Chapter Text
Ever since Karkat can remember, he's been sick of... well, everything. His body, his mind, his home, his family... Everything. Even his friends, sometimes. And sometimes that's just too much. That's why he slips away in the halls, away from everything, ignoring Sollux asking him what's wrong, ignoring Terezi brushing it off as hormones (or something), and ignoring the teacher's that'll count him absent the next few classes. And days. And months, and years, and eternities. Because, really, he's been absent for a while.
Fast forward through four more hours of hiding in the bathroom before the final bell, going in front of the school and getting in his brother's car more wordlessly than is natural, and hiding in his room immediately after getting home. Pulling out the baggie full of the pill bottles with two or three pills left that he forgot to take, at various points in time. Maybe, with luck, he'll figure out something lethal.
It's really fucking dark, and he tastes blood. Something below him is soft. Something on his arm is warm. Fuck, too warm! His eyes are open, and it's not dark. He tries to swing his arm a bit, but the hand is holding it down. No, no, no, this isn't what was supposed to happen! Nobody was supposed to find him until he was gone! Fucking... Great. Great, now it'll all get worse, just like he knew it would.
The hand is his brother's. Kankri immediately starts talking about how worried they've all been, and Karkat immediately wants him to shut the fuck up.
Rehab is over, and Sollux is staring at him from the backseat. Like a prompt, only a fucking useless one, because Karkat's fucking useless and he can't understand anything and
No. This isn't how he's supposed to think. He's supposed to think the way the counselor (that he's still going to have to visit every week) thinks he should. So he just sits there, silent, until
"Well? How'd it fucking go? Were you re-tramatithed by the hot counthelor or thomething?"
"Shut up, she was barely above average."
"Oh, c'mon, I'm a young, hormonal, cith, thtraight-ithh fuckboy. I think anything with boobth and an ath ith hot." Yeah, that's Sollux- Sorry, Thollux- For you. Young, horny, and obnoxious.
"I know, I know, jesus fuck." Yep, same old routine. It was actually almost comfortable by now.
"Anywayth, I found thomething online that might interetht you?" Okay, that, admittedly, caught Karkat's attention. Sollux was holding out a packet of papers, stapled together. "I ended up doing thome rethearch, and while you aren't really a gamer, thith might be jutht enough to get your lame ath moving when you're really fucked up."
The papers are blog posts, something around ten of them, from the blog of a (grammatically incompetent) trans gamer that, to put it simply, might have found a way out of dysphoria. VRMMOs. And, you know, maybe- Maybe- It's worth a shot.