Eleven more minutes had passed. They were probably some of the longest minutes in Karkat's life... definitely the longest since Lord English was taken down. He was feeling like a wreck. Everybody else was silent, now that the situation was largely over: people had been shouting over each other, going on about commands and orders and general exclamations and "Don't you die on me!"s for the first nine minutes or so. They had done their best, in the midst of the panic, and now the field had calmed down again.

Terezi was now stable, with partially green-stained bandages over her torso and face, sleeping what was hopefully a dreamless sleep. She was expected to make a full recovery, in time, apart from the hand, which, now that Equius was gone, no one really knew how to fix. Rose was looking over her, along with Kanaya.

Jade, though... she had not been so fortunate. Despite the best attempts of everyone helping her, she drowned in her own blood during the first three minutes, and passed away. Mostly everybody else was gathered around her body now. Dave was sitting there and looking moody. John was crying openly, taking off his glasses so that he could wipe his eyes.

There was something large stuck in Karkat's throat. He found it hard to breathe. This entire thing had been just... fuck. How could he have seen it coming? How could any of them? It had all started so we-
Someone caught him by the sleeve and pulled him up. It was Dave. But as he glanced over, he saw that Dave was still there, next to Jade's body... oh.
"What the FUCK is wrong with you?", he screamed. He had lost his cool.
"Fuck, what?"
"You had to provoke her! You made he do this!"
"What, you mean I'm responsible? Are you fucking crazy, I didn't ask her to do this!" That was a lie: he did feel responsible, but fuck if he would admit it to this asshole.
"Well you're the one who started it by punching ME for no fucking reason!"
"No reason? You were the one about to-"
"Guys, stop!"

The only reason they did was the strong blast of wind that threw Dave away from Karkat. Its source, John, had his arm reached towards them: he was no longer crying, though his face was still wet (the rain didn't help either) and he sniffled. "T-this isn't helping."
Dave consented, and though he got up from the ground, he did not attack Karkat anymore. He realized that he too was crying, behind his sunglasses, trying to hide it.

No one else said or did anything. No one bothered with the rain, though John or Rose could certainly have stopped it. Blood, and tears, washed away along with the water. The consorts were all mourning silently nearby. The exiles had gone back to Earth: they had a long journey ahead of them. The rest stayed: none seemed to be able to figure out where to go, or gather the strength to do so.

"We should...", Rose piped in, and swallowed: it was enough time for everyone else to turn their heads towards her. She continued: "We should go and find Nepeta. I don't... I don't think she tried to kill anyone..."
"She definitely tried Terezi," both Daves interrupted bitterly.
"Well, all right, but... I think it was just a temporary thing... like Karkat's sudden outburst. I doubt she would want to try it again... probably. And she should still know about Jade."
"I'll go," Karkat responded without hesitation, and stood up.
"I'm going with you," Dave said.
"Oh no no no, fuck you don't," Karkat said, perhaps a bit more harshly than he first meant.
"What?"

"I mean... look, I think it's the best if it's just me. I don't think she'll attack me. No one else should come, that might be a mess. Especially you, Dave. Seriously, you'd just..."
"What if I promise I wouldn't attack her right away?"
Karkat rolled his eyes. "We've already got two completely irrational and unexpected fuck-ups for the last half an hour, let's not add even the possibility of a third one. All right?"
Dave said nothing. "All right, so...", John said, "you'll bring her back, and what then...?"
"Fuck if I know. Get to the bottom of things?"

As Karkat left to the rough general direction Nepeta had gone to, the storm was directly on top of them. The rain was as if someone had poured it at them from a bucket, some parasols were blown away by the wind, and thunder struck at the exact same second the lightning flashed. It was not very encouraging.

Goddammit. It had not been a fun night in the end, after all.

There was a thick forest right outside the clearing, where Nepeta had run. Karkat could not see shit in front of him, he was cold and wet, constantly slapped by branches and tripping and whatever... should have at least brought an umbrella, but no, he never thought things through, that's why he was here.

