(OPEN) a vial of hope and a vial of pain

[crabmunicator]

Who| Karkat and OPEN
What| Karkat finally returns after the Binding plot.
Where| Around the tower.
When| Around when Sigma's announcement happens & afterward.
Warnings/Notes| Mentions of police brutality and brainwashing.

It's a little after Karkat has stepped back into the Tower that the announcement comes up over some monitor or several, demanding attention. He should have expected this, but he's feeling disoriented enough that it takes him a moment to process what it is. Sigma is no one he's ever met, so that part doesn't matter, but the subject of rebels and anti-Capitol plot filters through and tethers his attention.

He can tell the Capitol slant in how it's worded and presented, and a part of him still hates them for it, but the sharpest part is what he already knew: the Initiate brought this all. As much as he wants Panem to change, as much as he wants freedom for his fellow Tributes, he's never going to forgive the Initiate for trying to turn it into something for him to take over.

He shudders at the end and turns to move forward.

A. The Lobby

It's a bit hard to miss Karkat on his return. Though washed and dressed in fresh, clean clothing, he walks with a noticeable limp and a slight wobble besides. For all his gunshots to his right thigh were finally tended in the end, you don't go three days with little more than scraps of your disguise to bind them without having a lot of soreness left over. It's only by virtue of being a troll that he didn't come out worse for it. But beyond that is a general soreness, left over from the roughness of the Peacekeepers during his imprisonment. His sleeves are long, his pants covering, and they hide the extent of the bruises he bears.

Still, a tired, limping, dizzy tribute is not a steady one, and if not spotted on his own - either during the broadcast, or after as he makes his way to the elevators - then he's bound to get attention when he bumps into people.

"Shit, sorry," he mumbles. He's not trying to hit anyone, but his legs just won't cooperate.

B. District Six

Eventually he makes it back to his district. He's been missing for three days, easily noticeable for the lack of grumping, shouting, and orange horns going around. And it's here for a while that he stays, aiming first to shuffle off to his room to lay the fuck down, if no one stops him first - but it's not like no one can knock on his door.

Sooner or later, though, once he's feeling less of the weird nausea that's bothered him since the end of his imprisonment, he heads back out into the kitchen and then the common area. Winces and swears come from the former as he digs through the fridge for an orange, and eventually he settles himself on a couch in the latter, picking off bits of peel and pith with a claw. Some inane talk show plays on the television, but he's not watching it. Not really.

C. First Floor Restaurant

It's later after his stomach has shown that it can keep the orange down that Karkat decides he wants a real meal. Three days of bread and water will do that to you, and so after another limping trip down, he brings himself in to the restaurant off from the lobby and sets to ordering something.

"Yes, just the soup--no, no bread--no crackers--no sandwich, just the soup, alright? If I'm still hungry I'll order something else," he huffs at a concerned-looking waitress, who had been trying to ply him with are you sure?s and you look awful hungry. Good intents, to be sure, but he doesn't want to touch bread for a week. He doesn't dare tell why.

D. The Roof

With being stuck on house tower arrest until the next arena, Karkat ends up spending a lot of his time on the roof. Furnishings inside may be comfortable enough, but it gets stuffy, and he's had enough of being stuck inside to last him for a good while. The roof at least has fresh air and a view of the sky, and he heads up day or night to sit, watch the city, and most often read.

Did you want that other chair? Too bad, because he's too busy tugging it over with his good foot so that he might prop his right one on the seat. It feels better for his leg, and the less soreness he has, the better he can enjoy the trashy romance novel he's currently stuck his nose in.

E. District 9 (Closed)

Between everything else, sometime after making it back to his floor, getting some food and drink in him, and laying on his actual bed for a while, Karkat gets back up to visit this District. He's still sore and tired, but those things are weighed out by the need to visit his important people and communicate the fact that he's not dead or Avoxed. Three days may not equal the week he was gone after last arena, but it's three days after the Initiate's plan went off and the broadcast from Sigma Klim can't have eased worries.

