Chapter Text
And so it was the day that Karkat Vantas was set to die.
An old man trudged through an impressive but empty estate with all of the steadfast will and grace of a lead turtle.
Karkat Vantas had always been a short man, but age and grief have the indescribable ability to make one even shorter. Thick eyebrows furrow at their surroundings, when he and John had this place built why the fuck did they make all of the hallways so fucking long?
His cane digs too deep into the carpet and his unsteady trudgings grind to a hault as he sways on unsteady wrinkley-ass legs. His shoulder bumps into the wall and a picture frame is knocked off the wall in a delicate-sounding shatter as Karkat’s bulky weight slides down the wall and to the floor in a not-so-delicate sounding thwump. Breathing heavily, Karkat swears as he digs his cane from out underneath his ass. He uses the curved handle of the cane to hook to picture frame that had fallen to his right and slide it closer to him. He picks out the last remaining pieces of glass from around the photo and slides the paper out of the wrecked frame.
There. The picture was scratched but still recognizable.
He would recognize those big blue eyes anywhere.
Karkat had been a starving romantic comedy screenwriter and director, while John was working as a highschool science teacher and supporting them both.
John in all of his dorkiness and touchingly heatfelt nature, was his muse. Even through paper John's charm and pure nature must have shown through, because somehow, some way, Karkat had gotten a movie deal for one of his screenplays. He had begged John to act for him, he was the star in his mind after all. The budget was horrible, there was no air conditioning in the dinky two-bit studio where they shot it but they managed to make something…
New. Breath-taking. Heartfelt.
And they both rode that sucker to the Oscars and launched themselves into brand-new careers.
The picture was taken at the award ceremony, John Lanky and elegant in his tuxedo, Karkat short and tubby in his own ill-fitting tuxedo. Johns smiling and kissing him on the cheek onstage.After months of hard work that was the moment that they had WON and shoved a big fat middle finger in the faces of everyone who doubted them, and they had done it together.
Karkat slowly picks himself off of the floor, bones creaky and obstinate in even the smallest of movements.
He looks up from the photo in his hands to the ones that still adorn the walls. Advertisements for their movies, award ceremonies, shaking hands with the rich and famous. Their wedding photo….
The movie channel is having a movie marathon right about now of all of the now “classic” movies they made together.
You know, in commemoration of John’s death.
So many versions of John’s blue eyes look at him from photo after photo, twinkling, trapped in time to when they were both young and happy.
Karkat clutches his cane, caramel-colored knuckles going bone white in the ferocity of his grip. With all of his strength Karkat slams his cane into the glass-covered front of John’s face smiling at him from a movie poster.
“YOU IDIOT!!” The glass tumbles to the floor in a cascade of broken points of light. Karkat rips his cane back as the frame falls to the floor and immediately attacks another poster.
“YOU JUST HAD TO DIE DIDN’T YOU!!!” The cane swings into another frame and John’s cheery love-struck face in another movie poster, flies across the room and hits the opposite wall, shattering and leaving scratches in impossibly-expensive wall-paper.
“YOU DIED AND LEFT ME HERE WITHOUT YOU!!!” Karkat goes to swing for another photo but stops mid-swing.
John’s warm smile mocks him from their wedding photo. John stands next to him, both of them looking so fucking happy to be together and he can’t for the life of him break it he just can't.
Its like a punch to the gut.
All karkat can do in this moment is curl to the floor and sob.
Crying is different than it is in the movies.
In the movies, the girl sniffles cutely as mascara runs down her face, strong man-hands of her love interest wiping away her tears.
Real grief is powerful, a hot heavy force that smothers from you your breath in thick rasping sobs that tremble through your whole body. Its like being possessed, this hot empty burning brand where your humanity is supposed to be. Its ugly too, filled with more snot, tears, contorted red faces and wet rasping breaths than most film-makers are willing to admit.
After his fit of grief, Karkat feels numb.
The cinematic backdrop for this grief would be dark skies and thick pouring rain in a grey somber city to the sound of wailing sobs. But of course the universe has to be a dickbag, and out the window it's sunny with bright cheery blue skies.
Two birds flit outside tweeting and chirping happily to each other.
