Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Karkat ==> Be the traitor

You are now the traitor.

Actually you have been the traitor for a while. Three years to be exact. That's how long the cranking of the gears within your own rattling carcass has kept you awake at night. You can always hear the metallic parts grinding in the hollow of your chest like your own teeth when someone is stressing you out enough to pull out clumps of your own hair—which is surprise, surprise: 99% of the time. But the big joke is, you don't hate hate anyone more than you hate yourself. No one can inspire as much disgust in you and no one reminds you more of that deep repulsion with mere sounds.

Not even that bulge-sucking jackass.

But he's definitely the second biggest contender.

You, the traitor, are bowing to him now on one knee, with the knuckles of your fists digging into the soft surface of the red rug below you. The rug trails vermillion all the way up to the throne, a bloodied hunting track, guiding your eyes. The throne doesn't fit him as well as it should have. He is awkwardly tall and gangly, while still retaining some amount of childlike softness in his face and hands even after adolescence. It comes merely from eating dinners that have always contained meat, a luxury most in your homeland were never afforded. Though he may be a King now, he is not at all regal and the crown he hardly ever wears does not quite fit over his ears. His messy hair sticks out in strands all around it like the pelt of some flea-bitten stray attempting to be endearing.

What you hate the most is that sometimes he actually succeeds in that.

Though...not now. Now, in these moments, you could have killed him happily as you prostrate yourself to him in front of two other people, His Queen and His Knight. It is a gesture of submission, of soft-bellied vulnerability. Every time you need a Key Turning, he forces you to undergo this ritual... And every time you do it some of that dusty aggression rears its ugly head again like a poisonous snake hiding in a rucksack. You taste that old, bottomless well of dark, brackish rage in the back of your throat. You feel yourself almost shaking with the trembling coldness of your own anger. With a painful, longing ache, you remember the night you tried to slit that pale throat of his. You remember his hair in the wind as he turned toward you, genuine fear flashing in those wide blue eyes for only a moment before...

Before, without nearly as much grandeur as an angel, you fell. Three years ago. Fell metaphorically, yes, but more to the point, you fell physically from a gaping fuckhole in your chest. And you hit the ground. Hard.

It is for this reason your heart is no longer an organ, but a clockwork contrivance fashioned by the King's very own bat-shit crazy sister. Before he leaves the throne you could not have taken him seriously, never could you have imagined the depths of sacrilegious cruelty buried in that jelly-skulled head of his.

However, by the time he is standing up and walking slowly to you, you see the same coldness even in the measure of his steps. You saw the coldness the first time you woke up in a confused, painful haze after your injury and at first thought it was some form of hallucination. His pale face was hovering above you, not with that detestable optimism you loathed so much, not with the warm empathy you hated even more, but with a shrewd calculative kind of stare, otherwise unseen. It was the stare of someone worrying over an animal and wondering whether it'd be more profitable to have it put down. For these few moments, and only these few moments, he insists that you degrade yourself to exemplify your loyalty. It is a testament to the fact that no matter how much time passes, no matter what you do, your clock will run down and he will be the one who has the last say in life or death. This imbecile is your slave master. This idiot is your God.

You rise mechanically when he meets you, and you see the flash of the key, drawing light in a blinding yellow flash to his hand. He very slowly lifts your shirt, cold half moon nails grazing over scar-twisted flesh, rudely exposing the darker skin of your ancestry like a child caught at pick pocketing... Until he finds the indention and you sense him grow still for a moment. A second later, you feel the painful bite of metal nose intrusively inside you, so surreal as it slips and then locks into place. It finds the position where it can churn the mechanisms guiding your veins. You take a tortured gasp of air when cants his wrist and turns the key. For a shocked couple of seconds, everything seems to blacken around the edges.

Then, blindly you drink in the relief and humiliation greedily, in one gulp of gifted breath, like a jilted aristocrat swallowing poison. His sky blue eyes then meet yours and you can physically feel your rage close around you like a blanket when the sympathy returns into them.

Everything after that spike of pain and embarrassment is always a blur. Sometimes you only sleep for one afternoon- sometimes it's days. It depends on how run down your clock was before you made it back. Your body takes the offered rest greedily and without question. No one stops you, so you drift in and out of subconsciousness.

When you awake you breathe a few times just to test how easy it seems. The gears turn more fluidly, your chest doesn't rattle and wheeze. While your last days are spent in desperate agony, your first few moments are always blissful. Like an accursed golem still getting used to its legs, you roam clumsily without purpose until some well-meaning help finds you and settles you down enough to attempt to give you food. You usually, however, scare the squawking females away with dirty looks, gnashing teeth, and a string of sharp words. You devour everything like a half starved hunting hound and no one expects you to thank them.

It is only on perhaps the third (or fourth- you're not exactly sure) night that you become lucid enough to truly dream. And when you do that is, of course, when you reluctantly decide to join the world of the living again. It's no paradise but it can't be as bad as...other places you've been.

Eventually you are able to dress yourself and the feeling returns to your fingers, buzzing with erratic energy that keeps you awake after many nights of uninterrupted sleep. The first place your feet find themselves tramping to is the sanctity of the palace gardens. You don't entirely hate them, not as much as you hate everything else.

You anticipate the hot gust of air when your boots crunch grass underfoot. It's the height of mid-summer but still unseasonably warm. The Wind is still there, ever- present as it is over the border, but it's hot, like breath. The wizened fuzz of swollen storm-clouds on the horizon don't leave much guesswork regarding the reason. Predictably, it is wet and sticky outside and you do a sheer beeline for the tiny foothills. You don't even traverse the carefully-lit paths because you know the grounds well enough to make a short cut. The dirt is wet, but fertile and soft, cultivated. Quite unlike the rest of the wetlands in the Kingdom of Wind and Shade, it isn't drowning. It has been sheltered so the wild dark vines don't choke it, like they choke everything else and the strange glowing mushrooms don't pop up except in tiny clumps. The old, wizened gardeners are continuously ripping and laying them out in large piles to be chopped up later for salads. Babies compared to their monstrous counterparts in the wetlands and jungles, you reflect dimly. Droplets hang on every leaf you push past and by the time you get to where you wanted to go, you can't tell whether your clothes are damp with perspiration or humidity. Big fucking deal, you've spent the better part of your year deep in the sweaty asshole of a swamp... To you this is tame.

You settle down on the hill, getting a view of the Palace of Breath lit from far off, each window a comfortable burning circle. You survey your territory, already dividing sections where squares of purple and pink flowers needed to go. The hill can have a ring of red and at the top, here, at the crest, you will plant white. From above it would look like a tapestry. You glance upwards into the cloudy night sky and catch yourself wondering what he's up to, as you always do when you consider the bird's eye view. Then you hiss harshly at your own stupidity and get up again, intent on finding some better use for your time. The King needs your concern like he needs a hole in the head. If you have to worry about someone...there are better people you could worry about. Some who actually does have a hole in their think-pan.

In the days that pass, you keep the gardeners busy. You're pretty sure each and every one of them hates you but you couldn't give a salamander's greasy gallbladder one way or the other about their opinions. You're the one with the creative vision. If it was left up to them, this place would look like a bigger pile of shit than it already was. You enjoy ordering them around but you also do a fair share of the work yourself: hands on your knees, elbows scraped and chapped from thorns, pants covered in grass stains, fingernails scummy with dirt. There's nothing like it. You yell yourself hoarse at the tiny green shoots because how else are you supposed to fucking wake them up?

Apparently the noise you were making attracted some unwanted attention and you cut your eyes upward only to find yourself staring into a fluffy oblivion of white petticoat. As soon as you realize what the fuck you're looking at, you start wondering if stabbing yourself in the face with a pair of garden shears would be too much of a dramatic way to end it all. Before you can decide to act on it, however, she blessedly bends her knees and instead you have to look at her round, soft buck-toothed face. It's a very hateable facial structure, you have decided recently, largely and universally hateable.

She adjusts her glasses, her somewhat beady green eyes behind them make her look crazy and owlish just as a Witch would be expected to look. And a bit cute, by some cosmic abortion of logic. Just a bit, and not nearly as much as she thinks she is.

"I see you're hard at work, huh?"

"What're you talking about? This is relaxing." The sad part is, you're being honest.

"You know, when I taught you how to garden, I wasn't really thinking about the long term repercussions of giving you any kind of power over other people," she said teasingly, probably thinking she was being so adorable right now. That fucktard with the goggles would probably eat it up, but you've come to know better. She's a witch and that involves sometimes boiling small children in cauldrons.

"These morons have it easy all year! When I'm not here they can just screw around and cut grass like they're in lala-land. I challenge their sensibilities a bit. Is that a fucking crime?"

She sighs. "No, I guess if it makes you happy there's no real harm in it. I guess. Just try to go easy on the help, okay? They're all terrified of you."

You can't help but twist up a little smile at that and she snorts. "Karkat, that's not a good thing!"

Well there is her opinion and then there's yours.

"Are you just gonna stand there or are you going to fucking lend a hand? If you're not then go chirp at someone else, I'm busy."

She frowns. "If you want me to stick around, then ask politely." She gives you that trademark Swamp Bitch look that says 'I'm not gonna take any of your crap'.

