[closed] it's a circle, friend

[crabmunicator]

Who| Karkat and Phil, Alain, Roland and Signless
What| How to deal with the fact that you just murdered your ancestor's boyfriend and his friend/comrade, and that other murder earlier, and the person you couldn't save, and...
Where| Karkat's room.
When| The week between the end of the arena and Crowning.
Warnings/Notes| Description of gore and killing, allusion to or discussion of suicidal ideation.

Return from the arena sees a whole lot of shit to deal with. Roland and Alain each died because of him, and even if Alain killed him, too, it does a whole lot of nothing to make the burden easier. It was stupid and desperate and violent, one after the other, and Roland wouldn't let him do anything else.

(He thinks about it anyway, what if he'd done something different, what if he'd gotten the chair, what if he'd knocked him unconscious.)

Maglev and Sheen still haunt his memory in thoughts of what can't be undone and responsibilities failed. Sheen wasn't the first time he ever wanted to kill someone, and wasn't even the first he did it to. Gamzee and Eridan went murderous on the meteor, and Gamzee went worse over after the trip to the new session was done. He tries, then, and got killed for his trouble. And there was Nill in the space arena, a slow death looming over her if not for mercy. Even then, he had to use his teeth.

Now Nill is gone, too. If she were still here loops in his head, but he can't make her come back, and would feel too guilty to ask comfort if she did.

Then there were his rewards from the youth program.

He went to his room directly once he got back to the tower, ignoring reporters and media and fans, anyone in the halls to get there. They sat neatly laid out on his desk, merit badges and papers about his appointment to Jr Peacekeeper and graduation from the youth program, and some letter back from Drusus he couldn't bother to read more than a few words of. There were gifts: some kind of wind chime with little charms of his sickles and sign and lusus, and a model of the red, claw-like one he used in the last arena, contained within a glass case. Worst, though, were the replica hare's foot - Jackie's, that is, Maglev's token - and the video from Cable.

By the end he's shaking, breathing left an afterthought. It takes all his willpower not to destroy the things he's been given, and it's as if the effort exhausts him, for he collapses into his bed.

In this way he spends his free time over the next days. He leaves when he has to; there's no backing out of Peacekeeper training and duties. But he hides from his districtmates, hides from the media, and emerges only briefly for necessities.

The few times he's seen, he looks haunted.

Comments

[atouchofka]

Alain hasn't left his own room since returning most of two days ago. He's been sitting there, cross-legged on the bed, staring at a blank point on the wall and doing something that's halfway between meditation and madness.

At last, near the end of the second day, he decides he has to make a move. He's lingered too long already (too slow, maggot, Cort's voice tells him in the back of his mind, that was ever your fault in training and in life) and it does no good to anyone to waste away in a too-bright room, staring at a wall.

Around nine o'clock that night, he knocks on Karkat's door. He holds himself very straight and tense, his hands clasped behind his back, his shoulders back. "It's Alain," he calls, taking a half-step back from the door. "Seems to me we ought to talk."

[crabmunicator]

He kind of expected this to happen. Only a matter of time, right? One of them would either run into the other in passing, or come directly to him seeking... something. He doesn't know if it's better or worse that it's on purpose like this, or that Alain has come before Roland. They were both awful in their own way, and he hates himself twice over.

He can see the door from where he's laying. It's a debate whether he was trying to sleep by lying here in bed, and he's not sure of it himself. Being awake means the well of thoughts he's been stuck in the past two days, but sleep promises nightmares more than rest.

The quiet stretches near too long before he calls back, "Why?"

[atouchofka]

Alain is quiet for a long moment himself. "I've come to cry your pardon," he answers at last, and looks down, taking a deep breath. Staring at a door doesn't feel so different to staring at a wall, when all's said and done. "I did you wrong. Let myself be guided by anger, said and did what I ought not to have. I forgot the face of my father, and we both died for it."

[crabmunicator]

His... pardon. Karkat lifts his head then, and not long after Alain finishes his answer, he sits up entirely. He considers the door, but it seems too much yet.

"But I killed you. I killed you and him both," he protests. "Why do you want pardon from me?"

[atouchofka]

"I've fought a lot of men who wanted to kill me," Alain says, "and I know damned well you weren't one of them." There's another long pause, and then he says, "This talk would go a great deal easier without a door between us. Can I come in?"

[crabmunicator]

The door. Yeah. Embarrassment passes over him as Alain calls attention to it, but it passes quickly with other things to think about. He gets up and heads over, and then the door opens.

