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WHO: Rua and Ruka
WHERE: De Chima
WHEN: April
WHAT: Rua arrives in the city, his first priority is finding his sister.
WARNINGS: Emotions, empathy, ugly crying.

'No. No. I don't want this.'

He tried to reach out with his weightless arms. He tried to hold on. He could feel the distance between them growing. He didn't want this. He didn't want this.

'I can't hold on. I'm slipping. I'm slipping away. I don't think I'll make it there with you.'

He was drifting further and further back. He didn't know what would happen if they got separated. Would he go back home? Would he wind up somewhere else? Would he just...vanish? He didn't want any of those things. He wanted to stay. He wanted to stay with her. But he was falling further and further away. He knew that wasn't going to happen.

'I'm sorry. I'm sorry.'

For this, and for so many other things he'd screwed up that he hadn't gotten the chance to apologize for, yet. He thought if they could just get out of this in one piece, he'd have time. He'd have time to tell her everything that he hadn't been able to find the courage to say in the past year.

'I'm sorry, Ruka.'

---

"---HFFFFF!"

He snapped his head up. He was on his hands and knees. His body felt sore all over. He opened his eyes and looked down at himself. He was solid again. Solid and once again, beat up, exhausted, covered in olive-colored blood. He raised a hand up again. He put it to his head as he slowly breathed in and out.

In the back of his head, he was vaguely aware that he was getting another speech about being a hero. He swallowed. His head was still buzzing, but at the moment, he was acutely aware that a hero was the very last thing he felt like.

---

He was given the rest of the spiel, a file with some information on him and an address in some city he'd never heard of - De Chima - before he was taken somewhere where he could take a shower and get a change of clothes. The sun had already set by the time this was all done. He was informed that as long as he was Registered, he could use the Porters whenever he wanted. That revelation blew him away for all of a couple seconds before he was informed that his initial assumption that it meant he could use the Porter to go home wasn't so much the case, just that he could go to other cities with porters, of which De Chima was one of them. He asked if anybody knew if his sister was here. They apologized and said they didn't. He let out a frustrated grunt.

He guessed he could use this new communicator they'd given him (more things changed, right?) to try and find her, but he had no idea where to begin. Just make a post and describe her and ask if anybody's seen her, he guessed. He started to type it up, but something stayed his hand. It had been, he was pretty sure, four years since he'd left the dying City behind. Or at the very least...the date he'd left the City had been four years before the date here. He didn't feel like he'd been out there, floating between universes for four years, but, whatever, dimensional travel was stupid and he had literally never understood it.

The point was, he didn't know anything about this place he'd wound up in. He didn't even know if he'd wound up in the same universe as her. Or at the same time or....any other number of crazy things that could've happened. It was all just way too much to wrap his head around at the moment, so he just scrapped the post before it was even finished and dumped it in his pocket. He'd go to that new address they gave him -- De Chima or whatever, and figure things out there.

That decision led to him stepping out of the porter in Virginia and, almost on autopilot, looking for the address where the military was apparently putting him up. It was cool enough that he was being given a place to stay instead of just being ported in and told fend for yourself, my dude! oh wait, actually, they'd gotten a stipend in the City, hadn't they. Well, still, the house was cool. He tried to focus on that, rather than what he'd been through up until this point. The way the City had been collapsing in on itself. The feeling of the end of the world encroaching in on them...and, eventually, the deaths of his two friends. Karkat and Nepeta.

Well, crap, that did it. He'd thought about their names and now he was thinking about it again. His hands came up to his head and he let out a choked noise through his teeth. He tried to keep himself together, only partially successfully.

In that state, emotionally overwhelmed and physically wracked with soreness, it was easy to miss the relatively minor throbbing in the mark on his arm.

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She hadn't forgotten the way it felt. Four years ago by this calendar, but only two that she's existed in this world — that journey between dimensions, and the pull between her and her brother. How the connection had pulled thinner and thinner, each end further and further away, like two ends of taffy, or wire pulled away from the spool. Even arriving in this world, it hadn't felt like the connection broke, no matter how many months had past. Merely drawn thin, pale and fragile, unable to be pulled or reeled or spoken across, but there all the same.

Karkat had been pretty pissed at her for it. What kind of hollow comfort was that if Rua wasn't here?

