I'm going to apologize right now for the poor representation of self-harm in this story. I tried, but this is honestly my first time writing anything like this and I'm simply not very good at it. Still, I hope I captured some part of this-iany/i part of this-correctly.

I can only hope.

If you or a friend is ever discovered to be engaging in some sort of self-harming act-whether it be cutting, swallowing batteries, slamming the skull into a wall, etc.-please contact a parent/guardian, responsible authority figure, a therapist, or one of the many self-harm hotlines such as the Self Harm Hotline (1-800-DONT-CUT or 1-800-366-8288). Whatever is driving you or a friend to hurt your/themselves, please note that it isn't more important or you aren't less important than whatever is driving you. You matter, even if you feel as though you don't. Talk to your loved ones if you feel like they might be able to help, because they will do their best to guide you through this.

You didn't hurt yourself because you liked it or because it made you feel anything. Not at first.

You first began slicing and clawing and cutting into your own skin to watch your own filthy red blood trickle down your body—the same blood that made you cullable on the spot. It didn't make any sense, but you did it anyway, and hid the marks beneath sweaters and jeans, growing so used to the habit of covering up that you didn't even think about it anymore.

That was your mistake.

The first time John caught you also happened to be the first time you pailed. At the time, you were engaged in sloppy makeouts on the couch alchemized in your new universe, with John in your lap, squirming and warm and pink.

Sometimes you would let Egbert take the lead, especially when you were doing something particular affectionate together in order to make him more comfortable, despite your troll instincts screaming for domination. However, you wanted to dominate him the first time you pailed. You wanted it so much that it made you slightly rougher, slightly growlier in your noises, but it only seemed to excite your matesprit, thank gog.

You don't think you had ever ripped a garment so fiercely as John's poor T-shirt, flinging it, unwanted, across the block as you drew the tips of your claws over his rips and back, feeling him shudder against you.

"K-Kar—" he panted, flushed and beautiful and completely debauched as he tilted his head back, offering you his neck.

You attacked the proffered flesh without a second of hesitation, snarling victoriously at your newly conquered area.

Warm, soft hands slipped under your shirt, tingles rippling from the skin they touched. You hadn't realized being touched so modestly could turn you on so much, but it did, and you purred against his jugular to show it.

However, instead of shuddering again or moaning like he was supposed to—dammit, why did he always ruin your fun?—he pulled back with a frown, furrowing his eyebrows. His fingers tapped your lower back. "What's this?"

You groaned, annoyed at the lack of sexy actions going on. Gog fucking damn John's short attention span. "What?"

Instead of answering like a civilized person, of course, your human grabbed the hem of your sweater and pulled it up, bunching it up across your chest and under your arms.

"John, I swear to gog—" you started.

"Karkat . . . Why are you covered in scars?"

Shit. Shit, shit, fucking hellacious damn shit. He was not supposed to see those. No one was supposed to see those. Damn, why did past-you have to let John touch you under your clothes? Oh, right, because past, present, and future you are all lovesick morons.

"It's nothing," you grunt unconvincingly.

"It doesn't look like nothing. Karkat . . . These aren't from other trolls, right?" The human asked, looking at you with a mixture of concern and worry.

. . . What.

"You were an outcast on Alternia, weren't you?" John continued, probably seeing the confusion flit across your face. "Did the other trolls do this to you because of your blood color?"

What an asshole. He actually thought you were weak enough to have the shit beat out of you by other trolls.

Whatever. You couldn't stay mad when he was looking at you like that, the fucker.

"I don't really want to talk about it," you said softer than you meant to, cupping his squishy face in your hands and bringing him in to a sweet kiss.

You still planned to fill a pail with this idiot, even if he did think you were weak.

The second time he caught you, you were in a remade version of your old hive, alone (or so you thought).

