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The first time Karkat dies, he dies for you.
Fighting Lord English isn’t anything like you expected. It’s not a battle—it’s a nightmare. You’re down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass, and it’s all you can do to hold your own against the macabre constructs at his command. You’re tired and bleeding and you can barely remember which way is up when Karkat slams into you.
You go sprawling with the sound of tearing flesh and Karkat’s scream in your ears.
You barely see the creature— something long and thin with too many joints bending in all the wrong ways. All you can see is Karkat, looking too small and too still, covered in his own blood. John comes from nowhere, all hurricane and fury, and you trust him handle it as you scramble over to Karkat’s still form.
He’s alive, but only just. His breathing is shallow and his eyes are glassy, but they still manage to find your face as you cradle his head, careful, careful. “Pay attention next time, dumbfuck,” he mumbles, and you bite out a laugh that’s more like a sob, stroking his hair away from his face with shaking, stuttering hands.
You didn’t have to do that, you want to say. I might have died but I would have come back. You want to call him a stupid, selfless idiot and shake him until his teeth rattle. Instead you say, “You got it.”
Karkat dies with his head in your lap and his blood on your hands, in the eerily silent eye of John’s artificial tempest.
* * *
The decision to go back isn’t a conscious one. You don’t intend it, but you can’t let it lie. Karkat wasn’t meant to die. It was a mistake, a hiccup, a temporal wrong turn. It’s your job to set it right.
When you open your eyes, the world isn’t ending and something is wrong.
It takes you a moment to realize what’s wrong is you. You meant to go back days but instinct tells you that you’ve gone back weeks. It’s bad enough that your timing’s so off, but what’s worse is the realization that you’re alone. There’s no Past Dave here ready to receive your warning. It’s just you, all alone in your room on the meteor, and this isn’t how it’s supposed to go.
You scramble out of bed, track down Karkat and tell him everything. He seems incredulous that you’d go back just for him, and it makes you want to punch him right in his stupid face. Jesus. Karkat died for you, what does he take you for? In the end you manage to convince him it isn’t some stupid prank, and wring out the promise that he’ll watch his back.
After that the only thing left is to wait. A part of you still expects to die even though you’re the only Dave on offer, and you’re a little surprised when you wake up each morning. You wonder what happened to Past Dave, but you’re not too broken up over it.
The second time Karkat dies, he does it when you aren’t looking.
You’re so focused on making sure he doesn’t feel the need to save you in some sort of stupid, unnecessarily heroic stunt, that you don’t realize he’s been skewered until you trip over the body. You falter to a stop and drop to his side, but he’s already dead, a gaping, ragged hole in his chest.
This time you go back full of intent because you refuse to let this stand.
* * *
Three, four, five and six, and Karkat dies a different death every single time.
* * *
You want to lose track of time, but you can’t. You’ve been living the same three weeks on repeat for six months, two days and twenty-two hours. You’ve watched Karkat die eight times now. All you can seem to do is change the how, and it’s breaking you a little more every time.
You can’t give up on him, you won’t, but you’re exhausted and heartsore, and there’s a tiny voice whispering at the back of your mind that the reason your powers are working all wrong is because this is the alpha timeline— that Karkat’s meant to die and you could spend a thousand years in this terrible loop and never save him.
You ignore that voice because the truth of it would break you.
* * *
Somewhere in the middle of your eleventh lap you realize that you’re in love. You’re not sure if you were when you started, but the knife twists a little deeper and you suppose it doesn’t matter.
This time Karkat dies by inches, and it’s the first time you cry, holding him close and whispering promises you’re beginning to think you can’t keep.
* * *
It’s been ten months and you long ago gave up on telling anyone the truth because it never changes anything. Everyone knows there’s something wrong with you, they can tell you’re breaking apart even if they don’t know why. You haunt Karkat like a ghost, which is kind of ironic because you aren’t entirely sure you’re alive anymore.