You mull it over. She's kind of the heathen goddess of gardening and apparently has dark magic plant-powers or some bullshit... Basically she taught you everything you know, including your techniques for encouraging growth. Though of course she sticks with 'singing softly' while you put your... Unique spin on things, as always. With her help, anything you do will turn out 99 percent better and that's not hyperbole. It's just a fact. So it might be worth giving over your pride just a bit. Not that there was much left in the first place.

You force sickening sweetness off your palate. "Please help me out then, Princess?"

She smiles, presumably because you're the only one, besides her brother, that still calls her that. Simply put, the title has become something of an obnoxious inside-joke between the two of you. You further strain your facial muscles by offering a less aggressive grimace-smile in return. Then she speaks and the moment is ruined. Big fucking surprise.

"Sorry Karkat, but I actually have a reason for being here that kind of doesn't involve gardening."

You glare daggers at her. "You set me up."

"All is fair in love and war, fuckass" she says sweetly. She covets material like this just for these special visits of yours. You should consider yourself lucky that you are audience to these eloquent gems of conversation.

Apparently your mental-dagger trajectory was a bit off because she promptly begins picking up your gardening tools in that anal, meddling way of hers. The only detail she doesn't seem to notice are hate rays burning out of your eyes and in her direction. She just giggles. "Only a little. Come on, you need to wash up. I have to check out that ticker of yours."

"You mean that scrap of noisy junk you planted inside my chest in a fit of poor judgment?" You gripe, not at all happy with this turn of events. "...Fine."

You and Princess Jade (or as most of the Kingdom knows her: The Swamp Witch) are "friends"... Sort of. You're about as friendly as any person who horribly maimed and wounded the other person can be. She did save your life too, though. You're not falling all over her dainty little feet in gratitude, however, as most of what she did she just did to see if she could. She didn't really stop to think if she shouldeither... You're alive after all, so you guess you can't complain too much but... No fuck that, you will complain all you damn well please. At that point, your life was about as meaningful to her as that of a lab rat or... Fuck, in her case... A frog.

Weird shit goes on in that swamp of hers. You hear tell of croaking... And explosions. You don't ask questions. You don't wanna know.

It's the usual routine. She tells you to hop up on the table and you hop on the table. You remove your shirt. Good boy. She listens to your "heartbeat" as carefully as a field mouse, paying close attention to the intervals between infernal grinding of the gears. She examines what veins are visible, pokes around the indention that only the key John wears can depress. It's a bit awkward, all in all, and you're almost thankful when she opens her mouth to chirp at you again... At least until she decides to say the most mind-numbingly imbecilic thing possible. It's like she can't even help it. It's in her blood.

You know immediately something's wrong when the chattering stops. You tense, bracing yourself for impact.

"...Have you seen John?"

It's even worse than you thought. You dig your fingers into the edge of the table. "Are we done here? I wanna get back to work."

"Karkat," she frowns and tries to touch your hand. "Please just listen to me, okay?"

You swipe it away and curl your fingers into a fist. You'd never hit her, but there's no harm in imagining it. Your pretty sure she'd just fuck your shit up again anyway. You've learned your lesson before. But once again, imagination is a powerful thing.

"No Princess, I think I'm done listening to your magical rejuvenating fountain of utter bullshit. Did you really need to inspect that old ticker of mine or were you just trying to coerce me into giving that buck-toothed fuckass the time of day?" Your sick of these fucking mind games.

She bares them at you. "I have buckteeth too, Karkat!"

"Yes, and you're a fuckass too. Being a prodigy doesn't make you any less of a fuckass and it doesn't exempt you from judgment."

She shifts a bit and then starts pretending to busily put away her equipment. "If he wants to see you, you know he will eventually, Karkat. He's the King. He can see who he wants to see when he wants to see them."

"Fuck you Jade, I'm not talking to anyone unless I feel like it. Especially not him."

She sighed. "Now you're just being a big whiny baby."

You grind your teeth so loud you can almost hear it over the ticking. "You weren't there, were you? You got into town maybe yesterday? You're never there when it happens. You don't know what the fuck it's like."

"I'm trying to understand and … On a level I do … That's why I don't like to watch it but-"

"What the hell would a girl who ran away to avoid being controlled know about being controlled? Your the biggest fucking hypocrite I've ever seen. You live in exile, in a SWAMP for the gods' sakes."

She goes quiet for a minute and purses her lips. You can tell you've hurt her feelings with that one statement- it's so easy to tell with both of them. But you don't feel bad, your blood is up and she knows what you're like. If she can't take the heat then she shouldn't have brought you here under false pretenses, shouldn't have broached the subject, shouldn't have assumed-

"John's not as stupid as he seems."

You raise your eyebrows. If she was searching for a great opener that one was not exactly breathtaking. But she presses on anyhow.

"He knows you can't forgive him, Karkat. He'd never ask that of you either. He knows what he's doing is..." She wants to say 'wrong' but can't quite articulate it because you know that even she is still unsure of your motives. That's not something you blame her for. Just like you don't blame her for putting a big gaping hole in your chest. You tried to kill her brother.

But then they took it to the next level and made it unnatural. There's a difference between an honorable death and enslavement. There's no honor in enslavement because slaves have no honor of their own. Maybe considering all the things you've fucked up... You don't deserve honor. That's viable. But you can't just live with yourself like this either, and you definitely can't pretend it makes you happy. Not while you're working for their table scraps like a dog and your former "employer" spends his afternoons staring at rain puddles just so he can 'watch the motherfucking colors'. What do they expect from you? Sunshine and daisies? That just isn't going to happen.

Well, okay the daisies might happen in lieu of your recently acquired hobbies. But definitely not the sunshine part. Outside the no-holds-barred-beat-down raging inside your think pan, Jade is still talking.

"-Questionable... And he knows it hurts you, but he doesn't want to do it. You don't know how many times he's ..." She paused, biting her lip then hurriedly continued, in slight agitation as if she couldn't make the words tumble out any faster. "Look just trust me on this, it doesn't give him any pleasure. He has to. You know why too, and I'm not saying knowing why helps the strain but," she pants a little and tongues the gap between her teeth searchingly. "You can both make it easier on yourselves. You know you're friends so there's no need for more pressure..."

"He is not my friend," you snarl witheringly. It's as if she just accused you of something obscene and disgusting.

She rolls her eyes "B.S!"

Ugh, not this shit again. You HATE this shit.

"He's not!"

"Whatever."

You make an inhuman sound of frustration, suitable for jackals and head injury victims. "Gods damn it, Jade..."

You bite your tongue to hold back a spew of hateful words as she sighs and smooths her dress down needlessly. You know she just needs something to do with her hands. Fidgety. Twitchy. Just like her brother. Drives you up the wall.

"Well whatever you say he is to you.. He is a least decent enough to cordially invite you to eat dinner with him tonight."

"He didn't say it like that." If those pudgy pink lips ever formed a sentence that well constructed, you'd probably die of shock.

"Well...no... he said 'Karkat and I should chow down together tonight, it'll be fucking awesome!'" She shrugged. "But isn't that just as good?"

You exhale. He's pretending that he doesn't know you're mad at him. Typical freaky Kowasite mental manipulation tactics.

"Okay I'm done. Whether you're going or not is up to you," she huffed. "But please just consider it? Please? Even if it's only to yell at him, at least you'll be doing something other than sulking."

You feel oily, downright unclean just at the idea of it. Everything inside is screaming FUCK NO! BACK THE FUCK OFF! But it's the Swamp Witch... And she's got this sensitivity thing going on (big difference between she and her brother who has all the sensitivity of a rhinoceros on opiates). You can't even twist your mouth into articulating a more polite way to say 'no' so what you come up with is a noncommittal grunt. The worst part is that it leans more towards sounding like an affirmative.

So, of course, she runs with it and gives you a quick hug around the neck, like a child squeezing an old hunting dog. All you can do is sit stiffly and uncomfortably until her childish urges are satisfied. Then she pulls back and fixes you with the trademark English-family Sympathy Eyes. You feel your gag reflex kicking in but she doesn't just stumble into it... Her voice is soft and somewhat cautious, tiny wrinkles appear just above her eyebrows as if she's not sure what she should or should not say.

"So how is...how is he feeling?"

Your mouth is dry and your voice is flat. "Fine. About the same."

She bites her lip. "I'm wondering how you can even tell over the haze."

You sigh. You know she means well but it doesn't stop you from feeling dull anger. Not quite at her, but at the entire situation. "I've known him a long time, okay? He's...changed. The drugs are just for the headaches...and the night terrors."

She pauses, nods curtly, and then for some reason she feels the need to hug you again. Just like the first time, you put up with it. You don't hug back. You never do.

She tweets a quick goodbye at you and flounces off, her home-wrecking complete apparently. Now that she's done fucking around with your social life, you suppose she's off to facilitate her own.

Ugh, as long as you're not around to watch them 'macking on each other, it's all the same to you. In the jungle you've seen bigger snakes trying to eat smaller ones and you can't really think of a more apt description for how they slobber on each other. Disgusting. You're pretty, mostly 100 % sure they do it just to piss you off. And it works swimmingly.

After that, you consider going back to the gardens but you've lost your will to work today. There's really nothing else for you to do in here. As comfortable as you feel on the grounds, the palace itself is a bit... awkward. Really, you can go anywhere you please and the inside will always stay cool and breezy, no matter what the weather is like outside.

But...

