Green, pulsating light engulfed the group of trolls and humans, stinging in their eyes like fire. The eyes of some were even leaking, tear trails in various shades glistering on their skins, but there was no sadness to be found; at least not yet. For now, the immense relief, the overwhelming happiness and accomplishment reigned.
It was over.
A young troll, physically short for his seven and a half sweeps stared into the source of green glowing and tried to wrap his mind around that concept. Over. His hand clutched the sickle in its grasp tighter and red tears flowed down his cheeks despite his efforts to hold them back. There was no reason to cry and he was still not comfortable with showing his blood color like this.
It was over.
Next to him, Terezi stood as still and stiff as him and was not grinning for once. Further away was John, sobbing uninhibited in happiness because after three years, three long and painful years, the game had ended and Dave patted his back in the most affectionate manner the eternal coolkid allowed himself.
It was over.
Could that be? It seemed much longer than three meager years. They felt so much longer than his six sweeps before. Did those sweeps actually exist? He was sure they did, he didn't feel like it though. This game had sucked out more of him that he ever thought possible when he installed the program.
But it was over.
There was only one more thing to do to save what was left of both their races. "Hey!" he shouted to gain everybody's attention. For a second the troll contemplated whether he should let John do it; after all everything originated in their session and it was their session (somehow) that granted them a reset and a new chance. The boy caught his eye and motioned his fellow leader to go ahead.
And so he walked towards the harmless looking house from where the light emitted and grabbed for the handle, his mind assuring him that this time there was no omnipotent Jack to prevent him from claiming the price.
Sun rays shone through the window panes and hit the sleeping form of a teenager. This particular human was too lost in his vivid dreams to notice and he did not wake until a voice from downstairs called "Honey! It's time to wake uuuuup~!"
"YEAH YEAH, WHATEVER MOM!" the teen growled back and buried himself deeper in his blankets, intend on going back to sleep and never waking up, when his own words registered in his tired mind and his eyes shot wide open.
He quickly scanned his room to find that this was certainly not his. Well, in a way it was. This was the room of Kyle Vargas alright, and Kyle Vargas was him, but at the same time...he was not? No no no, his name was KARKAT VANTAS. He was a troll of seven and a half sweeps and just completed the most dangerous game in paradox space.
An inspection of his hands assured him that yes, he was very much a human now. Karkat scowled at the sight of the disturbingly pink skin and pinched himself to make sure that he hadn't fallen asleep and that this was a dream. It had to be.
Only it wasn't.
Kyle/Karkat was going through an identity crisis here. His head was full of Karkat's memories, of Alternia and SGrub, contradicting with the memories of Kyle who had never heard of anything like that. Oh god. He was going insane. Over the course of a single night, his mundane life had been thrown in a blender, turned into a slushy and then served back to him with a gleeful grin and now everything was a mess that he had to make sense of somehow. That had to be it.
He wasn't a troll. He was a human. He was merely overreacting due his strangely realistic dream. His name was Kyle, not Karkat. He was the younger one of two children of an average family.
This wasn't working.
Karkat was bend on shoving his believes and memories down his throat and damn, he was one stubborn motherfucker. Flashes of green light and the pictures of Karkat's world, of distant planets, fifteen certain friends and blood, seeped into his mind or maybe they had been there all along, slumbering until they seemed it fit to arise.
"Hey, I know it's Saturday and school is draining, but you shouldn't let yourself go like this!" The voice of a human woman ripped him out of his thoughts and while this person standing in the door frame with a disapproving look on her face was a stranger to him, his human counterpart recognized her as his mother.
"I already said I'm getting up!" The teenager threw the covers off of him and stalked past her towards the bathroom to assess his situation properly, human memory guiding him there. He gripped on the sink and leaned in close to get a good look at his reflection. His features were still the same; the same, slightly round face and the same old scowl and the same blood-shot eyes. The sclera was a sickly white instead of the alien/familiar golden yellow and his lips were no longer/never black, but a pink-ish color. He bared his teeth at his mirror image, white and blunt. Messy hair framed his dark face, completing the image.
All in all, he was different/the same as always, but not totally unrecognizable. He simply looked a bit like he caked his face with pink make-up and someone had removed his nubby horns.
