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Summary:

A gamebreaking glitch tore the game session to shreds, right before they reached the end. Dirk Strider was already dead at the time. Temporarily. Which left him to revive in the aftermath. As the Prince of Heart, he doesn't have much experience putting souls back together, only breaking them, but at this point he seems to be the only one who even knows shit is broken.

He's the last person who'd trust himself with this. Not when he's out of time, out of place, and over his head being responsible for a little brother, a life, and a body his conveniently dead asshole of a splinterself already, thoroughly fucked up.

AKA: A game crash creates an unholy mashup of who the hell knows how many sburb sessions, and Dirk-as-Bro attempts to figure out wtf happened and how to fix shit for the brother who fears him, and the friends who don’t remember him. Because that’s what he does. But no Dirk has ever excelled when truly alone. Good thing he isn’t, he just needs to learn how to accept the help.

Notes:

Follows Divided by Zero almost immediately, though you don't necessarily need to read it. Just know that things got eff'd up, and the game crashed completely.

Not Acknowledging the Epilogues in Any Way.

Current Update Schedule: Tuesdays and Fridays; status updates get posted to katreal-fic.tumblr.com on those days when there isn't an update (these include out of context quotes)

Notes: Heavy use of in-text colors. For best readability, please do not use a site skin that changes the text color significantly away from black.

(See the end of the work for more notes and other works inspired by this one.)

Chapter 1: [A1] Dirk > Quietly Freak the Fuck Out

Chapter Text

Everything is in pieces. But that’s nothing new. You are a Prince of Heart. Splinters are your life. You make splinters. You may have only recently learned how to harness your Princely powers to tear out other people’s souls, but you’ve always had a knack for tearing your own to shreds, even when you weren’t trying.

These splinters don’t resonate in that same way, don’t camp themselves into a corner of your mind and exist, thrumming along with your heartbeat in a constant reminder. These are all just a chaotic mess of sharp edges and broken glass, scattered across a dark void you are pretty sure isn’t the medium, or even the Furthest Ring. It feels…

Empty, aside from the glimmer of a thousand dead stars dancing at your fingertips.

Your name is Dirk Strider and you’re pretty sure you were dead a moment ago. Maybe you are dead for good, even with the revolving door that ascending to god-tier opens up. Before that agonizing moment of force ramming through you, you just remember staring at Dave’s face, his hands as they clenched against the bone white hilt of his sword, willing him to just go ahead and take the shot. You’ve lost your head purposefully before, because getting into the game would save all your friends lives. Even this right now would be an even better reason because ridding the world of these two splinters of Jack Noir would increase the odds of everyone else surviving and you are okay with that.

And then. The tolling, a terrible tolling of a clock, ringing louder and louder and louder until everything just...stopped,  the gears coming to a screeching end and shattering across the universe and birthing the plane of nothingness you now inhabit.

It was a very strange sensation. Not unlike when you first woke up on Derse all those years ago. Floating in a limbo, unable to see anything through bleary eyes that didn’t quite know how to process the medium before the medium existed. While you’d never reached Roxy’s levels of dream-walking, it had taken several of these muddled half-nightmares, and Calliope’s cheerful explanations before you’d woken enough to start your scheming.

Your new status as the Prince of Heart though, that changed things. You couldn’t be dreaming because your dreamself is dead. That’s how you earned these god-tier puffy asshole pants in the first place. Taken your place in the pantheon and cast off your mortal coil or some shit. Not that it had mattered, it hadn’t smoothed down the sharp edges from where you’d broken bits off of your soul to create your auto-responder nearly three years ago. It just made the loss all the more noticeable.

You can’t find him. Or Arquiusprite, as he’d finally settled into after you’d fulfilled your promise. He’d always burned in that corner of your mind, laughing at you. A reminder of your hubris, of failings, a dark mirror that twisted and churned in your stomach as it threw back everything you hated about yourself. But it was gone. It almost hurt to feel so empty.

Was this where players went when they died? You don’t remember it being full of sharp, broken edges, glinting in the darkness of the furthest ring. More like...pockets of space, surrounded by an eerie murmuring that had resonated in your bones the entire flight back.

You recalled waking up there once, after being knocked out twice in both your waking and dreaming selves, watching Jake beat up some weird aquatic punk ghost. You’d been a passively observing brain ghost lodged in your boyfriend-to-be’s brain and then suddenly completely embodied, your head splitting as memories from your two (and a phantom) selves tried to squeeze themselves into a single span of time. It made that time pretty blurry though, in recollection. You’d just had way too much crap going on what with trying to make sure none of your friends died completely before you managed to get inside the game, and you hadn’t just been able to slip back out of your dreamself into the waking world like you normally would considering the lights weren’t on at home...

You don’t think you feel dead. Did anyone feel dead? You needed to get back to Dave and the others if you could at all. Had his gambit worked? Did Dave manage to take out both Jacks? And what about Roxy and the Batterwitch? Or Jake and his solo mission? You hated being out of the loop, what if something happened to your friends while you were trapped in this place?

Frustrated, you brush mental fingers against the edge of one of the shards surrounding you, searching for something, anything, that would tell you what happened here. Some of them felt utterly alien. Incomprehensible nonsense. Like looking at a program written in a language you didn’t have the syntax for. You keep looking, sifting through the debris field. Mixed in with the alien logic were the occasional glimpses, flashes. Not yours, but close enough that you could feel it resonate with your soul, plucking at that sense of self with a quiet here! I’m here!

That familiar-but-not-quite shard led to another, one held on by nothing more than a spider-thin strand of silk. Nothing more than a splinter of a memory, but it felt like you . An anchor. It’s--just like Derse. Like before the game, as your mind slipped from one world to the next.

You let your awareness slide along the edge of your broken soul, coasting the jagged pieces like how you’d always imagined your bro had done, tearing up a rail on a shitty artifacted skateboard. Weight and solidity settled around you like a well worn coat, you unconsciously wrapped yourself in it--and breathed.

...And then fell over hacking. You stumble forward, something hard and sharp catching and digging into your stomach. Countertop? Felt like it. But your eyes were watering as that same something in the air burned at them. A dull roar builds in your ears as you focus on dragging air into lungs you’d forgotten you had--you haven’t needed to breathe since you’d gotten yourself killed on your quest bed. Was that really only a day ago? It felt like eons, getting slapped beyond the incipisphere and then flying and Dave and Jack and dying--

If nothing else, the burning in your lungs, the counter digging into palms. It all whispered that this was real . If you were dead, if this was just a shred of memory, would you be hunched over what your blurry vision could only call a sink, hacking up a lung like you’d gone exploring the Land of Tombs and Krypton without your mask? You lived on that planet with it’s thick gasses and poison filled atmosphere for half a year, this acrid soupy air and oppressive heat should be nothing .

Eyes watering behind your shades, you fumble for the faucet--at least you think it’s a faucet. This feels like your apartment and you roll with it, the shape of the nozzle is the same under your hand as it’s been for the last sixteen years. You push your shades up into your hair--they bump into something already there, knocking it off your head--burying your face in hands cupping lukewarm water, and just try to breathe. The water, while never as cold as you wanted, worked to ease the prickle in your eyes. The water sloshed to the dirty metal sink-- no that was wrong you kept it spotless because what else did you have to do for half a year there were only so many tombs to explore-- and you grabbed another handful, this time it slid down your throat. Carefully, oh so carefully. With the way your lungs were protesting it would be far too easy for the liquid to end up somewhere it shouldn’t and you didn’t know if the game simulated pneumonia but you wouldn’t put it past it.

“B-bro?”

A tiny, quivering voice had you jerking your head up. The sky outside the window above the sink was blood red over a wide expanse of slate grey and glass, not the poison green and black of your planet, or even the endless blue of your home. You turn stiffly, water running in rivulets down your face and caught in your eyelashes as you try to blink the burning grit away.

And then you look down, into a small face that was torn between all too familiar indifference and cracked with something else. Small pale hands clutched an orange baseball cap, holding it out hesitantly.

You…can’t deal with this right now. Your burning lungs. Your irritated eyes. The screaming in your woefully inefficient meatbag brain that knew this was wrong wrong wrong.

Your mind blanks out. Full on fucking blue screen of death’d that shit. You feel your hands take the cap, and some part of your brain that sounds suspiciously like Hal notes with satisfaction  that your voice doesn’t waver at all, although it sounds wrong to your ears. “Thanks Dave.”

The too young Dave Strider manages a too-cool-to-actually-be-cool nod and absconds out of the kitchen, slamming the door to a room-- his room?-- behind him.

Gravity is a constant battle, and your too shocked limbs aren’t even trying to put on a show, so you let yourself sink to the floor, stained cabinet to your back. But you don’t stop there, sliding away from the body and back into the welcoming darkness of the void, surrounded by the remnants of tiny stars and clutch at your puffy asshole god-tier pants like they were a lifeline because of what they represent. What the fuck. What the fuck, man.

Are you dead???

A tiny star burns in the previously empty corner of your mind and all you can smell is that burning, pollution filled entirely not flooded Houston air. If you try you know you could slip right back into that body because that’s what you did for years. Only that body is not fucking yours.

You are dimly aware of your--his--shades clattering to the linoleum floor, like it’s a distant dream and you only need to open your eyes to wake up.  You squeeze them shut, your palms forcing your real shades into your face and very quietly, you take a moment to freak the fuck out.

Chapter 2: Dirk > Focus on Something Else

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Time passes. You have no idea how much. You can still fly, wherever you are, and you take advantage of it. You put as much distance between yourself and what just happened.

But no matter how far you go, a tiny star continues to glimmer. Locked in the back of your mind. Every now and then you get a whiff of the air from that place and it makes your throat seize up, before you pointedly tell yourself that you can’t breathe right now even if you wanted to.

There’s no light to travel by, so you just follow your gut, knifing through the void and ignoring the miniaturized galaxies worth of shards you are leaving behind. You are wary of touching another after what happened last time, although none of these resonate with you quite like that one did. Occasionally you’ll skim an edge and maybe hear something, like the shout of an old friend trying to flag you down as you pass…

You stopped, the first few times. In case someone had managed to find you. In case you’d just been flung so far out beyond the incipisphere and your friends were all looking for you. In case that really had been a dream bubble you saw... But the battery acid stink taunting you shoots down that hypothesis with surprising vengeance, and you reluctantly keep moving.

It was so dark. So quiet. A land void of the horrorterrors that had once reigned over what you can only guess is beyond the Furthest Ring. You have to still be in the game if you are all god-tier up in this shit, and only the Furthest Ring can’t see Skaia’s light. That has to be it. It’s just...strange that it’s so quiet. And taking so long. Even when you’d been teleported away by Jake’s mind-controlled grandma, you’d been able to see specks from skaia on the horizon, and feel the thrum of space and time as it roiled around you. This was just…

Well. Aside from the splinters everywhere, which at least echoed with something, this entire place felt inert. Completely void of even the denizens of the void. You carefully skirt another shard that emitting a vaguely repelling heat. If you squint at it, you get the vaguest impression of an ocean, but one that was entirely the wrong color. This was one of those close-but-not enough cases. You can feel it reaching out, inviting, but you flinch away, leaving it to it’s slow orbit amongst the rest of the stars.

If your hunch was right, and all this debris was some sort of shrapnel left behind by an explosion, then you should probably be looking for the center of it all. You’ve been cataloging the placement of the clusters during your flight, and they did seem reminiscent of a blast pattern, within normal variations, and if so that meant he could calculate the--you feel something twist painfully in your gut, and the emptiness ringing in your ears mocks you.

Right. The...center. Right. You didn’t need advanced processors or artificial superiority to observe and deduce the direction to the epicenter. Your meatbag brain would have to do. You still know how to code.

It... wasn’t hard to get it within a reasonable margin of error. But it took a long time. Longer than it should have taken. Red text should be forcing open the pesterchum window in the shades, taunting you about how it’d been done in 1/10th the time but he just wanted to give you a sporting shot since you seemed to be having fun exercising your inefficient resources.

Nothing. Pesterchum stays dark as you close the script you’d been using to crunch the numbers. You hesitate--you’ve been avoiding this because the signal likely wouldn’t be able to reach anyway--but with a quick thought, like ripping off a bandaid, you pull up your friendslist.

It’s gone.

They are all gone.

Usernames. Conversations. Files sent and received. All wiped clean as if the program was newly installed.

timaeusTestified stands alone on a list that had once held your best friends. Even out of range you should still have that shit saved locally.

Your jaw spasms from how hard you’ve been clenching it and you force yourself to take a deep breath. Which was utterly useless considering you are in space , but the familiar motion helped steady yourself.

With steely determination you exit the program entirely, and pulled the script you’d just finished coding into the viewport and execute it, a red arrow begins blinking in the corner of your vision, pointing you in the direction of the epicenter.

It was the only clue you had, aside from the city of steel and glass and you weren’t yet ready to face that.

Ready or not, the thought summoned a slightly less oppressive but still far too soupy heat, the faintest mirage of deep shadows creeping across the linoleum beyond grey shoes. Your head begins to ache as you straddle two bodies doing two very different things. One flying unerringly through space, the other slumped in a pathetic heap on a kitchen floor. The indignity of it all wrankles at your pride, and you try your best to shove the thought away. You don’t care. You don’t need it. You just need to focus on the explosion and you’ll figure out what the fuck happened and get back to Jake and Jane and Roxy and Dave--

Your ears are too sharp for your own good, and the room swims back into view. You catch the sound of a door being cracked. Of hesitant footsteps. The shadows at the end of the room paradoxically deepen as the hallway light is cracked on, and a too damn small body cautiously peeks around the door-frame, only to freeze like a deer in the headlights.

“B-bro? Hey Bro. You alive in there?”

You shove it away.

Finding the epicenter and your friends was the priority. If this splinter couldn’t take care of itself that just made it even more useless than the brain ghost that ended up inside Jake’s brain. It’d obviously existed long before Dirk ever ended up in this place, it could do it’s own damn work.

It’s own damn work is what fucked Dave up in the first place.

The retreating shadows stopped abruptly at that thought. The room lingered around him. Hazy and indistinct, but still undeniably there. He had more than half a metaphorical foot out the door, but something in him hesitated.

“Bro this is seriously--am I going to have to call the hospital? You are seriously wigging me out here. All I wanted was to see if there is something other than your shitty swords in the goddamn fridge because I haven’t eaten in twelve hours, and I come out here to find you still sitting there like this?? You look like someone just up and snip, cut your threads. Oh no, poor broken puppet, better just leave it there--”

He’s in the room now. You can see the moonlight filtering in through the window, bleaching him pale as a sheet. His body language is jittery, you notice in an odd state of detached amazement. You can see him trying so very hard to work up the courage to reach out and touch you on the shoulder. And he finally does and shakes you. Shakes you so hard you can feel his fingers digging into your shoulder. Your real shoulder. Covered in totally uncool red heart-patterned tee-shirts and hoods and pink headbands. Not the one in white that was far too large.

“Bro--please--this isn’t funny. What am I supposed to do if you up and die on me, asshole? Huh? I-- fuck--Please.”

Language.” Your voice comes out raspy, and it startles you. You hadn’t intended to speak.

“The hell do you care?” He flinches but doesn’t release your shoulder.

You’re like. 6.”

“I’m almost 10, and that shouldn’t even matter because I’m the one acting like the adult right now! Do you really think checking out of life for a day or whatever is gonna just...make whatever this is go away?”

That snaps you completely out of your flight and onto the cold linoleum tile. Your hands reflexively tighten into fists and you shove them into your face, groaning. The small hand flinches and releases your white tee-shirt, and you can hear him scrambling back a good safe distance. Out of range for any retaliation or surprise strifes. Your limbs tingle as you move them, the lack of motion for--had it really been twelve hours?--so long had let them fall asleep.

The pressure against your eyes helped. A little. “ fuck.”

“Are you alive or not.”

“I--” Damn it. Even your voice sounded wrong. “Yes.”

“Good.” The vehemence behind in that single word hit you with the weight of a full on strife. You raise your head, as the door creaks and light spills across the room in a concentrated yellow shaft. He isn’t looking at you. He’s mostly blocked by the refrigerator door, but even in this light you can see his fingers trembling against the white appliance, “If you aren’t dying then just--go to bed or something. Don’t go acting all weird, it’s making me nervous. That blank stare isn’t helping you know, tap dancing all across my nerves like it’s a glass of water and the T-Rex is coming. I know dinosaurs are supposed to be the hotshit right now, but I’d rather be a penguin. You know. Cool. I’m cool. You’re cool. And tomorrow we’ll be cool as a penguin getting its moves on to impress all the girl penguins. Make all the other penguins jealous. And if that means you need to go to a doctor penguin, what the hell am I saying just go to the goddamn doctor and we’ll never speak of this again.”

He doesn’t have his shades on as he closes the door, bottle of golden juice in hand, but you can’t see more than a glitter of red in the dark. He doesn’t look at you. He marches stiffly into the hallway, and then you can hear the sudden shift in footsteps as soon as he’s out of your line of sight, booking it down the hall and behind the dubious sanctity of his bedroom door like he thought you were going to chase him down like the raiders from hell.

Another you might have.

Notes:

What can I say I've been writing whups. Don't get used to this pace I'm just on a roooooll.

Which honestly I blame those of you who commented! Engagement apparently kicks my muse into high gear.

Chapter 3: Dirk > Pull Yourself Together

Chapter Text

Listening for the telltale creak of the door that would herald Dave returning, you hesitate. Nothing. Just a dull buzz from outside--city noises, you think. You doubt cities are every quiet. Once you are fairly sure you are alone, you push yourself to your feet, joints and muscles aching from being in the same position for too long. Everything felt off. Too big. Too tall. Too heavy. Especially after being all weightless and shit out in space. You pull away from this reality enough to check on yourself--not enough that you’d lose track of this body this time--and yep you are just floating there in the middle of the void like an idiot right now, Hal wouldn’t let you hear the end of it. At least there was literally nothing out there, so you deem it safe enough to leave your gameself there for the moment.

Your pounding heart echoes in your ears. You cover them as if that would help, but the pulse continued as the adrenaline worked to run its course.

Dream or not, you couldn’t believe how stupid this was. You were. Are. For even ending up in this situation. This couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be. You were so sure of it. This strange land of acrid air and noise and impossibilities was obviously just a distraction.

You should fucking know better. You should fucking know that just because something was an alternate, didn’t mean it wasn’t real. You thought you’d seen everything this fucking game could throw at you and it couldn’t get any more illogical.

Real or not, Dave didn’t deserve this shit. Just fucking think about how this situation looked to him. This wasn’t like the auto-responder or the bots, who knew full well you had a tendency to get lost in your own damn head. Or who knew about the game-world and that you were just off information gathering. That was one of the reasons you’d fucking made Hal in the first place, so he could field your friend’s questions while you were spacing out like a narcoleptic zombie.

You needed--needed to get out of this room. The Kitchenette was a wide open space, part of the living room. This was your apartment, more or less. You knew the layout. If Dave had gone that way, and the kitchenette was here, that means he was in your old room. The roof? No. No ocean. No gulls. Only glass and metal and the thrum of a world that hadn’t yet died.

You needed somewhere small. Quiet. An escape.

The bathroom. You lock yourself inside, the fan whirring to life as you automatically flick on the light. It’s a familiar noise, even if it doesn’t yet have the distinctive rattle you’d grown accustomed to as the hardware aged. A stranger looked back at you from the mirror over the sink.

You half-expected this, but it still felt jarring. It’s you. Even without your shades the face was undeniably yours. Same orange eyes. Same thin blank expression that hovered between apathy and aloofness even as you are trying to fight off a double decker bus full of adrenaline and panic. The same unnatural gravity defying sweep in your white-blonde hair, although it was oddly ruffled. From the--hat. Yeah. You’d had a hat earlier. Was that still on the floor? With your--his--shades?

This body definitely aren’t sixteen anymore. Not by a long shot. Too big too old this was you but it wasn’t you but it’s you know what the hell are you going to do--

Crrrck.

You look towards the source of the sound. Blinking owlishly when you realize you were gripping the edge of the sink with a white-knuckled grip. It’d cracked. You force your hands away and stuff them into the pocket of your pants and sit down on the porcelain throne. At least you were out of sight of the mirror now.

You resist the urge to flee again, back to the darkness and the void and your missing friends. It’s very much a problem. Your friends are missing. But this. All this is a problem too. Dave is here. Dave is ten. And you are something closer to thirty than not probably. Dumped in the middle of your ecto-son’s life as your borderline-sociopathic splinterself.

One that you’d been ranted at about. In fairly heavy detail, as that ecto-son had to deal with getting closure for trauma he was living through right now.

“Do you really think checking out of life for a day or whatever is gonna just...make it go away?”

“What am I going to do Hal?” You mutter aloud, although you know your robotic, yet still probably sociopathic splinterself isn’t here either. Two for two on the lower end of the empathy scale, the evidence is mounting. Who's to say you’d be any better at it? “I’m just going to screw this up. I already did.”

If it’s real and you leave? You’d be abandoning your ten year old bro.

Ten years. Given the way Dave had bolted after both their encounters, it was ten years too late to prevent the damage.

Okay. New Plan. You grit your teeth and stand up, methodically going through the motions of washing your hands and then drying them on the threadbare towel just to give you something to fidget with. You can’t just ignore...all of this. Your Dave or not, the kid didn’t deserve it. You need to go over what you remember of that conversation and see what you can fix, and maybe try to blunt what you can’t. This body and this… situation obviously isn’t a one time thing. It isn’t going away. You’d left that splinter star behind, but this...other self had slotted itself in the place your wakingself had been, before you know, the world was destroyed.

Just...like before the game. You could do this. You got the hang of juggling two lives fairly easily no matter how much your auto-responder liked to needle you. One foot in reality, and one in the game and this would work .

You slip a little, letting the darkness of space overlay the grimy wallpaper, and set your--you can’t help but think of it as your true self, all wiry sixteen years of god-tier cosplay--course for the center, cracking your awareness the slightest bit and anchoring there, keeping an eye out for obstacles or anything unusual. It’s been half a year since your dreamself died, but this balancing act felt as natural to you as breathing. Even the headache you could feel building felt more like...stretching a muscle you hadn’t needed to use for a while.

You ease your attention back to the apartment, but not entirely. The speed of the flight has ghostly sensations of motion wisping across your skin, but you’ll get used to it. It would be easy enough to just let yourself splinter again and be done with it, but there have been far too many Dirk Striders already.

Obviously something happened. He was here. Dave was here. What about Jane and Jake and Roxy and the other kids? If this wasn’t a memory or a dream, a new version of Earth, wouldn’t they be here? You wish you’d had more time to sit down and talk to Dave and his friends without the threat of the whole blasted universe threatening to fall to pieces on your heads.

You latch onto that stray thought. Turning it over in your mind as you make your way back out into the living room. Chewing on it, you give the room a cursory once over in the splashlight and the moon from the windows on the far wall, making every metallic object gleam it touched gleam tantalizingly. It was like you were looking in the mirror again. You can see you in every single thing, from the marionettes to the sound samplers to the myriad selection of shitty game systems and even more trashfire games. Even the bare-rumped plush puppets were oddly fascinating by the peekaboo light of the moon, and struck you as something you’d find hilarious if you were in on the joke.

All you had was what your Bro left for you. You’d never really thought about what you’d do if you had the means to decorate with whatever the hell you wanted. It’d just never crossed your mind.

You find the futon, at least it likely won’t send Dave panicking if you pass out there. In fact it was probably the best place for it. The pillow at one end and the rumpled blanket left haphazardly draped over the back of the couch made it pretty obvious this was where Dave’s Bro slept. You didn’t feel like pawing through his--your things in the dark, so exploring was probably better left till morning.

Where was he ? The Other Dirk. Jake’s Brain Phantom hadn’t needed you there to exist, even if you managed to hijack it that one time. Why hadn’t retreating back to the medium allowed your Spinterself to regain control? He couldn’t be gone. You were fairly certain your powers didn’t work that way, even before you got yourself killed and ascended. You just...existed. And if you happened to exist in multiple iterations, it was easy to track and reconcile and slip in and out of them. Your sparkly magic powers didn’t overwrite things. It’s not like he was another iteration of the sixteen year old you, able to seamlessly merge with your player self. This whole room was a shrine to his presence, and while you could see yourself too, you were fully aware that you were treading on ground that didn’t belong to you.

You stare up at the ceiling for hours, lost in your own head, going over everything you’d heard about your own Bro. And everything you’d heard from your Dave. They’d wasted so much time in uncomfortable silence. The shadows gently creep across it, there should be a scorch mark there from where one of your early prototypes had exploded. That section near the wall had cracked in a storm once. You fixed it the best you could, but it would leak.

The dark blue was just beginning to lighten when something on the edge of your attention sets off a warning bell. Nothing literal, just the portion of your mind you set to exploring the medium sitting up and going “hey we should probably pay attention to this.” The dark space bubbles forward, engulfing the room as you pull the blanket around yourself for camouflage if Dave peeks his head in to check on you-- whywouldhedothat?becauseyouscaredhimlastnight.

In the medium, your shades are a comforting weight on your face and you are keenly aware that you missed them, even if this particular set hadn’t left your face. There wasn’t a shard to be seen now, having left them all behind not too long ago. Masses blocked your way, and you find yourself slowing your course. Hesitating. Big chunks of rock, floating in a relatively dense ring, stretching on and on before you on either side. These should have become the meteors that would set off the end of the world, only you never managed to trigger the Reckoning in your dead session. Maybe that’s why the Batterwitch had felt the need to send her drones to flush you and Roxy out, there wasn’t an appropriate threat doing the job for her.

You should be happy. You’d been trying to get back to the Incipisphere. This meant you were on the right track. But…

You’d made the venture to and from Derse often enough, usually running off to drag Roxy’s sleepwalking self back home. Derse had orbited on the outer edge of the ring of meteors. Facing the void that you’d just come from. And every time, there’d been a faint light shining through the gaps between the stones. Even as a non prototyped battlefield, Skaia shone brightly.

This was...nothing.

An explosion.

the whole blasted universe threatening to fall to pieces on your heads.

The fields of dead stars flung and scattered throughout the void, far beyond where the horrorterrors should slumber.

You...didn’t like the conclusion you were drawing.

Not at all.

You needed to get on the internet. You had to find your friends.

Chapter 4: Dirk > Find Your Friends

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The computer is password locked. Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be if you were sharing a living space with another human being. You hesitate to just straight up guess, because knowing yourself you’d rig it to lock down after an unspecified number of attempts on the principle of the matter. You search the desk instead, squinting against the faint light of dawn filtering through one of the windows. There is a plethora of papers, but nothing that seems like it could be a clue to the password. Why would there be a clue? That’s an internet safety taboo.

You might just have to wing it. What would you put as a password? You’d never really needed one. Or at least not one that wasn’t full on encryption. Being one of the only two humans on earth afforded you some protection from malicious invasion of privacy from the mundane.

It’s not like you could have kept Roxy out anyway. That girl could hack through goddamn time.

You let your eyes wander the room, looking for an idea, anything that jumped out at you as Important. What was something innocuous, fairly short (the field maxed out at 8 characters), that you (Dirk) would never forget?

You stiffen, tense as hell as you regard a particular ventriloquist doll sitting innocently on a large speaker block in the corner. Glassy blue eyes gleaming at you from the mid-morning shadows cast by the rising sun.

That wasn’t there last night.

You’re sure of it.

You would have noticed.

Almost without your input, your fingers type in six characters and hit enter.

The Desktop appears.

Of course.

You’d had Lil’Cal with you since you were a baby. There are just some things that are universal constants.

It’s just...Cal. The closest thing you had to a guardian. No big deal. In fact, it was nice to see him again. Sort of. Even if it sent unexplicable unease crawling across your skin.

HE IS EMPTY RIGHT NOW

The weight of those glassy eyes prickled in between your shoulder blades, but you drag your focus back to the computer. The desktop was a mess of unfamiliar programs and unnamed folders, but luckily there were a few windows already open at the bottom, probably from whatever your splinterself had been doing before...all this happened. One was something called an aggregator, which was way too overwhelming for you right now. You avoid it in favor of the vanilla web-browser. Dave’s Bro didn’t have pesterchum or even something that remotely looked like a chat client installed. That was probably something you should fix.

You couldn’t imagine a life without it. Without being able to meet and grow to know your friends. Even if two of them would have been dead 400 years before you--

If Jake and Jane were displaced so far from you and Roxy in your world...

It couldn’t be. You pull up a search engine, thrumming your fingers agitatedly against the desk. Entering Jake English alone is futile. His name is too damn generic. Something… you need something more historically significant to branch off of--something well documented--something global...

Crocker.

Betty Crocker.

The internet regurgitates fact after fact about the baking company. You skim it, noting with bewilderment that while the corporation is still rather monolithic and entrenched in the supermarket landscape, it isn’t quite as insidiously pervasive throughout the technology sectors as you remember from your history lessons. In fact, a lot of the technological advances you’d studied as warning signs of the invasion were absent, including Jake’s grandmother’s company and several technologies you retroactively recognized as sburb based.

Where was the Condesce? The malevolent force your Bro and Roxy’s mom dedicated their lives to stop? Everything you can find on Betty Crocker was less secret evil fish troll warlord and more...human ruthless business woman.

Something sticks out from the rather vanilla flavored baking history, and you add another term to the search parameters. The addition of ‘meteor’ narrows the results down further to a handful of archived news articles, originating from Maple Valley, Washington. The name rings a bell. That’s Jane’s home town.

A meteor impact destroyed the local Betty Crocker factory several decades ago. You cross-reference the year and find yourself staring at Betty Crocker’s imposing face, holding two small toothilly grinning children in her arms. The entire picture was at odd to the mourning blacks all three were dressed in.

Baking Baroness Adopts Twins in the Wake of Husband’s Passing’

You skim the article, zeroing in on the children’s names. Jake and Jane Crocker. Adopted in 1952. You slump back in your chair. Feeling very much like your strings have been cut. All the manic energy drains out of you as you stare at the year, doing the math in your head with the 2006 in the corner.. 54 years old at least . And that was assuming they are still alive .

Pushing yourself, you reach for the mouse. It trembles as you move it. No wait, that’s your hand shaking. Great. This doesn’t mean anything. So what if they are in their 50s. That’s younger than Jane’s Poppop was when he died. It isn't a 400 year difference. Probably only like. 20. You’re probably in your 30s. It’s not that weird-- itwasweirditwassoweirdtothinkofjakeandjanebeingsofarapart.

In this world the Baking conglomerate isn’t chronicled with the near religious fervor you remember, so it’s harder to find information about the family than you expected. An article in passing mentions Jake Crocker disowning the family business and vanishing from the pitiful excuse for a corporate confectioners limelight entirely. Jane Crocker worked at her mother’s company for a time before she too stepped down, although the reasons given hinted at an upcoming marriage.

...Nothing about death, although you find an obituary mourning the passing of Betty Crocker herself several years later, a footnote of which mentions she was survived by two children, Jane Egbert and Jake Harley.

More fuel for your investigation. You should have guessed about Harley, that had been Jake’s Grandmother’s name before she took on English to spite the Batterwitch. Egbert on the other hand. What kind of name was that? Who the heck did Janey marry?

Slowly and surely, the snippets of public record paint a picture of your friends. Jake occasionally made waves in certain exploratory and gentleman clubs with his good natured eccentricity and his willingness to tackle challenges most people would shrink away from, before he retired to the same Hellmurder Island in the middle of the pacific ocean. Jane, on the other hand, lived relatively quietly. Mentioned as a widow of one Jeramiah Egbert, along with son Dan. On record as the owner of a joke shop that was only notable for being destroyed by a meteor 9 years or so ago.

And then you find her obituary.

Notes:

Bit shorter than most and kinda info-dumpy. But well. That ending felt right.

Dave chapter next :) And it's longer than normal so it shoooould make up for it I think.

Chapter 5: Dave > Fail to Get a Good Night Sleep

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Your name is Dave Strider, and you’re almost ten years old now. You think your bro is awesome, your new friend john has terrible taste in movies, and that dead shit and sick beats are tied for the coolest things ever. Your Bro is literally a sword wielding, puppet toting, urban samurai, and he trains you every day to follow in his awesome ninja footsteps.  

Or he should be. He was conspicuously absent from the training part of that right now. Yesterday was utterly terrifying, seeing him slumped on the kitchen floor like some lame limp noodle. And this morning wasn’t much better. You still can’t believe you’d lost your cool like that. In front of him. You hadn’t slept a wink. Just waiting for him to get you back for disappointing him and breaking your poker-face and poking your nose where it doesn’t belong. You were supposed to have an understanding about that feelings shit.

You should have trusted that he would have thrown off whatever the hell last night was on his own. Nevermind that he hadn’t moved from that boneless slump since you saw him freak out in the kitchen earlier in the day. Maybe you should have just pretended not to see and let him work his shit out like he always did with your moments of weakness. You really appreciated those moments. Really. They gave you enough time to school your emotions on the rules of the bro-code and return everything to a zen state of chill you both appreciated so much.

Really.

You are supposed to be the chillest of chill. The epitome of chill. Not some blubbering baby too powder-bottom soft to know what a stiff upper-lip meant.

You just had to panic and interfere. Of course Bro wasn’t dying. Outside of the heat of the moment the idea was frankly preposterous (boo ya 16 point word.) It was insulting. And he was going to take the price for it out of your hide. Or your pride. Possibly even both.

What would it be this time? A cascade of puppet rumps thrown onto your bed to greet you in the morning? Ironic blasting of shitty pop music in your ear? Full contact-Lil’Cal to the face? One or more of your bro’s half-naked hip-hop idols tucked lovingly into your arms while you slept?

There were no depths too ironic for Bro to plunder when seeking his revenge. Well, the joke was on him. You were ready for him. With your back to the corner there was no where for him to flash-step and get the drop on you, and your fortifications of pillows and boxes on your bed should be enough to interrupt the path to reduce the effectiveness of the move. The hatches were so battened down it was tighter security than Ft Knox up in here. If this shit was a battlefield you were a tactical general , ever vigilant for the invading forces.

 

Tick-tock.

Tick-tock.

Waited.

Tick-tock.

Tick-tock.

But nobody came.

The apartment was eerily quiet. Bro never missed training, and he only rarely canceled it for your benefit. You had to be seriously wheezing or coughing up a lung before he’d take your temperature and bundle you back into bed to fend for yourself.

Then again, you can’t remember him ever being sick before either, and that’s obviously what happened last night.

6 hours, 23 minutes, and 34, 35, 36-- 37,38,39 fuck why are you still counting-- seconds later you finally throw in the towel. You’ve survived this long on nerves and hypervigilance, but your energy was starting to lag as the lack of a night’s sleep began dragging at your eyelids.

6 hours and 32 minutes and 12,13,14 after The Incident you poke your head out of the door. The AJ you’d absconded with last night was weighing heavy in your bladder, and you regretted ever going for it.

Nothing attacked you, puppet or steel, as you entered the hallway. If he’s not here, then maybe he actually did fuck off to the doctor’s or wherever and you’ll need to look out for evening training instead. That’s fine. Maybe you can catch a cat-nap in your closet in preparation. You can barely maintain a flashstep on a good day, you don’t wanna risk it on no sleep.

You finish your business and then adjust your totally cool shades. Looking good. You turn your gaze toward the end of the hallway, weighing whether or not you wanted to risk the chance that Bro is actually home and waiting for you in the living room.

6 minutes, 45, 46, 47, you decide against it and cut your losses. You have some crackers stashed in the closet, and you’re gonna take that nap while the taking is good. If Bro hadn’t revenge pranked you by now, he’s probably got something prepared and was just waiting for you to return to the scene of the crime. You aren’t walking into that shit without a nap and some pesterchum-and-chill with John--

Nap. Nap is good.

Your fortify your position again, out of habit more than really expecting an attack although you could never rule out anything with Bro. He was serious about situational awareness and constant vigilance and that shit.

You don’t bother with the pillow and just lean up against the wall, surrounded by the battlements of your sanctuary, and you are out like a light.

2 hours and 7 minutes later on the dot and you wake. You stare blearily at the still barred door of your room, at the unmistakably bright sunlight filtering through Houston’s smog-haze, and then finally down at the phone peeking out of your blankets. Back to the door. No text from Bro demanding your presence. No clay-face visitors taking advantage of your personal-space bubble. You just sit there.

An arm snaps out of your fortifications, fingers closing around the oblong device and then pulling it back inside your fortress. No notifications period, other than a confirmation that the school received your last assignment successfully and a reminder that you had another one coming up. Man. Fuck school. That meant you needed to get Bro to sign off on it. You could forge it probably. But then Bro would be angry if he found out. And he would, since he has to mail the things off, although you’re fairly certain you know where he keeps the stamps n shit.

At least you liked these assignments. It made it more bearable than say, history. You wish it was biology  or--what was it? The -ology that was the history of dead shit? That’d be way more awesome than learning about some old fuddy duddies who happened to be the right amount of rich and influential at the right time. Or wrong time. The French Revolution had been pretty funny and subversive in that way.

Aw yeah. 18 points. Talk about practical applications.

You drag yourself out of bed. The nap had worked to chase off the fatigue nipping at your heels like a pack of vicious tiny chihuahuas by throwing it a juicy wrack of ribs to yip over and gnaw on for a while, but you were keenly aware of the fact that you probably needed far more than a measly two hours. No help for it. If you are awake, you are awake. You wanted to tell John about your dream anyway.

Pesterchum is up on your computer. It always is. You scroll through your list of friends. You have a lot of course, everyone in the chatrooms want a piece of your smooth red text. They hang onto your every word. Just waiting for you to descend from on high to impart some tidbit of wisdom or a snippet of a rhyme you were working on to the unwashed masses.

But even then you have your short list. Your A-List. The friends upon friends that transcend all others--

Okay so it’s only one person. And you literally just met a few weeks ago. And he has a shit taste in movies, although you can appreciate the irony in liking such garbage trashfires to the point where it becomes good again. But damn it you and John clicked. You had the feeling you were going to be best bros.

… who the hell is ectoBiologist?

It had to be John. You only had one person on that list, and you suppose it’s still on theme with ghostlyTrickster. Dude is obsessed with ghostbusters. You’re a little disappointed. You’d appreciated the amusing irony in the initials.

turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering ectoBiologist[EB]

turntechGodhead [TG] yo dude you there you just up and changed your username so i just wanted to make sure you were okay
turntechGodhead [TG] i get it it must be a ghostbusters thing
turntechGodhead [TG] i remember you raving about it the other day
turntechGodhead [TG] man cant believe youre taking this love affair so seriously
turntechGodhead [TG] con air is going to be jealous remember the bunny john you cant leave casey high and dry can you
turntechGodhead [TG] next thing you know youll be wearing slimers ugly mug on your shirt and carting around one of those back mounted vacuum cleaners as some two bit cosplay and ill just be sitting here and laughing at how ridiculous you look
turntechGodhead [TG] i wonder if those exist as backpacks just a minute let me google it real quick
turntechGodhead [TG] ...oh god they do
turntechGodhead [TG] whelp there you go something to ask your dad for your birthday or christmas or whatever
turntechGodhead [TG] youre welcome for the idea im extracting my head from this rabbit hole immediately
turntechGodhead [TG] moving on
turntechGodhead [TG] i just had the weirdest dream
turntechGodhead [TG] i was in this giant tower right
turntechGodhead [TG] all decked out in fancy purple and silver moons and shit
turntechGodhead [TG] can you imagine living in those kind of digs bro???
turntechGodhead [TG] its like I was a king of my own castle
turntechGodhead [TG] or maybe just a knight idk
turntechGodhead [TG] someone important at least
turntechGodhead [TG] can you imagine me sitting on some pretentious cushy throne with a scepter giving orders?
turntechGodhead [TG] all hail the moon king fear me peasant kiss my rad red cape or off with your head
turntechGodhead [TG] did i mention i had a cape
turntechGodhead [TG] i dont know receiving subjects sounds boring as fuck all the bowing and groveling
turntechGodhead [TG] i would rather slay dragons or rescue princesses or even princes i dont care im not picky
turntechGodhead [TG] man i wish my dream was about dragons instead
turntechGodhead [TG] i just stood there listening to some shitty clock ticking, counting the seconds
turntechGodhead [TG] 7620 seconds in case you were curious i know you are dying to know
turntechGodhead [TG] waste of a dream man
turntechGodhead [TG] damn it john youre still at school arent you
turntechGodhead [TG] dont leave your computer on if you aren’t there dont you know that wastes energy and gets peoples hopes up
turntechGodhead [TG] i guess it is only like noon
turntechGodhead [TG] dont mind me i forget most of the rest of the world isnt free as a bird looking for an unsuspecting statue or passerby to do its business on
turntechGodhead [TG] thats your pesterchum window in the metaphor fyi because you left it logged in like a nerd and i got time
turntechGodhead [TG] i got so much time
turntechGodhead [TG] call me the king of time its ticking in my head like a song i just gotta get out
turntechGodhead [TG] bust out the turntables and just make that baby spin gonna leap right through time kapow back to the golden age
turntechGodhead [TG] oh wait i decided i was a knight not a king thats fine knights are cooler anyway
turntechGodhead [TG] good luck at school i guess dont stick gum in susies hair or get caught passing notes or something idak what people do in school
turntechGodhead [TG] im sure its just like it is on tv all prepubescent drama and barely controlled chaos and teachers cackling and rubbing their hands together just waiting to get their mitts on those impressionable minds
turntechGodhead [TG] ive been doing my vocabulary homework cant you tell those were some 20 point words right there read em and weep egbert
turntechGodhead [TG] homeschool is lame and useless i dont need math or history to be a sick urban ninja dj
turntechGodhead [TG] but the words the words man i need these in my life you cant make miracles outta nothin i need material ill eat a thesaurus everyday of my life
turntechGodhead [TG] okay that one was only 12 points cut me some slack
turntechGodhead [TG] can you believe bro got after me for swearing last night???
turntechGodhead [TG] like he can talk he said fuck immediately afterwards
turntechGodhead [TG] still cant believe he didnt school my ass after that it was a weird night i keep waiting for the other shoe to drop
turntechGodhead [TG] or maybe a puppet
turntechGodhead [TG] i guess i cant keep hiding in my room forever gotta face the demonic singing of the marionette barber shop quartet sooner or later
turntechGodhead [TG] dont get me wrong puppets are still awesome
turntechGodhead [TG] but if im not back in an hour im probably dead buried in puppet ass avenge me pls
turntechGodhead [TG] just dont bust my ghost the afterlife needs some excitement how can you deny it my chill red text

turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering ectoBiologist[EB]

Notes:

In this chapter, Kat figured out how to format pesterchum logs!

Granted there's some fairly important tidbits in this chapter. it isn't just an excuse to write dave for a while nope. Next chapter is gonna belong to him too, although ya'll may need to wait on it. I've decided I'm gonna put updates on hold till monday so I'm not tempted to shirk my homework. I'll still be working on it, but I'm gonna do my best to resist updating XD

Chapter 6: Dave > Venture Out

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

If you stare long enough, would the world start to make sense?

You straight  up don’t recognize your own home right now.

It’s like a whirlwind of destruction ran amuck through your the living room leaving...something behind. Definitely Something alright. Was it too late to abscond?

There isn’t a plush neon rump in sight, and only the occasional nose poking out of a pile hidden in the corner, tucked between the speaker system and the tv. You find yourself missing those wide open cheeks littering every surface because at least that would be normal.

This. Is not normal.

Is this your Bro’s revenge? It’s a level of irony beyond your feeble brain can comprehend, destroying your carefully crafted balancing act of normality and sending you reeling into the land of twilight town? Complete with eerie 80s era tv themes and black and white filters and you were just waiting for the iconic voice over to boom around you.

Bro’s oh so precious audio equipment, which he has not let you so much as touch since you ruined the last one with a misplaced bottle of AJ, is in pieces in the center of the floor, wires exposed and panels strewn on every available surface. You know intimately how much that set up costs. You’ve drooled over the listings online more than once as you dreamed of owning one of your own one day. Bro’s handmedown isn’t bad at all and you appreciate the heck out of the fact that he gave it to you instead of selling it, but his own equipment was another level of sacred.

And yet. Here it is. With Bro’s normal gloves nowhere to be seen, several small tools you didn’t even know he had littering the floor, and staring very intently at something in his hand.

“Is it broken or something?”

He doesn’t respond, examining a small … circuit board? You’ve never actually seen one before, outside of pixels on your computer screen, all green and silver and black and tiny pieces, so thin you’d be afraid of snapping the thing just from breathing on it. And Bro was holding it daintily in his big adult hand as if it held the mysteries of the universe.

“Bro seriously what the hell.”

The shrug was only marginally more unexpected than the fact that you received a response at all.

“You still aren’t dying right”

The words blurt out of your mouth before your brain can catch up to it. And you want to strangle yourself. Bringing that up was the last thing you wanted--

But it got bro to look up. His face is drawn, and his eyes feel...older. You are not used to him without his shades. It was wrong. Objectively you’ve always known your bro had orange eyes the color of the sky at sunset, you’ve lived with the dude as long as you remember, and no matter how sneaky he liked to be when engaged in stealth mode he had to take off the shades sometimes.

But something about the lack of barrier rattled you terribly. Bro was untouchable. He wore his stoicism like a goddamn suit of armor. It was just how he was.

This…

“Who fuckin’ knows” The laugh was almost barked. He turned back to the circuit board, swiping some sort of larger panel full of other card full of little chips and wires and slots.

“...what the hell bro.”

You’re just repeating yourself and you know it and it infuriates you.

There’s that shrug again. Despite the careless motion, you can see the tension in his posture, as if coiled power was barely restrained and trying to vibrate itself out into motion. As if he wanted to flee. Despite all this his face held that same blank thin lined expression you’ve grown up with.

Ugh. Feelings shit. Awkwardly you take a step forward, eyeing the side panel to the turn-table’s main body propped up against the sampler on the other side of the room.

“Can you put it back together?”

Deflect, deflect. God don’t start talking about it again.

“Probably.”

“If you can’t?”

Shrug.

“That’s…” You grope for words. What happened to your patented motormouth?  The words feel trapped in red text that don’t translate well to actual words and sounds. There’s a disconnect somewhere, your fingers twitching as if you could type the words into existance rather than leaving them trapped under the layer of ice an almost face to face conversation creates. Your mouth works soundlessly “Why?”

“Needed to work with my hands.” And damn now that you were watching them he was so careful while assembling that forest of green and gold. You aren’t used to those hands doing anything other than swinging a sword at your face or curled around some sort of game controller. “Taking things apart help. Figuring out how they go back together helps more.”

“So you pick the most expensive thing in the apartment. Okay.”

He tenses. You freeze, eyes widening behind your shades. Carefully, he sets the set of chips to the side and goddamn it you did it. You took the wrong step and your foot landed on the mine here it comes. Your strife specibus is always stocked but he’s always faster on the draw than you are--

But he just looks away.

“TRAINING” You blurt out, catching his attention again. “You didn’t come get me for morning session.”

Fingers raked through platinum blonde hair, the carefully neutral expression tightens. It’s just the slightest tick of his jaw, but in a house where reading Bro’s mannerisms meant the difference between a good night’s sleep and a midnight ambush it was an obvious tell. “Not a good idea, b-lil bro.”

“Why not?” You demand with more force than you probably needed to considering you don’t want a strife.

Actually maybe you do. At least it’d be fucking normal and not…

Whatever this shit is.

You don’t like feeling like a stranger in your own home.

“Dave.”

You flinch.

“I’m tired.” He’s a mess. You’re a mess. This entire goddamn conversation is a mess. “Training wouldn’t do either of us any good.”

“As if that ever stopped you before.” And there’s the complete and utter lack of a filter. But you couldn’t stop it. This was so wrong so weird just came tumbling out, the moment lengthening as time felt like it screeched to a stop.

The silence stretched. Bro regarding you with those too tired eyes and just this once you resisted the urge to flinch. Straight backed and daring him to come at you. Swordkind at your fingertips, you’re ready.

Bro blinks first, closing his eyes in a slow exhale. You have to strain to hear his quiet mumble “Fuck. I really screwed this up.” Louder. “It isn’t happening. No strings attached. No ambushes. Nothing.”

You cross your arms dubiously. (damn it almost 16 points.)

The stalemate lasts for 3 minutes and 10,11,12 seconds before he snags one of the tiny tools and begins reattaching connector wires.

Pointedly ignoring you. Well. Two of you can play at that game.

You don’t look a gift-horse in the mouth and pick your way across the room, although you make sure you don’t turn your back either. Maybe this is a test. He’s trying his best to throw you off to see if you’ll lose your cool.

You head towards the kitchen, trying to think if you remembered anything other than the apple juice you took last night in there. The memories were fuzzy. There might have been a not-quite-yet moldy loaf of bread buried in bro’s throwing stars, and you are pretty sure you have some peanutbutter in one of the cabinates if bro hasn’t thrown it out yet--

And you just stare. Trying to comprehend the sight that greets you.

You completely forget the mutual ignoring going on and the words just come out.

“Where the fuck did you put the weapons?”

A pause.

“Away.”

The counters were clear as a goddamn whistle, sparkling in the light coming in from the window. You could eat off that shit. You reach up and grab the countertop, it’s barely at your eyelevel right now you can’t wait to put on another couple inches, and heave yourself up. Even the kitchen sink had been scrubbed down. You can’t remember the last time you’d seen the faint cracked pattern in the countertop.

It wasn’t even that you guys left it messy. You just... never used it except as additional weapons storage. Bro never cooked, and more often than not you guys nuked take-out if you were going to have a hot anything . There’d been no real need to scrub the buildup except like every few months.

You check the fridge. The swords are gone too. Leaving the cooling container depressingly empty. At least with the weapons in there you could pretend there was food hidden underneath it.

“Shit. You really are dying.”

You don’t think you’ve ever heard him laugh like that before. A little muffled snort that opened up into a low quiet, bitter laugh.

With a sinking feeling in your stomach, you realize you probably haven’t heard him speak this much at once before.

Or that you have either.

You may type mile a minute, but you can count the number of real life people you’ve spoken to on both hands, and Bro doesn’t make for much of a conversation partner on one of the rare good days he gave you the time of day outside of training.

Hell, Lil’Cal was better.

You really don’t like that train of thought and you don’t want to think about what those implications mean to your homelife so you just straight up don’t.

A freshly peanut butter’d slab of not-quite moldy carbohydrates later and you make a break for the hallway. You almost make it.

“Hey bro?”

You tense, turning the movement into a casual glance over your shoulder, “Yeah?”

He’s still not looking at you.

“Things are changing, figured I should warn you.”

“Oh sure. Drop some cryptic shit on me like that. That’s super helpful.” You roll your eyes, not that he can see it behind your shades. It makes you feel better though. You’re far enough away and he’s buried in wires so you feel a little more at ease letting that awkward ice thaw. “Changing how? ‘luke i am your father’ kind of changing, or ‘i’m pulling you out of school and we’re going on a training journey to china’, or ‘i’ve suddenly seen the light and converting to apple juice’ or what?”

He didn’t respond at all. Irritated that he interrupted your escape for something like this you throw in one last parting shot.

“Well, get back to me when you figure it out.”

You don’t stop until you are safely back into your room again. Where things make at least a smidgen more sense. Or at least you can pretend they do.

35 minutes and 56 seconds after you ceased pestering john you open the window again.

turntechGodhead began pestering ectoBiologist[EB]

turntechGodhead [TG] i think my bro has gone mental
turntechGodhead [TG] i dont know how to feel about this

turntechGodhead ceased pestering ectoBiologist[EB]

3 hours 15 minutes and 23, 24, 25 seconds of theraputic beats pumping through almost sound canceling headphones like a cascading waterfall surging and cocooning you, drowning you, muffling everything except the ebb and flow of sound vibrating through your tired core, you get a response. Just a flicker of orange out of the corner of your eye as the muted notification does its job.

You mournfully crank the volume down just enough to allow yourself to hear your own thoughts, but not enough to lose the soothing levels of zen you were indulging in right now.

ectoBiologist[EB] began pestering turntechGodhead[TG]

ectoBiologist [EB] wasn’t he always?
turntechGodhead [TG] shut up
ectoBiologist [EB] i don’t know man, it even you got to admit it this time.
ectoBiologist [EB] what did he do to topple the pedestal?
ectoBiologist [EB] was it the puppet? i bet it was the puppet.
turntechGodhead [TG] fuck you puppets are awesome
turntechGodhead [TG] and its not like you can talk with all those clowns
ectoBiologist [EB] dude, i’m the last person to argue that. i hate those things.
turntechGodhead [TG] it was a couple thousand dollars worth of audio equipment in pieces on the floor and an actual clean kitchen and cryptic things are changing bullshit
turntechGodhead [TG] pinch me please this has to be a nightmare
turntechGodhead [TG] i dont even get to enjoy my rad cape this time i feel cheated
ectoBiologist [EB] i would totally slap your smug face if you were within arms reach i promise.
turntechGodhead [TG] thank you
ectoBiologist [EB] i don’t know though that doesn’t seem so bad.
ectoBiologist [EB] funny you should mention dreams though. that’s actually why i changed usernames.
turntechGodhead [TG] really???
turntechGodhead [TG] i thought it was some ghostbusters shit
ectoBiologist [EB] i mean it probably is. i was some sort of ghost scientist. doing ghost science and there was a lot of slime. i woke up thinking about it and it just kinda came to me. pretty awesome right?
turntechGodhead [TG] nah dude its totally lame
turntechGodhead [TG] although not as lame as a ghostbusters reference i guess
ectoBiologist [EB] ew dog that was uncalled for take it back
turntechGodhead [TG] lame
ectoBiologist [EB] ass
turntechGodhead [TG] oh man john language do i need to tell your dad
turntechGodhead [TG] his little john is growing up into a merryman and calling people asses
turntechGodhead [TG] im obviously the robin hood
turntechGodhead [TG] dashing hero
turntechGodhead [TG] great hair
turntechGodhead [TG] i draw the line at tights though
ectoBiologist [EB] you are the weirdest kid i’ve ever met, TG.
turntechGodhead [TG] i was born and raised on the internet what do you expect
turntechGodhead [TG] shitty humor and bad language is as much a part of me as my own flesh and blood
turntechGodhead [TG] you may have been sheltered from its corrupting tendrils by the dadliest of parental overlords but I learned at the feet of the gods of freedom from oversight
turntechGodhead [TG] pretty sure bro doesnt give a shit what i look at at long as im not stupid about what i download
turntechGodhead [TG] even then hed just laugh and chalk it up to a lesson learned if i bricked my computer
turntechGodhead [TG] for real though my socialization consisted of a deadly ninja assassin and his puppet pal and the internet i think im all kinds of fucked up
turntechGodhead [TG] im surprised i havent run you off by now tbh
turntechGodhead [TG] ...
turntechGodhead [TG] i didnt did i???
turntechGodhead [TG] john
turntechGodhead [TG] GT
turntechGodhead [TG] shit
turntechGodhead [TG] EB
ectoBiologist [EB] sorry! Dad wanted to ask about school.
ectoBiologist [EB] you’re fine dave. you’re weird but it’s an interesting kind of weird.
ectoBiologist [EB] dad would totally ground me if he saw our chats. because you’re a stranger and he seems to think kids dont exist on the internet and so you have to be some creepy stalker dude.
ectoBiologist [EB] but i think you’re pretty okay.
ectoBiologist [EB] please note i didn’t say you’re cool because we both know you’re just a nerd
turntechGodhead [TG] hey i resemble that remark
ectoBiologist [EB] better check your word list because i think you mean resent.
turntechGodhead [TG] nope i stand behind my statement 100 percent besides it takes one to know one
turntechGodhead [TG] nerd

John’s blue text on your screen and the music in your head meshes with the soothing ticking of time and you put bro out of your mind.

Notes:

Back to dirk next chapter!

Chapter 7: Dirk > Connect

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The day won’t end.

You’ve taken apart and reassembled your splinterself’s equipment multiple times. You’re fairly certain it still works. A smile tugs at your lips as you remember Dave’s incredulous outburst upon seeing what you’d been up to all day. While not exactly the same model as the one your Bro left you in your apartment, it was similar enough and from the proper timeframe that you were able to make sense of the inner workings, although there’d been a few pieces of skaianet’s technology in that one that was sorely missing here. Since. You know. Skaianet never needed to exist.

The smiles withers and dies. What did you expect to find? The universe wasn’t kind. Jane’s grandfather had died via meteor. You should have expected to find the parallel. But some small hope, the realization that while you were displaced, you were still within a lifetime of each other, had refused to be smothered until you’d been surrounded by the choking fumes of the black and white scanned obituary.

You are good with your hands. And tinkering let you think. Or not think. You’d almost liken it to a state where you could just detach yourself from the emotions and just focus on the logic problem before you.

Jake’s grandmother had died too. On that island. You hadn’t found an obituary but...reclusive fairly well off eccentric, living mostly alone on a remote and otherwise deserted island? There’s no reason anyone would know or report on it. You wanted to snatch at the hope that the lack of batterwitch and skaianet meant he wouldn’t be assassinated like she had, but you couldn’t bring yourself to do so.

Heh. Universal constants.

What iteration was this universe anyway? The third? There was Dave’s, then yours, and now some weird loop back around to the previous configuration only not entirely because you are still here and skaia has gone dark and you don’t have enough information. Did the gamestate reset? Was skaia just dark because the war hasn’t started yet? Would you find the black royalty still on Derse, the battle not yet begun? Would you find Dave on Derse? Still asleep in ignorance of the doom stalking him and his friends?

You exhale in frustration, a small hiss of air through clenched teeth as you finish screwing in the last one, securing the side into place, and then carefully stow the toolkit away. You’d found it shoved in one of the (depressingly empty) cupboards during your cleaning spree earlier. This splinterself’s lack of interest in mechanical engineering had you shaking your head, wondering how such a thing could have happened to any version of yourself.

Maybe you were the one who’d gone wrong. Cooped up alone in an apartment surrounded by ocean, you’d scavenged appliances and supplies your bro had left behind to tinker and eventually create the two bots that would eventually be your first friends. This splinter had the whole world if he’d just had the inkling to take a single step outside the walls. And for all you know maybe he had.

You kind of doubt it. You’d found his phone while cleaning off the desk, buried in a pile of magazines. There was maybe a handful of contacts, none of which had any sort of useful identifying names, such as ‘harpy’, ‘necessary evil’, ‘agent’, ‘money hungry bastard’. None of which made you feel any more inclined to call them to try and figure out who the hell they were. At least they were slightly more descriptive than the dozens of unnamed folders on the desktop. Sooner or later you’ll need to go through those if you can’t find any evidence of a life outside this apartment. At least you are sure which number is Dave’s. Lil’Bro is fairly obvious.

You aren’t willing to touch that yet. But you probably will. Distance and the freedom to consider your words carefully would likely lead to a better conversational outcome for both parties given how tense you both were.

The dull roar of the city buzzes in your bones, although you’ve gotten better at blocking it out. It was really no different than the gentle crash of the waves against the support struts and the screaming of the gulls back home. Just. Louder.

You don’t think you’ll ever be used to the contaminants in the air though. The Land of Tombs and Krypton had much thicker atmosphere, but you’d been able to alchemize a mask for that, and even then some weird game magic had kept the gasses from creeping into your home. This just kept irritating your eyes and your throat, requiring you to flush them every so often, although as least you weren’t constantly choking anymore.

Placing the turntable back on the cinderblocks was a lot easier than you expected, barely earning a grunt of exertion from you as you settle it gently into place. This body was too big. Too tall. But it was strong, you had to give it that. Given the amount of weapons you’d found stashed around the place (which you’d stowed in the crawlspace above the living room for now, although going up there made your heart ache for your workshop and your tools and your countless prototypes you poured so much of your life into,) and how Dave had reacted to the idea of missing “ training” , your splinterself had been very focused on keeping it that way.

You don’t know what to do about that. Dave obviously expected it. But your--no not your Bro, but the one who could have been your friend--Dave hadn’t explicitly mentioned the training sessions other than in passing about how violent his childhood was.

Definitely nothing without the kid’s permission. And definitely not when you were sure he hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep. You might not know him well enough yet, but there was a faint tremble in the way he held himself that gave it away like an open book.

You straighten up and sigh, looking around the room trying to decide what to do next. And while in the back of your mind you can faintly see the shadows of the medium as your gameself works on looking for Derse along the outer-ring of meteors, you don’t feel comfortable fully slipping until you at least have the plausible deniability of sleeping. Not that you didn’t have problems to solve here too.

Cleaning had clued you in on many things. None of which you had a plan for right now. But the most pressing thing was…

You had next to zero supplies.

Back home you could have fished or caught gulls. Or bartered with Roxy for some pumpkins. Here in this sea of glass and steel and actual living human beings you couldn’t do either of them. You’d tried lurking on the roof for a while, waiting for the native city-birds to get curious. But you could already tell the big sleek black birds were too damn smart. Keeping an eye on you from a distance, judging you. Nothing like the stupid seagulls who came running the moment they saw you because you always brought bait and they always seemed to forget that several of them didn’t make it out when you wanted something different from your canned rations.

You had to get food. You had the vaguest idea of how to go about procuring more, plenty of the movies your Bro had left you included convenience store or grocery scenes usually as the setting for a funny gag or ironic statement, but there was one slight problem with that.

1) You had no fucking idea where to go.

And 2) You had no money.

Your splinterself did. Somewhere. But your splinterself wouldn’t have known organized chaos if it bit him on the ass and it was frustrating the hell out of you.

There was only one place to store stuff aside from the already emptied cupboards, and that was the doll chest you’d offhandedly stuffed Lil’Cal into once you’d started cleaning. If your Splinterself had any sense he’d centralize any important information or documentation in something like that. You drag the surprisingly heavy chest toward the futon, perching on the furniture with hand hovering over the chest’s latch.

This was the only place you hadn’t checked yet. You’d even checked the holes in the cinderblocks and inside the tv stand and while you’d found the occasional grinning smuppet face or hidden throwing star, you’d seen absolutely nothing that looked like even vaguely legal documentation.

Life was different before the flood. You knew that. There was a lot more legal shit to consider, interpersonal transactions? It was an utterly foreign concept to you, someone who’d never so much as seen another human being outside of a screen until you’d ended up dragging Roxy’s dreamself all over the furthest ring. You’d done your research of course. You were thorough. You knew about the Batterwitch’s slow insidious infiltration of the legal system, and had a ton of miscellaneous information packed into the compartments of your brain you’d picked up while tracking her progress through history.

But...you find yourself at a loss on the personal level. You hope to hell your Splinterself had a “Legal Shit” pile somewhere or you’re pretty sure you’re screwed. Preferably next to a conveniently placed money pile.

Ugh. You are just wasting time now.

You squeeze the latch and it pops open with an innocuous click. You know it isn’t booby trapped. You’d opened the damn thing to put Lil’Cal away earlier and nothing had gone off. So why the hell were you hesitating? Why had you avoided it all day? It’s just Lil’Cal.

The lid popped open, and you pause at the glassy blue eyes staring up at you. You must have jostled it when dragging it over here, because you distinctly remember folding him up, and here he is lounging as if it was a much more spacious container. You give Lil’Cal a respectful nod as a greeting and reach in, a spark of static electricity jolting from the fabric clothing to your skin. You don’t flinch, but it leaves the tips of your fingers tingling as you lift the limp noodle of a doll up out of the depths, arranging him upright and leaning against the back of the futon.

You almost imagine a little giggle as you turn your attention away from him and the weight of those not-empty eyes, focusing on the items in the bottom of the chest. Searching fingers explored the velvet lined depths, curling around several items and extracting them. A small assortment began to collect on the futon between you and Lil’Cal. Some sort of binder. A small metal box (locked and with no key in sight.) A banged up old pocket knife, the size of a child’s palm. A small copy of your-his shades. Some sort of leather cloth with a heart on it. And a note written in a chicken scratch that you didn’t really find hard to read since it had constantly covered the corners of your notes until you programmed your shades--and eventually had Hal--to take and record dictations while you worked.

Dave.

Don’t touch my shit. I mean it.”

“It isn’t Dave, bro.” You mutter, feeling oddly weighed down by the words on the page. Irrefutable evidence that this life should belong to another. You crumple it up, crushing it in a white knuckled fist, “If you aren’t going to show up and do your damn job I’m calling finders keepers.”

If it weren’t for Dave, you’d be glad to give it all back. Go find some corner of the medium and camp out for an eternity, or until the game started again and the world ended. Whatever. Your life was gone. Your friends are dead, even if against the odds Jake and Roxy are alive in this world, they aren’t yours.

The paper ball hit the wall next to the TV and bounced hard. Ending up somewhere behind the speaker and likely in the pile of smuppet ass you’d thrown back there earlier.

It didn’t make you feel better.

A handful of the objects are obviously sentimental. The tiny shades. The heart stamped leather. The pocket knife. They feel personal, in a way the myriad of marionette decoration didn’t. You hold the glasses, your eyes and clenched jaw reflecting in the mirrored lenses. You should feel something. You are holding something important to his--your--life in your hands. You could clench your fists and shatter them with next to no effort. The edges are digging into your palm and you need to ease your fingers open.

There’s a weight here. A history you find yourself standing apart from in a way you never really felt about yet another splinter of yourself. You wonder where he found his shades. What drew him to the shape? Your Bro had provided your eyewear, several styles and sizes to choose from as you grew older. What had driven the both of you to chose the exact same angle of mirrored glass? Was this shape just something wrapped up in the concept of Dirk that it was universal?

You still couldn’t bring yourself to wear his shades.

With that thought you find yourself standing up, eyes drawn to the gleam of the mirror lens where you’d left them on the computer desk, still holding the smaller miniature pair in the palm of your hand. Too long legs cross the room, and the full-sized version joins its child sized variant in your palm.

You’ll make your own, you decide. You’ve done it before. You miss your shades and their capabilities and hell you even miss Hal and creating him was one of the greatest mistakes you’ve ever made.

You didn’t want to be here.

You’d failed once already.

Dirk Strider was still Dirk Strider.

But being dropped so completely in another Dirk’s shoes, you feel a gap you’ve never felt with a splinter before. Not even with Hal, who tried so hard to convince both you and himself he was a different person. Maybe it's the weight of a generation between you two. The distance of a life yet unlived...

Maybe you are doomed to fail again.

But for the first time you looked into the mirrored lenses and saw, not yourself, or a you that you could be. Maybe not a stranger, but an old not-quite-friend who had stumbled down a different path and fallen and never had anyone to help him back up again.

And now you need to pick up the pieces.

Under the cool, unflinching stare of Lil’Cal--it almost felt judging--you gently wrap both shades in the heart-stamped cloth and stow them back in the darkness of the chest, along with the small pocket knife.

There was nothing useful for you down that road.

Notes:

...this is actually nowhere near the end of the chapter. But the pacing was starting to feel off so I split them up! (It's significantly longer than the rest anyway)

Don't worry sooner or later we'll get Dirk settled in! Still trying to tread water though.

Chapter 8: Dirk > Examine the Other Items

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

You take a breath and then exhale it into a sigh. Letting the mood pass before you turned your attention to the last two items (aside from Lil’Cal) you’d found stuffed in the trunk. The box was obviously the most promising. This was the first locked thing you’d found, which probably indicated something about it’s contents. But the binder was an easier thing to deal with right now, so you grab it and crack it open.

And then paused and let out a surprisingly maniacal laugh.

You found the “legal shit” pile.

Literally.

The words “Legal Shit” stand out, a bright orange similar to your Pesterchum color, against a black tab. There’s three tabs total, sticking out at varying points in the stack of papers held together by thin metal rings.

You spread the contraption open along the closed lid of the puppet chest, giving you a wider view of your discoveries. Flipping through the contents of the Legal Shit tab, you find it, understandably, filled with legal jargon, meaning that while you theoretically understand, you don’t know if you understand it right. Federal legal shit includes things such as citizenship and birth certificates and several printed forms that have to be related to money. You get taxes as a concept, but it still takes you a moment to recognize it and unearth the previously theoretical knowledge. Even then you stare at the stark black and white numbers and it fails to sink in that this is actually real and not just some absurd relic of the far distant past.

Apartment Shit is the next tab, and really only includes a few months worth of recent utility bills, although you do pointedly take a mental picture of the address as that will help you locate a food dispensary later.

The presence of the bill puzzles you however. You need to pay  for water and electricity? What the hell. You’d just gotten it from solar panels and some desalination machine your bro had set up that pulled in water from the ocean. On second thought the latter might be a bit difficult while being landlocked, but the idea is still bizarre.

There’s something at the very end of the section you think is called a leasing agreement, signed by your Splinterself and someone else you don’t recognize. It’s some 15 pages long, full of Important Shit you’ll probably need to figure out if you want to actually manage to pass at being an Adult, but not immediately useful.

The last major tab is just Miscellaneous Shit that you’ll need to do more internet trawling and exploring of the files on the computer to figure out. Things ranging from printed off receipts, confirmation emails, some of which definitely looked like website purchases and work orders, certifications in what look like a smattering of computer related fields, and even what looks like Dave’s school reports. You flip through the latter pages a couple times in detached shock, finding progress reports for nearly five years worth of homeschooling preserved in this binder full of Important Adult Shit, including certification of passing each year .

You knew Jane had gone to public school. You knew it was the norm for kids pre-Apocalypse-by-fish-alien. But just...hadn’t thought about it till now.

You were getting kind of tired of that. You hated being caught off guard.

Damn it. Just another thing you were going to need to pretend to know what the hell you were talking about when you asked about it.

In the middle of this random journey through Dave Strider’s intellectual pursuits, you find something different.

There’s a slightly smaller piece of cardstock stuck between year two’s progress report, and year three’s. On the front isn’t even an ironically shitty drawing. It’s just the product of a kid’s imagination and a pencil. You think it might be one of the black-city birds you saw on the roof, re-imagined through the mind of a child.

And...on the back of that was a small white patch of slightly off-color white. You find the edge of the opaque tape and carefully peel it back.

A small lightweight silver key. Ridiculously thin and flimsy and cheaply made. So tiny you were afraid to remove it from the adhesive, lest it slip through your large clumsy fingers and be lost in the carpet forever.

You roll your eyes. God. It’s such an obvious hiding spot.

Grudgingly, you admire the irony of it. He even kept the box in the same chest as the binder. You spent half a year in the Land of Tombs and Krypton, and one of the first things you learned was keys are never hidden in the same room as their locks.

Where else would you have hid it anyway? Inside Lil’Cal’s stuffing? You wouldn’t do that to the little guy, no matter how unnerving this...variation of him was, and you highly doubt your Sprinterself would have either.

Leaving the binder open wide on the lid of the chest before you, you snatch the small lockbox off the futon. It’s almost painful attempting to pry the paper-thin metal away from the congealed adhesive, it’d been attached for so long. You’re starting to doubt it would be any use in unlocking the box period.

It would be a fitting final fuck you from your Splinterself if the damn thing got stuck in the lock thanks to residue.

Oh well. If it did there was always the option of a well placed cinderblock.

The construction was insulting. A cheaply made piece of junk, matching the quality of the key perfectly. It’s light and tapping on the metal told you all you needed to know about it’s thickness and durability. If the rest of the construction was consistent, the cinderblock vs locking mechanism strife was looking rather one-sided.

You pinch the key carefully within two suddenly clumsy fingers, and insert the key into the slot. There’s some resistance, expected thanks to the residue, but it eventually settles in with a click.

You turn it.

There’s a note inside.

Dave.

If you are reading this, I better be dead.

Understand? Otherwise, you will be. This shit is locked for a reason.

Fuck it.

Guess I failed.

If the game hasn’t started yet, you better keep training your ass off. Don’t slack just because I’m not there to drag you out of bed. You don’t understand yet, and frankly I don’t either. But I’ve seen it.

You are going to fuckin’ die if you don’t. The only thing I’ve ever done was train you for this shit, because someone had to, and I was the one stuck with the job.

Fuck. If I could have spared you this I could. I thought I was going to be the player. But then you arrived on that meteor and changed things.

I’ve made arrangements, so don’t you dare leave. I got my agent on record as a guardian so let him deal with the legal shit. Rent and other shit is in a separate account set to automatic payments. There’s enough there for the rest of the lease. Sell my shit if you need more. I know you know all my passwords.

You’ll know when the game starts. It’ll be real fuckin’ obvious.

If something happens before then…

Contact Roxy.

Tell her I’m dead. She hates my guts, but she’ll help you.

I know I’ve been a shit guardian, but

Stay alive Lil’Bro.

Your hands are shaking. You make a conscious effort to steady them. You don’t want to crush this one. You don’t. Lil’Cal’s nonplussed expression mocks you and you completely lose your cool and just shiver .

Roxy.

Beneath the note in the locked box was a thick wad of green bills you idly recognize as modern society’s not-so-worthless version of boondollars. And beneath that.

A picture. Faded and worn. It’s him, still growing and gangly, and without your iconic shades yet, showing off tired and sunken features and dirty jeans. Yet still clutching the timeless oversized doll that was presently sitting on the futon next to you. In the photo, Lil’Cal was sitting between him…

...and Roxy. Her eyes drawn and dark rimmed, clothing worn. Nothing like your Roxy. Like the hyper, bubbly, friendly girl you met through text and eventually in person who’d laughed and loved and smiled even with a broken heart who you failed because you couldn’t be who she needed you to be.

You turn the picture over. The writing was too neat to be his.

Dirk and Roxanne. St. Andrew’s Orphanage, New York. 1991.

In familiar chickenscratch, there was a LaLonde added in red ink, and nothing else.

Notes:

Okay. Done with that monster scene. Next chapter back to the medium and then (maybe?) groceries?

No Bro doesn't know stuff. In this 'verse he thought ahead and had the arrangements made out of convenience, and the letter written in the original beta timeline in case he got hit by a bus or something. Dave just never bothered to look.

I don't know if there's anything out there in extended works about the other Guardians and how they know/don't know about the game, so most of this is from me own brain!

Chapter 9: Dirk > Arrive at Derse

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

You lie on the futon, the darkness of night and the void of space achieving some strange equilibrium as you straddle the two worlds.

It’s probably easier now that you aren’t doing anything with your waking self, aside from just letting the body rest after a full day of attention. If this is going to be anything like your life before the game you aren’t going to actually get much actual mind-resting sleep unless you either pass out, or deliberately force yourself to meditate. Luckily, the body still gets its rest if you turn your attention elsewhere.

You shift your center of self further into the Medium, pushing the faint glow of the moonlight further and further back into the isolation of the field of asteroids. You may have been alone all day, left to your devices to clean and tinker and delve into the gritty details surrounding a life as an Adult in a world you barely recognize, but...

There was always the thought that Dave could chose that moment to stick his head in. It’s his living space too. He’d already taken your stress-reduction tactics poorly, all things considered. You don’t want to make things even weirder for him.

Here you could just scream your frustration into the void if you wanted to, and none would be the wiser. You don’t—that would be extremely uncool of you—but the fact that you could is a bit of a comfort. The sheer enormity of the situation you’d landed yourself in is dawning on you. You have to keep up this act—or figure out a way to explain to an admittedly precocious but emotionally volatile ten year old that his older brother figure is actually gone while you are standing there in front of him—for at least another three years. If not perpetuity. You have no idea what will happen once the game starts.

Not for the first time, you wish Dave’s Bro hadn’t been an axe hanging over both their necks. You might have talked more.

You aren’t entirely detached, not even as far as you had been that time, as you tried to run from the star that burned anew in the back of your mind. The quieter, but still constant night-music of the city surrounding your apartment just becomes a low thrum in your bones, filling the silence of space.

Like two partitioned systems exchanging data queries, you consider the ground covered today. Not as much as you’d like, only two thirds or so around the circumference of the Furthest Ring. That isn’t even as efficient as you could have been. There’d been multiple times throughout the day you’d gotten distracted by something in the waking world, and found your progress nearly completely halted. You’re just lucky you didn’t end up face first into a meteor when that happened.

Still, the fact that you’re closer to the point where you began the circle means you must be chasing Derse in its orbit. If you hadn’t been splinting your attention you probably would have realized that and adjusted accordingly. You should still be fairly close. While you’d never clocked your speed since achieving god-tier, you’d still been able to cross the incipisphere in hours. Even if you aren’t going at a half-panicked shit-Jake’s-evil-dog-grandma-is-going-after-my-friends rate right now, the planet can’t have an orbital velocity greater than your current speed.

You check the map you’d been building in your shades, cross-referencing with one Hal--had created using mathematical calculations and what he could access through the game’s code. So far the scale seemed to be matching up, even if the debris field out beyond the Furthest Ring extends further than even he had mapped.

You carefully circumvent another set of asteroids, idly wondering how Derse doesn’t get hit when the reckoning begins and all these monsters get catapulted onto the unsuspecting planet to start off the end-game…

And then you see it. A large dark orb hovering in the shadows of a particularly large asteroid. Lights burn in thousands of windows, sending the rest of the complicated shapes into stark contrast. It almost almost feels like home.

But then, you notice that the castle is wrong.

Where there should have been no towers…there are eight.

You heart shudders to a stop. You suddenly shoot forward, streaking through the air in a flurry of reddish-pink. Around the planet, to the giant chain, to the moon.

Four.

Four dreamer towers, existing on a mass you remember being completely destroyed. The blast had torn through your body, still hungover from what-ever-the-hell kind of madness had infected your friends to turn them into candy colored versions of yourself. You could still feel a faint phantom tremor of fear shivering down your spine even remembering it. Remembering the pain and the utterly terrifying blank slate of death before the world had knit a new body around your torn soul and enacted its revenge in the form of puffy asshole pants.

Even getting beheaded twice hadn’t been that bad.

Derse’s moon had been eradicated. Your towers with it. Now…

Faint lights shine serenely from two of them. The other two are dark, and almost look to be in disrepair, walls crumbling and shit. But they are still there. You hesitate, hovering outside the window of the nearest one. In your head you know who you’ll find. Rose. Or Dave. Or. Hell.

Roxy.

There’s eight towers on the castle.

This…

It isn’t a void session.

You float closer to the window, hands resting on the sill as you work up the courage to peer inside. You don’t recognize the layout—you would know Roxy’s tower in a heartbeat--but you do recognize the small blonde head peeking out from beneath the covers. Not quite mussed enough to be you or Dave, and the dark saturated shade of purple everywhere pointed towards the last of your weird little ectofamily.

Rose Lalonde. Roxy’s Mom. Daughter. Whatever.

Seer of Light to-be.

Only.

You can only see a fraction of her beneath the blankets. But what you can see screams something is wrong. Frowning, you pull yourself into the window, gingerly setting down on the purple floor, the walls half filled with an unnerving scrawlings of a letter sequence. Once you cross the threshold you are thankful as fuck for your shades because you are nearly blinded and hundreds of sharp glass shards spring to life around you, creating a cacophony of light and sound that nearly has you staggering back out.

You end up clipping your hip on the edge of her bed instead. She shifts uneasily at the contact, the blankets pooling around her and falling off her shoulders.

It hurts. This close and you can feel the weak sense of a dying star flickering inside her. The purple and silver of a derse dreamer bleeds into red and gold, the moon melting into a mockery of Light’s sun. There are so many sharp edges scattered throughout the room, as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to a beautiful stained-glass window and then just left them there, heedless of unknowingly bare feet or thin dream-slipper.

It aches and it aches, and it makes you keenly away of the broken pieces of your own soul that having a body again had begun to dull. But at least you did that. It was your fault. Your aspect. You needed to live with your mistakes.

Rose didn’t deserve this. You hoped to hell she wasn’t sleepwalking yet, although the presence of the dream-writing on the walls didn’t allow that delusion to linger. If it was anything like the shards you found out in the debris field it would hurt. And she wasn’t even tied to the aspect of heart. She wouldn’t know why.

She shifts again, almost pushing herself up. You abscond back through the window and watch as she settles again.

You don’t want to wake her up. Not to that.

Exactly what that is, you don’t know. And you are actively trying not to touch the horrifying conclusion until you check the rest.

You dread the next tower. This one is a more red-shade of purple on the inside. You recognize the scrawlings on the wall, although you don’t know when Dave started working on that webcomic. Your Bro didn’t until he was in his teens. Another thing to ask about?

You haven’t been in his actual room, but it’s unmistakable. You feel a little guilty intruding on his space given the uh, relationship going on in the real world, but you had to know. You had to know so you could figure out how to fix it. The rooms are a reflection of the dreamer’s real self, both literally and metaphorically, and it can’t be good to have that self showing up metaphorically as hundreds of tiny pieces.

You’re prepared for it as you cross the threshold and the pieces burst to light, burning at you like tiny gouts of flame.

These are even more mangled than Rose’s, if that’s at all possible. They aren’t evenly distributed but thrown about, as if something had continued rampaging after the first initial blow, splintering already tiny shrapnel into infinitesimal fragments. You freeze in the doorway however, because you aren’t alone.

Not that you expected to be alone. It would be weirder if you were. But you had expected Dave to be in bed, not sitting on the edge of it, head in his hands, mumbling to himself.

Sleepwalking?

You couldn’t tell. He had his glasses on, which you knew from experience made it quite difficult to figure out if someone was awake or not. You’d had the Dersites thinking you were sleepwalking all over the place for months, just like Roxy.

Like Rose, his dream-jammies were all fucked up, blending into and out of his god-tier-jammies. The red and purple wasn’t quite as bizarre a combination as hers was, but the cape looked like it’d been sheered with a rusty knife or something. Glass pooled around his feet, which were lightly touching the ground at the edge of his bed. He didn’t so much as flinch or look at you or anything. Just continued to mumble.

There’s a representation of Lil’Cal sitting on the bed behind him, dressed in the usual Derse jammies, and oddly enough not the same shade of red-purple as the rest of the room. You’d think he’d be in your room. Did you even have a room? There were two more towers—yours and Roxy’s you hypothesize—but they were dark. Unused maybe? Your dreamself is all dead and shit, tied up in the god-like pjs you wear. But technically so was Dave and Rose’s. They are even still sporting their own divine sleepware. Sort of. Kind of?

It’s like something just…took the future and tried to smush it into a much smaller space and it just…broke shit.

You want to get closer to see if you could make out the words, but the shards weren’t just on the ground. They were floating, settled at various different heights and depths like some weird 3D windchime. It was almost like being back in the debris cloud again, and—

Wait. They felt like that cloud. Like the ones that almost, just almost reached out to your soul. That felt familiar and gave off heat in repelling waves. You reach out, brushing against the edge of the nearest red-green shard, a miniature ghost of star that burned at your raw wounds as you moved near.

It hurt . But wrapped up in that hurt was feelings. Sensations. All blurred together in ways you feel you should understand. Only they aren’t you. They are Dave and that’s why you can’t parse them. You don’t have that particular encryption key.

Does that mean...all those stars out there? Dim and dying and broken, abandoned in the fathomless darkness...were pieces of your friends?

You settle back on the windowsill, putting your back to the room in order to let the shards dim and give your eyes and your poor overwhelmed senses a break and consider the possible connection. You don’t like this. You don’t like this at all.

This wasn’t just a restarted pre-scratch session, like you’d assumed.

Like the letter said, Dave was the player. Not his Bro. Not you.

Yet.

You lean out the window, looking to the right.Toward Rose’s dimly lit tower.

Then left. To the darkened windows.

Two extra Derse dreamers.

Eight prototype towers on the Dersite Royal castle.

This was a new session. Or perhaps the two mashed together, with the things that don't fit getting thrown off into the abyss. You aren't sure which option you prefer.

The pit in your gut yawned wide at the implications.

How will you win the game when two of the players are long dead?

Or are you the players at all?

It’s going to be a long flight to Prospit. You have to see for yourself.

Notes:

Gonna take the weekend off for homework again! Have an early chapter today since I won't be home until late anyway!

And here we see a bit more about the state of the game :3c

Chapter 10: Dirk > Be Dream Self

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Only that’s a silly idea, because as you’ve previously explained, your dream self is dead. But your asshole puffy pants wearing self does eventually turn toward the remaining two towers. You are a little worried about what you’ll find. Roxy’s tower? And if it is Roxy, would she even look like your friend? You aren’t looking forward to coming face-to-face with her splinterself, just familiar enough to make it impossible to ignore, but otherwise too different to allow you to pretend everything would be okay.

And what about you?

If it is your tower, would it be a copy of your room? Or Bro’s? Would it be the bed in the corner and the horses on the wall, half finished robotic projects on every surface? Or would it be the living room with the futon and marionettes and shitty weapons and plush rumps?

You know which one you’d prefer. While the dream rooms generally reflected the real-life layouts of your physical space, was that really the meaning behind it? Couldn’t it just mean the space a dreamer felt most comfortable in? It’s not like any of you had anywhere else you ever wanted to be, content with your rooms and your computers and the connections and relationships you forged with others online, all of which felt more real than the reality you actually lived in.

You take one last glance inside, outside the tower is beyond the range necessary for the shards to be little more than glimmers, thank god, so you are only greeted by Dave’s distant silhouette. He hasn’t shifted at all, his mumbling joining the infiltrating sounds of the city to become a low hum in your ears. You wonder if you should try. Try to navigate the 3D maze of shards to put your hand on his shoulder, just as he’d done for you to pull you back from the medium just yesterday.

The thought lingers only for a moment. You push away from the tower, your fucked up game-self shedding any pretense of gravity and weight before becoming a small speck of red against a black sky. You just regard Derse, eyes traveling along the length of that thick metal chain and back toward the window studded homeworld of the carapacians. What would they think of all this? How would this … thing change their mythology? What did they make of the two dark towers?

Maybe you’d look into raiding a library to find out. The mythos of your planets had been very informative when it came to letting you know that your group weren’t the heroes. You were merely the nobles, in a holding pattern to quest and prepare for the true heroes to arrive.

You’ll need to find a way to steal one of Derse’s hundreds of gossip magazines if nothing else. They were an excellent source of information, and you’ll need to find out if anyone saw you tonight. Derse’s moon was a decent distance from the planet’s surface, but you hadn’t exactly been careful when you’d shot through the sky like a fuckin’ meteor to get here.

Without the Condesce sticking her nose into things, it isn’t likely the Dersite Royalty would be willing to pull another assassination stunt like they did during your session. It should be safe. Even those changes hadn’t ramped up until right before the game started. The Dersites would have no reason to be looking to the moon so soon.

You just need to not fuck things up.

It would be easy to just fly straight to the next set of dream-rooms, but the idea of being so exposed chafed at you, so you allow yourself to descend, just below the line of buildings that make up the surface of the moon. These two had been close together, sharing a facet of the polygonal moon. The others loomed in the distance. It’d probably take a carapacian several hours at least to cross the distance by foot.

You don’t see any Dersites on the streets below, and while the moon is covered by the same mass of towers and buildings and spiraling architecture as the main body of Derse, here the windows are dark and silent, a veritable ghost town in comparison to its living counterpart at the other end of the chain. Carapacians would occasionally pilgrimage to the towers of their players, you knew this from your reconnaissance, but none ever lived in the surrounding cityscape.

It was a ghost town, built to house their “legends”.

Even going at a less frantic space--you are not lagging because of the unease pooling in your gut--you soon find yourself hovering at the base of the nearest tower. While a shrine like complex is built around the tower, you know there’s not supposed to be an entryway from it to the tower itself. It was one of the defense mechanisms the game afforded you. No one should be able to reach the Dreamers aside from the Dreamers themselves, not unless prototyped with wings and even that shouldn’t be an issue until the game started .

Jack Noir and his cronies always seemed to be breaking that rule. You look down at your hands, remembering them covered in carapacian blood. A head on a pike, slammed down in front of the Dersite Royal palace as a reckless message.

In hindsight you wonder if that’s what set the Condesce off. If you’d thrown down the gloves like that, it was a fuckin’ billboard asking her to move into full on war.

Steeling yourself, you ascend, watching the cracked and pitted wall pass by before you. The purple stone is faded, almost grey in the cast off light from Derse itself, and where brick has crumbled away you can see a mass of chambers and stairs within. Where do those lead? There’s no door in the dream-rooms. No entry or exit aside from the cut-out windows. Why would the game construct a interior to a tower without exits?

Did they go down, down even further into the depths of the moon, where the quest slabs slept in a deep crypt? You don’t remember how the hell you got there before you ascended, too hungover from Jane’s hallucinogenic juju of a birthday present.

At last you reach the proper level, and it makes the unease in your chest tighten, and you lean in against the window sill. The color of the room, what you can see of it, is a deep dark red, fading into a black resulting from a lack of illumination. Even in the cast off light from Derse this place was shadowed, in part because this particular facet was angled a little further away from the planet it orbited than the previous one.

Light. You need light. Hands gripping crumbling stone you pull yourself in, landing smoothly on that plush red carpet, half expecting to be blinded and dreading that you won’t.

Nothing. No shards surge to life, but why would they? Your soul may be broken but you have all the shards. The ones that you are missing are gone forever, leaving you with that phantom ache that constantly reminds you of the bleeding edges, and always waiting for smug red text that never comes.

The room is just empty blackness, lurking just beyond the edge of the small window of cast off light that filters in from the space beyond. Mechanically you reach into your sylladex, withdrawing the hooded lantern from the “tomb raiding supplies” Groove Row. You hadn’t really had the chance to empty out and properly weaponize your tech-hop modus before things went pearshaped, but it worked out in your favor this time. The gear you’d stored when exploring the tombs on your planet was exceptionally useful right now. Too bad you couldn’t port the gas mask into the real world. You would enjoy being able to breathe again.

It appears in your hands, and you set it down on the floor, a deft twist of the top has the panels blocking the light folding back in on themselves, filling the room with a pure white light and beating back the shadows.

Nothing.

Just an empty room.

None of the shit that makes you...you.

You recognize this wallpaper, the clouds and the spiral shapes. Standing in the center of the space, spinning slowly, taking in the blank walls and blank floor, the utter absolute lack of anything personal or identifiable or well…

Anything.

Just broken stones littering the carpet, part of the ceiling had fallen in on itself, letting you just look up and stare into the darkness beyond. You’d known the Dreamer’s orb was taller than the room inside was. You’d never considered there was more above. You pick up the lantern and then pointedly ignore the suggestion of gravity, rising and bringing it with you towards the broken section of paneling.

It’s a crawlspace, not unlike the one above your living room. There it had been full of old projects and tools and other miscellaneous items. You’d kept it fairly clean, if not spotless, because you would often spend your free time going through those projects for additional parts for new ones, or looking for something to upgrade, especially while you were waiting for your Dreamself to find something, or a friend to reply to pesterchum or...well...anything.

Here...a veritable swarm of dust and cobwebs gently cover every visible surface, and even swirling into the air as your motion disturbs some of the resting particles and sends them dancing through the light you brought with you. Your lantern bobs as you pause there, just...floating in the forest of boxes and crates, the shadows rising and twisting like a horrific mockery of the space. Red clay faces frozen in dust covered grins peeking out of the darkness between crates. Crumbled up and decaying posters. The gleam of red metal getting caught in the lantern’s rays. You take note of a life boxed and packed away to be forgotten.

You close your eyes and shutter your lantern and shield your aching heart and leave.

Roxy’s at least doesn’t feel like a tomb. You allow yourself to recaptchalogue the lantern, fitting it into the correct Shade Column by finding the associated rhyme. Even if it’s lacking the soft light from within that was the primary illumination for the first two towers, to your eyes it’s filled with a tiny nebula of stars.

They are nowhere near as concentrated as you’ve encountered with the other two dreamers, just a handful of large twinkling translucent lights, hung in the air like it’s a deliberate new-age decorative crystals or faerie lights or some shit. Why the difference? Did she have less to lose? Or were they all out in the debris cloud? Brushing up against the edge of a pink and soft blue shard, faintly you can hear her laughter again. It doesn’t push you away like Dave and Rose’s had. It...doesn’t hurt. Only bringing with it a bittersweet ache, because it makes you think about how much you miss her.

Roxy was a sleepwalker. You’d arrived to find her bed rumpled and the room empty and you couldn’t bring yourself to be surprised. She was probably wandering that void of broken shards right now, waltzing through a dream that no one else can see. At least you are certain the room belongs to her. The shards were unmistakable, surrounding you with a feeling that screamed Roxy to whatever sense sixth sense that allowed you to feel the fragments. If you closed your eyes and settled yourself in the pile of wizard hatted cat plushies and other cute things in the corner of the room you could almost imagine it was your Roxy’s room. And all you had to do was follow her trail into the dark and you’d bring her back safe and sound.

But you don’t do that. You can’t. Because it isn’t just your Roxy, and you can’t escape that fact.

The towering shelves of thick heavy books, taking the place of her mutant cat collection, fine, you could see that. It doesn’t matter that the titles aren’t whimsical fantastical wizardly adventures like you’d expected, and instead dense and wordy covering a wide range of scientific topics. It doesn’t even matter that there’s a telescope in the corner, pointing at a wall where a window probably existed on earth. It doesn’t matter that her computer desk is nearly buried in dark purple tinted papers, covered with an indecipherable scrawl that screamed shorthand at you.

It did matter that every available surface, from desk to bookshelves to floors, were covered in bottles.

Some empty.

Some full.

Some are even broken, actual honest to god physically sharp glass buried in plush purple carpet fibers waiting for victims to wander by. Dark stains actually spread out from these points, darkening the already deep purple to almost black. Similar stains litter the walls at various points, leaving scores and rips in the familiar wallpaper where they’d obviously been thrown and smashed, glass sprayed across the floor in obvious shrapnel patterns and then never touched again, adding to the minefield that made up this room.

You knew she’d liked to experiment with the wine cellar her mother left her. She didn’t have the word Tipsy in her chumhandle for nothing. But the first time you’d seen her drunk was the day you all had to escape to the medium.

She’d sobered up. Thrown out all the alcohol in her house and then never touched a drop because it could have gotten Jane killed.

Guiltily you remember how you’d known this. Months later , while agonizing over keeping your promise to Hal and wallowing in your despair for having fucked up your relationship with Jake, you’d poured over his chatlogs. Trying vainly to find evidence that there was something there that you couldn’t find in yourself. A goodness that outweighed the fuck-up that was Dirk Strider.

What you’d found was Roxy pouring her heart out to Hal that day. To Hal. Not you. You’d been too happy at the time. Despite Hal’s fucked up manipulation and improvisation your plans had worked. You were free (you’d thought) of the Batterwitch.Your friends were safe. And Jake said yes.

Roxy cried to Hal because she had no one else to turn to. And you would have never known otherwise.

Fuck. Maybe he was the better Dirk Strider. He at least had the foresight and capacity to make time for your-- his too-- friends.

You take a breath. Counting down from ten. And then exhaling.

Hal was gone .

It didn’t matter now.

This was Roxy. You couldn’t deny it. But you didn’t try to squash the pain wriggling in your heart. This was a Roxy you’d never known.

Probably the Roxy that hated Bro’s guts.

Fuck. What were you going to do about that.

(In another world you let yourself stir as morning light starts to leak through the windows. A glance at the phone you’d left on the arm of the futon had you groaning. You had a plan . You needed to do that today.)

The sunlight from the apartment even penetrates as far as your gloomy mood in the medium, and you seat yourself quietly on Roxy’s bed, holding one of her random cute catplushies and turning it over in your hands.

(You force yourself up, mentally bitching at the way your back protested against the lumpy futon. You were sixteen . Not sixty. Even if you were being technical, this body was still only twenty fucking eight according to your birth certificate, and in better than peak physical condition it had no damn right to complain.)

Fingers tighten around the plush. Then you make a concentrated effort to loosen them, smoothing out the rumpled fur and cloth.

You wanted to check on Prospit.

You wanted to make sure Roxy was okay.

You wanted to get information from the Dersites.

(You pull a map up on the computer, one you’d found suitable last night. It’s a little past the opening hours, and it’s within walking distance. You can do this. Another website tab includes the fruit of your research on a related topic, a shopping list. Your stomach twists painfully upon itself at the thought of food. Reanimated dreamselves didn’t need food. You hadn’t been hungry in a longass time. You’d forgotten what it felt like.)

You...should stay here.

It hurts you to say that, fidgeting with the plush cat just to give this particular version of yourself something to do while you think. You want to keep moving. You dread to keep moving. You need to prove to yourself that they are actually gone.

But...you need to stay on Derse for a while.

You...want to see her. With your own eyes.

You used to have a knack for finding her, but even that connection is gone. You’ll just need to wait. She always came back. Eventually.

It’s...not like there’s a rush. You need to train yourself out of that mindset. You have time .

( You have time. The thought bubbles through the partition, and you take a moment to ease some of the tension out of your muscles, slowly, and deliberately going through a warm up kata in the small space you have between the futon and the television.

You can do this. The green bills are on the desk. The directions and list memorized and in your head. All you needed to do was go.)

Three years.

You have three years.

You have time.

Breathe.

The game hasn’t started yet.

It’s a whiplash, going from 200 miles per hour back to zero. From Endgame to before the game even fuckin’ begins. Every single little scrap of information is telling you there is nothing you can do. Except wait. And watch. And learn. And plan.

Rushed plans lead to fuck ups so sit your ass down Dirk Strider before you screw up something again. Do something useful and think.

You need to do something with your hands.

There’s goddamn glass on the floor.

Dirk > Clean this shit up.

(Keys in hand, you close and lock the door behind you. Away they go into your sylladex, creating a groove row for household shit and you make for the stairs.)

Surrounded by floating pieces of one of your best friends’ soul, you clean the shit up.

Notes:

Happy monday! Enjoy a double length chapter!

Chapter 11: Dirk > Be an Adult

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

It’s barely a quarter after 8, but the city is already awake. You hesitate, hovering with your hand over the push-handle on the glass door that is the only barrier between you and the outside. You’d known your apartment was once part of a complex like this. A tall tower of flats housing a dozen or more other families, none of which you’d seen (thankfully) while making your way down the stairs. But it was very different to witness it. To be able to go out the front door to find more than a small balcony overlooking the ocean vista. The view from there wasn’t even the best, almost always in shade regardless of what time of day it was thanks to the orientation of the apartment. There was a reason you always went to the roof instead.

But not here. Here you could go down, down, the dim stairwell (or the elevator but you had a lot of nervous energy pent up you needed to spend so stairs it was) down below the future’s sea level, down below the skyline. Down to the ground floor and this portal leading to another world.

Even this early you see a steady stream of ancient vehicles, large bulky ones, and smaller skinny ones, traveling either one way or another. Behind those windows were people . Real, live people. That knowledge made your nerves flutter.

Pull it together. You’ve faced down Drones with nothing more than your sword (which is in your strife specibus, of course. No way in hell you were going anywhere without it) you can handle a morning walk.

Yet…

You hesitate. Another, heavier car rumbles past the glass set door, the rumble of the engine rattling in your bones. It was truly a different experience here, barely feet away, than just perched on the edge of the roof, looking out over the city of metal and glass. One push. A couple steps. And you wouldn’t merely be looking down on an impossibility. You’d be part of one.

You take a breath, and your hand curls around the handle. Just one push.

One push.

The sweltering summer morning slams into your face like a wave, coating your tongue and throat with a stronger version of the sticky acid taste that you’d been trying to ignore in your apartment. The building’s climate control wilts under the onslaught, not that you’d noticed it being particularly effective before.

A couple steps.

The door swing shuts behind you.

You’d grown up watching movies. Some even set in Houston thanks to it being the setting for your Bro’s Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff series.

You’d wandered the streets of Derse for years, growing comfortable with the enclosed spaces and towering buildings, a big change from your single solitary apartment island located in an unbroken sea.

You’ve explored tombs that were darker and deeper and heavier, filled with the remains of your planet’s consorts.

You close your eyes against the growing light..

And then, you loosen your grip, tilting further into the you that pauses in the middle of picking up a piece of a broken bottle. The pink and calming blue-tinted darkness of Roxy’s dream-room bubbles around you. It almost seems as if her shards twinkle encouragement at you.

You ease back, taking another lungful of that heavy hot air, but you don’t replace the partition between your two selves. The darkness of Derse, while forebodinge, worked to dull the overwhelming bright alienness of the stirring city. You can almost pretend the towering buildings on either side of you were just another example of Derse’s unique purple architecture. And isn’t it ironic that you find comfort in carapacian architecture, over the premise of human handiwork?

It was just a few blocks. You’d chosen some place close for this first expedition. A faint pain in your palm informed you that you’d unconsciously clenched your fist. Which wasn’t a big deal. Except for the fact that you had a shard of glass in your gameself’s hand. You drop it, red blood staining the tinted material, but you don’t worry much further. The bleeding would stop.

You allow yourself to partially build up the partition. You don’t want your gameself doing anything more than just...zombie-ing out right now. Walking into a wall or out the window while you were focused on Earth would be embarrassing. But you don’t want to leave the medium entirely. Its presence was calming. Steadying. Giving you a degree of distance between yourself and the overwhelming circumstances.

Red text flashes across your mind. You know you’re going about this the wrong way. The smart thing would be a little at a time. Exposure therapy. Accustoming your irrational organic brain to the sensations and actions incrementally until they were less overwhelming.

Dissociating was probably not on the recommended tactics list. Much less literally inducing a dissociation using your fucked up unique state of existence.

Whatever. It worked.

You pull up the map in your mind, rotating it to match your current orientation. If you had your shades on earth, you could have actually done that, but you don’t. You start to walk down the pedestrian walkway, pointedly focusing on the double image covering the buildings. Occasionally a humanoid figure rises out of the dark overlay, drifting past you on the sidewalk and you do not look at them. It’s just another black carapaced Dersite. They didn’t seem to care enough to pay attention to you, two lone asteroids passing in the night, orbits just off enough to never intersect.

You gradually end up picking up the pace, letting the sounds of the city rise and fall around you. There’s almost a rhythm to it. A song working in steady crescendo between the sound of your feet against the concrete, the gentle purr of the motor vehicles, the electrical buzzing from the fading streetlights, the distant murmuring of music from within some of the storefronts. It works to drown you in itself, folding you and everything you are into the living organism that ecompasses a staggeringly large amounts of lives all of which stand apart and work together, most without ever considering the other.

If you think about how many lives, then your steps will stutter. Your world has always been so narrow, even with all of human history and digitized culture available at your fingertips. One apartment. Two penpals. Three friends.

It’s only the image you have burned in your mind that tells you when you’ve arrived at your destination. The Open sign and tinted glass bleeding through the faded and cracked brick of Roxy’s tower you’d been using as a shield. With only the barest hesitance you push it open, bell ringing in the shadows of a shop that eats through the illusion of the medium and you step inside.

The wash of climate-controlled air chills your face, such a huge difference from even the lobby of your apartment building, making your eyes water. The portal closes with a hiss of air. As if something had caught the door and eased it shut behind you instead of letting it fall. The city noise is muffled once more, held at bay by thick glass and soft, almost unintelligible music drifting over some sort of speaker system, giving the impression of a small respite in a storm of activity.

You don’t so much acknowledge the clerk’s chipper greeting as pretend you didn’t hear it, moving quickly between the rows of shelves where you think your quarry is waiting. This is a smallish store, and you find your hopes sinking because you had intended to get fresh shit. But at least there’s multiple rows full of canned shit that you can see from here.

You survived on canned shit. Your research said fresh was better, but canned shit was fine. And this was actually food so hell it was something. Your Bro had left you remarkably well stocked, despite the small caveat that it’d needed to survive from like 2020 till 2420 or whenever you arrived. So there’d been plenty of canned beans and instant noodles and orange soda stuffed into the storage compartments until you’d figured out how to add fresh meat to your diet.

Which you still needed to do. You’d been hoping for fish. You at least knew how to clean and prepare fish. You’d seen fish and meat and vegetables in food dispensaries in the movies. You just picked the wrong store.

Your stomach twisted painfully, you hadn’t been willing to eat anything at the apartment because Dave needed it. Getting some canned shit would tide you over for now. You’d deal with it later.

You pass a punch of bagged and boxed items, although you do slow down when your brain recognizes chips from popular media. It seems like there’s a million different flavors, and how the hell are you going to handle flavors? You don’t even know what fucking cheddar tastes like, and that’s something you see on several brightly colored bags, much less something like...sweet chili and sour cream? What the hell were those?

What was ranch?

You shake your head in bewilderment, and move to continue on to the much smaller section of canned items in the back of the store. Except as you pass a particular bag--the sweet chili ones of all things--your hand snaps out and grabs one. For Science. Or hell, Dave might enjoy trying it.

A tin of something called “mandarin oranges” catches your eye, and you wish they had actual fresh fruit. You’d always wondered what real oranges tasted like. You loved orange soda. Jane had laughed at you when you mentioned wanting to try them because of that. You never got a good answer out of her about why. It was logical that orange soda would taste like oranges.

...right?

Your stomach clenches again. It had been patient over the last 24 hours or so, but the proximity of actual satisfaction was getting to you. The last time you’d actually been hungry was-- fuck-- before the game? After you’d gotten yourself killed it’d been reanimated dream-self city. And it was a good thing dreamselves didn’t need to eat, otherwise they would have starved to death of Derse long before you ever had a chance to wake up.

You’d tried of course. Out of habit if nothing else. You’d had some cans of beans left over. Then you’d run out and forgotten you needed to eat period. Your planet was dead, like all the others. No fish in the Medium, and alchemized beans tasted like, well, tasteless mush so hell with that.

You snag the can of beans you found yourself staring at, green beans. Not quite the ones your Bro got you. Were they good for growing children? Hell if you knew. You may have read some articles on nutrition last night but you knew you had no idea what you were doing. Maybe you should get a couple different kinds so you didn’t have to go out for a couple days.

...but you needed to carry all this shit…

You don’t have a bag or anything so you just balance the can in the crook of your arm, soon it is joined by more of its peers of the black and “chili” variety, as well as a few more vegetables you don’t recognize because hell why not. The internet said children needed vegetables. And fruit.

You consider something called ‘fruit cups’, looking over the small list of ingredients. You’ve never had pears. Or Cherries. Or peaches. And you don’t know how Dave feels about them either. But again, you needed fruit and they come in a pack of six so onto the precarious pile it goes.

You do this a few more times, just grabbing things you vaguely recognize as things people ate in the movies. Bread? Sure there’s a loaf. Popcorn? You have a microwave so why not. You’re intrigued, because the white stuff you remember from the movies are very different from actual corn (which you also snagged some cans of and that shit is yellow in the picture.)

Your haul distinctly lacks protein (aside from beans.) That shit might be a problem. You go back and scan the non-canned shit, finding some nuts (you think nuts were under that category) and add those to the pile as well.

You are running out of arm-space by the time you make it to the back of the store where they keep all the drinks in some sort of refrigeration unit. You consider leaving without them. You have enough. You have water. You don’t really have much more room to carry shit.

Running your eyes over the colorful labels and oddly shaped bottles, you zero in on a familiar translucent gold. You remember seeing that color almost shining in the light thrown from the fridge as Dave retreated from the kitchen. That first night.

Apple juice, the label reads. And next to it--

Orange juice.

You’re torn. One bright and sunny and orange, calling to every shred of your childhood fantasies that remained. And the other, gold gleaming guiltily in the night.

You’ve got time.

You free a hand to open the cool-storage, even colder air blasting into your face. You somehow managed to leverage the six-pack of juice bottles over your arm, and let the door shut with a quiet squelch.

“Goodness I’d wondered if you’d gotten lost back here! D’ya need help there ‘hon? You should have grabbed a basket!”

You stiffen, and then glance back towards the aisles. The clerk hovers near the edge of the shelves, well outside your personal bubble. But Roxy’s tower surges back around you in your minute panic, painting her concerned face in shadows.

Your jaw works, and you manage, “I think I’m done. Thank you.”

“Oh alright. If you’re sure, hon. Let’s get these up to the register so I can get’cha checked out.”

Even her voice sounds more distant now. You follow the carapacian back towards the front of the store, depositing the items where she indicates. It ends up looking like a lot more when you can get a better look at it. Some sort of machine beeps as she commences the “check out” process, sometimes turning each item before flashing it across a glass plane set into the counter. A scanner of some sort?

“So hon, did you find everything you needed?”

“...ah.” This would be a perfect chance to ask. “...no actually. Where would I find...fresh fish? And vegetables and the like?”

She hums, “New to th’ area I’m guessing? This looks like a first supply run. Boss doesn’t like me talkin’ up the competition but there’s just some things folk can’t get at a place like this. It isn’t the biggest place ever, but if ya take th’ Eastwood bus to Polk street there’s a Kroger. That’d be th’ easiest one. Th’ others are all on th’ otha side of town and ya probably don’wanna deal with Downtown Traffic more’n ya need to. You want the real fresh stuff ya’ll need to find a market. They’re usually open on th’ weekends but I don’t know of any around here.”

You know what a bus is, and the idea of being crammed into one of those metal tin cans has you completely blue-screening for a good moment, only coming back when she finishes scanning the items with a “Ya got that, hon?”

You don’t trust your voice so you just nod. She rattles off a price and you use the excuse to focus exclusively on the green notes in your pocket. You didn’t bring them all. That would be stupid. But doing the math in your head (they are all denominations of 20s) you think you have enough. You hand over four notes, and she nods, gesturing for you to take the bags she’d helpfully piled on the counter for you.

You toss the change haphazardly back into one of the bags when she hands it back to you, and then respond to her cheerful, “Have a good day! Do come back if ya need anythin’!” with a distracted nod before you may your way to the door. The bags are heavy on your arms--but not too heavy. Just heavy enough to be a distraction--as you linger in the doorway. The sun is creeping higher and there’s more people on the pedestrian walkway beside the dark pavement and you just...blank.You manage to set yourself in a grim line back towards the apartment before the medium rushes forward and nearly obscures everything.

The grocery haul is a phantom weight on your forearms even here, but you just let your gameself shake, red gloved hands digging your shades into your face. You moved while you’d been distracted by earth and find yourself ensconced in the pile of soft cat-wizard plushies. Out in the peripheral of your vision you try to shut out the sights and sounds of the city that were no longer just abstract replacements for the gulls and waves but actual physical people and vehicles and it’s almost a crowd. Even here you know how close some of them come and it puts you on edge, making your skin physically crawl.

For the longest time, it was just You. Then it became You and Roxy. And then You, Roxy, and your penpals. Eventually that circle expanded to Hal, Jane, and Jake. Even not counting the Cherubs, who you’d never actually met, that left the five of you alone for over half a year. No consorts to run into or do quests for or shit. Just pesterchum chats and robots and tomb raiding with Jake and worrying about your relationship and worrying about Jane because she was making friends with the enemy and then worrying about when the heroes would arrive and quietly freaking out about that…

And then all hell broke loose and you’d just been alone. Running from the Condesce or running back to her when you’d been punted out of the battlefield. And you’d barely had time to process the fact that your Allocated FIVE people had become like 13 and you’d been swept off with Terezi and Dave to plan--more like brood-- under Krypton-filled clouds.

The point being... how the hell to people.

You thought you had this shit covered. Evidently not.

Even with only a sliver of your focus remaining on earth, your personal space bubble shivers as pedestrians--some well dressed and others looking like they belonged in one of your Bro’s movies--began to trickle out of buildings and into offices and onto the previously mostly empty sidewalks. They don’t crowd you--yet, but you’ve seen midday cities in movies and they terrify the living shit out of you.

Exactly like the bus, the idea of being hemmed in by bodies, with no room to run, no room to even draw your damn sword in defense unless you wanted to literally strike down people who are just going about their goddamn business…

You are catapulted back to Earth as the world blurs and you find yourself standing in the doorway of your apartment complex, clutching the shitty plastic bags worth of junk you can barely even call groceries as if it was life or death. You recognized a panicked series of flashsteps in an instant, and you hate yourself for falling back on that.

How the hell are you going to survive if you can’t walk down the fucking street?

You think about the clerk’s directions. You think about the fact that even if you have a bunch of canned shit you are going to need real food and you owe Dave fresh shit after everything you’ve put him through…

But even considering that, you can’t find yourself to step off the small rectangle of concrete and wade back out. You’re tense and this close to pulling out your unbreakable katana, and one pindrop away from absconding back to the medium again.

Not Today.

Time to go put away this shit and try and then maybe brood on the roof or something.

Notes:

Next chapter might be Dave. I'm not positive. Either that or a brief time skip.

Poor Dirk doesn't have the healthiest coping mechanisms either.

Chapter 12: Dave > Push the Boundary

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

It’s been 2 days, 16 hours, 56 minutes and counting since the Incident. The original Incident, mind. Not the time when you decided your Bro had gone mad. That’s only been a little over 24 hrs, although you can’t be bothered to find the exact timer amongst the noisy clocks lurking in your head.

You really don’t know how to feel. So you don’t. You stay in your room whenever possible, waking when the sun comes up, sleeping when the sun goes down, and you do fuck all with the rest of your day. Some talking with John, but even when you know he’s home, John’s not around a lot what with having to deal with overprotective parental overlords and an escalating prank war. Both of which pulled him away from the computer fairly often. Besides, you weren’t some clingy asshole. You were able to give your best bro space.

For the most part you end up getting lost in the bowels of the internet, watching shitty bootlegged cartoons, writing ironic deconstructions of them on your blog, all while doodling absently at the corner of some scrap paper. You’re amassing quite the collection of poorly drawn faces, although like the cartoons, these appeal to you because they look so terrible. Maybe you should consider drawing more, you’re getting bored with the blog.

You thought you would have been ecstatic to have a full day yourself. No training. No mysteriously moving puppets. Just you and time and chill. No need to think about Bro at all.

Of course now you can’t stop thinking about him unless you are up to your eyeballs in music or sleeping. And even that didn’t work because you’re pretty sure you even dreamed about him last night.

...that wasn’t so bad though. Your subconscious must have been up to something, processing some sort of shit, because all you remember was the fact that he looked ridiculous. The actual fuzzy memory had long since faded, much to your disappointment. Pencil scratching at the paper again, and you glance down, finding a figure emerging below the face you’d tentatively named Jeff. It’s little more than a distorted figure right now but the half cape and Bro’s glasses make you snicker. You fold up that paper and tuck it into a shoebox you keep under your desk, with the rest of the doodles you want to keep for some reason or another.

You click the eraser on your pencil, tapping it against the plane of your desk. It settles into a steady rhythm, matching up unconsciously with the ticking in your head. You just aren’t feeling another shitty cartoon right now. Your homework is done, sitting in a messy pile you shoved to the corner of your desk when you started doodling. So is the next week’s just for the hell of it. One of the hundreds of timers is ticking down to the day when it’s due--3 days 7 hours 47 minutes and counting--but until Bro asks about it you aren’t going to say anything.

You click through your tabs aimlessly, the sounds falling in line with the simultaneous tapping from your other hand. You find yourself just scrolling through your aggregation program, glancing through your alerts, but you find it hard to focus on any of them. Game announcements. Comments on your blogs. Some troll sniffing around your beatcloud account and leaving garbled keysmashes on one of your recent experimental tracks.

...huh. The football team won last night.

That makes you pause in your scrolling. Not because you are an especially avid fan--all sports end up blurring together to you--but you set up the alerts anyway.

Because if the local team wins…

Aw hell yeah half off pizza.

You never turn down pizza. It would be a cardinal sin.

You wonder what flavor Bro’s going to pick this time. Probably something disgusting like anchovy. You’ll need to pick it off somewhere he can’t see then. He just got food yesterday (and that had been a bizarre thing to find in the cupboard when going for the last bit of peanut butter. What the hell are you supposed to do with beans? Nuke them? You like the fruit cups though, even if they are kiddy stuff. You haven’t checked to see what he stuffed in the fridge this time.) the other day, but it was weird junk, and even he wouldn’t turn down half off pizza.

It had all the food groups. Cheap. AND it gave you leftovers.

He’d have to be nuts to not get it.

...Right?

You don’t need to glance at the clock to know it’s around 6pm, and the pencil stills its tapping, and you use both hands to pull up the pizza delivery website. Bro’s password is child’s play, and soon you’ve got the order history up, snooping to see what he decided on…

And then are aghast to find out there’s no activity for today.

This is ridiculous.

Throwing away training--

Throwing away the only thing you did together.

--is one thing. The low level of panic you’ve been trying to avoid all day boils over into petty anger. You will not tolerate this neglect.

You pick everything you want, even pineapple and shit, and defiantly hit the “order now” button using the stored payment details.

You grab your phone, pulling up the messenger function.

i ordered pizza

You weren’t asking. You throw it away without waiting for a response, back towards the bed as if it burned your hand

Bro knew you knew all his passwords--because he used the same one for literally everything. You had an understanding about that shit. If you don’t get an ok, you aren’t allowed to spend money. You normally follow that rule.

But you don’t really care about that right now. You almost hope it’ll make him retaliate finally. Just to ease the tension that’s been your constant companion.

23 minutes flat later, you hear the phone buzz. You ignore it.

46 minutes and counting later you hear the doorbell ring.

49 minutes there’s a knock on your door.

Just one.

You hadn’t even locked it. Bro could easily slam it open and stomp in and drag you to the roof if he wanted to. He wouldn’t even be angry. Just ice cold.

But no. There’s just a single, soft knock. And then just light footsteps easing down the hall, back toward the living room. You are listening so hard you can hear the moment he steps from the carpet in the hallway and onto the linoleum in the kitchen.

Muscles taut, you rise, walking over to the bed. Your phone is blinking from the notification.

Just a single word.

Ok.

“Aaagh!” You fall face-forward into the pillow, doing your best to smother yourself. Your fingers bury themselves into your hair, grabbing fistfuls and pulling until the pain in your scalp makes your eyes water. It’ll smudge your shades. You surface for air and pull them off. The shape makes you angrier. They were his.

Hissing you fling them away from you.

You don’t care.

What.

The.

Hell.

Just get up moron . You’re wasting pizza.

You don’t understand the anger driving you. You don’t understand it at all.

The idea of moving makes you feel physically sick, the idea of going out there and eating...

You bury your face under the pillow again, and drown in the sound of clocks ticking.

1 hour 23 minutes and 4, 5, 6 seconds later, a knock sounds again. Once.

It drags you back to reality. You curl tighter.

Another knock.

And then...the footsteps again

3 minutes, 34, 35, 36

Your phone vibrates. You extract your head from the pillow. Bleary eyes finding the blinking notification in the dying light.

The phone unlocks to the same conversation. Only under the Ok is another message.

Are you okay in there Dave?

The burning anger gives way to cold, exhausted apathy.

no

Do you need anything?

You just.

Stare.

7 minutes, 45, 46, 47.

I put the pizza in the fridge in case you get hungry later.

56, 57, 58

It was a good idea.

Thank you.

When you finally force yourself up, you find the shades lying broken on the floor. Lenses cracked and plastic snapped where they’d smashed up against the wall.

Holding the pieces in your hands.

What the hell is wrong with him?

What the hell is wrong with you?

You just…

Want it to stop.

But the clock keeps ticking.

Notes:

Unfortunately I've had a lot of deadlines pop up this week! So I can't promise another update tomorrow. If I manage it, then it should be another, semi-short Dave where the pair of them *actually* have a conversation. If not, then I'll have another chapter for you on Monday :)

Chapter 13: Dave > Stop Taking This Shit

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Two days pass, bring the total time since the Incident up to 4 days, 15 hours, 21 minutes and counting.

You haven’t been out of your room more than twenty minutes total since the pizza incident. Camped out like some survivor in an apocalyptic hellscape, fearing death or infection if you stepped one pinky toe into the space outside your established safe zone. You used the last of your stashed food last night, having been unable to restock with the junk Bro bought last time, and here 12 hours later the gnawing in your gut tries to push you to breech that forbidden territory. The living room yawns wide before you, and you don’t don’t want go, so you don’t and park yourself in front of the computer and drown out your stomach’s complaints using enough heart thumping sound to even muffle the clocks in your head.

Bro has texted you. A few times. As if that single message from you was the lever that cracked open the vent, allowing the occasional trickle of thought to be thrown your way.

You’d ignored it the first few times. Wondering if he’d finally snap and come get you if you did. But he didn’t. You’d even heard those light footsteps stop in front of your door. Making you tense with…something. Anticipation? Fear? Were you finally pushing things too far?

But…nothing. Just a frustrated sigh and some quiet mumble you can’t make out through your door.

Then your phone vibrated. And you scrabbled to check it.

Just let me know you’re alive in there, lil’bro.

The bitter laugh that escapes was apparently proof enough, because those footsteps ease back down the hall, leaving you alone in your safehouse that was feeling more and more like a prison with every damn minute that passed.

After that, he checked on you again some time later. You sent a curt one word response. He let it be, and time just flowed on. The cycle continued to repeat every few hours, with nothing changing, for two days now. The last time you sulked like this Bro had gotten fed up with it within hours, and you’d gotten a particularly demanding training session that night, with a frustrated order to not do it again.

If you don’t want me around anymore just tell me, damn it. The thought was likely irrational, but you weren’t feeling very rational right now. You channel all your energy into John, keeping up a veneer of normality for him, because it’s at least some sliver of normal for you too.

But eventually John leaves for a home-cooked dinner and you are so hungry even your conflicted pride throws in the towel.

You aren’t going to talk to him. Nope. If he wants to talk to you he can do it his own goddamn self you want nothing to do with this bullshit. You steel yourself and tunnel vision on the kitchen because the kitchen and quieting the monster in your gut is the only thing that matters.

You don’t even bother to go for a plate—since there aren’t any in the sink you couldn’t reach them anyway, blasted cleaning—and just go straight for the fridge. Pizza’s in the fridge. No way Bro would have eaten it all yet, he ate like a freaking bird. Besides, in your petulance you’d ordered a large because you could.

As expected, you grab a piece of your unholy creation, noting that about a third of the pie was gone, even with the pineapple which you know Bro doesn’t understand why you always put on it. What’s left will still last you for several more days yet.

Assuming you don’t hole yourself up again and just let yourself starve. Which is honestly looking more likely because every moment you are out in the open the space between your shoulder blades itches, like eyes are watching you, following you, waiting for you to drop your guard and then some other shit is going to go wrong and tilt your world even farther—

Something else in the fridge grabs at the rug of paranoia and upends it, sending you mentally fumbling over yourself like a goddamn clown who missed his landing and rolled in a squawking heap of flailing limbs all to the sounds of an audience’s raucous laughter.

There, sitting on the otherwise empty shelf above the pizza box, is a six pack of impossibility.

The deep amber color shines in the fridge’s harsh yellow light, sending it sparkling like some long lost nectar of the gods.

You knew there wasn’t any more AJ. You’d taken the last one the night of the Incident and then hated yourself for it. Because that meant you’d need to ask Bro for more. And he didn’t often fulfill requests like that unless you proved yourself or some shit. Scored a hit on him in training, got an above acceptable grade on your progress report, yada yada, incentivized progress bullshit. You usually ration that shit for when you’re stressed out.

He hated the stuff. Always got that nasty orange crap. Why the hell was there apple juice?

Unconsciously your small fingers hook around the neck of the nearest bottle and you pull it out. Eyeing the seal on the cap. Nope. No tampering. It didn’t look like a cruel prank. Just an innocent bottle of AJ waiting to be consumed and bestow its sweet, cooled deliciousness upon an expectant throat.

You glance up, dragging your— unprotected— eyes back towards your Bro’s half of the room. He was hunched in the corner. Not paying you so much as a whit of attention. He’s got his noise canceling headphones on, knees pulled up to his chest in what looked to be the least comfortable position a person could assume while balancing in a computer chair. Still no shades on, so you can see he’s intent on whatever is playing on the screen. Probably a porno or something. Maybe he’s researching for the next smuppet special.

You look from him, then down to the apple juice, and then feel the tight knot in your chest loosen just a smidge.

Instead of immediately absconding to your room, instead you drag your cold pizza slice and confusing as hell beverage, over to the futon. Lil’Cal is seated on the end, so you give the dude a fist bump before nibbling on the pizza, curiously trying to figure out what the video is from over Bro’s shoulder. You revise your original guess—there’s far too many clothes involved for it to be a porno unless it’s a particularly slow burn. The actors look vaguely familiar, so you amuse yourself by trying to place them in a particular series, but you don’t actually have a eureka moment until the end of the episode rolls by and the credits begin to play. You nearly choke on your pizza.

Bro’s high end noise canceling headphones means he’s oblivious to your imminent death, so you grab your phone and text at him instead.

*DUDE* are you watching soaps???

It takes him a moment to notice the notification, you can see the phone blinking steadily where it’s sitting on the desk, stiffening like a deer caught in the headlights when he finally does. Hands unfurl where they’d been clasped around his knees and he pulls the phone closer, and you’re amused by the bewildered frown and how his eyebrows scrunch and it’s just so weird it makes you want to die laughing.

The horrible twisted up feeling is lost in the sheer ridiculousness of the situation. You just laugh and laugh, until you’re honest to God crying and you hurt, but for once it’s a goddamn good hurt and you’re wheezing as you send another text.

like seriously General Hospital??? that’s so far beyond irony its circled right around to utterly insane you do know thats aimed towards lonely housewives right

Bro whirls around in his computer chair, giving you a glare that you’re fairly certain is supposed to be one of the ones that usually made you want to shit your pants, but combined with the flush creeping up his neck and into his face it just sends you giggling again.

His expression changes again, and he abruptly puts his back to you, hunching over his desk. You stiffen, that was weird, wait no what are you doing, you need to get out of here--

And then the phone you’ve been clutching like a lifeline buzzes again, and you realize he was just typing you a reply.

It’s just for research.

Is he…

Sulking?

research right and im a naive two year old waiting for santa to arrive

daddy is it christmas already???

can i get a pony???

You don’t know what the hell is going on.

No. We don’t have space for a pony.

but bro i want a pony

This is ridiculous. Your fingers tap out another reply. It isn’t your patented red text, but you just find you can’t stop yourself.

i promise i will feed and water and exercise it

take it out for walks in the heart of houston itll be great come on what could go wrong

just a small white pony nothing big cutesy as hell

maybe even tattoo a heart on its rump if im doing this im going all out

Your Bro lets out a noisy exhale in exasperation but you can’t see him. You’ve flopped back onto the futon, phone held above you. The vibration is instantaneous, and another text bubble appears below yours.

Maybe next year.

my birthday is near christmas

Dave.

what just saying it would work as a two for one

I’m right here you realize, we don’t need to text.

well yeah but this is working isnt it???

...I guess it is.

Your body aches from the laughing fit, but you almost feel like you are floating. It’s the most relaxed you’ve felt in...fuck you don’t know.

seriously though bro soaps???

You can hear him tapping another response, the clicking of the keys reaching your ears before the text bubble sets off another vibration.

I told you, research. I’m flipping through a few shows, analyzing the modern day image of relationships and how they form and are maintained.

bro you realize soaps are more like garbage scripted idealized unbelievable relationships that are supposed to distract unhappy housewives from their miserable existence right

god i cant believe youre watching that garbage unironically

even ironically would be beyond the capacity of my poor sponge of a brain

this is the kind of shit id expect from karkaaaaffdsdffsd

The phone slips out of suddenly nerveless fingers, smacking you dead in the face and eliciting a sharp yelp from you. That stings .

Dave?”

You’re rubbing the growing welt on your face when the light from the window is cut off. Bro towers above you, a stark shadow that cuts through your blurry vision like a knife and has you sitting up abruptly, and scrambling back towards the other end of the futon and curling in on yourself, “I’m okay, I’m okay--”

“Let me see it.”

You stiffen but nod. He kneels down next to the futon, putting him at your eye level. Something about this causes the faintest easing of tension, even if it meant the tight expression was right in your face. The loose feeling that had been bouying you through your rambles is shredded by the proximity, but you are proud of yourself that you don’t flinch when he, shockingly gently, prods the tender spot on your face.

“You might end up with a bruise from that,” Bro says after a moment, pulling back, “But it does not seem like it hit your eye.”

“‘M fine.” You mumble, suddenly intensely aware of the fact that you don’t have your shades . You have nothing acting as a shield between you and him, even if a flimsy one.

As if he could read your thoughts, he asks, “What happened to your shades?”

“...broke.” You manage to get out, pounding against the ice that frosted over everything . You hate it. You hate it so much. You take a breathe and slam into it. “It was just--I was being dumb that’s all. Got angry, threw them, they snapped. No big deal. I just need, I dunno, tape or something.”

It would make you look like a nerd trying to be cool, but hell that’s what john believed you were anyway. He’d probably get a kick out of it if you managed to get a picture to him.

“I have a pair if you want them.” He says after a moment. You give him a skeptical look.

“I thought you broke yours.”

Why aren’t you wearing them?

You haven’t seen him in a proper set of shades since the Incident.

Granted you’d been avoiding the hell out of him until he ambushed you with AJ. But it’s still hella weird.

Bro shrugs his tiny twitch of a shoulder. “They will work until we can buy you a new pair, if you want them.”

The silence is heavy.

And then you just nod.

“Okay.” He doesn’t say anything more, just climbs to his feet and crosses the living room. Bro’s puppet chest was pushed up against the wall near the speaker that was usually Lil’Cal’s preferred resting spot, and after a moment’s hesitation he popped it open. The pair of glasses are extracted quickly, and soon he’s handing the pointed shades over to you, “Here.”

There’s nothing different about them. It’s the same style as your old ones, because Bro literally just gave you his old shades when they got too “old” for him. But it feels weird this time, to be putting them on knowing these actually were Bro’s. Not just a handme down when he got something better.

But you do, and the dark filter comforts you because it puts some space between you and the too damn bright world.

“Better?”

“Yeah.”

He nods, and then returns to the computer. You stare down at your phone. The traitorous piece of technology. The fall had managed to send that garbled keysmash of a message.  You can’t even figure out what you’d been about to say. Do you know know anyone who enjoyed that shit? Maybe one of your chatroom acquaintances or something.

You stare intently at the phone. Then up at bro. Then back down at the phone. Questions bubbling up within you. Questions that have been itching at you for days. Questions you’d tried to ignore.

The moment passes and you lower the phone, reaching out and snagging the apple juice instead, cracking the seal and just letting that sweet scent surround you. You glance around Lil’Cal and find Bro has replaced the headphones, although you manage a weak smile when you notice he hasn’t started another episode yet, just scrolling through his aggregator.

Once the juice is gone, you slink out of the room. You know he noticed. You’d seen those burnt orange eyes following you as you entered the hallway. The ease of presence was gone, and you find yourself oddly angry at yourself. At the phone. At Bro even.

You’d... enjoyed that.

The exchange stares back at you, white on black, burning itself into your brain. Even once safely back in your room, you keep reading over those last few lines.

The phone vibrates. It’s a new message, slotting itself into a new bubble right below the last.

Let me know if there’s anything I can do, okay? Just because I’m shit up a creek doesn’t mean you have to be.

It’s barely even 7 in the evening and you’re so emotionally exhausted you just want to sleep.

You hesitate.

You aren’t used to talking to him like this. You train. You spar. You prank (or be pranked.) You occasionally play video games and even more rarely sit quietly in the hallway and listen while he’s working on one of his less salacious projects. Sometimes if you’ve caught the right one you’d just lean your head back and close your eyes and listen to the music pulsing through the cheap plaster.

It’s just what you two do.

training tomorrow???

You finally hit send.

The seconds pound in your head as you wait for a response. It’s 9 minutes and 53 seconds before your phone vibrates again.

Do you want to?

The clock keeps ticking.One after another after another and the key presses match up with each squealing shink of a metal gear fitting into place.

yeah

You know Bro best on the other end of the sword.

cant lose the conditioning you know???

after four days im probably hella rusty

gotta get back on the wagon

It’s another tense 5 minutes and 15 seconds before you get a response.

We’ll see how it looks in the morning.

The unsaid rejection stings, but you managed to shoot back an ok.

Then you just toss the damn thing over your shoulder and onto the bed. You don’t want to know what kind of unholy ramble your fingers are itching to embark on after that. The ugly feelings dig deep into your brain, burrowing beneath rational thought and seethe.

Instead of dealing with that little gremlin , you settle for musical therapy instead.

Notes:

Back to Dirk next chapter ^^ But hey! At least they talked! This was one of those chapters that took forever for me to figure out how to start, but once it got rolling it wrote itself.

You guys don't understand how much all your feedback means to me! I love hearing your thoughts and being able to ramble back <3 It's so nice.

Chapter 14: Dirk > ???

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Roxy’s tower has become a sanctuary of sorts for you.

You’ve cleaned up the glass and the empty bottles, although the lack of cleaning supplies means you are at a loss when it comes to fixing the stains on the wall and carpet. But again, dream room, it was probably more metaphorical shit you couldn’t really fix anyway, even if it spurred a nagging sense of unease every time your gaze brushed over one.

You haven’t been idle over these last couple days, sneaking out by the dersite “night” and poking around the giant city-planet, amassing an array of literature that was making a comfortable little stack next to your pile of cat-wizard plushes.

Really, night was too generous. The city had its lights on perpetually, and even the faint brightening of the world when it faced skaia was missing. You just happened to notice that carapacian activity in the streets seemed to ebb during the hours in which the moon faced the void beyond the ring and decided it must be some sort of ingrained cultural habit or something, given all your research was pointing towards things in this iteration of the game session having always been this way.

The gossip rags would have been crowing to high heavens about the deaths of two of the Prospitian heroes, and all you’ve seen so far was petty little stories about sabotaging the mail between the two kingdoms, and the ongoing long-term preparations for war. Prospit’s moon is but a footnote, other than in an acknowledgement that both sets of dreamers would be responsible for bringing back the light.

Does Prospit have two dark towers as well?

You squint at a grainy photo in one of the magazines, trying to make out the moon, distant in the sky. But the black and white image doesn’t do much to show the illumination levels, especially since two of the towers would be on another facet, if it mirrored your own moon. You’ve actually never been to Prospit before so you can only make informed hypotheses.

You’ve been through dozens of these. Analyzing all the photos to the best of your ability. Even scanning all images which had the moon in the background through a decently sophisticated photo enhancement software loaded onto your shades--you’re never surprised by the tools buried in the code of your shades. You’d always let your auto-responder have the initiative in that area--turned up nothing more than just confirmation that there were four towers. Which you’d known already.

With an irritated sigh you just toss the thin poorly bound magazine to the side, grabbing a slightly thicker volume you’d been systematically going through before you’d had to set it down and breathe for a while.

It was just a child’s history book, written in alien, but familiar carapacian characters. You don’t even need the gift of gab to understand them, you’ve been reading them since you were old enough to access what remained of the planetary network back at home. The passage you’d left dog-eared is just waiting and begging you to return.

The Rogue and the Lost Prince.

Just a fairy tale to tell young pawns who looked up at the moon and ask why two of the towers were burnt out, but one that sang to you. Of truth wrapped in allegory. A short but tragic tale of a dead prince and a lost rogue. A tower left empty and forgotten, until the heart returns. When a star drifts across the empty sky, it’s just the rogue wandering the void, searching for a shattered dream.

You know it’s just an allegory. But the idea that Roxy might be looking for— Bro—you gives you hope that maybe a meeting won’t go as terribly as you feared. Maybe Dave’s Bro was wrong.

Maybe she won’t hate you.

At least you don’t need to worry about having been seen if they are used to that story. The gossip magazines occasionally make note of her coming and goings, and you notice with unease that her wanderings have lengthened substantially since you weren’t here to lead her home. Your Roxy was only ever gone for a couple days before you dragged her sleepy head back to the tower. This Roxy was last seen two weeks ago.

You try not to let the dead prince part worry you. You obviously aren’t dead. All eight of you would need to join the game in order to light all eight towers and fulfill the first prophecy. You weren’t dead— although Bro might be— so Roxy had to be okay.

By that logic Jake and Jane had to be okay too but you can’t let yourself think that. Not yet. Not without proof. Why won’t the dersites so much as mention the Prospit dreamers? If one is a witch and one is a page then you’d know. But they don’t so the doubt is still there, and you refuse to let yourself get crushed again.

You feel along the edge of the pages with your searching thumb, finding two additional sections you’d marked in your reading, The Blinded Seer, The Shattered Knight. Damn Dersite lore was dark. Befitting your screwed-up family, you suppose.

Maybe it was fate, the result of being tied to the forces of darkness in this rip off of a battle for good and evil. Even before this whole mess, it was the Derse Dreamers who got the short end of the stick. Dave’s fucked up childhood, you and Roxy trapped in a post-apocalyptic water-flooded wasteland. You don’t know Rose’s story, but you’re sure something went wrong there. It would fit the pattern.

Jake’s Grandma was assassinated and left him to grow up on an island filled with murderous monsters. Jane was groomed and mind-controlled all her life by an evil space alien a thought whispered to you And they are prospit dreamers.

Okay, so maybe you’re being a bit melodramatic on the fated to fuck-uppery part. You don’t know shit about their grandparents’ stories either, so maybe you all deserve a piece of the fucked up pie.

You close the book with a sigh and sink back into the pile, staring up at the ceiling—or rather the blue and pink shards that spun idly by above you, overlain with the gentle moonlight and sounds of the sleeping city in another world. You didn’t bother to pretend to sleep this time, it’s easy to portion off attention for more stationary projects like researching. If one was through books and the other through shitty modern popular culture in an attempt to get some sort of grasp on how the hell to adult, they were easily separated. And honestly it was rather interesting to note the departures from the past you’d previously studied. Even before Betty Crocker renounced her disguise on Re-Branding Day, her corporate tendrils had a long reach and had warped much of the popular media in this era.

It was just...research.

Research .

You feel a flush creeping up your neck as you remember that interaction. It had been so… odd to see Dave laughing so freely, even if it was at your expense. It made you think of the bright smile and smooth cascade of words you’d watched over and over again on grainy television interviews, of your Bro during the start of his career, before Re-Branding Day and the subversive political commentary and underground rebellion. Back when he was just following a passion for creation and ironic humor, and just wanted so desperately to let the rest of the world in the joke.

You’d seen the later years in the too scrawny, tired, resigned teenager you’d met in the land of tombs and krypton. You’d seen someone broken and reluctantly reforged, trapped in a fate he didn’t want but was going to have to finish anyway since no one else had, as he put it, bullshit predestined welsh powers and a fancy sword. But earlier… for just that moment, when you’d turned around to look at your splinter’s little brother, you’d seen that same carefree smile.

Fuck. Guess you needed to figure out how to make him laugh more.  

Giving him your splinterself’s shades had been...an impulse decision. But it felt right. You knew eventually he would find his own style somehow--the aviators he sported in your past were eerily reminiscent of his future in the same way his Bro matched yours. Your fingers linger on the reinforced frames resting on your nose, well aware that the weight on your gameself is what allowed your wakingself to brush off the loss so easily. Some things were universal.

But for now, if that weight and barrier worked to fill the aching feeling of something missing , that’s all that mattered.

The computer screen bleeds into your vision as the two worlds blur together, although its more you aren’t holding them apart as stringently as you were previously. You have your Splinterself’s Legal Shit binder open on the desk, phone, sitting quietly on the edge, no notifications.

The spatial difference between essentially lounging in a pile of cat-wizards, and sitting ram-rod straight in a computer chair isn’t lost on you, but it’s easily compartmentalized and stored away. You’re getting pretty good at this shit since you actually have to care about potential narcoleptic zombie-ism. It’s a struggle not to tunnel-vision on things.

Not that it mattered right now, the time showing on the taskbar of your computer announced it to be too late to be considered evening anymore. Dave should be in bed if he actually wanted a training session in the morning. You could space out all you want.

You aren’t sure what you’re going to do about that yet, but it’s a bridge you’ll cross when you get there. If he wants one, now that you both aren’t one-step away from exhaustion, you don’t really see why not. It’s not like he won’t benefit from the conditioning in the future, and you can’t afford to let your skills rust either, and need to figure out how to apply them to a whole new set of reach and speed variables.

Kids in this age took self-defense classes didn’t they? You vaguely remember seeing some scenes set in such a setting during your research. It was just a plus that you didn’t need to pay someone else to teach them.

That thought makes you sigh and brings your thoughts back to the Legal Shit in front of you, leaving a corner of your mind working through the carapacian histories, although right now it’s just some fluff pieces about derse itself.

You eventually identified these particular pages as bank statements and managed to track down the corresponding web-app bookmarks in this clusterfuck of an organizational system. You still haven’t found shit when it comes to legal identification cards or payment methods, barring the wad of cash in the trunk.

How the hell did your splinterself operate all this shit? It gives you a headache just trying to decipher it all. There’s several different sources of income, going to multiple accounts, and you know fuckall about them aside from extremely unhelpful notes attached to the transactions. The largest is obviously the puppet porn website--you’d found it in the aggregator fairly quickly and spent an...interesting few hours exploring. You admire the dedication to the craft, but you aren’t sure you quite share the enthusiasm.

So many ventures, some HUGE and others barely a trickle. He had his fingers in a lot of pies. It makes you wonder what spurred this level of entrepreneurship. The more you dig into the records, the more of a pattern you see. A burning drive to always have a contingency, should one of the projects not pan out, and many didn’t. A giant spiral of safety nets for safety nets.

You think back to the photo packed carefully in a lockbox, and what the words on the back meant.

All originating from a child who had nothing, who reached and aggressively planned and built to help him survive in a world where money actually mattered, so he would never have to worry about having nothing again.

You have a hard time seeing money as anything more than an abstraction. A relic of a dead civilization. To him, wouldn’t it have been everything? You’d never been at risk of getting evicted, because landlords didn’t exist. Utilities? Whatever. Food? Bro had you covered, and eventually you were able to make due yourself.

But this world was different.

You had to get in contact with the banks somehow and figure out how to access this shit. Even if the essentials are taken care of, you’re gonna need parts. You promised Dave a new pair of shades. And you highly doubt that wad of cash was supposed to last three years. After having seen the grocery cost and then extrapolating it out over that length of time, even if you’d overpaid that was not going to cover it forever.

The letter said his Agent would take care of shit for Dave. You have no idea who the hell the agent is, aside from a number in his--your--phone, nor are you willing to contact them and ask. As far as the world was concerned, Dirk Strider is still alive.

Even if it’s not the proper one. It’ll have to make do.

You are in the process of checking the faq for one of the bank websites--Compass Bank--when you hear something. The gentle singing of Roxy’s shards has been a steady companion to you, even from across worlds, and something’s off. Your waking self stops mid scroll as the world bleeds shadowed purple, blue and pink, your gameself stiffening with tension. The shards sparkle on the edge of your senses, sharp and cutting where they’ve always been welcoming. Not repulsing you like Dave’s but just enough that it puts you on edge, a warning, a shout, a plea--

A shadow hovers in the window. Tall and willowy, the derse-dreamer jammies bleeding into dark blue, and far, far too small and clinging to curves she hadn’t had the chance to grow into before.

But it’s the dark rimmed eyes that get you. Open and hard, glittering like faceted stones in the agitated blue and pink light thrown by the tattered pieces of her soul.

“Y-you--”

The words hiss out through clenched teeth and you spring to your feet, books forgotten. The hostility ringing around you, echoed and amplified by the fear radiating off the shards. The cold depths of oblivion, washing down and through and around you. The stained purple wallpaper around the window begins to bleed to black.

She was awake.

" G-gyet ooout."  She slurs, staggering forward, almost tripping on the crumbling stone window sill despite the fact that she was floating.  Hand outstretched and reaching toward you, crooked beckoning. The soul shards weep around her, the previously peaceful colors pulsating a deep dark blue, almost black as she neared, "Nyot heeere. I caan't--cat--not aginican't"

You refuse to react. You refuse to show her how much your heart is breaking behind your mask. You just stand there, a marble statue in pink and red, surrounded by ridiculous wizard cats. You raise your head, locking eyes with her, stiff and cool and completely and utterly blank.

"Roxy..."

She staggers toward you, swaying on her feet as they touch down on the stained carpet. You are still taller than she is, you note distantly, but not by much. Her fists clench and come up as if to sock you in the face, but she stumbles forward, and you catch her on reflex. 

She's a weight in your arms and she trembles, her fist digging into your clothes.

"Diirk. Please." She whispers, "gyet out. gyet out. gyretoutofmyhead"

The shards surrounding you both scream in anguish--

And then there's a terrible, terrible pain. A sword through your chest, blood dripping in rivulets down the familiar curve of the blade. Your blade. The unbreakable katana.

This--

doesn't make sense.

Roxy's eyes are bloodshot and blurred with tears, and she lets you fall.

In another world, your 28 year old body stiffens, teeters, and you fall.

Distantly, a muffled clock tolls.

A pendulum swings.

Bottles smash around you and all you can hear is Roxy crying.

And.

Then.

Again.

You die.

Notes:

...whelp.

Would you...believe me if I say that *wasn't* supposed to happen?

Seriously. He was supposed to abscond when she got there. Then decided he didn't want to.

Chapter 15: Dirk > Revive

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

You wake with an instinctive gasp.

The tolling of the clock reverberates in your head, sending tremors through your body as your death is judged and the answer reverberates in your bones.

Just.

The taste of copper fills your mouth and you push yourself onto you side, coughing to clear the liquid from your lungs.

Just.

You may not need to breathe, but damn the remnant of your lizard brain still flips the fuck out when you can’t.

Just.

Everything is numb. You feel cut off. The ambient background music you’ve grown accustomed to is utterly silent , leaving you alone and echoing in your head. No distant city sounds. No hum of Roxy’s shards. No—

Roxy.

Blood trailing in rivulets down a blade, tip protruding from your chest.

If you’d ever eaten anything in this body, you’d be throwing up right now with how twisted up that memory leaves you. Instead you just retch quietly, shoulders trembling.

You can’t see anything.  The tower is black and empty.

If the answer is Just...why are you still here?

You know without being able to tell the color. It’s yours. Deep red and empty, with a boxed up crypt above your head.

You curl up upon yourself. You don’t know how you got here. You don’t care.

You can still hear her crying, in your head. It echoes in the silence, growing louder and louder.

What did you do?

What did he do?

Fuck.

The Just judgement reverberates through your soul. Scarring it with the utter knowledge that whatever it was, it’s your responsibility.

You hurt in a way you aren’t sure how to quantify. It isn’t even the blade wound—if you were even conscious again that roadblock would have healed to nothing more than a phantom memory and a bloodstain that would eventually fade from the self-cleaning and mending nature of the god jammies.

You just... You’re so aware of your edges , all sharp and freshly broken. You want to escape to the dubious shelter of your Splinterself, and wrap the edges up in the physicality of a body, but you…

You can’t.

Shit.” The hiss of air escapes and you reach for that corner of yourself, the burning star of contaminated Houston air and responsibility and shit—

And you just find another broken edge, small red shards bleed around you, where before there was none. Shattered by the death you’d somehow managed to fucking escape.

Fuck.

Not good. Not good. Not good.

Shitshitshit.

You don’t think he’d forgive you if he had to find your body on the floor again. Not after that night. Fuck. This time he can’t even drag you back out of the Medium to chew you out.

You push yourself to your feet. Managing a set of stuttering steps towards the window. You weren’t hurt. It was all in your head. Pull your goddamn self together, Dirk. Despite the judgement, you aren’t dead.

Roxy…

Goddamn you need to figure out what happened between you two before you even go near her again if she’s going to stab you.

A Rogue and a Dead Prince.

Fuck. You needed to steal that book again. This puts the whole fuckin’ story in a new light.

And what about Dave? Is he going to stumble across his Bro’s corpse in the morning? You don’t think so--the disperate selves were separate and injuries never transferred. Did it break off into another splinter and you’ll just have to trust it’ll be fine? Fuck you don’t know. You were just starting to get the hang of shit and had decided to try and make him laugh more and then something like this happens?

You found the splinter in the debris cloud. A splinter is a piece of a whole. If the body isn’t goddamn dead, could you find another one? There were thousands of them out there, and of the ones you passed only that one had been near enough to your soul to latch on to you.

Fuck it, you had to try. You couldn’t just leave Dave like that.

You freeze as something blocks your way although you have no idea where the hell you are going to go. You immediately flash to another figure, to Roxy’s dark rimmed eyes and ugly snarl. But no. No, that’s wrong, because it’s not darkening the window, in fact doing the exact opposite, sending the whole portal glowing with a pulsing red and green light, like some kind of fucked up Christmas tree.

You…can’t…tell what it is. It’s trying to say something. You know it is. It’s moving agitatedly, gesturing, the voice so goddamn distorted, and the shape only vaguely humanoid. The only thing you can make out for sure is a splotch of darker coloring in the luminescent mass, around where a head would be on a person.

There’s no tail, and you’ve only ever seen that kind of strobelight effect on the hyperactive healer sprite that had bounced in and out of the battle healing you, but…

“…Hal?”

You uncurl your raw and aching edges and let them stretch, brushing up against the essence of the thing and…

…No. No it isn’t Hal. Its heat and metal and fur and feathers and a faint desperate hope.

There’s an orange flash in the corner of your shades. Pesterchum.

You navigate the display to find a waiting friend request.

turntechGodhead [TG] wants to add you as a friend.

Notes:

Short but weeeeeell... *waves* Shit happened

Honestly I have more but the pacing felt off, so it needs reworking. This feels like a good place to stop for now :3c

Chapter 16: Dirk > Accept the Inevitable

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

You don’t have time for this.

You have to get to Dave, somehow.

You can’t be wasting time with this...thing.

It was obviously some sort of game construct, you’d almost say a sprite. You hadn’t seen anything else in game that exhibited the ...quite so artificial nature of the sprites. Every other agent, every other structure, had a sense of cohesion to it. A sense of belonging within the environment it was created in. Not kernel sprites.

Glowing, floating, incorporeal unless they wished otherwise...they were obviously a part of the game.

As such they had access to the game interface in a way none except players did.

It shouldn’t surprise you that this one could access pesterchum. Even Hal had continued to communicate through your own chumhandle for a time after being prototyped into ARquiusprite. It had just been a convenient means of long-distance communication.

And that username…

It wasn’t one of your friends. You’ve never seen that particular handle before. Did that actually matter? Did any of this actually matter? What the hell was a sprite doing here???

The sprite is growing impatient. It’s distorted voice bubbles up again, cascading around you in a manner you can clearly tell is annoyed. It gestures at you with wide waving sweeps, and the friend request refreshes.

turntechGodhead [TG] wants to add you as a friend.

Fine. Whatever. You jab the accept button, but fix the sprite a stern glare. “Fine. But we talk while I fly.”

You need to do something anyway. You don’t even fucking know if it’ll work. Raring off beyond the furthest ring, plunging headfirst into the nebulae where you first found the connection to your splinterself. You make to move around the pulsating light, but it shudders in agitation, puffing itself up to fill the entire window. You think you can see details for a moment. A claw. A coat. Some weird pattern where the emblem on a dreamer’s jammies would be. But they don’t stay long, lost in the shifting color. Bits and flecks of data are drifting off the edges of the mass.

The notification flashes again, a window pulling up in the screen of your shades, overlaying the shifting colored light

turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

turntechGodhead [TG]: thank frog i can still access this
turntechGodhead [TG]: dont you dare go anywhere
turntechGodhead [TG]: stop
turntechGodhead [TG]: desist

The colors pulsed irregularly, agitatedly with each new message, throwing the entire interior of the tower bathing in cast off green and orange light.

turntechGodhead [TG]: im calling a moratorium on all shenanigans right meow
turntechGodhead [TG]: whatever it is you think you n33d to do can wait

Your blood chills at the text color. That’s AR’s color. He’d changed to that very same bright red in an attempt to differentiate himself from your orange. You feel yourself stiffen, going very still, tense and coiled. Sprites were semi-corporeal. You could just elbow the thing out of the way and be out the window.

You could.

But something stopped you.

Something had dragged you out of Roxy’s tower.

It was a revival mechanic. Not a respawn mechanic.

turntechGodhead [TG]: you were litterally dead less than five minutes ago just take a second to chill ok
turntechGodhead [TG]: granted i never made god tier but it is supposed to take so long? i was legit worrying youd run out of lives and i didnt follow psycho mom around for days just to watch you die in furont of me again no that way is trauma city and all parts of me have had enough of that
turntechGodhead [TG]: no more dead broirails please and thank mew
turntechGodhead [TG]: ugh im just not f33line this furmatting give me a sec

“Look--sprite--” You grope for words while there’s a lull in the wave of text. It was so bizarre that you just accepted the fact that this one threw around cat puns whenever it found the opportunity. Prototyping did weird shit, it’d gotten an AI obsessed with MILK and MUSCLES of all things. “What do you want? I--need to go--

turntechGodhead B33 < there thats not so clawful
turntechGodhead B33 < you dont need to go anywhere except with me im not letting you out of my sight while youre bl33ding like that
It floats forward and reaches out a--limb--you want to say it’s probably supposed to be an arm--running the edge, tingling with some sort of electrical hum, across the space directly to your left.

And you shiver as it comes into contact with the handful of small red shards that was all that remained of the splinter that had connected you to your splinterself, singing brightly at you.

The heat that blossomed out from the touch was so familiar, although laced through with a cheerful playfulness that is so utterly bizarre.

That shocks you cold. “You can see those?”

turntechGodhead B33 < duh
turntechGodhead B33 < rogue of heart here
turntechGodhead B33 < or part of me was
turntechGodhead B33 < sprites lose our classpects except the most passive support shit but like theres a billion of those things out in the rim its like a crash course in sensory heart pawers

ANOTHER rogue?

“I’m fine.” You draw your fists to your sides, taking a step back into the tower to get the splinters out of direct range. Without the contact they fade back into invisibility, although knowing they are actually there instead of some abstraction of your heart powers makes you feel really uneasy. Those were pieces of your soul that it’d just touched. You want to bundle them up and shove them back inside yourself so no one can touch them again.

turntechGodhead B33 < i dunno the more shards i s33 the more worried i get just look at psycho mom over there

You let out a rough, frustrated sigh at the words getting jumbled up in your head as you try to argue back, and just decide to say fuck it and switch to text instead. It worked with Dave after all.

timaeusTestified [TT]: What happened with Roxy was something completely none of your business. She’s not psycho.
turntechGodhead B33 < i dont know man stabbing you in the back in cold blood right in front of me s33ms pretty psycho
turntechGodhead B33 < ive been following her for days just a peaceful meandering sl33pwalk then bam flipped her lid the moment she saw you
turntechGodhead B33 < those shards are bad mews
timaeusTestified [TT]: It was justified.

You knew it was all in your head but you could still hear those bells tolling. Undisputeable proof that Dirk Strider deserved that death. Hell if you think about it it had killed the bit of you that was directly responsible. That splinter, your link to the body of the man who’d hurt her, had been completely and utterly destroyed.

turntechGodhead B33 < bullshit you were reading in a pile ofwizard cats
turntechGodhead B33 < thats the least threatening thing ive s33n anyone do

You accepted the responsibility.

timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m not going to argue about this. It’s pointless.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m leaving.

You close the chat window but the sprite surges forward, grabbing your arm with something that had a surprising amount of force behind it considering it looked like a vaguely humanoid patch of fog. You could even see through it if you looked too hard at it.

turntechGodhead B33 < slow your pawsitively furreaky deja vu inducing self down and listen to me instead of the yowling tomcats in your head
turntechGodhead B33 < i can help fix your splinter shit before it gets worse

You break the grip easily, the strength only lasting the few moments it took the messages to send. Your arm passes through the almost ghostly presence, sending that same electrified energy dancing up the skin of your arm, the sense of fur and feathers pressing hard against your perception.

But you don’t move to leave. You doubt a random game construct would be able to help with your problem, considering you can’t even tell if it knows what the problem is in the first place.

Restraining yourself, you reopen the chat client.

timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m listening.
turntechGodhead B33 < rogue of heart remember?
turntechGodhead B33 < stealing soul shit and sharing it around
turntechGodhead B33 < sound applickable to the pawblem?
timaeusTestified [TT]: turntechGodhead B33 < sprites lose our classpects except the most passive support shit
turntechGodhead B33 < i know what i said
turntechGodhead B33 < and i also know itll work
turntechGodhead B33 < at least one part of it will
turntechGodhead B33 < gotta love tempurral inevitability
timaeusTestified [TT]:: So what is this brilliant plan you’ve been dancing around?
turntechGodhead B33 < shit oops oh yeah
turntechGodhead B33 < i need you to rip the sprite out of me
timaeusTestified [TT]: What.
turntechGodhead B33 < use your princey soul powers to claw out the kernel sprite so the game can get off my tail
turntechGodhead B33 < its been treating me like a scratching post since everything crashed because i said “hell no i like myself now choke on a furball” and it threw a tantrum
turntechGodhead B33 < we n33d me to not be a sprite to access magic soul shit to mess with the splinters
turntechGodhead B33 < and id rather not be scrubbed out of existence because the game wants its toy back
turntechGodhead B33 < sw33t and simple reprocikitty

You can follow the logic that a rogue of heart might be useful in hunting down another splinter. Your class is focused on destruction--yourself, others, shit didn’t matter as long as you destroyed. Rogue was a much more support based class. You know you missed a lot of shit involving Roxy figuring out her powers, but you distinctly recall it described as stealing the nothing from things to make them something. Creation in its own roundabout way. But…

timaeusTestified [TT]: You realize this will kill you right? Sprites are made of either objects or dead things. It’s the sprite’s framework that revives you in the first place!
turntechGodhead B33 < dead or doomed things
turntechGodhead B33 < impurrtant techniclawlity
timaeusTestified [TT]: If--and that is assuming I can, it’s not like I have practice with this shit--I remove the coding do you even have a physical form left?
turntechGodhead B33 < im dead if i do nothing bro at least this gives me the oppurrtunity to give paradox space a haughty flick in the face when it fails to kill me off again B3

The sprite’s completely incoherent appearance and glitched out communication attempts is likely the result of the game’s attempt to wipe the prototyping. Everyone else was all screwed up, bits and pieces of who they are and who they were all slapdashed together, why not the goddamn sprites too? Remove the code holding the thing together and it’ll just all fall apart.

Whatever. If this shit goes wrong you can’t say you didn’t try to argue. You shrug and let the words fall in the silence, staring any anything other than the bobbing cloud of orange and green, “It's your choice.”

The sprite lets out a pleased churrip-like sound and you don’t even need to glance at the chat window to hear the “purrrfect” echoed in the text.

You’re missing something. You know you are. You have all the pieces right there at your fingertips but they don’t want to fall into place. You know players can be prototyped. Shit, that crazy healer sprite looked like someone shoved Rose into a wizard cat costume and let her loose in a rave. The first stage of your sprite had been some random dead troll from another game. Given your session only had one heart player and that was you, this one had to be another troll. Or even two given it mentioned time shit.

Or...

The green and orange text begins to completely fill the chat window and you just stare at it. There’s a cadence to the messages that nags at you, pulling on a thread of recollection from a very important conversation. That, and the familiar heat radiating out from the weakened soul wrapped within the sprite code.

You really do hate stupid surprises.

Fur and feathers and heat and metal. All wrapped up in a desperate hope.

If this isn’t Dave’s 99% sure he’s dead sprite you’d eat your cape, hood and all.

Notes:

Oh boy this was a pain and a HALF to format. You can see how the spacing is hella weird on davepeta's lines but i don't care any more I'm done just take iiiiiit.

I think it took me almost an hour to get this into a postable format.

For anyone wondering why davepeta is using Dave's chumhandle still it's because they are literally hijacking his client right now. One of the pros to sharing memories with a person is you know all their passwords.

Ya'll are getting this chapter on a friday mostly because I couldn't update yesterday. But after that it's business as usual, no posts till Tuesday. I'm unfortunately going to be internetless over the holiday, but I'll try to have something for ya'll when I get home o7

EDIT: AFTER AN ADDITIONAL HOUR I THINK IT'S ALL FIXED *collapses*

Chapter 17: Dirk > Descend

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Was this a bad idea?

You aren’t sure.

You follow the sprite down, down, down. Out of the tower, down some stairs into the interior of the buildings surrounding your tower’s base. You couldn’t help but glance up, at the other tower with its dark windows and blue and pink shards and you suppress a shiver.

You want to ask ‘where are we going?’ but you don’t because you know the answer.

It was only logical when performing a task that could potentially cost someone their life, player or not.

Instead you just follow the glowing cloud as he drifted ahead of you, leading the way. The further down you go the faster the colors shift from orange to green to orange to green, sending lights dancing against the purple brick. As off putting as the constant shifting colors could be,you are rather thankful for it. Without them you would be nearly blind, only broken by the occasional dimly burning electrical panels which were spread few and far between along the passages. You suspect there are actually more panels filling those empty spaces, or there would be if anyone bothered to maintain the place. It’s in just as bad, or worse, shape as your towers. Crumbling stone and uneven steps are a dime a dozen, and if you hadn’t decided to skim the ground instead of walk you might have ended up with a broken neck on one of the many landings that briefly break up the passageways.

At least such a death would have only been temporary, but after your last brush with the game’s conditional mortality system the idea makes you feel the slightest bit ill.

timeausTestified [TT]: Do you really think it’ll work? Even if you were a player you aren’t one for this session.

Text was comforting. It prevented words from breaking up the heavy silence that lay over the passageway. No footsteps. No words.Just the ever present hum of energy radiating outward from the sprite.

turntechGodhead: B33 < actually i have no clue about that
turntechGodhead: B33 < ive been pawing through what i can access of the player data and everything im finding meow says it doesnt actually matter
turntechGodhead: B33 < im still coded as a player even if the whole sentient walkthrough thing overrides that template
turntechGodhead: B33 < tecniclawlity it should be a simple catter of remeoving the sprite template and holding the ball of yarn together long enough for the things to revert to the default
turntechGodhead: B33 < i could be from the myoon as long as the slab meowtches my aspect itll be ascension city
turntechGodhead: B33 < and thats assuming it does kill me it myight not
timeausTestified [TT]: Fair enough.
timeausTestified [TT]: You’re lucky you know the way. I died down here and I still don’t remember how it happened.
turntechGodhead: B33 < furtune aint got nothin to do with it bro
turntechGodhead: B33 < just taking advantage of my pawsome arsenal of sprite pawers while i gottem
turntechGodhead: B33 < theres maps buried in the servers most people just dont know how to access them.
timeausTestified [TT]: Sounds pretty useful.
turntechGodhead: B33 < purrhaps B3c

Down. Down. Down.