"Here." He motions in. His room is relatively tidy, but in the present it falls to circumstances and timing more than a will to keep it so. His bed is the exception, covers bunched and rumpled, but they hardly matter now. "Take the chair." There's one at his desk. After closing the door, Karkat sits back on the side of his bed.

"... I don't know what to say," he says eventually. "You're really... You really don't hate me for it?"

[atouchofka]

Alain is quiet for a moment, turning the chair to face Karkat before sitting down, his hands clasped in front of him. It takes a little while to find what he needs to say. He's all right with that. He isn't Cuthbert; he's used to taking time to find the right words.

"Before I came here," he says at last, slowly, "I died. The Capitol showed it, a few weeks before the Arena. Two shells, shot in the dark - one winged me, the other took me right between the eyes." He doesn't even wince as he says it. That's progress, if anything is. "Cuthbert fired one. Roland, the other. I don't hate them for it, and I don't hate you."

He looks up at Karkat now, running one hand over his mouth. "When a dog goes rabid, you shoot it. When a horse kicks anyone who comes near, you put it down. When a gunslinger turns on you, loses all his sense and reason and honour, why should it be any different? Doesn't make you cruel, it makes you sane."

oh godddd I'm gonna hurt when that happens in canon (meanwhile Karkat continues to be a mess)

[crabmunicator]

That's how? Karkat stares with mouth set ajar. "I didn't see... I must have missed." It's sympathy on his face, though, threaded through every inch. He's been killed by friends before, and even the act of having done it doesn't change that reaction.

It pulls quickly into a sharp frown. "But you weren't. You--you found me after I murdered Roland. I tore him open. My sickle--it still had, had pieces of him on it." And here a wave of nausea, but he keeps going. "I did it to someone else. If anyone was a rabid dog, it was me. I killed someone just like that--Go, look at the tapes, I did it to a kid from the Districts because I couldn't fucking think. You can't tell me I'm not cruel after that." It's not even close to boasting, and by the end pink is pricking up at the corners of his eyes again, same as in the arena.

sorry - I didn't want to spoil but also it kinda felt ooc not to in this case?

[atouchofka]

"Yes. I can." Alain meets Karkat's eyes, holding them as best he can. "You may not believe me - perhaps it's not time for you to. Perhaps you never will. But I can tell you that, and I do. At your core, you are not a killer. Take it from one who is."

He looks away again, down at his hands, and is silent for a moment. "Roland is my commander, and I love him as a brother. But I loved plenty of others who were killed, too, and without the comfort of it being temporary, and I did not let it rob me of my reason. The posse under my command the day I came here - I watched them fall, and I was angry, and I grieved, and I turned my back and rode like hell to leave their killers behind. Because I had a duty. Because I remembered the face of my father. I forgot it in the Arena, and I fear I may not recover it for a time." Leaning over, he puts out a hand cautiously to touch Karkat's arm. "Roland and I, we are gunslingers. We were raised to take such things in our stride, trained to know when not to kill just as much as we were trained to know when we should. We learned our lessons on the training ground and in the battlefield, and chief among those lessons was to hold ourselves from being led by the rashness of the moment. We should have known better." That last bit with a fresh intensity; he makes eye contact again, and holds it. "And if we were taken up in the rashness of it, we who trained from infancy to be cold and clear-minded, you cannot expect me to think that you doing the same - once, only once! - was cruelty."

[voiceinthephone]

It's been too long since Phil saw Karkat but he had a good idea why the troll was hiding. This Arena, everything that has happened sucked the soul right out of everyone who participated in it. This time around, the Mentor knocked on the door, offering not just his company but some food to lift his Tribute's energy. There was so much to talk about, so much that needed to be explained and more importantly, Gray had to assure his friend that he could not shoulder the blame for Maglev's and Sheen's deaths alone.

"Karkat, please let me in," Phone Guy spoke against the door in a voice edging on a whisper spoken out of regret than fear of being heard. He's just doing his job now, nothing suspicious here. "I haven't seen you in a while now."

[crabmunicator]

Can't run forever, can he? Not that he's even trying that. Running is something active, and here he's hidden away, bunched up alone whenever he has the choice to be. Still, the thought that Phil would come eventually is one that's held true. He's his Mentor, after all. He'd have to in time.

It's that feeling of inevitability that gets him up to answer, if not promptly.

He doesn't have anything harsh to say, but neither does he look at him, gaze only sliding over the food before settling somewhere beyond him. His posture is stiff, his expression tight, trying for blank but failing where stress shows through. "You didn't have to bring me anything."

[voiceinthephone]

"I know but I haven't seen at the District commonspace so I know you haven't eaten," Phil pointed out as he offered Karkat a sympathetic look, "I haven't seen you at all really."

