Partisan Saga, Chapter VI - An Era of the End

            Dorian awoke to the too-bright light of an overcast morning, a cool breeze flowing through the open window, and most notably, the pounding on his door.
            “Dor!” Kev. “Dor, are you awake?”
            Well, he was now. Dorian slid from bed and trudged over to the door.  Kev, of course, was already dressed. He seemed quite surprised to find sleep in Dorian’s eyes, to say nothing of his nightwear.
            “Oh. Were you asleep?”
            “Only a little,” Dorian remarked with a roll of his eyes.
            “Do you want to get breakfast?”
            Dorian leaned to one side to peer past him. The dining room table of their flat lay bare; He had half expected two bowls of cornflakes. “You mean at the diner.”
            “Yes, at the diner,” Kevin replied. He shifted back and forth almost as though he had to pee. “What do you say?”
            It wasn’t far, but Kevin insisted upon driving anyway; from the moment they climbed into his small, old, but well-kept ride, and at every stoplight they came to, he drummed almost furiously upon the steering wheel. Dorian thought to ask more than once, and thought the better of it each time.
            They finally arrived at the diner; it was a humble place, boasting large open windows that revealed only a single row of tables and chairs, along with a broad counter for additional seating. Given the traffic, it would have proved faster to walk, and Dorian would have preferred so if only to avoid his friend’s constant fidgeting.
            Inside, things with Kevin seemed to settle; it was odd, for the diner offered a buzz of activity between the wait staff hurrying to and fro and the patrons who enjoyed their meals along with bouts of conversation. After taking their order, the server moved away to process it, and Kev leaned in. Dorian rolled his eyes. Apparently, hot coffee and casual diner talk was not enough for his companion.

            “I heard you got into it with some Whites last night.”
            “Yeah?” Dorian took a sip, a deep, slow sip of his coffee. “What else did you hear?”
            “You tried to pick a fight.”
            “Is that what they said? Huh.”
            “Dor.” Kevin suddenly became stern. “This is serious.”
            “Never said it wasn’t.”
            “Then why are you so uncooperative?”
            “Uncooperative?”
            “Keep your nose clean. Mind your business, do what you’re supposed to.”
            “Because that works so well.”
            “It does. It’s only because you act out that the Whites police you so hard.”
            “Except I was minding my own business last night.”
            “That’s not what they said.”
            “Well, I was. I was out for a walk, and they came to me. Judged me, and really all Blacks on account of the Ravers.”
            “Well...” Kevin seemed to think about it for a moment. “The Ravers are an ugly lot, aren’t they?”
            “Sure, some of them are,” Dorian admitted. “But not all of them.”
            Kevin shrugged. “So just don’t act like a Raver.”
            “Well, there’s good and bad Ravers. Shelley, for example.”
            “She’s a Raver?”
            “Surprised?” Dorian grinned. “You wouldn’t know if I hadn’t told you.”
            “Alright,” Kevin nodded. “So, she’s an exception.”
            “Not really. A lot of them are like her. I mean, yeah there are a few who you’d probably call crazies—”
            “Then you should reign them in. We wouldn’t be so put off by you all if you did.”
            “Wait… so I’m responsible for the poor behavior of those in my sect?”
            “Well, that’s just how it works, Dor.” Kevin threw up his hands. “As long as some of you act crazy, you’ll all suffer for it.”
            “Well, I don’t hold you accountable for the way those punks treated me last night.”
            “It’s not like they did anything wrong, right?” Kevin reasoned. “You were out and maybe they thought it was suspicious.”
            “I wasn’t aware there was a curfew.”
            “There isn’t,” Kevin replied. “But it still makes sense to confront anyone looking suspicious.”
            “Kev, I don’t think they were just patrolling the city out of the kindness of their hearts. They knew who I was from the Sermon. In fact, I think that’s exactly why they came after me.”
            “Came after you, Dor? Seriously?” Kevin shook his head. “You make it sound personal.”
            “I call it like I see it,” Dorian replied. “Like I said, they recognized me, and even after they realized I was just out for a walk, they still felt the need to harass me.”
            Dorian could see that Kevin had his doubts; whether he was doubting the words of his sect, or those of Dorian, however, remained unclear. “Alright…well, you could be more cooperative…”
            “Really?” Dorian asked. “And how’s that? I answered their questions and explained Black society to them. I asked them questions about the Sermon- at THEIR prompting. I wasn’t in the wrong here.”  The pair of them fell into silence as the server returned to refill their coffee. They offered the customary smiles along with nods of thanks. After their relative privacy returned, Dorian continued, quietly, calmly. “And in spite of all of that, I don’t hold you accountable for what they did.”
            “Well of course not. Why would you?” Surprise sat clear on Kevin’s face. “It’d be uncalled for to blame me for the actions of someone else.”
            “Yet you’re blaming me for the more perverse Ravers.”
            “No I’m not. Look, I’m just saying that if you guys did a better job of policing the Ravers—”
            “You mean the ones who aren’t like Shelley, right?”
            “What? I guess. Isn’t she the only one though?”
            “Not even close. Just the only one you pay attention to.”
            “That’s not true. I know lots of Blacks.  You, Shelley-”
            “Yeah, I bet.” Dorian remarked. “Keep going.”
            A period of silence ensued, and Kevin, frustrated, asked: “And how many Whites do you know by name, smartass?”
            “One or two,” Dorian admitted with a shrug. “Not counting present company.”
            “Okay then.”
            “But I realize that I don’t know a whole bunch of Whites, and I take them on a case by case basis,” Dorian explained. “I don’t judge them all at once because it’s convenient.”
            Kevin looked away. “Listen. Just stay out of trouble, alright? And keep the others clear too.”
           
