Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/369913.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Choose_Not_To_Use_Archive_Warnings, Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Rape/
      Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      Multi
  Fandom:
      Homestuck
  Character:
      Karkat_Vantas
  Additional Tags:
      Sexual_Violence, Emotional_Abuse, Physical_Abuse, (normalized)_filial
      cannibalism, casual_discussion_of_slavery, internalized_ableism, Original
      Character_Death(s), Psychological_Horror, Age_Difference, yo_dawg_i_heard
      you_like_epithets, Xenobiology
  Stats:
      Published: 2012-04-02 Completed: 2012-08-09 Chapters: 11/11 Words: 86535
****** This is Not a Nice Story ******
by with_a_kiss
Summary
     "So adult trolls have a very different relation with kids than adult
     humans - often malign or parasitic. That said, I want some adult-
     troll/kid-troll noncon."
     ok.
Notes
     Warning for extreme sexual, physical, and emotional violence that is
     non-consensual.
     That has been my catch-all warning for this, but there are more in
     the tags. If you want the version with footnotes and my commentary
     plastered all over, it was originally posted for a Homesmut prompt -
     http://homesmut.livejournal.com/5183.html?thread=3970623#t3970623
     For what it is worth, this is set pre-canon (give or take, it started
     in earlyish 2011) so Karkat does make it out the other side. But that
     is the only assurance I can really offer.
***** Chapter 1 *****
Karkat glowers at the cave wall. “Yeah, this is really fucking impressive,” he
says.
“Shut up.”
“I’m in absolute nooksucking awe at what a excellent use this was of my time.
Thank you, Ladeci, for dragging me through a cave the approximate shape and
stench of the inside of a razorworm’s rectum to show me this shit stained
excuse for a damaged wiggler party room.”
Ladeci worries at his lip with his crooked fang. “Uh, there aren’t any damaged
wigglers,” he says, and Karkat can't believe what an idiot he is.
“I can’t believe what an idiot you are,” Karkat says. “Of course there’s no
damaged wigglers! They get culled! That’s my fucking point! This place is as
empty as the rotted hole between your horns!”
“Oh, hey, fuck you.” Ladeci snarls at Karkat. Snarls more, anyhow. His angled
right tooth normally pushes the side of his lips apart, making him look pissed
at the world even when he’s smiling. Karkat hates his stupid face, it makes
Karkat look like the nice one. “You were the one who didn’t believe I killed a
musclebeast! I just said I’d show you.”
Karkat kicks the dead-musclebeast-free corner. “Well, case closed and suspect
swung on this evidence. What, did you bump into a sleeping one and think you
gave it an aneurysm from how terrible you are?”
“Or, maybe something ate it?”
Karkat looks down. There are, he notices, deep scraping sludge marks leading
away from the end of the cave. They could be anything. Maybe, okay, he’ll admit
it, an injured musclebeast. Maybe something... bigger. Hungrier.
“That’s bullshit,” Karkat says. “It’s too bad there aren’t any damaged wigglers
here, because maybe they would fall for your pathetic excuses.” He tries to
out-scowl Ladeci, who is staring hopefully at the corner in case a musclebeast
carcass should suddenly appear. He fails. “Come on,” Karkat says. “It’s going
to be dawn soon. Let’s get out of here.”
Karkat finds caves creepy as hell, despite all those “return to your grubself”
psych quackery claims that they’re supposed to be comforting. He avoids them
when he can, which is pretty much always unless, like now, his ego gets the
best of him. Unfortunately, that means he has no clue how to navigate in one,
and he’s stuck trusting Ladeci to lead them back to the entrance. And Ladeci
isn’t paying enough attention, in Karkat’s opinion. He’s running a thumb over
the relish green swirls on his shirt. He’s humming a famous classical rap. He’s
staring at Karkat like he’s not sure what language Karkat is yelling at him in.
He’s pausing to glance into other cave pathways, probably still looking for his
imaginary musclebeast.
The cave’s starting to lighten, which means they’re nearing the entrance and,
fuck!, that daylight is sooner than Karkat thought. They’ll have to hurry to
make it back to the lawnring.
“You are the worst oozing flap-rash of a neighbor on this entire goddamned
planet,” Karkat seethes.
“you think that you won but you ain’t even stunned me bitch you want to shun me
that’s,” Ladeci... well, it would take someone more charitable than Karkat to
call it “rapping.” Mutters, then.
“remember how many of them there are. They get everywhere,” says someone who
isn’t either of them.
Karkat grabs Ladeci’s arm and yanks him against the nearest cave wall. It’s not
cover, but they need a plan...
“Uh, what are you,” Ladeci says, and Karkat clamps a hand over his mouth.
“Listen,” Karkat hisses.
“the creepy little bastards. No one actually gives a shit.” The voice is
muffled from travelling down the cave, but Karkat can still hear the deep
resonance it has. He’s heard a similar tone maybe twice in his life, overseers
or “quality checks” and god knows how the the hell he survived those, and after
that has heard it only from safely behind his movie screen.
“We cannot simply ignore the security risk,” says another voice, this one
deeper than the first but with the same telling vibration. There’s more than
one of them.
Ladeci’s eternal sneer is dropping into horror. He’s hearing the same thing
Karkat is.
Adults.
“Is there another way out of here?” Karkat asks, as quietly as he can.
“I, uh. I don’t know.”
“Well, we better fucking hope so,” Karkat says. He shoves Ladeci back in the
direction they came. “We need somewhere to hide until they leave.”
Ladeci’s got a hand wrapped in the green of his sign, like he’s holding onto
himself. Karkat says, “Yeah, you’re still there, asshole,” but his anger
doesn’t feel real. He doesn’t know if it’s pity or terror, but Karkat suddenly
wants to grab Ladeci’s hand and hold on as they sneak away. He doesn’t, though.
Ladeci’s free fingertips are drifting across the cave wall, and maybe that’s
how he’s navigating? Fuck, Karkat knows shit all about caves.
“All right, all right, if it’ll get you to stop complaining,” says adult no. 1,
and the voice is getting louder. Moving closer.
Karkat glances back and sees a dark shadow against the navy blue opening of the
tunnel. “Run!” he shouts, pushing Ladeci forward. The other troll stumbles
but...
“Yeah, it’s way too late for that.” The words are lilted and syrup thick, and
Karkat hadn’t realized how badly his movie speakers suck until hearing an adult
speak up close. But that really... that really doesn’t matter right now.
There’s a buzzing sensation in his horns and backmost teeth, and he hangs out
with enough asshole psychics to know what’s coming...
Karkat’s feet are yanked out from under him. He falls hard to the cave’s stone
floor and hears Ladeci thump down beside him. A force starts to pull him
backwards by his ankles. Karkat grabs his sickle and catches it on a stone, but
the shitty blade breaks under tension and snaps out of his hands. Then he tries
to grip the ground with his fingertips, but he’s ripped painfully away. He
thrashes wildly, which doesn’t accomplish anything except giving him a glimpse
of the adult troll reeling them in, pulling on an invisible rope. She’s
grinning as she hauls them closer.
Ladeci is still trying to hold onto the floor. There are ten fresh streaks of
relish green stretching up the tunnel. Now Karkat does reach over and grab one
of his hands, and Ladeci looks at him over green stained cheeks. Karkat himself
isn’t crying. He’s spent sweeps training himself not to, not under any
circumstances. It doesn’t matter anymore, but the idea that even imminent death
isn’t breaking him is a sort of victory. “I’m sorry,” Karkat says, and because
there’s still time to curse out paradox space for his last words, he adds
magnanimously, “I believed you about the musclebeast, I was just being an
asshole.”
A tear rolls into one of Ladeci’s nostrils, and he has to snort it away. “Uh,
no,” he says. “No, you were right, I made it up.” His hand grips harder against
Karkat’s palm.
“I fucking knew it, you useless shitbrained nookstain! Fuck you! You got us
fucking killed!”
“I wanted you to like me!” Ladeci wails.
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!” Karkat remembers his decision a
few seconds ago to meet his death being a good friend, at least. Why is he is
so bad at this? I do like you, that’s what he should say, even if Ladeci is a
stupid lying cave-humping ugly-fanged weirdo who just guaranteed Karkat’s messy
death. You’re my pity friend, of course I like you. And maybe he would have got
that out, but the ground suddenly stops sliding painfully underneath him.
Karkat twists halfway and sees that he’s close enough to reach over and touch
the adult, if he wants. Yeah, right. She’s dressed in a black military
bodysuit, and her horns curl back by her ears. Her sign is green, slightly
higher than Ladeci’s on the hemospectrum. She stares back at them, amused.
“So, how many other kids are hiding in the tunnels?” she says.
“Twenty-five,” Karkat says, hoping twenty-five is a big enough number to worry
her. At least about the difficulty of catching them all. Maybe they could be
useful, volunteer to help. “We’re Flarping. There’s a Flarp game. We’re
Flarpers.”
“Really?” Her smile doesn’t shift. “Then I’d better kill you two quickly, so I
can start clearing this place out.”
“No!” shouts Ladeci. “It’s just us. There’s no one else. I promise. Please
don’t kill us now.”
“Well,” she says, smiling wider. Her teeth are really long. “Okay. If you'd
rather.” She turns around and walks away, the two young trolls bouncing along
after her on psychic thread.
“You idiot,” Karkat says. “She was going to kill us quickly.”
“Oh, shut up. I hate you.”
“Make up your fucking mind.”
They stop again in a wide tunnel several turns from the cave’s entrance. It’s
bright with reflected pre-dawn light. There’s no way they’d be able to run
home, even if they managed to escape. Karkat tries to untangle himself enough
to sit up, but whatever psychic thing she’s doing, it’s like moving through
sopor slime.
“Toss me the cuffs,” she says.
“I still don’t understand why you’re dragging this out,” someone answers, but
it’s followed by the sound of metal landing in a hand.
Then she’s back, yanking on the invisible rope. Up, this time. “Okay, you two.
Kneel.” Karkat finds something in himself to resist, or at least not respond
right away. Maybe he’s just not able to. But then she says, “Do you think I
can’t make you?” and no, he doesn’t, and he doesn’t want to give her a chance
to prove otherwise.
He clambers up to his knees. It’s painful. The tunnel was long and rocky, and
his entire body is one giant bruise in progress. The adult pulls his arms
roughly behind his back and secures them hand to elbow, and it’s almost enough
to make Karkat lose his balance. Ladeci is swaying beside him, staring slack-
faced at the other adult, this one a male with a blue sign. The man’s glaring
at them like they’re vermin he’s been inexplicably asked not to stomp under his
boot. Just quite yet.
“There.” The woman finishes cuffing Karkat and walks back to her partner. She
gestures expansively at them, wide grinned. “Dinner and entertainment. The
question is only... which is which?”
The man gives her a stony look Karkat doesn’t try to read. It’s taking enough
focus not to fall over. The woman shrugs. “Better than rations, trust me.
They’re fresh. It’s one of the only perks of doing recon on this shithole.”
“Don’t speak of the Homeworld in that tone,” says the man, but his tone
suggests he’s saying it out of habit, not because he actually cares. He gives
Karkat and Ladeci a more considering type of stare. After a moment, he puts
down the gray packet he’s holding. Karkat can make out enough of the script on
it know it contains a prepared military meal, some flavor of dried grubloaf.
“Fuck,” Karkat says. It’s barely a whisper, but it catches the man’s attention.
His focus shifts entirely to Karkat, and it feels like the air has been sucked
out of the cave.
“What color blood does that one have?” he says, pointing to Karkat’s gray sign.
“Red,” says the female adult, so confidently that Karkat flinches. “I felt how
warm his skin was when I cuffed him. Definitely a red blood.”
“I refuse to believe you can tell simply from touch,” the man says.
She shrugs. “You need to feel up more people, Dien. But I’ll prove it. Hey,
kid.”
Karkat, busy fighting the sense of his world slipping away, is shocked back
into awareness by a sharp pain across one of his horns. The woman’s holding one
hand to her side like it contains an invisible whip. “Hey, kid,” she repeats.
“What color’s your blood?”
“It’s none of your fucking business,” Karkat snarls out of reflex, but his eyes
immediately go wide when he realizes what he did. He stutters out, “Oh god, oh
god, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, oh god.”
The male adult’s face twists in fury, but the woman laughs. “Don’t worry,” she
says to her partner. “It’s easy enough to find out.” She pulls out a ten inch
blade and walks towards the young trolls.
Abscond, Karkat thinks. Abscond, abscond, abscond, but his legs don’t seem to
be responding. He tries to even lean away, but the arm cuffs stretch the
muscles in his shoulders and chest tight. He fights them in panic, struggling
back and forth ineffectually, until he topples sideways into Ladeci.
Ladeci holds his balance, supporting them both. He’s quiet and still, barely
breathing, and his eyes are focused on a far wall. It’s like he’s hoping to
remain unnoticed while Karkat diverts attention by thrashing around like a
loamsnake with its limbs torn off. Asshole, but Karkat’s pretty sure he’d be
doing the same if Ladeci was the one being a fucking idiot. Karkat doesn't know
what the fuck is wrong with himself, he deserves to get culled first. For a
brief, black moment, Karkat feels a hate stronger than anything before, strong
enough to wash away everything else, even fear. He’s not sure which of them
it’s directed at.
Then the adult’s boots scuff beside him, and the moment drains away. He looks
up. The early daylight reflects off her blade, and it’s so bright it hurts.
“It’s red,” Karkat says. His voice cracks on the word, even if it’s still
functionally a lie. “My blood. It’s red, it’s red, oh god, I’m sorry, you’re
right.”
At Karkat’s shoulder, Ladeci tenses and pulls away as much as he’s able to.
Karkat keeps his gaze fixed downward on the rough cave floor. It’s bad enough
to imagine Ladeci’s expression, disgust over-writing his terror. And he thinks
Karkat’s just a caste jumping asshole, he doesn’t even fucking know...
“Told you!” she shouts back to the man.
He grunts. “Your prediction was a safe one. What else would try to hide behind
gray?”
“You’d be surprised,” she says. “The anons are full of blue bloods and, hah!,
sea trolls. People who don’t have to worry about being reminded of their
place.” The knife blinks back into her index, and Karkat relaxes slightly. He
can’t help it, although he’s just as doomed as a second ago. Even certain death
is less terrifying than being exposed.
“There are very few topics I wish to discuss less,” the man all but spits. He
pauses, then says, “But I don’t care much for red bloods. I find them bitter.”
Of course we’re fucking bitter, Karkat seethes to himself. And we don’t care
much for you pompus assholes either. So he’s bewildered when the female adult
says, “Good choice!” and pulls Ladeci forward with her psychic rope trick.
Ladeci manages to stagger to his feet for a few steps, but she doesn’t bring
him far, just tossing him down in front of the other adult for inspection. The
man lifts him by the arm cuffs and sniffs at his neck. Ladeci stares pleadingly
at Karkat, the gulf between their blood colors apparently forgotten. But
Karkat, who is desperately fighting the realization of what the adults meant by
bitter, can’t help him.
The man rips the sleeve off Ladeci’s shirt in one smooth motion. He runs the
side of his thumb down Ladeci’s shoulder until, finding a spot that interests
him, he leans in and tears out a chunk of Ladeci’s arm with his teeth.
Ladeci shouts. Karkat, stupid stupid stupid, says “No!” and is rewarded by
something slamming hard into his face. It is, he’s slow to realize, the ground.
He must have launched himself forward. He struggles to get back into a kneeling
position.
On the other side of the cave, the woman is looking at Karkat curiously. The
man’s face is twisted in distaste, relish green spilling from his lips. He
forces himself to swallow. “Disgusting!” he says, sounding betrayed. Ladeci is
sprawled on the floor, sobbing.
The woman thwaps the other adult on the shoulder. “Well, yeah, look at them.
They’re sweeps out of the pupal stage. I’m amazed you never starved to death,
Dien, if you don’t know this.”
“I’m not in the habit of preparing my own food,” he says, and Karkat’s not sure
if he’s bragging or embarrassed or just carefully choosing the words most
likely to make Karkat lose his mind. He can’t keep listening to this. Maybe he
should get to his feet and run at them, attack with nothing available but his
fangs, get them to kill him now.
But he doesn’t. He’s too much of a useless fucking coward. The adults drag
Ladeci to a portable mechanic’s furnace, and Ladeci lets them, dangling limp
from the male’s arms as his partner talks about temperature settings. They are
going to roast Ladeci and eat him, and Ladeci isn’t even going to struggle.
He’s given up.
But hasn’t Karkat? He’s not fighting to do anything but stay on his knees, stay
where that bitch fucking put him. There’s no reason Karkat isn’t the one about
to be cooked for supper except they weren’t in the mood for something bitter.
He would show them bitter if they tried it, he would --
-- oh fuck, he’s slipping again, his arms are wrenched too far back, he can’t
keep his balance --
-- he would stay exactly where they put him, while a few yards away the adult
is digging her thumb into hole in Ladeci’s arm. Ladeci whimpers, but doesn’t
move. The adult raises her thumb and licks it, frowning thoughtfully.
“He’ll be okay,” she says. “But it’s better if you tenderize them.”
Karkat doesn’t understand what that means. Apparently, neither does her
partner, because she says, “Here, I’ll show you,” and gestures for him to drop
Ladeci. Ladeci lands like a thing already dead. His weight is on his wounded
shoulder, but he doesn’t even move to roll off it. He stays exactly where they
put him.
It’s not going to save him.
It’s not going to save Karkat either.
The adult mimes pulling a lasso around Ladeci’s chest. She swings her arm back
and forth, as if she needs the momentum, and then throws her arm, yanking hard.
Ladeci flies high into the nearest wall, hard enough to rattle stone. Further
into the cave, Karkat would have been worried. Not worried. Hoping. He would
have been hoping for a cave-in, but near the mouth every tunnel is solid.
Before gravity can take Ladeci, the adult pulls him back, flinging him across
to the floor. Ladeci’s making a low pitched whine. One of his legs is bent
oddly -- Karkat tries to tell himself it’s just how he’s sprawled -- and green
dribbles from his mouth. When he swallows some of it, Karkat sees that his
crooked fang has been knocked out.
The adult is providing commentary. “At that age, anything heavy will work to
soften the bones,” she says. “your hammers would do it better. I just think
this is more fun.”
She throws up her arm. Ladeci swings up into the ceiling, falls back down. His
head lolls towards Karkat, and the stone’s left deep scratches across his cheek
and forehead. When his eyes jerk towards Karkat’s face, Karkat shudders.
Karkat wants to say something to him. “This is all your fault!” or “Why the
fuck didn’t you let her kill us!” or “It’ll be over soon.” He hopes so. He
hopes it will be over soon. Or maybe something comforting, like “Hey, this is
probably still better than being cooked alive!”
The psychic rope yanks him away, smashing him headfirst into the far wall of
the tunnel. There’s a loud, extended cracking noise, and Karkat has no idea
what it is until Ladeci slides back to the ground and half of a horn rolls to a
stop an arms length away from him. There’s a moment of complete silence, and
Ladeci’s body seems to stiffen from the bottom up, from his feet to his hips to
his shoulders to his face, which twists in on itself, not even an emotion
anymore.... and then he drags in a gasp of air and screams.
It’s like nothing Karkat’s heard before, high pitched and warbling and it
doesn’t stop. It’s not a sound he even knew someone could make. More like a
wounded prey animal, shrieking its distress into the night.
Pretty fucking accurate, then.
Karkat curls forward, letting his head and shoulders hang. He can’t watch this.
He stares at his pants instead. They’re filthy, covered in dust and cave grime
and tiny splattered drops of green. He should have discarded them a while ago:
the dark gray is starting to fade at the knees, there’s a tiny hole in one
pocket, and Karkat’s fingers clench into his palms the way they can’t close
around the side of his head and tear out his ears because Ladeci is still
fucking screaming.
The adults can’t take it either. One of them, anyway. There’s a shout, “If you
don’t silence him, I will do it myself!”
“Oh, fine,” says the woman. She’s closer than Karkat had thought, and his head
jerks up in alarm. She’s leaning against the wall, her hands knotting something
complex into her psychic rope, her eyes fixated across the the tunnel. Karkat
can’t bring himself to look at Ladeci, but there’s a grin across her face.
She’s enjoying this, obviously, but there’s something more there Karkat’s not
entirely getting. Her nostrils flare as Ladeci starts screaming again after a
brief choked breath. One of her fangs is pressed against the softer inside of
her lips.
She looks... hungry, Karkat thinks, but that makes no fucking sense, because
then why is she hesitating to finish him off and shove him into her ad-hoc
oven.
“Zhaleya!” the man yells.
“Yeah, yeah, okay.” She pushes away from the wall and stalks slowly across the
tunnel. When she gets to the crumpled pile of what remains of Ladeci, she
reaches down and yanks him up by his broken horn. He doesn’t even seem to
notice, like there’s no level of pain above the one he’s already found. The
adult slides something invisible around his throat and...
No. Karkat shuts his eyes as tightly as he can manage. The screaming tapers off
in slow, choked jumps. Then there’s a muffled, squelching pop and. No. it
finally stops entirely. The cave is flooded with silence, but there’s no relief
in it. It’s a suffocating silence, a silence that rings in Karkat’s ears louder
than the screaming did.
He’s glad Ladeci’s dead. No. He is. He’s fucking ecstatic for Ladeci that it’s
over, and whatever happens next at least it’s not his problem. But there’s a
change in the quality of panic that’s been overwhelming Karkat since he heard
that first resonant voice. With Ladeci gone, Karkat feels hollow, and despair
solidifies around him like black stone.
Because there are two adult trolls in this tunnel, and now Karkat’s alone with
them.
***** Chapter 2 *****
Karkat thinks he's going to start screaming himself after every footstep or
scrape of stone he hears. He has to open his eyes.
The two adults have brought the body back to their equipment and laid it on top
of the portable furnace. The shirt and the arm cuffs have been removed, and the
female adult is busy pulling off the shoes and pants. She asks the other adult
to get sweetpaste from their ration bag, and he returns holding another silver
packet that he stares at somewhat confusedly. "Open it," she tells him. "Cover
the skin."
There are other directions, but Karkat tries not to listen to the details.
There's something surreal about the way the woman's explaining everything she's
doing with a slightly condescending tone. It's like having a cooking show on in
the background while he's busy around his hive, doing useless pointless things
like coding or shouting at idiots online or dealing with his lusus. He half-
expects to see the standard disclaimer run across the bottom of his vision. All
immature trolls (or derivatives thereof) used in the making of this program
were culled on the surface of the Homeworld before shipment. You don't fucking
say.
The adults seem absorbed in their preparations. Karkat wonders if he could try
to break and escape while they're distracted. Of course, his choices are to
turn deeper into the cave, where they'd just run him down again, or head
towards the burning light of the sun. His chances out there are pretty fucking
abysmal, but Karkat would take that firey death over being cracked open for
dessert or whatever those assholes are planning with him.
But when Karkat leans to flex his legs, both adults pause in removing a flat
silver gray sheet from the furnace and look at him. They hadn't forgotten about
him at all, he just didn't do anything worth their attention.
Karkat doesn't want it now, either. Every time they glance at him it's like the
air is knocked from his chest. He straightens on his knees and remains as still
as possible, not even breathing, until the woman quirks a self-satisfied smile
and both adults go back to pretending to ignore him. He'd never make it to the
entrance of the cave. And knowing that they're watching for it, Karkat can't
imagine himself even trying.
Finally, the woman adjusts the settings on the furnace. Ladeci's inside, no
sign of him visible except a pile of green stained clothes and half a horn
against the far wall. The man runs a sonic scrubber conscientiously over his
hands and then passes it to his partner, who gives hers a quick swipe.
Fuck. And they're looking at him again. The man, at least, only shoots him a
brief, contemptuous glare before sitting down and taking out a tablet computer,
but the woman sidles towards him the same way she'd moved to Ladeci, just
before the end. "What do you think," she says to the man. "Ready for the
amusement portion of the evening?" He responds with an uninterested grunt.
"And what about you?" she asks, and now she's talking to Karkat. He lowers his
gaze to the floor, but she grabs a fistful of hair to drag his head back up.
"Are you going to cooperate?"
Karkat opens his lips and manages to say, "No." It's barely a wheeze, but it
feels like the loudest thing he's ever said.
The adult's about to start laughing. "No?" she repeats. "Really?"
"No, fuck you, no," Karkat says, and now that he's remembered how to speak he
can keep going. He's amazed at the words coming out of his mouth, like someone
else is using his voice while he's too busy being terrified to stop them. "I'm
not going to fucking... fucking dance for you before you... Just kill me
fucking now."
"So you're not going to kick and claw for every second of existence? You've
considered your available options here, and that's the decision you made?"
"Why?" Karkat snarls. "So you can..." A vision of Ladeci being flung across the
tunnel snaps into Karkat's mind, and he has to start over. "What's the point.
We all know how this is going to end. Just get it over with."
The other adult looks up from his computer to say, "Tell me, is this really the
brand of entertainment you've scheduled for our morning?"
"Shut it, Dien." she says. "'We all know how' it's not. But actually, this is
better."
She lets go of Karkat's hair and, when he doesn't drop his head again, swings
her arm back to her side. "You're right, you know," she says, conversationally.
"There are worse things than being culled quickly. But that's some pretty
impressive advance thinking for a... how old are you, anyway?"
"Five," Karkat says, and feels a new burst of anger. He clenches his hands back
into fists and tries to hold onto it. "Ladeci was five too."
"What, you mean that other kid?" The adult points a thumb over her shoulder.
"And you actually give a shit. Amazing. You know what I think?" She laughs.
"Hey, maybe you do. I've never met a red blood without better mojo than mine."
"I know you're a... you're a bitch."
The adult moves her hand towards Karkat's face, but she doesn't hit him.
Instead she traces a fingernail along the bottom ridge of Karkat's left eye.
It's so much worse. He can't stop himself from trembling, and the sharp tip of
her nail seems to vibrate against the underside of his eyeball. "Watch it," she
says, "or I'll change my opinion."
Her finger meanders up from his eye and taps him a few times on the forehead.
"But yeah, I'm pretty sure you're the one who tried to bluff me out when I
found you. It was a shitty assed attempt, but then I guess all your practice
lying is to idiot wigglers who get confused by a bit of gray paint."
"I didn't lie to them," Karkat says, but he knows neither of them believe it.
"That's right! 'Cause it's too easy to get caught in a lie. You were careful,"
she says, grinning widely. This is the worst conversation Karkat has ever had,
and he can't stand that she thinks it’s hilarious.
"So here's what I think, I think you're one of the ones that could have made
it." She taps her nail once more against Karkat's forehead. He flinches. "I
think there's enough pieces of personality floating around in there that maybe
eventually, if you'd been more lucky, you could have developed into a person.
"So maybe for you, it's not simply a question of being culled now or later.
What I think is you actually had something to lose."
Karkat's body wants to fold in on itself, as if it's convinced she's kicked him
repeatedly in the abdomen. He knows it would have been impossible. He knows. As
soon as anybody found out about his blood color, it'd be over for him, and
that's not a secret he can keep when it's time to be registered with the Fleet.
But fuck her for taunting him with the possibility. Even this psycho asshole
thinks he would have made a worthy troll, but it was never going to matter with
his disgusting mutant blood. And even that doesn't matter anymore, because he
stumbled into a cave full of adults and getting killed is the right punishment
for being so fucking stupid.
"Are you finished toying with him yet?" the man says. "It's distracting."
"Not even close," she says. "In fact, I was just about to expand his options."
She pushes Karkat's forehead back until she's staring directly into his eyes.
"So here's the deal, kid. You do what we tell you, exactly, no hesitating or
complaining or fighting back... amusing as that'd be... and maybe I'll let you
make it out of here. Probably not. We're probably going to kill you no matter
what you do. But who knows, keep me happy, and maybe you'll have a chance."
It's the worst offer Karkat has ever heard. It's somehow worse than the
guaranteed painful death he's been trying to resign himself to, because he
knows he can't believe it but he wants to. She's even gleefully admitted the
tiny shred of hope she's dangling in front of him is as non-existent as her
stupid imaginary string, but he still wants to kick and claw and dance for it.
"What if I don't," he forces himself to say through clenched teeth. "Does that
mean you'll kill me now?"
The adult tosses her head and laughs. "Oh, no." she says, eventually. "Nah, I'm
still going to use you for whatever I want. I am going to use the fuck out of
you. The only thing in question is if there'll be anything left when I'm done."
She moves her fingernail up into his hairline, then slides her whole hand onto
the top of his head. Everywhere she's touched him burns in Karkat's mind like a
line of acid on his skin.
"So how about it?" she says, still grinning down at him. "We have a deal?"
Karkat doesn't answer. He can't. His tongue moves against his throat, but if he
opens his mouth he's either going to throw up or start screaming and never
stop. Her hand is still resting between his horns. He lets the weight of it
push his head into a nod.
"Yeah," she says. "Yeah, I knew you were going to cooperate."
There's a banging sound from behind her, where the other adult has stopped
working. He's slammed his tablet beside him rather than captchaloguing it.
"You're not serious about letting him go!"
The woman cocks her head. "Yeah? So is that a fact, or just something you wish
was a fact?" She turns to glance at her partner, and her fingers pull at tufts
of Karkat's hair when she decides to hold on. "But sure, I might be. Why not?"
“It would undermine the secrecy of our location. Unless you intend to endanger
our mission simply so you can play games.”
“Hah!” she says. “Dien, look at this kid." She pushes against Karkat’s
forehead, shoving him away, and he teeters on his knees. He has to twist wildly
to keep himself from falling over, and his shoulders, locked behind him, strain
painfully. "C'mon, do you really think he's about to abscond and tattle?"
"Not unless you're foolish enough to set him free," the man says, and the low
rumbling vibration in his voice echoes across the cave.
Karkat has just about steadied himself, but she pushes him again, batting
playfully, almost gently, at the side of his head. “If it’ll get you to relax,
I’ll give you my guarantee he’s not getting out of here.” And mostly what
Karkat feels is relief: the certainty of being culled is so much easier than
the almost certainty. The adult must know that too, because then she adds,
“Anyway, not until after we do,” poisoning him again with hope.
So that’s it, if he wants to survive, he has to hold on until they’re ready to
leave this tunnel. Which means at least until the sun goes down, and right now
the days are frustratingly long. Although it could be much more than that.
They’ve set up heavy looking equipment Karkat doesn’t recognize, overkill if
they’re just hiding from solar rays, and he’s seen movies about military
squadrons forced to wait in obscure locations for weeks. There’s no way he can
do this.
There’s a few seconds of quiet as the adults stare each other. It’s the blue
blooded soldier who backs down first. “Fine,” he says. “If you wish to spend
the morning grub-sitting, I won’t interfere. Even though I don’t understand the
appeal.”
“Hmm.” The woman turns back to Karkat and, after staring at him for a moment,
grabs another handful of his hair. Karkat still hasn’t completely recovered his
balance, and now he’s shaking more from muscle fatigue than fear. When she
pulls his head back, forcing him to stillness, he disgusts himself by feeling a
brief spark of gratitude.
“You’re going to have to change his mind about that,” she says to Karkat. “So
go over there and start sucking on his horns.”
Her words echo in Karkat’s brain like noise without meaning. He looks up at her
in horrified incomprehension.
“What?” she demands. “Are yours so pathetically tiny you don’t even know what
they’re for?” She slaps one of Karkat’s horns and he cries out in pained
surprise. He’d have collapsed if she wasn’t still holding onto his hair. “What
did I fucking tell you about hesitating?”
“No, fuck, fuck, okay.” There’s a weight building behind Karkat’s eyes but he
can’t cry. He can’t. It’s something to hold on to. “Okay.”
He tries to climb to his feet, but his legs are slow and heavy from kneeling so
long and he can’t use his arms to compensate. After two and half failed starts,
the adult helpfully pulls him up by his hair to something approximating
upright.
Of course Karkat knew they were bigger than him, and of course she’d been
towering over him while he cowered on his knees. He’d just assumed that part of
the effect was his imagination joining right up in the terrorizing Karkat
Vantas extravaganza for assholes. But now he’s standing beside her and his head
barely reaches the emerald green lines of her sign.
Karkat sways a few times, but when it seems like he's not going to fall over
she lets go. She steps to the side, leaving him a clear path to the other
adult. The man is glaring at them, and when Karkat takes a shaky step in his
direction he bares his teeth in a disgusted grimace. He doesn't want this
either. Then fucking open your fucking protein chute and fucking regurgitate
some word sounds, Karkat wills as he stumbles across the cave, but the man
remains silent.
Karkat thought that the tunnel was suffocatingly small when it was all the
distance between him and two adult trolls, but now it's taking forever for him
to cross it. Each step stings as blood returns to his legs, and he stumbles
over the loose stones that slide under his shoes. His instincts scream that
he's too exposed in the open space between them, defenseless before predators,
but he knows things will be worse when he finally arrives.
Which he does now, pausing uncertainly a few feet to the side of the man. He's
sitting on a metal bench and clenching the side of his tablet computer in a
tight knuckled fist.
"If you let him touch me," the man says, not to Karkat but to the woman leaning
back against the opposite wall, "I will tear out his shitblood throat."
"Dien, Dien, Dien," she says, and every time she overuses his name, his lips
tighten over his fangs. Karkat realizes with a fresh wave of horror that along
with everything else happening, he's trapped in the middle of some inexplicable
adult drama. Fuck.
"Don't be like that. The kid just wants to show you a good time." She's smiling
that open hungry smile. "I know you trust me, Dien." The man growls deep in his
throat, but doesn't answer. Her eyes flick to Karkat. "Well? What the hell is
the hold up?"
If he's supposed to decide which asshole he's more terrified of, there's no
fucking contest. He inches closer to the man, circling behind the bench. When
he can't get any closer without touching him, Karkat clenches his eyes shut and
leans forward until he feels the solidity of bone against his extended tongue.
The man's shiver reverberates up through his horns to Karkat's jaw.
So what the fuck is supposed to happen now? Karkat's never done this before. He
tries wagging his tongue a little. The man's horns are rougher than Karkat's,
with small pits and lengthwise grooves.
"This is your idea of a good time?" the man says.
"I don't know," says the woman. "It's pretty funny to watch." There's a sudden
stripe of pain over Karkat's shoulders, and he bangs his mouth hard between his
teeth and the man's horn. It's enough to draw some blood from his inside lip,
and he swallows it away in panic.
The woman's coiling back her psychic whip. "C'mon kid, pay attention here. Wrap
your lips around that appendage. I want to see you pleasuring that horn like
your life depends on it." She laughs like it's a hilarious inside joke. "And
you, Dien, have some pity! How's he supposed to know what you want from him? If
he was psychic we'd know it by now." Is she playing auspistice between them?
What the hell.
Karkat's brain is an echo chamber of Fuck you. Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck
you fuck you. The idea of putting his mouth back on any part of their bodies
makes him sick. He'd give up and let them kill him now if he thought it would
work, if that bitch didn't already promise him that this was just the easy way.
Because as bad as this is, he has no problem imagining they could make it
worse.
The man is shouting low and insulted across the tunnel. Karkat leans forward
and, just like she fucking told him to, wraps his lips around the other adult's
closest horn. He has to stretch his mouth to fit it around the circumference,
but he manages. He slides his tongue against it and, when saliva starts to ooze
wet and slippery from his lips, sucks back. The man stops talking, his words
fading into a moan.
"See?" the woman says.
Fuck you fuck you fuck you.
The man leans into Karkat, destabilizing his center of gravity yet again. In an
unthinking effort not to slip, Karkat bites down for leverage, and then he
nearly falls anyway when he freezes in fear, sure he's about to be made to
regret the mistake.
But the man just groans. "Yes," he says, "Yes. Lower," and lifts one hand to
rub the angled tip of his other horn. Karkat is so relieved that he's glad for
the chance to comply. He licks his way downwards and drags his lips and teeth
lightly over the cracks in the bone.
When he's told to stop, Karkat's cheek is already buried in the man's hair.
Everything stinks of sweat and styling oil, and half his view is greasy black
strands. "Harder," the man says in a rough voice, and Karkat breathes out and
then pulls back as strong as he can with cheeks and his tongue.
The man makes a low humming noise, but after a moment he says, "I said harder.
I want to feel teeth."
If someone jammed their teeth into one of Karkat's horns, Karkat thinks he'd
rip off his own skin, but who the fuck knows how it works with adults. Karkat
bites down gingerly, and when that earns him nothing but an impatient growl he
clenches his jaw, fitting his sharpest teeth into the surface cracks of the
horn. He tries to tell himself he's doing it to hurt, but with the wet,
desperate noises the man's making he can't even pretend. The man moves his head
in short, twisting jerks, rubbing himself against Karkat's lips. His hand runs
up and down his free horn, fingernails curled in.
Karkat swallows another mouthful of saliva and the man forces in a ragged
breath. "Do that again," he says, so Karkat does, swallowing again and again
and again even after his tongue is tired and his mouth is dry. The man, with
exaggerated carefulness, re-captchalouges his computer. Then he starts to undo
the clasp on his black military pants.
Karkat tries to focus on the cave wall instead. He wants to think about
anything other than the man's rough fingers sliding down to stroke himself, but
he can't afford the mental distance. He still has to struggle to maintain his
balance, and he still has to remember to move his tongue and teeth and lips the
way they told him to. He still has to be their entertainment.
Across the cave, the woman is watching with flared nostrils and narrow eyes.
Karkat's darkly surprised she's not fondling her own horns, how better to
appreciate the show she set up for herself. The man's thrusting his hips up
against the palm of his hand, but he's sitting on a bench with no back support
and can't exactly get a satisfying angle.
Eventually he hisses in frustration. He reaches behind his shoulder and grabs
Karkat, pulling Karkat roughly away from his head. Tendrils of drool bridge
between Karkat's mouth and the horn like spiderwebs, glistening in the cave's
increasing brightness. Karkat shakes his head until they break. His jaw is
beginning to ache, and moving his teeth to slice them seems like an impossible
amount of effort.
The man readjusts his grip, wrapping his hand firmly around Karkat's upper arm.
He yanks Karkat forward, knocking his closest knee and ankle hard against the
metal seat before dropping him hip-first to the floor in front of the bench.
His legs complain, but the man's still holding his torso awkwardly above the
ground by his arm. The pressure in his cuffed elbows and shoulders burns like
the joints are about to snap loose and spring themselves free of this bullshit
whether Karkat's ready to join them or not.
Karkat tries to find a better angle, but he only ends up flopping his legs like
a sea troll lusus stupid enough to trap itself on the shore. It doesn't matter
for long. The man changes the angle of his wrist and drags Karkat sideways over
the ground, until he's between the blue blooded adult's legs, face inches from
the exposed mound of his bone bulge. The black membrane around his seedflap
glistens with arousal.
Karkat doesn't know what he's expected to do now, but it turns out the answer
is not a fucking thing. The man is just looking for a masturbation aid. He
shoves Karkat's head deep into his crotch and finds a rhythm between rolling
his hips and rubbing himself with Karkat's face. The ridge above Karkat's eye
is pressed hard into the round swell of the man's bulge over and over as it's
dragged the length between his seedflap and nook.
It's hard not to struggle. The man's fingers dig into the back of Karkat's
skull, and it's all that's supporting the top half of his body. His neck
muscles strain with the weight and the forced jerky movements, but Karkat tries
to unclench them. The better to let himself be used like a ribbed fuck board.
The juices from the man's seedflap make Karkat's forehead damp. There are wet,
squelching noises where their skin rubs together, and sex pheromones drive up
Karkat's nasal passages until it's all he can smell. If he was a few sweeps
older, maybe they'd unlock something in his brain to help him get into the
fucked up exercise, but right now any effect is outweighed by the dull throb of
pressure in the eye the man's decided is his favorite rutting tool. Yeah, maybe
they can force him to do any screwed up thing in their diseased imaginations,
but they can't make him want it.
He's certain.
He's almost certain.
It's not the most consoling thought that has ever wormed itself through his
think pan.
There's a shift in the way the man's sitting. His breath is coming in faster,
shaky breaths. Instead of the endless rubbing the man's grip tightens above
Karkat's neck and pulls him harder against his crotch. Karkat can't see and his
nostrils are blocked against the man's skin, and he has to open his mouth to
gulp air that tastes of stale sweat and pheromones. When the pressure against
his eye starts to sting, Karkat tilts his head down so that instead it's his
forehead jutting into the man's bulge. The man either doesn't notice or doesn't
care.
The man's hips twist back and forth in quick, abortive movements until he
suddenly relaxes, finished. He drops Karkat's head a few inches into the
relatively fresh air beneath his legs, and Karkat breathes hard, trying to blow
the stink from his sinuses.
Karkat's not sure what's going to happen next. Not buckets, obviously, but...
the man tenses once more, groans, and then there's the soft, warm movement of
fluid against his bangs and forehead. The air turns sour. It's not a large
amount, not really, but Karkat can feel it sliding thickly on his face and his
arms move helplessly against his back with his urgency to get it off. Some of
it trickles down far enough to catch in his eyebrow and eyelash. When he
blinks, he sees a deep shiny blue. The blue sign under the man's shoulder is a
triumph of truth in labeling.
"Stop whining," the man orders, and it takes Karkat a second to recognize that,
yes, he's being addressed and, yes, he's making a low pitched stuttering noise.
Karkat swallows and, when his throat still threatens to vibrate, presses his
tongue tight against the roof of his mouth. It seems to work, as long as he
breathes slowly. "Now clean me up."
Karkat rolls his eyes upward. There's more viscous blue fluid around the man's
nook. Some of it has puddled on the open crotch of his pants. He lifts Karkat's
head opposite it.
Karkat leans forward and, since his hands are locked behind him, tries to hook
the fluid with his cheekbone and wipe it off. He gets some to stick, and when
he pulls back, a string of blue swings away and hits him wetly in the ear.
Something else hits him lightly in the ass, but the blue blooded man howls and
clutches his Karkat-free hand to his knee. "What are you doing!" he shouts, but
he's not talking to Karkat.
"Sorry," says the woman. "Really, Dien, I am. You know I usually have better
aim."
As if in proof, Karkat's back flares and he lands face first back into the
man's bulge. When he's pulled away, there's a messy smear of dark blue left on
the man's seedflap. The sting where the invisible whip touched him doesn't
subside right away and he hopes desperately, as if it actually matters, that
she hasn't broken his skin.
"What kind of idiot wiggler are you! He told you to fucking clean him up!"
"I am," Karkat says, but his voice breaks and he's sure he wasn't loud enough
for them to hear. He tries again. "I am. Fuck you. I fucking am."
"Oh good," says the woman. "your mouth works." There's another shock of pain
across his back, but this time the man holds Karkat's head steady. It's just
the rest of his body which rocks with the blow, and his already tortured
muscles twist to compensate. He drags air between clenched teeth so he doesn't
scream. "So get your worthless lips in place or I'll claw them off your inept
nooksucking face." She ends on a laugh, probably thrilled that Karkat provided
her an opportunity to use the insult literally.
Of course that's what they want him to do. Karkat must have been in denial not
to fucking realize it. He's unsuccessful at ignoring the stinging lines on his
lower back, but they turn out to be useful. The pain burns out thoughts about
what he's doing as he presses his lips above the man's bulge and licks the
misplaced blue fluid from his seedflap. It's sour and films over the back of
his throat when he swallows. The man's knees twitch inward a few inches when
Karkat's tongue touches between membranes.
"Unless I'm overstepping. You'd tell me if I'm overstepping, right Dien?" says
the woman, and Karkat can't tell if she's mocking or sincere. Both
possibilities are equally awful. "I was just getting his attention for you. You
didn't seem... satisfied."
The man grunts, although that could be thanks to Karkat's ministrations. He
pointedly rubs his injured knee, but he says, "No, It's fine."
Karkat removes the last of the blue from above the man's bulge. Everything is
still sticky with his saliva, but trying to remove that with his mouth sounds
like an unwinnable game. Just thinking about it makes him want to curl up in a
pupal position. Instead, he lets his head drop lower, closer to the man's nook.
Thinking about that makes him want to curl up in a pupal position too.
As slowly as he thinks he can get away with, Karkat licks the scattered
droplets from the fabric of the man's pants. The sourness of it fills his mouth
even after he swallows, and when he takes a breath the air tastes thick and
terrible. And this is him procrastinating.
Too soon the man's pants are as clean as Karkat's ever going to manage without
a fabric refreshening unit. He forces himself to look at the man's nook, on the
theory that forcing himself to do it is better than them forcing him. Thick,
sticky droplets and tendrils are splattered around the dark gray orifice.
Karkat's mind goes blank to make enough room for the certainty that it is the
grossest thing he has ever seen.
He shuts his eyes again and leans forward tongue first. He tries to dwell on
the pain of his back, or of his neck and shoulders, or his hip and shaking
knees. Actually, pretty much all of his body won't shut the fuck up. But
reminding himself he is sore as well as miserable and more terrified than he'd
imagined was possible doesn't exactly improve his feelings score.
Karkat quickly licks the blue fluid from the man's skin and then, seeing no new
delaying tactic, presses his lips around the nook itself. The man's breath
hitches and his body relaxes slightly. His grip softens around Karkat's head,
and he drags the young troll deeper into his crotch gently. A couple of the
man's fingers re-grip further up, slipping closer to Karkat's own horns.
It's suddenly a twisted nightmare version of a romantic redrom kiss. Well, of
what Karkat had imagined a romantic redrom kiss would be like. Karkat opens his
lips enough to slide out his tongue, but instead of meeting a chosen partner's
smooth teeth and own waiting tongue, he's wiping the last bit of sour fluid
from an adult's nook. And then what? Everyone throws around "nooksucker", so
should he actually suck?
He tries it, pulling back slowly with his tongue. The man breathes once
sharply. "That's enough," he decides, and lets go of Karkat's skull.
Without anything to support him, Karkat immediately falls. He manages to turn
and land on his shoulder instead of his face, but this is a mistake. The circle
of his arms and chest muscles burns after the impact. One of his horns burns
too. He must have nicked it on the bench on the way down.
Karkat rolls enough to rest the side of his head on the cave floor, and he
breathes in shallow puffs against the stone. The cool hardness of it is welcome
after dealing with warm, yielding flesh. Sunlight filters through the cave,
making the tunnel glow gold and highlighting tiny crystals embedded in stone.
The points are so bright that they hurt his eyes to look, like the world is
made up of a million tiny knives. They glitter in time with the throbbing of
his horn, and Karkat's never seen until now how everything is connected.
Fucking miracles. Trust that bulgebiting idiot to be right after all.
Far away, someone is clicking fabric clasps into place, but it has nothing to
do with him.
"So, you're done with him?"
"Obviously."
"Good. Set him up so I can grab him."
Karkat's throat is getting tight. No, that's not it. The man has grabbed onto
his collar and is pulling him back up. But no no no, he was done he just
fucking said. The man lifts Karkat far enough Karkat can drag his knees under
himself so the collar pulls less against his neck. When it looks like he's
going to stay up, the man lets go of Karkat's shirt.
Almost immediately, something brushes lightly on his hair and slides down over
his shoulders. Karkat can't see what it is, which is enough of a give away even
before it tightens around his upper arms and yanks him backwards. He folds
over, hitting the ground with his arms and ass. His legs untangle themselves as
he's reeled across the tunnel in a series of heaving pulls. It hurts like hell,
but it's a dejected, despairing pain, like his nerves have given up on Karkat
dealing with their problems.
The man has taken out his computer again, although he's not even pretending to
work on it. Karkat catches himself wishing that he hadn't finished with Karkat
so quickly, no matter how terrible it had been. It had been so fucking
terrible. The man hadn't been gentle, but it seemed like he just didn't give a
fuck what happened to Karkat, like Karkat was some inanimate tool he saw no use
for maintaining. But the woman...
Karkat remembers her hungry glee when Ladeci was out of his mind in agony, how
she'd stretched the screaming out. He claws reflexively at the ground, but his
fingers aren't even strong enough to grab on. One small loose pebble catches
against his fingernail. He tries to keep it as evidence he's accomplished
something, but it bounces away before he can convince his palm to close.
The invisible rope yanks him once more and then pauses. He's laid out messily
at the woman's feet. "Up," she says.
Karkat rolls onto his side and pulls his knees close to his chest so he can
rock onto them. That's what he's attempting to do, anyway. It probably just
looks like feeble writhing. After a moment, the woman takes pity and pulls
upwards on the psychic rope around his arms. Karkat cries out briefly as his
shoulders are pressed into a new angle, but when he leans against the rope
there's enough leverage to help him climb up. It feels absurdly like they're
cooperating towards a common goal, like they're both on team 'get Karkat to his
knees before this adult bitch loses her shit and stabs him through the bone
bulge with one of his own nubby horns'. Fuck, he wishes he hadn't thought that.
She probably would.
He manages to reach a kneeling position, but she doesn't stop pulling on the
rope. Taking it as a miraculously subtle hint, Karkat climbs shakily onto his
feet. The higher vantage somehow makes her more intimidating, because his head
still doesn't reach above her mid-chest.
The adult brings a hand to his face. Karkat cringes, but she just touches her
thumb to his stickiest eyebrow. She rubs at it lightly, working the man's fluid
into his skin. "See, kid," she says, "that wasn't so bad, was it? I knew you
could handle it."
For a second Karkat's worried she wants an answer, but then she grins down at
him, as brightly as if they were bulge bumping bros, and says, "And hey, now
you've been softened up a little, it's my turn."
The air is once again too thick to breathe. It doesn't even help when the adult
hooks a fingernail under her invisible lasso and eases it off Karkat's chest
and shoulders. It doesn't feel like freedom. It feels like he's about to crash
back to the ground if the cave doesn't stop fucking spinning.
For a few seconds, she just stands there and watches him tremble, her grin
spreading sharper across her face. She slides one of her longer fangs over her
lip, and when Karkat shudders deeply, she breathes in long and hungry. He must
stink of terror, underneath all the sex crap drying on his face, and she's
enjoying it. Fuck her. He wants to scream at her to just fucking get on with
it, but not nearly enough to actually open his mouth. He doesn't want to find
out what happens next.
The adult turns away and takes a low-backed chair from her captchalogue deck.
The chair is wide and overstuffed, very unlike like the man's utilitarian metal
bench. It's skinned with a weird purple and green striped leather that doesn't
look like it was taken from anything native to Alternia. Karkat's just thankful
it's not gray.
She flops unceremoniously into the seat, which bounces around her briefly like
its cushions are stuffed with rubber. "Get over here," she says to Karkat, and
hooks one thumb to a spot on the ground at her side.
Karkat gets. He's moving before he consciously gives in to the inevitability.
His feet have started walking without checking with him, and he can only
observe, slightly astounded, as they navigate a path of their own devising.
That they decide to stop exactly where the adult wanted him to stop seems like
coincidence.
From here, he's inches away from the woman, and her horns are rooted right at
his face level. Karkat can't even hope that's an accident. He closes his eyes
for a second, tries to blank out the panic churning in his chest, and then
takes the horn in front of him in his mouth. He does it the way she said, wraps
his lips around the entire bone. He closes around the spot just above the base,
where the man had kept him the longest, and runs his tongue over the grooves.
He doesn't press with his teeth though, just in case.
