Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Your name is Dirk Strider and you are always waking up in the same place, nowadays. 

That is, your apartment, back in Houston, crammed to bursting with your brother’s paraphernalia: old turntables and mixing equipment, posters plastered over the walls, stacks of vinyls, all kinds of cables tangled into impossible knots. Magazines, dusty fans, jewel cases with mismatched CDs, your puppets, your various swords. The windows are always open. It should make you uncomfortable, all of these unsecured entryways, but you also get the feeling that there is no reason to close them, except to keep the birds out.

White birds, mostly. That’s new. Or it isn’t. The ocean outside doesn’t look like any ocean you’ve ever seen. The clouds are strange, cut-out shapes. The sun and the moon tick through the sky like clockwork. Sunrise and sunset paint themselves up by inches.

But the heat is the same. You’d know that heat anywhere. It’s how you know you’re home, even if you’re dead.

At least, that’s the conclusion you arrived at a few days into this. You are – and this you know with resounding certainty – dead. You remember a lot of things, vaguely: You were in the middle of something. You were trying to find someone. You were flying above an empty green field with a single home, smoke curling from its chimney. You can’t seem to recall where you were going.

But this is the sort of weird that you only know from dream bubbles, and from the strange disjunction of your memories, you reckon it’s probably based on your life. There are very few shared memories connecting anyone to this place. Your brother could come in, maybe. He hasn’t.

You don’t find that you are particularly lonely, even though no one’s ever online. Old habits die hard. Your entire connection is out, actually, but something tells you that it’s not supposed to be fixed. You try anyway, just to fuck around and put your brain to work before it chews off its own leg in boredom. Even if you are dead, and in a dream bubble, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to be of assistance to your party, somehow, and you do want to know how they’re doing, but it’s not like you can track their progress until you figure out how to get around the way the bubble restricts native outgoing signals. So you pop the case on your computer and slap the metal arms of your chair to discharge any static you might have gathered up, and do some diagnostics.

The only thing that stops you from getting into the guts of your transmission apparatus is remembering, very suddenly, that Harley died a long, long time ago, and the other two will have kicked it by now. You kicked it, too, a while back. The Game is over for you. You are waiting for your bubble to pop, and then that will be it.

You stare at the breadboard inside your PC tower, and put your screwdriver down. You snap the case back on, and stand up, and you don’t touch the computer anymore.

But, again, you’re used to this, and aside from the occasional twinge of nostalgia, it’s not really an issue. You just don’t touch the computer. Life goes on. Sun follows moon, inch by inch.

This is fine until something starts to bother you. You aren’t sure what it is, at first.

Just a feeling.

Just that sometimes you stumble like you’re off-balance, a little bit, or that you look up and things are in a slightly different place than you expect them to be. Like the world shifts down when you’re not looking. Weird. That didn’t used to happen, you think. It’s been a long time, though.

A long time since what?

The thought pops into your head, unbidden. It kind of spooks you, to be honest, because you don’t understand it. A long time since what? Where the fuck are you? This isn’t your apartment. The sky is wrong.

The hairs on the back of your neck stand straight up. You take a deep breath and clench your fists.

Your name is Dirk Strider. You’re seventeen years old. You’re in your apartment in Houston, in some kind of fucked-up afterlife, and you’re waiting, you guess, just doing whatever it is that ghosts do in dream bubbles, until someone comes along to mix things up. Working on old projects, keeping fit, watching movies, eating centuries-old instant ramen for no other reason than morbid curiosity. Or habit. Might be that you’re supposed to be doing it. Something like that.

You take another deep breath and ground yourself, and it’s fine.

Except that it keeps happening.

You’re in the bathroom and your hand goes for something that isn’t there. Razor. You open the medicine cabinet to retrieve your electric shaver.

You’re on the roof, stretching out before you start your routine, and all of a sudden your limbs look alien, too short, skin too tanned, freckles standing out like accusations. It makes your skin crawl like it doesn’t fit, like you’re about to molt your own body. But you pause, re-center yourself, and the feeling goes away.

You’re repairing a torn seam on one of the puppets to fill orders and some part of you absently notes that you should schedule server maintenance soon and what servers. You have to put the puppet down because your hands are starting to shake because you don’t know. You don’t know what servers.

And suddenly you can’t shake the feeling that these thoughts are being injected into your head. Usually, you have such a painstakingly detailed grasp of everything that goes on in your brain that it drives you a little nuts, so this…

But there’s no one else here.

Your name is Dirk Strider, and you’re seventeen years old, and sun follows moon, inch by inch. You take a deep breath again and you’re okay.

All of the others are dead. But you’re okay. You’ve always been by yourself, except for Cal, and, well, he doesn’t really count anymore, not now that you’ve had a good helping of the real deal.

You are handling things pretty well, considering.

Then you have a dream, and in the dream you see the bright green eyes of someone you thought was dead, someone you never met, but you have met this guy, you know his buck-toothed smile, the short-sleeved green shirt he wears unbuttoned, his bitten-down fingernails. God, what’s his name? Harley? Harley’s dead. Harley’s been dead for a long fuckin’ time and you never met him and he never gave a fuck about you. But Harley leans his head against your shoulders and twines his fingers with yours and it’s so familiar and you know that the sunburst in your chest went out a long time ago and this, all of this is dead, but—

You sit up straight, eyes wide open.

“Fuck,” you say out loud, heavy on the labiodental fffff and the plosive k, voice still hoarse with sleep. “Jake. Jake English.”

His name is Jake English. How the fuck did you forget Jake? You spent so much time thinking about him. Created such a fucked-up complex about everything he meant to you. Still means to you. The only Harley you personally know is Jade, the Witch from the Beta session, and whatever her current status might be, she wasn’t dead before you died. Which means, logically, that… well, shit, you don’t know what it means.

Or. Or. It means that they’re not dead, that you’re not dead, and that maybe this isn’t a dream bubble. The only condition you are relatively certain of is the first, that your friends are still alive out there, somehow, or at least you can’t confirm that they’re dead. And you’ve been sitting around doing absolutely fuck-all for the better part of, well, however much time has passed, enough weeks for time to coagulate into months. But you were so certain that each and every one of them had chomped down hard on that dust. You remember knowing that, for a fact, you were the last one. That Harley, or Jade, died years and years ago, before the Game even started.

But she’s fucking alive, right? So who could it be? The only other version of her you know about died in your session, but she was ancient when she bit it. You didn’t know about her before meeting Jake, and she was technically an English, besides. So, not the alive Harley, not the Condesceased English. Not Jake. Come on, Dirk, think.

Okay. Jade’s guardian, maybe, because you can remember a couple of times when someone’s referred to Grandpa Harley or came up with some bizarre nickname for Jake. Your bro and Roxy’s mom died hundreds of years ago, and you know Jake met a similar end in the other session. Not much beyond that, though. You’ve spoken to Jade about – well, you’re not actually sure you’ve conversed with Jade at all about this, actually. Or, if you have, your defective fucking brain has dropped that particular interaction down one of the mnemonic oubliettes that now apparently riddle the thing like holes in Swiss cheese, and you may never retrieve it.

It’s the middle of the night, still. You know that instinctually. Rain is drumming against your window, lit up white-edged and glowing by the comically-oversized moon that peeks through the cartoon clouds. You roll out of bed and stand up, switching on the lights before you give your eyes a good, hard rub.

You’ve been in this place before. Maybe not this exact place. But it’s familiar, the feeling of three in the morning, eyes throbbing, the weird tension at the back of your head that rolls down from your shoulders to your back. The vibrating need to do something. So you and pop the case on your computer, and get back to work, cross-legged on the floor and surrounded by a mess of tiny components the size of your thumbnail, checking your achingly slow progress by running occasional tests on your laptop.

By the time you get to the point where you’re driving yourself up the wall about a hundred different little problems, the sun has gone down again, and you haven’t had time to think. You go out into the kitchen to pour yourself a cup of water, because it’s not like you’re going to be any good to your friends as a desiccated corpse. (Well, stranger things have happened, you guess.)

If they have any inkling that you still exist, Roxy’s probably on the case already, which would usually comfort you – you like working alongside her, or at least meeting her in the middle of a project – but you find yourself a little resentful, too, because she’s not—

Aren’t you over this by now? She’s not here. Of course she isn’t here. You’re fucking dead, and she (probably, hopefully) isn’t. But… you know. You never did too well by yourself, despite what you’d thought at the beginning of everything. Too much time in isolation sends you straight back to your old thought patterns, treading paths so well-worn that they threaten to give out beneath your feet at any moment, plunging you into your next spiral.

So that’s another thing you have to add to the list of things to keep track of in the afterlife, or whatever this is: the brain that just won’t goddamn quit.

The weird physical sensations have pretty much stopped. There’s not exactly a guide on how to survive the transition into being dead; you figure there’s probably a troubleshooting period where the Game is adjusting the environment dynamically, custom-fitting it to your particular neuroses. You just kinda hope there aren’t any more growing pains, because the dissociative sensation of being in a body that doesn’t look the way you remember it is, well, not fun.

The problem doesn’t quite go away, though. And you have a theory as to why.

Your brain is restless, as always, but even more so now that you’re not-dead or whatever. And isn’t this the perfect time to try to do some spring cleaning? To get rid of all the parts of you that hate the other parts? You’re picking at yourself, like when you used to peel dead skin off of your sunburned arms, because you’re bored out of your skull and you don’t like yourself very much. There’s always the itch to do some pruning.

And, really, once the idea worms its way into your head, you can’t let go of it: you can finally take a step back from your hypercritical, controlling functions, and pretend they’re someone else’s problem. When the urge to pick-pick-pick comes along, you can comfortably dissociate, because you can simply say that whatever it is, it’s not you. You’re taking responsibility for all the things that are you, that you want to be, and whatever that is – obsessive-compulsive, controlling, super-fastidious – you don’t want it. So you don’t take it.

That works for a while. You open a pack of ramen, corral a stray thought into the not-you zone. Practice your forms on the roof, push away your unjustified resentment. Watch a movie, firmly refuse to think about your dead friends or your save state. After a few days, it becomes as easy as breathing.

Eventually this conceptual other-you, impulsive and agitated and perfectionistic, repels you so much that you feel like you’re sharing a body with him. You are, but consciously you understand that you’re the same person.

Doesn’t feel like it, though.

Feels like you’re trying to pick a splinter out from under your skin. Rough, irritating, inflaming. That’s what you’re doing – splintering yourself, again. What absolute bullshit.

There’s no one around, though. No one except you. So you dig your psychological fingernails around the splinter and try to find its edges.

It protests the most when you get to your memories. That’s interesting. Your mind twists at your memory of Roxy because you don’t know Lalonde. You’re also suddenly, nauseatingly confident that she’s dead. And you’re alone, as always.

But that’s not fucking true, is it. Or at least you deserve the chance to find out whether it is.

Your splinter seems to disagree; makes sense, because you poured everything about you that is disagreeable into him. Your fear of abandonment, your latent death wish, your self-hatred and the toolbox of shitty coping mechanisms that come with it. That’s him, now, and you’d feel cruel and capricious for consigning him to a life with a brain that constantly shits the bed, but you also couldn’t give less of a fuck right now.

He gets his own memories, too. Cal, Dave, a Houston burning up under an unforgiving sun. A variation on a theme. You, mixed up, jumbled around, puzzle pieces shuffled into unrecognizability. Your imagination running hogwild on things Dave told you about his Houston, the one that looked kind of like the one your brother must have known. The Houston you know from video clips and photographs and movies, as far away from your reality as you can get it.

Your Houston.

But not yours. The Houston that was destroyed during the Reckoning. A Houston that only exists in someone’s memory, now.

God, you miss that piece of shit.

You want this splinter gone, because you are tired, so tired of being reminded of old thoughts and stupid fantasies, shitty memories and bad habits. So you push your nails in, resist the temptation to dwell on a dead Harley and a dead Lalonde, resist poking around in the part of you that wants so badly to be dead. You focus as hard as you can on your Jane, your Jake, your Roxy, their features, their doofy god-tier outfits. You can picture the gentle curls of Jane’s hair almost perfectly in your mind’s eye.

But you can’t and you don’t remember that. Even though you’re remembering it right this instant.

She’s dead – she’s been dead for a billion years, basically.

These are your thoughts, but you don’t want them. You ran through this shit on your alpha playthrough already. There is no reason you should be falling prey to these same insecurities again, and if it takes partitioning your fragmented disk drive of a brain to get rid of them, then so fucking be it, because you are so tired of being the same person with the same fractured mind, unable to stop second-guessing every moment of friendship you’ve ever had. You slam against it, pry it out of its place, trying to knock it away from the rest of you.

They don’t give a fuck about you. That’s the way the Game is played.

You drive that chisel into the rock of your brain again, around the parts of you that you are finally rejecting, that’s not true, and that makes a neat split, a crack all around, a psychic schism. And it works.

It works in a way that you didn’t expect, but doesn’t surprise you in the least. You’re still a Prince, after all. You have always been good at breaking yourself apart.

Your unwanted self dislodges and begins to fall away. It doesn’t hurt, but the sensation makes your skin crawl and your stomach try to evacuate itself, like something is sliding out of your body, like you’re just a cocoon and whatever was inside you has pupated, slithering down, leaving you an empty shell.

You half-expect there to be blood in your eyes and mouth, but there isn’t, although your stomach is still doing its very best kickflips. You end up tripping over your own feet and falling back on your ass, vision swimming, nausea cranking your salivary response. It takes a couple of swallows to get both of those things under control again.

When you collect yourself and lift your head from your knees, you’re looking at yourself, sprawled out on the floor in a heap of ungainly limbs.

Huh. Not yourself, entirely.

It – he, maybe – is older, or at least more physically mature, from what you can guess, a little taller, and with more muscle mass. Same pale hair, same face, although sharper and more lined. Same outfit, actually. You wonder how the fuck you managed to cough him up with clothes on. There’s no tattoo on his shoulder, and you don’t have as many scars on your arms, but they certainly look like he got them the same way you did. Maybe he also has a katana in his sylladex.

Well, it looks like you went ahead and generated your Beta session self. It feels very much like there’s some serious #incl<stdio.dirk> going on.

You stand up, nudge it/him with your foot. No response. You bite the inside of your lip. Holy shit, did you really just full-body-puke up a temporally-displaced clone of yourself through the sheer power of petulance? Can your brain ever leave itself the fuck alone, or are you just doomed to repeat this insane Jungian drama of the ego over and over until your bubble pops and you wink mercifully out of existence? You didn’t get Hal back, and there’s no AR and no ghost, so this time it’s just pure, unadulterated you. You, and your twin-by-carcinectomy.

And, well, he’s prone and unconscious, and it’s not like you’ve forgotten what Dave said, about his “training,” his cruelty, his absolute self-assurance. You’re not sure you’re ready to deal with a splinter you created out of your greatest fears and some kind of fucked up guilt over someone else’s shitty childhood. Maybe it’d just be better to—

He stirs in the middle of your monologue, cutting off your train of thought. You watch with morbid fascination as his eyes open, half-lidded, wandering around the room as if trying to get his bearings. Same color as yours, of course.

Then his gaze lands on you, and he scowls faintly, closing his eyes again, and says, at a decent volume, with a voice deeper than yours, “Ah, jesus christ.”

You’d be offended if you weren’t also pretty unhappy to see yourself.

He is still lying on the floor, sulking or rebooting or something, when you leave him to go chill in your room, extremely not in the mood to deal with more splinter bullshit. If you’re going to be trapped in a dream bubble, or some esoteric subset of n-dimensional space, or whatever the hell this is (well, maybe it’s hell), then you’re definitely not going to dive right into the combat portion. You’ve earned that right, if any.

Maybe you should have locked the door, though, because after about an hour, the knob turns and he’s standing in your doorway with a blank expression. You look up from the knot of cables you’re trying to untangle.

“What?”

He stares at you for a couple of seconds, face still completely unreadable, then just makes a kind of huh noise, and closes the door again. You feel like you’ve been assessed.

Usually, your splinters can’t shut up. They’re like sharks, almost – gotta keep the self-sabotage pumping or drown. But, besides your brain ghost, you wrote and debugged every line of code the others were made of, and you did sort of eject this one out of your own body with no prior testing and no QC, so it stands to reason he’d be different in a bunch of different ways.

There is also the fact that you have apparently modelled this splinter to look and act exactly like the image in your head that you have of Dave’s guardian, because you apparently have some hidden depths of self-loathing to plumb for a few final ontological nuggets. You chiseled out every part of you that you are afraid of, and gave it the face of your cross-dimensional brother’s childhood abuser, who also happens to be you, cross-dimensionally- and genetically-speaking.

You would be glad that none of your friends are here to comment on this, because it doesn’t take Rose to figure out what’s going on, but you just end up feeling faintly sad that none of your friends are here at all. You’d appreciate the company.

At least your memory of beating the Game has returned to the foreground, intact. You don’t have to rush to solve the puzzle of your entrapment to save them, probably. But you don’t particularly want to be here, either. You kind of desperately want to get back to planning the infrastructure of the Consort kingdom with Jane.

Yeah. You remember most of it, now. The life you all started together after the Game rewarded you with a clean slate. The life you suddenly left. And you can’t remember why, because whenever you stumble across your memories, you know that you were closer to happiness than you’ve ever been.

It’s always easier, these days, not to think about that.

When you finally leave your room again, he’s sitting cross-legged in front of the TV, sorting through the piles of Xbox games, muttering to himself.

“Hey,” you say, guarded.

He ignores you. You become a little less guarded.

“Hey, dickhead.”

He doesn’t look at you. “Shut the fuck up.”

Well. That’s not the retort you were expecting. You lean on the doorframe, hand on your hip. “Got a name?”

A noncommittal grunt.

“Or I could just keep calling you dickhead.”

That, for some reason, finally gets him to glance up at you, his fingers cracking one of the neon green cases open. His expression is half frustration and half… revulsion, maybe. “What’d I fuckin’ say.” He looks like absolute garbage, by the way, despite having only been puked out like four or five hours ago. Maybe you ejected your insomnia, too. That’d be nice.

“Right back at you.”

“Y’know,” he starts, and then stops. He shuffles a disk between cases, pressing his lips together. “Whatever.”

Wow, he’s testy. All the other splinters were yapping your ear off from the get-go. “What crawled up your ass to die an ignominious fucking death?”

He’s outright scowling now. It looks like how your frown feels, but more forceful. Concentrated. He pops a shuriken out of a TURBO RAD RALLY II case and tosses it on the carpet. “This place’s dirty as. You’d think if the Game decided to turn all this into beach-front property, it’d put some elbow grease in and clean the place up.”

Huh, okay. Maybe you misjudged this one. He’s totally rambling. You step forward, cautious, putting a hand on the corner of the mixing console. “Maybe you should’ve cleaned it when you were alive,” you suggest.

He rolls his eyes. “You really think I’m gonna learn anythin’ from gettin’ Scrooged.”

“What the fuck are you even talking about,” you say, because the point is absolutely not the amount of shitty Very Special Christmas Episodes you watched throughout your self-designed 21^st Century Cultural Studies curriculum. It is that he apparently doesn’t know know who the hell you are.

“Look,” he says, staring up at you. He doesn’t seem as irritated as he’s been letting on, just… on edge, tired, impatient, you don’t know. He’s proving kind of hard to pin down, despite being literally you. That’s a challenge you didn’t anticipate, but probably should have, in hindsight. “If you’re plannin’ on some kinda shitty morality play, or whatever, I’m not interested. Leave me the fuck alone.”

“There’s not exactly anywhere for me to go, dude. All of Houston’s underwater now.” While you are telling the truth, you’re also very interested in what exactly your newest splinter thinks is going on. There’s a 95% chance he thinks that you are his splinter, actually.

Either way, he is not being particularly kind to you. But, then again, you can’t be accused of showing particular kindness to any of your alternate selves.

“Great, so I’m stuck listening to you whine for the rest of eternity or whatever bullshit. Ain’t it just like this dumbass game to fuck up something simple as takin’ the dog out behind the shed.”

Your eyebrows are trending upwards. “What were you expecting?”

He picks up a stack of cases in one hand and starts opening them up, one by one. “I expected to be dead. And goddamn unbotherable. Yet here I am. And here you are, botherin’ me.”

To be honest, you thought your imagination would be a lot more active than this. It gives you a little bit of hope. This might turn out to be a manageable splinter, after all. You had this picture in your brain of a monstrous version of you, every destructive impulse and narcissistic tendency blown up in painstaking detail, some kind of Godzilla-tier villain. He just seems, well, like a grumpy asshole. You’re glad your newest brainchild didn’t follow your exact instructions.

But then again, it could just be your imagination being right instead of properly creative. You’ve watched enough Hallmark cinema to be able to identify the most human kind of monster.

And you, you maniac, cannot resist poking it. “Who do you think I am, exactly?”

He rolls his eyes. “Whatever double bluff you’re tryna pull is dead in the fuckin’ water already, so can it, asshole.”

“No double bluff,” you say, hand on heart. “Just curious.”

“Like anyone gives two shits about your curiosity.”

“I’m the only other person here, so I’d rate my personal shit-giving at about a four point five out of five, but I’m no Olympic Committee.” You watch him, but he ignores you. “Come on. I'll stop nagging you.”

He groans with not a little melodrama and stretches his arms over his head, cracking the joints in his elbows and shoulders. It’s fucking grisly. “Fine. Jesus. You’re Dirk ‘Fuckface’ Strider, you’re about fifteen years old, and you’re a pain in my fuckin’ neck, as per. That good enough for you.”

“Seventeen, but close,” you say, and that makes him freeze, for some reason. You get the distinct feeling that you’ve given yourself away, even though you never pretended to be anyone else.

In a split second, he’s over the couch, and his hand is wrapped around your lower jaw, pulling your face up for examination, all before you have time to react. You thrash out of his grip, a protest on your lips, but he grabs your left arm instead and stares at it, eyes searching your skin. You can guess what he’s thinking, because you’re thinking it, too – your nose is too straight, and the scars don’t match.

Then he drops it like he’s been burnt, and yes, you were right, he does have a katana, and it looks exactly as rad as yours, by which you mean it looks like a piece of shit but you love it. You are almost as fast on the draw, a half-step backward putting your hitbox just outside his immediate range.

“Who the fuck are you,” he snarls.

You give him a look, training your sword on his centerline. Of all people, he should be able to read you through the sunglasses. “I’m you. Dickhead.”

“No, you’re not.” He shifts his grip. “Dickhead.”

“I literally just coughed you up like a gigantic clot of anthropomorphic phlegm. You’re my splinter. Or do you not remember being in my brain for the past however-the-fuck-long?”

A stare. “You’re insane.”

You can work with that. “Have you looked outside?”

“The hell does that have to do with anything.”

“That’s my Houston,” you say firmly, only half-lying. “After your players scratched their session, the universal remix put the city underwater by the time I reached my entry point. It’s not a dream, it’s the post-apocalypse.”

He points the tip of the katana down and away, straightening up, but he’s still suspicious. High alert, this guy. “So they did end up scratching it.”

“Yup. And I’m the remixed version of you.” Well, kind of. “The real you, though. Strictly speaking, you are a remix of me, what with being my splinter and all.”

“Okay, see, that’s where you’re losing me again, with the bullshit.”

You shrug, resting the flat of the katana on your shoulder. Look how non-threatening you’re being. Just the most harmless dude in the world. “You’re entitled to an opinion, bro, but the fact is that you’re going to be stuck here for a while. So I’d appreciate it if you didn’t act like a fuckin’ menace while we ride it out.”

He curls his lip when you call him bro, but the katana blips out of meatspace and presumably back into his sylladex. He shoves his left hand into the pocket of his jeans. You get the up-and-down again, a kind of tsk and the impression of impatience, and then he vanishes.

Manageable, your ass. He might be the most immediately insufferable asshole you’ve created yet.

You don’t see him at all over the next few days, but he does leave a trail of… well, he leaves a trail. Your smuppets move from place to place, you find the menu screen of Halo 3 unnervingly glitched out on the TV, there are empty bowls of instant ramen on the roof, and there are shuriken on the fucking kitchen floor what the fuck. You almost slice your foot open on one of them when trying to captchalogue some more Crush, which is when you decide that you do not like this guy.

Not that you were ever going to like him in the first place, when you have so much trouble liking any version of yourself at all, but you could have at least hoped for a neutral start.

The second time you almost grievously injure yourself because you are not used to his organization schema (read: just leaving his shit everywhere, like a god damn animal, you have never met anyone more committed to earning the epithet beast of burden, not even Tavros fucking Nitram) is not coincidentally the time you actually go out and try to find him.

Try being the operative word. He’s not on the roof, he’s not in the hallway, he’s not in the crawlspace, he’s not in the living room, he’s not in the bathroom. And he’s certainly not in your fucking bedroom. You take an extra look at the iron struts that keep your house above the waves, but he’s not down there, either. You almost do not see the throwing knife lying flat in the stairwell.

You get the distinct feeling that you’re being fucked with. Typical splinter.

Eventually, he lets you find him, or at least that’s the impression he gives you. He’s finally actually playing the Xbox instead of leaving the game skipping in the drive to annoy you, messing with some Grand Snacks Fuckyeah ripoff that you definitely didn’t have in your session. He’s wearing a cap and pointy shades of indeterminate origin. You haven’t noticed anything going missing from your personal wardrobe, so either they’re his, or you need to take inventory again.

He’s hunched over, holding the controller in a claw grip. Finally, someone who gets it. Dave always hounds you for your weird fuckin’ goblin hand shit.

Because you think it’ll annoy him (because you know it’d annoy you), you hop over the back of the couch and plop yourself down right next to him. He absolutely doesn’t acknowledge you, which tells you that he has noticed you and does not like it.

“Sup,” you say, twisting your head to telegraph the intention of making direct eye contact, which you definitely don’t like but are willing to use in order to fuck with him. His mouth flattens almost imperceptibly. You are already worming your way under his skin and it is hilariously easy. “What are you playing?”

He doesn’t say anything for a minute, sends his little skater guy clipping through the floor of the level until he starts falling endlessly into the skybox. But when it’s apparent you won’t leave, he says, “Some old shit.”

The case says MAD SNACKS YO. “Huh. I didn’t have this game. In my session.”

“That so.”

You lean back, tucking your arms behind your head. “We didn’t have a lot of the things you did. Dave and I compared notes.”

His fingers pause on the controller for an entire quarter-second before he starts fiddling with the menu settings again. “Mm-hm.”

“Both of our universes have Faygo,” you say.

The controller clacks away. He says nothing.

“But yours didn’t survive long enough for Party Rock Anthem.”

Clack, clack.

“Wish we’d had Obama instead of the Mirthful fucking Executives.”

He hits the pause button and drops back against the couch, crossing one ankle over his knee. You can see him blink hard a couple of times, keeping his eyes trained strictly forward. It might take a few minutes, but he has something to say, and you’re going to wait with your arms figuratively crossed and your left foot figuratively jackhammering the floor.

Finally, he speaks, still not looking at you. “Did you win?”

That tiny bit of inflection makes you feel very, very smug. “Yeah. We got everyone through alive. Ain’t that somethin’?”

“So why are you here.”

You shrug. “I thought I was dead, for a while. I was convinced. But now I’m not so sure. I can’t remember dying.”

“That was me,” he says dourly. “In your head. I remember it.”

“Okay. So you admit that you’re my splinter.”

“Nah.” He shrugs. “I ain’t you. No two ways about it. I had my life. ’Sides, you, as a player, can’t do this to a non-player.”

You pick up the other Xbox controller, running your thumbs over the buttons and sticks. God, you haven’t played an actual game in a long time. Too busy with construction projects and landscaping and group therapy and whatnot. “Can’t do what?”

“Resurrection,” he says, navigating back to the menu. The title MAD SNACKS YO pulsates in vibrant, artifacted orange. Once the console recognizes your controller, you pick a random map, and the screen splits to let you play side-by-side. “We get one shot. So even if I am a construct, I’m not yours.”

“Right,” you snort. “I’m your splinter.”

“Fuck, no. Got no idea why I’d make a totty dickshit version of myself. The original’s enough.”

“Well, that’s great, because I dunno why I’d make an asshole litterbug version of myself, either.” He shoots you a look, brief and caustic, and you shrug. “Don’t mess with Texas, dude. You should know better.”

Neither of you are particularly focused on the goals of the level – collect ten MAD SNACKS and the letters C-O-O-L-K-I-D from the tops of various skate obstacles – because after hundreds of hours, intended gameplay gets kind of stale. You remember being able to jam yourself into the side of the halfpipe and launch yourself through the rest of the level full-ragdoll style in Fuckyeah, but the commands or the angles are different in this one, and all you do is wobble up and down like a dork. Embarrassing. Highly uncool.

“Is this your reward,” he says after a while. “Sucks ass, if I’m gonna be honest.”

“Nah. There’s a whole world out there, somewhere. I thought it was a dream bubble, at first, but this is a little too wacky for that. I don’t even know if the world we landed in has dream bubbles.”

He hums tonelessly. “And you don’t think you’re dead.”

“Ninety percent sure.”

“So how’d you get here, then.”

You shrug. “I don’t remember.”

“Fuckin’ useful.”

“You’re not any better. How did you get here?”

He shatters his poor little dude’s model. It’s just a mess of writhing polygons now. “I was dead, I was dreaming, I woke up on the floor. That’s it, from my point of view.”

You poke the bear again. “How did you die, anyway?”

The bear is poked. “Fuck do you need to know that for.”

“I just want to know what kind of ending I made up for you. Now that you’re not in my brain anymore, I don’t think I remember what it was.”

He gives you a withering stare out of the corner of his eye. “Why don’t you take a guess.”

You suck in a deep breath through your mouth and hold it while you think. There’s reason to believe everyone’s cloneselves had some kind of narrative continuity – Dave and SBaHJ, for example, or Roxy and her wizards, Jane and Crockercorp. The way they interacted with their roles turned out pretty fucking different, but still archetypically similar: daughters defying their mothers, boys looking for adventure, children growing up alone.

“You don’t seem like the kind of guy who’s into revolution,” you quip on the exhale, “but it wouldn’t surprise me if you tried to tackle a boss with Roxy and got fucked up anyway.”

“Is that what you woulda done.”

“Maybe. If I’d played your session, at least.”

“Well, that’s nice to know,” he says, falsely saccharine and genuinely mean, a true Southern gentleman. You can’t remember if Dave told you how he died, and your fantasy version of events is consistently unreliable. Doesn’t seem fair that he keeps it a secret, though. But place-voicing-manner of death and all that are personal subjects, you think, and so you decide not to push it directly, even if you want to. Even if you should, because he doesn’t deserve your consideration.

“I died plenty of times,” you offer. “So did Dave.”

You weren’t sure if that was a soft spot before now, but you’re pretty sure it is. Just not the kind of soft spot you were expecting, probably. He scowls. “Not when it mattered. You got out eventually.”

“Just because it wasn’t permadeath doesn’t mean it didn’t matter, dude. It’s hard to enjoy the spoils of war when your sleep hygiene goes to shit.”

“Fuck you, ‘sleep hygiene.’ You’re tellin’ me you’re capable of sleeping on the regular with bags like that.”

“I mean for other people,” you say pointedly. “Who are post-traumatic.”

He rolls his eyes. “Just skate, why don’t you.”

You both sit there in grim silence until your guy gets stuck in a bench and he manages to fling his guy up into the stratosphere where the camera can’t follow. The Xbox chokes and dies. You get up to make some instant ramen.

When you turn around, he’s gone again.

The next morning, you find a spot of blood in the bathroom, on the lip of the sink. That’s confirmation that he doesn’t use the shaver, because he’s a contrarian asshole. You wipe up the tiny stain, wrinkling your nose. Even if he’s you, that doesn’t make this not a biohazard.

You can almost see Jane wince and stick her tongue out in disgust. And that almost makes you smile.

It’s fucked up that either of you need to shave, anyway. Nothing changes outside. You’re not even sure time actually passes in any meaningful way. No matter how much Sunkist you stick in your sylladex, it never seems to make a dent in the stash your bro left for you.

At least the empty cups of ramen stack neatly and compactly. You used to repurpose them for fishing traps and prototype models. When you were really little, you used to make them into boats.

Look, you’re a messy guy. You’ll admit that. You have left many a be-rumpéd, coquettishly phallic plush guy lying around. You have left piles of Xbox games on the floor. You have not made your bed, ever. You weld in your bedroom, for christ’s sake. But you have tamed your organizational chaos. You have a system. It’s not like you had the benefit of a municipal sanitation system, much less a dumpster, so you had to find ways to keep the house functional. And since you lived alone, with the nearest living person a thousand miles away, you had to be able to find your shit in case of emergency.

Therefore you feel completely entitled to judge this motherfucker for his littering, unhygienic, rude-ass ways. The first time you open the fridge to find a shitty, shitty bundle of unsecured swords and not your normal store of sewing materials, you have half a mind to take one and shank him with it. You have never been exceptionally particular about someone getting up in your space, but this guy has made it his personal mission to press all of your piss-off buttons, apparently. He’s just plinking his splintery Ghost in the Shell robo-fingers all over the microswitches of your Qanba Irritating Neurosis™ Edition fightstick. Fuck this dude.

You’re not scared of him. Maybe you were apprehensive at first, because his reputation preceded him, to say the least, but apparently he is, indeed, you, which isn’t surprising, and, predictably, you hate his fucking guts. He’s an inconsiderate asshole who makes conversation feel like strifing and uses his aloof demeanor to, well, demean. You’re pretty sure he sees you primarily as an annoying little tag-along mini-him.

Well. Whatever. He can fuck off and die. You’re not taking the bait and babysitting your splinters again, ethics be damned. You’ve been paying attention in group therapy, Rose, you can be irresponsible if you want.

After a couple of days doing whatever the hell it is he does, he comes to you, finally, and you wish he hadn’t, because you’ve had it up to your neck with his shitty unwanted-roommate etiquette and you’re about to blow your top off. You’re in the middle of fixing up an old Brobot exo, tightening some bolts and buffing out some scratches. Other menial shit. Normally you’d do this in the living room or on the roof, because you don’t like to sand where you sleep, but the rest of the house is currently Schrödinger’s Ocupado by a gigantic piece of shit.

You’ve also been stewing in your irritation, a little bit.

He’s standing in the doorway, weirdly hesitant about coming into your room. What the fuck. It’s not like he’s been big on respecting your shared spaces before now.

“What do you want,” you grunt, inspecting a busted rivet. Fuck, you’re probably going to have to remove this, huh? That’s what you get for shipping these guys overseas. And over time.

“Just thinkin’,” he says, voice strangely light. He perches on the end of your bed, across the room from you, hunched over to look at your work. “You keep saying I’m your splinter. What exactly does that mean.”

You glare up at him. “It means you’re a non-alpha version of Dirk Strider. For you, specifically, it means you’re a simulacrum constructed from the worst parts of my personality and a bunch of stories Dave told me about his brother-father, as well as what I’m sure is a potent combination of latent desires to improve my character and any number of other moral projects I can’t name off the top of my unfortunately benighted head.”

“Okay,” he says, with an intonation that clearly means he thinks you’re overreacting. “I don’t think that’s a convincing theory, what with me having a couple of decades’ worth of mnemonic inventory that you don’t, and all.”

You set a chisel next to the head of a rivet, planting your foot on the Brobot’s chassis, and with a few blows of the hammer, you chip off its head. “Look, you can say all of these things, and you can have a goddamn subjective character of experience, and I’m not denying that you’re an – independent organism, or whatever. But you’re never going to convince me that you’re not an outgrowth of my own imagination, especially because I cleanly barfed you the fuck up.”

He shrugs. “Is there gonna be a problem if I don’t believe you.”

“Not as big as the problem you’re going to eat if I have to keep picking your shit up off the roof.” You knock the head off of another rivet.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see him stretch out his arms as you work. You’re not sure where he got that polo from. Maybe he has all that shit stored in his sylladex.

“You’re a solipsistic sonovabitch,” he notes in the pause when you move on to the next rivet. “Ain’t that kind of selfish, denying me my own point of origin?”

“Your point of origin is yourself, and therefore also me, dunkass.”

“No matter what oroborousian ectoscratch shenanigans may link us,” and he says this with not a small amount of distaste, “it seems kind of fucked up to insist that I have a false experience of my own life and universe simply on the basis of your tendency to create splinters.”

“What, you want me to lie to you and tell you I didn’t midwife you out of my own fucked-up brain?” You set your chisel at the head of the last rivet. “Isn’t it more cruel to let you labor under the pretension that you’re not what you are? To let you think you’re the Beta session’s Dirk Strider, with his fucked-up nightmarish child-beating legacy, rather than absolve you of your responsibility to those memories on the basis of not actually being him? This is a get-out-of-jail-free card for you. All you have to do to claim it is stop fucking tossing your trash all over my goddamn house.”

The motherfucker actually seems to be enjoying this. You hate him, you fucking hate this guy. Your hammer expresses what you shouldn’t. “Can’t. But that’s a wildly charitable impulse, ain’t it. Coming from us. You’re the type to pick at a scab for years. Why give me a pass.”

“Because I’m sick to fucking death of dealing with you all,” you snap, knocking the last head off of the last rivet and rooting through your tool case for the punch. “I’m done babysitting, I’m done with the ethical quandaries that are inherently fucking attendant to letting you interfere with my life. I’m done with all of your wildly out-of-control no-boundaries bullshit, and I think I’ve earned it.”

He snorts. “Seems like winning the Game put a ten-foot pole up your ass, huh.”

You shoot him a glance, barely an eyeroll. Jesus, he’s as bad as Hal. Maybe worse, considering you could just take off your glasses and ignore Hal (but unfortunately not your own overactive conscience). “Yeah, I won. What’s in your fucking portfolio?”

“Wow,” he drawls, and turns his tone entirely to cut. “I guess that makes you the majordomo of our minor domicile, huh. If there’s any argument to be made about our similarities, this is prime’n primary evidence.”

You could strangle him. Your hand curls reflexively around the handle of your pipe wrench. “How much time do you spend with your head rectally-inserted?”

He laughs, and it’s a nasty, derisive sound. “Aw, lighten up. You know what it’s like, thinking you’re so damn important. Pretending your opinions are important, like they mean any-fuckin’-thing. It should be a relief to know you’re not the real protagonist, but you got an ego the size of the Gulf, so you can’t let it go.”

“You can’t seriously think I care whether I was the main fucking protagonist of my session,” you snap, pointing at him with the wrench. He looks at it and raises an eyebrow, amused. “You spent thirty-odd years doing fuck-all other’n beating the shit out of a child under the pretense of ‘training.’ I kept my shit together long enough to make sure everyone in my party stayed alive.”

“Oh, that’s right,” he sneers. “How could I forget. I’ve seen inside that head of yours. All sunshine and daisies, yeah. Got along real well with that English kid. Definitely didn’t fuck that one up right out the gate.”

Your blood sears white-hot. “Shut the fuck up.”

“Or what? You finally gonna man up and crack some eggs?” He’s on his feet as soon as you are, one hand perched lazily on his hip as your fingers white-knuckle around the wrench. “Have you ever managed to get rid of any of your splinters? Or do you like living in an echo chamber of endless neurosis? Sure bet they all enjoyed that, experiencing every possible gradation of second-hand brainfuck you had to offer.”

The fucking audacity. “Where the fuck do you get off lecturing me about any of that shit? Dave told me what it was like in your house, and we might be colossally, fundamentally screwed in the head, but you turned everything about us into grade-A criminal negligence. Was it fun for you, raising a kid like that?”

He shrugs, flashing his teeth. “Maybe it was. He was so damn confused all the time. And jumpy as an alleycat. Maybe it was real fuckin’ funny, trying to see how far he’d shoot across the room when he heard the door creak.”

You think you might actually kill him because you can’t stop thinking about how responsible you felt for this guy you just met in his red cape just as goofy-looking as yours, an interdimensional echo of your brother, laying his heart bare for you, giving up all of his anger and his grief. He was so deeply fucking wounded by someone who looks exactly like you. Maybe is exactly you. And you were always scared that this is what you’d become.

But you’d never.

You would never.

That’s what you tell yourself, anyway.

“I’m not joking,” you warn him, raising the wrench, but he steps closer, anyway.

“Not jokin’ about what?” He has to bend down a little to look you in the eye. It’s so fucking patronizing. Like you’re staring directly into the soul of an apex predator, toying with his food. From here, you can see that the shape of your eyes is the same, but not the lines around his mouth, not the crooked set of his nose, not the near-invisible notch in his pale eyebrow, and you find all of the little differences repulsive – Rose would say uncanny, unheimlich. “You gonna kill me with that thing? Afraid I’ll get out of here and go after him again?”

You square your shoulders, heart racing, you wouldn’t, and lift your chin. “Is that the plan?”

He scoffs, upper lip curling, and he reaches out, lightning-fast, but you’re waiting for it and you react instantaneously, putting your whole upper body into the rotation of your swing, because you’re no use to Dave and all them if you’re dead.

The moment before the wrench head connects with his skull, you see his hand extending past your shoulder, and your brain short-circuits, and you think oh, fuck, I didn’t—

—but it’s too late, and you hear it crack, anyway, feel the bone fracture and give way to pulpy, fatty nervous tissue. Something splatters on the bare carpet like oatmeal. Or vomit. His skull is cratered in. Cracked open.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

You drop the wrench and stagger backwards, eyes fixed on his – whole, unbroken head.

He’s staring right back at you, but the sneer and the domineering swagger are gone, and there’s that blank face again, his hand hanging frozen, completely empty, in midair. He clicks his tongue against his teeth, looking vaguely disappointed, and drops his arm, cracks the knuckles on his left hand, then his right. There is nothing on the floor.

“Figures,” he mutters. Then he’s gone. To the roof, probably.

You find the punch on your desk.

The ceiling of your room has the same water damage lines that you hadn’t patched before entering the Incipisphere, but they haven’t spread.

Splat.

You’re not sure what you would have done if he’d actually died.

That’s a rule, you guess, about this world. Injury doesn’t stick, death doesn’t stick. Maybe it has to be conditional, like it was in your native session, but you don’t feel like trying to figure out the specifics. It’s the closest you’ve ever come to killing one of your splinters, closer than the time you almost crushed Lil Hal with your bare hands, and you don’t know how you expected it to feel, but it definitely doesn’t feel good.

It never feels good to get so angry with a piece of you that you want to destroy it. Justified, maybe. Not good. Very rarely good.

But, of all of your splinters, you should know he deserves your anger the most.

And then you let out a long, loud sigh, because even though you know all systems tend toward entropy, you don’t want to be convinced that it’s become more complex than that.

Like you said. If he’s a splinter and you made him, then he’s not the real deal, and whatever you do to him doesn’t technically matter unless you want it to. If he’s not a splinter, and you didn’t make him, then you’d probably be justified in whatever pissed-off vigilante beatdown you enact.

But the fact is that you spat him out like a shitty fax. And, to make things worse, you feel bad about your killing blow. You shouldn’t. But you do. Because regardless of what he has or hasn’t done, you know what you should and shouldn’t do, and the person who deserves to decide what happens to him isn’t here. You might never see him again.

Splat.

He wanted you to kill him. That’s not fair. He doesn’t get to take that choice away from you. Or anyone else. It’s fucking selfish.

The important thing is that you deserve, you think, to be understood clearly, if nothing else. You deserve, more than he does, to go down with a clear conscience.

You wait until sunset to catch him lurking around like he usually is, this time at the top of the stairwell that leads up to the roof. He’s sitting in the entryway, back against the frame, arms folded, one leg up and the other stretched out on the stair below. The door’s being held open with some kind of stopper; over his shoulder, you can see that he’s shoved something plush and purple underneath it.

He doesn’t look at you, although he definitely hears you coming from a mile away, and says, “What.”

You’re tired, and you don’t really want to do this, so you lean against the wall two steps down, fold your arms, too, staring down at the bill of his – your bro’s – cap. “That’s what I should be asking you.”

“I’m the splinter. The hell should I know about anything?”

“You seemed pretty convinced that my splinter theory was wrong up until a couple of hours ago.”

“Doesn’t fuckin’ matter, does it,” he grunts. “Whether I’m your splinter or your psychic vidja-game twin. You ain’t here to get your philosophy degree.”

“I don’t know what the hell I’m here for, so it might as well be that,” you point out, grimacing. “And shit, I know we’re from Houston an’ all, but ‘vidja’?”

He looks up at you through the gap between hat and shades, and it is withering. “It was a joke,” he says. “You know. Irony.” He spreads his hands, wiggles his fingers, accentuates his faint drawl to the point of Beverly Hillbillies parody. “Same reason why you started affectin’ some of the accent when there wa’n’t any reason fer you not ta spake like some gaddamn Hawlywood caricature.”

You cringe, big time. “Okay, I get it, fuck.”

“Yeah,” he says, sour, back to his normal monotone. “So. What do you want.” He still keeps his head turned away from you.

But you slide down the wall anyway, twisted so you’re sitting on the stairs but still looking in his direction. “I just…” You’re not sorry, he fucking deserved it, but you didn’t want to be capable of that. And you don’t know how the fuck he’s supposed to make your critical loss of control feel okay. “I dunno. I didn’t intend to… I didn’t want to kill you.”

“You did,” he says, and that makes you cringe inside, because you don’t want him to know you. “But it’s a’ight. You don’t have to come up here with your tail between your legs just ’cause I lived.”

You frown. Wow. “Okay, fuck you, then.”

“I mean it, you little—” A deep sigh. “It’s easier. If you drop the whole… performance.”

“Fuck you,” you repeat, louder, more pissed-off. “You think I want it to be easy for me to fucking kill you when I don’t want to?”

“No,” he replies evenly. “I want it to be easy for you to ‘fucking’ kill me, period.”

You drag your knuckles across your forehead and down your face. “Holy shit, that is not the point, and you know it.”

He makes a sound like he’s sucking his teeth, sullen. “Just forget I said anything.”

“I’m not,” you start, and then you stop, sails empty all of a sudden. You see the downward tilt of his mouth, the limpness of his wrists. You’re tired, too. Drained. You almost killed him. You killed him.

What’s the difference, really. You meant to.

Both of you sit there in silence until the warm orange glow of sunset has faded, leaving you in the temporary dimness of dusk. You doze lightly, your fist mashed into your cheek and your elbow on your knee. You haven’t really slept properly since you puked him up, and every single fucking thing he does seems to suck the energy out of you. It’s like bashing your head against a wall, except you feel compelled to apologize to it, for no other reason than that he looks like a human fucking being.

Sure would help if he’d start acting like one.

He doesn’t say anything until the sun has truly set, and then he waits for you to move, to open your eyes, to show that you’re awake.

“I won’t make you do it again,” he says, paced, like he’s been rehearsing it. For all you know, he has been. “’S not like it’d work, anyway. But. For what it’s worth.”

You peer at him through heavy eyelids, feel your brow furrow. This is hard for him, you guess, and he’s chosen his words carefully, purposefully. You don’t really know why he’s chosen to say it that way, but you have a good idea. And it’s not enough – you are completely within your rights to reject his shitty, half-assed apology for using you when he was too much of a coward to do it himself, but. It’s hard. You know that it’s always been hard for you, when it comes to the important things. Sorry for pressuring you into kissing my bleeding, severed head, sorry for always choosing my anger over your health, sorry for kicking your shit in every day for years, my bad. And other things you still haven’t said.

“You are such a fucking asshole,” you say, but it comes out half-hearted.

“Whatever.” He gets up, removes the smuppet from underneath the door and dusts it off carefully.

Before he lets the door close, you stand, too, and put your hand up to stop him. He keeps his arm stretched out, waiting.

“Look,” you say, and then immediately stop, because what are you doing.

After a moment of silence, he prompts you impatiently. “What.”

You take a deep breath. “Either way, I wouldn’t do it again. Okay?”

He gives you the ghost of a sneer. “Why not.”

“Because it’s not my goddamn place,” you snap. “If you’re uncomfortable being alive, then that’s tough fucking luck. The decision is definitively out of your hands. And I’m done being coerced by my own splinters into solving their fucking problems.”

He’s shaking his head. “Save it. You know who I am.”

“No, I fucking don’t.” You grit your teeth.

“Yes, you do,” he says, closing the door behind him and sinking you into darkness. The only light comes from the apartment, faint and yellow in the stairwell. He pushes past you. “Dave knows all about it. And that little shit never could keep a secret.”

Then, “C’mon.”

You follow him back down the stairs, sullen and tired, like a kid. Fuck if you know how Dave dealt with this for thirteen years. Fuck if you know what you’re going to do tomorrow.

The two of you eat in silence, even though you’re not really hungry. Neither is he, you expect; maybe it’s just something to do, to stay in this weird space of non-apology and tired truce. You fork instant noodles into your mouth while he thumbs through your bro’s DVD collection.

“The fuck is this.” He holds up a case with shitty bird JPEGs pasted all over it.

You can’t help but snicker. “Dude, you’ve never seen Birdemic?”

“No,” he says, scanning the summary and reviews on the back. His face doesn’t change, but you think he’s kinda into it. “Jesus. Looks like a god damn trainwreck.”

“It’s a classic.”

“Can you not fuckin’ talk with food in your mouth,” he grouses. “Whatever. Let’s rock.”

He makes his noodles while the opening plays, watching from the kitchen as the microwave runs. Barely ten seconds in, he starts up a running commentary. You’re willing to let someone else take the MST3K wheel for now, and it seems like he can’t help it, anyway, or his mouth runs on autopilot, pointing out weird things about color grading, camera angles, sound mixing, and the gloriously shitty bird GIFs.

You eventually lie down, pillowing your head on your elbow, when it’s clear he’s content to stand behind the futon and eat.

It’s weird. He says a lot of the same things you noted down in your first viewing. Some that you didn’t notice until later, as well – continuity errors, the more subtle logistical problems, comparisons to old memes that you had to dig for. You laugh, occasionally, because this movie is hilarious, and because it comes naturally when he cracks a joke that you used to make, and you’re goddamn hilarious.

He’d probably be funnier if he dropped the deadpan once in a while, though. You have to wonder how Dave never noticed anything was off with him, but then again, you have the advantage of both distance and familiarity. You can hear some resemblance between them, little tics that you never developed, or haven’t developed yet. The weird left-field punchlines, the flippant speculation, the stream-of-consciousness verbal extravagance. You indulge in those things, but not to the point of meander. You prefer to let things percolate, if you can. And you are always educational.

It’s weird, too, how safe you feel around someone you almost killed, someone who you should hate, by all rights. And you feel guilty about that, you do. It’ll come back around stronger, when you’re alone.

When the movie ends, you hop over to the flatscreen to eject the DVD and put it back in its case. He takes the opportunity to clamber over the back of the futon and settle his long limbs over the space you just vacated, tucking his hands behind his head and kicking his heel against the armrest. You wonder what stick crawled up his ass that he can’t sit like a normal human being.

“You into film, huh.”

You shrug. “Only inasmuch as I’m interested in the trends and tropes of cultural production in the twenty-first century.”

He shrugs back, gesturing for you to continue. “So what did you conclude, Sir Edward goddamn Tylor.”

“Do you want the abstract, or the whole dissertation?”

“Where do you think James Nguyen’s oeuvre fits into everything.”