It'd been... a long time since then. A difficult time, too, with everyone else slipping into that darkness, one by one. Even Ruka had lost time to it, only back in the world for two months now, and now the other survivors of that calamity can be counted on one hand. It was still difficult. She was doing what she could to survive, trying to keep to herself, keep her distance, hidden and as "whole" as she could be, when she has nothing left. The kind reminder of Lachesis' continued existence — and her mark's power — during that looping ordeal was... it was something. But everyone else was moving on from that, or acting the part, so she must too. Try not to think about what it meant, or what's been lost, or what still remains. Unfortunately, she was never good at not overthinking things, or sleeping at reasonable times, or having normal hobbies, or being anything resembling a functional adult.

So it's well into night, and Ruka was wide awake; she was in the attic, rather than her bedroom, trying to read back over the network for things she missed where their errant fate was concerned (and decidedly uneasy with the number of times the ImPort-submitted redirects in these conversations cycle back to her posts, yuck). She was cycling through another one of these redirects when the twing came, like a little muscle spasm. It wasn't the same piercing pain as the danger of two weeks ago; it was faint enough that when she first noticed it, she wondered if she really felt it at all. Phantom pains weren't uncommon...

But the feeling persisted. When she rolled up her sleeve, and unfastened the leather bracer beneath, it was that unforgettable red glow that greeted her — the birthmark alight in that comforting, familiar shine.

She knew what it meant, as she refastened the bracer and adjusted her attire, already on her way downstairs to grab her shoes, her coat, her wallet. She knew this feeling. But there was no spike of adrenaline with it, no surge of excitement and grief and relief to hurry her steps. She knew, but at the same time, she wasn't willing to hope. She wasn't ready for hope. So until then, she focused on that familiar sense of wire, finally beginning to rewind upon the spool.

He wasn't too far — it wouldn't be long before she knew for sure what to feel.

Rua still had his head in his hands. He was trying to just walk through the snow, walk through all his exhaustion. One hand dug into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He gave himself a goal. Find his new house. Focus on that, then figure out what's gonna happen next. He found a map app on his phone and punched in the address he'd been given and was given back directions. There. He could just. Focus on this for the moment.

-- he gave his arm a little shake, trying to work the sting out of it. His eyes went back to his phone for all of a few seconds, before he hesitate and looked back. His eyes widened. His phone fell back into his pocket. He reached for his sleeve and slowly pulled it up -- he saw the mark of the dragon's heart glowing, just slightly. He felt something on the other end. There was another end and something was on it. His heart started beating a little faster.

Suddenly, he was feeling some energy seep back into his body.

He put his hand over the mark. He waited a couple seconds, he swallowed. And he tugged back, trying to feel the person on the other end.

He was moving, but on foot — that was fine. She could keep up with that, and with how slow his going was, she could probably cross his path, or overtake him soon enough. It would be easier if that Shinigami oh-two guy had finished the bike by now, but she couldn't begrudge him the week lost. (Besides, she couldn't begrudge him the speed he worked on a bike he didn't intend to let her pay for, either.)

As she walked, she felt the sensation get stronger, more deliberate. An intentional tug, to find her end of the connection. Whoever was on the other end knew she was coming, and was seeking her out. If she focused, she could... get a sense, of how he was feeling, but was that their bond? Or was it wishful thinking? She didn't know. She didn't want to think about it, either. She knew who she wanted it to be, but at the same time, what if that was who she expected, and it was someone else — like Jack, who she hadn't seen since coming to these worlds, or Yusei, who had gone on... such uncertain terms. Or what if it was Rua, but... new? Different? One who couldn't remember anything from the City, someone older, someone younger, someone who didn't know...

She didn't want to think about the possibilities, when the answer would come soon enough.

Picking up her pace, she kept her focus on the wind of power in her arm, her heart pushing back. Yeah, she's here. Just a little bit longer.

A similar uncertainty gnawed at Rua as he followed his own end of the tether. He was used to the person on the other end being Ruka, of course, but. He still wasn't even sure that they'd wound up in the same universe after slipping away from each other. It was an incredibly strange feeling and not one he could readily described. It had happened so long ago, but also...just a short while ago. It had been almost instantaneous, yet also lasted a really long time. Dimensional travel was weird and he didn't understand it. But it had all led him simply not knowing what to expect on the other end when he got there.

Regardless of what he wanted it to be though (and it mildly shamed him to think like that and made him quietly apologize to Yusei, Jack and Aki. Not so much Crow, weirdly enough), whoever was on the other end was his friend and he wanted to see them before he did anything else. So, he pushed the slowly growing unease to one side before it could grow any further and kept walking, dragged forward as if on auto-pilot by his mark, until he rounded a corner --

-- and there she was.

