[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

[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."

[voiceinthephone]

"It meant something to me and her parents, does that still make it meaningless?" Phil corrected, his face locked down in a stern glare of a disappointed and deeply hurt man. He knows he's going in deep but at the end of the day, it's a ravenous tear on his back too. In Phone Guy's eyes, Maglev had become the Twelfth child who died because of his mistakes, one more body he had to carry in grief.

"I never said you were more right in what happened with Alain and Roland, that was self-defense if they were gearing up to kill you. But answer me this: what good would you dying bring about?" Phil pointed out without stopping, remembering what Sandy said in the mini-arena.

"Answer me that much." It's the finality in his voice that implied that by removing all meaning to Maglev's death, Karkat was playing into the Capitol's hands and making the native children just another number to be dismissed. And that was a surefire way to piss Phil Gray off. It might cost him Karkat's friendship but this level of self-hatred had to be nipped soon.

cw: suicidal ideation. crab's got problems.

[crabmunicator]

His anger flares again, and he tries to argue, "It didn't accomplish--"

Phil says more, though, and it cuts him off. He looks mad enough. A glare isn't something Karkat's used to seeing on his face, but it fails to cow him. His teeth grit together as a low growl rolls from his throat.

That question, though, is a lot easier to answer than it should be.

"If I were dead, then I wouldn't be able to fuck anything else up." His eyes are defiant despite the pink tears still rolling from them. There's a quaver to his shoulders, but his tone is solid. "You don't know how many mistakes I've made, Phil. There's a whole, literal universe out there that I helped create, that is now dead and gone because of what I did wrong. I didn't listen when my friend knew better, and all my friends back in Paradox Space suffered because of it. And that's not even getting to the mundane shit--half my team dead because I couldn't keep them together, more people dead because of more mistakes in the years after--And every single stupid thing I've done here that's hurt someone, that's pushed them into something dangerous or wound up with them dying because of me."

He sniffs, but his look hasn't changed. "That's what me dying would prevent."

[voiceinthephone]

Phillip held his tongue as he heard Karkat's story and understood more clearly where that sense of absolute self-hatred came from. He wants to say so much but this is one of the first times where Phone Guy decided to keep his mouth shut and not interrupt or dig any deeper. He pulled up a chair and sighed out a stilted breath, to then rub his forehead. He can't keep up the anger when there was so much more grieving to do. He'd offer a hug but he doesn't know how Karkat would take that.

"I didn't know." Because even as he was put in the mentor seat, he didn't go around prying into the Tribute files, he'd rather hear the stories from them. "But...and this might be salt on the wound but I'm glad you're still here." And that was the truth.

[crabmunicator]

They aren't words he can take easily right now, but they don't break him down, either. He rubs the corners of his eyes with thumb and forefinger, then wipes his cheeks with the back of his hand. It doesn't do much more than smear the pink, but he doesn't care about that right now.

"Doesn't matter." He's sure the Capitol will keep him around no matter what he does if they still want him here, then off him when he least expects it if they change their minds. "Do you want anything else, or is that it? I'll go to training like I'm supposed to, if you're worried about that."

Peacekeeper training, he means. He expects he doesn't have a choice about it.

[voiceinthephone]

Gray knew he messed up in his confrontation (he thought he did) but he doesn't overstay his welcome and nodded, "That was it, just wanted to say my piece and your Mentor and your friend."

Just because they were in different ranks didn't stop that trust from coming through. He still trusted the troll with his life and the lives of the other tributes. Phil didn't regret standing by Karkat's choices, and he sure as hell wouldn't stop that any time soon, "You'll be expected over at the training facilities but you'll catch up, I don't worry about that."

With that, he stood up, and gestured to the door, "Dunno if it means anything to you but my door is open if you ever want to talk again."

[crabmunicator]

"I'll visit if I feel like it," he answers simply. Right now the answer to whether he would want that is a solid no, but what the future brings isn't something he yet knows. He'll see what happens when it does, and he hopes for his sake it won't become worse.

With that he motions, a simple get on and go without the rudeness of the words themselves. From him it's enough to count as a kindness when he's feeling so bad as he is.

Only once Phil's left will he head on out himself, solely for a brief trip to wash his face. He'll eat the food Phil brought him after.