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You’re walking calmly, breathing evenly. It’s obvious that Porrim needs some time and space to take in and accept what you’ve told her, and there’s nothing wrong with that—it’s often difficult for people to question their own, admittedly problematic, socialized beliefs and assumptions. It may be necessary to present an idea to them many times before they are able to deconstruct and set aside their innate prejudices, and it would be a failure on your part not to give her the opportunity she needs to take in these new, perhaps challenging, understandings of her own unexamined privilege. You can be patient with her difficulties.
And so you are walking—slowly, unhurriedly, without any particular urgency—away from where she is. The just-finished conversation replays itself in your mind as you walk, and while it is difficult for you not to turn back when you realize ways in which your phrasing was perhaps difficult for her to grasp, given her still-elementary understanding of the topic, you remind yourself that this temporary pause will, in the long run, lead to more productive work. In fact, it gives you a useful opportunity to polish your rhetoric, to revise each phrase that led to that particularly unfortunate expression on her face. It’s true that she remains a particularly challenging individual to educate, and that you sometimes feel a certain weariness as the sweeps continue without any sign of her becoming enlightened, but you don’t believe that burn-out has yet overcome you. You will simply try again. Later.
Right now, though, you interrupt your musings about how to describe the ways that hemonormativity can affect even those in the OJA community to wonder where you are. You vaguely noticed the golds of Prospit fading away as you walked (calmly), but the cool gold of desert sand under the moons, while similar enough to not have caught your attention, is unfamiliar. It shifts underfoot, impeding your progress, and you’re surprised when you look back to realize how far you’ve gotten from the parts of the dream bubble you know. It’s odd to have found an area of the bubble where you’ve never been, odder still when you recall that you’ve never heard Latula or any of the more far-ranging members of your cohort describe traveling there. You suppose it may be a memory of one of your dancestors or their human companions, and the prospect of being able to spend more time educating Karkat is an enticing one. You devote more energy to exploring this unchanging landscape, watching dunes stretch away in the distance, the moonlight creating starkly outlined burgundy and jade shadows.
It’s hard to judge time here and now—the sensations tend to be hazier than what you remember before your unfortunate passing. You have a sense that in your previous phase of existence, your every moment was full of more sensation than you could possibly process, but that now, only the sorts of things that you (or whoever’s memory created this part of the bubble) consciously noticed are there to greet your senses. So your solitary trek through the desert seems oddly timeless, as if whoever remembers this had something occupying his thoughts too much to notice details of how long he had been walking, how tired he might be. You’re aware that this is more physical effort than you are accustomed to (you reject the ablist and body-shaming rhetoric regarding exercise, weight, and appearance), but the memory of this dream-bubble doesn’t include weariness, so you don’t feel it. This existence in which you find yourself certainly does offer fascinating opportunities to “walk in another’s footsteps,” so to speak, though you must admit that finding actual footprints would be a helpful guide through this cold, empty desert, silent save for your breath and the sand shuffling away from your tread.
You are encouraged by the flicker of firelight ahead of you. The opportunity for dialogue would certainly be enlivening after the unfortunate amount of time you’ve spent alone here. You redouble your efforts at making your way through the impeding sand, mentally rehearsing your lecture. You’re certain that Karkat’s attentive audience will be more fulfilling for both of you than this seemingly endless march through the dim, soundless night, and so it is very pleasant when you recognize that oh-so-familiar set of unconventionally-attractive horns against the firelight.
As you approach, though, you’re taken aback to realize your error. The featureless desert confused you in terms of scale, and rather than being the few-sweeps-younger form of your dancestor, this person is actually considerably taller than you—adult height. And you’ve never seen Karkat wear anything other than a simple black sweater and pants, so the tattered grey cloak is confusing. It takes a few, disappointing moments to realize that no, this is not your willing pupil. It takes a few more moments for you to realize who it must, therefore, be.
