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edenfallingSummary: After the revolution, Karkat is assigned to a special forces training team with Terezi Pyrope and Dave Strider. He'd never admit it, but they might be the least bad of his possible options. (They might even agree.) [3,400 words]
Note: There's a reason I call these three 'Team Damaged Goods,' and it's not because they had idyllic childhoods. Terezi's past is explained in Narutostuck: Set with Stars, but Dave and Karkat are equally screwed up in their own ways: Dave because he has what could be a first-generation kekkai genkai related to time manipulation and was thus the subject of intense experimentation, and Karkat because he's the genetic double of the Sufferer and was thus used as a combination of hostage and indoctrinated propaganda piece. Nothing terrible happens to anyone during this fic, but Karkat does think about their pasts and there's a brief description of Terezi's ruined eyes and what happened to them.
I don't think anything in this story is worse than the canonical darkness in either Homestuck or Naruto, but you are the best judge of your own boundaries. :-)
[ETA: The ever-so-slightly revised final version is now up on AO3!]
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Narutostuck: Damaged Goods
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Officially speaking, the revolution ended when the Sufferer and Lionclaw led their soldiers into the Uchuukage's compound and discovered that the Lady of Space, her enforcer, and several of their most notorious supporters had fled through a secret tunnel rather than stay to face justice. Unofficially, fighting raged on through Hidden Time and the surrounding districts for another three weeks and even the Sufferer's investiture as Lord of Space and Lionclaw's election as Uchuukage didn't pacify large regions of the country. It wasn't like the revolutionaries didn't still need every sane and able-bodied soldier they could lay their hands on -- and Karkat was cynical enough to know how far the definition of 'sane and able-bodied' could be pushed in a pinch.
He'd pushed it before, after all. Even combat medics didn't generally recommend heading out to the front lines only a week after breaking out from two sweeps of confinement with intermittent psychological conditioning as a garnish, but Karkat had had things to prove to the rebels, his erstwhile hosts, and himself and sitting around doing even more fuck-all nothing hadn't been on the agenda.
He was, to put it mildly, surprised when he was recalled to Kouin proper and told that as a sub-adult he was going to be stuck on a three-person training team for the foreseeable future. And no, training teamth were not allowed in combat. No, not even if they'd been fighting for monthth and could kill the troll thtaffing the dethk at general headquarterth in half a thecond. No, not even if they ran off and changed their nameth becauthe then they'd be detherterth, you pithbrain, so thit down, shut up, and follow orderth unleth you want to get cashiered out of the army and pothibly branded a reactionary element. Douchewaffle.
In retrospect, this was not the best way to meet Sollux Captor. Karkat took vindictive pleasure in pointing out to a human slightly higher on the authority ladder that Sollux himself was a sub-adult and therefore logically ought to also be in training rather than handing out orders. Fortunately for both of them, their specialties were too different for them to end up on the same team.
Unfortunately, Karkat still ended up paired with a douchewaffle.
There were far too many kids who'd tasted a bit of war to put all of them into training teams. For one thing, yanking several hundred full adults out of the army and ordering them to spend the next couple years wiping snot dribbles from the noses of the bedwetting assholes that passed as Karkat's age-mates would be like the revolution lying down on its metaphorical back, spreading its arms, tipping back its chin, and batting big seductive eyes at the Condesce until she sauntered over and deemed the sacrifice acceptable. Not even the Sufferer was that much of an idealistic fuckwit.
(Under duress, Karkat would admit that for someone who shared almost one hundred percent of his own genetic code, the Sufferer was surprisingly competent. Probably that was just the universe deciding it had found a more interesting chew toy when past Karkat stuck his unsuspecting horns out of the brooding caverns. He doubted the favor would ever be returned, if only because no troll in their right mind would ever quadrant with him, so the next asshole to hatch with off-spectrum blood would be a fresh mutation rather than an inherited one and the universe would therefore have no reason to abandon its sadistic habit of toying with Karkat.)
Anyway, all soldiers twelve years or younger got stuck in an academy. Most of the rest were being obviously nudged either toward joining the general army or returning to civilian life -- nobody said anything, but Karkat had ganderbulbs and a functional think pan and it didn't take a genius to figure out that unspecialized soldiers and mind-twisters were going to create more unspecialized soldiers or talk people into rethinking their life goals, respectively. But a few people were skilled enough or crazy enough that the only option was to throw them at the special forces.
It was just Karkat's luck to end up with that merry band of shithive assholes.
