancestor were the main things, but it's the rest that fleshes it out into something more real, if condensed. Karkat's posture straightens up and his head lifts, real interest filtering in the more the Signless speaks.

He only interrupts him once: "Never tell me Kankri was right. I don't even want to think about him."

But from there he lets him finish.

It takes him a good long space to think what he wants to say to it, and if Signless were to try to speak first, he'd hold a finger up to forestall it. It's an apology he never expected, and a self-awareness Kankri would never show. Had he been self-righteous about any of it, it would have been easy to be mad about how the world turned out, but this isn't the attitude he receives at all. Still, it's strange to think someone knew he'd come, even if he likely heard so before.

"The thing about being a leader," he says at a slow pace, once his thoughts have settled into order, "is that people are always going to find a way to be assholes, bulgebites, morons, and general pains to deal with. It's an exercise in herding cats, only they talk back and are twice as willful, to say nothing of the actual cat-associated members of our respective groups." He's heard of the Disciple, though the whole of it escapes him.

"You aren't the only one who ever fucked up and had to learn what happened as a result," he finishes quietly. There's sincerity in his eyes as he looks at him.

It's not a rejection. If anything it's the metaphorical extension of a hand, a way to bridge the awkward gap between them. It's what he wanted more than anything and yet the Signless is still surprised that he's actually getting it; his experience with stubborn young Vantas trolls thus-far had him expecting a more drawn-out period of trying to overcome the initial awkwardness.

He reminds himself firmly that he can't make comparisons. This Karkat is different, older, has perhaps learned more in the extra time he's had. He's no more the Karkat that Signless knew before than the Initiate is the Grand Highblood he might have one day become.

"In my experience it's a tried and true Vantas tradition." He offers a cautious smile, baring even more of those blunt teeth than his overbite usually shows.

"No matter how loudly you speak and how carefully you choose your words and how often you repeat yourself, it's no guarantee that people will listen -- or that anything you're saying would actually be helpful to them if they did."

He's had extensive experience by no with doing something he thinks will help only to have it backfire spectacularly. It's something he's grown hyper-aware of at this point.

"But I think another thing about being a leader is the ability to keep moving forward even when you do make a misstep. Leaders are still only people and all people are fallible."

Karkat doesn't even know what point in the timeline his previous self was from. He's avoided asking, owing to the fear of what he might learn when the thought of doomed timelines keeps flitting through the back of his mind. But the three years on the meteor have given him time to consider, time to learn, time to make huge fuckup romantic mistakes and realize how badly he shit the bed on that front. Existential crises and meeting the dancestors added their own new perspectives, and the inevitability of certain failures is well-ingrained in mind. His acceptance doesn't mean he's happy about it - indeed, he still takes too much blame on himself - but it's the best he can do just yet.

It's the combination of those two things, acceptance and self-blame, that make him cringe. He knows far too well how the best intentions can screw everything up spectacularly. Some of his worst mistakes have come about that way.

"We don't have a choice," he answers back. "Of course we have to keep going. If you just give up and resign the title, then what? You leave those assholes to themselves? It just--" Brow furrowing, lips pressing tight, his gaze drops to his folded legs. "You always have to be better than you are if you want things to go right. You don't get to fix what went wrong, or not in a way that stops the initial fallout, and that's the worst part of it."

His frown has turned deeper when he looks back up. It's not really where he intended to take things, but it takes little to bring that line of thought back to mind. The path is too-well trod; his mental feet carry him there without fail as soon as he lets his guard down.

"Everything is always bigger than what we can handle."

"It certainly does feel like it a lot of the time." He thinks back to the promise he made to his Disciple and the last Karkat. Keep things small. Limit the people you care about or else you'll kill yourself trying to care about everyone.

"You run yourself ragged trying to meet an ideal that you can never quite catch up to, because no matter how well you think you're doing, you could always be doing more. You have to carry all of your own problems and everyone elses' on top of them, and it weighs you down such that you can't keep up with the pace you've set for yourself -- and so you feel like a failure for falling behind, because admitting that you might need a break is unthinkable when so many people are depending on you."

He knows so, so well the feeling of inadequacy, of failure and shame, that comes with the realization that there's next to nothing he can do for all the people that need him. He's never had it worse than he did when he first came to Panem.

"Of course I can't take a break," he says, something sharper coming back into his focus. His posture leans in, lending emphasis to his words. "Even if I can't ever be good enough, I have to keep trying, keep doing something, because when I let my guard down everything goes to shit."

That's what happened on the meteor. Maybe if he'd done something more then Gamzee wouldn't have gotten so pious. Or if he'd just talked to Terezi about her thing with him, maybe that wouldn't have become the mess it did. Or the whole mess he thought of back during his conversation with Dave, auspisticizing between Rose and Kanaya to let Kanaya serve that role for Gamzee and Terezi--

It was a mess, no matter what, and like with too many things he feels responsible.

"It's like I just said. Being a leader means I have to keep going. Even if I fuck up it doesn't stop there. There's always going to be more to deal with, more that people will need leadership for, more I need to do. And I'm not going to let them down just because I'm a little tired of it."

"It's admirable to take that stance, I think. To keep going for the sake of others simply because you feel as though you need to be doing something to help. There are always things you can do, even if you can't fix the big problems all on your own or all at once."

He means that, too. He knows how tempting it is to give up and give in to a sneaky self-hate spiral. Failing at one thing means you'll fail at everything else, doesn't it, so what's the point? And it's good to see that Karkat has neatly side-stepped that kind of thinking.

