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The dreary expanse of the dreambubbles stretched infinitely in all directions, a purgatory where dead ghosts floated like forgotten thoughts. It was here, amid the eternal nothing, that two figures found themselves on a collision course.
Kankri Vantas, the Seer of Blood and self-appointed educator of all who crossed his path, stood with his arms crossed over his hand-knitted red sweater. His righteous leggings glowed faintly beneath his robe. He had been in the middle of a very important lecture to a group of unresponsive ghost-trolls about the problematic implications of the hemospectrum when he sensed it—a presence. A wrong presence.
Regulus Corneas, Sin Archbishop of Greed, stepped out of a swirling rift with the air of a man who had been deeply inconvenienced. His white coat billowed dramatically despite the absence of wind. His golden eyes were murky and disinterested until they landed on Kankri—at which point they immediately began to sparkle with the unmistakable gleam of someone who had found a new audience.
"You," Regulus said, pointing with an elegant white-gloved finger. "You are blocking my path."
Kankri's eyebrow ridges shot upward. "I beg your pardon? I was here first, actually. And I would appreciate it if you didn't point at me so aggressively. The accusatory nature of that gesture is frankly triggering to someone who has experienced wrongful persecution in a past life, which I have, thank you very much."
Regulus's eye twitched.
Kankri took a deep breath—the kind that preceded a diatribe of epic proportions. His quirk symbols for B and O flickered in his speech like warning signs. "Now, I don't know who you are or what oppressive power structure you represent with that... frankly ostentatious white ensemble. I'm not trying to tell you what to wear—that would be incredibly presumptuous of me and I would never dream of dictating someone else's self-expression—but I am curious as to whether you've considered how your appearance might be perceived by individuals who have experienced trauma related to, shall we say, monochromatic authoritarian regimes."
Regulus tilted his head. His expression hadn't changed, but something in the air grew heavier. "My rights," he said slowly, as if explaining something to a particularly stupid insect, "are being violated right now. You are talking to me. I did not consent to this conversation. Do you understand? I have the right to go anywhere I want without being bothered by people who have nothing better to do than stand in my way and make sounds with their mouths."
"Actually," Kankri said, holding up one finger, "you've just made several ableist assumptions in that single statement. First of all, 'making sounds with their mouths' is a perfectly valid mode of communication for individuals who may not have access to—"
"I am speaking," Regulus interrupted, his voice rising slightly. The golden buttons on his coat seemed to gleam more intensely. "You are interrupting my speaking. Do you know what that means? That means you are violating my right to express myself without interference. That is disgusting. That is abhorrent. That is the kind of behavior that makes me think the whole world should just disappear."
Kankri blinked. "Okay, wow. That escalated quickly. And I have to say, I'm feeling extremely unsafe right now with the way you're talking about mass disappearance. As someone who has personally experienced systemic erasure I find your rhetoric to be genuinely concerning."
The conversation had, somehow, continued for an hour. Neither participant had moved more than three feet in any direction. Both were vibrating with the barely-contained energy of people who had found their perfect conversational foil—someone who would never let them finish a sentence, thereby ensuring they would never stop trying.
Regulus was now explaining the concept of his Little King ability, though not in a way that was remotely useful or informative. "The thing about rights," he said, gesturing expansively with both hands, "is that I have them. It's very simple. For example, I have the right to take any woman I want as my wife, because my satisfaction is the only satisfaction that matters. That's not greed, by the way. I am not greedy. I am perfectly satisfied. I am the most satisfied existence in the world. And anyone who says otherwise is violating my rights."
Kankri's face had gone through approximately seventeen different expressions during this speech, finally settling on something between horrified and fascinated. "I have so many problems with what you just said," he managed. "I don't even know where to begin. The consent issues alone are astounding. The power dynamics! The complete and utter disregard for autonomy! And you're just... admitting this? Casually? Like it's normal?"
"Is there a problem?" Regulus asked, genuinely confused. "They are my wives. They exist to serve my heart. Literally. I put my heart inside them. It's a system. And before you start sputtering about carnal desires or physical relations or whatever disgusting assumptions you're no doubt making inside that inferior mind of yours, let me be absolutely clear about something."
