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Entry tags:
don't be afraid
Who| Nill and Karkat
What| A couple different things. Mostly meeting up and then dying, oops.
Where| Throughout the station.
When| End of week 2.
Warnings/Notes| Character death, gore, crying, and obligatory Karkat Warning™. There'll probably be another prompt for that stuff, or it'll just be one huge long thread.
To say that the Arena had been unkind up to this point would be an understatement. The first day hadn't been all that bad, generally speaking. For a few minutes she thought she might even survive long enough to make sure that someone she loved made it out of the Arena alive, to never enter one again. It was a goal. It was something to keep her going in an experience that she would rather have never lived again, even if it was better than sitting back with cigarettes and the Giant Wall of Child Death. She had found people she cared about. She kept them alive.
Even now, nearing the end of week 2, Nill would still maintain that being in the Arena was better than watching it. While close to a comforting thought, it could only do so much in the wake of all the deaths that occurred during Week 0, or the ones that followed it. It did little to help with the images in her own mind.
Being in Beth's head as she died, managing her pain so it was just a little bit less awful as she faded away. Watching Kurloz be cut in half in an instant. Seeing the face of a dark-haired boy in the stars. Kankri, Clementine, Davesprite, Gary; those were just the faces she'd seen when she had the willpower to look for them.
Despite all of that, Nill was holding her own well enough for a little while. She ate almost nothing, stuck to mostly water when she could find it. Once or twice she'd tried the dehydrated food, but she hadn't trusted it to do more than have it when she really needed it. She began to look gaunt and dehydrated, but it could have been worse. It remained that way until she found the Orb with the Initiate's voice, and it was all downhill after that. She'd cried out most of the moisture left in her system, couldn't bring herself to eat much of anything after it, didn't make a point of looking for water so much as just taking advantage of it if she came across it. Before the Mirth Core Nill still moved with purpose. She still looked like she might accomplish something if she tried. Now she mostly just looks miserable.
But hey, having to deal with an outbreak of Xenomorphs can do a lot to keep a person on their toes. They're not too hard to avoid right now, but it's tricky when they notice you, and Nill has had a few too many close calls this week. She leans her back against a wall, ignoring her wings entirely, so that she can actually catch her breath while keeping an eye on the halls around her, knife held tightly in her hand. The place was going to hell so much sooner than she expected from what she'd seen of other Arenas. How was it already this difficult? How had any of the kids she knew survived in other Arenas?
There was no way this could keep going for much longer.
What| A couple different things. Mostly meeting up and then dying, oops.
Where| Throughout the station.
When| End of week 2.
Warnings/Notes| Character death, gore, crying, and obligatory Karkat Warning™. There'll probably be another prompt for that stuff, or it'll just be one huge long thread.
To say that the Arena had been unkind up to this point would be an understatement. The first day hadn't been all that bad, generally speaking. For a few minutes she thought she might even survive long enough to make sure that someone she loved made it out of the Arena alive, to never enter one again. It was a goal. It was something to keep her going in an experience that she would rather have never lived again, even if it was better than sitting back with cigarettes and the Giant Wall of Child Death. She had found people she cared about. She kept them alive.
Even now, nearing the end of week 2, Nill would still maintain that being in the Arena was better than watching it. While close to a comforting thought, it could only do so much in the wake of all the deaths that occurred during Week 0, or the ones that followed it. It did little to help with the images in her own mind.
Being in Beth's head as she died, managing her pain so it was just a little bit less awful as she faded away. Watching Kurloz be cut in half in an instant. Seeing the face of a dark-haired boy in the stars. Kankri, Clementine, Davesprite, Gary; those were just the faces she'd seen when she had the willpower to look for them.
