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[parodeity]

DAVE STRIDER

consider this your warning about stairs. itll just keep happening bro. im telling you man

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[splinten]

Maybe fault isn't the most important thing. It's cause and effect, and if I can control the cause to stop creating the effect, I'd like to.

[parodeity]

That's my job. I'll...ok, at this rate, I will probably never get the hang of it, but I will relearn how to put up with it.

[splinten]

You do not have exclusive rights on taking responsibility for causality. [...] Time shit doesn't count. I'm reasonably confident Heart covers free will crap. I'm still in the clear.

[parodeity]

The things you do every day that hurt me aren't things I plan to ever talk to you about, Dirk. I never have before, not in more than flashes.

[splinten]

[There's a moment of pause.] Why?

[parodeity]

Because they're the kinds of tiny everyday hurts people deal to one another that shouldn't hurt at all.

[splinten]

[But they do. And that's what matters. They do, and they hurt Dave, and Dirk wants to stop doing them. He wants to know and go forward.

He can't force Dave to do anything. Won't that hurt more? When he speaks, he isn't forceful. It's more of an observation, something he thinks Dave maybe already knows.]

I don't know how much 'shouldn't matters anymore, either. It's what it is, and burying it doesn't mean workin' on it. It just means... having it.

[parodeity]

I've done it for years. For a lifetime, really.

[splinten]

Yeah. You have. [And nothing has changed.

Maybe it's what Dave needs. Dirk honestly doesn't know. He is so lost, and Dave's right. He's on quicksand.]

I don't know. For any of this. There's barely any stable ground.

[parodeity]

Sorry, it's just - it's all stuff you can't really change. So.

[ a shrug. ]

It's just not normally overlaid with another lifetime's bullshit.

[splinten]

You don't owe me an apology, Bro. It's okay.

[He traces along the edge of his shades again, the sharp point.]

It feels wrong to give up, despite that.

[parodeity]

The cure might hurt worse than the injury. So. Seriously, don't worry about it that much. I'm not gonna cut you out entirely.

[splinten]

I'm not the only person I'm worried about in this equation.

[parodeity]

I only completely broke down once to my knowledge back then. And I haven't cut it that close here as I've remembered more.

[splinten]

Again, that isn't totally my concern. I don't have to be a danger for my own health to be in a bad situation with the crap I had to deal with in this life [he.... still doesn't like calling it depression he never has] and it's the same. That you aren't breaking down doesn't mean you're okay.

[parodeity]

You know that's the lever.

[splinten]

What?

[parodeity]

You're sayin' you're...y'know.

[splinten]

[...]

Not in an ideal state of mind?

[ie: depressed and potentially suicidal?]

That isn't a lever I can ever use, dude, that'd be pointblank emotional manipulation. Which I may or may not have been guilty of in a past life and this one, but it's something that I don't ever want to make a habit of.

[parodeity]

You weren't and haven't been.

[ a shrug. ]

But yeah, that's how it feels, right? So you get why I sometimes don't want to tell you shit about my state of mind.

[splinten]

[wait]

You think it'd be emotionally manipulative. [There's a raise at the end that makes it a question. It's just so impossible to see it that way. for Dirk.]

[parodeity]

That's one of the problems, yeah.

[splinten]

Okay, I definitely don't see it that way, but what are the others?

[parodeity]

...Things. [ clear as mud, but that's apparently as helpful as he feels like being in that direction. ]

If me not doin' shit or doin' shit because you feel like crap is emotionally manipulative on your part, the vice versa direction is also true.

[splinten]

That isn't emotionally manipulative, holy shit.

[LET HIM JUST. Gh.]

It's manipulative to try to control someone else with your emotional crap. It isn't manipulative to tell them what the situation is and let them make their own choices.