thearena | [closed] all the neighbors are startin' up a fire

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[closed] all the neighbors are startin' up a fire

Who| Karkat and Roland, then Alain
What| In punishment for his interview speech, Karkat gets an aura that causes rage in those around him. Things don't go too well.
Where| The bunker.
When| Final week.
Warnings/Notes| Everyone dies, description of gore, allusion to/possible discussion of suicidal ideation, PTSD-type freakouts.

A. Roland

The weeks have gone on and somehow he's still going. Alive, tired, worn out, sore, driven by momentum more than his own wish. People drive him on in their way. Sansa needed help, then there were dragons, and Phil said to keep fighting for her - for Maglev. He can't pay back anything to District 6 if he doesn't win.

It's been hard, sometimes.

But things are getting late in the arena now. Time's hard to keep track of, but it's been long, over a month, and he's seen the dwindling numbers by the names put in the sky at night. The arena has shrunk, driving them in closer together. Now, the Gamemakers have bombed out the land above, and he's been driven into the bunker.

When it's not disturbingly quiet, it's something coming for him. The things they put down here have too many arms, too much speed, and voices that they shouldn't. Karkat hears them call like people he notices who aren't around anymore, and he knows they would kill him if he stopped. It might be fair in some roundabout way to let them do it, but in making it this far he's compelled to keep doing it.

So he runs, a sickle tight in his hand, until rounding a corner sends him slamming into someone else.

B. Alain

The door swings open and Karkat slams into the wall ahead of it. The door lasted fine enough. Dented when the thing after them hit it, sure, but the lock held; it was his own slick, fumbling fingers that undid it. He's alive. He's breathing. It comes in thick, choking gasps, hitching, then retching when he turns his head to vomit. It's not much, this late in the arena.

Nothing much smells good this late, either, but entrails and blood fill his nose more than the sick. There's red on his front, on his hands, dripping off the sickle he holds in a trembling hand. Some is his own, but it's Roland who lies inside the room, his gut cut open by the jagged curve of his weapon.

He's not watching his steps when he stumbles from there. They're loud, clunky, soles tracking more of the mess. He barely sees what's in front of him to even bother looking back. Everything is images: Roland matching Sheen, Maglev in the dirt, Signless and his eyes. His thoughts are too much a jumble. He doesn't know where he's going, and doesn't care to listen.

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If there ever was a time he and Alain need to be sticking together - but never mind that. They aren't. All the tributes who remain - and some who don't, if you believe your ears, if you've been hiding under a rock for the past couple arenas and aren't aware that the gamemakers love playing this particular trick, the one with the voices - are down here, and here in this dark and desperate space those tributes'll be more greedy than ever for some chance of leaving these places for good, for any chance to win.

So when he's bumped into Roland's first impulse is to grab at whatever figure it is who's done it, pull out his pipe with the other hand and points it-

points it, it turns out, at a very familiar gray-complexioned throat. "Karkat." No time, obviously, for niceties. "What's chasing you? How far behind is it?"

Edited 2015-11-17 00:40 (UTC)

That's the way of things here: those moments when you need to stick together most, you often don't. Maglev wouldn't be dead if not for that. Karkat has learned the hard way.

Here and now, though, that's not his thought. He stumbles back from the man he's run into, eyes widening at the pipe as he sees it pointed, but the action is caught before it can come to consequence. "Jegus christ, Roland," he snips, pushing out the startled feeling. "One of the monsters, and I don't know, too close. Go."

He'll zip around him and hurry on if he doesn't, but not without a look back. He won't leave Roland behind if he doesn't have to, but he sooner expects him to not need telling twice.

Karkat is right. Roland goes. Down a corridor, and noises at the other end, too - no decision is a good decision here so he makes one, yanking open the nearest door and taking a quick glance over what's inside. "In! You work the lock, I'll find something to fit under the knob."

And then he does, a chair, a strong metal one, and backs up to stand at the wall near the door. He squints at Karkat a moment, expression suspicious, because something, there's something...

Can't place it. Roland has spent a lifetime trusting his instincts but sometimes instinct can only take you so far; he can not put a name to whatever it is that's pushing at his instincts now. He sets it aside. Whatever it is'll reveal itself, in time. "Karkat," he says, pipe held tightly in one hand. "How've you been keeping yourself?" Roland's voice here is as casual as his posture isn't. To hear him, you'd think the two of them were meeting over tea. Outside, in the hall, Roland can hear claws clicking hard and fast over metal floor.

Karkat waits a tense second at the door, looking back over his shoulder until Roland shouts in. He goes in, shoves the door closed after him, and sets the lock as quick as his nervous fingers can do it. He moves from it after as Roland sets the chair, and he hopes the creature after him - after them, now - isn't strong enough to break it down.

"What?" he hisses, voice low. He's still looking at the door. "Ask me later, when we're not--"

The claws clack closer, far quicker than comfortable, and a metallic bang shouts out as the beast slams against the door. It dents inward, but the lock and chair together are enough to hold it, if not enough to keep Karkat from jolting back against the far wall. Some bestial noise of outrage comes, then familiar voices after each other, begging 'Let me in!', 'Come on, you know me!', and others, until it's forced to give up and stalk elsewhere.

His breath a rattle, Karkat slides down to the floor. "I'm not dead yet," he finally answers.

