ALFG Chapter 165

#08: NO PLAN by HOZIER

They stay at the hot springs for two more days before they return to One’s, and then another day there before Dirk and Three go home. The First Guardian does not show up again (although One says their phone is filled with text messages from him that almost break character limit), and the rest of the mini-vacation is violence-free.

It’s strange that Dirk can check off vacation from his bucket list now. He went on a hike in the woods and it wasn’t a life or death situation, he was on a legitimate vacation with friends, and he got to spend a few days at a hot spring.

He’s not the only one struck by the novelty of it. Damara’s scrolling through her new phone for places to visit in Kisaragi the whole way back to One’s house. Three encourages it and tells Dirk he can make his own list, if he wants to. If it makes him happy, then even if it’s just a novel thing, then go for it.

“And your office?” he asks, once they’re back. The cat leaps out of its carrier and into the kitchen, leaving them both behind in the living room.

Three waves his concern off. “Kisaragi has all the time in the world, we can just come back to it when you get tired of wandering around for a bit.”

“Is any of it actually helping me or am I just fucking around like an asshole now and running away from my responsibilities?”

Three looks at him with that now familiar pitying, though endlessly fond, expression of his. “Putting yourself first always contributes to finding your peace,” he says. “Small things, Dirk.”

“I’m just…used to it being us in a room talking about shit and I get upset and you do your weird mind-reading – soul-reading, I guess – and I go to bed exhausted as all fuck.”

“So you’re finding this odd?”

“No. Maybe.” Pause. “Yeah.”

“It’s normal. Some people react to that when things suddenly start being easy when they shouldn’t be. But it’s fine, I promise. In fact, it’s good news, and I’m glad that you are finding some things easy. You’re doing fantastic,” Three says.

Dirk lets the praise sink in, before nodding jerkily. “But something is going to come up, eventually, right?” he asks. “It feels like it has to.”

“Life is cycle of little things, both good and bad. Certain circumstances just make it so that sometimes, the bad is in overabundance,” Three says. “If something comes up, we will deal with it together.”

“And if it’s dangerous?” Dirk asks. “If it’s not just some misunderstanding? If it’s something like your First Guardian getting pissed at you?”

Three smiles, not the usual empty or soft ones. His red eyes shine with something bordering on malice, an edge to curve of his lips.

“Then I’d be insulted you think me so weak,” he says. “I am the sun, Dirk Strider.”

The memory of tiles melting in seconds comes to the forefront of his mind. He knows what Three is offering, but it’s a time of peace. He can make his exaggerated promises.

(He tried to severely burn his First Guardian when the man threatened his brother.)

“How do you do that, anyway?” Dirk asks, steering the conversation away before he can think too hard about it. “Conceptual magic?”

“Ah. Well, Time magic doesn’t really lend to everyday use, given how important and fragile it is,” Three says. “So, I decided to lean into the more conceptual part of my magic, so I have something I can use as much as I can, if physical fighting prowess isn’t enough. Time magic has always been associated with heat and fire, so…”

#

There are so many places to go in Kisaragi that he ends up just sitting down for a whole morning and scrolling through posts online. At some point, Three asks Seven for Damara’s list in an attempt to help, and Dirk ends up pestering Damara to compare suggestions on where to visit. She’s already planning on going to a waterfall next week, and has two months’ worth of trips lined up. Dirk leaves her to it and instead works on his battlebot to let his mind settle.

The chassis is easy to assemble, especially when he has easy resources he can just order and have delivered, it’s the training data he’s having trouble with. It knows his kata, since, well, he knows those by heart, but if it was up against something like fire, it’d need to be proofed. And if it was up against something long-ranged and multi-weaponed, like Three’s fighting style, the damn thing would probably get taken out in a few minutes.

“My fighting style?” Three blinks as they prepare dinner in the kitchen that evening. “I’m a dancer.”

“…what?” Dirk stops chopping the green onions on his board.

