Contrivance: Chapter Two

John==> Turn the key

You turn the key, watching closely as the man who tried to kill you three years ago crumbles at your feet.

Your name is John but your title is much longer. John son of Jake, Sovereign ruler of the Kingdom of Wind and Shade, King of the Kowasites, Heir of Breath. You think that if you were to clump all those names in a sentence together, it could easily serve as an anchor on a ship. Your reign has thus far lasted what your enemies call 'one and a half sweeps' though the war you inherited along with your crown has been going on for much longer than that. Your Southern-most neighbors, the Alternians, have never before met an enemy they couldn't easily crush and they have not taken to the idea of failure well.

You suck in an unsteady bout of your birthright and the sound it makes is a rattle that reminds you of tree branches shuddering against the wind. It is the only indication that the events currently unfolding may not sit right with you. Outwardly, your expression remains stony. Emotional ambiguity is not an easy look to achieve for someone like you, but you can't afford anything else, not even in company so personal. Though it doesn't matter as much as it's supposed to. Everyone in the room knows how you feel about this except... The one person who needs to the most.

His candy-apple red eyes are burning up at you, weighed down by folds of bruised, swollen skin that indicate a sleeping pattern of near nonexistence and a feral cocktail of terror and rage. They scold you in a harsh, ragged snarl of  foaming accusations and hurt feelings, matured like wine into pungent bitterness. You LIKE this don't you? You LIKE to do this to me!

No, no I don't. I PROMISE. You sigh back in your mind, aching. It's a familiar soreness, one that you can feel between your shoulders, in your neck, in your fingertips. It comes from lugging a heavy conscious around.

The truth is, you get the least pleasure out of this humanly possible. The idea that you're doing something embarrassing and wrong persists no matter how insistently Rose (but mostly yourself) tries to convince you that it's necessary; you can't shake off the feeling that those eyes throw back at you. The way that body crouches, as if struggling to hold up something much bigger than himself and losing the battle.

You take another step and another but you can't bring yourself to settle back down on your throne. You immediately motion for people to help him because it's obvious he can't get to his feet. You've never been afraid of him the way others are, but you know on some instinctual level that if you go to touch him right now, he'll probably take one of your arms with him. His heart is mechanical, and functional, for the most part... But it's also the only one of its kind that has, to your knowledge, ever been successfully made and it's far from perfect. The Key Turnings bring shock and a lot of pain along with the power they restore.

Jade made the thing like she usually makes things, in a manic frenzy with little to no pre-planning, only the vague notion that it could be done if only she had the resources to pull it off. Sure—arms and legs were easy, but a functioning organ? No one knew whether the it would really work or not. In fact, everyone but you was surprised when it did. You watch Dave open the doors, a signal for the Guards that it's alright to come in again. They half carry Karkat to his room on the West end of the palace and you can see that even in the state he's in, his body jerks as if wanting to struggle and bite. He never stops fighting.

Though you know no one is going to stop you, you can't really stomach getting to your feet and following just yet. Collectively, Dave and Rose know that you will regardless, in a friendship hive-mind kind of way, so neither of them approach you. For now, though they're just a few feet from them, brother and sister incline their heads and talk softly to each other. You couldn't have felt more far away  if you'd just walked over the side of a mountain. The conversation going on in your head is not one your used to having. Usually you move a little too fast for chit chat, but this subject is like an open wound you can't help but worry at it. You're mind keeps gnawing.

It's not the deed itself that's really wrong. The slight movement of your wrist brings the metal instrument into contact with the slit and it clicks as it turns a set of gears. A perfect fit with only one key to match it in the world. The gears start churning and the contrivance of iron and brass in the center of Karkat's chest begins to throb with life—too much life to bear. Technically speaking, what you're doing is pretty much a good thing because it means that he can breathe easily again. For another 11 or 12 odd months he can be a semblance of a man, a semblance of the fearsome soldier he once was. As soon as he opens his mouth to scream at someone, that's when you know he'll be fine.