In this moment Karkat feels the hottest, deepest, most irrational burning hatred anyone in the universe has ever felt for a pair of birds. He knows its irrational but that doesn't stop him from wanting to throw both birds into a microwave and nuking them until their cheery little heads explode.
Because how dare they.
How DARE they be happy.
HOW DARE ANYONE BE HAPPY.
DON’T
THEY
KNOW
HE’S
DEAD?
The world should stop. The world should have stopped fucking spinning the moment he stopped breathing. The whole world should look out their windows and to the skies above and notice that something is wrong. They should look out and feel in their very bones that the world has changed in a sickening irreversible way because something has gone missing. Some pure, beautiful thing has been wiped off the planet that will never be replaced because he is dead and nothing will ever be the same.
But the world doesn’t work that way. The earth kept spinning. The sun continued to shine. CNN mentioned briefly that “John Egbert movie legend died peacefully in his sleep this past Tuesday” and the movie channel put on a movie marathon.
And the birds kept chirping, blissfully unaware that the world has gotten a little more horrible without him.
Karkat picks himself off of the floor and his joints bemoan the fact that he has slid to the floor far too many times today, and trudges off to the kitchen.
He doesn’t bother with the mess, Aranea will pick it up tomorrow.
Aranea was the personal care-giver that he had hired to take care of John. He had given her the day off because dead people don’t need personal care-givers. He’s going to have to talk with her about her job when she comes in tomorrow. He doesn’t want to fire her, she has fucking tuition to pay, but there's no fucking John to take care of now so what the fuck is she going to do around here?
He looks back at the mess of broken glass and twisted picture frames.
Well that's a thing she can do at least… He resolves to knock down a lamp or something every day like some kind of giant senile house cat.
He gets to work out his aggression on unsuspecting lamps, Aranea gets to keep her job.
Karkat Vantas: Job creator.
Aranea is Vriska’s daughter, she is all easy smiles and long-winded speeches about fucking everything. He had first hired her years ago when John first started acting weird.
It had started off slow with him. Forgetting dates, middle names and the proper amounts for recipes. Then it was leaving his car keys in the freezer, calling people by their wrong names. Until finally it was forgetting to put on pants, losing sense of the passage of time, forgetting even his own family’s names.There were doctors and drugs. Aranea was a psychology student and she would sit with John for hours with children’s flash cards, telling him long-winded stories about his own life that he would swear sounded-
so
familiar…
It slowed down the symptoms for a while, but eventually it was like trying to stop up Niagara falls with a piece of bubblegum.
Until John would scream in shock at the mirror and ask him when did they get so old?
“When did we get so old kitty?”
“...When did we get so old?”
And Karkat would just hold him, make him a sandwich or something until he stopped crying.
He never forgot him though.
Even to the end he still remembered him.
He trudges into his kitchen, past the mounds of wilting funeral bouquets that he absolutely refuses to take care of. So many friends, family members, movie industry assholes and hipster fans who like their “retro” movies have sent him flowers, and baskets, and fruit and glittery flowery cards with disgusting meaningless things like “in your time of grief” and “In god’s light”. He thinks Aranea might be watering some of them when he isn’t looking.
He wants to burn them all.
Without matches he’ll just have to settle for knocking one particularly gaudy vase of blood-red roses off of the table with his cane. The glittery abomination hits the floor with a satisfying shatter.
Another thing for Aranea to do.
John didn’t even like roses...Hardly any of these people even fucking knew him….
He makes his way to the kitchen and to the ancient landline phone sitting on the kitchen counter.
37 new messages.
He hits play as he trudges over to the refrigerator to mindlessly eat.
“Karkat…” Rose’s voice flits through his kitchen “While I understand why you haven’t answered your phone or talked to anyone after the funeral I must explain why its ill-advised, you need contact with other people, I know that you’re hurting, but isolation will only worsen the effects of-”
Karkat hits the “delete” button with the tip of his cane and goes back to rummaging through the refrigerator.
The next message starts with Dave’s low sigh “........I’ve left you ten messages Karkles….” In a rare breach of coolness, Karkat can hear the anguish dripping from Dave’s weary breath “....You’re not the only one who’s hurting without him you fucker….” The last second of the message is an angry slam of Dave’s phone.
