chapter 10 - keyhole vision

Damn. The Texas heat really is the same no matter where you go. You're up on the roof, sun blazing away above you, and you're starting to think this place might be something like hell.

Your name is DIRK STRIDER. Right now, you're really wishing it wasn't. Still, you've put too much of yourself in it to really care that some other asshole is also named that, or at least that's what you're stubbornly repeating to yourself as you try to ignore the thing in the back of your brain trying to consume all of your thought processes.

Looking over the roof, it's about as barren of a wasteland as you imagine the Mojave to be, sun baking the concrete into a heat sink that's only found along the border. You're pretty sure it's something like that, anyway. You haven't actually been to Death Valley, so it's hard to compare.

At least the desert has rocks to kick around. You just have your own damn self, sulking around without even any crows to bother or be bothered by. They're all perched on roofs opposite the building, as if they're sizing you up. A shudder runs through you, and you try not to think about last time—one of them went right up to your face and plucked your shades off from where you'd been standing, unaware that the birds were so used to human contact. You thought you were going to lose an eye.

Still, as is, the feathered bastards aren't coming anywhere near you this time. Which... on one hand, you're grateful for, but it really isn't helping the general feeling of ominousity, if that's even a word. Ominousness. If you had a picture dictionary for omens, these things would be right there next to breaking mirrors and walking under ladders and all that shit. It also doesn't help that you're alone up here. Not that any of your options really sound good, you realize, gritting your teeth. Everything's been put on pause on the Dave front, and that means Dante as well—you can't just drag someone away from their dad that they've just met, even if he's your dad too. That would be a dick move by anyone's standards.

Discounting Dave and Dante, that means the only other people here are...

Well. You're not exactly eager to interact with anyone that's a part of Derek's brain.

You sit down on the hot concrete. There isn't anything much to do up here, other than squawk at the birds. Or fight, apparently. Dave's expression flashes across your mind, and you feel vaguely sick thinking about that. It does make you feel a bit better about no one else being here, though—you don't particularly want to end up in a spar right now, not with things being as they are. Still, you don't know how well you'll handle staying alone up here in the heat.

You aren't entirely alone, even so. Your phone, tucked into your back pocket, slips out a little as you sit your ass down on what's basically a grill at this point. You could just text someone if you wanted to—even if there isn't any Wi-Fi up here, you've got some data to spare. Opening up Pesterchum, you immediately make your way to your direct messages. You wrote to Jane before leaving, because taking your eyes off the road when Dante's driving and relying on you to cover basic safety shit like dude, slow down, you're basically tailgating that guy is a dangerous game to play, even if he's always fast on the trigger with any reversals. You need sideways non-memories like you need a hole in the head. Which is what they feel like, anyway.

Back to the point. Jane hasn't written anything back other than her last message of Take care! And write when you get there :B, so you might as well bring her somewhat up to speed.

timeausTestified started pestering gutsyGumshoe at 10:21 a.m.

TT: I've arrived. It's a bit more of a mess than anticipated, but nothing us Striders can't handle.
TT: We're practically made for this kind of bullshit.
TT: Watch out, Bullshit Swamp, we've got matching waders and a van full of chemical-grade cleaning supplies, and we're not leaving 'till the eponymous shit's been cleared out.
TT: However difficult of a fight it may be, it is one that will be won.
TT: Even if it takes metric tons of blood, sweat, and tears.
TT: Even if it lasts for eons, time stretching out like that freaky scene from Interstellar.
TT: Even if, God for-fuckin'-bid, it means having to deal with listening to idiotic adults who don't want to fix their own goddamn problems.
TT: This is what I'm prepared to face in the treacherous depths of this swamp.
TT: And they are treacherous indeed.
GG: Good aftermorning to you too, Dirk!
GG: You could just say you got there, you know.
GG: Sometimes I wonder why I ever let you join that server. These analogies are getting more impenetrable by the day!
TT: Rest assured, this has nothing to do with any outside influence. The sweet siren call of writing out walls of text with little to no regard for how the recipient might be able to climb them would have called me to crash my ship upon the metamorphorical shores of their isles even if I had never come into contact with your brother's friends.
TT: Besides. You know Rose is my cousin.
GG: I guess. It really is funny how that worked out, half the server being one big family and then finding out the other half is too!
GG: Well, three-fourths, anyway. Though I'm sure you're itching to say that Dave's an honorary Strider, hoo hoo!
TT: Practically already is, in my book. Have you seen the guy's irony levels?
TT: Should be taken to a medieval doctor and get leeches for them. That shit ain't sustainable.
GG: I'm sure there's other ways to avoid irony buildup.
GG: Like getting to talk to someone who isn't steeped in it all the time!
GG: I think it would do both of you good to come visit sometime.
GG: Or everyone, really! I'm sure we could find the space somewhere.
GG: Lord knows we've got plenty of guest rooms! And the yard for camping.
GG: We could have a proper barbecue and everything!
GG: And actually hang out and...
GG: Argh! I just really miss having you here!
GG: Or... I don't know!!
GG: I don't even know if I can say I miss having you here, we haven't even seen each other in real life!!!
GG: Isn't it weird to say that you miss someone you've never met?
GG: Ugh, I'm sorry.
GG: Everything's just been a mess recently. John's been acting really weird for so long now and it's throwing everyone off and I just wish he would say something instead of moping about it all the time and staying in his room!
GG: And I try not to get mad about it but it's been weeks! How are we supposed to help if he won't say anything?
GG: I just want things to be normal again. :(
TT: Jane, you are a treasure. And I miss you too.
TT: I don't know about John, honestly. If it weren't for you I probably wouldn't have noticed anything was wrong.
TT: We haven't talked a lot.
TT: Is there anything I can do to help?
GG: I really don't know :(
GG: Agh, I'm just making you worry more!
GG: It's fine really, I just needed to get it off my chest.
GG: I know you're supposed to be helping out your dad, I shouldn't be bothering you about this!
TT: I'm being put on the sidelines anyway. A moment away from the action won't hurt.
GG: Well alright then. But I don't know if there's much you can do about it!
GG: It's a family problem, you know! Even if you are the coolest guy in Texas, I don't think our dad would appreciate you showing up out of nowhere to drag my dork brother out into the sun!
GG: Although...
GG: It is nice to get to talk about it to someone else. So thanks for that. :B
TT: Of course.
GG: Actually...
GG: Oh nevermind, I've got to go.
GG: Talk to you soon!
TT: Seeya. Don't let shit get you down.

timeausTestified ceased pestering gutsyGumshoe at 10:54.

You put your phone back into your pocket. You don't know if it's a good idea to message anyone else when you're stuck like this, not even knowing if they'll remember it in the end.

You wonder, for a second, if this conversation will play out the exact same the next time you decide to have it, or if it'll be different—depends on you, you suppose. If you could press her on, give her some advice to deal with her avoidant brother, she might have some choice sharp words for him—or you, if you fumble it bad enough. Then again, you might manage to get it better than this time. You're still wondering what she was about to say, for one—maybe if you assuage her worries about bothering you, she might tell you without you having to bring it up yourself.

You realize it's kind of weird to think about your friends as—programs, or whatever, but when you've never really met any of them—Roxy and Rose don't count, not really—it's hard not to see them as some kind of black box. Input goes in and output comes out, and you can only make educated guesses at what it's going to be. And your track record has been abysmal these past loops.

At least with Jane you'll have a few more goes to figure out the best way through. You've already messed up with Dave enough that you're avoiding him as much as you can.

There's a sound behind you, and you barely manage not to jump at the slamming of the door. Looking back, you spot—not your dad, but the weird copy of him. D. He's not really paying attention, grumbling to himself rather than acknowledging you, and you can't help but start counting how long it's going to take for him to notice he isn't alone up here.

He's fiddling with something in his hands, head pulled down between his shoulders. You can't see what he's doing from where you're sitting, and it's unlikely that he's going to actually look around anytime soon with how intensely he's focusing. You manage to reach a full two minutes before you're bored enough to call out to him.

“Hey,” you say loudly, and he almost jumps out of his skin, something flying out of his hand and clattering onto the roof.

“Jesus Christ, kid, let a guy get his smoke on in peace,” he yells as he scrambles over for his lighter, cigarette hanging unlit from the corner of his mouth.

After he's fished the lighter off the ground with two long, bony fingers, like he's picking up something gross, he tries and fails once more to tempt any sparks from it. Eventually, he gives up, shoving the lighter and both his hands into his pockets.

There's another strange silence between you. He stays standing where he's just left the half-shelter of the door down to the building, the cigarette still stuck in his mouth.