You slot the DVD case back into the neatly-alphabetized shelf, maybe the only truly organized thing in this entire apartment. Then you sit on the floor for a brief moment, hands rubbing at your ankles, until you’ve compiled everything you want to say.

“Early twenty-first century film benefitted from the steep decrease in production costs and the advent of the home theater system that began in the 1980s. By the time Birdemic entered principal photography in 2008, any old Werthers-toting grandmother could pick up a hand-held camera and record gigabytes of footage of her squirming grandwrigglers for an incredibly low cost. On one hand, this created a greater public appreciation for more avant-garde or esoteric cinematographic and narrative approaches, but it also opened the floodgates of unfiltered mediocrity. Birdemic was practically a guerrilla film in terms of securing locations, cast and crew, and actual production. It’s poorly-written, poorly-acted, poorly-directed, poorly-edited, and, worst of all, it dares to be completely sincere.

“It was reviled by critics at the time, and rightly so, but the audacity of the film’s flimsy story and horrible production seemed to translate Nguyen’s lack of self-consciousness perfectly. I believe, though, that Birdemic only reached the heights of memetic notoriety that it did because of the same developments that allowed it to exist in the first place – ease of manufacture and distribution. Anyone could set up a blog; anyone could film their reactions to it. Anyone could be a filmmaker, so anyone could be a film critic. I could go on about how Nguyen tackles the issues of his time, but in terms of where it fits into the developing consumption cultures of the early twenty-first century, what I find more intriguing is that the discursive environment it was born into both loved and hated it. Loved it for entertaining them, but hated it for being absolute dogshit.

“Its sincerity and failure to deliver made it an easy target. There are particular things about the production, writing, and execution that make it more memorable and spectacular in its failure than other amateur filmmaking projects, but it didn’t deserve the following that it got any more than Wiseau’s The Room did. But ironic enjoyment employs a kind of masochism on the viewer’s part, and people seemed to enjoy the performance of disgust that the viewing of these movies entailed. It was almost akin to community theater, in that way. Maybe it was a training ground for tackling serious moral issues of the time that required actual emotional investment.

“I don’t think people hated the sincerity of it, really. I don’t think they had any reason to be jealous of some random filmmaker getting his vanity project into fringe film circuits. I think they liked that there was virtually nothing redeemable about it. Birdemic is easy to categorize. It gave its audience clarity and reassurance in a postmodern era where traditional boundaries in politics, public life, and the home were beginning to shift and dissolve in ways they hadn’t before. This thing was genuinely bad, through and through, when not very much else was. And it’s easy to see why people used it, and other films like it, to cathect their frustrations with the world around them. There was a genuine kind of joy to their ironic appreciation and sincere deprecations. It’s certainly a product of its context, and maybe one of the best examples of how and why the interactive web helped badfilm culture enter the transformative trajectory it did throughout the next several decades, which would culminate in several small paramilitary conflicts, at least two year-long federal furloughs, and the release of the SBaHJ Cycle.”

He stays silent for a few moments after you finish, processing, and you sit there feeling weirdly exposed. Well, he did invite it onto himself. And you sat through over an hour of his fucking RiffTrax performance. (And he baited you into - whatever that was.) He’s you. He probably got the same kind of obsessive over whatever was around in his session.

Well. Maybe that was part of the problem. You set your jaw at that thought.

“I see,” he says, and reaches over the back of the futon, folding it out into its mattress position.

You barely stop yourself from raising your eyebrows. “That’s it? You’re just going to go to fucking bed after I gave you a university-grade lecture?”

It locks itself in place with a clank. “Yup. No comment.”

You think you might be legitimately offended. “Bullshit. A real Dirk Strider wouldn’t waste an opportunity to roast himself regarding the insane archaeological depths of his hyper-specific knowledge.”

He hums, kicking off his shoes and stretching out on the futon. “A real Dirk Strider. Interesting that you’ve taken it upon yourself to define what that is.”

You snort. “I’d know. I’m sure I’ve made more of ’em than you have.”

“Uh-huh. You sure did make it easy for you to inflict yourself on the world.”

What the fuck. Okay, sure, but coming from him? “That’s rich.”

“Your assessment is fairly sound,” he says, scratching his neck, “but it’s interesting that you employ the dialectical approach to resolving the paradox of public response. I find that tends to reduce the perspectives to discrete an’ immutable philosophies, which is clearly untrue of any one critic’s body of work. It might serve you better to conceptualize it as a system of valencies, drawn upon, repelled, or attracted, dependin’ on the ambient ideological charge. That way, values can be held in tension, i.e. ambivalently, and relationships between them more accurately described.”

Huh. Interesting. “I guess that depends on whether you find valency is, discursively speaking, a useful and concise system to work with. Sure, it might lend more nuance, but if we’re talking about objective descriptions of systems whereby ‘the public’ generates knowledge, then even valency ain’t sufficiently nuanced. I'm not sure it serves my analytical framework any better.”

“Fair. Everything’s an issue of accuracy against comprehensibility, anyway.”

You stand up when he makes to lie down on the futon, folding his hands beneath his head. He hasn’t taken off his shades, hat, or shoes.

“Are you actually going to sleep?”

“You told me a bedtime story, didn’tcha.”

“Didn’t mean to bore you with a riveting presentation of my stellar fucking scholarship.”

He snorts. And, after a moment, adds, “Strange how shit like that gets released sincerely. As if it’s not immediately apparent that everyone’s gonna fuckin’ hate it, and for good reason.”

You shrug. “I guess it’s hard to stay objective when you're that deep into the money, or the message. Or the prestige. But I guess we don’t have to worry about that anymore.”

“Guess so.” He takes his cap off, brushing up his hair, and then uses it to block out the light. “Turn off the light when you go.”

Fuck. You are impossible. You tell him as much on your way out of the living room. He flips you the bird and you leave the kitchen light on.

You have a weird dream.

It’s fuzzy, and you can’t pick out the details, and you can’t quite remember it clearly after you wake up. Every time you reach for it, all you get is this dull, red throbbing in your head. It’s like an afterimage, a tune you keep humming, but you’re not sure whether you made it up or if it was real.

It’s just heat – red heat, prickling at your neck and shoulders, drying out the skin there. A knob twists under your fingers, and you can hear the splatter of water. Someone is calling to you, but not with your name. When you touch the water, it’s so cold that it shocks you awake.

Instantly, you know it wasn’t a dream, not in the way you usually have dreams. It has just the right touch of alien-ness to give away its origin – a splinter memory, maybe one you made up, maybe one he’s had all along. They’re all there, you realize, dozens of them, maybe hundreds. When you brush against them, you recoil. It’s like opening a closet that you didn’t even know existed. You know that you know what’s inside, but the idea of breaking them open to examine their contents makes your skin crawl, and you don’t really understand why.

It is the morning.

It is time to propose an idea you have been sitting on, ever since you broke open your ectoclone’s head with a wrench. Or didn’t.

“Hey,” you say when you find him in the living room, shooting up the Flood with a rinky-dink plasma pistol.

“Sup.” He doesn’t look at you when you vault over the back of the futon to sit next to him again, just scoots sideways a bit for no reason.

“So, I have a theory.”

“Mm-hm.”

You steeple your fingers in front of your face. This calls for a Gendo Ikari vibe. “You’ve noticed how we can’t die.”

“Well, I can’t. There’s no reason why that condition should extend to you,” he returns automatically. Looks like you haven’t been alone in your theorycrafting.

“You want to test that out?”

He scoffs. “Not particularly.”

“Okay, so then I think it’s a reasonable assumption to make.”

He hits the pause button with a sigh and tosses the controller aside, folding his arms across his chest and leaning back against the futon. “Okay. G’won. What’s your proposal.”

“Whatever environment we’re in is set on preserving several initial conditions,” you say, starting to count on your fingers. “We stay alive. There’s infinitely-replenishing orange soda and ramen. I can’t get an outgoing signal working.” You waggle your three fingers before beginning a second count. “Those are the major conditions. Small-to-moderate conditions seem to require maintenance. That’s why you need to stop fucking leaving your trash everywhere.”

“Fuck you.”

“And secondly, if you cut yourself shaving, you need to clean that shit up. I don’t want to find out if bloodborne illness counts as a small-to-moderate condition.”

He gives you a weird look. “My shave is goddamn immaculate, you little latchkey goblin. What the fuck are you talking about.”

You stare back at him. “You bled on the sink. I saw. Small-to-moderate conditions would, in my mind, include shaving mishaps. You know you can use the electric shaver, right?”

“Electric shavers are for middle-aged fathers with three kids. It harshes my vibe.”

“And what exactly is your vibe? The long-lost mutant child of Asher Roth?”

“Asher Roth is a fucking amateur and an infant. I’m part of the rich legacy of genre-bending artists like Snow and Vanilla Ice.”

You genuinely cannot tell if he is being serious, which marks trouble for you, the prince of ironic theory, apprentice to the former grandmaster of irony. “I’m open to nuanced interpretations of pop art. You can’t throw me. I’m the son of the very concept of unthrowability.”

“Back to what you were sayin’ before,” he says, brushing something (or nothing, like a douchebag, and you are not that performative) off of his shoulder.

“Small-to-moderate conditions are allowed to proceed normally,” you repeat, holding up your hand and pointing to it. You scratched yourself trying to pry a metal casing apart, and the pad of your index finger is scabbed over. “Maybe the Game’s engine can’t devote enough processing power to an event as significant as death or grievous harm.”

“Weird theory,” he says. “So why doesn’t it just gradually disappear. It’d seem that some things would reset at the start of a routine cycle. Unless it loops until certain criteria are filled.”

You rub the thin scab on your finger, shrugging. “I think it’s for verisimilitude. Maybe it doesn’t expect us to notice that we can’t die or sustain grievous injury. But we would notice if small things disappeared, or if small-to-moderate injuries weren’t healing well. I think that’s why I can’t establish an outgoing signal – it gets registered as a significant environmental or conditional change.”

He hums. “Where are the lines between small, moderate, and serious? Seems important to know if we need to hard reset something.”

You shrug. “‘Small’ is difficult to define. ‘Serious’ would be life-threatening or life-ending, though. At least, hypothetically.”

“Well, I guess we can see about moderate.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean we can conduct an experiment,” he deadpans. “You never seen Mythbusters or what.”

“Oh. Hell yes.”

There is no discussion of protocol. A knife drops into his left hand from his sylladex. He flips it into a reverse grip, and slams it down into the back of his right hand, between the second and third metacarpals, through the flesh and into the wooden arm of the couch. Intramuscular. Then he lets go, and it stays up, perfectly vertical. You both stare at it expectantly for a moment as blood wells up from the wound and starts to spill over the back of his hand. His thumb curls up just a bit. His eyes are steady.

After a long moment where nothing happens, he pulls the knife out, and the skin glitches over instantly. The blood vanishes, like nothing happened. He hums, examining his (whole, unharmed) hand, and flicks the (shining, spotless) knife onto the growing pile of Xbox game cases, where it lands with a clatter.

You really are the same person.

“Well. How’s that for moderate.”

You frown. “You nicked the couch.”

“Huh.” He scrapes his thumbnail over the small gouge. “Guess small-to-moderate for a couch is different than it is for a guy.”

You’re still leaning on your armrest, and your mouth starts to run as you put some pieces together in your head. “Point in your favor, regarding the whole splinter business: I wouldn’t have gone for the hand. Well,” you amend immediately, “at least not like that. Do you even have a risk assessment protocol?” 

He quirks an eyebrow. “Didn’t you cut off your own head with a fuckin’ microwave once.”

“It wasn’t a microwave, it was a sendificator, and it wasn't my—” You pause and frown. “Don’t you have that memory? It features rather prominently in my own hall of fame.”

“I remember you shoving your head in the sendificator with intention,” he says, making exaggerated air quotes. “I ain’t a carbon copy of your brain. Got limited storage capacity in my old age.”

You snort. “How old even are you? Thirty-five?”

“Thirty-two, thanks.”

“Either way, your brain won’t start degrading that way for another two decades. Unless you upload it.” Ugh, no. “How many of my memories do you have, anyway?”

“More’n I want,” he snarks. “What, don’t you have any of mine.”

You frown. “Kind of. It’s hard to tell if they’re dreams or not.”

He laughs, actually. Toneless and without any enthusiasm, but it’s still laughter. “Yeah. Kinda fucked, ain’t it.”

“That’s just how they are?”

A shrug. “Brain’s kinda. Well. Soupy. Always has been.”

What in the fuck. “Comforting and full of the affect of a Dickensian childhood in poverty? Hot off the stove? Full of fucking delightful umami flavor? What do you mean, ‘soupy’?”

He rolls his eyes. “I mean there’s some navigational difficulty. Whereas your memories come with a damn directory. Shoved your head in a microwave, got roasted on your quest mattress, got high and then dumped, saved the world. Or whatever. It’s very episodic. Not my kinda TV, though.”

“Yeah,” you grumble. “Wonder what got your brain melted down so early. I sincerely hope it’s not genetic.”

“It’s not.”

And that is a topic that neither of you seemingly has the balls to broach, so you don’t. You don’t even bring up your telecom troubles, which was the initial point, because that is how much you have been put off on conversation. Instead, you play some Halo 3 co-op until the sun goes down and you get sick of him glitching your guy’s arms off.

You no longer have a complex psychotherapeutic explanation for why Dave can’t play video games like a normal person. He has a compulsion to break games because he was raised by a total Gamesharking lunatic. (To be fair, you like the deconstructive approach, too, but you can at least get through a story mode once in a linear fashion. You are a good researcher.)

It is nighttime. You’re lying on your bed again, lights off, staring at the ceiling.

You miss your friends.

You are alone with a fucking inscrutable sci-fi mirror universe grimdirk version of you who doesn’t seem as intolerable as you’d imagined, but you know better, and more than that you know yourself, and what you’re willing to tolerate from yourself, versus what your friends are willing to tolerate from you. And you know with complete certainty that they would not extend the same kindness to him as they do to you, which is fucking you up in very weird and slightly unexpected ways. You are not sure how the hell you were supposed to prepare for this at all, except that you get the feeling even the Game didn’t expect this to happen. Dream bubble, your impudent ass.

So you miss them, and you wish you could ask them any number of questions, because this is turning out to be a more complex problem than you would have expected it to be, and you’re not good at this kind of shit. Whatever it is.

There’s no point to missing them right now, though, since you don’t have any guarantee that you won’t see them again, but part of your armchair therapy strategies for Living In The New World has been to jargon jargon accept your classpect bluh bluh bluh transformative non-martial applications, Dirk. It’s been a lot of lean into your feelings instead of immediately tucking them away into neatly-defined categories. Finding refuge in the mess. Being present and not living in a hundred different futures, Rose says, because that’s Dave’s job. You’re pretty sure that’s a joke, but you have difficulty telling with her.

But you have lived your entire life disciplining yourself into your approach to problem-solving, and you’re not sure you can afford to let things get biblically untidy right now. Not when you’re pretty sure you’re going to have to get down in the mud and wrangle the messiest version of yourself for the next million years, or however long it takes Roxy to figure out where you are and how to extract you.

So you seal away your loneliness for later (much later), and you try to go to sleep.

Except you can’t sleep, and you can’t stop thinking, and you can’t stop digging around in your own brain for things that don’t belong, or that you don’t want to belong. It’s a compulsion. You toss and turn as you slam drawers in your head. Once you start putting things away, you have to put everything away. It’s a habit you are very happy does not extend to your desire to organize your physical environment.

Too bad these things don’t care how hard you’ve tried to clean everything up.

You finally give in and reach for the memories that you (may have) created to be his, trying to pop one of them open for a closer look, but you… can’t interpret them, mostly. They’re loud, irritatingly colorful, smeared across your vision so you can hardly make out one shape from another. Sounds pulse at your ears in textures, things you can feel in your skull. It’s hot in those memories, red-hot, and the air is thicker than water as it goes down your lungs. Sometimes your foot hits something that feels like clay.

You shove and you shove, and you grit your teeth and feel yourself flicker, feel your proprioception warp and twist in the miasma of your fiction, his recollection.

And then you punch through, arms outstretched, and you stagger into a memory like a drunk wrenching open the door to someone else’s house.

It is hot and you stopped sweating a while ago. You are still holding the sword firmly in your hands, but your mouth is dry and your feet are miles away. You have no idea what you are doing here. (Lil Cal’s in the house. (What house.)) The only thing around for miles is sparse scrub and red dirt. Your hands are caked with dirt. Your knuckles are flayed raw and the blood makes tracks in the dirt.

“Again,” he says, because it’s what you asked for. You asked for this. Right. His face is blurry and weird. “Start from high guard.”

Your muscles remember how to lift the katana over your head but your brain doesn’t. Jesus, the sun is bright. The sun is so fucking bright. Holy shit. You shift your left foot backward as you bring the sword up.

You know exactly how he is going to come in, because it’s how he came in the last fifty times and it’s how he’ll come in the next fifty times, but your brain lags behind your body again, half a second. You have just enough control to twist away.

It does very little for you, though. He was never one for missing.

The live edge of your sword cuts through nothing but air, and the sunlight sparks against the steel, and then you lose track of it.

This isn’t a bad place to be. Lying in the dirt. The sky is cloudless, blue. You don’t think you’ve thought about the sky being blue in a while, and you don’t feel any particular urge to stop looking at it, or to get up. Maybe it’s not that important. Your lungs don’t seem to be working right.

Then he blocks out the sun, towering over you, and shimmering sunspots leak out from the frayed edges of his silhouette until

the memory ends, and you wake up, heart pounding, with the moon shining bright through your window.

Chapter Text

Well.

That was a fucking trip.

You get the feeling that literally everyone (except for Jake, maybe, given his record as your enabler-in-chief, but he’s been attending Rose Lalonde And Kanaya Maryam’s Very Special Group Therapy Emotional Wellness Jamboree for just as long as you have, so who knows at this point, and, as Rose and Roxy and Jane are always telling you, people are capable of fundamental change, Dirk) would tell you to bring it up to him, but they’re not around to make helpful suggestions, are they, so you don’t.

You don’t, until you do.

Look, you never intend to say anything to this guy, but for some reason neither of you can keep your mouths shut around each other for very long. You’re naturally talkative – it can get pretty grating, your tendency to hyperfixate and monologue – but you are already always talking to yourself as part of your debugging philosophy. Most of your various splinters, but especially AR, served time being a rubber duck to blab all your super serious thinky thoughts at, as Roxy puts it.

Ever since you demonstrated a willingness to knock his shit in, he seems more interested in talking to you, anyway.

The irritating part is that he’s now confident that you’ll answer his questions about your time in the Game.

Today, he climbs up onto the roof while you’re in the middle of doing bicycles like a dweeb, hair plastered down against his skull from… from the water, you guess. From the big goddamn ocean that you live in, and probably not the shower, because he’s wearing a pair of orange swim trunks dug out from god knows where (actually, are those yours? They’d better not be yours). Your eyes immediately zap to his side, and lo, there it is. A long, thin, barely-visible white line starting at the inner edge of the oblique, curving back to the lats, incredibly neat. Like someone took a colored pencil and drew the angle of contact across his side. Like the wound was from a scalpel, and not a three-and-a-half-foot-long sword.

“What, never seen a guy swim before.”

You realize you’ve been staring at him and not doing your bicycles, and you roll onto your right arm to push yourself into a side plank so you don’t have to make eye contact. Sweet. “Strictly speaking, only in movies.”

He snorts. “Guess you didn’t really have time to fuck around, huh?”

“We weren’t always on task. I mean, we got to celebrate some birthdays. And other shit.”

“Yeah, I got that impression.”

You peek over at him while he wipes his face off. He’s basically a walking spoiler for how you’re going to look in sixteen years, and you are pathologically incapable of resisting the siren call of spoilers. You’ll probably end up stockier than him if you keep up your own training regimen; he has more of a runner’s build, which doesn’t really match the stories of meteor-slicing and dogfighting that you’ve heard. But whatever the session dictates, you guess. You didn’t build your skillset around the contingency of chasing a high-speed slime-toddler through the mall.

“Hey,” you say impulsively, and then balk, instantly regretting it. You can hear his amusement in the awkward beat of ensuing quiet. Guess you really stuck your foot in it this time. “Did you actually split a meteor in half?” You sense an icy silence building and switch to your left side. “Just curious. I told Dave it sounded kinda farfetched. Not to say that I totally rejected the possibility, but he is prone to use more colorful modes of emphasis.”

He gives you a long-suffering stare, but he doesn’t deny it, just shrugs.

Ho. Ly. Fuck. “How the fuck do you plan for that?”

“Trade secret.” Another shrug. “I had a personal trainer.”

You give up on the planks and sit up to beam him your best Jane Crocker Skeptical Look™ through your shades. “What kind of personal trainer specializes in dissecting igneous space rocks hurtling through the atmosphere at ten miles per second?”

“Maybe that was just a stroke of genius,” he says smugly. God, you made a big mistake going anywhere near implying that what he did was impressive. “Pure talent, you could say.”

You can’t help but roll your eyes at that. “Forget I even brought it up. I don’t want to test the fucking Chandrasekhar limit of your insufferability.”

“Our insufferability,” he corrects you.

“Whatever. I’m gonna get my ablutions on.” You stand up and walk over to the door, and then he’s opening it for you, doing his best bellhop impression. And you cannot help it, yet again, when your eyes snap down to his side. Just for a split second, but at this range he definitely noticed, and he arches an eyebrow up at you.

“What.”

It is beneath you to dignify that with an answer, you think firmly, and you head to the shower just to find it occupied. You can hear the water running.

That piece of shit.

You bang on the door uselessly. “What the fuck!”

“Ocupado,” he calls from inside, and you have no choice but to sit in your room, trying to find a way to occupy yourself for fifteen minutes and fifteen minutes only before it’s your fucking turn. You might actually deck him when he comes out. You could do some damage with a towel.

That’s how you end up hammering out a dent in your Brobot’s chestplate. It’s the most immediate way you can think of to annoy that bastard while he enjoys the privacy of the ablution chamber in complete and total feckless disrespect of the Laws of Dibs. And common courtesy.

BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG. You shift the plate on top of your workstation and continue beating the dent into submission. Who the fuck does this guy think he is, anyway? This is as much your house as it is his. More yours, if the surroundings have anything to say about the issue of ownership. BANG BANG BANG.

The door opens and closes, and then he appears in your doorway, towelling his hair dry.

You set the hammer down. “You done?”

“Bathroom’s free,” he says, as innocently as his monotone will allow, and ducks back out of the doorway.

You are on the lookout for any sign of a prank throughout your shower. The only vaguely unnerving thing you see is a lime green smuppet sitting on the sink next to a small pile of fluff that was probably its hair, looking at the mirror. It is holding one of the safety razors on its lap, and has gone suddenly bald. You take a moment to appreciate the little narrative before going to town on your hair with the blow-dryer. It’s almost charming. You leave it as it is.

When you re-enter your room, he’s sitting in your chair, in a white T-shirt that is, again, suspiciously like yours, and shorts. The goddamn moon-tan of his legs is two watts away from burning twin holes in your retinas. He’s glowing brighter than Kanaya. You blink hard and randomly select something from your wardrobifier, flopping down onto your bed face-first.

“What are you doing in my room,” you groan, protesting rather than asking. It seems the douchebag has a topic of conversation he is eager to pursue, and you are basically just here to let it happen. Lucky you.

He thumps his fingers on the armrest. It might be threatening, or just pensive. “You got somethin’ to say, you should say it.”

Well, the jig is up. The cat is out of the bag. The beans have made their way out of the can and are dealing persistent area-of-effect damage. You are out of folk dances, felines, and fabaceae. You are out of every f-word you can think of. Well, not exactly. Literally every question you can think to ask is kind of Fucked Up.

But, hey, you’re curious, and screw his feelings, you guess. Whatever latent PTSD he may or may not have. It’s payback for attempted suicide-by-Dirk.

“I have… some of your memories, now,” you say cautiously. He just hums, inviting you to elaborate, so you dive in. “I guess I’m just curious. There’s one where you’re out practicing kendo with your ‘personal trainer’—” air quotes, because there was no gym involved – “and get fileted like your name is O’ Fish.”

You can see his eyes are open, staring at the wall. He hasn’t moved. “I don’t mean to sound mortifyin’ly Dickensian, but you’re going to have to be more specific.”

“Uh.”

“You remember where it was?”

“Out in some scrub, I think.”

He squints, looking up and away, trying to remember. “Anything else?”

You shrug. “It was pretty fucking hot. You weren’t sweating, which I assume is because of sunstroke.”

“Yeah, okay.” He bounces his heel against the carpet, thump thump. “So what the fuck’re you so curious about?”

You give him a hard stare. “I had to be in your body while the sun roasted you so hard your guts started cooking, and I’m not allowed to take basic fucking issue with it?”

A snort. “I’m fuckin’ alive, ain’t I? What else is there to know?”

There is so much else to know. You have so many fucking questions. “How old are you? In that memory, I mean. Do you remember?”

He clicks his tongue, drums his fingers on the arm of the chair as he squints his left eye in recollection. “Eleven, maybe. Ten or eleven.”

Your eyebrows rocket straight up into your hairline. “You had a personal trainer at ten?”

“Mm-hm. A man with a very good grasp of strife mechanics,” he drawls, reaching under the chair to yank at the lever. He raises the seat a few inches, then puts his feet on your desk. Asshole. “Had to do a helluva lot of research, but Skaia does have some built-in tutorial functions. My session’s Roxy probably found hers around the same time, or a little later.” With his feet up and his elbows on the armrests, he looks almost relaxed. He really does think this shit is normal, then.

“I dunno,” you say, slower, fingers twisted into your duvet. “A near-death experience doesn’t sound like a tutorial to me.”

“It’s part and parcel of training.” He yawns into his wrist, then lets it flop back down. “But, to be fair, it was way after I finished the kiddie shit. I was good at strifing, so he let me jailbreak the higher difficulty pronto.”

“Doesn’t seem like he was too worried about killing you, is all I’m saying.”

“The sunstroke woulda gotten me first,” he points out lazily, as if that contradicts anything you are saying. It must have been over a hundred degrees outside. You remember his skin being dry and papery. You can’t imagine Texas ever being that hot, even though you’ve watched your fair share of westerns. “Woke up in an ice bath with thirty-odd stitches in my side. Remember that?”

You flip through your limited inventory and come up with nothing. “No.”

“You did not inherit any of the fun shit, dude.” He sounds almost disappointed.

“I really don’t see how you could call that fun, except in the most relative sense.”

“Anything’s fun when you’re good at it.”

“And you’re really good at being a dick.”

“Hey, like I said. It’s fun.” To prove your point, he stretches in your chair like he owns it. Well, maybe he did, in his session. “You’re not too bad at it, yourself.”

“Shut up.” You pick up your pillow and throw it at his head. He bats it away without looking and now your pillow is on the floor. That’s what you get for following your impulses. Utterly defeated, you flop back down on the bed and stare at the ceiling, at the tiny chips of flaking paint, the faint lines of water damage.

“I studied with that guy for six years,” he says, softer, lower in his chest. You cautiously fold your arms under your head to show that you’re listening, brushing up the hair at the nape of your neck so it lies flat against your arms. “Summers, weekends, before’n after school. Until I was old enough to move out. Kinda miss it, sometimes.”

He can’t see you frowning, so you frown, because it makes sense. “I can understand why. It sounds disciplined and routine, with a concrete measurement of progress. Even if what you were actually doing was fucked up, the consistent nature of it sounds appealing. Waking up and knowing exactly what’s going to happen.” Then, “I’d like to have that kind of control. But I have also learned that it doesn’t work out very well for anyone, in the long run.”

He hums. “The structure of it was nice, yeah. But I miss… huh. Miss how there wasn’t room for anything else.”

You remember how dead-eyed the memory is, how he barely even registered the wounding blow, the fuzzy thoughts, the lack of… anything. Except how he looked at the sky with the mildest feeling of surprise, as if he hadn’t seen it in years. And then the man standing over him, the barest relief from the sun.

“Anyway.” He shifts his legs, crossing one ankle over another. “Ended up kicking his ass and getting the boot. So I guess I put myself out of a good spot.”

A quick round of addition. “You left when you were sixteen?”

“Roundabout.”

What were you doing at eleven? Making robots out of your brain, studying SBaHJ like a sacred text, shadowboxing with your katana on the roof. Watching a pod of dolphins swim around your house. Talking to Roxy and Jake and Jane, once you managed to rig up Pesterchum correctly. Getting cyberbullied by Caliborn, or amusing yourself with his best attempts, at least. Sewing puppets, making mixtapes. Navigating adolescent infatuation. Learning how to live with other people for the first time.

And he was – you don’t know, really. Getting fucked up in the middle of west Texas, day in and day out, steel sharpened by steel until all that was left of an eleven-year-old kid was a sharp edge and a set jaw.

“So when did you get into programming and all?” you ask, already planning your long and winding road to the end goal of figuring out what this splinter (or not) has to teach you. “If you were so busy with strife training all the time.” 

“Public library. When he couldn’t be assed to do anything. Spent a couple of weeks there after school when I stroked out.”

The wording makes your face contort with discomfort. “Ugh. Phrasing.”

He snorts. “Whatever. We didn’t have the fuckin’ internet back then. Had to keep busy with old-fashioned book-learning.”

“Print media’s for the birds, you decrepit old weirdo,” you grumble. “Where’s all your young, hip vocab? You have to do a better job of marketing your sad childhood backstory to me.”

That earns you raised eyebrows and a disbelieving snort. “Pfft. Shit ain’t sad. I was an S-tier ninja hacker at the tender age of fifteen, soon to become a multimedia visionary. I was William Gibson’s wettest fuckin’ dream.”

You cut smoothly into his jock jam monologue. “That’s cool, I guess. I fought my own killer robots. I have that DIY angle that really appeals to the youth.”

“You are so damn lucky the apocalypse wiped the Texan public school system off the map,” he groans. “Then again, maybe you need your head swirlied a couple times to take you down a notch.”

You laugh, letting out a single honking derisive HA. “Is that a threat?”

“It’s a prescription.” He pushes off the table and spins around in the chair a couple of times, legs tucked in. “Can’t say it don’t sound appealing, though.”

“Fuck you.”

He drags his feet on the carpet to stop the chair, stretching his arms and legs and yawning. The back support creaks as he leans backward on it, and you cringe a little bit. “How much do you remember?”

You press your heel against the wall. “Uh, not much right now. But sometimes I find new memories. Although I suppose they’re old, because they’re yours, but given all of the factors of splintering and simulation and gamified time, maybe they’re not. I mean, I’m still not convinced you’re not my literal brainchild.”

“Don’t overheat yourself,” he warns you, managing to look smug without moving any facial muscles.

Ignored. “The one I just mentioned was the one at the forefront. Most of the others are boring in comparison. Riding the school bus, I think, and watching TV.”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment, then gives you the tiniest of nods. “Okay.”

You narrow your eyes at him. “Why?”

“No reason,” he says, giving the chair a final spin before standing up. His image shifts and blinks out, and then you can hear him moving around in the kitchen, making cup ramen or whatever.

No reason. Yeah, sure. He’s probably just making sure you haven’t uncovered anything unsavory about him. But the thing is, he absolutely knows that you know about all of it already. That Dave told you about what went down, for years and years, for basically no reason other than what you can only assume was a power trip. And you can still see that in him, the way he commandeers space and only accepts your probing when it’s convenient for him.

He can’t possibly be concerned that having access to the specific details of the shit he pulled is going to make you think less of him. That’s pretty much impossible. It’s not like you don’t get it – you wouldn’t expect your infant self to hold up very well against a demonic juju, either – but you don’t get it. There are a hundred puzzle pieces missing, and you don’t know whether you want them back in place.

That’s your official stance, anyway, because anything less is unsavory and inappropriate.

It also hits a little closer to home than you’d like.

Because isn’t this what you were afraid of? That you’d grow up into a machine with no consideration for anything except your own ego? Isn’t that still in you? He’s one of your possible – probable – futures, still, no matter what Jane says, no matter what Jake believes. No matter what Rose says she sees in you.

And living side-by-side with your personal Ghost of Christmases Future is not exactly turning out to be a pleasant experience.

You’re pretty tired of banging your head against that particular wall, so you leave him for a couple of days to do whatever the hell it is he does when you’re not watching. You never hear him moving around at night. Maybe he just stays on the roof. You can’t really find it in yourself to give two shits. Not because you don’t care, although maybe you don’t, but because you’ve probably poked this bear a couple dozen times, and you’re tired of it. So you need to come up with a new strategy to crack this nut.

Nothing immediately comes to mind, so you open the PC case again and pick your multimeter off of the floor, and start to tinker with the things you have hooked into the TSPnet socket.

The thing is, you’ve always been good at multitasking. As a Derse dreamer, a mechanic, and a kid with a thousand interests and not enough time for linearity, you’re used to running several processes at once. You can run the splinter-psych problem in the background while you figure out how to boost your outgoing signal enough for it to punch through spacetime and find your friends. You remember their last broadcasted position, but they’ve probably moved on by now, so however loud you think you need to call, you’ll probably need to be twice as loud as that.

And god knows you’ve yelled at them enough in one lifetime for them to recognize your voice, no matter how far away you are. (But that doesn’t eat at you like it would have a year or two years ago, and you can feel the beginnings of a smile tugging at your face.)

Within an hour, you have your laptop out again, wires and pins and cables laid out on the floor around you as your fingers tap away on the keyboard, consulting your kid-self’s stupid notes (god, your commenting system is absolutely impenetrable, but then again you’ve always been a contentious person when it comes to making things easy for yourself) before you start messing around with your protocols.

Eventually, you get stuck, juggling a hundred different tiny issues and two huge ones. You know this environment keeps resetting the amplitude of your signal; you also know through experience that your default TSPnet settings aren’t going to work here, because you can’t get any stable connections to anything, not even to other devices in your own apartment, which is just stupid. You straighten some of the pins on the breadboard uselessly and pick at the wire housings, hoping against hope that something will click and solve your problems for you.

It seems you hit the gameworld’s reset threshold for modifications whenever you get broadcast-ready. It counts as a moderate change, just like… well, stabbing yourself in the hand. That’s fucking unfair, and you lie back on the floor of your room, groaning in frustration.

And then another one hits.

Your kid, one-ish, is crying from the couch that is also your bed, so loud that his tiny, shrill infant voice is cracking. There is apple juice all over the goddamn floor in the kitchen. You are sprawled out right next to the upended plastic bottle of Mott’s. You do not know how the fuck this happened. Maybe you tripped. Whatever the cause, it is difficult to resist the urge to sleep right there, even with a lake of juice drying on the floor next to you, and the knowledge that you’ll have to scrub it up with a wet towel later, and on top of that, the grating sensation of Dave screaming at the top of his lungs.

You think he might be hungry. Sounds like a hungry cry. You should do something about that.

The problem is that you can’t, or won’t, get off the floor, and there is not a lot of juice left in the jug. You almost manage to get to sleep right there, face pressed into the linoleum. Your eyes are burning. You don’t have the presence of mind to reach for him.

But he reaches for you, when you’re too brainwild to ask.

Snap. Jumpstart. It sends you scrambling to your feet in a panic, rooting frantically through the cabinets for – something. Come on, come on, shit. You tuck one thing into the crook of your elbow, peel off a foil lid with jittery hands, find a spoon, cross the room and feed him. Seems to work, since he starts eating and stops crying except for these little hiccups. Your heart still races. You wonder if you would have let him starve to death just so you could keep sleeping. Useless unless someone’s standing right there with a god damn jumper cable, aren’t you.

Eventually the adrenaline washes away, and there’s that pitchy shrieking again, Cal prattling on and on in brainspace. Enough to wake anyone up. He’s tetchy or amused, something like that. You are shaking, knees digging into the carpet as the kid eats the last of the whatever out of the spoon, and you are angry. Not sure why. Just mad. You toss the two empty cups and the spoon onto the floor when he’s done and bury your head in your arms and you don’t care if he pukes it back up and gets hungry again or crawls off the couch and cracks his skull open.

You’re mad, you don’t care, you’re so fucking mad. Your body feels like it’s falling apart, collapsing like a house of cards onto the seat of the futon. You press your closed eyes into the crook of your elbow, your juice-tacky calf sticking to the back of your thigh, sweat cooling on your back as you will your heart to slow down enough for you to go to sleep.

When you press your hand to your chest, you can feel your own heart hammering away, so loud that you can hear the thump-thump of your valves closing in your ears, and you swear the squeezing sensation just under your sternum is from the walls of your ventricles contracting. A few deep breaths, and you clear your brain enough to think again.

You’re not sure what to do with these as they keep coming. You’re kind of reluctant to do anything at all, actually, because these are highly fucking personal memories, and you can’t just bring them up willy-nilly, you know that much. You are aware the schism equipped him with a bunch of yours, too, but he hasn’t said much about it. Optimistically, he wouldn’t have too many of them, but you know better than to push your luck like that. You just hope he doesn’t run any commentary.

But, technically, these are your memories, too. Memories you simulated and incorporated into a splinter. You might be better off reflecting on what they say about you, personally. You can see several trains of thought bidding for your fare, and none of them are very appealing.

Ultimately, all of your questions boil down to the same thing.

Do you want him to be sympathetic? Do you want to believe that there’s a reason Dave had to go through everything that he did, that it wasn’t just chaos and inevitable cruelty?

Do you want to believe that there’s a reason for everything that you do?

If these are the memories you created for him, physically brutal and full of anger, is that the kind of life you think it’d take for you to become as monstrous as he did? Because all of it is cut down to the quick, pure sensation and barely any processing. They’re easier to pick out from your own, in hindsight, because you are practically dissociative in the way you step back to analyze a situation, constantly cataloguing and analyzing. He can’t get that kind of distance. He presses in, like an animal at the bars of a cage.

Maybe that’s how he was, in life. The Game was never keen on affording anyone the privilege of distance, and there’s no reason he should have been a special exception. You were only allowed what perspective you had because you carved it out for yourself.

Regardless of whether or not the memories are fake, though, and whether or not they’re from your brain, it’s difficult to get over the feeling that you’re intruding, poking around where you have no business being. He looks and acts like a different person, and not a stunted or twisted version of you. Not exactly. He’s a potential future, not a certain past. And that makes him different.

If it wasn’t for the fact that you know Dave would ask you what the fuck you think you’re doing feeling sorry for this bastard, you’d probably feel somewhat less reticent to interpret these memories graciously, because he’d just be entirely fake and hypothetical. He – did shit, in real life, to a real guy, who didn’t deserve any of it. To a fucking kid. And you can’t forgive him for ruining someone else’s life.

It’s hard, though. If you’re the author of these memories, this is your magnum opus. You can feel him sand down his own softness over time, and you recognize your determination turning into dogged perseverance. He didn’t pay attention to the way the sword tore through his side, but you did, and you know from his resignation that it wasn’t the first time that happened, nor the last. And your reflexive feeling, despite what you know to be morally (or maybe socially) correct, is concern. He has more discipline and more drive than you do, which sounds like hyperbole (and that sounds like narcissism), but it’s because he cut everything else loose. And that’s fucked, but you, of all people, can grok that.

Even so, it’s the feeling of the jumpstart out of nowhere, like a heart attack, that shakes you the hardest.

You don’t want to understand him because you feel like you’re betraying your friend, and your brother, but you kind of do, already, partially because he’s you. It’s ethical quicksand. Trying to figure out how to control how you feel, though? Uncomfortably close to your old shenanigans. It doesn’t seem right.

You find it easier to think about him as you, instead of as his own person. A thought experiment, rather than a sentient being. Fairly messed up, but so is the whole possible-dream-bubble thing. If you reframe it the right way, you don’t have to think about your responsibility to your friends, who are all still very much alive and probably trying to find you. And you need more responsibility like you need a bullet to the head.

So the question becomes:

If you flew off the handle, would you want someone to talk you down, or put you out of your misery?

It’s clear what he wants. A wrench to the head, a knife through the hand. Blood on the bathroom sink, from something worse than a shaving accident.

But what do you want? You’ve never needed that before. The talking-down. Not from that height, and not when it wasn’t absolutely necessary. You’ve been in bad spaces before. Just not past the point of no return.

You have a lot of life and a lot of cruelty in you, still, and a lot of fear. You want to believe you could come back after crossing the line, that someone would take you back, that you could fix it.

The problem is that, by the time it’s all said and done, you wouldn’t deserve it anymore.

When you shuffle into the kitchen to microwave some ramen, you stare at the linoleum under your bare feet. You can pick out the exact spot where the bottle of apple juice was, where he was lying down, where his cheek was pressed into the floor.

Maybe it’s stupid, but you’ve never had or wanted anything more than your friends. And you hope that they’d forgive you for succumbing to the worst parts of who you are. You know you’d forgive them of almost anything, given time.

Your little slice of the Game is apparently complex enough to have a complete weather system, but it can’t establish a simple outgoing broadcast. Cool.

Once upon a time, you had your own little early storm warning system set up. You weren’t always outside long enough to see fronts coming in, what with the blackout curtains, and you couldn’t afford to hyperfocus through a Category Four, even if the apartment had seen worse before you got here. Unfortunately, the array of potentiometers and displays you have nailed to the wall in the hallway remains totally depowered, so you wake up, startled, to the sound of rain on your window.

It’s been a while. Not that Earth-C hasn’t been full of weather surprises – you encountered snow during the Game, sure, but this time Roxy quite literally strongarmed you into going sledding with the squaaaad, Dirky! which turned into a confusing sample platter of god-empowered winter activities that neither Jake nor Dave nor the trolls in general had the constitution for. Apparently most of Alternian civilization is built around being in dark places that don’t have a lot of weather going for them, and also their rain is highly acidic. The closest they have to snowfall is some kind of semi-annual toxic ash deposit.

Suffice it to say that you were not the main focus of anyone’s teasing, because the ripest targets tended to be more of the Terezi “1 WOULD L1K3 TO T4ST3 TH3 ‘Y3LLOW SNOW’ D4V3 M3NT1ON3D” Pyrope variety.

You hop over the mess on your floor to draw your blinds for the first time in maybe a month, partly out of nostalgia and partly out of curiosity. It’s exactly what it looked like the first time it rained here: cardstock layers of dark gray cloud, shimmering through the rain on the glass. The wind doesn’t appear to be out in force, though, so it’s probably nothing to worry about. There’s no logical reason that home_sweet_home.exe would refuse to let you kill each other and then just smite you with a hurricane.

And even if it turns out to be malicious, there’s not really anything you can do about it at the moment. Not until you get your system to un-brick.

Also, you have a much more immediate problem to deal with.

A big, orange problem, prowling around your house, eating your cup ramen, popping into your room every so often to ask you just the most insane questions about the Game. Long, algorithmic strings of questions, like you’re a fucking search engine and he can tag on as many Boolean operators as he wants. As if you’re the guy who gets to be his personal GameFAQs.

It is a kind of asymmetrical information flow.

You are just trying to figure out how to make it bidirectional without being obvious. The dude shuts down faster than Rose on a bad day. You kind of wish you could just scoop his brain out and hook it up to your laptop, but you’ve had enough trouble with brains in jars to last a lifetime. Plus, it’d be kind of fucked up to have your future-corpse lying around for the rest of however long you’re going to be here. And also it probably wouldn’t work.

Jane loves the sound of rain. Not that she had any choice, being from Washington, but you kind of understand why; it’s like standing under a shower without getting water and soap in your eyes. It’s like a heavy blanket of obscure polyrhythms, rhythmic in a way you can’t explain without a lot of advanced mathematics and comforting in a way you can’t explain without… well, a lot of things. Or people.

So you sit there, at your desk, leaning forward with your chin propped up on your forearms, watching the droplets snake their way down the glass, until you figure out a way you can put your questions to work.

Smash cut to you, leaning against the back of the futon in the half-light, and him, eyes straight ahead, dicking around with some shitty FIFA knockoff.

“Sounds stupid,” he says conclusively after you finish explaining the concept of a lightning round.

“It’s not any more stupid than you barging into my room every ten minutes to interrogate me about the details of some obscure game event that none of us encountered,” you retort, crossing your arms. “This way you get to exorcize your fuckin’ curiosity demons all at the same time, and I get some information in exchange.”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it.” He puts the controller down, laces his fingers together, and shoves his arms out, cracking his knuckles, elbows, and shoulders all at the same time. Fuck, you really have to learn how to do that. Dave would absolutely hate it. Well. Maybe that’s why you shouldn’t, actually. “We’re missin’ some pink pajamas ’n’ nail polish, though.”

“This is more of a first-day-of-school type’a deal.”

For once, he doesn’t rip on the fact that you’ve never been to school. “Okay.” And he twists on the couch, extending his fist.

You… bump it?

He groans. “No, asshole, RPS for who goes first.”

Oh. You bite the inside of your cheek and try not to express your mortification.

An unforeseen problem arising from being the same fucking person: You both choose the same option ten times in a goddamn row.

“Can we just flip a coin?” You throw your hands up.

“I don’t have any cash on me,” he says, like it’s supposed to be funny. It’s not.

You end up retrieving a washer from your room and marking one side with a grease pencil. “Mark or blank?”

“Blank.”

You flip. It comes up blank. Of fucking course. You sit on the arm of the futon, folding one arms over the back. Maybe he was expecting you to sit down and invade his space again, because he sniffs and puts one leg up on the seat.

“How many times did you kill yourself intentionally?”

What an opener. “Uh. Once, I guess, with the sendificator. I don’t think it counts if you know that the chances of actual permadeath are not statistically significant. Or if it’s in a doomed timeline.”

He nods. You don’t think that means he agrees with you. “Uh-huh.”

You raise your eyebrows. “That’s it?”

“It’s your fuckin’ turn. That is how this works, right?”

This isn’t exactly how you envisioned the lightning round going, but then again, you are dealing with someone who has significantly more experience being you than you do. And you’re not usually the person who initiates these things. So you shrug. “Okay, yeah. Where’d you get the Unbreakable Katana?”

He taps his fingers on his knee for a long moment. He can’t possibly be trying to remember. “Garage sale.”

A garage sale. “Are you fucking—”

“I’m not kidding you. I was driving around Corpus Christi, there was a garage sale goin’ on nearby the convention center, some old guy was selling his shit, and I know a good deal when I see one. What, was there supposed to be some kinda ritual?”

“Mine was specifically left for me,” you point out. Like everything else you have, basically. Except for the shit you alchemized. “By my bro.”

He shrugs with one shoulder. “Cool story. I guess.” Then he tips his head back to think of his next question. “How’d the final boss develop in your ’verse? And I don’t mean physically, you already explained all the cherub sex ed shit. I mean narratively, plot-wise.”

“I know what ‘narratively’ means,” you snap. “He didn’t even develop in our session. He beat his own, on his own. We fucked our own universe basically from the get-go by abjuring the sprite mechanic pre-entry, and I wouldn’t be surprised if, because of some kind of paradoxical quadruple-reacharound plot bullshit, he affected that.”

It occurs to you that you haven’t even told him where LE comes from, technically. Or went to. Frame of reference, and all that.

Regardless, he seems to mull over your response and find it acceptable. “Sounds like a hard dude. Surprised y’all managed to pull it off, to be honest.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” But he’s right to be surprised. “I’m still not actually clear on all the details. My knowledgebase and skillset were mostly cultivated for combat, not manipulating gamespace. You’d have to ask Roxy about that. Or Vriska, I guess.” Not that he’s ever going to.

“I’ll make a note of that,” he drawls. Yeah, o-fucking-kay.

You try your hardest not to twiddle your thumbs like a cartoon before asking the next question. It is totally uncool. Why the fuck doesn’t he have problems with sitting still? “How did you know you were doing the right thing? With the other people in your session. I sure as fuck never did.”

“And you still don’t.” Weirdly, there’s no judgement in that, and it makes more you uncomfortable than if he’d outright called you an inept sack of shit. “The name of the game’s survival. If the Player survives, then you did the right thing. Simple as that.”

Of course that’s how he thinks. You could have guessed that yourself. You did, when you had your first conversation with Dave. God, you’re predictable. “Really? You never thought you were on track to fucking it all up?”

“Not since I was a kid. I had guidance, anyway, and it ended up workin’, didn’t it?”

He’s lying, or at least telling a half-truth. Or you want him to be lying, at least. You can’t tell whether his tone is actually off or if it’s just your sentiometer throwing out false positives again.

“I guess.”

He shifts on the couch, then flips his hands up in a kind of mini-shrug. “Do you just really like psychoanalyzin’ yourself, or is there a point to this that ain’t just profligate self-obsession?”

Hey, what the fuck. “You’re me. Literally every interaction we have with each other is an oxymoronic slugfest of narcissism and self-loathing.”

There is some serious eye-rollng action going on behind those shades. You’d bet your life on it. “So if you’re so convinced that I’m you, what’s the point of asking me about this inner conflict shit?”

“You know what, maybe I am big on the psychoanalysis schtick,” you say, long-suffering. “Doesn’t stop me from being curious, I guess, about which answers to my questions I’d find personally satisfying. And how could I pass up a chance to get to know the most fucked-up version of myself?”

He scoffs, but doesn’t disagree, and tugs on the fingers of his glove. “Right. Can’t say I’m not morbidly curious about your wrench-wielding lunatic brain, either. Whatever. Keep goin’.”

“’Kay.” You gnaw at the inside of your lower lip for a moment, trying to think of a way to approach what you want through a more circuitous path. “What do you think your best quality is?”

He blinks, looking blindsided for a moment. Fuck yes. Then his mouth curves in amusement. It looks, frankly, wrong. “All of ’em.”

“Stop,” you groan. “I guess you’re making a good case for your individuality. I don’t actually try to make myself cringe so hard that I retract every appendage back into my torso.”

“Then why would I ever do anything else?” He stretches his fingers, pulling them back one at a time. “And besides, I can’t believe you think I have such a low opinion of myself that I’d only be able to pick one.”

God, why did you ever think this would be a good idea? “Fine. We don’t have to talk to each other about anything, you know.”

“All right, jesus, uptight much. Let it be known that I give as good as I get.” He pauses, for a while. Seems like he’s weighing his responses, scratching at the side of his neck. “Mm. Used to be pretty smart. I liked that.”

That falls oddly on the ear. “Used to be?”

He stretches an arm over the back of the futon, mirroring you. “I had a long time to grow into my death. Decades. Can’t outwit it, can’t reason with it. It didn’t seem right to just fritter the last of my time away getting a degree or whatnot when I knew what was coming.”

“Oh.”

“I didn’t know everything,” he clarifies, looking at you sideways, like he knows this is the answer you wanted earlier. “Just that my quest objectives didn’t involve a lot of brainpower.”

“Didn’t stop you from having hobbies, right? Dave let on that you were a full-stack web developer,” you say, more delicately than is warranted.

He raises his eyebrows. “In those words? I didn’t raise that kid to pussyfoot around.”

“Yeah, you barely fucking raised him at all.”

He goes quiet at that, the freezing kind, like he’s shutting a door. Shit fuck fuck you fucked it up. The lightning round is not a PVP-enabled zone, idiot. You think he might get up and leave, but he doesn’t.

“Kinda the point,” he says, finally. “Supposed to teach him to be self-sufficient. Creative. Resourceful. And he ended up being all of those things.”