It takes him a while to get up - most of his time in jail was spent sitting around to keep from worsening his wounds, so he's not yet used to walking on his hurt leg - but get there he does. Elevators help, thank fuck; he doesn't want to think about stairs for another week. And from there it's not too far to one of the doors he intends to visit.

He knocks with the back of his hand, but doesn't call any greeting. There will be time enough to talk once he's inside and sat down.

Comments

Lobby!

[allyorfoe]

Tabris is used to being bumped into, everyone around here seems determined to scrape the ceilings, well into six feet tall. And a good chunk of them forgot to look down at what the smaller folks might be up to. However, she's not used to bumping into someone that can look her square in the eye. She doesn't move too much back--She's got a pretty solid build, and he doesn't have much weight on her. It still evokes a scowl, and she turns to him, to ask just what the idea was--

Oh, it was that kid. That one kid from the network, that wasn't a qunari, but was cranky as hell. Except he ain't looking so cranky right now. He looks like he got ran over by an angry stampede.

The scowl fades, because in the end, he's just a kid, younger than she was when she started out into the Wardens, and he looks like the last thing he needs is a scolding. Instead, she tilts her head, holding her arms out to steady him. She can't see through clothing, but she can see that he's not doing so hot. Got into a fight with another tribute? Got really drunk? Who knew.

"Hey, it's okay. Are you alri--No, you're not, but you can lie if you wanna, and I'll pretend to believe you. Shit, what floor are you on? I'll walk you up. Something weird's been going down, you shouldn't be wandering along like this." Something weird. That's all she knows. Hushed whispers and missing tributes, oddities at the ends of her radar, like the tension before a storm.

"I can carry you if it won't damage your pride."

[crabmunicator]

Who the--?

Oh. He knows that face. It takes him a second, but he does still, and the steadying hands are more welcome than they should be. Funny how she asks things, though: he's one of the missing, gone for three days straight, not a hint of alcohol on him. He's never tried human soporifics and doesn't plan to.

"Sore and dizzy," he says, and it's not a lie, but it's clearly not the whole truth. He doesn't need someone uninvolved knowing about the bandaged gunshot wounds on his thigh, let alone the treatment from the Peacekeepers. "And kind of sick. Don't carry me."

He doesn't have anything to throw up, but he doesn't need to feel worse by being jostled around. His pride, such as it is, has long since been shattered on the floor somewhere.

"Just give me something to lean on and take me up to District 6."

[allyorfoe]

"Alright, then. You can lean on me, I'm a lot sturdier than I look." She takes his arm, and wraps it around her neck, and puts her arm around his waist. Keeping him steady, and trying to take as much of his weight as she can, she begins to help him to the elevator. She keeps glancing over at him, and while curiosity is certainly there, she seems to mostly be feeling concern. She's a leader, and it's hard not to just try to smother wounded people in her attempts to care for everyone.

Especially kids. She really needs to stop fawning over all the kids or Alistair is going to start asking awkward questions.

In the elevator, the button is pressed, and she adjusts him, just slightly. "You look like shit, kid. Is there anything special you're going to need? Like. Special troll stuff. Medical troll stuff...?" The qunari teasing is dropped for now, though it will be assuredly picked up again once Karkat seems to be in better spirits.

"I have to admit, I'm decent enough at first aid, but I don't know how to do anything in this world. Don't even have elfroot. You can make it into a tea, and it perks you right up. Spindleweed would settle your stomach. But I don't know shit all here. Is your mentor decent? I can try asking them." She can't help but chatter, because that's what Tabris does, but it's mostly concerned chatter. Maybe a soup would work? They had meat here, she could whip up something.

d. roof

[biiowiired]

Psii had thought the worst when Karkat didn't turn up for three days. Unable to do anything, efforts at trying to find him proving futile. And then Sigma's broadcast put Psii in mind of Avoxing and punishments to come for all involved. Even as he knew each breath he drew could be his last, he worried more for the missing rebels. Each person that returned was a small weight off his chest. He felt guilty for feeling any shred of relief while Signless's moirail was walking around an Avoxed ghost, but goddammit he had to grasp onto something, even if that something was counting the amount of live allies versus dead or missing. He'd flitted here and there around the city, tracking down people and making sure they were alright.

