Work Text:
You meet her once, when you’re barely four.
She is all long skirts and unruly hair and bounces on the heels of her feet. You have a package bundled in plastic and hidden under your oversized shirt. It takes you a minute to step out from the cover of your tree and approach her. She notices you almost instantly and waves, though she doesn’t run at you or make any sudden movements. She just smiles and says, “Hi! I’m Sollux’s friend, apocalypseArisen. You can call me Aradia.”
You don’t tell her you already knew that, as well as her sign, blood color, location and any other little thing you could dig up during a late morning paranoia fueled search. Tentatively you take one hand away from your shirt and shake hers. Her fingers are just barely calloused and you can imagine they would be much rougher in a sweep or two. She’s taller than you. Then again, nearly everyone in your cohort is taller than you.
Hoarsely you say, “Karkat,” and hope she leaves it at that. You’re tired from the long trip, and you’re scared. You haven’t been this scared in a long time.
She frowns at your linked hands. A bit of bandage is poking out from under your sleeve. Quickly you yank your hand back and tuck it up under your bag. She looks about ready to ask you about it, but then rolls her shoulders back and grins again. Her teeth are blunt instead of sharpened like yours, though while yours are rounded like your horns, hers are straight across. Weird.
“So, what can I do for you?” Aradia swings her arms behind her back and rocks back and forth. She must have gotten restless while waiting for you. “Sollux had no idea what you need, and you signed off so fast I couldn’t ask you!”
Her voice is quiet but you’re still afraid it may carry over to any wayward ears. Your head swings from side to side, double checking for any other living soul. Logically you know Aradia isn’t stupid enough to be waiting out in the open if anyone else was nearby, but you can’t help it. You pull out the bundle from under your shirt and say, “I need to burn this.”
“Burn it?” She seems confused, as if that was the last thing you’d ever ask for. “What’s in it?”
She tilts her head curiously and manages to touch the bag before you can react and snatch it away. “No!” you nearly shout, with much more force than you intended. She withdraws, startled. “I mean,” you clear your throat, realizing you haven’t had anything to drink in a while. “Just burn it, please.”
She hesitates. You don’t blame her. If you were Aradia you wouldn’t trust some kid you’ve just met, who hides his blood with a nondescript grey in both text and sym69l, especially one who immediately snaps at you for wanting to know what it is he’s asking of you.
But you can’t tell her. She might be as rust as they come, she may even be sympathetic, but you just can’t let her see the clothing and old bandages you’ve bloodied after a nasty accident with your sickles. You can’t even trust yourself yet, how could you trust her?
Surprisingly, Aradia nods. “Okay, got it.” And suddenly you’re afraid that she somehow knows.
She turns and marches off in the direction of a small hive you somehow missed before, the joyful fidgeting gone and replaced with focused determination. You follow somewhat timidly. You don’t have much experience with psychics as powerful as Aradia, so you don’t know what kind of traps she may have set up around her hive. Sollux’s confidence in her rivals his confidence in how much he sucks, so you decide to trust her for now.
Strange square holes litter the ground around her hive. She stops before a particularly large one that seems to have been excavated recently. A pile of fresh dirt sits beside it. You stare down at it. “Here, just toss it down and I’ll drop a match on it. It’ll be less noticeable.”
You look around. There are trees around, yes, but most are a good 50 yards away from her hive, which is on top of a low hill. A fire could be spotted easily from a distance in the dark seasons. You think Aradia is arrogant, building her hive in a place where highbloods could easily overwhelm her if they wished.
“No,” you say finally. “Farther.”
She doesn’t question you again, she just nods and gestures for you to follow her once more. She seems to move effortlessly around the holes and at one point you catch her floating over a particularly large one using her psionics. You growl, “Goddammit, wait for me,” and she smiles over her shoulder apologetically. You think she is about to offer to carry you over the same way, but she thinks better of it. Good. You decide you don’t like psychics.