The woman stiffens when he sucks back against her horn, but then she reaches a
hand back and pushes him away. "Look at you, so eager!" she says, laughing. "I
didn't even say what I want yet!"
Karkat is overwhelmed by disgust for himself. Apparently he's such an
enthusiastic participant in this fucked up show, he's offering his services
beyond what they're taking from him. So what if these assholes are having some
fun before they kill him (probably probably probably). It's not what he'd been
warned about, but adults aren't required to give a fuck about his expectations.
It's like resenting the sun for burning him if he's caught outside.
It's actually reassuring to be reminded that the person he hates most is still
Karkat Vantas.
"I'm glad you like that horn, because the thing you are going to do," says the
woman, "is swallow it."
It's not a demand that makes any fucking sense, because first she'd have take
it off her head. But as Karkat stares blankly at her head, his incomprehension
is replaced by an awful suspicion. Until past her ears, the adult's horns grow
back only slightly rounded, and then they curve sharply downward. Once he
notices, it's harder not to see how the line of the bone follows the outlined
shape of a throat cut away from some anatomy diagram. Karkat owes his
imagination a fucking thank you card for keeping everything so very nicely
abstract.
It must be obvious when he's figured out what she's demanding, because the
adult suddenly looks twice as smug. She leans back, resettling herself in the
chair. "Oh, are you hesitating again," she asks. She sounds amused, almost
mockingly so, but he can guess that's not going to last long.
He's not hesitating. Okay, that's a blatant fucking lie, but he still has no
idea how this is supposed to work. Karkat takes a step to the side so that he's
lined up with the tip of her horn. Hers don't come to a point the way most
troll horns do. They're rounded, though still far less nubby than Karkat's own.
Up close, the grain in the bone is odd. She probably filed them down herself.
On purpose.
For a second he's nearly paralyzed with phantom sympathy pains, so fuck you,
imagination, he's ripping up that thank you card with his teeth. But at least
he doesn't have to put something sharp in his mouth. He wouldn't trust her not
to move suddenly and stab him through the back of the throat. She'd probably
find it hilarious.
Very carefully, Karkat widens his stance and bends to one side. When he doesn't
end up falling over, he leans closer to the adult and hooks the end of her horn
with his tongue. Then he guides his mouth over it until the horn fills his
mouth. It presses solid and unnatural against his tongue, and he can barely
close his lips while keeping his teeth apart enough not to bite her.
He moves a little around her, struggling to keep standing at this really
terrible angle, and the adult makes a low humming noise. Okay. He tries to
recreate the effect by swishing his tongue around, and the adult shakes once
and bends her head toward him, jabbing him uncomfortably in the back of his
mouth. He fucking knew it.
The adult catches him by his hair before he can fall. His bottom teeth bounce
up into her horn, and she inhales noisily through her fangs. "Careful," she
murmurs, but doesn't explain if she means, "Try to stay upright," or, "Bite me
again and I'll wear your entrails as leggings."
Karkat recenters himself, but the adult doesn't let him go. She's pulling his
head towards her, so he can't find a more comfortable position. Her horn keeps
poking him in the throat. Saliva gathers at the edges of his mouth. He's too
afraid to risk closing his jaw again to swallow.
"Swallow," the adult orders.
But he can't, because her horn is in the way. He can't. She grips his hair
tighter and angles his face up, pressing the round tip her horn solidly against
the back of his mouth. "Open your grubfucking throat and swallow me." He can't.
"Do it right the fuck now, or I'll rip my way through."
Karkat shuts his eyes. He tries to imagine he's eating something round and
solid. Musclebeast braid, maybe, even though musclebeast braid is truly
disgusting. Maybe it is musclebeast braid, then, because that would explain why
he wasn't chewing the flavor out before swallowing it whole. Yeah, you can dip
it in grubsauce, but why the fuck do they even make musclebeast braid. The only
person Karkat knows who likes it is a perverted asshole and...
The horn presses deeper against his mouth, and Karkat forces his throat to
unclench, pulls up with his tongue, and swallows. The horn moves into him, past
his mouth and the opening of his throat. But she doesn't stop pushing.
Helpless, he swallows again. The curved part of her horn slides past his lips
and jams against the roof of his mouth.
The adult's horn shifts inside Karkat's throat, tilting slowly forward. Karkat
has to open his jaw as wide as he can, but it doesn't help. The blunt tip
pushes in at an angle his throat doesn't go. It prods things that shouldn't be
prodded and stretches the flesh inside his neck, and still the adult doesn't
stop. The corner of her horn is wedged in his mouth, and he's suddenly certain
she's going to tear him open. Karkat would yank away in panic if there was
anywhere to panic to.
She reaches her other arm over her head and takes a new fist of hair by
Karkat's temple, which she uses to position his head more exactly, tilting his
skull back and forth, up and in. The horn scrapes millimeter by millimeter
deeper into his mouth. Karkat doesn't fight her. There's nothing to fight. He's
actually trying to make it easier, and he's not even sure anymore if he's
trying to make it easier for himself or for her. Maybe there's no fucking
difference. But he's keeping his throat muscles pliant and swallowing
repeatedly in case it helps. Mostly it doesn't seem to, but every time he does,
the adult's fingers twitch against his scalp.
She moves her head back in tiny rocking motions, steadily working her way in.
The most curved part of her horn butts against the back of his mouth, and the
tip angles forward so far inside his throat he's sure it's about to stab
through. Then the adult does something to rotate his head, leans herself back
in the chair, and everything just pops into place. He's facing forward, not up,
and the curve of her horn sits on the back of his tongue and turns into his
throat. He can still feel where the end of her horn stretched and scratched
inside his neck, but it's only left-over discomfort. The tip is pointing down.
His mouth circles a part of bone close enough to the root that several strands
of her hair run between his lips. The horn runs thick and immobile inside him,
trapping him against the adult's head. Compared to anything this should be the
worst fucking thing possible, but Karkat's shuddering with relief. He's dizzy
with it. Or maybe he's dizzy with lack of oxygen, since he's had other things
than breathing to worry about just now.
Karkat pulls in air through his nose, and the world refocuses. Everything gains
detail, but it is without fail utterly crappy detail. The cave is too bright.
The texture of the bone in his mouth would make him scream if it wasn't shoved
all the way down his noisehole, gagging him. He can smell the woman over the
fluid the man left on his face. Sweat, dust and, sickeningly, cooking spices
waft from her hair.
He moans through his nose. It vibrates through his throat, and the woman
answers it with a soft moan of her own. She's still gripping his head with both
hands, but now she loosens one and runs the fingers lightly through his hair.
It's like she is fucking petting him. Karkat wants to flinch away, but of
course there's no way that's happening.
"Good," she says. Her voice is breathy and distracted. She runs her hand
through his hair again. Again. Fucking again. "You did good there, kid. And the
hard part is over."
His body just seems to give up when she says that. His shoulders remind him
that they're unhappy. Muscles all through him shake in exhaustion, and he has
to support himself with the horn in his mouth so that his legs don't give way.
If the adult notices, she doesn't seem to mind.
"Okay. You're going to slide a bit forward," the adult says, like Karkat isn't
locked entirely immobile around her own appendage. But he makes an effort to
reach further with his lips. She laughs once, slow and halfway to a sigh.
"Here, let me help you with that."
Her fingers tighten in his hair again and she pulls on his head. The horn
pushes further back in his throat, until he has to fight the sense that it's in
the way of his breathing. She doesn't drag him more than an inch, stopping when
his face hits her scalp. It's even more uncomfortable than before, but if it's
all she wants he's fucking grateful. He can still deal with this.
A thin trickle of saliva spills over Karkat's lip. He scoops back as much of it
as he can with his tongue, then tries to swallow a mouthful of spit around the
adult's horn. It takes a lot of work, and the back of his mouth spasms in
protest.
Now that the adult isn't jamming it deeper, having her horn in his throat
doesn't hurt, exactly. Karkat's eaten larger things whole. But the way it just
stays in place when he swallows feels wrong, and his neck muscles don't know
how to deal with it, trying to free themselves by pushing the horn back up
instead. Karkat whimpers through his nose with every exhale.
He starts to slip, and the adult pushes him back towards her head. Her hair
isn't slicked back like the man's had been, and loose strands slide up his
nose, poking the inside of his nostrils. He breathes out hard but they don't
budge at all, and he can't shake his head or paw them away.
His lips are pressed against the seam of skin and horn, and Karkat moves his
tongue around them, gathering saliva before it can leak into her hair. When he
brings it back into his throat, the adult tightens her fingers on his head. Her
breathing is almost as noisy as his.
"This is... perfect," she says. "Just... keep moving like that. You're
perfect." And Karkat has to stop breathing for several seconds, fighting again
not to cry. He makes sure not to stop licking, though.
The adult shudders, and it echoes along her horn. Then she leans forward, and
Karkat's yanked like there's a hook inside his throat. His feet stumble under
him, but there's nowhere to fall.
The adult takes out a small, purple bench and places it in front of the chair.
She sits back again, dragging Karkat to his original position, and kicks her
heels onto the new furniture. Karkat adjusts his neck to find the least of
fucking horrible angles, but the inside of his throat still stings after the
sudden movement. He's slid too far back again, and the adult mashes his face
into her hair.
Karkat screams once, brief and high pitched through his nose, and the adult
sighs. She taps him in the back of the head with a fingernail. "Keep your
fucking mouth moving," she says. Karkat immediately tightens his lips below his
teeth and runs his tongue along the part of her horn it can reach. It feels
like the horn has doubled in size in his mouth, filling him entirely.
But that's impossible. He's on the edge of panic. Karkat clamps down on the
next scream building in his throat, and works to steady his breathing instead.
He has to get through this. And onto whatever next terrible thing they have
planned. Fuck you, brain, that isn't fucking helping.
The adult pulls one hand away from Karkat's head and reaches into her pants.
And Karkat was actually hoping this part would happen soon, but she doesn't
seem interested in getting him in front of her seedflap. She braces her feet on
the bench and rocks into her hand. Karkat tries to relax and let his body move
with hers, but the horn still pokes and yanks on the inside of his throat.
A long, rolling movement bounces her horn into one of Karkat's teeth, and the
adult stiffens. Karkat wrenches his jaw open even wider and licks at the spot
he hit in frantic apology.
She starts rocking again. The fingers on the hand supporting his head run
gently through his hair. She is petting him again, but this time, as a sign of
her non-anger, it is so grotesquely welcome Karkat moans in relief. The adult's
movements grow rougher and larger, but Karkat tries to focus past the
discomfort and just lick and suck and swallow.
Finally, the adult breathes deeply and stills. "Stop," she orders, and Karkat
freezes. She tightens her grip in his hair and pulls him backwards.
The curve of her horn presses up against the top of his throat. Karkat forces
himself not to struggle. He wants that thing out of him, but it was so hard to
get it there, he'd almost rather be trapped against her skull forever than go
through that again.
But it turns out it's a lot easier to slide out than in. His throat and jaw are
so stretched open right now that the corner of the horn comes out into his
mouth without a fight. The blunt tip shifts back and forth, pressing a
wandering line up the inside of his neck, but it's not worse than being yanked
after her every movement.
The adult bends her head forward and angles the curved section of her horn
between Karkat's wide teeth. It's almost completely out of him when he notices
that, just under the bend, there's a streak of vivid betraying red. Not much,
but if one of the adults notices it would be over for him. Shouldn't that be
what he wants? But Karkat jerks his head forward and licks off the blood with a
sweep of his tongue.
The woman pulls him back hard by his hair. When she lets go, his knees give up
and he collapses free to the cave floor. No, nothing like free, but just being
able to move his head again is the best fucking thing he can imagine right now.
His jaw aches from being wrenched open for so long. When he tries to close it
sharp pains shoot across his skull.
His throat is raw and strangely hollow feeling, and it stings when he closes it
to swallow. Karkat rests his head against the side of the purple chair and
breathes through his mouth in a wet, noisy whistle. It takes all the effort he
has.
Sharp fingernails clamp onto his shoulder. The adult is pulling him towards the
front of the chair. He moves where she wants him to, half sideways crawling,
half being dragged by his arm. She deposits him between the chair and footrest,
her legs locking him in on either side.
Karkat sits back on his knees. The adult watches him sway for a few moments,
before planting a heel on his chest and pushing him backwards until his
shoulder-blades are leaning against the footrest. The pressure on his arms
hurts, but it's a slow, distant throbbing. Karkat wonders without caring if
that's a bad sign.
The adult takes her foot off him and shuffles forward. The seat bounces
slightly each time she moves. Her pants are still clasped shut, but the hand
she was rubbing against her genitals is now cupped up at her side. Karkat can
see dark green slipping through the creases between her fingers.
"Let's see your tongue," she says.
Karkat's mouth is still hanging slightly open. He pushes his tongue forward
over his bottom row of teeth. Drool spills messily around it, but he is far
past giving a fuck.
The adult dips her first two fingers in the palm of her cupped hand. They come
away sticky and covered in green. She touches the edge of Karkat's tongue and
then slides them fully into his mouth. He tastes a now familiar sourness.
She pulls her fingers out and rolls them again in her other hand. This time
instead of simply coating Karkat's tongue, her digits explore his mouth. She
runs them along the edge of his gums and pokes experimentally at the softer
tissue near the back of his throat. It's like she's painting the inside of his
mouth with her fluid.
The adult drops her fingers back onto his tongue, and slides them back. She
hooks them over the root of his tongue where her horn had just been, and Karkat
shudders and shuts his eyes until she pulls them away.
She takes the fingers out of his mouth and wipes them on his cheek beside his
lips. Then she gives her other hand an evaluating glance, stretches it, and
then reaches it palm out in front of Karkat's face.
It's sticky with dark green swirls, and this close the air is choked with the
smell of her fluid and used up pheromones. There's a stillness to the adult's
expression as she watches him, and Karkat can make a pretty good guess at what
she wants from him. He extends his tongue and licks at her palm, filling his
mouth with a fresh burst of filmy sourness.
Karkat swallows with effort and sticks his tongue back out to lick her palm
again, but the adult seems to have gotten bored. She smears her hand up his
face, wiping the heel of it roughly against his nose and forehead and into his
hair. Fluid catches in his nostrils, rank and inescapable.
She drags her thumb down to Karkat's forehead and doodles looping patterns in
the mess on his skin. His face must look like some pupa's first claw painting
or an impressionistic ode to the unbearable fucking shittiness of being, a
study in emerald and sapphire.
The adult looks over Karkat's head to the other side of the cave, probably at
the blue blooded man. Whatever she sees inspires her to grin sharply. She bends
closer to Karkat, grabbing his head when he starts to flinch reflexively away,
and licks a short, sloppy line above his eyebrow where her fresh dampness mixes
with the man's drying blue. The spot where the airflow cools against her saliva
burns brighter in Karkat's mind than any of the other crap on his face. Somehow
the casual intimacy of her tongue on his skin feels like a greater violation
than jamming her horn down his throat.
Her eyes are still fixed across the tunnel. Karkat is hit again with the
terrible knowledge that the things happening right now don't actually have
anything to do with him. He's just a prop for whatever the adults are trying to
prove to each other.
The adult traces a few more lazy circles on Karkat's face. "Do you understand
yet that I can do anything I want with you?" she says. Karkat bends his head
down, showing his defeat, but she pulls on his hair until he's looking up into
her gaze. "What, did you miss where I asked you a question?"
"You..." Karkat's throat is still scratched and sore, and forcing words out is
like spitting out hot coals. He tries again. "I think you've made that pretty
fucking obvious."
And the adult fucking beams at him. "Good!" she says. "I knew you were a clever
one, for a wiggler." Then she grabs a knife from her specibus and brings it
towards him point first.
This one is a couple inches shorter than the blade she terrorized him with when
he was being a fucking idiot who wouldn't admit his blood color, but the knife
is carved from obsidian and so sharp that sunlight glows around the edge.
Karkat presses himself further into the footrest, ignoring the complaints of
his arms. But of course there's nowhere to escape to.
She lets go of Karkat's head and takes his collar instead. Then she slips the
knife against the edge of the fabric and draws it down, cutting open his shirt
in a neat, soundless line. She stops just before nicking the gray of his sign,
and Karkat lets out a held breath as she moves the knife away. His shirt folds
open under his neck, showing bruised but unbroken skin.
The adult lifts the bottom hem of his shirt and does the same thing again, this
time slicing upwards. When she sits back to examine her work, Karkat's shirt
flaps open over his upper chest and abdomen, held together only by the middle
section.
Satisfied, she puts her knife away. Karkat stares up at her in bleak confusion.
He has no idea what the point of that was, and he wishes to holy fuck he could
believe it would stay that way. Especially when she leans back down, smiling.
Why won't she ever stop fucking smiling?
The adult wraps both her hands into the top of Karkat's ravaged shirt. Her
sharp fingernails dig into his sign. Then she pulls them apart, tearing through
the black and gray fabric with a slow ripping sound that echoes impossibly loud
in Karkat's ears.
It's not his sign, not really, not the secret scarlet symbol that was his
reward for surviving the trials. The gray swirls he wears are borrowed and
irrelevant and not his, so it shouldn't feel like being skewered with a burning
lance to have this taken from him. He looks away from his shirt and his vision
is filled with the adult's intent, gleeful smile. The reflected light is so
bright behind her hair it makes him sick.
He shuts his eyes entirely, but he can't block out the noise of fabric being
methodically ripped apart. Karkat chokes back a sob after the final snap of
thread, when his shirt swings open and unbridged over his chest. He's
shivering, empty and exposed and indefinably lighter, as though coming unrooted
from Alternia's gravity.
***** Chapter 3 *****
Fingers touch gently to his neck, and Karkat hisses as if they sunk in claws
first. He reluctantly opens his eyes. The only thing worse than knowing what to
expect moment to moment is waiting for the adult to surprise him.
The adult pushes the shirt off his shoulders one at a time. The fabric not
stuck between him and the footrest bunches at his sides, the long sleeves
trapped in the arm cuffs at his elbows. She then moves to her feet in a smooth
motion and reaches back to recaptchalogue the chair before looking at him. Her
legs are inches in front of Karkat, and her eyes and teeth are nightmarishly
far overhead.
She steps over him to his right. The heel of her boot comes close enough to his
pants to brush fabric, but she doesn't take the ready opportunity to injure his
legs. She just smirks down, appreciating his awareness of how easily she could
have, if the whim struck her, and appreciating his helplessness to do one
fucking thing about it.
The adult drops to one knee beside Karkat and slides a hand down his neck. Flat
against his skin, her hand is smooth and cool, and the five sharp points of her
fingernails curve out between his shoulder blades. She pushes him forward.
Karkat bends over at the waist until there's enough room for the adult to reach
between his back and the footrest.
Karkat feels more than hears the scratch of metal against metal as the adult
unlocks the cuffs keeping his hands at his elbows. She pulls them away,
carefully untrapping his arms from the tangle of metal and ruined fabric, which
she tosses unceremoniously beside her. His arms unfurl limply, catching in the
angle against his back. Karkat rolls his shoulders and elbows to move them to
his sides, and his muscles shriek with pent up agony. Full circulation returns
to his fingertips like acid in his veins.
With his regained freedom, Karkat allows unresistingly the adult to lean him
back against her furniture. He leaves his hands useless and open on the ground.
She swings a knee over Karkat's own bent legs, positioning herself in front of
him. Karkat feels a wave of claustrophobia, like the world has collapsed to the
space between her body and the purple bench, no place to escape into and not
even enough fucking room for him to exist in.
The adult reaches forward and places a hand against his abdomen, spreading her
fingers wide. Karkat's muscles twitch and pull back from her touch, but she
rides the motion with her palm like a skywhale resting on the swell of the sea.
He raises a heavy, half-curled fist between them... and then, faced with the
question of what he was intending to do with it, simply lets it drop back to
the rocky floor.
She puts her other hand beside her first and begins to draw both up along his
torso. Her fingers are pressing into the grooves where his bones come together,
prodding at the shape of him under his clothes, his skin. She's examining him,
the way she would examine a weapon or an animal, or a toy she was careless with
and might have ruined beyond its warranty.
But while her fingertips probe in smooth, impersonal lines over his chest,
there's still a hungry satisfaction in how she looks at him that would look
fucking psychotic aimed at a knife or a cracked computer. As if she doesn't
look fucking psychotic anyway.
Her fingers dip into the dark gray bruises scattered and still forming along
his torso, until she reaches the deep black one spreading out from one side of
his chest. She makes a show of being surprised to find it there, marring him,
and pokes curiously at its fading tendrils, even though it was perfectly
fucking visible as soon as she took away his shirt. It isn't even hers. Karkat
was strifing with his lusus yesterday and tripped hard into the food
preparation block table.
Mock curiosity apparently satisfied, the adult slides her hand over the center
of the bruise, and then digs in with her thumb. It's not more painful than so
many things she's already done to him, but the shock of it makes Karkat gasp.
She doesn't let up, just grinds through his injured flesh to the bone.
The adult keeps squeezing until the pain levels off to a constant Karkat can
ignore. Then she rolls her thumb to the side, making a new line of nerves
complain. The throbbing spreads into the network of darker gray marks on his
skin.
Karkat rolls his eyes upwards to stare at the cave's rounded ceiling. His
breathing is fast and shallow. The adult doesn't stop pressing into the bruise,
but her other hand continues to slide up his chest, fondling the edges of his
anatomy. She reaches over his shoulder and probes the pad of her thumb under
the curve of Karkat's jaw.
Karkat tilts his head further backwards, but he can't escape her. It just
leaves his neck stretched out and exposed, and the adult slides inquisitive
fingers slowly along the ridges of tendon and bone in front of his throat. At
the side of his chest, she moves her digging thumb back to its original spot,
and pain blooms there new and stronger than the first time.
The pain isn't hard to deal with, but the fact that he's sitting passively and
letting her hurt him and touch him, and lick him, makes him want to stab
himself and save her the trouble. Karkat raises his lip, snarling a futile
threat at the ceiling.
The adult decides to move a fingernail to his exposed teeth, and now he can't
close his lips again. He's not snarling anymore, he's just giving her better
access. She traces the ridges of his teeth between their tips and gum-line. She
taps one, and the noise vibrates hollowly through his skull.
A louder noise beeps behind him, and Karkat jerks in surprise, his chest arcing
against the adult's hand. She glances across the cave, looking slightly
disappointed. Her grip loosens. Blood rushes to fill the dent her thumb left in
Karkat's bruise, and it stings and throbs in after-pain.
"Dien, can you shut that off for me?" she says. "I mean, it's for you too." The
man doesn't answer, but Karkat hears the shuffle of footsteps moving across
stone. The beeping stops.
The adult backs off, and it's like the universe snaps back into place around
him. Everything is too open. He's left helpless and exposed. The adult grabs
the metal cuffs before jumping up and standing, and Karkat's arms tense at the
thought of being bound again. She shakes black fabric from the loops and flat
pieces, not in any apparent hurry. The sliced shirt falls again to a pile on
the floor.
She bends down to Karkat and wraps her free fingers under his left arm, and
then straightens, pulling him up. His legs are still shaky, and he has to lean
into her hand to stay upright. His shoulder twinges, but it's not like the rest
of him is any fucking happier about it.
The adult starts walking to the other side of the cave, and Karkat stumbles
along behind her. Her fingers dig into the flesh of his arm whenever he trips
or falls back. The man is standing in front of their portable furnace, turning
off dials. Karkat realizes that the beeping must have been a timer for dinner,
and he loses his step entirely, paralyzed with fresh despair. He swings like a
pendulum on his adult-supported shoulder.
She hauls him back up. "C'mon, kid," she says. "You can make it. You're almost
there." And fuck her. Fuck her with a diseased musclebeast dick if she thinks
she ever gets to encourage him about anything. But he still pulls his feet back
under himself and continues dragging them one after the other.
She's brought him to one side of the man's vacated bench. She lowers her hand
slowly, and Karkat sinks down to the floor. The bench is a cool line across his
back, and beneath it, the lines from the adult's invisible whip throb in
recognition of a like pattern. They don't sting in the air, though, which means
she probably didn't rip the skin. Relief. He should be feeling relief right
now.
"Zhaleya." The man's voice is a slow, warning rumble. The echo of it makes him
seem a lot closer than where he's standing beside the furnace. "Is there some
reason a rust blood child is leaning against my seat?"
Karkat starts to pull away from the bench, but the woman pushes him back into
the metal. "What's the problem? It's not like he's bleeding on it," she says.
"Give him a break, Dien. The poor guy's had an amazingly shitty day."
She's smiling down at Karkat when she says it. An entire row of fangs shine
over her lip, nothing like sympathy. But hearing that acknowledged in words, as
if there was any minuscule part of the universe that gave a fuck about him
right now, unravels something deep inside his chest. It's all raw again, his
misery and his anger, the throbbing of his joints and the aching in his throat.
The adult rests a hand lightly on his shoulder, and Karkat trembles. What he
wants to do is scream. She leans closer to him. "And it's far from over," she
says.
The bench shifts as the man returns and sits on it, on the far end from Karkat.
Karkat doesn't turn his head to look, but he can feel the man glowering in his
peripheral vision. There's a double "clink" when the man sets down two dishes
of something Karkat really doesn't want to think about.
"Besides, you know he'll make it up to you later." The woman pushes playfully
at Karkat's chest. "Won't you, kid?"
Karkat curls his shoulders inward. When his head begins to drop, she moves her
hand up, but Karkat catches himself first. He's realized by now that she never
lets him look away when she's talking to him. "Well?"
Karkat hisses air between his teeth. His breath catches, turns it into a,
"Yes."
"Yeah," she says. Her voice is flat with promise. "Yeah, you will."
She picks up the cuffs in both hands and twists them at the hinges, changing
their shape. The metal bounces daylight around the cave when she moves them,
and the adult makes no effort to keep the focused reflection away from his
face. It stripes over his eye, and Karkat flinches. Spots dance in front of
him. He blinks away the sting.
Karkat's hands are bunched in fists and pressed to his sides. They still don't
entirely feel like part of him, after they'd been pulled away and locked
immobile. He wishes desperately that there was something he could do to stop it
from happening again, and then he's filled with self-loathing at how
pathetically narrow even his most urgent desires have become.
Can't he wish that this is all just a nightmare, and really he and Ladeci had
made it home before daybreak, and he's resting right now in his recuperacoon,
and his intact shirt boasts honest lines of blue or yellow, or even maroon, and
Troll Will Smith responds to his fanletters, and Troll Will Smith has promised
to come rescue him if he ever needed it? But no, he can't. All those things
seem equally impossible, too removed to even imagine.
The adult finishes reconfiguring the cuffs. The result is thinner and almost
twice as long, and there are two flexible joints in the metal. They look
fucking welcoming compared to before, and Karkat banishes the untrustworthy
thought that they're not going to be as bad. Nothing has gotten better for him.
So when she doesn't reach for his arms at all, and instead shuts one cuff
around his ankle and bends his knee towards the bench behind him, the noise
that escapes his lips is from relief. The adult reaches with the other end
under the bench, searching for a place to clip it.
Karkat fights to keep the hope off his face. If they're worried he'll try to
escape, doesn't that mean they're going to leave him alone?
The man's been silently and disapprovingly watching his partner. Now he says,
"I wasn't aware you wanted a slave. If you can contain yourself, we're expected
to reach Daugkzi Station two weeks after we're done on the planet." He
pronounces "planet" with the same inflection the woman used earlier for
"shithole." "It has a reasonable onsite market."
Behind Karkat, there's a "click." The woman backs out from the bench and
brushes away sections of hair that had fallen into her eyes. Karkat tries
pulling experimentally with his ankle, but it's held fast.
"I don't want a slave," she says. Whatever expression the man makes in
response, she laughs. "Really, I mean it! All the approved races, they're so
alien. I never have any fun with aliens."
The adult climbs to her feet. She shakes the dust from her clothes before
looking down at Karkat. She's grinning again, sharp and hungry, and Karkat
feels pretty fucking stupid for thinking the ankle cuff was a good sign. The
metal jingles when he tries reflexively to yank his foot further away.
The adult taps Karkat on the forehead again, forcefully enough that she pushes
his head back if he doesn't resist, and of course he doesn't. She holds him in
place with the tip of her finger, considering him from around the edges of her
hand. Every breath Karkat takes is shallower than the one before.
Then the adult drops her hand and turns to her partner, disregarding Karkat
entirely. As much as he hated being the object of her attention, now that he's
suddenly not he feels even more frightened, as well as confused and somehow
diminished. It makes no sense at all.
The adult shrugs. "I can't get inside their heads," she says.
The woman swings a leg over the bench so she's sitting on it sideways and
scoots up closer to her partner. Her back is to Karkat. He could reach her,
even with his ankle chained down. He doesn't have a weapon, but if he extended
his body far enough he could swing in with his own claws and sink them into her
flesh.
Five green gashes against her black uniform, and the flare of pain in her eyes.
He could.
But that's not fucking true, is it? He never uses his fingernails to fight, so
he doesn't bother to keep their points from getting dull. It'd be a heroic feat
if he even broke through her clothes. And Karkat's mind goes blank and cold
rather than ponder the question of what she'd do to him afterwards.
The man hands her one of the supper dishes and holds the other in one hand
above his knees. Karkat can't see beyond her shoulders, but he watches her bend
in and hears the unmistakable ripping sound of flesh in teeth.
All Karkat can think about is how overwhelmingly glad he is they're not sharing
with him. It actually smells really good, far better than anything Karkat's
ever made for himself or his lusus. But knowing those roasted greenish lumps
used to be Ladeci makes him never want to eat again.
Karkat's still half sprawled against the bench. His limbs are slack around him.
When his eyes fall to them, he feels disgust at how weak and useless every
single part of his body has proven itself to be, but he can't stand how open
he's left himself.
He draws his arms and legs into himself, ignoring the cramping and burning of
every stretching muscle. He can't extend the leg that's bent back and secured
beside him, but when he rolls his hip, he can lift his knee enough to wrap his
arms around it and pull it to his chest.
Karkat drops his head into the hollow between his knees. He's still acutely
aware of the adults' presence off his side, but his circling forearms block out
most of the daylight, so he can open his eyes fully. Bright spots still swim in
front of him, slow to fade.
The smell isn't as strong anymore, either. Karkat presses his nose deeper into
the cloth of his pants, until the smell of their dinner is filtered through the
oily, earthy smell of cave grime and fabric he could stand to wash more often.
There's also a small amount of blood, not his, and sex fluid, not his, but it's
still better. His body is responding to the promise of nearby food, reminding
him that it's been a while since his last meal, especially if he's going to
need energy to fight. As if he'll get a chance to fight. And his mouth is
filling slowly with saliva, dislodging just enough of the sour film on his
tongue and inside of his cheeks that the taste of it is stronger again.
And if Karkat hadn't been so thrilled at the chance to rub Ladeci's face in
what a lackwitted bulge-eater he was, none of this... Fuck, this is all
Karkat's fault. He is the worst fucking friend. God, and it's gross that he's
getting hungry, no matter how great a cook that adult bitch is.
He swallows, and his mouth is sour and sticky. He could use some water. Except,
no, that's the last thing he should want right now. If they do keep him around
for days, he's eventually going to need to use the load gaper, and how that
might go is another void in his imagination. Put it off as long as possible.
He can't do this.
The adults have been chatting. Friendly white noise that Karkat hasn't been
listening to. Now the man laughs, low and resonant, and the bench vibrates
against Karkat's back. Karkat's legs twitch in front of him. Metal bites into
his ankle, and he thinks that if he still had his sickle he would cut himself
free.
And then what? He wouldn't be very fast on one foot, leaking a mutant bright
trail to any possible hiding place, and the adults are right there. Even
without the cuff, he knows he wouldn't be trying to escape.
Karkat hugs his legs tighter. Pain shoots over the curve of his body, but he
doesn't care. The metal cuff forces his lower leg to a sideways angle, and the
pull of it feels in his mind like sarcasm. Like she put it on as a fucking
joke, and the punchline is how truly, entirely pathetic he is.
Now both of the adults chuckle. Their last few comments filter through Karkat's
memory. They're sharing anecdotes about an clumsy, yellow blooded
threshecutioner who, if Karkat trusts the source, practises by prancing around
with her sickle like she's in a Troll Jet Li movie.
Karkat has spent a lot of time prancing around with his sickle like he's in a
Troll Jet Li movie. He should be paying attention, if he really thinks there's
any chance they'll ever let him go, no matter how every word vibrates through
his chest and leaves him hollow. Who knows what adult secrets they'll drop that
could give him an advantage in an inevitable later battle to survive.
But Karkat can't even care that he doesn't care. He clenches his fingers into
fists and presses his face harder into his knees until he can't see anything
but gray weave. If it wasn't for the adults' voices echoing around him, maybe
he could pretend nothing existed outside of the dark, safe loop of his arms,
but there's only so much bullshit his brain's willing to put up with from
itself.
Karkat pulls his shoulders against his ears, muffling the sounds in the cave,
but his strained shoulder muscles immediately shake with exhaustion. He can't
keep them from falling again. The rest of his body trembles in sympathy, just
as used up and on the edge of collapsing. Karkat hugs his legs and fights to
stay upright. The texture of his pants rubs against the bruises on his chest,
hiding the naked skin where his sign is supposed to be. His shuddering slowly
tapers off, but he's not anything close to steady.
To his side, the woman's voice raises into a short, high trill. It's an
approximation of a security alarm set off in her story by the inept
threshecutioner, and it ends when the adults chuckle again. There's a nasty
edge to their laughter, as they're mocking someone they have no respect for,
and Karkat winces into his knees. He tells himself that they're not laughing at
him, that they don't give a fuck about him right now, but that thought is
somehow even more terrifying. He wants them to ignore him forever, but the
length of his existence depends on how long the adults find him worthy of their
attention. If they decide Karkat is a boring, pointless piece of trash he's not
exactly going to get a chance to argue otherwise.
The man starts another story about the worst piss-veined soldier ever to raise
a sickle. Karkat's surprised at how well they're getting along, considering the
glaring and snide remarks while they were using him, but it's a surprise void
of curiosity. It doesn't matter if he understands them, and he'd rather set
himself on fire than think about it. Instead he tries to tune out their
conversation and focus only on the hiss of his breath through fabric.
He pushes air through his teeth and then sucks it back, noting the contours of
his breathing organ where it expands inside his chest. The air, filtered
through his dirty pants, tastes stale. After a few minutes, the adults'
conversation fades to a distant, meaningless rumble. Muscles in his back relax
a little, exchanging their sharp twinges for other pains, easier to ignore, and
he wedges his fingers between his knees to stop their grip from unravelling
every time he stops paying attention.
Worst case scenarios, all of them shadowed with the certainty the woman is so
much more practiced than Karkat at imagining how bad things can get for him,
continue to run over and over through his brain. But they eventually begin to
lose their vividness, like watching a horror movie on repeat until the suspense
is sucked dry. The Karkat in his mind is dying slowly with an obsidian knife
hilt-deep in his abdomen, but that Karkat is an idiot who didn't turn back when
Karkat shouted at him not to go into a cave just before sunrise, how genre
unsavvy do you even have to be?
Above him, the soldiers who've captured him are having grubcakes and tea served
in cups made from the dainty skulls of a vanquished race. The man's crying
blueberry tears over the plight of an animated advertising character. "I can
still hear them taunting him. 'Silly hopbeast, tiny rainbow colored breakfast
pellets are for immature trolls!' How come they just couldn't give him some
cereal, instead of making him hunt down and rip open the kids who've eaten it?"
"You need to loosen up, Dien," the woman says. "And have some pity!" She passes
a grubcake down to Karkat's reaching hand. Karkat thought it was green but up
close he can see that it's red, weirdly red, like the baker had added extra
coloring powder. His tongue and jaw are sore so Karkat takes out the knife from
his abdomen and slides the cake directly into his digestive purse. Then Karkat
stabs the knife back into his torso before the adult notices he moved it from
where she left it. He tastes bitterness.
There's a noise, soft words and banging that echo in the cave. "Turn it up,
this is my favorite song!" the woman says. The man grimaces, but he presses a
button on his computer and they're surrounded by a high definition recording of
Ladeci screaming. He's accompanied by short screeches and pinging sounds, and
then a loud, low-pitched metallic clash--
Karkat jerks up into confused awareness. He bangs his back against the seat of
the bench, pulls his cuffed ankle too far when he leans forwards, and then
completely loses his balance and falls sideways in a tangle of flailing limbs.
There's a shout ringing in his ears. Karkat only realizes it's his when he
notices his mouth is still open.
Karkat fights the waiting knowledge of the situation he's woken into, but the
metal cuff twisting his leg backwards is a hard reminder to ignore. He can't
quite believe that he drifted asleep, or very near to it, while trussed down
next to two adult soldiers. Never mind the lack of a recuperacoon.
He doesn't know how long he was zoned out for, but the adult trolls have
vanished from the bench beside him. Karkat lets out a high pitched moan when it
hits him that if he doesn't know where they are, they could be anywhere.
He twitches his eyes around the cave until he finds them, standing across the
tunnel beside a strange, partially disassembled machine that hadn't been there
before. The man is holding a hammer with a wide head, and the woman has a small
display device clutched in her hand. They've both turned to look at him, and
Karkat, too late, too fucking late, clamps his jaw shut into silence.
They look more solid than before. More detailed. Karkat wants to stab out his
untrustworthy memory, which had apparently been so thrilled to play along with
their mind-games it was inventing its own just to screw with him.
But no, that's not it. The tunnel's still filled with reflected daylight, but
it's dimmed so that opening his eyes doesn't feel like blinking through drops
of acid. Everything around him has lost its glittering, unreal halo. The sun
must not be pointed directly into the mouth of the cave any longer. Karkat
doesn't know what that means. Is it even still morning? Is there some clue in
the angles of the indistinct shadows that pool around the larger objects?
Fucking caves. Fuck them up the nostril with a drill-headed burrowing vehicle.
Now that Karkat has shut the hell up, the adults dismiss him from their
attention. They're facing the machine again. They continue a conversation
punctuated by gestures at the woman's display, and then the man hefts his
hammer and swings it to clash loudly against a large metal panel propped
against the cave wall.
Karkat probably would have shouted again at the noise if his teeth weren't
locked so tightly together. He still jumps sideways, which he immediately
regrets. He's suddenly acutely aware of his body, aching and stiff from
sleeping in an awkward position. His joints burn, and his body throbs with
bruises. They've darkened over his arms and chest, so that his skin looks
almost mottled. The blackest is still the one from his fight with his lusus,
but there's a sharp, bone-deep pain buried in its center, from a spot the shape
of an adult-sized thumb-print. His throat stings when he swallows, when he
breathes.
The hammer bangs again, and its vibrations echo through the air and the stone
of the cave floor. Karkat starts to push himself back up, but the complaining
of his body turns to screaming when he tries to move so many muscles at once.
Instead he just shuffles backwards until his shoulders rest against the cool
metal support for the bench. The edge of the seat extends over his face. It's
almost like shelter.
Karkat tries to let his exhaustion drag him back into sleep. It's the only
escape available. But the hammer crashes again and again, not to any
predictable rhythm, and it startles him every time. Karkat shifts his head to
find a spot where neither horn touches the ground or the bench. His neck and
shoulders are uncomfortable, but it's nothing compared to the raw vibration.
Finally the woman makes a celebratory noise. The time since the last hammer
fall grows longer and longer, until Karkat finally allows himself to hope it
won't crash again. And it doesn't, but as Karkat watches the adults stretch and
laugh and place the hammered sheet onto their machine, he realizes it's because
they're finished. And after a brief glance at their handiwork, they break off
and head back towards Karkat.
Karkat tenses. He presses his back against the metal support of the bench and
squeezes as much of his body under the seat as possible. His leg restraint
rattles as he fights to fully extend his knee. It's a joke. It's not like he's
hiding from them, but he still scrambles for every extra inch of enclosure.
When the man reaches his seat, he glowers at Karkat's intensely visible body
pressed against the length of the bench. His lip raises so high in disgust that
the root of one fang shows, and Karkat would move the hell away except that his
limbs don't seem to be responding to his panicked commands. But then the man
glances over at his partner, flattens his mouth into a grim line, and simply
seats himself at the very edge of the bench, which part Karkat apparently
hadn't yet despoiled with his touch.
Karkat starts breathing again, desperate and shaky. The relief is a fucking
lie, but it feels real. At least for a brief moment, shattered when the female
adult returns from whatever detour slowed her.
There's nowhere to go, physically or emotionally. Karkat's jaw hurts from the
effort to stay quiet. She's going to yank him out. Or she's going to order him
to crawl out to her by himself. And he'd do it. He would. It doesn't even
matter what she actually does, because they both know exactly how cooperative
he's going to be, just given a fucking chance to prove it.
She doesn't move for a few seconds, just stands there, less a yard from
Karkat's head, so that he can't see much more of her than standard black
military boots. He struggles to resign himself to whatever is going to come
next, to accept he can't do anything to change it, but it only leaves him
feeling more desperate.
He grasps for the details of the moment he's in, as if that would let him
remain in it. The ground and bench make an open "C" around him, painful where
they support him, but oh so welcome that thinking of leaving is like thinking
of dying. In front of him, Karkat's hand clutches half-closed at its own fuzzy
shadow. The scent of the man's sweat wafts down, no doubt because of his
exertion with the hammer.
And Karkat knows that smell so intimately now. He'd want to retch if it wasn't
worse thinking about what'd come back up.
And the woman...
She spins on a heel, away from Karkat, and pulls out her purple and green
leather chair. She jumps into it, taking a loose, cross-legged sitting form
that doesn't hold together very well through the chair's extended bouncing. She
locks eyes on the other adult, and it's like Karkat isn't even there.
"Hey, Dien! Catch!" She tosses a blue bottle towards the bench in an easy
underhand pass, and Karkat hears the slap of a successful interception. She's
kept another blue bottle for herself. Some sort of flavored juice drink. The
adults are taking a work break.
Karkat should be so fucking grateful she passed him over. And he is, he can't
help it, but the horror of anticipation hardens between his shoulders like a
punch in the chest. His eyes sting threateningly, nothing to do with the light.
Karkat breathes deeply until the need to cry passes. Even this weakness he's
willing to be grateful for, because it gives him something else to think about
while the adults chat right above his head. They're talking about the machine,
Karkat guesses, all part names and measurements he doesn't understand.
He wonders if that means they don't have to kill him for their secrets, or if
they don't care because they never were going to let him out alive. He fights
off another wave of tears.
The woman pauses in conversation to bite the lid off of her bottle. Her teeth
snap easily through the plastic, but it's still messier than screwing it off
like a normal person would. She has to wipe thin blue trickles of juice from
her lips, which she does with a fang-edged grin. The man trails off mid
sentence.
Are those assholes flirting with each other? No. Oh fuck no. Karkat couldn't
handle them trying to fill quadrants with him chained in the middle. No no no
no no fuck god please no.
There's a soft noise from something bouncing on the ground near his face. It's
the woman's bitten-off bottle cap. It rolls back and forth in a smaller and
smaller crescent beside his cheek, and Karkat's utterly confused about how it
got there. At least it's a mystery he's willing to think about.
There are a few drops of juice still inside, and this close Karkat can smell
that they're eel blood flavored. One of Karkat's favorites, actually. He still
has half a container of the cheap concentrate crap in the thermal hull back at
his hive. Karkat wonders with bleak humor if his lusus will clue in to his
disappearance when no one sneaks in to drink any today. Or tomorrow. Or...
He can't remember why that was supposed to be funny.
Another noise, but when he looks there's not a new bottle cap. Karkat glances
up towards the woman, and then he flinches away from the object flying through
the air at him. It's a pebble, he belatedly recognizes. The pebble bounces
harmlessly off the skin on his upper arm.
The adults have segued from machine talk to more gossip about people Karkat
will never meet. The woman is parodying an ineffectual bureaucrat, and she
folds her fingers in for a clawless, mocking gesture. Then she takes a new
pebble from her other hand and glances down at Karkat. She sights playfully
with one winked eye and lines the pebble up to what might be the elastic of a
slingshot, except it would have to be invisible... Invisible. Right.
This pebble bounces off Karkat's forehead. Now that he knows what's going on,
he doesn't care that he's being used for target practice. The tiny stones don't
hurt, not enough to notice, and in a sick way this mild attention is better
than having her ignore him like he's nothing. Like he's a rock, or a part of
the metal bench, or worse, some idiot troll kid who'd proved himself useless,
unworthy of her regard. If she wants to entertain herself by tossing pebbles at
him all day Karkat is going to be the best fucking pebble target she ever
threatened to slice open with a knife.
The adult stares at Karkat until he returns it, and then she rotates her head
slowly, meaningfully, to one side. Karkat copies the movement, even though it
means he's stuck looking at the flat gray underside of the seat. Not being able
to see as much of the cave makes his pathetic refuge feel suddenly five times
smaller, but it's fine. He can deal with it. It's no problem at all.
A pebble bounces off his cheek. There's a break for half a minute, and then
another pebble comes down and hits his horn. It echoes unpleasantly across his
skull, but that's fine too. At this point Karkat is a fleet-class champion in
unpleasant.
The adult must have found her spot, because out of the next four stones, three
knock against his exposed horn. It's more irritating than painful, still, but
Karkat grits his teeth at how naive he'd been two minutes ago, when he was
hoping to do this for hours.
The man makes a comment Karkat doesn't listen to, but the woman shrieks in
laughter. Karkat rolls his eyes to the edge of their sockets, so he can see
without moving his head. The woman is leaning forward, bouncing lightly in her
chair. The pebble game is forgotten, at least for the moment, and Karkat's
still echoing horn doesn't exactly mind.
"No!" she says. Her voice is pitched high with laughter. "C'mon, Dien! You
can't talk to Baten. That fucker's got Malchek's horns shoved farther up his
ass than Caycai does!" She laughs again, and now the man joins in with a low
rumbling chuckle.
The woman shakes her head and looks up to say something more, but she
immediately trails off.
"Hey," she says. Contemplative. "You think that's actually possible?"
The adult tosses the remainder of her pebbles down to scatter on the cave
floor. Then she launches herself off her chair, landing smoothly on her feet.
Karkat notices the decapitated bottle of juice bouncing across the vacated seat
cushion before the adult puts the whole thing back into her captchalogue deck.
Even if the bottle is empty, there must still be droplets left to spray out and
stain the leather.
It's so careless, and while Karkat is hardly a beacon of scrupulous tidiness,
watching the adult treat her things with such casual disregard fills him with a
horror he doesn't want to examine very closely.
She bends down in front of the bench and wraps her hand around one of Karkat's
forearms. She doesn't quite yank him out from his inadequate cover, but she
pulls his arm firmly and still faster than he wants to move. Which is not one
fucking inch per perigee.
When he's slid most of the way out, she starts to pull upwards on his arm, and
Karkat climbs up after it, leveraging himself into a sitting position. His body
is stiff and sore, slow to respond, but the adult is patient with him. She only
jerks painfully with his arm once, when he twists his other elbow in the
process of pushing his torso upright and, gasping, stops moving entirely.
It takes almost half a minute before he's finally balanced on his ass, at which
point the man makes a low growling noise and shifts his legs away from Karkat's
position. As though now, after everything he forced Karkat to do, the very
possibility of some dirty lowblood child touching him is an unimaginable
debasement.
Karkat looks down and away, until he can't see the man except in the edges of
his vision. He feels like a dirty, used up piece of crap. His mouth tastes foul
and the rest of him is sticky, sore, signless, and he can still never manage to
ignore the pulse of repugnant mutant red moving under his skin. He tells
himself he's being an idiot when they've done this to him, but it's still too
hard to not think that the man might be right.
The woman reaches for the cuff at his ankle and unclasps it. His skin feels
cool and strangely light at the thin circle where the metal loop had closed
around his leg. He'd hated it. But he desperately wishes it was still there,
because whatever is about to happen next, he's certain it won't be as pleasant
as being chained to a bench and forgotten.
The adult brushes Karkat's bangs away from his face. She does it gently, with
only the soft pads of her fingers running across his forehead, but when they
slide into his hairline she clenches her hand into a fist and drags his face up
so he's looking at her.
"Guess what, kid," she says. "You're going to help me with an experiment."
Karkat can't hold onto his confusion for more than a second before the trailing
end of the adult's conversation replays itself in his mind. Then he freezes,
his entire body tensing in visceral refusal. Karkat knows he can't afford to
say anything, but he pleads with his eyes, desperate and terrified and all the
no he can fit into them.
The adult's face becomes an exaggerated mask of open friendliness. She raises
her eyebrows as if inviting him to share any opinions he might have about the
upcoming events in his life. Karkat drops his gaze. He struggles for one shaky
breath after another.
"Let's go."
She grabs onto Karkat's shoulder and stands up, bringing him with her. She
starts walking, and Karkat staggers along in a daze beside her. He trips
several times on the rough cave floor and catches his weight on the hand
holding him up. It hurts, but everything hurts.
He doesn't notice right away when she stops, and he stumbles again when his
legs continue on without his upper body. Karkat glances up at the adult, and
she looks annoyed with him. He'd thought he was as terrified as it was possible
to be, but now it's like his soul turns to solid ice.
She lifts her hand from his shoulder in a sharp movement. "You can walk," she
reminds him. Her voice is flat and unimpressed.
Of course Karkat can fucking walk. His legs are stiff and bruised, but putting
one foot in front of the other isn't difficult. It's being forced to pay
attention that has him ready to collapse. While the adult was half-dragging him
across the ground, he could hang on, if only for a few seconds longer, to the
mind-deadening weight on the other side of panic. But the adult is taking even
that from him.
She points a finger towards the newly hammered machine, and when Karkat just
stares dumbly after it, the adult narrows her eyes and snarls, "Move it."
Karkat trembles under her dissatisfaction, but he doesn't know how to fix it
except to do what she tells him. He immediately continues walking in the
direction the adult had jabbed through the air, and she follows so close that
Karkat can feel her blocking the movement of air behind him.
Karkat wobbles a little in his path, but most of that is fear of what will
happen when he has to stop. Resting has at least given all the pieces of his
body a chance to remember how they usually fit together. For as long as that's
going to last.
When they approach the machine Karkat hesitates unconsciously, slowing down,
and the adult shoves him forward so hard that he loses his balance and has to
catch himself on the metal. Then before he can recover, she grabs his shoulder
and spins him around so the siding presses cool lines into his midback. She
looks down at him dispassionately and says, "Stay here."
The adult lets go, shoving him a little into the machine as she does, just
because she can. She strides over to a new purple cube hunkered beside the
mechanic's furnace. Which is on again, Karkat notices, although he doesn't
smell anything cooking. Maybe they're using it this time for its intended
purpose? But no, he really doesn't care at all.
The machine Karkat's standing against has sections still missing from its
siding, and he can see sharp-toothed gears and pistons in the shadows. They're
not moving, but he clenches his arms and fingers reflexively to his sides.
Across the cave, the adult breaks the seal on the purple cube, dispersing the
scent of coolant and cold meat. It's a small thermal hull. Has she decided to
take a quick break for a snack?
