(OPEN) at least he's not dead now

[crabmunicator]

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.

Comments

[crabmunicator]

"Mmmgh."

Karkat finds his hands and the surface beside him, and pushes himself up slowly as Kankri delivers his inevitable disapproval. It figures. Of course he'd never get away easily, and this, his meeting with the concrete, is the punishment he's earned for trying. He has no cuts or scrapes for the impact, but he won't be surprised if he finds a bruise or two later. It feels like he hit a couple spots hard enough.

"It's called tripping," he says as he looks up, now sat on his ass with legs folded at his sides. "You know, that thing where your hoof catches on something and you fall if you can't catch yourself soon enough? Or--you know what, check your balance privilege. Is that a thing now?" It sounds ridiculous enough to be something he'd say.

He pushes himself to his feet thereafter, taking a short moment to dust himself off from the impact. The initial dread has given over to inward frustration and a distinct, stinging embarrassment at his own spectacular fuckup. Maybe he should have just made for the elevator, and like--shoved him? Could he have done that? Just pushed him away and mashed the door close button? But no, even that would depend on how fast the elevator arrived. Now, though, his stomach just fills with the cold pit of knowing: knowing he's going to be stuck here, listening to him, for perhaps not forever but its dragging, illusory cousin.

It's... aggravating. Even here, even in this messed up murder world, he has to get caught and lectured. It's enough that he snaps, "The least you could have done is ask if I'm okay, but no, clearly it's my social skills that are at fault."

[privilegecheck]

Kankri's mouth twists unhappily at that. "You've made it more than clear that you wished there to be no sympathy between us, Karkat. And that's more the least you could have done, after disappearing for so long! Can you even begin to comprehend what I went through when you left? But no, of course, I cannot possibly have problems that equal even to you so much as tripping over yourself by no fault but your own."

He wishes he'd brought a book up here that he could pitch at Karkat's head. It'd feel a little better at least. Still, arguing with Karkat is at least a comfort in its odd way.

"How long have you been here?" he hisses, ire rising rapidly in his tone. How long has Karkat been- been avoiding him? Because that's clearly what he was trying to do here, and that's an even more upsetting thought. Has he been creeping around and staying away from Kankri for days? Weeks? And here Kankri had thought they had finally reached an understanding.

[crabmunicator]

There we are, the one other thing he could have wondered about: did Kankri know his past self? The answer turns out to be a solid yes, and from the sound of it past Karkat did well to complicate things here as well. He'd be happy enough to have this particular crossing trestle burned, but Kankri goes on to sound... worried? Concerned? Offended, certainly, but it's the tenor of the offense that proves pertinent. Like they had something, and now he's gone and hurt him by not thinking to let him know he's back. Like...

Oh dear god, please tell him this isn't what he thinks. The pointed negativity, yet the equally pointed evidence of missing him. It can't be, right? Kankri had his stupid vow, even if it was a clear ploy to make himself seem holier than everyo--

Fuck.

Please, please, please, reality, let him be wrong. With as many other times as he's made mistakes and misjudged things and guessed incorrectly, please, let him have this moment for the growing collection.

His hopes don't stop him from backing away. There is a certain horror that has formed in his eyes, and it grows across the moments.

"Dude, shut up and listen a second," he says, actually dropping the ire. "I've been here since the start of the last arena, but I don't remember anything past me did. I never even knew about him until someone else told me. I didn't know you were here, or, or what that even means to you."

[privilegecheck]

Perhaps Karkat will be surprised that Kankri does listen. As the words sink in, as the meaning of this Karkat's presence sinks in, Kankri's anger transmutes into a horror that mirrors the other troll's. He drops his eyes, but not fast enough to keep Karkat from catching a clear glimpse of the mortification and a different, deeper kind of hurt in his face.

"Oh," he says, suddenly out of steam - completely off the tracks, if he's being honest. His fists clench in his lap. "I, I do apologize. I'd assumed, and, er." He swallows, suddenly feeling more nervous and self-conscious than he has in recent memory. "Well, then, you certainly did nothing to earn my, ah, sour conduct towards you. I'm sorry to have behaved so, so rudely towards you."

Polite formality is simply what he defaults to when he doesn't know what to do, and with the awful gnawing feeling in his gut he can't think of anything else right now.

[crabmunicator]

Karkat certainly sees that look. Add in Kankri's rattled, almost embarrassed formality, and the dread he felt violently consumes his hope. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Why this?

He wants quite suddenly to sit down, but instead he settles for sinking his face into his hands. "Oh my god," he issues, muffled for their cover. "This isn't happening."

What's he supposed to do? He doesn't like Kankri, but he certainly doesn't hate him in that way. This isn't even the first past relationship he's learned of, but at least things came easy with the Signless. He explained things and said straight that he didn't expect any return, that he didn't expect things to be the same, and it went easy besides when he proved himself to be an alright troll. But this... He doesn't know where to begin.

"This is so awkward, I can't even pretend it isn't when the gross, bloated corpse of any chance at a normal exchange is hanging its festering weight above us. Its musty fumes filter down over us, a perverse blessing of discomfort as we simultaneously punch the last slot on our asshole cards, hereby winning the prize of stultifying social disaster." He's rambling, he knows he is, but what's he supposed to say?

"Just, I'm literally never going to say this again ever, but sorry. I mean, it sounds like--you haven't said it but it sounds like, like you and past Karkat had--had something, and I can't fathom it and don't want to fathom it but even my colossal douchebuggy runs out of fuel before that kind of interpersonal wreckage."