Edited 2015-11-18 13:26 (UTC)

"Mhm," Roland says absently, eyeing the door. He glances at Karkat, then breaks his position at the wall and starts pacing across the room, the movement of his body quick and somehow more flowing than usual, more graceful. "With that attitude, you soon will be."

He reaches the opposite end of the room. Glances at the door again. This room is very small. He only just noticed. "Come on, boy," he says, and turns, and starts to pacing again. "Take up your weapon. There's more of those things a-coming. At least one more."

"And your track record?" That's what the news men in the Capitol call it. A track record. It makes sense to Roland, Panem recording how they've died, who they've killed, who they haven't. The tracks they make while moving through this world. It's up to each of them to make sure the tracks they make are interesting ones. Interesting enough to be worth keeping. "Fought any good battles since we last spoke?"

Edited 2015-11-18 18:39 (UTC)

There's something strange to him. It's too easy to be agitated, by Karkat's eye, but it's not the usual. There's harshness to him--that first comment easily, but something of the demeanor to the rest strikes him, too. "Roland?"

But Roland's asking other things, the kind that sets his jaw tight. He doesn't move from the wall because he doesn't want to, but his hold does tighten on his sickle.

"No, Roland, I haven't. I've been surviving by not seeking them out." He watches the door rather than look at him, though its opaque surface tells nothing. His voice hews blunt. "I hunt when I need food, I avoid other tributes when I can, and I move danger crops up so I don't get myself killed."

With that the majority of Roland's focus snaps from the room and the door directly to the boy and his expression is sharp, pale eyes narrowed. He stands in the center of the small room, entire body ready to hear more clicking of claws outside the door, set to meet that monster's imminent threat with a threat of his own. He'll have to be, if Karkat isn't up to the task. "Have you not learned? Or- it's that boy, isn't it? The district boy. Hiding and still brooding on him, is that what you've been distracting yourself with? Is that what you've been burying yourself in, instead of sleep?"

It hits like a dagger. He though he cared before, from how he sat down and talked, how he kept from pressing, how he stuck there as he wore through the flashback back to calm, until the dragon showed up. Now Roland sounds derisive. What is it, impatience? Is there only so much allowance for not being over it? Karkat's shoulders tense, and his lips pull back to show the fangs of his overbite.

"I don't need sleep, you dried out behemoth leaving. I made it the better part of a month when that's what I needed to keep alert, and look at that, here I am doing it again!" He finds his feet and rises up to stand proper. His sickle is still in hand, but pointed down; he's mad, not murderous.

"How about you drag your head out of your knotted up bowels and pay attention to the situation at hand? We're not going to stay anymore alive by you cashing in your shithead card on me before it expires."

There've been times when it startles him, evidence of just how inhuman trolls are, how purely they - even the peaceful ones - are built for battle. He'll never forget how it was, when the news came about Initiate's avoxing. Signless' eyes. His face. These people aren't human. He forgets that. He is very aware of it, yes, but the deeper part of him forgets.

This is not one of those times. There isn't even an instant of surprise, no hesitation before Roland bares his teeth right back, grimacing. His arms are spread, his feet slide to set themselves a little wider, better balanced. He doesn't notice. "What good is staying alive longer through this arena if you waste it? Your cowardice does no good for the tributes who'd fight you, and even less for yourself. If you don't learn that lesson now, you won't be around to learn it next time! Use your mind, boy!"

Roland's free hand reaches out, meaning to poke Karkat's forehead for emphasis, maybe try and shove him a little. Roland doesn't think on which. He'll find out once he does it.

Roland gets neither, because Karkat snaps his teeth at him. Not aiming to actually bite it, no, but it's a threat, impulsive and instinctual all on the same breath. He knows that kind of stance Roland's taking: it's one of someone looking for a fight. Whether or not he means it to be physical is not the point, though a niggling part of him has trouble imagining Roland to take it thoughtlessly.

"You want me to murder people? Is that what you're after, you pus?" There's a rumbling edge under his own voice, not yet a growl, but a hint of it. "I could have backed out any time if I chose to. Fuck you, I almost did that first week after--almost did later! But look at me! Do I look dead to you, asshole? I'm staying here because I owe District 6, but if I win, it will be by my own terms."

Alain's gun is lost, smashed against the wall when he was attacked by one of the monsters. He killed the beast, but the gun's casing was cracked, and when he cocked it and heard something clatter inside, he left it as a lost cause.

That fact probably spares Karkat's life, because when he sees the door open from down the hall, when he smells the blood, Alain's instinct is to go for his weapon. But it's a knife, not a gun, and that key second it takes to draw it is long enough for him to decide not to cross the distance between them. Still, he doesn't loosen his grip on the knife when he sees Karkat.

"Ro' came this way," he says, and if there's a hint of a tremble in his voice, there's none in his hand. "Tell me that's not his blood."

Karkat hears him, and it takes him a moment too long to turn and look. Alain. He thought it sounded like his voice, but a part of him hoped it was another creature come to take him out and not the man himself.

His eyes are wide, his mouth ajar as his breath rasps out. There's blood smeared from where he wiped it with his sleeve, one mess traded for another. The sickle's still in his hand.

