It was dark - not that it ever wasn't, but the dark only now really stood out to him - as he quietly walked his round through the laboratory.
It seemed so huge at first, but now that everything was explored, all maps were made and the bland metal-lined rooms had become so familiar... It really was actually quite small.
Most rooms and buildings were locked off or destroyed, so there really wasn't much more to it.
Karkat kicked a piece of stray rubble out of the way, he was coming close to a part of the lab where he remembered was a hole in the ceiling.
For a moment, he thought back to when they discovered it on one of their exploration tours. This one was found when all of them started out exploring together, but it dwindled down to only him and Dave doing these sorts of trips after Rose and Kanaya started spending more time together and Terezi at some point lost interest.
He breathed out a soft sigh thinking about it.
Not that Karkat hated Dave or something - he used to, but that had changed over time. Thinking about it now, the two of them were actually pretty close at this point.
Almost too close for Karkat's liking if he was honest, all the pale buddy-budding surely was weird but... at the same time also oddly comforting.
He felt weird thinking about it, but he shoved it aside for now. There were other times to remember the sudden end of his moiraillegiance with Gamzee, and certainly better ones.
He passed through another dark corridor, he was currently walking straight into the ruin-parts of the lab, where he was pretty much outside due to the ceiling being mostly non-existent here.
The dim light of the slowly passing by stars illuminated everything in a soft grey - a nice contrast to the warm, dim lighting from the main areas.
But Karkat couldn't help thinking about the pale-breakup with Gamzee.
Another quadrant of his left and gone.
He knew it was for the better, being pale with a murderous clown hiding in the vents like a fucking psycho wasn't exactly a good thing.
All his quadrants were unfilled, and it bothered him.
But what bothered him more was how horribly small the amount of people around him is generally, so the options for any quadrant whatsoever were scarce as well.
He definitely fucked up with Terezi, he knew that much, irredeemably, irreversibly fucked up.
It was embarassing, he has been so desperate to have her in literally any quadrant that he didn't focus on one and send all the wrong and mixed signals, eventually forcing her away.
God how he wished he could slap Past-Karkat from that time right now - from any given point in time, actually.
He used to be and still was close with Kanaya, but she and Rose were pretty much never anywhere without the other, so talking to just Kanaya was pretty much impossible.
Then there was Dave.
Of course he and Dave could be moirails, Karkat actually thought about it, as desperate as that fucking sounded, but Dave doesn't get the point of this kind of relationship and generally doesn't really care about it, so it was kind of a ridiculous thing to even consider.
And in addition, Dave already had John, the two of them were close from square one, they've known each other for a long time and didn't start out goddamn fighting over hypothetical relationships and-
Yep.
There he went, wanting to slap his past self all over again for being such a retarded, short tempered, goddamn INSUFFERABLE PRICK.
Karkat's hands clutched to the fabric of his pants as he walked, having had shoved them into his pockets until now and his walk gained a little bit of speed.
He took a deep breath, then sighed.
Wasn't he just great? Ruining every friendship and possible friendship by being the embarassing, loudmouthed jackass he always was and will probably always be.
It was a wonder Dave even hung out with him after all the bullshit he pulled.
A sudden, slightly painful tug in his blood pusher made him quicken his pace.
Now that he thought about it, Dave probably only did because it was too embarassing to be around his sort-of sister giving Kanaya bedroom eyes non-stop and Terezi after their relationship came to a halt.
They both were in reality just friends because they literally had noone else apart from the Mayor, weren't they?
His jaw clenched up and a sour feeling started blocking his throat when he took a turn to his left and walked down a less broken corridor back to the sleeping areas.
He tried not to think about it.
About how he genuinely enjoyed spending time with Dave.
About that time they watched one of his dumb earth movies and one of the jokes was so bad it actually made Karkat laugh.
About the times they just spent sitting outside somewhere talking for hours about the dumbest shit.
He definitely tried not to think about it, because it hurt.
It did and Karkat hated that it did, he let himself forget where his place was and now that reality hits him once more it hurt.