A shower should clear his head.
Cold water splashed him in the face and ran down his body accompanied by shivers and shuddering breaths.
A few agonizing minutes later everything had cleared up a bit and he was now convinced, he knew, he was Karkat Vantas and this was what SGrub lead him to. A life as a human on earth. It only made sense; it was their session after all. His true self probably awakened when his human counterpart reached his exact age, the game taking this course to enable him to integrate into this new life easier.
These facts (ASSUMPTIONS, you moron!) established, Karkat felt triumphant for a few seconds, before he faltered. What was he supposed to do now?
For three years, his only goal had been completing and surviving the game. He barely ever thought of what he would do afterwards, the threat of Lord English and the extinction of his race way too imminent and real.
The angry mother was still waiting for him, so he decided to tackle that issue first. That was at least something to occupy him.
The next few weeks, the former troll continued Kyle's routines; going to school, spending Fridays with the douche bags he had referred to as friends at some point in the past when he was still asleep (past-him was an idiot apparently), getting into fights with his idiotic asslicking fuckass of a brother and helping his mother out with different chores.
And every day before he fell asleep, he stared at his ceiling, wondering about the others. He couldn't get them out of his head for more than minutes, their names and faces haunting him every waking second. What had happened to the ones who died before the end of the game? Were they reborn like the others? Did they all remember? Did they know who they really were?
And where were they?
Of course Karkat didn't miss them; they were a bunch of the most insufferable, despicable fucking think pan-amputated deranged assholes to ever waste oxygen! Who would miss people like them? It was just plain curiosity eating him up.
...And he might admit that his life was a little dull and strangely pointless without them around.
The restless teenager figured he would have to search for them, whether he wanted to or not. There was nothing such as Pesterchum or Trollian, and even if there were, was there any guarantee they would still be ectoBiologist, terminallyCapricious and everything?
He needed somewhere to start, a basis. A comrade to support him. His first choice would've been either Gamzee or Sollux, but those two could be anywhere, as it was the same case with the other fellow trolls. That only left the kids.
Karkat had wished this option could've been avoided, but those were the only people about whose whereabouts he had a clue. John was somewhere in Washington, however, he had no idea where the town in which he lived was. That Rose-girl was the furthest away, with maybe the exception of Jade who of course had to be a douchenozzle and live on some fucking island nobody knew.
That left Strider.
Dave. Fucking. Strider.
Of course, even now life fucked with him in the cruelest ways possible. It was as if he had been labeled with an irremovable, invisible-to-living beings'-eyes tag on his back reading "I AM AN ASSHOLE, KICK ME" on his hatching day. And life went ahead with it all too gladly.
Wallowing in self-pity wouldn't do him any good the SGrub-player grudgingly realized and tried to think of excuses to get to Houston, Texas. Of all humans it had to be Coolkid of course. The boy who just came and stole his almost-Matesprit away right in front of his face, the boy who believed dictionaries explained the expression irony with his name. Stupid Strider and his fucking shades.
Summer eventually came around and "Kyle" relished in the knowledge that for a blissful eternity, he wouldn't have to return to school. Humans sure were weird. Even without the hemospectrum, some people thought they were fucking royalty and treated others from above, treated them like the dirt beneath their 'cool' sneakers.
"I'M HOME" he hollered once he entered the house he learned to call home and immediately headed straight for the fridge to retrieve a bottle of water. It was simply too hot these days.
His female guardian stepped into the room, a smile on her freckled face. "Hey honey!" she greeted him giddily. The dark-haired teen rolled his eyes at her behavior and ignored her annoying cutesy-name she tortured him with. It reminded him of a boy with heterochromatic eyes and a lisp. "What is it?"
She leaned against the counter and informed him that she and his father saved up enough money to go on a trip during vacation and since she didn't know where to go yet, she now wanted to hear her younger son's suggestions.
Oh god. This was like the perfect opportunity, all up and drowned in miracle-sauce with a nice fat fate-cherry on top served on a silver plate, just beckoning him with its delicious heavenly goodness.
He seized it like an obese kid would seize the last chocolate-bar after days of sugar-deprivation and stuck in a room with other hungry people. He really was shameless, wasn't he.
