/~|~\
Your name is Vriska Serket. You are currenly standing outside of your new college dorm room, with an unknown occupant inside. You have only a backpack and a seen-better-days duffel bag. With a deep breath, you fumble with the key you'd received in the mail and open the door.
Your roommate has clearly been here for a while. The room is pretty simple - it is split obviously in two, with a bed on each side. Two desks crammed into the corners. There's hardly enough space to walk, which explains why she is sitting on the edge of her bed, eyes fixed on the window. Her bright green eyes meet your blue ones.
"Hello." She is so pleasant and reserved you think you might puke.
"'Sup." You throw your bags down on your bed.
She makes a face that she thinks you don't see, then tries again. "My name is Kanaya. Kanaya Maryam."
"Vriska Serket," you say, back turned to her. You rummage around in your pack for your pain meds, then stop. Even though you really don't care what she thinks of you, it's probably not the best for her to see you popping pills like they're Tic Tacs.
You glance at her perfectly tailored skirt and black sweater. She's definitely one of your hometown's rich folk, who is coming to Skaia Tech on her parent's money. You wish you even had that option. No, your parents might as well be dead for the good they did you. You're a scholarship kid, majoring in neuroscience and minoring in psychology. You can't help it - you're fascinated by the mind.
Still, it's a wonder you've made it this far. You have more than a few bad habits: smoking, partying, other reckless activities you don't care to mention. Not to mention the pain meds you can't stop taking, even though you don't need them anymore. A few months ago they had been an actual prescription. After the loss of your arm, and the painful attachment of a metal prosthetic built by your friend Equius, you'd literally survived on those pills.
You're certain that Kanaya is burning with questions. You sometimes think you are a walking mystery to people that don't know you - you wear an eye patch and your left arm is made of metal. It's remarkably similar to a real arm, but it's still a fake. A fakey fake fake that you wouldn't even need if not for your stupid mother and your stupid life.
You turn around, ready for her to bombard you with her curiosities. She is now reclining on her bed and reading what looks like a romance novel, and it is clear that she has no interest in asking you anything about your exremely interesting if not traumatic life. You huff to yourself and retreat to the bathroom, which is barely bigger than a closet. How rude of her.
This is stupid of you. You have no reason to be here, so you wait a second to make it seem like you had a purpose before going back to your bed. She still isn't interested in your affairs. Well, screw her! You don't need her attention. You don't even know her.
Fortunately, there's a lot to do, and you're too busy to fume over Kanaya. You go about sorting your clothes into the tiny dresser at the foot of your bed. Your first class begins at nine in the morning, and it's almost ten P.M. right now. You are a major insomniac and think it's best to get to bed as soon as possible.
You are just tossing your textbooks onto your desk - some of them flip open or tumble off, and you can't express how much you don't care - when she speaks. "If I may ask, what's your class schedule?"
You hand her the assignment paper. She compares it to her own and says, "We have English I, Computer Tech, and Calculus together."
"Great." You draw the word out a little. Your infinite sleepless nights are catching up, and you need to toss and turn and doze for two-minute intervals already. That's the closest you can get to sleep these days.
"Good night," she says simply. She has already gone to the bathroom and washed up, now wearing a silk camisole-and-shorts ensemble as she tucks herself in. You repeat the pleasantry. God, you're more mechanic than your left arm.
Once you've brushed your teeth and changed into sweat pants and a tank top, you flick off the light and sigh. What a shitty day. You'd sort of been hoping for a college with wild parties and maybe a little sleeping around, to add to your mile-long list of issues. Skaia Tech does not fit this description.
You lie down and squeeze your pillow between your arms, letting your head fall a little awkwardly to the bare mattress. You forgot to bring sheets. Of course. What a wonderful fucking start to your college life.
/~|~\
Kanaya is nice enough to wake you up at seven-thirty. This is a little early for your tastes, for you'd actually slipped into something close to sleep and it had felt so good, but you groggily thank her anyway and roll out of bed. She's definitely a morning person. She is already dressed, groomed, and holding her messenger bag, packed with her laptop, a notebook or two, and some pens.
The dorms of Skaia Tech don't have any sort of common room or kitchen area, so Kanaya is making coffee when you emerge from the bathroom, dressed and mostly presentable. Mostly. She offers you a mug, but you decline, only because you just swallowed a few pills and shouldn't be mixing caffeine into the mess that is your stomach. It's a tough choice, too. You haven't eaten in over a day and a half.