"I," he starts. Sticky footprints follow his feet as he steps back. "I'm, fuck, I didn't mean, I didn't want to." Pink joins the dirt and blood now, two tracks wearing through from his eyes, perhaps strange if Alain's never seen a troll cry before.

At any other time, Alain might be able to cope with that. He's never been quick to anger, more likely to weep than shout. And, truth be told, there are a million worse ways Roland could have gone. At any other time, Alain would have nodded and maybe wept, told Karkat he understood, and tried to move on.

The worst part is that he knows that. The knowledge that he shouldn't be angry this way is buzzing away like a fly at the back of his mind, and it only makes him angrier, like an itch he can't reach to scratch.

"Sure you didn't," he agrees, and his voice is still, even now, oddly soft. "Sure. As if that makes him a whit less dead. Or you a whit less his killer." As Karkat steps back, so Alain steps forwards, keeping the space between them more or less constant. His grip on the knife has tightened until his knuckles are bone-white.

"Your-" Roland's grimace comes back, this time heavily flavored with disgust. "I knew you were stubborn. I never thought you were stupid. You think anyone controlling all this gives a rat's ass what you want? You think you can force them to give it to you?"

He lets himself go still. Roland is angrier now, yes. Angrier, and quieter. "Every young man thinks he has but to reach out, and the world will twist itself to suit him. In a fine and fair place, you'd have the chance to indulge that. Hide away, pretend to yourself, then learn your foolishness and let it pass. But this world is neither fine nor fair, and this is a lesson that is going to destroy you."

"This world wants to see into you, Karkat. You can curl up and kiss your own ass as long as you like, pretend you can ignore that part of yourself and not simply disappear afterward, go out in your own terms and not leave the rest of us to go on in your wake. Pretend as long as you like. But this world wants a fight, Karkat."

Roland watches him. Takes a step forward. "They'll get it."

With Roland, Karkat knew him enough to know something was off, though not why. He got pushy and critical, digging at what he had or hadn't done, poking sore spots he knew he had. Alain here is too new, someone he's spoken to all of twice. He can't imagine his usual for dealing with death, let alone the death of a friend at the hands of someone he knows. He wouldn't handle it well, either, in his shoes.

"Please." It's reasonless and empty. Please what? Karkat doesn't know himself, and he had guilt enough on him already without killing his own friend. He continues to back up, even as he raises his weapon in defense. Roland's blood drips from it where it hasn't dried enough to stick. Worse, bits of flesh cling at it, the blade too jagged to have made a clean cut. "I don't want to fight you too."

Whatever's got Roland so mad isn't his to know, but whatever did it has no kind regard from him. Karkat's teeth are fully bared now and grit together. It does little to muffle the snarl coming from behind them.

It's all presumption, what he's saying, or it feels like it. Does Roland know all what he's been through? Karkat carries the guilt of it even when it's not his to bear, and it feels much like mud shoved in his face to be told he's playing ignorant for thinking the world could be fair.

Loud and sharp, he snaps, "Back off, old man." His hand is tight on his sickle, for he refuses to put it down, especially now as Roland encroaches on his position. He'd like very much to punch him, but knows it wouldn't prove anything.

"I've fucked up enough to have it engraved deep on the walls of my skull that the many and various universes are not fine and fair, and you do not know the goddamn half of what I've been through. Don't pretend you give half a shit when something more comes on to add if all you're going to do is turn around and pull a grub's tantrum on me because I don't handle it how you like!"

His posture is set for defense, all the same. Trolls may not have always been violent, but the long and careful nurturing of Alternia to that end has made such cultural mores night unto an instinct in him. Roland talks of fights, and sounds as close without outright saying it that he threatens one. His glare is hard and unwavering.

"No, I don't suppose you do." Alain doesn't raise his voice, doesn't raise his knife either, just takes a couple of steps closer, steady and inexorable. His feet make a soft sucking sound as he steps into a puddle of blood, then out again. "That's the thing. You aren't a gunslinger. And I would... once I would have said that made you brave, that you could stand and fight this long. But it isn't courage. None of this is courage. None of this stupid, fucked-up world is courage!"

Now he raises his voice. He doesn't seem to be looking at Karkat, exactly, either: rather, through him, with the brittle shard of madness behind his eyes. "Isn't it enough? Father and Mother, and Cort and Vannay, Susan and Sheemie and Steven and Robert? Isn't that enough? Peter and John and Aaron and the rest, gone to the Clearing, gone ahead of me? Gone instead of me? Isn't it enough to drag me from rest, throw all my failings back at me, make me watch them all in inhuman clarity, watch my own fucking skull split? Enough to make me foreswear my promises? Enough to make me fail them, fail even the fucking children? ISN'T IT ENOUGH, WITHOUT THIS TOO?!"

It's aimed at Karkat, but not at Karkat. At the Capitol. At the world. At the Tower and whatever sits in it. At his kin for dying, at Roland for dying, at everyone else for having the sheer effrontery to go on living in the face of it. It's a bellow that comes out louder than he knew he was capable of, and as it rushes out of him, he charges, swinging not with his knife but with his empty fist, because he doesn't want to kill Karkat, not just now, he wants to hurt him. He's never wanted to hurt anyone in his life before, not the way he wants to hurt Karkat now.

The old man does not back off. The old man takes a sharp breath through his nose, composes himself a moment. "How I like. Huh."