“I learned all of that without my bro being completely over-the-top batshit to me for thirteen years,” you say, with a half-intentional edge to your words. Whatever this is, it sounds like an excuse, and you are so incredibly beyond you and your alternate selves and your fucking endless list of excuses. “You know what? I just don’t get it. How you let yourself turn out so fucked-up and mean. There wasn’t even one second where you realized how bullshit your life was? Not even when you started starving your own kid?”

He gives you one of those looks like you’re the dumbest motherfucker alive, and you rightfully resent it. “What is there to get? Sure, it was bullshit. The whole game’s a bunch of bullshit. But I had to do what I did and be who I was because the fate of the planet hung on how badass I could make one kid. And if that ended up being bullshit, too, then isn’t that just the way these things fuckin’ go.”

“And that’s it? You turned into a raging asshole because you had to? I don’t believe that for a second.”

He tilts his head in acknowledgement. “I don’t know what to tell you, Dirk,” and from his tone it seems like he’s making fun of you, but he folds his arms over his stomach and doesn’t really look at you, or anything in particular. “I didn’t just have to. I chose it. Every step of the way, I chose to be who I am. No one forced me to do anything. I got to choose what music I listened to, how I dressed, what I liked. What I learned, how I learned it.” He shrugs. Bitter smile. “How I fucking treated him.”

You clamp your mouth shut and count to five in order to not shoot off about the shit you’re not supposed to be asking about yet. Or that you can’t ask without absolute certainty that it won’t blow up in your face. But the only person who could calculate that is – gone. For lack of a better word.

“And you don’t have any regrets about that?”

His fingers slide up under his glasses to press against his browbone. “Do you really care whether I feel one way or the other? You obviously think I did the wrong thing. Ain’t that what matters in your li’l mirror universe psych eval? That you can tell left from right? Good fuckin’ job, have a cookie.”

“It’s just common courtesy in this context not to deflect what you obviously know to be the spirit of the question.” God, you sound petulant. “What’s so fucking objectionable about telling me whether you meant what you said?”

“I’m not gonna fuckin’ hand-hold you through a basic parsing exercise,” he says, voice tinged with annoyance. He knows exactly what you are referring to. “You tell me. Otherwise, what’s the point of havin’ all that autodidactic goddamn brainpower.”

“Then I’m just going to assume you did.” You watch him shrug, no expression. “You know, if you want me to hate you, you don’t have to fucking try this hard.”

“Yeah, whatever.” He sinks down a bit, lounging. “When was the last time you didn’t overcomplicate shit.”

Well, he has you there. You don’t like it, but he’s right. You frown. “That doesn’t mean—”

“I know, I know. You don’t know who I am, you don’t feel justified. In feeling whatever way. Not my business, but I gotta tell you that there’s not much you need to feel justified about.”

“It’s not that I don’t feel justified. I don’t need the whole picture to make a fair fucking assessment of who you are.” You don’t want to say that you feel conflicted, so you don’t. You don’t want to feel conflicted at all. But splinter business always seems to turn you inside-out, against your better judgment.

His mouth twists. “Yeah. That’s probably true. Just sayin’ that you got most of the ‘whole picture,’ already. So.”

So what? So don’t withhold judgment? Don’t hold back? You already split his head open like a ripe melon. What more is he looking for? You stare down at him. He doesn’t seem to notice; he’s looking straight up at the ceiling. It’s where you’re both most comfortable, you guess. “I don’t think that’s fair to Dave.”

One eyebrow goes up. “What?” His tone is a perfect mixture of disbelief and absurd amusement.

“He sure doesn’t feel like he knows everything about you. I mean, nothing he said gave me a sense of the person you were. Other than some kind of fucked-up brobot, with nothing going on inside.” You fiddle with the zipper on the cushion cover. “Empathy’s always been a sticking point for all my variations-on-a-theme, though. Maybe it’s just not hardwired into us like it is for other people.”

He groans and levers himself up on his elbows, adopting a painfully supercilious tone, like he’s been roused from crucial slumber in order to explain where wigglers come from, and looks you in the eye. “It’s not about empathy. I’d bet my left arm you have some kinda pathology regardin’ your desperate obsession with understanding emotional connection. It’s… WYSIWYG, essentially.” He makes an empty gesture with his hand. “Stepping into the Guardian archetype means giving up a strict claim to personhood.”

You cannot even begin to tell where to start unpacking this statement. You’re not even sure you have the time. You are spoiled for angles of approach, and it is not as liberating as you had always envisioned.

“You sure are putting words together in a sentence with grammatical competency, I’ll give you that.”

“Look,” he says, probably as gently as he can. “Don’t you have shit to be doing? Stuff you like to do, like with your – robots, or whatever?”

You actually have no idea where this is going. “Yeah, but—”

“Why do you like it?”

You shrug, throw your arms out, exasperated. “Because it’s fucking fun? I dunno. It’s intellectual stimulation.”

He sighs, and it turns into a similarly-exasperated groan at the end. “Okay. Why do you make things.”

“Because I’m good at it? It’s a challenge? I don’t fucking know what you want me to say in defense of the fact that I have hobbies.”

“Fine. Okay.” His hands are up, ugh, stop. “But you pretty much gave it up to play the Game. It’s not like you were building robots and futzing around with AI during your active session.”

“I guess. Not from a production standpoint, anyway. What’s your fucking point?”

He keeps talking to you like you’re slow, although it doesn’t feel like he’s trying to be mean. Even though he is, anyway. “You’re a well-rounded character. That’s the point. You’re not a fucking tutorial sprite who bites it five minutes into the game to propel the initial stages of a Player’s character growth. Think of it like occlusion culling. If it’s not visible to the Player, it doesn’t get rendered. So. Finished object, right here.”

“Well, clearly the Game isn’t done with you.” You fold your arms. “Otherwise, why are you here?”

“Thought it was because you splintered me into existence. I don’t got a clue.” That’s an honest-to-god smile shaping his mouth, but it’s lifeless, more like a joke than a reflex. You kind of want to smack it right off of his face. “Unless something decided you needed to play the tutorial levels again.”

“Not interested,” you bite.

The smile slides off and he looks away. “Yeah, me neither.”

You sit there in silence for a while, but he doesn’t move to sit up or anything. An invitation, probably.

“I feel sorry for you,” you say abruptly. He scoffs, but doesn’t interrupt you. “My bro wasn’t great at raising me, either, but he was definitely an honest-to-god actual person, and I’m proud to be one of the things that was important to him. What the hell did you even think you were doing?”

“It never fucking mattered,” he snaps, but it’s muted. You remember he was tired, mostly, in the memories. “What I did. How he felt. Didn’t matter whether it was forgivable, or good, or justifiable. I don’t see why it matters now, of all times.”

You stare at him. What do you have to do, downsize your vocabulary? He’s you. He knows the same fucking words you do. Your lexicon is the same in all the ways that count. “It did matter. And it still does, because Dave is still alive, and he remembers you. He knows he had the short end of the shortest stick, out of all of us. Nobody else ran their kids through your brand-name bull, and we turned out fine.”

“Nobody else knew what was coming!” He laughs, wild this time, manic, and it sounds like it’s cracking out of his chest. “Fuck, you think Lalonde knew how to scratch the session? You think Egbert had any clue what kind of war he was leaving his kid to fight?” He jerks his head to the side, rubs his hands together. “I couldn’t justify doing anything else. Not when I had access to that kind of information.”

“Did you even want to do anything else? Or are you just not enough of a fucking person to have the capacity for anything except dipping into brand-name assholery twenty-four-seven?”

He lets the question hang, still doesn’t look at you, until he scrubs his knuckles over his forehead and sighs, half-snarls. “Yeah. Sure. Whatever stops you being so hung up on convincing yourself I need to be Pinocchio’d into a real boy.”

And, god, this might be the only thing that can convince you not to wash your hands of whole thing. “Then what?” you demand.

“What did I want to do? Hah.” He tucks his fingers under his chin, mock-thoughtful. “Don’t even remember what I was good at, as a kid. Spent a lot of time in the guidance counselor’s office, probably ’cause they thought I’d end up in jail or dead in some freak’s basement, with the amount of school I missed.” He cracks his neck. “Lalonde went to college. Three degrees on that CV. Got her doctorate by the age of eighteen. Bet her kid grew up hella smart.”

You don’t know what you’re getting from this. It’s something, sure, but you can’t tell what it is. Maybe – and this is rampant speculation – a moment of vulnerability, slantways. So you prod. “Are you jealous?”

His hand stays folded, his expression unchanging, but he’s still, and quiet, and there it is. You fucking got him, didn’t you, but it doesn’t feel good.

“The hell would I be jealous of,” he sighs, then shrugs flippantly and U-turns the conversation on a dime. “Doesn’t matter, anyhow. Do I get a question now, or what?”

You blink a couple of times. Right, shit. Lightning round. Honestly, you thought that contract evaporated like five minutes ago, what with all the raised voices and aggression, and your little interrogation routine, but you guess it’s cool if you keep going. If he’s cool with it. Fuck, this has been an unmitigated disaster. “Uh. Yeah, sure.”

He takes a deep breath. And then you realize why he’s been putting up with all of this. You’re the one who is trapped. “You had a Cal.”

“Yeah,” you say, wary. “Why?”

“Wait for the fuckin’ question, why don’t you. What was he like?”

“I dunno. Really fucking cool, for a puppet.” You picture his long floppy orange limbs, miniature shoes, and big blue eyes, somewhere between a comfort object and a socialization training dummy. You miss him, still, despite everything. “He was there from day one, when I fell out of the sky, presumably. I guess he was kind of my best friend, before I learned to work the computer.”

“Huh,” he says, and nods. “Okay.”

You frown, despite yourself. “You’re displaying a weird lack of curiosity about the serious shit, you know.”

“Did you want me to cross-examine you?” His expression is full of mock concern.

You clam up, defensive. “No, it’s… whatever.”

“Spit it out, then,” he drawls, propping up his head with the arm leaning against the couch. “You had no problem tellin’ me off just now. Don’t tell me you suddenly lost your spine.”

You honest to god fidget for a moment, because you are oh-so-very curious about Cal, and LE, and the whole juju business, and this guy is one of several ground zeroes of their impact on the universe. Universes. But, on the other hand, this is also the guy who made a good friend of yours miserable for a really, really long time, for no other reason than that all versions of you are control freaks with a puppeteer complex, and Dave probably doesn’t want or need you to go looking for an explanation for all the bullshit that went down, even if you are possibly all dead and you might never see him again.

So maybe your motivations are more than a little selfish when you open your mouth and ask, “What was your Cal like?”

He’s silent, eyes closed. You look at the TV screen, waiting, bouncing your leg a little.

“Hard to say,” he murmurs after a while. “He was there for me, too. From day one.”

“Did he,” and you stall here, knowing that the line is right at the tip of your foot. “Did he ever – talk to you?”

One eye opens, studies you, narrowed in suspicion. “Why? What did yours say?”

“Nothing.” You kick your leg again, feel like you’re confessing. “He was empty in my session.”

He stares at you with both eyes now, still unreadable, and doesn’t say anything for a very long time.

How fucked up is it, you think, that this is the thing that kills the conversation, and not any kind of appeal to his conscience. Not Dave, and not what he did, but the juju.

“I think I’m done with this,” he says coolly, picking up the Xbox controller, and you know that you can’t push him any further. He won’t move.

You sure as hell wouldn’t.

He doesn’t come bother you for a while, which is perhaps the only positive effect of crashing and burning through the end of your conversation, but it puts you on edge, all the same. How badly did you fuck up? Is he ever going to crack about the whole Cal issue again? Because you will fucking die in this place where dying is apparently impossible if you don’t find out the specifics.

It rains for a couple of days. You spend most of it tinkering with the TSPnet and doing some shop work. It’s highly unlikely that your Brobot will actually power up, given your luck with literally anything technological in this house except for the TV, the goddamn microwave, and your shitty kludged-up fridge. But you can try, and really, what else is there to do, if the two resident assholes aren’t going to incessantly nag each other?

The casual way you’ve become acclimatized to his presence unsettles you, to be honest. You’re not sweet on each other, far from it – you doubt any two versions of yourself have done anything except actively try to sabotage each other – but it’s still… kinda fucked, you think. You shouldn’t be comfortable to any degree with seeing the version of yourself that completed the progression into absolute fucking maniac. Or the version of yourself that was capable of beating on your brother with no detectable sense of remorse. Who was able to justify it, utterly. You certainly couldn’t justify any of your behavior to anyone with an outside perspective. They do it better than you ever could, and you do resent that, still.

The part you can’t seem to digest is how he can disavow any preoccupation with the kind of moral quandaries you fuck yourself up over on the daily, just because he had foreknowledge of the game that he shared with absolutely no one. And, yeah, sure, you probably would have done the same thing, but his blatant disregard for the ethical dilemma of it doesn’t sit right with you. Even Hal had a sense of responsibility for the lives of other people, no matter how warped and controlling that sense eventually became. There’s something off here. Maybe your adamant refusal to acknowledge that you get a thrill from the freedom of absolute ruthlessness.

But it probably also has something to do with his reasoning – given so slowly and in such rudimentary terms, like you were expected to know, as if it was obvious – that he isn’t technically a person. At the very least, not a person in the way you are. And you get the feeling that it wasn’t some fucked metaphor about self-actualization. Does he even think he’s entitled to a moral conflict? Is that what it is?

You wish, for the trillionth time, probably, that you could turn your fucking brain off for more than half a second at a time. It keeps replaying your lightning round, analyzing each word, each shift in tone, every little rhetorical inflection. Digging into the familiar holes in your brain. You’re sick and goddamn tired of it. You’re sick and tired of yourself. What else is new.

In that moment you swear to yourself that you are never skipping out on squad hangouts ever again once you get out of this hellhole, even though you know yourself better than that. You wish literally anyone else was here to distract you from the siren fucking call of your next spiral. You’d be down to chill with Eridan, even. Fuck. You would gladly rip off your left arm to be able to talk to Roxy right now. Although it’d probably glitch back on immediately.

Normally, you’d be more interested in experimenting with these mechanics, but 1) what’s the point, you’ve already inflicted massive brain trauma on the only other person here, and 2) this is the one thing you are willing to listen to your friends on now that the Game is over: scientia gratia scientiae, by definition, does literally no one any favors.

Imagining what people would say if they were here is basically what you’ve done your entire life, anyway, first with your bro, now with literally everyone in the world. You’re used to this, in your own strange, solitary way.

But you don’t want to be.

It was just ramen.

It was just supposed to be you getting in and out of the kitchen and going back to work, but you can’t keep your mouth shut, and you will, as a rule, debate until the universe blows up or implodes and enjoy every second of it. You absolute moron.

“You can’t seriously believe that SBURB had no impact on your worldview. It’s primarily a fragmentation device. That’s fucking traumatic, and I don’t mean in some bullshit psychoanalytic sense of it. I mean that it literally reconstructed our universe and made it a warzone and gave everyone PTSD.”

“You’re not usin’ your fuckin’ ears. Not zero impact, totalizing influence. It’s a very obvious and straightforward distinction. And if you’re serious about this fragmentation idea, it’d behoove you to remember that the mechanics most integral to the Game are primarily determined by puncture and crossover. You, Master Splinter, are enormously biased.”

“The only reason you can even distinguish puncture and crossover from the inherent structure of a session’s plot progression is because of multiversal and temporal fragmentation! That’s literally the function of classpects – to splinter the party according to role, all division-of-labor-like, and then to synthesize all the session players by a denouement. And, as I said earlier, that’s basically why the acquisition of the universal specibus is unlocked at such a high tier.”

“We had specibi before entry. Unless you’re arguing about how it significantly repurposed them for something other than combat capability, which you conclusively ain’t.”

“Yes, but the Game builds transformatively on the specibus in particular as the ideological apparatus through which your capabilities with an object are defined, and how you learn to understand other abilities, i.e. god tier powers. Equipping an object to your strife deck doesn’t make you competent with it. In fact, the only way to gain competency is to fulfill the requirements of the progression system, which are quantifiable only through checkpointed specibus drops.”

“So your basic assertion is that the specibus as a construct per se limits the definition of competency and therefore creates discrete categorizations of what we’re callin’ ‘combat objects’ that don’t actually exist. But that’s true of any skill obtained within an achievement-based system, and the progressional model of achievement is fundamentally based on the idea of quantification.”

“Some models. There are so many fucking Enlightenment values up in this UX. The echeladder is, at its base, pun very much fucking intended, a typographic device that enforces timeline-indifferent intervalic measurement.”

“Are you calling the Game fuckin’ epistemologically delimited by Eurocentrism? Is that the legitimate criticism you’re makin’?”

“That’s not the criticism! What I’m saying is that it’s hard to fucking readjust to an unfragmented reality, or at least a less-fragmented one. No progression, no quest objective, no narrative that splits actions into productive and unproductive. You just fucking are. Ain’t it fucked up that we get rewarded with something we have no idea how to use?”

“Thought y’all had plans.”

“We do. I just… I don’t know. I don’t know whether we can make bad decisions in the same way we used to.”

“What, so this is about your moral compass going nutso?”

“If you had the opportunity to seed a new civilization, but your friends were heavily implying that you’d probably be expected to contribute genetic material from your fucked-up brain, what the fuck would you do?”

“No offense, but I wasn’t too keen on the idea of there being another one of me, for several reasons.”

“Same. No offense.”

Both of you stare at the big shitty replica Buster Sword on the counter.

Right. You were going to make ramen.

“Now put that thing back where it came from, or so help me,” you say.

“Fuck you,” he retorts, and decaptchalogues Twilight Sparkle and Fluttershy into the sink, which distracts you long enough for him to vanish like an absolute… something. Ugh. You look down glumly at your little figurine friends.

“I’m sorry you got caught up in all of this, Princess,” you say forlornly. “There’s just been a lot going on at home recently.”

That is not the last time you find that the most personally valuable items in your collection are being messed with.

Today, one of your Sweet Bro plushes is sitting on the couch next to what appears to be a facsimile of a bag of Doritos, tiny blobby hands on the joysticks of the Xbox controller. What you assume is intended to be the corpse of Hella Jeff lies face-down on the floor in a red felt puddle of blood. Upon closer inspection, you see the murder weapon on the couch next to his assailant. It’s the tiniest fucking gun you’ve ever seen. And there are flecks of red paint on the Bro plush.

Jesus dicks. Where is the motherfucker responsible for orchestrating this heinous fucking crime? Who has convinced Sweet Bro, the beautiful, innocent idiot, to murder his best friend, scoundrel though he be? Who will answer for this?

The perpetrator is on the roof, obviously. And his katana reflects sunlight directly into your eyes the moment you open the door. You know that wasn’t accidental.

“Asshole,” you call, blinking the stun out of your retinas. “Who fucking dunnit?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” He lets the sword fall to his side and straightens up from his stance. “Can’t get between a guy and his game time without some shit goin’ down.”

“Sweet Bro ain’t that kind of man, Strider.”

“Sweet Bro has hidden fuckin’ depths, you illiterate plebeian.”

You absolutely do not tell him about a particularly tragic non sequitur in a particular Moive (bro....... iss that, a Gung?), lest he presume he has the power to predict the SBaHJ canon. God, what a nightmare that would be. You must keep the upper hand in at least one aspect of your life.

“I don’t appreciate what you’re doing with my primo vintage merch.” You watch him settle back into his stance. “That shit’s limited edition.”

“And now it’s fine fuckin’ art. It’s a goddamn Grecian tableau. The Dying Gaul, and shit. What else could you want.”

“I want answers,” you say peevishly. “I want to know what drove him to murder. That’s a fundamental point of interest in any psychodrama.”

He starts to cut, arcing sweeps through the humid air, arms rotating and twisting like pistons on ball bearings. Like Disney on Ice. “It’s a basic narrative convention. What does the protagonist want? What stands in his way? What’ll he do to get it? All of those things are pretty self evident, if you got half a brain cell rattlin’ around in your skull.”

“Yeah, but there’s no rising tension in that scenario. I could call it an experiment with the form, or just shitty writing.”

“That’s just baseless slander.”

“Well, now,” you continue with your best poker face, “that depends on whether you consider your interference to be of a diegetical nature.”

With a look of false shock, he turns to you. “Are you accusin’ me of murder, Mr. Strider?”

Actually, you might not be, at least not in the way he’s suggesting.

Fuck. You are always busting through another metatextual reading. It’s your history as an acolyte serving the Church of Irony that always trips you headfirst into this kind of bullshit.

“Not in so many words.”

He doesn’t follow up, moving through his drill in silence. You recognize it, kind of, in a convoluted eskrima-esque way. The twist of the wrist, the shadow of a double-handed movement. It’s not a style you’d think was compatible with something of the length and momentum of a katana, but then again, you have no idea what awaits you after another fifteen or sixteen years of skill grinding.

You haven’t felt the itch to practice in a while, but this is as good a time as any. Maybe you can pick up some tips from his routine. This douchebag is good at, if nothing else, strifing.

Better warm up first, though. Injury seems to follow you around, and with two of you here, you assume your chances are at least doubled. So you limber up your arms, touch your toes, loosen up your neck.

“No fuckin’ space to practice up here,” he says, so suddenly that you almost dislocate your elbow. “I mean, it’s fine for a runty ten-year-old, but you can’t exactly go for a run, can you.”

You scoff. “Gonna start listing your pet peeves?”

“Nah. Got too many, for starters. Can’t believe you’re not sick of this place.”

Well, you were never going to tell him that you’re kind of going a little stir-crazy, and that you can’t rig up your boat if it’s not here, but now you’re never going to admit to anything whatsoever.

You’re stretching out your legs now, pressing your palms against the sun-baked ground, and take a moment to think about what you will say. “There was plenty of shit I hated about growing up here. But it’s home.”

“It would be,” he says. Temple strike, from the left, then the right.

“I take it you don’t like it much.” Careful, careful. Always kid gloves with this guy’s goddamn glass ego.

“I didn’t hate it.” He cuts up from the bottom left, then the right. “It was even fun, sometimes. But that’s how it’s always been.”

“Supremely fucked?”

“A big load of bullshit.” He tucks his free arm in, palm open near his temple, whipping through the next angles with unnecessary ferocity. You can hear the thrum of the blade tearing through the air.

You frown behind his back and sink lower into the lunge, feeling the pull at your quadriceps. “Yeah, you keep saying that.”

“It’s what it was.” He starts the set over, resetting his position. You switch your legs. “Turns out prepping humanity’s last hope for survival involves a great deal of forged paperwork.”

“Sounds pretty messed up already.”

“You joke, but it was a shitton of forgery and months of plantin’ documents.” One-one, two-two. “A lotta work, to do your duty. Buildin’ robots, gettin’ your head chopped off, huh.”

You switch legs, and then you pull one arm behind your head, loosening your triceps. “Sure. But I liked it. I designed my own regimen and everything. Nutrition, exercise, intellectual and physical. I had what very few other Players had – total freedom to control my life, and enough self-discipline to enjoy it.”

“Yeah. Sounds like a damn hoot and a half.” He sounds fucking tired. “And yet you’re still here, ain’t you? Fuckin’ sneakin’ around the place, scared as shit of what you’re gonna find out about yourself. Somethin’ you don’t like.”

“I am not afraid of you.” Honestly, you have to scramble for a response. “I can’t even begin to describe how referentially absurd the words you just strung together are. Colorless green ideas are shitting their pants furiously in fear, and Noam Chomsky is fresh out of Pepto.”

“Uh-huh. You say that, and then you start lobbing me the most fucked-up questions. That ain’t about me, or what I did, or who I was. Hell, they’re not even about Dave. They’re about you.” And he turns to face you, flipping his katana up, balancing it by the hilt on his finger. His eyes are trained skyward, on its tip. “Maybe there is some truth to us bein’ the same person. More’n I thought, at least. Same relentless drive, same absolute self-confidence when you need it. But you’re down a goddamn hole every other day. You’ll kindly understand, then, why I’m not particularly encouraged when I read through your memories.”

God, that’s actually fucking funny.

“Tell you the truth, I don’t get much enjoyment out of them either, half the time. Most of my hall-of-famers are massive fuckups.”

He laughs humorlessly. “But at least you’re not me, right? At least you’re not me. Fuck. That’s what it’s about, in the end. That’s why I’m here. To be a goddamn Aesop. What a load of bullshit.”

The worst part is that he’s not technically wrong, with regard to your motivations, so you can’t really afford to get offended. Of course he knows; there’s no part of you that doesn’t know what you will and won’t do out of self-interest. No point in getting mad. It doesn’t change anything.

“And maybe I’m here to be yours,” you say, shrugging.

“What, you mean I should learn from you? That will be the fuckin’ day, Fisher-Price.” He captchalogues his katana and lowers himself to the floor, knees up, back against the AC unit.

You don’t push him anymore, because there doesn’t seem to be anything more to say, at the moment. You picked the right option, and that’s enough for now. In the golden hours of sunset, you go through the rest of your stretches and start your calisthenic routine, and wait for him. You can feel his eyes tracking your movements.

Eventually, when you’re about finished, he gets up again, and you mentally prepare yourself for a strife, but he just stands there, hand on his hip, until you’re in the middle of your cooldowns.

The sun is half-sunk, and he’s little more than a shadow now, but you watch, squinting against the light, as he draws his sword and moves through the postures of a form you don’t know, the sword curving through the air with effortless grace. You can see the control in the smooth motion of his arms, in the precise placements of his feet, honed on decades of discipline and practice and not much else.

All the control you wanted when you were younger is right there, bound up in a man who never knew anything else. Who hurt people worse than you ever did, and resigned himself to it. Who gave up on the future a long time ago. You’ve seen the scars. You know the price he thought all of you had to pay.

But you’ve also seen the edge of a dream buried down there, somewhere, and you wonder if that’s what the others saw when you were busy pirouetting into another bout of unhinged toxicity. A hint of something worth saving. Some glimmer of hope.

And if he is a splinter of you, then jesus, you can’t give up on yourself this time. Nothing good has ever come of writing yourself off as a lost cause, has there?

When he’s done, he stands at the edge of the roof for a minute, one foot on the verge, looking out across the ocean. You can’t read his face from here, but the way he drops the katana back into his deck is – restless, maybe. And then he’s walking past you, heading to the door.

“Dinner,” he says, making a face. “You think we really need to eat in this place, if we can’t die?”

You snort. “I doubt it. But we ain’t even made a dent in the ramen yet.”

“Right on.”

He holds the door open behind him for a moment, long enough for you to catch up and see his back disappearing around the corner of the stairwell.

Chapter Text

The Houston that’s underwater here is not so detailed where you can’t reach it. The smashed-up buildings, cracked billboards, encrusted with algae and barnacles and layers and layers of dirt – those are rendered in high-definition, IMAX detail, but further down, where the pressure would pop your head, things are ill-defined. Lacking a certain amount of realism. You’d blame your eyes, but you know that’s not it.

You exhale a stream of bubbles as you kick back up to the surface, pushing through the water. You used to do resistance training down here. It was as close as you could get to flying. Now that you can actually fly (at least, used to be able to; it seems to have been toggled off here), it doesn’t feel as freeing anymore.

When you break the surface, you shake your hair out of your face and tread water for a minute, filling your lungs again. The support beams crisscrossed beneath your apartment are lousy with sargassum, just like they always are after a storm. Higher up, it dries out, and cushions your ass while you take a break.

No matter how complacent with it you were pre-splintering, it doesn’t feel quite right to be back. Regardless of how poorly-rendered some distant parts of it are, the building looks the same. The sky looks the same. Your chest opens up in a way it hasn’t for a long time, and you feel safe. No red threads cutting up the fabric of reality, no fire, no jeering cherubs. No window into another reality.

It’s like you’re ten years old again. There’s something to be said about how your affect changes when you’re in a familiar place. Like a dog, happily curled up in its kennel. And there were plenty of places that were starting to feel familiar, but this is where you spent fifteen years, alone except for the guiding hand of your brother.

Can’t believe you’re not sick of this place, he said. But how could you ever be? It’s really only Roxy who understands what exactly home means to you, out of everyone else. What it means to truly abide in a place, spiritually, physically, in complete solitude. Like a monk in a hermitage, or a lighthouse keeper. You didn’t have any other choice but to get attached to this old-ass floating garbage rig.

Even you and Roxy don’t really remember your time at home the same way. She fucked herself up in ways that you just couldn’t bring yourself to try. It’s shitty, you know, to envy her for the things that enabled her addiction, to think of it as her indulging in a loss of control. To wish you could experience dependency on anything except yourself. You know those kinds of thoughts do not a good person make, and you found your own preoccupations, anyway. You were always interested in disassembling things. And your rules did not brook exceptions.

It’s hard to bring that kind of shit up. There’s a lot of things you don’t tell anyone, that you can’t tell anyone, at least not yet. Like how young you were when you first thought about what nonexistence would be like. Not in any actionable way, but sort of in an abstract, fantastical sense, in pure hypothesis space. You wouldn’t become serious about it until years later, and even then, you know you were still a little too young, and you don’t want to deal with the aftermath of saying something like that, at least not among the humans. You never got much further than contemplation, anyhow. You chose to stay like that. The clock wasn’t ticking yet.

And when the hands began to move… well.

You have some nostalgia for the way things used to be. Solely contemplative. Being in this place again almost comforts you.

Is that weird? Or fucked-up? To remember this as the place where nothing ended? Where you chose, until you couldn’t choose anymore, to stay alive?

The exhilaration of diving has somewhat worn off. You swing your legs a couple of times, rubbing your hands over the clumps of dry seaweed.

You’re not sure how to feel about this aspect of you being genetic. Not fully genetic, probably – maybe a predisposition, amplified beyond the typical developmental trajectory by your extreme isolation, lack of socialization, and basically being forced to FLARP Waterworld like a giant fucking dork. If you’d had a choice in the matter, Kevin Costner’s biggest flop wouldn’t have been at the top of your list of Fun Survival Roleplaying Scenarios.

Which is why, you guess, what he said still bothers you. About the choices he made. Because you know what other choices you could have made – it’s kind of your job to keep track of how things could have turned out differently for you. You make a point of employing all of your neuroses for at least one constructive purpose each. So you know, intimately, every detail of every mistake, and every euphoric step leading to your successes.

He says he made his choices. You would have believed him completely, you think, if you didn’t know how old he was when he started making them. Like, you did a lot of dumb shit when you were ten. You started neurological research that would eventually lead you to imprison a copy of your (unbearable shit-idiot tweenage) high-functioning depressive brain inside a pair of sunglasses. You were experimenting with nuclear power cores that you would later implant into the heart of a worn plush rabbit, and then you turned the rabbit into a feral Watership-Down-slash-Naruto crossover OC, and then you shipped it through time to Jane. You developed somewhat of a nascent crush on Jake “TTFN!” English. All probably mistakes, however they worked out.

Yeah. He’s never broadcast any uncertainty to you. That would imply, oh, you don’t know, a more nuanced and experiential understanding of how paradox space works. Unlike him, you don’t believe in any kind of predestination. You do, however, believe in cycles, patterns, and the power of extrapolation. The subversive potential of loopholes and technicalities.

And the truth is that in an uncomfortable, kind of perverse way, you like talking to him. You like working on that problem as much as any other: picking the lock on his brain, trying to find what exactly went wrong. You like problems. The process of untangling. Discovery through re-ordering.

But on a more casual, fundamental level, it’s just fun, you guess. He’s probably the only one of your splinters that could provide intellectual stimulation for more than a year without becoming a depressing brutalist monument to your juvenile mental gymnastics, because he’s older than you, physiologically mature if not in any other way, and different enough to approach everything from a complementary angle. You’re equals, in that respect; you like verbal sparring, whereas Roxy gets bored, Rose gets mystical, and Sollux… well, Sollux’s fascination with existential bullshit and other programmatic things, while absolutely intriguing, tends to not be great for the old cast-iron.

Whereas, with this splinter, you don’t strictly have to care about that. You don’t have to care about the consequences of your own actions except as they interfere with your escape plans, so long as he remains a splinter, and there isn’t some kind of stupid surprise waiting for you at the end of this theatrical escapade. You’d rather he remain some kind of referential cipher, a complex system generated by another complex system, an operation on an operation.

A couple of seagulls flap down to the water, bobbing in a little squadron, shaking their heads and ruffling their feathers.

You like talking to him, up until the point where you run into the force field around the issues that you’re curious about – what you share, what happened, where you diverged – and then you want to crack him right the fuck open, to see what’s inside. You don’t think he’d let you, though. Which makes it all the more compelling. And now, as it tends to work in the splinterverse, any time you spend meditating on your own psyche metes out a double reward.

Which loops you back to before.

It is, again, probably fucked up for you to wonder when he first thought about dying. If he was as young as you were, or if it wasn’t until the time with the wrench, or if you’re just wildly off-base about everything he is. Fucked up for you to assume he fries up exactly the same shit in that inscrutable think pan. But his absolute confidence while mutilating himself, knowing (you’re sure of that, upon reflection) that it wouldn’t be permanent, tells you otherwise. Or at least that you have the same symptoms, if not the same underlying condition. Emics and etics, that kind of quibbling narcissism.

The climb back up to the apartment is easier with dry hands, pruned up as they are. You wish you’d kept all of your reality hacks from godhood like you did in the real world. Turns out you really, really miss flying. It’s useful. One might even say it’s OP.

You jump up into the empty elevator shaft and heave yourself up through the open door, relishing the reprieve from the wind, and when you enter the apartment, enjoy the softness of the carpet under your feet.

There is a hatted head leaning against the back of the couch. On the TV screen, a white furry dragon puppet soars across chroma keyed backgrounds, a small boy seated on its back. That movie always made you existentially uncomfortable, for some reason. Still. Falkor is cool as fuck. You leave well enough alone, for now, so he can’t pre-occupy the shower again.

Technically, you muse while washing shampoo out of your eye, you could just waste all the water every single day. Showers for hours, dude. Or you could at least use up all the hot water. It’d just replenish the next day. What a prank. What a caper that would be. But you know by now that there is a significantly non-zero chance that you’ll end up owning yourself at a critical and highly ironic juncture, so you just soap up and rinse off, and do some additional hair maintenance. Shit’s gotta look cool.

You finish washing up and towelling yourself dry, and that’s a memory, when you stare at your ghost in the fogged-up mirror and feel the humidity clinging to your skin.

You’re lying on the mattress under a wet towel because it’s hot. The man is somewhere in the house, maybe upstairs. You didn’t make very much progress today, and you’re pretty sure you’re going to die mad about it. Your heart is racing.

Hmm. You squint at the vague shape in the mirror, mind’s eye somewhere else entirely. You’ve been getting better at this, holding onto your consciousness.

Come on. Shrug it off, bitch.

No, that’s not it. Feels wrong, incomplete. Fragmented, compared to the others. You sit down on the toilet to contemplate.

Two months ago you were reading a book for your honors English class at the top of the bleachers while the sad brass section PARP PARPed its way through “Texas, Our Texas” and the wind pushed through your hair, soft, and you are lying under the wet towel and there’s no wind anymore and your anger crackles through your chest like lightning and—

Still wrong. You try to pull the memory flat to get a good look at it, like a wrinkled shirt. Reverse. Rewind.

You’re lying on the mattress in your boxers under a wet towel that barely covers your torso, trying to blunt the edge of the heat scraping its way across the western Texan desert. It’s the middle of the night but the light in the kitchen is still on, and from beneath your sagging eyelids you watch a bunch of gnats bang into the naked bulb over and over again, slowly frying themselves to death.

There. It unfolds.

It’s not like you’re any stranger to heat. You’ve been here for three years and you’ve learned the specific feeling of this dry burn now, your skin cracking at the slightest provocation, a constant feeling of grit and dust all over you, in your eyes and ears and mouth. You can rinse off, but it’s in the air, and it clings to you the instant you step out of the shower, the moment you turn off the spigot in the yard and shake the water out of your eyes.

And maybe it’s the fact that you’ve been here three years and you can’t leave yet, maybe it’s the frustration of hitting your latest skill plateau, maybe it’s the fact that you have less than a decade to learn to strife properly. Maybe it’s the wind whipping the top of the bleachers as you page through your beat-up copy of The Grapes of Wrath, Cal peeking out of your backpack, the shitty marching band crawling over the dusty football field for the least-effective pep rally the world’s ever seen. You’re short on energy.

You look over at Cal, one of his noodle arms flopping out of your backpack where he’s been for the past week, wide blue eyes peeking over the zipper. If you were a puppet, you sure wouldn’t want to be cooped up in a sack for the entirety of summer vacation. But you can’t quite muster up the energy to do more than fold the towel down from your chest, hot air mild on your damp skin for a few moments before the moisture evaporates.

You reach for him, but you can’t quite...

That’s not enough. Snap. Jumpstart.

He misjudges you, because at fourteen he’s giving you too much for your system, total overload, and you’re shaking too hard to get up, breath coming too short to be useful. You twist on the mattress, heart punching a hole through your chest, tremors running up and down your arms, skin clammy in a cold sweat. Jesus christ, you’re just lying here and there is so much to do, so much you still have to learn, embarrassment, behind schedule. Your body isn’t as strong as it should be at this age. Your brain is slower than it should be at this age. You’re not ready and you’ll never be ready and you’re so—

—you’re so fucking—

Not mad. You know mad, and you know this.

—jaw clenching, muscles tense. You’re cold, freezing. Fury shooting up black and electric from the bottom of your stomach, numbing your chest. Breath coming faster and faster. So fucking mad.

The memory calls it anger, but you know what it really is, when you can feel your heart pounding your breath back down into your lungs, goosebumps prickling your arms, fingers going numb. That’s fear, intense, unbridled, and the sick slosh of panic. Nervous and bright, like sunlight on the ocean, the shivering yolk of a gull’s egg.

You take a deep breath and shuffle the memories like a deck of cards as you walk to your room, and fan them out, take a look at the suits and colors, the faces. Compartmentalizing, this way and that, picking out the common threads of adrenaline and sunburn and silence. You are very good at this, at least, because whenever you let your own hand tip, you end up drowning yourself and everyone around you.

For the first time in a long time, you wish Jake was here, even though you shouldn’t, because he’d be miserable without the others. You miss him and his doofy enthusiasm and relentless, blind belief in good things. You miss all of your friends, but this one hurts the most right now, because he used to be a lot of things, and if he was sitting next to you, he’d tell you a lot of things, probably, about how you can make it through this, because you’re smart enough to figure out how. But you lost control, or tried to take more than you could handle, and things are different now.

Somehow it doesn’t change that he thinks(? thought? no, you’re pretty sure it’s thinks, even if you don’t deserve it) you’re fundamentally a good and capable guy. They all do, but it was important to you, when you started talking again, that you looked him in the eye and saw he wasn’t scared, not really. When he looked at you and gave you a toothy grin and you were just a person again, after everything was over.

You put the cards down one after another in your mind’s eye. He’s exhausted in this one, calls it anger. In this one, a lonely, confused kid, or just angry, or cool, calm, and collected. Jumpstart. He’s excited, or pissed off. Jumpstart. Anxious, desperate. Biting his lip. Angry. Flat and motionless. Cool, calm, collected. Snap, jumpstart. So fucking mad.

Unfairly enough, he’s let on that he has a good read on your hand (because, despite your best efforts, you cannot stop bleeding, and that’s only partially because he’s him; maybe drowning is inevitable), but you know he’s never even looked at his because, because, because. Because he’s lazy, he doesn’t want to look at the memories, what’s the point of looking if it’s all the same, if he knows it’s all the same because that’s what he said and he knows everything, and even if they’re not, even if he’s wrong, he’ll die in five, ten, fifteen years anyway, because that’s the whole point. That was the whole fucking point of clawing his way out there, leaving Houston for the dry grassland west of Abilene, five years of crawling in the dirt and collecting scars and feeling absolutely nothing about it. All to die somewhere else, sword in hand, blasted with dry heat, alone, for narrative purposes.

If he really is you, then he has the capability to be destructively introspective. If you unlock that, for real, then you’re at least seventy percent sure he’ll lose it worse than he already has; the last thirty percent is all you and your overbearing sense of responsibility and ethical obligation, and you’d bet on that being at least somewhat effective in mitigating whatever freakout this place is going to inevitably force. You’ve seen that in him in a way Dave probably never got to, in the way he’s been trying to throw a sheet over the worst of it. How he tests you in his own little morbid ways to see where you are.

But then again, maybe he’ll look at it and just shrug and make that hmm noise because he doesn’t see anything at all. You’re reminded of the flashing colors of LE’s coat, his eyes, the naked cruelty in his soul, his guttural laugh, his permanent, fanged sneer. You can imagine how a kid could grow up thinking it was all anger and nothing else.

You lie down on your bed again, on top of the duvet, bouncing your heel against the corner of your mattress, putting the cards down this way and that in your head, tracing the connections. Like figuring out all the matching sets in a group.

Dave would tell you not to bother, and drag you to the couch to break some more games, but you never could resist a challenge involving the bizarro wonderland of your own brain.

The plan you concoct isn’t good; it’s not kind, it’s not wise, it’s not careful. But it is necessary, if you’re going to sate your curiosity, if you’re going to mine out any proof whatsoever that your time will be rewarded.

And maybe your goals shouldn’t relegate the immediate wellbeing of others to a secondary consideration, but who’s going to tell you that you should consider him? Who’s going to reprimand you for breaking his psyche open, this splinter of yours who fucked everything up sixteen ways to sundown?

You have an acceptable target for the first time since you won the Game. You can say you’re doing this to help him. And you probably will, but you’ve never been pure of heart. Some part of you likes getting the opportunity to pull the strings again.

You don’t like thinking that way, but it’s true, and you’re also pretty sure he’s the last person you’re ever going to crack this way, because you’ve already hesitated for – days, weeks, a month, you don’t know. A long time to spend in a stable orbit. He keeps you at arm’s length, and you stay there. If nothing else, you’re itching to challenge his authority.

He’s become looser on the trigger, over time. He’ll talk to you if you want, without the need for a framing device, although he’s pretty transparent about evading the hard shit. He enjoys conversations with a high level of abstraction, even if it’s about mundane things like your perceptions of life in the twenty-first century, or the timeline of your session under )(er influence. Theory entertains him, as it does you.

Your theory is that, fundamentally, if he’s like you, he’s going to respond to the same kind of bullshit that you do. Maybe not consciously, but if it works, it works. It doesn’t matter what he calls the feeling as long as he feels it, and as long as it works in your favor.

You’re a piece of shit. Always have been. But you’ll be a piece of shit with answers at the end of this, and once you have them, you can start believing that it was for both of your sakes.

It starts, as many things do, with an accident.

You punch a hole through one of your sheets – look, it’s threadbare, you put two fingers through it just stretching out after a long day or week or whatever and now there’s a tear – and drag it out to the hallway, trying to find your sewing kit. Minor conditions, and all that. Your Brobot’s chassis is buffed and shiny and stays that way.

He must get irritated by you slamming cabinet doors left and right and opening and re-opening the fridge looking for your sewing materials, dragging a six-foot-long cloth behind you, because within five minutes he has his forearm pressed prohibitively against the fridge door as he gives you a disapproving Look.

“What the hell,” he says, and you do not want to hear it right now, you have business to attend to.

“Ripped my sheets,” you grunt, levering a box of ramen out of the way in your fruitless search. “Whatever overwrote my apartment with your dumbass apparently lost some of my stuff.”

He rolls his eyes, holds his left hand out, and with a muttered word and a muted click, he’s holding an old shoe box with a Nike swoosh racing up the beaten sides. Then he reaches out with his right hand and takes the sheet from you, raising it up in the air to identify the tear, then sliding it down into the fold of his elbow, picking up a glass of dubious cleanliness from the counter and ambling over to the futon.

Oh. That’s… nice. You guess.

You lean over the back of the futon to watch him stretch the sheet over the mouth of the glass, flicking the shoe box open. The thing is beat to hell; looks like it’s been through a lot. He fishes out a rubber band and rolls it down over the glass, to hold the sheet in place, and takes out a needle, and a spool of thick white thread.

“Your repair jobs have been kinda shit,” he informs you.

“They’ve been fucking fine, dude.”

“You’ve just been seamin’ the tears. It pinches the fabric. Did you never learn how to darn your shit.”

“I was kind of busy in the robotics department,” you snipe. “You think you’re the only guy who ever sewed up a smuppet?”

“So you didn’t.”

Affronted, and caught out, you purse your lips and say, “No.”

“Thought so,” he grunts, and takes off his shades to thread the needle. “Although you said you had those magic PJ’s, so. Guess you didn’t have to.”

“Thankfully, the Game didn’t test us on a lot of domestic skills. The fact that Jane was a great baker was mostly only good for morale.”

“Mm-hm.”

You pad around the futon over to where the Xbox controllers lie on the floor, and turn on the console while you look for a game that piques your interest. Maybe you can try your hand at MAD SNACKS again.

Of course, he’s criticizing your technique within minutes. You point out that it’s unfair to hold you to his standards when he’s had exponentially more time with the game than you have; he retorts that it’s a pretty linear function, it’s not like he got more time to play video games when he was officially dead. He was just dead.

Yeah.

He’s stitching through the edges of the tear and a little beyond that, toward the edges of the cup. The idea is to kind of weave new fabric over the gap. Like regenerating skin over a burn. It’s simple in theory, but also time-consuming, which is why all you ever did was whip-stitch your shit back together. Not as elegant, not as good for the material, but you fixed it, didn’t you?

After a few minutes, he notices that you’re not playing MAD SNACKS anymore, and returns your stare for a moment. “Don’t stare, numbnuts, it’s rude.”

You pop your elbow up onto the seat and settle your chin on your forearm, watching him slide the needle in and out of the sheet. “Did you learn to sew when you were a kid?”

“Kinda. Had to repair a lotta shit. Not everything is worth goin’ out and buying a new one of whenever you rip it up some.”

“And the puppets?”

“Bonus, even though that shit’s tight. Made a business out of it, you’ll recall.”

You tuck your smile down into your arm. “Can’t believe the pre-Scratch version of me was a bona-fide pornographer.”

“Hey,” he says in a warning tone, shaking the needle at you. “It wasn’t your run-of-the-mill triple-X handycam shit, okay? Avant-garde. New-wave. Use those fancy sociology terms you learned.”

“Yeah, I bet you were bringing on a new wave of something.” You let him kick you in the knee with a flick of his ankle, and you see him bite down on his lips for a moment before resuming his work.

“Don’t be so fuckin’ pedestrian about it. My filmmaking skills turned me into a breadwinner.”

“Is that some Guardian echeladder tier I don’t know about?”

“Uh-huh. Right under Baconic Homebringer, just above Greenback Gigolo. We don’t have echeladders, genius.”

“I was being sarcastic, jackass,” you say half-heartedly.

“I’m feelin’ the lack of respect in this house, by the way.”

“If you think I’m ever going to respect you, you have an unforeseeably poor grasp of the situation.”

You expect him to jab back, but he just shrugs, continues to sew. “Never had many expectations for how I’d be treated once I died.”

“Or when you were alive.” You remember it. The sword, the heat, the fall. Crammed into a seat at the back of the classroom, long-sleeved, sullen, unfocused.

“What makes you say that.”

You watch his face. “Your fucking memories, bro. You don’t give a shit about anything in those.”

“You weren’t exactly puttin’ on the theatrics tryin’ not to get killed by your own robots,” he points out. “What’s there to feel about training.”

“I don’t know. The memories don’t tell the whole story.”

“And you think I’m gonna spin you a yarn about. What. My childhood feelin’s.”

“It’s not like we’ve talked about it that much.”

“And we ain’t gonna,” he says, as if that’s that.

“I’ve told you hells of details about my wackass upbringing,” you protest. “It’s only fair.”

“Fair’s got nothin’ to do with it.”

“Is it because you don’t want to give me the DL about Cal?”

He pauses, and takes a moment to level a glare at you, calculating and cold, despite the natural warmth of his (your) eye color. “I know what I need to know. And so do you. End of discussion.”

And that’s the end of the discussion, or so he thinks. You didn’t want to start pushing like this – you hoped he’d be a little bit more vulnerable when you started in with the crowbar, but hey, you have questions. You need justifications, explanations. Something.

You need to know what the fuck happened with Lil Cal.

And you are pretty morbidly curious about if he’s going to flip the fuck out, like you predicted.

At this juncture, you know that all you can do to solicit a productive response is tell him what you wouldn’t want to hear. To cross a line in a way that makes logical sense, that you would have no choice but to accept, as a reasonable human being. Hal was always good at that. To do the shit you hated yourself for doing. Digging into your insecurities, your soft spots. You’re only sure of one of his, and because it’s one you share, you’re pretty sure you have a good read on what the other ones should be.

You try to read his face again, but it’s closed-off, carefully apathetic. Dimly, you register the MAD SNACKS YO level music chugging in the background.

“What’s so spooky about him that you’re locking that shit up in your own personal Area 51?”

“Thought I said we weren’t talking about this.”

You plow forward, unstoppable. “You were the one who asked me about my Cal, not the other way around. And you never told me why.”

“You ain’t ever gonna find out, neither.”

“You can’t play the dumb redneck card with me. It’s an offensive fucking stereotype.”

He rolls his eyes up to the highest heavens. “That’s my normal goddamn accent, you carpetbagging crypto-yank.”

“It doesn’t make me a yankee to call you out on your horseshit.” Fuck, you’re indulging him. Back on track, Dirk. “Come on. Whatever it is can’t be that bad.”

The corner of his mouth twitches. Up or down, you can’t tell. “Don’t matter if it is or if it ain’t. It’s not for you to know.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” he says, barely suppressing a yawn, and he’s just being a dick about it now, because he knows you want to know, and it’s funnier, you guess, to withhold the information and watch you wriggle around in anticipation like a grub who has scented the feeding trough.

“You know this is your only chance to get off scot-free, right?” Drop the first absolute. Nice going. “Whatever the fuck happened with him. I know it’s probably not sunshine and rainbows. You could pin all of your bullshit on him, and I’d believe you.”

“I’m many things, kiddo, but I’m not a liar.” He ties the thread off and bites it with his teeth. “I try not to blame shit on folks who ain’t to blame.”

“Yeah, okay. Are you ever going to have anyone else to talk to about this?” You shrug, forced indifference. It comes more easily to you than you like. “Who else is even going to give a fuck, to be honest? It’s not like you’re ever going to be able to pull out any kind of excuse for the shit you got up to, at least not on anyone who wouldn’t just call bullshit.”

He sighs, exasperated. “Thought we already had this conversation. I’ve been tellin’ you.”

“You ain’t been telling me a damn thing, dude.”

“Yeah, and if you ain’t gettin’ it, why should I keep opening my mouth.”

You frown and crack your knuckles, one at a time. “I know things about you that nobody else in the entire universe does, you know. I know you thought one way and felt another. It doesn’t take a guy with heart powers and encyclopedic knowledge of Dirk Striderism to figure you must have felt sorry for yourself at one point. That’s our MO. It’s practically all we do.”

He’s starting on the weft threads, stitching perpendicular through the ones he’s already laid out. “Once upon a time, sure. You’ll find that you outgrow that shit. Not useful if you’re gonna commit to your part.”

“Then just tell me what he was like,” you press, sensing an opening. “I’m fucking curious, dude. I can figure out everything else on my own. Besides, he’s one of the fundamental differences between us, if you ever wanted to make a case for being your own person and shit.”

That seems to give him pause. He sticks the needle in the cloth and stretches his fingers, pulling them back. You never understood why the others got creeped out by your avowedly preternatural flexibility, but you kinda think you get it now. It’s like he’s a little too stretchy.

