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Some days, you’re an unstoppable force of nature. You don’t need your psionics to kick ass. You’ve got a mind sharp like a knife, words that you can wield like weapons of their own. Sarcasm is your sword and shield, a defense and an offense. You fight, you survive, you talk with your friends. You’re going somewhere. You’re something.
But other days… other days, you’re not much at all. Your ancestor was The Helmsman, but you’re just a nobody. You’re a hacker with a lisp and you’re so angry, all the time. You’re not anything, until the game.
The world has to end for you to meet your friends, and you’re so scared. You’re so scared that they’ll look at you and know. Know what?
Know that you’re unstable. That you can’t control yourself. That some days you can’t sleep, some days mania takes over and you’re thinking so fast, but your body can’t move fast enough and that makes you furious. That some days you’re so low you think about… awful things. Awful things that don’t seem awful, not when you hate yourself so deeply that you think the world would be better off without you. You think your friends would be better off without you snapping at them and without you babbling so fast your words slur together and you’re barely coherent on a normal day, almost nobody can understand you.
Most days they try, but when you get frustrated, they back off. Except Karkat.
Karkat sits with you, quietly takes away the energy drinks and replaces them with water. He gets you to eat and holds your hands down when you try to claw at your arms to feel something. To feel anything.
He doesn’t say anything when you cry, like you don’t say anything when he does.
Some days you aren’t sure who you are and Karkat tells you.
Your name is Sollux Captor. You’re a yellowblood. You have psionics. He smiles weakly when he says you have a fetish for the number two and you laugh.
He tells you who you are, and you trust him. You don’t trust almost anyone in the goddamn universe, in any of the universes, but you trust him.
And that’s… that’s something.
x
Some days are hazy. You’re going through the motions, but you can’t feel anything. The world’s behind a pane of glass and you swallow down panic because it doesn’t matter. Because nothing matters. Because you’re nobody and there’s nothing and there’s—
There is Karkat Vantas. He’s so angry and loud but right now he’s soft. Right now he’s quiet and calm and this meteor stops moving, slows down to let you catch up. You inhale, exhale, and there he is, one hand soft on your cheek.
You think of how desperately lonely you were, how every day was nothingness in your hive, just waiting for something. You think about colored text lighting up your screen and hope shooting through your veins.
Your name is Sollux Captor, he tells you, and you nod, numb. You fall against him and hope starts over.
x
You snap at him and sometimes he snaps back. Most of the time, he takes it, he bites his lip until you start sobbing apologies. He’s so patient with you and when you feel so incredibly broken, he’s there.
“You can’t love me better,” you say, words falling from your mouth like glass and shattering on the floor. If he tries to walk through, it’ll just cut him up. I’ll ruin him, you think. If you weren’t so selfish, you would leave. You wouldn’t let yourself hurt him.
“I know. But I love you anyway.” He says it so easily, doesn’t even have to think about it.
You curl up closer to him and you sleep.
x
Your name is Sollux Captor.
Karkat says you’re not the monster in this story.
And you almost believe him.