He drew himself up to his full height, his white coat seeming to puff out with indignation. "The act of partaking in carnal desires is beneath me. It is gross. It is animalistic. It is something that lesser beings do because they cannot control themselves. I am Regulus Corneas. I am above such things. My body is pure. My body is mine. No one—and I mean no one—has the right to touch it. Not my wives. Not anyone. Ever."
He paused, seemingly waiting for applause that did not come.
"I took a vow," he continued, warming to the subject, "not because I am weak and need rules to govern my behavior, but because I am so strong that I can choose to abstain. I have hundreds of wives—hundreds, do you understand?—and I have never once lowered myself to that level. Do you know what that makes me? It makes me superior. It makes me untouchable. It makes me the most satisfied existence in the world because I need nothing from anyone. Not affection. Not intimacy. Not validation. I am a complete being. A perfect being. A god."
Kankri stared at him, mouth slightly agape.
Regulus mistook this for admiration. "You are impressed, I see. That is appropriate. That is the correct response. Most people are disgusted by me, but that is only because they are jealous of my discipline. They see my wives and they assume—because their minds are filthy—that I am using them for pleasure. But pleasure is for the weak. I have no need for pleasure. I have no need for anything. I am already satisfied. I have always been satisfied. I was born satisfied."
"So you're... celibate," Kankri said slowly, processing this.
"Extremely so," Regulus confirmed. "Aggressively so. I would rather die than engage in that activity. And I cannot die, which means I will never engage in it. It is impossible. It is forbidden. It is beneath my dignity as the little king of my little kingdom."
Kankri's expression had softened into something almost like respect. "That's... actually remarkably progressive of you. I took a vow of celibacy myself, you understand. It's a personal choice, one which I have found enormously liberating in terms of avoiding the messy entanglements of the quadrants. I don't often encounter others who understand the value of bodily autonomy in that specific context. So, credit where credit is due—I respect that commitment."
Regulus puffed up even further, clearly pleased despite himself. "Of course you respect it. It is respectable. I am respectable. My body is a temple that no one is allowed to enter. That is my right."
"Exactly!" Kankri nodded enthusiastically. "Bodily sovereignty! The right to say no! The right to exist without being touched or claimed by another person! That's exactly what I've been advocating for my entire life! I took a public vow of celibacy on Beforus, and while some people—Porrim—found it quaint or unnecessary, it was deeply important to me as a statement about who controls my body. So I genuinely, sincerely appreciate that we share that fundamental value."
Regulus crossed his arms, looking smug. "Finally. Finally someone who understands. Do you know how annoying it is when people assume that because you have wives, you must be doing things with them? It's disgusting. It's presumptuous. It's a violation of my right to privacy. The assumptions alone—the sheer audacity of thinking that I would stoop to something so primitive—it makes me furious. I have killed people for less. I have destroyed entire convoys for less. I once annihilated a fortified city because a soldier winked at me. A wink, do you understand? The implication was unforgivable."
Kankri's expression shifted. The warmth in his eyes cooled. "Yes, about your wives."
Regulus's smugness faltered. "What about them?"
"Well," Kankri said, and suddenly he was lecturing again, his voice taking on that familiar pedagogical tone, "I find myself in an interesting position here, because on one hand, I want to celebrate your commitment to celibacy and bodily autonomy. That's rare. That's commendable. I don't want to discourage that, because it's a valid lifestyle choice that deserves recognition."
"But?" Regulus said, because even he could sense where this was going.
"But," Kankri continued, "I also cannot ignore the massive, glaring, problematic issue of how you treat your wives. Because while you have bodily autonomy, Regulus—and I'm using your name here because I want this to be personal—you have completely failed to extend that same basic courtesy to the women you claim to care about."
Regulus's eye began twitching again. "I don't claim to care about them. I own them. There's a difference. They are subjects of my little kingdom. They exist to serve my heart. That is their purpose. That is their privilege. They should be grateful that I have chosen them. Do you know how many women would kill to be my wife? None of them, actually, because I would kill them first if they tried, but the point stands."
"Yes," Kankri said, his voice dripping with barely-suppressed fury, "that's the problem. You don't own people. People are not property. And the way you talk about your wives—as containers for your heart, as subjects of your 'little kingdom,' as things that exist solely to serve your needs—is textbook objectification. It is dehumanizing. It is exactly the kind of oppressive power structure that I have dedicated my existence to dismantling."