Despite all of that, Nill was holding her own well enough for a little while. She ate almost nothing, stuck to mostly water when she could find it. Once or twice she'd tried the dehydrated food, but she hadn't trusted it to do more than have it when she really needed it. She began to look gaunt and dehydrated, but it could have been worse. It remained that way until she found the Orb with the Initiate's voice, and it was all downhill after that. She'd cried out most of the moisture left in her system, couldn't bring herself to eat much of anything after it, didn't make a point of looking for water so much as just taking advantage of it if she came across it. Before the Mirth Core Nill still moved with purpose. She still looked like she might accomplish something if she tried. Now she mostly just looks miserable.
But hey, having to deal with an outbreak of Xenomorphs can do a lot to keep a person on their toes. They're not too hard to avoid right now, but it's tricky when they notice you, and Nill has had a few too many close calls this week. She leans her back against a wall, ignoring her wings entirely, so that she can actually catch her breath while keeping an eye on the halls around her, knife held tightly in her hand. The place was going to hell so much sooner than she expected from what she'd seen of other Arenas. How was it already this difficult? How had any of the kids she knew survived in other Arenas?
There was no way this could keep going for much longer.
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He's still not sure he deserves to be, but he's resigned himself that it's not really his place to complain. That woman isn't the only one who died helping him, but he's not looking to bring Terezi up if he doesn't need to.
Instead, he nods to her, and turns to head forward. "I don't like sticking in one place long, anyway. Keep your eyes peeled." His own gaze turns back to their surroundings, watching, listening. His pace is slow - part in case her own is, part because of his aching body, and part again because it's safer. Running is for escape, to be reserved for when it's really needed. Slowness allows more attention to what's near and conserves energy.
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When Nill wasn't looking Terezi had died. She couldn't say she knew Terezi well at all - she'd spoken with her more in the Arena than out of it, but it still hurt. Kurloz loved her a lot. She should have been able to keep her safe. She should have done something.
Nill selfishly longs for a lighter and cigarette, even if she wasn't the one to smoke them. Her fingers twitch. The ruin continues.
She bends down a little to grab her helmet, which she's been using to carry her cornucopia spoils, the length of rope that had still been on her now abandoned suit, and anything else she's found and deemed useful. There's not much. But going slow seems to be equally kind to her, so she doesn't try to pick up the pace. They're both exhausted. Using up their energy would get them killed.
"When we find a better place to stop you should rest. I can make sure they don't find us for a little."
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It wasn't fair that it had to happen like that. But then, none of this place is fair.
Unlike Nill, he's long since lost any part of his white outer suit. Feferi had to pull it off him when she found him, and he was in pain enough that trying to go back and find it wouldn't have done him any good. Instead he carried junk in the case itself, which lasted until the encounter with the mage. He doesn't mourn the loss; the flashlight isn't too necessary for him, and he never did figure out what to do with the blue gel he got. His taser will probably go before long, too. Though he hasn't used it often, there's only so much charge left in the batteries. The knife has served him best of anything.
"If by rest you mean sit down a while," he says. "I don't want to sleep. I barely have this whole time, and I've made it fine. Besides, with the dreams I'd have it would barely count as restful even if I did try." His head keeps turning as they walk, watching, not daring to still. He let his guard down once; he's not going to do it again when she's with him. "Even if you can ward off tributes, there's still monsters and shit lurking around."
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Trying to notice them helps a lot, too, and she hopes he doesn't put too much thought into that. She hopes he doesn't wonder why she didn't try to make him go some other way, because if she can talk in his head then other things should be easy enough, and she hadn't. Just as selfishly, she hopes that if Linden is actually watching and not off self-medicating that he doesn't notice it either. That the one-sided commentary isn't enough to go on. She doesn't want him to know she lied.
"The monsters are harder. They don't sound right, but I used to deal with monsters a lot."
She spares him a glance out of the corner of her eye, mostly to get a better view of his expression, before turning her gaze ahead of them again. It's more instinct than anything that she doesn't keep her eyes darting everywhere. Karkat can handle the short-distance. For now, she's trying to manage the long. If there are any groups of those things around, or other tributes, they need to avoid them. The two of them on their own wouldn't make it.
