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Nepeta's fingers tangle in the strings when she has nothing else to do. They float about, useless for now, fading off a few meters away into the planes of non existence, and get in the way more often than not. Ever since she was a grub, her red one has been cut short. It trails, a few inches long, and no longer floats. It just hangs off her hand. She can't bring herself to remove it, or even try.
Her friends have them too, in varying numbers and varying colours. She can see them in the photos she receives of them, but they are painfully unaware of their existence. The school feeds have a brief section on them, but not nearly enough to satisfy her curiosity.
The strings of fate. Most trolls are unaware of their existence, and as such are considered no more than myth, however occasionally a troll can develop the ability to see or sense them. There can be up to five strings, one for each quadrant and two for auspices. A string is said to break if the troll at the other end of the string dies.
And that was all.
Her red string, her soul mate matesprit, is dead, and she hasn't even met them. She never had the chance to, they were dead before she was hatched. She steels her resolve and tells herself that she will find her fated moirail, her only other string, and it will work out.
She tells herself this until she meets centaursTesticle. Equius. He doesn't know about the strings, hardly believes in them, calls them a low blood fallacy designed to keep idle trolls idle, and she gives him a right piece of her mind.
They click, something just goes right, and she forgets about finding the other end of her string, she has all she needs right here. It still gets in the way, floating into her hair and horns, tangling around her pencils whilst she's drawing. She talks to Equius and mourns the death of a troll she never met and life goes on. She could have had it all if she lived in a city rather than the wilds, found her actual Moirail, apparently there's supposed to be a change in the strings when the other end is found, but here she is and it's too late to change anything now. She doesn't even know if she would change anything.
Equius is perfect, even if they're not official.
---
-- centaursTesticle [CT] has begun trolling arsenicCatnip [AC] --
CT: D--> Nepeta I am afraid something terrible has happened.
AC: :33 *the mighty huntress stretches and yawns as it is nearing sunrise and she is getting sl33py*
CT: D--> Nepeta I implore you to behoove yourself.
CT: D--> Behave.
CT: D--> This is of the utmost importance. I am even restraining myself from including well thought words of humour to convey this fact,
AC: :33 *she tilts her head curiously, tail furlicking from side to side. she notices that her fur-end is indeed not using puns and wonders what the matter is*
CT: D--> Nepeta I command you to act your age.
AC: :33 *nepeta refuruses the ridiculous request and reminds equihiss that she and him are both only kittens still*
CT: D--> Please Nepeta. I am in a great amount of pain at the present moment.
AC: :OO *the might huntress gasps and concedes that yes, she should refurain furom roleplaying* well why didnt you say so
CT: D--> I was attempting to, however you were refusing to cooperate.
AC: :OO what happened? youre not injured are you?
CT: D--> There was an a%ident in my workshop. I do not know what happened but I am in e%crutiating agony.
AC: :CC where are you now?
CT: D--> My workshop floor. I have not moved since the a%ident.
Nepeta is torn. On one hand Equius is hurt and that makes something in her chest ache. She has to make sure he's alright, make sure he's defended purroperly! On the other it's nearly sun rise, and she's never gone sun running befur. There is no option of waiting though. She must go see him.
AC: :CC dont fear equihiss. i will come and make sure you are safe.
-- arsenicCatnip [AC] has ceased trolling centaursTesticle [CT] --
-- arsenicCatnip [AC] has logged off! --
CT: D--> Wait Nepeta! It is too dangerous for you!
CT: D--> Of horse you are gone.
Nepeta packs light, her claws in her specibus and strips of cured hoofbeast flesh in her sylladex. She brings water and salt also, and her fur-lint stones. She has to tear her curtains down to make a claw-oak to purroperly cover herself from the harsh sun, and uses the attached cord to adjust it to fit.
Pounce circles her nervously, yowling and pacing.
"Of course you can come silly!" She spares a scratch behind the ears for her lusus before finding a pair of tinted goggles. She has had them for nearly a sweep, in preparation of the day she decides to finally go sun-running. She hopes they purrotect her from going blind.
Fully equipped, she checks her map one last time befur stepping from her cave and darting into the jungle. She spends most of the trek to the edge of the jungle fretting over Equius. What could have happened to him to injure him so? He said himself that he has never even gotten bruised before, even if he does occasionally get a tooth knocked out. Not a lot actually hurts him.
