Karkat Vantas wandered through the hallways, head down, as close to the wall and as far away from the windows as he could possibly be. His full-length coat covered his entire body, so only his face was visible to the passing students, and even that was turned away, studying the wall intently. Or at least, he would have been if he could properly see the wall.

He couldn't see the faces of the other students, but he knew from experience what they would look like. Some would have wide eyes, staring shamelessly at him. Others would look at him for a moment trying to find what was off about him, then realize and look tactfully at the floor. Still others would point, supposedly inconspicuously, and whisper to their friends. Karkat tried not to think about it.

He repositioned the hat that graced his head, the mass of pale cream hair underneath quietly angry at being contained. Karkat was the only student in the whole school who was allowed to wear a hat indoors under the pretense that it shaded his face. He knew it was for his own protection, but sometimes he wished that he didn't have yet another marker to set him apart from everyone else. Yet another reason for everyone to hate him.

He knew that they did hate him. Either that or fear him. Because he was different. And when something isn't like you, you are afraid of it. You want to remove yourself from it. It is like a cancer, an ulcer, a disease, and you are scared that if you get too close you'll be infected. And so they detoured noticeably around him in the hallways. The teachers were too nice to him, always allowing him to sit in the dead center of the front row so he could see the board, or the seat farthest from the window. His parents were too concerned, pasting him with sunscreen every morning even in the dead of winter, and then forcing him to wear this disgusting overcoat. But he knew that beneath all of that, what it came down to was fear. No one dared touch him for fear that they would receive from him what he was so obviously tainted with.

He trudged into his next class. Even this late into the school year, the students couldn't help staring at his too-pale complexion, his strangely colored eyes. He bowed his head in repentance. I didn't mean to be born like this. I really didn't. Please don't look at me. His silent plea went unheeded, and he dejectedly seated himself in the dead center of the front row. He knew behind him, fearful glances and derogatory notes were being passed by the derisive winds that carry such things.

The teacher began lecturing about whatever it was she hoped to drill into the apathetic students that sat before her. Every so often her eyes would wander through the class, gauging them. When her eyes reached Karkat, they lingered just a little too long. Karkat stared decisively at a bit of graffiti someone had left on his desk. Let me out of this hellhole, it said. Karkat could only agree.

The class around him began giggling and pointing. He snapped out of his daze to find the teacher looking at him expectantly. "Well, Mr. Vantas?"

"Well what?" he spat at her defensively.

"The answer. Do you know it?"

"Well how the fuck should I know? I didn't even hear the goddamn question." Karkat sank deeper into his world of isolation with each word. Inwardly, he cursed his constant abrasiveness, but it was a defense mechanism developed from years of being rejected and ignored. There was nothing to be done to change it.

"Mr. Vantas, would you please make your way to the office?" The teacher handed him a small pink slip she had been filling out a moment before.

Karkat sneered at her. "No, as a matter of fact. I will not 'please' go anywhere. I will drag my fucking feet all the way there because there is an innumerable quantity of places I would rather fucking be. Like maybe six fucking feet under." He snatched the slip out of her hand and stalked out of the classroom.

The walk through the hall allowed him to blow off some steam, even as he cringed in the shadows like an inhuman monster. He needed something, he knew that much. A friend, maybe. A therapist. A life. Pigment in his skin. But all of these things were forever out of his reach. His defect, as he was determined to call it, and his temperament had seen to that. Drearily, he made his slow, meandering way to the office, where he sat in the plastic chair and first his counselor, then his vice-principal thundered the same reprimands and condolences that they did every day, their words washing over him as he sat in stony silence, glaring morosely at them.

At last, they left him alone, and Karkat felt himself falling as he so often did into the pit of his own design that lay in wait for him every day, a loyal companion and a hated enemy. The pit of depression and self-loathing and, most importantly, total isolation. The abyss that sank down into oblivion forever and ever, that he fell deeper and deeper into but never reached the bottom, but that protected him from outside forces better than anything else ever could. That didn't judge him for his strange coloration. Because that was all that mattered. That he was protected from the outside by an impenetrable shield, even one of his own design. So that nothing outside could hurt him, tie itself to him, make him attached to it. Because he knew that everything in the world he had ever loved had spat in his face, laughing as it did so.

He closed his eyes. Tumbling down.

And down.

And down.

Into the void.