Wow! Ok, so it's been, what, 2 years since the last update? I apologise. The first year there were several deaths in my family and I just didn't write for a while. Last year I barely wrote anything at all, as I go through non-writing phases. Worry not, I have been writing all year this year on stories that I am finishing before posting, mostly involving Doctor Who, but a few which are Homestuck placed. And that means that I am back to writing this story! Yay!

The ending of this chapter is probably way off to the rest of it, because I wrote it way later than the rest and need to get back into the swing of things, but the next chapter is getting started tonight and will mainly involve the Doctor and Rory on the TARDIS.

It's good to be back to writing and especially to this story.

Chapter Thirteen

Knocking on the door woke him up from a deep, peaceful sleep. The first thing he did was roll over to face away from the door and let the rocking motion of the bed lull him back to a peaceful state of mind.

The knock sounded again just as soon as he was about to go back to sleep and he growled into his pillow at the thought of having the peace he wanted right then being taken away from him. He might as well answer the insistent knocking, because he doubted it was going to go away until he did.

"What?! You just woke me up, let me sleep! I'm tired..."

"Karkat? You've been asleep for 10 hours! It's time for breakfast."

Great, the Doctor was being nosy and telling him what to do. Figures. Still, he was hungry. Very hungry. Stupid thing was he couldn't tell if his hunger was due to having a very empty stomach, or was the start of his moult.

Still, he did need to eat. Preferably a lot of meat. Maybe some fruits. Toast would do in a pinch, but right now he just craved meat. He always craved meat when it was time to moult, so it could be that. Though, with how rare it was for him to have had actual meat to eat on Alternia, because of the price, it was also one he considered a rare comfort food.

"Fuck my life! Ugh, fine, I'll be out. I want meat. Lots of meat. Do you have bacon? I'll have bacon. That's a breakfast meat in this universe, isn't it? The human kids ate it for breakfast anyway."

Getting up, he swayed slightly, and he made a lunge for the wall so he stayed on his feet. His head was making doubles of everything. God, either he was sick, or he was in more need of food than he originally thought.

"You alright?"

"Yeah, I just got up too fast. I'm fine, stop worrying over nothing, fuck...stop acting like my lusus."

After a few more seconds his head sorted itself out and he was able to push himself away from the wall and not fall to the floor in a heap. Slowly he walked to the door and opened it. It was only just the Doctor out in the hallway and so he managed to relax quite a bit at noticing that.

"Bacon?"

"And eggs if you want. The two do generally go together."

He thought about that before nodding. He generally just ate the meat, but hey, he'd eat the eggs too. And some fruit, fruit sounded good to him then too, especially apple. He wanted something to crunch. It always helped to eat something crunchy if this was a moulting thing. He still never got the reason why evolution decided to grace them with a protein chute made of chitin. Thankfully, they had sturdy stomachs and the stuff was digested easily enough.

Yet again, their mouths were made of just normal flesh, so it would be a bit hard to not swallow the stuff.

God, why did he have to over think everything? At least this didn't have the power to kill him, like it may have his lusus. His growth may be stunted a bit by all the water loss, but hey, he was short anyway.

He followed the Doctor to the kitchen and frowned deeply when he saw the male human in there cooking the meat. Not his meat, he hoped. Looking closer, he saw that this Rory guy was cooking long cylindrical meat products. What did the humans call them, again? Oh yeah, sausages. He wasn't interested too much in those. It looked too much like eating your own bulge after having it ripped from your body and cooked.

He shifted uneasily from foot to foot and hoped that that thought was just his imagination.

"Toast while we wait?" the Doctor asked him, and he started slightly, but nodded.

"Yeah, toast is fine. I want something different from the orange jam though."

"Didn't like the marmalade? I like it myself!" the Doctor replied, hovering over by the toaster and putting 4 slices in the slots available. Were they all for him? They better be all for him.

"It's orange jam, stop putting ridiculous names to things that could be simpler, god..."

"So says the boy who calls a bathroom an ablution block."

Blinking, he shrugged his shoulders. "I'm a hypocrite. Shut up. I'm not the biggest fan of oranges to begin with. I have no idea why I even wanted it before..." Sighing, he shook his head and got up and walked towards the cupboards he found the jams in the other day. Was that yesterday or the day before? Time was going wonky on him.

"Is this my third or fourth day on this ship?"

"It is the fourth. Losing time? That's not a really good thing."