Regulus opened his mouth to respond, but Kankri was on a roll now.
"And don't even get me started on the purity aspect of all this. Because I noticed, Regulus. I noticed how you talked about your wives. You want them expressionless. You want them to never smile. You spoke about how you killed your first wife's entire family and then forced her to marry you, and when she finally escaped through death, you blamed her for sneering at you. That's not celibacy. That's control. That's purity culture weaponized as abuse."
Regulus's face had gone very, very still. "I am going to let you finish," he said quietly, "because interrupting someone is a violation of their rights. But when you are done, I am going to kill you."
"I'm already dead," Kankri pointed out. "We're in a dreambubble. This is the afterlife. Your threats are meaningless here."
"THEN I WILL KILL YOU HARDER."
"Anyway," Kankri pressed on, undeterred, "what I find most troubling about your entire worldview is the contradiction at its core. You demand absolute bodily autonomy for yourself—no one can touch you, no one can speak to you without your consent, no one can violate your rights in any way—but you refuse to extend that same autonomy to the people around you. You objectify your wives. You control their expressions, their lives, their deaths. You've killed hundreds of them, statistically speaking, based on what you said earlier. And you don't see the problem."
"There is no problem," Regulus insisted. "They are mine. I am celibate. I do not touch them. I am respecting them by not touching them. That is more than most men would do. They should be grateful. Do you know what the alternative is? The alternative is that I could be like other men—those disgusting, animalistic creatures who cannot control themselves. But I am better than that. I am above that. I am pure. My wives are safe with me because I have no desire for them. They are objects in the purest sense—useful, functional, untouched. That is respect. That is dignity. That is more than they would get from anyone else."
Kankri stared at him for a long, silent moment. Then he laughed—a hollow, bitter sound.
"Respecting them," he repeated. "You think not having sex with someone is the same thing as respecting them. You think celibacy is a substitute for treating people like actual living beings with their own wants and needs and rights. That's... that's spectacularly wrong. That's aggressively wrong. That's so wrong that I'm actually impressed by the creativity of your wrongness."
"MY WRONGNESS IS PERFECT," Regulus shouted. "I AM INCAPABLE OF BEING WRONG. THAT IS MY RIGHT."
"Rights don't work that way!"
"THEY DO WHEN I HAVE THEM! Let me explain something to you, since you clearly don't understand the fundamental nature of how the world works. The world exists to serve me. Everyone in it exists to either serve me or get out of my way. My wives serve me by carrying my heart. That is their function. That is their purpose. I do not owe them anything in return because I am the one who chose them. I gave them meaning. Without me, they would be nothing. Without me, they would be ordinary women living ordinary lives and dying ordinary deaths. But with me, they become part of something greater. They become subjects of the little king. They become immortal in their own way—because as long as I live, their hearts beat inside me. That is a gift. That is an honor. And they should be grateful."
He paused, breathing heavily, then added, "Also, I have never forced any of them to smile. I simply kill them if they do. That is different. That is justice. Because a smile would imply that they are happy, and happiness would imply that they have feelings, and feelings would imply that they are people, and they are not people. They are my wives. That is a different category entirely."
Somehow, impossibly, the conversation had shifted to the topic of triggers. Kankri was in his element. "So when you say that being talked to violates your rights," he was explaining, "what I hear is that you have unexamined anxieties around social interaction that you're projecting onto others in a way that pathologizes normal communication. And I want to be clear—I'm not diagnosing you, that would be wildly inappropriate for someone with my level of expertise, which is none, professionally speaking—but I am suggesting that you might benefit from examining why you feel so threatened by someone merely existing in your vicinity."
Regulus's eye twitched again. It had been twitching for approximately forty-five minutes now. "My rights," he said, each word dripping with barely-suppressed violence, "include the right to not be examined. I am already the most satisfied existence. I don't need to examine anything. The only thing I need is for you to stop talking and get out of my way."
"But why do you need that?" Kankri pressed, leaning forward with the enthusiasm of someone who had never been told to shut up enough times to learn the lesson. "What is it about my presence that threatens you so deeply? Are you afraid that I might challenge your worldview? That I might introduce nuance into your rigid understanding of rights and violations? That I might suggest that other people have just as much right to exist as you do?"