He should have let her know from the beginning. It was all his fault. He had never wanted to hurt anyone.

"Nepeta!", he called on the top of his voice, but could barely make it heard over the rain and thunder, so it was futile. He could barely hear it himself, let alone any possible response. He did, however, find something else: stuck on a low tree branch, battered by the winds, was a large piece of light green silk: a piece of Nepeta's robe. She must have discarded it as she went through the woods. He shruddered: that thing was never particularly warm to begin with, and now she was wearing even less of it.

He tripped into a branch again, or possibly just his own feet, and failing to regain his balance, rolled downhill in a pile of loud, cursing, and seriously annoyed troll, before being stopped by something big, warm, and soft. "Buh?" He turned over to examine it. It appeared to be a brown human animal, large and very much dead. Bleeding profusely from some stab-wounds. Karkat grew worried when he saw some green on the body, but then realized that it was not her blood, but rather tears. ...Which really was not much better, now that he thought about it.

He called her again, for no results, and moved on... almost falling down the cliff, when he could not see it in time. He gave out another vast expletive and spent several seconds trying to regain his balance, applying his sickle on a tree for support. Several little pebbles and rocks fell down instead. As he got himself back up and on firm ground, though, he saw something on the other side of the gorge: even through the rain, it was clearly a living being, a troll...

Nepeta.

"Nepeta!" His throat ached from all the shouting, and yet she still did not seem to hear him. He went to the left, right next to the fall, to try and catch her attention and find a good place for crossing. The best he could find, after fifteen minutes, was a slightly less steep bit of a cliff that he could use for climbing down, then back up again. The entire time, Nepeta either did not notice him, or pretended not to.

He finally managed to climb up and reach the spot she was sitting at. She was looking beyond the cliffside into the forest, knees pulled against her chin and hands wrapped around them, and ignored him even when he sat next to her and blurted out another apology. "I-I really didn't... it was just... fuck it all just came out of me and..."

No answer. Her expression was stone, but judging from the large amounts of bright green on her face, she had recently been bawling her eyes out. Her hair was a mess again. Most distressingly, her dress was in tatters, having lost both the hem and the sleeves, exposing her arms and legs to the elements. "Shit, that can't be healthy..." Karkat took off his jacket, little help as that might have been, and forced it on her shoulders. He was rewarded with a small but significant reaction: a sniffle.

"K-karkat...?"
"Yeah?" He held her shoulders tight. She was trembling.
"How's... how's Terezi?"
He sighed, and took his time to respond. "She'll be fine... other than her arm. That's pretty much gone."
"How about you? Jade? I hurt you too..."
"I..." Karkat winced. He had barely noticed his injury during the chase, despite having patched it up only very lightly before. "I'm fine... just a flesh wound. Jade..." His voice broke. Nepeta bit into what was left of her robe, tears flowing from her eyes again.

"I-I'm so sorry... I didn't mean to-..."
"What? No. Don't apologise. I was the one wh-"
"You're not who stabbed Terezi!", she snapped angrily, looking directly at him. "Not the one that tore her arm off. You didn't... you didn't kill Jade!" She sniffled again, and bit her lower lip. "S-she was my friend... and I..."
"I should've told you earlier."
"It's still not an excuse."
"You have stopped making pu-"
"Does this look like the fucking place for cat puns?"

It was cold there, and wet. Neither of them were protected at all. Karkat held Nepeta close to him, burying her head to his chest, both for warmth and comfort. "We should go somewhere... find shelter..."
"The game... Scrub..."
"What of it? What's it got to do with this shit?"
She was crying again. "I-it was trying to make us all grow up, right? So that we c-could all become gods and rule over our universe...?"
Karkat nodded. "Yes."
"I think... I think this was what it was trying to do for me..."
"What, make you kill your friends?"
"No! I mean... I was always this shy girl... timid... no friends. But I had my wall full of love and... and a person I really, really, really cared about, but... but was too scared or shy or whatever to do anything about it... living in my dreams and fantasizing and w-whatnot... so, so this game, it tried to make me act on it, instead of just dreaming about it, and..."