You just aren't used to having walls around you anymore. They press on you and the more you wander in silence, the more the grinding inside you starts to become more prevalent. You need a distraction. You need to block out the noise.

Well...while you're in the neighborhood, it couldn't hurt to pay that friend of yours a visit. You take a wrong turn on the way back to your room, but your steps are slow and unhurried. You don't expect much change.

He wouldn't be awake now... this friend of yours can't really do nights yet. He's scared of the dark now. And he's got headaches that no small amount of alcohol and opium can abet. Despite your best efforts, you don't see him much... And yet you're always watching.

When you poke your head through the crook of the door, you see him the way he usually looks to you now. He's sprawled on the bed, all limbs and joints and unruly hair, slack jawed and dead to the world. His room always lit with at least one candle to break the dark. Sometimes you peek in early enough to catch a maid pulling a blanket over his sleeping form, sickly and pale against the yellow glow. That's all you need to see. It's what they call a decaying situation.

The best you can do for him is give him what he needs to get through the night and hope he has a good day. He usually does. He hasn't got much to worry about these days anymore and in some ways, you suppose he might be lucky... Stupid fucker certainly considers himself lucky. There's no guilt, no tension in his mind...only his body seems to remember anything about what occurred. You, however, can remember enough for the both of you.

You withdraw, feeling nothing except the inclination that you yourself could do with a little not-remembering. Not such a heavy dose of course, but just a nip.

Of course, this means creeping into the kitchen and procuring it for yourself because, honestly, you don't feel like scaring a house-keeper into submission at the moment. Nursing your drink (whiskey- like anyone with a bulgesack would) you keep glancing at the clock as dinner looms closer and closer (though your stomach gives much more indication than the clock could ever do).

As six o' clock draws nigh, you give up trying to ignore the quarreling (screaming) voices in your head. You finally have to address them, as both your past and present selves refuse to come to terms on the matter of the King.

So what the actual fuck are you going to do, anyway?

The easiest and most logical answer is to ignore his request. You know he won't make you come if you don't want to. He can of course, but he won't, because he's a nook-whiffing idiot. But if you do ignore it, he'll most definitely come looking for you and you can hardly imagine anything more unbearable. Your combat experience hasn't taught you much about matters of the heart (haha, fuck you), but it has taught you that it's better to opt for offense than defense when the opportunity presents itself.

John Egbert Fucking English. Excuse me King John Egbert Fucking English. What a fucking joke. It sounds more like a tongue-twister than a title. Any decent Alternian warlord from times gone by would've laughed himself silly at the idea of John as a leader.

Somehow though, somehow, the people do love him. It's not the kind of mindless "divine right" hero worship they gave King Jake either, it's different. It's sympathetic. You don't understand it, the culture shock is perhaps, too great.

You picture him now whether you want to or not. Him with his extremely punchable oval face glowing with stupidity and false hope, in the middle of digesting a whole stomach full of word-vomit he's just dying to project in your direction. But you're not about to be intimidated. You're the fucking Knight of Blood... At least that's what they used to call you.

Title or no title, the fact remains that you're a fearsome son of a bitch and John, even on one of his better days, couldn't scare a particularly fierce tulip.

Why were you ever worried? You've got this in the bag. Like a bag full of kittens you intend to toss off a waterfall. He won't know what hit him.

You dress yourself to the nines and pull your collar high and tight fixing your face with the gnarliest scowl you can summon. You think it's time to visit the sovereign ruler of the Kingdom of Wind and Shade...

And crush his spirit like an insect with your big black shit-stomping boots.

Chapter Text

John==> Turn the key

You turn the key, watching closely as the man who tried to kill you three years ago crumbles at your feet.

Your name is John but your title is much longer. John son of Jake, Sovereign ruler of the Kingdom of Wind and Shade, King of the Kowasites, Heir of Breath. You think that if you were to clump all those names in a sentence together, it could easily serve as an anchor on a ship. Your reign has thus far lasted what your enemies call 'one and a half sweeps' though the war you inherited along with your crown has been going on for much longer than that. Your Southern-most neighbors, the Alternians, have never before met an enemy they couldn't easily crush and they have not taken to the idea of failure well.

You suck in an unsteady bout of your birthright and the sound it makes is a rattle that reminds you of tree branches shuddering against the wind. It is the only indication that the events currently unfolding may not sit right with you. Outwardly, your expression remains stony. Emotional ambiguity is not an easy look to achieve for someone like you, but you can't afford anything else, not even in company so personal. Though it doesn’t matter as much as it's supposed to. Everyone in the room knows how you feel about this except... The one person who needs to the most. His candy-apple red eyes are burning up at you, weighed down by folds of bruised, swollen skin that indicate a sleeping pattern of near nonexistence and a feral cocktail of terror and rage. They scold you in a harsh, ragged snarl of foaming accusations and hurt feelings, matured like wine into pungent bitterness. You LIKE this don't you? You LIKE to do this to me!

No, no I don't. I PROMISE. You sigh back in your mind, aching. It's a familiar soreness, one that you can feel between your shoulders, in your neck, in your fingertips. It comes from lugging a heavy conscious around. The truth is, you get the least pleasure out of this humanly possible. The idea that you're doing something embarrassing and wrong persists no matter how insistently Rose (but mostly yourself) tries to convince you that it's necessary; you can't shake off the feeling that those eyes throw back at you. The way that body crouches, as if struggling to hold up something much bigger than himself and losing the battle.

You take another step and another but you can't bring yourself to settle back down on your throne. You immediately motion for people to help him because it's obvious he can't get to his feet. You've never been afraid of him the way others are, but you know on some instinctual level that if you go to touch him right now, he'll probably take one of your arms with him. His heart is mechanical, and functional, for the most part... But it's also the only one of its kind that has, to your knowledge, ever been successfully made and it's far from perfect. The Key Turnings bring shock and a lot of pain along with the power they restore.

Jade made the thing like she usually makes things, in a manic frenzy with little to no pre-planning, only the vague notion that it could be done if only she had the resources to pull it off. Sure—arms and legs were easy, but a functioning organ? No one knew whether the it would really work or not. In fact, everyone but you was surprised when it did. You watch Dave open the doors, a signal for the Guards that it's alright to come in again. They half carry Karkat to his room on the West end of the palace and you can see that even in the state he's in, his body jerks as if wanting to struggle and bite. He never stops fighting.

Though you know no one is going to stop you, you can't really stomach getting to your feet and following just yet. Collectively, Dave and Rose know that you will regardless, in a friendship hive-mind kind of way, so neither of them approach you. For now, though they're just a few feet from them, brother and sister incline their heads and talk softly to each other. You couldn't have felt more far away if you'd just walked over the side of a mountain. The conversation going on in your head is not one your used to having. Usually you move a little too fast for chit chat, but this subject is like an open wound you can't help but worry at it. You're mind keeps gnawing.

It's not the deed itself that's really wrong. The slight movement of your wrist brings the metal instrument into contact with the slit and it clicks as it turns a set of gears. A perfect fit with only one key to match it in the world. The gears start churning and the contrivance of iron and brass in the center of Karkat's chest begins to throb with life—too much life to bear. Technically speaking, what you're doing is pretty much a good thing because it means that he can breathe easily again. For another 11 or 12 odd months he can be a semblance of a man, a semblance of the fearsome soldier he once was. As soon as he opens his mouth to scream at someone, that's when you know he'll be fine.

It's what happens when those months are over that leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Inevitably, he has to come back and submit himself to this display of loyalty, an idea you contested, fought bitterly but were never able to completely shoot down. When held up against the awful things Karkat used to do with himself, you just can't. It's a cruel reminder that no matter what kind of undefined relationship the two of you have forged, he was once your enemy and still remains a prisoner of war, forced to conspire against his homeland under your orders. It's seriously heavy shit and you're pretty damn sure that while some part of him might like you, there's definitely a larger portion of that anger-pie that hates your guts.

Though you can't really blame the guy, can you? He didn't ask for this. He was perfectly willing to die for his crimes. The problem was you weren't really willing to kill him. Still aren't--- as a matter of fact.

After a few minutes of brooding and a few less words mumbled to your Queen and your Knight, you find yourself walking at a rapid pace down the high vaulted halls of the Palace of Breath. You know by the time you reach his room that he's already asleep. It's not exactly a dead faint but it's close enough to be as predictable as clock work (and about as predictable as a predictable simile). You lean against the door frame and squint through your flashing glasses to get a good long look. The only thing you can really make out in the moonlight filtering through the window are the most dramatic angles in his features. There aren't many.

He's a cutie. No matter how haggard his appearance, how red his eyes, how Alternian-dark his skin and snarl, he's got the characteristics of a child. A squat nose, a small compact face framed by prominent cheek bones, and large, emotional eyes that are successful at hiding zilch about how he feels. You know the face by heart and you don't even need the light to help you see it.

What's entirely not-childlike is the posture in which he sleeps. He slumps like a corpse or an old man getting ready to be a corpse. King Jake never laid like that. Even on his death bed, he could hardly stand to sit still and you don't think Karkat could have looked closer to kicking the bucket if he had a sword sticking out of his gut. You sway with unsteadiness a lot like sea-sickness at the thought, so again, you find yourself backing away.

You continue retreating until you feel your back against a cool, stone wall and you don't try to stop yourself when your fingers go to twist at your mess of cropped black hair. Of course, there are servants near by, always crouching like nervous rabbits, waiting to act in accordance with your next move, but it's as close to being alone you can get so you don't really see them.

