Dirk: Be Happy
A lot of thoughts go through your head as you watch Jake kick around that soccer ball.
It took so long to get to this point. To where you could even physically be near him.
Even now, the uncertainty still nags you.
Are you doing everything right this time? Giving him enough space to be himself? Not suffocating him with your love?
You have a feeling the questions will never stop running through your mind. Your brain is geared like a machine, forever crunching possibilities, adding up the probabilities, and coming up with the value most likely to end in your happiness.
If you truly stopped to think about it all, you're certain you would never have left your home. Never met Jake. Never been where you are now.
But you didn't let your own internal built-in defense mechanisms get the better of you. You went on this crazy journey with your friends.
More times than once, you think.
More like a few hundred times.
Or a few thousand times.
You were told long ago that your journey would be one of fragmentation. That to truly become whole, you would have to understand all of the fragments of your life.
At the time, you thought you knew what that meant. You had to think about all the possibilities, all the times you ever interacted with Jake. You had to decipher which of your jokes he thought were the funniest, which of your little quips were the most clever.
What made him smile? What did you do that made him happy?
But you were wrong.
Your journey of fragmentation, you believe, was much larger than that. It encompassed entire universes of possibilities. Alternate timelines that existed at some point.
Timelines where you kept all your friends. Timelines where you lost everything and faded into nothingness.
And, of course, this timeline that you are in now. Where somehow it all turned out all right.
You had to evaluate them with the mindset of Ockham's Razor. Cleave away all of the possibilities that held the most assumptions. Clear your mind of all the hypotheses containing the most falsities.
In the end, you would be left with the truth.
In the end, you're standing here now, in a world you helped create with your friends, watching Jake as he slowly kicks the ball farther away from you while you stay lost in thought.
You didn't have nearly enough time to think about what to say to him when you met Jake again, after your terrible outburst of a break-up. Despite your preconceptions of yourself being manga-cool, you found yourself scratching the back of your head while you murmured things to him.
You weren't even really thinking so much about what you were saying. You were busy watching him. Watching his hands as they nervously clasped together while he responded to you.
You both realized in that moment that you were both just two people swept up in something far larger than you could comprehend. That circumstances and life made it unfair, truly. The game was always rigged against you.
But somehow, despite all the awkwardness, despite all the struggles and pain, it turned out all right.
When you saw him smile again, this time clearly directed at you, you couldn't help responding with your own.
Somehow, despite all the possibilities, you know that this was the right path. Out of all the thousands of journeys of fragmentation, you know you've landed in the right timeline.
Jake finally notices that you've been trailing behind him, and he turns back, flashing you that brilliant award-winning smile of his. "Are you going to let me win again, Strider? You're making this too easy!" he says, standing and placing his foot triumphantly on top of the soccer ball.
You want to tell him that winning him was never easy, but you don't. Instead, you grin back at him and chase after him. "Not a chance," you murmur, chuckling as his eyebrows lift in surprise when you kick the ball from under his foot.
You both chase after the ball, both of you smiling like the idiots in love that you are.
Yes, out of all of life's possibilities, you know you've chosen the best.
LateNiteSlacker's Notes:
I know the ending is open for interpretation, but this is how I would like to think it ended for Dirk and Jake. I hope you enjoyed this and also the ending of Homestuck!