ALFG Chapter 159

#02: DAWN by CIRCUS-P

They don't talk about the incident after, or the days following. Dirk is more than happy to let it pass, save for Three's passing comment about him drifting. Obviously, having fought another version of himself, the god had to have some additional knowledge about how a Prince of Heart's magic worked that Dirk wasn't aware of. His time at the island had not discussed anything about drifting, but considering they were planning an offensive-dependent breakout, he can see why it wasn't important.

Classpect magic doesn't come up much during their more serious discussions – Three would much rather he talk about his experiences, and he's still instinctively batting away the questions no matter how much Three tries to bribe him with anything of his choice right after. But Three's talked about how his magic leans more conceptual before, so he has to have detailed knowledge of certain facets of Skaian magic.

"How much do you know about classpects?" Dirk asks one day while they're in the office. He's setting up the new computer in the corner because apparently, Three's shit with setting up anything more complicated than a smartphone.

"A fair bit," Three says. "Why?"

"What's drifting?" Dirk tries to keep his tone as flat as it usually is. "It's obviously not cars."

"It's to do with Heart magic. An expertise of yours, actually. Certain very specific classpects can do it too, though they're the exception. You guys are the rule." Three continues idly flipping through a drawer of folders, not looking up. "Since Heart players are meant to splinter, they can tap into their other consciousnesses."

Oh, he already does that. Though –

"Does that count for other selves?"

"If the makeup of your soul is the same – or paradox space types it as the same, yes." Three pulls out the folder he needs and shuts the metal drawer carefully.

"I see," Dirk says. "So sharing memories?"

Three pauses, looking upward as he thinks. "No, not entirely," he says. "It's more…" Another pause. A tilt of the head that is so Angeles it's uncanny. "You're from Earth, have you seen Pacific Rim?"

He's pretty sure Jake had at one point. Either it was Dirk or Hal who torrented a shitton of movies for him and it was part of that, or Jake torrented it on his own if it already existed at his time, whichever.

"A friend of mine talked about it once or twice."

Three very very carefully side-eyes him. No fucking way he knows about that. No fucking way.

"...okay," Three says, "Well, it's like that. Sharing not just memory but…sensation? Self? It's drifting." He waves a hand in a gesture. "It's like you become the person but you're also you, is how I've been told it feels? So it gets very confusing. Your thoughts are one and your actions are one. You meld, I suppose."

That explains the confusion he'd had, then. He's fairly sure none of his friends died in this timeline, but they did in another, it seemed.

And it'd been his fault.

Of course it had been, that's expected.

"I'm not an expert on it considering, well, I'm not a Heart player. But." Three fishes out one of his wrist guards from a pocket and slips it on his right hand. He flicks a wrist towards one of the higher shelves and a red ribbon latches onto a thick book. He yanks it down and catches it. "Dad did keep notes if you want to read up on it."

He walks over to a table to set the book down and returns to his work.

Dirk flips through the journal while the OS installs. Manifestations of magic vary from person to person and thus there were different ways for Heart magic to be used, but there are records of both Stand usage (though it's not called a Stand here; it's referred to by a different shorthand) and drifting written here. It's as Three says – a confusing mind meld where someone can tap into splinters or other selves.

Or other people.

Dirk reads everything about it from the observation entries to the notes in the margins.  Then he shuts the journal and returns to work.

#

Organizing the archives digitally is much faster with a better computer. Dirk tells Three to get a scanner – the god protests because the spines of some of the books are fragile so Dirk promises to take it apart and adjust it so the books don't have to be bent to hell.

"If there are items that need to be shipped in from the living world, do they pass on or something?" Dirk asks over lunch. They're taking a break from organizing since they have a session scheduled later (Three calls it a session, Dirk prefers to just call it as it is, talking. He doubts this guy has an actual degree, or if he does, it’s fake as shit).

“They get passed to our post office,” Three says.

When he doesn’t elaborate, Dirk blinks. “You’re serious?”

“Yep. One has a whole thing set up,” he says. “It’s slow, of course, since – post office – but it works.”

“You mean someone alive could just bitch to their dead aunt about some asshole relative who’s still living and that dead aunt could respond right back?”

“Pretty much. You gotta wait for it, though,” Three says. He scrolls through something on his phone, and then slides it over to Dirk. It’s the tracking page. “Scanner’s still on the way.”

“Unbelievable,” Dirk mutters. A scanner on the way to the afterlife. There’s a joke there somewhere. He slides Three’s phone back.

“I suppose,” Three says. “I imagine Earth’s afterlife isn’t as accessible?”