You know it must be a couple minutes later, but it feels like hours when a cool, soft hand falls on your shoulder. The voice is trim, stuffing in as much information as possible in the soft, brisk sound that forms your name.

“John.”

It's Rose. She doesn’t want to interrupt you but has to, which means, she's resolved not to feel guilty about it. It's also apparent that she wants you to come with her. “Sorry, I guess I just...” you begin and trail off. She nods. It's a good thing she knows when you don't intend to finish your sentences. That wife of yours is one sharp cookie.

“I understand.”

It's kind of funny how well you know these people. Just like you didn't have to see Karkat's face to imagine how it looked, you don't even have to tilt your gaze upward to know Rose is furrowing her brow in that god awfully prim way of hers. If you didn't know her well enough to have a very justified and healthy fear, you'd almost call it silly.

“However...” she presses, a trace of urgency laced into her tone, as subtle as poison.

You let go of your hair and force a smile at her. It comes out broad and fake. In regards to Rose, you might as well have held up a sign with bold letters that says Oh hey I'm talking out of my ass. “Don't worry about it. Let's just go.”

She nods curtly and doesn’t bring it up again that night. As you are whisked away to whatever business that needs to be attended to, you can feel her twine arms with you. You press back into it willingly and follow her into a night that is routinely spent with the two of you working tirelessly, machine-like, well past any sane person's bedtime. To your mother and father's credit, they had never once made it seem like ruling the Kingdom was an easy thing to do which is exactly why you'd be friggin' nuts to try and do it alone. Or more specifically, without Rose. You're pretty sure it would result in apocalyptic destruction if she ever decided to leave the atmosphere to rejoin her super-efficient fair-haired alien (heheh) country. Nope, you're positive. Without her, the Palace would immediately crumble in on itself and sink into the swamp, never to be seen again.

The only “flaw” in this team of royal badassery is the fact that you never, uh, consummated your marriage. Not much of a problem except for the times when Dave decides he feels like being a hilarious douche-bag and brings it up (as in all the time), but he can't exactly disapprove can he? It just means he and Princess Jade's hypothetical son is going to be the next Heir instead and Dave never misses an opportunity to gloat about how 'fucking magnificent and fruitful' his loins are going to be in comparison to yours (stupid, douchy Knight of Time best bro bastard whom you kind of wish wasn't going to be your future brother-in-law and whom you could freely strangle without upsetting your sister).

Anyway, the business Rose was so intent on is not a “kiss it off and hand it to a subordinate” type of deal. It's something that requires your immediate personal attention for the most part of the next week. The Alternians have been doing everything they possibly can to try and one-up you in the hopes that something will give them enough of a combat advantage to allow them to launch an all out attack.

Those guys are really big fans of war! And horses. And conquering shit. It's a little bit dizzying just thinking about how badly most of them want all your people dead or enslaved.

They've been pecking insistently at the same game for years, irritating every point on every inch of border they share with your Kingdom to test for weaknesses. Sometimes cavalries will come stomping across like a pack of wolves and get driven back almost instantly by guerrilla units crouching low in the dark jungles, or get rained with attacks from your admirable fleet of airships, circling above like great big carrion birds.

Luckily for you, your military understands that if the fighting's not in the open, Alternia can't get the upper-hand. You mean, they're great at riding into battle and crushing people. It's the way they've been fighting and conquering for hundreds of years and damn if they aren't good at it. Fortunately, their tradition is so set that they don't know any other way. They just do the same thing over and over again with a kind of of obsessive malice that tires you out just considering it. Dave thinks that even they must be aware of how stupid it is to expend so much effort because they have thus far never had the balls to send out a larger force. Maybe two or three cavalries will attack in different places at once, but you know they aren't using all the man power they have. Not nearly.

Only recently have they gotten a little smarter, and it's for this reason that you've spend these past few nights puzzling with Rose and your military advisers over weird correspondence messages.

Apparently they've started building their own airships.

Your airships were invented by Kowasite engineers, the most recent models perfected by Jade who works in utter secrecy (doesn’t get much more secret then that particular swamp). To your knowledge, they've never managed to bring one down either so no one can quite wrap their minds around how they could have figured it out on their own. They have either somehow gained access or there's a spy on the inside handing them information. One thing you do know, however, is that their airships pretty much suck ass.

First of all, they don't know what they're doing. They're just copying based on whatever intel they could scrape up and are sending them off into the air as fast as possible, with the sole intent of displaying power and spreading paranoia. We're watching you, those airships seem to say as they buzz lazily back and forth across the bordering skies like drunken bees while Kowasite people watch on, scared and confused from the safety of their jungles. “Yeah, yeah, fuck you,” you say as your armies beat them back again.

Your airships have always been much more functional and even have real fire behind them. It's no contest. Everyone knows that the Alternians and technology don't mix. Even so, the fact remains that they now have a presence in the air and Rose and Dave mutually find that this is a troubling prologue to shit-that-might-go-south later. If those two are worried, you know you should probably be pissing yourself.

...You've started out looking out one of the many wide windows with the best intentions. Intentions that involve concentrating on the problem at hand and trying to figure out how they could've come by the knowledge they have when you've had people sniffing for spies like hungry blood hounds. The Knight of Time being the hungriest of them all.

But you and concentration have this long history of not getting along very well. You can't help but pause and lose your train of thought when you spot some tiny speck of a person perched on top the highest hill in the gardens, barely visible in the fog but there, surrounded by soft glows of blues, purples and greens from far off. You straighten up, craning your neck to get a better look and adjust the brass rimmed glasses perched on your nose. Rose is busily penning a letter. You, on the other hand, are unhitching the window and beginning to climb out of it like a cat burglar. She turns immediately and sees you just in time for you to flash a winning buck-toothed smile that has made it into several portraits. The Queen is not impressed.

“John, where are you going?”

That woman has a sixth sense! It's spooky. But heh, she also has a lot on her mind and you can assume she's not going to push the issue. By the time you're halfway through, you can tell she's turning back to the desk in a fit of apathy. You don't plan to leave her alone for too long, you just need a little....Your eyes cut back down again to the lone figure on the hill.

Air.

You snort a little in bemused laughter at your own cutting wit, feeling the Wind escape into your collar, your sleeves bloat, your cape billows with the appropriate amount of roguish grandeur and then...

“Hurrk!”

She's pulling you back by the cape, blue fabric clutched in hand. Oh spirits- you hate when you misjudge things like this. “John, I do believe this sort of behavior is a sign that your interest has escalated into an unhealthy obsession. You were planning on using your Windy Shoes so you could fly over the gardens and stalk him no doubt.”

“It's not stalking!” you protest, snatching your cape back and flapping it at her a little, adding a bit of a whine to your voice. “It's just friendly... surveillance. Y'know, a bit of one-sided watching between friendly royal semi-associate pals. It's definitely a thing.” You trail off and then add in a bit of a scolding tone. “Hey- do I ever interrogate you about the shenanigans you get up to?”

“I've never heard of that particular custom being apart of the maneuvers of friendship. Unless by chance, you've been at the window in the maid's quarters unannounced and I'm just finding out about it this instant.” She smirked. “And in regards to my shenanigans, I can actually handle my own private affairs in a mature manner which is why I don't feel the need to discuss them.”

You tut at her. “Aw, don't be gross, Rose! I'm not like old Jake. It's me, John. Do you have to take the fun out of everything? I was just going to get some air.”

Rose winces at the pun as though you'd just reached over and slapped her with a big slimy fish. You can't help but grin. It's like if you want to ward off Rose, all you have to do is make a stupid play on words. Fortunately your mind is like a magical refiling bag that can just produce stupid plays-on-words. You have them in bulk. She presses her fingers to her lips. “Well I am not attempting to stop you. Spirits know, I'd become more psychologically defunct than I already am if I did not take a break once in a while. If that's the only thing I thought you were doing, I'd understand. However you are not. You are going to stalk the bloodthirsty pseudo-gardener, and don't let me hear you deny it, John. I'm not willing to play this game with you.”

You cock your head at this long winded speech and as usual, you find yourself too baffled to argue.

“Whose playing games? C'mon, Rose, you know me. I don't play games... At least not the-,” you brandish your fingers in the air and wiggle them a bit to illustrate your point more clearly, “-weirdo, brain-washing kind you play anyway.” You tilt your shoulders into a shrug and flatten your palms to smooth down your breeches.“And... Yeah. Maybe I was planning on doing a little friendly-not-stalking surveillance. So what?”

She sweeps those fingers away, pursing her lips and placing her hands on her narrow hips in a fluid, feminine motion, her long sleeves rustling. “And what, pray tell, are you hoping to accomplish by just floating around and watching him from a distance? Shouldn't you actually talk to him and have it over and done with instead? You know, in a way resembling a semi-functional human being?”

At the suggestion of being semi-functional, you dig your teeth into your lip a little, releasing your words through the corner of your mouth. “I just... don't know what to say to him yet, you know? And I,” you wince. “Okay, it's not like I'm afraid of how he'll react or anything... It's just that I definitely don't have time to hash it out with him right now. I keep meaning to talk to him these past couple of days but...” She raises one high arching bleached-blonde eyebrow and you wave your hand at her just dismissively enough to be “chauvinistic and infuriating”.