His hands are still over his face. He doesn't know when he's going to put them down.

[privilegecheck]

"We were kismeses," Kankri mumbles to his lap. "As you've likely guessed. Er, but, it's all right. I mean, it isn't, but it's not your fault, and it isn't as if I would hold you to - look, what happened was the result of a long time and a sequence of certain events and without that context there isn't a reason for me to- to-- let alone you, of course, but that's obvious." He's babbling, too, desperately trying to save some face, make this not as hideously awkward and awful as it is. He's all too aware that he's not really succeeding. At all.

"I am so sorry, I have made everything much more awful than it needs to be and this place is bad enough already. Is there anything I can do?" he asks wretchedly. After being such an utter embarrassment to trollkind, he feels like he needs to at least attempt making amends.

[crabmunicator]

Yep, bingo, fuck his life that's it. Karkat lets out an utterly defeated groan. he groans again when Kankri sinks into weird, awkward babbling, drawing out the discomfort of the moment into something even messier.

"Kankri, shut up." He might be nicer if it weren't him, and it is oddly satisfying in spite of everything to get to say that again. His hands finally slip down from his face. "If you can do that for me we will be one step closer to things not being awful."

Honestly, he'd like very much to leave and forget this whole thing happened, but he knows that doing that would just make every other encounter a reminder of how this ended. He finds the wall now to sink down himself, leaving a solid space between them.

"I'm going to be honest: I don't like you. But the kind of dislike I feel isn't remotely close to the kind you and past me had." How it wound up that way he doesn't know, and doesn't want to imagine. "Past me has done nothing but cause present me a heaping mountain of social chaos to navigate, with the ruins of broken quadrants to trip over and a bevy of landmines planted by past conflicts, all over the background of this place being what it is. I don't even know where to begin piecing it out."

[privilegecheck]

"No, I know," Kankri says miserably. He's still not looking at Karkat. "As I said, I don't expect you to feel that way without the...amount of time spent here, and the specific events that shaped that relationship. And complications...well, they are hardly avoidable in this sort of situation. He was here for a long time. I've been here for a long time."

He sighs gustily. "I feel as though I owe you another apology. It's entirely possible that the Capitol brought you here, in this incarnation and with no memories of time spent here, in some part for the spectacle of this very confrontation, and any others you've experienced with those who knew you previously. Romantic relationships between Tributes are grist for their media mill, you see. I made the mistake of thinking that perhaps we...he and I...were not at a risk as great for being sent away, but to be honest, they enjoy watching such relationships broken and hopelessly tangled as much as they like to watch them play out more naturally." He shakes his head. "Karkat was worried often about his public image becoming stale. I suppose the Capitol found their own way to spice up his - your - story for their viewers."

If he sounds more than a little bitter, he's reasonably sure that this Karkat won't blame him.

[crabmunicator]

"If you keep apologizing I'm going to form some sort of canker in my ear," Karkat grumps. He doesn't bother to say that he'd keep on his own emotional path even if Kankri did intend to push things, though the allowance and understanding certainly do no harm. They're much more than he expected, if he could be said to have ever expected anything in a situation where his dancestor was his past self's kismesis.

He knows he has a thing for people and their copies, but really now.

"Of course they're making a spectacle," he says a moment later. "They're already using us for entertainment by making us kill each other. Why wouldn't they want to raise the tension through ill-chosen emotional theatrics? This is a literal game we're stuck in, and every one of us is a meat-filled pawn to push around the chess board of the arenas, of this very planet, and every prod at our emotional sore spots is one more strategic move to pit us against each other for their amusement."

Indeed, he really can't blame him for bitterness. Kankri has been here longer, too, forced to die and see others die and all what that entails, for who knows how long. He's not going to ask how many arenas he's seen or all the traumas he's had. It's not his business, and it would only serve underlining to all he can expect for himself.

His knees draw up, and his arms fold around them. "I don't even want to think about quadrants right now." Not here, not in this place.

[privilegecheck]

"That's likely for the best," Kankri says glumly. "I wasn't thinking of it, either. They just sort of happened anyway. You can't avoid making connections, especially if you want people not to go after you in Arenas." He shrugs. "Either way, you're stuck."

He looks down at his hands, settled together in his lap, claws digging in a little. "And as you said, our previous Karkat's interactions with others don't help matters. I can offer you help with the things I know, but obviously I wasn't privy to everything he did. I can tell you what I know about some of the Tributes, if that would help? I at least know some about who to avoid."

[crabmunicator]

"It's hard not to have sympathy for people when we're all stuck in this," he says, arms still around his knees.

It's not the ideal way to make friends, but even when he does it hasn't been with ulterior motives. Not really, not with the other Tributes. His Mentor and Escort he's taken a cautious approach with, wanting at least their connections for survivability, even if it does mean he'll have to put up with the frustrations of parties and self-promotion for the sake of sponsors. Those that he can get - he doesn't feel as if he'll be popular, but then it's easy to think negatively of himself.

He mulls over Kankri's offer. It's not a normal thing to be offered actual, worthwhile help from him, but you know the saying about gift hoofbeasts: their teeth crush skulls.

"Tell me who to avoid. I already heard about Molotov and Black Tom, but if you know anyone else I'll keep it in mind."

There are things he could ask, and certainly questions he has about his past self's interactions, but he's gone through enough drama about the Initiate that he just wants to keep his mind off it right now. Besides, there's something weird about getting personal advice from his dancestor.