He starts to pacing again. Around, this time, curving in a circle around Karkat to one end of the wall and back again. Steps heavy and quick, hemming him in. His expression tries to be calm, distant, as if everything else in this room is much more worth looking at than Karkat. He can't quite manage it. His jaw keeps twitching. "What I'd like is for you to give half a shit about someone other than yourself. Do you know how it was after Cuthbert, after he gave in and never came back? After he stopped fighting?"

Each time Roland reaches a wall he turns and heads back again, and each time that invisible boundary he draws with his steps draws further in, gets closer to the boy. Closer. "Would you like it if I called you selfish? If I said-" He digs through his mind, tries to find just the right ammunition here. "-that you're failing everyone around you with this self-indulgent foolishness?" Roland stops, for the first time in his pacing looks right at him. "It's in you, Karkat. It's in you to survive, and you just aren't using it."

Roland circles closer, and something stubborn and animal in Karkat itches at the wrongness of it. He is being penned in, boxed up, closed on, while each word winds up the tension of already tight nerves, until he's left to snap.

"Go fuck your lusus!" Now as Roland's met the side of the semicircle at the wall, Karkat steps out and around, counter-circle, horns lowered forward even as his fangs flash on his words. "Or the mammal bitch that had to bear the indignity of having your slimy husk crawl out of her! I've made and fucked up bigger things than you've imagined, and the mold-slimy dish sponge you keep inside your lobe in place of a thought organ does not have one singular wisp of knowledge to what I think or care about." His voice is snarl-rattled, and the sibilants hiss harshly. "You shut your gutter trough of a mouth and fuck off out of here, or I swear to two dead universes I will bite you for the next word out of it."

Roland grunts, thoughtful, tilts his head. "Too wordy for a threat proper. If you want to baffle your enemy, sure, but this is no time for that. Try again, boy," and here the pipe still tight in his grasp darts out. In thought, at least, he only intends to push Karkat's shoulder with it, prod him and push him back.

In practice? Well. Maybe the lower parts of him, the animal parts of him waiting there in the dark of his mind, maybe they mean to hit a little harder than that.

Roland is quick, and some still trusting part of Karkat doesn't expect him to outright attack him. He jolts back, pain lancing from the impact - not bad, but bright and shocking in the moment.

"The fuck, Roland?"

He threatened to bite him. He doesn't. His sickle rises, though, stance turning from agitated and wary to outright expecting combat. His eyes sit alert and focused. The door is to his back, locked still and jammed with its chair. Roland's action is answer enough to whether he'll leave peacefully. Trying to get it open himself won't be easy. There's no telling before he tries it how the denting may have damaged or jammed the parts keeping it shut.

"I don't know what beefgrub laid its eggs up your ass, but the larvae have clearly traveled up into your brain. What's your problem? What the hell do you want from me?"

"Gods, aren't you listening?" Roland isn't surprised his weapon hit a little harder than he thought it would. It was necessary. It was right. He doesn't question it. "I want you to listen to me! Stop talking long enough to listen, for once in your godsdamned life! I want you to live! I want you to fight! And if you won't-" Here the pipe darts out again but not toward Karkat, toward his sickle, hits it in such a way that if Karkat's grip were too lose the sickle might tumble to the ground.

"If you won't-" Roland's other hand pulls the shillelagh out from his purse. It's longer, wood instead of metal, but a weapon in each hand feels right. He doesn't question it.

"Then you die." The shillelagh strikes out. He aims it toward Karkat's throat, where a human windpipe would be. He isn't holding back.

A hard, metal sound shouts from the meeting of their weapons, but Karkat's grip is solid, and he moves it with the blow 'til he can clear its arc. He hisses reflexively. His mind is still busy absorbing the words.

Die, though, is as clear as it gets. Karkat sucks a breath, leaning back from the sweep of his shillelagh. He catches himself with a step and ducks, darts sideways. He's glad suddenly for what training he's had, for Shepard's many lessons and even the brief bit of swordplay with Éowyn. Neither of these is a weapon he's fought before, but it's the principals that may save him.

That's not to say he's not scared. Flickers of thought rush through, recollections of the first day of the meteor when half his team died, disorganized and stir crazy in its metal walls after a lost reward. He thinks of Signless back in the Capitol.

This room is much smaller than he wants it to be, and if only there were a second door he could make a break for it. He wishes he had a different sickle. This one is jagged and brutal, more for tearing wounds than the clean cuts of a blade, which is probably why it was here. He thinks of the knife in his dwindling pack, but it's a big hunting blade with serrations. Its wounds wouldn't be much lighter.

"Fuck!"

Karkat's steps carry him circularly. He wants ever to keep more toward Roland's side if he can, knowing too well that two longer weapons would mean an easy blow to him if he goes in straight from the front. He baits him with darting half-jabs of the sickle, the back faced out to deflect. He wants to get the shillelagh; if he can time it right, he could turn his hand, snag the burled head in his sickle's curve, and yank it out of his grasp.

Edited 2015-11-19 15:59 (UTC)

Apparently Karkat's finally done talking. That's fine. Roland's still got a bit to say, but he won't need words to say it.