"I used to be good at keeping dreams away for people, too. I could try to do that for you. It should be safe enough for a little while."
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His expression when she looks is nervous, wary, and tired. He usually does have some kind of tired, stressed bags around his eyes, but it's worse here. He's exhausted from fighting and from trying to heal, and from poor supply of food for any of it.
He pauses once at an intersection of paths, and after some careful looking and listening, picks a branch to head down. "I'm pretty sure there's somewhere down here we can rest. Are you sure about the dreams?"
It would be a help to him if she could, and some hope swells up in him at the thought. He knows that if he tried to sleep without help he'd just dream of others' deaths, or of causing them himself: twisted combinations of memories and fantasy, or even turning on Nill himself. He doesn't want that.
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Which, as far as being a telepath goes, is honestly sort of fantastic. Being able to tell that creatures you're fighting or killing used to be human or something close to it makes them a lot harder to hurt unless you can think of it as a positive. But it also makes them harder to notice than they would be if they were previously human.
"Humans and trolls don't sound or feel exactly the same. I don't know if I'll be able to stop everything. But if I helped Kurloz get some rest, I should be able to help you."
Granted he'd still been pretty drugged, but he also had a head full of chucklevoodoo, and that had been awful to work around. She likes to think she did something for him, and that comparatively she'd be able to do a lot more for Karkat.
Though she follows him without question, there's something hesitant in her expression, a quiet sort of concern. She debates if she should actually bring it up for a moment, weighing he options, before deciding that it's better to do it than to not.
"Are you alright with me being in your head that much?"
Not that she'd do anything, but he should probably know that doing that kind of gave her access to a lot. She'd be keeping the bad stuff away, and usually people are comfortable with their bad stuff getting that close to people.
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that they've already had.He looks away a moment later, motioning her to follow as he dips down a smaller side path, one that looks a little more rundown but not unstable.
His steps slow to a stop when she asks her question.
"... Not really, but you're not the first." He looks back at her as he recalls his encounter with the Initiate. "At least you don't have weird shit with fear going on to make it work." Not that he knows, but the whole experience feels different than it was then. Even if it did teach him a greater understanding of things.
He looks one way then the other, then finally goes to sit himself down against a wall - or just in front of it, really. There's burns along the back of his shoulders that would make leaning too uncomfortable.
"Are you sure? You're the one who would have to deal with the shit I'm seeing. What if I have a dream about killing you?" he asks, and it's with such casual if concerned tone that it might as well be a given. Of course he'd dream about murdering a friend. It's something he'd want while waking, but the violent dreams of his species are bad enough without the fuel of this situation.
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"For a little while I lived in a world that was covered in darkness at night. If someone died in the darkness they became part of it. It made them monsters."
They'd been balls of anger, sorrow and pain, all so profoundly strong that the first few months dealing with them were dizzying. The only thing those monsters could feel was suffering. It made it easier to kill them. It relieved their suffering until the darkness recreated them. Rinse and repeat.
Nill doesn't move to sit, but she does set her helmet of supplies on the ground by her feet, and leans her back against the wall, ignoring the way it squashes her wings. They were gonna be sore as hell later, but it took some of the weight off her ribs.
Her expression goes a little surprised, but it doesn't last long. It seemed like all of the trolls have nightmares, and they were all awful. Of all the awful things she could think of, it seems very understandable that they would want to avoid the dreams if it involved killing their friends.
"Yes. It would bother me more if you dreamed of me killing you."
While she hasn't exactly seen someone trying to kill her through their eyes before, seeing herself afraid or betrayed was considerably more appealing than seeing herself trying to hurt one of her friends. She could live with it.
"I know you wouldn't do that to me."
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"That sounds awful," he murmurs back. He doesn't question the bit about another world. Where he came from had multiple universes and things like the Incipisphere before he even knew of Panem or the other places they drew people from. "It's bad enough just to lose friends without having to worry about things like that."