“Individuality,” he mutters. “Yeah, fuck it. Your little manipulation gambit is payin’ off, but you should know it ain’t because I fell for your sophomoric pathos-soaked rhetorical pearl-clutchin’. It’s ’cause your definition of proof is so narrow it’s practically one-dimensional.” It takes him a minute to think it over, and you’ll never admit to holding your breath, but eventually he nods, hiking his elbows up over the back of the couch. You start to turn back to MAD SNACKS. You’re not that kinda guy. You’re not going to make eye contact in the confession booth.

“My Cal,” he says, with some measure of difficulty, “was loud. Sometimes it was like—” and here his nose and upper lip twist like he’s going to laugh or smile, but he doesn’t. “When Dave was a baby, it was like having two of ’em. So fuckin’ loud, and just screaming, all the time.”

You don’t really know what to say, so you take a wild shot in the dark, based on the memories. “You must not have gotten a lot of sleep back then.”

He tilts his head to the side, just the barest movement, thoughtful. “Mm. It’s always been like that, though. We’re both probably just natural insomniacs.”

“I didn’t have a baby to take care of, though. Or a shrieking devil-puppet.” Then you shrug. “I guess I did make some asshole younger siblings that I was compelled to babysit all the time.”

“Yeah. People get used to all kinds of shit.” He rubs his thumb into his eye. “I shouldn’t say ‘all the time.’ I could get both of ’em to be chill. Just took some doing.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Don’t ‘uh-huh’ me,” he grumbles. “You know Dave. Think he’s hard to shut up now? Shoulda seen him when he was teething.” He picks up the needle again. You almost succeed in launching your skater out of bounds.

Your bro was talkative, sociable. Even suave, on occasion. You’ve watched all of his late night talk show interviews, and even if the hosts found his obfuscatory monologues totally incomprehensible, they at least felt comfortable enough to play along with a smile. Dave has a lot of the same qualities, albeit more jagged and unrefined. Refreshingly honest, maybe. He’ll talk your ear off about anything given the chance, but it’s not really pushy or demanding. It kind of rolls off the back like water or white noise, but funnier, and more fucked-up. And you think the excessive chatter is probably a direct result of his bro being… well, like this.

“How do you get a puppet to shut up?” you ask, guiding the conversation back on track. You have managed to get your skater stuck in a divot between a traffic barrier and a trash can. “It’s not like he had a functional mouth or anything.”

“I didn’t,” he says succinctly, lowering his hands back to his work, and you think he’s going to end there, but then he says, “Talking’s not all he did. Not even most of it. It was more like… his thoughts bled into mine. Especially in dreams. And they could get…” He tilts his head one way, then another, thinking. “Annoying.”

“Annoying how?”

“Dunno.” You can feel his doors closing again and prepare to jam your foot in it because you are not losing this hard-fought conversation to his counterproductive aversion to talking for more than thirty seconds at a time. “Like babbling about a buncha nonsense. Horses an’ shit.”

That makes you a little uneasy, because… well, alt-you stuffed that sweaty fucked-up trollsprite in there, didn’t you? Didn’t he like musclebeasts? Like, a weird amount, not with the healthy amount of respect you have for them and their cartoon counterparts? “Horses?”

“Mm-hm. Would not can it about the horses unless I took him where he wanted to go.” He tugs the needle out of the work and starts sewing again.

“Did he,” and you stumble because you’ve been thrown just a little bit, “uh, ask for a lot of things?”

He throws you a weird look. “Not really. He was more like a mentor figure. Fuckin’ annoying-ass… but.” He pauses and stares at his work, ticking the tip of the needle back and forth over a loose thread. “He taught me a lot. About what needed to be done. And how to do it. How things were supposed to go.”

You sit there in silence for a couple of minutes, mashing the buttons on your controller. The skater is still wiggling around behind the trash can. You wonder if they track worst records for level completion times in this game.

“What about you?” The question he asks almost doesn’t register as a question for a moment, because he doesn’t look at you at all, or stop sewing. And you weren’t counting on him being curious about you, or your relationships, or whatever.

“What about me?”

“Your, uh.” He hums. “Mentor. Your bro.”

“Oh.” You’re not really sure you want to share your memories of your bro with him, because those are yours, dammit, but what the fuck, he probably has them anyway. “What do you want to know about him?”

“No, I mean—” he waves his hand vaguely. “He’s Dave. I get that. Doin’ Dave shit for a living. Whatever. I mean, how’d you feel about ’im.”

You stop mashing buttons. The racecar bonks its way over the pit crew and slithers its way back to the side of the track, as if to nudge you back into the righteous land of intended gameplay. You don’t know how he knows your bro was a Dave remix, except for pure analogic reasoning. He’s making a lot of assumptions, even though they’re reasonable.

And you kind of want to keep it to yourself, you know? The only thing that’s really getting you is that you can’t let him go thinking that you might have resented him, that fucking up was the only way out. You’re proud of your bro, in the way you assume younger brothers should be.

“I admired him a lot,” you start. “He set up his apartment for me from four hundred years in the past, which would have taken serious intellectual computing power, even if his thoughts on the nutritional value of orange soda are unclear. And it’s kind of cool to know that someone was thinking about you centuries before you even technically existed. I spent a lot of time examining his behavior, because he had such a strong sense of morality, and I didn’t grow up around other people, so how would I know about shit like that? And dancestor relationship regardless, I wanted to live a life even half as significant as his.” But.

“But,” he supplies, tugging on a stitch.

And you sigh. “But. I dunno. He was my bro, I guess. I almost resented him, sometimes, because it felt like he set up this impossible example in the most obtuse way, with the ridiculous nature of his martyrdom. And if I wanted to get close to him, four hundred years in the future? I’d have to work for it. But I didn’t want to work for it. I just wanted to have a relationship with him. And that might be entitled of me, but I don’t care anymore.”

He puts in a few more stitches. You get the feeling he’s thinking it over. “Seems like you were more successful than him. When all’s said and done. Since you made it to the endgame, and all.”

“Maybe.” The thought makes you uncomfortable. “I’d like to think that I am one of his successes, though. It doesn’t seem right to compare our lives, anyway. The paradox cycles kind of ensure that all of our lives are part of a continuous narrative, right, and he was – well, he was always gonna die, I guess. To set up our endgame conditions.”

Then you realize what you’ve said, and also that you have too much dignity to backpedal on your unsubtlety, so you don’t say anything, and hope he doesn’t clam up like the drama queen you are. Not that he needs his feelings spared, but you should know better.

Unfortunately, though, you have the same exact fucking warp nine brain, thanks to being scratchways clones and everything.

“Yeah.” He’s tugging the edges of the tear together, bit by bit, and you wonder if this is what you look like holding a needle, if your fingers also look like they should not be able to do precision work. You look down at your hands to compare scars. “It wasn’t all successes, though. I got some of your stuff, so. I remember.”

“Yeah,” you say, quieter than you should. “We fucked up a lot of things.” Shit, you’re having a genuine conversation. This wasn’t the plan.

“They all died, once,” he murmurs. “I remember that. There was this dust everywhere. Like, uh. Like a glitch.”

You don’t remember that very well. As a mere Prince, you are somewhat lacking when it comes to your ability to recall timelines that aren’t this one (or whatever you’re in right now). Mostly, you were told some things, much later. You don’t know how he remembers it. Maybe Rose left something behind.

“Different timeline.” You nudge the car away from the racetrack and back toward the unsuspecting crowd texture. “I wouldn’t even count that among the most disastrous failures of our session, though.”

He doesn’t ask you for your TOP TEN ANIME FUCK-UPS, which is the best thing that’s happened to you all day. He just nods and ties another knot off on the sheet, using his teeth to snap the thread. His repair looks like quite the hack job, just a thick web of crossed stitches, but he pokes at it and it seems to hold up to moderate pressure.

“Done,” he announces, and removes the rubber band, tossing the sheet over the back of the couch. “Fuck this. Hand me P2.”

So you hand him the other controller, and go bug-hunting, and wait.

He returns, eventually, to the seed that you planted. Despite his protests, he knows what you told him was true, at least as far as he’s able to determine. What you didn’t expect was for him to be… you know. Nice about it. Domestic, even.

“You knew about him,” he says, jamming his skater into an invisible wall and mashing furiously until she pops through. “Threw me off the first time, I’ll admit. But in retrospect, it seems. Well. Obvious, that you’d know. Both of you.” He means you and Dave, probably.

“We didn’t really get it until pretty late in the game. Juju timelines tend to be more confusing than normal ones. It was hard to iron out.”

“Sure.”

You’re a little put off by his disinterest. “Did you ever wonder how you found each other?”

He thinks it over again, looks a little dour. “Not really. He was just a natural part of my environment. Can’t recall a moment I didn’t know him. And I couldn’t’ve imagined where something like him’d even come from, back then.”

“I don’t know exactly how he got into your timeline, actually. It probably has something to do with Gamzee – one of the trolls – and whatever weird plot shit he got up to.”

The map blinks and shudders as he plunges the skater below the level. Your camera spins wildly.

“That the one in the fridge?”

“Yeah. I mean, kind of. You don’t have that memory, I guess. But neither do I.” You bite your lip, thinking, trying to remember what she told you. “We sealed him into my Cal, because he was the only available vessel. Paradox-wise, he was the only vessel that would ever have been there, so I suppose it was always supposed to be him.” You stretch your legs out, kicking a little at nothing. “And then Roxy banished him into the Void.”

“And then he landed in Dave’s session that way. With me.”

“Yeah.”

He mulls over it for a moment, then nods. “Yeah, okay. Explains him knowing everything about the game. Being a sprite, winning his session, and so on.”

“So you don’t remember that at all? The end of my session?” You kind of don’t want him to. Those are your memories, your friends. But you think it might be easier, whatever this nebulous, foreboding ‘it’ is, if he does.

“I don’t remember a lot of anything.” He claw-grips the controller to mash the buttons in a sequence that sends his dude clipping through the floor, jerking the camera around. Your dude is shot to another spawn point and walks through the wall to re-enter the scene. “But, to tell you the truth, it doesn’t much concern me. Now that he’s gone.”

You fiddle with your controller, staring unseeingly at the TV screen. “What’s different?”

Deep breath from him. “Oh, a lotta things. Quieter, for one.” He shrugs. “Sleepin’ easier.”

“Relatively speaking,” you guess.

“Relatively speakin’. Well. Too easy, maybe. Don’t wake up for shit, nowadays.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing. What with our inability to sleep like normal human beings.”

“Nah. Too much time to think.”

“Again, I don’t see how that’s a bad thing.”

“Rich. You’re tellin’ me you don’t see how overthinkin’ can fuck you.”

You shoot him a look out of the corner of your eye. “That’s not what I said. I’m telling you that you don’t come off like you do a lot of introspection.”

“Feel like you already know what I’m thinkin’.” He rolls one shoulder, then the other. His skater twirls in place, like a ballerina. “The fuck’s the point of me bein’ here. Or anywhere. Sure, ’s easier to sleep, but no matter how much I sleep, I’m never gonna pay off the debt.”

“That’s just how insomnia works, dude.”

“Mm. Some debts are unpayable.” He meets your eyes for a moment, then drops his gaze again with a huff of amused laughter. But it’s not funny to him, you think. “Who else am I gonna tell, huh. Some fuckin’ puppet making sure I get to bed, that I get up, all that nanny shit. I let him put his foot on the gas. You know.”

You don’t know, but you also cannot resist poking this bear. For some reason, you have a predilection for self-endangerment. Well, you know exactly why. What you’re getting is good, but you need (want) to know more. You could crack him open right now, if you wanted. You’re not sure if he’d be stable, afterwards, but you’re kind of divided on how much good you think ripping him down to your foundations would do.

He’s you, though. And fuck you, you want to help, even if all you do is manipulate for your own self-interest. Even if all you’re going to do is try to fold him in on himself until he makes a shape that looks right to you.

You lick your lips after a long moment, trying to find the right words. “I talked to him a lot, when he was just Caliborn.”

“Uh-huh,” he grunts. The moment has frosted over.

Faster. Keep tempo. “I made him a leg, way back when. I mean, I thought he was interesting. But not as interesting as he found me.”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s kind of weird to think that the most evil thing in the universe – Satan, basically – had a weird teenage crush on me, I guess.”

“He had a what.” His grip tightens on the controller so quickly that you can hear the plastic creak, and you flinch, just a little.

“I don’t know how to describe it.” Well, you do. You just. You don’t want him to know that much. “He kept hitting on me behind my back, according to Jake.” You shrug, whip your camera around, try for some MAD SNACKS in the half-pipe.

He stops pressing buttons, and stops blinking, almost stops breathing.

“Oh,” he says, quiet. He looks at you again, like he’s seeing you for the first time, like he’s seeing an alien, frozen in place. “He… huh. He was always…”

You feel like your mouth has been vacuum-sealed shut. You have no idea where this is going.

“It was you.” It’s not a question. “The… Dirk. That he kept talkin’ about. All that time.” He presses the fingers of one hand to his mouth, then says, softer, thoughtful: “Did you know?”

“Know what?” you manage, peeling your lips apart.

“That he.” A pause. “That you sent him back to me. With all his. Dreams. Of you.”

“I – I didn’t know,” you stammer. “I figured he just – I don’t know. Vacillated out. Got over it.”

He’s chewing on his thumbnail in earnest now, eyes drifting to the side. “Yeah. I don’t think he did.”

You have no fucking clue how to deal with this. None. You avoided thinking about this eventuality because you did not want to discuss it, least of all with him. You barely escaped talking about it with Rose.

And you like Rose, have come to think of her as a close friend, but the things that broad tells you sometimes have only served to reinforce your tendency to only divulge information on a need-to-know basis. You can’t very well tell her you didn’t want to know; you just didn’t. And you can’t tell her you didn’t need to know, because that’s not strictly true. You’ve managed to avoid wringing out every sordid detail from Dave, because… you’re a human being, if only barely. You guess.

She was strung out, you think, in the way you get sometimes, lost in your own mind, fingers itching to do something, anything. You don’t know what she was mulling over, but it was five in the morning, and you sat next to her, because misery loves company, and she asked you whether you remembered the other timelines. And if you wanted to. She scryed something with Jake a long while ago. You appeared, in a dream.

You never refuse knowledge, so she took your hand, turned it over, ran her fingers over the lines there like she was reading your palm, and told you a story.

And now you’re here, sitting with the weird, horrifying, five-steps-removed guilt of knowing some version of you out there shoved a homicidal god-becomplexed cherub, AR plus a teenage alien strongman with a milk fetish, and half a frankly nutso serial-murdering juggalo honktroll into some version of your only childhood friend. You did not want to ponder the frankly Escherian moral implications of defeating the big bad boss in the big bad boss battle, only to realize that that Cal, the grisly turducken of weirdos alt-you and alt-Roxy made one step to the left of your timeline, is the one who got hurled back in time to “raise” your pre-Scratch self, who in turn “raised” Dave.

You don’t want to swallow the bitter pill of that being how it was meant to happen all along, to some versions of you. You don’t want to feel the sting of it being you, in some way, your slantways bad decisions, travelling through spacetime and the void to help haunt some kid version of the man you admired, way before you ever met him. Because of course that would be how it played out.

Like a fool, you still have not had this conversation with Dave. You suspect that if Rose divulged this to him, he’d already have brought it up with you and the others, because, like you, his brain waits for no man. And you know with absolute certainty that he would forgive you and Roxy for having a hand in creating the perfect conditions for his shitty childhood if you asked him about it. He’d blame the Game. Because he likes you, and he likes Roxy, and he is the happiest he’s ever been, now that his old lives are over and his new one has begun.

But you still cannot fucking spit it out, because that would be acknowledging the full extent of the fucked paradox situation, and why reopen old wounds now, if they’re not yours. If it helps no one. Why ask for forgiveness that you know you don’t deserve? If Dave doesn’t get the depths to which you descended in the first place, what right do you have to ask him to absolve you?

And, well, shit.

You were supposed to be happy and over all of the bullshit. And you’re not.

You feel several ways about this.

1)   Fuck this stupid-ass non-bubble.

2)   You wish your brother was here. Why the fuck did the universe stick you with Dave’s bro and not yours? Even if he turned out to be an asshole, at least you’d get to confirm it for yourself, instead of doing the same fucked-up dance number all over again, of you being too self-absorbed to change, of the way you keep inflicting yourself on other people, of your insufferable martyr complex.

You were not as prepared for this conversation as you thought you were.

Typical.

“I’m sorry,” you say, because what else is there to say, and you add “We had to,” because you did. That’s the problem, isn’t it? You have to do everything that you do.

“I know.” It almost sounds like he’s okay with it, but he’s still not tracking, eyes kind of glazed over. “He. Uh. Like I said. It makes sense.”

You shouldn’t ask, but you deserve whatever answer he throws at you. “What makes sense?”

His voice goes quieter than you’ve ever heard it, and it fucking scares you. “Just. A lotta shit.” Then he’s scrambling up, controller dropping into his seat, breath catching hard in his chest. Louder: “Shit, I. Uh. I gotta—”

You’re on your feet, hand seizing his wrist before he can get beyond the couch. “Bro, what’s going on?”

He breaks your hold, easy, with a brutal rotation of his forearm that nearly snaps your wrist, and you think he’s going to try to bolt again, or wind up for a hit, but he just stares, lips pressed thin and eyes wide. Then he turns his back to you, goes back to the couch and stares at where he was sitting, raking his hands back through his hair until his fingers are locked together behind his neck and his head is trapped in the vise of his elbows.

“You okay?” you say after a minute. It feels so indifferent, cheap, like you’re tossing it on the floor in front of him, but this won’t be the thing that breaks you, whatever it is. You can still handle the Game.

“Yeah,” he says, and his volume is normal, but there’s a slight quaver in it, and you think it might be laughter. He drags his hands down his face, digs his fingernails into his cheekbones. “I. Uh. I get set off easy. Hair-trigger temper. It’s. A thing. I don’t, uh. You can – fuck off. Or whatever.”

“No offense, but…” And now you are here to present your findings. Slide A. “I don’t think you’re mad. It kind of looks like you are totally freaking out.”

He looks at you, disbelief written all over his face. There are four little frowning crescents marking each cheek, just beneath the bags under his eyes that mirror yours. “What.”

“You’re not exactly the epitome of chill right now.” You wince. “I’m not saying you can’t still be mad at me, because you’re well within your rights on this issue. Just, I think you’re not mad.”

“And how would you fucking know,” he spits, rounding on you properly, taking full advantage of the half-inch he still has on you, his fully-rendered frame, angular and sharp in the places you are still soft and unsure. If he wasn’t really mad before, you’re definitely pissing him off right now. You are, as always, telling a guy how to feel and what to do. But you can justify it real easy this time, because no one you’ve done that to before has ever been this emotionally illiterate. Including yourself. You can take it, if he lashes out at you.

“I have your memories, dickhead, I know better than you,” you remind him, and stand up straight, prepping your sylladex just in case. “I guess you… learned, somehow, to say you were angry. But barely any of it felt like anger.” You’re biting at the inside of your lower lip, wondering how far you can get over the line before he lashes out. He hasn’t moved. Proceed with caution. “You keep thinking you are, and maybe that’s easier than—”

“Don’t,” he says, and there is a bite to it, but more than a little fear, too. “Don’t fucking – I know. I know. Just don’t.”

You nod, helpless. He cracks his neck, takes a deep, shaking breath, and then the bathroom door closes and the shower starts to run and he is no longer there.

He comes back, though. Six hours later. He seems fidgety, has his shades back on, finds you where you always are, in your room, elbow-deep in your little network connection problem.

“Hey,” you say warily, looking up at him from where you sit cross-legged on the floor. He’s half-in, half-out of the doorway. “You coming in or what?”

He stays there, still and silent, watching you as if you’re the dangerous animal in this equation, then jerks his head toward the roof. “Strife?”

You blink at him. You remember the jagged white scar right in the middle of Dave’s palm, the way he still flinches sometimes when you’re metalworking and something scrapes sideways.

And you remember someone else, too, twelve years old, disarmed, his diaphragm crushed under a dusty black boot, wheezing for breath. Empty.

This is probably a bad idea for several reasons. However, no one else is here to act as your auxiliary impulse control. The best you have is the mental image of Roxy going :\ and Jane shaking her head disapprovingly, and that’s not enough peer pressure to dissuade you.

“Okay,” you say, and he nods stiffly, and leaves you in your room. You start putting your tools away, bemused.

By the time you get to the roof, he’s already warmed up, and he has his sword in hand. He doesn’t pounce right away, just tilts his head and leaves you to do your stretches. Real considerate. You haven’t had a serious strife in a while – hell, your bots aren’t much of a challenge anymore – and while you’re fairly confident that you can hold your own against him, it’s good to know that you can’t technically die here. Well, hey, you’re kinda familiar with the feeling, anyway.

Without fear, the only thing you have left is curiosity. When you’re done, you drop your katana into your hands. He walks over to you, adjusting the bill of his cap, rolling his wrist. Seeing your sword in someone else’s hand feels weird.

He rests the flat of the blade on his shoulder like it’s a baseball bat and not three feet of live steel, reaches out with his fist, a little too far away for you to meet it. You air-bump him with your own fist, to signal that you’re ready.

And then he smirks, and drops his thumb down, and oh, it’s fucking on now, fucker.

You like having the first move, despite being a Derse dreamer, so you lunge, relishing the way your body moves instantly on command. It’s a tool, just like the sword, and you worked hard for this control. He slides back easily, just beyond tipper range, and strikes back lightning-fast, but he can’t steer you off of the attack. You’re looking for a response that’s slower than the others, for an angle that’s awkward for him to cover, a position that puts him off-balance, an attack pattern he’s not used to.

Inside three moves, though, you can already tell what separates your skill level from his.

Mainly, the difference between the two of you is that his form is fucking immaculate. You press him, but he has the perfect answer to every attack, up to and including autoparrying on reaction without resorting to a macro. You can see where those years of intensive practice paid off, because there is no getting past him.

And shit, do you try, slicing low, trying to interrupt his flash step when you have a 100% guarantee on his trajectory, eyes locked onto the one-frame flash of his tells. You know where he is every step of the way, but you can’t get further than that. He practically bats your katana away from his knees with a downward swirl of his blade and brings it up again to try and cut across your stomach. You barely manage to deflect it in time, at an angle that’s hard on your knees.

On the other hand, he’s having trouble cracking you, too, which you are very smug about. What he has in physical advantage, you have in godtier sharingan shit. You can almost see the relays in his head snapping as he absorbs every return, every riposte, trying to piece together your patterns. When you feint dropping into a defensive crouch, he quicksteps back, expecting something entirely different – that’s a flinch. Some part of you crows in delight. The rest of you takes advantage of his incorrect prediction to aggress again.

It almost gets into a rhythm. Aggress, divert, assail, evade. Tech the throw, lag-cancel your combos. It’s as easy as breathing, and you get to focus on watching him, just like he watches you. You watch the way his scars move over his arms as he extends and withdraws. The way he braces perfectly for your strike the instant you commit to it. The jittery, almost impatient way his flash steps zig-zag around the roof. You’re right there with him every time.

You almost think you can outlast him when he switches into rushdown mode, and you think sandbagging piece of shit with vague indignation before you are forced into blockstun as he chains hit after hit off of you, trying to pop you into the air. He almost succeeds – his extra muscle mass is finally coming into play, and it’s almost all you can do to keep your grip from breaking every time he smashes his katana into yours. You hold your ground, pushing your reaction speed, waiting for the moment he drops his combo.

He doesn’t. He pushes you to the edge of the roof, crouched with one knee on the ground, arms angling your sword to catch his as he swings down, steel shrieking against steel until the edge of his unbreakable blade catches on your unbreakable crossguard, a hand’s length away from your neck. You’re suddenly reminded that he cut a meteor in half without the aid of a player’s gifts. Fine. He fucking wins.

Then he pushes, just a little. Shortens the distance by a couple of millimeters.

You can’t help it when your eyes widen.

Again, it’s not like you can die, as far as you know, but the feeling that you’ve misjudged the situation runs your motorbrain through a fucking wall. You didn’t think he’d, uh.

Well, okay, you did try to cave his head in with a wrench, so this isn’t totally out of the blue, you conclude after a moment of reflection.

But he doesn’t push any further. In fact, he releases the pressure so suddenly that you almost cut him in half, but he’s already gone, stalking away, flinging his katana into the fucking ocean what the fuck dude. A flash of sunlight off of the edge, and then it’s gone.

“What the fuck?” you ask, with your usual eloquence.

He doesn’t say anything, just drops onto the edge of the opposite side of the roof, and you mean really drops, so hard you almost shout after him, even though the only thing beneath you is water. But he stays on the edge, and fully lies the fuck down on his side.

You spend a minute staring at your strife deck menus, trying to shake the Damoclesian phantom sensation of the blade at your neck. For fuck’s sake, you asked Dave to behead you once. You cut off your own head! How is this any different?

Maybe because you wanted to believe it wouldn’t happen, this time. You groan internally and wonder when this new bullshit clicked into place. When you developed the compulsion to help this dumbfuck out.

“Hey,” he says when you sit down next to him.

“Sup,” you reply. “What’s goin’ on.” You can see he’s staring that the ocean when you look through the gap between his eyes and his shades.

He takes a breath. “You have some of my memories.”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Did you ever hear him say anything?”

“Not in so many words,” you admit. “But I did get the impression that he was talking to you, among other things.”

“He wanted me to grow up,” he says, face stone-still. “Grow up cool. Grow up tough. Because that’s who Dirk Strider is. A man with a lot of irons and a lot of fires to put them in. And enough brain and brawn to handle the consequences.”

You stare at your hands, because you can’t look at him. You don’t know if he wants you to respond. What could you even say? Sorry for sealing the dark lord of the universe into a demon puppet when he was still way in kismessitude with me?

“He always seemed to enjoy all the blood too much.” He groans, covering his eyes with his hand. “Christ, I don’t fucking know. I shouldn’t be telling you any of this. You’re a fucking kid.”

“I am seventeen god damned years old,” you remind him. “And I’m you. I know how shit can go down.”

“Yeah, I know,” he says, bitter. “He was real proud when I left the house. He said we’d wing it from there, that the plot got looser, but we’d always end up in the same place. Thought he meant it as. Well. I don’t really remember.”

“He was always weird like that.” You elect to leave his overenthusiastic requests for nsfw uwu palesmut out of the conversation because this seems like a bad time to bring it up. Maybe later. “I’m sorry.”

“The fuck are you sorry for.” He sighs and pulls his cap down until it covers his eyes, rolling onto his back. “You didn’t raise me. I raised my own damn self.”

“It kinda sounds like two and a half bullshit god-posers in a clown suit did. To be honest.”

He’s silent for a bit, then shrugs one shoulder, a little too hard. “Whatever he was. Whatever he did. If he hadn’t been there, I would’ve. I dunno. Probably would’ve bit it. Or at least I would’ve been miserable. So. Doesn’t matter.”

“Caliborn was a ruthless, manipulative asshole with a predilection for murder and general mayhem.” You sneak a glance at him for a reaction, but he doesn’t give you anything you can read, and he hasn’t gotten more comfortable looking you in the eye. “He negged Jake in a big way. Probably tried to pull the same redpill shit on you.”

It’s maybe a fifth of a joke, but it gets a gentle scoff. “Fact remains that, without him, Dave’d probably have died before the session got off the ground.” If you didn’t know better, you’d think he sounds kind of mad. “Ain’t that somethin’. The guy who wanted me dead the most helpin’ me raise a kid. Didn’t know the narrative was that fucked.”

You shrug with one shoulder. “You never considered the other possibilities. That’s the most screwed-up part about it, I think. You were always convinced there was only one way forward.”

“Yeah, real fucked,” he murmurs. “But that’s the way we roll.”

Does he ever think about what comes out of his mouth? He’s you, so that’s a hard maybe, but it doesn’t sound like he does. “Do not implicate me in that shit.”

His mouth twists down. It reminds you of Roxy. You don’t like how it looks on his face. “Not what I meant.”

“The problem is, I don’t know what you mean by anything.” You might as well, at this point, what with his awkward quasi-attempt at cutting your head off. He owes you. “What the fuck is up with you? One day it’s ‘let’s provoke Dirk into fucking murdering me,’ and now it’s ‘how far can I push myself into murdering Dirk of my own free will,’ like this is all some shitty lab experiment and you’re the equally-shitty mad scientist played by some washed-up D-tier celebrity who peaked in 2003. Can you pick a damn methodology?”

“Did you really think I was gonna kill you?”

You look down at him. Nothing. “I think you seriously considered it.”

“Huh,” he grunts. “Didn’t. Got more control than that. Just wanted to see how expedient your trainin’ was.”

“Suffice it to say that I wouldn’t have let you cut off my head for no reason,” you say sharply. “Shit what’s unplanned is untenable.”

Apparently that’s funny to him. “I think you just find it distasteful if you didn’t personally plan for it.”

“This entire fucking situation is distasteful and untenable, and not in the least because it was unplanned,” you grumble.

“Haha. Yeah.”

The short laugh is so Dave-like hat it creeps you out. Or makes you kind of sad. You’re not really sure, and you don’t look at him. You stare, instead, out at the open ocean. “Did you want me to kill you? Or did you think it was just a likely outcome of you talking all that shit at me?”

“Sure,” he sighs. “Maybe. Mostly, I just wanted to grab the bull by the horns.”

“And wait for it to gore you?”

It’s a joke, and your tone is scornful enough to make up for your consideration. But you hear him shrug and say, “Yeah.”

You let your face twist at that. “What’s with your intransigent death wish?”

There is no visual evidence that he’s rolling his eyes, but you’re pretty sure he does it anyway. “I have a couple of your memories. Don’t act like you never wanted this shit to just be over.”

That’s morbid as hell and, to your chagrin, also correct. However: “The difference is, I never put that on anyone else. Your blatant disregard for the ethical implications of making me murder you really aren’t putting you in a good light. In case you were wondering.”

“No, I weighed the damn options well enough. Shit’s always easier to deal with by yourself.”

That’s. Just. Hmm.

“Then why didn’t you kill me? It seems like the effort you put into pissing me right the fuck off could have been invested in… I dunno. Cleaning. You just wasted your chance, if that’s the case.”

“Kill you?” His laugh is a bark. “Jesus, no. I’m not in the business of killing kids. The opposite, actually.”

“What you just fucking did is not really helping you making a case for that.” You kind of forgot about the protective aspect of Guardianship, which is weird. It’s probably because the sheer volume of aggression rolling off of him doesn’t really seem conducive to keeping anyone alive. But that was his job description, back then, even if he wasn’t particularly good at it. Well, even if he was total and complete shit at it.

And you didn’t really think you counted to him, either, due to… a list of reasons that you are not interested in enumerating. The point stands, regardless. “You owe me an explanation.”

“What do you want me to explain.”

“What exactly your plan is, for one thing. Dealing out mutual massive head-related trauma can’t be the only thing on your checklist.”

“I don’t know what the hell I’m doing,” he says, and the words are perfectly even, unnaturally so. “My arc expired. I’m supposed to be dead in a ditch somewhere. The world is supposed to spin madly fucking on. This was not part of the plan.”

You scoff. “And? Didn’t you have hobbies? Mixing music, sewing puppets, jacking off to weird shit? You know, normal dude stuff? You might as well enjoy being dead.”

His head falls to the side. He’s staring, again, at the ocean, left hand resting on his chest. You can see the peaks of the waves reflected in his glasses. “Why are you so set on this.”

You honest to god don’t know, really, but you have some good guesses. “You’re me, remember?”

“I’m not your splinter.”

“Sure. That still doesn’t make you not me, genetically. And I think our souls are similar enough to make the comparison.”

That’s what gets him to laugh, again, and not that aggressive, sharp noise that he made to provoke you back then. It’s genuine, bursts out of him like he’s surprised, a dry, low sound that sounds nothing like Dave’s sputtering and wheezing. Then again, Dave probably has a better grasp on the fundamentally hilarious nature of the absurdity of the cosmic order than this guy does, by nature of having won the Game.

But you humor him, saying, “You don’t think so?”

You think he might actually be wiping a tear from his eye. “Fuck, dude, don’t we know each other better’n that, at this point?”

“We have a lot of fundamental similarities.” You let the exasperation leak in. Why not. “Our sense of duty, our need for control, our innate capacity for self-discipline. The egocentrism that blinds us to the emotional needs of others.”

“Uh-huh.” He still sounds amiable, despite your very pointed statements. “Looks like you got my sickening pathological need to take control of a situation by makin’ a fairly accurate but completely unsolicited and unwelcome assessment of another guy’s character.”

“And you got my sick-ass sarcastic deflection skills.”

That seems to sober him up a little. The remnants of his smile vanish. You watch him blink slowly out at the waves.

Try again?

“Do you really think we’re that fundamentally different, soul-wise? It doesn’t seem to make much sense. From what I’ve heard, everyone else’s ecto-Scratch cloneselves were fundamentally similar. And none of them really flipped so gymnastically off the handle like you did.”

“I hate to say it, but it might be that we’re the only ones capable of sticking that landing,” he replies, monotone. “But you didn’t. You ain’t predisposed to some of this shit, like I was.”

You groan, squinting up at the sky. “If you want me to agree with you, you’re going to have to elaborate.”

He heaves a long, hard sigh, but there’s something cracked in it. He presses his lips together, drums his fingers on his chest a couple of times. “I know you want to hear something that tells you there’s some guy down here you can reach.” His voice comes out even flatter than before. “But the fact of the matter is, there isn’t. Call it predestination or paradox space. Whatever Cal did, whatever arcane shit he pulled, it’s not like I rebuffed him. What am I gonna tell you? What would even matter? You want me to make a fuckin’ excuse?” His head rolls to the side, and he tucks his chin down, stretching his arm out over the edge, fingers spread.

“I want a real fucking explanation,” you snap, batting at his arm. “I spent the first ten years of my life without any real human contact, and I still didn’t turn into half the carcinogenic asshole you did.”

“It’s because there’s nothing fundamentally screwed about you.” You can see his eyes flick to yours. There’s something confused there, and it just makes you angrier. “I keep – going back. Through every second of my life I can remember. And then through your memories.”

Huh.

“It’s different. Every minute of the day, there’s something in there, burning away. Even if some of it turned to shit in the end. And I just…” He clears his throat, furrows his brow. “I don’t remember holdin’ onto that. Ever. Can’t imagine what got fucked up in the split.”

“You got the stuffed guy.”

“Yeah. That’s not it. Or he’s just part of the effect.” He rolls his wrist. “I think you know, sometimes. Internally. That shit’s not random, not always, hardly ever. That you know what you’re gonna choose, even if you’re not conscious of it. You know what kind of person you’re gonna become.”

You wait, and when he doesn’t continue, you prompt him. “We were – are – both majorly fucking depressed, dude.”

“Not even that. It’s about telos. Like I said. Some anticipatory condition of paradox space. Maybe it was Cal. Doesn’t change the fact that I chose what I chose.”

“But the reason you made those choices is at least partially due to the presence of Satan’s own sockpuppet,” you argue. “Doesn’t your basic fucking sense of agency factor into all of this?”

“He didn’t put his hands on the wheel. He just helped me do the shit I was already plannin’ on. Updated me on the best and most efficient ways to get to my goals. However fucked they were.”

“Yeah, that’s the problem. You – I need checks and balances. You can’t just have a fucking mega-enabler jumpstarting your body whenever you run out of energy, telling you every shitty idea you have is fucking inimitable genius. You can’t just—” Yeah, you trip over yourself. Such is the nature of Dirk Strider. “You can’t just have someone around who blindly believes in you all the time. It’s how we end up irredeemable.”

He props himself up on his elbows. “Look how you’re phrasin’ this. You can still end up irredeemable. You have choices, just like I did. You can deny or embrace fate dependin’ on whether you find it useful. Whether it’s the only thing you have.”

“But that’s not how it has to be anymore! Don’t you want to—” You’re grasping for straws, honestly, and too close to giving up altogether. “Don’t you want to have some part of your life that’s not that? Where you can come back from jumping off the edge?”

He shrugs and shakes his head and his face is uncomfortably open when he says, “Why the fuck would I want that.”

You’re at a loss for words, for a long moment. It must show on your face, because he closes his expression off, looks away from you. Like he’s embarrassed, except you don’t get embarrassed, and neither does he.

“So you actually don’t regret any of it? The shit you put him through? Hell, the shit you put yourself through? How the fuck can you get this deep into self-pity without connecting it to anything that actually fucking happened?”

“Because it’s not pity,” he says simply. “Pity doesn’t get you standin’ in the bathroom wonderin’ how the hell your heart can still beat after you cut it through. If I felt sorry for myself, you’d’a splintered me up a long time ago. I’d have taken your out in a heartbeat. But I think, now, you’re mad that you found the one person in the world you can’t manipulate into doin’ exactly what you want.”

You grind your knuckles into the concrete, gritting your teeth, and your chest is tight, the tension slowly making its way up to your throat. Why does he have to be so fucking stubborn? You don’t know why you’re letting this asshole get to you now, of all times. It’s probably because he is you, thinks exactly like you, and you know that, but you want him to be someone else. Someone who can give you just a shred of fucking hope that you can change.

But he’s not that, and maybe he never will be. Maybe you can’t change him, and maybe you can’t get him to recognize exactly what the fuck went wrong, and maybe you’ll be stuck in the same rut forever, too. Maybe you’re going to be the exact same person for the rest of your life.

And maybe you hate him, sincerely fucking hate him, for reminding you of how inevitable that is.

“Fine,” you spit. “Stagnate, then, if that’s what you want. Just like every other splinter I ever shat out. We’re all the fucking same.”

He says “Hey,” and reaches for you, but by then you’re on your feet, through the door, in the bathroom, getting your cleanse on. The irony does not escape you (it never can; irony has tiny legs and a huge head, and you are the finely-tuned apex predator in this ecosystem) as you stand under the showerhead, begging your stupid mammalian diving response to give you an ounce of chill.

You receive no chill. Perhaps even a negative amount of chill. You go to your room, towel your hair dry, pull on your boxers, and faceplant directly onto your pool ball duvet.

Actually, fuck this pattern. You cannot wait to get out of here so you never have to sleep under this thing again. God damn green monsters with weird rainbow eyes and their batshit fishy minions.

It didn’t occur to you before that you were dead tired, but you are, and you sleep a full eight hours for the first time in a really, really long time. It’d be a blessing if you didn’t have the knowledge of an alternate Dirk Strider running around out there, soiling your good name and reputation, as always. Good to know some things stay the same forever in every universe. It doesn’t end up being very restful, though. Usually you can at least get an hour’s reprieve by hitting the hard reset button, but you just sit up and stare at your broken transmitter and the blank terminal, furious.

Why are you even mad? Is it because you can’t convince him he’s worth anything? That you’re worth giving a shit about? Is it because you’re pretty sure that this, the endless nagging, reverse-engineering his convoluted timeline and deformed personality into something recognizable, is what it would take to bring you back from over the edge? It’s a nightmare. It’s a fucking nightmare. No one should have to ever wade this deep into your particular brand of truculent horseshit.

But, fuck, you’d want them to. You would.

Because,

Despite everything, you’ve come to almost-not-quite like being you, having your brain. Existing as the person you are instead of always chasing some unattainable level of self-actualization. And you’re only seventeen, nearly eighteen now, but you know you can stand to be in your own head exponentially more than he does. You’re not sure if there’s anything he likes, period.

Huh. Actually, no, scratch that. He almost definitely likes the puppets. Or at least is more fond of them than he is of you, or himself.

When it comes down to it, you’ve always been more on the side of nature than nurture. It’s besides the point that you weren’t really raised in any particular way, and it’s only thanks to your bro’s prodigious planning that you aren’t completely fucking feral and running wild with a bunch of sea lions. Imagine the universe’s fate at the mercy of Dances With Pinnipeds.

Fact is that neither of you got much nurture, but he’s been at it twice as long with less than half as much, and you want to believe that under default conditions – your conditions – he would have turned out all right. That, if things could be different, if the logic of paradox space could be controverted somehow, Dave might’ve grown up into someone who doesn’t flinch at a sudden high five, doesn’t get edgy and irritated around puppets. Doesn’t have thirteen years of waking nightmares filling up his shadow.

That, somewhere, somehow, you’d been raised as a person instead of. Whatever this is. A mechanism. A fucking robot with too much self-assurance to be healthy.

And that maybe you could finally get a glimpse of a version of you that made it fifteen more years without fucking it all up.

The terminal stays blank. No narrative intervention here.

Tough fucking luck, Dirk.

Like a child, you avoid him because you’re angry. You wallow in your petty hatred, and for the first time in a long time, you feel like you can afford it, that the edge of your anxiety has dulled and retreated for the moment. You work, you try fruitlessly to diagnose your connection problems, rebuild the Brobot exo bit by bit, blackout curtains fully drawn. Your door stays closed unless you open it. And you work until you can’t work anymore.

The memories arrive sporadically, jars bursting under the pressure of your anger or stress or whatever, jumbled-up, soupy again, and you don’t try to disentangle them or iron them flat anymore. They’re vague dreams, from LOWAS, from the apartment, from school, from foster homes. Skies red first, then blue. Fire red first, then green. Fragments of nightmares that you push away and fail to commit to memory.

That only works for so long.

It comes to you when you’re half-asleep, face pressed into your folded arms on the worktop, screwdriver in hand. You only meant to close your eyes for a moment.

The knife gleams on the table.

You don’t have to do this, you know. It’s not an integral exercise.

“Yeah, I know.”

But you’re still going to try.

“Yeah.”

Do you remember the three steps we went over?

“Yeah.”

Some kind of hesitation. Why is he hesitating now.

You know you can stop whenever you want to. I’ll take over if you don’t want to continue. This is a non-essential tutorial.

“It’s not going to be a complex laceration. I think I’m pretty well-prepared for this.”

Okay. Would you like to begin?

“Yes, sir.”

All right, then. Pick up your knife and let’s get started.

You

You.

You?

You wrap your fingers around the handle of the knife. You test the weight, the balance. You

What the fuck. There’s – yeah. Of course. It’s right there. And it hurts but it doesn’t? Something is redirecting what he feels. Oh. You know who that is.

This is disgusting. Haha. Fuck.

What the fuck, what the fuck, what—

Step one: After receiving an injury, apply pressure until the bleeding has stopped or slowed as much as possible.

You must be losing your mind. What the fuck is this. When he lifts the rag from the wound to check the flow, you can see the pulp of his flesh catching on the fibers. You can feel his lungs spasm as it comes loose, plucking at his nerves like harp strings. You can hear Cal’s morbid interest.

Step two: Clean the wound and the surrounding area.

You watch him cover the bottle of peroxide with the wadded-up toilet paper and you’re

in the fucking bathroom? Your apartment bathroom? What?

He presses down on Dave’s shoulder.

What?

What the fuck?

You press down and Dave yelps and flinches away like he always does, like you taught him to, but you grab his other shoulder and hold him in place until the cut is disinfected. Dave hisses between his teeth but cuts it off because Striders don’t

you taught him that it’s

and by the time he finishes patting the wound dry, he’s observing through the windows of his eyes while someone else moves his hands, looking up for his next instructions.

Step three: Close the wound with the

He is fourteen and he is old enough to

aim for half an inch between every

He’s fourteen.

He’s twelve and still runty and you’re thirty-one and your arm smiles at you in the mirror with its bright red mouth. He put it there but he’s not interested in how he did what he did and he doesn’t want to know what he’s supposed to do and what kind of teacher are you if your only student doesn’t

want to learn from you?

you have to put him back in the fucking necklace before

survive?

Let it happen, bro, he says, and your back hits the floor.

Smells like a gas pump.

You can’t see.

He pulls the thread through one side of the wound. Hooks the needle through the other side, pulls it taut again with the driver, fingertips slick with blood. When did that happen? There is a calm voice guiding his shaking hands through each throw of the knot. Cal yowls in near-apoplectic encouragement. He enjoys

the way it slides in right where the heart lies over the lung. Perfect. Just perfect. Turn the key in the lock.

Eight stitches. Crooked. He needs to be able to do it one-handed. He needs to be an expert. He should be better at this than he is.

He wants to take them out and try again.

He’s shaking.

the dog cuts him across the stomach and he bleeds glowstick-yellow what the fuck are you doing and the chain snaps when you pull

Oh.

You strike forward perfectly and there is the reflexive satisfaction of the hit when the skin on his shoulder splits under the edge of your sword (not the only time but you don’t think about that, or anything at all), but it’s not deep and he won’t die, so he’ll learn.

He learns because of you.

He’s learned not to talk to you anymore.

And then there isn’t anything else.

You lean back in your chair, staring at the ceiling, and you cannot stop thinking about the way the cloth caught in his wound. How even the tutorial seemed hesitant to let him do whatever it was he was supposed to. A weird chill creeps down your back. It’s like you were watching him willingly jump down a rabbit hole, amputating the part of his brain that recognizes the world as a place to live in. And do it so purposefully, matter-of-factly, with no thought to the alternatives?

Yeah. You are pretty sure you know exactly how the Beta session Strider household got to the state of batshittery that it did.

(You are the guy who just needed a push from a tiny mittened hand to go rocketing straight off the edge of acceptable human behavior. It’s you.)

However. And this is something you hate to admit.

As far as you can see, he made the right choice, given his situation. It was good practice, and he had a capable adult nearby to help him if anything went wrong. Pragmatically and logically, he was correct to participate in the – tutorial? Exercise? He needed to prepare for the worst. Basic wound care is an incredibly reasonable thing to expect to have to teach a player.

But Dave was thirteen when his session started. You’re not sure it would have been ethical to teach him how to put in sutures on a live subject, least of all himself. It wasn’t something you practiced, really, but your sewing skills are decent and you know the theory, and pain does not scare you.

(And, as it turned out, most of the wounds that people suffered in the Game were not within the realm of repair by mere stitches. You would trust Dave with a lot of things, but sewing your head back on without Jane present is not one of them.

…maybe he’d do better with a staple gun.)

So you get it. You hate that you get it, but you really, really do. You understand him more than anyone else ever has, you think, and not only by virtue of being him, but also because you know the angle from which his actions make perfect sense. That angle is not created during anything close to the normative stages of human development. It grows with intricate mental contortions that turn the world inside out and upside down. It is a rejection of humankind’s fundamental desire to create mutually-informed social bonds.

That’s someone with a duty, maybe. Someone who thinks of himself as the only capable protector in his circle. An obsessive personality steeped in a doublestrong dose of narcissism and paranoia. But instead of a bunch of pale pals prying your fingers off the steering wheel, a world where your best friend groomed you to accept your death from childhood. It’d fuck anybody up. But it would especially fuck you up, with your hang-ups about duty and purpose and efficiency. And this is the evidence.

And you’re angry that he won’t show you what you want to see, but you know it’s in there, maybe locked away for decades, but you know, you know as much as you need it to be true that he has that same poison in his well, the same all-consuming sense of responsibility, the same hate for your general misanthropy. The same desire to have everything turn out well. Everything he cut down.

But you can feel it, in the way he reached for you. In the way he sewed up your torn sheets. That bit of hope you saw. His exhaustion, softening him enough for your fingernails to catch in his seams. You were repulsed by your own frustration.

So you try, once more, and you look for him, and find him in the water.

He’s cutting back toward the apartment when you spot him, freestyling (of course) back toward the pile foundation, arms in smooth rotation. You can see him break his stroke, shake the water out of his eyes, smooth his hair back as he starts to climb back up. You fold your arms over your chest, less to present yourself confidently than to quell the little tremors shooting up from your stomach through your chest and upper arms. You’re cold, and it’s not only from the breeze.

When he finally heaves himself over the verge, he sees you, but doesn’t say anything, just reaches for his shades and pulls on his shirt. It sticks to his skin, and the salt water will make it stiff later, but you think he just doesn’t want you looking at his scars now.

Which. Fair. But that’s a modicum of hard-fought vulnerability that you’re going to have to claw back, and it makes you tired just to think of how long it took to get here.

“What do you want,” he says, flat.

“I don’t know.” You shrug. You really don’t know. “Just felt wrong to leave it off like that.”

He just shrugs back. “I gave you everything you wanted to know. More’n I intended, more than you needed. Because you fuckin’ asked. What else do we have to do with each other now?”

“I think I remember how you died,” you blurt out, and his eyes snap to you behind the shades, you can feel it. Christ. You did not mean to say that.

“Do you, now.”

You nod, a little miserable. “Yeah. Like a key in a lock. I guess that’s what he thought.”

He doesn’t move, just towers over you, face like stone, and you tuck your arms tighter against your chest. Like you’re doing something wrong. Aren’t you always, though? Not enough of a gentle touch. Not determined enough to cut to the quick.

“Yeah,” he says, eventually, rubbing his forehead. “Okay. You fucked up about it or somethin’?”

The hint of genuine confusion in his voice makes you laugh, a reflex so instant that you can’t clap your hand over your mouth fast enough to pass it off as a cough.

“What the fuck? Of course I’m fucked up over your fucking permadeath! Maybe you’re fine with my memories of cutting my damn head off, but it’s not the same thing.”

“It’s exactly the same thing,” he starts, but you won’t let him finish.

“It’s not. It’s not even remotely the same thing. You think I got some kind of satisfaction from pulling off those kinds of maneuvers?”

He does an almost comical double-take. “Yes. That’s why you wanted to try them in the first place. All the ecstasy of death without any of the permanence. Consequence-free, just the way you like it.”

You let the laugh run out, this time, spilling out of your mouth, weird and high-pitched. “That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about a lifelong anticipation. What the hell’s wrong with us? Is it just genetic? Is the death drive real?”

He nods at you to get up, looking irritated, fucking arrogant, and you do – you’ll humor him, and maybe this time he really will kill you, break his promise, go against his ingrained directive. Maybe that’s what it’ll take to prove your thesis. People are fundamentally capable of change, Dirk. Yeah, okay. Maybe that fundamental change is graduating into full-on homicide.

“Do you need the Ghost of Christmases Past treatment? I’m bein’ serious. Is that what it’s gonna take to pry your fingers off my back? Because I’ll do it. I’m tired of goin’ in circles, trying to beat around the bush hopin’ you’ll finally realize that I’m not a new fuckin’ project to work on. I’m a done deal.” His voice is harsh. “That’s too damn bad for you, sure. It ain’t fun for me to wait around, hopin’ you’ll learn whatever shit I have left to teach.”

“I don’t fucking care!” You throw your hands in the air like some kind of kid in the middle of a tantrum. You can see him tense up, but you don’t care. “You think it’s not fun for you? I’m not exactly enjoying your bullshit, either! You won’t admit that I know shit, you won’t own up to anything you did, and you sit in your fucking failures like you enjoy them when I know you don’t! And it doesn’t help that I feel like fucking shit for even trying to apologize to you! Like, what the fuck is wrong with me? How far off the deep end have I gone that I’m trying to assuage the feelings of someone I know for a fact hurt someone I care about? Just because I know you’re capable of being better than you are, and you’re so fucking brainwashed into the idea that you don’t deserve any chance at reciprocal kindness that I feel bad for you! You know what you don’t deserve? You don’t deserve to shrug off any responsibility for your character development just because you managed to die when you wanted to!”