It's what happens when those months are over that leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Inevitably, he has to come back and submit himself to this display of loyalty, an idea you contested, fought bitterly but were never able to completely shoot down. When held up against the awful things Karkat used to do with himself, you just can't. It's a cruel reminder that no matter what kind of undefined relationship the two of you have forged,  he was once your enemy and still remains a prisoner of war, forced to conspire against his homeland under your orders. It's seriously heavy shit and you're pretty damn sure that while some part of him might like you, there's definitely a larger portion of that anger-pie that hates your guts.

Though you can't really blame the guy, can you? He didn't ask for this. He was perfectly willing to die for his crimes.

The problem was you weren't really willing to kill him. Still aren't--- as a matter of fact.

After a few minutes of brooding and a few less words mumbled to your Queen and your Knight, you find yourself walking at a rapid pace down the high vaulted halls of the Palace of Breath.

You know by the time you reach his room that he's already asleep. It's not exactly a dead faint but it's close enough to be as predictable as clock work (and about as predictable as a predictable simile). You lean against the door frame and squint through your flashing glasses to get a good long look. The only thing you can really make out in the moonlight filtering through the window are the most dramatic angles in his features. There aren't many.

He's a cutie. No matter how haggard his appearance, how red his eyes, how Alternian-dark his skin and snarl, he's got the characteristics of a child. A squat nose, a small compact face framed by prominent cheek bones, and large, emotional eyes that are successful at hiding zilch about how he feels. You know the face by heart and you don't even need the light to help you see it.

What's entirely not-childlike is the posture in which he sleeps. He slumps like a corpse or an old man getting ready to be a corpse. King Jake never laid like that. Even on his death bed, he could hardly stand to sit still and you don't think Karkat could have looked closer to kicking the bucket if he had a sword sticking out of his gut. You sway with unsteadiness a lot like sea-sickness at the thought, so  again, you find yourself backing away.

You continue retreating until you feel your back against a cool, stone wall and you don't try to stop yourself when your fingers go to twist at your mess of cropped black hair. Of course, there are servants near by, always crouching like nervous rabbits, waiting to act in accordance with your next move, but it's as close to being alone you can get so you don't really see them.

You know it must be a couple minutes later, but it feels like hours when a cool, soft hand falls on your shoulder. The voice is trim, stuffing in as much information as possible in the soft, brisk sound that forms your name.

"John."

It's Rose. She doesn't want to interrupt you but has to, which means, she's resolved not to feel guilty about it. It's also apparent that she wants you to come with her.

"Sorry, I guess I just..." you begin and trail off. She nods. It's a good thing she knows when you don't intend to finish your sentences. That wife of yours is one sharp cookie.

"I understand."

It's kind of funny how well you know these people. Just like you didn't have to see Karkat's face to imagine how it looked, you don't even have to tilt your gaze upward to know Rose is furrowing her brow in that god awfully prim way of hers. If you didn't know her well enough to have a very justified and healthy fear, you'd almost call it silly.

"However..." she presses, a trace of urgency laced into her tone, as subtle as poison.

You let go of your hair and force a smile at her. It comes out broad and fake. In regards to Rose, you might as well have held up a sign with bold letters that says Oh hey I'm talking out of my ass.

"Don't worry about it. Let's just go."

She nods curtly and doesn't bring it up again that night. As you are whisked away to whatever business that needs to be attended to, you can feel her twine arms with you. You press back into it willingly and follow her into a night that is routinely spent with the two of you working tirelessly, machine-like, well past any sane person's bedtime.

To your mother and father's credit, they had never once made it seem like ruling the Kingdom was an easy thing to do which is exactly why you'd be friggin' nuts to try and do it alone. Or more specifically, without Rose.  You're pretty sure it would result in apocalyptic destruction if she ever decided to leave the atmosphere to rejoin her super-efficient fair-haired alien (heheh) country. Nope, you're positive. Without her, the Palace would immediately crumble in on itself and sink into the swamp, never to be seen again.