He scowled at the scrap of paper telling him the time and location at which to meet his assigned team and trainer. Who the fuck set up an important military meeting at a ramen stand? It offered no security whatsoever, not to mention the implication that they were expected to buy their own lunch. Yeah, sure. Buy it with what money? Had he somehow slipped into a parallel world where the revolution had scraped up the funds to make good on the back pay all the soldiers were owed? Ha fucking ha.
Fuming under his breath, Karkat stalked through the streets of Kouin toward his fate.
The village (which was really a city; he didn't know why the old pre-imperial terminology had stuck so persistently) was bustling as people stepped out for lunch or just to enjoy the warmth and sunlight of early summer. If a person was paying close attention, the surface normality cracked and the subtle tension in people's bodies became a reminder of how recently curfews, caste restrictions, the secret police, and the ever-hungry draft gangs had clamped down on the population, scaring people indoors except when they absolutely had to leave the dubious safety of their homes. Voices were still a little too flat or a little too cheerful, and people swung between touching far too much or bristling at every accidental brush against their clothing in the crowds.
Karkat kept his sickles hanging openly at his side and thereby won a healthy bubble of personal space. Which was safer for everyone, really, no matter how long it had been since anyone had touched him without intending to cause pain.
The ramen stand in question stood at the edge of one of the village's numerous parks, between a barbeque place and a ticky-tacky tourist shop clearly set up by some enterprising soul looking to cash in on the recent end-of-war euphoria. Like any sane troll (or sane human, and unlike some speciesist assholes, Karkat was prepared to admit that neither race was completely incapable of surfacing from the sea of idiocy for a few rare, gasping moments of intelligent behavior) needed a badly silkscreened illustration of the Sufferer's face. Particularly when it might as well have been a bad picture of Karkat's face, ugh, fuck no, he was not a narcissist.
Nobody was waiting.
"Fuck my life," Karkat muttered, stomping up to the counter. Of course he was the first one here, never mind that -- according to the pan-shatteringly ugly ornamental pillar clock at the edge of the park -- he was actually five minutes late. A person might think that army officers might value timeliness, but apparently that would be too much to expect from the world.
"Are you buying anything or are you just going to glare holes into my stove?" the stall owner asked, leaning her elbows on the counter and staring down at Karkat with rust-brown eyes. "I charge for damages, no matter what your rank in the army."
"I could be glaring holes into your head," Karkat snapped. "Would that be less of an imposition on your busy life of cutthroat commerce and so-called comestibles that almost certainly violate at least a dozen different health code regulations?"
The chef laughed and hooked a stray hank of greasy hair behind her down-turned horn. "I don't know, why don't you try and see what happens? Or you could turn around and join those other soldiers who're waving at you like pan-bruised wigglers. The big one with the wings bought an extra bowl when he ordered and I bet it has your sign on the label."
Karkat turned.
The Summoner was indeed waving -- both arms and wings, what the actual fuck -- and beaming like the second-most pathologically optimistic dumbass ever to be hatched. (Tavros still held first place; at least the Summoner had eventually realized Mindfang was bad news and then done something about it.) Okay. That was bad, but Karkat had expected bad. He could cope with bad. He was prepared to slog through bad until his sheer grit-toothed determination made bad give up and roll pathetically in the mud, bawling for its lusus.
Terezi Pyrope and Dave Strider, on the other hand, were each individually composed of more inane dumbfuckery than anybody could be expected to face on a regular basis. Put them together and he was surprised the park hadn't exploded from pure bullshit overload.
"Karkles, you are late! We've been waiting for actual whole minutes, and Summoner-sensei won't tell us what the evaluation process is until the entire team is present! Come sit your butt down and pretend not to die of a rage aneurism before Dave and I are accepted into advanced training," Terezi shouted, with overly studied blithe unconcern for whoever might overhear her.
"Nah, babe, he doesn't need to stress on our account. We can cart his corpse around like a hunk of prime fly aphrodisiac, do the puppet thing. They said three-person teams but nobody said word one about all the members needing a pulse," Strider drawled, slouching lazily on the park bench and adjusting his sword where it hung over the slatted wooden back.
"I hate my life," Karkat said.
"Don't we all," the ramen chef agreed. "But it's getting better. Up the revolution and all that."
"Speak for yourself," Karkat snapped, and stomped over to join his new team on their pseudo-picnic outing.
"Welcome, Karkat," the Summoner said with a huge, jagged smile. "Your teammates were in agreement that your favorite ramen is crab with extra wasabi and chocolate sauce, so I got you plain with extra noodles. Here you go. Eat up! You'll need your strength for the evaluation."
