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The smell of Kanaya’s clinic makes you want to gag. It reeks to hell of every single body fluid known to trollkind and then some. Stagnating, festering, all in one place. She tries to perk it up with flowers, but you fail to recall the last time a bouquet of fucking petunias made treating the crusted toe-jelly of Alternia more cheerful.
It doesn’t help that her clinic is set up in the middle of nowhere; some creaky shack tucked into the juncture of two cliffsides. The route involves a delicate miasma of less-traveled roads and secret passageways. And wholly unnecessary sweat, you can’t leave that out.
You suppose it can’t be helped, though. Given her line of business.
You rap your knuckles against her window. The sound is swallowed--you hear a muffled apology. The shrill whir of a chainsaw followed by the wet crunches of bone.
Ah, you arrived in the middle of an amputation. Why, of course you fucking did.
You wait until the noise stops. Silence follows. You wait some more, lazily wondering whether your torso will scab over all on its own by the time Kanaya decides to attend to your sorry ass.
The shifting curtains, the soft click of a lock coming undone. You step back a little as Kanaya pokes her head out, and says your name with a tender familiarity.
“Karkat. Whose ire did you attract this time?”
Kanaya Maryam is the type where you can automatically tell how much she has---had, that is--going for her. She looks impossibly regal, with a finely-sculpted bone structure and a posture more befitting of an aristocrat than a back-alley bloodmongerer. She had an aura of intelligence, of compassion, but just a big enough hint of hardness to lend her your reverence.
Unlike you, she was actually a respectable member of troll society once. As a sturdy, reliant jadeblood, she used to have a promising future ahead of her. Then one night, she managed to piss off some indigoblood and got killed for her quote-unquote insubordination.
A pretty lopsided trade-off, you say. A life in exchange for a minor blow to the ego.
That’s just how it works around here. Nobody batted an eyelash as her head was torn from her shoulders. You wouldn’t have expected them to.
Instead of going to the Great Bullshit Beyond, Kanaya awoke in a stinking mass grave with a hole in her throat and a strange, terrible thirst uncurling in her shriveled stomach. So, here she is: a rainbowdrinker and a savior of scum. For a negotiable price, she’ll use her healing knowledge to treat trolls who’d be immediately handed over for culling if they were stupid enough to seek help anywhere else. Criminals. Cullbait. Or both, like you.
She’s just as much of a pariah as you, but unlike you, she once had something. You wonder how much she hurts, sometimes, and it feels traitorously similar to pity.
“It’s better than it looks, I swear.”, you say as you clamber through the window. You frown quizzically at the recuperacoon on the other side of the room, and by extension, the troll passed out inside it.
“Poisoned blade.”, Kanaya explains curtly, standing on her toes to fuss at a pot of hanging orchids. “It spread from the ankle upwards. Almost everything below the waist had to go. I’ve arranged for a friend of his to pick him up once he recovers.”
She raises an eyebrow at you, assessing your damage with a onceover. As a rainbowdrinker, her gaze is uncomfortably intense. Like it could peel the skin off your oculars if you look at her for too long. Kanaya Maryam is the searing sun compressed into this undead husk of a girl. “I thought I told you to be more cautious.”
“I was!”, you argue hotly as you settle onto a cot pushed into a corner. “There wasn’t supposed to be a fucking sentry on duty tonight. I checked beforehand. I was downright neurotic with caution. You’d be damn proud.”
She kneels before you, skirts rustling. “Karkat.”
“Right. Right.” You gingerly unwrap the cloak you’ve kept bunched around your middle. “Long story short, he caught me trying to scale the wall and I kinda got stabbed once or twice in the ensuing meowbeast-tussle. Don’t give me that look, I ran before he got a good look at me.” As an afterthought, you add, “I’ve been using my cloak to staunch the bleeding, so I think I’ll need a new one. Maybe I should track down that shitmaggot and make him pay for one.”