Well. This is unexpected. But on the other hand, you think, stirring your suddenly stilled feet into action, perhaps this is an opportunity. You have spoken many times to your group about the problematic nature of your Alternian counterpart’s methods. Surely, therefore, it behooves you to take the time, not just to attempt to analyze and deconstruct his words in absentia, but to actually call out the source of the toxic rhetoric in person. In fact, you have often mused about what you would say to him, how you would demonstrate to him his misconceptions and contradictorily kyriarchy-reinforcing methodology. You had not anticipated the reality of the situation coming upon you so suddenly, but, you suppose, no time like the present. Especially since he’s spotted you. So there’s no point in doing anything but continuing forward, disciplining your body language to present a warm, yet confident, demeanor.
He’s studying you, silent, and it’s hard to read what he’s thinking from the intensity of his gaze, the slight quirk of his lips. You remind yourself that while your own unexamined societally-instilled reactions may raise their metaphorical heads at unfortunate times, it’s important not to let your acknowledgement of them prevent you from engaging in productive dialogue. So you clear your throat and begin. “Am I right in thinking I’m addressing the Signless, also known, however problematically, as the Sufferer?”
His expression gets even harder to read. “So they tell me.”
“Excellent,” you say, because it is excellent that you have this opportunity, and it would be a failure of you as a leader and as an activist to let it slip away. “I’m delighted for this opportunity to engage in dialogue with you. As you may know, you have become a figure of reverence for many people, both in your iteration of the revised universe as well as those of my cohort in the pre-Scratch one. As such, I feel that you have a responsibility to your ‘followers,’ if you will, to examine your methodology in greater depth, with an eye towards the, well, I don't like to use the term ‘problematic’ lightly, and while I quite respect and even agree with your goals of peace, equality, and a truly spectrablind society, it seems to me that you might wish to consider whether the effects of some of your tactics not only reinforced the, ah, very power structure that you, at least on the face of it, were attempting to subvert, but also, perhaps contradictorily, and I by no means mean to imply that this was your intention, by your very, ah, so-called ‘Last Sermon,’ may have actually reinforced the very violence, both, ah, verbal as well of course as the unfortunate physical, tactics which are so often used to reinforce privilege in both of our universes.”
He stares at you for a long moment, and you would take advantage of this listening pause to continue your lecture, but you find yourself unaccountably lost for words, unable to remember clearly the narrative arc of the argument, despite all your past brainstorming on the topic. “Kid,” he says, finally, “who the fuck are you talking to?”
You smile compassionately, pleased for the opportunity to educate even this supposedly-brilliant iteration of yourself. “Ah, I apologize—I had assumed, and it is an example of my own unexamined privilege to perform such a microaggression, that as a fellow activist, you would be conversant with the rhetoric of Problematics. I would be very happy to educate you in this area so that we may continue the conversation on more ‘equal footing,’ if you will pardon the possibly ablist imagery.”
He shakes his head. “No, I got what you meant. You’re saying that I got pissed off when they were fucking torturing me to death, and did the same kind of shit I’d been preaching against, and that makes me a hypocrite. Fair enough. But you’re not looking at me when you’re talking.”
You stammer. You actually stammer, what’s wrong with you? “No, I— ” You take a deep breath. “It’s true that neurotypical society values eye contact during speech, and while I do not personally identify as neuroatypical, I must nonetheless protest your enforcing of the rigid societal enforcement of neurotypical privilege and the false ‘norms’ that such enforcement implies.”
He thinks about that for a moment. “So you’re not looking at me because it bothers you?”
“I must protest,” you say, and it takes you a moment to figure out what you’re protesting, just that you are, but then you have it, you know, you’re all right. “Your assumption that my acting as an ally for a disadvantaged community is in some way a form of ‘oversensitivity’ on my part, as opposed to the very basic troll—or indeed, sentient being, I don’t wish to betray my own privilege as part of an agent-species—but, the basic decency that any sentient being should feel towards his oppressed—or, I should say, less privileged—or, I should say, any other person at any place on the kyriarchy.”
