Chapter Text
Your name is Karkat Vantas, and your life is pretty much over. Not in the romcom, "I just saw my matesprit hugging someone (who will comically turn out to be their moirail later in the movie leading to hilarious shenanigans), oh my life is over" sense, but in the quasi-apocalyptic, "Welp, we've fucked up and are probably in a doomed time-line so the chances of dying have gone up exponentially" sense. You're pretty sure this is past-you's revenge on present-you to keep you from becoming future-you, somehow. Ultimately, it's probably a fitting punishment for actually trusting the moronic Knight of Time and flighty Witch of Space, but that doesn't make you any more happy about it.
After their botched attempt at space-time-fuckery, you now find yourself in an incredibly uncomfortable position (entirely aside from the doomed time-line angle): you are now stranded alone in the middle of a plain on Alternia with no way to tell where you are, what happened, or where your compatriots are. All right, that may be stretching the truth a little. Your surroundings remind you of your lawnring, but your hive is nowhere to be seen, nor are there any ruins to indicate that it had ever been there.
You are also currently in the company of one John Egbert. However, his overly cheerful attitude toward this whole mess makes you wish you'd been stranded alone.
"Oh my gosh, is this Alternia? It is, isn't it? Oh my gosh, this is so exciting!" He pushes his ridiculous hood back and looks around with the most endearing sickeningly vapid expression writ on his face. You have a hard time not unleashing a Facepalm x2 Combo on him, but you manage to tone it down to a disgruntled snarl. When he closes in for an excited hug, you place your hand firmly on his forehead and knock him away with a soft "doof."
"Shut your protein chute, fuckass! This is serious." You scan your surroundings anxiously, looking for any solid clues about your current circumstances. Unfortunately, you spot nothing useful; the only things you can see are the vague rustling of foliage disturbed by the passing of some anim--WHOA HOLY SHIT IT'S A LION!
Quicker than you can track, a full-grown female troll leaps out of the nearby underbrush and tackles you to the ground. Her hair is shaggy and wild, her eyes are a forest green, and she's covered from head-to-toe in animal pelts. She digs her fingers into your ribs and gazes down at you expectantly. After a moment, her eyes narrow and she growls. "Hey, you aren't my leader!"
"Get off my friend!" cries John, Warhammer of Zillyhoo in his hands. He takes a swing at the troll woman, but she bats it aside with ease. He falls on his face like the stupid little wriggler he is.
"Oh my gog," you snarl in exasperation, "cull me now to save me from your ineffectual and incredibly retarded ideas of heroism! Never fear, John is here to make our attackers laugh themselves to death!"
The troll perched on your chest cocks her head to one side, her expression shifting from annoyed to curious. "You're very strange," she says. "I think maybe our game is over." She purses her lips and lets out a series of sharp whistles and clicks, but she does not move from your chest. When John makes another attempt to charge her, she again swats him away.
"H-hey! No fair! Leave Karkat alone!" John huffs. His face is flushed with what almost looks like anger. If you weren't so annoyed at his utter ineptitude, you would be impressed by the fact that he actually can exhibit some emotion other than friendship moronic optimism.
"Huntress Leannara, what is the meaning of this?"
The troll woman (whose name is now evidently Huntress Leannara) perks up, a huge grin on her face, and turns toward the newcomer. "Leader! Look what I caught! I know I was supposed to be playing with you, but this little kid looked and smelled kind of like you so I caught him instead! And he has this squishy pet, too!" Is she purring? Oh my gog, she is purring while sitting on your chest.
The Warhammer of Zillyhoo disappears back into John's strife specibus. "Oh my gosh, Karkat, I think we're in your future!"
"What the ever-hating fuck are you talking about, you mindless bulgelicker?" you snarl, but there's an uncomfortable sinking feeling in your bilebladder that has nothing to do with the troll perched astride you. Warily, you crane your neck so you can get a good look at the person Leannara has identified as her leader.
A few yards away stands a full-grown male troll. He's of middling height (though certainly taller than either you or John), wearing the black ceremonial uniform of a Threshecutioner general. Rather than being accented with gray, the uniform is embroidered with vividly crimson thread, and where his unit's sign should be, he wears the symbol of Cancer. His eyes are the same red as the decoration on his uniform, his hair is shaggy, and his horns are just two modest nubs atop his skull. His expression speaks of boundless disdain for the entirety of existence. It's one that you know well. This troll looks exactly the way you're afraid future-you will look in a few sweeps' time.
