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You are fourteen years old and he has his hands on you.
Without thinking you lift up, over. Your muscles are worn whipcord-lean from your endless training, and the movement tugs at the scar tissue that runs down your back and sides. You feel pressure in your chest as you fight for balance, the alien above you hissing and spitting. Then you fall.
The breath is knocked from you. Karkat is incoherent with rage; maybe it's you though, maybe he's talking sense, maybe you're the one who's turned out wrong.
You roll onto your side and close your eyes, letting the sounds of violence wash over you.
--
You are fifteen years old and you are tired.
You're tired of piles of sharp, broken things. You're tired of the hollow in your chest, of apathy. You bump your fingers across the rough concrete walls and hum tunelessly to yourself, trying to create and coming up empty.
You've missed people for so long that it feels like muscle memory.
You run into him more than anyone else. For a full month you vie for the most secluded hiding places, glaring at each other when you find that the other's beaten you to it. He's as lithe and jumpy as you, something you didn't expect from the bulky shape his sweater builds around him. He climbs to the most secluded high corners and burrows under the dustiest piles, and tenuous heaps of bolts and circuitboards barely shiver as he slips into place beneath them. You thought only you could do that. There are reasons why you can do that.
You try to imagine him in your place, scrawny and underfed, eyes blazing, knuckles skinned. It's not a comfortable thought, but it eases something in you anyway.
You start to watch him and find the shadows under his eyes, the hoarse way his throat clicks when he huddles into himself and thinks no one is watching. You think, like you, he might be grieving without a map to navigate by.
Eventually you find yellow eyes glaring at you from underneath a broken table and slide in beside him, too tired to move another step. There's not enough room for both of you. The table wobbles dangerously on its three legs. Karkat's hiss is right in your ear and you knew it was coming and you flinch anyway.
“Didn't your monster dad ever teach you to share,” you say.
“I found it first, it's mine,” he snaps.
“Wow, compelling argument. This is how much I don't give a fuck.”
“Leave!”
“No.”
He glares at you, but if he moves too much the table and all the things atop it will come crashing down around both of you, and he knows it. He starts to slither his way free anyway, but then thinks better of it. “You want to share?” he snarls. “Fine. Let's fucking share. We'll sing troll kumbaya and hold hands and make daisy chains under this broken scrap heap. Kanaya will be out of a job in this part of the meteor, no hate dates to break up here! Love and harmony as far as the eye can see, we'll—”
“You just never shut up, do you.”
“Look who's talking,” he snaps, but he closes his mouth with a pointed click and settles back. You can see the slick movement of his throat when he swallows.
You shift onto your belly with some jerky maneuvering and rest your head on your folded arms. A long sigh pulls the tension from your body, the way you learned a long time ago—blank your mind and drift. You can do this for hours, you can out-wait anyone, you can win every game of manhunt.
You look out of the corner of your eye and see him frowning, hear a soft buzz spilling from his shut teeth. The tension in his muscles is infecting yours, and you turn your head.
“Hey,” you say.
He looks at you, and his face isn't what you were expecting—the anger is leached from it, leaving only a numb, confused sort of despair.
“What do you want,” he says.
You tell him the truth, for once: “I don't know.”
--
You are sixteen and you are friends.
Sometimes you look at him and you think, someone else should be here; but it doesn't hurt, because you know if you said it, he might agree with you. So you don't say it, because you don't have to.
There's really no one else here for the two of you, except each other. You watch the others fall apart, but you're both still here, standing watch. You watch the others fall apart, but you lean on him and don't follow their lead.
You hold his hand and feel all of its roughness, and it steadies you. You needle him until he laughs, and the sound of it makes you smile, and you don't think about it. You're a huddle of fucked-up teenagers facing insurmountable odds, but if you go down, you'll go down swinging, just like you were raised.
If you go down, you won't go down alone.