caughtinanetwork

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001

[The camera shows nothing but pavement, the edge of some wet fingers, and the ends of a really flashy red cape, fabric worn and water-heavy, trailing on the ground. Oh, and an adorable little white rabbit chomping down on the end of that cape.]

I don't get it. I don't freakin' get it at all. What--

OI!

[Suddenly the camera jerks and... goes flying. Seems Kamina, not knowing what it was, tossed it over his shoulder. It clatters against the coral, still recording for a few moments.]

Oi, lil' punk! Come here. I'll friggin' teach you to attack a guy from the rear when he ain't lookin'.

[Kamina dives for the rabbit, trying to catch it, and then the feed cuts.]

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Then they weren't impossible in the first place, idiot! Can't you understand simple linguistic definitions, or do I have to beat you bluntly over the head with a pile of dictionaries?

And you didn't address the other thing! Belief isn't enough.

Of course it ain't. You need belief and fighting spirit. Then you can do anything.

[Also what is a dictionary, but somehow that doesn't seem like the most important point of the conversation.]

Don't you get it? All this stuff you say is impossible... who says it's impossible? Who the hell got that kinda authority to decide what is impossible and not?

[He grumbles a little at that still, but it's a better answer than what he was getting.]

It's not who. If it was a person, I'd kick their ass with my own actions and show them. But it's more--it's written into how reality works. Sometimes things just can't happen, and that's how it is. Sometimes things just go the way they do, and you can't change it.

Things like what?

Like...

[He motions vaguely.]

Temporal predestination. Stable time loops versus doomed timelines. I couldn't ever be anything but the leader of my team, because if I hadn't, I wouldn't exist in the first place, since I'm the one who cloned myself into existence. Any other outcome - if I let someone else lead, if I refuse the job, if I gave up halfway - and the timeline would be doomed. Everyone including me would die, and that would be it. In other words, me not being the leader, or say, you not being the person you are in this moment, is effectively and impossibility, because all other options would lead to destruction.

Or say, if I made a different decision than I did. Every fuck up I've made is written into the code of timespace itself, and any deviancy screws us all over even harder, even if the decision would have fixed things in that moment.

And the things that are fucked up, they can't be undone. I can't go back to the planet I'm from and make it the way it was. Even if I went back to the Veil and picked up every last piece of the destroyed matriorb, it couldn't be put back together to save my species.

[STARE

and flicking his forehead again.]

[Karkat practically hisses like an angry cat as he swats up at Kamina's big muscly arms.]

Would you quit that?! That's not an answer!

Maybe if you stop talking about stuff that doesn't matter. You gotta face forward. That's the only way to live. Who cares about all that... time stuff? Just keep heading for the horizon, that's all there is to it. Why do you think you've got eyes there?

[Instead of flicking, this time he just prods Karkat's forehead, just between the brows.]

[Swat!]

If you keep doing that I'll bite your prong off.

But what does the fact that I possess a normal, functioning sense of vision have to do with any of this? And don't you tell me that stuff doesn't matter; that stuff is what's shaped the way things are now, who I am, what I'm doing, and why.

The reason people got eyes in the front of their heads is so they can always keep moving forward. So with each step they take, they can see that horizon coming closer, so they can see the backs of the others walking with them.

If we were supposed to care about all the shit that went wrong in the past, we would have eyes in the back of our heads. So stop worrying about that stuff. You made mistakes in the past? We all did. That's why you gotta keep moving forward. So you can make sure never to make those mistakes again.

[At that, Karkat's teeth bare incrementally. Something about this guy's attitude is just flat out annoying. It digs under his skin that he can just be so flat out positive about everything and how it's going to turn out. How can know that? How can he just be so sure when he's got nothing but hot blood and positive thinking to his name? But in the same space, not all of it is something to be dismissed - and that kind of works him up more.]