Unfortunately, thanks to your new class schedule, your hours at the crappy bookstore on Second Street have been cut back, and you can barely make enough money to pay for the little things your scholarship doesn't cover. Somehow food was placed under education on your priorities list. Oh well. As sad as it sounds, you're used to going hungry. Man, you're really pathetic today.
Even though neither of you propose it, you end up walking downstairs and outside together. No words are exchanged. The two of you are an odd pair - you, with your self-destructive behavior, and her, with her prim and proper demeanor. You cannot imagine how someone can look so composed all the time.
You have English together. The classroom is more of a lecture hall, with three raised half-circles of seats extending outwards and upwards from a chalkboard and desk. You sit down in the furthest row, seat closest to the door. Kanaya silently debates sitting next to you and opts for the seat directly in front of yours.
Another student in class is a kid with messy black hair, nearly the same shade as yours, and a deep scowl. He is slouched in the middle row and trying hard not to snap the pencil in his fist. You smirk to yourself. Good old Karkat. His stoner friend, rich kid Gamzee Makara, blonde and grinning and way too stupid to be in college without his dad's cash, lounges in the seat next to Karkat's.
The next students to enter come in a group of four. Two boys and two girls. Two blondes and two brunettes. They are weirdly matched up, and fill the first four seats, chatting excitedly. You're a little envious of their camaraderie. You've never been good with making friends, since most people can't see past your moderately hostile front. The friends you do make are often driven away. Like Terezi Pyrope, your best friend in the world for basically your entire childhood, until she dumped you. All because you let some guys beat up that little dork Tavros Nitram. It's not your fault they crippled him.
Speak of the devil. The door opens, and who should arrive but Terezi, Tavros, and ooh, bonus! More people that hate you. Sollux Captor and Aradia Megido. Sollux doesn't grace you with a single look as he sits down, but his antagonistic behavior is pretty justified. You did, for all intents and purposes, start his addiction to alcohol when he was only in the tenth grade. But how would you have known one swig of vodka behind the computer lab would turn him into an alcoholic?
It only got progressively worse, and Sollux started missing school and being violent, even with his girlfriend Aradia. You wince, because you remember her showing up to class on a few occasions with a black eye or split lip. It was indirectly your doing, after all. When Sollux really snapped and nearly strangled her to death, he was sent away to a rehab center down south. He missed all of junior year and some of senior year. Apparently he's clean now, which is good for him, you guess. You don't remember what being clean even is.
Terezi helps Tavros wheel his chair out of the way of the walkway and sits down with Karkat just as the door opens again. This time, everyone groans a little. Eridan Ampora and Feferi Peixes. Great. Feferi's not that bad - a little perky for your taste, but nice enough - but Eridan is a nightmare. You've been in a full-out war with him since middle school, even though your fights sometimes end in sloppy makeouts, but that's beside the point. He's a bigger douche than you and Karkat combined.
Feferi is the daughter of the oil tycoon that raised your town, the heiress to her company, and rolling in cash. It's a wonder she isn't a total bitch. Eridan, the son of another wealthy business man, is probably the second richest guy in town, and therefore a pompous little prick. Not a lot of people talk to him. Only Feferi, who insists he's a good guy beneath his incredibly unlikeable front. You think you can relate to that.
The last students to pile into the miniaturized lecture hall are Equius Zahhak and Nepeta Leijon. They sit down a few seats away from you, not caring to strike up conversation. Equius was cool enough to build you a prosthetic limb for pocket change, since you wouldn't have been able to afford anything else, but only because you were neighbors for a lot of your childhood. He knows the shit you've dealt with. You know he pities you, but you've stopped caring at this point.
The professor - old, balding, and wearing too much tweed - sweeps into the room and begins his lecture. You struggle to tune in. Despite your vices, you actually do well in school; you've been pretty careful to always be top of your class. You know there's no way out of your hellhole of a town without a college degree. And you will do whatever you have to to get away from your home.
You take detailed notes and read the assigned chapters thoroughly. You write down the homework assignment neatly in your notebook, and as you're shoving everything away, you catch Kanaya glancing back at you. It's inconspicuous. She has turned sideways to check something in her bag, but you see her eyes creep in your direction.