He lets the shillelagh go, in one smooth movement turning to face Karkat and raising his arms. The pipe swings at Karkat's head from one direction, the heel of Roland's hand from the other, and Roland thinks that if Karkat is not very quick indeed, quick to realize and quick defend, the boy'll still be all tangled up with Roland's weapon while Roland finds out just how sturdy a troll's horns really are.

Edited (Phone didn't do the icon thing right) 2015-11-19 19:58 (UTC)

The shillelagh doesn't hold him up too much. With no hand holding it anymore, momentum carries it with the swing to rattle loose and clatter onto the floor. But Karkat's no gunslinger, let alone the experienced sort Roland is. He sees in time only for Roland's hand to push him to meet the pipe, and shrieks out his pain as the horn cracks from the blow. It doesn't snap, too short and close to the skull for a clean break, but blood seeps through from where the soft, growing inner tissue was breached.

His own hands come up next. One, empty, seeks to shove away the arm used for the pipe. The one holding his sickle swings in and forward; if Roland's not quick enough, the jagged hook of it will snag his other arm.

Now, this he knows. Not directly, and not the particulars, but the overall spirit is the same that has a home in him. It's the kind of thing he felt when he saw Maglev dead, too late to come save her after he heard her scream. It's the anger that welled up in him that after everything in life, all his dead friends and their suffering and his own, the cruelty and caprice of the Capitol, he couldn't save the one friend who had no place being in it. And in him it was enough to snap, for that anger to finally flood out, overtake him, and drown any sense of thought. Alain doesn't have that - he still has his words - but that desperate, hurting rage is just the same.

Karkat stands as a deer in the headlights before it, and doesn't move until Alain's fist has smashed into him. Stumble and slump, step, then push with his hand and the side of his sickle. He's hurting already; there's blood in his hair and on his face from a crack Roland put in one horn, and other knocks from their fight hurt too. Part of him even thinks he deserves what Alain wants to give him, and it's likely that what held him back. District 6 deserves compensation for his failure, but what does it mean when it takes killing friends and allies?

He can't find his own tongue but for pain noises. He can't even find a mind for technique as he tries to shove Alain back.

Edited (put a sentence in a different place, same content) 2015-11-19 21:05 (UTC)

Alain grunts, his hand flashing up to knock Karkat's aside, his knee coming up sharply to try and catch the troll in the gut. Anger hasn't robbed him of the finesse which was so thoroughly drummed into him from boyhood: he may be no Roland, but he's a formidable opponent nonetheless, and he's not holding back. He runs to stocky, but that doesn't mean he's slow or unfit - much of his mass is muscle, and it lends more weight to his blows, if anything, the full weight of his body going into every strike.

No more words. Talking's done. Now, through the haze of tears and rage that makes the corners of the world blur into a red smear, he strikes out again, with his knife hand this time, slashing across. It shouldn't be too deep, not if he's aimed it right, and if it hits its mark across Karkat's chest it shouldn't be fatal, but that isn't the point. Truth be told, Alain isn't so sure what the point is any more. Only that, if the world's so set on hurting the people he loves, it's about damned time he started hurting it back.

(and will hurting him bring them back, whispers the voice of reason, did killing Farson's men make up for the blood they spilled, did raising a blade in anger ever yet win you the day? He ignores it, caught up in the fire and rage of it all)

Later, Roland will go over this footage and he will hear that noise Karkat's just made and his face will harden, his jaw will tense. But there's no shame here now. The pain in that voice, now, is good, is satisfying in some deep, animal way, and in that same animal way he wants to follow up on it. If there's a weakness there, even a weakness he's just created, the thing to do is use it. But he can't quite, yet, has to dodge that sickle, notes the sound of his sleeve tearing and the sharp feeling over a small area in his arm but is paying more attention to his hands again. Hand, that is, because the one that is free is the more important here. It has an important job.

If it succeeds in that job then Roland will have a grasp on Karkat's injured horn, will pull it toward him until Karkat must either stumble or bend backward with it. If it does not succeed he'll circle around, make an attempt to get close enough to his other fallen weapon to retrieve it. Either way, his side will be angled toward Karkat, the side which carries the pipe. That arm will hang down. The grip will be loose. And either way, he speaks: "Try harder, boy. You'd let me do this to you? All those back on Alternia who'd step on you and spit on you for the color of your blood, all those here who'd do the same whenever it suits them - you'd let me be one of them? Swing again, and aim this time, for your father's sake!"

Edited (forgot an important detail) 2015-11-20 01:05 (UTC)

Karkat roars when the knee hits him. His wounds from his fight with Sheen have been healing well despite running out of bandages before; knife wounds are old and familiar, and a troll takes more than that to die. Still, they aren't past the lingering soreness stage, and a hard knee to the gut hurts without the help. The knife comes next, and the burn of a fresh cut across his chest is what it takes to make him fight.

He lurches forward. Technique is still off the table, but packing all his frustration and hurt into action doesn't need much finesse. He has teeth. They go for an arm or shoulder, depending what's closest and whether Alain backs out of the way, while he slams the back of his sickle at whatever he can get. It's a fuck-off measure rather than killing intent. The weapon is solid and rounded there, more apt to smart with blunt impact, though a couple short spikes on the back may leave gouges or nasty puncture wounds if they hit at the right angle.