He dropped a heavy plastic bowl into Karkat's hands. The contents, still steaming, nearly slopped over as Karkat struggled to balance the sudden weight.
Strider clapped his hands, slow and mocking. "Sweet catch, bro."
Karkat snarled but forewent a lengthy diatribe on the human's nearly infinite failings in favor of shoving noodles and broth into his mouth as quickly as possible. He still hadn't gotten his back pay, after all, and nobody who'd been through the prison system and the rebel armies would turn down free food.
(One extremely minor point in his new teammates' favor: they knew that as bone-deep as he did -- for some of the same reasons, even -- and didn't pester him while he ate. This didn't make their laughter as they 'secretly' code-tapped scurrilous gossip onto each other's forearms any less nook-clenchingly annoying, but they could have done much worse.)
"Done?" the Summoner asked when Karkat lowered his bowl, licking his lips to get the last traces of broth. "Awesome. We're gonna head out to training field six on the west side of town for your evaluation. Now, I don't want you guys to worry -- no matter how badly you screw up, you won't get thrown out of the special forces! We're a team now and teams don't do that. This test is just so I know how miserable I have to make your lives for the next few months until you shape up into something halfway acceptable. Got it?"
The Summoner smiled again, huge and cheerful and oddly threatening, and flexed his wings as he stood from the bench. He strode off along the street without a backward glance.
"Well, that was the exact opposite of reassuring," Strider said, adjusting the shoulder-strap of his swordbelt as he and Karkat attempted to walk in the same direction without looking like they were in any way associated with each other.
"If you want reassuring, you're in the wrong career track," Karkat snapped. "Quit attempting to wrangle your witless mouth flaps into something resembling intelligible speech and get moving before our new lord and master decides we need remedial speed training. I am not getting up at improbable hours of the day or night to run sprints because you couldn't handle walking at a pace faster than a crippled--"
Something thin and hard struck the back of his head with an audible crack.
"What the fuck!"
"Don't rant while you're walking. It slows you down," Terezi said, twirling her cane and pretending to blow dust off the tip -- presumably the section that had just made forcible contact with Karkat's innocent pan case. "Hypocrisy is one of the roots of injustice," she added.
Karkat snarled. Dave snickered. Terezi swung her cane lazily between them, not quite close enough to touch.
They shut up and walked faster.
Eventually they reached training field six and got evaluated, about which the less said, the better. At the end of the process, the Summoner crouched down to smile at three pitiful, groaning lumps that might once, in halcyon days of yore, have been trolls or humans, and said, "Most of your flaws are fixable, and whatever quadrant-flipping drama you three have going on doesn't seem to interfere with your teamwork when you get over yourselves enough to try teamwork in the first place. I've seen worse starts to honorable careers! We'll meet back here at dawn tomorrow. Don't bother bringing your weapons. You're not allowed to touch them again until I give you permission."
"But how--" Karkat said.
The Summoner cut him off. "No. Leave them at home. You all have terrible habits -- hey, it's not your fault! You had to teach yourselves. It's a miracle any soldiers your age survived the war, really. But like I said, terrible habits. I need to find qualified instructors with the time and patience to break you out of them. There's no point drilling the bad habits in deeper."
He paused.
"Well? Did you hear me?"
"Yes, commander," Karkat and his teammates chorused.
The Summoner nodded. "Good. Now I want you to go to the military hospital and get those cuts and bruises taken care of. While you're there, get a full physical and bring a copy of the results with you tomorrow morning. That really should have been done during the reassignment process, but I guess it slipped through the cracks. We're all getting used to new things these days."
"Yes, commander."
"Call me sensei when we're not on missions," the Summoner said. "Right, I think that was everything. Am I forgetting anything obvious? Wait, that's a stupid question -- how would you know if I'm forgetting something? Though if we're on a mission and you notice me overlook something, don't waste time wondering if you should point it out. The safety of the team comes first!"
"Yes, sensei."
"Awesome! I'll see you tomorrow. Don't lie around too long -- you'll get stiff and then you'll have to argue with the night shift at the hospital, and that's never fun for anybody." The Summoner clapped his hands, leapt into the air, and flew away on a somewhat drunken pattern, like a giant moth daring an equally oversized bat to appear and snatch it out of the sky.
Karkat blinked.
"Did that seriously just happen," Dave said.
"I'm afraid it did," Terezi said.
Karkat considered this. "Fuck."
"You said it," Dave agreed.
They lay in painful silence for a long minute. Then Karkat groaned and shoved himself to his feet. His knees promptly betrayed him and he sat back down.