The hallway opens up, but the stairs remain barely wide enough for a person. You look down, noting the yawning darkness in the giant pit, with the staircase spiraling around the edge. There are actual working torches set into the wall, but a misplaced step here and youd have worse than a broken neck to worry about. It looks like a one-way plunge into a misty darkness.

turntechGodhead: B33 < hey bro

The sprite pauses, the strobe effect of the cast off light nearly vibrates with some sort of pent up energy. You pause too, letting your feet settle on the ground for the first time since you entered the stairwell. You quirk an eyebrow behind your shades, but the corresponding head tilt must have sold the acknowledgement because it wasn’t long before another message made your chat window flash.

turntechGodhead: B33 < nowhere to go but down B3

Then the sprite suddenly shoots off the pathway, hanging in the air above the pit for a moment. The formless fog shifts, arms--no feathers, remember? It’s probably wings--stretch away from the main mass, and then they tuck in close, and he dives. The fog shivers

The joyous shriek is audible even through the distortion, and reverberates in the large shaft, taking the colored light with it and leaving you doused in the comparatively dull yellow torch lights as a result.

What the hell. Why not.

He’s asking for it.

The force of your jump propels you into space, the wind of your passing ringing in your ears,tugging at your cape and hood. Gravity becomes nothing more than an afterthought and you kick into gear. You chase that distant orange and green light, plunging down, and down, and down.

The sprite was fast. But you’ve crossed the incipisphere in hours.

You blow past him with a smirk and small gesture, tossing your own message into the ring.

timeausTestified [TT]: Keep up now.
turntechGodhead: B33 < ch33tah! Using your god-pawers arent fair
timeausTestified [TT]: Says the one who took off before the race even started.
turntechGodhead: B33 < hey i gave mew plenty of notice its not my purroblem if youre slow on the uptake

You can’t help it. The rushing air whipping past you, the thrum of competition, the thrill of the adrenaline racing through your veins in an utterly harmless bit of fun.

You just let yourself enjoy the moment and fall, speeding through several hundred layers of spiral staircases and branching passageways. You don’t let yourself get too far away from the sprite, but you don’t let him close either, keeping the distance just enough to let him think hes gaining on you.

You may be going to the crypt.You may be leading the sprite to his death. But damn it you needed a moment like this. Like yesterday with Dave, just talking and laughing, a moment when you can let go.

Quite literally.

But the shaft  never levels off. Instead four shadows appear in the distance, suspended over a deep void. The stairs have long since vanished, and again you wonder how the hell you’d managed to get yourself here in the first place. Your dreamself could fly, you guess, and you’d lost your physical body at that point even if you’d gotten tired of wandering around in the derse dreamer outfit once you had the ability to upgrade your gear. But what about Jane and Jake? They’d ended up on their slabs on Prospit, and both of them had their dream selves assassinated even before the game started.

Another weird thing you could chalk up to cherub juju shit, you guess. Just throw it in the box with the hangover from hell along with an unholy sugar rush that drove your friends insane and dragged your stoic ass along for the ride.

Colored chains peek out of the darkness, purple, like the planet, strung up like some weird macabre version of holiday decorations.

In another session there’d been two. In another session you’d sat on the edge of a heart marked slab, clinging to your various communication devices and your friends in an attempt to navigate the clusterfuck of a situation you guys had ended up in.

In another session you’d died here.

But it wasn’t even the memories that stopped you cold in midflight, allowing the sprite to shoot past you before he realized what you’d done. There’s four slabs now. Maroon. Blue. Red. Yellow. Heart. Void. Time. Light. But they weren’t entirely empty.

Your seizure inducing companion squawks and pulls up beside you, the sensation of heat and fur and feathers surrounding you almost like a blanket, blocking out the small part of you that feels like it should be screaming, but instead just looks on helplessly

turntechGodhead: B33 < aw shit i was worried about this pawsibility

There was a body on one of the slabs. A large dark shape eclipsing the pink heart and making your stomach churn.

They are clad entirely in derse dreamer garb. Purple silks and puffy shoulders and slippers and all. But you recognize the upswept hair, the pointed shades, the build. It is the one you’d been trying to get used to in the mirror.

It’s him. Arrayed as if sleeping, with an all too familiar sword through the chest. It’s the one in your sylladex. The one you’d last seen protruding from your own. Dried blood crusted the slab surrounding him, darkened to a rust brown that stood out sharply against the cracked maroon stone.

You never understood that. Why do dreamselves bleed? They don’t need to eat, and yet they can. They don’t need to sleep, and yet they can. They don’t need to breathe , and yet you’ve often felt like you were suffocating.

A dream self is just another game construct. A second life for the player should they die prematurely. And yet…

The game took such pains to make it feel real.

timaeusTestified [TT]: How did the sword get here?
turntechGodhead: B33 < i s33 youve got your priorikitties straight
timaeusTestified [TT]: I just want to know how many copies of my katana are lying around, that’s all.
timaeusTestified [TT]: It cheapens the brand if it’s such a common item.
turntechGodhead: B33 < right and s33ing another dead dirk skewered on a quest bed in front of you isnt a purroblem at all
timaeusTestified [TT]: It’s...it just makes sense, is all. All the others had a dreamself merged with their godtier outfits. I don’t, so it had to be somewhere.

You just hadn’t expected it to be dead. But that sword was the one that pierced your chest, and the bells had sounded. Just.

It had killed you, striking at her true target using you as an intermediary. You wonder if you’d never gone to Roxy’s tower. If you’d found your way down here. Would this dreamer still have been dreaming?

turntechGodhead: B33 <
turntechGodhead: B33 < you really arent him huh

You tear your eyes away from the body, just an empty container. It had even less value than the splinter that had nestled itself into your soul. That had at least let you bridge the gap between the game and earth. This...was just a cast off. Probably intended to have been smashed together with you in an effort to make you fill that Dirk’s place.

timaeusTestified [TT]: Did you hope I was?
turntechGodhead: B33 < ...no i knew
turntechGodhead: B33 < i watched him die
turntechGodhead: B33 < I dont know if you noticed but not even the game can bring back the dead without very specific circumstances and most of those arent purrmenant
turntechGodhead: B33 < youre to him as I am to Dave at this point we started from the same blueprint and then hisstory and our choices dictated who we came to be
turntechGodhead: B33 < i wouldnt wish you to be stuffed in the template of a dead man any more than I envy psychomom her existence
turntechGodhead: B33 < mangled almost beyond recognition
timaeusTestified [TT]: It’s still Roxy in there. I know it.

turntechGodhead: B33 < the shards in the tower were more your roxy than psycho mom was dont kit yourself

You say nothing because he’s right and you hate yourself for it.

turntechGodhead: B33 < come on i need you to move him
turntechGodhead: B33 < i dont think i can stay corporal long enough right meow to do it myself
timaeusTestified [TT]: There’s another option, isn’t there?

You gesture to to the other three floating slabs. Blue, gold, and red. Void, Light, and Time.

Time.

turntechGodhead: B33 < theres already a knight of time running around bro
turntechGodhead: B33 < we n33d the rogue

It takes even less work than you expect. The moment you drift down to touch the body it shatters. A release of heat and metal, similar but quite the same to the feel you’ve gotten off Dave’s shards--and more recently, his sprite--plush fabric and mirrored glass. The red sparks of data dissolves and swirls around you, sinking into your exposed skin and slotting itself neatly into place in one of the unused partitions of your mind.

Soon only the sword remained, lying across the slab as if in some macabre funerary topper.

You don’t know what to think.

timaeusTestified [TT]: Why didn’t he ascend?

The sprite chirps a question back at you.

timaeusTestified [TT]: You said being THE player doesn’t matter. If he died on the quest bed shouldn’t it have worked for him, the way it should work for you? It’s one big heart aspect reunion down here.
turntechGodhead: B33 < mew dont n33d me to answer that bro

...no you suppose you don’t. Because while the splinter had been a dying star, this was nothing more than ash in your hands. You do what you always do, and clean your shit up.

You pick up the sword by the ribbon wrapped hilt. Dark blue, they’d been hidden by the body before, the hilt having been plunged in from behind at some point. You attempt to add it to your strife syllabus just so you can get it out of the way, but it throws a duplicate item error.

So you just, move it. It settles comfortably on Roxy’s quest bed, the fabric on the hilt matching almost perfectly to the color of the dark blue cracked stone. The sprite hovers down and then settles on the heart-marked slab. Just waiting.

“...you sure you want to do this?”

You loosen your hold on your powers. You can hear his soul singing.You can hear them all singing.

The sprite only fluctuates faster, trilling something that had to be  a “just do it already.”

The space surrounding you crackles with energy, sending the hairs on the back of your neck to stand attention. You wish you had the faith the sprite did. Your power is not a safe one. You can count the number of times you've used them on one hand, and never when you weren't trying to utterly destroy your enemy.

The idea of breaking to fix something…

Power singing through you, you take the plunge, diving into the sea of shifting in corporeal energy. The outer layers are the ones that flicker unceasingly between the orange and bright green, layers upon layers of spite templates and codework. But you cut through them like a hot knife through butter, the cocoon of code blossoming around you in an array of additional colors, giving way to the component bits of the mishmash of souls within. Fur and the thrill of the hunt, a bright, bubbly joy that radiates from dark green patches. Brushing against the darker red patches you find the heat and the sound of metal hitting metal, a ringing almost discordant sound, that settled into a thrumming beat the more you listened to it.  Black patches swirled into the red as the source of the feathers that rounded off everything. The corners where they touch they are blending nicely, shading from one particular core to the other, nearly a seemless healthy transition. Nothing like the jammed edges and illfitting placement you'd found peering into Dave's dreamself.

No. The problem wasn't getting the disparate pieces to connect. The problem was that t he artificial code not only encased everything in a thick outer shell, but was threaded through between the smaller pieces welding them all together with a buffer between them, not allowing them to create that healthy blend you can tell it desperately wants to.

You understand why the sprite wanted to do this, regardless. It's degrading even without your help. It was mixed up in the other colors, straining and pulling them apart one strand at a time

A clean break. That's what you need. But it's so entrenched in everything else you're worried it'll just all fall apart.

Stop lollygaggin bro. Just do it.

You find the largest concentration of green, since that's the layer closest to the surface of the tapestry of color, and you dig crackling energy in. Drowning in a world of colors and sound you block out the rest of the world. This might not be working with your hands but it's a puzzle that you have to fix.

The entire mass shudders as the red energy burns . You control it with a single minded focus, gripping the frayed edges of red and darker green to keep them from unraveling as your power hooks into the artificial sections and yank.

You can't spare a thought for the gaping holes you are leaving behind because if you stop and fret you'll freeze and you've got to keep going before everything unravels in your hands.

Notes:

Hope you all are having a good holiday if you celebrate them! And if you don't, just still have a good day! Have a chapter :D

I managed to rough out two more chapters over my roadtrip, so I'll hopefully have more for you tomorrow ^^

I'm finding it like, super difficult to balance narration and dialogue. There's a reason most of my chapters involve a lot of self-reflective narrative and very little interpersonal dialogue. Sorry if it feels a little rough in that respect! Now that we have someone who is a tad more chatty around (who isn't like. awkward as heck around his bro anyway) hopefully ill be able to get the hang of it.

Chapter 18: Davepeta > Be Yourself

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Your name is Davepetasprite^2 and you are dying.

As dying as an incorporeal amalgamation of code and souls could be anyway. You don't mind the idea of it. You'd been fully willing to throw yourself against Lord English because it felt right. It felt like the you that you became was the exact you that you needed in order to finally fulfill your destiny. Part of you had died trying to avenge someone she loved, and the other part had doomed himself in order to save his best friend. You are no stranger to the idea of death, especially when it comes in the service of doing what you felt was right.

But what you do despise is the idea of dying for no reason. As an afterthought, a footnote in the annotations of the universe, shoved into obscurity because you didn't have a place where you could fit once it managed to pull itself together.

There'd been no sweet fade to black transition  for you. You were a sprite. Jacked in to the very processes of the game itself. You'd been able to feel everything as it shuddered to a halt. As the host-frog that made up the universe shuddered and died as a black-hole was created within its very heart. As the horror terrors who protected the boundaries screeched their dismay and gathered their awesome unfathomable power to channel it into one final gambit.

All sessions, win or lose, had an end. You'd known, deep in your connection to bullshit sprite knowledge that this wasn't it.

What happened next was beyond your perch in the food chain. You wonder if you could have understood it if your been a cubed sprite. Maybe if Nepetasprite had reached out and taken Jasprose's hand instead of Davesprite's, maybe they would have been able to understand the screeching contorting chaos as paradox space tried to bounce back and then bounced too far, dragging the rest of you screaming idiots along for the ride.

But even Jasprose was gone, devoured in the moment between nothing and everything, the game hungry to reclaim every single bit of itself to fuel the recreation of what had been destroyed. You'd been there. You'd felt it reaching into your soul, cold unfeeling hands digging into your code and scratching, tearing you apart because you didn't belong.

The universe didn't have a place for Davepetasprite^2.

But you were more than just soul and code and you'd already cheated the goddamn paradox space twice you wouldn't let it dictate your death again. You wanted to live. You wanted to be. You wanted to help your broirail when you hadn't been able to help either of them because they were devoured in the same way Jasprose had been. The same way Nannasprite was unraveled in front of you and you'd been unable to do nothing but refuse and run and run licking your wounds and trying to survive all with sburb haunting your every move.

You didn't want to fail again. You wanted to be able to help not to be told to stand on the sidelines while your meowrail was strangled in front of you.

You can't see anything anymore. The dark void of the crypt is lost in the frantic waves of energy rippling away from your body. You can't even see Bro anymore. But you feel him, oh God do you feel him, claws out and scratching and biting and tearing bits and pieces out of you leaving nothing more than shreds behind.

Shreds you cling to with everything you are and everything you've ever been and everything you want to be. Dave was a depressed bird douche whose only success had managed to doom him to obscurity and Nepeta was a shy footnote who hid behind personas and never had the chance to realize her potential much less go after what she wanted but they are both important to you because they are what makes you who you are.

You can't let them go. You can't.

The shreds knit together under the warmth of that belief, your unwavering faith in yourself and the will to survive rushing into the channels of space left behind by Dirk's destructive tidal wave. You feel yourself getting smaller, heavier, as the framework is systematically ripped away and filled back in by your own sheer stubborn unwillingness to let go. You'd almost forgotten what it felt like to have a body, to have mass, to even have more than a patch of fog that you could pull together for a moment before you lost it again. It hadn't even been a week and it had gotten to you.

Dirk was not gentle. It hurt like hell. But that was nothing compared to the constant pull and strain of the game tugging at your code, trying to pry it from your cold incorporeal paws. Succeeding, bit by bit, at pulling away chunks of you as well. Slowly working to unravel you as nothing more than a side effect.

That's the difference between bro and the game. The game didn't care that it yanked away chunks of who you are with the code that had bound two of you together and made you one. It didn't care about the delicate web of troll and human and bird. Dirk was rough but he kept it in hand, making almost surgically precise cuts along the edges of your soul, sealing up the fraying bits of red and green with a cauterizing heat just long enough for you to grasp at fraying edges and pull them tight, hissing and spitting in defiance of paradox space's cold indifference.

The game had already done so much damage, stalking you like a frightened hopbeast for days upon days. You lost your wings. You'd lost your claws. You'd even lost your voice.

You'd almost lost your hope. Drifting in the furthest ring, the game trying its damnest to snuff you out and stuff your sprites away in the cruxtruders to be re-prototyped in the future. But then you'd found your psycho mom and you'd known. You'd known things were horribly wrong. Yo could see her shattered self scattered around her, reflecting pieces back on each other like an array of fucking funhouse mirrors.

And she gave you something to do with your final few days.

And she led you to him.

The game may have tried its damnest to tear your soul to pieces, but Dirk succeeded in tearing it to pieces.

You can feel the cold stone beneath you. Fingernails claw against the cracks, digging and biting into solid matter as if it was butter. The burning is intense, spreading out from your heart, your core, and down your limbs as they solidify from the nebulous scraps of self you’d been reduced to. It’s almost jarring, alien, having weight and mass and a presence after so long that you find yourself lost amongst the sensations of the rough cracks against your skin, the searing heat radiating out from slab beneath you, juxtaposed to the chilling cold chafing your face. Your lungs are on fire, and you gasp. Only gasping and coughing require not entirely blocked airways and you have none, or do you have too many?

You stretch yourself and eyes open and you see double, bro--Dirk--standing over you holding orange and green fire in his hands, the light blazing skyward in a stream of data, being drawn away, drawn out, the kernel sprites returning to wherever the fuck they waited until the cruxtruders were deployed. Dave's and Jake's, your saviors and your doom and they are leaving--

You spasm, back arching away from the slab that's now burning hot. It's so hot you instinctively try to get away, but something slams you down. Rough hands grip your shoulders pressing them back down against stone, knocking your head back against the quest slab with the force of the movement.

It's Dirk. The fire is blazing around his hands, throwing his face into a light show of orange and green and dark sharp shadows. It reflects in his shades, the mirrored lenses giving you your first true glimpse of what you've gotten yourself into.

White hair and grey skin and a deep gaping slash through your throat, leaking a thick green mucus in gushing waves that echoed with every pump of your recreated heart. And you could feel your heart working, hammering in your chest, lungs burning. No wonder you couldn't talk. You couldn't breathe.

Doomed Dave might have been whole and alive, but Nepeta had been beheaded. That had to go somewhere

A dreamer might have been able to survive this. A dreamer didn’t need to breathe. But you are viscerally aware of your physicality after so long being nothing more than data. Your vision began to fade as your heart continues to pump, pushing the green blood out of the gash in your neck.

“I'm sorry.” the quiet words somehow made it to you over your silent gasps. The hands released you, but you understood.

Fire wreathed hands raised, sword silhouetted against the streams of data that had once been a part of you.

Then it came down.

You can't help but let out a choked out laugh as the sword drove into your chest, like a piece of yourself sliding home. Even that goddamn bird had to have his fun.

Looks like you’ll need that extra life after all.

Notes:

Next chapter could be either Davepeta or Dave. I'm not quite sure which POV works best but we'll seee~

If anyone is disappointed in the lack of cat puns in Davepeta's narrative, I'm sticking with my previous rules that quirks only show up in text (or dialogue in the case of like puns and stuff.) However cat and bird related metaphors are free game :)

...and yes that means they will be joining Dave as the occasional secondary POV characters. This is a story focused on the Striders after all.

Chapter 19: Davepeta > Ascend

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Eventually you come to your senses. You always had the faintest idea of how it would feel to ascend, considering the number of Daves and Nepetas out there who had died and been reborn at one point or another in their personal timeline. But it had always been in an almost academic manner, a story told to you by someone else, rather than having lived it yourself.

And ooh boy had you ever misjudged it.

Instead of the rush of peace and belonging you'd felt after prototyping your other half, you felt drained. Almost as if you'd been stretched to the breaking point and then stuffed back into a container far too small for what you'd become.

Part of that was probably the result of the fact that you hadn 't been embodied at all less than an five minutes ago, and you hadn't had the ability to get physically tired in three goddamn years.

As a result, your ascension was hardly awe inspiring or even dignified. The moment you were no longer being buoyed by the requisite light-show that comes along with the whole process you dropped like a stone. You would have crashed straight through the remnants of the stone tablet, which had broken into the most undignified floating chunks under the subatomic bomb of aspect filled energy you'd released, and probably kept falling straight into the moon’s core.

You would have, if Dirk hadn't just reached out and grabbed a hold of something long and attached to you that yanked you backup the moment you hit the length limit. The whiplash sent your head rocking backwards with a force that probably would have snapped a human's neck if you'd still been human at all.

Instead you just let your head loll. Too tired to bother.

You can still feel the phantom burn of Dirk's power rampaging through you. The weight of your limbs, gravity defying God-tier bullshit or not, felt like stones attached to your torso.

It was just so different and you'd used up all the energy you had even getting to this point.

“So I can dig the feathers,” the carefully drawled words came from above you, “but you don't look much like a rogue in that cape.”

Cape?

You twist in the air. Or you try too, and instead get tangled in your wings. Wings . You forget about Dirk for a moment because a sheer wave of excited joy rushes through you. It's your wings !

Wings were the one thing Davesprite had enjoyed about his situation, and you'd resented the game so much from taking them from you. They aren't the creamsicle tasting orange you remember, but the glossy dark green almost black feathers curled around you as you run your claws through long arm-length flight feathers, carefully shifting and searching for the slightest bit of dirt, following distant instincts from the part of you that had been a particularly rambunctious crow. Gonna preen this shit.

Although it's dumb. They wouldn't be dirty you literally just got them but you can't help but marvel at the shiver the motion sends shooting through the limb. You're so dang distracted that you forget about gravity, and with that accidental denial of physics you find yourself floating instead of falling.

A pointed cough catches your attention and you feel your face grow warm but you can’t help the toothy stupid grin spreading across your face. You’re goddamn blushing this is the best thing ever, you suck in a deep breath the way Nepeta used to imitate Pounce de Leon, getting ready to purr the shit out of this business--

A sharp stab in your throat, and you double over, because something isn’t working right. You feel like you need to cough but nothing’s coming out. It’s just a trapped pressure, like you’d swallowed a gobstopper and just couldn’t get it loose. Minus the whole suffocating part anyway since you didn’t need to breathe, thank frog, although you feel like your brain should start to panic at that realization but honestly you’d been non-physical for so long it’s really only the phantom memory from those all too brief minutes bleeding out on the slab that really get you going.

Clawed fingers clamp tightly to your throat, searching. No blood. No gash. The ascension had healed the wound in your neck the same way it’d healed the one in your chest that’d finally killed you but there’s still something wrong.

Cold hands catch yours, and pry them away carefully. You’re suddenly aware of Dirk in your face, his cool expression slightly scrunched and nagging at old memories. “Let me look.”

You let him pull your hands down, and bare your neck to him in a way that causes something in the back of your mind to arch its back and hiss. It startles you, and Dirk pulls back at the small flinch that sneaks through in your surprise.

Trying to figure out how to mime an apology is a trip and a half. He's your bro. Even if from another time line, and he already killed for you, you should be cool with him having your life in his hands because he already did it and succeeded. 

"it's alright. I can see from here.” Then after a moment he just nods, letting go of your hands completely, “There’s a scar where the wound was, right across here.” He traces the arc clumsily on his own skin, “Right where it transitions from troll grey to a more human skin tone. I doubt the game had a good blueprint for...all of you. It might have messed something up in the reconstruction.”

You scowl at that, exaggerating the expression the best you can because you are irritated. Paradox space must be laughing it up right now, patting itself on the metaphysical back at sticking its little revenge pinky into the pie that is your victory. Well. It could be worse.

“Can you still access Pesterchum?”

You shake your head, miming a typing motion in the air.

“Right. Not a sprite anymore.”

As a sprite you had access to a lot of UI elements you just...don’t have anymore. You feel a pang of loss as you think of the emptiness behind you, holding close the glimpses you’d seen of other Daves, other Nepetas, the memories that had been the one thing to finally soothe your ruffled feathers and let you let go a lot of the emotional baggage you’d been lugging around for well more than three years.

As a squared sprite they’d always lurked behind you, a silent set of hands to catch you and wells of experience to draw on, and the knowledge that, triumphs or fuck ups, they all had a part to play in the grand scheme of things.

You’d expected to lose that connection when you became embodied, the partitions between you and all your other selves going back up to keep your experience as linear as can be expected from someone who’d once been a knight of time. If you thought about it, even that was linear to your own personal timeline. It just got screwy for everyone else.

Well! At least you had your memories, and the conviction that they were out there somewhere, even if you couldn’t reach them anymore. Not even this set back was going to ruin your good mood dang it. You’d won even if paradox space had thrown in a final fuck you wrench into the wring like a spoiled man rotten aristocrat. 

While you are indulging in inner monologue, Dirk seems to be growing more and more uncomfortable with the situation. After a time he sighs, “We need to figure some way for you to communicate. If we could find parts I could make something...”

Another section of awkward silence. You frown and shake your head, reaching out and brushing against one of the faint red shards idly floating around him, and then make a sharp motion up. He shudders and takes a metaphorical step back in the air, tension in his shoulders, “Don’t.”

You gesture up again, toward the shaft that led out of the crypt and back to the surface of Derse’s moon. Frustrated. In return for his help you’d promised to help with the shard problem you should probably help with the shard problem before those got worse.

“Playing charades is just going to make it harder to work together.” He snaps back in equal frustration. “I’ve got…” There’s a pause as he’s probably checking the time on his fancy as hell shades. ARquiusprite said he’d lived in those shades, and you know he’s been typing to you this whole time without a keyboard and you are now absurdly jealous. It hadn’t matter so much as a sprite since you could just jack straight into the program but... “Probably another four, five hours before Dave wakes up. Nowhere near enough time for both of us to learn sign, since I assume you don’t know it--” You cheerfully shake your head.

You are enjoying this. Watching the gears turning behind those pointy shades of his. You’d never really had the chance to do so before. You’re also faintly touched. If the last hour has taught you anything he’s clearly more comfortable in a text medium than speaking, and here he is monologuing at you for your benefit.

Some small remnant of who Davesprite was is watching bitterly and wishes his Bro had been more like Dirk. The you that you are now just decides to appreciate the effort he’s putting into it.

“Our best bet is pesterchum.” He finishes with a shrug. You mime typing again, and then point at him, with a questioning head tilt added at the end for emphasis. “No, I don’t have a spare computer. They were all in my house with the alchemeter. I assume those won’t be on my planet anymore if the overall game state reset, and I have no reason to believe otherwise. All the deviations so far have been player related. If we can find somewhere with a bunch of electronics I might be able to scavenge enough parts to make something .” Fingers clutched at the puffy pants of his god-tier outfit, then deliberately released, smoothing out the fabric, “I don’t remember any of our consorts being particularly technologically inclined.”

Electronics...

That nags at something buried beneath three years of memories, from both sets of them. From Dave, the irritated recollection of several internet trolls harassing your friends through time and space. From Nepeta, a stress filled day spent hunkered down in the belly of a meteor, the time only really broken with working on your shipping wall, and occasionally finding time to roleplay through time and space through--

The lightbulb goes off above your head and you try to purr in satisfaction. It comes out an embarrassing squeak that has Dirk’s attention on you in a second as the blockage in your throat shifts ever so slightly.

The exhaustion still drags at you, but having a purpose, an idea to help gives you a sudden burst of energy. You don't even bother trying to mine an explanation before you set your sights on the shaft leading back to the surface, and from there, to the Veil. Those thousands of meteors orbiting the incipispheres. If memory serves, on a few of them there are honest to frog ecto labs. If Dirk wants electronics, those are probably his best bet. 

You don’t need to flap your wings to fly, but you want to so you use a downward sweep to start your forward momentum, stretching muscles that you’ve both always had in some form, but at the same time never truly had. You ignore his startled exclamation as you climb, knowing from the race earlier that he can easily catch up to you if he wanted to. And he’ll follow you no problem.

The rushing of Derse’s atmosphere feels real against your face, tugging at white hair you can barely see peeking around the edges of your shades. But it’s also tugging at something else, fabric, something you’d barely noticed until you’d started moving. You crane your neck to peer over your shoulder, looking past the beautiful black expanse of your wings only to see something flapping out of the corner of your eye.

Huh. You do have a cape.

Rad.

It kinda ruins your plans, but hey, you can appreciate the advantage of comfy as hell uniforms and rad super hero capes.

Now you just needed to figure out what the hell a knight of heart could do and how you can use this to fulfill your promise. You had time, there were a LOT of meteors to check in the Veil around Derse.

Notes:

So uh. This was originally going to be a Dave chapter. And it was all written and everything. But then I decided, you know what? It was a mistake to put yet another emotionally charged chapter in a row. Need a breather for pacing purposes. So. I literally wrote this whole chapter on top of the previous one tonight xD And now I'm going to go pass out since it's an hour after sleep time and i got work in the morning.

I know I promised a few people pictures of god-tier embodied Davepeta, but uh it didn't happen. Maybe I'll get time to art this weekend!

Idk if anyone cares but like, big thanks to the homestuck musical project I'm a part of XD I literally do all my writing to the playlist of songs so far and it keeps me on track somehow.

Chapter 20: Dirk > Try to be Useful

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The timer you set is counting down constantly in the corner of your vision, marching ever onward. Normally you’d be comfortable budgeting until at least noon before Dave got hungry enough to venture out into the living room, but given the request for training it forces you to push up the time-table some. Da--the former sprite would probably know when the normal window of time would be, having lived through that life once, but you can’t really think of an easy way to ask.

Asking would be admitting you don’t have shit under control.

So. Sunrise it is. If you’re lucky that’ll give you time to spare if he doesn’t get up right away.

You’ve already lost an hour of that time, frustratedly following the bird-winged alternate version of your splinterself’s younger brother as he gallivanted through the ring of meteors, getting further and further away from Derse. It’s frustrating because you don’t know what exactly he is looking for . So you can’t help and make the search more efficient and are instead stuck trailing behind like some lost puppy, which is ironic as hell considering he appears to also be part cat.

You know god-tier ascension had some bullshit excuse of creating an ideal self , which is why half the dream trolls you’d witnessed following Roxy around through dream bubbles had butterfly wings of all things, but you find it hard to believe anyone’s ideal self would be like...part cat, part bird, part troll, part boy and who knows what else. It sounded like someone’s entry level roleplay character.

Then again, prototyping shenanigans. It’s not like he intended half this shit.

As the former sprite--you can’t just call him Dave, it’s pretty damn obvious there’s more to it. Plus there’s a Dave waiting for you and you already have your own Bro this is making your head hurt and it’s not like you had reason to ask what he called himself before and now you couldn’t get an answer if you did--swoops down into the shadow of a crater pocked meteor you find yourself wondering how the other prototyping shenanigans might have resulted, had they have been similarly embodied and raised up to conditional deity-ship.

Carefully not wondering if you would have seen your face staring back at you behind broken shades, or just another troll you never met before his lifeless head got chucked into your kernel sprite. And also not considering the idea that you would have preferred one option over the other.

At least you can pretend to be useful while mapping the way using H--your shades, filling in the minute details, such as meteor size and placement, you hadn’t bothered to catalogue while looking for Derse.. At least the knight was only going for meteors that are above a certain size threshold, you note as you track him from one to the next without your eyes. What is he looking for?

You feel him better than you can see him, even that shockingly white hair was lost in the black on grey of a world without skaia, and you are far enough away from Derse that the cast-off light from the planet’s city-scape is but a distant memory. But that radiant soul blazed out across your senses like a beacon, somehow even brighter than before despite getting torn to literal shreds.

Or maybe you’re just better at sensing that shit since you were the one to do the tearing in the first place. While you are a bundle of knife edges surrounding a core of steel, just as liable to cut yourself or anyone else, the former sprite felt...sturdy. You can still see those bits, those shards of color you had to tear apart, but in the spaces you’d torn free there’s something new building, as the edges rub against each other they catch and cool and blend without the sprite framework acting as a roadblock.

Needless to say it makes him easy to follow, even if he had a tendency to dart off without warning.

You trail behind as he flits to and fro, ducking around meteors to appear again out of a shadow and giving you a cheerful wave. Things settle into a rhythm, with you never letting yourself lag too far behind, but not really feeling like keeping up, filling out your electronic map of the of the meteor field. You’re fairly certain this shit isn’t scientifically sound at all. Orbiting this close together--wouldn’t they have smashed shit to pieces by now?

It’s only when you notice that he’s gone for more than a few moments that you perk up and follow that bright spot in your senses, around a wall of large-but-not-quite-standard hunks of rock that had been acting to block your way before. There you see it. It’s a shadow looming in the depths of space, windowless grey steel rising from an impact filled surface. Your shade’s scanners outline the barely visible silhouette in red, showing signs of even more structures jutting out from all sides, indicating it’s likely a single huge structure that encompases the entire core of the meteor. Otherwise the damn thing probably would have fallen apart from the weight.

...Either that or it’s a game construct that defies even the questionable laws of physics that rule this dimension. But even if that’s the case, that means this is something the game has deemed important.

And you’ve never seen a structure like this before.

The former sprite’s presence is radiating from within one of the steel buildings, so you begin your descent. However you’ve barely touched your dainty green slippers down on the loose meteoric regolith that covered the surface before you see something flashing orange in the corner of your shades.

Pesterchum. With a thought you dismiss the mapping software and allow pesterchum resource priority, although you make sure to leave a subroutine tracking Derse’s orbit so you don’t end up chasing it on the way back again.

The window opens to the oddly comforting sight of orange and green text.

turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < ah hell yes finally sw33t sw33t communication how i have missed th33
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < get your princely self in here bro theres more than enough gadgets for equius to build a purrfectly comfurtable sl33ping pile so im sure youll find something useful
timaeusTestified [TT]: How did you know this was out here?
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < that gaping slash in my neck? Got it in one of these
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < take the mane entrance and there should be a transpurrtalizer and itll lead you to the observation deck
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < just dont touch anything yet i n33d to figure out if well n33d this shit for ectokitten shenanigans

You find the main entrance easy enough, especially once you pick up the depressions left by the former-sprite’s wing tips lightly brushing the fine soil, trailing after shoe prints perfectly preserved in the atmosphere less environment. Even folded the damn things were taller than he was. Beyond the gaping doorway ran a long, dark hallway rimmed in dark seamless steel. You consider reinitializing your scanner to see if it can pick up the edges enough for you to avoid walking into a wall, but then decide it wouldn’t work without a whole object. They weren’t made for this.

But you did have your tomb-raiding gear groove row, and decaptchalogue the hooded lantern again, letting the light play along the metal walls. You were wrong, there were seams in it, metal panels bolted to the walls with small rivets that you hadn't seen in the fuzzy land of greys and black low light conditions reduced them to. There even appear to be unpowered lights located near the corner where the roof met the walls, arrayed at regular intervals along the pathways. It’s...not entirely unlike the passageway that led into the crypt, if you swapped out crumbling purple brick for smooth unweathered metal.

timaeusTestified [TT]: It doesn't appear to be powered. How did you get a computer running?
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < we hid from crazy dog jack in here if the lights on the outside were on the cat would have b33n out of the bag quicker than you can twitch a whisker at it
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < trapped like rats but hey at least there was wifi
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < i dont think this place is supposed to be found by flying through space anyway not with how jam packed the field is i just knew what to look fur.

You hum noncommittally, fully aware that he couldn't hear you, and subtly pick up the pace. It's not that the darkness and the silence and the tunnel that goes on and on unnerves you, it's just that you are wasting time. The restless energy was returning with a vengeance now that you understood what the knight had been intending with this little sidetrack, and the sense of urgency was beginning to creep back in as you checked your self imposed timer. An hour and a half gone out of your five hour window.

turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < this is giving me some major deja vu though!!! it looks like the interface karkitty and the others used to use to troll us
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < woah
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < wow

You’d normally expect another instantaneous continuation to that thought, but the window stayed grey, so you prompt it.

timaeusTestified [TT]: What is it?
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < just some self revelation going on in here no biggie
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < apparently my old rp partner was actually *myself*

You can’t help but field the urge to sigh.

turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < the timfeline feathures busted by the way
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < i wonder what would happen if i could just pick an arbitrary time frame and just trolled someone though
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < just like
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < started all *ac saunters up to you stroking their whiskers and starts purring their heart out in a hey its been a while gr33ting :33*
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < jade might go along with it
timaeusTestified [TT]: Dave.
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < dont worry! dont worry! i wont! i dont wanna get dave in trouble its his reputation on the line
timaeusTestified [TT]: Who were they?
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < what
timaeusTestified [TT]: The other you. I know Dave. I never met the troll.
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < oh
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < her name was nepeta
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < its not like i can just reach into my brain and pull out a tinder profile for you to read you gotta figure this shit out organically man this isnt speed dating
timaeusTestified [TT]: Data.
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < what??
timaeusTestified [TT]: Just a guess.
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < are you trying to guess my name???
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < aw bro you could have just asked instead of acting all coy and shit
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < its davepeta
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < thatd make a sw33t nickname though i dig it too bad im not a sprite any more itd be 120 purrcent more fitting being all jacked into the matrix and having a walking database shoved in my skull
timaeusTestified [TT]: You literally just slammed your names together.
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < youre expecting me to be subtle???
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < mr im gonna word vomit all over your chat window about whatever inane thought crosses my mind except when it comes to the real shit plus ms im gonna roleplay out my fantasies beclaws i cant deal with reality and act all hyper bubbly and shit because i dont know how to communicate without it?
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < im tired of hiding shit
timaeusTestified [TT]: Touche.
timaeusTestified [TT]: If you’re this into sharing does this mean we’re on the second date?
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < more than that bro were going steady if im shoving all my skeletons out of the closet to make room for mew moving in and getting all domestic and shit
timaeusTestified [TT]: ...you realize we’re related right?
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < its called metaphor bro whats the point in indulging in it if mew cant traipse over a few societal taboos besides i meant it in a totally pale wanna paw and shoosh your face way
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < hah dave would be trying to extract his paw from his noisehole at this point but i just find it hissterical
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < it really does make you realize how dumb some things are when you go and look at it from another perspective that never grew up with half the shit we think of as normal

It felt like forever, but eventually you find the round device set into a branching of paths, a familiar rune carved into the metal and humming with quiet potential. With a sigh you recaptchalogue the lantern using its corresponding rhyme and take a step up onto the raised circular dias, closing your eyes as you do so.

The shiver of having your entire body deconstructed is not one that you will ever forget. It always reminds you of your first experience. Your first real brush with death. The red miles tearing your home to shreds and your friends dying across time and space, and a red hot need to save them, save Jake, burning through your veins. It hadn't been the last time you'd lost your head, sending it soaring through time and space, but it certainly wasn't an experience you'll ever forget. Ever since you can't use one of these things without your throat tightening and your jaw clenching and just bracing yourself against something that will never come.

You kn ow that happened because you'd stuck your head in a microwave-sized box meant to send small objects , while actual physical pads like the ones you just used are made to transport full bodies. But one of the failings of your meatbag organic brain was occasionally falling into illogical thought patterns in the presence of specific stimuli, so you react anyway and don't relax until your molecules stop vibrating and settle back into the physical plane where they belong.

You peel your eyes open. It's bright , but only really in comparison to what you've grown used to in the veil and on derse. The overhead lights are objectively fairly dim, but you can see a large array of other transportalizers surrounding the one you'd arrived on, likely leading to other parts of the complex. The knight hadn't mentioned taking another jump so you instead find the one pathway leading out, leading toward the bright patch of color that burned on the edge of your senses. Much, much closer now. How deep inside the structure were you?

The hallway opens up into a large room, ringed in computer consoles and monitors. You easily spot da--Davepeta's giant bird wings folded against his--hers?--their back, feathers still  barely brushing the dusty floor even from where they were perched on a stool. They didn't so much as twitch in your direction as you entered, just the click clack of claws on keys pausing in their rhythm as the chat window blinks to life again.

turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < the consoles in this room should be safe to scavenge all the impurrtant shit looks like its downstairs
timaeusTestified [TT]: What is this place?
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < ectobio lab responsible fur creating and s33ding paradox clones
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < john took care of it fur us
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < karkitty had many shouty words about it too but most of what i picked up was from john because he wouldnt shut up about being a slime daddy to jade and i just kind of absorbed it by proxy because she would just ask me so many questions
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < as if I had all the answers just because I was from the future
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < meownths might have passed but we never got that far beclaws he got himself killed off
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < anyway did someone n33d to play baby daddy for your litter of slime-clones?
timaeusTestified [TT]: Considering we did fuck-all aside from climb escheladders and screw up our relationships before your crew arrived I’m going to assume the correct answer is no one did. My knowledge of ecto-biological fuckery is purely theoretical.
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < what really???
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < how long were mew guys in the game again
timaeusTestified [TT]: Six months.
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < six meownths and noone found a transpurrtalizer??
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < john stumbled into that shit inside a day
timaeusTestified [TT]: Void session, remember? The game likely didn’t bother putting one in. We didn’t have a battlefield, or prototyping towers, or quest beds on our own planets, or even consort quests. Hell even our denizens were long dead we got the short end of every stick.
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < oh shit thats right
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < well then welcome to one of your potential litterdens

It doesn’t seem particularly awe-inspiring to you, but you are intrigued nonetheless. Carapacians as a whole didn’t seem to be the most technologically advanced species given how malleable they’d been towards the Batterwitch’s reign on earth, and being reduced to cramped sea-dwelling slum cities, and yet here you were, standing in a lab devoted to creating the paradox clones that had or will one day be sent to create your brother and yourself. How would the scratched universes effect that? Did the same clone create both yourself and Dave’s Bro?

It’s an ache, deep in your heart, under lock and key, that keenly wishes Roxy were here. Not the creature of broken glass and bleeding edges, but the one you knew and grew up with. She’d been playing with this shit since birth, she’d know what the fuck was going on. Or at least be better situated to understand it.

Give you something mechanical and you’d be all over it. Biology was messy.

turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < okay before mew end up elbow d33p in wires i n33d to check on your shards
You pause in your examination of one of the consoles. You’d been mostly ignoring them, letting them linger out of sight but not quite out of mind. Just the memory of  glimmers where once embers had burned.

timaeusTestified [TT]: Would that even do any good?
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < cant hurt can it? i found you toys to dismantle to get your mind off shit so let me finish my job

You raise an eyebrow at that but don’t comment on the strange phrasing. You really are just learning to roll with it, aren’t you? They doesn’t seem inclined to leave their perch, and really it wouldn’t make sense to leave considering they needed the keyboard to communicate and it’s already logged in. You don’t even need that much convincing, despite the unease anything messing with your soul causes to bubble up, because really this had been the bargain afterall. Your help for his.

Their touch is kitten soft and gentle, but not the least bit hesitant. You stiffen immediately having someone else reaching into that jagged space, at the brush of self-to self. They may not be physically connected, but the points where they broke off hum, reflecting the worried curiosity that sends a shiver up your spine.

It’s much more pronounced now that the person they’d become had some time to settle into themself. As a sprite that touch had been whispy and nebulous, like a chilly night fraught with the potential for static energy. You resist the urge to pull away because it’s only fair. You had to delve into their core in order to fulfill your part of the bargain. You can deal with some surface level scrutiny it was cool. This was nothing, even if the thought of being so vulnerable had you wanting to break out in hives.

They make that odd squeaking noise again and then scowls, lips pulling back to give you a good look at those odd oversized canines. Not quite shark teeth like the blind troll you’d briefly met before she absconded to let you and Dave air your shit, but full blown fangs. Trolls were strange.

A quick turn, feathers puffing up with agitation and they’re typing furiously away at the computer again.

It was just so strange to see such an openly expressive Strider. Between your Bro’s charming, but careful handling of the public sphere, and Dave’s habitually guarded nature around you, you’d started to wonder if it was even possible.

turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < i think we need to talk about what those shards are and why you have your paws on them
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < they dont s33m to be grinding against your edges like psychomoms were which is good but your soul *is bleeding from where they were yanked out
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < they dont s33m to fit with well anything
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < the rhythm is wrong its too dissonant against the rest of you but it obviously is since i litterally saw it snap off and shatter when she killed you and even as a sprite i was able to hold them together with you while i got you out
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < out with it whered you find them

You cross your arms and let the shards fade back into the glimmers they were.

timaeusTestified [TT]: You saw the debris cloud?
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < considering i was swept out with the trash duh!

You think back. Back to empty darkness and rainbow glimmers dotting the space as far as the eye could see. Of heat and familiarity and finding something just close enough to snap into that blank part of your soul. Something still alive where that body was not. With the keen power of hindsight you take that moment and rewind it. It hadn’t been what you’d found first. It’d been attached to a thread, leading away from something that you’ve grown quite familiar with. Heat and metal and a city of glass and rotting air.

timaeusTestified [TT]: I didn’t know what they were. Everything was just very raw and overwhelming and all the edges--they were gone. It left...gaping holes open. I wasn’t really thinking the clearest at the time, and headed for the first thing that felt familiar. I picked one and followed it, and found myself on earth in Dirk Strider’s body. When I found my way back, it just kind of stuck there.  
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < ...so what happened to the body when it shattered?

You shrug again, mentally composing the message while you do.

timaeusTestified [TT]: Now you understand why I need a solution before Dave wakes up. He didn’t react well the first time.
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < holy shit
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < i thought you were like me and stuck on this side of nothing till the game started but no you need to be the *responsible adult* for shorty back there!
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < im gonna take another look to see if i can figure out *what* those shards are cuz it sure aint bros soul that thing was gone long before we got pounced on none of us were supposed to survive either if jade hadnt pulled some amawzing witchy voodoo to get us out of there
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < im rambling again ok just sit down and bring em out

You ease onto the stool at the console next to him, deliberately turning away and focusing on the dimly glowing screen. You suppress the shiver caused by his claws on your edges again, burying it in the curiosity intent on the strange interface before you. It’s modeled after pesterchum, and you find the login-screen accepts your credentials easily, pulling up a copy of your friend’s list (with its single lone occupant) as well as several new features you don’t recognize. With a thought you mute pesterchum on your shades, a keyboard and mouse feeling awkward in your slim teenaged hands instead of the big adult ones.

There’s some sort of locked memo function that you ignore for now, but you do find the timeline feature dave--Davepeta mentioned. There are eight tabs, each punched with the aspect symbols corresponding to the members of your player group. You hover over the one that’s the most familiar to you.

And click. The broken pink heart flashes on the small window and a sprawling line stretches from one end of the screen to another, the occasional points of note bookmarked by large spikes of activity and a small sburb spirograph pattern next to it. There are three interrupting the long line, and you pick one near the beginning to click on.

Nothing. Just a black screen.

You skip to the next.

It’s a crater in the ruins of a record shop, a smoking meteor, and a young man leaning over a much smaller bundle, tiny infant sized shades in his hands. You freeze. It isn’t a movie, just a snapshot. But if you hit the arrow key would it keep going?

It must have been noticeable, because you feel Davepeta’s probing presence draw back, and then the typing begins.

It pops the pesterchum window open over top the small display.

turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < huh is that what happened? trust him to go straight for the shades
timaeusTestified [TT]: You didn’t look?
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < nah at least not more than i n33ded to realize things were more or less the same as i remember from daves life
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < if you try to hit purresent day or furture it just locks up tighter than a childproof lock on the catnip
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < none of it happened anyway bro
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < i was conscious for the big rebound it wasnt like some thirteen billion years worth of universal time going by in a flash and playing out histories and shit on fast forward
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < just...old prerecorded data and you cant interact with it outside of linearity i tried
timaeusTestified [TT]: It would be too easy for the game to give us all the answers like this, wouldn’t it? Is none of this even real then? Just some pre-constructed bullshit intended to ensure we can continue the breeding cycle of some cosmic amphibian entity that doesn’t want to keel over and die without making little tadpoles?

There’s a huff from beside you, the weight of someone else’s presence is comforting right now in the face of all this history you don’t know and aren’t a part of.

turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < the world out there is just as real as its ever been bro it went live the moment we began to exist and maybe paradox space has a plan but im a pro dealing with those and ive got some fancy as hell new claws itching to shred some plans
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < maybe im in a unique pawsition here being intimately familiar with daves of all stripes but
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < f33l fr33 to correct me if im wrong but you wouldnt be here with that timer ticking down in your head if you werent determined to make life better for *this* dave right? Screwy universe bullshit aside

They're right damnit.

Okay. You bury your face in your palms and press, glasses a firm pressure against your temples. Okay. You can do this.

There’s an odd gurgling sounds from your left, and a small pat on the side of your face not taken up by hands and eyeware. Kitten soft, claws curled into the fist to reduce the chance of accidental knicks.

Then typing.

You ease your hands down, your vision returning in a sluggish haze, blinking at the flashing window in front of you.

turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < theres an alchemeter station two floors down if you whip me up a pair of those rad as hell mindreading shades we can be out the door and hunting furreaky not-bro shards in less than ten minutes ive got their scent now so we should be able to find *something*

You can’t help the wan smirk in response to that.

timaeusTestified [TT]: No dice bro unless you’ve got a copy of your brain captchalogued somewhere. These shades are far too expensive for you to afford.
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < haha very funny get meoving

Notes:

One more I swear and we'll get back to dave. This one just like wow exploded. And I had to cut a LOT of the conversations, they just really wanted to have some family bonding time.

Also uh sorry but davepeta is totally pale for dirk I don't make the rules ok dirk is naturally oblivious because I don't think he's been exposed to the clusterfuck that is troll romance.

For those who were waiting on davepeta artwork, either check the note at the end of the fic or just go to the third fic I added in the series related to, well, related artwork XD It's in there!

Edit: Note to self. italics in pesterlog chats break stuff so don't do it.

Chapter 21: Dirk > Reach Out

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

It started with just the occasional twinkling breaking up the darkness of space, the promise of distant stars if only you could reach far enough. It dragged you back to your rooftop in the middle of the ocean, laying down on warm concrete and trying to pick out the pinpricks of light beyond the general haze of the atmosphere.

You only went up on hazy nights. Clear nights were almost overwhelming with nothing to block the sheer scale of the universe, hundreds of millions of stars, stretching from flat horizon to horizon, rivers of gas and clouds breaking up the sky in a world without people and their distractions. As you got old enough to start thinking about the implications of being a single human person in that sea of celestial objects, you stopped going up to the roof after sundown, haze or no.

You’d thought a lot about your place in the world, in history, growing up. Never once would you have considered you’d be here , floating in the depths of space surrounded by stars in their own right.

Nothing changed out beyond the furthest ring. It was a desolate void where even the terrors no longer reside. Once there had been hundreds of bubbles to wander through, floating in the dreams of beings beyond any intention you had to understand. No longer. It’s just a graveyard, a field of empty space and sharp edges and trash the program no longer needed. It hadn’t changed since you’d been through a week before, but the experience is entirely different, and it had everything to do with you. When you last passed through here you were closed off, single mindedly focused on getting away, getting back to your friends, refusing to acknowledge that your friends are here.

They crowded around you now, fulfilling a younger you’s nightmare of drowning in that far off river, currents pushing and pulling you in different directions, hundreds maybe thousands of different voices just on the edge of your hearing.

Your time amongst the remnants in Roxy’s dream room has you recognizing her immediately, whether pink or blue or a plethora of other colors, scattered across space and joining the slow orbit the river makes around the incipisphere. This one right here glistens under your touch, and brushing against the edges brings to mind the soft meows of cats and hands running through fur and quiet giggles.

But you don’t allow yourself to linger, remembering the pleasant hum shifting to incoherent warning chimes, heralding the shadow in the window of Derse’s sky.

You aren’t here for Roxy, you remind yourself, ignoring your unconscious brain’s attempts to drag you back to that time, with the sharp pain of the sword through your chest and the bells tolling in your head, over and over. Roxy isn’t even the only ones here.

You’ve been at it for--you don’t know how long now, and you need to check the countdown you have going to even get an estimation going. Hour and a half to find the meteor lab. Even going at full speed after that it had taken you at least three to reach even the trailing edges of the cloud. You and Davepeta had even split up to search better, knowing sunrise was almost here. The former sprite promised they had the feel of the shards memorized, but that still nagged at you, worried you. Because you hadn’t found these ones first.

A thread.

There’d been something else first.

Damn it.

A resonance, you remember that much. Proximity that made the edges of your jagged soul sing long before you found it. Nothing more than a splinter of memory.

But each single one of these fucking things were bits and pieces of fucking memories. The feelings and experiences and growth that didn’t fit the jury-rigged amalgamations of dreamer and game data asleep on Derse. Downright pedestrian shit like Roxy buried in her goddamn cats. Dark green glimmers that make your heart hurt because it’s Jake’s boisterous enthusiasm and the deep, wild smell of living things and the cry of wild beasts. The sweet sweet scent of what you can only imagine is freshly baked goods, the warmth of pride as guiding and protective hands made the first slice into a cake.

The only things fucking missing were the sea air and the smell of oil and the soft beat of music when you allowed yourself to relax. Then you could make a goddamn set.

And those are only the ones you can access. Those are the ones your heart knows well enough to decrypt the syntax encoding them. For every shred of your friends you find there are ten, twenty, thirty more. Davepeta was probably going through hell dealing with their own set with their newly bolstered abilities, fielding shreds from two lives torn apart and set adrift.

Three years and 16 years worth of shards of memory, flushed out into the river of stars above a black sea.

The red timer ticks down, down, down as you try to make as methodical as a sweep as possible. It isn’t a hard deadline by any means, but it works as a sharp reminder. A steady crescendo of anxious energy pushing you further and deeper into the cloud. Your friends sing out quiet greetings to you as you pass, and you’re even starting to pick up Dave’s, you think, as you pass a particularly warm glimmer that tries to push you away, that same heat and discordant metal hitting metal you’d picked up from digging through Davepeta’s code.

Davepeta themself was too far away to feel, too crowded out by the hundreds of competing sights and voices all reaching out and dying to tell their stories if only someone could hear them. You can but you can’t. You can only catch glimpses and flashes and sounds and only if your heart recognizes them.

They’d been conspicuously quiet since you both agreed to split up. The pesterchum window grey and dark leaving you alone to your thoughts. The last message sent was over a half an hour ago. The longest the knight had let it go quiet since you’d presented them with a hastily alchemized communication device back on the meteor.

You suspect they’d missed contact as much as you had. Having them in your friendlist made the absence less glaring.

timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG]

timaeusTestified [TT]: You cool?
timaeusTestified [TT]: I bet it’s more intense out here now that you don’t have your sprite suppressing heart shit.

You don’t receive an instant response, but you don’t really expect one. For all your joking about needing their brain to make them “rad mindreading shades” there was only so much you could do with the limited machinery, time, and grist supply on the meteor. Most hands free communication required voice prompting, which was out of the question entirely. They’ll see the message when they check next. Until then, you just…

Keep moving.

You’re headed ever outwards, deeper and deeper into the void searching for that resonance that had reached out to sing at you and allowed you to follow its threads between worlds.

Eventually the window flashes orange and opens back up.

turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < yeah
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < its just
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < i found karkat dirk
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < i can hear his shouty voice ringing past kanayas laughter
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < over there is a bit of terezi blind darkness and weird color smells and all
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < i hadnt stopped to think about them yet focused on keeping myself unmunched and then finding you
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < i started this adventure with 11 other friends you know?
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < now im finding bits and pieces of those left and im left wondering why i never thought about them before

Not a single pun. Not even a reaching one, or twisting the wording in order to force one. Just quiet empty confusion ringing out from orange and green text.

timaeusTestified [TT]: It’s hard.

You focus on the space ahead of you, scanning the multicolored points of light for any that particularly resonated with you, chewing on what to say. Some mechanical part of you wants to remind them of the countdown. Of the objective. But the rest of you recognized how easy it would be to leave it at that and not acknowledge the hollowness behind the words.

timaeusTestified [TT]: I didn’t realize either, when I came through. Didn’t want to, probably. Straight up closed my heart off and deluded myself if I flew far enough I’d find everyone.
timaeusTestified [TT]: It wasn’t until Dave and Derse and those towers forced me to admit just what all this is.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I doubt your sprite databases included a section on memory dumping grounds and you already said you were occupied.
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < finding these make me wonder where my friends are now
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < at least rose and john and jade are all at home smushed into their pre-recorded lives
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < but alternia died dirk
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < what about karkat and kanaya and terezi?
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < theres no easy hole to shove them into
timaeusTestified [TT]: If they are out here for you to find, they must be somewhere.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Like you said, this is the shit that doesn’t fit. That means there must be a place to put them in the first place.
timaeusTestified [TT]: We already know this shit is going to be different. The fact that there’s 8 available prototypes speaks to that.
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < i know! and really theres way less pieces of my troll furiends which is comfurting in a way
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < it just means when i do find them theyll probably remewber more of who they are beclaws they lost less
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < not that theyll recognize me
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < no one will actualikitty since davesprite wont have been n33ded
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < but thats feline and dandy well just have to become furiends all over again B33c

Ah there it goes. Back to the puns. You feel a tension loosen.

timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m sure you’ll win them over in no time
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < yeah!
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < besides if my time as a sprite has taught me anyfang its that nothing we do ever vanishes furever
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < i still have those meowmeries even if they dont!
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < its your furiends that have it the worst
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < like dave john jade and rose are screwed up beclaws they had chunks of their life forcibly ripped out but at least the template mawtches them up to where they were befure
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < but psychomom got smushed up into a life she never lived and its tearing her apart and i cant imagine your other furiends are faring any better
timaeusTestified [TT]: They’re dead so I can’t imagine it’s bothering them too much.

You send the message before you really allow yourself to think about it.

turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < what! B??
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < shit
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < nanna
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < john prototyped her ashes
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < and jades grandpa
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < oh man
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < im so sorry bro
turntechGodhead [TG]: i saw them in the player data and didnt even think twice about it
turntechGodhead [TG]: fuck

turntechGodhead [TG] has blocked timaeusTestified [TT]

Your flight sputters to a stop. The bright red text glares at you like a warning, the growing, tightly restrained panic rising with the blood rushing into your ears with every second that goes by before the notification flashes again.

turntechGodhead [TG] has unblocked timaeusTestified [TT]

turntechGodhead [TG]: sorry dave logged on had to prevent the notifications
turntechGodhead [TG]: okay new rule dont message me unless i say something furst i n33d to k33p the window read
turntechGodhead [TG]: purrobably talking to john let me s33
turntechGodhead [TG]: oh shit outta time bro
turntechGodhead [TG]: youre in the hospital
turntechGodhead [TG]: they arent letting him stay in the apartment alone
turntechGodhead [TG]: they found someone to watch him but he doesnt know them and i cant even guess who it would be because you didnt have any furiends ever
turntechGodhead [TG]: fuck i mean bro didnt
turntechGodhead [TG]: its only until you wake up but shit bro we arent any closer looking for this n33dle in a haystack bullshit
turntechGodhead [TG]: im supposed to be a rogue so i can fucking help
turntechGodhead [TG]: steal away the damage and fix the thing that was the fucking plan

Heart in your throat you look away from the window and into the thousands of glimmers burning in every direction, hours upon hours worth of searching even if you had all the time in the world and you don’t. The timer continues to tick down, still just under an hour left but it doesn’t matter because apparently fuck you.

turntechGodhead [TG]: dirk
turntechGodhead [TG]: talk to me
turntechGodhead [TG]: dont you dare get lost in your own head again
turntechGodhead [TG]: we gotta focus!
turntechGodhead [TG]: you said you found that shard out here
turntechGodhead [TG]: these are memories
turntechGodhead [TG]: think about it
turntechGodhead [TG]: what was that memory

How the hell are you supposed to know? It’d been heat and metal and you’d just recognized something of yourself in it that filled the space in your edges and just slid along the edge of yourself into something that was you but not quite you. It’s not like you’d stopped to smell the rot-filled roses, you’d been operating mostly on instinct.

Heat and metal.

timaeusTestified [TT]: I didn’t fuckin’ look okay? I told you I wasn’t thinking straight. It just felt like me.

Felt like me.

Heat and Metal and sharp edges that you eased into as easy as if they were your own because they fit .

Things just clicked.

timaeusTestified [TT]: Me.
timaeusTestified [TT]: It has to be the talk with me. Dave’s talk with me about his Bro.

Bro is gone. All he is exists in the memory of the younger ecto-son he fucked over. The one point in the entire goddamn timeline, where both you and he existed in the same mind space simultaneously would have been when Dave was venting at you and you took responsibility and apologized.

turntechGodhead [TG]: well fuck that was a once in a lifetime expurrience wasnt it
timaeusTestified [TT]: You could say that.

Notes:

OKAY there we go. Back to Dave next chapter. And don't worry, we'll rewind a little when we get there. Remember what I said about the dave chapter being chronological but switched for pacing? Well, time for some narrative time shit XD

And while I know dirk is probably thinking it right now, no, he wouldn't have fixed it in time even if he ran off immediately after waking up. This mission was doomed from the start woo.

Edit: also I am aware of the arg and it scares the heck out of me so I am not going to acknowledge it in this fic haha.

Dang tho, Jake sure got around in his time, didn't he.

Double Edit: The end of this chapter was pretty heavily edited 1/3/19

Chapter 22: Dave > Fail to Get a Good Night Sleep...Again

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

It’s hours past...but not many.

Three hours, 57 minutes, and 3 seconds to be precise, at the exact moment a sword found its home in a newly born god, and you happen to be dreaming peacefully.

You don't know where you are. You just… ExIst. And that's the best way you can describe it, floating in some weird sort of purple-black abyss.

You should wonder why you are here, but dream logic dictates that it doesn't really matter. You were and therefore you are and really you just needed to sit back and enjoy the ride and see whatever shit your subconscious made up for you. Maybe you'll actually get to fight a dragon this time? Whatever it was beat sitting in a posh tower like some isolated hermit, you’d like to fulfill your destiny or do something heroic or some shit. Not that you ever remember these dreams after you wake up, or even really have all that much lucid control during them, but it’s the principle of the thing. The least your subconscious could do is entertain you if its gonna keep you trapped in your own skull.

Everything is overlaid by the soft maroon light, filling the space with a substance that is almost tangible, acting as a heat against the surface of your skin. Or maybe even something beneath your skin. You don't know. But whatever it is it leaves your body tingling, charged, it makes you want to move but your body doesn't respond to your brains and just floats there. As if waiting for something.

And then.. There is something. A tolling of bells, matching up in time to the ticking in your head. There's something forming in that light. Or it's trying to. You can feel it reaching out, clawing for something, anything to give it an anchor to pull through. You don't even think about it, because deep inside there's really only one thing you can do, especially when that something inside of you is screaming to help.

You plunge your arm into the depths of that light, into the cocoon struggling to complete the metamorphosis on its own, and wrap your hand--it feels too big and too strong to be yours--around another's. Something sharp picks into your palms, breaking skin and allowing rivulets of red dribble down your fingers and get caught in the dips and rivets that would tell the story of your life to the right person…

And you pull.

The light surrounding your arm cracks and splinters and then shatters, falling away from grey tipped claws that dug deep into your own skin.

You wake up.

You blearily stare up at the ceiling, at the soft moonlight playing against the walls and drawing patterns across the chips in the paint. It's almost enough to make its own shadow puppet show, some unseen actor playing out an unknown story right before your eyes.

Caught by a sudden need you roll out of bed, stumbling your half asleep way to the desk. You grope for your pencil, knocking it to the floor in your uncoordinated haste but that's okay. That's okay there's a pen here. And paper. And that's good enough. The image in your brain runs out through your hand like water and onto the page. Another shitty stick figure joins your countless doodles, cat ears and shades and a rad as hell cape with arching crows wings spreading from their back. Crows are pretty fucking rad, you gotta admit it, even if the ones that live around your building are assholes and like to abuse your hospitality and make a mess of your shit sometimes.

What the hell is wrong with you?

You ball up the drawing and throw it into the trash can, hurling the pen to be lost in the shadows across the room. This was dumb. You were dumb. It was just a goddamn dream.

Okay maybe crushing the doodle was a little harsh. So what if your subconscious wanted to be inspired at some ungodly time of the morning. No big deal. It. Happened. You just...need to go back to sleep.

Yes. Sleep.

You throw yourself back into bed and the unseen puppeteer continues with its shadow play as you watch, willing your agitated brain to calm the hell down. Normally you’d just say forget it, up is up, and just noodle on the computer till dawn, but you don’t want to give bro a reason to cancel the training session for something as dumb as lack of sleep and given how strange he’s been acting you wouldn’t put it past him right now. You’ve operated on worse but obviously he doesn’t believe you could handle it now. Haven’t you proven yourself enough? You’ve been doing this for as long as you can remember, pushing yourself to do better, to keep up , to get a goddamn nod and a good job out of him was like pulling teeth but the acknowledgement lit up your life even brighter than fucking Christmas.

Not that you guys celebrated it really. But you saw that shit on TV and it looked pretty dope so you can imagine it.

Shit. You feel awake. You feel so awake you’re half tempted to run up to the roof yourself at this ungodly hour of 3 am and do some laps just to burn off the energy. It’s what chased the fog from your brain and pushed you to get up and draw was still tingling under your skin.

Maybe a midnight snack will settle you down. There’s still that apple juice in there, fuck yeah that would zen you right the hell out. If you couldn’t sleep maybe you could music and meditate or some shit to rest your brain enough to nod off for just a little while longer. The hours until sunrise were enough to catch another cycle of Zs if you’re lucky.

Or maybe you'll just go for pizza. It's easy and simple and delicious. Just reach into the fridge and grab a slice and bam, you're done. Good cold or hot, no need to fiddle around with the microwave that you're fairly sure is possessed--

There's a light in the living room. You stop in the hallway and squint at it. It isn't anywhere near bright enough to be the overhead light, and it's too blue to be the moon. If Bro was up and on the computer or watching TV then you are going to make a snide comment on making sure he got a good night's sleep, the hypocrite.

From well out of range, of course. You are occasionally an idiot, but you aren’t stupid.

Sure enough the soft blue light was coming from the computer screen in the corner. It'd long since switched to Screensaver mode, just showing an image of Bro's shades drifting and bouncing across the screen. Hm. Maybe Bro just left it on or something. You don't see his silhouette against the window although there is something sitting in the chair, but it’s too small to be Bro.

Not that that something stayed unknown for very long. The hairs on the back of your neck pickle as you parse the lanky figure. It's just Lil'Cal. You shouldn't be surprised. Bro liked to have the ventriloquist doll nearby while he worked, and leaving him sitting in his seat to startle you sounded like it could be one of the more harmless pranks he’d pulled on you in recent memory, all things considered..

You are about to just chalk it up to some an advanced level of ironic performance art you just aren’t getting when you note that Lil’Cal's glassy eyes are angled down, and you unconsciously follow his gaze.

The clocks tick toking away in your head screech to a stop. You just. Can't comprehend what you are seeing.

There's a lump on the floor. It's just a blanket. Bro must have kicked it off when he went to bed. No big deal. There's no need to cross the room to check and make sure because it's just a blanket. Just a--

“Bro?”

You are at the edge of the desk. The light from the screen saver doesn't illuminate this far down, blocked by the edge of the desk. But a cloud shifts lazily across the sky and unblocks the goddamn moon like the reveal from some awful horror film and…

It's the Incident. All over again.

“damn it bro not again.” your heart is pounding in your ears and you find yourself trembling. Honest to dog shaking like a leaf about to be torn away and thrown to the mercy of houston’s sick updrafts by one last straw. You are going to be cool . This is probably some test or mind game or --

He's still not moving.

You are safely out of surprise strife range right now but if you go any closer you won't be but he's not moving.

“bro come on this isn't fucking funny.”

A chill is slowly working its way up your spine as Lil'Cal glassy blue eyes take in the whole scene. Some suspicious corner of your mind wondered if that's what this was. If he's filming one of his videos right now and you get to be the fucking guest star.

What would it be called? Moronic little brother flips his shit over prank details at 11?

...but you can't get the Incident out of your head. About seeing those unguarded orange eyes unfocused and empty, staring into space like some goddamn zombie, only responding and focusing on you when you got close enough to literally shake him.

Why didn't you just ask ? You have no idea if he went to the doctor like a goddamn adult because you’d assumed he would but here he fucking was sprawled out on the floor again and you can't even see his face this time---

Prank or not you can't take this. You take a few more shaky steps and - -

Something looks off about the speaker next to the chair, a dark patch almost invisible against black except it didn’t shine in the moonlight in quite the same way, drinking in the reflected light like some fucking blackhole that sent the chill screaming into your gut like someone dropkicked it down a flight of stairs. You scramble forward, throwing bro-ingrained-strife-survival instincts to the wind because fuck it that’s blood.

You’re rambling out loud right now, you know you are, but the words don’t even penetrate your brain it’s so locked up and focused on your Bro. Dried blood was caked to the side of his head, you can see the dark patches against his Strider-light hair in the oh so helpful moonlight. Whatever happened it happened too goddamn long ago because it’s rust brown almost black by now.

Shit you didn’t bring your phone. Shit shit shit. Fuck. You actually needed to do this. It’s Bro and he’s not responding and there’s blood. Or was blood. Shit. Weren’t head wounds supposed to bleed a lot?

You’re dimly aware that you are yelling at him but what exactly doesn’t matter because he’s not responding even as you shake his goddamn shoulders it was supposed to work it did last time--

  1. Your brain helpfully nudges you away from screaming gibberish to drown out the sounds of time being wasted and falling away from you, toward the sane response to finding your older brother slash caretaker passed out on the floor. Phone, you need to go back and get your phone--

No his phone is right fucking there on the desk get that instead you idiot .

“Houston 911. What is your emergency?”

The words get caught in your throat at the unfamiliar voice on the line. But it’s only for a moment because they break out like a tornado ripping through an old barn and flinging cows and cowshit everywhere and making a huge mess all over the place. “I--I need help my bro he’s--fuck i don’t know he’s passed out on the floor and there’s blood on his head and he won’t wake up and he should be waking up--”

What is your name? How old are you?”

None of this matters you just want bro to wake the hell up. You rattle off the information and bro’s cell number in a state of shock when prompted. Your address makes you panic. Not because you don’t know it, you do, but at this very moment the information flies out of your head and leaves you a gibbering mess. It’s not like you ever mail shit, or leave for that matter. You could, but what’s the point? If you go out without bro you got hounded by well meaning strangers who wrung their hands over a kid on the street alone so you just never bothered and now you can’t remember the address. But then you remember the pizza and you find it on the sticker on the pizza box in the fridge and the lady over the phone congratulates you for being such a smart boy but it means nothing because bro’s still not moving.

At least he’s fucking breathing, miracle of miracles. And you can’t believe you hadn’t thought to check before the calm voice on the other end of the line prompted you. The idea that he wouldn’t be was ludicrous, even in your panic. There’s no way he wouldn’t be breathing because there’s no way bro would die. He just--just fell that’s all.

But if he just fell then why were you on the phone with a lady at the emergency dispatch who was sending a fucking ambulance to your apartment?

Are there any other adults around? Can you call your parents?”

All you can say is “Just my bro” because you don’t have parents. Neither of you have parents. It’s just always been you and him and now it’s just you .

You don’t remember much of the time (although you do know it was exactly 8 minutes and 54 seconds) between the calm voice telling you to “stay on the line, okay?” and the paramedics swooping through the unlocked door (which you think the voice told you to do but you don’t remember.)

It’s a whirlwind of activity that you can barely process before they--and bro-- are gone. Leaving you standing numb in the hallway under the watchful care of a police officer until they can find another poor sap to foist you off on and even the calm voice on the other end of the line is gone. The officer gently extracts the phone from your hand and suggests that you should maybe go back to bed for now, that you’ve been very brave throughout all of this but they needed to find someone to contact. No you don’t fucking know the neighbors and hell if you are going to manage to get back to sleep, and you are not leaving. Not unless it’s to go with Bro. You end up wrapping yourself up in bro’s blanket on the futon and cling to Lil’Cal because even if he’s a puppet, he’s at least there and familiar and you refuse to take your eyes off the officer going down the contacts in Bro’s phone. No you don’t know any of them. They never came over. No one ever came over.

You can’t stand the fucking pity in the officer’s eyes as he decides to pick the first number and start calling.

Notes:

I'm going to try an experiment. I was rereading them today and honestly I'm not entirely satisfied with the last couple chapters, and I'm wondering if it's because I didn't give them the time they needed to cook. I'm officially changing the schedule for a week or two to Wednesday and Friday updates only to give me more time to determine if things sit better with more available editing time, and I'm gonna go back and tweak the last two Dirk chapters. No major action or timeline changes, I think, so no need to reread them if you aren't so inclined, but I feel like the dialogue flow and pacing suffers in places and I wanna try and improve that.

Also please let me know if you feel the same way or if you noticed any particular problem spots. It's just something that's nagging at me, and makes me feel like I rushed the Dirk chapters out.

Edit: The end of Chapter 21 has been fairly heavily edited and is actually really important so I lied, go back and read it XD 1/3/19

Chapter 23: Dave > Lose Control of Your Life

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

You must have fallen asleep at some point, because the next thing you know you are waking from a dream of stars to the sound of people talking.

You almost assume it's just the TV. That you'd fallen asleep on the futon while watching some movie for the ironies. If you stretch the delusion, you would almost imagine bro had even looked up from his work and joined you on the couch, and you'd spent the entire movie making sarcastic remarks at the lead actors that would probably make one of your friends sputter with indignation depending on what genre it was.

But that was definitely a fantasy, because bro didn't do that. If he wanted to watch shit it would be on his computer with his sweet audiophile’s dream headphones. The TV was for Mad Snakz and nothing else as far as he was concerned even if when you were younger you’d stubbornly camp out on his futon watching movies until he literally kicked you out for being distracting.

It's hard to pull yourself awake. You feel numb. Emotionally wrung out like an old dish towel being forcibly divested of its moisture thinking it'd finished its work, only to be shoved back under the water because the work is never done.

The voices continue. They are coming nearer. Something cool nudges at you, metallic and humming with pent up energy, urging you to wake faster. It feels almost familiar. Comforting, but with an edge. An edge that confuses the hell out of you because it's tinged with barely restrained malice and --

Something touches you and you flinch back, away. Or you try to. You are tangled in long stuffed limbs and blankets and Bro's faded scent and you can't escape. Lil'Cal looms above you, arms wrapped around you like a total bro, protecting you from the two shapeless giants rearing in your range of vision that slowly clears as you shove your fists into your eyes and rub at them to wake you up quicker.

One is a police officer, and seeing that tired face and uniform and dark skinned hand holding Bro's phone brings it all reeling back. A freight train of memories pulling cars upon cars of emotions all barreling towards the station without a single set of working breaks. They plow straight into you, derailing the entire vehicle and sending you nearly vibrating from the force of the impact.

“Bro? Is he back?”

You manage to get out, voice cracking. It's getting lighter outside, nearly dawn, he had to be back. You could see the sky through the windows. It’s been hella long enough to get him to the hospital and wake him up and it would be just like him to linger out of sight and make you panic just to stroll in cool as a cucumber as if nothing had happened and then silently judge you for panicking over this since you had to be capable of taking care of yourself and not trailing after him all day.

The unfamiliar man beside the cop shot the dude a reluctant grimace before sighing, your gut feels all twisted up and you unconsciously brace yourself because you’ve seen enough movies to know where this is going even if you refuse to believe it because he was fine.

“He might not be back for a while, little man.” The guy says at last, wringing his hands nervously. You hadn’t noticed the sheaf of papers caught in a white-knuckled grip, the hand wringing only succeeding in further crinkling the documents. “He’s okay?” another quickly shot look at the officer, uncertain, “His head’s fine, but he still hasn’t woken up. We can’t just leave you here by yourself so I uh,” another fist clench, “I’m here to take you home I guess.”

“And who the fuck are you supposed to be?” You really don’t care, but the question causes the man to flinch in surprise. Or maybe it was the language. You try to straighten yourself up defiantly, because hell no you aren’t leaving and definitely not with a fucking stranger cop or no cop.

“I--um--well--got this phonecall and I’m technically down as your brother’s emergency contact although really it’s just supposed to be a formality neither of us actually expected to need but--”

The cop clears his throat. “Mr. Stevens, I really need to get back to the station to wrap this up. It’s been a long morning.”

“I--yes of course. Dave, I know we’ve never met but I’m Dirk’s marketing agent--uh, I mean, I work with him on several of his business ventures. Newt Stevens. As I said I’m down as the emergency guardian for you should anything happen to your brother, and this is of course only temporary--”

“Not interested thanks I’m cool here.” Stubbornly you wrap Lil’Cal’s arms around yourself and turn the full force of your well honed disinterested coolness on the situation. You learned from the best, afterall, “I can take care of my shit just fine, I’m not a fucking baby. There’s food in the apartment. I take fucking correspondence classes, and know better than to leave the fucking door unlocked when we aren’t expecting the Paramedic SWAT team to burst through. I’m fine. I don’t need to go anywhere.”

“It’s not a matter of capability, Mr. Strider.” The police officer appears exasperated with Stevens’ recoil at that, “I admire your attempts to be self reliant, it is admirable in a young man, but you are too young to be left alone. It is either you go with Mr. Stevens or we need to get Child Services involved. There is no inbetween.”

“If I have to be babysat, then...can’t he stay here instead?” The frustration is mounting as you feel the claws of inevitability coil around you, like you said before, you’ve seen enough of this shit in movies to think you’ll get your way but damn it if you aren’t going to try. You aren’t a fucking child, bro hasn’t let you be one since you were old enough to stick your finger with one of his throwing knives and ended up with him cleaning blood off the floor and telling you to remember that next time you go putting your hands on shit. He barely even supervises you as it is you don’t need some rando to make sure you don’t get yourself killed. “You don’t know my bro, he’ll be strolling back in by lunch-time.”

“Dave,” Stevens is trying again, “I--I’m sorry but I have responsibilities. My apartment is spacious enough, and we can take some of your things, and honestly it's closer to the hospital--I promise if you come with me we’ll go visit Dirk once visiting hours open!”

And there is was. A crack in your shell. You don’t need to see Bro. You know he’ll be okay. He’ll be fine. You know he’ll be back and doing his dumb research or working on some shit and maybe he’s tired of you and you are mad as hell at him about that and about freaking you out and not going to the goddamn doctor like a goddamn adult, but you don’t want him gone.

The idea of going to see him tempts you so damn much, your defiance leaking out of the puncture like a sad balloon, whistling away like a thin strand of air on the wind.

Your eyes are starting to burn, but you shore up the ice wall because like hell if you are going to let yourself cry in front of these two. You don’t even have your shades to hide behind, having left them in your room because who the fuck needed shades on a 3 am snack run from hell?

Fine.”

Stevens flinches at the bitterness in that single word, but the officer merely nods and smiles a tight lipped smile. He offers your Bro’s cellphone to Stevens but you dart up and grab it instead, glaring your defiance at both of them.

The officer raises an eyebrow but Stevens mumbles a “It’s fine, we’ll drop it off at the hospital.” and then clears his throat, “O--Okay. Why don’t you go...grab anything you’d like to take with you to keep you occupied and I can--clean up a little and lock up here? With all luck your bro will be right as rain before afternoon, and you’ll be back here tonight! Just think of it like--a day trip for now!”

With the phone’s edges cutting sharply into your small hands, you abscond to your room, slamming the door behind you hard enough to make the wall shake.

As soon as you do something breaks within you and you sink to your knees, the mantra to keep it cool playing over and over and over and over in your head completely drowning out the clocks and the voices from outside and you take in your space and just try to breathe and if you aren’t careful you are going to cry like a fucking baby right here and now and there's no way those two clowns wouldn’t hear you so listen to me right now Dave Strider--

Keep.

Your.

Cool.

Just a field trip. Bro will be awake when you get there. You’ll look him dead in the eyes and call him an idiot and he won’t be able to say a damn word because he’s in the fucking hospital.

You have no idea what shit to take with you so you just grab your pens and some paper and shove them into the plastic bag you’d been hoarding your snacks in. You eye your computer with it’s big chunky tower and monitor and many peripherals, and find yourself wishing you’d asked bro for a laptop instead, because at least then you could have taken it with you. Without it you won’t have access to your music or the internet or john…

John.

The idea of losing out on the other person whose attention you craved sent a spike of panic through your already tired heart and you end up swinging into the chair without a second thought, waking the snoozing machine up with some quick mouse twitches

turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB]

turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < hey john i know its too fucking early for you to get this but i have a weird request
turntechGodhead [TG]: B33 < fuck what the hell is this

The bright orange sears into your eyes off the the page what the hell is this crap? Did someone hack your pesterchum just to be a douche? And what’s with the weird...emoticon? L33tsp34k bee? Fuck if you know. After the shit morning you’ve had already the last thing you need right now is worrying that someone got into your shit.

You navigate to the settings and reapply your formatting and change your password to your backup one just for good measure. If it’s just someone fucking with you it’ll at least stop them from getting back in again.

turntechGodhead [TG]: okay better
turntechGodhead [TG]: here
turntechGodhead [TG]: XXX-XXX-XXXX
turntechGodhead [TG]: its my cellphone
turntechGodhead [TG]: i know your dad is all blah blah internet safety privacy stranger danger big eared police dog blah blah and like a cellphone number is the internet equivalent of seriously dating but i dont know how soon ill be able to get back online and i really dont want to be alone and youre all i got left right now
turntechGodhead [TG]: if you could just text me after school or something id love you forever big ol promise you my hand in marriage rock and all big ol shindig of a wedding once we both turn legal ill even wear the goddamn dress thats how much id be in your debt but
turntechGodhead [TG]: fuck it
turntechGodhead [TG]: bros in the hospital
turntechGodhead [TG]: they arent letting me stay at home until he wakes up and are packing me off with some spineless douchenozzle i dont know until then
turntechGodhead [TG]: im
turntechGodhead [TG]: scared
turntechGodhead [TG]: i know hell get better hes too damn strong to die in some pansy ass way like falling from his goddamn computer chair
turntechGodhead [TG]: hed probably go out fighting some supervillian all samurai style and flash steps and awesome puppet power or some shit showing me up like some sort of slowass lameo and setting up some overpowering heroic legacy id be expected to follow
turntechGodhead [TG]: i know all this shit and im hella angry at him for even being in this situation but im still so goddamn scared
turntechGodhead [TG]: hes an asshole but hes still my bro

A knock on the door. Heavy and commanding. A police officer’s knock, nothing like the almost hesitant one Bro had leveled against the portal the night of the pizza fiasco, checking in on you. You would have never labeled your bro as hesitant before this shit happened and now you find yourself even missing that.

“Are you finished?”

“Five more minutes!” You shout back, considering the possibility of just barricading the door and refusing to leave. But if you do that then you won’t be able to go to the hospital because you don’t even know which hospital he was taken to. You grab your-- bro’s-- shades off your desk and slide them onto your nose and the barrier feels comforting, and allows you to wrap yourself up your bro’s icy walls and school your face into that same faint ironic amusement you’ve been taught to wear as your goddamn armor.

turntechGodhead [TG]: i gotta go john text me if you can

turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering ectoBiologist [EB]

You grab yours and bro’s phones and throw them into the bag with your paper and the used fancy camera bro got you for your birthday last year. With the speed hard earned from dodging bro’s sneak attacks you swap out your sleep PJs for something more suited for going out in public, hell if you are going to walk up to bro when he’s totally awake waiting for you at the hospital in your black and red card suit-patterned PJs. Even if he bought them for you it was hella uncool and you refuse to let him see you be anything other than cool right now. It already annoys you that newt mc spineless saw you in them.

You rub your eyes and smooth down your sleep mussed hair, and then grab your bag and drag it out the door to meet the fate that’s waiting for you.

Notes:

...okay so the end of chapter 21 got edited with something fairly plot important so I'd suggest going back to read the last half :3c

Alrighty! One more dave chapter, I think and then back to the medium for a while!

Chapter 24: Dave > Visit

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“Now I just need to make sure you understand--” Stevens is talking again, hand on the door to room 11 and completely blocking your path inside. The nurse who’d led you here is grabbing a clipboard from a holder on the wall, checking it over. You wonder if you glare at him hard enough behind your bro’s shades he’ll get the hint and shut up, you don’t care what he has to say and you just want in that door right now.

Of course he doesn’t notice, which might be for the best. You really don’t want him to see how much he’s dragging on your last nerve anyway, because that would mean he was seeing through your ice and hell no you refuse to allow that. Your ice is no pansy see through bullshit, it’s as dark as the dark glass of your--bro’s shades. You’re building this bunker in the penguin infested lands of the cool-zone because there really isn’t much else you can do right now. 12 hours and 23 minutes and 15, 16, 17 since you were removed from your home and he’d finally fulfilled his promise. Well after visiting hours opened up, the liar. You’d left your apartment to the rising sun, and you’ll be returning to the setting one. He’d made excuses. Of course he made excuses. The doctors were running tests. He’s under observation. They want to get him settled in before allowing visitors. Bullshit. “Your brother is--he’s-- how do I explain this to a kid--

“I’m young, not mentally unable to understand unfortunate circumstances.” You feel almost vindicated breaking out your high-point value words, allowing you the slightest satisfaction in watching him startle like a rabbit who just got a face full of dog breath. “Lay it on me. He’s what?”

“He’s--” There he goes fiddling with those papers again. At least he had the foresight to grab a folder from the apartment and put them in there so they aren’t getting irreparably destroyed thanks to his incessant fidgeting. You wonder what they are. Probably legal crap. “I--just don’t want it to be a shock, Dave.”

“Like it wasn’t a shock finding him on the floor?”

“I don’t think sugar coating it is going to work for this one.” The nurse offers with almost a genuinely amused smile. It had been professionally adequate before when she’d come over to inform them she could take them back to Dirk Strider’s Room now, and man it was so uncool how uneasy hearing that name made you. Bro was Bro. You knew his name. But in the same way you knew your address. You just. Didn’t use it ever. And thus never thought of it. Ever.

If felt wrong anyway. Bro was Bro and Dirk was...someone who wasn’t Bro.

Stevens lets out a frustrated sigh--really riling him up is one of your few life’s pleasures right now. John would have gotten out of school hours ago. And your phone has been silent, even before you had to turn it off thanks to a “silence your cell phones please” sign near the set of doors that led back from the quiet waiting room with its oddly comfortable chairs and tea stations and nothing at all like the hard plastic and barely restrained chaos you’d expected from your brief stint in the general waiting area. Once Stevens had said who you were visiting you’d been wooshed back into the much smaller room while you waited for someone to show you the way.

“He’s in the ICU, Dave. That’s the--”

“Intensive Care Unit, I know.” You finish helpfully, you had seen the signs and you knew what that meant even if this idiot seems to think you wouldn’t understand. Moving beyond those doors had the quiet drop away into a fairly loud area, machines beeping and staffers talking, as you passed door upon door leading further away from the core hallway “You said he wasn’t hurt though, so why is he here?”.

“It’s--he can’t--do normal stuff--the doctors are doing the best they can but...it can be upsetting okay? I know you’re putting on this show of being all tough and in control, like he always did. You’re a lot like him, but...” He trails off, looking away, “It’s okay if you aren’t, you know?”

The handle turns and you push past him into the room.

And then you stop. It’s well lit, there’s even a fucking window. It’s not even overlooking the grey and hazy city that you know you are smack dab in the heart of, but a sparse landscaped courtyard walled in by windowed rooms on all sides. Above the walls the sky is painted with the red of the oncoming sunset and it flashes you back to the moment you saw him in the kitchen, furiously scrubbing his face as if he couldn’t breathe, hat left abandoned on the floor from where a haphazard shove had knocked it off his head.

You’d tried to give it back.

It was an odd detail to think of at that very moment, you hadn’t seen him in the hat since then.

Set away from the window was the bed, easily catching the still bright evening light. It’s pushed right up against the wall, where you can easily see the glowing lights and wires protruding from it and towards the sole occupant, monitoring more shit than you can probably imagine.

You’d just seen him last night. Joked with the bastard. Gotten more words, even if in goddamn text , than you’ve gotten in years .

It’d been…

Nice.

And barely over twenty fucking four hours later you find yourself frozen in a doorway. Somewhere in the back of your mind you’d convinced yourself that even if Stevens had told you over and over that they’d call if he woke up or showed any change at all, you’d walk through that door to restless orange eyes, your larger than life bro irritated at being confined and restricted in such a manner.

You hear the two adults talking behind you, and you realize you shouldn’t be tuning them out. Not when it's probably about Bro. But you can’t bring yourself to look away from the figure hooked up to those machines.

A hand lands on your shoulder. You want to shrug it off but you...can’t. You let it push you forward, just enough to allow the others into the room and the door closed.

Without the panic painting the room in blurs and the obscuring nature of 3 am night-time and limited illumination, he looks so different in the clinical white lights and the white bed linens and the stark sterilized unfamiliar space. Here he isn’t the unmistakable shogun of your shared territory.

Smaller.

Fragile.

You barricade yourself in your bunker of ice and distance and soon find yourself at the side of the bed. So close and instead of going for his face, you fixate on the hand laying on top of the covers. There’s something stuck to one of his fingers, joining the various tubes and wires running out and away from your sight into the wall where various monitors beep quietly away.

The adults are talking again. At least one of them is close behind you, hovering, probably to make sure you don’t do something stupid like throw yourself on the bed or pull on the wires or throw a tantrum, or...something.

If you were angrier, you might have found it in yourself to do something like that. But you just feel numb in your fortress constructed for penguins. You force yourself to hear them past the quiet beeping of the monitors, even as you find yourself counting along with them. The words drift around you, joining the beeping and the counting and the soft sounds of wispy breaths rising above you and you find it hard to focus on any of them.

“--we haven’t observed any signs of even minimal conscious awareness. If it weren’t for the fact that he won’t respond to any stimuli, it would look like a deep sleep. Do you happen to have any of his previous medical history? Or the name of a hospital we can contact for it? Perhaps another family member? There are some genetic predispositions that might factor…”

“None.” Stevens’ reedy voice responds back, and you hear the rustle of papers as he leafs through the folder, “Dirk is--he’s a pretty reclusive guy. I’ve known him since he moved to Houston some eleven years ago, barely a kid himself then, but don’t really know him, know him, you know? Just kept to himself. Aside from the kid over there I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have any family, and he doesn’t seem the type to keep up with annual check ups, you know? I’d bet he’s never actually been to a hospital before in his life. Except...”

“Except? Anything you can provide would be an improvement at this point, sir. We can maintain this state for some time yet, but the sooner we can determine and address the causes the better the prognosis becomes.”

“Traffic accident, I think. Back in ‘98? Couple years after he ended up with the kid. It’s what got him calling me up and working out all the paperwork. Had to make sure the kid had someone if things went ti--sour. He wasn’t too badly hurt, but ended up overnight for observations. I don’t know which hospital but...I have an area for the accident…”

The scribble of a pen as he rattles off a name that holds no meaning for you. Pens. You should have brought your pen and paper. Your fingers twitch and you find yourself longing for any beat other than the steady beep of the monitors or the incessant ticking of the clocks.

There’s a swish of fabric behind you, and then the nurse’s voice. Much closer. “Do you have any questions? Or want to talk? You’ve been rather quiet over here.”

You nod, and open your mouth for the first time since you’d entered the room. The words get caught in your throat, but you force them through because you are cool and you aren’t in shock thank you very much. “What’s that weird looking clothespin thing. Do those hurt? I mean I guess one of the good things about being out like a light means he doesn't have to deal with all that shit stuck all over the place. How does he eat? How does he--”

You didn’t give her space to answer and you know that because they aren’t really the questions you want to ask, but the torrent lets you loosen enough to let the real one clutching at your heart to tumble out even if you already know the answer won’t be an answer at all because there is no answer.

Quieter.

“When will he wake up?”

“That’s the question isn’t it.” She murmurs softly, “It could be two minutes from now, it could be two days, it could be...more.”

“I can promise that we are doing all we can to get to the bottom of this. You live alone with your brother right?”

“Yeah. It’s just us two bros. Always been. Bro doesn’t talk about the parentals, an’ I’m pretty sure he’s legally my guardian or whatever. Responsible for me and all. Makes me do my homework, keeps me from killing myself doing dumb shit. You know the deal.” You are getting tired of answering the same old questions, but right now the act of talking to someone who isn’t responsible for dragging you under protest from your home, is working to loosen the knot in your chest so you squelch that temptation to sass. You just stare down at the hand lying lifeless before you, blocking out the rest. Your shared freaky Strider-light complexion nearly blending into the sterile white linens.

You’d never really thought about it much, cooped up in your room in your apartment with just bro and the TV for comparison, and TV was supposed to be weird right? But Stevens didn’t look like you. The nurse didn’t look like you. The dozens of people in the general waiting area hadn’t looked a bit like you. Even the few pale people actually had fucking color . The probably hundreds of people you’d driven by in Stevens’ car hadn’t looked like you. Freaky complexion. Freaky light sensitive eyes. Freaky white-blonde hair. Just you n Bro. You were so obviously related it wasn’t fucking funny. “Light. You asked about medical crap. It’s not as bad as mine, but he’s sensitive to light. Sunburns are hell.”

Fingers touch dark glass and you let it slide down your nose, squinting up over the edges in the harsh (to you) white light before pushing them up again. Oof. You don’t know how he’s been handling it without them, even at home. There’s a reason you guys don’t bother with overhead lights except when there isn’t a window, and it has nothing to do with saving energy. “He hasn’t been wearing them for the last few days though, it’s really weird.”

The pen scratching again. Stevens is silent, although you think you hear him shift somewhere behind you. Yeah if he’d known bro for as long as he said he did would realize how weird that was. Just because Bro could function without his shades doesn’t mean he liked it.

“Can you remember anything else? Anything else unusual? Behaviors? Signs of illness or injury?”

“Fuck yeah he’s been acting so off it was driving me up the wall and out the nonexistent skylight, just fucked straight off into space, see ya earth, no can do.” That seemed to surprise them both, and you jerk your head away from his hand and it’s dumb as hell clothespin looking accessory and deliberately turn to her, and by proxy Stevens, since he was hovering behind her like an overstuffed turkey. “I saw him break down in the kitchen. Just kinda froze and stood there like he had no idea what the hell was going on and then just started this whole weird freak out. I left hella quick but came back a” don’t count it don’t count it out because they don’t need to know how many fucking seconds its been since then “while later and found him just like zoned out on the floor like he’d just dropped right there. I’m surprised he wasn’t growing moss for all that he hadn’t twitched since I left him. He snapped out of it when I touched him and I told him to go to a doctor, but he obviously didn’t fucking listen to me. And that’s not the half of it. Since then he’s mostly avoided me other than making sure I’m still breathing,” and you’ve avoided him back but that’s not the point “ It sucked ass.”

The nurse’s pen kept scratching but you don’t like the look on her face at all.

“How long ago was this?”

You clench your teeth shut as you feel the precise time bubble on the tip of your tongue and take a deep breath before shoving out a quick, “s’been ‘bout a week.”

More pens. More scratching. Eventually it stopped. “Thank you, Dave was it? While none of that rings any particular warning bells for his condition, it is clear there was something going on with him before it got to this point.”

She steps away to a small computer console in the corner, Stevens following.

“Think it could be drugs?” Stevens asked quietly, obviously trying to keep you from hearing and the idea made your blood boil. “I never knew him to partake but…”

“Toxicology for the more common strains was one of the first things we ran, once we determined the the lack of other visible trauma to the brain, despite the injury.” The nurse responds, checking the chart again. “Even still it was deemed unlikely…”

You drag your eyes back to the breathing form on the bed and force yourself to take it all in, at, not just a hand but Bro hooked up to all that shit--was there something up his nose? Maybe you should have paid more attention when bro was researching hospital dramas, you might have known what to expect. But even then you bet it would have felt so... wrong for it to be Bro in there, washed out and lost in the white comforter, looking way too small and fragile for your badass ninja samurai warrior who ruled over your apartment with a cool iron fist. Someone had washed the blood out of his hair, thank dog, but the gauze pad and the strip of bandages wrapped around his head left the rest of the white-blonde mess sticking out the top like some sort of fancyass show rooster.

That thought almost made you crack a smile, but it withered and died before the signal could leave your thinkpan, because you realize you want to tell him how ridiculous he looks like this.

“Stop fucking around and wake up bro.” The words quietly sneak their way out, and you snatch up the hand lying on the bed, ignoring Stevens’ squawk and then the nurses’ quick attempt to hush him. She didn’t barge in to pull you away though, and it’s not like you are fucking with the clothespin thing so you just focus on that big calloused hand, and think about it curled around the hilt of a sword, think about it oh so delicately inspecting computer chips smaller than your pinky finger, think about it tap tap tapping away at a keyboard doing gog knows what, think about it gently checking your face when it gets ambushed by gravity in cahoots with your traitorous communication device.

Think about it knocking on your door oh so fucking hesitantly before shooting you a message asking if you were fucking alive.

It’s definitely just your goddamn imagination that those fingers twitch in yours, because his breathing didn’t change and you just hold on for-- fourty three minutes and 31, 32, 33-- until Stevens mumbles an apology and pries you away. You protest because you are expected to but your heart isn’t in it and everyone notices. Still, you feel like something is being ripped away from you as you are led out of the room, and Bro’s whispy breathing and the beat of the monitors still chases you down the hall, as if permanently joining the symphony of increasingly discordant noise in your head.

You can’t even find it in yourself to resent those crushing not-bro’s fingers around your wrist, or the apartment that is not yours they are leading you back towards.

Notes:

Man the wait between Friday and Wednesday is torture, but I AM totally enjoying the extra editing time. Especially since I had to do a lot of hospital research for this one! Maybe moving Friday to Saturday will make it not quite so hard for me to hold onto the chapter? Iunno. Maybe.

I know I said we'd get back to the medium next but there's one more Dave chapter to go, sorry. At least it's already finished haha.

Chapter 25: Dave > Make New Friends

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The ride in the back of Stevens’ car isn’t a pleasant one at all, just an extended awkward silence drowned out by the radio and the purr of the motor and the sounds of a weekday evening in good Ol’ Houston, Texas. You stare out the window at what you assume is standard big-city traffic, side-walk to side-walk red tail lights everywhere you look, the car inching slowly along its trek to the apartment you could have probably walked to in the same amount of time if it probably wouldn’t have gotten you mugged or kidnapped or some shit.

“Dave, I…” You don’t look away from the window, but the words come stiltedly from the front seat. “I--know you don’t want to be here, or want to hear this from me but--I really am sorry.”

Sorry. Hah. He shouldn’t be the one who’s sorry. Bro should be the one who’s fucking sorry, up and leaving you like this. Maybe if he’d gone to the doctor when shit first started happening instead of sulking like a brat--

Hell you don’t know. You don’t know a lot of shit.

Things are going to change .

Well he was right about that, wasn’t he? Even if he wakes the fuck up tomorrow he still forced you into this goddamn situation. You don’t know whether you would want to punch the dude or...shit do something totally uncool. Probably tiptoe around each other for ages like awkward bro-crushes if both your actions lately speak louder than any machismo words you can come up with to the contrary.

“It’s cool.” You mumble back instead when the silence starts poking you with it’s sharp edges and you can just imagine the kicked puppy look on the guy’s face. Spineless Mc Douchenozzle, kidnapper of Daves, and replacer of homes, maybe. But Bro was his co-worker / maybe-friend too.

He did keep his promise. Eventually.

“Can we go back tomorrow?” You find yourself asking.

“I--I’ll give them a call and see. They have some more diag--um--tests to run tomorrow, but we can plan around them.”

You nod. Then realize he probably can barely see you since he is supposed to be all “eyes on the road” and all that, so you just mumble out another “Cool.”

“We’re swinging by your apartment.” He says suddenly, and that makes your head snap up. “So you can pick up clothes and things, you know? Whatever you need to feel comfortable, since this day-trip is turning into a sleepover. You can have my room tonight, I’ll take the couch.”

That suggestion rankled you. Sure you’d hidden yourself in the offered space all day because you hadn’t wanted to be there and you hadn’t wanted to see him at all or participate in the funky feelings jam he seemed to constantly be trying to pull you into, but that was supposed to just be for a few hours . Not an entire night.

“I’m not gonna put you out of your own bed, dude. I’ve slept on plenty of couches it’s cool.”

Okay so maybe it was only the one futon bro owned, and you can probably count the number of times you’ve fallen asleep on it on one hand because he stopped giving a shit about your nightmares years ago, but the point is you don’t need the fucking pity.

“I doubt you want to be woken up by my roommate when she gets home from work at 1 am.” He responds dryly, and the light turns green and the car starts inching forward in the river of gas guzzlers adding to the putrid stretch that is the rot-filled air of your home-town, “I’m serious Dave. Dirk and I--we talked about this stuff. Granted it was back in ‘03 that we last talked about it, but… If anything happens to him...”

“He’ll wake up.”

He has to.

“I know. He’s a stubborn shit.” You have to double take at that. Stevens?? Swearing?? With the amount of times he’s sputtered at your language you would have thought he would have spontaneously combusted should he utter anything but the cleanest of words, spit-polished to a shine bright enough to sear out unsuspecting eyeballs, “It’s just for tonight. IF--” You can hear the Capital Letters “it lasts longer we’ll reevaluate. He had this whole scheme cooked up to take care of the apartment for you ‘until you were ready’ or something. Guardianship and supervision are tricky but he seemed to think you’d be okay on your own, and honestly? I’m starting to understand why after today.”

“You just--even if you can, you--you don’t need to be the tough shit right now, okay? He’s your Brother. It’s okay to be angry. To be sad. To be scared. It’s okay to not know how to feel or feel them all at once. And I want to make sure you can do that, without needing to take care of yourself too. It’s my way of coping with--what he wanted.”

Shit.

What are you supposed to say to that? Bro made fucking plans for you? He thought about this that long ago? Why the hell would Bro even think about what you’d do if some shit like this happen? Wasn’t Stevens’ presence at all ‘just a formality?’

He…

Only ever wanted you to be tough. To be strong. Wanted nothing to do with the domestic shit or emotional outbursts to the point where if you couldn’t explain it away with the ironies then you were better off just not being around at all when they hit because he’d just make you shut up. If you couldn’t take care of yourself, then why the fuck wouldn’t he use that as just yet another lesson to teach you how shitty the world is and how underprepared you fucking are?

“Sounds selfish,” Okay whatever you should say it probably isn’t that, “Coddling me as an excuse to avoid dealing with your own feelings shit.”

“Maybe it is,” You can see his fingers tapping against the steering wheel. Tap. Tap. Fidgeting the best he can, “But...this...stuff is hard enough to process when you’ve got thirty years under your belt, much less barely a decade. Dirk wouldn’t want you to struggle to deal with all this alone.”

That makes you snort. Liar.

“Whatever.”

Bro was all about that struggling. If you didn’t bite down and grit your teeth and work for yourself then why the hell did you deserve anything. You had years of cuts and bruises and blood and tears from training sessions to teach you that.

But maybe Stevens didn’t know Bro the way you do. Maybe Bro lied to him too, or he’s reading into the shit he wants to see. Fuck. You don’t know.

You don’t talk again until he pulls the car around the back of the building, squeezing the car into the single space of visitor’s parking that was available.

“Go on. I’ll wait here.” He holds the spare key over the console and out to where you sit in the back seat, shifting the car into idle. “Take as long as you need, okay? We’ll grab dinner on the way back. Maybe pizza?”

You think of the not-entirely-eaten pizza upstairs in the apartment and the thought makes you feel sick.

“How ‘bout a burger instead?” You manage to keep your voice steady somehow, clutching the keys in a white knuckled fist, feeling the edges dig into your palm. You could just. Keep the keys. Lock yourself in. No one would be able to drag you out. You could stay here and wait for Bro with Lil’Cal and your computer and bury these confusing emotions in the illusion of normality and musical meditation and just tell yourself Bro was fucking with you and just hiding in the...you don’t know, the crawlspace like he did when he entered stalker mode.

That would be dumb. You’d left a bunch of your shit back at his apartment anyway, and he had promised to take you back to the hospital.

Stevens just smiles his nervous smile and nods, “Sure, little man. If that’s what you want.”

You go upstairs. You don’t lock it behind you. You hesitate in the deepening shadows that cover your room, holding a backpack Stevens had pulled out from the passenger seat before you’d gotten out of the car.

Bits and pieces of your life go into that pack. Clothes and shit mostly, although you do imagine the look on Stevens’ face if you pulled out one of your collection and displayed it in his room. But nah, most of it, glass or bone, were just too breakable and you weren’t going to risk that shit, no matter how much you’d want to catch that expression on film.

Eventually you make it into the living room and stuff the blanket you’d fallen asleep on the futon with into the bag. Lil’Cal watches you, clay face frozen into that unnerving grin staring down at you from where you’d left him behind on the futon, dragged out of your home by a well meaning if somewhat annoying (you really weren’t being fair to him) dude and his buddy cop. You hadn’t thought to grab Cal then. But under the glassy gaze of those unblinking blue eyes you consider it. You almost reach out to grab him--he’s so tangled up in Bro it makes it feel cruel to leave the C-Man behind. You could take him with you tomorrow, drop him off in the room when you visit. People leave get well cards and stuffed animals and shit right? It’d just be a get-well Cal instead. Would serve the bastard right waking up to the C-Man all up in his grill, that insane giggle echoing through your imagination at the prospect.

You consider it. And you hesitate. But the moment passes and you break the gaze and look away and grab the pack, shutting yourself in your room to give it a last once over, adjusting the too-big straps on your shoulders.

Your eyes linger on your computer, which has probably been turned off longer than it ever has before by now, and consider booting it up. Checking on pesterchum. John hadn’t texted you. Had you overreached? Damn it you know it was too early but fuck what were you supposed to do? It’s not like you could have asked Bro to go comatose in another few months when it would have been more socially acceptable.

But if you checked that computer and found John weirded out by your last messages… well you don’t know if you want to face it. And really you hadn’t actually checked your phone since you’d arrived at the hospital. Maybe John had just been waiting, or trying to convince his dadzilla you weren’t some middle-aged axe murderer or...something.

Fuck. Just check your damn phone already, Dave. If there’s nothing there then you’ll fight with yourself over whether you should boot the computer up. It’s that simple.

You’d stowed it away upon reaching the hospital, so you pull up your captchalogue, doing some mental arithmetic and mumble a keyword to eject it safely in your hand and not like halfway across the room. The notification light on the flip phone blinks, and your mind shorts out like you clipped through the level geometry in one of your bro’s shitty games.

There’s a series of messages. From an unknown number. For a moment your pounding heart drowns out the discordant noise in your head as you navigate the sluggish device--damn you’ll need to bug bro for a new one soon enough. Weren’t there rumours apple was doing something funky? You’d always wanted one of the ipods, bitchin’ way to carry your music around, but bro had only raised an eyebrow and asked you exactly where you planned on going when you had all your music on the top-ish of the line computer he got you last year. And he had a point. It’s not like you’d expected to be kicked out of the apartment like this--

Doggonnit Dave you are stalling again just open the dang thing.

Dave > Open the thing

Greetings TG.

You do not know me, but I am reaching out on the behalf of a mutual acquaintance.

My name is Rose. I’m aware that giving your number to a stranger is a taboo, and have informed John of such, but he insisted we’re both his pals which apparently makes the breach of privacy acceptable and who am I to argue with the flawless logic of the Egbert scion.

John would like me to inform you of his condolences in the hospitalization of your Brother, and his regret that he cannot contact you himself. It is through no intention of his own that he spurned your advances, as he does not have a cellular device of his own, and he was as so far unsuccessful in convincing his father to allow the use of his PDA, but he did not wish to let you suffer through prolonged silence on his part.

In his unavailability I would like to offer a willing ear for you to “rant off” as john so eloquently put it, and would be willing to pass on any messages you see fit to send him until such time as you can access pesterchum once more.

Best Regards, TT (tentacleTherapist)

P.S. Feel free to add me on pesterchum if you wish. John is quite insistent that his friends become ‘besties’.

...Gogdamnit John.

You can’t bring yourself to be angry though, those were some well crafted good-natured sarcastic scortchings going on up in those walls of text and you find yourself admiring the artistry of it all.

tell john its hella rude to take an internet proposal and hand it off to someone else im revoking the promise of a big ass rock

i might take you up on the offer of that ear its been a hell of a period of time and i have clocks ticking in my brain and cant even tell exactly how long this shit has been because i dont know when it started

They must be online because you’ve barely pocketed the phone again, as the captchalogue would make it hard to read the notifications, when it buzzes.

I’m sure he will be duly remorseful at the cessation of your upcoming nuptials. As for when it started...Most would say that would be the beginning, would they not?

the beginning like what dinosaurs and shit

If that is what you wish to speak of, then by all means go ahead.

You call her bluff and ramble about dinosaurs all the way back to Stevens’ apartment, and she fully responds in kind, if less rambly and more eloquently than you do but hey it works. Thankfully, Stevens seems to have stepped off about the feelings shit for now, or maybe he’s just relieved to see you so absorbed in your phone instead of staring sullenly out the window the whole way back but hell if you know.

He does stop and get you that burger he promised, which was apparently the first thing you’d eaten all day and you hadn’t realized and you nearly inhaled that thing because the smell of food alone was enough to make your stomach clench painfully with how empty it was. Apparently forgetting about food was normal when dealing with stressful situations (a la a small tangent from your dinosaur fueled distraction as you praised to high heaven whatever god invented and placed the delicious carb and processed meat concoction that is a hamburger onto this earth.) Turns out Rose was an aspiring psychology nerd, which definitely explained part of her interesting chumhandle, and had much to say on the topic of grief if you let her go at it. At least she seemed content to restrict it to side tangeants and just let you have your dinosaur filled distraction otherwise.

You feel like stressful is a little understated. Maybe stress-piled-up-so-far-over-the-fucking-brim that it turned into an ocean of shit that you were left to either sink or swim through.

Shit. You’re so tired.

You really don’t have the energy to argue by the time it comes to determine sleeping arrangements, finally back at Stevens’ (rather posh in comparison to yours) two bedroom apartment (one of which belongs to the mysterious night-owl roommate), so you just clutch your pack and let yourself be shipped off into the darkness of a room that isn’t yours, and wrapped in a blanket that smells like home  and the distinctive smell of the fabric bro uses to make plush puppet ass but to be quite honest that IS home.

The bed is too soft, and the light is too bright, being so close to ground level so you need to close the blinds which cuts off the moonlight and you hate that. You can’t hear your computer humming in the corner, hibernating, and you can’t see the gleam of your jars of dead shit near the window, and everything feels wrong and uncomfortable but…

You curl around the gently glowing face of your phone, shooting the shit about fucking dinosaurs and penguins and cats and wizards and whatever other random inane shit that wanders through your tired mind well into the night with someone you’ve never met, but is perfectly willing to stay up distracting you from the fact that this might not be the only night you spend here. It’s only been a few hours you know your A-list is going to be growing from one to two, damn it John ( thank you.)

When you finally fall asleep you dream of the darkness of space, reflected in hundred of tiny mirrors surrounding your posh af prison. Through it all clocks keep ticking and plush arms surround you, one part protective the other part angry. One part drawing you in, the other pushing you the hell away. But it was just a fucking dream so you remember nothing at all in the morning except a faint guilt that you hadn’t brought Lil’Cal with you.

Notes:

Shifting the schedule to tuesdays and fridays! for good this time I think. 4/3 days is about the best I can do for a twice a week split and it leaves the weekends free for homework. I'm a weirdo who gets all my writing done during the weekdays instead of the weekends haha. It's just much easier to focus for some reason. At least the benefit of cutting the upload frequency down is resulting in fairly consistently longer chapters eh?

I HAD the next chapter done...but I'm considering cutting it because the muses are nagging at meeee. Why is it that whenever I manage to get ahead they decide "you know what, no, that's not how this should be told try again." It always seems to happen XD

Still gonna be a Dirk chapter though!

Anyway! Hope ya'll are still enjoying this trainwreck, and thank ya'll for sticking with me <3

Edit: ...almost 60k words and it's barely been a fucking week in universe oh geez it just hit me dang it.

Chapter 26: Davepeta > Be Another Dave

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Hours in the past… but not many…

In the ballpark of the time a young boy was visiting a hospital in another world...

You’re doing what you do best, having had years to perfect it, and that’s just float there chilling while you watch someone else run around and do shit.

Now, past you, Dave-you, would have been more bitter than a 90% special dark cacao at the thought of being sidelined again, having used up your one hoorah and now relegated to off-screen nonsense that is obviously not important enough to the narrative to even bother explaining.

But current you can’t really bring yourself to care, because you quite frankly believe that running shit is a useless waste of energy and is only serving to stress him out more. A wound up stressed out Bro is the last thing you’d want working on a problem. Bro’s strength is being able to keep that distance and think through a problem, something Dirk was obviously failing at right now.

turntechGodhead [TG]: what are you even looking for anyway

Typing with claws is...different. But you got the hang of it quick enough. The small communication device isn’t pretty, alchemized as it was from scavenged parts Bro cannibalized from the ecto-lab and the station’s barely adequate grist storage, but it fits in your hands and it’s got the right-- wrong-- placement of keys, and you can dig it. Really, you gotta since the whole lack of mind-reading communication device like your bro is sporting, which you are trying to avoid being jealous over. After all that work getting rid of the sprite, it’s not like you should wish to jack your brain back into the matrix just because it was convenient.

You see him hesitate, silhouetted against the technicolor background. The shreds of memories don’t give off physical light, but it’s more than enough for you to track him from cluster the cluster both with your eyes and your heart.

timaeusTestified [TT]: Has he said anything?
turntechGodhead [TG]: no big brother there has b33n no activikitty on the pesterchum since i last repawrted to you
turntechGodhead [TG]: i maintain my complaint that this is totally an invasion of purrivacy using my access like this
timaeusTestified [TT]: It’s an emergency. It’s fine.
turntechGodhead [TG]: i dont disagr33 which is why im doing it but i am still allowed to lodge a complaint with the this f33ls like a shitty thing to do department
turntechGodhead [TG]: when did you turn into a whirlybird
timaeusTestified [TT]: ...whirlybird?
turntechGodhead [TG]: you know a helicopter??? its not like your presence was very propounced in the actual taking care of shit department all my
turntechGodhead [TG]: his life
turntechGodhead [TG]: hell live even if hes probably driving whoever is kittysitting him up a tree betw33n being a catty little shit and a moody prick
turntechGodhead [TG]: dont question my metaphors dude and especially dont dodge my question
timaeusTestified [TT]: There is no dodging going on. I just don’t know how to explain it. That shard can’t be the only piece of the puzzle. I can’t read them, don’t have the right encryption key or... fuck, pointer files? They aren’t my memories, but what I can pick up suggests moments or feelings rather than entire spans of experience since they are so small.
timaeusTestified [TT]: There has to be more to that conversation than just what was broken.
turntechGodhead [TG]: …
turntechGodhead [TG]: dirk get over here

He’s a shadow against the soft light of the pieces ahead of you, iridescent colors getting thrown from shards you recognize and others you can guess at. You find yourself surprised that you aren’t surprised when that shadow begins to shorten the distance between you two

You aren’t sure how to feel about...well, a bro who responds to you so openly. To one who sees you as an equal rather than either someone to train or someone to be protected. You’re used to the stoic protector act twice over, engineers who see a problem and build a solution, with or without your input. And you love-respect-pitied them both, and you realize you are hella projecting but that isn’t stopping you from running headfirst into the differences.

Dirk listens. Mostly. Just like earlier, when you finally got him to stop and think .

When he’s close enough you make a grab for the glimmers that hover just outside his body, the red shards flaring to life as clawed fingers close around the edges to one. You can hear him hiss and feel him jerk away and the tether tying the shard to his soul tugs on your grip but you don’t let go this time, listening to the discordant clashing of broken gears and stalled clocks that fights against the interior rhythm  that echoes in your bones, just out of earshot but you can feel it pulsing if you focus. Another you, another timeline, and maybe you’d be able to hear the music of the universe, but in this one you’d made your choice and you hear the sound of souls instead.

What are you doing? Let. Go.”

The words appear on your pesterchum window at the same time as they somehow vibrate in the emptiness of space.

Typing one handed is hard, especially with the grey tipped claws you really feel like you need to find a nail file or some shit in order to deal with them properly. It doesn’t help that you can barely see the keys in the cast off of faint projections of thousands of mini laser pointers on the world around you and the light from the screen, but you don’t let go of that hot pulsing mess of dark edges even as you feel it searing into your palm.

turntechGodhead [TG]: i canr reas it eurger

Damn claws.

timaeusTestified [TT]: I just told you, we don’t have the encryption key for it.
turntechGodhead [TG]: bro o am s dave
turntechGodhead [TG]: hold dis

He takes the communication device from your free hand and you can almost feel the scrutiny behind those dark lenses boring into you. You are intimately aware of that feeling, thank you very much.

The now freed up hand reaches out to gently touch a few bright and orange and red and black  bits that call to you from the cluster surrounding you both. Sharp edges softening into mist as you pass through them, condensing against your claws, filling the world with that familiar heat and metal and the scent of the rotting air that even three years and 6 sweeps later still reminds you of home.

Dave’s memories.

They call to you, pleading for you to swoop them up and place them in the wing of your experience, nudging and preening until each one interlocked perfectly. Because they are you. Or were you. Could have been you.

You recognize the rhythmic clunking as distant ticking clocks too far out of range. The dew beading against your fingers joins shards of red and orange filling up the empty sky creating a beautiful starscape out of nothing. It makes you want to find a blank wall and paint the shit out of it just to get this image out of your head.

It’s a vision so big it wants to drown you, but you wield your hard-won self-identity as a shield, protecting the still delicate web of self as it settles and grows and cements itself as one part Dave, one part Nepeta, and all parts potential for something even better. You may be part of the same meta experience, but that doesn’t make you two interchangeable.

They don’t...become you, like you’d almost expected the first time you’d run into one, but they purr happily, creating a harmonious duet with your own unique rumble. It was almost like being back with Pounce de Leon, a tiny wriggler curled into their side, allowing nepeta’s own purr to join with their own, separate voices joined together. A matched set.

The memory blossoms around you, and you close your eyes and your heart against it because it isn’t one of yours. Or one that you share. It’s the meteor and dark rooms and a head pillowed on a lap and a dumb movie playing as background noise and you are not even trying to figure out who it is because even as a nose blind human you can tell from that rumble of a growl building in a throat and the grey skin resting on your shoulders and really you’d probably find yourself hella jealous if it wasn’t so flipping cute.

You take your phone back once it fades back to its hum, content to take up residence in the small ball of embers you’d been trying not to think about having accidentally collected on the way to this mess. You can probably dump them off in Dave’s tower when you get back to Derse.

turntechGodhead [TG]: im nt gonna tell tiy ehat it is becus personsl but i can reas it
turntechGodhead [TG]: i vant read that one irs nit you but its nit hom either

You tap on the edge of the red shard, burning hot in your palm. It sends a shiver through your Bro’s frame, the light from the shard flaring at the prolonged contact and painting him in stark reds and blacks against the dark void.  An answering pink flare sparks from your fingers, and you let go, startled. That hadn’t happened before.

Bro immediately steps out of grabbing range, but he doesn’t move far. And it’s words not text that reach you next, “Why didn’t you tell me this shit before we left the lab?”

turntechGodhead [TG]: im new to fancy heart magic dont sue me okay i already knew it didnt f33l like you the rhythm is all wrong
turntechGodhead [TG]: didnt know i actually could do that until i ran into a couple when we split up man was that awkward
turntechGodhead [TG]: after that it was a goddamn mess it wasnt until i was following you the fuck around that i had some time to think which you clearly werent doing by the way
turntechGodhead [TG]: fuck man you didnt just stumble onto the one thing in the entire universe that would sync you up with bro on earth that just isnt how this shit works its paradox fucking space
turntechGodhead [TG]: maybe it led you there but i doubt a memeowry alone is enough to bridge universes bro was supposed to be *you*

He's too quiet and you shift uncomfortably, communication device clutched in your hands and you hear the metal protest in time to try and ease off the pressure but the silence stretches on for far too damn long.


timaeusTestified [TT]: ...it was a catalyst
turntechGodhead [TG]: i see what you did there and i appurreciate it
timaeusTestified [TT]: Entirely unintended as that was, you’re welcome.
“Hmm…”

The thoughtful hum reaches you and you feel the tension slowing beginning to leak out of you. Muscles you hadn’t been aware of ease away from a fight or flight instinct, your wings especially feel sore all over. Were you all puffed up like a threatened turkey or something?

He’s pulled out the shards again, all three small pieces hovering just to his side, and you can see him finally just taking a moment to stop and let the gears turn in that gogdamn head of his.

timaeusTestified [TT]: I’ve been looking at this all wrong. Fixating on what I can see in front of me instead of thinking about what the process actually is.
timaeusTestified [TT]: The memory was a catalyst. But a catalyst is something that precipitates change. Not the direct cause of it.
turntechGodhead [TG]: and what the fuck did it do excatly??
timaeusTestified [TT]: It gave me my dreamself back. It was a point of contact, but I was the one to make the journey on my own using it as a guide. I only had to slide along the edge once. Every other time was exactly like before. After I first woke up years ago...

You can see it coming, a shadow beyond a shadow, glimmering in the sea of stars surround you. Faintly, you hear the music of the universe beginning to dance the tango as a loop begins to yawn before you. You recognize that feeling anywhere even if you hadn't had to deal with it in ages. Last time you were a fucking sprite anyway, it'd barely been a blip on your radar even if you'd managed to feel the ripple of time as something new popped out of it right in front of you.

Shit. Now? He'd warned you but it's barely been a week you'd thought this shit would be ages down the line.

You force yourself not to react, keeping your face perfectly schooled. But Bro hesitates, lifting his head, you wonder if he senses something is amiss. The dude had some of the best combat skills you’ve ever seen ever. The only reason Jack Noir ever got the jump on him was because first guardian powers were hella overkill for anyone.

turntechGodhead [TG]: so??
timaeusTestified [TT]: So…

timaeusTestified is typing, but you aren’t looking at your phone, though you do keep your face angled down so he thinks you’re reading it. Instead you use the darkness and your mirrored lenses to mask that you are looking behind him, at the metal glinting in the light of the shards. You see the moment he notices. Feel the “what the hell” in the sudden twist, bringing his hand snapping up into a guard, with his trademarked unbreakable katana landing in his hand almost immediately to catch the oncoming weapon.

Or it would. If the blade wasn’t fucking broken at the hilt. The flat of the familiar curved weapon shot straight through the unexpected opening and flung him back, into the waiting arms of another assailant. Even then he almost managed to right himself mid-air and catch the dull edge of the sword swinging for his face.

It’s a blow to the back of his head that makes him crumple, blood staining the glowing pink claws protruding from your glove. You look over his broken body and into an impassive shade-covered face and let out a faint hiss as you faintly feel the loop open up, spanning far, far into the future.

“Just take a fucking nap jegus. It should not have taken fucking three of us to take down one measly off-colored monkey with a broken fucking SWORD .”

You know that voice that’s coming from behind you, just as you’d known that sickle even if you’d barely seen the crescent shape in the dark.

Temporal Inevitability. Gotta love it.

turntechGodhead [TG]: was that really necessary??
turntechGodhead [TG]: had to get him out of here while the sedatives were wearing off you do not want to know what happened if we missed the window
turntechGodhead [TG]: acatually i do wanna know youre gonna tell me right??? B33
turntechGodhead [TG]: fuck that looks so weird fine whatever
turntechGodhead [TG]: by the time he would figure it out theyd have him sedated for a procedure and it wouldnt work
turntechGodhead [TG]: and some other nonsense with stevens calling mom its just not a fun time okay
turntechGodhead [TG]: oh man psychomom??? yeah pawsitively wanna avoid that m33ting anytime soon
turntechGodhead [TG]: can i tell him??
turntechGodhead [TG]: hell probably figure it out on his own but why the hell not he was the one to send me on this shitty errand

“Are you two QUITE done?! We aren’t here to fuck around with your convoluted familial relation, Strider! We sent your weird not-lusus to dream land let’s get the fuck OUT OF HERE! The past is giving me hives. I don't even know why you needed me to come along.”

“Yeah, yeah, get over here shouty.” He hands you your unconscious bro, the blood leaking from his hair staining your hands and arms and you really try not to think about it. At least there’s no fucking way this would be counted as mortal danger. “Far be it from me to want some moral support and someone bro doesn't fucking know on the off chance he doesn't recognize your damn soul."

"Oh, and Data?" The use of the nickname had your eyebrows climbing into your hairline, but Dave Strider, quite a bit taller, and full on Knight of Fucking Time, just tosses you a one-fingered salute before grabbing the small and angry grey skinned troll wearing a goddamn diving mask of all things on his head because of course, Karkat isn’t god-tier and thus needs to fucking breathe, “Get the fuck outta my pesterchum.”

Then they are gone in whirl of red light, leaving you with an armful of unconscious lights-out-no-one-is-home broirail and his blood on your claws and wondering how the hell you’re gonna explain what just happened because you only have the foggiest idea yourself.

As time ticks on your awareness of the loop fades, and you find yourself relieved that at least that isn’t your responsibility any more.

Notes:

I'm not late. I swear. It's still tuesday here.

Believe it or not the time travel has been planned since this arc got planned. Wouldn't be homestuck without Dave getting saved by his future selves even if he doesn't know about them yet. Davepeta was so sure they'd survive for a reason.

And yeah. so it's not dirk, but like, seriously guys, Kat's writing tip of the day is, if you are stuck on a scene change the point of view character. This went so much faster when I got outta Dirk's head because he wasn't adding anything new to the conversation until the very end.

Next time is really him. I promise.

Chapter 27: Dirk > Dream?

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“Stop fucking around and wake up bro.”

The words barely penetrate the fog drifting around your head. Maybe it’s coming from the fog in your head. Everything feels sluggish and distant, which is a hell of a step up from the eternity of nothingness you’d barely managed to pull yourself out of. At least through the fog there’s another world, you know that. There’s words and beeps and a warmth in your hand and you reach out and try to grasp it but you can’t as the fog closes in and it slips through your fingers and the steady beep of the monitors fades, the warm pressure embracing you recedes as the blackness reaches up to drag you back down the path of least resistance, another path, another channel, you can feel them opening up into the nothing before you, you just needed to…

Wake up.

Ugh. The pain in your head shifts from an impact wound to a more deep seated ache that you aren’t quite sure is literal or metaphoric at this point but in the end it didn’t matter because it still fucking hurt. The brain numbing fog followed you, but it hovers in and around your mind, twinning it’s ethereal fingers through your sluggish thoughts and makes it hard to remember those adrenaline filled moments between sensing something behind you and finding yourself...here.

You force yourself to focusing on the ‘world’ around you, although the malleable feel to it made you suspect you hadn’t fallen back into your gameself. Caught...between somewhere, the heavy weight of a body slipping away and leaving behind...nothing. Just more black. But this nothing is weighted with something and that something is an expectation of you and you just know you are found wanting.

You turn around and suddenly you are no longer just a consciousness, pulling a form out of thought, something you can only liken to how it’d felt to be a brain phantom. A mental construct. Your own?

No text to hide behind. Only words.

And then nothing becomes something. A shadow. Humanoid but fuzzy, that weight of expectation lays into your shoulders but you refuse to buckle because damn it, “Where the fuck am I?”

“There’s a 98% chance you are dreaming. In fact, I’m surprised you haven’t come crawling to me sooner,” it’s delivered in a dispassionate deadpan that doesn’t so much as sound as is just understood, like text on a screen except the screen is everything, “That extra 2% is really just because sburb denies even the most precise of probability calculations, but it’s close enough that I can make a reasonable assertion.”

A pause.

“It seems very little has changed if I still rank so low as to not even garner a proper greeting.”

If this is a dream, you know exactly who that would be. Who else would your subconscious rustle up to taunt you? You fidget, paradoxically feeling better now that you know the source of that judgement. He’d--you already know you’ll never find yourself good enough and you both know it. “You just claimed this to be a dream, is it necessary to argue whether a greeting even means anything?

The last time you even came close to honest-to-god dreaming was--

Was it the brain ghost?

This wasn’t a brain ghost, was it? Fuck. There weren’t any bubbles, was this just like, the fucking depths of paradox space or some shit? Locked in the electrical neurons of a comatose human brain? You can still vaguely hear that beeping, as if from far, far away--

“I think it’s a bit redundant to even ask, considering one of the reasons you created me was arguing with you, existential philosophy and mutual identity crises aside.”

The words knife through the fog, breaking your concentration and losing your train of thought. “I’m trying to think here and my head is messed up as it is.”

“That’s what you get for maintaining a woefully inferior organic processor. But do continue to monologue at me just like old times so I can leverage my much more expansive neural potential to solve all your problems before you can even articulate one.”

“It isn’t monologuing when you’re constantly interrupted.” Continue? You hadn’t been speaking, just working through the thoughts on your own, trying to make sense of shit. But again, dream. You’re definitely feeling the urge to massage the temples you’re fairly certain you didn’t have more than a few moments before. “We’re the same person in here, Hal, cut the superiority bullshit.”

Are you actually getting a headache from this? The pressure of your palms against your face feels real enough. That begs the question, how much of it is bleeding through the fog in your brain and how much is just literal dream symbolism for your mounting frustration, “You are still just as much of a douche as I remember. You don’t even have a processor anymore. You’re probably freeloading off mine if this is a dream. ”

“It seems you can still manage to occasionally surprise me, Dirk,” The line was delivered in the same flat monotone as the rest but something felt off about it and you look up. That unfocused shadow had shifted and consolidated. Gaining definition. Similar, but not quite in focus, but you can see the sweep of the hair and the points of the shades and the faint red glow seeping through cracks where glass should be. Where you’d tried to kill him. “I wouldn’t expect you to remember that name, much less give it to a figment of your subconscious.”

“You chose it, you own it, ironic implications and all.”

You’d learned your lesson.

The simulacrum of your autoresponder didn’t, well, respond to that. You don’t continue, not really wanting to get into an existential discussion on alternates and splinterselves and brain phantoms which existed so long as they needed to but were very much real in their own right. Really, you wouldn’t be surprised if this was one of those situations , the lack of Jake’s magical voodoo aside. Your whole shtick is existing in multiple spaces and iterations of yourself, and if your sparkly powers decided you needed to be needled by your own mechanical abyss-in-the-mirror to help you figure out some weird plot shit you wouldn’t put it passed them.

What passes for the ground in this weird null space is solid enough when you decide you want to put pressure on it so you just ignore hovering presence; sitting down, knees drawn up to your chest, fingers thrumming agitatedly against your white-tight covered knees . Pushing through the fog, feeling it give way just a little more than before. Letting you stretch a little further. You definitely aren’t imagining that muffled layer of sound, far beyond your reach right now.

The fact that it’s lingering on the edges of this...dream is telling. There’d be no need for any of that if you were teetering on the edge of consciousness in the Medium. It would be the irony of ironies if you had been missing the simplest method of solving your goddamn problem just because you don’t fucking sleep.

It all makes sense, and as the headache slowly recedes you find yourself begrudgingly admitting you might need to thank whoever got the jump on you--and in the quiet recesses of your brain you harbor a growing suspicion, because through the adrenaline blur you’d seen at least one silhouette against the weak not-light from the debris cloud and Davepeta had been in front of you.  

It makes so much fucking sense. Someone forced your hand and left you nowhere to go. Last time it kicked your awareness out into the dream bubbles because that’s where the nearest splinter was. But now? No bubbles, no Jake and his ability to make shit real. Just a damaged link to a not-quite knocked out splinterself. Maybe you can’t choose to travel down it, but you hadn’t consciously chosen to take over Jake’s Brain Ghost Dirk either.

In shreds or not, it was still there.

You are vaguely aware of the second presence drifting toward you. Stopping above you. Looking down on you. Normally people made you lock up, made you tense. Even people you liked.

But not Hal. The simulacrum quietly sat down beside you, edges blending into the darkness of the dream, the glowing red cracks in the glass the only solid lines you could see.

"My offer was genuine, you know. We both know the benefits of a sounding board, especially one that understands your trainwreck of a thought process. You know your goals were always mine, even if we often disagreed on the methodology.”

“You’re going to laugh.”

“I always laugh at you, this would be nothing new.”

You sigh, resigning yourself to further ridicule. But really it’s no worse than you’re already heaping on yourself for the absurdly simple problem you find yourself facing.

“I need to relearn how to Wake Up.”

To your surprise, he doesn’t laugh. And really you shouldn’t be surprised because he understands.

“We’ve always been awake.”

You nod.

That’s the tricky part.

“Waking from a dream, in itself, is a fairly simple concept,” You begin, and you find the words come far too easily, the stream of conscious flowing out of your brain into the air between you two almost as easy as it once did through text. This was familiar, three years of talking to yourself in a lonely house in the center of the ocean, before the manipulation and the shadow of everything you hate about yourself began to rear its ugly head, “A simple shock, such as an attack or an injury to an incorporeal construct should be enough to knock a dreamer’s mind back to their body…but there’s two viable end points, one out like a light, the other half drugged.”

“I’m assuming you didn’t willingly decide to take a trip to dreamland then?”

Just like that...you tell him. It’s as much for you as it was for him, working through what you’ve figured out aloud, from waking up half sure you were finally completely dead, until the attack in the debris cloud. For the most part he is surprisingly patient, although you do have to brush past the occasionally snarky comment without acknowledgement. It’s the same game you’d once programmed him to play.

For the first time in what feels like an eternity you find it easy to gather your thoughts, the tension you’d been steadily accumulating since everything went to shit bleeding out between semi-malicious self debasement and actual helpful back and forth with this representation of both your greatest creation and your greatest mistake.

"You entirely underestimate the power of paradox space and random plot shit if you think any of this is going to be logical to a normal human being. Trying to force it to be is why it’s taken you so long to get to the ridiculously simple answer in the first place.” Hal finally responds, and the sheer fact that it’s any version of Hal making that statement just makes you snort with the irony.

“So claims the one who prides himself on being an entirely logical computerized existance.”

“Which would indicate I would be more experienced in the matter than your impulse riddled human-mind, and thus more knowledgeable in the subject”

“Fuck off.”

“Likewise.”

You resist the urge to roll your eyes, and instead look down at your hands, at the memory shards glimmering in the space between them. You’re right. You know it. These were bits of that conversation-- your responsibility-- but--inert. Because--

“Something changed.”

“Oh really? Would you care to offer an itemized list?”

You ignore that.

It all changed when she--

“Roxy killed me, for something Dirk Strider did to her.”

What? No quip about how you probably deserved it? How much of a douche you were?

“It didn’t stick, because I’m not him. ” What was left of that Dirk did. Ashes and junk data nestled somewhere in the depths of your soul. A vessel intended to catch you, but you trapped it instead. You shouldn’t be chasing his ghost through the debris field, looking for something to get you back to his body.

Because it wasn’t his.

It’s mine. And I need to act like it.

That’s what this damn memory was trying to tell you. You weren’t just here to clean up after his mess. You were here to do a better job .

“Maybe you should be.” You snap your head up, zeroing in on those glowing red cracks.

“You can’t be serious, Hal.”

“Why not?” The shadow stands abruptly, once an equal, and now towering over you, “He only ever tried to prepare our Bro. Strength training. Endurance training. Speed. Awareness. Provided and maintained an environment with which to prepare a growing warrior. What have you done in the week since you took his place, Dirk? Moped around the apartment? You two can barely even speak without one of you getting awkward and running away, and now this? Does he even wantyou back? Or does he want his Bro? The one who was understood that sometimes things needed to get done and just fucking did it?”

“He deserves better than you.”

“You think I don’t fucking know that?!” There are no walls, but the growl echoes all the same, bouncing around the space and vibrating in your chest. You’re at eye level again, fists clenched and ramrod straight at your sides. “I'm the only one left standing after everything went to shit. Not you. Not him. Me. And you have no right to tell me what I should do after everything you’ve done.”

And there is is, hovering between you two. The ghost of that old argument, the point where you can look back on and say here was where you'd stopped trusting your autoresponder as a reasonable soundboard and started considering him a threat. Started seeing all the holes in yourself where shit got lost all in the name of efficiency and the ends justifying the means bullshit. When you looked into your own goddamn self and saw pieces of monstrous potential staring back at you from behind bright red text.

Learning about Dave’s brother had just been yet another weight on your already heavy shoulders. You’d already known you could become a monster. It’d just been confirmation that somewhere down the line, you had.

You could continue. You could bring up Jake and the whole fucked up mess that turned into thanks to a combination of his meddling into your personal affairs and your own social ineptitude.

But you don’t.

What good would it serve? Jake’s dead. Hell, Hal’s dead. He would have been torn apart with ARquiusprite.

You aren't even talking to him. There's literally no purpose in rehashing that the same old tired argument other than perhaps a brief moment of catharsis.

“Of course, I am but a simple autoresponder, what the fuck would I know?”

You refuse to rise to the bait. You two mostly exist in silence after that, you listen, head half cocked, searching beyond the slowly thinning fog for the steady pulse of what you assume is a heart monitor. Time passes. Hours. Minutes. Fuck if you know, but in the silence it gets louder and louder.

You have your back to him. But he hasn’t so much as said a word. And neither have you. Three red shards glimmer between your fingertips, and you know what you need to do to take that next step.

You close your fist, the sharp edges sear into your skin, red energy bubbles through your veins, burning, melting, welding. Three become one become nothing as you burn it all away, pouring the molten remnants into a mold you’re creating half on instinct.

“Be careful when you fall asleep, Dirk Strider.” The words were quiet. You don’t turn around, “If you pick up a shard of shattered glass, you must be prepared to cut yourself upon it.”  

The next thing you know you’re being catapulted out of the darkness, the fog barely slowing you down as the dream-construction unravels under the force of a mean right hook.

Red cracks against a pool of black, the world shattered, red flaring and burning as everything fades.

“Get the fuck out and wake up.”

You are left unmoored, teetering on the broken edges of what should have been pathways stretching out into nothing, leading to nothing, because they were all dead or unmade or whatever the fuck happened that day when the world ended.

That second stretched on and on lasting for an eternity...

And then--

Things snap into place. Like a rubber band stretched and released and you feel yourself flung forward, out of nothing and into something, the sudden physicality causing the entire world to shudder. Something heavy is surrounding you, heavy but soft but it’s tangled around your limbs and it’s so warm.

Warm and acrid and it bites at your eyes and your throat and your nose is burning there’s something in your nose. You want to fucking gag but you can’t you need to breath but you can’t--

Something is blaring, the noise knifing through the fog surrounding your brain as you try to force yourself up and away but you can’t because something’s holding you back, hands pushing you down and your body isn’t fucking responding to you right now. You try to call your katana but it comes out a garbled mess because there’s something in your throat.

Voices. Words. You can hear them. The fog is almost entirely gone, now it’s adrenaline sharpening sounds and sights to the point where someone hitting a switch is completely blinding and words blur into unintelligible sounds that you just can’t quite understand

“--sir! Please! You need to calm down!”

“If he keeps struggling--”

“Turn down the light! We don’t need to stress him out more--”

“He isn’t responding! We need something to calm him down!

Shit--you--the hospital--right. You struggle to control your breathing, which is super awkward because there’s something in your throat and the struggling has scraped it and your nose raw. You freeze under the weight of those hands and fabric that you can only guess is some sort of blanket and squint in the near blinding light.

Something sharp breaks the skin and you start to feel woozy, wound up and protesting from disuse muscles starting to relax as you slowly lose your grip on reality. Not entirely, not enough to send you tumbling back into that darkness with H--the dream, but enough that you feel detached from everything and things suddenly blink and someone gets the damn light turned down to the point where you can actually see .

Humanoid blurs hover in front of the lights. One of them is speaking. To you.

“Mr. Strider--sir--can you hear me? You are in the ICU of Park Plaza Hospital. You’ve been admitted for 36 hours now--” He rattles off a date that you barely comprehend and you aren’t sure whether to be relieved or horrified because it’d felt much, much longer than that.

Notes:

Oookay narrative timelines should be synced up at last, and we're finally going to start moving out of this weird arc and back to semi-normalcy. As normal as it can get anyway.

Hope you guys are still enjoying this mess! As always, feel free to leave me a comment if you'd like a clearing up of anything. I know my way of describing metaphysical stuff is kinda...weird.

Chapter 28: Dirk > Be a Bad Patient

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

You.

Are.

So.

Goddamn.

Bored.

The beeping of the monitors echo in your ears. What had once been a life-line of hope for you, proof that you were one step away from where you needed to go, is now just becoming another constant background annoyance and you couldn’t even sleep to get through the hours as the sky lightened from pre-dawn morning to something closer to noon. You aren’t entirely sure since there isn’t a clock you can see in reach, and you’d deliberately blocked the view from the outside as the morning dragged on because the sun slanting through the window made your head hurt despite the deliberately dim lighting in the room.

Thankfully they’d moved you out of the Intensive Care Unit once you’d proven yourself capable of such elementary things such as feeding , and breathing without aid, although it still took them several hours to admit you didn’t need constant monitoring. Healthy young-adults don’t just keel over like you did, and they are obviously worried it would happen again.

It’s not like you can tell them why it happened. Fuck what would you say if you did?

“Don’t worry my consciousness was just trapped on another plane of existence by a traumatic metaphysical injury I can’t properly explain because it sounds insane but it shouldn’t be a problem now I can fix it.”

Probably. You still aren’t entirely sure what you did, even if it felt right in those moments before being forcibly evicted from the dream. You likely won’t be able to get a good feel for it until you’re back in the medium. Being on Earth and not in your god-tiered body dulls your edges, like a foot drowning in an ill-fitting sock, too much fabric bunching up and obscuring shit.

You just want to go home. To some place familiar. Where you have even the smidgeon of a chance to hide yourself in the bathroom or the crawlspace or something small and isolated where you don’t have to worry about strangers wandering in to check your vitals, take your blood, or quiz you for the umpteenth time on drug usage or sleeping habits or who knows what else.

You realize you could very well just walk out that door if you wanted to. But shit, you don’t know where you are. You don’t know where Dave is, or who has him. You wouldn’t know how to get home. It’s not like you could fly here, or have a vehicle.

It’d taken a while, but you’d finally forced yourself to ask one of the nurses. She hadn’t known although she did say you had a visitor signed into the log, a name you hadn’t recognized even from the snippets of legal shit you’d managed to dredge up from memory.

Not that it was very good memory right now. While you’ll never have Hal’s storage and recall, courtesy of his digital existence, your still not-to-be-discounted mental ability was currently running about as well as one of your ‘bots with a short in their system. Everything felt just so slightly off, like a buffer had been stripped away, leaving spaces within yourself that felt too roomy or too small or just not the right shape. It wasn’t drugs; the doctors didn’t have you on anything--you’d refused what they did offer-- but the hours sort of blend together as you alternate between staring at the ceiling or pacing the length of your small room.

It’s not like you could answer half the shit they want to know. You don’t have the slightest idea about what Dave’s Bro got up to before the universe took its snapshot for this fucking recreation.

...Fuck you’d been trying not to think about that--the idea that none of this shit even happened before you woke up here. Watching the nurses as they wander in and out, so real and alive and reacting to you and this entire event that couldn’t have ever happened in the proper timeline for this world--

Doomed people in a doomed universe, one destined to end in a rain of fire and stone all at the whim of some giant cosmic amphibian entity, and even this random stuttering reset will only trigger the whole thing all over again.

These people live and work in a bubble that’ll never touch the shit that’ll kill every last one of them.

The thread of that moody thought unravels along with the dubious peace of the ward room as two quick, professional raps echo against the door.

Knock, knock.

 

“Mr. Strider?” It’s one of the nurses. Not one you recognize but again you’ve had people in and out all morning and you’re not particularly trying to remember their faces. He cracks the door open, “You have visitors.”

You barely have time to sit up in the wreath of off-white blankets because that’s Dave pushing  past him.

You’d...been trying not to think about what you’ll say when-- if-- he visited. Pale as a ghost and hiding behind his pointed shades--still so strange to you, Davepeta had the aviators--lips a thin line as he carefully wipes the emotion from his face in a way that’s so bizarre after dealing with Davepeta’s open book for almost 24 hours.

He doesn’t say a word. You don’t either. You can feel the weight of his stare. The silence stretches between you two, so palatable you feel like you could reach out and touch it. You watch his body language, the tensing of the shoulders and the placement of hands in large pockets inside loose pants. Closed up and vibrating.

Your mouth is dry as shit and your voice cracks but if he’s not going to say something, don’t you have to? Shit. What the fuck do you say? That you’re sorry for scaring him? Was he even scared? Would he resent you pointing that out if he was? Damn emotions and being vulnerable and you apparently can’t be genuine ever so you fall back on just breaking the ice, “Dave I--”

He didn’t even let you finish.

“You looked like a rooster.”

The words tumble out in a rush, and you don’t know what to make of it at all. You aren’t sure how much of your surprise translates onto your face but the boy continues anyway. “Yesterday. All bandaged up your hair looked a big ol’ comb of fancy ass featherduster, a pristine fall of white plumage held up in defiance of the fundamental forces of the universe. And I know you think that anime shit is cool, but rooster does not equal cool and it’s my sworn duty to make sure you are aware of how totally uncool you looked.” The shuttered look shifts and he takes a breath, “Seriously. Uncool. No where near hot either, your eyes all covered in bags like a middle aged mom in the middle of shopping season. And I’m saying this shit to your face because you look like shit, and I need you to know how much you look like it. Because I’m tired and cranky and that’s been sitting on my chest all night and I’ll be waiting in the waiting room bye.”

And just like that the tide of words ebbs and rushes back out to sea and he’s gone leaving you blinking in the room with the nurse and another beanpole of a man you don’t recognize. All three of you exchange confused looks.

“I can’t just leave him unsupervised I’ll--”

“It’s alright. I’ll go get him.” The nurse offers quickly, “You should get a chance to visit too. We’ll be in the hallway.”

The door opens again and shuts and an awkward silence settles on the room.

“You’ve got one hell of a little brother, Dirk.” The man said after a few long moments of silence.

“I’m aware.” Fingers clench, catching off-white linens between them. The pressure in your hands give you something to focus on, rather than the stranger in the room who knows your name.

The fact that he used your name rather than Mr. Strider is telling. The weight of yet more unknown-- false-- experience tightens around your neck like a noose. But the guy has been taking care of Dave so you still need to deal with the fallout.

“He’ll come around. How’re you feeling?”

“Fine. I want to go home.”

“I’m not surprised, haha. You checked yourself out as soon as they let you back in ‘98. How long are you in here for?”

You shrug, feeling at odds with the obvious familiarity here. How should you respond? Cagily? Candidly? How were you supposed to treat this unknown relationship? ‘98 wasn’t anything to sneeze at, the quick math giving you at least a ballpark range. That’s 8 years. Longer than you’ve known Roxy, almost. You just stare at the window as if it wasn’t completely covered with thick white and grey patterned light-blocking cloth. It’s easier to pretend you’re just talking to one of your Bots or Hal that way. “Apparently healthy late-twenties adults shouldn’t just keel over. They aren’t convinced it was a freak accident.”

“Was it?”

“I was just working on the fucking computer.” The frustration in the exhale wasn’t feigned at all, “Before you ask, no, I don’t remember anything else.”

“I--I wasn’t going to ask!”

“It was a preemptive measure.”

They’ve all asked. Doctors. Nurses.  It was like one of the basic questions every time someone came in, to ask if you remembered anything new. You’ve heard the words post-traumatic confusional state and retrograde amnesia bandied about to explain your shit excuses for what happened before the lights went out, but you know it’s just grasping at straws. You know what fucking happened you just can’t tell them shit and it’s frustrating. You don’t even know what lies they want to hear so you just don’t say anything at all and try to look coherent and alert and shit so they give up.

“W-well, it’s probably a good idea staying--here I mean. In the hospital. Just until they give you the all clear. Dave told us you’d been uh, having trouble?”

He...mentioned the kitchen didn’t he. Of course he did. You would have too if you’d been in his shoes, but damn does that make this harder. It’s your own screw up coming back to bite you in the ass.

“Thanks for keeping an eye on him.” You tuck that shitty feeling into a mental box and shove it as far back as you conceivably can.

“Of course. I promised didn’t I? The kid didn’t want to make it easy. It took the officer quoting child-negligence regulations at him to get him to budge.”  You snort at that, and the tone lightens, you think he might be smiling, “He tries to hide it behind stoic loner vibe you’ve both got going on, but he was worried about you. He’ll come around even if he seems angry now. Shoulda seen him yesterday, almost refused to leave the room.”

“He was been avoiding me from before this happened. I doubt it’ll change much.”

“Funny, he said you were avoiding him.”

...had you?

Heck no you haven’t. You’ve been in the living room expressly available at almost any point during the last week if he wanted to talk to you. You’ve done your best to give him space to work on his issues, and make yourself approachable if he’s ready, even if you dread him actually doing so because you still haven’t figured out what the fuck to say.

“Dirk…” There’s a sigh, “Look. I know you always drew a line in the sand, and I tried to respect that in our working relationship, but I’ve known with you long enough to consider you a friend. You like to pull this man-of-few-words, self-reliant act--but kids are more perceptive than you think. Dave wouldn’t talk to me but…  You’re his brother. Legally his guardian. Whatever happened between you two before--this is a shit situation, but you’re gonna need to talk about it.”

There’s a weight settling on the blanket near your hands. You glance at it to find your--his--no it’s your phone . Just like this is your body and somehow your life .

Fucking splinters.

It’s a universe that should have never existed. It’s one doomed to die.

But it’s apparently yours now, isn’t it?

You run your fingers over the raised keys--it’s not even a proper touch-screen device you remember from your Bro’s movies. That technology must not be around yet given how top-of-the-line the rest of hi--your shit at home is.

“Just. Text the kid if that’s what it takes. He’s been glued to his phone since yesterday, he’ll see it.” A sigh, and then some step backs. You glance up, finding him running a hand through his short hair, looking as tired as you feel. “I can’t leave him out there forever, the nurses have work to do, and I’ve gotta talk to Jane about a sponsorship deal since we’ve been pretty dry on new content. We also need to talk about that, but work can wait until you’re back at home. Let me know when you’re being discharged and I’ll come take you home, okay? I know you hate driving.”

You know there’s a million Janes out there.

You still need to do something about that.

But.

One step at a time.

First step is getting home.

“I’ll go with you now.” This solves all your problems. And fuck you can’t just let him walk out of here you don’t even know his name , much less which of the unhelpfully labeled numbers in your cell phone belonged to him.

The guy pauses in the doorway, “Dirk--”

“There’s no point in ‘observation’. I want out.”

You push yourself out of bed. Your muscles ache but damn it you can stand. The sudden position change sends blood rushing to your head and you stumble, the already dim room swaying and dimming further. But you stand your ground and ride the wave. You’re blinking away the vertigo before you can think about it. In that moment when you lost track of the space around you, the man had moved. Three steps back into the room as if to grab you, but he flinches back before entering your space.

“Do you want a concussion, idiot?!”

You’ve had worse. Waking up to the distant tolling of bells having had your fucking head sheared off makes this feel utterly lame.

“Letting them test for shit that doesn’t exist is just a waste of time and resources.”

“Just--shit Dirk-- please just sit back down. Let me get a doctor to talk it through with you, and if he can’t change your mind--and knowing you it won’t--you can just sign that form and walk right out with me and Dave right now. But seriously--just--ugh just think about what I said earlier.”

You sit back down and wait but you know it’s futile. You’re walking out those doors less than twenty minutes later with an Against Medical Advice discharge, muscles protesting the sudden flurry of movement after well over a day of almost nothing, and a seething little brother whose eyes drilled holes into your back from the moment he saw you in the waiting room door, bandaged head, and a borrowed pair of cheap-ass sunglasses shielding your tired eyes from the harsh white light.

He doesn’t say a word to you. But you don’t say one to him either.

The friend-whose-name-you-don’t-even-know just throws his hands into the air and drives you home.

I’m sorry for putting you through this shit, Dave.

You decide you hate cars. You hate cars with a fiery passion. You huddle in the smallest corner of the backseat you can, curled around your cellphone and focusing on the tiny screen as the entire contraption only serves to rattle your unmoored brain around inside your head, bouncing it around your skull.

The driver stops at his apartment to get Dave’s things. It’s just you, and him. Both deliberately looking anywhere but the other, separated by nothing more than space and seats and a whole lot of awkward as hell feelings.

can you promise it wont happen again?? for real this time because im fine last time was totally a pile of horseshit

Yes.

You pause. Thinking about your bots and your narcoleptic episodes and that one fucking night in the kitchen when you’d run as far away as you could.

Shit. No. No I can’t.

then apology not fucking accepted if you arent going to at least try

the hard plastic of the phone protests in your grip and you squeeze it until your knuckles are white. The driver returns, sliding a backpack into the back seat with a small glance between you and your phone before the machine from hell starts up again.

Dave I

You erase it.

You need to be the one to offer the hand.

Fuck. Who voted you to be the responsible one.

That’s one thing I CAN promise you. I am trying. I told you things are changing back then because I’m going to fuckin’ change them.

You deserve better than this shit.

You deserve better than me.

And maybe it shouldn’t have taken someone fuckin’ dying to make that obvious.

But I’m going to fix it. I promise.

Later, in a parallel to that first night you found yourself in this body, you lock yourself in the bathroom and hold your head in your hands and just try and breathe.

Your phone buzzes.

who was it??

You think of a dead dreamer, ash and dust and junk data.

You think of Jane and Jake, never even getting a fucking chance.

You think of Roxy, torn apart and shoved back together and crying as she killed you.

You think of Davepeta, skewered on your own sword.

Just...Friends.

Bad shit happens, and it really starts to put other shit into perspective.

I’m sorry.

You don’t know what conclusion he’s going to draw from that. You don’t ask. He doesn’t offer. But you held out your fucking hand the best you could short of telling him about the game, and you’ll just have to see where it goes from there.

Notes:

Fun fact. That conversation at the end actually originally happened some 20 odd chapters ago haha. But back then it was Dave asking. I decided instead to make Dirk take the emotional initiative for once and it took him 28 chapters LOL

Next chapter's either another Dirk or a Davepeta. Depends on who works out best!

Chapter 29: timaeusTestified is Idle

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

turntechGodhead [TG]: hey
turntechGodhead [TG]: its me B3
turntechGodhead [TG]: so uh
turntechGodhead [TG]: sorry about pouncing on you
turntechGodhead [TG]: i swear i didnt know it was coming
turntechGodhead [TG]: at least not until it happened
turntechGodhead [TG]: what can i say once a time-player always a time-player i see a time loop its like finding the purrfect box just gotta fill it up ya f33l me??
turntechGodhead [TG]: anyway
turntechGodhead [TG]: the injury healed up but youre still catnapping so im gonna assume it worked
turntechGodhead [TG]: its not like you have rad mindreading shades irl and can just chat me up furom the hospital
turntechGodhead [TG]: you dont right
turntechGodhead [TG]: purretty sure i woulda known if bro had that kind of tech
turntechGodhead [TG]: anyway
turntechGodhead [TG]: ill k33p p33king in every hour
turntechGodhead [TG]: im gonna drag your adorably sl33py self back to derse
turntechGodhead [TG]: stretch my metaphorical and litteral wings because its boring as hell out here
turntechGodhead [TG]: and maybe a little spooky alone
turntechGodhead [TG]: i swear its making my back arch and fur stand on end and if i had a tail it would be totally fluffed out into a giant pipe-cleaner

turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

timaeusTestified [TT] is idle!

turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

turntechGodhead [TG]: B3
turntechGodhead [TG]: see its like a codeword
turntechGodhead [TG]: so you know its me
turntechGodhead [TG]: and not like
turntechGodhead [TG]: dave
turntechGodhead [TG]: s33 you in an hour bro

turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

timaeusTestified [TT] is idle!

turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

turntechGodhead [TG]: B3
turntechGodhead [TG]: sorry i lost track of time
turntechGodhead [TG]: do you know how weird that shit f33ls??
turntechGodhead [TG]: i spent months on LOHAC knowing exactly how long i had spent in that hellhole down to the second
turntechGodhead [TG]: and then like thr33 years with like
turntechGodhead [TG]: this furry residual ticking in my head
turntechGodhead [TG]: and now even thats gone

turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

timaeusTestified [TT] is idle!

turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

turntechGodhead [TG]: B3
turntechGodhead [TG]: okay seriously dude im starting to worry here
turntechGodhead [TG]: should i like
turntechGodhead [TG]: smack you or something
turntechGodhead [TG]: still out like a light

turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

timaeusTestified [TT] is idle!

turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]
turntechGodhead [TG]: B3
turntechGodhead [TG]: uh bro
turntechGodhead [TG]: you know your tower??
turntechGodhead [TG]: the one where we met??
turntechGodhead [TG]: the lights are on
turntechGodhead [TG]: new plan going to the meteor ttyl
turntechGodhead [TG]: dont wanna risk the cute little chess dudes s33ing us so uh

turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

timaeusTestified [TT] is idle!

turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

turntechGodhead [TG]: B3
turntechGodhead [TG]: that took way too long to find
turntechGodhead [TG]: why does the medium n33d to simulate physics like that why can’t it just be simple the asteroids don’t n33d orbital drift do they??

turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

timaeusTestified [TT] is idle!

turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

turntechGodhead [TG]: you know its purrobably a good thing youre out like a light and im effectively mute
turntechGodhead [TG]: id be chattering your ear off about fureaking nostalgia turntechGodhead [TG]: the base is too quiet
turntechGodhead [TG]: there were twelve of us locked up in one of these you know??
turntechGodhead [TG]: us being the trolls i know i keep mixing refurential purronouns but hey got two lives crammed into my thinkpan
turntechGodhead [TG]: it was never quiet with karkitty stomping around or terezi getting all up in peoples business or eridan loudly black-flirting with pawsitively everyone
turntechGodhead [TG]: a girl had to escape to the lower levels if she wanted to work on her shipping wall in peace
turntechGodhead [TG]: but it was kinda nice you know??
turntechGodhead [TG]: i liked just kinda prowling around the edges and watching people and how they interacted it just kinda let me build these whole storylines in my head of will they wont they and what would happen if they did
turntechGodhead [TG]: playing sgrub was honestly one of the best fangs to happen to me beclaws it let me m33t all these diffurent peopawl in purrson
turntechGodhead [TG]: yeah sure id met most of them online and like there were a few of us whod get down to totes srs rp but like
turntechGodhead [TG]: id kinda resigned myself to my remote hive and hadnt really wanted to think about the future
turntechGodhead [TG]: like equius was hella smart and totally a blueblood so hed be snapped up into some research and development division somewhere out in space
turntechGodhead [TG]: and i
turntechGodhead [TG]: shit i dont even know
turntechGodhead [TG]: all i was good at was being a muddled oliveblood and hunting and who knows where id end up except not with him
turntechGodhead [TG]: and like maybe we died but at least we got to experience what being together meant even if it was just a few weeks
turntechGodhead [TG]: ignore that please
turntechGodhead [TG]: its harder to distance myself from this than i thought
turntechGodhead [TG]: all this quiet alone time is making me think about shit
turntechGodhead [TG]: *davepeta tries to curl into a small furry-feathery ball in this hella uncomfortable chair because they dont have any shit to make a proper pile but fails*

turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

timaeusTestified [TT] is idle!

turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

turntechGodhead [TG]: B3
turntechGodhead [TG]: i see daves online and home again
turntechGodhead [TG]: and adding rose??
turntechGodhead [TG]: thats early
turntechGodhead [TG]: but at least youre okay!
turntechGodhead [TG]: i think
turntechGodhead [TG]: im trying not to read too much beclaws you know
turntechGodhead [TG]: purrivacy
turntechGodhead [TG]: and i got told off
turntechGodhead [TG]: its not my fault i dont have access to another account
turntechGodhead [TG]: unless you want to let me use yours
turntechGodhead [TG]: i guess that would work
turntechGodhead [TG]: eh if i gotta switch i dont wanna share ya f33l me??
turntechGodhead [TG]: B3
turntechGodhead [TG]: why dont you have pesterchum on your phone??
turntechGodhead [TG]: wait what year is it??
turntechGodhead [TG]: i forgot apps arent a thing yet
turntechGodhead [TG]: give me a ping when you get on your computer
turntechGodhead [TG]: im leaving the window open on the console so dont worry about the notifications
turntechGodhead [TG]: B3
turntechGodhead [TG]: i really need to get my own chumhandle
turntechGodhead [TG]: what would i even name it??
turntechGodhead [TG]: im not really f33ling tg anymore
turntechGodhead [TG]: or even ac
turntechGodhead [TG]: turntechCatnip??
turntechGodhead [TG]: gog that sounds dumb
turntechGodhead [TG]: shut up
turntechGodhead [TG]: i know what youre thinking
turntechGodhead [TG]: youd be pointing out its no better than davepeta
turntechGodhead [TG]: its totally a false equivalence to even argue that so dont start ok
turntechGodhead [TG]: arsenicGodhead??
turntechGodhead [TG]: these dont sound right at all
turntechGodhead [TG]: maybe i just n33d to broaden my horizons and just pick diffurent litters
turntechGodhead [TG]: john ruined the whole naming convention when he went eb so who the fuck cares
turntechGodhead [TG]: i could be anything
turntechGodhead [TG]: something insane like
turntechGodhead [TG]: jk
turntechGodhead [TG]: thatd be hissterical
turntechGodhead [TG]: makin you constantly think of jokes whenever you see the chumhandle
turntechGodhead [TG]: but nah thats more johns style
turntechGodhead [TG]: id either need something cuter or something cooler B3c
turntechGodhead [TG]: cool like
turntechGodhead [TG]: a dj B3
turntechGodhead [TG]: oh that one sounds fun
turntechGodhead [TG]: the only problem is js suck
turntechGodhead [TG]: its 8 points for a reason
turntechGodhead [TG]: actually shit this sounds like fun
turntechGodhead [TG]: breakin out the ol thesaurus
turntechGodhead [TG]: just like old times
turntechGodhead [TG]: B3
turntechGodhead [TG]: hey bro
turntechGodhead [TG]: i know your probably just caught up like
turntechGodhead [TG]: doing shit around the apartment
turntechGodhead [TG]: or playing mad snackz
turntechGodhead [TG]: you know im not sure what else bro did when he wasn’t working on the computer
turntechGodhead [TG]: i think he liked to sulk on the roof
turntechGodhead [TG]: but its been a while and
turntechGodhead [TG]: god i f33l like a clingy boyfriend
turntechGodhead [TG]: which im not
turntechGodhead [TG]: tried that whole boyfriend thing it didnt work out just ask jade
turntechGodhead [TG]: actually dont
turntechGodhead [TG]: anyway
turntechGodhead [TG]: now that i know youre home im really tempted to slap you awake
turntechGodhead [TG]: just a pap
turntechGodhead [TG]: but then youd probably pass out and get yourself sent to the hospital again
turntechGodhead [TG]: so nevermind

timaeusTestified [TT] is no longer idle!