His brother later slapped him on the head, complaining that Houston was probably the last place on earth he'd like to go, but Karkat just flipped him off, too satisfied with himself to care right now.
He should've taken into account that Houston was not a tiny town like the place he lived in.
Meeting Dave there would be a miracle and he wished he had listened to Gamzee all those-
it had only been two or three months. Two or three months since he saved the...well, saved reality itself. It was a startling observation and the gravity of it all returned at once, crashing him nearly and his mind swam from the combination of merciless heat and grave realizations.
His name was Karkat Vantas, he was known as Kyle Vargas, and he was currently stumbling down the streets of the maze labeled Houston like a drunkard who hadn't been sober for a week. Why couldn't humans be nocturnal creatures? It would make everything so much easier and less bright and less hot.
"You okay?" some random guy asked him, his words heavily coated in a southern accent. "Kyle" promptly fainted right in front of him.
When he regained consciousness, he found himself in a lying position and a sigh of relief escaped his lips as he felt cool air against his sweat-sleeked skin. Fuck, cool air? Wasn't he outside just moments ago and seconds away from a heat-stroke?
Karkat was most definitely on someone's couch in an air-conditioned apartment and the guy who probably brought him here straddled a chair and eyed him with an amused expression on his tanned face.
"About time you wake up, I was worried for a second there, dude! You can't just faint on me! Your luck that I brought you here to my apartment!" Despite his serious words, his tone was playful and only edged with concern. The ex-troll muttered a thanks and slouched forward to cradle his still pounding head in his hands. "What's your name, mysterious fainting stranger, if I may ask?"
"Kyle. Kyle Vargas. And who the fuck are you?" Great, they had been conversing for a few minutes and he already acted like a huge douche bag. The guy however didn't appear to be deterred by the snarky response and merely chuckled. "My name's Dean" Dean explained and got up, strolling over to a small fridge, retrieving two cans.
Karkat felt the beads of sweat forming on his forehead once more and he knew it had nothing to do with his temperature. The shock lasted only for a second and he accepted the offered Grape Faygo.
He really missed Gamzee now.
The two males chatted back and forth, though the alien's replies were mostly monosyllabic and vague. A knock interrupted their conversation. A grin broke out on Dean's face as he informed Karkat that he was having a cool friend over and that he just knew he'd get along with this friend.
From the entrance, "Kyle"'s human ears picked up voices and when he turned around to see who this "cool" dude was, when he froze. He now believed in miracles; the Faygo should've been a sign.
"'Sup."
Dave was no different in this second life from what he had been like before. Not a single strand of his platinum blonde hair was out of place, his ironic shades hid his eyes and his expression was perfectly blank. Cool.
This was probably the first and only time Karkat felt consumed by unadulterated happiness instead of burning rage at the sight of Strider.
But what if he didn't remember?
There was a large possibility that he had no recollections of the events of SBurb and so the excited troll/human licked his dry lips and forced himself to stay calm.
"Hi." An undramatic greeting, no signs of recognition.
His savior butted in. "Hey Dave, this is Kyle Vargas! Kyle, this guy here is my best bro Dave Strider!" he cheerfully announced and Karkat almost cringed at how much he reminded him of John, from the nerdy glasses to the slightly dorky personality. Maybe it had been Dave's subconscious guiding him when he elected Dean as a friend.
More useless chatter. Two hours passed and by now, the black-haired teenager was panicking on the inside. He slipped in subtle hints, certain keywords, to suggest coolkid he remembered, that he really was Karkat, but either the blonde wasn't catching on or he simply
couldn't
remember.
This was a disaster. He needed Dave to remember. HOW VERY FUCKING IRONIC. There he was, finally face-to-face with a survivor, a comrade in a battle to saving reality, and the guy couldn't even recall him or anything at all. Help was within grasp, but at the same time far out of reach, taunting him. Karkat had never hated irony as much as he did right then and there.
A poke to his ticklish side broke him out of his reverie. "I was asking if you'd like to come with us to this totally sweet party tonight, since you're new around here and everything!" A party? That was perhaps the last thing on his mind. But if it meant that he could stay close to another player, he was fully willing to attend to whatever goddamn party Dean wished to.