Terezi sat up beside him, unfastened her blindfold, and began scraping dirt and grass off her face and ears. Her eye sockets were dark pits in her face, little streaks and patches of rough, heat-warped chitin spreading outward across her cheeks like lava around a volcano. Rumor said that Mindfang herself had been the one to press the red-hot poker into each eye and wash the remains with saltwater. Rumor was much less clear about how Terezi survived, let alone escaped.
Karkat had never dared to ask for details. It was bad enough he'd overheard her quiet breakdowns after interrogation sessions, before Mindfang stopped bothering to return her to the holding cells.
"I dislike medical examinations," Terezi said, almost managing to sound idly disinterested in her own words.
"Word," Dave said, his voice muffled by the grass and dirt he'd faceplanted into.
Karkat had never asked for details of Dave's time in captivity either. It had been enough to see the human dragged out of his cell toward the experimentation block, and then dragged back: sometimes bloody, sometimes just strangely faded, which was somehow worse.
Karkat looked down at his hands and the telltale crimson seeping from his scraped palms. That blood had kept him physically untouched for years, humored and indulged, too valuable to risk breaking before the right tactical moment.
All his scars were inside.
"They can't have had time to do deep background checks on everybody at the hospital," he said. "Who knows how many docterrorists might still have connections and loyalties to the Condesce?"
"Aww, are you scared, crabcakes?" Dave said. He flopped over onto his back, then rolled to his feet with a grimace. "We don't have to let them examine us in separate rooms. If we stick together, whoever's not getting poked can stand guard, keep the nasty medics from trying any funny business on your poor virgin flesh. It'd be such a shame if you had to buy an 'I visited the mad scientist's lair and all I got were these vivisection scars' t-shirt."
Karkat shot back to his feet, anger and adrenaline overriding his exhaustion. "I am not scared! And fuck you, it's not like I asked those assholes to slice up everyone except for me. Try insinuating that again and I'll stuff those words so far down your food-pipe you'll--"
"I'm scared," Terezi said.
Karkat's mouth clicked shut.
"I am scared spitless of docterrorists," Terezi continued in that same flat, even voice. "I am not ashamed to admit it. It's worse because I had not yet learned to compensate for my blindness while I was in Mindfang's tender loving care and she was the only one who ever spoke to me, so I have no way to identify which individuals might have been involved in my interrogation sessions. I would therefore very much appreciate having the two of you guard my back while I get a physical examination."
Oh.
Right.
They were all fucked up, weren't they? Nobody could come through their lives without being fucked up -- well, obviously a better, stronger person could have managed Karkat's own history; what was really so horrifying about two sweeps sitting around doing nothing while other people fed you and spun wiggler-tales about your supposed glorious future in suppressing the rebellion and becoming a pillar of the regime? -- and Terezi was even brave enough to admit her problem and do something about it.
(Of course she was. She'd always been amazing.)
"I'm sorry," Karkat said. "I am a first-class grade-A douchwaffle, nobody who's met me could possibly disagree, but even I'm not such a shitpanned loser that I wouldn't stand watch for you."
"What he said, minus the self-hatred," Dave added. "Uh. You need a hand getting up?"
Terezi took a long breath through her mouth, rolling the air over her tongue as if to wring out every drop of scent and flavor it carried. Then she smiled, sharp and bright and nearly carefree enough to cover the cracks she'd just let them see. "Your chivalry is appreciated, but no." She stuck her rapier back into its sheath and pushed herself upright with the now deceptively-innocent red and white cane.
"Shall we, gentlemen?" she said.
Karkat looked over Terezi's shoulder toward Dave, who shrugged minutely as if making a decision on his own was somehow too much effort. Definitely a douchwaffle. And for all that Terezi was amazing, she was beyond impossible when she wanted to be. But if Karkat wanted the chance to keep defending his village and their people (which he did, because apparently suicidal idiocy was genetically inheritable), he'd have to learn how to play well with others regardless of his personal feelings toward his teammates. There were probably worse fates than being paired with the two people who'd already seen him at his lowest.
"Yeah," Karkat said. "Let's go fool the authorities into thinking we're actually qualified for this shit." He took a few tentative, painful steps and felt more than saw Terezi and Dave fall into place on either side, close enough that if any one of their team collapsed, at least one other would be in position to break their fall.
They walked toward the hospital together.
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End of Story
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HA. It took me three-plus years and a lot of angst to write that story, but it is DONE. *dusts hands*
(If you have suggestions for improving anything, I am all ears, since I freely acknowledge I lost perspective on this fic somewhere back in 2013.)