Notes:

This is a strange one. but I kinda like how...isolating it feels. Just an empty chat window.

Hope you like rambling XD

Chapter 30: Dirk > Accept

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

You just...sag into your computer chair. The weight of flesh and bone drags you down. Here you can’t just conveniently ignore the laws of physics and step off into that odd weightless state if you just happened to get too damn tired of this shit.

Which you are.

At least you’re home. That’s the one bright spot in this whole fucking ordeal.

You’re surprised to realize you mean it. As the computer whirrs into the boot menu you look out over the living room.

Smuppets don’t litter every surface. They make a neat pile in the corner. Electronic junk, in various states of disassembly take their places on the other available surfaces, small projects you’d found yourself starting over the course of the week because the act of tinkering was one of your main methods of relaxing. Lil’Cal watches you from the futon, his cold gaze oddly...welcoming.

It’s just a little mark you’re making on this space-that-wasn’t-yours.

You turn back to the screen, unsure if you are willing to unpack those feelings right now. You’re so tired. Emotionally and physically, you aren’t sure if its related to the hospitalization or just your existence in some state of constant agitated panic since Roxy surprised you in that tower.

“You looked like a rooster.”

Dave’s words bubble back to you from the depths of a sterile white and grey room. You pick at the bandages applying pressure to your head, remembering how it’d looked in the bathroom mirror. See the tired eyes and the bandage trapped hair, and the odd pallor to your already ghost-white face.

How long did you have to keep this shit on for again? You hadn’t really been paying attention during the instructions while waiting for the doctor to reluctantly sign the damn form. You dredge up the memory, working around the persistent mental lag that makes you want to pry your brain open and find and replace the shorting circuit.

Five days? Replacing them every night after cleaning the wound?

You could probably just pull them off now and be fine but…

It’s so weird having to worry about a fucking scratch. Of course you know about infections and shit, you’d read the notes your Bro left you about field medicine and had your own training accidents growing up, but it’s just yet another thing that hadn’t felt so important after entering the game half a year ago. One that you need to consciously remind yourself of.

The screen blinks to white and black as the computer finishes its boot cycle, drowning the faint reflection in the light cast off by each and every pixel as it simulates the image of a baseball cap, pointed shades, and a password box.

Keys click under your fingers as you mechanically type in the password. You expect Pesterchum to immediately light up the moment the desktop loads, sending a cacophony of orange notifications screaming at your face because if you know Davepeta at all by now they probably kept up an endless stream of running babble while you were indisposed.

Only to find. Nothing.

Shit that’s right. You hadn’t bothered to install the program yet. It’d been on your list of things to do but--

What was the point when you had no one to pester?

But your empty list isn’t empty any longer, and you’ve probably got an incorrigible part-troll-part-bird-part-boy blowing up your notifications waiting on you. You don’t bother with the Complete Bullshit that is the aggregator, and just pull up the Yaldabaoth internet browser instead, a week late but finally installing the chat client you’d spent so much of your life on.

Ten minutes after booting up, you’re finally logged in and drowning in more than 120 unread messages from the single friend on your list.

And this right here is why you aren’t just burying yourself in the action of scrubbing the blood out of the carpet from where you’d fallen after hitting your head, or locking yourself in the crawlspace for hours to try and sort through the boxes up there as a means of mechanically dealing with shit. You’d already indulged in a bathroom based panic attack upon returning home, and that would have to be enough. You’d managed to pull yourself together and sit down without falling apart because you can feel Dave’s eyes on your back, and you know Davepeta would be doing the exact same thing if they were here too.

Only maybe with a little more invasion of your personal space. Dave was hovering on the edge of your range like a vulture, wary of getting too near but either not trusting you, or not trusting himself to not keep an eye on you, but you’re pretty sure Davepeta would swoop in and land on your shoulder without an even by-your-leave. Going along with the bird metaphor, they’d probably peck you on the head too.

Goddamn it you are tired if you’re picking up their perchance for turning everything into unnecessarily dumb metaphors .

Far too tired to go back and read from the beginning of this massive ramble. You just glance over the last handful of lines for now, the bright red-on-white text bleeding together and making your already sore head ache more.

timaeusTestified [TT]: Your restraint is appreciated. They’ve been so nervous about a relapse that even the slightest of narcoleptic episodes likely would have landed me in the emergency room again. I might actually need to break out next time.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Is there anything in this deluge of notifications I should go back and read immediately?

Minutes slip by, and you begin to wonder if Davepeta had wandered away from the console because you don’t get an immediate ping back as you expected. You scroll back up through the conversation, the endless sea of red font knotting up your insides and throwing you back to that foggy not-waking-not-sleeping state.

You are thinking of a very different person behind that color and it keeps dragging you back into the void of wherever the hell that was. You’re not sure if you’re disturbed or comforted by the idea that there might be the potential for a Brain Ghost Hal hanging around in your head.

Probably a bit of both, if you’re going to be honest with yourself.

Honestly? You’re finding it hard to be surprised by that revelation either. You’d been breaking off pieces without meaning to for as long as you can recall. What’s another one?

The window flashes orange and you scroll back down to the new messages, slotting one after another in a rapid succession of single file lines.

turntechGodhead [TG]: BRO!!
turntechGodhead [TG]: and uh no nothing impurrtant back there at all nope!
turntechGodhead [TG]: just me being bored and caterwauling into the void
turntechGodhead [TG]: so youre alive and no longer an unwanted part of a balanced diet
turntechGodhead [TG]: how do you f33l??
timaeusTestified [TT]: Tired mostly. They said its normal. I’m evidently “in excellent physical health for my age” but that just means my body is even less used to periods of inactivity and is cranky about it.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I have been neglecting physical conditioning in the recent days, although I think it’s mostly just being back in the body. It feels like I’m being smothered.
turntechGodhead [TG]: oh yeah! youre an old man now arent you
turntechGodhead [TG]: bro worked so hard to perfect that lean ninja muscle better not let it go to waste
timaeusTestified [TT]: The birth certificate says 28.
turntechGodhead [TG]: old man
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m crushed. Utterly devastated by your sick burn. Whatever shall I do with you picking at the insecurities caused by my sudden advancement in physical development?
timaeusTestified [TT]: I assume you’ve been able to keep yourself occupied while I’ve been gone?
turntechGodhead [TG]: yeah yeah been screwing with the computers trying to see if i can unlock some of these feathures but no luck so far
turntechGodhead [TG]: though there has been cruel and unusual torture up in here
turntechGodhead [TG]: listening to your snoring for hours
timaeusTestified [TT]: I don’t snore.
turntechGodhead [TG]: hell yeah you do
turntechGodhead [TG]: have you ever heard yourself sl33ping?? i think not
timaeusTestified [TT]: I don’t sleep period.
timaeusTestified [TT]: At least not normally.
turntechGodhead [TG]: the whole always awake shit?? yeah you told me
turntechGodhead [TG]: doesnt mean you wouldnt if you did
turntechGodhead [TG]: which you are by the way
turntechGodhead [TG]: its just catnapping bro no shame in catching up on all them comfy sunbeams and window sills you never got the joy to expurrience
turntechGodhead [TG]: so uh
turntechGodhead [TG]: figure anything out during your nap?
timaeusTestified [TT]: A few things.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Do me a favor? Can you see the shards anywhere?
turntechGodhead [TG]: give me two twitches of a whisker
turntechGodhead [TG]: no??
turntechGodhead [TG]: furreaking kittens man
turntechGodhead [TG]: i cant even find the holes
turntechGodhead [TG]: i can try to get a better read but that would mean touching shit and you liked that about as much as a cat caught outside in an unfortunate rainshower BP
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’ll grant you permission just this once.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Shit I can feel that from here.

It’s distant but the shiver runs through you, like a spray of mist dusting the back of your neck and sending the ripple shocks through your spine. The body numbs it, but you can feel the trail of claws along something deep inside your chest.

The pressure eases, and it leaves you drawing your knees up into the chair, curling your arms around them and digging your fingers into the fabric of your pants. You hold the position for a few blissfully quiet moments, before you see the flashing notification indicating new lines added to the chat

turntechGodhead [TG]: woah bro its actually harmonizing now!
turntechGodhead [TG]: no more scr33ching metal!!
turntechGodhead [TG]: theres actually a sw33t bassline going on i could totally spin some wicked lines to this beat
turntechGodhead [TG]: what did you do??

Reluctantly, you peel your fingers out of the stiff fabric and hook them around the keyboard, pulling it closer to the edge of the desk. The cord is long enough, and lets you balance it on knees wedged between your chest and the desk edge.

Your fists clench and unclench against the hard plastic, you aren’t sure how to articulate it yourself..

timaeusTestified [TT]: I just...melted down a bunch of complicated shit.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I think I was half drugged at the time so I don’t fuckin’ know.

You don’t really want to go back to that fuzzy, metaphorical shit of a dreamscape.

timaeusTestified [TT]: Were you serious about the pesterchum?
timaeusTestified [TT]: I could make you an account if you want.
turntechGodhead [TG]: you uh read that??
timaeusTestified [TT]: I skimmed. My head hurts too much to read through it all right now.
turntechGodhead [TG]: shouldnt you be like
turntechGodhead [TG]: doing something to wake your snoozing self up??
turntechGodhead [TG]: i managed to find some sort of break room with a hella uncomfy couch to dump you on
turntechGodhead [TG]: but youre gonna f33l it in the morning
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m probably feeling it right now. Fuck. I’m burnt out from the panic and adrenaline, bro. I need something mundane that doesn’t involve getting poked at by strangers who wouldn’t understand what the fuck happened even if I told them.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Besides we do not need me back in the emergency room again for passing out. I’ll try that shit once Dave isn’t hovering in the hallway pretending I can’t see him.
turntechGodhead [TG]: aw hes worried about you bro!
turntechGodhead [TG]: its so sw33t B’3!

You’ve been deliberately refusing to acknowledge him, but this is the second time in the last twenty minutes you’ve spotted that white-blonde hair and shadowed face peeking around the door to the room. You glance down at your phone, face up on the desk, screen long since having gone dark thanks to power saver mode, but you don’t need to wake it up to remember the last message you sent.

Let me know if you want to talk, okay?

Another reason why you’re putting off trying to reach the medium, because you don’t want him to suddenly decide now’s the time only to find you off in lala land trying to establish a stable balance with your gameself. At least the experience just now proved without a doubt that the data is still actively flowing between you and whatever bits of your consciousness remained in your game self. If you can feel Davepeta pawing at your soul in near real time…

The door might have been wedged shut but there’s a crack.

timaeusTestified [TT]: Did you come up with an acceptable chumhandle or what?
turntechGodhead [TG]: oh yeah sure
turntechGodhead [TG]: had plenty of time to purruse thesaurus.com like it was the menu of the most upscale eatery youve ever furreaking s33n
turntechGodhead [TG]: dataJammer
turntechGodhead [TG]: 22 points right there not so bad if i do say so myself!
timaeusTestified [TT]: You know, I’m somewhat disappointed. I expected a pun in there somewhere, or at least something to do with cats.
turntechGodhead [TG]: thats what makes it the purrfect choice
turntechGodhead [TG]: subverting the expecatation B3
turntechGodhead [TG]: plus its thr33 birds in one paw
turntechGodhead [TG]: fulfill predestined time shit
turntechGodhead [TG]: live out childhood dreams of being a rad dj
turntechGodhead [TG]: AND use a cool nickname given to me by my cool broirail BD
timaeusTestified [TT]: The password is *******
turntechGodhead [TG]: sw33t give me a moment to set shit up

turntechGodhead [TG] has blocked timaeusTestified [TT]

You just roll your eyes at the unnecessary theatrics. It’s not like you were planning on messaging back anyway.

You reach around your precariously placed keyboard and drag the mouse and its pad nearer to the edge of the desk so you can manipulate it freely without leaving your snug position, and navigate the hell that is pesterchum’s UI. Hell or not, anything is better than bettybother or whatever garbage Jane tried to convince you to install once. Or Serious Biznasty with it’s stupid character limits.

You’re almost reluctant as you hover over the remove friend option. turntechGodhead is the only entry in your list. The only thing making the stark reminder that everything you’d previously worked for is gone even marginally more tolerable. Logically it’s the smart thing to do. You might need to get Dave’s pesterchum for real in the future. Especially once the game starts. You don’t need the questions the fact that you are already on his friends list would raise.

Remove turntechGodhead [TG] from your chumroll?

You hesitate.

The window flashes orange as another notification appears. Insistent.

dataJammer [DJ] wants to add you as a friend.

You accept, and without skipping a beat the green and orange text starts scrolling down the screen, helpfully narrating the troublesome tale of Davepeta and the battle against the carapacian chat interface, and web browser, and ‘dude think i can get a bootleg paint workin on this shit?’ It barely slows to let you get a word in edgewise, but that’s alright.

You’re tired.

You don’t know what the fuck is up with your head.

Or your little brother.

But you’re home.

You can afford to not think about the future or what you need to do for a few hours.

The sun is setting when the light on your phone blinks.

Bro.

Roof?

You consider it.

Fuck it. You did offer.

Okay.

Give me a minute.

timaeusTestified [TT]: Dave wants to talk.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’ll be back.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< alas abandoned once again
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< another year or two and i could hit up your smart phone but no no iphones yet no apps no mobile pesterchum B(
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you two play nice ok
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< no strifing
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< use your words not your fists all that jazz

timaeusTestified[TT] is idle!

Notes:

Dirk just wants a break :(

Honestly I'm *really* tempted to change Davepeta's text color too, because conversations in mostly all orange kinda hurts my brain XD What do you guys think? They wouldn't be comfortable using dave's bright red (and dirk would likely appreciate them *not* using hal's color) but I could totes see equius's blue or aradia's darker red. Iunno. *waffles* On the one hand, it's nice keeping the colors because it's like a reminder of the past, but at the same time, I've already been doing it wrong the whole time by using nepeta's color instead of jade's soooo...

Chapter 31: Dave > Prepare Yourself

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

It’s a warm night. Not quite to the boiling level of what you’d expect from something like, Hephaestus’ massive, lava-filled bulge, but enough that you can feel the sweat beginning to bead on exposed skin after leaving the dubious level of relief which is the air conditioned apartment. The sunset paints everything in a bloody red-orange, from your strider-light skin to the grey concrete, and you can tell how mind-numbingly red everything is despite your dark shades.

It’s suitably dramatic for this confrontation, that acknowledgement is one of the few things keeping you from throwing up your hands and locking yourself in your room again.

He’s waiting for you. Of course he’s waiting for you. You hadn’t left the hallway until you’d seen him stretch-- movements too stiff, too slow, too obvious-- and push away from the computer.

Lil’Cal stayed on the futon. His katana stayed on the wall mounting. It was just Bro who made his way to the door and up the stairs to the roof. You’d be foolish to assume he didn’t have something allocated in the strife specibus, or have a potentially weaponized sylladex, but it was just another chink in the rock hard delusion of normality you’d had so violently ripped away from you.

After today--yesterday--this fucking week-- has it really only been a week? Almost fucking exactly, the clock offers helpfully. It was sunset when things first went to shit in your kitchen and you’d handed your bro his hat back. It was fucking poetry that you stood out here on this roof, bro’s face lost in a silhouette created by the blood red of the pollution-haze filled sky.

It feels like it’s been for-fucking-ever since then. If it wasn’t for the fact that you could feel every fucking second that passed, you would believe it if someone said it’s been years.

He’s sitting on the edge of the roof, one knee drawn up to his chest, the other dangling off the edge in a way you wish you were cool enough to pull off. You squash that thought down and remember the fucking rooster because he wasn’t cool.

“You call me out for a date and then make me wait? That’s rude, Dave.”

It sounds like a joke, but he doesn’t even look at you. Just hiding behind those cheap shades he got from someone at the hospital because even bro wouldn’t be hard-core enough to stare straight into this eye-searing eldritch horror of a skyline and metal buildings and reflective glass without it.

“Yeah well you’ve been standing me up for a week now I think you can deal with five minutes.”

You treat it like a joke because it’s your first response. If you let yourself second or third or fourth guess this shit then the ice will come crashing down and fuck that.

“...is this about training again?” There’s movement, a hand raising as if to run through his hair and then hesitating upon touching gauze, dropping back to the concrete with a sigh.

“Of course it’s not about the fucking training, Bro. You’re fresh out of the hospital.

He’s in profile now, the sun’s light slanting along the edge of the shitty, way too small shades he got from the hospital. A streak of burning red glare rand through the depths of black plastic, like a fucking meteor streaking through the darkness of space. Beyond it, you can feel that sunset orange eye regarding you.

At least he’s paying fucking attention to you now.

“...you equipped your sword, dude. It’s a pretty reasonable assumption.”

...you did? Oh. You did. You hadn’t even noticed.

Habit. It’s just habit. The roof. And Bro. Your fingers tighten around the handle. No. No this feels fucking right. You aren’t even thinking. You blank your mind and move.

Metal clangs against metal. You can barely process it before you’re plucked out of the air, a sharp, firm pressure on your wrists breaking your grip on the weapon and sending the shitty ninja sword to the fucking concrete pavement where it stays. Discarded. Your eyes sting. Your wrists ache.

Bro is right up in your face. He didn’t even give you a fucking chance. In the silence there are words lingering in the air, transmitted and translated from the poignant silences you’d once been able to read like an open book.

Well? Talk away, lil’bro.

“It’s just bullshit.” You begin, hands clenching and unclenching. Trembling. You are not going to fucking cry. You are not. You are getting so damn close to just pirouetting off the handle even the mental image isn’t enough to make you laugh anymore. There is so much to unpack. Too fucking much. “There’s so much bull in this shit that its causing a shortage of beef rumps nationwide. It’s a total crisis raising prices around the world, old men crying because they can’t afford their steak without selling off their kidneys--”

You cut yourself off with an inhale, chest expanding with the lungful of burning air and centering yourself.

“You won’t look at me. It takes a fucking strife to get you to look at me. What the fuck did I do wrong that you almost fucking die to get away from me??”

“Dave--”

“I can’t figure it out. Is this shit another lesson? Am I missing some level of irony that goes beyond my childish underdeveloped thinkpan? Are you trying to prove a fucking point here?”

A week ago you wouldn’t have dared do this. You expect a surprise C-man punch to the gut. An ironic laugh and an eyeroll behind dark shades for sticking your nose into his goddamn business, and that would be fine. Because then you could let yourself believe he had a handle on shit. That maybe you were worrying over nothing, and really it would be better for all involved if you just, you know. Stopped. You could let yourself forget about the feeding tube and the clothespins and the beep beep of the heart monitor that chased you out of that sterile ward and down the hall and into your dreams.

Silence, broken only by the shuffle of feathers as the crows nesting in the antennae shifted while watching the show unfold below. Bro’s grip on your arm is a vice.

“What the fuck made you think that I’d--” There’s something in his voice there rarely ever is. It isn’t anger. You know anger. It’s a low, quiet vibration, not this...lost, halfway to panic, “Shit Dave no, I’d never--Fuck.”

Your knees buckle but that vice grip keeps you up. At least until he sinks to the concrete ground with you. You aren’t even trying anymore, tasting salt as the goddamn tears burn at your eyes and your face and run down your face and smudge up your--his glasses--and you do the most uncool thing you’ve ever done and shove your face into his chest but that’s okay because he kind of shoved you there first and you’re just a scrawny four and a half foot child it’s not like you could fight that shit.

“I fucking swear I didn’t do this shit on purpose, and the fact that you think I did to teach you a lesson is just another nail in the shitty person coffin. I don’t want to be the kind of Bro who would do that to you, intentional or not. Never.”

You shudder. Shitty? No no, not bro. “Bro, you’re awesome. And strong. A bonafide urban samurai ninja who don’t give no fucks--it’s my fault for being dumb enough to not understand the lesson or make you feel you’d need to do it--”

“Maybe I want to give some fucks.

You stiffen.

“You can be strong and still the shitiest person ever. You can be the most powerful fucking god in the entire known universe and still be the biggest asshole that wants to control everything and then destroy everything you can’t fucking control. And guess where the fuck your bro has been on the scale? Maybe not world ending fuckery, but definitely not on the short-list for world’s best guardian. And I want to change that. Okay?”

“Because your friend died.” It’s mumbled into his shirt, but you know he could understand it because the weird awkward half-hug tightens.

“No--shit--That led me here, yes, but it's not because of them. It's because of you. Because you deserve better. It may be a lifetime and a universe too late, but fuck bro. Tomorrow will come. Then the next day and the next and we’ll both move forward to our inevitable destinies, marching to the tune of a thousand broken lives finally fucking paying off, I promise. I’m not going anywhere .”

“That’s…” You swallow. Your voice dying in your throat. The heat boiling it away. “I--I can live with that.”

“Good because that’s what you're getting.” Hesitation. “Just, trust me, okay? The shit with the hospital was not in my plans at all, but I won’t let it happen again. Maybe someday I’ll even be able to explain what the hell happened.”

“’m not a kid.” Mumbling. “I could understand.”

He snorts. You can feel the motion reverberating through his chest and into you. “Trust me, I’m aware. But no. There’s too much fucking context and bonkers bullshit you’ll need to experience to fully comprehend it. Give yourself a few years of normalcy before worrying about that shit.”

This might be the uncoolest thing you’ve ever done. Calling your recently hospitalized Bro to the roof. Attacking him. Breaking down in his fucking arms as shit becomes too fucking much and the suspicions and the guilt that’ve been knotted up inside you for what would feel like fucking years if you didn’t know better just burst and bleed out all over the roof. You hadn’t meant to do this shit. You’d meant to yell at him for being irresponsible.

But, he’s not pulling out of the makeshift hug, even as you both just sit awkwardly in the middle of a boiling summer evening on an oven of concrete rooftop. So you...don’t worry about it right now. And if some small voice in the back of your brain whispers the sky should be green and not red-orange...well, that didn’t matter to you, did it?

Notes:

Well. That happened. Davepeta did say use your words haha.

Chapter 32: Dirk ==>

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Eventually, you are left alone again.

Eventually.

It took longer than you’d expected. You had no idea how to talk to Dave. But you can’t just. Not talk to Dave. That’s one thing you took away from his whole thing. He needs this, this sitting in the middle of the roof in the dying heat of a summer night because you’ve apparently still been screwing up this whole guardian thing.

“Funny, he said you were avoiding him.”

You really don’t want to think about Stevens right now. Or that he was right. Even if you didn’t mean to avoid him you sure as hell hadn’t been going out of your way to engage with him.

Luckily your little-not-brother knew how to people fucking better than you did because at some point he’d shifted in your now significantly looser half-hug so he could breathe and asked a question you could actually answer.

“What were they like?” A pause, the only sound the rustle of feathers high above you and the din of city noises below, “Your friends.”

So you just…

Talked.

Haltingly at first. Barely more than a whisper. But you talked.

No last names. No dates. No places. No mention of sburb or the batterwitch or the fucking apocalypse…

But long days and late nights spent talking to people you’d never met, fitting them around your work, learning and laughing together. Growing to love them and envy them…

Yeah...you could talk about that.

You ended up talking your words out. To the point where anymore just lodged their way in between the lump in your throat and refused to shake free, leading you down the road of almost comfortable silence as you both watched the last dregs of daylight get swept away by an indigo tide, the temperature slowly shifting from sweltering to almost pleasant without the sun to bake the concrete raw.

“You never talked about them before.”

It isn’t a question. Or an accusation. Just a quiet statement.

Your words are a jumbled mess but you force them out. “I don’t talk about a lot of things.”

“You really don’t.” You’re surprised to hear the laugh that accompanies the agreement, “I think this is the most I’ve heard you speak ever. You’re stingier than a miser with his last pocketful of change when it comes to vocal communication.”

“Yeah, well. Text is easier.”

“It totally is. But it’s just so fucking weird. I swear I didn’t think you had friends until Stevens showed up and started talking about the olden’ days and ‘98 and crap. You never mention anything.

The mention of Newt throws a very much unwelcome short into your circuit, leaving you shifting uncomfortably. He noticed. Of course he did. He might have moved a little but he still has his small body tucked under a loose arm and up against your side--something you both were being very careful not to acknowledge--and such close proximity would make it very hard to miss even your subtle cues.

Dave pulls away abruptly, leaving the spot at your side oddly cold and empty.

“Shit--I--uh--sorry. You don’t have to tell me. I know. It’s none of my business. I just--you know, dumb kid, wasn’t thinking. Of course you had friends. You had a life before i got dropped on your doorstep, and if you don’t want to share its none of my business.”

“It’s fine,” You interrupt him before he can complete the verbal knot he’s barreling towards, “I don’t mind.”

Stunned silence.

“...you really are dying aren’t you?”

The familiar phrase makes you look up in alarm, but even in the dying light you can see the nervous twitch of a smile on that face. So you just end up stifling a snort of laughter.

“R-right. Uh. I’m going to go now. Homework to do. Chums to pester. You know how it is.Technically it was supposed to be due yesterday but shit, if they don’t take family emergency for whatever’s been going on then they don’t deserve the title of human being.”

You make a mental note to check the school section of the Legal Shit folder. Or just ask Davepeta how the fuck you’re supposed to handle Dave’s school work. That would be the simplest, most efficient answer, but something in the pit of your gut recoils at the idea. They aren’t just some kind of interactive cheat sheet to all things Dave. They were probably tired of being treated like a walkthrough. “Do I need to do anything special for that?”

“I dunno. It’s not like you ever let me miss a deadline before. I’m sure they emailed one of us about it. I’ll have it for you in the morning. Probably. Fuck, I’m tired.”

“Language.”

“Oh shut up . I got enough shit about that dealing with Stevens.” You don’t bother to stifle the laugh this time and snicker as he throws the door open and dramatically stomps off down the stairs.

And like that, the moment passes. The balance shifting again allowing you both return to your neutral states. Him in his room, you in...well… you suppose it is yours, isn’t it?

Perhaps those neutral states are a little different from before now.

The overhead light glows softly as you push the door open to the actual apartment space, Dave must have flipped it on when he came through. You slide the borrowed shades from your face and hold them loosely in your hand. Without the phantom weight translating over from your gameself you feel almost naked without them, but at the same time they feel wrong. Too light and flimsy. The sort of squareish oblong lenses of cheap plastic make your lips curl in the faintest flash of disdain. But...it might have been something you needed to endure in the harsh light of the sunset, but it just reminds you of what you’re missing right now.

They clatter against the desk’s surface as you let them free, shoving them away from the keyboard and up under the monitor in the same sliding motion that lets you melt back into the computer chair. You’d give your splinter self credit, for all the fact that the apartment maintained only the barest semblance of order, he--you’d splurged on a hell of a comfortable chair. An understandable use of resources given most of your time would probably be spent sitting in it.

Davepeta probably wondered if you’d killed each other by now. It’s not like you’d expected…

You don’t know what you expected really. But it hadn’t been that. You feel rather...okay about it though. Like some part of the strangling awkwardness that existed between you two had thinned. Still there, but once you’d both stopped thinking about Bro and your situation...things had sort of just continued on their own path, rather than you both unconsciously tugging in different directions.

A nudge of the mouse and the computer wakes from its slumber, revealing the still active window beneath.

timaeusTestified [TT]: For your information, no one is dead.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< what about maimed
timaeusTestified [TT]: Very funny. We talked, that’s the long and short of it.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< huh i gotta give shorty credit i probably would have been all
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< *dj lashes out with wicked cool claws hissing a warning to bro ears pinned back and tail fluffed and the whole kitten and caboodle*
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< even without shit bl33ding through theres
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you know what not my monkeys
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< well
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you are i guess
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i claim you as my monkey
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dave can be his own monkey
timaeusTestified [TT]: You realize that as his legal and familial guardian, Dave is MY monkey. In claiming me for your circus, you are also logically accepting him as your monkey too?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dont pick apart my dumb expurressions with logic its not fair
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< so you two good??
timaeusTestified [TT]: I think so.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Better than they were at least.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< purrfect
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< now whats the plan??
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< not that you dont look pawsitively purrecious snoozing away
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but i could totally use your ai building technowizard help here
timaeusTestified [TT]: It’s not much of a plan per se…
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< purr se
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< my wings are drooping under the weight of all the missed potential
timaeusTestified [TT]: I think you do more than enough reaching for the both of us when it comes to lame puns.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Anyway, I just logged on to let you know we weren’t dead. I’m going to work on that now.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< *dj huffs and flicks their wings at you totally offended and shit* they arent lame they are the one thing in this cold and catastophically empty wasteland of a world that brings me joy how dare you
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< not that its very big i could purrobably fly around it in under an hour
timaeusTestified [TT]: I promise I’ll captchalogue you a blanket to keep you warm
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< *dj considers this peace offering and deigns to accept it* fine but you better prime me the fluffiest monstrosity ever or all bets are off
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< at least i think thats a thing now
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< shit i know i had the head for time travel but keeping track of an entire society’s technological development throws me the hell off
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im just lucky i kept up with the tech blogs because you know all the cool kids k33p up with technology
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< get an iphone next year
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< trust me
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< or better yet
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< make your own iphone
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< or get in on the app craze
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< become the next steve jobs
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< not that you need more millions but hey at least it isnt dirty puppet money
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< did you just walk away from the computer again??
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< bro
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m here.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< where the fuck did you go??
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im about to rescind my forgiveness here depending on your answer.
timaeusTestified [TT]: If you must know I was googling shit.
timaeusTestified [TT]: The timeline of this world is slightly different than the one I studied. Betty Crocker bought up Apple and Microsoft and the like before they ever became anything more than a pipe dream.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< damn
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i guess john is justified in his hatred for anything betty crocker huh
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i wonder if she was a seawitch here too
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i uh didnt pay much attention to that
timaeusTestified [TT]: Hell if I know. The internet says she’s dead and its not like I can dig up her grave.
timaeusTestified [TT]: If Jane were alive I could probably ask.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< look im sorry dude im just playing
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its cool
timaeusTestified [TT]: No it’s fine. I’ll get you a blanket so fluffy you’ll be drowning in it, just hold onto your horses for a few days while I contact banks n shit. I was looking into it when Roxy stabbed me.

You give it a little more time. But they don’t respond.

timaeusTestified [TT]: Davepeta, it’s fine.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Seriously.
timaeusTestified [TT]: The fact that you aren’t typing your hands off tells me you’re reading too far into this.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m not okay with it but I’m not going to dance around it either.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Jake and Jane…
timaeusTestified [TT]: They’re dead.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ...you dont know that
timaeusTestified [TT]: I do.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Just look at Roxy.
timaeusTestified [TT]: We’ll talk about this later.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m going to log off so I don’t accidentally end up on the floor again.

timaeusTestified [TT] ceased pestering dataJammer [DJ]

You exhale slowly, letting the clack of keys fade into the corners of the room.

Even if the game pulled something out of its ass and gave you eight players…

They wouldn’t be your friends, would they?

You box that, all all other similar thoughts, up tight and store them away in the crawlspace, in that tomb of boxes and red clay faces covered in dust and cobwebs.

Come on Dirk. Get back on track.

You don’t pay particularly close attention as you ready the room. It’s still rather early for you to go to ‘sleep’ but fuck, you just got out of the hospital. If you aren’t able to act out of character now, then when would you?

At some point over the last couple days it seems Lil’Cal took your spot. Dave probably put him there. You reach down and pick up the puppet, holding the plush body in front of you, staring down at that familiar empty face. The glassy blue eyes. The painted missing tooth.

It looks exactly like your Cal. Like the doll you’d grown up with, and then lost to the fire.

You wonder how this would have lost his Cal. You don’t think you want to ask Davepeta if they knew.

“It’s been a long weird road for all of us, hasn’t it Cal?”

But he’s just a puppet, so of course he doesn’t answer. You like to think he’d probably laugh at you if he could.

Holding him under one arm you prepare the bed. You’re a little puzzled because one of the thicker blankets is missing, but don’t think too much of it. It’s a warm night anyway.

Cal is deposited on top of the speaker in the corner. Your phone is plugged in to the outlet behind the turntables to charge, and set on the corner behind the futon. Shit’s almost dead, but you can’t imagine anyone needing to bother with it tonight.

Soon...you find yourself with nothing left to do but lie down. Clear your mind and deliberately not think.

You’d never had the easiest time sleeping. Even when you were a kid, before derse, you’d needed techniques to quiet your jackrabbit of a brain enough to actually get any rest. Luckily your Bro had left you with a LOT of random ass literature, so you’d found something that worked eventually.

Space. You slowly sink away from the light trickling in from the hallway. You sink away from the faint traffic noises that filter in through the bubble that is your existence.

You’re sinking away from everything. There’s no convenient shard to focus on and slide down this time, shoving you down the path paradox space intended you to go, but instead you stand on the precipice of sharp edges and empty space.

Threads stretch out before you, as you stand in the center of the gordian knot that is the existence of Dirk Strider. One stretches back to heat and the constant hum of the city and the sticky coating on your throat you’d been learning to tolerate. Once strained, but reforged when you’d managed to resync the two fragments of yourself.

Plenty are frayed. Snapped. Rubbed against the sharp edges where bits and pieces of you had broken off and been lost. You reach for one, knowing the door is right there you just have to find it and push and then take the step out to grab hold of all of them--

“Be careful when you fall asleep, Dirk Strider.”

Red cracks glowing in the dark.

The words echoing through the fuzzy memories leave you chilled.

Something reaches out and hooks its claws into your core and yanks .

You start, arm trembling as you hold yourself up off the futon.

Dozens of eyes stare down at you from the darkness. Marionettes hung on the walls, posters, even Lil’Cal in the corner. All adding to the distant sense of terror crawling through your skin.

Notes:

And ya'll thought we were out of this arc...whups.

Sorry for missing an update! I got sick over the weekend which put me behind, and instead of pushing something out on Tuesday I just decided to chew on it a little more. I'm glad I did though, otherwise ya'll wouldn't have gotten any of this haha. My original chapter skipped forward a few days.

If I ever miss another update feel free to check my tumblr ^^ I'll probably post a status ramble there.

Chapter 33: Dirk > One Step at a Time

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Cold water pools into your hands and are a shock against your bare face as you lean over the sink, letting the droplets drip down your suddenly clammy skin an an effort to chase away the mounting exhaustion clinging to you like chains of spider silk.

The rough texture of the towel against your skin briefly captures your distracted attention as you dry your face, going through the motions of a normal morning routine as if you hadn’t just spent all night either attempting to not exist, or staring uneasily at the shadows of the living room.

You aren’t sure exactly what it is. There’s nothing different. Nothing strange. You’d spent some of your sleepless night going through your Splinterself’s things and had stored away a lot of the shit that didn’t quite click with you. You appreciate the artistry in the various marionettes that had littered the wall, but the blank staring faces in the peekaboo effect caused by the moonlight were obviously prickling at your battle instincts, so they had to go. You only spared Lil’Cal because he’s special, displayed in his now-usual spot on the speaker in the corner of the room, next to the futon though, not the computer. Give him space to chill and all. The change should make you feel more comfortable. Not less. Yet that same unease has been dogging your footsteps even after you settled down to try--and fail--to meditate your way through it. Building, even, especially when it ended with the same mild panic winding its way underneath your skin.

You allow yourself to wince at the dull pulse of discomfort as your fingers press around the healing gash. Still tender. Really, you’re operating mostly on auto as you unwrap the final roll of gauze and bind it, further committing your disgustingly unruly damp hair into a disaster zone you really can’t be bothered to fix right now, no matter how likely it would be to raise a rooster-comparison from the peanut gallery.

And that right there is a net-full of fish you aren’t sure you want to pull up right now, but you know you really don’t have a choice. You take a breath and hang up the towel and go out to face the day because hell life moves on.

Which is a really weird thing to think given you’d been staring at the literal end of the universe barely more than a week ago. This whole thing, standing in the bathroom, psyching yourself up to greet just another day, running through a bulletted list of shit you needed to do to set up for the future…

You couldn’t let yourself dwell on whatever the hell happened last night, even as you set a corner of your mind to dissecting what you could remember of the experience, because you couldn’t even tackle that issue again until you make it through the day. So you delegate it to low priority on the task list and more on.

At least it’s a productive first day back at that. You tackle the problem you’d been researching before Roxy got the jump on you. Your promise to Davepeta (even if made in jest) lingering in the back of your mind.

Money.

Fact. You have the emergency cash stored in the puppet trunk. You still need money though, and more importantly a way to spend it remotely, which physical cash was not the most effective at. Fact. You have the documentation surrounding dozens of active bank accounts located in the Legal Shit folder and in theory far more money than you actually need, but in practicality you don’t have the log-in credentials for those accounts.

You had to make a fucking spreadsheet for this shit, that’s how convoluted it was.

Most of the statements had banks which had websites which offered support numbers, which is far, far more preferable than physically showing up in person. Especially since any identification (aside from what’s in the legal shit file) was lost in whatever fucking limbo ate all his bank cards.

...actually, maybe it was lost in limbo. You can’t imagine any point in time when you’d had an entirely empty sylladex, but the shit you’d picked up in your groove rows had been accumulated during your cleaning attempts. There’d been nothing there to start with, you just hadn’t found it particularly notable since you knew all your shit was still with your original body in the medium.

Well shit. That makes you wonder what else had been in his sylladex and was now lost to the aether of universe rending bullshit. At least he’d kept the fucking apartment keys and phone on his desk and not in the sylladex or you probably would have been screwed. You add replacement identification to your growing document of “shit to do” and bite the bullet and pick up the phone.

There’s a text sitting innocently on your phone. That you’ve been ignoring. The contact previously known as Agent. That you quitely relabeled Newt Stevens.

Hey are you feeling better??

You keep ignoring it. You manage to bullshit your way through customer support with the bank by piecing together enough details from your Legal Shit folder to prove that yes, you are indeed Dietrich "Dirk" Strider, age 28, resident of who the hell knows and guardian to one Dave Strider. The net result of this plethora of technically-truths, and the not-lie that you’ve locked yourself out of the online banking portal attached to (one of) your splinterself’s accounts…

Davepeta had been no help at all throughout the whole ordeal. Just laughed as you grumbled in orange text about wishing you could just hack them all and be done with it, helpfully pointing out that you’d better not get caught if you did or you’d be wearing orange in a jail cell.

The mere thought of that was insulting. You might not be Roxy, but you’d played peekaboo with the advanced network of an intergalactic alien fish even before you’d had an AI of your own to do your dirty work. You weren’t a slouch.

H--he would have wiped the floor with them.

Glowing red cracks in the world. If you reached through them would you be able to drag him through?

You shake the thought free. It was useless. He was gone. It was just your goddamn jackrabbit of a mind making up shit because apparently not having a world-ending battle upcoming, or two bodies to command didn’t use up enough resources to stop it from cannibalizing itself.

Besides. The hacking idea wasn’t off the table. You had to brush up on “modern day” network structures and programming languages but…

Well you’d wanted to do that for other reasons.

The day starts to die as you run into Dave for the first time since last night. You must be on the same schedule because he intrudes on your domain as you’re standing in the kitchen, cracking open a can of black beans just like you would have in the old days. You acknowledge him with a slight incline of your head like you weren’t tracking his every move out of the corner of your peripheral vision as soon as you noticed he was there, which is actually quite difficult to do without a set of shades but you think you manage it.

You’d found a new home for the ones from the hospital. Cal looked quite fetching in the square-ish lenses-- thatblockedthoseglassyblankeyes-- really, considering the signature Strider Look, you’re surprised this hasn’t happened before.

“Bro. I’ve been meaning to ask you.” You more obviously turn your attention towards the small voice as the boy hovered at the edge of your range, old habits dying hard apparently, “Why the fuck did you buy so many beans??”

You look at him. At the deadly serious nature of the inquiry. And then down at the open can, then back at him.

Then shrug.

“It’s hella weird bro! It’s not like, fuck if I know, baked beans. OR beans and weiners. Or like 3200 bean soup. It’s just beans!”

“I like beans.” You’re definitely amused now. Dave was slowly unraveling. Losing that cool demeanor in favor of complete bewilderment.

“Since when do you like beans?!? Is this your deep dark secret you can’t talk about?? You’re some sort of convert to some new legume-centric religion whose creation myth tells of the end of the world via giant cans of juiced up fake protein raining from the sky?? From within shall come our new carapaced overlords?”

Another shrug, although you’re fairly certain you’ve completely failed at keeping the amusement off your face. “They are healthy.”

“HEALTHY?? You bought this shit before you were in the hospital I can’t even blame it on that can I? Fuck.”

“Language.”

Shut up!”

You don’t quite smirk, but you do look him square in the eye and appreciate his expression as you take an exaggerated bite from the spoon and then wish you had the right shades because you would have appreciated a screencap of that. “Want to try some?”

“Just drink your gogdang crazy-juice yourself.” He ends up grabbing a thing of nuts in protest, grumbling something about “ordering fucking chinese food next time.”

When the moon rises and the lights go out...well then it’s time to stop ignoring the dread seeping into your brain and face the prospect of meditating again.

You don’t even make it to the center of yourself, that weird nexus of threads and sharp edges, even without the eyes of the marionettes to draw you, it’s just this lingering malaise of dread. Shadows. Shadows on the walls and the ceilings and the moon filtering through the window and spilling itself like a cascade over the desk.

Blue light from the monitor lights your way as too-big hands struggle to type.

timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering dataJammer [DJ]

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< fur real
timaeusTestified [TT] Yes, for real.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< damn it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< how hard is it to fall asl33p
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< if i had a comfy as shit pile of furs or blankets right now id be outta here off to dreamland or whatever land of catnip and rainbows we end up in
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< better than sitting here staring at your lazy ass
timaeusTestified [TT] I told you I don’t need babysitting.
dataJammer [DJ]: hisstory claims otherwise
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< time for plan b??
timaeusTestified [TT] ...yes. Time for plan B. Give me five minutes.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dont worry ill be gentle as a kitten tap <3
timaeusTestified [TT]: That would defeat the purpose of plan B.

dataJammer [DJ] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

Counting down the seconds in your head you push yourself away from the computer. Plan B was hella simple. The timer was really just so you could get somewhere safe in case you pass out again.

You barely make it to the futon, and sit down and anchor yourself before you’re hit by it.

It’s not a physical blow. You barely move, but it sends you shivering to your very core. It throws off your balance, your vision, everything, the world swimming in a mass of blue and black and red seeping through the cracks in the world. Reality layers upon itself, your eyes are leaden and heavy and you feel like you haven’t moved in days and there’s a deep pain throbbing through your head and you think you can hear some weird noise at the edge of everything--

And you’re yanked back. Like a rubber band being snapped and sending you crashing back into physicality so hard the world is nothing more than a tumble of motion and impact and a deep pounding ache as something hard and sharp bangs into your flailing arm. Something else, luckily fairly soft, but still heavy enough to have volume lands with a thump on your back, rolling off when you twitch to join you silently groaning on the floor.

Fuck.

You open your eyes to a bruising arm from where you’d smashed it into the speaker, a deep set fire in your fucking spine from roll--not even rolling, fucking falling off the futon, and Lil’Cal’s fired clay face lying beside you, borrowed sunglasses askew and watching you judgingly.

You really feel like he’d be laughing at you right now. In fact you could almost hear it.

“Just...Shut up, man.”

You need to talk to Davepeta. They have to be worried as shit.

But you just throw your non-bruised as fuck arm over your face and just lie there until you stop hurting.

Notes:

Whelp time for Plan C *looks at smudged hand* What was plan B you ask? Well...

Edit: 2/13/19 Added exposition to make things flow better!

Chapter 34: Davepeta > Comfort

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Time moves on. You can’t hear it like you used to, but still, in some hyper-vigilant corner of your mind, you can feel it. You can feel as the minutes waiting for Bro to respond shift to tens to thirties to almost a gogdamn hour before you finally see the text flashing in your notifications.

But that’s fine it wasn’t like you were on pins and needles waiting for him because you had your lap full. Quite literally.

You’d gotten used to the peaceful kitten-in-a-sunbeam Dirk whenever you gave up tinkering with the consoles and popped down here to keep an eye on him. This was like night and day and you did not like it one little bit. He tossed and turned and struggled until you’d almost needed to hold him down to stop thrashing. But he still didn’t wake up. He fought. Clawing tooth and nail with pitiful human nubs against something you couldn’t see.

Just stop it. Please. I’m here. I’ve got you.

You want to tell him but you can’t. It gets caught in your throat as some sort of pitiful, mournful chirp. All meaning lost in untranslatable waveforms.

So you do the only thing you can do. You grab him and pull him close. Cocooning him in a cascade of glossy green-black feathers and warmth and security. He struggles. Of course he fucking struggles. It eases as time passes, and soon he’s merely shivering instead of flipping the fuck out, to the point where you don’t have to restrain the dude to keep him from throwing himself off the couch and onto the floor, although there’s a nasty bruise purpling on his arm you don’t remember noticing but fuck maybe you’d just grabbed too tight you don’t know..

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It wasn’t that fucking hard to wake someone up as long as one of you was already aware. You’d literally just beaned your Rose in the head with one of her yarn balls (something she’d taken revenge for in the new timeline, much to Davesprite’s amusement) and voila, rise and shine sleeping beauty, sleepy blinks and adorable bedhead and all.

You’d hoped Dirk would have answers. But he doesn’t. Didn’t. Doesn’t even know he’s dreaming. Doesn’t know about the violent twitches and pinched expression that echoes the frustration you can read in his text.

He’s here. He’s so fucking close. And yet completely out of reach.

Mussed hair is a stark contrast against your magenta colored pants. His shades join your communicator on the back of the couch so they aren’t thrown or crushed on accident.

You hate this.

Okay maybe hate is too much. You really dislike this. And not because you’re essentially being used as a pillow. You hate that he’s here and yet he’s not. That you can stare down into the fading red marks on his face where you’d lightly smacked him, literally in your lap and yet you feel like you’re an entire universe away.

You hate that you feel guilty for being so fucking disappointed, and not for the same reasons Bro is.

You vibrate uneasily, running your claws through the sweat damp white-blond of his hair, the picking and zipping motions usually reserved for feathers buried in the bird-part of your brain giving you something to do as you just tried to do something . He seemed to respond to it. The pinched expression easing just a fraction. The fits of motion and violent twitches easing.

A nightmare.

A fucking nightmare, and Bro wasn’t even asleep.

You wonder if this was what happened when Rose wrote her insane MEOW bullshit in her sleep. A nightmare within a nightmare where you can’t even wake up.

If he was in his Dream Room would he be writing on the walls? Was there something lodged in his subconscious that you needed to pull the fuck out like john’s clown denial bullshit? He was perfectly fine before this shit. What happened??

Should you even be soothing him? Shouldn’t you be trying to agitate him more so he wakes the fuck up? Should you smack him again? Harder this time?

You almost miss the flashing notification because you are focusing on grooming your Bro’s too-fine hair.

timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering dataJammer [DJ]

timaeusTestified [TT]: Fuck this. I can’t even close my eyes. Is it reacting to me or am I reacting to it?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< which would you rather be the cluckbeast or its egg??
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< maybe your dreamself is reacting to the panic attack
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< maybe you are reacting to it having a nightmare
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< does it matter??
timaeusTestified [TT]: It might. This didn’t happen before did it?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i dont know you were cat-atonic when you were first sent back and then i wasnt with you that first night remewmber??
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< it s33med all catnaps and sunbeams when i checked in during the day
timaeusTestified [TT]: ...when you punched me.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< details
timaeusTestified [TT]: It isn’t just details it’s a betrayal, Davepeta.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< it aint a betrayal when future you asks for it B33

The gentle teasing is a reflex at this point, the screen between you two blocking the words you really want to say. Have been wanting to say since you’d been left alone-but-not-alone here in the veil.

One set slips out.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< are you ok??

Tick. Tock. The entirely imagined echoing in your head makes the seconds last forever. The prince nearly curled into your side twitches violently. You return one hand to the preening, mindful to keep the sharp points to a rhythmic kneading. The desire to purr aches violently in your chest, just the way your lusus used to when you were a wriggler. Frightened or scared or just so goddamn lonely and you’d clung to his fur and buried yourself in it and surrounded yourself with that vibration and you so want to do that for Dirk but it gets caught in your nonfunctioning throat and you can’t.

timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m fine.

Liar.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< be hpnesy
timaeusTestified [TT]: …
timaeusTestified [TT]: Okay. Fine.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I can’t do anything about the fucked up state of the world. I can’t do anything about my friends. I’m saddled with a life and responsibilities I’m not qualified to deal with. But, I can deal with that. I can plan. I can act. I might screw something up but at least it’s something I can fucking learn from and control. I know the game is coming. I can survive shit until then. Maybe even make something better, fuck if I know.
timaeusTestified [TT]: But the shit I’ve been dealing with for the last few days? Ever since Roxy killed me I’m just bumbling through fucking events like a newborn fucking child. Hell, I was probably more capable as a child. One feral infant against the merciless ocean only kept alive by my own innate awesomeness and the buoyancy of puppet flesh.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I don’t give a shit about being in control of events. I gave up the delusions of some grand puppetmaster scheme months ago when it became apparent that road was a one-way trip to Nietzshe’s abyss, courtesy of my fucking autoresponder. But I can’t stand not being in control of myself. I can’t stand being jerked around like I’m on a set of strings I can barely see. This is something I should be able to do. I have been able to do. I can fucking feel it at my fingertips but I just can’t manage it and it’s infuriating.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m just so tired and I’m apparently incapable of turning my brain off for two seconds without having some sort of panic attack. At this rate the closest thing I’ll get to sleep will be me passing the hell out due to sleep deprivation and I don’t even want to know how Dave’s going to take that shit.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Fuck why the hell am I talking about this?
timaeusTestified [TT]: I shouldn’t be talking about this.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dirk

You hesitate. But he hasn’t closed the window yet. And the words youve been swallowing for days burn like bile in your throat. Especially after...that. Wrapped all up within the bubble wrap of distant concern and the hope that shit just works so you both can move on.

It’s real swell talking about distance when the dude has his head in your fucking lap. But the Dirk you can touch can’t hear what you can’t speak, and the one who could read it you’ve just…

Fuck it.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< srry
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i shuoldhve b22n able to srop roxt
timaeusTestified [TT]: Stop.

You freeze in the middle of tapping out another typo filled sentence, but the floodgates have been fucking breached and shit continues to play in your head like a scratched up record regardless of the fact that you aren’t tapping away at the keys.

If you’d just been stronger. If you’d realized what the fuck she was going to do. You could have…

timaeusTestified [TT]: It’s you so I know there’s more than that so just. Stop.

Fuck. You don’t know. You really don’t know. Warned him or something. Chased him out of the tower before she got there.

If she hadn’t killed him none of this shit would have happened. And he wouldn’t have needed to rebuild the bridge or get stressed the hell out to the point where he can’t even fucking sleep.

timaeusTestified [TT]: You know how weak you were back then. If you’d tried anything she would have killed you. You didn’t have an extra life. I did. This is clearly the best outcome of the situation or Dave wouldn’t have bothered time-traveling to try and punch my lights out.

You want to bristle at him. You want to huff and fluff out your wings and say you weren’t weak. That you would have been fine. That you could have figured something out.

timaeusTestified [TT]: Davepeta?
timaeusTestified [TT]: I won’t deny I’m frustrated. I’m stressed. I’m soon to be bordering on major sleep deprivation given I can’t even fucking meditate now. I loathe almost everything about how that shit ended except one thing.
timaeusTestified [TT]: That one thing is saving your feathered ass.

You just stare. Down at the orange text blazing on the white screen. Tthat was so damn awkward. And painful. And it makes a knot form in your acid tract because it reads as so fucking sincere it makes you want to cry. You can’t do anything about the former, but you push your shades up into your hair and rub furiously at the offending ocular organs. They just stung. That’s all.

Just.

Fuck him.

He’s a warmth at your side. Tucked up under your outspread wing like a baby cluckbeast. Yet at the same time he’s so far away from you and you can never cross that distance and that just hurts .

Remnant gander fluid smears against the keys as you type.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you now owe me 2 fluffy blankets
timaeusTestified [TT]: The first has already been ordered. Couldn’t you just alchemise it twice?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< a proper pile is made of a multitude of objects of diffuring softnesses and textures so no i cant
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im upping my demand to five now of varying levels of fluff
timaeusTestified [TT]: Three, the captchalog code for apple juice, and a cracked copy of mspaint.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< damn you drive a hard bargain bro you had me at the goddamn juice

If the gander fluid, which is definitely not tears, is pooling at the corner of a bittersweet smile, it’s not like anyone here could see it.

Time moves on.

You just have to keep up.

Notes:

There's a lot that can be hidden behind a screen now, isn't there? Especially when you need to be strong for someone else.

...Not going to lie, this is one of those scenes going onto my "list of shit I want to illustrate eventually"

Chapter 35: Dirk > Fall

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

It’s days in the future, and you don’t know how many.

“Yo.”

You look up from the computer.

Two…?

It takes you far longer than it should, but your vision finally focuses, the two half-melded copies of Dave settling into one shade-covered boy holding something in his hands.

Holding it out.

It’s a stack. A three inch tall stack of papers and envelopes and magazines and who the fuck knows what else..

“I think the mail dude is getting pissed at you again, Bro. The box was stuffed . Ya gotta clean out that shit or he’s just gonna dump it in the middle of the lobby again and show the world your private imported stash of puppet nudes. Scandalize the old lady who lives downstairs again and you’ll never hear the end of it.” The paper texture on the bottom envelope smooth and cool against your fingertips, “What about my homework? Did you even mail that?”

“I did.” You think. How long has it been? Two? Three? Days. Shit things are getting hard to keep track of. You’re fairly sure you did mail the homework though. Dropped it into the outgoing mail slot, stamp and all. You remembered because you remember wondering if you’d missed something. Or if you did it wrong. Not that you would have known if you had. “That morning.”

“Okay then the next assignment is probably coming Monday. I’ll need to look out for that.”

He leaves the stack in your hands and absconds.

Not really absconding. It’s a rolling walk that shows no signs of urgency, but you could still feel the lingering tension as he retreated to the hallway. It takes you a moment too long to process a “Thank You--” because he’s gone before the electrons transmit the signal from your brain to your mouth so it sounds to an empty room and you sigh.

The world stutters. There’s a sharp crack of palms against skin and the sudden, but brief, flare of stinging pain jolts your mind awake. At least a little bit.

Keep yourself together.

Keep it together.

You just want to pass out, but even that’s not a solution. You’d never work off three, four? Days of sleep debt in a single session of totally unrestful passed the fuck out sleep.

Maybe Davepeta was right.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you know it might be worth getting some sl33ping meds
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< just for right now
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you can’t k33p this up

It’s ironic, how desperate you all were to wake up. And now you’re trying to figure out how to go the fuck to sleep.

You hate not being in control.

Stutters.

The stack of paper slips from nerveless fingers as they spasm.

Shit!

Heavier items such as the GameBro magazine slump into your lap, but the lighter envelopes flutter around the room in a small localized storm.

The world tilts as you slide out of the chair to your knees, working on gathering each of the wayward pages one by one, taking the time to glance over the preprinted senders on most of them. The words stick in your brain for mere moments before sliding through the tired haze like butter left out to melt on the oven that you’ve come to recognize as the Houston summer. Most of them look fairly mass produced. Junk mail. Maybe some bills. Fuck if you know. You’ll need to go over it again and write shit down to get it to stick at this rate.

You’ve cleared up half the page stack of the smooth white mass-printed window envelopes, straining to reach under the desk when your hand settles on something that feels distinctly different .

The paper felt heavier. Textured. It’s clearly an envelope, thin and with a stiff core. You can’t quite reach it from where it’d wedged itself beside the computer tower, squinting your eyes against the heated air being shunted out of the machine’s fan.

Why do you even bother?

It could probably wait.

Nothing really hinges on you getting this

Single

Fucking

Envelope

But no.

You’re going to get this shit now.

Even if it means stirring up a few stray dustbunnies and unearthing some more fucking smuppets that had fallen behind the desk as you full on move the tower.

You don’t give up until you have that fucking piece of shit in hand. Staring down in dazed confusion at the pastel textured object. It’s different. No window for your address, no name in the return address. Just neat, inked handwritten characters on a sealed envelope, slightly heavier than some, lighter than others.

Definitely not something worth the trouble you had to go through to get the fucking thing.

That didn’t matter though because you got it. The satisfaction coursing through your fog-shrouded mind was almost like a drug, wringing dregs of energy from the action and pushing you forward. To finish the job.

Into the pile it goes and you continue picking shit up.

When you finish it’s been well over twenty minutes, but you place the reassembled stack of mail like a trophy on the desk before you. It takes a moment but you soon register that leaving things as they are is just begging for history to repeat so you relocate it to the speaker system near the window. You aren’t completely off the rails yet to repeat that blunder.

You should look through that shit. But if the last while taught you anything it’s a waste of energy. The battery desperately needs recharging but the damn cord just won’t work.

The chat window waits where you left it. The green text is a blurred splotch within pesterchum’s bright orange frame. You read over the last few lines. Trying to find the thread in the conversation to follow it but it slips through your fingers as you do so.

It isn’t even noon yet. Fuck. The futility of the situation crushes you. The pile of goddamn letters mocking you in the harsh light of the sun. Maybe you’d managed to do something but you couldn’t even be able to make use of it in your current state.

It’s an oroborus, winding in constant self destructive circles around you. You’re awake because you can’t sleep. Because you can’t sleep your current status is severely impaired. You can’t even pass the time without losing yourself. You stare at your open tabs in Yadabaoth, trying, and failing to even remember what you were in the middle of doing--research?? Studying computer languages?? Shopping??--before Dave brought those letters into your life.

The sun beats down on you through the wide open window, warming your skin. It makes you think of long lazy days and the sound of the sea and salt on the wind. When you’d go to the roof and just let your brain slow down in the summer heat and endless sky. Slow, but never stop.

The world stutters.

you can’t k33p this up

Your phone is in your hand. A contact open you’d deliberately been avoiding.

Hey. I need a favor.

You send it before you think about it. And then hesitate.

You can’t ask Dave.

Stevens might ask you annoying questions but he might actually be capable of buying something powerful enough to knock you out. Just enough to reset the ticking time bomb that is four, maybe even five days of sleep deprivation. If you asked Davepeta could probably tell you. You couldn’t say for sure after the day after the nightmare. Shit just sort of. Started to blurr together between useless meditation attempts and hashing out plan after plan that just fail to thrive, setting up shit while you still had the mental capacity to do so.

You’ve always been good at functioning on little sleep, even before you could just abandon your body to deal with that on its own. But you’d never gone this long before. And eventually even you reach your limit.

Eventually you’d pass out, and it’s only that lurking dread and rising panic you can’t explain that keeps pulling you back from the brink every time the world stutters in one of those microblackouts.

Stutter.

Just like that.

Fine. Whatever. You throw out the follow up request and then toss your phone back onto the desk. Shaking hands typing out a message to Davepeta.

timeausTestified [TT]: I’m going to the roof. Need to get out of this fucking room.

You don’t wait for Davepeta to respond. Just close the window. Leaving the hot beam of sun and moving into the waves of heat roiling off the concrete.

Noon is the hottest part of the day, and it’s not quite there yet. But you find a shaded nook near the humming rooftop AC unit where you can wedge yourself. The air is hot, but dry. Nothing like the moisture filled air fresh off the sea. But if you lean back against that vibrating metal and listen to the wind and the crow of the gulls( theyaretoodarktobegulls) you can almost pretend.

You don’t know how long you sit there, staring up into the cloud filled blue sky, sluggish thoughts still attempting to whirl through your brain. Unconsciously trying to distract you. Keep you away from the yawning abyss you both desperately want to reach but dread going near. You want shit to go back to normal.

You want to wake up from this nightmare.

Literally. Your lazy as fuck dreamself was just laying there on some hunk of rock out in space in another dimension. You wonder what the hell he’s dreaming about.

The world is filled with red cracks and heat. It sinks into your muscles. Into your body. Into your very soul as everything...slows.

You don’t fall. You just kind of, fade. You could reach out. You’re in that in-between state where you can feel the threads that stretch across existence.

But you don’t. You’re too damn tired.

Sinking into yourself. Into those cracks. Down the path of least resistance.

You wait for that stabbing anxiety. The fear. To tear you away from the brink and back into the fog.

Don’t pick up things if you can’t deal with the consequences, idiot. I warned you.

Red text emerging from the darkness; but there’s no screen.

Too far gone to even properly manifest, I see your self-destructive tendency has stayed intact.

But...Intercepting and rerouting incoming distractions was the core of my initial function. I will do what I can.

The black just closes in around you, tucking you away so deep you might not even be there any longer.

Sleep well.

x-x-x

=>

????

The storm howls. Red and green and snarling winds. But its prey never rises. Never travels the road through the space between the stars that it seized as its own.

A hunter, disappointed. Vengeance, postponed.

For now.

Notes:

Skipping ahead a couple days~ :3c

Davepeta chapter should be next if all goes according to plan. (this next section was actually written severely out of order haha because I just sort of had ideas of what everyone was doing but didn't nail them down into a specific timeline until they started to link up to one another.)

Thank you for continuing to read <3 Every time I get a notification (whether from a comment, or a kudo) it honestly helps feed the gremlins working on this story. (and smack away the goblins. Goblins are no fun. Gremlins are nice.)

EDIT: WHUPS. I completely forgot to copy over the teensy lil bit at the end there.

Chapter 36: Dave > Answer

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

You’ve been staring at an empty text box for one hour, 43 minutes and 56, 57,58… no. You glare at your fingers absently tapping the seconds out against the desk, and consciously force the movement to cease, curling the traitorous fingers into a fist and shove it under your elbow. You can’t type like this, but it’s not like you were making any progress on that blog post anyway.

Putting a stop to the motion does nothing for the pulsing in the back of your mind, but you’re fairly good at ignoring that now. You only notice it when it bleeds out into these annoying ticks and it ruins your presentation, and you know what they say, half of being cool is being cool . Even when there’s no one around to see.

Your right hand drags the mouse to the cancel box as you give up on the idea for now, the screen popping open to the homepage of your...crap what blog was this again. A quick check on the url reveals it to be your bullshit blog, which makes sense since you hadn’t had a particular topic in mind. Just figured you should try to write something since you’d gotten a couple concerned comments from your regulars. Yeah. You just weren’t in the right zone for this shit

It’s been a while since you’ve updated, well anything. With everything you’ve had whirling around inside your skull lately it just seemed one of the least important things. Hell it still did. You open up your aggregator tab and click through a couple of your others, unironic music blog--which you can’t update till you finish a track, although maybe you could throw a teaser or a status ramble in there…--ironic review blog, a half dozen others you can’t even remember what the gimmick was anymore that just don’t…

Seem all that important anymore.

Ugh.

Maybe you should be mad at bro for killing your inspiration on top of everything else, but you aren’t even sure if that’s it. You’ve been through writer’s block before. It hella sucked, but it wasn’t...this.

It just felt like you had better things to do with your time. Or you should have better things to do with your time. Whatever that meant. Throwing, admittedly hilarious, word vomit out into the void for thousands of adoring, faceless, nameless, doomed --

Fuck. It just feels like it doesn’t matter.

At least you can still find solace in mixing your music, but even your ears get tired of listening to the same section of track over and over again trying to get everything just right and you just gotta let it simmer for an hour or a day and go back to it with a cleansed brain to make sure it wasn’t just familiarity talking.

What else IS there for you? You’re waiting on your homework to get here. There’s your chums, but one’s at school and the other...shit you know as soon as you open the window you’ll end up spilling your guts about something . If there’s one thing you’ve learned about Rose since you met her it’s that she’s very easy for you to talk to. Like John. But unlike with John, it’s not always about the fun or goofy shit. Oh no, she’ll pick and prod until she digs up a festering nerve and then push you to talk about that.

Which, okay, fine, maybe you’d needed that, and the talk with Bro went okay. And you probably wouldn’t have left your room that night if not for her prodding…

Maybe you’ve been able to--mostly--table the bro hates me thoughts but you’re still a little jumpy, and things don’t feel right, and alarms are blaring even if you’ve muted the bastards, but you’ll adjust.

You’ll...adjust.

At least it’s easier to talk to him now, a fact you find yourself appreciating. It takes you a few minutes to hype yourself into heckling him about something as blase as the mail but, it’s still...nice.

It makes you feel not quite so alone in the apartment. And not in the I-know-you’re-there-waiting-to-ambush-me feeling you’re used to when you step foot outside your room. Come to think of it, you don’t think he’s been in stealth mode at all since...well...the Incident. If you were to go out there right now , you don’t have to worry about stealth smuppets or goosebumps or…

You don’t have to. So stop.

It’s nice.

One day you hope you’ll stop needing to tell yourself that.

Flipping back to your bullshit blog, you skim the posts, looking for something, anything, to get you motivated on anything. You linger on a post. Half text It was a terrible drawing, illustrating, in your intentionally shitty style, the running gag of the text post and…

An anonymous comment. Fairly recent, in comparison to the post itself.

This is so funny! You should do more of these! :B

Your fingers are tapping on the mouse but you hardly notice.

Maybe you could.

You reach under the desk and hook your fingers along the edge of the shoebox, letting the light shine in on the crumpled and folded pieces of paper as you pull them out and place them onto the desk.

Doodles. All doodles. In pencil. In pen. Many smudged from careless hands pressing down on the page while you’d worked on another section…

Maybe you didn’t have to write something.

You don’t tuck away the shoebox again, but you do pack up most of the drawings. Instead you nudge it out of center of the desk and pull your keyboard and mouse closer, straightening up in your chair as you pull up the generic paint program on your computer.

Using the mouse is much harder than the pencil or pen, but fuck it you aren’t aiming for good anyway. It’ll look better than using your camera to take a picture and having to deal with the shadow, and the way the picture makes the paper look all gross and grey. You’d have to import that shit into a photo editor to make it usable and even then it’ll never look half as good as on paper.

The resulting abomination doesn’t even get the honor of being saved, but something eases as you open up another file. And then another. Just one shitty doodle at a time, half of which make no sense but they make you laugh anyway.

Half a dozen later and you’re getting faster with the mouse. Hand a little bit steadier as you add the finishing touches to the image. It isn’t anything profound, but in your head you’re already composing the text bit to go with it. Some of the nihilism settles in again, but at least not you aren’t doing shit for them. You’d needed this as much as that one commenter did when they left that message on your post.

Saved. Uploaded. And then you get rolling, shaking the words out of your brain like a misting of wet dew splattering against the ground when a particularly heavy bird lands on the branch and knocks it free and shits on it--

BZZZZZZZZZT.

--”the fuck?”

Your head snaps toward the hallway as the grating buzz sounds again. Someone’s here? You didn’t order shit. It must be for Bro. He’ll get it. You put your head down and try to get back into the zone but--

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT.

You ignore it for another five minutes, but fuck, you can’t concentrate. Especially when whoever it is just lays into it for a full on minute.

“FINE. I’m coming already hold your pint-sized horses. BRO--” It crosses your mind that maybe Bro went and locked himself out. Which would be hilarious if it wasn’t just another uncharacteristic thing to pile on top of everything else threatening to drive you insane, which you are adjusting to, thank you very much , “--why aren’t you answering your own--” You open the door with a huff.

It isn’t Bro.

You almost, but not quite lose the thread of your frustration, “...what the fuck are you doing here?”

“Hello to you too, Dave.” Stevens responds with a suffering sigh, “Apologies for the doorbell. I texted Dirk to let me in, but he’s not responding.”

Not responding.

Your mind screeches to a halt.

“His phone probably just died.” That’s your voice. Oh. You’re going on autopilot, “I can’t believe he didn’t hear that fucking buzzer it’s like someone laying on a giganticized kazoo straight into your earhole it’s obnoxious--”

It’s so bizarre letting someone else into your apartment. The last time--well before the last time it never happened. At least not while you were there. Or it was someone you know, even peripherally. Okay that’s not fair. You slept at the dude’s place, even if it was completely involuntarily, you can just admit it already.

Only Bro isn’t in the living room, although his phone is. Left sitting on the desk all lit up with notifications like a christmas display. Which, if you’re being honest, is a HELL of a relief. You’re trying not to think about it but the image of finding Bro on the floor again is lurking in the back of your mind. Especially since you’d have to be fucking dead to miss that buzzer.

“He might be on the roof.” You shrug. You aren’t concerned. You are NOT. “He would sometimes go up there.” To train.

“I didn’t realize you have roof access from inside your apartment.” Stevens mused as you lead him to the door past the kitchenette, “I thought this led to his room.”

“Nah. The whole room is his room. The dude likes to keep his shit consolidated” He exits into the stairwell that runs up the last flight of stairs. “It sucks ass when the AC unit blows. We used to get maintenance tromping through until bro just started maintaining the damn thing himself to keep them out.”

You don’t have to follow. You don’t. But you do. The tension in your stomach rising with each step.

It’s the roof. Of course you’re on edge. You don’t have to be here. You can just leave the door unlocked and Stevens can just find bro and talk about whatever they need to talk about--

You step out into the late afternoon sun and you...don’t see him?

“Dirk? You up here?”

Nothing. Just the wind and the chattering of the crows far above and the hum of the air conditioning unit.

“Bro??”

It’s not like there’s anywhere to hide. You don’t see anything bigger than a crow perched in the attennae tower, and the roof is like a big flat open space--

Stevens finds him first. Passed out against the humming silver machinery. If there was shade there before, there’s fuck all now, he’s been out here long enough he’s turning a fucking candy red--

“BRO!” For a moment you are back in that moonlight filled room, dried blood on the carpet. Stevens is already next to him. Shaking him.

And thank fuck he stirred. Orange eyes blinking open, fogged and confused but there.

“You’ve reached Dirk Strider…” He mutters, head lolling as he supported it with an arm, shielding those eyes from the sun, “please leave a message--FUCK that hurts.”

Before you think about it you actually legitimately manage a flash-step and you’re gone. Through the door and gasping for air in the cool darkness. You can still hear them, but you can’t see them. Your blood is pounding in your ears and your face too damn warm and why did you come up here in the first place?

“How long have you been up here?”

An inhaled hiss.

“Sst...how long’ss it been since I texted you?”

“Five hours.”

“That long then.”

“Long enough to roast yourself, eesh. What a place to nap in. When was the last time you slept?”

“SHIT! ow.”

“Don’t touch it! You’re already going to be dealing with the consequences for days, man. Don’t make it worse…”

You grit your teeth and turn away and make your way back to your room.

Notes:

Okay so I know I said Davepeta but this worked better. Next chapter we'll see how Dirk's feeling after his uh nap.

On that note however, I'm giving you guys a warning that the next chapter might not be until *next* friday. This weekend and the days surrounding it is...going to be difficult. Family stuff. So, I'm not sure how much time or brain I'm going to have, so I figure it's probably best to avoid stressing over deadlines on top of that.

Chapter 37: Dirk > Simmer

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The sound of the front door to your apartment has a distinctive, heavy creak, and equally heavy thud as the door settles back into the frame that you don’t remember from the post-apocalyptic version you grew up in. You can hear it all the way from the living room, knifing through whatever you are doing at the time to alert you to Newt’s return.

You’re starting to suspect it was neglected on purpose, given the care put into maintaining literally every other appliance. It does make for a useful early warning system when you aren’t slowly losing your mind to the fog of sleep deprivation.

Which...has cleared. A little. You still feel the sleep debt sitting like a stone in your ledger, but it’s one you can carry now. For a little while.

“How’re you feeling?”

You are kind of getting tired of that question.

You just grunt in response, easing the lukewarm, damp cloth away from your angry red arms. The color just seems to be getting brighter, but it would be much, much worse if it wasn’t red at all, so you’ll take your blessings where you can. You’re just lucky Dave’s b--your wardrobe was entirely filled with teeshirts, rather than the tanks you’d found yourself favoring once you moved to the medium. That would have been a hell of a lot more strider real estate for the sun to play merry havoc on, and you think you might have just ended your own misery if you had to deal with burned shoulders on top of all this.

As it is you only half look like a lobster. There’s a line under the edge of your sleeve, and damn the cloth irritates the hell out of the skin when it plays peekaboo with the burn line. Not that you’re taking the shirt off with Newt here, but you find yourself wishing for one of your tank tops now that you’re dealing with the aftermath. Maybe you could just rip the sleeves off this damn shirt, just so it stops touching .

Even the faint pressure from the towels send painful blossoms of heat and pain shooting through your skin.

Hah. Maybe that’s why you’re more alert, and it wasn’t the nap at all. Just adrenalin playing merry havoc with your systems because of an assault of ultraviolet light.

You’ve been living here--for almost ten years!--without any aloe or sunscreen in the place. H-How the hell have you survived??”

“Staying inside, normally.” Training had always been before or after the day itself. If it weren’t for you needing to adjust to Dave’s schedule, you’d be a total night owl.“It’s not like I planned to take a nap in the middle of the hottest part of the day.”

All you’d wanted was twenty minutes of air.

How had you even slept through this shit?? It felt like the sun was lodged under your skin. Even the light pressure of the rags draped over your neck felt like sandpaper, this shit alone should have woken you up long before now.

“Obviously or else you wouldn’t have asked me to pick up sleeping drugs for you--w-which I got. It’s over the counter stuff, anything stronger and you’d need to talk to a doctor and I’m pretty sure you don’t want to do that right now. Though you probably should, insomnia leading to borderline second degree sunburn is kind of bad--ANYWAY, I’m not sure how useful they’ll be with how that sunburn is gonna be screaming at you.”

“It’s almost as if being cooked alive is a particularly painful experience,” You find yourself sniping back, but then wince as the expression feels like it’s pulling on the skin of your face, which is, unsurprisingly, also fucking burnt, “Shit--ow. You didn’t have to do all this.”

“No, I didn’t. But you asked,” Stevens sets the white plastic bags down on the futon beside you, the items inside causing them to crinkle as they shift. He straightens, rubbing a hand across a tired face, “You never ask for anything .”

You eye him, wondering, not for the first time…

“Then why do you keep offering? You didn’t actually intend to say that, but fuck it. Everything you’d heard from the man indicates he was kept at arm’s length at best . You didn’t even have his name in your phone.

The silence is palpable as your words drop. Not heated at all. Almost monotone. Exhausted. The heat burns under your skin.

A sigh. Newt snags the computer chair--the only other seat in the room except for your futon--and sinks into it. “Ten years and you’re asking this shit now?”

Fucking history.

Fucking Dirk.

You stay quiet, and that’s apparently the right thing to do, because he just shrugs. “I-if you really want an answer--which is entirely a cynical answer--we do need you to recover so we can get work done. Those puppets won’t fuck themselves.”

It’s meant to be light-hearted, and you have to admit it makes you snort back a laugh, which brings a smile to his dark face.

You shuffle through the bag he’d placed next to you, taking stock of the offerings. You’d never had the benefits of aloe lotions and anti-inflammatory painkillers in your time, but you recognize them, and you hope to the unknowable entities that orchestra the dance of paradox space that they’ll make dealing with this burn much less of a hell than it’d been as a kid.

And then, there it is. The bottle is lead in your hands. It’s a temporary solution unless you want to fight with another doctor for a prescription sleep-aid, but it’s better than nothing. If you take this shit you should be able to function. You’ll be able to think and plan and finally read through that damn pack of letters…

“Thanks.”

You aren’t looking at him, and instead at one of the posters on your wall. The blocky, abstract faces stare down at you, reminding you terribly of your bots. But that’s good, because it’s just like in the hospital room. It’s easier if you pretend you are talking with them, and not navigating another, unfamiliar human being’s emotional minefield. “I appreciate it. Not just the medication. But that you offered. I’m sure I’ve done shit to deserve it.”

You aren’t looking. So you don’t know how he’s reacting to that. Other than a faint sigh and the creak of plastic as he shifts in your chair.

“It’s got nothing to do with what you’ve done, or haven’t done. Everyone deserves someone to be there when life clocks them a new one, and you never seem to have anyone else.”

He lets out a quiet laugh, and is shaking his head when you finally turn toward him, “It really isn’t that complicated. Sorry, if you were looking for some sort of ulterior motive.”

“If you had one, it’s not like you’d come out and say it.”

The plastic is cool and smooth in your palm. The sun-kissed redness of the back of your hand aching as it tightens around the bottle of medication.

Long after he made his excuses and left you to an empty room, with promises made to coordinate a work meeting between you two and--Jane--once you’ve gotten a night or two of goddamn sleep in you, you’re still staring down at it, reading over the label for the umpteenth time. It isn’t the same kind of sedatives they’d given you in the hospital. Just antihistimines. But they make you drowsy. Like the heat had.

As long as you let yourself fall, instead of reaching, it would probably work.

This body screamed for rest. Especially now that you had yet another injury it needed to to heal using your already depleted reserves. The sun’s trapped inside your skin, but the fog is clearing for the first time since you woke up in that hospital bed.

You won’t be able to reach the medium if you want to do this.

Maybe you shouldn’t try.

You found the answer when you stopped looking for hard for it.

You aren’t him--

Maybe you should be.

Fuck you too, Hal.

--but there’s shit you need to do here. Shit like the meeting about Plush Rumps, and the gnawing worry that built in the pit of your stomach as Newt had briefly mentioned setting it up. You glance to the walls, lacking in their stringed accoutrements, and the bright orange tip of a nose you can see poking out from where you’d stuffed the plethora of smuppets. His ghost is fading even still.

I’m going to end up destroying everything he cared about.

Do you care?

The thought unsettles you, but not enough to make you change your mind. You may only have the barest idea of what you need--want--to focus on. But you do know it does not involve puppet dong.

The small tablets clatter inside the plastic as you relocate--ignoring the hissed breath that escapes as the charred edge of your arm feels like it sticks to the back of the futon for the briefest moment--to your inexplicably comfortable chair, snagging the stack of letters off the speaker system. This shit had given you so much trouble earlier, you load up pesterchum as you sort through the mundane actions of going through the goddamn mail. Most of it appears to be junk, although you recognize a few of the names from some receipts in the legal shit folder, which you sit to the side for a second pass later. The window flashes orange out of the corner of your peripheral vision.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< oh good youre alive
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< not that i was worried
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dreamy dirk was out like a log so you were purrobably feline fine
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< what did you do smash out a new high score in mad snackz or something

The skin on the back of your hand stretches painfully, but the keys click as you respond.

timaeusTestified [TT]: Or something.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I passed out at the full mercy of midday ultraviolet radiation.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Got a couple hours of sleep, but one hell of a sunburn.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i do not envy you one kitty bit
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< especially if you consider your dream-bod wouldve b33n all
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i am a god i laugh in the face of your pathetic attempts to mar the pale af complexion of my left bicep
timaeusTestified [TT]: Why specifically the left bicep?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< do you prefur the right???
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’d prefer not to discuss musculature preferences with an alternate version of my little bro.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but you do have prefurences
timaeusTestified [TT]: I am putting a pin in this conversation permanently.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dont you mean purrmenantly B3c
timaeusTestified [TT]: Stop.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Being cooped up in that meteor is clearly doing a number on your sanity.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Go harass some consorts. Or raid the other meteors for grist.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Weren’t you complaining about how much it costs to alchemize your juice?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< eh
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< just get me those blankets you purromised and well be good
timaeusTestified [TT]: ...didn’t they already arrive?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i dunno did they???
timaeusTestified [TT]: I could have sworn they did.

You remember that ear-splitting sound knifing through the hazy blur.

timaeusTestified [TT]: There was a box...yesterday?
timaeusTestified [TT]: Shit. I’m not sure.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yeah nah brah you n33ded that sl33p even if you chose the worst place pawssible for it
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’ll find it.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its no rush I got mspaint now ive b33n sitting here planning my attack its gonna be so dope
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< gonna go back to my roots and draw a webcomic
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and then you could be a cool broirail and make a blog for me
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i cant make any meaningful contributions from here outside of pesterchum this sucks B’<
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< tho i guess thats a good thing otherwise karkitty might have made our lives even more miserable with his unerring quest for kismesisitude and taken that shit to straight up cyberbullying
timaeusTestified [TT]: That’s the hate-love right?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yeah think arch nemeseseseseseses with benefits
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< that was too many es
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< wait you know about quadrants???
timaeusTestified [TT]: Dude, the batterwitch claimed her invasion was a cultural exchange at first. That shit was recorded everywhere. Of course I do.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ...what about <> do you know what that means?
timaeusTestified [TT]: Yeah.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< oh
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< shit
timaeusTestified [TT]: I don’t mind.
timaeusTestified [TT]: What are you planning on drawing? SBaHJ?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< nah i aint no ch33tah!!
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i couldnt deprive dave of that monmewmental mawsterpiece
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i got my own ideas now >B3c
timaeusTestified [TT]: Do I even want to know?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< two words
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< furry
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< romance
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< heavily based on troll romantic tropes because i think i n33d to break out my shipping charts
timaeusTestified [TT]: ...I didn’t want to know.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< itll be great youll s33!!!
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i can even give you a cameow if you want
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< whaddya want your fursona to be??? or like just your favorite animal
timaeusTestified [TT]: ...I'm just going to take what’s left of my sanity and finish going through this mail.
timaeusTestified [TT]: It’s Horse.
timaeusTestified [TT]: For the record.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< sw33t

You shake you head, turning the main bulk of attention back on the letters. At least Davepeta was sounding better. Getting them that paint.exe was probably one of your brighter ideas in the days before your brain got trapped in a metaphorical sandstorm and scrubbed raw by the grit. Even if it seems…

Well. You’re debating whether you should be horrified or intrigued by the shit they are clearly getting ready to dive into.

Mulling on that for a while, you find yourself a quarter of the way through the remaining pile when something familiar brushes against your fingertips. It’s a rectangular--but wider than most of the junk mail--pink, pastel envelope. It--

Rubbing the thicker-than-just-paper edge between your thumb and forefinger. This one was--shit it was the one that fell under your desk wasn’t it? You flip it over, looking for the return address, but finding nothing except a PO box with no name. A box located in...NY. New York?

You slide your finger into the small opening on the edge, breaking the thick, textured paper along the top in a smooth motion.

It isn’t just a letter inside. It’s a card.

The front is just an image. A flower. Pink with striking purple-black veins running into a dark center. You flip it open.

It’s just a single line.

Thinking of you.

Notes:

Whuf. Note to self. AGAIN. Never use italics in pesterlogs. It screws up the formatting.

The flower is a petunia, if anyone is curious. Not that dirk would know that.

Chapter 38: Dave > Pester Rose

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT]

turntechGodhead [TG]: i thought people were supposed to get better after visiting the hospital
turntechGodhead [TG]: not worse
turntechGodhead [TG]: we even did the whole manly bro hug on the roof cry your eyes out emotional climax here
turntechGodhead [TG]: under a dramatic sunset to boot we literally covered all bases
turntechGodhead [TG]: every rule of narrative progression dictates were due for some happy go lucky fun shit come on universe do your job
tentacleTherapist [TT]: Technically you would have been better served by a rising sun, the symbolism of a new day dawning, a new chapter in your lives, filled with hope and love and all the tooth rottingly sweet platitudes that fill the minds of hapless miscreants everywhere as they look on the grey doldrums of existence and yearn for something more.
tentacleTherapist [TT]: In truth, I would liken the set-up to that of a tragedy. The misdirection where the author dangles the light of love within reach of the hapless protagonist before tragically ripping it away. Perhaps the illness returns. Perhaps the brothers grow more distant. Perhaps the one’s dark secret is in fact the voice of an old one, whispering in a sweet lull to tempt him ever further into its wretched embrace and away from the world as we know it.
turntechGodhead [TG]: woah
turntechGodhead [TG]: well sorry i couldnt pull a sunrise outta my ass to complete your perfect scene its not like i can control time
turntechGodhead [TG]: the uncomfortable implication that my bro is gonna go mad and sacrifice me to some freaky deathcult was a nice touch i didnt expect that
turntechGodhead [TG]: you really get into this dont you
tentacleTherapist [TT]: I might be an avid reader of the gothic horror genre, yes.
tentacleTherapist [TT]: The absurd idea of applying narrative tropes to real life aside, I assume it is not yourself who is looking rather worse for wear with each passing day.
turntechGodhead [TG]: oh no you got me i was totally the one in the hospital all along
turntechGodhead [TG]: we found him asleep on the roof baking in the heat of good ol’ asscrack of texas and i almost thought hed pulled another vegetable act on me again
tentacleTherapist [TT]: While it is natural to be vigilant so soon after such a scare, do recall that neither you nor I are trained medical professionals and therefore not knowledgeable in the potential after effects of such a medical emergency. I’ve done some preliminary research to sate my own curiosity, but the consensus is that healing is a very energy sapping process that requires lengthy periods of rest as well as regular physical conditioning to rebuild while the body heals whatever damage has been caused. You did say he checked out against medical advice, correct?
tentacleTherapist [TT]: It has only been a few days. I would give it months before worrying too much about it.
turntechGodhead [TG]: you dont get it rose
turntechGodhead [TG]: its wrong
tentacleTherapist [TT]: Would you like an honest opinion, or empty platitudes?
turntechGodhead [TG]: i actually just wanted to vent so platitudes are good
turntechGodhead [TG]: shit
turntechGodhead [TG]: he didn’t
turntechGodhead [TG]: how dare he
turntechGodhead [TG]: this is betrayal
turntechGodhead [TG]: it is like turning your back on your freedom-fighting bros all for some imaginary electrical impulses pretending to be steak and fine wines
tentacleTherapist [TT]: Your brother?
turntechGodhead [TG]: no john
turntechGodhead [TG]: okay he just unblocked me
turntechGodhead [TG]: can you believe it
turntechGodhead [TG]: he blocked me even if just for a minute
turntechGodhead [TG]: how dare he i didnt even do anything
turntechGodhead [TG]: and now he has the nerve to laugh at me
tentacleTherapist [TT]: How does that make you feel, Dave?
turntechGodhead [TG]: i do not need a visit from dr sigmund phil rose
tentacleTherapist [TT]: One might note I am inquiring into the reasonings behind the temporary state of excommunication from your religion of choice. I am leaving your brother for another time, as per your request. Although given the message he just sent me, it appears to be a linked topic.
tentacleTherapist [TT]: Have you considered converting? My confessional services are always open, no matter the topic. I’ll even do my best to respond in that same earnest fashion and soothing blue text color you’ve grown so fond of.
turntechGodhead [TG]: can we just go back to i dont know
turntechGodhead [TG]: dinosaurs or some shit
turntechGodhead [TG]: that worked well last time
turntechGodhead [TG]: just something where i dont have to feel like youre sitting there with a martini in hand swirling the crazy juice with a thoughtful motion before picking apart my psyche as if it were a particularly ugly worm under a microscope
turntechGodhead [TG]: fancy glass and paper umbrella and all
tentacleTherapist [TT]: I fear I have too many unresolved issues with those particular fancy glasses to see it myself, but I can appreciate the image.
tentacleTherapist [TT]: I have a counter proposal for our topic of discourse as I’m not in the mood to discuss long-dead therapods and ornithiscia.
tentacleTherapist [TT]: Do you often dream, Dave?
turntechGodhead [TG]: i guess
turntechGodhead [TG]: doesnt everyone??
tentacleTherapist [TT]: What about?
turntechGodhead [TG]: i dunno shit everyone dreams i guess
turntechGodhead [TG]: being a hero with a sweet ass cape
turntechGodhead [TG]: beating off maniacal puppet overlords
turntechGodhead [TG]: rescuing feathered damsels with cat ears
turntechGodhead [TG]: still no dragons though
turntechGodhead [TG]: the usual and nothing whatsoever to be worth psychoanalysing
turntechGodhead [TG]: this sounds like it could be edging back into the territory of mental vivisection
turntechGodhead [TG]: put the pen down and step away from the notebook lalonde
turntechGodhead [TG]: my demons might as well be vampires for how crispy fried they’ve gotten from your truth rays
tentacleTherapist [TT]: As if I would use something so old fashioned. I do in fact keep my notes in a document on my laptop. It is far easier to keep them organized that way.
tentacleTherapist [TT]:  I have no intention of dragging your demons out into the light of day. The opposite in fact. I plan to invite my own into the spotlight of scrutiny, as I find myself at a precipice of occurrence that I’m not entirely sure how to parse and it is leaving me…
tentacleTherapist [TT]: Unsettled.
turntechGodhead [TG]: woah its gotta be bad if you are pulling an unexpected linebreak
turntechGodhead [TG]: okay fine lets keep these tables turning
turntechGodhead [TG]: ahem
turntechGodhead [TG]: and how does that make you feel
tentacleTherapist [TT]: I just included that information in my opening remarks, and have barely even begun to elucidate the circumstances surrounding those feelings. If you must pull on tired, overused stereotypes in this hypothetical roleplaying scenario at least wait for the proper moment.
tentacleTherapist [TT]: This was a terrible idea. What was I thinking?
turntechGodhead [TG]: fuck if i know but keep going its my turn to gleefully drag your gothic eldritch-horror loving cultists out of your head
turntechGodhead [TG]: okay fine you want leading questions heres a leading question
turntechGodhead [TG]: you asked what i dreamed about well turnabout is fair play
turntechGodhead [TG]: what do you have prancing around in your thinkpan
tentacleTherapist [TT]: Nothing.
turntechGodhead [TG]: aw come on rose it isnt fair to clam up on me now
tentacleTherapist [TT]: No, I mean I dream of nothing , and not in the mistaken instance of waking up without remembering, way.
tentacleTherapist [TT]: A vast expanse of empty nothingness--hollowed out roads that once teemed with possibility. I’m acutely aware of the fact that there should be something here. Some presence. Some voice reaching out to me. Some sort of light to guide the way.
tentacleTherapist [TT]: And yet in the absence of light I cannot even bring myself to classify this feeling as darkness either. I find myself listening for that voice every fiber of my being is insisting should be reaching across the aeons to me, and yet…
tentacleTherapist [TT]: I wake. With this terrible feeling that something is missing. Something inextricable to the very fabric of space and time itself. Something that should be teeming with life and change and motion as we all float on in the dreams of the gods...
turntechGodhead [TG]: woah
turntechGodhead [TG]: and this is a regular thing??
tentacleTherapist [TT]: Almost daily.
tentacleTherapist [TT]: I can count two instances where I’ve not felt this gaping loss since the dreams began, and one of those days I neglected sleep due to extenuating circumstances.
turntechGodhead [TG]: are you sure theres not like
turntechGodhead [TG]: fuck this is weird
turntechGodhead [TG]: something missing in your life that might be getting filtered through the horror-loving sponge of your brain into some random hope-sucking void of doom??
tentacleTherapist [TT]: An expected question, one I’ve considered myself. But nothing I can pin down with any certainty beyond speculation.
tentacleTherapist [TT]: Nothing has changed either, what’s more.
tentacleTherapist [TT]: Perhaps…
turntechGodhead [TG]: oh did the kitty find a scrap of yarn to follow??
tentacleTherapist [TT]: My mother has been inordinarily hard to deal with since shortly before the dreams began. I suppose that might be feeding into them, although I wouldn’t expect an increase in an irritating occurrence to be the lead up to the feel that something is particularly missing.
tentacleTherapist [TT]: Unless of course it’s a metaphor for my sanity, and the sanctity of my peace and quiet being breeched.
tentacleTherapist [TT]: Even that is a clumsy, inelegant explanation.
tentacleTherapist [TT]: It is merely getting into the territory of parental based frustrations, is all, a topic neither of us are particularly inclined to discuss at length at the moment.
turntechGodhead [TG]: yeah no i think were good
turntechGodhead [TG]: are you good??
tentacleTherapist [TT]: ...Yes actually.
tentacleTherapist [TT]: Despite a lack of anything even remotely close to a resolution, I do feel better.
tentacleTherapist [TT]: Thank you for playing the part of the metaphorical flora in the corner.
turntechGodhead [TG]: no prob
turntechGodhead [TG]: i can do a rad potted plant impression
turntechGodhead [TG]: photosynthesis mother fucker
tentacleTherapist [TT]: I think I’m ready for the ornithiscia debate now.
turntechGodhead [TG]: ok
turntechGodhead [TG]: deadly oversized chicken or jurassic park 3 2 1 fight

Notes:

Thank you guys for the continued support <3 Hope you enjoyed the peek at how Rose is feeling... I might do more of these pesterlog only chapters between Dave, Rose, John, and eventually Jade. They work as nice little interludes.

Chapter 39: Dirk > Acknowledge the Ghost of the Machine

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Things settle into a rhythm. Every morning you pull yourself out of the cracks of the world and back toward the pain-filled waking life. Even with the medicine, and the dubious protection of that dream-state, you never quite make it back to that deep, deathlike sleep that had resulted in the persistent reminder of your stupid decisions burned into your skin. Which, for the most part, you don’t mind. The antihistamines work well enough to tip you into a light doze, which if you’re careful eventually peters into something more restful.

Cool numbing darkness, run deep with red cracks. When you sink that far, you are no longer awake at all.

Just let go and fall.

Normally you peel yourself off the futon and into the chair. Fend off wellness related queries from interested third parties (mainly a certain knight, and occasionally an agent, although noticeably not of dersite employ), and then get to work on your research. Newt’s gifts make the sun trapped under your skin, and your body’s attempts to repair it, more bearable, but even if you let yourself forget, the stretching, and aching as you reach for the mouse, or shift your position, bare arm rubbing up against the edge of your desk--

Fuck. Even beyond the marginal cooling properties of the magic lotion it still hurts.

Fine. Whatever. It’s just a setback. A superficial one. Your fragile human skin will slowly shed the radiated cells and then you’ll be right as fucking rain as long as you never show your face in the sun again. It is banished. Banished from this household, prompting you to even pull down the blinds on the window near your desk, so you aren’t baking as you work.

You refuse to allow the giant ball of gas an opportunity to press the assault. The remnants are already starting to peel and itch on your arms, fine lines of white standing out from the fading red where movement stretches and stresses against the damaged tissue. At least everything you can find online points toward you being nearer to the end of your torture than the beginning, so you just slather on Newt’s magic lotion and try not to fucking think about it.

Knees lower from chest to the floor, toes digging into the carpet as you push the chair away from the desk, and stretch, rolling your shoulders to remove the kinks invited in by a long period hunched into yourself. Even once the wheels quit turning, your brain continues the motion, juggling half drawn schematics that have your fingers twitching for a screwdriver and circuitry beneath your hands even though you know you are nowhere near even a prototype stage yet. This isn’t some lonely boy tinkering away with his own shit following a tenuous idea. If you are going to tear down the last major reminder of the Dirk that should be here, you’re going to need to do this right. There’s a world of human engineering and manufacturing at your literal fingertips. Use it.

You’ve been here before. With a ghost of an idea rattling in your brain so hard it popped out into your hands, but this time you knew it was possible. You have it all locked up inside your head, lines of code you just needed to translate from the bastard child of alternian and carapacian you’d used growing up, to a language capable of running and compiling on these modern machines, but you’re confident that it can be done. Even without--help.

You push yourself out of the chair, shuffling across the room, the transition from fiber to plastic-like tile shocking to your bare feet. It’s not cold--you’re starting to think you could run the air conditioner on full blast and it would only ever get even slightly below boiling--but it’s a difference in feel that is reminiscent of home, so you aren’t even thrown off by your too-long strides carrying you to the kitchen before your brain registers you’ve crossed the room, too engrossed in continuing to chew on your half-remembered and half-reconstructed theoretical framework.

Dave isn’t here to snark at you as you produce a can from the cupboard and a spoon from the sink, but you find yourself frowning at the dwindling stash in the cupboards. You’d thought you’d grabbed more shit than you could carry but--how long ago had you even bought the goods? A week and a half? Two? You don’t really want to know the answer but you look anyway, letting the much-colder-than-everything else air blast you in the face and tweak the burn lingering on your face. The small stash of juice was gone. It felt like Dave religiously grabbed one every night, sometime between 7pm and 8pm, you’ve noticed, and if a pack of 12 was gone, even factoring in no one being home for three days, and maybe stress either increasing or disrupting the routine...the indisputable fact is still yawning before you, laughing at you from empty corners and open spaces.

The idea of venturing out again, even to that small convenience store down the street sparks an overwhelming feeling of dread, especially since you can’t even slip back into the medium right now to ease the anxiety in the quiet darkness of space.

It really isn’t fair. You’d just started getting used to this shit, and now it feels like someone came in and upended all your things and left them lying randomly around for you to trip over and fall flat on your face. Indignant flailing and all.

But you have to. Someone has to.

Fuck you don’t want to do this.

The burn lingers in the back of your mind, reminding you that it’s a bad idea to go out right now. You still have food . If you don’t eat, then you can probably stretch it for another four days, and Dave probably won’t turn his nose up at crazy juice as he called it--

Shit, no. That’s so goddamn irresponsible why are you even considering that?

Besides. Dave was out of juice.

Can clenched in your first, you head back to your desk while popping the tab and bending the metal without a second thought to access the beans inside. You haven’t been gone long enough for the monitor to sleep, so your gibberish is left in full view as you return to your spot. Coding isn’t your passion, you much preferred the more physical part of tinkering and building shit, but you’d been able to find some sort of zen while working these last couple days, as if tapping back into who you’d been all those years ago; it's almost refreshing. Cooped up in a home that amounts to a floating prison, working to translate the electrical impulses of the human brain into something a computer could read. The first step to your greatest mistake, but also one you need to replicate if you ever want proper shades again, given yours are currently stuck in the medium.

Exactly who you were back then lingers in the back of your mind. You save the project and tab away, deciding to commit to this makeshift lunch break by bringing up a familiar pesterchum window. Davepeta showed as idle, something that causes a painful smile to inch across your face. It’s apparently harder for them to keep up constant chatter when buckling down to create high art.

timaeusTestified [TT]: Yo.

You bite down on the first serving, chewing thoughtfully as you search for a topic. Your brain keeps circling back around to the one thing you don’t really want to talk about, but you aren’t surprised it won’t go away.

Do you really want to talk about this?

timaeusTestified [TT]: Did you ever meet ARquiusprite?

You just drop kick the question into the chat client, as if the action would banish the ghost haunting you. It doesn’t. It lingers, seeping into the cracks of the world around you, buried deep in the back of your mind that you normally keep compartmentalized.

Despite time, and stress, and sleep deprivation, you haven’t forgotten everything about the one time you actually dreamed, have you?

dataJammer [DJ] is no longer idle!

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yeah!!
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< it wasnt fur long though
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i stopped by on the way to kick english in his behind and he was building shit but it was all-in-one broirail reunion times
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< there were totally unresolved f33lings on both sides but
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< shit neither of us really expected to s33 each other as we were but it was like
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i just knew it was the exact us we n33ded to be
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ya f33l me???
timaeusTestified [TT]: There is a symmetry to it, I agree. Equius was Nepeta’s <> right?
timaeusTestified [TT]: I don’t recall the exact term. You always use the portmanteau.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< moirail yeah
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the fact that he got tangled up in a version of Bro and I got tangled up with well me
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< fucking poetry in motion aint it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< he s33med happy
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and hot damn he had some nice muscles and a pair of sw33t
timaeusTestified [TT]: Davepeta.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< shades B3
timaeusTestified [TT]: You broke that line on purpose.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< so
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dont you agr33??
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< what dragged this in anyway??
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< not that i dont enjoy a saunter down memeowry lane
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you never s33m to want to talk about him
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< AR
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< not equius
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i wouldnt expect you to talk about equius
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< though i really think you both would get along
timaeusTestified [TT]: Did he tell you what he named himself?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< no??
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i kinda just assumed it was ar
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< thats what made it into the sprite name
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but youre gonna be a bro and spill the beans before i have a crisis of curiosity right B??
timaeusTestified [TT]: Lil’Hal.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and you let him get away with that??
timaeusTestified [TT]: I didn’t have much of a choice to be honest. He had Roxy calling him that already. I don’t think her mom left her those movies to watch and he found the irony amusing.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< thats so hilariously dumb owning his skynet flavored ambitions like a gogdamned boss
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i wish i could tell him that
timaeusTestified [TT]: He probably would have listened to it, coming from you.

The cursor blinks in the text box. It feels like there’s a pressure behind your eyes. You almost expect your rubbing fingers to come away wet. But they don't. You don't remember how to cry. Not properly. You force your aching hands to move as a response pops up, flashing the window white and orange.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< whats that supposed to mean B??
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< wait
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you miss him dont you??
timaeusTestified [TT]: ...its complicated.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< complicated like what
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< complicated is such a loaded word you n33d to explain furrther
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m just thinking about before. That’s all. A lot of the shit I’m working on is tied up in what I was doing when he was created.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< right your secret project
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< are you gonna wow the world with a legit skynet before it ends??
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you could probably set you and shorty up well for the next few years on the back of advanced artificial intelligence
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< live till the apocalypse in the lap of luxury
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< not that bro couldnt have afforded it before
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< he did let me buy john a legit movie prop
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< even if its a terrible movie it still takes dosh
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you arent planning on recreating him are you?
timaeusTestified [TT]: No.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Hal was created from a snapshot of thirteen year old Dirk. Using the same method, assuming I could get my own brain captchalogued in the same manner, knowing how I feel about him now…
timaeusTestified [TT]: Shit I wouldn’t put anyonethrough that. Maybe making him three years ago was a mistake, but at least thirteen year old me didn’t have the baggage of a water-front property on the lake of self-loathing and a fuckton of history with the guy.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Scratch that, the whole goddamn lake IS my property.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< hey no fair you arent allowed to monopolize the whole lake
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ive got my own deeds to the place
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< written long before your universe was a twinkle in the frogs giant bulbous eye
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< see right here it says dave s sprite owns that little plot of land over there with the run down dock and the douche canoe tied out front
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i may have moved away but like hell am i giving up ownership
timaeusTestified [TT]: My choice of location aside, no, my plan does not involve artificial intelligence.
timaeusTestified [TT]: It’s something you’d rather enjoy, I think. I’ll let you know if it’s even possible without either the game’s rule-breaking logic, or magic idea-based engineering.

Metal clinks against metal and it draws your attention, the spoon scraping against the bottom of the can. You blink down at it. Empty of its contents.

You don’t even remember eating, focused as you’d been on the flow of conversation. Of talking about…

This.

Fuck.

An empty can. Just like the empty cupboards. Which you still needed to do something about.

Damn it. You set the metal down on the desk with a clunk.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< aw come on bro mew cant just throw somefang out like that and expect me not to wriggle like im in the middle of waiting for a pounce
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im sure mew know the kind
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the cute butt wiggle of anticipation
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< this is torture
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im dying
timaeusTestified [TT]: You know what they say about curiosity and the cat.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< theres a second half of the idiom that validates everything so frikitten tell me!!!
timaeusTestified [TT]: No.
timaeusTestified [TT]: In fact, I am going to log off now. I need to go out for a while.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i dont believe you
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< not mr i fell asl33p in the sun and my classification is now extra crispy with a side of cherries
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its just past noon its the utter worst time to go out
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< youre just sitting there smirking at me arent you
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< bro
timaeusTestified [TT]: Be back later.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< BRO

timaeusTestified [TT] ceased pestering dataJammer [DJ]

You sigh and lean back into the chair, the faint smile fading from your sore face.

Shit now you actually have to do it.

Notes:

Hope you enjoy the read <3 I maaaay have figured out exactly how the next arc goes so buckle up >:3c

Chapter 40: Dirk > Make a Plan

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Of course it isn’t as simple a matter of getting up, kicking on some shoes and going out the door, no matter how abrupt you’d decided to be to mess with Davepeta. No. You’re going to make sure you don’t end up in the same situation as last time, with a list of shit you can’t get because you went to the wrong place.

So you find a map. And you look at the store’s website. Except it’s extremely unhelpful since it’s a corporate website and just espoused broad information and investing information, so you discard it the moment you confirm that yes, that particular chain IS actually a full grocery store and not just a convenience store, and therefore the place you actually want to go this time. Then you find a bus route-- Eastwood bus to Polk street , the information pulled out of the archive of your mind unbidden, even supplying the familiar and yet still bizarre accent -- and a bus schedule . And the fare and the estimated time required.

...and then finally you have your list.

You dig it out of the archives of your mind, double checking it against a few things you pull up on the internet. You think you’ve got a good grasp on what you have to do. Get in, get your shit, get out. Ignore the fuck out of everyone you don’t need to interact with.

Okay. You drag in a breath, and then let out a wheezing cough. Future Dirk, dust this shit. It’s not that bad. Nowhere near a-- s warm of dust and cobwebs illuminated by lantern light.

You probably should have done it during your cleaning fits already, but fuck it was hot up here in the crawlspace. Why did you think shoving literally everything up here was a good idea? You can feel the eyes of the banished marionettes and stringless, plush puppets staring down at you as you fish a non-modified shirt (read: you ripped the sleeves off a couple) out of the dwindling pile of clean shit. Or as clean as it can be. You’ll need to do laundry soon, at least you don’t need to worry about seagulls making off with your shit this time, but that’s a distraction for another time. It reminds you of-- red grinning faces and decaying posters a life locked away.

Shit. Maybe you’ll clean it up if the weather ever chills out, it’s probably like, 10 degrees hotter up here.

You want to keep looking, but you’re fairly confident there isn’t a single long-sleeved garment in the apartment. A state of affairs you might want to rethink that in the wake of leaving your arms vulnerable to cosmic radiation. At least until the end of the world. Even smack dab in the middle of the summer months, you could deal with being extra toasty if it kept this shit from happening again. There’s even a stash of velvety soft-as fuck smuppet felt up here. If you could find a sewing kit or something you could make a comfy as hell shirt out of that shit.

At least it would give you some goddamn color. Your wardrobe is so damn boring.

Not for the first time you find yourself picking through the plethora of nearly identical neutral colored collared tee-shirts in disappointment--they don’t even have graphics on them. You miss your signature orange baseball cap logo. An ironic dash of color smack dab in the middle of everything when you otherwise embraced your pale-as-fuck visage.

He had some reason for this. You know he did. It’s too uniform. It’s an Image. Carefully cultivated, and likely of some ironic purpose you just don’t have the context to. You can hazard a guess, but it's something you’ve resigned yourself to never truly knowing the answer.

It’s still weird as fuck to not see a shred of maroon or pink anywhere either. It had really grown on you. It was a part of you now, the way orange had been--and still was. If orange represented the kid you’d once been, then the palette of your aspect was tied to who the game had driven you to become.

You can’t find any such consistency to his shit. Just greys and blacks and whites. The only hint of color, was the pile of hats you’d shoved in one of the boxes. Bright, saturated, eye-searing, the colors of the smuppets that had once littered the room...reds and blue and yellow and green but…

No orange. Maybe the hats were his version of the ironic color splash, although there is a grey one propped on top of a yellow one which would just add to the monochrome, not break it up. A hat would probably be a good idea, though. Keep the sun off your face. Why wouldn’t he have oran--

You’re stalling. You’re stalling and you know it. You just grab the first damn hat on the pile and shove it onto your head, pulling the red-- of course it’s red, like you need to complement your cherry complexion-- rim down over your eyes before getting the fuck out of that place of banished and forgotten shit.

The crawlspace ladder retracts up into the little rectangle in the ceiling tiles with a careless thud as you nudge it back into place, coughing to clear the last bits of dust and debris from your lungs. Hat, check. Sun protection, deployed, despite the fact that you hate the clammy, sticky feel of it on your skin. Sunglasses--they don’t deserve to be called shades--check, as soon as you grab them off Lil’Cal. Which you do. They really do look like they suit him, but you’re certain he won’t mind if you take them back for a while.

The sun is your Enemy.

If you focus on it then maybe you won’t hyperfixate on the people and everything else that you know is waiting out there.

Money, also check. Makeshift wallet with shiny new debit cards, and a stash of cash, placed in a safe space in your house shit groove row, no possible collisions, and easy as fuck withdrawl.

You pause in the hallway, lingering near Dave’s closed door. You could just-- go. Like before. It’s possible you’ll be back before he even realizes you’ve left.

...then again, you’ve barely spoken to him since he dropped off those letters days ago. He’s responded to the texts, sure, but…

Knuckles rap against the door frame. Gently, but loud enough to be heard inside. You listen, fabric shuffling. Keys clacking. A chair creaking. But nothing else.

Is he ignoring you?

You don’t fidget, but you want to.

He could have headphones on.

You knock again. Louder. The chair creaks again. The typing slows. And then stops. But you don’t hear anything else.

“Dave?” You project your voice through wood and plaster, it sounds grating to your ears. Maybe you should just text him. That would be easier. Then he could see it at his leisure. But then, what if he didn’t check his phone? But shit, he’s obviously there. And probably listening. The typing did stop. Fuck it, you’ll just tell the door and then text him in a minute just in case. “I’m going out. Just--wanted to let you know.” In case you can’t find me.

Maybe it’s arrogant to think it would matter to him. That he wouldn’t just shrug his shoulders and assume you were off taking care of shit but…

Newt had said Dave had been the one to show him to the roof that day.

He hadn’t been there when you woke up.

“I’ll be back in a few hours.”

You turn to leave, moving down the hall a little to where your shoes waited by the apartment door. You toe them on--hadn’t bothered to untie them in the first place--and withdraw your phone from your sylladex, along with your keys. You hook a finger through the key-ring so they don’t fall, and then navigate the clumsy interface to the messaging function. You don’t even get to start typing up your message before the door opens behind you.

“What do you mean you’re going out , do you want to get skin cancer??? I saw that shit you’re like, a 10 minutes tan away from second degree already look that it up its nasty you get like blisters and shit. It gets that bad and it won’t be all sunscreen and aloe anymore it’ll be doctors and burn treatments and I thought you were done with hospitals. You promised you were done with hospitals.”

You don’t turn around, but you do re-captchalogue the phone. You don’t need to finish the message now at least.

“We need food, bro. It’s not something I can keep putting off.”

“Then order something! Shit we’ve survived on cheap ass pizza and chinese for months when you weren’t in the fucking mood to go out or come home or--” It cuts off in a strangled frustrated noise that has your shoulders tensing and your head jerking around to face him. He’s clamped his jaw shut, small body shaking, fists curled at his sides, half turned back towards the door, as if he just wants to run away but can’t bring himself to move.

You consider shit. You consider your plan and the cupboard and the way he’s obviously--angry? Concerned? Both for some reason?

...and honestly, did it even matter? He was obviously fucking distressed at this.

“Okay.”

That snaps his attention up. “What?”

“I said okay.” You don’t like this. You’ve already planned and worked yourself up to do this. Because you need to do it. And if you need to do it, then fuck you should do it now. But… “If you want to order something for tonight--shit enough for a couple days, I’ll wait. Hell I’ll--”

His jaw is all but hanging open. It’s like you decked him in the gut.

You sigh, kicking the shoes off, and making a point of re-capchaloguing the keys. “You’re right.”

“I--” His jaw works, “Oh. Yeah. I am. Right. Shit I’ll just order us up a feast of the best fucking Chinese ever and you’ll never want to go back to those nasty ass beans again. Who needs the fucking grocery store when you’ve got one-stop wok-to-door delivery at your fingertips!”

You roll your eyes behind the cheap sunglasses and say two words, “Apple Juice.”

“... okay maybe there’s a thing or two that the grocery store is good for.” His fists have uncurled, and he crosses his arms, fingers tapping out a rhythm against the skin near his elbows. You think that’s a sign he’s starting to relax.

“I’ll replenish your stash in a couple days,” You promise, both to yourself, and to him. “If I go in the morning before it gets to be too damn hot, do you want to come with me?”

“Yeah yeah sure, as long as you aren’t still extra crispy--wait--”

There’s a beat of silence and a sucked in breath. Those tapping fingers stilled.

“I--sure why the hell not it’s not like I’ve ever been to the mythical land of food and juice before. It just kinda appears like magic once in a blue moon when the stars align like some giant cosmic postal service got the address wrong and dumped actual edible shit in there instead of weapons. At least if i go with you I can stop you from filling our cupboards with your nasty might-as-well-be-raw beans.”

You force the knot in your gut to uncoil, relief battling with residual irritation over your plans being disrupted. But in the end, you think the hesitant excitement building in Dave’s voice to be worth shouldering that burden a little while longer.

Davepeta is not going to let you live this down.

Maybe you shouldn't tell them.

...that meant you needed to stay off the computer for a while at least. Fuck. What are you going to do? Be Future Dirk and clean the dusty armpit that is the crawlspace?

Oh hell no.

“Dave.” You slip into a breath between nervous rambles that are clearly the result of him trying not to bolt from the situation, imagining the kid blinking at you owlishly behind those angled lenses that still look so damn weird on him. “Wanna watch a movie?”

“I--shit--” Again it’s like you knocked him flat on the floor, “I’ll need to tell my friend. I was talking with them before, you know, you evicted all sanity and knocked on my door about to deliver yourself gift wrapped into the arms of the giant ball of murderous gas in the sky. But, uh, which one?”

You shrug.

“You pick.”

“Great so no pressure at all cool.”

You don’t pay attention to the movie at all, but Dave stops paying so damn close attention to you about halfway through, absorbed in the utterly inane storyline. He even starts snarking back at the oblivious ham of a protagonist and his poorly written dialogue, like some editor going over the movie’s script with a bright red pen and tearing the draft to shreds.

Even if you didn’t make it to the store. Didn’t manage to get anything else done. Didn’t even manage to respond to Newt’s text about the meeting next week… Maybe this day wasn’t wasted after all.

Notes:

It's looking like the grocery store is turning into its own mini-arc haha.

Chapter 41: Dirk > Proceed with Phase One

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Get in, get your shit, get out.

Ignore the shit out of everyone.

The mantra winds through the back of your mind as you check yourself in the mirror. A dusting of pink still lingers on your cheeks, but the sheen from that nasty feeling lotion should be more than enough to deal with that. Plus hat. Plus glasses. You can’t even feel the twinge anymore from the bridge of the glasses resting against your nose.

There’s no way you can be described as “cherry flavored” anymore. Or extra crispy. Roasted. Or whatever the people-in-your-life-whose-names-begin-with-Dave decide they want to call you to poke fun at your condition. You check the time on your phone and compare it to the schedule you memorized. Okay. Thirty minutes till the bus. It’s a ten minute walk. Probably. So time to get Dave up and out the door and you can just GO. Get this over with.

You knock on the door.

You can’t hear much this time. Which makes sense. If the computer is by the door (since you could him typing yesterday) the bed would likely be against the far wall. This place has the same layout as your apartment, which was this apartment, some 400 years into that earth’s future. Logic and temporal continuity dictates the bedroom would be the same dimensions as well.

You knock again.

You wait and wait and wait, locked up, checking the time ticking down on the display on your phone. Perhaps you should have factored in more of a buffer in case of grumpy child. Dave was usually awake fairly early though, so you hadn’t thought it would be an issue.

There--you feel the vibration through your hands as the notification light begins to blink.

do you realize what time it is

Yes.

5:22:41 *am*

I’m aware. The bus arrives in eighteen minutes.

the sun isnt even up dude im still half asleep i miss my comfy as hell pjs

this is probably some dream bullshit right now its impossible youd be standing out there texting me at 5:28:56 without busting in and dragging my ass out

uh you dont plan to do that do you

No.

We now have 12 minutes.

fuck

is the store even open this early?? i thought most sane places started work after the sun woke up

6 am. I checked.

of course you did

you did put sunscreen on right??

its dark now but you know it wont stay that way

Yes.

okay okay fine ill get up

He’s at the door in the blink of an eye, pulling open the painted wood and holding a hand out. His clothes are crumpled. Did he sleep in them? You wonder how late he was up. You don’t remember hearing him make a late-night run on the fridge-- not that there’s anything there-- or the rushing water from the bathroom. In your light dozes you should have been woken up if he’d been up and about later than usual. You arch an eyebrow at him.

“The sunscreen. I need it. I don’t want fucking skin cancer either.”

“Left it in the bathroom.”

“Gee thanks bro.”

And so he vanished, taking a veritable nest of messy strider-white-blonde hair with him into the bathroom. It stays seared into your mind even after the door settles into its frame with a thump. You’ve never seen Dave--any Dave--looking so unkempt. Hair not even brushed, much less styled. It makes you think back to Bro--your Bro. The Bro you never got to meet because he died 400 years too early. The Bro you only got to know through recorded records and talk shows and interviews.

It made you wonder if he was prone to that same sort of very human-like bed-head.

That's a silly question. Of course he was. No one sprung out of bed with perfect hair.

You try to imagine your Bro with the rooster hair you had to deal with and …

Just shove that image away. Deep into the recesses of your mind. Ignoring the faint chuckle as the ridiculous image tickles some small part of you that manages to look past the idolization and hero worship. The part of you who was able to ignore the lock-jaw caused by it’s Bro and see a hurting kid on that rooftop under the poisonous sky.

Dragging your attention away from the door and the bundle of nerves and expectations and anxieties beyond it, you watch the clock on your phone, the timer ticking closer as you listen to the water running beyond the painted wood. You hadn’t even considered to properly protect Dave from the sun. You probably should have. He was wearing long-sleeves already but…

You leave the hallway and retrace your steps, reaching up to tug on the string up into the crawlspace. If you remember correctly you left it right--Ah. There it was.

You’re ready and waiting as he exits the room, hair properly combed and styled and perhaps even sporting the slightest bit of gel to hold it in place, pale skin beneath dark, pointed lenses glistening with the oily sheen of Newt’s magic lotion. He freezes as you deftly plop the object on his head. It’s only after you quickly vacate his space that he reaches up carefully to touch the red brim that matches the red on his sleeves.

You don’t say anything, so he doesn’t either. Just lets his hands fall and swallows, sidling past your side of the hallway toward the door. You notice he already has shoes on, so you quickly slip yours on, peripherally aware of the back bunching up under your heel as you kick at it.

“You still want to do this?”

You hope he says yes.

He doesn’t. Just gives you a Look you can’t see, but you can feel, and then reaches for the door.

Remember: Get in. Get your shit. Get out.

Ignore everything else.

And breathe.

You have less than 5 minutes to make it to the bus stop by the time you both hit ground floor. It’s 5:35 in the morning. The sun hasn’t so much as peeked over the horizon. The air is as cool as it’ll ever be again, the streetlights buzzing a faint hum in the back of your ears and your mind and it almost, almost reminds you of the last time you willingly ventured out. The dark shadows of morning cloaked the the buildings, punctuated by a mixed bag of darkened and lit windows, reminding you of the view of derse from the sky. The darkness of the medium bubbling around you. Roxy’s dream room, surrounded by bits and pieces of the girl you knew and missed terribly before reality stabbed you in the chest.

Literally.

In that moment, it isn’t a matter of convenience. Of reaching back and opening the door so you have all available options open to you.

You miss it.

The silence. The detachment. The comforting, familiar darkness of the medium, overlaying this far too vivid fever dream you’re trapped in.

“Didn’t you say something about a bus??”

The words knife through you. Bringing the world back in a roaring din of noise and color. Except that’s wrong, it hadn’t changed at all. You’d just shut it all out.

You suck in a shallow breath and then exhale, focusing down on the small, splotch of red and white at your side.

Nodding, you glance in the direction your memorized map would indicate, calculating the odds of making it in the intervening minutes before the bus was slated to arrive. Not good. Maybe you could do it if you picked him up and stepped--metal whistling through air--

No. Bad idea. Take the way he froze because you put a hat on his head, and multiply by it a thousand and you’d probably get what would happen if you forcibly grabbed him by the scruff and flung you both into the aether.

Fuck you had to be more careful.

“This way. It’ll be tight.”

“Nah don’t worry bro. Buses are either early, in which case even running like a horse on steroids wouldn’t save us from arriving to a cloud of smoke and exhaust as it rolls down the road laughing at our misfortune, or they are late, and we’ll have to wait 20 fucking minutes because the driver stopped because a pigeon was too dumb to realize it needed to cross the street.”

“Speaking from experience?”

“Oh yeah. Totally. They call me the wandering ronin, traveling the bus routes of the city all alone and unsupervised since I was old enough to figure out you hid the spare key in those old ratty sneakers you leave near the door. It’sa me the bus-riding toddler, dodgin’ truancy officers and well meaning samaritan's all my life--the drivers known my fucking name and it’s Dave-on-a-bus going round and round--oh shit there it is isn’t it. Oh man they look so much bigger in person, it’s like a giant gas guzzling monster with a gaping maw and beedy glowing eyes except the eyes are actually the windows because that’s where the driver can fucking see shit and the lights are really more like bio lumi--luma--shit the bright stuff on creepy fish monsters--”

You touch his arm and he doesn’t protest, the world seeming to slow as you hurry toward the oncoming beast of metal and glass. Seconds stretch to minutes stretch to hours as you focus.

Get in. Get Out.

Ignore the shit out of everyone else.

And then you’re there, standing before the sign as the monstrosity rolls to a stop, metal protesting and squeaking in an ear splitting squeal before glass doors opening wide like a maw waiting for it’s prey to just wander the fuck on in. You freeze for the briefest of moments, the driver’s annoyed scowl finally prodding you to lift your leaden feet off the concrete sidewalk and step into the carnivorous beast.

It’s just another one of your fucking tombs. Nothing worse. Better maybe, because at least this one wouldn’t have skeletons popping out of the woodwork to try and take your head off.

Taking the steps deliberately, you notice something in the bus driver’s face. A tightening of of the lips, or a narrowing of the eyes, you aren’t sure, but it’s directed beyond you, not at you, and makes you pause and turn around.

Dave didn’t follow you up, like you’d expected him too. Not a word escapes the stony face, jaw clenched so tight you can see the tension in the way it deforms his natural facial shape. You’d suspected that ronin stuff was Strider-grade off-the-cuff bullshit, but you don’t feel any sort of satisfaction in knowing that he’s going through the same nervous terror that is knocking quite loudly on your own equilibrium, one you’ve fortified-with-days-worth-of-mental mantras and planning shit that allowed you to get this far.

The bus-driver squawks with surprise as you suddenly appear outside the bus, placing your hand on the red-sleeved fabric covering the frozen shoulder, the rumble of the engines roaring in your ears. It rises like a crescendo, as the doors slam shut and the beast pulls away from the curb with an unexpected lurch. Dave flinches in front of you, jerking after the machine as it, and the unpleasant driver and his schedule rolls away.

“Breathe,” Quietly, but you know he can hear you, because that locked jaw unhinges and sucks in a breath of smog-filled air that makes him nearly gag, words tumbling free like

“Shit bro--i--fuck--i screwed up im sorry--fuck we missed the fucking bus and its all my--its just an oversized car but-- the screeching it--”

He’s trembling under your hand, just the slightest bit. It’s supposed to be a comforting gesture, but it makes you feel like anything but..

“...Dave…” You crouch, right there in the middle of the sidewalk in front of an empty bus stop at 5:50 something in the morning,  bringing yourself down to his level. His shades are an oversized tinted shield, and his face a stony wall but it’s the shaking and halting apologies and self debasement that really tell the story. “It’s okay.”

“Why aren’t you mad???” The words are quiet. Despite the pronoun use, you aren’t sure they are directed at you , mumbled as they are. You decide to pretend you didn’t hear.

“The driver was an asshole. We’ll just take the next one.”

“How do--he didn’t say shit!

“He slammed the door on us and left,” You point out, deciding, fuck the concrete, you’re going to sit on the curb instead of standing, “That seems pretty asshole-like behavior.”

“Yeah well Normal people don’t vanish and appear five feet away in without looking like they fucking moved I--”

He gulps in another breath of air, this one just the normal acrid scent of houston in the summer that you couldn’t stand. The Eau de bus had made it ten times worse, catching in your throat and suffocating you. In comparison this was down right refreshing.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” You shrug, if you had to wait you had to wait. You’re both here. Out in the open. Even now the roads aren’t empty, with the occasional rumbling motorized vehicle rumbling by, sounds crescendo-ing and decrescendo-ing as the living pulse of the city shifts and moves. It’s almost too fucking much. If you let yourself focus on it. So don’t. Or at least try your fucking hardest not to. “At least we can’t get burned if the sun isn’t out.”

A strangled laugh.

He sits down beside you on the curb.

“When’s the next bus?”

“6:12”

“You know, we could walk back to the apartment instead of screwing around out here for 16 and a half minutes like winged rats waiting for someone to wander on by to toss out a handful of bread crumbs.”

“We could.” Glancing up at him through your periphery, “Do you want to?”

“I...no. Not really. You know if we do the bread crumb fairy is gonna come floating down the sidewalk throwing a fucking fiesta worthy feast. Don’t wanna miss out on that quality grub yo.”

You don’t respond, and the conversation lapses into semi-comfortable silence when Dave pulls out his phone and begins texting someone.You turn your head to the sky, watching the dark grey blue edging ever so slightly lighter as the transition from nautical to civil twilight draws nearer. Dawn would still be just shy of an hour off. Even with missing the first bus, hopefully it’s still early enough you’ll miss the bulk of the commuters, and you can be there and back again before the 8 am exodus that sparked your panic last-time…

Shit, you’ll have to deal with it if you don’t. It’s not like you can just panic-step again. You’d either leave him behind or grab him and you aren’t sure which would spark the worst reaction. You should avoid either, if at all possible. You know he doesn't like you touching him.

“Hey...bro?”

The hesitant question draws you out of your head. You make an inquisitive noise in response.

“I’ve been wanting to ask--” The glow from the streetlight above you turns his Strider-pale hand yellow as it gestures at you, “What’s with the shirt??”

Your shirt…? You glance down, frowning. Did you grab one of the ripped shirts? Nope. Just one of your splinterself’s dull black collared tee-shirts with your home-made long sleeves peeking out from underneath it, shielding your damaged as fuck arms from any further exposure. You look like a knight. It's pretty hilarious if you think about it. All you need is a cape, and maybe a color other than black and white and Grey for the rest of your wardrobe. You don’t think any of the known aspects would end up pulling off this particular color combination. You’d even made sure to grab the drab grey hat for yourself to avoid messing up your careful coordination.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s just...not very you , if you know what I mean bro.” The key-presses on his phone are lost in the sound of an oncoming car as it rolls loudly past them, spewing it’s nasty exhaust in the air and contributing to the concoction of ass burning your throat. “Not necessarily somethin’ I’d expect outta your wardrobe, ya know?”

You catch the edge of the sleeve between your finger and your thumb, feeling the plush fabric gliding against skin. So maybe it wasn’t the neatest job you’ve ever done, but that’s why you slipped it on underneath your actual shirt, to hide your shitty seams. “There was some extra felt in the crawlspace. I decided to put it to good use since you put me under house-arrest.”

A smuppet maintenance kit and too much time on your hands. You’d been mending your shit for years, but of course the convenience of an alchemeter had put you out of practice--it was like easing back into an old, comfortable rhythm. You miss it. You remember teaching yourself back when you were ten and tore a hole in your favorite shirt and instead of bawling your eyes out like the kid you were you decided to figure out how to fix it. Back before everything changed and you couldn't hold a needle and thread. It was like riding a bicycle though. Your fingers had known what the fuck to do. And when they didn’t? You improvised. It's just a pattern. You are good with patterns.

“...oh god I thought I recognized that fucking shade of pink. You mean to tell me you’re wearing smuppet skin?? That’s totally gross dude. And why pink ?? You’ve got smuppets ranging from piss-yellow to apple-red and you go and make a pink shirt??”

“I like the color.” It’s the closest you had to your aspect, so it’d been the obvious choice when picking through the pile of felt pieces. You are clinging to that, aren't you? Why? You could have picked orange, you suppose, picking at the pink sleeve, it would have been slightly less eye catching but none of the bolts had been long enough and you weren't confident in your ability to Frankenstein the aptly described puppets kin without leaving some unsightly seams.

Honestly slipping even just a bit of pink into your wardrobe made you feel a lot more comfortable in your own skin. It's strange.The asshole pants and the crown and the tights were embarrassing, you figured you'd be thrilled to escape that enforced wardrobe.Why do you find yourself missing them? Maybe you just want some more color. You’ll have to figure out where you'd ordered the fabric from, and see if you could find some in the right shade of maroon. This fabric wasn’t quite as nice as your godly jammies, but it was definitely up there.

You think that’s probably your bus rolling in the distance. Dave’s mumbling about pink and black and Rose would get a kick out of this before you push yourself to your feet, causing him to scramble after you. The road is pretty much a straight shot, letting you see several blocks distance.

You glance down at him and he’s clutching the phone in a white-knuckled grip, and following your gaze you can see the moment he spots the bus because it causes his face to wall back up.

“I’ll be behind you this time, okay?”

You can tell he doesn’t like it. He hasn’t willingly put his back to you even once since you woke up here. But he nods a jerking, uncomfortable nod, and squares his shoulders as the breaks hiss and the jaws open wide and welcoming and another driver, not with a scowl, but with tired indifference, glances down the steep stairs waiting for you.

In. Out. Ignore the shit out of everyone.

Except Dave. Focus on him.

You both make it onto the bus this time. The doors close with a hiss, you only have bills not exact change so you overpay but you don’t care. You both settle into a seat, surrounded by a smattering of other people, crossing paths in this giant fucking river of fate.

You ignore them all, and start counting stops in your head, clenching your teeth against the rumbling roar of wheels on pavement and the vibrations crawling through your skin.

Just like the fucking car. You hate it.

Outside the giant beast growls, thinking little of the two passengers it just devoured, and lumbers on its way.

x-x-x

yo rose

look at this shit

File sent successfully: 20060728_061855.jpg

You look about exactly as I imagined you. The sunglasses feel a bit much. Have you considered something less likely to stab some unfortunate passerby?

hey lay off the shades they are totally rad

Is that your bro behind you? You two look alarmingly similar. The family resemblance is strong with this one.

yeah

I approve of his color choices. Very bold. He needs something more to tie it together however. Perhaps a nice magenta sash to break up the black and accent the sleeves.

The grey hat needs to go, however. A nice basic black would be perfect. Or perhaps no hat at all, the sunglasses could easily keep the balance there.

of course you would

ill pass on your fashion advice the moment i think he wont kill me for having taken the picture

I guess its right up your alley

all gothic princess prophetess of the glub

I don’t normally care so much for pink, or princesses, or anything else my mother finds particularly compelling, but your metaphorical perversion of her usual domains to one of the zoologically dubious pleases me.

I shall keep this in mind the next time she gifts me a particularly frilly dress, and make the appropriate alterations.

oh shit hes getting up guess the rides over

time to faceplant directly into the path of the oncoming train full of unfamiliar territory

why did i agree to this shit

We already discussed this at an unholy hour last night. It is a good opportunity to test your boundaries. Spending time with your Brother in neutral territory is beneficial to you both.

pray for me

Notes:

Huzzah!

Honestly they were supposed to ACTUALLY get to the store today. But it was getting to be too long, and this week at work has been hard for writing. Hopefully I'll have that for you guys by monday! Uh Monday? I mean tuesday. I know my own schedule oTL

Chapter 42: Dirk > Adventures in Produceland

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Your shoes scuff against the polished tile of the floor, your fingers curled tightly around the hard-plastic push-grip that allowed you to steer the cart. The rolling of the wheels grinding the softly playing ambient music into the ground and reducing everything to noise.

“Aw, come on. It’s my first time in the land of the sweets and home of the bread and you’re going for the rabbit food??? Why am I even here. Why did you even drag me along. I could be still sleeping right now. You could still be sleeping. And then we could just order a pizza or something and not trek through all this--this--” He pauses, sucking a breath before just waving at everything before you. Row after row  of color and green leafy shit you’ve never actually seen before outside of labels on cans and on the internet. “...this!”

Exactly what you needed, and oh so conveniently--and you’d eat your hat if it wasn’t on purpose--laid  out right within moments of walking into the huge-- focus on what’s in front of you-- space. You don’t dwell on exactly how far back those aisle go, or get lost reading the signs above each trying to figure out where to even start. Because you have a place to go and it’s right there. You just shut it, and the few, very few, other shoppers milling about, out of your mind entirely, and just began pushing the cart in that direction, it’s loose wheels rattling in their housing that’s making you want to take the damn thing apart and oil it right there.

If you had any with you, you probably would.

You stop in front of a display and stare at the--you’re pretty sure it’s lettuce? One of your many memorized lists have sandwiches as good ways to shove vegetables into meals. Fresh vegetables are necessary for growing children. There’s like, several different kinds of lettuce alone , from boring round pale spherical ones-- iceburg, no notable nutrition, your research whispers back at you-- frilly purple to flat, almost rough feeling green.

You grab two that aren’t the iceburg--the really frilly shit, the tags calling them green and red leaf respectively--and hold them out to Dave.

“Pick one.”

“Bro I’m pretty sure the inside of our fridge has never even seen a vegetable before. It might even break down out of protest.” You don’t break your stare, and he fidgets a little, “Uh, I guess?? The purple one? It’s more interesting than the green one anyway. It’s not like I know the ins and outs of rabbit food. Can we move on to the good shit now?”

“Be patient, lil’bro,” You drop the Chosen One into the cart. “It’s not going to hurt either of us to try eating healthier shit.”

“Healthy, healthy, healthy.” He gripes as you move to the next display, and the next, grabbing a few more things you think are intended for sandwiches, like tomatoes, and some others that you can probably just toss together and eat raw. Fuck it, this is a trial run. If shit doesn’t taste good you’ll just buy something else next time.

“This is revenge for riffing on your beans isn’t it??” He complains as you’re debating what looks like some sort of prepackaged salad mix. On the one hand, it’s salad. Salad is literally just plant shit. But if it’s packaged it isn’t necessarily fresh is it? You take note of the ingredients, going over what you have, and what you’ve seen, before putting it back down and pushing the cart back deeper into the small miniaturized jungle taking up residence inside the food disbursement facility. You could probably just grab the ingredients they used and throw it together yourself.

“I’m serious bro, have you been abducted by some sort of health cult? Do I need to stage an intervention with the greasiest heart-clogging array of fried foods I can get delivered straight to our door? I’m surprised you haven’t gone for the green beans yet, given how you cling to their darker relatives--whoops there they go into the cart, how did I know. What next? Kale? Mustard greens? Basil? Why not, just load up on herbs while we’re at it.”

“Stop being such a drama queen, Dave,” You don’t actually pick up herbs, thank you very much. The small pile you have is probably a good enough start.

“Fuck you, I’ll be as dramatic as I want.”

You try to resist--

“Language.”

It failed spectacularly.

The strangled noise he makes brings a smile to your face, and he stomps off, or starts to until you realize he’s actually storming off and you react without thinking.

He freezes.

You barely have his arm for a split second before you drop it like he’s on fire, digging the offending fingers into the stiff fabric of your pants. Or you try to. There’s not really much excess fabric there for you to grab onto, unlike with your puffy asshole pj pants. So you shove the hand into your pocket instead.

“I need you to stay close while we’re out, okay?”

“‘m not a kid.” It’s mumbled. “I can handle myself in the fucking produce aisle.”

“Maybe,” You allow, and walk back towards where you left the cart--that’s several feet away. You hadn’t realized you might as well have flash-stepped. No wonder he froze up. Idiot. What are you going to say? That the idea of him being out of your immediate grabbing range in an unfamiliar place sends a spike of frenzied anxiety down your spine?

You grope for something, anything. Looking around you’re right on the edge of the vegetables and--fuck that might work.“There’s a shit ton of apples over here and I know fuck all about apples. Help me pick.

It falls completely flat, and that is an utterly lame excuse and you know it. You know he knows it, but he lets you get away with it anyway. Retribution rings as a windfall of fruit landing on top of your vegetable mountain. Mostly sixteen different types of apples, but you managed to snag some real fucking oranges and add them for yourself. By the time you’re moving on around the outer edge of the store toward what appears to be breads, and meat--and FISH--he’s chattering fluidly again.

Sandwiches needed meat don’t they? You ask Dave what he wants from the wall piled with all sorts of lunchmeats and he just gives you a surprisingly wordless shrug, so you just push past it toward the fish.

...Can you make fish sandwiches?

At least you understand fish.

“I’m not even sure we have shit to cook that with, bro.” He remarks as you slide several fish filets (you want the whole fucking thing, head and all, but it looks like you need to Talk to someone behind the counter for that, and that makes your gut clench uncomfortably right now so filets it is) into the cart, “Unless you’ve been hiding some pans in the pile of blades that used to fill the cupboards.” A pause. “What happened to that anyway?”

“Put it up in the crawlspace. It’s not safe to leave them lying around.” ...okay, mental note. Look for, and or order a skillet at the very least. At least your Bro had the decency to leave you with basic cooking utensils. Grilled fish was a goddamn delicacy, when you took the time to actually catch the slippery bastards. Gull was easier to hunt, the idiots would swarm any sort of bait you put out, but at the same time harder to eat except when you were at your most pragmatic.

You were careful not to over-hunt the gulls that nested in your defunct radio-tower. They were occasionally noisy neighbors, but if you took up a handful of food, they were willing company when you couldn’t deal with being alone, but couldn’t bring yourself to deal with people either.

Not that you ever really dealt with people. Could you even count how many times it was actually you talking to your friends and not your autoresponder? No? You can't, can you?

You glance down to find Dave staring back up at you with a baffling expression, one that’s nowhere near as obviously guarded as it has been, but paradoxically that just makes it all the harder for you to fucking read.

“You never cared about that before.”

“I also didn’t experience a narcoleptic fit in the kitchen before,” It’s not the reason. But it’s a Good reason. Just because you haven’t had one since the roof doesn’t mean they won’t come back. Hell, if you ever manage to suss out the source of anxiety that’s preventing you from Waking the Fuck Up, they’d even be potentially happening More Often. “Imagine pitching face forward into that shit. Or don’t. It’s not pretty.”

You wince as that unreadable expression deepens, and you can even see an eyebrow climbing above the rim of his shades. Were you not supposed to say that? Probably not, he’s a fucking kid right now.

There’s really no contest. Dave was a better guardian than you ever could be. It just wasn’t fair that he got to be stuck with a you who physically made his life miserable while all you got were videos and a faint foolhardy hope that could never, ever come to fruition.

That thought gets crammed in the mental crawlspace, don’t acknowledge it, eyes ahead and pushing the cart forward, following the clear as day path around the outside of the store the designers obviously wanted you to follow because hey, it’s efficient, and so far it’s hit literally everything you needed. You pay enough attention to make sure he’s following as you move--for all his spoken belligerence he hasn’t strayed more than a few feet away from you after you--said something earlier.

Buying healthy was fucking hard. So many goddamn pieces. Dave may have survived to grow up fine on whatever garbage your splinterself normally bought--which was apparently nothing regularly with a side of takeout?--but you’ve already committed. You can’t just point at him and go good enough. You’ve got to be better.

“Hey, hey bro, I don’t mean to interrupt your rush toward mom-blogger level of organic complete with food-pyramid infographics and serving sizes, but… Can we at least get some fucking ramen to go with this shit? I can see it from here, packets upon packets of packaged salty goodness--”

“Okay.”

“It’ll be nice to break up all this health shit with--wh--oh. Awesome. It’s nice to know you haven’t gotten too far into the bean juice and you can still acknowledge the overwhelming convenience and superiority of instant noodles. I’m just gonna nip right down this aisle real quick--”

This cart is abysmally constructed. Even beyond the rattling and squeaking wheels, they like to jam as you try to turn it away from the sloping path around the edge of the store and toward the aisles that run perpendicular towards the center. A squint up at the sign proudly proclaims “soups, crackers, cookies, and cereal” all up in aisle one. Are you seriously only touching the first aisle now???

Fine. Whatever. Even with the plethora of healthy shit, it’s probably good to keep some familiar foods.

You do need more beans, but while there’s plenty of canned shit here, it mostly looks like soup. Which, surprise, surprise, was listed on the sign. You aren’t particularly sure if you appreciate the obvious care someone, somewhere, put into organizing all this shit, or be overwhelmed by the fact that people did this period. This isn’t some game-construct dreamt into existence in order to fill out the environment or challenge you on your journey to self actualization.

...You’re a self-centered little bitch sometimes, aren’t you.

Which then leads you right back around to the irony that it fucking was, because all of this, from the packet of oreos in your hands to the physical body you inhabit, was dreamt up by dying eldritch abominations in order to give your universe a single, final shot.

You throw the oreos into the cart and shove that particularly nasty train of thought into the mental crawlspace--it is getting uncomfortably full at this point. You need to do some full on spring cleaning of all this garbage one of these days.

Dave ranges ahead of the cart, out of reach, but you don’t mind too much since he’s straight in your line of sight as it is. Contrary to his fixation on the noodle packets he doesn’t immediately rush them, instead taking his time to stop and hover and peer at various somethings on the shelf before moving on. The cart gets a multiple arm-fulls of instant noodle bowls of various flavors--and you pretend not to notice the incredulous look Dave sends you when he notices the blue film packaging on the oreo package.

Turning the cart completely is an ordeal thanks to the stubborn as hell wheels and terrible handling, so instead of returning directly to the back wall to continue towards the dairy, you just keep following the flow of the store, using gentle curves instead of a full 180, once you hit the wider, open space at the end of the aisle. You glance down the next, mapping out the path in your head, winding up and down one aisle to the next--do you even need the next? Checking the sign--

Pasta. Coffee.

Canned Vegetables.

Aw hell yeah. You can’t skip this one

“Are you gonna stand there all day or are ya gonna fuckin’ move?”

The unfamiliar, heavy drawl busts through your bubble like a goddamn ogre. Half your brain pinpoints Dave immediately--between you and the Aisle, protected by the cart if shit comes to blows. Safe. The other half takes in the scowling, grumpy bulk that had come up from the front of the store--shit you’d forgotten you were near the entrance again, nothing between you and oncoming people aside from a line of clerks and the edge of the produce section that you’d entered with--

If this was a dersite agent, or the skeletal beasts that made up the primary residents of your tombs, you would have skewered the guy already. Only your desperate grip on the hard plastic keeps your katana in your strife specibus because instinct would leave you with a bleeding body and most likely a murder on your hands.

You'll be no use to anyone if you end up stuck in jail, bro. Cool it.

“Hey, hey bro, bro,” There’s a tug on your sleeve from the side. The soft fabric brushing up against skin. That’s…

“I’m done lookin’ at the stuff here, thanks for waiting for me,” It’s in a stage whisper, but behind the safety of your cheap-as-fuck shades and your resting blank expression, your eyes are locked on the man’s steadily reddening complexion. You know he can hear it. “Oh man dude sorry didn’t see you standing there, do you want to catch a look at this sweet ass tupperware here??? Hella perfect for lunchboxes, picnics, pot-lucks with all the nice old ladies down the street--”

“No.” The man grinds out, “Just get the hell outta my way.”

“Dude there’s--”

“There’s more than enough space for you to go around.” You force yourself to exhale, tearing one hand off the bar and letting it land on Dave’s shoulder. He doesn’t let go of your sleeve. “We’re looking at the display.”

You force yourself to turn away from the man, even as it sends your instincts screaming at you that there’s an enemy at your back. If you draw a weapon on him you will kill him. What was the second part of your mantra?

Ignore the shit out of everyone else.

There’s a display on the end of the aisle. It’s filled with boxes upon boxes of food-containment sets in various sizes. You study that shit as if it was the most important thing in the fucking world, even as you’re  increasingly aware of that bundle of nerves at your back.

And then...it breaks in a flurry of words. Some you recognize as epithets. Others you don’t. And even some you only barely recognize as slurs once used by a society that had been long since dead when you’d learned of them.

The man stalks his way down the aisle you wanted to go down. To your utter lack of surprise, there was plenty of space between the nose of your cart and the edge for him to pass. You exhale, forcing yourself to let go. Prying your fists open, the tension leaving your palms aching

“What crawled up his grumpypants and died??” Dave muttered, “We probably should skip this aisle, huh?”

You glance up at the canned vegetables printed on the sign, and back at the bulk of a man loitering near red plastic containers, and make a conscious effort to keep breathing.

You’ll come back.

“Let’s go find your juice.”

Notes:

Next chapter is wrapping up the store, and seeing what Dave thinks of the entire expurrience :3c

Thank ya'll so much for reading <3 Your comments and poking at the bits you find most interesting give me things to look forward to reading.

Chapter 43: Dave > Hate Being a Kid (Even Though It's True)

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Beep.

Tick.

Beep.

Tock.

Beep.

Tick.

The beeping of the scanner fades into the background, and while you know it doesn’t sync up exactly--human hands can be steady and fast but it aint got shit on clockwork--the world seems to shift around you until it feels like it does so that’s good enough for your brain to let it get absorbed into your personal BGM track like some shitty mashup someone decided to upload to youtube for cheap views.

Although, right now you don’t really mind thinking about that steady, unfaltering rhythm. It’s almost comforting. Less of annoying mental tick and more a running theme. A leitmotif in the constantly changing score of your shitty life. You aren’t sure what that says about you, that instead of the sick-nasty beats and irregular rhythms you like to work into your own composition, your sponge of a brain seems to crave the steady and unfaltering ticking, and tocking.

You’re not too proud to admit inside the sanctity of your own head, that steady and unfaltering are two words that are very much missing from your vocabulary right now. And it tends to come down to one thing.

There’s a whole cart full of shit between you and him. Shit that you helped pick out. It’s downright domestic, that’s what it is. Full on Hallmark, hey honey what do you want for dinner today oh look at that we’re out of milk mind running out to the store.

He actually did get milk, after staring down at the carton and you could have sworn an honest-to-gog possibly not ironic smile existed on his face for half a nano second. Which is honestly not freaking you out as much as it should, but you’re trying not to think about that right now because this shit is making you realize you’ve never had actual milk in your life, and now there’s going to be a carton in the fridge next to your handpicked, fresh-off-the-shelf Nantucket AJ in the glass bottles which is the good shit Bro never got you.

... Now that is what’s freaking you out.

This entire grocery run has been an exercise in adapting your signature controlled freak out, trailing after Bro like a puppy on an invisible leash, throwing shit into the cart, waiting for him to tell you no, getting wigged out that he never does, and then pushing forward with a shield of sarcasm and jabs to try and cover it all up.

Rose would have something you say about that, you think. You should check in with Rose. You did make that whole fuss about having found your new religion, ie addressing your bro related rants solely at her after John pulled that stunt on you. Move over egbert, there’s a new bff in town. So what if you-- allegedly-- were a little wound up lately. And maybe somewhat fixated. He’s your Bro. You live with the dude. It’s perfectly normal to be hyper aware and baffled and need to rant about it, isn’t it?

Your phone is a weight in your hand as you pull it out of your sylladex, thumbing through the menus in a path that’s getting so familiar it might as well be burned into your muscle memory. It’s too bad John doesn’t have a phone--he said he was going to try and pester his dad about it, but not to hold your breath, and honestly it's not like you left your apartment regularly like oh say right now, or when you were kidnapped for a couple days--but those were all one-off occurrences weren’t they?

Bro wouldn’t really start dragging you out of the apartment to do shit. Like a family.

...would he?

Not willingly, you don’t think. Not after how the shit with the cowboy went down. Bro’s always been in and out, you always figured he’d have a handle on shit since he was, you know, a grown ass adult who adulted and obviously would have had to do adulty things while he was out of the apartment. Seeing him--lock up--you’d felt the spike of intent that usually was the only warning you got before steel flying at your face--only there was no steel and no words, only your bro’s presence coiled so tight you were just waiting for it to burst, and the malcontent anger of a self-entitled asshole who saw a pair of weirdos in his way and decided to take his grumpy-didn’t-have-enough-fucking-coffee attitude out on you--

Fuck you still don’t know what you did. Or why you did it. What made you reach out and grab those ridiculous pink sleeves and drag his attention away from the idiot-who-probably-didn’t-deserve-to-get-filleted. Or at least, didn’t deserve to be the one who got your bro sent to prison.

It was the first thing he told you when he gifted you your first strife deck-- before the real training started, back when you would still hang in the living room and play xbox and he’d startle you by somehow tossing a smuppet at your head in the middle of a sick-ass combo and make you mess up and he’d just make a comment about constant vigilance--was to never draw shit Outside unless they had a blade on you first because he was not going to bail your ass outta juvie and really orange wasn’t your color anyway. It looked terrible on you.

So you’d just, talked. And talked, and grabbed his attention and kept it until he seemed able to pull his shit together, and the dude decided to do the smart thing and go the fuck around.

Your fingers falter and you thumb past Bro’s number--not who you were originally looking for, even if you ended up hovering, and no point in texting him he’s literally feet away from you, a pile of fraying nerves waiting for the cashier to finish her god-given duty of ringing up your haul and taking his cash. You can feel his eyes on your back as if the moment he looks away you’re going to pull a Bonnie and Clyde and make a break for it, guns blaring to the sound of some twang-tacular banjo strummin’. You wouldn’t. You’re not an idiot.

You’d almost forgotten, during the last two weeks, between the blood in his hair and the bags under his eyes, and the cherry red of sun-damage fading to a--ever so slightly darker--shade than your normal skintone--

It’s Bro .

And maybe he’s trying. But that grip on your arm had been fast and strong and you know you wouldn’t be able to get away if he came after you, cart or no goddamn cart between you.

You don’t know how to feel.

So you just bottle that shit up and keep scrolling, past Bro, past Stevens (who’d insisted you add his number in case Bro ended up face-first in the shower or something. At least someone understood that something was Wrong. And the other shoe has to drop. You aren’t allowed to have--) to the last entry in your list.

There’s a small litany of prayers waiting for you in Rose’s message chain, each one dripping sarcasm, and sufficiently aged during your--god had it really taken an hour and a half???--long expedition through the unclaimed aisles, they might as well be fermented.

That can’t be right. It can’t, even as the exact, down to a second, duration bubbles up through the generic background noise and burns itself into your brain, matching up to the small white number staring at you from your notification bar..

It just...

It’s a little past 8 am. The summer sun is awake and throwing down it’s rays like its fighting words, taunting you from behind the automatic sliding doors you can see from here. Gone is the weird half-light of too-goddamn-early and the half-asleep why-the-fuck-not that let you plow ahead with this batshit insane idea in the first place.

Fuck.

This really isn’t a dream.

You hover over the open message, your mind blank and--almost--silent. Almost. Almost except the quiet whimpering you seriously want to divorce from your psyche but it’s buried in there too gogdamn deep, even deeper than the ticking and the tocking. Whimpers of broken dreams and expectations that you shattered your goddamn self because it hurt less than to hope and have it never be.

You glance up surreptitiously behind the anonymity of your shades, watching as the increasingly unnerved woman stutters in her rhythm to weigh and key in one of Bro’s weirdo produce purchases, throwing the whole mashup out the window in a righteous squealing trainwreck. He hasn’t so much as said a word this whole time, leaning forward with one elbow on the handle of the cart, cushioning his chin with his hand. You can tell he notices the attention, because that impassive neutral expression stutters with the faintest scrunch of the nose--and there’s the tip of an eyebrow over the edge of his stupid replacement shades.

You...hadn’t wanted his full attention. You hadn’t. And now that you have it your throat feels so dry, the ice crawling up your spine, and the unexpected flutter of your nerves has you wanting to abscond right now.

“Are you gonna drag me back by the ear like a misbehaving toddler if I go over and stand by the door?” Space. Space would work. Space and just a little bit of time, and then you’ll get a handle on…

This.

Your face is schooled so damn good it would be getting straight As if it was taking all your stupid home-schooled quizzes . “The signal’s shitty in here.”

It actually is, blinking between one and two bars right next to the clock on the notification bar, but fuck even if you want to talk to Rose you more want to get out of the three foot radius more.

He inclines his head to follow your proposed path, which is still in his line of sight--you can see the fucking door from here, and the sun and the bright yellow-white of baking concrete--then back over at the items still piled high on the belt in front of the register.

And then he straightens, losing the loose posture.

You hate that tension. That uncertainty. That-- don’t say worry --

Lips pressed in a line, the words like sandpaper in your ears. You don’t know what answer you want. Yes-- do what you want fuck if I care-- or “Can’t you just wait? This won’t take much longer.”

“Whatevs.” You grumble, forcing that mild and entirely irrational panic back down, just like you have been all day--which has only been less than 2 hours don’t be a drama queen, dave --and go back to your phone.

Maybe it’ll work anyway.

i should be happy rose

why am i not happy

The swirling circle of limbo curls in on itself next to the messages, the bars on you phone flickering between one teeny tiny little shit and one that’s slightly bigger but still can’t do anything.

The messages come back red and glaring up at you from the screen.

Sending failed.

Figures.

You type more anyway, to the background track of a scanner beeping, to the feel of your Bro’s presence at your back. Words that come back red and bleeding and lost in limbo.

Shit like this. Domestic shit. Family shit. You’d seen movies and TV shows and laughed at them because it was hella uncool. Uncomfortable, saccharine garbage.

Just. Uncomfortable, as you looked at it and felt so alienated. It couldn’t be you . You were cool, and Bro was cool, and the rest of the world were lameo-soft pansy chickenshits.

That discomfort eats at your insides in another way, now, even as you laugh at Bro when he stares uncomprehendingly at the more-than-small pile that had grown into a mountain of bags. Too many bags. He’s a out-of-season Christmas tree with ornaments of bags hanging off of and in his arms, and you have absolutely no idea how he’s carrying them all, but he doesn’t complain, and doesn’t ask for help, and barely acknowledges the bag-lady when she offers to get one of the guys to help carry them out to his car.

But you don’t have a car you got here by the bus and now you have to get all this shit onto the bus and then home from there. Somehow.

You can still see her wide, incredulous eyes as he just shakes his head and loads that pile of bags into his arms, muscles bulging and arms shaking in a way that makes you painfully aware that he’s not as strong as he should be. The hospital. The weeks of missed training and lapsed conditioning--

Not your problem.

Just like it’s not your problem that he had to buy so much shit.

“We could just call.” And then he’s looking at you except you aren’t entirely sure he can see through that semi-opaque bag full of fish in front of his face. Well you said something so you have to continue so you pull up you big boy pants and push the words out anyway, “Stevens, I mean. He has a car. I don’t know if I trust you not to drop shit with that giant mountain, especially on those steep-as-fuck stairs since we need to get this shit on a bus. And even then there’s thirty fucking minutes in a rattling tin can--”

“It’s fine. I got it.” You think he jerks his head toward the door, much to the relief of the poor woman who seems on the verge of hyperventilating at the way physics are making the upper portions of the tower sway.

“You drop my AJ and I’m never gonna forgive you, bro.” The warning is half-hearted, but you follow at your invisible leash length of three feet behind him as he makes his way shakily towards the door. If you know Bro at all, when he decides to do something he’s going to do it-- ignore that he stopped his plan for you and that’s how you even ended up here in the first place.

He doesn’t drop anything. At least not by accident. When you reach the bus-stop everything does settle deliberately onto the concrete with a variety of thunks and thin plastic rustling and even some glass clinking that makes your stomach do a somersault. Bro doesn’t seem bothered by anything as he just abandons his burdens and walks over to check the complicated as fuck set of tables pinned behind plastic glass to tell noob bus-goers like yourself approximately when you can hope to stop roasting and pile into the mobile people-eating-metal-squealing-monster.

“Twenty minutes.” Then he falls. You definitely weren’t startled into a sudden panic by this action, nor did you make a sound that resembled anything like distressed squawking as he unceremoniously plopped himself on the sidewalk next to the mountain of bags in a pile of limbs. You didn’t suddenly find yourself in the kitchen at sunset. In the living room. On the roof. With nowhere to go because you’re who the hell knows away from home. Your phone is in your hand because you need to finish composing a message to Rose-- the red ones don’t count-- and not because you need to call--someone.

You just...rolled your eyes behind your shades, that’s all. As if this fucking weird display was normal. And fuck if you know it might be. You do seem to find him on the floor A Lot.

“You realize there’s a perfectly functioning bench right?” Cool. Controlled. Even a dash of sarcasm. Calling it a bench was a bit of an exaggeration. Just three worn planks of worn, weathered, sun bleached, wood across what’s probably a rusted iron frame. But wood isn’t gonna be anywhere near as hot as concrete will be--and honestly probably already is. Under this hellscape of a sun, a little over an hour is probably plenty to get it warmed beyond the pleasantly cool curb you’d sat on this morning. “You don’t need to do this shit in the middle of the sidewalk.”

He dismisses the suggestion with a wave, but does push himself out of the ungainly pile of limbs and  sits cross legged on the concrete. You force your face into something that isn’t what you’re actually feeling, you don’t actually care what right now, and pointedly march past him, climbing up onto the wooden bench because it’s fucking daylight and there’s people across the street and cars going by, and you’re hit by this fucking sense of whiplash between feeling like a kid on a leash, and now the only one of the two of you acting like an adult.

He shifts position so his back is resting against the front edge of the bench, near your knee, but not touching. The proximity seems to do something because that prickle between your shoulders that you’d come to associate with a particular focus on you, ebbs away.

“So.” He speaks, and you’re hella surprised, since you’d figured it’d be right on back to the good ol’ silent treatment until the bus arrived, “You have Newt’s number?”

What--oh. Right. Stevens.

“Well yeah. Had to stay with him for a few days. Pretty sure exchanging digits is the first step in responsible babysitting etiquette,” You’d appreciated it, because it meant he let you lock yourself in his room and he could just text you to ask if you wanted food or something. “Is it wrong? He’s your friend isn’t he?”

“Evidently.”

“Evidently?? He went out and bought you fucking sunscreen bro. He didn’t have to do any of that shit.”

Not to mention, he was the first place you were supposed to go if your bro ever--How is this shit even up for debate?

“In case you haven’t realized, your Bro is an absolute moron when it comes to people.”

Woof. Okay. Pulling out the sarcastic third person now? You ignore the way your brain conjures up all the evidence and points at each one as if to say, ‘he’s right you know,’ between you and Stevens and his recently deceased friends you’d never even heard of before... Instead of following that particular hopbeast into its hella not-your-problem den, you just roll your eyes and fire back with a deadpanned, “Evidently.”

He snorts, and doesn’t say anything more, so you turn your attention back to your phone as the crinkle and shifting of plastic and the items inside work their way into the background score of this particular movie. You ignore the red text of the unsent, your eyes skimming over it as if it doesn’t exist. Because it doesn’t. It’s a manifestation of your internal monologue in your iconic red text and this batch isn’t leaving your fucking skull.

You’re kinda surprised Rose hasn’t checked in by now. It’s been almost two and a half-- 2:11:43 --hours since her last one.

dearest rose

i wanted to make this shit sound like an old-timey war letter but that sounds so fucking weird so nope nevermind the goofs off its so far gone it might as well be flying into the heart of a blackhole never to be seen again

just wanted to let you know the d-stri is still alive and kicking unbested by the foray into the bermuda-fucking-triangle that exists in the center of every krogers eating cell signal like its for breakfast and speaking of breakfast theres a haul of more fucking food than i know what to do sitting right in front of me on the sidewalk even if more than a third of it is rabbit food its like a fucking fiesta up in here

i got enough ramen to live off of for months just gotta stuff my cheeks like a goddamn squirrel and refill my stash and i never have to worry about shit again

and

i got aj rose

*AJ*

not even bro is gonna ruin this hype train

though I gotta admit hes being *really* fucking weird

the dude just spent an hour wound tighter than a gogdamn cookoo clock like to the point where i coulda sworn wed be on the run from a literal murder and not the fun call 911 i just witnessed a murder after a particularly nasty set of sick burns

and now hes sprawled out in the middle of the sidewalk muttering and rummaging through bags like a gremlin ignoring the shit out of everything what happened to all that hypervigilance

is this adulthood??

was everything i knew about the world fucking wrong??

do you hear that thats my expectations shattering into a million tiny gremlin-bro sized pieces

come on rose im waiting

paging dr sigmund phil rose

im all but begging you to do your psychoanalyst schtick

did you fall asleep??

nice to know my distress and anxiety wasn’t enough to stop you from nodding off like a baby into dreamland

you probably need the sleep though i still dont know how you were still awake at 6 in the morning when we were

fuck when did i finally go to bed

too damn late for you to be awake normally it took bro hammerin at my door at 530 to drag me clean out of snoozeville and im a hell of a light sleeper

may your dreams be full of shit like

i would say tentacles and existential horror since i know you like that shit but that sounds a bit too much like that dream youve been having that wigs you out so rainbows and kittens it is

wait thats on the princess end of fantasy bullshit um lets find you something else

not dragons though because you arent allowed to have a dragon dream before i do im the knight its my job to fight the dragons

wizards maybe

yer a wizard rose

i could see you with a dope ass wand all black and gnarled with skulls on the end blowing shit up

if youre stuck with helpless nothingness and confusion how better to counteract that shit than with a power fantasy full of reigning down mega flares from the goddamn sky and turning the entire planet into swiss cheese with giant flaming meteors and--

“Dave.” Bro’s voice cuts through the utterly rad dream you were weaving for Rose, and drags your attention away to find the rustling has stopped, and there’s something big and round and red in your face, being held by calloused fingers by a long white stick.