“Soon, soon I'll talk to him about it. I mean I need to talk to him anyway to tell him about the next mission, right? And we have to get everything settled with that friend of his if we really want to send him along...” You trail off, furrowing your brow in concentration. “Lets see, uh tomorrow... No, tomorrow I'm meeting with Dave and we're going over the, uh...” you trail off frustratedly. “The next day..? No... That won't work either...How about...”

“Tomorrow afternoon?” she supplies instantaneously. Her small smile tells you absolutely nothing about what she's thinking. But that's to be expected.

You fiddle needlessly with the tips of your cape. “But uh—hey wait, no, that's afternoon tea.” Afternoon tea with Rose is not as casual as it sounds. It's more like--- sip half halfheartedly at hot liquid while going over everything that happened that week and analyzing it. It's more like afternoon debriefing. “I mean later in the afternoon John. Dinner. Night time. We'll do tea with the Witch and her beau ...and in lieu of getting any real work done, concentrate instead on your ill-advised romantic endeavors.”

You shift on your feet a little. “I dunno Rose... That kinda sounds, no offense, a bit nightmarish.”

She shrugs a little, the gentle slope of her shoulders draped in all that fabric managing to make even that look elegant somehow- kinda like an understated waterfall. “I have already told Jade to tell Karkat you'd be there tomorrow when she gives him his check-up. Really, I don't see you having a choice in the matter, unless divinity suddenly bestows upon you the gall to call it off yourself .”

You blink and then immediately smile at her appreciatively. “Wow, you're being so evil. I'm kinda proud of you sometimes.” Only you have had the right to watch that evil start out as a tiny evil sprout and then fester and grow into a sprawling fungi garden of evil. It's touching.

“Knowing that you have dim, slightly fearful admiration for my cunning displays of tactility surely gets me through those cold winter nights and well into the summer, John.”

Cunnilingus displays? you think privately, but rather than inciting a full blown act of violence you instead lean over to give her a little kiss on the cheek. “Yup. That's why I married you! I mean besides the fact that it was arranged when we were born and we were both forced into it,” you pipe cheerfully and beam at her.

“Oh John. You certainly have a way of ruining every sentimental moment possible and I'm sure that's exactly what he sees in you.,” she chuckles and pushes you away a little. “Are you quite content to get back to business or do you still need some air?”

You grin and back away towards the window, clicking your heels together in an attempt to achieve the right rhythmic pattern. “Just a bit. I'll be right back.”

“Very well,” she quips, giving you her back in a dismissive swish of printed fabric, her opal head dress grinning in the low candle light, reduced to a white blur out of the corner of your eye.

In a second, you're scaling sheer spires like a deranged monkey, whisking freely from hand-hold to hand-hold, currently a hundred feet above the ground. You click your heels a few times to activate your Shoes, hearing the whirring and whining in your ear drums, a sound softer than a heartbeat and then you tense like a cat and launch precariously into open air, feet outstretched to catch a roiling wind current. Pchoooo!

This presents no problem for you at all.

The next day, afternoon tea is every bit as nightmarish as you predicted but you take it in strides. These are your friends, after all. You know them better than anyone. So you could've practically mouthed the words when Dave says, “Look Egbert. Not to be insensitive, but we're in the middle of a fucking war and all, so just speed it up a bit, would you? Given that we might all die at any moment when that bitch decides to send every inbred sword-toting mofo she ever pushed out of her vag galloping over the border you might as well-”

“Spirits...” Jade squeaks a little, even with her palm pressed over her mouth, she's unable to contain her cackle. She shouldn't be surprised people think she's a witch when she goes around cackling like that.

“-Hire a male prostitute you know, like all the other politicians and while you're at it, leave our pet bloodthirsty assassin alone. Yes? Everyone with me on that? Good.”

“That's not what this is about, numbnuts,” you snap back, feeling your first faint spark of annoyance. Man, it's not usual that Dave can get to you at all. He's Dave. You expect him to act exactly how he acts and as your Knight, he only has your best interests at heart. Most of the time. The idea of you being that twisted over this kind of vaguely unsettles you. But why shouldn't you be?You sigh. “Me and him...We're pals okay? All that other stuff comes after and he has a right to be fucking cheesed off. I mean for the spirit's sake, every time he needs a Key Turning, it wears him down a little more. Shit... I'm not even sure whether what we're doing is necessary anymore... Forget the moral implications.” You lean wearily back in your chair as all three of them silently peer at you.

“The fact remains,” you finish, “Is that we give him an awful lot of responsibility and not much in return. That's all I'm saying”.

Rose is the first to speak again, her voice a patient and measured drawl. “John. You know why it's necessary that we do it this way. At least while the war is still ongoing. He was the Knight of Blood once and he could be again. Not only that, but his ability to go undetected in Alternia is invaluable. We just can't afford-”

You shake your head impatiently. “I know that, all of that but it doesn't make it any less not- okay. He's still a person, my friend, under that title.”

“Well,” Jade puts in, shifting a bit and blinking sympathetically at you. “I really don't know if you guys are giving Karkat enough credit! He's changed a lot in three years and I don't think he could ever put on that cloak again even if he was given the opportunity and I think....” Dave turns back to her, and even your own words die in your throat as you wait for her insight. Sometimes your sister really does seem like the Witch the public thinks she is. Not just because of any of the scientific mumbo jumbo but the way she can just...

Aw, you don't have a word for it. Rose would. Rose has all the words.

“I think the only person he has any loyalty to anymore is you, John. Everything he has in the world is in your hands but then, it's more then that. I think the reason he's so angry isn't just because it hurts or it's inconvenient... I think it's maybe because he has personal involvement.”

A smile stretches your face. “You really think he considers himself my friend?” You feel a cathartic glimmer of hope that isn't entirely happy, but nonetheless you can't help but chant in your head. Hell. Yes. Hell fucking yes.

She laughs a little and twines her arm around Dave's, squeezing it and inciting an eyebrow raise that almost makes you laugh ,despite the knots in your chest and stomach. “I dunno if he'd uh, word it that way, but yeah!”

“It's a bit difficult to define your relationship in one phrase, John,” Rose notes with that same placid smile that topples empires all over the place.

“Aggressively not-heterosexual?” suggests Dave, earning himself a tiny slap on the wrist from his indefinite fiancee.

You laugh openly at that, though it comes out just a little bit nervous and rushed. “Look, once the war ends.... I mean after we fix this,” you look up and straight into Rose's eyes. “After we fix all of this, we won't have to do it anymore right? There won't be a reason,” you take a deep breathe and lift your teacup, squaring your shoulders, “It'll all be over and Karkat will be free. Just like the rest of us.” That's what you truly believe, you kind of have to. Everything is riding on the end of the war, absolutely everything and Karkat is only the first of many, many lives you will save.

They look at each other but no one disagrees with you. They'd better not! If there's even a one percent chance that your reign will bring an end to the war, you're definitely going to make it happen. You're so close now and Karkat's strong. He's gotta be the strongest man you've ever known, like something out of one those Sir Nicholas Cage legends except shorter. You know he can hold on.

In the meantime...

“In the meantime,” you begin again. “... I'll just make him feel better. Cheer him up a little, right?” You don't think you know one person these days who couldn't stand a little cheering up, and Karkat is probably one of the biggest candidates.

“Yeah. Go get 'em tiger. Sweep him off his feet like a zookeeper wrestling a rabid honey badger... Or... Hell, maybe an emu. Domesticate that shit,” Dave says. The only thing that tells you he's cutting his eyes up is the shift in his eyebrow quirk and the wrinkle his forehead. You stare back at him, understanding immediately what he means by looking at you like that. I know you like him, Egbert, but if he makes a wrong move, I'll cut him down.

I know, you think back with a dip of your chin that only Dave would interpret as a nod. You blink from the flash of those brass goggles always firmly fixated on his narrow face, the sun turning them into glaring fiery spheres with no more empathy than any other burning ball of gas in the sky. To anyone else, even Jade, they might as well be his eyes. One day he might take them off for her, you hope, but that day hasn't come yet and you know the only time he did it for you, it wasn't by choice. Dave has protected you for almost your entire life. He commands your army and trains your most elite soldiers. In order to do his job, sometimes he disobeys direct orders and has to keep secrets from you. Unbeknownst to anyone but your inner circle, you are the only King in Kowasite history to have two Knights working under you at once. You know he doesn’t really appreciate it but he would never admit to being anything but cool with it. As the Knight of Time, he's supposed to be an immortal being that's basically impenetrable and all that shit but really he's just a basically good guy with an attitude. Like someone else you know.

“So guys.... any day now....I'm open to suggestions?” You offer as attractively as possible, raising both eyebrows at once and spreading your hands becomingly to beckon in all the good vibes and profound commentary your friends will surely provide.

“Karkat is a delicate flower,” Rose advises, words flowing calmly as warm milk. “He obviously needs to be firmly courted with all the passion a young robust man such as yourself can muster, for only a proper wooing could possibly alleviate his tempestuous storm of hormonal dissonance.”

You hear a strangled choking noise, sort of like a cross between a suppressed scream and a hiccup as Dave snorts into his cup.

You look back at Rose, your eyes suddenly gleaming with unshed tears of joy (okay not really, but you're seriously are all on board with this one!). Perfection. You reach over and grasp Rose's dainty hands eagerly. “Oh spirits, you are the best wife ever. That's. A. Fantastic. Idea.”

