[Karkat is left to sit on the beach. He pokes at some messages meanwhile, but the longer the wait stretches on, the more he gets lost in his own thoughts. He didn't just lose his moirallegiance: he saw the steady change, the growing awfulness and self-righteous claptrap, and didn't even break it off himself in the end. Gamzee broke up with him. And he tries to make it clear in his own head that the Gamzee here never did that, never came close, but he can't separate the experiences anywhere close to neatly. It's been a long three years, and a long two and a half crammed back into his head, and the resulting soup of it is too mixed up to be any good.]

[He barely even sees Gamzee before the blur of clown slams into him. He locks up.]

No--no, I can't do this.

[It comes after a moment of nothing, no word or movement, but there's something like regret in his tone just the same. He does move now, trying to wriggle out of the trap of his arms and back to some personal space.]

Let me go. We can talk but I can't deal with your lanky husk latching onto me right now, not the way things went.