“No. Death is…pretty difficult back on Earth,” Dirk says. It was why Angeles had made him promise, in the first place, to take care of Hal. If death were this accessible, they wouldn’t have had to worry about Hal.

Speaking of.

“Would there be a way to access the afterlife of our Earth?” Dirk asks. “You guys managed to connect yours with your living world, and we used to access dream bubbles while in the game.”

“It depends on how the universe is structured,” Three says. “A universe takes after its players and creators. So how you interact with it depends on how it’s structured.”

Well, that’s a problem. He barely knows anyone from the ancestral session. Nereus hadn’t talked about it.

“Can you tell how a universe is structured?” Dirk asks.

“With the right Seer, perhaps?” Three asks. “We’ve never tried it. Why do you need to access your afterlife, do you need it for something?”

“You remember what I said about our Anathema Point?”

Three pauses, then nods. “Ah, your end of your Dead Man’s Deal?”

“Might make it easier if Hal could just talk to Angeles.”

The god hums, poking at his food as he thinks. “Well, I suppose that makes it easier, since it’s one specific person. Though, it might be easier to revive them as a godtier?”

“There’s no active game,” Dirk says.

“Well, that does complicate things,” Three says. “What do you know of the situation and of the Anathema Point? I know they’re an Heir of Doom, but I need to know as much as I can if I’m going to help.”

It’s not like details of Angeles’ life are much of a liability to him, so he tells Three what he knows – they’re some alternate timeline version of an original self, they were cursed to be the Anathema Point and carry the weight of the universe’s doom, and when he last left them, they were on their way to dying.

He pauses as he remembers a detail from their conversation in the storage room, the night they asked him to take care of Hal.

“They died once, before,” Dirk says. “Hal revived them by…the way I understand it, he splintered a part of his soul and forcibly attached theirs to their body.”

Three starts rubbing at his wrist, though he appears to be listening. Must be a nervous tic.

“Later, when they found out, they gave it back to him,” he says. “And snuck a part of their own soul in some bracelet as a contingency for Hal.”

Three stops. His eyes widen, slowly, his face going ashen. “…they did what?”

“That’s a bad thing, I assume.”

“That is reckless,” Three says. “To a degree I cannot even fathom. They are not a Heart player, they’re not made to splinter.”

“Okay, catch me up.”

The god’s hands have started to shake, and he’s clenching and unclenching his fists to stop them from doing so. He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and then exhales. His right hand returns to massaging his left wrist, like it hurts.

“Heart players are different from the rest of the aspects because they can splinter or at least they can interact with them without much consequence,” Three says. “The rest of us aren’t. Souls are very, very fragile, it’s why some of you can splinter so easily. It’s just that when you do, those splinters don’t affect the integrity of the whole. When other souls try to – chop off a part of themselves, they’re risking permanent erasure.”

Dirk frowns. “You’re saying – ”

“I’m saying Angeles’ ghost is out there slowly dying.”

Jesus.

“Even if it’s just a small piece?” Dirk asks. Because surely, Angeles isn’t that stupid, right? It’s just Hal. It’s just a fucking robot –

“Even so,” Three says. “It’s like poking a hole into a glass full of water, everything will spill out and drain.”

Dirk’s hands twitch.

And for what? Some piece of software? God, what did Hal do to the kid to get them to act like that?

“I suppose they figured it was inevitable anyway,” Three says, dragging his gaze back to the surface of the kitchen island. “I don’t imagine their original self would have let them escape their purpose of Anathema Point even if they were dead, if the whole point was to transfer damage from the universe to someone who could carry it.”

“Will that kill them too?”

“They’re not godtier. It very well could,” Three says. “They might have figured, since they were doomed anyway, they might as well kill two birds with one stone.”

Dirk presses his lips to a thin line. Angeles was being reckless, but whatever their weird fixation with Hal was still his fault. That, at least, he needs to fix.

“If they can hold on until the problem with your universe is fixed, they could survive,” Three offers. “Though, I don’t know how fast their soul is going to decay.”

Dirk needs to get out of here fast. God, everything just keeps piling up.

“Any update on alternatives for how I can get out of here?” he asks.

Three shakes his head. “Nothing yet, I’m afraid. It might be the time dilation? I know One’s been talking to M, and M stays in the real world.”

And the real world’s time progression doesn’t sync up with Kisaragi’s. That gives Dirk some leeway, at least.

“If we find a way for you to get back without having to complete your Dead Man’s Deal, I can try to make it so that you come back not too long after you left,” Three says. “If not right at the moment you left, then as close as possible.”

Right, Time player.