Jade's leaf green eyes get kind of wide like an owl's, further magnified by her glasses which she pushes further up her nose with anxiety. “No. John, she wasn't actually being serious-”

Rose blinks back calmly at her. “Of course I was. I shall even set it all up. I'll make sure they prepare his favorite foods, I'll get the gardens lit up...”

“Rose, do you want him to die? Help me out here!” Jade turns tug at Dave again who is apparently giving a congratulatory fist-bump to Rose under the table for just giving their sovereign ruler and supreme palhoncho the best advice ever.

“I wouldn't dream of interfering with this,” Dave says gravely “This is just beautiful.”

“Guys this isn't funny, you're going to get him killed! Listen John, Karkat's not a flower. That is the furthest thing from what Karkat is … Karkat's more like a … Cactus! A cactus covered in razor sharp bitchy thorns-”

You laugh warmly and stand up, hearing the screech of your chair as you push it, mussing up the tablecloth slightly in the process.

“Jade, Jade,” you say shaking your head.“I've heard from a reliable source that cacti do in fact have flowers. I've got this! It's totally in the bag. We'll have the most awesome night two bros ever had right after a bitter, emotional conflict.”

“I...” She started raising her hand, but then she balls it into a fist and huffs out a resigned sigh. She reaches for a scone as a gesture of defeat. “Okay well, if you think it'll be okay, maybe it will be. You're serendipitous that way. Just...” She winces visibly and idly adds, “Just... remember there's a high-speed setting on your Windy Shoes is all.”

You're already backing away eagerly. It's not often that you get the opportunity to escape afternoon tea. Usually Dave is the one who gets to leave first, lucky bastard. “I will! See you guys later!”

“I'm proud of that kid,” you hear Dave mutter sagely as Rose snickers quietly.

You're proud of yourself too. Why didn't you think of this sooner? Of course, as a former Master level prankster, you're aware that they were just yanking your chain but that doesn’t make it not a good idea.

Some of your best plans come from terrible, terrible ideas!

You're in the know as to all the things Karkat likes (of which there are admittedly few but enough to work with!) so, maybe if you just pack them all into one evening, his mood will improve! Plus you're giving him a new mission, a new relaxing mission that shouldn't be too difficult. He'll have his best friend along too...

And this time you'll see to it that he returns well within his time limit.

Chapter Text

Karkat ==> Check the time

No. Haha. No.

First of all, you already know what time it is because you happen to be a more than semi-competent life form. Secondly you fucking hate clocks and thirdly, you don't need to even faintly consider the idea of being late. You don't give a wildly, nay, acrobatically pirouetting fuck whether or not you are late. If you get there too early? Well boo hoo, you guess this time you--- very metaphorically—caught him with his pants down. If you get there too late? Well you guess it'd be a damn crying shame if you went and offended your new sovereign ruler, wouldn't it?

Gods forbid that.

The servants around here, unlike the gardening staff, definitely know what's up because none of them look you in the eye as you stomp past with all the concern of a stampeding hoofbeast. You are a nigh impenetrable fortress even in casual wear, but like this you are fucking armor plated. Nothing can get past the high collar of your coat. Nothing can puncture the neat line of brass buttons positioned ornately down the line of your torso. Your infamous boots, black and expensive, crush everything underfoot, especially that slimy gelatinous substance known as emotions. In case, you missed any on the way there, you make sure to back track a couple times just so you can grind the toes of them hard into the floor, as if you were crushing an insect with a hard shell.

It might be cliched, but it's true and you subscribe to this mantra- the proud mantra of warriors, brigands and midwives everywhere. Emotions are for the weak.

The only emotion that you are playing the hospitable host to is anger. You are pulling out anger's chair and inviting him to stay and have dessert. Anger is fine with you. If you were a dog, you'd be rabid. If you were a cannon, you'd be fucking exploding. So much anger seems to expand inside you, filling every thought available to the bursting point. It's more than you'd ever thought you'd be able to hold..

How dare he invite you to dinner. How dare he set this up like some kind of playdate. How dare he not talk to you for weeks and send his sister to do his fucking dirty work. How dare he involve her at all. How dare he try to apologize this way. It's contrived, it's sickening, it's incredibly manipulative and it's just gahhhffffuck you don't even have words obscene enough for it. You do have some nonetheless colorful phrases stored away. But you'll hold on to them for now, allowing them to rattle against the walls of your think-pan. When you get there, they will come out in a violent, vomiting stream of bile and venom. That's what your waiting for.

You're tired of this and you're not about to hold anything back. This will drive him away for good. You will yell yourself hoarse in his face, and then you will leave him with his fancy dinner and his hopefully busted illusions of friendship. Who knows. Maybe he'll grow a pair and execute you for it. …. But you're not going to hold your breathe for that.

You pause just for a second as you stare up at the arching doorway, vaguely annoyed that you are dwarfed by it. The passage is so narrow and light, yet also ornate with rings of stone flowing in broad, swirling patterns. Of course, it's built incredibly high like everything else in this fucking place. u. High ceilings to match high expectations. Would paradise even be enough for the Kowasites if they believed in it?

You don't allow yourself a deep breath. It feels good after all this time of drawing water from a well that just got shallower and shallower. But the deeper you breathe, the more you hear the gears rattle and you just can't think about that right now. Besides, you have no intention of calming down.

You throw the door open as if the panels of wood have personally offended you and before you even see the room through the cloud of red, you just start talking. Talking very loudly.

“WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK DID YOU THINK YOU WERE DOING, EGBERT? YOU THINK THAT YOU CAN FUCKING SUMMON ME TO YOUR SHITTY ASS PLAY DATE AND I'LL SHOW UP LIKE SOME KIND OF SERVILE FRIENDSHIP GENIE? AND NO I DON'T MEAN ASSPLAY DATE, YOU RIDICULOUS BRISTLY TWAT. I WOULDN'T FUCKING TOUCH YOU AGAIN IF I WAS POISONED AND THE ANTIDOTE WAS IN THE TIPS OF YOUR GRUBBY LITTLE FINGERS. IN FACT, IF YOU TRY TO TALK TO ME OR TOUCH ME I WILL MURDER YOU THREE TIMES, BRING YOU BACK TO LIFE AND KILL YOU AGAIN. FUTHERMORE, I DON'T GIVE A SHIT IF THAT SCHIZOFRENIC DOUCHEBAG COMES AND CHOPS MY HEAD OFF WITH HIS SHITTY LITTLE SWORD. YOU SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF THAT BEFORE YOU TRIED TO BEFRIEND AN ENEMY ASSASSIN, WHICH BY THE WAY, MOST PEOPLE DON'T DO....BECAUSE THAT'S MENTALLY DEFECIENT AS ALL HELL,” finally, you relent and gulp in air, thankfully unable to hear the gears because your ears are ringing.

“---BEFRIEND AN ASSASIN SHITLY. EVERYTHING YOU DO IS SO SHITTY. HOW DARE YOU FUCKING INVOLVE JADE. HOW LOW IS THAT? THAT'S DETESTABLE. YOU ARE THE SHITTIEST FRIEND IN HISTORY. EVEN IN PRE HISTORY. WHEN CAVE PEOPLE WERE THROWING ACTUAL FECES AT EACHOTHER AND STEALING THEIR NEIGHBOR'S WIVES, THEY WERE STILL BETTER FRIENDS THAN YOU. BUT YOU KNOW, I THINK I CAN CONSIDER ALL THIS IS A POSITIVE RELEVATION BECAUSE GUESS WHAT, DUMB ASS? WE'RE NOT EVEN FRIENDS!”

You all but screamed the four words. Your vocal cords not just needing a break after that, but a good, impassioned rest. You then brought your eyes up with the very intention of seeing John's face fall, seeing the hope drain from it, seeing the possibility of redemption blow away...

Except...

Your words didn't hit anything, they spiraled in an angry gray tornado and bounced off the wall, harmlessly ricocheting up to bump against the gargantuan ceiling and then dissipate into whatever heinous netherworld angry rants went to when they died. You actually used your fucking eyes then and saw a long table set with hot food, the smell of which made your stomach pinch with longing, but only for a split second before your eyes were immediately drawn to a chair at the end by the window. An empty chair.

“....What,” you croak.

For a moment, you aren't sure what to do. Your chest throbs and every flow of blood through veins feels like they're squirming underneath your skin and fighting for a better grip on your muscle tissue.. Your head feels interesting- sort of like you've been beamed up the side of it with a juggler's club.

But there was no unconsciousness, just bewilderment. Profound bewilderment. The sick fuck hadn't even shown up for his own speech. His own fucking apology. Absent.

It's … just...

You stare at the table, positively stacked with delicious goodies. It doesn’t strike you odd that your favorite foods are there and John is not. The only thing that's wrong with this picture is that the food is not on the floor and servants are not rushing to pick it up. Pandemonium needs to happen.

You step towards the table, intending to fix this, among many other things. But first you hear the word.

“Karkat?”

And then you flip the goddamn table.

It's a mess. Even in the air as you watch the table go, you can see food that shouldn't be mixed together getting ready to land on top of each other, creating atrocious mutations that would make any chef worth his sodium products hold his hands to his face and sob like a three year old. For instance, mashed potatoes definitely don't belong with chocolate fudge putting. However, the mess itself is nothing in comparison to the noises.

