ALFG Chapter 162

#05: THE KINTSUGI KID (TEN YEARS) by FALL OUT BOY

Three sews runes into the inside of his coat to make it responsive to temperature and keep its wearer warm. Then, they fly at top speed north, following the coast until the air gets colder and the winds more biting.

And then, as far as the eye can see, ice sheets. There are a few specks below, white and furry and moving, that Dirk soon realizes are polar bears, animals he's only seen in photos and were long extinct by his time.

His surprised breath comes out as mist. Three tosses the ends of his scarf back over his shoulder before it's completely blown off by the gusts around them.

"I know it looks tempting, but they'd maul your face off. Polar bears are terrifying predators," Three says.

Dirk turns to him. They stare each other down before Three gives him an exasperated look.

"Just because you're immortal doesn't mean it won't hurt," Three says.

Fine. Whatever. He can't see the cool extinct bears.

Three tugs his sleeve and starts gliding down. Dirk quickly follows. Okay, maybe he can see the cool extinct animals.

They keep their distance, high enough that the things can't just stand and claw their limbs off, but Dirk can see them - a mother bear and her tiny cub, toddling after her obediently.

"There are penguins ahead, if we keep flying. Narwhals inland, where the glacier splits," Three says. "Keep warm.”

They slow down their flight so they don’t spook the animals as they pass. An artic fox that almost blends in with the snow is jumping and widening cracks in the ice. Another polar bear is swimming in the water, hunting. As they cruise up ahead, an entire flock of penguins comes into view, several of them sliding on their bellies as they glide across the ice.

Dirk turns to Three. The god obligingly stops mid-flight and sighs, as if Dirk were an unruly child at a zoo, but who can blame him, really? It was penguins. You always stopped to see the penguins if you had a chance.

“Be careful with them,” Three says.

Penguins are surprisingly more curious than he expects them to be. They crowd around him as he floats cross-legged over the ice, a few pecking at the edges of his coat that falls within their reach. Three, completely immune to the cold, sits down at another spot and is swarmed by several of the birds shortly after as they realize he’s a walking heater. Several of them go so far as to jump onto his lap, forcing him to lie down on his back as he’s completely overtaken by the flock.

Dirk floats over to where he’s staring at the sky in surrender while the penguins huddle around his limbs. A few are pecking at his hair.

“Do they know you?” Dirk asks.

“They might recognize me, sometimes I just fly aimlessly,” Three says. A penguin settles beside his face, closes its eyes, and promptly goes to sleep. He sighs.

They stay there for hours, Dirk following several of the birds as they play and glide on the ice. Three ends up falling asleep (how the fuck) and Dirk has to wake him up so they can see the narwhals. They fly high up inland, until they come upon a chasm in the landscape, and way below, a strip of water where they can see the tusk of a whale, and the dark shape of it underwater.

“They hide in leads to have their young,” Three says, “But since spring is starting, it’ll be time for them to migrate soon.”

They cruise down the lead, slowly following it out to the sea. The ocean is much calmer here, much more idle. It’s nothing but ice for miles and miles, but there’s some sort of peace to the harshness of this place, as unforgiving as the environment is.

“Did your world have any of this?” Dirk asks.

Three shakes his head. “No, we’re lucky we could even still restore this.”

“Were there some things you couldn’t restore?”

“Some species, we didn’t have DNA copies of,” Three says, “So we only have records but no restorations.”

The new Earth he was on was lucky to still have their world; Kisaragi and its universe was running on echoes.

“Tell me if there’s any you really want to see,” Dirk says. “I’ll find them for you.”

Three blinks. Turns to him. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Dirk says.

“Oh.” He turns away. Frowns slightly like he’s having a hard time believing it, and then, “…thank you.”

“No problem,” Dirk says. It’s the least he can do – quite literally; this world has housed and provided for him;, Three has been patient with him for months, let him meet his brother. Some animal that’s probably underappreciated on Earth is nothing.

#

Damara leaves Kisaragi to visit the living world. The news is passed on to Three one afternoon while he and Dirk are both continuing the rearrangement of the office, and the red landline by the computer desk starts ringing. Three instantly drops everything he’s doing and picks it up.

Turns out she left with Seven, presumably to sightsee. One doesn’t sound too worried, so though Three first listens in concern, he later just says, “Okay,” quietly and puts the phone back onto the receiver.