It hurt to know that he only had one person to be close with, that everyone else was dead, angered away or too busy with more important things than to think about him.
Nobody cares about the mutant.
It's always been this way.
He grew up thinking this way, it should be normal to him by now, but this stupid stupid hope that maybe, just maybe he could be just normal enough to have friends?
It fucking blinded him to reality, blinded him senseless and making it hurt even more when he let his guard down just for fucking once.
He had tried. Tried so hard to keep people at bay, to not get too attached to anyone, but he couldn't help it.
He could never help it, he was an overemotional mess and everyone knew it.
And to make it worse, his fucking idiotic attempt to prove to himself that he wasn't as worthless as he grew up thinking, that he could do good and great things as a leader... It blew up in his face, now most of his friends were dead because of his horrible decisions, his cowardice and goddamn lack of action.
He failed them all.
How stupid of him to hope for anyone to genuinely care much about him.
The warm light from the always lit hallway of the sleeping chambers were close, but he really wished they weren't.
He could feel himself crying, holding it in was kind of just as pathetic an attempt as he was himself and he really didn't want anyone to see.
Not that there would be, it was pretty late into sleeping time and everyone should be asleep by now, but he really didn't feel like running into questioning faces right now.
Thankfully, he got to his room without any issue, entering it quickly, but closing the door with a bit too much force and it slammed shut with a bang.
Hopefully noone heard...
He curled up on his bed, sitting in a corner of it and crying into his arms for a while, before he heard a gentle knock on his door.
"Fuck off! Not now!", He cried out, a subtle crack in his voice giving away his crying.
God why did he have to fucking slam that door shut with so much force, fuck fuck fuck-
The door opened anyway though and a pale, partially shade-covered face peeked inside.
"Hey you okay man- wait fuck are you crying?"
OH GOD NOT HIM, OUT OF ANYONE WHY DAVE?
"PISS OFF, IT'S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS"
Karkat really wished his voice wouldn't crack so stupidly, he just wanted to disappear and cry everything out in peace and eventually be okay again but fuck no, Dave was already coming inside and closing the door shut.
"whoah, hey, calm down, it's totally my business when my bro walks off into nowhere at 2am and comes back sobbing and slammin doors after an hour" Dave retorted.
"FUCK NO JUST-"
Karkat grabbed a pillow that was close by and chucked it half-heartedly in Dave's vague direction before grumbling and giving into another sob twitching through his body.
He didn't need Dave's stupidly fake compassion, he just needed space, cry this crap out and feel okay again.
A small part of him didn't really feel up to fighting it though.
He knew Dave was mostly just replacing John with him in a way, but he couldn't help but hope that only just a sliver of it was genuine.
"hey lil man, come on," Dave said, a sliver of worry swinging in his tone as he walked over to the bed where Karkat was currently clawing into the fabric of his sweater, trying desperately to control the sobs surging through him.
God he was so pathetic.
"listen, whatever's on your mind right now - not gonna pressure you to say if you don't want to - but whatever it is, try to forget it. I'm here okay, I'm here."
Karkat could feel the shift of the mattress when Dave sat down, and he didn't fight it when Dave pulled him closer into what barely counted as a hug.
Karkat eventually lowered his head onto Dave's lap and let his emotions run free, he was too tired to care anymore and just let go.
So what if Dave just needed some kind of buddy substitute in Karkat.
So what if this pale as fuck comforting was fake.
Karkat was tired and this felt warm and nice and made him feel slightly less shitty about himself.
AN:
AHAHAHAA guess who fell down another fandom hole and finally got to write some stuff again after literal years
Anyway, point is, I got into homestuck and recently got past Game Over and holy peanutbutter covered pickle in a shoe did it wreck my feels
I wrote a little drabble about it (idk if I should post it, it's really short) and then afterwards was still in the mood to write so I did this because I'm a sucker for writing thoughts and bittersweet things (and also for DaveKat in case you haven't noticed but pshh)
So yeah I ended up writing out this and was actually kind of please with how it turned out :3
I hope you enjoyed it!
~ Cree