Roland just misses. Karkat skitters away, wheeling, breathing hard from the throb of pain. Pink tears stream down his face from it now. Later the pain will fade to the background, constant but less important than his thoughts, but for now he can't let Roland make it worse.

As Roland moves to circling, he easily sees which hand is toward him. Is it on purpose? Is he thinking? But the words come, and they hit too hard on his soft spots for him to think further of it. He moves, and the swing is wild, but should hit hard enough send the pipe falling from his grip. Even then it's only with the back of his sickle. He kicks the pipe away with his foot, then holds the sickle out toward him, pointed and straight, grip firm.

"You're unarmed." Karkat's eyes are angry and hurt. There's a tremble to him from adrenaline and pain, but his focus doesn't waver. "If you go out there, you'll have to face anything on your own. No one's going to send you bandages for your arm this late in the game. If you go for your weapons, I'll take them from you again."

He sniffs, then exhales.

"Leave."

Edited 2015-11-21 13:01 (UTC)

There's a feeling that's been thrumming through him this whole time, a feeling he recognizes. A feeling which has, to one degree or another, been running all through him for a good portion of his long and violent life.

It explodes.

"YOU FOOL!" Roland roars, teeth bared, the wrinkled planes of his face stretched into something all taut and hollow and ugly, and he bursts with all his speed into a dive toward the arm with which Karkat is holding his weapon. He tries to get a grip on the spots which, on a human, would affect tendons and bundles of nerves, make it easier for him to fold the boy's arm up, make easier his efforts to drive the weapon there toward that vulnerable and deserving throat.

"YOU STUPID LITTLE FOOL!" This tone of voice was not designed for this; it was designed for battlefields, shouting cool and calculated insults to enemies, shouting orders to bondsmen and allies over chaos and panic and distance. Roland uses it, though, because his voice is a tool, his whole being is a tool toward this one purpose, and from all of six inches away he bellows noise and spit and rage against the boy who, five minutes ago, he would not for a second have hesitated in defending with his life.

"I gave you everything you needed!" Roland's been leaning on Karkat with whatever grip he can manage, trying to drive him back toward any solid surface, and if he manages it he'll try and slam Karkat against that surface to punctuate the end of every sentence. Even if he does not manage it he'll still give that small form a little shake, a little shove. "You squander it! You'll live, by god! You'll live, even if I have to KILL YOU!"

And with that Roland pushes off with his toes and leans forward to give a mighty shove, a shake, and this one even more than all the others is one he shifts his grip for, one he loosens the tight pull of his fingers for, maybe even lets go for a space which is not a full second, but which in this state feels like an eternity.

Or maybe it isn't an eternity. Maybe it may as well have not even happened at all. That depends on just how much this selfish little boy is determined to squander.

Edited 2015-11-22 01:36 (UTC)

Roland surrounds him on all fronts. It's overwhelming: sight, sound, touch. He batters him with his presence, and the room reflects it, too small to look anywhere, a prop to each slam, and an echo to each word. Of course Roland got hold of him. Karkat expected he might leave then, might give up and take the point and at least concede that Karkat has left him worse for wear. It would have left him guilty even then, sending off someone he's regarded as a friend like that, weaponless and injured against the creatures that have been after them.

There really isn't much left of the arena.

And he wanted to ignore that. Why else would he have wanted to survive with him, to help him, when he could have run past or shoved him the monster's way? It doesn't matter if it would have worked. It's his failure as a troll and his failure as a tribute: when these easy chances to kill or at least try come up, he fails to take them, barring extreme circumstances.

Roland looks apt to force them. It's what he's screaming about, isn't it?

But Karkat's head is full of images, memories, thoughts. What would Signless think? What does he think already? He remembers people dead before him, Nill killed for mercy, Sheen for rage, and Terezi's severed arm by accident as she died behind the door between them. He thinks of Gamzee the last time he saw him, but of his other friends, too.

Roland's grip loosens, and Karkat pushes with the flat side of it against his chest.

"Please." He's not meeting his eye, though he feels his gaze bore into him. "Just go. Just leave."

Teeth dig into Alain's arm, and a split second later, the sickle takes a deep gouge out of his thigh. He doesn't curse, doesn't show any sign of pain besides a thinning of his lips, a momentary paleness under the crimson flush of anger rising into hectic spots on his cheeks, and a low, solid grunt.

But while Karkat is biting him, it gives him some purchase in return. He yanks his arm down sharp and hard, figuring it'll either pull him free or pull Karkat's head down, in which case he can throw him off-balance with a hard blow to the back of his head.

"He was the only one!" he shouts, over the thick thudding of his own pulse. "He was the one who lived! What damned right do you have to kill him? What fucking right?!"

Alain strikes the back of his skull, and though not aimed at his injured horn, the jolt and shock reignites the pain coming from it. He gasps out, teeth dislodging, and falls hard to his knees. Alain shouts above.

"He forced me!" he screams back. His eyes are wild and hurt as they turn back up, rimmed still with pink tears. "I didn't have a choice!"

He hates Alain, too, in this moment. His sickle hooks out, looking to snag his pantleg if not his leg itself, to take his balance in turn. Is this what Roland meant to get from him? Fighting despite everything? It feels no better, but he expects he won't be given another option. Alain may kill him if he doesn't.

