don't be afraid

[reassures]

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.

Comments

[crabmunicator]

The softness of her voice is strange, prompting him to look at her as if it might make the words clearer. But it's a thing he can understand. He's been there; he told her already how he's lost so much of his team. Earlier in this arena there was Terezi. He's cried openly over people dying, not just a few small tears, and has missed even the worst of them. He thinks about Sollux bleeding out from the Vast Glub, about Feferi and Kanaya murdered in front of him, about Sollux dying again to save them all... And those were just what he saw.

They were all awful in their own way.

Maybe it is easier to just die. Jack blew everything up; Jane stabbed him; and even as terrible as being mauled in the mini-arena was, at least it was quick. But here there's so much waiting, and he hurts for her because of it.

"It's both. It is staying here with you, but all this babbling is filling up time between now and whenever..." He bites his lip. "Whenever it ends." His gaze travels across her face, then down to her wound, trying to judge just where things stand. "If we had some kind of timer at least we would know, but like this we're just sitting, jabbering while you hurt, and it's not fair that you have to go through this."

[reassures]

There's a very obvious distraction there, just for a few moments, while the images flickering by in his head come to focus. Terezi, whose death she'd already seen in his mind. Sollux, who she had known very briefly - he was awkward in a different way than Karkat, but she liked him well enough. Feferi, whose face she knew even if she didn't know her mind.

Somehow Kanaya's face is the last to register in her mind. Nill is sure, watching it as she is, that the Kanaya in his mind is younger than the one she'd known. She must be, she has to be, but it still shoots through her like a bullet, watching the shot from Eridan's gun go through her. It hurts so much more watching it through Karkat's eyes, because if she'd watched it in person it would have been almost as horrible for her.

She wants to ask. For one awful moment she wants to ask more than anything what happened, if Kanaya was okay, if someone killed that purple-blooded asshole, but there's no way to do that without making the situation a lot worse than it already is. No matter how much she might want to, she can't, even if she probably won't get the chance to ask again until the next time they allow abilities in an arena. She doesn't know if she can live with that, but she'd need to try.

Despite herself a few tears roll down her cheeks, and finally she looks a Karkat again. She most she can do is offer him another smile, though this one is more halfhearted.

"I'm not sure there is another way we could do this."

The wound shows no immediate signs of worsening; much like how long it took her to succumb to the pain, it could be hours more before the wound actually kills her. Maybe even a day. There's no real way to tell for sure.

"All we can do is wait."

[crabmunicator]

Kanaya is definitely young, there, younger than Karkat is now. Depending when Nill met her and the path of the timelines, the lack of a glow might be a clue - and then again, it might not. So long as Nill doesn't ask, he doesn't even know her worry. Her tears are easy to take as coming from something else, given the situation they're in.

Is it pain? Is it upset at her position? Hell, it could be both. Her smile doesn't carry enough weight behind it, and he can't take any comfort when she says what she does. Waiting--just waiting. His lips press together. He knows, too, how long it took that things even progressed this far. He knows she's weaker than a troll, but that still doesn't tell him any estimated time of death, just that she can't walk this off.

"You're sure?" he asks, stubbornly hoping still.

It's the unfairness that sticks with him still: both that she has to die, but that despite its inevitability it still has to take so long. It means pain for her, and danger for the both of them as they wait--no matter how superfluous that might be in her case.

But if something came, then what? Tribute or monster, it would put him in danger, and he'd have to worry for her--but is there any point in defending someone so near death? Safer though it may be to let the hypothetical take her and buy himself safety with it, that would be a coward's out, too cruel. He could never do it. But he'll need to move eventually if just for food and water, yet he can't leave her, either. He couldn't carry her without more danger, and the only reason they're here is because she can't walk anymore.

Unfair, unfair, unfair, it repeats in his head. It shouldn't have to be this way.