[OPEN] If the sun don't come you get a tan from standing in the English rain

[honeyedwords]

Who| Sherlock Holmes
What| Midnight mopery
Where| In the park by the shopping district
When| Right about now
Warnings/Notes| References to (kind of ongoing) drug abuse

Sherlock had spent much too long avoiding the Capitol. It had seemed reasonable enough to take whatever excuses he could to stay away from the place; after all, what was the point of marching all the way out to the killing fields just to watch two children from his district get slaughtered by careers, year after year? (Well, he supposes it's not necessarily children anymore, but uninvolved bystanders from across time and space isn't much better.) Drugging himself into a stupor and allowing Beetee or one of the other competent ones run the fool's errand of trying to bring someone home always seemed the better option.

That particular dodge wasn't an option anymore, though. Not if he wanted to actually get anything done ever again. There isn't anything useful about hiding away from all your problems forever, anyway. Might as well stop being a coward and go already.

He's seated on a bench towards the edge of the park, as the fountain is too much of a gathering place for his likings and he'd prefer not to be gawked at today. Anyone who passes by receives a particularly severe scowl and precisely zero eye contact for their troubles. His manner of dress is characteristically shabby, from the fraying sweater to the worn jeans. This on top of the thin sheen of sweat on his brow despite his shivering and the dark circles under his eyes all contribute to making him look like an absolute wreck.

Comments

[honeyedwords]

"And your Signless's unfinished business was his message of peace? It's what he's gained the most notoriety for here, certainly. A little incongruous with what I understand of the rest of troll culture, but I suppose that has something to do with why it's still unfinished."

Sherlock doesn't mean that in a biting way, but most would be forgiven for taking it like that. He's never been one of the greatest communicators of his time, nor has he attempted to be. Bluntness has been his closest companion, year after year, and he's not about to abandon it yet.

"You, meanwhile, seem to fall much more in line with the zeitgeist."

[sleeplessinalternia]

Karkat shrugs. "If you don't want to die, you learn to fight and you learn to kill. I don't want to die."

He leans back on the bench to gaze up at the sky, but the familiar constellations of home are nowhere to be found. He can't really see any stars due to the lights of the Capitol, but there's a moon: a single, small grey moon.

"He had some other unfinished business that I almost did finish before I came here."

[honeyedwords]

"Certainly a practical philosophy. It will serve you well enough here, I think."

It's certainly one of the common ones adopted by victors who actually wanted to be victors. Somehow, though, he thinks Karkat may not fit in with the other careers quite as well as one might think. There's more to him than fighting and killing, though perhaps that's only because that's the baseline for most if not all trolls. Holmes makes a mental note of it regardless.

"And what is that, if I may be so bold as to ask?"

[sleeplessinalternia]

Karkat doesn't say anything at first, just staring up at the lone moon. It's too small, too pale, too colorless, too alone.

"I played a game," he says finally.