“That one got away from you a little,” he comments. He gestures to a worn piece of cloth laid on the ground near the fire, like the one he’s sitting on. “Want to have a seat?”
You don’t, really, his adult height is already far enough above you without giving him this added advantage. But you remind yourself that a key step to engaging in productive dialogue is to approach the individual in question on his own terms, as much as is possible without by your very doing so reinforcing problematic norms. So you sit. The cloth is scratchy and rough beneath you, and little padding against the sand. The fire crackles, though the breeze at least carries the smoke away from you. You look up at your other-universe iteration, the flickering firelight playing over his face, glinting in his eyes.
He leans back on his elbows, his head once again just barely below yours. “Are you okay?” he asks.
You bristle. “If you’re implying that my very valid sociopolitical views are simply a form of irrational emotion, I would ask you to check your privilege, as such use of a tone argument is simply the unthinking defense of a person who cannot address the logic of the case being presented to him, and so must resort to ad hominem attacks to avoid the conversation.”
He actually laughs, the assh—extremely problematic and unthinkingly privileged individual. “Wait, I’m sorry, who’s avoiding the question, here?” He sighs. “I’m not saying anything about your politics. I’m saying you look like you’re freaking the fuck out. So is it something I’m doing, or did something happen before you got here?”
“Before you go casting aspersions at me,” you growl, “you may want to consider whether or not your own actions have a problematic bent which may be at least partially responsible for the sociopolitical situation in which you find yourself.”
“Yes?” he says. “Like I just said, right?”
“Sarcasm,” you tell him, “is the last defense of those who are incapable of bringing themselves to honestly engage with the concepts under discussion.”
“Ah,” he says. “So, you’re not seeing me or hearing me. That’s great. Why are we having this conversation?”
You glare at him—well, study him attentively, at any rate. “Because I need to help you examine your rhetoric!”
"Oh,” he says. “Well, sure.” He chuckles. “You’re a Vantas—Vantases always know better than everyone else, right? Sure, help me examine my rhetoric. Thank you.”
You aren’t so easily lulled, though—something about him is troubling you, and you’re just not sure about the sincerity of his request. “You want my help?”
“I do,” he says. “I’ve been wanting your help forever.” You draw breath to rebuke him, to point out that you don’t need his mockery, but he doesn’t stop talking. “But since I’m all unenlightened and ass-backwards and shit, maybe you could do me a favor?”
“If your intention is to mock—”
He shakes his head. “No, no, fuck, no. Really not. I’m here for a reason, right? And I have been wanting to talk to you, for a long time. So, no, I’m being serious.”
You hesitate. “...very well. I’ll be happy to make any reasonable accommodations that would meet your needs.”
“Oh, good,” he says. “Okay, so—please, tell me about what’s wrong with my rhetoric. But—just for me—could you do it all in words of one syllable?”
You stand up, stiff with the desert cold. “I should have known. You’ve obviously been toying with my perfectly sincere efforts, for your own amusement, without the slightest intention of listening!” You don’t need this—there are other people to talk to, people who will be more receptive to your teaching, or at least won’t make fun of you, or at least, if they do, it’ll be in a way that you can just know is their own defensiveness. Not that you don’t think this mockery is his own defensiveness! You’re sure that’s what’s going on here, there’s nothing else it reasonably could be, this isn’t—you don’t need to feel so unsettled, this is just a conversation, like any other, except for being less productive, so you would be perfectly justified in enforcing your own boundaries and escaping—and leaving, leaving the conversation, in a dignified way—
“No,” he snarls, only it’s not threat, just anger, you don’t know how he’s doing that. “Please. Kankri. I want to talk to you. I want to hear what you have to say.” He looks up at you, white eyes imploring, you can see him seeing you even through their dead blankness. “Please—just try it. You know I’ve spent a lot of time talking to people, right? I really do think it’ll help. Just try. Please?”
