Almost a week passes. Every night, Dave asks for a light when Karkat walks by. There's no conversation to interrupt the routine, beyond asking for a light and offering the lighter, but there's a second subtler conversation, one that's spoken in hesitations and the brush of knuckle against knuckle as Dave lights his cigarettes. It's a thousand words they never speak, but a conversation nonetheless.

Finally, there's a night where Dave isn't waiting for a light. Karkat doesn't know why, but he's upset. He hasn't had friends in years, and this is the reason. They all run away. He has his books and his cigarettes and his sunrises, and he needs nothing beyond that. Not even someone who asks for a light every night.

Inside, the smell of old books and sweet decay fills the air with a comforting scent. It's the scent of his life—comforting and yet somehow sad, filled with neglect. He wanders up to the corner where he reads, the spot where the oldest books reside. Without really caring, he picks one up, opens it to a random page, and starts reading. The story doesn't make any sense, not without the beginning, but it'll do to keep his mind off things.

Eight pages in, he's about to give up when he hears a familiar voice. "Hey. Got a light?" Karkat jumps, crumbling the corner of the page he's reading. He's too shaken to reply—he can only stare at Dave as he emerges from the shadows of the shelves.

"You can't smoke in here," he says after a while, totally at a loss.

"Well, fuck." Dave smiles a little, holding the unlit cigarette in his mouth. "Spoken like a true citizen of the law."

"Spoken like a true anarchist," Karkat retorts.

"You've been reading too many newspapers. We don't want to destroy the social order, we want to expand it."

Karkat nods, searching for what to say next. "Your poetry, things like that. I went to a reading once."

"I thought you didn't get out much."

"I don't."

There's a second, longer silence. Dave chews on his cigarette, nodding when wordless thanks when Karkat reluctantly hands him his lighter. There's a snap, a breath of blue flame, and a curl of sharp tobacco smoke. That must be all he wants, Karkat thinks. That's all I am here. Just another way for him to get his nicotine fix.

The cigarette burns down, scattering ash on the scorch marked table. Karkat watches sullenly, trying to resist his own sudden craving. Dave eyes him and then starts speaking in a soft voice.

"Watching boxcars rattle
Down dusty tracks,
To legions of places,
Long forgotten by human hearts,

We dreamed,
Whispered, screamed, kicked, danced,
About angels,
And inked feathers,

Searching for indomitable truths,
In junkyards of salted bones,
Building cairns,
To science and religion,

Asking shadows,
For directions to nowhere,
Drawing maps from fired ashes,
To show those on our left,

Reliving the multitude of pasts,
The sorrows, stupidities, and elations,
In ships sinking,
Up towards revelation,

Seeking lost souls,
To pull from the ether,
Forming ink and paper bodies,
Of chained-in freedom,

Spying on beasts and demons,
Spinning cobwebs,
Of curious hate and half truths,
Meant to break the cogs of the machine,

Rattling ever onward,
Towards a paper town,
Burning from falling stars,
And mindless intent,

Wondering if the boxcars,
Could restore ourselves,
Ensnare the world in our minds,
And set us free."

The words take on a musical quality, each soft and spoken with care.

"Does that sound like an anarchist?" Dave asks once the silence stretches out.

Karkat can only manage to shake his head in amazement.

"Exactly," Dave says, sounding satisfied.