"Karkat."

He's still alive. His second thought is, Thank God he's not Avoxed, and he felt terrible for it. Psii felt his hands shaking. Psii was invested in keeping a lot of people safe, Karkat included. He had a bit of a problem, and this rebel plot hadn't helped it. Here he had come so close to letting yet another person beloved of Signless get raked across the coals. He should have planned better, helped more with coordination, something.

Psii had a hacker's hand in this, punishable by death, and he still remained unscathed. Sometimes Psii flashed back to times of slavery, when a friend would die and he would live. Why couldn't it have been him? He could be the scapegoat and the world would still turn with one less lisping nerd.

He had to word this carefully so he didn't blow his cover where there might be bugs.

"I wath the one heckling you. It wath me. And it didn't work. You thtill got hurt. It'th my fault." How this translated to being his fault he wasn't sure, but he felt it anyway. Survivor's guilt. People were getting captured while he checked his codes. "I'm thorry."

[crabmunicator]

That voice, and more the tone with it, brought Karkat's eyes up from his book. The Psiioniic wasn't someone he'd seen involved in the proceedings, but the way he spoke told enough of worry that even before saying so he suspected he may have had part. To hear him actually say it put a pain in his heart.

"No, it's not you," he said, folding his book shut without any care to mark his page. "It's absolutely not you, you shut your virulent trap. You don't get to blame yourself for anything."

With the book set on his lap, he motioned over - not wanting to rise, with his leg hurt as it was - and moved his foot from the seat it had stolen. The last thing he wanted was for someone he wasn't even close with to go putting pain on himself over what was all the Initiate's fault. How he'd make it clear he didn't know, and he didn't dare break an innocent's cover, but not talking wouldn't solve it any more easily.

[biiowiired]

It wasn't Psii if he wasn't flinging apologies left and right. He noted the way Karkat gingerly set his leg down. Easily seeing weaknesses in others was a survivalist Alternian troll thing. Karkat's fire was gone, replaced by this tepid watery ghost of himself. Anyone could see that. It was why Psii didn't heckle him more now.

Psii approached the chair as directed and tensely settled in it. Unlike Karkat, Psii was completely unharmed. He was hale and healthy as a stressed sleepless troll could be, excepting a deepening of the rings under his eyes. His face was a more ashen sort of grey with his continued efforts to fight down the bile of horror. Someone Psii knew, even if he hadn't exactly liked the clown, had been Avoxed. The punishment hit too close to home for the former slave.

"I promithed SS I'd keep an eye out for you. He'th important to me, and you're hith dethendant. You were gone for three dayth, and you come back with a weird leg. What happened?" What is the version of your story you'd like to say, that is safe to speak here? What was left unsaid could tell Psii a lot, given he was in the know about quite a bit.

"Or if you'd like, we could alwayth relocate thomewhere elthe to clear your head," he added gently. Somewhere with no cameras or mics.

D6, AND DOES SHE CARE IF SHE'S ALLOWED IN THERE? (no)

[earthborn]

Back home, people had talked about her ability to inspire loyalty as if it were some mystical quality that she had somehow acquired via divine provenance. It was annoying, really, because as far as Shepard could tell, there were only two real components it took. You want to make someone think you care? Act like you care about them. You want them to do anything for you? Do anything for them.

It was work, and it was personal, and it was unrelenting, so of course most of them wouldn't do it, but it'd take more than laziness to stop Shepard. It behooved a woman of her age to set standards, and then to keep them.