You look down at him—this person who could have been you, in another time. You owe him, you think, and then start to question that thought—it’s an illusion to think that any one person, no matter how privileged, could genuinely repay all of the injustices suffered by another, and your purpose is not, no matter how one might argue, to do more than to help others to gain enlighten—
He clears his throat.
“All right,” you say. You return to his side, graciously sitting down again, to show your willingness to engage in the dialogue. “If you think it will help you.” You take a deep breath, thinking about it. This is a challenge, but you don’t think it’s beyond your abilities. You’ve endured worse than this before, in trying to educate Mituna, or, rhetoric save you, Kurloz. “I would suggest that you stop—” You notice your error and he shrugs. “I think you should not tell your...” followers, hearers, people? Hm.
“’You,’” he suggests. “You think I should not tell you that...?”
You don’t like it, but that’s not quite the point. “I think you should not tell us that we should use—” violent means, violence, swearing—“I think you should not tell us to swear and hurt people in order to—” He shakes his head, and you... can handle this. It shouldn’t be that difficult a challenge. “You should not tell us to swear and fight, because it will not work! It is better—fine, ‘more good,’—to use means which are more... wise. To talk to people—us. To talk to us.”
He nods. “Yep,” he says. “I see that. But they hurt me. And I got mad.”
Your mind goes blank. “But,” you say, you’re sure of that part. “Just because—just to be mad, it is not good, it will... hurt...you need to be nice or they won’t listen—won’t hear you, so if you get mad, you will hurt them and they will hurt you back and—all the bad people—“ oh, that’s a ridiculous oversimplication, to call someone “bad,” it completely ignores the circumstances and their social conditioning, it—“you’re just like them, and you can’t teach anyone with any—being—true, trust, they won’t—” You hiss through your teeth in frustration. You’d have an easier time of it if he hadn’t imposed this handicap, which is a very problematic thought of you to have, it’s as much as celebrating your own privilege, that’s a terribly ablist thought on your part, and you need to remember that even though you might be coming from a less powerful position on the hemospectrum, that in no way negates your own privilege! In fact, your uniquely underprivileged privilege may well be preventing you from noting and checking your own—
“Kankri?” he says. “You still with me?”
“Yes,” you say. “Of course. Pardon me, I was taking a moment to recalibrate my examination of privilege.”
He frowns, and you can see his disappointment, his loss of faith in your abilities, when you can’t even complete the very simple task he’s set you to. Even though it might seem illogical to think of him ‘setting you tasks’—he’s hardly your superior, you are after all the same person, even if he spent more years in the living state, and had different experiences, but it’s important not to dismiss your own experience, even if it might mean that because of your privilege you need to be certain that, as a good ally, you aren’t demanding recognition and praise for your efforts—far from it, of course, you wouldn’t dream of imposing your narrative on someone elsewhere on the hemospectrum or in other circumstances, that would be most problematic of you. And you’re not going to do that. So. You... will continue this lecture. Even in idiotic—no, damn it, that was ablist, you are being shockingly ablist today, you’re not sure why, it’s not as if you have reason to or to not be more prone to ablism than concillianormativity or concupiscenormativity or, of course, hemospectrism, let alone speciesism. He shifts his weight forward, and your eyes are drawn unwillingly to his wrists, to the thick scars there, pale and flickering in the firelight. Which, you suppose, of course, the unfortunate incidents surrounding his unfortunate transition to your current state, not that that in itself isn’t problematic, but still, does he have to flash them around—oh, merciful Problematics, how silencing and discounting could you get? You don’t know what’s happening in your head today, you don’t know, you don’t, you can’t...
“Kankri!” he exclaims, and you dodge that scarred hand coming at you before you realize that he’s trying to touch your shoulder to get your attention. He pulls back, looks down at you. “Kankri—kid, what are you so scared of?”
You straighten yourself up, trying for dignity as best as you can. “It’s not—I don’t—I can’t—” That’s not very dignified. “It’s not reasonable of you to continue this conversation, under these circumstances, I am very concerned that I may inadvertently trigger you, and so I feel it would be best to, conclude...”