This time you’re the one who throws himself in the line of fire, and you welcome the pain because this is different, this is new. Karkat is yelling, but it’s fear, not pain, and maybe this time he’ll live. Karkat will live and you will die, and maybe that’s always how it had to be.
You wake with a shattering breath and that’s when you learn that a death you crave is not heroic, no matter the circumstances.
Karkat died while you were gone, and in the end nothing changes.
* * *
It’s been a year and this time you tell Karkat the truth. You don’t mean to, but you open your mouth and it spills from you like rot from a wound. You tell him everything, every desperate failed attempt, the entire broken-record skip of your last year. His eyes go wide and for once in his life he shuts up and just listens. You must sound insane, but once you start you can’t stop until you’ve wrung it all out.
You tell him you love him for the first time, the words like razor wire around your throat, cutting deep every time you breathe.
You’re not sure what you expect when you finish, when the silence settles between you like something tangible. You watch Karkat’s mouth open and close like he’s not sure what to say, and you think this might be the first time you’ve ever rendered him speechless. Eventually he fists a hand in your shirt and hauls you into a crushing hug.
It’s a soothing balm on your wounded soul, and you bury your face in his shoulder and hold him back. You aren’t sure how long it lasts, just you and Karkat and the mingled sound of your breathing, but eventually Karkat shifts back just enough to grab a fistful of your hair in both hands and growl, “You need to stop.”
The words don’t make any sense. “Stop?”
“You’ve done enough, Dave. Fuck, I don’t want to die but if it has to happen then it has to happen. This is killing you, and it needs to end.”
You stare at him, because he can’t be serious. Not after everything you’ve been through. “I can’t just give up, are you crazy?”
Karkat gives your head a vicious shake. “You can and you will or so fucking help me I will reach through time and space and end you. This is it. It’s done. No matter what happens, you will not go back and try again.”
A tiny sliver of dread curls up your spine, and he can’t make you do this, he can’t, you can’t lose him now, not after everything you’ve been through. It would destroy you. “Karkat—”
He shakes you so hard you bite your tongue and taste blood. “Promise me!”
He looks almost frightened, and it’s with no small wonder that you realize that he’s afraid for you, not himself. “Okay,” you say, because he needs you to agree. He needs to know that you’ll stop grinding yourself down for him, wearing away inch by inch. “Okay.”
It’s a promise you don’t keep.
* * *
Karkat was right, this is killing you.
Except no matter how reckless you get, how hard you try, suicide is suicide and you can-
Never.
Stay.
Dead.
Karkat always does.
* * *
It’s been one year, seven months, three days, and fourteen hours. You feel like an old man even though your body hasn’t aged. You’re so, so tired, sick to your core, and you just want it to be over. You can’t give up and you can’t keep going, and there’s only one option left.
You find Karkat and before he can open his mouth you draw him into a hug. He squawks and struggles for a moment because this Karkat doesn’t know anything, doesn’t understand. It’s better that way and you just hold him until he goes still and uncertain. “What the fuck, Strider?” He sounds completely bewildered.
“Can’t a guy just need a hug sometimes?” You try for lighthearted but you haven’t been able to fake it in a long, long time.
Karkat must read something in your voice, some shadow of everything you’re feeling and how broken you are, because he just huffs a little, arms coming up hesitantly around your back and fisting in your shirt. You lean your head against his with a heartfelt thanks and reach for your power.
It comes more easily these days than it ever used to, but you’re not going back this time. Instead you wrap it around the two of you like a cocoon, drawing it down and out and slow, slow, slow, until moments creep by like hours and Karkat’s scarcely breathing in your arms.
Then you make it slower still, until the world beyond yourself is all but frozen. Karkat can’t live and you can’t die, trapped in a purgatory of your own making by your stubborn refusal to let him go.
But here in this moment you can keep him. Here in this moment Karkat can continue and you can rest. It isn’t perfect, but it’s the best you can do and Karkat is warm and alive, and that’s all you ever wanted for him.
You draw everything down so tight and slow that seconds take eons, until the moment is as close to forever as you can make it.
And then you just let go.