Hello and thank you for reading this ahead of time! This was an RP I did with carcin0Geneticist over Omegle. Hope you enjoy the fluff~!

Disclaimer: I do not own Homestuck. If I did, there would be so much more canon. 0_0

~X~~~0~~~X~

On a meteor floating though the Veil, a certain nubby-horned troll crouched on the roof of a makeshift community hive where four trolls and two humans lived, him included. The usually grouchy troll stayed in his place on the roof as the meteor hurtled through yet another dream bubble. He didn't say anything, sullenly watching as the landscape changed around him.

Karkat pulled his legs closer to his chest, peering over his knees at the melded memories around him. The others were inside, probably messing things up as usual and in desperate need of his leaderly help. But Karkat didn't feel like being a leader right now. So instead he continued to blankly stare ahead with his mutant red eyes.

There was Terezi's old hive, complete with her dragon dolls hanging from the tree by their nooses. There was Gamzee's world, colorful enough to warrant his description of "a LaNd Of MoThErFuCkInG mIrAcLeS, hOnK. =O)". There was a desert of hoofbeasts that couldn't possibly be all that important. And there was –

Huh.

Karkat blinked as one of the destroyed Aradia robots approached him, landing on the roof near where he was sitting.

"Oh fantastic," he growled, glaring at the alternate version of Aradia. "Like I wasn't mind-numbingly bored already. What the fuck are you even doing here?"

Alternate-Aradia simply looked at the angry troll with her usual deadpan expression. "I did not think that I was that boring." The robot-Aradia looked around before asking, "Where are the others?"

"They're all inside," Karkat replied before narrowing his eyes at her. "Wait a fucking minute. Why the fuck do you want to know? What, am I just not interesting enough for your deceased see holes? That's it, I've caught you in the fucking act, Megido."

"No," Aradia denied. "You are interesting. I was just curious if I could speak to the humans."

Karkat scoffed. "Don't bother. They're all idiots."

Aradia looked at him with a slightly-more-curious deadpan expression. "What about the Rose human? Kanaya seems to like her well enough."

"There are other gogdamned humans other than the Seer of Fuck," Karkat growled, "and they're all fucking ridiculous."

Robot-Aradia tilted her cranium slightly, looking at Karkat with passive blue eyes. "Then why did we waste our resources trolling them in the first place?"

OH MY GOG, Karkat thought. IS SHE GOING TO FUCKING ASK THESE STUPID QUESTIONS THE WHOLE TIME.

Out loud, Karkat responded, "Because the fucking consensus at the time was that they were hugely repulsive and deserved to know just how fucking far their stupidity extended. There was this huge fucking leaderly speech and everything, remember?"

"I remember," Aradia said. "I also remember that you seemed to be interested in the John human."

OH FUCK NO. "That's an old thing and past me was a fucking idiot for even going down that road. He was the fucking definition of "lummox" with how gogdamned stupid he was."

"So you hated him?" Aradia questioned. This version of Aradia seemed to do nothing but question. "Romantically hated him?"

Karkat grimaced. "Like I said, it was temporary. I came to my senses."

Aradia-bot's expression didn't change at all. "Okay then, I suppose."

And suddenly Karkat was beyond frustrated with this version of Aradia. "Yes, you suppose. Go the fuck ahead and suppose the shit out of my meager statement. You and your gogdamned metal shit-thinkpan make all of the fucking assumptions. Have fun." Karkat turned around, shifting his back to the robot.

"I shall attempt to have fun in my state of death."

And suddenly Karkat was beyond guilty as Aradia's statement made it into his thinkpan. He mentally face palmed and cursed his past self's utter stupidity.

"Okay, now I feel like an asshole." Karkat ignored Aradia's "Do not worry" and went on. "Which I am, there's no denying that. Oh Gog, is this why no one likes me?"

Yup, it would make sense. Terezi, his flush crush, seemed way more comfortable hanging out with Dave than with him. Dave didn't hang out with him either, but he was a douchebag and didn't count. Kanaya and the Rose human tended to stay away from him to do whatever the fuck they did, and he hadn't seen hide or hair of Gamzee since the humans had joined their meteor of death. Now that he thought about it, before they had died, the other trolls had always been insufferable. He couldn't remember if it had been because they were just nooksniffers or if he'd been the one antagonizing them with his temper.

Now he couldn't even ask them.