He'd go on longer, but there's really only so much to say about it. Much of his energy for long rants has been drank up by the situation he's in.
What takes his attention more is her answer to the second question, and it holds there solid for a long stretch. He looks at her. I know you wouldn't do that to me, she says, like it's just as much a given. He never intended to as it was, but to hear her state so is more an expression of trust than letting it go would be. Briefly his lips press together, and then he reaches over with his unburned hand - just holding it out, if she'll take it. If she does, he'll give it a gentle squeeze.
"You're too fucking nice," he says, more struck by it than bothered. "You stop a fight when I barely know you, you practically insist on letting me take your bed to sleep, you listen and talk with me about things, now this..."
That wave of I don't deserve this surges back up, but with it is gratitude. He's fucked up this much, has two people who've died for him, one he blames himself for explicitly; and yet as he's slumping along with no intent or belief he'll win she still offers him help. Not just with sleep, either, for all he turned the other offer down. It's almost overwhelming.
Softly he admits, "I trust you."
It occurs to him distantly that someone out there in the Capitol must be eating this up, but it's not why he's saying it. He says it because he means it.
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She tries not to dwell on it, and she doesn't need to try much, because she said something that meant a lot more to Karkat than she thought it would. Nill looks at his hand, as if not understanding entirely at first, before she reaches over and gently takes his hand.
It's always a little surprising when she manages to win the trust of others, but it leaves her with a quiet warmth in her chest, just about the best thing she's felt in weeks.
If she had it in her to be smarter, to be braver, she would pull her hand away. She would act like it bothered her, all the while reassuring him that nothing was wrong, that it was dangerous, that she didn't want the Capitol going after him because they were close. But Nill has been worn and beaten down horribly by this Arena, by the knowledge that she has ruined so much and everyone knew it, and this one little thing is something she needs. Just one good thing to hold on to so she can make it just a little longer.
She gives his hand a very gentle squeeze in return, and there's a small, soft smile on her face, the voice colored by warmth.
"Thank you. I trust you too."
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She takes his hand, though, and that evokes another flush of gratitude. For all his gestures, he isn't the most prone to contact, let alone like this. He's struck all over again when she explicitly confirms her trust. What the hell did he do to deserve that? He hasn't done anything to be untrustworthy, sure, but he hasn't gone out of his way to be nice the way she has. He's barely done anything. Yet here she is, smiling however slightly, with an unmistakeable warmth to the words in his mind.
It inspires a feeling somewhere between warmth and a hurt in his heart, and hell if he knows what to do with it. He looks from her to the opposite wall, and after another squeeze of his hand he takes it back to cross loosely over his chest.
After a moment, he manages, "You deserve better than this. I wish--I wish I could do something for you, but I don't have any special powers or anything. If you ever never a favor or--" He glances back, just briefly. "--something a jerk with fangs and a pocketknife can accomplish, I'm here. I owe you a favor. No arguing, or I will add another onto the list owed."
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And they did deserve better. Every one of them. The only people who deserved to be in an Arena like this were the ones that created them in the first place. Even then, that might be harsh, and though that kind of anger could certainly be inspired in her right now she was too tired for it. She just wanted to hold on to this one good moment for as long as she could.
"You've done more than enough for me. You've been my friend." Her smile widens ever so slightly, a more obvious expression. If the cameras didn't notice it before, they will now. "You don't owe me anything, but I'll remember that."
The smile doesn't fade, but the voice goes silent, just for a moment. She takes it to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear, and finally, she goes on.
"I told you I knew another timeline of you. That was true, but I didn't meet him here."
Honesty is... hard. Especially in a place like this, where it feels like there might be a dozen ways that being honest could hurt the people you care about, or make it dangerous to be around them. This was one of the only chances she'd get. She had to take it.
"I liked him. He once told someone they were being stupid on my behalf. But we never spoke very much, and we weren't close."
He's not a replacement for some other timeline, and maybe the idea of that wouldn't bother him. Maybe he would never be insecure over something like that. But Nill knows that she would, and it's important that he know she doesn't see him that way.