The troll could hide away but his Mentor could not, he had to assure sponsors and the public that things were all right. Even if it was an outright lie. "May I come in? I don't want to make you walk over to my suite but...this is best done behind closed doors." And away from the prying eyes of the public.

[crabmunicator]

Part of him wants to argue he's not hungry, but it would be a lie, and a transparent one at that. For not the first time he thinks of Nill. She would have made sure he ate.

"Alright." It's more giving in than agreeing, but he steps back and opens the door for him to come inside.

He's got his crying out of the way for now, the only sign a wastebasket stuffed with tissues. The room isn't even messy; he hasn't had time for apathy to impede him much yet, and it would be more trouble than it's worth to go destroying his 'gifts'. There's a desk if Phil wants to set the food down, but it's the bed Karkat sits on once the door is closed.

"I'm not really feeling up to chatting, so just get to the point."

[voiceinthephone]

"You know exactly why I'm here, there's no need for that," thanks to handling things, if poorly, with Jeremy, Phil learned to skip the filler and carry himself in a stronger position than before. "You're carrying a lot of blame for circumstances you had no control over, correct?"

It's not like Gray could cast the first stone, he was just as guilty of snapping and murdering a Tribute in his rage. This is a talk that the mentor was bracing for ever since they were able to connect in the Arena. Of course Karkat carried the weight of Maglev's and Sheen's deaths, and his actions in his rage state caused the murder of other tributes.

"But that's the thing: you can't blame yourself for what happened, Vantas."

cw: some gross description of gore

[crabmunicator]

"How can you say that?" Karkat's eyes search over his face, his mouth set ajar, eyes squinted beneath close-drawn eyebrows. "How can you have seen what happened and tell me I had no control--that I can't blame myself for it? The whole thing--" He motions out. "There was so much. I..."

He looks aside, then back up straight. "They aren't coming back, Phil. Don't you get it? I didn't stick near Maglev like I promised to. I didn't even give her the knife I got that second week when I already had my own weapon for--for no more than a promise to a stranger I didn't know if I would see again. I made fuckup after fuckup--"

His jaw tightens. "I heard her. He was after her and I heard her, and I didn't get there until she--she was f-full of holes--I'm so sick of seeing my friends full of holes. And what did I do but add another dead kid to the pile. I didn't stop, I didn't think--I couldn't think--and you can't... You can't tell me that it's okay just because I couldn't control myself. That's not how it works. Not when I went on, and, and even in the last week I--"

Nausea hits him, and he curls inward, cringing with it. Nothing comes up, held down by force of will, but he sees it all over again. He remembers all the blood, the torn flesh. Alain's throat ripped and gushing red, Sheen and Roland's innards, the smell when Roland fell at his feet. He'd sink if he weren't already sitting.

It's a long moment before he can say, "I did the same to Roland and Alain." He breathes. "I should have just let Sheen kill me."

[voiceinthephone]

"I do get it, funnily enough," Gray wasn't having any of Karkat's self-hatred, especially when he'd done the same thing in his last arena experience and prior to that, finding the serial killer's trail back at Freddy's.

"I know that Maglev and Sheen aren't coming back because I had to send my deepest condolences to their families. I had to ask Peacekeeper Faxlvale for her knuckle bone to send to her parents as per Linden's tradition. The choices you made, you have to live with them but-"

Phil trusted Karkat's actions in the Arena and that didn't change. But this? This wasn't helping anyone. "You were under the influence of the Arena for Roland and Alain's deaths, correct? Were you able to actively stop the influence? No, right?"

He hated being so stern but Lockhearst said it best: there will be choices that he would have to make that would not be palatable. Being a hard-ass was one of them.

"Locking yourself away like this doesn't do anything to heal the loss, now does it? All it does is...make you wallow in your decisions and keep thinking of the what-ifs. You kept going and I told you that you had to, for Maglev. Are you going to make her death meaningless?"

[crabmunicator]

Karkat watches him through the full of it, eyebrows drawn in, mouth set in a grimace of memory. He winces at the mention of Maglev's knucklebones. He'd thought of the tradition before, but thought it impractical once he considered it for longer, and couldn't bear to put more harm to her after he came out of the haze of killing Sheen.

The rest isn't much easier to hear, but worst is when he draws back to Maglev. Her death sits like a bleeding wound in him, and here Phil has gone and stuck his fingers in and pulled.