Kanaya hums in understanding and rises to fetch some bandages and disinfectant. Probably also to check up on the other troll. She’s going to end up making you another cloak, you both know that. She jumps like a gaffed trout at any opportunity to sew something for someone. While she’s busy, you idly observe her clinic. It hasn’t changed much since you last dropped by. Medical supplies, ranging from shiny-clean to gore-stained, lie on steel trays laid neatly on counters. Behind those, a cabinet you recognize as the one where she keeps assorted remedies. That, and stocks of raw beast meat a la Leijon for whenever she goes too long without a visitor. She almost never uses them. She gets good business, and the friends of her patients can usually put up with a bit of blood-letting by way of extra payment.
You’ve formed a symbiotic relationship of sorts because of this. See, as the sweeps have dragged on, your stupid mutant blood has found new-and-improved ways to fuck with you. Namely, your body has started producing too much of it, leaving you to painfully vomit the excess. It isn’t easy or pleasant, to puke out mouthfuls of candy-red muck that has the consistency of sewer sludge. Therefore, you often find yourself dropping by the clinic, where she takes nourishment from what you don’t need.
Due to complications, you haven’t showed up in months. It makes you feel a twinge of guilt, though you know you have a good excuse.
“You fed yet this week?”, you ask. At a gesture from Kanaya, you lean with your back against the wall. It goes quiet as she attends to you. The stab wounds only came from a standard-issue sabre. Both in your abdomen; spaced a couple of inches apart, running a couple of inches deep. About a fingertip wide, and only leaking sluggishly at this point. No big deal, but you still hate seeing your own neon garbage-blood staring back at you, so you school your gaze to the walls.
Your nose wrinkles reflexively as she applies disinfectant, and then some kind of minty-smelling poultice. You force your tongue between your teeth as she begins to stitch you up. “Did you hear me? I know that legless fucker’s friend won’t be over to pick them up for a long time coming, and I’m sure you don’t want to resort to Nepeta’s--”
“You may not want to patronize the troll providing you with medical treatment.”, she cuts you off, the way she primly cuts off a length of bandage.
“I’m just worried--”, you begin irritably.
“You are just ridiculous.”, she says softly. “You worry about everyone so much, you don’t have enough concern left over for your own well-being.”
“Hypocrisy, thy name is Maryam.”, you snort. “I could say the same about you, you meddling leech.”
Her mouth twists into this amused, affectionate curve. She raises her head so that your faces are level. There’s a sudden, clammy sensation on the back of your neck, where she rests her fingers. Her claws, filed to needle-like points, graze the small, circular scars she’s left on you. “I’m fine, I assure you. Besides, you hardly need two more puncture wounds in you. Maybe later, but not tonight.”
You would search her face for insincerity, or hidden meanings, or something. By now, you know that isn’t necessary. Kanaya’s frank. She’s straightforward. You like that. It’s so much better than the sideways sneers, the underhanded civility you’ve had to deal with your whole life.
“Fine, then. This can be my payment, then.” You only manage to nick a couple of things that would be worth a barkbeast’s bulge at a pawnshop, and this was one of them. You fish out the finger guard and press it into her palm. It’s carved from gold and some kind of bone...either beast or troll, you can’t tell and you don’t want to. It’s thin, deadly-looking, and intricate.
Something only a seadweller or maybe a very vain blueblood would wear. “In case you want to get all theatrical about your rainbowdrinker gig.”, you grumble tentatively.
In a fluid movement not even your oculars can catch, she pockets it. Damn rainbowdrinkers, with their damn supertroll speed.
Kanaya smiles. Her fangs poke out over her lower lip when she smiles like that. “I notice you haven’t visited recently. Was Scourge giving you trouble again?”
“Yeah, for a while, I had to lay lower than an ocean trench--wait a second, how’d you know about that?”
Her smile begins to teeter into smirk territory as she replies. “Isolation does not warrant ignorance.”
“Which means you were gossiping again, you meedling leech. Anyways, they’ve been strangely quiet after the one incident with that cavalreaper...you know what’s up with that?”
Kanaya’s composure stutters at your inquiry, and it makes your spine snap rod-straight in alert. “...That would be because they have disbanded.”
