004.

[gloomyapoplectic]

Characters: AU!Kanaya Maryam and you!
Setting: Floor 12, Floor 14, Floor 15, or Floor 25.
Format: Starting action, will match!
Summary: Kanaya hasn't really left her room much since being killed with Equius. It's probably time to change that.
Warnings: Potential trauma related to world destruction and culling drones, probably language. Will edit for anything else!

Floor 12
[Space isn't exactly something Kanaya is unfamiliar with -- she lived on a stray space rock for a very long time, after all. Still, something about this floor has always kept her at bay. Something has always made her hasten her way to the staircase without sticking around to see exactly what this floor had in store for its visitors.

Today, she lingers too long on the sight of an asteroid belt. Not the Veil -- it's far too close to an unfamiliar planet to be what the refugees of her race called their very short-lived home. But still, it catches her eye. There were no drones in the Veil, at least. It was probably the closest thing she'd had to a home besides the spare recuperacoon in Vriska's hive, at least since she had become a fugitive.

She watches as a bright speck of light blooms from the planet rung by the asteroids. All of a sudden, everything seems to die before her eyes. Kanaya observes the stars going out, the planet going gray behind a shroud of smoke as the gases in its atmosphere react and combust.

She realizes that she is witnessing the destruction of a universe.

Despite the cold feeling in her chest telling her that she should walk away from this floor and never pay it any mind again, Kanaya stays. Watches as the projections show universe after universe being gutted and drained of life. And wonders, faintly, if that's anything like what the Scratch would have been like.]

Floor 14
[Romcoms. Who would have figured?

They're not her favorite thing to watch, but they remind her of...not really simpler times, as running from an empire was anything but simple, but a time when there was, at least, a status quo. She missed visiting everyone's hives sometimes. Even Feferi's. She'd liked Feferi before...

Kanaya pulls her legs up onto the couch and hugs them close to her torso with a sigh as the happy couple on-screen kisses. Maybe she should mess around with those video game consoles instead. Less chance of getting distracted that way.]

Floor 15
[She's been getting better at sewing. She was even able to make herself a shirt that didn't have a sign on it, which is laid out on the table next to her as a reference. Not that she's particularly ashamed of her sign, but she thought it would probably be a good idea to have something to wear that didn't need to have a color on it. Kanaya wasn't as scared of her blood color anymore, but it was best to have contingency plans for any case.

At current, she's trying to make a maroon dress in a similar style to what her skirt used to be, before it got so tattered. She's having a bit of trouble, though. She's not quite sure how the pieces are supposed to fit together.]

Floor 25
[Kanaya was no sun-dwelling jadeblood, but being on the run during the day constantly had given her a fairly tough husk. The bright, strange light of the meadow -- which was tame compared to the scorching Alternian sun -- almost felt calming, to a degree. The kind of light that would lull a nocturnal creature to sleep.

Despite her survival experience, which had been tailored to let her sleep at night and be up during the day for the most part, Kanaya found herself drifting in between sleep and waking in the depths of the meadow, sprawled amidst a field of wildflowers. It was nicer than the respiteblocks they were provided, that was for sure.]

Comments

[chronomancer]

I should go.

[Eridan's throat is dry and he has a crushing fear that the moment Kanaya isn't looking, Karkat is going to cull him. Given the fact he's still feeling the itch in his skin and the chilling sensation of another mind in his thinkpan? He's a little confident he's not overreacting. But. But better get it over and done with. Better do it somewhere no one has to look. Or know.]

If. If that's okay with you...?

[The question is ambiguously aimed, at either or both of them. And to be honest, Eridan doesn't really care about the answer, he just wants to abscond. Oh fuck, how does he even get himself in these messes? He's just told Kanaya that he doesn't go looking for trouble, trouble finds him without asking. And fuck, he just had to go and confirm it.]

[gloomyapoplectic]

[While she's never exactly considered the feeling of Karkat being in her mind as being pleasant, his intentions for her had never been malicious. She can't imagine a full-out assault with powers like that. And though she clearly has some talking to do with Eridan after this, she has this feeling he's not in the mood, and she has a moirail to attend to in the meantime. So, she gently dismisses him.]

You can go, Eridan.

[Following that, she looks to Karkat again, waiting for Eridan to be safely out of earshot before she says anything. The tinge of fear has subsided. She can't bring herself to be scared of Karkat when he's shutting her out. Confusion is still heavy, but there's also concern.

She doesn't want to lose him when she doesn't even know what she did wrong.]

[caliginous]

[Still, the boy who never shuts up has nothing to say. Why that is...well, that's anyone's guess. But he's looked away from Kanaya now and he's staring after Eridan knowingly.

He doesn't want him gone -- he just wants him to know his place, and to know what is in his reach...and what is out of it. When Eridan turns to leave, he feels his temper flare again, as well as a strange feeling of something dropping in his stomach.

Fuck. That had been the opposite of what he wanted, at least in the long term. He was supposed to be keeping them all together not forcibly driving them away.

God, he was so selfish -- one more fuckup to add to the list, and another tally mark on "Things That Could Get Him And All He Held Dear Brutally Murdered". Its impossible to see the change in his expression from a distance, but there is a very brief flinch in his eyes, covered up by the action of him turning sharply on his heel and walking away from both of them in favor of pacing around the room.