“Thanks,” Dirk says.

“No problem,” Three says. “But for now, let’s focus on what we can do.”

#

Doing what they can, unfortunately, is just talking. Dirk spends half an hour tapping his fingers on the armrest of his chair and looking around the room, before Three closes his notebook and says, “Okay, take a walk.”

Dirk looks up at him, since he’d been glaring down at the carpet behind his glasses. “What?”

“Take a walk. You’re clearly agitated and high-strung,” Three says. “You can take a walk, or go dig in the backyard. There’s firewood in the shed, if you want to split them for the fireplace.”

“What the hell is that gonna do?”

“Calm you down for one,” Three says. “You’ve got a lot of nervous energy. Let it out.” He stands. “Come on, I recommend the firewood, unless axes are too heavy for you.”

Axes are not too heavy for him, so he stands and follows Three to the shed out back to get the firewood and an axe. A few ways off from it is a stump that has marks from being used as a flat surface to split wood on.

Three shows him how to split the wood, rolling up his sleeves to reveal his concerning number of scars on his arms. He doesn’t seem to be self-conscious about it and goes ahead with setting a log up vertically and then swinging the blade down the middle twice to chop it in half. When the blade’s cut through it, but the log hasn’t split off completely, he takes both halves in hand and pries them apart.

(Yeah, maybe challenging this guy to a fight wasn’t a good idea, but Dirk’s not about to admit that.)

Three hands him the axe, handle first. “Do you know how to handle an axe?”

Dirk’s never handled an axe in his life. “Yeah.”

Three nods and goes to sit a few ways behind him. At least Dirk doesn’t have to see his judging stare as he tries to handle a weapon he’s never tried before. It couldn’t be that hard, right? He taught himself how to handle a sword.

He sets a log up on the stump, lifts the axe, and swings it down. The impact rattles up to his shoulders and he grits his teeth.

“Yeah, I figured,” Three says nonchalantly. “Given that you grew up in a tower and never saw firewood.”

“I’ve got it,” Dirk says.

“You can ask for help. It’d make things go by faster.” He hears Three approaching behind him. A foot nudges the inside of his right ankle. “Feet apart.”

Dirk makes an irritated noise, but Three taps his shoe against his foot again.

“You want to dislocate something or what?” the god asks.

Dirk moves his right foot. Three taps his left and he moves accordingly. The god moves to the side.

“Bend your knees a little. Left hand close to the blade, a bit above the middle of the handle. Non-dominant hand near the end.”

“How do you – nevermind.” Stupid question, knew a version of him. Right. Dirk bends his knees a bit and adjusts his grip on the axe.

“When you swing down, let the weight of the axehead fall, so you have to aim right first. Lift the axe up, swing down, and as you do, slide your left hand down to your right. Don’t hold on too tightly, that’s how you’ll hurt something.”

Dirk grunts, lifts the axe overhead, and does exactly as he’s told. The axehead’s weight carries most of the downward motion of the swing, and his left hand loosens and slides down as he does. The axe splits into the log, though it doesn’t cut through fully.

“Good job,” Three says, throwing him a thumb’s up and a small smile. He returns to sitting back somewhere behind Dirk. “Keep going til’ you’re too tired to be mad.”

“I’m not mad,” Dirk says, carefully yanking the axe out like he’d seen Three do earlier. He takes aim again like he’d been told and swings. It splits, but doesn’t break. “I’m just thinking.”

“What were you thinking of?”

Dirk sets down the axe and takes the wood into his hands, trying to get a good handle on both sides before attempting to pry them apart. The pieces creak for a moment and then split off. He tosses them to where Three’s pieces had been set down. “There’s things to do and I’m here just – talking to you and making copies of files and splitting fucking firewood.”

“There’s not much else you can do,” Three says. “This is out of your control, so we’re trying to work with the things you do have control over.”

“I can hear a lecture incoming.” Dirk grabs another log to set on the stump to hack down at it.

“It’s not a lecture. It’s just advice,” Three says. Dirk splits the log easier this time now that he knows how to swing, though his aim is a little off-kilter. “You can’t always be in control of everything all the time, Strider, that’s just how the world was made. We’re all independent pieces of a big puzzle no matter how interwoven we are. There will always be things out of your grasp.”

“Yeah, and what the hell am I supposed to do, lie down and take it?”

“Of course not. Like I said, work with what you can,” Three says. “Work up to the thing you really need to change if you must. But know that there will be some things that will remain immovable.”

Dirk glances at him over his shoulder. The god is sitting on a little bench close to the house, leaning back in his seat and looking up at the sky. He’d probably know a thing or two about immovability, the fucking Time player. Still.