The air around Regulus began to ripple. "You want to know about rights?" he asked, his voice dropping to something almost quiet. "I will tell you about rights. The right to not be pitied. The right to not be laughed at. The right to destroy anyone who looks at me wrong because my feelings are the only feelings that matter and my perspective is the only valid perspective and I am the only person who gets to decide what counts as a violation."
Kankri suddenly stiffened, his posture becoming noticeably more rigid. He held up one finger in that familiar lecturing gesture, but his expression had shifted to something almost panicked.
"I need to interrupt you there," he said, speaking faster than usual, "because you've just used a word that I need to immediately distance myself from. The word is pity. You said you have the right to not be pitied. And I need you to understand—truly understand—that I am not pitying you. I am not. I do not pity you in any sense of the word. Not the human sense, not the troll sense, not the clinical sense, not the colloquial sense. No pity. Zero pity. None."
Regulus blinked, thrown off by the sudden intensity. "I... what?"
"I am not pitying you," Kankri repeated, his voice rising slightly. "I want that to be absolutely clear. The last thing I want is for you to think that I am looking down on you with condescending sympathy or patronizing concern. Because I am not. I am critiquing you. I am analyzing you. I am identifying problematic patterns in your behavior that objectively harm yourself and others. But I am not pitying you. I refuse to pity you."
Regulus stared at him. "Why are you so concerned about this?"
"Because pity is a loaded term in my culture!" Kankri exclaimed. "It has romantic implications! It suggests a desire for connection that I absolutely do not feel! And beyond that, pity implies a power differential—the pities looking down on the pitied—and I refuse to occupy that hierarchical position because hierarchies are oppressive! But also I refuse to be pitied myself, so I understand why you wouldn't want to be pitied, but that doesn't mean I am pitying you, because I'm not!"
Regulus's eye twitched violently. "You are making no sense."
"I am making perfect sense! I am simply clarifying that my critique of your behavior comes from a place of intellectual observation, not emotional sympathy. I don't feel sorry for you, Regulus. I don't feel sorry for someone who has murdered hundreds of people and enslaved dozens of women and destroyed entire cities because someone winked at him. I feel concern—abstract, theoretical concern—about the systemic implications of your behavior. But pity? Absolutely not. Never. I would rather die again than pity you."
Regulus stared at him, his golden eyes unreadable. For a moment, something flickered across his face—something that might have been confusion, or uncertainty, or even the faintest hint of something almost human.
Then it was gone.
"You are wrong," he said flatly. "You were pitying me. Everyone pities me. Everyone looks down on me. Everyone thinks they are better than me. That is why I destroy them. That is why I destroyed my family. That is why I destroyed my village. That is why I destroyed my country. Because they pitied me. Because they laughed at me. Because they thought I was weak. But I am not weak. I am the strongest. I am the most satisfied existence in the world. And I do not need your concern or your empathy or your therapist recommendations."
He paused, his voice rising to a near-shout. "I have killed thousands of people who looked at me the way you are looking at me right now. Do you understand? Thousands. And I will kill thousands more if I have to. Because my rights—my right to not be pitied, my right to not be examined, my right to exist without being bothered—are absolute. They are inviolable. They are mine."
Kankri opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. "I hear that you're feeling defensive," he said carefully, "and I want to validate that those feelings are real to you. But I also want to reiterate that I was not pitying you. I was concerned for you. Those are different emotional states. Pity is intimate. Concern is impersonal. And as someone who has dedicated his existence to understanding the nuances of interpersonal dynamics, I feel confident in my ability to distinguish between the two."
Regulus was silent for a long moment. Then he said, very quietly: "I will now kill you."
He paused, then added, almost as an afterthought: "Also, I killed my entire family. And my village. And my country. Because they looked down on me. That was my right."
Kankri was silent for approximately three seconds—a personal record. "Okay," he said finally. "Okay. So there's a lot to unpack there. First of all, murder is never justified, regardless of the microaggressions you may have experienced. Second, and I say this with complete sincerity and no judgment whatsoever, have you considered therapy? Because the amount of internalized rage you're carrying seems deeply unhealthy."
