Cognito Ergo Sum

[fasterthanthought]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ARI~!

I had halfway written up something nice and long for you but then my attention span failed me and I was at a loss at how to characterize some things. So! You get a mainly self-absorbed (hopefully) funny story in the meantime because, yay birthday. It's just this popped into my head on four hours sleep and I thought it would be fun to write. Also maybe for Roxas-mun for the wisdom teeth thing. D: But mainly for happy birthday and being cool and awesome and the best emo-kid on the block.

I will take requests to make it up for you...


Ari and Roxas knew their existence was a tenuous, careless thing. They had had their lives taken apart before and shown only as illusions and so many straw men, so when people told them to cheer up and be happy they exist in the here and now both of them had to try very hard to not tell them it was none of their business. Partly because even if they were prone to telling people off, Ari and Roxas still wanted them around to acknowledge their existence.

And for the most part it was okay, people not getting it. Their existence was a sure thing, and sometimes being up against all these sure and solid people was a little overwhelming, but when they cared it was nice. It meant something that people liked them regardless, even if they didn’t understand. It was something you had to know by experiencing what it’s like to lose yourself...or the experience so far as their existence would allow.

Bart Allen also did not get it. He didn’t get a lot of things, so it was a little easier when he fidgeted and stared at their explanations in confusion, because he did that a lot.

Ari had long since given up explaining it to him. He liked his friend Imp and it wasn’t out of any self-preservation instincts, it’s just that Ari didn’t want him to worry about something he couldn’t change. Ari thought at least he was strong enough for something like that.

Roxas didn’t know him as long as Ari, but Roxas liked Ari because he understood in a way that made him feel like Ari could be somewhat real as anything in his world. And he thought Bart was nice, if not a little scatter-brained.

Then one day Bart got it in his head to help.

“No, really guys, Mr. Snodgrass explained it to me in history! This guy figured out a proof of existing!”

“That’s not the...” Roxas suppressed a heavy sigh as Bart appeared again with a book from the library.

“See? Right here. ‘I think, therefore I am.’ So as long as you think even if you think you don’t really exist you do, because you think of it. So you’d have to exist to think and I don’t even think you have to think to exist, ‘cause sometimes people tell me that I don’t think but I know I exist anyway and if I think I know I do I hafta exist. So there.”

Roxas blinked and looked a little shell-shocked. Ari, who had grown a sort of fond tolerance for them, pulled the book from Bart’s hands.

“It’s—it’s not all of it, Imp.” Ari explained hesitantly. “We were made.”

“So was Kon. And Rey. There’s a club for it!”

“Not...clones,” Ari sighed.

“Clones?” asked Roxas.

“They took parts of people to make new people with their abilities,” Bart explained. “Like Kon’s supposed to be Superman’s clone only he’s not a lot like him, but that’s a good thing. Even if he mad that he might go bald or not be as tall as him, I like Kon that way.”

“...oh.”

“...” said Ari, to fill the awkward silence even more.

“Y’know, even if somebody evil made you that doesn’t make you evil,” Bart said, trying to be circumspect. “I’m not just saying that because of Kon or anything! Um, there’s this part in the book where it talks about an evil genius fooling you too!”

“...the guy who made me is too stupid to be an evil genius, Imp.”

“It’s not that we don’t think we exist now,” Roxas ventured, trying valiantly to put the images of Sora and the tendrils of darkness out of his mind. “It’s that things can happen that wipe out what our existence is now so that we were never here at all.”

Bart nodded slowly, as if sudden awareness was dawning. “You mean like time-travel?”

Ari threw his hands up in the air to signal defeat.

“Whaaaat?” Bart asked indignantly. “It makes sense! I hafta worry about messing up in this time and doing something that means I’d never be born in the future. Or supervillains like Extant or Cobalt Blue or Professor Zoom trying it...”

“It’s not the same as you. It’s not like we go in the past and change ourselves,” Ari paused. “Although if we could it might be worth unraveling my existence to tease Stan about Rosalyn before my self-esteem runs out...”

Roxas shot him a pained, angry look.

“There was that time in the future I almost unraveled the timestream?” Bart continued, still not getting it. “I jumped in front of a laser that was supposed to hit my older self and saved him!”

“...” said Roxas.

“Not enough dots for this,” said Ari.

“...he was in trouble,” Bart mumbled defensively. “It still counts that I tried to save him even if I maybe sorta didn’t think of how I could’ve erased his existence trying that.”

“Annnnnd we’re back to the thinking.”

Roxas was still dotting.

“The point is you can fix your existence if something bad happens to it! There was this one kid named Bedlam who hated me for resetting his world and he made it so everybody forgot me and it was like I was never there and my friends were all weird and grim and, okay, so Cassie gained a hundred pounds and I don’t know how that worked with me being gone but they fixed it so I was back!”

Ari thumbed at the Descartes book he had confiscated from Bart and shook his head. “Imp, why don’t we show Roxas how to play Mario Kart instead?”

“Okay! I’ll get the controllers! You can explain how the tortoise shells work while I’m gone!” he grinned before zipping off in a trail of lightning.

“...Mario Kart?”

Ari patted Roxas gently on the shoulder. “Secret escape method of dealing with him. Only to be used in emergencies and times I really want to play video games.”

“Did...did that make any sense to you?” Roxas asked tentatively.

“He does sometimes. In a very...special way. You’ll know you’ve been at camp for too long when Impulse and Ash start making really good points.”

“So what was that supposed to mean? All I heard was something about being crazy and what clones are and now my head hurts.”

“I think he was trying to say as long as we’re still confused by everything, we exist. Sort of like how I’ll never get how I have so many friends here. It’s, I never had any before here and now everyone keeps telling me they’ll remember. Even if they don’t I...”

“It’s not hard to imagine,” Roxas scowled. “But...I don’t think I’ll ever understand it either.”

“So. You want to go team up and play Mario Kart against Imp while he confuses us some more?”

“Only if you’re the one explaining the game.”

“Sure,” Ari smirked, “Sometimes I even beat him.”