He explodes. And all you can do is stand there, fists clenched to take the edge off of the adrenaline surging in your body.

“Why is it so goddamn important to you to see me as something I’m not? Just because you never liked being yourself doesn’t mean that’s true for all versions of you! I made my peace with what I was, and so fuckin’ what if you don’t care for it? That doesn’t give you the right to turn me into you. I don’t want your insecurities, I don’t want your fear, and I sure as hell don’t want the misguided, overbearing and frankly fucked-up help you force on all your dumbfuck Fisher-Price friends!”

The words roll off his tongue sharp and venomous, but you are attenuated to him now, finely enough to hear the desperation hiding behind them, and read something else in his furrowed brow. Fear. He probably even thinks he’s angry at you.

You are very conscious of the fact that you are angry at him. Mostly because you’re yelling. “You want to know why I’m so obsessed with your potential for change? Because we’d all be better off if you were someone else! This isn’t just about Dave, and you fucking know it!”

“Yeah, it’s about you, I know,” he snarls, cutting you off. “You feel bad for me? Feel bad for yourself! You want a fucking security blanket to assure you that you’ll never become a monster! You don’t have the faith in your own abilities to choose that future for yourself, so what? You project all that shit on me in some kind of doomed Sisyphean trial run, and you expect me to be grateful for the fucking privilege? That’s pathetic. You hate the fact that you got trapped in here with me and not the perfect shining paragon of virtuous fucking martyrdom you wanted. Well, guess what, shithead, you got me. You get to walk around cheek-to-jowl with livin’ proof that you’re capable of doing everything you said you wouldn’t. If you can’t handle that, fine, but have the fuckin’ wherewithal to pull your goddamn boots on and climb down outta my ass. Christ!”

You clench your jaw so hard you wouldn’t be surprised if you cracked a tooth. “I wouldn’t be hounding you with this fucking kerberosian level of persistence if you weren’t so against admitting there’s anything about you worth saving!”

“That’s because there goddamn well isn’t!” His voice bangs off the AC housing, skids over the rooftop to shoot off into the vast plane of the unrelenting ocean. Boy howdy, he’s mad. But he takes a sharp breath, comes back quietly. “My life is teleologically complete. I lived and died doing exactly what I was supposed to do. I met my destiny and I’m done with – with all of this bullshit. The Game. The universe. Everything. Mission fucking complete, okay? You can’t save shit. Our file was overwritten by yours. It’s gone. Whatever change I’m capable of doesn’t fucking matter anymore. Stop wasting your time.”

You bite the inside of your lip before responding. The way his voice hollows out makes you jittery, like you’re about to do something you’ll regret. You’ve never been completely sure how he’ll react to the things you say.

“So it was your destiny to be miserable and kick the shit out of your kid? You said you made all of your own choices, but that doesn’t fucking mean anything if you’re still operating under the presumption that paradox space predestined all of your actions.”

He groans, pops his neck, and turns away from you. His frame is tense with barely-contained nervous energy. He’s always ready to go off. “We meet destiny halfway. What was I gonna do, leave the kid without a Guardian? Walk around waitin’ to get smashed up by a meteor like the rest of the world?”

“Yeah,” you shrug, pointedly ignoring the obvious dig at your bro. He won’t get under your skin so easily this time. “Realistically speaking, you could have done anything you wanted to. But you didn’t, and we both know why.”

You, older, meaner, sharper, turn to give yourself a bemused look. That look turns to realization in the blink of an eye, and he scoffs in disbelief, shaking his head and turning his back on you. “No. Fuck you. You ain’t listened to a word I said.”

That’s the sound of you on the defensive. Fucking jackpot. “You wanted to do the right thing more than you wanted to die or quit. That’s always the story with us.”

“Yeah, that’s the fucking problem. I’m never going to quit being this. I’m way past that exit now.” Then, more quietly, with genuine confusion, “Don’t you have those memories? You know what I did.”

“I do,” you say, and god, you wish you didn’t. You could have gone forever without knowing the finer details of what went on in that house. “And that’s why I’m saying this. It’s why I’m being a pain in your ass twenty-four-seven. Because the longer you have to defend the idea that you meant to do what you did, the more scared you get of the possibility that you’re wrong. Because if you didn’t have absolute control, it means you couldn’t have stopped it, even if you let up on him. And that means there is no timeline where Dave could have been happy. You’re terrified of the possibility that you might be me, fundamentally. More than I am of the idea that I could turn into you. Because you could have been good for him, or at least better, but you were too stubborn to do anything but hurt him.”

He bristles, but it’s half-hearted, more a response to your physical advance than anything else. “I was never going to be good for him. It’s the nature of the Game. That’s what I’ve been trying to drill into your thick-ass skull this whole time.”

“Then who the fuck do you think you are? A fucking victim? Some special case that’s allowed to be a fucking Nachos-Supreme-tier douchebag? Society’s only valid exemption from the social fucking contract? Shit, I didn’t have a society to grow up in, and even I can play by the rules. What exactly do you think is wrong with you?”

It takes a long time for him to face you, but when he does, you almost want to tell him to turn his back to you again. You’re not sure what to do with that face, the absolute nothingness in his expression. Hollow, you think. Like he’s finally dropped all his pretenses, but only to reveal the empty cavity of his skull.

But his voice is different. His voice is tired. “I don’t know how to put this in more direct terms,” he says, crossing his arms. The scars there are old and faded. “I picked him up. I assumed Guardianship. I’d been preparing for it the whole time. I gave him everything I had. I wasn’t holding back.”

“That’s bullshit,” you start, but he cuts you off with a wave of his hand.

“For you, it’s bullshit. Not for me.”

“I am you.” Your voice sounds petulant even to your own ears.

He grunts, then looks away for a long moment before he takes off his shades to pinch at the bridge of his nose.

“I was expecting,” he starts, then stops, and sighs. “I wasn’t expecting anything. I was supposed to raise him and get him into the Game, and then I was supposed to die. And all of that happened. He wasn’t supposed to fuckin’ – care. But he cared so goddamn much about everything, as a kid. Even me. And what the fuck was I supposed to do with that, huh? He wanted me to love him.” He sounds… disgusted? Horrified? Jesus.

You have to bite back your flaring temper. You have to control yourself if he can’t. (God, fuck being the adult.) “What’s so bad about that?”

He looks at you with something weirdly like desperation, but there’s too much bite in it, something accusatory, like he expected you to know better. “I spent my whole damn life trying to prep him for the Game. He can love whoever the fuck he wants later. When shit’s not actively tryin’ to kill him anymore. I was there to teach him, and he refused to learn.”

“He didn’t want to learn from you. He didn’t have to. Any one of us could have taught ourselves competence in the Game’s basic mechanics, and most of us did.” You dig your thumbnail into the side of your middle finger, and add, “Do you know how much I would have given up just to meet my bro? Just to know if this inscrutable phantom of a guy gave a shit about me as more than some kind of abstract heroic obligation?”

“That’s the whole fucking point!” His hands claw up like he’s shaking a pair of invisible shoulders, arms tense, the fingers of his left hand pressing the points of his shades into his palm so hard you’re surprised he’s not drawing blood. “I went out and fucking asked to get ground into paste every single day for six years so I’d be ready to teach him. And he wouldn’t fucking – he hated it. He wanted me to give him the kind of soft shit I had to toss in the fucking dumpster to survive. Am I supposed to be happy about that? That he wanted to be soft, that he wanted to need me? What kind of guardian would I be if I let that happen? Let him need me when I was only ever gonna end up dead?” His arms drop. His face is pale with rage.

Oh, not rage. Despair. Absolute, totalizing despair.

You see it so clearly. Your reflection in his face, in his soul. His sense of purpose is the only thing he has left, and you know how easy it is to chip everything else away, once someone else starts calling the shots. You like the clarity that comes with single-mindedness. You like it when you’re allowed to find and execute the shortest path to victory. It’s why you told Dave to do what he did. It’s why you let your splinter tell you what to do. It’s why you’re afraid to die, but not afraid to kill yourself. Problems have solutions. The others have always been comfortable with struggle. You’ve always raced to the finish line.

But it took you a while to start hating yourself enough to want to study your own brain. To want excruciatingly precise knowledge of your flaws and the ways you deviate from a hypothetical norm. He’s always had Lil Cal, so he’s always had Hal. And that is a problem you think you understand better than anyone else in the known universes.

You took away Cal’s objectivity, and now he has nothing to prop him up anymore.

“If you could have,” you say, “would you have given him what he wanted?”

For a moment, you think he might try to strangle you. He settles for staring at you, then shaking his head with a breathless, scornful laugh. “Isn’t it a little too damn late for a hypothetical?”

“A good hypothesis is the first concrete step toward comprehending any issue worth the effort,” you say, as primly as you can with your heart in your throat.

“The answer is that I don’t know,” he says shortly, arms open. “I don’t know. I don’t think I ever had the damn capacity for it. Ha. Fuckin’ bled it out somewhere along the line, maybe.”

“You don’t just lose that shit. You either have it, or you don’t.”

“Then I don’t. Never did.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I’m a bad fuckin’ person. Always have been.” He digs his knuckles into his temples, grimacing. “Karma only gets you from both sides when it knows you’re gonna shit the bed from day one, I think.”

“I don’t know if I believe in intrinsically bad people,” you say carefully, neutrally. You know this particular song-and-dance like the back of your hand; you spent a long time thinking your flaws were an immutable part of you. Maybe they are. But it’s not like that thought does anything but send you spiraling into a depressive paralysis. It doesn’t help. And isn’t that what you’re trying to do, in some misguided way? Help him? “I think it’s something you grow into.”

“I got a head start, then. Never was the nurturing kind. All I wanted was to be competent enough to teach him. Cal was – he made me competent.”

“No one needed competent. You could’ve been a walking disaster like Roxy was, and that would have been better for him than your sensei act.”

“I know. Yeah, I know now. Lost in the message, or whatever.”

It’s quiet. He’s quiet. You’re both spent. Going in circles. Swimming around each other. You finally ground him down, so cut the bullshit. Time to gut the fish.

“Forget the hypothetical, then. Who do you want to be? What do you want to do?”

He sighs, goes for the bridge of his nose again. He’s worn, still. Dimly, you realize he’s probably getting used to the feeling after spending the past two decades getting doped up by his best friend. “I want to go to sleep,” he says, “for a very long time. Possibly forever.”

You reach out instinctually, trying to… you don’t know. You have no idea what you are doing at any point in time, it seems. He watches your hand, wary, but not moving away. You curl your fingers up, bump him in the arm with your knuckles. He stares at you like you’ve grown a second head, but he’s too tired to do anything about it. “You can sleep as long as you want, you know. Forever’s probably not feasible, but you could try catching up on what you missed.”

“Uh-huh,” he grunts, brushing off his arm where you bunped him. It seems kind of instinctual, though, given his standoffish reaction whenever you sit close to annoy him, so you don’t take it personally. “Dunno. Maybe it’s just. I’m overestimating myself, without him.” There’s just the slightest hint of humiliation in the way he looks off to the side, tugging at his cap, like a reticent kid in front of the principal, caught in the middle of a prank gone wrong.

“Maybe you’re just getting to know yourself. I mean, it’s one thing to have me figured out, but if you’re really your own person, then there are complexities to your experience that I shouldn’t tell you how to navigate.”

“But if you could, you would,” he appends with a thin smile.

You shrug. “Yeah. But I know better now. I had good teachers.”

“Cute.” He tugs at his shirt, rubs his hands together. “Look, I’m tired. You good?”

“Nah,” you say, but you manage a smile. And he nods back. “You think we’ll ever be good?”

He sighs, and claps you too hard on the shoulder as he starts walking. “Stop bustin’ your head over this. You got other shit to worry about. Still tryna get outta here?”

“It’s not fucking working,” you grumble.

When you reach the door, he’s holding it open again, from inside the stairwell, and lets you slip by him. You can hear his loping step behind you.

And his voice, echoing in the small space, even though it’s so quiet that it’s almost a whisper: “You remind me of him, y’know. More than you do me. Dunno if I deserve to miss him, but I do.”

You don’t know what to say to that, but you look over at him, and his face is distant. Even if you responded, he’s probably too far away to hear it. So you don’t say anything.

Is it weird that the most comfortable you are around each other is after you have a big fucking blowout?

Probably not the most healthy dynamic, but you get into a verbal tussle over Birdemic again, and you are pointing at him with a fork, following him all the way over to the DVD collection as he rolls his eyes and makes a bluh-bluh gesture with his hand. You sit on opposite ends of the couch, trading jabs back and forth, gesticulating wildly, fighting over the remote in order to pause scenes so you can finish illustrating your points.

It’s nice. You’ve been at John and Dave’s movie nights, and this feels almost as natural. Almost. You don’t think you’ve ever fought this hard with either of them over anything. You’ve never let anyone chase you out of the room after the movie’s over, either, but here you are, in your room, so fucking exhausted that the only thing keeping your eyelids from slamming shut is the fact that you almost stepped on your laptop, and now you need to make sure nothing is cracked or split or broken. If you damage any components and they don’t regenerate, you might just be screwed forever and ever, no matter what Roxy or Sollux or anyone else tries.

Also, as always, you keep thinking about Birdemic.

Strange how shit like that gets released sincerely, he said. As if it’s not immediately apparent that everyone’s gonna fuckin’ hate it, and for good reason.

You have a better answer now, maybe. Because you can love something and still destroy it. Because pride poisons love, makes you twist everything into garbled nonsense until all that’s left is your good intention. And it still won’t measure up, still won’t be good enough for anyone. Not even you.

You’re too tired to climb back into your bed after you check all of your components, so you stretch out on the floor, back on the carpet, before drifting off.

Where are you going from here? Either of you? You don’t know how long you’re going to be here, if you’re doomed to spend the rest of your life in your apartment with him. If you can even die of natural causes. He’s tried all of the other options, apparently, and they don’t work.

He’s – you don’t know. Broken down, maybe. You’ve made some kind of progress. And he scares you in so many ways, but you’re finding firm footing again, and that gives you something close to hope, bright but fragile. You don’t know what to do with it; you didn’t think you’d get this far.

Something blips on the screen for a moment, and you swear Pesterchum lights up, but none of your contacts are online, and no one is trying to contact you.

You’ll just close your eyes for a few minutes, and then you’ll check it out…

Chapter Text

“Y’know, I’m not exactly surprised it didn’t work.”

You cannot exactly tell him to fuck off right now. Your head is halfway in the toilet bowl, your shirt is soaked with sweat, and you lost most of your voice about twenty minutes ago. You look like dogshit and you know it. (This is not fucking cool, dude.) Every muscle in your body is cramping like a motherfucker.

He puts a bottle of water on the sink above you (what a considerate douchebag, you know he’s only doing this so he can come take a peek at you in your lowest moment of disgrace) and leans against the wall, arms crossed. “You’re literally the stone-coldest dude I know. Of course you can’t roll. Too cool for school, right, Strider?”

“Shuddup,” is all you can really grit out right now. Your stomach spasms again, pushes heat up through your chest and into your throat, and then you spit a mouthful of vomit into the water, turning your head to avoid the backsplash. Smells like alcohol and the sick tang of garbage. Smells like the floor of a club.

“For serious, brah. I’ve never seen someone have, like, literally no reaction. I mean, I wasn’t expectin’ you to, like, climb all over everyone, but nah, you were just as hands-off as always. I bet you got a bigger buzz from the pregame.”

“Didn’ I jus’ tell ya tuh shuddup,” you slur. Feels like you have a rat in your skull that’s desperately trying to gnaw its way out. Holy fuck. “Tol’ you it wouldn’ work.”

“Yeah, but I thought you were just talkin’ a big game.” He chuckles. “Like, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you crack a fucking smile. None of the UH crew have, either. And I checked. Either you got some kinda freaky-deaky metabolism, or your brain just doesn’t understand when it’s getting the good shit.”

You squeeze your eyes shut, lean your head against the edge of the seat. Your voice has to tear its way out of your throat. Fuck this. Fuck rolling, fuck drinking, fuck the parties and the raves, and fuck the fucking idiot kids at the University of Houston. “Ain’t good shit if it don’t do what it’s s’posed to.”

“Maybe you just need more. Or maybe you just got a bad cut.”

“Or maybe it just don’t fuckin’ work,” you snarl, but it breaks. You sound pathetic, defensive. You’re so damn tired. Your arms are cramped, your jaw aches. Your head is splitting open. And you have the feeling that your stomach hasn’t quit wringing itself out yet. “You done starin’, or.”

He actually sits down. Not next to you, but with his back against the doorframe, stretching his legs out. “C’mon, dude. I know it’s like, weird, being the only guy actually hustlin’ out here, hanging out with a bunch of other eighteen-year-old shitheads. But, like, it doesn’t have to be all that. No one cares that you gotta work. You’re just one of the guys.”

You’re not “one of the guys.” You are The Guy. (Not The Dude, that’s. Someone else. You can’t recall…? Doesn’t matter.) You have shit to do. You’re gonna catch a kid in the face not more than a year from now. You’re only occupying this shithole to split rent for a couple more months. Getting fucked up is a side project, and not one you intended to pursue seriously. Or at all, in the first place.

(Well. Maybe that’s a bit of a lie. You used to smoke a bit. Used to drink some. (Used to lift shit from the liquor store because you could.) You wanted to know what it was like. (Fucking stupid, really, you need the control, you cannot lose your shit and die in some grody club bathroom.) He told you it was pretty much pure. (He told you that it would help you let go. (What the fuck do you even have business letting go of.) You wanted to. (No, you didn’t. (Shut the fuck up.))) You took more than you should’ve. Bombed it straight down your throat, no bigger than a sugar cube, little rolled-up tail. (Looked like a tadpole. You imagined it growing into a frog, white tissue paper, amphibious, in a lake of acid.) It didn’t fucking do shit. (Not that you expected it to. (You kind of wanted to see if it would work.) You’re not much for letting go of the wheel, naturally. (If you can’t get high, then you’ll adjust the dose. Maybe next time you’ll take enough to kick it. (That shouldn’t be the goal. (But it is.) You got shit to do.) Fucking control freak.) The room felt hot, and that was all. And this is Texas. Ain’t no room not overheatin’ down here.) You should have known better.)

He waves a hand at you, lazily. “Earth to Strider. What’s up, bro?”

You know he’s doing this because he has some kind of bizarre fucked-up attachment to you as his roommate and resident pity project. He’s said you remind him of his brother a couple times. He’s never come out and said it, but you figure he means the whole. AS thing. You’re not necessarily mad at the assumption, more that it’s none of his fucking business. An overreach, an overstep, more familiar than he has a right to be. He’s always doing that. Poking and prodding and getting in your space like he owns it. Like you’re actually friends. Always figuring you need to be helped when the last thing in the world you want is his paws in your business.

Fuck him. What you wouldn’t give to just plant your fist straight into his jaw this instant. Doesn’t help that the rat’s still mining away up there.

“Lay the fuck off,” you manage through your teeth.

“Or what?”

“Or I’m gonna kick your ass.”

“Oh, yeah, sure. You can’t get up off the floor, and you’re gonna kick my ass. Okay. All right, Hulk Hogan. Sure thing.” He chuckles. He doesn’t think you’re serious.

Your voice is back, for whatever reason, or maybe your throat is so burned out you can’t feel it anymore. Either way. “Take your bleedin’ heart and go spoonfeed some weepy orphans or somethin’. Don’t know why I keep y’all around. Spoiled fuckin’ trust fund brats like you ain’t know shit about shit.”

Yeah, now he’s pissed. “You don’t know shit about me, so how about you knock it off with the assumptions.”

“I know plenty about you. You’ve never worked for a damn thing in your life. You’ve had it cushy since the day you were plopped out into Dr. Phil’s waitin’ arms, and you’ll eat off a silver spoon ’til the day you die. ’S why you’re such a fuckin’ pussy.”

“Jesus. Why the hell do I even try with you?” He’s frustrated, curt, disdainful. “Fine, I’ll leave you alone. That’s what you want, isn’t it? To cut everyone off so you can, like, maintain your macho man image. Well, fuck you too, bro.”

You’re still hugging the toilet when he gets up and leaves, footsteps creaking across the floorboards, and you don’t know whether the stiffness in your joints is from the comedown or from sitting here for the past however long. It’s peaceful, now that you’re alone.

Your stomach roils again, but nothing comes out. Lil Cal stares down at you from his seat on the reservoir. You can imagine a look of sympathy.

You have less than a year left. He’s been waiting patiently while you have your little shitty drugged-up rumspringa, bashing your head against any available surface. He’s been waiting for a long, long time. Longer than you.

When your legs finally manage to unlock, you grab the water bottle from the sink, unscrew the cap, drain it in one pull. Crumple the plastic in your hand, toss it into the trash from where you’re sitting. You never miss. Somehow you always know the angle. You stare blankly at the wall.

God, didn’t you used to like this place? Didn’t you get along with him? What the fuck happened to you?

(Doesn’t matter.)

You can’t stand up.

Snap.

Jumpstart.

When you wake up, the sun is already high in the sky, glaring through the two windows on the other side of your bedroom.

Two windows?

You thrash your way out of the bed – it’s not your bed – and stand up, check your body – still your body – and then look around for your shades.

They’re on the night stand, under the lamp, next to the alarm clock. You pick them up and put them on, then tap the ratty lampshade cautiously, shaking your hands when dust puffs up in a cloud. In the drawer, there’s a handgun, a faded box of cartridges, and a nail clipper. You frown.

The room is bare, mostly. There’s a world atlas pinned up over a desk, another lamp, a mug of pens and pencils. A chest of drawers and a closet. The floorboards creak beneath your shoes as you go over to the windows, pushing the thin, sun-bleached curtains aside.

Wow. This is not Houston. To say the least.

You’re in a two-story house in the middle of nowhere. All you can see out of the window is long grass, red dirt, and short, leafless trees planted in haphazard rows. Some kind of wind break, probably. There’s a stack of old tires, a heap of scrap. If you look down, you can see the sloping shingled roof of the back porch. Needs repaired, to say the least.

It’s pretty obvious where you are, but you don’t want to admit that you know, so you set off looking for your overgrown biopsy.

He’s not on the second floor. There’s the room you just came out of, then a short hallway with two doors (a closet and a bathroom), and then another, smaller room at the end next to the stairs, filled with boxes and household supplies. You open one of the boxes to find old, musty clothes, packs of batteries, VHS and Hi8 tapes, cassettes, Christmas decorations, spare parts for god knows what. One of the hard cases has an electric guitar in it, and in a nearby box, there’s an amplifier and cables.

The swords are in the beat-up gym bag resting against the near corner of the wall. You can’t find the katana. It must be in use, then. Or maybe it never returned to his sylladex.

On the first floor is a guest bathroom, a coat closet, and a small, grungy kitchen. The stove is splattered with grease and dust, and the ceiling light is missing its shade. The kitchen is adjoined to the combination living room and dining room, where an old bunny-eared CRT is perched in the corner in front of a stained corduroy La-Z-Boy and a sagging loveseat. You can see the AC vent in the wall right next to it.

There’s a dinner table on the other side of the room, with two mismatched chairs pulled up. Behind the dinner table, tucked into the opposite corner from the TV, is an old mattress. You walk over to stand in front of it, and when you look behind you, the image of Lil Cal half-flopping out of a backpack clicks into place.

This is home. Not yours. His.

You find him sitting on the back porch, hunched over, staring out into the scrub and dirt that glows red in the morning sun. When you slide the screen door open, you can see a muscle in his left shoulder jump.

It’s fucking hot out here. Your shirt is starting to stick to you already.

To give him time to adjust, and because you feel weird about talking to him right now, you walk across the porch and plant your feet into the dusty dirt, feeling it slip a little under the soles of your shoes. The scrap pile is about shoulder-height. You can see an old microwave with a shattered door, some hubcaps, broken-up roofing and siding, all rusted into one big Tetsuo of metal, rubber, and vinyl.

You turn around, finally, to look at him. He’s watching you from beneath his cap, hands laced together. He must be frying in those black jeans, but he doesn’t seem to be bothered much.

He looks younger. Maybe it’s just the expression on his face, terrifyingly open, twisted up. You think you see loathing, a little bit of anxiousness. It’s very – articulated. Disconcerting, to see that on your own face. Or his. It’s the most expression you’ve seen him wear so far.

Instead of making a snide comment, you ask, “Sup?”

“Nothing much,” he murmurs after a moment, twisting his neck to look back into the house, towards the stairs. “Haven’t been here in a while.” He clicks his tongue, wrenching his eyes back toward the open dirt of the yard. He’s wound tight, elbows pressed onto his knees as he cracks his knuckles. You can hear his artificially-regular breaths.

“Get up,” you say, kicking at his shin. He scowls at you, but it’s half-hearted. “Give me a walk-through. I’m thinking of buying.”

“Slept there,” he says, nodding to the mattress. His posture is stiff, hands jammed into his pockets. “Living room, dining room.”

You purse your lips. “What in the fuck kind of MTV Cribs spotlight is this? I know all of the kinds of room in a house, dude, I’m deeply fucking cultured.”

His shades are back on, but you can still feel his flat stare. “My tour, my rules.”

“Come on,” you wheedle. “I know you made a ton of Precious Moments™ all up in this place.”

He yanks his left hand out of his pocket to make a sweeping gesture at the room. “Do you not have functioning eyes? It’s the living room and the dining room, idiot. Watch TV over there, eat over there. Use your brain a li’l.”

Wow, pricklish. Or just a prick. You mow over him. “Who sleeps upstairs?”

You get an exasperated sigh for that one, and he actually walks away, but not too far, folding his arms.

“The guy,” he says eventually. “The fuckin’. Tutorial guy.”

You feel like you’re tweezing out a hangnail. “Did he have a name?”

“Maybe.” He shrugs, tilts his head. “It wasn’t important.”

“You lived with him for five or six years and you don’t even know his name?”

“It’s not like I called him by his first name, jesus. When you’re the only two people around, you don’t really need that shit. It’s pretty deictically clear who’s who.”

“Fine. Okay. It’s not that important,” you say, and change the subject to keep him rolling. “What’d you watch on the TV?”

He hums, stepping in front of the armchair, staring the TV down. “Buncha MTV.” And then, bizarrely, a quiet Ed Lover impression. “C’mon, son!”

Oh, shit. “Right. I think that’s where Violent J started his political campaign, in my session.”

“The Insane Clown Posse was on MTV in 1989? Fuck, I’m glad I’m not you.” He sits down in the armchair, draws the TV tray up with his feet. He’s not quite frowning, but he taps his fingers on the sides. “Ate a lotta Easy Mac off this thing.”

You plop down on the loveseat, wincing as your ass hits the springs. “You do your homework here, too?”

He huffs and pushes the tray back, yanking the lever on the other side of the armchair so the leg rest pops out. He puts his feet up one at a time, like he put them up on your desk. Maybe he’s done that his whole life. “What fuckin’ homework. Did it in class or during detention. No time for that shit here.”

“But plenty of time for MTV?”

“A man’s gotta have his priorities. ’Sides, I had enough work to do here without bringing more back. Ain’t no sense in procrastinating.”

You frown, then slide down on the couch so you’re lying on your back, feet jetting off the other armrest. The springs punch at your spine. “What kind of work did you do?”

“You got the memories, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but not a holistic understanding of your epic ninja training routine.”

He gives you another deep sigh, letting it linger until it rattles in his chest. “I’d get up early, do some calisthenics. Off to school. Back from school. Then whatever training I had scheduled. Maybe watch some TV or put on some music in the meantime. Shower, sleep.”

“Sounds fucking miserable,” you say, even as you hypocritically wish for the comfort of routine. You’d love to be back in Houston right about now. At least you had a good sea breeze going at all times, instead of this stagnant, dry heat.

“It was a’ight.” A long silence. “It was necessary.”

You palm the sweat from your temple, then sit up before your back melds with the cracked vinyl. You really don’t like how that feels. “Show me the kitchen?”

It’s nothing much. There are some old coupons stuck to the fridge, a Milwaukee-themed magnet and some other brand-name ones. Inside is a plastic gallon jug of water, a bag of sandwich meat, a six-pack of Bud with one can missing, a mostly-empty carton of eggs, a bottle of ketchup, and some TV dinners. He almost smacks your head when he opens the freezer. A box of Otter Pops, bag of veg, three frozen dinners, cans of juice concentrate.

“Explains why you’re such a good cook,” you quip, and he actually tries to close the freezer door on your head this time. “Fuckin’ ow.”

“I can fry an egg, fuck you.”

“I can catch, clean, and fry a fish, fuck you.”

“You think a down-home country boy like me don’t know how to fish? Think again, numbnuts.”

“In case you forgot, we’re from fucking Houston, John Denver.”

He turns on each hob of the stove, one by one, twisting the dials at the front and waiting for the ignition to click. Then he turns them off, touching the fume hood and then the foil taped over the backsplash. Opens and shuts some of the drawers, as if he’s confirming what’s inside.

The door to the pantry swings open. You’ve lived your whole life in the presence of an emperor’s hoard of orange soda; a pantry stuffed with cans of beans should not surprise you. But you still let out a bemused “huh” noise. They’re sorted by bean type, and then brand.

“For emergencies,” he says, and you think it might be sarcasm. He kicks at one of the plastic storage boxes under the bottom shelf. “Rice. Box to keep the mice out.”

You come up with several drafts of rhymes involving “rice” and “mice” before giving up. Nothing is sicknasty enough. You’re not in the flow.

“Sink,” he says, moving to the side of the stove opposite the fridge. He runs his hand along the edge of the counter. “Drying rack.” He’s doing inventory, lifting up a plate, running his finger along the edge. “The chipping here always pissed me off.”

Surprisingly, when you hold out your hand, he gives it to you. It’s a nondescript ceramic plate, a vaguely leafy pattern picked out in brown around the rim. There’s a jagged chip where it must have hit the floor at some point, and a crack spidering its way slowly toward the center.

He heads back into the hallway, and you can hear him open and close the front door before you get there. He’s not gone, though, just checking the coat closet, after which he shrugs and steps away.

“What?”

“Jacket’s still in there.”

You open it up once he steps away. There’s an old denim jacket, a colorful windbreaker with a hole in the elbow, and two raincoats. You don’t see any shoes.

He’s halfway up the stairs by the time you’re done nosing around, and you take them two at a time to catch up.

“Attic,” he says, pointing to the room with the boxes. “Washer, dryer.” The closet. “Bathroom. Master bedroom.”

“Cool,” you say, just to make sure he knows how lame he’s being about your tour.

Instead of rising to the bait, he opens the door to the bathroom and goes inside. You think he might be up to take a shit just to spite you, but he leaves the door open, so you lean against the frame, watching him.

He just stares at the tub.

“Take a lot of nice baths in that thing?” you say without thinking.

“Mm,” he grunts. “Woke up in an ice bath more times’n I can count. Right here. Didn’t help with the skin peeling, after. Felt like a damn onion.”

Oh. Sunburn. You’ve had your fair share of that. “Gross.”

“Yeah. Gross.” His face is tight and carefully blank as he turns around, pushing past you back into the hallway, flash-stepping away. Fuck, you weren’t looking for a tell. Where did he go?

Fortunately, not far. He’s standing in the master bedroom, back straight as a ramrod, fingers twitching at his sides. It takes a moment, but you watch him as he finally moves, opens the nightstand drawer, frowns. Looks in the desk, examines the pens. Pokes around in the chest of drawers, frowns deeper, slams it shut.

“What,” you prompt, curious.

“I didn’t come up here much.” Hands back in his pockets, like he’s hesitant to touch anything else. You’ve never really seen him hesitate to do anything. Dave warned you about that, in a way. “To this room in particular.”

“Parenting,” you say knowingly, because John told kind of the same story on his seventeenth.

“Hah. No.” He clears his throat. “Didn’t want to, mostly. Seemed kind of. Inappropriate.”

You open and close the nightstand drawer again, idly, and then you toe off your shoes and lie down on the bed. “What does that mean?”

A frown. He is so fucking uncomfortable in this room, and always. “Dunno. Too personal. For me.”

“Oh.” You kick your heels against the mattress, thinking. “Does it feel weird to finally get a chance to look around?”

He doesn’t respond to your question, just slides the closet door open. There’s a judo gi and a third-dan black belt, an old suit, a bunch of dress shirts and slacks. “Never saw him wear any of this. Must be old as balls.”

You raise your head off of the bed a little bit. “Anything else?”

There are some cardboard boxes stacked up under the hangers. He nudges one with his foot, then drops down reluctantly and folds back the top flaps.

“Photo albums,” he says after a moment. “Fifties, sixties. Got some shit from ’Nam.”

You flip onto your stomach. “Don’t push it, or I’ll give you a war you won’t believe,” you quote.

“Your Sly sucks ass.”

“What’s in the boooox?”

“Well, shit, now you ain’t even trying.”

He dumps the box on you, literally gets the drop on you, knocking the air out of your lungs with the weight of five binders full of Polaroids. “What the fuck!” you wheeze.

“You wanted to know what was inside, moron.”

“Yeah, but—”

Well. He’s gone. Typical.

You wriggle out from under the pile of albums and crack one open, because you have a good idea why he doesn’t want to look through them himself, but you can’t contain your morbid curiosity. So you do what he tells you, and get to flippin’.

The face that was blurry in the memories isn’t that much more memorable in the photos. You can’t remember what it looks like when you close your eyes. He’s dark-haired and dark-skinned, like Jake, but you can’t tell what color his eyes are, and he doesn’t smile much. In a lot of the later photos, he wears a bit of a mustache, and more often than not he has his arm around a woman with hair like Farrah Fawcett, shorter than him by half a foot. You don’t remember her from the memories. He’s in a jean jacket, she’s in a fuzzy green sweater. They’re standing on a hiking trail or something. Maybe a national park.

Some of them have notes pencilled into the margins in neat, angular handwriting. First car (1961). HS Graduation (1962). That’s either his initials or “high school.”

You wonder if this is what your bro’s parents were like. If he had parents. It’s hard to tell, since so much of his early history has been obscured, maybe intentionally. You’d like to think he had some kind of home life, that he wasn’t just a batshit courageous auteur from the moment he landed. You’d like to think he started out like Dave.

With [illegible] at the zoo (1949?).

Him and his brother, maybe, or a cousin. The picture is kinda blurry, a little smaller than a playing card, with trimmed edges. The smaller one has a little sailor suit on.

It is weird, going through the pictures, knowing who this guy is in relation to you. To your crossways cloneself. He seems normal. He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would beat the shit out of a kid for six years just because he was asked to. He had family. A wife. There are wedding pictures. It’s probably her handwriting in the margins, loopy and faded. Kendo studio, on leave in [illegible] (1975).

Lots of wedding pictures. Faded reunion portraits. Great-grandparents, maybe even great-great-grandparents. Jesus, is this what it’s like to have history? You’re a little jealous, a little resentful, you won’t lie – maybe this is just the fantasy of what you always wanted. You’re used to the headache-inducing cluckbeast-ovum ectofuckery of your own lineage. It’s weird to hold the records of entire generations of a family in your hands. You haven’t even thought about what you want to pass down to your future clone babies, if you end up having any.

And you still haven’t thrown down with Rose about how weird that idea is, either, how reluctant you are to make anyone else deal with having your brain. She’ll probably wave you off with a cryptic warning about eugenics. And she’ll be right, which is the worst part. People with ‘fucked-up brains’ still deserve to live, Dirk. Bluh bluh.

[Illegible] at the beach (1983). They’re standing in the waves, grinning at each other, hippie hair blown wild by the wind.

You close the album on their faces in profile, feeling strange. This must have been why he foisted all the pictures onto you. He talks a big fuckin’ game about choices, but he can’t even look his own in the face, when it comes down to it.

He’s not ready to see Dave again, if he can’t handle the idea that he wasn’t always the adult, that he didn’t know what was best for everyone. That’s the truth. You’re not sure Dave wants to know any of this more than he does, either. So fucking what if this guy is the closest thing Dave has to a grandfather? He was just a tutorial, by the end. Just another one of his bro’s shitty choices.

You don’t know why you’re so pissed off. You should feel sad, probably, or at least mad on someone else’s behalf. Or sorry that this, whatever the hell it is, this farce you might have just fucking concocted in your brain as some half-assed wangsty apologia, had to happen to anyone. That this guy became a tutorial and this other-you followed right the fuck in his footsteps without question. You thought you were smarter than that, but obviously not. Of course you’d be way too insecure to do the smart thing instead of the technically correct one.

But.

Fuck, you don’t know. You shove the albums back into the box, all of the memorabilia and childhood photos, the wedding portraits and ancestral records. Hal wouldn’t have apologized to you, not even in the clumsy, vague way that you got in the stairwell that night. Not without Equius sharing his brain. And he’s gone, now, because part of the process whereby he mellowed the fuck out was apparently letting you seal him into a juju right before Roxy chucked him into the void of uncreation.

Yeah, you take real good care of your splinters. They all inherit your strong instinct for self-preservation, you guess. The instinct that fights against the knowledge that not existing would just. Be easier.

He got his wish, then, this bigger, badder Dirk. And he’s still not happy. In fact, he’s never been as happy as you have. Is that fucked up, or what?

The box goes back in the closet. You poke around the others half-heartedly. Most of this shit seems to be someone else’s. You see the fuzzy green sweater, some more tapes, a ziploc bag full of earrings.

God dammit. Okay. Fine. You close all of the boxes and slam the closet door shut so hard it almost jumps off of its track, and then you stomp down the stairs to find him back outside. Way outside, in fact. He’s just a faint white-shirted smudge out in the distance, half-hidden behind the shimmering heatwaves.

You flash step up to the edge of the yard proper, then walk the rest of the way to him. Sometimes you forget that Texas used to be mostly desert. You don’t particularly like being reminded, but it does intrigue you, how the Earths you came from weren’t themed around anything. Like Earth-C, they’re a mishmash of different climate zones and geological features, sculpted gradually by the sun and moon and stars until they became habitable.

Maybe there are surprise fossils on Earth-C. Probably not, since it’s supposed to be a blank slate, but Dave would probably get a kick out of that. Super old dead shit.

Maybe you’ll be the first fossils. Hmm.

He’s still tense when you walk up behind him, shoulders squared, arms folded, back straight. Your shoes crunch through the grass and dirt, and you can practically see him wind tighter at the sound.

You stop when you’re about five feet away, trying to pick something to say. The heat has melted off some of your anger.

He saves you the trouble, though. “Find anything interesting?” he asks, only lightly condescending. It’s still enough to piss you off.

“He was married,” you snap. “No kids. She was probably gone before they could have any. Two younger brothers. Graduated from high school in the forties. Do you think he was taking kendo lessons before or after he was drafted?”

His jaw works, clenched tight. “Why the fuck do you think I know the answer to that.”

“If you don’t, then why are you asking me, you complete asshole! What did you think I was going to say?” He’s silent, but his shoulders drop, and you can see him take a deep breath. You groan and mash your hands into your eyes. If you don’t hydrate soon, you’ll get a headache. And if you get a headache, you’ll stop feeling uncomfortably protective of this reanimated cap-wearing career douchebag real fast. “You really don’t fucking like that house, do you? Is that why you keep jetting out here?”

He hums for a moment, scuffs the ground with his shoe. In the silence, you can hear unfamiliar birdcalls, the sounds of insects. If you look closely at the dirt around your feet, you can see ants crawling around, picking up god knows what to take back to their underground empires. You haven’t done a lot of walking in your life, to be honest, either because you didn’t have room or you could fucking fly, and the solid earth beneath your feet feels… ancient. Inhabited. Kind of creepy, actually.

You remember that they didn’t have computers back then, or cell phones, really. The guy’s older than IRC. He probably spent his childhood eating dirt before he got it in his head to be a ninja rapper piece of shit.

You barely restrain yourself from bending down and pinching up some of the loose soil for further inspection. Jake probably ate a ton of island dirt as a kid. And bugs. You are curious as fuck, suddenly. You never really had a reference for tastes like dirt, growing up on Strider Island, and by the time you settled down enough to start enjoying new experiences, you were too old to indulge in stuff like sandboxes and mud pies.

“Gives me the creeps,” he says finally, almost too quiet for you to hear under the Sounds of Nature tape blasting the both of you in perfect surround sound. “But. It’s familiar. The whole thing is too… whatever. I never planned on coming back.”

“You hate it,” you summarize briefly. “I know you hate this place.”

“Hate’s a strong word.” Something flickers over his face, too quick for you to catch. “Didn’t very well like it, I’ll give you that.”

“You’re not giving me shit, and you know it.”

“Uh-huh,” he says, and flicks his finger against the bridge of your shades before he starts sauntering back to the house. You readjust them indignantly before you nail him in the shoulder with a (very small, probably actually just a stubborn clump of dirt) rock. “You comin’ inside or not?”

Fuck this cryptic-ass motherfucker. Maybe the AC will chill him out enough for you to, ugh, you don’t know, have a heart-to-heart. A soul-to-soul. Maybe you need to perform a magical god-power quintuple bypass on his shrivelled, blocked-up emotions gland. You trudge after him, anyway, legs burning the heat, snapping at the elastic collarband of your shirt to dry some of the sweat.

You linger, though, before you close the screen door, waiting to hear that strange bird sing again.

He’s reclining on the La-Z-Boy with two Otter Pops dangling from his mouth, both orange. You get up in his face to squint at the writing on the labels, and:

“‘Little Orphan Orange,’” you read aloud from the label. There’s a sad bear-ish mascot in a bow and skirt printed near the bottom, standing next to an even sadder cartoon dog. “Ho-ly fuck. Ain’t that a little on the nose?”

“Shcrew yew.”

“Where’s mine? I’m the one with the dead parent.”

He plucks the tubes from his mouth and uses one to point to the freezer. “You even know how to eat one of these?”

You glare at him. “I hate you.”

“Okey-doke,” he says, and sticks the pops back in his mouth, levering the chair back until he’s almost lying down flat. There he is. The douchiest walrus in the known universe. And you’ve heard some unflattering things about Sea World from Jane.

Otter Pops, which seem to be mostly ice and sugar from the ingredient list, aren’t really doing it for you right now. The fridge doesn’t have anything appealing in it, either, except for the eggs, and even then you’re not sure if they’ve expired or not. You’ve seen that rotten egg shit in movies. You are hip to food spoilage, despite what Jade and Jane would have everyone believe based on one singular incident which you learned from. In your defense, there are not that many movies featuring close-up shots of different kinds of bread mold, so how were you supposed to know.

Frozen dinners are for dinner, you reckon, so you root through the cabinets for the rumored Easy Mac. A-fuckin’-ha. A stash of blue cups. What really appeals to you is the orange-yellow macaroni texture on the lid. The blaring neon color of it must activate your feral infant scavenging instinct, or something. The instructions are simple (it is, after all, not Difficult Mac) and you manage to operate the microwave with ease. You definitely do not think about whether your head would fit in the door of a Real Microwave™ when you stir the cheese powder into the drained noodles.

You sit on the couch with your Easy Mac and wish the TV could pick up a signal. It’d be cool to get a taste of the authentic 80s experience your bro must have gone through. But the bunny-eared, foiled-up TV picks up nothing, and instead of sweet, fiery raps, you have to listen to the sound of your own chewing and one Dirk “Dickhead” Strider sucking the sugar water out of his Otter Pop walrus tusks with a level of enthusiasm he hasn’t given much else except chasing the dream of a blunt-force lobotomy. It makes your skin crawl.

It’s like he’s trying to be obnoxious on purpose.

Well, he probably is. Because he loves to play a tune on your last frayed nerve.

After a minute, you hear him start crunching on the ice, and the two empty plastic tubes are deposited on the TV dinner tray. He flops back down, and you can hear the armchair creak underneath him. You blow delicately on your warm noodles and refuse to turn your attention to him like he clearly wants you to.

“Sometimes I’d fall asleep in this chair,” he says, completely unprompted. You almost choke on your lunch. “Keep the TV on, taped up, holding a coupla ice packs. And I’d wake up there, in the same spot. Always hated Good Morning America.”

You make a show out of spooning your mac and cheese-product into your mouth. Sorry, too busy to respond, keep monologuing.

“Cal would wake me up if I slept too long.” Softer. “Or if I had a concussion. Real cheerleader, my Lil Cal.”

Fuck, man. You’re losing your appetite. You lower the cup from your mouth. “Caliborn—”

He cuts you off. “I know. I just…” Hums. “The game’s over. And if I have to be here, then so be it. I wasn’t miserable.”

You put the cup down on the table, curling your legs up on the couch, leaning on the armrest with your elbow. He’s not looking at you. “I don’t think you were much of anything.” Is that mean? It’s probably mean. Well, to anyone else but you, and therefore him.

That gets another weird laugh out of him. “Yeah. God. Been lookin’ around, and I…” He shrugs helplessly at the ceiling. “This place is fuckin’ with me. I feel like I should be outside. Doing work.”

“What kind of work.”

“Training. Cleanin’ the yard. Grimy out there, right now.”

There’s a long silence where you’re not sure what to say. Of course you fucking hate it here, maybe. You got crushed into the dirt every single day trying to do something you didn’t even know you had a choice in until it was too late. People lied to you here. For years. You fucked up here, exquisitely. But you don’t say that, because he’s snippy, and you’re tired, and those two things don’t mix well. You learned that the hard way.

“I knew all of the stuff that was in the album already,” he tacks on, almost an afterthought.

Is it time for confession again? Are you supposed to avert your eyes? “Oh.”

“I locked it up,” he continues. “It was easier to just forget he had a family. A past. Anything tying him to anyone. Then it was like – like there was no standard for how things went. He didn’t have to be some guy. I could tell him to not let up until I passed out, and he’d do it. Fucked up thing to ask someone to do, huh.”

“Fucked up ask to follow through on,” you mutter, and you know him well enough by now to assume you’re getting a massive eyeroll for that.

“That’s what a tutorial is for. They’re not supposed to keep track of how long you grind.”

“Yeah, but he was still a fucking guy. Guardians are still people. Jane’s dad is a goddamn riot. And you’re an unbelievable asshole. I’m two for two on meeting Guardians who have personalities, and even if one of ’em is a twenty-car pileup who is also a man, it still counts.”

“I pity Egbert, then,” he drawls.

“Crocker.” You’ve been over this, but it is confusing, you’ll admit.

“Okay, I pity Crocker. Whatever. Point is, I flipped his switch, because I’m smart as hell.” He sighs. “Or somethin’.”

You purse your lips, tapping the fingers of your right hand against your ankle. “You really hate it here, then.”

“Might be the best place I ever lived in, actually.” He folds his arms, tucking his hands into his armpits like they’re cold. “Everything was under control.”

Against all odds, he sounds kinda lost. Nostalgic. A little confused, a little when-did-everything-go-wrong.

You know exactly when and where.

Jesus dicks, it should not be this hard to hate him. Dave absolved you of everything the minute you met, basically. It’s his fault he screwed everything up, not yours. (Not that you actually fucking believe that, because as much as Dave can forgive and forget, you can match it five times over with shit he don’t know about. And which you purposefully withhold from him. You know, like assholes do.)

And yet.

And fucking yet.

You listen to the AC rattle and drip in the heat, watch the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes. He’s mostly failed to act like the nightmare you thought you would be. He’s not even that physically imposing. Like, sure, he’s tall, and it’s obvious he’s lifted a couple of dumbbells in his time, but he’s more lanky than anything else, just like you. Excessively vain, incredibly exhausted, foul-mouthed and sharp-edged. He’s just… some guy.

Some shitty, annoying, punk-ass guy who terrorized Dave every day for years.

And despite knowing that, knowing what he did, what he said he chose to do, he almost feels like an older brother to you, at this point. You used to want to kill him, and you don’t agree with him on practically anything but puppetry and strife strats, but you have a weird rapport with him that you swear is a figment of your imagination half the time. You both got fucked up by some of the same people – well, mostly one person – and he got stuck with an evil version of your childhood boon companion who hated Roxy, in a world where Jane and Jake died years before the Game began. Everything and everyone who kept you on the straight and narrow, gone. Those are the privileges of being the elder brother.

Any other person would have the right to shrug and say, so fucking what? But you don’t have that luxury. You could have been him, too. Easily. Those could have been your choices. Your friends could have died, or you could have pushed them away. You still very nearly shattered them beyond repair.

The only thing stopping you, really, was that you wanted people to like you. That you were starved for human interaction, and Roxy was nice to you, and she fed your monstrous appetite for affection with the right words and gestures. That used to make you feel like an asshole. Now, looking at him, it just makes you feel lucky, and thankful that you had enough sense not to fuck it all up by the end.

“Dave hated it there, too,” you say against your better judgment. “The apartment, I mean. I kind of wanted to recreate it, since we have basically infinite build grist, and all. With the rust and everything. Perfect replica of a shitty rig, for peak irony. But he wasn’t jazzed about the idea. Didn’t even seem nostalgic for your place on LOTAK. And I think it was because of me, or you through me.”

“Mm.”

God help you, you cannot stop blabbing about this all of a sudden. You’re not even sure you’re accusing him of anything, or maybe you are, because you keep imagining what your friends would say if they saw you humoring him. “I mean, he gets twitchy at night. He’s always just. Looking over his shoulder, and he doesn’t like being in the room when I’m metalworking, or doing any of my robot shit. And he still isn’t over his aversion to puppets. Sometimes I wonder if it’d be easier if I didn’t look like you, or sound like you. If I didn’t like the same things you did.” You force a laugh, for your own sake. “But he’s okay with Rainbow Dash, so I guess he doesn’t hate everything about me.”

“Lucky you,” he murmurs. He sounds bitter, but there’s no heart to it, not like there would have been, days-weeks-months ago. “He’ll get over it.”

You bite your lip. “You know that’s a shitty thing to say, right? We’ve been over this.”

“He fuckin’ will, though. Pops back up every time. He has a talent for that.”

“You really think he’s just going to forget you, and everything you did to him? For him?”

He’s raising his voice at the ceiling, suddenly, palms facing upwards, fingers curled. “Yeah, no shit. He’s got you, right, Pinocchio? A real fuckin’ boy, a real fuckin’ brother. A life. An intergalactic goddamn boyfriend. And I can’t—” He cuts himself off, slams his open hand down on the armrest. It makes a dissatisfyingly soft noise. A spring creaks somewhere inside. “I can’t do anything. To him. Anymore.”

“You’re still doing shit to him, whether you like it or not,” you say, cool as can be. “He can’t forget you, not while I’m there, and he’s not getting over shit so easy, no matter how smoothly he tries to play it off. And there’s only so much I can help him with. I look exactly like you, remember?”

He throws it back at you with a laugh. “What am I supposed to do about that? You think some leftover fucking hypervigilance is in any way equivalent to physically staying in the same house as the guy who took a shit on your life for no reason? I’m done. I told you. Done doing anything to him, or for him, or whatever.”

Jegus fuck, this guy. “You did e-fucking-nough, you know. Enough for one lifetime, maybe two. It’d be cool if you could own up to the fact that your actions have far-reaching consequences and that you have to take responsibility for their lasting effects.”

Hands up, mock surrender. “Sure. Fine. I own up. I fucked him up forever, and he’ll never recover. What the fuck do you want from me? An apology? Want me to beg for forgiveness? Fuck off.” He gives you the finger, still supine.

You ignore that. “Would you even have the balls to ask me for it?”

