"Alright Karkat," Dave called out as he shut the front door with his foot, his arms were busy carrying bags of food and other errands, "I got your vitamins, your sleep meds, your painkillers, and pretty much every other fucking medication the doctor prescribed you." The human glanced over to his troll friend who was just sitting on the couch, his twin sickles in his hands and staying perfectly still. Karkat looked as if he hadn't moved from that spot since Dave left approximately two hours ago. "...Come on over and pop one of these badass motherfucking gummy vitamins in your mouth." Karkat did as told. He obediently stood up and left a single sickle on the couch before walking over to Dave and waited patiently for him to set his things down and give Karkat his much needed vitamin.

Dave hated this.

Dave hated how Karkat was so...obedient...so robotic. So unlike himself. Dave missed the Karkat who retaliated everything with a snarky comment. He missed the Karkat with the spunk in his step. Yes it was nice having Karkat back, he missed his friend, but he never wanted Karkat to return to him so...different.

"The label says to only take one but you know what, fuck the label. You're taking two." Karkat shrugged and ate the two handed to him before sitting back down. Not a word was said and Dave was left in the kitchen with an open jar of gummy vitamins in his hand. Karkat was back to sitting quietly on the couch. "...I uh, I splurged a bit and got you some special treats." Still silence. This was fine. Dave knew how to fix this. He grabbed a plastic bag off the kitchen table and sat down on the coffee table in front of Karkat.

"Look. I got our-- your old favorites." Dave dumped the contents of the bag into the couch besides Karkat who turned to look. "Got us "Good Luck Chuck", some buttered popcorn, and even some of those sour ass candies you liked. This time they'll be the proper amount of sour instead of the shitty way I alchemized them." Dave smiled and looked at Karkat expectantly. "I figured we could...y'know, recreate old times on the giant rock. Snuggle up on the couch and watch our old favorite while munching on cliche and overused movie snacks." Karkat responded with a shrug and Dave swore he could hear his own heart break. "Oh, yeah, I mean, it's cool. It's whatever. We'll just see how you're feeling later, cool? Yeah. Yeah..." He cleared his throat and stood up, going back to the kitchen. "I'll get dinner started soon..."

This was going to be harder than expected.

~

Dave. Dave. Dave. Dave.

That one name. That one face. He kept popping up in Karkat's mind and it was distracting him. He hated that he missed Dave so much. He hated himself for getting distracted over Dave.

Dave. Dave. Dave. Dave.

Karkat was too slow and didn't block the opposing sword and was scratched. Thank god this was just a practice. If he were in actual combat he'd be dead by now. And all because he couldn't stop thinking about Dave.

Dave and his stupid smirk. Dave and his stupid hugs. Dave and his soft lips. Dave and his constant desire to tell Karkat he loves him. Dave and his comforting arms that were always there to hold Karkat when he needed it.

Fuck. Karkat missed Dave so much.

It wasn't like he didn't attempt to find out some way to possibly reconnect with Dave, Karkat tried every possible approach. The first was, obviously, asking about humans and the possibility of the empire being stretched out beyond their planet.

Karkat's idea was, of course, shot down. There was no expansion and the Empress would never dream of taking land that wasn't hers by force. If another Empire wished to merge with hers that was fine, but forcibly taking land from others? Unthinkable. Luckily Karkat had another idea.

His sylladex was still available to him, what a stroke of luck. And thankfully it was still filled to the brim with useless items Karkat had shoved in there. Movies, snacks, photographs, anything Karkat thought would be useful for everyday life in a meteor. What the troll was really looking for was his old crab communicator.

It was like the universe was throwing some magical luck powder in Karkat's direction because the purple crab watch sprung out of his sylladex and into Karkat's opened hands. He let out a shaky breath of relief as he quickly slid the watch onto his wrist as he quickly scurried to an empty part of the castle and turned it on.

The green eyes of the watch glowed and Karkat felt tears of joy beginning to form at the edges of his eyes. This was his chance. He might actually have some sort of connection to Dave.

"Dave? Dave are you there? Fuck, please answer." He pressed his ear against the cold metal of the crab only to hear a static like noise. Karkat groaned and gave the device a couple hard taps before speaking again. "Dave. Dave it's Karkat, do you read me? Over." Again, nothing but a static noise. "Dave! Jesus fucking Christ. Answer me! Answer me...please..." Nothing.

The cancer troll pressed his back against the wall and slid down, taking the crab communicator off. It was hopeless. He was hopeless. His last chance to have some sort of communication with Dave just...gone. He didn't have any other plans. Karkat looked at the little metal crab in his hands again.

Three years worth of memories on this thing. Three years worth of late night conversations in each others own rooms and basic bullfuckery. Three years with Dave. Three years gone. Karkat felt tears streaming down his cheeks and he quickly wiped them away, he couldn't risk someone catch him, the badass and personal knight of Her Imperial Radiance, crying.

He let out a shaky sigh and brought the crab closer to his face. Just because the communicator didn't work the way he wanted didn't mean he still couldn't talk and pretend Dave was on the other end, happily listening to his boyfriend talk.

~

Karkat was crying when he woke up. It was like he was reliving that one moment again in his sleep mad that one struck a nerve. Karkat tried to stop crying, he really did, but for some reason the tears just wouldn't stop flowing. Eventually Karkat just took a deep breath and tried to remind himself who he was.

"I'm Karkat Vantas," the troll whispered, closing his eyes, "I'm Her Imperial Radiance's personal knight. I am a troll feared by my enemies and adored by the kingdom." Karkat sighed, beginning to calm down. This was dumb, he was basically reminding himself that he was a manly man and couldn't let anyone see him cry when he knew very well that anyone could cry, but he needed to calm down and this was the thing that was helping him do so.

