🤡
“This isn’t funny, Rosine.”
“You know what wasn’t funny? You coming back just to humiliate me, as if you hadn’t done enough the first time.”
Dirk is on his feet behind his desk, watching you, backing up when you take a step forward. Your smile is plain, your hands empty of weapons, yet he seems to, correctly, distrust both facts as indicating anything close to diplomacy.
“...You--”
“No. You don’t get to talk right now. It’s my turn.”
He swallows.
“You fed off my desperation, like a parasite, and treat me like the villain for my hesitation to want this again? To trust this? To trust you? How dare you.”
Another step forward from you, another step back from him.
“I’d lost everything. I discovered I was a pawn, a mere pitiful punchline in the joke of my own universe, robbed of my childhood, my state of mind broken down from the moment I was born on purpose ‘for the good of the many.’ I had to watch as my stepbrother, my soulmate, abandoned me, and what did you do?”
You’ve reached his desk now, and your arms throw themselves forward, to shove half its contents to the floor. “You said you loved me, and then you fought me! Every step of the way! Pushed me away and isolated me all at once as though one on its own wouldn’t be cruel enough? You wanted me to love one person, you, no one else, and not so much as breathe near anybody else. And God forbid I made the mistake of doing so. It was never enough for you, no amount of my finite attention, no cornucopia of my sacrifices could ever satisfy your stupid trophy shelf. Like the fact that I tolerated your pathetic Frankenstein complex with that monster of an AI you built wasn’t proof enough of my love for you! None of it was enough!”
You round the corner of his desk, so nothing stands between the two of you. His back hits the wall.
“And you have the audacity... to come back, come back into my life, only to embarrass me in person, and then embarrass me on that platform, and then leave? Do you know how many times you promised me to stay by my side no matter our dynamic when I never even asked you to? You said it then, you said it again this round, and you used the fact that every single person in my life broke down my psyche on purpose, against me.”
“Rosine, you’re completely overreacting. That’s not what happened. I was scared, for fuck’s sake, and I was trying. Trying, apparently, not hard enough for you--”
“You’re damn right you weren’t trying hard enough, you piece of shit.”
That shuts him up.
“What?” A laugh comes from dark parted lips, dripping with bitterness. “You think I’m sorry, for expecting more from you, after what you put me through? You think I have any sympathy left in my body for you, any drop of mercy for your fear left in my bones? Am I supposed to apologize?”
You’re close to him now. Too close. Close enough that part of your heart wants to kiss him, feel his arms around you again, feel how he can draw you in and hold you close and feel safe from the crumbling world around you. But you know better now. You know it’s a false sense of safety; you know it’s a trap.
You start to lower to the ground. He watches your hand slip down your boot, your eyes fixed right back on him the whole time, as you stand up again with your switchblade. He flinches when the blade clips out.
“What the fuck are you doing.”
“You shouldn’t’ve made me beg, Dirk.”
“What?”
Your body is against his. “That night, when you demanded reassurance I was yours, in spite of the fact that I hadn’t done a godforsaken thing. You told me to get on my knees, and plead for you to stay.”
“...Rosine...”
“And I did it. I did it for you, because I loved you, and I will never, ever, forgive you for it.”
“I told you I was fucking sorry.”
“You shouldn’t have made me beg,” you repeat.
His features are paler than you’ve seen them in a long time. He doesn’t seem capable of bringing himself to hurt you. You know he can’t. You know, in his own, broken way, he meant it when he said he loved you. He does love you, to the extent he can love anything.
“Don’t come near me again.”
He nods.
“Understand?”
He nods again.
“And if your demon robot amalgam even sets foot in my universe again, I’ll consider you its keeper. If I survive whatever it tries to do to me, in order to get you, you will be the one pay the price. Understand that?”
He nods yet again.
“I’m done fucking around with men that want me brought to heel like a dog. That means you. Breathe near me again, Dirk Strider, and I’ll slice your throat open.”
Another nod. Another nervous swallow.
The harshness in your features fades. You step back, he blinks.
You’re smiling as you put the weapon away, sliding it back into your boot, fixing your hair as you look back up at him. It’s hard to tell if your smile is genuine, or completely empty, but there’s no in between.
“I got you good with that one, didn’t I?”
He stares at you for a few moments of silence. “What?” he finally forces out.
“It’s April Fools’ Day. You should see the look on your face.”
He chokes out a laugh of confusion, still tainted with nerves. “Oh?”
“Yes. Seems I gave you quite the fright.”
“Y-yeah.” He doesn’t know how to respond. “Yes, you did do that.”
And then your smile is gone again. You can see how his body tenses.
You don’t say another thing. You walk to the transportalizer in the corner of his office, enter coordinates back home, and send yourself back out of the room without another word. He’ll spend the rest of his night, rest of his week, wondering if you were serious, robbed of the closure that you just gave yourself in confronting him. Because you know the answer. You know whether you were serious or not. And you could have made your threats in a more direct way, untainted by the possibility of a psychotic joke like this one, but you chose not to. You chose not to because you’ve decided it’s high time Dirk be left as confused and distressed as he forced you to be, for years. You want him torturing over those moments, wondering what on Earth you were thinking, what could possibly have possessed you to do that the way you did, whatever your intentions.
You’re finished trying to make sense to Dirk Strider when it’s clear he never understood you to begin with, and never will.
Your steps are light as you make your way back to your bathroom, tugging the sleeves of your sweater back down to your wrists, and picking up your lipstick to fix it once you’re in front of a mirror. You see the tears in your eyes even though you don’t feel them, not until, that is, a few fall and drip down your cheeks. They hit the porcelain below in silence, the last (the beginning?) of your heartbreak over him demanding to be felt.
But you ignore them anyway. Demand and command and direct as they will, you’ll continue to refuse to give that heartbreak the satisfaction or time of day. Because even if he’ll never know it, even if he’ll never see it, you refuse to give Dirk the satisfaction of crying over him.
He’s broken you badly enough. He doesn’t get to make you cry over him anymore.
You stand up straight, tease your hair once more as you brush the tear trails from your cheeks, cap your lipstick, and make your way to John’s for the night, just like nothing happened.
