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Karkat stared at his reflection on a darkened computer monitor. He'd joked sometimes about his nubby horns and dull teeth, but the truth was that he didn't like his own appearance. If anything, he hated it. Maybe that was why he'd had such a hard time finding a proper kismesis – he hated himself too much to divert any of it towards another person.
Since he and his friends had started playing Sgrub, he'd entangled himself further into self-hate by arguing with past and future versions of himself on memos. And now, he was left with just his sickle and an abandoned room on this good-for-nothing asteroid, trying to hide away from the others who had helped him get this far.
After tearing his eyes away from the monitor, Karkat rolled up the long sleeves of his shirt. Numerous cuts in various stages of healing criss-crossed his arms. Some had been left by his own nails, sharpened into claws; others had been left by his sickle. Those were the deep ones, the ones that had left raised scars because too much flesh had been damaged.
Karkat weighed the sickle in his hand, staring at his left arm. That was another thing that had set him apart from other trolls; where all of his friends were left-handed, just like the majority of the troll race, he was right-handed. He growled and tossed the sickle aside, attacking his right arm with the claws of his left hand.
Freakishly bright, candy red blood stained his hand. Karkat was only able to stare at it. Whenever his blood color might possibly be revealed to any other troll, he panicked and tried to hide it. When he was alone, however, he couldn't stop staring at it.
He brought the blood up to his lips. How many times had he thought about tasting it, seeing if it was anything like the candy it was so similar in color to. Karkat changed his mind last second – he always did – and smeared his blood on the metal walls. At least when it dried, it was a nice rust color. It was waiting for it to dry that was the hardest part. He was stuck down here until his new wounds scabbed over and the blood on the walls was rusty and flaked away.
"KK? You okay down here?" Sollux's voice drifted towards him, and Karkat started to panic. He couldn't allow his best friend to see him like this, couldn't let him see the fresh candy blood on the walls.
"I'm just fucking peachy, Sollux. Now why don't you do yourself a favor and go find a pail to fill with her glubbing highness?" He wasn't bitter. Nope. Not at all.
Sollux stuck his head into the room, scowling and blushing that ugly mustard-yellow while Karkat tried to hurry and cover up his arms. "That'th thick, KK..." The other troll paused, looking at the blood on the walls that had at least stopped looking quite so bright. "… You thure you're okay?"
"I told you, I'm just fucking peachy." Karkat tried to hide his bloody hand – that still had a damning color on it. Not that it mattered anymore, since everyone already knew... but an entire life spent panicking wasn't going to go away anytime soon.
"Doethn't look like it." Sollux frowned and moved closer. Did he look... worried? No, he couldn't be. Sollux wasn't romantically interested in some mutant-blooded freak.
"Yeah, well, looks can be deceiving." Karkat growled, then sat down at the computer terminal and went back to staring at his reflection in the monitor.
Sollux sat next to him, grabbing his injured arm. "What the..." The dual-colored glasses were pushed up to sit just behind his horns, and Sollux brought his hand away from Karkat's arm. It was slightly damp with candy red blood. "What happened, KK?"
Karkat couldn't stand it. Here he was, next to his best friend, unable to admit anything. Not his romantic intentions, not what he did to himself, not even the full extent of his self-hatred. "It's nothing." His voice was a whisper, in stark contrast to his usual tendency to yell.
"I don't believe that." Sollux reached out, grabbed Karkat's hand, and slowly started to push his sleeve up. "Thit, KK..."
He wanted to pull his arm away, wanted to shove Sollux back and make him swear never to tell anyone... but he couldn't bring himself to.
"You do thith to yourthelf?" Karkat could only nod in response. "Haven't we warned you about trying to become your own kithmethith?" Sollux grinned, just the tiniest bit, but there was still a sickly pale color to his face. He was probably disturbed by the whole thing.
"Ha fucking ha." Karkat snarled, but the kick he aimed at his friend's shin wasn't nearly hard enough to distract Sollux.
"How long have you been doing thith?"
"For about a sweep."
Karkat shouted as the back of his skull was smacked. "What the fuck was that for?"
"For not telling me earlier. Thith ith dangerouth, KK. I thought we were..." Sollux frowned.
"You wanted to be pale with me?" When had this happened?
"Well, yeah. I thought we were already, tho I never athked..."
Karkat snarled and punched Sollux in the shoulder. "Fuckass." But he followed it up with a slight smile. "You know what they say about assuming."
For a moment, Sollux looked lost, then laughed. "Tho. You gonna do thith again?"
Karkat stared at his arm, scowling. "Probably." His answer earned him another smack to the back of his head.
"Can you at leatht tell me why?" Sollux pulled his glasses back down, now that he wasn't quite so shaken up and disbelieving.
"Not... not right now."
"Eventually?"
Karkat stared at his friend – no, moirail – and nodded. "Yeah. Eventually."