capitalh | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

Who: Karkat & Signless
Where: CONDOR not-so-scary jail
When: After Signless gets taken into CONDOR custody, before any escape attempts happen
What: Karkat goes to visit his grandpa
Warnings: mopey troll nonsense prob

Karkat’s feeling a bit of deja vu, coming to a CONDOR facility to try to speak to an Alternian with dangerous superpowers who he’s personally fairly certain doesn’t exactly deserve to be in jail – he’s a little less positively disposed towards the Signless than he was towards Sollux, but after everything that’s happened…

He was worried that CONDOR would be less likely to believe him about Signless, considering last time he vouched for a fellow Alternian it was one ended up doing a runner and more or less dropping off the grid complete with his phenomenally powerful and dangerous psionics, but apparently a guy who could well be the actual reincarnated Signless is of sufficient political interest to give him a bit of the benefit of the doubt… a bit. The other key difference between him and Sollux is that he has actually been working with Earth’s enemies... but anything that might get him to reveal more information is worth a shot as far as CONDOR’s concerned.

Not that information extraction is really Karkat’s primary goal here.

They won’t let him into the cell proper, but he’s kind of glad about that. There’s something a little uncomfortable about being too close to someone who looks so much like him.

And also threatened to kill him multiple times.

Still, he lingers close to the glass, watching his double for a moment before he says anything. He’s being monitored, which he doesn’t really like – but he does at least have the privacy that speaking Alternian affords him.

“Hey,” he says quietly, waiting almost nervously for a response.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

His eyes widen and he leans forward a little.

"Right," he says, frowning. Honestly he isn't really sure how to talk to someone like that. Normally, in his experience, when people are pretty fucked up, they prefer to pretend that they're not. "Because... she brought you back to life, right. That seems kind of dumb of her."

"Mmm," Signless mumbles, with a low creaking subvocalization. He's not sure that he agrees with that. He shakes his head a little.

"She got what she wanted from me. Mostly."

Karkat frowns. "I thought... what she wanted was for you to kill me."

"That's the only thing she hasn't gotten," he says quietly, his eyes lingering on the floor in front of him.

"... What else did you do?" asks Karkat, looking suddenly more deeply concerned than he did before – and kind of afraid of the answer.

He hesitates for a few moments, glancing at Karkat, and then away again.

"It doesn't really matter. She can do anything she wants to me."

Karkat's eyes widen a little. He'd been afraid the Signless had meant that – that he'd wiped out colonies of Sufferists at the Condesce's behest, that perhaps somehow Karkat was already all there was left. The way he says 'to me', though, implies something completely different, and perhaps Karkat should be relieved, but he isn't, in the slightest. He stares at his double – his ancestor, if that's what he really is – for a few long moments, and then forces himself to look away.

"Shit," he says again, quietly. He glances up at him again for a second, with eyes like yellow lamps. He swallows. "...She can't now, though."

He shakes his head a little, apparently dubious of that assertion. That would imply he was in any way safe.

"While I'm here, maybe," he mumbles. "It doesn't end so easily.'

He frowns. "You think she's going to... get you again?" he asks, like he's making sure. He sounds a little defensive about that idea. Although the Signless's presence should have proved otherwise, he's attached to the idea that Earth is safe from the Alternian Empire, at least – even if it's turned out not to be as safe as he thought it was when it comes to everything else.

"Yes," he says, as if that should be obvious. His gaze settles on his Descendant, his expression frank. "Maybe she will kill me instead."

"She can't," he says, almost too quickly. "I mean – the Empire tried invading Earth before and they couldn't. She can't come here."

"She doesn't have to," he says, voice becoming softer. "The humans are working with her."

Karkat sits up, looking alarmed. "Wait – what? No fucking way, no one here would do that, she tried to invade Earth–"

"TRIDENT, it's called," he says. "The humans there cooperate with her willingly. They captured me when I tried to run."

Karkat swears, loudly, as soon as that answer is out of the other troll's mouth. "Why the fuck is it always TRIDENT??" He puts his face in his hands with a protracted groan. "It's like they literally exist to shit on everything I love. It's like they exist to take my stuff and cram it into their gross warm human mouths and squeeze it through their revolting alien digestive systems and shit it out all over all of the other shit I care about! I – fuck!"

He drags his hands down his face as he looks up at the Signless again, shaking his head. "No, look, the guys who got you now, they fight TRIDENT all the time, they wouldn't..."

He doesn't quite sound like his heart's in it, though.

That is, perhaps, more of an intense reaction than the Signless was expecting. He stares at Karkat with more focus than has been present previously.

"I don't think that CONDOR would - I have fought against them before." He looks increasingly uncomfortable with Karkat's reaction. It's hard to keep up his state of listless apathy with that going on. It feels too familiar.

"What else...has TRIDENT done?"

Karkat frowns and looks away. "They kidnapped me," he says, although it doesn't sound like that's the real problem – he gets kidnapped all the time, after all. He folds his arms. It's a moment or two before he goes on: "And – they tortured my best friend. For a year. So they could – fuck, I don't know, use him as a weapon or – to power shit, or something..."

That explanation seems to trigger something. Signless's ears perk up warily, and his body seems to shiver with deeply buried anxiety.

"Helmsmanship?"

Karkat glances up at him; his ears fold down. "Not... Well. Yeah. Kind of. But – with human technology."

"I see," he says, his voice faint. He curls his arms around his knees, staring at the floor. He falls silent for what feels like a long time, with the tension in the air.

"I'm sorry," he says.

He shakes his head, looking at the floor. "He got out," he says. "But I couldn't help him."

He's silent too, now, but it's an agitated silence, like he's trying to decide whether to say something.

"...Me and him and some other guys... we left Alternia so we wouldn't have to... you know. But then all that shit happened anyway." He glances up at the other troll again, his brow furrowed, his eyes bright with a sort of regretful determination. "That's why I've got to at least take a shot at trying to unfuck everything back there, you know? If we can't just fucking escape..."

Signless nods vaguely, like his mind is somewhere else and he's only vaguely registering things outside of it. Eventually, though, his gaze sharpens.

"But do you really believe it's possible?"

He frowns. "I don't know. Probably not. But – it's not going to get any better if we don't try, is it?"

Signless falls silent again. He doesn't look at Karkat. His emotions in this moment are difficult to read.

"That's what I thought," he says quietly.

Karkat shifts uncomfortably, but his frown is still defiant. "I think it's worth it," he says.

Edited 2014-10-23 22:18 (UTC)

(no subject)

sufferist - 2014-10-23 22:21 (UTC) - Expand

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only