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He holds silent as she speaks more, but this is the part that catches him. Really, how can just friendship be worth that much? He has a bunch of friends. It doesn't mean he's really done anything. But she takes his offer, even if she claims he doesn't owe it to her, and that keeps him quiet still.
What's he supposed to say to that? He can't let go of the feeling that it seems like more than he deserves for her to be this nice. And sure, he's had other friends, and been through other shit, but he barely knows her and at least one of them is going to have to die before the end. And maybe it is overdramatic to make such a big deal of it in his mind, but it's these life and death situations that really bring out what's important. She'd be perfectly justified in just looking out for herself, but still she offers him help and gives him kind words and seems, with all of it, to genuinely mean it.
Before he can think of what to say next, however, she says more, and this is what truly surprises him. Shove all the rest aside and he still never expected her to open up about something like that - to say nothing of the fact he wouldn't have imagined such a thing in the first place. His eyebrows draw in as he listens, confused but intent, and it takes him a moment after before he can think how to phrase himself.
"Where? What happened?" he asks, by now turned to her properly. It's just vague enough that the Capitol shouldn't pick up on it, but he has to learn more because who knows when he'll get another chance. His seriousness is his return for her consideration in telling him this much.
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"Someone tried to ask me something very personal on the network there. That Karkat made sure they knew why it wasn't okay."
Though her expression doesn't seem bothered by the memory. If anything, she almost looks a little fond, both for the people who had been on her side at the time and the dumbass doing the asking. It doesn't necessarily seem like a bad memory, at least.
"That was Siren's Port, Canada. The world with the monsters in the dark. At the time it was the third world I had been to." She stops to consider for a few moments, as if not completely sure of the details, before she adds a little more hesitantly, "This is the fifth."
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Besides, the issue of other worlds is much more important, and her combined answer shocks him silent for several moments. Eventually he mutters, "Holy shit," but it takes him a stretch still before he can find something better. "Five? How... how did they work?"
Everything where he came from was linked up somehow. Beforus was just a different Alternia; Earth was part of a universe they made; and Sgrub and Sburb were alternate versions of the same game that they all played on purpose. It was all part of the same reality anyway, on some level, not this... disconnected whatever-it-is he and everyone else have been drawn into. The thought of more places that could yank people out of their home realities isn't unthinkable after this, but it's a shock nonetheless, and not something he naturally considered.
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"The first world was mine. It was..."
Even now, she hasn't found words to really explain what her world was like. She hadn't disliked it, but it was responsible for a whole slew of awful on it's own.
"The second world I visited was similar to it. None of them have been similar since then. NeoGenesis was a city with three levels and very cruel people. Siren's Port was an island that was impossible to leave that mutated Newcomers. Exsilium was a version of earth much further in the future than the other worlds."
And then, here, which she certainly doesn't need to explain to him. After taking another moment to consider, a slight frown creasing her brow as she thinks over her information, she continues, "I think I was fifteen the last time I was in my own world. I should be older than twenty now. Is that three sweeps?"
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Instead, what sticks with him is the weight of seeing so many places, of being so long gone from where she came from, and of the threat that it could happen to others too.
At the end, he reaches for her hand again, to hold it firmly.
"Two and a half, maybe three," he says, though his voice comes out distracted. "A sweep is a little longer than two years. I'm seven and a half - mid-teens, I guess."
A part of him just wants to give her a hug for all she's been through, but he doesn't know how it would go over. Besides, she's standing and he's sitting, and they're both sore and tired.
All of this is just so heavy to think about. He may have had a complicated life, one that's long since left his home behind, but it doesn't match up like this. It's not about him, anyway.
"I don't know what to say," he admits. "But if you need to talk more, or want to ask things, or just sit together--I'm here."
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"Thank you."
She wouldn't be opposed to a hug, but she's not sure either of their injuries would be fond of them for it. Even that thought she's appreciative of, even as she considers her words, how long a sweep is, how old Karkat and the Initiate are comparatively.