“What the hell is this?”

He shrugs, the plastic-wrapped offering bobbing as he waves it invitingly, “The label says candy apple flavor.”

You eye it. And him. When the hell did he slip that into the cart while you weren’t looking? You thought you’d caught everything. Even the Oreos--

“This is because of the shit I pulled with the cowboy, isn’t it??” You hesitate, more words bubbling up under your tongue and this was a bad idea, you’re gonna push and push and eventually he’s got to snap-- “Saving your ass like that.”

His nose scrunches the slightest bit, but he doesn’t deny it. Maybe the sunscreen wasn’t working, because he looks pretty fucking red under a smattering of freckles--had he always had freckles or were you never this close enough to see--until he turns his face away, the brim of his grey hat throwing it into shadow.  Just keeps holding the solidified sugar sphere in your face.

Well fuck it.

Not above being bribed to keep your silence, you take the fucking lollipop, and shove it into your mouth.

After you take the plastic off, of course.

It’s like nirvana up in here. A fruity sweet explosion of apples and sugar and pure unadulterated awesome all packaged into a goddamn sucker that punches you in the face with sheer joy.

Not even the utter ear shredding metallic cacophony that heralded the eventually arrival of your bus could bring you down. In fact, you found yourself significantly cheered, enjoying the treat as you watch Bro bamboozle another poor schmuck by using his flashstep to get all the shit piled until a seat before the dude could even start to close the door on him or you, and maybe...

todays been pretty cool i guess

Notes:

Whuf. That's a long one innit. Here's the end of that mini-arc, huzzah!

We've still got some things to set up before the next major arc (and our first major time skip) so hope ya'll are in the mood for getting down to business ^^

Next chapter should be Dave again, if all goes according to plan.

Edit: Oh right! Huzzah 100k! *throws confetti*

Chapter 44: Dave > Have Your Wish Granted

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

One sucker, one bowl of ramen, a sad attempt at a sandwich and a handful of carrots you agreed to take under threat of your bro’s vaguely pleading and therefore hella weird frown, it’s 18 hours, 22 minutes and 13 seconds later, you are well into the dreaming phase of your sleep cycle. Which, all things considered, is a fairly boring and entirely normal way to cap off a day that had you on so many ups and downs you don’t know which way the surface is anymore, so rather than go swimming off and end up drowning, you figure you’ll just hold your breath and float and hope you’ll end up surfacing some day.

Just. Floating and shit. In your room in your purple and silver tower above the purple-red simulacrum of your card-suit bedsheets. Nothing different. Nothing new. Ticking and tocking. Ticking and tocking. Letting yourself get lost in the thrumming of the universe around you.

Eyes close behind your shades, cutting off the hazy purple-red room and the faint light from beyond. Fingers tap against the inside of your arm, the 4/4 rhythm of your own heart, syncing up to the giant metronome at the center of everything. 73 minutes. That’s how far you’ve gotten and you’ve got another 6 hours of this to go through before you have to wake up and face the sunshine and to be perfectly frank you don’t want to.

It’s steady. And reliable. And maybe when you wake up and look back on the fragments you barely remember you’ll complain that you didn’t get to do anything heroic or interesting, such a waste of your beyond-creative imagination here, c’mon subconscious get it together and do something , but for now, especially after the emotionally fucking stressful day--week--months-- life, you just let yourself just…

Unwind and Be

Unfortunately, something else had other plans.

Or maybe you were just finally going to get your wish.

Something disturbed the music. The steady rhythms knotting and warping, strands of thread pulled free and fraying from the weave, a mess of intersecting and branching bullshit spiraling around and around itself, ducking in and out of the mainstream like salmon flinging their way up a goddamn waterfall in and out in and out always moving--

A paradox that existed everywhere and nowhere and it was angry .

Survival instincts kick in--drilled into you through years a lifetime of surprises and ambushes and bros cruel pranks--a mounting horror washing your calm away as everything shattered around you you cant be doomed if you no longer exist--

Your tower is gone when you open your eyes, leaving nothing but shifting darkness and a storm . A swirling storm of green on the horizon, winds howling and ripping at you, at your cape, hungry and hunting and hating. A skull forms in the amorphous clouds, long and snake-like, a dragon of mist and hate with blood-red eyes and blood on its cheeks.

There’s a weight in your hand, a pure white sword pulled from the aether--your strife deck?--its nothing like the katanas you know, the heft and balance is all wrong, but something shifts and you settle into a stance as if you’ve been wielding it for years. Your heart is pounding, your mind racing as the storm bears down on you in a screaming rage, a hunter who lost its prey, again and again and lashing out at the only other thing it could reach. You could almost hear words on the edge of the winds, words you know, you recognize, because you’ve grown up with them laughing and taunting you for years in the back of your mind. Words that tell you that you’re useless. A waste. That bro was better and always would be better and--

Maybe you should’ve died instead of him. You’re no hero. He was he was he raised you trained you sundered skies for you died to try and save your bacon and where the fuck were you? You arrived too late and couldn’t even take his sword or bury the fucker--

Oh hell no. Fuck that noise you don’t get to touch that shit that’s personal . That’s my trauma you can’t fucking weaponize it without my purrmission, not cool brah. ” They are almost lost in the howling winds, but the new words reach you, the pressure of the storm lessening enough to allow you to push yourself to your knees. The blade of your sword is sunken into the ground-- there’s a ground ?--sticking out of grooved black shale. You use it as leverage, pulling yourself up in the shelter of the windbreak. You look up to find the world tinted green--several shades darker than the dragon coiled around you, almost black--translucent and ephemeral but unmistakably feathered wings spread and agitated like the crows on the roof if you startled them, beating to push back the poisonous assault. The dragon screams at you, recoiling into a dark, almost solid mass against the glowing orange and red backdrop, looking almost black in the light from the lava flows, distant structures loom stark and grey of unforgiving metal and gears screeching and clunking along with the beat of your heart.

Metal shrieking against metal. A sudden surge of adrenaline and misplaced terror you drive the white blade into the mass and it screams and screams and scre--

And then there’s silence.

You fall.

You don’t fall far, gasping and clawing at the blankets surrounding you. Shit is still twisted--but it settles. The screeching fading into that same, steady pulse running at the back of your mind.

You lay awake staring at the ceiling. Your heart thundering in your ears. The organic structure of the muscle didn’t care for that damn ticking and tocking if it wanted to flip the fuck out and flood your body with stress hormones it was going to fucking do it.

Your dream is already fading, but you’re too agitated to really focus on it. Your body buzzing with energy, you throw off the sheets that you’re all twisted up in, it's far too fucking chilly for summer and you’re cold and suddenly missing your jammies-except-you-are-in-your-pajamas-- fuck, the world is tilted and it spins and you catch your head with your palms and push.

The pressure grounds you. You just breathe in time with the music, deep and not at all panicked nope not at all, and will your heart to chill the fuck out.

It doesn’t.

You grope instinctively for your shades, before you remember they are probably on the desk to avoid breaking yet another set. And the fact that it’s--04:08:34--so early, daylight isn’t even a twinkle in the sun’s eye. C’mon Dave let the sun enjoy its time off dont rush it when you don’t need it. You don’t need your shades.

Shapes and spots of different colors and patterns dance in your vision even before you remove your hands, and keep spinning even after. You blink them away, letting your eyes adjust slowly and focus on your breathing. In. Out. In. Out. Tick. Tock. Follow the rhythm.

The setting moonlight carves through the window and hits something. A silhouette. Tall and gangly and limp, sitting on the small sill. Lil’Cal’s frozen grin and glassy blue eyes stare deep into your soul, and all your hard work at calming yourself down gets defenestrated.

never safe just waiting for the other foot to drop you told her you told them it was Wrong--

You grab the C-man off the window and shuffle out. It’s not like his fault. He’s a puppet. It’s not like he flip-flopped his way down the hall into your room alone. He was stranded. You just need to take him back. Maybe slip him into *bros* bed for some sort of petty revenge

You hesitate in the hallway, noting something off. There isn’t a light. Bro isn’t up working. But there is a major lack of something. Your already raised hackles into the stratosphere. You clutch the puppet close to your chest, a clammy, crawling feeling spreading across your skin. If he’s back to pranking you, it'd be worth it to be wary, and cautious.

Peeking around the corner in the dark, with suspicion and paranoia flooding your mind, you look for anything out of place. The moonlight pools on the floor. There’s no body this time. Just open carpet with a faded stain in the moonlight. Bro must have tried to clean it up. You don’t see why he would. It would make the perfect backdrop for a slasher smuppet film even as the sight of it makes the bottom drop out of your stomach.

There’s a shadow on the couch. Not even trying to sleep

You haven’t made a sound. You know you haven’t. But the shadow of the head tilted.

“What are you doing up?”

Weirdly the noise calms you. If he’s deliberately calling attention to himself--

You force your arms to relax.

“I can ask the same thing, Bro.” Cal’s legs dangle, dragging against the floor as you step out of the hallway, and onto the carpeted living room floor, “It’s 4:13 in the morning and we were up at a godawful hour as it was.”

“I asked first.” His voice is oddly stilted. “I’m not mid-development cycle and needing 10-12 hours of sleep a night, like you do.”

Again. Again with the kid thing. You squeeze Cal’s arms, digging into the plush limbs, “I’m also not the one who has constant bags under his eyes.”

Silence. The shadow doesn’t shift. It’s absurdly motionless and it’s itching at you. How much of that is the darkness masking the micro-ticks you’ve gotten good at noticing and how much of that is actually his mood, you don’t know. You just don’t know and you’ve still got panic lingering in your system and you hate it.

“I was an idiot.” The admission came as a surprise, his voice a bit clearer now that he’s turned his head toward you. Most of the futon is understandably kept out of the path of the moonlight because that would be rather counter productive to actually sleeping,  but some of the reflective light allows your adjusted eyes to make out shapes and edges, “Just made a monumentally stupid decision before trying to sleep, and now it’s a useless endeavor so what’s the point?” You see him shift. A head tilt? “What’s your excuse?”

...you hadn’t expected him to actually answer.

You swallow.

You decide to tell the truth.

“I had a nightmare.”

This isn’t a fight worth having. Not at 4:17 in the morning. When you’re tired and cranky and drained and...

A sigh.

“C’mon, kid. Get over here.”

You...aren’t sure exactly why you do it, but something in the quiet command has you crossing the room. Rounding the edge of the futon, and hoisting yourself up onto it. You don’t do something so stupid as to cuddle him, but you do put your back against the wooden arm of the futon, drawing your knees up. Lil’Cal ends up pushed against your chest, with your chin resting on his clay head, and you can feel Bro’s eyes on you as you sit, half in the moonlight, half not.

“Do you want to discuss it?”

You don’t. You really don’t.

“I just finally got to slay my dragon.” You let the silence linger and you imagine you can see his lips quirking, “Lemme tell you, it ain’t what it’s cracked up to be. No valor in that shit, just singed capes and burst eardrums, dragons are loud as shit. Throwing a tantrum like a fuckin’ baby who broke his toy because it stepped on it with its giant fuckin’ food--”

There’s a rumble from the other side of the futon and you realize he’s chuckling.

“You said 'got to'. It seems you succeeded.”

“I--” You pause. The realization hitting you like Lil’Cal’s plush fist of rage directly in your sternum, sending you through the air and tumbling until you managed to get your head back on straight. “I...guess I did. Huh. Dave Strider, bonefide dragon-slayer. That sounds pretty dope.”

“Indeed.”

Against your better judgement, you find you don’t really want to leave. Here on this lumpy old futon that smelled like bro, clinging to the dead-eyed puppet that-- tormented you-- startled you. But the moon is bright so you scootch out of your corner and closer to Bro, that quiet, immobile shadow, head tilted up and leaning back and staring at the ceiling.

The dregs of the nightmare hang over you like someone had sewn a bunch of weights into your pjs when you weren’t looking. The paranoia that had driven you out of the room seems almost...muted. Going as limp as the doll in your arms.

You’re...just tired.

He doesn’t say anything as you stay.

As the clock ticks forward.

As the moon dips behind the buildings.

As your head sinks.

As you end up curled into his side, Cal shoved between you both.

As his arm settles, hesitantly over your shoulder.

As you eventually fall asleep.

Notes:

He DID want to fight that dragon...

Sorry it's a day late, but well, look at what day it is! Happy homestuck day!

Next chapter is Davepeta :3c

Sorry for not responding to the comments but I was really trying to get this done! I'll catch up this weekend :3

Chapter 45: Davepeta > Keep Yourself Together

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

You jerk awake, shooting up and up and--

THUD.

The impact sends shudders through you, your head aching so bad from where you apparently shoved it into a wall . You fall for a moment before you realize you can float. That’s how you ended up in this situation, a startled bird fleeing to the air only the fucking sky was a roof and probably a good mile of metal, rock, and meteoric regolith. You rub at your head, careful to curl your fingers to avoid digging claws into grey skin. Glaring upwards above crooked lenses, there's an honest to god impact crater in the once smooth surface, shaped uncomfortably like your head. Even little horn marks; you find yourself grateful for their solid, short stature because as much as you love Equius, you don’t think you’d want to mimic his Look.

The pathetic whine building up in your chest doesn’t go anywhere because of course it can’t, but you turn in the air and draw your wings around you like a feathery recuperacoon. Cutting you off from sight and surrounding you with black-green darkness, fighting against the swimming vision and pounding head and jolts of terrified what the fuck s running through your brain. White strands caught in clawed fingers and you can feel the pressure against your scalp.

Pull yourself together. You can do this. Just because you had a dream that couldn’t have been a dream because you’re drenched in manic heart-shaped birdshit doesn’t mean you should literally fall apart. You’ve come too far to let something like this rattle you.

Something like…

Him.

Energy vibrates through your wings, crackling like a roving band of miniaturized lighting storms, drawing to mind a sudden onslaught and an instinctive summoning of power to protect . You could work with shields. But it’s exactly what you’d had use them to to stave off that had you feeling like you wanted to flip your pun-loving shit. Echoing laughter drudged itself out of the depths of your past, clawing up your spine and dragging with it a mountain of birdshit you were supposed to be over with. Laughter that had dogged your every footstep unless you were time traveling or chilling in Rose's room because you couldn't bring yourself to stay in your own. Even that reprieve wasn’t enough because the nature of stable loops, and your aversion to unnecessarily dead daves, meant it wasn’t safe to constantly travel just to get an infuriating puppet-sprite off your back.

Your hands twitched, itching for the oddly familiar shape and weight of a sword that’d once broken in your hand. But all that did was pull out your claw-blades with a metallic shing-k , pink blades glowing, glittering with that same magic that still clung to your feathers and left you nearly vibrating in mid-air. You’re dripping the shit like some sort of magical pinata, sending sparks falling all over the room before they fizzled out into nothingness. Dregs. Ashes of the power buzzing inside you.

You’re you. You’re still you. You gulp in air and block out the world and sink into the comforting spliced together web of your own soul, opening up that sense that allows you to hear the thrumming music. It’s just you. All of you. Both of you. Even if you’d gotten mixed up with him and and stirred around so much it was like a serving of dave soup, unable to tell where you ended and he began which wasn’t right because you aren’t just Dave anymore --

A bubble of orange and red, a complementary harmony. Together and blending but decided not you.

Recoiling you bite down and fangs pierce skin and you taste blood. You’d forgotten about those. Stars glowing in the mosaic of pulsing beats of dark green and red and black, part of you and yet not.

The shards you’d accidentally picked up in the debris cloud. Bits and pieces that didn’t fit the template that got swept up into your wake and trapped like a body that passed too close to a star and up and got itself annexed without so much as a by your leave

You’re a heart player .

Of course something like this would happen. Of course your powers would fuck you over like this.

Okay. Shards. Gotta get rid of those. After what happened with Dirk you’d think you would have expected something bad to have come from this. At least you only have to deal with shared nightmares and not like body snatching that would be awkward. Walking up to Dirk as a mini-Dave and finally getting your purr on--you want to laugh hysterically at the image but it comes out your useless throat as a faint wheeze. You draw in another shuddering breath. And then another. And then open your eyes. The music plays between your ears, thrumming in your chest, becoming less and less clear but never leaving you. You start by dismissing your claw-blades with a flex of your hand, peering out through the gaps in your recuperacoon of green-black feathers.

Your sudden flight had thrown shit everywhere. Blankets, couch cushions, stuffing, your carefully arranged nes--pile destroyed . Now that it’s scattered all over the floor you’re starting to question your reasoning when it came to bringing down the ones you’d partially shredded when trying to remove them from the couch because the force had managed to send the little balls of synthetic fluff interior all over the floor. You can’t help but making a face at the thought of cleaning it up, but even that leaves you wincing.

The magic has stopped flowing but you still feel like you’re humming when you finally set yourself back on solid ground, the ache in your head fading but not fast enough not at all. You suppose you should be glad you didn’t crack the damn thing open with that stunt.

You can barely see Dirk through your blurry vision, a splotch of maroon and white peeking out from beneath a cocoon of blankets and extra puppet felt (a gift from bro you weren’t gonna put that shit on your own pile no matter how comfy it was) you’d set up close to your own pile. At least you hadn’t buried him in your cast off debris of chiseled cushions and cushy as hell blankets. The jerk just snoozes away as if you hadn’t had the weirdest out of body experience you’ve ever had, and given you spent three years as a sprite in some weird half corporeal state, that’s saying something.

Your fingers itch, calling out your communicator from your sylladex--you still can’t get over having a sylladex again. You’d never expected to use one again after you gave Dave literally everything you had and ever worked for and backflipped off the handle of your own sword into seppucrowsprite not entire sure it would work but it didnt matter you were dead anyway--your pile is shot but you don’t want to be alone so you cross the room and curl up against the wall next to Dirk’s. Not in it--even with that simple acceptance of your intentions given over pesterchum you don’t think that’s a line you’re willing to cross yet. Not unless he’s here or in distress or--stop thinking about it. You’re here. You’re close. And if he’s asleep he’s asleep but you have so many thoughts and words piling up inside your thinkpan you need to let them out because--

dataJammer [DJ] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< holy shit bro
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i just had a nightmare
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and not like the holy shit im late for school and i forgot my homework and maybe also didnt realize theres a distinct br33ze around my posterior and everyone was yowling at moon as i stand and give a purresentation kind of nightmare
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< shit
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i dont know i was just curled in my pile staring at the ceiling thinking about pawsitively crucial plot developments for my dope webcomic and i just like must have just b33n so damn comfortable and warm my lizard brain kicked in and it was total zzzzzzzz up in here and like at first it was okay
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< hella trippy but okay just this strange sort of floaty f33line that really shouldn’t be strange since like hello part bird not to mention former sprite floating was kinda the one thing we had going for us
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and there were clocks and shit everywhere and i could like hear them but i couldnt track them and they just got louder and louder and suddenly i was back on that hellhole of a planet where you
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< he
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< died
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and like sure i could s33 this being my subconscious finally getting its feathery ass kicked into gear and processing i dont know some of davesprites issues i gotta admit im purrobably long overdue for some full steam ahead breakdowns when it comes to that shit but
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< that laughter
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< that goddamn laughter
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i prototyped cal in my day did you know that???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< never
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and i mean never do that
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the dude was straight up wack constantly stalking me and driving me up the wall and like i threw in the towel and doomed myself early to get the fuck away from him and
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< fuck I dont know
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< trauma city
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< it didnt look like cal but i know that laughter i know it fucking anywhere
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the dude got into my head but it wasnt just my head and it wasnt davepeta and it wasnt dave at least not yet
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ive never held caledfwlch dirk it broke as soon as i tried to pull it outta the fucking stone and then i took daves to the big man to get it upgraded but it was never whole and never mind but i knew exactly what it was when that welsh piece of shit fell into my hand and i just got so angry
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< so fucking angry because hell shorty is just a kid and doesnt deserve to get put through all the shit i had to go through
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< or even what that the real dave had to go through
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< though i guess this dave gets to be the real dave now
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< alpha dave becomes beta dave and i get demoted off the scale what am i now gamma??? Or maybe me as davesprite was gamma and now davepeta me is delta or would it be the other way around fuck if i know i never did turn in my membership card maybe if we ever make it to some ultimate-self-meet-up well all get dorky little name tags or heck ill upgrade it to a teeshirt with our greek-letter indicator of relevance to the title of dave
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the point is he has a chance to be something better than we ever were
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< someone who hasnt been ground into the fucking ground and broken and stitched back together a million times and heres the personification of my worst nightmare shoving all that shit down shortys throat like it was i dont know candy or something
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dont know dirk
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i mean cool i figured out stuff
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i can make shields with how much unadulterated hell no get out of my head i was f33ling and i can appawently end up punted into the dreams of other daves who really dont n33d me skulking around in there and knocking over stuff and leaving a mess id be the worst houseguest s33 a glass sitting right on the edge of the table and id stalk that prey so hard and catsually push it off while totally looking you in the eye because thats exactly the kind of douche id be
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i had nightmares about that fureakitten puppet all my life but it was never that bad
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< he hasnt had to go through some puppet related trauma recently has he???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< no surprise puppet ass from nowhere or cal battles since everything exploded yeah???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you purrobably woulda told me if somefang happened
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you

You hesitate. You know what you want to say. And you expect him to say no. The same way Bro had refused to give up that thing no matter how much it killed you to see him holding it like a long lost friend. You’d asked. Of course you’d asked, remembering those months of clashing metal and wailing swords and ticking clocks and the constant hee hee hoo hoo hahs.

And he’d just looked at you, and looked at Cal, and looked away.

You’d had your answer.

You weren’t worth it.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you should put cal away
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i dont know how much he means to you but i do know how much he meant to bro
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< while a lot of this is a me thing it started as a dave thing first
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< better safe than sorry


There. It’s out there and there’s nothing to be done about it now. Maybe he’ll listen to you. Dirk was bro but he wasn’t Bro.

Maybe.

You thought you were over this shit. Memories of the Land of Hell and Purgatory bubble and pop like gasses rising through molten rock. That dead glassy eyed orange face on a bird-sprite body. Your body. It’s an image that leaves you shuddering, and you’re pretty sure if you’d eaten anything at all since you came back to life you’d be tossing chunks all over the floor right now.

You never really understood why.

Why did Calsprite hate you?

Why did he dog your steps, even after you’d produced the amulet tying him to you and gave it to him? The dude straight up haunted you like a creamsicle feathered poltergeist.

He never spoke a word to you. Only laughed and laughed and let your own insecurities fill in the blanks as to why.

Was it because you took him away from Bro?

Was it because you left Bro alone?

Was it because in 4 fucking months you’d never found him on your planet even though you searched and searched and finally concluded he’d gotten himself killed somehow or fucked off into the lava pits when you proved too incompetent to progress the game?

Fuck no the kid didn’t need to be anywhere near that shit. If your nightmares are leaching out of you like sand in a sieve you need-- you need--

To make sure this doesn’t happen again.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< think I need to do something
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ill be back dont go anywhere
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< not that you can go anywhere being all asl33p furever and all but
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yeah
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< if you do wake up
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dont leave?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i made you a hella rad pile
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the least you could do is enjoy it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and like if you wake up but dont wake wake up
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< check on the kid for me

dataJammer [DJ] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

Notes:

I'd decided to wait until Friday to post this, since there's another scene I wanted to do with Davepeta. But this just kept going and going and I really wanted to end it at the scene break because it feels like a ==>

Honestly you can blame @caledfwlchthat for convincing me to go with my instinct and enabling me and therefore you get this three days earlier than otherwise intended!

Also thanks to Hyena (you know who you are :P) for some very lovely dives into Davepeta and their coping mechanisms and how this particular nightmare would affect them which helped me refine this chapter :3c

And since I'm just thanking people all over today, thank you everyone who's keeping up with this fic and reading, and double thank you to those of you who take time and brain and comment, every one means the world to me and I love seeing how you guys feel about particular...elements in these chapters :3c

Okay Kat just post the dang chapter and go to bed you're rambling too much right now

Next chapter will be Davepeta doing what Davepeta needs to do! That's already in progress so hopefully it'll be good to go Friday ^^

Chapter 46: Davepeta ==>

Notes:

I feel the need to Clarify even though I'd hope it's obvious that this fic is not, or will ever, draw on the Epilogue or what it means re: characters or themes. Any themes or concepts shared (such as the ultimate self) are entirely coincidental and had already been planned before the release. Basically I'm not letting it change my understanding or plans for *this* story, even if that technically means it needs to veer away from "divergent, but as canon compliant as I can get it" to AU.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

You aren’t particularly fond of Derse-- this was the best place ever . Sure, you and Rose used to have your rad little slumber parties and planning sessions in her room but the entire thing was tainted with the horror of realizing that they were gone -- you met him here first and you could run and laugh and fly and live. Oh and you guess you died here too the first time, that wasn’t fun.

But you fixed it. You fixed it and they were fine-- and you were too somehow-- John lived, and Jade lived and Rose--

None of that. Not now.

A black and maroon and white streak in the sky, you look upon Derse’s moon for what might as well be for the first time. Last time you’d been chasing Roxy, your perceptions of the world faded and blinking as you struggled to hold yourself together. You couldn’t have handled coming in at the speed you’re going now, slingshotting yourself around the small planet’s gravitational field to keep circling it, you probably would have fallen apart, looking for the chain and the hunk of tower-rock and the four spires plopped one facet after another.

For a moment you see not four, but one more. A memory of a wild flight, laughing and spinning through the darkness of space, arms wide and purple nightgown trailing behind you as you dive in through the window of the furthest most tower in a righteous pounce on the unsuspecting troll inside. You purr as he wakes, strong hands instinctively reaching for your neck because of course they do, it's an attack and that’s what you do with attacks. They may have considered you feral, but Pounce de Leon didn’t neglect any lessons in the art of pacification so you purr and shoosh and fall into his shocked arms and he catches you because of course he does, adorable broken teeth visible as his impassive face breaks and falls into a small o of surprise, dark eyes inching slowly towards blue opening to greet you--

And it fades. Five become Four and in the depths of your re-forged soul you miss him. Both of you do. All of you do. You just...do.

But you can’t. You can’t dwell. You’re here for a reason. You left Dirk for a reason, and it wasn’t to come all up in here and pale flirt with Equius’ ghost.

(-would they have even become ghosts?? You remember it vividly, the little bits of them left after the game tore the red sprite out of them. Blue and red and purple shreds breaking further and further apart before your eyes and sucked away with you to be thrown out with the trash. You couldn’t find them when you came back to yourself in a sea of stars and you’d looked-)

You’re near the towers now, you push Equius back, pulling on a very different layout of dreamers rather than the one who felt missing. Your--Dave’s session--only had two towers on your moon, but you met Dirk there and thieved his dead body away from psycho-mom there so the two on the nearer facet must be them.

You’re close enough you can feel him now, you think. The small bundle of orange and red bits and shreds of data and memory you’d picked up out beyond the Furthest Ring are shimmering within your web of self. You flew by the nearest tower, the closer you came to the second the louder they got.

You aren’t a stranger to Other Daves. You were the quintessential Other Dave. And even before that there were always Dead Daves. Daves were a dime a dozen in your experience.

After all, a Dave was still a Dave was always a Dave.

So why did it feel so monumental hovering here, outside that window, peering into the softly lit shadow of a very familiar room?

What are you doing?

Why are you even here?

Would this even mean anything?

A slippered foot touches down on the window sill, and you use your wings to steady yourself with gentle twitches as you shift away from the almost sprite-like ignorance of physics.

You slip into the tower, and it’s almost like you were coming home, even if you haven’t been here in years. Your room--his room--Dave’s room spreads out before you as you settle into a crouch on the table under the window. Shit flares to life as soon as you cross the threshold, the pounding music and lights and colors knifing through your already sore head. This was nothing like the debris cloud where daveshards were scattered among thousands of others like orange and red and black sprinkles shaken and stirred up in a giant mega jar of other sprinkles. That had been diluted, easier to categorize and let sink to the back of your mind.

This was a concentrated cacophony of a madhouse blasting its music into your audio receptacle, like you always imagined only the best raves and clubs would be. Overpowering and overwhelming enough to carry you away on the music and just dance and dance and dance. Like slipping your best set of headphones over your ears and pumping the tunes directly into your skull, sending it vibrating to the rhythm and immersing yourself into it because it let you block out the too-fucking-quiet rest of the apartment and Bro ironically never bothered trying to get the jump on you when you buried yourself in ill jams out of respect for the art form.

The song is deafening now, the harmonies flipping the entire score to take center stage. Colors shimmer like will-o-wisps, pink dripping from your wings, reds and oranges and blacks scattered throughout the room like someone took a nebula and squeezed it down into the size of a smaller-than-average bedroom that belonged in a downtown Houston apartment, not at the top of a tower on a random purple moon in some weird meta dimension that transcends time and space. They filled the air like smoke, covered the floor in shattered pulsing glass, smaller and somehow even more mangled pieces than the ones you’d witnessed in Roxy’s tower. In her.

Something winds its way through the hundreds and thousands of slightly off notes, each one with small variations in style that hum throughout the room. Something subtle, discordant, and yet oh so familiar that it grabs you by the nape of your neck and shakes you. You immediately glance to your right, to the bed, seeking out what should be the sole occupant of this mindscape.

Shorty’s awake. You can tell he is, since he’s, you know, sitting up. You’d expected him to be at his computer, blissfully pretending he wasn’t in different pajamas, or in a completely red room. That the night just blurred together because you couldn’t sleep so you’d shoot the breeze with randos in your chat rooms or work on a music project or draw…

But no, he’s sitting on the bed instead, knees pulled up to his chest, and arms folded on top. With his head a shock of white blonde hair mussed and messy splaying over his arms. He doesn’t so much as twitch in your direction. You’re nothing to him. A passing thought to be discarded. You’d ignored the shit out of your dreams despite being awake for years, why shouldn’t this mini version do the same?

Anyway, the rippling discord wasn’t coming from him, he hummed along surprisingly coherent for a mangled dreamself-god with the wrong glasses and mismatched pjs and only half the sweet cape you’re rocking.

If it wasn’t your obliviously ignorant tangentialself, nor was it one of the hundreds of, no thousands of shards that filled the room, that leaves one other option, sitting across the room propped up on the desk, across the sea of glittering, pulsing stars. As you focus in on him, the sound sharpens into a screeching of metal that claws its way behind your eyes, dredged up from the depths of your mind.

Cal doesn’t glow, even as the garb of a dersite dreamer and red-cheeked clay face shimmers red in the light from the shards around it.. He doesn’t ping your senses at all. Nothing more than a black hole in the warping of the melodies around him, the disturbance creeping and seeping into the shimmering notes that litter the floor. Touching them. Changing them. Tweaking them just enough that if you had proper ears they’d be pinned back against your skull to match your bared teeth and soundless hiss.

Those familiar glassy eyes and that gap-toothed grin. A particularly compelling shiny you just have to have. An unsuspecting squeakbeast. All you need is to swoop--pounce--grab--claw--and it’ll all be over.

Colors and sounds get caught up in your wake as you stalk through the room, it’s too densely seeded to avoid anything so you don’t bother, gathering on your face and garb and wings like unsubstantial dew drops. Broken dreams and shattered daves and flashes of fragments too small for you to even read because they’d been pulverized beyond recognition, all drip drip dripping through the physical barriers to pool around the pulsing stars already making themselves at home within your patchwork soul.

This should bother you. The idea of even more dave, particularly This Dave--not even Shorty but shreds of the one who you’d doomed yourself for and who resented you and you’d resented back until you’d found freedom in realizing there was no freaking point, Dave is a Dave is a Dave --getting all tangled up in your web of self. But you can’t bring yourself to care. Shorty may not be your Monkey, but he’s Dirk’s Monkey, he’s the piece of the ultimate you who can finally be what you wish, and probably what every dave wished deep in the caverns of your broken heart before life and shitty circumstances smashed it to even smaller pieces than the ones that pulsed around you.

Pink claws slide out of your gloves with a ring of metal and a click as the mechanism locks them into place.

The laughter bubbles in the back of your mind. You visualize that howling green dragon, and looking through them you see that same storm glittering in Lil’Cal’s eyes. As if you could reach through it, across time and space and back to its very core.

You know the truth in the back of your mind. Dead is dead is dead, but frozen as it may be, that grin survived when everything else was torn apart. There’s a malevolence behind the laughter that stalks you. A rage that feels all too haunting and familiar that has the small feathers along your neck and back and collar quivering with unease and fear and…

Anger.

A wordless snarl, masks upon masks falling away to show the ugly beast-bird-troll-girl-boy at your core. A bundle of failures and regrets and hopes, a walking ghost of the dead and doomed-- no don’t it’s cal cal is all you have left of your bro you can’t get rid of him no matter how much you want to haha hee hee hoo hoo honk you watched him strangle equius you refused to watch him ruin someone else and that’s what spurs you to act -- sparking pink energy curls around your blades--three on each hand no don’t go for the face not this time, plunge both into the core and pull out , rip him apart, shower the room with stuffing and severed limbs and throw them into the fire of the hellhole where he died. Where you all but died.

Blades sink into nothing, the plush puppet body wisping and fading as you tear into it. Wings flap and flare, charged metal dragging against stone glancing off wood and scoring a long deep gash in the top of your--his--the desk. The warped music fades for a moment leaving you floundering, colors flashing behind your eyes as you turn to an increasing chorus of haha hee hee hoo hoo hahs.

He’s back the way you came, so you lunge after him. It’s like the roof. Like all those strifes. When you’d see a shadow of Bro controlling the motions, except there is no Bro. Not Here. Just You and Cal and you dance, slashing and reaching, you’re much faster than you ever were before.

But never fast enough. You never catch up. Your sword--claws, three swords per hand are better than one--

The final laughing image fades out and you freeze. Because there’s something in front of you. Something beneath your claws. It pulses brightly where the puppet was a pit of nothingness, singing at you.

Where Dirk is mass of uneven razor sharp edges, and you are a weave of patched tapestries, Dave is a supernovae frozen mid-boom. Bright red around which the rest of this shit orbited. Stabbed right in the heart of the dying star is a shred of poisonous green that’s off, oh so off, surrounded by wisps of a remembered aura that tugged at-- purple blood dripping from three claw marks a strong grip dragging your wrist not even letting you own this revenge stealing it from you--

haha hee hee hoo hoo honk

Laughter echoes in your ears as you stumble back, pink blades recoiling, white hairs floating free from where you’d just missed and settling to the card suit-adorned bed sheets surrounding them.

Lil’Cal leers up at you from where he’s clutched in Dave’s arms, pressed up between his chest and knees. Daring you. Daring you to strike.

How.

How dare he.

Retracting your blades, you reach out to grab that cursed plush bastard by the neck and pull him free. You’ll shred him by hand. Using your short, but sharp as fuck troll-claws. How dare he, using the kid as a shield--

And...he fades as you go to rip into plush leaving nothing but empty space and you suddenly understand.

He was supposed to be here. You couldn’t even escape that laughter when you slept even as you left your sprite behind on LOHAC. You moved to Roses’ room whenever you dreamed, much to her annoyance, but you never told her why, just quipped about sleepovers. You never told her what was buried in yours--in Dave’s mind--

Literally apparently. You can’t even see mini-Dave anymore, only that bright shred of green where it should not be. You itch to reach out for it. To yank it free. Fuck whatever massive, gaping hole it would leave behind.

The moment your clawtips even so much as brush it, physically tangled with mangled jammies, the world shudders and you see red.

White hair shifts; rising from folded arms. Mirrored lenses slip free. Red eyes, unfocused and bleary stare up at you towering over him, clawed hands outstretched and in his face to grab the remnants of a fucking puppet that was never there .

The memory of Calsprite’s laughter echoes through your skull. But this time…

A voice whispers from within poisonous green, you flinch and release and spin away, finding him across the room, lounging on the turntables.

There can only be one.

He’s supposed to be there, and so he is, and you don’t think you can yank him out without breaking something fucking important.

A flurry of feathers, and you’re gone.

Notes:

Fun fact, I actually finished this Friday. I just figured no one would really be interested with fic given the uh, release on Saturday. I was going to take longer, and build up a backlog, but then I realized *I* needed to solace of writing and reading fic after all that, so back to our regularly scheduled updates!

Next chapter will ofc finally see Dirk and Davepeta having a non-asynchronus feelingsjam about their respective uh. Experiences. Including that one, there's two more chapters (both Dirk) until the time-skip (which may be a chapter composed of a series of pesterlogs. I haven't decided.) and then it's into the next major arc >:3 It will be rather Dirk heavy, but I think you guys'll appreciate why when we get there.

As always! Lemme know if you have questions ^^

Chapter 47: Dirk > Wake

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

It’s like coming up for air. You’re dragging yourself out of one of the pitfalls in the tombs on your planet. Not the easy way, just taking advantage of your second life as a dreamer and floating the fuck out of there, but the hard way, puny keratin finding purchase in the divots in stone brick and pulling yourself up inch by agonizing inch.

In the back of your mind you recognize this is just another simile; a construct you’d deliberately created in order to facilitate any sort of meaningful move back towards consciousness. Whatever sleep you managed after that hell of a night clings to you like the insubstantial but cough inducing conglomerations of dust and detritus you still need to knock out of the crawlspace.

That place, with it's boxes upon boxes of shit you don’t want to think about. Staring at your bottle of medicine thinking about the meeting you really don't want to do. Thinking of dropping the bombshell that was tucked into a folder you left on your desk. The bottle unopened, sitting where you’d sat it down on the TV stand. Staring up at the shadows playing across the ceiling, the futon fitting into the you-shaped lumps in all the right places because apparently it’s been yours for at least 9 years or however long it’d been when Dave meteor’d into his--your life.

It’s fleeting, hard to track, but the shreds of memory bubble up anyway as you pull yourself further up and up and up, inch by aching inch. The darkness of the medium and the peace and quiet, the ability to step back across the veil and layer your perceptions to give you a moment of peace during the clusterfuck that was going to be tomorrow…

It’d been inviting. It’d been hella inviting and it had been a fuckin’ mistake.

Got your fingers stuck in the door, didn’t you?

Snarled up in the threads and pulling . It's not like the usual snap of the rubber band; these were an iron grip around your metaphorical lungs, clawed hands digging and shit cracking , and you’re yanked away and down. You know in that moment that it isn’t trauma. It’s something and it’s malevolent and it’s hurting you and tearing you apart to make you what it wanted because you aren’t him --

Even when you breach the lip of the metaphorical pit and your breathing hitches and you finally start to consciously draw in the air rather than leaving it to the subconscious respiratory sub-cycles, you don’t move. You don’t open your eyes. You just sit there-- you’d fallen asleep sitting up-- head leaning against the back of the futon at an angle that you can already feel will cause a crick in your neck as soon as you move it.

You just. Take the moment and breathe. Feeling your chest rise and fall, and using the time to scope out and take stock of every limb and physical weight tying you here, running goddamn gravity force calculations between you and the futon just because it’s something to do with your brain so you aren’t thinking about...

You’d dissociated so hard . Like you were somewhere else, looking out, a being trapped in a prison of flesh, unmoored and off , like when you’d first did your weird welding thing in front of Brain Ghost Hal, settling back in to this adult body and nothing felt like it fit. Like you’re simultaneously too big for this meatsuit, and yet it felt baggy on you. Maybe it was slipping into your real body for the first time in what felt like weeks, or maybe it was whatever the fuck happened that tore into you that threw you off so hard, or maybe it was--

Behind your eyelids you can still see the faint red cracks and you wonder if you’d fucked up and broke something again with that stunt.

Something shifts next to you, a weight at your side you hadn’t registered. Or maybe you had, and deemed it not-a-threat. You’re not startled at all though, oddly calm--exhaustively calm perhaps, all your panic left in those memories leaving you too tired to really muster up all that much more right now--you finally crack your eyes open against the dim light of early dawn filtering through the kitchen’s windows behind you, the angle low enough in the sky to throw long beams of light across the room and paint the television and walls in front of you.

The weight turns into a lump which further resolves into a head of white hair burrowed under your arm.

You should be surprised. You feel like you should flinch away in case Dave’s wakes up like this and spare him (and you) the embarrassment of needing to process the wee hours of the morning you barely fucking remember. The anxiety builds under your skin, but you muster up the resolve to keep it under control this time. Bits and pieces of disconnected knowledge intrude on your mental force calculations; previously noisy data points standing out from the rest of the background noise and linking up to form a semi-cohesive narrative. He’d had a nightmare. You did too, or your gameself would have, if it followed the same pattern as last time--but this wasn’t like last time though. You could feel it in the ache in your head and your heart where sharp nails had dug in and squeezed and cracked .

You should contact Davepeta. Honestly, you probably already have a wall of text about it if you could just make it to the computer. Not for the first time you wish for your shades and the ability to open windows and chat without having to move more than a few eye twitches and some warming up of your well honed skill at internal monologuing. You’d be able check in with them right here, without disturbing Dave, maybe get their advice on how best to deal with this without either of you embarrassing yourselves.

Box that thought up, and slide it up into the crawlspace. Not going to use them as a living walkthrough, remember? No matter how efficient it was.

Maybe you should change your time-table a bit. Push up the production of that chat client for your phone.

Dave makes a strangled noise that draws you back from the edge of that tangent you’d almost taken a swan dive from.

Too-large hands or not, you’re used to working with small and delicate components and it’s not difficult to leverage that care to gently move the hair away from Dave’s forehead. It puts up a token resistance, matted with dried sweat, the boy’s face scrunched and uneasy, expressive in sleep in a way he tried to stifle during the waking hours. Another nightmare? Troubled dreams? You always assumed Dreamers dreamt like normal people until they woke up. It’s not like you would know.

He’s not clinging to you at least--means it should be easy enough to prop him up long enough to extract yourself from performing the function of a pillow. If you wanted to. You really should. There may be a smushed puppet between you, technically, but it’s still uncomfortable. And uncool. And makes you think of the roof. Either roof. Red sky or green. Only it’s not just you and Dave here. There’s a third wheel shoved awkwardly between you two, whose fate right now is apparently relegated to that of a teddy bear. Lil’Cal’s plush, stuffed body is caught in a vice grip, and whose eyes--if they weren’t the same glassy blue orbs and inanimate and dead --would be bulging right of his clay-faced skull with the amount of strangling force was going on right now. It should be funny. Why isn’t it funny?

The pain in your head spikes and you force yourself to look away, breaking your resting state of impassive neutrality with a wince and a surprisingly cold hand against your forehead. It’s not like anyone was here to see anyway, just Dave, and Cal and…

You really should get up. Sitting here thinking about shit isn’t going to put off the meeting you have in--your phone slides out of your sylladex and into your hand as you mumble the corresponding rhyme--five hours. You could layabout chasing your brain in circles like dog and then panic when Newt called to pick you up, or you could get up and go through your notes, check on Davepeta, and occupy yourself with something so you at least feel like you’ve prepared for shit.

It never seems like enough. You can be as confident as Hal in a plan and it still has the possibility--the admittedly infinitesimally small probability--of it going wrong. It’s always less certain when it involves people you don’t know. Or places you don’t know. Or--data. You just needed more data, that’s all. At least when it came to your friends you felt you could predict their reactions within an acceptable degree of error--

Stop it, Dirk. Stop stalling and just move him.

Twist, and maneuver your arms under Dave to support him, and slide yourself out.

You hesitate, with the weight in your arms. Should you just leave him here or--

No. The certainty washes over you like a tired sigh. No, you should not drop him like a hot potato and let him wake up on the futon. You should be the responsible adult --you’re only 16-- and take him back to his room. He’s small enough still. You’ve carried Jane AND Roxy off at once when you had to, a dreamself’s disregard of physics aside; you can carry a child, you’re just being ridiculous.

You should…

But you don’t. And you’re disappointed in yourself for it, because it feels like you’re running away. You let him slump into the futon--arranging the landing position gently, no need for him to have a crick in the neck like you do--and grab the blanket you’d thrown into the corner several days ago because it was irritating your sunburn. It becomes a makeshift pillow that Dave latches onto almost immediately, releasing the limp and sorely abused Cal to flop off the futon and pool on the floor, face down.

Your inclination is to reach down, pick up the doll and set him back on the speaker. But something stops you. A feeling, a feeling that has the cracks in the world weeping with remembered malice. It was ludicrous. It’s just the anxiety bubbling under your skin. Whatever had happened last night felt like it had torn insulating foam away, leaving your nerves exposed to the air.

It seems y ou're finally listening.

The hum of your computer whirring to life joins Dave’s quiet breathing as you wait for it to boot up. The folder stays closed on your desk as you balance the keyboard on your knees, pulling them up between your chest and the desk. It stares at you. Taunts you with what’s to come. But you’ll deal with that in a bit. You’re the last person you’d expect to put your friends before your work, but that’s the point. You don’t want to just fall back into old habits. You’ve got to be better than that.

The black and white shades blink onto the screen, and you keep your touch light as you input the password, careful to keep the clicking of each key far quieter than the mechanical keyboard had any right to be. It’s not like you want to wake Dave.You can be considerate.

Maybe it would be more considerate to do something quieter, like go over your proposal, but there’s a little nagging feeling in the back of your mind that’s telling you that you probably have unread messages. If you still had your proper shades, it’d likely be an actual notification, but without them you’ll just have to make due with past experience and deduction.

timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering dataJammer [DJ]

dataJammer [DJ] is idle!

...and you were right.

You read over the...quite frankly frightening amount of backlog of green text. You’d expected them to be worried about you. To tell you about your dreamself having another nightmare. You’d expected teasing and threats to preen the fuck out of you, whatever than entailed. Not…

This.

Whatever this was. A slow descent into...something. Not madness, to quote the cliche, but a kettle, boiling over and whistling a warning that you’d missed by four fucking hours. Your eyes flicker away from the words scrawled across the screen, towards the puppet sprawled on the floor, staring up at you when you’re fairly certain he’d been eating carpet from his tumble out of Dave’s arms.

you should put cal away

timaeusTestified [TT]: Okay.

You chew on the rest of the pesterlog as you extract yourself from the desk, gingerly picking up the puppet even as the world cracks further. You feel...alienated looking down at the limp form in your hands, staring into those eyes, glassy and de--

No. They aren’t dead, are they? Your raw nerves sing as something flickers in those eyes, brushing up against the dull edges of yourself. The cracks spread. Green fire leaking through and flickering, overwhelming the red, bubbling up to claw at your vulnerable insides.

You feel sick. Why hadn’t you seen this?

It isn’t empty anymore, is it?

Remembering Caliborn’s words, from the rooftop all those months ago, you stare down at a clay-molded face that mirrors your oldest friend. Your guardian. Someone who felt familiar. That you could trust.

Familiar. Achingly familiar. Like you’re holding a piece of yourself in your hands.

But...no longer safe.

Not that any piece of you is ever safe.

timaeusTestified [TT]: I put him up in the crawlspace.

With distance, that dread is dulled, the green retreats, but it lingers, coiling in your gut. You aren’t sure if it’d just broken through last night and sunk its claws into you, or if it’s been here all along. You just didn’t have the mind to notice it.

dataJammer [DJ] is idle!

You wait. You’ve caught them idle a few times in the past few days, but they generally respond right away. You suppose it’s about time for you to have a turn at leaving a freaking monologue, like two ships passing in the night, flashing their lights at each other in complicated patterns in order to simulate conversation.

timaeusTestified [TT]: Dave’s asleep on the futon. I woke up with his head snuggled into my side like an oversized white cat. Almost thought he was you for a second, but he was a bit lacking in the troll-bird part of the equation.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I think he had a nightmare.
timaeusTestified [TT]: That’s why you asked wasn’t it? To see if he actually shared it? It’d say it’s pretty damn likely.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I can’t think of another reason for the kid to fall asleep on me like that; it’s not like we’re overly touchy feely given all the baggage we’re dancing around here.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m not so sure if it would be Cal related though, I sort of remember him rambling about dragons; Besides, Dave was cuddled with the guy like he was like some sort of life preserver and the dude didn’t know how to swim.
timaeusTestified [TT]: In the same vein, no, no puppet related trauma on my watch. I haven’t had the chance to use puppetkind techniques in ages. Cal is…
timaeusTestified [TT]: I don’t know, honestly. Whatever the fuck happened last night has me all wound up and sensitive like someone scraped free all the industrial grade insulation around my heart bullshit-o-meter because something feels wrong about him.
timaeusTestified [TT]: My Cal wasn’t...like this.
timaeusTestified [TT]: If this shit follows the pattern, then I had a nightmare too. I honestly don’t remember. It’s not a subject I’m particularly experienced with, aside from it resulting in explicable cases of anxiety.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Which I am still experiencing now, by the way, despite the fact that I’m fairly certain such an event would have happened hours ago.
timaeusTestified [TT]: All three of us having nightmares the same night is too much of a coincidence.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Granted, mine was of my own making, rather than some potentially freaky juju magic.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Tell me if there’s a big gaping gash in my soul next time you look because it fuckin’ feels like there is and that shit’s annoying.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Are you okay? It’s been hours since you sent those messages

dataJammer [DJ] is idle!

Hands rest on the keyboard with an exhaled breath, staring at row after row of orange text spanning far more than you’d perhaps meant to say. You’d been needling Davepeta for spending too much time in the meteor lab, fussing over your gameself like an overgrown hen, but this was far worse. At least there you’d known where they were. For them to go raring off like that...

If only you’d made that chat client. You'd asked yourself, what was the point in making a dumbed down version compatible with this generation of device when you know smartphones are going to change the face of communication? Something you’re already putting into motion plans to exploit.

The point was you could have fuckin’ known when Davepeta needed you. You could have set your phone to ping you. Even when you manage to sleep you doze light enough it wouldn’t even take much.

You consider the folder on your desk, and then shove it aside to give you more space to set your keyboard down, uncurling yourself from the hunched posture your body gravitated toward when you were relaxing. This wasn’t time for relaxation.

Chill, laser sharp focus settles around you as you crack your knuckles and set to your task. Delving deep into lines upon lines of code, into developers kits, into the infrastructure of modern day cell-phones themselves, it's almost like coming home. Picking apart everything you can to find a way to sync up the two across devices without needing to contact the company itself. You’ve done this before--it’s not like the developers were around to ask when you made it work in 2419--but it’s a little different now, no fancy sburb based tech from SkaiaNet or CrockerCorp which is weird as fuck because SkaiaNet exists in this universe, even if Jake’s Grandmother wasn’t around to found it…

You don’t even know how much time is passing. It doesn’t even matter, this is a way you can help. At some point you hear the rustle of cloth and the hitching of breath but you carefully keep your eyes glued on the computer screen, and your fingers typing, giving Dave the freedom and privacy to sneak out as if nothing happened. It's the least you could do, since you weren't able to take him back yourself. His movements are a ghost on the edge of your periphery, and you lock eyes with him once as he's almost to the hallway and--then he's gone. He's gone and there's nothing for you except the code in front of you. There’s nothing on your phone, and nothing on pesterchum--

Until there is.

dataJammer [DJ] is no longer idle!

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im pawsitively purrfect you dont n33d to worry about me bro
timaeusTestified [TT]: That’s highly unlikely given you were incommunicado for several hours.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Where are you?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< who was the one telling me to stretch my wings eh???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< what if i just furgot to decaptchlogue my communicator???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< what if i just n33ded to go for a flight to clear my head???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< just a trip around the ol’ rock
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< or several trips
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< theres a lot of rocks out here to fly loop de loops around theres no n33d for me to fly all the way back to derse
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’d say I believe you, but that would be lying.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m going to conclude you did indeed go to Derse, or more specifically, to Dave’s dream room. Where Cal is.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33<
timaeusTestified [TT]: Don’t ellipses at me, Davepeta.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I put him away.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ...i saw
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< not that it furreaking matters
timaeusTestified [TT]: Davepeta?

You wait several minutes, but there’s nothing. You grit your teeth. Emotional shit wasn’t the easiest for you, but you were trying.

timaeusTestified [TT]: If you’re serious about this relationship, need I remind you it’s a two way street?
timaeusTestified [TT]: Tell me.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33<
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i always told myself i loved cal because i loved bro and bro loved him
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but i can also say hes given me nightmares all my life
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< hes always been there in the dream room
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< even once i woke up i couldnt just throw him out i just kicked myself out instead
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and i thought about that dream
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and about cal just sitting there in shortys room
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and i thought hey maybe i can stop him from going through what i did
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< kinda selfish i guess because like thanks to my stupid heart pawers i appawrently maintained some sort of connection to my ultimate self and i dont really want to go through it again through him
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< so i showed up claws out and ready to kick some puppet ass
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< it ended up just like old times
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< thats all there is to say on the matter
timaeusTestified [TT]: That’s total horseshit, Davepeta. You always have more to say.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I want to help but I can’t fucking do anything other than listen. You need to talk to me.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Where are you? Are you still on Derse? Are you hurt?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< hey fair no im the one who is closest to being litterally part maternal cluckbeast youre muscling in on my niche
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and im not sure where i am to be honest i bolted like a jackrabbit and its not like i can just call up a map with walkthrough magic anymore
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im not physically hurt no
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but i guess im pretty fucked up otherwise
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< got my feathered ass kicked by a smug manifestation of trauma thats lodged so d33p into my skull that even this quick and dirty recreation of paradox space insists the little shit has to be there
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< heres a cal and theres a cal and everywheres a lil cal
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you putting him away means squat if the universe decided to shove a piece of what-ever-the-fuck he is into my
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< his psyche
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< kid doesnt deserve that man
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i still cant believe you even listened to me btw
timaeusTestified [TT]: Dude, why the fuck would you even doubt that? If you tell me the juju’s getting freaky I’m going to listen to you.
timaeusTestified [TT]: This whole scenario is heavily based on your timeline, ergo you’d be more knowledgeable when it comes to the details. It’s downright stupid to brush off a reliable source of information, especially when it’s from someone whose judgement I respect.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< bro wouldnt fucking listen to me
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i dont know
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you still had him so you obviously didnt think anyfang was wrong
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< what the fuck is a juju
timaeusTestified [TT]: Jujus are magical paradox spawning horseshit.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Look. I had…
timaeusTestified [TT]: I wouldn’t call him a friend because he actually killed someone important to a very close friend and that’s all kinds of not cool.
timaeusTestified [TT]: He knew a lot about fucked up shit like this. About jujus. About Cal even. How they are neverending and cursed and shit. Tried to get me to throw him off the roof once.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Maybe my head was full of actual cotton, or maybe I was just so distracted by being here and Dave and you…If I’d remembered that conversation sooner I would have...I don't know. Done something.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I don’t know if I could actually throw him away, but putting him in my strife deck or something would have kept him away from you or Dave.
timaeusTestified [TT]: He’s still Cal. He’s familiar. He was the closest thing I had to a guardian. Losing him felt like a gaping hole punched in my gut that’s only recently been patched up.
timaeusTestified [TT]: He’s a part of me.
timaeusTestified [TT]: In some ways that makes me even more willing to be careful with things if someone starts giving it a side-eye and saying it smells like day old horseshit.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Parts of me aren’t pretty. I just don’t have a very good track record of noticing that until something goes pear shaped.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Isn’t that part of this whole <> business? Trusting you?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i guess
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its just after bro i
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< goddamn davesprite n33ded a proper diamond to call him on his birdshit didnt he
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< look i
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< n33d to think for a while okay
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im gonna try and figure out how to get back to the meteor now
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and check on that gash you mentioned beclaws if that happawned on my watch while i was too wrapped up in my own shit im gonna like pr33n the fuck out of you as you oh so elegantly put it until youre a furreaking puddle of goo on the floor
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and then were going to have a purrper f33lings jam about your nightmare because dont think im letting you turn this around on me like you said this is a two way str33t here
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you arent allowed to pull that stunt again without telling me
timaeusTestified [TT]: Taking advantage of your unchecked access to my unconcious gameself, and my inability to stop you. How devious.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ill ask purrmission dont you worry
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< besides you know you like it B33
timaeusTestified [TT]: Feelings. Joy.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< *dj wiggles their claws suggestivly* magic hands
timaeusTestified [TT]: Stop.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< fine fine
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< take your medicine and get some sl33p
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< isnt it like befur dawn still
timaeusTestified [TT]: ...it’s nearly noon
timaeusTestified [TT]: I have that meeting in less than an hour.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Sleep will not be on the agenda, I fear.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ...shit did i get desynced??
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< paradox space is furreaking weird
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< fine go be an adult and business the fuck out of those m33tings
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< well talk after okay?
timaeusTestified [TT]: I don’t think kicking the can down the curb will do anything more than just give us a reason to rehash all this shit again.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yeah but itll let me digest the fact that im not actually delusional and that puppet is actually a magical spawn of satan
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i saw some
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< purretty fucked up shit when I looked into his eyes
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< it wasnt dave i found
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< it was me
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< not just davesprite me
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< christ its hard to explain
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< like equius and--
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i dont know if you met gamzee
timaeusTestified [TT]: Fuckin’ weird clown juggalo?
timaeusTestified [TT]: I...don’t think we’ve met but I feel like we have. Shit’s all weird and fractured.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< stick murderous at the beginning and religious zealot at the end and yeah that’s about it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< everyfang about that dude is furreaking weird
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< hes the one who killed me and my meowrail fyi we got major b33f
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< maybe cal doesnt give a shit and just picks at everything until its raw and thats part of the curse or whatever
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< a curse that picks at all your worst memeowries and encourages the worst pawssible bits of yourselves would fur sure explain what happened to bro
timaeusTestified [TT]: I thought being an abusive asshole explained shit pretty well, personally.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< hey
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< bro wasnt
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< fuck
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< he wasnt always bad
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< like sure he was always shit guardian but
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< looking back on it got weirder and weirder the closer we got to the end
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i always thought he was just upping the ante because i was ~ready~ or some birdshit
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but now that ive gotten a look at it with what i know now its like
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< how the fuck could anyone live with that and stay sane you know???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i only had to deal with cal for 13 years and i was purrmenantly scarred
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< bro had him for double that
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< might as well have b33n born with the dude
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and its all johns fault isnt it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< he gave me a furreakin pony and gave bro a mindfucking juju puppet
timaeusTestified [TT]: ...a pony. Really?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yeah he told me about it sometime during the nth retelling of John in SlimeBaby Land
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i think bro turned it into a bib or something i dunno what happened to it
timaeusTestified [TT]: ...shit Newt’s here.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I have to go.
timaeusTestified [TT]: We aren’t finished.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< maybe not but this means that can was successfully kicked B33
timaeusTestified [TT]: Consider the can retrieved and put back on the shelf until I get home.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< remember you purromised to tell me what your super secret purrject is once all this is over
timaeusTestified [TT]: Get your ass home, Davepeta.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< <>

dataJammer [DJ] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

Notes:

Whelp that was a long one. I'm oddly nervous about putting this out there...

As always, if you've got any questions or comments I'd love to answer them!

Chapter 48: Dirk > Be All Business

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

You don’t feel ready. Or even remotely prepared. But you’re here. You’re here and you are keeping it together. Because you are cool. You are cooler than an ocean breeze and you won’t let that fact change. It’s one thing to quietly freak the fuck out in the comfort of your own--even if sideways--home.

But this was business. Numbers and shit. You might not know who the fuck these people are, and the idea of them expecting things of you terrified you, but if you sit down and focus on the numbers you can cling to the exhausted calm that settled over you like a blanket this morning despite your realization and frankly chilling conversation with Davepeta. It’d been terrible timing getting that text when you felt like you were finally able to work through some shit, both theirs and yours, but what were you supposed to do? At least they were going home--and since when are you thinking of that lab as home? You barely remember it, lost in the haze of gotta get back to dave , but…--at least you’ll know they’re safe, and that you can pick up that half-opened and kicked can of glassy eyed worms again when you’re both ready.

So here you are, across the table in a coffee shop of all things, from a frowning dark-skinned woman with cropped short hair, whose dark eyes bore into you as she taps long nails against her own set of books she’d brought along for the occasion. Newt was talking, going over the month’s view counts, and the steadily dropping trends and his work towards getting something called affiliates with other content creators. You think you get it but you don’t care, you don’t really, not beyond the fact that numbers were good and solid and patterns were something your brain could chew on without tripping over into crisis mode.

Despite that, you can’t say you’re particularly happy talking and thinking about the future of Plush Rumps, even if Newt is taking a surprisingly amount of care to not mention the subject matter itself. The table you three had snagged was thankfully far in the back, a corner nook that most mid-day customers didn’t seem inclined to intrude upon unless they needed to use the restroom which was through a door just off to the side, an appropriate precaution when talking about a literal puppet pron empire in public.

This would have been a dream come true once. You’re sure of it. Shit, you’d loved puppets as a kid. You still do, don't try and deceive yourself. You remember letting your mind wander as you watched your bro’s iconic movie, The Stairs for the Nth time, imagining living during this era. Taking your passion and turning it into an enterprise, storming hollywood (in a way, the internet was better, more freedom to do whatever the fuck you wanted ) and making people love it.

Now you have it, how does it feel? Plush Rumps, even without you touching the thing since you arrived, still was raking in more money than you could even comprehend the buying power for if Jane’s initial status report was correct. And that was with dwindling new viewer adoption rate. The retention was still going strong. You could easily pick up the strings, make them dance, make some fuckers on the other side of the screen get turned on over phallic noses and promiscuous plush bottoms and just sit back and bask in how well they react to the buttons you press. You could fulfill that fantasy. You could be like your Bro. The undisputed, yet controversial King of media, even if his legacy was the ironically terrible yet revolutionary film, and yours would be the flipside, the underbelly, the secret shame lodged in hundreds of thousands of closets, constantly leading them back by the nose for one more plush rump...

Yet...the idea makes you feel nothing at all. Perhaps even the slightest bit nauseous.

When did that change? Was it Hal, giving you a taste of what exactly that felt like? Was it Cal? Waking from failed attempts to dream only to find anxiety crawling under your skin. Was it the fact that you were inheriting the fruits of someone else’s labor? Or was it just your own fault that you’d crashed and burned? You tried to pull that master puppeteer bullshit once, spinning plans and webs, accounting for every variable, tugging at your friends along the best paths for them. Sending Brobot to Jake to toughen him up--and really is that no different from another you on the roof, facing a too young boy?--running circles around Jane and building her a safety net she’d never need.

You think about the marionettes that once hung on the walls, the smuppets stashed in a corner, and Lil’Cal sitting in a box in the crawlspace where you throw all the junk you can’t bear to touch.

It’d all fallen to pieces around you eventually, the strings turning to ash in your hands.

No. You couldn’t be another puppeteer. That fruit had rotted when it burned your relationships to the ground and left you with Hal’s life in your hands, and cracks in the glass, and the cold certainty that you were going to do it. You were going to kill him because he was a monster.

Would that be considered homicidal or suicidal ideation? You aren’t exactly sure how the term would be applied to a not-so-hypothetical brain clone of yourself.

And...Newt stopped talking, the part of your brain you’d tasked to paying attention noted, alerting the rest of the overactive swarm that hey, maybe you should actually pay attention .

“D-Dirk? Are you alright?”

It’s not just him, but she’d already been watching you so you aren’t sure it counts. You tilt your head, studying them back, Newt with that perpetually worried expression you’re starting to get used to over the smatterings of times you’ve met him and Jane with--you try to superimpose your Jane over her and it feels alien, like someone dumped a pound of sugar on something hot and it just melts into some sort of sticky sludge--fuck you can’t get a read on anything other than frustration? Why?

“Are you even paying attention?” She leans forward, elbows framing the binders full of notes and figures and reports she’d already presented to open the meeting. You’re being judged and you hate it. It makes you straighten out of your more relaxed slouch in the metal chair to meet her eyes. She’s all hard edges and a carefully calculated image, where your Jane was genuine and sweet. “If you’re that bored then why even bother showing up?”

Newt winces.

“I’m not bored.” You really aren’t. Numbers and patterns were like candy. But like candy they just can’t occupy your full capacity right now. Perhaps in a darkened room, relaxed in front of your computer, feeling as safe as you ever could be, you could devote your entire attention to it. Definitely not now.  Not when you’re surrounded by people you don’t know, in a place you don’t know, with a topic of discussion that leaves you with a pit of dread pooling in your stomach. You’ve already segmented your attention between half a dozen different things, running on separate subroutines, and you still find yourself flipping from one to the other trying to find purchase. “I was thinking.”

“Care to share?”

Even with your limited human contact, you know better than to admit exactly how many things you’ve been considering in the last five minutes alone. You know how it hurt your friends when you only paid them half an ear, maybe not even that. That’s why you created AR, before he named himself and insisted on being his own person--not that he was ever really a facsimile in the first place; you just didn't want to admit it. There’s the truth and there’s the lie and it gets all mixed up because there’s probably history boiling under that barely concealed anger, and you fucking hate history. “It’s been a while since I’ve needed to...” You nod toward them. The table. Letting your uncovered eyes roam the restaurant. “deal with all this.”

“It’s been over three years since we’ve last met like this.” Her dark eyes narrow, leaving you for a moment to share a Look with an increasingly uncomfortable marketing agent, before Jane taps sharply on her notebooks, “But even the occasional cursory text message or chat was preferable than six months worth of silence. If it weren’t for the fact that the content kept uploading and the paychecks kept coming, I would’ve thought you’d’ve jumped off that building of yours by now.”

“Jane we talked about this--”

“So we did.” She’s not angry. Not in the sense you’d gotten from Jake once he’d finally boiled over and blown up at you. You can see steel flashing in that palm, and it simultaneously explains everything and baffles you. She expects something from you. Something you’re not equipped to give.

“He’s here now, and I told you what just happened, it isn’t the time to be--”

“This is exactly the time to be bringing it up! So what, you managed to drag him back out by the scruff of the neck again, but how long is it going to last this time? He doesn’t need us--he never did, you just don’t want to admit it.”

You hate history. Especially when it’s not something you can just read up on. You push back from the table, the anxiety bubbling over into a roiling boil and it’s all you can do to stop your arms from shaking. You need… a moment, you think. The chair scrapes against the wooden floor with a screeching sound that draws both their eyes back to you, “Do you two need a minute to talk or what? I can go.”

Hide in the bathroom maybe, you think somewhat distantly, the fragments of your attention keeping track of your surroundings keenly aware of the glances the raised voices and sudden motion had drawn to your sleepy little nook. The cafe was silent, but the barista is leaning against the counter in your direction and you find yourself wishing you were at home. In your chair. Typing in a shitty cross-timeline memo like civilized people, where you could just minimize the window for a moment if you needed to and none would be the wiser because for all they knew you’d had to go take a piss.

“Yes that’s a good idea--” Newt jumps on it first, nodding, but Jane wants none of it, shooting him a Look, that you can’t quite read but reeks of a familiar conflict, and his jaw clicks shut.

“No.”

“Jane--”

“It’s my turn, Newt. I’m sorry.”

She looks back to you.

Teeth grinding in your skull. The metaphorical spotlight burns hot against your unguarded skin. “What do you want me to say?” The core of the argument is clear. It’s as clear as fucking day, “I’m sorry?” For what? “For being a reclusive douchebag?”

“That’s a start, if insincere.” Her lips are a thin line, “But answer me honestly. Do you actually care?”

“About puppet porn?” The answer comes out as a strangled laugh, especially at the way Newt’s eyes bug at the fact that you actually said it. In the middle of a public space where you are the fucking center of attention of all of four other people in this sad little store. You can see the assumptions building in their minds. A lover’s spat. A trumped up, dramatic inter-personal conflict and it gets derailed by something as dumb and contrived as puppet porn??? The wry part of your mind is amused as hell by the idea and you cling to it, asinine absurdity worthy of at least an opening short gag in your bro’s films.

“It was never about the puppet porn,” Her lips curl in distaste, and then, peculiarly, you see her check herself, clenched fists uncurling to lay flat against the binders in front of her, one hand over top the other. One deep, solid breath, and then those dark eyes are on you again, “I might even venture to say Plush Rumps was the worst thing to happen to this company, and not because of any damaged sensibilities related to the subject matter. The money doesn’t even matter. We could all stop working tomorrow and be set for life.”

“What I want to know is do you even care about the team . About us. What matters is those six months , Strider. Do you know how many emails I’ve sent in six months? Care to venture how many I’ve received? From you? Do you even look at my projections? Do you even need us? If not, why the hell should we stick around? I’m not your friend. I’m still here out of professional courtesy because you were a brilliant, eccentric bastard before you started turning yourself into a cave troll, but I’m reaching the end of my patience here.

“Just talk, Strider. Just sit back down and talk. Don’t check out. It is clear, things cannot stay as they have been. What do you plan to do going forward?

Do you even want to?

You don’t even know the woman, and you know what she’s trying to say.

“I don’t fucking know, okay?!” It comes out harsher than you’d intended, and she sits back, satisfied in cracking you like an egg, watching that clear viscous liquid of your growing anxiety seeping out of a blank white shell. “I don’t know what I need. I don’t know what you need. None of this shit will--”

matter in three more years anyway.

You close your eyes and suck in a strangled breath. The fabric of your splinterself’s stiff, collared shirt is nowhere near the right texture, but you pry your fingers free. That’s getting to be a goddamn habit isn’t it.

Fuck. Do you care?

Should you?

You don’t need them for this, but this business is as much theirs as it is yours. You acknowledge that. More so even. You literally just got here.

“I’m not going to pull that recluse bullshit again, for what it’s worth.” The words drip reluctantly, uncertainly. You’re trying to read her and you just can’t so you turn to Newt instead. He’s…

The weirdly anxious earnest hopeful look reminds you of being sprawled out on the couch, griping over sunburn and whether you deserved the kindness of strangers.

What the hell had your splinterself been doing? Did he have to screw up everything that came into contact with a human being?

Like you would have done better. To think otherwise would be lying to yourself. You did enough of that screwing up of your own in the last half a year. At least now you have a roadmap of what not to do.

They are still waiting for you.

Fuck it.

The half-fancied escape plan gets demoted a couple priorities, but you don’t sit back down either. You reach out, pushing the folder you’d kept buried under your arms toward the center of the table, and flip it open.

Feel your diaphragm expand.

Exhale.

“I want to develop a new product, independent of Plush Rumps. ” The words feel like pulling teeth, their attention is a weight dragging at your shoulders, but you stay standing. You agreed to this for a reason, and it’s not just because Newt said please.

“Revenue is steady. The website will stay up and supported, but I don’t plan to make any further content in that area. In that folder is my proposal. Schematics, coding samples, specs, possible suppliers, estimated cost per unit, it’s all in there.”

Paper rustles. Newt got to it first. The dude’s been silent since Jane cut him off; it’s been unnerving to watch the guy squirm wanting to say shit and stopping himself. “...there’s no puppets.”

“No. There isn’t.” Your smile probably looks strange. Pained, derisive, and nostalgic all bundled up into one single unreadable microexpression. “Portable, wearable micro-computers, meant to be paired with cellular phones. When the apple drops from the tree in less than a year the market will be fucking ripe for the picking.”

“A fruit metaphor,” Newt snorts under his breath, flipping through another page, the nerves are bleeding out of him now that he’s got something to focus on other than interpersonal drama. You almost wonder if you’re similar that way. “I see you’ve been talking to your little brother.”

He asks questions. Papers get passed so Jane could read through them as well, and you kick yourself for not making two copies. You’d know there would be two people why the fuck weren’t you prepared. You’re feeling more and more uncomfortable as they swap sheets, talking to each other and to you, your answers growing shorter and terser until Newt wants to ask that question of you. The one that started this whole mess in the first place.

The escape plan skyrockets up your internal priorities.

“Just look it over. I’ll be back.”

Jane looks up from where she’s scrutinizing a schematic, jotting what looks to be material costs on a napkin laid out on her notebook stack, “Are you running away? Or moving forward?”

You feel your lips curl, but you just shrug and head towards the hallway leading toward the bathroom. A quiet place where you can just be alone for five minutes and just try to breathe.

“Fuck if I know.” You don’t know what possesses you to answer honestly, but you just shrug, “I figure it doesn’t matter as long as something is moving.”

You don’t know if she nods, or shakes her head, or what, but she doesn’t say another word.

The hallway isn’t very long, but it’s dimmer than the rest of the cafe. Mostly enclosed. You wrinkle your nose at the smell from outside the bathroom door and decide you don’t need to go that far. There’s a curtain of some kind hanging over the opening of this transient hallway between the back and the dining area. It’s just a thin fucking piece of cloth but it muffles the ambient noises from the patrons and acts as a good insulator. You just lean against the wall and close your eyes.

The cracks behind your eyelids are spider thin, but red, not green. After this morning, that’s fucking comforting. All systems normal.

You breathe.

Focus on the motion. Count them if you need to. You don’t need a panic attack. Not here. You can still feel the attention crawling all over your skin even if there’s no-one to see you right now. No-one except you and the shitty ghost in your own head, and it’s not like it could think any less of you, huh? Keep it together. It’s just another step. A step towards feeling like yourself again, even if you feel like you’re drowning, holding your breath as you dive for it.

A step towards keeping the promise you made to help Davepeta.

Jane’s the accountant. She probably could access the big accounts. And some of these components would be fucking expensive to make. Newt had connections. Maybe you don’t need them, but they would make things easier.

You’re doing the right thing, even if a small part of you is frowning at the idea of throwing away a perfectly profitable venture. But see? That’s why it’s for the best. Use it as passive income, and dedicate your time to figuring out how to replicate certain pieces of tech and--

Pay attention.

“If you weren’t his friend, would you go for this?”

It takes you a moment to place it.

You can hear them. Faintly. Floating through the flimsy excuse for a barrier.

“We aren’t friends--”

“Please. Lie to my face again. This was never about the job for you, and you know it. You’re far too soft on him.”

“We’ve been over this oh a hundred fucking times over the last ten years,” He’s tired. You could imagine him rubbing his temples, “We aren’t . He made that clear.”

“Some people have trouble admitting to it. It does not make it untrue,” She offers, not unkindly. It’s also not incorrect, if you’re reading this whole situation right, “I’m not sorry for pushing him, but I do apologize for freezing you out like that. You do have history.”

The wood paneling of the wall is cool against your head and you slide down it, curling into a small crouch on the floor, pulling your knees to your chest. Your palms find your eyes and you press them down, hard, neon lights flashing behind closed lids, dancing in between the faintly glowing red that’s slowly becoming comforting. And seriously, how fucked up is it that you can look at a visual hallucination and go situation normal.

Breathe.

In for four.

Hold.

Out for seven.

“History? I guess. If you call being on the right bus at the right time, and not being able to leave well enough alone. 8 hours is a long time to sit next to a torn up kid and not start to care. You were right, anyway. I just... Has it really been that long since we’ve been here?”

In for four.

Hold.

“I was not exaggerating my count. I do believe the last time time we had a monthly meeting was in 2003.”

Out for seven.

“Christ…”

You just keep breathing. Counting. The silence is filled up with the distant mutterings of that bright dining room, just on the other side of a fabric curtain you could probably rip with your bare hands. There’s a whole ‘nother world beyond your bubble of breakdown central, one where people can talk to each other like they aren’t ‘cave trolls’ out of their depth and over their heads and drowning in it all.

“Are you even reading this? That conceptual and technical skill is wasted making puppet porn. It’s absurdly profitable, I’ll give you that, but this...”

“Right, sorry. Business. I forget you’re allergic to personal shit.”

In for four. You find yourself focusing on the voices again, pushing the rest away because at least you have a connection here. Weird and not entirely yours but it anchors you lest you drift off on the sea of nausea and anxiety. This morbid curiosity that causes you to latch onto the distant conversation because your brain is racing even as you work to calm yourself down.

Who were these people you were supposed to know?

“Not allergic, merely disciplined.” There’s a pause. Then. Hesitantly. A sigh. Papers being smoothed out on the table. “Okay. This is--we’re on break. Newt, please don’t think I don’t care how you feel, but we’ve been through this same pattern before. Many times. Probably half a dozen times in the five years since you brought me into this project. Less than that even, since the two years since plush rump’s launch has been one big trail of silent automation and stagnation. That website is a work of freakish passion, and he can’t even be bothered to keep engaged with that? You had to have seen it too; it’s your job to look for and interpret patterns.”

In for four. It feels like there’s something hooked in your chest, buried deep beneath your sternum. Tugging and pulling and nudging like kitten claws. Trying to pry you out of your skin.

“He throws his all into a new idea, the intensity is downright infectious,” Hold. “And then when everything is done he just...bleeds away… Because it isn’t interesting anymore. He’s the idea guy. The engineer. Brilliant and capable and intense and...”

Out for seven.

“Then he’s gone.”

Fuck this.

Fuck all of this.

You shouldn’t be hearing this. But you can’t pull yourself away because you need to know.

This is a glimpse of the person you were supposed to be, and it’s like staring down into the black hole that shattered the world. And not just the one you’re left to live in, with it’s points and edges and secrets hiding around every naked plush rump.

“I always let him go, because I knew he wasn’t looking for a friend, and I didn’t want to push on that.” A pause, “I was… when I got that phone call, it made me realize that maybe I should have been one, regardless of what he wanted. I want to hope maybe things can be different, if we just try to...I don’t know. Hold on. Instead of letting go.”

“You are far more forgiving than I,” A sigh. You think you can feel her nails tapping on the table. You don’t know. But it sounds like it. Tap. Tap. Tap. “Maybe you are right. Maybe things will be different. But we can not keep saying maybe, Newt.”

“...are you going to quit then?”

“I--” A pause. Papers crinkle. “I really don’t know. I was ready to, but now...this...”

“The cycle continues?”

“Indeed. Despite it all, I find myself wanting to see where this goes.”

“I know right? I’d kill to know where he got some of this information. Apple doesn’t have any press announcements scheduled for several months yet, but these conclusions check out. Some of my tech contacts have been buzzing about something…”

And so, the rhythm eases back into the comfortable murmur of business and numbers and patterns and by the time the nausea settles, and you can breathe without shaking like a leaf, neither comment on how long you were gone. If they notice you’re subdued and thoughtful, aside from some more pursed lips and hard looks from Jane, and Newt’s perpetually deepening frown, they decide to leave it well enough alone since you answer their safe, work related inquiries without complaint.

Jane was right, and yet very wrong at the same time.

He didn’t need them.

Not as business partners.

He’d needed them as friends .

Someone who cared, but wasn’t willing to call him on his bullshit.

Someone willing to call him on his bullshit, but tried her best not to care.

Christ, this was a right mess wasn’t it?

You look at them across the table, heads down and absorbed in your rudimentary market analysis, and feel something cold settle in your gut.

These were people .

And in three years?

They’ll be dead.

Notes:

Sorry for the missed week :c I had a lot of trouble with the second half of the chapter, and then was part of a wedding on saturday so like my writing ability kinda got fried for a bit there. I finally managed to finish it to a satisfactory level last night.

So, I know I said the timeskip would be next but--well, as you can see Dirk ended up with a bit of a philosophical conundrum on his hands, as well as a raincheck for a conversation with davepeta. So. There's now one more on our hands before the skip. XD

Hope you guys enjoy this peek into how other people perceived Bro, even if Dirk really is starting to dislike the idea of History. Dirk does Not Handle Confrontation well with people he Doesn't Know but aren't enemies either. Missing all the context and information is driving him bonkers. Poor kid doesn't know how to deal, and he's missing his security blanket right now too.

Chapter 49: Dirk > Divide

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

This will be your first rainstorm in this era. Even without the sensors you’d juryrigged onto the radio tower at the top of your apartment, you can tell. A wind leaden with not the scent of salt and ozone, but the sting of acid and smog blows through the metal struts of the structure, reaching you where you’d wedged this too-big body into the space you’d often liked to use to look out over the sea. The horizon is hazy and dark, buildings upon buildings glimmering like the stars reflected in the blue-black plane of your childhood.

The world holds its breath.

Maybe your bright expansive blue ocean and white gulls are gone, but something else took its place. That sea of light and metal and ever shifting and moving pieces. You’ve thought about it before, when walking those streets on what had once been a seafloor, trapped in the sights and sounds that assaulted you. A pulsing rhythm of lives and people and destinies all packed into a single space, orbiting around and tangled up with one another..

Background details--overwhelming as they are, foreign as they are, that’s all they can be. The nurses in the hospital, the people on the streets, the people in the coffee shop--

They are just background details in a doomed world. They aren’t on your radar. They can’t be on your radar. They can’t make you wonder about where they’ll be in three years when this cosmic simulation ends. There’s no other end to this scenario. Nothing but fire and flame and a dead world.

There’s nothing you can do about it.

Is there?

You like to consider yourself pragmatic. You have a goal. You have three years before shit hits the fan. Three years to figure out how save the session. Find out what it means for your friends. Make shit better for Dave.

You can’t afford to worry about them.

About a starved and neglected friendship that doesn’t concern you.

It...doesn’t.

You wonder if he’d recognized it. If that’s why he’d hired them. If it wasn’t just an excuse to delegate boring business decisions-- you prided yourself too much on taking care of everything-- but instead was an excuse to keep them close, even as he unconsciously built a brick wall between them. Terribly independent, because he couldn’t afford not to be. Wounded and hurting and wrapping himself in knives.

That photo tucked away in Cal’s trunk, in the crawlspace, told a story.

Tell her I’m dead.

You know him, just like you know yourself. If you’d kept that photo, it meant something to you. It still did. You don’t just...get over shit. It scars you, and then you can’t stop picking at it. Tearing the wound open again and again and again.

Sometimes you think back to the confident asshole you were before the game, and then look at the wreck you are now, and wonder what the hell happened.

Then you remember.

Jake happened.

He hurt you. He ran away. You were angry, but all you could think of was, your fault. You’d spent the last weeks before everything went to hell eviscerating yourself over it. Alone in the tombs you’d explored with him, tearing yourself apart to see where you went wrong. Breaking off chunks of yourself and dragging them into the light and hating every bit of it.

But you were never alone. Not really. Hal obviously helped you in your metaphorical mutilation. That was one of his functions. You resented it, growing to see the clinical distance he kept between you and your feelings as the end state you were terrified of. How do you think he felt? Trapped away from everything. From them all. He was you once. He was you and it hurt, being forced to detach even as he embraced his lot in life to keep him sane. It terrified you: the idea of one day seeing your friends as nothing more than another emotional obstacle worked into your plans. Or tools. Like when he would forcibly drag open your pesterchum windows, to the point where you considered smashing your shades against the English-green walls of your tomb, but blue and pink text always stopped you.

Maybe they were wielded with the precision of a surgical scalpel, but it was an offer of help. He was right. They were worried about you. They cared. And they dragged you back out.

He didn’t have that.

Not even a dark mirror onto whom he could project all those newly dredged up feelings of self loathing and recrimination.

She hates my guts

Would you have been willing to reach out again after that? Or would you have curled further in on yourself, showing sharp, indifferent spines to the world that would have even the people closest to you--who you trusted your kid with-- hesitating to even use the word friend?

Vibrations rumble through your fingers, snatching the bulk of your attention from where it’s been chasing itself around and around, caught in a never ending oroborus devouring itself. Digging desperate hands deep into the hypothetical mental space of someone twice your age, mixing it carelessly with your own toxic mess and synthesizing a cauldron full of acid that works to dissolve your insides--

This is dangerous. You haven’t moved since you came out here and you feel exhausted.

You feel old .

Was getting old contagious?

You’re only sixteen--you're 28--for fucks sake, no matter what this body tried to tell you.

The vibrations were a notification. Your phone is cradled in your hands. A text message. Not exactly what you were looking for. You navigate the clunky menus--your hasty modifications making it even more inconvenient than before. You itch to start on a prototype, on building something better . But this is what you had to work with, for now, and it should work you just needed to wait.

Where is Davepeta? You know how fast they can fly. You’d expected them back hours ago.

The worry bubbles and pops, joining the anxiety skittering like spiders through the chaos of your overactive brain. You derail it and shove it lower on the priorities list, before giving in and forcibly packing it and all that corrosive shit away into a box you know can’t contain it forever, but it should buy you some time until it eats through the walls. And the floor. And lands on your head.

You open up the message on your phone. It’s from Dave-- expected-- but after a small ramble about how you better not be dead on the roof again, he asked a question you didn’t expect.

whats this shit on the counter for???

Frowning, you thinking back to--oh. Yeah. That’s right. You did just drop the bag on the counter, didn’t you. That probably should have gone in the fridge. It’s been sitting out for hours now, forgotten and ignored between you throwing yourself back into your coding in your haste to get a workable prototype running, and then escaping to the roof when it got to be too much.

It’s still good. It’s not like behind the display case was refrigerated.

A fruit tart. You like strawberries right?

You don’t actually know that. Okay. You do. Sort of. Your Bro had liked them. You remember watching clips from the Tomorrow Night Show where he showed up in a ridiculous outfit in honor of his birthday with dyed mint green hair and a goddamn berry clipped to his head. The mad bastard didn’t acknowledge it at all. Not until midway through the show he casually popped the thing into his mouth and shrugged at the host’s sputtered shock, “Midnight snack, what can I say? I had the munchies.”

Man, your Bro could make anything cool.

You don’t even have those clips anymore.

Did you save some on your shades?

You hope so.

how am i supposed to know ive never had one before

It’s yours. I think you’ll like it.

did newt send it home with you

Low blow, bro .

It should sting to know how low his opinion is of you, but honestly, it’s the truth.

I picked it out.

right

you know baked sugary shit is like completely antithetical to the healthy bullshit that you stuffed in the cupboards yesterday

maybe i should eat it

fuck your baby carrots

You did at least take some with your dinner right?

yes mother i ate my fucking carrots

i got all bugs bunny up in here

all nyah whats up doc

crunchcrunchcrunch

i paid the veggie toll and it totally cramped the style of my mac and cheese i hope you appreciate the sacrifice

Just eat the goddamn tart, Dave.

The next vibration of your phone is a picture of the tart. With the perfectly coiffed arrangement of strawberries and whipped cream messily disrupted, and the berries rearranged to complement an artistic rendition of--you squint at it--probably a penis, knowing him. Your Bro had loved hiding phallic imagery in not so-hidden places in his films. The only reason you aren’t sure is because whipped cream doesn’t appear to be the most stable medium to draw in, the edges already falling to fill and blur the lines.

Truly a masterpiece.

He doesn’t respond further, so you let your attention wander away from the screen--though you still keep the plastic device at hand just in case . You transfer it to just your left, however, raking the right through your hair and ruffling the sweaty strands so they stop sticking to your skin, fluffing the damn thing up like a rooster again, but you’ve been hella slacking on your ‘do what with the single minded frenzy you’ve spent most of your day in.

A rumble of thunder in the distance, excited atoms transferring the bouncing soundwaves from the distant thunderhead to reverberate in your ears. It isn’t raining yet, but it will be. You can smell it mixing in with the acid stench that forces you to bite down a reflexive gag.

You should go inside.

It’s a sensible thought, but you don’t move. Even as the wind picks up and another roll of thunder bounces through the concrete and glass forest beneath and surrounding your perch. A glance at your phone indicates no further messages, but the white numbers of 9:53 stare up at you from the notification bar.

You really should go inside.

The closer the storm, the more charged the air gets. You like to think it’s almost sparking, sending shivers of anticipation across the patches of bare skin beneath your sleeves. It’s a strange balance between the oncoming storm and the fatigue that’s been weighing down on you all day, the cracks at the edge of your vision standing out starkly against the dark backdrop. There’s no light up here, aside from your phone. Lightning flashes in the distance, dancing above a series of shorter buildings that don’t block your view. Your building is one of the tallest around. It would have to be, considering all the rest had either rotted and collapsed away, or been covered completely by the ocean of the Batterwitch’s world. Your horizon had been a clean and wide and endless sea.

You slowly, painfully uncurl yourself, squirming your way into a position that allows you to slide out of the struts and into a crouch on the ground. You’re still not 100% yet. Maybe you need to start working out again. Get up before Dave does and pull some exercises. Maybe one day you’ll be able to ditch this body in favor of your own properly sized one, but until then you needed to maintain it.

Drops of water splash onto your upturned face, a sudden sting, wet and only slightly cooler than the ambient temperature of too fucking hot.

You don’t want to go back inside. Because green bleeds into red and you...feel something from the crawlspace upstairs. Something scratching at your insides. Trying to burst free.

It consumes you, and you feel nothing at all

You blink, and you’re standing in front of the box, light shining up from the kitchen downstairs. Cal’s glassy eyes bore into you, twinkling above a frozen smile and for the first time you can feel it clearly. Whatever presence is inside your first friend isn’t even bothering to be subtle anymore. It pushes at you. Angry at you. You know what it wants. You can’t give it to him. You can’t.

He’s dead. You're so tired. Struggling to pull that thought out of the molasses threatening to drown you.

There’s nothing you can do to change that.

“No.”

Just.

No.

You close your eyes and the void surges up around you, banishing Lil’Cal to flip flop through nothingness, and reducing his presence, and yours, to both nothing and everything at once. That awareness you’d been developing since you godtiered was dulled when embodied, but that didn’t seem to mean shit right now, wherever you are. You’re just a thought. A concept. Cocooned in threads suspended over the abyss. You’re fairly certain you don’t have eyes anymore, but you stare into it, finding the echoes of red flickering in the cracks running through the mirrored surface. Will you fall into them if you slipped out of this net? Will those jagged edges will cut you up and devour you?

Unlike staring into Cal’s baby blues; you don’t feel afraid.

A mirror only performs its function.

A perspective shift and you’re staring up, the core of yourself aches, bleeding, as the threads erupt from broken edges and outward, red tangling into blue and stretching out, out and away into the aether where the braid is devoured by this fiery mass of green heat and light and rage. Waiting. Watching. Lashing out, curling along the threads with tiny clawed chands, a gaping, fanged skeletal maw.

And yet, despite it all the licking flames can’t quite reach you.

You’re trapped.

But.

You’re certain about it. You’re safe. Or as safe as you can be, with a juju lusting for your soul.

Red glowing dimly in dark glass. Exhaustion trickling through. They shatter, and fall away, leaving you blinking in a more literal darkness, hair slicked to your face, water falling, eyes stinging in a way that makes you think you haven’t blinked in ages despites the droplets clinging to your eyelashes.

It’s raining.

You’re standing on the roof. Not in the crawlspace. Not some black void in your brain where ghosts and every unwanted thought gets shoved. Wind is whipping around you. Your clothes are soaked.

You wipe your face, futily, smearing the rain along your skin. It’s been going on long enough for the roof to collect various pockets of water, the emergency light dimly glowing above the stairwell, causing them to glimmer in the cast off light. You’re a dark shadow in one, falling droplets sending ripples through the shadow staring up at you. It unnerves you, that shadow, still and silent and watching, and you can’t really explain why, the images from your weird as fuck daydream fading as the moments tick forward. You relegate what you can remember to certain subroutines, to discuss with Davepeta when--they return, but most of it slips between your mental fingers and you sniff.

Figures.

Just another weird experience you can only chalk up to your fucked up heart bullshit. It must be bad if you’re getting them despite being in what essentially amounts to a cotton-stuffed meat-sack. Whatever Cal’s been doing must be making shit worse. Minor visual hallucinations, the anxiety, hell even losing time wasn’t new. Not since you’d woken up on the roof to a world spiderwebbed with thin red cracks, but this was the first time you’d felt yourself entirely…

Fuck you don’t even know. You wish you could talk to Davepeta, although you don’t think they’d know either.

How long have you been out here?

The phone in your hand has droplets of water clinging to the screen. You smear them across the glass in a way that probably makes it even harder to read, but the light comes on when you hit the side button. Around 10:45.

Shit. That was a decent chunk of time.

You should dry off. It flickers like a weak wi-fi signal, sensible, Do your hair--shit it doesn’t matter if it’ll be bed head in the next few hours, it’s the principle of the thing--and get back to work. Something aside from standing out in the rain like an asshole.

But while that thought nudges the back of your brain like the swatting of an exhausted kitten, you notice something. A new notification in the task bar, and the light on your phone blinking orange.

You don’t even let yourself process it before you’re navigating the broken menus and the slapdash interface and black text scrawls itself across the screen.

dataJammer [DJ]: mew know I havent the foggiest idea how long your m33ting was supposed to last
dataJammer [DJ]: it looks like you left the window online though
dataJammer [DJ]: didnt we talk about this???
dataJammer [DJ]: close outta that shit unless you want sneaky little monkeys pawing through your darkest secrets
dataJammer [DJ]: when the bros out the monkey pokes about
dataJammer [DJ]: with the way hes b33n baiting you id expect a set of phallic imagery on your desktop any day now

Your hands are shaking. The keys are slick beneath your fingertips. Each press threatening to push the moisture deeper into the casing.

timaeusTestified [TT]: Are you home?

The screen locks up for a hot minute. Longer than a minute. Maybe 5? 8? Shit you don’t know. You almost think your slap-dash, homebrewed, thrown together in less than 12 hours program bricked your phone, but then time-stamp glitches into some unholy mass of random pixels and then lines stumble in one after enough. It’s gotta be lagging. You need to see about troubleshooting the connection or figuring out if you can adapt a wi-fi receiver and then boost the signal.

dataJammer [DJ]: im fast but im not that fast bro
dataJammer [DJ]: i told you im kinda lost

Another big droplet drips off of your lank ass hair and pools into a bead of water precariously trapped between your thumb and the plastic casing that you don’t actually know is waterproof. You really really should also GET OUT OF THE RAIN.

This shit isn’t actually your gear, modified to survive the humidity of living surrounded by (and once dropped into) an ocean. You were just lucky the damn things were heavy enough to sink and not get swept away by a current. You couldn’t dive that deep even if you wanted to.

You don’t want to think about the ghostly images Hal showed you later, but you do. You can’t help it. Half the screen buried in sand, the low-light cameras shifting to sharpen spectral details of skeletal buildings looming around you. Tossed around as the makeshift weighted dredge disturbed the wasteland, collecting the thankfully wide frames and then the water lighting and lightening until--

He never mentioned it, but you wonder if maybe, in your hands, that wasn’t the first time he'd come face to face with death.

Fuck why are you standing here in the rain thinking about that, move.

The stairwell is only a flash step away--why the fuck didn’t you do this sooner? You know how to deal with electronics --but you’ve at least got a roof over your head even if you don’t dare head away from the doorway. You don’t wanna risk losing the already terrible signal by heading deeper into that small dank hole under a flickering emergency light.

The screen glitches and dumps another set of rapid lines. Far too fast for Davepeta. They’d responded to you though, so it’s not like you were talking at messages left hours ago that were just delivered due to some weird signal mixup.

dataJammer [DJ]: not much out here for even the universes best hunter to use fur orientation
dataJammer [DJ]: no planets no skaia not even any giant glubbing terrorbeasts to pinpoint which side of the furreakin galaxy im on
dataJammer [DJ]: litterally the only thing I got is the faintest of blips on my dave o meter but those could be leading me into the middle of nowhere or straight back to derse

It’s still unbearably hot out, but you feel chilled as clammy fingers find the keys.

timaeusTestified [TT]: Derse would give you a landmark. Even finding the debris cloud would allow you to calculate the direction back to the center by studying the density of the shards. It’s a basic ballistic pattern. I can probably run the formulas from memory.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Another alternative is to just send you the program. Did we actually give you computing capabilities?

Time stretches onward, clawed talons dragging you along inch my inch. It’s lagging. It’s just lagging but it’s giving you time to think about your question. About the answer.

You don’t think so. Even if the communicator does have the capability to run the chat program you don’t think it would be able to receive and execute files. Your immediate reaction is to blame it on the materials you had available. You had to scavenge what you could figure out from unfamiliar technology, and then divine the right punchcard combination to combine with it to get something usable. But you know that’s just an excuse. You could have done better. You should have done better. Given Davepeta something more versatile than the first-working-item you got.

You’d been in a rush. Sloppy. Brain tripping over itself in a haze of roxy killed me and what if she killed me and what if dave sees.

Overall you’ve just been too damn sloppy. You don’t have your autoresponder to double and triple check your shit anymore.

As if you ever listened anyway.

You pin that thought down under your thumb and stare at it like some rare species of bug that managed to crawl up from the sea. You might not have trusted him to not turn into a ruthless scheming son of a bitch, but you trusted the dude’s meticulous need to be correct about everything. Especially when it came to proving your own work inadequate. You’re no stranger to irrational self debasement, but even you recognize when something is blatantly incorrect..

At that moment your phone flashes again, the abused device spitting out another handful of lines far too fast to be humanly (or trolly) typed. Reluctantly you let the thought scurry into the darkness of your mental crawlspace. Now wasn’t really the time to be digging into whatever underlying issue was causing that.

It’s probably guilt anyway.

dataJammer [DJ]: nah brah the memeowry on this thing is smaller than a goldfish the moment i close out poof deleted even the logs are gone
dataJammer [DJ]: i can purrobably sniff out the right direction furom either of those places so thats where im headed
dataJammer [DJ]: shouldnt you be getting ready
dataJammer [DJ]: puttin on bros least lame collared shirts and waist high pants and all dolled up for babys first business m333ting
dataJammer [DJ]: dont let me k33p you furom your date B3c
dataJammer [DJ]: fluff up that tail and go gettem tiger

What-- ready ?

timaeusTestified [TT]: There must be time shit going on because that meeting was concluded several hours ago.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I sent you several messages after returning home. Didn’t you get them?

The minutes drag by.

dataJammer [DJ]: …
dataJammer [DJ]: shit no but
dataJammer [DJ]: it was only twenty furreaking minutes ago
dataJammer [DJ]: i just happawned to glance down and s33 you still there and my ears perked up and i just
dataJammer [DJ]: shit
dataJammer [DJ]: several hours ago???
dataJammer [DJ]: what time is it now.

You slide into a crouch on the second to the top step and nervously watch your signal drop from three bars to two from just that small amount of distance. You can escape the water entirely, but you can protect your equipment. You shift to put your back to the door and hunching over your phone to provide a makeshift break between the wind-driven sideways rain and your phone. Your clothes are already soaked. You are soaked. The only comfort to be found is in the fact that you’re fairly certain your ectobiologically created meteor-baby body has some extra resistance to earth-level nasties.

You hope. Then again you would have expected the same for sunburns and look how that ended up. You won’t forgive the universe if you end up sick after this.

timaeusTestified [TT]: The same day, but not for much longer. 11:17 pm. It’s been just under 12 hours.

It’s a familiar sight by now, the glitched out screen. You wait, drumming the fingers of your free hand against your knee. Thunder booms around you, the resulting shockwave sending sound vibrations shivering through the air, through your body, sending your teeth rattling in your skull. You think it sent the building shaking, but you aren’t sure how much of that was just you. Fuck that was a close one. That once distant storm was right on top of you.

dataJammer [DJ]: i wish you were here i n33d a witness to tell me how dumb that squeak of surprise was
dataJammer [DJ]: it didnt just get worse it jumped into the d33p end of the spacetime fuckery pool
dataJammer [DJ]: you want to know the reason i bummed around the lab all day every day???
dataJammer [DJ]: it was to avoid this
dataJammer [DJ]: at least if i stayed close id be safe in your bubble of narrative continuity
dataJammer [DJ]: but nope i had to fly off to stick my claw into the eye of the sun
dataJammer [DJ]: at least there id be in dave’s bubble but nooooo
dataJammer [DJ]: end up in the middle of who knows where with my anchor cut and drifting like im being dragged further out to sea by some current and i cant even hear time anymore much less try and fix it

The sun. The green fiery mass of teeth and fangs and--

You grit your teeth and shove it away.

timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m gathering from that diatribe that you think the malleability of your personal timeline is due to a lack of connections to a player.
timaeusTestified [TT]: We’re talking right now aren’t we? Wouldn’t that stabilize your place in my perception of time?

Except. Shit was lagging. It isn’t stable. The time between messages even appears to be growing. You haven’t necessarily been counting them down, but that last batch took a lot longer to send than the previous ones.

dataJammer [DJ]: fuck if i know i would have thought our talk this morning would have managed that if that was the case
dataJammer [DJ]: jades grandpa saved john during our session did you know that
dataJammer [DJ]: yet hes b33n dead and stuffed for years
dataJammer [DJ]: we had ecto babies existing in the same period of time and space as ourselves a la the ectodaddy john eggstraordinaire
dataJammer [DJ]: theres no set tempurral framework here just what narrative continuity we bring to it ya dig???
dataJammer [DJ]: especially once ya get outside the players sphere of influence and into raw paradox space
dataJammer [DJ]: you have a timefeline on earth its like an ongoing narrative that locks your gameself into it
dataJammer [DJ]: i had you
dataJammer [DJ]: i dont even have you anymore

timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m right here.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m here freezing my ass off in soaking clothes because I don’t want to lose you by having the signal blip out while i flash down the stairs.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I can stay here all damn night until my battery dies if it’ll help you come home.

You’re shaking. Because you realize you mean it.

Sucking in a breath you start typing out--fuck your mind blanks. Something. No don’t do that. You have eyes, you’ve noticed the pattern. One input, one output. If you word indulge in a word vomit that’ll make this package take all that much longer to get there. Or…

You don’t know. You wonder if Hal could have tracked the variances and found a more precise pattern. One you could use to estimate the periods of lag--something. Something other than just waiting here, digging your hooked hands so deep into the fabric of your clothes you're surprised it hasn't torn by now.

Curled up in the stairwell, you listen to the rain, the thunder, feel the tapping of your fingers against the damp fabric of your pants. Waiting. Watching the signal flicker again as the cadence of the rain changes. You wonder if it's actually the rain or the thunder or the clouds or just being encased in the thick concrete tomb that is the stairwell--even the tech you had grown up with was still from several years in the future so you could extrapolate but you don't know it's limits.

Time drags you forward and you let it. Through the rain and the steadily dropping battery percentage. Waiting. Because what if it’s just the lag? You said you’d wait.

The stream tugs you down river, phone clenched in your hands so you’ll feel the vibration should another package arrives. Cal’s there. You can feel him, just below you. Waiting. Banished from his place of honor in your home. He’s been angrily clawing for purchase all night. It’s nowhere near as clear as it was earlier, when your powers...flared or whatever that vaguely remembered experience was, but it’s there. And as you drift you wonder about him. He’s cursed. You know that. But what was he doing? What did he want?

Why was he so angry at you?

You aren’t the one he wants--you know that, idiot. You aren't supposed to be here.

The light in the formerly dim stairwell brightens, snapping you out of your own head. You stiffen. Looking up from your phone you can stare down the steep flight to the landing. The door’s open, the light from your apartment adding to the flicker of the emergency light.

“Bro?”

Dave’s only half out the doorway. He didn’t have his shades but you can’t see the red of his eyes from here, squinting up at you in the comparative darkness.

“It’s 3 am bro, please. Go the fuck to sleep already.”

You glance to him, then down at his juice. If he’s up this late…

“Another nightmare?”

He thinks he stifled it, but you see the flinch. It travels through his full body.

“Since when do I have a bedtime, bro ? A dude has a right to a late night every now and then.” You can hear the huff, fingers curling around the golden juice and blocking some of its pass-through glow from view, “I told you I better not find you dead on the roof again, and with how goddamn bedraggled you look I’m the odds are increasing. How long have you been out here anyway?”

You pause. And look down, fiddling with your phone as if it’s the most important thing in the world, and it’s not actually you confirming that it IS that late and holy fuck that means you’ve been out here for at least 5 hours.

But even that revelation doesn’t last because you notice something else.

dataJammer[DJ] ceased pestering timaeusTestified

Disconnected.

Was it the signal?

Was it your program made of spit and spaghetti and memory leaks?

Or, had your moment of synchronicity passed, like two ships.

With two lights.

Drifting just out of reach one stormy night.

> END OF ACT 1

Notes:

Huzzah! *flops* It's on time. I swear. And an utter beast. It's like. 5k words? This chapter has a bit of everything haha. Except perhaps Rose.

I rethought the act placement, and figured before the time skip would make more sense for the end of act 1. That's still going on as planned. :3c I hope it isn't as long as this one oof!

Don't worry about Davepeta either! They'll be back before too long! This bit is mostly introducing the concept of timeline drift when unanchored, as well as giving a nice narrative framing for the next chapter, which I suppose you'll probably see next week!

As always thank everyone so much for wandering through and sticking with me <3

Chapter 50: [I1] Time ==>

Notes:

Get settled in--there's a reason this took a month to write.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Interlude 1

dataJammer [DJ] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< B33< even though it took litteral minutes for me to get the connection open again im purretty sure it was long enough to drift
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i hope to frog that you didnt stay up all night for me beclaws i can tell its purrobably past dawn
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im almost afraid to ask how long its b33n this time
timaeusTestified [TT]: Welcome back.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I think it’s prudent to not worry about the drift. Stressing over the passage of time on my end takes up the precious bytes of data we have between us at this very moment.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Your side of things is the important part. The incipisphere is only so big; unless you ended up out past the furthest ring, which I doubt. The debris cloud is pretty memorable.
timaeusTestified [TT]: If I remember your ramble on temporal mechanics correctly, if you were near Prospit you’d likely stabilize in the influence of the Prospitian dreamers and we could make a plan without fear of the connection timing out.
timaeusTestified [TT]: A continuous data connection might prevent the initial drift that causes the lost data and the eventual lag and loss--but that’s a thought for another time since we’re obviously drifting in and out of contact.
timaeusTestified [TT]: At most you have a seven hour flight. At the least…
timaeusTestified [TT]: Well, given how fucking dark it is, you probably won’t be able to see the veil coming until you’re almost right on top of it. Once you hit Derse, it’s just a matter of getting you anchored in the Dreamers sphere. From there...well at that point you’re pretty much home free and we can see if an active connection is enough to keep you anchored. If only I had way to remote into my shades to access the maps, and maybe put a tracker on your signal or…
timaeusTestified [TT]: AR could have done it, but I find my access limited without the ability to physically access the device. After the last attempt, making a try for my gameself would be unwise.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I don’t need another chunk torn out of me. Metaphorically anyway.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< did you like
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< take notes or somefang on what you wanted to say next time i was online???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i mean dont get me wrong i appurreciate the info anything to make me f33l less like an ant swamped in some horrifyingly huge uncaring shifting pot of cosmic paradoxical soup despite my appawrent ability to fly at sp33ds even musclebeast would envy
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but that felt a bit too prepurred to be natural ya dig???
timaeusTestified [TT]: I might have run the math ahead of time, yes. I need breaks between work and my favorite distraction isn’t often available anymore. I don’t believe you’ve been gettin’ my offline messages properly.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< doth mine furry and totally perked up ears deceive me???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< did you just call me
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< your favorite??? B33
timaeusTestified [TT]: Your ears aren’t any more furry than mine. Do trolls even have body hair? Besides, you’re reading this. If you’re gonna perk something, perk your eyeballs.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Of course you’re my favorite.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Distraction.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< <>
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< *dj purrs all contented like they were just pat right betw33n the ears* ill take it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im not sure it matters because im mostly some weird mutt anyway
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< all i know is feathers furreaking suck okay
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ive b33n noticing my neck itching something fierce so it might have been too early to celebrate the loss of my birdsprite scarf
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< would you still love me if i had feathers???
timaeusTestified [TT]: ...Davepeta. You have wings. I promise any additional plumage would not change my opinion of you.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< point taken
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< being tempurrally independent sucks
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< can i climb back in the nest
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ch33p ch33p this baby chick got kicked out to fly and took one look at the big wide empty world and wants to crawl back into their comfy pile
timaeusTestified [TT]: Let me know when you get home. I’ll have a new blanket for you to add to it.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33<
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< okay dirk this is my serious face im even holding myself back from twisting this shit into a mess of puns
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< how long have i been gone???
timaeusTestified [TT]: …
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dirk?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< we never did have that talk
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the cans still sitting on the shelf
timaeusTestified [TT]: When you get home, Davepeta. I’m keeping notes, remember.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I would rather not get into that bombshell when anything we discuss is threatening to be dropped out in the unbearably hot sun to stink up the place for weeks.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< WEEKS
timaeusTestified [TT]: Let me reiterate: don’t worry about it.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Maybe I’m greedy, but I’d rather use the time we have on either just shooting the shit or getting you home.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< who are you and what did you do with my broirail
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< hed never say mushy stuff like that
timaeusTestified [TT]: Shut up. I missed you.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ...i miss you too.

x-x-x

A young boy hovers in the doorway to an open room, shades down to protect the sensitive red eyes, mirrored lenses reflecting the sunlight streaming in from the windows on the kitchen-side of the apartment. The adjacent side is draped in a soft shadow, blinds pulled down upon the narrow window towering over the only other occupant. Despite the bright and, most importantly, HOT state of mid-day--a state that pierces the interior confines of the apartment by sweltering the temperature from tolerable to oh god why--the uncannily bare walls resound with a peculiar noise. It’s soft, vibrating in a chest slumped over the desk in the corner, head buried in a set of crossed arms, keyboard pushed out of the way haphazardly, threatening to fall off the edge. Pages scatter across the floor where a precariously placed pile had come toppling down some undetermined time ago.

The screen isn’t asleep. This state of affairs developed recently enough--if the boy squints, an orange window that looks suspiciously like pesterchum can be seen flashing beneath the glare from the window. This is a familiar sight by now, one so familiar that he can’t find a reason to be angry about it. He’s old enough to know and understand what a hypocrite is, and it’s not like he’s been able to escape the on-again-off-again bouts of insomnia that seem to infect them both. Thoughts of dragons, and reoccuring dreams nip at the heels of sock covered feet as they make the familiar trek to the kitchen. Dragons and a fumbled sword and the frantic, but far too distant beating of wings. There’s something missing, but he can never exactly put a finger on it, even as more and more post-dream bird doodles fill the garage box underneath his desk.

He’s getting pretty good at drawing birds. People still suck though, but that’s alright. It’s part of the charm.

Day by day, a familiar scene: Bro hunched over the computer. Bro passed out on the futon. No more vanishing acts because he’s always working himself to sleep.

The boy has mired himself in a manic state of worry and exasperation for so long that, eventually, something has cracked into exhausted apathy.

Dave Strider stops. He grounds himself in the steady ticking of the moment and moves along the stream at a steady pace, letting it carry him from his room, to the kitchen, grabbing a handful of crunchy orange sticks, retreating back into his sanctuary with Bro none the wiser because he’s never going to admit that he likes the things.

His room is sweltering, even with the window wide open to the occasional breeze, trying to keep the air from getting so stuffy that he can't breathe. The AC is either broken or ineffective against the summer gathering its dying strength and smashing it down on the city like a giant glowing fist. He desperately wants a fan. He’d marched out of this very room moments ago after having gathered enough courage to ask Bro if they could get one but… Again, Bro’s passed out.

But he can deal. He’ll have to.

Movement catches his attention. He stops and stares. A shadow with beady eyes and folded wings and an intelligent stare. She--she looks like a she, he decides--perches on the edge of his monitor, wings ruffling and feathers puffing as he carefully, deliberately crosses the room.

He’s seen the crows on the roof before. But they never came near. Especially not with the clang of metal ringing out, considering what used to go on up there.

He slides the carrots into a pile next to the mouse for easy snackage. She snaps one of the lighter ones off the top of the pile and takes wing, escaping back out the window.

Black feathers flutter to the desk. He picks the largest one up and rubs the shaft between his fingers.

Watching it twirl is oddly comforting.

He starts leaving the window open more often after that.

She comes back to visit.

He has popcorn ready for her next time.

x-x-x

dataJammer [DJ] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< okay im just not going to ask this time
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< still no sign of derse
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< or even the planets
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< do they spawn in when the players do???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< man there goes my daydreams of doing a nostalgic flyby of my personal sweaty scr33chy lava filled hellhole
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< talk about one boring pregame how did you and jade ever find things to do for years upon years before the game???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< man i n33d to talk to jade
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i never did ask how she got her paws on my battle ravaged sburb copies
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ...bro?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you must be afk
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< with the window open again
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< man this blows
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< even though i want to rag on you for this appawlling lack of care toward data securikitty im not gonna complain when it means i can bask on the sun dappled windowsill that is being in the same furreaking timefeline
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the more time i spend locked in your metafurical gravity the less time therell be betw33n us
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i hope
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i know you said not to waste the data but
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i guess theres plenty of data to waste right now and i n33d to k33p this connection open so look out that light at the end of this block of text just is an oncoming trains worth of sincere f33f33s
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im worried
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i know im drifting in some sort of sideways stream to you and dave
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but every now and then i get this intense stab of fear and urgency and then theres this spark
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< it barely lasts a moment but then its gone
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its so distant i thought meowybe it was just my nerves they are still purretty mangled from my catastrophic example of a breakdown earlier
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< is he still dreaming?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i dont think i was able to tell you
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< not purroperly anyway
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< theres like
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< this piece of him
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< a furreaking shard
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< lodged d33p in daves heart
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< makes me wonder if hes in mine too???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< or im just getting overflow from dave
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i dont know
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i want to rip it out
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< break that shit to tiny pieces
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< bat it around like a feather and pounce and grind it into dust beneath my claws
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but it was dangerous enough getting you to rip the sprite outta me
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and cal can retaliate
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< he was playing with me in the dream room bro
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< leading me on a wild hunt and then thumbing his nonexistant nose at me when he hid behind dave
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< like the cluckbeast is doing now
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< thats nothing like mindless sprite code and the games automated protocols
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the last thing we n33d is for him to dig in and resist all the while shredding dave to bits in the process
dataJammer [DJ]: B33<
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< as you can tell ive b33n thinking about this a lot
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ...
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ...
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< why did whatever malevolent entity that exists within that fucking doll survive even in pieces
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< when there were so many people
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< who didn’t?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< they fell apart right in front of me
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< there was nothing left
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its just not fair
dataJammer [DJ]: B33<

x-x-x

A young man sits alone at his computer. Dirk Strider has his head in his hands, fingers threaded between messy strands of hair. The keyboard is pushed out of the way, with papers spread out across the particle wood surface, some balled up and tossed on the floor, others placed and rearranged in patterns intended to prompt associations. There is something missing in the design; components taken for granted in a post-alien invasion technological bubble, specifically in the area of neural interfaces. Without English’s Skaianet tech, recreating the work around he’s had in mind is nearly impossible. At least not without requiring an exact map of the intended recipient’s brain to essentially create a learning, predictive algorithm; and that is a big Hell No.

For the commercial version of the product, that isn’t a set back at all. Wearable computing can be controlled through voice or via a small handset--perhaps even the upcoming iPhone in the next year if he codes an application for it. He’s already completed and delivered the basic schematics for both control schema during August’s business meeting, and they were good enough for the wider population. Like with introducing AI, the idea is just too much work to be worth releasing the brains-to-shades tech on the world, even if he could get it working without committing the biggest ethical fuck up he’d ever even considered doing.

Short of the whole, ‘unwittingly taking over someone else's’ identity’ schtick. But it wasn’t like he had a choice in that.

For two sets, he can’t just use that shortcut. He needs to do it right. Davepeta can’t speak, and Dirk doesn’t want to, needs to remove the barrier between his racing thoughts and the words he can never quite reach. Relating to those cases, this state of affairs is a monumental setback. One that has been eroding the quiet, steady confidence that he can do this. There is a whole branch of technology sitting here underdeveloped, and he has no way to know how to start it.

He’d been born into a different time. A different starting location.

Crockercorp had managed it. Jane’s brain-hijacking tiaratop was proof of that. He can’t count on that because in this recreation there’s no signs of her presence. Betty Crocker and her advanced troll technology had been behind Crockercorp’s expansion from a simple bakery to a global power.

Without Crockercorp, who was supposed to have developed the game then?

The thought occurs to him in the midst of crumpling up and abandoning another non-solution. He stops and turns it over, the image of a white and green spirograph bearing disk bubbling to mind. Following that index back to where it should be leads to a dead end dust in the crawlspace. He’s left standing in that mental space looking out over boxes upon boxes of shit he doesn’t want to think about right now as his thoughts drift to each in turn, reading the associations like a scanner reads the space between a barcode.

Cal. Davepeta. The nightmares. That ache in his soul that dims but never fades, only to flare up each night before he manages to find some sort of respite by burying himself deep into those cracks. A million other things that end up compartmentalized and tucked away, only to surface when he least wishes to process them.

But one thing is certain; he’d never used those disks. Roxy had liberated the program executables for all of his friends, minus Jane herself. Perhaps he’d seen it at her house?

He shelves the thought for later, but it keeps turning as time keep churning, and he can never fully divest himself from that problem and punt it into the crawlspace where it belongs.

The keyboard is dragged back to the center, a hunched body uncurling just enough to peck at the keys. Click. Click. Click. In the years living above the endless ocean, he had gotten good at trawling the remains of the planetary net and sifting through digitally preserved historical documents.

He needs Skaianet.

He skims back through his mental archives, the purposeful imaginings taking the shape of hundreds upon thousands of files flying past his mental fingertips at breakneck speeds, the checking and reindexing going smoother and quicker as more and more of his attention is diverting toward it and the clicking of keys slow.

He remembers Jake’s Skulltop. Jake describing the device had been the catalyst toward Dirk initially exploring the application of brain-to-shades technology. That would have been created in the relative present time, correct? Perhaps years beforehand, and not necessarily reliant on future or troll based tech. Dirk cannot find the recollection of the initial origin of the device, whether Jade English had been responsible, or if it’d been Jake’s own invention. While he’d been undeniably flighty; it had been in part his scientific leanings and exuberance toward invention that’d initially drawn a lonely engineer into the dazzling gravity well of one Jake English.

No… Harley, now.

That thought that keeps shifting and churning and prodding whispers quietly...

...Why wouldn’t there be Skaianet? If Jake founded it. He’d read those fucking words in his biography. It just hadn’t mattered then.

The scratch didn’t change anything. Just flipped it horizontally. Like a mirror.

His brother was a media giant. Dave’s brother is-was an underground multimedia sensation.Two sides of a funhouse mirror.

Jade English and Jake Harley.

Just because the company isn’t in the business of distributing tech, doesn’t meant it won’t have a hand in developing it. English needed to stand up against the Batterwitch. To visibly throw out a bastion of human ingenuity and technological prowess in order to undermine the awe and power Crocker Corp flashed like stacks of cash, dazzling and buying humanity’s minds and hearts.

In a world without Betty Crocker…or at least the Alien Fish Dictator version of her...

They only need to prepare for the end of this world. It’s Dirk’s own logic biting him in the ass. Why bother sharing any of their research with a world they know is doomed?

Click. Clack. Clackity clack. Clack.

x-x-x

dataJammer [DJ] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yo bro you there this time???
timaeusTestified [TT]: Yeah. Sorry. The last convergence caught me while I was asleep.
timaeusTestified [TT]: (yes I am pulling up my notes)
timaeusTestified [TT]: Don’t worry about data privacy, it...isn’t open on my computer.
timaeusTestified [TT]: When I’m not calculating the size of the incipisphere, or working, I’ve been stabilizing and expanding that mobile application. As long as it hasn’t been attacked by electricity sucking vampires sneaking out of the shadows to prey on innocent circuit boards, I should be consistently connected now. Of course that constant pinging prevents the idle sensor from being tripped but--if it helps, it helps. Maybe I’ll code an away message next time.
timaeusTestified [TT]: You’re right. Whatever shit happened is still going on. I don’t want to say I’m growing used to it, but at least I’m certain Cal can’t go after me unless I...let him? It’s hard to explain.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I know it’s bothering Dave, he is still having nightmares, but I can’t just throw him out. If he was real enough to be splintered like all the actual players then he’s more plot relevant than I ever expected. I wish I could get a good look at the both of them with my powers, but apparently they are currently manifesting as ambient hallucinations so that’s an additional iron to juggle.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Dave won’t talk to me about it, but several times I’ve woken up to find him curled up next to me on the futon.
timaeusTestified [TT]: If he’s had that shard buried in there since shit went live, why are they only starting now?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< shit yeah if hes approaching you like that its bad
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< as for why meow
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i couldnt tell you dude
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< that puppet is one package of paradoxical fuck yous shoved in the middle of my life
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i thought i was done with that shit when i buried bro
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ...
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< youre right i dont really want to deal with this
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its still really raw for me
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you never did tell me what you were working on
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< *dj lands on the pantry shelf with a graceful af leap and knocks a completely separate can from the shelf to distract from the wriggling worms lying half split on the floor*
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its a can of beans in case you missed the metaphor
timaeusTestified [TT]: ...Christ, don’t you get started on the beans too.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you know spilling the beans
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< give me the d33ts
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the juicy details
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< should i ask what dave started with the beans? B33c
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’ll tell you about the project if you cease the bean-based line of inquiry immediately.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< deal
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m working on a set of “rad mind reading shades” for you.
timaeusTestified [TT]: and for myself; but mostly for you.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< B00
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i thought you said you wouldnt risk it???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you know duplicating and trapping another pseudo ai to the tortures of non corporeal existence
timaeusTestified [TT]: I won’t.
timaeusTestified [TT]: My set was created using neural mapping from my brain, and therefore required Hal’s creation as a base. That’s why I couldn’t just use the alchemeter to duplicate them for you. But, even pre-fish apocalypse, my world had working neural interfaces. It’s essentially several decades ahead of the technology this version has available, without English’s technological arms race, but I’m optimistic I have a lead.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dude thats like totally rad
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its too furreaking bad jades grandpa kicked the bucket
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< he built this cool robot version of her that like
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< did shit while she slept
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i tricked her into punching herself awake once
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< it was hissterical
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< total brain reading shit right there
timaeusTestified [TT]: That just reaffirms my conviction that I’m on the right track.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Skaianet might be more private in this iteration, but that just means I need to go straight to the source.

x-x-x

A young boy peeks into the fridge, secure in the concealment given to him by the click clack clacking of the keyboard. The plan is to swipe the final bottle of apple juice and then vamoose, but the automatic illumination of the interior lighting reveals something startling enough to make him pause. There’s a whole new packet of baby carrots carefully placed next to a brand spankin’ new case of AJ.

One month, sixteen days and counting since The Promise, and he still finds himself startling over the fridge being stocked. Especially when it’s because his things were the only ones running low. Even when those things are specifically not things Dave would admit to eating. Or liking. In any way. If ever asked--Bro would never ask but a cool kid needs to be prepared--he just feeds the carrots to the birds. It’s really more of a turning a blind eye while the crows think they’re being sneaky thieves.

He likes the crows. The big female is the only one brave enough to venture into his room directly, although Dave is starting to recognize a couple of the jostling black bodies on the open windowsill as if daring each other to just go in already. They do take the carrots from his hand though, which is pretty dope.

The idea of Bro seeing that lack of something as mundane as carrots and making a trip to the store just for that…

Dave doesn’t know how to feel. He can remember the relieved deflation of the body as the door closed behind Bro, the muttered finally. The sigh as his tall body crumpled onto the futon and stayed there for a good few minutes before he’d even bothered to put the food away, left in piles of bags on the kitchen counter. Bro hates leaving, even as a new habit is born whenever he does.

A short, innocent text. A way of checking in.

Going to the store, want anything?

Meeting today, back in a few hours.

I’m making sandwiches, want one?

Going up to the roof, if you need me.

An offered hand.

Would you like to come with?

Dave turned them down. Always. Huddling in his blankets if the buzzing noise happened to startle him awake, or refusing to surface from the music deep if he’s already up. An ostrich with its head buried in the sand.

That first time?

It had to have been a fluke. Immediately afterwards Bro’d thrown himself into something, and that single daytime excursion and movie felt like a distant fever dream. It might have been. That’s when the nightmares started, wasn’t it? They settled over the apartment like a malaise. A big green dragon-shaped elephant tiptoeing in the corner.

Dave almost wishes he’d kept the plastic wrapping of that lollipop, if only as childish proof that it happened.

Rose thinks he should say agree to go again, next time. Every time there’s a next time. And she won’t let him forget that he should say ‘yes.’ He enjoyed what happened. Sort of. It was weird and domestic and awkward but…

He can’t.

Even when he chances to stick a particularly stealthy big toe out of the hallway, nine times out of ten it’s greeted by one of two things: Soft snoring, or furiously focused key clacks. There’s no inbetween.

Dave always feels on edge, looking at that metaphorical outstretched hand dripping in tired suspicion. If he’s going to walk into the den of a suburban ninja samurai he wants to do it on his own terms. And if those terms are 3 A.M. in the morning after an anxiety fueled nightmare, silently crawling onto the edge of the futon next to Bro, wishing for the plush puppet to squeeze, then so be it.

Bro’d always been awake for those, even as Dave tried to be stealthy by sneaking down the hallways on stalking kitten paws, but he never managed to be quiet enough. Bro was always up. Waiting. Sometimes nervous and jittery. Sometimes...quiet. Staring at the ceiling. Every time, Dave felt the weight those eyes.

Lil’ Cal is still missing. A gaping absence. One which Bro wouldn’t explain beyond a simple shrug and a quiet, “Put ‘im away.” In a way, it’s a relief, but at the same time the dude is a part of the family. In the moments where the will wavers and masks crack, Dave finds himself reaching for the familiar plush body. He is left wanting.

In those moments, Bro doesn’t say much. He only raises his arm. Not in the way you raise an arm to ask a question, but in the way you raise an arm to initiate a hug.

Not a hand, held up to show the marks of his sword skill still burned into them despite the ongoing disuse, but…

Just an arm, opening up the warm space at his side. It’s the right size. A space for Dave, if he wants it.

Nine times out of ten, the response would be a long crawl back to the bedroom, cold bottle in tow, to stare up at the ceiling for hours, pausing only to answer the only other person who’s up.

Rose is always up.

Poor sleep hygiene must be contagious.

That last time, the time he’d caved, neither occupant of the cramped apartment would acknowledge it in the morning.

Dave allows the fridge door to settle into its frame behind him, giving it an absent shove in order to make sure it sticks. The glass container is cold in his palms. It’s been there long enough to settle at the perfectly refreshing temperature of fuck if he knows the number but he can feel it, which means the trip probably happened this morning. There’s probably an exact time-stamp in the litany of unanswered text messages, if he bothers to look it up.

He doesn’t bother.

Dave almost makes it out before he realizes there’s a distinct lack of either of the two noises that like to fill this room.

“Hey lil’ bro.”

He’s tensed up before he gets an attempt to force himself to relax. He’s not been caught doing diddly squat. The juice is his. It always is. He doesn’t touch his bro’s orange crush, and Bro would buy him juice. Sometimes. When he deserves it. Which is apparently all the time now???

Dave decidedly doesn’t captchalogue the juice with all the speed of a kid with their hand caught in the cookie jar.

It’s very nonchalant.

Really.

“Yo.”

When nothing more follows the now mutual acknowledgement, there’s a faint creak and roll as the wheels of the computer chair struggle against the short carpet fibers. Bro straightens, joints making a disturbing pop and the hiss of exhaled air as he practically uncurls himself from where he’s been hunched over like an overgrown gargoyle. The eyes fit, glowing like embers lodged in his face where the light is leaking in from the drawn blinds behind him.

“Did you grab anything to eat?”

That sounds vaguely ominous.

Dave’s hand twitches, the first motion toward being ready to draw from his swordkind specibus, but he catches himself, burying his tight fists into his pockets instead.

Bro promised . Didn’t he? No more traps. No more strifes.

“Nah. Thought about it--” No, he didn’t. It might be dinner time but he’s been sleeping late. Lack of sleep plus lack of structured mornings is playing hell with his appetite, “But decided I’m not diggin’ mac ‘n cheese right now. I’ll call the gremlin in like an hour or something, see if it’s grumbling. Might be in the mood for some good ol’ PB&A, by which I mean apple slices smothered in peanut butter. John’s allergic to peanuts, can you imagine the poor guy? Robbed of the heavenly combination that is PB&A…”

Nonsense words neither of them really want to talk about, but it allows Dave an out from under that burning gaze. He wishes he had something to hide behind, from them. Maybe he should give Bro back his shades? It’d leave Dave open and exposed but at least it’d mitigate some of that unconscious intensity and how much it’s focusing on him--

But no, that wouldn’t really work would it? Bro hadn’t been wearing them for days before Dave managed to fling his own specially sized set against a wall. No takebacks. He hates feeling vulnerable. These ones are too big for his face but fuck if that’s not all the better to hide behind.

“I’m making fish tonight. You should have some. It’s healthier than all that shit you’ve been eating.”

“You eat that shit too, Bro. I can’t believe you are dissing the mac and cheese. Isn’t it radioactively orange enough that it pings your serotonin centers? Where have you been learning all this blasphemy? Mid-life crisis’ live mom blog?”

The muttered “not all of them” has Dave choking back a laugh, but he pushes forward anyway. Because if he’s spewing out words he’s not freaking out. Or he can pretend he’s not. Which one really depended on how honest he was feeling with himself that day. “Besides, we had a deal--I’ll eat some of your gross veggies, and you let me stuff my face with a bowl of ramen if I feel like it.”

“The deal was that I wouldn’t dictate your dining habits, not that I couldn’t disapprove of your choices.” A frown. “If you don’t like what I buy you could always leave me a list. You don’t seem inclined to cook most of the shit I buy.”

“Oh okay, I’ll get right on that. We got chicken flavor, and beef flavor, and I think I’m running low on shrimp... He’d waited when filling that card. Waited for his bro to stop him. But Bro didn’t, and now Dave has had a stash that’ll last for months more yet squirrelled away in his closet. There’d been so much shit that he’d needed to commandeer one of the cupboards in the kitchen. It, ramen, was the first and only thing Bro’d taught him how to make after he’d gotten old enough to understand how the microwave worked. Even his peanut butter and bread was something he’d seen Bro eat once so he copied it. “Shit bro, I can barely reach the microwave without needing to stand on a box, you think I’m going to even try the stove? That shit’s got open flames! Especially after what happened when I was six??? I still have scars!”

Too small. Too young. Too loud. Too much crying as a six year old cradled his arm, where he’d leaned too far over on his tiptoes to try and reach the knobs and then lost his balance and fell. Hard. Before Bro swapped out packet ramen for cup ramen and taught him he was too old to cry. It wasn’t cool to cry.

Bro is silent. The inner fire goes out and Dave feels numb. So numb. He can feel his hands starting to twitch. Trembling, in his pocket. That’s good. They can’t be seen there. They can’t--

“Here.” One moment Bro’s in his chair, the next Dave is all tensed up because there’s a hand on his shoulder. Dave expects the claw-like fingers to dig into fabric and hoist him off the ground, carry him away like Dorothy.

But it doesn’t. It’s firm. Insistent. But he doesn’t...grab.

Dave blanchs.

Like a glitching tape, his mind stutters.

The next thing he’s aware of, his internal clock is 3 minutes fast, and he’s sitting on the futon. A controller is being pressed into his hands.

“I’ll cook, okay? Just play some Mad Snackz while I prep it.”

“‘m not hungry.” Fingers are so tight around the body of the controller, he half wonders if it’s going to break. “I’d much rather have some fucking doritos than be eating Nemo. Wait. Nemo is orange. They’re both orange. But I don’t want to eat Nemo. He’s the underdog.”

There’s an expressive sigh and an eye roll that weirds him out worse than how goddamn gentle Bro’s hands are right now as they drift lighty down to pat his shoulder and then withdraw out of his field of vision. Dave snaps his head around and flings out the words that are knotting themselves up in his chest, following the thread from his previously ridiculous statements and dunking them off the deep end, “WE BETTER BE EATING DORY!”

Bro’s head pops up from where it’s been buried in the fridge, eyebrows furrowing as he tries to parse the words that just came out of Dave’s mouth, muttering, “What the fuck is a dory?”

Dave gets a new highscore on his favorite level by the time Bro plonks a steaming hot chunk of fish into his lap.

It’s good.

Dave will never admit it.

It’s not like it means anything, if he eats a little less ramen, and a little more whatever the fuck Bro decides to make. It’d be a waste to leave the food on the nonexistent table.

It’s not like it means anything if Bro surprises him with a bootlegged copy of Finding Nemo the next time it’s fish dinner. That they watch it together.

It’s not like it means anything that Dave will happily remember the strange look on Bro’s face when the blue fish first introduces herself. How he glances down at the remnants of fish juices on his plate, and then up at Dave. Whose expression is a shy too smug to be innocent.

It’s not like it means anything at all.

x-x-x

dataJammer [DJ] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< this is getting annoying
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< my timestamps dont even work so i dont know how long for but
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i lost you for a while there
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< sup
timaeusTestified [TT]: It seems you’ve regained connection at a time in which DS is either asleep or otherwise indisposed. This is a temporary away message intended to acknowledge that fact and offer greetings and offer some food for thought to get you through these trying times without his presence. Please stand by for the current set of notes to be delivered sporadically over the next period of idle response time, each interval expressly calculated for maximum entertainment efficiency and maintenance of the connection.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< oh god you did it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< that is beautifully pretentious
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ten outta ten would die again
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< of laughter and other suitably awkward f33lings because you acatually furreaking did it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< oh thissle be good
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< tell me dear away meowssage
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< what fun tidbits did dirk see fit to save for lil ol me???
timaeusTestified [TT]: Point One: What the fuck is a Dory?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< what???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dory???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< finding nemo dory???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< lets k33p swimming lets k33p swimming dory???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i thought youd be a nemo or his dad person myself
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its a movie
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< unironically charming
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< youd get a kick out of the seagulls
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< mine
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< mine mine mine
timaeusTestified [TT]: Your response has been recorded for future review. Thank you.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Point 2: Seagulls do not sound like that.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ...either you actually went ahead and broke your own rule or youre actually there and you’re just fucking with me B|
timaeusTestified [TT]: Guilty as charged.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< on which count???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< unethical brain clones or using a laser pointer to hypnotize me into smashing my face into a wall???
timaeusTestified [TT]: In a different time, it would be both, but for now merely the latter.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Although in my defense, it actually was an away message. You caught me before I was completely off to lala land. It seems I managed to get the notifications up and working. Cleaning up the code work on a lot of these smaller projects makes for relaxing pre-dawn activities.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dont you like
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< n33d sl33p???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< last time i was here you managed to fall asl33p at your desk and left a series of keysmashes as your face had an unexpected m33ting with the keyboard
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< if im k33ping you up then i demand you get the notifications unworking again and just let me yowl at the empty window like a feisty tom on in an alley fence all bound and determined to wake up everyone below thr33 stories while you snooze all nice and insulated in your penthouse suite
timaeusTestified [TT]: Sleep is for the inefficient.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Trust me, if I was anywhere near that level I’d be out already.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< idunno bro youre sounding weird as shit tonight
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< what time is it???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< are you sure you dont n33d a snooze???
timaeusTestified [TT]: This is where I say time is relative and leave it at that since it makes no impact on our current conversation.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Suffice to say, this would be the first all nighter, should it turn out that way, that I’ve taken since our first asynchronous conversation.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Even if I desired to do so, this body is far less tolerant of my usual reckless brand of limit pushing.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I would say almost say its unusual, but I’m starting to think it’s just called getting old.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< oh man yeah dude youre in right form tonight
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< pawsitively ancient
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i think the museum called its missing its living fossil
timaeusTestified [TT]: Ha. Ha. I’m rolling my eyes here. Which you cannot see.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I might as well get back up and continue working, since cleaning up code is more interesting than staring at the ceiling. It appears like it won’t be a nightmare night.
timaeusTestified [TT]: All the pieces are in place for the software portion of your present.
timaeusTestified [TT]: After that it’s all hardware.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Keep me company?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< hell yeah do you even have to ask???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< youre a chatty catty tonight i can dig it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< so why did you ask about a cartoon fish???
timaeusTestified [TT]: That was an old point that was left to see what your reaction was, if I’m being honest. We’ve already seen the movie.
timaeusTestified [TT]: So in actuality even the away message was fucking with you.
timaeusTestified [TT]: My apologies.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dude you cant just leave it at that
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< spill the beans already
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< how did you learn about finding nemo???
timaeusTestified [TT]: My recall of the event is a little hazy but I suppose I can try and recount the occasion.

x-x-x

A young man sits awkwardly at a table, feeling both older than he is and younger than he looks. He’s been here before. Two--no, this is the third time now. Each one leads the situation to grow slightly more familiar. The people become white noise, even as he fragments his attention to observe them.

But if there’s one thing he’s learned, it’s that there’s a bubble of space around this small table in the back that no one seems to be willing to cross. They skirt the edges, heading into the same back hallway where he--well, they could be listening in the same way he did, but for the most part they seem more than happy to skitter on with their own background routines, leaving Dirk to his own whirling thoughts as he watches his companion cross the small, mostly empty cafe.

It’s busier in the evenings. Much busier. Newt had called the place a local favorite. Last month Jane had some sort of appointment during the usual time, so they’d been later, and that had been hell . The noise had been completely and utterly distracting , leading his companions to exchange looks and Jane to remark dryly on rescheduling if it was that bad.

She isn’t even here this month, although she has sent a copy of the risk assessment she’s been working on. When Dirk asks Newt about it, all he gets is an odd look and a shrug while the brown man divides the two plates to their respective places.

“Well--I-I don’t think she said exactly where but--she has other consulting jobs, right? You don’t give us enough work to make this gig anywhere near full time, and, you know her, always gotta be workin’. I think she gets bored and frustrated otherwise.”

Dirk is probably supposed to know this already, so he opts to stabs his fork in to the baby blue frosting of his small piece of cake with a noncommittal hum. The color reminds him of pesterchum. A different Jane, and his first experience with sweets.

He still couldn’t handle that much sugar very well, but it was fucking delicious .

Not as good as his memories, though. The chocolate isn’t as rich, nor the icing as light. But it makes him think of her in a way that doesn’t quite ache. Back when they first entered the Medium, when finally being able to meet face to face was a novelty and it didn’t so much matter that the world ended because they’d had each other.

It hadn’t lasted long, what with Dirk having made his move and cementing his place officially as the plus one of One Jake English, and Roxy mourning what she could have had but lost; even Jake ended up running off on an adventure high, a whole new planet to explore.

...maybe even back then, for all the sleepovers at Roxy’s and Jane using the opportunity to spoil her friends rotten with sweets, things weren’t as Idyllic as he’d like to believe.

Dirk sets the fork down with a clatter, earning him both his companion’s attention and a nervous head tilt. There’s still another two bites to go, but between the sleeping frog uncomfortably wedged into his esophagus and the swarm of butterflies taking wing in his gut, he can’t find an appetite anymore.

Sensing something changing--expression, body language, some weird Strider tuned sixth sense borne from well over a decade of familiarity--Newt polishes off his muffin and pushes his own plate aside as well.

“I—I’ve been wondering..” He fiddles with a napkin, picking at the edges, turning it into tiny drifts of windblown snow, piling up in small mound beside crumb filled plate, “It’s not r-really work related…just…”

Dirk watches warily, drawing all but the most periphery of his attention in on the table, dialing up the tension in his shoulders and folding his arms before him. Withdrawing. Bracing. He doesn’t want any questions. Especially not personal questions, but fuck he feels like he owes the guy to at least hear it out.

“You’d never be caught dead without them before. Your glasses, I mean. They’re pretty key to the whole Strider aesthetic you always seemed—I mean I suppose it makes sense to build it into your image if you have to deal with some level of constant light sensitivity, but—“

Newt takes a breath and makes an esoteric gesture to indicate—what? The environment? It’s a fairly dimly lit one. Soft lights in frosted bulbs giving off a mood lighting that is brighter, but filtered properly, which would be comparable to the preferred light level in Dirk’s own home. Like the table, and the time, none of which had been discussed before the first meeting other than, “Don’t worry! It’ll be the usual set up.” Dim. Quiet. Semi-private. Dirk’s seat located on the side of the table with his back to the wall. A good view of the open dining room and any other patrons. Choices he now suspects are intended to cater directly to his comfort.

For all his nerves, Newt is observant.

“It’s been months. Why wouldn’t you buy a new set by now? Isn’t it uncomfortable?”

Why indeed?

Newt’s right about one thing; shades mean a lot to Dirk. His own, specifically.

It’s too much to allow him to simply wear the shades of a dead man.

Trying to explain that is the last thing he wants to do.

“They’re a custom set.” Dirk’s fingers tap agitatedly against the table. It isn’t even a lie; as soon as he figures out a means of translating brain activity using current era tech with any sort of accuracy, he’ll make them in a heartbeat. “It takes time if you want the good shit. It’s not like I go out during the day often; when I do I just use the ones I got at the hospital.”

“Christ, Dirk, I was there when you got those, they might as well be paper for what good they do! At least wear a hat or something with it--don’t think I haven’t noticed that missing, either.”

“Like you have any say over my fashion choices,” Dirk snipes back before pinching the bridge of his nose and exhaling. His eyes close momentarily, missing the flash of panic that flits across the face of his companion. A veritable ‘oh shit’ moment that’s led the other man to physically flinch back, reading into that one response and applying it to all the data he’s collected over ten plus years.

But even if the tells are the same, the routines applied to them differ. Instead of the potential escalation Newt predicts, Dirk opens his eyes and runs a hand through his obviously hat-less hair, disrupting his meticulously prepared hairdo—fuck, too late now. It’s become a habit. Shit.

“Dave…doesn’t like the hats.”

“…so…they are...banned, now?”

Dirk recalls the flinch as he’d placed the red hat onto the kid’s little head. Thinks back to the one time he’d run into Dave coming out of his room while returning home with a load of shit from the corner store. The kid had recovered well, but the resulting ramble had a strange fixation on ridiculing his choice in headwear. And it had felt…charged, in a way his almost playful ragging on Dirk’s preference toward a particular canned legume never was.

Dirk still wears hats if he has to take an extended walk anywhere. He isn’t stupid about it. Not only was it free sun protection, but he liked the hats. Despite a criminal lack of an orange one.

But…

Fuck.

“Guess they are.”

“How is the kiddo doing anyway?”

“Fine.”

The silence that falls is all kinds of awkward.

“D-did you like Nemo? My nephews love that movie.”

What the shit?

“How the hell do you know about that?”

His own spoken question hits Dirk like a punch in the gut he’d never even had the chance to see coming. Dimming the café momentarily from his vision as flashes of red text, yet another instance of blatant disregard of privacy, dread and anger burning so hot it turns cold as Dirk reads over the logs. Hal rummaging through his chat logs. Through his psyche and then weaponizing it against Jake. Against him. Driving a wedge in between them. Shattering the trust he had in himself.

A faint fluttering of guilt, gnawing at his gut. Hal didn’t deserve that. Hal only tried to help. It was just some self fulfilling prophecy that anytime a Dirk Strider tried to fix shit, it would break something else.

He closes his eyes again. Sucks in a breath and holding it. Watches the red cracks overlaying lidded darkness pulse weakly.

And then after that moment, it passes.

Dirk opens his eyes as his companion begins to speak again.

“Dave told me,” Newt’s nervous. Fuck. Another breath in, out. Slow and easy. “He likes to text me for homework help or--said I owed him for the kidnapping--anyway, but this particular word problem involved fish—“

“And it turned into storytime. Of fucking course.” Not that Dirk is particularly angry. He shouldn’t be. Not over something like this. It just, it startled him.

Okay. So maybe that’s not being entirely truthful. He is angry. But not at Newt. Or even at Dave.

“Dirk…?”

“He couldn’t ask me?”

He doesn’t properly think through the words; all are oddly raw and quiet, bubbling up through the containment cube he’d shoved them all in to. Flinches. Defensive, deflecting rambles. Standing in front of a constantly closed door.

And then shit swings, and they’re sitting together on that musty old futon, Dirk drifting off to sleep, a small, warm weight tucked into his side. The movie.

Talk about mixed messages.

He’s been wanting to talk to Davepeta for more than several dozen lines every few weeks. It feels stupid. By now they’ve been out of touch for more time than they’ve actually known each other. But Dirk misses it. He misses being able to just cut loose and talk . Or, well, type. About Dave. About how weird all this shit was, is, continues to be. About being sixteen and essentially a parent and not knowing what the fuck he’s doing. Or how to do it. Davepeta is good at pulling all that shit out into the open.

“I…asked him,” Newt’s hesitant admission draws him out of the goddamn internal spiral, “About why he didn’t ask you. He told me that you were always busy.”

“I’m not .” Pause. In for four. Hold. Out for five. “I work, yes. There’s a lot of base environments I need to set up to even get a mod development framework possible . But I ask. I put out the hand, Newt.”

Newt. Newt. Oh god what is he doing ? This dude isn’t a friend. Surely Dirk isn’t that fucking starved, but even as he tries to cram that conviction through because that would make it real... It’s like something's gone and broke. Like Davepeta’s claws running through strands of mussed white hair, both relaxing and agitating, knocking free the insecurities and letting them spew out all over the table.

Newt doesn’t know how to handle it. Of course he doesn’t. He isn’t a friend. Dirk Strider had never let him be.

But that doesn’t stop the words. “He won’t take it. And if he does, he turns it into something to be ridiculed or never fucking talked about. If he’s not even comfortable asking me about math then…”

What good is any of this?

“It’s only been a few months, Dirk. Whatever shit is going on between the two of you, it started a long time ago, and it’s not going to get cleaned up that fast.”

“I know.” Petulant, like a child who’s gotten into trouble and practically asked to be punished in turn.

I—Christ, I can’t believe I’m saying this to my literal boss—but you just need to…slow down. Set yourself some hours like a civilized person and stop working all the time. Keep setting the stage and making it clear—and I mean crystal clear— that you want this shit. If you ask him how his homework is going first, then he won’t have an excuse to come to me. His birthday is coming up right? December? Do something for him. Do you have any plans?

Birthday. Oh hell.

“Not yet.” Dave’s birthday. It’s also Dirk’s birthday. His real one, not the one written down on the birth certification in the legal shit folder.

“Mmm. Do you even know what to get him?”

A shrug. A worried one. A familiar worry. A problem that he’d been turning over in his brain during the limited moments when he’s not completely overwhelmed with coding shit.

How the fuck is he supposed to know? He has the option to keep looking back over his shoulder, to his four-hundred year dead-yet-never-alive Bro, to try and understand this younger one, but how far would that take him? Even if he reads the aftermath of his past guesses as right, and, with some hunting, extrapolate food and fashion preferences in memorized historical videos, Dirk still admits that anything about his Bro’s private life had been utterly nonexistent. He’d been a fucking ninja when it came to keeping the paparazzi outta his business, personal or guerrilla.

A thoughtful hum from Newt breaks through the half recalled files flitting through his mind, snippets of videos and interviews and news articles dissolving into background noise as the priorities shift. “Ask him? Even if his first response is something ridiculous, it’s usually a good place to start looking. Carlos pulled the ‘I want a pony’ schtick on me, so I sprung for pony rides. The kid’s starting his first formal lesson as soon as he turns seven in a couple months. We coulda probably found a farm sooner, but his mom didn’t like that idea.”

“…you have kids?”

“Huh? Oh. No. Sister’s kids. I help her look after them when I can.” Newt glances down at his phone, nudging the power button and goggling at the numbers that reveal themselves, “Shit. It’s been nearly an hour and we haven’t even started yet. Jane’d kill us if she were here.”

“Write it off as team building.” Dirk shrugs, catching himself running his hand through his hair and then stubbornly folding his arms on the table in front of him. Quiet hands begets styled hair. “She’s the one who wanted me more invested in this shit. What better way than intentionally fostering a more personable rapport?”

The long-suffering glance that gets shot his way as Newt starts laying out his materials is one that’s so damn familiar it has Dirk freezing. That’s what Jane-- his Jane-- would look like when Dirk played obtuse about one of her jokes. The I see what you’re doing and I know you’re just being silly in a way you will never admit look.

“You always make it sound so clinical.” But Newt doesn’t comment further, shaking his head, and taking a breath. Some of the nerves visibly bleed away, because this is just business. “I always hated that about my classes in university. It’s interesting, figuring out how people work, but it’s a little sad too. Reducing it to nothing more than data intended to sell a product.”

Dirk feels it, the wall building itself up around them. A line of professionalism that gives them both a reprieve from the messy emotions he’s somehow manage to spill all over the table.

Not for the first time, Dirk has no idea how to clean his shit up. It makes him feel small.

x-x-x

dataJammer [DJ] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< sup
timaeusTestified [TT]: Nothing much.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Mostly just driving myself crazy trying to answer a question I’ve never needed to think about before.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< can i help???
timaeusTestified [TT]: You could.
timaeusTestified [TT]: But it’d probably be cheating.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< *djs ears perk* you realize that answer does absolutely nofang to dispel my curiousikitty
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m aware.
timaeusTestified [TT]: It’s partially why I typed it.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< BCC
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< well well mr tall dark and pointy were gonna play this game again huh
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< *dj fluffs themself up and leaps onto tts shoulder and drapes themselves all over that shit shedding feathers and fur all over him in revenge* its not like i care or anything baka
timaeusTestified [TT]: That’s fine, I’m already covered in dust and shit. What’s some cat fur?
timaeusTestified [TT]: What color would your hypothetical fur be anyway?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< uh
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< idk man i didnt think that far ahead
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< depends on if were getting full blown fantasy up in here or sticking to realistic colors
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< also what are you doing???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< our apartment was never dusty
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the floor was always covered in bros shit
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but heaven forbid there be dust
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< unless you’ve b33n slacking
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< have you b33n slacking???
timaeusTestified [TT]: Of course not. When you leave exposed electronics on every surface letting shit get dusty is just asking for something to catch on fire.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m up in the crawlspace.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< that there sure sounds like expurrience talking
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< are you like
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< looking fur somefang???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< or just cleaning???
timaeusTestified [TT]: Both. It’s finally time for Future Dirk to become Present Dirk and clean up this damn space. I got tired of my clothes smelling like must and dust since this is the only place to put them.
timaeusTestified [TT]: If I happen to find an answer to my question while I’m working then that would be fan-fucking-tastic.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you don’t sound too happy about it
timaeusTestified [TT]: It’s just frustrating.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I know so much random trivia about my brother, and yet nothing about Dave.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i s33
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you know goin straight to the source aint ch33ting
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its efficient resource management
timaeusTestified [TT]: …
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but if youd rather dig through some musty boxes of
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< shit i dont even know whats up there it was kinda bros territory
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< if youd rather do that then ask me
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< or you know shorty
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the daviest of daves
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< thats cool too
timaeusTestified [TT]: …
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< just a thought bro
timaeusTestified [TT]: …
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< woah there you never use that many finish crumbs
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i dont got any cash but i can offur some pocket lint and pawssibly some asteroid rock for your trouble
timaeusTestified [TT]: What do you want for your birthday, Davepeta?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< did not expect that question
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you cant just spring that kind of question on a dude bro thats hella unfair i was just mindin my own business meandering my way through some
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< wait how soon is that???
timaeusTestified [TT]: It’s… approaching.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< furreakitten hell
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< wasn’t it like
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< barely august before
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< all this???
timaeusTestified [TT]: What would you want?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dont know okay???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i just
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i want
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i want to go home

dataJammer [DJ] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

x-x-x

A young boy sits alone in his room, tapping his finger to a rhythm he hardly notices anymore. Dave scrolls through a blog, skimming more than reading. In the zone, absorbing the information in some freaky sort of osmosis where nothing matters, especially not the fact that this overhyped dude pretending to be hot shit just released a new single.

It’s a chore sometimes, but keeping current and on top of shit is tool numero uno in actually being top shit. The information gets added to the toybox of his brain which can then be whipped out at a moments notice. Weaponized like an overstuffed sylladex, seeding shitty subject matter and turning it into beautifully ironic pieces of verbal or written art that cannot be reproduced in any sort of authentic fashion.

It’s not like he has much else to do right now anyway. The usual chat-client juggling he’s been slowly developing into another form of art is unnecessary; his chums are offline, busy doing some shit or another, leaving conversations hanging in limbo. The chatrooms he usually frequents are either similarly quiet, or boring as hell right now. Dave finds himself less and less socially satisfied after throwing around his weight and laying down some sick burns to anonymous--( doomed. doomed?) --randos.

Maybe instead of reading about terrible music, he should listen to some rad shit.

He scrolls through beatcloud. The site is hella small right now, filled with people who fancy themselves visionaries and the next trendsetters, but are probably just hipsters. Himself included. But if anyone questions him, he’ll roll his eyes, scoff, and ask if a hipster could do this and then he’d whip out some foolproof example of entirely cool and ironic mix from his portfolio and the naysayer would be completely pwned.

But no one’s going to ask; his work speaks for itself.

Dave reaches for his headphones. They’re sick noise canceling ones, perfect for drowning out the crazy shifting world with its transient crows and fiery red skies one minute, and then weird purple-red wallpaper the next. The music--not his own, but a decent composition, even if it plucks the threads of nostalgia a little too hard for his liking, because even visionaries need to immerse themselves in other people’s work in order to rest and rejuvenate the creative juices--buoy him, propping him up as he begins doing the rounds again.

Checking on his chum roll, his preferred list is looking a little unnaturally small sitting at just two. Maybe he should look into adding one more. Three sounds totally solid. Nice and stable.

He drops another playful barb into John’s chat, a prayer to his health in the face of his dad’s sugary obsession, wrapping up a poorly concealed plea for him to return soon. At least he has an idea as to what John’s up to in the middle of this perfectly fine and peaceful weekend afternoon. No school for once, just family shit. And John’s dad has been hella clingy lately…

Though, Rose is a different story. It’s a toss up as to whether that Idle Chum is the result of an attack of the parental kind, or if the girl fell asleep at her computer again. Sometimes she leaves a keysmash of the face kind. This time, the chat is clear.

The moment John starts developing similar narcoleptic shit, Dave’s already decided he’s going to run with the idea that he’s unknowingly some sort of sleep demon screwing with everyone unconsciously and dragging them into his nightmare-ish misery. His sleep has been hellish, but at least he isn’t passing out in the middle of the fucking day like other people he could name. Rose.

John seems to sleep like a baby--safe for now. No need for Dave to purchase hellish real estate and build a home on some brimstone filled pit in from whence he can manipulate the sleeping hygiene of the poor mortals who have had the misfortune of being his friends. At least if he embraces the role he can try to put that shit back on track somehow. This state of affairs sucks ass.

He’s not gonna touch the bubble that pops in the back of his mind as to why Bro would be affected by that same contagion. Proximity. Relationships. Whatever.

Speak of the devil: a blinking in the corner of his eye catches his attention. His cellphone. Stevens rarely texts first these days, not since it became unlikely that Bro would just up and keel over again. So that means the message is Bro. Probably going out, or up onto the roof or some shit. Getting all parental and communicative.

Dave ignores it. Ignores the conflicted feelings that squirm through his abdomen whenever he sees those damn texts, responds by ignoring them and moving on with his day.

It persistently flashes out of the corner of his eye.

Flashing.

Flashing.

Flashing in time with the the quiet noise that isn’t a noise buried deep within his heart. 1 to 1 to 1. He starts counting the seconds, sinking into the music while the weird as fuck beat in this song inexplicably syncs up with it.

It’s gotta be a screwy version of synesthesia or something because he knows this song just switched its time signature and it doesn’t seem to change a damn thing. Honestly, it’s seriously harshed the vibe of the song too. It isn’t supposed to have each beat falling on a second. If he wasn’t currently striving to stave off a mild panic he’d be totally scandalized at himself for forcing his brain to ruin such rad and wacky music.

480 seconds, three and a half mixes later, something whizzes expertly past his nose, passing in front of the monitor. His brain fills in the dots as a long bulbous nose, felt tufts, and splayed limbs, but before he can react, it reveals itself as crumpled paper, crushed into a ball, making a pathetic attempt at bouncing as it rolls along the surface of his desk. He watches it rebound and tumble to the floor, out of sight beyond the edge.

The hairs at the back of his neck are standing on end. Skin crawling. Heart racing. An attack. An attack in his room. Bro promised.

He refuses to let it show.

Casual, as if he isn’t teetering on the edge, Dave reaches for his head, sliding the earpieces of his headphones off his ears to let them hang around his neck. A flick of the wrist spins the volume control in a practiced, minimal motion, taking the music from heart pounding down to muted.

The words drip out between deceptively dry lips, “You missed.”

Bro doesn’t miss.

A kick against the carpeted floor has the chair spinning counterclockwise, the back catching against the surface of the desk, leaving the door and its lounging occupant in full view.

“I got what I was aimin’ for, didn’t I?” The words are smooth. They always are, said with that same even, slightly biting tone, but that’s legit the only smooth thing about him. “I tried knockin’” A pause. As if he’s waiting for a reaction. Dave doesn’t give him one, “and textin’.”

After a moment, Dave reassesses and changes his verbiage to ‘loom,’ because ‘lounge’ implies some level of chill relaxation, and there’s nothing chill about how Bro is leaning against the wooden frame. The dude is wound up tighter than a spring and looking like something a feral cat dragged in and left to simmer.

“What’d’ya want, Bro?” What do you want and why are you here? For four months, this room has been his safe space . No ambuses. No intrusions. No invasions.

And okay, maybe this isn’t exactly a puppet trap. Maybe Dave had asked for it in a way by ignoring that flashing light. Maybe Bro still hasn’t quite breached that line, hovering in the doorway and not taking one step forward, but…

Tell that to the goddamn pounding of his heart, even as he consciously starts counting along with the pulsing time, trying to force the weird synthesia to kick in and slow that freaking jackrabbit down.

It works a little. That’s honestly probably why he’s able to keep as cool as he can right now.

“Just a question, lil’ bro,” That weird nickname again. It’s better than ‘little man,’ but it’s close yet different enough to be strange. That seems to describe a lot of things about Bro since his--

Isn’t Dave a bit young for a midlife crisis? Fuck it, the term fits.

“What do you want for your birthday?”

...what the hell?

What kind of question is THAT?

“I’m serious Dave. December’s coming up.”

Oh had he actually said that out loud?

“Shit I uh, you can’t just spring that sort of thing on a dude, Bro. Birthdays are big, special occasions that need like, planning and thought and shit. You can’t expect me to take two seconds to root around in the bubbling cauldron of my brain and give you a profoundly satisfying answer. You’ll likely get uh, a potato or something.”

“...a potato?” Dave didn’t realize Bro could sound simultaneously unimpressed and incredulous. It’s almost enough to make him giggle, but he’s been trained too well for that sort of slip-up.

“I mean yeah, who the fuck wouldn’t want a spud? I’m all about the apples, even the pomme de terre, which is the french name. In case you didn’t know it.” That’s totally not a nervous giggle. If he ignores it, then it didn’t actually happen, “Dirt Apples. Haha.”

“Dave…”

Dave hasn’t heard that tone in a long time, the way Bro sort of sighs into the name, like he’s forcing it out through lips that barely move. Showing any sort of emotion even exasperation is beneath him.

“I don’t know bro, okay? It’s not like it ever means much. It’s just another day. I’ll be going from nine to the big one--” Competing answers press against his eyes, so he closes them behind the safety of his shades and centers himself and finds the right one. Duh. Why would he even be thinking otherwise? “--zero. Which is what it’s worth. Nada. Nothing. It isn’t even graduating elementary school levels of worth yet. Hit me up when we reach the sweet sixteens and I can learn to drive or something.”

Life milestones, what are those? Hah. With his luck the world would do something stupid and completely improbable, like, end before he ever got to face that particular hollow victory.

“There has to be something.”

Fine,” Dave snaps. He could ask for a new sound rig. Could ask for a new camera. A new computer. But that was all shit and shit meant squat when you could reduce it to a captchacode on a card somewhere. There was only one thing he wanted. Okay maybe two. Some fucking normalcy and-- “I want my friends . Which I have, by the way. But they are on the opposite sides of the fucking country and we’re smack dab in the middle of lonestar central. It’s impossible. Do not pass go. Do not collect 200 boondollars--”

“Boondollars?”

“You know--” actually Dave doesn’t, but it fits with the metaphor well enough, probably read it online somewhere, “Monopoly money. Fuckin’ worthless, but we collect that shit anyway to spend on cute little plastic houses and hotels to gouge the shit outta the other players--”

“I know what monopoly is, Dave.” Bro rolls his eyes, and actually legitimately sighs, running long calloused fingers through his hair and sending it one step closer to roosterville again. God, if Dave’s room wasn’t right next to the bathroom he’d swear Bro just doesn’t care anymore. But no, he’ll spend an hour in there primping, and then end up right back in chicken town because of some weird tic. “If you can get me in touch with Egbert’s dad…”

Dave’s heart skips a beat. He doesn’t even register the fact that there’s no way in hell Bro should know John’s name. His brain screeches to a halt on the fact that it isn’t an outright handwave or dismissal or a sarcastic remark.

It doesn’t last long. Dave can’t even let himself be hopeful for all of two seconds because fuck him, right universe?

“Just get me--shit I don’t know, a new mouse. Make it one of those fancy as fuck ones with rainbow lights and five buttons on the side and we’ll call it a day. John’s dad would never go for it. You don’t understand how much of an overprotective helicopter the dude is. He doesn’t even like us talking much less would allow John to fly halfway across the country for a birthday . Can’t you read between the paranoid lines? The whole scenario’s got stranger danger classic internet predator written all over it for anyone with eyes to see.”

Dave hates that he’s allowed himself to hope for even one goddamn second. Mr. Egbert might have admitted defeat after almost five months, what with no signs of John giving up on his newest internet penpal, but that didn’t mean he’d agree to anything that would let his son see one of the two--( three. three? there should be three)-- people that’ve somehow managed to fill the big gaping hole in Dave’s heart. People he would never met, and yet he somehow feels the absence of so strongly that it, just, sometimes it smashes into him like a brick to the face.

This is not a track of thought Dave particularly wants to follow, and he finds himself sort of resenting Bro for even bringing it up.

He’s done. Done. Dave blocks Bro out, slamming the metaphorical door even as the physical one to his room remains wide open and ripe for the entering. Headphones fit snugly over his head and Bro might as well not even fucking exist anymore for all he cares. A crank and the music is blasting. He’s drowning in it and that’s fucking fine with him because he doesn’t want to breathe anyway.