She searches through the cube briefly, and it's obvious when she finds what she
wants because her face lights up like sunrise over salt water. She telegraphs
every microscopic brainwave that passes through her diseased think pan like
she's taken data space out in the Imperial Broadcast, and normally Karkat would
wonder how she survived through the grub stage but right now he's actually kind
of glad for it. It's hell enough trying to keep her happy with him when he
knows if she is.
Or isn't.
The adult seems to be pulling at something. There's a crunching, cracking noise
from inside the thermal hull, and then she shuts the cube and steps away. Her
hands are empty, although there's a thin green liquid staining one. She wipes
it off on her pants.
She walks back towards Karkat. She's grinning at him now. Her eyes are hungry
with anticipation of whatever she has planned, and Karkat tells himself that
this is better than when she was annoyed with him. It is. It has to be.
The adult doesn't stop until she's right beside him. She bends to one knee and
wraps a hand, not tightly, but firmly, around the curve where his shoulder
meets his throat. She touches the fingertips of other hand to the collage of
bruises on his naked chest, and then she slowly brings her fingers down over
his torso. The points of her fingernails scratch lightly over his skin,
trailing lines only visible in his imagination.
She's done this to him already, even if before her fingers had been travelling
up. But now she's not taking the time to explore, although she still pauses to
prod at a couple darker bruises. Karkat begins to curl his shoulders inward,
but the adult tightens her grip on his neck and pushes him upright.
Her hand moves diagonally over his abdomen until they reach the edge where his
pants rest over his hip. She curls her fingers so that their claws slide
between the waistband and his skin, and Karkat's breath catches in a high,
desperate moan. The adult keeps grinning at him, and it suddenly seems like she
has twice as many teeth.
***** Chapter 4 *****
There's a banging noise from across the cave. Karkat glances over, seizing the
distraction. The man has slammed his computer onto the metal bench again. "No!"
he says.
Karkat's knees waver in a rush he can't tell is hope or relief. It's absurd.
The male adult isn't interested in helping him, Karkat knows that, but...
"Get him away from the reactor shell!" the man shouts. "I'm not going to fix it
again!"
...Karkat knows, but having even that absurd hope ripped away leaves him
feeling more defeated than a moment ago. He wouldn't have guessed it was
possible.
The woman doesn't look upset with her partner. She's giving him a milder
version of that same predatory, considering grin Karkat would rip from her face
if it didn't petrify him entirely.
"Yeah, okay," she says.
She stands up and yanks Karkat in front of her. There's a moment of quiet as
she scans over the tunnel. Her hand is warm on Karkat's skin, and her
fingertips prick his neck. He can feel the movement of her breathing against
his shoulderblades.
Then the adult makes a decision. She marches him towards a nearby boulder, only
half broken from the cave wall, and pushes him down on it.
Karkat lands on his back at a sloping angle. He begins to slide down the rough
stone, but the adult grabs the waistline of his pants and hefts him up. She
positions him so the top half of his body is draped over the boulder and his
legs dangle, unsupported. The toes of his shoes brush lightly on the cave
floor.
He tries to stretch his legs so he can put weight on them, but the adult kicks
a few times at one of his heels. Karkat forces his lower body to relax, letting
his feet swing through the air when she pushes at his ankle with her boot, but
this doesn't seem to be what she wants either.
Finally the adult reaches down and grabs Karkat's upper leg. He flinches. He's
too sickeningly aware of both her hands. One set of her fingers are searching
for a solid grip on inside of his thigh, and the others are still hooked inside
the top of his pants to hold him in place. Her claws are smooth arrowheads
pressed flat to his abdomen.
He digs his own fingernails into the side of the stone. The vibration grates
uselessly through the bones of his hands. No one's ever touched him like this
before and he doesn't want it and there's nothing he can do to get her off of
him. He's helpless to even fucking try.
The adult moves her grip down his leg, and she pulls his leg further into the
air as she goes. When she gets below his knee, she bends it so that she doesn't
have to stretch. She grabs the heel of his shoe and starts to pull it loose.
Karkat cooperates, anchoring his foot against the directions she's tugging.
She's not bothering to be gentle, and he's sure she really wouldn't be upset if
she left him with a twisted ankle. The shoe comes neatly off, taking his sock
with it, and his toes curl in the sudden coolness of atmosphere.
She drops the leg and props up his other one, quickly removing his remaining
shoe. His bare feet hang beside the stone, awkward and vulnerable, but the
adult leaves them alone. Instead she leans forward and wraps a second fist
around the top of his pants.
And it's not difficult to undo his pants, or even to simply slide them off.
Karkat rarely bothers to fasten and unfasten them properly. But the adult yanks
her fists apart until Karkat hears the fabric rip between her claws. His body
drifts sideways as she pulls, and the adult wedges her knee into his hip to
keep him in place.
She removes his pants piece by destroyed piece, which she tosses away to drift
down to the floor like forgotten gray flags. There's no point to it, except
that the adult seems to enjoy how Karkat winces every time she tears off a new
section. And she's still done too soon, and Karkat is lying entirely naked on
the stone.
The adult looks down, running her gaze over the display of his exposed body.
Karkat can't stand the appraisal in her eyes. He turns his head towards the
cave wall instead. His hand rests near the crack where the boulder comes away
from it. His skin almost disappears into the gray of the stone, camouflaged,
except for the fingernails that almost glow orange in the light. If he could
mask those somehow, rip them from his bones, maybe he would be invisible. Maybe
he could even hide.
The adult takes one of her hands off his body, and Karkat glances miserably
over to see what's changed. She's taking something out of her captchalogue
deck. It is, Karkat sees with a disgusted, unsurprised horror, one of Ladeci's
horns. The baking process has left it duller orange and cragged.
Ladeci had awful teeth, but he'd had great horns. They tapered elegantly from a
wide base, and they curved only slightly as they rose above his head. One of
them had a thick bulb near its tip that would have probably resolved into an
extra spur if he'd lived long enough.
Karkat hated them, although truthfully it was just envy. They were way better
than Karkat's pair. Not like that's very hard. Even the people Karkat knows
with horns nearly as short as his at least have theirs tipped with respectable
points.
The adult turns the disembodied horn in her hand, examining it from different
angles. She takes her other hand off Karkat, although she jams her knee harder
into Karkat's side to remind him not to move. It's not necessary. Karkat is
pretty clear on the fact that he's not going anywhere without her explicit
order.
She takes another knife from her index. This one's long and matte gray steel.
The adult flicks a switch on the hilt, and a line along the knife's cutting
edge glows red. Karkat can feel it as a point of heat, but even with the stone
stealing the warmth from his chest, he wishes it was further away.
The adult cuts the tip from Ladeci's horn. The knife slices easily through,
leaving behind a stench like burning hair. The point falls to the floor with a
dull thud. She then changes the angle of the horn and carves away the sharp
edges of the new plateau.
When she blows off the orange dust, Karkat can see the resulting curve. Is that
what she did to her own horns? It's almost too horrible to think about, but
Karkat takes some grim satisfaction from the knowledge she'd been in extreme
pain at one point in her life. Probably. Still not enough.
The knife blinks away and between it and the mutilated horn she's now holding
no sharp objects above him. But that's not reassuring at all, because now she's
going to...
She bounces the horn in her hand and looks down at him. Her grin still looks
hungry, and Karkat feels like a piece of meat she's laid out on a slab for
butchering. And considering what happened to Ladeci, that's exactly what he is.
He breathes out in a distressed moan.
The adult smacks him in the forehead with the horn, just hard enough to
surprise him. She doesn't take it away, just lets it sit between his eyes.
Karkat can still smell the cauterized bone.
"Fuck it, you're a whiny one," she says. She walks the horn slowly down his
face, prodding halfheartedly at his cheekbone, at one of his nostrils. "And
sure, I appreciate that kind of thing, but I haven't done shit to you yet." The
horn presses against the corner of his mouth, shifts back and forth. She's
working it into his lips.
Karkat holds his breath. It's the only way to keep himself silent right now.
The adult gets the end of the horn between his lips and spins it in a circle,
grinding against his teeth. "So tell me kid, if you're going to start
whimpering now, how am I supposed to know when you mean it?"
She taps the bone on his teeth a few times. Tilts her head. Says lightly, "You
think I could get you to swallow this horn?" Karkat keeps quiet with huge
effort, but the adult slams the horn harder against his jaw. "That one I expect
you to answer."
If he opens his mouth to speak, Karkat's terrified she'd take it as an
invitation. He nods instead, his head shaking up and down as much as he can
with the horn pressing it into the boulder. He keeps his gaze locked on hers.
The way she likes him to.
The adult seems amused. Karkat can't tell if it's with him or herself. "Yeah,
that's right. It wouldn't be hard at all. But I won't."
She pulls the horn out of his lips, and Karkat lets himself breathe again, deep
shuddering gasps that he's careful to keep silent. He doesn't want to think
about her implication, but at least this is something to focus on. Something he
can control. He doubts it'll change one fucking thing but if she wants him to
shut the fuck up, he'll be as quiet as he can. Until. Until he can't. Until.
The adult touches the horn to Karkat's chest and slides it down the length of
his torso, and Karkat doesn't give a fuck. When she reaches his genitals, she
pokes the horn at the side his seedflap, just in case Karkat missed she was
there.
Karkat's fingers and feet twitch against the stone. She didn't hurt him, but it
feels gross and wrong. He drops his neck back and rolls his eyes up so he's
watching the other side of the cave instead of what's happening to his body.
Most of the machines have been activated now. The male adult is working, upside
down in Karkat's view, and making a point of ignoring what his partner is
doing. But as the man gestures sharply on his tablet, he's still displaying a
lot of teeth.
The woman moves the blunt tip down, just slightly further, until she reaches
his nook. She pushes, gently, at the opening, and Karkat jerks in reflexive
panic. His legs curl up to protect himself, but the adult swats them back down.
The knee closest to the cave wall bangs into the rock, and his leg flares,
throbbing, down to his toes. Karkat clenches his jaw shut, swallowing his yell,
and forces his legs to relax again, inch by inch.
When his toes once more brush against the ground, the adult runs the thumb of
her empty hand softly over the curve of his hip, petting him again. She does it
several times, and maybe it would be a soothing gesture if she was Karkat's
lusus, but she's not. She's not. His muscles twitch away from her touch, and
it's a mocking joke of a soothing gesture because if she wanted to help she
would stop doing it.
She would stop doing so much.
There's a glint of crystals in one upside-down cave hollow, and Karkat tries to
narrow his focus to block everything else from his mind. He can't stop what
she's doing to him, but maybe he can attempt to ignore it, pretend his body
doesn't exist beyond the inside of his eyes. He's not any good at it, but it
works a little. His breathing begins to slow, leaving behind an empty ache in
his chest. He tries to ignore that, too.
The adult lifts her hand off his hip. She slides the horn away from his nook,
and Karkat wants to moan, this time in relief. He doesn't. Even when she stops
moving the horn again, using it to put pressure on the opening of his asshole,
it's almost tolerable in comparison. This is what he was expecting.
She presses harder, wiggling the end through small side to side motions. Karkat
tries to brace himself. He tries to think about nothing but the glittering
corner in his vision. He finds that he really can't do both at the same time.
For leverage, the adult leans her free hand on his abdomen, just above his
seedflap. She pushes with the horn until it finally gets past the outer ring of
muscle and starts to actually enter his ass.
It's immediately too big, too much, stretching him open. Karkat's eyes go wide
and he sucks air through his teeth. The muscles inside his ass clench to fight
the intrusion, but that only makes it hurt more. She pushes the horn further
in, still slowly, still wiggling it back and forth, and it still feels like
she's going to rip him open. The lines in the bone catch on the skin of his
inner walls, which get pulled along when the adult tries to get it deeper.
There's no way she's going to shove the entire horn in without tearing him
apart, and Karkat realizes this is it, this is how it ends for him, an adult
fucking him up the ass with his dead friend's horn until he bleeds enough
she'll notice. It's such an perverse, awful, stupid death. Which he guesses is
the perfect punchline to his perverse, awful, stupid life.
The adult pauses, then starts working the horn back out. Karkat is confused,
unless she's already injured him badly enough that he's bleeding. But when he
lifts his head, he sees that she's frowning at a horn unstained with red.
"Yeah," she tells him, when she sees him looking over. "This isn't working at
all." She sounds almost apologetic, as if stabbing him in the guts from the
bottom up is a project they're approaching together with camaraderie and mutual
fucking effort.
After a few thoughtful moments she says, "Hey, Dien! Where's the motor grease?"
"I imagine," says the man, and there's a level of vibration in this voice that
buzzes menacingly along Karkat's horns, "that it remains where you last put it.
Unless you did eventually see fit to put it away properly, in which case it
still remains where you last put it."
The woman drops a wink down at Karkat, and Karkat thinks that the next time she
gets close enough he's going to rip her throat out with his teeth. And then, of
course, he despises himself for the lie.
"Hold this for me, okay?" she says. The adult puts the disembodied, maimed horn
down on Karkat's skin, balancing it on the crease where Karkat's thigh meets
his torso.
The horn begins to roll off him, so Karkat turns his leg inwards until it
catches. The strain of keeping his leg in that position pulls along the line of
his body up to his shoulder, and it's a struggle to keep it from falling again.
It would be easier to simply reach over and hold the piece of bone in place
with his hand, but Karkat can't deal with the thought of touching it with his
fingers, his palm. With any part of his skin where he has a choice.
The adult has wandered away to the half-covered machine. She bends momentarily,
and when she stands she's brandishing a round black canister like its recovery
is an exciting achievement. As she meanders back to Karkat, she shakes the
container fast enough that he can't read the label. He doesn't care. It
probably just says "engine grease," anyway.
She stops next to the boulder, in the same spot she left from. Her leg presses,
softly but oppressively, against the side of Karkat's hip. The sense of
dangling, exposed and open, fades, but Karkat's returning it for a worse
feeling, like he's suffocating, like there's no escape. Like escape was ever
going to be an option for him.
The adult picks up the horn, and Karkat can finally let his leg relax, though
it keeps trembling for a few more moments in memory of the effort. Then she
flicks off the canister lid and sprays the contents. Thick, black goop splurges
out, covering the orange bone and splattering heavy drops on the boulder and
the top of Karkat's thigh. He winces every time one lands on him, hitting his
skin with a quiet, wet slap and leaning to gravity in a viscous trickle.
When she's done, the adult puts away the canister and extends her arm in the
direction of his face, as though offering her handiwork for inspection. Karkat
stretches his neck away. Most of the orange bone is hidden, but the surface is
coated in a thick oily blackness that clumps and slides off in slow, erratic
drips. And Karkat still knows what's underneath, and he knows that it's going
back inside him.
"Let's try this again," the adult says. "Should be just like taking a shit,
right? Only backwards."
She leans further into his hip and puts her hand low on his torso again,
supporting some of her weight. Karkat rolls his head back so all he can see is
the ceiling and the tunnel behind him. He tries to pretend he isn't aware of
anything happening to the lower half of his body, but he can't hold onto the
illusion. Especially when the adult presses the round end of the horn against
his ass again, and this time it's cold and slick.
But the machine lubricant actually seems to help, because now it slides more
easily through his asshole. As the adult works it into him, there's the same
unpleasant stretching, the same knowledge of something unwelcome slowly
exploring upwards, but at least it doesn't feel like his insides are going to
scrape and tear.
She reaches the same point as her first attempt and keeps going. The
stretching, too full sensation becomes more intense, cramping, burning, even
when he puts all his remaining energy into forcing his muscles to unclench, to
not fight her.
His breath hitches, and Karkat tries to keep his gasping as silent as possible,
but he's sure it's not enough. His breathing becomes even more shaky as he
waits for her to react, but the seconds tick by and she doesn't. She just keeps
shoving the bone up his ass, and it hurts, and it's terrible in ways Karkat
never even fucking imagined, but he knows she was going to do it anyway.
What Karkat doesn't know is if this means she's too engrossed by his current
torment to punish him right away, or if it means he has her implied fucking
permission to scream now, if this ranks bad enough on the scale from ripping
out his own teeth to sunbathing while an imaginary musclebeast stomps on his
limbs and pisses in his eye sockets.
The adult is still shifting the horn side to side, but it doesn't seem to be
getting much deeper. Karkat hopes it's done, but instead the adult starts to
rotate it. The slight curve is starting to be an issue, or maybe it needs to
bend more, Karkat's not exactly an expert in the mechanics involved. His body
demands to bear down against it, but he doesn't have any leverage, can't find
anything to hold onto. His fingers scrabble futilely on the stone.
The adult is done twisting. She leans further over him, pressing heavier on his
abdomen, and forces it in again. The horn moves, climbing at a new angle. And
then it gets stuck inside him, pushing in a direction where nothing yields, and
she doesn't stop. She jiggles the horn, increases pressure... and Karkat
screams before he can remember not to. It's a sharp, mind-numbing flare of
pain. He screams and even after he wrenches his mouth shut, the noise echoes in
the cave like an accusation.
But the adult doesn't look irritated with him. She's stopped working at the
bone, and she might actually be surprised by his reaction. Karkat doesn't know
how to get his mind around the possibility she hadn't meant to hurt him. It
doesn't fit within the known laws of the universe.
He doesn't have to deal with the confusion for very long. There's only a beat
where they stare stare uncertainly at each other, and then she grins and prods
the end of the horn into the same spot.
Karkat cries out, and when she does it again, harder, he cries out again. She
keeps it there, maintaining the pressure, and Karkat isn't even bothering to
try not to scream anymore. He doesn't know if she's stabbed a hole inside him,
or if she's pushing against one of the organ channels that empty into his
intestines, or if all this pain is just because the horn isn't going to fit.
His back arcs over the boulder and his feet slam into the side and he can't
think through the burning. He's going die like this after everything and it's
not fair and no one's even going to notice that he's gone.
"Hey, kid," the adult says. "Yo. Hey." But fuck her. Fuck her up the ass just
like she's doing to him right now.
She slides the horn out just enough to loosen the pressure inside him, and
Karkat gasps and shudders, still groggy from pain. "Hey. Kid." She starts to
wiggle it back up, slowly. Threateningly.
And Karkat gives her all the wide eyed, desperate focus he has. "Glad to see
you've joined me," she says, and she still has way too many long, sun-
highlighted teeth. "Now pay some attention to what the fuck you're doing."
Karkat doesn't understand. He's not doing anything. Is he supposed to be? There
isn't anything for him to do. But then his eyes begin to process the scene in
front of his face. His hands are raised to her arm and shoulder. At this moment
they're simply resting against her jacket, but he must have been clawing
mindlessly at her, or at least trying to push her away.
Karkat clutches his arms back to his chest. "No," he says, "no no fuck no
please I didn't," and he can't breathe, and his words are tripping over each
other, and he's choking on them, "oh fuck I'm sorry I'm so I didn't mean it I
fuck sorry no no no oh god no."
She lets go of the horn in his ass and puts that hand, black and sticky, on his
shoulder. The horn slides a little away from whatever it was pressing into, and
Karkat trembles because it feels so much better, and because he was caught
struggling, he's broken the rules, and he's certain what's about to come will
be unimaginably worse.
The adult places the palm of her cleaner hand on his jaw and stretches her
fingerspan from his temple down to his neck. She angles his head so that he
can't look away from her. Her hand is warmer than the air, but as it rests
longer on his skin, he begins to feel the underlying coolness of her richer
blood.
"I'm sorry," Karkat says. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Please."
"Yeah," the adult says. She runs her fingertips gently through the fringe above
his ear. "Shhh, yeah, I know." She's smiling at him, she's always smiling at
him, and Karkat wishes it was pity but it's not. She looks pleased. Smug. "I
know you didn't mean to. You're so docile. So here, I'm going to do you a
favor."
When she lifts her hand off his face, the outline of her fingers remains warm
on his cheek, slow to fade. She takes hold of the other side of his chest and
twists him up and sideways into a half sitting position. Karkat lets her,
pliant as a doll, as a dead thing, as someone with no resistance left. She
folds his closest arm behind his back and then puts him down so that, while
both hips are lying on the boulder, his chest is resting on that one shoulder.
He's turned to face the inside of the cave, but there's not much he's
interested in looking at.
She knocks his other arm down so his wrists fall together. Karkat's pretty sure
he knows what her favor is going to be, and the thing, the fucking thing of it
is that he's already grateful. So unbelievably grateful, he'd beg her if she
asked and mean every syllable. Please restrain his arms again, please, please,
because they'll betray him otherwise, he's obviously too weak to control them
on his own.
Karkat waits for her to retrieve the metal cuffs, but she just stands there and
fidgets in the empty air. Karkat watches in confusion until she leans over him
and catches one wrist in the edge of an invisible loop. Of course.
She guides his other hand in with it. Karkat holds his wrists close so she can
tighten the loop, but instead she pushes him over onto his back. His trapped
arm and shoulder strain under him, but at this point that's a familiar, almost
nostalgic pain.
The circle of invisible rope is still several times too big, and when Karkat
finds the invisible knot, it's one that won't tighten. It was never meant to
tie his arms safely away, he realizes. Not unless he's actively holding on.
Cooperating. Being fucking docile.
The adult leans back over his hip and grabs the horn. Karkat feels it moving
inside him as she repositions her hand. He clenches his jaw in anticipation of
the pain he knows is going to come. One of his arms is weighted down under his
back, but he loops his other wrist through the psychic rope over and over until
there's no slack where he can unthinkingly slip free.
She starts pushing up once more, slowly wiggling the horn further in. Karkat's
whole body is shaking with the effort to lay, quiet and still, on the boulder.
He braces himself as much as he can and clenches the imaginary rope in his
fists. His nails press on it, but it's much smoother than a real rope. There's
no texture to dig into.
The adult glances for a moment at his wrists. Her grin quirks in satisfaction.
Karkat suddenly wonders if she can feel along her psychic rope like a true
extension of her body. God, probably. He's not just enthusiastically making
himself even more helpless, he's tangling his arms inside a piece of her,
pressing the rope around his wrists and hands where she can better sense every
desperate twitch and surrender.
Karkat wants to rip his hands loose, but he makes them clench tighter. He tells
himself it doesn't matter. It doesn't change anything. He can't afford even
that freedom right now, not unless he's really ready to give up.
The wall of his ass stings more as the horn gets close to the same spot as
before, and Karkat has to remind himself that he's not ready to give up. It
would be easy, so easy, all he'd have to do is swing a leg at her, or open his
mouth and say, "No". Sure, and then she'd torture him to death, but at least he
could let go. At least he'd know it was the end.
Instead, he lifts his lip to scowl at her. She's not looking at his face, which
is the only reason he's willing to try it. For a second his expression feels
like a badly fitted mask, as the sole emotion behind it is terror, and it
doesn't match. But then he's flooded with the familiar weight of anger, hot and
solid. He squeezes the invisible rope as tight as he can, driving his claws
into the side. He hopes she fucking can feel it.
The horn slides next to the spot that had left him screaming, and Karkat
readies himself for the pain, he can get through it, that psychotic asshole
isn't going to break him like this... and then the horn keeps moving, in a
slightly different direction.
The side of the bone scrapes the sore point inside him, and the exploring tip
stretches a new part of his ass, and it hurts, but it's nothing compared to
what she did to him before. Karkat's relief is cut with suspicion, because he
doesn't trust her not to backtrack and try again, and with an odd, unsteadying
disappointment. As if he had been prepared to throw his weight against a locked
door, only to have it swing open when he reached it, leaving him to topple off-
balance to the floor.
He actually catches himself thinking his current situation isn't that bad
before he has time to get angry again. Mostly at his own think pan for
entertaining such a disgusting idiotic idea, how would it like to be wrenched
backwards over a cave's stone bulge while an adult bitch probes into the other
end of its digestive tube. And his throat is still sore. Although who knows,
maybe that's just all the fucking screaming.
The horn stops creeping further into him. When Karkat lifts his head, the adult
looks almost bored, and he feels a new pang of fear despite the fact he's
hardly been in charge of this portion of her morning's entertainment.
The adult lets go of the horn, and some of the pressure releases. It's still
way too far inside, Karkat wants it gone, he wants to be done, but he doesn't
dare try to push it out. The adult pokes a fingernail at the stretched ring of
his asshole, surprising him, and his ass reflexively clenches tighter around
the bone. The shudder travels all the way up his body, but at least she looks
interested again.
"What do you think that'd feel like," she says.
Karkat would be perfectly willing to tell her that it feels fucking terrible,
but of course she doesn't give a shit about Karkat's opinion. She's looking
over him to the other adult.
"I couldn't cram my horns up there, but yours aren't that twisted." There's a
silence, and Karkat doesn't know how the man reacted, but when she continues
talking she's grinning again. "C'mon over here, Dien, give it a try. Trust me,
you haven't lived 'til you've had some poor asshole clamped to the side of your
head." She laughs at her own pun. No one else is going to.
Karkat feels like every point in his body is being crushed together. He's going
to be the first troll case of spontaneous implosion. Because. It's not... The
man's horns are more than twice as long as Ladeci's were, and they end in
pointed hooks. If one of them stabs up through his intestines, it's not coming
back out without half of Karkat's internal organs. Just. No. He can't.
The woman starts pulling the horn from his ass, much faster than comfortable.
Especially when Karkat's suddenly changed his mind. He wants that one to stay
in.
Karkat feels the deep growl to the man's voice before he makes out the words.
"That's the most repugnant suggestion I've ever heard," he says, and Karkat
sucks in a desperate gulp of air. He didn't even know he'd been holding his
breath. His body relaxes fractionally, shaking after that moment of helpless,
frozen panic.
The adult yanks the horn free with a squelching plop. Karkat's asshole is sore
and it's the first time he's been aware of it's emptiness, and his thighs and
lowest back are slick and sticky. His insides are aching and he feels scratched
up, but if there was any bleeding, it's lost in the black engine grease.
The top two thirds of the horn have been mostly wiped back to orange, but the
couple inches above the base are still covered in thick blackness. Inside him,
the horn had seemed impossibly long and thick, and it's hard to believe she
only crammed in a few inches before losing interest. And this was Ladeci's
narrow horn. Karkat doesn't know what he'd have done if the horn with the bulb
near the tip had been the intact one.
Except he does know, doesn't he? He'd have lain there and fucking taken it.
The woman briefly examines the piece of bone she's holding, then shrugs and
lets it clatter to the cave floor. She wipes off her palm against Karkat's hip
and, when no more black slime seems to be transferring to his skin, she scrubs
her hand a few times on her own pants.
"You know, he's probably telling the truth," she says, conversationally to
Karkat but loud enough for her partner to hear. Karkat's still shaking,
adjusting to the idea that he's not about to be skewered to death, but he moves
his eyes in unsteady jerks until they meet hers. In case this is one of those
times she wants proof he's paying attention to her. As if he has a choice to
stop. As if his life isn't at the mercy of her every fleeting whim.
"Blue bloods," she explains. She expels a short, dismissive hiss of air, like
she's actually a gossipy lowblood, not a high green. "Maybe that's really the
worst thing he's ever heard."
Her tongue darts momentarily between her lips, touching each of her longest
fangs before disappearing back into her mouth. Her stare shifts to an undefined
point in the distance, and she grins at the scene playing on the inside wall of
her head. "I still haven't figured it out. Is he actually that sheltered, or is
it just a lack of imagination."
***** Chapter 5 *****
The adult looks over her shoulder across the cave, presumably at one of the
scattered machines of indeterminate purpose. Then she takes out her small
computational device and looks at that, before packing it back into her
captchalogue deck.
"We've still got some time," the adult says. Then she looks at Karkat. It's all
too exaggerated for her not to be doing it for effect, but does she really
think it's possible for Karkat to feel any worse right now?
The adult doesn't say anything for a second, just keeps looking at him. And,
yes, Karkat thinks, as anticipation grows heavy and solid in the center of his
chest. Yes, it turns out it is possible.
She pokes him in the chest, and Karkat flinches as though she punched him.
Which must be the response she wanted, because she pokes him again, this time
in the darkest bruise under his shoulder. At this point, it doesn't hurt more
than the rest of him.
When she does it a third time, her finger jabbing suddenly into his upper
abdomen, Karkat barely grits his teeth in reaction. He stares up at her in
bleary resignation, helpless to do anything but wait for it to happen again.
Instead the adult reaches down and closes a fist tight around one of his horns.
Karkat's eyes clench shut as though he'd glanced outside during the day. It
feels like it. His mind is too full of unexpected sensory data, and it's too
intense to mean anything. Pressure and smell and vibration rush together until
he's dizzy. He twists and arcs over the stone, trying to pull away, but every
time he does there's a new burst of sensation. With his eyes closed, he can't
tell if he's floating or plummeting. From far away, his trapped arm throbs.
He's smashing it between his body and the stone.
He needs to stop thrashing right the fuck now. Karkat rips his eyes open and
finds a spot on the top of the cave to stare at, ignoring the way the rest of
the world lurches around him each time he yanks against the grip on his horn.
Except, wait, no, he's not. He's managed to get himself still. The adult is
pulling on him. Up. She is fucking pulling him up by his horn like it is a
handle on an overnight journey packing sack.
His throat tightens. He's going to growl at her, Karkat realizes in a moment of
perfect but abstract clarity. It's like he's detached from the process,
watching from somewhere just beyond the overwhelming sensory information. Of
course he's going to growl at her. That's what anyone would do, although they'd
do it while kicking away the grabby offender. Karkat probably shouldn't,
though.
He'd clamp a hand into his neck to shut himself up, but now that he needs his
arms, he can't get them free. The loops wrapped around and around his wrists
tighten when he fights them, and he can't focus enough to untangle the
imaginary rope.
Karkat's teeth are bared as his lip lifts into a snarl, and he thinks shut up
shut up shut the fuck up you fucking useless nooksniffing moron, and pressure
builds in his throat anyway. He's going to threaten her, it's a thing that's
going to happen, and he can't stop it any more than yelling at the memory of
himself will stop him from going cave exploring like a lost braindead wiggler.
Except that just as his lips widen to let out the sound, the adult clenches her
claws into his horn, yanking hard, and the sensory overload flares into pain.
The nascent growl turns into a scream.
When she loosens her grip again, Karkat pants for air. His vision slowly comes
back into focus. He untenses in the relative comfort, and he can't tell if it's
exhaustion or giving up. And he's grateful again. It's worrying, Karkat knows
he should be worried, but there's already too much to be frightened about. He
doesn't have the energy. He couldn't stop himself from growling at her, but she
did, and it takes effort not believe that she saved him. Even though she is the
thing Karkat needs saving from.
The adult is still pulling up on Karkat's horn. "Work with me, here," she says,
and there's an unimpressed edge to her voice. Karkat's already wincing, but his
face twists even further at how stupid he is. He hadn't guessed she had a goal
beyond making him miserable.
She yanks up a few quick times. Pointedly. Karkat fights through the surge in
dizziness and tries to get into a sitting position. His feet can't find
purchase anywhere, so he pushes with his elbows. One of his arms hurts a lot
when he does, and filtered through the blaring nonsense from his horn it's like
his whole body is in agony. Fuck. Maybe it is. He can't think.
He needs to move upwards. It's taking too long to get his wrists out from the
mess of invisible rope, but he still has some inches of movement with the hand
he's not laying on. He presses his palm against the stone and pushes.
And his balance is so messed up right now, what he accomplishes is pushing
himself off the top of the boulder. His eyes finally confirm his horn's
confused announcements that he's sliding, falling, tumbling forever into the
abyss, and his limbs feel like they're flying in seventeen different directions
at once. He couldn't stop himself if his arms were free.
But he doesn't have to. When he actually tips over the side of the boulder, the
adult's arms grab around his torso. She's suddenly almost clutching him against
her chest, and whatever other horrible things she's done to him today, this is
the largest amount of contact they've had.
His feet flop uselessly to the floor, and Karkat wishes she had let him follow
them. Her encircling arms feel like a trap, and he has to force himself not to
thrash in panic. He's acutely aware of the smooth texture of her jacket on his
skin. The raised, curved lines of her green sign press into his shoulder.
The horn she was holding is muted in his brain, leaving the other one
unbalanced, but without someone pulling them in the wrong directions his dizzy
confusion starts to fade. And his other senses settle back to normal, now that
there's no overload in his head. The cave appears mercifully darker. Phantom,
out-of-place smells waft away. If only he could turn down his tactile senses...
God, he can't handle being this close to her. He's going to lose his mind
entirely. He's going to bite her. He's going to start screaming and not stop
until she snaps his neck.
The adult lifts Karkat onto the boulder again. She arranges him so that he's
sitting, with his shoulders leaning on the cave wall and his lower legs hanging
down the side. His hands rest on the stone surface behind his back. Enough
loops have unwound from his wrists that he could slip the invisible rope, but
he's doesn't know if he should anymore.
Sitting upright is putting too much pressure on his ass, and it throbs as a
reminder of the adult's last choice of fun. In case the black stains on the
side of the boulder weren't enough.
Karkat shifts very slightly, so that most of his weight lands on his hip. The
change in position pulls at his chest and shoulder, but "less uncomfortable" is
all he can hope for.
More than he can hope for. The adult is getting closer to him, and Karkat
doesn't know if she's moving too fast or too fucking slow. At least she looks
pleased again, although Karkat wishes to fuck he would never get to find out
why. He watches, limp and unresisting, as she leans her leg on the stone beside
his knee, and reaches towards him, and touches his horn again.
It's the same horn as before, and Karkat tenses. His fists grab desperately at
the psychic rope. But this time the adult isn't pulling, she's just lightly
resting her thumb on the curved top. Even though he hasn't completely
recovered, this isn't overwhelming. Almost the opposite. The weight of it sits
in his awareness like a welcoming shadow.
The adult starts to move her thumb down his horn in a loose spiral, and that
shadow expands and unfolds pleasantly over his thoughts, enveloping them,
slowing some of his panic.
Karkat hates it. He hates it and he hates her and he hates his stupid nubby
vulnerable traitor horns. His breath hitches, and part of that is the texture
of her skin sliding over bone, and part of that is how he needs to roll his
eyes towards the ceiling until he suppresses the warning burn of tears.
When the adult's thumb is partway down his horn, she raises her free hand to
Karkat's opposite one. Starting from its tip, she matches the speed and
direction of her other thumb. It's the same movement exactly, except on
different levels of each horn.
His brain decides this means his body is tilting over, extremely slowly. Karkat
stares above the adult's shoulder at a steady point on the far wall of the
cave. The illusion fades in and out, but it doesn't go away. It feels like the
cave floor starts sliding with him, and then they both snap into place, over
and over. Each time he blinks he loses his sense of place completely. His arms
jerk reflexively in their invisible bonds, as though to catch his weight.
Karkat fights the sense of disorientation, but it's still nothing compared to
when the adult was pulling roughly on his horn. The main part of his dizziness
now is because he's pitting one sense against another, a deathmatch of vision
vs kinesthetic vibration. Beyond that, Karkat's body mostly feels light, like
he's floating in supor slime.
The adult reaches the base of Karkat's first horn. She slides her thumb around
the seam between bone and scalp, and she keeps increasing the pressure. It's
not unpleasant. Karkat almost wishes it was unpleasant, but he's not such a
frond yanking idiot he can't see how that might possibly, conceivably be a
thought he'd find himself regretting pretty fucking immediately.
The shadow of sensation balloons further in his mind. There's not enough room
for the rest of his thoughts, and edges of his other senses narrow and start to
turn fuzzy. He shakes his head, but that just moves his horns faster and harder
against her hands.
Her second thumb finds the bottom of its horn, and Karkat makes a high pitched
noise in the back of his throat. It's distress. It has to be distress, because
otherwise... he doesn't even fucking know.
"You're so sensitive," the adult says. She squeezes the base of both horns at
the same time, and Karkat doesn't whine again but he gasps hard, lips and teeth
open into the air. "Even with these stubby pieces of shit."
Karkat cringes. Fuck her, his horns are fine, he wants her away from them, he
doesn't care... but even now he can't stop the welling of embarrassment. Shame
for his defective mutant body. The hot niggling fear that he's not good enough.
And more shame at that, knowing who he's trying to impress.
The adult's looking at him like he's a mildly amusing joke. "I hope you
appreciate that," she says. "It fades when you get older." Her mouth quirks
suddenly, like she finally got to the mildly amusing punchline. She corrects
herself. "If you get older."
Karkat doesn't know if his shudder is from her words or the pressure of her
fingers. She holds it a few more moments, increasing her grip slowly, until his
thoughts are bleeding into each other and his senses of sight and smell begin
to blur. Then she lets go. Karkat feels like he's suddenly crashing down,
hugely heavy and no more stable.
She returns one thumb to the top of his first horn, and she lets it sit there
while she brings her other hand down. Too far down. It jumps back into Karkat's
awareness when it lands on his lower abdomen and slides onto the membranes of
his exposed seedflap.
Karkat's eyes widen, despite the reflected daylight. He jerks backwards as much
as he can. Which is approximately half an inch, just far enough to slam the
back of his head into the cave wall. The adult is starting to get that hungry,
too familiar look, and Karkat can't figure out why he's even surprised. Of
course this is what's going to happen next. What the fuck was he expecting.
His thighs are inching closer together, resisting on their own since the rest
of him is useless maggotshit. The adult moves her leg away from the boulder and
slips it between his knees. Then she shuffles her leg back to the original spot
she was leaning against, but this time his thighs are wrenched open as she
goes. The airflow moves, cool, around his crotch and outlines where black
grease is stuck to him.
The top of the boulder scratches under Karkat's skin as the adult pushes,
widening the angle of his hip. As if she needs to. As if she doesn't already
have easy groping access to his genitals. As if tips of her claws aren't, right
now, running lightly over his seedflap.
But the roughness of stone is the only sensation that doesn't make Karkat want
to be sick. He tries to focus on it, but there's so much competing for his
attention. The smooth, unyielding pillar of the adult's leg pressing against
his own, or the itching lines she's tracing along his sensitive membranes, or
the gentle, distracting weight of her thumb on his horn.
And the rest of him is still a jumbled assortment of the different ways he can
hurt. Throbbing bruises, strained muscles, sharp burning lines in places that
aren't meant to be scratched... even where she's not touching him now, his body
can't forget that she has.
The adult twists her hand around on his crotch, so that the heel of her palm
rests on his bulge and her fingers slide up over his flap. And then she grinds
down and, slowly, pulls her hand halfway into a fist around his flesh.
Karkat's back arcs into the rush of what is, and he can't pretend, of what is
intense, spongefreezing pleasure. His hips leave the boulder for a moment,
putting his weight on his fists and his shoulders against the wall, and there's
a moan ready to escape his throat. Karkat doesn't let it, clamping his mouth
shut, claiming this small victory. He couldn't handle the admission.
But her eyes narrow as she stares at him. Smugness. She doesn't need it.
She loosens her grip, equally slowly, and Karkat settles back again. His
breathing is rough and he's still twitching, writhing under her hand. He tells
himself he must be trying, even if uselessly, to get further away.
The adult starts squeezing again, but this time she wraps her other hand fully
around Karkat's horn. She moves both sets of fingers together, and when the
pleasure builds again, this time it gets tangled with the vibrations from his
horn and seems to spread into his body. The throbbing of his injuries is
overwritten with the throbbing in his bulge, and it should be relief as much as
anything, except that there's no relief at all. The pain might be blanked out,
but it's quickly replaced by disgust.
Karkat's disgusted by how weak and helpless he is, by how easy it is for him
not to resist. By how fucking amazing it feels with every pull of her fingers,
because anything else is a lie, and the need growing in him second by second
for more. If she stopped now, it would be its own sort of torture, even if it's
one he'd take over her continuing.
It's not like Karkat's never stuck his own hands down his pants. Over the past
few perigees, his bone bulge has become thicker and more sensitive, while the
membranes of his seedflap have grown longer and begun to fold in on themselves.
He's not done with puberty yet, but he's groped around the changing parts of
his body, rubbing and squeezing in contented exploration.
But what the adult is doing to him is nothing like his own inexpert attempts at
masturbation. She's moving with a faster rhythm now. Her palm grinds hard
against his bulge, and her fingers reach farther up his flap with each stroke.
And worst part is that it's good, it's better every time. His hips buck without
his permission, and while they don't match the speed of her stroking, Karkat
thinks they might have if he knew how. Below his range of vision, the coolness
of air runs between his twitching toes.
She knows how to play his body better than he does. And of course she does,
that shouldn't be any fucking surprise, she's had access to a body for a lot
longer than Karkat has. But he feels more pathetic anyway. The unbearable
ecstasy bounces directly from his crotch to the horn she's holding, like she's
strung one of her psychic threads through his torso and head. Fuck, can she do
that?
Tension is starting to build in his groin. It's a heavy, pleasant tension,
though one that promises it'll be even better when it's ready to release. And
then Karkat remembers with gruesome clarity how the male adult had shuddered
around Karkat's face, Karkat's nose pressed to the man's stinking bulge, and
how the man's telling blue fluid had dripped from his nook onto Karkat's face.
It had been the worst thing that ever happened to him.
Karkat will have have to laugh at how ignorant he was. Sometime. Maybe after
the worst things that ever happened to him stop fucking happening.
The adult moves her wrist in an semi-circle. Her fingers press along Karkat's
seedflap, and the tightness in his groin stretches into his abdomen like an
elastic band. It's hard to think. His brain is full, between the echoes of her
hand rubbing up his bulge and the vibrations in his horn that have him half
convinced he's floating away.
But he's finally realizing how this is going to end. The adult hasn't felt a
need to break his skin. Yet. He's been lucky. And it doesn't matter at all,
because when she's done with this...
Karkat doesn't even know why she's doing it. She's not getting any pleasure out
of it. And she's staring at Karkat with that weird, intent hunger, and her fang
is playing with the edge of her grin, and all of it makes no fucking sense...
...when she's done, there's going to be a puddle of mutant red staining the
rock beneath him. Karkat won't have anything left to hide.
For a moment, fear burns away the need growing through Karkat's body with every
press of the adult's hands. His senses clear, and everything is too in focus.
The sharp twist of the adult's smile, the smell of her breath rushing, faster
now, over her lips. The angle of his knee, hooked around her black clad leg.
Daylight traces harsh lines over everything in the tunnel, and it's like he's
never seen so clearly, and all he can see is that there's no way he can escape
being exposed.
And then the adult squeezes him again, horn and bulge, and fear and pleasure
spin together until Karkat can't tell the difference. He shuffles backwards on
his hips, squashing his hands against the stone wall, but the adult just leans
after him. She doesn't even drop her rhythm.
The adult runs her thumb in circles at the top of his horn, not quite in time
with the way she's been tightening her fingers around it. Karkat knows he's
solidly planted on a piece of rock, but he feels like everything is spinning
away. It might have been pleasant, but he's too ungrounded already, too
desperate. The tension in Karkat's groin is becoming an insistent pressure, and
he's not going to be able to hold it off. He has to. He can't.
He can't tell her to stop, but maybe if he begged, maybe if he offered... What?
Anything. He'll do anything she wants him to. But she already has him on that.
The adult bends further over him, giving her more weight to press into his
crotch. Her claws scratch harder at his seedflap, and Karkat jerks at their
sharpness against his membranes.
"Look at you," she says. "You're terrified. Don't you know this is the fun
part?"
Her nostrils are flared, but just the stench of his fear must not be enough for
her, because she leans in even closer and fucking presses her tongue to his
face. She licks a stripe from his jaw to the inside of his eye, and then pulls
away, bringing her tongue back into her grinning lips. The line of her saliva
burns cold on Karkat's skin.
She rubs the heel of her hand faster over Karkat's bulge, and he still manages
to keep silent, but his hands clench and unclench on the psychic rope looped
around his wrists.
"What, am I hurting you?" Her fingers move on his horn, and the tension in his
abdomen pulses again through his body, bringing him closer each time to losing
the last of his control. Karkat shuts his eyes, remembers better, and looks up
into her face as he shakes his head, rolling his skull on the rock behind him,
pulling his own horn through her grip.
"Didn't think so," she says, sliding her hand down far enough it hits his nook
before she grinds up again. "How about now?" And this time, instead of
squeezing gently at his horn, she pulls back her nails and digs them in.
Karkat screams. It's too intense, too much for him to process without warning.
But by the time he drags in a second breath the stabbing pain is already
fading. The adult is running her fingers in small circles where her claws had
bit in, as though to smooth the sting away. Light throbs and dims in his
vision, and Karkat's muscles twitch as he struggles to stop gasping.
Then the adult starts rubbing his bulge again, and Karkat's gasping for a
different reason. "See?" she says. "This could be going worse for you." Her
hand tightens on his horn, and Karkat tenses, but she's just falling back into
her old rhythm. "Though you do scream pretty nicely. I definitely want to hear
that again."
And Karkat would gladly scream for her right now, he's been constantly on the
verge of screaming since she caught him. But he knows that it doesn't count for
her unless he can't stop himself. Unless he means it.
The pressure in Karkat's groin is starting to ache with the need for release.
The pain of it is nothing compared to the vibration of the adult's skin on his
still tender horn, but the desperate tension builds along the lines of his body
into something he can't sustain. He tries clenching his abdomen to hold it
back, but that just makes the tightness around his muscles even more urgent.
Karkat's shifting on the boulder, arcing his chest and jerking his hips,
strange abortive movements that don't mean anything. He's still gasping, and
the trail end of each breath is a low sound, halfway into a sob. He's going to
give in. He's not strong enough to hold on, even when his life depends on it.
So maybe he deserves to be culled.
"Huh," the adult says. "Are you actually fighting this?" She would sound
incredulous if she was less amused.
Karkat can't focus, but he does his best to aim his gaze up at her. He
struggles to say, "No," and his voice cracks even on the single word.
The adult laughs at him. "Kid, thought I already broke this to you. You're as
shit awful at lying as delaying the inevitable."
And then the adult clamps her fingers along the folds of his seedflap, grinds
her palm against his bulge, and twists...
And the no longer anything like pleasant tension flares through his mind as
powerfully as her claws in his horn. There's no room left for pain or fear or
panic, and that blankness would be the greatest relief he's known even if it
didn't carry its own sharp ecstasy. But barely an instant later it drains from
his body, muscle after muscle, leaving him limp. Karkat would slide down the
cave wall if the adult wasn't still pinning him in place by his horn.
Her eyes and fangs gleam in the reflected light. She stares down at him,
considering, and Karkat knows that it's over.
***** Chapter 6 *****
The adult makes an amused humming noise. She takes her hand off Karkat's bulge
and angles it further down between his legs. Karkat feels the press of one
fingertip against the opening of his nook. He flinches away, slamming his hands
harder into the wall, but it doesn't change anything. He's still naked, and
exposed, and finished.
She lifts her finger up and holds it in front of Karkat's face. It's a blurry
gray meat tube in his vision. She's mocking him, she's obviously mocking him,
she hasn't ever stopped. But it doesn't fit. He's betrayed himself, she knows
he's a mutant. She's not mocking him enough.
Karkat forces the world back into focus. The gray smear becomes a thick,
jointed line, topped with a short nail filed to a point. But it's dry, there's
no telling red stain. He doesn't understand.
"Five sweeps, right?" the adult says, randomly. Karkat's not sure if she's
expecting him to respond, but she just snorts and drops her hand, wiping it
casually on her pants. "I know you're new at this, so here's a hint. You're
supposed to provide your own lubrication."
So that's it. There isn't any vivid red fluid dripping from his nook. She
caught him too young.
Karkat almost wants to laugh. It's close. His shoulders shake, although most of
that is muscle tension. The movement rubs his horn distractingly through her
hand. He takes a deep, glorious breath to celebrate that he still has a chance.
"That's okay," the adult says. "I don't mind improvising." She brings her hand
back down and rolls it in the crease of his leg, where engine grease is still
collected. It smears wetly at the beginning of his inner thigh.
She lifts her hand away, so Karkat can see that her first two fingers are
coated lightly in black gunk. As if he was a black blooded troll, which would
leave him equally cull-worthy. He doesn't know what her point is. Is she going
to make him eat it? Fucking fine with him. Better than the rest of the shit
they've stuck in his mouth.
But she doesn't. The adult drops her hand to his crotch again and pokes her
finger to his nook. Then she pushes through.
Karkat cries out in shock. It doesn't hurt, she barely has the tip of her
finger inside the orifice, but he's never had anything there. Of course he
hasn't, he's not a pervert with a death fetish. He is obscenely aware of the
sharp end of her fingernail sliding inside his nook, and she's pushing it
deeper, and even after everything else Karkat can't believe this is actually
happening to him.
He tries to squirm away, twisting from side to side in case somewhere there's
an escape, fighting to yank his arms from behind him, but the adult tightens
her grip on his horn until every movement leaves him whimpering in distress. He
stares pleadingly at her, and she just widens her grin at his desperation. Her
finger twitches further in.
"Oh god," Karkat says. "Oh god please I'll do anything please don--"
And the adult yanks her hand from his nook for the purpose of slamming her
elbow into his chest. The air is forced from his breathing organ. He's dizzy,
and it's not just his abused horn. He wants to crumple in on himself but he
can't. He can't breathe. If this is what dying feels like no wonder he's been
fighting to put it off.
The adult waits until Karkat has more or less gasped his way to a recovery. Her
expression has flattened, although there's still amusement in the crease of her
eyes.
"You wouldn't like what I'd have done if you finished that," she says. Karkat
tries to focus on sucking air without wanting to collapse. And she's right,
he's such an idiot. He keeps handing her excuses to make things worse.
"Understand?" she says, and there's an edge to her voice that means she wants
an answer.
She's gripping his horn too tightly for him to nod, so Karkat says, "Yes." It's
barely a whisper. It's the best he can do.
"Good." She runs her thumb along the base of his horn, and some of the pain in
his chest floats away. "That's what you want, yeah? To be good for me?"
Fuck you. Fuck you fuck you fuck you. But what Karkat says is, "Yes."
"Bullshit you do," the adult says, and her grin slides right back into place.
"But it doesn't matter what you want, 'cause you will be." She pokes him in the
chest with a back stained finger. "Won't you?"
Karkat pulls his hands tighter against his back. It doesn't do anything except
make his arms flare in pain, but somehow that helps. It's a pain under his own
control. He keeps looking into the adult's gaze, because that's what she always
wants him to do. That's what she's trained him to do. "Yes."
The adult says, "Remember that one. Yes. It's so much better for you than no."
She puts her finger back on his chest and runs it quickly downward, over his
abdomen and through the folds of his seedflap and onto his bone bulge, which is
so sensitive right now that Karkat sucks air through his teeth when she pokes
him with a claw.
And then she's back at his nook, pushing into him with a filthy, grease stained
finger. Karkat clenches his jaw so he doesn't make the same mistake, but every
time he breathes out, it's a whine.
Karkat hates her. He hates her more than he's ever hated anything in his life.
It's like he didn't even know what hate was until now, because he finally truly
hates something, and it's her.
But it's wrong. He doesn't want her to keep touching him, he wants her to stop.
He wants to hurt her, but he doesn't want to see emerald green blood pooling in
the gashes he's clawed across her shoulders, he wants her gutted. He wants her
head rolling on the floor.
He just wants her to stop.
She doesn't stop. She's not going to stop. The adult wiggles her finger slowly
into his nook, more slowly than she probably fucking has to, and Karkat squirms
and kicks his free leg on the stone, but he doesn't fight. And it's sick that
it's starting to feel good as she slides inside him. It's little like when she
was pushing on his bone bulge, but more direct, not spread through his whole
groin.