The only "flaw" in this team of royal badassery is the fact that you never, uh, consummated your marriage.  Not much of a problem except for the times when Dave decides he feels like being a hilarious douche-bag and brings it up (as in all the time), but he can't exactly disapprove can he? It just means he and Princess Jade's hypothetical son is going to be the next Heir instead and Dave never misses an opportunity to gloat about how 'fucking magnificent and fruitful' his loins are going to be in comparison to yours (stupid, douchy Knight of Time best bro bastard whom you kind of wish wasn't going to be your future brother-in-law and  whom you could freely strangle without upsetting your sister).

Anyway, the business Rose was so intent on is not a "kiss it off and hand it to a subordinate" type of deal. It's something that requires your immediate personal attention for the most part of the next week. The Alternians have been doing everything they possibly can to try and one-up you in the hopes that something will give them enough of a combat advantage to allow them to launch an all out attack.

Those guys are really big fans of war! And horses. And conquering shit. It's a little bit dizzying just thinking about how badly most of them want all your people dead or enslaved.

They've been pecking insistently at the same game for years, irritating every point on every inch of border they share with your Kingdom to test for weaknesses. Sometimes cavalries will come stomping across like a pack of wolves and get driven back almost  instantly by guerrilla units crouching low in the dark jungles, or get rained with attacks from your admirable fleet of airships, circling above like great big carrion birds.

Luckily for you, your military understands that if the fighting's not in the open, Alternia can't get the upper-hand. You mean, they're great at riding into battle and crushing people. It's the way they've been fighting and conquering for hundreds of years and damn if they aren't good at it. Fortunately, their tradition is so set that they don't know any other way. They just do the same thing over and over again with a kind of of obsessive malice that tires you out just considering it. Dave thinks that even they must be aware of how stupid it is to expend so much effort because they have thus far never had the balls to send out a larger force. Maybe two or three cavalries will attack in different places at once, but you know they aren't using all the man power they have. Not nearly.

Only recently have they gotten a little smarter, and it's for this reason that you've spend these past few nights puzzling with Rose and your military advisers over weird correspondence messages.

Apparently they've started building their own airships.

Your airships were invented by Kowasite engineers, the most recent models perfected by Jade who works in utter secrecy  (doesn't get much more secret then that particular swamp). To your knowledge, they've never managed to bring one down either so no one can quite wrap their minds around how they could have figured it out on their own. They have either somehow gained access or there's a spy on the inside handing them information. One thing you do know, however, is that their airships pretty much suck ass.  

First of all, they don't know what they're doing. They're just copying based on whatever intel they could scrape up and are sending them off into the air as fast as possible, with the sole intent of displaying  power and spreading paranoia. We're watching you, those airships seem to say as they buzz lazily back and forth across the bordering skies like drunken bees while Kowasite people watch on, scared and confused from the safety of their jungles.

"Yeah, yeah, fuck you," you say as your armies beat them back again.

Your airships have always been much more functional and even have real fire behind them. It's no contest. Everyone knows that the Alternians and technology don't mix.

Even so, the fact remains that they now have a presence in the air and Rose and Dave mutually find that this is a troubling prologue to shit-that-might-go-south later. If those two are worried, you know you should probably be pissing yourself.

But...

You've started out looking out one of the many wide windows with the best intentions. Intentions that involve concentrating on the problem at hand and trying to figure out how they could've come by the knowledge they have when you've had people sniffing for spies like hungry blood hounds. The Knight of Time being the hungriest of them all.