You couldn't help but find yourself in the nutrition block, where crabdad used to prefer to lurk. You still weren't sure why you let him in at all—all of your friends kept their lusus outside, and you really should have done the same. But you didn't, you let him stay inside as much as he wanted (which was all day, every day) and pretty much let him do as he wanted.

You missed him. You missed his screeching, his chirps, your strife battles and the dead animal carcasses crabdad placed in front of your respite block from time to time. It was hard to be in a place so familiar without him.

Your old sickles were hanging on a peg nailed into the wall, recently cleaned and gleaming in the dim light of the room. When your eyes drifted over to them, tracing over the edges of the curved blades, you couldn't help but shuffle over, fingers brushing along the tip of a sickle.

It had been awhile since you had hurt yourself, or anyone else had hurt you. You hadn't even thought about it, at least not much. The simple fact of the matter was that you had always been with John since you're first pailing, and Egbert had a knack for keeping you busy making sure he didn't do something stupid and deadly.

But now, John was visiting Jade on her planet, leaving you all alone in your remade hive. Together with your blades.

It wasn't an addiction; you were positive you could stop if you wanted to, but once the thought was in your thinkpan, you were suddenly itching for a scratch. You wanted to feel the blade, and you longed to see your own blood running down your arm.

Your fingertips danced over the very tip of one of the sickles, hesitating for only a moment—you shouldn't, because John would notice, and you hated lying to him—but you wanted to, wanted it like Gamzee wanted his disgusting sopor—and then you pressed hard against the blade, hissing as it dug into and through tough layers of troll skin, crimson beading in the hole left behind, drooling over the sides of your pointer finger.

"Karkat?"

You clutched your hand to your chest, tensing, and slowly, slowly turned around to face your matesprit. At first, he looked stupidly happy to see you, like he did every time you left his sight and came back, and it made your blood pusher do strange things, as if no part of your body could quite do its job with John right there, taking up all your focus. However, then his eyes dropped down to your hand curled towards your chest, and his expression morphed into alarm.

"Oh fuck! Karkat, what happened?" He demanded, rushing forward with a gust of wind and taking your wounded hand in his.

You were tempted to resist him, to pull back and snarl defensively, but you were too shocked, too numb. He caught you again.

"It—uh, it was an accident," you answered ever-so-intelligently, watching him closely, looking for any sign of suspicion.

But of course, John Egbert didn't know the meaning of the word "suspicion" and so didn't question it. "Oh man, it's not very big but it looks kind of deep. Come on, I'll bet Kanaya or Rose will know what to do. Uh, um, here," he took off his shirt, and you readily admit to losing track of every single intelligent thought as soon as you saw all that bared, warm skin, right there and marked with the faint-but-healing traces of bite marks. You would have to fix that later. "We can wrap this around you hand to staunch the bleeding. Just stay still . . ."

Fuck. He wrapped you up before you could snap back, but you couldn't growl at him when he looked so worried, and about you no less. Gog, why are you such a terrible matesprit? You knew this would make him worry, and oh look! He's worried and now you feel like shit for hurting yourself like this.

And yet, there was still a third time. A third time for John to catch you because you suck.

You were in a meeting block your combined groups had built to have godly discussions in, and of course, every single meeting always descended into separate entities of anger and chaos between pairs of teenagers because you were surrounded by melodramatic sixteen-year-old with questionable IQ and in-built loyalties to only a certain few.

You hated when it happened, even with the knowledge that it would happen. Honestly considering, it really shouldn't have bothered you by this point, but it did. It did and it prevented you from coming up with solid plans and providing for your new universe as quickly and efficiently as you wanted to. And you hated it.

So once you realized that everyone but you was immersed in stupid arguments and some, like the Strider brothers, were already in the middle of a strife, you pushed up from your chair and left.

The meeting hall wasn't the only block you had built; all of you had chipped in to build a whole hive, almost, though as far as you knew no one had spent the night inside it yet.

Still, that meant there were other places to go, and you were so infuriated right now that all you wanted was to get away from the arguing idiots in the meeting area.

