-11-

Lies

"W-w-w-what-t?!" I ask, smiling nervously. I look at the rag she's holding; it's dripping blood. "U-u-um that's from…" Think, Tavros! Um, what would you do- wait! The nose bleed you fibbed about! "It's from my nose bleed from earlier! I was gushing everywhere so Sollux and Karkat helped me clean it up!"

She eyeballs me. "You're acting strange, Tavros. Are you really not feeling good?"

"Morning…." Karkat says, stretching and slumping through the kitchen. He looks at me and I avert my eyes to the rag. His eyes widen a little. "M-Mrs. Nitram! How are you, my you look like quite a fox!"

I punch him in the arm. My mother blushed and tightened her ponytail.

"I'm sorry for my appearance. I was driving all night and I didn't get a wink of sleep."

"Oh, you look like a beautiful woman in the morning~." Karkat says in a soothing tone. My god, it was so weird seeing him like this- all nice and stuff…

"Mom, Karkat and I need to talk about school stuff."

"Okay~, have fun!"

We exit.

"You fucker!" he hisses, whapping me on the back of the head. I cringe.

"Ow, what!?"

"You fucking left the towel in plain view!"

"I made up a damn good story!" I glance to Vriska, who was still asleep on the couch.

"Are you going to seriously cover this up for her?" I noticed him leaning on that word.

I turn to him. "Karkat, I love her."

"You barely know her. I know her better than you, dude."

"Prove it."

"When Vriska was about ten years old, we had the same class. Someone called her a freak because of her darker eye and she shoved a pencil through their eye, blinding them."

"I don't believe you…"

"Why do you think her eye is like that?"

"A birth defect, maybe?"

"Wrong."

He drags me to my bedroom and shuts the door. "She's like that, because she deserved it."

I clenched my fist. "Don't say that, she doesn't deserve any of this!"

Karkat furrowed his brow. "You've known her for- what, almost three days?" he puts a hand on my shoulder. "I don't think it was in self-defense…"

"Of course it was. He was coming at her with a bat!"

"Tavros," he sighs, "Jayson didn't have any weapons on him or around him when we moved the body. She striped him clean of his weapons to claim self-defense. She's a walking, talking lie."

I didn't want to believe this… had she had a violent history like Karkat's saying? Or maybe he's just saying all this so he can have her.

"You're lying, Karkat."

"What's he lying about?" I look behind me to see Vriska standing in the door way.

I thought I saw—for the slightest moment—a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.