But you and concentration have this history of not getting along very well. You can't help but pause and lose your train of thought when you spot some tiny speck of a person perched on top the highest hill in the gardens, barely visible in the fog but there, surrounded by soft glows of blues, purples and greens from far off.  You straighten up, craning your neck to get a better look and adjust the brass rimmed glasses perched on your nose. Rose is busily penning a letter. You, on the other hand, are unhitching the window and beginning to climb out of it like a cat burglar. She turns immediately and sees you just in time for you to flash a winning buck-toothed smile that has made it into several portraits. The Queen is not impressed.

"John, where are you going?"

That woman has a sixth sense! It's spooky. But heh, she also has a lot on her mind and you can assume she's not going to push the issue. By the time you're halfway through, you can tell she's turning back to the desk in a fit of apathy. You don't plan to leave her alone for too long, you just need a little....

Your eyes cut back down again to the lone figure on the hill.

Air.

You snort a little in bemused laughter at your own cutting wit, feeling the Wind escape into your collar, your sleeves bloat, your cape billows with the appropriate amount of roguish grandeur and then...

"Hurrk!"

She's pulling you back by the cape, blue fabric clutched in hand. Oh spirits- you hate when you misjudge things like this.

"John, I do believe this sort of behavior is a sign that your interest has escalated into an unhealthy obsession. You were planning on using your Windy Shoes so you could fly over the gardens and stalk him no doubt."

"It's not stalking!" you protest, snatching your cape back and flapping it at her a little, adding a bit of a whine to your voice. "It's just friendly... surveillance. Y'know, a bit of one-sided watching between friendly royal semi-associate pals. It's definitely a thing." You trail off and then add in a bit of a scolding tone. "Hey- do I ever interrogate you about the shenanigans you get up to?"

"I've never heard of that particular custom being apart of the maneuvers of friendship. Unless by chance, you've been at the window in the maid's quarters unannounced and I'm just finding out about it this instant." She smirked. "And in regards to my shenanigans, I can actually handle my own private affairs in a mature manner which is why I don't feel the need to discuss them."

You tut at her. "Aw, don't be gross, Rose! I'm not like old Jake. It's me, John. Do you have to take the fun out of everything? I was just going to get some air."

She winces at the pun as though you'd just reached over and slapped her with a big slimy fish. You can't help but grin. It's like if you want to ward off Rose, all you have to do is make a stupid play on words. Fortunately your mind is like a magical refiling bag that can just produce stupid plays-on-words. You have them in bulk.

She presses her fingers to her lips. "Well I am not attempting to stop you. Spirits know, I'd become more psychologically defunct than I already am if I did not take a break once in a while. If that's the only thing I thought you were doing, I'd understand. However you are not. You are going to stalk the bloodthirsty pseudo-gardener, and don't let me hear you deny it, John. I'm not willing to play this game with you."

You cock your head at this long winded speech and as usual, you find yourself too baffled to argue.

"Whose playing games? C'mon, Rose, you know me. I don't play games... At least not the-," you brandish your fingers in the air and wiggle them a bit to illustrate your point more clearly, "-weirdo, brain-washing kind you play anyway."  You tilt your shoulders into a shrug and flatten your palms to smooth down your breeches."And... Yeah. Maybe I was planning on doing a little friendly-not-stalking surveillance. So what?"

She sweeps those fingers away, pursing her lips and placing her hands on her narrow hips in a fluid, feminine motion, her long sleeves rustling.

"And what, pray tell, are you hoping to accomplish by just floating around and watching him from a distance? Shouldn't you actually talk to him and have it over and done with instead? You know, in a way resembling a semi-functional human being?"

At the suggestion of being semi-functional, you dig your teeth into your lip a little, releasing your words through the corner of your mouth. "I just... don't know what to say to him yet, you know? And I," you wince. "Okay, it's not like I'm afraid of how he'll react or anything... It's just that I definitely don't have time to hash it out with him right now. I keep meaning to talk to him these past couple of days but..."

She raises one high arching bleached-blonde eyebrow and you wave your hand at her just dismissively enough to be "chauvinistic and infuriating".