When she walked into the District Six common room, catching the door on someone's exit in blatant flagrance of all the rules, Shepard found Karkat torn between idly not watching the latest episode of paternity-test drama and idly not eating his damn food. She watched him carefully avoid doing anything for a few minutes, then cleared her throat.

"Hey. You got a minute?"

[crabmunicator]

Karkat had visited others on their floors often enough that when Shepard showed up, it wasn't that part that surprised him. More he was surprised by how quick she was in it--but then, with the announcement that Sigma guy had made, perhaps she had guessed, or maybe there had been some other prisoner freed who had tipped her off.

He flicked a bit of pith from where it had caught under his nail, orange still held firmly in his other hand, and frowned at her. Not the mad kind of frown, the get-out look he might give, but something sore and dreading. He had figured he would have to talk to people about it eventually, but the wound was still fresh in his heart.

"Go on and sit," he told her anyway, and with sticky prongs motioned to a seat beside him.

[earthborn]

Shepard looked him over, as if judging the worth of his suggestion, then sat, sliding gracefully enough over the top of the sofa. There's a right attitude to these things; it involves putting your feet up on the coffee table. Shepard did so.

"Missed you at practice this morning," Which was, by her tone, nearly unforgivable, "Got to say, I'm not impressed by your perseverance."

D

[dead_black_eyes]

Linden comes up here like clockwork, mostly because chain-smoking with Nill is one of the things he can rely on to make him feel a little less used-up and hollow. Holding the cloud of nicotine and tar in his lungs is like trying to recapture the feeling of having a soft, warm, living soul, but it never works alone. Only, strangely, with Nill by his side does he even come close to remembering the person he was before his arena, the one who insulted Caesar Flickerman's toupee on live television and talked passionately about finding his parents and bringing them home.

Tonight, he doesn't see her. Only a diminutive grey figure with orange candy-corn horns poking out from a mop of dark hair that actually looks a fair amount like Linden's from a distance. He hasn't spoken to the troll since before his capture, and after giving it some thorough thought, he approaches with his pack of cigarette. Both chairs taken, he climbs up onto the guard rail, lighting a cigarette and then swinging backward, essentially hanging off the guardrail by the back of his knees.

"You know this already, but you're in a world of trouble," he calls up, taking a draw on the cigarette and then letting his arms dangle toward the ground stories below. There's no danger; the forcefield ensures that, but it's still a rush, something Linden's been short on since quitting morphling.

[crabmunicator]

Karkat's heard tell of the forcefield before, something he has no desire to test, but even knowing it's there doesn't stop his stomach from dropping when he sees his Mentor casually stroll up, climb, and hang off the rail like a fucking lunatic. May it suffice to say he's lost interest in his book.

"Jegus, would you get up from there?" he calls over. Of course he knows he's in trouble, and an official pardon doesn't change that. "I'll give up my hoofrest if you'll just sit down in a chair like a normal person. Then you can come berate me as much as you want, or whatever you're here to say to me."

D

[ka_sera_sera]

It's been a day since the announcement, since they all discovered the consequences of their actions. Roland doesn't even know if they succeeded. It's too much of a risk to ask.

He's heard of Karkat's return, because once you start listening for news of one person or another you find out that this tower is a very small place. But Roland hasn't tried to see him, and his reasoning for that is sound but that doesn't make the fact that he hasn't any better. Roland had come up here for a break, too, for although this place reminds a small part of him of Cuthbert now it is still almost beautiful, and seems high away from the ugly realities of the city below.