"Nepeta..."
"Well I did exactly that, right?" She wept so hard it made her difficult to understand, her nose leaking and forcing her to sniffle many times, trembling in his arms. "I went and pursued my love and look what happened! I killed a friend, maimed another, and didn't even... d-didn't even..."
Karkat said nothing.
"Y-you're going back to Terezi... aren't you...?"
He still said nothing.
"You s-said you didn't like me... but you liked her... so..."
"I'm so sorry..." He squeezed her as close as he physically could. "I'm sorry. I just wish I didn't need to hurt anyone..."
She shook her head, pulling away from him. "It's okay... you didn't hurt anyone... it was just me. All me."

He tried to pull her back, but she resisted. "Come on. The others are waiting for you. You've still got friends."
Her claws extended again. "You can go back. Tell them I wouldn't come." It suddenly occurred to Karkat just how close her right claw was to her left wrist.
He lunged forward and pulled her hands away from each other. "Oh no! Fuck! No no no no no no! Don't even think about it! Never!"
Nepeta tried to pull her hands away from him, but he would not let them go. "Why? What've I got left? Equius is dead, and you won't be with me, so..."
"No," he repeated sternly. "I won't have anyone else die. I've lost too many already. Not another. You've got people that care about you: I care about you!"
"B-but not the way I c-"
"That doesn't matter shit! The point is, I won't let you do this!"

She sniffled again, but stopped resisting, and her claws went back in again. And Karkat smiled.

He did not smile often at all, so it was all it needed to genuinely startle Nepeta, and she no longer resisted when he pulled her into another hug. "It's okay, Nepeta. No one's blaming you. We'll go back and we'll do things right, okay?"
"I... I don't think I can..."
"You can."
"It hurts..."
"That's okay. It hurts me too. It'll stop soon."
She sniffled. "W-why won't you just let me die...?"
"You don't want to hurt me, right?", he mumbled.
"Y-yeah?"
"You dying would hurt me."
She had no response for that.
"We're through with that shit. God fuck, I'd rather die than let any of you die anymore..."

She was trembling again, more heavily than ever. "K-karkitty...?"
"Nepeta?"
There was a slide of metal against metal, then metal against flesh. And Karkat Vantas found that his words right now had been very poorly chosen. Two sets of claws, six in total, went right through his chest and out from the other side, making it difficult to breathe and bringing the taste of iron into his mouth. It suddenly felt even more cold, though he could not feel the rain anymore.

Her horrified face, gaping mouth and eyes full of tears, covered his vision as it faded away...

He threw up some blood on her, and then he was gone, leaving a large amount of lifeless flesh hanging from her claws, herself trembling, terrified, and forever traumatized. "K-karkat... Karkitty... no... I'm s-sorry..." The claws retracted again and she pulled his body, swiftly growing cold, into a hug. "I'm so sorry...!"

honk

She wept next to his body for a good while, his blood in her hands and all over her dress, apologising profusely all the while though she knew he could not hear her. No one else was coming for her anymore. No one else would miss her, or love her.

There was only one thing left for her to do.

HONK

One last time, her claws extended. Well, this entire day had been full of some profoundly stupid things to do... one more would not weigh much anymore, not after all the other deeds done. Not after all the blood spilled. And so, Nepeta turned her claws towards one last target, and barely winced as they cut into her.

honk

As her wrists bled to the ground, she noticed how the rain seemed to go away, as did the thunder... it was cold and dark now, as well as silent - or almost entirely silent anyway, apart from that blasted honking that was echoed here along with the rain... she was sitting on a cold metal ground now, and though there was a body next to her, it was a different one.

What kind of a lame power was Heart, anyway? What could it ever do?

It could show her the feelings in the future, where the hearts blew, and what emotions decided for people. It showed her much, but none that she would have wished to experience.

HONK

Nepeta Leijon did not abscond. She accepted her fate without trying to flee: it was so very much less painful this way.