"Soon, soon I'll talk to him about it. I mean I need to talk to him anyway to tell him about the next mission, right? And we have to get everything settled with that friend of his if we really want to send him along..." You trail off, furrowing your brow in concentration. "Lets see, uh tomorrow... No, tomorrow I'm meeting with Dave and we're going over the, uh..." you trail off frustratedly. "The next day..? No... That won't work either...How about..."

"Tomorrow afternoon?" she supplies instantaneously. Her small smile tells you absolutely nothing about what she's thinking. But that's to be expected.

You fiddle needlessly with the tips of your cape. "But uh—hey wait, no, that's afternoon tea." Afternoon tea with Rose is not as casual as it sounds. It's more like--- sip half halfheartedly at hot liquid while going over everything that happened that week and analyzing it. It's more like afternoon debriefing.

"I mean later in the afternoon John. Dinner. Night time. We'll do tea with the Witch and her beau ...and in lieu of getting any real work done, concentrate instead on your ill-advised romantic endeavors."

You shift on your feet a little. "I dunno Rose... That kinda sounds, no offense, a bit nightmarish."

She shrugs a little, the gentle slope of her shoulders draped in all that fabric managing to make even that look elegant somehow- kinda like an understated waterfall. "I have already told Jade to tell Karkat you'd be there tomorrow when she gives him his check-up. Really, I don't see you having a choice in the matter, unless divinity suddenly bestows upon you the gall to call it off yourself ."

You blink and then immediately smile at her appreciatively. "Wow, you're being so evil. I'm kinda proud of you sometimes." Only you have had the right to watch that evil start out as a tiny evil sprout and then fester and grow into a sprawling fungi garden of evil. It's touching.

"Knowing that you have dim, slightly fearful admiration for my cunning displays of tactility surely gets me through those cold winter nights and well into the summer, John."

Cunnilingus displays? you think privately, but rather than inciting a full blown act of violence you instead lean over to give her a little kiss on the cheek. "Yup. That's why I married you! I mean besides the fact that it was arranged when we were born and we were both forced into it," you pipe cheerfully and beam at her.

"Oh John. You certainly have a way of ruining every sentimental moment possible and I'm sure that's exactly what he sees in you.," she chuckles and pushes you away a little. "Are you quite content to get back to business or do you still need some air?"

You grin and back away towards the window, clicking your heels together in an attempt to achieve the right rhythmic pattern. "Just a bit. I'll be right back."

"Very well," she quips, giving you her back in a dismissive swish of printed fabric, her opal head dress grinning in the low candle light, reduced to a white blur out of the corner of your eye.

In a second, you're scaling sheer spires like a deranged monkey, whisking freely from hand-hold to hand-hold, currently a hundred feet above the ground. You click your heels a few times to activate your Shoes, hearing the whirring and whining in your ear drums, a sound softer than a heartbeat and then you tense like a cat and launch precariously into open air, feet outstretched to catch a roiling wind current. Pchoooo!

This presents no problem for you at all.

The next day, afternoon tea is every bit as nightmarish as you predicted but you take it in strides. These are your friends, after all. You know them better than anyone. So you could've practically mouthed the words when Dave says, "Look Egbert.  Not to be insensitive, but we're in the middle of a fucking war and all, so just speed it up a bit, would you? Given that we might all die at any moment when that bitch decides to send every inbred sword-toting mofo she ever pushed out of her vag galloping over the border you might as well-"

"Spirits..." Jade squeaks a little, even with her palm pressed over her mouth, she's unable to contain her cackle. She shouldn't be surprised people think she's a witch when she goes around cackling like that.

"-Hire a male prostitute you know, like all the other politicians and while you're at it, leave our pet bloodthirsty assassin alone. Yes? Everyone with me on that? Good."

"That's not what this is about, numbnuts," you snap back, feeling your first faint spark of annoyance. Man, it's not usual that Dave can get to you at all. He's Dave. You expect him to act exactly how he acts and as your Knight, he only has your best interests at heart. Most of the time. The idea of you being that twisted over this kind of vaguely unsettles you. But why shouldn't you be?

