i'm flunking out, i'm flunking out - i'm gone, i'm just gone

[crab]

WHO: karkat and ruka.
WHERE: their house.
WHEN: evening of the 4th of january.
WARNINGS: feelings and problems.
SUMMARY: ruka stages an intervention.
FORMAT: prose to start then whatever olesia wants.

Karkat's head hurt, and for the moment, he tried to focus on that -- the least of his problems -- rather than dwell on everything else that had happened earlier that day. Still, while he could choose not to think about it, blocking out what he felt about it was another story. He entertained the fleeting idea of going someplace crowded, immersing himself in other people's problems rather than deal with his own, but dismissed it quickly as he stepped over the threshold to Ruka's house. The thought of trading in his own for other people's misery was a tempting one, but his empathy didn't work like that. He wouldn't be blocking out his own feelings, only compounding them with everyone else's.

Hoping no one was home, he stumped his way into the kitchen, yanking opening the fridge and scanning its contents absently, not really paying attention until his gaze came to rest on a bottle of bright red Faygo. Karkat's knuckles whitened on the fridge handle, his teeth ground together. Everything he'd been attempting to subdue since meeting Eridan slammed into him again with a vengeance -- the sickening loneliness of knowing he was and would always be a freak, that it was more than his blood color that made him so, the fury at being forced to feel and confront his isolation, at the ultimate insult of having exactly what he wanted paraded in front of him while aware that it couldn't ever be what he wanted. All of it serving as fuel for his self loathing, that and more, it wasn't like he was short on reasons to hate himself -- and he hated himself so much. He wanted to be sick with it, wanted to scream, wanted to be someone else if only to escape the outrage of enduring himself another moment. Why did he have to be Karkat Vantas? Why did he have to be shackled with the unending personal fucking torture that is being Karkat Vantas? It wasn't fair. He would give anything, anything to be someone else. Anyone else.

He really was a freak, he thought, slamming the fridge door with all too much force, storming out of the kitchen -- he hadn't argued with his past or future self in nearly half a sweep, but if anything, he only hated him more. You didn't get much more fucked up than being caliginous for yourself.

Comments

[dragony]

No one was home; at least, not to witness or overhear his explosive tantrum. Ruka had things to do, places to be, stuff to buy, and it's roughly thirty minutes after Karkat's own return that she arrived.

Immediately, she's irritated when she tries unlocking the door and it opens without resistance. Sheesh, can't they at least close the door, if they're not going to lock it?

It gets nudged closed and locked behind her, and without taking off her shoes she makes her way to the kitchen. Stuff to put away, of course. It goes well enough with the cupboards and shelves, but the moment she moves to put away the milk and cream, the whole world drops out beneath her. Her knees hit the linoleum floor hard enough to bruise, her grip on the handle all that keeps her even slightly upright. Her free hand braces against the freezer door, arms trembling. It's so powerful, the fury and the despair and the hatred. Nothing else exists in all the world except for her, it seems in that moment, and no other feelings exist save for self-hatred, self-loathing. Her fingernails screech across the brushed metal surface of the door, and her heart is a stone in her throat. There is nobody there, nobody who can understand, nobody that shares this fate; sorrow and anger and hatred and loathing and fury, fury, sorrow and fury and empty, crushing loneliness pound at her from the slim metal handle of the refrigerator.

Minutes dissolve and are lost to the black hole of this darkness, but a voice cracks the silence. "Not my heart," it says, and it takes Ruka a moment to realize that the voice is her own. She swallows, repeating the words. Not her heart. Though some of those feelings call to ones within the dark pit of her heart, none of hers match perfectly. She dislikes herself, but not that much; she feels loneliness, but not that much.

She tightens her grip on the handle, using it as leverage to climb back to her feet, and with a steadiness of breath brought from years of meditation and training, Ruka moves aside some of those bright bottles of soda to make room in her own refrigerator for her groceries.

The door closes. She lets go.

And unless someone broke into her house specifically to raid her kitchen during an emotional breakdown—not entirely unlikely, as break-ins have happened before with much stranger consequence—there's only one person this heart can belong to.

"Karkat?"

[crab]

Karkat isn't exactly hiding -- but he isn't trying to make himself easy to find, either. He'd decided against going to his and Gamzee's room, while he did want to and would eventually have to tell Gamzee about how he felt, he had needed some time to himself first. Instead, he'd chosen to retire to the smaller, unused bedroom, sitting on the floor in some far corner.

He has the scarf Nill had made him draped across his knees, which are drawn up nearly to his chin, glaring down at the alternating colors. Red, gray, red, gray -- he knows she'd been trying to be thoughtful, but right now, he wishes she hadn't given him anything. He'd calmed down, somewhat, since his outburst in front of the refrigerator -- his self hatred now less an explosive boil and more a low, persistent simmer. He sighs.