He came to a stop as soon as he saw her. It took a second for it to sink in, it was her, not any of the other Signers. He saw the eyepatch and the bangs and her posture and realized that it wasn't just her, it was the same her, the one he had drifted away from. They had landed in the same place. And, once again, just after he'd arrived...she was right here to meet him, guided to each other by their marks like they had been the last time.

He swallowed. His arms fell to his side, one of them still lightly throbbing. He didn't say anything, yet.

The strength of the marking's pull grew, and grew, until finally she could feel the presence of that other person just ahead — just around the corner. In only a few more steps, he would round the bend, and she would finally see who had arrived. It was there that she stopped walking. There, that she needed to brace herself — for what? She couldn't know. She couldn't even let herself breathe.

When he rounded the corner, she remained at a standstill, her gloved hands pushed deep in her coat pockets, hoping the burial would keep them from shaking. Rua, after all this time still more familiar than her own reflection, but, but, he hadn't aged a day since she saw him last, the same height, the same build, but the clothes were unfamiliar, and what did that mean? Had it taken him the two-four-however many years to cross that divide, Lachesis digging through her drawer of dusty pawns and knocking him loose into the world? Or was it the blindness of hope she was trying so hard to restrain, and this boy in front of her — this version of her brother — one who had never left the world protected by the Crimson Dragon before now, one who had grown into who he was now, side-by-side with a Ruka whose life had stayed on that steady track, whose fate she didn't know, whose life she would never experience for herself?

She didn't know.

The silence remained between them, as physical a presence as the burn still lingering along her right arm, a draw not yet completed. So long as it remained like this, the question had no answer. The brother she had lost, those years ago? Or the brother who had never known her, could never have considered her existence?

"Well," she said, nudging that silence to the side, her voice steady enough to not betray her uncertainty, "did you miss me?"

He had been speechless for a moment there. But when she said that and something about the way she said it got him to sputter.

"Geez!" He said, bringing a hand to his forehead, his tone somewhere between incredulous and laughing. "Is that seriously all you can say?!"

She kinda owed him one there, he guessed. Either way, speechlessness and hesitation left him at that moment and he crossed the rest of the gap between him, throwing his arms around hers, dropping his face into her shoulders.

"I'm sorry," he muttered. "I tried. I tried to hold on. I didn't want to let go. I just..." He trailed off. There was no good way to end that sentence that he could think of at the moment, so he just didn't.

Hey, if nobody actually saw his eyes when he was crying, it was like it didn't happen, right? He was gonna go with that because at the moment, he sure wasn't gonna be able to stop.

It shouldn't have, but the quickness of the hug took Ruka by surprise; even as Rua buried his face in the puffy material of her coat, she was still getting her hands out of her pockets, finally getting her arms around his shoulders. It was strange. Everything about it was strange. Maybe it was only shock, and self-defense — that the reality of Rua, here, after all this time, was just too much to accept so quickly. Maybe it was just surreal, to see him after so long — for him to come tripping on her heels, only two months after she'd returned to this world, when the years had stretched so long?

Or maybe, she thought, it was strange because it'd been so long since anyone had reached out to her like this, and she had forgotten what a hug felt like.

It explained why her arms felt so stiff when she returned the embrace, uncertain if they had fallen into the right place, and how, while she could feel his crying (muffled against her shoulder and echoed in her heart), while it hurt so much to miss him and how strong that feeling became when exposed to the light of his return, how her cheeks stayed dry.

"I know. I know. I didn't want to, either." Her hug tightened, trying for comfort, trying for stable. "I never felt you let go."

It wasn't his fault. It was just... what happened. That was all.

He stayed quiet, just quietly sniffling into her shoulder for a few moments. There was a million things he wanted to say. They were all ramming into each other in his head right now and it was like they were all trying to stumble out at the same time and as a result, they were all getting stuck and he just said nothing.

He was aware enough to realize that he wasn't gonna get to any of The Big Stuff right now. And that was, in its way, fine. Maybe he just needed some time to wrap his head around everything that had happened -- to him, the end of the world was still, somehow, simultaneously long past and a very fresh wound (thanks, again, weirdness of dimensional travel). He wasn't going to beat himself up for still being a bit overwhelmed.