“From you? What the hell are you gonna forgive me for? Being a shitty sample track? Whaling on your big brother?”

It’s mean. It’s purposeful. You stuff your blooming temper back in its box. “I know you can’t do it. You’re too scared of literally everything. That I’d say no, or even worse, that I’d say yes. How are you gonna tell me I don’t know exactly what you’re afraid of when we are literally the same person?”

He’s silent, sullen. You’re not sure if he’s dragging his feet or if he’s just fed up with this little spat.

Go again. “Okay, then. Do you actually fucking care about him? As your kid, or even just someone that you hurt? Or was he just a Tamagotchi to you, and now you’re done with him, and you don’t give a shit anymore?”

That’s the wrong thing to say, apparently, because he levers the chair back up with a loud, rattling clank, and stands, and walks away without a word.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going? We ain’t done talking.”

No answer. The front door closes. You used to think this was his attempt a power play – he gets to decide when the conversation ends – but now you understand that he’s a coward when it counts.

“God fucking dammit.”

You pick up your Easy Mac again, fuming. It’s cold.

You spend the rest of the afternoon sleuthing around the house, although the mystery has lost most of its allure by now, what with Mr. Tantrum’s sulking-ass aura everywhere.

The “tutorial guy” never took any pictures of your Beta self, or at least none that appear in the house. You’re still not sure how much of this is (theoretically) his local memory, and how much is being copied over from the (theoretical) original instance. There are a hundred little things, habits you see carried over from one life to the next. The oval bar of Dial soap on the bathroom sink, placed into a rectangular divot behind the right-hand tap. The Otter Pop wrappers stuck to the TV tray. The bedding on the mattress, lying in a crumpled heap. The AC cranked almost beyond capacity, doomed to fail any day now.

If it wasn’t for the litter, you realize glumly, you probably wouldn’t have guessed there was a kid in this house, once. There are no pictures, no textbooks, no toys lying around, no video games. Maybe there were in the real house, once upon a time, but now there’s just trash and disorder. It seems like your tendency toward disorganization arose from convergent evolution, then. He’s probably not even conscious of it. Or if he is, he chooses not to recognize its origins.

He seems ready to make peace with you by the time the sun sets. That’s the thing with him – older, more volatile, and a local, he has the privilege of removing himself to places you where you wouldn’t know to follow him. He arrives back through the front door, drenched in sweat and smelling like garbage. You give him a look that communicates as much, and he chucks a disgusting shoe at you before jetting up to the shower for a solid half hour. He re-emerges from the bathroom with limp hair, shades hooked over the collar of his black shirt, basketball shorts (ugh god his fucking Lite Brite legs you hate living with this bastard so much), and high spirits.

In retrospect, you should probably have categorized his mood as manic rather than cheerful. Either way, it makes dinner less of a pissing contest of who gets to be in the kitchen without receiving incredible amounts of sulk damage, and more of an acrobatic endeavor. Easy Mac again, obviously.

You let him use the microwave first, and tap your spoon restlessly against the two containers you have set on the counters. Miniature rack toms. One-two-three four-five one-two-three, and so on. Basic. You’ve never touched a real drumset. Maybe you’ll alchemize one when you get back.

When you get back.

Yeah.

For the first time today, you kind of blank out while trying to remember if you saw any windows open on Pesterchum last night. Holy shit. It could have been some kind of error, or something, but somehow you know it wasn’t, and that means…

Actually, you don’t know what that means. And you can’t check, because you’re living in the fucking pre-digital era. How the hell is anyone going to contact you here? Are you going to get chopped-and-screwed TV soundbites like some kind of broadcast ransom note? Fuck, what if you’re trapped here forever? What if you never make it back to the apartment?

Then the microwave beeps, cutting through the beginning of your spiral, and you snap back to reality. Your turn to make dinner.

He waits for you to finish stirring up your noodles and cheese powder before fishing the six-pack out of the fridge and lumbering out to the porch. Of course he doesn’t invite you, doesn’t give any sign that he’s even aware of your presence. Except that he leaves the screen door open, and sits to one side, as if he’s leaving you some space. Your first impulse is to be contrary and eat on the couch, or at the dining room table because that’s what it’s for, but your Bear Grylls meteor spawn temperament and your adolescent resentment of structure combine to propel you through the doorway.

You sit down and plant your feet in the cooling dirt, feeling the powdery dust shift beneath your skin. Gross, but satisfying. You’ve always liked this feeling. It has retained its novelty, over the years.

At first you do nothing but eat in silence. He cracks a beer open before starting on his next cup, and it smells bitter. Well, basically everything smells bitter to you. You grew up on orange soda and rainwater. And whatever Roxy liked to drink generally had a more astringent quality.

When he catches you looking over again, he twists one of the cans out of the plastic rings and sets it down next to you, like he’s pushing a drink across a table. Underage drinking, nice. You don’t pick it up until you’re done with your Easy Mac, and even then you just roll it between your hands, where your skin practically sighs in relief.

The sunset is blazing on the horizon. You’ve never seen anything like that before, and you say as much.

“’S all the dust,” he says, waving his hand dismissively. “Changes the refractive index of the air. More lower-spectrum waves get through, and more particles to scatter the light.”

You’re beginning to wonder if he wears his gloves specifically to avoid touching cold beer cans with his palms, or if he thinks they actually help him grip the katana. Your god-tier ones weren’t cut out specifically for swordfighting, but they were all right. Kinda cool. Not much better than your old gloves.

“Makes sense,” you say, as if you haven’t had to calculate refractory indices from childhood with relatively sophisticated equipment. Well, maybe what you’re responding to is his lack of sentimentality for it.

He drains the rest of the beer and yanks another one out, opening his second with a pop and a hiss. “Uh-huh.”

The ball’s in your court, now. He’s inviting you to say something, but you’re not sure what he expects. “Where’d you go earlier?”

“Down the road a ways. Just to take a look around.”

“Find anything?”

He shakes his head. “Nah. Guess it doesn’t generate out that far. Don’t know what I would’ve done if folks were still around, actually.”

You balance the can of beer on your knee, unsure of what to say to that. He seems to recognize a dead end when he sees one, but is highly reluctant to start anything like a conversation. The only reason you can stand being silent around him so long is because you’ve been stuck in the apartment together for so long, anyway.

But he proves you wrong when he says, “I could see him freeze up.”

You roll the can over your face. It’s just hitting you now, the toll this heat takes on a guy. Your brain is mush, even in the nighttime cool. All you can manage to scrape out is, “I literally don’t know what that means.” You have a good guess, but you don’t know.

He crushes the empty can in his hand, then puts it under the heel of his shoe and presses it flat. It crumples like paper. “When he thought he did somethin’ wrong. Or thought he fucked up. He got better at hiding it, eventually.” His tone is somber, but you can’t help remembering the way he sneered about it at first, when he was trying to provoke you. “Tried to teach him. But I don’t think… shoulda seen it back then, but he was never gonna learn.”

The beer isn’t ice-cold anymore, just cool, having leeched your body heat out through your hands, but you nestle it in between your ankles, and they can’t seem to tell the difference. You fold your arms around your knees and hook your cold, wet fingers together, head resting sideways on your kneecaps to stare at him. “Why are you telling me all this now?”

“It’s what you want to hear, ain’t it?” He leans back on his arms, expressionless. “My fuckin’ confession.”

“Okay,” you say, scratching your shin. Probably a mosquito bite. “That’s not the point, though. I don’t want to extract a detailed account of every single way you fucked up. I just want to know if Dave is a person to you. If you consider what you had some kind of filial or fraternal relationship, or if you didn’t want to see him as anything other than a series of objectives for you to check off before you could claim your grand prize.”

You know the answer from his anger, and his relief at being cut off from the gameworld, but you want to hear him say it of his own volition. That’s important, for some reason.

He’s silent for a good five minutes, and you’d think he was freezing you out if he wasn’t frowning, if he wasn’t resting his chin on his knuckles. You’re getting used to this, seeing his hair down around his ears, unstyled. It softens your angles. It makes him look vulnerable. It makes you feel uncomfortable.

“Hard to tell,” he says, and you can tell he’s still thinking. Slow-churned bespoke scoops of thought, here. “Don’t even know if I want to say I did. I mean, he was my kid. That was important. The only important thing. And I want that to mean something. But that’s vague as all hell, ain’t it? Doesn’t actually mean anythin’ at all. Nothing did. ’N that’s on me.”

“That seems like kind of a fatalistic attitude to adopt.”

“That’s what you get for talkin’ to a dead guy,” he quips, stretching his arms and back. His joints crack like popcorn. “I gather we tend to focus on the grim side of it all.”

You’re itching to correct him. “You died, certainly, but you’re not dead. And that has implications.”

“I’m not alive in any kind of significant gamespace,” he reiterates. Then he kind of nods his head and clarifies. “Any kind of gamespace with him in it. I died. Took the last exit.”

It’s probably not that he doesn’t care, at least not definitively. Chin on your knee, you squint out at the indigo sky, mark the steady, bright dot of Venus, first light of the evening. You think he genuinely doesn’t know how he felt, that he can’t separate the responsibility from the person. He was just a vessel for responsibilities, to a point. What does a principle feel about a child? Either optimistic enough to stockpile a penthouse in the middle of H-town like a fallout shelter, or nothing at all. Not even apathy.

But your bro cared about you. And you admired him, would have taken any chance whatsoever to meet him, if you could, if it was responsible. If it wouldn’t have irrevocably fucked up your timeline. If it wouldn’t have… distracted him.

You know that feeling didn’t just emerge from random chance. All the protectiveness you feel about this younger version of your bro, so strong you’re scared you’ll smother him or shatter him with the sheer pressure of it – you’re the same person. You know he has something. Anything, no matter how small, no matter how deeply he’s buried it.

Otherwise, you don’t know what you’re doing.

So you switch to another track, hope you’ll still get where you want to go.

“What was your tutorial guy like? Since you won’t even tell me his name.”

He sighs, taps his foot on the ground. The warmth of the porch light makes his skin look jaundiced. Yours, too. “He was a nice guy. He never hit me when I didn’t ask him to. Didn’t even raise his voice unless he thought I couldn’t hear him. I think he must’ve wanted his own kid, at some point.”

“That doesn’t seem consonant with dishing out the tutorial assay.”

“Don’t think he enjoyed it. Not sure he was conscious of it, on some level. Or at least, it didn’t seem like he had a choice in the matter.”

“So you’re saying that you don’t know whether he wanted to do it or not?” You furrow your brow. “I mean, no offense to the persuasive skills of your ten-year-old self, or to my younger self, for that matter, but that sounds more like a Caliborn thing.”

“I don’t know, I don’t fuckin’ know,” he groans, tucking his head down against his knees, hands clasped over his neck. He’s silent for a bit, but then it seems like he can’t hold it in anymore, and his voice comes out in a rush, quavering with nerves and self-loathing as he scrubs his fingers through his hair. “I don’t think it was him. I think it’s just. Me. I just make everyone around me like that. Violent and fucked up. ’Cause I tell ’em to be. Haha. Sa-wing, batter.”

“Stop being fucking creepy.” You kick at him with your gross dirt-foot, and he just swats you away with a roll of the eyes. “Just because you ask for it doesn’t mean you should get it.”

“Maybe.” He raises his head and reaches over to the six-pack, grabbing his third beer and polishing off the condensation with the hem of his shirt. “I was all kinds of askin’ for it, though. ’S not like I was a good kid.”

You flick the tab on your beer back and forth. It’s still unopened. “So you actually think you deserved to get your shit kicked in on the daily. What kind of shit could you have possibly gotten up to in the middle of fucking nowhere? Did you rob a saloon? Did you hide an alien in your closet and feed them peanut butter?”

The jokes fall flat. He doesn’t say anything for a minute, mouth shaped into in a humorless smile. Then he seems to find his words, and he looks at you – not at your eyes, but at you, nevertheless. “You’d think what I ended up doing would be enough to justify it. Eye for an eye’s holdin’ back too much.”

Jesus dicks. This again. You dig your fingernails into the rim of the can. “Do you really believe it’s karma for what you did to Dave?”

“It’d be the most poetic interpretation.” He turns away from you to take a drink, and doesn’t turn back. “Retroactive retribution, pre-mortem justice. Makes sense, with the whole paradox space thing goin’ on. But nah. That can’t be the whole explanation. You gotta be a special kind of annoying li’l fucker to get what you ask for from a guy like that.”

You lean back in your chair, squinting up at the porch light and its various moth suitors. “Do you really think a good guy would listen to a ten-year-old kid who asks for that, even if they’re polite about it? Nobody was around to stop me when I was ten and getting up to truly idiotic escapades. I’d like to think they would have, if they’d been around.”

“Doesn’t matter.” A shrug. “Ten, twenty, I chose it. And that trumped whatever kinda decisions he would’ve made. He could’ve been a good guy. Didn’t matter in the long run, though, did it? Got fuckin’ demolished by a meteor, like everyone else on the god-forsaken planet.”

“It did matter, though. He trained you. Sure, he was going to die, anyway. So were you. That didn’t stop you from using up the rest of your life like you were told to. Maybe he thought the same way.”

“Don’t fuckin’ lecture me like this is our Very Special Episode,” he snaps, running his hands back through his hair. “Whatever happened, it was uni-fuckin’-directional. I asked to have it laid on me. No one else did.”

You’re going to sour the conversation again, you just know it. “You had a tag-along, though.”

“It ain’t fuckin’ fair to blame everything on the goddamn puppet,” he says flatly. “When I dragged my ass out here every single fucking goddamn day. He didn’t do that for me. He just gave me the choice to keep going. I never would have reached the levels I did without that. So how is it fair to Dave if I asked for everything I got to give him, and you blame it all on some bullshit evil plan. ’S not like I fought what he told me. Hell, I even cooperated.”

“So it doesn’t bother you? The fact that Lil Cal manipulated you, from day one, and you took it at face value? It doesn’t bother you that nothing you did actually prepared Dave for the shit he had to deal with, because you didn’t actually know what was going to happen to him? You were operating on flawed assumptions given to you by a god-pretender who wanted to make you into me for laughs. That doesn’t mean you didn’t fuck up on a catastrophic level, or that you’re not a bad person, or whatever you want to believe. It just means you were flying blind.”

His tone isn’t altogether cold, just… strange. Resigned, maybe. “Yeah. I don’t blame other people for the consequences of what I decide to do. Not about to start.”

“It’s not relinquishing responsibility for your fuckups to admit that nobody else around you actually gave a shit about doing the right thing.”

“It is passin’ the buck to chalk everything up to him.”

“But that’s not what I’m saying.” Like the whiny teenager that you are, you ask, “Are you even listening to me?”

He stands up, slowly, picking up his trash and the rest of the beer. Damn, you didn’t think he would. What a stand-up citizen. Don’t mess with Texas, you fucking animals. The Planeteers are here.

“Let’s go for a walk,” he says, offering you his hand. He doesn’t look at you straight-on while he does, but hey, you’re not that much of an asshole (at least not right now), so you take it and let him haul you up. His palms must be forty-grit at most. You’re surprised your skin is intact by the time you let go.

“It’s dark,” you say, like the genius that you are. “Where are we going?”

“Just out front.” He turns off the porch light and closes the screen door behind him after you come inside. “Get your shoes on. Not like you can die from a rattler bite, but it sure won’t be fun, anyhow.”

You roll your eyes but wipe your feet down in the kitchen with a rag before pulling on your shoes, leaving your unopened beer on the counter. He’s already outside near the front door, wearing the jean jacket from the closet, a flashlight in his hand. Its beam zigzags over the brush.

The moon is hiding behind a cloud at the moment, so the only other light comes from the house. You’re about to leave the door open behind you when he points back at it and says, “Bugs.” So you shut it.

You start off down the path to the gate together, side by side, the night warm and dry on your skin. He never seems to stumble, even in the dark, and works the latch on the gate without needing to see it, handing you the flashlight. You follow him out onto the road, flicking the beam back and forth across the dirt.

By “out front,” you guess he means this road. He turns right and starts walking, toward the glow of the hidden moon. It’s hard to make out much of anything in the darkness, even with your flashlight, but you also get the idea that there isn’t much of anything to see, anyway. Just grassland, dry and brittle in the remaining heat. Maybe an occasional animal in the distance. All you can hear is the crunch of your shoes against loose gravel and grit.

Somehow, holding the flashlight with him next to you, your red alert shit doesn’t go off. You’re just two dudes, walking down a familiar road at night, in what would almost resemble a companionable silence, if either of you could be described as companionable people.

And you walk pretty far. You don’t keep perfect time, but it must be about twenty minutes and more than a mile before he speaks to you again. There’s still nothing around you but flat land and scrubby trees, although you’ve seen the eyes of rabbits gleam briefly in the vegetation before disappearing at the sound of your footsteps.

“It never occurred to me that I coulda turned out so different,” he says, soft enough not to startle you. And you were kind of expecting this, anyway. “Dunno why. Seems obvious, in hindsight. The kind of person I would’ve been if the Game had progressed another way. Or if there’d never been one at all. Well. He wouldn’t have been so…” You hear more than see his shoulders hunch, even though your eyes have adjusted to the night, because you feel like looking at him too hard will make him shut down again. Which isn’t too far off the mark, probably. “I wouldn’ta been. Whatever I turned out to be. I guess.”

You can hear him stopping and starting in his mind, picking out his words as carefully as possible. Like someone learning to walk again, going up and down the parallel bars, concentrating with all his might on putting one foot in front of the other. You slow your pace, and he matches you unconsciously, until you’re both stopped on the side of the road, looking out at the dry expanse of scrub that stretches out as far as the eye can see. There might be buildings here, wherever this is in the real world. Maybe he doesn’t want to see them anymore. You’d understand that.

“What does it feel like?” Your turn to wildly spin the conversation roulette. You hope you win a car. Unfortunately, your Bob Barker would rather fight to the death than just hand anything over. Douchebag.

“What?” He muffles a yawn behind his hand.

“Dying,” you say, and his eyebrows jerk up. “I mean, my deaths were all pretty much instantaneous, and none of them stuck. I haven’t really gotten acquainted with the process.”

He makes a face, like he’s considering whether to answer you at all. He’s well within his rights not to, but your persistence must be paying off, because he gives in without much of a fight. “Feels like shit. I dunno what you want me to say. You die, and then… you get stored in overflow memory, I guess.”

“And you?”

“Me’n my type? Guardians?” He hums. “Guess we just cease to goddamn be. Deactivation. Back in cold storage, just a buncha bits and bytes. I thought we just got deleted, back then, but now that obviously ain’t true. But I can’t remember anything after dyin’. Only what I thought I dreamed up when we were. Y’know. Unsplintered.”

Ah. That’s a joke, maybe. “I see.” You get the feeling that he hasn’t said everything there is to say, but you’re not about to call him out on it. You’ve managed to get yourself under control at least somewhat.

But then he takes a deep breath and looks up, so he doesn’t have to look at you. “It’s like purification,” he murmurs, dreamy, like he’s talking to himself. “Makes bloodletting seem like the most logical medical practice. Like he said. It was like he fit a key into a lock. Everything just. Clicked. It made sense.”

You kick at a loose chunk of asphalt, sending it rolling into the dirt. “What made sense?”

He waves his hands haphazardly. “Everything. The meaning of life, I guess.”

“Which is?”

“Pushin’ the narrative forward.” He flattens his hand against his sternum. “Drama. Intrigue. Character development.”

“Is that worth dying for?”

“Hey. Character development saves the world, remember.”

“Just not yours,” you say, somewhat impatiently.

“Yeah. Just not mine.”

You do your best Roxy :\. “That is pret-ty fucking convenient, with regard to all this talk of blame and responsibility. Seems like the buck’s been passed, because you seem pretty passive about the whole thing.”

“Nah. I mean. Some things you can’t change, some things you can. Doesn’t have anything to do with bein’ passive or active. There are just some aspects of a person that’re immutable. Some that can and will change, given a fitting impetus. And some that can’t be changed within a given timeframe.” Within a given timeline, he means.

That’s the closest he’s come to admitting that you’re right, and that doesn’t really excite you as much as you thought it would. Probably because he’s inconsistent as hell and will probably renege on that statement within the next five minutes.

“Like what,” you ask, a little wary, a little sullen.

He takes a deep breath, and sighs. “Yeah. Been thinkin’ a lot. About this, and the other shit. That maybe everything would’ve turned out better for you two if I’d just bit it early. Maybe if I died out here, of sunstroke or snakebite, or if I drowned, or if I could just fuckin’ follow through, then all this shit would…” He presses his lips together, tilts his head again. “Would’ve gone smoother. Or somethin’. Don’t know what, exactly. But there’s no use in speculatin’ about that, huh? No use for any of this, after the fact, for him. So I guess this is all for you, now.”

That makes you incredibly uncomfortable, but there are very few things that don’t make you incredibly uncomfortable, including you, so you ignore it. “So you’re going back to the splinter-Scrooge theory? Are you finally going to Ghost of Christmases Future me?”

He waves his hand dismissively. You resist the urge to shine the flashlight into his eyes as a fun retaliatory prank. “I don’t think you need me to warn you ’bout shit. At least, not anymore. You already won, didn’tcha? So. I guess it’s more like. Passing the torch, maybe, or taking something off your back. Whatever it is that comes with bein’ us.”

“But that’s the fundamental problem.” You toy with the switch on the flashlight, running your thumb over the serrated plastic. “You can’t take that off of me, bro. It’s just part of who we are. Being absolutely goddamn harebrained, and shit.”

“That’s not what I mean. More like whatever’s fuckin’ you up about bein’ me.” He folds his arms and looks up at the patchy sky. “I’m not one of your possible futures, y’know. Not even under extenuating circumstances. You’re never going off the deep end, not this bad.”

Well, fuck. You bite back the complaints that leap to the tip of your tongue. Better to have those motherfuckers form an orderly line. Don’t crowd the ticket booth, folks, we’ll get everyone a seat at the shitshow.

“How do you know that?” you ask instead, sounding more plaintive than you strictly want. “What if he comes back? You can’t rule out that possibility.”

“Maybe not.” He rubs at his eyes, then his mouth, restless, looking back and forth across the flatlands. “Mm. Used to wait for the bus at the intersection down thataway.” A jerk of the head down the road. “Six-fifteen, every morning, before it got too hot. Not that that means much, down here.”

You squint through the darkness, trying to see it, but no dice. Even the beam of your flashlight gets swallowed up. “What do you even use this thing for?” you complain, flicking it on and off. “It doesn’t help me see shit.”

“I know where we’re goin’. That’s so you don’t trip over whatever’s right in front of your feet.” He glares at you when you point the flashlight at the asphalt between your feet. “Yeah, I know, smartass, we’re on the road right now. Ever heard of a precautionary measure?”

“Are you planning to chase me through the grassland like I’m some Gothic heroine fleeing from a vampiric predator?”

“I really could just book it and leave you to find your way to shelter like Jane fuckin’ Eyre, huh,” he muses. “Wonder if we could get to the river from here. If we walked long enough. Used to camp there.”

“He took you on camping trips?”

“He came the first coupla’ times. After that, it was more about whether I could hack it on my own. Week, week and a half on the river, every summer. Peaceful.”

You can see it, in your mind’s eye. Not a river so much as a wide creek here, but deep enough, anyway. The water is brown, moves languidly between the banks. He crouches under the shade of a short green tree, fly-bitten. “You liked that place.”

“Kinda,” he says. “Not rarin’ to go see it. Probably take us a few days, anyway.”

You squint at him. “So he just left you there.”

“We do pretty well without supervision,” he says, crossing his arms. You swear there’s a hint of humor in his voice.

“So you think I did pretty well,” you say, hand on your chest in mock flattery. “Wow. I’m going to laminate that and hang it up behind all my soccer trophies.”

“Why do I ever open my goddamn mouth.”

You have yourself a nice chuckle at the thought of… living an all-American life, as it were, tucked away in some suburban neighborhood. Soccer trophies, science fairs, movie theaters, malls, the red mail-here swingy appendage on mailboxes. John only talks about it when he’s properly sad-sloshed and Jane’s dad isn’t around to express mild fatherly concern over underage drinking.

He’s stressed out pretty much all the time. The ratio of kids to available lusii is about shitfucked to one. He handles it well, though, and you respect him for it.

“I’d like to think my bro didn’t leave me alone four hundred years out on purpose,” you say. “Although I suppose my entire adolescence was somewhat of an extended camping trip.”

He raises his eyebrows at you. “It wa’n’t personal,” he says. “Purposeful, sure, but I asked him to do it.”

You furrow your brow, rolling your wrist. The beam of the flashlight circles your feet. Jake asked you to do shit, once. To send him a robot, and help him hone his adventuring skills. But only because you positioned yourself as the only person who knew how to help.

“Do you think he cared about you?” you say, impulsively. “I don’t mean in a sort of will he complete the tutorials way, but as a kid that he could’ve killed if he wasn’t careful.”

He pauses to get his words in order, and you rock back on your heels, full of nerves for some reason.

“I don’t know if I wanted him to care about me,” he says, almost conversationally. He doesn’t sound bitter, or sad. Doesn’t really sound like anything. “On some level, it feels like it would’ve been a waste. Of time, energy. I wasn’t his kid. Hell, I wasn’t anybody’s kid. So I couldn’t expect him to treat me like I was. But. I dunno. If all this was fuckin’ pointless, then it – would’ve been useful, I guess. To know that. So I could’ve taught Dave somethin’ else. Like Lalonde probably did for her kid.”

“Not so you didn’t have to go through all that ninja training bullshit?” You know you’re being a little hypocritical here. You like being capable of wild anime stunts. And you’d like to think that, given the chance, you would have been a pretty sick apprentice to your bro. Also, he’s very wrong about the condition of the Lalonde household(s), but hey. This isn’t about that. At least, not right now. “I always thought I would have been better at being a person. Or being around other people. If I’d had my bro around to mentor me. Teach me the ropes of socialization, as it were.”

He shrugs, nods a little. “I don’t regret it. Least, nothin’ that went down out here. Or before he came down on the fuckin’ meteor. And I don’t think I’m cut out for handlin’ people, not now, not then. Never had much to do with anyone else.”

“You went to public school. How the hell can you be more poorly-socialized than me?”

“It was rural Texas in the eighties, kiddo.” He looks almost amused by your answer. “Not a good time or place for half the things we are.”

Oh.

Right.

“But you’re not incompetent,” you insist weakly. “You’re more than capable of carrying a conversation, for one.”

“Got lots of practice.” He does that finger-wiggling thing. You’re not entirely sure he’s being sarcastic. “I keep that shit locked up for extenuating circumstances only. This counts.”

“Doesn’t hurt that you’re talking to yourself, basically.”

“Doesn’t hurt that you won’t shut the fuck up for more’n five seconds at a time.”

You groan, and then you sit down, planting your ass on the asphalt. “Okay, I guess I’ll reconsider. You’re better at derailing a conversation than keeping it on the rails. You’re shit with trains in general. You’ve never shoveled coal a day in your life. You couldn’t conduct electricity if you grabbed a live wire with your bare hands.”

It takes him a moment, but he looks down at you, hands in his jacket pockets. The night is getting colder. You wish you’d thought to bring one of the jackets, too. You miss your wardrobifier, and it’s only been a day. You rub at your arms absently.

“I do fuckin’ hate it here,” he says, finally, like he can hardly believe it. “Never thought about it much. Left a bad taste in my mouth. When I made it to Houston, I said I wouldn’t’a come back here if you gave me all the money in the world. I could just be some cool guy born fully-formed from the meeting of Kriss Kross’s heads. But now that I know none of it mattered? Yeah. I can feel that, in hindsight.” His mouth goes flat, lips pressed together. He shakes his left hand out, like it’s stiff. “Guess I would’ve damn well appreciated a heads-up that I didn’t actually have to roast on a spit for six motherfuckin’ years.”

You remember those six years. You know you only got the highlights, but it was still some hard shit. More unnecessarily brutal than anything you forced yourself to do, or any training regimen you and Jake conspired on. Fuelled by the same kind of determination Caliborn had, that would let you rip off your own leg, kill your own family, win the Game all by yourself.

But not quite, right, because Caliborn wasn’t going to give up his chance to keep you subservient, was he? He got to make you into his pretty yaoi ninja boytoy, in more ways than one, and it was so easy for him to use your own classpect against you, especially with your absolutely unbearable brain. Too much gas in the tank and you’ll gladly do the dirty work of ripping yourself apart.

The silence makes him uneasy. Or maybe it’s just you. “Doesn’t matter,” he mutters, hand going up to his hair. “Got no idea what I’m trying to prove by telling you all this. Nothing changes. Hell, you probably still think I’m a figment of your imagination, and you’re makin’ all of this up. You having fun with this extended therapy session?”

You squint up at him, missing your shades. It hasn’t mattered for a long time whether he’s real or not. But now, with the image of Pesterchum lighting up in your mind, you’re starting to feel… not nervous, but anxious, maybe. About many, many things.

But you don’t want to think about that, so you ignore his provocations and ask, “What did you think would change?”

He heaves in a deep breath through his nose, then exhales, long and frustrated. “Fuck if I know. The course of history, maybe. Stupid.”

“You said it yourself, dude. In the new world, paradox space doesn’t matter for us anymore. There are no quest objectives. You can’t remix history, but you can still change the future.”

“Optimistic of you to say,” he hums. “Don’t think that’s how it’s gonna work out, though.”

You really just are throwing PBS Aesop darts at this dumb ectoclone corkboard. “Could you stop acting like you know the ultimate outcome of every decision you’ve ever made? It’s incredibly arrogant.”

“I have good intuition.”

“You have shit intuition.” You turn the flashlight off and set it on the ground. “You couldn’t intuit your way out of a wet paper bag.”

“You are a pain in my ass. You said you wanted me to take responsibility, right? I took it. I took a shitton of responsibility, and look where it got me.” You guess he means the scrubby ass-end of childhood depression, or the other side of real monstrosity. “What makes you think I can handle responsibility.”

“I mean a proportional fucking amount, moron. Owning your bullshit and admitting the big bad had his claws in your brain aren’t mutually exclusive actions.” You frown. “You can’t possibly be comfortable with your failure.”

“I wasn’t planning on havin’ everything to go to shit, no. But that’s what was at the end of the path I committed to. I lost the right to complain about the consequences a long time ago.” He looks down, not at you, around his feet. “Can’t fall any further now, though. Like you said.”

You’re quiet for a long time, assembling your thoughts. A hundred different insect calls ring in the silence, rising and falling in waves. How did you get yourself in this deep, that he’d be unstable enough to let you into his childhood home?

“You don’t fucking like yourself, do you?” You hear him charge up a sarcastic comment, so you quickly preempt him, pressing down against the gravel digging into your palms. “Sure, you hate this place, but I don’t think you like being anywhere so long as you’re there. Don’t you think that’s kind of fucked up?”

“Ain’t that a kind of hypocritical accusation?” He gives you that weird ghost smile again.

You cock your head. “You’re me, I’m you. Is it hypocrisy or just self-reflection?”

“Navel-gazing, more like.”

“It’s not navel-gazing if it’s important,” you insist, letting your hands flop down into your lap. “You gonna keep arguing semantics or answer my question?”

He laughs, sharp and biting, hands on his hips. “You know what’s fucked up? Nobody who’s not a sprite is supposed to know that metagaming shit. But I was special, so he told me. No, actually, you were special, so he told me. So, no, I don’t appreciate this whole resurrection charade. Shit’s just the same, even without him. I’m the fucking same, just half fucking tank. The same guy who dragged everyone through the shit for nothing.” And there it is, the acrid turn of his voice that shows you just how deep the rabbit hole of self-loathing can go. “Why give me the chance to change now? What’s the point? Ain’t like I’m ever gonna see him again.”

“Actually,” you say, on impulse, thinking of the lit-up terminal in your bedroom again, “I think Roxy was able to establish a signal into what I assume is our pocket dimension. So the possibility of us getting out of here is now nonzero.”

The wind chooses that moment to blow right through you, raising goosebumps on your bare arms. He stares down at you, the new moonlight lighting up his hair and his eyes, and he looks like a ghost, paler than pale. Looks like he’s seen a ghost. Sighs like you punched him in the stomach.

“Are you for real?” he says, so quiet you can barely hear it. “Don’t just fuckin’ say shit like that.”

“I’m not joking. I think my terminal finally connected last night. Only for a couple of seconds, but it did. That means someone is looking for us. For me,” you amend, somewhat guilty for it.

He doesn’t press you about what that means. You’re pretty sure he has a good idea.

Eventually, he sits down next to you, slumping over. He looks like he’s fucking dying. You are melodramatic, you’ll admit it, but you never channel that theatricality into looking absolutely goddamn pitiful. Which probably means that you hit a home run straight through the glass in the second-story window of his brain.

“Fuck,” he says, and it’s a difficult sound, cut out with a knife. “Fuck.”

You give him his privacy, looking down at your hands, at the familiar freckles and scars lit up by the moon, your very own Morse code. You listen, and you keep your eyes to yourself, because you know you don’t want to remember what he looks like, grinding his fists into the ground, tearing at his hair, scratching, cursing incoherently, struggling to breathe just the same as he did back then. You don’t know if he’s crying; you don’t want to know. He’s angrier than he’s ever been, about anything, about anyone. He’s horrified. He’s grieving. You know that.

But, clearer than anything else, you recognize what agony sounds like. The soul-shattering pain of getting a second chance that you didn’t believe in, didn’t deserve, didn’t want, or maybe wanted so badly that it scared you, because that desire would contradict everything you believed about justice. Because it means, in fact, that you don’t want justice, or heroism. You don’t have the self-lessness that a Prince should. You want happiness, despite knowing you’ll never quite get there, and that it comes at a price that others will have to pay. You want impossible, unethical things. And that selfish, entitled level of hubris makes you want to shred yourself alive.

Or it would have, once upon a time, if a lot of things had been different.

It takes him a while to settle down, but when all you can hear is ragged breathing, you turn your head to look at him.

He’s almost curled up, knees close to his chest, face tucked into his arms, hair in wild disarray, hands clasped in what looks like prayer. You’re the only god here, unfortunately, and you used to let a bot take your calls.

You don’t touch him. You don’t say anything. You just wait, arms wrapped around your waist for warmth, watching the normal-sized moon crawl across the sky, the clouds passing in rough, realistic patches.

“Why won’t this fuckin’ game leave me alone,” he groans, beginning to unfold, joints creaking audibly. “Didn’t I do what it wanted me to do? What the fuck kind of justice lets me walk?”

“I guess the world ain’t just,” you say as he peels his hands apart, runs them back through his limp hair fruitlessly. “Nor does it respect the heroism of others. It was always a bullshit mechanic, in my opinion.”

He sucks in a breath through his teeth, craning his head back. His eyes are bloodshot. “Everything was fine. This is a lousy fuckin’ attempt at introducing pointless conflict into a dead plot. Why can’t it just move on.”

“I think you’re the one who’s going to have to get over it this time, bro.” He doesn’t tense up at that, so you continue. “Isn’t it high time you considered changing your goals to something other than eventually dying again? You might not be ready for the responsibility, but nevertheless, you’re getting a chance to rise to the occasion. To try and fix your shit. If you have any kind of destiny anymore, wouldn’t you rather it be this one instead of the apocalyptic shit you were saddled with before? To do one good thing, for once in your life?”

That seems to agree with him, because you can see the resignation settle over his face, in the grim set of his mouth, the lines around his eyes.

“Still don’t think this means what you think it means,” he says. “Shouldn’t exist for me to take. But here it is.” His laugh is mirthless. It’s hard to get a real one out of him. You wonder if Dave ever did. Probably, but rarely. “Here it is, and here I am.”

Nothing, after that, and after a while, you stand up, offer him your hand, this time. He thinks it’s amusing, but takes it, anyway, with a click of his teeth. He rises up from the ground all in one motion, and hands you the flashlight again.

You walk back in silence, less companionable this time, more baleful. You’re not sure what to do, what to say. Something’s bound to happen, if you return to the apartment, but there’s no guarantee that you will.

When you get back to the house, he follows you up the rotted wooden steps, through the front door. Neither of you are up for further discussion, you think, and the only VHS tapes in the house are home videos from someone else’s private life, so there’s no ethical riffing material.

You’re starting to warm up, anyway, and consider another bowl of Easy Mac. Shit’s pretty good, you have to admit. It’s radioactively orange, full of preservatives, and ready in minutes, so it matches your diet pretty well.

He takes a detour through the living room before coming back into the kitchen and leaning against the counter, watching you work the microwave.

“No way I’m takin’ the master bedroom,” he states. “Just to put that on the record.”

“You sure you want to sleep on that busted-ass mattress?” You don’t have good memories of that bed. You don’t see how he could, either.

“Nah. I’ll be good on the recliner.”

“If you sleep,” you say, and he scoffs. “Look, I can take a hint. I’ll hole up after I finish eating.”

“You can stay down here, ’s fine. I don’t mind.”

He doesn’t make eye contact when he says that, but he rarely does; it’s a courtesy, as far as you’re concerned, to let you watch each other without too much discomfort.

You bite the inside of your lip thoughtfully. “Shit, yeah, I think I’d prefer the couch, actually. I don’t think I’d be able to sleep up there, even if I wanted to.”

“Suit yourself.”

While you’re stirring up your mac, you hear him rummaging around upstairs. You have no idea what the hell is going on, and you kind of don’t want to know, actually. For once. Maybe that’s because you know you’ll find out in approximately five minutes, and it probably will turn out to be something obnoxious, and also you are done finding things out today.

When you pad out to the living room, he has approximately a metric glubton of ham radio equipment set out, and he’s plugging in wires, attaching clips, running a power strip.

“What the hell is this.”

“You know how to work this, right.”

“Yes, but—”

“Ain’t got a laptop, and this is the only shit in the house that’ll send a signal,” he says, patting the transceiver. “Good to know I don’t need to baby you through this.”

You scoff. “It’s absolutely primitive equipment. Of course I know how to work it. It’s like asking you if you know how to drive a car. It basically runs itself.”

“Uh-huh. So work your godly magic, Ma-Ti.”

“That’s not what my powers were.” You purse your lips thoughtfully before talking again. “Did you use this stuff when you were a kid?”

He sits down in the armchair and gives you an amused look. “Yeah. ’Course. Radios and phones made it out here a long time before computers did. Spent a long time blueboxin’ from a payphone just outside town.”

You settle yourself in front of the transceivers, picking up a pair of worn headphones with worn pleather cushioning over the earpieces. “You were a phreaker?”

“A prank caller.” He cranks the La-Z-Boy back until he can lie mostly flat, then kind of thuds down against it, pulling his hat down over his eyes to block out the light. “Thought you might be interested, seeing as this place isn’t exactly computer-accessible.”

Elbows on the table, you hook the headphones around your neck, wrapping the cord around your finger absently. You don’t know how to read this. From anyone else, you’d think it would mean he wanted to get out of here as much as you do. But unlike you, he’s not trying to take over the project to ensure it goes as quickly and smoothly as possible; he’s handing you pieces of a puzzle you’ve never seen in full. Maybe he’s trying to apologize for flipping his shit. Maybe he’s realizing, like you are, that this isn’t a thought experiment. It’s not a one-off, what-if episode. What you do here is no longer quarantined from causality. And never has been.

You’re just not sure he knows what to do with that knowledge. Whatever he decides, it certainly won’t be what you would do, or what you would want him to do.

And that is unsettling. You may have splintered him off, but you’re increasingly uncertain that he’s a splinter at all. Just like he’s been insisting this whole time.

Whatever he is, he seems set on snatching up some fitful Z’s, so you pop the headphones over your ears and get to work.

He doesn’t sleep well, your not-splinter. As you search, listening to the beeps and tones and variations on static fuzz, adjusting dials and flipping switches and squinting at the oscilloscope, you see him snap awake now and then. You’re a light sleeper, too, but not this bad. He startles up to halfway-sitting before he realizes where he is, and it takes him a while to settle back down, for his breath to even out.

You register all this while listening to the Game chirp and buzz around you. You’ve never listened to it like this; you’ve never listened to any world like this, really. Radio was never your forte. There was nothing to listen for, in your empty Earth, except for whatever faint signals Roxy was sending from thousands of miles away. Everyone else was dead.

That’s the only thing that makes this familiar. You’re listening for Roxy again, surrounded by nothing but silence and emptiness, in a house someone left behind long ago.

A couple of hours in, you take a break, and wander out into the backyard, looking up at the millions of stars simulated in the sky. You could pick up some of their faint radio signals, faint and wobbly, the white noise of the universe trickling in through your limited equipment. You’re familiar with these – they’re the ones that used to appear above your home at night, when you would lie down on the roof with too many thoughts buzzing around in your head, and try to get lost in the Milky Way. It used to work pretty well when you were a kid.

With a sudden start, eyes full of stars you know for the first time in two years, you realize that if you ever leave, you’re going to leave this behind, too. The last view of your universe, stored in some glitched-out memory you have no idea how to access. The universe that your bro lived in, the one where his apartment still stands. The remnants of the world he fought to save.

If you leave, you leave him, and almost everything he gave you. Again. And the thought fills you with a deep, sudden sadness that weighs your chest down as you slowly, reluctantly return to your makeshift radio station.

He’s asleep again, one arm slung over his chest, the other draped over his face. You flip a couple of switches, adjust a few dials, try to guess whatever frequency will tune you into the world beyond this one. It kind of feels like he expects you to dial up heaven, or something. Not that you'd put it beyond your capabilities, but this might take longer than even he thinks.

What do you have left to do but try, anyway?

When the sun begins to rise again, and the sky lightens two shades above black, you hear the armchair creak and clank, hear him groan, crack his joints. He sits down next to you, still looks just as awful as the first day you saw him – maybe worse because of the hair, still limp and mussed.

“Got anything goin’?” he mumbles, rubbing whatever little sleep he got out of his eyes and slipping his shades back on.

You shake your head, sigh, lean forward onto the table. Effectively, all you’ve done so far is twiddle your thumbs and look around. There’s nothing weird or actionable that you’ve been able to tune into, no ear to catch your transmission. It’s just you and the static.

He nods. “Was worth a try, anyway. You drink coffee?”

You’re pretty sure you don’t reply before he steps into the kitchen, and very shortly, it begins to emit the various clacking, pouring, and gurgling sounds of what you assume is the brewing procedure. You stare glumly at your various displays, wishing for your laptop. There’s just not a lot you can do, trying to connect with the digitized world from behind a bunch of, as far as you’re concerned, stone-age tools. SBURB is primordial software, encoded into the very fabric of the universe; the complexity of its engine reaches far down beyond the subatomic level. If you can get this thing to pick up on someone else’s signal, it’ll be through nothing less than an exploit.

While you’re grousing about this, he sets a cup of coffee down next to you. Jane has grown pretty fond of the stuff. You think it’s probably one of her attempts to develop her connection to her father in your brave new world. Some of the others have taken up the habit, too, and the trolls have long been alchemizing their own kinds of casual low-grade stimulants. You wrap your hands around the cup, breathe in the dark, sour aroma.

It tastes like tar, but not in an altogether bad way.

He must see the face you make, because he snorts from the other side of the table, one arm folded under the other, free hand looped through the handle of his mug. It says Pikes Peak 14,115 over a stylized icon of a snow-capped mountain.

“Goin’ on a journey over there, aren’t you.”

“I was raised on a steady diet of carbonated artificial orange flavor. This has negative amounts of sugar in it.”

“It’s what we in the business call ‘bitter.’”

You shoot him a look over the rim of your cup. “What, the puppet porn business?”

He takes a loud sip of his coffee. “That, and many others.”

“Is it true that America runs on Dunkin’?”

“Fuck Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, dude. This shit right here? In this cup? Is better than that. That coffee is basically two handfuls of hot water.”

The ramble goes on for a bit. You’re pretty sure he’s just filling dead air, spitting out whatever his brain spins at the moment, and for a few minutes you swear he’s just workshopping diss couplets about fast food breakfasts.

Eventually, he offers to take over the setup for a bit. “Probably more familiar with this thing than you are,” he says breezily.

“But you have no idea what to look for.”

“I’ll just let you know if I hear any spooky alien shit, a’ight? Can’t be that complicated.”

You end up relenting and switching chairs with him, if only so you can see him sit there and not come up with anything at all, and sulk when he lets you take back the captain’s seat again. You’re not above that pettiness, is what you’re trying to say.

And of course he wears the headphones like a DJ, one hand cupped over an earpiece, holding it in place, leaving his other ear free to listen to the feedback. Or to you. He flips switches, spins dials, makes microscopic adjustments as his fingers skate across sliders on five different machines. The waveform on the oscilloscope balloons and shrinks over and over again. You’re pretty sure he’s not actually doing anything productive, but his command of the machinery is admirable. You can almost imagine him at fourteen or fifteen, sitting in the living room, making prank calls or spying on the government, or whatever he was doing besides training.

“This is the first time I’ve seen you be proactive about anything constructive,” you comment, swirling your coffee around in your cup. “Are you actually excited about the prospect of leaving? Because your reaction to the news was ambiguous, though intense.”

“Excited’s a word. I’m itchin’ to leave this shithole and get back to where we were, if we can.” He presses his lips together, continues his work like neither of you had interrupted. “I have my doubts about me being able to leave this place, in general. But you have hells of unfinished business. No reason to help you slack on it.”

That’s a cryptic reference to Dave, you think. You stare at your coffee, uncomfortable. Is he doing this for you? For you, and Dave? Does he think you’re going to put in a final good word for him? He’s wearing such a defeatist attitude when it comes to his own existence that you think he probably believes he can’t leave. If, hoping against hope, you make contact through this collection of ancient relics, you’re going to have to ask about that, because you’ve got some theories.

He’s fine to sit there for hours. You have nothing to do except snoop around, make food in the kitchen, and train. Except you don’t feel like training here, because you remember what it was like and you would rather not participate in a reenactment of any kind or to any degree, even for a one-man act, and you’ve already snooped so much you might as well be a Dogg sitting on a red kennel.

You wonder idly, peeling open a frozen dinner, if he smoked at all while he was alive.

One mushy Salisbury steak later, he’s bobbing his head to some inaudible beat, and you’re forking mashed potatoes that taste like absolutely nothing into your mouth. He’s in the flow, and has ceased to be anything resembling a good conversational partner, so you’re flipping through an old TV guide, fact-checking your knowledge of eighties reality television programming.

Then he pauses, tilts his head to the side, and pushes a few buttons. You pause your reading for a moment to watch him as he leans into his earpiece and listens intently.

“Think I got something,” he says, slipping the headphones off and handing them to you. You press your hands down on the speakers to seal them over your ears.

And you hear it, faintly: a gradual upsweep, like the call of a whale in deep water, an almost plaintive sound.

You look back at him, battling two emotions. The first one is incredible excitement, and the second one is impotent fury at the fact that you listened to jack shit for ten hours and he’s been here for only five, and somehow he’s the one who picked up on an aural anomaly. God dammit. Some assholes have all the luck.

The upsweep starts again, fading out as it reaches the peak of your range of hearing. Sounds like radar; sounds like something is trying to ping you.

“That’s her,” you say, and when he raises an eyebrow at you, you clarify: “It’s Roxy or Sollux, I’m pretty sure.”

“Okay, so we found the Red October,” he says. “Think you can get a message through?”

You try. You really do. The pattern doesn’t change in response to anything you try, on any frequency. The only thing you can conclude is that your equipment simply can’t broadcast a signal strong enough to match what you’re receiving, like you’re standing on the ground yelling at a passing plane with a megaphone.

The two of you fiddle uselessly with the thing for the better part of two days. You’re sullenly consuming an Otter Pop (orange, yes, so sue you for having consistent taste) and possibly dozing off, listening to the steady upsweep that is driving you up the wall, as well as the crickets absolutely losing it outside. It’s an insectoid mosh pit out there. You do not appreciate it.

He sees you getting frustrated, and tags you out. Yanks the headphones off of your head, shoves you out of your seat unceremoniously, and takes over from where he interrupted you, seamless as can be. You guess there are some upsides to this whole arrangement – your workflow is similar enough to avoid any methodological complications.

You lie down on the loveseat, careful to avoid touching the cracked parts with bare skin, and switch the TV on and off, legs dangling over an armrest. Now that the initial excitement of seeing actual static snow on a CRT has worn off, the thing bores you. That feels blasphemous to admit, but you didn’t grow up in the MTV generation. You were raised through practical tutorials designed by a genius, albeit one who was admittedly very into things like tomfoolery and shenanigans. Besides, you can generate more interesting noise patterns by rubbing your eyes and watching the phosphenes burst in geometric patterns against the backs of your eyelids.

Keeping your eyes closed, you hone in on the sounds of your asshole roommate as he makes continual adjustments to the broadcast. Humming, clicking.

Do you trust him? Not to sabotage your chances at returning? Are you scared he’s going to reveal his presence before you’re ready to talk about it with the others? Are you absolutely certain he won’t accidentally destroy all of the progress you’ve made in every arena in your life?

The answer seems to be yes, because you’re not prowling anxiously around the room, trying to wrest control back from him. You trust him implicitly, in a way you have never trusted any other version of yourself. Not to do the right thing, of course, but to be predictable. Not to be benevolent, or kind, or to have any kind of reasonable moral grounding, but to have a routine. And to have the same interests in mind. To have your eyes on a similar prize. To be, at the core of it, Dirk Strider. You’ve both claimed your prize before. The only difference is that you snatched victory from the jaws of death, and he worked in reverse.

You trust him, but no one else will. And now that the near future is opening up in a very real and tangible way, you want to stall here, in your comfort zone, in a place that makes sense to you and no one else. You don’t want to have to make excuses for your behavior just yet. You don’t want to have to explain why you can doze off in the same room as him, knowing the sleep he stole from others through sheer terror alone. You don’t want to explain why he isn’t a specter to you.

He wants, against his better intuition, to take that second chance. You know he does. You have to believe he does. You’re the one who has to have hope this time. It’s you.

So you keep your eyes closed, and try to believe that his shift in attitude isn’t just temporary mania, or a mask for his fear. That he has plans for a future, just like you. You try to believe, even though there is mounting evidence indicating otherwise, that you are the same person.

You think, although you’re starting to drift off, so you can’t be sure, that he’s beatboxing quietly to himself.

Chapter Text

You wake up with a start in your own bed, lying on top of your pool ball sheets. You hold your breath for a moment, uncertain if this is just more shenanigans, and then you breathe a sigh of relief. The world does, too, because a breeze pushes through the crack in your open window and ruffles your hair. The nights you spent in the middle of Texan backcountry picking apart your splinter(?) seem like little more than a bad dream.

And maybe it was just a bad dream. You don’t know. This place keeps fucking with you in new and unexpected ways, and you have had it up to here with the various surreal regressive hypnosis shenanigans it seems determined to pull. You stretch up, hands grabbing at the ceiling, and yawn like a cartoon.

Then hot pink text flashes on the terminal that you’ve left open, and you think your heart might skip three beats in your mad dash to the computer. You kick at the comforter and fall onto the floor ungracefully, scrambling across the carpet to squint at Pesterchum.

-- tipsyGnostalgic [TG] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] at ??:??OVERFLOW AT LINE 0 --

TG: yo d strizzle
TG: anyone home??

Holy shit.

You were right.