"It's because I've been sleeping a lot. It's throwing me way off."

Getting down on the floor so he could have a proper look, he rummaged through the cupboard. Why were these on the ground? Shouldn't they be up higher? So many fucking questions and no answers. Well, no good answers anyway.

In the end, he found a blueberry jam. He knew blueberries, he liked blueberries. Living in a communal hive ring, he was used to fruits and vegetables with the occasional fish product brought in by his lusus when he went to the sea to breed and swim.

If he had legally been a rustblood like Aradia or Tavros, he wouldn't have had enough money to even buy the little meat he had bought. Most of their pay had gone towards personal belongings and FLARP gear. They grew their own food to live. Both their psychic abilities also made meat free and easier to get.

He was pretty sure the only true carnivore out of all of them was Nepeta, and she only ate what she caught and killed herself.

God, he really missed his friends if he was getting upset over looking at a jar of fucking jam! At least he wasn't crying this time, just...just really sad and thinking and why couldn't he stop his stupid thoughts from going places he really didn't want them going?

"Karkat? Find something you like?"

Giving his head a little shake, he looked up and took out the jar. "Yeah, I like blueberries. You make them into a jam, that's cool. We had basically grub sauce in my hive and nothing else. I've never really wanted anything different, and now I'm stuck with everything but what I'm used to and this is just stupid and I feel like a fucking idiot and past me is a huge whinging douchebag."

"Ooh, he really can swear in here!" came a sudden and female voice from the doorway, and he quickly swivelled his head to look in her direction. Amy wasn't it? Yeah, he was pretty sure that was her name.

He curled his hand tighter around the jam jar and hunched his shoulders. This jam was his. He would fight to the death for it if he had to. The toaster moving the toast upwards with a popping sound made him raise his head back up and away from the two humans to his now ready food.

If he kept this up, he'd give himself whiplash.

Standing up, he moved over to where the Doctor was, putting his toast on a plate and getting out a knife and fork. Well, it at least stopped him from having to do it later on. He quickly snatched the cutlery and the plate with the food on it out of the Doctor's hands, took it to the table and begun putting copious amounts of what used to be blueberries over them.

It smelled nice, and after a quick taste test, realised that it tasted better than it looked.

Within two minutes his plate was empty and he was being stared at by everyone in the room.

"What?! I'm hungry. Don't stand in the way of me and food right now. You can have the sausages though, those look like you ripped your own bulges off and are eating them, ugh."

"Hah, I have no idea where you found this kid, Doctor, but I like him!"

Karkat stared at the woman and blinked. For a second there she had sounded like River. Well, except for the accent and the different tone, just in the way she spoke. Which was odd. Why was River so different? Wiggler's generally carried on what their ancestors do on Earth too, right? Rose wanted to be a mediculler that works with people's emotions and shit and she said he mother was a scienterrorist. John and his father and his ancestor were all pranksters and two of them loved baking. Dave and those goddamn puppets and the whole ninja thing and Jade loved to explore and hunt, like her lusus and grandpa.

They carried on their ancestor's roles. So why was River an archaeologist while her parents seem to be...well, he didn't even know. The male was a mediculler who looked after the sick but what did Amy do?

He quickly ducked his head back down when everyone else noticed he was staring at her. He face palmed when his stomach began announcing to all, that he was still hungry. "God damn it! Bacon and eggs I was promised. Instead I get toast..."

She laughed and ate her sausages. He watched her jealously. Okay, maybe he would give them a try at one point, just not now.

The Doctor, seeing the look on his face, went off to cook up what he had been promised. The eggs on this ship were tiny, but that was fine, he couldn't eat too much egg. Still, the yolk was orange and not candy red, so he hoped not everything had his fucked up blood colour.

It made him relax. Some things remained the same. Maybe the things that laid the eggs were all bronze and ochre blooded, or maybe they were weird as fuck mutant TARDIS creatures. Either way, he was fine with it. They weren't his colour.

Watching the Doctor cook at least made the time pass faster while Amy and Rory ate. He could at least concentrate on his own food. The bacon looked good. Like home really. He wondered where they were. The TARDIS was parked somewhere, he could feel it.

He wanted to go out and see what similarities there were to his universe and this one.

"Where are we?" he asked the room in general.

Rory rolled his eyes and Amy giggled.

"You are in the kitchen of the TARDIS, but if you mean where is she parked. Currently we are sitting in the Ponds' living room."