You pick a hole closer to the shade of trees in hopes it would conceal the smoke. It’s small but deep. Carefully you pull the package fully out from under your shirt, kneel next to the edge, and drop it as gently as possible so not to cause the bloodied cloth to fall out. You stand up and Aradia pulls a box of matches from her sylladex. Your blood pusher suddenly leaps at the thought that maybe a tiny match wouldn’t be enough to light the bag on fire, or maybe it would burn away the plastic before burning the fabric, leaving your disgusting mutant blood in the open for Aradia to see, and you’re scared all over again.
She drops the match and halfway down the hole you see a flash of white and then the flame is twenty times its normal size and you realize, oh. She could do that too. And then--and then she does something you never would have expected, and turns her back to the pit.
You watch the bag burn for a respectable half a minute before you start to feel ill and are forced to turn away to gag into the bushes. You can sense Aradia hovering worriedly over you. You’re glad she doesn’t try to touch you. You don’t think you could stand it.
Eventually you calm the shaking of your shoulders, thankful that you’ve managed to keep the meager contents of your stomach. You pat the corner of your eyes to dry any wayward tears. Satisfied that your face is in no danger of revealing your blood color, you turn around. Aradia is biting her bottom lip with those pathetically blunt teeth. You ignore her and slowly go back to the hole to look at the bottom. The last few charred remains of the bundle smoke lazily.
She is very quiet for a long time while you just stare. She says finally, “Do you want to bury it?”
You just nod.
Aradia becomes a flurry of activity, skirt and hair flying around her as she rushes to the other side of her lawnring to grab a shovel. She uses her psionics to very carefully move a pile of dirt closer to you, and you even notice a few beads of maroon sweat. She must not be very good yet. She holds out the handle of the shovel and you just stare at it. She shakes her head, then starts tossing dirt down the hole. Oh. She wanted to know if you wanted to do it.
You don’t know why you feel so empty inside. You had to get rid of the bandages and you didn’t know how. Fuck Sollux for mentioning Aradia lives close to you. Just, fuck him. You don’t want to see his ugly yellow text again.
The hole is small and fills up quickly. “I’ll plant something over it,” Aradia promises.
You kick a rock. “Yeah. Okay.”
She hesitates again, her fingers fluttering like she wants to touch you. You vaguely remember how warm her hand was. You can’t have known her for longer than thirty minutes, but it feels like the handshake happened weeks ago. Finally, she takes a breath.
“You should stay here! I mean, not forever. Just until tomorrow. It took you ages to get here, and you don’t want to be out when the sun comes up.” She falters slightly. “I don’t have a spare recuperacoon, but you can have mine. You just don’t look well.”
“Shit.” That kicks you into gear. You straighten your back and begin to calculate your trip home. “Shit. No, I can’t. I can’t stay. Fuck.” You can’t stand to be there another minute. You need to get back, your need your lusus, and most importantly you need a good cry and you just can’t do that in front of her.
She’s frowning. “At least let me go with you.”
“What? No, that’s stupid. Then you’ll be stuck at my hive when the sun comes up.”
“Fine.” You can’t read her face very well, so you can’t tell if she’s irritated with you or not. “Just tell me when you get back, okay?”
You make an annoyed sound through your teeth. This was stupid, walking several miles to get rid of some bloody bandages. Sure they might mark you for immediate culling, but you can’t go running to an acquaintance each time you have some trash to get rid of, especially if all she’s going to do is fuss over you. You don’t need this. You don’t need to be taken care of. You need to be badass and independant and then no one can criticize you for having mutant shitty blood.
You still want to cry, though.
You practice your march when you walk away from her. She says nothing and you don’t look back. Time to be a big troll now, Karkat. You can do this, Karkat. As soon as you’re sure you’re far enough away she can’t see you anymore you let your shoulders sag. If you hurry you can make it back in a few hours. If not, well, you can find a nice leafy clump of bushes and cry there during the day.
Fuck. You should have at least gotten a glass of water first.
