Chapter Text
"Hang on, Momo!" John shouted, snapping his glider open with a practiced flick of his wrist. Karkat looked on with only a little bit of jealousy, and a whole lot of longing, as the younger boy showed off both his bending skills and his physical prowess, leaping into the air and zooming towards the cage that held not just their flying lemur companion, but also a trio of rather plump hog monkeys.
Karkat's stomach grumbled in protest as he watched his crush, the bridge between his world and the spirit world, free several game animals without a second thought. He reached for his water pouch on his left hip, feeling the way the water sloshed eagerly within the leather. It called to him, not as strong as the ocean back home, but still enough to make him smile as he took a sip.
"We could have used those," Rose complained, his nonbender sister cocking her arm, boomerang raised as she watched the hog monkeys scamper away. "I understand John's dietary restrictions, but would we not have an easier time preparing his portion of the meal if we were able to forgo consuming some of his rather small nut pickings?"
"Rose, I know you're the plan guy, but I think you worry too much," John said with a laugh as he landed. "I really don't mind sharing, and besides, if we let Appa fly us to the next town, we can just—"
"We're not flying," Rose snapped, and Karkat rolled his eyes.
"Why the fuck not?" he asked, crossing his arms. "We've been walking for hours, and I'm fed the hell up with it." His feet hurt, and unlike John, he couldn't just ask his element to carry him when he got tired.
Rose snorted, crossing her arms right back. His big sister was taller than him, the bitch, and she knew how to loom. "Because Fire Prince David and The Orphaner General never catch up to us on the days we're walking, even if it's much slower." She turned to John, who was giving her his inquisitive head tilt. She sighed. "Clearly, they're navigating by your furry friend's prodigious girth."
Appa mooed plaintively at this, and Karkat wondered if the animal guide of an Avatar was gifted with sapience. He'd been wondering this for the past five weeks of their journey, and each time Appa reacted to someone other than John , he added another tick to the maybe column.
"Maybe it should be John's decision, not yours," Karkat snapped back. "He's the leader, he's the one who knows what kind of risk we're taking if we don't hurry up and get to the North Pole!"
Karkat really wanted to say that it didn't matter if the disgraced Prince followed them, not if they made it behind the walls of their sister tribe's homeland. With a sky Bison, it's not like they were restricted to follow the ocean or the roads. But his sister took being the oldest seriously, and would never approve a plan that put the Last Southern Waterbender in danger.
It was while the trio were bickering that Rose began walking again, her long legs allowing her to pull ahead of them quickly, even when she turned and walked backwards, gesturing with her boomerang to punctuate each sentence.
Thus, when Rose shoved herself between some thick bushes, Karkat had to watch in horror as Rose nearly fell ass-backwards into the Fire Nation soldiers hidden behind it.
"SHIT," Karkat swore, scrabbling for the mouth of his water pouch. His sister turned with a snarl towards the soldiers, who were standing from their cooking fire, their faces already twisted in fiery rage.
"Get separated from the rest of your kind, you filthy barbarians?" One of the men taunted, a spear in his hand. Beside him, a woman lit her fists in a hot fwmp of sound.
"We mean you no harm," John tried weakly, but the soldiers didn't listen- didn't care, more like, and they edged in closer, laughing cruelly.
"Too bad, pretty thing," one of the soldiers purred, hand ablaze. "We're going to harm you anyway." He licked his lips, and took a step forward–
And with a wet, meaty thwack , a small dagger struck true, landing dead center of the soldier's throat. He looked down in shock, a choked gurgling escaping his lips along with his life's blood, the flame in his hand guttering out as he fell. John whimpered at the sight from somewhere near Karkat, and his heart clenched for the pacifist.
Taking that as her invitation, Rose screamed a battle cry, leaping towards the man with the spear, her own warclub in hand. John blasted his air at the flame fisted woman, joining the fray despite the death.
And then Karkat had no attention left for anyone else, focusing on taking down anyone in his way. He lept and spun, his limber frame not quite as quick as John's, but still allowing him to flow like water past the lumbering bulk of adults in full plate.
He tried to focus on what the scroll had taught him, taking the water in his hands and pushing it at the head of his opponent, then pulling it back towards him to create a bubble around his face. The man began to writhe wildly, and Karkat hoped grimly that John wouldn't notice.
Instead, it was Karkat that didn't notice the flames coming for his back, not until a lightfooted figure— John?— collided with him, a strong arm wrapping around Karkat's slim waist and lifting him off the ground entirely.
"John, holy FUCK," Karkat shouted, twisting his wrist to make the water follow him into the sky.
"Sorry, not John, but if you're comparin' me to a real life Airbender, it means I'm doin' my job right," a deeper voice than he expected brushed his ears, and then they reached the apex of their trajectory, apparently a large branch that the stranger dumped him on.
"Name's Eridan, by the way," the shaggy haired boy called, Karkat watching open mouthed as the rope swung the guy back towards the carnage, swinging his gleaming hooksword towards the naked belly of a solider who'd clearly been woken up by the battle. His gut exploded in a dark mixture of offal and viscera, releasing a sickly scent that made Karkat gag, even from up here. Other strangers, clad in dark oranges and browns like the autumn leaves, were joining the fray, each leaving a bloody splash across the grass to rival Rose's own.
Karkat had lost his water in the rescue. By the time he'd worked up the ability to retrieve it, the fight was over, and bloody children were counting the bodies, whooping over the spoils.