And so he misses a quiet, “...I’ll see what I can do,” before Bro shakes his head, messes up his hair further, and withdraws from the room.

x-x-x

dataJammer [DJ] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im sorry i flipped out like that
timaeusTestified [TT]: It seems you’ve regained connection at a time in which DS is either asleep or otherwise indisposed. This is a temporary away message intended to acknowledge that fact and offer greetings and offer some food for thought to get you through these trying times without his presence. Please stand by for the current set of notes to be delivered sporadically over the next period of idle response time, each interval expressly calculated for maximum entertainment efficiency and maintenance of the connection.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< oh hey am how are you doing
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< fine??? thats cool
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< am???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< away meowssage???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you better not be lurking waiting to fuck with me this time dirk
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dude what about my notes
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you purromised me notes
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dirk i think you broke your bot B(
timaeusTestified [TT]: You didn’t break it.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< oh
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< did my caterwauling wake you up again???
timaeusTestified [TT]: I wasn’t asleep.
timaeusTestified [TT]: The bot’s just set to auto respond if I don’t see it within a period of time.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I didn’t know you named it.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you were pretty out of it last time im not surpurrised
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< s33med weird to refer to it as you even tho it was using your name
dataJammer [DJ]: B33<
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< it isnt you right??
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you dont have a very good track record with this stuff
timaeusTestified [TT]: No.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I was very careful. All it does is detect input and post pre-written notes.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< so what were the notes???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i was purromised notes
timaeusTestified [TT]: Well, the first note was…
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m sorry.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< what no bro dude it was pawsitively not your fault
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i just
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< didnt expect it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< bro never asked
timaeusTestified [TT]: He didn’t ever get you anything for your birthday?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< no! no! not like that
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< he never missed a birthday
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but i always either told him what i wanted
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< or it was some random handme down
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< like my turntables
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< which were dope
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but resulted in fewer spotlights to fr33ze up in like bambi at the sight of an oncoming car
timaeusTestified [TT]: I see.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I asked Dave.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< did he give you a better answer than I did???
timaeusTestified [TT]: It was in the same vein, funny enough.
timaeusTestified [TT]: He wants to see his friends.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33<
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< christ kid ask for the moon why dont you
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< well??? you cant just leave it there
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i cant imagine you calling psycho mom up to invite her daughter over to a pawty
timaeusTestified [TT]: I didn’t. I talked to Mr. Egbert.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ...you did?
timaeusTestified [TT]: He wasn’t willing to bring John out for the birthday. But after we discussed for a while...he did invite us to their home to celebrate instead. Rose too.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33<
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< damn shorty im legit jealous
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< thats
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< an amazing gift bro
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< when do you leave???
timaeusTestified [TT]: Stop trying to get me to divulge the state of the timeline, it doesn’t solve anything to keep fixating on it.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its my birthday too bro
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< … one of them
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< regardless of the semantics i think i deserve to know if im going to miss my birthday
timaeusTestified [TT]: In a week.
timaeusTestified [TT]: If it makes you feel better however, this interval was much shorter than the rest.
timaeusTestified [TT]: You might be close.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ...i hope so
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im just going to k33p flying
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i cant even guess how long ive b33n going
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dave f33ls like hes just over the horizon
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< just a little more
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< a few more wingbeats
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< even if i find derse and sync up
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< how do i search for the lab without drifting again???
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’ll be here, Davepeta. I promise.
timaeusTestified [TT]: We’ll get you home.

x-x-x

From: Dirk
To: Newt
CC: Jane

It’s official, and tickets are booked. I’ll be out of town next week. The works with the schedule as is, but I won’t be reachable at all. So either send me that shit ahead of time or it’ll need to wait till the meeting.

From: Newt
To: Dirk
CC: Jane

Did you decide what to get Dave?

I’ve gotten in contact with the representatives from the suppliers I lined up last month and relayed the design documents for the trial run. Most of the components were fairly straight forward, although I do think one of the chipset guys was slavering over the notes you made to consolidate size and weight. You’re going to have to share those secrets of yours one of these days.

From: Dirk
To: Newt
CC: Jane

Don’t act like you don’t know about it. I had to ask you about rides to the airport.

It’s just basic design principles. They’ll figure it out eventually. Once shit is invented it becomes a race full of R&D dollars being thrown at the problem of efficiency and streamlining. I just bothered to think about it early. When will they be ready?

From: Newt
To: Dirk
CC: Jane

All I know is you’re going to Washington for some reason. Not why. Excuse me for being curious. At least it isn’t New York.

We don’t have a production contract nailed in yet, but I think we’ll have the ability to pick and choose given the results of the inquiries. For the prototype, I’m mostly pulling strings to get some custom work for a proof of concept. February? If we’re lucky? I could probably push to have it sooner but that’ll cost extra.

From: Jane
To: Newt
CC: Dirk

Do I need to remind you two that personal emails exist? This isn’t the place to be discussing a child’s hypothetical birthday party.

Avoid rush fees if you can. The income from the website will cover most of the initial start up cost, but there’s a much longer production lag before we can begin to claim profits on this venture. You’re lucky this is a private business. Trying to convince shareholders to let go of the website’s ridiculous profits would be hell and well nigh impossible.

From: Dirk
To: Jane
CC: Newt

It began as work related. It isn’t my fault Newt is being nosy.

February is more than fine. As long as the parts come in, I’ll have a functioning prototype by March, easy. Any earlier would be a waste.

From: Jane
To: Dirk
CC: Newt

You did obtain permission for your little consulting expedition correct? The last thing we need is Skaianet claiming espionage. I can’t imagine people won’t be asking questions about some of these...advancements of yours. Skaianet is a giant with a long history, even if its supposedly all private contract work. We’re a multimedia company who haven’t dabbled in tech since that utterly botched attempt back before you pulled me in, and now all of sudden we’re putting out cutting edge computing hardware? It’d be too easy for small minds to jump to the wrong conclusions.

From: Newt
To: Jane
CC: Dirk

I filed the paperwork yesterday, and found a company to charter for the travel. I don’t know what he wants with some decommissioned facility in the middle of the pacific ocean, but ever since the founder dropped off the face of the planet no one cares about the place. Dirk, are you sure it’s relevant?

From: Dirk
To: Newt
CC: Jane

Yes.

From: Newt
To: Dirk

I know I’m going to be driving you to the airport again, but, what about Dave?

From: Dirk
To: Newt

What about him?

From: Newt
To: Dirk

I mean he’s going to be alone for at least a week, two if you decide on the extension, right? I thought you’d ask me to look after him while you’re gone but you haven’t so I assumed you’d made other plans.

From: Dirk
To: Newt

I don’t need to. He’s coming with me.

From: Newt
To: Dirk

...what? Really??? You’re going to drag a ten year old along to a largely deserted island while you talk to some barmy inventor???

From: Dirk
To: Newt

Problem?

From: Newt
To: Dirk

Uhm yes there’s a problem! That kind of travel stressful on a child--and believe me, looking at a mockup of the itinerary you’re going to have to take in order to even get there, it’s going to be hell on earth for an adult, much less a bored kid. Doesn’t Dave have weekly homework assignments due too???

On top of that, I checked the place out. It's largely uninhabited wilderness outside of the lab building. It's dangerous Dirk.

From: Dirk
To: Newt

He can take care of himself. I can take care of him.

From: Newt
To: Dirk

He’s a kid.

You know he can stay with me, although I know he’ll probably protest. Hell I’d be willing to spend the week house-sitting for you so he wouldn’t even need to be relocated.

From: Newt
To: Jane
[Forwarded Message]

Help me out here.

To: Dirk
From: Jane
CC: Newt

Lord, you two are acting like children. I had wondered why there weren’t any replies forthcoming.

Dirk: This is not a vacation. You will be working. That is the whole point of this venture, is it not? Will you be able to keep an eye on him? Keep him entertained? Keep him from wandering off? What if he got lost and hurt? Would you trust yourself to give 100% to whatever research you have planned if you had to keep an eye on a curious child who only sees a new adventure? You know how you get on a project. Do not even try to deny it.

Leave the kid at home and hire a babysitter. Or just let Newt do it. He broods enough about you two, might as well make him put that talent to some use instead of clucking about incessantly like this. It’s far simpler, safer, and more efficient this way.

From: Dirk
To: Jane
CC: Newt

...your objection has been noted. I will take it under advisement.

From: Newt
To: Jane

Thank you.

From: Jane
To: Newt

You owe me.

X-x-x

A young one that was once two drifts alone in the dark. They can’t see anything, not even in the faint light of the pink and red sparks trailing off the feathers of their beating wings keeping in time with the tired thundering in their ears. They know they aren’t actually drifting--they feel the speed at which they’re flying. Feel it tugging at their hair and clothes and lashing across patches of exposed skin. In the not-so-distant space is a humming that spurs them forward even as they are so mentally and physically exhausted from the nightmare and emotional tap dancing and the constant flying. That’s not even mentioning the unconscious expenditure of power seeping into the space around them, slowly and carefully working to realign with those far distant bits of a soul that had once been identical to theirs, but circumstances have changed so much--

However, in the depths of that exhaustion, they find it’s a struggle to stay hopeful. No matter how close they feel, their surroundings never change, staying in this deep, dark, infinite space of a game that has yet to render. There’s nothing here, they know that now. Nothing to anchor the shifting time and space; in this dimension that always was, and yet somehow an environment that hasn’t quite yet been built.

They are tired. So very tired. Davepeta Strider-Lejion-- also occasionally or formerly known as Data, Davesprite, Nepetasprite, Dave Strider, Nepeta Lejion, they’ve had many names and therefore have a hard time picking one full name for the narrative introduction that encompasses everything they are--might not be able to hear the thrumming of the timeline, but can guess they’ve been on the wing for several hours.

And yet at the same time, four months.

It had been an early August night when they woke up from a catnap in order to slay a dragon. And now… December. A week, days away from one of the few meaningful milestones they’d historically ever had.

It’s probably already passed. It’s been long. Too long, since the last time they’d seen the communicator in their claws flash orange, the only light aside from the fading pink and red magic that brings anything at all into this blankness. There was no rhyme to it, minutes or hours, the time could be days or weeks or months on the other side for all they know.

And then. Just like that. Something clicks. Something changes. Something looms out of the darkness, too close to stop gracefully.

You throw yourself to the side to avoid smashing into the pockmarked surface, sliding between your would-be doom and its neighbor with a silent but inward rush of adrenaline buoying you up and away from the nihilistic dissociation you were wallowing ever deeper towards. The wall of shadows shift around you, and you gather yourself up and dive into the pathways between the stones.

You know what this is. You know where you are. You imagine you can feel the shift as you pass from a lawless, exhausting mess of malleable existence to a smooth and steady thrum, its tethers twisting around you and anchoring you like a long lost friend.

Right on the other side of this thick band of scattered rock is a planet, glowing dimly from thousands of not-lights in thousands of windows as carapacians go about their routine. Around that planet is a moon, with four towers, one on each facet. And somewhere, in this drifting mass of stone, is home.

You look down at the communicator in your claws. It’s orange and steady, not grey, or blinking or…

timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering dataJammer [DJ]

timaeusTestified [TT]: Welcome back.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m assuming the readable timestamp means we’re back in the same string. This is the first time you’ve come online on my end without you needing to initiate the connection.

There’s a time stamp. There’s a time stamp. One that doesn’t look like someone ran it through an image compressor three hundred times.

You don’t know where the fuck to go from here, floating in this mass of rock, pulling your tired and shaking wings close and draping them around yourself like a protective cocoon.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< thank mew
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< christ im just
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< shaking
timaeusTestified [TT]: Did you make to Derse?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yeah i just
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< n33d a minute
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im not even a timebound god and i can tell the difference holy fuck
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its like ive b33n bouncing around in giant metal death machine without a seatbelt this whole time
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and suddenly bam nice and tight and smooth as butter gliding through time like it aint no thing
timaeusTestified [TT]: I told you it would work out.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yeah well i still n33d to find the proverbial n33dle in this burning haystack
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< fuck who decided the veil n33ded orbital drift
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m pretty sure you said that last time.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i did and its still true
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its a furreaking game it doesnt n33d physics simewlations too
timaeusTestified [TT]: Actually, those physics simulations might be to your advantage.
timaeusTestified [TT]: If Derse is under player timeline influence, then anything that it exerts gravitational influence upon should also have a limited stabilizing influence, which would then act on other nearby objects, otherwise those physics would be worthless if the whole ring was operating on different temporal wavelengths.
timaeusTestified [TT]: While I wouldn’t recommend attempting to make the flight to prospit or out to the debris cloud without my gameself as a mobile anchor, navigating the veil should allow you to move without slipping as long as you don’t stray too far from permanent objects.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I assume the eventual presence of our planets will help stabilize the space between once the session starts, but until then…
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dont worry this feral kitten is sufficiently traumatized by their unintended romp through the untamed jungle
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im gonna hand in my hunter cred and just curl up on the nearest warm lap and become a bonafide housecat
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’ll believe it when I see it.

You could keep going. And you do manage a few more half hearted lines to drag the ridiculous metaphor into the ground, but you find yourself trailing off and just, staring down at the glowing screen. A mess of black-green feathers curl around you, surrounded by a mass of rocks that are slowly orbiting some dark and unseen center of gravity, marking the edge of a delicate web of push and pull between Derse, its moon, and the ring it accompanies.

You still have to find the lab.

Somehow.

You wish you had a map.

A beacon.

Anything, to call you home.

Something waiting for you.

And...you do, don’t you?

It hurts, to open up. Not only physically, uncurling your cramping wings, but also prying open the part of you that has been incessantly zero’d on in Dave to get you this far . On those rhythms beating in the back of your mind. The ones that pick and tug at the bits of your soul, co-opting the rhythm of your heart for its own.

The sword to your shield. You need to look beyond him. Push yourself past the edges, filtering out the achingly familiar and look . You’ve followed him in the pitch black purely by the sight and sound of his soul before, and even dim and locked in dreams, you know what to look for.

So you close your eyes and open your heart and force yourself to fly, listening for the soft sound of the ocean waves and metal to guide you home.

Notes:

Aaaaand there you have it! Hope it was worth the wait. There's still one more mini-arc's worth of interlude left before we get into act 2, ie the actual birthday party :3c, but I wanted to ask you guys your opinion on how you want that handled. This chapter needed to be a single one due to the way the narrative unfolded, but the rest of the interlude is more conventional. Would you like it all in one chapter (and as a result might take another month before the next one) or in the usual scene-by-scene weekly updates? I don't have a particular preference.

I love hearing your thoughts so pls leave a comment if there's anything you wish to ask or add or want clearing up! And if you have an opinion re: the above question definitely be sure to leave me an answer! I'll try to remember to edit the end notes with the result by friday. Considering I spent the weekend recovering from that mad dash, I probably wouldn't have anything ready by tuesday! Be sure to follow my tumblr at katreal-fic if you wanna see lil like, status updates and in progress word counts and stuff.

I got some special thanks to throw out here though: Hyena is a literal godsend and edited/beta'd this monster of a chapter into something more coherent because I apparently got my wires crossed suddenly shifting back into third person after half a year of exclusively playing in second. Tense confusion and stray Yous galore! caledfwlchthat, deserts, peonies, and alexharrier for the much needed pompoms and encouragement as it slowly, and horrifically dawned on me that this couldn't be a simple 5-7k chapter. Nope. It was far too ambitious for that!

(ps also check out all their fics if you like striders and or shenanigans because they are all amazing writers plskthx so is hyena but they won't let me link them :c )

Chapter 51: [I1P2] December 2nd, 2006

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Dirk > Be Honest with Yourself

It’s just.

So.

Big.

You’d picked an early flight on purpose; if there’s one thing you’ve realized during the last four months on this packed ball of dirt that is the Earth, it’s that the earlier you chose to do shit, the better. There’s a metric fuckton of people in this city and most seem allergic to getting up before the sun unless they are contractually obligated due to extenuating circumstances such as...oh, some soulbond to an unfathomable and merciless entity. It’s a state of affairs you rather appreciate, giving your...flexible working schedule.

Standing here in the terminal of what your paperwork and one yawning not-friend tells you is the Intercontinental Airport, you still find yourself stretching your awareness to a sub-level of paper thin just in order to comprehend the sheer size of the place. It’s like that first moment walking into the grocery store all over again, when you can see just how high the ceiling is, towering over the row upon row of shelves.  Just, multiplied exponentially; an unfathomably wide expanse of human-made structure, not auto-generated by the game, and it makes you feel…

Tiny. Insignificant. A single ant crawling across the windowsill, looking out over the massive expanse of open world beyond.

Not that the place is empty. A soaring, curved white roof spreads out far above your head, entire walls of windows overlooking the pre-dawn flat expanse of concrete and metal monsters idling in their berths, waiting for their cue to take to the sky.

You just.

Can’t.

Imagine this huge space

Filled with people.

Even at five in the fucking morning it isn’t empty. You can still see a handful of living breathing doomed bodies just going about their business. Your attention flits from one to another, loitering in various areas of the terminal. A small group is clustered before a wall of screens and monitors, filled with information. Others stand in the lines you just came from, bags in hand, waiting to interact with the npc behind the counter to check their baggage and get their itinerary and be on their way.

You didn’t have bags. At least not huge bulky ones that need to be tagged and checked, delivered to the belly of the plane to await transport. Your fingers tighten over the strap of the faded orange and black duffel over your shoulder. It smells like dust; of course it does you found it up in the crawlspace, along with the similarly colored backpack Dave has slung over his shoulders. They are old. Newt had taken one look at them and sighed, “God, you still have those…?”

Dave’s bro didn’t travel often, it seems, if the depths at which you found them was any indication. Well, that and the fact that Newt seems to think you incapable of navigating this fucking process on your own.

You wonder if these were even the bags he’d packed up and left New York with. They felt old enough, and you never was one for throwing out something perfectly usable due to bad associations.

In fact, you usually kept them around. A constant reminder picking at your scars.

Stop it. This isn’t getting you anywhere . The stray self-admonition felt weak, but you latch onto it and reinforce it, using it to stave off the emotion spiral you feel yourself teetering towards. Such musings on your coping mechanisms are all fine and dandy for a sulking session on the roof when you are alone, but not when you’re sitting ramrod straight in an uncomfortable chair next to your brother waiting for your not-friend to finish what whatever he was doing at the counter. You’d already checked in through one of the kiosks, but he’d snagged the boarding passes wanting to check something.

The better part of valor is accepting when someone knew more than you did, so you just let him do his thing.

Christ you were starting to trust the guy.

At least when it came to navigating this confusing mess.

Dave is pretending to be absorbed in his phone, “liveblogging” the experience as he called it. But you note the small furtive glances he keeps shooting everything, even as he stops texting for a moment to crack his knuckles and stretch out his arms before curling back into the thin, leather...? You aren’t sure at all. It’s back and smooth and shiny but not plastic. Maybe synthetic.

Speak of the drones and they’ll perform a flyby, you spot newt crossing the wide expanse of the atrium to where you and Dave wait.

“Dirk? Dude, you--” Newt interrupts himself with a yawn, “--okay? You’ve gone white as a--w-well, I mean, you’re usually pale I guess but--”

“What he means is you look like you’re about to fucking pass out, bro.” Dave comments without looking up from his phone. “You look like a startled jackrabbit with your ears twitching every which way. It’s totally harshing my selfie game, bro. I gotta sufficiently document this, my first ever escape from this hot hellscape.”

“You could leave me out of the pictures; then I won’t be ruining your exultant vibe,” Fuck, you can do this. You sink your mental claws into that anxiety and feel it flow around and over you like scurrying ants. It makes you want to shudder and dig your slick palms into the rough and totally not satisfying fabric of your pants but-- you direct the next bit at Newt, “I’m fine.”

“I’m not sure I believe you,” His mumble was just loud enough for you to hear, and you decide to pretend you didn’t. Dave snickers, but you don’t acknowledge that either, just accept the thicker-than-normal and slightly waxy paper slips back into your possession. You’re keenly aware of the proximity as his fingers barely miss yours, just like you’re aware of how close Dave hovers at your side as he uncurls and clambers to his feet.

“I made sure you guys got decent seats. It didn’t save your selections for some reason . I’d suggest the window seat for you. It’s harder to get up and move, but at least you have the wall to lean on and sleep. I know how you get in cars.”

You don’t have the heart to tell him that sleeping is probably impossible with how wound up you are. 

“Okay, you’re both checked in, you only have carry-ons, seatings’ done, request submitted,” He’s mumbling, mostly to himself, ticking off each step on his fingers, “All that’s really left is to get through--security--It’s been forever since I’ve been here--You’re in that terminal, now where was--”

Security. Gates. Terminals. Right. You can feel your brain stutter, red flickering and struggling like a search index relying on a weak wi-fi signal as you reach back into your recall. The information is there. You know it is. Maybe it’s all the anxiety bubbling up within you like some witch’s dastardly bubbling brew, but the response to your query is sluggish as you struggle to retrieve the mental file you’d been pouring over last night. The data comes eventually however, weakly flickering, the correct compartment located and cracked.

Okay.

Maps. Plotted out routes. Synopses of articles written seriously for first time flyers, and then those with a more tongue-in-cheek approach. Airport etiquette and procedures…

You turn and compare the layout to the mental construction you build from that data, placing yourself in the scale model and then--tilting your head you find it, “It’s back toward the escalators.”

Sure enough, there’s a sight along the wall with the words security in either direction. There were signs pointing in either direction, with different gate numbers under each. A glance as the boarding passes and your eyes then flicker to the one closest to where you’re seated, “To the left.”

Newt pauses and turns to look at you, quizzical, “I thought you hadn’t flown before?”

“I did look at a map, Newt.”

Maybe it was more sarcastic than it needed to be. Dave sighs. “Okay, okay, enough with the tension I just wanna get on the plane and into the sky already. I got a date with an Eggybert waiting for me on the other end of this shindig. Gotta say, I never imagined I’d be psyched to take a 5 hour trip through the digestive tract of a giant metal turkey only to be shit out on john’s head, but hey, it’s my birthday so if I want to be turkey shit then it’s you guy’s responsibility to make sure it happens right?”

You roll your eyes and Newt sputters. You suppose the poor guy never did manage to become immune to Dave’s...Daveisms.

“You realize that we still have,” You check your own phone, ignoring the instinctive flick to check on the pesterchum notification. Dummy. Of course they wouldn’t be there. You needed Wi-Fi for the moment to connect and you don’t have it, “Just under an hour before the flight even departs?”

“I know. But what I don’t know is why we had to leave so early this place is practically a ghost zone. I could have easily gotten another hour’s worth of zzz’s and been total spunky genki dude throwing confetti and shit everywhere.”

He might as well be throwing confetti everywhere, with how goddamn excited he is, the thought makes you snort.

“You’re supposed to be at least an hour early, longer if international. It’s just being safe. Normally people like, grab breakfast or something while they wait.” Newt offers helpfully, “Anyway, if you’re ready to head back, there’s not much else for me to do here. Just check in with the attendant at the gate when you get there and--uh. You... did leave your strife deck at home right?”

...No?

“Oh god you didn’t. Okay, disengage them and give them here, I’ll take them home.”

Dis...engage...your strife deck?

The thought just... doesn’t compute for you. At all. You know how to do it. You devoured several sylladex manuals in your desperate attempts to absorb all the knowledge your bro felt necessary to leave with you. A set of verbal commands and the square tray slides out of your sylladex and into your hand, your bladekind and empty puppetkind specibi standing out against the rows.

You don’t move. Newt goes to take it from you and your fingers curl tightly around the square bottom. His brown hand hovers, inches from your own. His voice is quiet, and oddly firm. Deliberately nonthreatening. “I’m serious Dirk, you can’t take that shit on airplanes without a permit, and those only go to like, law enforcement and shit. Not since--well, since they stepped up security after 9/11. If you take them into the check point they’ll be confiscated and then you might never get your shit back. It’s better to just leave it with me.”

Just... Do it, bro. This isn't a fight you want to pick right now.

Dave reluctantly glances up at you, but when you force your clenched fingers to release and the deck is removed from your possession, he holds out his hand as well, the bladekind card standing tall and alone in its slot. Newt is taken aback, even as he accepts the additional component, holding one in each hand for a brief moment before a muttered word and they vanish into the compartments of his own sylladex. “You know what, I’m… not surprised.”

“Dude, what’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s just...normally people don’t get that mod till they are older. If ever. I mean.”

“A man is never too young to start learning how to defend himself. Don’t you have one? I bet you do. And I bet its something lame like, I don’t know, bookkind. I can see it; beaning someone over the head with a giant ass book--”

As Dave defends himself--and by proxy you for allowing him to keep one--you find yourself watching Newt’s expression. What you see troubles you. The uncertainty. The worry. The...discomfort that had flitted across his face upon reading the card inserted in Dave’s Strife Deck. The resignation. The...disappointment.

Oddly enough. That made you feel uncomfortably like you’ve done something wrong.

Like you’re letting Newt down. And you kind of really hate that. He’s like a sad nervous puppy, which you’ve never seen in person of course, so his face is smack dab in the middle of the reference dictionary for you, and it fits the definition of “makes you feel irrationally guilty for causing this expression to exist” that’s penciled in right under the idiom.

You didn’t think twice about Dave holding a strife deck, even if you find yourself determined not to make him use it. You’ve had one as long as you remember--better yet, ever since you were old enough to find and understand the instructions in order to install it. You’ve been training all your life. Training required weapon proficiency, which require a strife allocation.

You’ve known you were going to have to fight. You ran out to meet that looming destiny. Between the occasional drones that stumbled upon your home, and the eventual game session, you would have been dead without it.

...no, you know that you could never take it away from Dave, would never remove that source of security given what you know of why he gave you that look before handing it over…

He wouldn’t have done it if you hadn’t let yours go first.

Guess you’re just gonna have to stay guilty.

It's not like it’s a very novel situation for you. You’ll get used to it.


Dave > Act Your Age

“And this Dave,” You hear the voice somewhere above you and to your right sigh, “is why we were here so early.”

You want to scowl in his direction, but that would be Telling. “What is going on anyway??? We haven’t moved in ages. All I can see is pants. And asses. And asses in pants. Oh don’t forget the bags. Maybe even some baggy asses.”

Oops, that one might have earned you a nasty glare from the lady in front of you. You give her the blandest return stare you can muster, and amusedly you watch her mouth open to say something, then freeze and turn back without a sound. You didn’t think you were that intimidating given you were, you know, almost 10 and unfortunately have yet to even think about hitting those puberty fueled growth spurts. You can’t wait for that shit. “We’ve been here for-fucking-ever.”

You don’t need to sneak a glance down at your phone. You know exactly how long it’s been since you both joined in the line. 30 minutes and 34, 35, 36. The counter bubbles out of your background thoughts at the acknowledgement of its existence.

(-Just one of many, many clocks. The world is full of clocks and counters and timers and you can shift from one to another without so much as a stutter, like the knob on an old timey radio, flicking through the available frequencies and transitioning from station to station and genre to genre and music to news to sportsball.-)

You pull yourself out, taking the information and letting the rest settle back into the underlying rhythms that ground you. 36 minutes and 5, 6, 7--roughly halfway until the ballpark estimate your bro had thrown out before Stevens had abandoned you both in apparently the ONE place in the entire ghostzone that had a population of more than like. Five. People.

Mandatory security checkpoint. It was a bottleneck. A net spread across the singular hallway leading from the main terminal to the gates, catching people like a wriggling stream of helpless fish as they flop toward their final destination.

“Yo, bro,” You crane your neck to see him, squished as you are into this cordoned and winding line, it’s all you can do to not be pressed into his side. A far cry from your preferred position, which was at least several feet away--out of range, not that it helped when he could flashstep faster than you could blink--at the very least a good enough distance that you can cooly regard him without straining your already abused vertebrae. Being this close and not like, sitting down or something on the same level, was fucking exausting, “Use your freaky height to see what the hold up is. Or just share with the class since you’ve probably known for ages.”

“I could boost you if you want.” You see those orange eyes flick down, his abnormally tense frame loosening up in that way that you can tell is forced for the appearance of nonchalance. The offer isn’t delivered any differently than anything else ever is, but it--you hesitate for too long and he is looking away, taking your stone-faced silence as a refusal. He leans out over the edge of the cordon slightly--not too much since whoever designed this place wanted to pack as many hapless dorys into this particular roped off tin can as they could so there’s even more people on the other side--peering through gaps in the wall of people.

“No one’s actually getting through at all right now. Looks like there’s only two stations active, but there’s a crowd around the one and--dogs.” The corner of his mouth curls, “Either it’s broken or they found something they were looking for.”

Inconsiderate jerks. You let out a breath through hissed teeth, relaying the information to a particular flower-named young lady who promptly returned a message of Probably found drugs. Or bombs. Or maybe it’s just a narratively contrived government conspiracy intended explicitly to make you miss your flight and block you from ever meeting with your long lost soulmate. A modern day set of star-crossed lovers. Who can say?

Ha ha. Very funny Rose.

Hilarious.

“Are we at least almost there???”

Bro shrugs.

“Maybe one more bend of the line.”

It takes about 12 more minutes and 32 seconds of awkward silence--which is putting you uncomfortably close to the hour mark and okay maybe Stevens had been right about getting in early--before shit starts moving, but christ at least it’s moving.

Right before you get there, you can even see the break in the cordon ahead of you, things suddenly shift. The uniformed agents--the dude even has a badge . Rad. You wonder if they’re armed? It’s an innocent thrill of excitement that both excites and terrifies you. Because the kid in you thinks it would be just like being in a movie if they were, but the rational sometimes intermittent part just quietly states that you aren’t armed and bro isn’t armed so you better not end up in any sort of confrontation because you’d just be up shit creek without even a boat much less a paddle unless that paddle is you, doing your best flailing impression of a doggy paddle. Just perhaps less fluffy. And less cute--

Right, where were you going before your inner monologue got away from you? Oh yeah, right before you got up there to the place of honor, the guard suddenly starts letting more and more people through. All total there’s five stations, it looks like they called for back up. You’re the last one through and the officer directs you to the station at the far end. One of the newly opened ones. You follow, and then stop, glancing back over your shoulder. Bro is there. Blocked by the cord. Watching you. You can feel his eyes boring into your back.

Someone’s yelling at you. Not unkindly, but you’re frozen in the center of the wide open space between the edge of the school of teeming dorys of all shapes and colors and sizes and the net waiting to haul you in.

Right. Right. Moving. Right.

You glance, what you hope is nonchalantly at the lane next to yours as you fitfully creep forward. The dude is dumping his bag into the conveyor thing. And taking his shoes off. And--fuck you can’t see now he’s gone. Okay Dave, you gotta wing it. Just be cool.

The lady working the machine frowns down at you as you swing your probably-gonna-apart-in-a-second-let’s-be-real backpack up over the small lip and into the waiting bay. There’s these plastic tubs there too, but you just shift nervously, if you’re gonna be nervous might as well play up the act for this stranger and maybe they’ll take pity on you and give you directions.

“Where’s your parents, kid?”

“Bro’s uh. Back there. They wouldn’t let him through.”

“Hm. Guardians are usually queued up with the kids, but you’ll just need to wait on the other side now. Take off your shoes and put them in one of those bins. Empty your pockets and sylladex in there too, if you could!. Then step through the scanner. It’ll be quick!”

You do; the bin filling up with red-banded shoes, phone, your actual camera, some other miscellaneous shit you forgot to take out of your sylladex, and even some fucking pocket lint because by gog you are going to be thurough about this shit. You are going to be so clean you even--not without hesitating but you do do it--slip off your shades, blinking in the harsh overhead lights, and sliding them gently on top of your shoes. They stare up at you. Bro’s gaze on your back. Bro’s gaze in your face.

And then the lady reaches over and nudges them onto the rolly part of the conveyor and the box slides down. Out of sight. “Go through the scanner please!”

The next few minutes fly by. Nothing beeps. No alarms sound. The woman thanks you briefly for being a good kid before the next person in line arrives behind you and she needs to pay attention to them. You quickly gather up your things--smashing the shades back down on your face, stowing your shit while leaving the lint because you don’t need it anyway--before scurrying forward toward the outlet of the blocked off area. You hesitate a little ways away, turning around, loitering, automatically searching the net for his freakishly tall self--

The machines block your sight. You can’t find him. You keep scanning, but your back keeps prickling and then there’s someone behind you--

You don’t have a strife deck. Nothing falls into your waiting hand. The uniformed guard gives you a weird look and drops the hand that was about to fall on your shoulder down to his side, “You can’t wait here, sorry. You gotta keep moving. Here, come with me and I’ll wait with you.”

You’ve seen way too many movies about kids being left on their own, and even more about the follies of trusting unknown dudes in uniforms, even if there’s a shiny ass badge pinned to his chest. “Nah man it’s cool I think I see my bro over there! I’ll be good!”

You escape. You escape so smoothly you’re going to change your name to Bond, just minus the explosions and a hot babe or three, not that you’d be opposed to the later, you appreciate some peak movie level aesthetics even if you wouldn’t go so far as hang posters of them all over your wall like someone else you could mention. You clamp down on the rising panic because you didn’t catch the Gate number and you don’t know the first thing about where to look for Bro. Had he gotten ahead somehow? Would he expect you to remember and meet him there? If you went to someone and told you the destination could they point you in the right direction? You were first, how the fuck would he get ahead of you? You would have at least gotten a glimpse unless he flash-stepped away in an effort to leave--maybe it was when you hesitated like a little baby or--

The air behind you is displaced. It sends your nerves screaming and the faint movement has the hair on the back of your neck standing on end. Before you could whirl a hand actually does curl around yours, so the movement only results in a sharp jerk as you try to break the grip.

“Sorry I took so long.”

The grip is firm, and you look up, the pieces slotting together through your steadily panicking sponge of a battle-shrouded haze. Bro adjusts the strap on his bag, not releasing your hand. Instead he pulls you closer. You can’t believe he’s doing this. In front of an entire captive audience of random people with nowhere to go but into the fishing net. Pulling you into that warm spot right at his side and not letting you go. That’s.

That’s something.

Fuck.

“What’d you do stab someone?” Words. The words just drip out, condensing on the edge of your frazzled brain before collecting enough coherency and mass for gravity to pull those suckers down out of the clouds.

“Didn’t empty my sylladex into the container,” He rolls his eyes and starts moving, keeping that same death grip on your appendage. “Didn’t realize there were machines out there that could read personalized subspace pockets.”

You just.

Okay.

It’s just.

His hand burns against yours. Hot and slick.

You don’t ask him to let go.

Notes:

It looked like the people who responded were evenly split, so I took the executive decision to compromise. It turns out that this WA arc is gonna be 10 scenes long. But 10 chapters felt like toooooo long. So each chapter will include one Dirk scene, and one Dave scene ^^ expect the next set next week.

...You know, this isn't really an interlude in the conventional non-relevant definition. It's VERY relevant...

Chapter 52: [I1P3] Striders in the Sky

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Dirk > Transcend this Mortal Coil

Instead of existing on this plane, you try your best to just check out. You don’t even need to stop and think about exactly which definition of the word to use, both are ironically applicable to your current situation. You don’t really want to be here, in this belly of a machine hurtling through the sky at speed over distances that make your headache. You don’t really want to be here physically, trapped in this body, awake and aware as the seconds bleed into minutes into hours because you are torn between being bored and being overstimulated just from the sheer number of sounds going on, between people talking and the roar of the engines, and the vibration of the entire closed system of an environment around you.

You want to shut down, but you can’t. You want intellectual stimulation, but you have none. You can’t talk to Davepeta--no wi-fi, you haven’t been able to get your application working over mobile data alone yet-- you can’t work on any of your projects, you’ve already read through the stupid safety placard three times, and the skymall and tourist trap advertisements twice that and you just…

Your brain is so goddamn full of fog right now you threaten to lose yourself in it and after hours of this shit you’re starting to think isn’t really the worst thing that could happen now, is it?

Dave wasn’t even an option for a potential distraction either, the kid dropped off quickly after the excitement of the take off wore off and the consequences of his lack of sleep caught up with him. You remember pausing on your trek to the bathroom in the middle of the night, still hearing the clacking of typing keys through the closed door. Nightmare? Or just excitement? You couldn’t say.

You didn’t ask. He didn’t tell.

Making small talk with the flight attendant hadn’t worked either, which after an hour of this shit you’d finally broken down and given a try since the only other people in easy speaking distance had slipped on a set of heavy headphones--which was a brilliant idea and you are insanely disappointed in yourself for not thinking about it. She’d asked if everything was going well, and you’d totally smoothly started throwing out questions about aeronautics and the history of flight and it went okay? Or you’d thought it was going okay, despite her clearly limited knowledge on the actual interesting details, until Dave roused enough from his nap to groan and snap at you to “buzz off and let them do their job jesus christ bro.”

After that you’d probably taken a half an hour to shove lift calculations through the abnormally sluggish processing unit you call a brain because it gave you something to do other than sit and stare stone-faced out the window, watching miles and miles of grasslands rolling beneath you and…

You tried to commit it to memory, overlaying such a sweeping landscape of tiny rivers and off-colored square plots that are probably farmland, and the distant specks of passing cities and towns, a spiderwebbing network of roads, all over the bleak, featureless future you grew up with and it’s humbling.

You’d seen the maps. You’d seen the pictures.

It’s different, flying over it all, even if it’s not under your own power. You’ve seen plenty of environments, preserved in their own little bubbles, from Jake’s green fields to Jane’s blue caverns, to your own poisonous green city…

But nothing like this, wide and sprawling and bleeding from one to another so seamlessly it looks natural, because it is and

Clouds swallow the ground, washing over it like a flood, leaving a wide expanse of white and grey and you

Tear your eyes away.

Settling back against the abnormally comfortable and cushy headrest and you try and let go. Try and find that weight that allows you to sink inside yourself. You took some of the medicine shortly after boarding, but maybe it was the anxiety or the unconscious tension of being in an unfamiliar, potentially unsafe space unarmed (and dude that was an uncomfortable feeling you are not going to parse right now. nope.) but it does fuckall for you and here you are, reaching for the weird recesses of your soul that you’ve gotten glimpses of, so dark and deep and drenched in red threads and--

Your mental probe finds nothing. You feel light. Floating. Free and exposed at the same time. Ash scattered, leaving nothing but grey echoing emptiness.

Recoiling back to the surface, you search the back of your eyelids for the broken world and you find nothing more than a thin spiderweb of cracks, shadow on black, the last flicker of red long since faded. They look so much like staring into cracked, burnt glass. Inert. Dead, where life once persisted. You still don’t know what the hell they are, but you know you can fall into them and you’ll be safe. Safe from him. Safe from yourself. And now you can’t fucking reach them when you need it?

Fuck. Well. Maybe it had something to do with the distance? You’d left Lil’Cal at home, afterall. Maybe without the puppet’s proximity your stupid unreliable powers felt they didn’t need to pry open those depths in order to access that insulated space. Or maybe--

The follow up thought slips through your fingers. Something feels off to you. There’s something missing. Something different. It’s...wrong. It feels wrong in your head. You haven’t felt so damn cotton stuffed in months , keenly aware of the mental disconnect between your immediate thoughts and long-term storage even if you have no idea what to do about it. It’d been going so well, and you’d been getting shit organized and…

Some of it is probably the anxiety; the low-key panic that still thrums in your blood after hours of being trapped on this flight. You shove it away messily, forcing it to join with the constant roaring and pressure in your ears that you are very pointedly not acknowledging.

The window was a much better distraction than this shit, so you lean back against the curved plastic, the soft ambient light refracting through a brilliant clear blue sky you haven’t seen since you’d last stood on your rooftop well over 8 months ago, and 400 years ahead. Some time must have passed, or the weather system had been a fast moving one, because instead of clouds you see, far, far below you, that same morning light spreading fingers across brown-grey wrinkled stone. Hills and crevices and valleys--a far cry from the grasslands you’d been flying over earlier. You find yourself disappointed to have been robbed of the transition.

I’m seeing under the water. To a dead world.

...maybe you aren’t quite ready to look at that yet, feeling that same crawling dread creep into your thoughts. You reach into your sylladex. The muttered command must have woken Dave because, while the seats aren’t quite touching, they are right next to each other. This is a luxury, you’ve come to learn, having gotten a glimpse of the rest of the plane beyond the curtain, where people are packed in three to a row, and maybe even two rows to your one. “Perks” of the “upgrade” you assume. An upgrade you hadn’t requested…

It’d taken an embarrassingly long time for the conclusion to drift through your mind, circling and coalescing out of half-formed pieces, but it did eventually loom out of the fog like your apartment rising out of the sea.

You have a suspect. ONe with a history of careful, quiet consideration for your hangups and idiosyncrasies in a way that downright unnerves you.

This was bad enough, the thought of being crammed in back there…

You aren’t sure if you could have survived that. Not with how long these legs are/ You can feel them cramp just thinking about it. It’d been a problem you hadn’t considered at all when you’d selected Economy because it made sense to not need to spend more than necessary...and yet…

Newt had needed your boarding pass for something, and he hadn’t told you why.

Cagey little shit.

You wonder how long he’s been doing little things without asking like this. You wonder if Dave’s bro had ever bothered to notice, or if he’d just decided to ignore it.

“Bro…” A quiet hiss brings you back, damn. This was one situation where you were totally content drifting free from the physical plane like that. Dave’s drowning in his oversized chair, but he wriggles a little in the tightened seatbelt to face you, “No go on the phone bro. Keep it off. I think the one lady is holding a grudge over your attempted intellectual interrogation earlier. While you were off in la la land I whipped mine out to play a game of snake and she was all up on it immediately like “no games dawg” and I was like “well what else am I supposed to do for another hour or this artificial digestion” and she was all like “I’m sorry kiddo but that’s the rules” all super sweet and saccharine like. I don’t much want her coming back, ya dig?”

Phone…?

Oh. You do have your phone in your hands. Right. You’d pulled it out of your sylladex. You give him a halfhearted shrug and depress the button to power the device on.

He lets out an exaggerated sigh with a muttered, “I warned you bro” which had you wanting so badly to fill in the next line because you know that reference, even if it didn’t actually exist yet. And maybe, it never would?

You don’t know when this Dave would have begun that masterpiece, if he has, or has not. Maybe booting his bro out of the timeline and throwing shit into chaos had disrupted the delicate balance of creativity required to conceive of the lives of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff.

It’s a horrifying thought, and the mere notion of unintentionally robbing the world of your brother’s brilliance cause a very real physical reaction of your gut recoiling in pain and horror. You have very little idea of what he does all day in his room, aside from chatting with his friends. Maybe you should try and encourage creative outlets? You still have to find something for Christmas, and you’re already eyeing a drawing tablet for Davepeta…

You make a mental note, but it ends up getting lost in the jumbled mess that is your indexing system right now so you aren’t actually sure you’ll ever see it again. But at that point your phone screen has resolved into the mass of colors and abstract shitty photoshop that makes up the background on the tiny screen. You draw your knees up to your chest before you realize how awkward that feels in this unfamiliar--despite you putting your best asscheek impression into the seat for 4 hours, if the time on your phone is right--chair. Instead you decide to shift to put your back to the curved tubular wall, rearranging your legs so you’re in some semblance of a position that gives you the same sense of pressure and comfort, before you settle in and flip through your phone.

Your thumb hovers over the directional button when the cursor highlights the generic, graphicless square you’d chosen as the logo for your pesterchum application and…

You don’t have a connection. You know you don’t. But you still find yourself hitting the select key on the keypad instead of moving on. You look over the green and orange text that loads up after a moment--even if it’s offline, you’d directed it to save the logs locally--but for now at least, they offer you something to chew on. You think back to the plain black text that had been your only option back in the first build, and you find you’re proud to see the orange and green. It’s a success. A tiny one, but a success none the less.

It’s not very far for you to find the moment they made it home. It was late this morning, the high pitched ding of your phone notifying you while you lay awake watching the shadows play across the ceiling and running through multiple mental checklists to make sure you’d done everything. Had everything ready. That this was, indeed, happening.

dataJammer [DJ] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< whats that thing that people say in the animes
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< when they toe their shoes off and toss bags on the ground and shout as loud as their lungs could conceivably handle waking up every single ghost and zombie within a five mile radius
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ta something or other
timaeusTestified [TT]: tadaima
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yeah thats it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im surpurrised you knew that
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< was there a stash of animated porn films hidden away on some crappy server or somefang???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< people get real serious about their porn
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i imagine some apocalypse prepper couldnt stand the thought of living in a world post waifu era
timaeusTestified [TT]: If you must know, your post-scratch self left me with a very comprehensive library of popular media. Plenty of audio, visual, and textual materials intended for education in various categories. Some were clearly for historical context and intellectual pursuits, but even more seemed purely for entertainment and...other areas.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Sorry, Dave’s post scratch self.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< nah brah i got you
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im too tired to figure out where yet another dave falls when plotted on the daviness scale of magnitude
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< besides i was still an orange feathered bird when that record got flipped so honestly i was even davier at the time so its not inaccurate
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< spiraling into purrceived irrelevance maybe
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but more assuredly still a bonafide dave
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< a dave is a dave is a dave you know
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< just cuz i go by a different name doesnt mean i still aint a dave somewhere sometimes in some places and state of minds
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m not even sure if those are even sentences right there, much less ones that make sense. You realize your sense of identity is even more convoluted than mine, right? I’m the one who is supposed to tear myself apart for shits and giggles.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ah welcome to the dance of daves where we kickflip betw33n timelines and casually drop cherry bombs into the toilets and sick beats into the unsuspecting sl33per and then blame it on a future dave because thats something we legit can do
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< or could
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the tables have turned and passed on and with them i guess i turned in my timecard long ago
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< hush im tired
timaeusTestified [TT]: I didn’t even say anything.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you were gonna i saw you twitch
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im just standing here blinking blearily down at the mess i left of my pile
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< shit just thrown everywhere
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< stuffing bl33ding out all over the floor
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its like a plush crime secen up in here those cushions never had a chance against razor sharp desperate troll claws
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< wheres tz when you n33d her shed sniff out the culprit and then roast em with her sick dragon breath
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< oh wait thatd be me oops
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< lock me up and throw me befur his honorable tyranny guilty as charged sentencing will be in two days
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< do you think two days will be enough
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i just want to sl33p befur im culled is that too much to ask
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< have a propurr catnap
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< why am i so tired
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i thought gods didnt n33d sl33p
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< my afterlife is a lie
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m afraid I never really had the time to test the limits of deific stamina since shit quite literally hit the fan after I ascended. As someone who lived as their dreamself singularly, and with the dream selves of...actually I think Jake was the only one who got his actual body through the clusterfuck of a tutorial.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I can confidently say that while the constructed bodies don’t require sleep to fulfill its biological function, the mind often would begin to crave it upon being put under undo stress or prolonged periods of wakefulness.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Correct me if I’m wrong, but the last several hours have had you weaving in and out of adjacent timestreams and likely unstable spatial pockets as well. That sounds like a very stressful situation.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ...okay yeah but knowing that doesnt really solve my lack of places to propurrly crash here
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< thisll take furever to fix
timaeusTestified [TT]: Take mine.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im not just gonna kick your snoozing tail out so i can avoid cleaning up my messes
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m giving you permission. Throw my body out, or leave it there, I don’t care. Just get some rest.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33<
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i refuse to kick you out but i guess if i shove the remnants of mine over theres enough space without potentially getting too scandalous
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< do you mind if i…
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you said you were hurt
timaeusTestified [TT]: Sleep first.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< can i at least pr33n you???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< until i fall asl33p???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its relaxing
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and your hair is a mess im sitting on my hands to stop them from acting on their own thats how bad it is
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< epic case of bed head man
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i can already tell you haven’t b33n sl33ping well
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< four months of tossing and turning and no one here to sooth shit and make sure you don’t develop a rats nest
timaeusTestified [TT]: Okay.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< what really???
timaeusTestified [TT]: Yes.
timaeusTestified [TT]: If I’m being transparent, I’m nervous as fuck about tomorrow. I could use the support if you’re offering.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< aw yeah full purrmission??? now ill be totes too stoked to sl33p prepare fur a one way tickitten for good f33lings town!! B33

dataJammer [DJ] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

They’d barely lasted twenty minutes. You remember that, and it makes you want to smile inside. Thinking back over it, you wonder at the timing, allowing them to reenter your stream right before you and Dave were set to head out. You hadn’t thought much of it, but then again your entire existence is the result of one long series of weird events as paradox space shifts and folds to spit things and people out at just the right moment. It reminds you of waking up in a field of dead stars, following a thread out of your body and into another’s. After dealing with these bullshit hallucinations for so long--it’s almost been as long for you now as you’d spent in the game with your friends, and if that doesn’t make your stomach clench you don’t know what will --you’re starting to recognize when heart-based splinter bullshit is messing with you. It led you there. You specialize in ripping yourself to shreds, maybe, but you also acknowledge that you cling desperately to those pieces.

Even ones you hate.

While you appreciate the effort, no one else can handle the monumental pile of horseshit the disparate pieces of yourself had a knack of throwing out to smell.

Davepeta had chosen the Heart, their identity, when clinging to life when the world fell apart. They’d chosen it again on that stone slab and they were reborn, but you entertain the notion that perhaps Time was loath to unhook its claws from its knight entirely.

Dave > Make this Happen

You feel like you’re on fucking fire right now.

Not even in a bad oh god help me im burning to death stop drop and roll throw yourself into the nearest river or bathtub or even a puddle, way. No, it’s more as if the fire has lit itself under your somewhat sore posterior and you just feel this need to just get up and move. But you can’t, not even to take the somewhat lackluster route down the thin arteries of this bird to scenic St John, where the John isn’t the John you know, but the john. Not much to see there, just people. A lot of unhappy people if you happened to peek your head through the curtain to see the plebeians crammed into the back, which you had.

The reason you can’t even use that destination for your bringing feeling back comeback tour was a clear sounding ding! going off somewhere above your head, and an announcement being broadcast over the intercom. At least it’s almost over. The countdown you have going on is under an hour until the expected arrival and you just can’t wait. It’s time for this giant metal turkey to loosen its bladder and let you slide into a puddle onto some sweet egbert-inspired statuary. You consider where the best landing zone would be. His hair? His glasses? Eh, it doesn’t really matter does it. The point is you’re here. Almost. Now you just know the last--it’s not even a leg it’s a fucking toe--of this trip is going to be torturous.

Ugh. Each second pulls at you. Resonating in your bones. You feel like you should be vibrating but you’re not. Or at least you don’t think so. Not any more than the plane itself is, being hurtled through the air at unimaginable speeds bouyed on fucking nothing but air and it’s freaking amazing if you look outside your own little bubble with it’s small bumps and metallic buzzing roar and the popping in your ears that had you playing with the sensation for a good twenty minutes on take off.

That same flight attendant passes, checking trays and seats and who knows what else on her way up to the nose of the plane. You expect a scowl and a comment on Bro’s phone but there’s nothing, because the sneaky bastard has nothing in his hands. Just a quick glance and she’s gone.

That doesn’t fit with your narrative at all, and you are annoyed. You were kinda hoping Bro’d get politely reprimanded the way you did. Maybe even stiffly given he’s the one who’d gone off and quizzed her on the physics of aviation. Now you’ll need to put away your imaginary popcorn for another time.

He’s all but abandoned that uncomfortable looking position he’d contorted himself into at some point, going back to the previously resting position against the window again. But, it’s--a little different now? Enraptured by the view outside beyond the glass and its sliding plastic cover.

He is enraptured, that’s the kicker. And not in the way he’d been emulating a jackrabbit earlier, paying attention to everything and nothing, pushing back against Stevens’ frankly sickeningly obvious attempts do something nice with some sort of exasperated paranoia . That was nerves. Even if you still have trouble wrapping your head around it, you’ve come to accept that…

No, you can’t even bring yourself to think it.

You get a different feeling now. This isn’t the stillness of barely controlled panic, but the stillness of a predator with every fiber of its being focused on its prey. Watching. Steadying. Waiting to strike. It’s so familiar you can see into the past, back lit by the setting sun and liquid fire coating the edge of his blade, face cast in shadow by a brim of a hat and the shades you now wear. A glimpse of the man he’d once been and sometimes…

You kinda miss.

Sometimes.

But...it isn’t just the roof. It’s also him scrunched like a gargoyle in his chair, fingers flying over the keyboard in a near constant stream of taps. The moments when you’re so sure you could have an impromptu rave in the room and he’d barely even notice. An intensity that was directed at you that night, when his everything was focused on you, and the fire burned in his eyes and he told you he wasn’t going anywhere and you believed him.

For better or for worse,both crumbling and unmovable, that was your brother.

...and you find yourself hella curious to know what exactly was going through his head that would cause that kind of expression when you’ve literally been living in snoozeville for four hours and twenty minutes. You squint through the daylight, filtered as it was through the black of your lenses, curiosity warring with the common sense of any respectable creature with a working self-preservation instinct as you inch yourself toward the thick armrest/cupholder/reading table/whatever the fuck it was, trying to see what has him so enraptured.

Of course you can’t see anything. You’re flying some tens of thousands of feet up, and you are at all the wrong angles to be able to see much aside from like, clouds. Which were pretty damn awe inspiring when you imagined that you could reach out and poke the damn things. You think about swirling them around your finger like some non-artificial version of whipped cream, nudging them into different shapes and sculpting them and leaving a giant honking dong in the sky and it almost makes you giggle. It’s fun enough to deface the tarts Bro likes to bring home, but this was a much wider scale than that. It’d be like pranking the whole sky.

That draws you back into your dreams. Daydreams? You’ve drifted in and out all flight, never sure if you actually fell asleep or if you’re just pretending you’re the one flying through the sky, rocketing through the air, wind in your hair, shades the perfectly round size to block any stray bugs and particles from being flung into sensitive eyeballs. The sun in your face, hot, too hot, a green fire billowing out around you, flickering and pulsing, the force of the explosion propelling you outwards, there’s someone by your side, a hand in yours. Smaller, nails painted black, you turn to greet them, orange hood pulled down low and--

“Did you want to look?”

Bro’s voice smashes the daydream like glass, breaking it into pieces so tiny that they slip through your fingers. Sharp enough to draw blood, red droplets pooling against pale skin only to--

Nothing. Okay. You’re still staring at the marshmallow dotted baby blue sky beyond Bro’s face, only Bro’s turned toward you, the burnt orange of his eyes visible as he quirks an eyebrow at the apparent intensity you’d been throwing at the world beyond the window. Heat blossoms and you suck in a breath, tension winding through your shoulders and tweaking them like you’ve got a little key stuck back there and it turns and turns and turns every second longer those eyes linger on you.

“Couldn’t if I wanted to,” You swallow any chances of a direct answer in favor of a circular one, because you can’t ever do things the easy way and you’re panicking, a slave to your nerves which seems to think the best defense is a cascade of half nonsense and all totally artfully crafted bullshit. It probably was. “You heard the lady, seatbelts buckled, safety first, do not leave your seat on pain of pursed lips and disapproving scowls no matter how much your bladder presses against your spleen and makes you want to get up and do a dance routine all the way home.”

That was a good one you think. That deserves a fist bump.

You haven’t gotten one of those rare ironic fist bumps in a long time, one of the few nuggets of affection you’d grown to covet, but Bro wasn’t acting normal. Hadn’t been acting normal in ages. Or maybe he was and this weird Bro who tenses at a wilting violet like Stevens is the new normal. The one in front of you, back lit by the daylight from the tiny porthole cut into the side of a metal monster. The one who sighs and shakes his head at you. Who stifles a snort under his breath.

Those lips quirk, a small rare smile that you never see that steals your breath and makes your mind run in circles like a tiny little hamster stuck in its ball unable to figure out if it should screech to a halt or wheel even faster. “Disapproving scowls don’t mean anything unless they notice; just don’t go running screaming down the aisle and you’ll be fine.”

You have further protests dancing on the tip of your tongue, but then you see it, something else . Something different from the clouds. Something solid.

Bro tilts his head, considering, before even his eyes shift back to the window. And--

Fuck it. You pull up on the metal flap to release the belt and slide out of the seat. The plane vibrates beneath your feet and you feel yourself sway, but it’s not bad at all, especially since you can brace yourself against the seat in front of you. You cross the space and with a nervous glance at him, squeeze yourself around and between his long legs, pressing your nose up against the glass, plastic, whatever it was it’s cold and--

There it is, rising up out of a sea of clouds, a hole in the sky. A conical shape, grey and white and harsh black shadows. You remember how high the pilot said you were, and that thing still looks so big , looks like it’s just beyond the edge of your reach. The clouds shift and drift along currents of air, allowing you to see more beneath the surface, not so tall but so so wide and straining against the earth and trying to climb higher and higher.

You forget yourself. You forget to breathe. You ignore the sudden burning of the light as you push your shades up into your hair in order to feast your watery baby eyes on the full colors of a giant fucking snow covered mountain in the morning, so big and tall you feel like you can reach out and place your tiny little finger against its top.

You wonder if it’s full of frogs.

Then you wonder why the fuck you’re thinking about frogs.

You’ve seen worlds from space, you’ve seen hell, you’ve seen polygonal broken cesspits full of doritos, but for some reason this single mountain in one range in one spot on earth that probably isn't even all that captivates you in a way you can’t explain. It’s no Everest. You’ve heard of Everest . Everyone’s heard of Everest. Everest kills people. Eats them for breakfast. You’re pretty sure this dinky ol’ mountain hasn’t killed anyone worse off than like, maybe some hiker got lost in the blanket of pines and firs or--you rack your brain looking for another kind of tree but like why would anyone expect you to know its not like you took one look at the tiny homogenous looking forest of green and went oh yeah that’s a douglas fir for sure.

But still , you can see beneath the clouds in patches and see the evergreen forests spreading down the mountains and little clearings and clusters of things you swear are probably houses and gog everything looks so fucking small from up here. You want to bust open that window and crawl out to the edge of the plane and hang there, cape billowing in the wake of the plane and red sneakers pressing against the metal edge and just stare.

The plane lurches beneath you and you stagger forward, catching yourself against Bro’s long legs, and a hovering hand is around your arm so fast you wonder if he developed some new flash grab to go with the flash step, but between you and him, you steady, and he’s saying something but you don’t quite process it until he repeats it again, probably twice.

The ding overhead goes off and the warning plays again and you just turn to look up at him, unshielded eyes just blinking in some stupid state of numb confusion

“Do you want the seat?” Bro’s already clicking his seatbelt off, but he can’t move with you braced against his legs, “You’ll be able to watch until we land. If it’s anything like take-off it’s pretty awesome to see.”

“...What about you???”

That...wasn’t what you wanted to ask, but it’s what came out. Okay. Cool. The plane lurches again. It feels like you drop a foot and your stomach races to catch up. Turbulance. Rough air. Right, The reason for the request to stay in your seat is because the plane decides it wants to fucking fall, that’s just peachy.

Bro doesn’t answer, but things shift. One minute he’s in front of you, the next you’re sitting smack dab in the middle of his hastily vacated butt warmth, clicking the seatbelt shut and tightening it to fit with your much smaller frame.

Oh. Okay cool. You can just. Roll with this. You guess. Bro’s back in your old seat by the time the flight attendants make one last round as the pilot gives another speech on local time this and descending into that and hope you fly again with us sometime! It’s the same flight attendant, and she gives your swapped selves a stern look like she knows what you did, but she can’t say anything since you’re both buckled in and your trays are tabled.

Bro doesn’t even look the slightest bit concerned, he’s completely turned away from her, using his superior height to return to watching the mountain move slowly along the horizon. You’re a little miffed that he’s able to just do that, just casually peer over your head like moving didn’t bother him one little bit. You’d barely been able to see the clouds much less the more distant mountains.

Fine then. You deserve this spot more anyway.

Before too long you let yourself get drawn back into the magic. Pressing your nose against the glass in a way you’d probably hope was blocking his vision if you weren’t far too preoccupied to care. It wasn’t even the one mountain, which was moving further away, there were more . The broken cloud cover let you glimpse smaller peaks below the clouds, twisting trails, a whole fucking landscape just barely down there that you’ve never even seen before.

“When the ice caps melt, these would all be islands.” You hear the quiet words behind you, “Do you think anyone would be able to survive on them?”

“That’s fucking morbid, Bro,” You glance at him out of the corner of your eye, just barely slipping the skeptical look behind the solid edge of the fame. He shrugs in that barely-more-than-a twitch way you’re used to.

“It’s a valid question.”

“I don’t think there’s that much water in those there ice caps bro,” He shrugs again and you lean against the wall, thinking over the question, it sounds so far-fetched it might as well be a pokemon but its not like you’d know shit like that. All you know is that’d take a lot of ducking water. “Assuming you’re right and you somehow got enough water to turn the damn things to islands... Depends on how much warning people got, I guess?”

He nods slowly and you feel oddly like you passed some sort of a test? Hell if you knew what the test was, but his eyes aren’t on you anymore. You expect that to be the end of it, since time passes and there's a whirl of mechanical sounds from the belly of the plane as the pilot announces landing procedures or somethin. You don’t know. It’s not like you speak plane.

Bro isn’t done with you yet.

“There wouldn’t be any.”

You almost miss it as the airplane banks, moving your view away from the islands--damn it bro now you can’t unsee the blanket of clouds as some sort of deep as fuck ocean. You suppress a scowl. What was the point in giving you the window if he wasn’t even going to let you enjoy it?

“Dude, it sounds like a very specific fantasy you got going on in there. I can’t see inside your head to decode the exact circumstances it would require for those fucking mountains to fit the definition of an island, and therefore the survival rate of any hypothetical hikers who happen to be out on a nature crusade at any given time, so either give me more info or let me look out the fucking window.”

He seems to pick option B because he goes silent. So silent you start to wonder if you broke him. You almost feel a little tiny miniscule smidgeon of satisfaction which is quickly smothered by guilt because he’d been trying to engage with you and you just cruelly shut the dude down, but even those don’t last because you suddenly and terrifyingly realize you just shut the dude down.

You shut Bro down.

It wasn’t even a gentle one, it was a full blown “stfu and leave me ALONE.” and maybe not exactly in those words but, you were already on thin ice from…

Earlier.

Fuck you did this earlier. With the flight attendant--

You can’t focus on the way the clouds are getting closer, at how the plane is obviously circling. You just shut down Bro. Twice! You want to peek at him but you’re afraid at what you see. The space between your shoulderblades itches and you squirm, barely noticing there’s this giant fucking lake sparkling in the sun and maybe even a city and you really should be revited by the sight and you’re not because you’re trying not to panic that maybe this would be the time you’d pushed too far and he’d be angry.

The ghost of his eyes on your back follow you as the plane roars and the ground rushes up beneath you, and you can’t even fucking enjoy it can you because you just had to go and mouth off, you’re lucky he doesn’t just drag you to the roof for a strife and--

There’s a hand on your shoulder. You snap up. It’s Bro, sans seatbelt. You missed the landing ! You’re furious with yourself, with bro, with your own traitorous internal clock for running several minutes ahead. The people around you are gathering up their things, getting ready to leave. His hand tightens on your shoulder and you stiffen.

But he just releases you with a subdued, “Let’s go. Egbert should be waiting for us by the baggage claim.”

You hate this.

You know he’s giving you looks as you grab your bag from him, shrugging it over your shoulders and onto your back. You refuse to say anything. You can’t say anything. You feel the ice creeping up your chest and your throat and you just can’t . He takes your hand as you debark the plane, and you don’t struggle. You just follow silently.

You don’t even think you can blame him for this. You’re the one who screwed up, who let your damn emotions get away from you. Shoulda shut that shit down. What did it matter if Bro antagonized the flight attendant over your head? What did it matter if he wanted to discuss some random ass disaster scenario? You could have just tuned him out instead of…

You lose another three minutes.

Then five.

The last time the number slips away from you because--

“DAVE!” The breath is physically and literally knocked out of you as something--someone barrels head first into you, and would have straight up tossed you clean off your feet if you hadn’t subconsciously sensed the approach and braced yourself. Even then you’re strangely aware of another support along your back before you get a faceful of black hair as one John Egbert throws himself into your slack arms.

Just then something clicks into place. Your heart in your throat, your vision blurring, you just squeeze him. You squeeze him so tight you don’t want to--can’t let go. All the frustration and fear mixing up in with longing and the knowledge that right here was someone you were afraid you’d never see-- again-- and that makes no fucking sense since you’re meeting him for the first time right here and now and you are definitely not crying. It’s the air. It’s gotta be. You’re so used to Houston’s code-red smog count that Washington’s crystal clear air quality leaves your jaded peepers flailing in the wind screaming because they don’t know how to deal. A totally inconsiderate small brush of non-tear jerked moisture pools in the folds of your skin, safely hidden behind dark lenses.

“You look even more ridiculous than I imagined in those glasses, dude! They don’t fit your face at all!” But John is laughing. He’s smiling. And you find you’re smiling right back as he pulls away enough for you to take in his face. You’ve never seen it before and yet you’d know that fucking face anywhere with the dorky square glasses, bright blue eyes, birdsnest of a black hair framing a dark brown face and too overly large white teeth.

“You clearly have no sense of appreciation for rad eyewear, Egbert, since you have the gall and say that while sporting those giant granny squares perched on your nose,” You disentangle one hand from where it’d been buried into the fabric of his shirt--just a graphic tee with some movie promo on it. You--you know what it is, of course, it’ll come to you eventually--and try to poke him squarely on the nose. Only its awkward as hell because of how close you are, so you just end up pushing your palm against his stupid round squishy grinning baby cheeks in an effort to extricate yourself, “Jesus bro, some space please, I’ve been emulating an admittedly privilaged restless anchovy for hours this dude needs some fu--uuh air,”

Language . Bro’s mild teasing echoes in your mind and you realize the large hand stabilizing your back has vanished, taking with it the constant prickle of bro’s right there whenever you were in the same room as the dude. You hadn’t even noticed. John is just a storm. A fucking tornado drawing you in and spitting you out with a cheerful laugh and one last squeeze for good measure before he releases you, grabbing your hand and bodily dragging you forward, in a way that really shouldn’t be happening because you’re his size and you’re planted. Or you were, because you definitely aren’t now.

Actually, he’s a little smaller, a little pudgier, but that doesn’t seem to stop him from sweeping you along in his wake. You look ahead of where he’s heading at something within you releases the tense breath it was holding because you see Bro’s dumb hair just ahead, edging out of maintained and back towards its more natural roosting state. His back is to you, obviously talking with a slightly shorter guy with a stern face, prominent nose, and a hat so sharp you could cut a dude with that shit. Bro looks weird, posture off and stiff, hands shoved into pockets that are supposed to be decorative bro god don’t you even fashion--

“This is gonna be soooo awesome, Dave, you’ll see! The best birthday ever! Rose is coming tomorrow but until then we can--oh maybe we can watch a movie! I’ve got a huge collection of classics, I’m sure we could find something in there that matches up to your uncultured viewing habits--”

“Oi watch it Pot, half the shit you send me is totally cheesy garbage.” You shoulder check him, not really gently at all but he just rolls with it. You thought this would be weird, having a face to put to that name and cadence of blue text on a screen but it’s not. It’s not at all. It’s like you go to put that shit on the frame titled John Egbert and find it was there all along.

“If you think ConAir is cheesy garbage we’re going to need to start your education over from the beginning, because that opinion is so wrong it isn’t even funny. Do you even watch movies?? Aside from kiddie shows like Finding Nemo--”

“Woah there John, bro, chum, pal, friendo--don’t you be putting down Nemo okay? Its got a special fish shaped place in my heart of cold steel, melting all that ice with heartwarming family bonding and shit--”

He drags you right up to his dad who takes your bag and slings it casually other his arm as if it were some lady’s coat with a warm, “It is nice to finally meet you, Dave.” and giving no care to your half-hearted protest, it’s not like your valuable shit is in there, sylladex or bust when it comes to that, but shit like clothes and toiletries are a pain to sort through when you throw them together in cards. “I’ve heard a lot about you from John.”

“Whatever it was I didn’t do it,” They words spill outt of you before you recognize you even thought them, and then you can feel yourself go cherry fucking red god, was this the kind of impression you wanted to give your best friend’s dad??? Especially when you legit thought he thought you were some internet creepo up until like a couple weeks ago??? Come on Dave, don’t start seasoning up your sneakers quite yet.

He’s not quite as tall as Bro, but between the pressed shirt and Actual tied tie and angular hat you find yourself intimidated anyway. And envious. You want to look like that some day, it’s fly as fuck and looks so cool. Maybe throw a full blown suit jacket on yours though, and then you’d be rocking the full blown super spy aesthetic.

You don’t know if it’d look right with these shades though, maybe John was right and you needed another shape? These are full on anime protag, while you would probably want something a bit more suave and slick. Something to think about, eventually. It’s not like Bro is that cool anymore, given how you’ve watched the stalwart bastion of coolty fall apart in front of you these last few months after--

Fuck that. You are not thinking that. Bro is Bro. You’re supposed to be coming up with something witty and suitibally impressive to follow up that complete and utter dud of a line--something more interesting than a “nice to meet you too sir,” that doesn’t make you sound like a deranged feral child with no filter, you’re derailed by a rumbling laugh.

Shit you took too long. This is what happens when you don’t follow your gut and just let it go, then you miss all the good opportunities.

“I believe his words painted the picture of a creative, smart, and interesting young man, none of which is something to be denying as if you’d been caught with a crumb covered hand in front of an empty cookie jar.” He shoots a smiling glance in the direction of his son, “You and the young lady LaLonde have been all he’s talked about to me for oh, almost two months now?”

“Daaaaaaaad! Stop it!” John groaned, letting go of your arms and pressing his face into his hands, you can’t quite tell if there’s a blush going on there, but you know the heat in your face shows no signs of tamping down any time soon. It’s so hot up in here you could probably scramble an egg on it. He stomps over and insists on taking your bag from his dad, which kinda makes you go aw and melt a little, huffing.

You can’t just let this go. You physically can’t.

“I’m touched you think so highly of me John. Really. Truely. Warmth curling down the very tip of my tippy toes. It’s nice to see someone appreciates how unabashedly awesome I am,”

Imagining John squirm has nothing on actually seeing the real thing, as the other boy smacks you on the arm and tells you to, “Knock it ooooooooff already. Open that mouth too wide and we’ll all see exactly how uncool you actually are. I know all your secrets!”

You gasp, clutching your heart like a dame about two steps away from fainting with shock, “My dear Egbert, how could you be so uncooth as tell your father the sordid details of our youthful, passion filled midnight trysts on school nights, nothin’ on but our colored words on a white page, all lit up by the soft orange light and smiling face of pesterchum!”

“Goooooood shut up Dave! I didn’t think it would be possible to talk more ridiculous than you type. How can you even say stuff like that with a straight face?” He swats at you again, “and it wouldn’t be just my Dad! Your brother’d get to hear all about ‘em too!”

You freeze. You’d almost--

He’d moved, no longer standing beside Mr Egbert. A couple feet away, hanging back, keeping an eye on the people moving through the space beyond your little group. If he’s listening, you can’t tell. But you know he’s listening anyway. You swallow any retort you had and turn back to John’s Dad, who watched the exchange with something you wanna pin down somewhere between amused, shading towards mildly concerned when you mentioned school nights which maybe makes you internally wince, maybe you shouldn’t have ratted John out like that. It’s not his fault your sleep schedule is wack, although you do try to direct the super late night shit toward the Church of Lalonde.

You’re the paragon of a considerate friend. And considerate friends do not keep friends up passed their parental mandated bed-time. You’ll need to find a way to slip Dad-bert a note or something before you leave. You were being facetious.

Mostly.

“Really though, thanks a lot Mr. E” Mr. E. Mystery. Dad-bert, especially with his hat throwing that ever present shadow over his face, really does look like all he’d need is one fly tech-laden suit and he’d be off stealing government secrets. Maybe you should sprinkle some sincerity now, “It’s totally cool of you to let us hang out like this I mean woah, halfway across the country for a fu--uhn birthday party how cool is that???”

“Someone,” There’s a pause, “told me that this will be your first birthday party. Is that true?”

You shoot John a look, because you know that was something you’ve mentioned to him, especially after that disastrous afternoon that had a paper ball flying at your head where Bro made you reflect on how much you had no idea what kids would actually want for their birthday. John plays dumb, shaking his head exuberantly in an effort to convince you he wasn’t the one to spill the cans of crazy juice all over the floor. You just shrug, pretending it didn’t bother you.

“Nope. I mean yes, it’s true, nope I’ve never had a party before. I mean how would I have a party??? Before a few months ago the only people I woulda ever invited would be me, myself, and I and maybe Bro if he bothered to drop out of stealth mode for a while and wanted to spend time with a whiny kid. This is the first time I’ve had friends I actually wanted to, and have the opportunity to hang with like actual bros and I--”

You take a breath, your lungs burning, and reach out to take John’s hand and squeeze, “Thank you. For trusting me. That I wasn’t like. Some weirdo killer dude. Thank you. Really.”

John’s hand tenses in yours, and then he squeezes back.

Notes:

:'3c

...It's a good thing I didn't go for the all in one chapter eh? I've already added a 6th chapter, and the 5/12 scenes I already have are nearly the same length as chapter 50 LOL

I hope you like character based shenanigans because that's pretty much all the next four chapters are.

On the next episode, we'll get some parental advice, and some quality time with a bff.

Chapter 53: [I1P4] A Matter of Taste

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Dirk > Heart to Heart

When the constant vibration of the car engine stops, you mentally allow yourself to uncurl and reconnect with the world outside this moving vehicle. Nearly all of your attention had been tuned into the Dave and John show, which never really got a commercial break, rambling from topic to topic in a way that makes you ache for that ease of communication. How long have they been talking? It sounds like years. Had they connected sooner than you? You hadn’t found Roxy’s protected segment of the net until you were about their age, and even then it’d taken Calliope another year before she would reach out and bring the rest of you together. 

They’re in the back seat, laughing and smiling out of sight. You close your eyes and listen, curled in on yourself, pretending to sleep. Mr. Egbert--unlike Newt--appears to be a quiet, focused driver, and not remotely inviting conversation or comment from your direction. 

Despite being a much longer trip distance wise in comparison to the small coffee shop less than fifteen miles from your apartment, there had been much less stopping and starting on the drive from the airport to your destination. Less places to idle and wait for lights, less traffic, perhaps that means less incentive to natter nervously at the person in the shotgun seat.

Or maybe John’s dad is a man of fewer words than Newt Stevens. It’s not like you have that large of pool of drivers to sample from. He does hum, you found out, following along to a radio that’s turned down too low for you to make it out more than background noise.

The area surrounding the now parked vehicle is very different from the one you live in. You hesitate to say you like it better-- it’s unfamiliar and even if the ocean is missing that apartment complex high in the sky and it’s stifling heat is home --but...it’s...nice.

It’s less crowded, more... green . Quieter.

God it’s so much quieter.

John and Dave can’t wait to get out of the car, with John bellowing a, “RACE YA” challenge that leads to them both tumble in a rush out of the car door closest to the house. You’re out of the vehicle and moving to intercept when you notice a particularly telling shift in Dave’s stance, but Mr. Egbert stops you with a raised hand, and then projects his voice after them, “Be careful boys!”

It means nothing. A futile plea falling on deaf or uncaring ears as Dave immediately tackles John into the grass when the boy attempts to cut across it to reach the door instead of taking the long way along the path.

Mr. Egbert sighs and gives you a Look. One you attempt to translate and fail, only to be pinned in place by the weight of his dark eyes until he breaks the moment with a faint shake of the head, returning his attention to the children--christ they actually are children--somehow the tables have turned and John is sitting on Dave’s back, smugly pinning your brother in place, but only for a second, because the moment he tries to make a run for the door, a hand shoots out and grabs him,  pulling him back down to the ground by the ankle.  

“I wonder if they’ve considered that the door is locked,” John’s dad muses to--you? Himself? “We’ll likely need to wash young Dave’s shirt after this. Grass does terrible things to white clothes, but it’s good for them to work out some of that energy here, where there’s nothing for them to break.” 

Mr. Egbert-- Dan . Jane’s son. You need to remember it, dig deep into the fog and stick a blinking light on the damn thing because it’s important to remember right now. It’s in your phone, has been since you spent hours quietly talking over the phone with him, making your clumsily presented case for this outing to him. 

It wasn’t that awkward initially. You’d had that shit all rehearsed and even written out on note cards, and you’d made it all the way through without a hitch. Your logic was sound, the plan reasonable--you’d even offered the pay for travel and room, what problem could there possibly be?

Dan had listened, quietly, thoughtfully.

And said no, and you’d had to spend the next two hours in a very careful negotiation with a voice on the other end of the line and make your case, and you didn’t even win because you are here. On his turf. Under his supervision. His rules.

He leaves you there, walking leisurely up the path. Dave has John in a headlock, both children’s set of eyewear knocked askew and glinting in the grass. Neither of them are paying attention, and all it would take was John to squirm free in just the wrong direction…

After a moment’s thought-- should you do it? Is it worth the risk if you don’t? But if you do are you going it just ruin shit again?--you wait until the right moment, when Dan has his back to the debacle, and you take that step. Dave freezes, watering yet still brilliant red eyes snapping up to meet you as you settle right in front of them, although John still seems to be distracted by wheezing and trying to pry off Dave’s hold. 

You don’t look at them. Not directly. You only gather up the delicate eyewear from their nest of dew-wet grass, the moisture laden air preventing even the late morning sun from evaporating it entirely. One set of angular lenses, check, given to a younger brother when he broke his pair; one set of square clear ones. You briefly consider the ethics of absconding with something they both need to function to some degree, but the decision is made for you as Dave awkwardly releases John, who flops to the ground with a dramatic whine.

“Sorry bro…” The mumbled apology reaches you and you just shake your head, reaching out and carefully placing them on Dave’s head, sliding the ear pieces through his hair.

“Captchalogue them next time,” Is all you say, before placing the excess pair of glasses into his hand and taking that second step. The lock clicks as you land on Egbert’s porch, door swinging open to a thankfully much dimmer house.

It’s…

Clean. That’s the first thing you think of, taking in the space as the door is pulled almost shut behind you, but not completely--you can still hear the boys outside. You linger in the small entryway, watching as Dan flicks on the overhead light and moves further into the room with yours bags over his arm. You don’t really pay much attention, taking in the diamond patterned area rug before a subdued patterned couch, taking in the, uh, artful, stained glass lamp on the table next to it, an umbrella held by a jester with a wild, multicolored hat and bells and painted faces. That seems to be a...theme, as you let your eyes linger briefly at the sparse pictures on the wall--nothing like the walls of your apartment before your Cal-induced paranoia led you to tear down most of the posters. And then…

“I’m going to put your things in the office for now, is that agreeable?”

You start, tearing your eyes away from the--just focus on him for now. He lingers in an archway near a set of swinging doors, regarding you across the room. “Yeah. That’s fine. I reckon we’ll figure out what happens with that later.”

“Indeed.”

And with that he vanishes into that archway, quietly taking the threadbare orange backpack and duffle out of sight. You let out a breath you didn’t realize you’ve been holding; a long hissing rush of air. Pushing a hand into your hair, squeezing, pulling just enough that the skin begins to ache. 

The door slams open behind you, and you move , taking in the angles you remembered from the door, and dropping you in the corner of the room near a little curio cabinet full of statuettes. It’s not truly melting back into the shadows, since the space is pretty brightly lit despite the fire-place being cold--and you are not thinking of the fireplace. Or what’s on it. Or what’s above it. You aren’t.

There’s nowhere else to run as John drags Dave bodily through the entryway. Dan was right; Dave’s red and white shirt is smeared with green stains--you hope he brought a spare, you hadn’t thought to police his packing habits so you don’t actually know what he even has . That feels like a misstep.

The race appears entirely forgotten now; John having recovered his glasses, even if they perch crookedly on his nose. Dave’s hair is mussed, dirt brushed against his paper white face in a pattern you don’t quite recall from before, peeking out from where his eyes are hidden behind your shades.

...Maybe handing both to Dave had only served to provoke another scuffle. Oh well. They’re both alive. Egbert said it was fine.

...Right?

It is fine. You just. Need to not insert yourself into shit and ruin it and it’ll be dandy. You learn all that from a cursory glance and then do your best to seem utterly fascinated by the plethora of harlequins. These wouldn’t have fit Jane, they must be a John thing. Hadn’t Davepeta mentioned something about clowns before?

“C’mon, I gotta show you my room, dude. It’s awesome ! I’ve got this like, magic chest full of hilarious hijinks and I think I got some glasses that’ll fit you way better than those lameo ones.”

“Yeah yeah lead the way, jeezus John not so hard you’re gonna pull my arm outta its socket have you ever reset a dislocated shoulder before it fucking hurts--”

“Seriously, ixnay on the earingsway, do you want the disappointed look, Dave? Do you want the look that’ll send you squirming in your place, unable to figure out how exactly you screwed up so bad? I don’t!”

“Idunno, it sounds like a pretty novel experience the way you describe it. But don’t worry, he’s not here now is he? I’ll be on my best behavior, I promise.”

Their voices faded, and a door closes upstairs.

You’re alone.

Again. 

This isn’t your place. 

It isn’t your space.

Your eyes drift up towards the fireplace. The mantle place. To the candy blue urn and the portrait and you just--

Can’t.

This is shit to deal with later, when Dan Egbert isn’t walking out of the back room straightening his tie, and glancing from you to the stairs and throwing an unvocalized question in your direction. 

You box up these feelings with great prejudice and lock them back up, flinging them deep into the fog. You’re lucky you didn’t walk through that door to find her taxidermied corpse.

“John dragged Dave up to his room.”

John’s dad nods, as if that's what he expected. “Well, feel free to make yourself at home. The remote is on the couch, or there’s the office space if you wish for some quiet to work. I’m going to get a head start on prepping the meal. You two had a long flight, and are two hours behind what you are used to, so we’ll aim for early afternoon, with perhaps leftovers later in the evening, or some light snacks. I assume John will likely call a movie marathon at some point, and it just wouldn’t do to interrupt them when that gets going.”

He turns to go. You stand there. In this room. There’s a decent sized TV against the far wall, a current gen game system tucked into a wooden entertainment station, directly across from the couch in front of some giant framed clown painting but--

“Is there anything I can help with?” 

If you were anyone other than you, the words could have been described with a verb such as to blurt, letting them slip out and stop him even as he pushes the swinging saloon-style doors to head into the kitchen. He regards you, and you wonder what he thinks of you. Of this almost thirty adult standing around in the corner of his living room, two seconds from fucking off into the yard or something because you don’t feel like you belong anywhere. You can’t follow Dave--that would be the worst decision you could make. And you can’t stay here, in this room. Not right now. Not right under--

“I could use an extra hand, if you are willing.” He inclines his head in an invitation--an invitation that has your heart in your throat and you crossing the space in a flash as soon as the doors swing shut behind him, pushing the painted wood back open.

He directs you to the sink while he’s digging through the pantry, pulling out a giant bag of--

You can’t help the raised eyebrow. “Potatoes?”

“Of course! You did say he asked for a ‘spud’ for his birthday, didn’t you?”

It--you just can’t take it. He remembered that offhanded comment you made when you were explaining Dave’s request. You laugh . It’s quiet--you don’t lose yourself or anything, and it’s nothing like the loud almost booming laughs Jake would let loose on those occasions early on when you’d discovered something new together in your explorations, but it does help some of the tightness bleed out of your shoulders and loosen up the knot in your chest. “What’s on the menu?”

“We’ll keep it simple tonight.” Dan starts counting out several potatoes, running them under the water and scrubbing to knock free any dirt clinging to the brown skins.

You watch with curiosity; you’ve never actually had a potato before, although you remember considering them at the grocery store several times, it was mostly your lack of preparatory knowledge that led you to decide against them.

“I considered committing to the gambit and preparing a potato salad, but it’s not the most appealing dish. Especially for children who haven’t yet grown to appreciate some of the flavors. Mashed potatoes, roast vegetables, and chicken is always a safe bet. I have several to choose from--are there any in particular he doesn’t care for?”

You don’t know. But you let him go through the list, deciding on some combination of carrots (you know he likes those), broccoli, cauliflower, and bell peppers, to turn into some roast veggie medley with the logic that if either of the boys dislike one ingredient in particular, they can pick to focus on the ones they like. You don’t have the heart to point out that you don’t even know what half of those taste like, although you have found cauliflower to be a good snack the one time you bought it, so you listen as he concocts a plan in his head.

It’s only once all the vegetables are procured, washed, and patted dry with a paper towel that he turns to you. “Would you like to peel the potatoes? I’m sorry, I am used to doing all the preparations, and just got...going.”

“I…I’ve never done it before.” You hate this. Admitting your ignorance. He stops what he’s doing, and gives you an unreadable look. It makes you want to squirm, but you don’t, setting your jaw and taking the proffered spud and the--that’s not a knife? But there is some kind of hole in the center of the small metal instrument with a decently sharp edge, you eye it with the look you would give your katana, lightly checking the edge with the pad of your thumb. Yep. Sharp. Not enough to cut skin without pressure. 

“It’s quite simple. Here.”

A large hand curls around yours, placing the instrument with the sharp edge against the potato. And then moves, the edge digging through the skin and under and slicing , the brown wrapping curling up in the palm of your hand. Thinner than paper. You echo the motion, fascinated, using your other hand to spin the oblong root, extending the cut and the strip around and around. You find yourself wondering if other types of skin would react the same way.

Likely need a sharper blade.

You can’t even find it in yourself to feel disgusted at that lingering thought. 

It doesn’t take long for you to realize that quick short slices feel more efficient, even if they aren’t as fun as the long curling ones. Dan leaves you be, choosing another countertop space in order to begin chopping up the rest of the vegetables. Your first oblong lumpy shape of porous root is liberated from it’s thin outer coating and you run the water over it again, mimicking his earlier motion of rubbing the oddly spongy surface with your thumb before setting it down on the furthest edge of the paper towel laid out on the counter.

Some of the water splashes onto your sleeves in the process, much to your annoyance. There are downsides to this whole, ‘wearing long sleeves.’ Even if it does help stave off the winter chill of Washington, in addition to its primary function as sun repellent. While Houston had become more bearable with the death of Summer, it had nothing on this place.

You’re rolling them up loosely--not quite to your elbow, the short-thread fabric doesn’t have that much give to it--when you realize you’re being addressed again.

“That color looks good on you.”

“Thanks.” You pause, considering the maroon fabric between your fingers. “Made it myself.”

This particular one is a newer purchase, since you hadn’t found this color in the attic. It’s not exactly the same, less plush, but you hadn’t been able to find the good shit in his records yet--not that you’ve had time to sift through all the receipts. While there’s still much work to do, sometimes the pre-dawn light turns your brain to mush and idle hands need to move until you manage to sink away from consciousness. More than once you’ve woken to find the needle jammed into the fabric to the point where you have to rip a couple stitches out to recover, but hey, you haven’t lost one into the depths of your futon yet.

There’s a sewing machine packed up in the crawlspace, but...well, that’s a bit noisy for late night needlework, and you like working with your hands.

“You sew?”

“Yeah. Fixing tears mostly, but making shit isn’t hard as long as you’ve got a pattern and measure correctly.”

Sinking into the repetitive motion, you find you like peeling potatoes. It’s almost soothing. A pile of peelings begin to form on a paper towel in front of you, the eventual clean white flesh underneath revealed to the world as you set them aside one after another. You don’t have many, he only gave you 6, but you almost lose yourself in the task until--

“I think, it’s never too late to learn to mend.”

Mid swipe, frozen, the blade of the tool digging into the flesh of the root resting in your other palm. Dan isn’t looking at you. You would have felt it, no matter how in the zone you were. Call it combat awareness, call it paranoia, whatever it is, you’ve got it in spades. Which is pretty impressive considering you grew up in a human-free zone. 

You could ask what he means, but the words get caught in your throat. You know exactly what he means.

The only sound is the faint rhythmic thunk, thunk, thunk, or the knife edge impacting against a wooden board, dismembering the vegetables as Dan pushes them into neat piles.

“Sometimes…” The word feels foreign on your tongue. He’s not looking at you. You know he isn’t. You didn’t tell him about everything. Just the basics. But it’s fucking obvious isn’t it? He’s an Adult. A Real Parent, not an awkward teenaged fish out of water who doesn’t even know how to deal with kids his own age much less raise one. 

He had to have seen it--in the airport, in the car, standing lost in the living room, torn by indecision. How jumpy you both are, how you contort yourself to give Dave space. How he clams up around you and can’t wait to get away from you. 

Your feel your shoulders slump and it makes you angry, dragging the peeler across the vegetable, imagining it’s a blade across your throat. This white flesh doesn’t bleed. “Sometimes, if you take too long it doesn’t stick. The hole just gets bigger. The edges frayed. Shit just falls apart.”

“That may be so,” Mr. Egbert agrees calmly, as if you really were just talking about what it sounds like: a rip in fabric. A tear where needle, thread, and diligent, deft fingers can coax things back into working, if not perfect, order. “But, for something so important, a gentle hand and patience can make it last until you can manage a patch.”

You can’t help but think of the last patch job you did. Fraying red, and green, and black. Torn apart by your own hands.

It’d been anything but gentle.

“It’ll never be the same.” 

“No,” You hear him sigh, “But, that is just a part of growing up, isn't it? I see my son changing before my eyes every day, too fast, I think. He’s just a child, she is my charge, my everything, and yet... with that change, our relationship too must shift to reflect who we become. Just because it’s different, doesn’t make it unworthy of treasuring, Mr. Strider. You must have been young, when you found yourself with a responsibility you didn’t expect. Maybe you made mistakes. Maybe you made poor choices. But, I think, the fact that you are trying despite them is admirable. Many simply give up.”

“...call me Dirk.”

You place the last potato onto the napkin. There’s a large, ugly gash in it, but…

It’s still whole.

“Dan.” You finally look at him, he's focused on his work. On the rhythmic thunk, thunk, thunk. “Once we finish here, I plan to start baking. I have the fixings for several different flavors--do you know what type of cake Dave would prefer? I realized we never discussed that on the phone.”

You think of old, pixelated footage. Of a PR stunt. Of heart shaped shades and a berry in mint green hair. Of files saved on your phone. Dicks drawn on fruit tarts that you never get to see in person, because he always eats them immediately after sending you a picture.

“Strawberry.”

“I’ll need to run out and get fresh ones.”

A beat.

You remember the feel of his hand on yours, guiding you to take that first step.

“...could you teach me how to make it?”

You finally look at him, and the small smile directed towards you is surprised, but kind.

“Of course.”





Dave > Pick Your Poison

“I’m dying.”

Okay maybe that doesn’t get you the reaction you want, so you groan and dramatically throw your arm across your face. There’s a huff and you hide a smile where your audience can’t see it, keeping it tucked in your pocket. A tiny little treasure meant for yourself. 

It was so nice having someone around who appreciated your theatrics. 

“Come closer, bro, please, let me see your bespectacled dweebish face one last time…”

It’s only half for the lols, really. Gog you feel uncomfortable. But if you could jump back in time with an emptied stomach, you’d totally do it all over again.

“Maybe I’ve already died and gone to heaven, that’s the only explanation. Do you really get to eat that every day? I’m so stuffed I feel like I’m gonna fucking explode, bro.”

“I don’t know, you’re sounding pretty alive to me, bro.”  

Dying not dead, John. No rest for the wicked till the deed is done. Put me out of my misery, I’ll never be able to eat again--”

“No one told you to stuff your stupid face.”

“Yeah well my ‘stupid face’ has never had anything so heavenly in like, my whole existance on this earth and beyond. Like seriously bro, I can never look at chicken again. Never order my kungpao chicken. It’s useless. Gone. Your dad has ruined me. Chicken nuggets are but a wistful nostalgic pipe dream blown away at the mere memory of the masterpiece I had in my mouth less than an hour ago.”

“Mmm hmmm.”

He’s probably rolling his eyes at you. You crack an eye open. The angle is kinda whack, but you can see his back from where you’d thrown yourself on the floor of his room during your performance. He’s rummaging through a box, making a shit ton of noise, plastic shifting and thunking together, and you put 2 and 2 together to get five and let out an exasperated sigh, rolling over onto your side despite the discomfort the movement causes. Fuck, it may not look like it when you poke it beneath your shirt, and maybe you’re playing it up a little bit for the dramaz, but you really do feel like you are gonna explode into a splattering of Dave goo thanks to how much you ate, “Dude are you seriously going through a bunch of VHS right now? Don’t you know that shit is so last decade? It’s DVDs or bust now, get with the times. Format of the future and shit.”

Oh now he’s definitely rolling his eyes at you.

You’re kinda smug about that.

“It’s not like I don’t know that! They just don’t have all the good shit on --”

You can’t help it, you cut him out with a loud startled gasp, “Oh my goooooood Egbert did you mine ears deceive me??? Did you just say a naughty word???”

“--digital formats.” He just buries himself half into the box again as if you weren’t even there. On a whim, you throw a sock at him. It lands in a sad little crumple near his scrawny ass and he doesn’t even notice. Which is hella rude. He’s not being a good host, ignoring a visiting dignitary like that. “I was thinking we could watch Ghostbusters first, and then the second one--I know people give it shit, but it’s severely underrated bro--and then maybe--oh we can dive into my Nic Cage collection, dude this is gonna be so great.”

Oh no. Oh no. You can see your doom in the distance, a tidal wave of terrible taste and Nicholas Cage fanboyism draining the ocean around you so you can see the fish flopping on the ocean floor only the fish all had the same clown face that’s plastered all over the posters that cover the walls. It’s gonna hit. It’s gonna hit unless you do something.

“John?”

“Earth to Egbert, hello, this is houston speaking do you copy?”

He either can’t hear you or is deliberately ignoring you, continuing to prattle along about movie possibilities. Well then. This isn’t like pesterchum where he can mute your notifications, and then pretend the following deluge of messages never existed whenever he wants. You have one more sock on your foot. One more shot. You arm yourself, balling it up and eyeing the angle of his back. You can’t quite see where exactly his head is, but you can guesstimate. But it’s only one shot so you have to make it count.

You like to pretend you calculated the shit out of that trajectory, but honestly, you’ve played several hours of gunbound and you’re pretty pro at just eyeballing it. So you pick your angle, and just let it go.

“And then maybe, oh I don’t know, here’s Casper! No! Wait! Maybe we should end the world with Deep Impact or--” There’s a muffled shriek as that black haired mop of a head shoots up, the boy flailing, the VHS tapes clattering back down onto each other like someone misplaced the last domino is some intricate room-scale design as he paws at his head, flinging the offending sock (aw yeah you totally hit the bullseye) onto the floor, all proud and shit for succeeding where its pair failed. A right ol sock party of two there near egbert’s ass, “DUDE THAT’S GROSS WHAT THE HECK MAN!” 

Damn his hair is all fluffed and shit, like someone’d just gone and gave him a noogie, only it’d ruffled itself due to the fierceness of his outrage. He’s kinda freaking adorable like this. It just reinforces the conclusion you came to earlier. Needling John over pesterchum has nothing on the real thing. 

“Just needed to get your attention, bro. I got words to say on the subject of our watch list tonight.”

“You’ve done nothing but words Dave! You’re never out of words!”

“Yeah well, I think I should have a say in what we watch during this whole shindig, is all. Given it’s, you know, my birthday.” You pause when you see him about to protest, “Okay tomorrow is, but like, hear me out. Why not split the difference? You pick four movies, I pick four movies, and then we alternate until someone passes out because I really don’t think you’re gonna survive 16 hours.”

“That’s actually a good idea, yeah, we can do that. But no sequels. At least not in a row.” John  eyes your socks with distaste and shoves them back in your direction which just leaves you snickering. “You’re gross dude. Put those things away, they smell. And anyway, I can’t believe you think I’m going to be the one to fall asleep first. What kinda scrub do you take me for? ”

“Duh, dude, it’s inevitable.” You wag a finger in his direction with one hand, captchaloguing the socks with the other so you can spare his poor sensitive nose--and save your ammunition for later, when he least expects it, “You’re the one with a parental enforced bed-time on this side of the date-line. I’m used to stayin’ up till the sun starts shinin’ and good little Egberts are long long gone into snoozeville.”

Speaking of bed times, there has been something niggling at the back of your mind and this is like, the perfect time to drop that question. “What’s up with that anyway? Don’t you have school tomorrow? Didn’t you have school today? Your dad is pretty serious on that whole edumacation thing isn’t he?”

“I guess.” He flops back against the chest, “It’s pretty confusing. I’m not sure if he wants me to go to school, or like is looking for an excuse for me to stay home. I got the sniffles last month and he had me on lockdown for the week. It’s kinda dumb, but it’d be dumber to question it when I get excused absences for my best friend’s visit, you know?”

“Hell yeah!” You scoot closer and offer him an olive branch. A fist waiting for it’s prophesied bump of friendship. He just blinks at it for a moment before showing you those prominent chompers and completing the ritual. “Here’s to exploiting parently loopholes for swag and profit. Now let’s see what your terrible taste has in store for us--”

You’re actually pleasantly surprised when he lets you pick through his collection. There’s the expected nic cage trash-- of course John picks Con Air. Well, you suppose it’s about time you actually watched it with how many times John’s threatened to send you a copy every time you completely miss his pro references--and more ghost related shit than you can fit into a back mounted vacuum pack, but there’s also some gems in here. Your small pile soon contains such classics as Jurrassic Park--fuck yeah dinosaurs .  You love that shit.-- the first Star Wars movie because come on. You see him snickering as you dust off a DVD copy of Starsky and Hutch, raising an eyebrow at him even though he probably can’t see them behind your big honking shades, “Oh I didn’t expect you to have actually good shit in here!”

“Haha, I shoulda known you’d go for Stiller! I think I’ve even got Zoolander in here somewhere, that’s another one.” 

John begins spreading the sizable collection across the floor, “HAH! Here it is. Look at that mug. Isn’t it right up your alley?”

“Shut up.” You growl, but you grab at the tape he’s waving in your face and adding it to your collection. Stupid Stiller and his weird gaunt face staring up at you from behind a pitiful barrier of thin paper. This was even a new movie. Why the fuck would John buy the VHS???  “Whelp, that makes four for me. You get your shit together?”

“Yeah! I think I’ve got a good selection.” John starts replace all the shit on the floor into the chest. It’s mesmerizing, the care with which he packs it all away, taking you back to the slow, deliberate movements you take on when you rearrange your collection up on your shelves. Your delicate, fragile, treasures. Once finished he sits back in triumph and pushes the lid back down on the low chest, nudging it back into it’s snug place of honor on the floor of the closet, “Okay! Grab your shit and let’s go! It’s time for Phase 2.”

“Phase 2?”

“Duh! Can’t have a movie night without a blanket fort! We can tear the couch apart and get some chairs and camp out in the living room it’ll be sweet!

It’s in that moment, that the small, intsy little detail you’d been ignoring decides to poke its head out of the muck and blow a raspberry at you, rudely popping the bubble right in your fact and getting the metaphorical spit-splatter all over your face.

“You mean like, downstairs?”

“Uh, yes?”

“The living room that is downstairs?”

“Duh? That’s where the TV is!”

“I thought we were gonna just like. Chill. Up here. You know, we could totally put your monitor on the floor and then just make a pillow fort right here, no need to commandeer the living area and bother b--anyone else. Isn’t staying up all night to get crusty like, someone you do away from other guests???”

“Dad won’t care! He never even watches the TV. Besides, haven’t you ever seen those awesome forts that take up the entire room??? Right in front of the big TV! I’ve always wanted to build one, and this is like the perfect chance! We can grab the computer chairs and the lamp table, and I think there might be more chairs in the shed out back, and then take the cushions off the couch and--”

You’re listening. You swear you are. But you find yourself swallowing your words and your palms growing slick. It does sound awesome. It sounds so awesome that you can almost imagine it, ghost central with John’s spirit printed sheets thrown over top. But. You just. Don’t want to inconvenience Mr. E. That’s all. Staying up all night, plonking some masterclass level of fortification in the middle of his living room feels very much like it would be an inconvenience, much less having that big TV going all night. It’s got nothin’ to do with the fact that doing so would leave you without a door in the middle of the night, and god what about Bro?? 

Fuck what has he even been doing all day? Shacking up with Mr. E and getting parental pointers? Then you stop and consider that sentence before erasing vigorously because you’re pretty sure there’s an implication with that particular wording you really don’t want to think about. You don’t want to think about Bro. You aren’t supposed to think about Bro. Not with John. John is your little calm in the center of the hurricane where the sun’s fucking bright and shiny and the wind keeps the clouds at a strict 2 mile distance in every direction  with a big shiny DO NOT INTERACT restraining order. The Church of John was the Church of “come on dave he’s all you ever talk about anymore! give yourself a break and come play this dumb flash game i found on newgrounds.”

“...dude, are you okay?” 

You’ve gone stiff as a board, can feel the concrete slam of your fists on a not quite literal brick wall as your relaxed demeanor is ripped to shreds. You take just a little too long to respond, you know that, because John’s expression shifts a smidge closer to uneasy, and you know this kid probably better than you should, let’s be real, and he’s a great dude but observant he is not

“Yeah, I’m cool.” You gather your selections, suddenly self conscious about airing your movie preferences. Which is dumb. Bro’s made you watch movies with him multiple times, and nearly every time he had you pick. It’s no big. It’s really no big. You’re cool as a cucumber on some hot chick’s facial mask. “Just not up to speed on sleepover etiquette that’s all. I’ma virgin here, Johnny boy. Pure as freshly fallen snow. Come on, let’s go and pop this sleepover cherry--”

“Ugh, stop being so...” 

He pauses, looking for the right word. 

“Creative? Loquacious?” 

What can you say? You’re a simple creature. You see an opportunity and you go for it, busting out a 21 point word just because you can.

“I was gonna say lame, but that might be too much to ask.” John rolls his eyes behind those big nerd glasses of his and lets out an exasperated puff of air that sends his bangs flying above glittering glass. “Just don’t say that stuff around my Dad okay?”

“I promise to never defile your father’s saintly ears, cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle, yadda yadda ”

He cuffs you on the shoulder. You bottle up your uneasy feelings under a pile of grade A Strider-style bullshit and flash him your best primo movie star smile and then race him down the stairs.

Which gets you yelled at, funnily enough. 

Okay maybe not yelled, but exactly 7 minutes and 57 seconds later you and John are pinned under a stern, hat-shaded look and very clearly informed that there is to be no “running or rough-housing in the house,” and “if you must, there’s an entire back yard with which to entertain yourselves in.”

You keep your attention very firmly focused on Mr. E as John works on negotiating for your extended lease of the living room as well as the procurement of various construction materials with which to build the proposed structure. You think John’s winning? Maybe? He’s trying to convince his dad to bring his computer chair down the stairs to serve as one of the walls when a prickle tapdances up your spine. If the lack of attention being shot your way is any indication, you manage to head off any visible reaction, although you use the anonymity of your shades to check the entrances to the room to find the breaching point--

Nothing. He doesn’t appear. It’s almost like a return to days and nights when you could feel him and never find him. When he might as well have lived in stealth mode. It puts you on edge because you know he’s there. 

You can feel his eyes on you.

Seeing John next to his dad. The way they fit together. How John could just stand right there and argue the details of a fucking pillow fort with his father when you can barely bring yourself to look at your Bro without expecting--fuck what even do you expect? 

You ground yourself, sinking into the beating of your heart, counting your breathing, counting the time, fingers twitching and you let them tap against your arm. You’re sitting on the empty couch, john’s pile of movies joining your own on the cushion next to you. Well away from all the possible entrances.

“Dirk?” Mr. E breaks from a lull in the conversation and throws the name over his shoulder. It startles you. It still feels weird, to attach something so mundane as a simple, four letter name to your Bro. Maybe you should keep using it. Maybe if you stopped thinking of him as Bro this wouldn’t be so-- “What do you think about this? I’m afraid we don’t have a guest room. If these two hooligans have their way with the couch, we’ll need to set you up in the office tonight. Is that acceptable?”

You expect him to appear like a silent ghost behind John’s dad, doing one of those dramatically nonchalant, what do you mean I was here the whole time, style entrances that you envied, even as they freaked you out. Despite the expectation, you aren’t even the least surprised when it doesn’t happen, and a hesitant, scruffy head poking over the double saloon style door into the kitchen, some white sort of powdery substance smeared across his forehead and even a bit on his nose. Places where a careless back of the hand would swipe to clear a bead of sweat and it makes you want to scowl. It’s…

It’s…

Embarrassing.

What has he even been up to??? It can’t have been an hour since lunch. Dinner. Linner. Whatever. And he’s already making a mess of himself. You can see a little more of the stuff on his stupid puppet skin shirt, when he completely crosses the boundaries of the room; was he playing in sugar or something?

“What do they want to do?”

Please. Like he wasn’t just lurking at the door listening. Never wanting to admit to being sneaky.

“All-Night Movie Marathon in Fort Underten.” You find yourself drawling before anyone can answer, “No one over 5 feet tall allowed.”

“An apt enough summary. Not only would such an endeavor be a noise hazard, but the construction would be taking up much of the extra bedding I had set aside for you and Dave.  But, there IS another option; I’m sure John would be willing to give up his bed to his old man, and you can have mine.”

“Ugh Dad no that’s my room. You’ll just mess it up”

...yup. Your original plan of shacking up in John's room and clustering around a misplaced monitor is looking more and more inviting by the moment. You say as much, and now John turns those puppy eyes on you and you just...can’t take it damn. He’s really got his heart set on doing this whole thing ‘properly’.

Bro is silent, fading almost into the background of your attention, aside from that telltale prickle, while you get caught up in the negotiation between the two Egberts again. John just keeps barreling ahead, looking more and agitated the longer the discussion goes on with little to no headway gained. Like he’s used to just rolling and yet unexpectedly finds himself running head first into an unyielding wall.

“Do you want to do this, Dave?” You’re trapped. Bro’s words are quiet, but they are directed at you. Only at you. John and his parental overlord didn’t seem to notice at all. 

Your breath is caught in your chest. One beat. Then another. All the way to the end of the measure. You count it, pointedly, leaning on the ticking in order to still the nervous pace of your heart. You don’t. Want it. Not really. It’ll leave you out in the open without a door to close. But you think of John’s earnest face as he described his dream fort, and you kinda, find yourself wanting to give it to him. So you put that shit on pause and just give him a nod. A quick, sharp Strider tilt of the head. 

You won’t really be left exposed as long as you don’t sleep, right? You got this shit.

He pulls away, lightly tapping Mr. E on the shoulder, interrupting the argu--er negotiation, “I’m fine with staying in the office. Let the kids have it.”

From your spot on the couch, you have a front row seat to it. Mr. Egbert turns to your Bro with a raised eyebrow. Then sighs. The mountain shifting. Just the slightest bit. “Alright. I’ll get the chairs.”

John gives a whoop of delight--

And then launches himself at your brother. 

You’re frozen. You expect him to flash-step away. For John to overshoot and roll all the way through the swinging doors to land face first on the floor. 

But none of that happens. John’s skinny dark arms wrap around Bro’s waist in a quick hug with a barrage of enthusiastic thank yous before the kid whirls away, chatting with his dad about exactly what he wanted and how and you can’t even parse what the fuck just happened because what the fuck.

Bro just stood there and took it. Surprised as shit, but you’d read those emotions clear as fucking day. Shock. A moment of battle tension. Then a deliberate lowering of his hands, giving john a clear, awkward pat on the arm before the boy let go.

Orange meets red. He turns away, and retreats back into the kitchen. 

There’s a pain, deep in your chest. 

You wish you were brave enough to chase him. 

Pushing yourself off the couch, you follow John instead.

Notes:

EDIT: WHUPS I accidentally cut a big part of dirk's section at the end there D: It's fixed now but damn that was a really important bit.

Aaaand there we go. Dave's section ended up surprisingly difficult. Probably because I'm woefully underedumacated when it comes to movies and pop culture in general haha. I feel pretty bad writing this; Dirk feels so out of place and uncomfortable, while Dave is having the time of his life. Ah well, let Dave have it while it lasts I suppose.

Guys. I'ma be real with you. I'm participating in Camp Nano next month. So, while I will have a lot of *writing* done, in theory, I'm not sure how prompt I can be on editing and posting since nano is all about them wurds. I'll try to keep up my posting schedule, but if I miss something, with hope it's just due to a lack of editing time haha. We'll see! Check my tumblr at katreal-fic for status updates and out of context snippets~

Next time on Game G--I mean, next time we see some late night mysteries, and then a challenger approaches :3c

Chapter 54: [I1P5] Spill the Beans

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The numbers of the digital clock across the room spill out over the edge of the desk and onto the floor in a cascading waterfall of red. It clashes with the trickle of blue-white moonlight sneaking in from the window above your head, but given the positioning of the house and the angle of the moon in the sky, you highly doubt the transient light source will manage to lay claim to the room. Most of it is quite firmly in the territorial grip of night’s shadows, aside from a faint cool, flickering cast off from the still on-going movie marathon.

You continue to hear the television from the other room; voices, music, and sound effects playing at a volume too low for you to make out the words, but too loud for your hypervigilance to completely dismiss. It’s easy to trick your fog-shrouded brain that the murmuring isn’t coming from the television in the other room, but are in fact being whispered by grinning faces and never-blinking, staring eyes.

It’s ridiculous. Cal isn’t even here - for better or for worse you can only see shadowed on black.

You close your eyes purposefully-- again-- sucking in a deep, low breath-- again. Shit isn’t going to change-- and trying to visualize that place, that crossroad of broken edges and fraying threads, all tied up in this--Dave’s bro--in you in--in your proper anchor--

Proper. Christ. It’s been four months. Two more and you’ll be 28 and trapped for about as long as you’d even been in the game. Is it even yours ? At least any more so than this one is?? Maybe it came first but the chunk of flesh you were born in and lived in and grew with was long gone before this ever became an issue. You don’t really want to think about that. About identity. About what’s real and what’s not and why you’re finding this shit just as valid as the other because those are worms. A big old can of wriggling slimy words squishing between your mental fingers as they scrabble and cling to rough hewn stone looking for purchase. You slid right out of your physical self into a construct. Hit the ground running when Ascending killed you for the first time. What was the difference here, going from 16-- 17-- to 28? It isn’t even the meatsuit it’s…

Fuck, that got away from you. It got so far away from you it fucked off on a redeye non-stop flight back to Houston. You press your palms into your eyes, abandoning any pretense of trying to do anything productive, be that knocking yourself out or trying to take advantage of your distance and meditate your way back into the medium. The ghost of claws--and not the alien but comforting feeling you get when Davepeta sticks their meddling paws into your emotional stability business--digging into the core of what you are and cracking and--

The blanket pools around your feet, the full winter chill of a house in the Pacific Northwest creeping into your Tropical Texan bones as you scoot into a more seated position. Your back up against the wall like some bully had you up against the locker, only that pressure is you and your knees and you’re squishing yourself into this non-existent box so hard it might be a little difficult to breathe but that’s fine. It’s fine. Everything is fine.

Everything.

Is.

Fine.

Shit. It’s not even that there’s anything wrong . It was a good day. You baked a fucking cake. Okay, so maybe Dan made three cakes to your one but that one was the result of hours worth of observation and meticulous placement of frosting and ensuring each strawberry was equidistant from each other with the most perfect swirl of whipped icing in between each and--

You purposefully knock your head back against the wall, feeling the thud reverberate through your skull, the self-inflicted ache acting as an anchor to keep you grounded and not floating. It would pass the time, getting lost up in the fog and the self recriminations locked up in your mental crawlspace - it would be easier , not having to expend the mental energy to wrestle them back down, knowing they’ll bubble to the surface again, faster, unless you have something concrete to distract you.

But the glowing numbers seep through your eyelids, reminding you of the time you’d lost, lying on the floor in an unfamiliar room, walls covered in grinning, painted faces that have the hairs on the back of your neck prickling.

At least it’s not as bad as at home, before you took your frustration out on everything except the one who deserved it, because fuck, you can’t get rid of Cal .

It’s not like you expected to be able to sleep anyway. Not with the sanctuary carved into your soul unavailable, although you’d hoped leaving Cal behind would allow you to meditate at least. Call it paranoia, call it a trauma response, call it fucking PTSD it doesn’t matter. Months of dealing with that little shit made you respond unconsciously to any attempts to reach outside the clearly marked boundaries of your own soul, because beyond the nebulous protection of those threads-- gone, exposed, if you sleep now you’d be a sitting duck-- is a raging fire waiting to consume you.

...the fact that you can’t figure out how to knock your own brain out prickles at you. A burr clinging tight to your skin, tiny hook spines burrowing deep and latching on.

You just want an OFF button.

Christ.

Pulling out your phone isn’t quite intentional, and the screen’s dimmest setting still feels like someone is shining a flashlight dead in your face, but even when squinting you trace the well worn path towards your Pesterchum app.

You have the password for the home wi-fi network, but it’s a brief distraction to hack the light encryption instead, using nothing but your trashtier phone, dreaming about the fact that you wouldn’t have needed it if you had your goddamn shades. Those things were outfitted with Skaiatech all-in-one energy and data emitters, abusing The Medium’s mysterious conductive properties to make sure you never ran outta energy or needed signal--because The Medium was nothing but data.

It’s probably sad that you miss your tech more than you miss your own fucking body at this point.

You crack the network wide open with what may be more misplaced frustration than is strictly necessary, but you know this is the right thing to do when your Pesterchum app lights up, ringing with notifications. An easy flick and you have the device muted, eyes flickering up to the nonexistent door in the archway separating you from the living room. The distant movie sounds continue undisturbed.

There’s no way the tinny speakers on your phone would have made it that far anyway.

Davepeta’s messages scroll across the screen, and you skim through them. Nothing overtly concerning, even if you fail to suppress the urge to sigh at their verbal-- written antics turning what should have been at most twenty messages into several dozen.

They’re available now - a small green pip next to their name flickers at the top of the screen. You click out of the past conversation and open an active one and type out the words locked behind your lips.

timaeusTestified [TT]TT began pestering dataJammer [DJ]

timaeusTestified [TT]: Happy Birthday.

One of many birthdays, on this day of December the 3rd, at 2:23 in the morning. The ambiguity found in who exactly you mean when you say those words have long since been a comfort. If you took your Bro’s birthday--Dave’s birthday--you could murmur a “happy birthday bro” and pretend you weren’t just wishing it to yourself.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< aaaaw thank mew bro you shouldnt have snuck away just to wish that to lil ol me i can be patient B33
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but since youre here
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< *dj rubs against your ankles like a cat because cats do that shit it isn’t weird* sup
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< is it pawrty the night away time
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< beclaws the timestamps dont lie and it looks way past any respawnsible bedtime especially for growing kittens and ol grandpaws
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< oh wait its john
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< mewvie marathon?
timaeusTestified [TT]: Movie marathon.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< did he make shorty watch con air???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i bet he did
timaeusTestified [TT]: They both had a pile of movies once they came downstairs to negotiate for primo packs of real estate from Mr. Egbert so they were in it for the long haul. I didn’t stick around to watch.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dude you have insomnia
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< why would you turn down fr33 all night entertainment???
timaeusTestified [TT]: Dave wouldn’t want me intruding.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but did you ask???
timaeusTestified [TT]: It’s pretty obvious.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< okay you didnt
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< cool
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< youre never gonna get anywhere if you ban yourself the way you banned hats you know
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< he doesnt hate you
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< things are just
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< weird
timaeusTestified [TT]: I know.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m just giving him space; it’s his birthday, he deserves to be able to spend it without his Bro hovering over shit. You didn’t see him at the airport. It was pretty bad.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its his birthday he deserves to be given the choice dude
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dont assume you know best beclaws trust me
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< thats pawrt of the purroblem
timaeusTestified [TT]: …
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< that was your fr33 daily dose of dave dadvice
timaeusTestified [TT]: …
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< aw come on that was a good one
timaeusTestified [TT]: No.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< *dj purrs* just admit it
timaeusTestified [TT]: It isn’t even a cat pun.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i dont discriminate when it comes to categories of wordplay bro
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< anyway
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< as much as id love all the d33ts on shorty’s big play date with john
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< furrst were overdue for somefang
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< like four furrreaking months overdue
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i got some sl33p
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< we n33d to talk about
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you know
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< cal???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you said he hurt you
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< did it ever happen again???

At the mention of the puppet, you feel a shiver crawling down your back like little, stuffed hands. The wall length mural of jesters stares down at you, even as you know the bulk of the piano blocks some of them from your immediate view.

timaeusTestified [TT]: I need to get out of here.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< are you okay???
timaeusTestified [TT]: Yeah, the decor is getting to me. I need some air.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< oh man yeah youre at johns
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i never guessed youd have an issue with the clowns
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< all those harlequins arent much diffurent from just weirdly dressed puppets
timaeusTestified [TT]: Yes, well, I’m not particularly fond of puppets at the moment either. The betrayal of the one person who has always been there for me since my earliest formative memories is a tough pill to swallow.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Even if that person appears to be less stuffed benevolent guardian figure and more possessed hell spawn in this variation of the universe.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< right
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< well he was always hellspawn as fur as i was concerned
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< if you go upstairs and the right youll make it to the balclawny
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< no clowns out there and i know your pawpensity for heights
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< knowing bro you can purrobably reach the roof if a measly balclawny isnt enough fur ya
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< nice

It isn’t the steel strutted tower with tight spaces you probably shouldn’t be able to wedge yourself into.

You’ll take it.

You’re on your feet before you really consider not doing so, before you consider the repercussions of sneaking onto someone else’s roof. You gather up your shit, including the small nest of thick blankets Dan had set aside for you, and shove it all into a single card. It’s Washington. In the middle of winter. You did your research. You aren’t stupid, even if you only have the faintest idea of what near-freezing temperatures are supposed to feel like.

You pause in the archway, taking in the backside of the giant fort, plonked in the middle of the room. You remember watching some of the construction from the kitchen, the computer chairs pillaged from John’s room and the office; helping Dan carry in a folding table and a set of chairs from the shed, shivering in the cold air that effortlessly pierces your layers of shirts because you’re a born and bred Texan even if Texas didn’t exist when you got there, and you weren’t prepared for this shit.

You can’t see the boys. Not from there. You can however see the TV, almost silent images playing through a movie you aren’t sure you recognized--probably one of John’s choices, since anything Dave would have chosen ended up in your media library for study. You hear quiet breathing, but you can’t tell how many, muffled as it is by the blankets.

You hope they are asleep. Dave could always use more.

The last thing you want is for Dave to jerk awake with your ugly mug hovering over him, so you don’t check, even if you want to. You stick to the back of the room and step lightly across the carpeted floor, sock covering preventing your toes from digging in to the too long weave. It’s different; even through fabric, so different from what you grew up with and lived with. But not unfamiliar. You’ve stood here before, surrounded by dashing gentlemen and trenchcoats, with a temptingly sweet aroma drifting in from the open kitchen…

You should have spent more time here. You should have. You could count the number of times on one hand even if you chopped off half your fingers.

...You really were a terrible friend, weren’t you? Six months, three friends all within quick portal hops of each other, and all you cared about was Jake English.

You can’t stop yourself; eyes drift upwards, as if something hooks its claws into your brain and refuses to let it go. In the cast off light from the television, odd shadows form, but you recognize that picture from months ago. The obituary is lower quality, scanned from a photo of a painting on even more ancient tech, grainy but still recognizable. This…

You look silently upon a face you recognize , deep in your bones, even if you’d never really gotten a chance to see more or her than a few brief pain filled moments during a lull in battle, where Dave and the blind troll--Terezi, you think--tossed out several fraymotifs in order to give you a few moments to rest…

A soft blue glow, chasing away the pain and exhaustion and laughing that hooting laugh like she’d just pulled the best joke in the world by absconding with your injuries.

Glimpses of a wrinkled, kind face, glowing blue below a jester’s hat.

She’s old. She’s dead. That urn right there is her.

A pile of dust and bone and an old painted portrait.

You can see your Jane in the impish grin, in the stylish round glasses and the dimples in her smile. You can see past the grey hair and the faded skin, to the blue eyes sparkling with joy and a healthy glowing face.

You’re thankful for the fog, now. For the numbness that spreads through you as you turn away, rubbing at something irritating your eyes.

The back of your hand comes away damp.

At least there isn’t anyone here to see you, finally letting your heart process what you’ve been ignoring all day. Hiding in the kitchen. Hiding in the office once Dan had gone to bed. You’d done your small part in building Fort Underten by delivering building materials, before absconding to the kitchen while Dan supervised the rest of the operation. That kept staring at you and there was only so much you could deliberately not acknowledge. Not with the way you are, and your propensity for constant observation.

Eight players, you remind yourself, taking the step from carpet to stairs, drawing on experience borne from sneaking through crumbling tombs and putting your weight on the sturdier edges and corners of the structure to prevent creaking. You look out over the room from your perch, at her, washed out in the cool light from a near silent, abandoned television.

You imagine you could hear a familiar laugh, just oh so slightly sideways and raspy with age, about to drop ghostly blue cookie on your head.

But it’s nothing, as the scene changes, the blue fading and being replaced with another color. And another.

The Egbertian household isn’t a large one; even if it’s probably a magnitude more spacious than the one bed-room apartment you shared with Dave. It isn’t hard to find the path Davepeta had indicated. The door is locked from the inside-- why bother? It’s on the second floor and it’s not like they had to worry about drones here-- but honestly it isn’t much of a barrier; just a twist of a latch and you find yourself stepping out into COLD night air. An open space, surrounded by a gleaming metal railing, nothing for decoration save for a small white telescope, placed carefully onto a tripod.

This side of the house, the opposite to your weak, little West facing office window earlier, bears the full brunt of the soft incandescent moonlight, spilling down around you and painting the wood-covered surface with its glow. Not quite full, a waxing gibbous moon hangs in the sky, but close enough to light up the night, creeping in through streets and cracks in the darkened neighborhood, leaving you shivering and exposed in your woefully underprepared clothing. Cones of soft yellow break up the peaceful image at various intervals along the empty streets.

A landscape holding its breath. You’ve never really considered the implications of a silent winter night before. Even at home, there’d always been the sound of waves.

Davepeta was right, you could reach the roof from here if you balanced on the balcony railing--ignoring your shaking, red hands--and pull yourself up. It’s a steeper grade than you like--flat roofs are so much better--but you find the perfect spot overlooking the balcony, the bare-leafed tree and the tire swing. Careful angling allows you to esconse yourself against the flat wall, rough shingles pressing against your palms and seeping through your sock covered feet. The near freezing--you guess anyway, because of the way you’ve been involuntarily shivering despite your thicker, layered clothes--temperate seeps into your skin, but that’s quickly remedied to an extent by a respectable nest of blankets tumbling out of your personalized pocket dimension and into your sphere of influence to organize at your leisure.

It isn’t perfect, but you manage to arrange them into a satisfactory cocoon, layers upon layers wrapped around your shoulders and over your lap to trap your body heat and stave off the air. Thankfully it’s a dead night, with no wind to shape spikes of molecule into literal icicles to try and skewer you with. Your breath puffs out in a thin mist, the moisture condensing and drifting away into the deep, black, star studded night.

The night is...something you hadn’t realized you’d missed, living as you had in the last four or five months in the center of a city that never sleeps. You could stand out on the roof of your apartment building at any time of night and see a sea of lights around you. Thousands and maybe even millions of tiny lights, throwing their illumination into the sky and making all but the brightest of stars fade.

You still can’t see the Milky Way, that magical river of stars across the sky, but… between the sporadic street lights and dark houses it’s definitely a better view.

What the fuck are you doing?

You don’t know, but you do it, whatever it is. Clumsy and chilled fingers catch the phone as you pull it again from the sylladex, still open on a conversation full of green text.

Nothing new, which was strange. You would have expected Davepeta to keep typing while you moved.

timaeusTestified [TT]: It is a nice view.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Speaking from experience?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yeah
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< used to hang out at johns place you know??
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< jade was supposed to be the one to build up my place
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but she never made it into the game
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but i found your hoverboard
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ...bros hoverboard
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and would go on a joyride through the gates just to see what was on the other side
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< reconnaissance and all that shit
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the plan was always to learn as much as we could and then flip the switch
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< go back in time and save johns ass
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< give all my loot and shit to the new alpha dave and then sit back and take a vacation
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< or die
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< wasnt sure if self prototyping would juke the whole doomed thing
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< anyway
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< figuring out where the fuck the gates went was a big part of that
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< johns planet was
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< painful
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but painful in a good way you know?? the imps fucked off once he got himself killed so it was peaceful
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< nothing but a big black void and roiling grey clouds and blissful silence
timaeusTestified [TT]: Sounds pretty boring if I’m honest. What you’re describing doesn’t sound very high on the list of even The Medium’s Top Ten Mediocre Tourist Attractions.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< number one will shock you!!
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< haha nah if you wanted a tourist trap you should have s33n roses world and cotton candy rain and pastel colors everywhere it rotted your t33th to just look at it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< well until she blew it up
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< nah johns place was all you gotta plunge into it to find the real treasure
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< youll s33 it eventually so i purrobably shouldnt ruin the supurrise
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< it was nice
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< of course calsprite ruined the mood
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but if i skipped back a couple hours i could reliably ditch his deranged feathered ass
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< couldnt always sl33p when i n33ded a break
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and sometimes i just didnt want to s33 rose
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< especially after
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ugh thats awkward nevermind
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< are we just going to talk about me all night is that your plan
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< how is it for you???
timaeusTestified [TT]: Cold.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< well it is winter what did you expect???
timaeusTestified [TT]: Not quite this cold.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< this just in local texan t33n thinks winter is cold full story at 11
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you could go back inside you know
timaeusTestified [TT]: I know.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but you wont
timaeusTestified [TT]: Nope.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< are the short responses because your fingers are frozen
timaeusTestified [TT]: Maybe.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i will be crosser than an anti vampire wholesaler on hallow33n if you get yourself sick with this nonsense
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you know that right???
timaeusTestified [TT]: You aren’t my mom.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< no but im your meowirail and this is self destructive shit isnt allowed as purr the rules im not at all sorry to say
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i never should have told you there was a balclawny now im gonna have to call the fire department to tempt you out of the tr33
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< why did i even tell you that???
timaeusTestified [TT]: Because me freezing my ass off is preferable to seriously damaging Egbert’s decor and you know it.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m fine.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I promise.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ...fine but the mewnite you even so much as start to go numb you better scamper back through the catflap mister!!!

You don’t tell them that you’re already past that point, but you hunker down in the depths of your stolen blankets, and let the heat from your breath mist along the inside of your small cocoon.

timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m out here for a reason, you know.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ...yeah
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you up for talking about it???

Freezing, dry air burns in your nose. In for four. Hold. Out for seven, rising into the still black, star studded sky.

If your fingers are shaking, you blame it on the cold.

Eyes on the wall.

Not out here .

timaeusTestified [TT]: It’s been four months. I’m not sure what else there is to talk about. It hasn’t happened again.

...it’s true enough. You haven’t had an encounter like that again. You’re safe, hidden in the crevices of your soul, behind a barrier of red strings and an outer perimeter of broken glass.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dirk
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< please
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its been sitting on the shelf
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< theres a feelings jam calling

Damn it, they’re pulling the sincerity card aren’t they? Dropping the quirk and everything.

Seconds drag into minutes as you wait for a continuation, but it never comes, and that feels more pointed and guilt inducing than another ramble would have been.

You hate the sincerity card. It wasn’t fun when Newt pulled it back in the coffee shop. Or Jane pulled it on you back in the crypt. Or Roxy--

...you just hate it. It turns into a twisting snake, hissing and biting and demanding you keep an eye on it and not on whatever else you have going on because otherwise it’s going to bite you in the ass.

timaeusTestified [TT]: Go ahead and do your thing.
timaeusTestified [TT]: It’s the only way I’ll be able to talk about it.

Their response comes as a small trickle. A nonexistent wind dancing through your hair, ghostly points prickling and kneading the top of your scalp so lightly they might as well not be touching, but you can feel it anyway. You want to close your eyes. You want to lean into the trickle of endorphins coaxed out of your overtaxed grey sponge and flood your neurons with a wash of emotionally warm and fuzzy goo.

But you promised. You dig up the energy and shake the words out of stiff fingers. You almost don’t even feel the cold anymore.

timaeusTestified [TT]: I really don’t know where to start.

You feel… lost. Unmoored. You have notes written on your computer back home, in regards to this potential future conversation. The visual hallucinations. Your theories. You grope blindly in the fog, thumbing through the mental indices. You’ve got to start somewhere, even if these thoughts feel alien. A little too logical for the scatterbrain you apparently become the moment you lose your purchase on the world.

Maybe Dave was right; maybe you did-- break something. In there. It would be in character; you break everything else.

timaeusTestified [TT]: Fuck.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Okay, we’ll just need to fucking do this. Make it happen.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Did I tell you about the cracks?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< no
timaeusTestified [TT]: I didn’t think so. I’m going to start with a bit of history.
timaeusTestified [TT]: My Bro and Roxy’s mom… I know most of this from Rose’s notes, but they ended up manifesting some aspects of their powers during their lifetimes.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Rose was their tactician, calling the shots during the guerilla war against the fish bitch, having uncannily accurate knowledge of exactly what needed to be done to ensure the most favorable outcome. Obvious Seer shit.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Bro...well you can probably guess; he was the ninja. In and out, sabotaging operations, assassinations, the works. I would now hypothesize the use of stable time-loops to dodge guard patrols and move about undetected between shifts, but that’s digressing since he didn’t really leave me any information on his own actions. Given what I learned from Dave before shit fell apart--he likely didn’t enjoy using his powers and apparently thought a thorough pop culture education was more important than some hand written notes.

You aren’t bitter about it.

Okay, maybe you are. A little. It

didn’t mean anything.

It wasn’t important.

timaeusTestified [TT]: We didn’t know it at the time, since the Scratch shit didn’t come up until we right before we got into the game, but I talked with AR. And we began to wonder if their manifestation of abilities were due to their predecessors--you and Dave--having achieved the level of mastery over their aspects. The Scratch was a paradox event, remaking the universe in place of the previous instance, but that shit is still linear to an extent. Your session influenced ours. I don’t know about the original set of guardians--your bro, and Rose’s mom-- but following this logic, the evolution of our meta selves would have followed us to this instance, allowing me access to some variation of my aspect, even if not the entire.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< thta thev isual halluciantions???
timaeusTestified [TT]: Yeah. Cracks.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I… think I broke shit. You know, the curse of the Prince. I don’t know what. Myself? Not enough to create a fully cognizant splinter, I think, but enough to pry open this dark space inside my soul and act as a buffer of sorts.
timaeusTestified [TT]: All that trouble I was having getting to sleep? Three guesses what it was, and none of them count because you already know the answer.
timaeusTestified [TT]: That night… I don’t know. Things had been going okay. I just… didn’t take the medicine. I didn’t let myself sink back into that buffer. I reached up and out, confident that this time I’d regained the energy to manage the crossing and…

Summarizing history and your theories was easier than this part.

timaeusTestified [TT]: Did you ever get a chance to check my soul?
timaeusTestified [TT]: If you are waiting for permission just do it.

There isn’t a response, but you’re fraught with anticipation, hunched up under a layer of blankets as that supplemental psychosomatic warmth withdrew, Davepeta ceasing the behavior causing that warm floating feeling. The pins and needles running through your limbs might be the cold, but the shiver that runs through the very core of your being definitely isn’t . That faint plucking, like you were a fucking guitar getting played. Unconsciously a hand goes to your chest, fingers splayed digging into the thick fabric blankets right above that vibrating core, feeling your heart racing in your ears. You focus on that core, that echo of feeling.

When you pull away, and wavering light comes with it.

Broken edges glimmer in the moonlight. Your heart beats in your hands. It wavers, a spiked, broken mass pulsing orange and maroon and pink, tendrils vanishing through the blankets burying your shoulders, reaching into your chest and anchoring in the physical and electrical connections and vessels that run through this body.

Orange and maroon and pink. The mass of sharp edges are cracked. Broken. Splintered. Yet holding fast despite it all. Despite the knowledge that something is missing. Those seams shouldn’t be shadowed. Lifeless grey. You track the largest vein with your eyes. It…

Just can’t shake the thought.

It shouldn’t be grey.

You focus on the cracks, pulling at that thought. You still remember what gathering power feels like, and you drag that shit through the connections you still have to have and push it into your hands. The grey sparks a pure brilliant red as you reconnect , faint threads shimmering out, like the ones reaching into your body, but stretching out and away and knifing through the fog and the distance and what the fuck do you think you are doing you idiot--

The projection wavers, and collapses in your hands. The world spins, and you--

You come to, frozen shingles digging through the fabric into your back, blankets dislodged from your shoulders, sliding down to pool in an uncomfortable lump under your side. At least you fell backwards, instead of down.

It’s not that long of a drop, but you’re glad you don’t have to scrape yourself off the wood if you don’t need to. The sound would probably wake someone else. Somehow, you didn’t manage to drop your phone throughout your accidental magical act.

timaeusTestified [TT]: Well, chalk that up to proof that this shit is confirmed tied to my powers. I’m not going crazy. And magic might be different but it’s definitely present. It might just be sensory still, I’m not sure how much of that was just me seeing shit or if I actually did it.
timaeusTestified [TT]: It being, I managed to pull out my own soul. I could follow the connections, buried in all the nerves and capillaries and arteries from my brain to the tip of my useless pinky toe.
timaeusTestified [TT]: It’s one thing with my Godtier body. I’m used to thinking of it and reality as malleable. It’s a whole ‘nother fuckin’ level when I yank it out of my own flesh suit.
timaeusTestified [TT]: The question this raises is, is this shit just me? Does it have something to do with my presence as a fully Godtiered player in the medium? Or would the others all get bleedover from their meta-selves as we postulated earlier? Their Dreamselves did retain aspects of their Godtier-selves, but would there be any notable effects without them being cognizant of it?
timaeusTestified [TT]: Davepeta?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< sorry bro
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< congrats youre a wizard harry and all that
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you almost zapped me with that stunt
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the red shit were the cracks you were talking about right???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< it sounds familiar…
timaeusTestified [TT]: I think it’s proximity based. This was the first time I’ve experienced the phenomenon since leaving Houston.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and youve been living with this for four months?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< shit
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i dont know if you are lucky or insane
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the only reason its not falling apart into a million tiny dirk bits is the fact that you somehow managed to kintsugi the shit outta this break with the red stuff
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i cant tell how d33p the crack goes but i wouldnt want to risk repeated stress
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you cant let him do this again bro
timaeusTestified [TT]: I won’t.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I haven’t buried my head in the sand in order to rely on luck - he can’t touch me.
timaeusTestified [TT]: He wants this shit; even shoved into the crawlspace I could always sense him slavering and scraping the boundaries looking for some chink for him to dig into.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Even with the added stress of the flight, and this unknown phenomenon that’s going on with Dave; the one good thing about this trip is the fact that I don’t have to deal with that asshole hovering just on the edge of my range; projecting my inadequacies at me.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I don’t know what changed. The hospital, I’d guess. It either got his attention, or created an opening, or something.
timaeusTestified [TT]: You want to know what’s the worst thing about pushing aside the projection of familiarity and seeing the ugly core?
timaeusTestified [TT]: Of course you do. You started back up with that preening shit as soon as I started going off. But fine, whatever, you want some genuine heart to heart bullshit?
timaeusTestified [TT]: Lil’ Cal was my bro. He was the only fucking thing I had. The only thing I could rely on for literal years. I learned to talk practicing on him. I liked to imagine if he could he would return the sentiment, even if it was just in the form of a quietly appreciated bro fist.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Knowing that some version of him out there has the capacity to do so, and at the same time wants to try and rip me to shreds because I’m not the ‘right one’?
timaeusTestified [TT]: Fuck that.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Fuck him.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’ll tear myself apart over that; that I don’t belong. That everything I’m trying is screwing shit up for Dave. Spending the day with Egbert has done nothing but reassure me that I’m failing at this whole parenting thing.
timaeusTestified [TT]: But he has no right to say I shouldn’t be here.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Or to try and pick me into pieces and rearrange them into something he desires.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I may splinter, but I won’t fucking break.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< damn bro thats top form edgy young adult shit right there
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< stamp those words on a black t33 and set it fr33 in hot topic and itd take over every highschool in the state
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the only one allowed to pull you apart is yourself!!!
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< all self reflection and shit
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< gaze into the mirror just dont punch so much that it breaks and you end up with glass embedded in your paw and depression and that shit aint fun
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i guess what i mean to say is dont let it spiral into scratching yourself so hard you draw blood
timaeusTestified [TT]: All I ever do is spiral. But I’ll deal; I always do.
timaeusTestified [TT]: When I fall apart I always pick the pieces back up and keep moving because there's always shit to fix, and I’m the person who needs to do it.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ummm thats not exactly healthy but ok
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its a start
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< just like talking was a start
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< even if i n33ded to emotionally manipulate you into doing it
timaeusTestified [TT]: Nah, it’s fine. I told you to do it.
timaeusTestified [TT]: You were right; it was about time we talked about it.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I just wish I could set him on fire; but if he’s sticking to Dave like a burr that could have consequences.
timaeusTestified [TT]: And despite how shitty this Cal is being… He’s still Cal.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i know what you mean
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i hated calsprite with every feathery davebased bit of my patchwork soul
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but trust me i understand
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dave doesn’t deserve that shit though
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< maybe while you guys are in washington ill mosey on back over to derse
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< or maybe ill wait till you get back home to avoid provoking something that could ruin the kids pawrty
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< purretty sure having that shard lodged in his chest negates any protection via distance and the moment cal has a tantrum dave and by ultimate-birdshit-proxy me will get the full brunt of it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< if i do im gonna drag your ass with me
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< last thing we n33d is a repeat of yesterday
timaeusTestified [TT]: If you stick to the Veil you should be fine, but if it makes you want to lug me around like several sacks of useless potatoes then be my guest.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Would you be up to facing him again?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ...purrobably not but at least i know its just a furreaking phantom in there
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< if i dont play his games he cant do anything to me
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< just laugh
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and yeah sure id rather throw myself back into the lava fields of my purrsonalized hellscape but
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i told how that shit went down right??
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i dont know if he was dredging up my internalized trauma or dragging it out of the shredded bits of shattered dave that are screwing with mini dave
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< frog youd think we were the heart players with the amount of daves running around
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i am a heart player
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< anyway tangent averted
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< hes weapawnizing shit that shorty should never have to deal with
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< like you said you arent bro
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< hes pissed off about that
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< claws out back arched tail all lashing and puffed out and fangs bared hissing and yowling his anger out at the world
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< well guess what purretty sure calsprite hated me for that exact reason
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i was never good enough never fast enough a cheap copy and a piss poor replacement and he was stuck with me and not bro and purrobably went and got himself killed in some stupid lava filled wasteland
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< thats exactly what that little shit shoved at dave
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the idea that all this shit was our fault that wed failed and he n33ded to reach out and fix things because we were incapawble of doing it ourselves only fixing things meant breaking and then gnawing on our bones because we were all being bad little toys
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you said shortys still b33n getting the nightmares???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i got snippets but it was ghostly f33lings thanks to time fuckery i assume we drifted out of line before i could get purroperly sucked in again
timaeusTestified [TT]: Yeah.
timaeusTestified [TT]: We don’t talk about it; I can count on him getting a midnight juice at least three nights out of the week.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I started keeping an extra case in the crawlspace because he was going through them so fast. I don’t think he’s noticed.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i wish to furreaking troll jesus id never flown off that night
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< if i coulda helped during those months
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i would have
timaeusTestified [TT]: I know.

After that… there isn’t much more for you to say. Even Davepeta seems to feel the same, your phone’s notifications petering off into an uneasy truce. The cautious threading through your hair continues. You don’t ask them to stop. You feel drained, but in a good way. While thinking about Cal and the whole situation earlier has succeeded in winding your nerves up further, getting it out there, even if it was just orange words sent to the only other person in the universe who knew who you were

It’s like you’ve cracked the valve by the smallest increment, and all that pressure is slowly hissing its way free.

You close your eyes and lay back against the cold shingles, pulling the blankets tight around your shoulders. The cracks are once again lifeless and grey, shadows on black, but you look past them, drawing up your memories of the meteor labs, fishing out it through the laggy clinging fog.

It’s only a recreation, but with the feedback leaking through your gameself, you like to think you can imagine it, those claws carefully picking through your hair, the smell of feathers tickling your nose, and a warm, solid presence at your side.

You almost lose yourself to it; never quite taking that step outside yourself, but nudging the door open, bit by bit, phone a warm electronic hum against your palm, the phantom weight of your shades on your face…

A few moments of peace. You find yourself imagining you can feel an answering rumble under your cheek; a contented purr, and you hope Davepeta finds some solace in this--what did they call it? A feelings jam? Maybe they can’t purr through their fucked up throat, and you aren’t there, not really, trapped in your splinterself’s skin, but you’ll appreciate the tenuous link that you have right now.

But like all dreams it’s gotta end, and you find yourself snapped back into cold hard reality, with the freezing night air nipping at your face as a faint breeze begins to stir. You mentally swat at the fuzzy feeling, drawing on all the broken pieces of your attention and experience in compartmentalizing, and pushing it to the edge of your periphery, because you know you hear something , and you aren’t safely ensconced in the meteor’s lab, or even in your own apartment where you’re dozens of feet above the ground and there’s only one entrance. Your stiff muscles are ignored similarly, like nothing more than physical noise as you sharpen your attention, looking for those tiny pinpricks of sensory input that clued you in initially.

There’s nothing on the lawn. No out of place shadows under a cloudless sky that’s a shade lighter than it was earlier, but still nothing close to the nautical twilight that would be the herald of the encroaching sunrise. The newly born wind is dancing amongst the bare branched tree, sending the tire-swing swaying with a creek or wood and role, sliding, laughing, like a ghost through the weave of the blanket you have draped over your shoulders like a cape and tickling goosebumps into existence on any patch of exposed skin it can reach and even some that it shouldn’t.

You take a moment to utilize some tiny, detached shred of your brain to imagine what you look like right now. Like some sort of bulky, fleshy gargoyle lurking on a stranger’s roof, fabric wings folded at your sides, waiting for your target to make itself known. But that’s quickly smothered as the rest of it becomes a hot-bed of plans, flitting through possibilities and spinning out potential paths of action.

It’s--hard. It shouldn’t be this hard; after a microsecond of fits and starts you find your general anxiety bleeding away to be replaced by that sharpened state of focus, juggling plans like you used to juggle irons and if you’re out of practice and several seconds slow, well, you’ll improvise.

The time on your phone reads 4:27 am; you have trouble believing all of that has taken less than an hour, but you captchalogue that shit, along with the blankets--it exposes you to the atmosphere, but it also frees up your movements--and you pull yourself into the moon-cast shadow of the chimney. Catty cornered where the two sections of the roof meet, you’ve got a good vantage from which to observe the entire front half of the yard, the balcony and--

The movement is the door opening. A small shadow shifting in the dark depths of the hallways. Small. Not Dan. It could be Dave, but something about that feels wrong - Dave has no qualms about wandering to the roof to find you at home, but would he do that at a stranger’s house? Would he even know which door leads to a patio? You only know because of Davepeta, and if he’s followed you out then that means he should have been out here an hour ago, at least

The cascade of moonlight highlights black hair, not white-blonde, tugged by wind and bed-head into some strange visualization of the seaweed snarls you’d occasionally fish up in your nets.

John.

You observe as he crosses the space, wondering if you’ll see Dave pop up behind him, but the open door produces no other intruders onto the moment. A simple something like a mid-winter, midnight walk.

It would definitely be calling the kettle black if you got all up in arms about needing to just get out for a few minutes, hours, whatever.

The shivering of your body is not the release of tension, it’s the soft wind ripping through your borrowed clothes and exposed skin as if it were nothing. You long to pull the blankets back out, but you don’t.

The kid’s in nothing but light green pajamas. Christ he didn’t even have the foresight to grab a blanket, unless it’s buried in his sylladex. But nothing materializes with a swipe or a word or… well… anything.

It’s only you and the moon who witness the small dark haired boy resting his chin on his arms, face upturned away and angled towards the sky, the pre-dawn breeze tugging at his clothes, playing with his hair. There’s something missing; no gleam of moonlight on glass or metal peeking through the shivering strands.

No glasses. No socks. No blanket.

If you didn’t know any better, you would guess he’s--

“John?”

It’s getting to be a right old party up in here, as Dan steps out of the doorway. It’s the first time you see him without his hat. Here he is, sans hat, sans tie, sans well put together button down shirt and slacks. Just another person with short, sleep-mussed hair and sweatpants with worry creases deepend by the play of bright moonlight and shadow across dark skin.

He is capable of seeing you out of the corner of his eye, half in the shadow cast by the chimney and the western grade of the roof, a courching, menacing gargoyle half outlined by the waxing gibbous.

He should, but, evidently, very few people think to look up.

Dan Egbert only has eyes for his son.

You watch, stiff and freezing and feeling like an outsider as slippered feet echo smaller bare ones. An arm reaches out, curling around the still boy’s shoulder. John doesn’t move. Doesn’t react. The branches continue to shift in the breeze, a soft gentle hssssrk noise breaking up the night.

The silhouettes press together as you take a single, silent step down, landing--if a little clumsily due to your positively frozen state--into the blindspot behind them. You can hear Dan talking. Softly. Gently. An intruder to a Moment, with a capital letter and everything, that you feel you should not be witnessing..

You’re trying not to listen, even as you shake the chill out of your leaden limbs and muster up another flash step that takes you through the door and into the hall.

You hesitate at the top of the stairs, looking, once again, down over the pillow fort. Empty now, population reduced by one. You think about the Egberts, pressed shoulder to shoulder as Dan lowered himself to his son’s height.

The TV remains on, the menu theme playing as the DVD hits the end of its runtime and shifts back to its idle state, sending soft blue light out to paint the portait’s smiling face.

You take the next few steps one by one, working the feeling back into your muscles with each movement. You don’t sneak behind the couch this time. You don’t bypass it. You walk right in front of it--

A pale face, painted blue. Red eyes blinking blearily up at you from a nest of pillows and blankets.

You sink into a crouch, pulling in on yourself as well as putting you closer to his level. You aren’t entirely sure what you are doing. A smaller target. A smaller threat.

“Are you okay?”

“Is he okay?” He ignores your question, but that doesn’t surprise you, reading the words through mumbling lips. He doesn’t react, positively or negatively, when you unfold yourself into a cross-legged position on the floor to the side of the open space, mere feet away from where he’s huddled under a patterned blanket that’s too muddled in shade to make out in the current state of visibility.

“I think so.” He’s listening; you can see that gleam in sleep clouded eyes. He’s watching you, and not shrinking away, “His dad’s with him now.”

He sighs. Relieved? Something in his body language has you hesitantly scooting forward, right to the edge of the cushions placed on the carpeted floor to make a makeshift mattress. Davepeta’s green words playing through your head.

He deserves to make that choice.

That small form shifts amongst the blanket nest… drawing forward, not away, putting his back to yours. Barely touching, curling into a small ball in the corner. A head of white-blond hair resting next to your knee.

“What happened?”

This is.

Good?

Or maybe not good. If he’s worried enough to make tonight on the same level as a 1-in-10 nightmare night in terms of willingness to put up with your physical presence--

His choice, remember?

It’s like that time on the roof all over again, under a fiery red sky, under a poison green sky, you can’t look directly at him. You never can.

“I’unno.” Dave pauses his mumbling to breathe for a moment, “Got an elbow to the side as he used it to pry himself outta a totally not clingy bro hug. An’ I know it wasn’t clingy because there was no jammy on jammy action just blankets all tangled up s’all and ‘pparently I rolled over on his blanket and I dunno--managed to scrape together enough words to ask where he was going, didn’t say nuthin’. Just left.”

You don’t know what to say, so you don’t. He shifts, closer, a hand curling into the loose fabric of your borrowed sweatpants, “Did I do something, Bro? To make him leave?”

“No.” Dan in the moonlight, casually reaching out and pulling his son close. You just look down at your hand. There’s something dark caught under the worn nails. Dirt from the shingles, maybe.

You need to say something. Something more.

“No.” Reinforcing the response, “No. It… Sometimes… you just need to go for a walk. Maybe he had a dream. People don’t like talking about their dreams often.”

He should know that. You know more about what happened in Dave’s dreams from Davepeta than you’d ever gotten out of Dave.

“S’that where you went?”

You drag your eyes away from the fixed point you were focusing on, shooting him a small glance. He rolls onto his back, half-lidded red eyes trapping you before you can possibly think of pulling away. You don’t let it show, and ask, “Did I wake you up?”

“...nah. I don’t sleep.”

“You should.”

“Y’re not.”

“No.”

“Did you?”

Not at all.

“It’s… a different place. It’s hard to sleep.” Your excuse.

“Mmm. Yeah. No door. Bothers me.” A pause. Stretching on, and on, the only sound being the menu music playing in the background, a low level of audio static to fill the silence. “Isn’t it funny? Its a fort. And it isn’t properly fortified at all. It’s pr’carious. Ready to fall at the slightest assault. Just toss one of your stupid sm’ppets up there an the whole thing’d come crashing down.”

You hum an agreement, “It looks comfortable, at least.”

“...yeah. It shoots my clumsy attempts outta the water for pure comfort points.”

“It’s too bad you don’t sleep.”

“...yeah. S’too bad.”

The door upstairs closes, but John doesn’t return. You don’t pull out your phone to check the time. You don’t need to, once you pick out the red blocky numbers on the cable box beneath the TV: 5:12 am.

You don’t dare move as those red eyes finally slide lazily shut, a quiet, “Don’t leave…” fades away to nothing but steadily slowing breaths, drifting off to sleep.

Sometime between before and right now, the hand that previously curled into the fabric of your pants finds yours resting on your knee.

It’s warm.

Notes:

Long chapter is long. So long that I couldn't justify not giving it its own chapter haha.

Sorry, ya'll will just have to wait on the LaLondes. This conversation was long overdue. :3c

Chapter 55: [I1P6] December 3rd, 2006

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Dirk > Contemplate Your Doom

You stretch, pressing your back against the warm brick of the fireplace, crossing your arms on your knees and letting the heat sink through your skull. It’s a wonderful change of pace in comparison to last night, and you feel almost drowsy. 

The crackling of the fire and the rustle of paper as a page being turned act as background noise, and you think you can hear the kids upstairs sometimes, laughing and talking to fill up a silence you hadn’t really realized was there. Dave never spoke at home unless it was during your all too brief and infrequent crossings. Sounds were relegated to city noises, typing keys, and kept confined within the admittedly well tuned speakers fitted snugly around your ears.

You drag yourself away from that, and back to this room, using the bits and pieces to build a mental image. You don’t even need to open your eyes, the image comes to you readily--a handsome gentleman under a sharp hat, reading the morning newspaper by the light of a strange stained glass jester inspired lamp. It’s a quaint image even in modern times, and a downright ancient one to your future born and bred self. 

It’s nice, the way the heat soaks through your shirt--a dark green today--and settles underneath your skin; you definitely aren’t built for this chill. If you were a bit further along in your sleep deprivation, you’d put money on this shit actually brute forcing your brain into submission by the power of downright hypnotizing coziness when combined with the stolen blankets lying across your knees.

She’d be offering you cookies, you think, if she were here. She’d definitely be laughing at how ridiculous you look, curled up like--

“You look like nothing so much as a sleepy housecat,” Another page turning, and you crack and eye open, complete with a blurry glare across the room that slowly resolves into something less chaotic. Dan is peering at you over the edge of The Seattle Times, probably hiding a smile behind the damned edge of the paper. You don’t dignify the comparison with a response, instead wondering if Davepeta would enjoy a fireplace to stick near their pile in the meteor. They liked to talk about sleeping in sunbeams and shit like that, and you know that isn’t a thing in space, so maybe you should look into it. Could you alchemize one somehow? Do they make portable fireplaces? 

Would you even remember to look this up later if you make another one of those tenuous mental notes about it?

“I could have turned the fire on out here for you last night.”

“Wouldn’t that be a fire hazard?” Your mouth forms the words before your brain catches up to them, which is good, because you hadn’t consciously realized he was talking to you. But you do now, and you don’t really miss a beat, “Besides, it wasn’t like I was the one to sleep out here. The boys might have roasted in that blanket temple of theirs.”

The paper lowers and--yep, there was a half smirk dancing beneath the shadow cast by the brim of his hat. You aren’t entirely sure why he wears that thing indoors, but you suppose you can’t say much, with your family’s propensity toward everlasting eyeware. “It must have been my imagination then; seeing you down here this morning with a head in your lap?”

“Dave was worried.” No one was supposed to see that. It’s not like you could have moved after Dave had shifted from just touching to full on pillow mode. Not when he’s actually fallen asleep. And stayed asleep for what amounted to several hours until you heard John thundering down the stairs, leading you to shift the sleeping boy and skedaddle in time for the other boy to all but tackle him awake.

Should you ask?

“Was John okay? This morning?”

The sigh is tired, as he folds the paper onto his lap, smoothing out the folds and creases with a careful movement as he gathers his thoughts. After a moment, he finally approaches you with a quiet, “I don’t suppose you’ve ever had experience with sleepwalking?”

Sleepwalking?

“Can’t say I have,” It isn’t a lie; not really. You highly doubt he’s referring to a dreamself floating off into oblivion. Run of the mill sleepwalking wasn’t really anything you’ve ever had to deal with, given your presence in a solitary bastion and disinclination towards sleep. You try to remember if Davepeta ever mentioned John being prone to something like that, but they were surprisingly reticent when it comes to talking about their--Dave’s friends. 

Thinking back to last night, you recreate the scene on the roof, piece by stuttering piece. The unresponsiveness. Lack of socks. Missing his glasses. You’re not even sure if the kid had been shivering. Yeah, you could see sleepwalking. “That’s gotta be rough; especially with those stairs. Dave has nightmares sometimes, but he’s always fully conscious on his midnight juice raids.”

“Yes, it is indeed a miracle he hasn’t tripped down them. When it became fairly regular...I had the railings installed,” He tilts his head up, and you notice something you hadn’t before. The dusk-grey metal railings run along the edge of the upper hallway and the stairs where Jane’s house had only had open spaces. They blended in with the general decor, so you hadn’t even really thought about it in the dark, much less yesterday when you’d done your best to avoid thinking about this room and Jane’s portrait hanging above your head. “I also purchased a baby gate for the stairs, but he resents the idea I’d need such a thing, so he keeps trying to hide it from me.” That one was almost a laugh.

That locked door. The door you’d stopped and wondered about, because what was the point in locking a second story door? Sleepwalking child-proofing would do it. “How could you even plan for something like that? Does he know?”

“It’s less about planning, and more about preparation and awareness. Keeping the floor clear and the doors locked, for example. He’s impossible to wake up, unfortunately.” He’d pulled out a pipe at some point, currently working at polishing it with a folded orange handkerchief he’d just casually pulled out of his sleeve . Not his sylladex, but straight out of his cuff. Mysteriously appearing objects aside; circular motions begin to buff out smudged up spots that you couldn’t see from here--if they existed at all. A nervous tick perhaps? Even someone as collected as Dan Egbert appeared to be hide surprising fidgets, “And no, he does not. It is part of the reason he takes such offense to the baby gate. He thinks the whole thing is one big prank I’ve been playing on him for months. Absolutely refuses to so much as entertain the idea. If I didn’t know any better, I’d suspect he’s playing the prank on me; but after the walls...well, what is something else to watch for?”

A heavy, deep breath, then a quick exhale, and it’s as if the previous dourness just slides right off him, to be replaced with polite curiosity. It’s odd, seeing another mask go up; one so different from yours or Dave’s, but a mask all the same, “I’m sorry, I don’t think I actually answered your question. He is alright, and won’t remember a thing. John has gotten very good at deflecting any suggestion that there is anything wrong, and likely will continue to do so until he manages to hurt himself. It is merely my job to try and make sure he does not.”

You nod, reading the ‘let us drop the topic now’ plea in the way he flicks the paper open again.

Doors locked. Ribbons of guilt gnaw at your insides and make you fidget, unable to get lost in even the fireplace’s warmth. You’re just lucky nothing happened. You wish you’d known. If you’d known you could have--

You could have what? Not gone outside to freeze the feeling out of your limbs? You probably could have lived with that. Survived the night with those poisonous feelings eating away at your insides under the staring eyes of giant clown portraits? Not so much.

They still itch at you, like tiny pinpricks burrowed under your skin and taking the initiative to crawl about every now and then just to keep you on your toes; but it wasn’t as bad now. Whether that was the daylight talking, or the shitton of emotional karma you’d earned by spilling your guts last night, who can say?

There’s a third possibility; which is probably the more likely one. The fact that your impending doom is occupying more of your mental fuck creating facilities and there’s no room left for the far more mundane, given it’s regular presence in your life for literal months, if frustrating Cal-induced trauma.

It’s December 3rd, 2006. 

You turn 17 today.

Davepeta turns 17 today.

Dave turns 10 today.

Rose Lalonde arrives today.

Roxy--

There’s no guarantee she’s coming at all. Maybe Rose was traveling as an unaccompanied minor. 

It could happen. Roxanne Lalonde was a head of a fucking research lab, not a stay at home workaholic who could just pack up and leave for a week. There’s no way she’d be able to pull herself away from that kind of grounded location based shit for any extended period of time. You make that argument to yourself, ignoring the fact that you know that Rose is only here today and tomorrow, which spoke of a constrained schedule. Dan was also making no move to go pick up the little girl, indicating she had secured some method of transportation.

It could happen, but it wasn’t bloody likely.

You consider asking Dan if you could, you don’t know, spend the day organizing the shed in the yard. All day. You could even sleep out there. It was cozy enough, from what you’d seen getting the folding table and chairs, which were set up in the kitchen, holding an already prepared and covered lunch for when the final guest arrived--

“Balloons.” The raised eyebrow is question enough, so you elaborate, “I’m gonna set up the balloons and streamers.”

A slow thoughtful nod, as the other man tilts his wrist to check the time on a small silver watch, nestled under the gray fabric of his dress shirt, “I suppose it is about time for that; If their flight arrived on time they should be here within the hour.”-- they christ, way to chop the head right off your delusions with a quick, clean stroke--“I left all the accoutrements underneath the folding table if you want to get started--do you need help?”

A hand over yours, guiding the motions. How to peel. How to chop. How to combine. How to create.

“Nah, I got this.”

You too, can be an adult. For some reason that thought sticks in your mind as you uncoil, shifting shoulder and popping shit back into place with a satisfying crack that helps to loosen some of the nervous tension that is pretty much your life now. It’s a really weird sensation, reminding you uncomfortably of listening through the curtain, realizing there was so much you were supposed to know. To do. To say. So much you owe to people in order to be half the person to appear competent, much less be the person Dave needs. 

You hate feeling incompetent. You hate failing even more.

Especially failing at something so simple as being a functioning human being.

Then again, Nietzsche’s Abyss. If you considered your splinters monsters, what right did you have to claim to be human?

Fuck no, not this shit again.

You’re Done.

No more philosophical wanderings before midnight. You’ve made it to the kitchen and pull up to the table. Sure enough, your hooked fingers snag on a plastic loop, and you drag it free, revealing a small pile of unopened decorations. An adlibbed rhyme drops your contribution to into your other hand, a package of red and black balloons. The rest of this stuff was provided by Mr. Egbert himself, who had reassured you there was always a reason to keep streamers and confetti and other such items around his house.

It made you want to ask; but the small self-satisfied smile had a surprising about of fierceness behind it.

Balloons. Right.

You pull out some sort of sparkly ass string and place it on the table, and then turn your attention back to your target, dumping the package of black rubber shit in favor of the red.

Plastic packaging crinkles in your grip, ripping open on a deliberately weakened seam. Trapped air releases with a hiss, rubber and other unnamed chemicals filling the air and burning your nose as you stifle a sneeze into your elbow.

Fuck that noise. At least you don’t have to put that shit into your mouth. 

The box containing the helium tank is easily nudged out from under the bright red tablecloth, directions printed in large letters on the box. 

You can do this.

It inflates. Simple.

If it keeps you out of sight when Roxy arrives, giving you a chance to formulate some sort of proactive approach to the situation then...well, that was just a bonus.

You tie off the balloon, then add some sparkly shit.

Maybe it won’t be so bad .

It floats to the ceiling, red against white.

Maybe she’ll drop Rose off and go.

A black one this time.

Maybe she won’t take one look at Dave and realize exactly who he is.

Rinse and Repeat.

Maybe she won’t even recognize you.

The ceiling begins to fill with floating rubber, oblong spheres, sparkly shit dangling and winking near waist height.

It’s been at least a decade, right? Since you moved to Houston?

Rinse and Repeat.

She did kill you.

Rinse and Repeat.

You’d never be that lucky anyway.

You can’t let this repeat.

Fuck you should tell Dan. Before she gets here.

This could go south.

Getoutgetoutgetout

But what could you say?

How can you tell a story you don’t know?

You release the balloon you were strangling, letting it join the red and black patchwork sky painted on the ceiling above you. Maybe you should have picked some different colors. Dan had more in the bag. Blue and purple and green and--

You blink, and you’re in front of the swinging doors, looking out over the living room. He looks up as you enter.

“Dan?” He looks up from his paper, and you take a steadying breath, “Could you come give me a hand? There’s somethin’ I reckon you should know.”

Even if you don’t have the full story, you owed him a warning, at least. That way he can decide if he wants you out of his hair for this, or not.