Karkat yawned and sat up, thinking back on the dream he had. It was amazing. In such a short while his feelings changed for Dave. One perigee he's crying over not being able to see Dave and missing Dave, the next his only thoughts on the human is how much of a cold murderer he is. Thankfully his feelings changed again, he didn't think of Dave as a cold murderer. He didn't know what he felt for Dave actually. The dream he had only confused him. He woke up crying so he must feel something for Dave, right? Karkat didn't know, and in all honesty he didn't think he wanted to feel anything for Dave. He still wasn't over his last matesprit and he just didn't want Dave to feel like Karkat was going to saw through his neck because apparently that's what he does to his matesprits.

The troll sighed. He wished he never dreamt of that. He wished he didn't wake up blubbering like an idiot and end up confusing himself. The time he wasted sobbing about Dave was pointless, he never made contact and he ended up resenting him anyway so what was the point? In fact, he didn't even think he still had the stupid crab communicator anymore.

Just to prove to himself that the dumb thing was gone, Karkat emptied out his sylladex and began digging through the pile of shit he had collected. It actually surprised him to see that the small crab watch was there, looking nearly the same as he remembered it being. But surely it was broken, after all it never got his messages to Dave sent. The Knight of Blood cleaned up his mess, returning it back to his sylladex and examined the crab communicator. He didn't want to shove it back in his sylladex, it'd just take up space. He also didn't want to put it in the trash, then Dave would start talking about "recreating old times" again. Instead, he put it under Dave's bed, there was enough shit under there to help it blend in. With that settled, Karkat left the room and the crab communicator.

~

"Hey Rose." Dave glanced at Karkat, putting the tomato sauce in his hand down down and holding the phone up to his ear with his free hand. He was making Karkat a nice spaghetti dinner with already slightly burnt noodles.

"Hello Dave. How's it going?"

"It's going great. Doctor's prescribed Karkat some medication and shit, I'm about to make him a dinner chalk full of carbs, and later tonight we're gonna watch some movies and eat a fuck ton of junk food. Hopefully the sugary shit'll get him hyper enough to at least say one full sentence to me." Rose hummed in response and allowed Dave to continue his ramblings.

"He still doesn't want to explain the brands or the fucking scars or pretty much anything that happened to him, which is cool. I'll give him time and when he's ready he'll tell me. Oh, also he liked all the clothes Kanaya made for him. I think he might be ready for a visit from the two of you soon. Maybe Jade and John could tag along? I haven't seem 'em in a while either. Or maybe we could get the old meteor gang back together? I think it's time to slowly re-introduce him to our friends. Well not re-introduce...he technically never forgotten them, he's just got some crazy fucking mentality that some of us are dangerous and may want to kill him and shit."

"That sounds like an excellent idea Dave. I don't see that plan backfiring at all." Dave rolled his eyes. "But enough of Karkat and how he's doing and progressing, though that is pretty fantastic news and Kanaya will squeal with joy once she hears. I want to know how you're doing."

"What do you mean how I'm doing...?"

"I mean, you can't be handling this as calmly as you're pretending to be. You must be under some sort of stress or major emotion. No one can really lose their significant other for six years then see them return only to find out that they find them terrifying for some completely valid yet still horsehit reason." Dave stayed silent. Rose was completely right, as always.

"I'll be in the room for a bit, alright Karkat?" The troll turned around and nodded just as Dave quickly fled to his room and shut the door. "Okay, congrats Lalonde, you caught me. Your ever knowing Lalonde intelligence once again bursts through my emotional barrier and you have, yet again, figured out that I am fucked up. Happy?"

"Yes actually. I'm pretty damn happy that I was able to get you to admit those feelings. Now if only I could get you to elaborate on them." Dave sighed and flopped down on his bed. Looking over at the slime filled coon tucked away in the corner of the room he wondered if Karkat would ever elaborate his own feelings the way Dave was about to.

"I dunno Rose. Shit just feels weird. And I know, he was gone for six years of course he'd change but...not this much. It just isn't right. Someone just doesn't lose themselves and their entire personality in a few years. It just isn't...possible y'know?"

"Actually Dave, it is possible. If I recall there was a certain 'cool kid' under the impression that masking emotions was the cool thing to do and his obviously horrible guardian was a supposed hero." Dave winced at the mention of those painful memories from the past. "My point is, it is completely normal for someone to change entirely if there's a major emotional event. Your major emotional events were years of physical and emotional trauma which caused you to believe that using overrated dark eye-wear to mask your emotions was cool and that apparently everyone's normal childhood involved major strifing and porn puppets. That made you into the robot like douche bag we grew up knowing. " Dave opened his mouth to say something but Rose continued prattling on.

"What changed you; however; was spending quite a few years with Karkat. He was the one that helped you realize that you had a pretty unusual childhood and helped you come to terms with a lot of things that you were suppressing. Karkat, in this case, was also the major emotional event that helped you become the Dave Strider that was buried beneath hundreds and hundreds of layers of shit. Now Karkat obviously went through something horrific of his own and changed from the loud and caring troll we lived with to...well...what we have now."

"What're you trying to say?" Dave asked, cutting Rose off before she could finish her oral presentation on how Dave's personality went through a roller coaster of changes. "That this is it for him? We're stuck with Karkat like this for the rest of forever?"

"No. What I'm saying is that he went through something traumatic and it changed him. Now he needs someone to help him back to the swing of things and bring his normal self back, someone who somewhat understands better than the rest is what it's like to live everyday in fear and getting bullied and hurt. Someone to break down those emotional walls and free the Karkat we all know and love. Now I can't guarantee that he'll be one hundred percent the same but...at least he'll be back for the most part. But the question is, will you be the one that helps him break down his walls?"