There are not enough modifiers in your prodigiously expansive vocabulary to properly express exactly how right you were. You cannot wipe the grin off of your face. It is permanently markered on there, but you are fine with the possibility of it never coming off, because sooner or later you’re going home. With Roxy, the impossible always gives way to the inevitable. Your hands leap to the keyboard of their own accord.

TT: Hey, Ro-Lal. Long time no human contact whatsoever.
TG: !!!!!!!!!!!
TG: what the EFF is up my guy!!!!!

You dash off a response, maybe too long of a response, but she’ll forgive you for it, because it’s been a long fucking time and she can give you all the shit she wants once you’re out of this godforsaken Polly Pocket universe. You never thought you’d miss having a sea of people around, but you have things to do back there, dammit. So you give her the rundown of the conditions you’ve been trapped in for ninety percent of this purgatorial skit, what is essentially a log of what you’ve been trying to do with the TSPnet, and an essay with only a third of the necessary philosophical footnotes detailing your gradual descent into cabin-febrile egomania.

She is very sympathetic to your plight, but warns you that she’ll only be on for about an hour and a half, because the signal is proving difficult to sustain, due to multiple factors. You get the lowdown regarding the patch that is allowing you two to communicate, and your excitement starts to morph into apprehension at exactly how gargantuan of a task you’ll be taking on together. There’s only so far your mood can fall, though, because fuck, you’re talking to Roxy again, and that’s the peachiest thing that’s happened to you so far in your entire non-afterlife. Your brain is so ecstatic to be talking to someone that’s not him that it’s dumping your entire store of dopamine into your blood right this instant.

TG: so whats been happenin all up in that desync for the past like 5 months lol
TT: Desync? I assumed I had entered a pocket dimension. Unless that’s what you meant.
TG: ehh kinda
TG: dont u rembember what happened?
TT: Not specifically.
TT: My memory is pretty fragmented when it comes to that particular event, although I’m fairly sure I have been able to recall everything else with the usual laser-sighted pinpoint accuracy.
TG: :O
TT: And honestly, I’ve had my mind occupied with other issues since then.
TT: We don’t really have time to get into that, though.
TG: r u ok? i rly hope u havent been like
TG: fighting for ur life while ive been dickin around in the lab
TT: I’m fine.
TT: The issues have been more metaphysical and ethical in nature than a material threat.
TT: I haven’t been defending my childhood home from swarms of raygun-toting robots with killer codpieces that are really my darkest fears given horrible hentai life which can only be vanquished through enthusiastic sexual union in an incredibly manufactured classical psychotherapeutic metaphor for the resolution of traumatic experiences. Or whatever.
TT: In case you were worried about that.
TG: nope
TT: Shit, that robot hypothetical did become rather abstracted from a material threat, didn’t it.
TT: I guess I’m out of practice.
TT: Anyway, not to be unnecessarily cryptic, but I’d rather spend our limited time on this first broadcast trying to figure out how we can have more conversations.
TG: finally lmoa
TG: ok

Roxy’s assessment of the situation isn’t grim so much as it is puzzling. Not that you think it’s inaccurate, far from it – she has better tools and a more holistic vantage point than you do, and she’s hella smart, anyway – it’s just… strange. Apparently you were conducting a routine flyover observation of the grounds for maintenance purposes, and you seemed to glitch out of existence when you approached your landing site. Accordingly, “evry1 fuckin freaked out,” and ever since then, the “crack team” of Sollux, Roxy, and occasionally others (mostly Space aspects) have been attempting to figure out where the hell you’d gone.

Because you weren’t dead, that much they could figure out. Your motivic signature was still there, just translated or transposed, which they figured was due to some sort of dimensional and/or temporal shift. They ruled out temporal when Dave’s godtier powers turned out to have very little effect. You imagine he wasn’t happy about that.

You imagine he won’t be happy about a lot of things, and chew on your thumbnail while reading the rest of Roxy’s theory about oscillating pocket dimensions and collapsing waveforms. Interestingly enough, she has an explanation for your jump into west Texas.

TG: n then when i tried to broadcast the signal thru
TG: it got excited!!
TG: i mean like the electrons way not like a puppy lmao
TG: like i introduced charge and accidently reconfigured ur space
TG: supercharged ur environs
TG: so we lost contact there for a while cuz i couldnt find a way to reconfig for ur new dimensional duds
TT: Yeah. The environment certainly did transform.
TT: But I could still hear you trying to ping me.
TG: :O???? how??
TT: Radio. I could hear your sweep on UHF, for some reason I have yet to figure out.
TT: I know that’s not exactly a satisfying answer, but it’s all I have for now.
TT: I gather our instance is in periodic contact with the true session’s entry point somehow, which is affecting our connection.
TG: ya

“Ah. Strategically withholdin’ information, are w—lgh.”

You flail instinctually, which jams your elbow back into the offending dickhead’s throat. “Get the fuck out of my room!”

He rubs his neck with a facetious frown. “Ouch.”

“How long have you been crouching there like some amateur Splendy LARPer?”

One shoulder up. “Coupla minutes. Was gonna see if you were awake, and clearly you were.”

You squint at him, pushing his face away from yours by the chin. Jesus, the personal space prankage is going to come back to clamp its spiked steel mandible into the fragile ankle bones of your Issues, huh. “Did you fucking sleep at all?”

“Yup.”

“Are you lying?”

“There’s really no way to know, is there? Who’re you talkin’ to?”

“Roxy,” you reply, turning back to the screen. You’re getting a little nervous, for some reason. Probably at the prospect of this life intersecting with your other one. It’s not like she has a video feed set up, stop being paranoid. “You know. My Lalonde. She’s a remix of yours.”

“Huh.” He continues to peer over your shoulder, and you resist the urge to cover the screen with your body. “She the one who got the comms set up? Sharp.”

“Incredibly so.”

“Although she doesn’t have quite the delivery I was expectin’ from a multiply-degreed scientist.”

“And I expect most people wouldn’t expect to be able to have any kind of non-superficial conversation about complex concepts in sociology and engineering with you, given your stubborn hold on that dubiously Texan affectation.”

“Touché, I s’pose.” He rocks back on his heels. “So. You convinced I ain’t your splinter yet, what with this rock-solid and incontrovertible evidence?”

“I am giving the notion some mad serious thought. The levels of sincere pondering are at a Richter ten. You should be checking your emergency preparedness for a seismic upheaval of revelatory considerations. Can you table that shit for later?” You focus back onto Pesterchum to see Roxy pinging you, in a much more metaphorical sense, this time.

TG: hey
TG: DS
TG: u still there??
TG: omfg
TG: if i lost connectiob again im gonna be soooo fuckin pissed!!!!!!!
TG: *connection
TT: Sorry, got distracted.
TT: New technological developments, and all that.
TT: Give me a minute.
TG: r u srs rn
-- timaeusTestified [TT] is an idle chum! --
TG: sign

You twist around to look at him as he unfolds and gets to his feet. “Where are you going?”

“There are like, three options. Use your imagination,” he says, padding over to the door. “Why do you need to know.”

“I was more asking you why you’re absconding while Roxy is dishing out some choice info. I thought you were a little more passionate about our escape room plans. And the more brains on this project, the better, right?”

He snorts, hand on the doorframe. “Just debrief me later. Or don’t. That text color’s givin’ me a damn headache, anyway.”

“You’re wearing sunglasses. It’s fucking fine. Don’t tell me your old man eyes are giving you trouble all of a sudden.”

“Whatever. Tell the brat pack to hurry it up, if you’re so hungry for my input.”

You try to dangle a carrot. “She figured out how we managed to jump scenarios over the past couple of days.”

“Don’t care to know the details. Lemme know when something fuckin’ happens,” he says, and disappears into the hallway. You hear the bathroom door close. God, what a dick.

TT: Sorry.
TT: You were saying something about the Game processes that led to this dumbfoundingly asinine situation.
TG: i mean
TG: it was p much random as far as me n sollux cn tell
TG: like it tried to write 2 sum obscure address but that obv wasnt a valid action or sth
TG: so it wigged out n partitioned itself
TG: n u got chucked over 2 the next world over or whatev
TG: ive been combing thru this core dump for weeks!!!
TG: i was p sure intitially that ud just been fuckign deleted or smth
TG: but sollux picked up ur sig
TG: weve basicly been defraggin the universe since u disappeared
TT: Shit.
TT: That sounds pretty hardcore.
TT: How did you know I’d pick up on your signal?
TG: we didnt
TG: it was kiiiinda a last resort?
TG: like idk what we were gonna do next if it didnt work
TT: I cannot believe we have to deal with SBURB’s shitty engine in the win state. Holy fuck.
TT: What if this happens again? Have you figured out if there’s a way to prevent it?
TG: nop
TG: its p arbitrary
TG: i dont think we could stop it from happenig even if we knew wat was causin it
TG: but at least it wasnt life threatening!
TG: im rly glad ur safe dirk!!!!!!!
TG: relatively :P
TT: Yeah, relatively.
TT: It’s good to hear from you. Probably one of the top ten moments of my life so far.
TT: It’s just been me, myself, and I for a dumbass long while.

Which is, again, not technically untrue. Lots of technicalities, with you.

TG: wow i made tha ds top 10! damb i gotta reorganize my trophy cabinet n shit
TG: speakin of 10s
TG: janey just got here!!
TG: shes been staying up with me thru hells of late nites n stuff! shes my hero <3
TG: u wanna talk to her?
TT: Roxy,
TT: Do you even have to ask?

And soon enough, cyan blue text begins rolling across the window.

In your last fifteen minutes of contact, Jane updates you about everything in the world that she can, and you ask her every question that pops into your head, about everyone whose name or face you can remember. It’s a thrill just knowing everyone is still out there, alive, whole, and in a peaceful world. It’s like they reached through the connection and lifted a mountain off of your shoulders, and you find yourself smiling at the screen, and the cyan-blue lines of text that flow across it.

You’re pretty sure you’re inhaling bandwidth, your fingers cramping with how fast you type to cram all of your remaining questions into the suddenly tiny text box, when Jane sadly informs you that the signal is about to cycle out. The way you can almost see her frown over instant messenger kind of breaks your heart. But you make the most of your last few minutes, attempting to express at least one sincere emotion because you know she likes that shit, and when she finally signs off, you find yourself scrolling back through your conversation, drinking it all in again. God, you miss them. You might just keep rereading this pesterlog until they manage to get the connection back up.

Obviously you did not tell either of them whom you’ve been sharing space with.

Because,

you absolutely cannot, holy shit, dude.

Look, yes, despite RoseMary’s cogently concerted effort to administer a surgical beatdown to the carefully-constructed ironclad barriers you have erected around literally every part of your core personality, you still cannot trust anyone with this information. Not because you hate them, but because the idea of shit not going to your specific twenty-step plan, or at least not proceeding in an orderly fashion of your design, is absolutely insane to you. All this disclosure is going to do is make someone else feel guilty and pressure you into telling Dave about your bullshit, or have someone else do it first. So you have to keep your lid vacuum-sealed on this one, sorry, hoss.

Anyway, the lack of dream-bubble-y behavior in your dream bubble makes sense, now, because it’s not a dream bubble at all. It’s a little fragment of the universe, created for some stupid reason by a random fuckup of Bethesdan proportions, and you and your pre-scratch self ended up overwritten onto each other. Man. If ever there was an argument against intelligent design. Okay.

So he’s not a splinter, either (well, technically you’re both splinters, you guess), which confirms your sneaking suspicion, but kind of makes you nauseous, too, because that means the sneaky fucker lurking around out there really is the guy who forced Dave to hide food in his own room in order to just have shit to eat, and you really do have the memories of another kid bleeding out in the Texan desert because he shook hands with the universe. And you really have been out here playing hockey with the puck of his soul for personal psych notes, more or less.

And, worst of all, you’ve grown grotesquely attached to him. (Or re-attached, if you will.) You know it’s shitty of you, you know you’re betraying Dave’s trust (not that he thought you’d get stuck on a dimensional island with his shitty guardian, but despite the absurdity of it all, you know with absolute certainty how he’d react; you know that saying that he is especially predictable sounds insensitive, but it’s true). You know you’re not supposed to be fraternizing with, much less speaking to, him. You know that what you’ve done in here will not create good outcomes for anyone except you. As always.

You have this stupid, juvenile, futile hope that he’ll – not get along with everyone, but exist peacefully on your world. That he can keep changing, and you can keep hoping. Like fucking show-and-tell, you displaying your non-splinter, eagerly explaining how you could, one day, be redeemed in the worst-case scenario. Trying to prove a case with hard evidence that no one else seems to care about. They’ve been making their decisions on how they feel about you, and what if that changes? What if they finally, honestly acknowledge what you’re capable of and begin to believe you’ll actually follow through with it like you already know you would?

And you don’t have the right to sweep everyone else’s life plans off the table just because you’re insecure, or some shit. You want a fucking security blanket to assure you that you’ll never become a monster. You’ve attached your own self-worth to his redemptive capacity. It would be manipulative and unfair to insist that everyone live with the monster in the crawlspace with only your word to assure them he won’t triple axel off the handle and demonstrate the heights of your idiotic hubris for everyone to see.

But you still want everything to work out your way.

This sucks. It’s hard. You wish you didn’t have to deal with this. It would have been easier to just live by yourself all these months. You would have gone totally feral, sure, but only under the influence of vague ennui, and not because of your proximity to the most emotionally illiterate and stubbornly life-averse man in the entire fucking multiverse outside of yours truly.

You groan and stretch your hands out in front of you, cracking your knuckles. You have other shit to do right now; you can swim deeper into your morose musings later, when you’re… well, when you have all of this figured the fuck out. Or something like that.

One final scroll through your pesterlogs, and you think you know where to start working before you make next contact.

You’re both sitting on the floor with your customary cups of ramen when he asks you to explain exactly what the problem is with your communications array. You give him a rundown of Calliope’s Temporal Shift Protocol networking add-on to Pesterchum. You can’t actually change what it does, because you have no fucking clue what it is, how it’s written, or how to even open the file it came in. It doesn’t even have ASCII characters, or any discernable input mechanism, really. Since you can’t modify Callie’s shit, if you need to make changes, you have to mess with the Pesterchum client itself. And so you wrote a mod to stabilize the client while you applied the patch updates you periodically received from your temporally-distanced friends.

You wrote the majority of this mod when you were about ten years old.

That was a bad idea.

“Essentially,” you say as he appears to ignore you for his noodles, “I have to go back and remove some limiters in the client. The TSPnet is probably interacting poorly with whatever engine is powering our desync, but we can’t exactly reach in and change the xeno-oil, so I’ll have to see what I can do otherwise.” His fork pauses on its way to his mouth for a fraction of a second when you say xeno-oil and you glare at him. “Not right now, please.”

He shrugs innocently. “So you need to mod your mod. Seems easy peasy. All in a day’s work type’a shit.”

And at this, you heave a deep sigh. “The mod I wrote for the add-on is not pretty. I can probably sift through the code and reorganize it in a week, but depending on whether my calculations are accurate, that might not even be helpful.”

He purses his lips thoughtfully, then says, “I could take a look at it. If you wanted.”

It takes a moment for you to register that he’s offering to help you debug, and at that realization, you think faintly that you’re going to need a winch to lift your jaw back into place. Instant panic and terror. “No. No. Oh my god. You actual fucking lunatic. Absolutely not.”

“Why are you kickin’ up such a fuss? You still use C++ four hundred years in the fucking future. I thought you’d be on, like C-quintuple-sharp or somethin’ by then.”

“It’s not actually C++, and no,” you repeat, desperately blocking his path to your setup with your arms. “A hundred times, no. No one touches this code except me.”

“’Kay, so it’s C by aliens.” He scoffs, tries to push your arm down out of his line of sight as you both stand up. “Goes with the whole oceanic theme. You don’t want me to see ’cuz it’s radioactive garbage, I bet.”

You hold firm. “I told you, there is no way I’m letting you at this shit. You might have been a totes rad ninja phreaker-hacker in nineteen eighty fucking nine, but programming conventions have moved on since you spent your adolescence balls-deep in Fortran or whatever.”

“C++ was specified in the early 1980s, genius. Thought you were supposed to be some kinda programming prodigy.”

“I am calling you a torch-swinging Neanderthal with probably little to no understanding of how to use something as basic as pointers, much less the capacity to manually debug a truly labyrinthine program with hundreds if not thousands of idiosyncratic functions that are interdependent and practically arcane incantations at this point.”

He is one hundred percent trying not to smirk. “Lots of spaghetti, then?”

“I hate you.” Are you pouting? Is it obvious? Your ten-year-old self was so disorganized.

“Fine. Can I look? With my eyes? No touchin’, pinky promise.”

You scoot away from your desktop and fold your arms over your chest, glaring at his back as he links his hands behind his neck in a showy gesture of what you assume is supposed to be half-goodwill and half-condescension.

After about ten seconds, he’s gone completely still, staring in total perplexity at the terminal. “What in the shit is this.”

“I know.”

“No, hold on, lemme read this back. Lines 577-579:
/*Do not delete this comment or you won’t be able to call this function anymore for some
infuriatingly opaque and most likely occult reason. If you are pasting this back in, I told
you so, and also fuck you.*/”

“I know,” you moan, covering your face in abject, red-faced shame.

He pauses, inching his face closer to the screen. “Is this pointer bein’ cast to a physical fuckin’ address? What were you tryna do? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”

“Just don’t touch it,” you plead. “Look, I’ve cleaned up since then, but unfortunately this house of cards cannot be rearranged in its current form and will topple if you so much as breathe on the display, so please, for the love of Lamb Chop, do not do whatever it is you are thinking about doing.”

Too late. His hand has dropped reflexively to the mouse, other hand forgotten at his neck, and he is scrolling through the guts of your horrific Lovecraftian flailing spaghetti monster child from like almost an entire decade ago. You are being exposed. This is humiliating. An involuntary noise comes out of your throat that sounds like the call of a dying whale.

“Line 430: int tauBar = int tauBar; /*Just don’t think about it.*/ Christ. Forget debugging, this needs to be completely re-fuckin’-factored.”

“Do you think I haven’t tried?” You are just a tiny little ball of mortification now, gesturing at him with the criminal hands that midwifed this abomination into existence. “It works, doesn’t it? Let’s just work with what we have. Please.”

All that gets you is a hand flapping vaguely in your direction. “Don’t worry, I ain’t gonna break your precious, dear, sweet, darlin’ program. Although I use the word ‘program’ very loosely, here.”

“There are many things on that computer that only tangentially fit the description of ‘program,’” you admit, and then you are seized by a sudden panic. “Um. Okay, fine, you can modify a copy of this file, but I am hereby prohibiting you from opening anything else. There are serious ethical ramifications to consider here. Sensitive projects with fragile feels. Like sentient tissue paper that has no mouth and cannot scream. Be motherfuckin’ considerate.”

You haven’t thought about the guy in a while, but the idea of him even looking at Lil Hal’s source code (if it’s there anymore, fuck, it might not be, and if it is, should you upload him to your shades? Is leaving his executable untouched equivalent to pocket-dimension murder, or is it more akin to abortion? Fuck, that’s an awful chain of words) makes you queasy. Like, you had your petty squabbles, you had your fundamental differences, and you were fucking cruel even back then, but any changes that would be implemented by either of your hands feels like – well, shit – a violation of his right to determine his own development as an individual. That wasn’t a top-priority concern back then, but you…

You stare at his back, the inside of your cheek caught between your teeth. Damn. Some things really don’t change, do they? You’ve always been a complete control freak trying feverishly to convince yourself of your own benevolence.

“Can I get a seat here,” he monotones, still scrolling.

“Fuck you.” You hop onto your bed. In a flash, he’s sitting in your chair, opening up another window in Notepad#, and hammering out his own comments. The ceaseless clacking of your keyboard is, you find, somewhat soothing, even as you open up your laptop to avoid sinking into a maelstrom of anxiety about you-but-shittier dicking around with extremely vital processes upon which your chances of escape are precariously hinged.

You absolutely refuse to lose it over this. You have backups and redundancies. It’s fine. Everything is fine. You’re fine.

You are so fine that you cannot stay in the same room while he’s hammering away without getting a tension headache. He complains about being able to hear your teeth grind from five feet away, and verbally kicks you out to the living room, where you stand awkwardly for a moment, unsure of what to do without access to most of your projects. Like, you’re pretty sure you’re not going to create an environment conducive to letting a code chiropracticor concentrate.

Initially, you try to occupy yourself with strife practice, but the anxiety is just. Incredible. Absolutely unbearable. You made the choice to hand him some seriously life-or-death tech and you are completely unable to get your mind off of the vague, terrifying idea that he’s going to accidentally – or maybe even on purpose, for god knows what reason – delete everything and destroy your one weak communications link to your friends, like an interdimensional EMP. He could open up Pesterchum and just wreck your shit, probably. Or ask to speak to Dave, masquerading as you.

But you don’t think he would, because you’re approximately one hundred percent sure he’d rather hack off his own head with a wet bar of soap than acknowledge that he exists in any significant capacity, especially not to his own kid.

His moonlit terror comforts you, in a kind of fucked-up way. It gives you a guidepost, a flashlight in the dark, so you don’t trip over your own feet just because your brain is preoccupied with action items that actually matter. You can eliminate a lot of possibilities based on that moment of fracture alone. You know he isn’t going to use the chat function, although he may very well read through your chat history, which is fine, because that’s what you would do. He isn’t going to sabotage your code purposefully, because he knows you and Dave are practically joined at the hip nowadays, and he’s either looking for some kind of redemption by proxy or a chance to stop existing in the first place. You know he’s probably going to try to produce something functional. He’s going to be sincere about this.

Damn. You really managed to pull off the “first month of rehab” turnaround shit. He’ll probably relapse into being you at some point, but you’d give yourself good odds that it won’t happen until you both blow up at each other again, which won’t be until you actually sit down and have the talk about what the hell’s going to happen once you have a concrete evacuation plan.

You give up on strifing practice after a couple of hours of shoddy forms and try to turn the brain combine onto less routine fodder, like video games. You have your laptop hooked up to your Xbox controller the first time he takes a break, recording your button inputs as you attempt to replicate (and then hopefully build on) some of the more sophisticated glitchfuckery you’ve seen him do.

“Progress report?” you call back.

He doesn’t say anything, just starts punching numbers on the microwave. He must be in a flow state. You don’t exist right now. That’s fine by you. Means things are going well. Or that he just hasn’t broken anything yet. In a minute and a half, he takes his ramen out of the microwave and flash steps back into your room, and you shrug and return to fiddling with your joysticks, excuse the triple entendre.

You completely break MAD SNACKS YO on Day 2. You’ve heard doors opening and closing in the hallway a couple of times – nature calls, even to those of you who are capable of sustaining intense hyperfocus for weeks – but every time you’ve peeked in, the only thing that changes with him is the amount of empty soda bottles on the desk. Must be a minor condition to the game engine. It will remain a minor condition to you so long as he keeps his mess localized. But you push your check quota a step too far when his head snaps around to look at you, and you find yourself being pushed away by the face before the door slams in it.

Well. Okay. Fine.

You get your comeuppance for the door slam some time later (a day? Two days? You don’t really have a memory for this kind of thing) when you finish unloading in the bathroom and throw the door open in preparation to jet back to the futon. That doesn’t happen. Instead, the door rebounds immediately with a THUNK, and you hear a bellowed “JESUS FUCKIN’ CHRIST” come from the other side of the door. When you crack it open again, you see him clutching at his face. There’s just a little bit of blood in the process of glitching out when he pulls them away. Wow, he looks like he’s going to murder you. It’s very uncanny, seeing your own face move like that. You can see how scary it would be to someone else. You’re just amused.

“Major condition, huh?”

“I’m gonna give you a major fuckin’ condition,” he mutters, feeling at the bridge of his nose. It doesn’t look any more broken than it was before. “Get outta the bathroom.”

“Let me see.” You try to move his hands out of the way, but he shakes you off.

“I told you to get out of the bathroom, you little goddamn chode.” He drags you out by your shoulder (you kind of let it happen) and locks the door behind him, leaving you standing in the hallway.

You bang on the door. Déjà vu, really. “Is your nose fucking broken or what?”

Running water. He’s washing his face, probably. “You’re damn lucky you’re on the other side of that door, is what.”

“So it’s not broken.”

The tap squeaks off and you skitter back as he re-emerges, looking highly unamused and flicking water into your face, gloves in one hand. His nose is fine. “Fuck off.”

You flash step out of the way of the droplets, because you’re cool and you can do that, and then you are in your room (yeah, it’s your fucking room, in case someone forgot) standing right behind him as he settles back down at your desk, in your chair.

He’s remapped some of your keys, but you can only barely tell, because his fingers are a blur over the keyboard. Your code is getting hacked to bits in the editor. You can see him dragging his cursor around, highlighting some parts over and over again in the original file, a repetitive tic that feels like watching his brain buffer for a split second before he starts typing again.

There are a lot of windows open. Outside of your original mod file, he has multiple Notepad# files pulled up on the left side of the screen, which seem like references, and you can see him switching through five new DS Code projects labelled with inscrutable handles. It’s very, very messy. But with the size of the scrollbar on what is maybe his main project, you’re thinking he’s made a lot of progress.

You are not going to admit that he is competent to his face ever again. You have learned from your experiences.

“You missed a bracket,” is what you say. “If you put your cursor over—”

“I’ll fold your monitor in half if you keep runnin’ your mouth, see if I don’t,” he says loudly.

“Do it. You won’t,” you fire back. It’s an empty challenge, and gets zero reaction, and you roll your eyes along with your entire head as you leave.

You’re actually not sure how much time passes before you get the urge to nag him again. You managed to hit your zone trying to see if you can get your weather prediction system up and running again. Some parts of it are functioning – it can sense ambient temperature and humidity – but most of it is still completely lights-out. After a couple of hours fiddling around with the tiniest screws you’ve ever had to handle plus another couple of hours trying to figure out what the fuck’s up with your potentiometers, you trot back through the apartment, into the hallway, and use your toolkit to trigger the lock in the doorknob that’s holding your bedroom shut. You are fucking bored.

His typing has slowed down a lot. It’s mostly the sound of your mouse wheel grinding through chunks and chunks of text. He has his chin planted on his fist, elbow digging a hole into your desk. He is not paying attention to you, as usual, but this time you can tell he is genuinely filtering out everything except the screen in front of him. Every so often, he taps at the keyboard to correct something, fixing typos and catching loose brackets.

Then, with a final series of clicks and taps, he closes out all of the other windows and leaves only one project in your text editor open.

“Done,” he announces, slapping the side of the monitor and standing up, stretching his arms and fingers like he hasn’t been sitting there for basically the past… uh, few days. Maybe week? Anyway, you were beginning to think he’d just stay in that horrible hunched gargoyle pose for the rest of eternity. Your chair is ergonomic, for fuck’s sake, bad posture shouldn’t be happening.

When he steps away, you plant yourself grimly in front of your computer to assess the damage.

The filename reads wavy_bullshit_fixed.cxx, and the first lines say:

/*suck it.
      -TT*/

 TT. You make an involuntary hmm noise. “Do you have a chumhandle?”

“Kinda. I was on a different client most of the time.”

You twist in your seat to squint at him. “You think we have the same one, though?”

He shrugs. “Possibly. Haven’t used it since my IRC days. Maybe it’s time for a change.”

“I think you should probably add me after you do that.”

“What, so you can text me from one room away? Kids these days.”

You give him a withering stare. “Do you even have your phone?”

His ancient, clunky-ass iPhone 3G comes out of his sylladex, not his pocket. He waggles it a bit to emphasize the black screen. “Bricked, ever since we got here.”

Inhaling deeply, you suggest, “It might not be, anymore.”

You watch his eyebrows rise above his shades, and then there’s a beat where you can hear some thumping around in the living room – why isn’t his charger in his sylladex, what an idiot – and then silence, for five minutes, before you hear a loud “Oh SHIT, son” through the wall. Well, well, well. How the turntables.

“Add me,” you call back, opening up your client. After a bit, a yellow notification that you haven’t seen in a while pops up.

Chum Requests: [1]

You click Accept and return to your shiny new TSPnet mod file.

The code is neat. Very neat. Almost brutally simple, but elegant, in its own way. His comments are thorough, if not long-winded, and you can almost see the flowchart in how it’s all laid out. What with his self-labelled “soupy” brain, you expected more mess.

Then again, if you think about it, this is a form of stylin’, just like the way he strifes. Using his inhuman discipline to dazzle. You could have made this work with less organization, and he probably knows that. More generally, you could have done all of this yourself, and he definitely knows that. He just could not resist the opportunity to get up in your shit, huh? You’d count this toward the evidence supporting his splinterhood if you weren’t 90% convinced otherwise.

Well, now the only thing left to do is to run it.

Which you do.

Your theory about compensating for the oscillation by repurposing Calliope’s Temporal Shift Protocol is confirmed in live time as Roxy’s Pesterchum icon lights up again, now that your connection has popped back into existence. Now all that remains is to see if it actually remains stable, and if you hypothesized an accurate model of the dimensional interactions.

His head pops back into the doorway. “Fuckin’ worked, didn’t it.”

“Fuck yeah, it did.”

“Cool. I’m puttin’ on Muppets Take Manhattan in five.” He retreats to the living room again, leaving you alone with your newly-minted connection.

-- timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering tipsyGnostalgic [TG] at ??:??OVERFLOW AT LINE 0 --

TT: Yo. I’m back.
-- tipsyGnostalgic [TG] is an idle chum! --
TT: Worked some magic on my end. Shit’s up and running again.
TT: Callie’s TSPnet really saved our asses again.
TT: Message me when you get a chance.
TG: holy fuxk dider strider
TG: this is fuckin great!!!!
TG: imma have 2 run sum checks from my end to see if it handshakes but like
TG: hellllll yeaaaaa fist punp
TG: id ask how u figured this out but honestly idfc as long as it works lmao
TT: I know the feeling.
TT: Pretty good hax, right?
TG: hells o good hax my dude
TT: You know it.
TT: Okay, so,
TT: Not to ruin the moment,
TT: But I’m going to ask you something weird.
TT: Can you keep the portal open after you extract me?
TG: the super rad wizzard gate :3?
TT: Yes, that.
TT: The super rad wizard gate.
TG: hhhmmmm
TG: idk but i cn look in2 it
TG: can i ask what 4?
TG: like r u investin in a sicknasty timeshare or smt n im not allowed in
TT: Just trust me on this. If you let it close permanently, we’re going to lose something very important.
TT: Very dangerous, but very important.
TT: To me, specifically.
TT: And possibly others.
TG: ………………………………
TG: diiiiiiirk
TG: di stri
TG: d s man
TT: I’m not going to make some bullshit cryptic comment about irons and fires. So don’t worry.
TG: uh huh
TT: I just don’t feel,
TT: Comfortable.
TT: Telling you what exactly is up.
TT: Nothing to do with you, everything to do with me making bad decisions. As per usual.
TG: :\
TG: i aint rly an extortion kinda gal
TT: Right.
TG: but u kno
TG: i will fuckin extort u 4 info dirk!!!!!
TT: I figured.
TG: i KNO u n kanaya talked about ownership of information n transparent practices as best practices yadda yadda bler blar
TG: so if u want me 2 keep the portal open then u gotta tell me y!

Your fingers hesitate over the keys. This isn’t technically lying, but having to propend technically doesn’t do much to comfort you regarding what exactly the fuck you are doing. Or not doing, as the case may be.

TT: I’m not sure allowing you to pressure me into giving you the information you want was the intended outcome of those little “talk therapy” sessions.
TT: For lack of better phrasing, let’s just say,
TT: I have a splinter in here with me.
TT: And, contrary to popular opinion, I’m not quite happy with the idea of eliminating all of my different selves.
TT: There is a reason none of my attempts have never worked out. And I’m sort of glad they didn’t.
TT: Wait.
TT: Do not let Rose read that under any circumstances whatsoever.
TG: hmmm
TG: ok!
TT: That’s it?
TG: thats it! :3
TG: im not gonna force u to basicly murder another one o urselfs
TG: specially when u dont wanna
TT: Oh.
TT: Well, okay. I was expecting more resistance than this. Given the range of possibilities we’ve encountered.
TT: Interesting.
TT: Anyway. Would it take a lot of energy to keep it open, if you managed it?
TT: I know we have sustainability concerns.
TT: And would the contents remain shelf-stable?
TG: we r all ABOUT susainability n green livin on earth c!
TG: as far as i cn tell the runtiem environoment is suprisigly robust n self sufstaining so theoreticallaly ur splinter guy should b fine
TG: plus im a fuckig wizard remeber i cn probs think o hella majyykal solutions *lightning fingies*
TT: Yeah. The Rogue of Void Main(), specifically.
TG: har har v funny ur such a good programmer
TG: neway even if i could id rather not keep it ovpen 4ever bc who knos what other bee ess mite happen w it
TG: but a lil tiny short bb time shoul be ok if thats gud
TG: allllso, im trustin u not 2 make any akshually bad decisions dirk
TG: n that u wont give me any reason 2 regret tryin to do this
TT: You probably won’t regret it any more than I will. But you know how the whole Heart thing tends to work out.
TG: i dunno :[
TG: i dont think its as inherantly as bad as u keep implyin
TG: like… i miss talkin to ur AR! he was cool!
TT: He was most certainly not cool.
TG: thats a bad take and u kno it
TT: Yeah.
TT: I know.
TT: I just,
TT: It’s weird.
TT: Maybe he’ll return in a future drop. There’s really no way to know.
TG: le sign :\
TG: speakin of returns
TG: we miss u out here
TG: even sum of r troll buddies
TG: sollux called u a
TG: 1 sec lemme find it
TG: “TA: why the fuck 2hould ii 2tay up two watch. agaiin, ii miight add. TA: he2 a dumb2hiit 2piiked up aniime douchebag who got hiim2elf locked up iin 2tupiid gliitch jaiil for iincompetent wiiggler2. on alterniia he would have been iin2taculled. TA: youre hii2 pale pal, you do iit.”
TG: which is how u kno
TG: he rly cares *wimk*
TT: Wow. That means a lot.
TG: ya so
TG: ill keep u up 2 dave
TG: *DATE
TG: re how things go n shit
TT: Thanks, Roxy. This means a lot.
TG: no probelm!! u kno i gotchu
TG: h/o i gotta afk for a hotttt minute were yellin at john again 4 sum reason
TG: c u later buster!
TG: b good >:O
TT: Haha. Yeah.

-- tipsyGnostalgic [TG] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT] at ??:??OVERFLOW AT LINE 0 --

You push back from the table, spinning lazily in your chair before jetting off to the living room, where he’s just finished booting up the Xbox and is cracking open a beloved DVD case. Looks like it’s time for some prime time entertainment. The both of you settle in just in time for the opening credits to roll.

There’s not a lot to do, now that you’re home. Now that you’ve finished the majority of the projects you had planned, and because you know your time here is probably limited, you’re getting kind of antsy, and really bored. Brains-spilling-out-of-your-ears level bored. It’s either boredom or sinking Artax-like into a bog of ennui and picking at your psyche like a scab.

Or picking at his psyche, which you’re trying not to do too much, even if you are still curious about many, many things. You try to keep that consultation to your collection of his memories, but, plentiful though they are, your selection is surprisingly limited. There is a lot of fragmentation going on in there, and you’re not sure you have the time or tools to figure out how to put them back together. You’ve gone through all the accessible ones already, it seems.

There are a couple more from the days before Dave splashed down in the middle of Houston. Working, partying, picking up new hobbies. Mixing up some new shit for the rowdy b-boys he met through a friend of a friend. Driving to out-of-state conventions. Researching the meteors that hit earlier in the year, anticipating his own.

And then there are some more, later, that are grim, and at this point, you’re fairly certain he would never discuss those with anyone except… well, except Dave. And you’re also fairly certain he doesn’t even want to do that. At least, you wouldn’t. You couldn’t even bring yourself to really, seriously apologize to Jake for all of your cloying, string-pulling bullshit until a couple of months ago. It was for the best, sure, but you had to be goaded into it, and nobody enjoyed participating in Operation Extract Dirk’s Head From His Ass.

What he did was indescribably worse than that. When you close your eyes and find yourself transported to that rooftop, understanding more and more why Dave was so adamantly against recreating your apartment, you never discover anything good. More often than not, you have to shake off your nausea and anxiety by going out for a swim. It’s one of your old habits, one you’d never thought you’d have to resurrect. Still comforting, even if you mostly end up dwelling on the severity of this whole shebang.

To make things more unsettling, humorously or not you’re unsure, your routines seem to be steadily converging. You find yourself hammering on the bathroom door whenever you feel like taking a shower, finding it occupied. You’re both in the kitchen at the same times. You see him already there, more often than not, when you head up to the roof to get some air. You’re synchronizing. Becoming more similar. And you don’t know who’s becoming more like whom.

You both seem to make it a habit to practice at the same time, too. It’s mid-afternoon when he opens the door to find you this time. It’s usually the other way around, since he doesn’t really do much, or at least you have no idea what other shit he does, and despite how hard you’ve tried, you haven’t had any luck figuring it out.

Some time in, he quits out of a half-hearted form to watch you finish your sets. You don’t mind the staring; you’ve done your own fair share of annoying him, so you guess it’s only fair he gets to annoy you. But you think you can turn this on its head pretty neatly, and maybe you’ll get some tips and tricks out of it.

“Got any feedback?” you ask.

“Your form sucks.”

He probably expects you to just flip him off and continue, but you just break your stance and stand up straight. “How does it suck, specifically?”

“Just sucks.”

You swipe the tip of your sword up in the air like a conductor’s baton. “Constructive criticism only, please.”

“You’d do a lot better if you fixed it.”

“So teach me how,” you say, tipping your chin up in challenge, giving him no quarter.

The look he returns to you is sharp and ever-so-slightly displeased, but he nods anyway, peeling himself off of the AC unit. Doesn’t equip a sword of any kind, though. You haven’t seen the katana since he tossed it into the ocean, so either it’s still down there, or he’s keeping it stuffed into the very back of his inventory.

He doesn’t touch you as he teaches you, keeps his arms folded, but as you move through the postures he prescribes, he lets loose with a torrent of criticism. Turn your foot when you pivot like that, you’ll fuck up your hip socket that way. Elbow back, you ain’t holdin’ a putter, Tiger. No, higher. You listenin’ to me? Higher. Now you’re just askin’ to get your fingers sliced off, dumbass. Don’t meet the blade, let it slide off. Point down. Point down. Widen your stance, what makes you think you can absorb torque pressure like that? You don’t need to regrip, just turn your wrist. Turn – not like that, jesus, are you stupid? I said turn.

His hands hover a foot and a half out as he directs you, intentionally refusing to come into anywhere near contact with you, although it would be easier – you used to fix Jake’s combat form with a combination of constructive suggestions and literally repositioning his limbs to the optimal formation – and, although it’s not what you were expecting after your last strife, you understand why.

And you’re okay with this, even if it is annoying and opaque and hella condescending, but you remember what it was like on the other end of the deal, watching Dave fail again and again and then shrink back when his bro’s patience snapped, once bitten, twice shy. You saw him close off, shut his face down behind his shades. Any kid who wasn’t you wouldn’t have taken this well, especially seeing as he has presented you with perhaps one debatably affirming statement in the entire time that you’ve known him. That’s not a great ratio.

He cools off by the time you finish up, but it seems to have whet his appetite for pedagogy. It’s not what you’d dreamed of – not the teacher you dreamed of, either – but you got some good information out of it, and you’re ready to go again.

You meet a few more times, get a few more useful critiques out of him. The quality of his instruction is slightly variable, you find. He has more of a sense of humor some days. If nothing else, you’re surprised he even agreed to teach you. Not extremely surprised, because you’ve long considered yourself naturally suited to a didactic role, but mildly so, because you’ve spent the last five months seeing exactly how fucked up that sentiment can become.

Eventually, as always, you stick your foot in it.

The sun is pounding down on the roof and he’s giving you some of the most opaque guidance you’ve heard from anyone, and you distinctly remember your spiritual guide clamoring for you to touch his muscles, which was not a cipher for anything except the two base personalities’ excitement for bodily form and toned physique.

“You gotta conjoin the postures.”

You stare at him, pouring sweat, exasperated. “Would you like to give a fucking demonstration?”

“You don’t need a demonstration. Stop pickin’ up your foot when you switch out. That simple.”

“Then what the hell do I do with my foot? I’m not grinding it against the concrete. That’s just going to shave the grip off my shoes.”

“Then don’t grind ’em, genius, you can do it with a touch’a elegance.”

“So I should pivot, but not grind my sole, but I have to?” you ask, less because you don’t understand the principle (you do), and more because you are being difficult on purpose. Perhaps sulking a bit, because this isn’t coming naturally to you, and you hate it when that happens. “Got any other hot tips for bladekind mastery?”

“Jesus christ, we don’t have time for this bullshit! Just do what the fuck I tell you to!” A spike of aggression, blowing out your audio levels. And then he seems to collect himself and realize where he is.

There is no time to waste. There is no countdown.

And yet he’s lived with one for so long that his considerations, or lack thereof, are still deeply ingrained. And that, you know, has serious implications for his… compatibility.

He shuts his mouth, leans back, folds his arms again, gives a rough shake of his head. “Think I’m done.”

You frown. “Only if you want to be.”

“Nah,” he says, dragging in a deep breath. “Nah. I’m done. I don’t think…” And he trails off, but he’s having trouble closing his face to you. He can’t hide his fear now that he knows you know what he wants.

“It’s fine,” you say, reaching out to him, but he pushes your hand away, shaking his head.

“It isn’t.”

“We can go again.”

“I don’t want to,” comes the simple reply. “Feel like I’ve worn a rut in this path. I’m not keen on returnin’ just to wear it deeper. My memory still works.”

The atmosphere is completely dismal now, and it’s pretty much your fault, so you take responsibility for adjusting the psychological thermostat. You’re just not sure how to actually go about doing that. Comfort has never been your forte; your Princely demeanor allows you to dissect and diffract and destroy the intimate workings of the soul, but that isn’t exactly conducive to convincing someone that they’re not too dangerous for the real world. Or giving pep talks.

But you don’t think he needs one. Or that it would work.

You’re not sure what he needs from you, as you are. Faintly, you ponder this marvelously ironical situation, that the only way either of you are going to get what you need out of this whole purgatorial caper is for the other person to already be better. Loops on loops, operations shaping each other. The two of you are caught in lockstep with no inertia to fuel your entangled progression mechanisms.

The only things you can think to say are either an apology – which he never seems to take sincerely, or just doesn’t have a use for, and you’re not sure how you would go about it, anyway, or if it’d be sincere – or to reach your hand up and offer to help him plunge deeper into the orphic depths that your conversations always seem to seek out.

“You can be angry with me, you know. I don’t mind.”

“I’m not fuckin’ mad at you, asshole,” he groans. “I just. I can remember all of it, piecemeal though it may damn well be. Didn’t expect to feel the same way, after all this. And all this time.”

You press. “The same way?”

It takes him a moment, but you don’t relent, and that gets you results. “Fallin’ into the same mindset. I don’t – I was always… there wasn’t enough time. I was afraid to fuck up, and I pushed him, and I thought we were going fast enough, that we’d make it if I just. Kept going, like I used to. I thought I could get us there.” He bites his lip, a sharp, unkind smile curving around it. He adjusts his cap. “All a fuckin’ lie, huh. None of this mattered.”

You return, eternal revenant, to the fundamental question. “So would you have gone about everything differently? If you didn’t have your drive overclocked?”

He frowns at you. “I know you ain’t gonna like this answer. You still wanna hear it?”

Shit. Of course you do. “Yeah. Lay the bad news on me.”

“No,” he says emphatically. “As long as I knew what I knew, in the way that I knew it, I wouldn’ta let up on him. It’s like I didn’t even fuckin’ see him, y’know. It was me, and my damn vanity project, the entire point of my life or some shit, and I knew I could do it. I knew, without a doubt, that I could get him through, and I thought I was makin’ good progress, until I had to hop on that meteor. Maybe it wouldn’t have been as bad, but. It still wouldn’t have been good. ’N in the end, that’s what actually counts.”

He sounds bitter about it, spits the words out like he’s angry. No two ways about it, you don’t like this answer. But it doesn’t tell you about what you wanted to know, and you realize you’ve been asking the wrong question. But you hold onto the new one formulating in your mind until you think he’s done.

There’s not much left that he wants to say on this subject, though. “I thought he was tough enough to take shit he didn’t ask for. Because, y’know, that’s the world. You don’t ask for shit, you never ask, but you gotta handle it, regardless.” His laugh is splintered, jagged. A scrap heap in a dusty yard. “I was charging into all of it wrongheaded from the start. Damn. What a fuckin’ waste.”

“But you don’t think that’s what he deserved?”

He scoffs, but much quieter, almost under his breath, he says, “No.” And that’s the crack, you think, the schism that reveals the cognitive dissonance you’re so fond of fostering until it grows into mature hypocrisy. You have an in, now.

So you give him platitudes that you know mean nothing, are worth nothing, to provoke him. “You did the best you could with what you were given. It was a total shitshow, sure, but your intentions weren’t inherently cruel.”

The look you get is equal parts ridicule and incredulous disbelief, but it fades quickly, and what replaces it is more pensive, stony. “I’m comin’ to realize that ‘my best’ meant worse’n fuck-all, in the long run. It was what kept everything in perspective, when I was a kid, the idea of. Being useful, somethin’ like that.” That hard, sour smile, again. “Affecting the course of human events. Not in the least by goin’ down as a force for good.”

“You died fighting Jack, didn’t you?” you point out, softly as you can. “I did the same thing, just with less permanent consequences. It’s how we won. I think that’s a net positive.”

“The difference is that y’all killed him,” he says. “You helped Dave kill him. All my fuckin’ skill, and I couldn’t even touch that motherfucker, not when it mattered. Not always a good thing, failin’ when you’re intended to, is it? Didn’t know Dave’d be there. Didn’t know anyone would be there. I don’t know why, or how, but I don’t think he was supposed to.”

You furrow your brow. That would have come up in conversation, if he’d been there. If he’d had to watch it go down. He’s never actually said he wasn’t, but you’re pretty sure he wouldn’t have been able to keep something like that to himself all this time. “But he wasn’t.”

“He—” He makes a gesture that you can’t decode. “He was. Just different.”

Oh, okay. He means Dave’s sprite. Davesprite? You didn’t really get to know him that well before he became someone else entirely. And you don’t – you guess that was him, orange feathers in the death memory, cross-referenced with fragments of conversations you’ve picked up between John and Jade. Maybe you’ll get to meet him someday, or them, whichever one comes back, theoretically.

“I remember him,” you say. The necklace, chain snapping in his hand, the wing bursting into a hundred downy fragments beneath a black blade. “You tried to get him out. That mattered. It was a good thing.”

“If I could go back, I wouldn’tve done anything differently, no. It was the right decision, in that moment. But it wasn’t supposed to be how shit went down, in general. I fucked up.” He shrugs. “In the perfect scenario, it would just have been me and Lil Cal at the end, just like it was at the beginning.”

“That’s not going to happen again, dude. You’re going to have to learn to be around people. And you’re going to have to talk about this shit with someone other than me.”

“Yeah.” He waves you away. “Whatever. I think I’m not coming up here again, at least not for this. Hard for us, pack rat brains, but I… can’t give you what I know. I can only deal it out one way.”

You’re a little disappointed, but you get it. “Okay.”

“And the rest…” He scratches at his arm, the white scar there. “We’ll – talk about that later.”

That flippant return leaves a bad taste in your mouth. “When’s later?”

“Later,” he says dismissively. “Just wanna veg out right now, if Your Highness doesn’t mind.”

“Okay,” you say again, and try to offer some kind of olive branch again, to make sure it’s relatively smoothed-over. “I’m back online with Roxy and company in about half an hour. If you’d like to invade my privacy and screen-peek over my shoulder again, you’re welcome to it.”

A shrug. “Told you, I’m not interested in the sordid details of your li’l tangled web. If somethin’ happens, I’m one room over.”

You end up pulling Pesterchum up on your laptop and sitting in the living room with him as he mows his way through Prince of Persia. He’s on the couch, and you’re on the floor, leaning against a pile of plush friends and watching from the sidelines as he wages a ferocious battle against intended gameplay.

-- tipsyGnostalgic [TG] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] at ??:??OVERFLOW AT LINE 0 --

TG: hey thar
TT: Hi, Roxy.
TG: anythin interesting happning on ur end 2day?
TT: Not really. I’ve been monitoring everything you told me to, and nothing has been presenting out of the ordinary so far.
TT: Do you know if the overflow error is on my end or yours? Normally I wouldn’t complain, but it’s getting pretty annoying.
TG: lol its client side for both of us
TG: idk how the server connection is bein sustained seeing as ur like
TG: not technicly connected to ours
TG: but u cn prolly root around in ur time settings n get rid of the timestamp altogether!
TT: Right. Shit, I should’ve thought of that. Pretty obvious.
TG: ur good ds
TG: uve kinda been under sum stress lately
TG: if u hadnt noticed :P

You frown. You’re not really that stressed out, at least not enough that you’d think Roxy would pick up on it. At least, not about this whole situation. You’re more antsy than anxious. The thing you’re getting heated about is the thing you absotively, posilutely cannot tell them, cf. your previous navel-gazing ramble about the ethics of informing anyone that you’ve been trapped in a tiny bell jar ecosphere with Dave’s bro.

TT: Surprisingly, I’m not that stressed out.
TG: rly? u always seem stressed about ur splinter guys
TG: is this one chill :O
TT: He is the opposite of chill.

Belatedly, you realize that by informing Roxy of the presence of any splinter at all, you’ve set yourself up for a trap. If you decide not to extract your splinter, she’s going to judge you, because for some godforsaken reason she tends to grow pretty attached to all of the different iterations of you, and if you do, that’s going to blow up in your face with predictable immediacy.

So, at this point, you either have to take the plunge and inform her of your mysterious splinter’s identity, thus locking you into a path that completely robs Dave of his agency in making this decision, or you delay it until it’s too late and they press it out of you anyway.

You should have kept your big stupid mouth shut.

TG: well duh dummy his source material is u
TG: ur also the opposite of chill
TG: so wassup?

You shouldn’t tell her. At least if you keep the big reveal delayed until the very end, it’ll only blow up in your face and no one else will be implicated in the idiocy of your escapades.

You shouldn’t tell her, but you desperately want to, because for a very, very long time she was the only person you could tell anything to, up until a bunch of shit happened and you fucked up.

Therefore, for the thousandth time, on impulse, you make the decision to put a horrible burden on someone else’s shoulders. One that you should have the good sense to carry alone, but don’t, because you just need that much attention.

TT: You were right, I guess. It’s the splinter.
TT: I haven’t been completely transparent with you. I still don’t think I should be, just because I don’t want anyone to think you’re at fault for what might happen if anyone else finds out the sordid details.

Wait. Shit.

TT: Wait.
TT: You haven’t told anyone else, have you?
TT: About the splinter.
TG: no

Oh thank god.

TT: Okay. You’re a rock.
TG: im a rox ;)
TG: gimme the deets!! im actully so fuckin curious
TG: curious george ova here and ur the man in the yellow hat
TG: orange hat mebbe
TT: I still don’t think those caps fit me. Maybe it’s a hairstyling thing. Or maybe I have to wait to grow that final inch.
TG: but ur not growin anymore are u?
TG: were all like
TG: mad post pubescent n shit msotly
TG: well im not sure about r troll buds idk how dat works
TT: I’ve come into some information as of late.
TG: ????
TT: Gotten a glimpse into my future, you could say.
TG: :O???