But of course, there is no escaping the ugly realities of the Capitol - only the illusion of escape, easily broken. Another piece of that reality sits in front of him with his leg propped up on an extra chair and Roland's steps slow. His expression is grim, briefly, holds something like sympathy, something like guilt. "Karkat," he says, and hunkers beside the chairs to speak to the boy on his level. "It's very good to see you. You need anything?"

going to assume Karkat hasn't talked to Signless yet just to make this easier

[crabmunicator]

Karkat's sat up watching the city, and though he's brought a book with him it sits closed on his lap. He tried to read earlier, but his mind is too caught up in everything that he hasn't been able to focus, helped little by how tired he still is. His clothes hide real sign of wound, but the look to his face is telling still. All the rest he got before the mission matters little after something like that.

He's not worried when he hears someone approaching, but he does look when he nears, in time for Roland to crouch at his side.

"That's a weird question to ask, old man," he teases, but even that comes out with a tired tone. "Do you know how to sleep without dreams?"

He hasn't got a lot of hope for that, but it's worth a try when he's sure he'll never get sopor to sleep in again.

E

[reassures]

There must have been something truly ironic about Nill trying her damnedest not to lead people to Karkat and Linden, only for the both of them to end up in far worse situations than she did regardless of what she actually managed to do during the binding. If she didn't sleep much before all of this, save for at least trying when encouraged by karkat, then she sure as hell wasn't sleeping after.

She's been all over the place the past few days, and she has not expected anything even close to good. It takes her a moment to tear herself away from her desk, mostly just because she's tired, but then she's at the door and pulling it open. Karkat's face is about the last thing she expects to see on the other side, and Nill's eyes go wide, taking him in, before she hesitantly extends a hand towards him. He looks awful, and she has no idea if being touched is even close to what he wants right now, but she had been so scared. He really came back?

Though it doesn't seem like she's smoking when she opens the door, and no obvious scent of nicotine and tar permeates the room, it probably is still lingering on her clothes.

[crabmunicator]

There's no obvious wounds just in looking at him, but when Nill opens the door he still carries the mien of someone who's had a very shitty three days. He has his weight put on his left foot, and his face has that look it gets when he hasn't been sleeping.

He takes her extended hand, glad for it and not a hug right now, and presses it against his cheek. Not a pap, not when he doesn't make her pat it, but just holding it there. Though the smell of smoke is stronger on her than usual, it's not his concern just this instant.

"Can I come sit down? I'm sore." Which is the least of it, but is safer to say.

D

[wizardplease]

When they won't let you outside but you still want to get some air, at least there's the roof. He'd call it a small mercy, but really, just being here instead of in a cell or in a body bag was an enormous mercy. He hated to give any legitimacy to the Capitol's take on things, but he wasn't dead. And they could have very well made him dead. And they didn't. That is, as much as he'd rather not admit it, a pretty serious amount of mercy.

Not that he wants to think much about any of that. He just wants to get air, maybe sit down and read the book that China gave him, and not ponder too hard on how he'd been once again taken in by some off-kilter manipulative weirdo. He comes across the troll taking up multiple chairs in his effort to do the 'sit down' part, though, and just stands there with a flat look, wondering if he should ask him to move or just take the chair or any number of solutions to this particular furniture-related predicament... and then it hits him. That's one of the others that were in on the raid. Who was captured, too.

He sighs, and just sits himself down on the ground near the chair that's propping up Karkat's foot. "It's nice to be back, isn't it?" It is said somewhat jokingly. Okay, maybe he's got it in him to address the whole mess a little. Assuming the other guy takes the hook and runs with it.

[crabmunicator]

At first Karkat doesn't take note of his fellow roof-goer. People come by, they see him sitting with his extra chair, and whether or not they'll accept that and move on soon becomes clear. But when whoever-it-is stays standing by his footrest, seemingly with no intent to leave, he lets his gaze roll up.

Does he... does he know this guy? There's a nagging familiarity to his face, and it's somewhere between him crouching down and the nice to be back that it hits him in turn.

Being grey doesn't exactly lend him much color, but what little their is drains out then. Someone else who got captured, someone else imprisoned, someone else brainwashed into the whole plan. It's the first he's really seen one of his fellow prisoners, and the shock of it is such that he doesn't know whether to welcome it.