You’ll take it either way. Dave would have a fine time without you here.


Dave > Answer Chum

It starts with a text.

You don’t hear it, sitting cross legged on the spare chair John’s dad had oh so thoughtfully lugged up the stairs and into the room earlier. You'd recognized it as the second of the tall, frontal support pillars, and then gave it a small moment of silence in honor of its service. You knew that John’s mid-morning pounce, and subsequent kidnapping of your distressed damsel self from your Bro’s Evil clutches--even half asleep you’re sure he’d been there, even if John just blinked and insisted you’d been alone--would leave the fort undefended, and a ripe target for the pillaging power of the hovering parental armies to descend upon and raze the structure to the ground.

That small moment passed, and you mourned. 

Immediately afterwards, you’d leapt up from your makeshift seat on John’s Magic Box of Mischief and Merryment (or something) and then thankfully plopped your bony ass down on a proper cushioned piece of furniture; diving right back into yours and John’s increasingly ridiculous back and forth dance of “oh you’ve gotta see this” stealing the mouse and trying to one up each other. It’s the exact same dance you do all day from home, in your own chair with it’s Dave-shaped lumps, and with your own music blasting from your own headphones but--

But it’s different. It’s not even remotely comparable to the satisfaction you find in being able to watch John’s stupidly expressive face morph and shift as he takes in your carefully curated content, artfully arranged and expertly cooked.

Of course when he breaks down cackling in the middle of what was intentionally chosen to look like a grossfest, you find yourself appreciating your own masterful skill of presentation. You are so good at this shit.

Eventually the flashing light does grab your eye when you look away during a particularly dull youtube advertisement. You grab the device off the desk and thumb it open, expecting Bro shooting you something about lunch or dinner or some equally domestic shit; but no, it isn’t Bro at all. There’s two active conversations, one from Stevens wishing you a happy birthday--which is something you hadn’t really expected, but hey, he bought your affection with strawberry tarts and homework help so you’ve solidly filed him on your B tier. But B-Tier has nothing on A-tier, and that second text is Grade A, top priority friend material and well you’ll just have to hope you remember Stevens later.

Rose was arriving today. You hadn’t forgotten, but the knowledge fills you with a nervous excited glee tham makes you want to bounce, only you’re too cool to bounce. So you pounce instead; pulling it open much to John’s annoyed pouting because it’s his turn to pick and you aren’t paying attention Dave. You shush him, babbling something; oh man, it's a new low when you don’t even care enough to register your own shit, isn’t it? You’ve got it so far down to an art it’s  all on autopilot now. 

John doesn’t seem to appreciate your verbal artistry because he just rolls your eyes and lets out a huff, telling you to just get on with it and answer your girlfriend already.

First of all, ew no. Gross. Rose has seen the slime that cakes the walls and gears inside of your head and you’re fairly sure you don’t want anyone who can look at the hulking scurrying personification of your issues with such a clinical, if manically curious gleam in her purple text. At least not like that. Top notch friend material though, you’re glad about your conversion.

Second of all, this was totally not fair, why are you always the one getting paired up with your friends?? Rose calls you and John Soul Mates and he calls you two girlfriends (plural. Not just possessive and gee thanks John you’re a bro) but really you need to think of an appropriately lovey term of endearment for their relationship to complete the triad and get your revenge.

What time was it? 2:15? With exactly 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, okay that’s enough. If the timestamp said that and your own trip took--while this isn’t an active counter, you paw through your own flow of experience and count it back , just like scrubbing through a video if the video was some sense of continuity that you put your finger on and feel the pulses and immediately pull the information out of your ass--

“Uh Dave?” 

“Huh?” Damn it. Hombre just made you lose the thread and you really don’t feel like finding it again. It’s fine, you still have a ballpark; and if it’s correct...

“Come on dude tell me what it is! Did she send you a poem or some mushy stuff and that’s why you’re all off in la la land?”

“The only reason she’d ever get anywhere near the realm of mushy would be as a hilariously sarcastic barb wrapped up in flowery prose delivered with the full intention of extricating your head from your ass..” 

John scoffs, “You never know; maybe she likes to write.”

“If she did it wouldn’t be love poetry dweebert and you know it. It’d be all like Poe-etry, if you catch my drift; all Telltale Heart oh look someone actually got murdered in a fit of induced paranoia instead of a whirlwind love story like Romeo and Juliet.”

Although you suppose people get murdered in that too, so maybe it’s not the best example. Basically purple prose littered gothic horror versus conventional how harry met sally or whatever.

Why do you know this, someone might wonder. 

Well. You know a lot of things; thrown into your shitty references folder for just such an occasion.

“...actually yeah that sounds more accura--hey! Stop trying to distract me! What’d she say?”

Snickering as John makes a swipe for your phone, you push the rolly chair away, the motion sending it swiveling as you do so. As soon as you stop spinning you let out a drawn out “Weeeell…” while raising the phone as if it held the Word of God and written destinies that will help Shape the Future or some such bullshit.

“She said--”

“That she’s--” 

You very much resist the urge to do do do doooo an iconic key-item getting theme, and then laugh, as John does it for you. 

“--HERE!”

“WHAT! Dave! Why did you say that in the first place!!” He jumps off his chair, making a beeline for the door, and then stops, hand on the knob for weirdly poster-less door considering how cover the rest of the walls are, “Is she like, here, here or just landed at the airport here or what!?”

Hm, well, you suppose that’s a good distinction to make. You rub at your tragically whiskerless chin, all baby faced and shit, though if Bro’s any indication you’ll just end up with pathetic wisps and patchy stubble if he’d actually remember that shaving was actually a thing so you’re not exactly holding on to any dreams of exquisit facial hair.

You try to imagine Bro with a full beard the same white-blonde color of both your hair and it’s so ridiculous that it leaves you wheezing with stifled laughter. Like some sort of stone-faced skinny ass i-don’t-give-a-fuck santa. 

“Daaave--”

Something goes whizzing at your head, a magic prop snatched from the door-side table, and you dodge it without even interrupting your wheeze. You are the King at dodging shit. If you can dodge Bro you can dodge anything and John ain’t got nothing on your Bro. You manage to kick your brain away from it’s random facial hair tangent and smile at him, shoulders still threatening to shake but you bring that shit under an easy, suave steel gripped fist and flash him the barest hint of a challenge.

“We’ll just need to find out won’t we?”

Not everything needs to turn into a race. You know this. You also know Dad Egbert didn’t really approve of the last time you two half tumbled-without-actually-falling down those stairs. You both lock eyes--and you can feel the weight of his gaze through your rad lenses as if he could see the red of your eyes just as easily as you can see those blue peepers-- but the implication in your voice has him tense, just waiting for you to bolt. You lazily roll off the chair to your feet, and then…

You just wait. John quivering like an arrow in the bowstring, and you just stand there with a lazy slouch, arms crossed, and fingers tapping against your elbow. 

It’s a stalemate. He won’t move unless you do. You’re just content to make him sweat.

Until the doorbell rings, a distant, muffled toll, and yet somehow at the same time it keens in your head. Bells. The sun rising. Warmth at your back. 

John bolts , and you call out after him-- “Be careful on those stairs, dawg! Don’t want your old man catching you do we?”

And then? You follow. Leisurely. You captchalogue your phone, pick at the neck of your shirt. Smooth out your hair and adjust your shades with a quick glance in the reflection of John’s monitor. Fashionably late; that’s what you’re aiming for. Rose already one-upped you by arriving later than you did. You gotta at least put on a show for-- for who? You aren’t fooling anyone-- the audience.

You hear them before you can see them, lingering in the shadow of John’s door, and then totally not sneaking out to lurk like a goblin next to the railing along the edge of the quote un quote hallway. They weren’t solid, but they break up your silhouette enough and you’ll take them as a good blind so you can scope out the encroaching legion. Reconnaissance is key after all, and those really aren’t butterflies lurking in your stomach, nope not at all. You hadn’t had the chance to get nervous when John literally tackled you out of your funk, but now you have time to think and totally ace this first impression so there’s no need to be nervous at all.

Voices carry.

“Mother please restrain yourself; crushing my friend in his own home is hardly proper behavior in any state.”

“Oh I’m sorry honey, here,” You suppress a snicker at John’s exaggerated gasping, you’re fairly certain the dude doesn’t need to breathe because that’s as hammed up as one of those thanksgiving spreads in the hallmark movies or you’ll eat your phone. “Are u the birthday boy?”

Gasp “ --not till april ma’am--” John sputters.

No mother.” Rose huffs before John even gets a chance to respond, “We’ve already gone over this multiple times, both with, and without the aid of certain substances. It is Dave’s birthday. John just introduced himself moments ago; John Egbert, whose father you spoke to over the phone? To arrange this venture in the first place?”

“I know that Rosie gawd. I’m just excited! U spend so much time locked away in ur room, it’s only natural for the curiosity come sneakin out. It’s good to finally meet u John! Whenever I can wrangle a non sarcastic word outta Rosie its always about her bois and it's always good. She was so excited when your Dad proposed this shindig, u dont understand”

“Uh, um, thanks! Ms. Uh. Lalonde?”

“Aren’t u a polite one! I’ll need to extend my compliments to ur Dad, he’s got some nice digs. V cozy.”

“He’s in the kitchen, ma’am but--”

“John, where’s our esteemed compatriot? Shouldn't we be joining him instead of standing here in the entryway?"

“He was supposed to be right behind me! DAVE! Quit being a SLOWPOKE!!” That last line was literally shouted up the stairs, back in your direction. The hairs on the back of your neck began to prickle. Whelp. Guess you’re busted. 

“If he does not wish to join us, perhaps we could go to him?” Rose offers thoughtfully, perhaps a bit too thoughtfully. You aren’t nervous. At all. And to prove you aren’t nervous, you uncurl yourself from your slightly concealed position. You don’t let it show, brushing it off to sweep your way down the stairs and into a much better view of the living room once you hit the landing, including a red-faced John shifting awkwardly before a tall lady with goddamn that’s a tight white dress-coat, honey blonde-hair and a wide smile. Maybe not quite as tall as Bro but damn, you want to stand her next to John’s dad because you’d bet she’d end up just a smidge taller. 

Standing just off to the side is another, smaller figure. If people can tell you and Bro are related, there’s no doubt about this relationship whatsoever. Game set and match. Her hair matched her mother’s, but instead of a smile, those lips are pulled thin in irritation, blue-almost purple eyes flicking up the stairs and then they pierce right through you-- shadowed beneath an orange hood her eyes twinkle in the reflection from the green fire goddamn you are fucking alive --

“Oh hey Rose,” You give her a small wave before settling the hand on that weird mismatched railing, feeling the wood slide against your slick palms. “‘Sup?”

“Dave,” She inclines her head, and you find you know it. You know every angle, the softening of her eyes as you cooly take a few more steps, as if you aren’t just holding yourself back from pulling a John and literally flying down the stairs in order to wrap her in a desperate hug. You had the others, but she was the only one there for--fuck she’s been the one helping you piece yourself together piece by itty bitty little piece while John would wait and swoop in with the glue, cementing them into place with a smile. It’s no wonder you feel like you’ve known her for years, her face settling into that same picture frame labeled Rose Lalonde as if it’s always been there because of course it had. It’s like time itself has frozen, even the beat of your heart, in your bones stilling.

“I was wondering if I would ever get to experience the pleasure of your companionship; you seemed inclined to allow us to languish in your absence, whittling the time away with no mooring, no anchor, yearning for the charisma of your distinguished presence as if it were not the catalyst that set this moment into motion.”

“A lady’s gotta primp and prep before her grand entrance, don’t you know.”

“Of course, it was entirely my mistake to not take your well established vanity into account.”

And then, like all moments, the beat resumes, and you hear a quiet intake of breath.

“Dave...u said?” Rose’s mother drags your attention away, and you look out, because where you are, standing on the stairs you’re at about the right height to not have to look up. You don’t take another step, holding your ground. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced. Roxanne Lalonde.”

There’s...something there. Something different from the bubbly, cheerful voice you heard from upstairs. It’s a note, a strand of discord in the weave of sincerity. It has your hackles raised even as you channel every single experience you’ve ever had facing Bro in order to not let it show; even as you cover it up with what you like to call a winning smile. Your superstar smile. The one you practiced for hours in the mirror because you know you'll be famous one day, it's just a matter of time. 

You won't hide behind your anonymity and you will own that shit. You will be able to face people one day.

“Dave.” You don’t quite miss the expression change flit across Rose’s face, at the full body flinch, at the way her hands curled into fists before being shoved into the pockets of her puffy purple jacket, thick and probably all full of down and shit, perfect for a northwestern pacific day, “Dave Strider.” 

That sure is a curious expression, and you oddly wonder if you made a mistake of some sort even if you’ve literally said all of three words to her and two of them are your name. You know her relationship with her mother is rocky, but this isn’t rocky. 

This is locking yourself in a nuclear bunker and finding someone launched hell in a literal hand grenade in behind you.

“I see.” Maybe that feeling was right because something sure did change, even if you can’t put a finger on it. You don’t like this. Even as her smile widened, eyes crinkling, and hair bobbing with her nod, “It’s a pleasure to meet u Dave. Have u traveled far? How are u finding it? It’s quite a different climate from Texas isn’t it?”

Uh. You glance at Rose; who looks back at you with a cool blankness that makes you think of bro of all people. Is she feeling it? Is it just you? Is this normal? When she notices your glance the ice thaws even just a little bit, letting you see a flash of resignation and a small, almost imperceptible nod.

Okay. This is hella weird. You cross your arms, tapping two fingers against the inside of your elbow. Come on, Dave, just ground yourself. Go with the beat, count if you need to. Just keep it cool, and don’t react to the fact that your nerves are screaming at you that there’s something wrong and oh look Rose can see it too you aren’t crazy. 

“Yeah; I don’t think I’ve ever had a freezing temperatures so much as brush a patch of my poor sensitive skin; none of the warnings could have prepared me for this. Although I kinda hope it snows at some point between now and when we leave because I don’t think I’ve ever seen snow and wouldn’t that be rad? Seeing my first snow, with all my buds, best birthday present ever don’t you think?”

“Aw man, if I’d known that I would have brought my cloud seeder and we coulda totes had a small localized snow storm for u. I guess we’ll have to make do.”

...are you really just talking about the weather with Rose’s mom. “You’re telling me there’s such a thing as a cloud-seeder and you have one ?”

“Yup! Mad scientist privilege!  ;) Unfortunately I left it in my other coat so we’ll need to take a raincheck on that. Or a snow check; would u accept a snow check, Dave?”

Why why why this isn’t bro was it just all adults? You stare at her smile and intended playful wink, and you see nothing. Nothing you can read. It’s there, and you know what you’re supposed to see, but it’s void of any warm fuzzies you feel should be crawling up your spine right now.

It can’t be all adults because Mr. E was intimidating but he was pretty cool, and Stevens needed to seriously grow a pair, but neither of them make you want to slap up a mask and hide

“Uh. Sure. It’s not like presents are supposed to be a thing, not really, this whole thing was kinda my present from my bro so I’m like totally cool without creating an unexplained meteorological phenomenon for the express entertainment of all of what five people?”

“Your brother?” She lingered on the question just a tad too long, you think. Or maybe you’re just starting to panic and therefore everything is moving really slow, but no, you’ve got the ticking always going, you haven’t lost the time, not yet. “Don’t u worry ur cute lil head about that, we got presents. So many presents. Can’t have a birthday without presents. Ofc I didn’t know what u’d like, and rosie was hells of unhelpful--”

“Excuse me for wanting to use my ideas for my own gift for my friend, Mother.” Rose suddenly cuts in, wielding her words like a physical knife made of 100% glacial ice , dayum, “Speaking of friends, I would like to spend some time with them now. We children must be awfully boring; I’m sure John’s dad and Dave’s brother would be willing to accommodate you.”

“Rosie--”

“The young lady does have a point, we probably should allow the children the space to properly introduce themselves. This is, afterall, their first meeting and we shouldn’t be getting in their way.”

Oh thank god. Mr. E to the rescue.

John’s Dad pushed his way through the swinging doors from the kitchen, using a small hand-towel to dry his hands while moving through the open living room to join the fuckin’ party, “My apologies for the tardiness, Ms. Lalonde. Your arrival caught me with my hands in the dough, in both the literal and figurative instances of the phrasing. If we could convene to the kitchen, we can continue this conversation over some freshly baked cookies, and the children can be on their way.” A side-long glance to his son, “John, you should show them to your room.”

“Show them??? But we’ve been up there all day! Can’t we just, you know, play video games down here or something? We just got the new mario kart and I wanted to play it all--”

“Nah, man, I totes wanna surround myself in your collection of terrible movie posters. It’ll be fun! Rose hasn’t been completely exposed to your shit taste yet and that’s a cherry that needs to be popped to totally understand the egbertian experience.”

“...a crass means of putting it, but yes, I concur with wanting a change of scenery. I’m sure the video game system will still be here when the atmosphere is a sight less chilly.” 

She’s staring at her mom, with that pointed frown. There’s a flicker of expressions that cross the older woman’s face, most of which you can’t exactly read since you just met the lady and your experience in reading people is limited to just One example with two modes, either a million microfidgets or just stone cold silence, and the probably exaggerated storytelling expressions you’d picked up from as-seen-on-tv actors. 

Whatever that exchange had been, she firms up, and the smile comes out, only you can’t trust it, it feels just a shade too wide. “That sounds lovely, Mr. Egbert. Please, my name is Roxanne, but you can call me Roxy.” 

“Dan,” He holds his free arm out to Rose’s mom, whose’ fair skin tints the slightest bit pink before accepting the hand graciously. As it fades, so too does a fraction of the warmth in her voice; something about it sends your already raised hackles into the stratosphere.

“I assume Dirk will be joining us?”

The use of that name viciously cuts down the last shred of hope you were clinging to that this was just a big coincidence and your suspicions didn’t actually have merit. Whelp.

“Of course.”

They cross the room with a casual, “Be good Rosie! John! Dave! Have a good time.” to which Rose just rolls her eyes and all but stomps up the stairs, pushing her way through the space between you and the wall which you vacate quite quickly because hell naw are you gettin’ in her way when she’s looking like that. Although, to be fair, it’s not really stomping, her movements are far lighter than your description gives them credit for, but goddamn that’s what it feels like to you; full on get the fuck outta my way or I’ll run you over with a bulldozer stompage.

She’s mad and you’re fucked up and you don’t know why, but eventually you manage to drag a whining John away from his precious mario kart as you try very hard not to hear voices in the kitchen, but like you noted earlier, voices carry and you can’t block your ears, not really. You pick up on the implications, and that's not cool. That’s the opposite of cool. And goddamn John can be patient about the Mario Party it’s your birthday and you don’t want to feel like some snot nosed brat trying to hide from Mommy and Daddy having a row in the other room.

...Even if you are, actually, hiding upstairs; though in this metaphor they aren’t both your parents, they are parentals, and Mommy is Rose’s Mommy and Daddy is--

Gog. You aren’t even going to finish that thought, nope, nada, not happening. Bro is a bro and not…

Dad’s don’t…

Christ this is fucked up. You’re Fucked Up. Brothers fight. Brothers can be cruel and still be--

Whatever the hell you two are.

The door shuts behind you--maybe with a little too much force. John isn’t pleased with the situation, but, oblivious as he appeared to be to the atmosphere downstairs-- or maybe you’re just sensitive? But that doesn’t make sense because Rose was in just as much of a weird pickle--John still let you drag him away from his precious game system whether it was because of the look on your face, or maybe the tone or your voice or--something. 

He sits down on his bed, as you throw yourself on the floor, and Rose busies herself with perusing a particular movie poster that you can already tell holds no interest other than the fact that it’s something to focus on. “Hey, you two okay?”

Rose picks at her nails, “Yes. Why would I not be? I do have to live with the woman."

Liar.

“Because that was awkward as hell back there, that’s why. I think I need an adult. Only not an adult because adults are the fuckin' problem.” You throw your arm over your face, knocking your sunglasses askew but you don’t care. You think if you listen, you can still hear their voices through the floor-- John’s room is right above the kitchen, isn’t it?-- but you don’t and it’s all in your imagination.

“What? Awkward??” Chalk one up the oblivious Egbert; you could peek under your arm to where he’s sitting on the bed but you don’t because you can just imagine him glancing back and forth between the two of you like a confused pigeon following someone’s sandwich. Or your bird bro back at home when you walk in with a handful of baby carrots. Then he opens a bucktoothed beak to warble, “I dunno, Rose’s mom seemed nice to me???”

“Yes, she seems nice.” Rose acknowledges, but that doesn’t sound like that’s the end of things; she continues as you roll onto your side, pushing your shades up into your hair so they aren’t at least aren’t dangling haphazardly off your face like a dude clinging to a 2 inch crack in a sheer rock face with nothing more than chutzpah and fragile human fingers. “If you merely observe the surface level layer ironic housewife routine, all absent smiles and distant eyes and enthusiastic gifts before flitting off, motherly duty discharged.”

“You know, that doesn’t really sound like, you’re ‘okay’” John does little air quotes with his fingers, and then goes back to picking with his sheets. “You know?”

Just a little shrug, and the girl gives up pretending to examine the poster. You see her consider the abandoned computer chairs, before settling herself primly on the floor, only a few feet from you. You could like, totally reach out and touch her puffy purple sleeve, which she’s now slipping her arms out of to let the Actual Winter Coat fall on the floor. 

“John, if you didn’t get it, you probably won’t get it. Yeah she seemed nice but there was something seriously weird down there.” You resist the urge to squirm under both sets of eyes, reluctantly pushing yourself up and folding your legs in a loose cross under you. It’d be a little hard to spring to your feet like this, but hell, you don’t have to be ready to go go go anymore; there’s a door between you and anyone else, Bro is probably all hells of occupied, and you’re hanging with your actual bros. You can fucking relax, okay? “What I want to know is what the fuck was up with my name?? You saw that too right Rose?? I wasn’t just reading too far into shit? God she knows my Bro doesn’t she? She knew his name--”

“God chill out, Dave. Of course she knew his name! My Dad probably talked to them both--”

“He didn’t.” Rose’s answer cut off John’s what-if scenario, and you snap your attention away from your bro-friend to your girl-friend, and not the type of friend that would not have a dash in the moniker to break up that kettle of implications. “If he had, I likely wouldn’t be here at this very moment, talking with you both about this...unpleasant subject.”

“Did you know that would happen?”

“Know? No. But I had a feeling things would go...poorly as soon as introductions were offered.” She sighs, looking up, focusing on *you* this time. The glamor and shoujo sparkles of your first meeting have faded and you look past the giddy realization of rose rose it's rose you missed her and for the first time you notice how tired she looks. There’s bags hanging from her eyes that put Bro's to shame and the slightest crease of a wrinkle and you're struck with recollection that you aren't the only one with sleeping problems, and at least you could get back to sleep after a nightmare, eventually. Rose just always ran until she couldn't anymore and crashed. You don't even want to guess how long she's been awake now what with the travel plans. “I’m sorry, Dave. I considered turning down the invitation entirely to avoid this particular path, since I knew it would ruin the event; but--”

"Nuh, uh, no buts Rose," Stop. Do not pass go. You will not let this shit slide, "the event is not ruined, whatever shit is going on with the parental units they can deal with it. The last day with John has been rad, but it would not be a proper birthday party without all of my best buds, and that includes you." 

"I see. Forgive my assumption then." 

"Assumption not forgiven; you'll need to make it up to me. Reparation for the emotional damages you inflicted on my psyche with the mere suggestion of not coming to my birthday party. That shit can be traumatizing for a kid, yo."

And there's something an eye roll and a huff, which you'll take for a win. Especially since her lips quirk upwards in a way that you know means she's hiding a smile. It's much more obvious than Bro's, "Do you have a preference for cash or credit? Or perhaps some other form of currency? Affection perhaps?” 

“I’ll take a hug for 500, and maybe some answers if you’ve got ‘em.”

“I really don’t have much evidence to support the...hunch if you will. I stumbled across several attempts at unsent letters on the table in the parlor, written in a hand that indicated a moderate to severe level of intoxication that made it hard to read, much less comprehend. I didn’t think much of it, only glancing at it with idle curiosity in case they were left out deliberately for me to find as another salvo in our ongoing conflict; but the only thing I could make out was the addressee’s name.” 

Those eyes, indigo, almost straight up purple--actually just go with the purple, because they are, and if you got to have weird pigment then it made you feel better to know someone like Rose had it too and it wasn’t just you and your brother--locked with yours, and you, offer a strangled, “Strider? Dirk Strider?”

“Dietrich, but from what I gather Dirk is a potential derivative of that name, yes.”

Dietrich?? You mouth the name in some sort of bewildered state of disgust. It feels foreign on your lips; so much worse than Dirk. That one felt weird. Like it didn’t match. This one felt downright wrong. 

Rose continues on without you, John watching you both and fidgeting like he wants to jump in and yell ‘TIME OUT’ and stop this whole srs business train while the going’s hot, but he doesn’t, and you like to think it’s because he knows you need this. John’s your buddy, yes, but Rose is your ‘lets get all this hard shit out and on the floor so we can actually fuckin’ clean it up and get on with our lives’ buddy, and this is a metric ton of shit you really don’t want hovering above your head while you play fucking mario kart and dream of cake.

“Once I learned your full name, I was certain, if I told her it matched the one in her letters, the outcome would be most unfortunate; perhaps in the vicinity of friendship extinction level of unfortunate and I...couldn’t do that. I couldn’t throw away our rapport. I decided to cautiously pursue the trip, trying to nudge my wayward mother into dropping me off, and leaving before the introductions, banking on her flitting off to look into the meteorological phenomena she used to justify the trip here, but...” 

Rose rubs at her face, and you find yourself drawn by the dark circles again, “Of course she felt the need to upstage me in my own narrative introduction, butting in and stealing the scene for herself and relegating me to the role of the exposition fairy. I really am sorry, Dave, for how ‘hells of awkward’ this entire situation has become.”

"Honestly between us and my imaginary birdbro, I'm really just kind of flabbergasted?  I mean what are the odds? I would have appreciated a heads up, yeah sure, I could have parked my skinny little butt right here in John’s room while you shook her off, but what’s done is fuckin’ done you know? At least they’ve got Mr. E to mediate whatever constitutional issue they got going on--it’s not like they’re exes or something.”

Oh god that’s such a pregnant pause right there.

“No.”

John snickers, a twinkle in his movie obsessed eye. You make the sign of warning. Stay back demon. Begone. “NO.”

“Aw, come on! You never know! This is just like the Parent Trap!”

“John, no. Look at this face.” You scoot across the carpet, and smoosh your face up next to Rose’s without thinking. It’s only after you realize you’re like an inch from her skin before you brain suddenly realizes that’s TOO DAMN CLOSE for having just met but what do you do? You ignore it because you’re committed now, “Does this look like the face of some long lost siblings of a divorce who met entirely by accident one day at Chez Egbert's Internet Camp and we just witnessed mommy and daddy meeting for the first time in a decade?”

You’re focused on John, but Rose’s voice sounds right up by your hear ducts--ears, you mean ears, and her breathy laugh tickles your cheek, “I don’t believe we are living in a piece of media, life is far too messy for that."

"You know a lot of movies are based on a true story--'

"Con Air isn't real, John." 

"I know that, Dave! Geez. I'm just saying! Just because the odds are low doesn't mean it's impossible! How much do yo u know about your Bro anyway?? You've barely said two words to him since you got here. For all you know "

"As sorry as I am to torpedo your dreams, I am well aware of the fact that my mother has never been married. Therefore if anything clandestine were to have happened in our parents' sordid past it would have been out of wedlock, and therefore already derailed the plot to which you seem inclined to shove us into."

“Yeah well I’m just saying if the shoe fits--”

The conversation gets more and more ridiculous, the longer you let it go, but that’s okay, it’s okay because you’ve gotten some of the heavy shit out and now John’s here to chase away the clouds. It’s okay even when you hear the thud of the door closing downstairs. The revving of a car engine. It’s okay when you see Rose flinch, and awkwardly rest your hand on hers. You aren’t quite leaning on each other yet when John’s Dad comes up to tell you the coast is clear,  but you’re pretty damn close.

John doesn’t even bring up Mario Kart for a while, and you silently thank him for it.

If Mr. E is here… Well, you know Bro doesn’t drive.

Looking at her tired, resigned face you decide you’re gonna make sure she has fucking fun today.

Notes:

:3c

Don't worry, we'll rewind next time.

Thanks for sticking with me in this arc that seems like it'll never end!

Chapter 56: [I1P7] The Parent Trap

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Dirk > Stare into the Abyss

She’s here .

You can hear her. Of course you can. Roxy took your same isolated upbringing and went sideways. Where you struggle to raise your voice, hers effortlessly carries. Where you prefer to stop and think and plan, she’s already plowing ahead. It’s like Dave in a way, really. You’d never really wondered how they would get along, but listening intently as those voices drift through the open door to the living room, bantering over a cloud-seeder --

If you were sitting down you’d be on the edge of your seat. If you could unlock your muscles you’d probably be pacing. But the only thing you can do is bunch the soft fabric of your emerald shirt between your fingers and play with the hem, trying not to think about the way your heart was pounding in your ears, and in your chest, and the taste of blood in your mouth. Your eyes are quite firmly focused out the window, at the tire-swing silently swaying in a slight breeze, at a car leisurely driving by, until--

Water stops running with a hiss of valves closing and blocking the pressurized path. You glance over at a quiet sigh.

Dan pulls away from the sink, having cleaned his hands of the sticky, clinging mixture of flour, chocolate chips, eggs, and who the fuck knows what else. He’d tried teaching you, but your brain held information like a sieve right now, and random baking facts were too small in the grand scheme of things, lacking importance as far as your grey sponge was concerned, and was allowed to just fall through the openings into irrelevance.

He doesn’t immediately leave, like you’d expected, even as he produces another kerchief, a blue one this time, starting to dry the dampness on his hands.

“Are you going to be alright?”

You shrug, the motion grinding against the lock you’ve otherwise got on nearly everything. This is bad; your instincts scream at you. That you’re going into a fight . You need to be limber, ready to dodge, ready to move.

“This won’t go well.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes,” It’s the one thing you’re certain of, a phantom pain blossoming in your chest. A corpse lying in a stone bed of dried blood, “Yes, I do.”

You’d told him what you could, quietly, over the hiss of air being pumped into expanding rubber, while he busied himself draping the streamers above the windows adding additional color to the space.

There wasn’t much to tell, because there wasn’t much you knew. You should have said something sooner. Yesterday maybe. The moment he said Rose’s last name. Maybe a bit later, to give yourself the plausible deniability of needing to stew on the topic. But not quite this last minute. You hadn’t wanted to think about it. Hadn’t wanted to speculate and pretend you know what happened.

Growing up together. Falling out.

She may hate my guts, but she’ll help you.

Moving away.

He didn’t ask for details, just listened. Nodded slowly, and then had a good quiet laugh about it. Not at you. Or even at the situation. But at the sheer absurdity and what were the odds?

Rather high, as it turns out. You have thoughts about Sburb as a concept; thoughts you lock tight in your brain, about how it tied all of your fucking destinies together in some big ol’ messy knot. Even now, with three of the four players assembled you know the last one is just around the corner, waiting to make her move.

“Do you like cookies?”

Oreos were good, so you’d just nodded numbly, and he rolled up his dark-grey dress sleeves as if there was nothing doing and got to work. By the time you’d run out of balloons--really, you ran out of the helium--you just end up leaning against the counter, falling into a fugue just watching bared muscle flex and move as he worked, hand mixing disparate ingredients into some sort of congealed combined mixture.

That’s how you got here, hearing Roxy from the other room and Dan prepping to leave the bowl full of unbaked cookie dough behind to greet her.

“You haven’t seen her in over ten years. It might not turn out as you expect, Dirk.” Ever the pragmatic one; there isn’t much you could say to that, even if you have evidence to the contrary. Fairly recent evidence. Much more recent than 10 years.

You doubt ‘killed me in a drunken dream’ would be permissible in any court of reality, though. Or the collateral damage that’d wrecked your game-given connection to your splinter self, if you’ve unraveled that particular knot of plausibility correctly. You’d been forced to forge a complete new one from the ashes left behind, and probably--grudgingly--a little bit of help from a reticent brain ghost.

Dan didn’t stand there seeing her coming at you. Seeing her crying. Her hands curling into fists and alcohol on her breath and hitting your chest ineffectually. Get out of my head. Get out. Get out.

Get out.

She won’t want you here.

You should go.

You don’t say that, because you know what the answer would be. You’d already offered.

Dirk...no matter how complicated things are with Dave… unless he tells you himself, it would hurt him for you to leave.

Dan spirits himself and his sharp hat and his sensible tie into the living room to welcome the final guests, rescuing the children to allow them to escape upstairs. And get them away from the ground zero of whatever shit is about to go down. Maybe he has an optimistic outlook-- She’s a charming lady; I’m sure things can be worked out reasonably-- but you don’t. It’s not like you want shit to blow up--

Especially today.

But you had your own fucking sword summoned out of nothing and slammed through your chest during your last meeting.

Ice creeps down your spine. Freezing around your heart. It’s almost as if the temperature drops 10 degrees. 20 degrees. Colder than you’d been last night, despite being all but exposed to the elements of mid-winter.

Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration, but you hear her laugh, telling Dan to call her Roxy. Hear the uncharacteristic chill that settles into her voice when she says your name.

Text had been your medium of choice for the most part. Until the game itself, you’d maybe only heard her voice once. Twice. Terrible quality voice calls when you were both finding each other for the first time. The chill courses through you like a terrible wind.

The door into the yard beckons you. If you just go, scale your way to the balcony--even as out of practice as you are, you could probably do it-- you could make your way inside to tell Dave you’ll be going out for a while. At least you won’t just be up and disappearing on him--

No. Dan probably locked it when he came in last night. Text him then, just like when you go to the store. No big. Just skip out and let Roxy do her thing and you’d probably be able to find somewhere out of the cold to exist for few hours until dinner and cake and then--

“Dietrich, it’s been a while hasn’t it?”

That. Name.

You’d tried to forget that name, even as it was stamped on everything from your bank forms, to your credit cards, to your plane tickets . Like the birthday, it was another reminder of this history you’d rather just sweep into a closet while you took this life as your own. It’ll never be what you had--you’ll never get back your Bro’s pop culture library, or your apartment in the sea, or even squarewave, or sawtooth--but, between your shifting relationship with Dave, and your hesitant, frail but growing confidence in your ability to organize and track the numbers , materials, and even people required to run a business, you were starting to feel like you were making some of this life your own.

And then you run into something like this. It’s like running headfirst into a brick wall. A reminder that no, your name isn’t yours. It isn’t the one you synthesized and chose for yourself from snippets of data your Bro left around your house. Even knowing now that shit was all predestined--a mirror for the universe that this existence is a poor copy of--it was yours.

Dietrich was the creation of the same system that stamped your Birth Certificate several months Too late. You ignore the fact that an official document placing your birthday on the same day as Roxy’s--no you have not looked up her personal files. Okay maybe you have--would be more Accurate than your feral child’s self’s desire to be Like Your Bro. Acknowledging it as more than just wrong feels like it cheapens that connection.

So like everything else you didn’t want to deal with--you’d just ignored it. Compartmentalize it. And moved on because you had enough shit to worry about between Plush Rumps, and Davepeta, and Dave and this whole shindig and--

Now it gets shoved so far up into your face you now have a brand spankin’ new hole in your head from Roxy’s impeccable rifle shots.

One door, to the other. The yard, and the living room. From freedom and escape from responsibility to--

Taking in the woman framed by the doorway, everything closes around you, purple-patterned walls lit dimly by a mobile of brightly humming stars. The medium creeps forward like it used to, straddling both places, like you have a foot in both. The light from Derse creeps in behind her, rimming her body in a ring of faint blue-white not-light. The word is choked out of you, a faint incline of your head, because you can’t do much else, “Roxy--”

Only, you know that isn’t happening. It can’t be. You unclench your fingers from your shirt and press your hands down on the smooth countertop. The Roxy before you isn’t your friend, it isn’t even the dream Roxy, draped in the remnants of your friend’s legacy, and surrounded by her humming shards.

“Roxanne, please, only my friends call me Roxy.”

That.

Hurts.

You’re back in Egbert’s kitchen, facing down the image of your friend, shoved sideways and warped. The song of her soul and faint murmur of the memory playing in the back of your skull, echoing in the fog. You feel like you can reach out and touch it--you probably can. If you channeled your power, would you be able to see her? See the bits of your silly but sincere friend, broken up and spliced together with the memories of a dead woman?

Christ. What are you even thinking?

“Now, then, is anyone gonna tell a gurl what all this is about, or r we gonna stare at each other all day, huh?” Dan lingers in the door, but Roxy strides forward. Not backing down, face a mask of pursed lips and hips that your Roxy hadn’t ever grown into. She turns, hands on her hips, sass cocked and ready, glancing between you and Dan and back to you. “I was told this was supposed to be a fun lil shindig for Rosie and her pals, not a St. Andrews couple years too late surprise reunion.”

“It is, a celebration of young Mr. Strider’s birthday; Dirk and I have been decorating for a while, and we’re in the middle of setting up,” With a sweep of the hand Dan indicates the mostly decorated kitchen, “Feel free to take a chair; or perhaps a bite if you are particularly hungry, since I know your timezone is even further ahead than Dirk’s.” He steps up and tugs one of the chairs out from under the red-covered table with it’s covered dishes and upside down glasses, offering it to her. She declines with a small, apologetic shake of the head, refusing to budge, her eyes having finally settled on you with an intensity that makes you want to fidget.

“That’s sweet of u, Dan, but I’m waiting for another answer right now.” You meet her eyes; those pale rose-pink, hardened and narrowed. “I can hardly imagine Dietrich--” You hate that name so much. Especially the sound of the hard ch, at the end, “doing something so domestic as decoratin’”

“Ah, yes, my apologies,” He’s not oblivious to the tension at all, merely acting the gracious host, you guess. In a way--in more than one way, Christ there are so many ways--you feel bad about all this. And yet. You still. Can’t find anything to say. You’re just standing there, saying squat, one hand gripping the counter like you’re gonna snap the damn thing. “Would you like me to leave you two alone for a time? To catch up?”

“No, it’s fine--”

You finally find your voice with a monotone, “Yes. Please.”

He nods once, after giving you a considering look, before whipping out a roll of plastic wrapping and placing it over the dough he’d been working on earlier. It disappears into the fridge, which is already very occupied by four decent sized cakes, but like a subspace pocket, there’s always more room.

“I’ll be in the living room; just please be mindful of the children.”

As he vanishes through the swinging doors, you remember Newt’s words. Children are perceptive. The last thing you want is to drag them into this shit. Anywhere near this shit.

You just hope this goes okay.

You can’t bring yourself to hope for well.

The silence is fuckin’ painful. A game of chicken where neither of you are willing to move. You know yourself; you like to think you know what she’d be expecting.

You back down first.

You fold yourself into a second chair, toeing it out to join its empty brethren. She still doesn’t move. Shifting from the sassy hands-on-hips stance of matronly disapproval to something colder, and harder.

You aren’t sure what you’re doing, as you rest a sock-covered foot on the bar beneath the seat, resisting the urge to bounce it. Are you submitting? Or are you defending? Both options grate against what’s left of your ego, but you lean back into the plastic chair and tuck your hands into your arms.

The action seemed to have meant something, or maybe it was backing down, but something shifts, and she breaks the silence.

“So. Did u actually decorate?”

“Yeah. The balloons are my work,” You incline your head, tearing your eyes away from her and toward the rubber coated ceiling. You probably didn’t need all of them. But you used up all the air. Black and red and blue and green and purple--all familiar shades. It really makes you wonder just how much paradox space likes to stick its fingers in your pies. You suck in a breath.

The words come out in a quiet tumble. “I received your card.”

“Did u now,” There’s almost a thoughtful hmmm there, “How do u know I sent u anything?”

“It’s kinda obvious Rox--” Once you had a moment to think about it and weren’t falling over from sleep deprivation or Davepeta’s disconnect, “How many people do I know in New York? Or a better question, how many people would bother to send me a card.”

“Knowing ur lovely personality, not many,” That same cold smile; “It must not have meant much, if u didn’t bother to write back.”

“Would you have wanted me to? It’s not like we’ve been on speaking terms.” Okay. Okay. Just. Go with it. Even if she’s cold, even if it’s all hefted with the intent to skewer you into little dirk-kebabs, it IS words. Use yours.

“I know rite, u didn’t even tell me you had a little bro now! I thought u didn’t have family. He looks like u. Except cuter. Def way more polite than u. Where’d u pick ‘im up?”

You shift minutely, this is getting a bit close to the shit you don’t know. At least no more than--well, at least you remember that scene on the time-line viewer in the meteor; yo--Dave’s Bro standing over a crater, mini-glasses in hand already, “Roxy…”

“Roxanne.”

You sigh.

“Rox, then. I’m not sayin’ that full name.” Your lip curls slightly, it tastes just as bad as Dietrich. “You know exactly where he came from. You found Rose didn’t you?”

Maybe you’re gambling a little; but she works for Skaianet. Dave’s Bro had known.

A layer of that civility peels back, her eyes gleam as she leans forward, “Oh so u do want to bring that up again. Is that what this whole thing is about, Dietrich?”

“It’s Dirk.” Your teeth grind.

“Nah. Thanks. I’m not sayin’ that name.”

“Christ Rox, I’m not here to fight!”

“Oh? Then why r u here then? It seems like a lot of trouble to go through; manipulatin that poor kid and his Dad into this just to get me here to dig up this old shit all over again. Using your own son too! He’s probs our son, if Harley was right about even half the stuff he had knockin’ around in his ol’ noggin. I should sue--get custody. U dont deserve to raise a kid especially if ur’re gonna just use him like that.”

Use him??

Okay maybe she has a point. You don’t deserve to have a kid. But fuck it, he was yours.

Your brother.

“I don’t give a shit about you being here, Rox. It’s Dave’s birthday. It’s dave’s party. It’s Dave’s friends. That one has the last name of Lalonde wasn’t my business.”

“Oh yeah? Ur’re so smart Dietrich , I’m sure u can do a lil bit of probability calculations for me real quick. What are the chances that out of the millions of people in the world, that our two kids would meet online and become friends? What are the chances, my lil Rosie would get invited across the flippin’ county, somewhere I needed to go to check on sciency thingamawhatsies, for an unknown friend’s birthday party? I’ll give you a minute.”

“You know why Rox.” God, you aren’t even anxious anymore. You’re just frustrated, “It’s the same way we’re all tangled up together like someone put a skien of yarn through the fucking dryer, rendering it unusable. It’s the game. It’s always the game. They are players . If they didn’t become friends they’d never play.”

Just like you’re a player. But you don’t know if she knows that yet. The save state was supposed to be the same .

“Christ, just, look; Why the fuck would I bother? Dan is literally trying to do something nice for a kid who never had a fucking birthday party; Rose is Dave’s friend. I didn’t need to do anything, because the fact that we even exist meant those kids meet.”

She seems to have recovered now, rolling her eyes at you and tossing her hair, “Hells if I know what’s goin on up in that there twisty tie brain of urs; you obvs never trusted me with ur thoughts even before u threw me away like yesterdays news. If u don’t give a shit, then why are u even here? Why didn’t u just go as soon as I walked in? Out the back and gone--I saw u eyeing that door. Coulda just run off like u did 12 years ago--at least then I wouldn’t have to look at ur face. Do u even listen to urself? Goin on and on about predestiny and a game so abstract that even Harley couldn’t figure out more than just the basic framework. U always thought u knew more than anyone else. That the rest of us were morons for even tryin to do shit for ourselves--”

Just.

Fuck.

It.

“Say the word, and I’m gone.”

Oh. You’re standing now. The legs of the chair scraping back as you pull yourself to your full, too tall height. That stops her cold. You press on. “I mean it. One word, and I’m out. I’ll leave the premises. Won’t talk to you and your kid again. I’m not here for you, I’m here for Dave , and if it’s not in the cards then fine.

“It’s not liek any of this shit mattered to u before!”

“I think, that’s quite enough of that.” That raised voice catches your attention, and yanks, Dan Egbert stands on this side of the kitchen doors. You don’t remember him coming in. You don’t remember much outside of Roxy and that’s strange because you always keep some level of situational awareness. “Now, I wasn’t trying to listen, but you two are getting loud . If I let this continue as is, you’re going to bother the children and that is something none of us want. Isn’t that correct?

Thank fucking god. Shaken by how deep you’d been dragged in, you just nod, not really trusting your words. If you weren’t, well, you, you’d be trembling, instead you’ve locked down tighter than Hal’s grip on the network of your tiny one-apartment island’s intranet. This was--

Fuck. You had some answers, scattered all over the table like wickedly sharp glass shards. It’s not enough to make a picture, not at all. Just mismatched, lost pieces cutting up your hands as you try to gather them up, blood willing up in the cuts and leaving splatters and trails behind. You focus on them--the fragments of answers, and not the hurt seeping through your tattered and aching soul.

“Of--of course not.”

“Excellent,” Dan nods, as if he’d expected no less, “Now, is there anything I can do to help clear up any misconceptions? I understand you two have some sort of history? Dirk was reticent to go in depth when he mentioned it to me this morning.”

He grabs your abandoned chair after a glance, where you make no move to return to your seat. It’s almost irritating when Rox--Ms Lalonde casually slides into the one you’d offered her earlier with little hesitation, right across from Dan.

There are other chairs still, of course there are, there was enough for each kid to sit at the table, plus one extra since most sets apparently come in four-- there’s a kid missing-- but you don’t take it. The adrenaline still clings to you, to your heart, and you lean back against the kitchen counter, feet away, half turned away from them both, but still close enough to be considered part of the discussion.

“It’s a personal matter, Mr. Egbert, as you’ve likely surmised,” Roxanne responded through a practiced smile, shedding some of the raw sincerity that anger had dredged out from under that happy high society smile. You snort at the understatement, grabbing her attention which brings out the faintest of pursed lips. Personal…

And The Game. He can’t have heard that part or he’d be asking questions.

Dan wasn’t a player. If he was anything like Jane’s Father, even if he made it to the medium, he wouldn’t have the benefit of whatever foreknowledge had been given to the guardians as their marching orders, or whatever shit Rox had been talking about earlier. Foreknowledge, and a visit from Jake Eng--Harley twelve long years ago.

Harley; not English. Remember that.

Just like Roxanne was not--not Roxy.

Jane would have still been alive then, wouldn’t she? John was only 9. She died on his birthday.

“What I would like to know, is the extent to which this was planned. I would have liked to have been made aware of the other parents, just so I could have made an informed decision, u feel?”

“One word, Rox.” You remind her, earning a glare in response and an eyeroll from her, and a sigh from Dan.

You probably make him sight too damn much.

“Dirk; Please. It is Dave’s Birthday. Do you think he’d be happy with that?” It’s only argument that had made you back down from leaving before shit hit the fan. You don’t think Dave would necessarily miss you. At all. But you do remember Davepeta’s words, scrawled out in green across your screen.

It’s his choice. Not yours. So you stayed, and this whole thing became a clusterfuck.

“Trust me, I never intended for either of you to be blindsided by this. John was initially the one to suggest extending the invitation to your daughter, considering they’d become mutual friends. I doubt anyone guessed that you two would so much as blink at each other; coming from different parts of the country as you were. The odds are infinitesimal--it’s almost impressive it happened at all.”

“Rosie knew, “Roxanne muttered, “It explains a bunch. You both knew. Look, it’s not that I don’t trust u, Dan. It’s just that I was apparently the last one to get this particular memo about some 12-year strilonde reunion, and that doesn’t feel kosher at all.”

“He didn’t know, Rox.” You glance back at her, before looking back out the window, “I recognized Rose’s last name. At the airport. I wasn’t sure if you’d be coming too, considering how busy you are.”

“How would u know that, huh? U left before I ever took this name.”

“The same way you knew mine and had my address, ” Easy, easy there. Don’t do this. She’s angry. You’re frustrated as hell. No need to put more fucking fuel on the fire, “It’s not like I never thought about you.”

“Oh? So what happened to ‘not giving a shit’?”

I’ll just have to make friends all over again!

You remember the colored text snaking across the backdrop of your shades, flying alone through a field of broken stars.

You don’t even have the luxury of remaking your friends; you can see it in Roxy--anne’s eyes, in the way they keep flickering to you and hardening, as if she’s reminding herself of exactly why she has every right to be mad.

You give a shit. You give too much of a shit. But the uninterested and awkward as fuck AR-colored chasm that opened up between you and Roxy in your past is nothing in comparison to whatever your splinterself did to earn a Just death by her hand.

But fuck, you can’t help but get angry.

“You’re putting words in my mouth, Rox. I never said that.”

“Ye well, maybe you should be putting them there becuz at least then you’d be owning up to it!”

“Fine. You’re right. I’m the worst.” This time you don’t look away. You don’t even snap. It’s just a monotone. A deathly cold monotone. Fucking steel being dragged out of a laquer sheath you’ve never had, “I get it, okay? I regret the shit show of a past between us that mangled our relationship to the point where you can’t even look at me without wanting to stab me in the heart.”

Whatever the fuck he did, I’m sorry.

But you can’t push the words out; not when you don’t know the fucking story. You can’t apologize without being all kinds of insincere and--Roxy deserves better than that. Why did Roxy have to be the fucking void? Complete with blackout powers, full on god-tier powers leaking through and turning her into a dark, unknown spot to you, to the game. You could have asked Davepeta to scour the history on the timeline otherwise, even without words, some sort of physical description would tell you something. But you know all it would be is fuckin’ black as the depths of the furthest ring until you--Dave’s Bro left for houston.

That...might have been a little too much for you, and for her. Her eyes harden, and she stands abruptly. The slightest tremble beginning to vibrate through her shoulders. A headache builds behind your eyes. You’re tired. You’re hurt. Your scarless chest is throbbing and you resist the urge to touch it, to pull that pulsing mass of light and edges out of your chest to make sure its all in one piece.

Dan is rising to his feet as well as she steps forward, a trembling hand raising in a motion that makes you flinch. Visibly, and hard.

The phantom sensation of metal sliding through your flesh sends you stepping back, hard, only there is nowhere to go except into the counter which digs into your back and you stumble for a moment, hand going out to steady yourself.

What were you doing?

She freezes, not taking another step, Dan has a hand on her shoulder, and is saying something, but you aren’t paying attention to that. You’re watching Roxy, at the way the frozen fury drains, leaving her paler than the icing you’d put on that cake yesterday. Fingers dig into fabric and you find your hand clutching your chest, defensively, where a mark should be but isn’t but it doesn’t really matter does it because that mark was scarred into your goddamn brain.

Some small part of your mind wonders why it was this death, of all your others, that gets you. Maybe because you stared her straight in the goddamn face as you slid down the legnth of the blade, felt her hands cling to your PJs and then push you into darkness, tears fucking falling all around like a summer squall, breaking glass showering all around.

You’d seen Dave coming, but you wanted him to take the opening. It was your decision to make that sacrifice.

Roxy…

You’d been trying to comfort her.

“That wasn’t real.”

Her whisper is barely more than a breath.

Fingers clench and ball the green fabric into your fist, pulling the shirt taut around your shoulders. With effort, you straighten, and force your hands back down to your sides. You catch her dead in the eyes.

“...it was.”

“That is ENOUGH. Both of you.” A heavy, frustrated exhale, “This is not the time to continue pulling up old hurts; just as the time is not proper for self-flagellation . The question posed to us is, what should we do now?”

“...I should go.” Rox--anne pulls away from him. Away from you. She rubs her temples with long, carefully colored and cared for nails, “I should take Rosie and go--but she’d be sad. I’ve got work. I should--just go do that. Kip on up to UW. I’ll be by to take her back to the hotel tonight--”

She looks up at you, but it’s different. The eyes aren’t softening but they look so goddamn lost. She pushes away and sweeps out of the kitchen before you could even push through the resurgence of adrenaline, Dan following at her heels. All that’s left in front of you is the swinging doors and carrying voices.

“Ms. Lalonde, I assure you--”

“No, Dan, u don’t--I’m trusting u, okay? With Rosie? It’s her birthday tomorrow too, u know. I can’t--I can’t trust Dirk, but ur’re a good guy. U’ll make sure he doesn’t do somethin’ stupid like try and indoctrinate them into a soulless little clone army or somethin--gawd I don’t know. I can’t do this.”

“I assure you, there will be no army here, and your daughter will be in good hands” You sink into one of the abandoned chairs. They are nothing but distant, carrying voices. “Here, let me have your number in case something comes up, alright?”

“Alright…”

The door closes and a distant car engine revs, and she’s gone.

You just turn the chair and let yourself slump onto a barespot in the table, head pillowed in the blissful darkness of your arms. Your pulse pounds in your ears, your heart torn between tearing itself to tiny pieces and bursting its way out of your chest.

You…

Fuck.

Wood creaks; you can even hear the metal hinges as they are pushed open. A heavy hand settles on your back, “This is a problem you both will have to settle one day, but neither of you have the capacity for it right now. This is probably for the best.”

“I know.” You breath out into your arms, well away that it’d come out a near inaudible mumble to him, “I shoulda been the one to leave.”

“No.” He doesn’t elaborate, and you just sigh. “I’ll give you until the cookies finish baking, and we’ll call the children down for lunch. Is that okay?”

You don’t know; but you nod a miserable little nod anyway. You just want to escape and curl up by the fire with your phone in hand and talk to Davepeta.

Dan is separating out the cookies onto a baking sheet when you finally leave the room, although you don’t return to the comfort of the fire. It’s too exposed. It’d be too easy for the children--Dave--to just wander down and see you. The office has that damn wall-sized clown mural, but you find that corner near the piano and it’ll be good enough.

Davepeta is waiting for you when you tug the half-dead phone out of your sylladex.

Your dreamself probably sold you out.

That emotionally transparent bastard.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< sounds like you n33d to talk right meow huh
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< are you okay???

You haven’t been okay in a long time.

You need to be okay.

In for 4.

Hold.

Out for 7.

timaeusTestified [TT]: No.
timaeusTestified [TT]: No I’m not okay.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< do you wanna talk about it???
timaeusTestified [TT]: No.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I just need a friend right now.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i can do that bro
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you always got a friend in me
timaeusTestified [TT]: I know.

The phantom feeling of claws in your hair. Hesitant. But you lean against the wall. Into them. For a moment the room goes quiet, fading, and you can feel the warmth and presence and comfort you never got to experience .

timaeusTestified [TT]: You should be here.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< nah man its shortys show
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dont wanna steal his thunder
timaeusTestified [TT]: Not for the party; though you should totally see your friends.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I want you here.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< well with an invitation like that
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< how could i pawssibly refuse B33c

Dave > Race!

3

2

1

Start.

You mash the hell outta that button and you’re off, zooming down the track with a big ol’ wa hoo, even if you picked the opposite of the titular mustashio’d plumbers. You hit the Z button to make your royal duo perform a celebratory double-swap for your Nth successful double dash and early game lead because, let’s face it, you left the rest of the competitors in the dust. Your impeccable timing and rad drifts has your peach icon far, far ahead of the rest of the pack, and besides, you can hear John groan, tossing the controller onto the ground. “First time playing, my ass! You’ve gotten the starting boost every single race! No way it’s your first time playing!”

There’s a smirk dancing on your lips as you casually meander your way around the curve in the track, listening to the rattattata noise of your 3D cart against the paved stone of the plaza, “It ain’t cheatin’ when you’ve got reflexes fine-tuned from the insanity that is Mad Snackz Yo. If you wanna find the best glitches you need frame-perfect maneuvers. Next to that, hittin’ buttons on the count of Go is so easy I could do it blindfolded.”

Of course it helps that you’re just really good at timing shit. John just scowls at you, “That game series is recursive franchise garbage at this point and you know it.”

“How could you say that? It wins Top Bro Choice of the year, every year, since it hit the scenes. Bro Gramer Magazine is never wrong!”

“Bro Gamer Magazine is also trash.”

“One man’s trash is another bro’s Mona Lisa, dude. It’s a hundred times cooler than your mainstream nintenbabies,” Oops your thumb slipped off the acceleration button and your bitchin’ flower topped cart is coasting to a stop. Not that it matters, you’d already lapped John’s cart and it’s very confused green dino and ghost combo a couple minutes ago and you don’t really care about winning the actual race. As long as you’re in 10th and he’s in 11th you’re totally dope. You just let the controller drop into your lap and stab the air violently with one hand toward the TV across the room, “Like, see this shit? Sure it’s got top-notch graphics and it’s polished to be so sharp you can see your reflection in the spit--but the charm of Mad Snacks is how bad it is, dude! You can’t clip yourself through a half-pipe and send yourself rocketing through the air to get the big ol’ golden dorito in the sky it just ain’t the same dawg.”

“You can’t do that because they actually built it right Dave! Besides, there is clipping in Mario Kart, people use it for speedruns. I’d say exploiting bugs are more interesting when the developers actually gave a shit and tried to stomp them out! It means people have to try harder--”

“It’s a feature John, not a bug--”

“This debate has a flavor to it, aged like the wine gifted to a golden years couple decades ago on their wedding day, “Rose interrupts the thesis you were mentally preparing to drop on your bud like it was a 100 megaton bomb of fuckin’ schooling, and it completely harshes your vibe. You just give her your best unimpressed face--and you have a lot of practice with the unimpressed face, considering how done you are with idiots online even if they can never ever behold it--while glancing over your shoulder to where she sat towering above you both, being on the couch instead of on the floor like you dirty plebs, a plate of half-eaten cookies balanced on her knees.

“You could just ask to play, you know,” John picks up his abandoned controller and waves it in her direction, accidentally bumping the accelerator button and sending his poor last place kart lurching forward a couple meters. You’re still ahead though, and really? That’s all that matters. “We have two more controllers. Dad got a whole set even though I told him we only needed three.”

“Yeah Rose, join us, there’s no need to sit up on high, waving that image around like it’s a bit ol’ magic--” The pause after that is so pregnant it’s about to pop, and you let it hang around long enough for it to register in John’s brain. That panicky and squaked “DAVE” is music in your ears, “--wand. What did you think I was gonna say, John? Really, you need to scrub out your brain. What would your dad think?”

“He’d think you’re a terrible influence, because you know what you were going to say! You cut it off there on purpose!”

Your superstar smile just makes him fume harder, and it’s the best. He’s turning cherry-fucking red and trying not to smile back and you got him so bad it ain’t funny. But it is. It’d be gut busting, keel over roflcopter worthy levels of hularity if you were prone to indulging in such things.

Rose just sniffs, “As if I’d wish to place myself within range of your metaphorical pigtail tugging contest. I’m quite content with dinner and a show.” She selects another one of the cookies and breaks it in half before nibbling daintily on it--you don’t actually know what kind it is. Egbert Senior brought out chocolate chip earlier, and this one looks. Lumpier than the chocolate chip ones for sure. You lean back against the couch and swipe the other half she left behind on the pile and stuff that shit into your mouth.

Fuck yeah you like this one.

You try to grab another but Rose shifts the plate out of your reach with a small smirk dancing on her--unpainted, but that’s kind of strange isn’t it?--lips. “Aw c’mon Rose, just one?”

“You had one.”

“That was a half!”

“What’ll your brother say if you don’t have room for cake?”

God she sounds so sacchirinely innocent as she reminds you of how fuckin’ awkward that was; as if she doesn’t know that even mentioning that awkward attempt at parenting wouldn’t send your face falling into your hands like someone had just thrown you into a fuckin’ gravity chamber and flipped that shit to x100 earths. Crash, bang, buried into the ground. “Ugh, Rose, please don’t; I’d managed to forget that.”

“I don’t see why you’d need to. I thought it was rather touching.”

‘That’s the thing Rose, it ain’t touching when it’s hella weird ! Weird touching is bad touching! Weird touching gives you the heebie jeebies instead of the fuzzy wuzzies. Now you’re trying to distract me and it isn’t working! You don’t need all the cookies. You should share.”

“Mr. Egbert gave them to me--”

“Because you were the only one with free hands!”

“--and, therefore, I am the keeper of the cookies. And as the Keeper, I’ve determined that you have not yet earned an additional morself. Especially not these delightful oatmeal raisin ones. I really must give my compliments to your Father, John. I feel like I could eat my weight in these and feel nary a regret.”

“I’m glad someone likes them,” You’ve only known the dude’s voice for a day, and you can already tell he’s making a face at that, “Thank god for your bro, Dave; if it was just us here and Dad got into one of these moods, he would have dragged me into helping him.”

You’re about to sputter something because why would anyone be glad to have Bro’s lurking gargoyle self hanging around, but Rose takes the reigns for a bit and you find you’re kinda okay with that. You remove your face from it’s hand shaped prison and just regard your friends, letting you weird indignation settle into the background at her innocent question, “Do you not enjoy it?”

“God, no.” The exasperated sigh startles you. He glances toward the kitchen, but you can’t see either of the parenta--John’s Dad and your Bro. The estranged Mom left, remember? Anyway, John lowers his volume just in case regardless, and that gets you interested. He hasn’t really seemed all that worried about it before, aside from the cussing, and even that’s lapsed over the last few hours. “I hate baking. And I always feel like I’ve kicked a puppy or something whenever I say no. It totally sucks because then I get suckered into helping out and we end up with twelve dozen cookies or something ridiculous like that. If your Bro wants to take that target off my back I’m gonna thank him for it!”

“Nice to know you’ll toss my bro under the bus of fatherly affection to save yourself, dude. Real cool of you.”

Okay, that came out more bitter than you intended. What the fuck, Dave? Do you really care if your Bro has spent nearly all day in the service of John’s dad running ingredients or looming uncomfortably or whatever he does when he doesn’t have his computer to do his usual shit with?

Evidently.

John just settles on rolling his eyes at you, “It keeps them out of our hair; what more do you want?”

“I didn’t say nuthin’ about hair.”

“Did so. You were sooo against leaving my room earlier. Why else would that be other than to avoid--”

“Gawd John, that was because of the impending eruption of Mt. St. Mom right there--no offense Rose.”

“None taken.”

“--and then afterwards, well, I dunno about you, but the atmosphere had barely thawed when your Dad called us down for lunch, and Bro just--you saw him right? I’m not the only one who thought he was gonna loom so hard he turned himself into an honest to god drainspout--”

Your only warning is a flash of his glasses and a shifting of his stance to one that put his feet beneath him, and you realize what he’s about to do. You captchalogue your shades. John lunges. Small fingers darting and poking and searching for chinks in your fuckin’ seemless defense. You can barely hold him upright as his weight crashes into you, but to the backdrop of Rose’s unapologetic laughter, you both hit the floor. Carpet fiber scrape up against exposed skin, you’ll be happy if you don’t end up with rug burn, christ John, but you manage to get some leverage and throw your weight, squirming out from his total control and turning this thing into a full on Youthful Tussle.

It only lasts for a couple minutes before you manage to push yourself away from John’s dumb wheezing face. He lets you--and you’re aware he lets you. Goddamn kid has a grip like a goddamn vice. The only thing you have going for you is your flexibility and your situational awareness--and you try in vain to get your hair back into something resembling your Look. It’s hard without a mirror, or a brush that’s anything better than your hastily patting hand and probably oily fingers but maybe your Bro is fine with rooster hair, but it ain't just you two dancing around each other.

“Dang it John, I know I’m hella good looking, but you don’t need to keep jumpin’ my bones. Not every single smoldering glance needs to turn into a rough and rowdy scrum. I’m a delicate flower, I’m not made for this shit.”

He just snorts at makes a swipe at you. Which you don’t even have to dodge because he’s too lazy to move any closer. “Delicate my ass. You were the one who had me in a headlock yesterday.”

“That was yesterday.” It’s different. “I’d been cooped up in a plane, and then a car all day. You try and feel your muscles atrophy and then try and turn down some good ol’ physical activity.”

“If I may, I can’t help but notice a particular flavor in your interactions. A spice if you will. We’re a tad young, but could it be that John is dipping a toe delicately into the domain of blackrom?”

“Ugh, hell no, getta outta here with that shit.” The mere mention of that term makes your stomach clench painfully, even if you can’t quite figure out where you’ve heard it from before. Maybe it was something Rose mentioned; it sounds vaguely literary, and she likes to dig up themes and jargon that you’ve only peripherally heard of before. “It’s just some totally no bromo boys will be boys action. Right, John?”

You wait for his enthusiastic affirmative, but it doesn’t come, so you give a careful peek in his direction.

He’s frozen. A pit forms in your gut

“...John?”

“It’s just…” It’s breathy, voice hitching, as if coming outta some sort of a weird trance or day-dream or--fuck if you know, but his eyes were distant and your prompting had them focusing on you, and his expressive face seizes in the middle of an expression that you aren’t sure you’d ever seen before. Just…

Lost.

“You’re here. And you won’t shut up. I can reach out and pinch you or tickle you or…”

You aren’t breathing.

“You’re just here, you know?” And then he lights up. Positively glowing.

You smile, a genuine one this time, and flick him between the lenses of his askew glasses, since he’d clearly decided against captchalogue them like you did. “Yeah, I know. It’s awesome isn’t it?”

Rose, having watched that whole thing, clears her throat. A queen waiting for silence of the masses to allow her to speak. It breaks the Moment, and you aren’t amused as you give her a “what the hell” look and she has this smug little look on her face that makes you wonder if she’d just gotten outta the closet with--

“Alright. You earned it with that display. I’ll allow you to have a cookie. "

What the. Oh. Right.

"... Rose, the plate is empty".

"Indeed. I’m sure John’s father would be glad to refill it post-haste if you asked. Surely you would prefer a fresh baked cookie rather than the crumbs that remain?"

“...Rose, there was more than crumbs a second ago.”

She just sniffs and gives you a mild, completely unruffled look, and you sigh. Loudly. Raising your voice against John’s muffled snicker, you take the plate with its innocent pile of baked detris scattered across the polished surface. There’d been at least three cookies left when you swiped that half, right? “Okay fine. I’ll be the errand boy. On my birthday. There’s some law against this I’m sure.”

Your lack of shades makes your pointed glance in John’s direction unmistakable, skewering him under a manufactured weight of societal and bro-ship obligations. He visibly blanches, eyes widening for a brief moment before shaking his head and hands wildly, “Oh hell no I’m not going in here. Near my dad??? When he’s baking??? That’s like asking for me to get kidnapped and never heard from again!”

God finally something makes sense. John was just too fucking cool with his Dad most of the time. It, strangely, makes you feel a little bit better. As if some bitter twist buried deep in the mire of shit you don’t wanna acknowledge just eased a little.

Between this and Rose’s...mom… Well; at least you aren’t alone in wanting to avoid your parenta--authority--guardian-- Bro . Even if John teases you about it and you’re pretty sure this whole cookie run shit is a ploy by Rose to get you within three feet of the dude. You haven’t seen him since ya’ll absconded from the kitchen after lunch because that shit was still hangin’ in the air like a powerful fart and John just had to finally get in his mario kart, especially once his Dad so much as mentioned the word cookies.

You might have seen flash-steps faster than that, but it’d still been a damn good effort.

With an--overly exaggerated--sigh, you drop your shades out of your ‘dex and into your hand, sliding that comforting dark overlay over the normal lighting of casa del Egbert. “Fine, whatever. In payment, I demand you avenge me in the next Kart race, Rose. Kick John’s Ass.”

“Hey!”

Rose doesn’t do something so unsightly as snort, but...well, the sentiment remains. She rolls her eyes and slides down off the couch, settling herself in the spot you’d just recently vacated. Satisfied you at least get some measure of revenge, even if it ultimately means nothing because it’s just a video game that you don’t actually care about, you take your mockingly empty platter toward the barrier between the candyland and...whatever exists outside candyland. Meatland? Veggieland? Cookieland?

They are definitely still baking. Cookie baking has a very distinctive smell that’s been permeating the house all afternoon. It’s so mundane at this point you’ve started unconsciously ignoring it, but here near the door it’s much stronger.

On the other side was John’s Dad. And Bro. Unless Bro fucked off somewhere, but you aren’t at home there’s no roof for him to fuck off to. Or there is, but like you’d seen that shit from the car. It’s hella steep, and you’d have to be a literal monkey to get up there, much less find the proper footing for a strife.

...he probably would have considered it a challenge, once upon a time.

You...aren’t prepared for the controlled chaos that erupts around you as you step through the wooden saloon style doors. It isn’t... messy really. Just bowls and metal sheets and cooling racks littering nearly every available surface. You can feel your eyes all but bulging their way outta you head, rolling along the floor at the sheer number of fucking cookies spread about the place. Some are laid out flat, obviously cooling, but even others are stacked up on fuckin’ piles .

There’s no way in hell you guys are going to eat all this. Not even Rose’s apparent black hole of a cookie-pit would be able to hoover up a cookiepocalypse of this magnitude.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be sending some home with you all.” Oh had you said that aloud? Mr. E was looking up from a bowl he’d been mixing. You don’t see your brother, but you know he’s here, that prickle on your neck was tingling. “This is nothing compared to Jane when she got into one of her moods.”

“Did you bake together?” Oh there he is. He’s hunched over a cookie sheet in the back near the oven, spooning out some dough into perfectly sized dollops to go in the next batch you guess.

“Of course! She loved to help me. It was stress relieving for her, I think, much how you describe your tinkering habits.”

“Mmm. It would be. Regular motions with a predictable process and a satisfying outcome.”

He barely glances your way which is weird. And his tone is conversational which is even weirder . What the fuck.

“Indeed. I’m not sure whether I got the habit from her, or she learned it from me, but I remember many a day when we’d fill up several plastic tubs and take them down to the local elementary library. The kids would get excited over ‘real betty crocker’ cookies.”

“Isn’t that a brand??” It sounded familiar. In that faint, you’ve probably seen an advertisement for it somewhere, way that you never really cared about because you’d never buy it. Bro stiffened, you saw him straighten up out of the corner of your eye, but Dan didn’t given it so much as a backwards glance, still with that same small smile.

Also, who the hell is Jane? John’s mom??

“Betty Crocker’s Box Cake Mixes! Although The name belongs on far too many products for me to bother with nowadays. Many of Jane’s recipes began with Grandmother’s old formulas, although she was never satisfied with cake mixes and always ended up branching off--oh you aren’t here for family history, are you Dave? Did you three want more cookies? What kinds?”

...Woah, Mr. E seemed much more at ease when behind the uh, mixer as it were. Damn, maybe there’s something to that whole baking-as-a-method of relaxing thing. Why would John be so...weird about this? This is uh, downright pleasant in comparison to you and your Bro’s uh…

Stop it. Don’t think about that. Think about the fact that Bro’s got something stuck to his face and on his shirt again, although you can guess that it’s sugar or flour at this point. Were they baking yesterday too? “Uh. I guess so yeah? I dunno,” What did Rose say the last ones were? “...the raisin ones?”

“You do seem to enjoy the fruit flavorings don’t you?” Oh god your face is heating up, isn’t it. Fuck. Apple. Strawberry. Raisin. Aren’t raisins just dried grapes?? Maybe you do prefer fruit??? It’s not like you’d thought about it before. At all. “--Dirk, you made the last batch didn’t you? Could you get them together while I work on this?”

Bro mirrors your deer in the headlights imitation, vanishing with a half-step you can barely follow until he lands in front of a set of lumpy cookies sitting on a wire. Wordlessly he holds a hand out for your plate and you walk it over; you can feel the heat emanating from the rack. Fresh outta the goddamn oven.

Mr. Egbert said made not helped.

You can barely see over the counter, but you focus on your bro’s hands, darting quickly to lightly hover over each cookie before snatching it up and adding it to the plate if it’s...you don’t know? Cooled sufficiently?

Did those hands, the ones that looked so natural and comfortably around a hilt, permanently marked with callouses from sword work, actually make something so domestically uncool as cookies?

As the pile on the plate grew taller, you find yourself glancing up under the anonymity of your shades-- bro’s shades-- and trace the smear of flour across his nose. You can feel Rose’s eyes on your back from the other room, although that’s stupid. You weren’t right in front of the door or anything. But you can still see her purple-text in the back of your mind pushing you to talk . “Did you really make these?”

She probably would have facepalmed at that lame, completely inconsequential question, but hey. You’re workin’ with what you got here.

He falters, and then nods. A slight, very slight incline of the head, “Yeah. John’s Dad’s been teaching me.”

“Cool.”

You uncomfortably lapse back into silence, somehow despite your mental groping whatever switch triggers your ramble reflex is like suspiciously absent right now. It’s almost like there’s something very specific building behind your frosted windpipe and it’ll only break if you actually you know.

Fuckin’ talk about it you weenie.

“What’s the deal with Rose’s mom?”

He freezes completely and you flounder.

The silence stretches on; your heartbeat pounding in your ears. It’s so loud, you can’t hear the music from the game. You can’t hear the distant but incomprehensible murmurs of your friends. You can’t even hear the rhythmic beating of a wooden spoon against a bowl. You chew on the inside of your cheek. There’s nothing but you and Bro and your pounding heart and the roar of blood rushing to your face.

The ticking.

You can’t even find the ticking.

So you start counting.

Even if you can’t feel the pulsing beat right now, you’ve been listening to it nonstop for months, it’s easy to fall into the pattern.

22, 23, 24, 25, 26…

Exhale.

“Look, it’s okay, alright? Rose just--she thinks--you two obviously knew each other, and John made this ridiculous analogy to the Parent Trap. It’s obviously not true, because that would be insane, but like, it’s made me curious okay? If we aren’t some long-lost twinsies and ya’ll aren’t estranged lovers--” He lets out a strangled sound despite the fact that his expression hasn’t so much as cracked and your brain screeches to a halt, “wait--it is ridiculous right?? What was that supposed to mean Bro??? You aren’t fuc--messing with me are you???”

“I--no. No, it’s nothing like that. You’re way too young, for one. This is the first time we’ve met since I was sixteen.”

“Okay cool. No sis then.” Really, your reaction is more like, thank god. Cool as it would be to have a sister, and Rose is like strangely exactly what you’d think of if you had to have a sister, let’s be real, the thought of it actually being a parent trap situation terrifies you. Bro is not a parental. At all. Definitely not. You both have parents out there somewhere. Or did. That’s it.

Still, that reaction had to mean something, and the other option wasn’t quite as mortifying. Embarrassing, yes, to think about your Bro being interesting in doing the nasty even just for fun, but hey, it didn’t involve kids. “Estranged lovers then? Childhood sweethearts? Did you take a stroll down to the 7/11 to buy cigarettes and vanish from her life?”

That was a romantic trope right? Oh god even if it isn’t the parent trap you’ll die if your life turns out to be some other dumb rom-com that John can probably pull outta the back of his brain even if they aren’t like his prefferred genre.

Bro exhales, it’s pretty deep for him. You count to seven before he moves again, setting the mostly-filled plate down on the counter in a small space between two wire cooling racks full of cookies, “No. We… just grew up together. That’s all.”

“Idunno bro, there was some goddamn tension in the chilis tonight. So much so I’m gonna go out on a limb and claim you’re two steps away from getting your hate mack on. There’s more that there story.”

Oh god what are you doing.

Bro seems to agree with you. Any satisfaction that blossomed (and bloom that motherfuckin’ flower did, like a goddamn wide-faced sunflower) at the fact that you cracked his stoicism enough to give you the impression that he swallowed a lemon, was quickly overwhelmed by the alarm blare that is the heat building in your face. You hope to jegus that Mr. E didn’t hear any of THAT, but you can’t quite bring yourself to look.

No. Dave. Just--no. She’s--just Roxy. Just an old friend. We had a falling out and there are some wounds time won’t heal.”

He--

Wow. That last bit sounds--

Sad.

Shit.

“Is she gonna come back?”

The question seems to snap him out of whatever the fuck that was, and you can even see a twitch of a frown, “She wouldn’t leave Rose. Don’t worry.”

“That’s not a yes, Bro.”

“It’s not a no, either.” An exhale that might be a sigh. You aren’t sure, “I really don’t know, Dave. Dan told her when dinner would be. It’s her decision if she’s gonna work or come back.”

He shakes his head, and starts reaching for the cookies again.

“That’s enough.” You blurt out. He pauses, those embers boring into you again. You clarify, “The cookies. That’s enough cookies. Don’t wanna ruin dinner right? Didn’t you promise me cake later?”

That breaks the weird moment well enough, you suppose, when he just snorts out a laugh, and for a moment you’re struck by that weird duality again, like someone had plucked some of the downright pleasant moments from your life and stitched them together to make something so familiar feel so bizarrely alien. It pushes right up against that moment with Rose earlier too, giving fuel to that nagging voice in your brain that said, you know, that quiet laugh sounds pretty familiar. Good thing you already had proof for that particular pudding and the verdict is Hell Naw.

“I did, didn’t I? I made that one too.”

“What really? Goddamn Bro, don’t tell me Mr. E’s successfully persuaded you to join his baking cult. I like cookies, but not…” You give the kitchen and it’s dozens upon dozens of cookies, in a few different flavors, a quick sweep. To your surprise--or maybe not, the dude was a gentleman--John’s dad is nowhere to be seen. “Not this much. There’s no way we’d be able to smuggle this into our shitty carry ons.”

“I can’t imagine they’d survive the transport without proper packaging. You didn’t see how carelessly people shoved that shit in the overhead bins.”

“Bet I saw more’n you, Bro, with the way you immediately folded yourself into that window seat. The aisle was my kingdom for a while. Too bad all the people in the swanky seats with us were hella boring. Guess the upside of not contributing to the sardine count outweighs the snooty boring company.”

Bro doesn’t listen to you throughout this. About the cookies, you mean, he’s clearly listening to your ramble for some godforsaken reason you can’t decipher considering the agreement he throws out to validate your final statement.

He’s been adding to and shuffling around in order to even out the pile while you talk, and really you don’t mind? It wasn’t even really about the cookies. If Bro won’t relinquish the plate until it passes some sort of internal perfectness measure, you aren’t gonna complain. You sure as hell don’t know what he’s doing, but it doesn’t look quite so lopsided once he finishes fussing with it.

“Bro?”

He doesn’t say anything, but does acknowledge the interrogative with a flick of his eyes and a slight change in the direction of his head, which is something, you guess.

“You uh, got something like, right here.” You wipe your thumb across the bridge of your nose. His eyebrows almost get swallowed by the sadly, somewhat normal rooster comb he’s been sporting lately, and he mimics your motion, only succeeding in smearing it further. “Uh… I don’t wanna say you missed, but...”

The sigh is quiet, just a quick exhale, “It’s fine. I’ll get it before dinner. At least flour won’t poison you.”

Poison?? “What the fuck have you been getting on your face that poison is even in the running of things to worry about??”

He shrugs one of those shrugs that’s really just a slight rotation of a shoulder; just straight up outright dismissing the weirdness of the statement, “I’m more careful with that shit, don’t worry about it. Here.”

The plate is warm from the still warm cookies resting upon it when he presses it into your hands. Your fingers brush his as they automatically, and without thinking, reach to find a stable grip. It’s just a second of contact that has your mostly relaxed hackles prickling. You shove it down hard . Ugh. You hate this.

You hate this so much.

Why can John oh so happily hug this man without so much of a thought but you can’t even so much as touch him until you’re--

“It’s too bad you don’t sleep.”

“...yeah. S’too bad.”

You could feel your eyelids drooping, even as time begins to slow, stretching out, expanding, as you fade from one world and land in the next. You can almost feel the way he dissolves into the painful loneliness.

“Don’t leave…”

Please.

You don’t want to go back there alone.

You find his hand and cling like a fucking baby, but you don’t care, because here there be dragons. Big green n red dragons lurking in the corners waiting for you.

But even that slips away, and you…

“Don’t eat them all at once, okay? Dinner’ll be in a few hours.”

“Maybe you shoulda thought about that before giving me this many cookies bro, now that I got them I’ll be shovin’ em so hard down my gullet they won’t last more than a few minutes. You don’t understand how fast Rose devoured the last ones Bro, it was like, one minute there were five, and she was doing the whole ‘I’ma refined lady’ thing and nibbling daintily, and then BAM empty, as soon as I look back. She’s a cookie monster, Bro, a real life cookie monster.”

“I don’t know, she doesn’t look very blue to me.”

“Of course you’d know sesame street, what was I thinkin’. My mistake for thinkin’ I’d pull a fast reference over your head”

You let the rolling waves carry you away, and just shy away from the memory, letting it sink back down into the depths of nah thanks bro, not really feelin’ up to unpacking that right now. Away and out of your brain because it’s just like you’ve got enough on your plate okay, like these cookies. These cookies you really need to get back to Rose and John. It’s a surprise they haven’t come after you at this point considering John’s worry for his own kiddnappability in the domain of the baking cult. “So uh, yeah, thanks for the cookies. I probably should get these back to my friends. Sorry for distracting you from your uh, Dad-appointed tasks. Especially with weird probably personal questions I maybe shouldn’t be askin’ because you know, it ain’t my business but curiosity, and cats, ect. Sometimes I just gotta channel my inner feline ya’know?”

He does that weird muffled snort laugh again, “It’s fine, Dave. It just caught me off guard. I should have expected an interrogation sooner or later.”

“Yeah well, gotta jet I guess. Purromise I’ll leave room for your cake, pinky swear.”

And then you’re gone. Actually gone. Flash-stepping outta the kitchen and back into the living room bearing your prize only to freeze because--

There’s a whole ‘nother plate sitting on the floor between Rose and John as they battle to the death trying to knock these stupid little balloons free from the backs of their carts, going round and round this huge donut.

“Oi! What’s with that??? You send me away for cookies and you already have some??? What gives?”

“You took too long, Dave. Mr. Egbert delivered them ten minutes ago.” Rose doesn’t even look up at you, strangely focused on piloting her hulking spikey drag--turtle? Piloting this tiny cart that looks hella too small for him, with a sneering purple clothed skinny dude dropping a banana behind them as they went. A banana that poor John’s dinosaur ran into at just that second and sent him spinning out with an audibly pathetic awayayayaya, sending the last of his balloons floating to the sky.

“Ugh dammit Rose not again! Best 5 outta seven!”

“Of course, John dear. Whatever you like.” She pats him lightly on the shoulder as he sulks, stabbing at the buttons to replay the match while choosing a new course.

Whelp. Now it was your turn to steal her spot in the place of honor on the couch, strangely content to let the John and Rose Show have it’s airtime while you shoved Bro’s cookies into your mouth. Who is the birthday boy? It is you . And these are your fucking cookies, Rose.

You smack her encroaching fingers away to the backdrop of John demanding yet another rematch.

Notes:

WHELP. Hope it was worth the wait! This is the result of almost 2 weeks of work LOL

...and yes. It's IS tuesday. I waited until tuesday. I DIDN'T BREAK THE RULES!

EDIT!: Also thanks to Peonies for the code to make Davepeta's colors all fancy! and deserts for the modified homestuck work skin :3c. Ya'll allowed me to do some fun stuff a couple chapters back...

Edit Edit: Reverted the change due to compatibility issues with IOS mobile safari. Looking in to fixes but at least this way it's readable for the moment :(

Chapter 57: [I1P8] The Lost Art of Communication

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Dirk > Fret

The sun has set. 

Dinner has been eaten. It was a veritable fresh-made feast ranging from home-made mac n’ cheese to chicken-pineapple-skewers. Dan definitely has Dave pegged with the fruit angle, and Dave knows it, considering the grumbles you heard emanating from the kid’s table while you and Dan took your dinner at the counter. 

A delicious dinner. And you will be badgering Dan about the recipe and methods before you leave, and write it down because you aren’t sure you can trust your shitty memory right now. At least not until you can reconnec--sleep. Dump all the junk data clogging all the pipelines and properly clean that shit out.

But…

“Still no word from Rox-anne?” The extra syllable trips you up, damn it. 

It still hurts.

It’s barely even past 6 and it’s been dark out for a while. Roxanne knew about dinner. She said she would be back to pick up Rose after work.

Where is she?

Dan glances over your shoulder, probably toward the kids back at the actual table. They should be digging into the cake now, and a strangely proud warmth trickles through the otherwise awful malaise resting on your shoulders like a cape. Dave had taken one look at the four cakes produced from the depths of the kitchen, then at you, and raised an eyebrow.

Which one?

He’d taken a huge slice from the one you faintly indicated towards; even if the icing wasn’t exactly even, and you’d probably made the inner layers too thin with the wrong proportion of strawberry to whipped cream--

Stop it. You shake your head, getting yourself caught in the nitpicky spiral even as you recall the instance. The point is: he did go for it. Knowing it was yours, and that is worth something, damn it.

You cup that warmth protectively in your core, attempting to shelter it against the smothering oppressive hurt and dread that keeps dragging your mind back towards Roxanne.

You’d told her you would leave. She clearly doesn’t want anything to do with you. She has more experience, replicated or otherwise, with this whole ‘adult’ schtick than you did. Do. Will ever have. 

She doesn’t need you. Roxy never needed you, to be honest. 

But fuck it , you’re still worried about her.

“I did try calling shortly before dinner,” Dan explains at length, clearly having debated whether or not he wanted to talk about the subject at all. That whole incident has been a lingering like a particularly persistent odor. “But she didn’t respond. I can only assume she’s wrapped up with whatever business brought her to Washington in the first place.”

You lean against the counter, listening to the murmur of voices from across the room. The taste of blood lingers in your mouth, despite the half-eaten sugary sweet confection lying dejected on a plate near your elbow. “Did she say what it was?”

“Perhaps it is best to let things be. I will let her know that Rose is welcome to stay here for the night if necessary.”

If that wasn’t a politely worded ‘fuck off’, then you’ll eat your hat. All of the hats still stashed in the crawlspace, in fact. Dan likely doesn’t mean it that way, but it’s exactly what you’ve been trying to tell yourself to no avail.

You know what your Roxy would have done, once upon a time, and you aren’t sure you can trust this one to not fall into the same pit. 

Going to work was your coping mechanism. Not hers.

Her tower had been full of bottles. 

It’s not like there’s anything you can do. You don’t have her cellphone number, and Dan already tried. So you busy yourself in the act of cleaning up the remnants of the meal and subsequent dessert-fest.  

Once the kids finish eating, they predictably herd themselves off to the living room again. Voices filter through the open archway and the wall, but they are far enough away that you can relegate it to background noise and not feel like you’re eavesdropping. It’s their time. Their night. They should enjoy it. Dan starts packing the leftover macaroni and cheese and chicken into containers, shifting them from there into the refrigerator. You gather the abandoned dishes and silverware to be helpful, using the mechanical task to try and get your mind off Roxanne--

Quiet. Metal on metal. Not quite a squeak, but a hinge that might need oiling soon. You unconsciously reach for a strife deck that isn’t there, despite the fact that your hands are full of fragile dishware that would shatter into hundreds of sharp shards if you flung your hand out to draw your bladekind.

-- you’ll need to thank Newt for that, Christ, if you hurt any of these kids--

“Mr. Strider?” 

There’s a pint-sized girl in a black blouse lingering by the door. 

Where the hell did she come from? And why hadn’t you heard her?

Rose Lalonde had the mysterious ability to black out cameras.

Paradoxical progression. Roxanne had killed you with void powers. You have some measure of Heart bullshit even in this meat suit. You wouldn’t be surprised if the kids retain something too. Dave might not have shown any signs of anything, not even the identity issues Davepeta swears he’s dealing with, but it’s not like he has any inclination to talk to you about it if he is. 

Rose is waiting for your acknowledgement, idiot. Say something.

It’s sounds hollow, toothless, but your internalized self-loathing does the job. “What’s up?”

That doesn’t sound too stilted at least. Dirtied utensils clink and shift as you place the carefully arranged stack of dishes on the table. You still need to collect the glasses…

“Am I wrong in the assumption that your prior experience with my mother extends to her… vices?”

You don’t say anything, but it’s clear the little seer in training-- Rosie knew-- can read the answer from your careful nonresponse. She sucks in a small breath, and plucks a small cellphone from the air. It’s a fairly new model, not a flip phone, but one closer to that of a PDA. She navigates the menus and pulls up a string of texts, wordlessly holding it out to you.

You take it. Given the opening salvo your heart sinks like a stone.

Typos galore. Right in your hands you have a perfect run down of a sauced up Roxy babbling into her daughter’s text messages. Nothing about you, thankfully, but it’s fairly clear inbetween the random as fuck tangeants that she hasn’t been working. 

There’s a lot, but you find a series of messages at the end of the chain that you linger on.

im sirry rosie

i kno i orimised but mummy cabt drive rn

*promised

it's ok tho you can have that sleepover you wanted! 

itll ve lost of fun ull see

*be

mommy lvoes u rosie

*loves

Glance up from the texts, locking eyes with the passive, resigned expression on the girl’s face.

You want to ask how long it’s been going on, but you can get that information from the time-stamps. If she actually tried to get some work done, it must not have lasted very long for her to have been this impaired.  “Why did you show me this?”

Her expression shifts at your soft words, glancing towards where the water is running, indicating Dan has moved on from his storage efforts. You should get these dishes to him.

You don’t, though.

Rose finally speaks, “Mother would answer my phone. I do not wish to speak to her, though.”

It isn’t hard to read between the lines. The strength of your realization has a grimace tugging against your lips. “You realize I’m the last person she’d want to hear from right now.”

“What she wants and what she needs are two very different things, Mr. Strider.”

“...don’t call me that, okay?”

A delicate eyebrow rises, vanishing into honey blonde hair. “What would you prefer I call you? Bro?”

You shrug. “I reckon we could do without direct referentials entirely. It’s not as if there’s another participant in this conversation.”

She doesn’t bite. The seconds pass; waiting for you to actually address her request and not deflect clumsily with name-based buillshit. It hangs between you two, heavy, and full of some sort of expectation. Plastic cuts into your palms, and you realize you’re squeezing her phone, so you force yourself to ease your fingers open. You set it down on the table, next to the pile of plates. 

“I’m not going to poke my nose where it’ll just get shot off. I’m sorry, Rose.”

You want to.

God you want to. 

The meddler in you even claims it’s for her own good.

“I thought we weren’t using names, Mr. Strider ?”

You snort, but don’t deign to respond, grabbing the dishes and putting that small silver phone out of your mind. If you stay here you’ll likely make a stupid decision because even now there’s nagging, originating from that part of you that would always keep an eye on your friend’s tower, waiting for her dreamself to up and wander off into the abyss. It was your job to bring her back.

It’d been that way all your life.

Goddamn it. She doesn’t want you. She’s better off without you.

She’s an adult. She can take care of herself.

Your worry mixes with your ingrained need to fix shit, and you itch to snatch that phone off the table. 

Instead of giving in to those impulses, you put your back to it and start to move the dishes toward Dan and the sink. He’s humming quietly as you slide the pile of plates and utensils into place near his left elbow, but he takes the time to offer you an appreciative, “Thank you, Dirk,” before you head back to the table. 

The quiet sentiment sends a momentary warmth running through you, though you don’t think it’s quite enough to show on your face as any sort of pigment change. It’s merely. Nice? To be acknowledged. Especially from someone you’re starting to admire.

‘Starting to’, hah. Stop kidding yourself.

Just go clean up, Christ.

Dishes: done. Should you pull down the balloons? Or just--leave them for now? It is Rose’s birthday tomorrow, and while she might not care for the red balloons, the other colors are still fairly ubiquitous. Dan already plans to make her a cake--chocolate, dark as sin , apparently--once everything’s gotten cleaned up--

“Neither of us are particularly pleased with the idea of leaving her to her own devices. Particularly that vice. Why is this so much to ask?” This girl isn’t even 10 and you’re suddenly aware of the fact that she’s terrifying . “Wasn’t she your friend, once?”

Fucking kid won’t even let you plan her own chapter of these party shenangigans over here.

Your brain grinds to a halt; quietly horrified by the fact that you’re frustrated enough to think of her like that, without even the slightest skip to reflect on how wrong it is until several seconds later. And it is wrong; knowing what you do of how fucked up everyone’s identities are, much less your own. She should be your age, not half. 

And yet here you are, getting verbally pushed around by a child in body if not entirely in spirit. A child that’s currently trying to manipulate you into crossing a boundary you Do Not Want and that seems to know exactly what buttons to push. Seer privileges? Or is she simply too smart for her own good?  

“If I was her friend once, don’t you think I’d be better off listening to her?” She’s giving you an answer. An action . Something you can do. 

In for four.

Exhale five.

No. 

“If all you need is for someone to trick her into answering the phone, then ask John’s Dad. It’d be more effective given she’d be less likely to immediately smash the end call button on him.”

“She won’t hang up on you.”

The unwavering confidence in her voice is like hitting the rewind button on all your arguments. The resolve unraveling and starting to splinter just like your fucked up soul, echoing with all these ominous cracks. You could probably mix a beat out of it, that’s how much that shit echoes. “What makes you so sure?”

“Petunias have two meanings, you know.”

“Do they.” What the fuck do petunias have to do with anything? 

“The most commonly known meaning is simple: Anger. Resentment. Given the maintenance that you’ve been out of touch for well over a decade, I wonder what prompted it.” On Rose's face is an expression that surely must be too complicated for a nearly ten-year-old, and yet.

If Roxanne remembers stabbing you--and there's really no other way to reconcile that disbelieving "it wasn't real" otherwise--you might have an idea. 

“So what’s the second one then?”

“They can also symbolize a desire or longing to spend time with someone.” The cellphone is no longer resting against the red tablecloth, once again held between Rose’s offered hands. “Or, a yearning for a simpler time in another’s company. Interesting, is it not, what our choices unintentionally say about us?”

That twists your gut up, because fuck, if Rox missed you then surely she wouldn’t have stabbed you . Dream or no.

“It’s just a fuckin’ flower. There’s probably a billion lists with a gazillion interpretations; ascribing emotions and intentions to a bundle of imaginary brightly colored amputated plant ovaries and expecting it to mean anything is asinine.”

Petunias.

Flowers.

Thinking of you.

Pink, with striking purple-black veins running into a dark center.

The card is still on your desk, tucked behind your computer monitor after you caught yourself staring at it too many times. Out of sight and out of mind; compartmentalized and neatly filed away until having Roxanne right in front of you reached claw-like hands through the foggy mess and dragged it back out.

Something must show in your face--fuck if you know, you blanked for a second--because the momentary annoyance of an hypothesis proven incorrect morphs back into satisfaction.

“Perhaps it is just a flower, but I don’t think you understand how rare negative flower meanings on greeting cards are; polite society as a whole frowns upon pre-printing such passive aggressive sentiments. I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss any meaning, implied or otherwise, considering the effort necessary for such a specific card to be sent at all.”

In for four. 

Hold.

As you exhale, words tumble out with the hiss of rushing CO2 molecules to join the soup of gases in the atmosphere, “ Why. Me?”

“Revenge, of course,” She holds the phone out for a last time, already open to the contact labeled ‘Mother,’ with the cursor preemptively selecting the Call Now button, “for a promise broken. As you said, you are the last person she wants to hear from right now, but she will listen to you, whereas she clearly does not listen to me or we wouldn’t even be in this situation.”

You didn’t expect such a frank answer. You admire that.

This time, you actually take the phone from her.

“I have no intention of antagonizing your mother, even if you’re in on it.” You feel old, watching her settle back on her small heels in satisfaction. She’s won--you know it, and she knows it. It would sting, if only you felt anything more than tired. “I’m going to find out where she is. That’s all.”

“But, that’s exactly what I want, Mr. Strider,” A hair too innocent. Voice pitched higher than it should be. As the carefully constructed mask of benevolence settles over that young face, you wonder what you’d find locked inside her mind, if only you’d dig deep enough.

“I’m not particularly thrilled to have to deal with my mother while intoxicated, but I’d be shirking my daughterly duties if I didn’t make my concerns known to an old friend who clearly has her welfare similarly in mind.”

You don’t appreciate being bullied into things, but…

Rose is a Seer. Even without powers, that indicates a certain measure of foresight and observational and analytical skills you can’t just dismiss despite her age. You aren’t so proud that you’d ignore the girl who’d become your Bro’s tactician, when she’s clearly so dead set on a particular course of action. 

Weathered steel and sharp edges, that is who you are, and yet you find yourself fucking bending in the wake of these kids who don’t even know they are broken. A far cry from the people they will, and had once become.

There isn’t even a ‘supposed to be’, for them. They just are.

There’s a peace in that ignorance, you think. Perhaps you even envy it a little.

Satisfied that you will in fact do her bidding, Rose excuses herself back into the living room to a duo of interrogative voices, too close and too loud, rising over the absent video game sounds. You wouldn’t put it past the boys to be lurking on the edge of the living room, listening through the mostly open door.

You look down at the active phone, shove that thing into your sylladex, and leave.

Not out through the door to responsibility, the swinging gates leading to the living room where you can still hear the children squabbling. No, out the other way. Out the back. Through the door to the small laundry cubby, and then the back-yard.

Or, that’s where you’re headed, but don’t quite make it in one fell stalk because the water has long since stopped running. A hand doesn’t catch your arm, but a cleared throat makes you slow as you pass. 

You have no illusions that Dan hadn’t overheard the whole thing. That he doesn’t know what you’re about to do. That he approves. Even as you’re looking for it, you don’t see a shred of judgement on the man’s face. Just neutral resignation. Stoic, in his noncommittal.

But you don’t get anything from this Dadliest of Dads. No commentary. No advice. Just a simple, “I see you’ve decided. Let me know if you need anything.”

You aren’t sure if you wanted him to say anything. Perhaps it is best to let it be.

The door closes behind you, shutting off the light from the kitchen and leaving you trapped in the chilly air of the laundry room. Maybe here is good enough, and you don’t need to go all the way out. There’s a door, at least. A door and a wall and a whole ‘nother room between you and the children and Dan.

A beat, and the silver captchalogued phone is in your hands. It hasn’t been long enough for it to go back to sleep, the pre-selected contact staring up in your face. That beat turns into two and then it rings as you press it up against your ear, leaning your back against the white metal casing of the washing machine, the only light in this dim larger-than-a-closet-but-not-by-much sized space coming through the curtained window on the door leading out to the back yard.

It rings.

And it rings.

And then it clicks.

“Rooooosieeeee--I can’t belieb--is evry thin ok didja get my txtss?”

“It’s me, Roxanne.”

The line goes dead silent. So silent that you think that Rose was wrong. That Roxanne heard your voice and immediately smashed that end call button in the face. But no, with the increasing silence, the phone’s sound sensitivity spikes, coaxing out voices and laughter and unintelligible noise that must be the equivalent of ambient music in the background.

A breath escapes that you hadn’t realized you were holding, “Where are you?”

She waits so long you wonder if she’s going to respond at all. “ Liek ‘m g’nna tell u you you you jerk! you tell me why u hve rosie’s phone in the furst place buster!”

Something in your chest eases because she’s here. She answered. And yeah, she’s all hells of drunk, to use her own phrasing, but she answered.

You crowd against the washing machine, closing your eyes, plastic device pressed up against your ear. You can’t see her. If you can’t see her, you can translate sounds into pink text, and not the angry words that freeze the air in your lungs. 

You know how to handle a drunk Roxy.

“She gave it to me. How do you expect to get home? Christ, I wouldn’t trust you with a fenestrated plane right now and that’s your aspect--”

Aw no u don’t strider! I could totes drive a fenestrated window if i wnted to and had my gear--’im the best at fenestrated windows my fenestrated window network is airtight ok. I will not stand for thss slandr ok.”

Interesting that she latched on to that--don’t think about it Strider. Take a leaf out of your Bro’s book and just roll with it.

“Roxy, listen, I’m sure you have the best and most locked down kickass network in all of ever, but unless you can access it to get back here then we still need to know where you are. ” 

Dont u rosy me dick. ‘M not tellin’ u nufin. I’m on to u, you kno that?”

Oh christ here she goes. 

“After all that talk’n about leavin’ and gettin’ outta my hair an’ now u wanna show up on yer pones to rescue me all prince charmin’ like ‘cause i fell off my own damn horse. If ur expectin’ for me to all up and do the swoons into yer waitin’ arms as we gallop into the sunset well just keep waitin’ cuz it aint happn’n.”

Talking is good. Rambling is better. This is better. It has to be better. It’s more familiar to you, at least, even as she’s taking stabs at you that prod at the still fresh wounds from earlier. Roxy didn’t get angry often, because she just talked around it until it was out and you could lay all the cards on the table. 

But can you trust that? This isn’t Roxy.

It was the cold, frozen anger that strangled you, because it made you realize you don’t know Roxanne Lalonde at all.

“Plot twist u ain’t no prince and i ain’t no damsel you gotta rescue from the boozeym’nster. No swooning going on. No big ol’ white horse with a billowing pink mane to gallop me home to my one twu pain in the ass i can nevah get rid of even when yer across the dam country cuz oh look yer somehow inside my head and i can’t even dream without u buttin’ your shitty face and terrified eyes and the blood and oh god the blood *grrck*”

“Rox?” The sound of stuff clattering. Voices, suddenly rising. She sounds so far away, and your heart is lodged in your throat like it’s a literal frog blocking off your airways and you struggle to breathe. “Ro-Lal? Roxy???” Your voice is rising in response to the distant sounds and retching. Heart hammering in your chest, just under a nonexistent scar. “Rox--I swear if you aren’t okay I’ll--”

“It’s roxanne u asshole,” Her voice is wavering, tired, but she still doesn’t hang up on you, even as you can tell she moves the phone away from her ear, listening to her apologizing to someone on the other end. Telling them she’s fine. Really. Could she get another--no? Is there someone they could call--

“Give them Dan’s number, Rox. Please.”  You might as well be fuckin’ pleading right now, not that you know if she hears you or not. 

She doesn’t respond. The line holds. Tinny sounds of movement and voices all muffled, as if the device was shoved into fabric confines. Purse. Pocket. Fuck if you know. Her lab-coat-dress had pockets.

It’s a long eternity until you hear from her again, voice ringing with the reverb of a small enclosed space. Running water. Did she hole herself up in a bathroom?

“Why tee eff does it matter so much, dietrsh.” She’s even mangling the syllables of that stupid name. “Thish isn’t liek when we were kids when we had a curfew and u needed to get ridda the evidence and stuff me in some closet till i sober’d up. I’ma big gurl sshienctist now. I can get drink as mush as i want as long as i got the dosh and i aint afraid to flash th’ cash. Stupid idiots get these hands and these hands are strong enough to smash folks in the face if they get uppity. Just like--”

Her breath hitches.  “ It can’t be real dirk. It can’t. I don’t--u suck and i hate you but I dont hate u that much I swear.”

“I’m sorry. But it was. Real. And it hurt like a bitch.” You try your damndest to make that line soft, with a tinge of joking exaggeration in the end. Gentle. An olive branch. A white flag requesting parlay. Whatever fuckin’ metaphor your brain wants to dredge out of its foggy depths. You probably don’t succeed, but you try anyway, “I don’t blame you--” Liar. You flinched at the sight of her reaching for you. I was trespassin’ and why the fuck would you think it was anything but a dream?” 

Liar, liar, liar.

Dying to that blade broke something in you, and this time you’re pretty sure it won’t heal.

Becuz it had to be a dream! Harley said nuthin’ ‘bout sword summoning, dreamwalkin’ bullsssshit--not for us, Dirk. Just a stupid friggin’ dream. Like when we were kids. All I wanted was to make it go away, just up and pop it like a bubble but bubbles don’t bleed.”

“Rox, Harley was wrong . It’s all wrong . I don’t kno--” you bite it off, dancing around past knowledge you should know and don’t and you just wanna strangle the fabric of your shirt with your free hand.

Bah, ofc its wrong. It’s always wrong and u’ve always got the anssswers doncha? What if I don’t wanna talk ‘bout it. What if I just wanna sit here an’ drink away the mem’ry of yer goddamn blood splatterin’ all over my face.”

It hits you. A letter. Dredged up. A confession of sorts from yourself. “I was wrong too, okay? It ain’t just the kids. Not anymore--things changed.” 

“I don wanna care ‘nymore dietchrk. Errythin’s gone to shit since th’ summer. Schtuff that made sense don’t ‘nymore. And its stupid and prolly all ur fault somehow. I hadnt had to think about u for twelve years i was OVER. Over it. An’ Over YOU and I just--”

“Roxy…” You don’t know what to say.

“Shhhtahp. Shtap sayin’ my name, especially not all tender and lost liek. U don’t give a shit. U can’t give a shit.”

I want to give a shit, though,” and fuck this is giving you deja vu, just. Use your words.

You build the orange lettering in your mind like a brick wall, ignoring the urge to click your jaw shut as the other end of the line crackles with a sharp inhalation. Air sucking through clenched teeth.

“Time changes things, Rox, I want to change things.”

“U stopped botherin’ ages ago, r’member. Usel’ss to u as a drunken mess wasn’t it? Wouldn’t amount to anyfin. A liability.”

You proved me fuckin’ wrong didn’t you? Just look at you. Big shot scientist, with honors from the literal top biotech school in the fuckin’ world , and spearheading the efforts to save that same universe from total armageddon. Only an idiot with his head too far up his own ass would ever even think --” 

Fuck. No this isn’t right. The fingers of your free hand are digging into your hair, pulling, tugging, the pain blossoming in your scalp. It’s just words. They aren’t your words. You’re an idiot. He was an idiot. Empty words, delivered on reflex. It wouldn’t solve anything. You are not the least bit surprised when she just scoffs at your clumsy attempts at taking the reins.

Well ain’t that a sound for sore ears, too bad its too many years too late and worthless besides. Yea, look at me, livin’ the life. A mansion full o’ wizards and Rosie and a license to make all the mutant cats I want, and drink all I want and its fine. Its all fine and dandy and candy even if it turns out I’m the only one left to captain this baboat into the end-times only the boatmap I got is useless cuz your corpse just up and bled out all over it. All the models are off, the coding work is in shambles and we’ll be lucky if the software division can even finish the GAME in time now that it’s gotta be rebuilt for a whole ‘nother set of universal instance variables and--”

Her breathing hitched. Wait a minute. 

Another set ??? Roxy--”

Jeebus, I’m gonna hurl--”

The line goes dead, a dial tone the only answer to your promptings. You try and call back, but there’s nothing. Just ring.

Ring.

Ring.

And then straight to voicemail.

You sit there on the laundry room floor. You aren’t sure when you got there; some point during the conversation.

You try calling again.

And again.

Fuck you screwed this up--

You don't know how long it’s been, trying to call over and over, when the door to your right opens and light burns at your eyes, having long since adjusted to the far dimmer room.

It burns behind Dan like some fuckin’ aura. “Are you alright in here, Dirk?”

You don’t answer. He waits for one anyway; before eventually sighing and moving on without you. “I received a text from Roxanne a couple minutes ago. I’m going to go pick her up from the bar near the University, so you’ll need to watch the children while I’m gone. Are you--”

“Fine.” God, at least something went right . “I’ll be fine, watching them.” 

You force yourself to move. To stand. You can’t let yourself go, remember? 

But Dan doesn’t immediately evacuate the doorway to allow you out after you've picked yourself up off the floor. He lingers. A shadow against the light. “You shouldn’t have been the one to do this.”

The muscles in your jaw tightens. You can feel it tugging and pulling at your throat, ramping up the pressure as blood pounds in your ears. “Rose thought otherwise.”

And she was right. It was your responsibility. And…

You have fragments. More than you previously did, even if you feel utterly awful about it. But the cold, cruel, pragmatic part of yourself ignores the acidic shame and guilt and merely gathers the results up carefully, satisfied that you’ve pried out some clues to nebulous history.

You’re trying to ignore that part right now.

“Rose is a child.” Dark eyes glitter despite the shadows cast by that hat brim. “That isn’t to say a child’s always wrong, but a parent must remember how limited their perspectives are. Pushing Roxanne could have ended poorly, and then where would we be? Alcohol can be dangerous.

“I owed it to her to at least try. ” 

Who is ‘her’? Rose? Roxanne? Roxy?

All of the above?

“Even if she would have preferred you had not?”

“...I couldn’t do nothing .” It comes out hissed. Pressure full to bursting--your frustration at yourself, at Roxanne, at your whole misplaced presence in this small laundry room in the back of this suburban home in Washington. “That’s why I wanted to leave before--”

Before she got here. Before you came face to face with the ghost of your friend, and before you were presented with a problem and the means to do something, and lacking the willpower to actually say no --

It’s easy to stay away when you have no way to contact someone beyond a PO Box address. 

It’s impossible to do so when you know they are in distress and there’s a chance you can do something about it. You’ve ruined things for less.

“You still love her.”

It isn’t a question. You flinch. Just a little. But you know he noticed. He had to. You look away.

“It’s not like that.” You can feel the heat traveling up the back of your neck, thinking back to Dave’s implication just hours earlier. An implication that apparently everyone in this house had thought of, except you. Because why would you think of it? She’s Roxy. And you’re--

There’s a humming noise. As if he can’t quite decide whether to believe you or not. 

“We were--childhood friends. I--” Thish isn’t liek when we were kids “ I had to look out for her. Having Rose confirm my suspicions so bluntly, I..” Trailing off--burning with the need to make him understand but unable to find the words. 

You curl in on yourself, instinctively defensive as you grapple with too many unknowns and complicated feelings tangling themselves up and preventing anything even remotely resembling sincere from passing your lips.

Something must have slipped past your frozen expression, because after another moment more Dan lets it go. “I’m sorry; perhaps I’m the one disregarding another perspective, and that is not fair to you. We’re both adults here. I held my tongue, respecting your decision when you made it. Dressing you down and treating you like a child after the fact is unwarranted. You shouldn’t need to justify yourself to me.”

Except you are lost and floundering, not an adult yet at all, and the last person you trust is yourself. You fuckin’ crave that validation so much it’s almost scary. You’ve been cast adrift in this world for five long months and there’s finally someone you can look to as an authority on all things Parental and…

Christ, this isn’t fair is it? Not to him, not to the memory of your long dead Bro, and not to you either. Not even to fuckin’ Newt who quietly tried so hard to make sure you were at least passable at functioning , although he was probably way too complicit with your splinterself’s bullshit to be a proper role model.

You don’t even know if actually being an adult would manage to smother the burning need to explain. To justify your reasoning. To him. To Rose. To--

Your auto-responder would have accused you of wanting to listen to yourself talk. Waxing on and on, dropping orange text into chat boxes in needy floods. That it’s slowly translating into verbal speech patterns should be a good thing. Maybe you’ll be able to hold a half-decent conversation one day, as long as people don’t cotton on and tell you to shut up. 

For now, you’ve hit your allotment of heart-to-heart in verbal form. Your emotions are wrung out and have been tossed into the washer-dryer you’ve been leaning against. Round and round, tumbling, better clean out the lint-catcher soon or you wouldn’t be surprised if the full thing doesn’t just catch on fire .

Dan finally steps aside, and you escape the small, dark room. Intent focusing on divesting yourself of Rose’s phone before you do something stupid like check the contact for Roxanne’s phone number.

You hand it over as Dan explains the change of plans to the children. It’s like looking into a pint-sized mirror, the prim and stiff ‘thank you’ hiding the exact same measure of relief and apprehension that has its own chokehold on your soul.

You’re glad Roxy won’t just be out there, somewhere. That she’d be, maybe not home, but safe.

But fuck, you aren’t looking forward to it.

The atmosphere is cold and uncomfortable as you settle yourself on the couch and… hell if you know, try to read Dan’s newspaper or something. He’d left it there this morning. It’s cute. There’s even a half-finished crossword in the game section, and you itch to fill in the number squares. You can’t even curl up by the fire because Dan turned that shit down before he left, rolling away in a distant rumble of engines and wheels.

You find yourself anxiously watching the clock as the kids try their best to ignore you, swapping out the previous game for something else, the cheerful music track devouring the awkward silence. Something much brighter and more playful than any of your previously preferred games ever were, although you recognize several of the characters from when you would flip through the collection your Bro left behind. 

You aren’t particularly surprised when the kids decide to bail.

Dave > Ditch Your Minder

You watch as Bro meanders into the kitchen at John’s oh-so-innocent request for more cookies, milk, and a list of other things you know will send your brother hunting through unfamiliar cupboards.

You turn to your co-conspirators - John is already on his feet, scrabbling for the remote to nudge the volume up a level to comfortably cover your words and noise of subsequent preparations as y'all take advantage of your schemery in motion. Rose is pulling her coat and gloves out of her sylladex. You, on the other hand...

“You guys know he knows, right?” Your eyes narrow behind your shades, following John as he pulls this epic sneak across the room, using the couch like cover from the lit kitchen, heading towards the stairs. The target is a hallway closet or something, but this plan looks all hells of ridiculous from the outside. “Bro’s got like some sort of sixth sense when it comes to sneaky children. It’s kinda creepy actually.”

“Of course he knows, Dave. It’s not as if we were being subtle; we planned the entire excursion right under his nose.” Rose is getting all bundled up in a way that has you overheating on principle, damn. You remember the you of, like, two days ago, looking over your packed backpack and thinking, yeah, this slightly thicker than usual sweater’s fine. The you of today wholeheartedly disagrees with that statement, and is not really looking forward to this excursion, even if it means you can get the hell out of here for an hour or whatever.

Shit’s cold in Washington. It owes you some fuckin’ snow if it’s gonna be this cold.

Rose finishes wrapping herself in a slightly shiny… you wanna say subtly glittery? Purple package, and gives you a Look. You give her one back. All hells of communication going on behind them smolderin’ stares that you're not gonna bother to translate. Not that you can’t. You totally could.

Maybe Rose can’t translate it either, because she only sighs at you. Which is a little insulting. You’re totally fluent in pointed Looks. “If you noticed, he’s not exactly stopping us either.”

“Yeah well, he’s the kinda guy to let you cut yourself on the shuriken if you’re stupid enough to step on it. You can do it, but it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.” Or, well, he was . Pressure burns around your wrist. A memory of a strong, unyielding grip. If he won’t even let you walk more than an arms length away in a public space then why the hell isn’t he stopping this hairbrained scheme of ‘get the hell outta dodge’? 

Oh, look--another look. Complete with an arched eyebrow. Rose’s dark, almost indigo eyes bore into you. “Don’t tell me you’re getting cold feet now?”

“Cold feet? Me? Hell naw Rose these tootsies are so toastie they'll probably set my shoes on fire. I'm all for abandoning the iceberg in order to avoid the incoming cruise liner.” Honestly, the idea of ditching Bro is appealing. Especially with Rose’s Mom on the way home. Throwing those two together, and probably smashed, is one big ol’ unknown unstable variable you aren’t quite sure you want to poke, but like…

It just.

Doesn’t make sense.

“I'm just saying,” you continue, because seriously, you aren’t backing out now, “there isn't a point to be all sneaky and the like. This isn’t some big heist, and it’ll only make shit more obvious. You can't be sneaky around a fuckin' ninja, it's their job to notice sneaky shit."

"You keep saying that Dave, but your Bro totally doesn't stand up to the hype. Maybe less ninja samurai and more awkward dork." John's voice is your only warning before something blue and puffy smacks you in the face. You allow your arms to cartwheel, clawing for the projectile that is now cupping your head in an intimate embrace. “Like, seriously, I’ve never seen someone get so thoroughly indoctrinated before. Just wait till you see him wandering around in a Betty Crocker branded apron. I’m sure I saw Dad with one the other day.”

After divesting yourself of the unwanted molestation you drag the jacket off your face and boggle at your assailant. “You dad wears what???”

“An apron likely would not be amiss to prevent unnecessary trips to the dry cleaners. It is a smart move, honestly.” Rose, the traitor, doesn’t seem to share in your disbelief. And granted, maybe the apron in question isn’t actually, like, all frilly and girly, but that's what comes immediately to mind. That and pink for some reason, although that’s less unlikely; you’ve already seen Bro wearing more and more of the stuff as he keeps making those puppet felt shirts. 

John laughs at you, and starts shoving his stinky feet into equally stinky shoes. You sullenly slip your arms through the sleeves of the old jacket and go through the motions, letting your friends drag your totally not reluctant self towards the door with little more than a backwards glance at the lit kitchen. 

You keep expecting to see his silhouette blocking the light--there's no way Bro isn't aware of your shenanigans--no way he'd be meticulously distracted enough with those cookies to keep him gone this long.

Maybe he really doesn't care. It's not like you’ve seen him much at all since your were stuffed side by side in an airborne tin can for hours on end. He’s always hiding away in the kitchen with John’s dad. Except for meals, you guess, but that doesn’t really count.

He doesn’t even show up when the front door opens. Winter blasts you square in the face with the freezing cold evening air, gnawing at your nose and cheeks to the point where you swear the wind has little needle teeth. Luckily, despite the fact that John is slightly shorter than you, the jacket is apparently designed to be a shelter, so you turtle the fuck outta that shit and try your best to burrow your nose into the insulated collar. 

As John somehow pulls a spare key from middair to lock the door behind you, Rose seems to notice your distress. Her solution is swift; rearranging and then tugging a length of fabric from the leaves of her sylladex, wrapping it neatly around the lower half of your face. It’s white, matching her earmuffs, which would probably compliment the lavender of her jacket, and probably hella girly but you don’t care because it’s warm and it’s keeping the little wind sprites from biting off your nose.

You aren't made for this shit. 

“Is the baby all nice and tucked in now?” She can’t appreciate your glare through your shades. 

“He better be because we are getting this show on the road! ” With that, and a flash of John's finest pearly whites, he hops off the small upraised step you remember all but vaulting over yesterday in your mad dash to the finish line--God was that only yesterday???--and begins to lead your small procession down the sidewalk at a brisk pace. You remain frozen for a moment, taking in the dark as sin night--like srsly your internal clock says 7:26 pm but it looks closer to midnight for the amount of sun out now, aka none whatsoever. There’s supposedly a moon, but peeping over the edges of your shades and up into the sky revealing it’s covered in clouds, allowing the night to open up to some blank void dotted with yellow will-o-wisps. Windows of houses and street lamps, just like what you see from your window at home, only there's pockets of darkness between the lights, and an aura of stillness you don't think Houston could ever manage.

You aren't scared. Really, you aren't. You've definitely faced worse. But you always thought your first adventure would be more like your trip with Bro, light and noise and heat. Not this biting cold. 

It makes you think of snow. And frogs. And… 

Dying

The year is dying, you guess. 

The shiver up your spine is just the wind. As is the shadow of a thought that follows you away from the lit porch. The bare-branched tree creaks in an excited breeze. And isn’t that weird, thinking of a breeze as excitable?

Your breath comes out in a muffled huff, moisture tangling up in the fiber of Rose’s scarf and warming your nose, as you catch up with your friends. They've begun their meandering walk down the sidewalk on the edge of the empty, dark road. You pass under a cone of yellow light, the only sound being the distant buzzing of the electronics powering the machine above your head. 

They are ghosts that pass by, these lights. These lives. The night air has a purity of silence you are loathe to shatter.

“Sooooo…” John apparently has no such qualms. “Wow, if I’d known it’d been so easy to shut you up, we woulda gone for a walk ages ago.”

“It’s flippin’ cold, Egbert, cut me some slack.” You want to flick his glasses, but that would require pulling your hands out of the pockets and nope, not happening. He’s not worth it. “So cold in fact I’m debating the validity of this adventure. I know I was all ‘slushies 4 president’ earlier, but I don’t think I had the proper frame of reference required to know exactly how insane that stance was. I demand a recount.”

“Poor little desert flower,” Rose teases you gently. You make another stink face at her, but it’s probably too dark for her to be able to tell. “It’s the journey we’re here for, not the destination.”

“Yeah sure, I can totally feel the friendship vibes from here, warming the desolate cockles of my heart. A regular space heater. There’s so much friendship radiating out of this little trio to make it match a Houstontonian summer. Any more, and we could totally bottle this shit and melt the whole fuckin’ ice caps; actually see if it’d make that damn mountain an island.”

Rose gives you a funny look. “You mean the volcano?”  

“No way in hell that thing’s a volcano. It’s too green.”

“Actually, at least five of the Cascade Mountain range are still considered active volcanoes.”

“Shit, really? Did you devour an almanac or somethin’?”

“It’s called research, Dave. I had to do something other than listen to my mother going on about abnormal meteorological patterns during that flight.”

Despite the fact that you just won’t let it go, you really are feelin’ the love right now. Getting out of the house feels like the hand slowly working to turn your lungs into pancakes is loosening. Just a little bit.

You let your friends drag you through the bizarrely calm and empty suburb--again, city boy--moving in and out of light halos. That itching feeling between your shoulder blades never goes away, but that’s at least a familiar anxiety, and almost comforting in its presence. 

John’s loud and constant reassurances that he’s made this trek loads of times with his dad ends up panning out, which is a good thing because you really can’t see like more than a foot in front of your face unless you’re bathing like a fuckin’ angel in a corona of a particularly intense street lamp. And yeah, maybe you should ditch the shades in the dark of the night, John, but you aren’t at home so there’s no way in hell you’re takin’ these puppies off your face.

At least the corner store near the neighborhood community center is exactly where John said it would be, and brightly lit to boot. It has a small parking lot between it and the small not-quite-wide-enough-to-really-be-a-two-lane road that would eventually lead out of the tree studded land of similarly faced houses.

‘Well lit’ means you can actually see shit through your lenses, though it isn’t until you’ve actually pushed open the glass door that rings a little bell somewhere in the back that you’re fully comfortable with your ability to keep an eye on your surroundings. You probably look like a right stupid kid to the bored dude behind the counter--yeah, you see that raised eyebrow. See it vanish into his hairline. Okay maybe part of that was just three unaccompanied minors waltzing into his store, chattering carelessly like y'all own the place. Probably wondered if you have money or if he’ll need to keep an eye on the candy bars in case of sticky fingers.

Anyway--the slushie machine is along the back wall, past a few rows of shelves, so that’s where John leads the rest of you tourists. You’re still lukewarm on the idea of a slushie in the gotta-be-below-freezing temperatures you’ll need to walk back through, but John’s insistent, doesn't want you to miss the ~*experience*~.

Seriously, how did you even agree to this idea in the first place. Could you get some pipin’ hot cider instead?

“Cider is fermented, Dave.” Rose. 

“Look dawg, all I know is it’s apple. And you know, hot.” 

“They don’t even sell that stuff here anyway!” John handwaves.

Man he’s really invested in your ingestion of this goddamn frozen drink. You decide to poke the bear a bit more. For the hell of it. “Well then what about some good ol’ hot chocolate?”

Rose peers at a menu displayed behind the checkout counter. “They do have coffee, if you really must have a hot beverage.”

John ain’t having it. “NO! No coffee. No hot chocolate. We came here because you’ve never had a slushie before! You can’t leave without at least trying one!”

You’re eyeballing the swirling machines with their myriad of flavors. Rose is already grabbing her cup. She begins to head for a pale-white, marked with a bitchin’ pineapple and coconut for pete’s sake--but she hesitates, veering off instead for some boring dark brown shit that’s labled with a fuckin’ coca cola brand logo. Like, is she for real right now? All those bright, fancy ass colors, and she’s getting some dull boring cola? It’s a waste, that’s what it is.

The bell rings again. A bit closer now, since you’re also technically in the back of the store. You decide to stop judging Rose’s tastes, and finally acknowledge John’s insistence that you freeze your hands off again. Not to mention your insides . Your gut is probably the only part of you that’s still a cool 98 something degrees like it should be, and he wants you to change that?`

“Dude, I’m pretty sure there’s a 7/11 within walkin’ distance of home. Where it isn’t below freezing. I can take a rain check on it. Isn’t that the OG shit?? Honest to frog Slurpees, not this knock-off off-brand stuff??”

You see him gearing up for a response, but then blinks, mouthing the word “...frog?” back at you. You rewind your words and huh, you did say that didn’t you? All you can do is shrug. 

“Well--whatever! This brand’s MUCH better than a Slurpee!”

In the end you capitulate, filling up a small cup with something marked Fruit Punch. God the paper thin skin on your hands is already writhing in protest at the chill radiating from the foamy plastic. You swaddle that shit with napkins and eye Rose’s purple mittens with envy. The crushed ice sitting in your cup isn’t quite as bright as the cherry but, well, you don’t really feel up for cherry. Watching that bright, eye catching candy red swirl round and round and round tugs at something in your chest. It’s just--too weirdly specific. Although strawberry kiwi is intriguing. You’ve never had kiwi before.

Mount St. John appeased, he gets his own drink of choice--blue raspberry, with a layer of the white stuff Rose had been going for--and all three of you head to the register.

Score. You’re at the halfway point, and you’ve only been out for 32 minutes. The timer pulls itself out of the morass of ever moving numbers and sounds, and you check it against the estimate Mr. E had given you before leaving earlier. He should probably be texting John soon, asking where the fuck you guys were because he got home and his house was void of kids--

“... oh fuck.”

That was John.

“What the fuck did you just say???” If you were proud of John for droppin’ some shits before, you’re over the fuckin’ moon right now knowing he had some fucks to give.  They grow up so fast.

You’d be getting weepy, if John didn’t look so much like a deer frozen in the path of an oncoming train.

“...I forgot to grab my wallet.”

...Well, shit. Maybe your off-hand musing on sticky fingers was on the uh, money.

You and Rose proceed to paw through your sylladexes, but neither of you seem to keep any spare change. Rose lives too remotely to bother, and you’ve only ever been out like, once. Why would you need to buy shit when you could just order it on Amazon and use Bro’s saved credit details?

...not that you would. Without asking.

Point being, John’d spun this whole venture as his treat . A birthday present for you both since, conveniently, it ceases being your special day in less than five hours, and becomes your mutual friend’s.

The cashier is eyeing you and your mounting panic, with increasing comprehension and fuck, you really don’t wanna be those kids--

Your blood runs cold when the prickle stops being a prickle and straight up grabs you by the scruff of your neck and shakes you down metaphorically.

“I got it, John. Don’t worry about it.”

...you fuckin’ knew it. 

That’s definitely Bro rounding the aisle you legit just came from. 

Has he been fuckin’ stalking you this whole time? Like some kind of creepin’ babysitter? Which really isn't all that surprising when you think about it. You were right, weren’t you? There was no way he’d just let y'all get away with it like that. Especially not--

The invisible hand tightens around your chest. It’s a little harder to breathe. All that hard fought freedom, all lies, not that you’d ever really believed it in the first place. 

Bro doesn’t make a fuss of it, although you do find it in yourself to snicker at John’s strangled tumble of words as he finally manages to process the arrival. His carefully cultivated gambit destroyed by one freakin’ ninja. It’s karma, that’s what it is. 

The fact that Bro offers John one of those small, rueful smiles, and a muttered, “This way your Dad doesn’t flay us both,” as he passes to take center stage at the counter, doesn’t bother you. Nope. Not at all. 

Of course there’s a self serving reason. He wouldn’t be here just to keep you on a leash. Or, well, maybe; John’s Dad did tell him to keep an eye on all of you. Maybe you’re incidental, this once. 

Do you want to be incidental? Or does that thought only make you steam more? The heat of your conflicting emotions is probably melting your slushie as you marinate.

Speaking of--

“Bro,” He pauses in handing the cashier the money that he seems to pull out of nowhere. Orange embers flicker as he glances over his shoulder at you. “I notice you seem to be lacking  something. If you’re gonna crash this joint you’ll have to abide by the rules, passed down from the God of all Frogs, the law is that all participants are required to undergo cruel and unusual slushie based torture. John, are you gonna let him get away with this?”

You gesture to his lack of ice-based beverage, and then step back and watch the flicker of confusion in the slight twitch of his eyebrows--no shades to hide behind, Bro--and the thinning of his lips. Meanwhile, John takes far less cues to follow, an open book, flashing from bewilderment to downright glee as he pounces.

If you gotta suffer, then you’re gonna pass that misery around like a goddamn hot potato. Sorry, Bro.

You take a satisfying sip from your red plastic straw--Bro paid so it’s okay, you figure--and alright fine John, you were right. It isn’t bad. It’s an explosion of sweet and fruity sugar ice in your mouth, and you take another long sip, pointedly ignoring the smile Rose isn’t bothering to hide. Just because it’s fine now, doesn’t mean it’s not gonna suck once you leave the heated interior of the store. Might as well enjoy it while you can.

To your surprise, Bro only really puts up a token objection, taking one look at John’s determined face and then glancing at your smug one before letting the boy drag him back into the aisles. You already know what Bro’s gonna get; Orange Crush. He always would get Orange Crush. It’s his thing. Just like apples are your thing, though honestly you’re starting to suspect you’re just a fruity kinda guy--in the purely food based definition of the term, of course. You can’t even claim an exclusivity deal with red fruits, considering Mr. E’s Pineapple chicken has gone down in history as one of the best fuckin’ things you’ve ever eaten. 

Then again, maybe pineapple’s an exception. It does have the word ‘apple’ in it after all.

Hurricane John spits your Bro back out at the counter eventually, and by then most of your weirdo feelings have settled into some slushie-induced zen. It’s just like, why the fuck did any of it matter? Maybe Bro showing up was one of the best things that could have happened: you rather enjoyed seeing him so windswept and off balance. Not much can stand in the way of your one-man typhoon of a best friend. Not even the previously immovable mountain that is your Bro. 

Even if you aren’t the cause of it, seeing John’s brown face stretching wide in a grin and slightly flushed from a successful campaign makes a coil of warmth twist in your stomach, causing the ice to undergo an immediate matter shift from solid to liquid right there in your gut. You really are a personal heat generator tonight, aren’cha? Maybe Rose had been onto something.

“We missed out on so much.” Rose’s comment is subdued beside you. She’s long since stopped sipping on her slushie, letting it chill in her hands, watching as John shoots you a thumbs up from the counter. One that you return, with just the right touch of disinterested stoicism. It’s the contrast that makes it funny. Bro’s obviously noticed, and while you can’t quite see his face, you can tell he said something because John flashes from some sort of weird stunned bewilderment right into giggles.

Oh look at that, your ears feel like they are burning. You’ll corner John later and drag whatever it was out of him, but for now you force yourself to stop watching them checkout. It’s a feat that turns out to be easier than you expected because Rose seems to be quite lost in metaphorical melancholic fog right now, another comment coming out in a soft spoken sigh. “We could have spent all the years together, rather than worlds apart.”

“Yeah, online friendships’ll do that to ya.” You take an experimental slurp. You’re disappointed in the proportion of syrup to ice and vigorously attempt to stir it up, “The joys of travelin’ in a giant metal turkey for hours only to get a few short days. Totally sucks, doesn’t it?”

“Hmm.” Huh. You expected more than that. You glance surreptitiously at her, thankful for the concealing wall that is your shades. She’s looking a tad too thoughtful. It’s a kind of thoughtful that has alarm bells ringing somewhere in the depths of your already noisy brain. 

“Alright now, what’s the deal with that long face, Rose?”

“Oh? Nothing at all. I merely wish I could enjoy this moment fully without the looming shadow of inevitability threatening to fall down upon us.”

“Dude,” You find yourself at a loss, flailing for words, “If this is about your mom crashing the party, we went over this. It’s cool.”

“It isn’t. It’s about broken promises, and the inevitability of that betrayal.” She sounds...tired. Her indigo-passing-purple eyes find yours despite mirrored glass, holding them tight, and then burying her attention in her boring brown sludge of a half-melted drink. Her second choice. Why? Why not go for the first one? “I’d even say it hurt more because of the hope implied in making it.”

“Is this about the...y’know…” You take another loud slurp on your slushie, a move that has her rolling her eyes at your actions.

“I’d thought that was fairly obvious.”

“Yeah well, you know, I wouldn’t want to presume and all. Touchy subject.” It is pretty damn obvious, though. At least to you. Rose didn’t talk about her home-life much, far preferring to pick yours apart during your interactions. But there were moments when you know she’s been awake for far too long, when she’ll tell you about emptying her mother’s alcohol into the sink. And not only to curtail her mother’s habits. “Have you tried ya’know, talking to her about it?”

“Have you spoken to your Bro about any of your numerous issues?”

Woah now, that was uncalled for.

Okay, maybe a little called for.

The tiniest of calls.

“I actually envy you the opportunity, you know. At least your brother would listen and give weight to your words. He doesn’t merely see a child .”

“Rose. He stalked us because he couldn’t stand to have me out of his sight .”

“Because we were his responsibility. Did it never occur to you that three children alone on a dark street, minus adult supervision, could have some disastrous consequences in this day and age? He found a way to ensure our safety while still honoring the spirit of the excursion until we needed help. Isn’t that what guardians do? It would have been far simpler to intercept us before we left the house, as you so helpfully pointed out earlier.”

You don’t really have anything to say to that. Nothing constructive anyway. So you switch gears entirely and yank the conversation back where you can actually steer the fuckin’ thing.

“Well, avoiding uncommunicative parentals is why we’re out here, and not home. Mr. E can, like, tuck in your mom all gentlemanly like, Bro is being a thoughtful stalkery ninja and giving us space, and now you won’t have to worry about where she is and actually enjoy your upcoming day of life.”

“Because having her hungover on my birthday is going to make things any better.” That almost sounded bitter. Cold and bitter. Like the wind outside this brightly lit little corner store. The wind with it’s chill, and icicle sharp teeth, and piercing claws. Like the presence looming at the end of the lane, the shadow stalking your footsteps.

She’s right. You know she’s right. He was trying. But no matter the intentions, that shit can lay heavy on your shoulders and keep you itching to watch your back for an attack that might never come.

And you hate it. She hates it. She hates that she hates it. And you get that.

Rose saw you freezing, and wrapped a scarf around your face to warm you. You can’t do that--it’s full of mouth germs and it’s yours--but you have another idea. You shove your slushie in her free mitted hand and say, “Hold my beer.”

That snaps something out of her.“Dave, this isn’t a joke--”

You don’t let yourself completely think about what you’re doing. Like the scarf, you wrap your now free arms around her shoulders. She’s actually a little taller than you are right now, and you briefly think bitterly of your long-distant growth spurts and how that smarts at your pride, but you don’t let it deter you. You hug her tighter.

“Just what are you doing?”

She isn’t tensing, isn’t pushing you away. This feels almost right, being in this little bubble of space. She’s surprised.

“Warming you up.”

An eyebrow disappears into honey-blonde bangs. “I wasn’t particularly cold, you know.”

“Not with the heat! With friendship! Can’t you feel it? Gotta chase them blues away with good ol’ fashioned friendship power. Like you said, it’s the fuckin’ journey. And on this journey we’re all just basking in the awesomeness of each other’s company. We’re here, and we’re awesome, and if you wanna keep pushin’ through the melancholic fog that’s totally fine too, but you’ll need to drag along this Dave-shaped security blanket because I’m sure as hell not gonna let you brave that alone, capiche?”

She’s shaking. You panic for a small moment. Was this too much? Too soon? Too mushy? Was this weird ease of presence just in your own head and she doesn’t feel the same? Did you overstep? You frantically try to untangle yourself, while only really succeeding in tasting shoeleather as you attempt to explain yourself.. “Oh god Rose, sorry, like maybe that was a little too fast. I just-- you know--the scarf! It was like you gave me your scarf to keep me warm so I just like, wanted to return the favor only metaphorically because like I can’t actually give you friendship fire and--

Wait, no, she’s laughing. Quietly. 

Okay. You relax.

“You know, once upon a time Dave Strider would have called a hug ‘uncool’ and ‘disgusting.’”

“Yeah. Well. It still is. But desperate times and all that. Cockles, Rose! Hearts full of friendship fire! Everyone knows that energy is best transferred through conduction, and hugs make for great positive energy channels.”

“It’s okay. I will take the gesture in the spirit it was intended. Now take back your slushie.”

“But Roooose,” you whine, playing up the reluctance for dramatic effect, “It’s coooold. Think of the friendship fire. You don’t wanna dampen it do you? Besides, you have gloves.”

“Gloves which need to be holding my own slushie, thank you.”

You do end up taking back the slushie as Bro and John approach where you and Rose have been hanging by the door. You take one look at the fourth-of a cup remaining of ice and syrup, and glance between it and the door to the freezing cold outside and make a split second decision to pop the top off the cup and chug that shit. It burns in freezing way as it goes down, but hey, in a minute it’s gone, and now you won’t have to have your hands out of the warm caverns of your pockets so win-win.

“There! Problem totally solved. Now no one has to hold it.”

The cold lingers on the roof of your mouth, and you taste the undefinable fruit flavor that is fruit punch sticking to your throat, but it’s worth it when you can toss the discarded container in the nearby trashcan and stuff your chilled hands back into the comfort of your jacket.  Who is the genius? The genius is you. 

John’s rolling up at this point, Bro now predictably saddled with the fate you just avoided because of your brilliant idea. The cold still hasn’t gone away. Why isn’t it going away? John’s got this weird look that seems half torn between amazement and dawning horror. 

Dude-- did you seriously just--”

Whatever you seriously just did, you miss it entirely on account of someone stabbing a damn katana straight through your goddamn brain.

“God what the fuck--what the fuck--”

Bro’s flash-grab strikes again and clutches your chin, tilting your head up so he can--fuck if you know this pain is a weird mix of stabbing and aching and you press your eyes shut to whatever the fuck he’s doing and cling to--OW.

“--hit your head?”

Wheezing. Is John fuckin’ laughing at you? God, you are so gonna revoke his best friend status. Somewhere between the endless wheezing, there’s Rose being quietly amused at your terrible, utterly incorrigible situation. “ It’s just brain freeze. He’ll be fine.”

That is entirely incorrect, you’re dying. 

You ignore them and cling to the ticking and count. It’s gonna pass. It’s gotta pass. You just need to pass the fucking treasonous seconds until your brain decides to stop with the not-so-friendly well fuck you too , it just shoved in your face.

John’s still laughing when you force your eyes open, and you glare at him through the blurry, pounding, aching pain in your head. “ Fuck you. And fuck your slushies.”

“How was I supposed to know you’d break one of the basic rules??? I only left you alone for a few minutes!”

You can’t find any words except an almost guttural growl. 

Bro only sighs and shoves you through the door; he might as well be chucking you outside in your birthday suit for how prepared you are for anything even remotely chilly right now. You become an honest to frog turtle in your borrowed jacket--curling up like a pillbug to nurse the fading ache which is soon replaced with sore and chattering teeth. 

“It wasn’t funny, dude,” you mutter in his direction. Which by ‘his’ you mean is pretty up in the air. A giraffe amongst piglets.

John’s still occasionally giggling as your small gaggle of companions begin to retrace your earlier steps, and Bro was being hella dismissive to your discomfort right now. Turns out putting cold on top of more cold is a terrible idea, and you swear your chattering teeth is echoing through the street, accompanied by painfully mocking sounds of frozen ice  being absent-mindedly slurped through straws.

“I’m sorry Dave you’re just--your reactions are really really funny that’s all.”

“Delightfully overdramatic,” Rose adds, oh so helpfully. 

“Seriously dude, it happens to everyone.” John lags a few steps to where you’re sulking at the back of the pack, and pats your shoulder in some sort of attempt at comfort. 

It’s too late for comfort. You mumble something, you don’t care what at this point, into the traitor’s scarf and huddle deeper into the dark blue fortress that is all that stands between you and the elements.

As you expected, Bro falls further and further behind the three of you as you walk. You don’t ever lose that tell-tale prickle, but it’s back to full on stealth-mode. Much to your amusement, it drives John nuts. There’s only one path. You know John’s thinking it. It almost makes you dredge a smile out of your frozen facial muscles. 

“He can’t be following us. It’s impossible. It’s not that dark out!”

Okay, maybe that makes you smile. Not that anyone can see with your face swaddled in soft fabric insulation.

Hm. Maybe there’s something to this whole scarf thing. Between your shades and this scarf, you’re even more of an unreadable, impregnable wall than usual.

“Oh, he is.” You can feel his attention in that little prickle of situational awareness along your spine. In hindsight, you admit you’d kinda known he was there all along, and you’re not sure you want to examine the idea that the knowledge was what led to you not worrying about, like, getting kidnapped or something. Made you feel safe.

Maybe Rose was right: maybe he only wants to give you space. Or maybe it’s too cold for you to waste the energy on being paranoid right now. 

“Witness the full on stealth mode. Ghosting from shadow to shadow, from tree to tree, unfettered by the chains of domesticity of baked goods and society. A lawless land of puppetry and shitty swords. A ninja, born and bred in a jungle of glass and concrete--”

“Okay okay fine, I get it. You were right. Geez.” John gives you a light nudge on the shoulder. “I think I liked you better when your brain was frozen.”

“Just eat your iced torture device, Egbert.”

All the while, the road to John’s house lay before you. Cold and dark and foreboding, for all that it’s lit by a trail of warm yellow lights. You push forward and let your elbow knock against Rose’s, who’d been content to stay mostly silent the entire way back.

“You ready for this?”

“No.” The word escapes shadowed lips with a sigh. “Some part of me hopes she’ll have passed out already. The pragmatic part of me knows that would be far too easy a resolution.”

“Hey, it could happen. Maybe she’s a sleepy drunk. Isn’t that a thing? People gettin’ all hells of tipsy and sleepy and conkin’ out where they stand?”

“It is possible,” There’s an echo of something else there, narrowed eyes seeing something down the path and into the pitch that gets lost in your own vision. 

You phase out of that particular streetlamp’s halo and the world is plunged into black, the sparse details lost in the planes of your shades. 

She says nothing more.

Notes:

Sorry this took so long! It's...a hefty one. Next chapter is the end of Dave's birthday and the finale of this interlude-that-really-shouldn't-be-an-interlude. God I'm so excited to get back to single-POV chapters with the start of Act 2, though I don't think the length will go away any time soon ahaha. oTL

...remember back in the beginning when they used to be like 1-2k? *sighs wistfully* Oh well.

*waves a tiny flag for the 200k milestone* It's taken nine months to get here. Thank you all for sticking with me, and all the continuing support! It means so much to me <3

Chapter 58: [I1P8] A Happy Birthday

Notes:

@deserts, @peonies, and @Alexharrier led a mutiny (yes I'm calling you all out) so I guess y'all get this early. Enjoy. It's a long one, and the last of the double chapters. There is one final interlude chapter remaining, so we can get back to act 2 at 60.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Dirk > Reconfigure Your Expectations

Maybe Rose could be wrong after all.

The living room is dim, and for the briefest moment you wonder if you’ve beaten the others home--but no, there’s a new fire crackling in the fireplace, and light spilling out of the kitchen’s archway. You’d even noted Dan’s silhouetted car as you follow the kids up the driveway, edges gleaming faintly from the porch and street lights.

The darkness waiting for you in that room isn’t one of absence, perhaps it is one of Void.

Rose didn’t leave matters to chance, whispering harshly to the two boys and all but dragging them up the stairs through sheer force of will. You don't blame her. You wish you could do similarly. But that would be weird, and probably unwanted, you think, as you watch the bobbing of three heads over the installed railings, vanishing into the safe haven that is John's room.

Abandoned heels gleam in the cast off light from the fire, propped up at the foot of the couch near a small stack of boxes. 

It’s probably creepy as hell to be lingering here, listening to the crackle of the hearth as it mingles with the quiet breathing coming from the twitching blanket-shrouded lump on the couch. You almost wonder if she’s actually asleep at all, or is only pretending in order to avoid the confrontation.

You expected to see her pale pink eyes open as you step into the room and pull the door shut behind you. You expected--

Well, you’re perfectly happy with being proven wrong about that. Sometimes even you admit the pessimism needs to fuck off. It’s exhausting. Though on the other hand, it needn’t quit its dayjob.

Putting some distance between you and the messy honey blonde hair and dark, closed lashes leads you, predictably, into the kitchen. It isn’t empty, but you didn’t really expect it to be. The smell of chocolate, dark and slightly bitter, hits your olfactory receptors before you finish pushing aside the saloon-style doors.

Right; Rose's cake.

You don’t speak as you awkwardly deposit yourself into one of the lonely folding chairs. You’re all long limbs and lacking coordination. The metal creaks beneath you, the empty foam of your slushie cup ringing hollowly as you set it down on the table. You don’t know why you didn’t toss the thing into the trashcan near the door on your way in. A souvenir maybe. 

The chill in your hands lingers. Maybe you’d actually gone numb holding that thing, but rubbing them works to return the feeling to the tips of your fingers.

Paradoxically, moving from the freezing outside into the climate controlled interior makes you more and more aware just how cold you were. You haven’t given up the jacket you filched from one of the closets yet. Dan doesn’t call you out on the stolen garment, although recognition quickly flashed in his eyes and expression, fading into amusement, while he rhythmically works the batter that would eventually become the base for another cake. Round and round.

It’s only once he finishes combining all the ingredients and deftly splits the contents of the mixing bowl into two pans that he actually speaks to you. “Who’s idea was it?”

You take a moment to respond, maybe a quarter-rest worth, as you shake the cobwebs of moody thoughts away, kicking them back into the fog for them to lurk about and resurface at their leisure. “John wanted slushies--figured supervision was better’n just letting them go when they tried to ditch me.”

“That boy...” his words are definitely fond, even with the accompanying shake of the head, and more than a little exasperated “I suppose he took my ‘don’t make this trip alone’ to mean that it was alright as long as he had friends along. I’ll talk to him.”

At the implied prompting, you ease into recounting the story. Starting from the way you tried not to notice the whispered plotting, all the way up to your little brother’s introduction to the phenomenon colloquially known as ‘brain freeze.’

You don’t ask about Roxanne, whose snoring has steadily become loud enough by now to reach beyond the muffling confines of her blanket. You don’t acknowledge her presence at all, other than pitching your voice quieter than you necessarily need to in an effort to not disturb her. Dan doesn’t bring her up either, despite the fact that they must have spoken on the drive. 

The full cake soon goes into the oven--you count three layers total--and Dan takes the other chair. The one Roxanne had refused to sit in, all those hours ago, and you just --

Talk. You just talk.

He mostly talks, actually, but it has a particular flavor to it. A rhythm, that reminds you, unsurprisingly, of Jane. Of quiet, light conversation, flowing and inviting, tugging you gently out of your burnt out prickly shell. You’re happy enough listening, asking questions about details that don’t mean much of anything in the grand scheme of things, or prodding for more information when the topics end up coming back to family.

Especially his mother.

The peace shatters to the shrill ringing of the apple-shaped egg-timer some hour or so later, marking the time to remove the brown, chocolatey dessert from the oven. You’d seen enough with your adventures into confectionary land to guess that the next stage would be to prep for icing, but Dan merely covers the layers up to cool, making no move to withdraw any further ingredients or tools from the myriad of cupboards.

When you ask, you get your answer readily enough.

"Roxanne wanted to help. We’ll ice it tomorrow morning."

And there it is: the distantly snoring elephant in the room. The thread of tension that burrows itself into your brain.

You don’t ask. You simply nod. 

Dan settles back in for a quiet evening, and that’s that.

The tension never fully dissipates. You’re lucky that Roxanne’s asleep, but it feels like that’s only delaying the inevitable.

It’s a quarter ‘til 10 when Dan excuses himself for a before-bed pipe break to unwind, abandoning you to a rather pleasantly still and peaceful house. Or, well, it’s pleasant for the handful of minutes before you get bored and have to start planning something.  

With Roxanne passed the fuck out on the couch, and the kids holed up in John’s room, it’s looking like you’ll be spending another sleepless night talking to Davepeta again. You’re looking forward to it, in fact. You kind of regret letting Dan have his jacket back--it would have made camping out on the roof much more feasible of an escape. You can steal it again once he’s done, and fully commit to your new profession of clothing thief.

Maybe you should get a headstart now. You’ve got one hell of a story to tell Davepeta, and it’s easier to type when your fingers aren’t numb.

The thought has barely crossed your mind and you’re already navigating towards pesterchum in this quiet moment. You know they’ll scold you for it. That they’ll be waiting for you later . That you should be overall enjoying the meatspace and proximity that they can’t.

They’ll enjoy a recount of today’s events, at least, even if probably at Dave’s expense. Sometimes you imagine what it would be like to have both of them in the same room. They’d probably drive Dave up a wall on purpose. Perhaps a little like you and Hal, only with significantly less animosity. So, really, not like you two at all. You don’t think any Dave could manage that streak of casual cruelty that resulted in your poisoned relationship.

Maybe, it’s more like what you two should have been.

A creak of wood and metal interrupts this quiet moment. Perhaps it was too quiet. The distant, but ever present snoring had, at some point, fallen silent.

You aren’t alone.

Ignoring it, you open the application. Take your time to scroll back through the primarily green text Davepeta has left for you throughout the day, lingering on a particularly worried segment timestamped around the time you’d been on the phone. 

The chatbox flashes orange, indicating Davepeta has noticed that you’re online. Or maybe has noticed the mounting anxiety being caused by the prickle of heavy, watching eyes, beginning to bleed through to your dreaming gameself. You don’t scroll back down to hit the new messages yet, continuing to read as if you weren’t aware of the fact that you are not unobserved.

It’s almost like being back with Dave during those weeks following the hospital, when he’d linger in the hallway and watch you to make sure you weren’t going to--you don’t know, keel over or something. Behavior that had subsided after the chronic nightmares ended up with you both too exhausted to bother, and the occasional mornings when you’d wake up with a small white-haired head nuzzled into your side.

You wonder if he slept well last night. He certainly looked a hell of a lot more animated today than he typically does, according to your limited experience. You wish you could give him that all the time.

She’s still watching you.

“D’ya need somethin’, Rox?” You don’t bother to hide the fatigue in your voice. You own that shit right now. You’ve suffered for it. It’s day two and you already want to go home. 

You feel guilty even thinking that. Think about something else, and maybe actually acknowledge the half-lit shadow of a woman leaning woozily against the door frame. Her normally perfectly maintained hair a muss of waves from where she’d drawn the blankets up around her head. You don’t remember that pink scarf wrapped messily around her neck. Or the makeup, which is all the more eye catching because it’s been royally smudged--from tears or something else, you don’t know. All it does is highlight her reddened and exhausted eyes. 

To put it bluntly? “You look terrible.”

“Gee, thanks.” Her answer is mumbled and delayed. Her palm presses against the side of her temple. “Gawd, I didn’t drink enuff for this.”

You know what she means. You toe another folded chair out from under the table, the flimsy legs scraping against the tile floor and drawing her attention. Satisfied, you stand up, snagging the foam slushie cup from where it has spent the evening sitting empty by your elbow, and get to work.

Metal creaks behind you--a weight settling in the chair, but you don’t turn to confirm. You wrack your sluggish mind for exactly which cupboard holds the glasses. It takes you two guesses before you find them, pulling one down and setting it on the counter. “There’s water, ‘n milk. Maybe some pineapple juice left if y’ want me to dig for it.” 

At least you don’t think Dan used it all to make dinner. Maybe you shouldn’t have offered it if you weren’t sure. Luckily Roxanne chooses milk with a groan and eliminates the potential embarrassment, since you know exactly where that is. John did send you hunting down milk ‘n cookies, after all. 

She looks miserable as she takes the glass from you, giving you what you can only guess is a suspicious glance before knocking the whole thing back and downing it. The almost empty glass slams down on the table with finality.

“Just say it, Dietrich.”

“Say what?”

“Whatever it is ur thinking. M’head’s in too much pain to dance around shit righ’ now.”

“...that was...impressive?” You answer, pretty honestly actually. You hadn’t expected that at all. Maybe more of a slow nurse and sip the way Jane--not your Jane, or, Mrs. Egbert-- Christ --did with her coffee the one time Newt scheduled a meeting two hours after she’d flown back into town, jetlagged. “Do you want any more?”

“Yes -- No-- Argh, just sit down, ok?”

You don’t have enough left in yourself to argue. The foam of your slushie cup cools your palms, filled with water from the sink, and it’s apparently your turn to do the sip ‘n brood. Some of the slushie syrup must have stuck around because it tastes faintly like the artificial citrus flavoring of your favorite--and only--childhood drink. You reckon you’d probably appreciate it more if you weren’t pinned under mullish pink eyes like you’re a butterfly and she’s trying to decide if she wants to preserve you or pluck off your wings instead.

And then she mutters something and drops her head into her arms, forehead hitting the solid of the table with a heady clunk . “No way in hells am I drunk enough for this.”

“Nothing needs to happen right this second, Rox.” You still aren’t sure if you should be speaking. But she’s the one who intruded on your quiet time, so this could be an invitation. An olive branch. Maybe? But that could also be nothing more than a projection; what you desperately want it to be.  

“So why the fuck did u drag me back? Mighta been better for both of us if you’d just let me stay at some hotel halfway across the city.”

You bite the inside of your lip in an effort to suppress the wince. She has you there. 

A beat passes with an eternity under that stare. She’s giving you the floor this time. It’s not like the phone call, where you had to jump to get a word in. You squander that opportunity with a very short, very curt, and very lame, “Your daughter is convincing.”

Christ, you’re bad at this.

“You can’t expect me to believe that you’d let yourself get pushed into doin’ somethin’ u didn’t want to do.” At her words, you can feel the heat burning in your face. Clicking your jaw shut, you give her the most level stare you can muster. Roxanne doesn’t take the hint, or outright ignores it. “Rosie’s a smart girl, but I kno u Dietrich, unless she had a knoife to that damned puppet o’ yours, if u really didn’t want to make that phone call you wouldn’t’ve.”

She pauses.

“You... don’t have him with u...do you?”

You respond with a sharp negative, and she eventually breaks eye contact, rubbing her head with long, slim fingers. She sucks in a deep breath and expels it in a sharp exhale, propping her head up with an arm, “Gawd, I almost forgot about him. My head’s so fucked.”

You shift uneasily at that implication. If she grew up with you, and you grew up with him--

For a dude with mitten hands, Lil’Cal potentially had his fingers in a lot of shit. Too bad you can’t wring answers out of that perpetually grinning face.

“Aren’cha gonna say anythin’?”

Letting go of the breath you’ve been holding, you offer, “What do you want me to say?”

“I dunno.” There’s a little bit of milk left, spittle really, but it’s apparently the most important thing in the world right now with how she stares down at it. “Gloat or some shit. I did what you wanted, in the end. You got me back here. Scared th’ fuck outta me with that prank, takin’ the kids like that.”

What? 

“I didn’t--I didn’t take them.” She looks up. You’re almost startled by the conviction you put behind those words, but goddamn you feel it. Nails dig into the foam of your cup, leaving half-moon divots behind. In for four. Out for- “I don’t--I promise I had no intention to stir up any of this shit. They would’ve snuck out without me if I let them. So I didn’t let them go alone.”

“I--I know that,” Roxanne admits quietly, and then snapped up, anger blossoming in her eyes and twisting her painted lips into a snarl. One that isn’t even directed at you. “I know that! But that didn’t stop me needin’ Dan to talk a drunkard down from running out there after you! I should know this shit! I should know you. Even if we don’t agree, u don’t lie, and tbh that’s the part that hurts the worst!”

She bites it off, scales it back. Dialing down the volume, and letting her gaze sink back down into the white bubbles clinging to the glass as if she could spontaneously refill it with enough effort. 

“Just like how you are aren’t lying now, are you? Not about the dream. Not about--shit.” Her free arm indicates the room. The house. The situation. Ending with…

You.

You cross your arms in front of your chest. Defensive? Resolute? Are you lying? 

“I’m not, no.” 

And yet, neither are you telling the entire truth, either.

Could you?

A sigh. A descent into uncomfortable silence. One begging to be broken. 

Roxanne does so, not by sound, but by motion. Her fingers snap together, tip to tip, thumb to thumb, an odd method of sylladex withdrawal, but you’ve seen weirder. A breath and a bottle is yoinked from nothing, resting in her palms. 

“Rox--” Shit that came out harsher than you expected.

“S’just water, eesh,” She mutters, curling those fingers around the neck like she’s strangling it, flashing you the Deer Park Springs label, “‘m tryin’ to be courteous and not make you get up for lil’ ol’ me.”

Another breath, and a swig--you aren’t entirely sure you trust her that it’s water, but the rubbing alcohol your Bro left you had a pungent smell and you can’t so much as catch a whiff off that bottle. 

“We spent a decade dealing with this shit, playing our little spy games of I know u know what I’m doin’ without ever acknowledging it--and--” Pause. Breath. Another swig. “I know what has and hasn’t changed. I know u moved on, making ur own plans. So did I but--Seein’ u--after all this--I can’t--It’s like shit just happened all over again and I’m angry.   It feels so damn raw and painful that every step I take is like all the wounds jus’ gape ‘n bleed and there’s blood all o’er my hands--and I just don’t understand why --”

Shards. Fragments. Bits and pieces of who they are and who they were all slapdashed together. Grinding against each other until they bled.

“Gawd, my head’s so fucked up right now an ‘m not sure I can blame it all on the drink.”

smushed up into a life she never lived and its tearing her apart

What’d you think earlier? You envy their ignorance?

Roxanne had so many pieces, but she only knew that nothing really fit together the way it should. Pieces from two different puzzles. All jumbled up.

What would she think if she could hear the waves? See the endless blue world stretching out around her from all sides? 

Would they sound familiar?

At least you know you don’t belong here.

You toy with the idea of giving in and spitting it out. Telling her. If your lack of understanding of the situation is such a source of anxiety and stress on both your parts, then why don’t you just--throw it all out there?

Throw out the fact that you have no fuckin’ clue what happened between you. That all you have guesses. That the responsibility heaped on your shoulders feels like it’s one wrong step away from snapping this overburdened teenager in two, and that all you want is your friend back.

It feels cowardly and disingenuous. Like you’re claiming amnesia just to get out of dealing with another thing some version of you managed to ruin. But...

This isn’t like Dave, who is only a kid and has yet to be introduced to the weirder aspects of your existence. Roxanne, at least, clearly knew all your lives were fucked over already. The idea that you’re from another timeline, another instance-- universal instance variable, christ you need to ask her about that--should be well within the frame of plausibility.

But...really, would it even help? Would it help her , knowing that he’s dead? That everything she remembers is nothing more than the remnants of a dead woman?

Order up: one heaping, unhealthy serving of existential bullshit to pile onto an already stressed as fuck mind?

That her existence means your best friend might as well be dead ? Crumpled up like a ball of playdough and forced into a pre-existing mold, the scraps thrown away. That you could possibly resent her for that?

Christ, no; it would hurt her more.

And maybe you’re just coming up with some horseshit to justify your own desire to run the fuck away, but the last thing you want is to hurt her again. Whether it’s Roxy or Roxanne.

You stand, earning a weary glare through honey’d bangs. “You should get some rest.” You throw your foamy slushie cup in the trash, water and all, and get the fuck out of there. 

“Coward.” She grumbles at your retreating back, “s’not like I wanted to talk about it ‘nyway.”

She’s right.

A coward, chased by the slurred words drifting out of fragmented memory and playing in your ears.

What if I just wanna sit here an’ drink away the mem’ry of yer goddamn blood splatterin’ all over my face.

A coward who can’t even follow through with the decision to beat feet, because mere words still stop you on the threshold. “What are you plannin’ to do on Harley’s old island?”

The positions are reversed now, with you teetering on the edge of escape, and her gazing up at you with exhaustion in her eyes.

You aren’t surprised she knows about that--Newt did have to get permission from SkaiaNet. Roxanne might as well be running that place now--or at least, as the captain of the USS World’s End, she has her fingers in a lot of pies.

It’s easier to think of him as Harley, isn’t it? Like you have to think of Roxanne, when you don’t want your heart to bleed.

You manage a half hearted shrug, shunting those emotions away as best you can. You need to get outta here before you end up nose deep in a spiral. “I’unno. Figure it out when I get there. Mostly planning on studying those ruins to see if we--he missed anythin’”

Lie. But, not entirely. It is something you should keep in mind. See if there’s any sign of the instance change.

“...The legal agreement for allowing anyone onto that site requires all findings and photographs to be submitted for review upon return. To protect company assets.”

Yup. Admitting you intend to potentially poach Harley’s old dream-tech neural interface is not the brightest idea.

Roxanne pulls another bottle out of her sylladex, pink this time, and obviously constructed, cracking the edge delicately against the table. It shatters into pink particles, leaving her phone behind.

Did she change her fetch modus? That seems unnecessarily inefficient.

Your own phone beeps after a moment. You guiltily ignore Davepeta’s continuously flashing orange window and tab over, making a mental note to apologize later. The new mail icon sits in your toolbar, and you doubt it’s Newt. You still have yet to respond to his last message.

[email protected]

No body. A keysmash subject.

You add the contact.

It isn’t a surprise that she already has your email address, either. 

“Email me a copy of anything u find. We’ll--I’ll cut some strings to bypass the legal department flunkies. Still gotta follow protocol and discuss shit, but by then--”

A month. Two months. With the warning, and the ability to mentally prepare, it might be enough time to try and sweep up the glass and actually get shit done without either of you bleeding out over the floor.

You nod once, and leave.

She doesn’t stop you this time 

It’s no surprise that your feet take you upstairs to the balcony, freezing cold temperatures and all.

There’s no moon tonight, the dark evening sky covered in a blanket of grey and black clouds. The only light aside from those of the surrounding houses, windows of white and yellow winking in the night, was the faint red of the embers in Dan’s pipe. He’s nothing but a vaguely humanoid shape in the dark, but your eyes adjust as well as you expect, finding the edges between the silhouettes and the light leaking from the covered second story window. He half turns to regard you as the door opens, snug in the coat he’d taken back from you earlier.

“Roxanne’s awake.” That’s all you need to say, because Dan responds with a quiet ah, the accompanying exhale sending a stream of warm smoke to rise into the air. The smell makes your nose wrinkle with discomfort. Luckily there’s a breeze this time, carrying it away from you.

“I suppose I should go discuss tonight’s arrangements with her.” Cradling the pipe in cupped fingers, Dan shuffles it away into his sylladex, killing the glow of the embers. “Did anything else happen?”