Note: There's a reason I call these three 'Team Damaged Goods,' and it's not because they had idyllic childhoods. Terezi's past is explained in Narutostuck: Set with Stars, but Dave and Karkat are equally screwed up in their own ways: Dave because he has what could be a first-generation kekkai genkai related to time manipulation and was thus the subject of intense experimentation, and Karkat because he's the genetic double of the Sufferer and was thus used as a combination of hostage and indoctrinated propaganda piece. Nothing terrible happens to anyone during this fic, but Karkat does think about their pasts and there's a brief description of Terezi's ruined eyes and what happened to them.
I don't think anything in this story is worse than the canonical darkness in either Homestuck or Naruto, but you are the best judge of your own boundaries. :-)
[ETA: The ever-so-slightly revised final version is now up on AO3!]
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Narutostuck: Damaged Goods
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Officially speaking, the revolution ended when the Sufferer and Lionclaw led their soldiers into the Uchuukage's compound and discovered that the Lady of Space, her enforcer, and several of their most notorious supporters had fled through a secret tunnel rather than stay to face justice. Unofficially, fighting raged on through Hidden Time and the surrounding districts for another three weeks and even the Sufferer's investiture as Lord of Space and Lionclaw's election as Uchuukage didn't pacify large regions of the country. It wasn't like the revolutionaries didn't still need every sane and able-bodied soldier they could lay their hands on -- and Karkat was cynical enough to know how far the definition of 'sane and able-bodied' could be pushed in a pinch.
He'd pushed it before, after all. Even combat medics didn't generally recommend heading out to the front lines only a week after breaking out from two sweeps of confinement with intermittent psychological conditioning as a garnish, but Karkat had had things to prove to the rebels, his erstwhile hosts, and himself and sitting around doing even more fuck-all nothing hadn't been on the agenda.
He was, to put it mildly, surprised when he was recalled to Kouin proper and told that as a sub-adult he was going to be stuck on a three-person training team for the foreseeable future. And no, training teamth were not allowed in combat. No, not even if they'd been fighting for monthth and could kill the troll thtaffing the dethk at general headquarterth in half a thecond. No, not even if they ran off and changed their nameth becauthe then they'd be detherterth, you pithbrain, so thit down, shut up, and follow orderth unleth you want to get cashiered out of the army and pothibly branded a reactionary element. Douchewaffle.
In retrospect, this was not the best way to meet Sollux Captor. Karkat took vindictive pleasure in pointing out to a human slightly higher on the authority ladder that Sollux himself was a sub-adult and therefore logically ought to also be in training rather than handing out orders. Fortunately for both of them, their specialties were too different for them to end up on the same team.
Unfortunately, Karkat still ended up paired with a douchewaffle.
There were far too many kids who'd tasted a bit of war to put all of them into training teams. For one thing, yanking several hundred full adults out of the army and ordering them to spend the next couple years wiping snot dribbles from the noses of the bedwetting assholes that passed as Karkat's age-mates would be like the revolution lying down on its metaphorical back, spreading its arms, tipping back its chin, and batting big seductive eyes at the Condesce until she sauntered over and deemed the sacrifice acceptable. Not even the Sufferer was that much of an idealistic fuckwit.
(Under duress, Karkat would admit that for someone who shared almost one hundred percent of his own genetic code, the Sufferer was surprisingly competent. Probably that was just the universe deciding it had found a more interesting chew toy when past Karkat stuck his unsuspecting horns out of the brooding caverns. He doubted the favor would ever be returned, if only because no troll in their right mind would ever quadrant with him, so the next asshole to hatch with off-spectrum blood would be a fresh mutation rather than an inherited one and the universe would therefore have no reason to abandon its sadistic habit of toying with Karkat.)
Anyway, all soldiers twelve years or younger got stuck in an academy. Most of the rest were being obviously nudged either toward joining the general army or returning to civilian life -- nobody said anything, but Karkat had ganderbulbs and a functional think pan and it didn't take a genius to figure out that unspecialized soldiers and mind-twisters were going to create more unspecialized soldiers or talk people into rethinking their life goals, respectively. But a few people were skilled enough or crazy enough that the only option was to throw them at the special forces.
It was just Karkat's luck to end up with that merry band of shithive assholes.
