awakener | (no subject)

Karkat had dreamed of the Sufferer before, times when he'd stayed up all morning over scripture and his subconscious had taken over with gory cinematic guilt-riddled speculation; none of it ever quite made sense, the things he'd read blurring over into his own experiences and fears.

This was different. It was clearer, less dramatic, more coherent. More real. When he spoke, the words came from somewhere else, with a passion and sincerity he'd never quite felt, but which now seemed second nature. Everything was familiar but strange, and detailed in a way he wouldn't have thought he had it in him to imagine, and when he woke up he felt lost. He couldn't remember where he was, and the recuperacoon seemed empty with just him in it.

It took a moment for the noise at his door to reach him, and another for it to occur to him that that must have been what woke him up.

It took a few more for him to realise he should probably do something about it.

His head emerged from the recuperacoon very slowly, glistening greenly and squinting.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He frowned, obviously not understanding what was so weird about that opinion.

"Not really..." he admitted. "People have mostly just told me about it."

He nodded. That was pretty common, really.

"You should. I don't have the whole thing but I've got a lot, if you want to..."

"Well, yeah, sure. I mean I may as well..." He still looked confused. "But I don't get how that's going to explain anything..."

"Well, it probably won't explain everything, but you still should, if you're going to be the descendent of the Psiioniic..."

He shrugged.

"The Signless wasn't just some guy, though. He had visions. I mean, not as in just a bullshit melodramatic way of saying he could imagine what Alternia would be like if people weren't enormous douchevents to each other constantly, like it actually came to him in dreams and he was compelled to try to change things as a result because he was literally, like, the chosen one, he wasn't just a dude who had some good ideas or whatever."

The Aerolith furrowed his brow, like he was trying to puzzle that out.

"But...dude, I have visions all the time and it isn't like I'm the chosen one." He stopped. Blinked. And then shook his head, planting a palm to his forehead. "Okay well like...more than any psionic that can do that kind of thing would be...obviously. Maybe he was just a psychic?"

The Awakener frowned at him.

"Dude, have you ever met any troll, ever, who has visions or dreams of any kind whatsoever that aren't about murder or carnage or, like, horrible apocalyptic tragedy? I mean, name one."

Edited 2012-10-07 20:07 (UTC)

He couldn't think of anything.

He looked kind of embarrassed and just shrugged his shoulders in response, huddling over.

"See," said the Awakener, pointing at him.

"... Anyway," he added, a good deal less triumphantly, "I'm not psychic. I've never had any visions, so it can't be some kind of regular genetic mutation thing."

The Aerolith bit his lip, gesturing with his hands.

"But okay...if you were the chosen one..." He paused. "Which you are. Wouldn't it make sense for the same stuff to apply to you anyway? Like...magic, or whatever the hell you're implying it is."

"Well, it doesn't need to, right? I mean, the message is already delivered, I've got it all here, I just have to ... revive it."

"...Maybe," the Aerolith finally relented, shrugging again, weakly. "But it's pretty obvious that destiny is backing your play here so...you'll probably have whatever you need to do your thing too, right?"

"... Right," he said, looking a little relieved but still not really as optimistic as would be ideal. "Exactly. We basically can't lose."

The Aerolith smiled faintly at him, and though it was sad, he'd done a lot more smiling in the last half hour than he had for a long time. He shuffled back over on the slab, reclaiming some of the territory he'd lost during their argument.

He carefully let their shoulders bump.

"Yeah," he agreed. Somehow it was easier to be optimistic for the Awakener than it was for himself.

The Awakener looked up at him in surprise. Then, only a bit uncertainly, he smiled back, and nodded, finding his resolve a little firmer.

For a moment he fought the urge to lean against him. Eventually he compromised on a reciprocal shoulder nudge.

"Yeah. Right. They totally won't know what hit them."

The Awakener may have resisted, but Aerolith doesn't. At that return of affection he leans his shoulder against him, looking sort of genuinely relaxed for once.

"Did you want to go back to sleep?" he asked a brief period of silence. "Probably shouldn't stay up all day if you have to do important shit tomorrow."

"What? Oh." He frowned. "Yeah. Well. All I have to do is say some stuff to a bunch of trolls. I'm good at that shit, it's fine. If anyone says anything I'll tell them we were up late having a philosophical discussion, I bet everyone will totally buy it."

He snickered quietly, letting himself get a little bit more comfortable.

"Okay, probably," he said, sounding content with that outcome.

"Hours of intense ethical scrutiny and definitely not dumbshit arguments about pointless crap," said the Awakener, shifting a little to accommodate him. "My reasoning nodes are totally bloated with weighty moral contemplation right now."

He yawned, comfortably, and let his head rest against his friend's shoulder.

"Sounds legit," Aerolith said, watching him from above with a faint smile on his face. He rested against the Awakener's conveniently point-free head. He could kind of see where this was going, but felt no need to stop it. "What else is there to be doing at a time like this."

"Yeah," said the Awakener, indistinctly. "I'm a busy guy. Got a heaped nutrition plateau of important shit to preach at."

For his part, his vague intention was to haul over to his recuperacoon sooner or later, it was just that he didn't want to leave the Aerolith to just sit on his own in the dark like this so soon, and besides, they probably still had loads to talk about, and...

Predictably, he was asleep inside ten minutes.