“What if I need it to move?” Dirk turns back to the log pile to pick another one.

“Then work up to it, see what pieces you have and do what you can with it. Sometimes the only way is through,” Three says. “The current situation is that we don’t have a way for you to get home if you don’t achieve peace, so we’re trying that.”

“Well, it’s not working.” Dirk’s swing is a little harder this time.

“Well,” Three starts, and then pauses. Dirk leaves the axe in the log and turns around.

“What?”

Three waves a hand. “It’s not going to be a one and done thing, you know,” he says. “Peace isn’t a permanent stage of mind.”

“Then what the hell am I doing here?”

“Teaching yourself how to achieve it in the first place,” Three says. “It’s not a permanent stage of mind, but it’s…imagine it to be like a home. Something you can’t always be in, due to certain circumstances, but it can be something you can return to, if you know how.” The god sighs. “We need to set realistic goals for you, Prince, and the truth is that you’re not perfect and you won’t ever be. You can’t control everything and everyone and you never will. You can’t always be at peace, but you can know how it feels and how to find it, if you would only allow yourself to.”

He spreads his hands, the motion exasperated.

“Nothing in life is permanent. Everything is in a stage of fluctuation. Everything is a matter of effort,” he says.

Dirk frowns slightly. He feels like a child, being reminded of something yet again; Three’s already said that. He’s been on Kisaragi for almost two and a half months now, and the god still has to repeat some of their conversations back at him.

The god’s expression loses some of its edge at Dirk’s frustration. How the hell he can read it when he’s wearing glasses, Dirk has no idea, but Three’s freaky. He’s always just done that. Creepy fucker.

“It’s not something everybody can get at the first try,” Three says. “Not easily, at least. Some have a better grasp at it than others, some don’t. It’s alright if you struggle.”

“I’m not – ” He starts, but they both know he is, so he just clenches his fists instead. “I just – I don’t think shit like that is made for someone like me. I don’t think I’d even know what to do with it.”

“Not to be pedantic, but how do you know if you’ve never had it?”

A flash of déjà vu hits him. Hal had said a similar thing.

“Dirk, you have lived your whole life operating under stressful conditions. Your whole life, you’ve lived wired to survive. You were in an apocalypse, and then you were in the game,” Three says. “Of course you have no idea what to do when it’s suddenly a period of rest. But all things that come up must come down; this was always inevitable.”

“Not for me.”

“Yes, for you. You are under the governance of the universe, you are subject to its fortunes as well as its misfortunes. You will have a time to heal.” Three frowns, muttering, “If I have anything to say about it, especially.”

He probably hadn’t meant for Dirk to hear that, but the area around Three’s house is so quiet, save for the sea, and Dirk’s long learned to ignore the sound of the ocean from living surrounded by it. He hears.

“There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens,” Three says – no, recites, Dirk is pretty sure. “A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to uproot. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build. A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance.”

The god stands, smoothing out his cardigan before approaching Dirk.

“You’ve done enough, Dirk. Rest for a moment,” Three says. “Haven’t you ever wanted to let someone else take the burden for once?”

Dirk looks away, not that Three would even know since Dirk stands just where he is and instead glances to the side behind his shades. Sometimes, in the back of his mind, he entertains the thought. It was why it was so easy to talk to Jake about his situation, because for once, he wanted someone to carry the burden with him, except he had to go and fuck it up.

Which is exactly why he should never do it again.

Three frowns slightly. This time Dirk can’t stop the immediate suspicion of What the fuck because there is no way the god can tell what he’s feeling when he hasn’t done anything.

The god sighs. “Look, Dirk. Wanting to rest is not a crime and it’s certainly not similar to being a burden and ruining a friendship or any sort of relationship,” he says. “It’s a normal human need. It’s just taking a break for a little moment and making sure you’re okay before you continue on.”

“Three,” Dirk says. “You’re a creepy son of a bitch, do you know that?”

“Sometimes I can be,” Three says, motioning to his eyes. “Never really looked not intimidating.”

“Not that, asshole. How the fuck were you doing that?” Dirk asks. “I didn’t even say anything.”

A small smile twitches on the edge of Three’s lips. “You tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine,” he says. “Quid pro quo.”

Dirk makes sure to show his frown now, because nothing else seems to faze this equally-stoic bastard.

“But, don’t change the subject,” Three says, sobering and looking at him in concern now. “You can’t keep running on fumes forever, Dirk.”

Dirk’s frown deepens. “I don’t expect you to understand,” he says.