He can't remember the last time his emotions were so out of control, bleeding out from their carefully sealed envelope to make his hands clammy and to cause his vascular system to beat into overtime.]

[chronomancer]

[The moment Kanaya lets the words out, Eridan scrambles away. He has to go past Karkat to do so, but he doesn't care. He's running the moment his feet touch the stairs, scarf trailing after him messily. He's not even sure where he's going except that there's this... this feeling, this residue of Karkat inside his skull and it makes him ill to the tips of his horns. He doesn't stop running, even as he runs out of air, because if he stops he's liable to start gagging and throwing up.

Fuck, fuck, he's so fucked.]

[gloomyapoplectic]

[She's upset to let him go when he's so distraught, but it's Eridan, who probably shuts her out more than Karkat does at this point. And it's not like they're in a quadrant together. They're just friends. He needs his own time.

Kanaya stands once he's gone, stumbling after Karkat only to come upon him pacing. She doesn't want to come on too strongly -- because that just seems to result in her getting upset too -- and it's obvious she still has no idea what she's doing in regards to being a proper pale quadrant.

She'll try, though.] Karkat?

[caliginous]

[He stops on a dime when she calls him, looking back to catch her eyes briefly before looking away almost immediately, like he had done something wrong. Karkat feigns a stretching motion, pulling his hair when his claws finally reach his head while he sucks in a subtle deep breath and holds it.

Boy, he really fucked that one up.

But he has to relax -- get that fire under control again, and try to keep Kanaya from asking too many questions. It would just be better if Eridan forgot about everything tonight and they could all go on like nothing happened.

Except for that part where Eridan was flushed for his moirail. That could not be a thing also and he would be pretty happy.]

Sup.

[Its short, clipped -- though not in an angry way. In fact, he asks while he's still holding his breath, so it comes out a little strained.]

[gloomyapoplectic]

[After he stops pacing, she approaches him. The whole turn of events has her a bit shaken, still, but the moment of hesitation between her stopping behind him and her hugging him is minute at best. An improvement on being more confident with her boundaries, at least.

Of course, she has no idea what to say. If she did, she probably wouldn't have skipped straight to the hugging part. She's hoping something will occur to her in the time Karkat takes to process what's happening and then probably shrug her off or something.]

[caliginous]

[When she hugs him, it immediately becomes apparent that he's holding his breath. He's forced to let some of it go when she hugs him, but he stubbornly lets the other filter out on its own.]

I wasn't aiming to scare you.

[Its all he can think of to say right now. He doesn't even bother to shove her off once she's grabbed him. Karkat simply stares straight ahead of him, a bit blank and lost. His claws come up to scratch at his throat nervously.

He wants to say more, but the desire bleeds out of him when he realizes that he'll have to prompt Kanaya on what started the whole thing.]

[gloomyapoplectic]

I didn't think you were.

[Or she's pretty sure he could just as easily have seized control of her mind instead of Eridan's. Though considering how used to it she is, maybe it would have been a better approach to make Eridan the example.

It's a realization that hits her sluggishly, in stages. She trusts Karkat to muck around in her thinkpan. Not that she could stop him anyways, but he's never hurt her with it. Save the punching therapy, which in all fairness, was much-needed on both ends.

She's okay with the fact that a cerulean can wade around in the moldy recuperacoon that is her head. That should logically be a lot scarier of a thought than it is. And yet.]

I trust you.

[She tightens her grip on him a little. Maybe he doesn't realize it. It's not really something she's bothered to voice to him before. It's a start, hopefully.]

[caliginous]

[Karkat swallows his emotion down as he so often did to make room for other thoughts, masking his true expression in a rather carefully constructed veil. Eventually, he reaches up and wraps his arms around Kanaya to calm her without saying a word.

He knows he went overboard. Part of him doesn't care, and another part of him acknowledges how good it felt to teach someone else a lesson, even if it might not have been fully deserved.

But he didn't dislike Eridan, which was a good reason why he felt so shitty about it. Despite being the monumental failure he was at his given tasks, he had a pretty hard job in several different areas -- jobs that Karkat himself wasn't altogether unfamiliar with, though Feferi was much more dangerous than Kanaya. He knew what it was like to die over and over again since being in the Tower -- to watch everything around you fall apart and knowing that there's really nothing you can do about it.

He's still quiet, but his tension continues to bleed out of him as he tries to calm Kanaya down.]

Good.

[gloomyapoplectic]

[She wasn't exactly tense, but she relaxes a lot when Karkat returns the gesture. Even though it's gotten better, part of her is always worried he'll try to push her away. She doesn't really want to mess that up.

The mutant turns her face in towards his jacket, which she has quickly come to associate as one of the comfiest places to be, emotionally speaking. Even sleeping doesn't offer much respite here without sopor slime.

She faintly wonders if it'd be any better to try sleeping right where she is, which is ridiculous enough that she has to swallow down a laugh. She is pretty sure Karkat would laugh too if she voiced the thought, and while she wouldn't mind a lift in his mood, she's not sure if it's quite the time for joking yet.

So, she turns her head a little to keep her speech from becoming muffled, and asks quietly:] Would you like to go somewhere else?

[She'd suggest they watch a romcom, but that seems even more in poor taste than her other idea.]