“Would it be dangerous if she was in the living world?” Dirk asks.

“No, it should be fine, we took care of the rift as best as we could,” Three says. “It’s Seven I’m worried about.”

“Why?”

Three pauses, and then, hesitantly: “He’s not the best with people.”

There’s something there, simmering right under the surface, but Dirk doesn’t know Three’s siblings well enough. Other than a single encounter with the Prince of Space, he doesn’t know how the guy would act around a liability to his universe.

“Just make sure she’s in one piece or something,” Dirk says.

Three nods. “I’ll text him.”

He takes his phone out to do just that – he must really be worried about how his little brother is going to take this. As the app on his screen loads, he rubs at the scar on his wrist absentmindedly. The color looks darker today, more like a bruise than a scar.

“Is that okay?” Dirk asks.

Three freezes.

“…yeah,” he says, voice flat.

Dirk similarly pauses in what he’s doing, to observe him. “You sure?”

“Just hit it on something the other day,” Three says. “It’s healing.”

“Doesn’t look like it,” Dirk says. If anything, the thing looks worse. At least at first, it looked like it was old and slowly fading. It looks like it’s worsening from inside out.

“It’s fine,” Three says, smiling over his shoulder. “It’s just been banged up a bit, so it looks worse than it really is.”

Dirk watches him carefully as he turns away, making sure that his wrist is out of Dirk’s line of sight as he texts his brother. When he returns to his work, he’s pulled his sleeve down, effectively hiding it from Dirk’s scrutiny, though that just waves a massive flag that something is obviously very wrong.

But he’s moving around like it doesn’t pain him, or if it is, he’s plowing through it.

“Does it hurt?” Dirk asks. “Tell me that, at least. You said it was fine to ask for help, take your own damn advice.”

Three stops again.

“Yes,” he says, eventually. “It does, a little.”

“Rest, then.”

“It doesn’t hurt that much,” Three says.

“Rest anyway. You’re gonna fuck it up.” If it’s a scar that’s getting worse when his body’s godtier, then that means it’s something that hurts beyond the physical. Like something done to his soul maybe, and Dirk already knows who to blame for that.

A wave of guilt instantly makes his stomach drop, but he clenches his fist. If he’s not Dave’s Bro, he’s not that asshole either. Same designation, different person.

“Could I help?” Dirk asks – this time Three flinches like he’s been shot.

What the fuck.

“…no,” he says, “Not with your skillset, I’m afraid.”

“…but a Prince of Heart could help?” Dirk asks.

Three’s jaw clenches, and then, he says, tersely, “Yes. So can another restorative Heart class.”

“Can you find one?”

“There might be someone,” Three says. “I’ll have to ask One for help.”

“Go,” Dirk says. “I can handle the house, go talk to your sibling.”

“Dirk – ”

“I said take your own advice. Go, Three.”

The god dithers for a moment. He sighs, and puts down the books he’s carrying. “Fine,” he says. “Call if you need anything.”

#

The little hellcat is a fucking menace when he can’t ask his owner for attention. Dirk takes to flying to get around the house because his ankles have been bitten one too many times.

Three left on an afternoon and has not been back in five days. There are no other gods here on Kisaragi aside from Dirk himself and One, so the mystery helper must be in the living world, which makes the wait make sense, but the fucking cat is so annoying.

“I’m going to toss you into the ocean,” Dirk says, petting the thing’s head as it contentedly sits on his chest, loaf mode, rumbling away as it purrs. “I’m going to feed you to one of those polar bears up north and I’ll be justified in doing so.”

The cat ignores him, still purring. Bastard. He doesn't understand why Three likes this thing so much.

The cat unloafs and rolls on its side, turning its head so the underside of its jaw is exposed for scratching. It's still purring.

Oh, to be a fucking cat with no worries, only biting people for attention.

"Do you ever get sick?" Dirk asks out loud. He supposes nothing does in Kisaragi – if they're dead, at least – because then what would be the point. Living people obviously still get ill if Three's any indication.

He fishes his phone out to send a quick Any updates? Hopefully any time dilation the message experiences won't fuck up when Three receives it.

One's help is on the way, is the answer the next morning, when Dirk wakes up on the couch, having not remembered falling asleep right there with the cat laying on him. It's still there, but it's sleeping on his legs now.

He gives it another week before he sends another text to Three, since he doesn't know how often he can do so without it being received as rapidfire messages. This time Three doesn't respond.

