[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

[ka_sera_sera]

Roland takes Karkat's hand tightly, any hint of frustration gone as he listens. "I'm certain. I wouldn't have said it if I weren't. Those two friends - do you mean at the end, in the bunker? You ought not count me in that, if that's what you're doing. What happened to me was hardly murder."

GROUP HUG

[crabmunicator]

Something flops over in his chest: relief, surprise, fear that he might wake up and find that none of it happened.

"I'll count it how I want," he argues, but it's distracted. Then, "Fuck, come here." He tugs Roland - "You too," - and Signless, pulling them in toward him, or leaning into them, or maybe both. He leaves their hands to put his arms around them instead, holding tight. He might be tearing up into someone's shoulder.

"It wasn't you--It wasn't either of you. The Capitol must, it must have..."

His words trail off. He's shaking now, relief won out, and it's too much to verbalize just yet.

IM SO HAPPY

[69problems]

Following Karkat's example, Signless lets go of the hands he's holding to wrap his arms around both of their shoulders. It's his that Karkat is tearing up against and he doesn't mind at all, he just presses his cheek against Karkat's hair and lets a comforting trill bubble up in his throat. It's one of those singularly-alien noises that isn't a word and so manages to slip past the translator chip.

"I wouldn't be surprised at all. That isn't a new trick for them, manipulating the way you feel and think to make you do things you never would otherwise."

shall we end on grouphug happytimes?

[ka_sera_sera]

Their moving pulls Roland in toward them and he lets it, feeling his head come to rest against both of theirs. The warm voices and breath and arms and bodies of those Roland loves are in front and behind and all around him, and he hardly realizes how widely he is smiling. The boy is shaking and Signless is making that odd, familiar noise of comfort, and Roland is a little surprised, somewhere in the fainter parts of his mind which are not taken up with this, to realize that in this moment all is well in his world.

"You'll be alright, Karkat. We're going to be alright." Roland wraps his arms around the two of them and pulls them closer and, in this moment, he holds on tight. He holds on for as long as he can.