            After their talk, Kevin seemed to relax; while he had evidently gotten such concerns off his chest, Dorian now found himself grappling with them. When they finished breakfast, Dorian declined the ride back to their flat.

***

            To those unfamiliar, uninitiated, the halls of the Black might prove a fearsome place. Poorly lit, curving, winding, covered in a thousand different scrawls of paint- to Dorian however, it represented home.

            Here was a place untouched by outsiders.
            Here was a place ignored by order.
            Here was a place where no one watched, where no one cared.
            Here, Dorian could be himself, as could his brethren, and no judgment would befall them. Thought was a pleasantry, discipline a choice.

            The flickering torchlight that typically bounced with his thoughts now seemed to roil, to stumble, faint and struggling alongside his troubled mood. He'd felt far too sour far too often lately, and any joy the morning might have held had vanished over coffee.
            He descended into the deepest and darkest halls, places devoid of sound, save for the footsteps— both his, and those of his brethren. He knew of the things that lurked in the dark, and in passing them gave only a nod. So it was within the Black Library.

            A shadow parted from the wall and kept pace with him.
            "Well hello there stranger," she said with a smirk. "I don't believe I've seen you here before.”
            He turned and concealed a smile of his own behind feigned confusion. “I come here all the time. You’re the stranger, stranger.”
            They knocked fists before falling into a brief embrace.
            “How goes, Shelley?” He asked.
            “It goes.” She peered at him. “You’re looking sour. What’s wrong?”
            “Nothing.”
            “I’ll drop it if you want.” She paused, and the smirk returned. “But let me guess. Kev?”
            “Kev. He doesn’t understand me.”
            “What do you mean?”
            Dorian shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

            The pair wandered the mazing of the Black, passed by the random establishments thrown up among those halls wherever they might fit. They took no route in particular while speaking of their mutual friend.

            “He thinks we’re all Ravers,” Dorian told her. “Or more accurately, that we’re all insane.”
            “Insane?” Shelley’s eyebrows rose.  “You mean like we’re not all there mentally?”
            Dorian nodded. “More or less.”
            “Really? Even you?”
            “I was the exception. And you too, after I told him that you partake sometimes.”
            Shelley frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense. Where did he get that idea?”
            “He’s heard stories.”

            It was the freedom to build whatever, wherever that brought a home to such a place. While it might seem craven to others, to Dorian and Shelley, and those like them, it was a city within a city- or perhaps more accurately, beneath one.  A place consisting of open space: ‘parks’, lounges, studios-

            “So what did you tell him?”
            “What could I tell him?” Dorian shrugged. “I doubt he’d listen.”
            “Maybe, maybe not,” Shelley caught him with a sharp jab in the shoulder.
            “Ow! What was that for?!”
            “You don’t get to mope over it if you didn’t even try. How are you any better than Kev if you don’t give him a chance?”

            To Dorian, it especially seemed that the Black Library was everything the White Library was, and still more; or perhaps everything it was and everything it was not, simultaneously. There was more method than madness, a chaos that took on patterns if one knew which words to speak and precisely where to step- art.

            “Yeah, I get it.” Dorian glanced down at his hands, flexed his fingers. “But I did actually try.”
            “What exactly did you tell him?”
            “Well, I told him a lot of things,” Dorian replied.
            “Specifics.”
             “That we weren’t all alike, for one. That it wasn’t fair to lump us all together.”
            “And what did he say?”
            “That it was up to us good eggs to police the bad ones so the Whites stay off our backs.”
            “Well, that makes some sense,” Shelley admitted. “Because everyone should always be watching out for their brothers and sisters. But that doesn’t mean we should all bear the blame if one of us acts up.”
            “I told him that last part,” Dorian insisted. “And he didn’t really have an answer for it. I don’t think they’re listening.”
            “Whites in general, or Kev in particular?”
            “Whites in particular, Kev included,” Dorian clarified. “Or I should say, every one of them I’ve talked to lately.”