He looks... distressed. “You want to run away.”
“Taking precautions around triggering is not ‘running away’! Far from it—it is simply a way of allowing the conversation to continue on a respectful and meaningful level, rather than allowing microaggressions—nay, let me say full on macroaggressions—or perhaps simply ‘aggressions’—to, ah, to impede the. Conversation.”
“Okay,” he says, softly. “Okay, kid, okay. Why don’t you tell me what ‘triggers’ are? I haven’t heard that before.”
“Triggers?” You’re surprised—that seems so basic—but you can certainly manage that. “A trigger is a reminder—whether spoken or written—of an event, situation, system, or concept which causes significant, traumatic distress to the person who is triggered. It can lead to traumatic reactions, which of course can be anything from verbal or physical violence to more internal expressions of affect.”
“Huh,” he says. “So how do you think you’ll ‘trigger’ me?”
You hadn’t expected that. “Well,” you begin, “of course, there were a number of—situations—which you experienced in your life, starting of course with our shared off-spectrum hemotype and the many institutionally-enforced systems of oppression related to it, and leading, of course, to the... ah, well, as you know, there were many ways in which your life was, less than utopian, though I do protest that those who claim that Beforus was an actual utopia were fooling themselves and so simply reinforce...”
“Ah, shit,” he says. “I’m sorry. This isn’t going to work—you’re just going to curl back up into your shell, and you’re not going to tell me a damn thing that’s true. Are you?”
It takes you a moment, for some reason, to come up with an answer. “I’m trying to explain my perspective to you, to the very best of my ability! I understand that this can be a challenging subject of conversation, and I am trying to be sensitive to your own triggers and difficulties, but I do think it would work better if you would be more willing to listen to a different perspective!”
“Ah,” he says. “I see.” He takes a deep breath, and then he leans forward, his face right in front of yours—so thin, compared to yours, or even Karkat’s, drawn and hollow, adult-long and strong-featured, and you can see marks on his lips where he bit through them. “’Situations,’ huh? Like the situation where they strung me up with red-hot irons in front of everyone in the Empire, and flogged me until my back was nothing but mutant meat, and shot me until I died screaming? That the situation you’re talking about?”
The desert sands are shifting under your feet, more than before. Because you’re stumbling, falling to your knees and scrambling back up, sand biting at your hands, embedding itself under your claws, coughing into your throat and nose and eyes, which are already stinging, wet, through the red haze of the world around you, shifting and struggling to run. You fall, again, and it’s not just desert now, the dream bubble’s shifting around you, you’re surrounded by trolls, on all sides of you, chanting and laughing and screaming for mutant-red blood. The jut creaks under the weight, there are arrows flying through the air, and you can hear Meulin wail in horror and grief and fury, hear Porrim’s soft sobbing, and you’re tired and hurt and you struggle, you run, crashing into the walls of the arena, and there are stars swimming above you, and everything’s red and stinging and bad. You keep running, keep falling, can’t find an exit, just run from side to side, trying so hard not to see the only thing to see here, the jut above you, trying not to smell flesh cooked by hot iron, don’t know what you’re saying, until you finally fall for the last time, panting and whimpering, and you hear what’s coming out of your mouth as, “sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry...”
He kneels down next to you in the dirt, close enough to touch, but makes no move towards you. “It’s okay.”
You curl up, clutching at your knees with torn and gritty claws. “No.” You close your eyes, the filthy dirt of the arena floor sticking to your wet face, and he doesn’t understand, doesn’t get it—“I hurt you.”
He still doesn’t understand, and his voice doesn’t quite hold the humor he’s going for, is too hollow. Blood drips from his wrists. “Pretty sure that was the Condesce’s soldiers, actually.”
