Work Text:
"This is completely unbelievable. You spend all this time building up your bullshit coolkid persona only to break down into a blubbering goddamn pansy at the first existential crisis."
"Fuck off, Karkat," Dave mumbled. "Bro meant a lot to me."
Karkat wasn't about to let up so easily. "Isn't irony supposed to be your thing? Shouldn't you be adjusting your stupid jackass shades and riding off into the sunset on his obnoxious rocket board or something?"
"Yeah," Dave said with a sniff, "and that's why mourning him seriously is actually the most ironic option. You- you wouldn't understand!" He burst into tears.
"Fucking unbelievable," Karkat repeated.
"Would you just shut up Karkat!" Jade snapped. "How can you even be such an asshole about this? hasn't anybody close to you ever died?"
"Of course! My Lusus meant everything to me, and do you know how it feels to be the one responsible for your Lusus' death? But I actually understood that I had some fucking work to do, so I decided to cut the tears-and-remorse parade a bit short! We have better shit to do than mourn Dave's criminally negligent custodian."
"You killed your own guardian?" Jade asked incredulously. "Ugh, that's exactly what I've come to expect from an emotionless husk like you."
"Hey, fuck you!" Karkat shouted, his face flushing. "You think that's all I've been through? How about being one gogdamned doorknob away from paradise and then almost getting murdered by an omnipotent demon? How about dying by the hand of someone you thought you could trust and knowing that you would spend the rest of your sleeping hours with the squamous horrors of deepest space?"
"Of course I know about that! I have to go there too!"
"Well at least you don't get off on it the way some of us do," Karkat retorted, making a plaintive gesture toward Rose, who had until now managed to avoid the heated conversation.
She pocketed her book and looked up at Karkat. "The whispers of The Gods are not so easy to interpret, Karkat. Madness is always but a single step away. I bear this burden only to better equip us against the trials that yet lie ahead."
"Oh, so you're a plaything of a pack of Horrorterrors for our benefit," Karkat muttered. "Fantastic."
John decided that he really couldn't let this discussion get any more out of hand. "Come on, everybody, we've all been through a lot lately. Could we just take Dave's mourning as an opportunity to catch a break ourselves?"
"And what hardships have you been through lately to decide this, John?" Karkat persisted. "You haven't even died at all yet! Easy to be smug and condescending when your life's been sugar, gumdrops and rainbows, eh?"
"I'm not being smug!" John said indignantly. "I just think this is a good time for some rest! I don't like it when everybody shouts at everybody like this! And I've been through some stuff too."
"Out with it then, maggot feeder. What kind of tragedy have you got?"
"Uh." John gulped. "Today I learned that my dad was actually my brother."
That shut Karkat up pretty quickly.