There's the feeling of being stretched open, but it's so different from when
she was ravaging his asshole. Her finger is a lot smaller than a horn, and his
nook is meant to be penetrated. Eventually. Not like this.
"What are you doing?!" It's the male adult. He's yelling. He's a lot closer,
too, than Karkat realized, having gotten off his bench and stopped a few feet
from his partner's shoulder. His hands are clenched into fists at his sides.
The woman makes a show of rolling her eyes as she turns her head towards him.
And fuck, she looks even more smug. She jerks her finger up, and Karkat yelps.
"Now I really don't get how you survived this long," she says. "Should I label
you a diagram, Dien? Borrow you a copy of Where Do Grubs Come From?"
It looks like the man's trembling, but Karkat's trembling, and between that and
the pressure of the woman's hand on his horn he can't be sure. Besides, he
doesn't care.
"This is contemptible," the man says, and the rumbling undertone of his voice
is halfway to a growl.
"Yeah?" The woman bends her finger inside Karkat, enough to make him gasp, but
she doesn't look away from the other adult. Karkat's glad to have a break from
the center of her attention, but having her hungry, vicious smile aimed at
someone else is just a reminder that whatever's happening, it's never been
about him. There's nothing he can do that will actually matter.
"Why's that? You think this kid's got a matesprit somewhere, depending on him?
Or a kismesis swinging a half-full bucket around? You'll have to explain to me
what your fucking problem is, Dien." Her grin deepens, like she's daring him.
The man snarls. "I will not be a party to this depravity," he says.
She laughs. "That's a happy coincidence, 'cause I don't remember handing you an
invitation."
The two adults stare at each other for several seconds. The man's snarl sets
into an unhappy line, and the woman's self-satisfied expression falls to
something more serious. "Or what," she says. "Are you going to stop me?"
Now the man does growl. He spins on his heel and stomps to the other side of
the cave, where he glares over from the the opposite wall. The woman shrugs,
but when she looks back at Karkat there's a frustration in her eyes. Karkat
suddenly understands everything. It's so stupid.
She glances over Karkat. "So where were we?" she says, and pondering that
question seems to cheer her up again. Karkat's fulfilling his purpose as
entertainment, at least.
He braces himself for her finger worming its way inside him, but what she does
next is tighten her grip on his horn, through disorientation and discomfort and
right into throbbing pain, and pull it down.
Karkat follows it without thinking. His brain is filled with the stabbing
intensity, but his body begins to topple sideways to where she's leading him.
But this isn't what she must have wanted, because she drags him back up again.
Once he's upright, Karkat shudders with the relative comfort of not having his
horn jerked around, even if the adult's still gripping it too hard. But that
doesn't last long.
The adult slides the heel of her hand until it's leveraged solidly against
Karkat's head, jammed into the sensitive flesh just below the base of his horn.
Then she regrips with her fingers and pulls down towards her palm. It's the
familiar dizzy pain of having his horn yanked in the wrong direction, but she's
pressing back against his skull so Karkat can't move to alleviate it. This
time, the adult really doesn't have a purpose beyond seeing him suffer. Big
fucking change.
The adult has about half her finger jammed up Karkat's nook, and now she pushes
in until her knuckles are resting against his skin. She does it quickly enough
to shock him, and his hips twist in response, a feeble attempt to dislodge her.
The movement knocks her fingernail around the inside walls of his nook. It's a
sharp sensation, one he's exceedingly aware of even over the noise from his
horn.
He wishes the rasp of her claw didn't feel good. Good and close to...
something.
The adult shifts position, using Karkat's horn to steady herself and filling
his vision with new pulsing stars. Her nails catch on it, and the vibration
travels through his bones. She knocks Karkat's knee wider and he barely
notices. Then she rotates the finger inside him until she finds an angle where
she can drive it in further. Her knuckle digs into the opening of his nook.
Karkat's hips leave the boulder, but that's no escape. The adult gets her hand
directly underneath him, making gravity an accessory to this travesty. He
slides down as she works upward, bending and stretching her finger inside him.
Her fingernail scrapes higher and higher, and Karkat's own fingers scrabble on
the wall behind him.
Until the adult must have reached the top of his nook, because the point of her
finger is suddenly the only thing that matters. And it's not like Karkat wasn't
expecting this, hadn't resigned himself to it, but he hates himself that the
whine escaping his mouth is only half horror.
The muscles above his groin shift and tense, but they stop mid-spasm. It's
uncomfortable, but seconds pass and nothing else happens. And Karkat's lower
torso, that traitor, is yearning for more, urging him to increase the pressure.
Karkat's pretty sure he knows what happened. The adult is bigger than him, but
her fingers are still way shorter than an Imperial Drone's spines are supposed
to be, and that's what belongs up there. She can't reach quite far enough to
finish this. Karkat's shaking from being trapped on the edge for one endless
moment after another, but anything is better than the alternative.
The adult seems to reach the same conclusion, because she growls softly in
frustration. Then she tightens her hand around Karkat's horn, tight enough that
the intensity burns away some of the feel of her other hand, and uses it to
push him down.
There is no down. His ass is on the stone or on her hand and there's no more
down to go. But she doesn't stop pulling at his horn, harder and harder, and
her finger scratches all the way into his nook, and Karkat can't take it. He
screams. It's like she's trying to twist his horn off at the base, and Karkat
screams wordless nonsense, and if she decides to shut him up by doing it
permanently he doesn't even care anymore.
Karkat had thought bleeding out with a horn up his ass was the universe's most
embarrassing death on offer, but that was only because he never imagined that
even such a huge psycho bitch would try to steal his genetic material out of
season, without even a bucket. Even though it probably wouldn't kill him,
whatever it feels like right now. It'll still be sweeps before the Drones come
looking, after all, as if he could ever risk them finding him.
If they were both mature trolls, at least he'd have the right of vengeance
before being culled himself for failure to perform. But he's not. She can do
anything she wants to him, even this, and no one will care.
The adult pulls up a little, only to try to slam him down. Her finger bounces
inside him, but it doesn't go any further. The adult lets out a noise herself,
Karkat notices over his own misery, and what's available of his attention snaps
to her without waiting for the rest of his brain to catch up. Apparently he's
developed a new survival reflex. Rip his hands out of fire, flinch away from
the sun, and make sure this asshole stays happy.
It takes him a few moments to process it over the sensory overload from his
horn, but the noise was a sharp groan, pushed out through sharper teeth. It's
probably because she's mashing her hand between his body and the boulder.
Because she is stupid.
She flexes her fingers under Karkat, and her nails dig into the skin behind his
nook. One of them pokes the ring of his ass, which takes the chance to remind
him that, yes, everything still aches where she forced him open. In case he was
worried that had stopped just because he was distracted by any fresh new
torture or anything.
The adult has stopped trying to push him down by his horn. She's frowning,
which frightens Karkat into near lucidity. It's so hard to focus between the
leftover vibration in his horn and the torment of her fingertip almost far
enough in his nook. He manages to narrow his eyes to her face and ignore the
fuzzy ghost images drifting over his vision.
The adult's definitely frowning. But it doesn't seem like she's displeased, and
she's looking at Karkat's general area more than him personally. It's like
she's trying to sort out a challenging logistics problem in her head.
Karkat wishes he had less faith she'll get it. She managed the horn in ass
problem, didn't she, and...
Fuck. Fuck, no, she wouldn't. She couldn't. There's no way Ladeci's horn is
going up his nook. It wouldn't fit...
The adult doesn't notice Karkat stiffening with terror, but then it's really
not much of a change. She must be bored with problem solving, though, because
she shifts her grip on his horn, convincing his brain that the cave is rotating
under him far too fast to be plausible, and starts pulling again. At an angle
this time, not down. She makes sure to counter the pressure by pushing the heel
of her hand against his skull, so he can't fall over even though he'd like to.
Sitting is too much for him. He gives up. He can't do this anymore. He doesn't
have a choice.
She's yanking even harder than before, and Karkat screams again. It's the only
option he has. He catches the glint of the adult's satisfied smile, and he
knows it should make him want to shut up to spite her, instead of feeling some
slight relief that he's doing the right thing. It doesn't even matter. He
doesn't have the energy to stop.
The worst part, the very, truly worst part is what a hollow sponged idiot she
is. And Karkat is just as bad, because he's the one who'd blundered directly
into her clutches like he woke up one night and thought it would be neat to
pick himself a bouquet of oversized, flesh dissolving snapplants. Now he's
trapped in the middle of her inept, bullshit drama. They'd cull the writer of
this screenplay as a blight on the genepool, because no one would believe any
character could live this long while being such an astounding grubfucking
moron.
The adult leans back. The pull on Karkat's horn abruptly lessens, although the
intruder in his nook doesn't go anywhere. Without other senses screaming at
him, the insistent clench of his abdomen floods over his mind. Karkat tries to
focus around it, blinking at the adult until he can make out the considering
frown back on her face.
It's different, though. This time she is looking directly at Karkat, and her
expression holds no patience of one about to tackle a fascinating puzzle. If
there's something confusing her, she looks more likely to grab one of her
knives and stab it until it stops.
"You going to explain that," the adult says. But Karkat's still fighting to
regain his bearings. He doesn't know what she means.
The adult pushes his head back, knocking it against the cave wall. The impact
shoots around his skull, but it's barely more than his current level of pain.
"That wasn't a fucking question," she says. Karkat's trying to figure out what
to say, but when he doesn't respond immediately, the adult's lip raises over
her fangs. "I didn't doubt you had some choice names for me rattling around in
there," she pushes Karkat's head into the rock again, for illustration, "but
moron. Really?"
Oh shit. Oh fuck. Karkat had been shouting thoughtlessly while she twisted and
pulled at his horn, but apparently thoughtlessly hadn't meant wordlessly after
all. And he'd shared at least some part of his rant on her intelligence with
the worst imaginable audience. Karkat stares at her in silent terror.
"You going to give me your reasoning now, kid? Or are you just waiting for me
to ask more creatively?"
There's a deep chuckle from behind her. "Perhaps the child has simply noticed
your speech patterns, Zhaleya," says the man. "They're hardly indicative of a
deep and wide-ranging intellect." The female adult looks at him with as honest
a snarl as Karkat's seen from her.
"Yeah, and you can go lick out the mothergrub's secondary asshole, Dien. I
wasn't talking to you." When she turns back to Karkat, the anger is still
there. "But you, kid. You know I'm not going to keep waiting on your answer."
Karkat gives her the best one he can think of. "I'm sorry," he promises
desperately, voice cracking. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean it."
"'course you did." The adult's eyes wander down to her hand under Karkat's
nook. In his terror, he'd actually almost managed to forget about her finger
digging inside him.
Now she pulls the finger out, quickly enough that it exits with a sticky pop.
His empty nook feels raw and too wide, and Karkat's body untenses fractionally.
Part of him is frustrated at being held so close to release, only to be denied,
but seriously fuck that part.
"So you're going to tell me why. Unless curiosity is insufficiently moronic for
you?"
"I'm sorry," Karkat repeats, still lost for anything else. "I'm really--"
And this time the adult jams two fingers through the entrance of Karkat's nook.
He shouts and shifts back on his thighs and shoulders, lifting himself off the
boulder, but the adult grabs onto his horn again and forces him back down.
Her fingers slide deeper, claws drawing two sharp lines inside him, and they're
so thick together. The stretching of his nook is unbearable. They don't fit.
Even with the black grease, he doesn't know how she's not tearing his nook
apart. Not that the adult would care if she did.
She flexes her fingertips, stretching him even more, and Karkat digs his nails
into the psychic rope holding his arms safely away. Not like it's stopped him
from finding all new ways to doom himself. "Please," he whimpers. "I'm sorry."
"Sure you are," the adult says. "But I didn't tell you to be sorry, I told you
to explain what's going on under this pathetic orange nub." She's still holding
onto Karkat's horn, and now she starts yanking it down at an angle again. And
it flares painfully, but at least the adult's grinning again, amused at
Karkat's distress. Karkat's in more pain than when she was angry, but he feels
paradoxically safer like this. Like he's proving that he's useful to her, even
if the only thing she wants from him is his agony.
And then she jerks her fingers another half inch into his nook, and all he can
think about is the abrupt stretching where no one should ever, ever be allowed
to touch him. It hurts, but the disgust is no less overwhelming the second
time. "Well?" the adult says.
And Karkat says, "Fine! Fine." The adult doesn't let up, her fingers still
moving deeper into his nook, still tightening over his horn, but Karkat
continues anyway, careful to aim his words directly into her face. "Fine. Yes,
you're an idiot. You're making this huge performance out of flirting, because
that's why I'm still fucking breathing, isn't it?" The adult yanks suddenly on
Karkat's horn, and he chokes, but that is cheating. "But you don't even know if
you want him black or pale. You can't tell if you're hoping to offend his
fragile blue blood sensibilities, or get him to stop you."
She glances over her shoulder at the other adult, and when she looks back, her
grin is fading. It should probably be Karkat's cue to shut up. He doesn't shut
up. He knows that as soon as he closes his mouth, he's going to be left facing
the enormity of what he just did. "How can you mix that up. What kind of
spongerotted grubsauce reject doesn't know the difference between a moirail and
a fucking... and a fucking kismesis."
Karkat has to stop talking so he can hiss through his teeth. The adult has kept
working her fingers into him, and now she's nearing the top of his nook. Those
unfamiliar muscles in his abdomen clench again, stronger and more insistent
than the last time.
The adult is staring down like she just saw a lusus win a game of three
consecutive symbols in a nine square grid, and is wondering what its brain
would taste like. "You really are pretty smart, aren't you?"
Karkat laughs, once, although it trails into a whimper when she increases the
angle on his horn. "If I'm so smart," he says, and it comes out like a plea,
"why am I still fucking talking."
And the adult brightens, delighted with the question. "That's an easy one," she
says, fangs bright over her smile. "It's because I told you to. And 'cause I
still haven't ripped out your tongue and swallowed it."
Karkat clenches his teeth together with a loud click, hard enough that his
bottom fangs poke at the upper line of his gums. His tongue retreats into the
back of his throat. As if it would find any safety there. When the adult
wiggles her fingers inside him, prompting Karkat to whine, his tongue is so far
back that he chokes around it.
"Hey," the adult says. "Don't look so worried about it." And that's bullshit.
She wants Karkat to be worried. To be terrified. Even now, she's leaning slowly
towards him, her nostrils wide to better appreciate the scent of his fear.
"You've done a good job so far, showing me why I should leave that tongue
exactly where it is," she says. Karkat shudders, his memory offering a quick
replay of everything they forced into his mouth. He can still taste it. He can
still feel the texture against his lips. He wants to be sick, and the dizziness
from his horn isn't helping. "We've still got loads of time together, so just
keep it up. I know you can manage that."
The adult is smirking at him, close enough he can feel her breath sliding over
his face. Her hands are both occupied, and for a horrible moment Karkat is sure
she's going to close the last few inches and kiss him, to prove how easily she
could make him open his mouth.
But instead she straightens slightly, and her attention moves to the horn she's
been pulling on. She gives it another yank, so strong and sudden that Karkat's
head wobbles despite the heel of her hand pushing back. The world is washed out
for a moment in bright confusion, and no, it's not hard at all to make Karkat
open his mouth. You only need to give him a reason to scream.
The overwhelming sensation fades more quickly than before. Karkat's brain must
be getting better at filtering it out. When things come back into focus, the
adult has stopped twisting and pulling his horn at weird angles. She seems to
be readjusting her grip on it, and her fingers slide lightly around the
circumference, tightening gently and letting go.
The pain is already fading to an echo, and the constant dizziness has become
that earlier sense of floating. It could be pleasant, even, if Karkat doesn't
fight it. But he will. He has to. The vibrations also amplify the feeling of
the adult's fingers in his nook, tying his whole body to a single point of
disgusting, shameful need.
And she's so close now. Her fingers have slid in further while Karkat was
distracted by his horn, and the tips of her nails ghost over the end of his
nook when she moves. The too-wide sides of her fingers press into the trails
she's scraped on her way up. Karkat hates his body for reacting to the
sharpness. Apparently the point of her claw is close enough to the point of a
Drone's spine, so nothing else matters.
His abdomen is tightening over and over in rhythmless spasms, and it's starting
to feel uncomfortable on top of wrong. Whatever muscles these are, they're
getting tired. They aren't any more prepared for this than the rest of him.
The adult jerks her hand up another few millimeters, and one of her nails
scratches at the top of his nook. Karkat's whole body arcs, into or away from
her reaching fingers, he can't even tell. His head bangs against the wall
behind him and his arms jerk in their psychic loops, and he draws in his legs.
The adult surprises him by letting it happen. One of his legs is still tangled
in hers, forced open, but when he brings his knee up, she slides her own leg
out of the way. His feet scrape up over the boulder, and Karkat keeps them
there until his body slowly untenses, from resignation and muscle exhaustion
rather than because she released the pressure inside him.
But while the adult allowed him to bring his leg up, she doesn't let it back
down. Her thighs and crotch are in the way of his knee, and Karkat's forced to
keep supporting it awkwardly. It doesn't even do anything to block her access
to his genitals, because she twists her hand and the pressure in his nook still
increases. It's about as much as she'd managed with one finger, which makes no
fucking sense. Wouldn't she get stuck earlier with two?
Karkat makes a noise that's way too much a moan for him to forgive himself and
pushes against her with his raised knee. Which he regrets instantly, but the
adult doesn't mind. At all. She's actually pushing back, grinding her crotch
into his leg with short, circular motions that jam his foot into the rough
stone and make his fatigued leg muscles complain.
There's no mystery to what she's doing. He can feel the swell of her bulge
pressing through the fabric into his skin. She's rubbing herself off against
his knee, like his entire body is nothing more than a cheap fuck board for her
to test out and discard.
It is. That's exactly what he is to her, and the adult never pretended anything
else. He's an object for her to amuse herself with, and he's helpless to do
anything but let himself be used. She could break him in half, and it would
matter shit all to her.
But her fingers are inside him right now, crawling up his nook. Her claws are
sharp points of heat building through his body. It's the most debased, and the
most intimate violation Karkat can imagine, and being reminded that it's still
nothing personal leaves him feeling even more worthless, like he really is just
a disposable piece of trash. The weight on his leg is barely a twinge compared
to the other sensations fighting through his mind, but he cringes every time
she thrusts.
At least it's only a couple of minutes before she stops rotating her hips,
although she's still leaning so the shape of her bulge presses under Karkat's
knee. It doesn't seem like she's finished, and Karkat doubts she'd been
grinding hard enough to actually get off. His utter misery must have been just
so compelling she couldn't go without touching herself.
She's welcome to her take her hands back for that. Any fucking time.
The adult is looking at his fondled horn with an anticipatory smile that
Karkat's sure would terrify him if he had any more terror to call on. Her
fingers have stopped moving over the horn's surface, and now she's gripping the
bone in a fist. Most of the confusing vibrations fade once her hand is still,
although Karkat doesn't yet feel stable on the stone.
The position she settled on is strange. Under the hand around his horn, the
adult's wrist is bent so that the side of her forearm runs over the ridge of
Karkat's eye, and her elbow juts out in front of his vision. It has to make
another sharp bend to join her shoulder.
Karkat doesn't understand why she would ever choose such an awkward way to hold
her arm, and now he's feeling a surge of fear, because he's learned that the
things he doesn't understand always turn out worse than anything should
possibly be.
"You might want to brace yourself," the adult says. As if Karkat has any way to
do that. Except maybe jam his leg harder into her crotch, but she'd probably
take that as encouragement. The adult's lips quirk, amused, as she continues,
"but I doubt it'd make any difference."
And she's right, because the next thing Karkat's aware of is pain.
It's blinding, white fire along Karkat's every nerve, every cell. The world is
swallowed into it. The adult is pulling on his horn again, but this makes her
previous yanking seem like a pleasant, feathery touch. The complicated twisting
of her arm is letting her angle his horn down while keeping his head more or
less in place, and it's letting her use all the weight and leverage she has.
His senses are overwhelmed to uselessness, bleeding so much information there's
nothing but white. He might as well be floating in the sun. Karkat would tear
out his eyes if it'd stop, but the whiteness doesn't exist anywhere but his
brain. He's too hot and too cold and his pain receptors sting and throb and
burn and everything he's ever smelled is flooding him.
Karkat smells an echo of his lusus and cries out to it, but it doesn't work.
He's already screaming. He just can't hear it over the noise in his head.
Karkat doesn't know how long it lasts. His sense of time has been wiped out
along with everything else, the only way for his brain to make enough room for
the agony. But eventually the adult releases his horn.
She does it too suddenly for him to compensate, and the empty outlines of her
claws digging into his horn burn cold. Everything lurches in the opposite
direction, but the intensity ravaging his nerves doesn't fade quickly.
The first sense that returns to Karkat is kinesthetic vibration, and the
awareness that his body actually exists, although the information it reports is
nonsense. It's like he's spinning imposssibly fast around an ever changing
axis, falling both up and down through a bright, noisy eternity. There's
nothing to grab hold of. He can't even think, but that's an improvement,
because this is the first time he can think enough to notice.
Then some of the vibrations echo through his ears and become voices, unsteady
and modulating, and overlaid by clicks and humming that only he can hear. The
adult trolls. They're arguing.
"not going to put up with the noise!"
"Whatever, Dien. Is he the one yelling right now? No, I think that's actually
you."
They're arguing about him. He should be paying attention. But it's hard. But
there's nothing he can change anyway.
Everything slowly dims around him. Blurry splotches resolve into outlines of
the cave and the adult troll in front of him, although the textures are shot
through with unlikely bolts of neon. When the adult moves her head, Karkat is
hit with the scent of ocean salt. His senses are a scrambled mess.
At least now that his vision is recovering, it's anchoring him in space. The
feeling of spinning freefall lessens, and a lot of his confusion with it. Other
sensory ghosts blink out one by one. The humming echoes in his hearing become
muted, and the smells with no source vanish as if wafted away.
And some of those hurt to lose, despite how impossible it is to sort through so
many at once. His brain had given him hallucinations of things that he knew,
and crammed between memories of swamp decay and load gapers he's known were
much more comforting smells. The chemical spray of a newly spawned movie
container, or a recuperacoon with freshly changed supor slime, or the promise
that his lusus is somewhere nearby.
Karkat whimpers when that last one disappears. Even if it was never true, he
feels abandoned, left with nothing but dust and the stink of his captors and
his own despair.
And with the female adult's fingers still up his nook, of course. Now that the
input from his horn isn't so overwhelming, his body wants to focus on that
instead. His abdomen is clenching and unclenching faster now. Karkat tries to
hold it still, but it doesn't have any effect. It's like those muscles don't
even belong to him anymore.
The adult waves her hand in front of Karkat's face. Karkat watches it blankly,
and when she sees that his eyes are tracking, the adult pulls it away and grins
at him. It's a wide grin, with more teeth than Karkat thought she had, although
he might not be seeing correctly yet. Some of them undulate as he stares.
He thinks she's on the edge of laughter.
"Kid, you have no clue how lucky you are." Karkat just looks up at her. If
there's a response to that, he doesn't know it. He's shaking. His body is
throbbing, and his brain is throbbing, and an adult troll is so, so close to
extracting his genetic material, and no one's going to stop her, and he barely
even cares any more that it's going to betray him as a mutant. He was an idiot
for ever thinking he was going to survive this.
The adult's watching his expression, and now she does laugh. "No, really!" she
says. "You won the jackpot when they handed you these undeveloped nubs."
She reaches out and runs one thumb over the round top of Karkat's horn, and
Karkat doesn't even have the energy to flinch away. But it actually helps,
strangely, as the concrete weight of her hand settles some of the imaginary
vibrations. The world becomes clearer around him, and his heels relax slightly
from their grip on the stone. As though that would have kept him stabilized. At
some point while he was distracted and yelling, she'd let his other leg go.
The adult's smile is just a few degrees away from friendly, but the edges are
too sharp and her eyes have a predatory gleam. "See..." And her claws lurch up
inside his nook, and his abdomen tightens so suddenly Karkat's breath is forced
from his lips. "I thought it'd be fun to snap it off."
The adult's eyes flick across the tunnel, to where Ladeci had spent his last
few terrible moments, and her smile deepens in happy memory. Karkat's sure he
has the same scene playing across his think pan. Ladeci had been a twisted,
broken thing when the adult was done with him, screeching like nothing Karkat
ever heard from a troll, mindless with agony he was never going to get a chance
to recover from. He hadn't even reacted when the adult finally went to kill
him. And maybe Ladeci was aware of what was happening, he was just desperate
for it to be over.
The adult had been disappointed to end it so quickly. Lucky for her she had a
spare, because now she has another chance to get what she wants. Which is to
turn Karkat into that.
And he agreed to cooperate, didn't he? To let her break him? Like she wasn't
going to do it either way.
The adult takes her hand away from his horn. She shrugs. "But yours are so
small, I couldn't get the leverage right. Might have been able to tear the
whole thing out of your skull, but there's already going to be a mess without
bits of brain sponge everywhere."
Her tone is so companionable as she tells Karkat the details of her attempt to
maim him horribly, and he can't handle listening to it. But there's nowhere for
him to escape to, nowhere for him to even look without seeing the adult's smug
grin. Karkat would close his eyes, but she's talking to him. He doesn't know if
he's allowed.
The adult grabs Karkat's hip where it meets his inner thigh, holding it steady
as she pushes her other hand into him. It shouldn't work. If one finger failed,
two shouldn't get any further. Yet when she pushes up, with a grunt and a twist
of her shoulder, something in the angle lets her first knuckle enter his nook.
The thickness makes it feel like she's burning him, rather than stretching him
too far open, but with the extra inch she can finally drive one claw into the
end of his nook with the force his body has been yearning for.
Karkat bites back his despairing "No!" There's a moment where he's still, as
the pressure of her claw seems to build and spread itself inside him, and then
it crests and his muscles start spasming again. Their movements are stronger
and have a new rhythm.
It's nothing like after she manipulated his bulge. Karkat has no control at all
over the reacting muscles, and there's no ecstasy in this release. If anything,
it hurts, although Karkat's felt so much pain recently it barely matters.
It's probably muscle fatigue. His abdomen is clenching over and over, rippling
from the front and the sides, but nothing else seems to be happening. There's
no bucket's worth of mutant red exploding from his crotch, even when the adult
spreads her claws inside him, making him whine from the mix of pain and sharp
edged pleasure.
She hadn't gotten any fluid from his nook, so maybe Karkat hasn't matured
enough for this part either. His muscles are squeezing, but maybe there's no
genetic material for them to force out. Maybe that's why it hurts.
But then Karkat feels a wetness under his seedflap. It spreads up through the
folds, catching the coolness of the cave air on his membranes, and drips down
over his bulge. The adult's grin brightens when she notices. She lets go of
Karkat's hip and cups her hand under his bulge to collect it, though she keeps
working her other hand inside him.
Karkat doesn't know why she's not reacting to the bright red, but his capacity
to give a fuck is draining out of him with his genetic material. Karkat shuts
his eyes and leans his head against the stone behind him. His shoulders pull
awkwardly in their bonds, and he fights for a few seconds with the psychic rope
before giving up.
She's left him emptied. Ruined. Worthless to anyone when the Drones come, and
the fact that he would have been worthless anyway is no comfort. He knew this
was coming. He should have fought her. She'd have done it anyway, but at least
Karkat wouldn't despise himself for relaxing back and letting her.
The adult wiggles her fingers out of Karkat's nook. The places where her claws
scratched into him still throb with pleasure, but everything else is stretched
and aching. She runs her fingers through the membranes of Karkat's seedflap,
collecting the last bit of his material into her cupped hand.
She snorts at the result. "Didn't exactly need a bucket with you, did we?"
Karkat reluctantly rolls his eyes open. The adult has a handful of liquid. Some
of it drips over the side of her palm or between her fingers, but she's right,
it would barely coat the bottom of a collection pail. And it's mostly clear,
with some clots of white, pink, and engine grease black suspended inside it.
Not much genetic material at all. It smells of mucus more than musk or
pheromones.
He was right after all. He's too young to be destroyed like this.
The adult rubs apart one of the thicker white clumps with her thumb. She looks
slightly disappointed as she watches it dissolve, but this time Karkat's
unwilling to take it personally. Especially since she gets over it a moment
later.
She lifts her gaze sharply to his and grins. "Thirsty, kid?" Karkat's tongue
seizes up and his insides twist, mostly reminding him how unhappy his abdomen
muscles are right now. Of course that shit is going down his throat. At least
it's his disgusting sex fluids this time.
Karkat doesn't answer fast enough for her, and her eyes narrow slightly.
"Yeah," she says. "I don't actually care. How it works is you open your mouth
or I unhinge your jaw."
Karkat opens his mouth. He tries to hold it wide enough to give her easy
access. The faster she pours it in, the faster he can swallow it away, right?
But as she raises her cupped palm towards him, the adult's grin starts to fade,
like she's puzzled or slightly annoyed. After holding her hand at Karkat's
chest level for a few seconds, she changes her mind and dumps it to the side,
shaking the fluid over the boulder and Karkat's thigh.
She wipes the remainder off on Karkat's shoulder, and then she raises her
fingernail to Karkat's face. The adult scratches lightly at the skin beside his
nose and along his cheekbone, and he's very careful not to move when she gets
near the corner of his eye.
"Hey, Dien," she says. And Karkat notices that the male adult is much closer
now, drawn in despite his protestations of disgust. "You ever see tears this
color?"
***** Chapter 7 *****
It's like Karkat's entire blood pushing system has been replaced by freezing
water. Karkat doesn't know when he started crying. He doesn't know which part
broke him, but now that the adult's pointed it out, he can feel the dampness on
his cheeks.
"No," he says, barely a whisper. It's a child's fervent plea, spoken as if
denying the state of the universe would be enough make it come untrue. If only
Karkat had been able to hold together for a few more minutes... but no, he was
too weak. Weaker than he'd ever imagined. Whatever comes next, he deserves it
for giving in. "No no no no."
And he should be punished for his words, even though he doesn't mean to refuse
her anything, but the adult isn't listening to him. She doesn't even wait for
her partner's response before moving. She seems more focused than Karkat's used
to and, for once, uninterested in playing games.
The adult drops her hand from Karkat's face to his neck and grips into it. Her
fingers wrap under the line of his jaw and her claws dig into the skin under
his ears. She lifts him a few inches against the stone wall, far enough to
stretch his body taut but not to actually unseat him from the boulder. Karkat
jerks, more in surprise than struggle, and the adult presses her forearm into
his shoulder to keep him steady.
With her other hand, she takes out her glittering obsidian knife and swings her
arm in a smooth, efficient gesture.
The edge of the knife is so sharp that the next thing Karkat feels is the
warmth of liquid spilling down his torso, and it takes long moments for the
sting of parted flesh to catch up. Karkat can't see it from where the adult has
clamped his head to the wall, but she's sliced a line across the width of his
chest. What little strength he has left in his body evaporates, leaving him
hanging limply from the adult's hand. It's hard to breathe around the pressure
on his jaw, but Karkat doesn't care. He's sure it won't be a problem for much
longer.
The adult lets go of Karkat and straightens. The knife goes back into her
specibus. Despite the small distance, Karkat drops awkwardly, scraping his
elbows and banging the back of his head. He could look down at his newest
injury now, but he doesn't. He knows what he'll see. Vivid red staining the
outside of his skin, marking him, exposing him as wrong to any assholes who
want to come and stare. Just the knowing makes him sick.
Karkat wants to wrap his arms in front of him as cover, but he'd have to
untangle them first. And that urge is exactly why she let him have the psychic
rope. Karkat's not the one who gets to decide when he's done being on display.
Both adults had watched the first spill of his blood with bemusement, but
they're getting over it fast. The man's lips are returning to their sneer, and
the woman...
She's been looking down at Karkat with a flat expression that he can't read,
but it lifts between seconds. Her eyes shine again with amusement, and she
laughs at a joke only she can see. "He did say his blood was red," she says,
snickering, to her partner. The dismayed line of the man's mouth twists to
anger.
The woman turns back to Karkat. "Wow," she says. "Kid, I didn't give you nearly
enough credit for your bluffing skills." She traces a finger under the cut on
Karkat's chest, and it comes away dripping with his mutant blood. And it's
ridiculous, but apparently Karkat had some remnant of hope to be destroyed,
like as long as he hadn't seen it the possibility remained that something else
was leaking from him. Blue, or yellow, or fucking carbonated grubsauce juice.
The adult turns her wrist, admiring the shine of reflected light on vivid red.
Then she raises her hand and licks the blood off. To her side, the man makes a
repulsed choking noise, which she ignores.
She makes a brief show of thoughtful consideration, before tightening her
nostrils and scraping her tongue off on her fangs. "We definitely picked the
right one," she says, and what she means is that Karkat would have tasted gross
if they'd tried to eat him. And it should be a relief that at least he's not
going to end up as midday snack, but somehow it isn't. It's just further
evidence of exactly how disgusting he is.
The man has finished rebuilding his scowl. His hands are in fists, clenched
tight to his sides, and there's a focused rasp to his breathing. He's livid,
and he's barely keeping himself in check. Karkat imagines he can see the blood
pulsing blue under the bones of the man's throat.
When the female adult glances at him, her grin spreads wide over her face.
He's been staring at Karkat, but now he turns on his partner. "You knew?" His
words are half-growled, and it sounds like an accusation rather than a
question.
The woman sighs heavily through her teeth and rolls her eyes. "C'mon, Dien,
think. How the fuck would I know about this. Not that I'm shocked by your
absolute faith in my many, many talents..." But he's turned away from her to
glare at Karkat again.
Karkat wilts even further against the rock. Their revulsion is nothing more
than he expected, but the man is violently angry and focused in Karkat's
direction. His hands make the occasional twitch, like it's an continuous effort
to stop himself from ripping Karkat apart. Karkat doesn't know why he's
bothering.
The woman is considering her partner with her own brand of hungry intentness,
one fang toying with the edge of her lip. "Yeah," she says, softly. Her voice
rumbles deep in her throat. "He's not even on the hemospectrum, is he? A
rogueblood. Freak." The man doesn't say anything, but now his shoulders are
actually shaking in rage.
"Disgusting piece of mutant filth." It feels like the adult's sunk her knife
into Karkat again, all the way through bone, and twisted, but she doesn't care.
She's only watching for the man's reaction. "And you had his mouth dripping all
over your horn, Dien," she says in the same low tone. "Drooling deep into the
cracks." The man makes a high pitched, aborted growl, and Karkat flinches.
"Where else did he put that freak tongue? Did you get him to wipe your flap for
you? Stretch it up your nook?" The man shudders, distracted momentarily by an
idea even more repugnant than Karkat himself. But Karkat would have done it. If
they'd told him to. Of course he would have. "Tell me something, Dien. Did it
feel as good as I told you it would?"
The man spins on his heel, tearing his violent glare away from Karkat and
aiming it at his partner. He opens his mouth in a snarl, and Karkat thinks he's
going to yell at her, but then he catches himself. The man breathes out in a
noisy hiss and goes very still.
Moments pass while the adults stare each other down, their expressions and body
language frozen, communicating who the fuck knows what between them. Karkat
finds himself holding his own breath, like time has stopped for him too until
they deign to unpause it.
It's the female adult who breaks off first, turning away with a short,
dismissive shrug. But she seems vaguely disappointed for a second, until her
gaze lands on Karkat and the corners of her lips twitch back up.
Her eyes widen in sympathy. Mock sympathy, unconvincing sympathy, but Karkat
can't help trying to hold on to it. He stares pleadingly up at her. He's so
desperately grateful to exist for her again, and that she can still look at him
without being overcome by disgust or rage. It's the only protection he has
anymore, the only reason he's still alive at all. The adult runs her fingers
gently into Karkat's hairline, displacing tiny flakes of dried green and blue
which catch in his eyelashes, and Karkat leans into her hand instead of
flinching away.
"Don't know what to tell you, kid," she says. "Doesn't look like he's very
happy with you right now." She nods her head at the male adult, now glaring
again at Karkat specifically, in case Karkat should be confused about who she's
talking about. "If I was someone who gave a shit about that, I might think
about apologizing."
"I'm sorry," Karkat says, and the adult's eyes fill with amusement, wiping out
the fake concern. "I'm sorry," he repeats, more urgently, needing to bring it
back.
The adult just seems more smug. "Not to me." She's petting Karkat again, her
fingers moving in slow lines against Karkat's scalp. He can still feel her
touch burning in his mind, but this time because he's actively focusing on it.
It's the only connection he has left. "Believe it or not, I'm not the one who
wants to crack out your leg bone and skin you alive with it."
Karkat knows how pathetic he is right now, naked and helpless, with his hands
wrapped inside her own projected rope and a vivid red slash across his chest
more honest than his sign ever was. There's no pity in the adult's eyes, but
her lips twitch in amusement as she stares down at him.
The adult is still happy with him, and it doesn't even matter that what she's
really happy with is Karkat's pain and despair. At the prospect of causing
more. It feels like safety, like the closest thing to safety he's ever going to
feel again, like the world will still exist five minutes from now and maybe,
maybe he'll be around to see it.
Karkat knows what she wants from him, but it's almost impossibly hard to look
away from her. He has to, though. He needs to keep her happy with him.
Karkat turns his head to the blue blooded soldier. It's physically painful, as
if the movement squeezed every organ in his torso. His breathing is shallow.
The man is quiet, but his mouth is frozen into a sneer. He's glaring like
Karkat's continued existence is an affront to his personal dignity.
"Well?" the woman says.
Karkat's breathing organ locks completely. He mouths the words emptily several
times before he manages to force himself to look at the man and say it. "I'm
sorry," Karkat says, and his voice breaks on every syllable. The man's sneer
widens in further anger, but it doesn't matter, Karkat's done. He looks back at
the woman.
She's smiling now, and Karkat relaxes a tiny amount, even though it's a smile
sharp with anticipation. "Nice try," she says. She's still running her fingers
through Karkat's hair, and she pauses to tap a fingernail against his skull.
"So you're sorry, huh? What are you sorry for?"
Karkat doesn't understand the question. The words float on the surface of his
brain, refusing to acquire meaning.
The adult tightens her grip in his hair and yanks his head up and back against
the stone, forcing him to look directly into her gaze. But he was doing that
already. "I mean, are you apologizing for being such a repulsive freak-blooded
aberration? A pathetic mutant runt? Is that what's happening here?"
She hasn't stopped smiling, but she might as well be kicking him in the chest.
Karkat wants to drop his eyes, but he can't. She's holding his head in
position. He wouldn't anyway. "Yes," Karkat whispers. "Yes."
Her eyes glint with satisfaction, and Karkat feels a strange lightness at
getting it right. But then she bends closer to him and shakes her head. "I
don't need to hear it." She releases her hand, and Karkat's head drops, heavy
without her support.
He looks back at the man, who seems even more hostile. "I'm sorry," Karkat says
again, and it's no easier. "I'm sorry for..." What did the woman say? He can't
remember. Fifteen seconds ago is impossibly distant. "I'm... I'm the most
disgusting mutant nubslurper who ever hatched from the Mother Grub's oozing
diarrhea soup." He's choking the words out, but finding them is easy. They run
along familiar grooves in his brain. "I should have been culled before I
crawled out of my pupation cocoon. I'm a shitstain on the surface of a
hoofbeast's tumorous asshole and... I screwed everything up. This is my fault.
It's all my fucking fault."
Karkat runs out of words, exhausted. The man is still obviously furious, but
when Karkat tries to avert his gaze, the woman pushes Karkat's head back with
her palm. It's a gray wall beside his eye, preventing her from entering even
his side vision. The loss twists in his chest. "Yeah?" she says. "And what
else?"
"I..." Karkat trails off. He doesn't know what the adult wants from him.
She drums her fingertips against Karkat's head, just below the root of his
horn. It echoes loudly through his skull. "What did you do," she says.
The man reacts to that, releasing a quiet growl before silencing himself. It's
extremely low, felt more as a tremor in the air than an actual sound. Karkat
tries to turn his face into the female adult's palm, the closest thing to
hiding he has as an option, but she just rotates her hand, aiming his gaze back
at her partner.
When Karkat is still silent, hesitating, she tightens her fingers against his
head. It's a warning. Her claws dig into the skin around his horn, and Karkat
gasps, but he breathes out into words.
"I'm sorry that I..." And there's a hiss underneath Karkat's voice, like it
burns on his tongue. "That I touched you."
The woman loosens her grip on Karkat's head. She moves her fingers in slow,
encouraging circles where her nails had been, and that close to his horn, the
movement is a soft weight in Karkat's mind. It might have been comforting, but
the man is actually growling at him now, a deep warning rumble, and every
instinct Karkat has is screaming at him to abscond. He sinks further against
the boulder.
The woman leans down towards Karkat and says, close enough that her breath
touches his ear, "You can be more specific than that."
Every word Karkat stuttered out has only seemed to push the man closer to
losing control and ripping out Karkat's throat, just as originally promised. He
can't do this anymore. But when his silence grows into seconds, the woman
starts to tighten her fingers again. "How did you touch him," she says. She
flicks a claw into Karkat's horn when Karkat answers with only a whine.
"With my mouth," Karkat forces out, and the blue blooded man's eyes widen
further in rage. But the woman doesn't stop squeezing her nails into Karkat's
scalp. She wants him to keep going, and Karkat knows that the only choice he
has right now is giving her what she wants. "I put my filthy mutant mouth on
your horn... oh god... on your skin...."
The man is still growling at him, but it's no longer a low frequency warning.
He's not demanding Karkat get out of his presence, he's declaring his intent to
strike.
The female adult says, "You forgot something," in a friendly, lyrical tone.
And Karkat finishes with, "I'm sorry." His voice shudders and breaks, and he
tastes salt and pigment at the corner of his lips. He's crying again, painting
even more bright lines over his skin. No wonder the man is so revolted by him.
The woman slides her hand back along Karkat's cheek, so that it's no longer
blocking his view. His breath is still unsteady, and it catches again at the
sight of her, at the evidence there's someone, anyone, who still wants him
alive.
She makes a show of slowly glancing to her partner, and then she looks at
Karkat with an expression of overdone sympathy. Karkat knows it's false,
taunting. He does. But everything she made him do seems worth it, just to have
that soft smile aimed in his direction.
"Well, okay, you tried," she says. "But it doesn't look like it helped much.
Maybe you're just crap at apologies, kid." She turns back to the man. "So what
do you think, Dien? Want to punish him?"
Karkat closes his eyes and moans a soft, "No."
The woman takes her hand off Karkat's cheek and slaps him hard across the face.
His head slams into the cave wall, one of his horns bouncing against the rock,
and his horn and cheek sting in harmony with the slash on his chest, with the
stretched contours of his nook, with so much of his body. The adult's nails
come away tipped with unnatural red.
Karkat whimpers. "I'm sorry," he says. "Sorry. Please." But he doesn't dare beg
for anything.
"Mmm, I bet you are." The woman reaches between his horns and playfully ruffles
his hair. Karkat shudders, but it's in relief. That she's still willing to
touch him feels like absolution. Cave dust scatters around his face, sticking
to his tears.
When the woman takes her hand away, Karkat bunches his own into fists. But his
fingers are weak, and they tangle in the loops of psychic rope.
"See?" she says to her partner. "How else is he going to learn to be better?"
The blue blooded adult takes a deep, forceful breath and lets it out with
steady intentness, but as calming measures go, it's a failure. He does stop
growling, but his tension merely flows into his shoulders and hips. His stance
grows as limber as a sheet metal sculpture of a brick.
He twists towards the woman like his joints are run on notched gear circles.
"Not all of us require playthings to keep ourselves entertained." Each word is
bitten off with carefully enunciated scorn.
The woman scoffs. "Dien, you just gave me a summary of like, twenty of your
most debilitating personality faults." And the man's fists clench so hard at
his sides, Karkat can see bones shifting under the flesh of his hands.
With the adults solely focused on each other, Karkat's back to being a
nonentity, with no action possible except sitting quietly until they
acknowledge him again. Allow him to exist. Continue tormenting him. He doesn't
understand why that's not worse than the waiting, however terrified he is right
now. There must be something seriously screwed up about his think pan, because
the last thing Karkat should want is their attention.
"C'mon, I know you want to," the woman says to the other soldier. "You stink of
excess rage and... wanting to."
"It wouldn't be my place," says the man, and his voice has lost some of its
crisp edge, vibrating too much in his throat. Whatever amount of control he'd
gathered is evaporating again. At least the woman has drawn his murderous scowl
away from Karkat. It's hard not to be so, so thankful for that.
"What, you think I never got schoolfed in how to share my 'playthings'?" And
then she takes a large step backwards, away from Karkat.
Without her next to him, Karkat feels acutely exposed. And betrayed, which
makes no fucking sense, but his chest seizes with it. He stares desperately
after her and grips onto her psychic rope, as though that would keep her
anchored to him, but if the woman notices either, she gives no hint. She's
somehow managing to keep him the subject of conversation while ignoring him
entirely.
The woman keeps her eyes on her partner. Her lips are thin around her open
fanged grin. "Live a little," she says, and her voice once again vibrates low
and hungry. She points an open hand towards Karkat, as though presenting him as
a prize. An offering for their adult bonding exercises. "Don't know about you,
Dien, but I've never seen such an uppity rogueblood wiggler. Why not show him
exactly what he deserves?"
Karkat has to press his tongue against the back of his mouth to keep himself
quiet. Say no, he wills the man. Say no, Say no, say no, refuse, don't touch
me, I'm not yours.
For a few moments the man doesn't move. Maybe he can't. He's so tense with
barely suppressed rage, maybe his muscles are locked and his limbs are frozen.
But then the woman laughs at him, a single, mocking "Heh," and the man snarls
noisily and spins away from her. He closes the distance to Karkat in two fast
strides and grabs him by the sides of his chest, huge adult hands wrapping just
below Karkat's shoulders and thick fingers digging into his skin. One thumb is
less than an inch above the slice across his chest, and the wound flares with
new pain.
The man yanks Karkat off the boulder and Karkat doesn't scream, he's too
despondent to scream anymore, but he makes a sobbing, high-pitched whine.
As frightening as it had been when the man was glaring before, now his face is
inches away from Karkat's and it displays no less murderous intent. His eyes
are wide and every line of his expression is twisted into rage. "Shut up," the
man growls, with so much fury that droplets of saliva are spewed from his
mouth. They splatter down onto Karkat's skin.
The man slams Karkat's upper body into the cave wall, and all the air in
Karkat's chest is expelled at once, effectively silencing him. His head and
heels lash backward after his shoulders, and his ass hammers his hands into the
stone. The force from the hit echoes through his bones.
Karkat's dizzy and gasping, but he's also surprised to still be in one piece.
The deep blue lines of the man's sign wobble in front of him, and on some level
Karkat had expected him to be as freakishly strong as the only other asshole of
Karkat's acquaintance with that exact shade. But he's not. Despite his choice
of a heavy weaponkind abstratus, he might not even be stronger than the green
blooded adult.
Karkat twists in the man's grasp. Karkat can't help it, he needs to find air
but the man is holding him by the chest and squeezing it.
The man takes offense, or he's still offended that Karkat exists at all. He
snarls, a wet rumble of noise through his teeth. Then he pulls Karkat away from
the cave wall and slams him into it again.
Karkat's head barely has time to bang into the stone, before he's being yanked
away. Pounded back. His mouth opens to let out air he doesn't actually contain.
His efforts at breathing are irrelevant. He might vomit, though.
It's as if the man is trying to ram through the wall using Karkat's body, but
Karkat is going to break long before the stone does. He's smashed into it
again, and now he's losing his bearings entirely. Maybe his horns aren't
working any more after all the bullshit they've had to deal with.
When he's yanked back this time, Karkat sights a black and gray smear beyond
the man's shoulder. It's the woman, and if he had any breath he would call out
to her. Stupid. Pointless. Karkat has somehow acquired a visceral belief that
she'd help him, if only he were allowed to ask, but that's wrong. His vision
isn't resolving very well, but Karkat can make out the slash of white teeth in
an open grin. Like she's laughing.
She is laughing. That's the noise Karkat is hearing, under the growling of the
male adult and the ringing in Karkat's head. She goaded her partner into
beating Karkat to death, and now she's laughing like it's the greatest joke she
ever pulled.
Her partner doesn't appreciate it either. This time after he bangs Karkat into
the wall, the man keeps him dangling there. Karkat uses the pause to suck in a
thin, shaky breath, but he doesn't have enough strength to fight for more. The
air moves cold over his tongue, and Karkat tastes his own blood and fear. Some
of his dizziness subsides, making room for the aching of his body in his
attention.
The man looks over his shoulder. "What?" he demands.
"You, Dien. You're hilarious," the woman says. The man gives her a warning
growl, but it doesn't seem to bother her. "Not afraid to get your hands dirty
if you're having fun, huh?"
He turns back to Karkat and stares down. He doesn't keep his nails pointed,
unlike the woman, but even with blunted claws he's gripping Karkat so hard that
his thumbs have torn through skin and flesh. Karkat thinks he can feel them
rubbing against bone.
The man's angry snarl lifts higher, into disgust. He takes a step back and
throws Karkat to the floor. Karkat's shoulder and one horn clip the wall as he
tumbles, and he lands, dazed, sprawled on his side at the man's feet. His arms
are twisted awkwardly underneath him in loosened invisible bonds, but he can't
summon the energy to pull them free.
The man is looking in dismay at his hands. All ten of his fingers are coated in
dripping bright red, and yes, Karkat can feel the deep points of pain, four to
a side, spreading down from just behind his armpits. One of the man's thumbs
tore into the long cut in his chest. But Karkat doesn't care. The hurt of it is
swallowed by the throbbing of new bruises, as his body's just waking up to
whatever injuries he's taken from being pounded into the wall.
The woman snickers one last time. "Finished with him?" she says.
The male adult doesn't respond in words, but his scowl deepens across his face.
He steps back with one foot, bringing himself into a more balanced stance, and
reaches an arm beside him. He takes out a hammer from his strife specibus, the
same wide headed instance he was using earlier to flatten metal machinery.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Fuck. Karkat had thought he'd never find the energy to move
again, but now he's twisting on himself, heedless of the agony, and trying to
scramble up. It's not working. He's too tangled in the psychic rope. His arms
won't move out of his way and the dangling invisible length is wrapped around
one of his legs. His knee can't unbend.
The woman's smug smile fades from her face. "Hey."
The male adult grips the hammer with both hands and hefts it backwards to build
momentum. "Hey!" the woman repeats, and this time her voice is tinged with her
own warning growl. But he ignores her, bringing the hammer over his shoulder
and into the downswing.
Karkat manages finally to yank one wrist out of the psychic rope, but it's too
late to scurry away. He throws his arm in front of his face, and for an
instant, the hammer blocks a shadow through the reflected sunlight.
And then—
***** Chapter 8 *****
It is dark.
Dark is good, is comfort, is safety. In darkness Karkat's eyelids rest half
raised, and he does not pull them fully open nor wince them against brilliant
reflections and something is wrong.