He scowled at the scrap of paper telling him the time and location at which to meet his assigned team and trainer. Who the fuck set up an important military meeting at a ramen stand? It offered no security whatsoever, not to mention the implication that they were expected to buy their own lunch. Yeah, sure. Buy it with what money? Had he somehow slipped into a parallel world where the revolution had scraped up the funds to make good on the back pay all the soldiers were owed? Ha fucking ha.
Fuming under his breath, Karkat stalked through the streets of Kouin toward his fate.
The village (which was really a city; he didn't know why the old pre-imperial terminology had stuck so persistently) was bustling as people stepped out for lunch or just to enjoy the warmth and sunlight of early summer. If a person was paying close attention, the surface normality cracked and the subtle tension in people's bodies became a reminder of how recently curfews, caste restrictions, the secret police, and the ever-hungry draft gangs had clamped down on the population, scaring people indoors except when they absolutely had to leave the dubious safety of their homes. Voices were still a little too flat or a little too cheerful, and people swung between touching far too much or bristling at every accidental brush against their clothing in the crowds.
Karkat kept his sickles hanging openly at his side and thereby won a healthy bubble of personal space. Which was safer for everyone, really, no matter how long it had been since anyone had touched him without intending to cause pain.
The ramen stand in question stood at the edge of one of the village's numerous parks, between a barbeque place and a ticky-tacky tourist shop clearly set up by some enterprising soul looking to cash in on the recent end-of-war euphoria. Like any sane troll (or sane human, and unlike some speciesist assholes, Karkat was prepared to admit that neither race was completely incapable of surfacing from the sea of idiocy for a few rare, gasping moments of intelligent behavior) needed a badly silkscreened illustration of the Sufferer's face. Particularly when it might as well have been a bad picture of Karkat's face, ugh, fuck no, he was not a narcissist.
Nobody was waiting.
"Fuck my life," Karkat muttered, stomping up to the counter. Of course he was the first one here, never mind that -- according to the pan-shatteringly ugly ornamental pillar clock at the edge of the park -- he was actually five minutes late. A person might think that army officers might value timeliness, but apparently that would be too much to expect from the world.
"Are you buying anything or are you just going to glare holes into my stove?" the stall owner asked, leaning her elbows on the counter and staring down at Karkat with rust-brown eyes. "I charge for damages, no matter what your rank in the army."
"I could be glaring holes into your head," Karkat snapped. "Would that be less of an imposition on your busy life of cutthroat commerce and so-called comestibles that almost certainly violate at least a dozen different health code regulations?"
The chef laughed and hooked a stray hank of greasy hair behind her down-turned horn. "I don't know, why don't you try and see what happens? Or you could turn around and join those other soldiers who're waving at you like pan-bruised wigglers. The big one with the wings bought an extra bowl when he ordered and I bet it has your sign on the label."
Karkat turned.
The Summoner was indeed waving -- both arms and wings, what the actual fuck -- and beaming like the second-most pathologically optimistic dumbass ever to be hatched. (Tavros still held first place; at least the Summoner had eventually realized Mindfang was bad news and then done something about it.) Okay. That was bad, but Karkat had expected bad. He could cope with bad. He was prepared to slog through bad until his sheer grit-toothed determination made bad give up and roll pathetically in the mud, bawling for its lusus.
Terezi Pyrope and Dave Strider, on the other hand, were each individually composed of more inane dumbfuckery than anybody could be expected to face on a regular basis. Put them together and he was surprised the park hadn't exploded from pure bullshit overload.
"Karkles, you are late! We've been waiting for actual whole minutes, and Summoner-sensei won't tell us what the evaluation process is until the entire team is present! Come sit your butt down and pretend not to die of a rage aneurism before Dave and I are accepted into advanced training," Terezi shouted, with overly studied blithe unconcern for whoever might overhear her.
"Nah, babe, he doesn't need to stress on our account. We can cart his corpse around like a hunk of prime fly aphrodisiac, do the puppet thing. They said three-person teams but nobody said word one about all the members needing a pulse," Strider drawled, slouching lazily on the park bench and adjusting his sword where it hung over the slatted wooden back.
"I hate my life," Karkat said.
"Don't we all," the ramen chef agreed. "But it's getting better. Up the revolution and all that."
"Speak for yourself," Karkat snapped, and stomped over to join his new team on their pseudo-picnic outing.
"Welcome, Karkat," the Summoner said with a huge, jagged smile. "Your teammates were in agreement that your favorite ramen is crab with extra wasabi and chocolate sauce, so I got you plain with extra noodles. Here you go. Eat up! You'll need your strength for the evaluation."
He dropped a heavy plastic bowl into Karkat's hands. The contents, still steaming, nearly slopped over as Karkat struggled to balance the sudden weight.