Delete.
It’s Jane’s delicate sniffling he hears in the next message “....Karkat?.....”
He pauses from where he had been eating sliced lunch meat straight from the package without tasting it. “...... I know what you’re going through Karkat…..”
Out of all of them it probably is Jane who understands best. It had been over forty years since Gamzee was gunned down in a botched mugging. His death had shattered their newlywed bliss and left Jane alone with twins. They had mourned him together. He mourned the loss of his best friend, she lost her husband. It had brought them closer together in the way that only shared grief can. He had always made sure to look out for Gamzee’s kids, even if that Caliborn turned out to be a fucking terror. Jane had made him Calliope and Caliborn’s godfather.
She was also John’s older sister. They had been so close….
“I know you’re angry….because I was angry too……We’ve lost too many people Karkat…...We’ve lost too many fucking people…..”
It was an amazing circumstance when profanity came out of the mouth of Jane Crocker, he knew how much it meant she was hurting…
“I wanted to burn down the world for not properly mourning him, for letting him get killed in the first-place….there are times even now that I still feel raw about it...It's been forty-five years since he died karkat….and even now….”
He heard her sharp intake of breath and her shuddering exhale.
“But you helped me back then….You and John….”
Don’t say his name, please Janey don’t....
“...You and John helped me stay afloat back then...please….let me do the same for you…..”
It was so tempting. Karkat thought about calling Janey while chewing through a mouthful of lunchmeat. Letting her come over, having a good fucking cry together. He knew she was hurting too…
But he doesn’t think he can face her Egbert-family blue eyes just yet.
Message saved.
Next the sob heavy sound of his daughter’s voice filled the room.
“PICK UP THE PHONE YOU ASSHOLE I KNOW YOU’RE THERE!!!!”
All those years ago when John and Karkat were young, their movie careers were young, it was John who told him he wanted kids.
They had tried orphanages but after…..
after….
After….
That doesn’t matter right now….
After IT they had decided to have a child through in vitro and a surrogate.
Rose had donated the egg with the agreement that John would be the sperm donor for when her and Kanaya decided to have children. The agreement had worked out for both parties, Rose and Kanaya’s kids inherited a tall dark lankiness from John that was so similar to Kanaya that people often assumed it was Kanaya’s eggs used, he and John got Casey. Unlike Kanaya’s tall elegance, it was a pretty damn good thing that Casey looked nothing like him. She was all of Rose’s blonde beauty with John’s tallness and his striking blue eyes.
She sure as fuck got her spunk from him though….
“YOU’RE NOT GETTING AWAY FROM ME DICKBAG!” Karkat’s heart clenched at the sound of her angry sobs
“DID YOU JUST DECIDE ‘today i’m going to be a douche’ BECAUSE LET ME TELL YOU. YOU ARE BEING A TOTAL DOUCHE!!”
He could practically see the angry tears rolling down her face as she shouted into the phone.
“YOU CAN’T KEEP ME AWAY FOREVER!!! I WILL DRAG YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING PITY-PARTY IF IT’S THE LAST THING I DO!!!”
She can’t exactly angrily slam down an iphone for dramatic effect like Dave did, but he imagines that she angrily poked the ‘end call’ button.
He knows that she’s right. That he’s being selfish. That he’s a horrible father. But he can’t look at John’s eyes staring out from her face right now. How the fuck do you tell your kid that their presence makes you want to jump out of a window face-first into the concrete below in the world’s worst belly-dive, rather than look them in the eye?
What kind of father can’t stand to look at their own kid?
A shit father that's who.
Having destroyed his living room, listened to gut-wrenching phone messages and eaten an entire pack of baloney, Karkat feels physically and emotionally drained.
He trudges up to his bedroom even though it's only 4:30 in the afternoon.
He’ll call them back in the morning.
He lays down without changing into his pajamas. Cold baloney adorning the front of his turtleneck. Right now it feels like he can sleep forever….
and in a way...he does.
At exactly 11:45 that night Karkat Vantas will simply stop breathing.
His death will be peaceful, and still covered in baloney.
And it will only be the beginning.
Because this tiny, old, baloney-covered man has a very long journey to take.
And a very special man to find.