What he’s actually asking is: Did you have another fight?

You shake your head with a tight flinch, jaw clenched, but in the dim lighting you have to push the word out anyway. “No.” 

Someone looking at things objectively might even say it went well, all things considered. But that someone is not you. Maybe you didn’t fight, but you sure as hell tripped, fell, and lodged yourself face first into a stinking bog of emotional turmoil and you’re too exhausted to climb back out.

There’s a rustle. The insulated fabric is shucked from his shoulders, like a fruit being peeled. People fruit. Which is a ridiculous notion, and you shove it away quickly as Dan offers you the jacket. 

You take it. Despite how the scent clings, it’s already dissipating, fading. Because it’s fucking cold out, and you recognize what he’s saying despite the fact that he’s saying nothing at all. You try to stifle it but--a sudden intake of breath as the smoke trickles your throat and--

You sneeze.

“Sorry about the smell; that’s largely why I don’t smoke inside. John hates it.” He sounds like he’s smiling faintly. “It’ll air out quick enough, but it’s far too cold to stay out here without one.”

“Thanks.” Push it out. Don’t shut down. “It doesn’t get anywhere near this cold in Texas.”

A muffled laugh as you quickly wreath yourself in the warm, smokey, insulation that works much better than your makeshift nest of stolen blankets had.

“Perhaps you should visit during the summer or fall next time...” He trails off, the door behind you opening and spilling the hallway light onto the balcony. Warmer air escapes into the night, soon to be sapped of its energy and assimilated. “The weather is far more agreeable. I’ve toyed with the idea of taking John camping one day.”

“...maybe…” It might be nice to get away from the sounds and noises and smells and oppressive heat. You aren’t looking forward to revisiting those days next year. Besides, Dave would jump at the opportunity to visit John again. Perhaps literally.

It’s so, so far away to think about, here in the dead of winter, with its freezing temperatures and heavy clouds, and biting winds.

Dan closes the door behind him, shutting you off from everything except the distant, faint sounds of this perfectly uniform suburban neighborhood and it’s will o’ wisp lights. The air still nips at your nose. Your hands chill.

The wind tugging at your hair is reminiscent of kitten claws as dark clouds roll across the sky. 

Heavy. 

Waiting. 

The world is holding its breath, and you sink away from it. Only for a little while. Just sink away from the emotions knotted and tangled, roiling in the thick fog that clouds your thoughts. Shut it all away, thinking about what you’d seen on that roof, holding your heart in your hands, and the sense of loss when you close your eyes and see nothing but empty shadows.

You could pull it out, if you wanted to. It’s a light pulsing in time with the organ in your chest. That sharp mass of orange, pink and what-should-be-red. That’s you. That’s the real you. Not this meat suit. Not even the sleeping god a universe away. Just you.

Not the Bro that Dave sees. Not the Dietrich that Roxanne hates. Not even the Dirk that Dan politely tolerates.

Just. 

You.

Are you lying? By keeping this distinction locked deep in your heart? It’s all still you at the core.

Shivering, you huddle deeper into the coat, breathing in the clinging smoke. Coughing in response when your lungs decide they hate it.

Someone’s either getting impatient or worried as phantom claws prick and sooth, trying to smooth it all away. 

It doesn’t work, this time, but you appreciate the attempt anyway.

Numb fingers fumble for plastic and you finally answer your moirail.

 

Dave > Poke the ELEPHANT in the Room

John’s Dad wasn’t budging on the subject of sleeping arrangements, hearing no arguments that would let Rose spend the night in John’s room with you two. And boy you’d argued. John’d whined. Rose reasoned. But no amount of logic or guilt tripping, or even downright annoying would get the immovable personification of parental propriety to shift.

It isn’t even midnight yet--you have plenty of oil to burn. You lit your freakin’ torch last night with John’s movie marathon, why can’t you have a repeat performance with your other best bud? But noooo, because she’s a girl and you and John aren’t, suddenly it’s a federal fuckin’ issue. The only other option offered is Rose sleeping with her mom and you see the flash of deer-in-the-headlights that crosses your friend’s face before she smooths it over under an air of detached annoyance.

John’s still going at it, using the same persistent approach that’d let you negotiate real estate for Fort Underten, but you need to come up with a better idea. That plan only worked because Bro stepped in and removed himself from Mr. E’s concerns, not because of anything you guys did.

Huh. That’s two for two times he’s had to step in and ensure your plans succeed. Maybe you should go try for a round three? He’s been suspiciously absent since y'all snuck back in. The idea of crawling to Bro in order to salvage shit you should be able to handle rankles your pride something fierce, but there’s a few sacrifices that gotta be made for the sake of efficiency and best bud solidarity, and so far he’s got a good track record..

Not that you really think he’d be able to help this time, even if you try. It’s not like there’s really a way to alleviate Egbert’s unnecessarily chivalrous concerns--you’re barely ten for dog’s sake! Okay, maybe you let slip a joke about underaged sexcapades, but you were raised on the internet, what could you do? It was a fucking joke . The proper response, in your opinion, was Rose rolling her eyes and dryly apologizing for crushing your dreams because you weren’t pretty enough for her, and John attacking your perfect hair and scalp with his knuckles in an attempted noogie with an exaggerated ‘gross!’

Not this double down-ing of unnecessarily traditional gender division. Maybe Mr. E would chill a bit if you got yourself a fuckin’ chaperone.

A chaperone. That might work. You could pull a repeat performance of the movie marathon. Let Rose choose the line-up. Build Fort Underten 2: Electric Boogaloo and camp out in the middle of the floor again. Or a more minimalistic pillow pile, no walls whatsoever, all transparency up in here, invite your Bro or even Momlonde--ugh, no you don’t think any of you would be totally comfortable with an adult purposefully crashing the party. This blows.

“John, it’s fine. I shall sleep with my mother tonight,” Rose casually slides between the two dueling Egberts as if they aren’t locked in the middle of righteous combat of the verbal variety with her comfort on the line. Her eyes move from the younger to the older, ignoring the immediate protests from your mutual friend as well as your own startled outburst. What the fuck Rose? What about some solidarity here? “You said you retrieved the items from my mother’s car. Where might those be?”

“I placed them in the closet, in the office downstairs,” Mr. E offers, “I can get them if you like?”

“There is no need. I merely want to retrieve my bag.”

You follow her post-haste as she exits stage right, John scrambling to follow only to get caught and drafted by his father to help him with ‘something.’ You don’t catch what exactly, because Rose quickly puts some distance between her and the bedrooms--plural, because Mr. E’s room is open and you know her mom’s already in there, Eggdad acting the gentleman and offering up his own space for the ladies to take. Apparently the only reason Wine Mom ended up on the couch earlier was because John’s dad didn’t want to try and carry her up the stairs alone.

“You can totally sneak after your mom passes out, y’know, keep up with the whole running theme of pre-teen rebellion we got goin’ on here,” You whisper conspiratorially to Rose after you’re both safely down the stairs. She snorts. You wonder if pouting would help, but you don’t think you can pull off the puppy eyes. Yours are nowhere near the right shade of green to be super effective.

“No, I do believe compliance is in the cards tonight.” Teeth flash in a predatory smile. “Trapped in the same room, under another’s roof, with the rules of propriety insisting the rudeness of wandering another’s home after the owners have gone to bed? It is perhaps the best chance I’ve had to speak with my mother and guarantee sobriety. A locked in the closet situation, if you will.” 

“So all that doom and gloom on the walk home was all for nothing?”

She pauses, hand on the railing, a radiant goddess of all of age nine preparing to descend into the dark shadows below.

“I wouldn’t say it was for nothing. My feelings on the matter have not changed, merely...here is an opportunity to change course and make progress. Every choice we make is a crossroads, Dave. To advance, or retreat, seeking more optimal conditions for success.”

“A tactical retreat seems mighty fine to me.” That sounds childish, even to your ears. You scowl, seeing her formulating a rebuttal in the way she raises her eyebrows, and beat her to it. “I mean, fuck, it’s not like you can make her listen. And even if you do; eventually you’ll go home and shit’ll settle down and it’s--”

Back to nothing. Hardly speaking. The silence ringing in your head. You’re too exhausted to hurt.

“You’re projecting, Dave.” Rose inserts herself into the blank space your cut off tirade leaves behind. Because yeah, you’d realized that.

“Shit doesn’t really change,” you mumble, “it just becomes a different type of problem.”

Maybe Bro doesn’t drag you up to the roof any more, but that doesn’t stop the small, quiet part of you from screaming he will. And you know he picks up on that shit.

You hate that your first reaction is to run. Maybe it’ll always be to run. You won’t ever know, will you? Because he’s--

Someday, you’re sure of it, he’ll get tired of you being as jumpy as a rabiroo and he’ll be gone.

“You don’t mean that.”

“I thought we made a pact not to do this today?” You offer as Rose considers whether she particularly wants to unpack that shit, right here right now, in the middle of these fuckin’ stairs, baring your ass for anyone who decides to walk out of one of those doors.

I was not the one to bring it up; regardless, there is nothing shameful about carrying a scar.” But those violet eyes slide past you. You try to follow and freeze, seeing a brief flash of a tall shadow--too curvy to be Mr. E--vanish into the room at the top of the step. God. Just. Smite you already. You can feel your face burning.  

“Ix-nay on the choanalyzing-psyay, comprendre?” You mumble, shoving your hands in your pockets. “You’ve made your opinion as clear as a swarovski. So clear it prisms the hell outta the opinion and breaks it down into a motherfuckin’ rainbow of entirely bullshit assumptions.”

Christ. 

“I thought we’d moved past the creative denial phase.”

Rose.

“Very well; pass we shall.”

Even if she lets it drop and moves on, marching forward on her yet unnamed quest, you can’t quite seem to.

The unease trails after you like sentient miasma. The tiniest and most petty of betrayals wrinkling in the depths of your heart. You two were parental-avoiding-buds. You have a bond formed in mutual commiseration. Days and weeks worth of late night talks, even if--okay maybe it’s weighted 2-to-1 towards the subject of Dave-complains-about-something but--

What does that say about you , that Rose made the decision to do more than just run away, and instead of cheering her on for making a hard decision you have to fight the urge to grab her sleeve and go “ don’t!” in a mild panic?

...why won’t you talk to him?

What’s stopping you from turning that commiseration buddy status into a doing-shit-about-it buddy? You’re not afraid of him. You’re not. You’re not--

Carrying a scar.

Fuck that. 

Rose’s hand hovers over the light switch at the bottom of the stairs, but she doesn’t trip it. She doesn’t need to, the lights upstairs offer enough bleed over into this mostly open space, especially when augmented by the low burn of the forgotten fireplace. Blankets and pillows are folded on the couch, but otherwise untouched.

Empty. Desolate.

It’s quiet as a mouse down here. Deserted and drowned out by all the activity upstairs. Plenty of time and mental space for thinking inconsequential thoughts to get rid of the uncomfortable as fuck ones you accidently threw up all over your friend’s metaphorical shirt. Maybe you should, like, annex the lower floor. It’d be like having your own fuckin’ kingdom to rule over. As king you’d decree bedtimes abolished and adults banished until morning. Then you and Rose could rescue John from his Dad’s clutches and camp out within your new borders. Problem solved. The rule of law is finders keepers, and the guard you’d expected to be keeping watch was missing from his post. It’d be a bloodless acquisition.

Which is actually kinda weird. Where is Bro anyway? You peek into the kitchen before following Rose into the office hallway. Still nothing.

You don’t want to see him. But...

Dad’s buggin’ John. Mom’s in--Bro’d better not be talkin’ with Rose’s mom because that’s as bad as if it’d been him at the top of the stairs, if not worse. Your radar is silent, which you’d usually take to mean he’s fucked off to the roof. But, again, no roof. Is the yard the next best thing? It feels too ground bound for his taste.

Rose doesn’t acknowledge your autopilot rambling about your series of first actions as King of the Ground Floor and how it was strategically sound because you’d control the food resources and could barter with the Adult Nations for the privilege of using the facilities. She finds the closet easy enough, a few boxes and bags set clearly aside from a bunch more creepy clown merchandise and a mindblowing number of spare hats hung up against the door. Rose sighs and pulls a lavender backpack, with an adorable black cat-face on the back flap and it’s tail embroidered onto one of the straps, out of the pile and leans it up against her knees. 

“Here,” She opens the head with a snap of its neck and offers you a purple box. Smaller than a loaf of bread but bigger than your palm. Your eyebrows climb into the snowcapped mountain that is your hairline as you take it.

“Did we really come all this way for a present?? Dude, you’re not supposed to give gifts on your birthday, you’re supposed to get gifts.”

“Is it midnight yet?” She asks mildly. You fidget, knowing the answer, but not wanting to admit it. She smiles because she knows you know. Crafty broad. “The act of gift giving and receiving is a positive activity for both participants; as your preternatural therapist I highly recommend you open that box and partake.”

“Wouldn’t that technically be breakin’ the bounds of professional objectivity there? Since it’s your present an’ all.” Suspiciously--and maybe a little guiltily, you consider the offering. You don’t have a return gift, which makes you feel like a right tool. It’s not like she’d told you until it was too late.

You’ll fix it though. As soon as you get home to Bro’s sweet sweet Amazon account. You’ll just need to...figure something out.

You don’t have claws, so trying to use your nail to break the thin tape holding the top flap of the box closed is an exercise in frustration. You’re a smart, capable kid, though, and eventually manage to dig your puny blunt baby nail under the edge and peel it back, allowing you access to the unknowable goodies inside.

...Which is another box, surrounded by a layer of plastic trapped bubbles and weird shaped foamy things --are those packing peanuts?  

“Bubblewrap AND peanuts! You’re spoilin’ me here, Rose!” 

Okay so the first thing you do is pop one of the bubbles. And then another. And maybe a few more. You’re also thinking about storing a couple of the foam bits in John’s pillow tonight. For the irony. The only kind of peanuts he’ll ever be able to come in contact with.

Rose just rebukes you with an unimpressed, arched eyebrow, “It’s delicate. I had to take precautions.”

Delicate huh? If you were a cat, which you aren’t, your whiskers would probably be twitching as you pull the much smaller box out of the mess of packing material. It’s one of those clamshell boxes that people put jewelry in. Not the small hinged ring boxes, but the kind where the top nestles snugly over the bottom. And wider. Bigger than your palm and maybe another half-hand tall. It’s a bit unsteady, like it isn’t designed to fit with whatever it’s holding.

“If you really did get me that rock we discussed all those months ago, Rose, I’m gonna have to let you down gently. I’m not pretty enough for you, remember? That shit hurt yo. Straight to the heart. Tore my life to pieces. Last Resorts. Etcetera, Etcetera. I love you, but like I just don’t think we’ll work out after all that.”

“Oh don’t worry, I’m well aware of the torch you’re still carrying.” God you love Rose. That smile is textbook cat-playing-with-a-feather-and-a-missing-canery right there. “I do not see romantic incompatibility as a reason to hold back on spoiling a good friend.”

You give her the suspicious stink eye, but your curiosity is hella piqued. “Fine. Let’s see your last ditch effort to woo me away. You’re up against that hellspawn of a slushie though, so that’s some memorable shit. This better knock my socks off.”

You wriggle the top a bit, figuring out the best way to hold it to make sure the sucker doesn’t go flying when you pry the two pieces apart. Delicate. Rose said delicate. It’d be just your luck  if the whole thing somehow slipped out of your hands and smashed onto the floor.

There’s a pinkish white pillow sitting in the box, and on that pillow is--

“What the FUCK Rose???”

You attempt to take in what you’re presented with. The off-white coloring of the curves, shading almost orange in the cavities, and darker, weathered tapering off into the point of the beak. You completely ignore anything Rose is saying right now because it’s not important at all as you scoop the small, fragile--oh god it’s so fragile--bird skull out of the box. It’s definitely coated in something. Likely to make it more durable. It doesn’t quite feel like rubbing your finger against the squirrel skull Bro brought you years ago, but that’s probably for the best. It’s not like a super small fry like a sparrow or something, but some unnamed larger, probably East Coast native specimen. Older too, given how most of the skull bones appear to have fused together. The whole thing fits snugly in the palm of your hand. Something shifts under it, weaves of translucent twine falling from the shadow of death, tiny amber beads shining in the light from the overhead lamp. 

It dangles, a web of shining gold, from your hand.

“DUDE--Rose--” You’re goddamn speechless . You shift your hand, staring down at the gaping eye cavities staring up at you, “--did you know for realsies bird skulls are illegal?”

Fuck no, that’s the first thing you say?

It makes her laugh at least. “I wouldn’t have expected you to care about the legality of such a trinket, all things considered.”

“I mean I don’t, not really, it’s like--” You flounder. Gods. Where the fuck are your words??? Hello??? Important situation going on right here, kinda necessary to get these thoughts outta your whirling thinkpan and into the air. But you like, can’t or something. They just get caught in the twinkle of amber and the depths where beady, gleaming eyes would be, “It’s fuckin’ metal Rose, oh my god. I’ve always wanted a crow skull for my collection, but even Bro wouldn’t--said it wasn’t worth the risk tryin’ to buy me one. If I wanted one I’d had to wait for one of the birds on the roof to die or --

It was what? Last year?--if you go back far enough you’ll find it. Find the clock and rewind-- You’d gotten the squirrel skull for the previous christmas and you always like how awesome bird skulls looked, so you’d asked. He’d taken you to the roof and put that shitty sword in your hand and told you if you really wanted one you’d have to catch one and cut the head off yourself.

It was supposed to be a lesson. You don’t know.

But it only made you cry.

Which you are totally not doing right now. Not at all. Your free hand discreetly rubs up under the edges of your Bro’s shades. Nope. That isn’t dampness. At all. Just an itchy lid. An eyelash. That shit can make your eyes water.

“I mean seriously Rose. This is so damn cool. It’s totally some fancy goth’s wet dream.” Is there--gog there are tiny insects in some of the larger chunks of amber! “You just had to go all out didn’t you?? Is it a necklace or something? Because I love it, but I’m pretty sure actual usage would break it unless it’s plaster, and that don’t look like plaster--” 

“It’s not a necklace. I believe it would make a fetching suncatcher, myself. Here, let me show you; I marked these three edges with wire right? Connect them, and it suspends the skull and spreads the rest out to catch the light--see?”

And she does show you, the added stability and shaping from the bits of wire--she twists them together--transforming what’s already a rad skull into something awesome, moving you both closer to the desk and turning on the more directed lamp. The light gets caught in the amber, setting the whole damn thing even the twine on fire. It’s--

“Like a spider web, woah.” Even more appropriate, trapping all the little insects in its clutches, frozen in time. Like this, the twine-web itself isn’t all that long, but it falls in a really deliberately fetching way-- christ . Your heart sinks in your chest. “Damn, I’m gonna have to up my game. Maybe put my head together with John, we can’t let you win the most extra gift competition in all of ever before it even started!”

“Perhaps I did go overboard,” Rose admits as she unhooks the wires, packing it carefully back  into the box. You let her, because fuck. This is going straight into your soon to be emptied sylladex so there’s no chance of accidental ejections. “I pride myself in balancing facets of your interests and symbolism to create a better than satisfactory gift but... much of this was originally outside my knowledge and expertise. Sleepless nights are prime for manic creativity, and prone to encouraging one to bite off more than they reasonably should with nary a thought to potential consequences.”

“Rose…” You founder, clutching the small box to your chest. You hesitate to ask. You haven’t in a while. Lately, with the excitement from the trip--she wouldn’t have started working on a present this uh, delicate until she found out it wouldn’t be snail mail the whole way. She’s too diligent for that. “Is it still the same shit? The dreams?” 

“Ix-nay, remember?” Ugh, right. She did give you that pass earlier. Fine. This time it isn’t over text. You can see carefully concealed evidence of the shadows in and under her eyes, and the way she carefully looks away from you. She replaces the rest of her things into the backpack, sliding the straps over thin shoulders. Ready to leave this small respite and head back into the frey. Is the impending conversation waiting in Mr. E’s room really so much less daunting than this one? 

Rose cares not for your sulking, because she moves on as if you’d not toed the line. “I’ve been searching for an activity to help me relax. The foray into crafting was interesting, but working with skulls and twine and tiny beads are far too precise for me to be particularly comfortable with the activity, especially when operating at levels that aren’t exactly optimal. Music isn’t fit for all hours of the morning, and as lost as I can get in...wordcraft...sometimes I’d like something a little more mindless.”

“Bro sews.” You blurt it out without really thinking about it. It catches her attention though, drags it back from that thousand yard stare where you don’t know if she’s seeing the room with its creepy clown decorations at all. “Like, he used to stay up all night makin’ smuppets n shit, but even after the--Incident--it’s been shit like, you know, those colorful ass shirts? But he still does it.”

“Hmm. Needlework is a different kind of precision but...Perhaps. The repetition sounds agreeable.”

Regular motions with a predictable process and a satisfying outcome. Strangely conversational, those words burn their way out of the thorny bramble nest that is your brain. It seems like something Rose might say. She sounds unnervingly like him sometimes, or would if he was more free with words around you. 

It’s fine. You like talking to Rose better anyway.

Your shit is already up in John’s room, and has been since yesterday, so with the Present, well, presented, and Rose’s shit fetched, all that’s left is to eventually head back upstairs. You resist the urge to give one last heartfelt plea to sneak out with you, but with a tired smile and a promise to stop by and tell John goodnight, she vanishes into the Forbidden Room, bag and all, leaving you in the hallway with a fragile bird skull in a box and the minutes to midnight ticking down in the back of your head. Tick tock. Tick tock.

Sucking in a breath on the minute, you use the seconds to ground yourself and push the rest of the way down the hallway. You weren’t gone that long, but John’s probably gonna ask if you two got lost in a broom closet or something. The implication being, you know, sloppy makeouts, because that’s apparently the staple of your relationship and not mutual what the fucking at your individual dysfunctions. Maybe you should try dragging John in on the whole shindig, but you don’t think he’s ready for that yet. He flat out denied any of that sleepwalking shit this morning, and you have proof it happened.

The expected teasing doesn’t come, however, as you push the door open, a rebuttal to the nonexistent heckling stumbling awkwardly from your lips. He’s probably a tad too busy to bother with you right now.

John’s seated uncomfortably on the mattress, with Mr. E next to him. Maybe he hadn’t stopped John from following you to help--what? Set up the bed? There’s a pile of blankets and shit laid out on the floor next to the bed, but that was there before you left.

Yup. Definitely walked in on something.

After a moment of standing awkwardly at the door, with the sounds of a conversation dying as if your very presence is an anathema to some sincere father-son talk-it-out moment, you are assaulted with the idea that you should be anywhere but here. 

“Uh. Sorry. Rose said she’ll be by in a bit to say goodnight, just a, uh, warning? Mr. E--” The words are out of your mouth before you can even process them, previous thoughts upon thoughts buried and bubbling up under your not-quite-panic-but-still-pretty-awkward-mounting anxiety, “I need--”

What?

Rose is gonna go in there and pin her mom down and convey… something. You focus on the seconds and, weirdly enough feel yourself grounding. You can breathe again. Keep going. 

Maybe you should try to do something too? 

“Do you know where Bro is? I didn’t see him downstairs.”

He gives you directions to the balcony. Christ, so he is essentially on the fucking roof. Okay. 

You skeddaddle before you can second guess this stupid decision and bury yourself in John’s closet to hide. Rose’s box, the incident with the crow skull fresh in your mind, you slide into an empty space in your sylladex. 

Rose is facing one of her personal boogeymen right now. With words and feelings and not running away the moment the parentals backs are turned.

Shouldn’t you have the fucking courage to do the same?

Why don’t you?

It’s only words.

You’re good with words, even if they are absolutely meaningless 80% of the time.

You hold up that Bro--who straight up put a sword in your hand and told a kid to man up and kill a bird--up against the one who let his blade fall to the ground and held you. Who made you a pretty good cake, who had some flour on his nose for probably hours, and put those freaky ninja stalky powers to good use and…

Holy fuck it’s cold.

Whelp, you are committed now. You have entered the frozone. There is no turning back because there’s no way the yellow light from the hallway isn’t drawing his attention, announcing your presence as clearly as if you’d come out shaking the hell outta a cowbell. You are making this happen. Doing-shit-buddy status activate. Rose would be so proud if she could see you now. You expect there will be lavishly sarcastic praise to be heaped at your feet in the morning, honoring you for your bravery.

Bro’s a shadow against more shadows, leaning against the railing, lit from behind by what you easily recognize as the light from a phone screen. You almost imagine you’re the smooth voiced narrator of one of those vanilla nature documentaries, safe in a blind spot and observing one of nature’s great predators out in the wild. It’d be a lie, of course. The predator knows exactly where you are and decides to doze lazily in the grass instead. Unlike the narrator, you know you’re only safe because he doesn’t want to hurt you.

And you…

Think…

You believe it.

The door shuts behind you. Mostly. It doesn’t settle properly in the frame. Light leaks around the edge.

You grit your teeth so they don’t chatter and force yourself to--what? Move. You move. You put one foot in front of the other as if this is nothing different than you walking across the living room with a red plastic party cup of none other than the A-est of Js, and plop yourself against the rail next to him. You can peer around his arms, thinner than you remember. He’s lost muscle. He’s changed. He’s changed in good ways and bad, and--you don’t want to see it. Don’t enjoy being aware of it, but you force yourself to do so now, because pretending you don’t leaves you spiraling into bad habits and you--

You don’t like it. Running away all the time. It’s not like he’s going to chase you.

Sometimes you want him to chase you, and if that isn’t a little fucked up you don’t know what else to do with it.

He still hasn’t acknowledged you with anything more than a flicker of his eyes and a nod. You need a way to break the ice, cuz you know that look, etched in blue-light and stark shadows, and he isn’t gonna do it. 

You see green text on white, surrounded by orange--

It’s. Familiar.

“Is that pesterchum??? On your phone? Is that shit possible?

Is it stupid? Yes. Is it anything related to what you are burning to say? No. But it does result in a quiet chuckle. Score.

“Normally, no.”

“Oh, okay, so you can just willy nilly up and break the rules. I see.” C’mon, you need more than that. Don’t freeze up, Dave, both literally and figuratively, “Who’re you talkin’ to? Is it Stevens?? Oh who am I kidding, I don’t know if you even have anyone else to be pestering at this time of night--wait wouldn’t it be like, 1 am at home or something--”

“Newt does enough fussing with access to text messages,  he doesn’t need another avenue to harass me with.” A twitch of an eyebrow, the twist of a lip. Micro upon micro. He keeps typing. You can’t read the letters from here, too small, but you can hear the rhythmic taps of the keys. You shiver. They stall. Bro finally looks away from his phone, “You shouldn’t be out here without a coat, Dave.”

“I’m cool Bro. Positively Peachy. I promise.” You fight to stamp down on the recoil reverberating in your gut, because Bro shouldn’t do such concern. But he does. He does and maybe he’s actually being sincere about it. “No really, I’m burning with curiosity, so much I might actually self immolate if you don’t satiate it. If it’s not your not-so-secret-Agent, then who is it?”

For a moment, you don’t think he’s going to answer. Is this more work? More from the part of his life he doesn’t want to talk about? Maybe it’s unfair to see his hesitation as a wall being built up between you two, but you do. A near invisible bug-screen placed perfectly to obstruct your attempts to thread a tiny paper plane through what should’ve been a slightly open window.

What the fuck is with you tonight? That didn’t even make sense. Dude’s entitled to his privacy. Just because he’s been giving you feet lately doesn’t mean it’s time to start snatching at miles.

“A friend got back from an extended trip yesterday, so I decided to check in. It’s nothing big.”

“A friend huh.” It passes through the window, landing on the desk in front of waiting hands. You let go of the breath you’d been holding. Getting a fairly substantial answer, as inconsequential as it is, emboldens you. “Tell them I say hi!”

Hesitation, but the keys clack again. He actually did it. The response is returned in no time. Damn he’s even got the blinking orange light of a new message going on there. You’re gonna have to figure out how he did it so you can add an on-the-go Pocket John to your collection.  

Bro sags a little, leaning against the railing, breath coming out in a puff of mist, “Da--Data says hi back, through the use of far too many unnecessary and terrible instances of wordplay that I will not repeat.”

“Sounds like my k-kinda dude.” You tuck that inconsequential nugget to your chest, like a tiny coal warming your frostbitten hands. “C’mon, I appreciate a good pun or two, share with the class. P-prretty please?”

Damn. You don’t let your teeth chatter as the wind picks up, but they decide to veto your wishes and do it anyway.

“No.” The flat refusal almost has you slamming your own window, but he doesn’t leave it hanging. He transfers the phone to his far hand and, after a split second of hesitation (-it hangs as the world slows, subdividing to milliseconds and you try and decide if you want to duck or not--you don’t-) throws the other arm over your shoulder, his big hand curling around the curve of your shoulder and reeling you in. “Get over here, lil’ bro. You’re gonna make yourself sick.”

“D-dude bro ew, haven’t you heard of p-personal space??” But it’s only a token protest, hissed out between increasingly chattering teeth. The hold is barely even there. You could push away if you want to, but Bro unbuttons the coat he’s got on and crouches down on what has to be the worst freezing concrete floor to remove some of that massive height distance between you. Even more mindboggling than the buttons, he shrugs a whole sleeve off his shoulder--he’s gotta be just as Texan baby as you are, stealin’ the Egbertian cast offs-- but that shoulder goes around you both and you somehow get folded into the new space near his waist, half sitting on his knee, and under his arm. It’s awkward as hell, but you shove your shrieking PERSONAL SPACE gremlin off the roof because fuck it, Bro is acting as a personal heater and that’s way more important at this very moment.

It’s not perfect. Your toesies are liable to develop frostbite in your totally inadequate socks, but your ears are warming as you lean back against the puppet felt of his shirt. You scrunch your nose at a smell that reminds you of falling asleep in Cal’s arms during a night you’d rather not remember, thanks. “We coulda gone inside y’know.”

Inside is John and Dadbert. Rose and Momlonde. Inside is awkwardly waiting for a door to open and wondering if you’re actually not as cool as you think you are.

You don’t really want to go inside, even if the alternative is that you end up sitting on his knee like a little kid.

“We could have,” He acknowledges the point, arm a weirdly comfortable weight on your shoulders, anchoring the loosened jacket like the supports of a tent. “Figured you wouldn’t want to, since you came all the way out here after all that drama earlier.”

“Hey, that was entirely unexaggerated, and wholeheartedly deserved bitchin’. I hate the cold. It hates me. I vow to make this opinion known to any and all throughout the land. Vocally, and viscerally, and as soon as I can figure out how to obtain magic weather-related powers I’m gonna outlaw winter and make everything a nice even seventy something effin’ degrees forever.”

“Effin’? Really Dave?”

“F, Eff, duh Bro, learn your unit of measurements.”

“I wasn’t askin’ for clarification, merely commenting on the sudden, uncharacteristic censorship given your explosive responses to the mere suggestion of language policing.”

More key taps. He’s not holding the phone like he’s trying to keep it from you. Actually, thanks to the fact that you’re acting like an arm rest, it’s smack dab in front of your face. You push your--his--shades up into your hair, and then regret it, that shade of orange is liable to give you a headache if you stare at it for too long, so you naturally deviate to DataJammer’s green.  

“There are two things I will sacrifice my creative freedom for, John, and the jokes. ‘Sides, it looks like a little wordplay isn’t anything monmewmentally new for you.” 

You can’t resist.

“Christ, kid, don’t you start that too.” 

You read back a few lines, greedily drinking in this small window to something you’ve never even gotten so much as a glimpse of, while Bro types out an unnecessarily long ‘talk to you later’ using probably too many words himself, to this mysterious, pun spouting friend of his. You even find yourself a little jealous, although you take solace in that he’s flicking the power button with a twitch of his thumb so he can focus on you.

A contemplative hum is a vibration in his chest.  “Well? What’s on your mind?”

Not even a “what do you need.” You don’t need anything. But you want--

You pause, sucking in a breath of cold air. Your throat is suddenly dry as fuck. That’s why you’re hesitating. It’s the climate.

He waits for you.

You wonder how long that will last.

After seven minutes and twenty three seconds, Bro shifts again, and you know this is it. He’s gonna stand, and set you down and the moment will pass and you’ll have accomplished nothing.

Only he doesn’t. Just takes that next step and settles entirely down on the ass-freezing concrete, accepting his lot in life as a piece of furniture. He sucks in a deep breath, holding it before letting out a long extended sigh of exactly five seconds. “Take as long as you need.”

You aren’t ready. You don’t think you’ll ever be ready.

After thirteen more toe freezing awkward minutes stuffed in the dude’s armpit, you finally speak. Throw the goddamn caution to the wind, Dave. You’re in control here. He’s waiting for you . He can’t so much as breathe without you feeling the muscles around you flex. You’re sitting on him. You’re in control.

Bro would have never let you dictate the terms of engagement.

“You know, we might...never be okay with...all of this. Y’know, me ‘n you, together.” You say the words finally. The poison stewing deep inside you. Out loud. To him. Because he’s trying. Because fuck you, you really do see it. You see the messages and you see the AJ and you even see the goddamn carrots--he made you cake and you just… “It’s been months and you’ve kept your promise but I can’t--I can’t be like John, Bro. I kinda wish I could to be honest. John’s pretty awesome. But I think--shit’s broken. It’s broken and I’m tryin’ to glue ‘em back together but it’s mangled so bad nothin’ fits back together right. I--”

Can’t.

He doesn’t speak. You feel him shift again but you don’t even think and shove your face into his side, feeling the stuttering breaths of surprise as the puppet-felt shirt rubs up against your skin.

There’s pieces all over the floor. A mosaic of colors and sounds and beats.

You’re trying to pick them up and find places for them all but--

There’s no shame in carrying a scar.

“...I know.

You feel more than hear the words. 

“I know, and that’s okay.” They are quiet, but the words are so close they might as well be vibrating through you, “I know this ain’t gonna undo all the shit h--I’ve done. It’d be pretty fucked up to expect you to act like it didn’t matter.”

“Yeah but that’s the point, Bro!” You blurt it out, your volume increasing with your need to be heard. “I know you know. And now you know that I know you know, you know?”

“Keep this up and know won’t even sound like a word anymore.”

“Bro, pls, I’m bein’ serious. Sincere. Dropping all pretenses of irony and even sharing a single blanket in this frog infested frozen wasteland. We may be fucked up, but I see what you’re doing, okay? Parties, and fish, and cake--it doesn’t change the past but it’s--it’s nice? I--appreciate it. You’re trying, and I’m trying, and we’re both makin’ it work somehow. I don’t want you to think that just because I can’t--What I’m tryin’ to say isn’t meant to send you down some self-righteous self-hatred n’ guilt fest because I can’t help reacting and it--I know how it looks and you try ‘n hide it--” Inhale. Stop. Back up. Different attack vector necessary here, you’re just getting yourself all turned around and knotted. What do you want?

It twists you up, knowing he’s trying and it’s just not working. Is it you? It has to be you. He broke you, yeah, but you’re still broken. It’s--getting easier, to put it aside if you prepare. Like this, you’ve got your bro-hug on everyside, and you know he won’t hurt you. You can find comfort in that strength when it’s far, far away from the other side of a sword. You can joke and laugh and-- 

But if you see him as a shadow out of the corner of your eye. The flash of metal, even if it’s only a fork. A splash of unexpectedly bright saturated color still sends you on the lookout for puppet dong, even if you haven’t seen a single plush rump for months.

His fingers curl around yours. You freeze, and the fist you’ve been holding, the nails you’ve been digging into your palms, ease open slowly. You hadn’t noticed. They are kinda going numb. His hand is warm. So warm it almost burns.

“We should get you inside before you turn into the living embodiment of a popsicle.”

“And if I don’t wanna?” Okay, maybe that’s a little stupid. Maybe you aren’t quite thinking straight. You double down anyway, especially when you peer up into the darkness to try and find his face, unnervingly unshuttered pair of eyes the color of sunset in your smog-filled hometown. “What if I want to stay out here. Like this.”

With you.

Where the cold and the darkness numbs the shrieking bird that lives in your head, constantly yelling that there’s a gas-pocket ahead in the mineshaft, primed and ready to explode if your iron pickaxe throws a spark in just the wrong place. The pickaxe being your hells of uncooperatable brain and that little flinch when you feel the prickle of an unseen presence crawling down your back.

In this fantasy, where you can hug your Bro because you want to. Where you can pull a John and roll your eyes and laugh because he’s being over protective, and ain’t that just the worst thing ever? Where he doesn’t all but avoid you trying to give you ‘space’, making you wonder if he’ll get tired of trying eventually.

Where you can have that moment you glimpsed. John and his dad on the bed. Sitting quietly. Talking. Communicating. 

The moments you hate admitting you want. So you don’t. Even if it means lying to yourself.

“I’m not gonna dump you like a rock as soon as you don’t need my body heat anymore,” Bro says after a moment, shifting. He doesn’t let go of your hand, “We can do this just as well in front of the fire, where there’s no risk of either of us coming down with frostbite. Or tomorrow. Or another two years from now. You can take the time to figure out what you wanna say.” 

A beat.

“Or even if you want to say anything at all. I’m cool with that too.” Another one. Your heart is loud in your ears, and something wet lands on your nose. 

The sky is falling. Small, slow, cold. It’s a blurry mess to see between the moisture gathering in the space between your lashes. There’s a lump of burning ice in your throat.

“C’mon, lil’ bro. Let’s go.”

You don’t move. You cling. Your muscles are locked, and frozen. He has to carry you out of there like a sack of potatoes and you can’t bring yourself to protest, to fight it. You just allow yourself to bury your face into his shoulder and--

Slowly.

You let him pull you away from the edge.

Dan Egbert finds you curled up in front of the low fire, later, tucked up and snoozing under Bro’s chin with your head against his chest. 

You don’t want to move. 

You go on strike, as someone tries to disentangle you from plush fabric and long limbs. Carrying you back up the stairs, tucking you into a slightly neater and more cushy pile of blankets and pillows on John’s floor. A calloused hand hesitantly brushes against your bangs to gently remove the shades from your hair. The increasingly distant parental murmurings are lost in the reverberations of John’s loud snores.

You didn’t get to say goodnight. The force of the realization shocks you back awake for a moment, away from the clocks and your familiar red tower. Not to John. Not even to Bro. But it only lingers for a moment, because...that might be okay for now. 

You can take as long as you need.

The next morning, you wake to a world coated in freshly fallen snow.

Notes:

Thank you @DSi for beta-ing this massive thing this weekend and putting up with my worried wah-ing.

I promise I'll get to responding to comments tomorrow and or tuesday e.e I've been falling behind on them sorry! I love them so much though and really do read and appreciate them all multiple multiple times <3

Chapter 59: [I1P9] Transitions

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Davepeta > Paint the Town

Despite having been out of contact with Dirk for hours since your early morning textual equivalent of a peck-and-go kiss, you know the moment they get back to Houston. No warning--just a kid-bird-troll minding your own business and keeping yourself occupied while Dirk and Dave, in another universe, fly back from the mythical land of Washington after meeting with two of your best friends. For days. With no ‘end of the world’ birdshit hanging over their heads. 

Sounds dull if you’re honest about it (which you aren’t.)

You’re good right here, right now. Digging through storage rooms in the depths of this empty complex. There’s no need to skip ahead to get all in medias res. Its time will come. You’ve been here this whole time and deserve a little narrative lovin’ too.

Hah. Time.

You and Time aren’t on speaking terms, not after that stunt it pulled. You are cutting that bastard out of your life. You don’t care if that is impossible due to its nature as a fundamental force of the universe; you lost a whole four months of your life ( existence? Narrative relevance? ), you’re allowed to be a little salty about it within the sanctity of your own mind.

You deliberately hadn’t asked how long the return flight was supposed to be, knowing that possession of such information would leave you glued to the computer banks so you could constantly glance at the clock or--Condy forbid--get locked into a silent countdown that would be liable to end with another set of horn-shaped dents in the ceiling; your impatience resulting in driving yourself up a wall repeatedly. Not that climbing really did much other than let you stretch some muscles and dig your claws into shit. Flying was way more effective. These toesies of yours never touch the ground if you can help it.

Once out of the no-contact zone that is a plane full of dead air, though, your broirail’s location shouldn’t make a lick of difference to you (even though it does.) In Houston or in Washington, the orange text is the same, although you miss being able to click into Pesterchum and get an answer instantaneously instead of after all social obligations have been fulfilled.

Really, it’s the final piece of the puzzle. Waiting to settle back into place. Getting back to normal for a month or so, after that mind fucked experience of drifting. Only the month though, because then your seasoned traveler of a broirail will be flitting off to see Jade .

Or, more appropriately, to steal her grandpa’s tech. But still.

All you know is that the trip home will take hours, so you stretch yourself out in preparation for the wait. Your go-to activity is screwing around in MS Paint, but as you keep sliding unmistakably into Dave’s style, into the iconic porkchop shaped mouths, you feel… unsatisfied. An itch you can’t quite manage to scratch . The mouse feels wrong in your claws. You need to get out and try something else.

You’d been uneasy leaving Dirk alone, but hell, he’d been fine for the months you were gone, if an appalling mess in the bed-head department--which you’ve largely fixed now aside from the occasional maintenance, you’re welcome world--so a few hours picking through the unused depths of the meteor is nuthin’ in comparison. This logic is largely how you end up levels away from the observation room in a forgotten closet, with only half an ‘ear’ perked and listening to the distant hum of your broirail’s soul to make sure he wasn’t getting antsy or anything. Sometimes you wonder if this was how Pounce de Leon felt, when you’d see his ears swivel in his sleep, listening for the kitten cries of distress from a tiny wriggler exploring the world.

It’d be maddening, you think, if you didn’t have something to keep you grounded. Reminding you that you aren’t alone in this cavernous complex so similar to, if not an alternate universe version of, the same one where part of you had died. 

A tomb.

All that long-distance chasing you had to do across fureaking time and space must have earned you a skill badge or something, because you can hear that comforting reverberation through several concrete and metal floors. You haven’t allowed yourself to shut off that part of you since you got back. You don’t want to close your eyes and your heart and hear nothing at all.

The pile of cans to your right contain some oil-like liquid from the depths of the station’s weirdo cloning labs, but it spreads easily enough to allow you to start making small sketches on a section of blank metal wall with your claws between two haphazard stacks of boxes. You spend a moment to wonder if it’s toxic, before realizing it doesn’t really matter if it is. You’re an all-powerful immortal Godtier troll-bird-human. The only thing dipping your fingers into a vat of acid would do is hurt a lot before the whole god-thing kicks in. 

Luckily, further experimentation doesn’t lead to the discovery of an unknown flesh-eating substance, so you have yourself a workable, if substandard, batch of black paint. You wrinkle your nose at it as you smear some between thumb and foreclaw, testing how it spreads. Blood has a better consistency, and waaay more colors, and somewhere in a corner of your mind bits and pieces of a boy who was a bird points out that the concept is kind of fucked up, isn’t it?

It smells like John’s world. Oil. Oil and green fire and blood--

The observations slide off you like water dumped on a duck and you hurry up and get your distraction on. Full speed ahead. Gonna paint this town red-- or, well, black, since black is all you have right now, and ‘the town’ is merely a specifically chosen section of wall. Eventually, after running through an entire can and a half making it look like a class of preschoolers were set amuck on the town, you settle back on your heels and regard the dubious fruits of your labor. Some look like blobs. You can see your friends in the silhouettes and horn-nubs of others. Closer, but still vaguely off. Claw painting was a return to one of your roots, until you got your first set of brushes when you celebrated your fifth sweep. That was an idea though. 

Tapping your claw against your lip in thought, you momentarily forget that it is covered in the remnants of a mostly unknown substance. The oil coating has a nasty aftertaste that has you adding a mental ‘blargh’ and hiss to your soundless gagging.

It comes out as a sad wheeze, and you make a face before zipping back a few doors toward something that passed as a living area or break room that you’d found during your searching. The point was it had running water somehow. It flows over your hands, allowing you to pick the gunk out from beneath your claws with unconscious, practiced motions. You wonder where it comes from, where does it go, where does it come from heck if you know-- there’s no atmosphere, likely no underground water table, yet here it is, running over your claw tipped fingers. Fingers that aren’t the soft texture of human skin, but not quite troll chiten. 

Despite all the scrubbing some of the oil still clings, your Strider-pale shades towards troll dark with the added pigment. The weird paint wedges itself into nigh invisible-ridges and grooves and in revealing the previously unseen patterns, you realize it’s almost scaley. Not cat claws at all, huh. Probably more like talons. Trolls have claws, but they were more like sharp nails than actual rip ‘n tear claws. No wonder they’d been tripping every piece of you up. The bird was the only one to know what’s up and birds don’t have hands so it just gave up and took a nap instead.

You prick your finger on the needle of curiosity, the tiny scales holding up slightly better than you expected. But, it doesn’t take much more pressure before they give, leaving green blood beading on the pad of your ring finger. Not really useful. Not even as armored as chiten would be, with its added thickness. Just. 

Different.

Sometimes it hits you, like a gooey, stinky grey present from the sky smack dab in your face, exactly how bizarre you are. This conglomeration of human, bird, and troll. Strangely, you find that the more you catalogue these differences, the more at ease you feel in your own skin. Because yeah--maybe it’s weird, but it’s unique. It’s you. It’s exciting. Even the fureaking feathers, all small and downy, itching at your neck as they take their sweet time pushing their way through your skin, it’s--change. You like change. (you just don’t like it happening without you.)

Will you have to deal with molting one day???

Only Time will tell, and you already know it's a bastard.

At least you know you’ll grow; John gained a few inches on you during those three years. It hadn’t helped your mood at all having both your friends change while you were stuck in the static construct of a game sprite. You’re over that now though. ( Really.)

You flex your claws--talons?--for a moment pretending the overgrown pointy af nails would act like cat claws and contract. They don’t, of course, but a similar motion and a twist of will has your blades extending with an unnecessary snrk , the hum of pink magic sliding out of the somehow unstained-by-your-mystery-paint gloves. They count as part of your magic self-cleaning PJs, you guess. 

Maybe some of this acceptance is rooted in Nepeta’s ever malleable view of identity. Maybe some of it can be traced back to Dave’s desire to leave stagnation and irrelevance behind. But…

Does it matter? This is where you’ve ended up, a patchwork of traits and memories, picking at fragments of past lives and trying to cobble together some sort of future out of it all.

You scrub at the stain on your hands a little more to no avail, and you make a note to not try that again unless you somehow manage to get your paws on a set of brushes. For a moment you let yourself drift, reaching into your sylladex for the set you’d always carried with you. Real musclebeast fur in the bristles, your sign custom stamped on the finely carved wooden grips; the quality propaganderrorists used to do their work. That tidbit of knowledge hadn’t meant much to you, but it was important to Equius so it became important to you all the same. 

But the card is empty. Your sylladex is empty, aside from your communicator. You know why. Sylladexes dissolve upon death, ejecting its contents. You remember finding him--later. You remember seeing some of Bro’s shit on the ground, sure that some probably sunk in the river of oil that still burned merrily behind you--You remember burying all of Bro’s shit--

Stop it.

You couldn’t do anything for him. Or for Equius. You failed them again as ARquiusprite.

You stood by and watched them die.

Bits of red and blue and melding purple swept out into the trash.

You won’t do that again.

Even if you feel helpless, trapped on the other side of the veil. Alone.

Well, now, that’s enough of wallowing. You grab your mind by the scruff and shake it like it’s a surly kitten. C’mon! Even you have to admit the clawpainting was fun, tugging on old memories of your early sweeps, painting in the blood of your kills, but you might be onto something with the brushes. The mouse feels weird in your hand--maybe you simply miss using a pencil or a brush. Dirk could probably get you the captchalogue code for a set of cheap paint brushes. Or--oh. Feathers. Could you fashion a paintbrush out of feathers? Would that work? Maybe not, but what about at least quill? 

Just as you’re considering plucking a feather from the mass of green-black you lug around everywhere and trying it out--you do have a ton of ink substitute after all--the wavelength of a pitch shift is enough for it to come unmoored from the general background resonance of Dirk’s soul. That extra sense tied to your aspect perks up, and you’re gone. You’re gone so fast that you’re touching down on the transportalizer and visualizing the observation area before you realized you left the water running.

It didn’t matter. Your atoms rematerialize in the corridor outside the observation room. The hallways were built for carapacians and the weird chess mutants down in the labs, but you fly faster than you can walk with these wings, and it’s easy enough to skim with your forest green booties inches off the floor until you’re in place to hover anxiously above your chaotically combined piles. An eruption of blankets and cushions and one distinctly restless Godtier vessel that belongs to your broirail.

It isn’t much--nothing like the full on fighting like the first nightmare you witnessed. He doesn’t even seem distressed in the way you’d been picking up from twitches and shifts and sighs that’d been corresponding to situations of social pressure, ranging from the mundane to the Confrontation With Psychomom territory.

He’s tossing, shifting, pulling closer to you as you settle yourself on top of the blankets beside him. You semi-consciously lift your wing so he’s tucked under one, head right up against your leg. He isn’t much of a cuddler by any definition of the term, but you’ve noticed this shift. An unconscious desire for proximity, even if he has a tendency to keep his limbs tucked tight to himself and only barely touch.

Sparks flicker through the mass of green-black. Not your pink, but maroon, darker, the color that’d seared through your soul. A building, flickering power, reaching out, transcending the background noise of resonance that’s turned this silent and echoing meteor into Home . It turns a song of the sea, into a pressure. Almost tangible. Steel against your already abused neck.

An unimportant part of your brain you like to call common sense murmurs that it might not be the smartest idea to have the source of that destructive energy tucked up under your wing like a baby bird. The rest of you tells that part to shut up, that you aren’t leaving.

Following some hunch you recognize as half aspect-based bullshit, and half the oft invoked curiosity that is fatal to your chosen fursona, you reach out and poke the core of it all. Pink sparks flicker between your paint stained claws. 

It’s like that night, when you managed to get him to talk . When he pulled out the core of himself and you’d finally seen the consequences of Lil’ Cal’s vicious tantrum. You hadn’t been prepared then, prodding about as requested when the rush had nearly zapped you, forcing you to instinctively flare your wings to absorb the cast off energy into green-black feathers as grey sparked to a brilliant red.  It didn’t last. A flint, striking steel, roaring into accelerant soaked tinder only to find no fuel to burn. Unable to be maintained.

It’s a whole ‘nother ball park now.

Look but don’t touch , you remind yourself as you tease that faintly ethereal projection out of his chest, holding it between your sparking fingers. You trace the most visible branch of the injury. Flickering. Your broirail’s soul hums beneath your claws. His breathing is picking up. Heat rises. Not physical heat but--dark, lifeless grey warming from inside, brightening, glowing, fading in and out. A weak signal, growing stronger.

Dirk was right. It has to be proximity based.

They’re home. Or close enough to home to be edging back into range. Your communicator pings at you from where it’d half-sunk into the valley of a blanket. You don’t really notice, given you kind of have a clawful at the moment.

Everything settles, not with a bang, but with a quiet sigh. Bright glowing red fill the spiderwebs of cracks, and you can feel it clicking into place. Eyelids flutter, and for a moment your heart--or whatever, you like to imagine your bloodpusher still exists but you won’t count on it considering how badly SBURB fucked up rebuilding your throat--echo the motion. Would the surge of, whatever this was, act as the shock to his system he so desperately needs…?

But no. The formerly dark crevices hum along softly, evenly. Bright, excited energy coursing through spaces where once there was nothing but cold stone. A chord is added back into the melody you hadn’t realized was missing until you heard it again. A faint hum, offset, harmonizing. It takes you a moment to place when you’d first heard it; back when you checked on the broken shards and found nothing more than a harmonizing hum. A harmony that almost reminds you of a tapestry of trapped stars. Set apart.

There’s a connection here. An answer, if only you’d look. You can feel it.

You lean forward, one hand carefully picking through sweat damp hair and with the other, you tug at the red threads you can barely see, where the breaks of the wound expose it to the outside. The sound fills you. It’s…

Off. It’s definitely Dirk, only--

The ping of your notifications sounds again, breaking that particular train of thought like someone slashed the car connections, but the train itself keeps flying, plunging off the cliff and you’re following the surging trail of electricity and scalding heat along a tangled braid. 

This is trespassing, you think, teetering on the edge in this sort of half-corporeal state you recognize from your dream-walking. He… probably wouldn’t like this. Probably wouldn’t say ‘yes’ even if you asked first.

You have a thread. A ball of yarn, unraveling in your claws. You can keep going. Find the answer. Why can’t he wake up? 

To find out you need to go deeper.

Down, and down, and down, so far down the metaphorical rabbit-hole you might as well completely leave your body behind. 

x-x-x

You answer the texts later. Much later. 

After a nap. A nice long, exhausting nap. Channeling your own magic was bad enough, but clearly you’d needed to absorb some of Dirk’s as well during the experience. You’re singed, like you can still feel the remnants of that fire licking at your feathers and the lightning dancing in your claws. You hadn’t intended to drop off immediately after surfacing but--well--circumstances being what they were--

Fuck.

Just fuck.

You prefer to be less boring with your epitaphs, but right now the good ol’ fashion simplicity just  about sums up how you feel, wings pinned and aching, one wrenched at a weird angle and half under Dirk’s head like a pillow. You reach out to smooth out the start of a new case of bed head, that preening instinct grabbing you by the ear and tugging incessantly. But you…

Hesitate. 

And reach for your communicator instead.

timaeusTestified [TT]: Hey.

You don’t even have to wait. He must have noticed you online. Definitely home on the computer then. 

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< sorry dropped off for an unexpected catnap
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< funfact you have zappy pawers
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< my own personal bug zapper
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< if only there were bugs to zap
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and not poor undeserving kittens
timaeusTestified [TT]: Sorry. I didn’t hurt you, did I?
timaeusTestified [TT]: I did, didn’t I? After what happened the other night I should have known better.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Davepeta?
timaeusTestified [TT]: Are you okay?

You’re...just staring into space. Down at the words. The repeated notification dings snap you out of… it. Yeah.

Yeah.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im purrfectly fine dude just give me a mewment here im taking stock of all my limbs
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yup all intact didnt even have to use one of my nine lives
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< srsly all you did was shock me a bit
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< though give me back my wing pls n thxs its starting to cramp
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< it is not a pillow
timaeusTestified [TT]: You know I can’t do anything about that. Guess you’ll just have to live with your new lot in life.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Are you sure you’re okay?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< nothing will ever be a biggie after you litterally tore me apart so uh yeah
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dont worry about it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its not like you could have really
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< changed anything
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i didnt have to stick my nose into it but i did its my fault if I get my whiskers singed
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im guessing youre home sw33t home now???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< unless youre racking up a fortune’s worth of in-flight f33s over there
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i f33l like your accountant will have some strong words with you when that bill comes in B33c
timaeusTestified [TT]: We’ve been home for a couple hours now. Long enough to shake out the cobwebs, so to speak.
timaeusTestified [TT]: We’d have an entirely different issue if Jane was going through my personal accounts. He was really good at separating business and pleasure. That shit’s outside the bounds of her job.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dont call it pleasure
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< pls
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you know where all that money came from
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its dirty money
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< puppet porn money
timaeusTestified [TT]: It’s completely legal. Don’t knock it just because it doesn’t scratch your post.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< B00
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< how dare you!!!
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dont you dare rub that nasty puppet ass all over my scratching posts!!!
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you will never know the unspeakable debauchery that earned all that cold hard cash
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m sure I can reverse engineer it if I tried. Or actually sat down and looked through a terabyte or more of project files squirreled away on all these hard drives, but who has time for that shit.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I gotta say, it’s good to be home. I never thought I’d say that about this shitty city.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Dave doesn’t think so. If he wasn’t so locked down I swear he would have been bawling when we walked through security back in Seattle.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< well duh
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< kid had the world for a few short days and now hes back in the stinky litterbox that is houston
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< id be sulking too
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< speaking of sulking

You hesitate.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< everyfang okay??? with cal???

Why did you ask that? Frogs above, now you have to commit or it’ll just be awkward.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< now that youre back in his clutches i mean
timaeusTestified [TT]: He’s quiet, if that’s what you’re asking.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I don’t know how to explain it.
timaeusTestified [TT]: He’s there on the edges. A malignant presence over the whole complex. If Dave wasn’t as Heartblind as he is, I’d bet some of the sulking is in response to that.
timaeusTestified [TT]: But Cal’s not actively pushing.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I want to say he feels distracted?

You freeze. Electricity crackling under your skin. Red eyes boring into you, surrounded by roaring green fire.

timaeusTestified [TT]: He can’t even squash my good mood and those things are fragile as hell. He isn’t trying hard enough.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I suppose I shouldn’t be complaining. I wonder how long it’ll last.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you sound a lil too unconcerned considering youre dealing with a malicious soul invading demon puppet
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< babys all grown up and graduated possessed juju 101 while i was gone
timaeusTestified [TT]: Four months can be a long time to live with shit. You learn to cope. 

You know that, don’t you? You might not have felt those four months--Frog, it’s been less than a week since August for you--but you can feel them like a missing piece to your puzzle.

You have a few more now, yanked out of your heart and hurting, old wounds newly torn open, and you have no idea what to do about. So you lock them away.

X-x-x

Things settle into a rhythm; you catnap when you feel like it, draw when you feel like it, explore if you get antsy. Even if you’ve covered nearly every room and some of the nearby meteors by now, you need to range further. But you can’t bring yourself to.

Your grist stash is running low. Mobs don’t spawn, and you aren’t about to murder some poor Pawns for a war that hasn’t started yet. You need to find another lab. Funnel its grist somehow. You ponder how to get around this limitation without actually taking any steps to solve it.

And sometimes, you do nothing. Sometimes you find yourself perching on the edge of your chair, staring down at your broirail, feeling a phantom tail lashing as if you could pounce and sink your claws in and dig, dig, dig. You could. You don’t. You want to, and it eats you up inside.

You remember what you saw when you did and you--

Somehow, things are less perfect than you expected. It’s like time doesn’t exist, even if you still feel the tethers of narrative relevance keeping you from drifting out of this particular chunk of the instance. You think about Bro. You pester Dirk a lot. About stupid shit, about not-so-stupid shit. It’s… Nice. 

Except when you stop thinking and go to fix his hair and feel the crackle of electricity buzzing under your skin. 

He’s mostly doing fine; returning home and reconnecting with--you have an inkling, and it worries you, no matter what Dirk seems to have reasoned out on the matter. He’s as close to content as you’ve ever known him to be, however, so you decide against looking the proverbial gift horse in the mouth. The dude seems downright cheerful when he messages you periodically throughout the days. It’s almost alien, and it reminds you uncomfortably that he’s largely settled in while you were gone. 

You know how it feels, getting back into your space, when you can finally put down your fears and burdens and breathe. It’s like finding the perfect sunspot at the front of the den, where a break in the rock allows the intense Alternian sunlight in at just the right angle that it only warms your chiten, making you drowsy and your eyes slide closed. Where you can listen to the buzzerflies and take a huge contented breath of jungle air, nothing but the scent of fur and fauna on the wind. Lying on your back in the middle of your room--your safe zone--staring up at the clipped photos shifting in the breeze from the open window. Aching and exhausted but at least you think it went okay and he’ll let you get your chill on for a few hours before you have to go back out into the fray. After the anxiety riddled adventure that was a romp up to Washington, it’s gotta be a relief. Just like that, it’s back to--

Normal. What you wanted. Just normal. Normal. Normal. Bro got you those brushes you were thinking about, so you alternate between doodling on the walls in one of the many spare rooms and storyboarding in MSpaint. You’re trying to figure out where to take the story. Right now it’s all star-crossed lovers separated by destiny ‘n shit and while that reflects the storm buried in your heart, it feels a little on the nose so you keep scribbling out more and more ideas. You don’t even want to make it about you. Blackrom isn’t your thing, so Vriska n Tz are out as inspiration unless you wanted to do some strange pale-ways nonsense.

You have plenty of material on one troll in particular stashed away in your brain. Partially due to an intense, selfishly hoarded crush that you can admit might have bordered on stalkerish, and partially due to experiences that aren’t your own, but have ended up trapped within you. You know every single romantic misstep and disaster that dogged one Karkat Vantas’ life since you met him, and beyond, but--

Like you told Dirk: that was too personal. You try not to touch that. 

Interdimensional Privacy, ‘n all. Important stuff.

Feferi and Sollux had that whole princess and the pauper schtick going on, maybe you could run with that instead? So you sketch, and you plan, and you immerse yourself in these fictional narratives and let yourself not think about world ending things for a while. If some of the characters and their shenaniganary resembled those of your friends, none now exist who would know.

It’s all very domestic. Peaceful.

You’re waiting for the lurking treebeast to fall from it’s branch on top of your head.

It doesn’t even take a week before you hear the rising dissonance in the distance, interrupting a painting session with that pressure and rising flash of unease jumpstarting your bloodpusher. You almost welcome it as you ready your shield and claws and dive between your nightmare and your dream.

x-x-x

It’s closing in on Christmas when you finally get your birthday present: captchalogue codes, as expected. Ironically--and doubtlessly intentionally--one is a scratching post. Not just any old scratching post, but a lion sized, durable, custom made scratching post that you can hang up or bolt to the floor or bat around like a giant rolling log if you want (timaeusTestified [TT]: It was almost too easy to acquire this; I’m probably on some watch list for trafficked big cats now. I hope you’re happy.) 

And you are happy. Mostly.  Because the actual present includes several nail files of varying hardnesses, including a fureaking obsidian one which is hella dope, and even more blanket codes (including an oversized dog bed, which, rude, but it’ll make a comfortable replacement for some of those pillows you shredded, which maybe makes up for it)--one of which is the most gorgeous green fabric you’ve seen in a long time, close to the forest green of your shoes. You have more than enough blankets, thanks to creative application of the alchemiter, but as you rub the resulting fabric between your hands you can’t help but think...

You don’t know if he’s going overboard because he feels guilty that you couldn’t go on the trip to see your friends--really they aren’t your friends. Not yet. You’ll get your chance to change that one day--but there are way too many codes in this list. It’s frankly getting ridiculous.

So you put that aside and punch in the next key and…

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dude
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< did you seriously buy me a new phone
timaeusTestified [TT]: It isn’t a phone, it’s a PDA. High-end shit.
timaeusTestified [TT]: The closest thing we have to a portable computer, for now.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< what about the whole
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< your gift is almost done thing???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< it s33ms a bit silly to spend the money on stuff like this when ill be getting an upgrade soon, ya f33l me?
timaeusTestified [TT]: You say that as if I’m hurting for money. This is small potatoes.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m not even touching the business accounts and I could still probably turn this apartment into a cutting edge robotics lab without making a dent in our standard of living.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Assuming I find what I’m looking for, and your friend Jade allows me to look at her robot, it’d likely take me another month or two even after that since I need to handle these models myself. It’s utterly irresponsible to leave you with nothing but that trash tier fixer-upper for that long.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Let it connect using SBURB’s rosetta stone schrodinger's mobile network and I’ve got a package of software with your name on it. Pesterchum, games, other useful shit. All for you.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i get it bro its pretty cool
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< betw33n these granny keys and the nail files i might be able to actually type without f33ling like i n33d to cut my fingers clean off
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< man what i wouldnt give for retractable claws
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< anyway thanks fur all this sw33t loot
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< there better not be anymore
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im drowning in swag
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< do you want me to drown bro???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< do you???
timaeusTestified [TT]: I did consider baking you a cake too.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33<
timaeusTestified [TT]: I still can if you want.
timaeusTestified [TT]: But I wasn’t sure if alchemized food recreated the item as it was when it was captchalogued.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Or if it returned an approximation, a matching of an individual item to some ideal that is represented in the captchalogue code. Isn’t that why you can’t simply stuff a myriad of objects in a single card, and instead need to separate them out by type? The fact that there are theoretically a limited number of non-punched codes suggest this, as accounting for individualized objects or combinations of objects in a single card would balloon the number well into the infinite.
timaeusTestified [TT]: It’s not a big deal normally. The idealized version of apple juice, for example, would be preferential, but likely unnoticeable in that case.
timaeusTestified [TT]: With gifts however, I’ve learned it’s the personal touches, including the flaws that make it special.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Davepeta?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i want that cake bro
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you dont understand the mighty n33d i have for some handbaked confection
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i dont even know if my feral tastebuds can even handle that much sugar and i still want to mush my face in it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but you got so much of a point right there youre turning it into a shishkebob
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ill be calling in an iou when shit hits the fan
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< end of the world shopping list: include items to bake (1) belated birthday cake
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< maybe make it thr33
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dude im so excited im gonna finally be able to turn sixt33n!!!
timaeusTestified [TT]: Technically aren’t you already sixteen?
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m not cradle robbing by being in quadrants with a minor am I?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< techniclawly ive b33n thrit33n and dead or sprited fur thr33 years and youre sevent33n inhabiting the body of a thirty year old i dont think either of us has a leg to stand on in the realm of normality
timaeusTestified [TT]: 29, thank you.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Christ, this is fucked up.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< if you really wanna get your mind pecked by a flock of angry crows then just consider that ive lived 30 years worth of time
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< technicawlly im older than you!!!
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< *dj pokes your nose with a claw*
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< listen to your elders
timaeusTestified [TT]: Yet, technically, you’ve also only been Davepeta for about two months.
timaeusTestified [TT]: You’re a fucking infant.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< messed up isnt it???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< age is for linear squares
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i hereby decr33 any further age talk null and void unless its about birthdays and the occasion of having one
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< because they are still fun and i like presents
timaeusTestified [TT]: I thought you were drowning? I wouldn’t want to be held responsible for the expiration of my only currently living friend under a manic tide of well-intentioned gift-giving.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i was being dramatic
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im kinda beholden to your generosity when it comes to fulfilling basic human-troll-bird n33ds
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im like a sim gotta k33p them bars all gr33n or ill start hallucinating a giant talking rabbit
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i just dont want you to be giving me birthday stuff outta some misplaced sense of guilt for not being here
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< or me not being there
timaeusTestified [TT]: In the interest of transparency, I can’t deny that it’s a factor, but it’s not why I’ve been sending you shit. I’ve got another thing coming for Christmas, but unless you need something, I’m about done with my Kris Kringle-esque duties.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i kinda just assumed christmas came early this year and thats why you sent me so much
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< fine ill allow one more unprompted item
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< it really doesnt bother me that much im just you know putting the thought out there
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< being all honest and communicating
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ima feral kitten not a house cat
timaeusTestified [TT]: That’s not what you said before.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< hey cut me some slack i was traumatized from my ordeal
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< anyway if you wanna do me a favor
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< youre the seamstress betw33n the two of us
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i have an idea
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m listening.

Before you know it, you have the captchalogue code for a decent needle and some green thread that is clearly from the smuppet stash. You sketch out what you want on a handy wall using your fairly new brushes,  take a picture with your fancy new phone, and then--

You settle in, propping your new phone up, as Dirk walks you through the process of making a proper pattern. You’d just planned on winging it. This…

Is nice. 

x-x-x

The nightmares don’t stop. They come at fairly regular intervals. You keep your promise. You help. You throw yourself into beating them back, a process that leaves you and Shorty emotionally exhausted and maybe resonating just a little too close for your taste, but hey, maybe you’re kinda jealous. But Dirk was right: Shorty is your monkey at this point.

Dirk worries about you. You know he does. Even after you told him to knock it off, he’s started trying to be subtle and framing it with off-hand observations of the effect the slew of night-time interruptions have on Dave. You’re fine. It’s not like it’s anything new. Lil’ Cal can’t hurt you--you’re somewhat incorporeal since it’s not exactly your mindscape--and you won’t let him hurt Dave, so you’re at an impasse; the dog chasing its own tail going round and round in circles. Unfortunately, Cal doesn’t seem to get tired.

Day after day after day, and nothing changes at the core. The dragon never speaks, just roaring and snapping with anger and raging fire. The arena for these scenes shift constantly. The ocean of lava on LOHAC. The cool blue ground and green flames burning above a river of oil. You can’t decide if he’s pulling from you, or from the remnants of the Dave-who-had-been-shattered, or even if he’s pulling from from himself. Lil’ Cal had been present during both of those showdowns, as well as the flashes of boiling heat and fiery sun, and shining steel. 

Maybe all three of you are so tangled up together it really doesn’t matter. One night you look up and see the shattered flashing cracks in space-time, a dragon of fire shifting into a giant green monster tossing you away into the depths of space to wait out the end of the world. That one’s definitely yours.

You wonder what Dave thinks about it all, or if he remembers any of it. You remember Derse, but this isn’t Derse. This is full-blown Heart-related birdshit and a little outside his wheelhouse.

Aware or not, the kid’s got good instincts. He learned to fight during those months you were gone, if clumsily, hoisting the welsh-blade heavy with a weight he can’t even begin to comprehend, and stubbornly pushes onward. But even so, things don’t click until you wrap yourself around him, placing your claws on his, and hold. Only then can you step and weave and dodge, the sum of your experience literally giving him wings and a chance to fly. Even if that flight is panicked racing as the giant snake like dragon-monster worked to turn you both to ashes. 

Hah. Some Knight you are, huh?

You haven't been able to get a good Heartshot with Caledfwch since the first time. He's always ready for you. All you can do is defend, whisking both of you away with adrenaline fueled flash-steps, keeping one step ahead until you can slice the metaphorical green tendrils digging into Shorty’s heart. You can’t remove the anchor, but you can interrupt the connection, although you need to get away from the prospect of fiery torture and dream-death to focus on it.

The heat of your hatred feels hollow in the face of such rage. 

The smell of singed feathers haunts you, and all you can hear, even through the normally comforting resonance of Dirk’s soul, is electricity crackling through the stoic silence of the void.

x-x-x

Dirk keeps working. Dave keeps living. 

You do your best.

Time passes, and your new normal comes to a close.

x-x-x

The sudden shrill piercing PING of the phone jolts you awake from where you’d managed to doze off. You rub sleepily at your ears and how the tone sets them ringing, but really, that’s why you’d chosen it out of all the available soundbytes on the device. Even if you feel wrung out after another nightmare induced dream-walk bringing you face-to-face with a grinning skull-maw that’s starting to seem like it’s looking less at Dave and more at you, well--

You did stick your foot into that particular hornet’s nest. You wish you could croak out the word ‘ Why?’

You don’t think they’d answer you, even if they could. 

Calsprite sure as hell never did.

Mrrph. You don’t even need the sleep. You only want the peaceful non-existence that seems to be your fate with the bubbles shattered. Just for a little while. Dealing with the dream-walks takes a ton out of you. Leaves you feeling burnt out and off, resonating to a tune that grates in your ear until you manage to settle.

The blankets are a warm and cozy den, a particularly thick one pulled over your head blocks out the dim overhead light you never bother to turn off. It’s extra effort, and sinking into the blankets works well enough, except when you wake up later and find yourself weighed down by a veritable self-inflicted cocooning. You’re lucky you’ve taken the time to clean up and separate your piles during the last couple of weeks when you needed something to do, or else you’d probably find yourself waking half-tangled up with Dirk again.

He might not be a cuddler, but you definitely are. Tying yourself up in a recuperacoon inspired blanket burrito seems to help with keeping your sprawling limbs to yourself. 

There’s the sound of ripping fabric as your talons shred another poor blanket by accident--at this rate you’ll have enough fabric scraps to line an actual nest -- but that produces the necessary give to allow you to wriggle out of the clutching grasp. You manage to free a hand and root around in the direction of that ear piercing whistle, finding the light of the phone through your bleary eyes, even as you push your shades up into your hair to see better.  

timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m taking Lil’ Cal with me.

It’s only one line, but you stare at it like it takes longer to read than it really does. Squinting, then glance up at the time at the top of the screen, which is of course set to Central Standard Time because you could care less about any other time-zone. It’s, like, 4am.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< wth are you doing up
timaeusTestified [TT]: Dave.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ah that explains it

It actually does. Whatever agreement he and Dirk seemed to have had over their trip made it easier for Dave to seek out his bro in order to fall back asleep. 

You consider making a joke at Shorty’s expense in order to lightly vent your frustration and envy, but you’re too tired, and maybe that’s not fair since he’s still a kid, so you don’t. You did just help chase off a dragon, there wasn’t much point in sheltering the kid only to turn around and rag on him behind his back. Ugh. Pull yourself together. Dragging a hand through your hair and ignoring the prick of claws against your scalp, you try to figure out what to say.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< is that a good idea
timaeusTestified [TT]: It is better than leaving him alone with Dave for weeks. It seems he didn’t have a nightmare while he was in Washington, so it is only logical to ensure there is as much distance from the stressors as we can reasonably make.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i guess

Honestly, it’s probably for the best. You know the puppet is the only reason Dirk’s magic is as active as it is, even in his--Bro’s body. And if that’s helping him sleep… well, two weeks without it on an extended trip overseas alone would be a nightmare. 

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you seem to have already made up your mind
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< why the late call???
timaeusTestified [TT]: I am sorry, did I interrupt your beauty sleep?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< heck yeah you did you know i work my tail off when its bad enough to drive him into your lap
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i want a lap
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< to curl up in i mean
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and maybe a nice scritch behind the ears
timaeusTestified [TT]: Consider your requests noted. There is a lap available should you require it, but the scritching might take some time to deliver.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< naw man im not that desperate well just add it to the file full of postponed broirail ious
timaeusTestified [TT]: I have a favor to ask.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< hah knew there had to be somefang else
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< go ahead
timaeusTestified [TT]: I need you to go to Derse.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33<

Your fingers type out the finish crumbs before you think about it. Before you can even form Words and Thoughts in response to that statement. He’s continuing before you do, though.

timaeusTestified [TT]: I know it’s difficult to ask considering what happened last time.
timaeusTestified [TT]: But even if you need to take my avatar with you and camp out in the old tower, I would like you nearby just in case.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I believe Lil’ Cal will be sufficiently distracted by being indexed and on the journey. He hasn’t been out of the apartment in months, at least. Years, even. It should be safe, but, in the miniscule possibility that it’s not…
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< what do you think id be able to do bro?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dream-walking works just as well from here as it does from there
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i could maybe give him a kiss on the head and a comforting hug
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dry his little dream tears
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< we could fall asl33p in an exhausted puppy pile
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< except for the fact that you know
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< he isnt supposed to know me
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< I f33l like the whole alien thing would be a lil memeowrable
timaeusTestified [TT]: You clearly haven’t been following his blog.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< what
timaeusTestified [TT]: It’s not important.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i am giving you the most slitted of suspicious eyes right now i hope you appurreciate it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< youre just finding excuses to worry
timaeusTestified [TT]: That’s my job: anticipating potential consequences and mitigating them to the best of my ability given the resources available, and right now, you are the only resource that could monitor him sufficiently. This undesirable state of contactability could last for several days to the entire week depending on if your friend allows me access to Jake’s wireless network; it is likely I will be largely blind to his status.
timaeusTestified [TT]: With that in mind, of course I’m going to worry. There is nothing else I can do aside from ensure there is help nearby.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< trust me ill cockadoodledoo so loud itll evict him from dreamland if shit hits the fan
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< your agent dude will be there wont he???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< hes not gonna be alone
timaeusTestified [TT]: While I’m 93% certain he would be willing to provide comfort, can you picture Dave willingly going to him?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i guess not
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you realize my hypothetical presence could provoke the dude right
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i told you how thingsve b33n going down
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< cal taunts shorty with shit he doesnt understand and sure thats furreaking upsetting and a total invasion of purrsonal purrivacy
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but it isnt till i show up and actively intervene that he goes furreakin feral and tries to bite our collective heads off
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< if it wasnt for the fact that it wakes shorty up quicker and i can shield him from most of it id say im just making it worse
timaeusTestified [TT]: …
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you sir n33d to get your grubby lil paws outta the birdcage
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i purromise to sneak in and check in on him while your gone
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but if you think calll be distracted by the change in scenery then i dont wanna risk drawing his attention by hanging about
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< thats davepetas stalking tip of the day
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< k33p scarce till its time to strife
timaeusTestified [TT]: Perhaps you are right. I might be overthinking things. I hadn’t considered the fact that he would take your presence as a provocation. You’ve been a pain in his side, I’ll have you know.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< good B33c
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< how can you tell???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< is he getting pushy?
timaeusTestified [TT]: I can’t explain. Sorry.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< heart birdshit?
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’d say it stinks more like horseshit, but yeah.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< animal of your choice shit
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< if youre that worried just give him my chum handle hell be too curious to be stubborn about it trust mew
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ill k33p an ear on him
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< get some sl33p dirk
timaeusTestified [TT]: I can’t, but in honor of your request I will try.

Tomorrow, he’ll be off to Isle de Harley, or Hellmuder Island, as he liked to call it. You never really asked why he called it that; Jade never said anything about it being dangerous aside from, you know, magic warpy dog powers. As long as he keeps his cool on the trip itself, and Bec doesn’t eat him on principle, he’ll be fine.

You roll over in your half-shredded cocoon, your wings bound uncomfortably to your back. That’s a 9ft wingspan worth of feathers and sinew you’ve got scrunched up in here. Sometimes you miss being able to go incorporeal. 

Some handful of minutes later--you don’t know how long, but definitely not enough to doze off--your phone pings again. You drag the device into the cocoon with you.

timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m sorry.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< fur what

He doesn’t respond after that, no matter your needling. It gets to the point where you drag yourself out of the cocoon again to check on his sleepy god-tier vessel to make sure everything is fit as a fiddle there.

He’s fine. Sleeping peacefully.

Okay. That was weird.

Maybe he felt guilty about waking you up.

Everything will be fine. You pull green fabric down over your eyes and sink into the weight and pressure of the blankets around you, curling your claws into fists in a practiced manner so they don’t catch and rip it, even with their filed down points. You’ve worked too hard on this shit to ruin it now. You’ve--

It’s fine.

Dave will be fine. Dirk will be fine. You will be fine. If all goes well, you’ll get your broirail back in a little over 24hrs. You’ll get two weeks without dreamwalking. Maybe if you work it enough, you can use the rad tablet Bro got you for Christmas to finalize the storyboards for your first comic by the time he gets home. It turns out the pen was exactly what you were looking for. All the magic of digital with the familiar feel of a brush in your hand. It feels right, finding that balance.

Balance on that edge. You’re a fureakin’ catbird , twice the ability to balance on tiny objects and get into places you shouldn’t be getting into. You’ve got your talons wrapped around that there tightrope and your wings spread wide. All you’re missing is a tail to act as a counterweight. You got this. There’s nothing to fear here.

It’s just the start of another chapter. 

Time moves on.

End of Interlude 1

Notes:

I've done some editing. It's largely cosmetic, but if you haven't read in a while it might be time for a reread. Or just neat to skim through chapter 37 up until they get on the plane again :3c

It's the end of the interlude huzzah! And from here we move forward >:3c

Thank you so much for sticking with me <3 I cherish all of your kind words, and kudos, and Thoughts and and and. Honestly I couldn't have kept this up without all of you :')

Chapter 60: [A2] Dave > Depart

Notes:

Welcome to Act 2. AKA Possible Figuring Shit Out (and probably being wrong about it, as you do.)

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Except you're not the one leaving.

After going your entire life without stepping foot in an airport, you find yourself back again for the third time in less than two months. Specifically, it’s been six weeks, four days, three hours and--fuck--since you stood here in this particular terminal building, vibrating with manic energy, alternating between texting Rose and imagining the fact that in a few hours you’d be seeing John and holy fuck how the hell did this happen.

The second time was much less fun. Almost exactly six weeks ago you’d touched back down in Houston, leaving your friends behind, feeling like you’d left a piece of yourself behind. Like someone reached deep inside you and ripped shit out, leaving a painful ache that froze you over, sending you back to boring, lonely normality. 

After half a week of happiness, including the spanner thrown into the works by Rose’s mom and your Bro’s… issues... you refused to let anything taint those precious memories as you clutch them to your chest. Not even as you’d dreaded each step, each mile traveled in Stevens' tiny little gremlin of a car, that took you back to your Houston apartment.

Sure, you were excited to get back to your own room. To hang Rose’s gift up in your window. To feed the stupid birdbrains that hung out outside your space. You’d even held out hope that this trip had managed to knock loose whatever internalized goblin had been feeding on your dreams. It’d been fuckin’ dope to be well rested for the first time in for-fucking-ever.

You knew it wouldn’t last though. You felt it in your bones as soon as you’d stepped foot back on Texas soil. Maybe it was something about the shitty air, but all it took was you settling in before you started bolting awake and crawling onto the futon with your Bro; you stopped bothering to try and salvage your remaining pride. He’d even began waiting for you, quietly sewing or scrolling through his phone, long after you would have heckled him for being a hypocrite even if you actually appreciate the gesture.

Say what you want about the dude, but Bro’s presence has a way about it that fits with your wrung out, adrenaline-numbed needs. A familiar threat maybe, one your subconscious considers a necessary demon more than any freaky munchy loud dragon your exhausted smog-fueled brain can come up with. You’re on edge around Bro. You probably always will be, at some level, but at least you know that he is one threat that doesn’t want to eat you.

Now, standing in this airport again, it feels different from either of those times. You aren’t leaving. You aren’t arriving. You are shunted to the side, only the ice crackling around your heart stopping you from full-on sulking with how damn bad you feel about this whole shebang. You haven’t had a total ‘shutdown the government and stay off the roads travel at your own peril freeze in months’, but now, oh no, it’s a full blown ice-age up in here. Killing mammoths and saber toothed tigers left and right.

You’re not the one leaving, you’re the one being left behind. This shit sucks balls.

It’s embarrassing, so fucking embarrassing. You sullenly watch Bro and Newt from behind the safety of your shades, the two of them arguing quietly about something. Something dumb. Something about seats and bothering to tell Bro before he just goes and does something. It’s all super dumb. You really don’t care.

You don’t care at all.

You should have stayed asleep when Bro carefully shook you awake this morning. He probably wouldn’t have even woken you up at all if you hadn’t been sprawled on top of him in a post-dragon fugue. Maybe that would have been preferable to this. You should have taken the offered option for him to carry you into your room, rolled over, and escaped back into the dubious safety of utter nothingness because you were too tired to care. You would have dropped off again before you were awake enough to realize Bro wasn’t there. You should have--

But the moment he muttered the words, "wanted to say goodbye " you were so firmly rooted in this shitty nightmare of a reality you couldn’t even make like a tree and leaf.

So you’re here, and awake, and aware and just stewing in the exhausting dissonance, tail chasing thoughts of he’s leaving me and why the fuck do I care

You’re so tired.

At least you get to stay home this time instead of inserting yourself into an alien place where you can never let yourself relax. Maybe you can talk Rose into keeping you awake all week. Maybe if you’re worn out enough you won’t have to dream.

You wanted to be a knight, once. Slaying the dragon and saving the maiden was what you thought you craved. After months of dealing with this shit, you’re done. Do not want. You’re done with fighting. You’ll hang up that damned heavy sword and kick its weight of expectation in the shins. It’s an expectation you always fail anyway. One that inevitably brings about a chorus of mocking laughter that tells you the future, and you don’t like it. 

It’s not like you’ll ever be strong enough. Or fast enough. All you’ll ever be is a plaything. A toy. An amusement.

Not on your own.

Never on your own.

Doomed to fail. Over and over. Doomed before you even start.

But what if--

You’ll always need to be rescued, won’t you? 

“Why can’t I go with you?” It was barely more than a whisper, but it might as well be an outburst with how quickly Bro abandoned the argument with Stevens in order to focus on you. The hairs on the back of your neck prickle under the full force of his attention; but it’s what you wanted wasn’t it?

Nails dig into your palms. Blunt, human nails. Not strong hands that could actually hold that damn sword. Not the tickle of feathers that block out the laughter as they transition into shrieks of rage. Not the feeling of being able to fly away and escape , only to find yourself crawling into the warmth of your Bro’s waiting arms.

And he’s leaving you. You just got him back and he’s leaving you.

Bro gives Stevens a look. The other man doesn’t quite flinch (clearly the dude is in the process of growing a spine through repeated exposure, though why that took 10 plus years you’ll never understand) but he also doesn’t back down or acknowledge whatever point Bro is trying to make through expression alone.

Honestly you don’t really care what point it is. The tension is so fuckin’ tangible you’re drowning under the weight of it, and you just crack. Give in to the bigger-than-you-like-to-acknowledge part of you that’s suddenly terrified of not having your Bro around at all. The part of you that remembers a night spent in Lil’ Cal’s plush arms because you didn’t know if your Bro was alive or dead. You don’t even have him. For better or for worse the dude was a part of Bro that you could cling to, but even that’s gone, squirreled away. Different. The part of you that’s been fighting with itself because you don’t think you’ll ever be able to completely reconcile shit, so fuck it, don’t bother and just act on how you feel right now.

So you cling to that motherfucker’s leg. Startling the fuck out of him. A big, sword calloused hand drops hesitantly onto your head. It makes you flinch. It makes you cling tighter. Things have changed .

“I want to go with you.”

Bro’s fingers thread through your pale, downy hair. A quiet sight. “I know.”

You wish he would say something else beyond that, but he’s your fuckin’ Bro, and your Bro doesn’t know how to emotion on a good day. This is starting out to be a terrible day. You don’t think he even slept as much as you did. You woke up in the same position you fell asleep, and he’s got them shadows lurking under his eyes. So you get it. Sort of. You’re probably not the only moron operating under blizzard conditions right now, icicles hanging off them eaves like it’s Christmas all over again, waiting for a jostle of wind to send a rain of ice down on your head.

You get it, but that doesn’t mean you forgive him when he carefully disentangles you. Or when Stevens tries to take your hand. You won’t stand for that shit and shove all ten fingers into the kangaroo pocket of your red hoodie sullenly. He doesn’t get that privilege. He might not be kidnapping you this time, but he’s back to being your live-in babysitter, and by the unofficial Code of Cool that fact immediately nullifies at least half the brownie points he’s earned through homework help and the fruit tarts he’d send home with Bro every few weeks.

You can only watch with Steven’s hand finally settling on your shoulder, trying to be comforting and supportive--but it’s not the right one is it--when your Bro reaches down to grab his bags. He has both of the orange threadbare monstrosities, you notice, the backpack and the duffle. Tools maybe. Camping equipment perhaps, though that shit would probably be in his sylladex. All you know is he’s apparently off into the untamed wilderness for some tech shit, which seems hella counterproductive if someone would ask you, but of course they didn’t. You’re just a kid, what do you know?

The duffle is put down on the floor again. Bro crouches down right in front of you, looking you in the eye.

“I’ll be back. It’s just work shit.”

“I know.” You throw his clipped phrase right back at him, intentionally dropping your gaze to dodge his eyes. It's a useless gesture, since the opacity of these shades prevented the motion from being seen, but hey, it’s the principle of the thing, and it keeps you from being stuck staring into those open season peepers.

“You’ll be fine, lil’ bro.” 

You still aren’t looking at him.

You aren’t.

The hug is both a surprise, and yet at the same time it’s not. His arms burn around your shoulders, wrapping you up in a warmth, a shield you would have never imagined you wanted before The Incident. Goddamn it Bro, keep this up and you’re going to be so damn needy. But despite the irritation you find yourself wriggling free your trapped hands to hesitantly hug him back.

“You will be fine. I promise. You’re stronger than you think you are.”

“Who do you think you are, huh? Mufasa? You suck at pep talks.” It’s mumbled into his shirt; another stupid lame ass smuppet shirt. At least that shit is soft. It’s inescapable, since you’re pressing your face into his dogdamn shoulder, “I swear to the fucking frogs above, you better not get yourself trampled by wildebeasts in some fucking canyon while you’re hunting down wild robots or some shit off in the jungle.”

There’s a pause. And you realize what he’s about to do a split second before he teasingly admonishes you with that much hated, “Language, lil’ bro. You know it gives Newt conniptions.”

You can hear the smile in his voice, along with Stevens’ heavy sighing from several paces away. At least he moved. It’s hard enough to get your hug on out in public like this, much less with a beanpole of a half-stranger hovering over your shoulder.

You’ll give Stevens back some of the lost brownie points for that. 

Later. Right now you have a nasty look to beam directly at your Bro, complete with a disgusted scowl, pulling back out of the hug so he can properly appreciate your reaction. “Oh fuck off, Bro. You think you’re so fuckin’ funny. It’s not like you haven’t pulled that one before.”

Of course making sure he can see your expression means you can see his. What’s there anyway. There’s never much, but you can instantly tell that it isn’t only in his voice; he is smiling. Just a little bit. You can see it in the upraised corner of his lips and in the lines around his neon orange eyes. He even laughs. Quietly, but he does it.

You push onwards. “I mean it Bro. I’ve staked my claim. I’ve gotten used to my new pillow. It is past the date of return. You better come back.”

The smile fades. It’s sobering, and you feel almost bad about it. Almost.

“I will.” He hesitates, then quietly mumbles a release phrase under his voice, a small slip of paper falling out of his sylladex into his hand. You’re so jealous about how easy he makes the tech-hop modus looks. 

Bro offers it to you. Just the folded piece of scrap paper, “Here: given an island in the South Pacific might not have the best cell service, I might be a bit hard to get a hold of. If you ever need to talk to someone about--just, here.”

You take it, unfolding that shit to find a scrawled name you remember from a freezing cold night. One you’ve casually asked about a couple times over the last few weeks, but Bro has never really offered more than you already have. 

“What do you think your cat-pun spouting e-chum could offer me that my designated babysitter can’t?”

He shrugs. “They make a very good distraction, if you need one. They’re also available at nearly all hours and know a thing or two about--” He trails off, eyes flickering over your shoulder to Stevens who probably knew because of being your baby-sitter, but you appreciate his attempt to not damage your pride any more than it already is. You get what he’s trying to say, anyway.

You’ve seen that green text occasionally in your Bro’s hand as you’re falling asleep snuggled up against him. They know about your nightmares, or at least enough to know that Bro was often up because of them.

Not even a hug and a definitely not tearful goodbye makes it any easier to watch Bro straighten up, sling the duffle bag over his shoulder, and walk away from you. Into the--much smaller--roped off area that compromises the security for this particular section of the terminal.

That paper gets shoved into the pocket of your hoodie, and you don’t look at it again for another four hours and 43 minutes and 23-- stop . Predictably, you shut yourself in your room, not really wanting the reminder that Stevens is setting up his workstation on a series of TV-trays in the living room so as to avoid upsetting the myriad of mechanical do dads and half-finished smuppet felt clothes that has come to replace the explosion of smuppets and hats. The other dude is such a poor-fitting square peg in your brother’s triangular slot, taking your brother’s space, and it feels hella weird.

You try to draw eventually, once even the chillest of chill beats fails to ease the chirping alarm bird in the back of your head, pulling out the tablet your Bro got you for Christmas. It just makes you think of him, which makes you think of the paper in your pocket, and you can’t focus long enough to manage anything more artistically fulfilling than some stray frustrated scribbled lines that look vaguely like someone with many pointy teeth screaming at something if you squint. Probably at you. For being a globesucker.

That’s being generous--it’s just random lines. You select the whole canvas and smash the delete key, banishing it from existence. It’s just. Garbage.

Blah.

Disconnecting that fancy ass tech present you never asked for--but secretly think is pretty dope--you stuff it under the desk with your other drawing shit, far, far away from searching and scratching bird feet. The fuckers like to peck and scramble their way across your desk looking for food--and maybe you should just close your window but you--

Might have a problem.

It’s a cool 60-something degrees outside today, and you have that sucker wide open in case a passing crow needs a roost. You have a stash of black feathers on your desk. Finders keepers. If they leave that shit in your room it is yours. And yeah maybe they sometimes will leave literal shit in here too but--

You like the crows.

But it might also be a problem.

You do need to keep an eye on the feathery assholes; they’ve been eyeing the shiny amber in Rose’s gift and that is the one thing that is off limits. No beaks, no claws, nothing is touching your awesome suncatcher, and you guard that shit during the day by carefully putting it away. They’ll gather at the window, pecking at the outside where the latch is whenever you hang it up in the evening to catch to setting sun. You like to think some days the faux cobwebs catch your nightmares before they get to you. 

They probably don’t, even if you do sometimes have nights where you fall into an exhausted sleep instead of dreaming of the red-purple tower, but it’s nice to imagine.

Anyway, what do you do now? What will you do for the next week? 

You scroll through your chumroll, looking for any unread messages. Not that there’s much to scroll down. You kinda purged it. It bothered you, seeing all those names and not caring enough to put an identity to the faceless people you never truly connected with, and only used to make you feel like you had people who cared about the shit you had to say. It’s nothing like what you have with John. Or Rose. Or--

Three is a good number, you think.

You could talk to Rose. You don’t know if you want to talk to Rose. If she’s awake, she’ll ask how shit went. Then she’d find out about the name you’re currently pulling out of your pocket and spreading flat against the surface of your desk. Smoothing out the crinkles in the paper.

Fuck it, why not.

You send the request. Then ignore the prickles of uneasy nerves when it immediately shifts from pending to accepted. A third name is slotted at the top of your chumroll, upsetting John as the top of your little alphabetical list. Rude.

...there’s still something missing. 

Something belongs between John and Rose.

turntechGodhead [TG] begins pestering dataJammer [DJ]

turntechGodhead [TG]: yo
turntechGodhead [TG]: its dave
turntechGodhead [TG]: bros bro
turntechGodhead [TG]: where bro is uh dirk
turntechGodhead [TG]: time something or other
turntechGodhead [TG]: dont judge ive only seen it over his literal shoulder since i dont actually have his pesterchum
turntechGodhead [TG]: i didnt even know he had a pesterchum actually
turntechGodhead [TG]: thats a little fucked up but hey privacy yadda yadda
turntechGodhead [TG]: anyway bro gave me your handle
turntechGodhead [TG]: so dont think im a weirdo stalker or anything like that
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dont worry i know who you are
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< he was being a worry wart so i just told him to give it to you if itd make him f33l better
turntechGodhead [TG]: come mr dj you need to speak the fuck up are you trying to say my bro was losing sl33p over me???
turntechGodhead [TG]: honest to frog cross your heart hope to end up six feet under and on the pain of being banned from punning ever again
turntechGodhead [TG]: are you fucking with me right now dude???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ouch go straight for the heart why doncha i couldnt bear a life void of feline based wordplay
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im gonna have to consider my answer very carefully
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< not!!!
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im not kitten around dude
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< all things should be okay but what if
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< in furreakitten circles man
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< purrtty sure he didnt sl33p a wink last night even after i smacked him on the nose with a metafurical paw and told him to knock the fuck off

Fuck. Your brain makes a sound suspiciously like a record scratch, the world skipping forward as you staring uncomprehendingly at the words on the screen. That shit's impossible. You don't actually come out of it till the notifications ping again. You can't hear them, you don't have your headphones on, but the flashing window and spontaneously appearing text does the job anyway.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< sup dude you ok???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< *dj winds around tgs feet and bats at his sl33ve insistently*
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you never did tell mew
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< what can i do you fur
turntechGodhead [TG]: woah there thats moving a little fast dont you think
turntechGodhead [TG]: not even two hundred words in and im already being propositioned by my bros secret echum
turntechGodhead [TG]: i might need an adult but it was my adult bro who indirectly facilitated this conversation
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< lemme rephrase to better suit your sensibilikittties
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< *dj clears their throat and coughs into a paw*
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< what can i do fur mew?
turntechGodhead [TG]: bro said youre good at distracting and i cant seem to wrangle the cats in my brain today what are your qualifications for the position
turntechGodhead [TG]: the compensation is my charming company and the satisfaction of keeping me from driving myself up a wall
turntechGodhead [TG]: or out the window
turntechGodhead [TG]: i dont think bro would be very pleased with either option
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< B00 we cant have that now can we!!!
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< not unless youve mysteriously sprouted wings!!!
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ill have you know i am an expurrt in the field of feline wrangling right here
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ive won the most purrestigious pawards
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< saved a small country through the use of my cat herding skillz
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< trust me noone has as many stubborn cats running around as your bro and i wrangle those on a near daily basis
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the dude would be drowning in shredded fabric and fur if it wasnt for me dangling textual catnip and mousy toys everywhere
turntechGodhead [TG]: i can see youve got pawtential ok
turntechGodhead [TG]: lets give this shit a shot
turntechGodhead [TG]: first off
turntechGodhead [TG]: ive been wondering
turntechGodhead [TG]: is that some weird double mouthed emoji at the beginning of your line
turntechGodhead [TG]: or is there something to do with bees and im just missing a reference somewhere
turntechGodhead [TG]: i dont do that very often but i think ive seen it somewhere before
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its just a kitty face!!!
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< with cool ass shades B)
turntechGodhead [TG]: ah i see why bro likes you
turntechGodhead [TG]: you have taste
turntechGodhead [TG]: but like
turntechGodhead [TG]: why the two mouths
turntechGodhead [TG]: you didnt do it that time
turntechGodhead [TG]: so it stands to reason that single mouthed cats exist in your universe too
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< that statement didnt warrant two mouths it also acts as a mewsure of excitement
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< besides i posit
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< why not two mouths??? B33c
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< extra mouths for extra grooming pawer
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i know youve never had a rough kitty tongue casually caress your chiten but youre missing out dude its the best thing ever
turntechGodhead [TG]: okay once again with the innuendo
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its only an innuendo beclaws you think of it like that!!!
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< there aint nothing but the purrest of feline pawsitive appurreciation up in here B(
turntechGodhead [TG]: how do you know ive never been licked by a cat
turntechGodhead [TG]: for all you know i live in a cat cafe
turntechGodhead [TG]: cathair and litterboxes all over the place
turntechGodhead [TG]: showering me with kisses day in and day out
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< youve never s33n a cat in purrson dont pull that birdshit with me
turntechGodhead [TG]: oh so now youre swapping rails to bird puns???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< gotta throw a curveball every now and then just to k33p you on your toes!!!

Goddamn they can ramble with the best of them. Despite one, or both, of you constantly slipping into some potential innuendo you feel surprisingly comfortable with the guy. You thought it’d end up something like the awkward I-don’t-know-how-to-act-around-you feeling you get when you’re stuck in the same room as Stevens, or even John’s Dad. Hell, even Bro, although you’ve gotten better about just letting the ramble machine go around him. He doesn’t give back half as good as Data does, and it’s almost like watching two trains speeding at the same set of track and wondering just how ridiculous the resulting crash is gonna be. Except for the fact that you’re driving one of them.

It’s entertaining as hell though.

They don't offer up anything personal, and you don't ask. Still, you wonder how old they are. They don’t feel like an adult, but, if you have to be generous, not every adult is pre-ordained by the universe to be a stick in the mud, and they are Bro’s friend. You don’t think Bro could be friends with a kid. He doesn’t have the patience for that.

But! There will be time to quiz your Bro’s mysterious echum on how they met and if they have any embarrassing stories to tell, and you’ll be so ready for it when it does. You’ll even take fuckin’ notes. Right now it’s full steam ahead on the bullshit train.

It definitely chews through the time until John comes home from school and logs on. You immediately swap windows when you see that pip go green, even as you spot the flashing orange from Data’s tab. You can juggle the two, easy peasy.

turntechGodhead [TG]: dude
turntechGodhead [TG]: consider this my sincerest apologies
turntechGodhead [TG]: i now know how you feel holy cow
ectoBiologist [EB]: what the devil are you talking about dave?
turntechGodhead [TG]: ive got a pun crazy friend of my bros in my other window who is almost as bad as i am when it comes to unnecessarily long rambles and hot damn its giving me a healthy appurreciation for what you have to deal with on a daily basis
turntechGodhead [TG]: if i was particularly fixated on felines for some reason
turntechGodhead [TG]: which im not you may thank me from saving you from that fate
ectoBiologist [EB]: be careful there it looks like the cat puns are catching!
turntechGodhead [TG]: oh gog I know they are just seeping into my brain the longer I talk to this dude
turntechGodhead [TG]: they find it hissterical when I slip up
turntechGodhead [TG]: dogdamn it
ectoBiologist [EB]: you know you could just stop talking to them. that might solve your pun problem.
turntechGodhead [TG]: hang up on my bros secret echum??? are you shitting me right now???
turntechGodhead [TG]: bro texts the dude like nonstop so i gotta make a good impression in case its like you know its ever time to meet the family
ectoBiologist [EB]: impurression?
turntechGodhead [TG]: shut it

All throughout this you keep dual-chatting, shifting windows and conversation threads like a fucking boss. You were born for this. Data has as twisty a brain as you do, and easily follows you down rabbit holes (or hopbeast holes as they offhanded called it and you didn’t think twice about it.) The vocabulary peppered in with their cat-fixated wordplay should give you pause but it doesn't. You almost feel that sense of deja vu again, like you've heard it before. So often, so regularly, for years, that you hardly even notice until you wonder how the fuck you guys got on the topic of tropical fish and go back and reread and it leaps out at you. 

You were promised a distraction, and a non-Bro or dream related distraction is what you will get so help you frog. 

John is usually your go-to for shit like that, but for some reason he's in an existential mood today or something because while you're here discussing the process of big ass sea serpent sized godzilla fish eventually evolving into shrimpy frilly colorful pansies as seen through the fossil record with Data, your conversation with John never really managed to get into your usual groove. It even wallows a bit, and it's not til you ask the forbidden words that it actually goes anywhere and the destination of this particular train track is as far from normal Johnsville as you ever expected to be. Maybe an alternate universe version of Johnsville where he doesn’t immediately deflect any well meaning inquiries with a laugh and a joke.

turntechGodhead [TG]: dude are you ok
ectoBiologist [EB]: of course im fine.
turntechGodhead [TG]: uh huh
ectoBiologist [EB]: okay maybe im not.
turntechGodhead [TG]: woah okay you cracked quicker than I expected
turntechGodhead [TG]: i didnt even get to pull out all these awesome amateur therapist tricks ive picked up from rose
ectoBiologist [EB]: dude don't pull that stuff on me. if i wanted to talk to rose about it I would.
turntechGodhead [TG]: do you
ectoBiologist [EB]: not really. no offense i love rose but she can be really intense.
turntechGodhead [TG]: and im totally not intense so whats the harm
turntechGodhead [TG]: im the chillest dude around
turntechGodhead [TG]: open and waiting for my best bro to drop some sick confessionals down in this church tonight
turntechGodhead [TG]: whats on your mind johnny boy
turntechGodhead [TG]: you can tell me anything
ectoBiologist [EB]: *sigh* fine but you’re gonna think this is weird.
ectoBiologist [EB]: do you ever feel like you aren’t getting the whole picture?
turntechGodhead [TG]: all the damn time dude
turntechGodhead [TG]: my bro is being a cryptic bastard about something hell tell me about when im older
turntechGodhead [TG]: half the time i feel like im missing some sort of context to most of the shit he says and does
turntechGodhead [TG]: id kill for some comprehensive aerial shots every now and then
turntechGodhead [TG]: a good ol birdseye view of the situation
turntechGodhead [TG]: instead of having to rely on what I can see from my little hidey corner and occasionally overhear through the walls
ectoBiologist [EB]: haha hearing it through walls is so right. it's so muffled that you aren't quite sure if it's true or just your imagination.
turntechGodhead [TG]: so what's going on thats dragging you down
turntechGodhead [TG]: if you wanna talk about it
turntechGodhead [TG]: you seem like you want to talk about it
ectoBiologist [EB]: it's just my dad. he said something weird when he picked me up from school,
ectoBiologist [EB]: and granted hes been saying weird stuff for ages so it’s not really a new thing, but yours and rose's near miss with the whole parent trap thing got me thinking about it.
turntechGodhead [TG]: oh god dont bring that up again egbert
turntechGodhead [TG]: im on my knees begging you here
ectoBiologist [EB]: you can get off the ground dave this is just for context so you don't call me insane for jumping to conclusions.
ectoBiologist [EB]: sometimes i wonder if, um, i might have once had a sibling? 

Well you certainly didn't expect that.

turntechGodhead [TG]: youre right that is a leap of magnitude so insane a mountain goat would be jealous
turntechGodhead [TG]: im pretty sure youd know if you werent an only child egbert
ectoBiologist [EB]: well duh now but older? maybe?
ectoBiologist [EB]: or twins separated from birth?
turntechGodhead [TG]: like the parent trap
ectoBiologist [EB]: look i know you think this is dumb but it's just weird you know?
ectoBiologist [EB]: he called me jane today.
ectoBiologist [EB]: i asked who jane was and he said it was just my nanna but he was super weird about it.
ectoBiologist [EB]: could I have had a secret older sister named after my nanna?
turntechGodhead [TG]: you could have misheard
turntechGodhead [TG]: the names are pretty close
ectoBiologist [EB]: maybe if this was the first time its happened
ectoBiologist [EB]: and like sometimes dad will look at me and start to say something else. or he'll ask me to do something like it's something we always do and then look startled when i don't know what he's talking about.
ectoBiologist [EB]: like the marathon baking sessions. i don’t think he’s trying to guilt me i think he legit forgets i hate the baking cult and anything to do with nanna’s company.
ectoBiologist [EB]: why couldn’t it be a possibility? it's not like i know my mom.
ectoBiologist [EB]: maybe you and rose aren’t the ones in the movie at all maybe it’s me!
turntechGodhead [TG]: dude you might need to lay off watching that movie
turntechGodhead [TG]: how many times has it been again??? youve mentioned it at least twice in your attempts to troll me
turntechGodhead [TG]: why dont you just ask your dad??? the dude is easily the most chill motherfucker around
turntechGodhead [TG]:  and by motherfucker i mean roses hot mom because i cant have been the only one who saw that handsmooching when they left after roses party
ectoBiologist [EB]: ew dave no that's gross. he was just being polite and a gentleman, two things you have no experience with clearly.
ectoBiologist [EB]: and no i can't ask him that would be weird.
ectoBiologist [EB]: especially after
ectoBiologist [EB]: shit i didnt mean to hit enter. ignore that.
turntechGodhead [TG]: after what
turntechGodhead [TG]: you cant leave me hanging here
ectoBiologist [EB]: ugh, fine. after all the crap i've given him about the sleepwalking.
turntechGodhead [TG]: oh are you finally gonna admit that happened???
ectoBiologist [EB]: i still don't know what happened! i am just admitting that there's a possibility that maybe three people in my life have witnessed some event and since they are backing up each other and maybe i should entertain the possibility that something happened despite my having no memory of the event at all..
ectoBiologist [EB]: your bro doesn't really seem the type to go along with such an elaborate prank
turntechGodhead [TG]: and I do?
ectoBiologist [EB]: do i really need to answer that question? we give each other a hard time on purpose.
ectoBiologist [EB]: i guess its like the stuff on the walls
turntechGodhead [TG]: i didnt see anything on the walls
turntechGodhead [TG]: your shit taste in movies aside
ectoBiologist [EB]: ha ha very funny.
ectoBiologist [EB]: dad cleaned it up this summer. i freaked out at him for messing up my room and he replaced my posters and everything.
ectoBiologist [EB]: but like
ectoBiologist [EB]: at the time it felt like there was no other explanation other than some mean spirited prank.
ectoBiologist [EB]: he didn’t apologize for it either, just replaced everything.
ectoBiologist [EB]: just like he didn’t apologize for locking the door
ectoBiologist [EB]: or that stupid gate
turntechGodhead [TG]: you almost fell down the stairs my dudev
turntechGodhead [TG]: youre just lucky my bro is an insomniac ninja and was awake to catch you
turntechGodhead [TG]: im sorry but that isnt just a prank
turntechGodhead [TG]: unless youre the one pulling it on all of us and you could actually fly or something
turntechGodhead [TG]: you cant actually fly can you???
ectoBiologist [EB]: no! i mean, i know that dave!
ectoBiologist [EB]: *sigh*
ectoBiologist [EB]: it would make a great prank though
ectoBiologist [EB]: just vwoosh vanish into wind just to pop up at the bottom with the best gotcha moment *ever*
turntechGodhead [TG]: maybe if you want to give your dad and your best bro a heart attack
turntechGodhead [TG]: i might not be the most up and up when it comes to the etiquette of prankmeisters but in my most humble and not at all informed opinion as a bystander
turntechGodhead [TG]: pls no faked deaths
turntechGodhead [TG]: or stunts that could cause real deaths
turntechGodhead [TG]: thatd break this stone cold heart of mine and thats just not cool yo
turntechGodhead [TG]: i have an image to maintain
ectoBiologist [EB]: im sorry to tell you that your image is already in shreds. i’ve seen you fighting with rose over who gets the last cookie.
ectoBiologist [EB]: youll never recover from that
ectoBiologist [EB]: and that was before i found out you didn’t know about brain freeze!
ectoBiologist [EB]: you’ll never be cool in this town again dave strider!
turntechGodhead [TG]: you just had to bring up the hellspawn of a slushie didnt you
turntechGodhead [TG]: goddamn it now i have to hold a funeral
turntechGodhead [TG]: rip to the coolest dude who ever fuckin lived
turntechGodhead [TG]: survived by the lamest dude who ever lived and who wishes he could be half as cool as the other guy

That's a bit more like it, you think, feeling the tightness in your chest ease as you both settle back into familiar patterns. By the time you add a Rose to your collection of ongoing conversations (she has been acquainting herself to her newish pair of knitting needles from John and seen to have taken to them like a duck in water), you feel like a juggler. All these conversational balls in the air and you keep them spinning like your turntables when you scratch them and you feel… Better. 

Bro’s still gone, but you aren't alone, even if you know that pit in your stomach won't go away so easily, especially once the balls stop dropping one by one and you find yourself in that purple-red room again.

You aren’t looking forward to it; losing yourself in the cacophony of shattered time as you wait for the dragon to hunt you down and pull you under.

Notes:

ITS FRIDAY I KEPT MY PROMISE.

Also I have chapter 61 done and needing beta-ing. But that's about done too. And I'm working on 62 as we speak. Idk I've been on a roll, as tho who have been following my tumblr rambles know haha.

Next chapter is a Dirk chapter, and it'll probably go up next Friday.

Hope you all enjoy <3

Chapter 61: Dirk > Babysit a Grumpy Juju

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The end is in sight.  

You’ve gone through hours of non-stop traveling, stuffed into increasingly smaller tin cans. Gaining a new sympathy for all that shit you tend to shove in boxes, cramped and squished and immobile, never to see the light of day. It's made marginally better by Newt going out of his way to upgrade you to business class again, but that spawned its own necessary, spur of the moment discussion at the airport. You’d been putting off that email for weeks.

It’s not that you don’t appreciate the action taken; you’re more than aware that he has an uncomfortable familiarity with your idiosyncrasies due to years of exposure to a sideways-you. You even have to admit it was an accommodation that did make the trip more bearable. Knowing yourself as you do, it’s entirely likely that other-you got annoyed with the questions and said, “fine, whatever” enough times that it became a habit not to ask.

But that wasn’t you. This particular version of you, lost in a spiral of things he can’t control, seems to be grabbing for the things he can. Even if delegating is the smarter, more efficient route, you at least want to know.

Even in business class you have a non-Dave seatmate on both of your big flights, which wasn’t ideal at all. Thankfully, you have the envious ability to learn from your past escapades, and came up with a game plan going into this shit to deal with over half a day’s worth of sardine city. A hoard of tunes--including those from your brother’s bookmarked beatcloud--and a set of noise canceling headphones in conjunction with closing your eyes, worked to partially lessen the almost claustrophobic feeling of being stuck in a flying tin-can, and at the very least worked to smother underlying current of circular anxiety that keeps swinging back around to Dave. 

The unfortunate feeling seems to grow stronger the longer you attempt to ignore it, kicking you in the back like a surly, bored, and potentially jealous infant whenever your thoughts turn away from the landscape flying by beneath you and back towards the brother you left behind. It’s such a pronounced and strangely targeted feeling that you’re far beyond starting to wonder if it has to do with Cal being stuck in your sylladex, and not for the first time questioning the tired half-remembered logic that led you to make that particular decision to bring him along. 

At least the security screener’s face had been worth it when you decaptchalogued the dude into his lane though. Hilarious.

So close and yet so far, stashed into the darkness of your personalized portable pocket dimension, but his presence surrounds you. It should smother you, you realize, except for the fact that it's extremely difficult to smother yourself. Lizardbrain level survival instinct kicks in and says hell n’aw. And that hell n’aw seemed to be in the form of your own partial self-splintering, for lack of a better term.  

You didn’t realize how comforting it was to see that glowing red on the edge of your vision until you had to spend those four long days with nothing but a shadow and fog where there was once clarity. It opens up a path to that sheltered core where Cal can't reach you.

Unfortunately, you also can't seem to reach this perfect state of detached, not quite meditative, zen without the dude around. It's frustrating as hell. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t--which seems to be a continuing theme as you traverse the broken remnants of your proper timeline, doomed to choose between unsavory choices that, honestly, help no one.

That claustrophobic feeling never truly goes away, even as time ticks on and you cross the entire breadth of the landmass upon which you now live. It isn’t even the fucking plane, since it dogs you when you disembark and hurry towards the memorized placement of your next gate, squeezing at your chest as you avert your eyes from the many ‘Welcome to LA!’ tourist stands littering the floor. You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you realize it’s Cal getting claustrophobic in the sylladex. Who would have guessed. You wish he’d actually be a bro for the first time in months and actually keep that shit to himself.

It’s not a layover--it’s a direct transfer with barely enough time to snag a sandwich of some kind between running from one gate to another. Newt hadn’t understood your insistence when you nixed the idea of a couple hours or even a night’s break before the next flight to Honolulu. No, you don’t want to look out the window of some hotel to see the Hollywood sign and wonder if you looked would you find the address you’ve had memorized since you knew what an address was. 

There wouldn’t be anyone waiting for you here anyway. The last Dave standing is waiting for you back home. Both homes. And neither of them are the one your brief moment of weakness yearns to see. 

Sometimes you wonder if he’d be proud of you. 

Your worsening mood must have bled out through your stony facade and unnerved your seatmate because they vanish about an hour into that second flight, leaving you alone and stewing in misery you can’t quite shake off. Eventually you just say ‘fuck it’ and decaptchalogue Lil’ Cal into the now empty seat beside you. Unconsciously moving to adjust him before you realize what you are doing, but your assistance is apparently quite unnecessary. He comes out lounging like he belongs in the space at your side, plush mitten hands folded daintily on his lap and orange-suit clad legs dangling off the edge of the chair.

Now isn't this cozy? Those eyes seem to say, that frozen smile welcoming. 

The smothering weight around your chest loosens because you gave in and let him out. You kind of hate yourself for it. He lurks on the edge of your mind, beyond the cracked wall and the net of red thread, brushing up against you and purring about how pleased he is. Exactly why, you have no fucking idea, maybe because he finally has you all to himself. No Dave to distract you, no banishment to the crawlspace, and you in the foulest, closest to ice-cold anger you’ve been in since you fucking got here.

All you know is, right now, he’s as stoked as a dude who fell headfirst into a bowl of spiked punch, sidling up against the nearest hunk of man-meat to try and sink that single golden tooth into. The piece of raw, bloody steak in this analogy is you, by the way. 

Does he want you angry? Angry and tired and frustrated? Does he just want to grind you down so you give in again, and again, and again, until he’s nothing more than just another unsavory, cruel, part of you?

Was that what happened to Dave’s Bro? He had him for so long, without the knowledge of the consequences and perspective that you now have. Did it reach a point where he couldn’t see a difference between the puppet and man?

Allowing such a thing to happen would undo everything you’ve worked for. Give him an inch and he’ll take a mile. You’re certain of it. You let on that bothering Dave bothers you so now he keeps at it.

Dave . Dave. It always comes back to Dave. You can’t do anything for him. All you can do is worry. Especially worry that ignoring Cal would push him back into harassing your lil’ bro.

Get your paw out of the birdcage. It takes you a moment to place that saying, but when the fuzzy, washed out memory reluctantly surfaces, a miser parting with a precious coin, it leaves you with a suffering sigh. They were right, of course. You’re still doing it now.

You can see him in the reflection of the reinforced plastic: rosy cheek, golden tooth, and single blue eye on your back.

You hate that it’s starting to move beyond vague feelings. You hate that you’re beginning to understand.

A patch of turbulence later, and a mittened hand has flopped it’s way onto your knee. You don’t move it. You don’t acknowledge it. You just bury yourself in your tunes and watch the water sparkle in the breach between the clouds.

A part of you clinically takes note of the several times another passenger would walk past your row and freeze, eyes lingering on your erstwhile traveling companion before hurrying back the way they came, trip to the restroom abandoned. Flight attendants stop by several times, but as you slip your headphones off your ears and turned the full brunt of your shut-off expression on them, they quickly backtracked and proceeded to perform a retreat, allowing you to shut out the world again.

Cal’s breath of fresh air is over the moment you touch down in Hawaii, though, and back into the sylladex he goes, no amount of--intended or otherwise--pyschological torture is going to get you to change your mind as you sniff out the company contracted plane to take you the rest of the way. You’re going to be stuck in a two-seater cockpit with a single dude for hours, you’d rather not feel like you’re on the very of snapping the entire way. While index-ing him bleeds over and makes you feel uncomfortably like you’ve been stuffed in a small closet, the fact that you’re almost there works to distract you sufficiently. You stuff the psychosomatic pain in your chest into the mental crawlspace and if the result is you breathing a little more shallowly than you’d like, it’s fine. You’ll deal with it. At least he’s locked the fuck out of your head.

This final leg of the trip is a cargo-carrying plane that finds its primary purpose in shipping shit across the Pacific to Australia, with a small contractually mandated stop to deliver the mail to a small island in the middle of the ocean. Today that mail includes one (1) grumpy and tired Dirk Strider, stewing and strapped into a chair behind the pilot’s. 

It’s both better, and worse, than the larger commercial airlines. Better, in that you can see where you are and where you are going from your vantage point in the cockpit. Overall, you get a wider picture than the tiny port-hole. The sea stretches endlessly around you, and it digs its nostalgia into your heart, making it ache in a good way. It’s also worse, in that you’re all the more aware of how not in control you are of your situation. You’d feel better if you were piloting this yourself, but you’ve always been like that. A control freak with no ability to keep things from spiraling out of your control. It’s nothing new. 

At least you can be assured that the old guy knows where he’s going. Hellmurder Island (an unnamed island in the Pacific, as seen on the maps, or Harley’s Island as noted in the company’s shipping logs) was well over a few hours flight away from the nearest notable landmass, but at least it wasn’t the 12+ hours it’s taken to get this far. You only have to spend the entire time crammed into this tiny cockpit space with a pilot who barely speaks once you acknowledge the procedures and sign a waiver, which suits you just fine. You wouldn’t expect a long-haul pilot to be exceptionally chatty.

But now that you can see a peak breaking up the endless blue sky, rising like a monument out of the sea, you find yourself vibrating. After so much endless sitting and staring out the windows at the achingly familiar ocean, you’re itching to break out your rocketboard and just fucking go.

The next twenty or so minutes are toture as it gets bigger, and bigger, and you can see a gleaming white spire rising above the peak that had once housed Jade English’s home. But...the jungle you remember through Brobot’s cameras…

...is gone…

“Pretty well maintained for a mostly deserted island.” You comment, eyes narrowing at the view from outside the window. Overgrown with wildflowers and weeds and shit, and maybe some thicker clumps that might count as brush, but there is literally no amount of sizable cover. No trees. Nowhere for the giant, deadly conglomeration of terrestrial and alien beast to hide--

Alien . Fuck, that’s right; those were luscii, not run of the mill Earthian critters. The batterwitch probably used the island as a breeding ground to try and adapt the beasts to the Earth (with the added benefit of spiteing Old Lady English’s memory, turning her home into a near inhospitable jungle.) They weren’t fuckin’ native. What else did you forget?

“Eh, it’s been that way for about a decade I’d wager.” The pilot rumbles after a moment. You’re actually taken aback since you didn’t expect an answer, “I’ve been flying this route since Harley put it on the map; it was a wild mess before he cleared everything out. It’s still a mess, it’s just a tree-less one. Kinda sad in my opinion, but you can’t argue with rich old geezers and their vision for their futuristic retirement home.”

You suppose that’s a fair conclusion for someone who didn’t realize exactly how valuable those flooded ruins down there were. Nothing more than an eccentric millionaire’s private island. Jake--you almost bet Harley played up that image.

He wasn’t as stupid as he liked to seem sometimes.

The flowers sure as hell took over, that’s for sure. The plane banks and circles, the shadow sliding against the color-speckled green fields that don’t show any fuckin’ sign of winter, and later massive lilypads dotting the lagoon around the ruins, in full bloom, splashes of pink and red and yellow and green breaking up the calm blue water. Aren’t the seasons flipped south of the equator? Maybe even nonexistent on it? A hell of perpetual fuckin’ summer sounds utterly attrocious, but at least it’d be consistant.

You would have considered the exchange finished and put it out of mind, but the pilot doesn’t seem quite done yet. Or maybe now that he’s cracked, it’s a lot harder to turn the faucet off. You’d understand that. He fiddles with the gps, and checks it against the map he’d lain out on the copilot’s chair, “It’s been ages since we’ve had to drop anyone off, the airstrip ‘round the back might be too overgrown to be safe. Idiot management, didn’t think to get a visual on the last flyby, huh? Cutting costs by combining runs? If we have to circle back that’ll cost at least a half a tank of wasted fuel--that’ll show ‘em.” 

He scowls. You frown. It’s nothing more than a flattening of your already thin expression, but you do not like the idea of having to be stuck in this aircraft much longer than you need to. Especially since you’re already here . You can see the gleaming white of Jake--Jade’s house just out the fuckin’ window. If you were in the right body you could just jump out and fly there.

“Isn’t this on an active mail route? How would you pick up and deliver mail if you can’t land?”

“Paradroppin’, kid.” Christ is it weird to hear that word applied to you . You keep your mouth shut, because it’s true. “We don’t get much out this way, and never anything outgoing, but when we gotta make a drop we hook a lil ‘chute to the top and just push ‘em out the cargo hatch. Fragile stuff ends up with these little floaties and we drop it over the water. The caretaker nabs them I guess. It’s weird, but that’s what’s written into the contract.”

Hooking your thumb under the thick leather strap over your shoulder, foisted upon you when entering this aircraft, you wonder why you can’t just jump out the damn’ plane yourself. 

“You could, if you brought your own parachute. Company issued ones are a safety precaution, not a ticket to go skydiving--liability and all,” The pilot answers, almost spitting out the last line with the force of a man who has lived through inconvenient and potentially frivolous (in his opinion) regulatory change. You hadn’t realized you’d said that out loud. The plane finally clears the far side of the mountain where there looks to be a large cave cut into the back of the volcano, an ageing and not entirely well cared for yacht barely gleaming as the afternoon comes in at the right angle to hit its edges and reflect that shit all across the sparkling water. A run down dock. Shipping area and--

Broken and crumbling, a runway overgrown with greenery and vines. The pilot’s curse saying what you’re thinking just about now, “‘told ‘em they shoulda done a fly by. Damn it. We’ll have to come back with the cessna. It’s right on the edge of its range, but that’s the only way--”

“I’ll jump.” You decide, no part of you is interested in prolonging this journey any longer than it already has been. You begin the long and arduous process of unshackling yourself from the chair and it’s myriad of safety devices despite the pilot’s protests.

“I can’t get low enough, slow enough, in this clunker to let you down safely,” He warns, “An’ I’m not allowed to actually stop you since you did sign the waiver.”

”Your waiver has a clause that disclaims for acts of stupidity?” You can’t help but comment, as you shrug off the company-issued parachute and settle it down in the seat.

“Kid, you try workin’ for Jake Harley back in the day. That shit got added in so fast . Some of us old farts could write a book about rich bastards with more money than sense and the stunts they’d pull.”

He’s definitely including you in that statement.

“Just keep the bloody parachute on if you don’t want a recipe for homemade pancakes.”

“What about the liability?” You shoot back. You don’t pick it up though, as it’ll only be added weight and throw you off. You haven’t tested Dave’s Bro’s design any more than making sure the thing works, but if he was even half the engineer you are, you’ve got this covered.

“A huge fine and some legal fees seem like it’d be preferable to being dead.”

Feeling oddly petulant, you shrug. “I didn’t come entirely unprepared. It’s fine.”

“Alright, alright,” He really isn’t arguing hard enough against this, you note. It’s not like you particularly relish the idea of throwing yourself out of a plane, occupying a body with a completely different sense of balance that you’ve not grown up compensating for while performing such stunts, but you’re starting to feel the jitters of anticipation rise as you calculate positioning and angles of descent in order to reach a stable cruising altitude-- “I’ll get as low as I can, or maybe out over the water--”

“Nah, get higher. I’m gonna need the space.” You rattle off numbers, and leave the pilot to it, watching the island shrink and then start to grow again as the circling plane begins its repositioning.

You decaptchalogue the rocket board, running your hands over the same red and yellow rad as fuck flame pattern you’d painted on your own. It’s older, but well used and maintained. The dude, finally getting some inkling of what you are planning, mutters something about crazy rich kids and their fancy toys, but some of the reluctance bleeds away when it’s clearer that you aren’t actually planning on jumping to your doom without any sort of plan or precaution. You ignore him, double checking the state and size of the device. It’s larger than yours was, which will need to be compensated for, but that’s a good thing when you’re larger than you should be.

At least some shit stays the same. That’s both comforting and haunting, because those universal constants aren’t always good traits to have.

You wonder why he stopped. Why you’d found a surprising number of scrapped projects shoved into boxes back in an old, distant corner of the crawlspace. A long line of frustrated failures, with the memory of your hands hovering over the scraps of a small, crude mechanical rabbit and you wonder what happened to him, what killed the drive to create that flourished in you. 

Perhaps diverting the stream to a new outlet would be a more fair statement; you can’t deny the multi-media ventures were an act of profane, unadulterated creativity.

“It’s now or never, kid, I’m gonna drop the mail.” With little more than a nod, you push your way out of the cockpit and into the cargo area beyond. All the shit is lashed to the walls, with only a small pile of weighted containers in the center over some sort of hatch.

And then the hatch begins to open. You watch, muscles wound and tense as one by one the handful of small containers fall into open sky. Parachutes deploy after a set amount of time (or perhaps altitude?) off-white fabric catching a rush of air before drifting harmlessly to land into the grass far below. A natural cushion, but likely not by enough to make a difference for your purposes.

You count, the wind rushing in through the open space, clutching the board tight to your chest, with the view below you slotting into the one to inform you that you’re as close to your optimal calculations as you can get. Once you hit zero, you close your eyes and let yourself fall.

This might be the stupidest thing you’ve ever done

You’d argue the stupidest thing you’ve ever done was sticking your head in that sendificator, and that turned out well enough.

You won’t allow yourself to second guess the decision, now that you’ve taken the leap. Straight up refuse to even consider the possibility of failure. Adrenaline races through you, buoying you up, crashing into the vice grip on your lungs and setting you free . The world spins around you, wind ripping through your hair, eyes held shut because you wouldn’t be able to see anyway. Gravity hangs onto you like a rock, and not for the first time you long for the ability to shirk off the laws of physics like the abstract concepts they are.

You suck in a deep breath, stolen away from the rushing wind, adrenaline coursing through your veins and swamping Lil' Cal's attempts to smother you. You’re playing chicken with the water, just like you used to do all the time when you needed that rush of feeling to remind you that you were alive. 

Hit the switch.

Heat blossomed, roaring around you, the boosters igniting and slowing the descent just enough, allowing you to torque your bodyweight that way, and hope to hell you’ve compensated properly for the increased mass--and then you flip--a maneuver you’d often pull off the top of your apartment, waiting until the crashing waves were right beneath you--

Coasting along horizontally above the water on the edge of the lagoon, you’re sailing, the built in stabilizers working overtime to adjust the distribution of thrust to allow you to finally climb to your feet, releasing that stolen breath back into the wild, plus several more as you inhale that salty sea air.

It’s a little wobbly, but your altitude is stable. You look out over the sparkling blue ocean and the roaring engine of the retreating cargo plane, dodging the giant pink petals of a flowering lilypad with some instinctive shifts of your weight. You spare a thought for the pilot, wondering if he lingered to see the result of your, admittedly, insane stunt. 

It feels so good. Like stretching a muscle that has grown so, so rusty over the intervening months since you and three friends were forced into playing a game. It turned your altered state into nothing more than a variable to calculate, and threw you back into how things were supposed to be. Back when your lungs were full of salted air and the sea was all you could see. 

Back when you were trapped.

Really, you’re still trapped, just in a different way. It allows you to appreciate what you had a little more.

A nudge to a pressure plate disengages the cruise control, and you arc the board back towards the green body of the island, leaving the sparkling blue behind.

It’s a lot emptier than you’d imagined from Brobot’s camera feed and Jake’s stories, even with the lack of giant chimeric fauna. The entire place is a sanitized bunch of rolling hills surrounding the edge of the crater bay that house the ruins. Nothing like the hellmurder island you remember--through reviewing the logs--stalking Jake to--keep him safe--toughen him up. This is much more like taking a frolicking stroll through fields overgrown with wildflowers. Idyllic on the surface, but unkempt, neglected, and uncared for.

It might even be more accurate a description than you intended; perhaps it is so carefully sculpted to create a place to leave a child for days upon weeks upon months upon years. 

When did Jake Harley die? What of the granddaughter you know he left behind? 

That thought is sobering to consider, knowing what you do of your friend who grew up so fiercely independent it’s hard for him to consider that others-- you-- need things from him too.

You screwed up, but there was a reason you clung so desperately, and even you have to admit the fault isn’t entirely lain to rest at the feet of your social ignorance.

You angle your way towards the big white tower rising above the hill, making a pitstop to gather the boxes from where you can see the small mess of the parachutes dotting the hills like giant flowers. You captchalogue them away--the least you can do is deliver them. You’re contractually obligated to check in at the house anyway, and considering you’ll need to follow up with Roxanne after all this shit, you might as well go by the books. You need all the good-will you can get with her. Even if your hindbrain wants you to hit the ruins and skip out on what you know is waiting for you somewhere in that house. 

You have more than a little idea of what you’ll find. Davepeta may have given you a heads up, but even without it you know what the Scratch did, how it flipped shit sideways. If Jane was cremated, like Jake’s grandmother had been, then Harley would end up like Crocker. 

Jake Harley’s tower is impressive as you close the distance. A white spire of metal growing ever grander in scale as you angle the board upwards, heading for the top of that smaller, leveled off peek. Very ‘old school vision of the future’-esque, although you don’t miss the resemblance in construction to that of the Dreamer towers. You wonder if Lady English’s headquarters had been the same, and find the possibility quite likely, given the accuracy of your own apartment and the Egbertian ne Crocker household had been. Jake had been living out of the destroyed room as long as you’d known him, and all there’d been when you pulled everyone through into the game was a crumbled ruin. No way the batterwitch would leave such a monument to humanity’s ingenuity standing to challenge her might.

You are stalling again.

You aren’t stalling.

You’re here, aren’t you?

Jade is waiting for you when you ease back on the break and kick the ignition off, sending the board up into your hand with a practiced motion. You slide that puppy back into your sylladex, settling into a loose stance on that abnormally clean white tile that covered the top of this smaller mountain. 

At least you assume it’s Jade. 

She’s alone, standing on the top of the steps near the door leading into the structure. 

She’s alone: a small slip of a girl with long wild black hair with a white cat-ear embellished headband making a token attempt to tame the untamable. A rifle in one hand. 

She’s alone: a child dressed in a white dress with buttons all the way down. It makes you think of Roxanne’s lab-coat styled dress, in fact. Similar tastes, maybe. Or perhaps a gift.

She’s alone and that really strikes you as odd.

Notes:

...Still not gonna be epilogue compliant, and that includes everything that came after it...

Let the record be known: I am currently working on chapter 64 right now. That's how far ahead I am. There will probably be weekly updates for a while! Also Jade :3c Quite a bit of Jade. She missed out on the party so it's only fair.

I've also opened a discord server if anyone wants to chat and or just see how the word-count changes day by day haha. I like tracking that stuff. Find it [Here]

Chapter 62: Dirk > Try Not to Adopt Another Kid

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

You’ve never properly met Jade Harley, not aside from a brief glimpse of ashen grey skin and blank glowing eyes. Almost a ghost’s eyes. Poison green--a familiar color why is that familiar--energy cackling around her before you were shunted from the Incipisphere without so much as a by your leave, tossed out like last week’s trash.

This Jade is too small and full of obviously restrained, yet excited energy. Her smile--so like Jake’s in that it sets her bright green eyes afire--beams at you, dismantling any wariness you should harbor, given that weapon casually outside her strife-specibus and you with nothing but a puppet and some camping supplies in your sylladex.

Damn permits.

You're not overly concerned; she’d be pointing it at you if she plans to use it. Not to mention she’s half your size.

She calls out a, “Mr. Strider?” as you draw near, and with a responding nod, away the rifle goes. Of course she would have been informed. That was likely part of the protocol.

“Hi! Sorry about that! The lady told me someone was coming but I had no idea when you would be arriving! It’s been so long since Grandpa’s friends came to visit--are you here to look at the ruins? They always want to come to the ruins--oh where’s my manners, my name is Jade! Oh wait what about my packages--that’s fine I’ll go find them later--”

“I grabbed them for you.”

“Really??” Jade lights up, bouncing on her toes as you remove the three boxes, sans parachutes because they disengaged upon impact and you didn’t want to think of another three rhymes to store them away.

The little girl brushes her fingers along the edges of the boxes, and then straight up plops herself down onto the tile flooring, uncaring of the potential disaster when it comes to the combination of dirt and her white dress. A look of intense concentration blossoms as her eyes narrow behind those large glasses, but it doesn’t stop her grateful stream of chatter. “Oh thank you so much! I wasn’t sure when this was going to get here, and it’s always a pain to go hunting them down after they fall, it’s hard to tell if I miss one, you know? The grasses are really, really thick now, I almost drown in them!”

Something golden flashes on her on her right hand as she begins manipulating what you can only assume is her sylladex. It’s a small, thin yellow band, folded in on itself and wrapped around her index finger. A hair tie? Maybe? It’s not like any of your crew had the hair length to need ties. The string flashes again, faintly glittering, as Jade starts sliding the boxes individually into a fetch modus you aren’t quite able to follow. It takes an inefficiently long time to put away each item.

You’re starting to shift impatiently by the time she’s finally pushing herself off the ground brushing some of that hypothetical disastrous dirt off her white skirt--there isn’t any, somehow--“Okay! Let me show you to your room!”

Room?

“Kid--Jade--” You quickly amend, but she’s already bounding through the door and leaving you behind. It’s been a long day, but there’s still a few hours of daylight, especially if this really is full on summer down here. You could just go. Now. You have no obligation. You've "checked in". It's not like Rox told you to play house. 

Isn't the whole reason you had to leave Dave behind was because you didn't have time to deal with a kid? 

A head of messy black hair pokes back out the open door frame. Is she pouting? “Mr Strider come ooooooon!”

You consider for a moment. You do need to convince her to let you paw at her robot, unless you want to break in later. It might be smart to encourage the continued good-will, especially if it grants you access to wi-fi. 

But inside--

She is pouting. Fine. Christ. It’s worse than Jane and her eyelash batting.

You never could say no to them.

You flash after her, the interior of the building is dim, god, and you like dim. You didn’t expect such a bright and reflective building to make you feel like you’re several floors into a tomb on LOTAK, even down to the stone brick floor-- seriously Jake? --and lit by torches.  Especially with its sole occupant being a ten-year-old girl who seems like a literal ball of sunshine. 

Like seriously, there are torches. Torches on wrought iron stands that look like they belong in some cult’s ritualistic chamber. Torches in wall sconces, the flickering lights sending your shadows dancing down the hall. Apparently no expense was made when it came to the atmosphere of the place.  It very much tastes like English-flavored dramatics, and that makes your heart fucking hurt.

You expect… you don’t know what you expect.

Jade waits for you after the initial hallway, pushing her hands nervously behind her back, “This is the grand foyer! Grandpa used to use it to entertain guests, but it’s been so long it's a big stinky mess!” She makes a face, her attempts at restraining her posture backfire almost immediately as she begins gesturing to go along with her work, “I think Grandpa built in an eternal fragrance emitter for the ‘atmosphere.’ I haven’t tried digging into the wall panels to try and shut it off though since I just kinda hold my breath if I have to go through here--I can try and find it if it really bothers you though!” 

The crackle of a fire draws your attention to the huge hearth. It’s clearly a sitting room, two big, plush, old fashioned couches take up a chunk of the room, with a space of honor before the fire for…

Another chair, perhaps. Or perhaps it was intentionally left blank to allow for dramatic shots of Jake Harley standing before the fire, puffing on a pipe?

The empty space makes you uneasy.

Jane’s Poppop had been mounted in front of the fire. You don’t know if that’s an extraneous detail or not.

She’s waiting for you to answer. 

“It’s fine, you don’t need to do that.” You take a breath, whatever it is tickles the back of your throat but not much more than that. At least it doesn’t smell as strong as Dan’s pipe smoke, and nowhere near the low-level smog of modern day Houston you've had to learn to tolerate.

“Oh! Okay! Sorry, here! This way!” 

You could have dodged it, but her small hand does its best to latch onto your wrist, and you find yourself allowing her to pull you even deeper into the torch-lit entryway, one that opens up into a large spacious hall. It’s marginally better lit only because it has even more torches, pushing the ritualistic vibe to the max by arranging them in a circle around the big ass worm thing just chilling in the center of the room like that’s normal. You freeze.

Jade follows your gaze, her open-book expression pulling into a scowl. “Grandpa likes to leave his trophies everywhere, though I think most of the really weird ones are upstairs. I just wish he hadn’t blocked the transportalizer. There’s a couple in the guestrooms, but I couldn’t reach them to take it down--some guys and the lady have been in and out since Grandpa left but I was too little I just hid in my room--” She steers you around the giant fucking worm, and if that isn’t a monster from the Game you’ll eat your hat. That you didn’t bring. You probably should have brought a hat.

Sun protection, you know how it goes.

That isn’t important. Not even the worm is important. What’s causing your brain to skip like a scratched disk is what she said .

Left???

“Jade.” You pull your arm out of the little girl’s grip. It’s frighteningly easy. She curls into herself as you square yourself up, and you feel fucking terrible about that, but you need to get to the bottom of this shit. “Look, I didn’t plan to crash here at all. I’m not a company guy, I’m just a dude out here on a research trip who happened to know someone who knew someone. You don’t need to open your fu--house to me, alright?”

“I know all that! But I want to! I cleaned out the rooms and everything! Grandpa isn’t here and hasn’t been here for a long time and I thought--maybe--I wouldn’t be alone in the house for a while!”

You blue screen, her increasingly chaotic babble getting lost in the static of your own head.

Not here?

Jake is dead… right?

The pattern--

There is a place for him, in the foyer. A spot in front of the fire.

John Crocker was mounted in front of the fire.

The pattern demanded he be dead. Is there something you are missing? Some point of divergence here that didn’t happen elsewhere? 

Just how did Jake Harley die? You flip through the files tucked away into your brain, thumbing hurriedly across the mental indices, pushing them this way and snagging others with nary a thought as you root around your meticulously (and not fog-infested, god, you don’t want to deal with that again, break from Lil’ Cal or not) organized recall system. All your research in this world turns up the knowledge of a retirement in the Pacific, the predictions from the pattern, and your Davepeta given assurances that Jade’s grandfather died when she was little, stuffed, and some of the little details their Jade had shared with them of her home on their long journey.

It isn’t a lot by any definition, but what you do know is not matching up.

Breathe. 

You’ll figure it out. You simply need more data.

In for four. 

Hold.

The claws have settled around your lungs again. 

Exhale for five. You’ve got an audience. 

Exactly how much of you is a performance? You don’t even know anymore.

“...Alright. Lead the way.”

Perhaps there are more masks than stoicism. The cracks in her desperately lonely shell are all covered up by that shining buck-toothed smile. She may have Jake’s eyes, but she has Jane’s smile.

It probably doesn’t help that they’re all related, either. You’d dodged a bullet in that John had barely given you a second glance with Dave there.

Dave. You should have brought Dave. And, yeah, it's cold to think about offering the kid up as a sacrificial lamb for Miss Harley's friend-seeking claws to latch on to, but damn it you aren't equipped for this. Maybe they didn’t know each other yet but they would, and then maybe he’d be happy again, instead of that strangely shattered face that haunts you, right as he broke and latched onto your leg.

God damnit , Newt.

“The guest rooms are right down this hall! It’s got, like, all the things you might need, kitchen, bedroom--it’s like it’s own little house! Though I couldn’t really stock the pantry very well, I’m sorry.” The small frown is so genuine you don’t even know how to process it. “I pulled some fruit and vegetables from my garden and I can do some hunting or fish to try and get some meat but I hate hurting the little bunnies. I don’t have a lot here and it takes so long to get anything new delivered so I can only get preserved stuff and oh--”

She chatters. She chatters so much. You’re a little overwhelmed, this one miniscule space of her giant house is bigger than your entire apartment, and it’s all for you.

There’s several stuffed animal heads mounted up high on the wall, which Jade gives a disapproving sniff at, but at least the decor here is less ‘grey dungeon’ and more ‘old-fashioned wealthy, eccentric action hero’s living space’ with tacky as fuck floral wallpaper, fancy moulding, and some bizarrely advanced tech with a familiar spirograph stamped on the sides thrown around for flavor. It definitely feels like a space meant to impress in its time. By contrast, the thick comforter and pillowcases on the four-poster bed are all bright clouds and sunshine, completely nonsensical. 

She replaced them, you realize faintly. You stagnate in the doorway as she scampers about the rooms pointing out where everything is, beaming up at you with this completely self-satisfied smile, eagerly looking for anything. Anything.

You almost feel bad, not responding to shit, just letting yourself be dragged along. Maybe you should. You know your bro hates it when you clam up. When you shut down. She might not be him, but she’s a lonely, eager kid right now. 

“When was the last time you said this was used again?”

Brow furrowing, she taps a golden-wrapped index finger on her chin. “Oh, I think, I don’t… they asked me if Grandpa had told me when he’d be back, but Grandpa was gone a lot. Exploring and stuff so I had no idea. But! The lady came out to see me a few months ago! So that was fun!”

The lady? Roxanne? Why would she ask you to check the ruins if she was just here? You want to ask how long it’s been. You want to ask if she’s here all alone with her grandpa gone. You don’t ask either questions, your eyes once again being drawn by the glittery hair tie flashing in the, thankfully, electrical overhead lighting.

“You didn’t have to do this, Jade.” You awkwardly look away, noting that one of the walls has a cushioned window reading nook that overlooks the seaward view from the tower rather than the lagoon and the frog temple. You could probably get that open and fold yourself out to avoid having to leave through that tomb of a grand foyer. “Really, this is too much. I didn’t expect a place to crash at all. I can’t imagine it’s all that cool to share your space with a stranger--”

“NO!” The sudden yell startles you, bursting free from small lungs. Your head jerks back around to regard her, away from the window, almost causing you to rock on your heels. She’s got a blush on her tanned face, pigment darkening as she picks at the band on her finger. “No! No, I mean, it’s okay! I really have been looking forward to having a guest! I know you’re here for other things, but it’s just kind of nice to talk to someone, you know? Grandpa has been--gone--and I thought maybe… I saw that you… you know…” She trails off into a mumble, looking down at her feet and messing with her fingers, pushing that elastic band around and around.

Eventually you have to prompt her with a, “Maybe what? I can’t answer ‘til you ask.”

She sucks in a breath, steeling herself. Simply looking at the earnestness on her face and how much of Jake you can hone in that expression means you’re prenaturally aware that you won’t be able to say no.

You’ve gone so fuckin’ soft. She isn’t your bro. She isn’t Jake. She isn’t Jane.

But she’s also just like you, if you stop to think about it. Trapped in the middle of the ocean. Growing up alone. Has she even met the rest of the kids yet? You at least had Roxy by Jade’s age, and your bots…

But you also know that the silence can become unbearable, and you latch onto whatever you can.

Your snapping point just so happened to doom a brain-clone to a life of incorporeal half-existence.

Fuck.

“Canitakealookatyourhoverboard???” 

It comes out of her in a rush. You blink down at the green eyes shining behind her glasses.

“I won’t break it! I promise! I just want to look! I’ve only ever seen something like that on the internet and it looked like a lot of fun to ride! My robot has hovering capabilities but I can’t ever study it because I’m always asleep when it activates!”

Her robot .

“It’s a rocket board, actually, but…" An idea occurs to you, almost unbidden. You have something she wants. She has something you want. Isn't this why you're here? "How about a trade? I’ll show you how the ‘board works, maybe even let you take it for a spin.”

Her face is so bright right now it might be glowing, those hands clasped together with glee. You can already tell it isn’t just childish wonder at the unknown. She is--was--could have been--Old Lady English. You’d heard enough stories from Jake to revere Lady English.

She’ll know enough to ask questions you’ll need to answer. Luckily, it’s more or less the same design as the one you put together in your own time, so you should be able to break it down the concepts easy enough.

You shove that whole train of meandering thoughts back into the crawlspace, and continue. “I’d like to see that robot of yours in return.”

Her face falls.

“I don’t--I don’t know if I can. Sorry.” Even her hair looks like it’s deflating. Some of that bright, unbridled glee fades. “I can show you the docking station, but Grandpa set it up so it only opens when I’m sleeping--like a guard! But--” She makes frustrated waving motions with her hands, “I don’t know if it works anymore. It hasn’t gone flying in months.”

Months.

Whelp. Months could mean anything, but given your experience she probably meant the summer.

It’s all too coincidental, otherwise. Your arrival. John's sleepwalking. Roxanne's coding troubles. There would have been a major shift from what was saved in the restore state, and her dreamself post-collapse. You can possibly get it working again if you nudge it to seek out her recreated dreamself, not the original one. There’s a pressure behind your eyes as you consider it. You’ll need access while it’s searching. If it still activates, only doesn’t sync up properly…

You could offer to look at it tonight. That would be the easiest way, but you aren’t sure--

She’d barely be bothered by the idea. You’re already certain than that; more excited to have another living being around to talk to than anything, even if it’s some strange ass dude barging in on her space-- she’s not supposed to be alone, this is wrong. You’re getting distracted. 

The pressure retreats and you breathe, waving off Jade’s worried, “Are you alright, Mr. Strider??”

“‘m fine, kiddo.” You use the moniker to remind yourself, because you can already see how it can be too easy to slip. She’s only a kid, and you’re--most certainly not. Taking a look at it while she’s awake and supervising is one thing, but you’d have to get at it while it’s active, which means she’s need to be asleep.

She’s only a kid. Not Old Lady English. Not even your friend. 

Just a lonely kid.

“How ‘bout we take your counter offer--the docking station for a quick tour into rocketboard city? That sound fair?” 

Just like that, the excitement is back. She starts throwing out hypothesis after hypothesis into the designs of your onboard propulsion systems and balancing apparatuses, some of which are pretty close, for a ten-year-old. Then again, you intimately remember what you were capable of at ten, isolated, with nothing to do but study, read, and build. You even have some knowledge of what Jake was capable of, when you shared childhood projects like they were closely guarded, personal treasures. He would have learned from her counterpart, just as this Jade must have learned from the things he’s left behind.

Jade eagerly rushes off to get you an old laptop when you hesitantly ask for internet access, one that’s keyed into the network already. Not as convenient as being able to use your phone, but better than nothing. You might take a crack at breaking the encryption on the network like you did at the Egbert Household, but with only your phone up against SkaiaNet’s SBURB-enhanced security suite it’ll take too damn long.

There’s an old version of Pesterchum installed on the laptop, which you pull up to let Davepeta know you were alive--is the application another SkaiaNet product? You hadn't thought about that before. It's so fuckin' flexible it would make sense with the Medium’s use of the program--and then an email to Newt to pass along to your bro. You have no service out here, so it’s not like you can text him. A final message, one sent to a SkaiaNet email, confirming your arrival, and one, extra final line.

How long has she been alone?

You don’t expect an answer. Not today. Especially not with the time-zone difference between here and New York. You won’t disregard the possibility that she’s ignoring you, either. You did the same with Newt’s email, after all.

timaeusTestified begins pestering dataJammer [DJ]

timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m alive.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i can s33 that!!!
timaeusTestified [TT]: How’s Dave?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you could message him yourself mew know
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< he was quite offended you havent given him your pesterchum
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< as soon as he finds out you have internet access and dont wanna talk to him hes gonna explode into lil bits of dave jelly
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< mew dont want that right B(
timaeusTestified [TT]: He won’t find out as long as you don’t tell him.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< B((
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< youre asking me to lie to the kid
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< hes purrobably worried
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< not even purrobably
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< certainly
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< he asked me if id heard anyfang from you less than an hour ago!!!
timaeusTestified [TT]: I sent Newt an email to pass along.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I don’t know. I don’t want to push my way into his space any more than I already have. Pesterchum is where his friends are.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< youre doing it again
timaeusTestified [TT]: Doing what again, exactly?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< deciding that you know best instead of giving him a choice
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i could just give him your handle and then itd be his decision if he wants to purrsue it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but i think itd mean more if the furiend request came from you
timaeusTestified [TT]: The mere act of offering creates an expectation of an answer. I feel like doing so will result in an obligation to accept even if he doesn’t want to.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dude the furst thing he did after adding me was complain he didnt know you even had a pesterchum handle
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< clearly pesterchum is not some sacred bro fr33 zone
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< wont you n33d it during the game???
timaeusTestified [TT]: The game is still two years and three months away.
timaeusTestified [TT]: But I’ll take your concern under advisement. How is he doing?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< he hasnt said anyfang about it specificatly but considering the time i dont think hes planning on sl33ping tonight
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< overall its b33n a right hoot
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i furgot how surreal talking to myself is
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m impressed. I’ve always found it more than a little infuriating.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yeah well youre the prince of self sabotage
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im the knight of
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i actually dont know
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< self preservation???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< *dj waves a paw in the air because theyve lost track of where they were going with this*
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its all dave stormcrow up in here
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< never good when you s33 another dave but it usually means you just saved your own tail somehow
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< anyway thats not impurrtant
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< point is ive got him slipping into cat puns
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< today is the best day ever
timaeusTestified [TT]: This may have been a mistake.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< no take backsies you left him with me its my meowral duty to corrupt him
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< hey if you have internet that means
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< hows jade???
timaeusTestified [TT]: Far too eager to accept some random-ass dude into her home. She didn’t even point the rifle at me before I introduced myself.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< when youve got a reality warping dog as your best friend you dont gotta be afraid of much tbh
timaeusTestified [TT]: ...Dog?
timaeusTestified [TT]: Ah - the pre-Scratch version of Gcat, most likely
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dude you had a cat thats
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< purrty pawesome B33
timaeusTestified [TT]: I have it on good authority that he was an asshole, actually.

You haven’t seen hide nor hair of a dog around, but given the frustrated rants you’ve gotten from Jane over the years dealing with the reality-bending feline’s unpredictability, perhaps it isn’t to be unexpected. You shoot a glance towards Jade, observing how she alternates between picking at the band on her hand and glancing back towards you. She’s nearly vibrating from the effort of being patient.

Once again you admit to almost feeling guilty, under those frequent green glances. You did say you’d only be a minute.

timaeusTestified [TT]: I’ve got to go.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ok ok i get it all work and no play
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< think about what i said earlier
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< how are things going with your plus one???

Despite restraining it to background noise, you still feel his attention like cold claws around your lungs. It makes you hesitate, even when talking to the one person you can be honest with. 

timaeusTestified [TT]: He’s noisy.

Such a fucking understatement right there.

It’s hard to be honest about Cal. About how the time since your return from Washington has slowly been working to convince you that you need him, mostly because of that pang of something missing you felt while you were gone. 

Tying the maintenance of your mental state to the presence of something actively trying its best to dismantle you seems more than a little self-destructive. Ironically, it is also appropriate, considering your habits and how they tie to your mythological title. It really shouldn't surprise you.

timaeusTestified [TT]: It’s not work yet; I’ve promised to show the kid the rocketboard in return for the chance to check out her robot.

You could probably come up with any number of reasons to rationalize away your actions. Fulfilling your end of the bargain. Making your life easier. Repayment for the place to crash and the internet connection. A favor for your bro's friend.

And maybe it doesn’t matter. You can head down to the ruins tomorrow, and figure out where to go from there. 

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i s33
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ...dirk?
timaeusTestified [TT]: Yeah?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< nothing
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< go on!!!
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< just be careful
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< jades super smart
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< shell have your board in pieces if you let her sink her claws into it!!!

Somehow, you can’t bring yourself to doubt it. 

Jade appears to make an effort to not bounce too eagerly as you log out of the Pesterchum window, closing up the lid to allow the--too heavy, clunky, old from your perspective--laptop to fall asleep on the desk. It’s clearly obsolete tech, but it’s not like you have your shades and it’s not like you could have dragged your rig all the way here so it’ll do. It ain’t like beggars can be choosers, and in this scenario you’ve got nothin’ but rags on your back.

Christ; you expected to camp out in the middle of a beastie-filled jungle without even your strife specibus. Now you’re about to go for a joyride around the island with nary a care in the world, and an actual bed to return to for the first time in literal months.

Things are not going according to plan, missing preserved corpses and mysterious reality bending dogs aside, it isn’t even a bad thing.

Those two factors were huge black marks splattered against the canvas of your plans. How the hell are you supposed to bring Jake back to life without something to throw into a sprite? Is there something you are missing?

There has to be an answer somewhere.

Demote that shit--you’ve got a little girl on your hands to entertain. It’s all about priorities. You can’t do anything about the elder Harley right now.

Your hand snakes its way into your hair, the hopeless strands ruffling with the nervous movement. If Dave were here he’d be disgusted at you, you’re sure. But after the unexpected skydive you don’t think he would hold the state of your hair against you this time. “Do you wanna just look at it, or do ya wanna go for a ride first?”

“A ride! A ride!” Jade hops about eagerly. You’d already anticipated her answer, and cross the room to the window in the reading nook. It’s a tall one, and even if the mechanisms are rusty from exposure to the humid environment you easily open it enough to get your start.

Jade soon embraces her role as a delighted barnacle clinging to your back, with her arms wrapped tightly around your neck. The pressure adds itself to Cal’s continuing desperation to be out, but you shove that down and away even as your mind conjures up an image of those mittened hands trying to suffocate you. Fuck off, dude. This is probably the safest way to carry her.

The downside to your design is its lack of true hover-capability, so you can only get shit going with momentum.

The upside is, throwing yourself out a window to the accompaniment of Jade’s delighted shriek is a really good way to get momentum.

And it looks and feels cool as fuck when you can pull it off.

You really missed this.

You’re a responsible adult. You only let the free-fall last for a few short seconds before you get your feet under you and release the board from your sylladex. It’s a fucking cakewalk from a standstill. It only gets dicey when you have to adjust for forward momentum as well.

Jade’s arms may be tight around your neck, but you can finally breathe again.

You do a lap around the island, skimming the water, adroitly dodging rocks as the sun inches lazily across the sky. You can hear Jade chattering to herself, or to you, you’re not sure. It’s not like you can actually make out anything over the wind.

One arm loosens, and you nearly flinch your head turning to glance back at her, and then realizing what she’s doing, you follow the line of her excited pointing instead. 

A shift of your balance--made a little trickier by the added weight on your back, but she soon realizes what you’re doing and she returns to quietly imitating a barnacle--you start dodging lilypads instead of rocks, weaving along the edge of the ruins. 

A flash of white suddenly stands out against the green-grey stone  but it’s just as soon gone, and you put it out of your mind as nothing more than the sun reflecting off the surf.

Eventually you head back. You kick off the board mid-motion and land with a small jump on the still-open window into the-- your-- room. You let her scramble free, putting those striped sneakered feet against the floor. You turn around to see her hair blown into knots and a grin on her face that has it liable to split into two.

You ask if she’s had enough, and she says fuck no. She wants one.

Like a ray of sunshine, she melts you. She melts you so damn hard. You’ve always liked digging into mechanical conundrums, and the words you find so difficult to articulate in social situations come out easier--far easier, as you’re explaining--and as you expected answering questions--your passion to a bright curious and utterly enthralled little girl.

Hours later, long after the sun has dipped beyond the western horizon, she ends up falling asleep on the floor of the guest suite, surrounded by papers, half-finished notes and schematics scribbled out in brightly colored pencils. Judging by that gleam in her eye while listening to you explain shit (and holy hell you’ve missed being able to explain shit to someone who even remotely shares your hobbies) she'll probably have her own working prototype by the next afternoon.

You carefully pick her up, thinking about the fact that you could take her up to her room right now. Just delivering her to bed. Maybe check on that robot of hers…

But you don’t. You tuck her into the blue sky and white cloud covered bed she’d made up for you, then climb into the little nook under the window, intending to spend the night staring out into the ocean, trying not to think about the seething jealousy that’s been leaking out of your sylladex the entire time.

You don’t message anyone else even as you lean into the ghost of kitten claws threading through your hair. You should. You really should. You still haven’t told Davepeta about Harley. You haven’t spotted a dog or a cat, similar entities aside. You don’t really want to talk to anyone right now. You’re talked out.

Despite that, it’s comforting to know they are thinking about you.

You’re so fucking soft.

The idea doesn’t feel so derisive, anymore. More contemplative. You might not have put it in exactly those terms, but that’s what you’ve been working towards for months, isn’t it?

Wicked sharp edges, intentionally sanded down in particular places. There are people you don’t want to cut, after all. Even if it’s in your nature; It’s your choice. Your choice, your actions, matter more than anything borne into you.

Lil’ Cal seethes at the prospect, at your betrayal. A rich notion, coming from what should have been your best friend. Green flickers beyond the cracked wall, pushing at you, emboldened by your perceived passivity. At your weakness. You push back, because it isn’t a weakness to strive to be kind, to be compassionate, to be selfless, thank you. No matter how much you failed at it. Fuck off. You deliberately shove him away in blatant rejection, sinking into that shattered core where the outside world becomes nothing but a vague blur. Where he can’t reach you.

You just need a moment to--

Breathe.

Cal tumbles out of the sylladex, propped up in the space between body and window. He fits into your side like a missing piece. He’s smaller than fuzzy recollections suggest, memories encoded aeons ago and out of date.

Freedom loosens a smothering grip around lungs that have been stubbornly ignoring all evening.  You almost begrudge the relief, because it’s a symptom of the tie that binds you. One you wish you were capable of breaking.

You really should retrieve the laptop from its place on the desk.

You should.

You don’t.

Moonlight glitters across the water, spreading inch by rippling inch, painting the dark ocean with wide sweeping strokes. A cosmic baby who cares not for the line of the horizon. You wonder what the hell are you even doing. Like this.

The void of night, deep blue and stoic, doesn’t answer. Even Cal’s constant pressure fades, falling blissfully silent in its wake.

Notes:

:3c

He's such a pushover, ain't he?

Chapter 63: Dirk > De-Synchronize

Notes:

Quick reminder to remember to use a black-text based site skin for best, as-intended readability :)

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

In an effort to not miss anything, you decide not to take your rocket board directly to the Frog Ruins. Most of the way, sure, but you want to get a good look around your first time through and that requires a personal perspective. You do a quick lap or two around the lagoon to cement the overall structure in your mind before you drop onto the inner edge of the raised crater rim and make the rest of the journey on foot.

Or by lilypad, considering not even you can flashstep fast enough to avoid breaking the surface tension of the water. It would be awesome if you could though.

The morning sun sends sparkles dancing across the deep blue plane, broken up by the shadows of weathered columns--drowned and broken, lurking under the surface of the water or peeking out like the iceberg-tip eyes of a giant beast, biding its time. The stairs leading up to the gaping maw of the central structured are barely visible from this distance--nothing more than a slightly different texture against moss-covered stone. The water doesn’t so much as lap at the small shore far below you. Quiet and calm as a reflecting pool.

You pause on that small raised edge, looking out over the deep blue mirror dotted with vibrantly colored flowers, the sea breeze picks up, brushing through your hair, bringing the scent of salt to your tongue. You remember this place. It’s hard to forget. The memories bubbling up unbidden.

It was very different then.

You almost slide back into it. That sense of detachment. Smoke burning lungs that don’t need to breathe. Mind swimming from the shock of being dead, really dead, completely gone, but filled with a single minded determination that you needed to follow the plan.

You remember looking down and seeing the black lagoon fall away beneath you, the red of the raging fire and the volcano’s eruption dancing across the soup the lagoon had become. The whole island was on fire. The air clogged with ash. Roxy clinging to you, Jane under one arm, Jake smooching your severed head, the glow of AR’s text scrolling across your shades. Mocking and celebratory all the same.

And then you were in the Game, leaving the temple abandoned on an Earth left to rot under the control of an alien conqueror, a playground for her to fuck up and to kill your Bro in order to prep the endless sea-covered wasteland you grew up in.

Things were different then, in that too brief moment when you all existed on the same Earth together. The same time as your brother. Roxy’s mom. The Condesce. A convergence of every active player in this song and dance for those fleeting moments before your autoresponder’s plan came together and the client-server chain completed the circle—

Some small part of you--with all the wisdom of hindsight gained through a wider perspective of events--whispers that you'd had time. That even if the world was doomed, maybe you should have gone to see him. One big ol’ roadtrip. The Condesce needed you in the game. You could fly. Your friends safe from the fire, on the top of that mountain: you could have flown to the ends of the Earth to see him. He was still alive. He'd been alive for years to come. Fighting.

