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Maybe. But maybe that isn't true. [He is trying to articulate an idea that he know he can't get Dave to accept. Still, he has to say it. Full of uncertainty and platitudes, still, he has to try.] Maybe... maybe what you need is the only thing that will fix it. Maybe figuring it out, and establishing boundaries, would make things stable. And maybe deciding what you need once you have that solid base of your boundaries would help you get you where you need to be. Maybe all of this is like flashsteppin' and puppets, but the first step in that is always putting a total ban on it until you're ready to try, at your pace, according to your needs and decisions. Not to fall into a cliche, but... I think that sometimes the best way we can take care of other people is by answering our own needs first, so that we can be in the right state to give them what they need.

Or maybe that's all wrong, but I think that it isn't. Admittedly, I have a bias in your favour. I suppose though that if one of us does it maybe it will help the other one, the way keep tryin' to drag each other up together.

I can't make you juggle knives, holy fuck, stop -

[ those were the words, the ones that made it clear he has to do anything but. he pulls back from the hug, shifts but doesn't raise his gaze. ]

I think - I think we need boundaries, then. I don't think we can do this like we are anymore.

[ he has no idea what he needs. what he wants is to remove himself entirely from every equation, though.

maybe he can take baby steps to "i think i should move out of the tower, and also off the island, and maybe go live with the kharaa or something" day by day. ]

[There's a long pause.]

I said I was jugglin' knives and hearts. I meant... that if I fucked up, I'd stab either your heart or Jake's. Holy fuck, am I this bad at metaphors? That was what that meant. Either I stab you or him or both. The metaphor meant—the point of it was that I feel like it's impossible for me to avoid hurtin' the people I love.

That was what it meant. I have really good leather gloves in this metaphor or some shit, my only injuries are sympathetic because I have just impaled the hearts of the people I love most. That was about me hurtin' you and Jake.

I didn't misunderstand. [ or not entirely. not enough to make him think it's any less crucial he fuck off? ] I can't do this? I can't do this. I can't be part of a jugglin' act that always seems to end with you or him or a million other people gettin' hurt. Even if I try to pick somethin' that should - whatever you guys want, it hurts everyone, and I can't. I just want to not be part of the equation so you don't have to.

I don't have to, it's the position I put myself in.

[He doesn't know how to make the counter-argument. He doesn't know how to explain it in the way that makes it all okay. Maybe because it isn't okay, but it will be. It has to be, eventually. They have to make it there.]

There are other ways out of the juggling act than takin' out one of the hearts. I think maybe we just aren't in the best position to figure it out. Maybe we need to let the knives hit where they're going to for a minute and just stop, and instead of juggling we put a ban on all acts related to clowns and figure out how to get knives out of the hearts I have in my hands.

Every time I -

[ he stops himself. breathes. ]

Fine. [ he doesn't even know what it means or what he's agreeing to, really, but hey. ] Ban enacted.

[Dirk doesn't dare reach out. Not when a 'fine' came down like that.] Every time you what?

No matter what choice I make, you always remind me where the knives are gonna land. There ain't ever a choice where they don't land somewhere. Even when I do fuck all and make no choices.

[Oh.]

I'm sorry. I'll stop.

Nah, it's fine. I need to know? I can't...

[ a shrug. ]

I just can't. [ that seems like a decent answer. there is no option that didn't get a reminder of who would get hurt, and even without the reminders, those things would have been true. ] Even the one where I fix my shit you said hurts you and Jake. You said so. There's nothin' I can do.

[ except just not. ]

I don't like the one where you treat yourself as a defective thing that needs to just insist you're fine until it finally clicks, no. That's sort of a recurring thing I disagree with.

[He's twisting it around in his mind. He's trying to figure out how to get out. How to fix this.]

When you... There's a thing that would hurt but it doesn't. When you decide you need to go away, I'm fine. Like, I'm not ecstatic, but it was the agreement we made that as long as you promise you'll come back, it's okay. It doesn't hurt because I know I'm not being abandoned, and I know you'll come home. There aren't knives.

That doesn't really apply to the tellin' people shit issue so much as like, issue one thousand twenty-seven in the Strider lexicon, which is I suppose abandonment and space.