"That little girl just kept killing them," John's voice announced him before Karkat registered the airbender's arrival, so light was his landing on the branch. "This war has turned children into murderers." His voice cracked as he spoke, and Karkat wished he could protect the boy from the destroyed world he'd inherited.
But the Avatar's duty was to save the world, and Karkat had to hold onto hope that John was strong enough to do that duty, even if the world that was left was a cruel, violent mockery of the one the airbender remembered.
"It's not murder," a reedy voice scoffed, and they both looked up. Clinging to another branch above them, a crossbow in hand, was a hollow-cheeked boy with a lisp. One eye was grey-blue, the other a reddish-umber. "You have to be human for it to be murder."
"Well said, Sol," praised the boy with the hookswords, his face splashed with blood, as he swung back up to their branch with ease. He turned to Karkat and John, his eyes, a strange, near-purple shade of grey, wide open and earnest.
Look in my eyes / they lie
"My freedom fighters aren't killers, we're only taking out the trash."
Karkat swallowed roughly. This guy, Eridan, was ridiculously handsome. He'd done something to his hair, put a streak of henna through it that matched the dark, burnt-leaf color of his clothes. Dressed darker than John's nomad robes, the stranger seemed more wild than John. He was older, and evidently well-trained with the gore coated weapons in his hands, which gave him rather well developed muscles in comparison to Karkat's crush.
John looked like he wanted to argue, so Karkat cut in. "Thank you for saving us. I'm Karkat, this is John. My sister Rose is the maniac with the warclub. You said you're the Freedom Fighters?" He snuck a glance at Eridan's legs, wondering if they were just as muscular as his arms.
Eridan smiled coyly, as though he'd noticed Karkat's wandering gaze. "These are our woods, but the ashmaker scum keep sending patrols. You're lucky we were planning a raid on this one." He gestured at the ground, and Karkat looks down to see the other Fighters carrying supplies out of the solider's tents. One of the smaller figures, a girl with a red bandana tied across her eyes, seemed to be plucking daggers from the soldier's corpses. "Terezi's one of my best fighters, and Sollux here is one of my brightest. They help me train and protect the rest of the kids."
John snapped his glider back open. "I'm gonna check on Rose," he said, and jumped off the tree before Karkat could stop him. Eridan's gaze tracked the airbender as he descended.
"The bastards would've loved to kill a real airbender," Eridan said, a wistful edge to his voice. It sent two shudders through Karkat, one part of him wanting to question the older boy's tone, but the... other part of him felt a sudden pulse of arousal. It was something about the way Eridan tilted his head as he spoke, his eyes heavy-lidded.
Trying to regain some measure of control over his thoughts, Karkat made the mistake of looking down.
"Well, I'm just a waterbender, I can't fly my way out of this tree." Karkat's voice cracked as he spoke. Being on Appa was one thing, the bison wasn't exactly likely to bow under his weight. He couldn't say the same about a tree branch. He still felt his stomach swooping from John dragging him and Rose away on his glider from those pirates, and that was four days ago!
Eridan chuckled, extending a hand to Karkat. "If you wanted a ride down, all you had to do was ask."
Karkat felt heat rising in his cheeks, and carefully took the proffered hand—
And gasped, as Eridan used it to tug his body inward along the branch, pulling him close until Karkat was slotted against his chest, pinned tightly by Eridan's arm around his waist. With the other hand, Eridan grasped the rope, then jumped, pulling Karkat with him.
"FUUUUUUUUUUCK" Karkat shouted in terror as they dropped at a controlled, but still way-too-fast, speed. Somehow, Eridan was laughing, loud and spirited, as the winds of their descent whipped his hair, and the sound reverberated through his chest and consequently, through Karkat.
Thankfully, it was soon over, and Karkat leaped away from the tall drink of temptation— but not before his sister got an eyeful, and she scowled mightily. He gulped, resolving to control himself before she gave him an earful on the subject of discretion.
"Hey Tz, what we got?" came the voice of Sollux, and Karkat looked over to see the scrawny boy had followed them down on a rope of his own, and now approached the knife girl (Terezi?), who was rapping her tiny fists against the side of a large barrel, leaving bloody smears where she touched it.
"I'll bet you two copper this is blasting jelly," she replied, her voice nasally.
Sollux whooped in excitement, hurrying over. "That would be so sick," he praised the girl, producing some thin metal device that he used to tear open the barrel lid, eagerly peering inside.
"You can give me the coins later, nerd," the girl replied, patting her companion on the shoulder.
"And what, pray tell, does a group of wayward urchins need with blasting jelly?" Rose asked, eying the display distrustfully.
"None of your business," Terezi sneered, and Karkat's hackles raised defensively.
"Now now, let's not treat our guests of honor so snappishly," Eridan said, raising his hands in placation. "They're from the south, they don't know what those monsters do to places like this. They don't know that every barrel we secure, we're keeping the enemy from using to destroy our forest."
John gasped. "Like Hei Bai's forest?"
Karkat felt the fight drain out of him at those words. The ashen wasteland of Hei Bai's home had shaken all of them, even after Rose was rescued and the last of the burned expanse vanished behind the horizon.
"I don't know that name, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's what they used. These monsters aren't above any sort of sick, dirty trick, when it comes to destroying us."
went to hell a couple time
Eridan's face darkened with passionate anger. "I've seen the things they do to us, close up and personal."