After more than an hour of speaking to Karkat on the phone, you finally make up an excuse to leave, not really able to keep it together after everything heâs told you. Right before you go to hang up, you feel something seize up in your chest, and you hesitate.
ââŠNothing. Good light.â
You select âend callâ, put your glasses into standby mode, and bury your face in one hand as the last embers of your cigarette â only one of many youâve needed to get through this evening â dance around the fingertips of your other.
You were going to go on a date with Feferi â you were excited to go on a date with Feferi! She spoke so kindly to you â even past the bullshit facade she puts on for the sake of her job, you can tell that she means it, tell that sheâs nervous and genuinely sweet underneath the surface. How couldâŠ
How could she be so sweet to you when she ruined Karkatâs life so thoroughly?
You scrub away at the tears that prickle at the corners of your eyes before they have a real chance to form, leaning against the apartment balcony that overlooks the city for support. Your cigarette stub gets flicked down into the alley below before it can singe your fingers, and then you take a deep, deep breath to keep yourself from crying any further. God, youâve missed so much. The Karkat you remember was quiet, sweet, lonely, and so, so shy, with the occasional penchant for getting into fights and a hair-trigger temper based in as much of shame as it was in pride. It must have killed him to have his trust betrayed so thoroughly. It must have killed him so much more to lose his privacy than to lose his pride. You didnât know how much he lost period, with Terezi and Kanaya and Nepeta being gone as well. Oh god, and the way he spoke about losing Aradia, about when he lost â
No. Not you. He didnât lose you. You arenât Sollux to him.Â
You remember the pain in his voice when he talked about how innocent and naive you were, and how you almost said âI love youâ when he did, and you canât help but break.Â
You cry into your hands quietly, not wanting to awake Aradia sleeping on the couch just inside. You miss your best friend so much. All you wish is that you could take some of his pain away.
And at this point, you canât cancel with Feferi. Tomorrow, youâre going to have to look Feferi in the eyes knowing what she did to ruin Karkatâs life.
You donât think you can do it.