"What."
The word crawls out of your protein chute at the same time as it falls out of this other nookstain's. You narrow your eyes, and he does the same. Distantly, you are aware of John chirping and bouncing in excitement like a brain-damaged hoofbeast offspring. "What the fuck have Strider and Harley done?"
John ignores you, instead closing in on "Leader" for a hug. The male troll stops him easily with an outstretched hand and shoves him aside with another soft "doof." He stops glaring at you long enough to glance at Leannara. "I appreciate your forethought in capturing these creatures for me. I will reward you later. They are coming with us back to camp." His gaze returns to you. "I do not know what highblood sent you, wriggler, but you will not be returning to them. Your pathetic masters cannot stop me now."
Your bilebladder clenches in your abdominal cavity as his words sink in. It all makes a horrible, twisted sense now. The landscape is familiar because this is your lawnring, or rather it will be. You have not been flung into your own future, as John has assumed, but into the far past. The only person you could be staring at now is the legendary Sufferer who nearly succeeded in tearing apart the whole hemospectrum with his red-blooded hands. The fact that his eyes are the same color as yours will be and his personal symbol is the same as yours can only mean one thing: this troll is one of the spare wrigglers you cloned, and he is your ancestor.
More than anything, the fact that Vriska could be right about something (especially something as idiotic as her ancestor-worship) lights an anger in you that burns with the intensity of a million Green Suns. The Sufferer sneers. "Hit a nerve, have I? Leannara, bring your spoils. We should not stay in the open for so long, especially since we know we have highblood spies in our midst."
"What's a highblood spy?" asks John. "Future-Karkat, what are you talking about-- hey! Put me down!"
Huntress Leannara has hopped to her feet and tucked both you and your friend kismesis obnoxious companion under her arms like livestock. You struggle to get your sickles out of your strife specibus, but her grip on you is too firm for you to do much of anything but flail around like a moron. John looks at you with wide eyes that are steadily being filled with fear. "Karkat, what's going on?"
"We're in a doomed time-line, nooksniffer," you say, though your words lack heat. "What do you think is going on? We're about to get culled."
---
The trip back to camp gives you enough time to paint a brief little sketch of your situation for John using every color of expletive at your disposal. Though his eyes light up when you explain that you are, in fact, on Alternia, his face falls when you describe your historical situation, and he looks close to tears when you estimate your chances of surviving Harley and Strider's monumental fuck-up. You feel a little twinge in your gut for so thoroughly destroying his mood, so you make a peace offering: "It'll probably be quick, and maybe Alpha John can show Alpha Karkat that stupid Nicholas Cage movie you can't shut the fuck up about."
As it happens, their definition of "camp" is a little closer to your definition of "damp cave that reeks of slime mold." When the Huntress tosses you and John onto a pile of furs heaped in one corner, you have to fight the visceral need to eject the entire contents of your digestive tract on her feet. From what you can see out of the corner of your eyes, John isn't doing much better. Neither Leannara nor the Sufferer seem to particularly care; in fact, Leannara just plants a chaste little kiss on her leader's cheek before cheerfully skipping out of the cave. Your romcom-sense tingles in the presence of potential quadrant shenanigans, but the Sufferer's glare chases any other thoughts out of your mind.
"Now, I think it would behoove you to divulge your master's name, wriggler," he says, his voice chilly with barely restrained rage.
John scoots closer to you and latches onto your left arm. He looks entirely too pitiful for you to even make a half-hearted attempt at shaking him off. Instead, you focus on not panicking because HOPY SHIT YOUR ANCESTOR/ECTOBIOLOGICAL OFFSPRING IS GOING TO KILL YOU BECAUSE SOME STUPID GRUBFUCKING ALIENS FUCKED UP EVERYTHING FOREVER. Okay, maybe you aren't doing so good a job at not panicking.
"Well?" the Sufferer prompts with a snarl.
"Well, nothing," says John, to the shock of everyone currently in the cave (even himself, it seems). His voice wavers, particularly when he notices how you and the Sufferer are eying him, but he forges onward. "We're not 'highblood spies,' whatever that means! Our friends, Dave and Jade, they were trying to save all of us, but something went wrong. Now we're here, and we don't know what happened to the rest of our friends! I thought we were in the future for a little bit because you look a whole lot like Karkat, but I'm going to believe him when he tells me that's not true."