This just—gah! You hated hated hated when they got like this! How the fucking hell were you supposed to do your fucking job when those imbeciles refused to peacefully negotiate with each other for once in their gogdam lives?!

You couldn't stand it. It never failed to keep you up and night and make you tear your hair out and scream. Fucking lazy dumbasses.

Ugh. You wanted to rip your flesh and claw at your face with all this pent-up fucking frustration and it wasn't going away. And why would it? Because seriously, fuck those guys. Fuck them and the stupid lusii they rode in on. Fuck all of them and their quadrants and arguments and complete lack of a fucking attention span!

You slammed your head into the wall and pulled back, dizzy and snarling but feeling a smudge better. Fuck them. Your skull connected again with metal structure, head aching and thinkpan throbbing. Fuck all of them. Another hit to the damn dead center of your noggin.

For a second, you thought you heard someone gasp, but you were sure you misheard. Shit, how hard did you hit yourself?

"Karkat!"

Oh gog. Okay, you really must have damaged your thinkpan this time.

"Karkat, stop!"

You glanced over, leaning against the wall so you didn't fall over, and squinted at the blurry John running your way. Damn, you could even smell him. That's an impressive hallucination.

"Ohmigog," he panted when he reached you, and you were pretty sure he was looking at you, but it was hard to tell with the corridor swaying. "Oh my gog, what are you doing? Don't hurt yourself over something like this!" John was jumping up and down and throwing and tantrum now, but all you could do was blink his doppelganger away. "That's . . . That's dumb! You're dumb and beating yourself over everyone arguing is dumb so you need to stop!"

He grabbed your arm, tugging you down, closer to him. You felt his soft hands grasp either side of your face, saw a hint of clear big blues. "Don't do this again, ok? We'll work on other ways to get rid of your anger, but don't go off and hurt yourself again. Alright?"

You tried to nod, but it gave you a headache, so instead you rumbled out a, "Yes."

John continued to stare into your eyes for another minute, as if searching for something, before releasing your head and grabbing your hand. "Come on, Rose and Kanaya can patch you up again."

You let him lead you for a few minutes in silence, slowly coming out of your haze, and as you did, the dizziness faded away to be replaced by guilt.

"John," you said, licking your lips.

"Yeah?"

"The scars aren't from other trolls."

He paused, looked back at you over his shoulder with wide eyes. "What?"

You didn't like this, didn't like that disbelieving look on his face, but you pressed on. "I did them to myself."

"But why?" John exclaimed, turning his whole body back to look at you, gripping your hand so tightly it started to hurt.

You shrug one shoulder, feeling embarrassed. What was the right answer to that? Somehow, telling him you wanted to see yourself bleed, wanted to see the evidence of your freakishness, didn't seem quite right. It didn't seem enough.

"Karkat—" John made a funny noise in the back of his throat. "Look, I, I can't pretend to understand but—but I mean, I can try. I care about you, Kitkat. I don't want you to hide things or hurt yourself or—"

You cut him off with a hug, draping yourself over and around him and sinking into him, sighing. Gog, you pitied him. So much.

"I can't promise to stop, dickweed," you grumbled in his ear, ". . . But I guess I could try too. If, you know, you wanted me to."

"Of course I want you to! Is that even a question? Come on, move your butt! We are going to talk to Rose and Roxy about this right now!" John commanded, tugging on your arm.

"What? Why the hell would I talk to both Lalondes?"

"Because Rose told me once that self harm can be addicting! I don't really remember why, something about it working like drugs, I think? I don't know, but Roxy can help! She can give you advice or something!"

You fought the urge to facepalm. You were not addicted to hurting yourself. That was one of the stupidest things you'd ever heard—no, it was the stupidest thing you'd ever heard.

Damn John. Damn him and the way he could persuade you to do whatever he wanted with just a look. And damn Rose for agreeing that you had an addiction.