It takes him a moment longer than he should, but he manages a, "Yeah." Then catching himself, he slips his foot off the chair and closes the book he's been reading. "Don't just sit on the ground when there's a chair right there. Go on, get up. I'm not holding a conversation with someone on the floor."

[shenunigans]

Were Dave even slightly aware of Karkat's presence in the tower, he'd have found him in a heartbeat. Any wishful thinking about intuitive friendship bonds and a sixth sense for someone's presence has gone out the window as every day gets longer and injected with more bitterness and false hope. He saw what they did to Steve Rogers, the epitome of strength and heroics, he didn't want to think of what Karkat might be going through right now.

All he knows is that he sat here on his ass while two of the people who mean the most to him have disappeared off his radar. For all he knows it could be forever, he doesn't know if another jailbreak is logical at this point. He doesn't think they'll go easy on anyone, so he doesn't expect to see Karkat. Or anyone, because he isn't expecting guests. He can only assume it's Feferi or someone else out to console him even though he's perfectly fine, so he isn't too abrasive about it when he calls out.

"Go away, I'm touching myself." Not abrasive, but just weird enough to try deter anyone from sticking their head in.

[crabmunicator]

There is something ridiculously comforting about Dave's response, weird and familiar and downright homey in a way he's missed these past three days. Nill might be his moirail now, and she's offered the comfort she can, but it's Dave who's his best friend.

"Then put your pants on, nookbiter," he calls through the door. "I am not that human Earth gay that I want to see your hideous junk." It's the most lighthearted response he's managed yet.

Roof!

[yoknapatawpha]

At first, Bayard was so terrified of the trolls - which he were certain were demons as described by Granny's tales of hellfire and sulfur - that whenever his Mentor, Signless, passed through the Suite he would duck behind a door and breathe very shallowly, trying not to attract attention. It was only after about a week of not being cast into the pits of Hell, and a talking to by his Escort, that Bayard came around to the idea that they were merely funny-looking people and not actual incarnations of the devil.

He feels compelled to seek them out and apologize for the misconception, because he's sure they've noticed him running for cover whenever one crosses his path, but he's also loath to actually admit he could be so rude. He hopes they forget it, or at least understand that they look damn scary.

Nevertheless, when he comes to the roof this evening, he watches Karkat (a near replica of Bayard's Mentor, if he were to say anything about it) with his chair for a little bit before approaching, thinking he should probably at least explain why the last time he saw the troll in the halls he ran for cover. That is, until he sees what Karkat's reading, and all thoughts of courtesy go out the window.

"Pardon," Bayard says, looking at the cover of the romance novel and finding...well, a woman with her bosom cramped up and outwards in a corset on the front, and a man without any shirt at all. He tries to avert his eyes, but insatiable curiosity keeps driving his gaze back to the portrait of the entwined lovers. "But may I ask what you're reading?"

[crabmunicator]

There are a couple differences that set Karkat apart from the Signless, among them being age (Karkat is still only a teen), facial hair (which Karkat yet lacks), and the perpetual tired, grumpy look he carries around with himself. There are a couple inches of height between them, too, but only a couple, and that would be harder to discern while he's still sat in his chair.

If he's noticed Bayard and his running before, the reaction he'd have received would have been a roll of his eyes and a tired sigh. As it is, he's not concerned--he hardly even notices the kid--until he comes up to ask about his book. It's impossible to miss why he did.

"A book," he snaps, promptly pressing the book closed and turning the front cover down against his lap. "Full of words and sentences constructed out of them for the purposes of weaving a fictional story. Don't ask stupid questions, kid." And if his face colors a little red, he pretends it doesn't. His own interest in romance may have started young, but that doesn't mean he intends to go introducing steamy Capitolite literature to a human his age.

"Don't you have... child things to go do?" he goes on, waving a hand vaguely in the air as if said activities might manifest therefrom.