The insomniac felt as if his ears were bleeding from the music blaring from the various speakers erected in some places of the location and a dull aching spread through his skull. This was possibly not one of his wisest decisions, but alas, he had made much, much worse ones in the past.
The masses of sweating, dancing bodies combined with the colorful lighting and the horrendous noise falsely dubbed music made him feel even more out of place than usual and he watched sort of apathetically as a girl with long, flowing black hair dragged Dean away to dance with him.
"Kyle." The teen in question glanced at Strider, his face set in his standard-frown. "What?" Dave shrugged in that casual way that Karkat had always despised. "You're acting pretty weird like fuck, shit's really weird." Oh no, he was absolutely fine, just fucking peachy.
"I just need some fresh air or I'll fucking asphyxiate." "Just don't go and faint on us." "Fuck you."
The cranky male forced his way through the crowd and bumped right into a skinny girl whose elbows were much too sharp for his stomach's liking. He hissed at the pain, only to find another miracle unraveling.
Terezi still wore that toothy, slightly unnerving grin she used to and her face was still all sharp features. But he noticed right away that a pair of red glasses was a-missing and her eyes, a teal-ish color, weren't unfocused and unseeing. She looked nice, albeit a bit unfamiliar as a human.
"Hey, aren't you gonna apologize, hmmm?" She chuckled and he realized that he must've looked ridiculous, standing there like a pathetic moron, just gaping like a fish on land. "Fuck, if I were you I would stop throwing those fucking sharp elbows everywhere like a lunatic that's trying to perform some fucking tribal dance to worship the gods of their delusion" the troll snapped at the girl that once held his vascular pump in her hands and crushed it.
His words seemed to fuel her amusement and she continued to cackle in this painfully familiar manner that would make any psychopath pale in jealousy. Right now, she'd tell him how she remembered him. Right now, she'd tell him she hadn't forgotten their time together.
Right now-
"But if I stopped, I wouldn't meet such handsome guys, don't you think?" Her eyebrows disappeared behind her bangs and her crooked grin revealed impossibly pearly white teeth. Damn her and her flirtatious ways, "Kyle" growled to himself as he felt his heart going crazy within his chest despite the wave of disappointment that crashed over his head.
"Whatever. What the fuck do I care" he snarled and crossed his arms in front of his chest, beating himself up on the inside already about how he should stop being such a dick to everyone, especially someone he had been looking for desperately.
"Well, I care" she stated. "My name is Teresa by the way. Teresa Byron." A moment passed before he registered that she had introduced herself, apparently willing to deepen their acquaintanceship. "Kyle Vargas" he replied and awkwardly shifted his weight from one foot to another.
"Okay Kyle, let's see what you've got!"
His former (lasting) love caught him off guard when she grabbed his hands and suddenly pulled his body flush against hers and began dancing. The question whether Terezi always did this whenever she met handsome men was pushed out of his mind and he simply enjoyed being so close to her. Their body movements were in near-perfect sync and she playfully complimented him on being able to keep up with her, making him blush scarlet. He hated how she could reduce him to such a state with a simple compliment.
Time lost its value as he lost himself while dancing with her. After a while, "Teresa" dragged him to the bar to order drinks. The lighting there revealed the somehow... pleasant pinker-than-usual hue of her cheeks as she sipped her fruity-smelling red drink. His formerly mutant blood color suited her somehow. For the first time in months, Karkat felt perfectly at peace.
And then Dave happened.
He sauntered over to the pair, hands in his pockets and looking like he hadn't been stuck in an enclosed space with dozens of heated bodies for hours. Perfectly cool.
Terezi's grin stretched if possible further when he joined them. It was happening all over again.
It started out as light conversing, about the music and (much to the subject's annoyance) about "Kyle"'s lack of social skills. His cry of indignation had them cackling and smirking.
The Cancer watched as things grew progressively more personal and noticed with disdain how the blonde scooted closer and closer to her and how she actually listened to whatever shit Dave was spewing like his mouth had a bad case of diarrhea. They doodled stupid, purposely bad comics on napkins they found and soon it was as if Karkat wasn't even present and it was just them in their cool own little world.