“Then make me,” Three says. “How else would I?”

“The last time I tried, I ended up ruining everything,” Dirk says, and if Three’s any good with his weird sixth sense around people, he should figure this out on his own, shouldn’t he? Some fucking magic shrink he is.

The god pauses. Then, “Another thing you should learn,” he says, “Is that people are not homes, nor are they things to be fixed,” he says. “They belong to themselves and only to themselves, and it is a blessing if they let you in and let you help them.”

Dirk snorts and crosses his arms. “Isn’t that what you’re doing though? Trying to fix me so I can get home?”

“I’m not trying to fix you, Dirk. I can’t fix you, not because you’re inherently broken but because no one can fix people, it doesn’t work like that. We’re not playthings or objects,” Three says. “I can help, only if you let me and if you listen to me. Anyone can, only if you let them. This is why I ask you, all the time, to let me help you.”

He sighs.

“Do you remember what I said about friendships sometimes not being about things we deserve?”

“Sometimes it’s just people who just reach for us anyway,” Dirk says.

“Yeah, exactly. This is the same thing. You can’t reach someone who keeps pushing you away either. Dirk,” Three says. “No one can save yourself but you. I can offer you a life preserver, but you have to swim to shore.”

“Should I?” Dirk asks. “What good am I, anyway? Why the fuck am I in the water in the first place?”

“I don’t know,” Three says. “But sometimes we just end up there and we don’t even notice until someone points it out.” He tilts his head. “You’ve been treading water for an awfully long time, Dirk.”

He has. Good lord, he has. Seventeen years of nothing but fighting and keeping himself afloat, and for what? If Sburb had ended, it was going to be an empty fucking world, anyway. He would have to be a god with everyone else and it was just more responsibility again. The ride never ended. When he fell to the new Earth, he was being hunted left and right and always second-guessing his decisions because he’d already fucked up way too many times.

“I think, because you’ve been under nothing but this for a long time, you can’t really envision a future beyond it. It’s always the present moment of danger, and nothing else,” Three says. “When the world is saved and you are on a peaceful earth, Dirk, what will you do?”

That…is a point. He’s never really thought about things outside of the game because he was always waiting for the game. And then after that, it was Sburb and its reward. But say the world was saved, and he didn’t have to be a god, and there was a whole world of possibility…

Something yawns deep inside his chest. His stomach flips. Something beyond the present danger and a world where he can do just about anything he wants, because it’s safe. No responsibilities.

It sounds odd and awful and terrifying, but there is a shake to his limbs, a nervousness that makes his whole body feel like a livewire. What if.

Truly, what would he do with something he’s never had to consider before?

“I don’t know,” he says, and that something inside his chest opens itself wider, and oh god, he is going to throw up. What the hell would he do when he has nothing to do? What purpose would he even serve? He’s always been a leader, always been the guy with the plan, the guy to rely on. What the hell would he do if nobody needs any of those?

“Easy,” Three says, putting a hand on his arm. “Don’t overthink it, sweetheart. Just focus on the small stuff first. Work up to it. If you could do anything in a world that was open for you to explore, what would you do?”

“I don’t…I don’t know.” Dirk frowns, tries to grasp for anything at all, but he can’t come up with anything. Roxy who’d lived with him in the apocalypse had a dream of family; why the fuck is he coming up blank?

Has he ever had a dream at all outside of the present?

“Even mundane stuff. Any pipe dream at all. Nothing is too childish or stupid or silly,” Three says.

“I don’t know,” Dirk says. The Earth he’d come from was in 2014, right? “An MLP con?”

Three smiles. “Then that’s a start. When you get back to your Earth and you all save it. Go to an MLP convention and have fun.”

“What?” Dirk asks. “You’re gonna fucking take that for an answer?”

“Why not? It makes you happy, right? Then go do it,” Three says. “Not everything has to have some deep, enormous answer. Life’s just a series of small things we pile together that make us happy. This is how we find contentment and peace.”

Three’s hand on his arm squeezes in assurance.

“One step at a time. You’re getting there,” he says.

…for some reason, he feels some pride bubbling up at the praise. So far, their talks have always been him avoiding certain questions and Three writing in that black notebook of his. It’s nice to be told he’s doing a good job with something he’s going in blind, Dirk supposes.

“Can we go get takoyaki again?” Dirk asks.

“Sure,” Three says, looking up at the sky. “It’s still four, though. Maybe sometime around six?”

Well, Dirk’s still got that weird nervousness from the thought of having to face a world that’s not ending for once to shake off. And there’s plenty of logs to split. Six o’clock works.