He frowned at that. "Living room? What the fuck kind of name is that for a room? Is it like, where you go to live extra long or something?"

"We usually do things like watch movies, play games and that's where we mainly go to sit and entertain guests." Rory answered, finished with his food and getting up to wash his plate.

"Oh! It's your Entertainment Block. Okay. Why do you call it a living room? That's just fucking weird."

Amy looked up at that, the last piece of her own egg disappearing down her gullet. Wait, do humans have gullets? Fuck human anatomy.

"Entertainment block is a good name for it, yeah. Why?"

He shifted in his seat. Amy and Rory were humans. Humans didn't have space travel yet. Or not much of one at least. "I want to go and see. I've only seen the inside of four human houses, and they were all so radically different from each other. I want to go explore one without the use of a computer screen."

"Wait. You've been with the Doctor for half a week and this is the first time you've been to Earth? Wow. Usually you can't keep the Doctor away from our planet. Good job, kid!"

He was getting kind of sick being called kid, but he was beginning to understand that it was just the way Amy spoke and that she didn't mean it in a bad way. Human adults were totally not as bad as troll adults. He was beginning to see that maybe, just maybe, he could learn to trust them.

"Mainly we have been in the vortex. We only went to one planet, with other insect species living on it. Can't remember what it was called though...they are all diurnal anyway. Wait...is it day or night? My sleep cycle is fucked. I can't even tell anymore."

"Early morning. Don't worry; the sun on earth isn't as dangerous as the sun on your own. You'll be fine. If it's too uncomfortable on your eyes, you can always get a pair of sunglasses," the Doctor stated, coming back to the table and put a plate in front of him with two eggs and five slices of bacon.

His mouth immediately began watering at the smell. He was amazed a few minutes later when the eggs were gone that he was not that hungry anymore. Still, he ate two slices of the bacon before he couldn't eat anymore. Well, at least he knew it wasn't yet a moulting thing.

"You going to eat the rest of the bacon or do you want to keep it for later?"

"Later. I shouldn't have eaten the toast. I'm stuffed."

The Doctor patted his shoulder and grinned. "Alright. Not feeling sick?"

He stared. "Why would I feel sick? I'm not even feeling stressed at the moment. Kind of good to have had real food I will hopefully fully digest in me. It feels kind of weird. Can I go look around or am I under hive restrictions."

"Don't break anything. Tell you what? Why don't Amy and Rory give you a tour? That way they can explain things that are different or not invented on your own planet without much trouble."

He would have liked to go exploring the house on his own, but it did belong to two adults and it was totally better to have them know where he was at all times, just in case...he didn't want to get into trouble. He shrugged his shoulders. "Fine, I can live with that."

Rory had been watching him the entire conversation, silent and steady. Either he was going to rage out on him at any time, or he really was that calm. It was kind of freaking him out. He shifted in his seat, pushed it away from the table and got up. He was pleasantly full and had permission to go explore. Hopefully today was a good day and stayed that way. He couldn't take another day like yesterday again. Not in a row.

"One tour coming up! What are the main differences anyway?" Amy asked him, getting up from the table herself.

He grimaced when he remembered the toaster incident and never wanted it repeated. "Um, we name things differently. Or, well, at least the lowbloods did. The Highbloods use the same language usage as you humans. But most stuff on Alternia was organically based. It's mostly the same kind of shit, just different casing and way of working."

"It can be a bit much if you throw things at him, take time to explain things."

Rolling his eyes, he wacked the Doctor on the shoulder. "Yeah thanks for the unpleasant memories I never want to think of ever again. Can I go now? Wait, is it safe for me to go?"

"Safe how? Are you planning something with my house I don't know about?" Amy asked, a look of amusement on her face.

"What? No! In case you hadn't realised this, I'm not exactly human."

Amy shrugged. "Earth's visited by aliens all the time, both good and bad. We're used to it. Well, a lot of people might freak out, but hey, that's their problem. You're a good kid. They'll like you given enough time. Maybe you could make some friends."

He growled under his breath but stated out loud "Stop calling me kid, it's really annoying..."

She grinned at him and shrugged. "Sorry. Old habit of being an adult is calling anyone not an adult or under the magic age of 18, kid."

He scowled deeply at that, hoping a display of teeth would change her mind, regardless of her adult status. "I'm 6. Why the fuck would you wait until I'm 18. I don't even know what my age limits are yet. I might be dead by then, of natural causes and not stupid game law shit."