He pulled his face out of her coat, rubbed his eyes and, to the best of his ability, Got It Together. He decided, for the moment, he'd focus on one thing. He was with his sister again. He was happy about that, darnit, so after one more sniffffff, he put a smile on his face. Tired, but genuine. He didn't break the hug just yet, though.

"I guess I showed up late again, huh...really, really late this time." He gave his head a little shake. "If I keep talkin', I think I'm just gonna be, like. Apologizin' for stuff all night, so. How have you been?"

Always late... there were teases she could offer, little barbs about oversleeping, or how he could never bring himself to ask for directions when he got turned around and lost, but there was a familiarity to them that felt wrong, in this moment. He felt bad enough as it was; even ribbing like that could be too sharp, the way things were right then.

She took the moment to ensure her stability — a deliberate breath, a too-long closing of her eye, a shift of one of her feet to steady her weight. Apologies all night if he kept talking, but Ruka knew as soon as she started, there would be no end to them. There were so many things she'd done, so many things she'd said, that she'd not said, and the weight of them had never really left her, had they?

She regretted keeping her secrets, but even with him back in front of her — and knowing now that he really was her brother, the one she had lost and the one she'd missed so much — she felt no urgency to spill them now, either. It was hard to make iron float.

In the end, her answer started with a sigh, a forced shrug, and a shake of her head. "I don't know what to say." She tried to smile, a pull at the corner of her mouth — but like a piece of tape covered in lint, it couldn't stick. "It's been better, it's been worse, but I only got back a couple months ago."

Much as he didn't really want to, Rua broke the hug somewhere in there, taking a step or two back from his sister, since it would've been a little awkward to keep holding a conversation with them wrapped around each other like that. He told himself that if he wanted to do it again later, hey, it wasn't like it cost anything.

He probably shouldn't have been surprised at the (non-)answer she gave to his question and after a second, he realize he wasn't surprised. Sharing hadn't been Ruka's specialty ever since he'd come back to the city. That had never stopped being a thing that happened. For now, he decided not to push it. Partially because something stuck out to him.

"Two months...? So, you only got here two months ago?" 'Here' and 'back' were kind of relative terms at this point. He kind of wanted to hang on to the idea that it had only been two months and not four years separating them this time.

"It's... Sort of?" The hesitance was clear on her face, a grimace in the pull of her cheeks and the narrowing of her eye, one of her freed hands rocking side-to-side in the universal gesture for yes and no, kinda but not really. Punctuated with a shrug, she shoved her hands back into her pockets.

How to explain?

"She's been playing yo-yo with me, a little. I came to this world with everyone else, four years ago, but I've... been here for about two years, and lost the other two, from then to now." She shrugged, as though that would make the words less awful. "I didn't get to go back, to Neo-Domino City, but I didn't get to stay here the whole time, either."

"Oh."

Well, it had been a nice thought, for a moment at least. But, nope, there was another two-year gap in between the two of them. Those were kind of piling up at this point, he realized with a grimace. Two years was kinda...bad. But at least it wasn't four. For the other two, she'd just been kinda. Out there. In the weird ether between Porters, sorta like how he'd been so delayed in showing up here.

...something else was dawning on him. He scratched his head as he thought about it for a sec.

"....s'how old are you now?" He asked. He had to confirm it.

More questions she should have expected — and an easy enough answer. It didn't make her any more eager to answer it, not for her own age, or for the number Rua carried, but what the two meant together. Because if Rua only arrived from that day, four years ago, and not from their original world...

"Eighteen. Nineteen in two months."

... then he hadn't aged at all, had he?

"So I suppose... you have to call me big sis Ruka, now, right?"

Oh, he was going to hate that.

Oh, boy, he didn't like that. It actually gave him enough vinegar to get just as petulant as he normally would about that sort of thing.

"Psh! Don't you have to actually be bigger than me for that? You're three years older than me and we're basically still the same height!"

The words you're three years older than me coming out of his mouth felt so weird in this context, but, well. If they kept getting split up like this, it was bound to happen eventually. He'd only sorta caught up to her back in the City because he'd gone back to Neo Domino City for a couple years. And apparently, she still hadn't.

"So what? That's because I'm fine the height I am. Like a nice petite bonsai tree. It's not my fault you're going to be a gangly weed that doesn't know when to quit growing."

It was weird how she could pull her face in such a way to convey the feeling of sticking out her tongue without actually sticking out her tongue in petulant tease, but there it was, clear as day.