            It was hard to see it that way, Dorian realized. On the outside, it was distasteful. People might object to the (lack of) lighting in the halls, or the at odds painting, the skewed designs, the apparent lack of any sort of organization. On the inside, the mazes rose, wound, cantered, careened; it was easy to get lost, true—

            “Be careful,” Shelley warned.
            “I tried explaining myself to the ones who jumped me last night-”
            “What?”
            “Well, jumped isn’t the word. It wasn’t a fight.”

            —But that was okay. Getting lost was part of the Library, and part of the Library because it was a part of the world. Here, a truth lost to the Whites. In their halls, a truth denied. Unsettling.  In any case, his amendment hadn’t helped his case much; now Shelley gazed intently upon him.

            He cracked a smile. “You hurt me more than they did.”
            She remained unsatisfied.  
            “It was just a talk. Honest.”
             “A talk about what?”

            As Librarians, they owed it to the people to preserve the truth, and because of that, Dorian spent most of his time above ground despite his love for the Library. To be a Librarian, he reasoned, was to love the world, and in some sense he could agree with the Whites on the notion of service- but truth be told, sometimes he felt as distant from his brethren as he did from their White allies.

            “You know how I went to that thing with Kev, right? I guess they call ‘em Sermons.”
            “Oh, right! How was that?”
            “Boring. Dry. Irritating.”
            “Dor…”
            “Well it was!” Dorian protested. “And it seemed like it was just all about how important the Whites are.”

            This distance came mostly from Dorian’s lacking. He lacked creativity to throw upon the walls, lacked interest for the Mosh, the Rave. These truths also played a role in his absence, and to deny his failings in such things would be dishonest at best. Still-- to travel the Black and observe what others could imagine brought him more joy than his own creations, and he valued the freedom in such experiences.

            “Well, Dor, they are important,” Shelley reminded him. “We’re all part of the balance.”
            “Yeah, I know, and I know I forget sometimes,” Dorian admitted. “But I don’t think they see it that way.”
            “Why do you say that?”
             The Sermon, for starters. It went on and on about playing parts, specifically ‘leadership’ and ‘sacrifice.’”
            “Both good things.”
            “In moderation.”
            “Right.”
            “But the way it was talked about, Shelley…they think only Whites can be leaders.”
            “I see. So when it comes to each person taking a role…”
            “Exactly. Where do you think you and I fit in?”
            “Did they say?”

            Wasn’t that enough? It certainly was enough for his kind; though some teased him for not partaking of the rave. Like the Black Library itself, they still saw the conduction present in his chaos, and though it took its own shape in him, they all knew it as one power and the same. Surely the White looked among their own oddities the same way? Then again, thinking of their steadfastness to order….
            Dorian looked at his hands again, clenching and unclenching his fingers. “That brings me back to the talk I had afterward.”
            “What about it?”
            “Shelley, they don’t see us as equals.”
            Shelley thought for a moment.

            He found his mind now lingering upon the Sermon again, and for a desperate moment, he wanted to believe that it was a matter of place; that each of the White knew precisely where they fit in, and took to that spot for their sakes, and those of the world. That they had designed places for the Black as well, not out of hatred, disdain, or disrespect, but necessity…

            “Why don’t you invite Kev to come tour the Black with us?”
            “What?!”
            “We could even bring some of the others,” Shelley added. “Show them around, tell them what we’re really about.”
            “What makes you think that’s a good idea?”
            “Well, if what you say is true, they already don’t seem to think much of you, so it couldn’t hurt. But who knows? Maybe this could clear the air.”
            Dorian wanted to argue the point. Sure, it was definitely a longshot; Kev wouldn’t want to visit, and assuming the talked him into it, he’d find himself subject to a lot of unwanted attention, particularly from the ravers.
            A sly grin spread over his face. Yeah, Kev would totally be out of his element. But he might learn a thing or two. “You’re right, Shelley.”
            “As always!”

            “It’d only be fair…” Dorian pondered it further. “After all, I had to go with him—”
            Shelley hit him again. “He’ll be uncomfortable enough without you hamming it up. It’s supposed to be a learning experience, not teaching him a lesson.”
            “Isn’t that the same thing?”
            “You know exactly what I mean, Dorian.”
            “Yeah. I guess I do.”
            Maybe if Dorian were lucky, Kev would learn something- the others too. When he put away the thrill of unnerving them, he found another taking its place- the thought that maybe they’d all be able to connect. Perhaps the Whites would come to see the Black Library the way he did. He thought back to the conversation with Kev that morning. Understanding had seemed close there for a while; Dorian was determined not to let it go to waste.