630 Days, 10:32 Hours

Despite the fact that John was the greatest idiot there ever was, he was at least good with doing what he was told. Earth's pieces had more or less been returned to around the empty photoworld. Karkat had briefly been working on restoring parts of Alternia during that time, and he had at least a few patches that were looking back to where they had been before.

But he had stopped that for something else that needed to be dealt with. Half of the Earth pieces were still covered in dried blood. So, of course, it meant manhandling all of the fucking miniatures and wiping them down. Of course, there had been the problem of what to clean them with, but the answer was almost too obvious.

After all, it wasn't like John needed the god hood anymore. It had changed from its original blue to a damaged, disgusting brown, and the two had resorted to using it inside out for the most part. The troll had made sure that the kid's head was cleaned first though. The caked blood in his hair was disgusting.

So it was back to long, boring, repetitive work. The two boys would sit with the hood on their laps, cleaning off different parts and sorting the pieces as they went. John had been slowly getting better about sitting in silence, but for the most part still hummed or muttered.

Karkat sighed, dropping another cleaned piece onto the pile. It was bullcrap, doing all this. But he wasn't going to half ass John's world, not after what had happened.

Not that they had really talked about that. John didn't seem to want to touch on that, and Karkat didn't want to start arguments when there was no need to. It was pretty fucking upsetting on different gogdamn levels.

"I miss the walls," John noted absently, shifting on his seat. "It's so boring here now."

"No, really, this is boring?" Karkat snapped, grabbing another piece. "What a shock!"

John rolled his eyes. "Karkat, you know what I meant. I miss those drawings."

Karkat paused for a moment. Knowing John, that was some kind of vague lead up into talking about their dead friends. He chipped at the blood laden miniature in his hand, giving it a rub against the hood. A lull of silence filled the air.

The idiot cleared his throat. "You know, that's one of the things I'm scared of, going back."

"Boredom?"

"Forgetting everyone."

Yeah, there it was. Predictable. Karkat gave a sigh, looking over his friend. John was taller, his face was a bit thinner, and his hair even messier. A lot had changed, and they had discussed this issue many times before. But if it weighed on the kid that much, maybe Karkat would cave a bit and agree with him.

"I can kind of agree with you," Karkat muttered. He looked away, but could sense John's surprise. It wasn't what Karkat liked talking about, since it was depressing and the troll had to keep his shit together.

"Like, what if they're saying stuff and I don't remember anymore? I don't even know if I can remember what we did in the game anymore," John said softly, still cleaning the pieces. At least they could work and talk then.

"Then just explain to them you spent over two fucking Earth years fixing their planet, and they better respect you for it," Karkat snapped. Not like he'd get much respect for it heading back to Alternia. But he knew those idiotic kids and they'd understand why John was a bit weird in the head. Really, sometimes the troll wondered what John was worried about.

"I guess I just don't want to be...isolated."

"Yeah, well, you'll have me, you stupid shit, so you won't be. I'm not letting you get away with ditching me to suffer."

That got a laugh out of John. Good. Neither of them were really laughing or amused anymore, especially due to having to completely redo what they had already finished. No, Karkat shook his head. Now wasn't the time to get mad. It was the time to get John to keep himself together.

Because, after all, the troll knew they needed each other. It was a stupid codependence, but after this long, it seemed wrong to consider what would happen if they were split up. There wasn't going to be any other person who could share this with them, after all.

"So, we'll be with our friends and somehow still talk to each other?" John was asking.

"Sure. We need some kind of stupid optimism, might as well be about our friends."

"I never really expected you to talk about stuff like this, Karkat. Well, I did, but I thought it would be a lot more work."

The troll turned. John was watching him carefully, an interested look across his face. Well, maybe Karkat had been an idiot for too long. Maybe he just wanted to have some hope after the game fucked them over.

Maybe he was just being a better friend as well as a leader.

No, that was stupid. John was the friend leader, Karkat was just the idiot. The forceful slavedriver to John's fucking useless daydreaming, picture drawing, friend loving self.

"Get back to work, stop staring at me, you useless shithead," he muttered, shoving John's arm. The boy laughed again, shoving the troll back. It slowly degraded into a childish fight of pelting pieces of Earth at each other, that later Karkat knew he would deny happening.

Shit happened in the game, but maybe there was some reason to keep going. It was better than being alone. It wasn't as good as going home, but there was still worse shit that could happen. So maybe they'd just remember their friends and try and keep things together until they got home.

It seemed they'd be the ones who were probably unrecognizable when they got back, appreciated or not for their efforts. But that was a long way off, and the Earth did need cleaning. But maybe there was time to teach John not to mess with his fucking leader after all.

Karkat readied another handful of planets to lob at the boy.