There is gray flatness in front of him. It is far in front of him, too far to
be reachable. Karkat doesn't reach for it. The gray is the gray of stone. Its
texture is blurry through his lashes and familiar, just as a dream is familiar.
Something within Karkat feels home in a way that has no words, that could never
have words but he is missing something. It is like his pre-language memories,
instead of being burned away by metamorphosis, had been rolled up and hidden in
the safest part of Karkat's chest, buried deep under his bones.
Karkat watches the stone because the stone is what is in front of him. He does
not lift his head or his eyelids, and the stone does not change. There are thin
fissures running through the grayness, and Karkat finds abstract shapes in
their lines. He dedicates them to people he associates with, or to their
protectors, if he knows them. Or if they actually have one, but a ragged,
three-edged polygon trails a pair of bent cracks beneath itself, and it's close
enough to a pair of scales and Karkat needs to wake the fuck up, right the fuck
now.
He's lying on the ground. Karkat starts to raise his head in confusion, but he
immediately drops it with a silent, open mouthed gasp. The world is on fire.
No. He is on fire, and his body surges with intense, non-differentiated hurt.
It doesn't pass, it settles. Sharp pains scatter through his torso and limbs,
leaving throbbing bruises to colonize the expanses between them. His nook and
ass ache from the inside out. His head pounds. Lines sting over him with the
promise of ripped skin, and the front of his chest is agony when he moves it to
breathe. But he has to. His back won't expand at all, and when he tries to curl
in his shoulders, his nerves flare with a cold, prickling burn, and underneath
that is the terrible growing certainty that there's something he doesn't
understand.
There's a noise. A chuckle, sonorous and round edged, resonant over stone
walls, and every wiggler instinct Karkat has left screams for him to abscond,
to hide, to be any fucking where else right now. He tenses, pain roaring
through the whole of him, and it takes him second after second to realize why.
Adults. He has to not be lying exposed. He has to not be here. He has to...
Yeah, it's way too late for that.
Knowledge slams into his think pan, far more mercilessly than that first
awareness of pain. It's over. Ladeci is dead. Karkat is caught. By adults, who
can do anything to him. There's nothing left to do to him.
or is it just a lack of imagination.
Karkat turns his head towards the origin of the noise. He has to fight the
stiffness in his neck and shoulders for every millimeter, probably alongside
his reluctance to obtain visual evidence that the adults aren't simply day
terrors he conjured for himself as a playful Fuck you, Karkat Vantas,
sincerely, Karkat Vantas. PS, After smashing you in the face with it a few
dozen times, I slammed the crowbar up your nook. Because I know that was
exactly what you were hoping for, you deviant flatbulged nookreek.
The adults are on the other side of the tunnel and some distance down. The man
is crouched over a lumpy blue device Karkat hasn't seen before, and the woman
is leaning one arm against the wall. She's gesturing with her free hand, and
whatever gossip she's sharing has the man pausing in his work to give another
brief laugh. They're getting along again, easy once more in each other's
company, as if all that posturing tension came with a switch labelled "Off."
Both adults have their backs facing Karkat, exactly how they never would if
they considered him any sort of threat. Any sort of troll, instead of just a
disposable thing to be used up and thrown away.
And that's it, Karkat realizes. That's the detail out of place. The thing that
has been bugging him because it makes no fucking sense at all. They've taken
everything from him, and his torso is slathered in peeling mutant red, and he
remembers the woman mocking him while her partner smashed him apart. He
remembers the huge mechanic's hammer coming down.
There's something about the state of the universe that is wrong, and it's this.
He's still alive.
Karkat stares silently at the adults for long moments, unwilling to risk their
attention by even blinking too loudly. But they continue to look only at the
blue machine, entirely uninterested in Karkat's existence.
Maybe they don't know. Karkat feels about one kick in the face away from death,
so maybe, since he's not worth salvaging for meat, they didn't bother to check
for vital signs. After. Just dumped his body off to the side and forgot about
him.
The thought churns up despair inside him, despite his understanding that it's
the best case scenario. There's a part of him that wants to call out across the
cave, let the adults know he's alive, have them verify it by reacting. That
part is an idiot. If Karkat can remain still and quiet enough, still and quiet
as a dead thing, maybe they'll continue not to notice him. And it's dark now.
Nightfall. Maybe he'll have a chance to escape.
If he's capable of it.
Carefully, slowly, Karkat rolls his eyes down towards his body. His head pounds
when he tries to focus, but he can see his legs, his abdomen, most of his
chest, and his right arm. He panics for a second, and his chest heaves once
with the effort of swallowing his gasp, before he realizes his other arm is
just outside of his visual field.
Karkat glances quickly back to make sure the adults didn't notice anything.
They're still facing away from him, unpaused in their work or conversation, but
changing his focus so suddenly makes him dizzy and his headache worse.
A terrible thought occurs to him, far more chilling than when he'd misplaced
his arm. Very, very slowly, with his eyes fixed across the tunnel in case the
adults make any sign of moving, Karkat rotates his head until the top of the
closest horn touches against the ground. The vibration echoes across his skull
and through his opposite horn, which Karkat hopes to fuck means that one's
still intact as well.
Of course, it wouldn't be any fucking fun to break them off while he was
unconscious, would it?
No, not unconscious. Dead.
He has to get out of here.
Karkat looks down at his body again. His skin is more black than gray right
now, and as well as the huge smear across his chest and the holes where the
man's thumbs had dug in, there are bright red scratches all over him.
Especially on his shoulder and hips, where he'd been tossed against rough
stone.
The mutant vividness of his blood seems to stand out even more in the dark. In
the daylight, it had stung his eyes, but then everything had been shiny and
brilliant and painful to look at. Now that the light levels are back to normal,
it's the only color that still makes him nauseous.
Beside his torso, most of his right forearm is a single bruise, darker than
he'd known flesh could go. And it hurts. It's sharp and throbbing both at once,
and in the middle of it is a wide dent.
The bone is cracked. It has to be. And it's not like Karkat made it to five
sweeps without breaking anything, but he's only had hairline cracks and a few
shallow contusion craters. Stuff hardly worth noticing. Not like his arm right
now, where the dent is so large it looks like the bone is folding in on itself.
Karkat braces himself. He clenches his jaw shut, slowly so there's no audible
click of teeth against teeth, and reminds himself to keep silent. Then he tries
moving his fingers.
They twitch, fingernail orange flicking in his vision. Karkat focuses harder
and this time the digits curl halfway forward towards his palm before he lets
them go. His smallest finger resists the command, bending only slightly, but it
had gotten the worst whenever his hands were being smashed between his body and
stone. The finger is bruised and the skin on its outside edge is largely
scraped away. It's probably screwed up regardless of what's happening above his
wrist.
Karkat does it again, bringing his hand into something resembling a fist. Every
time he moves, it feels like a dull knife is grating into his arm, but the
inner muscles and tendons, the important ones, are working. It'll be weak, but
he can still use the arm if he has to.
Karkat relaxes his fingers, and the sharpest edge of pain relaxes as well. It
spreads from the crack through the rest of his arm, and it melts until it's
barely notable among his other injuries. That's probably a bad sign.
Karkat moves his attention to the rest of his body, sighting down his torso to
the faraway gleam of his toenails. His feet feel strange, as though further
distant than the length of his legs, but at least they're not heavily bruised.
He curls his toes, one foot after the other. They're stiff, but they respond to
his commands.
At the movement, sharp twinges bounce up his legs and through his abdomen.
They're amplified by the pressure of his horn resting against the ground, but
Karkat just tries to ignore it. It's easier than lifting his head.
With the sharp spikes of pain and dark blotches of damaged flesh, Karkat
wouldn't be surprised if his legs had cracks too, but nothing stands out like
the damage on his arm. Of course, he didn't throw his legs between the
battering surface of an oversized hammer and his head. He's lucky that dent
isn't between his horns. He is. And he'd trade an arm for working legs. Easily.
One of these things won't help him run.
That's three limbs accounted for. Karkat still can't see his left arm without
turning his head, but when he pulls in his fingers, he feels his nails catch on
the ground. He stops before they make any betraying noise and rotates his hand
over, putting skin instead of claws against the stone. Just in case he twitches
without thinking and scratches out an alarm.
His arm isn't happy to be forced into movement, but it doesn't seem to be in
anything near as bad shape as his right one. Experimentally, Karkat curls his
wrist forward, and the pull of it stabs pain through his shoulder, his back...
And then Karkat stops, and his entire body freezes. He's run his fingertips
into something resting on his forearm. It's something round, and thin, and
long, and he can't see it.
It's a rope.
Karkat's eyes widen, panicked, and his legs lurch into focus. But that view's
useless. He forces his gaze slowly towards the adults, hesitating after every
inch because he's not sure the scenarios twisting across his think pan could be
any worse than reality. The rope is the female adult's projection, and she
would have sensed the pressure. She must have felt Karkat move, she's going to
straighten, she's going to turn around, she's going to smile...
Or no. She's not. Karkat's looking at her now, and she's still ignoring him
completely. She's reading from her display device to the man, who's studying
the surface of the lumpy machine. If either of them are aware of his continued
existence, they don't find it worthy of reaction.
And now that the first numbing moment of panic is fading, Karkat notices that
the rope lying on his arm is qualitatively different than the one that was
wrapped around his hands earlier. It's wider, and even though it's fairly
light, there's still an actual weight pressing down on his skin. It's probably
a real rope, which means Karkat hasn't given himself away. Though fuck if he
knows how he got tangled in this one.
He bends his wrist until his fingers touch the rope again. And yes, it's
smooth, but there's still a texture there that the adult's projections never
had. Karkat traces the line of the rope with his fingertips, ghosting them
across his arm and the top of his chest, above the long slice in his skin, and
over to where the rope changes direction, starts to wrap around his neck.
And now that Karkat's aware of it, he doesn't know why it took him so fucking
long. His fingers tell him that there's slack between the rope and his skin,
but his throat tells him that it's cutting into him. He can barely breathe. He
can't swallow, and suddenly he desperately needs to. His mouth is coated in
thickened, stale blood. If he was with someone safe, he'd call out for water,
but right now Karkat would rather die of dehydration. He remembers what was in
the adult's hand when she offered him something to drink.
There are a few cuts healing inside his cheeks. Karkat reopens one with a
chipped fang he doesn't remember breaking. His own blood pools slowly over his
tongue, as gross as everyone agrees, but at least it tastes fresh. And it's
liquid.
Karkat manages to swallow without choking, but the rope is too tight and too
heavy. He slides his fingers around his neck, searching for the knot. There
isn't one. He's enclosed in an unbroken loop, like it had been welded shut
around him.
The adults still aren't turning from their work, so Karkat risks looking away
from them. He rotates his head until he can see the other side of his body. The
rope glows a very faint green, too dim to illuminate anything, and at this
point it actually seems odd to be tied away by something visible. The rope has
fallen into the crease of his elbow, and it meanders off under the closest
giant machine. Which, as Karkat stares bleakly, resolves itself into the
portable furnace.
If his back didn't flare with hurt when Karkat started to bend it, he'd have
scurried away before remembering why that'd be a stupid, stupid thing to do. He
pauses to slow his breathing. Calm himself down, because it's either that or
screaming and there's no way the adults wouldn't notice that. Tears well in the
corners of his eyes, and Karkat blinks them away without knowing why he's
bothering.
He's not going anywhere. Not with his throat anchored to a hulking cube of
metal, and the adults wouldn't have bothered doing that to a corpse. So they do
know he's alive, they just don't currently give a fuck about it. They're saving
him for later.
There's nothing left for Karkat to do except lie on the ground and hurt and
wait until the adults get around to finishing him off.
And if he could believe that, Karkat thinks he'd actually be able to relax.
Surrender to the inevitability of getting culled, which was always, always
going to be his fate since the moment he heard the woman's multilayered voice.
Longer. Since he skipped happily through the cave's stinking prolapsed asshole
of an entrance. Since he first wriggled out as a brainless mutant larva.
But the male adult had intended to kill him. Karkat's sure of that, and if the
woman called her partner off it just means she isn't done with Karkat after
all. She must be having too much fun destroying him slowly, breaking him down
piece by piece by piece. And who knows how long she'll be able to stretch that
out, until there's finally nothing of him left worth tormenting. Hours? Weeks?
He can't. He has to get out, because.
He can't.
Karkat's hand tightens on the rope. It pulls at his neck, but he doesn't care.
He's already having trouble finding oxygen. He digs his fingers into it,
searching for the knot he missed the first time. There's still nothing. The
rope splits into a "Y," the arms of which wrap around his neck until they meet
in a perfect closed loop, too narrow to squeeze over his head without first
cracking off half his skull. And Karkat had anything to work with he would try
it.
The rope leads away in one solid piece. It stops at the furnace, and Karkat
doubts it's attached in anything so kind as a hitch knot, but given the entire
sprawling range of paradox space, it's dimly, hypothetically possible. There's
no alternative hope.
Across the tunnel, the adults bend a panel back from the lumpy device. Where
the surface is broken, it drips blue, and the man cauterizes a few of the
larger bleeds before reaching into the gap. The woman holds it open for him,
and neither of them care to so much as glance in Karkat's direction. Okay.
He presses his heels more solidly against the ground and lifts some of his
weight with his elbows. Every joint in his body screams its unwillingness to be
used as support, but Karkat focuses through. His jaw is clenched and the
movement of air stings over his wide eyes and every muscle that still works is
trembling, but he manages to shift himself a few inches closer to the furnace.
And silently, with no scraping of stone. The adults didn't catch him.
Karkat returns his full weight to the cave floor in a controlled collapse and
rewards himself with a few unsteady breaths. The new texture of rock against
his upper back stings like a pattern of cold, twisting knives, but he's going
to be in pain no matter what he does, and less while resting than otherwise.
The side of the furnace is still a couple feet away. Karkat steadies himself as
much as he can and then, after making sure he's still entirely disregarded,
stretches his heels forward and drags himself after them.
His limbs protest more this time, now that they've been informed on what to
expect. He's trying to be inconspicuous in his movement, but he's shaking so
badly that there's no way he wouldn't be noticed if one of the adults deigned
to stretch their neck. And he has no strength left, he needs to stop again
before his arms give way beside him, but instead Karkat kicks out once more,
digs in his elbows, and does some weak semblance of throwing his torso an extra
few inches before the inevitable muscle crash.
Karkat remains prone and tries to remind his shuddering body that, yes, it's
meant to fit together. The metal side is close now. Close enough that he might
actually make it, so his useless whining muscles can go fuck themselves. He's
doing this.
He drags his arms in again. They throb their displeasure, but Karkat pushes
through it, feeling a strange, bitter thrill of power as he forces them to
work, regardless.
His legs don't want to move either, and Karkat curls in the fingers of his
dented arm as revenge for the insubordination. Pain stabs into his forearm,
brighter than everything else, and it's a focusing pain, away from his core and
under his control. He shuffles forward over the stone until his toes hit
unyielding metal.
Karkat freezes for a moment after the shock of it. His angry resolve drains
from him, and the next step in his plan vanishes from his mind. He can do
nothing but stare across the tunnel in desperate terror, viscerally certain
that the adults are aware of his small moment of success.
The man pulls his arm out of the lumpy machine. He studies a reading on the top
of it, and then indicates for the woman to shut the open panel.
She does, mostly carefully, although a small amount of blue sprays around the
edges as they latch. If Karkat is going to do something, he's running out of
time.
Karkat grasps inside himself for that small kernel of anger he misplaced. It
doesn't work. The only thing he finds other than despondency is panic. Karkat
draws on that instead. He turns his head to the other side, so he can see how
the rope is attached to the furnace.
It's not.
The rope leads to the portable furnace, but there's no knot here either. It
disappears underneath the metal, as if the device had been placed on top of the
rope to hold it down. The furnace is solid and heavy. There's no way Karkat
could ever shift it.
But the adults aren't strong enough either. Right? The man didn't even smash
all the way through Karkat's arm. If the rope has simply been jammed there, or
kicked into a crack, maybe he can get it free.
Karkat can still hear the low murmur of adult voices, but this time he doesn't
glance over. It's too hard to turn away again. He reaches with his least
injured hand and grabs onto the rope near the side of the furnace. He braces
his feet flat against the metal siding, cool on his skin despite the machine's
purpose, and then, willing the adults not to look, brings his broken arm across
his chest.
He rotates his torso so both hands can touch the cord, which glows a dim green
stripe over his red-marred skin. Air catches in his chest, either from the loop
around his neck or the changed angle of his body. His entire side flares, and
in answer, Karkat closes his right fist beside his left. He tenses his legs,
taking as much leverage as he can, and he pulls...
The shock hits mid-throat and blazes through him like electric fire. Karkat
doesn't scream, but his muscles collapse, tensing and releasing with no input
from him. He hits the ground with a whumph.
Karkat can't move. He can only lie on the stone, twitching, as echoes of the
electric shock reverberate through him, slowly winding themselves out. The cave
has gone silent, no more fuzzy background of nightmare toned voices, and the
lack burns inside Karkat worse than anything sent down the rope. Karkat's still
facing away from the adults, but they must be staring at him now. They must.
The silence stretches another moment, and then the female adult speaks. "Dien!"
she says. Her voice bounces down the tunnel, and she sounds absolutely gleeful.
"Look who's awake! And trying to escape!"
The effects of the electric shock fade, but Karkat doesn't so much as quiver
from where he collapsed. Both shoulders are lying awkwardly, but Karkat doesn't
give a fuck. He's exhausted. Finished.
She's wrong. He's not trying to escape. There's no point anymore.
There was never any point.
The female adult breaks from her partner and walks towards Karkat's part of the
tunnel. He can't summon the interest to turn his head and look, but he hears
her boots crunch down over loose stones. She's walking slowly. It's probably to
let him wallow in terrified anticipation, Karkat thinks. But he just feels
empty.
The adult's footfalls grow louder, and now her approach reaches him through
vibrations in the floor as well. She steps down right beside Karkat's chest, so
that the black of her bodysuit cuts into Karkat's peripheral vision, and then
she simply keeps walking. She steps over his body in a rolling stride.
The heel of her boot lands millimeters from Karkat's splayed left hand. His
fingers don't twitch away, even though her ankle rocks as if her gait is
slightly unbalanced. As if she came a hair-width from grinding his palm into
the stone out of carelessness, rather than a precise, considered choice.
She swings her other leg over him without pausing, continuing forward like
Karkat isn't there. Karkat watches with a strange indifference as she sidles up
to the furnace and drums her nails on its metal top. There's an edge of
performance to her movements, like there is to so much of what she does, but
for once Karkat finds himself largely unaffected.
She bends down to the floor. Her back is still to Karkat, even as she busies
her hands with an object from her captchalogue deck. Despite being well in the
range of his tether, she's not at all worried that Karkat will attack.
And of course, he doesn't. The idea can't form fully enough in his mind to let
him even imagine it. Karkat simply stares as the adult readies a hydraulic
lifting arm and works the flat end under the furnace with some effort. It
doesn't seem at all interesting, like a show he's only watching because he's
too tired to shut it off and move away.
The adult clicks the lifting arm several times, and the portable furnace groans
and shakes. It tilts a few inches towards its opposite edge, and the adult
pulls the trapped length of rope from underneath. Without particularly looking,
she winds it in neat loops between her thumb and elbow. The weaving of her arms
is casual, but she's finished within seconds. The image of someone singularly
familiar with handling rope.
Once she's done, she yanks the lifting arm free and recaptchalogues it without
waiting to lower the furnace. The metal cube clatters to the ground, and the
noise and vibration pound through Karkat's skull. But the pain seems like
something he's observing from far away.
The adult stands again and rolls her shoulders, stretching muscles, stretching
time. She turns slowly around and lets her gaze drift down to Karkat. Her lips
edge into an amused smile, so at least one of them is appreciating her show.
Her empty hand slides along the coiled loops of rope. "Alright, kid," she says.
"Time's over for stroking your bulge in self-pity." Karkat doesn't react, and
the adult grabs the rope trailing under her elbow. She flicks her wrist,
jerking the length between them, and a new, though much less severe electric
shock drives into Karkat's neck. "C'mon. Up."
She does it a second time, and even these minor shocks burn along Karkat's
nerves and into the dark parts of his brain. He can't ignore them, and they
drag the rest of the world into urgency as well. Forcing him to care.
The adult raises her hand again, and this time she also raises a questioning
eyebrow to Karkat. She'll keep doing it until he moves. "Okay," Karkat says.
Karkat's voice isn't working. His throat is too dry, and his tongue runs into
his teeth, and there's not enough air in his chest to do much more than
whimper. But the adult doesn't shock him again. She doesn't loosen her hand on
the rope, but she allows him a few moments to curl sideways and push against
the floor with his left arm.
And immediately fall back down, as agony flares through every one of his
injuries and his shoulder gives way under the weight. Karkat gasps silently at
the ceiling for as many seconds as he can risk, before turning his eyes back to
the adult. She's starting to look annoyed.
Fear wakes in Karkat's chest and twines around his organs. "I can't," Karkat
whispers. "I'm. I can't."
The adult stares down at him. She hovers giant and impassive, and here is the
anticipating terror. "Nah," she finally says. "I don't believe that." And
Karkat wants desperately to shut his eyes to her, but he knows better, she'd
never let him, and his face muscles compromise with a wince. His exposed teeth
hurt. Everything hurts.
The adult considers Karkat for another moment, and then she shrugs lightly to
herself. She lowers into a crouch, balancing on the balls of her feet. From
Karkat's floor-bound perspective, she's still overwhelmingly tall, but at least
she no longer towers over him like a distorted, impossible nightmare of a
troll. She's still not smiling, but her expression has softened. Karkat doesn't
know what that means.
"What you need is more faith in yourself," the adult says. "I mean, listen.
You've spent your entire life being careful." Karkat looks at her,
uncomprehending, and the adult reaches down with a nail and scratches one of
the scabs decorating Karkat's chest. A fresh trickle of too-bright red leaks
out, and Karkat reflexively flinches away from it, as though it's something he
can ever escape.
"Keeping all that freak blood hidden inside its ugly gray sack. Fuck, I bet
you've never been hurt before. Not really." And that's true, or true enough
that it weighs in Karkat's mind like an accusation. Coward. He's proven that
today, hasn't he.
The adult draws her finger along Karkat's skin until it hits the cut she sliced
across his torso. She digs her claw into the gash, making the whole line of it
sting brightly. Mutant blood wells around her finger. "So how the hell would
you know what you 'can't' do."
The adult takes her hand back and wipes her blood stained finger on her pants.
"I know there's fight left in you, kid, and if that's true, you can do this.
And if I'm wrong..." The adult laughs once, and her lips settle back into a
smirk. "Well, then I guess you finally understand how you don't have any
fucking choice."
"Tell you what," the adult says. "I'll give you some help." She extends one
hand beside her knee and turns her palm up into an offer. "Pass me your arm."
Karkat's arm is currently twisted beside him, with his elbow jammed under the
side of his chest. After a brief struggle, he shifts sideways enough to free
it, and then raises it a shaky foot and a half. But it weighs too much. He
can't keep it there.
He can't reach her, anyway. She's on the wrong side of him. Even if he
stretched his hand across his chest, he'd still need to roll over to touch her,
and Karkat doesn't think that he could. He'd have to pivot his entire body
weight on his shoulder, never mind that the cracked arm would be trapped
underneath him... And with a despondent jolt, like his think pan drawing back
the opaque window covering on something he's already known, Karkat understands
what she's asking of him. His left hand falls back to the ground, hard enough
to bounce on stone, throbbing along his bruises.
The adult's grin settles. She waggles the fingers of her open hand, inviting.
Demanding.
Karkat tucks his broken arm closer to his body, but he can't afford to hesitate
for long. She'll grab him anyway, and it will be so much worse than whatever
she's already planning.
His breath hitches into a sob, and Karkat moves his right arm away from himself
with a burst of sour effort. It lifts elbow first, and it's unbearably heavy.
His hand dangles from his wrist, and in profile, the dent seems to cut deeper
into the blackness of his flesh. It doesn't look solid, as if the intact side
of the bone is about to fold over like a hinge.
The adult takes his arm with both of her hands, placing the rope-holding hand
underneath his elbow and cupping his palm gently in her other one. His arm lies
there like a limp, dead loamsnake, and Karkat's entire body sags with the
relief of no longer having to support it himself.
The adult carefully rotates his forearm to get a better look at the damage, but
it's not out of concern. Her eyes glint with amusement. Karkat knows he should
be very worried, but the arm doesn't feel like wholly a part of him, now that
she's claimed it. And he's safe, so long as she's smiling, right? She can tear
the arm off his body and keep it if it means that Karkat can rest.
The adult makes a soft humming noise and starts to bring her hand away from
Karkat's elbow towards the blackest part of his forearm. With the smooth,
coiled texture of the rope, it's like she's dragging slithering tentacles. The
pain increases as she goes. Karkat's chest tenses when she gets close to the
break, and the adult runs her fingers against his palm in encouraging circles
until he remembers how to breathe.
Her sliding hand pauses when she gets to the center of the crack. The adult
reaches her thumb across the width of Karkat's forearm. Then she presses down
hard, clamping her hand around him.
Pain spikes up the arm. Karkat's head rolls back as though it would escape his
neck. He screams, but his teeth have clamped together and the sound runs
through his nose like a moan. At the bottom of his vision, his fingers curl
inward without his command. Either she's bending the softened bone so that it
presses against tendons, or there's a gap between the edges of the broken bone,
and she's digging directly into the softness on the inside his skeleton.
"Still works!" the adult says cheerfully to Karkat's shaking body. But she
doesn't let go.
She grips harder and starts to pull up. Karkat thrashes, probably in hope he'll
help her rip it off, but the adult just keeps steadily raising his arm an inch
at a time. She rises from her crouch back to standing, and Karkat's entire
shoulder lifts off the ground, the weight balanced on the point of his broken
arm. And she doesn't stop lifting.
Karkat shoves at the ground with his other hand to try and take some of the
load. It doesn't help much, especially when he falls back again and the world
flares white with pain. He kicks with his heels and twists around on the cave
floor and whimpers when he runs out of air to scream with, and eventually he's
on his side with one knee folded underneath the other, and he pushes down with
his shoulder and hip and rolls up into something like a kneeling position. He's
sitting on one ankle and bent forward and sideways, propped up by his left arm.
It's shaking, and his shoulders are heaving with exhaustion and the effort of
finding oxygen. Karkat pants noisily through his open mouth, and saliva drips
from his bottom lip in long, pink threads. He's sure, second to second, that
he's going to topple over again, but he doesn't. When he wobbles, the adult
uses her grip on his right forearm to steady him.
"See?" she says. "There you are." And Karkat tries to turn his head, he does,
but it's too impossibly heavy on his neck. He can't lift it to her.
So she does it for him. The adult tangles a fist in his hair and yanks him
upwards until his back is straight and he's almost kneeling properly. His neck
complains, but he's desperately glad for the added support. Karkat rolls his
eyes up so he can see her face through the fringe of his hair.
"I knew you could do it, kid," the adult says. She loosens one finger from the
fist and taps the nail several times against his skull. "You just needed a bit
of motivation."
The adult lowers Karkat slowly. She brings down the hand gripping his hair by
careful inches, only letting go when he's supporting himself on his own shaky
limbs. She still has hold of his right forearm, but after seconds pass and
Karkat hasn't fallen over, the adult loosens her grip and tosses the arm back
to him.
It throbs in the sudden absence of pressure, but compared to when she was
squeezing the dented bone further into his arm, Karkat's noisy gasping is in
relief. He clutches his arm against his chest, crossing over the long red slice
through his skin.
The adult yanks lightly on the rope around his neck. This shock isn't enough to
burn, only to remind him that he owes her attention.
"That's where we're going," she says. She's pointing to her overstuffed purple
and green chair, which sits abandoned across the tunnel. "Ready?" She
punctuates the word by shaking the cord again. It isn't a question. Karkat
doesn't get to decide what he's prepared for.
Karkat braces himself on his hand and brings one knee up. He plants the foot
flat on the ground and tries to lift himself so he can stand, but his body is
too unstable. His ankle shakes under the pressure, and it's a painful effort to
bring his leg down again before he faceplants into the floor.
The adult tugs at the rope, slightly harder, and Karkat's shoulders twitch
after the low prick of electricity. He leans in the direction she's pulling,
but as soon as the rope slackens between them she loops it tight. His balance
is wrong. He slides his hand forward to compensate.
She doesn't stop. Karkat doesn't have a chance to climb to his feet, but he
wouldn't make it anyway. The adult takes a step towards her chair, and Karkat
can't stretch out his arm enough to steady himself. He has to push his whole
body forward and up from his knees.
Even this is a challenge. His hips weigh uneasily on his legs, like the joints
don't quite fit together, and his arm shakes under the weight of his entire
torso. He can't maintain it, he's going to fall back on his ass, but then the
adult takes another step and the rope pulls again at his neck. Karkat lurches
forward instead, before the small jolt has a chance to intensify, and forces
his knees through another step when he thinks she's about to tighten it again.
The adult watches him with narrowed eyes. "You move as slow as a one legged
grub," she says, but there's that strange adult timbre at the edge of her
voice. Karkat can't tell if she means it as an insult or as self-satisfied
approval.
But it doesn't matter. Not to him, when he can't change anything either way.
Karkat takes the pause to retry climbing to his feet, but as soon as his center
of gravity shifts the adult yanks him forward. His left elbow throbs unsteadily
with the shock of catching his weight. So he was wrong. She doesn't want him
standing.
The adult continues walking, and Karkat's choices are to hurry or be dragged
along the floor by his neck. He's so tired, that last option seems worth the
agony of electricity and banging over stones. At least he wouldn't be a
collaborator in his own torment... but as soon as he thinks that, it's the most
terrifying possibility of all.
He has to cooperate. He has to give this asshole any fucking thing she wants
from him, even if he's fuzzy for the moment on why. Those are the rules, and
the idea of resisting feels as ludicrous as disobeying the law of gravity.
The rope begins to tighten against his skin, and Karkat thinks the adult is
moving slightly faster. Before it can activate whatever is throwing shocks down
the line, Karkat hobbles on his knees and left hand to catch up to her. He
matches pace beside her leg, honest to fucking heeling like a broken, tamed
wagbeast.
It's easier to continue moving than it was to start. Karkat focuses on a rhythm
of legs, arm, breathe, legs, arm, breathe. The rope swings against his shoulder
with the adult's stride, and Karkat winces every time it hits, even if the
slight waving isn't enough to make it jolt him.
They're getting close to the chair when there's a low series of beeps from
behind them. The male adult says something that Karkat doesn't register over
the litany of legs, arm, breathe in his head, and the adult beside Karkat
twists around to check on her partner.
Karkat can't adjust to the change in time. He moves too far forward. The rope
tightens, and Karkat's sure it's going to shock him, and he scrambles
desperately backwards with muscles that respond slow and untrustworthy to his
commands. He loses his balance on his left arm completely and catches himself
without thinking on his right.
He knows his mistake instantly. The pain shoots though the rest of his mental
fog, and Karkat thinks he actually hears the further cracking around the bone.
He jams his other hand back into the floor. He doesn't want to look at his
right arm, not with the mental visions of its entire circumference broken
through. But when he does force himself to peek in its direction, it doesn't
seem like anything has changed. Karkat realizes, like the knowledge comes
secondhand from a distant source, that he wants to scream. Maybe he would, if
he had the energy.
A soft weight lands between his shoulders. Karkat shudders and nearly falls at
the surprise of it. It's slightly warm, and there are five thin pricklings at
its edge. The adult's hand.
She runs it upwards and stretches her palm, so that her fingers reach gently
into the hairline above Karkat's neck.
"It's okay. Not much farther from here," she says. "You going to make it?"
And Karkat doesn't think she wants an answer until she starts to press her
claws through his hair. He can't look at anything but the floor, but he nods
his reply, his head bobbing twice on his neck. It's so heavy. His skull pounds,
and the world spins dizzily.
"Good," she says, and smooths the bottom fringe of his hair before sliding her
hand away.
When she reaches the rope strung around his neck, she pauses to roll the
texture of it in her fingers. The movement pulls it tighter against the front
of his throat, and even though Karkat's gasping breaths are unaffected, he's
convinced the rope is infinitely tighter.
The adult lifts her hand away, but the weight of it still echoes in Karkat's
mind. His skin, flesh, bones ring with hundreds of inescapable reminders.
Everywhere she's touched him, or hurt him, or shoved into him, and there's
nothing left of his body that she hasn't used up for herself. The rope she's
leading him with is slack, but it feels so heavy that his shoulders want to bow
away from it. A physical reminder that there's no chance of escaping the
adult's control.
The adult starts again and Karkat follows, grinding his joints into motion. His
palm and lower legs scrape against the rough stone ground, and each bend of his
torso shakes the broken arm he's holding against it.
"There you go," the adult says. "Guess I won't have to tie it to your horns
instead." She laughs once, and Karkat wonders if he's supposed to be terrified
by the suggestion. He knows that, objectively, getting the jolts directly into
his horns would be worse, but he can't imagine worse well enough to care.
He tries to regain his mindless rhythm, but the adult only takes a few steps
before she slows down. Karkat looks up from the floor and the center of his
vision is filled with the adult's chair, a large mound of purple shot through
with green.
The adult doesn't jump up into it this time. She sidles backwards until her
legs hit leather and lowers herself gracefully onto the front edge of the seat.
The cushions barely wobble.
The extra length of rope droops to the floor. Once she's settled, the adult
shortens it, adding the slack to the loops she's already holding. Karkat
doesn't want to get closer, though he's not sure if he's afraid of what she'll
do to him or if he just doesn't want to move, but she reels him in, inch after
inch, just slowly enough to keep some slack between them. She keeps pulling
until he's right between her knees, with his head an inch away from the chair's
base.
She's holding the cord a handwidth from his neck, and now instead of leading
Karkat forward she guides his head further up, above the seat cushion. He has
to change position and shuffle so close that his chest touches purple leather,
bringing his knees in and sitting back on his ankles. His legs are reluctant to
bend underneath him, but it's still so much easier than supporting himself
above the ground.
The adult's knees shift closer together, boxing him in, but at least if he
loses his balance now he's not going to have to climb back up from the floor.
Karkat's staring directly into the black fabric of her crotch. He's been here
before.
The adult slides her closest hand over the rope and up his neck. She stretches
her hand around his head, pressing into his chin with the soft pad of her thumb
and wrapping her other fingers from the base of his skull to his temple. She
angles his face up to her.
"You're not going anywhere, are you?" she says. Karkat stares blankly at her.
Is he? He doesn't want to. He doesn't want to ever move again. But of course he
will if she tells him to. Karkat doesn't know how he's supposed to answer.
Silence stretches just long enough for Karkat's confusion to gain a hollow
shadow of something like fear. Then the adult quirks the edge of a grin and
says, "No. You're not."
She keeps one hand supporting his face and reaches the other behind his
shoulder. The Y junction of the rope is pulled around to the back of his neck.
Then the adult simply drops the gathered rope, and coils unravel over his back
and fall onto his toes. The weight pulls the loop tighter against the front of
his throat, and the ghost of an electric shock travels through his skin.
So he's loose, but somehow Karkat feels even less free. If the adult's legs and
body define three sides of the space he's trapped in, the line of rope down his
back feels like the fourth, enclosing him completely. But it doesn't matter.
He's not going anywhere either way.
The adult drifts her emptied fingers over Karkat's hair and onto the front of
his face. With her thumb, she tests the curve of his forehead, lingers over the
ridges of his eyebrows, traces the line of his cheeks. She pushes at the top of
his nose, but her other hand is still clamped under his skull and he doesn't
move.
"Really, you're the wrong way up for this," she says. "But we'll make it work."
She taps Karkat lightly on the forehead, and then she takes her hand off his
face and brings it to the front of her pants. She starts to undo the clasps.
The adult pushes the front of her pants open. The way she's gripping his head,
it's easier for Karkat not to focus downward anyway, but he can't avoid the
smell of her arousal. And nothing's even touched her yet.
There's an irritated noise from the tunnel behind Karkat, where the man is
working. "Again?! You're going to..." He pauses, searching for the appropriate
word. "Dally?" As if everything can be glossed over by choosing a polite enough
euphemism. Or maybe it's just that how she's wasting time doesn't matter to him
at all.
The woman snorts. She rolls her eyes slowly, mockingly, up to her partner, and
Karkat is grateful that no matter what she's done, at least she never pretended
it wasn't horrible for him.
"Dien," she says, lightly. "I wasn't aware it's me we're waiting on." She
doesn't look away for a few seconds, but the man doesn't make a response that
Karkat can hear.
When the woman does return her attention to Karkat, she seems pleased. Which
usually means she's about to start hurting him again, but the only important
thing is that she stays pleased. Everything else is just. Details.
The adult slides a finger along her seedflap, and it comes away shiny with
wetness. She rubs it against her thumb, adding the sex stink to the air.
"Okay," she says. "You're still new at this, so I'm going to help you through
it."
And her help has never been anything but awful, but some part of Karkat's mind
goes even quieter with her assurance. He had been worried. He isn't sure what
she wants from him.
"So here's what's going to happen. You are going to suck my flap. And you are
going to be fucking careful about it, because if I feel teeth poking in there,
I am going to rip them out of your head one by one, and then you are going to
get shoved right back in place to try it again. You understand me?"
She stares down at Karkat, waiting, until he musters a, "Yes." It comes out as
a croak, not a word. Karkat swallows into the dryness of his throat and tries
again. "Yes." It's not much better.
"Glad to hear that," the adult says, and she does look glad. She's smiling.
"Because let me tell you something." The adult's fingers twitch slightly into
his scalp, claws prickling, until she relaxes them again. "Maybe you think it's
impossible to feel worse than right now, but you're wrong. You are so fucking
wrong on that."
And Karkat believes her. He trusts her expertise on making things shittier for
him. The adult moves a few inches closer to the end of the chair, her hips
shifting back and forth underneath her, and Karkat also trusts that she'll take
any excuse to use it. He presses both rows of teeth into the inside of his
lips.
"Good boy," the adult says. She threads her free hand into the hair behind his
head, and two of her nails jump in his awareness when they scratch the base of
his horn. "You'll do fine."
She loosens her grip on the bottom of Karkat's skull enough that, without the
support, his gaze drops from her face to her crotch, exposed in front of him.
And Karkat doesn't mean to hesitate, but his muscles shudder under a new wave
of exhaustion.
The adult doesn't say anything. She just draws his head forward until his face
is mashed into her flap. Her bulge is hard against his chin, and membrane folds
fit into the line of his lips and block his nose. Karkat didn't think to take a
breath first, and now it's difficult to find air with her hands locking him in
position. He could suffocate like this, but Karkat can't fight it. He still
needs to keep her happy with him, because it's not close to the worst death on
offer.
Karkat opens his lips slowly. Carefully. Like the adult told him to, he sucks
at the skin and membranes in front of him. His chest heaves, expecting air, but
Karkat ignores it. He just sucks at her again, and when the folds of her
seedflap press against his lips he, after checking that his teeth are safely
pointed into his own flesh, opens his mouth wider and takes them in. His mouth
is dry, but with the dampness of her flap they slide through easily.
The adult's thighs twitch into Karkat's shoulders, rattling down through his
hands. He's more concerned about the arm he's using as support than the broken
one, but the adult is gripping his head securely. He's not going to fall. And
he must be doing it right.
Karkat sucks again, harder, and he rasps his tongue into a crease between
membrane folds. This must have been the magic gesture, because the adult pulls
him away by his hair. Her seedflap pops out of his mouth.
Most of his face is damp, covered in her juices, and every desperate breath
smells like sex pheromones. Fresher, this time. "Get ready," the adult says.
"You're going back in."
Karkat grabs onto a breath and holds it, and then the adult presses his face
back into her crotch, slightly lower than before, so that her bone bulge
smashes his lips against his teeth. He tastes a small amount of blood which he
urgently sucks away, even though his mutation is already written over the
entirety of his skin.
The adult uses his jaw to grind into her bulge. She angles his chin underneath,
and then she drags his face slowly upwards, over the swollen mound. At the top,
Karkat's mouth is back in the middle of her seedflap.
She keeps him there for a moment, until Karkat guesses what she wants from him.
He opens his mouth and licks at a nearby membrane. The hand at the back of his
head pushes, forcing him further against her. Karkat takes in a mouthful of
seedflap, sucking and teasing at the folds with his tongue, and the adult
relaxes her grip very slightly. She runs her two outside fingers back and forth
on through his hair, petting him, one against the bottom curve of skull, and
one at the base of his horn.
"You're so easily trained," she says, a relaxed, approving rumble. And Karkat
shuts his eyes against the bottom of her jacket, and works at keeping her
pleased with him until she pulls him off and brings his head back down.
The adult falls into a rhythm, grinding Karkat's face up and down her bulge,
pausing long enough on the peak to let Karkat search out her seedflap with his
lips and then starting over. The movement pulls at his neck and shoulders and
everything attached to them, but the strain is almost bearable. His chest leans
into the leather base of the chair, and his sides are fenced in closely, and
the adult has taken over positioning his head. He doesn't have to fight to keep
himself upright, or to do anything except occasionally lick a fold of flesh.
It's almost like being allowed to relax.
There's a change in how her muscles respond around him, tightening all at once,
and the adult draws in a sharp rush of air. Her hips shift up, and she breaks
the pattern. She brings Karkat further down, so she can rub his forehead in
short, fast lines into her bulge. She scrapes against herself with the ridge of
his eye, the same ridge her partner had been fond of so much earlier, and
Karkat realizes what she meant when she told him he was the wrong way around.
If his face was flipped over, he could still be sucking at her seedflap right
now.
The adult presses him hard into her bulge with a final shudder. Karkat, knowing
what's about to happen, tilts his chin up and places his lips around the
outside of her nook. And he's right. Sour fluid squirts out of the orifice with
every squeeze of muscle. It's thinner than before, but still filmy as it runs
over his tongue. At least he isn't going to have to clean it off her, drop by
drop.
When it seems like there's nothing more, Karkat sucks gently at her, to be
sure. The adult pushes him away from her crotch. She settles him back into a
kneel and glances him over. Karkat can't imagine what kind of mess he is right
now, black and mutant red and unraveling at every metaphorical fabric joint,
but the adult seems satisfied.
"Just one thing." She brings her hand forward, with its first two fingers
pointing at his face. Karkat recognizes the gesture. He opens his lips enough
that she can slide her fingers into his mouth, and she rolls them over his
tongue, scooping up anything he hasn't swallowed yet. Her fingers come out
dripping with green.
She smears them in a messy stripe over Karkat's mouth, painting him like her
fluid is sloppy lipstick. The adult runs her eyes over him again, and now she's
more than satisfied. Her eyes are low-lidded and her smile is loosened, sated.
Karkat stares blankly up at her.
"Good look for you, kid," she says.
The adult clasps her pants shut. Seconds pass, and it's hard for Karkat to stay
balanced in front of her. He sways on his knees, his heels rolling into his
ass.
The adult watches his struggle to stay where she put him, and her smile never
shifts. Finally she places her palm on his left shoulder, like a kindness, and
shoves him over. Karkat falls to her inner thigh.
The side of his face and neck are pillowed against the fabric of her pants. Her
outer muscles are lean and strong, but there's enough softness to her leg that
he sinks into her. Her flesh cradles the shape of his bones.
The adult runs her thumb in slow, calming loops under his shoulder. "I like
you, kid," she says. "No, really! I do. If it wasn't for that embargo on
immature trolls... well, you know. Live ones... I'd pack you out with me."
Her thumb is still moving over his skin, and now Karkat recognizes the pattern.
It rises up and over through two high arcs, common among the spread of greens
and blues, and then ties off with her own unique squiggle. Her sign, inscribed
into his skin, exactly where it would be branded if he was one of the chattel
species. And she owned him.
Karkat's entire torso twists with an emotion he doesn't know how to parse
anymore. It's like he's feeling it sharp and hot from the outside.
"Hey, maybe you'd like that?" the adult says. "I bet I'd get a few sweeps use
out of you, before I'd have to turn you in for crimes against the hemospectrum.
Probably longer than you would've lasted in the wild."
And. No. Karkat can't... Being broken down over and over again, night after
night. Made to scream for her amusement, or beg her to do unspeakable things.
Today would be every day for him, for the entirety of his life, stretched out
into sweeps. He couldn't handle it, except. He wouldn't have a choice. Except.
She'd lent him to the other adult, yes, but then she'd stopped the man before
he could finish smashing Karkat into a vivid red pulp. She wants Karkat alive.
And if she wants him enough to risk sneaking him off world, wouldn't she have
to want him to stay alive?
Of course he couldn't be allowed to reach adulthood, to develop into a full
troll, Karkat understands that. It would be an impossible thing to ask. But
that's so many sweeps away, and he would be safe until then. He's so fucking
tired of worrying about stumbling, betraying himself, letting down his guard.
If the adult claimed him, it means she would protect him from being culled.
Protect him from everything, except.
Herself.
No. He can't deal with this.
Except.
The adult understands him. She's gotten into his head enough to pick him apart.
She knows how weak he is, and exactly how much he can take before breaking
entirely, and she's forced from him every secret worth hiding. She peeled him
open and tasted his mutant insides, felt underneath the protection of his
bones. She's a crueler person than any Karkat has imagined, but she knows
Karkat for precisely what he is, and.
She wants him.
He never thought anyone would ever want him.
The adult is still watching him expectantly, but he can't answer her. No. It's
no, it's no, it's no. Of course it's no. Even though she doesn't care what he'd
like, she's not asking for permission. It's.
He doesn't know.
Karkat turns his head into her pants, letting his vision fill with nothing but
black fabric. Her body is surrounding him, is blocking him in, is everything of
the world that he can feel and smell and taste, but at least he can remove her
from his sight. She's still signing her identity under his shoulder, again and
again, like he already belongs to her, and Karkat feels a new wetness spread
into the stickiness of his cheeks. He's crying, but he doesn't make any effort
to stop it. There's nothing left for him to protect.
The adult grips his shoulder more solidly. She stands to her feet, removing her
leg as Karkat's support, and puts her chair away into her captchalogue deck.
"Oh, well," the adult says. She pushes very gently against one of Karkat's
horns until he lifts his gaze to her, and then in reward she starts petting him
again, running her nails in soft arcs between the base of his horn and his ear.
The most horrible part is that it helps. His shuddering becomes slower with
each line the adult's fingers trace through his hair.
"Can't have something just because you want it, and there's a piece of grownup
wisdom I'll give you at a discount."
She takes a step away from Karkat, leaving him to struggle again not to fall,
but it doesn't matter for long. The adult swings back one thick soled military
boot and slams it hard into Karkat's side.
Karkat is flung down. He hits the ground on his right shoulder, and his other
hand lands beside his face splayed, as if reaching for something below the
ground. His cracked arm starts to scream with the jolt, but before it matters,
there's movement above him and another solid blow into his back, just under his
shoulders.
He's pushed forward by the force of it, torso bending in and one side of his
face hitting the floor. The adult takes a step, so her pants are a hovering
shadow above the scraped skin of Karkat's legs, and then she changes her stance
and lands a quick, brutal kick into his hip.
Karkat pulls his knees up, sliding them as far towards his chest as they're
willing to bend. It's a useless, futile movement, curling his limbs in for
protection, dragging his body into a poor semblance of the pupal arrangement.
Like just echoing that position would be enough to call back the hard cocoon
that was once surrounding him, shielding him from everything outside himself.
The adult kicks him in the hip again, and then steps over his legs with one
foot and spins her other into the side of his shoulder. His chest jerks, but
Karkat doesn't react. There's no reaction left to have. The adult takes another
step around him and kicks him in the side of his head. The front of her boot
slams into the base of Karkat's horn.
The world goes bright and fuzzy. Karkat still feels the blows slamming into
him, but the pain is a growing distance away, like he's floating, like he's
flying. Almost an escape.
And then she stops. A moment passes. Another moment. Nothing is hitting him
anymore. Is she still with him? One of his horns is against the ground,
carrying the vibrations of footsteps. They're far away. Everything is far away.
Maybe he's alone.
Karkat blinks, and his eyelashes scrape against the cave floor. It's too much
movement. He doesn't know how long he's been lying here. Time wobbles when he
tries to focus. But he doesn't want to focus. He breathes, and the world tastes
of dust and blood.
There's a sudden weight around his throat. Karkat sees the adult again, moving
in the sides of his vision. The vibrations reflected from the ground are much
louder, but Karkat didn't notice her approach. The pressure grows, and it's
repositioning him, not bringing him down. Karkat's uncurled from himself by the
force on his neck.
His weight is on the back of his shoulders, and the adult looks down at him
from her full height. She meets his bleary gaze with a blank, considering
expression. Then Karkat's halfway down the tunnel and sliding over the rocky
cave floor, his weight pulled by his neck. The transitory moments are gone.
It's like how she had dragged him when she first caught him, bouncing him along
on her invisible string. Except, no, every time Karkat snags on a stone or
hollow dip in the floor, an electric shock bites into his skin. The green rope
again. Still. Did she ever take it off?
The ground changes underneath him. Rock becomes softer dirt that yields under
his trailing heels and collects under his fingernails. Above him, the cave's
stone ceiling breaks open into night sky.
The pink moon rests directly over him, casting everything in a violet glow. It
will be moon noon soon, and that's a verse to say for luck, but fuck if Karkat
remembers how it goes. He hasn't thought about it for sweeps. Something about
an unripe plum and an olive... what rhymes with olive?
The world stops moving around him. He's been dragged perhaps ten yards from the
mouth of the cave, to a spot that's almost fully in the open, exposed. But
there's a large, round stone on one side of him, broken away from the raised
hill. The adult stands between it and Karkat. She lets the rope slip from her
fingers as she lifts them to brush the rock's texture. Loose green coils land
by Karkat's shoulder.
Is he free, then? Did he make it? Is she going to just... let him go?
Karkat never thought it was a real possibility. So he should be happy right
now, instead of just exhausted. Confused. Hurting. He wants to go home. Is he
going to get to go home?
The adult crouches down beside Karkat. She's still turned away, but she glances
at him long enough to smirk and bring a claw to the inside corner of his eye.
Lift away a pale red tear. She wipes it off on the stone, and...
She's gone. Karkat jerks in surprise, and then struggles through a fresh burst
of dizziness. There's nothing blocking his view of gray stone beside him. But
he can still hear her voice, debating with the blue blooded soldier not far
from Karkat's feet.
Now that they're out of the cave, the night swallows some of the underlying
resonance to their voices. They sound flatter, like all those adults Karkat has
listened to in his movies without panicking. Monsters, but safe monsters, not
entirely present. The woman is radiating amusement, but the man looks like he's
scented something unpleasant.
"should simply destroy him now," the man is saying. "It would be cleaner."
"What," the woman says. "You don't think this kid lived up to his side of
things? 'Cause I feel plenty entertained right now."
The man bristles. "This is unnecessary!" he says, and the growl in his words is
loud enough to carry over empty air. Then he pauses, drawing in on himself.
Calming. He looks down at Karkat, and there's no pity, but the disapproval in
his stare is meant for his partner. "It would be a kinder end."
"Yeah, maybe, but when was that ever on offer," the woman says. "I said he
could earn himself a chance at crawling away from this. Not that it'd be a kind
one."