I already am moving forward. I am not some asshole stuck in the mud of his own incompetence, slopping it around instead of any meaningful progress. I am tracking that mud at my feet, but I'm fucking walking, and every look back at the path I've strode is to evaluate where I screwed up and how. There's purpose in that, douchewagon. I might not have eyes in the back of my head, but that's why we can turn around. We have brains for thinking. Those mistakes don't mean nothing. I'm responsible. It's not enough just to not repeat them, I have to set shit right somehow.

[Kamina just arches a brow.]

You are like nine. What kinda big mistakes have you made that you gotta pay that heavily for.

I'm not nine by either time system. I'm like 14 of your earth years, or 6 and half Alternian sweeps. Not nine anything.

But do you really want to know how much I've fucked up?

I wouldn't have asked if I didn't wanna know.

[Karkat sucks in a large breath, holds it, then exhales.]

I ran a computer virus that blew up my computer and killed my lusus, who was basically a big crab monster that served as my custodian instead of any biological parents, which trolls can't really trace. That virus also set off a curse that killed the lusus of everyone else I knew. I started playing a game that both triggered a meteoric apocalypse that wiped out everything on my home planet, and eventually caused a psychic shockwave that killed every other troll in the universe, including my best friend. Him I wasn't fast enough to get into the game before he died, because like a douche I didn't believe him when he said something wrong was happening. In that game, we created a universe, but I pushed my other best friend to finish the job so fast that in effect I'm responsible for giving that universe cancer. A whole universe, Kamina! And that cancer was in the form of a whole series of fuckups within that universe that turned around and bit us in the ass in the past.

Then outside the game, I completely failed to keep my team coherent and together, and as a result, five of use were killed by three others, a sixth was blinded, and our sole hope of continued survival as a species was destroyed, meaning we are utterly and completely doomed to extinction now. Two of those murders, the blinding, and the destruction of the aforementioned one hope of survival all occurred right in front of my eyes, but all I could do was stare. I was a coward who dropped my best friend down the stairs so hard he lost his teeth, then fucking abandoned him because I heard a goddamn honk. I couldn't stop my third best friend from his rampage until it was too late.

Then here? I never took anything seriously enough. That third best friend's rampage that happened in the Veil happened here too, and I--I couldn't stop him peacefully, I mean there were time shenanigans so I didn't know what I did in the Veil but... I learned later I could have done it different, but I... [He can't say it.] I didn't do it right. People died because I didn't take the threat seriously. Then I was an outright ass to people for months because of how bad that messed me up.

There were people close to me I should have protected, but couldn't. One got dissected while he was still alive, and another got killed, when I should have watched them better. I couldn't even do anything about the first, and for the second, I only got stopped from a big mistake by like four people coming in to prevent it.

I've been an ass every single day of my life and hurt everyone I've known.

And lastly--lastly--I couldn't even defend myself or my hive from some crazy chick who didn't even have legitimate reason to kill me in the first place.

Are you fucking happy now?

Just peachy.

Is that it?

[Karkat looks up, face a picture of disbelief growing into livid indignation, tinged by the heat of somewhere between embarrassment and shame. He looks like he could about punch him, and from the way his fists curl and shake at his sides, it's no hard guess that he wants to.]

I tell you--all that, I spill every fucking failure I've made to you, and that's all you can manage? Every big mistake I can dredge up out of memory, every important thing I have to look at and know and can't put down, and what you tell me--what you fucking tell me--is "just peachy"?

Yep, that's it.

[Kamina rubs the back of his neck for a moment.]

Listen, I don't get half that shit you are talking about. Computers, viruses, universe... whatever. It doesn't matter. That stuff made ya into who you are, but that don't mean you gotta keep thinking about it. It's not use thinking to much about the past that you can't live in the present.

[Watching him like that, rubbing his neck, making such a plain answer - it really doesn't help. The shaking grows from his fists up to his shoulders, head drooping down above. In the end, he finally swings a fist at his chest.]

Fuck you! You don't just tell someone to tell you what mistakes they made that were so bad, and then come back with such a half-assed, useless excuse for an answer! Why did I even fucking say anything? This is humiliating, you asshole!

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