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I wanted to sing you a lullaby in your time of need.

[LULLABIES ARE BETTER!

He recognizes that hesitation. He quiets down.] What was the way? [He is pretty sure the usual way is his head gone John the Baptist. He is afraid that he already knows what this different way is.]

The usual way is lovingly totin' your head around. And also your body. And like, the part before that.

[ stall tactics 101: deliberate misunderstandings. ]

That's what I figured it was.

[Response tactic: just wait until Dave's ready.]

I mean, there are other usual ones too.

[ the terrorscape of dave's mind is vast and varied. he hates it so much. ]

But that's like, director's cut favorite material right there.

It isn't great stuff.

[It is kinda awful, in fact. Not for Dirk, who was mostly dead for it. But for Dave.]

Yeah, well.

[ it is what it is. ]

What's your overactive imagination picturin' over there?

A particularly unpleasant interpretation of our talk about our aspects and identity.

[Dirk hurting Dave. Physically or emotionally, it doesn't matter much even if one is worse. It's still Dirk hurting Dave.]

Edited 2017-01-26 07:57 (UTC)

Oh.

[ maybe dirk should stop being a fucking genius for two seconds? he could try. it would be great. he could not pick up on any of dave's asides or guesstimate where his brain was at. it would be great. ]

Do you ever have nightmares around your weirdo split thingy or does that like, negate all of them.

[Well, he nailed that. He isn't hurt by it, but it is still... saddening. Or painful, maybe but not for himself.]

Not really. There have only been brief periods where dreaming was even a theoretical option. Mostly, if my consciousness doesn't shunt off to the dream bubbles, or the Derse body or the dreamscape depending on availability, I'm just out.

[Like the working to exhaustion also may have things to do with that but not enough sample data here.]

It's not exactly what you're thinkin'.

[ which isn't to say it's good, but. also: ]

Maybe an actual sleep schedule will make it so you're not just out. And then you can join the rest of us in havin' your brain helpfully supply you with fun and exciting trips through your issues and random thoughts while you're tryin' to sleep.

You're doing a stunning job selling a sensible sleep cycle to me.

[Thanks Dave.]

What was it?

Sometimes you get to have good dreams, too. I mean, I do not have those very often myself? But I'm told they exist.

[ yw dirk ]

It was just...a bad day. No big deal.

[His mind is made for connections. It might be the wrong one but it is so easy for him to make.]

A bad day from me. [The little lift. Yes?]

It was just a memory at first. Not a bad day from you.

[ just one of those Bad Days he refused to expand upon, back when dirk asked what constituted a bad day. ]

[Days he doesn't know if he can even begin to imagine.]

Then what happened?

I couldn't remember if I was dead or dreamin'.

[ rose asked him that one and it's stuck around in his mind ever since, because it was always a good question in the game. it'd been a question he'd asked first, that she'd mirrored back at him.

am i dead or asleep? try to remember. sometimes when he's sleeping, he can't recall, and he twists himself up trying.

it doesn't answer "then what", except it hadn't been rose who'd asked this time. ]

You were there, too. [ too, not instead of. ]

[That doesn't still answer 'then what.' He doesn't want to shove; he wants to let Dave take his time.

So he just nods. He was there too, and Dave didn't know if he was dead or dreaming.]

It was just a nightmare.

[ dave shifts, crosses his arms over his eyes as he lays there, thinking. after a second he moves them away so he can keep an eye on dirk instead, re-orienting. ]

You get that, right? Sometimes after you wake up from shit like that it's just hard to fall back asleep so you have to wear yourself down until you can. I've had them since I was a kid, about a million different things. Rose used to analyze them for kicks. Still does if I bother to tell her about 'em.

Roxy used to tell me about her dreams sometimes. I get it.

[It's a nightmare. It isn't real. But it is real, bone-deep, a mind jumbling up terrors and spitting them out in messy rearrangements.]

It's okay. ["It will be okay."] I'm here and I'm willing to listen to what you're willing to say.

I just want you to know it isn't about you, not really. And you're the person I tried to get to distract me. Okay?

[ he's more worried about dirk's reaction than he is about his own. dave doesn't really consider nightmares to be that noteworthy in the long run, even if he'll wake up and putz around until he can go the fuck back to sleep, or avoid it sometimes. his default reaction is to bother dirk or rose to distract him, when he has the option at all. ]

That means a lot to me. [That Dave went to him for distraction. That whatever happened, at least Dave actually wanted him to stay there and be there and sing a dumb lullaby.

He doesn't give a smile; that isn't his vocabulary. But his expression is reassuringly steady.]

It's okay.

[ dave's seen you smile before, dirk. a lot. but all right. he breathes out, slow. ]

It was a bad day, but it was just a memory, until it wasn't. Because when it happened, you weren't there, and I was younger. At first, I was younger. You just watched for a while as we went at it before you asked me: Are you dead or dreaming, Dave?

[ the question bubbling up through a million different voices and faces at a million different times throughout his dreams ever since he'd realized it was always a question that mattered.

sometimes, he answers wrong. ]

And I couldn't remember.

[It sounds unsettling, to say the least. Dirk has never liked being unsure of his reality. He likes to know where and when his mind is, and his splinters have sometimes been helpful to that, even if other times they're really annoying about it.

At the same time, Dirk doesn't exactly understand. Why is Dave afraid that Dirk would be hurt? It's creepy but it hasn't touched on Dirk hurting Dave. Unless that was what hurt him? Unless there was something else.]

Was that when the dream ended?

Oh, no.

[ he's being really sparse on the details. dirk still doesn't need to know what Bad Days were like. but he's told dirk before, when he was scared he'd broken dirk's nose, that he knew how to handle his own broken bones and could probably reverse engineer a solution if he had to. other people getting hurt freaked him out but he'd been used to it, when he was a kid, and he hadn't questioned it.

the stupid rooftop, his left arm broken but he'd always been capable of using either hand after a certain point in his life out of necessity and anyway it barely matched up to the rest, and the strife pausing so the weird watcher could ask a single question. ]

He said it didn't matter, and killed you, and then things changed again and it was my turn. I die a lot in my dreams.

[ bro's voice, barely ever heard, a sword swinging. toss the body over the roof and then it wasn't entirely bro and wasn't entirely dirk and the question wasn't a question because it doesn't matter because you're dead, Dave, either way. ]

On the bright side, there was minimal puppet ass, so you know, actually relatively relaxin' compared to some of my greatest hits.

[Dirk can't ask what bad days are but Dirk can work some things how. He can work out mind games and he can work out things lasted longer, and he knows Dave has had broken bones and had to care for them on his own, he knows Dave gets basic self-administered medicine on a level he shouldn't.

And then Dave tells him he died.

It doesn't register as bad except that it hurts Dave. Dirk is sure he'd die in his dreams if he dreamt more. He hates that Dave dies in his but he knows that's how it has to be. But something seems to be escaping him.

Dirk reaches for Dave's hand.]

What was the part where you were telling me it was just a dream, so it wasn't about me?

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