He would honestly love if he could feel sorry for himself -- he misses the catharsis of self pity. Things were easier to come to terms with, back when he could tell himself it wasn't fair, that he didn't deserve it. Now, though, things have changed. Self pity no longer feels like a catharsis, merely a way to make himself even more miserable than before, and an invitation to himself to berate him for being so hideously pathetic. He had always hated himself, but never this much, perhaps because his reasons for hating himself were less weighty, and he had still had hope that he could prove himself. He'd failed in that, however, failed in more ways than he could be bothered to tally up at the moment, and with each failure his self loathing had grown deeper, more poisonous, blacker. And then, of course, he got to talk to himself, witness first hand how unbearable and obnoxious he was, and that cemented it. He hated Karkat Vantas, and he deserved everything he got.

He winds and unwinds Nill's scarf around his hands, tensing slightly when he hears the front door open, the sound of footsteps. He thinks of how he'd handed Eridan's scarf back to him, remembers how he'd shaken hands with Jack. The two actions carry the same weight, the same connotation -- allies. Alliances, Karkat notices, are all too common in his case. Pacts, truces, treaties, agreements, compromise -- he feels a surge of impatience with himself. Does he even have any real enemies, anyone he doesn't pull his punches for, won't compromise for? Is he capable of it? Is his entire emotional hemisphere for hatred just warped, is he broken, is the only person he's capable of honestly loathing really just himself? Trolls aren't supposed to behave the way he does. He should be ruthless, he should be vengeful, he should be merciless -- he should have killed Eridan Ampora perigees ago, but here he is making a blood pact with him. He's weak, he thinks unhappily. A coward.

He hears his name called, but doesn't get up, not just yet. He sighs a second time.

[dragony]

It's a small house.

The kitchen is, obviously, empty, as is the sitting room and the wide open spaces. If it were her, crumbling into a void, she would go up to the attic and out the window and sit on the lonely roof and wish for higher altitude.

But Ruka is not Karkat, and even if her heart still gnaws on his suffering, they do not cope in the same way. She checks the closets, the bathroom, the master bedroom with great caution, but no success. She does not check her own room, or at least does not have to, as she finds him when she opens the door to its neighbor. Rua's old room.

It's gone almost completely untouched since Rua departed, the summer before last. The magazines on the desk are from spring of two thousand eleven, covers slightly faded from exposure to the sun, and the bits of machinery around them wear a thin layer of dust. An alarm clock flashes the time, seven hours and forty-two minutes off, its time blinked to midnight during a power outage and never corrected.

She does not like coming into this room, but Ruka stands for a moment in the threshold, still in her winter coat and scarf bundled around her neck, still in heeled boots that should have been discarded in the front room, and looks at Karkat. Her gaze, limited, is even, and she says nothing. She enters, and though she wants to ask him what the hell is going on, or prod at the raw wounds she knows exists to understand how they got there, she says nothing.

Instead, she sits down on the carpet beside him, foot of the bed on her opposite side, almost mirroring his posture. She waits.

[crab]

Karkat looks up to glare at her when the door opens, expecting questions, expecting her to at least ask him why he's holed up in an unused bedroom. He has answers ready, too, biting and defensive. Thus, he's a little surprised when she keeps silent, merely sitting down next to him.

He keeps his eyes on her when she does, expression defiant, and waits for her to say something. He is not a patient or quiet soul, however, and it's not long before he begins fidgeting uncomfortably, and not long after that before he bursts out, perhaps much harsher than intended:

"Did you want something or are you just here to for an impromptu tournament of the silent game? Because I can tell you right now I am not in the mood for inscrutable bullshit, Ruka."

[dragony]

She considers for a moment what to say in response, if anything at all, trying to judge how his state has changed since... whenever it was that happened had happened. Anger from Karkat is about as useful as a clue as him still possessing all his limbs. Instead of looking at his face when she speaks, she turns her attention to a blank spot of wall near the ceiling.

"You left some of your heart behind," she says finally, voice quiet. They may be the only ones in the house, but hurt and pain like this calls for the care of dark secrets. "In the kitchen."

She glances his way, quiet once more.

[crab]

Karkat already has his mouth open to bite back an angrily nonplussed retort, not comprehending the meaning of her cryptic explanation, when she clarifies -- in the kitchen. The kitchen, where his emotional turmoil had reached its plateau. He remembers, then, that Ruka is an empath. That she had never actually told him how her empathy worked.

You left some of your heart behind.

He wishes he didn't have one.

He is appalled, at first, to think of anyone being aware of how much pain he is in -- how weak he is -- when he devotes so much of his time and energy trying to pretend the contrary. He recoils from her, scooting across the floor, placing distance between them.

"I don't even know what you're talking about," he hisses at her, but his horrified, defensive tone is tell enough of the truth.

[dragony]

The sudden physical distance is hard not to notice, even if she weren't looking; fabric drags across the carpet, easily heard in the quiet of the house. Her gaze drifts to his hands, and she speaks again in that low, steady voice.