"I guess it's been a long time," comes the voice, also distracted. "Sometimes things get a little hard to remember when you move between worlds. I don't know how long it's really been."
Nill has no intention of actually resting, but everything aches dully, and the weight of that admittance, soft and a little off-handed as it may have been, drags on her. She lets go of his hand, but it's only so she can put a hand against her side for support again as she slides to sit down, probably bending or snagging several feathers in the process. The sigh of relief she lets out is barely audible, but he might still catch it.
"...I can't talk about this outside the Arena. I don't want them to try to bring the people I love here."
If ever he asks her a question that she can't answer, it's not because of him. She's tried so hard, and so many of the people she's loved are dead and gone. It would be more than cruel to mention them only for them to be brought back into a place like this. All avoidances outside the Arena are with the intent of protecting, and little else beyond that.
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"Life shits on everyone," he says quietly, after a moment has passed. "I've been through a lot of awful things, and seen it happen to others, but all I've dealt with isn't like what you must have been through. We still had goals to work for. We..."
A thought catches him. Every place he'd been to had some link to another, apart from this one, and that connection gave meaning. Being dragged around from world to world is harder to imagine. Has anyone been brought with her before? Was it just her, alone, having to deal with it each time?
"... What do you want, now?" He looks at her directly, finding her eye. "What would make you happy?"
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Somehow though Karkat manages to ask her a question that she not only didn't expect in the slightest, but that she has no idea how to answer. Normally she tries not to make it obvious if something like that happens - she tries to cover, to make it seem like there are a dozen options, but this time Nill can't help but to openly stare at Karkat, and to look, just for a moment, completely and utterly lost. So much so that she can't bring herself to hold his gaze for very long.
"...I don't know," She finally admits, because she can't think of anything better to say, and even if she could, a very small, exhausted part of her doesn't want to.
"Before now I always tried to stay with my friends or get back to them."
The implication there being, of course, that the preferred course of action is no longer an option.
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Some part of him hurts for her again when she can't stay looking at him, and when she has no real answer. He knows what he might like even if he doubts he can have it, and that's more than not knowing. Before now seems to speak to a broken hope, or a giving up - an abandonment of that course of thought.
It takes a moment before he can even issues the non-answer of a sighed out, "Fuck."
He glances to her again, and this time his impulse wins out. "Come here," he murmurs, and he goes to drape his arm across her shoulders in a loose hug. It's easy enough to pull away from should she not want it, and with any hope light enough to not be too harsh for their sore bodies. He's not one for gestures like this, usually, but the harshness of the circumstances weighs out.
"I don't know how to fix this," he admits. "I'm not even close. This is too much for anyone; it's unfair, and it's crazy, and I hate that it has to be happening like this. But if there's a way, I'm going to fucking find it." His voice is solid there, certain and determined and unwilling to give in. "You deserve to have a life you want."
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Gilbert still existed somewhere, but if he went back to his own world he might not know her, and she wouldn't be able to handle that from him. Maybe, some day, if she got to leave she could go and find Kanaya, but it seems like such a strange thing to do, and perhaps not a kind one. While she loved Kanaya dearly, their relationship had primarily been around fixing the world they were in. How would Kanaya take it if she just showed up one day?
(What if she tried and Kanaya was dead too?)
It's not often that Nill finds herself the one receiving comfort instead of giving it, and though she doesn't give any sign of not wanting it, she's not sure what to do with it at first. They're both still sore everywhere, and if she twists around to return it probably it's going to hurt more than anything, but she's not unappreciative. After a moment she finally lifts a hand to put it over his, and leans just slightly towards him, not enough to actually put weight against him but to be a little bit closer. It's nice, and it doesn't feel like he's doing it out of obligation, which does happen at times.
"I'll help. We have to find something eventually."
She tilts her head a little to get a better look at him, and after a moment of uncertainty, the voice asks quietly, "What would make you happy?"
