Chapter Text
He’s nervous as he unlocks the door. The last time he was here – was it only a week and a half ago? Was that all? He knows better than anyone that it doesn’t take much time at all for lives to change, but still … it’s been a long time since his life changed that rapidly. Since everything shifted so quickly.
A bag thumps to the ground next to him as Sollux grabs his hand. “Okay?” Dave asks, a little further behind. They’re moving in with Karkat, for the time being. They’re lugging too many bags between them, but they wouldn’t let Karkat help. The doctors still want him to be careful of his stiches, and he’s hasn’t moved around much lately. Best to ease back into things.
“Yeah,” he says, but he has to swallow after because his throat is dryer than he thought. Shaking his head a little, hoping to shake off the watchful stares behind him, he roughly shoves the key into the door. The key turns easily, and the door swings open to slam against the wall.
He’s not okay.
It all looks the same.
So much has changed.
Hasn’t it?
His friends came here and cleaned it all up, he knows that. He wonders if he even has a bed anymore. He wonders if all his pillows had to be thrown out, if he’ll have to buy new ones. It’s not that money is a problem, it’s that some of those pillows had been given to him over the years. He remembers one Kanaya made him for Christmas one year. He doesn’t remember if it was out of the way of the blood. He doesn’t know if he ruined it.
“KK?” Sollux’s voice is small and concerned. Karkat is just standing in the doorway, looking scared to move. Karkat is worrying him, this whole situation is worrying him. He and Dave didn’t want Karkat coming back here, not yet, maybe not ever.
But Rose had said Karkat needed stability. He needed a safe base. If everything changed rapidly, there was a chance he could fall back into bad habits. Not that that was exactly the right phrase, because he wasn’t exactly out of those bad habits yet. But Rose had said that starting completely over would be unstable and unlikely to last long. Karkat needed to build on what he had before, needed to create new habits out of old, needed to learn to live the way he did before, but better.
Dave and Sollux understood, but it was hard to remember all the logical arguments when Karkat looked so … lost.
So distant.
Karkat is walking through ghosts. He doesn’t remember being taken from here, he doesn’t remember leaving. He was unconscious by then. The last time he walked through this door, he wasn’t in turmoil. Not like now. Then … then he was calm. Collected. Certain that this is what he needed to do, more than anything, this was the right path. Certain that he had found the way. Set. Determined.
He follow’s his past self’s path. He sets his keys down on the table. He kicks off his shoes and walks slowly down the hallway. He reaches his door.
He really doesn’t want to open it, but he’s started retracing what happened, he can’t stop now. He opens the door slowly.
He’s looking for his sickles, because that is what he grabbed next, but of course they’ve been removed. He wonders if they’ve been thrown out. Or melted down. He wonders if he still has knives in his kitchen, or if all that’s left is plastic cutlery.
He wonders how much really has changed, just below the surface.
He wonders which he’d prefer. Change, or no change? The proof that his death has a surprisingly small influence on the world around him, or the fact that his entire world will never be the same again? There was a comfort in the sadness, in the despair. There was a stability there. After all, what does he know better than self-hatred? What does he know better than depression? Does he know anything else at all?
He turns to where the bed used to be.
His eyes begin to water.
It’s got to be a new mattress, absolutely has to be. No way that survived. But it’s also a new quilt, clearly made by Kanaya, with his symbol on it. And hers on the other side, if the turned down corner is anything to go by. And a new knitted throw, that has to be from Rose, though god only knows how she made it so fast, with everyone else’s symobls, even hers and John’s and Dave’s and Jade’s. And stuffed animals lean up against the pillows, a bee (Sollux for sure), a spider (goddamnit Vriska), a white, fluffy dog (Jade’s, he’s seen it before, she gave him one of hers), and oh god there’s that pillow Kanaya made him years ago and he doesn’t know if it was never damaged or if she saved it, repaired any damage that was done, and god, he loves them all so much.
And now he’s crying and Dave and Sollux are just standing there in the doorway, unsure of what to do, because Karkat’s only taken one step into his room and he’s sobbing silently and neither of them know if comfort would help or hurt in this moment and one wrong move now could change their entire future.
And Karkat is just so grateful for all these wonderful people, especially these two idiots behind him that he’s just struck dumb by it. He loves them all and for some mad, incomprehensible reason they seem to love him too, and he can’t believe it.