At the edge of the jungle she drops from the tree she was in and finds herself in scrubland. She's never been this far from her territory before. Everything is so bright, even with the tinted goggles, and she has to squint but it doesn't hurt her eyes. She sets off at a reasonable jog, Pounce loping alongside her. She runs for a good hour or two before growing tired and slowing to a walk, keeping it brisk. She doesn't want to keep Equius waiting. Not when he's in pain.
A half hour of walking and she breaks out into a jog again. She's sweating profusely and it just makes her worry more. If Equius is injured and he's sweating, will the salt drip into the cuts, if there are any, and make it worse? She runs faster.
This time when she has to walk, Pounce bumps into her, as if she wasn't staggering enough, and keeps cutting in front of her. Usually when she does that she wants to be carried. Nepeta isn't in the best shape to do that, but she crouches to scoop the oversized cat onto her back.
Pounce skips away swiftly and meows loudly, both jaws stretching wide. She drops her chest to the ground and Nepeta realises what she wants. She slides her leg over Pounce's back behind her shoulders and twines her fingers in the thick fur, and when she's settled Pounce bounds off, the scrub giving way to desert and then rocky mesa with red, red soil. The colour makes her hurt for her lost, unknown matesprite, and ache to help others find theirs. Find all their quadrants.
Equius' hive doesn't appear on the horizon until about midnight the next night, and then it's not until dawn that they get there, weaving between robots floating around, husks or silent sentinels, a thousand glowing eyes tracing their movement.
Equius' hive is enormous, decadent and old. Ancient even. It's a relic of a bloodline. Nepeta had access to no such thing. She just had her lusus and her teeth and a few old, beat up drones to help her hollow out her cave system.
The door is easily thrice her height, and she bangs her fist on the heavy wood several times. She'd let herself in, but she tried that first. It's locked.
There's a clip-clopping from the other side of the door, the sound faint but definite, and the locking mechanism creaks and groans before unlocking with a loud thud. The hinges screech as the door opens to show Arthour standing there, a fading bruise on his shoulder. Pounce hisses and scuttles behind Nepeta, and she reaches out with a smile to pat Arthour's arm kindly. He flinches at first but relaxes when she doesn't accidentally hurt him.
Pounce relaxes a little when she sees the Arthour is no threat, and bounds through the doorway and down a hall to explore.
Arthour insists that Nepeta climbs up on his back and he trots, bouncing her like a rag doll on his back he shifts so quickly, off towards some unknown goal. Probably Equius.
Her assumption is right when Arthour stops outside a door and gestures to it. Nepeta is suddenly nervous even though she has no real reason to be.
She's just meeting Equius, her pale crush of a sweep and friend of two, a highblood who could crush her with his little finger if the mood ever struck him, for the first time. He's in pain and told her first. He needs her.
Swallowing thickly, she pushes the door open to see the dimly lit room. There are bits of junk laying around dangerously, wires and sheet metal, some tools, a lot of broken bows and some shards of glass and splashes of milk.
Equius is laying over near the bench on his stomach in a veritable, albeit small, pool of his noble blue blood. Nepeta cries out as pain lances through her skull, through the core of her right horn, and she buckles to her knees. Across the room Equius shifts.
She brings her hands to her head and cradles it. Now isn't the time for a headache. She has to help her friend first. She drops her hand and the pink string gets caught over her thumb tightly. She picks it loose as she stands and it doesn't float off wispily like usual, it's almost like it's pulling her along, stretched taut across the cluttered room.
The other end of it is tangled around Equius' little finger.
She's at his side in a flash, kneeling in sticky blue blood and stroking his (probably) normally silky but currently damp hair with the tips of her fingers. It's him. She found him. She found him and she didn't care and she /should've been here/. His only other string is as black as coal, and severed in the way her red string is.
The source of his pain is apparent. Equius' right horn is snapped off at the red band, and it'll still grow, but it won't grow back. She looks around for a rag to stem the sluggish bleeding, it's been nights since he did the injury and he's still bleeding. Nepeta a horn throbs dully and she thinks it's the string. What's mine is yours. She thought it was just their lives and emotions, but pain seems to be a part of it. This is uncharted territory they're dealing with. It's a good thing Nepeta is good at uncharted territory.
"Nep... eta?" Equius groans and his head shifts slightly.
She doesn't even consciously move her hands. She just reaches out and pap him, her throat already shooshing him automatically. He settles and Arthour places a gilded tray by her knee.