Eventually, he seems to make up his mind about... something, and actually starts walking towards you. He crosses most of the distance between you with a few strides, but when he's actually getting closer, he stops. He's still a bit away, so you wonder why he was even coming closer to begin with, when you hear the half-scrape of shoe soles against concrete.

You recognize this. Anyone who knows your dad would. He's doing the same thing as Dante does, opting to shuffle his way closer rather than risk misjudging the distance.

For a second, you wonder why, but only just a second. He's a, a—you try to remember the term, you did a quick Google on the subject of what you now know to be DID earlier and there were a lot of terms to keep track of—an introject, of course he's doing the same thing as Dante.

Realizing that Derek knows Dante like that, enough to remember it years later, longer than you've been alive, makes a pang of... something reverberate through you, like someone hitting a gong. Whatever the cast of Dante in Derek's brain has been filled with, it's closer than you'd have expected. Which makes you mad, anger starting at the tips of your fingers and making its way inwards, because how the hell does someone know your dad this well and dislike him enough to—to do what Derek does?

“So,” D starts, startling you out of your thoughts, “roof, huh.”

You pause. You're used to your dad's brand of non-sequitur, but this seems more like he's trying to make conversation because he's supposed to rather than having some kind of asinine rant locked and loaded.

“Yup,” you say back. You don't really want to talk to him.

“Yep,” he says, popping the p.

Again, an awkward silence settles. You're intensely aware of the way he shifts uncomfortably beside you, and at some point he starts drumming out some kind of rhythm with his hand on his leg, which gets on your nerves within seconds.

“Dude, stop that,” you say at last.

“What?” D says, as if he hasn't noticed he's doing it.

“The tapping. It's noisy.”

Immediately, his hand stills.

“Don't know what you're talking about,” he says instead of admitting to it.

You roll your eyes, although you're sure he doesn't see it.

“Yeah sure, Milton.”

“Milton?” he asks, brows making their way past his shades. “What the hell kind of nickname is that?”

You don't answer, instead picking absentmindedly at your shoulder.

“Whatever,” he shrugs, “not my job to vet whatever the kids are watching these days. Or reading.”

“Laissez-faire parenting? Never would have expected that from a guy who even bothers to leave the apartment when going out for a smoke,” you say, letting as much sarcasm into your voice as you can.

Your dad smokes, too. A lot less than he used to, nowadays, but there's stains on the table in your living room and marks where he used to put cigarettes out in a hurry.

D huffs out a small not-laugh, as if pleasantly surprised by you firing back at him. He takes the still unlit cigarette out of his mouth and flicks it off onto the roof, where it lands unceremoniously on the hot concrete. You half-expect it to burst comically into flame. It doesn't.

“You know, kid,” he says, smiling, “you're rude as all hell.”

It's eerily reminiscent of your Dante, the lopsidedness ending up just on the wrong side of the uncanny valley. Like those wax figures they have of celebrities. The image of Dante with his arm around the shoulders of a stiff, just-off statue of himself dances across your mind, with matching douche smirks, and you can't help the huff of laughter. D notices, much to your chagrin, and the smile grows larger.

“And you're not even sorry about it,” D says. There's a weird fondness in his voice that shakes you out of it, because even though he sounds like your dad, his cadence is just off enough that keeps reminding you of what he is. This isn't your father. You can't get too comfortable with him.

“Says you,” you let slip, even as you're trying not to fall into the back-and-forth. “You're the guy who started antagonizing the guy who was beating you up five seconds after he stopped.”

“Yeah, well,” he says, and doesn't elaborate. You lapse into that strained silence again, as much because you don't like what you might say as it is because you don't have anything to say. D fishes another cigarette out from his pocket—does he just have them loose in there?—and manages to actually light it this time. He takes his place beside where you're still sitting, one hand in his pocket as the smoke drifts over your head.

You don't like this. Any of this. The ways in which he's the same, sure, but the ways in which he's different, too. He doesn't fit into himself: too sharp in some ways, too soft in others. It's like seeing someone try to make a blade out of aluminum, seeing it fold in on itself the second it meets a solid surface. Where your dad has worn down edges, D seems to never have had those edges in the first place, and it makes you wonder how those huffs of laughter and that lopsided grin could survive here, in this place that has ground your nerves into a sharp point in just a few hours.

You yourself have become jittery, ready for any change to mean this fragile peace will crumble again. When you heard Derek flash down into the kitchen that first time, you barely managed not to bolt immediately into what you figured was Dave's room.

You still did, in the end, but it had been a strategic retreat. The thought of being alone with that guy, knowing what you do...

Even here, separated by layers of concrete, it makes your skin crawl.

Still, something about this strange xerox of your dad creeps you out even more, not-quite-laughter exactly the same even as your brain keeps pointing out all the ways in which he's wrong.

“Christ, kid,” he says, and you do not jump five feet in the air, “you're thinkin' so loud, I'm surprised no one's come up to make a noise complaint.”

That, too, makes you think of your dad. I can hear you thinking from here, you know, voice soft in the apartment as you'd stopped in the middle of a packet of math exercises, trying not to ask if you could go see your mom. That had been right after she'd left, and you only vaguely knew that it was because she was sick—Dante had tried to explain it when you asked—and because she and Dante had been arguing for a long time before that. You didn't know the word alcoholism then, even if you knew what it looked like.

“Not like it's any worse than usual, right,” you say, with a sharpness you expect will cut. “We aren't exactly beating each other up.”

“Guess you're right,” he answers simply, something in his voice strange and distant.

When you look up at D, the early noon sun catches his face in a way that reminds you of those days when everything had just changed, your dad barely keeping himself together even if he wasn't drinking that much anymore, only waking up in the morning when you'd poke and prod at him, never managing to make it to the door without falling over at some point. You eventually learned how to maneuver him around all those hazards, letting him lean on you just enough that he wouldn't just keel over on his own.

That was still better, you think. You don't remember much of what it was like before, mostly hiding in your room when it got bad, but it makes your palms sweat and your heart beat fast when you try.

“Hey, li'l man,” D says, and his voice is edging into concern. “You good?”

“'M fine,” you shrug him off, burying your face in your knees rather than look back up at him.

He doesn't respond at first, but you can feel the lead up to his next sentence like the moment before liftoff, the weight pressing you gently down.

“Y'know, it's kinda funny,” he starts, but it's a false one. You wait for whatever he's about to say next, eyes trained on the rooftop opposite, trying to find shapes in the small murders of crows congregating.

The silence settles again for a few moments. You wonder if you could just wait it out here, let D think himself out of saying anything. No such luck, though. He clears his throat, and you hear him shift again. Looking up, his face is trained on a point on the skyline past the next block over, and you have the feeling he's deliberately trying not to look at you. It's still another long second before he opens his mouth.

“Met your mom once,” he ends up saying, huffing out a breath of not-quite laughter. “Well. Meet is a strong word. He did, I didn't really play a part in the proceedings. I'm surprised she had another brat.”

You're frozen, stock still as the implications overwhelm you. But no, it makes sense—how the hell else would Dave end up here in the first place? If Derek's been living under an assumed identity this whole time, then...

D sighs, interrupting your thoughts. It sounds forlorn as all hell. Like the word was invented just to describe how fucking sad this guy sounds.

He sounds exactly like your dad.

Your thoughts get immediately interrupted by what he says next, hand coming up to scratch at his jaw, and it's barely any better than if he'd have let you keep going down that road.

“Still, kind of a shame he didn't go for it,” he continues. “I know he's swinging for the other team or whatever, but your mom's a real hot piece'a—shit, no, don't tell anyone I said that, that's like, all kinds of weird—”

He backtracks in the middle of the sentence, as if surprised he'd even said it, but the damage is done. He glances down at you with a panicked expression, and you try your utmost to empty your mind, even if the way D keeps going renders it utterly impossible.

“Wait, fffuh—will Dante be mad if I swear in front of you? Please say he won't, it'd be so goddamn lame if he did—does he think damn is a swear? He can't, right? No fucking way he does. Shit.”

D is in full swing now, and it takes you a good minute to find your voice again. You're still reeling over the past minute, never mind the barrage he's firing at you now, gesturing like a madman as he tries to find the brake on his own mouth.

“You—he—what?” is all you manage to stammer out, and D's looking like he regrets the fact that he's ever had the curse of speech, lifting his shades slightly to pinch the bridge of his nose.

You really, truly, honestly did not have to hear anyone say any of that, and no amount of conversational drift is going to save it, no matter how masterful the maneuver. Unbidden, the image of Roux and Derek together springs up in your mind, and you try to stomp it out as quickly as you can. No fucking thanks. You don't need to think about the mess that would have resulted.

“Listen,” he says, and then immediately falls quiet again. You're just about to accept the strange silence once more, but then he starts talking again, and by now you just need to stop him before he digs himself into a hole he can't get out of while dragging you with him.

“Eh, it's not like he's gonna care anyway, right? I mean, you're an internet kid, pretty sure you've seen plenty of fucked up stuff—wait, does he bring you along for every one of... whatever it is he's here to do? Bettin' that's gotten you a lot worse'n a couple of bad words, if every job's as bad as this one—”

“Dude,” you say, “can you just—shut up?”

He's taken aback for a moment, looking down as if he'd forgotten you were there entirely again despite ostensibly talking to you, and then a smirk spreads slowly across his face.

“Sorry, li'l guy, no can do,” he says, “you couldn't keep me from being irritating as hell if you tried. Kinda part of the whole brand, in case you hadn't noticed.”

“Maybe you could do with some rebranding, then,” you say, and he snorts. Again, it manages to hit every note just a semitone off from what Dante sounds like, his breath just a smidge too slow, the corner of his mouth just a touch too dull.

“You...” you start before he can say anything again, because there's something in the way he treats you that's too familiar, too strange to be the strangers you are, and it's starting to sit wrong in your stomach.

“Me?” he prompts, and again that grin that's too easy, too much like your dad's when he's trying to make you spell out the issue on your own, see if you can put together the right string of words to explain yourself. On D, it's more like he's waiting for an animal do a trick he's trained it to. Even so, there is little to no difference, and it makes you feel...

“Who do you think I am?” you ask, genuine in a way that surprises even yourself. You can't help the sting of bitterness in it, but you mean the question wholly, fully.

“Dante's kid,” D says, easily.

“And you?” you shoot back, because he isn't answering, not really.

This time, he pauses before saying anything.

“...Still Dante,” he says, and he looks away again when he does. The murder of crows is starting to move, slowly, like a single large mass, across the rooftop opposite.

“But you aren't my dad,” you press on, “or Dave's.”

He doesn't even have the decency to react visibly to that, and that makes a grim shudder of satisfaction run through you. Because he isn't. You're right, and you both know it.

“No,” he agrees. You don't think he knows why this is important, though. You're sure you can break through if you keep at it.

“So how—” you breathe in, and you wish the heat was the only reason your palms feel clammy and uncomfortable, “how can you say you are Dante?”

“'M not saying I am. Not anymore. It's just D now, right?” he says, lightly, like changing who you are is as easy as letting a name drop. “Doesn't matter if the only one thinkin' I'm me is me.”

“That—that's not what I'm saying,” you force out, because either he's deliberately not getting it and trying to make you run in circles to explain it, or he's stupider than you thought. And it does matter who he is, right? It has to. “If you're still—if you still think of yourself as Dante, then who am I?”

You feel the way your throat tightens around the last words, and it takes you a moment to say the last two, the ones that might matter the most. You don't know if you're grateful that he lets you.

“To you?” you say, looking at the man who's claiming to be your father but not.

This time, D doesn't answer as quickly. He looks back over at you, something pulling at his mouth before he speaks, and the slight grimace is too familiar, like everything else about him. In the end, he lets out a frustrated sigh, running his hand through his hair.

You know you don't look like Derek. Whatever it is he sees when he looks at you, it's not whatever Derek used to see in the mirror.

So why do you still feel like you're being cast in a role that you haven't auditioned for?

“Shit, kid,” he says, “I don't know. Won't win any brownie points if I say it's like talkin' with my kid brother again, will I?”

He laughs like a man headed for the gallows. You freeze up without meaning to. Of course this Dante would say that, the one that's steeped in the caustic acid that Derek must have in place of blood.

“I'm not him,” you say, far too quickly, “I'm not like him.”

“Not much you can do about being raised by the same guy,” he says, like it's a challenge. Like it's a trap, some part of you says, but you're too riled up to care by now.

“We weren't,” you spit out, because Dante's...

He's a good dad, and anything that turned Derek into what he is now can't have come from him. It can't have. It doesn't matter if it is true or if you just need it to be, it's what you're clinging to right now. It's the only thing you have.

You don't like the thought that the only things worth saving in you came from Roux. She's left you with very little.

D looks at you with tired, tired eyes, bags just visible past his shades, and you think of Dante seeing you off at the door, apartment still dark in the early morning.

You hate D, you decide.

Not because he looks like your dad, but because he keeps twisting the image of him in ways you despise. It makes you think of worst case scenarios, of paths not taken because the weeds and thorns were too thick to see any light on the other side. It makes you think about Derek spitting out the words So you didn't have to be one? like a curse.

“Guess you're right,” he capitulates, his hands in his pockets as he shrugs, but he sounds more like he's tired of arguing than actually agreeing with you.

You don't say anything. The black mass of crows seems to have stopped in its tracks, waiting for something you can't place, a sea of iridescent darkness against the harsh Texan sun.

“If y'don't want me around, I can go,” D says, and when you look back he's putting out the cigarette on the sole of his shoe, “but we're gonna have to see each other at some point, so...”

He trails off again, and it's clear he's waiting for a response. Meeting his gaze, you feel anything you could have said crawl back into a corner of your brain and hide, the strange sternness in his expression making you grateful that he's giving you an easy out even if it makes you frustrated you couldn't refute him.

When you don't answer, he shrugs again, and a small smile runs across his face, gone as quick as it came. He turns around, shoes clacking against the concrete.

Just as he's about to leave, something runs through your mind. A flash of inspiration, a buzz of static across your skin.

You can still catch him in his own words, you realize. Standing up, you wonder for a split second if you should run up to him just to make sure he doesn't leave, but you keep still. You have to stand your ground. If you're going to ask this, you need it to be on your terms, not trying to catch up to him.

“How do you know he's still the same guy?” you ask, loudly.

He stops, turns. There's a second where he just stands there, mouth half-open, and then his expression changes, shifts as he lifts his glasses. He looks at like you're stupid, which is to say he's got a strange small half-smirk on his face, the corner of his mouth twitching in anticipation.

“'Cause we are?” he says, a look of consideration passing quickly before settling again in that strange parody of a smile, “other'n the whole dad thing, I guess. Same personality, same thought processes. Shit, I'd thought you'd be used to alternate selves or whatever if the guy's going around doing time travel shit all the time.”

“You haven't met my dad,” you say, ignoring him, and the smirk ossifies into something sharp.

“Yes, I have,” he says, all trace of a drawl scrubbed clean, “and you know what, kid? It wouldn't have mattered if I hadn't.”

He's standing straight now, looking down at you, and he takes off his shades and hooks them in the neckline of his dress shirt as he speaks.

“I'd still know what he'd act like because that's how I'd act.”

He fixes you with a look, cold despite the sharp red. You try to swallow down your nerves, speak slowly, clearly.

“Is it? You haven't had a kid. He did. Two of them.”

He shrugs with one shoulder, hands firmly in his pockets.

“Could've ended up baby trapped with the best of them, kid. Shit, we did. Plus, don't know if you remember this, the kid we got stuck with is Dante's.”

“But Dave isn't your son, right?”

D's voice is flat, his face expressionless save for a slight furrow in his brow.

“Listen, kid, if you're pulling the 'you just said Dave wasn't your kid, how can you be Dante if he's Dante's kid and not yours,' again, we both know that isn't what I mean. Don't know if you've noticed, but I didn't really have a body of my own until—” he pulls back the sleeve of his shirt as if to look at a wristwatch that isn't there, “—one and a half hours ago. Ipso facto, Dave isn't my kid. Thought they still teach Biology in school.”

You bristle at that—he has to know what you mean by now, or else he wouldn't be trying to stonewall you like this.

“You still could have said he's your kid.”

He goes silent at that, furrow deepening.

“If me and—Derek really got raised by the same guy, and you're close enough to being that guy that the difference doesn't matter, then why didn't you say the same about me and Dave?”

Your heart is beating fast now, exhilarated at the course you're running, and the more momentum you're managing to build up the more you feel like you can break through him. D, for what it's worth, seems as if he's trying to chew through glass. His jaw set like a bear trap shut around his own leg.

“If you're the same as him,” you say, “why didn't you do anything?”

“Wasn't around as much as some of the others. Might've been different if I was,” he says reluctantly, words dropping from his mouth like bricks.

It still isn't enough, though. He still isn't answering.

“You were around, though, right? You could have done—something, as much as—as Hal could have, or—or Cal did, but you didn't. You just didn't want to try.”

You think about Dante, your Dante, hugging you goodbye when you went out for school, even when he'd flinch against the light in the hallway. You think about Dante helping you with homework even when he'd barely gotten himself out of bed that day. You think about...

You're tripping over your words as you try to get them out, try to break through to the core of him, but you realize you're on the right track when you see he looks pained, drawing in on himself as you speak. Still, an ugly expression rolls across his face like thunder the moment you blink.

“You haven't met my dad,” you say, viciously, “and you aren't him, because he isn't a coward.”

“I couldn't—” is all he can get out, though, and he shuts his mouth again with a snap of his jaw the second he says it. “Fine, yes, I'm a coward, but I know Dante Strider. I am Dante Strider.”

He says it like the latter part is worse than the first.

You think about your dad. You think about every second you've spent together with him, every moment shared, and as much as he says he's a mirror, you can't see a single thing of that reflected in the man in front of you.

“He's had a whole life without you knowing anything about it until he showed up again,” you say, simply.

The almost-snarl on D's face softens out again into something small and sad.

“Sixteen years isn't a whole life,” he says after a moment. His voice sounds strange, not quite the dismissive sneer you'd been expecting.

“It's longer than I've been alive,” you answer, because it's true.

You realize with a start that you want to believe that you existing has changed your dad, even if just a little. If this is what he could have been if you weren't born, then...

The thought is too big for you to handle as is, especially with D now looking at you like you're a puzzle he's trying to solve instead of something loathsome. Eventually he walks past you again, his gaze trained at the opposing rooftop. The crows are starting to move again, slow like molasses.

“You know what? You're right, kid,” he says, without a trace of humor left in his voice. “I ain't your dad, because even when I was a useless piece of shit I never left my brother behind when he needed me there.”

“Because you couldn't,” you say, wondering what softness could survive Derek's mind without melting away.

“Wouldn't.”

“Why not?”

Silence, again. The distant sound of traffic from way down below drifts into focus again, and you remember, distantly, a broadcast of an impossible car crashed on the way from Houston to Dallas—Dallas, you remember with a sudden clarity, not Austin.

“Because he's my brother,” D says, quietly. “He's a piece of shit, but he's my baby brother.”

You swallow down the lump in your throat with difficulty.

“Your dad can have the name for all I care. Not like I'm gonna have a lot of use for it, anyway,” D smiles to himself as he speaks, bitter and sardonic, before his face turns serious again, looking over at you as he takes his shades from where he's hooked them.

“But if he's going to say he's still Dirk's older brother, that he fucking deserves to be that, then time powers or no, I'm gonna beat his ass seven ways to Sunday and then back again for good measure.”

For a second, you feel as if you're hovering above a deep chasm, hearing your name out of his mouth and the steel-solid conviction that lies in every word. Aluminum might be soft, you think, but gravity can make planets of anything. Under the strange flimsy layer shaped like Dante, you've finally found something real; devotion so heavy it could turn anything into a black hole. You're on the event horizon, one step away from falling in.

“Still,” he continues, face folding in on itself back into a blank nothing as he puts on the glasses, “probably not all bad that he showed up. Tell him thanks for the Dave thing.”

“What? No way, man, do it yourself,” you shoot back, off-balance from the sudden retreat, and you realize with deep mortification that you've defaulted to how you speak around your dad again.

He pauses, but then a small smile makes its way onto his face, and the embarrassment is overwhelming. You look away, gaze set resolutely on the birds. In the mass of black feathers, you can see a few birds poke their head up, beaks cutting a sharp silhouette against the sky. You wonder, off-handedly, if one of them is the menace that stole your shades last time.

“Whatever,” you mumble. You dry your uncomfortably sweaty hands in the same motion as you dust yourself off. “I'm gonna go down.”

You turn, gaze locked in front of you. If he's still got that weirdly sincere look on his face, you don't know what you're supposed to do.

A great big sound reverberates behind you, and it takes a disorienting second for you to realize that the crows have all taken off, wings beating as one as they take off and leaving a sound like paper against paper echoing over the rooftops. Some fly overhead, and you let your eyes trace their path down toward the skyline. The sun's still on its way up, not quite at its zenith. You blink up at it as you walk, the bright light only somewhat dulled by your shades.

A shadow blocks it out for a second, and you pause in your tracks. One of the crows has circled back to the roof you're standing on. You watch warily as it lands on top of the doorway back into the building, and as it turns its head, you think you can spot a glimmer of recognition in its eyes. It jumps down onto the roof in a single smooth motion—

—and instead of going for your face, it goes right past you. You look back as it half-hops, half-walks across the concrete, and when you look up you meet D's gaze from the other side of the rooftop. His expression is flat in a way that makes your skin crawl. You're frozen, stuck trying to figure out what he wants from you.

The crow, oblivious to whatever tension has been building between you, waddles over to D. Then, with as much disregard as a bird can muster, it jumps up and hooks itself onto D's shirt with its claws, trying to climb up to his face. D panics, waving his hand at the bird ineffectually in an attempt to shake it off.

“What the fuck—ow,” D yells, and you laugh a little despite yourself as bird and man squawk at each other. You make use of the distaction to hurry back over to the stairs, taking them two steps at a time.

It's only when you're already halfway down the stairs, still letting the idea of bird-dispensed karma warm your heart, that you realize you forgot to ask which Dave thing he meant.

◎

You spot Dante in the hallway, looking at a shuriken stuck into the wall like it's a puzzle he's just a step away from solving—it's one of only two, the other one a bit further down the hallway towards the apartment. The sound of your footsteps makes him look over, and when he spots you he shoots you a salute.

“Everything alright?” he asks. “Didn't realize Mr. Funhouse was gone until I had to take a piss—I thought he was hiding out in the bathroom this whole time. Hope he wasn't being too much of a pain in the ass.”

Dante visibly cringes at the thought of interacting with D, and you can't really blame him—it might be weird to deal with a clone of your dad, but it's probably nothing compared to dealing with a clone of yourself. You stop by where he's standing, look at the shuriken. You have no idea what the hell this is for. Probably one of the weird-ass improvised tests he's always doing when he's out on a job—it's the first time you've seen this, though. Probably because the amount of people who'd keep shuriken in their house out and about is a negligible percentage of the population at best.

“Mm. I survived. How's Dave?”

Dante scratches the side of his jaw, glancing back at the apartment. There's a complicated look on his face, like a dog that's eaten something it knows it shouldn't have.

“He's...” he sighs, letting his hand drop. “It's complicated. I'm trying to give him some space, fuck knows he needs it after all that, but... can't fix this without him here, y'know.”

He huffs out a laugh, flicking a finger on the flat surface of the shuriken still in the wall.

“Things'd be a lot easier if I could.”

“What, can't you just—”

You gesture in a way you hope communicates the idea of doing some weird-ass time shit more articulately than you can put it in words. Dante chuckles at this, and then looks back towards the apartment again, this time letting his gaze linger.

“Bit more complicated than,” he turns and mimics your gesture, “that. Especially when there's, y'know, the other situation. Don't really know what to do about that one yet. Maybe if I could—”

He catches himself in the middle of the sentence, like he's just realized he shouldn't be telling you this.

“Never mind. Point is, it's all tangled up in itself. I can figure out some of the stuff with the loop, but that's just surface level, and... I'm starting to think I'm fucking things up a lot more than I'm fixing them.”

He sounds...

Forlorn, some part of you supplies, and you try to shake off the pit in your stomach.

“Isn't that what you do?” you mutter, looking at the shuriken rather than at him. “Fix things?”

Dante's shoulders slump, and he lets out a slow exhale.

“Yeah, well...” he starts, “I'm sorry, Dirk. I should've told you a lot sooner than this. At least... before anything like this happened.”

He flicks the shuriken, clicking his tongue in frustration—not at you, you know, but it still makes that feeling in your stomach worse.

“This... this whole thing I do—we do. It's not that simple. You can't just have someone else come in and fix things for you, that's not how it works. I just call it fixing because it's a lot easier when people think someone else can come in 'n do all the work for 'em. Most people realize they've gotta do most of the legwork themselves pretty fast 'cause I deal with adults more'n I do kids, and those are...”

He pauses mid-tap, slowly puts his hand back in his pocket. The plaster around the blade is starting to chip off and leaves dust falling onto the floor when.

“I wouldn't've brought you along if I knew it was a kid,” he says, in the end.

“And—” you breathe in, trying not to sound shaken, “—if you knew who it was? If you knew it was Dave?”

Another pause. It feels like being deep, deep underwater, pressure bearing down and no light from the surface. Dante bites at his lip for a moment before he answers.

“If I knew who it was, I wouldn't have come at all.”

He lets the answer sit between you. You don't respond, because how can you?

“Would've asked Roseanne to go. Or asked old man Harley if he'd gotten someone else ready for field work.”

“Because you'd have known it was Dave,” you half-ask.

“Because I'd have known it was Dirk,” he answers quietly.

“So you wouldn't have—” you start, but Dante interrupts you before you can finish the thought, let alone the sentence.

His hand on your shoulder is heavy, and so is his voice.

“Dirk, I want you to understand that this?” He gestures widely at the hallway, ending in a thumb pointed over his shoulder vaguely in the direction of the apartment. “This isn't good. I shouldn't be here. Me being here is like a gasoline manufacturing plant hiring a chain-smoker and giving him a complementary pack of smokes and a lighter as a welcome gift. But I got myself stuck here, and I got you stuck here too, so I'm trying not to make everything go bang.”

Dante lets his hands drop to his sides, defeated. He can't keep your gaze for long, and looks up at the ceiling instead, breathing in and out shakily. You feel a pressure building in the middle of your face.

“And if I'd've known it was Dave, I still wouldn't have come here, because I wouldn't want my kid to only meet me when he was at the lowest point in his life and then find out I couldn't do anything to help him anyway. I wouldn't want...”

He trails off.

You swallow through the lump in your throat, remember lying in bed with a fever so high it made you feel like your brain was boiling inside your head. You remember the taste of medicine sticking in the back of your throat, remember cold on your forehead and hushed reassurances as the figures of both Roux and Dante melted together into some vague comforting figure, one that you found difficult to reconcile with the weird tension that had permeated the apartment more often than not.

“It's like an immune response, right? Can't we just—fix what we can and wait out the worst? If we can't do anything, then...”

“No, that's...” Dante sighs, scratches at his chin as a small frustrated look creeps over his face. “It isn't that simple.

“Some things make reality start to... unravel. Unstick from what they're supposed to be. And then you end up in a bad place at the wrong time, shit goes south because the world can't handling the extra strain, you start panicking and that makes it worse. Everything stops making as much sense, mostly in ways that hurt you. Or others. That's what I mean when I say immune response—it's a reaction to something outside of you, or something that's been stuck inside for so long it gets infected. And if it's too big for you to handle on your own, and you don't get any help, it...”

His voice is shaking slightly now, and you feel very, very small, standing in front of your father and trying not to think about what he's telling you.

“It can kill you.”

You think about nights spent hiding away, fear pushing you over the edge and into cold numbness of knowing you couldn't do anything.

You couldn't do anything, so you had to change.

You remember being tired, bright pink static running along your skin. You remember thinking about atoms, about how people thought the world was made up of tiny, tiny things, about how they thought you couldn't break them apart until thousands of years later. You remember feeling very, very small then, too. And that atoms were made up of electric charges, millions and billions of those little things held together like magnets.

You remember wondering what would happen if you tried to split them apart. If you could make a you that was just the cold numbness, if the other one could be the one that changed. You remember not minding if you were the one who ended up cold. At least there would be a you that wasn't.

You remember seeing your dad's face lit up by the pink current. You don't remember a lot after that. You woke up with him wrapped around you, his head resting on yours and his arms hugging you with a certainty you felt safe in.

“If you don't get any help,” you echo hollowly, looking at Dante.

“Yeah,” he says, breathing in unsteadily. “But I don't know how to help. Shit, maybe I should've taken some of those courses Roseanne was always bugging me about.”

He half-laughs, trying to plaster over the tremble in his voice, but he's nervous in a way you aren't used to. It makes you think of—

Of D not knowing what to say, you realize slowly, like watercolors seeping into cotton. There's a bitter taste in the back of your mouth at the thought. You shake it away, try to focus.

“And... I don't know if I want to,” he admits after a moment, voice heavy. “I know it's my responsibility—shit, he's my brother, I can't just let him do whatever he wants, but...”

He runs his hand through his hair, letting out a noise of frustration.

“Fuck. I'm sorry for dragging you into this mess, kid.”

Your dad looks so, so tired.

You blink, try to find somewhere else to look other than his face because if you keep looking you'll want to cry even more and you can't do that right now. You know that'll just make him feel worse.

Breathing in shakily, you try to piece together some thought that isn't just wanting to grab on tight to Dante and never letting go. That isn't going to help anyone. Maybe you'll find some false comfort in it, but it'll only get in the way of... of whatever you have to do. Whatever Dante has to do. There still has to be something.

“Dave,” you blurt out, surprising yourself. “Do you—he might not...”

You swallow down your selfish thoughts, try to cover your feelings in a way that's convincing. If there's a chance it might help, why not?

“Maybe he doesn't need the space,” you say, “maybe he just... doesn't know how to ask you to stay. Even if you can't help, that's still...”

Dante blinks at you, eyebrows pulled up over his glasses. A small smile spreads, and relief runs through you like spring melt down a mountain.

“Fuck, kid,” he says, ruffling your hair, “I really don't know how the hell you got so damn smart.”

Even if the praise doesn't feel like enough, you doubt anything will, so you take it with a small smile and bat Dante's hand off your head when he keeps messing your hair up.

◎

You walk back together, Dante trailing behind you and muttering to himself. You're about two steps away from the door when, suddenly, you hear a crashing sound from inside the apartment.

It takes you a second to react, long enough for Dante to already have gotten inside. As you run in after him, it takes you little time to spot the issue—the latch to the crawlspace is open, and there's a robot lying on the floor, indents on its surface from falling the ten feet or so.

Splayed out like this, it looks like a corpse.

Derek is standing over it, staring down blankly at the figure. Hovering by his side, a livid Hal has his head in his hands.

“I told you you couldn't move that on your own, idiot, that's like trying to—”

Hal pauses in his tirade when he spots you and Dante. Derek only looks up from the mess when Hal's stopped talking, meeting your gaze slowly before looking at Dante. His posture straightens, like he's sizing Dante up for a fight.

“Would've appreciated it if you'd warned us about that,” Dante says, breaking the silence.

“None of your business,” Derek answers curtly, and when Hal turns to him whip-sharp, he just crosses his arms.

“What is it, anyway? Some kinda pet project you were workin' on?” Dante squats down to prod at the figure, lifting one arm by the wrist. Hal looks vaguely affronted when he does.

“She's—” Hal starts, and this time it's Derek's turn to shoot Hal a look that could kill.

“It's a work in progress. Don't touch it.” The way he says it leaves no room for argument. Dante drops the arm, fingers splayed as if to prove his innocence.

“Alright, alright,” he says, “just wondering. Would be a lot of help knowing what the fuck was going on with you guys, but if you don't have anything to share with the class...”

Dante trails off, tilting his head as if to prompt Derek. He doesn't say anything.

“Yeah, whatever, get your grandstanding in,” Hal says, rolling his eyes. “Listen, we're figuring stuff out, alright? Don't worry about it.”

He directs the last part at Dante. He's almost about to answer when there's a noise like something breaking from the crawlspace above you, and a distinctly high-pitched screech of frustration rings through the silence. Hal's gaze shoots up at the sound, and in the blink of an eye he's gone, slamming the latch shut.

“...Alright,” Dante ends up saying. “You know, I'm starting to think I should worry.”

“What, you want a guest feature in Puppet Problems 2: This Time It's Even More Personal?” Derek says, raising an eyebrow. “Didn't peg ya for a wannabe snuff star.”

You wonder what he means by snuff, but considering Dante's reaction, face contorting into a grimace, it's probably better that you don't know.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Dante groans, “just—fuck off, man. Is Dave here?”

Derek nods over at the door.

“He's in his room. The hell'd'ya even say t' the kid?”

“Why the fuck should you care?” Dante snaps back, and there's a moment of quiet between them that's deeply uncomfortable, like a pair of wild animals circling each other.

“Alright, if you wanna be a pissy little bitch about it,” Derek says in the end, shrugging.

“Just—” Dante sighs, running his face through his hands, “don't fuckin' butt in, alright? It's already bad enough as is.”

“And the other kid?” Derek asks, nodding over at you, “Y'want to kick me outta my own apartment so your little darlin' fuckin' angel doesn't have to look at me?”

“Maybe you can just hide up in the hole along with the rest of the fuckin' circus,” Dante says, voice cold.

“Here I thought you wanted t' know what the fuck's going on. Which one is it? Y'want me hiding away or keepin' my hands where you can see 'em?”

Derek's face is open, like he's genuinely willing to follow whatever instructions Dante would give him if only they were clear. It's deeply fake.

“You—” Dante starts, before the rest of the sentence devolves into a noise of pure frustration.

“It's fine,” you say quickly, pulling at Dante's sleeve before Derek can say anything else. “I can just... ignore him or something.”

Derek's quiet at this, arms still crossed. Dante, for his part, hunches down and puts a hand on your shoulder.

“Are you sure?” Dante asks, looking you right in the eyes. “Hundred percent?”

It's more like 50%, but you nod anyway. You can handle this. Even if you can't, well. That's a problem for later.

“Alright,” Dante says, with worry in his voice. “Just... you know you don't have to deal with him, right? If he's being an asshole, just...”

“You really think I'm gonna fight your pipsqueak?” Derek says when he trails off, voice dripping with contempt.

“Doesn't seem like anything's stopped you so far,” Dante spits out as he stands up, levelling a look at him that could freeze the Pacific. Derek seems wholly unaffected.

It's strange, you think, that none of the hostility seems to be directed at you. Even if the pipsqueak comment does make you irritated.

And the darlin' little angel one, too.

Okay, you're pretty mad at him too at this point, but he wasn't actually talking to you at all, only to Dante. You don't know if that makes you feel less or more worried about your decision, but at least you're pretty sure he isn't going to go sword-murder mode on you the second Dante's out of the room.

“Make sure y'give him a real awkward talk about puberty or somethin', too,” Derek says as Dante goes to knock on Dave's door, “otherwise it ain't a real bondin' moment, just a sparklin' father-son conversation.”

Dante just flips him the bird as he walks through the door.

This time, the quiet feels more like an empty grave.

◎

Derek huffs as he hauls the inert hunk of metal across the floor to sit it in front of the futon. It must be heavy, you think, by the sound it makes as it scrapes across the floor and the way it thunks when he lets go of it. It takes him a bit to move it, but in the end it's sitting somewhat upright with its back towards the rest of the apartment. When it's secured, Derek makes his way over to the desk and kicks something out from underneath it—a toolbox.

“Hey,” you say, leaning against the wall. This really is too small of an apartment to fit this weird gaggle of Striders that are slowly cropping up. Even being in Dave's room felt uncomfortable—like it was trying to suffocate you. There's no space here for anyone else than Dave and Derek, and by now there's too many individual actors to keep the system stable. You can't help feeling it's all about to come crashing down.

You glance at the robot without meaning to, remembering the way it was lying when you came in. A mangled body.

“What's up, kid,” Derek says, his back still turned to you. It's the same thing he calls Dave, you notice. He hasn't called you by name once.

“You ever get sick of being such a condescending piece of shit?” you ask, because you really can't help yourself sometimes.

“Well, it's hard not to be one when you're talking to a ten-year-old who's using words like condescending.”

He says it like it's just another fact of life, not even bothering to look back at you. You bristle.

“I'm twelve.”

“See, that's what I mean. Y'know it only makes ya sound more like a kid when y'do that, right?” He's looking over his shoulder now with one eyebrow raised above his shades, expression on the bored side of disdain. “No one's gonna take you seriously that way. Much less adults who've already decided y'aren't worth their time.”

“And you have?” you say, trying not to sound petulant.

“Liked you a lot better when you weren't talkin', kid. Let me do my work.”

He turns back to hunching over the chassis, shades still balanced perfectly on the bridge of his broken nose. You've seen him without his shades exactly once, when he'd answered the door. Other than that, he's been wearing those sharp ones that are far too similar to your own for comfort for the entirety of your time here. It's... notable, you think, because he doesn't have Dante's photosensitivity. Or, at least, he shouldn't have. You're a bit more uncomfortable with bright lights than you should be, but that's just because Dante keeps forgetting to turn the lights on before it's totally dark.

As Derek goes to work, opening up the toolbox he's pushed over from under the desk, you walk over and sit on the futon. It might be a bit close for comfort for either of you, but you're willing to risk it if you can throw Derek off-balance too.

When he runs his hand down the back of the robot, his hand catching on grooves you can't see from where you're sitting, you almost want to look away. It's intimate in a way that feels uncomfortable, even if you can't explain why. As he opens up the box, you wonder, for a moment, why he'd bother trying to fix it while still in the loop. You guess practice makes perfect, but still, he could just as well wait until the next round comes around. Maybe he's just bored.

It doesn't quite fit, though. Another idea flashes across your mind, another reason for why he's acting like this.

“Is that robot actually...” you trail off, because you don't know how to put it.

“Real?” Derek finishes for you. He pries open a large back panel with a loud crack. “What do you think?”

“Obviously it's real,” you say, rolling your eyes, “but was it real before, too?”

“Didn't have a body, if that's what you mean.”

You wonder what it means that, where the rest of Derek's cohort seems to be too active for their own good, this one couldn't even make it out of the crawlspace on its own.

Speaking of...

“Talked to D earlier,” you say, trying to gauge Derek's reaction. He pauses in the middle of whatever he's doing, reaching down into the metal shell, but it only takes him a moment before he's back at it.

“Yeah? So?” he asks, voice muffled by the chassis he's almost buried his head in.

“Thought you might be curious.”

“Don't really see how I should care about what you do in your spare time,” he says, in a tone of utter disinterest.

“Just thought some of the stuff he said was interesting,” you say, and this time he straightens up with a jerky motion. When he turns towards you, sharp blades for shades, an image runs through your mind: yourself, perched on top of a raft, trying to hunt sharks by letting drops of blood fall into the water underneath. You barely suppress the shudder that runs through you.

“Like what?” Derek says slowly, with some degree of suspicion.

Even though you can almost see the shadow beneath the waves, you keep thinking about D asking you to thank Dante, the little worried glances Hal keeps shooting at Dave, the way Derek actually asked Dave if he wanted to go with you instead of just immediately washing his hands of the whole matter. It's a puzzle you can't figure out.

If he really is as ruthless as he seems, then... why?

“He told me you met Mom, for one,” you say, and his face immediately goes like stone again.

“Mm,” he hums, instead of answering.

“How long did she even stay here?” you wonder out loud, casting your line—you don't know if she did at all, but you know she cares about people. She told you that one night, face buried in your hair, holding you tight enough you thought you could stay there forever. That she cares so much it hurts, that she doesn't know how not to care. You can't see her just leaving Dave with someone like Derek, not without a reason.

Even if the reason she left was the reason she stayed in the first place.

You take a quick deep breath, looking back at him. He seems... unphased, is your first impression. When you look anywhere but his face, though, it's clear the question caught him off-guard—his grip around the small screwdriver in his hand is white-knuckled, more like the one you'd have around an axe than a delicate instrument. His other hand is still stuck inside the chassis.

“Wasn't that long,” he starts, and shifts a little where he's sitting, “...couple'a weeks at most.”

You wait for another moment, and just as you're sure he's done speaking he keeps going, knocking you off balance.

“Wasn't here, neither. Moved after she left.”

“Why?”

Derek sighs, turning back to his work. As he speaks, his other hand withdraws from within the hull, and he lets the small sound of screws falling to the floor punctuate each statement.

“What d'you wanna hear? That she was askin' too many questions? That she was a cog in my plans? That she was such a hysterical bitch that I couldn't fuckin' stand the thought of her findin' me again?”

Again, the anger boils up in your fingertips—who the hell let him talk about your mom like that?—but you don't have anywhere to put it, not with the line still slack in the water, so you just pick at the fabric of the futon instead of saying anything. There's a small shock of static, but Derek doesn't seem to notice your suppressed flinch.

“I want to know the truth,” you say, barely keeping your voice even.

“You can't handle the truth,” he mutters under his breath as he pries something free from within the robot with a crack. He continues at normal volume. “It isn't that interesting. She thought I was yer dad 'n that I was into her, then she either realized I wasn't one or the other, or she realized I wasn't neither, 'n then she went into rehab 'cause it's embarrassin' to have been so fucking drunk that you don't remember hookin' up with a freak of nature.”

You bristle.

“He isn't,” you say, “just because he's—”

“Yeah, yeah, just because he's different don't mean he's worth any less 'n a normal boy,” Derek says, snappily. “Doesn't mean it couldn'ta been a reason she checked herself in.”

“She still found him again,” you say, weakly.

“Yeah? How'd that go, pray fuckin' tell? 'Cause something's tellin' me y'ain't here just 'cause you can do some woo-woo shit that your daddy can't.”

“How do you know that?” You snap back. “Maybe I asked to come with him. Maybe it's bring your kid to work day and the assignment just got way out of hand. Maybe my skills are essential to the task at hand.”

You cross your arms, daring him to come up with any reasoning that you can't just outright ignore or deflect.

“Or maybe,” he starts slowly, like he's thinking you won't understand it, “maybe I know Dante can't see for shit, and when he shows up with his kid instead of an actual fuckin' adult to a place that's five hours of driving away from his apartment, I get a little fuckin' suspicious when that kid tries to tell me Dante's still got his shit together with his ladyfriend.”

Fuck. You stay quiet—even if you said anything, a denial at this point would be useless. Derek goes on, voice back to flat disinterest as he grabs a different screwdriver from the box.

“You probably wouldn't've been here if there was someone back home you could've stayed with,” he says, “so Dante's gotta be the only adult around. Would've gotten you to stay with a friend or something instead'a hauling you out here if he didn't need someone to see the fuckin' road. 'N Roux probably would've gone with Dante herself if she'd gotten sober 'n they were still livin' in the same place instead of sendin' her kid on his own. Unless she didn't know Dante's legally blind, but that'd be pretty fuckin' hard to fake for twelve years. Even for that guy.”

“That's...” you grit your teeth. Derek reaches in and fiddles with something inside the hull, and there's another, more hollow sound.

“Not that hard to put two 'n two together. Or guess what happens when two fuckups get together.” He continues in a mock sing-song tone, righting himself from where he's sunken more and more into the depths of the hull. “Y'see, kid, when a daddy and a mommy dislike each other very much...”

He looks back and raises an eyebrow at you, as if prompting you.

“They split up, sure, whatever,” you say, when it's clear he won't keep going unless you say something.

“Close. B+. But for an A,” he turns back to whatever compartment he's been working at, now pried free from the inner workings, “the answer's that they stay t'gether until they can't stand bein' in the same room, 'cause gettin' a divorce is like admittin' they've given up, and then they make it everyone else's problem. Doesn't surprise me it happened t'her 'n Dante, too.”

“That's not—” you start, standing up from the sofa and almost yelling before you catch yourself. Derek's head tilts in a curious look back at you that makes you stop in your tracks. Your heart's beating too fast, and it takes you another moment before you let your hands, already balled into fists, drop to your sides. You try to ignore the rushing in your ears.

“That's not what happened,” you say, voice quiet.

Derek doesn't say anything in response, just looking at you, and you don't know if you should be grateful that he isn't twisting the knife or if you should be angry that he's backing off. He's holding himself back from hitting you where it really hurts. Like a cat playing with a mouse before killing it. You sit down again, slowly, unwilling to let him get to you more than he already has. Another beat passes, and when he speaks again, you've already worked yourself up enough that you almost don't hear it.

“Dante treatin' you alright?” he asks, turning his attention back to the robot. His voice is strangely soft. You almost nod before catching yourself—he isn't going to see it.

“Yeah,” you say. At the very least, he's leagues above Derek. You can't help the skepticism in your voice as you say it, though; why is Derek asking this?

“Mm. That's good.”

He reaches in, and you almost miss it when he drops a screw onto the floor beside him. For a second you wonder why he's being so careless; it's small enough that you can barely see it from where you're sitting. It would be easy to lose it.

“It matters how you think about it,” Derek says, voice made strange by the way it echoes inside the robot, “if something—or someone—changes how y'think, really changes it, y'start tryin' t' make everything fit into that new way of thinkin'. Doesn't matter if you know two plus two equals four, y'start findin' ways to make a five look a lot like a four.”

What the hell is he talking about?

“It's still a five,” you say, because it is.

“Like I said. Doesn't matter. It's a distorted perception of the thing. 'N y'might realize that, and do your best t' figure out if it really is a four or a five, but y'can't know the objective truth without some kinda outside input anyway. Can't run the numbers properly if y'don't have anything to double-check your fours ain't just a load of fives makin' themselves look like fours.”

He clicks his tongue, suddenly irritated, though you don't know at what. When you look down, he's rummaging around in the small toolbox for something. After a second, he finally pulls out a small pair of tongs, and starts to work again.

“Then suddenly it turns out two plus two does equal five all of a sudden. 'N all those numbers you were tryin' t' add up don't matter anymore 'cause everything's just like y'want it to be.”

He pulls something out of the chassis by the tongs, dropping it neatly onto the floor. You can't make out what it is.

“But there's still something buggin' you, 'cause two plus two ain't s'posed to make five. You've been tryin' t'make a five look like a four for years. So something's gotta be going wrong somewhere, if everyone else is suddenly thinkin' two plus two make five too.”

“Maybe you thought a three was a two,” you say, quietly.

“C'mon, kid, don't get smart on me,” he says, “it's a fuckin' metaphor.”

“Yeah, I got it,” you snap back.

“The point is,” he starts, then goes quiet for a bit again.

“If the world's makin' you be right, even when you know y'aren't,” Derek says, tone bitter, “the fuck can y'do about it?”

You look back at where you thought you saw the screw drop. There's nothing on the floor.

“Anyway. You don't gotta worry about that. Not if Dante's doin' his job right, anyway.”

He cracks his knuckles and pushes the toolbox away from himself with the side of his foot as he stands up, leaving the robot still hunched over on the floor. You don't dare ask him which job he's talking about. He rights the robot's back with one hand against its shoulder and turns where its face would be in this and that direction, looking for something you can't place. It doesn't seem like he finds it.

Letting the empty husk fold in on itself again, he walks over to the kitchen. Over the back of the futon, you watch him open one of the cabinets and grab a bag of Doritos, which he throws from one hand to the other for a good few seconds before closing the cabinet again.

When he sits down beside you on the futon, you're wondering what the hell he's up to, but he just pops open the bag and starts eating the chips as loudly as humanly possible.

You grimace. It's obnoxious as all hell, and you're close to grabbing the bag yourself just to make him stop, but you can't shake the feeling he's just trying to distract you from what you've been talking about.

“How'd'ya do that thing with Cal, anyway,” he asks after a bit, with his mouth full. It's so sudden it shocks you out of your silence.

“What?”

“When y'came here. The thing y'did t'Cal,” he says, mouth still obnoxiously full. “Wh't wassat?”

You pause, try to figure out what the hell he's trying to get at.

“The expulsion?”

He waves at you vaguely, swallows.

“That. Whatever it was fucked me up bad.”

You bristle. You aren't about to apologize for keeping the puppet from killing your dad.

“Listen, if you think I'm going to—”

“Naw, it's cool. Don't worry about it. Just wondering how y'did it.”

That awakens a wholly different worry in you.

“I'm not sure I should tell you that,” you say, narrowing your eyes at him.

“Sure you shouldn't,” Derek says, easily. “But duct tape ain't exactly working out too well.”

As if on cue, something up in the crawlspace crashes, followed by Hal saying something you can't make out and the faintest hint of a laugh.

“'N I know my brain wirings might be more twisted than a fuckin' bike path through the words, but even I know it ain't a good idea t' let Cal run free. Pretty sure he's startin' t' figure out how fingers work.”

He wriggles his fingers in an imitation of the strange way the puppet moves, jerkily and yet too fluid to make sense of it.

“Just a matter of time before he figures out how to wriggle himself free, 'n then we're all fucked.”

He grabs another handful of Doritos, shoves them in his mouth like it's a contest.

“Sho 'm askin' real nice,” he says, “and if ya d'n't wanna let me know 'cause y'don't like me, I c'ldn't care less. Just sayin'. You got some options t' try and make things a lot easier'n they are.”

He leans his head back on the back of the futon, looking over at you with a lazy gaze that's still got something too sharp behind it. You sure as hell don't trust him, but...

Well. If Dante doesn't know how to deal with this, then how else are you going to get anywhere? Dante might be able to figure things out with Dave, but then you'd still be left with Derek.

And you aren't supposed to be fixing things, right? Just giving them a way to fix things on their own.

Still, it doesn't really sit right with you. You remember the way he dropped when you panicked and grabbed the thing's core—the core that it definitely shouldn't have had, and you wonder, faintly, what would happen if he did that himself. If he'd even be able to, at that—a finger's only as hard to bite through as a carrot is, right? The only thing that's stopping you is the pain.

The shadow of a terrible, terrible thought runs across your mind, but you can't quite put words to it.

Derek's still looking at you, and the way he keeps staring makes you feel like you have to do something instead of just getting lost in your thoughts.

“Alright,” you say, sighing. “Just—sit up. Focus, I guess. Follow my breathing or something.”

“Yeah, alright, guru,” he quips, but after that he goes quiet, never looking away even as his posture goes from languid to uncomfortably rigid.

It's weird, tuning in like this, intensely aware of Derek's eyes on you. Still, it's only slightly harder than usual to turn your attention inwards, letting your body go for the feeling of a cold, orange sunset and the smell of a sea you've only seen once. Then, comfortable, secure in the way it's engulfed you or flows from you or is you, you let your consciousness wander out.

The first thing that hits you is an overwhelming sensation of...

Nothing.

Vaguely, from somewhere above you, you can smell sharp orange syrup, and from somewhere else the comforting blunt iron and melted plastic that reminds you that Dante's still around, but right in front of you it's as if there's a hole in the world. It's strange and almost liquid, the texture of tar.

It has to be Derek in front of you, because you don't know what else it could be. Like D, the darkness is overwhelming, but rather than a black hole, this is just—-

This is just empty. It's as if someone has carved out haphazard shapes from him and thrown them into the murky depths of the universe, left the rest to drift.

This isn't like with Roux—Roux can cloak herself in nothing, make it seem as if she isn't there with you none the wiser. This nothingness hits you like a brick wall. Derek has no core, no center of gravity that pulls what he is into himself—

At least, you think, remembering the idea you couldn't put into words, not right now.

When you tried to rip out that small, sharp core of molten spikes that was in the puppet, exposed and simple in a way no human soul would be, or should be, Derek had collapsed. And Derek, sitting in front of you, doesn't have a core.

Somewhere through layers of abstraction, you feel your mouth go dry. For a single, terrifying moment, you wonder if that could have happened to you. If you could have done that to yourself.

The nothing shifts and turns, an impossibility trying to find a shape it can inhabit. You feel a rush run through you as you reach out, static over the tip of your consciousness. It's like reaching a hand through the cage of a large animal, you think, only to find that it isn't biting. It isn't even reacting.

You push a bit further. The barrier between you and the deep liquid wound in the world is more stable than expected, more solid than you'd thought, and you can't help wondering what would happen if you'd just—

The barrier gives way.

You're plunged into it, and even as you pull away as quick as as you broke in you swear you can taste oil on the back of your tongue.

“Kid,” you hear Derek say distantly, words slow and rough, “you look like dogshit. The fuck's going on?”

It takes you a good few moments to realize he's asked you a question, and far too long to find your teeth again so you can answer him.

“Just push and pull,” you hear yourself say, your mouth moving through layers of sludge. “I need to—”

The strange nothing in the world pauses in its ebb, now flowing slowly like molasses, and then it's as if it realizes you're there. That the thing that's been poking and prodding is real.

And then, like—like a curious child, you think, deliriously, it slowly, deliberately pushes back.

In small increments at first, the animal slowly moving towards you before scuttling back into shadow—you saw a stray cat on your way to school once, in one of the parking lots you'd go through as a shortcut, and you'd squatted down and made little pspsps sounds until it had inched step by step towards you. It ran off the second you'd tried to shuffle closer.

It's the same, you think through thousands of paper-thin layers separating you from your brain. You have to let the animal feel safe. Make it realize you won't do anything. You make yourself small, try not to disturb it as it pushes in inch by inch, hesitating between each step.

The tide rolls in, inch by halting inch.

It takes you another second to realize you can't feel anything else anymore, just the empty feeling surrounding the small island of sunset, and you—

A bolt of bright magenta shoots through you, and suddenly you can feel your fingertips again, pulsing as if the circulation had been cut off for a while now. You breathe in way too hard—your lungs feel so empty—and choke on your own spit. The coughing pushes out the air you'd been so sorely missing, and as you try to even out your breathing again you look through the tears welling up in your eyes at Derek. He seems to have flinched back, his breath as loud in the room as your own, and for a moment they fall exactly in sync: in-in-out, a terrified waltz counted in convulsions.

Then his breath stutters, in-in-in-out, and the line between you is cut.

“Kid,” he says, low and rough, “what the fuck was that?”

“What the fuck was that?” you shoot back, sharp and off-kilter, “I thought you were going to—”

You cut yourself off, because you don't know what he was going to do. You hadn't realized you were about to drown until the last moment—it had just felt like numbness. Like nothing. No panic, no pain, just...

Dark matter, your mind supplies helpfully, and you shudder. A presence only proven by the hole it leaves behind.

Derek's face twists, for a second, into something appalled—disgusted. As if he really hadn't realized what he was doing.

“Wasn't—” he says, mumbles out too quickly to make sense of it in your reeling mind, still trying to figure out if your body is still all there, “you're just a kid.”

He breathes out the last word like it's a lifeline.

“You—don't do that again.” You scratch at the inside of your palm, still feeling the aftershocks of lightning across your skin. “How—”

You pause, because you don't know how to ask a man how he transplanted his soul without dying in the process.

“Y'know,” you say instead, “if you try to do that to Cal, I think you're gonna fuck yourself over a lot worse.”

He doesn't seem to hear at first, lost in thought. Then, slowly, he looks at you, eyes focused like a hawk's. His expression is strange. You don't like it.

“Thanks for the tip.” He barely says it, a strange distance to his voice—not that you can blame him, you're barely faring any better yourself. The futon under you still feels like it's unreal, hovering a few inches above the floor. The way he dismisses your concern outright is expected, but it still stings, somewhere that's a lot more soft than expected.

“You can't,” you say without meaning to, “you can't.”

Like it's a prayer. The idea of it is anathema, is seeing someone calmly and resolutely open themself up and rip out everything inside of them.

Derek's face goes stern, resolute. You couldn't talk him out of this if you tried, but—can't you? You rack your brain, try to think of something.

“That's your fucking soul in there, that's like—like doing heart surgery on yourself—”

You go quiet when he doesn't respond.

“Really?” His face twists into something strange. “I thought you'd figured it out.”

His voice isn't mocking, not like you've come to expect.

It's disappointed.

Wait.

If it isn't Cal, then...

You've fucked up entirely. Wholly. Utterly and irrevocably. Panic shoots through you and you're suddenly hyperaware of every strand on the back of your neck, every chip in your nails, everything that grinds against the air in the room.

“It ain't really fair when y'won't even let the guy you're fightin' have a weapon, is it,” Derek says, “you'da thought someone would've beaten some manners into your dad by now.”

He stands up, rolling his neck in a way that makes the crack resound like a tree getting struck by lightning.

“Guess I'll have t' do it myself.”

He walks over to the kitchen and you can barely hear him rummaging around again through the heartbeat in your chest.

“Y'want some noodles?”

You don't answer. You think you might throw up if you eat anything.

“Alright,” he says.

After a few moments, he puts down a bowl of instant noodles on the makeshift table in front of the futon, and sits down on next to you.

He eats, and you watch the steam waft from the bowl without a word.

“You're a piece of shit,” you say when he puts down his own empty bowl next to the one still untouched, and you don't know if it's the fake, cloying domesticity that gives you the courage to. You don't even know if it's domestic, really, but it's close enough to what you're used to from home, Austin, that you feel sick of it coming from this asshole. He pauses before he leans back on the futon again.

“I know,” he says, simply. A statement of fact. An acknowledgement. He says it like it's what's been playing over and over in his head for years, a recording seared into the background hum of the universe, and you want to shake him because then why would he keep doing this.

“You should,” you say, not quite knowing if you can say it outright. But the words have been repeating in your mind on loop for the past ten minutes.

“You should die.”

The words are as simple as they can get. He barely reacts, only just looking up from where he's crouched.

“Y'sure yer dad would like hearin' you talk like that?” he asks, cocking an eyebrow. You hate it, because it makes you think of Dante. Dante does the same thing. You don't want to wonder who picked it up from who, because that means thinking about your dad as a child, the man in front of you as a child. You don't like thinking about that at the same time as the words you've just said.

“I don't care,” you manage, somehow. He doesn't say anything, just huffs out a breath.

“Alright,” he says. Doesn't even fucking move. Your spine roils uncomfortably with sparks of anxiety, willing you to run. You've been in dangerous situations before—you haven't put yourself into one like this before. He stands up and goes back to the robot, clicking things into place and tightening screws you don't think exist for longer than he thinks about having to fix them.

“You don't—?” you say, when an uncomfortable amount of time has passed.

“Reckon you're about right,” is all he says, and this makes you feel...

You don't know what it is it makes you feel, but it isn't good. It's slow and roiling, starting in your throat and making its slow way down to your stomach in sickening waves. Like trying to swallow sheets of aluminum, crackling as the metal makes its way down your trachea.

“Alright,” you say.

“Soggy noodles ain't any good, y'know,” he says.

You haven't eaten anything today.