And everything has changed, but nothing has, because they loved him before too, he knows this now, maybe not in the same way, but they showed it a million different ways and he never saw them clearly before. He couldn’t see clearly, he still can’t, but even as his vision is blurred by tears, he knows that it’s really just clearing up, and one day he’ll be able to see everything the way it is, the way it really is. And he’ll still doubt and worry and fuss and hate, because that is who he is, but for the first time in this life, he knows that they love him, the real him, not the him he put up in front of them, because they saw through that somehow. They saw past the walls he put up to protect them, maybe not to the sadness within, but to the person he is at his core. They saw that and they love him anyway, and even though he won’t always believe that, he knows it now, and that can never be taken from him. Even on his darkest days, even on their darkest days, because he knows there will be more dark days, there always are, he will always know they love him. He will never lose that.
He gropes behind him vaguely and almost instantly their hands are in his. And he smiles this watery, beautiful smile, and leads them to the bed. He sits them down and then grabs his laptop.
“Whatcha doin’, Karkat?” Dave’s trying too hard to be casual and Karkat knows that he’s worrying them but he can’t talk right now. He could open his mouth but nothing would come out, no sounds, nothing at all, his voice has been stolen by feelings that can never be given voice. On another day he might have tried, might have stumbled over words, but today he just kisses Dave’s temple before he curls up between them, laptop on his lap, already loading up the next episode of whatever they were watching on Netflix yesterday. Sollux’s hand immediately winds its way around his again, and Karkat brings their entwined hands up and presses his lips against the back of Sollux’s. And then they’re all fighting back tears, because it’s the three of them curled up in the spot where not two weeks ago Karkat was dying, and now they’re holding hands and watching How I Met Your Mother, and so much has changed and so little has as well, and they’re not sure how to deal with it. They’re not sure any of this is going to work out, they’re not sure they’re not just going to crash and burn. Sometimes it feels like just a week and a half, the most emotional week and a half of their lives, is too little time for them to already be feeling this way. And sometimes they feel the vastness of that time stretching all around them, the long hours of it, the emotions that aged them years and years in a week and a half. And god knows they still have a million and one obstacles to fight their way around. Karkat doesn’t know if Dave and Sollux will stick around once they realize how bad it really is, once he retreats to old habits, old issues. Sollux doesn’t know if he’ll even be able to provide Karkat with the support that he needs, if one of Sollux’s own attacks won’t be triggered, if Sollux will end up hurting more than helping, if Dave really will end up punching him out for being a shitdick one day. Dave doesn’t know if he will be able to resist trying to remember, if he will be able to deal with never being the Dave Karkat really wants, or if maybe one day he will be that Dave, if he can stay strong when Sollux needs help too, or if he’ll be able to accept help when he’s the one who needs it. It’s a crazy, wild leap of faith they’re taking here, despite all reassurances that they’re taking it slow. And it could end so, so badly.
And they’re so, so scared.
But when Dave realizes Rose put a smupett on the bed and chucks it across to room to uproarious laughter from Sollux and a wordless, angry noise from Karkat for almost knocking the computer to the ground, when Dave apologizes by making popcorn, when he re-enters the room to see Karkat and Sollux wrapped up in Rose’s throw, only to pester them until they share it with him too (which they were planning on doing until he started whining, the idiot), when the three of them are wrapped up snug in a blanket meant for one, laughing and throwing popcorn at one another and trying to catch it in their mouths, when the tear tracks are gone from their faces, these doubts fall to the wayside.
Because in the end, what they need is each other. Each other’s love and support, and they are lucky enough to have it. And nothing is final yet and it has been a week and a half and everything has changed, but somehow they have managed to find the good in it, and they have managed to find each other.
Nothing is quite resolved, and this is in no way the end for them. At no time in any of their many lives has the path before them been smooth. But, then again, the path is rarely smooth for anyone. And everyone has a shot at happiness. And, this time, they’re pretty damn close to it.
It’s not a happily ever after. It’ll never be exactly that. Not with what they’ve lived through. Not with what they have to face ahead of them. Recovery is bumpy and full of back steps and retreats and pit falls.
But people make it there. With support, with understanding, with hard work, and with just a little bit of love, people make it to where they need to go.
And, together, they’ll make it. Someday.
For now, they’ll cuddle up on a new bed full of the physical embodiment of their and their friends’ love, watching a silly show, eating popcorn, and loving each other.