John is there now. Of fucking course. Now he decides to show up and he gapes like a fish with his mouth opening and closing, and you stand there with your lips tightly pressed together, losing your god damn mind. This is totally not your fault. It's his. If he'd act like a decent human being none of this would happen!

The thunderous clattering, rattling and general fuckery seems to go on forever, the like of which you have only seen nowhere near a dining room but on a battle field. John's face is just the appropriate mixture of surprised, frightened and hurt. Not so much in an emotional way as much of a I-just-got-shot-in-the-stomach-with-an-arrow kind of way.

That expression strikes you. It fills you with a heady buzzing cloud of energy when you see it change his features. Finally, he has nothing to say. Finally you've gotten him to pay attention. He usually floats above everything, untouched by your anger and always ready with a stupefyingly ...stupid-and-just a- little-bit-snarky response. You feel satisfaction of course, because that's what you were going for. But it's only a marginally small amount compared to everything else. You can't. You can't hold all these emotions.

“WHAT THE FUCK, JOHN-,” you start, almost in a pant. You haven't even started yet and you're already exhausted.

“..Karkat-” he tries to begin, landing on the ground in front of you. Landing on the ground. Of all the times to be flying around like a doofus with those fucking things Jade built him, this was definitely the worst possibly imaginable. Why would he choose to wait for you from outside a window? Probably just daydreaming and lost track of the time. He's not even doing it on purpose. He's like your natural predator, built to infuriate you on a cellular level.

“WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU,” you turn amidst the rubble of cutlery and spilled food and spit the words at him. You don't care what you're stepping on, of course. That's what these boots are for.

“I was... I was just outside, uh, doing that thing I do... Waiting for you to show up,” he spins around a second to try and take in the destruction you have wrought upon his dining hall. “Holy fucking spirits, bro! Do you know how long it's going to take them to-”

“NO. STOP TALKING,” you throw your hands up immediately. You can't breathe.

“I JUST WANT TO KNOW ONE FUCKING THING AND THEN I WANT YOU TO SHUT YOUR RELIABLE BOTTOMLESS WORD-GEYSER-”

“Yeah but-”

“NO. STOP. JUST... JUST STOP.” You need to stop him now, before this goes too far. “AND IF YOU SAY ANYTHING ELSE BESIDES THE INFORMATION I AM REQUESTING, I SWEAR TO MY ANCESTORS I WILL... I WILL DO SOMETHING PHYSICALLY UNPLEASANT TO YOU.”

At that his brow knits together and he frowns. It's such a concentrated, quiet frown. “Okay Karkat. Just... Tell me what you want!” He blurts it with more bite than John usually puts into his sentences. His nerves are obviously rattled.

“DID YOU,” you exhale, shakily and glare. “Did you hear anything I just fucking said?”

You see that thin dark brow part and raise, his spectacles are slightly askew but he doesn’t bother to right them, his eyes dropping a little. When he speaks, he doesn’t sound upset or resigned, but he does sound helpless.

Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe he ought to know how it feels sometimes, a dark voice inside of you hisses. But it's surprisingly not as loud as you thought it would be.

“Yeah...” Clear blue eyes stare you down, a good distance away, but still not far enough. He blinks slowly. “Yeah. I heard it.” His shoulders are limp, his overbite tugs at his bottom lip. Helpless.

Your voice is quieter too when you respond, but maybe only from yelling so much. You step back warily from him. You feel like a dangerous animal. Perhaps one that puffs up so it can look bigger or more poisonous than it actually is. You aren't really sure anymore....“Good.”

For a terrible, godawful moment, the two of you just stand there like idiots and look at each other. It's the first time either of you has seen the other face to face in a couple days and it's not like you want to coddle clear memories of the first time. John looks tired, and you're sure you aren't much better off. This is pretty much the exact opposite of what you want to be doing at the moment (though you aren't sure exactly what that is either- except definitely not this). True, you wanted to see the hurt delivered by the words you'd been wanting to say for so long, but you weren't exactly sure what was going to happen afterward. You didn't actually think past saying those words.

This definitely can't go on and your feet itch to take you away from it. But you are relieved in the fact that whatever misplaced feelings he had will be gone now, and you can suffer in peace, gnawing at yourself. Maybe later, the little dumbass will send someone to collect you and finally put you in a prison where you belong, or hell, get rid of you all together. That's not your decision to make but this one was... And you've made it.

But John apparently didn't get the memo.

“Karkat, wait,” he says, not pleadingly, but firmly. He can be firm sometimes. There's an Heir in there, somewhere, just below the skin. His pale fingers are suddenly in his dark hair and you see them scuttle like a spider, make a quick, brushing motion through it. “Come on, man... Don't do that. We can talk about this.”

John takes an entire step toward you and then another and another. You feel backed into a corner. And then he finally bothers to push up his glasses. His voice is fresh. It's not devoid of feelings. It's definitely not happy either, but it's fresh. The idiot is still trying. He still thinks there's hope to get through to you. He's still trying to make friends with the traitor of two nations. It staggers you. You can't believe it. Why won't he STOP? Why won't he give up?

“WHAT THE FUCK,” you snap back, bristling “COULD YOU POSSIBLY HAVE TO SAY NOW?”

“I...” he stammers a bit and then throws back in a fiercer tone “Spirits, I just...”, his hands coming up to close tight against each other as if he's trying desperately to hold something together. It takes all the strength in his hands to do it. John is the type of leader that would spend days trying to force magnets to get along.

He releases a frustrated puff of air as he speaks “I don't know exactly, okay? I don't have a speech prepared for this or anything... If that's what you're thinking I do, you're pretty much entirely wrong in like, every conceivable way.” You hear him laugh a little but it's just a quick, nervous sound. You stop to watch the different tones his face makes, fascinated. Of course you do. If there's anyone stupider than John, it's got to be you.

“...I invited you here because I just wanted to take the opportunity to talk to you about all this shit. I'm trying to apologize but I don't have a heh, a friggin' instruction manual on how to assemble a Karkat or anything so I ...I need you to help me out a little...”

“LISTEN-”

He falters for a moment but quickly rushes on .“I just... I just wanna fix this, okay? Or... If I can't fix it.... At least make it a little better” he shifts uncomfortably. “Let me try at least.... Tell me...Y'know how you feel and stuff. So I can understand better...”

Your fingers find your forehead and you start kneading it furiously, willing the contents to stay inside, god damn it. At any second, your think-pan will start to leak out your ears in gushing streams just from the force of being slapped by that radioactive olive branch.

John just cocks his head and stares at you, like a curious whelp watching its mother. It's sickening. For a moment, you're sure that you won't be able to articulate anything you're feeling right now, but you always surprise yourself. “You've got the motherfucking gift of gab, bro,” as your old friend used to say.

“I can never fucking tell what you're doing on purpose and what you're not so I'm just going to treat this like it's genuine without being totally aware of whether it is or not. What I want to know is....are you honestly that vapid? Do you not get what I'm saying?” you grind out tightly, raising your eyes and studying his face. “I don't want to be apologized to, John. You do that every time and I always just....Fucking...Gah.” Your knuckles and palms clench, slick with sweat.

Your hand swings, a gesture to the ruined dinner.

“That is probably the last thing I want in the world right now. The situation is fucked up enough as it is without continuing this facade. It's gross. It's nasty. It's like...” your tongue presses against the roof of your mouth a few times, searching for a simile But you can't find one. What the fuck? You always have a simile.

“--It's not right,” you settle on lamely. “If I'm a prisoner, then I'm a prisoner and not anything else. That's how it has to be.”Because otherwise, it's too confusing. And it hurts. That's the essential part you always leave out.

“Karkat... I'm sorry, but that is a gigantic a crock of shit,” John says, almost disbelievingly. You swallow dryly at those words. How can he always just find it? That button he has to press to make you shut up?

His fingers slip down to instead touch his chin, as if considering and quickly refuting. “Why can't I do something nice for you? What's so taboo about that? It's not like I'm trying to get something out of you. I....I don't have an agenda.” The last words are tinged with some amount of bitterness. People must expect him to have an agenda, they must expect it at every turn. But they are only right half the time. He has grown under a thick curtain of shadows, King Jake's crown, Queen Rose's gown. In terms of gardening, you've seen it before. Sometimes persistent plants grow from between cracks in a stone path, pressing towards the sun despite all odds. John is like those little plants. Only he hasn't been crushed, but instead flourished. He metaphorically kind of fucking split the path apart to make room for himself.

“I just...don't get what you're saying at all. I mean...” You watch the toe of his shoe push some cutlery around for a moment. The ground doesn’t treat him well. He's slightly slouched as if lugging around some heavy burden. Possibly a strap-on coffin.

“...I mean it's cool if you don't wanna eat with me. Fine. If you don't wanna be friends, it's not like I can force you. And it'd be pretty stupid to try and force someone be your friend. Sure... But...” He frowns and as you watch , you see it again, that flash of pain passes through his eyes. The arrow must be lodged in there pretty deep. You wonder why he got so much food in the first place. It's not like any of you would be able to eat.

“Thing is...I don't really think you hate this dinner... Or me. I mean you've acted like you liked all this as much as you can like anything up until now.” He sighs a little, apparently not aware that he just said 'like' three times. Seriously. “And if you do like it.” Four times. “...I think you should just let yourself...” He trails off but then starts again, hurried and slightly agitated.