"That's a coward's answer!" Alain roars back, crimson with fury. And he might roar more besides, but then Karkat's sickle catches him, and there's a spurt of blood as the tip bites deep into his leg, and he goes ass over elbows.

He's back on his feet quickly, rolling with the momentum as he was taught all those years ago, snatching his fallen knife back up as he comes up. But he's favouring one leg now, and more than a little at that; blood soaks his pantleg with a speed that would be worrying if he thought about it.

There are tears in his eyes, too, running down his face as he aims a kick (with his wounded leg) at Karkat's neck.

Karkat is finding his feet as Alain comes back to him, but in a way he lets the kick hit him. Not in the neck it aimed for, but it hits at his upper chest near the shoulder, knocking him back. He stumbles back into a wall.

It's stupid. He's stupid. He feels no right to live from this, no right not to take what Alain throws at him, but compulsion to win back something for the District he failed keeps him fighting.

"I don't care," he yells now. "You think I don't know I'm a failure? You think I don't know what I am?" Pushing off from the wall, he charges forward, sickle swinging with broad, flashy strokes. "Gutterblood, cullbait, cowardly mutant trash! I only fuck up everything!"

"Leave?" His hand wraps around the handle, just below that part of the sickle that can barely be called the blade. It's sharp, aye, but all jagged, all rough. Serviceable. Or would be, with a different hand wielding it. "You'd ask me to leave- plead with me? After all I've done? It's in you, boy! It's in you, you've seen it, and still you lie to us both! You plead! Not even to save yourself will you use it! I've shown you and I've shown- Look here, maggot! Look, and look well! You're not half so stupid as you act now, you'll remember. I'll teach you a lesson you won't soon forget!"

One hand tries to cover Karkat's, tries to guide his grip on the weapon. The other hand, the one near the blade, slides up onto it, feels hot pain as the jagged points of it tear parts of his hand open and he bares his teeth, does not flinch because that heat is the same as the heat which burns through the rest of him. That hand pulls the sickle, turns it, feels its point tear through his clothes and begin to press against the skin just below his ribs.

"LISTEN TO ME!" He yells it just to shock the boy, try and make him more vulnerable and suggestible, lets his rage out in his voice one more time. "You'd let me do this to you? No one else! You'll leave this room and no one will do this to you! You'll use what's in you or you'll never dare to look on my face again! Do you understand? You'll damn well USE IT!" His hands, both of them, pull. There's a strange noise at his belly, a strange feeling. It almost feels like a pop.

Alain ducks under the weapon, slashing up with his knife to try and get under Karkat's guard. "So you give up?" he demands, and steps back smartly from another blow. His injured leg buckles, and he almost falls, but regains his balance. "You decide not to give a fuck about honour or courage? That's weak, maggot, weak and cheap and not worth a whore's fuck!" And it makes him angrier. It shouldn't, but it does. He can feel the anger, pulsing through him like a raw red light. "You aren't what others make of you, you're what you make of yourself, and you make yourself a fucking coward!"

He lunges forwards, slashing for Karkat's neck this time, wanting blood.

Karkat tries to resist. Roland can surely feel it, the tension in his hand and arm, how he tries to keep him from pulling it. But Roland is strong and Karkat is tempered by fear, shaking at the same time under the weight of everything happening. He gets it where he wants.

He breathes hard and fast, and his face is streaked with pink from tears brought both by pain and emotion. Now, though, his sore spots sit like an afterthought. The words hit him on some level, but in truth the particulars slide past. It's more rage and anger, more denigration of the same kind. What's more important are the actions.

Roland had both hands on the blade.

He sees it - he's watching it - and he knows just as Roland does what it means when he pulls. He sees Sheen again in his mind's eye. He sees Nill, even, remembering when the xenomorph's tail lodged itself in her side, and what came at the end of their travel together. Perhaps if he'd been using his knife it would be different, but if he even tries to pull his sickle back, his flesh would tear more for the effort.

He can't fathom why Roland wants it. Why this anger stole over him, why this should be the way Roland would teach him. The lesson, whatever it is, does not reach through--

"Damn it, Roland..."

He pulls not against but with his hands now, dragging across with force, tearing through flesh and pushing deep enough to snag the soft, inner organs. It's decisive, and not something meant to be survived.

--He just can't let him die slow.

Roland grins, wide, savage, victorious, as he feels the boy's hands move with his, finally, finally his message has gotten through, the boy is listening, and then he feels-

It feels strange. He looks down. It feels strange. It doesn't hurt and that would be a bad sign, except that 'bad' would be a word for someone who hadn't seen this coming. He'd known exactly what was coming. But he hadn't known how, how-

There's the sliced edge of an organ or two hanging out of him, wobbling against the loose flaps of his skin. Roland stares down, fascinated, identifies that warm soup spilling down and pooling against the waistband of his underwear as the mostly digested remains of this morning's breakfast, they must have got his stomach.

He realizes his mouth is open, and his expression slack. He knows now the look which must be on his face, knows exactly because he has seen it on countless others, countless times through countless years. Never really thought it'd ever be on his. Dumb surprise, shock too deep to really process what his senses tell him is happening - but of course, he'd always mostly expected to be shot. Or, lately, expected to fall from some place high. He realizes, too, that he's pressing at his belly reflexively, trying to keep everything in. Huffs, a sound mostly derisive, tinged with something genuinely amused. The time for dumb shock is over. Roland knows what happens now.