After two more weeks of radio silence - a total of four since Three has left the house - he leaves the cat in the local daycare, pays for a three-day stay, and finds the city hall map for the other side of the island.

And then, he flies as fast as he can to One's mansion.

#

It's not hard to miss. There's only one house in the spot where the map indicates the god of the dead lives. Dirk easily flies over the gate and lands on the front porch.

Obviously, he has never met One yet and…there's a possibility they could be hostile. There's also a possibility they're not even home, but this is his first lead for Three's whereabouts; he'd waste time if he tried to scour the living world for him right away without even trying to check the place.

He'd equip his weapon normally, but rocking up to a stranger's house with a sword might rightfully make them panic and kill him on the spot. So, instead, Dirk rings the doorbell and keeps his magic at the ready.

There are faint voices inside, so someone's home. Dirk steps back and prepares to meet the god of dead – and instead looks up and up and up at…what the hell was the name of Hal's Stand again?

"...Electric Love?" Dirk tries.

Electric Love stares down at him impassively, though his expression is hard to discern with the visor in the way. He stays by the doorway, looking down at Dirk, unmoving. The circle on the screen of his visor doesn't change.

"What is it, E?" someone asks. Something dark leaps from behind the Stand, a head poking over his shoulder. It's a…grayscale clown?

The black-and-white clown (with its hair in pigtails?) looks down at him, its eyes widening in delight.

"Oh, a Mini-Prince," it declares. "Let's eat it."

[I don't consume,] Electric Love says.

"Great! More for me," the clown says, and proceeds to unhinge its lower jaw, exposing rows and rows of needle as the bones on its face crack and pop.

Electric Love calmly puts a hand on its lower jaw and shuts it back up. Its mouth clicks shut, warping back into something more proportionate.  [I do not think One would appreciate blood on their porch.]

"I'll eat him whole. I won't be messy."

[I still think you should ask them first.]

"What the hell are you both talking about?" another voice asks, this time familiar. Enough to make Dirk freeze, because last he'd heard it, he'd sold his soul away to get signed up for interdimensional therapy.

Sapphrel Angeles shoves the door wider to get a good look at whoever their visitor is. Their eyes meet Dirk's, and they freeze in place.

Except it's not Angeles. For one, their hair is longer. For another, their eyes are a solid blue, instead of a ring around their left iris. They're taller too, less sickly and lanky and more fit.

Their surprised expression shifts to something colder. They're not frowning, they don't look angry, but the Kubrick stare they're giving him definitely doesn't look friendly. Is it him or did the temperature literally drop?

They recognize him, clearly. If the guy who fucked Three up had his face, he's not surprised.

"Strider," they say.

"You're One?" Dirk asks.

The tension leaves them, and they sigh. "Sorry," they say. "I just – sorry. That was rude of me." They close their eyes for a brief moment and then straighten their posture, plastering on a smile, and it's like they've turned on a switch. "Welcome, can I help you?"

"Where's Three?"

"Elsewhere –"

"In the living room," the clown with the pigtails interrupts. One's jaw clicks shut and they look like they're about to start punching someone. The clown giggles into Electric Love's shoulder guard.

"Is he okay?" Dirk asks.

Electric Love turns to him, as does One, and the god looks like they're deliberating whether to send him away or not.

"They're kind of ripping his soul piece by piece right now," the clown butts in again. "Because it's falling apart bad."

Dirk shoves Electric Love aside, while One barks out a curse at the talkative little clown creature. Before anyone can grab him, he flashsteps to the doorway to the living room, stepping inside –

Three blinks at him, sitting on the couch, perfectly fine…if not for the absolute gorey mess of his left wrist, the skin flayed open, bone exposed. Floating above it looks like shards of pink and red glass.

Sitting across from him is –

"Hal?"

"I thought you weren't invited to Kisaragi," Hal says, not looking up from where he's…sewing…together? Sewing together two strips of glass with bright red thread. "Unless you got stacked with another addendum to your sentence – oh."

This time Hal does look up. He looks different from the last time Dirk had seen him. His arms are bulkier and look fitted with weapons, instead of made to pass for human.

He tilts his head. "He seems different," he says. "Fascinating."

"Did something happen?" Three asks.

"You haven't replied," Dirk says.

"Oh," Three says. "I left my charger and my phone died."