Before you even realize what your treacherous tongue is doing, you add, "Listen, I'm not even going to bother pretending that you're going to believe any of this hoofbeast excrement, but in the spirit of trying not to die before we can find our way back to the alpha time-line, I'm going to be honest. We're from your future. Want to know how this is going to turn out? Go ahead and ask me. Our time-line has been flushed down the load gaper, so the amount of fucks I am not giving right now has reached epic proportions here."
The Sufferer seems taken aback. He looks you over appraisingly. "Surely you do not expect me to believe this... story."
"I know how weird it sounds," John says with all the earnest charm he can muster (which you must admit is quite a lot), "but it's definitely the truth! Though I don't really get why you look like a dashing older version of Karkat if we're really in the past." He turns to you. "Karkat, have you been engaging in your own personal time shenanigans?"
You don't bother resisting the urge this time: you execute a perfect Facepalm Combo, which turns into a Facepalm Combo x2 when you notice your ancestor succumbing to the same urge. It makes you feel vindicated to know that John has that effect on someone else, too. "Oh my gog no no no no you useless assface. You know that time you were passing out bunnies like fucking candy in the Veil? Yeah, I did the same thing except without shitty hopbeasts and instead of making lusii, I made an extra set of wrigglers that got sent to the past on meteors and evidently did a bunch of stuff, okay?"
All anger is gone from the Sufferer's face. "Not even my moirail knows the circumstances of my wriggling day," he says quietly. There's an edge of danger to his voice that causes you to position yourself subtly between him and John because let's face it that grubmuncher couldn't defend himself against a domesticated legless cluckbeast.
"It's because I'm telling the truth, grubtard," you grumble. This is evidently not what the Sufferer wants to hear. Without warning, he hauls off and clocks you, sending you to the ground with spots swimming in your vision. You feel a little trickle of warmth at the corner of your mouth, but it's too late to hide it because the Sufferer has already taken three steps back. Distantly, you hear John squeak and start fussing over you.
"You..." The Sufferer's voice cracks, and there's a sharp stab of satisfaction when you hear it. You smirk, pushing yourself back upright and smacking away John's worried, fluttering touches. "It can't be."
"It's true," you state again, emboldened by the fact that your ancestor has been thrown off-balance by your blood color. "I'm from the future, I made you and sent you to the past, and now I'm here because of the mistake of a couple of nooklicking aliens."
The Sufferer is shaking. "Does that mean... we succeed?" There's a weird quaver to his words, something like hope.
There's this moment during which you almost don't hate this dumpass and you briefly consider lying. It's a very short moment. You realize that the only thing you hate more than future-you is past-you, and this grubfucking nooklicker is about as "past" as you can get if Vriska's stupid ancestor-worship is to be believed and oh you are willing to believe it for the sake of finally having a target for your desperate burning hatred of all things past-you. Besides, you justify to yourself, like you said before, you're not even in the alpha time-line anymore. Who cares if you wreck shit even further? "No. The Empress snatches victory out of your grubby fingers at the last second and scrubs outright mention of you from the annals of history forever. You have your chance and blow it in the most spectacular way that no one will ever really get the chance to remember."
You're intensely pleased with the absolutely shattered look on your ancestor's face.
You are not pleased, however, with the shattered look on John's face.
"Oh, no, Karkat, that's terrible!" he says, still with that stupid earnest charm. "We can't let that happen to your ectobaby, we just can't!" He turns wide, pleading eyes to you. It does some really stupid things to your pity glands that you will never ever admit to, even under threat of torture by Her Imperious Condescension Herself.
You growl. "Fine, whatever. It's not like we can fuck this time-line up any harder than Strider and Harley already did." You glare at the Sufferer. "We'll help your shitty rebellion."
No sooner than the words leave your mouth, John's face brightens and he grabs both your hands and your ancestor's hands in his. "Great! I know we can do this!"
Your eyes meet the Sufferer's. You can tell exactly what he's thinking. "Never has hatred gripped me so swiftly and utterly as to churn my bile pump with such protest," he declares dazedly.
You nod. "Hold onto that feeling, because the really horrifying part is when that hatred inexplicably fucks off."
John just grins as if neither of you had been talking about loathing him at all. "Aww, you guys are like an enraged matryoshka doll!"
"Lies, wriggler," the Sufferer hisses for only you to hear.
"I wish," you say with a snort.
All right, so your life is still probably over (in the doomed time-line sense), but it's looking like you'll be able to make the best of it. If nothing else, you're going to go out with a bang and take the whole rest of the time-line with you.