It was exactly the same like it had been back during SGrub and the foul emotion called jealousy made him sick, so very sick and he felt as if his blood pusher suddenly pumped poison through his veins. Why did he have to see this all over again? IT WASN'T FAIR!
"Kyle!" She called out for him when they were about to depart. With a sigh he faced her, not able to stop himself from feeling hopeful all over again. She shoved a crumpled paper in his hands with a dragon on it and a phone number scrawled underneath. "Hehehe! We should do this again you know!"
And just like that she was gone. He punched in her number the next day, asking her to meet somewhere where the heat was bearable. She laughed at him and questioned how somebody who practically lived in the desert could be so sensitive to heat, yet agreed to meet anyway.
Three weeks passed all too fast for Karkat's liking and once he was back in the little town in Arizona he lived in, he caught himself staring at his cell phone and hoping she'd call. He was so motherfucking pathetic. How could he cling so much to a girl that didn't even know, could never comprehend how much she meant to him and didn't even remember.
Two months later his phone rung and when he picked up, the girl's scratchy voice assaulted his ears, announcing her new established Matespritship with Dave Strider. Kyle's father made a fuss when he found his son glued to the TV watching chick-flicks with the shattered remains of a once perfectly intact cell phone scattered on the couch cushion next to him.
Life felt so unreal, Karkat noticed one night while he was huddled up on the roof of his house, a tad bit intoxicated and hysterical laughter tore from his throat. All would've been better if he hadn't finished the game, if he had let John open the door at the end, because he should've known that everything he touched was doomed to end in failure.
The next time he stumbled over another player was some time in December in school. He had been introduced to his class as a new student.
He didn't recognize Tavros immediately. Maybe it was due to the absence of the fluffy Mohawk and the wheelchair, but he should've been prepared for that. Without those big-ass horns, there was no use for such a haircut and in this life, nobody had pushed his sorry ass down a cliff.
"I, I am Travis Martin!" he stuttered out and shyly waved the bored teenagers that made up the class. Travis Martin. Tavros Nitram. Only then it was that it clicked and all of a sudden that slightly child-like face with the big brown eyes triggered memories of a boy getting his legs sawed of right in front of his very fucking eyes.
The first few days, Karkat stayed in the background, instead observing the oblivious kid's behavior and another surge of jealousy overcame him when he noted how obnoxiously happy he seemed. In this world, there had never been a Vriska to tease and taunt and cripple him, nobody to trample on him until his confidence was shattered into pieces and no hemospectrum to pressure him. Sure, he still stuttered sometimes and was way too polite and a bit insecure...but it was nowhere near the way he had been during the game.
"Kyle" had to get into contact with "Travis" already; it was too much to take for him to have one of the others so close. A school assignment in Tavros' third week at his school served as a connection and Karkat made sure to play one of those awful rap CDs his brother had hidden somewhere in his stack when the boy came over to work on the assignment.
He had his head over his note book, glanced at the screen of his laptop and scribbled down various notes. From his peripheral vision however, he kept a close eye on the boy hosting Tavros' soul or whatever it was. The kid was swaying slightly to the beasts coming from Karkat's stereo, occasionally muttering reoccurring lines under his breath.
"Travis" looked like he had been caught killing kittens in his basement every Saturday when Karkat pointed it out to him. "S-Sorry, I just really like this kind of music, y'know...By the way, you never really struck me like the type to, uh, listen to this music genre!"
"I actually don't. But my best friend used to love that shit." The words flowed from his mouth before reason could hold them back and immediately, Tavros' interest and curiosity were piqued.
"Oh, really? What's he like?" Ha. Ha. Ha. If only the guy knew that of all people, he had been one of those closest to Gamzee.
"He was a fucking moron, always doing shit that wasn't good for him. Always poking his nose in other people's business and that fuckass had never heard of this really cool thing called personal space. But...I guess he was a pretty good friend, those things excluded.
You would've gotten along with him just motherfucking great."