"You can pretend otherwise, if you like, but we'll both know it's pretend. I doubt it'll help, either." She crosses her arms to fold them atop her bare knees, leaning a little forward to put weight on her legs. It's a closed expression, implicitly defensive, but even if her gaze is turned down, her face is towards Karkat. Receptive, in that small way. "Something happened. I'm not going to push you about it, if that's what you're..." Afraid of. "... worried about. You don't have to tell me anything."

[crab]

He's poised to get up and leave, already kneeling, one hand braced against the floor, and he considers doing so anyway. He would, if it were almost anyone else. But he hesitates. Ruka has already seen Karkat at his lowest, at his weakest, has already seen Karkat break apart, and she hadn't pushed him then. He's no stranger to her darkness either, as is evidenced by the scars on Karkat's stomach and shoulder, on Ruka's neck and side. Ruka has, unbeknownst to Karkat, become a much-needed constant in his otherwise volatile and unpredictable life in the City. Complicated as things between them may sometimes be, Ruka -- her friendship -- is something Karkat feels he can rely on.

If there is anyone he can trust with this, it would have to be Ruka. He makes his decision then. Slowly, he sinks back to the floor, though he doesn't close the distance between them. The drawbridge remains up, too, knees drawn up to his chest, arms encircling them. Defense still lines his posture. But he stays.

"It's nothing," he tells her. "I just had a fight with someone."

[dragony]

There's no pride or smugness that he thinks about leaving but stays; her concern really is genuine, watching the the tight curves of his back and his shoulders as he tenses, noticing every mimicked defense.

"Must have been a rough fight," she offers, neutral and quiet and leading, if he wishes to follow. He's hedging enough on the defensive—nothing rarely leads to intense emotional drops of that caliber—probably on a matter of pride. Self-reliance.

Loneliness, she knows, is a complicated battle. Sometimes a person will fight against it by making bonds with others, and sometimes that same person will justify fighting forever in solitude. As though taking pride in an injury would make it hurt less than having it treated; expecting the hollow ache to hold enough self-convincing as to form a stable foundation. Of course she understands the roots of loneliness.

It's why she offers openings if he wants to talk, but does not drag him into a conversation. It's his choice, how he wants to fight his own heart, and she'll offer only as much help as he wishes to take. So she waits, watching and listening.

[crab]

Karkat rolls his shoulders in a shrug, attempting and failing to look nonchalant.

"Not really. It was pretty pathetic, actually," he tells her, tone deliberately casual. This, at least, is the truth. "I'm pretty sure it was the most embarrassing excuse for a fight I've ever participated in. I mean, he did give me a concussion, and I nearly cut his hand off, but the whole thing was so egregiously stupid it would make a lobotomized gigglemonkey who can't tell the difference between a grape and a shitnugget look like an upstanding intellectual."

He pauses a moment, taking a deep breath. He isn't sure how to progress from here -- he's opened up before, but it's rarely been under his own autonomy. Outside factors were always at work, motivating him to reveal parts of himself he would ordinarily fight to keep under wraps. Deliberately making himself vulnerable is another situation entirely, one he isn't skilled at approaching.

"How much... how much of my "heart" did I leave behind?" he questions, cautious.

[dragony]

"Mmm... Only a few heartbeats, if I'd have to measure it. Or the equivalent, I mean. Hearts don't really control emotions in humans, but it's a shorter way of explaining."

That much is off-topic, and she knows it, but this sort of conversation isn't the easiest. Sure, she has practice taking and consuming and synthesizing raw feelings into more meaningful explanations—this depth and duration of this kind of love means they were married, this quickness of vitriol comes from a sudden shock, this color of desperation is that of a man about to die, this thick hatred from a murderer—but rarely does she have to bring these feelings back out to the person she copied them from in the first place.

Ruka leans back, arms dropping to her sides, and her legs straightening out and folding to the side, away from Karkat. A glance his way out of the corner of her eye.

"But an instant's too long, even alone." She's hesitant too; her teeth pinch and bite at her lower lip for a moment before she continues. "How specific do you want me to be?"

[crab]

In general, Karkat has little patience for the cyptic; right now, in his current emotional state, his patience may as well be an urban legend. His teeth grind together, brow furrowed with impatience.

"How about not talking us both around in circles with pointless riddles, for a fucking start?" He snaps at her. "I mean, how much do you know -- you're talking about your empathy, aren't you?"

In other words, how much room is there for Karkat to bullshit her.

[dragony]

If she had two eyes to roll, she would, her tongue instead dragging across the roof of her mouth for a pause. He's all harsh words and biting teeth, but she makes no moves to sit forward or even look back his way.

"Yes." Her voice is quiet, but not soft; softness takes more effort. "I felt what you felt. Everything you felt. Exactly as you felt it."

His thoughts, and the catalysts for his feelings, were his own, but he hasn't asked about that.