You sigh. "Me and him...We're pals okay? All that other stuff comes after and he has a right to be fucking cheesed off. I mean for the spirit's sake, every time he needs a Key Turning, it wears him down a little more. Shit... I'm not even sure whether what we're doing is necessary anymore... Forget the moral implications." You lean wearily back in your chair as all three of them silently peer at you.

"The fact remains," you finish, "Is that we give him an awful lot of responsibility and not much in return. That's all I'm saying".

Rose is the first to speak again, her voice a patient and measured drawl. "John. You know why it's necessary that we do it this way. At least while the war is still ongoing. He was the Knight of Blood once and he could be again. Not only that, but his ability to go undetected in Alternia is invaluable. We just can't afford-"

You shake your head impatiently. "I know that, all of that but it doesn't make it any less not- okay. He's still a person, my friend, under that title."

"Well," Jade puts in, shifting a bit and blinking sympathetically at you. "I really don't know if you guys are giving Karkat enough credit! He's changed a lot in three years and I don't think he could ever put on that cloak again even if he was given the opportunity and I think...."

Dave turns back to her, and even your own words die in your throat as you wait for her insight. Sometimes your sister really does seem like the Witch the public thinks she is. Not just because of any of the scientific mumbo jumbo but the way she can just...

Aw, you don't have a word for it. Rose would. Rose has all the words.

"I think the only person he has any loyalty to anymore is you, John. Everything he has in the world is in your hands but then, it's more then that. I think the reason he's so angry isn't just because it hurts or it's inconvenient... I think it's maybe because he has personal involvement."

A smile stretches your face. "You really think he considers himself my friend?" You feel a cathartic glimmer of hope that isn't entirely happy, but nonetheless you can't help but chant in your head. Hell. Yes. Hell fucking yes.

She laughs a little and twines her arm around Dave's, squeezing it and inciting an eyebrow raise that almost makes you laugh ,despite the knots in your chest and stomach. "I dunno if he'd uh, word it that way, but yeah!"

"It's a bit difficult to define your relationship in one phrase, John," Rose notes with that same placid smile that topples empires all over the place.

"Aggressively not-heterosexual?" suggests Dave, earning himself a tiny slap on the wrist from his indefinite fiancee.

You laugh openly at that, though it comes out just a little bit nervous and rushed. "Look, once the war ends.... I mean after we fix this," you look up and straight into Rose's eyes. "After we fix all of this, we won't have to do it anymore right? There won't be a reason," you take a deep breathe and lift your teacup, squaring your shoulders, "It'll all be over and Karkat will be free. Just like the rest of us." That's what you truly believe, you kind of have to. Everything is riding on the end of the war, absolutely everything and Karkat is only the first of many, many lives you will save.

They look at each other but no one disagrees with you. They'd better not! If there's even a one percent chance that your reign will bring an end to the war, you're definitely going to make it happen. You're so close now and Karkat's strong. He's gotta be the strongest man you've ever known, like something out of one those Sir Nicholas Cage legends except shorter. You know he can hold on.

In the meantime...

"In the meantime," you begin again. "... I'll just make him feel better. Cheer him up a little, right?" You don't think you know one person these days who couldn't stand a little cheering up, and Karkat is probably one of the biggest candidates.

"Yeah. Go get 'em tiger. Sweep him off his feet like a zookeeper wrestling a rabid honey badger... Or... Hell, maybe an emu. Domesticate that shit," Dave says. The only thing that tells you he's cutting his eyes up is the shift in his eyebrow quirk and the wrinkle his forehead. You stare back at him, understanding immediately what he means by looking at you like that.

I know you like him, Egbert, but if he makes a wrong move, I'll cut him down.