“No!” He has to understand, you have to make him understand—“I was the leader! I was the one who was responsible, when we—when we decided to Scratch the session, when we made the universe the one that you lived in. We made your world, and we made it be harsh, and horrible, and we made—everything that happened to you, we did that, I did that, just so that we could win a stupid game, that’s it! I—I made your world be like that, you got—hurt, tortured, you died, and it was because I couldn’t lead us to win a stupid video game, because I couldn’t get us to work together enough to do anything but lose and decide that we could never win, because I was such a bad leader that no-one could imagine any way we could do it! I hurt you, I created the world that hurt you, so it would hurt you, just and only because I failed. I failed them. I failed you. And you died. And I’m so...” the word sticks in your mouth, for all that you just shouted it to the unhearing skies above, “I regret... I didn’t intend... I...”
“I know,” he says. He’s sitting right in front of you, and you don’t want him to touch you, you hate it when people touch you, and he knows it somehow, so he doesn’t. He just looks at you, and you wish you could have seen his eyes before he died, before you got him killed, because maybe if you could see his expression better, if you could really look into his eyes, maybe you would know what he wants from you... “I remember.”
You can’t get the words out to answer him, choking and gasping too much to be clear. He just sits with you, while the arena fades away again and the green moon sets on the horizon, the desert sands going from gold to a dimmer red in the tyrian moon’s light. The stars move above you, constellations different all that time ago, and you sob and cry and try to get your breath back. “You remember?”
“Being you,” he says. “Something about the blood, I think. But that’s why I preached what I did. I remembered you. I remembered your world, and your friends. I remembered playing the game, and I remembered the choice you made at the end. I know. Kankri. I know.”
Something about the way he says it... “What’s your hatch-name?”
He smiles at you. “Kankri,” he says. “Kankri Vantas. It’s nice to finally meet you.”
You knew that, you suppose. “I,” you say again, “I did that to you.” You could have been me, but instead...
“Yeah,” he says. “You did.” He hesitates, and then says it, voice heavy. “And then I spent my entire life fighting for just a little bit of what you threw away.”
You crumple. Which is pathetic, ridiculous, you have no right to be upset about something you did to him, you’re being... entitled, and making it all about you, show-boating, it’s idiotic of you to be making a scene like this when he’s the one who suffered, who Suffered so much that they changed his name to reflect it, and still, the words come out of your mouth. “I didn’t mean it.”
“I know,” he says. “You couldn’t.”
You shake your head, digging your face deeper into the sand.
He goes on, though. “Grubling, you couldn’t understand. I remember that life—never hungry, never in pain for longer than it took to get to medicine, never a hand raised against me. You couldn’t imagine...” the shadow of the jut flickers into existence above you, and you both flinch, “...this.”
“But I knew it would be traumatic,” you protest. “I must have. I must have known that—that making a world that would teach our counterparts skill at violence and strategy would be—harsh, painful, I must have known that.”
“Yes,” he says. “In the abstract. I don’t think you understood, though. The worst thing that ever happened in that life was getting culled.” He pauses. “Is that a ‘trigger’?”
“It’s fine,” you say, roughly. “It wasn’t a pleasant experience, but compared to what you went through, it’s nothing.”
He shakes his head. “No, it’s not.”
You feel the tears trying to start again. “That’s ridiculous! My life—I might not have had as much privilege as your average coldblood, but I wasn’t—considering the level of prejudice that you faced, it would be pretentious of me to claim any kind of consideration, or... I’ve overcome that.”
“But it hurt,” he says, and behind him, there’s the wall around the well-groomed institutional grounds, architecturally elegant, reminiscent of old-fashioned hospitals, and far, far too thick for you to get through.
“It doesn’t matter,” you say, your clothes turning into the plain, sensible charity-wear you wore as a wiggler. “Not compared to the global scale of injustice. Not compared to the... the problematic interlocking systems of oppression, they’re so much bigger than anything that I as an individual may have dealt with, it’s not—”
“It hurt,” he says. You shake your head, sensibly close-cropped hair too short to rustle your ears. “Kankri,” he says, “I remember. It hurt.”