The next class is not with Kanaya. It's your Biology class and you're stuck with those four friends - John, Rose, Dave, and Jade - and a few other unfamiliar faces. You don't care. You're too focused to dwell on much else aside from your pen scribbling across your paper.
You have a pretty long break before your computer lab. Three and a half whole hours. What to do, what to do . . .
The campus is nicer than you thought it would be. Lots of grass and trees with the leaves falling off, all red and brown and orange. The buildings are all red brick. You are currently leaning against one of these buildings - you think it's one of the science departments. Doesn't matter. You turn up the collar of your jacket against the biting fall wind and light a cigarette, letting the match warm your fingers, the flame so close that you think your skin will melt away. It doesn't. Sometimes you want to melt away, but you revel in your own shitty life too much to ever want an easy way out.
Your stomach growls. So, nicotine is not what it wants. That much is clear. But you only have a few bucks on you, and you figure if you wait until night fall, you, like every other needy college kid ever, can stock up on ramen noodles and feast while Kanaya is in her fashion design class. That's what she's enrolled in Skaia Tech to become. A fucking fashion designer.
You let the spent cigarette fall to the gravel, adjust your eye patch that you secretly hate wearing, even though you make everyone believe you think it's cool, and push away from the building. You pretend not to notice Kanaya watching you from across the courtyard as you go. The burning curiosity is finally igniting in her, you guess.
You walk around until you come to the crippling conclusion that the campus is boring as hell, and finally retreat to your room. You curl up on your bed with one of Kanaya's books - vampire romance, you cannot even believe what you're reading - and try to ignore your raging hunger and the fact that you really want a drink or maybe a pill, but you've already swallowed a few, and that could kill you. Any of your habits could kill you. One of these days, you figure someone will stumble on your corpse, and you think your mother won't even go to the funeral.
Kanaya's book is so spectacularly bad that it puts the starving insomniac to sleep. That's a miracle if you've ever seen one. You are awoken by a sharp, if not clear voice and a hand on your shoulder.
"Vriska, please wake up."
You blink, glad you have a contact in and can therefore recognize Kanaya leaning over you. "Oh. Shit. How long have I been asleep?"
"You missed the computer lab," she says, shaking her head. "Really, you shouldn't miss class. It's not doing you any good-"
"I fell asleep," you say simply. You are so tired and hungry and pissed off because you've already missed a class. You press the heel of your hand into your working eye. "Fuck, I can't believe I missed the first class-"
Before you can start freaking out, Kanaya calms you with a gentle pat on the shoulder. "It's alright. The professor only read the syllabus to us and let us talk for the rest of the class. You're very lucky, you know."
"Yeah. Lucky. I have all the luck, don't you know?" You push yourself into a sitting position and gingerly hand her her book. "Heh. This is sort of what put me to sleep, thanks for that, I think."
"My pleasure." She gives you a wry smile and reshelves the book on her nightstand. "I suppose everyone needs to sleep off their responsibilities every now and then. I wouldn't recommend making a habit of this, though."
"It's a wonder I slept that long at all," you blurt. Shit. Now she knows you don't sleep a lot, and you don't want her to pity you the way everyone else does, because you have enough pity to start the National Bank of Pity and fill every vault with all of your pity. Well, maybe that's a little dramatic. But you did get a lot of pity as a kid. All of the neighbors knew your mother was a drunk and didn't look after her poor little daughter, and then you grew into a poor little delinquent, and the pity increased tenfold. Especially when you left home with a hand print on your cheek or a scar you hadn't had before . . .
"Are you not sleeping well?" She is so concerned, sitting on her bed and watching you with genuine interest. When was the last time someone actually cared about your wellbeing?
"I'm fine!" This comes out too rushed. Great, now she's suspicious. "Totally, completely fine. Don't worry about it."
"If you say so." She looks at her alarm clock. You really have been out for a while; it's almost eight P.M. and the sky is dark. "Well, I'm going to have dinner with my mother and father tonight - I hope I can trust you to take care of yourself in my absence?"
You get angry at this for some reason. You figure it's because she doesn't even know you, and she has no business caring about what you do. You tell her as much. She purses her lips, but only to hide a smile. She's amused by your anger. This is not okay.
A few hours later, she finds you collapsed on the ground, having broken into the bottle of Smirnoff you'd been saving for a while. So much for taking care of yourself.