You barely have enough time to arrange your facial features into an expression of astonishment before she leans in and starts to ramble. Her face and voice take on an air of hushed confidentiality, like it usually does when she has some gossip to disclose, but there was a dash of urgency to it this time. “Vriska’s been cutting ties with some very important allies of theirs, seemingly on a whim. Additionally, she’s been unreasonably hostile with their subordinates. There was even talk of mutiny. According to my source, Terezi said that if Vriska’s going to burn their ship to ruin, she won’t be around to go down with it.”
You blink. “...Wow.”, you say finally. “I must have been living under a bigger rock than I thought...seriously, Kanaya, find someone, anyone, who is even less in the know than I always am, and I will let you drain my bloodpusher dry.”
She makes a little huff of a laugh, and it’s only now that it registers to you that she’s close enough for you to feel the warmness of her breath. “It’s not your fault...this all happened just last night, see. Even though, admittedly, this has been a long time coming.” Her look of amusement gives way to one of worry. “...Vriska was never the diplomat of the two, as you well know. Without Terezi, nobody’s going to stay loyal to her for long. And there is no way she can stave off her newfound rivals for long.” Kanaya lets out this soft, frustrated little hiss that makes your chest tighten. “She constantly claims that she can handle things fine on her own, but I know damn well that she cannot evade death a third time. And yet, I also know that she doesn’t even humor anything I have to say at this point...”
You’re quiet for a solid minute. Genuinely, contemplatively quiet: when was the last time you’ve done that? “...You’re too good for her, Kanaya.”, you say raspily into the awkward stretch of silence. “I know Serket’s a steaming hot mess and that it makes her a top-shelf pity magnet in your eyes...but you’re too good for her.”
Before you can fully recognize her own idiocy, your palm is on the elegant curve of her cheek in a suspiciously conciliatory gesture. Less than two tap-dance steps away from an outright pap, god Karkat Vantas you are a tool by which the likes of Alternia has ever seen before. You’re making pale advances on somebody spilling grief over their wayward ex-moirail? Romcom hivewrecker much?
You wince and retract your hand. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that--”
“It’s fine.”, she says hastily. Her eyebrows are raised; not so much smug or irritated as quizzical. “I should not have dumped my emotional baggage onto your unwilling lap, in the first place.”
“I’m not unwilling to hear what you have to say, unlike some petulant womangrubs out there! You’ve done so much shit for me, it’s the least I could do--but I’m not listening out of some haughty sense of obligation, let me get that out in the clear where every peeping prick in the room can see it, I care, okay, you’re a really good friend and you don’t deserve to be yanked around by some sociopathic harpy, don’t you know that---”
The projectile vomiting you’ve been spouting in the form of words is cut off rather abruptly. Kanaya closes the distance between you and brushes your bangs out of the way. You feel her cool lips on your forehead, which naturally makes the rest of you go sunburn-hot in embarrassment.
“Shoosh.”, she says, her voice on the edge of a laugh. “The sentiment’s returned.”
Kanaya does not sleep. Now that you think about it, the whole undead thing fits serendipitously with her image. She’s always busy, always moving, always helping. There doesn’t seem to be any time left over for sleep in her schedule.
You do not sleep, either, when you can manage. To sleep is to let your guard down. To let your guard down is to invite even the most incompetent pisspanned mugger to come and cut your throat.
Nevertheless, the both of you pretend that you’re capable of being at rest for more than two minutes. The only recuperacoon she owns is for patients, and you don’t feel keen to construct a pile out of syringes and sewing needles. And so, you improvise. You and Kanaya lie nose-to-nose on the medical cot you’ve been sitting on. It was only made to fit one person, and thus, it’s uncomfortable for both parties involved. Your combined weight makes the mattress almost sink to the ground, and you have to press flush against each other just to keep from falling over the edges.
Neither of you mind terribly. There’s this odd feeling of ease to it all, just lying there and unloading the grievances you have with the entire fucking planet onto somebody who could console or banter or just listen in a way that somehow hits all the right emotional buttons. When combined with the sense of purpose from doing the same in return, you get the promise of something pale as the blindingly white hands resting on the back of your head.
Neither of you feel like dwelling on quadratic cluckbeastshit at the moment, however. No, you just content yourselves with the company of someone in this huge, stupid world that you can truly rely on. And breathe, in tandem.