He's brought her milk, a needle and syringe filled with a substance she didn't think was available to get, and gauze and bandages. She sits on Equius' shoulders, almost straddling his neck, and injects the local anaesthetic into the bed of his horn. He thrashes and howls in pain, and she can feel it, splitting her skull right open, but she's got a job to do.
She wakes up with an empty syringe in hand, flat on her back next to Equius, with Pounce licking and nudging her arm. She sits up and she is not in pain.
Equius is asleep.
He is a little bigger than her, but fits nicely in her arms until she deposits him next to his recoopercoon, propping him up against the hard shell. She strips him naked before heaving him into the 'coon, and make sure he's settled properly. He's a highblood. He's got good, thick sopor. Purer than what she's given; not enough packet mix, and stream water she has to transport in rusty water-collection-containers.
She goes back for the gauze and bandage, and cleans and poultices the end of the horn with sopor. That should keep it numb, too, and then wraps it firmly. A cast would be ideal. She'll have to wait until he goes through his adult moult after sweeps of reshaping and hardening, before she can carve it into something less pitiable.
He hardly rouses, exhausted from nearly a week of excruciating pain and suffering. No sleep. She watches him in his slumber, and the high quality sopor is too good to resist in her travel-weary exhaustion, so she strips off too and follows the pink string until her hand is linked with his and he's leaning against her, his face in her throat and her other hand in his hair.
It's the best night sleep she's have ever had.
---
After the incident, her string doesn't float about. In fact, she can hardly call it a string anymore. The wispy end is gone completely, leaving a pale band around her finger. Something changed in her too. She can't read Equius' thoughts, but she gets a good picture of his mood all of the time, whether he's in pain. She has a radar for her moirail and it is the best thing she could've ever asked for.
Oh, and they make it official, tell all their friends.
She tells Karkat last. She doesn't know how she wants him to react. It isn't exactly a secret that she has a flush crush on him, and it's no less of a secret that he likes Terezi.
She expects him to flood her screen with a wall of grey text that she will pick through word by word, and he does until she tells him directly.
AC: :33 equihiss and i are meowrails now
He stops typing and doesn't reply for a few minutes. She's about to apologise for bothering him and leave when he just replies with.
CG: WELL IT FUCKING TOOK YOU TWO GRUBS-FOR-PANS LONG ENOUGH NOW, DIDN'T IT?
She laughs and thanks him and her bloodpusher aches.
Maybe one day he'll like her back.
---
Equius hates himself sometimes.
He's despicable, a terrible friend.
Karkat screams into the chat client at him for two hours and he sits there and reads each and every word, picking apart the sentences at the seams and understands that, in his own way, Karkat is giving him the shovel talk. Take care of Nepeta or else.
He doesn't specify the 'or else', but Equius is sure it won't be nice.
He's treading a dangerous path, he realises halfway through filtering Karkat's angry words. He's held STRONG feelings for the shorter troll for a long time, feelings of an unknown hue. But seeing Karkat obviously care about Nepeta enough to threaten Equius makes him fill with compassion obviously, but also with a touch of pride and glee, positive emotions.
He thinks he might have a flushed crush on Karkat in moments like that.
Then there's moments where Karkat mocks him, mocks his feelings towards Aradia, much STRONGer than those he holds for Karkat, how they clash with his STRONG and righteous beliefs about the haemospectrum, and how much of a 'AURICULAR-SPONGECLOT BLEEDING, MAGGOT RIDDLED SACK OF USELESS ROTTING HYPOCRITICAL BULGES' it makes him, and whilst he's in awe and shock at Karkat's language, he hates him a whole lot for daring to even think about saying such horrendous things.
His worry is Nepeta.
She isn't naive. Not by a long shot. But she seems it. It seems like she lives in a world where she can get what she wants by force of will, with some paints and her claws. And why shouldn't that work? That's how it's been for her her entire life. If she wanted something she went and got it. She didn't have to tiptoe around other trolls, didn't have to worry about what they thought, how they felt.
Now, and for the last sweep, at least, she's been flushed for Karkat, and he's worried that it's only a matter of time before she does something hasty or irreparable.
He doesn't want to do the same, doesn't want to let out any hint that he holds concupiscent feelings for Karkat, because Nepeta is so much more important. She's his entire world, and he can put aside his feelings for her. He can distance himself from Karkat and ignore his feelings, of either shade, and help Nepeta get what she wants.