That…is thankfully much more mundane than he thought it would be, but it doesn't explain the gorey wrist and what's clearly a version of Hal here. Speaking of, he turns to where Three's wrist is currently extended towards the robot, who's trying to stitch the floating pieces back together.

"What's happening there?" Dirk asks.

"Strider, get out," One hisses as they enter the room. The temperature drops again.

"One," Three says, frowning at his older sibling. A blast of warmth hits Dirk. He has to hold back a sneeze at the sudden change.

"You sure he can be here?" Hal asks, though he doesn't sound too concerned, instead focused on his task. His hands are stained in blood, and Three's wrist is trembling from obvious pain. "He looks…"

"It's fine. Can we just – " Three grits his teeth, sucking in a pained breath. The room quickly quiets.

"Dio mio, fratellino." One marches over to where Three is, putting a hand on his shoulder. There's a shift in the air, something Dirk can't see, and Three slumps on his side against the couch in relief, sweat beading his forehead. "Say something."

"I can bear it."

"It'll get worse if you never say anything, look at this," Hal says. "I don't even know if I can fix this."

"What's wrong with it? What's wrong with him?" Dirk asks. One's attention swivels to him, scathing, though it immediately withers into exhaustion.

"Magic poisoning," Hal says.

"Three's godtier," Dirk says, glancing to where said god looks to be falling asleep from the sudden crash of being in pain to nothing at all. One must have hit him with some healing magic, however that works for Heirs of Doom.

"Yep, master of his own magic," Hal says. "Shit with someone else's though, especially an opposing class's."

Three's half-dead, with a patchwork soul.

And he could time travel to someone's memories without the person being there. Dirk's pretty sure he can work this out. Three's wording had been careful – a memory that built Dirk but wasn't his; if he dealt with conceptual magic, it made sense he was drawn to history; history builds the present. Perhaps the concept of that allowed him to tap into the things that built Dirk.

But to inspect a differentperson's memories by exploiting that history with someone else, even if the person was in the past…as if uniting the ability to move through time with the ability to go through someone else's psyche, two different forms of magic…

Souls were made of their experiences too, weren't they?

Dirk turns to Three, about to be pissed he'd do that to himself, but the god's already drifted off, eyes closed and breathing rhythmic in a state of rest.

He addresses One instead. "This house is big, you got guest rooms, right?"

#

One, surprisingly, does let him stay over. Dirk thinks it's only because though they look alike, he's not the Dirk who hurt their younger brother, and so he gets a pass. Seven and Damara are coming back to Kisaragi, it turns out, so One warns him to expect more guests.

If he runs into Damara, he doubts she'll throw a fuss. It's fine. Instead he tries to figure out where Three has been moved (the blabbermouth clown with dangerously sharp teeth tells him he's in his room – third to the stairs on the third floor), and then goes around the building to find the right window to climb into.

There's a balcony by Three's room, which makes it easier for him to have something to land on. Unfortunately when he gets there, Hal is also in the room, still mending Three's soul through the injury on his wrist.

"Don't break the lock," Hal says on the other side, voice muffled but audible. "One will kill you if you destroy anything in their house."

"Open the fucking door then," Dirk says.

Hal only glances at him, and then returns to his work.

"Hal," Dirk says. "Open the damn door."

"I'm sure you can figure out how to get in without breaking anything," Hal says. Asshole.

Dirk stands as close to the glass as he can instead. "What are you doing anyway?"

"Fixing where the seams have ripped," Hal says. "It's not my magic, but our souls have a specific frequency that are close enough; the parts patching up Three's are responsive to me because of it."

"How are you fixing it?"

"Very carefully."

Without changing his expression, Dirk gives him a bitchface. He snickers.

"It's a skill way above your level, don't bother," Hal says. Little shit; Dirk bets he can get it down in a week. "It requires a precision and delicacy you're not capable of. You're quite fond of throwing bricks into windows instead of picking locks, Dirk."

"Since when?"

"Let's see: telling Jane you'll be the leader behind the scenes full stop instead of guiding her along or negotiating with her – and relegating the role of assistance to me, by the way. Sending Jake a battlebot to fight instead of teaching him step by step. Deciding to make and subsequently emotionally abandon me because I scared you, instead of thinking what existing would mean for me when I'm a copy of you. Do I need to go on?" Hal turns to him, a thin smile on his face. "Wow, One's right, this is cathartic."

"I'm not even your version of Dirk."