It’s the way he says it, you think. His voice is so soft for you, so gentle, and yet, so angry at your cullers. Like he’s holding you in his arms, holding you safe and warm, and snarling up at anyone who would dare to hurt you. It’s not the words, it’s not the meaning, they’re debatable, surely, problematic even, but it’s the way he says it, like he can’t stand how sad you were, how ashamed and alone and hurting, like he’ll do something about it. Even dead, even in another universe, even chained to a jut, like he’s not putting up with that shit happening to you. That’s why you’re crying, again, sobbing and sobbing, clinging to rough fabric that smells like him, while he sits watch over you, not intruding with a touch, just there. With you.
You quiet, after a while. It’s his cloak that’s wrapped around you, you realize, while he sits, bare-armed in the block you never chose, that they never trusted you to know enough to design for yourself. He’s close enough for you to feel his warmth, hear his breathing, though he’s still not actually touching you. “It hurt,” he says gently.
“Yes,” you whisper.
“I remember,” he says again. “It made you so angry. And so ashamed, that there was nothing you could do with that anger. So you wanted it to not matter, you wanted to go out there and be angry on everyone else’s behalf. You wanted to be so strong that nothing they did could touch you, so powerful, so ‘privileged,’ that you could protect everyone else in the world. But not need it, yourself. You wanted to change the whole world, make everyone in it perfectly safe. And then, maybe, no-one would notice that you were finally safe, too.”
You squirm under his scrutiny. “But that's entitled, and ridiculously self-interested, I can't—”
“Kankri,” he says, “there’s nothing wrong with wanting something for yourself.” He sighs. “Everyone would have listened to you a lot more if you’d ever admitted that, you know. It took me a long time to figure that one out.” He weaves his fingers through the tattered fringe at the edge of the cloak, still not touching you, in a way that’s more reassuring than any touch could be. “You were so young when you died. It’s not your fault that you didn’t get a chance to grow into yourself.”
You’re not used to thinking of yourself as young. You’ve been the leader of your cohort—and alone, with them and only them—for so long. You’re not used to there being someone else there, someone older, someone to know better than you about anything. Someone to look after you. “I should have done better,” you insist.
“Maybe,” he says. “But you did the best you could think of.” He’s looking off into the desert moonlight, not looking at you, but you still feel his attention, and just for a little while, you let yourself rest in it.
“It was easier for me, in some ways,” he says, softly. “You were all by yourself, but I always had you. Remembered what you’d think, how much you’d despise the people who thought they had the right to do the sorts of casual injustice I’d see every day. I remembered how you thought of yourself, and I always thought of you as older than me, tougher, stronger. You would have done something. So I tried to do what you would have done.”
“But...” you start, looking up at him, not liking the feel in your mouth of the obvious rejoinder.
He raises an eyebrow. “But then what about that last ‘fuck you’ to the universe?”
You sit up enough to nod, to collect yourself. “I wouldn’t phrase it like that...”
“Oh, I didn’t either,” he says. “Yeah, I surprised myself, there. See, I remembered what you taught, so I thought love was better than anger, that love was the only thing I could feel for people if I wanted to help them. And so when I was pissed at them—like you get, you so do, don’t lie—I hid it under trying to be helpful. Just like you do.”
You brush your hair back, smooth dirt off your knees, gather up his cloak from around you to hand back to him. “I’m not sure what you’re implying...”
He makes a face. “I’m not implying shit, I’m saying. You did what you did in the game, and I... spent some time wishing you hadn’t, but you were doing the best you knew how. But you could be doing better now.”
Your hands clench on the cloak. “Excuse me?”
He looks at you, and this time there’s heat in it aimed at you, not just at the people who culled you. “Kankri Vantas, do you honestly for one second think that your friends want to hear about Problematics?”
You start, indignant. “It’s not a question of wanting to or not, it’s important--!”
“Important?” he snaps. “They’re your friends. And your dancestors, who are kids younger than you are, grieving and scared and trying like hell to save the world. And you’re telling me that what they want doesn’t matter?”