It was at this point that Regulus decided to demonstrate his power. Not because Kankri had threatened him—Kankri couldn't threaten a wet paper bag—but because Kankri had done something far worse. He had pitied him. No matter how much he tried to deny it, he had looked at Regulus Corneas, Sin Archbishop of Greed, the man who had killed Reinhard van Astrea (temporarily), and felt sorry for him.
That was unforgivable.
"I will now kill you," Regulus announced, raising one white-gloved hand. "You have violated my rights for the last time. This is not murder. This is justice. There is a difference."
"Oh great," Kankri sighed, not even flinching. "Violence. Because obviously when someone disagrees with you, the appropriate response is physical harm. That's not problematic at all. That's a totally healthy conflict resolution strategy. I'm sure your wives love that."
Regulus stopped. His hand hovered in the air. "What did you say about my wives?"
"I said I'm sure they love your approach to conflict resolution. Which was sarcasm, by the way. In case that wasn't clear. I'm being sarcastic. Because the implication is that they don't love it. Because no one would love being married to someone who kills people for disagreeing with him. That's abuse. That's textbook abuse. And I'm not saying you're an abuser, because I don't know you, but if the shoe fits, which it does, then maybe—"
"DID YOU JUST CALL ME AN ABUSER?"
"I specifically said I was not calling you an abuser—"
"YOU IMPLIED IT. IMPLICATION IS THE SAME AS STATEMENT. THAT'S A RIGHT I HAVE. THE RIGHT TO INTERPRET ANYTHING YOU SAY IN THE WORST POSSIBLE WAY AND THEN KILL YOU FOR IT."
"That's... that's not how rights work. That's literally the opposite of how rights work. Rights are universal. They apply to everyone. Not just you. That's the whole point."
Regulus stared at him. For a long moment, nothing happened. Then, slowly, his hand lowered. "I have decided," he said, "not to kill you."
Kankri blinked. "Oh. Um. Thank you?"
"I have decided this because killing you would be too easy. You would stop talking. And I have realized that you not talking is not what I want. What I want is for you to know that everything you believe is wrong. I want you to live with that knowledge. I want you to suffer under the weight of your incorrect opinions for eternity."
"...That's deeply disturbing. And also? Kind of ableist? Assuming that I would suffer from being wrong implies that I have a need to be right, which I don't, because my self-worth isn't tied to winning arguments, unlike some people I could mention—"
Regulus was already walking away, his white coat billowing behind him. "I am leaving now," he announced to no one in particular. "This conversation is over. You have no right to continue it. If I hear one more word from your mouth, I will come back and I will throw dirt at you until you stop existing. And that is not a threat. That is a promise. Which I am allowed to make because I am Regulus Corneas and I am always right."
Kankri opened his mouth. Then closed it. Then opened it again. "I just want you to know," he said, "that the compulsive need to have the last word is often a sign of unresolved validation issues. I'm not saying that's what's happening here. I'm just suggesting that maybe—"
A handful of dirt—its time stopped, its molecules frozen in perfect, inviolable stasis—sailed through the air and obliterated the section of dreambubble where Kankri had been standing.
When the dust cleared, Kankri was gone.
Regulus nodded once, satisfied. "Finally," he muttered. "Peace and quiet."
He took three steps.
Then, from somewhere behind him, a familiar voice called out: "Okay, first of all, physical assault is never an appropriate response to verbal disagreement, and second of all, the metaphorical implications of using dirt as a weapon against someone who has already experienced systemic oppression are frankly staggering in their tone-deafness—"
Regulus closed his eyes. He had been alive for over a century. He had killed thousands. He had been immortal, invincible, untouchable. But this? This was hell.
In the end, neither of them won. The dreambubbles stretched on forever, and somewhere in that infinite expanse, two figures continued their eternal conversation—one lecturing about triggers and microaggressions, the other screaming about rights and violations. Neither one listening. Neither one capable of listening. It was, perhaps, the most honest depiction of online discourse ever conceived.
And somewhere in the distance, a ghost who had once been Karkat Vantas covered his ears with his nubby claws and screamed into the void: "SHUT UP! BOTH OF YOU! JUST SHUT UP!"
But the yapping continued. As it always had. As it always would.