Hal's eyebrows raise. "You can make that distinction," he says. "Fascinating."

"Let me in, Hal."

"I don't own the house, if One wanted you to visit, they'd have showed you the room." He turns back to his work. "Now shut up before I mess this up and accidentally kill him."

Dirk's gaze flicks to Three, asleep, and very clearly exhausted. His breathing is ragged, like it's painful to do so even when he's resting.

He settles for sitting down on the balcony, annoyed.

#

Seven and Damara arrive in the evening. Apparently, for them, it's only been a week since they'd left, but for everyone else in Kisaragi, it’s been a month. Damara raises an eyebrow when she spots Dirk in the corner of the living room, looking out towards the backyard.

"Well, you look…less of a skeleton," she says.

"Gee, thanks," he snarks flatly. Compared to him who's been here on Kisaragi for nearly half a year, Damara's only spent a couple days in this new universe. She still looks as tired as he'd last seen her, if not more so. Falling out of the sky would do that to anyone, he supposes.

One shows them to their guest rooms upstairs. Dirk follows after them, if only to catch One telling Seven where his brother is and technically be shown where Three's room is and thus have permission to enter. Hal's still holed up in there, slowly putting the sleeping god's soul back into place.

He's sure One's noticed him tailing the back of the group, but they continue on with showing Damara her guest room ("Same one I used last time?" she asks, and One nods), while Seven is told he can have his room upstairs. Third floor, just like Three's – One makes no move to show Dirk where it is while their brother leaves to go unpack.

Instead they stare him down in the hallway. One is taller than him, compared to Angeles' small stature, but Dirk squares his shoulders and meets their gaze straight on.

"I apologize," One says, casting their eyes down. Mild surprise hits him. "I realize I have been…unfairly putting blame on you." They lower their head. "I have been remiss in my duties as god of Kisaragi and host."

"It's fine," Dirk says. "What's up with Three?"

One straightens their posture and motions for him to follow as they head for the stairs. Fucking finally.

"My brother's soul is in a precarious state, has been since the war," they say. "He was returned alive but…not exactly whole."

"He said his soul was shredded to pieces."

"It was," One says. "A soul completely destroyed also destroys the possibility of an afterlife. You need a soul to have a ghost. He would have been eradicated completely."

They pause speaking as they reach the bottom of the stairs and begin to climb. Then:

"Evidently, his opponent decided to put him back together, but you can't just stick torn souls back like that. Not without certain types of magic," One says. "So, to facilitate that reconstruction, he used his own soul in that restoration."

"Like kintsugi?"

"Like kintsugi." One nods as they reach the landing, and stop walking. Dirk does the same. "But our powers stem from our souls, not our bodies, as you yourself know as a godtier. So since Three's soul is about half Prince of Heart…"

"He can tap into those abilities sometimes," Dirk finishes for them.

"Correct," One says. "But a godtier body is made to accommodate a certain threshold of magic. Prince magic is too corrosive for a Mage like Three. So when he overdoes it, he gets poisoning."

They click their tongue.

"Hal also says it's like the connective pieces tried to wrench out of place," they say. "Which just made it worse.”

"There has to be another way to keep him alive that isn't…that," Dirk says. Obviously his other version tried to correct a mistake, but that was a shaky solution at best and a ticking time bomb at worse.

One sighs.

"Three hasn't really had much reason to use his powers recently," they say. "And it's only been a year or so since the whole debacle, we haven't had a lot of time to…look for alternatives. We govern a universe."

And from the way they've run things, duty comes before anything personal.

"But is there a way?"

"Not that I know of personally that can be achieved. We have no restorative Heart classes." They motion towards the third door down the hall. "Three's room."

The god is still asleep when they enter. The mess of shards above his wrist is in better shape, a half-formed sphere with cracks running across its surface, lines of pink filling in the gaps. The blood on Three's wrist has dried on his skin and Hal's hands. There is a towel right under it, smattered with congealed blood.

"So Hal's not so much as fixing it as making sure the connective parts stay in place," Dirk says, addressing One.

"Yes," they say. Hal glances to Dirk, then to One, but when the god doesn't protest his presence, goes right back to work. "As a splinter, the pieces recognize him and lets him nudge them around."

"Where is he," Dirk says, with clear contempt though he doesn't raise his voice.

"He is not allowed on Kisaragi barring very, very specific reasons, and in case of an emergency," One says. They frown as they look down at their brother.