You’ve committed to this, haven’t you? And yet you cannot

TT: I don’t know how I managed to do it, but I have created a splinter that is a number of years older than me.

spit

TT: It’s been strange, to say the least. I hope I don’t turn out like him.

it

TT: Not because of any aesthetic issues I have. I will continue to look pretty damn cool well into my thirties.

out.

TT: It’s more of a behavioral issue. A number of behavioral issues, actually.
TT: That is to say,
TT: Is it irresponsible of me to want to bring him back to base even if he’s a horrible person?
TG: i mean
TG: pls dont take this the wrong way
TG: but idk if i trust ur abiltiy to assess ur splinters character :\
TG: like u were pretty down on ur autoresponder guy
TG: he did a coupla shitty things but all of us did bc we were dumb bbs
TG: toddlin around in a cruel n unforgivin universe
TG: so i guess i need 2 ask u how u kno hes a bad person?

You peek up over your laptop monitor, simultaneously sinking backward into the smuppet pile. He doesn’t suspect a thing about you attempting to leak spoilers into the main session with reckless abandon. Jesus. You’re the god of a new world, aren’t you? You could get the mouth reclassified as a sphincter with how tightly your lips are sealed. One-way passage only for absolute bullshit. He should be amazed at how hard it is for you to unclench about this issue.

TT: Okay. Let me go back and correct some of the purposefully wrong things that I said in order to cling to the charade of normalcy that I have been attempting to employ largely for my own convenience.
TG: uh huh
TT: He’s not a splinter. Not in the way Hal and BGD were.
TT: When the Game attempted to write to an illegal memory address, I believe it attempted to reinstate a set of initial conditions within the dumped instance it created to put me in.
TT: However, perhaps inadvertently, it drew initial conditions from several sources.
TT: These sources include the Beta session.
TG: so hes a dirk from before the scratch?
TG: i thought those mems were btfo or sumthin
TT: I think they’re preserved for retcon purposes. Or maybe the flags that are triggered by our progress through the different sessions are never really wiped, because we have to conduct future operations on the backs of pre-existing conditions.
TT: I’m not surprised that this shit turned out to be palimpsestic in nature, actually. It’s very literary.
TG: ok so ur tellin me that
TG: wait ok
TG: ur in there with his bro??
TT: Yes.
TT: I assume you’re aware of the nature of their relationship.
TG: i mean kinda?
TG: i kno it wasnt like
TG: good :\
TG: but weve never rly spoken in depth abt it
TG: like out o the 4 of us only janey ever rly got to kno her guadian
TG: n i think thats one of the things tht rly makes us diferent from them
TG: like they mostly knew where they came from
TG: they knew… us?
TG: like rose knew the old me n what she did rly well
TG: or at least she thought she did idk u kno wat i mean
TT: I understand, generally.
TT: So you know that it was strained, to say the least.
TG: ya
TT: I can tell you, genuinely, and with no exaggeration, that he’s one of the worst people I’ve ever met.
TT: But he’s also me. And that complicates everything. Ethically, morally, intellectually, relationally, existentially.
TT: A version of me that Caliborn got his gross, predatory, domineering claws into from pretty much day one.
TT: But now that he’s gone, things are… different, I think. In a better way, if not a good one.
TG: well fuk
TG: yea idk thats
TG: i mean it should b daves deicision rite
TT: I know.

She’s not going to like what you say next, so you take a moment to brace yourself.

TT: But I know what Dave’s decision is going to be, if he knows his bro is alive.
TT: He might think he’s conflicted about it, and he might be right, but in the end, he’s not the kind of person whose conscience would rest peacefully after condemning someone to eternal isolation.
TT: Even if that person was basically the singular cause of all of the misery in his life, and destroyed his own faith in himself.
TG: thts serious 4 sure
TG: but like
TG: u cant srsly base ur choices on whether or not u can predict what hes gonna say
TG: knowing what sum1 is gonna do is not the same thign as makin them do it
TG: its rly an issu of autonomy when u get down 2 nuts n bolts
TT: I guess you’re right.
TT: I’m still conflicted, though. Because whether or not he wants his bro back in the main session,
TT: I do.
TT: I really do.
TG: u kno im a judgment free zone ok
TG: i stll gotta ask y?
TG: u said hes a horrible person n i think weve all had enuff exps w horrible ppl to not want to add another 2 the list
TG: n like im not sayin this 2 be like i think we gotta leave him in the box or whatev
TG: just curious as
TG: fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck
TG: (lmao)
TT: Roxy, this may come as a surprise to you, but no iteration of me has ever been a decent person.
TG: woooo spicy take
TG: ur straight up wrong but ok
TT: I’m serious. We tend toward manipulation, we disregard the autonomy of others, and we always think we know best. That mindset has consistently begged severe consequences. You’ve experienced that yourself.
TT: And before you say anything, I don’t want you to defend me on this. You know I have the capability to destroy any one of us. It’s written into my fucking classpect. He’s the same way.
TT: But I kind of want him around?
TT: It’s pretty vain of me to admit this, but for some idiotic reason, I’ve been compelled to use him as a reference point. The worst guiding star possible. I keep thinking that if he can change, then no matter how bad I get, I can still come back over the edge.
TT: And that I can still have a place in the world.
TG: :[
TG: u kno we dont need hard evidnce for that
TG: ur my friend dirk!! thats what friendship is about!!!
TG: trust n faith n shit
TT: I know trust and faith and shit are premium goods for all of you, but they’re not good enough for me.
TT: They’re sentiments based on idealistic presumptions about my character. Presumptions which I am perfectly aware have no substantial line of reasoning behind them. I will always strive for perfection, and I will always let important things and people fall by the wayside in my pursuit of self-actualization. Those statements have historically been true with very little margin for error.
TT: Our therapy jam sessions are great and all, but I remain thoroughly unconvinced that even if I have attained a relatively more stable mentality about what we’ve gone through, and the ways in which we’ve dealt with it, any relapse I have where I devolve into that ruthless, authoritarian persona again has the most potential for damage out of all of us.
TT: I could singlehandedly destroy the world we’ve been working hard to build, and with it, everything we suffered and struggled to achieve. I could obliterate our second chance at happiness and enjoy it.
TT: Do you think you could forgive me for that?

She’s silent for a good while. You cross your arms and chew on your lip, watching the eponymous Prince of Persia jump clean through several walls and begin falling upward through the level, heel tapping on the carpet.

TG: ur not the only one with potential on that scale u kno
TG: im defo capable of killin u right now by megawishin u out of existence
TG: but u kno i wouldnt bc u trust me or u can predict what im gonna do or w/e blabla
TG: nd ur sayin that destruction part of ur class and THEREFORE ur core personality
TG: n i dont think it is

It’s not that you don’t want to believe her. You just don’t. The least charitable interpretation is that she’s saying this out of misguided naiveté. That kind of trust is simply not in your nature.

TT: How can you say that with any degree of certainty?
TG: bc ur not just potential!!!
TG: ur not just theoretical outcomes! no1 is
TG: ur also evrythin uve done for me, n jane, n jake
TG: but u wont focus on any of that shit bc ur so preoccupied w plannin for some hypohetical .0000000000000000001% outcome eventaulity
TG: if u go off the deep end at this point were in it 2 win it ok?
TG: weve come 2 far n been thru 2 much to just let u go
TG: we love u dummy
TG: thats why im sure
TT: Ah. The power of love.
TG: dont b a fuckin dick dirk
TG: im like layin out all my sincere feels dont u dare!!!
TT: I mean, I am a dick.
TT: But I appreciate your assessment of the situation. It’s good to know.
TG: SIGN
TG: sumday im gonna tattoo all that shit on ur forehead backwards so u gotta stare at it every mornin when u wake up n spend 5 hours stylin ur wackass anime hair
TT: I have one tasteful tattoo, and I’d like to keep it that way.
TG: u mean that 8^y guy
TT: Hella Jeff.
TG: ye thats the 1
TG: mk mk we shall see
TT: Don’t tell Dave about anything I’ve said to you.
TT: Just don’t tell anyone, actually.
TT: It’s shitty enough that I dropped all of this on you.
TG: ur gud
TG: n also u dont even gotta ask!! im a hella good secret keeper
TT: On account of learning powerful majyyks from powerful wizards, I assume.
TG: fuk yea
TG: ok but wats the plan tho

“Hey,” he says, interrupting your little chit-chat from the couch. “You mind if I borrow your laptop for a bit? Kinda wanna crunch some of the input data from this thing.”

“I’m in the middle of an important conversation,” you protest weakly.

“Oh yeah? What about?”

“Stuff.”

“Any reason why you gotta have that conversation not on your desktop or shades?”

“Fuck you, it’s my laptop!”

He cracks the knuckles of his index fingers, a quick double pop. “Fine. Just thought I’d ask nicely instead’a just takin’ it.”

“I thought you were an expert at this kind of shit,” you snark. “But here you are, relying on unauthorized peripherals to do your hacking for you.”

You see him roll his eyes, the action revealed in profile where his shades can’t hide it. “So can I use your laptop or not, pipsqueak.”

“I’ll consider it if you resubmit your query in a more deferential manner.”

He groans loudly. “Mother of god. Okay. Mother-may-I use your fuckin’ laptop for non-nefarious purposes.”

“Sure,” you say cheerfully, and notify Roxy that you’re closing out of Pesterchum for a moment. You’re pretty sure he won’t get into your chat history, and there’s really no way to stop him if he wanted to, short of encrypting your shit right the fuck now, but you don’t have time, and honestly, you don’t really care. It’s maybe a tiny bit fucked up that the things you were so cagey about discussing with Roxy are just topics of daily confrontation with him.

TT: One second. The splinter is acting up.
TT: Just being annoying, nothing to get concerned about.
TT: I’ll see you in a moment. Switching to desktop for a stable connection.
TG: mk

-- timaeusTestified [TT] ceased pestering tipsyGnostalgic [TG] --

You deposit the laptop on the futon, and he fishes underneath his seat for a cable, hitting the pause button.

“Cool,” he says as he plugs the USB end into the laptop, instead of thank you, because you’ve never met a Strider capable of expressing unfiltered, unironic gratitude. It amuses you, really.

“Yup. What are you trying to do?”

“Just testing out a theory about the angle of attack I need to shit on some of these polygonal dickholes,” he grunts. “Nothin’ special, pretty mundane, but calculatin’ it purely by sight is for the damn birds.”

That is pretty boring, but there’s something charming about the normalcy of it all. Just a little project to satisfy a simple question. You shrug. “Well. Have fun with that, or something.”

He stop with one end of the cable plugged into your laptop, and kind of just lets the controller fall into his lap before he twists to look at you, one leg up on the seat so he can drape his arm over his knee. His brow is lightly pinched. “You good?”

You blink rapidly. “What?”

“You good?” he asks again, a little more impatiently. “I know we got into some shit up there.”

Is he fucking checking up on you? This is new. Holy shit. “Yeah, dude, I’m fine.” You lean on the back of the couch with your folded arms. You should… return the favor, you guess, if everyone’s trying out new shit today. “Uh. How about… you?”

“Fine,” he says after a split-second pause, like he wasn’t expecting you to say anything else. “Fine as I can fuckin’ be, I guess.”

“Okay.”

There’s another pause, longer this time, more awkward. Personal development is hard, you conclude, if only because of all the time and energy you have to spend at social impasse could be better spent avoiding exactly that, and working on more productive endeavors.

You receive an imaginary slap on the wrist from imaginary Rose for that, because you can’t just refuse to engage in difficult situations until you’re feeling particularly masochistic blah blah whatever. Developing healthier approaches to confrontation doesn’t stop you from wishing you could just phase through walls in order to alt+f4 your way out of a conversation.

Put a little effort in, why don’t you? His face, as usual, is kind of unreadable – it always is until the moment it’s not, and then the shit you see is uniformly horrifying, as all kinds of vulnerability are – but you get the feeling that there’s something trying to surface there. Something’s troubling the waters in jackass town.

“What are you trying to do?” That’s probably the wrong thing to say, but you say it anyway, because you want to know, and he’ll probably tell you because what’s the point in being closed-off about it now. “I mean, it’s nice that you’re making an effort. Are you… I mean, are you thinking about what it’s going to be like out here?”

He blinks at you, slow and strange behind his sunglasses, and then he kind of shakes his head. “Not really, no. Just thought – well. Dunno what I was thinkin’.” And with that, he turns back to the Xbox, pulling up your input viewer program and plugging the other end of the cable into the controller.

“It’s fine if you aren’t,” you lie. “I just wanted to know.”

This time, you don’t wait for him to reply, and flash step into your bedroom, turning onto your desktop to resume your conversation with Roxy after messing around with the timestamp display.

-- timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering tipsyGnostalgic [TG] --

TT: Much better.
TG: hey dere
TT: Sorry about that. I’m on desktop now.
TT: So. The plan.
TG: da plan…
TG: so from my lil pov over here
TG: my humble lil pov
TG: y dont u just talk to dave about it
TG: its not like hes forbidden from comin down here u kno
TG: hes been off doin some surveyin kinda bc ur gone?
TG: takin over ur job n everythin
TG: but hes gonna b back soon n he knos we made contact
TT: I’ve thought about this extensively.
TT: This is not a conversation that I want to have with him over text.
TT: So it’s going to have to wait until I’ve actually been extracted and can communicate with him face-to-face.
TG: hmm but if i cant figure out how 2 keep ur escape hatch open then
TG: it would b safest to bring him out w u since we dunno if the instance will collapse once u leave
TG: n idk if u wanna spring that kinda surprise on him if were concerned about like
TG: forcin him to make choices n stuff
TT: There are just some things that have to be hashed out in meatspace, as it were.
TT: I’m really betting on being able to keep the portal open. I know it’s putting the cart about six lightyears before the horse, but I want to be able to tell him myself.
TT: It’s the least I can do after everything that’s gone on in here.
TG: yea i get it
TG: but i cant make any guarantees u kno
TG: so u gotta plan around that
TG: we might not have a lotta time between figurin out how to establish ur escape route n makin u take it just cuz this whole thing has been kinda drivin us balls 2 the walls nutty for months
TT: Yeah.
TT: I’m not going to be angry with you if you can’t figure it out. That’s just my optimal scenario.
TT: And in real life, you cannot produce optimal scenarios. Not even near-optimal.
TG: thts mega depressing but also mby is the healthiest thing uve said 2 me so far lmao
TG: u sure u dont want any of this getting back to rose bc shed b hella proud of uuuu
TT: God no.
TT: I’m not saying she’d hold it over my head forever, because that would be counterproductive with regard to the therapeutic outcomes she’s looking for.
TG: what u dont want her 2 be proud o big bad dick stricker unlockin all these mega cool psych achievememts
TT: Especially not when you put it like that.
TG: ok ok lips r zipped regardin ur character developmentz *wink*
TT: Thanks.
TG: thats not stoppin ME from bein proud of u tho
TG: cuz i am
TT: I am,
TT: going to log off now.
TG: awww cmon
TG: we were just gettin the feels party started
TG: i kno ur a party animal dirk u cant hide that shit from me ur best pal ro lal
TT: I’ll tell you if anything comes up on my end.
TG: party pooper
TT: Goodbye.
TG: ok c u later i gotta tag in sollux anyway
TG: u cn talk to him u kno his handle is @twinArmageddons
TT: Maybe. I don’t know what we’d talk about that you and I haven’t already covered.
TT: Tell you the truth, I haven’t really spoken to him much at all. I don’t know him that well.
TG: hes a lil prickly n got that whole doom gloom kaboom thign goin on but hes a rly sweet friend when u get down to it
TG: he n kk are super srs bffs
TT: KK? Karkat?
TG: o ya lol thats what he calls him
TG: been spendin a lotta time together in the basement doin fuck all u kno
TT: That makes sense.
TT: I’ll let you go, then. Have a good… sleep. I guess.
TG: will do capn
TG: good nite!
TT: Good night, Roxy.

-- tipsyGnostalgic [TG] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT] --

Here are some of your options, sorted by contingency and exoticism:

 1)     Roxy is able to sustain the exit route after you pop back into the real world, and you can leave Dave’s bro in here temporarily while you discuss what to do with him in the main session.
            a) This means you can get Dave alone, preferably within an hour of your arrival, to talk about a big ass decision.
            b) And the longer the exit route stays up, the longer he has to make his decision.
            c) Great idea. Best idea. At the very tip-top of all the tiers.
2)      Roxy isn’t able to sustain the portal after your exit, which means you have to take Dave’s bro with you.This means you have to pester Dave before Roxy opens whatever door she needs to in order to let you out.
            a) Bad, awful, worst idea. You are absolutely not going to have that conversation over fucking Pesterchum, jesus.
3) You never get out of here and you never technically have to speak to any of them ever again.
            a) Depressing. Let’s not think about this.
3) There is some complication with the portal and only he gets out, and has to mediate on your behalf.
            a) Haha. Holy shit. This is the clown car option. This is never going to happen, because if it did, the entire universe would explode. This is stupid and not an outcome you will abide by.

So, out of those three, you really only need to treat two of them like eventualities.

However, there is something you haven’t deeply considered, because you’ve been operating on some baseline assumptions.

You need to tell him about the plan. But you’re nervous, because… he could just refuse to cooperate. And you don’t like not getting what you want, being forced to respect decisions you think are bad or having to do damage control because other people aren’t prepared for the consequences of their non-cooperativity.

In this case, shit could get out of hand real fast.

You need to have a heart-to-heart.

And you need it to have one specific outcome, so, of course, you drag your feet about it, with no splinter to kick your ass, and no friends around to force you to have that serious sit-down. You want to beat your head against the wall in frustration at your own stubbornly irrational misgivings.

It’ll be fine.

It has to be fine.

As time passes, you get more of those weird, disjointed moments from him. Awkward pauses, questions that come out of left field with how uncharacteristically careful they are. He has no idea what he’s doing, and it’s painfully obvious that he’s trying to effect some kind of change. You want to know why he’s being a difficult asshole, and what he’s trying to achieve.

But every time you try to bring it up, your questions die on your tongue, and you settle back into agitated silence that drops back into that comfortable space of non-antagonism between you. The space patched together from moonbeams and radio waves.

It’s that space that brings you to the roof again, when the sky is dark except for the big, twinkling cartoon stars and the pockmarked cartoon moon, and the roof is empty except for the nesting gulls on top of the AC unit and the man sitting on the verge, looking out over an ocean he doesn’t fully understand.

“Hey,” you say.

“Sup,” he replies, getting to his feet and turning to greet you. That alone picks at something inside you, makes you latch onto it as tangible proof that something has changed. That anything has changed since the day you puked him up.

You are so fucking desperate, at this point, aren’t you. You know you are, because you only let the awkward pause go on half as long as it usually does before running your mouth like an idiot.

“So I’ve been talking to Roxy about the extraction plan. You know, the thing you’ve been avoiding hearing details about for whatever reason. She’s fairly certain at this point that she can create a stable emergency exit that will last about as long as our original communication time, but it will only be able to stay active for a five-minute transition period, otherwise we run the risk of shattering this entire pocket dimension entirely. Now, I’ve asked her to find a way to open it periodically, so we’ll have more opportunities to leave in case we’re otherwise preoccupied, or she opens it out-of-bounds for us, like at the bottom of the ocean or a mile out or something. I’m not sure exactly when she and Sollux will have the extraction apparatus ready, but it can’t be that far off. Maybe a couple of weeks, tops.”

He holds his hands up to stop you in your tracks. “A’ight. Slow down, take it from the top.”

You take a deep breath, and clarify, “We’re getting out of here soon. I just wanted you to know, so you’d be ready.”

For a long moment, he’s silent, and then he nods, looks up at the moon, puts his hands in his pockets. “Dunno if I will be. Ain’t nearly different enough to warrant it. Went in on you first chance I got, didn’t I?”

“Is that what you’ve been trying to do? All this careful, hesitant shit?” He doesn’t reply. “We can figure that out later. It doesn’t have to stop once we leave. You can still – keep doing what you’re doing.”

“That’s not,” he starts, then sighs, folding his arms. “Just tryin’ not to argue before time’s up.”

You furrow your brow in confusion. “I mean, I guess that’s considerate of you. But you know me by now, dude. I fucking love arguing.”

“Sure. Don’t mean we gotta. And I guess that’s the one thing I can guarantee, from my end.”

“Are you—” You balk, thrown off. You didn’t anticipate this kind of response. It would be easier if he picked a fight with you, actually. “You’re not still experiencing hangups over whether you’re capable of becoming a better person, are you? Because I thought we’d beaten that horse to hell and back. The horse has been judged for its sins and deemed dead as fuck.”

“Yeah, sure, I could’ve been better. At some point, I could’ve been way different.” He reaches for you, hesitant, and it takes all of your willpower not to flinch back for a hundred different reasons, but all he does is scrape his thumbnail over your cheekbone, and he shows you one of your eyelashes, a pale line, barely there, before flicking it away. “Could’ve been you. But whatever you have fell outta me a long time ago. And I’ve thought long’n hard about this, but I don’t think it’s comin’ back. Ain’t shit down there, and you know it.”

You want to rip your hair out. “There is nothing about me that hasn’t been carefully cultivated since I became capable of conscious thought and long-term memory recall. Change is the fundamental nature of existence.”

He grimaces. “Sure. But I can’t guarantee you’d like whatever I changed into.”

“Like what? How could you possibly become a worse person?” You’re squaring your shoulders without meaning to, but god, he won’t listen. “It’s not like you have much further to fall until you hit rock-bottom. I know who you were before the shit really hit the fan. I have your memories lodged in my head like – like a fucking wrench, I guess, fuck you. But everything’s different now. You could be different. You could learn. Being out there, with us… You’d actually believe in your own capacity for change. I know you would.”

He grabs your shoulder, a little too rough, his mouth smeared downward, eyes dead tired, looking somewhere past your left ear, and you feel like you’re about to be appraised again.

“Look,” he says, heavy on the tongue, “Whatever happens, I’m staying. Here. I’d say I’m sorry, but you know it don’t matter.”

“What the fuck are you even talking about,” you say, because you don’t know what the fuck he is even talking about.

“I’m not going to—” It’s like he gags on his own words, and he drops his hand. “I’m not going to a fuckin’ universe where he… I can’t. I’m not gonna keep him looking over his shoulder when he has a whole world to himself that I’ve never even set foot in. Where he feels safe.”

“You don’t know that he doesn’t want you around.”

You’re pretty sure you fucked up somewhere along the way, because you know Dave probably doesn’t want him back, but you’re sure as hell not going to leave him here to rot or get deleted or whatever. Even if it’s wrong, even if it’s a betrayal of everything good you’ve ever done, you fucking care about this asshole, for reasons of greater scale than the technicality of being the same person. You’ve seen parts of him that were never allowed to exist in any universe – dreams, desires, grief. You are bitterly confident that you know him better than anyone ever has, outside of Lil Cal.

And he doesn’t deserve it, sure. But you’ve never been able to make peace with the notion that you should get things because you deserve them; you’re not sure you’ve ever earned anything for yourself. So maybe you want to extend this care to him specifically because you want that kind of mercy to exist, somewhere, for someone, so that it might one day make its way back around to you.

He lifts one eyebrow. “I don’t know anything for sure, but I can make a damn educated guess about what that kid wants, knowin’ what I gave him. Better to err on the side of caution, and all.”

“It’s fucking rich that you’re acting like you’ve ever known what’s best for him,” you mutter. He’s right, but he has no business being right.

“Once you tell him I ain’t dead, you can’t unbreak that seal,” he warns you, but his serious tone fades into something more mild, a little humorous, a little self-deprecating. “And. ’Sides. You act like it wasn’t fuckin’ obvious he was scared of me all the time.”

You swing your legs once, twice, chew on the inside of your lip. “He’s scared of me, too.”

“’Cause of what I did. Don’t get it twisted.”

“Even if it’s you right now, it’ll be me on my own merits soon enough.”

He cocks an eyebrow at you. “Thought you already worked through that issue with the English kid.”

Is it too melodramatic to plant your face into your hands? “The fact that he no longer resents me for trying to puppeteer him into fulfilling my adolescent fantasy of an ideal partner in no way indicates that the fundamental issues that caused the problem have been resolved in totality.”

“The fundamental issues bein’ your perfectionist tendency towards hyperfocus and ruthless progression, yeah. I think we’re aware of that,” he says, parroting your tone and cadence back at you. Wow. That’s annoying. You’re fucking annoying. “One would think it’d be mitigated by the absence of the clear win conditions that enable your absolutism.”

“Well, it’s not,” you snap, curling inward. “I know I haven’t changed, fundamentally. Some things have gotten better, sure, but I’m the same person, aren’t I? I have the same capabilities. Your capabilities. And more than that, it’s concretized by my class assignment – I destroy shit. It’s what I’m good at. And what exactly is the place of a destroyer in an ensemble that’s trying to create a new world?”

You like to think you’re making progress on all of your bullshit. And you respect Rose and Kanaya, you really do, but some days you feel like you’re just performing, pretending to have a healthier approach to life, while all of your cruelty and impatience roils just beneath the surface, where no one but you can feel it.

Why are you telling him this, anyway? Are you just that desperate for a listening ear? He’s a thousand times worse than you are at being a functional human being. Whatever advice he has to give you on this subject is fully unreliable.

He seems to be considering what you’ve said, scratching idly at his arm. “What you did wasn’t good, I’ll give you that. But come on, mini-me. I told you, you’re not goin’ off the deep end anytime soon.”

“Okay, but where’s your evidence? I think it would be fair for you to extrapolate from your catalog of my memories that I am, in fact, capable of exactly that.”

“You started out better,” he says simply. “You weren’t mad at every fuckin’ thing in the world, for one. That shit poisons your soul in a way that don’t got a cure.”

“I’m based on you, aren’t I? Isn’t my soul already fucked up beyond repair?”

He gives you a look of mild appraisal. “Not in my estimation, no.”

“What makes you think I trust your estimation?” That’s not nice, and it’s not fair, because he’s trying to reassure you, which is what you fucking wanted, but now that you’re getting it, you feel like you’ve been cheated. You’re – yeah, you’re panicking, a little bit. “You have no understanding of what a soul that’s not fucked-up looks like.”

He drags in a reluctant breath. “I had Dave, didn’t I?”

“That’s exactly what I mean. You had Dave, and you still tried to wreck him. Your idea of functionality is still extremely, and I do not use this word lightly, bad.”

“Doesn’t mean I couldn’t tell he was different from me.” He looks down at your hands. “Doesn’t mean I can’t tell you’re different, too. You ain’t pulled anywhere near the level of the bull I did. You care. About him.”

You shake your head. “Just caring isn’t good enough. What if I end up hurting him? Haven’t I already done that, anyway? Part of me comprises the literal fucking villain of our story. Almost every point of antagonism in our session can be traced back to one of my splinters, complicit or no. I’m ground fucking zero for almost every hardship they’ve ever had to face.”

“You are not gonna blame yourself for what I chose to do,” he says, cold as steel. You can practically see his hackles raising. “I’m tellin’ you that, on a basic, rationally-explicable level, you have the capacity to do better’n I did in every single way imaginable. You are fixatin’ on what went wrong without acknowledging the conditions through which those outcomes were enabled, and you cannot keep living with the assumption that all this shit’s gonna come crashing down on your head someday. Living with the taste of death in your mouth is not sustainable if your goal ain’t to end up fuckin’ dead of unnatural causes. And it can’t be, if you want to be good for him.”

You’re not sure if he’s going parent mode on you, or what. Mr. Crocker’s parenting technique has been more camp counselor than anything else so far, considering the workload he’s had to face with all of you milling around. All you know is that you kind of feel cowed. Not enough to make you back down, and certainly not enough to shake your pessimism (there’s no force in the universe strong enough to do that), but enough that you sort of lose your appetite for argument.

“Are you speaking from experience?”

He scoffs, but it’s not unkind. “The only reason you’d ask that is if you genuinely believe I’m dumber than you and incapable of reasoning outside of my own experiences. I’m just extrapolatin’ from reliable data, as people tend to do.”

Well, he’s got you there. “I feel like there’s a lot of cognitive dissonance in the way you always gas me up about having the potential to be a good person and yet simultaneously reject even the slightest suggestion that you have that same potential.”

“Let’s see how you feel about your ‘potential’ once you shuffle off this mortal coil.” Then, more seriously: “I worked out my potential, anyway. I had a destiny to aim for. You don’t have one’a those. Haven’t used up all that potential yet. And, like you said, I’m only the template. Filled it up with a fucked brain and a shit soul.” He looks away, adds, “It’s better for you to be – softer. It’s what he should have. Some kinda family.”

“And you’re part of that,” you argue back. “Don’t you think he deserves that closure? To know that you know you fucked up?”

“You’re the Most-Improved Dirk Strider, ain’tcha? So you have full license to show it off.” You can see him rolling a thought over for a moment before he shrugs with one shoulder and adds, “Closure ain’t everything, anyway. Sometimes it’s just better to forget as much as you can.”

That doesn’t really make sense to you. Not the closure thing, but the idea of – trying to forget. That sounds like undeserved DIY absolution, to you. “What about you, then? You don’t seem like you’re forgetting much of anything. Technically, you know more than you did before.”

He turns his hands over, palms up. “Maybe I will. Eventually. If this place’ll let me.”

“Do you actually want to stay here forever? Or until you die, or your file gets corrupted, or whatever?”

“Doesn’t matter. If Dave don’t want me out, then I ain’t leavin’. Simple as that.”

“What if I want you to be there?” You always sound like a kid when you pull at him, but you do, and you aren’t above a guilt trip right now.

There’s that smile again, faint and sad, a vague gesture towards the real thing. “I appreciate the sentiment, but you can’t decide for him. You didn’t spend thirteen years in that penthouse with me breathin’ down your neck and twistin’ you up somethin’ awful. You can ask him, if you like, but I wouldn’t give you good odds.”

“He hates you less than you give him credit for,” you protest, and hate yourself a little for it, because that’s one of the things you said you were going to give up, putting words in other peoples’ mouths, throwing your voice like they’re one of your marionettes. “You’re scared of him, is what I think. You’re scared of how he’s going to react when he sees you, now that he knows better than to fucking hero-worship someone who used to starve him for kicks.”

He straightens out his spine, rolling his shoulders back, and you can hear the cracking of his vertebrae. “Not scared, so much. Not for me, at least. If Cal came back, somehow, even if he was empty like yours?” He dips his head. “I’d lose it. Same principle.”

“Cal was a literal demon. You’re just – I dunno. Just some shitty guy.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“You know what I fucking mean.”

“I do, and I’m telling you that it doesn’t matter.” He’s really gotten his claws into this whole quasi-paternal firm-yet-patient schtick. It’s kind of nauseating. “What do I have to offer him that warrants you putting me back into his life without his permission, huh? He doesn’t need a fuckin’ father figure. And you’re a good enough brother, as-is. You’re closure enough.”

It’s soft, and sincere, above all else, stripped down to the pure sentiment of it. You can hear the fucking love in that, in the way he stays the course, fully ready to cut himself loose from reality, if that’s what it takes. He’ll never say it to you, but you know, because you’ve felt that. You’ve been there, in your own time, in your own way. And the recognition of how familiar it is, how strong, makes your throat close up, and you barely get the first fuck you out before your voice starts shaking. “Just fuck you, dude. I don’t need permission from you to be his goddamn friend.”

“Yeah,” he sighs. “You don’t. But it never hurts to have, I don’t think.”

Then you’re sitting on the edge of the roof together, feet dangling above the calm, black ocean, the moon painting you blue and gray. He looks peaceful, thoughtful, leaning back on his arms, cap crushed under one palm, sunglasses hanging from his collar. You take yours off, roll up your hand around them, and plant your face into his shoulder. He stiffens in surprise.

“What,” he starts, but the rest of his question is muffled by the lightly violent application of your open hand to his face, palm covering his mouth. He cuts himself off and waits for you to speak, even when you take your free hand back to grab his arm, digging your fingers into the pit of his elbow.

“It’s okay,” you say quietly, forehead crushed right the fuck into the gap of his rotator cuff, half-hoping he won’t hear you over the crash of the waves and the creaking of your apartment’s piles. “To want something for yourself. You know? To want to have a life.”

He hears you. He doesn’t peel you off. He just sighs and looks away. “I’m not sure it is. There are some things you can’t earn back. That I never deserved in the first place.”

Your voice is barely a whisper. “That’s fucking stupid. You know that every time you say shit like that, you’re telling me that I… that I don’t…”

“Hey, no.” His weight shifts but you keep your eyes shut. “I told you. We’re different, you and me. You got your friends. You had your bro, right from the start. You never had a lick of evil in you. Fact.”

The pressure on your head is from the breadth of his hand resting on your hair, gentle and completely still, like he thinks he’ll crack your skull open if he presses too hard, and ain’t that peak fucking irony. You look up from under the strands of your hair that have been pushed down over your eyes, and at the edge of your vision, you can see him tuck his chin down against his chest, and close his eyes.

You want to argue with him, knock some sense into him, but you’re tired and your throat closes off like a valve, so you just press your palm against his back, an anchor, and hope he understands.

TG: n since the true alignment period is about once every month we should be able to open one up in abouuuut 3 days?
TG: long story short, we think its viable! :3
TT: Oh. Okay.
TG: u kno i thought ud be a lil more excited about this
TT: He’s not coming.
TT: He straightforwardly informed me that he’s not leaving unless Dave wants him to leave.
TG: i mean isnt that what u wanted in the first place?
TT: At the risk of sounding like a total asshole, which is the usual outcome,
TT: It’s different if I want it than if he wants it.
TT: I want him to want to leave.
TT: If that makes sense.
TT: He might, on some deeper level. But he won’t, without. Permission. Or whatever.
TG: again i dont see how this conflicts w ur previous plans?
TT: It doesn’t.
TT: I just expected something different from him, after everything’s been said and done.
TT: I expected…
TG: u wanted him 2 be enthusiastic about ur plan?
TT: I guess.
TT: Yeah, actually.
TT: And I’m kind of pissed off that he’s not?
TG: i mean it sounds like uve been rly invested in understandin him n gettin him to realize sum shit abt himself right
TG: u put the elbow grease in etc
TG: i think its fine if ur upset about that
TG: but u shouldnt force him to do anything he doesnt wanna just like u shouldnt just override daves role in the situation
TT: Sigh.
TT: You’re right. I know the answers are obvious. I just don’t like them. And usually I’d respond to that dislike by changing the question.
TT: But I can’t. Not this time.
TG: yea :[
TG: im sry dirk
TT: You, of all people, have nothing to be sorry for.
TT: Unless I find out you’ve given Rose new fodder for her file on me.
TT: Then you will be really, really sorry.
TG: lmao
TG: u will just have to come back n find out huh!

In the last three days before your promised escape, you gravitate toward him like a moth to a lamp, like you’re afraid he’s just going to dissolve and disappear the moment you take your eyes off of him. He gets testy about this, rolls his eyes and huffs in irritation, inches away from you on the couch when you play co-op with him.

“Stop hovering,” he says eventually, physically pushing you away from him. “Y’ain’t doin’ anyone any favors. Your little pal said I was shelf-stable as a box of fuckin’ Twinkies, yeah?”

You fidget and fuss a little and heave a petulant sigh. “I’m going to make a theatrical exit soon, dude, have a sense of drama about it.”

“I’ve never had a sense of drama about anythin’ in my fuckin’ life,” he says, obviously lying straight to your face. “Why should we start actin’ different about it all now? Got regrets?”

“I don’t know. More like unfinished business.” You pull up Pesterchum on your shades to see Roxy’s idle status. Sollux is online. You’ve spoken a few times, but only briefly. You’re intrigued. “Do you? Have regrets, I mean.”

“We have wrung literally every ounce of melodrama from that particular long and windin’ road,” he groans. “Revise and resubmit, thanks.”

You do, because you’re feeling amiable. “Not about shit in general. About being here.”

“Nah. It’s been – fuckin’ weird. Unexpected.” He shrugs. “Better than most of my life, though, I gotta admit. Nice to have the downtime.”

“I guess this is like your retirement.”

“It will be, after I get your naggin’ ass outta my hair.”

You pull your legs up onto the seat of the futon, keeping your hands wrapped around your ankles, lips pursed. “What do you plan on doing to keep yourself occupied? It might be some time before I can pull you out.”

“Oh, I dunno. Mix music, sew puppets, jack off to weird shit,” he parrots back at you. “Don’t worry about me. If I’m wanted, I’ll be there, but if not, you don’t gotta give half a shit about what’s happening in here. I’ll figure somethin’ out.”

It’s a kinder response than you want. “Are you going to think about what I’ve been saying at all?”

“You mean, am I gonna try to model myself after you? Nah.” His smile comes to you in quarters. “Ain’t change the nature of existence, or some shit? I told you, don’t fuckin’ worry. If it happens, it happens.”

“You’re not worried that it won’t?”

“I know it won’t,” he says, confident as ever. “That’s gotta be the baseline assumption. I know who I was. Now and then ain’t so far apart that I can justify anything else.”

He won’t budge on this, you know, and you’re resigning yourself to that, albeit reluctantly. “We can still talk, you know. I have you added on Pesterchum.”

“You’d talk to me behind his back? What kinda friend are you?”

He means it in jest, but you duck your head a little, looking at his offline status on the interface of your shades. “A pretty bad one, going by my track record. This wouldn’t be out of the ordinary.”

“Don’t do that. You got a fresh start with him. Do not fuckin’ mess that shit up, okay?”

You hear the edge in his voice, and you nod. “I won’t.”

And you sit there, not speaking for a while, until your high scores pop up on the TV screen and the round is over.

“Does this mean you don’t want me to message you?”

He scratches at his neck, arches an eyebrow. “Not if you can help it.”

“What are you gonna do about it if I can’t?”

“I can just fuckin’ block you. Or delete my account. You ain’t my dad.”

“Technically,” you start, and he physically places his hand over your mouth to stop you from going on an ecto-rant.

“I didn’t ask for an ectobio 101 lecture, okay. Pester me if you want. You’re a big boy now, you can make your own shitty decisions.”

“Fuck yeah, I can,” you grumble, shoving him off of you. “Jesus, maybe I’ll just cut you off, since you’re going to be like that.”

He laughs. Not for long, but it’s real, that low, lilting sound, hills in the grassland, and you can’t help but grin.

“Do what you want. Y’know? World o’ possibility out there, for y’all. You don’t have to let the old shit drag you down where you don’t want to be. You got folks to help you out with that. And so what if you’re a destroyer class? Gotta plow before you plant, right? Bein’ a kid is hard enough without havin’ to wage war against fate or whatever bullshit on top’a havin’ to justify your own existence to yourself. Just let it come as it may. Like, you’ve never enjoyed anything, I know that, but you’ve gotten closer than either us ever have before. So lock onto that, and don’t let nobody tell you what you want to do or who you oughtta have around. You’ll be fine. I guarantee it.”

-- termerusTransposed [TT] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] --

TT: test.
TT: Got it.
TT: aite. catch you on the downcycle.

-- termerusTransposed [TT] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT] --

Roxy’s emergency exit appears exactly when she says it will.

It’s just a black hole in the sky, hovering in the middle distance. Kind of anti-climactic, if you’re going to be honest, although you’re sure Roxy would have endowed it with all kinds of snazzy lightning and smoke effects to give it the look of a highly mystical and radicool wizarding portal if she could have.

Probably the most majyykal effect is that you immediately pop three inches off the ground. Looks like your godtier powers are back.

“You got five minutes,” he says, one hand on his hip. “Do you just float up, or what?”

“I guess,” you say, wishing you had the rocketboard so you could make a cooler re-entry into your winner’s world. Mere levitation does not have the effect it used to.

There is still so much you want to say to him. Things that you’re not sure he understands. You feel like you’re leaving him incomplete, and you can’t shake that, no matter how unfair the thought is. You wish he’d just come up with you. You could carry him. You’re strong enough.

And you almost offer that, but he’s already given his answer.

So instead, you say, “You know I’m coming back for you. So you can’t slack off.”

“Yeah, okay,” he says, and swings his arm up to clap you on the back. “Ain’t much time left. You better get outta here.”

You stare at him for a moment, trying to memorize what he looks like. What you’ll look like, someday. The scars, the crooked nose, the slouching set of his frame. The humorless angle of his jaw, the masked indifference of his eyes. A hundred thousand memories behind them, of which you’ve kept but a handful.

And you proffer him your fist.

He looks down at your outstretched hand, then up at your face, and then he gives you a wry smile, more genuine than any other you’ve seen, and bumps it with his knuckles.

Then you’re rising through the air, leaving the rooftop of your childhood home behind. The Gulf shimmers around it, wild and blue, but as you watch, it shifts and swirls. It must be the power surge of your exit, you think, because it becomes hard, red earth, covered in long, dry grass, and you can see the other Dirk Strider watching you from the ridge of a hill, alone. You raise your hand to wave, just once, and as the white dot of him shrinks down, you can see him wave back, before he turns around and walks toward the long, dark line of an asphalt road, the sunset cutting a shadow across his back.

He’s going home.

You turn and face Roxy’s portal, closing your eyes as the void stretches out around you like an embrace. There’s a weird lightness in your chest.

You’re going home, too.

“—irk? Is he awake?”

Your name is Dirk Strider, and you are lying on the ground outside your home on Earth C, having just opened your eyes to see the worried face of Jake English hovering over yours.

“Waddup,” you say blearily, trying to sit up. Jesus, your head is spinning. He supports your back with one hand, patting your knee with the other.

“You really gave us a fright, old chap,” he says, and then freezes in place when you wrap your arms around his torso and hug the absolute shit out of him, burying your face into his shoulder. Jesus fucking christ, you missed him. You feel him hug you back, squeezing just a little too hard. “Damn good and well glad to have you back, Dirk. It’s been rather philosophically dull around these parts in your absence.”

You release him with a smirk. “Gee, think you could call me a windbag again, all fancy-like?”

“Ur a fancy fuckin’ windbag, DS,” you hear right before getting piledriven by the rowdiest broad you know. Roxy has you absolutely immobilized and pinned to the ground via the neck, but you find that you don’t mind, putting one hand on her back. “I missed you,” she says wetly into your ear.

“I missed you, too,” you murmur. “I’m also starting to miss things like oxygen and being upright. No offense.”

Once you sit up again, you can see that almost everybody is here to witness your return. You weren’t exactly expecting a reception, but in hindsight, maybe you should have.

Jane is next in line for a slightly tearful reunion, and for once you don’t really care that everyone is watching you receive a muffled lecture directly into your chest that is nevertheless as scathing as it is deeply concerned. Truly, you have arrived at the correct gamespace. Jane Crocker’s signature verbal beatdown has remained unchanged since the very first time you received one.

Dave is really the only other person who has pursued a high enough clearance level to punch through your avowedly strict personal boundaries with no prior notice, and he takes advantage of this with great aplomb, possibly cracking a rib or two in the process. Your heart jumps into your throat because shit shit shit shit shit oh my god oh my fucking god what are you going to tell him holy fuck you just spent a billion years cooped up with the guy who is the exact reason why he won’t even touch a sword anymore. His reaction is no longer a hypothetical or even a real possibility, he’s just real, and you are not fucking equipped to handle it.

“I am going to kick your dumbfuck bug-catching ass so hard that all your mass collapses instantaneously and forms a microscopic black fuckin’ hole that I will use for the sole purpose of trashing your gross hoard of Muppets merch,” he announces. “But like. Later.”

“Yeah,” you say, voice surprisingly stable, and squeeze him back in what you hope doesn’t come off as a half-hearted way. “Later. I’ll hold you to that.”

And with a firm, fatherly handshake from Mr. Crocker, you’re helped to your feet and returned triumphantly to the house.

You try to make informing Dave of his choice your top priority, you do, but you are constantly surrounded by people, and there’s – you – god dammit, Roxy has organized a “Welcome Home” party for you. There are balloons and a big banner and tables full of teenager-appropriate snacks and drinks.

It’s not that you don’t appreciate it, because you do, but the festivities begin immediately, and you thought there were plans. Which you try to bring up with her, but all you get is an elbow to the ribs and a sharp it’s not just for u, dingus, and then you try your very hardest to turn off the alarms echoing in your skull and enjoy some fucking video games.

Switching your brain into celebration mode is not as hard as you anticipated, mostly because wow, you get to interact with people who aren’t him, and you didn’t know how much you missed that until now. You thank Sollux, who cusses you out in a major way while he refills your soda, and then listen intently while he explains the more technical aspects of the emergency exit plan. You catch up with Jade, who immediately yanks you and Jane to the planning room and shows you the intricate models she’s been constructing with the carapacians’ help. You chat with Tavros and Terezi in the living room, and you get the feeling that Terezi knows something’s up – she’s Seer and all, just like Rose, and maybe she smells something on you? Unclear. You make time to thank Mr. Crocker for helping to keep everyone sane in your absence, but he just laughs and puffs on his pipe.

“They’re good kids,” he says. “It was hard on them, you being gone, but they took good care of each other nonetheless.”

You make your rounds, eating hella horse divorces and reveling in the flavors of tiny hot dogs and Jane’s chocolate cake. You’re kind of making sure all your ducks are in a row, which is not the point of this party, but after a few hours, when the sun has set and the energy has tapered off, your thoughts turn to Dave again. Everybody’s just kind of hanging out in the various rooms of your expansive home base, watching Ghostbusters II or playing Mario Party or talking or whatever, and you decide to go look for Roxy.

The house is full of laughter that echoes through the halls. It comforts you as much as it makes you feel a little crowded, and you did miss that. It puts you at ease like nothing else ever has. And you are kind of scared that whatever you tell Dave is going to change it irrevocably. You’re not sure you’re ready for that. Selfishly, you want to enjoy this relative utopia for as long as you can.

Roxy is talking with Rose and Kanaya in the kitchen that adjoins the living room. It’s kind of an open secret that they’re busy wedding planning; you’ve seen Rose working on their ketubah in the studio on some late nights, humming to herself.

You only get out “Do you mind if I,” before your brain grinds to a halt, and you point awkwardly to Roxy. Rose has to physically turn away to hide her smile, and Kanaya shoos Ro-Lal out of the kitchen while she takes a tray of bat-shaped sugar cookies out of the oven.

Roxy comes with you to talk in one of the living rooms, and closes the door most of the way. You sit on opposite sides of the couch, legs entangled as she sips at her root beer and waggles her eyebrows at you.

“Sooo, wassup?”

“I’m having second thoughts about telling Dave about his bro still being alive,” you blurt out. Because you are.

She groans and rolls her eyes and kicks you in the knee. It hurts. “Ugh, you canNOT be havin’ cold feet now, Strider! We went over this!”

“I know I’m being an idiot, but I can’t help second-guessing this,” you reply, massaging your eyes and the bridge of your nose indiscriminately. “I’ve never understood the phrase ‘ignorance is bliss’ so fucking viscerally in my life. If he knows, he’s just going to be compelled to extract him, regardless of his own safety and comfort, because he’s going to equate leaving his bro in a desync to actual, literal murder, like with an axe. By all accounts, it’s better that he doesn’t know and never has to make that choice, and it doesn’t help that saying that makes me look like a megalomaniacal freak!”

She grimaces and shrugs. “I mean, it sounds like u already know what’s the right thing to do.”

“Just because it’s the right thing to do doesn’t mean it’s going to have a good outcome.”

“I don’t feel good about not tellin’ him, Dirk,” she says, frowning. “If the ethical answer isn’t enough, then think about how I can’t justify keepin’ that portal open for too long before people start askin’ questions, and it’s gonna be a reeeeal shitty foot to start off the rest of our lives on if I lie about something like this. And the same goes for you. Do u really want to keep him in the dark just because it makes you feel better?”

You knew that, probably. That you’d end up dragging whoever you told into this ethical conundrum, and that they wouldn’t be happy about it. The moment you asked someone for advice, you locked in the disclosure. You should have kept it to your goddamn self instead of blasting one option off the table because you think, deep down, that you know what’s best for Dave.

You don’t. No version of you ever has. And you swallow that bitter pill on that sofa, once and for all.

“I’m sorry, Rox,” you say quietly. “For getting you involved.”

“Don’t tell me ur sorry,” she replies, gesturing at you with her can of soda. “You got somethin’ to do, mister, and you’d better go ahead and do it before you go nuts.”

“You’re right, as usual.” You clink your can with hers and down the rest of your cola, standing up from the sofa reluctantly. “Do you happen to know where he is right now?”

Roxy shrugs, standing up next to you. “You know how it is. Just listen for KK.”

Duh. “Right. Okay. See you later.”

She puts a comforting hand on your shoulder. On reflex, you touch your fingers to hers. “He might not be happy about his, but you know he won’t blame you, right? Dave’s a good guy.”

“Yeah.” You only half-believe that.

Pap pap. “Off ya go, newsie!”

So off you go.

You manage to herd Dave off from the others by nabbing him in the kitchen while he’s refilling his drink. It’s not technically a kidnapping, but you do kind of loop your arm around his shoulders like a shepherd’s crook and yank him outside. Like, outside, down and out, onto the porch. You shoot off brief salutations to people you haven’t gotten a chance to debrief with yet, warding them away for a few moments until you can pass through safely. Aradia is sitting down in the drawing room with a bunch of nakodiles, playing cards and poker chips strewn all over the floor between them, and nods at you when you wave at her, shovelling Dave through the back door.

And then you’re standing outside, under the strange moon and stars. You’re alone with him, for the first time since you got back.

“Hey,” you say, uncertainly. You’ve never been less sure about anything in your various lives, you think.

He hikes his eyebrows, slips his hands into his pockets. “Sup. What was with the whole ‘get down, Mr. President’ routine?”

His vaguely nervous jokes spurs you to action. You need to stop being cryptic. You’re trying to hand him an important decision, he needs to feel at ease. Unfortunately, neither of you are particularly calm people.

But you have a promise to keep. Sworn, with your hand against his. Blood on dirt, child to man, prince to tyrant. You have the shards of his memories with you, the sharp edges of his cruelty and resentment and raging anger, the fire of his futile despair and yearning. And you are carrying a heavier weight, too – all of his love, unspoken, unspent.

So, taking a deep breath, you hook a hand behind your neck, meeting his eyes through his shades and yours.

You say, “You mind if we split off and talk for a while? I have something important to tell you.”

He shrugs, glancing at the picnic table Mr. Crocker put up under the spreading apple tree. “Sure, dude. You’ve been – yeah. Lemme know what’s on your mind.”

“Okay,” you say, and think of the man on the roof, alone. Once you tell him, you can’t unbreak that seal. No going back on this one. The permanence of this should scare you. His imminent reaction should scare you.

But you’re not afraid, like you thought you would be. Like you have been. You had forgotten how good and easy it is, just to talk with Dave, because he wants to understand, in an active way, especially with you. And when you remember that he is, above all else, compassionate, that weight, the hesitation and anxiety and presumptive guilt, evaporates from your chest like ice sublimating into the air.

His kindness is not a weakness; it will not lead him to grasp for old pains. You can trust him to know what’s good for him.

You nod toward the picnic table, and try a smile. “Okay. Yeah. Let’s go.”