He lets go. His guts spill out, make a plopping noise as they hit the ground and sit there shining in the bunker's bright white lights and Roland spills over with them, can't keep on his knees and his hand slips as he tries instinctively to prop himself up with it. Slips on blood, he realizes, and quite a lot of it. Breath's coming hard now and he's more than a little dizzy, not that it matters here on the floor like this. There are shoes in front of him. The boy's, he realizes, Karkats, and something makes him reach out and try to grab at them, except he must be using the hand which sliced itself all up on that blade in those seconds which must have been years ago, and the grip of his hand won't close.

There's the smell, too. Roland takes a breath, realizes they must've also gotten his bowels. They also apparently got at least one artery, though, so there's no need to worry about that. The blood loss will feel as if it kills him slow, but it will in reality be very quick. "You listened," he mutters, voice rasping, tone absent. "Listened to me. Took you long enough, maggot. But you did, in the end. Very well. It's very..."

"Huh," he finishes, as the thread of his wandering thoughts runs out. Roland realizes his eyes are closed, and lets them remain so. He feels his blood warm and wet against his face and maybe he can feel air slipping all chill inside the hole in him, too. With his eyes closed all those sensations are more vivid and his mind moves slowly, sluggishly over them, he lays in the cooling remains of himself and takes slow, heavy breaths of the fouled air and time slows around him, stretches out. It fades after a while, after an eternity. After no time at all.

Edited 2015-11-25 19:29 (UTC)

Maggot stops him. It's a singular word, not the worst insult he's ever heard, but Roland said it to him twice: once before he forced the sickle in, and once more as he lay dying over his spilled guts. The rest lodges somewhere in his brain, but it's unimportant, mind elsewhere--

The knife strikes. It bites in sharp, drawing a hot spill of red blood. Karkat gasps, gurgles as it slips into a gap cut in his windpipe, then mashes his free hand over the wound. It doesn't help; the blood is too slippery, spilling too quick. A troll has more blood than they know what to do with. After the fact, the commentators will debate whether it was the loss of blood or drowning on it that killed him.

Stupidly, he has it in him to look shocked. Other images flash through: a smilodon rushing on before its teeth found his neck, the floor of the space station as he dragged himself with a broken leg and punctured lung. It hurts in different ways that fizzle toward lightheaded numbness and a burning in his chest. He knows it, either way: he's going to die, and he can't stop it.

But just the same, despite certainty or whatever he might deserve, some part still resists. Roland forced him until the sickle was in his flesh. Alain puts it in his words; Karkat doesn't want to die a coward.

He stumble-charges forward, not minding the blade, not minding anything, only looking to tackle him down with the sickle put to his neck.

Alain ought to be able to avoid it. Ought to be faster, ought to have seen it coming. But when he moves to dodge Karkat's blow, it all happens too fast; his good leg slips on the blood, his bad leg crumples with a sharp jab of agony, and then he's down, his head hitting the floor with a wet thunk.

As Karkat's sickle bites into his neck, Alain has time to think gods, Cort must be turning in his grave before the blood comes. His smile is sharp, though, sharp and wild, blood on his teeth where he bit his tongue when he fell. "Fuck you," he says hoarsely, and to his own surprise, laughs. It's not a laugh with much humour in it. Like his smile, it's thin and bitter and treading the edge of madness. Like his smile, it's fed on rage, not joy. "Fuck you, you whoreson." Or maybe it's whoresons. His voice is thick and rough, and it's hard to tell.

Karkat, for his part, bleeds on him. He's given up holding his neck in the fall, doesn't even mind the sore spots that struck hard against the floor, because what does it matter? He's dying anyway. The only effort he puts is to try to press down on the sickle. It doesn't work very well; his strength is draining as he grows more lightheaded. It would work better if he could put his body weight against it, struggle forward and lean--but he slips, too, or perhaps his arms just give out.

It doesn't matter, in the end.

Alain swears at him, laughs at him, insults him with a word that has no significance to a troll, let alone one made by cloning. It's not offense that makes him angry. Regardless, words are beyond him, and all Karkat can manage in his dying moments is a low, thick, gurgling growl from his throat.

Alain's laugh turns into a gurgle as the sickle carves into his windpipe, flooding his airways as the blood gushes out in a sudden crimson flow. The smile remains, though, pulled taut and vicious across his face as blood bubbles up between his teeth.

There are worse ways to die than that. It's fast, at least, and there's a kind of victory in it, if only for his rage. He's dead not long after Karkat, letting out a low, bubbling rattle and going limp and still. The last conscious thought that goes through his mind, before the blackness takes over, is fuck you bastards, you'll have no more show from me.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

[closed] all the neighbors are startin' up a fire

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this... headed into alain's own issues a bit. tell me if you'd rather i edit it.

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ISSUES FOR EVERYONE

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lemme know if this is okay. presumed some stuff would happen because of our planning earlier

yeah that works

nnrnrnrghhggh here are words

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one way ticket for the hate train

they are lovely words.

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gonna follow the fine tradition of roland's canon and not gloss over much of this, so cw for gross

Karkat got to die by slit throat in another game once. it was fun

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