—
You barely make it in your door before the sun’s rays become unbearable. You’re sweating profusely and your lusus is screaming and goddamn you don’t want to deal with that right now. You throw your grossly damp shirt at him and command him to do laundry. He’s so flustered he accidentally rips it in two. Uuugh. You call him a useless waste of space and flip him the bird while you go to the kitchen. Your bandages are itchy and pink with sweat and blood, plus you’re dehydrated and starving to the point you’re getting too dizzy to stand.
You guzzle down probably a gallon of water and eat half a tub of nutrition paste before you feel okay enough to pop a frozen meal in the miniature rectangular radiation cookalizer. That gives you enough time to pick off your bandages, since they’re pretty much useless now anyway. The physical exhaustion from your trip back has reopened a few of your wounds, but the blood is coming out slowly so you only put on a couple of adhesive bandages on the worst cuts.
Your lusus comes back with a fresh shirt. He clicks his claws a couple times and you think it’s meant as an apology. You think about how freaked he must have been, to see you injure yourself so badly the night before only for you to disappear in the evening of the next. God, you are such an asshole, you can’t believe you put him through that. You put your forehead against his hard shell and mutter a pathetic, “Sorry.” He runs his claw through your hair.
The miniature rectangular radiation cookalizer beeps. A small scuffle ensues as your lusus wants to get it for you but you’re a big troll now dammit, you can do shit for yourself for once. Finally you have your food and are shoveling it into your mouth as your lusus shoos you upstairs. You think those clicks and that skree means it’s time for bed. You roll your eyes. Thanks for the obvious, crabdad.
You’re about to take the last mouthful of food and launch yourself into your recuperacoon, clothes and all, when the sight of your husktop gives you pause. It wouldn’t hurt to not be a completely ungrateful bastard today. You dump your ass into your seat and click the husktop on.
carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling apocalypseArisen [AA]
CG: HEY.
AA: 0h g00d y0ure alright!
CG: WAIT, YOU’RE ONLINE? I THOUGHT YOU LET YOUR HANDLE IDLE OR SOMETHING.
CG: DID YOU SERIOUSLY STAY UP TO SEE IF I GOT BACK ALRIGHT?
AA: sure did
CG: WOW.
CG: YOU’RE PRETTY STUPID.
AA: excuse y0u!
CG: NO NO, JUST THINK ABOUT IT.
CG: WHAT IF I DIED?
CG: THEN YOU’D JUST BE SITTING BY YOUR COMPUTER LIKE A CHUMP ALL DAY, LOSING SLEEP FOR A MORON WHO WAS STUPID ENOUGH TO GET BURNED CRISPY BY THE FRIENDLY SUN.
AA: if y0u died then s0llux w0uld have c0ntacted me
AA: and by the time he managed t0 message me i w0uld pr0bably hear fr0m y0u myself
CG: WAIT, WHAT?
CG: DON’T TELL ME YOU HEAR THE DEAD TOO
CG: I DON’T NEED TWO SPOOKS WITH MY HANDLE HOLY SHIT.
AA: n0t quite
AA: i just hear the gh0sts 0f the dead
AA: n0t 0f the dying
CG: WHOA! CONSIDER ME SCHOOLFED ABOUT THESE *COMPLETELY DIFFERENT* TYPES OF DEAD PEOPLE!!
AA: 0_0
AA: besides
AA: i knew y0u w0uldnt die
CG: OKAY, THAT’S NOT A CREEPY THING TO SAY AT ALL.
CG: FUCK, I AM JUST WAY TOO TIRED FOR THIS.
AA: then get t0 c00n stupid
CG: POT, KETTLE, BLACK.
AA: t0uche!
AA: i am glad y0u g0t back 0kay
AA: thanks f0r messaging me
CG: YEAH, WHATEVER.
CG: GOOD MORNING, ARADIA.
AA: sleep well karkat
carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased trolling apocalypseArisen [AA]