"Remember though that even if you're supporting everyone else, you yourself need support, or taking on all of that work caring for so many people will kill you. Trust me as someone who knows. That isn't the kind of work you can do alone."

There's a twitch of his eyebrows, a certain skepticism. Is Signless mocking him in saying that? But he goes on, and his voice is too sincere. He's a Vantas who actually does something - did something - future-past will do-had dod something? Screw time travel.

Signless doesn't even know the depths of Karkat's self-hate spirals. Those recur like a rash of nasty sores, and with it comes much self-blame. Failure always happens sooner or later; he's just trying to minimize it.

But what does he mean with the last bit? Again his eyebrows knit, and his frown pulls deeper at the corners. "Well what am I supposed to do?" he asks. "Walk away until I have a moirail to keep me level? I'm not in any kind of position to begin thinking about that right now."

"Not a moirail necessarily. I wouldn't mean to imply that any kind of romantic relationship is necessary to someone's wellbeing. You don't need a moirail, but you at the very least need someone else you can vent to."

It's difficult to ever really know the depth of someone else's issues, especially issues as deeply ingrained as Karkat's. But Signless knows his own shortcomings and he knows how easy it is to keep all of his pain to himself so as not to burden anyone else with it, resulting in it eating him up from the inside. He can't imagine Karkat is much different.

"As someone who has made these mistakes, I promise you it will help in the long run to remember that you don't need to give the appearance of having everything completely under control at all times."

Karkat's expression doesn't change as he continues to regard him. Venting--well, venting makes sense as a thing to do, but how can it solve everything?

"You're telling me to solve my problems by carefully applied bitching?" he asks, like he's missed something. "Trust me, I bitch plenty as it is. Ask Dave; he's been on the end of a lot of it. It just doesn't fix stuff or make me a better leader."

It certainly didn't make them any more ready for when Jade showed up. In fact, he's still certain that if not for her coincidental intervention, they would have kept on sailing past the new session and back into the abyss.

"No, no. I'm not telling you that it can solve your problems. If merely expressing frustration with something could solve problems the world would be a much better place." Alternia would have been a utopia in a matter of sweeps if that were the case, he's fairly certain.

"But airing not just your frustrations but also your fears and insecurities to someone you trust can help you better combat them, instead of keeping them inside and letting them fester while you act as though there's nothing wrong. Do you see what I mean? It won't directly solve your problems, but it will keep you better-equipped to move toward that goal."

"No shit, Signless," he fires back. He's done a metric shitton of complaining in his life, and if it were that easy he wouldn't have had to do so much.

But it's the rest that tugs his mouth to a look of uncertainty. Complaints are safe and easy. That part...

"I don't need to go venting my insecurities to people. What do they need with me whining about that?" It would look too weak of him, he feels, though he doesn't dare say it.

"It isn't for them," he points out.

"It's for you. But this is only meant as a suggestion based on what I myself have observed. You needn't take it if you don't want to."

Karkat frowns at him for a good moment, not that he wasn't already, but this is his I-am-frowning-look-at-my-face frown.

"Okay, whatever. Ancestorly advice dispensed and received, inasmuch as that's a thing to be given out and listened to. Which I guess it is now because it literally just happened, and wow, my life is stupid." He waves his hands like a double-fisted chalkboard clearing.

"What are you here for? Obviously I was learning about fires until you came and thought I was past me, but I doubt you just came in to kneel at my feet and confuse the heck out of me."

"That wasn't exactly my intent, no, but what I was originally here for is meaningless to you when you don't remember me. An apology is pointless when you don't remember the transgression."

He runs a hand through his messy hair, shifting his posture just a little where he sits. Why did he stay, then, once the initial misunderstanding was cleared up?

"And then I stayed because... it's as I said. I'd like to start fresh. I would like to eventually be allies, if not friends."

Karkat's gaze holds on him for a long moment, curious, but he ends up not asking. Whatever his past self did isn't his to worry about if it's not causing problems now. Signless clearly knows whatever it was he did wrong, too, so that's less chance of a repeat.

What he says after gets a moment of mulling, but he nods without a fuss. "I think we already made clear that we're starting fresh, and I'll definitely take allies. I never wanted to be in this game, and I'm going to have enough people to worry about as it is."

"Allies, then," he says with a relieved smile. Allies is good. Allies he can do, particularly here where each and every one is indispensable when it comes down to it.

"If there's anything that you have questions about, anything that you need, please let me know. I've been doing this long enough that I have a lot of knowledge built up, if not necessarily skill."

Karkat holds his hand out, and if Signless will take it, he'll give it a firm, brief shake to seal the deal.

"I'm positive I'm going to have to learn a lot of it just through experience. But there is one thing: how likely am I to find a sickle in the arena?" They don't exactly seem common here, but a part of him holds out hope regardless. "My issues with this whole situation set neatly to the side, I at least want to have some idea of what I'll have to defend myself with if it comes down to it."

Signless takes the offered hand readily, glad to have things for the moment squared away between them. At Karkat's question, his smile becomes a little sheepish.

"Not very likely, I'm afraid. Weapons usually tend toward straight knives or swords. Sometimes I've seen other things -- axes, bows -- but in the last few arenas they've been rare."

His hand drops away as the line of his mouth turns crooked. "Fffuck. That's what I was worried about."

His gaze casts out to the area around them. Sicklekind has always been his go to, and while he's bound to keep at it if he can for familiarity's sake, he knows this means he'll have to pick up something else. "Maybe I can get Dave to teach me swordfighting," he muses with resignation. "Either that or I just waltz up to the nearest tribute next time and invite them to get things over with."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

(OPEN) at least he's not dead now

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject