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[rebells]

How is it different?

[That's a genuine question. He has absolutely no idea what Dirk is talking about.]

[splinten]

[It isn't sarcastic, which is why Dirk doesn't snap back. Instead, he tries to find a way to articulate it. It's surprisingly difficult, when he usually has words for basically everything.]

I hurt people without being angry at them or attacking them. I'm obnoxious and condescending, and I push my own desires about how people should be on them, and I make them feel like crap. Or I force them to fight unwinnable battles against stupid robots that look just like me in a twisted idea of courtship while claiming it's helpful training, which is definitely worse. That's a universal constant across every iteration of Dirk Strider that ever is or was: I'm a dick who hurts people and acts like I know what's best.

This is just that same toxic, horrible personality slipping out in a really obvious way. Anyone who already knows what I'm like would identify it instantly.

[rebells]

[He listens.

Dirk's response answers some questions, and raises new ones. But--for the most part; this doesn't really seem like the time to inquire about robots--they all boil down to one:]

. . . do you think I don't know you?

[He doesn't know everything about Dirk. That much is true. But he knows enough to know he doesn't recognize the person Dirk is describing.]

[splinten]

[He draws his legs in tighter, his arms closing in a circle around them.]

I think you don't know the kind of bullshit I'm capable of because you've never seen it.

[rebells]

[Silence. Well, it's possible that Jay doesn't know what Dirk is capable of, just as Dirk doesn't really know what Jay is capable of. He wonders, not for the first time, whether they're the same in more ways than the obvious.

But at the same time--]

--Don't be stupid.

[splinten]

[Jay.]

If you're going to say I'm not as smart as I think I am, Geir—and, weirdly, some dickbag alien I knew—already have you covered.

[rebells]

What?

[Dirk, your asides. He decides the alien thing can also wait.]

No, that's not what I mean. [ . . . ] I may not know everything you're capable of. But unless you've been faking your entire personality for the past six months, I do know you.

[Excuse you for implying that he does not!!]

[splinten]

I'm not saying I'm faking it, it's just like... [He breaks of.]

My understanding of myself is that I'm just an inherently bad person and the things I do are always selfish and toxic. It's something I've come to see growing up, especially after I made a copy of myself to talk to. The more I was exposed to him, the more I was sure that my friends were right about me being an aloof mastermind more machine than man.

That kind of person isn't the kind of person anyone wants to be around if there's nothing to make up for it. So since I'm like that, but I don't want to be alone, the only thing that makes sense is to try to turn that to good ends. Since I'm manipulative, I can try to become a benevolent mastermind guiding people to the best possible outcome. Since I'm heartless, then I can use my inability to feel emotions the right way to stay calm and do the things real people with normal emotions can't handle. I have to become competent, self-sufficient, and above all else useful so that I can make up for my inability to get right anything that actually matters.

But I'm just the asshole without the utility, so it always blows up in my face and ends in disaster. Withdrawing for a few months was okay. But the second I start trying to be useful again, I lose it and go for an open wound that I know is there just because my own pride was struck at. You've never seen it before because I haven't been letting myself try anything like that for the past half a year.

[rebells]

[He listens to the whole thing, a look of increasingly intense skepticism on his face. When it's over, he reaches out and . . .

. . . pushes Dirk. Gently, and not in the "off the roof" direction, but he still pushes him.]

I told you not to be stupid.

[splinten]

[Dirk pushes him back because Dirk is a mature person.]

I set it out pretty logically, bro.

[rebells]

[What does he even do with that?? Pushes Dirk harder, for one.]

You did not. None of that even makes any sense!

[A lot of this could be solved if Jay wasn't too emotionally constipated to say I like you and think you're worthwhile even when you're not being manipulatively helpful, you total assface. Sadly, we have to work with what we have here. And so:]

I--Do you really think you haven't helped anyone in the last six months?

[splinten]

[He opens his mouth to retort, and then shuts it. Then he puts his face in his hands.]

I can absolutely flip this one on you. It proves that another shitty thing I do is discount other people's feelings about me and the events of our relationship in order to support my own narrative of self-loathing. That I was so entrenched in my own bullshit I ignored those things to suit myself backs my point that I suck.

[rebells]

[Crabbily:]

You're contradicting yourself.

[splinten]

Thanks, Geir. I didn't notice.

[STOP BEING SUCH A GODDAMNED DRAGON, JAY!!

Dirk mostly is tired and he knows he can't win the argument, but he still hates himself, so here he is. Being ironic. Defensively.

God, can he not even learn to stop that? He's such a goddamned disaster.]

[rebells]

. . . what?

[Jay has not come to think of this behavior as characteristic of Geir because he shut down the last time Geir tried pointing out contradictions at him, and so he's confused.]

Why are we even having this argument, anyway?

[splinten]

Because we have a fundamental difference of opinions on the subject of Dirk Strider.

[He assumes. Also, Jay is confused, which makes Dirk confused.]

You don't talk to him much, huh. Geir has a pretty powerful habit of pointing out inconsistencies in the things you say until you're forced to lay out the whole logic of it, including admissions to contradictions and inconsistencies.

[rebells]

No, he doesn't.

[Is the automatic response, which, he's pretty sure it's not that simple, but--he feels like he would have noticed that about Geir? It's not as though they never talk.]

. . . never mind. That's not the point. The point is that you're being ridiculous.

[splinten]

If he doesn't with you, either you're surprisingly consistent around him, or he's making a conscious choice not to. He's both analytic and curious by nature.

[Forget the point, Dirk is still a pain in the ass and is going to point out the mistake here.]

What am I supposed to do here?

[rebells]

[That's something to think about--but later.]

You could stop arguing with me about how terrible you are, or whatever point you're trying to make.

[splinten]

Sure, I'll stop. That doesn't mean I'm going to believe otherwise.

[Great. Now he's being even more of an ass to someone who cares about him and is trying to be a good friend.

He's not raising his face from his hands, ever.]

[rebells]

. . . why?

[When it comes down to it, what he really wants to know is why Dirk is so intent on convincing himself that he's a bad person. He doesn't understand that.]

[splinten]

[There's a moment of silence.

And then,]

Once you actually get to talk to yourself, even or maybe especially if it's yourself as a supercomputer in a pair of sunglasses, you end up developing a fairly comprehensive set of feelings towards yourself. Three years with my AI clone was enough to give me a good idea of everything I hate about myself.

[rebells]

[There's a lot of that explanation he doesn't get, not being from a world with supercomputers in pairs of sunglasses. But something about it strikes a chord.]

. . . did I ever tell you about the black mist?

[splinten]

[He glances over at Jay. Small headshake to indicate no, Jay did not tell him.]

[rebells]

It's a threat we dealt with on my world. We never figured out exactly what it was before--well. [Focus. This isn't the point. He's not entirely sure what the point is--he's not quite sure where he's going with this, but he keeps talking.]

It takes the shape of the darkness in people's hearts, and drives them to despair.