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You can read the writing on the walls. You’ve always been good at it - in your plans and machinations, you’ve seen enough to know where things are going. You can hazard your guesses and make your predictions, and rarely are you completely wrong. You’re a cautious man at most times, whispering words of advice into listening ears, pulling strings to keep yourself - and more importantly, your loved ones - out of danger. You’re far from the most sensible man in the world, and yet - you know when things are going to go to shit. You’ve always known.
And thus, you know how this ends. You hear Karkat’s words as he spreads teachings as far and wide as they’ll go, see the stares from the crowd nearing reverence, chants of his name in defiance as the drones patrol harder, competing to see who will put his head on a spike. You see his defiance in the face of an unstoppable empire, the spitting image of his Ancestor aside from the rage that drives him forward, and you know how his story will close. You know he’s going to die, and he knows it too. And yet, you remain in the place you’ve chosen to belong - right by his side. You know he can’t be pulled off this path, and you know following him will simply drag you with him. He warns you of what you already knew, cautions you to leave, to turn back, to abandon him to his fate so you don’t have to share it. And yet, you don’t fucking care. He knows it’s fruitless, just as you know you’re not leaving.
To say that you love him is to minimize your feelings, to do injustice to them, to lie. You’ve always loved, always felt, with the fire of the sun that burns in the Alternian sky you followed him back to knowing you’d die under it - and he’s coaxed loving hatred out of you that’s every damn bit as strong. You turn your fire on him, and he welcomes it. Few can love your intensity, your rage, your fire - he’s the only one you’ve found who matches it. Both of you, alike and snarled up in a dozen/hundred/thousand alternates, splintering off and breaking apart and shifting like the hem of the cloak he keeps pulled over his head for anonymity that offers only precious little protection - and yet, only one matters to the other. You are the only you to him, and he is the only him to you.
You’re always there for his speeches. His features rendered grayer by the shades you wear, your own little form of protection, as you watch him deliver fiery sermons for justice, for equality, for something better for the generations ahead - half in your words and half in his. Your murmurs turned to raging fire in his claws, fire that will sweep through the population and burn the Empire, you’re certain of it. From your vantage point, your shadow doesn’t fall over his stage - but you can imagine it looming there all the same, the specter of your words over his revolution. People below only see you as some dark-shaded silent figure, perhaps even imposing for your silent stoicism - but that’s merely for the public.
Behind closed doors, he sees you for what you are and you see him for the same. Shades and cloak alike fall to the wayside in favor of short-bitten nails, raccoon-mask sunglasses tan lines, smiles that are more than half grimace for lack of practice. Bantering and feelings jams and loving words that all only ever end with the two of you crammed into the bed you’ve shared for years now or the new ones you move into every week, your arms tight around him to stave off the daymares that come with being denied access to sopor, the best comfort you can give. The sun scorches above and the drones hunt tirelessly for the both of you, but in the enclosed little rooms you hide away in, you can let down your guard and so can he. You know you’re trading a long life for this, giving everything for some hidden moments in a dark room on a hell planet, and you do so with no regrets.
Inevitably, the drones find you. Tearing through your camp, rebels running for their lives as you fight back to give those who stand a chance of escaping even just a moment longer to flee - you know that now that you and Karkat have been found, you’ll never be lost again. He knows it too, fighting at your side until the two of you are overwhelmed, slamming his lips against yours in a final act of defiance for your rebellion, for your quadrant-fuckery of a romance of a codependency of a relationship, for the sacrifices you both knew you’d need to make even if he hoped, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the two of you would make it out the other side alive. You always loved his hope, for all that you knew better. You only have a moment to savor your last kiss before the two of you are pulled apart, detained, whisked away - but still, you have no regrets.
You reach your hand through the bars keeping you apart once you’re thrown in neighboring cells to twine your fingers with his, lean on the cold steel bars to feel him through them. Holding his hand won’t save you. Neither his commanding voice nor your whispers will spring you from this prison, spare you from the end you always knew was coming. But it’s a comfort that you take with both hands - you whisper to him, a final use of that advising voice you’ve employed, just for his comfort. A final act of pity, in his tradition, and he returns it with a warm shoulder to lean on and the closest to a comforting whisper he can muster. Everyone else trapped in these cells can hear his words to you, but for once you don’t have the energy to care. The execution will be soon. The execution of the Empress who’s coming to kill you won’t be far behind.
When the two of you are finally dragged out to the conclusion you always knew was coming, a torturous spectacle is made - not that you’d expect anything different from this Empress. It seems to go on forever - her speeches in a desperate effort to counteract yours, the heavy-handed symbols and attempts to humiliate as she uses every tool at her disposal to hurt the two of you, to break you. Through all of it, you are stoic and he is angry - preparation has blessed you with silence, and him with the ability to not let his famed rage crumble into pain. Red blood spills across her stage and she jeers, only to be met with cold silence and Karkat throwing every word back in her face with interest. Finally, finally, she grows impatient - but the execution itself is all too long-winded. At the very least, it gives you a chance to meet his eyes - to say a silent goodbye. This is the end, you know that, and you greet it as a man who’s known it’s coming for years - but you can’t resist one final smile at the love of your life, nor can he resist giving you one in return.
And yet, when the light finally fades from your body’s eyes, you awake again. Another chance, an afterlife, a reward for your sacrifice - and you get to share it with him. Together, entwined as always with him, you watch from above as the Empire crumbles under the rage of the rebels, his words and your words repeated a million times over by worlds’ worth of angry trolls and humans and aliens of all stripes who are sick and fucking tired of the Empress’s rule and everything that came with it. Her flagship burns, and you warm your ghostly hands, still holding his, by the flames. A better world will be built for the future, because of you and he - and you get to enjoy the fruits of your work, even if you can’t be part of it. You always knew this would end in tragedy, and yet you took every step along with him - and as outcomes of your choices go, you accept this with gratitude.