Strider clapped his hands, slow and mocking. "Sweet catch, bro."
Karkat snarled but forewent a lengthy diatribe on the human's nearly infinite failings in favor of shoving noodles and broth into his mouth as quickly as possible. He still hadn't gotten his back pay, after all, and nobody who'd been through the prison system and the rebel armies would turn down free food.
(One extremely minor point in his new teammates' favor: they knew that as bone-deep as he did -- for some of the same reasons, even -- and didn't pester him while he ate. This didn't make their laughter as they 'secretly' code-tapped scurrilous gossip onto each other's forearms any less nook-clenchingly annoying, but they could have done much worse.)
"Done?" the Summoner asked when Karkat lowered his bowl, licking his lips to get the last traces of broth. "Awesome. We're gonna head out to training field six on the west side of town for your evaluation. Now, I don't want you guys to worry -- no matter how badly you screw up, you won't get thrown out of the special forces! We're a team now and teams don't do that. This test is just so I know how miserable I have to make your lives for the next few months until you shape up into something halfway acceptable. Got it?"
The Summoner smiled again, huge and cheerful and oddly threatening, and flexed his wings as he stood from the bench. He strode off along the street without a backward glance.
"Well, that was the exact opposite of reassuring," Strider said, adjusting the shoulder-strap of his swordbelt as he and Karkat attempted to walk in the same direction without looking like they were in any way associated with each other.
"If you want reassuring, you're in the wrong career track," Karkat snapped. "Quit attempting to wrangle your witless mouth flaps into something resembling intelligible speech and get moving before our new lord and master decides we need remedial speed training. I am not getting up at improbable hours of the day or night to run sprints because you couldn't handle walking at a pace faster than a crippled--"
Something thin and hard struck the back of his head with an audible crack.
"What the fuck!"
"Don't rant while you're walking. It slows you down," Terezi said, twirling her cane and pretending to blow dust off the tip -- presumably the section that had just made forcible contact with Karkat's innocent pan case. "Hypocrisy is one of the roots of injustice," she added.
Karkat snarled. Dave snickered. Terezi swung her cane lazily between them, not quite close enough to touch.
They shut up and walked faster.
Eventually they reached training field six and got evaluated, about which the less said, the better. At the end of the process, the Summoner crouched down to smile at three pitiful, groaning lumps that might once, in halcyon days of yore, have been trolls or humans, and said, "Most of your flaws are fixable, and whatever quadrant-flipping drama you three have going on doesn't seem to interfere with your teamwork when you get over yourselves enough to try teamwork in the first place. I've seen worse starts to honorable careers! We'll meet back here at dawn tomorrow. Don't bother bringing your weapons. You're not allowed to touch them again until I give you permission."
"But how--" Karkat said.
The Summoner cut him off. "No. Leave them at home. You all have terrible habits -- hey, it's not your fault! You had to teach yourselves. It's a miracle any soldiers your age survived the war, really. But like I said, terrible habits. I need to find qualified instructors with the time and patience to break you out of them. There's no point drilling the bad habits in deeper."
He paused.
"Well? Did you hear me?"
"Yes, commander," Karkat and his teammates chorused.
The Summoner nodded. "Good. Now I want you to go to the military hospital and get those cuts and bruises taken care of. While you're there, get a full physical and bring a copy of the results with you tomorrow morning. That really should have been done during the reassignment process, but I guess it slipped through the cracks. We're all getting used to new things these days."
"Yes, commander."
"Call me sensei when we're not on missions," the Summoner said. "Right, I think that was everything. Am I forgetting anything obvious? Wait, that's a stupid question -- how would you know if I'm forgetting something? Though if we're on a mission and you notice me overlook something, don't waste time wondering if you should point it out. The safety of the team comes first!"
"Yes, sensei."
"Awesome! I'll see you tomorrow. Don't lie around too long -- you'll get stiff and then you'll have to argue with the night shift at the hospital, and that's never fun for anybody." The Summoner clapped his hands, leapt into the air, and flew away on a somewhat drunken pattern, like a giant moth daring an equally oversized bat to appear and snatch it out of the sky.
Karkat blinked.
"Did that seriously just happen," Dave said.
"I'm afraid it did," Terezi said.
Karkat considered this. "Fuck."
"You said it," Dave agreed.
They lay in painful silence for a long minute. Then Karkat groaned and shoved himself to his feet. His knees promptly betrayed him and he sat back down.