"And what if he does survive?"
"A secret, Dien? I kind of hope that happens." She grins down at Karkat, teeth
flashing in moonlight, and nudges his naked foot with her boot. "He's
hilarious. Best joke in all of paradox space." Her partner is still glaring in
Karkat's direction, and she shrugs and thwaps his arm to break his attention.
And then time catches again, and in the next moment the adults are slinking off
around the side of the cave, on their way to fulfill some unknowable adult
purpose.
***** Chapter 9 *****
Karkat can't smell much other than his own blood, drying in his nostrils, but
he doesn't mind. It makes the world seem smaller, even manageable. The dirt
he's lying on is much softer than the rocky cave floor, and it molds to him
like a thin layer of sopor slime.
Above, the moons chase each other across the sky in a series of slow lapse
photographs, stop and start, blurry halos dragged in their wake. The pink moon
wanders into low eclipse of its larger green sister, and together they sweep
over Karkat's prone form like a sea dweller's eye. Lofty and indifferent. The
night breeze rustles cool, numbing, over his skin.
He gradually becomes aware of a change in the soundscape around him. Dirt and
gravel, shifting somewhere nearby. A warmer burst of air touches Karkat's skin,
and in his peripheral vision there's a hazy silver shadow rising slowly. So
hazy, and so carefully slowly, it might just be a late sensory ghost. Pre-sleep
hallucination.
Karkat rolls his eyes to the left, and the creature beside him freezes, started
by his attention. The smooth neck and shaggy tail mark it as a long-snouted
slurpbeast, one of Alternia's pre-dawn scroungers. They're too cowardly and
weak to hunt their prey like proper predators, so they rummage in the late
night hours for easy prey, animals too wounded or stupid to find a place to
hide before sunrise.
For a long moment, Karkat and the slurpbeast stare at each other, gazes locked,
neither moving. And then the slurpbeast shakes its head, and twitches its ears,
and inches closer to Karkat. It snuffles the air just behind Karkat's ear,
blowing his side fringe into his cheek. Its mouth is open just enough to see
fangs and the black tip of its long, poisonous tongue.
And then Karkat is flooded with something heavy and hot, like black fire stoked
through his veins. He raises his arm and swipes it across the slurpbeast's
face, and maybe his claws are too dull to pierce a military bodysuit, but
they're strong enough when there's nothing to rip through except fragile eyelid
skin and membrane. His hand comes away with burnt orange dripping between his
fingers.
The slurpbeast yelps and leaps backwards. It glares at Karkat with its
remaining three eyes and opens its narrow mouth in a threatening hiss, exposing
its full serrated fangs and a tongue coiled to strike.
Karkat rolls over and pushes himself to his knees. His entire body shakes, and
some of that is because his muscles aren't ready to support him, but most of it
is anger. This useless fucking scavenger intends to grab Karkat and drag him
back to its hive as provisions and how does it think it can fucking dare.
Karkat might be discarded, and weaponless, and broken, but he is still a troll,
and that means he is never, never easy prey.
He opens his own mouth to growl, threaten it right back, but the noise that
comes out is a strange hybrid. Half deep resonant rumble and half high pitched
shriek, and loud enough to echo in the open night. When he stops, it's because
there's nothing left in his breathing organ to push through his throat, and
he's panting and trembling and only held up by his fury.
Karkat lifts his lips to expose more of his own fangs, though they're less
impressive than the teeth that can fit in a mouth stretched down longer than
the face it belongs to. The slurpbeast paws back and forth on its front legs,
uncertain now of its predator's calculus.
Finally, with a last dismissive snort, it turns around and scurries away in
search of a less defensive meal. It runs with its silver tail fur pulled flat
to its back, a slow moving streak of reflected ambient light, and vanishes
behind a distant ridge of stone.
Karkat slumps back on his ass, his legs splaying to his sides. His anger
collapses into a hard lump at the base of his throat, and in its absence his
exhaustion and pain rush back into place. He clenches his left hand into the
dirt for a more stable grip, and blood and sticky eye fluids squelch in the
creases of his fist.
It's a victory, but Karkat doesn't feel stronger for it. Yes, he fought off a
slurpbeast barehanded... or at least succeeded in bluffing it... but who would
ever admit that they had to. He knows what it must have seen to go after him in
the first place.
And if it's active...
Karkat tilts his head up. The pink moon has now fully overtaken the green, but
the sky is beginning to brighten with more than the soft white glow of their
combined light. Dawn isn't far off. If he's going to make it back to his hive,
he has to start moving now.
It doesn't seem worth the effort. Most of Karkat is ready to lie back down in
the dirt and wait for the day to consume him, or whatever's left that hasn't
already been used up.
Instead, he leverages himself back to his knees and leans forward onto his
hand. He hasn't worked out the direction of home yet, but a good enough start
is away...
And he's stopped. Choked back by a loop pulled tight around his throat. His
shoulder collapses and he tumbles inexorably over to his side, landing with a
half face full of dirt. An electric pulse runs through him like an aftershock.
Even after the muscle tremors subside, Karkat remains where he fell, unwilling
to move and unable to see any point. When he finally does twist around to see
the rope, its green glow no longer discernible in the threat of day, leading
underneath the extremely large stone next to him, he's not even surprised
enough to be disappointed.
Of course they've trapped him here, tied him out in the open to boil in the
sun. Did he really think that it was going to be easy for him from now on, that
the adults decided the most entertaining method of disposal would be simply
setting him free? The only thing he's ever accomplished by hanging on is giving
them more deaths to choose for him.
Except, before the adults finally departed, hadn't they said. Laughed about.
Been offended by. That it's still possible for him to survive, that they'd left
him with a chance. What if there's some way out of this without his flesh
roasting from his bones, and Karkat just won't stop wallowing long enough to
see it?
The large boulder is rounded, so there's a slight overhang on each side. It
doesn't look like nearly enough, but maybe if he crammed himself closely enough
to its bottom edge it would shelter him from the worst of the daylight hours?
But Karkat reaches out to the crease between stone and dirt, the darkest spot,
and he comes away with a handful of nothing but vegetation with small, dense
white leaves and black seed ovens. Things built not to be afraid of the absence
of shadows. The black pods are warm, still, at the other side of the night. The
heat radiates into his fingers, and Karkat realizes abruptly that he's cold.
What warmth that hadn't been lost to the cave floor is now being stolen from
his uncovered skin by the breeze.
He doesn't care. It's a problem he's going to wish he had in not very much
longer.
Karkat hooks the rope around two fingers and gives it a quick tug, to be
certain it's actually held down. That the adult didn't only leave it there to
fuck with him, to see if he'd simply accept it already and lay down to die.
Like he'd begged her to let him do, the last time it was dawn.
His answer comes in a taut rope and a soft jolt into the flesh beneath his
chin. The weight of the rock is crushing down on the rope, holding him, more
than Karkat could have shifted even if it didn't feel like he's currently held
together with bits of reusable novelty adhesive, and isn't now when he's
finally allowed to give up because what the fuck is left.
He's truly alone. There's no psychotic adult bitch waiting to toy with him
again once she notices that he's aware enough to struggle. And he's glad for
that, Karkat reminds himself, he is really, really glad, but whatever happens
next, he has to do it for himself.
The adult has shoved the rope under the stone exactly like she'd put it under
the portable furnace in the cave, but the furnace was a metal cube, flat on
every surface. The stone is a very rough sphere.
Karkat knows he's not going to be strong enough to roll it, but he pushes
himself back up anyway. He makes it to his left hand and knees and moves until
his shoulder hits rock. It's rough and cool on his skin, and it scratches as he
turns so that he's more or less sitting with his whole back pressed against the
stone. His legs don't twist gracefully underneath him, and his ass lands hard
in the dirt.
Everything swims dizzily after the impact. Karkat slowly tilts his head from
side to side, regaining his bearings. He blinks out at the view of scattered
rocks and low, distant vegetation. The edges are already starting to sharpen
with light.
Karkat pulls his knees up. They don't cooperate, and he has to bend them in one
at a time and steady them with his arm, but finally he can brace his feet to
the ground. He pushes back against the boulder with his shoulders.
It hurts. The line from his neck to his toes becomes a solid, sharp burn.
Karkat clenches his teeth and pushes anyway, harder, until his mind is filled
with screaming nerves and his bones creak under the pressure. But he can't hold
it for long before collapsing, and Karkat slumps forward, panting from the
exertion.
The stone has not moved. It has not rocked from its base, and it has not slid
even a millimeter. It's too large. It's taller than Karkat would be standing.
Tall as the adult had been, beside it. She must have lifted it to anchor Karkat
in the open, but the rock has since resettled itself into the ground. Karkat
has no powers and no tools except his smashed up body. The stone was never
going to move for him.
His eyes sting, and sunrise isn't close enough to blame. Karkat swipes his hand
roughly at his eyelids, furious at his weakness. His arm swings into the rope
hanging down his side, and he can't stand its smooth line touching his skin. He
is trapped here, and he is exposed here, and he has to get away right now and
he can't.
He growls threateningly, at the rock, or at the morning, or at himself, and
kicks down at the dirt. His back slams against the rock, and he keeps doing it,
driving his heels down like he's running in place. He gouges two dark lines in
the ground in front of him, and the rock doesn't move and Karkat grabs the
solid joint of the rope around his neck and yanks on it, over and over, and
heaves his head to the opposite side. The rope cuts into his throat and jolts
him continuously with small shocks that almost actually help him get past his
muscle stiffness, and the rope does not stretch and it does not give and around
him the world is brighter each second. It's not working. Nothing is working.
The adult has secured him too well.
Karkat grabs the rope further down, where it vanishes under the stone, and
pulls it from there instead. He tugs mechanically, and the rhythm of low
electric pulses barely changes. The rope turns between the border of rock and
ground. It digs out a few pebbles from the loose dirt.
And that's not enough. It doesn't matter, but it's the closest thing to an
accomplishment Karkat has won today. He hefts himself sideways to face the rope
and then up on his knees, left shoulder braced into the rock. He grabs onto the
rope with both hands and yanks it with as much strength as he can manage, and
Karkat's already screaming before he pulls because he knows what's going to
happen next.
The shock, when it comes, topples Karkat over. It drives all the panic and
anger from him, and as he lies twitching on the ground, he feels strangely calm
and clear. Karkat waits with numb patience until the muscle tremors become
bearable, and then he rolls over towards the stone. Has he done anything? He
doesn't know.
The half inch of rope closest to the rock is dirtier than he remembers, but is
it because he pulled that much free, or because the single effect he did have
was rubbing the rope into the darker soil. Or because it was always that dirty,
and Karkat simply hadn't noticed in his flailing.
And even if he did gain an entire half inch of freedom, so fucking what? He's
still trapped, and there's no way he can steal enough fractions of inches
before dawn.
It takes Karkat three tries to collect his limbs and push himself back to
sitting against the boulder.
He coils the rope around and around his left hand, and he wants to tell himself
that he's struggling in defiance of the adult who trapped him outside to fry in
the sun, but Karkat knows otherwise. If she can even be bothered to think about
him on her way off-planet or wherever she's stopping for the morning, the adult
is probably laughing at the idea of exactly this. In her absence, Karkat
spending the last minutes of his life desperately torturing himself.
If Karkat's fighting to spite anyone, it's only that quiet, tired voice in the
back of his head, whispering that wouldn't it be so much easier not to have to
fight anymore, not to have to hurt anymore. He's not strong enough to break
free. There's no point in making the inevitable worse than it has to be.
But he has always known that he would face his culling eventually, and Karkat
Vantas is not going gently into the day. He's clawing and swearing all the way
down, and it doesn't matter if no one else will know, and when Death comes for
him, that bony asshole had better not mind getting a sickle through the eye
socket.
Karkat wobbles to his feet, sliding up the side of the boulder for support and
balance. He clutches his fist over the coils of rope, and almost laughs at the
collection of muscle twinges that shoot through his arm, because the next thing
he does is throw himself forward and let his falling momentum pull harder than
his strength could.
When the initial wave of pain passes, he's shaking and sprawled on the ground.
His broken arm has landed, twisted, above his head, and his forearm is a
thundering hot numbness. He draws it carefully into his chest.
Karkat shifts around until he can see the spot where the rope reaches the
stone. There's a wider indent in the dirt around it. Possibly. A sign that he's
drawn out more of the rope's length, or that he's loosened it, or that
nothing's changed and he's a laughable victim of wishful thinking.
Karkat rolls himself up so that he's sitting again with his shoulders leaning
on the stone. The loops of rope have tightened around his left palm, squishing
his fingers together at strange angles, but after a couple perfunctory shakes
Karkat decides he doesn't care. His biggest problem isn't the level of
circulation to his fingernails.
His muscles are still twitching after the last electric shock, but if Karkat's
actually trying to accomplish something, rather than just throwing a stupid
wiggler tantrum because the universe is being mean to him, he can't afford the
recovery time.
Karkat climbs laboriously to his feet, breathing heavy and depending on the
rock to support him through every inch that he moves. And his ankles and hips
still sway under him. He has to hold onto the rock's texture with his elbows to
keep from falling, at least long enough to wind a few more loops around his
palm, collecting any of the rope's escaped slack...
There's a noise from behind one of the nearer crests of dirt and stone.
Footsteps scratching into the ground, and quickly getting louder. Karkat
freezes. He raises his lip in a snarl, in case it's the slurpbeast come back
for him after all, but when the creature runs over the the top of the hill and
into view, Karkat's expression goes slack with surprised dismay.
It's much larger and faster than a slurpbeast, with a tough scaled hide and six
sharp clawed feet, and Karkat knows what it is because it is Ladeci's lusus.
The scaled lusus is rushing between the stones with its nose inches from the
dirt. It's obviously looking for its charge, retracing the path Karkat and
Ladeci had taken yesterday at the start of their idiot's spelunking quest.
When Ladeci's lusus reaches the point in the trail opposite Karkat's current
location, it lifts its head towards him, swiveling its ears and tasting the air
with a thick, forked tongue. But it doesn't pause, and the lusus vanishes
through the mouth of the cave before Karkat can call out to it. Beg for help,
or warn it not to go inside, or string together some other collection of
equally pointless mouthsounds. It wasn't bred to concern itself with Karkat's
needs.
It's easy to tell the moment when Ladeci's lusus realizes what happened.
There's a high pitched, warbling scream from the inside of the cave, like a
distance muffled echo of Ladeci's own final cry, and Karkat's legs give out,
folding underneath him. His back slides down the boulder until his knees hit
the dirt. He shudders with the pain of landing, but mostly what he feels is
nauseous.
"No," Karkat moans to the dirt beneath his legs, although he doesn't know what
he's objecting to.
There's more noises of claws scrabbling against rock, and Karkat turns to watch
Ladeci's lusus bolt from the cave. It's moving on its back four legs, as its
front two paws are each gripping a broken orange troll horn. One with a lumpy
bulb near its tip, the other streaked with black engine grease, and Karkat can
imagine what it smells like.
This time, when it nears Karkat, the lusus stops and spins to face him. The
frill of skin around its neck flares out so forcefully that there's a crack of
displaced air. A ripped strip of black fabric is stuck on the lusus's bottom
lip, and it flutters when the lusus opens its mouth and screams at him.
Karkat has never spent enough time around Ladeci's hive that he'd pick up on
the moods and expressions of Ladeci's lusus, but it's not hard to translate the
screaming into loss and into rage.
Karkat pulls his shoulders in and hugs his left arm around his right. "I'm
sorry!" he shouts, voice breaking. Ladaci's lusus doesn't react at all, eyes
wild with anger and spit flying from its fangs, droplets refracting the pre-
dawn light. It's glaring him down, but Karkat is already down. He should tilt
his head, show submission, but he can't force himself to look away.
"I am so fucking sorry. I didn't mean for any of it," he says, even though he
knows it's just noise to someone else's lusus. "I didn't. Oh god. I didn't want
to."
Ladeci's lusus stops screaming. The ridge of skin behind its jaw flags, and it
backs off several steps. Karkat relaxes very slightly from his cringe, hoping
it's decided to leave him alone where he is, and things have gotten fucked up
if that's the best scenario for him. But then Ladaci's lusus shrieks one more
time, neck ridge flaring wide, and it bounds forward directly at Karkat.
Now Karkat does look away, by throwing his arms in front of his face to block
out the oncoming creature. There's nothing he can do against a lusus naturae
several times his size and set on ripping him apart in vengeance, and it's not
like Karkat can even say he doesn't deserve it. Except, before it arrives,
something else starts screeching over them both.
Karkat recognizes the sound. But it seems so impossible, he actually hesitates
before lowering his hands and seeking out the source. Until the moment he looks
over and sees nothing, it can be true, it can be true.
It can be Karkat's own lusus, hurrying over the ground at its own lumbering top
speed. Ladaci's lusus pauses as Karkat's approaches, but it's still snarling,
now at both of them. And it's bigger, with more offensive limbs and more teeth,
but Karkat's lusus jumps in front and opens its pincers in a threat display.
Karkat's lusus screeches again, and it's louder than anything it has aimed at
Karkat himself, but Karkat understands the driving concept being communicated.
Back the fuck off.
Ladeci's lusus rears back on three legs, hissing, and Karkat's lusus goes
silent for a moment before screeching again, not quite as noisily. Are they
trying to talk to each other? Can lusi do that?
What would they have to converse about. Oh my, it's amazing, my troll has
finally wrapped his pan around the arcane science of cataloging shit down the
load gaper instead of back into his protein chute, and just as an aside, if
your little twit accidentally touches upon any of the hundreds of nonsensical
grievances I am endlessly pulling from my shiny carapaced ass, I will see you
both die crying?
Or at least, hey, how about we team up to track down those knuckle sponged
idiots. Because otherwise Karkat can't explain the timing of how there's
something here that cares about him. Paradox space has made its position on
Karkat Vantas exceptionally clear, and it is not going present him with his
lusus simply because he wants it to. No matter how very badly he wants it to.
But whether or not they understand, they're watching each other very closely.
Ladeci's lusus seems to be calming down, its collection of shoulders untensing
and its long tail slowly drooping to the ground. At least until it coils to the
side and dances one step forward.
It's going to dart around, but Karkat's lusus meets it with a scything twist of
one raised claw. Glittering droplets of relish green scatter from a shallow
line catching its cheek and neck frill. Still a warning, not an attempt at
harm, but Karkat recognizes his lusus's ready stance. There aren't going to be
many more warnings.
There's a second where Ladeci's lusus reacts by glaring at Karkat's with bared
frills and teeth, and Karkat wants to believe his lusus would win this fight.
He's seen his lusus take down some nasty things, it might even be true. But
when he reaches for that child's unassuming faith in his protector, there's
nothing except blank despair.
His lusus is here, so he should feel safe, but he can't. He could have used
protection a day ago, but it's too late. He's already broken. Why even bother
fighting for Karkat anymore.
Ladaci's lusus must agree, because it suddenly backs down. It looks away from
Karkat's lusus, down to the orange horns clutched in its front claws, and
just... drops them. They roll out of its paws and onto the ground, but the dirt
cushions them from any dramatic bouncing. Ladaci's lusus drops down beside
them, landing with a thump on all six limbs. It watches the horns, covered in
black dirt, come to a stop.
Now that it's not threatening him, Karkat has no idea what thoughts are
bouncing around its peanut sized brain. Maybe it can't figure out why it ever
cared so much.
Karkat's lusus makes a soft chittering noise at Ladaci's, questioning, and the
other lusus slumps further down. It seems to finally notice the piece of
clothing in its mouth, because it swipes at it uncarefully, cutting a green
line into its lip in the process, until the fabric flutters free and falls next
to the remains of Ladeci's horns. Then it turns away from Karkat's lusus,
stretches its tail, and runs off.
It's heading in the opposite direction of their lawnring. It passes by the
cave's entrance without pause, and Karkat doesn't know where it's headed, or
how it plans to hide when the sun comes up. What happens to a lusus when its
not needed anymore?
Karkat's lusus watches it go, and doesn't lower its pinchers until it has run
completely from view. And even then Karkat's lusus doesn't relax, but only
draws all the tenseness further into itself. It turns around and produces
another burst of chittering, a noise of non-specific uncertainty, and it swings
its head down and tilts it to the side, and squints its eyes through the
brightening sky. Then his lusus steps closer towards Karkat with a slow,
careful gait, like Karkat is something strange and easily startled.
Karkat remembers that brand of vague urban legend that kids whisper to each
other and then try to laugh off as obviously untrue, or at least no cause for
personal worry. It happened to a troll in my hive stem, or to a friend of
someone I chatted with once, and it's not even a case of things going wrong
because this is exactly what we designed them to be.
After your trials, when you first crawl out to the surface of the planet, your
lusus recognizes your scent and knows you for its own. But there have always
been stories... unverified, though Karkat has never exactly brought himself to
checking... that if anything happens to change your scent too much, your lusus
will reject you. Knock you from your hive, or tear you apart with its own
claws.
And that's nonsense, it has to be, but as his lusus approaches Karkat finds
himself leaning away. His shoulders press behind him into the rough side of the
boulder, and when his lusus repeats its soft chittered inquiry, Karkat says,
"It's me."
Karkat's lusus is much bigger than him, even when he's fully upright. When it
reaches him, standing so close that its body casts him into soothing semi-
darkness, it bends down so that its snout is an inch from Karkat's forehead.
His forehead that has been rubbed through the seedflaps of two adults, that has
been marked with their fluid and their pheromones.
His lusus snorts hard enough that its expelled air ruffles through Karkat's
filthy, sticky bangs, and then it makes a deep, rumbling, unhappy sound. And
Karkat just keeps saying, "It's me, it's me, it's me. Oh god please, you know
me. You have to knowme."
His lusus brings one pincher forward and sets the sharp edge against Karkat's
neck, and Karkat molds himself closer to the boulder behind him but there's
nowhere else to go. His lusus starts to close the other side of its claw, and
Karkat closes his eyes, whispers, "Don't, please, no," and...
There's one last aborted shock through his throat, and then the rope falls open
from Karkat's neck and slides down into the dirt by his legs.
Karkat already has his hands half-raised in front of him, to ward off his own
custodian, but now he thrusts them out and scrabbles at his lusus until his
claws catch on the edges of its outer shell.
His hands don't respond easily, not with his right arm broken and his left palm
still twisted inside the adult's rope. Karkat forces his fingers to close
anyway. He pulls himself forward, up on his knees, away from the boulder's
support, and his entire body shakes with the effort but Karkat barely notices.
He presses his face into his lusus's hard chestplates, cool and solid and
familiar. They block out most of the dawn light, and it's almost like being
somewhere dark.
"I want to go home," Karkat pleads directly into smooth carapace. "I want to go
home, I want to go home, please. I just want to go fucking home."
And his lusus screeches at him. Quietly, but it's not much different at its
base than the one it blasted at Ladaci's lusus, and Karkat understands what it
means but he doesn't understand. It's a negative. A denial, a refusal. A no.
Karkat's lusus slips the flat edge of one claw between itself and Karkat's
shoulder, and starts to gently pry Karkat away.
And Karkat shrieks. He clutches tighter to his lusus, his nails digging into
the places where its armored plates meet, and he cries out with short, high
pitched screams of panic and horror. His lusus is pushing him away but it
can't. Karkat needs it.
Karkat struggles to hold on, but his lusus would be stronger even if Karkat
hadn't already been hurt. It peels him off its chest and shifts him back
against the stone, and it holds him there by pressing one large claw to his
torso.
Karkat wraps his arms around the claw and sobs loudly. He can't stop himself.
What would be the point of trying to stop himself?
His lusus is still screeching, though no longer a simple negative. Now it's
trying to get Karkat's attention. Or no, it's trying to get Karkat to pay
attention. To what? But its vocabulary doesn't stretch that far.
Karkat chokes back his next few sobs, and it hurts, it's like they're physical
things trapped and angry inside his chest. He gives his lusus a series of tiny
nods. If he tries to talk, he's going to start wailing again.
Karkat's lusus gestures with its free claw. Karkat follows the direction with
his gaze. It's pointing at Karkat.
At Karkat's naked, rent body. He's covered in large, dark bruises and lines of
vivid, mutant, exposed, disgusting red and, oh. No, of course he can't go home,
not like this. It would only take one person slow to retire for the day, one
glance out a rectangular silicate aperture while Karkat's running for his hive
and then...
What?
Something terrible, but Karkat's currently having trouble imagining a different
worst case scenario.
Karkat moans. It's a low, hollow sound that might have started as a failed No.
His lusus is quiet for the moment, waiting for his reaction, and Karkat notices
that the sky has brightened enough to make vision painful. "I'm such a fuckup,"
Karkat says. "I don't know what to do."
Karkat's lusus takes a step backwards and gently shakes its arm to extricate
its pincher from Karkat's hold. Karkat lets it go, but then without the support
he topples over again into the ground.
His lusus turns and runs towards the dark opening of the cave mouth. It doesn't
glance back to make sure Karkat is following.
"Oh god," Karkat says. "Oh fuck, don't make me go back in there. Oh god. I
can't."
But his lusus disappears into the safety of the cave's shadow. "I can't go
back," Karkat says to the dirt by his face, and his mind replays for him the
adult's voice, mocking him for being a frightened wiggler, untested and
untried. So how the hell would you know what you 'can't' do.
Although Karkat literally can't start towards the cave yet. With the rope
wrapped around his hand, he is still tethered to the boulder. He is lying on
the ground exactly where the adult had dumped him, and it doesn't matter that
it's his own work, that he could get his hand free if he wanted to. It feels
like an excuse not to move, yet another favor provided to him. It feels, on
some level, right.
God. How badly did she fuck him up?
Karkat drags his left hand over the ground in a weak-assed attempt to scrape
off the coils of rope. About half of the last loop distangles, but it tightens
again when Karkat moves his hand to repeat the process. The second try is no
more useful.
So Karkat slides the hand up to his face. He reaches forward with his head and
grabs the outermost loop in his teeth. The rope is dirty, and he tastes the
burnt ash flavor of topsoil. Even this close, none of the green glow is visible
anymore, but Karkat can feel its hum of energy in his lips and teeth.
When he begins to bite down, thinking of snapping it, there's a small, warning
jolt into his hand and the tips of his fangs. The shock is far from the worst
the rope's given him, but it travels directly through his teeth into his skull
and echoes between his horns. It's like the whole planet jumps underneath him.
And this was after the points of his teeth had barely begun to dig in. If the
rope hadn't begun to slide faster from the rock, if his lusus hadn't found him,
he'd have been here down eventually, desperately trying to gnaw his way free.
Just thinking about the possibility makes him want to give up all over again.
Karkat hooks his front fangs more carefully over the rope's edge, and holds it
in place while he wiggles his wrist free of one loop and then another. And now
it's slack enough that he can sort of bat at it with the claws of his other
hand, but no. Moving his right arm was a mistake.
Karkat spits out the rope and bites it again, closer to his hand. He unwinds
another coil the same way. There are only a few loops left, and those have
already loosened slightly. They come away faster, unraveling themselves two at
a time when he shakes his hand.
Until the rope doesn't hold him anymore. Karkat takes it out of his lips and
brushes it away. It's not touching him at all, and in the pre-morning glare
it's thin and dull gray on the ground.
He's free.
He's free, and his insides churn with it. The air is starting to warm, and the
temperature change spurs the breeze to move faster around him. When it touches
his neck, Karkat shudders. The absence of the rope burns in his mind as a
phantom line. He feels more naked now, more exposed, as if the half inch of
smooth cord made any sort of difference.
He has to keep going. There's a next step, if staying alive until evening
remains one of his life goals, but choosing to take it looms impossible and
exhausting.
There are long dents crisscrossing his left hand where the rope had dug in, and
Karkat's fingers prickle with static. They wiggle at his command, but they
don't feel entirely attached to him yet.
Karkat plants them by his chest and leverages himself up from the ground,
propping himself into something like a sitting position. His shoulder and
entire left arm shake under his weight, and Karkat shifts and drags himself so
that his back is supported again by the boulder.
The dark, open mouth of the cave looks threatening rather than welcoming, and
too close. Which should just be submitted into evidence that he has the mind of
an idiot, because he's going to have to get there by himself. Considering the
unwillingness of his body to do anything right now, it should look too far
away.
It's not quite move or die time, so Karkat gives in and pauses to rest. He
leans against the rock and takes a series of shuddering breaths, and he feels
no more ready at the end of them. But it's enough hesitating. He pulls his legs
in, getting ready to climb all the way to his feet.
Then there's a glimpse of movement at the cave's mouth. It's Karkat's lusus,
rushing out from the cave's protection. It's returning for him, and Karkat
slumps, his muscles relaxing without waiting for his permission. A few fresh
tears spill over his lower eyelids. He didn't really believe his lusus had
abandoned him, but seeing it again makes him nauseous with something like hope.
His lusus isn't going to let him die here. Right? So doesn't that mean it's not
up to Karkat anymore? That he can stop struggling?
His lusus has its arms folded to its chest. For several confusing seconds, it
looks like it's carrying an armful of actual black and gray shadow towards
Karkat, like shadow is something that can be harvested from stony cave walls as
protection from the day. But as his lusus gets closer, the illusion gains form
and detail. It's black and gray cloth. It's clothes.
Karkat's lusus stops beside the rock and opens its arms, and everything drops
next to Karkat. One singular shoe bounces away, and a few smaller strips are
stolen by the wind, but most of it lands into a small fabric pile.
Karkat's first impulse is to lie down and curl up in it, and never mind the
coming morning. This is an utterly ridiculous desire to have, but before Karkat
can figure out what the fuck is wrong with himself, his lusus interrupts with
an impatient chitter.
Karkat reaches into the clothes, picking aside the dark gray remains of his
pants. They're entirely unusable, nothing but torn pieces of fabric now, the
edges ripped apart when the adult had held him down and towered over him, had
touched him, her eyes bright with glee...
Karkat hisses. But he forces himself to keep his hand where it is. Even when
the next torn swatch is black and decorated with a relish green edge. His Lusus
had been indiscriminate when prowling for clothing. This was once part of
Ladeci's t-shirt.
The adults had destroyed that as well, but beneath another handful of ruined
strips Karkat finds a pair of black pants. These are mostly intact, if Karkat
doesn't mind the missing top clasp, though they're stiff with patches of dried
green blood.
Ladeci's pants, and Karkat wants to drop them and cleanse his hand in sunlight.
But they'd get him home.
His lusus chitters louder, and Karkat says, "Fine, okay. Fine." He twists so
that the pants are lined up to his feet, and works at sliding them over his
lower body. He ends up lying down and twisting his hips as he inches the pants
up with one hand, trying very hard not to focus on the rough texture of the
soiled fabric as it touches the skin of his legs.
When Karkat finally gets the waistband settled above his hips, he scrambles
back into a sitting position. Ladeci had been taller than him, and the pants
trail down over his feet, blocking them from view. At least Karkat won't have
to chase down the one shoe his lusus had foraged, lest any hypothetical
busybody insomniac catches a glimpse of Karkat's freak, betraying toes.
The fabric pile is spread out now, and Karkat sees one black arm of his shirt.
He pulls it free, and the rest of the shirt follows. It's still in one piece,
though split open along the front. Completely ruined, but then Ladeci's shirt
is confetti.
Karkat wraps the shirt around his torso. He settles it over his shoulders like
a cape, and then works to guide his right arm into its sleeve. His wrist
doesn't want to bend properly, and it's hard to keep his fingers from getting
tangled in the fabric, even ignoring the pain, and by the time his hand is
through Karkat's beginning to think that having his shirt torn open is yet
another thing to be grateful for. He wouldn't have gotten the sleeve on
otherwise.
Karkat shoves his left arm through the remaining sleeve and draws the gaping
front of his shirt closed. The bright red slash across his chest is hidden
beneath black fabric, and further buried when he presses his broken arm back
against his torso. His right hand falls near the center of his shirt, so Karkat
clenches his fingers to hold the fabric in place. The broken edges of his sign
are joined together around his fist.
And it's like a connection has closed, deep within Karkat's brain. He breathes
out slowly, and it feels as though he's been holding his breath for a very long
time.
Karkat's lusus is hovering beside Karkat, so close that its body casts him into
semi-shade. It leans down and snuffles, and air blows damp and too loud into
Karkat's ear. Normally Karkat would be irritated and swat his lusus away, but
right now he's desperate for the connection. He raises his left hand and places
his palm flat on the side of his lusus's face. It's smooth against his skin.
With more caution than Karkat can remember it ever using with him, his lusus
swings its arms forward and wraps them around Karkat. It rests the flat side of
one pincher just beneath his shoulderblades and works the other through the
dirt underneath his hips. When it pulls itself up to a taller stance, Karkat is
lifted and held against its chest.
It's awkward. His lusus hasn't carried Karkat like this in sweeps. Not since he
was much smaller, barely pupated, although this is largely because Karkat
hasn't let it try. He's been too proud. Now Karkat curls into his lusus,
pressing his body closer to the shape of its carapace. He tightens his left
fingers into the edge between its neck and thorax and holds on.
Karkat's lusus turns around, still clutching him, and jumps into a run. It
starts without warning him, and there's an awful, disorientating moment where
gravity yanks him down like he's shoved a stone into his digestive purse. But
then the movements even out into his lusus's familiar lumbering stride. Back,
over, and back again. Steady, and faster than Karkat could have run on his own.
His lusus's armored plates slide into each other as it moves, but it holds its
chest relatively steady around Karkat.
Karkat watches unfocussedly at the view around his lusus's elbow. The stones
they're running past grow smaller as they travel farther away from the cave,
but they grow brighter too, noticeably now, with every moment.
It's getting hard to look out at all, especially when his lusus passes the low,
encroaching boundary of reflective vegetation, all those bright whites and
pinks. The air gains an aromatic scent as their dew water evaporates into the
morning.
Karkat turns his head so that the only thing he can see is his lusus's shadowed
armor. It smells of safety, home. His lusus tightens its grip on Karkat and
shifts its claw up to support his head in its new, more hidden position. With
its other claw it tucks Karkat's legs closer, even though the hemlines of the
pants he's wearing dangle inches below his feet.
His body complains at being folded into a new position, however slight the
change. His right elbow is jammed tighter between his chest and his lusus's, so
that every bounce reverberates right through to his fingertips. His throat
prepares a whimper, but Karkat holds it back.
He's not cold anymore. He's warm, even underneath his lusus's cool, protecting
shell. The air is warm, and warming. Softly in the background, as a quiet
underline to his lusus's crashing footsteps, Karkat can hear the crackle of
water escaping twigs and tiny insect bodies. Newly dead things. Light still
winds in between the spaces where Karkat's face meets his lusus's carapace,
even if he clenches his eyes, and Karkat nervously brings his exposed hand down
to his chest. He twines left fingers through his right, hiding them in the
black folds of fabric around his sign.
His lusus's gait is faster now. Its strides are longer and shakier, and its
chest is heaving hard above Karkat's. And, no, Karkat doesn't let himself
whimper, not even when his lusus trips and staggers. It tightens its hold
around him, bending his joints in further, but Karkat would have to be the
pail-spawned bastard of a mildly inconvenienced saltsucker to complain now.
The ground carries them up a gentle slope and then flattens. It's the area
surrounding the neighborhood lawnrings, it has to be, and Karkat's lusus makes
wide turns as it runs, probably to avoid the nearby hives.
His lusus winds to the left and straightens, and keeps running. And it keeps
running, another ten seconds, twenty, and shouldn't they have reached home by
now? Karkat's idea of where he is grows fuzzier with every moment his lusus
doesn't slow down. He's been assuming it's taking him back to their hive, but
what if that's wrong? Karkat hasn't been watching the route.
His lusus could be heading anywhere. Another cave, maybe, closer. Or maybe it's
already gone sun mad, and they've been wandering in circles, lost, and it's too
late to find shelter now.
And then Karkat's lusus brakes, suddenly as if it has just noticed a glass
plate wall set across its path. It twists hard to one side, and Karkat feels a
lick of sunlight over the edge of one horn, a sliver of cheek, and the curve of
his ear. It's still not strong enough to hurt in the first moments of exposure,
but it's an ugly, point radiant heat, wrong wrong wrong on his skin. He tries
to press his forehead deeper into his lusus, but its carapace isn't something
that will give.
All his lusus's momentum is carried through to one shoulder, and it pushes into
resistance. Once, and when it bounces off, again, and Karkat has a vivid memory
flash of trying to train his lusus to stop doing this.
Karkat even designed most of the hive doors so they can be accessed by a
pincher claw, but no, his lusus has to be brain dead and push its way in
anyway. It warps the vertical door supports!
Karkat remembers, with confusion, caring a great deal about warped vertical
door supports. He made the carpenter droids heavily reinforce the hive's
entrances last time, to encourage his lusus to use them properly. It could open
the door easily with its pinchers, but right now Karkat's lusus has its arms
full, and Karkat really doesn't want it to put him down. Fuck. He is so
shortsighted.
His lusus backs up and throws itself forward one more time. When its shoulder
connects, Karkat's lusus makes a screech that comes out rough and garbled, like
it started with the force of a much louder noise.
The door makes its own screech, bending metal, and gives way.
***** Chapter 10 *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
The brightness filtering in through the sides of his eyes vanishes completely
between one second and the next, but the utter absence of light is so sudden it
disorients him. It might be better if he looks around, but Karkat still doesn't
want to move his head, and his lusus doesn't let him go.
His sinuses are still full of the stench of blood and burned things, so it's a
change in the texture of the atmosphere, more than anything, that means safety.
The air inside isn't much cooler, but it's still. There is no rising current
pressing into his clothes, no yawning breeze ruffling the ends of his hair.
Enclosure. Finally.
Karkat's lusus moves in a shorter, more careful gait. It winds around furniture
and piles of Karkat's crap, and then with each step it pulls itself upwards,
huffing into a wheeze every time. The staircase. Karkat now has a precise
mental image of his location, and it's like the world settles around him. All
those tiny movements and nudges against his horns are slotted into meaning.
His lusus must be carrying him to his respiteblock. Where it will dump him
bodily into his recuperacoon, like it used to when he was sweeps younger and
refusing to go to sleep for days at a time, just because he didn't enjoy the
nightmares, forcing himself to stay awake until long past he was capable of
acting like a rational being.
Karkat doesn't want to leave his lusus, but he's so ready to be done with
consciousness for a while, to let go and slip away. He can't imagine any
nightmare he's afraid of meeting today.
He must have already started to relax, because when his lusus makes a sharp
turn before reaching Karkat's respiteblock, full alertness returns to him with
a jolt of alarmed confusion.
Karkat's lusus bends further down, until Karkat's ass rests on hard floor and
his shoulders touch against a surface much more giving than rock. His lusus
begins to loosen its arms around him.
Karkat leans closer to compensate, but he's not holding on to his lusus
anymore. His hands are twisted into his own shirt, into one another's fingers,
and he doesn't untangle them in time to reach out. When his lusus pulls up,
Karkat remains behind.
His lusus's chestplates move away from Karkat's face, and the more open air
carries the scent of scouring slime and the sour tinge of a load gaper. He's in
the ablution block, his ablution block, safe, but he still can't shake that
cloying, outdoors smell of burnt things.
Then Karkat's lusus takes a step backwards, and Karkat knows why. The underside
of its chest and abdomen, where Karkat had been pressed, are smooth and pale,
but his lusus had angled him away from the sun. The rest of its body hadn't
been sheltered from the daylight.
The outer edges of its sides and shoulders, elbows, face have darkened under
the morning solar rays. In places, its carapace is cracked and leaking a thin,
yellow-clear fluid, which bewilders Karkat until he realizes it isn't blood.
Karkat can't see his lusus's back from where he's half-sitting, half-sprawled
on the floor, but there's no way it would look any better.
Karkat's lusus tilts its head as it looks at him. The rightmost parts of its
shell have the worse damage. The sun was rising on that side as it ran. Both
its right eyes bulge under their protective film, and Karkat has no idea if
they're permanently damaged.
It feels like a hand has reached into Karkat's chest, collected his organs, and
clenched. He needs to scream so badly he's choking on it, and when he does
manage to force air through his windhole, he surprises himself by not being
horrified but furious.
"You asshole!" Karkat shouts at his lusus. "You shit for sponge, hoofbeast
mounting idiot! There was shelter right there! Right fucking there!"
His lusus rears very slightly at Karkat's outburst. One of its back spines hits
the door frame and crumples, its tip folding to an angle. Dark flakes drift
from the bend like dust. Karkat's lusus screeches a response at him. No. Stop.
No. Quiet. Wrong. No.
Maybe its aural canals are sore, because the rest of it has to be, but Karkat
isn't ready to stop. "You never fucking listen to me! Even when I'm right,
which is, oh let me check, always. So of course you pick the time I've decided
to give raving lunacy a test run. You should have dragged me back. In there."
"Unless what, did you think I could have hurt you? Worse than this?"
He's crying again. His lusus swings a claw forward and prods Karkat awkwardly
under his eye. Karkat raises his hand to hit it away, but somehow ends up
holding on instead. "Why didn't you make me?"
His lusus screeches again, softer. No.
It pulls its claw from Karkat's fingers and reaches to a horizontal storage
plank, where it takes a box of medical supplies. This is the first time in
perigees Karkat has needed it. His lusus brings it down to Karkat, holding the
box by Karkat's chest until he grasps the sides shakily and guides it to his
lap. His lusus lets go.
The edges of the box's metal bite into his legs. It feels much, much heavier
than Karkat knows it is.
His lusus chitters at him. Questioning, and Karkat would wave dismissively
except his arms feel too heavy as well. "Yeah," he says instead. He stares at
the box lying across his thighs. Its dull gray finish is easier to face than
the burned, warped sections on his lusus's forehead. "Thanks."
His lusus backs out through the doorway. It moves slowly, gingerly, trying to
avoid touching the walls, and it makes a low, strangled huffing noise when it
proves too big to succeed. It maneuvers around in the hallway and then, after
another moment's glance at Karkat, it hurries back to the stairs. It will be
heading for the levels underneath their hive, its own space, no doubt to soothe
itself in the salt slime pools there.
And Karkat's glad. Really. It already put itself in way too much pain for his
sake, he'd be the worst troll to ever exist if he wanted more from it. But even
his own ablution block feels too large, empty and exposed now that his lusus
has left him alone.
For minutes, Karkat doesn't do anything at all. He doesn't have to. Nothing is
forcing him, and nothing is going to come for him. He's safe here.
Karkat knows that, even if his breathing is fast and stilted because he can't
actually believe it. His legs are splayed out in front of him, and they feel
more like ablution block installations than pieces of himself. It would be so
easy to leave them where they are, to close his eyes and forget. His mind is
just as heavy and exhausted as the rest of him. And he's home.
But if his lusus thought he'd be okay sleeping on the ground, it could have
bundled him into much nearer shelter. It could still be unhurt, and as terrible
as moving is going to be, Karkat imagines his lusus returning in the evening to
find that Karkat's followed up on its sacrifice with a 'fuck you, I'd rather
loaf around on my apathetic ass pillows,' and it's impossible for anything to
be worse.
Even the blank gray side of the medical box seems to be mocking him. Salvation
has been placed directly into his hands, and he's still too useless to do
anything about it.
Karkat lifts his arm from the elbow and limply drags the side of his hand
against the box's latch. Which does nothing but scrape his hand, so he's going
to have to do this properly anyway. He'll have to turn his wrist, and bend his
fingers, and align his nails in a line under the metal, and twist all of them
up together... It's so complicated.
He does the same thing over again, the nerveless pawing. This time, the latch
catches on his last knuckle. If he's careful to keep the pressure right, he can
push it up.
The metal lid cracks from the side and flops over, banging onto his knees. A
few unnaturally red drops fall onto a clean black bandage, and Karkat freezes,
panicking for no fucking reason, until he eventually manages to notice that
he's only pulled open a cut on his hand and that it doesn't even matter. No one
can see. And anyone who could would have more to see than a half inch scratch.
The top of the medical supply box is layered with new bandages, neatly wrapped.
Karkat starts to pull at one, and then he pauses to stare at his hands. They're
more black than gray, and more brown than black, covered in grime and dirt and
red dried so dark he can almost pretend that he's a rust blood.
His hands are filthy, and the rest of his skin can't be any better. He'll ruin
anything he touches.
Karkat has to clean up first. But that means getting off the floor, and he's
not sure he can. His legs are stuck. There's a box on top of them.
Karkat brings his hand to the side of the box and presses with his palm. The
metal is cool, and it doesn't move immediately. He pushes harder, until his
shoulder burns, and finally it starts to slide. It wobbles precariously as it
moves from two legs to one, and Karkat has a half formed plan about catching it
and laying it gently on the floor, but it topples entirely off his lap before
he works out the necessary wrist placement.
There's a clang, and one bottle bounces free into the opposite wall, but most
of the box's contents get stuck in black bandages before they scatter too far.
Good enough.
Karkat's back is supported by the side of his ablution trap. It's not quite
squishy enough to be 'cushioned,' but it still absorbs any force he pushes into
it, making it hard to get the leverage to lean away. Karkat ends up grabbing
the lip of his load gaper and pulling. Gross, but probably from the load
gaper's perspective. His fingers smear greasy lines over the seat.
He twists away from the trap and kicks at the floor until his legs are folded
more or less underneath him. One of his heels knocks the back of the medical
box, which tips upside down so that the majority of the spilled contents are
hidden again under the metal. The reverberation from the hit travels all the
way up his leg, his chest, right through his horns, and Karkat nearly loses his
grip and tumbles down to the floor. He clenches his teeth and waits for the
wave of pain to pass, or at least settle.
Then he shoves with his legs and climbs upwards, grappling for each inch. He
trades his grip on the load gaper for the higher edge of the cleansing basin.
His left hand closes around the hydration spout, and there. Even if he's bent
forward, even if he's heaving like he's about to vomit. He's standing.
There's a mirror above the cleansing basin, and Karkat suddenly can't turn his
eyes from a bright slash of reflected red. His shirt has fallen open, and the
cut that the adult sliced across his chest is on display in silvered glass. The
vivid red line is framed by curtains of black fabric and the snapped gray lines
of his sign.
Part of it tore again while he was struggling from the floor, and bright red
oozes over the length of the cut and starts to drip thickly and sluggishly down
his chest. The line is huge, and disgusting, and seeing it face on makes Karkat
think he's going to actually vomit.
Is it deep enough to scar? Is he going to have to look at it for the rest of
his life, and know?
Karkat can't handle this right now.
The mirror is higher on the wall than it needs to be, because Karkat's waiting
on a growth spurt, and if he bends forward a couple of inches the gash vanishes
from the bottom of the reflection. The cut stings, pulling across his skin, but
he doesn't have to see it.
Further up, his hair is even more of a disaster than his usual "don't give a
fuck" chic. Entire sections are matted together, flattened to his skull or
sticking up at unfamiliar angles. His fringe is largely crusted to his skin,
one side glued to the large bruise reaching over his cheek and nose. Three
dulling red streaks shoot through the black, their paths separated by the
distance between an adult's claws.
There is dried residue in blue and green at the edges of his forehead, flaking
from his hairline and the roots of his eyebrows. One set of upper eyelashes is
a solid, filmy block. Dark emerald gunk is still caught in the corners of his
nostrils, his lips, the crease under his eye.
And if Karkat tries not to remember, it almost could be someone else's blood
splashed across his face. The troll in the mirror has the complexion of a
rotting meat slab dropped in cave grime, and the cuts on his face are too
vivid, and he looks like he entered a battle with musclebeast and an Imperial
Drone.
And, if he's standing here now, like he made it through.
He looks like a bad ass.
Karkat raises his lip, and his reflection snarls as if he's still waiting for a
challenge. One of his side fangs is chipped, and there are bits of green and
bright red in the spaces below his gums. He could be Troll Sylvester Stallone,
triumphant after tearing his enemies apart by tooth and claw.
It's not true. The only thing that smells, that tastes like blood is his own.
But what is true is that Karkat spent an entire day as the close held captive
of two real to god fucking adult trolls and that he impressed them so much they
didn't kill him.
The woman was laughing as she left him, but she left him. Karkat made a bargain
with an adult and he kept it, and that's more impressive than a dozen
musclebeast carcasses with his sign scythed into them. He survived. He won.
But when he meets his own stare, his reflected eyes are hollow and lined in
bright red. Mutant tears have dried branching trails through the dirt on his
face. His gaze jerks down, like his eyeballs are suddenly heavy in his head.
His left hand, clutching the hydration spout, has smeared dark brown beside the
edges of his palm. It's no less filthy than before he got up. And Karkat can't
spare the balance, so he has to uncurl his right hand from the side of the
cleansing basin to activate the flow of water. It's set to his preferred
temperature, but when he brings his fingers cautiously under the spout, the
water is shockingly warm. The weight of it carries to the dent in his forearm,
but Karkat has become practiced at ignoring that particular pain.
The grime begins to sluice off, leaving behind a mess of bruises and scraped
skin, and as the water bounces in shiny arcs from his fingers, Karkat remembers
that he is so, so thirsty. His tongue aches with it.
His hand isn't clean yet, but Karkat cups what water he can in his palm and
bends to take it. He traps it in his lips with a force close to biting.
It's thick with dirt, and then immediately with the other shit caught in the
corners inside Karkat's mouth. He wants to swallow, but he can't seem to bring
it back on his tongue. He finally just opens his mouth, letting the water spill
back into the basin.
The water isn't clear at all anymore, polluted with nothing he wants to think
about. Emerald green and mutant red swirl together down the drain, alongside
what Karkat is pretty sure is a pebble. He has no idea when a pebble got behind
his lips.
Karkat takes a second handful of water, and this one he manages to swallow
although it still tastes grungy and sour. The water runs too warm over the back
of his mouth, and he can feel it moving inside him, pouring down the length to
his digestive purse. The scratched up parts of his throat flare like he's
scraping them raw all over again.
He coughs, spluttering more dark flecks into the basin, and when his torso
jerks forward he almost collapses. He tries to tighten his grip on the
hydration spout, but his palm slips with grime or sweat or slurpbeast eyegunk
or who knows what the fuck.
He clamps down on the rest of the coughing fit, shuddering with the suppressed
air, and even that much movement is hard to ride out.
His back must be really messed up. But of course it must be. The adults hadn't
been inclined towards gentleness when they were slamming him around. Kicking
him or dragging him or tossing him, or snapping him with invisible whips, or
pounding him into stone over and over and over and....
Karkat brings up more water, and in his hurry he splashes his face with about
as much as he manages to get in his mouth. And he should twist around to check
the damage to his back, but he's sure he really would fall if he did.
Besides, what's the point? He knows what he'll find. Red and black where there
should be a smooth gray curve, and probably the pocking of craters, where
they'd cracked that bone too. It's bad enough, knowing. Feeling. He doesn't
need to see it.
When his hand fills with water again he carries it to his mouth. It takes a few
seconds this time, and he loses most of it over the inches of distance. His arm
is shaking badly. Both of them are. He's not going to be able to hold himself
up much longer.
Karkat bends closer, forcing through the white blaze of pain, and drinks what
he can. He shovels the water into his mouth with his still dirty hand, and
ignores that pain too, and gulps it down more quickly than is comfortable,
sucks it through his teeth. Until his support arm stops shaking with effort and
actually folds at the shoulder. His fingers start to slip free. In the mirror,
the troll's eyes widen despite Karkat expecting this. Glancing up from his
half-crouch, he looks like something too young for five sweeps and alarmingly
wild.