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He nods to her first. As much as he wants her to be happy, he has no delusions of being a singular, solitary hero to earn all the glory. He's a leader, and her skills are as worthwhile as anyone else's.
It's the question that stops him up.
Nill gets no surprised look like she gave him. Instead Karkat's gaze draws down, brow furrowing just so as he thinks it over. The goals he had in mind before this place come to mind immediately, but the conflict of what's happened since draws into question whether he can have it. So if that's the case, then what? If he is doomed, he can't just wish it away.
His lips press together as he mulls it over. That fear isn't one he's admitted to anyone yet. And while he could brush it over, what would be the point when Nill has opened up to him as much as she has?
Slowly he draws in a breath then lets it back out. "I had things I wanted to do before I came here," he admits, words slow. "But if I went back somehow, I don't think I'd be able to do them. You see, time is complicated there. If even one thing goes wrong, even something small, that timeline is doomed. And the thing is, I had no clue about that other me who was here before I showed up. No memory, no hint, no sign. Nothing warned me or gave any clue that I was going to get sent somewhere else when they brought me here. It's... I can't shake the feeling that this is all unrelated to everything back there, just this big anomaly, not part of the plan at all. If even dumb, incidental stuff can doom a timeline, then something this big..."
He shakes his head. Calm though his voice is, this is hard. It's one of the fears that came up when he ran into the Initiate before: irrelevance. The thought that he doesn't matter to the main timeline at all. Back on the meteor he had a big moment about this, about how arbitrary everything is, and how unfair that even doing something right could mean dooming everyone if it wasn't what Paradox Space needed to happen.
Here the thought that he might be doomed was only a nagging idea at the back of his mind, but how can he write it off when he lays it out logically? Even if he'd never know until he went back and saw the results for himself, the chance of it being anything else seems vanishingly small.
It takes a moment before he can continue.
"Part of me still wants to know if we'll ever fix things back there, and I don't know if I'll be completely happy until I do. But if I can't go back and do it myself, then... I have friends and teammates here." He looks to her again, holding her eyes, because he means her as much as the people he already knew. And even after what he's already said, it's too important not to emphasize even now. "I want the chance for us to live. To have something good, you know? This isn't where I wanted my life to go, but it's what I'm stuck with regardless, and I'm not going to give up just because I'm not the alpha Karkat. My own shame would dislocate itself from my body to disown me entirely from any conceptual existence of a Karkat worth recognizing if I did."
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She remembers the clusterfuck of alpha and beta timelines, what it meant for the people in them. She remembers someone telling her that sometimes even in the alpha timeline not everyone actually got to make it to the end and how bitter the thought had made her, that for all the suffering and all the time and doomed timelines it took to get things right that in the end not everyone could live.
"If you do fix it someone from that timeline should be here eventually."
It might not be as comforting as she'd like for it to be, but places like this didn't only bring in people from the bad time periods, even if sometimes it seemed like it. And especially with just how many people here seemed to be from Alternia, eventually there would need to be someone from a point where things were better. It would be awful for them, but it would make sense if it happened eventually.
"I think we can make this place better if we have enough time."
It was going to be a long time before they managed it, but it could be possible. And if nothing else, it was something that she intended to work towards. It wasn't just the tributes of this world that had it rough. It wasn't a small group of outsiders that wanted to make this place into something less awful than it was right now, it was an entire nation. Time might not be on their side just yet, but numbers were.
"If we can make this place better then maybe we can make your world better too."
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He slips his arm away from her as he thinks over the rest. Making Panem better is all well and good, and that's what he hopes to be able to do so long as he's here. But his world isn't something he can imagine fixing like that, and he shakes his head. "No. If I'm doomed, then there's absolutely no way that trying to fix Paradox Space would help anything. Even if you try to do something that would be good and productive, if it's not the thing that's 'supposed' to happen then everything is doomed. That's just how it works, no matter how unintuitive and infuriating it might be."
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