“I know it’s not traditional, but yes, my fighting style is mostly derived from dance. That might be why you’re having trouble with the training data,” Three says. He pours soy sauce into the pan of fried rice, steam rises from it as it hits the metal. “My ribbons are runed; the stitches on it are very deliberate. I use them in a combination of ribbon dancing and silk dancing, and I take advantage of my flight to make the physics work. When I’m using my chains, it’s a combination of silk dancing and fire dancing, depending on whether I’m setting the weapons on fire. I had ballet training too.”

He tosses the food to let the sauce evenly distributed among the rice. Dirk slides the chopped green onions into a bowl and passes it to him to add to the pan.

“I can spar with your bot so it can learn, if you want,” Three offers.

It would be an interesting thing to observe, so he says, “Sure.”

They set up the whole session in the backyard the next day. Three’s nice enough to let the bot start with evading the ribbons thrown towards it with intent to latch on and pull. By the end of the hour, it knows how to anticipate and dodge multiple of the things trying to grab it at the same time from all angles.

Three trains with it for the next few weeks every afternoon, between him and Dirk arranging the office and having their talks. It still reacts slower than Dirk does when Three changes up his attack patterns – Dirk ends up trying to spar with Three to check how well he fares compared to his boy – but it does pretty well, though Three never tries to throw heat and fire at it.

“Well, you worked hard on it. I wouldn’t want to trash it,” Three says when Dirk asks him after one sparring session with it. They’re sitting on the porch while Three rests and Dirk checks on the equipment. “I might not be good with technology like you are, but I know it can’t have been easy to make that.”

“I need to test if the fire-proofing works,” Dirk says. “Torch it.”

Three makes a face, genuinely looking pained at the thought. “I can test burning a strip that’s fire-proofed? You’ll lose all the training data if I just torch it.”

“I’ll make a copy.”

Three’s expression is still scrunched up, brows drawn and mouth flattened to a line.

“Fine, I’ll give you some scrap to test,” Dirk says. “It’s just a battle bot.”

“You have to understand, one of my friends is a robot,” Three says. Dirk stills…right. Yeah, he hadn’t even thought about that. Even if this battle bot isn’t sentient, the fact that it looked like a bot must be uncomfortable. No wonder Three is always so careful with it. “And, like I said, it took time and effort to make. I’d just feel bad.”

“You feel bad about everything.”

“I can’t help it.”

“You should be careful,” Dirk says as he clicks a panel on the bot’s arm back into place. “People can take advantage of that, you know.”

“I know,” Three says. “But do you ever feel like none of it matters because you’re already fucked up beyond belief anyway?”

Dirk stops. He looks to Three’s forearms, since he’s rolled his sleeves up, covered in scars. Looks to his own scarred hands, from years of self-taught training and burning himself while putting his bots together or accidents from the high tower of his house.

“Yeah,” he says. “…but people will get concerned about you, anyway, so. Just watch yourself.”

Three blinks and turns to him.

“You have a problem with not taking your own advice,” Dirk says. It’s humanizing, it’s sobering that Three’s just another fucked-up kid like him, but still.

“Sorry,” Three says. “Pull me back from the edge if I get a little too close?”

Dirk nods.

#

He gets updates on Damara’s vacation from Three, because Seven sends him photos and sometimes Three views the photos on the laptop where Dirk can look over his shoulder and snoop. Damara looks a lot less haggard these days, sometimes smiling in the photographs she shows up in. It’s like watching a rerun of Dirk’s own first few months on Kisaragi, surveying the photos that come in every few weeks or so.

The rifts over the ocean and over Hatsune city don’t get worse, but they don’t get better either. Dirk is still on the island, but it doesn’t feel so bad anymore. He reads through every journal entry he can find in Three’s archives about anything that could be related to interdimensional travel, even tangentially. Three gets updates from One about their own research and their discussions with the First Guardian, and Dirk compiles everything he has in a document after he gets himself a separate laptop so he doesn’t eat up Three’s storage space.

