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Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you have lost everything.
You were the best, simply put. You were an assassin in the Second Summoner's rebellion. Hell, you've been a member of the rebellion since before the Second Summoner was called that. You had always known him as Page of Breath. Quiet and shy. But then things happened and he took command and, well.
That's a story for another time.
You were musing over how you ended up in this mess. Huddled up in a cave in some strange-ass timeline where everyone was too-bright and giggly. You didn't like it very much, and then they tried to make you like them, and you just noped the fuck out of there. Your timeline-traveling device is still recharging, so you're stuck here for another good hour, hoping the candied idiots or the drones don't find you first.
You sigh and close your eyes. You used to be better than this. You miss your old life. You even had quadrants filled, like, you thought you would never get even the most feeble of moiraillegiances because you were a mutant. But no, you had three quadrants full, and was close to even filling the fourth ashen quadrant when shit decided to hit the fan.
You lost your kismesis first. Mage, everyone called him. He had told you, not long into your relationship, that his name was actually Sollux. He wouldn't give you a last name, Captor, until far later, when you both were sure that this wasn't going to end with one of you betraying the other to the Condesce. You and him were actually really close. It could have been a redrom, actually, had that underlying rivalry not been as prominent.
Well, that and the fact you both had matesprits.
You didn't hear about his accident until long after it happened, long after he had died and been put in the ground. You had been on a mission at the time and, for confidentiality and security reasons, you couldn't have any contact with home base. You heard that he was connected to the mainframe, hacking away at HIC's mainframes to get information, when someone noticed him and sent a virus to stop whatever the intrusion was.
You heard he screamed for three days straight while the virus ravaged his thinkpan. You heard he had eventually electrocuted himself to death to make it stop, make it stop.
You had cried for hours in front of his little makeshift grave. Sure, you pretty much hated him, but you cared.
You also had a moirail. Sylph was her code name. She told you early on that her real name was Kanaya Maryam. Fuck, you two were so pale for each other. Not even the greatest of romcoms could depict those feelings. She was your steady ground when things got rough and you were the one that would gently guide her through bits of society she didn't quite understand. Living as a hermit in the desert did stunt social growth, after all. She never would get angry with you when you corrected her, either. You supposed that was why your relationship worked out so well. You two could never get mad at each other.
She died protecting you from the Condesce, later on when you were captured. Jumped in front of the royal 2x3dent and gave you one last little pap before telling you to run, run, spread the revolution.
You did run, but you aren't sure how much of the revolution you have managed to spread. You were always shit at diplomacy.
And then there was your matesprit. The Bard. You.... You don't like to think about him very much anymore. It makes you want to rip your pump biscuit out of your chest and smash it into little bits on the ground because it hurts so much to think about what they did, about who he was, about anything relating to him. You can't even bring yourself to say his real name anymore.
A sound outside of the cave sends you to your feet and you realize your warping device is ready. You quickly press the button and travel to another timeline, a safer timeline, you hope.
Your name is Karkat Vantas.
You just want to go home.