Aradia's computerized voice brought Karkat out of his depressing train of thought. "I cannot say. I have very little emotion in this state."

Karkat looked back over his shoulder and stared at alternate-Aradia. "Well, that was encouraging." Karkat sighed, "I guess I really don't have any redeeming features, then, if not even the dead girl can say anything for it."

Aradia floated somewhat closer to the hunched-over troll. "You have made a good leader," she pointed out.

Karkat looked back to her. "I got everyone killed," he retorted. "I was a terrible leader and now I'm paying the price by prostrating my self before a bunch of sick humans, waving my ass in the air in a gesture of complacency and surrender."

"You were the one to prevent everyone from killing each other, though."

"Well yeah, there was that. But I could have done more."

"In his state of mind? Are you certain?"

"..." Karkat lapsed into a rare silence as he stared at this alternate-Aradia. "This is a trick question, isn't it. Yes I'm fucking certain."

"I think you must recall the exact situation," Aradia – alternate-Aradia – reminded him. "Gamzee did not lose his thinkpan because of you. You were not even in the nearby vicinity when that occurred. Anyone would have feared for their life in that situation."

Karkat shook his head, somehow curling even further into himself. "But I should have been there to calm him down. We're moirails for a fucking reason."

"But you did," alternate-Aradia said.

"Just shy of too late, when everyone was about to cull each other." Karkat buried his head further into his knees. "I got lucky."

"No, you did not," Aradia corrected. "You supported him as his moirail. It was just later than 'perfectly in time'."

Karkat whipped his head up to glare at robot-Aradia. "What good am I as leader if I can't be perfectly fucking on time? He culled Equius and – oh Gog. It's all my fucking fault."

"It is not all your fault," alternate-Aradia reassured. "You did not beat them with juggling batons. The insane Gamzee did. And he is now gone, thanks to you."

Karkat stared at this strange alternate-Aradia for a moment in another rare fit of silence. He seemed to be having a lot of those lately. "Since when are you so fucking nice and lovely and encouraging and shit? Are you ill? Do you have a death cold or some shit?"

The alternate-Aradia did the equivalent to a deadpan-shrug. "Since I understand death more than ever before. It would not be conducive to have our leader be mentally distressed. Although thinking about it..." The robot's head tilted. "Should you not be talking this over with Gamzee?"

"What. Why."

"He is your moirail, after all," Aradia reminded the other troll, as if she had to remind him about that at all.

Karkat gave the robot-Aradia a look that said oh-fuck-no-are-you-batshit-fucking-insane. "What, I should talk to him about how I couldn't help him because I'm a useless nooksniffer? That I completely fucking failed him as a moirail?"

"He would be able to give you his opinion on that matter," alternate-Aradia said.

"His opinion would be somewhere between 'motherfucking miracles' and 'It's all good, brother'," Karkat muttered. It was always easy to tell with Gamzee.

"Of course," alternate-Aradia agreed. "Because he cares about you as his moirail."

Karkat sat there for a moment, thinking. Alternate-Aradia looked on for a while, waiting with her newfound patience-of-the-truly-dead. It was silent once more for a while, robot-Aradia and Karkat simply standing and sitting on the roof, respectively.

Alternate-Aradia tilted her head. "Karkat?"

The nubby-horned troll was startled out of his reverie and looked up at the robot-Aradia. "Fuck. I got distracted."

"By what, exactly?" Aradia-bot queried.

"I'm contemplating on exactly which moment of this conversation I should shove my thumbs up my waste chute," Karkat growled, his usual grouchy demeanor returning.

"I would ask that you not do that," alternate-Aradia said. "Talking about these things will help you in the long run."

Karkat grumbled, "I fucking honestly can't think of anything more boring."

"Perhaps you should speak with Gamzee, then?" robot-Aradia suggested. "He will certainly be more entertaining than I."

"Yeah yeah, fine," Karkat grumbled. "But only because you're dead and omnipotent."

The Aradia-robot only stared back at him. "I shall take that as a compliment. Now go and see your moirail."

Karkat watched as the alternate-Aradia turned around and left the roof of the meteor as the dream bubble ended. He sat there for a moment, not quite believing what just happened. But after all the shit that had happened in SGrub, that hadn't been anything, really. So, grouching and grumbling all the way, Karkat stood from his spot on the roof and left to go find his moirail.

~X~~~0~~~X~

So, I hope you enjoyed it! R&R please!