And it doesn't matter if he's still thirsty. He's done.
He catches himself enough with his chest and fingers on the edge of the basin
that he can slow his fall, that he can slide his way downward and not simply
topple to the floor. Karkat reaches back for the load gaper. He doesn't quite
grab the lip, but his side settles into it so that his drop to his knees is
almost controlled.
His heel hits something hard. The box of medical supplies. Karkat had the
entire bathroom to choose from, and he put the metal box in the one spot where
it would be continually in his way. His decision making skills are amazing.
He kicks out angrily with his heel, hard enough that the box skids a few inches
over, black bandages unfolding from underneath it like digestive coils. Then,
breathing through the aftershock of the impact, he regrets this.
Amazing.
Karkat turns so that his back is against the load gaper and lowers himself
until he's more or less sitting. Ladeci's pant legs rise in sad lumps where
Karkat is fairly sure his toes would be. With the clasp broken, it won't take
much work to peel them off him, finally. But when Karkat lowers his hands to
his hips, making a brief detour to drape his sign closed again over his chest,
he hesitates as his claws touch the fabric.
Even with the stiffened sections, they feel so normal. They could be a pair of
his own pants, if he tended towards black instead of gray.
Well, yes, congratulations, he's correctly identified a fucking pair of pants.
What the fuck was he expecting?
Karkat pushes down at the waist of the pants and shifts his hips until the top
line of fabric is across his thighs. Then he makes a series of small kicking
movements, where he grabs the insides of the pant legs with his heels and tugs
them outward. When most of the fabric has been gathered over his ankles, Karkat
only has to bend his legs in very slightly and... There. He's out. And he
barely wants to pass out from new pain at all.
Ladeci's pants are curled into themselves, the fabric tubules hugging each
other in a lonely black pile. Karkat's legs are exposed again, but it's still
hard to tell how badly they're injured. After kicking around in the dirt,
they're covered in as much obscuring grime as his hands had been.
Karkat relaxes his shoulders. Or tries to. They don't move, so he consciously
commands them to droop, hissing through each fraction of an inch, until his
shirt slides down behind him. It bunches at his lower back, and the sleeves
tangle around his arms and hold them close against the load gaper.
He leans forward to ease them out. It's slow. Even though there are no metal
cuffs on him this time and even though this time every twist and pull of his
arms is a louder spike of agony, Karkat freezes completely more than once,
overwhelmed by the familiarity of his struggle.
When the shirt does fall completely from his wrists Karkat wants to rest for a
moment, but he is too immediately conscious that he's naked, never mind that
he's alone and deep within his own hive. And every time his breathing organ
expands, he can feel the warmth of the water sitting awkwardly in the middle of
his chest, churning around and around with everything else he ingested. He
thinks he's going to be sick. He wants to be sick, wants to dig his claws down
his protein chute and shovel their fluid out of him, but nothing happens.
Karkat reaches and hooks his fingers into the side of the ablution trap. He
pulls himself up enough that he can lift a leg onto the ledge, and he half
slides, half rolls into the slime.
And then he has to remind himself that he's not trying to escape, whatever it
feels like. What the hell is there to escape from? Air molecules? Air molecules
that are touching him, air molecules that are sliding over his bare,
unprotected skin... This is ridiculous. Get into the ablution trap. That was
his plan.
The scouring slime pooled in his ablution trap could have stood replacing the
last three times he used it, but if Karkat was too lazy to do it before, he
really doesn't have the energy now. The slime is still slightly warmer than the
air. It accepts him with a gloopy slurping noise and sloshes up against his
chin. Karkat blinks up at the gray ceiling, rough with patterns etched by slow
corrosion. He's surrounded by the familiar tingle of dirt being pulled molecule
by molecule away, but where his skin is broken it stings.
This is all right, expected. Karkat's been injured before. He has been injured
lots of times, really, even if not this comprehensively. He knew what was
waiting for him, and this is a cleansing pain. It's welcome.
His lusus must be feeling something similar right now, submerging its burnt
carapace in the underhive salt slime pools. And it's fucked up and unnecessary
that his lusus is hurting at all, but knowing that they're sharing the same
hurt is a little comforting anyway. It's like there's still a connection,
though Karkat's lusus is so far from him and they have no psychic join.
Scouring slime is thinner than sopor and it's bitter in Karkat's sinuses, but
the ablution trap's side walls hide him away. They run close around his limbs,
solid where his drifting fingernails bounce into them, and it's so much like
being tucked safe in his recuperacoon Karkat finds himself unwinding several
millimeters.
Karkat closes his eyes and allows his head to sink below the surface level. The
slime runs over his face, climbing over his cheeks and scalp and, when he tilts
his head back, the entirety of his horns.
Karkat usually avoids doing that. He's pretty sure the slime scours small bits
of collateral damage off whatever it touches, and he's happier losing a layer
of old skin cells than horn. But he's less happy than that about having to
wonder just exactly what gunk the adult had ground into them.
With Karkat's horns submerged, the tingling sensation multiplies in his
awareness, drowning out the sections of his skin more convinced that they're on
fire. The ablution trap seems much vaster than seconds ago. He's drifting in a
warm ocean, but here there's no salt thickened water. Only slime to encircle
him, cradle him, buffer him from the outside world.
When his fingers and toes brush against the sides of the trap, the ocean
becomes no smaller in his imagination, but Karkat is struck with the sense of
being huge himself, powerful and big enough to entirely fill the space. If the
slime around him is an ocean, he himself must be a world beneath it.
A world, he doesn't have to worry or think. His path is inscribed by inertia,
and he doesn't have to move. Which is good because when he tries, he's
incapable. He's frozen. Trapped in place. Caught, and above him stretching ever
longer over the surface, there is the shadow of something becoming fast larger
or fast closer.
The shadow branches out an arm, reaching for him, and branches again. It
sprouts a tip of five stretching claws.
He would run or scream or cringe, but he can't. He can't do anything but wait
for it to get large enough or close enough and Karkat doesn't understand how
there can be a shadow, when there hadn't been any light...
Karkat's eyes jerk open. He sees green for the brief instant before the only
thing his ocular related nerves register is burning.
He squeezes his eyelids shut and scrambles upwards. Karkat doesn't wait to hit
the surface before opening his meal tube for a deeply felt "Fuck!" so when he
does break through, he's already choking and spitting up globs of bright green.
The scouring slime's tingling isn't nearly so pleasant from the inside.
One hand smacks the side of the ablution trap, and Karkat hauls himself over
it. He pulls and kicks until the solid edge of the trap is behind him and he's
slipping into a bone jangling landing on the respite block floor.
Even when he's finished coughing, it takes him more than a minute to get his
breathing under anything like control. The blood pounds in his head. He's
shaking. His upper cheekbones inform him of a drippy wetness, nothing like the
touch of scouring slime.
He's probably tearing up. Again. He has to stop doing that.
Karkat runs a hand angrily over his face before opening his eyes and blinking
through the sting. He's sitting with his ass on the small pile of discarded
clothes, not that they did much to soften his fall. The medical supply box is
upturned a few inches from his knee. Karkat waits through a few shoulder
heaving breaths, making sure he's steady, and reaches for the box.
The metal side scrapes over the floor, and tangled bandages and a few small
bottles and canisters roll out as Karkat drags it to him. Hopefully he won't
need anything in them enough to chase after it.
When the box is up to Karkat's hip, against the side of the ablution trap,
Karkat pries it from the floor. All the medical supplies still caught
underneath tumble out, spreading into a tiny heap. Karkat paws through bandages
and comes up with a bottle of epidermal repair adhesive.
It's mostly full. The bottle has proved unnecessarily large for the number of
injuries he's acquired since adding it to his medical collection. But he'll
make up for it this time.
The scouring slime has dissolved open some of his scrapes and cuts, and there
are multiple trickles of vivid red winding over Karkat's freshly cleaned skin,
under the long chest wound especially.
Karkat thumbs open the bottle. He transfers it clumsily to his right hand and,
with a hiss, touches the edge of the sliced skin. He presses it close together
and squirts the epidermal repair adhesive over the junction, and he holds it
until the adhesive is secure. And then he moves on to the next inch of split
flesh.
His right arm shakes, so much of the adhesive is wasted in twitchy lines across
less damaged skin. And he has to focus carefully on the slice, staring intently
into his own mutant flesh. Bright, slow red trickles over his fingertips until
the whole seam is finally fixed.
Karkat examines his handiwork. It looks like the shitpath of a blind and
hornless grub, but it's not leaking. He glances at the rest of his body, and
considering the ratio of bright red to black to gray, fixing all his broken
skin is going to take hours. And he doesn't even know which part to do next.
He finally gloops some adhesive onto a particularly nasty scrape on his hip...
where the male adult had thrown him to the ground, Karkat's hip grating with
the force over rough stone floor...
Karkat stares at the mess left to take care of, and comes to a decision of fuck
this.
None of it is going to kill him. He doesn't know how screwed up his back is,
but it can fucking well heal without his coddling.
He tosses the adhesive back next to the mound of bandages, and it turns in a
wide circle, dripping a line of clear liquid just the way Ladeci's newly broken
horn had traced out a long arc in green.
Karkat forgot to close it properly.
Whatever.
He digs back into the pile and brings out a dual metal loop. Bandages have
wrapped through it. Karkat shakes them off over the complaints of his shoulder
and slides the loop around his right hand. He tightens it to the width of his
forearm with a series of metallic clicks that itch at his fangs, and then he
activates it.
The skeletal reinforcement module blinks on, lights flashing green as it
assesses the damage to his arm. Then the lights on each ring switch to blue,
and the rings start to grow away from each other, extruding a dull yellow-brown
substance between them. Maybe it'd have been classier to choose a style in his
own blood color, but that wasn't exactly an option.
Karkat watches with fascination. He's never really needed skeletal
reinforcement before. The time he tried to grow one over a small contusion
crater on his leg, the module winked green twice and then, unimpressed with
Karkat's dramatics, simply shut itself off.
The rings reach the outside boundaries of the dent in Karkat's forearm, and the
reinforcement module pauses briefly while its extruded sludge hardens. Then the
light flashes pink.
Karkat knows the general procedure, but it's still a shock when the module
punches through his arm, anchoring itself in the undamaged sections of his
bone.
Karkat loses his balance in the flare of pain and slips from sitting to lying
half curled on the floor. The lights blaze solid pink, checking the result, and
switch off. Karkat's below bone throbbing takes longer.
When it starts to subside, Karkat raises his arm a few tentative inches from
the floor.
It's not comfortable. The bolts from the skeletal reinforcement module pull at
his flesh where they've stamped through it, and every movement still shakes the
cracked section of his arm.
He turns his wrist and pulls in his fingers. A few drops of vivid red gather at
the edge of the module closest to his hand. Karkat can still feel the dent
pressing into his tendons, and the newly punctured bone is making itself known,
but his arm seems more stable. Like if he falls on it at the wrong angle, it
won't hinge all the way open.
Karkat pushes himself up, making a point to leverage all his weight onto his
right arm. It hurts, but its solid. It's only his arm's joints that wobble with
the threat of collapse, and that doesn't distinguish them from his left elbow
or his knees. When he's back up on his ass, he drags his fingers into a
defiant, nerve offending fist.
He reaches up for the lip of the load gaper, ready to struggle one more, and
hopefully one last, time to his feet. But he glances down as he does and...
Karkat's hips are on the pile of destroyed clothes, and there's a black smear
across one loop of his halved sign. He doesn't think it had been there before,
and he scowls at it, offended by its inexplicability. Until his attention
happens to fall on the dark slickness at the top of his inner thigh.
It's barely visible over the bruises still darkening there, but now that he's
noticed it, he can't look away. It's only a sheen, thinned now, but Karkat
knows what it is. Engine grease.
The scouring slime hadn't reached beyond his outside skin, so the grease is
still inside him everywhere the adult had forced her way in. It's drying slowly
in his ass. His nook.
Karkat gives up on standing and pulls his hand back to hover over his thigh. He
can't bring himself to wipe away the grease, but he can't handle thinking about
it pooling, squelching, hardening inside him.
At least the grease shoved up his ass will get pushed out the next time he uses
the load gaper, but how the fuck is it going to be transported out of his nook?
He can't generate the fluid to get rid of it, even if he wanted to spend the
next perigee rubbing himself off. That has been proven today.
Oh god, it might stay stuck up there for sweeps then, smeared black along the
channel of his nook, marking out exactly where the adult had touched him.
Exactly what Karkat had let her take from him, without him putting up any fight
at all.
Even if the grease is hidden to everything except his own knowledge that it's
there... No. He can't do this. He needs to get it out.
The medical supply pile is becoming more and more scattered over the floor.
Karkat glances over it for anything he can use, but most of the contents within
easy reach are unraveling lumps of bandages. He finally closes his hand over an
unused syringe, stored in pieces. The metal tip is attached to a small motor,
and the bottle with it promises to restore function to torn inner muscles. It's
complete with a helpful diagram of where to punch it through his limbs, if
Karkat is inclined. Karkat is not inclined.
But the syringe itself looks like it might help him. Karkat breaks the
packaging with his teeth and peels out the syringe, then lets the rest drop
back to the floor beside the other scattered medical contents. Then he grabs
the load gaper again and pulls himself up. He turns and sits on it this time,
balancing his thighs on the ledge and spreading them open, and disregarding the
air brushing gentle and cool over his crotch.
Karkat stares at the empty syringe. After a brief, terrible moment considering
the possibility of scouring slime burning up his nook, Karkat reaches up
towards the cleansing basin instead. He places the syringe under the continuing
flow of water, holding it with both hands and steadying his arms on the lip of
the basin. He opens the syringe, sucking the water back.
It doesn't work perfectly and he's left with a syringe of mixed water and air,
but that's good enough.
Karkat brings the syringe down and turns it so that the end is against the
opening of his nook. He takes a nervous breath and clenches his teeth and then,
with a single determined motion, he swings it forward, pushing the tip narrow
and inflexible past the boundary of his orifice, and he plunges the water
through.
The warmth of water surges inside him, lighting up the claw marks carved into
the sides of his nook. He's still not ready for the sensation, although
thankfully, without preparation, it feels less pleasant than just intense. The
water squelches through his nook, because Karkat has personally put it there
like the worst kind of quadrant disloyal pervert, and he whimpers at the
wrongness of it.
When it hits the top of his nook, phantom light, his abdomen responds with a
weak, confused twitching of muscles. He leans into the back of the load gaper
and rides it out, along with a edge of pleasure that is dulled to a memory, a
question of pleasure. His eyes are stinging, but they've never completely
stopped since he opened them in the ablution trap. So maybe he has an excuse
for that much.
The water begins to drain out of him, hitting the load gaper slime with a
swallowed drip drip plop. The liquid running from between his legs is darkened
with grease, and a few thicker sections of black slime follow after the rest of
the water has mostly emptied from him.
Karkat refills the syringe and repeats the entire thing. The water comes out of
him a little clearer, and now that the black has turned to gray, Karkat notices
that some of it actually has a reddy, pinky tinge. Near the end a few clumps of
bright red exit beside the black.
This is the fluid that was supposed to be covering his entire nook, getting him
ready for penetration. As much as his lack there had. Not saved him from
discovery, but at least postponed it. Karkat feels an odd and tentative kind of
pride at these small, almost pink smudges.
Karkat can never risk anyone else seeing it, of course. The adult's hand
clenching down against his bulge as her fingertips scratch over the folds of
his seedflap. Her crotch grinding the texture of her pants into his knee. The
way she...
All of it. This is the closest thing to sex that's ever going to happen to him.
And the bright red bits aren't much, but he's not such a useless child that he
produced nothing.
With the third press of the syringe, the water drips into the load gaper more
or less clean. Karkat sits there for several moments when it's out of him,
waiting for the throbbing of the clawed lines to fade. He can feel the last
dregs of of liquid gathering around the opening of his nook. It drips
occasionally into the slime with a soft plip.
He wants to refill the syringe and do it again. Again and again, until he is
clean inside and out, until every trace they've left on him has been wiped
away. Until he is sure.
But that means the process of twisting and reaching to the basin, and holding
the weight of his arms still, and the thrusting of water up into himself... and
the water really had been pretty clean this time. Clean enough.
Karkat stops making the effort to keep his fingers clenched, and the syringe
slips from his grasp. It falls into the load gaper and vanishes under the
slime, where any evidence of what he just used the syringe for will be slowly
digested to nothing.
That's it. He's done. Yes, he's still in terrible shape, and any given bruise
or cut would be a big deal on any other day, something to yell about as he
carefully winds a black strip over it, but right now he's as finished as he's
going to get. Karkat leans against the back of the load gaper. His arms rest on
the top of his thighs, which are more willing to support the weight than his
shoulders, and Karkat is ready to just close his eyes here and stop moving
until sundown.
Except being asleep on top of a load gaper wouldn't end much better than it had
in the ablution trap. Fuck, he'd probably fall forward and get the sharp half
of the syringe punched through an eye into his brain.
What he needs is sopor slime. He yearns for it, enveloping, soothing,
supporting. His entire body is so heavy. It's had enough of supporting him
while he's awake.
And his recuperacoon isn't so far away, no matter what it feels like. One last
burst of moving, and then he can be done.
Karkat grabs the edge of the basin and climbs to his feet. His legs are stiff
and slow to unbend, his muscles unhappy to be wrenched from the promise of
stopping. When he does make it upright, he needs to keep the support of the
basin. He's breathing in gasps that shake down his limbs to his ankles and his
wrists.
The mirror shows him a reflection more composed, not that that's a high pile of
rotting mammal teats to clear. Now that the scouring slime has pulled
everything away, Karkat's hair is recovering to its more usual shape above his
head. His skin is clean. Even the dried blood has been dissolved, although the
scratches on his face still shine with narrower but brighter streaks of red.
Besides the three claw marks, there are cuts over his ear and along his temple,
and scraped up skin between his jaw and one corner of his mouth, and etcetera
etcetera... various minor damage he hadn't even noticed before it was
highlighted in mutant red. The bruises are still there, various shades of black
mottled over his skin. They're more visible now that the grime and other colors
have been washed away, and there's nothing to blur the contrast with gray.
It still looks like he's been in a fight. A nasty one.
But in the mirror, his eyes are too wide and too hollow, as if they are focused
out to something much further than the polished perpendicular vanity plane
right in front of his face.
Karkat sneers. "Get over yourself, you astonishing pile of sniveling hoofbeast
turd!" His reflection doesn't make any response. "What the fuck is your problem
now!" Yelling hurts his throat, more likely from the scouring slime he'd
decided to pour down it than... anything else, but he only shouts louder. Like
the pain inside his neck can spite the weak looking thing wearing his horns.
"This doesn't get to break me! I'm still here."
He lifts his chin defiantly, to the outrage of his neck muscles, and it exposes
for the mirror overlapping dark coils under his jaw. This is where the green
rope had caught when the adult had dragged him, yanking him over the ground,
electricity jolting into his throat. The black lines could be the shadow of the
rope, as though it's still looped around his throat. Trapping him exactly where
the adult had placed him. Preventing him from doing anything but exactly what
she wants him to do.
Or the lines could be the shadow of the adult's fingers, digging into his neck
as she held him up to see what was inside. And Karkat still doesn't really get
it how her closed, intent stare had felt worse on his skin, just for a moment,
than her knife.
Karkat raises his right hand to block that part of the reflection, and he
almost loses his balance. He grips the basin harder with his left hand to
compensate.
It's kind of neat to see the skeletal reinforcement module wrapped around the
black of his reflected forearm. It adds to the image of someone battle tested,
hard core. But the edge of his hand is a mess of vivid red, some still leaking
from his three or so broken fingernails.
Having a mutant red line hovering across his throat is not much easier than
looking at the dark stamp of coils.
Karkat snarls a last "Fuck you!" at his reflection, and his voice cracks on it.
He's obviously exhausted.
He turns his head from the mirror, exiling his reflection to his peripheral
vision, and focuses on the exit gash. It's not as far as it feels. Karkat
carefully balances on his heels and then lets go of the basin. It only takes
one, one and a half staggering steps before he catches himself on the break in
the wall. Karkat shifts around until he's actually made it into the hallway.
The door to his respite block beckons from across the corridor and a few yards
up.
Karkat removes his fingers from the vertical door support. He takes an unsteady
step towards the opposite wall. He's acutely aware of every line of balance as
he moves, how his weight rolls on his ankles and knees.
Once, he's forced to make a quick side gesture with his arms to prevent
falling. It's like he's trying out his post-wiggler limbs for the first time,
except that Karkat doesn't remember it being this complicated.
When he reaches the other wall, he sinks against it gratefully. His respite
block is only a few steps distant, and Karkat moves to it in an awkward side-
amble, keeping as much weight propped against the wall as he can.
His respite block door has been shut tightly, because apparently you never know
when the ravening hordes might break in for his unguarded copy of last
perigee's Game Grub magazine. Karkat grabs onto the entrance handle, but his
wrist refuses his demand that it twist. Finally he wraps all his fingers
through the handle's decorative splines and pulls one entire arm up and the
other down. The door cracks open and Karkat stumbles forward, catching himself
on the sliding repository stack just inside.
And as happy as he had been to reach his hive, this is his sanctuary. His
respite block is precisely how he left it, as though nothing at all had
happened since yesterday. His Troll Adam Sandler poster is untouched, and the
drooping corner he'd reaffixed last evening is still holding fine. The block
doesn't smell of anything but old echoes of himself, give or take a couple
stale computer games and the chemical waft of sopor slime sitting ready for him
in his recuperacoon, barely a step away.
He could touch the squishy purple exterior right now, pull himself up and in
and then not move any more, at all, for as long as he likes. So pretty much
forever, then.
But.
His computer station isn't that far either, and sitting on the flat top, beside
the one stack of recently watched movies and the other stack of soon to be
watched movies, there's a crumpled black shirt. Exactly like the clean, folded
shirts in the sliding repositories he's leaning on right now, but this one
won't require him bending, and pulling, and unfolding...
It's not like Karkat is comfortable in his nakedness, but he's been focused on
getting his body into sopor. He'd never imagined wanting anything so much. But
now, in view of the opportunity to hide the mess on his torso under the lines
of his unbroken sign, Karkat wants that at least enough to make this very
slight detour. Even though it is a silly thing to want, because what kind of
dense sponged recuperacoon wetter would try to sleep in their clothes.
Karkat pushes himself off the repository stack and begins the slow stumble to
his computer station. He's once again aware of the sensation of his body being
a collection of poorly matched pieces, of his legs and hips not fitting
together properly. Pain vibrates up his bones each time he steps. He keeps
moving, careful, careful, and when he reaches the station he leans his palms
flat on its surface, letting his shoulders take the weight from his ankles. It
does the opposite of help, though Karkat is distracted for a few moments by how
his arm flexes under the reinforcement module.
Karkat lets go and sinks into his chair. There is a wad of gray bunched to one
side, and when Karkat moves to push it on the floor, it reveals itself as a
pair of pants. Karkat's also not enjoying having his seedflap dangle free, so
he brings the pants down and scoops his legs into them. He pulls the gray
fabric up his legs, standing again for the half second necessary to yank it
over his ass.
Then Karkat takes the shirt and pretty much dumps it over his head. It takes
him a while to line up his head and arms to the appropriate fabric tunnels. For
the first moments, it's actually comforting. It's cozy and dark and he's
already worn it, so it smells like part of himself. It could be a close-fitting
and unusually dry recuperacoon. But then, when one arm gets caught elbow-first
in an armhole, he realizes that familiar or not, it's trapping him inside, and
he jerks and struggles madly to get free. By the time the shirt's on properly,
Karkat's panting and there's a short rip along the neckhole. His right arm is
pulling at the shoulder's fabric. The reinforcement module doesn't fit easily
underneath.
It's good enough. Being back under gray makes him feel safer, hidden, even if
it wouldn't fool anyone who happened to look at his face. He feels more like
himself.
Or a version of himself that is ready for sleep.
But before he gets up, Karkat notices that while he was engaged in epic battle
with his clothes, he must have bumped a peripheral to announce his presence
because the computer screen is no longer an idle black. It's filled completely
with notification windows from his chat client, all of them blinking urgently
for his attention, and all of them filled with ugly yellow text.
"Oh, what the nub fondling fuck." Karkat squints in at a random yellow
monologue. It starts
twinArmageddons [TA]  began trolling  carcinoGeneticist [CG]
TA: you know how youre alway2 twii2tiing your horn2 about iif were friiend2
anymore?
TA: well GUE22 WHAT A22HOLE.
TA: WERE NOT.
and Karkat closes it without scanning to completion. It reveals another,
previously buried window, and Karkat's eyes fall on
TA: lii2ten. ii diidnt mean iit, okay? ii wouldnt want to be on a team wiith a
grubmunch liike me eiither.
TA: 2hiit that wa2 even more pathetiic thii2 tiime.
TA: FUCK why am ii 2uch a u2ele22
before he closes that one too. And beneath it is yet another message, something
about
2ent your character on a random walk.
TA: ii am laughiing my a22 off watchiing 2iir nookflap bulge2teiin wander
2traiight iinto enemy broad2word2.
TA: ehehe hii2 face look2 almo2t a2 2tupiid a2 your2 doe2.
TA: ii had to hack the character de2iign2 two get the horn2 blunt enough.
And when Karkat destroys that he uncovers, still waiting
twinArmageddons [TA]  began trolling  carcinoGeneticist [CG]
TA: no 2eriiou2ly why havent you logged iinto the 2erver yet?
TA: diid you forget you were goiing to be our thra2her, after you whiined for a
week that you diidnt want two play cleriic agaiin?
Karkat leans back and blinks at the whole expanse of his display, and holy
troll bulgefisting Almighty. How many layers deep is this crap, none of which
Karkat is in the mood for.
Yes, clicking mindlessly at his chat client feels surreally normal, but there's
no surge of familiar, spurring irritation. Instead, every line of text leaves
him heavier, and trying to parse the overwrought mustard quirk is making the
back of his head pound.
This time, instead of shutting a single conversation, Karkat chooses "close all
from user." The yellow windows wink out one by one, and there are fucking
dozens of them. Hundreds. Karkat needs to find less awful friends.
As example number two reveals in indigo, excavated from the yellow messages.
terminallyCapricious [TC]  began trolling  carcinoGeneticist [CG]
TC: HeEeEyY mUtHeRfUuU
--  terminallyCapricious [TC]  is now an idle troll! --
terminallyCapricious [TC]  ceased trolling  carcinoGeneticist [CG]
And that's it, because keeping his think pan on task long enough to string
together two words at a time is literally too much of a challenge for this
idiot.
If only all the idiots in Karkat's life had this problem.
Karkat shuts the window with what he wants to imagine is an angry click, even
though it was actually the slightest possible movement of his finger on the
keyboard. Then there are only two chat messages left.
Karkat stares at the relish green one for a long time.
TO THIS AGAIN.
CG: AND WHAT? DID YOU TOSS YOUR POINTLESS FIVESTONES IN ITS GENERAL DIRECTION
AND THEN THE MUSCLEBEAST TOPPLED OVER CONFUSED TO DEATH.
RR: oh/ yes/ that's exactly what happeNed.
RR: but with more aNimal shrieKiNg.
RR: galthrapKiNd are amaZiNg weapoNs/ really/ if you have better aim thaN aN
armless slimebeast/
RR: liKe some of us do.
RR: and you would admit it if you wereN't such a ragiNg asshole wheN it comes
to KiNda/ oh/ everythiNg!
CG: I CANNOT BELIEVE THE HOOFBEAST SHIT YOU ARE TRYING TO CRAM THROUGH MY
OCULAR ORB SLOTS.
RR: that's oNly because you didN't see the body yet.
CG: IS THAT SO?
CG: FINE. LET'S GO.
RR: uh/ Now?
CG: SURE, WHY NOT?
RR: oh/ i doN't KNow/ KarKat.
RR: it's goiNg to be morNiNg sooN. i'd rather taKe you tomorrow.
CG: AT WHICH POINT THE BODY WILL HAVE BEEN CONVENIENTLY DISPLACED BY A CLIQUE
OF MAMMAL PHALLUS FETISHISTS.
CG: NO, WE CAN GO BEFORE YOU COME UP WITH ANY EXCUSES, AND WHEN THE BODY IS
STILL CONVENIENTLY DISPLACED YOU CAN CHANGE YOUR ONLINE STATUS TO PERSONAL
POLISHER OF MY HORNS.
CG: I JUST NEED A MOMENT TO GRAB MY SPECIAL DEALING WITH IDIOTS HAT AND THEN
I'LL BE STANDING OUTSIDE. WAITING.
RR: but i've Never seeN you wear a hat.
CG: NO THAT WAS
CG: WHY DO I EVEN BOTHER.
carcinoGeneticist [CG]  ceased trolling  rockersRuin [RR]
Karkat scrolls to his contact list and sets Ladeci's status to "Culled".
Ladeci's icon vanishes from Karkat's list, and the information will be
propagated through the network to anyone else who deals with Ladeci's account.
An alert box asks Karkat if he wants to delete his and Ladeci's chatlogs, and
Karkat freezes in indecision. Ladeci is gone, and he never passed along any
galaxy shaking insights. So, "Yes," obviously. There's no benefit in keeping
them. But having all evidence of Ladeci's existence vanish from Karkat's
computer feels wrong. Unfair, as if unfair was ever a thing that mattered.
So "No" then... but the question blazes out from Karkat's screen in a large
bold text, and he feels sick. He can't bring himself to click.
He hesitates so long that the chat client gets impatient and chooses for
itself, settling on some default value. Karkat watches through the entire
override countdown, and he still isn't sure which option it picked.
The gray and relish green conversation closes. The last chat window is written
solely in teal.
gallowsCalibrator [GC]  began trolling  carcinoGeneticist [CG]
GC: K4RK4T! STOP 1GNOR1NG YOUR 4PPL3B3RRY TH3M3D FR13ND!
GC: TH3 COURT H4S B33N FORC3D TO TURN 4 BL1ND NOS3 TO NO L3SS TH4N FOUR
D4ST3RDLY CR1M1N4LS WH1L3 1TS ST4R PROS3CTUTOR W4S STUCK D34L1NG W1TH H1S SOUR
MUST4RD SH1TF1T
GC: 1 SHOULD STR1NG YOU UP FOR OBSTRUCT1ON OF JUST1C3 BY PROXY!
GC: H3LLO? K4RK4T? 4R3 YOU TH3R3?
GC: >:T
GC: BL444R YOU 4R3 TH3 MOST FRUSTR4T1NG
gallowsCalibrator [GC] ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG]
Karkat shuts that one down too.
And he starts to move the cursor to shut the whole computer down, but he's
interrupted by a new chat box popping into existence in front of him.
twinArmageddons [TA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG]
TA: hey KK iif you get thii2 me22age ii ju2t wanted two 2ay
TA: you can CRAM IIT UP YOUR NOOK becau2e iit2 the LA2T ONE ii am EVER goiing
two 2end you
TA: and iif you want two contact me, dont bother.
TA: iim banniing you from my chat cliient.
TA: here ii go.
TA: iim liiftiing my fiinger.
TA: iim cliickiing down on your iicon.
TA: thii2 iinterface ii2 an dii2grace two iinnocent 2emiicolon2 but iim goiing
two 2ettiing2 anyway.
CG: OH MY GOD WHAT DO YOU EVEN ACTUALLY WANT.
TA: 2ure now youre wiilliing two talk two me.
TA: but TWO BAD. IIT2 TWO LATE. WERE DONE.
CG: YES, YOU'RE RIGHT. I'M THE ABSOLUTE WORST FRIEND. IT'S ME.
CG: WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T I INTERRUPT THE ADULTS HOLDING ME CAPTIVE FOR THE PAST
DAY AND SAY EXCUSE ME, BUT IF IT'S NOT TOO MUCH TROUBLE, COULD I PLEASE HAVE A
TIME OUT FROM GETTING MY FACE SMASHED INTO ADDED PULP GRUBSAUCE WHILE I CHECK
IN WITH A CODEPENDENT NUBSUCKLING MORON OF MY ACQUAINTANCE.
CG: IN FACT, COULD I BORROW YOUR COMPUTER FOR THE PURPOSE?
CG: WE CAN GET BACK TO THE TORTURE AS SOON AS I'M DONE ACKNOWLEDGING HIM THE
CROWN PRINCE OF SPAZVILLE.
TA: wow, you are 2o full of 2hiit ii am amazed your horn2 havent exploded off
your head.
TA: gey2ers of pulpy brown iidiiot 2auce 2hootiing from the hole where your
2ponge ii2nt.
TA: iif you wanted two back out FIINE.
TA: you could have just 2aiid that youre 2iick of lii2teniing two me beiing
terriible and pathetiic and my emotiional ii22ue2 whiich are NONE OF YOUR
BU2IINE22 ANYWAY iin2tead of makiing up B2 NON2EN2E.
TA: but ii gue22 iim not a2 much of a moron a2 you thought, becau2e ii know
there ii2 NO WAY you fought off an adult, you aggrandiiziing ba2tard.
CG: TWO
TA: what.
CG: TWO ADULTS.
CG: YOUR FAVORITE FUCKING NUMBER. HOW THE FUCK DID YOU MISS THE FUCKING PLURAL
YOU STUPID FUCK.
TA: yeah that2 WAY more beliievable.
TA: diid you tell them what an amaziing leader you are, and they 2aiid holy
2hiit we diidnt realiize.
TA: hey everybody iit turn2 out we have KARKAT VANTA2 here.
TA: quiick let2 drop two our knee2 and take turn2 kii22iing hii2 2tiinkiing
bulge, that 2ound2 liike 2o much more fun than u2iing hii2 gut2 for party
decoratiion2.
CG: NO. I CAN'T DEAL WITH THIS.
TA: liike you even KNOW HOW two 2top beiing an iincontiinent wriiggler long
enough two deal wiith ANYTHIING.
CG: SHUT UP. SHUT UP. YOU NEED TO CLAMP YOUR SEEDFLAP SHUT RIGHT NOW OR I SWEAR
I WILL REACH THROUGH THIS SCREEN AND CLAW IT OFF YOUR UGLY LISPING FACE.
CG: OH.
CG: AND BY THE WAY. LADECI IS DEAD.
TA: 2o what? who the fuck ii2 ladecii?
TA: ...
TA: KK?
TA: KK waiit.
-- carcinoGeneticist's [CG'S] computer has been smashed to the floor. --
Karkat stares at the pulpy blue heap splattered by his desk. He's standing, and
his shoulders are shaking with the effort of it. His hands are clenched into
fists.
That was a stupid thing to do. Now he's going to have to grow a whole new
computer.
Yet as he watches a chunk of the computer's outer shell break away and coast to
the floor on a stream of chemical ooze, Karkat can't manage to care. The
contents of his data storage unit are slimed across his station and floor and
the nearest wall, but the hot twisting in his center is not regret.
The burn of constant, non-differentiated anger had seemed to underscore his
whole life, but Karkat's slow to recognize it. The emotion is strange and
uncomfortable, like his chest is suddenly the wrong shape. He wants to punch
something. It doesn't matter what. The entire world, or himself, or the
computer again.
Karkat only had one station top computer, so he swings his arm out and smashes
his skeletal reinforcement module through the movies stacked beside him. The
impact jars him to the points of his teeth, and the movies scatter wildly into
the air around his block. They bounce off the wall and hit the floor at bad
angles. Some of them break out of their protective casing.
One flat disk bounces onto its side and rolls along his floor. It turns in
increasingly wobbling spirals until it runs out of momentum and folds over,
flat. There's a deep scratch gauged into its side, as if Karkat had torn
through it with his claws, and Karkat is glad to see it.
The top of his computer station is empty now. Karkat shoves his arms under the
ledge and makes a very brief attempt to flip it over, but his knees give out
before the station moves. Karkat ends up with his torso sprawled over the
surface. He kicks backwards, and his chair topples with a clatter that is
satisfying but not good enough.
Karkat yanks open the computer station's topmost sliding repository, the one
where he keeps a backup sickle, and clenches a fist around the handle.
He leverages himself back to his feet, more carefully than fits his mood, but
he's already one wrong horn twitch from falling over. The chair is legs over
seat, and Karkat bares his fangs and hooks his sickle through its yellow outer
layer. He pulls up, and his sickle tears a ragged line. A few inches of the
chair's insides spring up, along with a small amount of ooze from the gash, but
he meant to injure it far more severely.
Karkat swings his sickle down again and scours another line crossed to the
first. More spongy innards swell out. But it's still not enough to render the
chair unusable, so Karkat digs into the chair with the sickle's curved point,
stabbing and ripping until the sickle gets stuck around the solid inner
structure. Karkat yanks at the handle, but it doesn't come free. All he
accomplishes is nearly knocking himself down. Finally he growls at the sickle
in frustration and throws it from his palms. He adds a kick at the remains of
the chair in revenge for the theft, and then he catches his ass on the computer
station when he overbalances and begins to tilt backwards.
The chair is still recognizable, but with its surface torn to open strips and
its stuffing and suspension gel half spilled on the floor, no one would mistake
it for anything but trash. Karkat's chest heaves with exertion and his back and
shoulders burn more each second he allows himself to calm, but it's worth it
for the sense that he triumphed over something, no matter how unmatched and
ridiculous the fight. And the hurt is okay, because he's going to take it and
dump himself into his recuperacoon and...
Someone is watching him.
Karkat's hand reaches for his sickle, but it is stabbed through the chair below
him and not hanging at his side. He is once again unarmed. He thought he was
safe here.
What kind of moronic excuse is that?
He doesn't move, just keeps his eyes pointed at the opposite wall and takes
slow, shallow breaths.
Karkat doesn't smell anything but the slime in his recuperacoon and the
evaporating chemical remains of his computer's data storage unit. Nothing
unexpected. Nothing that is a threat.
But some deep instinct had been so sure... Karkat turns his head to the side,
and yes, an adult is there to meet his gaze. The angles of her face hit him
like a blow directly to the abdomen. Panic floods through his veins, which
makes no sense. She isn't real. It's just Troll Meg Ryan smiling her harsh
satisfaction from behind The Sea Troll Suitor Who Was Justly Executed For
Heresy Two Centuries Before Her Hatchdate, Yet Fate Has Another Chance When A
Poorly Explained Starship Malfunction Deposits The Sea Troll Into The Present
Quarters Of Her Recently Culled Matesprit...
Troll Meg Ryan's claws grip possessively into Troll Hugh Jackson's shoulder,
denting the fabric of his jacket. Troll Jackson is twisted to focus on her
face, despite the awkwardness of the position. The fins under his ear droop in
the relaxation of trust or submission.
Karkat snarls and stomps to the poster. His feet squelch through his computer's
innards and the sharp bits of its case poke into his toes, but who gives a fuck
if they scratch through his skin now? He can feel each violent step rattle
through his hips, but it's an angry pain. A good pain. And nothing less than he
deserves, for getting freaked out by a fucking movie poster.
Troll Meg Ryan's amused gaze is directed over Karkat's head, and Karkat growls
and swipes his claws across her face. They tear gashes through the poster, and
even its thin paper resistance stings his broken nails and messed up fingers. A
few splatters of blue computer gel mar the gray of her skin, like it's Troll
Meg Ryan herself Karkat injured, not her lime blooded character.
Karkat brings up both hands and tears at the poster, scratching out Troll Meg
Ryan's eyes and bisecting Troll Hugh Jackson's face at the nose. He rips Troll
Hugh Jackson's shoulder from Troll Meg Ryan's head and rips Troll Meg Ryan's
head from her horns, and soon there's nothing but ragged tatters affixed to his
respite block wall.
Karkat glares down at the yellow scrap holding Troll Meg Ryan's disembodied
eye, and he remembers that he really liked that poster. What was this supposed
to accomplish?
But two yards over, Troll Adam Sandler smirks mockingly in Karkat's general
direction. Troll Sandler is raising a phalanx activated telemanipulator to his
shoulder, like it's a whipkind weapon he's preparing to crack, but this
manipulator is supposed to grant him control over all paradox space. His finger
hovers over a button marked SKIP (to the end).
"Make sure you fondle the raised nub labeled go fuck yourself," Karkat says,
and when Troll Sandler doesn't flinch Karkat goes over and tears his flat paper
smile from his flat paper face. And this is pointlessness squared, but even if
they're only mass reproducible prints of snickering trolls, there is something
satisfying about reducing them to tatters by his feet.
Beside the slashed representation of Troll Adam Sandler, Troll Kate Hudson and
Troll Anne Hathaway point improvised weapons at each other's throats. A
standoff between moirails waxing black in the stress of awaiting the Drone, and
with only a self amused indigo blood in pant-suits willing to step between
them.
Karkat yanks that poster down and tears it into quarters in his hands. He tries
for eighths, but the layers of poster material are too thick. The reinforcement
module pulls inside his arm, and fresh bright red trickles up towards his
elbow. Karkat gives up and tears the poster with his teeth instead. He bites
off Troll Hathaway's ear, cheekbones, Troll Hudson's fingers and spits them
onto the floor.
Karkat is still shaking, still angry, but he glares at the wall behind his
computer station and there's nothing intact enough to look back. Good. He turns
away, as haughtily as he can while stumbling over his own ankles, and
approaches his recuperacoon. Karkat doesn't remember the top of it being this
far off the ground, but it doesn't matter. He's going to have to get up there
anyway.
He goes to the corner he usually uses to climb up. The indents in the surface
are too shallow to grip, and he's sure jumping like he usually does to reach
the top would end badly. He ends up leaning over it, supporting himself as much
as he can with chest against the lumpy purple surface. He grabs as far as he
can with his nails, digs in, and pushes with his legs, clambering up until he's
resting on the recuperacoon rather than the floor. After moving, the tops of
his thighs are cool and squelchy with the water residue still dripping from his
nook. Karkat tries not to think about it. He finally rolls over.
And from his place of honor high on Karkat's wall, Troll Will Smith grins down
at Karkat. A line of thick, even fangs rest on his lower lip, and the partial
curve of his tongue is visible inside his mouth.
Troll Will Smith is smirking at the room beyond the poster, but there's a humor
to it, assuring the viewer that they're in on the joke.
He has his weapon hand wrapped with faux abandon around the much shorter Troll
Alfonso Ribeiro's shoulder. Troll Will Smith's sickle dangles down beside Troll
Ribeiro's sign. His wrist is loose, but a twitch of his fingers and Troll
Alfonso Ribeiro would be bleeding out blue.
Troll Ribeiro doesn't seem bothered by this, setting the photo in one of Troll
Smith and Troll Ribeiro's characters' on and off moirallegiances. Troll Ribeiro
also smirks at the viewer as he twists his hands into a well known rust blood
greeting gesture... which he's doing wrong.
Highbloods, right? They just don't get it.
That's the punchline.
The poster's tag informs Karkat that Troll Will Smith is teaching his highblood
flaysquad-mates the meaning of FUN... without an utterance dissection tome!
This poster had come special. It was a limited release edition with preorders
of The Thresh Prince of Bel-Air's season four collection. It's such a great
show, and Troll Will Smith is such a great actor. Karkat knows it's dumb, but
he always feels like Troll Will Smith is looking right to him personally as
Karkat drifts in his recuperacoon. Proving what everyone knows anyway, that
highbloods are totally mockable, promising him that he doesn't need blue
pumping through his arteries to make it. It's comforting, and it's not like the
thick taper of Troll Will Smith's horns is acid in his orb slots.
But right now Troll Will Smith's inked gaze feels weird, like Karkat is the one
on display instead of the poster. Karkat's body is so heavy, but he can't stand
lying flat and low under Troll Will Smith's judging green eyes. The idea of
spending the day resting under his amused smirk makes Karkat's breathing organ
tighten.
Karkat drags himself over and climbs to his feet. He braces one arm against the
wall to keep him upright on the lumpy surface.
From this vantage point, Troll Will Smith is exposed as a miniature. Karkat is
taller than him, realer and more dangerous. But the poster keeps smirking out,
unintimidated, and Karkat lashes with his free hand and scratches out Troll
Will Smith's face.
The ruin of his favorite poster burns thick in Karkat's throat, loss and anger,
triumph and a knee-shaking guilt he can't follow to its source. Karkat tears
out Troll Alfonso Ribeiro's face too and then rips through his comically ornate
blue sign. Then Karkat removes the entire poster and throws it over the
recuperacoon's side. It wafts down gently to his respite block floor.
And fuck, his block is a disaster. Soppy smashed bits of computer and chair,
and ripped scraps of posters, and scattered movie cases.
Karkat couldn't keep his shit together for the thirty second marathon between
his station and his recuperacoon, and now he's going to have to clean all this
crap up. Replace his computer. His computer chair. Wander back to his ablution
block and turn off the fucking hydration spout.
But when Karkat imagines the alternative, waking up into a hive that it looks
exactly the way it did when he left, exactly how it always looks and all his
stuff in place and no evidence that anything happened, the line of anger
supporting him seeps from Karkat's legs. He folds down to the surface of his
recuperacoon.
This time, Karkat pushes himself through the opening to the recuperacoon and
lands inside with an ungainly slurp. The sopor slime catches him before he
sinks more than a few inches down, suspending his battered limbs in place. So
much of the aching in his joints vanishes as soon as they don't have to support
each other, and the sudden lack of pain is a jolt of its own. The slime feels
slow and strange, creeping into the inside of his full set of clothes, but it
works just like it always does, soothing his thoughts to numbness.
He'll pick up the pieces in the evening. Right now, what Karkat wants is
nothing.
Karkat can still see marks from the poster's double sided adhesive strips.
Where they touched the wall, its texture is very slightly scarred. Karkat
watches them until the sopor slime blurs everything out and drags him into
unconsciousness.
.
.
.
.
.
Chapter End Notes
     for reference:
     Poster 1: http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0m6frtyty1r8jzvu.jpg
     Poster 2: http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0m6g4KlTq1r8jzvu.jpg
     Poster 3: http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0m6gijX8X1r8jzvu.jpg
     Poster 4: http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0m6hjznTY1r8jzvu.jpg
     Ending Author's Notes are here: http://homesmut.livejournal.com/
     5183.html?thread=32326975#t32326975
***** ALTERNATE ENDING *****
Chapter Notes
     If you have read up to this point, congratulations, you've made it
     through the complete story.
     This chapter is an Alternate Ending, or a bonus extra scene that
     ended up getting away from me. I consider it completely optional,
     especially as it diverges away from "Hivebent prequel."
     All the warnings still apply, plus character death like as to canon.
It's dark, not even midnight, and there's only one moon edging over the
horizon. Karkat is jumpy anyway, startling at places in his peripheral vision
that he's sure should be shadowed and that, when he spins towards them for
closer examination, are.
Karkat squeezes his palm tighter around the sweet-spice flora strips he’d torn
away. If he stashed them in his sylladex it would give him another hand to hold
a sickle in, but Karkat still hasn't mastered his modus to a degree he would
like to admit. He's not certain enough he could recover the plant skin before
it rotted in a locked cube, in which case why is he out here at all?
He shouldn't have to be. His lusus brought home half a hoofbeast carcass, and
it knows Karkat won't eat hoofbeast unless it has been seasoned with fresh
sweet-spice, and look at this, there is a copse of sweet wood barely five
minutes out from the border of the lawnring. His lusus must have passed that on
its way to the hive.
There's no reason it wouldn't have grabbed some, unless it was trying to make a
point. Karkat has never made a frequent habit of venturing from his hive, but
the past few perigees he's really been... too busy.
So what, now his lusus thinks Karkat's too lazy to grab a few flora strips? It
is so stupid. And this is a waste of Karkat's time.
Karkat runs back to the flat circle of his lawnring. The neighboring hive
angles to the side of his vision as he gets closer, revealing his own home once
again. After he crosses onto the shared grounds, Karkat slows into a casual but
steady jog. If any troll should glance from a rectangular aperture, they will
note only his air of well offended dignity and no trace of the creeping anxiety
Karkat has no reason to feel and thus is not, in fact, feeling. His sickle is
out and readied because sickles are awesome, that's why.
When he reaches his hive, Karkat swings the door shut and sets the lock behind
him. He pauses a moment to catch his breath, and then he notices. Everything is
wrong. The inside air cloys with the tang of spilled blood, with what Karkat
thinks for a long confused moment is his own blood, but no. His skin is intact.
His entertainment screening board is knocked into the walking path, and his
reclining surface has deep gashes, weeping brown. And Karkat has seen A
Throwaway Character Accepts A Voice Communication Notification Which She
Assumes Is From Her Nascent Kismesis But The Caller Is In Fact A Young Indigo
Blood Who Happens To Be Currently Located Within The Initial Character's Own
Hive (etc.) even if he squinted through the goriest bits. He's not going
further in.
Maybe the half a hoofbeast wasn't as dead as Karkat thought, or maybe another
sort of monster got in and attacked Karkat's lusus. Karkat will exit the hive,
not to run away but to sneak around the outside and...
He hears a crack of bone plate from behind the next wall, in the food
preparation block. The scent of too familiar blood redoubles through the air,
and nothing shrieks or skrees or crashes or reacts at all...
And make sure his lusus is okay.
That's what he's going to do.
Karkat pushes at the door. It remains shut. Which makes no sense. Karkat didn't
lock it against himself.
There's a noise behind him, the decisive click of a footstep too sharp and too
light to be his lusus. Karkat spins around, slamming his back against the solid
door. His heel grinds into the flora strips, fallen and forgotten on the
ground, and the aroma of blood is underlaid with spice-stink. Both sickle
handles press textured grooves against Karkat's fingertips and...
There is no and. No next thing to do. There is an adult leaning a casual
shoulder into the door gash to his food preparation block, and it is the same
adult who had held him captive perigees ago, and this is too precisely a scene
from an entire selection of recent day terrors for Karkat to do anything more
useful than freezing and staring blankly. His thinkpan can't make any inroads
to processing this as reality, instead of its cue to wake up. Wake up right
fucking now.
The adult's hair is a couple perigees of growth longer and she's wearing off-
duty clothes with the dizzyingly busy, sign-themed patterns that pass as adult
fashion. But Karkat isn't about to forget the abrupt orange curve of her horns.
Her eyes rake over him, and despite his heavy shirt Karkat feels fully exposed
by her stare. This really is a nightmare. One where he's stepping in front of
his inexplicably gathered friends, and when he follows their disgusted, mocking
expressions it turns out he'd forgotten to wear clothes. The unimpressive whole
of him is on display.
Or worse, he's arrived appropriately pre-wrapped in fabric, but the skin of his
chest has broken open without his notice and his blood is seeping through his
shirt, staining his sign to pure, brilliant, vibrant, mutant red.
The angled lines of the adult's lips pull up around her fangs. Karkat's clothes
continue to follow the physical rules of the universe, but she could peel him
layer by layer and know what she'll find all the way through.
Run for the stairs. The door to outside won't open. Karkat will have to run for
the stairs like the first culled brown blood in every horror film.