Traditionally, interdimensional travel is not encouraged and that’s why there’s barely any information on it, but obviously, it is possible, if the walls of the universes are weakened enough. It’s targeted travel that’s difficult.

Dirk frowns. Targeted travel…he stands up and leaves his room to go find Three and ask him for One’s chumhandle. If they could literally ask Hal to come over, then it has to be possible for targeted travel to be a thing, right?

TA: it’s cause our classpects are linked together. it's not unlike the link that exists with three sharing his soul with someone else. because there’s already a connection there, it’s easy to just follow it here if someone knows how to

TT: And how do you follow it?

TA: drift

TT: Of course it’s fucking drifting. Again.

TT: How the hell does that even work?

TA: hang on. respond to your friend requests, i’m going to ask hal

A minute later, there’s a request from a timeausTestified. Of course he’s still using the same chumhandle as Dirk is.

TT: One says you asked about honing in by drifting?

TT: How the hell did you get here by following a soul link?

TT: Is that how One explained it?

TT: I assume that’s why they had you contact me; it’s not their expertise.

TT: They’re not wrong, but it’s more nuanced than that.

TT: Are you familiar with Heaven Help Us? It’s a Hope spell that essentially sends out a signal to every Hope player the caster knows that they need assistance. As far as I can tell, it overcomes even spatial boundaries.

TT: This functions somewhat similarly. Souls are very strong. They can seem fragile to us since our magic is tailored to destroy them, but they’re resilient. They don’t get destroyed without very fine-tuned magic.

TT: That kind of connection, it seems, holds across universes.

TT: How do you use it to travel?

TT: Follow it like a homing beacon.

TT: There’s a certain pull to it, like a psychic connection. You would still need an actual spatial tear in order to physically travel, but when you step through that tear, you know exactly where to end up in.

TT: It’s the same mechanic that had you landing on Kisaragi instead of someplace else.

TT: Because somehow has chunks of a Dirk’s soul mixed with theirs and the universe mistook me for that Dirk?

TT: What?

TT: Oh, you have no idea. Shit.

TT: Ignore that, then.

TT: Ignore what?

TT: Hal.

TT: Nothing.

TT: Tell me. I’ll just find out on my own if you don’t.

TT: I can’t tell you, this shit is outside my jurisdiction.

TT: Also, One would skin me alive when I don’t even have skin to make it happen. They’ll manage somehow.

TT: Just don’t tell them. What the hell are you talking about?

TT: Ignore it.

TT: I can just ask Three.

TT: That would not be a good idea, trust me.

TT: He talks in less circles than you.

TT: …

TT: Hilarious.

TT: What is it this time?

TT: You’ll get it eventually.

TT: But don’t bother Three unless you want One to put you in permafrost. Don’t lie and ask him later when you’re offline. The guy’s going to have a panic attack or accidentally set the house on fire.

TT: You’ve accidentally drifted when you had a panic attack. If he has one, his soul might go unstable again.

TT: Don’t fucking ask him about it.

TT: Jesus, I won’t.

TT: If I can somehow find a splinter of my soul back on my Earth, can I go back?

TT: If the connection is strong enough, sure. You can usually tell if you can drift with them, like you used to with your dreamself.

TT: It’s a conscious thing when you really pay attention to it. I can feel One even across universes.

TT: Could Hal be an option?

TT: If you can reach him, sure.

TT: Can these soul connections extend to every version of me out there? How muddied do the waters have to be?

TT: The closer they are to you, the better.

TT: I see.

TT: Don’t try to fish for information, asshole.

TT: You’re not giving me much to work with and apparently, asking Three is off limits.

TT: I’m blocking you after this. Drop the subject and forget about it after.

TT: But my Dirk barely knows his powers. He doesn’t know how to drift.