---
The game makes Karkat feel sick. It's too raw and hard and fast, things he's used to, but he thought there would be time out occasionally. He destroys shit and kills imps and gets stabbed by Jack Noir. He collects frogs and cries when it all becomes too much and he thinks finding that meteor with the ectomachine is the best thing that's ever happened to him because for a while he can pretend that nothing and no one else exist. He gets some peace and quiet and he gets himself back into order whilst he fiddles with the machinery.
He ran into Nepeta for the first time ever just recently. He hadn't known what to expect from her. He had expected her pale string to be as it was, but hadn't expected to see her red string cut.
He feels sick knowing he can see them like that, people's hearts on their sleeves. It's a frightening ability and he thinks he might be delusional sometimes.
He doesn't have strings. He never did. But he has always been able to see them.
Since they first started messaging he couldn't quite help the way he felt about her. He just wanted to know more about her, be there for her and make her smiles when he hadn't found himself jealous when she told him she had filled her pale quadrant, he realised he was very much flushed for her. Dangerously so.
He feels guilty for it. She deserves better than an angry mutant. She can find someone better than him. With no destined matesprit anymore she would be comfortable with anyone.
Oh how wrong he was.
The grubs appear and he sorts them, not knowing why there are doubles of them that are only slightly different. Maybe they are the ancestors those stupid highbloods are so fixated on.
When he gets to untangling the two olive blooded grubs apart, the one with shorter hair, it has to be Nepeta, still has her red string intact.
His grub has strings.
He's got a red and a black. He had strings and they-
They're connected to Nepeta and Equius.
He looks away before he throws up. His grub is disgusting. Bright red eyes and exoskeleton. Nubby little pathetic horns. It makes curious noises when he picks it up, and it squeaks loudly when he curls his head forwards and gnaws the strings right away.
The little blue grub is silent through the pain, but Nepeta screams, some of the other grubs join in.
By the time he's done he's crying and clutching his grub to his chest. He did it for Nepeta. To let her have a life free of this hassle. He knows she can see the strings. She's mentioned it to him before. He's saving her the agony of meeting him and getting her hopes up and then having them crushed beneath the heel of some cosmic deity because he's so fucking dirty and gross and she deserves the world.
He can't give that to her.
He can't even give her what she so desperately wants because he knows he shouldn't.
He can't have her. Can't be hers. Not now, not ever. But he can pretend for now.
He scoops Nepeta up into his other hand and shuffles to a dark corner, setting the two grubs between his legs. They sniff at each other curiously before they both start squeaking excitedly, already over the temporary pain from earlier, and they bump faces and crawl all over each other and knock horns lightly and he bursts into tears.
He just sits there sniffling, and wipes at his eyes and nose, waiting for him to exhaust himself.
His grub falls asleep first and he tucks it under the hem of his jumper before picking Nepeta up and bringing her close to tuck under his chin. His tears start anew and he cries into her hair whilst the other twenty two grubs explore and squeak and play and fight. He feels a third grub nudge at his leg and he hisses in pain when Equius bites his ankle, sharp little teeth stained candy red, and he falls asleep with himself by his hip Equius in the crook of his knee, and Nepeta tucked up in the side of his neck, little blunt horns digging into his jaw.
He's never been happier.
---
Karkat is tiny!
That's the first thing she notices when she meets him the first time. That doesn't stop him from being larger than life, his presence easily making up for his lack of height. All his yelling online made her think that he was big and strong, a bit more like Equius (who is also a lot shorter than she thought, to be honest. His only height advantage comes from his horns), but no. He's short and stocky and even angrier than she thought.
The second thing is that he has no strings. None at all. It makes her feel sick. She's never met someone without strings, she's met people who don't deserve them, but Karkat does, and he doesn't have any.
The third is that he's bleeding copiously.
She'd thought he'd been hiding his blood colour behind the wall of grey text, no troll had grey blood, but no troll had red blood either. She'd thought he was a sea dweller or something, someone who could afford to be angry and get away with it. She'd thought he'd been a maroon blood or something, someone who had a reason to.
She was right and wrong on both accounts.
"Nepeta-" blood bubbles up between his teeth and lips, stained paler by his spit, and his teeth are just as stained, it looks like he's ripped teeth first through a caprician. "What the ever loving fuck are you doing just standing there and staring?" His hands are clamped tightly over his ribs on one side, but that's by no means the extent of his injuries. His leg is bent at an unnatural angle, and one of his eyes is bruised not by sleepless days, but probably by a rock. "My very essence is oozing out of me as I speak, did you not pay attention to the schoolfeeds on first aid? Or is your pan more rotted than Captor's? Fucker eating mind honey, Jesus." He's sounding a lot weaker than he probably means to, and she steps closer, falling to her knees to push his shirt up, so she can use it to tie tight around his stomach and hold his wounds closed.