I know, you think back with a dip of your chin that only Dave would interpret as a nod. You blink from the flash of those brass goggles always firmly fixated on his narrow face, the sun turning them into glaring fiery spheres with no more empathy than any other burning ball of gas in the sky. To anyone else, even Jade, they might as well be his eyes. One day he might take them off for her, you hope, but that day hasn't come yet and you know the only time he did it for you, it wasn't by choice.

Dave has protected you for almost your entire life. He commands your army and trains your most elite soldiers. In order to do his job, sometimes he disobeys direct orders and has to keep secrets from you. Unbeknownst to anyone but your inner circle, you are the only King in Kowasite history to have two Knights working under you at once. You know he doesn't really appreciate it but he would never admit to being anything but cool with it. As the Knight of Time, he's supposed to be an immortal being that's basically impenetrable and all that shit but really he's just a basically good guy with an attitude. Like someone else you know.

"So guys.... any day now....I'm open to suggestions?" You offer as attractively as possible, raising both eyebrows at once and spreading your hands becomingly to beckon in all the good vibes and profound commentary your friends will surely provide.

"Karkat is a delicate flower," Rose advises, words flowing calmly as warm milk. "He obviously needs to be firmly courted with all the passion a young robust man such as yourself can muster, for only a proper wooing could possibly alleviate his tempestuous storm of hormonal dissonance."

You hear a strangled choking noise, sort of like a cross between a suppressed scream and a hiccup as Dave snorts into his cup.

You look back at Rose, your eyes suddenly gleaming with unshed tears of joy (okay not really, but you're seriously are all on board with this one!). Perfection. You reach over and grasp Rose's dainty hands eagerly. "Oh spirits, you are the best wife ever. That's. A. Fantastic. Idea."

Jade's leaf green eyes get kind of wide like an owl's, further magnified by her glasses which she pushes further up her nose with anxiety. "No. John, she wasn't actually being serious-"

Rose blinks back calmly at her. "Of course I was. I shall even set it all up. I'll make sure they prepare his favorite foods, I'll get the gardens lit up..."

"Rose, do you want him to die? Help me out here!" Jade turns tug at Dave again who is apparently giving a congratulatory fist-bump to Rose under the table for just giving their sovereign ruler and supreme palhoncho the best advice ever.

"I wouldn't dream of interfering with this," Dave says gravely "This is just beautiful."

"Guys this isn't funny, you're going to get him killed! Listen John, Karkat's not a flower. That is the furthest thing from what Karkat is … Karkat's more like a … Cactus! A cactus covered in razor sharp bitchy thorns-"

You laugh warmly and stand up, hearing the screech of your chair as you push it, mussing up the tablecloth slightly in the process.

"Jade, Jade," you say shaking your head."I've heard from a reliable source that cacti do in fact have flowers. I've got this! It's totally in the bag. We'll have the most awesome night two bros ever had right after a bitter, emotional conflict."

"I..." She started raising her hand, but then she balls it into a fist and huffs out a resigned sigh. She reaches for a scone as a gesture of defeat. "Okay well, if you think it'll be okay, maybe it will be. You're serendipitous that way. Just..." She winces visibly and idly adds, "Just... remember there's a high-speed setting on your Windy Shoes is all."

You're already backing away eagerly. It's not often that you get the opportunity to escape afternoon tea. Usually Dave is the one who gets to leave first, lucky bastard. "I will! See you guys later!"

"I'm proud of that kid," you hear Dave mutter sagely as Rose snickers quietly.

You're proud of yourself too. Why didn't you think of this sooner? Of course, as a former Master level prankster, you're aware that they were just yanking your chain but that doesn't make it not a good idea.

Some of your best plans come from terrible, terrible ideas!

You're in the know as to all the things Karkat likes (of which there are admittedly few but enough to work with!) so, maybe if you just pack them all into one evening, his mood will improve! Plus you're giving him a new mission, a new relaxing mission that shouldn't be too difficult. He'll have his best friend along too...

And this time you'll see to it that he returns well within his time limit.