---[timeausTestified has blocked timeausTestified]---

#

Three’s already asleep by the time Hal’s blocked him, so Dirk puts the conversation about Hal’s vague message off for tomorrow and turns in for the night. Three has been willing to talk about a lot of things that are emotionally upsetting, Dirk’s not going to lose anything if he asks. If the guy’s uncomfortable, he’ll just say no. He’s been pretty straightforward for the most part, baring the obvious non-answers here and there.

Sometime past midnight, there's a crash and a thump across the hallway. Dirk snaps awake, already sitting up.

Quietly, floating off the bed to not make any noise, he retrieves his sword from his sylladex and flits over to the door. Three's room is down the hallway and the cat stays with him; if there's an intruder, he only needs to get to them and then find whoever's snuck into the house.

The hallway is a warzone when he opens his door, smelling of burnt wood and smoke. He retrieves his phone this time to shine a flashlight down the space. His stomach drops at the sight of Three's door open...but the doorknob has been melted, specifically the one that has to be accessed from inside the room. Its base has fused with the wood panel, half of which is blackened and smoking. Scorch marks that are suspiciously spaced apart the same way footsteps might be marr the carpet, leading all the way to the bathroom.

Nobody's in the house. It's just Three, his powers possibly going haywire. Dirk returns his shit back to his sylladex and rushes to the bathroom, its door open, steam drifting out from inside. The lights are off.

Carefully, he nudges the door open. The shower curtain hasn't been pulled across – Three is sitting slumped over in the bathtub, clothes soaked as the water around him continues to steam. The shower and the faucet are both running, desperately trying to cool him off. His back and shoulders heave from the effort of breathing.

Some ice might be good. There's an ice maker in the kitchen, so Dirk flashsteps down as fast as he can and loads it up, dumping everything into a bucket and starting the machine up again while he returns upstairs. Three doesn't notice him coming inside, hunched over as he is over the blackening porcelain tub.

He carefully and slowly dumps the ice into the water behind Three. The steam worsens, but the god visibly relaxes. Dirk goes downstairs for more ice, checking into Three's room for the cat along the way – the thing is peacefully sleeping away on the bed, which has its covers thrown aside carelessly. Three managed to get out before he could hurt it.

He keeps filling the tub with ice until everything stops steaming. His hands are shaking by the end of it from the cold, but Three has stopped subconsciously boiling everything. Dirk sets the cold bucket to the floor and shakes his hands out to get some warmth in them.

In the bathtub, all the ice has melted already. Three's breathing is still ragged, but he's not as tense. Dirk wipes the condensation off his glasses and kneels by him.

"Three?" he asks, softly. Three doesn't respond. He puts a hand on his shoulder – and god, he is burning up, though thankfully only to the levels of a fever than to the point of steaming water – and shakes him gently. "Three."

The brittle tub groans as his weight shifts. Dirk grabs him by the shoulders before he can list to the side and sink under the water.

"Three." Dirk crawls closer, looping his arms under the god's to haul him up and lean him against the side of the tub, making sure to keep ahold of him so he doesn't accidentally go under. "What happened?"

The god's eyes open slowly. With his mess of a hair plastered all over his face from the water, Dirk has to clumsily brush it aside so Three can look at him without being poked in the eye. His irises are bright, red embers in the dark of the room.

"Dirk?" he asks, softly. "You're back. Sorry."

... he's not lucid.

"Yeah," Dirk lies. Three can barely discern what's real right now. "I'm back. What happened to you?"

"I think I had a nightmare. Or a memory. I don't know," Three says. "The fire wouldn't kill dad."

Three had implied he'd burned his old man alive. He must have activated his powers in his sleep in a panic and only had enough presence of mind to cool off before he set the whole house on fire. There's not a single shine of awareness in his eyes right now.

"You're fine, Three. You're safe. Your dad's not here," Dirk says – it's what Three would say, right? If this had been the other way around.

"I know," Three says, smiling weakly. With him completely drenched, Dirk takes a moment to realize he's crying. "But he never really left, did he?"

If the man wasn't already dead, Dirk would be hunting him down.