That looks a lot like an emergency, but Dirk gets why they don't want to call in the guy whose fault this is in the first place.

"How does it work?" he asks, turning to One. "I'm a Dirk Strider, it might go faster if it's me."

One blinks and lifts their eyebrows very slowly. "...you want to fix his soul."

"I'm the best fit."

They turn to Hal, who has stopped what he's doing to similarly turn to them.

"I…see," One says. "Interesting. How well do you know how to drift, Strider?"

"I've...only done it by accident," he says. "Though there may be times I wasn't entirely aware I was doing it."

"Perhaps not tonight, then. I apologize but my brother's life and afterlife are on the line here," One says. "But, after dinner, if he wants to, Hal can tell you."

"I didn't come here to tutor someone," Hal says.

"Up to you." One shoots him a tight smile. "Now if you'll excuse me – I still am master of the house and have guests to attend to."

#

Hal does not tell him, because of course he doesn't. He does let him sit in the room while he continues to work, sorting out the pieces floating around the mess of the sphere. The whole thing is mostly in one piece, there's just a few stray shards here and there. Hal is threading red wire into a bright pink needle that looks more like a piece of sharp glass than actual needle.

"Why did the foreign parts try to wrench out of place?" Dirk asks. If he could stop that from happening, then Three would be fine, right?

"Incompatibility," Hal says. "A Prince of Heart and a Mage of Time are very far away from each other on the classpect dial."

He carefully nudges a small piece into the sphere, stabs the needle in, draws it out the other side.

"This method of putting back a soul together, from what I've learned, is also very…unorthodox. It's not something archived or studied since it's not something people just do," Hal says. "I've combed through One's father's research, and then some. I'd know."

"Should probably start writing this down, then."

"Maybe," Hal says. "From what we know, it's…splintering, but in a way where you're in a state of perpetual drift. Souls are very fluid things, you see. If you splinter off cleanly, those splinters can gain their own individuality. Case in point, myself."

He motions to himself on cue.

"But to use it like it's kintsukuroi, you have to stop it from overpowering the pieces you're putting back together, and instead simply hold," Hal says. "We can drift through connection, and we form connection through similarity or trust. The more similar, the more effective the drift. That's why other selves drift much better than outsiders. What these pieces are doing are exploiting the connective property of a drift to keep the soul together, and the soul to the body."

Hal turns the sphere around so he can get to a missing patch on the other side, nudging another shard into place.

"A drift only needs to be one-way. With other selves, the universe just doesn't differentiate between you, and so you can drift with them, though they might resist a bit. If you're stronger, you overcome," Hal says. "But what this is doing, is very consciously not drifting to subjugate, but rather drifting to connect. It holds on to the other pieces, and the other pieces hold on to it. And to connectively drift with a completely different person needs trust."

"So the pieces are falling apart because of the obvious," Dirk says, motioning to Three. He can't imagine the guy would trust the person who put him in this situation in the first place.

Hal shrugs. "It held together for almost a year and a half," he says. "Drifting like this is two-way, because the pieces are constantly interacting. It's like how sometimes we trust our friends automatically, because they're our friends. It's not even a question. But, sometimes there are things that shake that. It's…"

He pauses.

"How do I explain it – I'm not Three and I'm not you, I'm only skimming the surface here. It's like how sometimes we think we're terrible friends for some people, so we try to wrench away." Hal lifts the needle with the red thread, waving it around. "You catch my drift?"

"That was awful."

"It's a delicate balance of not crushing the pieces it's holding together," Hal continues, ignoring him. "And making sure the connection isn't corrosive."

Hal pauses in his work. He's wearing glasses but…though they're not the same person, Dirk knows him enough to tell that his expression is grim.

"For people like…us," he says. "Kindness and connection doesn't come easy. We're not like Roxy or Jane or Jake. Understanding and selflessness and compromise don't come easy to us. We're always so all or nothing, and we can be overbearing."

A lifetime of nothing often results in grabbing onto everything offered with clenched hands.

"It's work," Hal says. "We weren't born like the rest of them."

"But it's about kneeling in the mud," Dirk echoes, "And taking the time to get your hands dirty."

Hal pauses. "Jesus," he says. "What the fuck are you saying?"

"Shut up."

Hal snickers. He looks back down at the sphere to resumes his work. Dirk reaches for the needle.

"Wait," he says. "Show me."