You don’t want to start crying again, it’s undignified and unsafe and you’re going to get a headache. You say nothing.
“They’re not idiots,” he tells you, quiet and fierce. “They’re not cruel—well, not all of them—and they’re not all oblivious. You’re not the only one who cares. You’re not the only one who wants to change things.” His voice shakes. “Kankri, you’re not alone.. Not if you don’t want to be.”
You’re shaking your head. “They don’t want to listen to me.”
“They don’t want to listen to a lecture,” he says. “You could try just talking.”
The bubble flickers around you, desert to the ‘comfort block’ in the culling center, the special, softly-padded place where they put you to calm down when you were upset. Where they’d leave you until you stopped yelling, stopped complaining, stopped saying anything except to thank them for their kindly efforts on your behalf. It took a long time, sometimes. He looks around, and there’s that anger again, not just at you—but he’s not taking his attention off you. “No,” he says, softly. “It’s not the same. They won’t despise you. They won’t think you’re useless, or pathetic, except maybe in an attractive sort of way. They won’t think of you as nothing but an outcast mutant who doesn’t know better than to talk back to his betters. You don’t have to keep going around trying to educate them just to get them to pay attention to you. It’s not working. And from the way you sound tonight, it’s gotten worse and worse and worse since you died. You don’t have to educate them out of hating you for your blood color. That’s not why they’re not listening to you.” He leans forward, serious, intent. “They’re not listening to you because you’re not listening to them.”
But they hate me, you hear yourself think. I don’t want to hear that. “I’ve been trying to engage in dialogue...”
He gives you a look. “Well, stop it. Just listen.”
You can hear your own breath, the distant cries of desert creatures. The fire crackles, and looking around his campsite again, you realize that he’s not really the only one here. There’s a tent over to the side, moving gently with the breathing of the trolls inside it. It’s close, cozy—him keeping watch over them in the night, them trusting him to.
“I don’t know how,” you say, a confession.
“It takes practice,” he says. “Just... shut up and see what happens. Stop trying to protect them, and listen to them. They’ll tell you if you hurt them, if you hurt their feelings. They’ll tell you what they need, and what you can do for them. And even when they need something you can’t give, it’ll matter that you listened. That’s how you get them to listen to you—because you’ll have learned something worth saying, from them.”
You think of things you could say about that, about respect for those with vocal or maybe auditory disabilities. But it’s so tiring, to remember everything that’s wrong about every word he says, to check your every thought for its every implication. “I... misjudged you,” you say. “Your rhetoric.”
He sighs, and there’s relief to it. “Thanks,” he says. “I’d hate to think you really did disapprove of what I did with our life. I got more of it than you did.”
You hadn’t thought of it that way. “No,” you say, slowly. “No, I... I think you did your best, too.”
His smile is bright, and it’s strange to see that expression on what’s basically your face. “I’m glad,” he says.
It’s so surprising that you find yourself speaking without thinking about it. “You don’t look angry now.”
He thinks about it. “I always am, some. But it’s not the only thing I’m feeling.” He sifts sand through his hand, thoughtful. “Love’s not better than anger. It’s not a choice of one or the other to change the world with—you need to use them both. They’re both good tools.” He looks thoughtful. “And we both did okay, in the end, because I think Karkat knows that.”
You wonder about that. “Does he? He seems... very quiet.”
The Signless looks wide-eyed at you. Then he laughs, laughs and laughs and laughs, clutching his belly and howling. “Listen,” he says. “Seriously, kiddo. Do some more listening. For me.”
You are very tired, for all that your physical body doesn’t always send you those signals any more. You don’t remember everything that either of you said, even though you’re sure it’s important. But you do remember sitting with him, in the desert night, feeling wrung out and fresh and, for all your social justice work, more clean and good than you ever let yourself feel. And for all that you feel your rhetoric coming back, all the problematics and uncertainties of everything that you’re doing, all the implications that could be there—you’ll remember that feeling. “I’ll try,” you say.
He smiles at you, warm and familiar. “Good.”