D (several days after he initially returns)

[69problems]

It isn't that Signless has been avoiding seeking out Karkat as that he's been avoiding seeking out anyone. This is the first time in days that he's left his room -- and even settling back in to District 12 was difficult after growing used to District 4 and not being alone with his own thoughts quite so much.

Being alone with his thoughts is marginally less distressing on the roof among the plants and flowers and the fresh air and so that's where he finds himself tonight. He spots the familiar messy hair and nubby horns of his descendant and a weight lifts itself from his chest. He knew Karkat was alive but it's still different having it reaffirmed by seeing the younger troll right in front of him. There was a time during those three days he worried that Karkat might not come back at all.

"Karkat. It's good to see you."

[crabmunicator]

While there are certain people that Karkat has automatically sought out, his ancestor wasn't one of them. Not for lack of caring, no--he cared--but for a sort of dread. He knows by now that Signless and Initiate were close, and it's hard to judge how the conversation might go before it happens.

The other worry, that Signless might not know he's back and alive, was set aside by other means. The Psiioniic and Roland found him within a day or so after his return, and there was that broadcast on the day after from Quintus Falxvale naming those who'd been brainwashed and returned. So Karkat waited still.

It's up on the roof again, where most everyone has run into him since his return, that he finally hears his ancestor's voice. He looks up from his book (he's been doing a lot of reading lately) and takes in the sight of horns, hair, skin, all as they should be, all well. Of course, his ancestor wasn't a part of the break-in, but seeing him whole and hale is still a relief after these days. There's relief on his face.

"Thanks. I would have come see you, but I didn't want to..." He trails off into a vague hand motion for lack of the right word. Interrupt, maybe. He's sure that one way or another there had to be a period of mourning.

He pulls his foot down from its chair-cum-footrest, wincing only a little, then waves him over. "Come sit your tall-pantsed ass down, because I'm comfortable and not moving without very good reason."

A. Lobby

[pythianjudgment]

It's been days, and the anxiousness has been eating away at Terezi ever since the mission had ended. Most of the teams had made it back. There were a few that didn't, and the names on that list tied her stomach up in knots. Especially after that broadcast with Sigma and the Initiate.

It made her skin crawl, what they had done to him. After everything they'd done to get him back to normal--but never fully back. She had noticed the way that sometimes that first Avoxing had lingered. But now, a second time... It was heart-wrenching.

And what of the others? There hadn't been any word for days until that broadcast, and all she could imagine was that they were suffering the same fate, only out of sight of the rest of the Capitol. She couldn't stand that thought.

So when Karkat finally shows up in the lobby, Terezi is still reeling from the broadcast and expecting the worst. She can barely believe that he's standing there when he runs into her, and she doesn't stop to think before grabbing a hold of his arm, eyes wider than they should be. He's real. He's alive, even if he smells like he's seen better days. Even her fear that he might be an avox is assuaged immediately. He's not wearing the typical uniform, and there's nothing about him that screams of the brutal conditioning they but them through. Still, her worry is immense.

"Karkat, what happened? Where were you? Are you okay?" come the barrage of question, before she can stop to organize them or give him time to answer.

[crabmunicator]

Karkat is still disoriented when Terezi grabs him. The broadcast is still echoing in his ears, and he's tired and hungry and aching all over. He got to wash before he returned so at least he's clean, but Terezi if anyone would be likely to smell the other signs of what he's been through.

And that's--yeah, that is her. Alive and well, safe and sound, but clearly worried by the tone of the questions that pound into his skull. How is he supposed to answer those? He blinks at her, then squints, and shifts his footing with an obvious wince to something a little easier to stand on.

"I want to sit down," he says first, clear but exhausted. "They... caught me... in the thing with him." A vague motion. "Figured out what he did. Fixed it. Can we go?" And he motions again, limply, off toward the elevators.