Amy frowned at him at that, her eyebrows doing this weird thing at the front of her nose. God, does he look like that when he frowned? He had big eyebrows too and by god he wanted nothing to do with that look.

"What do you mean game lore? What game?"

He rolled his eyes. "It's really complicated and I doubt you'd understand even if I told you. I need to change clothes. Be back soon."

He had to get out of that room. He knew that more than anything else right then. He couldn't talk about the game or what it was like or his friends or how he was a doomed offshoot. What he did want to do was go explore a human house and see how different they really were to his own hive. And he had been stuck in these clothes for far too long.

"Black and greys only, you know my size. I don't mind white socks though. Nothing else. I don't want to be hunting for clothes all goddamn day..." he said to the TARDIS, who hummed in his head. He walked out of the kitchen, but still heard Rory asking if he was sane.

Fuck them. The Doctor could tell them he was talking to the TARDIS. Why couldn't they just learn to understand her? She was easy enough to read. He went to his room and hoped to find clothes in there of his size, not that they would for very long, but who cared about that. The wardrobe that had been empty before now had a few changes of clothes. Enough for three days worth of wear. He grinned and patted the wall closest to him, before getting changed. She had been kind enough to give him long sleeved shirts.

He stopped in the ablution block to wash his face before he left his room. He looked lost in the mirror. He wanted to not look lost because that shit made him uglier than he already was.

Shaking his head, he made his way back to the console room, where he knew the others would now be waiting for him. He hoped the human house had water, he was getting thirsty. At least he wasn't hungry any longer and he seemed to be digesting properly. God, he hoped he didn't throw up again.

"Alright, I'm ready now," he stated as he walked into the room, heading straight towards the door outside. Amy joined him, but Rory didn't. For that matter, Rory wasn't even in the room. He didn't bother asking, figuring he'd either already be out in the house, or he'd be elsewhere in the TARDIS. What an adult did with their time was no business of his.

"Rory is staying here for a bit. Something about cleaning his sword...So you're stuck with just me. Come on, I'll show you what an English human house looks like. Well, townhouse anyway. It was our wedding present from the Doctor."

Karkat rolled his eyes but followed her out into what they called the Living Room. Yeah, it looked like an Entertainment Block alright...it looked much different to his, mainly because his hive was wider than the house he was currently in. He could tell that already. He made sure to have the best Entertainment Block he could have as a wiggler.

He started to slowly roam about. The television was of a normal size. He had no idea if they were considered small or large by human standards though. By it was a gaming station that had no game grubs. He stared at it, his head tilting to the side. "How do you play on that thing?" he asked, pointing to the white console.

"Oh! It runs on batteries in the controller and electricity to the console, the games are played by using the movement of your body with the stick and nunchuck. It's called the Wii. You wanna try it later, you can. Just don't throw the controller or nunchuck. They can break."

He shrugged. It interested him and he might give it a go later, but for right now, he was happy looking at everything else. There was a three seater couch. Some bookshelves. The TARDIS in a corner and a fireplace. He never had a fireplace, because he was afraid he'd burn himself or his hive down around his horns. There were pictures on a mantle on top of it.

"Who are they?" he asked, pointing to a picture of two men and a woman.

"Oh, the couple are my mum and dad. The man on his own is Brian, Rory's dad. Brian comes and visits everyone now and then to make sure the plants are watered if we're with the Doctor. My parents have no idea what we do. It's a bit of a mess, but best they don't."

He frowned at that. He knew, of course, what a dad and mum was because of the kids, but this was his first real look at an actual mum and dad. The kids and their guardians were paradox clones so didn't really count.

Amy looked nothing like her dad at all. Her mum was kind of close, but neither of them was just like them. Troll ancestry had never gotten even remotely close to this. No one knew or saw their parents. There was no way of knowing if they were close or not, and as Karkat and his friends were all identical to their ancestors because he made them that way through the paradox slime, he only saw his own image when thinking of his own ancestor.

Humans were different. The female carried the young inside them instead of laying eggs and birthed live young. Amy had been pushed out of that woman at one point and the thought made him squirm.

He did learn something though. Amy was her own person. She looked nothing like either of her parents.

Individual looks were to them as horns and sign were to trolls.

He suddenly felt very naked without his sign on his clothes to mark out who he was. Too bad there was no salvaging his shirt from the meteor...