“I mean, why are you still trying to punish yourself for stuff that happened forever ago? It's not like anyone else wants to punish you. You know... That was never what this was about...As....As much as it may seem that way sometimes.” Then you follow his gaze as he stares past you. As if watching something troubling from afar, like a forest fire.

“John, for fuck's sake, stop trying to psychoanalyze me,” you growl. He spends way too much time with that wife of his. “You're terrible at it.”

“ I don't wanna make you... I'm just...” his hands twitch as if he's lost the reigns. Helpless, helpless, helpless. 'Why can't ruling a chunk of the civilized world assist in areas like this?' he must wonder. Finally his hands give up scourging his upper body and they hang down in front of his torso, the fingers twining together, interlocking as he lowers his voice just enough to sound slightly ashamed of himself. It hurts you, no small amount, to hear that, but it also enrages you further.

“I'm really sorry it has to be this wa-”

No. No. No!

“You're doing it again. Don't you fucking REALIZE that every time you TALK to me, everything you DO is just another APOLOGY?” You're hissing at him from between your teeth, low and savage. “I don't fucking want an apology, you inscrutable shit-wranger! Do I have to draw you a goddamn diagram in the clouds? How can I get you to understand? Do you honestly think I expected anything else? It's not what you're doing, dipshit, hell, it's not even all the horrifying crimes against sanity you do on a daily fucking basis...”

His voice becomes a little flat, not with annoyance but with lack of feeling. He really wants to know, and that's the only reason why he asks.

“Well...then what is it?”

Well if he really wants to know, you must tell him.

“It's ME, douchebag. It's ME. WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU WANT TO HELP SOMEONE LIKE ME ANYWAY? YOU REALLY THINK A FUCKING FEAST WOULD CHANGE THAT? I'M THE REASON PEOPLE STARVE TO DEATH. DO YOU GET IT NOW, CANDY ASS? I TRIED TO FUCKING KILL YOU.” You can't even hear yourself over the burning and ringing in your own ears. Your voice cracks and becomes slightly faint but you still force it out. You don't care if your throat tears at the seams.

“W-well...” he stammers. “But I mean--- duh, why would you be any-”

“AND THEN I FUCKED EVERYTHING UP. NOT JUST FOR YOU AND YOURS, FOR US TOO. DO YOU WANNA MAKE EXCUSES FOR THAT, JOHN? HOW ABOUT THOSE BURNING PILES OF BODIES? DO YOU WANNA KNIGHT THAT AND BECOME IT'S FUCKING BOSOM BUDDY, JOHN?” You feel your knuckles pop as words foam from your mouth, twisted in an animalistic snarl. “I didn't consign myself to this to make friends.”

Or fuck buddies, you spit brutally at yourself in the confines of your mind. You just have to hurt people at this point. You don't care who it is.

You see his gaze slide. He can't look you in the eye anymore. He's wincing, not just in his face or shoulders, all over. From his round cheeks, to his soft neck, down his torso, all the way to his ankles. A full body wince. Your words are pinching the King, making him seem smaller.

Now you can't raise your voice, so your making a harsh croaking sound a lot like one of Jade's frogs. Your heart pounds and the gears grind, as always. After you die, there may be juice left in them. They'll probably continue to turn so from the inside of your decaying skeleton for months to come while John grows old fast pursuing an unattainable peace and innocent people continue to die.

There's a noticeable tremble in your voice now, but you push the words out anyway, trying to get them as far away from you as possible. It won't matter however, there's no way they can ever really leave. They are poisonous because they are the truth.

“...I gave our Kingdoms cancer.”

It's finally out, and it's just sitting there with John in the same room. You suck in wind. You wait for him to say something, anything, as the silence divides you, makes the hall longer. Much to your chagrin, in spite of everything you have said and done to squash it, the weak half of you actually hopes he will. You don't know what the fuck is wrong with you sometimes. The room remains silent, except for the hollow whooshing sound of the Breath funneling in through the open window.

You turn and carefully step around the food this time as you push the door open, some of that cold air hitting your back as you leave the dining hall. The only thing you pay attention to is the sound of your own footsteps. You don't see anything in front of you, your eyes are not in use. Servants must avoid you, walls seem to almost do the same, but perhaps it's just that you've come to know these paths too well. You are a train on an unfinished

“-Track him down,” you wheeze.

The light blinks steadily, with more urgency than before. You don't know why you keep speaking, it's not as if they will listen to the Traitor.

You'll only have the mental coherency much later to think that the sound of your “breathing” is now sort of like what a scream must sound like from the mouth of a drowning man. There's people of some manner looking down on you, at least four of them, maybe more standing behind them. You can hear them talking amongst each other in a world above yours. You can only see the form of their bodies, the way what little light you can interpret carves them out of the closely, pressing void. You writhe a little in your nest of shadows like a fish caught in a dark, woven net. It's cold and hot and it burns either way in long painful ropes, tightening, tightening. There must not be any more flesh left for them to grasp by now.

Your father, throat gravelly from scars and smokes and whiskey, warned you about the underworld for mercenaries and black knights alike, but you never really believed any of that superstitious fuckery until now. Hell is real, hell is in your ribcage, chewing on itself and making a racket as it eats rather messily.

The crystal rests, looped on its chain in the junction of your collarbone. You cannot move your arms enough to right it but you can see it, barely rising and falling with the faint movements of your chest. Even if you'd been running at full speed, the movement would not have been enough to jostle the tiny microorganisms clustered tightly inside it, their bio-luminescence forcing out a constant, steady glow from the hard diamond-shaped structure. At least that's how it usually looks, nestled under many barriers of clothing.

Now however, it blinks rapidly. The warmth comes and goes, comes and goes. All the while, you are still talking.

“Send them out,” you rasp, jerking again like a dog kicked so hard it forgot to finish its snarl. “Send them after the cal... I will...fucking...stay. I will do anything. FUCK- I will give you fucking anything.”

They talk over you, as if you've done and said nothing. Who gives a fuck? Of course you will. You're their prisoner now. Except people like you were trained to starve to death or poison yourselves in situation like these.

You would have no problem doing just that, like every tanned, dark haired prisoner the Kowasites have ever managed to net. When you rushed at the King, death was a perfectly legitimate outcome. You had been prepared for it your entire life. Torture as well is simply the way the cards are drawn sometimes, face down and reversed.

But the one you promised to protect is still out in danger. Something's gone wrong. They're doing something to him. And it's all your fault.

The message keeps telling you to hurry, but it's hard to speak. You are going as fast as you can.

The crystal is called, in low voices, Serenity, a name Alternian nobles only dare speak. It produces is a light paler than a winter's moon and while its function is to guide, it is not a beacon, but a messenger. Each crystal has a twin, the light and consciousness is shared between the two parts. You never have to look to read it, you can feel just the press of warmth against your skin, as gentle and light as the first tentative kiss of a toddler, but unique to the warm glow of any normal flame. In contrast, you hurt with a kind of agonizing persistence that stuns you. You've never wanted to die more than you do at this moment. Something is unnatural. They've put something inside you, you suppose, so you may possibly live long enough to give them information. And it's making so much noise, but it's still not louder than your thoughts, which race feverishly.

You will be the first to speak. You will be the first Traitor. Because your friend is in danger and they have no reason to help you, no reason to listen to you. The shadows in the medical tent thicken and now the forms are just a dense forest.

You lose yourself in that unfamiliar forest, and wander it blindly. Soon the only place to look is up.

Through the cover of the trees you see only one break, just a sliver of light. There are blue eyes shining down on you, planets of sky, framed by an oval shaped face. You saw the Kowasite Prince's when you first rode up, heard him speak his piece in a clear, airy voice that resonates like a bell, you saw him many years before on etchings passed underhandedly across the border.

He captivated your friend, the freshness of his ideas, his brightness. At first you were too focused on your own agenda to see it but now you can very clearly understand why the border people believe him, why your Prince in turn, believes him. Or used to.

You only have to see his face to understand that you were wrong in several assumptions. He is every bit the Kowasite, pale and spindly like a creek eaten alive by raw moonlight... But he is neither a monster nor a cackling demon. He's listening to every single garbled, half decayed word you manage to get out. His blue eyes are curious and attentive like a child. He's soaking it all in, but not only that. Somehow, insanely, he understands what is to be done.

He speaks to his would-be killer, his words floating up with buoyancy. “We'll go after him, but you have to promise me something in return, okay?”

You've already promised everything you can, what the fuck else could he possibly want?

“What,” is all you can manage to say, not even an expletive. Nevertheless, it sounds like one. A vast, angry question. You could say it again and again to these people who interrupted your death. You wish you could have said it to the girl, the girl with the scalpels. The one who took you down with a weapon you cannot name and made you into a shitty, contrived sort of golem you've only heard of in even shittier legends. What. What. What. What.

He's already moving away, you hope he moves in the right direction. There is nothing you can do now, for Serenity or for yourself, but before the darkness closes in, he answers. You can't tell if there's wry humor in his tone or gentleness in his tone. After this day you'll think about it over and over and eventually come to the conclusion that it was both.

“Stay here.”

There aren't any guarantees...but you think you might be able to handle that. It's definitely a fucking possibility.