Run, but if he moves she's faster than him. Run, but the adult's hand rests at
her thigh in a fist that is loose, open, like she's holding the edge of a line
Karkat can't see and if he twitches she will throw it over him. He won't make
it up the stairs, but it's that or standing here and letting her take him. He
has to try.
The adult must have noticed the tensing of his muscles. She pushes herself away
from the edge of the door support, exposing her lower arm from behind the wall.
She shifts her balance to her opposite heel and tosses the contents of her hand
into a lazy, sideways spin.
And... Karkat knew. He's not such an entirely braindead nub thumper he can't
add together one or two subtle situational clues and... he knew. But Karkat
watches his lusus's unattached head bounce off the toppled entertainment board
in a splatter of bright red droplets and skid to a messy stop in the center of
the room, and Karkat's horror snaps into fury. Instead of launching himself for
the stairs he leaps out towards the adult.
As soon as his shoulders are away from the solid backing of the door, Karkat
realizes that he picked the most impossibly terrible of available choices, but
it’s too late to change direction. One sickle is extended to the side in his
outstretched arm and the other is readied near his chest, and Karkat is
screaming. He jumps over a pile of noise extruding boxes and hooks his sickles
towards her.
The adult shrugs into his advance. She meets the curve of his weapon with a
toothpick glimmer of silver held between her claws.
Karkat’s blade is torn from his fingers. It clunks off the side of a far away
movie organizer, and the adult angles her wrist into a downswing, catches his
second sickle.
She raises her other arm in time with his flailing momentum, and in the next
moment Karkat is sprawled on the floor with his shoulder jammed into the corner
of the wall. He tries to push himself up, away, anything. He can’t. His wrists
are wrapped together under his back. The adult looks down at him with amused
green eyes, and Karkat is frozen. It's like the last half-sweep of his life has
been a not especially vivid piece of wishful imagining, like he is still
trapped that same day in the cave, like some part of his thinkpan never
escaped.
The adult is spinning Karkat’s last sickle around her tiny blade, and the high
pitched squealing of metal on metal loops on repeat. The weight distribution is
all wrong, heavy handle and razor thin tip, but the adult compensates with
quick, practiced jerks of her wrist. It’s halfway a juggling trick, halfway a
blasphemy, with Karkat playing the traditional role of captive audience.
The adult spends a few more seconds toying with Karkat’s chosen and maintained
and deadliest weapon. Around, around, around... Then she flicks her fingers and
the sickle flies loose. It stabs point-first into an opposite wall, wobbles,
vibrates, and stills.
She twists her wrist to show Karkat the tool she used to disarm him. It's the
approximate length and diameter of a sewing needle. It blinks away, but Karkat
doesn't know where. Would a sewing needle even fit in a knifekind specibus? Why
would anyone ever try. It would be less humiliating if she'd taken him down so
easily with nothing in her hands.
"I brought something for you. A bit of morning reading material," the adult
says, and pulls a tablet device from the air. "Where you personally were the
inspiration." She closes the last step between her and Karkat and this isn't
the cave, all those perigees ago. He can't lie around and hope for the chance
to escape back to his hive, because the adult has found his hive. He has no
safe place left. There's only one way he's getting out this time.
The adult is wearing emerald-outlined strips gathered like a skirt over her
leggings. It's flashy and stupid for fighting, and when she closes in Karkat
launches up and bites into the fabric, twists his entire body for the force to
take her off balance. But the material rips cleanly under his teeth, offering
no resistance, and he falls to the side.
The adult doesn't let him hit the ground. She pulls up on the lead from the
psychic rope tying his arms away and lifts him to his knees.
"Fuck you, you enormous sack of bleatbeast assholes!" he screams at her. He's
not cooperating. He's breaking her rules, that list of ways to earn his
continued existence, and his voice is almost steady. "Get your fungus infested
claws off me!"
"See, this is what I appreciate about you," the adult says. "You know the right
things to be afraid of." Karkat fights to pull away, and her smirk sets deeper
in her face, like she's thrilled at his invitation to torture him to death.
Please, god.
Please let her torture him to death.
"Clever wiggler like you, you're literate, right?" She shakes the tablet in
front of Karkat's face, and Karkat lunges teeth first at the gray hand holding
it.
She loops her hand over his head, invisible rope catching on his horns, and
yanks him back. The world goes wobbly. The adult crouches down and reaches her
arm around him. She's too close. Her jacket blocks off half his vision with
repeated double arcs in various ugly proportions. Her arm rustles the fabric of
his shirt.
Karkat arcs and bends his torso, struggling to throw her off even though he has
no chance of it, even though the pressure of the invisible rope around his
horns flares when he pulls against it. The adult calmly attaches the new loop
to the knot on his arms, locking his head back. His chin is tilted up, exposing
the underside of his throat. She breathes in, and she's so close that air moves
over the skin beneath his jaw. She doesn't back away.
"You know, I was worried," she says to Karkat. Confides. Her knotwork is
finished, and she pushes him backwards into the wall. Her fingers drift to the
side, tracing the shape of his back, pressing into the curve of his hip. "I got
you halfway broken in the first time. Thought maybe you'd make this boring."
"If you need excitement, I have a list of sharp implements you can go fuck
yourself with," Karkat spits at the ceiling, and when the adult laughs he
growls at her, as low and vicious as he can. The adult considers his threat.
She puts the tablet away and lays her palm across Karkat's throat, muffling but
not stopping the vibration. Although she could. Her nails dig under his jaw,
but she neglects to tear out his neck.
If he’s displaying his fury, it’s because she’s allowing him. The adult isn’t
upset by his defiance, she’s amused. Karkat’s noise box isn’t developed enough
yet for the sounds he’s trying to force through it, and each second he
maintains the growl his throat feels more stretched and scratchy, and he’s not
accomplishing anything but entertaining her.
Eventually Karkat goes silent. The skin of his neck is cooling under her
fingers, and he can't twist away without her projected rope pulling on his
horns. She has him. She won't even let him fall. It's hard to remember how to
be angry, and not just scared and tired.
Partway hidden behind the adult’s elbow, Karkat’s lusus watches with blank,
upside down eyes. No one is going to come for Karkat this time. There’s no one
left to help him. Rescue him. Put him out of his misery.
The adult glances over her shoulder, following his stare. She says, "Yeah, it
was almost inspiring how hard that thing fought for you. Like it actually
cared, as much as it could with the six brain cells in its oversized cranium.
You should feel honored."
When she looks back she’s grinning, fangs sharp and too close to Karkat’s face.
And he notices for the first time that, no, she’s not unmarred. There’s a green
line dripping under her eye, and one sleeve of her jacket is ripped shoulder to
elbow. Her hair is battle-wild but uneven, like something ripped away a chunk
of it.
It should hurt less, knowing that his lusus went down fighting. But it went
down fighting for him. For nothing. What could any single lusus hope to do
against an adult troll?
More than Karkat, at least.
The adult presses her thumb under Karkat’s eye and smears a jagged line through
the wetness of too-bright tears seeping over his cheek. "Don't fucking touch
me," Karkat says. He’s breathing too fast, and the words are shallow and
broken.
The adult laughs, light and honest, like Karkat's just repeated her favorite
joke. But she does take her hand away, even though she pauses to flick him once
in the forehead. Her fingers are damp, covered in a slick, bright red that has
nothing to do with his tears.
"Alright, so what do you want to do instead? Hey, how about some schoolfeeding,
if I've got your permission." Her eyes gleam. That was Karkat's cue to chuckle.
The tablet is back in his face. Karkat rolls his eyes all the way to the side,
focusing on a bleary view of a wall. There's an arc of bright red droplets
across it.
"No?" says the adult. "Well, maybe you know this already. How current are you
on news of interest to the mutant scum on the bottom of the gene pool?"
And even now Karkat shudders at the word mutant but, "Yes," he snarls.
"Stamping that keyword into my subscription service. That sounds like a really
amazing way to not get myself flagged for a visit from a skew-happy bulgemunch
with a culling fork, just to be sure."
"You’re so considerate," the adult says, "keeping yourself safe like that,
until I had a chance to come back."
There's a prickling on Karkat's scalp as the adult brings her fingers down into
his hair. Karkat thinks she's going to drag his face over so that there's no
option to look away from her tablet, but she seems content to have her hand
wander over his skull. She picks at the seam between psychic rope and skin and
horn and when Karkat growls at her again she pulls the rope tighter, forcing
him to lean backwards. Her thigh knocks into his side, holding him in front of
her.
The adult taps her reading device playfully, not even hard enough to disorient,
at the top of Karkat’s pulled-back horn. "Not that I blame you for a lack of
civic interest, especially at this level of extorted bureaucratic spew," she
says. Her fingers wander inch by inch over his neck, as though measuring the
exposed flesh.
"Some tacked on addendum to a clutch of rules on fleet maintenance." When she
reaches the collar of his shirt, her fingers lift from his skin, but Karkat can
still feel the pressure of her hand against fabric. Sliding downward. "Everyone
understands what a troll is, right, so who'd even notice a couple extra
guidelines on what a troll's not. Like, how about anything not on the
hemospectrum, that makes a good start."
Karkat's eyes flick to the tablet. A swarm of meaningless legal phrases above
the uncaring scrawl of a seadweller's sign.
"What," Karkat says.
"Yeah, see, there’s this senior legislacerator who owed me a favor," the adult
says. Her mouth is inches from his face, and Karkat can’t help flinching every
time her fangs move to frame words. Tiny bits of saliva bounce from her tongue,
scattering below Karkat’s eyes, and her smile is thick and smug. Her wandering
nails prick through the fabric of Karkat's shirt, just under his sign.
"And no one else on committee was going to waste time arguing about the
standard legal codification of shit we all know bone deep as truth. The learn-
ed met were too busy spilling blood over ceiling heights. What, like the
Empress is going to stop down to the slime distillation chambers?"
Karkat's chest is too tight. He's not breathing. His body has been hollowed out
and his organs replaced by white fire. His thinkpan pounds inside his skull,
and the adult might as well have yanked out one of his horns. He can't think.
He doesn't want to think. As soon as his pan starts working again, he's going
to understand the point of the sentences she's shoving through his ears.
"So what does that make the leftovers. Not people, and not subjugated races.
Not aliens. Not slaves. Fuck if I know, but whatever it is, it's something
subject to the ancient doctrine of finders keepers."
The adult reaches the bottom of his shirt, but instead of continuing to drag
her hand over his pants, she twists her arm and reaches directly into his
waistband. Which isn't a surprise, but Karkat panics anyway, growling at her
and squirming as if there were any way to kick her off him.
There's not. With his balance fucked up and her body so close to him, Karkat
only manages to grind his own seedflap into her claws. His growl is broken with
whimpers.
"Something I can carry anywhere I want, and never have to worry about waking up
one night with a troll as a captive."
The flat of her palm grinds into his bulge, slow and too lightly to be good,
and it's too hard to see around her to place himself. To remember, each second,
where and when he is. He's confused when his hands hit flat wallspace, and not
the rough texture of stone.
Karkat can't reach her, but he gnashes his teeth through the air between them.
"I'm going to fucking kill you! I'm going to rip apart your abdomen and choke
you with your own digestive coils! I'm going to yank out the bloated, moldy
maggot corpses buried in your skullsockets and shove them up your tumor
collapsed nook, and then I'm going to jam your head into my load gaper until
your thinkpan is dissolved in with my shit, with apologies to my shit for the
introduction!"
"No, you're not," says the adult, amused. Her hand is splayed over his ass, and
she squeezes it, claws bunching around one cheek. Her thumbnail catches at the
inner edge of his nook. It's a sharp point just barely inside him, and Karkat
screams and thrashes. The psychic rope pulls at his horns, flaring pain, and
he's grateful for the distraction.
"Let’s not start off bullshitting each other," the adult says. "You’re never
going to do anything but what I want you to, ever again."
She's going to keep him. It's no surprise. How can it be. The adult would never
have come all the way planet-side for him with any intention less final. But
she's changed the rules. He can't pretend that there's still a way to goad the
adult into disposing of him, or that she's giving him anything to fight
against.
And she won't stop touching him. Maybe she'll never stop. Her thumbnail tracing
his nook, and her forearm thick along the side of his bulge, and her body so
oppressively near, blocking him against the wall. Closing his universe to a
patch of floor too narrow to fit himself completely into. The texture of her
jacket grates on Karkat's shirt when she leans in, and all Karkat can smell is
her sweat and her breath. The blood of his lusus on her hands.
The world swims in blurry pink and the air is thick in his throat. Karkat
forces it out with hitching sobs. The adult makes a low humming noise. She
says, "Sure, go ahead if you want to scream and cry for a bit." She tosses her
tablet to land in a careless clunk on the ground, and then prods her finger at
the side of Karkat's eye, smearing the escaping tear across his cheek.
"Get some practice in."
Karkat tries to clamp down on the burn of emotion in his chest. The pressure
behind his eyes. But when he blinks there's a warm rush of liquid from between
his eyelids. His following high pitched growl of a whine is just anger at
himself.
There's nothing left but giving into her, but Karkat does it so fucking
readily. He couldn't hold back the tears if trying meant his destruction.
Claws scratch on the front of his scalp, sharp points, mates to the ones that
are gripping the globe of his ass and digging right now into the inner border
of his nook. Karkat jerks away from the touch, and the psychic rope pulls at
his horns, confusing his senses. The feel of adult's claws is amplified in a
jolt, as if they stab through him and meet in his center. Karkat sobs harder.
He's breathing too fast, dragging in more oxygen before he remembers to cough
some out first.
Then the claws drift back against his forehead. The adult is brushing his bangs
to the side from his face, tender as a concerned moirail. "It's okay, kid," she
says. "I know. You've got a lot to be upset about, even just this far."
Which is ominous as the first rays of daybreak molesting his exposed bulge.
Karkat should be more frightened and desperate. More furious. But her
supporting hand doesn't slide any higher inside him, and her other fingers tuck
a section of Karkat's hair behind his ear. Gently.
She's looking at him with that hungry, considering expression that always ends
in him screaming... but that's it. There's no disgust at the mutant bright
tears running too hot over his cheeks and pooling under the collar of his
shirt.
Karkat knows she's only allowing this display because it amuses her somehow,
but it feels suddenly like a mercy, like the greatest act of pity anyone's ever
shown him. He can't hide what he is from her, but he doesn't need to. The adult
has already seen everything wrong and weak about him, and she returned for him
anyway.
When Karkat slumps, into the wall, into her hands, the adult moves her fingers
and pushes the psychic loop over his horns. His head stretches back, his throat
unprotected and inches below the adult's fangs, and then the rope falls free
behind him. The circle binding his wrists had seemed solid when he fought it,
but now now it yanks loose and slides away after the wider loop.
Karkat puts together a nebulous fantasy of his claws swiping across the adult's
ugly smirk, adding more green lines under his lusus's impotent attempts. He
doesn't try. He doesn't even move his hands from behind his back. If he can't
fend her off or protect himself by putting them in her way, what is the fucking
point of them.
Karkat's eyes roll down, away from her, but the adult doesn't yank him back.
His attention catches on the corner of her tablet, which is strewn on the floor
alongside a piece of reclining surface padding splattered in brown and bright
red.
He can't make out individual words from his position, but Karkat's gaze
skitters anyway over the screen like a skimbug bouncing low over an electrified
puddle, unable to find a landing point that doesn't burn through. Karkat still
hasn't actually read whatever sentences the adult got her friendly neighborhood
law-makeradicator to doodle under something official, and the thought of
filling that lack in his pan makes his entire torso seize in panic.
As long as Karkat hasn't fully considered the evidence, it could be false.
Lies, even though...
Let’s not start off bullshitting each other.
The corner of the tablet has smeared through a drop of vivid red that used to
be hidden inside Karkat's custodian, the only thing on Alternia that ever would
have protected him. And it's gone. If Karkat tilts his head towards the adult's
shoulder, he would see the bright painted edge of his lusus's rendered neck.
Gone, but there's no place in Karkat's mind the right shape for comprehending.
It's gone. It's over. Everything.
And from the floor, the glow of text negates his existence, transforming him by
indifferent decree from a mutant, a potential hemocriminal, into literally
nothing. His existence is no longer worth even the effort of a cull notice.
Karkat's always known he would eventually be destroyed as defective, but as a
defective troll. As a threat to the purity of the race and the neat spectrum of
society. He'd never accepted it, not really, but he'd understood. To lose even
that shitty fate...
And the document itself matters so little that the adult tossed it away rather
than use up the room in her sylladex.
Karkat promises himself that it doesn't matter, he is a troll. Still juvenile,
obviously, but whatever shade of purple is stamped under an update of fleet
operating standards can't change that.
It's been handed to him fairly fucking nicely that the adult isn't using the
same rules from back in the cave, but Karkat takes a few careful breaths and
then equally carefully moves his head so he can exactly meet the adult's gaze.
She doesn't say anything. Her eyebrows raise into an exaggeration of generous
patience, but she waits for him to compose himself. Or at least to stop gasping
with sobs. The adult's expression is steady. She might be genuinely interested
in what he's going to do.
As a preface, Karkat says, "You are an aficionado of rotbeast frottage who has
shoved so many larvae up the puckered fissure of your digestion chute they've
chewed into your sponge, upgrading it to a maggot rumpus shithive."
The adult doesn't take offense, doesn't hurt him for it, doesn't stop winding a
lock of his hair between her finger and thumb. Karkat's extremely aware of her
hand poking underneath him, but it's not like that's news.
"And I am a troll," Karkat says. "I know what I fucking am." At the end, his
voice cracks, more uncertain than he needs it to be.
And here the adult laughs. This is probably the last thing Karkat will get to
say that matters, and the only result is her amusement.
Good, whispers a quiet, traitorous piece of Karkat's brain. He can't stop
whatever the adult is going to do to him, but it'll be worse if he doesn't keep
her pleased.
The adult tightens her fingers through Karkat's hair, so he can't look away
from her face. This is the angle he'd personally chosen, to get her attention,
but he's forced to hold it now that she wants his.
He'd remembered right. Or the adult is just mocking his attempt at playing
along before he knows what the game actually is. He'll find out which.
Eventually.
"You sure on that one, kid?" she says. "Cause you're naive as wormshit if you
think I can't get you convinced you're a grubsauce coated doughsplotch with a
hole in it before I have you a week."
She's still grinning at him like she's hungry and Karkat is the promise of
dinner or maybe, if she's craving a doughsplotch, dessert. And Karkat knows
that she's telling the truth, would believe her even if she hadn't said she
wouldn't resort to lying. He's always known he's a shitty figure of a troll,
small and blunt and missing that essential panspark that lets other people face
the night without being certain something awful is always just on the verge of
happening. Like he's expecting, with every moment, the entire universe to come
crashing in around him.
He can stop worrying, then. It turns out he was right.
A week to shatter his identity entirely, and that's a high estimate, only
dragged out because the adult would enjoy the process too much for efficiency.
Her tongue darts out, thick and black, so close he can smell the saliva
clinging to it, and slides over the tips of her longest fangs. They glisten
wetly, and she snickers at Karkat's expression.
"Here's a piece of advice I really thought you'd figure out faster than this.
You should be extremely fucking careful about what shit comes out of your mouth
that sounds like it's maybe a challenge." Her hand twists tighter around his
hair, and her nail points burrow into his scalp. "You understand me, yeah?"
Karkat doesn't trust himself with the Yes. He nods instead, fighting to pull
his hair through her fist. And then he can't stop nodding. The movement spreads
down through his shoulders, torso, hips until Karkat's full body is shuddering.
The adult moves her grip on his ass to keep him from listing over. She
scratches thin lines to the top point of his thigh and digs in hard, and her
thumbnail leaves his nook. Karkat should feel relief, but he doesn't. He knows
it will be back.
He can't see. He's crying too much again. Karkat squeezes his eyelids together
to force out the excess tears.
"Hey, don't look like that," the adult says. "I haven't even decided how
thoroughly I'm going to break you, yet." She tugs a few times on his hair, and
Karkat winces into himself before realizing what she's asking for. When opens
his eyes to her, she smooths the tuft of hair, tucking it in next to his horn.
She's smiling like they're having an excellent conversation on a topic Karkat
gives three fucks about. Maybe he should. But how can it make any difference.
"It's no fun to take it too far," she says. "Like, there was this other freak I
found, a couple weeks after the mutant issue got, you know. Revisited." She
knocks her head to the side, towards the discarded tablet, in case Karkat
needed a reminder on how that turned out.
"Blood so dark you could barely make out the indigo. Big for a kid and strong
like highbloods get sometimes, but she lasted maybe three hours before she was
all used up. Nothing left to care what happened to her."
What happened to her, Karkat asks, almost. The words rise in his throat like a
mass of phoneme vomit, but there's a narrow edge to the adult's grin and Karkat
already knows too much of the answer. She'd gotten boring.
God, how many other kids has the adult destroyed like this. Smashed into their
component pieces, unravelled in slow motion and forced to watch.
Maybe it's a good thing that it will only be Karkat now, over and over forever
until he's useless to her. Better than picking off kids who haven't been ruined
yet, right? Who still have some chance of a future. And if the adult is really
going to keep him, then this is the closest thing to a future Karkat's ever
had.
No. No, what the fuck, no.
Who it should be is the freak indigo, and her ghoul can jam an electrified
prodding device through its ectoplasmic bulge because it would be, if she
wasn't such a pathetic plaything.
It should be anyone else except Karkat. Karkat's paid his turn. He won, he
survived. It's supposed to be over for him. That's his prize.
If the adult wants to carry off a troll kid as a souvenir, Karkat would give
her first pick of every damaged idiot in his personal weirdo menagerie. Another
green blood, since after all she likes the taste. Or a cackling maniac who'd
figure out enough of the adult's rot sponged mindgames to play her role better
than Karkat ever will, or an asshole who wears his mutation on the outside of
his head. Or if the adult would like a more proper indigo, Karkat knows one
who'd be too drugged up to realize what was happening until she'd dragged him
halfway across the Empire, and anything that happens after is too late.
Karkat would trade anyone over to this, would turn his back on their betrayed
screaming and run. He knows it under his bones.
Then thank fuck none of them is here.
No one except Karkat and the adult who returned for him, and that makes no
fucking sense because...
"You killed me," Karkat says. His voice is a sobbed out rasp. "You left me for
ash." It's not a question. It's a notification to the universe that the laws of
cause and effect have broken down, someone should yank the wrench from their
flap and go check that out.
"Nah." The adult lifts her hand from his hair and flicks him in the horn. The
sharp ping of it echoes over his skull. It's unpleasant, but not painful.
Quite. Karkat tries to swallow down the hope that this means maybe, since she's
not going to kill him. Maybe this time she'll be kind. "You had enough ways out
if you wanted to live badly enough, and you did. Never met anyone who wanted
something so much, who had so little chance of getting it. I crack up every
time I think about you."
"Most kids, they're just biomass that hasn't been recycled yet," the adult
says. She's grinning to herself, thinking of the mutant indigo, or Ladaci, or
the entire parade of juvenile trolls she personally culled, but her words are
nothing but fact. No one expects to make it, and everything else is bluster. "I
want something that'll last."
She flicks him again. "So let me warn you, you better be worth the
backtracking. You would not fucking believe the the shit I got into, looking up
those goofy gray squiggles."
It takes Karkat a few moments to realize the adult is talking about his sign.
She remembered it from all those seasons ago. She traced it. Finding him was a
plan, but Karkat doesn't understand. "Why?" he says. "Why me?"
The adult brings her hand to Karkat's mid-chest with the force of a punch. The
blow folds him into the wall and forces the air from his breathing organ. Her
claws close around his sign, careless of ripping the fabric or the flesh
beneath it, and she yanks him close. There's a long seam from Karkat's chest to
his knee where the shape of her body presses on him.
Karkat is wide eyed and gasping as he finds her gaze again, terrified of not
appeasing her, and the adult says, "Haven't you heard the good news, kid?
You're special."
She's smiling sharp and victorious, two rows of open fangs an inch from his
eye. She laughs, and Karkat flinches away from her breath on his face.
And Karkat...
Says...
"No," Karkat says. "No, this is wrong."
"This never fucking happened."
-------------------------------------------------
"No," Karkat says. "No, this is wrong."
His hands are raised in front of him, not trapped behind, and the surface they
are pressed to is transparent and silica smooth. The adult is kneeling on one
leg in the ground level entertainment block of his hive, leering over Karkat
like he's just another piece of furniture for her to entertain herself by
ripping apart, but Karkat is watching the scene from the outside. His feet rest
on the lawnring that once abutted his home, and he's safely blocked off on the
opposite side of a rectangular aperture.
Karkat lifts his fingertips, and they come away.
"This never fucking happened."
"Not to you," says the ghost of the troll beside him.
The words are too loud in Karkat's ears, like she's so close her voice rattles
the base of his horns. Cool air touches the back of his neck like whispered
breath, but when he turns to her, teeth exposed in a snarl, she's standing an
acceptable distance away. And Karkat's not certain the dead actually breathe.
The ghost is smiling at him. It's a soft, gentled expression, and it doesn't
shift at all. The edges of her lips and eyes are crinkled upwards at matching
angles, as if she had once overheard the definition of 'beatific' and
immediately spent three weeks in front a mirror.
Though the blank pools of white where her glance nuggets should be ruin the
effect, presuming she is not in fact going for "soul crawlingly creeptastic".
Around those twin bright pools of nothing are the wire frames of glasses.
Clear, but their shape is a copy of Terezi's pair. They're pointed at the
outside edges like sharp, even horns, a contrast to the asymmetrical mess
jutting from the top of this strange troll's head. The first time he'd seen
her, Karkat thought paradox space had dumped him in with a particularly far
fetched Vriska alternate before she opened her gabhole.
"Who the fuck else is there," Karkat demands.
The ghost's blue lipstick smile twitches around her fangs, and her eyes widen
in anticipation, and Karkat stumbles a reflexive step backwards. His shoulder
hits the window which he does not turn to look through, ignoring the movement
in his peripheral vision, and then he recognizes the expression.
This is Rose Lalonde in the asteroid's nutrition block, behind all the
translucent alien folds of her skin, when the over-extension of Karkat's latest
metaphor edges too close to her Sgrub gifted field of expertise. You bring up a
very interesting point, she'll say, jumping after the excuse to answer at
length, and Karkat should have backed up a hell of a lot further.
"No one," the ghost agrees, "but unless someone is an accomplished Hero of
Light, such as myself, it's hard for most people to see it from that
perspective. Even if we leave aside the question of alternate possibilities,
you personally try to isolate your identity from your own, direct timeline's
past and future."
"I can understand why you would want to amputate them, or to whittle your
reality down until it only encompasses the present moment, especially if it is
a safe one that is untouched by the horrors you have experienced, or those you
are likely still to face."
"But it seems to me that this can't be a very satisfying existence. When you
deny yourself that continuity, you deny yourself the ability to truly learn
from the experiences of your previous self, or to access his perspective at all
except through the means of antagonistic chat client paradoxes. And without you
- that is, the present you, the you I am talking to - working to integrate all
aspects of yourself, you'll never achieve equanimity. In the future you can't
help but to be as lost and hindered as you are now."
Karkat's back is to the wall of his hive. Everything else is moonless night,
but if he doesn't focus on the far away points of stars they start to blur in
front of him. He can feel the prick of claws though his shirt but never
happened.
"Good," Karkat says. "That asshole deserves it. He doesn't appreciate the shit
I put up with so he doesn't have to."
The ghost pauses her babbling to look at Karkat with exquisitely practised
sorrow. In the silence, Karkat can hear the night breeze rustling through his
hair, exactly the way he remembers, but nothing of what's happening on the
other side of his hive wall. And apparently the adult can't hear his
conversation, can't see him through the transparent window.
Unless she just doesn't care, entertained enough by the young troll she already
has in her grip.
"Is that who he is?" Karkat says towards an empty point on the horizon. "Some
poor asshole from an offshoot timeline who gets trapped in that shit forever?!"
His voice cracks at the end of the sentence. Never happened but what did happen
is too ready to jump forward in his mind, memories of precisely what it felt
like to know that this was the end, he'd forfeited the rest of his life to
something he couldn't dream of fighting or persuading. Something that didn't
even want him dead, not as much as it wanted him screaming.
The sky blurs again, and Karkat thinks he must be crying until he realizes it's
not fading to pink but gray. The far away sparkle of stars shatter into
crystalline debris and...
The ghost stomps her foot sharply. Karkat's view solidifies into the dark night
sky, and the wall behind his shoulders instantly smooths. He hadn't realized it
was changing.
Fuck dream bubbles. And fuck this lobotomized Vriska deathclone for dragging
him into this one.
"No, not forever." And she's still smiling at him, calmly, helpfully even. From
her vantage, she has an excellent view of the scene playing itself out in
Karkat's hive, but she doesn't rate it of concern. Her expression radiates
beneficent contentment, except for the empty eyes. "This is a remnant of an
offshoot timeline. After it diverged from the alpha branch, it wouldn't have
lasted very long. Relatively speaking."
"My fucking mistake. So that idiot in there, he didn't have to deal with this
forever, just until she finally got fed up and killed him or until reality
imploded, whichever came first."
"Yes, that's right. The pressure on a doomed timeline---"
"Holy shit. Eject yourself into a floating snot pustule where somebody cares."
There's a movement at the side of his eye, and it could be the harmless
shifting of shadows, if shadows were patterned with emerald green. "Hey, I have
a better topic for discussion. What sort of wiggler stomping, seedflap grating
sadist are you to bring me here?"
"Isn't this what you wanted to know?"
"What?! How does that--"
"If she meant it," says the ghost. Her voice is still calm, but she raises it
to talk over Karkat. Apparently he has not yet allowed her a fair talking to
clamping down her flaphole ratio in this exchange.
Her words itch under his horns, and Karkat reminds himself to continue
reminding himself to be wary of her. Her eyes are erased but she's wrapped in
cerulean blue, and Vriska had her own tricks when she wanted you to pay
attention to her. Ie, every single moment.
The ghost's lips tighten in the middle, pulling between her fangs. "I don't
think it will be helpful to discuss the interesting matrix of personality flaws
one could ascribe to Over-Lieutenant Zhaleya Arvak. Certainly not at this
point. But she was the first troll, since you climbed onto Alternia's surface,
who saw what you carry under your skin and didn't immediately attempt your
culling. In fact, she claimed to like you."
"Am I wrong that you have been wondering, all these perigees, if she was
telling the truth?"
Karkat's hands are clenched into fists by his sides, and his chest shakes with
the effort to draw in enough air not to collapse. As if the imaginary substance
passing through the meat flaps of his meal cavity must carry any oxygen at all.
He looks up into the soothing blackness of the night, and he's sure that it's
only the ghost's influence that stops the view from shifting to the towering
amusement of green eyes.
"Absolutely. That is precisely the fucking question I invite to skip daintily
across my ponder lobes during the pants squirdling finale of my most cherished
bright-afternoon terrors," Karkat says.
The ghost acknowledges him with a small, stiff nod. "That as well. It can't be
an easy question to carry." She doesn't have pupils, but Karkat is aware of her
attention shifting from him to the dream echo winding itself out behind his
shoulders. Whatever is happening through the window, it earns only a soft, fond
smile.
"This memory offers us only one answer, among many. But I believe it is a
particularly relevant one, if your goal is to find the level of closure that
will allow healing."
"In this timeline, several key events did not occur, preventing the
commencement of your game session. Meanwhile, a thousand lightsweeps from your
home planet, Lieutenant Arvak responded to the death of a close friend and ally
in a minor border skirmish by single-handedly imbibing, over a period of three
days, a significant percentage of her station's holdings of intoxicants."
"By the time she recovered, her bodycount included a new bronze-blooded
conscript and five alien prisoners. She had also used up three important
favours, and she had recompiled a rough catalogue of her goals in life. That
is, which things she would like accomplish or to obtain."
The ghost is smiling vaguely into the distance, like she's reading off a poster
stamped with the title of the worst movie in paradox space. There's an edge of
interest to her tone. If it is a movie, it's one with exciting preview clips.
"Among them, well. She remembered how much she enjoyed having you-"
"Oh god no. Stop fucking talking." Karkat's throat is seizing, and if this was
actually the body he'd used to eat dinner instead of a flimsy stand in model,
he's sure his grubsauce covered noodle meats would be making a special bonus
reappearance over his shoes.
"I'm sorry," says the ghost, and Karkat lifts his head to sneer at her, but she
really does look regretful. As much as she can without proper eyes. She starts
to take a step towards him, but Karkat bares his teeth in warning and she
settles back on her heels.
Her shoulders twitch. She might be flustered, her centuries-practised composure
fraying against Karkat's refusal to cooperate. He feels a pang of
gratification, prideful and tinged black.
The ghost brings her hand to the pendant which Karkat is not going to ask her
about. Who knows why the dead from even his own version of reality do anything.
Her palm closes around a small knockoff of Karkat's sign, eclipsing it from his
view. As if it were hers to keep. As if she had a claim, a right to it. Her
orange nails fold in behind her fist just how, beyond the window, the adult had
twisted her claws into the gray fabric on an elsewhile Karkat's shirt, and...
The ghost lets go with a suddenness, as if the silver metal had burned her or,
likelier, as if she was having trouble amusing herself with only the thoughts
in her own head. And it would be so easy to use that against him, but the ghost
frowns sorrowfully at Karkat and says, "I'm not choosing my words very well."
"Or here's a panflash," Karkat says. "Why don't you choose to shut the fuck up!
Who gives a limp fingered bulgesqueeze about her career path or what her name
is or if her lusus diddled her as a pupa. There was an adult, and I got her
attention. What else is there that fucking matters!"
"A great deal." The ghost smiles, unflustered again, back to calm and bland and
still. "When you observe reality from the perspective of a Light player, you
see that almost everything matters. Even the smallest, most whimsically
acquired item or off-hand remark may be the difference between a failed or
useful timeline."
"But for now, perhaps it would be simplest to focus on the particular detail
that we came here to witness. It may help you to know that Lieu... that the
adult troll who hurt you... she truly did wish to keep you as a... companion."
She hesitates over the last word, finally settling on a euphemism instead of
something more accurate, like 'slave' or 'fucktoy.'
As the ghost talks, a heavy and twisting emotion grows in Karkat's chest, too
thick to parse. She's telling him that he would have been trapped forever,
defeated, tortured, used. By an adult.
By an adult. A successful soldier, strong and vicious and stamped with a green
sign. The adult had tested him to every limit, and she'd judged him to have
value, even if just for her sick idea of entertainment. She'd wanted him, and
let the pained, terrified screaming of the kid in Karkat's hive be presented as
objective proof.
Something hard stabs into his palms, and Karkat jerks and throws them in front
of him before realizing it's just his claws, rolled too tight into fists. He
hisses, "Is that supposed to be comforting?"
"In a way," the ghost says. "Although it may only become apparent much further
into the healing process. I know this scenario must be hard for you to face,
but it would be much more difficult to find closure for past events without
understanding the full truth of them."
Her smile doesn't twitch, and it's still a strange frame around her familiar
fangs. Vriska's attempts at sympathetic expressions ranged from bewilderment to
constipation, but then Vriska was never locked away for a century with nothing
to do but practice making faces. And the ghost's movements are all too stiff,
limbs pulled as if by outside strings rather than the fluidity of tendons.
In one sense she's young, not more than a sweep or two older than Karkat. But
she's obviously been stuck in this afterlife for a very long time.
The ghost seems to realize that she's unnerving him. She blinks at Karkat for
the first time, with careful, deliberate effort, and she gets it so almost
right that Karkat shudders.
He turns towards the window. He can't see the adult's face right now, but he
can tell from the way her neck and shoulders move that she's talking. The
adult's hand is at the other Karkat's temple, and she drifts it slowly upwards.
If Karkat doesn't focus, doesn't keep reminding himself which side of the glass
he's standing on, with his shoes on the outside lawnring and the night's breeze
touching his skin, the other's memory starts to bleed into his own awareness.
He can't entirely shake the pressure of fingertips moving above his eyebrow.
Maybe the ghost is right, and they're the same person after all, sharing one
soul and one scalp.
The adult's nails lift his fringe as they slide gently into his hair, and she's
still the only one who has ever touched him like this. Karkat had papped
Gamzee's scraggly claws away when he tried.
They had paused there, with Karkat's blunt fingers raised against Gamzee's
long, knobby ones. Karkat stared at their hands in a blank and confused
distress, unable to name what his fucking problem was.
Gamzee had. Not frowned. He has too many fangs to be very good at frowning. But
he'd looked at Karkat for a while, and there had been a series of old fears
that spiked new and fresh in Karkat's mind, as though someone was picking
curiously at the scabs on the inside of his thinkpan. Karkat held his breath to
keep from complaining and waited it though, because you don't deny your moirail
full knowledge of you. You don't. And you really don't do it twice in the same
minute. Not if the serendipity is true.
Then the sensation passed, and Gamzee entwined his hand through Karkat's, grip
secure as if that's all Gamzee had wanted from him. They sat in a dark asteroid
corner and spun out together into the void.
"So she's dead, right?" Karkat says. "I mean, not her, but the spew-blooded
freakshow from my timeline. The alpha bitch, I guess."
"I haven't personally witnessed her death." The ghost's voice rings loud behind
him, and Karkat has the sensation that her voice is coming from much closer
than where he last saw her standing. If he turns, he's sure he'll find that she
hasn't moved. "In the alpha timeline, your lives only intersected once, and
that was many perigees before your world was destroyed. And this adult was
never a Sgrub player. She does not exist in any dream bubbles, except as a part
of your own memories."
"I can only offer you my best guess, but if you consider my aspect and the fact
that I have witnessed the results of thousands upon thousands of parallel
timeframes, I think you will agree that such a guess is a very near thing to a
certainty."
"Fine," Karkat says. "Great, sure. Thank you for that sponge-expanding prologue
to what I really hope will be the 'yes' or the 'no' next regurgitated up your
meal tube. Lalonde can sit alone and rhythmically slam a liquid filled metal
cylinder against her human bone bulge. I am obviously standing next to the
fucking Empress of this shit."
"The Sylph, as it happens," the ghost corrects, and the flat pleasantness of
her tone deepens briefly with pride.
"If I were to gamble," the ghost says, "an activity which I did not pursue in
my lifetime, although I have reason to believe I would have been very skilled
at it, I would bet that yes, she is dead. My best guess is that she died slowly
and in extreme pain, just as did every other member of your species. And many
sweeps later, that the dust of what had been her bones was crushed in the
explosion that formed the green sun. Perhaps some energy from their destruction
has been emitted as a photon or two that are now lighting the way to your
current destination."
"But does that answer help you?" the ghost says.
Across the window, the hive block, the other Karkat's memories, the brightest
seams of the adult's jacket and skirt appear to glow green themselves. The
adult runs her fingers through his hair again, petting him. Karkat watches
himself close his eyes, accept her touch. He wills himself to rally and bite at
her wrist, but the boy behind the glass doesn't even struggle away from her
palm.
Of course, this is the closest thing to comfort left to him now that the adult
has caught him. What scraps she offers him as a joke. And Karkat remembers what
it means to be desperate for even that.
"No," the ghost says, agreeably, as if Karkat has responded obediently to her
cue. "Because you can't truly start to recover without understanding that your
attacker is not a blank silhouette, or an unthinking representation of the
danger an adult troll represents. This is not the case. She was an individual
person who was fully responsible for the results of her actions. She was a
bully who took her greatest pleasure in utilizing her limited but significant
social power to cause harm to those even less favored than herself. On my
world, it would have been unthinkable for one of a higher cast to behave in
such a manner to those underneath us, but on yours that type of cruelty was
encouraged and rewarded."
The adult rotates her shoulder. The shoulder is attached to the arm that is
currently digging inside Karkat's pants, pulling at his bulge or seedflap or
ass. Karkat's entire torso twists up. His hands are in front of him now, palms
down against the adult's forearm, but he's only bracing himself, not pushing
her away. There's nothing left in him that hasn't given up.
The ghost is still talking, and every word still grates along the inside of
Karkat's skull. "And how can you heal, without first accepting that what
happened to you was wrong?"
He's had enough. Karkat spins to her, forcing the window back behind his
shoulders. "Oh my god, stop fucking doing that!" he says.
The ghost pauses mid syllable. The black tip of her tongue is visible in the
gap between her fangs and cerulean painted lips. "What am I doing?"
For a moment, it seems like she offers him an uncertain, shaky smile, but then
Karkat notices that he's the one shaking. His chest is heaving. He's breathing
too fast. He is either angry or panicking, and whichever chest-squeezing
emotion he's landed on strengthens when Karkat realizes he can't tell.
"Talking to me like we're," pale, Karkat almost says, but he can't manage the
word. "Friends."
She blinks again, slow and careful and he can hear the scrape of her eyelids
over blank ghost eyes. She's facing him, or she's facing the window behind him,
and Karkat doesn't know which version of him she's watching. Or if there's any
true difference.
"No," the ghost says, "I suppose we're not. Although I was friends with someone
very much like you, or at least very much like someone you could have been. And
it might be that I feel a sense of familiarity that I haven't earned, after
I've observed so much of your life--"
"Holy ass squelching fuck, who said you could do that," Karkat says, and good,
it turns out that the hot burn in his chest is anger after all. "You need to
keep your voyeuristic pan tendrils out of my memories, and that includes the
ones bobbing around in horrorterror spit bubbles. All that nonsense spilling
from your word hole, how did you never get schoolfed on the definition of
privacy."
The ghost only falters for a moment. "Okay," she says. "I understand how, as
someone unfamiliar with this form of existence, you might see an uninvited
guest as a violation. But the memories contained in these dream bubbles are of
events that have happened somewhere in the branching timelines of paradox
space. They are simply facts. Can you really claim that they belong solely to
you?"
"Yes!" Karkat snarls. "They are my facts, which makes them none of your fucking
business. And you think that you know me? Well, I know who you're supposed to
be, too."
"There's no one I'm supposed to be," the ghost says. "My name is--"
"Wow! It's like I was gabbing to myself when I said that I do not care." Karkat
says.
He says, "Here's a new simple fact for your aural spirals to fondle! Your
descendant inherited the gene that made her incapable of keeping her howl gash
sealed, probably even if Maryam had stabbed her repeatedly through the mouth
curtains with a needle and seam line like I kept fucking asking. And when
Vriska heard that I had to sort out two skittering cerulean bite globs, she
read me pages and pages of inane, ancient prattling. Would you like to make a
best fucking guess to whose inane, ancient prattling it was?"
"If I was willing to invite another doomed Aradiabot to punch me in the
cartilage nub for crimes against pan function, I would have done Alternia a
favor and pulped you for grub sauce right there on the meteor."
"I know who you are," Karkat says, and now who has the lead in the hypocrite
horrolympics, event of being inappropriately pale. "You're the biggest bitch of
anyone."
The ghost has waited happily for him to stop talking. Of course she's
interested now that the subject of conversation has turned to herself.
"Yes, I'm familiar with Mindfang's exploits," she says. And she says her own
name like she had said the name of the adult troll currently in Karkat's
remembered hive. Like she has recently read a story about a troll fascinating
for her sins, and yearns to begin a creepy ghoul book discussection club. "But
I assure you, I myself have never abused my psychic abilities."
"Is that right?" Karkat says. "Then what was that crap about being one person
spread across every timeline, or does it only apply to people who aren't
psychotic spider assholes. You can wrap your healing in nettle weed and use it
as a suppository! Get the fuck away from me. From every me!"
The ghost crosses her arms and glares at a neighbouring hive, empty and memory-
hazy. The silver copy of his sign she's wearing as a fashion bauble doesn't
shift on her chest, but Karkat thinks it would if she remembered the motions of
frustration. Because Karkat isn't listening to her. He won't.
When she looks back at him, however, she's wearing her gentle, fond smile. No
offense taken, however much was meant. "All right. If it will help," the ghost
says. "I'll leave you alone with yourself."
Karkat's about to yell at her again, because what the hell is that supposed to
mean, but then there's a moment where the surrounding sky and lawnring does the
opposite of expose itself as flat projection. It goes deep. Parallel angles
swerve suddenly away from each other, and composite objects reveal themselves
as optical illusion, components existing on different planes. In the cracks
within a slab of stone, vast tentacles writhe in darkness, very far away.
The ghost takes a step forward and is gone. The dream bubble thrums back into
stability, like a ripple passing from an elastic sheet.
For a while, Karkat doesn't move. He stands and watches the space in front of
him, unconvinced the ghost won't return to the front of reality. But minutes
pass, and he's still alone. His anger sits in his throat, awkward and too large
to swallow.
The neighborhood remains exactly as he remembers it, although the other hives
are silent and dark. The stars are bright in the hours before moonrise. Karkat
recognizes the barrel section on the constellation of the death-ray
flamethrower gun, setting in the north, which places this memory in early
second autumn.
It's a good season. The air will be cooling and the nights will be getting
longer, although there'll be daylight to avoid for perigees yet. Karkat can
almost smell... and as soon as he thinks it he does. The sweet smell of distant
corpseweed blooms, carried over the breeze.
He could bide here until evening. He could sink to the ground and wait for the
dream bubble to fade out around him. Rest his back against the still-warm wall
of his hive, and just not think about what's happening behind it, about who
he's sharing the dream bubble with. It's already happened. It's nothing he can
change.
Karkat squeezes his eyes shut. A thin line of liquid spills from the corner of
each, and Karkat wipes them with his sleeve. "Fuck!" he announces into the
backdrop of sky, but there's nothing there to answer him. And this bubble is
too big for the weird inverted echo some of them have, where his voice runs
into itself from behind, having made it all the way around a tiny encapsulated
world.
Here, the curse simply vanishes.
When Karkat turns, he finds the same scene behind the window. The adult's hand
is deeper inside his pants, like she's forced the clasp open, but Karkat
thankfully can't make out what precisely she's poking at. She leans in to say
something that, insulated by the glass, Karkat can't hear, but the other
version of himself shudders.
The adult laughs. Muted or not, Karkat knows the shake of her shoulders. Then
she licks a thick, sloppy line from the base to the tip of his horn.
From the outside, Karkat watches his own torso arc with inescapable pleasure.
The pink light of a moon that doesn't exist in his own remembered sky falls
through the window, turning the mutant tear lines under his eyelids an even
brighter red. The lines are starting to dry. He must have no tears left.
The adult pulls a few inches away, and the other Karkat settles deeper into her
grasp like a slowly deflating bladder ball. He turns his neck to the side with
a careful balance, as though his head was a hugely difficult burden, and looks
out from his side of the window. He meets Karkat's stare with blank and dead
white eyes.
Karkat had expected this. But matching his own gaze, Karkat was waiting for the
familiar roil of disgust he feels every time he's forced to look at the stubby,
ugly joke he always finds waiting for him in the mirror.
And yes, that's an undercurrent, but it's not more than a sharp twist in his
abdomen, easily disregarded. Maybe it's that the other troll's hair lists to
the opposite side from Karkat's reflection, or that his eyes are a blanked out
white that will never turn to vivid red, but Karkat doesn't feel the surge of
hate he usually reserves for his alternate selves.
His rage is not aimed at this ghost, although he's still angry. Karkat wants to
rend the world apart with his claws. Because it's not fair.
There's a rush of shame as soon as he thinks it. Maybe the Karkat across the
silicate plate gets a pass, but he isn't going to miss calling himself out on
his own wiggler naivete.
But it's not fair. The other boy has never spoken, truly spoken, with his
lusus, has never cut down his enemies with Troll Will Smith's signature sickle,
has never led a team into battle against Derse's Black King and found
victory...
There are pounding noises now, loud as thunderstrikes or as the Black King's
grotesquely heavy footsteps, filtered through Karkat's recollection. But they
are distant and Karkat ignores them...
His other self has never outlived his own universe, or watched impotently as
his friends ripped each other to tatters, or wrapped his fingers around a
quadrantmate's palm.
So how can any timeline expect him to deal with an adult troll. It's not
fucking fair.
The adult twists to stretch out her back. Because it's true, Karkat knows. She
has personally taught him. Holding a position for that long gets fucking
uncomfortable, doesn't it? She glances briefly out the window, but once again
she has no reaction to the duplicate Karkat at the glass. Her ocular orbs blink
through him to the night, and they're thin green rings on gold.
She is no ghost. But she's not alive either. She's not a troll at all, merely
an afterimage from a dead boy's day terrors. This time, the adult is nothing
but a prop for Karkat's drama, but he doubts that even Dave Strider would find
amusement in the irony.
It should make it easier, knowing that the adult is not real. But she's not
real like the ground, solid beneath Karkat's feet, or the texture of the hive
wall against his fingers. Or the stripe of saliva on horn, still glittering in
pink hued moonlight, which Karkat is sure he could feel on his own horn if he
stopped remembering not to.
The adult moves sharply against her captive's body. She grinds her crotch hard
into the angle of his hip, and when he glances down and away from the window,
there's a staleness to his misery that makes Karkat wonder exactly how long
he's been trapped here, playing this memory on repeat.
And why the fuck would anyone ever pick this incident out of their panframe for
a review.
Except Karkat has no idea how long this timeline lasted, how many perigees or
how many sweeps the adult had held him for. What if his memories get worse.
Than this.
For this ghost of himself, and for the parallel ghost Karkats from an infinite
variety pack selection of timelines where he didn't annihilate his entire
species instead. And all of them waiting in dream bubbles at the edge of
paradox space, like a minefield he'll be playing kickskull over every time he
falls asleep, or the asteroid passes too close.
And still, after they've reached the humans' new session, waiting there.
Forever.
Just because Karkat's past self was careless enough to get noticed by an adult.
"Sorry," he mouths into the glass. But the dead boy has his eyes shut and his
head bowed, and he does not see.
Karkat steps away. The night has changed around him. Alternia's stars are gone,
replaced by a sky the color of a rustblood's veins. A dark, many tentacled
mountain gallops across the horizon, and there's a shadow above it that might
be a dragon's wing in profile.
The spider ghost's presence must have been keeping the memory bubble stable
somehow. And Karkat's thoughts drift to other spidertrolls of his nubthumping
acquaintance, and the hive nearest his is displaced by The Land of Maps and
Treasure's strange green vegetation. His brain must be trying to open a memo on
an internal Fruity Rumpus Asshole Factory board, and the topic is all the
places he could be instead. But when has Karkat ever listened to that whiny
idiot?
Karkat walks to the front of his hive. His door sits in the middle of the wall,
and it's dull gray and only slightly dented. Here, Karkat hasn't yet set off
any explosions, or had an ogre with fairy wings and his own lusus's claws rip
it in half and try to mash his head between the pieces.
He doesn't know what will happen once he goes through. Maybe his presence will
be enough to snap his other self out of his pre-scripted hell, or maybe Karkat
will be able to fight her off. He's climbed the rungs of his echeladder like an
Imperial scout clambering to shove a flag into a mountain of alien beast shit.
It has to be possible. Or maybe he can simply transport them into a happier
scenario.
He'll have to think of one first.
Karkat reaches his hand to the entrance handle. It isn't locked from his side.
He opens the door. And he opens his eyes. He's suddenly floating, limbs made
sluggish by thick gel. The air above him is sour, the reek of alchemized sopor
slime that has never been enough to anchor him within his own head.
It takes Karkat long minutes to realize he's woken up, and that this isn't just
the best memory he has to offer.
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