He shook his head and moved towards the door leading to other rooms of the house. The first thing he encountered was stairs leading up. The kitchen could be spotted from the hallway being on the other side of the house. There was a linen closet under the stairs. His fingers itched to steal the blankets he found in there, but they weren't his. Amy was grinning at him as he ran his hands over one of the plain white sheets, feeling the texture of it. He wanted to curl up and cocoon himself in a blanket pile. He really needed to make that on the ship sometime soon. He needed a pile.

"Your species didn't sleep in beds?" she asked him, seeing his interest in the bedding.

"No. We did have blankets though, but for wrapping ourselves in to keep warm. I lost mine. Really need to find some on the TARDIS. Gonna make a pile of the fucking things and roll in it. Thick ones with a nice feel to them. Sounds like a great idea to me."

She smiled at him. "Pillow and blanket forts are a thing humans do. We just pile pillows in them to roll around on. Made from furniture and pegs and blankets of course. And pillows, lots and lots of pillows. But a big pile of blankets on its own to roll in I suppose could be fun. Can't say I've done that though."

He looked at her with interest for possibly the first time since he met her. Okay, maybe the human race wasn't all stupid, the pillow thing sounded pretty much like a pile, but covered with a blanket wall. He never thought he'd hear something so cool come from a human's mouth. He grinned at her. "Holy shit, your species isn't all hopeless. Pillow piles sound nice too. At least I got something right."

Amy grinned wider at him, and he immediately backed up. He didn't want to be near an adult with so many teeth showing. She looked at him with a small tilt to her head, the smile disappearing into a look of curiosity, or what he thought passed as curious in a human.

"Don't smile like that, or I'll take it the wrong way. I'm still getting used to being around adults. This isn't exactly normal of my species, you know..."

"You don't know any adults other than my family? Ever?"

He shook his head. "I thought the Doctor told you this already. Adults were conscripted at reaching and surviving their first mating season. During conscription, you're given a ship name and a job. You do what you're good at or die. You stay on that ship for the rest of your life. So, no, I had never met an adult before."

"Wow I thought my life was weird when I didn't grow up with adults around. In humans that's a bad thing. Humans tend to smile at one another when they're happy or trying to make others happy. I never really thought that with your sharper teeth it would be taken as a threat. My bad."

Nodding, Karkat looked away from her, closed the door to the linen closet and went to the stairs.

"All that's on the next level is bedrooms and the bathroom. The interesting stuff is mainly here in the living room and the kitchen and dining room. Want a drink or anything? The Doctor said you were drinking a lot."

He nodded. "Yeah, water sounds good. I need a lot of water to make up for what I lost."

She nodded back. "Yeah, the Doctor did mention moulting or something like that. Okay, well, kitchen is down here, come on." And with that, she led him to the other side of the house, where a small table took up a bit of room and the kitchen cabinets and fridge and everything were all in non cramped positions along walls. He spotted the sink and gravitated towards it.

He had turned on the tap for cold water and stuck his head under it, lapping at it with his tongue, before Amy tapped his shoulder with a glass.

"Use this instead. You look like a drowned rat like that. Or a dog. Your hair's getting wet."

He pushed his hair out of his eyes and scowled. Okay, so he was getting his hair wet. He needed to cut it shorter. He hadn't had time during the game and it was starting to go wild. He could barely see his horns anymore.

He'd do that when he was safely back in his room on the TARDIS though.

There wasn't much left in the house to interest him.

He climbed the stairs and took a look at the bedrooms. There were two of them, one that was for Amy and Rory and one for guests. The beds were bigger than his, but lacked the watery movement. Wardrobes for clothes were exactly the same, since neither he nor the humans here had a wardrobifier. He was beginning to suspect those things were a Space thing.

There was another floor, which led up to a storage area to shove things that weren't in use or to be kept hidden away. They called it an attic.

After he was done with his tour, he decided that humans were weird for using electricity for everything. What if it failed? At least with organics you can easily just switch out a dead or dying grub with a younger one still full of life.

Batteries were closer, but still inconvenient. He could breed his own grubs, the humans had to go out of their way to buy more batteries.

He chalked his species up to being the better in power and left it at that.

He wanted to try the Wii, but he wanted to cut his hair first. He also wanted to ask both the adults when they were together if he could have some of the blankets.

He was also beginning to worry if any of the kids had left messages for him after the apology he had sent to Dave.

He really hoped that he hadn't scared them off with his temper.