He's reluctant to shift his hands, and when he does more blood pours out in a slick trail, curving down his waist sluggishly. He probably doesn't have much more to bleed. She presses her hands over it anyway, and absently notices that it's not much hotter than hers is. It feels like syrup between her fingers, like killing wild animals, when she skins them and delves between their organs to gut them, and she wants to throw up. She hurts so much she doesn't want Karkat to die, she doesn't want to lose another friend. She tears the shirt open and wraps it around him, tying the wound shut tightly and she looks over his chest more to make sure he's not any more injured.
He's got little gills set between his grubscars. They flutter and make the blood coating them bubble and he hisses and groans.
"Don't- not them please. They're disgusting." He coughs, body curling up a little as his frame is wracked with the force, and a splatter of blood lands on her cheek. "I'm so sorry Nep." He looks up at her, with a face full of angry lines and a mouth full of blood. "I didn't mean for this to happen." His fingers spasm against the dirt for a moment before coming up to run over her hands, still on his chest. "The- the strings. I know you can see them."
She gasps, eyes wide. "I knew it! I knew you could see them too." Her fingers tighten on his and her red string floats aimlessly.
"Shut up!" He coughs again, and this time his body hardly heaves. "Fuck, I'm sorry." His thumb moves sluggishly over the back of her hand and he smiles bitterly. The world is out to get him, this poor, mutant boy. "It was you, you and him. I-" this time, his coughs make him up a little in an effort to hold himself still.
Why him. Why did he have to be the one to get caught in the crossfire. Of all those that could get hurt this bad, why did it have to be Karkat?
Why doesn't Karkat love her. She wanted him to be the one so badly.
The one is already dead.
Karkat is dead.
There's no time to be sad, she's one portal away from LOPAH, she could get him to his quest bed, might just make it in time. She has to try at least.
She clutches her sprite amulet to her chest tightly, until it digs into her palm, and calls Pounce to her. Her world is tinted green, and she begs Pounce to be gentle and take him to his quest bed, that she'll follow but Pounce will be quicker. Go now and just save him!
---
Karkat is gone when she gets to his quest bed. There is nothing but her panicking lusus, and a smear of blood. There are no consorts, nothing. She can't even smell him.
She was too late, she failed.
She screams, angry at her self and irrationally angry at Pounce. Her lusus only tried to help, did as she asked, but she wasn't quick enough. The cord of the the amulet snaps when she yanks it from her neck, and drops it on the quest bed. The sprite's services are no longer required. There's nothing she could ask Pounce to do anymore. Equius is too strong and they're so close to finished that she doesn't need the advice.
Almost on cue, her palmhusk makes a noise, and she knows what she has to do now.
---
He always seemed so placid, so... harmless. That was before she saw his eyes bleed red, pupil beady. Mouth manic, a gash across his face. A chasm full of needles and jagged rock. He has two grey strings, and one is whole, and the other is not just snapped, but it is shredded to dust. His red string is a thing of history.
She secrets herself in a vent at Equius' request, and as she watches in horror, her pink string unravelling at the seams, floating up and wrapping around and around and around and- she can't breathe can't think it's all just blue and red and- and her rage. Oh her rage. She could tear him to pieces, flay him where he stands and separate each and every muscle fibre from each other and the bone with her bare hands, crack his joints in two and split his bones open and feed the marrow to the hungry masses. She'll make a crown with his horns and relish as his royal purple blood drips down her face.
And it's with that mindset she leaps at him claws first, over Equius' prone form, and his mind is sharper for lack of sopor and he catches her, and her wrist snaps like a twig beneath his highblood strength. She doesn't care. She struggles and thrashes and then watches in paralysing horror as he drags the tips of her claws over his face. It's exactly what she wanted, not enough, she wants to see his blood spray out from his throat in a torrent. He's taking what she wants to do away from her and she hates him for it. She screams it in his face and he drops her hand. It hangs, limp, by her side.
Her fangs go for his throat and his club goes for the back of her head.
It's not hard to know which fell first.
---
Karkat is dragging Sollux's' prone body, and he's blinking up at Karkat, as blind as one of those flying, echo-location mammals, and missing half his teeth, giggling like a wriggler seeing a nine sweeps and over pailing vid for the first time. Karkat's terrified. He has no idea whether Gamzee actually knows he's here. Until ten minutes ago, no one did, now Sollux does, Feferi did until she bled out all over his cape.