"Shut up!" It's loud and sudden, and his teeth are bared, gritting together between his words. "I didn't give her death any meaning just because I lived a few weeks longer! You want to know what I did? I fought back when Roland and Alain wanted to kill me--and even Roland had to force my hand in the end. And then what? Alain came and wanted me dead for killing his friend. Are you going to tell me I'm more right?"

His hands have come up, falling into the broad, dramatic gestures he's used to, but with sharp, jerky force to them. He keeps digging his nails at his palms whenever his hands close, and up beyond his arms his shoulders have set to shaking.

"It wasn't the 'influence of the Arena', Phil. I was a scared, stupid, idiotic grub of a troll who couldn't decide if he wanted to just die already or keep going for some nebulous payback for Maglev's death, like a bunch of gifts for victory would just make it all better. They were my friends. What kind of gutter slime murders his allies--and worse, can't even make up his mind about it until he's being forced or he's already dying?"

He swallows tightly. Somewhere along the line he's started crying - he's cried too much since coming back - but he hardly cares.

"I have news for you, Phil," he says slowly. "Her death already is meaningless."

[ka_sera_sera]

The first day Roland'd been in no state to think on it, and there had been that party, that time and talk with Signless to try and clear his head. Then there'd been the arena footage to go over - difficult when Roland can't make out the images on the screen, and he still hasn't decided whether it's more kind or cruel to be able to hear those things without seeing them, but Signless had been there then, too. He's here now, and they've worked out a very rough strategy which consists mostly of the idea that Roland should be as honest as possible. Which he'd been planning to do anyway, but it's good to have confirmation from the person who, in his estimation, knows Karkat best.

He gives a couple solid, brisk knocks on the boy's door. Roland's voice, when he speaks, is heavy and solemn, but not nervous. Apologizing is a thing which does not intimidate him, and he has plenty of experience with it. Even if he's never exactly had to apologize for this. "Karkat. We ought to speak, the three of us. I'll do it in the hall, if you need, but I'd rather not have to."

I didn't expect to vomit angst words everywhere, but here they are

[crabmunicator]

Even after his talk with Alain, Karkat hasn't sought out Roland. He almost did a time or two, thought it over and hovered near the elevator, only to go off to something else. Their talk might have given him some reassurance, but it came with an uncertain note, too. Alain couldn't tell him that Roland wouldn't have done it, and though a part of Karkat holds hope that it was the same as with him - that the anger wasn't normal, wasn't natural - there still held too much fear that it had been.

And with Roland, too, comes the issue of his ancestor. It's not hard to guess that's who the third party is.

He seizes up.

Sure, he wants to know what Roland was thinking then, and what he thinks now after the fact. He misses the Signless and doesn't want yet another wedge coming between them. But what if that's all this is? What if Roland's come to berate him again, make him out as a coward again, and brought Signless for some kind of backup? He killed him--killed his friend, his ancestor's quadrantmate, and couldn't find a way out. If he had just tried harder...

And what does he say to this? He can't just sit up and invite them in like it's normal. A conversation through a door is twelve layers of stupid, but the knot of anxiety that burrowed in during things with Alain tugs tight at the thought of opening it. Any sharp or flippant response seems to invite more of the vitriol Roland gave him in the arena, and flat out refusal likely the same. It's stupid. He used to the be the one who would spit out hate and bile like nothing, like it didn't matter, like anyone bothered was the one at fault for it, and now the thought of a little hate stops him up. But what would it mean? He's the one who couldn't do anything properly: couldn't fight him properly, couldn't push him away, couldn't kill him until he had no choice about it--and even then, that had to be his fault, too, for not avoiding Roland's efforts.

It never came to this before, is the thing. He never killed anyone outside of Panem, and the times he wanted to were to save other people, to cut off a problem that shouldn't have happened in the first place if he'd just paid attention and put in more effort. Here, what good did he do? A District kid gone for good from anger after Maglev was already dead didn't save anyone. He couldn't live up to whatever Roland wanted in his death. And Alain--Alain may have said he's no killer, not the way the kind trained for it are, but what point did killing him have, anyway? It didn't prove anything, and even if Alain's anger wasn't his own, why shouldn't he have taken his payback?

Why did he keep going if that's how the arena turned out?

It's stupid. He's a troll. He shouldn't care; he should have done better; he should have been culled from the start. Too many people dead for a stupid mutant who can't live up to his own culture. Didn't the Grand Highblood make that point to him back in his dream? Stupid, just so stupid, and here he is freaking out about it like an idiot all over again.

"Just--make your point. Get it over with," he calls over finally after a too long gap, in a voice too rough for simple bad mood. He's shaking and he hates it, and he buries his head under a pillow as though it will get him to stop.

