Author's Note: I began writing this before Rose died (spoilers!) and didn't feel like changing it, so I moved her fight with Jack Noir (I'm not calling him Bec) about half a mile away from the castle.
Jack Noir had stabbed John in the chest for the second time and he had blacked out. When he came to, he was lying in a pool of his own blood, the wound healed, Rose and Jack nowhere to be seen. The broken table was still there, as were the corpses of his father and Rose's mother. He picked up the Warhammer of Zillyhoo from where he had dropped it however long ago. It went back into the strife specibus as he turned his back to the bodies. He descended the staircase, bloody footprints following him, his eyes filling with tears. He tried to hold them back, but when he reached the bottom, he couldn't any longer. As he reached up to wipe the wetness from his face, he stepped on a transportalizer quite by accident. When he looked up, he was in a gray ectobiology lab, except with twelve containers for ghost slime instead of four.
"What…Where am I?" John stammered. No answer seemed to be forthcoming, so he began to walk around. There were a few computer chips scattered around the floor, along with two chests on either side of the appearifier. One was open, the other was not. He examined the open one and found an open box of Fruit Trollups, orange creamsicle colonoscolypse flavored. He began to put them back in the chest when it registered. He lifted the box to get a better look, rubbing the 'T' in case it was a sticker or something. Nothing happened.
"Okay…that's weird…" he muttered. He dropped the box and moved over to the other chest. He opened it and found a bucket. He quickly closed the lid, wondering if a troll was watching, and exactly what was with them and cleaning appliances.
A voice came from behind him, "What are you doing here, fuckass? And who the hell are you?"
John turned around. The speaker was a gray-skinned humanoid with small orange horns, black hair, a black shirt emblazoned with a gray Cancer symbol, and gray pants. Apparently he liked the colors gray and black. "Wait, how did you get here?" he asked.
John shrugged. "That transportalizer." he answered, pointing at the blood-speckled platform. "And who are you?"
A honking noise echoed through the chamber. "OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK GET ON THERE!" He pushed John onto the transportalizer, following back to the castle and rushing off down the rest of the stairs.
John was a bit confused, but he followed the mysterious person. However, instead of running down all those stairs, he just jumped through the gaping hole in the middle of the floor, slowing his fall with the windy thing. He landed next to the corpse of a Dersite, the soles of his shoes once more getting soaked in blood. He looked down and stepped out of the blood as the gray person reached the bottom of the stairs. "Who are you?" John inquired again.
"Karkat," he replied, not stopping. He walked over to the other stairs, which happened to be blocked by a giant stone frog head. "Fuck."
"There's a secret passage over here," John supplied, walking in the direction of said secret passage. "What are you running from anyway?"
"Who says I'm running from anything?" Karkat countered, pushing past John and entering the opening.
John shrugged. "If you weren't running, then why did you push me back on the transportalizer when we heard that honk?"
Karkat stopped and mumbled something.
"What was that?"
"I said I don't think I could take losing any more friends today, alright?" Karkat repeated. "Kanaya and Feferi are dead, and Gamzee's probably killed someone else by now. Besides, your session isn't over. You need to see it through." He abruptly resumed walking, ignoring the corpses in the next room.
John followed after Karkat, making sure not to step in the blood. "Wait, what are you talking about?" Silence. John sighed and retrieved his Serious Business goggles from his sylladex…wait, he left those with his corpse on LOWAS. He searched his sylladex for any computer at all, then remembered that he left it in his dad's wallet, which went on the battleship with Liv. He facepalmed at his stupidity and continued walking the path he first tread with Rose. They strode past the curtains, the statue, and out the door, exiting the castle entirely.
In the distance, a black mass of thorns and vines writhed and faded, a smaller black spot soaring away from it. Another black spot fell to the ground, trailing a barely visible streak of red.
"Rose," John whispered, eyes locked on the descending speck. He summoned a gale, flying to intercept her, Karkat being brought along for the ride.
"Whoa, fuck, what the hell is happening?" was Karkat's reaction, more or less.
Even going as fast as possible, John couldn't make it in time to catch Rose. She hit the ground with a sickening thud, blood pooling underneath her body, her sylladex ejecting. John landed next to her, paying no mind to Karkat, who happened to be doing a high-speed faceplant a few feet behind him. He stared at her body for a few seconds, then shook her shoulder gently. "Rose?"
Karkat had recovered from his face's abrupt meeting with the ground and walked up behind John. "I think she's dead." He looked down and saw the red liquid spreading from her wounds. "Wait, her blood is red, too?"
John looked at him like he was insane, only sparing a moment for him before turning his gaze back to the corpse formerly known as Rose Lalonde. Tears began to roll down his face, and he looked away in the stupid belief that if he didn't see her body, she wasn't dead. He looked up into the sky, where he saw Jack circling. He clenched a fist and looked back down, sweeping his eyes across the ground until he saw the Thorns of Oglogoth and the needlekind specibus. He picked up the specibus and filed it away in his strife portfolio, also retrieving the Thorns, holding them firmly in either hand. Dark energy swirled around his hands, tendrils going up as far as his elbows, swirling slowly. "I'm gonna kill him."
He stepped over Rose's body, about to summon a wind of equivalent strength to an F-3 tornado, when he felt a sharp edge against his neck, nicking him slightly. "No. You're not."
Karkat stood directly behind John, his sickle held firmly to John's throat. "If you do," he continued, "you'll create a doomed timeline. He's already in our session. He can't die until after the Scratch. Even if you go through with it, it won't work. The alpha timeline will still stay the same. Or did you forget that like the complete fucking idiot you are?"
John opened his mouth to retort, and closed it immediately, realizing that Karkat was completely right. He couldn't kill Jack, and honestly, he'd most likely just get stabbed again and again and again. He'd bounce back each time…or would he, he mused. Would revenge solve anything, or would it just corrupt him, leaving him open to true death? He realized that the latter was the most likely, and if he died, that would leave Dave and Jade alone, and it wouldn't bring Rose back. No, the only thing that could possibly do that was the Scratch. It was supposed to be a reset button, after all. He placed the Thorns of Oglogoth in their strife specibus, the black tendrils fading from view.
John, being a little slow on the uptake as demonstrated before, finally registered the name of his companion and grinned. "Oh! Hi Karkat!"
The troll's hand contacted his face with great enthusiasm. "Jegus fuck, Egbert."