Or at least, clear as one little sunbeam that managed to cut through an overcast sky, because it faded just as quickly as a came, her expression settling back into her more usual tired-serious resting face. "Where were you heading, anyway? Before our marks... reconnected."

He took in a breath to bite something back (probably comparing himself to a mighty oak or perhaps, somehow, a tiger again). But he didn't really have the energy and they were moving on anyway, so for once, he let it drop.

"...uh. They gave me a house that's in this city. So I was heading there when I felt you on my mark."

The tried and true method of getting the last word: immediately changing the subject.

"At least they put us in the same city right away." She frowned a little as she said it, already unhappy with her conclusion. "I don't know if I would have felt anything, if you'd stayed in Florida. Which house is it?"

Maybe he'd been assigned the same house as her? It would be a little awkward explaining to the roommates she'd given fake names to that they were fake names, but if it meant being with her brother again, she could handle a couple weird looks.

"Uh. It's in "individual housing"? Whatever that means. Here's the address they gave me." He rooted around in his pockets for a second, fished out the piece of paper he'd gotten with the address and handed it over to Ruka. "So you already live here? That's lucky, I guess. What's this place like?"

"Seriously?"

She tugged the paper out of his hands, scowling intensely. Seriously??? Rua showed up to this universe for the first time ever and he got a whole place to himself, but she — an empath, with empathy powers, that are always reactive to the people around her — kept getting stuck in houses with a bunch of strangers?

"What the hell." If she was only feeling petulant before about the height dig, she was sorely bitter now. She shoved the file back to Rua without reading anything else, crossing her arms. "I know I'm unlucky, but this is ridiculous."

A pause. "If there's two bedrooms I'm moving in with you."

"Uh, sorry, I guess?" Rua said with a shrug, completely missing whatever about this situation had gotten so under her skin. But it wasn't like he had a problem with what she was saying.

"I mean, I just assumed one of us was gonna move in with the other," he said. "I dunno how many rooms there are, but hell, if there's only one, one of us can ride the couch or get an air mattress or something." He scratched his head. Then, very much without thinking, he added, "What about Karkat?"

He blinked after he said it, as if he'd realized something.

There was no way Rua wasn't going to ask, but still — when the question came, it stole the breath from her, old and familiar hurt rising back to the forefront. Her comparatively petty irritation at the housing assignments dropped immediately. Even knowing it was coming, even knowing she couldn't avoid saying it, she didn't feel ready.

She was never going to be ready to admit how much she lost, but Rua deserved the truth.

"... Karkat isn't here anymore." He was here, she needed Rua to know; Karkat hadn't sacrificed himself for good, for Rua's sake. "He's been gone for a long time."

She hunched her shoulders, starting to walk back on the path to Rua's new house.

"... Most of the people who came here from the City are gone."

"...oh."

Rua averted his gaze. He suddenly wished he hadn't asked, but. Part of him felt like maybe it was for the better that he did know. He still felt awful about what had happened with Karkat in the City, but the fact that he had made it anyway...was...comforting. In its way. When Ruka started to walk, he followed. He crossed his arms and looked down to the side. He wasn't sure what to do with the idea that most of the people from the City were gone -- he hadn't known a lot of people, anyway, but he'd still felt a sense of connection to them for the weird situation they shared. Like, they had been in it together right up through the end of everything. He supposed it was probably for the better that most of them had gone home. There was still something hanging in his head, though.

"...I wish I'd gotten to talk to him," he muttered. It wasn't something he'd said without thinking this time. Part of him had wanted to keep it in because it hurt to think that he wouldn't be able to talk to Karkat again, but he said it anyway. "I wish..."

He rubbed his head.

"I really don't want the last time we saw each other to be the last time we saw each other."

Edited 2018-04-12 02:30 (UTC)

It was a familiar sentiment. For Ruka, who so often was the one left behind when others left, it was usually her carrying the regrets for things undone, things unsaid... she kept her gaze down, quiet. If she said she agreed, or that she understood, would Rua refocus instead on how the loss had affected her, instead of dealing with his own grief? She'd had time to come to terms with it, after all... he deserved his own time.

They carried on with the quiet between them for about a block before she could work up something worth saying.

"... He told me what happened." A glance up, at Rua from the corner of her eye, before tilting her chin up to the dark clouds above them. "He was glad he was able to protect you. He didn't... regret that."

It was like those awful crypt-crusader movies, she thought, with the trap-rigged floors — inching around each little step, each safe little corner of stone to put weight on, to keep the whole place from collapsing.