There's a honk and Karkat nearly jumps out of his hood, and drags Sollux faster.
Up ahead there's a sliver of light and he heads to it, it's eerie and green, the ecto-room's antechamber. The moment he sees the trail of green blood, so pure and amazing, he drops Sollux andruns. Sollux yells after him but the screaming in his head drowns him out. Oh god please don't be dead. Please just have a blood nose. Just have spilt a pot of paint.
Fate has never favoured the poor.
Nepeta's body is scant inches from Equius', and they're holding hands. She's on her belly, staring at him with all the wonder in the world, and she doesn't even flinch when Karkat walks over and kneels next to her. Just glances at him, takes no notice, and whispers incoherent garbage at Equius' body.
He only speaks up when she falls silent. "I'm so sorry, Nepeta." He doesn't know where to go from there. He fucked up, and he's not scared to admit it. He faked his permadeath, hid his ascension to godtier, secreted himself away on the meteor, hiding from every living soul because he was too fucking scared to stay behind and maybe, just maybe try and fix things. Fix Billious Slick, destroy Noir before he was even created.
But no, he came along for this hellish ride on the slim, stupid fucking chance he could apologise to Nepeta.
Love has made him horrendously weak.
Well, he did it, he apologised. And for what? To ruin her final living moments. Take her attention away from the last good thing she had in her life. Sometimes he forgets Equius was as much his as hers. The tiny scars on his ankle ache vaguely and he sits as close to her as he can. Blood is staining into the ass of his robes.
He doesn't dare touch her hair like he wants to, the back of her skull caved in and the tissue inside is a sickly green-grey. She looks at him like she can't see him, like he's not there and she's fixated on something. She makes half an apology before she stops.
"No I'm not. I'm not sorry. I had nothing to lose." Her eyes clear for a fraction of a second, and there's a faint hint of green laced through her slate grey eyes, her eyelashes brush her cheeks when she blinks and he regrets everything. "You were dead and they were dead and I just wanted you to like me. I just wanted that so much and I was too late." Her eyes are worryingly dry. "I just wanted you to be happy." It's then she tears up a little, and looks away from him, to Equius instead.
What is he supposed to do in this situation? He's long since past the point where he should be trying to hide his tears. He fucked up and she's in pain and she doesn't care about herself what is your problem just fucking do something Vantas. He wishes she would be angry with him, tell him to fuck off. Because that would be easier. That would be logical and Nepeta defies every expectation he has of her and he loves her so much and she's dying and there's nothing he can do about it.
"Hey Nep." She looks up at him, and this time she definitely sees him. There are tears in her eyes and this is not what he wanted at all. He needs to explain everything now. Before it's too late, and it all comes out in a rush. "When I created the grubs I cut my strings right off because my black one went to Equius and- and my red one was attached to you and I thought you could do so much better than me." Karkat can hardly get the words out for all of his sobbing, and he curls forwards, one of his hands finding hers, and he holds on tightly. "I wish I hadn't. I wish I had told you sooner, just so I could've spent more time with you."
She squeezes his hand weakly, and then she's bawling her eyes out. "I don't want to die. I don't- I don't wanna go. Karkat please don't let me go. I wanna stay here with you." That takes a lot of energy out of her and he can't do anything to save her, some great boon being a Knight of Blood if he can't stop Nepeta from fucking bleeding. Her grip goes weaker and it's all he can do to stop himself pleading and begging her to stay there, stay with him please he needs her.
---
Gamzee bashes his skull in and snaps his neck twenty minutes later when he tries to kill the clown, not only for Nepeta's vengeance, but to protect everyone else from Gamzee.
Death is a welcome darkness then.
She searches long and hard for Karkat in the bubbles, not just for Karkat, but for /her/ Karkat. She finds him after too long and not long enough, she's not ready to see him, but she so desperately wants to see him, touch his face and horns, play with his hair. Have him yell at her.
Because he will and she knows he cares now.
She's not sure what to say, so when he sees her and smiles (oh god he's smiling!), she steps closer and it's a mutual choice to hug tightly, and he's still shorter than her. When they part, they're holding hands and she couldn't stop herself from kissing him if she tried so she does. It's chaste and fleeting and it's all she ever wanted. She still doesn't know what to say.
Luckily, he does. "Let's go find Equius."