An expression of glee crossed the former troll's face, before it died and was replaced with a sad one. "W-Why would've? ...Or is it too personal, because in that case, you don't have to tell me and-"
"Don't get your pink flowery panties in a twist, Martin. He moved away when we were thirteen, end of story." Instead of reacting to the jab, Tavros bit his bottom lip and eyed Karkat somewhat apologetic, even though he had nothing to do with this. Not really. The former mutant-blooded teen didn't notice the tears burning in the corners of his eyes.
After that, he found himself talking to Tavros more often. He told himself it was because it was of the game, like always, but deep down... being close to someone who had had the potential to fill a certain subjugglator's other red quadrant made him feel closer to Gamzee as well.
Because if only all that "killing your friends in a fit of rage and selling their blood as magic potions to oblivious girls" hadn't been, the juggalo-like troll had been the ideal moirail.
And years later, Kyle Vargas was still not entirely convinced whether he really was an alien, if not maybe all of this had been a product of his imagination. All of his being yearned for it to be delusion; he was twenty-three and had in fact found five of the fifteen he was searching for. Just the other day he had seen a gossip-show while going through channels lazily with Terezi and Dave occupying his couch, reporting on a successful fashion-designer who was known for her generous donations to charities. No doubt Kanaya.
Seven years. Seven years already and meager five people. So pathetic.
"Karkles, -beeep- Terezi to Karkles' think pan!" Bony hands squished his cheeks together, forcing his face into a comical fishy expression. From next to Terezi, Dave chuckled and promptly took a photo of it; the humiliated former troll retaliated by snatching his 'ironic' sunglasses away and launching into a rant riddled with profanities.
"Yeah, whatever" Coolkid brushed it off and downed the rest of his Faygo. "Shit, I still don't get why you drink this. Tastes like day-old piss" he commented and a flick of his wrist sent the empty can flying to the bin in the far corner of the room. Showoff. "Where's Nathalie by the way?"
"How the fuck should I know?" Karkat retorted, his mind drifting off to think about the short, energetic girl who he once knew by the name Nepeta Leijon. He came across her in some anime forum Terezi linked him to, where else.
The man's eyes returned to stare at the flickering screen of his crappy television airing some cartoon Dave insisted on watching ironically. With "Teresa" and him teaming up against the grumpy one of their trio, he guessed that tonight he'd have to live without "Hitch the Date Doctor", the human equivalent of a movie he used to enjoy. He couldn't even recall its name anymore.
Later Nepeta joined them and proudly showed him her customized T-shirt, proudly displaying the green sign of Leo, "to match yours, Tavros' and Terezi's! It's pawsibly my favorite shirt now!" Indeed, the three wore shirts with Cancer, Taurus and Libra respectively. Karkat had started the trend, as well as slowly integrating words from his old culture into the others' vocabulary, to at least hold on to something from their old world. To remind himself of what had been.
He couldn't explain why he clung so much to the past. Maybe it was because if he didn't have the past, he had nothing at all.
One by one, sleep claimed the three and the black-haired insomniac allowed himself to sigh in exhaustion. This immature bunch was worse than the invasion of the grubs. In many ways.
He took in their sleeping forms, the peaceful and content expressions on their faces (oh gog, he could be such a creeper). Nothing plagued their dreams, no horrorterrors, no dream bubbles, no traumatic fragments of memories. How he envied them.
He was a still a freak, even as a human, and never loathed his goddamn blood just as much as he did that moment.
His imagination conjured blurry images of people with eyes twinkling with mirth and sadistic grins etched on their faces, laughing at his misfortune. Har-fucking-har. 'Hope you're enjoying the fucking show, nooksuckers.'
Yes, he could practically hear their laughter ringing in his ears.
The three on the sofa the same and yet so different from back then. It just wasn't the same.
It was over. But not for him. Like always, he fell out of line.
(This was unfair.)
(So unfair.)
Homestuck is too inspirational.
Again, this idea has been driving me insane until I wrote it down against my will. I thought 'There are so many Post-SBurb/SGrub fanfictions. But what if Karkat were in fact the only one who can remember the game because of his mutant blood? It'd be pure torture for him!' and BAMM, inspiration hit me in the face. I really hope you enjoyed it and since this is also mostly a writing-practice, some constructive criticism is highly appreciated! :D