Terezi sat up beside him, unfastened her blindfold, and began scraping dirt and grass off her face and ears. Her eye sockets were dark pits in her face, little streaks and patches of rough, heat-warped chitin spreading outward across her cheeks like lava around a volcano. Rumor said that Mindfang herself had been the one to press the red-hot poker into each eye and wash the remains with saltwater. Rumor was much less clear about how Terezi survived, let alone escaped.
Karkat had never dared to ask for details. It was bad enough he'd overheard her quiet breakdowns after interrogation sessions, before Mindfang stopped bothering to return her to the holding cells.
"I dislike medical examinations," Terezi said, almost managing to sound idly disinterested in her own words.
"Word," Dave said, his voice muffled by the grass and dirt he'd faceplanted into.
Karkat had never asked for details of Dave's time in captivity either. It had been enough to see the human dragged out of his cell toward the experimentation block, and then dragged back: sometimes bloody, sometimes just strangely faded, which was somehow worse.
Karkat looked down at his hands and the telltale crimson seeping from his scraped palms. That blood had kept him physically untouched for years, humored and indulged, too valuable to risk breaking before the right tactical moment.
All his scars were inside.
"They can't have had time to do deep background checks on everybody at the hospital," he said. "Who knows how many docterrorists might still have connections and loyalties to the Condesce?"
"Aww, are you scared, crabcakes?" Dave said. He flopped over onto his back, then rolled to his feet with a grimace. "We don't have to let them examine us in separate rooms. If we stick together, whoever's not getting poked can stand guard, keep the nasty medics from trying any funny business on your poor virgin flesh. It'd be such a shame if you had to buy an 'I visited the mad scientist's lair and all I got were these vivisection scars' t-shirt."
Karkat shot back to his feet, anger and adrenaline overriding his exhaustion. "I am not scared! And fuck you, it's not like I asked those assholes to slice up everyone except for me. Try insinuating that again and I'll stuff those words so far down your food-pipe you'll--"
"I'm scared," Terezi said.
Karkat's mouth clicked shut.
"I am scared spitless of docterrorists," Terezi continued in that same flat, even voice. "I am not ashamed to admit it. It's worse because I had not yet learned to compensate for my blindness while I was in Mindfang's tender loving care and she was the only one who ever spoke to me, so I have no way to identify which individuals might have been involved in my interrogation sessions. I would therefore very much appreciate having the two of you guard my back while I get a physical examination."
Oh.
Right.
They were all fucked up, weren't they? Nobody could come through their lives without being fucked up -- well, obviously a better, stronger person could have managed Karkat's own history; what was really so horrifying about two sweeps sitting around doing nothing while other people fed you and spun wiggler-tales about your supposed glorious future in suppressing the rebellion and becoming a pillar of the regime? -- and Terezi was even brave enough to admit her problem and do something about it.
(Of course she was. She'd always been amazing.)
"I'm sorry," Karkat said. "I am a first-class grade-A douchwaffle, nobody who's met me could possibly disagree, but even I'm not such a shitpanned loser that I wouldn't stand watch for you."
"What he said, minus the self-hatred," Dave added. "Uh. You need a hand getting up?"
Terezi took a long breath through her mouth, rolling the air over her tongue as if to wring out every drop of scent and flavor it carried. Then she smiled, sharp and bright and nearly carefree enough to cover the cracks she'd just let them see. "Your chivalry is appreciated, but no." She stuck her rapier back into its sheath and pushed herself upright with the now deceptively-innocent red and white cane.
"Shall we, gentlemen?" she said.
Karkat looked over Terezi's shoulder toward Dave, who shrugged minutely as if making a decision on his own was somehow too much effort. Definitely a douchwaffle. And for all that Terezi was amazing, she was beyond impossible when she wanted to be. But if Karkat wanted the chance to keep defending his village and their people (which he did, because apparently suicidal idiocy was genetically inheritable), he'd have to learn how to play well with others regardless of his personal feelings toward his teammates. There were probably worse fates than being paired with the two people who'd already seen him at his lowest.
"Yeah," Karkat said. "Let's go fool the authorities into thinking we're actually qualified for this shit." He took a few tentative, painful steps and felt more than saw Terezi and Dave fall into place on either side, close enough that if any one of their team collapsed, at least one other would be in position to break their fall.
They walked toward the hospital together.
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End of Story
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HA. It took me three-plus years and a lot of angst to write that story, but it is DONE. *dusts hands*
(If you have suggestions for improving anything, I am all ears, since I freely acknowledge I lost perspective on this fic somewhere back in 2013.)