Your idea with it was that I'd know you'd come back, so both of our things would be dealt with. Maybe if we applied the same logic, we could answer this on a longer scale. If what you need is control over the flow of information, cool. What I need to know is that you want to feel safe with me and you'll work towards it. So. I don't know. Maybe we don't have to juggle knives if we know that we're trying to reach that point where it'll be okay. You can't share the information this time, but no one gets hurt because you are going to try to get to that one day. It just isn't on this one. Me and Jake have our own side of it that's sort of dealing with our own issues between us on this kind of thing, and we should work on that. But we don't have it down yet.

Following that idea, we can say it's okay to not be okay, and no one gets the knife because we know we're all trying. I think because of how we are, which is to say human, we can't give absolute promises to be totally ideal. We can agree to try, though, and that matters because it allows us to be okay with each other's current needs, while working together to try to achieve what we want. Waiting for the day you trust me is something I can accept in the way I can't accept the total loss of your trust forever.

[ the immediate thought he does not say: i don't know if i'll ever trust you that completely ever again. it's pandora's box and he can't trust he won't lose out every time. dave's quiet as he swallows the words down.

there's no fight in his voice or posture, and he's not even sure what he'd fight for if he felt any of that kind of passion. what he needs is still too impossible to see when faced with what other people need or want. ]

If that's what you want. I don't really - I don't know how it works out as a game plan. What you want me to do. But okay. [ he lasted maybe fifteen minutes total this time. less, really, because dave can't even pretend to do estimates. it's just as pathetic a realization as it usually is. ] I said I'd try to change.

[He recognizes what happens and it hits him painful, and it comes out slight and scared in the little shake of his head. No.]

It isn't—this isn't a request. I'm tryin' to—you deserve choices. You have one choice, which is cuttin' out. This is another, and a third would be to hit pause on all of it, offload the entire thing onto me or Rose, and take a break from all of this. I don't think that'd hurt anyone. We can probably come up with a fourth option that doesn't hurt.

You said that you need to not hurt people. I don't know how to help you get what you need. [He needs to get a grip on his fear. It isn't important. Only Dave is important.] That was a bad try.

What do you mean by offload it? [ a small frown, but he's still not arguing. ]

The possibility we talked about that you didn't know if it would help, where every time you find information, you shove it onto one of us and make us responsible for tellin' people or not.

[Another option. Another choice. Anything to try to get Dave out of a trap where he's sure the only way out is just removing himself from the equation. At least this would be a different way to take himself out of it, one that didn't mean removing himself totally.]

[ he kind of. laughs. ]

Rose wouldn't. I mean, tell people. In general? She might sometimes but she isn't really ever plagued by doubt about what she should or shouldn't tell people. I don't think? But sometimes I think she might be even worse than I am about that shit, just without any - you know, she doesn't give a fuck. Which, while bein' a thing I sincerely admire about her, probably means it'd be like tossin' a note into a vault and throwin' said vault into a volcano.

Yeah, probably. But it wouldn't be on you.

[That's what matters to Dirk now. Not the information. Not anything but taking care of Dave.]

Okay.

[ he doesn't know if it will help but it's halfway what he kept suggesting anyway: dirk gets to make the choice and dave can deal with whatever it is when it happens. or rose doesn't make the choice and raises her eyebrows at him over her latest book. tell or don't tell. ]

That's another option. I don't... have any others yet. We can try to come up with more.

[He's trying. He is trying to build choices back after cutting show many off.]

It's kind of the option I tried to take a few times with a paint job? So. Okay.

[ the "tell anyone don't ask i'll deal" ]

The one where you have me tell people and just shrug at it?

[ cal's little expression in that icon is creepy in miniature BUT YEAH ]

It...felt like what would be easiest for everyone.

[Cal's little expression in every icon and yet, Dirk loves his fucking puppet.]

We should go on a road trip in a direction we've already covered, and just point-blank refuse to acknowledge anything we see that isn't a cool new animal to make friends with. Plot shit? Fuck that. Nobody's home. Sign me up for a new squideel friend.

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