[69problems]

Signless looks sideways at Roland, eyebrows drawn down low in worry. That response doesn't make him feel all that optimistic about this discussion, though it's very much the response he was most expecting. He doesn't want this to have to be an uphill battle more for Karkat's sake than anything. The poor kid doesn't need any more stress and pain than he's already probably feeling.

Still. Getting right into it is probably the best way to make it clear to Karkat that they're not here to attack him but rather just to come to terms with what happened and move on. After a moment he nods, tipping his head toward the door with a 'might as well' sort of expression. It's best if this comes from Roland's mouth. He's the one who died.

[ka_sera_sera]

Briefly Roland meets Signless' eyes, their two looks almost identical. Not that he's worried, exactly - he hadn't expected the boy to take what Roland had forced him to do very easily. If he had, then Roland would have worried. Roland leans toward the door and raises his voice to carry across it without argument because it's fitting that he say this in a space which is even less private than their little cells. It's appropriate, given what he's done, that he humble himself in this way.

"I don't want to cry your pardon," he begins, leaning one narrow shoulder against the doorframe, staring at his up-close view of Karkat's door and feeling his gaze unfocus, "because you deserve more than that. No one should be forced to kill someone they care about. No child, most especially. And mine's the hand who forced you. For-"

He pauses. This isn't easy to say, but that doesn't trouble him. It shouldn't be easy.

"For selfishness. There was more at play there than me, than either of us, I'm sure of it, but that doesn't change what my actions caused."

"I cry your pardon, Karkat. You deserve more, but I don't have the words for anything else." He leans his head against the doorframe, eyes the spot where Karkat might be behind the door, then pulls a questioning face at Signless. Signless does know Karkat best, and after all, his mediation was part of the reason he'd joined Roland here in the first place.

[crabmunicator]

His ancestor doesn't say anything, and the first thing out of Roland's mouth sounds a lot like "I'm not sorry" to his pessimistic ears. His heart sinks with the weight of the fear he's carried, and he finds himself wishing it could pull him down through the bed, through the floor, down and into the earth where none of this matters anymore. Even the next of what he says doesn't reach at first, too easy to twist with his doubts into some sort of renouncement. He shouldn't have been forced, because he was too weak to do it himself, right?

But Roland doesn't lead that way. He claims he was selfish, and there was something more happening, and--and he apologizes after all, despite how the beginning struck him.

He's silent for another long stretch. What does that mean? He picks back over what he said before, trying to uncloud his understanding from the haze his troubled heart has laid over it. It's hard to believe from the place he's in that Roland would come to his door for repairing things, but now that he has, he's not sure what to do with it. He doesn't know what to say.

Instead, his thoughts turn to his ancestor, and he slowly climbs out of bed to approach the door. Not close enough to open it, not yet wanting to, he calls through again.

"Signless? Does he mean it?" And then, like a grub to his lusus after he's done wrong, "Do you hate me?"

[69problems]

Signless is about to answer the first question when Karkat asks the second. His bloodpusher suddenly feels very heavy in his chest.

"Of course not! Karkat, neither of us hate you. That's exactly what we're here to tell you. We're worried for you."

Personally he thinks Roland did very well, but he also knows that Karkat is a Vantas and wont to interpret things as negatively as he can when he's already in a funk. Signless has been in that place too. All he can really do is reassure Karkat that that isn't the case and hope Karkat believes him.

[ka_sera_sera]

It isn't until Karkat asks Signless whether Roland means what he said that Roland realizes the boy no longer trusts him. Of course he doesn't. But having been disemboweled is new to him - when he thinks back on it, his mind sticks on certain details and maybe he can not quite see the whole situation as he ought.

But it makes sense. Of course Karkat doesn't trust his word, not after- Well, not now. Knowing that, he knows it would help no one if he tried to butt in here. If it's Signless Karkat needs to convince him then Roland will wait, and speak once Karkat is ready to hear him.

[crabmunicator]

Worried for him is a strange phrase, heavy in the light of all what's happened. Signless surely had reason enough after things with Maglev and Sheen, but now the matter of Roland and Alain has added onto it. The fact that he's made up with Alain doesn't guarantee anything about these two.

Still, Signless says too that they don't hate him. He thinks more over that and Roland's words, and for a stretch there is only silence from him. The thought passes his mind that it would be easier if he could just talk to his future self in a memo like the old days. Even as much of an asshole as he was to himself, the difference of time gave perspective and made things easier than chasing his thoughts inside his own head.

Eventually Karkat does cross the rest of the way to open the door. "Come inside if you want to talk more," he says, not looking either in the face. Roland in particular he tries not to get too close to.