Instead, he prepares to haul Three out the tub, when a bright pink glow slowly illuminates the room. Under the water, Three's left wrist is growing, cracks of light under his skin crawling up his under his sleeve and shirt.

What now? Are the soul pieces holding him together trying to pull away? Now, of all times?

Except, that's not what they're doing. He knows, somehow, that that's not what they're doing. He doesn't know why, he just knows with a certain calm that they're not trying to escape.

He kneels back down, leaning over the edge of the tub, one hand reaching for Three before he's even aware of it. Two fingers brush over the god's brow, careful, and Dirk speaks a name he does not know.

"Rest – "

#

When he wakes up, he's no longer in the bathroom. He's changed into dry clothes, since the pair he'd worn earlier had gotten soaked from the ice and trying to make sure Three didn't drown. But he's not in his room.

Instead, he's sitting on the edge of a bed, back against the headboard, legs stretched out in front of him. He'd fallen asleep leaning back, sitting. Three's cat is on his lap, purring away as it sleeps.

Beside him, Three is similarly passed out, though his slumber is much more peaceful. He's in new pajamas, rolled over on his side so one of his hands is clutching onto Dirk's, the grip loose since he's unconscious.

The door is still a mess, burnt with the doorknob turned to slag. It's left ajar since it can't close. The last thing Dirk remembers is the bathroom, and now Three's been put to bed much calmer than earlier.

Three's holding onto him with his right hand. His left is free, the underside turned up and baring his scar to the world. Something inside it glows for a brief moment, as if taunting Dirk.

His hand lifts on its own and rests itself on Three's hair. The god relaxes at the touch.

Except Dirk hadn't done that.

The pink glow flares from Three's wrist again.

Dirk frowns down at it as it clicks in his head. Oh, that drift-exploiting body-hijacking asshole.

#

He doesn’t ask.

Three repairs his door and the carpet by reversing time on them and apologizing for waking him up. He doesn’t actually remember the incident, as when Dirk asks, he comes up blank, but it’s easy to put two and two together when there’s burn marks in the hallway and the bathtub is destroyed.

Three is so mild-mannered that it’s easy to forget, sometimes, that the god carries such dangerous firepower with him (hah). He conducts himself politely, always the bigger person and the first to stand down and apologize, even when he can easily escalate things. He might be a hypocrite sometimes, but he takes his own advice of putting in the work when he’s interacting with people. Dirk’s suddenly aware of how flammable he is, how easy it would be to have his flesh melted from his bones.

And Three lets him stay in the house, dries his hair for him when he starts sneezing because he was hurrying to get back to a project after a shower, mends and comforts. It’s easy to be destructive, easy to be abrasive, and yet he doesn’t.

So Dirk doesn’t ask.

#

He eventually puts together a list of places he wants to go to. Damara sends him photos herself from time to time – she’s been in a great mood in the past two months – and the last place she and Seven had visited was a little town that looks like it’s from one of Jake’s mafia movies. All winding cobble streets and little stone houses clustered close together, arched bridges over a clear river that people can actually ride boats on.

The trip marks nine months since he’s arrived on this universe. As irritating as hearing Three talk about the importance of good food and a consistent sleep schedule and regular showers is, it genuinely is the best he’s physically felt in months. Godtier healing has scraped away that stretched feeling of being under constant stress, and taking care of himself makes him go through the days with all cylinders firing instead of running on fumes.

He’s going to miss this place, he realizes, sitting in a tiny boat with strangers as the ferryman rows them down the canal. The boat rides are a tourist attraction, offered to the public for a fee.

Kisaragi is so far removed from his life, but that’s exactly it. It’s someplace far removed from how fucked up his life was. Five thousand years of history, and still going, all waiting to be explored. The world’s his oyster.

“When you guys figure out how to move between universes,” he asks later once they’re back at the hotel, winding down for the night. “Can Damara and I come back?”

Three looks surprised at the question. He blinks, and then smiles, though it looks strangely sad.

“Of course,” he says. “You absolutely can, Dirk.”