Karkat is different, yes -- not drastically so, but it's as though the jagged edges of his psyche have been sharpened, certain parts of him brought into sharper focus. He's had to harden much of his heart, and hide all of himself more entirely than he ever had to as a child, as a teen, even growing up a fugitive in this miserable regime.
At Ruka's sudden move, another change in him presents itself: he flinches, tensing as though bracing for a physical blow -- or worse. The recoil is involuntary, and only lasts a split second, but it's enough to allow her to snatch away the collar before Karkat can even realize what she's done, and then--
"Ahhh," he moans, freezing in place.
What she picks up through haptic empathy is everything Karkat Vantas felt for the past six months of his imprisonment. Blanketed over everything, at the root of everything, the most prominent emotion in the overwhelming cocktail of feeling is a terrible, gnawing fear. Fear of your captors, fear of yourself; your own weakness, fear of pain, fear of solitude, fear of death, fear of continued life, fear that paralyzes and fear that drives. The kind of terror that brings you to wake up screaming in the middle of the night and the kind that makes you hesitate. Woven through all of this -- almost as strong, and even more constant is loneliness. An endless, aching sense of isolation, the kind where you would take anything -- a word, a shift in expression, even leap at the prospect of torture if it meant your existence would be recognized, if it meant you would be allowed to interact with someone. The kind of loneliness that would drive someone to talk to themselves for hours. The desperate, hollow longing to see those you love coupled with the despair of the impossibility of that ever coming to fruition. Pain of varying intensity and type is splattered across the emotional tapestry like blood: from a backhand blow across your face to "accidental" failure to properly anesthetize you before a surgical procedure. Despair and defiance wage a furious war against one another, hate and anger fighting to overcome sorrow and futility, neither quite coming out on top. All of this is a mere glimpse of the emotions trapped in that collar.
But -- threading throughout it all, like delicate gold embroidery, thin and easily lost in the storm of emotion, is something else. Something brighter, something that -- while sometimes unacknowledged, or abandoned -- is never quite lost.
Hope. Hope for escape. Hope for death, in his lower moments. But always hope -- always there, and strengthening, the fresher the emotions are, the closer to the present, intensifying and solidifying until it comes to a head, the thrill of escape, the exhilaration of success, and then nothing.
Unfortunately for Karkat, that brightness is inaccessible to him. The feedback loop he gets from Ruka is limited to the darkness alone, and he is entirely unprepared for it. He'd grown used to being without his powers, and he shudders, entire body rigid, swaying in place, letting his past self wash over him.
no subject
At Ruka's sudden move, another change in him presents itself: he flinches, tensing as though bracing for a physical blow -- or worse. The recoil is involuntary, and only lasts a split second, but it's enough to allow her to snatch away the collar before Karkat can even realize what she's done, and then--
"Ahhh," he moans, freezing in place.
What she picks up through haptic empathy is everything Karkat Vantas felt for the past six months of his imprisonment. Blanketed over everything, at the root of everything, the most prominent emotion in the overwhelming cocktail of feeling is a terrible, gnawing fear. Fear of your captors, fear of yourself; your own weakness, fear of pain, fear of solitude, fear of death, fear of continued life, fear that paralyzes and fear that drives. The kind of terror that brings you to wake up screaming in the middle of the night and the kind that makes you hesitate. Woven through all of this -- almost as strong, and even more constant is loneliness. An endless, aching sense of isolation, the kind where you would take anything -- a word, a shift in expression, even leap at the prospect of torture if it meant your existence would be recognized, if it meant you would be allowed to interact with someone. The kind of loneliness that would drive someone to talk to themselves for hours. The desperate, hollow longing to see those you love coupled with the despair of the impossibility of that ever coming to fruition. Pain of varying intensity and type is splattered across the emotional tapestry like blood: from a backhand blow across your face to "accidental" failure to properly anesthetize you before a surgical procedure. Despair and defiance wage a furious war against one another, hate and anger fighting to overcome sorrow and futility, neither quite coming out on top. All of this is a mere glimpse of the emotions trapped in that collar.
But -- threading throughout it all, like delicate gold embroidery, thin and easily lost in the storm of emotion, is something else. Something brighter, something that -- while sometimes unacknowledged, or abandoned -- is never quite lost.
Hope. Hope for escape. Hope for death, in his lower moments. But always hope -- always there, and strengthening, the fresher the emotions are, the closer to the present, intensifying and solidifying until it comes to a head, the thrill of escape, the exhilaration of success, and then nothing.
Unfortunately for Karkat, that brightness is inaccessible to him. The feedback loop he gets from Ruka is limited to the darkness alone, and he is entirely unprepared for it. He'd grown used to being without his powers, and he shudders, entire body rigid, swaying in place, letting his past self wash over him.