"... but he didn't want it to be the last time, either."

"He wouldn't have had to protect me if I wasn't..." Rua trailed off and swallowed. He didn't want to go there. He slowly shook his head. He hadn't regretted it. Rua had probably already known that. It was the kind of guy he was. He acted like such a jerk, but it was all surface. Right underneath it had been a guy that didn't hesitate to help both of the twins a lot - even if he was a jerk about it.

It was kinda hard to believe he was missing a guy that obnoxious this much, but there it was. He tried to think about something else. Eventually, he let out a breath through his nose.

"...so who're you stayin' with now?" He asked, having searched for and successfully found a change of subject..

A safer topic. The harder things would come with time, she knew, but for now, if Rua wanted a respite, she could provide that much. "Three guys. Basically four, though, because one guy's boyfriend is over all the time. I'm pretty sure I've seen more of him than the other two combined. Most of them are about my age, I think, but the one guy's in his twenties or so. I'm not really friends with any of them, though."

She hadn't gone out of her way to get to know any of them — if anything, she'd gone out of her way to avoid them, spending more time in the attic than the living area, knocking the outer doorknob from her bedroom to dissuade approach, keeping odd hours... when she and Karkat had first been assigned a house together, it'd been so draining to live through each of their roommates disappearing, one after the other, replaced every month. Even now, it only felt like a matter of time before it happened to this house, too.

"They'll probably like having the second bathroom back, once I'm out."

Because. Of course she took a whole bathroom to herself. Look, she's an empath, not a saint.

"Huh. Sounds like you were a really good roommate."

Somehow, the days of the twins sharing the same bathroom in their apartment in Tops seemed a million miles away. He took a couple steps until he was ahead of her and he was fixing her with a very silly looking version of a skeptical, serious glower.

"I mean, this is my place we're heading to. Am I gonna need to get references or a security deposit or something?"

She paused when he blocked her path, and for a brief, brief moment she thought about taking the question as a sincere concern, but — well, this was Rua. She didn't need empathy to know when he was just giving her a hard time.

So she sighed, blowing her bangs out of her face.

"Well, I suppose I can get a co-signer, if you're that worried. Will a United States Senator suffice?"

"Pfeheheh!"

Rua let out a giggle, as if he'd suddenly heard something really funny in there. It turned out it had almost nothing to do with what Ruka had actually said. He pointed to his arm, then hers.

"Co-signer."

She pursed her lips, but didn't let it turn into a frown.

"How long have you been waiting to use that?"

"That was completely off the cuff! I wasn't waiting at all!"

"I'm sure you weren't."

She obviously wasn't. Still, she crossed her arms, leveling him with a halfhearted glower.

"Are we going to get to this place of yours, or should I let you get ready to sleep on the sidewalk?"

"Geez, what're-- oh."

He realized then when he'd stopped in front of her, they'd stopped. Whoops. He moved out of the way, then started walking behind her again.

"Actually, I think I'm probably gonna sleep as soon as we get there."

"Alright," she said, and it was really the only thing she could think of to add. It may have only been two years, for her, but it was still two years since she had lived through the day Rua was living now — coming to a new universe, with the death of another at their heels, feeling lost and loss like weights within their hearts.

She'd lost Rua, that day; Rua lost everyone else.

If he was lucky, exhaustion would take him into a long sleep without dreams tonight; if he was lucky, it would only be in the coming days that nightmares would settle, and grief would coalesce in a way that his overwhelmed heart prevented now. And for all that, she would be here — like Karkat had been for her, even though she received it so poorly. Karkat had deserved better than her, then; Rua deserved better than her, now. She would have to do better.

"You haven't eaten yet, have you?" The question was mild as she slowed her pace a half-step, two, slipping her hands out of her pockets. She kept talking as she took his hand in hers. "There's a lot of decent late-night diners around here, so we can grab something if you're too hungry to sleep, yet."

Rua was ready to say he was ready to sleep instead, but he actually took a second and thought about it. When the words 'eaten', 'diner' and 'hungry' actually made it into his ears, he remembered something. He remembered how freakin' hard it had been to find any decent food and water while the City had been dying around them. Everything with Karkat had happened because they'd been going out searching for supplies. Unsuccessfully, he might add! After that, eating at a diner sounded straight-up heavenly.

"Now that you mention it, I think that's exactly what I am. Let's go."

He'd stuff his face, then he'd fall asleep the second he walked into his house.

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