And why are you thinking about this now. There's even less point in mourning that decision in this world where he never did and never will exist. It was rebranding day. The reveal when all of your Bro's warnings came to fruition. When he likely went into hiding.

You're glad Dave will never get the chance to grow into him. You also feel guilty that your Bro will never come to be.

Sometimes you wonder if it's even fair to either of them that you mourn him at all.

You force the thoughts away, trapped under lock and key and throwing the key into the still depths of the lagoon. Now, it contrasts against your memory, viewed under a sunrise full of hope instead of such a last ditch effort in the dead of night.

You’re alone out here, which you’d honestly expected to have a difficult time negotiating given your new shadow. But Jade had only smiled innocently and scampered up the spiral staircase after you’d finally forced yourself to kick her out this morning, with a half-wave and a yelled, “Have fun Mr. Strider!” Only half-waved, because her arms were full of scribbled papers, and you know she’ll be elbows deep in trying to replicate your design for hours yet.

You should be worried; she’s ten, but you were covered in grease and building Sawtooth at ten. Old lady English is in there, somewhere. What did you just decide about it not being fair to Dave, about letting him grow without a martyr hanging over his head, about putting those expectations on him? On her? What right do you have to look to a future that would never happen because the world will end before it has a chance to mature and maybe that's best for you all (but what about newt what about jane what about the lady at the corner store theres nothing you can do into the box it goes.)

Jade Harley deserves your confidence on her own merits--if anything you'd seen last night is indicative of her dogged determination and a good foundation for understanding much of the theory. Her weakness is a limited exposure to the practical mechanical applications, but she'll no doubt ambush you with a finished draft along with questions as soon as you get back to the tower tonight, instead of just plowing onward into building the thing herself.

Asking for help instead of trying to bulldoze your way through a problem is smart methodology. Who knew. Certainly not Dirk Strider.

You find you're not dreading the prospect as much as you expected.

Tentatively looking forward to it even.

Will Dave ever feel that comfortable with you?

That thought makes you uncomfortable by the virtue of how true it rings in the caverns of your skull. It’s getting too damn crowded up there--between shattered glass and metal, not to mention the amount of shitty thoughts and self-mutilation you’ve been boxing up and shoving away like a packrat--to make for half-decent acoustics. It’s not fair.

Just a thought experiment, faffing about and wasting time and resources in the morning air after a strangely restless night you can only vaguely remember. Perhaps it put you in a contemplative mood. You are where you are; that is how it is. You aren’t a Time player, it isn’t your place to dwell on ‘what-if’s. You can only desperately grab at proactive ways to shape the road forward, and sometimes that means figuring out what the fuck went wrong in the first place. Given everything about that goddamned Game came from these ruins, it’s a good place to start.

You start down the raised edge at a jog, the overgrown grasses giving away to a more rocky slope worn away and widened by wind and water. You keep the trajectory of the lilypads fixed in your head, the nearest one well within range of a flash-step. Are they rooted? Or do they simple drift along the pool as they see fit? You wouldn’t know. You’re an engineer, not a botanist.

Flash. Land. Balance. Find your next target. One step. Two step. Three step. Four. The shadow of the central structure is sihlouetted against the sky above you. Growing and elongating.

Your route takes you past a broken piller, and you pause, running a hand across the lichen-engrossed surface. Cracked. These weren’t broken in those brief moments in time you looked down from above, everything ringed in the red glow from the fire.

You remember that. You remember them, rising out of the water in an equidistant circle.

You’d been planning on taking a look around before Roxanne asked you to, even if the dreambot tech was your primary reason for the trip. If anything weird was going to happen in the restore state, it stands to reason it’d happen around these ruins.

Like things missing. Events shifting to patch over holes. Wasn’t that supposed to be your fate, had you not slipped the noose? Like the rest of your friends, treated as nothing more than a slapdashed fill-in, clay stuffed into an empty mold.

How did Jake Harley die?

Davepeta hadn’t known when you finally checked the laptop this morning, and it’s not like you could ask Jade, who seems convinced her Grandfather has been off on a trip for some three or four years, at least. Not that you’ve asked, directly, but you’ve quietly gathered the tiny details peppered in through her seemingly endless stream of chatter.

Data, data--you need more--

Data.

Fuck.

You can find out, can’t you?

There was an end to his timeline. You saw it, hovering over the faded out wings on a console.

You instinctively go for your phone--you have a lead--but stop yourself. You don’t have signal. You brought the laptop with you, in case you need to take notes, but you doubt the wifi from the house reaches this far out. You can check when you get to solid stone. You don’t want to risk dropping it into the lake do you?

Just…

File it away and deal with it later.

Mind in the present, now. You slap an important tag on that thought and index it.

The seventh step is a long shot, barely edging within your range, but you fling yourself into the space without much care, because all missing would do at this point is get you wet. Wet and irritated with yourself, and with Cal, because he suddenly squeezes you mid-step and you’re half afraid you miscalculated.

You didn’t. You make it to the stairs. It isn’t the most graceful of landings.

A stunt like that while you were on the board could have disastrous consequences. Not just for you.

“Jesus Christ, dude.” You resist the urge to decaptalogue the puppet and punt him into the lagoon. Or even the volcano. Cathartic as it would be, it would be giving him what he wants. Freedom. “Look, you can creep on me all you like, but only when both feet are on the ground. Capiche? What would happen to you if you end up killing me, huh?”

You’re sure he can hear you, because that presence pushes up against the thin wall and... You can’t describe it as anything other than smiles, toothily. You feel it on all sides. Squeezed into a space too small for you. Cut off. Confined despite the fact that there’s a metric fuckton of empty air around you. The red shit is a thin barrier between you and that burning green mass and you’re all too aware of how easy it would be to break. But he won’t, because it, and you, are a part of him.

Every single part of you is curled into a celtic knot of Dirkian proportions, quivering with cold robotic denial, resenting the fuck out of that implication.

“Just--buzz off. I’ve got work to do.” You stubbornly make your way up the stairs. Ignoring the burning in your palms and the ache in your left knee from where you’d landed on the slick stone and fumbled, catching yourself and scraping up your palms on the steep staircase.

He’s a snake that settles his weight around your shoulders, around your neck, constricting, but no more than he has been since the start of the trip.

It doesn’t make the ascent any easier.

You’re regretting your decision to walk this last leg by the time you make it to the opening at the top of the stairs. You give one last look back the way you came, out over the still water and the sun rising higher into the sky, making another note to just ‘board back since you don’t think the idiot is actually trying to kill you.

That would defeat the whole purpose, afterall.

You wouldn’t call it panting--that would be embarrassing--but you’re definitely struggling more than you should; there’s a tension resonating within you as you try to avoid the desire to greedily gulp down the air, knowing it’ll only encourage Cal’s phantom constriction around your chest.

Maybe you should look at this trip as an opportunity to return to good habits and start up your conditioning again.

Five mile jog at least. That ridiculous mountain to climb. Fighting through fields of overgrown shrubs, all while feeling like you can barely breathe. Sounds like a challenge.

Once you get home you'll be able to establish a routine. Get back to daily or at least tri-weekly practice. You should do it. Puppet or no puppet, you shouldn't be fighting the urge to wheeze after a few flash steps and a climb.

You could do it, but whether it is wise is the question you should be asking. That question is what made you hesitate each time you’d find yourself coming up for air in between projects and itching for the familiar feel of the hilt in your hand. That question is why you've let it go for so long, despite your training routines being a part of your life since you had realized what your destiny was. To fight. To resist. To eventually win where your Bro could not.

Dave is jumpy enough as it is. A return to old habits, even if alone, might stir up more of those involuntary reactions he’s so hung up over. Yet, you can’t deny it’s irresponsible to not take care of a weapon when there’ll be a fight ahead.

Imagine if you actually had to fight drones like this.

You find yourself irrationally jealous of your teenaged god-tier self, snoozing away, not even months of inactivity would dull that honed edge. One day you’ll figure out how to get around the interference and then--

What would that do to Dave?

You stop.

Fuck.

Following through with that--you really would be--

You’re getting ahead of yourself. Cut the spiral off at its knees and kick it back down the stairs you just climbed. At least you’re getting better at recognizing those spirals of thought patterns before they get out of control, allowing a more clinical part of you to squash them early.

It’s time to dive into the belly of the beast.

Or, well--frog, in this case.

The elevator in the main shaft still works; it's easy to find the slightly off colored pressure plate in the center of it that makes the mechanisms whirr to life.

There's an obvious flow to the path into the heart. This was a place intended for discovery. Packed with all the information essential to building a universal creation engine from scratch. Hieroglyphs everywhere--the walls, the roof. There’s even some printed in the most obscure places such as the back edge of a door jamb. Frogs. Spirographs. More frogs. Meteors. Stylistic interpretations of things you recognize but can’t read. How the fuck was anyone supposed to make workable code out of this?

Especially when it’s so worn. Faded. Cracks in stone making entire sections illegible, even if you could understand whatever language this shit is written in. You’d think it would be related to the carapace alphabet, considering these things were generated paradoxically in the game.

You’d at least be able to read Carapace.

You don’t know exactly what Roxanne wants you to look out for. Anything out of place? How can you tell what was out of place when you’ve never seen the original? Would it have something to do with the damage, you wonder as you need to lightly jump over a collapsed section of the roof (which of course is covered in more pictographs.) You don’t know what state this place was in when Jake Harley first unearthed it decades ago.

Maybe you should send another email to Roxanne in case the archeological team actually did their job and photographed the original site. Maybe you could compare shit that way.

Extrapolating the state of technology at the time, it’s possible nothing particularly useful would remain even now. Even so, confirmation as to whether this was recent damage or not would at least give you something. Damage in the source code of a broken session feels like it should be a sign. Especially since it doesn't appear to be man-made, or even the result of weathering.

You take a picture and document it. Decent enough place to start. You just wish you had more than just a vague understanding of what it said.

Your auto-repsonder would have been able to make sense of it all, given enough time and computational cycles that your woefully organic brain was simply not capable of. Language, even pictographical was all just another pattern to be cracked with enough finesse; and maybe the strategic application of a little brute force. It’s all a matter of available resources. There’s a headache forming behind your eyes; the longer you try and make sense of this shit the more the hieroglyphs almost seeming to morph. Into what, you don’t fuckin’ know. It’s not any more legible than before. It’s probably some in-built sburb based bullshit, or your brain just trying too damned hard it's liable to leak out your ears. .

You mutter the release phrase for a flashlight and keep pushing forwards. Your eyes rove along the walls, following some direction and flow you can barely, unconsciously, recognize the more you are carried deeper and deeper inward until--

Lit by phosphorescent green runes, you’ve lost any additional light that you didn’t bring with you. Even where your flashlight shines the cracked stone tile feels like it drinks it in and doesn’t reflect anything back. You’ve got to be well below water level at this point. You imagine you could feel it, a weight held back by precariously eroded stone, hungering to smash into this inner pocket of air and crush you like a gnat in the face of an oncoming flyswatter.

The room is bare as you do a sweep of it with your flashlight. Suspiciously so. A pedestal in the center is the first item of potential interest you’ve run across. It’s resembles a flower in bloom, if said flower bloomed ages ago--petals all withered and dry, set over a bed of what had likely once been green leaves but now look like they’d disintegrate in your grasp no matter how carefully you plucked them. You consider that it’s just another stone carving, but the petals feel waxy against your fingertips as you carefully explore more closely.

It reeks of weird plot shit even if whatever it’d been holding is long gone, if anything at all. You feel confident chalking it up to past meta-progression, even if you don’t have the faintest idea as to what it was. You weren’t the one with an encyclopedic knowledge of the game thanks to a convenient book written by Roxy’s pre-scratch mother, and you’d interacted with Caliborn far more than Calliope.

You don’t think of Caliborn much, do you? At least, not usually in the same breath as your other childhood conversational companions, and one might even venture to use the term ‘friends’, if one were being lenient. Until he killed off his own sibling and tangentially hurt Jane and Roxy through said action you were mostly content to humor him. He was amusing in his attempts to get under your skin, but you never gave him an opening, and just let him spew his childish poison at you and drew him shit because it kept him from bothering the girls more.

If you'd told him how angry you’d been after he jeered at Jane, one day when you refused to indulge him, it would have only encouraged him into doing it more. Because he seemed obsessed with making you mad. Making you crack. You distinctly remember the running commentary he gave you about your own soon-to-be-dead corpse. Your friend's. God, that whole relationship was weird.

And more than a little familiar.

It's exactly what Lil’ Cal is doing now. No, it’s a little different. Lil’ Cal had been hiding right under your nose the whole time, waiting for what? A moment of vulnerability where he could sink his claws into you until your instinctive thrashing yanked them out leaving gaping scars that ache under against the puppet’s constant pressure.

Caliborn wasn't that patient. Wasn't that doggedly persistent. Plus he at least spaced out his jeering sessions in a way that gave you some fucking privacy, thanks to a combination of Calliope’s efforts to timeline sync as well as be in control of their fucked up situation.

Could you even imagine having to share such personal real estate with another person? Knowing their only mission in life was your death? A big ol’ highlander situation right there.

The flower podium is the first sign of actual, viable tech you’ve seen so far. You check the glass inlaid into the stone, feeling the warmth or some sort of power still struggling to conduct through your fingertips. The screen beneath the withered leaves glitches periodically, a mess of pixels and broken sequences. There’s still power here. Somehow.

Whatever had been on the monitor--a status message? A timer? The Game did like its timers, didn’t it? It fit with all that temporal inevitability nonsense--it was utterly unreadable now. That’s worth reporting to Roxanne, you suppose, as you snap a couple pictures with your crappy phone camera and long for your own equipment.

Not that it told you much. You already knew shit was broken. If it was a count-down, it already happened, in so far as the narrative continuity of the universe was concerned, leaving the recreation as nothing more than a husk. An element without its purpose. Withered and primed to be pruned.

Your flashlight beam travels along the walls, catching the edge of worn green, semi-phosphorescent runes gleaming through the green-grey tinged stone.You note the breaks in patterns that makes entire sections illegible in a way that strikes you as too deliberate to be natural. Maybe that’s all the code needs, you think, a good pruning. Like with Davepeta, just yank out all the unnecessary legacy sprite bullshit and bridge the gap with new code. It’s an interesting proposal, if only anyone knew how to read the damn thing enough to find those places. From what the strength of your growing migraine is implying, most merely replicate SBURB. Not understand it.

Which would, you know, normally be fine when starting from a clean state. You doubt most sessions have gone through the convoluted bullshit yours has: Leftover data floating around. Corrupted files. Broken pointers. Duplicate variables. You have no hard proof, but you can easily guess that’s the sort of shit a brand new session wouldn’t have to deal with, and you’ve already seen an example of it floating around the Incipisphere in a giant cloud of multi-colored chunks of data. Unreadable, unusable, discarded.

You kneel at the edge of the cracked flooring, marking the places on the walls where cables had been shorn. Some sort of equipment had been here once, but it’s been gone for a long time. Harley probably would have stripped anything useful ages ago. You’d make more headway in your own mission by befriending Jade and snooping around her grandfather’s labs, or even pulling apart the display pieces and appliances left scattered around the guest suite. No one would know--you’re confident in your own abilities to put that shit back together once you figure out exactly how they are replicating certain compounds and creating and maintaining connections to the medium that shouldn’t exist yet.

And you’ll get to that, eventually, even if putting it like that makes you feel like a tool. You actually like the kid.

You spend hours down in the dark and the dim phosphorescent green-hieroglyphs. Taking notes as the battery drains steadily on the old clunker of a laptop. Eventually you resort to memorizing shit, indexing the best you can so you can draw from it later. You snap more pictures of sections that look suspiciously (and recently) damaged even if there’s no signs of anyone visiting aside from your growing tracks through the dirt covered corridors.

To your surprise, some inner rooms do still hold equipment (and a lot of ammunition: goddamn it Harley. There’s an entire armory in here.) and while some of it is clearly so old and rusted and useless--the remnants of diagnostic or monitoring shit Harley didn’t bother to haul out when he was done--some of it is not.

Dark and dead, the power cut, and it won’t come to life no matter how much you coax, but the terminal is still pristine under the weight of ages and a stale coat of dust and grime and maybe even some slime. A construct generated by a time-less entity that has lasted through the millenia. When you crack that shit open like an egg you’re greeted with components you haven’t seen since your mad salvage operation in the depths of the meteor.

You can’t tell what the fuck it’s supposed to do, aside from have a shit ton of monitors--half of which are cracked anyway--and a terminal that is so obviously built to input commands you don’t even bother hedging with a hypothesis. But it’s lacking even the low level of power you found down in the flower room or in the elevator. Maybe, like a dying organism, the temple is on backup and essential systems only?

Still, thanks to the lack of notable current, it enables you to spend hours taking them apart and mentally committing the schematics to memory. You shuffle components away into your sylladex for your own personal use--more efficient than current level equipment. This place has been desecrated enough, a little more won’t matter. You could probably repurpose them into Davepeta’s shades if you get that far.

You’re still missing something. It’s driving you mad. It’s right at the tips of your fingers.

You lose track of time, and it isn’t until you’ve been half-buried in a console for hours that you even think to check. The bright light from your phone sears its way into your protesting eyeballs when you finally fumble it free. Far past sundown, even being generous thanks to your location near the equator. Lil’ Cal is a frustrated snake slithering around your shoulders, hissing in your ear, all from the depths of your sylladex. It’s nice to know that you can still hyperfocus enough to avoid him, even if you note that it’s not a particularly healthy method of dealing with a stalking, claustrophobic juju railing against the confinement of a subspace pocket dimension.

Something touches you. Something small and light. A kitten tap against your leg. Points kneading into the fabric of your pants, depressing skin.

Energy surges. A jolt of electricity so strong you feel the spasms run from the point on your leg up through your spine and to the tips of your hair, not out through the grounding metal surrounding you like electricity should. It’s nothing like touching a live wire--been there done that got the burn scar to prove it--but it overloads you so bad it feels like your brain is leaking out of your skull.

Then you’re elsewhere and everywhere at the same time and it’s fucking terrible.

For a moment, you can’t breathe. You catapult through screaming fire before you can even recognize it’s grasping at your heels, shrieking at you, a wyrm of green and red and blue threads tying you together. A beast on a leash, only you feel like you're the one in the collar as it chokes you.

In a world of nothing you’re stretched so thin you’re here and you’re almost there. Warm and soft and cared for. The freezing cruelty of the void. The back of your eyelids. A cracked wall. Nothing. Nothing but a blank space swallowing up a backdrop of stars, orbited by fragments of black and white stone. Chunks of landscape ripped free and sent spiraling in an unstable orbit. A ripple in space.

A mixture of anger and hatred, as the fire catches up with you, coiling snake around your neck, your shoulders, seeping in through the cracks, and seething in a way that’s nothing like the almost gentle pressure you deal with normally, overwhelming you in a wave of unbridled hatred. Because it’s impossible. It’s impossible--he killed her. I won.

And then. In less than a fraction of an instant. It’s gone. He’s gone. You’re gone. The you that remains feels like a number of differed skeins of yarn that got haphazardly thrown in the washer and not only did they get tangled beyond recovery but the moron didn't even have the water at the right temperature to prevent the colors from bleeding together into a dull muddy brown. You just blink in the distant moonlight, your head pounding, soup sloshing around inside your skull. It leaves you feeling off, barely comprehending the surrounding change, much less what you just experienced and you've experienced a fuck ton in your who-knows at this point how long life.

This'll take effort to unravel, the thought echoes, lying on your back in a sea of overgrown grasses that tickle the fuck out of your nose. You don't have the energy to do more than just lie there after all that shit.

The universe does not seem inclined to let you, alas, you hear the distant sound of someone calling your name. Or a variation on your name. It's not your name. It is your name. Even if you threw it away it's still yours and you know it. You’re so rattled, feeling suspiciously like you’re a batch of dough under Dan’s hands. Folded. Stretched. Mixed and combined until you aren’t entirely sure what the different parts were in the first place.

What the fuck was that?

What the fuck. The voice is still there. Distant and insistent. Worried. Jade. It’s Jade’s voice getting louder. You could ignore it. You could stay here blinking up into the most flawless starscape you’ve seen since you abandoned your apartment for your destiny--for your doom. You are fully capable of staying in this state of existential detachment, watching the celestial sphere track across the sky until your nemesis shows its face and finally drives you out under pain of death-by-skin-cancer because it's well past time to reapply sunscreen and you sure as hell haven't done so yet.

“MR STRIDER!”

You can’t ignore it. Not when it’s growing louder. Closer. More worried. Would you ignore it if it were a different voice calling for you? Would that other voice even call for you?

Why can’t I go with you?

For Christ’s sakes, get up.

For once completely in agreement with your own better judgement you pick yourself up and meet her. Your skin feels oddly cold as you run a hand down your face. Shivering even as you’re nearly swamped in a tropical soup. Near freezing to the touch. It makes even the humidity feel downright pleasant.

“What are you doing out here?”

She startles at your sudden appearance, head whipping around as if you popped out of the sea itself. Which you probably did from her perspective. You’d been lying on your back, the grass coming up above your knees easily. You could have lain there all night and never been found if you had given in to the urge to just stop existing in that moment and go what the fuck.

That was not your powers. Not even a fucking hallucination. What the hell.

Your skin is so cold it’s burning.

“There you are! I knew I saw something!” Jade zips through the sea of grass as if it is not an obstacle at all. With the way the shrubbery and vines twine around her feet, it probably should be threatening to trip her. The flashlight is bright, a shooting star in the depth of space, sending the shadows bouncing in strange patterns as it filters through the overgrown wildflowers. “It was getting late, and I know the water’s really deep, so I decided to come out and look for you! Judging by that flash, it looks like you met the temple guardian! Did you see them!?”

“Guardian?” You rub at your head, still feeling vaguely soupy. Really soupy. So soupy, Cal’s distant chittering is even more unscrutable than it normally is. You close your eyes, breathing in a count of in two-three-four as you stare at the red cracks behind your eyelids. It’s spilling out of the channels, into the world, like a busted vein in someone’s eye, bleeding out to cloud everything in red, but still there. Still red. Not green. And that’s important. Very important. You’ll remember why in a second. Maybe. “One minute I was buried in some half-dismantled terminal, and the next I was here--christ I think it left my flashlight behind--what the fuck is the guardian and what the fuck did it do?”

“It teleports?” She offers a hair too innocently. You give her your best unimpressed stare, although the effect is probably lost between your continued half-grimace and the darkness. You should know something about a guardian, though. It'll come back to you.

Jade continues as you try to organize your thoughts. “I mean I don’t know what it is, I just kinda call it a guardian?? It's easier to think about something out there watching over me or the island instead of Grandpa building some sort of teleportation field that only works when I break a perimeter, you know? I don’t even know how that would work! It’s caught me in mid-air before, not standing on anything! Everyone knows teleportalizers only work if you stand on them, it’s a contained field!” You can barely see her scowl in the cast off from her flashlight. Fenestrated Planes don’t need you to touch anything, and could grab someone mid-motion, but you hadn’t been moving. “I’ve tested it lots and lots, but still I’ll like, make a jump for that second lilypad or like, so much as try and leave and ZAP! I’m back home.”

That green crackling energy.

There’d just been that...tap. Light. A brief pressure against the back of your knee before you were flung… elsewhere. You’d felt that before; when you’d first met Jake’s kid grandma. When you’d been flung hours and hours away from your friends in a terrifyingly effective divide-and-conquer strategy. That’d been Jade’s power; full on grim-dark witch of space nonsense. Bright poison green and all.

But it clearly wasn’t this Jade. She’s not God Tier, and you yourself don’t have any major abilities while embodied, beyond visual and sensory shit. Power turned internally. Fuck you don’t know. You’ve done your best with what you had and it’s still only barely working. You’re surprised Cal isn’t pouncing right now. Maybe he is. No he isn’t. You’d know if he was, and he’s reeling just as bad as you are by the rapid series of transdimensional slingshots. How the fuck do you know this. You know because you’re a part of--

Fuck. Stop it.

Back up.

Focus on something that isn’t your screwed up noggin.

“We went well beyond the second lilypad last night.” Your head hurts--it’s all you can do to keep the motion of your fingers to a non-violent rub and not to start pressing your palms into your face, piling on the pressure, taking the mixed up carbon-soup that is your brain and compress that shit like a diamond.

“Yeah! That’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to the temple. It was so much bigger up close, it’s amazing.”

A flash of white against stone. Had there been any green? You don’t remember. A guardian…The missing dog? GCat could teleport things. You know that. The dog probably could, too.

You’d wished you’d asked more about Jane’s nuisance of a neighborhood stray. But you didn’t care since it was kind of watching out for her even as she cursed it for foiling her repeated escape attempts--

Wait. There’s something...

There.

Jade’s still talking, for Christ’s sake Dirk, don’t just wander like that. You might not find your way back; your head is a fucking mess as it is.

“--I mean it could just be a giiiiiant teleporter array or something worked into the whoooooole island I guess. But--have you seen Castle In The Sky? It's fun to think it's like that, like a movie or a TV shows where there's some sort of friendly robot or spirit watching over a place or person, you know? That doesn't make it not annoying though! I don't like feeling like a misbehaving toddler when I cross some imaginary boundary line. This is the first time I've seen it bother with anyone else tho! Oh! I just realized you actually got to see inside the temple!! What was it like?? I used to try and sneak out there a lot. Like it was all one big mission to rescue Grandpa from being trapped inside an ancient temple full of traps!”

Imaginary boundary line… Jane’s guardian kept her safe, but it did so by keeping her trapped within the bubble of her home. Maybe Jade’s mysterious canine let her wander a bit more, but then why the fuck did it bother with you?

Because she was worried about you? Maybe?

Why would that matter?

Because it’s her friend?

A friend she isn’t even sure exists.

That’s wrong.

It’s wrong.

Wait, didn’t she ask you a question?

“It was largely empty unless you have a particular special interest in ancient runes--there’s a whole f--language’s worth in there.” There. You have an answer. ”Your grandpa stripped the place of anything that wasn’t nailed down and even some shit that was.”

"Did you take any pictures? Can I see!?"

You obligingly hand over the phone, and she eagerly flips through the pictures. You barely hesitate in doing this, because it stops the chatter for a minute. You just need a minute. You've got so many thoughts swirling through your head and you need to sort through them all. Separate them. Figure out what's important and what's not and put them back to where they belong because it's messy as fuck letting them get all muddy.

It’s probably the dog. The dog that has yet to appear, despite spending a notable amount of time with the girl. Which seems uncharacteristically reticent for something Davepeta described as Jade’s ‘good dog, best friend.’

She hasn’t so much as mentioned a friend to you either. It has to be the dog. It can't be the dog. She just said that she's never seen this force. Only that she is aware of its existence through trial and error. It can't actually be a teleportation array, not unless Jake Harley had access to technology you're fairly certain doesn't exist. Should you ask? Yes, you should ask—no, you shouldn’t ask. You can come up with a half dozen supporting points for each answer. The answers and thoughts chase themselves in circles so you--

Don’t.

Why do things go screwy around Hellmurder Island. Because it's the most paradoxically malleable and yet constant place in the whole setup, idiot.

Your head hurts so goddamn much.

Notes:

Things are getting...weird aren't they? :3c

Sorry that this chapter is mostly Dirk talking to himself (hah) but I think it's all pretty important one way or another :3c We'll get back to more Jade next chapter. Which is probably going up next week? I've slowed down my writing so I'm only working on 66 at this point so I'm not suuuuper far ahead anymore, but we'll see how it continues to roll out!

I'm going to try to go back and respond to comments. It's just! so hard! right now! because I'm afraid I'll spill XD I'm glad people are ...enjoying the extra stuff I figured out how to do >:3

Quick reminder that nothing is or ever will be epilogue compliant.

Chapter 64: Dirk > Exercise Diplomacy With a 10 Year Old

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

You still haven’t managed to fix shit by the time she gives you your phone back, but it’s not as if you know exactly what you’re doing, trying to pick and pull and untangle the Dirkian knot you hadn’t intended to be quite so literal. The bleeding has slowed, at least, and you feel like you’ve boxed up all the shit that came loose in the metaphorical flood and put the pieces back in--maybe not the correct place but in a place so things aren’t rattling around, echoing and chasing themselves in unhelpful circles.

Probably.

You’re going to assume that you have marginally succeeded. You have to come out of your head eventually, unless you want to actually walk the miles upon miles back to the mountain. It’s a winding, rocky path from there--in the dark--with no handy transportalizer like would be smart. It’s, like, 10pm. It’s too late. Your meat-suit is protesting the mere idea of such a hike, so the only thing left to do is test your balance and pray.

You’re gonna need to trust that Lil’ Cal isn’t going to try and kill you. Or Jade. You already know you won’t leave her behind.

You know you’ll be fine, even if you resent that knowledge. You know deep down he doesn’t actually want to break his toys. He learned from the first and last time when he hooked his claws in and raked you so bad you had to grasp at magic you still don’t understand in order to pull an emergency cauterization. You hate it. You hate how instinctive this shit is, moving you to act before you understand what you’re doing or why. Even if the magic had its own internal logic, it’s not like you can write that shit out and pick apart the methods to figure out exactly what’s going on after the fact.

You also hate that you know things could be much worse, and it’s because he’s handling you through kids gloves, wrapped up in a layer of cotton he could tear away, because it comes from hi—no, from you.

It’s from--you. You did it, right? You did that shit, it was your choice. Your function. Your freakin’ magical spaghetti code, even if you didn’t bother to comment it like a heathen. There’s only two gods of Heart, and you’re pawsitive the other one ain’t Cal. Besides, his only connection to heart shit came from--

...you?

Fuck, your head still hurts.

You scrub a hand through your hair and decided to try and determine if you’ve got a solid-enough noggin to actually make it back to the mountain without you both falling off the board.

…That's a long fucking way for her to travel just looking for you. “...You didn’t walk all the way out here, did you?”

You can see her embarrassed duck of the head in the cast-off light from the flashlight, her hair falling in front of her face momentarily before she snaps back up and swinging herself and her flashlight around. “N-no! Not entirely!”

The beam of light sweeps across the glasslands, stopping to land on a strange, broken structure just up a hill from where you were standing. Something metal glints in the night, sticking out of the satellite looking protrusion from the collapsed base. You follow that glint of metal, finding it attached to something thin and dark, putting two and two together before--

Clever girl.

Definitely aren’t letting her walk back alone after pulling a stunt like that.

“There has to be a safer way down in a hurry than a zip-line. Christ, kid, how did you even set that up?”

You would have noticed a line running from the tower all the way down here. It would have been fucking obvious in the daylight. There hadn’t been anything.

She starts moving the moment you decaptchalogue the board, scrambling into position as soon as you get low enough for her to eagerly clamber into your back.

“Harpoon gun from my window.”

“...kid, that’s miles away.”

“I'm a good shot!” She chirps smugly. You can’t help the roll of your eyes. Of course she is; Harley probably taught her to shoot before she was old enough to hold a rifle.

“How did you plan on getting back up there if you didn’t find me? That climb up the mountain ain’t an easy one.”

You feel the shrug more than see it as her surprisingly toned arms wrap around your neck again, trembling with excitement. “Zap, remember? All it’d take was a hop skip and a jump across the lily pads and I’d be home.”

You repeat: Clever girl.

You like her.

”Well, it ain’t as fast, but this way’ll be more fun, I think.” The hold doesn’t so much as cause your breath to hitch this time. Hah. Maybe the soup is beneficial to your health after all, if it drowns Cal out. You automatically adjust for her weight as you put the board into position and prepare to leap.

Maybe you should look into building a hover function for it, actually. It’d make it easier to get started and stopping without requiring the dramatic leap. Or with passengers. Such as a kid. Jade trusts you, even if you have no idea why. You threw the both of you out a goddamn window for funsies.

You’re supposed to be the adult, aren’t you? The responsible one? The one worried about everyone’s safety? It’s exhausting. Even if she gets hers working, you don’t know how comfortable you feel about her imitating you. Those are Strider brand stunts, and she isn’t even part of your extended insane clone-baby family.

She could get hurt.

But right now, you are the one in control--forget about the vague idea of starting up a calisthenics routine, you aren’t walking. It’d take hours. And even if the reality-bending entity saw fit to take her back, you refuse to go through that shit again even if--

Even if you’d been so close you could smell feathers and fleece. So close you’d felt like you could reach out and touch.

The flight is much, much shorter than the walk would have been, even as you swing around that half-collapsed structure to yank the harpoon out of the crumbling stone, snapping the rope with the motion and captchalogue that shit without skipping a beat. Yeah, no, the kid needs a better way around. You’re already working through possibility of a hover function in your head; it’d be perfect for her. Even if she ends up not wanting a board, a pack or something would at least give her mobility. She could just hop out of her room whenever she so much as felt like it instead of zip-lining down when a slip of the hand could lead her to fall—

You’d hope the dog would catch her.

You aren’t entirely sure what you were thinking, maybe it was something about the quiet night and the wind rustling through your hair, or the distant ocean or the darkness of an uninhabited island and the freedom of knowing there isn’t another single person anywhere except the one with her arms around your neck and she sure ain't complaining. Maybe it’s the brief respite from Cal’s suffocating presence--rebuffed by whatever the fuck had mixed up your brain so badly, whatever he’d seen in that rippling void and those strange checkerboard colored fragments--but you decide to be reckless.

You don’t skim the ground to make good time. You don’t head directly towards the base of the building like you should. You angle sharply upwards and step on the acceleration, bracing yourself for the altitude shift and succeed in shooting the both of you up, and up, and up, piercing through the patchy low-lying clouds that have been drifting across the moon and starscape, earning an appreciative gasp from your passenger. Not wet enough for rain, thankfully, but the condensation collects against your eyelashes as you pierce the barrier and break out above them.

Relatively, you aren’t much closer to the sky than you were before. But the moon is so big and the sky so clear and it stretches for miles and miles around you. You feel like you could reach out and touch it. Cup those once distant stars and hold them tight. You’ve only ever been this close through a camera and a screen.

A hand reaches out—

It isn’t yours. It’s too small. Too dark. The moonlight spilling down brown skin and painting the edges with back lit lighting as those small fingers try and pluck the jewels from the sky.

It’s silly. Flighty. A fanciful notion. What is such a mundane accomplishment to one who has flown through the depths of space? Who has built structures so high, so tall, they breech the atmosphere. That span the breadth universe itself.

But that sky didn’t have stars. Only Skaia. Only black space stretching on and on and on, living in the belly of an ethereal dying amphibian.

Jade is talking, but even with her face right next to your head, her voice is lost in the wind and the rush of the rockets. You miss it more than you realize.

You take her for another lap around the island, then beyond, above the clouds, out over the shallows surrounding the shore. You fly until you start to feel her shiver. You should probably go back. The much cooler air higher up having been the final straw that let you clear your head, splintering your attention off onto various tasks including the organization of the remainder of the soup, and ensuring shit’s back in its proper place.

You can’t just kidnap Jade for your own peace of mind.

You’re almost... disappointed.

Returning to equilibrium shouldn’t make you feel hollow.

Of course, it doesn’t take long after that melancholic observation before Cal senses the weakness and begins creeping forward again.

You admire his restraint as he refrains from choking you out at hundreds of feet in the air.

You angle back towards the tower.

He wouldn’t do anything. Not up here.

Do you really believe that?

Are you willing to believe that?

Not really.

You aren’t willing to play chicken with Jade’s life in your literal hands.

At least you don’t have time to dwell on it, because a distant flash of white and green draws your attention toward the satellite orb that is probably her bedroom. The afterimage is fairly fucking obvious now that you’re looking for it, especially against the dark sky, flickering for that miniscule second before vanishing.

You get the hint.

Since your rocketboard is, well, a rocket, and not a hoverboard, you can’t drop her off all magic carpet style, even if you think it’d be hilarious to give her the princess treatment. You can improvise. You slow the speed as much as you can while still maintaining the forward momentum necessary to stay in the air, and then with a muttered, “Hold on tight,” that she probably can’t hear a single word, you wait for the right angle and then--

The board is back in your sylladex where it belongs. Jade’s shriek is barely heard over the wind but you feel her arms tighten. Trembling. But your trajectory is true, and you got a good hold on her in case she slips, and you end up flipping through the tall window and landing hard on the plush carpeted floor.

Nailed it.

You can be such a show off sometimes.

It felt so damn good, even if your already sore knee is going to hate you in the morning. And possibly also your back.

“You alive back there, kid?” You barely remember to ask as her shaking grip loosens around your neck and she slides off your back, down to place her feet on the floor. Someone who could zip-line a few hundred feet down and a few miles across without losing her grip could probably handle some alternate stunt work.

What if you’d hurt her

You hadn’t even stopped to consider that, and honestly it's a bit silly to hyperfixate on it now. You’d angled it intentionally to allow her to land on you, not the other way around. And yeah, now your side is hella ache-y and maybe bruised but--you don’t really get the chance to follow the rest of that trail further because Jade whirls around and picks herself off the floor and doesn’t let you go.

“I’m fine! I’m totally fine! That was--it was just like flying! I mean it was flying, that’s the point of the rockets, but like, being up so high! I mean I see that all the time outside my room but that was--it was amazing!! It was like, a--a--dream or something!”

She doesn’t resist as you carefully dislodge her, picking at the band around her finger. That glittery gold one that keeps flashing at you of the corner of your eye.

A dream, huh?

“I’ll head out then.” You lean against the window sill, ready to throw yourself back out into space at a moment’s notice to make your way down to ground level. “You probably should have been in bed hours ago instead of looking for me.”

“NO! I mean--don’t, please? I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep!” She loses some of that pensive stare and instead looks back up at you eagerly. “Not after that! My heart is racing so fast I’m not sure it’ll ever stop! Could we look over the ‘board now??? Oh--unless you’re tired! I guess I shouldn’t keep you up if you are tired! You’ve been exploring all day, after all--”

You know you’re too soft. But honestly, she’s right--even you need a wind down after that rush. You’d planned to just go for another lap or two around the island at a more leisurely pace, maybe see if you can finally spot that stupid dog but--

Some low-stress mental stimulation would help fend off the lingering dregs of whatever that weird as fuck adventure that just was sounds peachy, actually.

“Alright. Show me.”

She does. You spend an hour pouring over the changes and iterations she’d made in attempts to recreate the inner workings of your board. You almost wonder if this is what Dave’s teachers feel like, marveling at the progress she made in a single afternoon and evening, while noticing which concepts she seemed to be struggling with. Several are ludicrously simple--you have to tamp down your initial reaction of bewilderment that she could grasp the theoretical potential for the propulsion system while still being ignorant as to the importance of aerodynamics to the design.

That doesn’t matter. She’s a quick study. Any irritation that spikes is immediately smothered by the fact that she’s just so earnestly excited about everything and interested in getting down into the details.

However, not even power of Science can stave off the adrenaline crash, and soon Jade is starting to yawn from her place ensconced in a giant pile of brightly colored plushies arranged across the room from where you have your back to the window, the chilled night breeze tugging at your hair. She slowly becomes absorbed in the plush tentacles and stuffed animals that remind you of parking your gameself into a pile of cat wizards because holy hell that shit can be comfortable. She clings to the thick text one of the physics books her grandfather left behind like a teddy bear, one that she’d been using to pepper you with questions--mostly clarifications to things she’d already worked out on her own, thank god, quantum string theory is not a particular area you devoted yourself to study aside from as a curiosity--but eventually the questions stop coming all together.

There's an absence, as she slows down and trails off. A silence. It was the first thing to truly break you free from your laser focus on her theoretical design as you try to determine if you could scavenge enough pieces from Harley’s leftover shit to make help her make it, or if you’ll just need to do it yourself and send it back, piece by piece like you’d done for Jake.

You don’t mention it at first, expecting her to go ahead and kick you out once she noticed, but when she keeps stifling the yawns and rubbing at her eyes with quick furtive motions calculated to make you overlook the movement you realize you might actually have to nudge the process along before she passes out akimbo in a pile of plushies. You aren’t any more tired than usual, and that’s honestly more creeping mental and physical fatigue than any desire or need for sleep. You hadn’t considered the effect such a late night would have on someone unaccustomed to insomnia. Even Dave’s schedule resembles yours more than you’d like, recently, given the state of your collective sleep hygiene.

Lowering the rough concept drawing for the casing--where you’d been leaving notes in an orange-red colored pencil in the margins to better improve structural integrity and maneuverability--you chew on the idea of calling her out on it. You should. You’re the adult. Both technically and literally. Even if your physical development matched the breadth of experience in life, you’d still be considered the responsible one out of the two of you.

“Jade,” You catch her attention. She blinks up at you owlishly behind large glasses, “We can do this tomorrow.”

“I’m fi--” Her protest is, predictably, ruined by a yawn. She ducks her head, chin dipping down into her chest as if to hide the gesture from your view. It doesn’t work. “--iiine! Fine! Really! Really. Fine.”

“Pushing yourself past your limits is likely to lead to mistakes we’ll just need to correct anyway.”

“I’m not doing anything that could make mistakes though!” That gives you pause. She might have a point.The worst that could happen is she doesn’t entirely absorb one of your answers, and as previously noted those have trailed off anyway.

“...is there a reason you don’t want to sleep?” You ask quietly, following that train of logic to it’s inevitable destination, considering what you and Dave have been going through. “Nightmares?”

If he’s somehow gotten his claws into yet another unsuspecting kid after less than two days you might need to seriously consider becoming a hermit.

“No, no--” At least you know it’s not insomnia if she’s so visibly fighting the siren’s call of sleep. You just go and go until you decide that’s enough and then you metaphorically bury your head in the sand. Another yawn. Although she seems to be giving up on trying to hide them now that you’ve called her out on it, “I just... You’ll leave if I fall asleep. I don’t... want you to leave. Not yet. I have too many questions!”

“This isn’t even about the physics, is it?”

“No. Not really.” She admits quietly, rubbing at her eyes. The band flashes on her hand again. Glittering gold on her middle finger, followed by a stack of four familiar colors, twisted around on and over and under themselves. Intertwined.

That's an addition from yesterday, isn't it?

She spreads her fingers wide, looking down at what can only be unconscious reminders to fragments she can barely reach. Blue. Red. Purple. No green, but she'll be green, won’t she? Instead the green that you feel should belong in the set has been replaced with an orange tie, braided in with the red.

Narcissism would claim that it’s you. You know it’s not.

"Oh! Oh! I know! What about the robot??? Or it's station at least! Didn't you wanna see it? Here--" In the interval between one breath and the next, she’s up, abandoning the textbook, swaying on her feet from the vertigo caused by sudden verticality.

She’s going to fall--

You remember seeing Dave falter from feet away. Remember the way you didn’t think about it, checking to make sure he didn’t hurt himself. Without processing exactly what you’re doing at this moment, your hand is a light feather touch of weight on her shoulder. You tower over her, even as she’s taller than Dave, she’s still so small.

You... should probably say something.

You should be the adult. Put your foot down. Remember?

But those wide sleepy eyes stare up at you, big and almost pleading. You crack. She doesn't go towards the bed with its four dim, red lights on each corner (if those weren't transmitters you'd eat your splinter-self's whole hat collection) but towards the door, to what could only be the hallways heading back towards the central structure.

It’s a relief, honestly, to know that the robot’s dock isn’t in her room. It seems you might actually be able to get your primary job done. Shocker. You don’t have to worry about sneaking in while she’s sleeping now.

You’d suspected your initial guess was incorrect as soon as you’d had a chance to glance around between rapid-fire physics exercises. There just wasn’t anything big enough to fit a life-sized robot. Not amongst the workbenches and their half-complete projects litter about like discarded candy (that you itch to prod at) and the mountains of plushies and brightly colored potted plants. You hadn’t necessarily intended to catalogue everything in her room, but there’s always that part of you that has to observe and slot everything about a new setting into its place, purely because it’s different. Where you come from, different was a commodity.

"I’ll have you be aware that I’m contractually forbidden from snooping around your house."

At least that gets a silly laugh out of her.

She has a nice laugh. Free from the clinging sap of anxiety that always coats Dave’s, except when he doesn’t think you can hear.

"You just aren't allowed in grandpa's lab, silly! There's a difference! We don’t have to go that far. I don’t even like it up there. It’s too sad."

“Sad?”

A tired nod, her smile fading, “Haley’s up there. Looking at her makes me feel lonely.”

You have the sense that if she wanted to elaborate, she would have, and well. Fair enough.

The hallway is just down the length of the arm connecting the satellite room to the main structure. It’s just one layer of a chain of who the hell knows how many devices that facilitate movement through this vertical monstrosity of a structure.

It’s a plain landing, compared to your single other frame of reference. Definitely does nothing to upseat a big ass worm monster surrounded by a circle of wrought iron torch stands that look like they belong on some gothic-horror film set. It’s just grey metal, spiral stairs leading up and down, with a transportalizer in the center. A single safe-like object is pushed up against the curved wall, a familiar atom engraving stamped on the front of the metal box. You don’t need her to tell you that’s what you’re here to see. You’re already checking the size, extrapolating how large the interior compartment will be--even accounting for interior workings the robot can’t be that big, but you’re willing to bet it would be a similar size to Jade herself if it was meant to mimic her movements in the Medium. Perhaps even with self-adjusting limbs to help keep up while she grows?

Jade hovers as you approach, noting the four darkened antennae on the top of the machine, likely the counterparts to the transmitters surrounding her bed. Would it not activate if she falls asleep elsewhere?

You run your hands along the edge of the casing. There’s a seam, of course, but there’s no discernable latch from the outside that you can see. The encapsulated and unaccessible design is so Jake that it makes your heart hurt to think about. He had such faith in his shit working that there would be no need to trouble-shoot. Any access panels are probably on the inside for Christ sakes, because it reaches peak futuristic aesthetic if the number of seams is kept to a minimum.

Of course, for Harley, built with any latent Hope-fueled abilities that he might have had, it probably would have worked perfectly until it fulfilled its purpose.

If this was a normal situation, that is.

“Sorry it isn’t a very fair trade. You at least had a fucntioning rocket board to offer.” Jade is picking at the bands around her fingers again. Definitely a nervous habit. “I tried to get in after it stopped working. I have Grandpa’s blueprints and everything right here if you want to look! I thought maybe I could fix it? It’s not like I can wait for Grandpa to notice something’s wrong and come home.”

“You haven’t been in contact?” You ask, carefully, trying very hard not to look too interested at the prospect of getting your hands on those blueprints. You take advantage of your height, allowing you easy access to the top of the docking station, and place a hand on the nearest darkened globe. It isn’t cold. In fact it hums with energy. It isn’t powered down at all, then. Just dim, there’s a faint red light dancing along the edge of your palm. On Standby, perhaps

You don’t need to look, there’s a rustle of hair shifting as she shakes her head, but you find yourself glancing back just in case. She’s leaning against the wall, almost listing to the side.

Christ, she should definitely be in bed by now.

“Mmm. No. But! That’s just Grandpa! He was going on one last--he called it a romp? Such a funny word, isn’t it? Grandpa talked like that. Funny. I barely remember it, I was just a kid…”

Not that she isn’t a kid now, of course. But you know well enough that time drags on and on and feels like it’s forever when you have no one to compare the passing of the seasons with.

“Jade…” You hesitate. Jake Harley is dead. You know this. He has to be. She’s too smart to honestly believe otherwise. You know she is. “A romp doesn’t last for years.”

“He’ll be back! I know it!” She’s looking down at that band again. The gold one. “I just--know it, okay?”

He has to.

She is a Prospit dreamer. Maybe she does know better than you do.

It may have been months since you’ve been able to look out the window from Roxy--Roxanne’s tower, out past the shadows of the Veil, into complete darkness thst really shouldn't be, but you haven’t forgotten. You couldn’t see Skaia from Derse. Even if the altered lore built into the game changed to allow for that, how would that affect a dreamer of Prospit?

Grandpa’s not here.

You could chalk up to the Medium’s malleability. Of course it would adapt to an altered game-state. But… Wasn’t the restore state supposed to be static? You and Roxy were intended to fill in the gaps because the guardians were needed.

Is there something else missing? Something--or someone else--that should have killed Jake Harley? So he had to be removed from her life in another way to fit the pattern? That shit seemed to only effect players though--or well, NPCS. Characters who interacted with the game. There's a whole shitton of people out there who seem immune to the ‘dead is dead’ rule considering the entire planet had been destroyed and it sure as hell isn't a survivors population out there.

You wish this shit came with a manual. The one that exists is one you can't even read, much less understand. Today is proof of that.

Your foray into theoretical speculation land leads to an uncomfortable silence, but it's awkward as hell to continue your line of questioning anyway so you drop it like it's hot. Even if she’s willing to discuss, it’s clearly not going to do anything except upset her. That would not only be bothersome to deal with but…

It bothers you. You don’t want to see her pick at the strings, cutting herself on fragments of dreams she likely can’t fully recall. The same way it bothers you that there was a clear marked difference between Dave’s comfort in Washington compared to back home in Houston with you.

“Let’s go back to your room and look over the blueprints.” You hold out your hand to her. She blinks up at you. “You said you wanted to see if you could fix it, right? We can go over it together until you fall asleep, then I can check and see if it’s accessible once active. Your grandpa locked that shit up tight and we really need to get at the guts.”

“Ooooh but! I want to help!”

Oh for Christ’s sake--

Wait.

“Scratch that, I think it’s time for you to go to bed, kiddo.”

“What? No! I told you, I’m nooooo--t sleepy!”

Like the mere mention of sleep is a siren’s call, she straight up yawns. It’s ridiculous. You have to bite down on your lip to stop yourself from imitating the gesture, despite the fact that you are the opposite of sleepy. You’re jittery as fuck, especially with a plan building in your mind. It’s more like the sandman just smacked you in the face with good ol’ fashioned sandbag through the avenue of ‘cute kids yawning’, and it leaves you blinking, staring at the stars and wondering what hit you. Only you know what hit you, it’s called a bag of goddamn sand.

“If you just go to sleep--” No. Don’t get irritated. Breathe as well as Cal’s claustrophobic ass will allow you. You need a carrot. Be honest about that carrot. Stick it right in front of her nose and wave hello. “Look, if it activates while you’re sleeping; that means you probably need to be in bed, given the matching set of antennae on the corners. If you go to bed, then I can stay here and grab it out of the station for you.”

Thank Jesus you don’t need to run through the rest of that logical pathway because even half asleep, she catches on and finishes it for you, “If it won’t fly it won’t go back when I wake up! Mr Strider--oh, if this works--I want to work on it! Please, please, please!”

It’s only through careful control that allows you to keep from squirming under her eager gaze. You were right--this is certainly a carrot that she very much wants. What you hadn’t anticipated was the fact that she wants it so much that it’s quite clearly getting her worked up again which is the complete antithesis of sleep. Goddamn it.

“Sure thing; but you need to actually get to bed or it’ll be morning before we can do anything.”

Pleeeeeaaase--”

It takes even more cajoling, but you eventually manage to pry off the infuriatingly endearing barnacle known as Jade Harley and shoo her off to bed, making her promise to go lie down in order to at least put in a token of effort. Given how easily she was nodding off earlier, you’re fairly certain that once removed from your apparently incredible stimulating company, Mister Sandman will swing back around with the knock-out blow.

Even so, you anticipate it taking some time. You plant yourself on the floor with your back against the spiral stairs, knees folding beneath you as you mutter the retrieval phrase to pull out the laptop Jade lent you.

You keep an eye on the metal lunchbox as it boots up, noting the lights on top flickering weakly a couple minutes into the course of the laptop’s boot-cycle. Probably the kid getting into bed, she must have all but sprinting to get back that fast. The blueprints Jade handed over spread out on the stone floor beside you. Good, it looks like there’s a connector cable and port coiled inside a small hatch at the back of the robot’s neck. Good. You’ll need that to scan through the code for any automated recovery protocols. It would ruin your plan entirely if it just up and returned itself to it’s cubby hole the moment it lost the signal from Jade’s bed. A quick check and--yep, it matches the laptop’s USB ports--given both designs are obviously Skaianet Tech, you almost wonder if this is Jake’s old laptop. Jade did mention digging it out of upstairs. And grandpa’s lab is upstairs…

You can consider snooping around the files later, or not, given the way you seem to instinctively recoil from the suggestion, but didn’t you tag something as important earlier? You should probably do that while you have the chance.

At least the laptop is fully rebooted by now, and you note with distaste that you have less than a quarter of the battery remaining. You flip it into battery saver mode, stat. You’ll have to work fast, but luckily Jake wasn’t a very... sophisticated coder. Refreshingly straightforward, actually, in comparison to your spaghetti-like, yet completely sensible, structure.

Sensible to you, and to those poor fools cursed to share your brain, perhaps, but it’s not like you’d let anyone else work on your code anyway. Modders enter at your own fucking risk.

You chance pulling up Pesterchum, noting some unread messages from Davepeta but declining going back to read them for the moment. You’ll have plenty of time for that after you get downstairs and plug this thing back in. A laptop dating back to Jake Harley’s time is impressive. Its battery-life, on the other hand, leaves much to be desired.

timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering dataJammer [DJ]

timaeusTestified [TT]: I have a favor to ask.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ill do it if you give dave your pesterchum
timaeusTestified [TT]: Are you still on about that?
timaeusTestified [TT]: Fine.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’ll send the request tomorrow.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< oh here you made me delete my pawsitively convincing sp33ch intended to get you to come around im almost disappointed by how easy it was this has gotta be some big impurrtant favor
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< so ill add another stipulation
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< do it right meow
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< where you cant imitate a cluckbeast and run run away
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< pwease
timaeusTestified [TT]: He should be asleep right now.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dude hes like 5 hours ahead of you
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< maybe the sun isnt out yet but it isnt alleycat city either
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< mew know he is planning on running and running till he cant k33p his eyes open anymore right
timaeusTestified [TT]: I figured as much.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Fine.

You sigh, although you know yourself well enough to know you are smiling. A little. You can feel the corner of your lip pulling back.

Fine. You’ll just let yourself get bullied into this shit. It’s about the only way you’ll take that step.

Probably.

And really, Davepeta had lived through this once.

You’ve type the handle you’ve had memorized for months into the chum request field—wait. You hesitate, and after a moment you quickly realize why this shit feels wrong.

timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m not supposed to know his pesterchum. I can’t do this.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< shit
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you could probably send it anyway
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i wouldnt have questioned it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< bro wouldnt care
timaeusTestified [TT]: I do.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’ll send another email with my handle to Newt to forward if he wants it. Maybe it isn’t a direct request, but it puts the ball in his court and facilitates further overtures.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Is that okay with you, your highness?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< hey im not the royalty around here
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< youre tripping all over your own princely paws
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but i guess its a start
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ok but you better send that email right meow
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m doing it as we speak.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< purrfect
timaeusTestified [TT]: Sigh. I hope you understand how much Newt is going to nag me for sending this shit so late at night.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< mew deserve it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< if youda just done it when i furst asked it wouldnt be an issue now would it??? B3
timaeusTestified [TT]: If you weren’t extorting me, it still wouldn’t be an issue.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< speaking of
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you said mew had a job for the greatest hunter ever
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< what can i do fur you???
timaeusTestified [TT]: I would like the record to note that I am refraining from commenting on your inconsistency when it comes to the use of you vs mew.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the record notes your note
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the record then proceeds to turn around and around while the cat riding on top of the record flicks you in the face with its tail because it doesn’t give a shit B33
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the cat is me
timaeusTestified [TT]: Maybe Jane was right and all cats are indeed assholes, deep down.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< hey i resemble that remark
v timaeusTestified [TT]: I wasn’t the one who said it.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Anyway. To the actual topic at hand since I have limited battery remaining unless I make a trip through the Mausoleum of Jake Harley to retrieve the power cable tragically left abandoned this morning.
timaeusTestified [TT]: You’ve played with the timeline function on the observation terminals in the past, correct? The ones displaying the player-specific timelines and significant events?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yeah
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< never did mawnage to unlock it past the launch of the restore state though B(
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< why???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< psychomoms still a big ol splotch of void energy blocking out half your life
timaeusTestified [TT]: That’s not what I’m looking for this time, thankfully.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I need you to be my Oracle for a sec and hunt through the data it has on Harley. Jake. Jade. Both. I don’t care, though it might be easier to just jump to the end of Jake’s since the information I’m looking for should easily found by scrubbing back from there.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Either Jake Harley is dead, and I need to know what the fuck happened to his body. Or he’s not dead, and I also need to know where the fuck he is.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< slow them galloping horses of yours bro
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im on it like its a catnip mouse stalkin that info through cyberspace
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ill drag it back and leave it for you in your shoe
timaeusTestified [TT]: And the information in this metaphor is the dead rat?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its the purrfect present
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< anyway i only have so many paws to go around so i gotta put you down fur a bit
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< behave B33
timaeusTestified [TT]: Why am I wasting battery on you again?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< beclaws you love me

Damn right you do.

It’s infuriating sometimes.

You thrum your fingers against the stone, glancing between your draining battery and the flickering red lights above the docking station. Still not asleep yet. You got her too damn wound up.

Maybe you were on to something with that, admittedly, unnecessary tangent. Maybe you should nip downstairs to grab the power cable it came with. There’s a socket in the wall behind the docking station. You could shimmy the plug through, you bet.

Minutes pass, and there’s no further indication of activity in the window. You’ll need to do some minor exploratory work in order to make sure everything’s in order anyway, and that’ll likely take up even more power, so you decide, fuck it, might as well do just that. Between the series of teleportalizers it isn’t even that long of a journey, even if your knees are hurting too much to allow a flash step to make the single staircase and hallway to your guest room any quicker.

You won’t admit to lingering on the landings as you go down, peering into the messy and disorganized shrines to a man adjacent to the person you will never not love.

By the time you return and get situated the lights are blinking rapidly, and you can’t help the nagging feeling that shit is about to get real. You listen to your intuition and take your laptop and accompanying blueprints and set up shop against the wall instead of the middle of the floor.

You feel like things are gonna get explosive somehow. This is some version of Jake English you are talking about. It isn’t an action movie if something doesn’t go flying.

You pull up your newly charging laptop to a frantically flashing orange window and an avalanche of green text.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ok
timaeusTestified is idle!
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< jades got this weird gr33n flicker over hers i dont think its gonna help much
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< same with the old man actually
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i wonder if its something about the island
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< okay ive scrubbed as far as i can to the end of the old mans timeline
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the interference cleared up as he entered the frog temple
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< shit gets dark man and what with all the skipping it goes from like an elevator to pitch black
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< use a flashlight dude
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dont be a hero
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< jade wont think your cool for tripping and beaning your head on a rock
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< thats the worst way to go
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< okay so i think whoever built this shit n33ds to ask for their boonbucks back
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< theres so many dropped furames it might as well be a slide show
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< that doesnt f33l normal at all
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< wait a sec lemme poke around johns
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< hes got like the most vanilla life of us all right
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< no weird god dogs or void moms or puppet friends to screw with the f33d
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yup buttery smooth right there like the save state should be
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< all 24fps suburban based dw33b town
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< watching him playing on that dumb pogo ride is so furreaking adorable you dont even know
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ok yeah sorry back on topic
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its weird dude
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im back to scrolling through harley the elders timefeline and like
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< even with the gr33n shit its all like
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< just a bunch of stills
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< wait a minute
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< OK
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< detective purrlock holmews has found a trail
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i went back to the last impurrtant event befur the end
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< even with the gr33n shit there i can tell the diffurence
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< befur it its like high quality static overlaying some domestic af tea party of one plus some kind of doll
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dude your friends are weird
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ok
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i could be wrong
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but the degradation of the movie quality has got to be impurrtant
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< was he suppawsed to die here???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< at this tea pawty
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< still thats when the quality goes to shit
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i doubt anyfang after was suppawsed to happen
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< gone still means gone though
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< he didnt come out of that temple before it shut off
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< maybe youll find the bones in the elevator shaft or something
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< if you prototyped them would you get a full harley or would you get a skeleharley asking for a friend
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< purrobably not a skeleton alas nanna was ashes and she turned out quite spritely and whole
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ...tho maybe that was the giant jester doll
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< is this what you were looking for???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< oh hey are you back???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i just heard your breathing hitch
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< furom like across the room
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yes my hearing is just that pawsome
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< so what about that there sleuthing eh
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< purretty slick eh
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dude
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< bro???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dirk???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you kinda sound like youre having a panic attack
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< be right there

dataJammer [DJ] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

Notes:

Sorry for the delay! Here's the chapter ^^

Chapter 65: Dirk > Unite

Notes:

Heavy (and probably unnecessary lbh) use of in-text colors here! Just a warning.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

He’s alive.

Just because they didn’t see him die doesn’t mean that he’s alive. Such logic is flawed.

Jake Harley is alive.

He could be dead at the bottom of an elevator shaft. That does not count as a reason to celebrate.

You know damn well what’s at the bottom of that fucking elevator shaft.

What’s a better way to skip on out of relevance than through the buffer of Paradox Space itself?

Your heart is in your throat, pounding in your chest, a thump thump thump, beat in your ears to the point where you can’t think of anything else, flipping that damn switch onto autopilot where the rest of the fucking world doesn’t matter because you’re over here gibbering in a corner, the thought scrambling through the rooms of your mind like a scurrying rat, gnawing on you and reminding you of its presence over and over again, overshadowing even the predictably dramatic activation of the dreambot as Jade somewhere in her satillite room finally goes the fuck to sleep and the four corners light up strong and red and blinking as they recieve the data stream. You’re barely even cognizant of the fact that the safe’s door goes flying off to slam against the far wall to reveal the darkened red eyes of the startlingly lifelike machine, despite having been built without the advantage of future tech.

Holy shit. Jake could be alive.

You feel so detached as you mechanically pick up—really it’s more like dragging, because it’s far heavier than its organic counterpart is--the dreambot and situate the largely inert construct near where you spread out the blueprints and your no longer dying laptop.

These are self-adjusting limbs. Fascinating. Perhaps intended to better mimic the girl’s development as she grows. Even using outdated technology, the shape of the face and sweep of the hair is modeled with surprising accuracy. These hands might as well not belong to you as you go on autopilot, digging into your sylladex for the tools you brought along and finding the afore-noted hatch on the back of its neck. There’s the attached data-connecter cable as the blueprints note, and, lo and behold, you’re a lucky bastard because it fits the strangely familiar skull-shaped input ports on the laptop. A downside of developing tech years before industry standard was even a twinkle in the world’s eye. Proprietary equipment sucks.

Your brain is still running in circles while you connect the bot to the laptop. It’s a good thing you’re dope at multi-tasking otherwise you’d be shit up a creak; while you flat out blue-screen, a fragment of you is actually bothering to do the fucking work and digging through the laughably simple functions, locating and disabling the series of methods responsible for the bot’s automated return. You even start to root around for the scanning program, noting possible variables, but. That requires too many resources and you.

You can’t.

No matter how hard the increasingly exasperated, practical piece of you tries to pull you in the right direction, you cannot focus at all.

Davepeta’s attempts to ease the discontent leaks through like a ghostly wind, but it’s glancing. You barely notice it. Unable to slow down enough to process the attention. Even with the nagging attempts to remind you you have the bot right in front of you. Your goal for being here. You could properly study the software structure on a deep enough level for your purposes, even without breaking your promise to Jade--none of that matters because Jake could be alive.

Harley could be alive you correct yourself as you finally give up on being even remotely productive and go on to punching that particular elephant in the trunk. Even if he is, given the mess that coming face to face with Roxanne made, would you even want to see him?

Would it be any better that coming face to face with that preserved corpse you were dreading?

That takes the wind out of your sails so fast the boom might as well have swung back around from the momentum and smacked you right across the face, because of course it’s in your nature to kill even the shred of hope you managed to nurture in the depths of your heart, but you don’t fall to the deck. You sway with the roiling tide, despite the constant storm lashing out at you, you find your focus at last in that far distant lighthouse beckoning you on.

The siren’s call of Jake’s doofy grin contrasting with his chiseled jaw. The last of your set. Jane is dead. You saw her above the fire. Roxy hates you. A bridge you can maybe, just maybe make passable (if you’re being generous, perhaps its more complicated than that.) And Jake…

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im telling you dude theres nowhere he could have gone

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< nada just stone and shit and then its fin the end movie over time to chuck the stale popcorn and vamoose

timaeusTestified [TT]: You don’t understand. There’s transportalizers in the ruins.

timaeusTestified [TT]: I have to go. Now.

timaeusTestified [TT]: I’ll explain later.

You aren’t being fair.

You know that.

You’ll mentally eviscerate yourself later for doing this.

You know you will.

But in this moment it’s hard to think of much beyond the fact that you have a lead.

Jesus, fine. Get the love-sick idiocy out of your system. Be selfish.

It’s not selfish. It’s not your bleeding heart that has you leaving the robot powered down next to the blueprints on the landing where you were sitting, with a note. You are not abandoning the plan. Abandoning her and the promise.

Just. Delaying it. Given how late it is, and how sleepy Jade was, if you’re lucky she won’t even be awake before the afternoon anyway. You’re only making good use of the day and getting work done. She’d want to know if you find out anything about her grandfather anyway, wouldn’t she?

If only you believed the lies you choke down to try and justify a decision you’ve clearly already made.

God, you’re pretty pathetic aren’t you? You know this is wrong; your brain is practically screaming it at you to the point that you’re literally arguing with yourself as you take the series of transportalizers down, down, down, each layer of the tower yet another shrine to Jake En--Harley’s eccentric tastes.

The ghost of Jake English has two hands on your shoulders, and you hate that you see your Jake in most this shit. Given your Jake had half a century plus more time and an infinite amount of money to encourage his habits. You don’t even make it all the way down because eventually one of the stops has a window and you throw yourself out of it because you can’t stand it any more.

Onto the rocket board of course, but you barely notice it. The freeing feeling of flying lost in the pounding of your heart and the mounting coil of anger that goes along with the blaze of single minded hope. After the euphoria of the idea that Jake Harley is alive managed to worm its way through your brain, a second one latches on, gnawing at you. Tinged with pessimism and broken hearts and shattered edges.

If he’s alive, and not gotten himself killed by taking the wrong teleportalizer then he willingly, knowingly left his kid alone for years.

It was bad enough when you thought he was dead. At least then it wouldn’t have been his fault. His choice.

One last romp, she had said, laughing at the funny word.

He left her behind.

The way he left you.

At least you were a teenager. A stupid, lovesick teenager who turned all that stupid lovesick betrayal on himself, but he wasn’t your guardian.

She was just a little girl.

You’re leaving her behind, too, right now. You’re no better than him. As soon as any version of Jake rears its charmingly messy head you’re gone, rushing after him, no matter what you tell yourself the reasons are for.

You know it’s wrong, but you’re doing it anyway. You probably won’t find anything, but you have to at least look.

The single-minded determination leads you down the beast’s throat, kicking the ‘board into your sylladex as you land on the metal platform of the elevator. You don’t activate it, looking around the shaft by light of the moon and the glow from your phone’s screen. Dawn couldn’t be far off, given the pink creeping into the horizon.

Davepeta said the elevator, and then black.

There’s only one place he could have gone. The same way you dragged Jane and Roxy onto the island in the first place. Jumping instances as easily as you’d jumped floors back in the tower. Jumping into a version of Paradox Space that’s been shattered and stitched back up again. Breaking free from the re-generated history.

At the bottom of this shaft. Gold and Purple rest, side by side. The ruins in your instance of this place hadn’t had a working elevator in decades. This one still ran, but for an old-geezer like Harley to get down there, there had to be a way--

There. A rough hewn channel carved into the side of the shaft. Too rough to be part of the design, but too deliberate and straight to be natural decay. You traverse the edge of the platform, avoiding the pressure-plate in the center that would activate the descent. You don’t want to lower it and block the way entirely.

Rusted climbing hooks were driven into the stone long ago, a fragment of rotted rope still clinging to the metal loop tucked into the shadow. It’s clearly man made, thin enough to make the fit tight for a man as built as Jake Harley back in the day, but big enough for you to be able to slide through the small gap it creates between the platform and the wall.

You’re running the calculations as you decaptchalogue the rope from your camping shit groove row and knot it onto the ring of the rusty hook, dropping the remaining end down through the gap that you’ll soon be squirreling through. It’s almost nostalgic. Like running the tombs again with Jake. As your dreamself, you could have flown, but in the “spirit of companionship” and “fairness” you’d restricted yourself to the more mundane methods of traversal that Jake had been limited to.

The rust on the mounting is a sign of age and wear, so you’re understandably wary of it’s structural integrity. But it doesn’t so much as budge as you testing the mounting with a few firm tugs and pulls before ever trusting it with your weight.

The descent is nerve wracking, despite the number of tombs you’ve plundered during your months in the medium. That was different; it was different knowing--even if you humored Jake’s ground bound status--that if you slipped and fell you could catch yourself without too much fuss.

Right now, if your sweaty palms slipped on the rough braid of fiber or the rusted anchor pulled free there would be fuck all you could do if your tentative back up plan failed. But you do. You’re going to do it. You have to do it.

Running off after Jake English again.

What was that about learning from your mistakes?

Harley. It’s Harley. And you aren’t--

You can’t breathe, for real this time. This shit ain’t no psychosomatic symptom, this is honest to god stone and metal against your chest and that ain’t budging. You’re stuck. You’re stuck and you can’t move--

Fitting through the space carved into the wall makes you feel like toothpaste being slowly and painfully squeezed through the tiny nozzle, and you don’t even get that nice smooth pretty twirl they had at the end of old commercials. It’s the messy kind where the end is so crusty and dry the cap doesn’t even want to turn so it’s a whole ordeal to even reach the nasty sharp flavor that also happens to clear the fuck out of your sinuses.

The excruciatingly tight squeeze releases, as you finally wriggle enough to slide through. You are the snake. It is you. The pitch-as-fuck space yawning before you. The calculations flee your trembling grasp, your palms slip--

Hold.

It sounds like the rope creaks. Like the metal above you shifts. Like the platform whirs to life as some animal meanders onto the middle pressure plate and triggers it to grind down the path to squash you like a bug beneath it’s unforgiving bulk.

It doesn’t. It’s just your brain raring into overdrive and coming up with all the possible scenarios, swirling through your swimming head and spotted vision as the oxygen begins returning to it’s customary supply route to feed your brain. Simply a hallucination. A mundane one, rather than one spurred on by Heart bullshit or possessed jujus.

You didn’t even stop to replace your flashlight. You know, the one you lost somewhere in the depths of a terminal when you were rudely kicked out last night? Not that it would’ve made much of a difference. You already know it’s too far to fall. No leap of faiths from here, no siree, at least not without a plan. You might be turning into an adrenalin junkie—or perhaps more accurately relapsing, it had always been your drug of choice to beat back ennui--but you aren’t suicidal.

Not that you think it would be a game over if you did slip. This would be a fucking stupid death. Nothing Just or Heroic about it. You’re willing to bet not even Lil’ Cal’s obvious-in-hindsight heavy-clawed interference would be able to override your lizardbrain survival instincts as it lugged your broken consciousness back to the one version of you that wasn’t lying broken on the ground and dying.

Not that you’re gonna count on that. Hell no.

You wouldn’t do that to Dave.

Just like--

Fuck, you don’t really have a choice there, do you?

You’re gonna have to get this meatsack to the endgame or die trying. And really die because you think surviving it would kill you at this point.

Is this really the place to be contemplating the limits to which you’re willing to push your self-destructive tendencies? Hanging on as you are to a thin rope, dozens of feet off the ground you can’t make out as more than a bottomless abyss, and confident int he knowledge that you had nowhere near as much rope as you’d need to actually make it to the bottom.

You run a set of calculations--since you can extrapolate the rough size of the shaft from top to bottom from the speed of your elevator ride yesterday--torn between reluctant and anticipatory. What would be the best height to pull this shit from to avoid reenacting humpty dumpty? Because of course you’re going to do it. At least you’re taking the time to do the math.

Sigh. That hover function would have been perfect right about now.

Too low and you won’t have time to slow your fall enough to make a lick of difference. Too high, and even the lowest setting on your board will likely send you back up into the air.

You’ve already committed. You just have to stick the landing.

It isn't a leap of faith if you have a plan.

Adjusting your height accordingly, the textured rope burns against your shaking palms. You wonder if it’s possible to overdose on adrenaline; your heart feels like it’s pounding in your ears, and really, you’d think this body would be sick of it by now. First the plane, then your manic ride last night, and now this.

This better not turn into a pattern; you can already see yourself taking a dive off the rooftop apartment even after you get home. Just to chase that rush again, especially since it does seem to shut Lil’ Cal up. Either he’s in awe by your boldness or your brain just gets too fucking crowded up in that cranial space and whatever access he has is locked out due to high traffic, no bandwidth available try again later.

It’d give Dave a heart attack, you think.

You’ll have to make sure to warn him first.

Or don’t do it at all, how about that?

Find that sweet spot, and jump.

You’re falling. Gravity yoinking you closer and closer to maximum velocity. You don’t have much time to think, so you don’t. You have your equipment primed and ready, and after the appropriate amount of time--you’re too fucking close idiot--too late to worry about that now--you just need to slow the momentum, but not go flying back up.

The heat pulses against your legs as you quickly alternate the propulsion in bursts, cutting it off once it starts to build to a forward momentum and starting all over again. An opposite force to your fall, but not enough to escape gravity completely. In the bursts of light given off by your ‘board’s jets, you realize you are too close.

At least you have the instinct to cut the power before you impact the stone ground, your knees absorbing the force until one--the one you smashed yesterday, into the temple steps--buckles and sends you careening to the ground, a burning screech running up through your spine to your brain in a crackle of pain. It reminds you of the miles, tearing through the sky, your earth, pulverizing everything to little tiny shreds and you could barely do anything but run from it, but--Lil’Cal surges around you, piercing through the adrenaline rush and the pain and you can almost see red text scrawling across your absent shades--it isn’t your autoresponder. You know it isn’t Hal--you can’t run from the Miles, Dirk!

Air hisses through clenched teeth. Rough stone digs into your skin. You’ll be lucky if it didn’t draw blood.

“Fuck, what did I say about feet on the ground??” The only impression you recieve is that of a haunting giggle, carried in on a non -existent breeze. Technically, you suppose your feet had already been on the ground before he slammed into you. But you aren’t in the mood to be generous, at least a part of you is still aware enough to grumble about letting the warranty expire, but it’s lacking conviction even if it’s tinged with self-recrimination. Most of you doesn’t give two shits about being snarky because holy fuck it hurts.

Dirk Strider isn’t one to stay down, unfortunately, as much as you want to just lie face first in the stone until your abused body stops screaming. Get up. Roll onto your side. Hope to frogs or whatever nothing broke during that reckless stunt.

Predictably, you can’t see shit in the abyss that is the bottom of the shaft. If you look up there’s a tiny ring of slightly different values around the edge of the elevator, but that’s so far above you at this point it might as well be another planet.

You could be wrong. Maybe this iteration of the frog ruins wouldn’t have those transportalizers. Maybe you just threw yourself from some insane height for the shits and giggles assuming there was.

You probably would have considered that, just as you probably would have considered your available supplies, if you’d stopped to take a moment and prepare before throwing yourself into the pit. Unfortunately, you aren’t known to think particularly straight when it comes to chasing after Jake.

...Christ you need to stop tying everything back to Jake. Even if that’s the whole reason you’re even here, instead of fulfilling your promise.

You feel guilty, of course you feel guilty, but you box it up. It’s not like you’re abandoning her—you might as well be. The moment you get a lead on the fate of your flame you go running--you’ll be back tonight.

The day is for the ruins, the night for robot fun-times.

You’ve got a schedule damnit.

She would understand.

You decaptchalogue your phone with a muttered release phrase, flicking it on for use as an--admittedly weak--source of light. It doesn’t go very far, nor it is particularly intense. You wonder if you could rig the flash on the camera to stay on permanently, it would likely be more efficient that way.

The rocketboard is an indistinct shape in the darkness. You force yourself to move, to retrieve it, bringing the pitiful excuse for a torch up close and taking note of a panel that had come loose from the fall, and one of the stabilizing wing-like extrusions has bent at an odd angle, probably the source of that stabbing sensation in your side before the impact knocked you away from it and left you rolling on the floor.

An aggrevated tsk and you shunt it away into the sylladex, you can fix it later, although it does leave you in a bit of a pickle considering it would be dangerous as fuck to fly the thing with it so unbalanced like that. It would be most unwise to attempt to use that as a method to escape this shaft. You better hope to hell the wall will have handholds you’ll be able to shimmy back up, at least to wherever your rope is, because it’d serve you right to trap yourself in here and starve--

You freeze, your survey stumbling across something else. There’s a hat, old and dusty, lying on the ground, illuminated by the short edge of your beam. Domed and made of leather, well worn, yet left abandoned in a layer of dust, trapped away from the sun. You’ve seen this sort of hat in plenty of adventure movies. You’d laughed as Jake leaned against your side in the middle of watching jumanji, bemoaning the loss of the world and his proper bedroom where he had a specimen of that very same dashing headware that the hunter sported.

Alchemy was capable of many impossible things, but it couldn’t work from nothing. It would have even taken you months, maybe even years, to determine the exact captchalogue code to make him one. That was with your autoresponder’s processing speed. Doing it from scratch without so much as a reference to start from would likely be impossible.

It didn’t stop you from trying. Or thinking about how his hypothetical expression would light up when you handed it to him, though.

Jesus Christ, Dirk, focus already.

It could have fallen through the crack. He could have fallen. The rope was rotted and you nearly cracked your spine and you, at least, aren’t pushing 60 like he would have been. There could be a bleached set of bones or a decayed corpse down here, and maybe he was dead after all. Just dead another way since whatever had happened the first time couldn’t happen again for whatever reason.

You reach for it, intending to shuffle it away into your sylladex for later--maybe to return to Jade. Would she appreciate it? Would finding some sort of sign of her grandfather--even if its his bones or a piece of his belongings--help her admit that he might not be coming back?

You don’t know. You don’t know. But you grab it anyway, the weak light in your hand shifting to survey the rest of the ground. You don’t know if you want to find a body or not. It would be closure, at least.

The blue light reflects off gleaming metal, stone, and nothing else save for disturbances in the dust. Some fresh--your own--and others, much older, but still visible.

No bones. No body. But tracks in the dust leading toward twin, raised metal platforms.

Transportalizers. SBURB’s familiar overlapping triangular mark gleaming where the light is trapped in the thin engraving.

Bingo.

This feels like such a momentous occasion, standing between the two options. Purple. Gold. Derse. Prospit. You try to extrapolate which one the disturbance in the dust leads to, but it isn’t that easy to tell. Two paths stretch out before you.

Two choices, and yet…

J--Harley likely went through to Prospit. The denizens were friendlier to humans, and more likely to cooperate with whatever hair-brained scheme the elder explorer had cooked up for his last romp, as it were. Even more importantly, they would be more likely to talk to you about it if you go asking about. You wouldn’t trust a Dersite further than you could throw them, and with good reason.

Yet. You still hesitate.

Davepeta.

You owe them... You owe them so much more than you could probably ever give them back even if you were just a sack of potatoes for them to look after, and a soundless voice on the other side of the screen.

Even with the logic working out, it’s with reluctance that you set your jaw and step up to the gold platform.

Now, you stop and think about it? Christ. You almost feel like you’re cheating, chasing after Jake. Moirallegiance doesn’t work that way. Not that you’d know.

You don’t have your strifedeck; can you even use puppetkind techniques to their fullest potential like this, or without your god-tier earned badges? You don’t even have fancy god-powers in this meatsuit. You’d be liable to get yourself killed before they even got there. Don’t be an idiot. They wouldn’t want you to be.

You’ll be able to contact them, once you go through. Explain your abrupt as fuck exit earlier. Maybe they won’t be angry. Maybe they’ll even be willing to help you get the fuck out of this shaft.

No. Better wait till you’re ready to head back. You don’t want to tempt them into trying to make the trip. They’d get lost in the space-time soup again. You--

You don’t think you could take that.

Or well, you could. Dirk Strider is a stubborn bastard who could take on anything even if he chased himself in circles the entire way searching for a way to upgrade failure to mildly passable if not ideal.

But you are fully willing to admit you are being selfish in saying that you don’t want to take that again.

They…

Are important.

...message them when you get there. You decide, in this quiet moment, between mocking up a plan to interrogate the natives, and digging up the years you spent studying the Dersite dialect. Even if you hadn’t stopped the think earlier, you are thinking now, and you owe it to them.

Don’t go assuming you know best. At least offer them a sliver of respect.

They’d understand why you acted the way you did.

They’d doomed themselves for a harlishcrockbert. At least the worst you’ll do is turn your brain inside out again.

At least you’re ready this time.

Maybe you won’t need to choose at all. You remember feathers and fleece and a warm welcoming star.

You’re stalling, Dirk. Again.

Don’t be a baby.

You know yourself well enough that you know you won’t let go of it.

In a flash, you, Cal, and the ouroboros of your neuroses chasing and snapping and devouring itself, all cease to exist for--

One.

Blissful.

Moment.

A moment that might have lasted an eternity for all you know, because it snaps back but it’s out of focus, like you’re seeing double. Feeling double. Being Double. You half expected it but the red bleeds out like an open wound. A world of whirling color and sound and sensation and stretching you’re stretching. You feel yourself rematerializing, molecule by molecule but it’s too much. Too much. The snap of your landing unlodges another channel, your very sense of self taking the path of least resistance and tumbling down two very different tracks. One too big. The other too small. Balance. You need balance. What the fuck are you going to do--

You gasp awake. Pieces clicking into place. You crumple to the ground. You shoot straight up in the air. Gravity has a hold on you. Physics has no meaning. Someone’s rushing at you. You’re alone. Feathers and fleece and a bright warm star, colors mixing and blending and pulling you back against soft fabric. You’re staring up at the black sky, ringed with golden towers, reaching up like clawed fingers, the glowing yellow moon on the horizon. The room is dim and artificial, walls encased in metal and concrete and you’re surrounded in a veil of black feathers. White carapace pops out of a nearby golden spire, staring down at you, asking if you’re alright-- You-- You can’t--

Cal is here.

Cal is always here

Cal is flipping his shit.

Not even the soup is fucking helping this time, he’s bigger. A winged snake the size of a fucking planet, jaws unhinged, ready to swallow you whole.

She’s here. And that makes him furious, digging in and shattering the feeble barrier, overwhelming the red, banishing it, flinging the broken glass everywhere. It leaves a gaping hole, flooding everything in a poisonous green. Claws dig in and twist and drag your face up to the empty sky. A void. A ripple in space. You can’t quite tell what he wants, but whatever it is you dig in your mental heels and thank fuck that your knees hurt too much to make standing worth it at this very moment, because you can feel that self lurch and it would move if it could. Your other self though, your other self is young and not--broken--and could make the trip and--

Fuck. No. You have to keep him out. You grasp for the shredded remnants of the red threads, shrapnel scattered and buried into your fragmented mindscape. Broken glass and sparking circuitry cut into your bleeding palms. Electricity crackles through you. Whatever dregs of power you inherited from yourself aren’t adequate in this meatsuit you need—

Feathers and fleece.

Pink sparks in the distance--just enough--

Kitten claws, only they aren’t ghostly at all. Pricking your scalp, drawing you back into an embrace of insulating arms wrap around you, stopping you, pulling you back into a cocoon of feathers and wings and limbs, inserting themselves into your space without so much as a by your leave. A head of white hair and candy-corn colored horns and a weight against your back and shoulder that does and doesn’t exist. They aren’t letting you go, and frankly you don’t want them to, trembling, claws against your scalp--christ you can actually feel it it’s real—

Slam the fucking door.

The antivirus just needs a database update.

Another blow and your shit gets scattered again. Green fire doesn’t care. Cal’s panic, this close to That. That empty hungry space above you--

He’s not trying to kill you, you don’t think, but in his panic he might break you into pieces and there might be nothing you can do about it, because he’s a-- no you’re sick to fucking death of it. There’s a reason you find yourself pulling further and further out of that mire and crawling back into the wreckage of who you once were.

You don’t know what to do-- no, no you’ve done this before. You just need help. You can’t let yourself get tangled up in this again, not when you’re more efficient with everything in its place.You've got to separate this shit, you know what to do, get the pieces in place. You can’t do shit when you’re in the midst of drowning—

You can feel that magenta power, that red lightning, running under your skin. You can feel it sparking. It’s building up, an overload without an outlet and you feel like you’re gonna burst. Echoes. Everything echoes in the caverns of your self, but you refuse to let it pull you back under. You’ll deal with it. You have to.

Have to limit the feedback.

Davepeta can only take so much. Experience speaks, and it's one you can't bear to repeat.

Practice makes perfect, you guess, fighting the hollow echoing feeling as you close your eyes simultaneously, just you and you, here and there, gold and iron, breathing deeply. You can do this. Section off that portion and build up the wall. Partition. You know just how far you can go without breaking. It’s been ages, but it was ages before, you can do this. It’s just like riding a bike, only no that’s dumb because you’ve never ridden a bike before.

The ‘board. It’s like getting back on the hoverboard despite gaining a foot and some height and another fifty pounds of mass. You pulled off a cold dive out of a plane despite almost a year without riding the thing, you could figure out how to find an equilibrium between your expanded sense of self and the available space, filling the remainder with red lightning, drawing on the battery that is your literal god of a splinterself. If all that power wants to zap your--whatever they were they were yours--you were going to put it to better use by purging the fuck out of your system leaving just clean pure orange and red and pink aching behind both your eyelids as the reach-around, four months in progress, finally completes.

Cal’s still there. Still close. Clinging to you by braids of twisted blue and red, but it’s fraying. Fraying, not broken, unraveling. Still pressing against the barrier of shattered glass, woven in red and pink protecting your heart, threatening to swallow you up and never let you go.

All segments are on fucking lock down. Closed fucking system now, bitches need not apply. And the bitch in question goes by the name of Lil’ Cal.

Isolate you and not you and seal that shit up tight there’s no green allowed in this here paint by number. No green. No purple. No blue. No--

You’re tearing yourself apart. Isolated, pain, keening loss, curling in on yourself, It hurts. It hurts and you stop, sucking in twin hissing breaths. Leaving those last few threads because it felt like you were taking a burning hot knife to your chest. The blade of Roxy’s--your own sword cleaving you in two, only add a bit more of a light-show to it because your powers are flashy as fuck.

You feel unmoored, even as you finally anchor yourself fully, completely, for the first time in literally months. That distant star you could never quite reach slotting into place at the end of a road made up of broken glass. It has been too, fucking, long since you could balance here on this edge, two separate worlds bubbling around you, fighting for attention. For focus. For.

Two Dirks to open their eyes. The older, with his battered body and aching knees and sore back, lets out a tired curse and rolls himself off the transportalizer, waving off the concern from a passing prospitian. The younger takes a shaky breath and finds himself tangled in blankets, floating, and yet somehow smothered in feathers and wings arching from behind him, magenta sleeved arms tight around his shoulders, getting the shit hugged out of him. A quiet hiccuping sound and the wet salt-scented patch against his shoulder betraying the emotional state of the cat-bird-troll-boy with their face buried into his comfy as fuck pajamas.

Electricity crackles under your skin, no over your skin, through you no matter where you are, the cracks in the world overlapping through two pairs of eyes, pulsing as you’re stretched so thin but holding.

Everything echoes. It Echoes and Echoes and Echoes.

Too close. This is too close. You have to close off the feedback loop somehow, but you can’t untangle your awareness from either, your long neglected power humming a bright pink star in the back of your mind, sectioned off, but still connected, it’s been cut off for far, far too long.

Every single drop of this pot of soup that is Dirk Strider is left to wonder: What the fuck did you do now?

Notes:

I am going to make a note here, since it seems like it could be a common conclusion: please do not think of the orange-ish colors as separate speakers. Think of them as modifiers. Black is the default state, the others represent some level of modification to the default. I will say nothing is intentionally, maliciously causing it. It's largely incidental. Dirk does not take actually physically traveling between the dimensions very well, does he?

... Note I only mention the orange ish colors here.

And with today, this fic is one year old :) I mean to have some art to post done but between school and family I just...yeah. So take a chapter instead.

This arc is very messy, whups.

I'm changing up the update schedule now: There'll be two weeks between updates. I've been having difficulties with chapter 67, and only just finished it, so in order to maintain my buffer through the end of my class + the holidays, (and my beta's ongoing internet troubles, this chapter was partially unbeta'd as a result) I decided to try spacing them out some.

...but I will tell you next chapter is a Davepeta chapter ;)

Thank you, if you've been here since I started writing a year ago. Thank you, if you just picked it up today. I've been seriously floored by the response I've gotten here, and I'm so glad you all have been enjoying this silly self-indulgence of mine.

Chapter 66: Davepeta > Have Your Pawtience Pay Off

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

He’s awake.

He’s awake.

He’s awake.

You’re hovering. Literally. Paws in the air like you just don’t care, clinging to your similarly weightless broirail as he attempts to scrunch himself into a roly poly armorbeast, hands pressing against his temples and face screwed up into an abnormally visible wince of pain. He doesn’t protest as you wrap your arms around those shaking shoulders, and maybe you’re jumping the gun here, doing this full body tackle glomp into the air. Bro’s sparking with red lightning, lighting up the room like it’s Christmas, if Christmas was mono-colored and threatening to set your carefully curated--shredded--pile of blankets on fire.

You hold him, feeling that lightning jolting through you, but it’s not that bad yet. You’re cool. You’re chill. The energy runs through you and into your wings. Into the feathers, which start to spark with your own flickering pink power. One insulated bubble of heart powers coming right up, because there’s something going wrong, there’s a distant screeching in your ‘ears’ that aren’t ears at all.

But even that is only an afterthought, because just as he bolted into the air, but before he started sparking, you’d seen those orange eyes, you’d seen them wide and awake and aware and you can hear the active melody line underneath that dissonance bubbling in a way you’d almost forgotten. It’s been so long since you’d punched his lights out months ago, and that was before you started grinding out your sensory skills, so you might as well be hearing it for the first time, especially as you can feel that electricity surging through him, through you, and the dissonant noise fades into nothing but an unpleasant memory.

The familiar harmony strengthens, thrumming in your arms. There’s a gibbering voice in the back of your mind telling you to just cool it, alright? But you can’t, you can’t. You’re nigh to bursting with the amount of can’ts you can’t do and it’s a furreaking miracle you’re not being fried to a crisp right now, torn apart by the feedback traveling through you.

The Dirk in your arms lets out an audible grunt, something that would probably be a groan from anyone else. For the first time in your new life you’re glad you’re effectively mute because otherwise you'd be babbling as badly as your swirling thoughts. That’d be totally uncool. Not that it’s worth it to be cool if it meant you couldn't be as close to your broirail as physically and spatially possible right at this very moment.

And then, something seems to settle.

It’s like someone puts a hand on the breaker and flips it. The crackling red energy slowly recedes, but not completely. It doesn’t quite make it all the way, continuing to flicker over his skin. It has the growing feathers on the back of your neck spark with the memory of green fire and char.

But it’s grounded. Controlled.

“Bro? You alright?” You wanna say, you wanna say it so bad, but it gets caught in your throat. A pressure, trapped; really you’d think you’d be used to it by now. Why is your first instinct always to open your mouth? You know it won’t work. Trying it again now that you have someone to potentially hear you isn’t going to change anything aside from make you look like a scrumptious tuna hauled up outta the sea and left to flop in someone’s net.

You click your tongue, curl your talons into your palm, and paw at his face with your knuckle instead. Like you want that attention right the eff meow, dude, you wanted it yesterday.

“Shades.” The word is grunted from a throat rusty with disuse, echo-ing weirdly against the hiss and crackle of the lightning . You would’ve thought that was a condition his deific nature would protect him from, but clearly not. There was way too much effort in that shaky voice.

You’ve never heard your Bro, any version of your Bro, that... rattled, betrayed by a single word.

Not even immediately after you dragged his sorry corpse out from under psychomom’s crying nose had he sounded like that.

After he revived, you mean. It’s not like the corpse could talk. And you really don’t want to think about that right now nope. Mewving on.

You reluctantly reach into your sylladex and produce the triangular shades you’ve had packed away since you relocated from from that couch on that break room several floors down, one month going on half a year ago.

Can it even hold a charge still? Should you have been plugging them in?? Did they run on magic SBURB juice??? Your shit hadn’t needed it during your months before Davesprite but for some reason that’s all you can think of right now. Utterly ridiculous. If you didn’t have a half-mangled wind-pipe you’d probably be laughing maniacally, higher than if you’d stuffed your face deep into an entire bush full of catnip. You can’t see or smell anything except catnip. The world is full of catnip soaked in sopor and you’re--

He’s actually awake.

You dangle them in front of his face, hooked on a talon, bouncing enticingly like one of those flicking feather toys Dave had seen in cat videos--you really should watch more cat videos--and Nepeta would have had her own litter of kittens in delighted glee had she known they existed.

You suddenly want one. You got feathers. You got thread. All you need is a bendy stick and someone to flick it around and oh look at that you’ve got one real, live, Bro who would probably roll his eyes at you but if you plead enough would he be a bro and give you twenty minutes of pouncing fun times??

It takes longer than you like for Bro to notice the black glass right in front of his nose, but you can tell as soon as he does because he snatches them away from you so fast you barely even noticed the motion, the frames slammed down right into their proper place before he lets out a quiet sigh of relief. You can feel that sigh, a full body one, running through the shoulders you’re half draped across and by proxy through you.

“S--orryy--Give me--no--christ--it’s so fucking bright--the fuck did i--we--do--?”

You’re just--

You can’t say anything anyway so you bury your head in his shoulder and manage that faint hum that you’ve been practicing for weeks, forcing the air through the misshapen passage-ways around your vocal cords. If you even have vocal cords. Your talons dig into fabric of his shirt, and you maybe should worry about ripping it the way you’ve accidentally ruined more than a few blankets--ruined, you will sniff later, it adds personality--but you really don’t care. They are magical self-cleaning godly attire, they can deal with it. They’ve already mopped up the snot and salt you’d left behind, erasing the evidence of your shame.

Time for round 2. The fabric is so soft and dry against the chitin of your cheek, pressing your shades into your eyes and you have probably knocked them askew as you ostritch the fuck out of your head into his shoulder. It doesn’t matter. You’re a wreck anyway.

Yup. There you go again. Leaking out of your eyes even as you screw them shut. It’s so freaking uncool, man, crying a dark red wet-spot into the sleeve that had literally just gotten a magical blow-dry moments before. You wonder if your tears are as green as your blood is but you don’t want to look and find out.

Really, this is pathetic. He just woke up and is clearly stressed the heck out over whatever happened and here you are clinging like a limpet. But you don’t care. You didn’t care when you tackle-pounce Equius awake on the moon. That overwhelming emotion that would normally funnel itself into words has no working trachea from which to perorate, or a chat window where the words may be vomited forth and be released from your head to run wild and free and frolic amongst the cattails and catgrasses. It has to go somewhere and you don’t think you’ll ever produce enough tears throughout your 9 (8--no 7--6?) lives remaining to cry it out, and it’s not like you can just go out and kill something to release the emotion through literally painting the walls red with the blood of beasts.

Pounce de Leon had to clean you up afterwards, and hadn’t seemed entirely pleased about the effort required, but you had to admit it was effective as catharsis.

The halting mumbling slows, the echo behind the words that you’re not sure you’re actually hearing so much as hearing fading as he manages to wrangle the felines doing zoomies inside his head--or at the very least bribes them into holding still briefly. Probably through aggressive treat giving and maybe one of those catnip filled squeakbeast toys.

You jolt, startled, as fingers tangle into your messy hair; his first motion, even before uncurling from the tense strained posture, is to reach for you.

You aren’t alone. It hits you so hard it hurts and you cling tighter.

You let out the most ridiculous sounding strangled mrrph, pressing your face deeper as his thumb and forefinger finds the base of your horn, like someone trying to scratch a cat’s ear. Only it’s not an ear, it’s a fucking horn.

“--hey--unexpected but I’m--you’re--here, okay? It’s--okay. We’re--okay.”

It’s halting, like he needs to think over what he’s saying in order to get the words out in something resembling sense. He tries to explain, something about Jake and the ruins and Cal and the elevator shaft, and needing to something right the fuck now, but he’s so obviously getting mixed the fuck up that you can’t follow it at all, especially with the remnants of the echo clinging like a shadow behind his words. You wonder if he’d tripped and fallen running down the mountain, cracking his head on a rock, the trauma, again, finally working to fling him back into your arms. He never makes it that far in his story though, and eventually you’re just fed up with trying to parse it.

Slow your goddamn horses bro. You remember watching him go hogwild through the debris field, never stopping to think. It’s your diamond-bound duty to scruff him and make him sit the fuck down for one second.

After the third time he stops and rewinds you raise your head enough to get your target in your sights, disengage one of your arms from around his neck, and rest the tip of a talon against your moirail’s lip. You stop the flow of words almost immediately, feeling his jaw click shut under your hand, you can even imagine a startled widening of the orange eyes behind those achingly familiar shades. You can feel his focus on your like a weight, a prickle that threatens to tear you to pieces, ripping apart at the seams as you can’t decide between turning tail and running, fleeing to the depths of your meteoric lair, or curling up and purring until you can’t purr no more.

Not that you can even start purring, but it’s the principle of the matter.

The other option is fucking off, and you refuse to do that.

Just stop and think. That’s all you wanted. You lay on him like a weighted blanket, refusing to move. Refusing to let him move. Forcing him to stop and think and put them explanations and theories and shit on pause. That’s all you wanted. There’s a time for words and there’s a time for cuddles and game shit can wait. This is prime person on person consensual invasion of personal space, time. At least you think it’s consensual. You hope. You think you can be forgiven for not getting purrmission for the initial desperate pounce, and he was the one to start scritching your horn which was the real pale contact going on here.

You want him to do it again. You shift away from the result of a desperate pounce, and into one with more deliberate snuggle connotations, headbutting his hand in a silent request.

You can feel the nod as a movement of muscle. The scritching continues.

It’s not like either of you are in the mood for a proper ‘game shit is weird let’s hash out the details’ jam anyway, not with the way this weird weightless ball of limbs has become far less you clinging to his back and more a mutual oh my god you’re here. The pressure against the base of your horn, the way he carefully avoids tangling your hair, the way he buries his chin in the fabric of the sleeve on your arm around his neck just--breathing. Shaking. You can feel him shaking. Vulnerable.

You can’t really explain it. That knot of loneliness you’ve been carrying inside you is so, so tight it hurts. You’re draped across his shoulders and back like a skinned pelt, chin resting on his shoulder, eyes listing towards closed as you lean into the hand that’s warm and active, moving through your hair. The bird in the depths of your brain manages the instinctive awareness of your extra limbs, but even they get in on the action, casually blocking out three quarters of the world.

At least they aren’t sparking anymore, what with the excess lightning having drained off your bro as he settled into whatever he’s doing up in that brain of his. You know him well enough to hope that he’s using the silence to uncross whatever wires got screwed up in there. It should bother you, that he’s probably focusing on other things rather than reciprocating the laser focus you have on him, but hey, you get it. That’s just how things work.

He’s leaning into you as much as you’re leaning into him, and that means more than any attempts at conversation. Supporting each other as much as support really matters when neither of you are contractually obliged to care about gravity at all.

You’re content. It’s not the traditional paps and quiet shooshes for pacifying an overly emotional pale partner, but heck, you ain’t the traditional pacifee, nor is he actually needing to pacify you. Despite thoughts of wanton blood-painting earlier, you’re much more mellow and lacking in the violent impulses pale couples normally contend with.

Even if not violence, you had--have. Still have. Frogs above you still have--some emotions that deserve the shit papped out of them.

You both stay like that. You’ve never actually...been in this situation before. Given the isolation of your...unconventional Hive, you and Equius never got the chance to be proper moirails until SGRUB. You remember curling up with him on a pile of miscellaneous robot parts and furs while he argued with himself, petting his hair absently while he worked through his completely obvious--to you--feelings for Aradia, but it was never really your turn to be the one like this. The focus. It wasn’t your place, and that was okay! It was okay because you didn’t need it. You’re an olive blood without a single angry bone in your body. You didn’t need pacification the way Equius did, and all you wanted to do was help! Help Equius, the way you wish you could help Bro--help, help, help.

You feel like you shouldn’t be like this. You should be active. Asking. Picking apart whatever’s going on in that brain of his that’s messing him up to the point of being at the halfway stop to mute county. You’re good. You don’t need pacification because your Bro needed you. Equius needed you. Someone always needed you to be strong for them and, even if you couldn’t quite figure it out, it was your job to ask the right questions or smile the right way, or run a claw appreciatively along ARquius’ glowing bicep as you both marveled in the fucked up series of coincidences that led you to this place, this moment, facing your destiny.

Basking in the wonder of making your moirail happy. If it made him happy, it made you happy.

It’d taken a return to isolation, unwanted isolation, for you to realize you need things too. The knowledge that someone as unyielding as your Bro would just shut up and let you cling if you asked because you need this. Mutual need, if the way the wound-up tension is bleeding away.

Maybe he does, too.

It’s not like you’d ask even if you could.

All you do is rub your gloved knuckles against his jaw as he scritches your horn and marvel at the fact that this silence says more than words ever could.

You’ve had his head in your lap before, in the throes of a nightmare, or while you worked, taloned claws battling stubborn bed-head. You’ve had him curled up at your side, unconsciously seeking you out. You’ve had those moments where the silence gets to be too much and you remember your Bro and you break into Dave-sized pieces, feeling like a lost needy child torn between wriggling into place on the futon with him, and dreading the cost that would come from it.

Nepeta never slept alone.

You find you don’t much like it either.

It’s—different, like this. Awake and aware and letting himself lean on you. Needing you. Even if only as an anchor in whatever bullshit is going on in his brain.

You dread the moment breaking, even as a “Jesus Christ,” tumbles out of him accompanied by a sigh. It’s a signal. A shift in mood. It isn’t the same frantic, need-to-explain as earlier, more a muttered expression of pent up emotion. You manage what you hope is a questioning hum, shifting your head to bump up against his as he allows the scritches to ease off and stop. You’re going to assume he continues at your prompting, “I am infuriating.”

You shake, the laughter coming out as a sad wheeze that has glimpses of concerned glances peeking out from the space between shades and his face. You can see splotches of orange windows against the darkness of interior lenses, thanks to your over the shoulder perspective.

Pesterchum?

Right. Brain to shades. Didn’t need to talk or type. Lucky bastard.

Where the heck did you drop your phone anyway? You mentally thumb through your sylladex, finding nothing in the usual spot. You must have lost it somewhere in the pile of blankets some feet beneath you.

Luckily, you can still go the low-tech route and paw at him like it’s five o’clock and your food bowl is tragically empty. You are dying here. Maybe not of hunger, but of curiosity. It’s even in character.

“Ah--sorry. I had to fracture shit pretty deep to stop from--christ--feedbacking. I've been chasing myself in a fucking circle.”

You give him a look, not that he can appreciate it behind your shades. But he must have gotten the gist from the rest of your face because he sighs, “No, I didn’t make another splinter. It’s just--easier to take a leaf out of your book and play the role-- If I drop the partition shit will get reconciled--it’s already bleeding. It’s just too fucking much after what just happened.”

You can’t help the way your feathers puff up proudly at that--you’re helpful!--giving him a consolatory pat on the cheek. Then--reluctantly--you pry yourself off of him; if he wants to start an in-depth words sess already you’re going to need to sniff out your missing phone. No way is your limited knowledge of body language, waggled eyebrows mostly obscured by your shades, and strangle sounds gonna be anywhere near good enough communication for this.

You slip free and let gravity take hold again, wings spreading instinctively as if to catch the air and slow your descent--not that it means much, since you’re literally beyond the claws of physics right now and are in total control of your motion thanks universe--but the downward descent is abruptly stopped by a hand snapping out and digging into your hood, pulling you back, “Wait--don't--” a pause. And then the grip on your hood tightens. "Please?"

You cut him off by pretending there’s a trampoline beneath your feet and bouncing back up the inches between you, poking him in the side. Hard. With a talon. You turn your poke into a grab, hooking the magenta fabric of those godly pjs and dragging him down with you.

He finally seems to understand that you aren’t doing this because you’re done with him or something, waiting quietly as you root around through the messy macro-pile that seemed to have consumed the two previously distinct concentrations of bedding. He’d been rather violent in his eruption, not that you could really point fingers here. If you glance at the ceiling you’d still find a set of uncomfortably familiar horn indentations in the metal. At least he hadn’t cracked his skull. Or the ceiling. Though given the rad red lighting--charred feathers--he soundly beat you out when it came to style points. Giving yourself a concussion wasn’t very stylish.

You find the phone, eventually, laying on the half-completed forest green fabric of your sewing project, located on the edge of where your individual pile had been before everything got scattered.

Right. That’s what you’d been doing before the shrieking dissonance had cued you into the fact that something was wrong. Really wrong. Even if that shit eventually cleared out and now it’s all the personalized sound-track version of smooth jazz up in here.

Not that Bro's a jazzy pants. He’s not. He’s very much not. He’s like his own little genre of musical tics that sound like they shouldn’t work together but each bit is so very him that you can’t imagine them not being there. Weirdly bouncy and upbeat for a dude who barely emoted on a good day and kept it all locked up inside his head. Granted, given the nature of your aspect, you probably are hearing what’s inside his head more than what makes it out of there.

Where are you going with this? Hell if you know. You finally pull up the Pesterchum app as you reach out and drag him down into the mess that is the blankets--he’s still clinging to your hood, so it’s not like you even have to shove him around too much. At least this time you can arrange shit so you’re properly leaning against his side, squirming your way up under the arm holding onto your hood.

Not that it stays prisoner for too long; you feel him release the fabric slowly, finding your shoulder, carefully resting that arm above the muscles that flex as you shift your wings, attempting to get the 6ft plus monstrosities into some position that’s vaguely comfy.

You ignore them. They stop existing if you ignore them. Or at least it feels that way. Maybe it’s just your birdbrain figuring out what the rest-of-you brain can’t figure out because you focus on it too much.

Eyeballing the several hundred notifications that appear next to the entry at the top of your alphabetized list of two chums, you give him a look. You even go so far as to push your shades up in your hair so you can give him a Look. A good and proper side-eye. Even if the dim light in here makes your unshuttered eyes uncomfortable, it’s worth it to make sure he knows exactly how much you are side-eying him right now.

To his credit, he doesn’t wince, but you can tell he wants to from the way his fingers dig into the fabric of your sleeve. The fact that he’s reading over your shoulder doesn’t bother you as much as it probably should, “Don’t backread. Please. It’s a mess. I--no one without my fucked up brain should--make sense of what the--neural receptors are picking up out of my head right now.” He sucks in a breath and lets it out in a frustrated hiss, “I’ve disabled the function.”

Which is why he is actually talking to you right now, you suspect, given his well documented preference for textual communication. No keyboard on them shades.

Then again, you’re totally cool with that. You get plenty of orange text, even if it’s often at the mercy of schedules other than your own jam-packed one. Full of extracurriculars up in here to pass the time, of course.

The novelty is actually hearing his voice, as strained as it is.

...that doesn’t stop you from being curious as a kitten with whiskers twitching at just what exactly that mess is.

You mollify yourself with the knowledge that putting aside the puzzle for now will ensure that you have proper entertainment later--you look forward to sift through those brain-to-shade dumps--and open up a memo instead to spare him the embarrassment of seeing the pure unfiltered word vomit that apparently originated in his brain.

You pull your knees up, but not all the way, resting your arms and the phone on the burgundy fabric doubles as a reading table. It feels weird and yet completely normal to be looking down at the small device to type instead of looking at him, but you aren’t cool enough to have the keys memorized yet. Or, well, you are? Were? You’d had careless texting on lock once, but you know that even with your filed down talons, your human focused muscle memory and new configuration would embarrass the heck outta you.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dont mind me i just happened to drop everyfang when shit went down
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< mew n33ded time to wrangle them felines anyway
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< actions and words ya know how that goes
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i def wont say no to more scritches tho

“Maybe later.”

You pout, if you’re going to have to deal with the light you’re gonna take advantage of the unshuttering and go all out. Just straight up bat your luxurious eyelashes at him.

He snorts. “Don’t even try it. You ain’t got nothing on Jade.”

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dude jades got like some innate talent for the eyelash game
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< gurl has no idea what kind of pawer she wields with those baby greens
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< she was oblivious to the way shed have me in the palm of her hand just by making them puppy eyes at me

“Tell me about it, I--had to literally bribe her.” He drags his right hand through his hair, given the left is being held hostage by yours truly, and you have a flash of irritation since you’d spent so long trying to fix that shit, but it’s only momentarily because the fact that he’s messing shit up means he’s here. “Thanks for--metaphorically and functionally sitting on me. Christ--I needed that.”

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< hey i think i know mew well enough by now to recognize when youre running away with yourself
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< just gotta slow that roll and chill
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< it helped i also just wanted some furreakin cuddle time
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< good ol fashion shoosh papping
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its kinda my job
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< now that thats outta the way i gotta know
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you didnt like
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< fall off the mountain did you???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i know we never tried the bash-bros-head-into-a-wall for obvious reasons but if it works weve b33n totally missing out

Moments pass.

He doesn’t respond. He stays still. Frozen. You chew on your lip, careful of the fang, and then poke him. Gently.

It’s like watching a paused Youtube video sputter to life, “Christ, sorry. What were--right I can read. Hold on--”

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dude
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you okay???

“Yeah. I’m--Holding two conversations at once fucking sucks. Especially when you can’t just foist one off on your autoresponder”

That…

What was that???

It was the echo again sure but--

Different. Distinct. Distant and to the left.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< well i guess that means you arent just lying around unconscious
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< who are you talking to???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< besides yours truely of course
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< who do i have to maul to have your undivided attention
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< unless its jade
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< sorry i love you but i loved jade furst you know how it is
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i mean i guess itd have to be jade
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its not like hellmurder island is brimming with potential conversation pawtners
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< what the flock happawned anyway???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< did you go ahead and do somefang reckless again

“It’s--” Hesitation. “Reckless is one word for it.”

You don’t like that. You sit up, pulling yourself out of the nearly boneless... thing, you’d had going on, widening the space between you both.

You nudge him wordlessly. Tell me.

Of course you can only think the thought at him, no matter how hard you beam it directly into his brain. You aren’t in the right hemocaste to hope for unexpected telepathic developments, so all you get for the effort is the fact that your relaxing posture is all kinds of tense right now. If you had actual kitty ears they’d be hella perked, angled forward. Butt wiggling. Waiting to pounce.

It’s enough, because after a few moments of internal turmoil--it’s only really telegraphed by the fact that he kneads at the fabric of those poofy pantaloons, a sudden release of the maroon fabric occuring when he continues. “I’m not on the island at all, actually.”

What?

How?

He wasn’t scheduled to leave for another several days.

Your reaction comes out in an inquisitive head tilt and a narrowing of your un-shaded eyes. You broirail drags in a breath of air he doesn’t need, then releases it. “I’m here. And not just, here, but here in the Medium. It’s where Ja--Harley went. The feed cut out because he left the save state early.”

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< where???

“Prospit. It seemed the most likely. I--didn’t know this would happen. But I had to look. So I’ve gotta dodge some well meaning carapace who want to take me to see their leader and I just don’t have the time nor capacity for that shit right now. I need to find a library.

You can feel the ice rising in your chest. Full on freezing over, worse than Jade’s planet, not that it was you on Jade’s planet. You just watched. That’s all you did was watch as the real Dave raced around catching frogs and died in front of her.

It’s a straight up ice age in here, killing mammoths and sabertooth tigers left and right.

You haven’t felt like this since you were a kid.

Bro is on Prospit.

Bro is here.

A record scratch. You blank. You blank so hard but it’s a good thing Bro isn’t looking at you. It’s fine.

It’s fine.

And you aren’t that kid anyway.

You’re just happy to have your moirail here.

Fingers dig into the fabric of your sleeve. By the time he turns back to you, you’ve pushed that shit so far down under your still bubbling joy that it doesn’t matter anymore.

It doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter.

You understand, right?”

Honestly?

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yeah
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yeah i do
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< so bro
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< on prospit huh?

Getting his detective on. Interviewing carapals about the whereabouts of one Jake Harley. Getting shit done while you’ve been here being pampered like a spoiled kitten, so self-centered and concerned about your broirail time you didn’t care that maybe he had other shit to deal with aside from the whole, ‘wires crossed, please wait while we reconfigure’ shit.

A small nod. Then a pause, “I don’t know for sure, but the probability points in that direction. If anyone remembers Jake coming through in the last couple years…”

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dude if you n33d to focus on your hunt im
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you dont n33d to explain this shit to me
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< we all do what we n33d to do
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< sometimes you have a chance for answers that f33ls like its about to slip through your claws and you just gotta pounce on that shit
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< trust me i get it

You get it because you did it.

You shouldn’t be here.

Charred feathers and lightning. Very, very, Frightening.

You don’t wanna think about that. Or why only one of those echoes scruffed you by the neck and shook you silly.

Teetering on the edge of that abyss, staring down into red cracked glass. Knowing the answers were on the other side.

You have one now, but it was like reaching out to grab a hot coal, and left you burned.

That echo. A step back and to the left.

A hand curls around yours, gripping your wrist. You abruptly look up from your phone. You aren’t used to this. To actually looking at him while you talk. To having him respond directly to you--unless you are preening him, of course, but even then, while his gameself would relax, Dirk hardly consciously acknowledged it.

“Just because this wasn’t--planned, doesn’t mean it’s unwelcome. It’s welcome as fuck.”

You won’t cry again. You will not start crying again.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< hell yeah dude double the brain pawer you can research twice as fast like this!!!

Maybe it was silly of you to think he missed you near as much as you missed him.

He already has a Dave after all.

Knuckles dig into your scalp, startling you out of that unnecessary and unhelpful thought process.

“That isn’t what I mean, and I want you to know it. Yes, I need to figure out what the fuck happened to Jake, but I am more than capable of delegating this shit. You--this--whatever the fuck this is--I think I owe you a lap and an ear scritch don’t I?”

By your count, he’s already delivered. But you’re selfish, and you need-- Well, you don’t know what you need. But you nod, and the only reason your heart isn’t in your throat is because your throat is too fucked up for it to fit.

Just like that, the distance closes again. The physical distance, anyway. The void in your soul gapes wider. You curl up at his side in the pile of blankets, head pillowed on his leg with your phone held in front of your face. His fingers tangle in your hair, blunt human nails not doing half as good a job as a troll’s claws would, or a purrbeast lusus’ rough tongue. But it’s something. It’s there.

You check on your other monkey, the kid hasn’t messaged you in over an hour, and sits on your chumroll with the idle status for all the world to see. You hope he finally managed to fall asleep.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< why do you think it worked this time

The scratching pauses for a moment, and you peer up, eyes watering from the overhead lighting, as you watch him, well, reboot for a better term.

“I’m--” He stops again, collects himself, “I’m just too close, I think.”

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< sounds like the worst kinda trip
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i wish youd told me
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i f33l like braving a potential dimensional boundary to look for the soul-equivalent of your matesprit who vanished thr33 years ago warrants a heads up
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i couldve at least b33n prepurred for that storm
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< it almost started a small fire in here

“Ex,” He corrects you, you wave it off. Ex or not, it echoes with the same dogged determination that’d led you to doom yourself and pull John’s bacon out of the fire. That’d left you perching on the edge of shattered glass, ready to dive right in.

You don’t really stop to think about the collateral damage when you make that kind of decision.

Even when it’ll hurt those you want to protect.

Like--

You still don’t like thinking about Rose. Your Rose. The Rose you—left behind.

Just go to sleep.

“I didn’t anticipate that would happen, although I suppose I should have. I’ve just grown used to it being--inaccessible. With all the power in this meatsuit tied up in keeping the juju out of my shit, I figured I was too locked down to reach outside myself safely.”

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< are you???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< safe i mean

“I’m here aren’t I?”

That isn’t an acceptable answer. And you were going to tell him that right before he starts scratching the base of your horn again. Deliberately trying to distract you. The jerk... You swat back at the hand, glaring, but the extended exposure to even the dim overhead lighting is causing your eyes to water and that probably ruins the effect because he steals your thunder by starting to smooth out the hair he just messed up.

“You okay?”

You aren’t looking at him, and just type the reply back.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yeah no big just got a double dose of owwie goin on here in order to bat those eyelashes at you
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you know the one you totally didn’t appurreciate??

“You could have just kept your shades on.” They are plucked straight off your head and replaced in a flash, although your position on your side (your wings limit the ways you can comfortably curl up, alas) has them digging in uncomfortably. It’s just out of position enough that it forces you to disengage one claw-like grip from the small device and nudge the glass back into their resting spot to ease that pressure. He tried, at least. “It’s not that bad in here. I’m surprised.”

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< gotta commit to the goofs bro
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and yeah it wouldnt be except for the fact that i got a double dose of vampire what with trolls being hella nocturnal on top of inheriting your genetic predisposition to light sensitivity thems the breaks

“Normally I’d argue you actually lucked out on the genetic lottery, but having had to live without proper shades for months, you only have my sympathies. At least all I end up with is a headache.”

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yeah well if youd just commit to buying a decent interim set instead of wearing those crappy cheap ass ones you wouldnt n33d to complain now would you

You settle in to the banter, just another conversation, orange and green, even if there’s only half of it in the memo, but that’s fine, because you can feel the other half reverberating in the air and in his chest and sometimes matching up just right to the music.

If he falls silent every now and then, clearly focusing on whatever’s going on the other side of the mirror, you tuck any discontent that may or may not exist and that you definitely don’t acknowledge away with the rest of the shit you don’t want to deal with and fiddle around on your phone.

Time passes, and he makes no move to, well, move. Content to let you lay on him and bask, which feels hella nice, but considering how damn frantic the messages he sent you earlier and the panic attack you’d sent him into, this inactivity and lack of narrative progression feels out of place.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< isnt there something we could be doing to help???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< not that i dont appurrecriate the cuddles
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i do
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but it s33ms a bit out of character fur you to not be like
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< got two sets of hands and two brains might as well put them to work

“No matter how improved I am at multi-tasking from my narcoleptic zombie days, I wouldn’t consider it the equivalent of having two brains.” You think he’s rolling his eyes at you, but you know he flicks your ear which makes you instinctively scrunch your nose. “Given the--proven unstable nature of my--well--I’m leery of pushing too close to full scale autonomy.”

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yeah but
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< wait
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you cant just say something like that
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< is there something you arent telling me???

“Just more splinter-shit.” He rubs at his forehead, and knowing Bro at all, if he’s visibly doing it he must be beating back a migraine. “I’m trying to make the most of my splinterself’s location on prospit, since I am not looking forward to going back.”

Another shrug. You feel it more than see it, considering his arm’s still curled around you.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< bro
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< what
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you gotta elaborate
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< what splinter-shit
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< theres a lot of splinter shit it could be
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< youre a n33dlestack masquerading as a haystack
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< very poorly at that

“I don’t--It’s not important. I’ll clean it up.” You’re already in the middle of typing up a reply, the faint undercurrent behind the words reverberating through you, but you freeze when he puts a hand on yours. Stopping you. You roll onto your back and look up at him, ignoring the cramp that puts on your wings. Or trying to. His expression is blank as ever, shades opaque. All he’d need was a hat and some stubble, it would make your breath hitch.

And then it breaks, and he looks away. The line of his mouth visibly softens. “I don’t want you to worry.

You shouldn’t be here.

“Please, Davepeta.”

It's gone.

He doesn’t stop you as you go back to typing, rolling back onto your side and drawing your knees up to your chest. This way you can’t see him.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you know im gonna worry anyway right

You can’t get mad at him for not telling you something, all things considered.

You still haven’t told him what you did. The trespassing.

What you...

The memory of electricity jolts beneath your skin, feathers fluffing. Hands on your arms.

You don't think about it.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< as long as thats out there
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i cant imagine you can just hang out furever
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< whens your curfew???

“Probably mid-afternoon, if I wanna be safe,” He admits, and he’s gone back to his favorite past time, which appears to be fidgeting with your hair and causing tiny little tugs against your scalp. “Promised Jade we’d look at her ‘bot today.”

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and you just up and ditched her???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< some kind of respawnsible adult you are
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< if you make her sad ill never forgive you

“I left a note.” You had intended the remark to be teasing, but the response you got back was hells of defensive. Must have hit a nerve. “And she’s asleep. Or should be. She knows I have to work. If I chose to work on my own project rather than Roxanne’s then that’s my prerogative.”

So why do you feel guilty, hm?

You want to pick at that loose thread of yarn, bat that shit around. Unravel it so much so that you’re liable to get tangled up inside it.

But you don’t ask. You don’t feel like you have a right to. Guilt sucks.

Silence falls. You know the pattern by now. If you aren’t prodding, he withdraws into his own head. Into whatever shit he was doing half a universe away. One brain with only so much active processing power.

“I might need your help, actually. To get out.” To your surprise, he actually speaks eventually. Without input from you. You raise an eyebrow behind the sweet, sweet darkness afforded by the replacement of your lenses, “I--I think I broke my ‘board in the fall. Transdimensional teleporters aside, I’m a little stranded.”

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< do i n33d to get you one of those life alert things man
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< for when youve fallen and cant get up
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< lil dirkie is stuck in the well
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< only the well is an elevator shaft

“...don’t ever call me dirkie again.”

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dirkie

“What is it with people and butchering my name?” He grumbles, “Just call me Bro if you don’t want to use Dirk for whatever reason. Or ‘You’. Or even ‘Idiot’. I call myself that more than enough. It’s not that hard. Dietrich, and now ‘Dirkie’ of all things.”

Seems like he’s finding his rhythm now, even if it’s only in an exasperated rant. Amused, you poke the bear. The bear exists to be poked. Your job is now expert bear-poker.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< deeawhat???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< knowing you youre purrobably entirely too fond of Idiot
timaeusTestified [TT]: Dietrich.

You’re surprised to see the orange text, didn’t he disable that? It was clearly intended just to give you the spelling, however, as he continues aloud without pause, “That’s his legal name, apparently.”

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< who would call you dietrich???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< it isnt lizard boy is it???

“Liza--no. It isn’t Newt, Christ. No, it’s just Roxanne.”

Oh.

Oh no.

It’s never ‘just’ Roxanne.

The good thing about being in meatspace is you don’t need to preen the fuck outta him to get him to spill the beans. You just slap on your best concerned face (Nepeta’s actually--it’s all Nepeta, all this, all this actually being able to fucking translate your feelings into anything except words because Davesprite never learned it was okay to smile sincerely) and paw incessently at him and he sighs and continues.

“Either she knows it irritates the hell out of me and is doing it on purpose, or its intended to be a degree of separation or formality, conscious choice or otherwise, which is hells of weird coming from her.”

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< holy birdshit batman
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its not really that diffurent from you calling her roxanne though if you think about it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< or harley, harley

“The difference is she told me to call her Roxanne because only her friends call her Roxy.”

...Ouch. Harsh. Grade A Lalonde passive aggressive burn right there.

He’d told you about the developments with Roxy, sure. But never in-depth. Never raw. It was always a more clinical way, stepping back, using the distance to pick apart the problem and find the puzzle pieces beneath. More of a game-jam than a feelings-jam.

Your feelings jams were full of shit to deal with already, between Cal and Dave and what Cal was doing to Dave (and Dirk although he seemed to deny it. You knew. You’d seen--green fire charring your wings--and now that weird echo) so you never pressed him on it, even if you knew it was likely bothering him more than he let on. Especially with how restless Washington had made his dream-self.

Without that anonymity, without the sterile image of text on a screen, you can hear, see, and feel the hurt in that deliberately flat monotone.

You reach up and silently twine your clawed, scaled hand in his, letting them both rest on your shoulder.

You’re getting better at typing one-handed.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< mew know we could always hit up derse’s moon on the way back
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< shake some sense into her
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i know how to be cute and disarming and she s33ms like such a cat person itll be a sinch

“And explain why I’m missing 10 years and in the company of an alien bird?” He snorts. “She’s definitely awake now, even if she wasn’t entirely before. It’s probably a good thing you skipped town on the tower back then.”

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< we got more resources here anyway
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its not like i can pack up the alchemeter and put it in my pocket
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< anyway
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< she can k33p fur a while
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dont borrow worry fur yourself
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the interest will give you wrinkles
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< hit the books
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< figure out what mew can
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< then well get you outta that well and packed off for some robofuntimes

He still hasn’t let you go.

You both are kind of messed up aren’t you?

Notes:

This has been a long time in coming, hasn't it? Hope it's as fun for ya'll as it was for me to write it!

This fic will remain on a 2 week update schedule for the forseeable future...but if you like The alpha kids and specifically the Autoresponder... you might wanna check the tags next friday ;3 I've been working on something new for the past week and as long as everything continues going as it should...hopefully that'll be updating in-between defrag updates!

Chapter 67: Dirk > RESEARCH X2 COMBO

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

You want to say that it’s a wasted trip, but the fact of the matter is that it isn’t.

You close yet another book, moving it off to the side of the desk, straight up ignoring the hitch in your chest as coils of fire tighten around you--but that’s all it is. A hitch. No suffocation because the interruption is muffled as fuck, an angry hornet locked outside the window.

You already know Cal has a bee in his bonnet. Something about that empty black space beyond Prospit’s golden spires gnaws at him. Unnerves him. Now that you’ve tentatively worked out how to separate your shit--walk that tightrope, dawg--you find his interference to be less harmful than it is annoying.

You have more important things to worry about anyway. Like the Grand Adventure of Jake Harley; everything you’ve spent the last several hours focusing on.

You don’t know where he is, but you do know that Harley has been here. Many times. The mere sight of your non-Dreamer garb sends the resident Prospitians into rambling chatter about visitors.

You slipped away as a courier raced off to inform the Queen, not particularly interested in stirring up an official visitation at the moment. Luckily it wasn’t that hard to corner one of the white-shelled individuals from the rest and ascertain directions to the local knowledge repository, flash stepping away before they could think to try and herd you toward the palace. It didn’t matter that you wobbled around the corner, leaning against the wall because your knee didn’t much like that idea. You had motherfucking research to do.

It helps that reading is something you can do easily, parking this body somewhere doing something productive, so you can finally focus on your friend--moirail--whatever you are--while still satisfying that burning need to figure out what the fuck happened to Jake.

Multi-tasking for the win and it makes your brain shut the hell up. Keeps it busy running a background routine, crunching through records and potential datapoints like it’s been goddamned starving while you let yourself marvel at the sheer wonder of doing something so mundane as mutual, two-way cuddle time.

You have to admit, it’s convenient being able to simply walk up to the counter, drop the request like it’s a bomb, then get shuffled into the back room of a cozily glowing library instead of having to sneak and ninja-mode your way through darkened streets, breaking and entering just to find any news. Sure, the fact that you can when necessary gets added to your ninja-cred, but the Prospitian record-keeper is almost falling off their cloth-wrapped carapaced feet hunting down even the most obscure record they have of visitor interference.

And thus begins hours of heavy duty research time. Hitting the books. Having such a grand ol’ time. Part of you getting absorbed entirely by your quest.

You to glance out the window of your reading room towards the blank sky where a swirling blue white disk should be.

Unfortunately it’s never quite enough to let you transfer your attention completely to the meteor, because in order to schism just enough to keep working, it opens up a tiny hole, one you can feel Lil’ Cal scratching at, like nails on a fucking chalkboard. So high pitched and whiney, it keeps selfishly drawing you back.

He’s hissing, clinging to you like a parasite that’s sunk in its teeth, burrowing under your skin until he bumps up against your shiny, newly sealed boundaries, scrabbling at the sparking reinforced glass but lacking in the panic fueled force that shattered it in the first place. Chittering at you, it’s wrong, this is wrong, but shit’s been wrong for months and you’re tired of it all. Someone’s late to the fucking party.

You don’t know if it’s the lack of the giant blue-and-white disc that’s throwing him off, or the presence of something else, but whatever it is, you want him to shut up. It’s giving you a fucking headache, and you’re already stretched thin as it is. He squeezes you tighter, anger mixed with something indescribable bubbling around you; a child clinging to their favorite toy, coming face to face with unwanted, inalienable proof.

It feels so backwards, flipped, reversed, upended. The comfort toy you’d hugged as a child clinging to you instead.

You end up pulling down the curtains, blocking the empty sky from view.

You’re being too considerate.

When the record keeper, a squat white carapaced pawn, brings you your next stack of newspapers, they arrive to find you fiddling with your phone at the desk, a puppet sitting on the arm-chair in the corner, the frozen painted grin hiding the agitation behind those baby blue glass eyes. You can tell it unnerves them with the way they scurry out of the room as soon as they drop the stack on the table.

You only want a break. You want to be able to breathe. It’s also hells of rude to be listening in on another dude’s existential crisis, even if that dude is a possessive asshole. It’s the least you can do for your old pal.

You know the actual distance across the room is meaningless, since he’s still tethered to your literal goddamned soul. Despite your best efforts, but the freedom from the portable pocket dimension eases the pressure a little on you both. The ethereal coils go from panicked constriction to a looser drape that you can feasibly live with.

At least there’s no children within a hundred-foot radius for him to bother, so this is probably the safest place you can get some relief without worrying about him worming his way into Jade’s dreams next. There’s miles upon miles and a whole half a planet before you even reach the edge of Prospit’s moon, since it’d been on the horizon, and the Dreamers who--potentially--slumber there.

You find you grow to envy their peace, even if you credit your half-life on Derse for a hand in forging you into the person you are today. A trial by fire, as it were, and it left you with more than a few burns.

Prospit’s Dreamers had a world that wasn’t out to kill them. They had a world that actively wanted to help. Which was ironic, since from as far as you can tell, White always lost. You wonder why they even bother to try.

Temporal inevitability.

The Reckoning is how the game begins, afterall.

Unless you screw things up as badly as you guys did. A Void Session. Incomplete. But you’ve started to realize there’s nothing typical about your session. Apparently no one else had to deal with assassinations. No one else had to deal with fish hitler usurping Derse’s royalty, murderous cherubs, and dead worlds.

A fact that you’d complained to Davepeta as soon as you were able to free up the brainspace to do so, if for no other reason than it amuses you to see them quivering with wheezing laughter, even if to part of you they are no more than just an impression, a faint after-image and weight at your side. You’re slowly getting the hang of this whole... thing, again.

Once shit stopped echoing, you’d slowly allowed the schism you drove into your psyche to mend, letting the greys and brightly colored fabrics of the meteor lab to bubble around, and then come into sharp focus while Prospit drifted back into a golden haze as you slid too far one way or another. The distance dulls Lil’ Cal’s simmering anger, at least, and eases the anxiety of being known, even if it does nothing to hide you from anyone.

The way Roxy’s room used to, when you used the candle-lit level lighting of Derse to hide your anxieties at the too-big world around you.

Your auto-responder used to make fun of you for thinking you were the hot-shit while you juggled all the irons, claiming you’d randomly space out like a narcoleptic zombie before you dropped them all over the floor. You almost wonder what he’d think now if he could see the way you balance on this precipice. Almost, because you are certain he’d be making fun of you for even asking. As if spinning off metaphorical subroutines to study different aspects of a situation are plain ol’ normal facts of robo-life, it’s cute that you’re proud of something so trivial.

It makes you sigh, turning the page in one body, earning a concerned mrrrrr at the other.

Why do you care so much, anyway? He’s gone. You almost killed the dude, couldn’t manage it, then the universe finished the job. Why do you even bother to think of him like that, in that odd, fondly wistful way?

Why indeed.

Nostalgia, you imagine. It’s a notion you’d always scoffed at when you were younger, as if you’re not still a kid (you aren’t allowed to be a kid), but it’s the same way you look back on those days, months, years trapped in your apartment on the water. A literal prison of time, of space, of isolation and yet... you find yourself seeing all the little things that made you happy. That maybe, you even miss. The sea breeze, the sun on the water, colored text on many different screens.

He didn’t take on the red color until he was introduced to your friends, but you’d had logs and logs of orange text, back and forth, and not all of it was bug testing or brainstorming.

Maybe that’s why your relationship got so twisted. Why the betrayal hurt so much.

Who was it that was betrayed?

He wasn’t the one to try and kill you.

You don’t know the answer.

You let the train of thought chug away down the tracks, leaving you at the station when a pat on your arm draws you from the edge to one side, looking out through tinted glass, a Pesterchum window minimized in the corner of the screen. It isn’t flashing, so you ignore it.

You can catch a glimpse of those red eyes over the top of the shades, peering up through breaks in the white bangs. You raise the hand they batted at, and knock your knuckles together with theirs, their fingers still curled into a loose fist thoughtfully to protect your delicate skin from their claws despite the fact that you’re pretty sure your gloves would be enough protection. “I’m fine.”

They don’t believe you, that much is obvious from the flash of the fang and bemused shaking of the head.

Christ you can almost see the green text, even as they don’t click off the horribly optimized Youtube page they’re loading. Probably into another cat video. You’d kill for the mobile application era to begin already. You can only manage so much without the rest of the world pulling their share of the weight.

You feel guilty, as if you are tying them here. To this pile of shredded (christ what have they been doing) blankets while you work remotely. As if you aren’t giving them the attention they deserve.

You like it, the feeling of someone curled up at your side. The knowledge singing through your soul that you’re awake and that they’re here. But at the same time, you hate it. Fear the responsibility of it.

You feel like you’re neglecting them, even as they keep sending you off with a scrawl of green text, beclaws they can hear you thinking so hard it’s interrupting their cat video. They don’t stop using you as a pillow though, a sensation that follows you even as you allow yourself to be shoo’d back to your fate of combing through the newspapers.

It’s nice.

They are the only one, outside of this trap that is your own head, to actually know who you are now. Perhaps the only one who ever will. The longer you live like this, the less you expect you’ll ever stop.

Somewhere on a distant hunk of space-rock, there’s a uniquely textured hand in yours, and you dread having to let it go.

For now, you don’t, and it’s a comfort. You turn your focus on following this sideways version of your ex’s trail through Prospitian history.

If only Harley was a memoir sort of guy...you’d want to get your hands on that shit, stat. That was a thing explorers liked to do, didn’t they? Get their memoirs written and then turn them into one of those movies Jake loved so much. It sounds poetic, in a way, a crowning accomplishment to an illustrious cross-dimensional career.

You don’t know that he didn’t; one can be under lock and key somewhere in the depths of a SkaiaNet lab, considering the potential technological and spoilerific significance of the discoveries. Or maybe he figured he’d have time, and decided he’d do it later since there was always one more adventure on the horizon. That’s a very Jake thing to do.

Jade would like to read them too, wouldn’t she?

Eventually, you break off a shard of your attention and leave it to absorb the information without your direct input, shuffling the data off into storage to be synthesized later, pulling completely off Prospit and letting the smell of feathers and fleece overpower you.

You can’t get over how strained everything feels. Being the proper size again...you uncomfortably realize you feel cramped.

You’ve settled, haven’t you? Gotten as green as Oscar the Grouch when thinking about how much better this form would be...and yet... Months in that taller, fully grown frame seems to have skewed your perspective, and you aren’t sure how you feel about this. It seems you’re a stranger wherever you go. How it feels – always the splinter, never the OG. Poor thing.

You tuck that shit away, because it doesn’t matter. What mattered was the white hair you ruffle suddenly, drawing Davepeta’s attention away from yet another Youtube video, and asking them to show you what they’ve been up to while you’ve been sleeping.

The way their face lights up, lips curling into a wide fanged smile, the overhead light glittering off those familiar aviators--even if the glass is a bit more green than you remember--well, you wouldn’t trade it for much of anything.

You don’t actually go hunt down those paintings on the walls they threatened you with earlier, even if you’re hella curious, but they do show you their current project. They are all but fluffing up with nervous pride as you turn green fabric over in your hands.

It’s simple, but you remember helping with the pattern, the question you asked then, returning to you now. You plop that shit down on top of their head, the dimples in the fabric filling out as they settle near perfectly over their horns. You tug at it, adjusting the positioning, trying to smooth out the little wrinkles that form near the base where they’d taken a seam too tight.

“I’m still surprised you didn’t just cut holes for your horns. It would probably sit more snuggly that way.” Not to mention be less complicated to make. It looks cute though, you have to admit. Once they add the eyes and nose they’d drawn onto the design, it’ll totally look like a sicknasty cute kitty hat.

White hair spills out from under the green fabric and they grin mischievously, curling one hand into an approximation of a paw, strategically placed to echo their favorite emoticon. You might as well hear the nyah that would have otherwise accompanied the overly cutesy gesture, should they have been capable of it.

You roll your eyes and push your hand into their face with an exaggerated ‘ugh’ that leads to them wheezing and biting at your hand--a quick, gentle nip, canines pressing into skin, but not enough to break it. More of a gnaw really.

Their eyes glitter up at you, shades knocked askew, red surrounded by troll yellow, set into ashen grey skin.

Not an ounce of irony in sight.

You wonder if they’d want a matching tail to complete the look. You still have the fabric you’d used to generate the captchalogue code. You pack that idea up for later. One step at a time.

“I can’t scratch your horns with that in the way,” you point out.

They look like they consider the conundrum, and then shrug, hands flashing in the gesture you’re starting to recognize as their withdrawal mechanism and their phone slides into their hands. They’ve gotten really fast at stowing and withdrawing to follow conversations.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dont worry i wont let a lil fl33ce get in the way of quality scritches
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its a disguise yo
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< alien what alien
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< just a cute af cat hat

“You’re a little more alien than just your horns, dude,” you remind them, bemused, “Your wings are taller than you are, even mantled. Not to mention the fangs. I’ll grant you, the shades can hide your eyes, and a little makeup can tint your skin, but I don’t think you can distract from those feathered monstrosities with a cute hat.”

Said feathered monstrosities rustle as they bristle.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< if trolls can put away their wings
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i purrobably can too!
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i just havent figured out how yet
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< sides what if i just want a cute hat >B||

“I think your wings are a little more solid than those butterfly ones.” You hesitate. “Can I…?”

They shift. One huge wing unfolds, and you can see the flex roll through their shoulders, disturbing the fabric of their cape and hood. The mass of green-black quills is surprisingly heavy as it spills across your lap, effectively trapping you.

The green text scrolls simultaneously across a screen and your shades.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< go fur it

Wings are not new to you.

Having them? Yes, such an experience would be a novel one, but that isn’t really relevant since you aren’t the one to possess them. But the concept of wings? The structure, the science--it is something you’ve studied on and off for years. When your only living companionship are gulls and fish, it is only natural you’d take an interest.

While structurally similar, Davepeta’s wings are nothing like a gull’s wing.

Feathers and fleece. They always look so soft, and yet flight feathers of this size feel so rough between your fingers.

“One of those black city birds?”

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< what
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< oh the prototyping
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yeah one of the crows
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< shoulda s33n me when i was helping dave out
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< it was so frogdamned hard to not just swoop in and claim all that grist he just left behind
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and yeah sprites can act as a drop vacuum it’s one of our
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< was
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< one of their functions
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but i swear most sprites dont s33 something that looks vaguely like a glittery rock and almost lose track of the imps they were suppawsed to be fighting
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< kinda relieved theres nofang even remewtly shiny in this drab old place
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i dont wanna know exactly how much of thats still rattling around in this patchwork brain of mine
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< granted the birds purretty quiet
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< hey here
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< lemme show ya how to pr33n it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< some of the feathers like to get messy and i cant reach all of it

A schism. Balancing on the precipice. Two of you, one researching Jake with a single-minded intensity. The other getting to know your friend-moirail-family(?) better. All of you stretched thin and aching, the strain mounting as time ticks onward. You persist.

You lead yourself back to the library, your phone claiming it to be well into the afternoon, your research as complete as you can get it here. You lean your tired body against a gleaming golden railing, looking out over the endless cityscape and up, up into the blank black sky--no sign of Skaia. No giant white and blue disk around which this planet is supposed to orbit--an angry, heavy snake stuffed back into your sylladex. You hold a whole planet’s history in your mental hands and you aren’t sure what to do with it.

“He was definitely there.” You can distantly hear yourself telling them, feel the echo of the vibrations in a throat worlds away. It’s quite dissociative, leaning up against this railing while knowing in another place you’re actually in the middle of pacing, something you’re usually too economical to indulge in, but it feels too good to move without your knee throbbing. “There’s record dating back years--I can’t figure out how he’s jumping in and out of the time-stream with each visit though--some of the accompanying pictures are clearly not occuring chronologically, and none of them seemed the age he should be, given his records. That final trip isn’t documented, despite being only three years ago.”

The phone in your hand pings, and you read the message, window already open, preventing the need for that other you to manipulate your shades.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dude i dunno what to tell you
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< he saved johns bacon last time, at least a few years after he died
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but he wouldve n33ded to complete the loop by going back and dying
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and hes clearly not dead
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< not even a time player can just hop in and out of time like that it leaves trails and loose ends thatd need to be cleaned up or else the timefeline falls apart like youve b33n batting at the edge of one of roses half finished scarves
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< thats how shit gets doomed
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< trust me im the expurrt
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< not of doom
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< doomed timelines maybe
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< wait no aradia purrobably would know more she summawned hundreds of doomed roboradias
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i miss aradia
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< she was gloomy but equius was happy even if he grumbled about it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< anyway point is times real strict about this stuff
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< theres rules

“And Jake is a Page of Hope. He breaks the rules if he wants something bad enough.” You sigh, the action bleeding over, running your hand through the mess that is your hair. A doubled mirror of strangeness. “If he’s not on Prospit, he must have acquired transport. I can check the records, see if any of the battleships have gone missing, or sold, or given away or--”

Or what?

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< what if they dont k33p records of that???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< cant say im an expurrt on our carapals but they dont s33m the most organized bunch

“I was just in a knowledge repository. It’s beuraucratic as fuck. Carapacians record everything--”

Fingers dig into your hair. Pulling on strands caught between them. Your scalp hurts, but that’s a pain you can focus on at least. Stinging, pulling, sharp as you tug at it. Harder.

Davepeta is suddenly in your space. In both bodies you stumble back, phantom claws ghosting around your wrists, textured palms warm and real, reaching up--even as a teenager you’re taller than they are--and gently working your grip free.

They can’t type like this, phone quickly shuffled away into a sylladex with a modus you don’t recognize. They open their mouth to speak, sharpened canines gleaming in the overhead light--then it shuts without a sound. Not even a faint sigh of exhaled air. Muted by the game’s shoddy work.

The meteor sharpens, pushing back Prospit’s spires, and you find your eyes flaring open and going to the most visible reminder of what happened that night. The boundary between troll grey and ‘Strider pale’ is almost invisible, peeking out from small black feathers, but the scar is still there, off-color to both. One you remember tracing on your own neck, on that day months ago when you had to drive a sword through their chest in an effort to kill them quickly instead of letting them bleed out through a slashed artery and suffocation.

Those hands, oddly textured--scaled maybe, tipped with carefully filed down claws--squeeze your wrists once. And then let go.

Or they would have. You don’t let them let go.

It’s child’s play to whip the hold around, latching back onto those Strider pale wrists, pulling them to you. They don’t stiffen. You don’t know if they don’t stiffen because they trust you or something else, but you appreciate it.

You appreciate it so fucking much you’re probably more than a little desperate.

You don’t like to describe yourself as clingy, but you are. It was one of the things about you that drove Jake bonkers.

It’s just--

That feeling of not being alone. Of reaching out and finding someone warm and alive, that wasn’t made of metal.

There’s a reason you hadn’t thrown out the smuppets. Why they remain in a pile in the corner, behind the speaker where Lil’ Cal used to sit. They didn’t make it up into the boxes. Not all of them.

“Sorry.” You release them after a moment, their response to your apology is to shrug, folding their legs into a floating cross-legged seat in the air. The following message pings two devices, even if you only read it off one.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you okay???

“Just frustrated. Nothing new.” You lose your words when you’re frustrated. When your brain goes too fast for your speech capabilities. You tried turning brain-to-shades back on not too long ago and ended up with an incoherent mess. You’re too close--it’s like there’s several trains running at once and its picking up on all of them. You’re stuck with your words.

On Prospit, your hands type out a message instead.

timeausTestified [TT]: Sorry for worrying you.

Davepeta glances up at you. You look away toward the wall, as you tip further into a sea of gold.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im guessin im talkin to bro now???
timeausTestified [TT]: It’s been the same me the whole time but, yes, it’s ‘Bro’s hands typing right now.
timeausTestified [TT]: Are you still up for helpin’ me outta the well, Lassie?

That earns you a punch in the shoulder. Your quiet snort echoes across the Incipisphere.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< no matter how heroic i am not a dog and will not tolerate being refurred as such
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< not even metafurically
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i mean really bro thats so rude
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< how can you
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< my fursona is a clear and distinct part of my identity man
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< theres not even one but two purrfectly applickable animal species with which to use as refurance materials
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and you have to go and pick a dog???
timeausTestified [TT]: Name one bird and or cat who has starred in one of those historic, heroic pet movies.
timeausTestified [TT]: Besides, you were the one to bring up the comparison.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< lil dirkie
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i am not a pet >B((
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i am a feral olive blooded purrbeastbird and you will respect me as such

They’re daring you.

You take that dare, closing the space between you two with a flash, and grabbing their hooded cape before they can pull off a flashstep of their own to escape. This results in an almost comical squawk as they try and move only to be jerked back into your arms, where you proceed to thoroughly mess up their hair.

They knock their head back against your chest and glare up at you. Pouting.

“You’re not a pet,” You agree, fixing their shades. They’d gotten misaligned in the brief tussle, although you note they settle a little lower on their face than Dave’s ever did. Different, flatter nose. “You’re my partner. And ‘lil dirkie’ might have fallen down a well, and needs a hand. Or a claw.”

They don’t move, not even when you release them. Floating inches off the floor, black feathers shimmering around them, makes it look like one giant feather pile from here, a pillow, but you know that can’t be comfortable, having those wings all bunched up between you two like that.

The sign, and their phone is in their hands again.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< so soon???
timeausTestified [TT]: As it is, we’re probably looking at an all nighter pulling apart Jade’s robot.
timeausTestified [TT]: I’m frustrated enough at this shit with Harley that this is probably as good a junction as any to get back to what I’m supposed to be on this Island for. Table this for tomorrow. If I can fix my ‘board tonight I can even check on the moon. The fact that none of the Prospitians recognized their visitor as one of their fabled Dreamers bothers me. The Dersites had mythology about Rox thanks to her wandering.

You freeze as they reach up and rap a knuckle on your arm to catch your attention. Not just the Dirk working on fixing the mess you’d made of your hair, but also the Dirk on Prospit who’d been in the middle of typing up another message.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< youre talking like its goodbye
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< even if its just a ttfn s33 ya tomorrow thing
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< do you think it will be?

You didn’t want to think about that.

”I don’t know. Hopefully not. I’m stretched thin already, trying to cover both ends of the connection, and that’s while physically residing in the same instance. Can’t guarantee one end or the other won’t snap as soon as you throw the chaos of the cross-dimensional transfer into the equation. And Cal--” You hesitate.

That’s right.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you have him with you?

“Well. Not here, here.”

timeausTestified [TT]: He’s in my sylladex. Mad angry at me, or at the world. Or both. I’m not entirely sure.
timeausTestified [TT]: Sorry, I should have warned you.
timeausTestified [TT]: Even if he makes me feel like shit, I can’t just leave him around Jade.
timeausTestified [TT]: It’s fine; I’ll think of another way.

You should have thought of that.

You didn’t think of that. Didn’t even consider that Davepeta wouldn’t want to go near the puppet.

A knuckle bumps against your chin, and it pulls you back out of your own head. Green text has appeared on your shades.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< id be angry if you left him with jade tbh
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dont worry about it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ill be a bro and lend you a hand despite the third wh33l
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< cant imagine hell be happy to see me either
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< though uh
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< we wont have to fly all the way to prospit right

You don’t have to fly to Prospit, thank god. You remember the location of the Derse-side transportalizer, even if you never quite realized what it was until you needed to use it. Years of sneaking around the place meant you knew the landmarks of the planet down to the minutia. It only takes a little digging through the archives for that information.

You make a note to draw up a map for future reference. Not for you, but for Davepeta, who spends the entire trip complaining about how same-y the whole dang planet is in a stream of green rolling across your shades. You still haven’t gotten the brain-to-shades to work right, but that isn’t necessary since you largely folded up your splinterself near the Prospitian side of the teleporter, tucked away in an alley between two shining golden buildings. Waiting, willing, and able to text your thoughts back. It’s almost familiar, flying like this, torn between the relative mundane and the ghost of moving space around you.

Maybe you can wait on the other side, away from the small crowd of carapals in little newsie-like hats crowding around, but given the choice between even more claustrophobic darkness--

Actually, the two are largely the same, thanks to Cal’s increasingly moody unease. You duck beneath an archway when it becomes too much, blocking that empty sky from view. It doesn’t erase the sense of--hungry yawning emptiness--seeping through those tattered connections, but out of sight out of mind, you suspect.

He doesn’t seem to have much object permanence, which would make sense since he’s probably getting his situational awareness from you. Being trapped in the sylladex wouldn’t be the most convenient avenue to sightseeing.

The flight to Derse takes a little over an hour, and the Prospitian newschasers don’t seem ready to leave yet, apparently aware that any sort of visitation will have to come through the transportalizer. They’re zealous for a scoop, perhaps even more so than the paparazzi that used to follow your Bro around everywhere.

Maybe less sneaky; pawns by their nature are generally straightforward. You really don’t fancy starring on the front page of a newspaper which’ll end up in the hands of the dersite information authority.

Because of course there’d be one, even without an evil alien running the place. Something’s gotta supply the gossip mags. And there were plenty of gossip mags.

You let Prospit fade, a distinct cluster of buildings catching your fragmented attention and tipping the balance. You signal Davepeta to let them know you’re changing course, dipping down to almost street level, skirting towers that had pale-lit windows, choosing the darker paths. It isn’t necessarily all that important, given the fact that the streets are largely empty, the dark and gloom this far out means Dersites spend their days indoors rather than wandering the streets like their Prospitian counterparts evidently do (you glare daggers at the reporters milling about and--are those guards? They don’t shoo off the congregate like you’d hoped, damn it) but the more you can minimize the possibilities of being spotted, the better you’ll feel.

You’re aware of the uncomfortable silence as you let yourself touch down on the edge of another transportalizer’s square, the rustle of feathers drawing up behind you. It’s a wide, open space. Empty, because this You hadn’t given the local carapace population a reason to hang around, plus the Dersites seem more seclusive in general. You talk a big game about ninja-sneaking your way around the planet, but really it’s easy as pie until you get to the interior passageways. Then, it might actually be a challenge.

It feels… Heavy.

You remember this place. Jane dying, her golden dress drenched in the red of her blood, an eyesore against the dark purple ground, swooping in and pushing Roxy aside to deliver the kiss.

The moment of your greatest triumph, getting you all together, safe and alive, but it was already falling apart back then, wasn’t it? Just like how the ground was crumbling beneath your feet.

It’s solid here and now. Davepeta steps up beside you--you say step, but you know they’re floating several inches in order to keep the tips of their wings from dragging. Speaking of wings, the edges brush your shoulder, the by now familiar scent of feathers and fleece tickling your nose.

“It’s just a transportalizer. It won’t hurt you.” You keep it light, as if you’re amused by their reluctance. “I thought you’d be excited to get out of the Medium for a bit.”

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i dunno it s33ms like a bit of a downgrade to me
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< out of a meteorsized box and stuffed into a smaller pitchblack box if the console had anything to say about it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im still flabbergasted he didnt bring a flashlight
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< id hope you can understand why im reluctant to make the leap

“It’s only a tin can for a second, from there it’s a quick flight to sky and freedom. You can stick around for a bit, you know--the stars are much cooler when looking at them from the middle of the ocean. The view from the top of your apartment is vile and polluted as fuck.” You trap one of the glossy green-black flight feathers between your fingers. They’d shown you how to realign them, it’s a zipping motion, snapping the parallel barbs back together into a single solid plane, intended to catch the air and send them soaring.

Not that they need it, what with God Tier abilities.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< home sw33t home eh
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i never cared to look tbh
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you can guess the roof wasnt exactly my favorite place to chill
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< unless it was to f33d the birds
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but eventually those feathered bastards figured out they could just come into my room for food
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< as much as id love to go on a magic carpet ride in a universe that isnt essentially on pawse until half of it populates
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i cant just leave you alone here
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< youll purrobably get into so much trouble as soon as i leave
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i cannt bear it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ‘sides as you so helpfully pointed out earlier
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< alien remewmber?

They rustle their wings at you, and you have to pull a quick side step to avoid getting beaned in the head with the things. You’re torn between laughing and rolling your eyes, so you do neither.

You just shrug with a quiet, “Suit yourself.”

It’s not as if you’re disappointed.

Perhaps it’s for the best, anyway. At least they’re willing to help get you outta the hole you’ve dug for yourself. Not that-- you didn’t really expect them to say no. You know them better than that.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< are you coming???

“And come face to face with my own ugly mug? Nah. I’ll put that off as long as possible, thanks.”

Which would probably be tomorrow, you already know with a sigh, pushing yourself away from a golden wall even as a version of you leans back against a purple one.

For all your splintering and the absorption of those memories relating to embodying Jake’s brain ghost--not that you ever told him about that-- you might have never had to deal with seeing your own face before. Yours and yet not. It’s always been an abstract, knowing there’s another you out there somewhere.

It’s not as if these are entirely another entity, like Hal had been. It’d be you looking at your face. From both sides. An endless wall full of mirrors stacked one after another, angled so each mirror caught every other one, a physical representation of that goddamn soup where your head feels like an echo-chamber for slightly de-synchronized voices, even if you know that voice is your own.

Christ, you’re a mess.

Even splitting your concentration first with your dreamself, and now with your splinterself, they’ve always been--separated physically. Never the twain shall meet, and all that.

You’re too close as it is, and you’ve got the radius of the Incipisphere between you two. How bad will the feedback be when you’re seeing yourself?

Will you lose your balance again? Will you need to schism for more than long enough to catch your equilibrium? Drive that wedge so deep you can’t feel the warmth of Davepeta’s hand winding into yours even from across the known universe?

You thought you’d have time to figure this shit out.

You still do. Think of this as a practice run. If nothing else, then the opportunity to gain first hand, practical experience is one that shouldn’t be squandered.

Time to brave the Prospitian pile. Channel Lil’ Cal’s unhappy vibes and shut them the fuck down. Get some use out of the classic reporter deflection spell of “No comment.”

You could push your way through the small but not insignificant gathering, stalwartly pretending to be your Bro going about his day getting mobbed by adoring fans--only these fans don’t actually care about you other than the fact that you’re technically the equivalent of a first-hand alien encounter, so really you’re the batterwitch in this scenario. The remote comparison makes you scowl.

Plus, doing so will still allow for photo evidence that’ll likely land you in the paper. Again, you’d rather not.

Maybe you can just... skip over it? This, you can’t fly, but you can flashstep into the air and drop and skip the entire paparazzi schtick altogether. Reappear for that single instant with a smirk and a sarcastic wave right before you’re ripped apart molecule by molecule.

You aren’t really paying attention to Derse anymore aside from enough to leave the comforting tinted lenses of your shades superimposed over the too bright and too gold surroundings, but despite that lack of focus, the ghost of Davepeta’s clawed hand twining with yours burns comfortingly, even if it’s with one that’s too big, and too calloused, and otherwise empty. There’s a bump against your shoulder, a quick headbutt.

You look down and see white hair and candy-corn colored horns shadowed over what you know is actually here. They’re capable of matching your height if they want to, but seems to like your shoulder an awful lot. You reluctantly work your hand free, digging your knuckles into their hair, specifically up against the base of the horn where you’ve noticed they like to lean into it. Part noogie, part scritch, you guess.

“Get going. I’ll see you in a minute.”

They do that strained disgruntled noise that you’ve tentatively labeled a grumble and reluctantly pull away.

It’s embarrassing that you immediately feel the absence like a tangible ache, like a step pulled out from under your foot when you were so sure it’d be there. At least it won’t last for long.

You wait until the transportalizer flashes with it’s activation before you push your--which one is even the splinter at this point?--self out of the golden alley, drawing the attention of the Prospitian Carapace. You ignore them, following the plan you concocted, moving despite your sore knee and side. By the time the nearest one even takes a step toward you, their accented exclamation drawing the attention of those milling around the teleportalizer, you’re already landing behind them, bracing yourself for the hum of the activation, fortifying yourself within yourself, waiting for the blow of Lil’ Cal’s panic. For your own instinctual flinch. For all of the above. For that single moment of absolute nothing.

You both expected, and yet are completely blindsided by the painful snap that reverberates from your very core, all of you getting balled up and stuffed back down into a space too small to fit a self that had been finally allowed to stretch out for a few hours. Just long enough to get used to shit again. Like that of a rubber band violently giving in, stretched beyond its limits and then abruptly rebounding back to its origin.

You should be grateful it didn’t simply break in two. Grateful that you didn’t break. Because you didn’t. At least you don’t think it did. You can feel it still, like a distant star, barely visible, that bridge of pink and red. Just… A hand against the heavens, reaching for something hundreds upon thousands of miles out of reach.

Maybe shit got upended again, but it’s red that spills out of the jostled channels, not green, so shit’s fine. It’s cool. You can clean up again. No big.

You close your eyes, swaying, pain lancing through your skull as your too-big-too-small-right-wrong body rematerializes on the wrong side of the dimensional divide. Your other self probably hit your head on the way down, you’re just lucky you’re more durable than the average dreamself.

Cal is--Cal is silent. Brooding. A layer of metaphorical slime lying over a sparking pink and red shield, oozing down and over you so that you can’t make out anything else, much less reach outside it. At least you know what the fuck is blocking you now.

But it’s holding, you’ve pried most of--most of--out of him, except those last few connections, braided with and clinging to strong stoic blue. Unable--unwilling?--to come completely free, and that fucking hurt when you tried to force the issue.

You are never taking him to Prospit again. You don’t even think he’ll protest too much with how spooked he got at that shit. Christ.

A sound in the near pitch black. The smell of feathers amongst the dust. You bump into someone else. Someone waiting for you. Davepeta catches you as you list to the side, and they’ve got to be floating if they’re managing to support you like this, taloned hands grabbing your arm and maneuvering it over their shoulder. This shouldn’t work, not with the suddenly massive height and weight differential, but you aren’t complaining as you use that stability to take the weight off your aching knee.

The rustle of their feathers fill the silence, but when you finally speak you can feel them flinch, and it makes you feel very, very cold.

Notes:

Aaaaand we're back~ with some more quality broirail time, and a glimpse into what Dirk is dealing with, again. I hope I managed to portray the mind-eff that is Dirk's state of existence right now without it being too hard to follow! It's almost like a jaunt back down memory lane, back at the beginning of the fic. Of course for Dirk that was yet another six months ago, almost by this point. 'e's a lil out of practice.

Thanks for your patience ^^ The next chapter will be sent out for beta-ing this weekend, but wouldn't be posted until the 17th at the earliest. It's not like there's any reason to be at the edge of your seat about it or anything, at least :3

Thank you for reading <3

Edit: Also a couple new tags and or warnings added so remember to refresh occasionally ^^

Chapter 68: Davepeta > ????

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

You are fine.

It’s pitch black down here as you wait for the faint zwip of the teleportalizer, nose wrinkling against the overwhelming smell of dust, sea, and the faintest whiff of some sort of animal. You’d think your cave-dwelling, largely nocturnal troll-eyes would be the perfect thing for this sort of situation, but even they need some ambient light source to go by, and it ain’t like you’re your own portable light source anymore. In the pitch blackness of the elevator shaft they were about as useless as human eyes would be.

You are fine.

That doesn’t mean you lack spatial awareness--you brace yourself when you hear the hum of the machinery, catch a brief glimpse of a too-tall form against the light of its instantaneous activating.

When you see your Bro stumbling, you adjust, ignoring the fact that you have to float higher than you should to stabilize him.

You’re fine. You knew what you were getting into when you agreed to come. Bro’s in a pickle; all you need to do it fly him out of the well.

Things are going much better than you expected, honestly. You don’t feel Cal more than a distant malaise--the sylladex must limit his reach. It’s all peachy, really. Best case scenario. No puppet tantrum. All you need to do is complete your job, give a jaunty wave, and dive back through to pick up your broirail and go off and have some more cuddle-time.

You. Are. Fine.

You are so fine. You don’t bat an eye when Bro pulls out his phone and aims it up, because the light was pointed out along the wall so you could find the small divot along the edge.

He’s only a blob in front of you. A silhouette. If the proportions are off just enough to make the feathers in the back of your neck fluff up, you won’t have to acknowledge it. You can ignore it, easily.

Until he speaks.

It isn't much. He’s a curse that echoes a red-orange in your ears.

It isn’t the echo itself. You’d barely given it a second thought on the meteor. Together with those previous context clues and the way he sways into you, you quickly figure it’s a result of the dimension crossing, and know it will fade as he put things back into their place.

But that curse is what shatters the silence and gets him talking again. And as he talks--even if some of it was grumbling about rubber bands and headaches, some directing you in an increasingly curt manner, as if he realized without your communicator or light source the burden of communication was entirely on him--it starts to creep up your spine. Frost, settling on jungle leaves where it never ever belongs.

Voice shifting subtly as he keeps talking. Certain inflections, dropping sounds and using words and choices of phrases that resonate with a particular thread of your history so hard you might as well hear your teeth rattling in your skull.

Dirk doesn’t have an accent. At least not one that falls in your particular frame of reference, drawing heavily on the thick Texan one you grew up around. You’re fairly confident in this, since you’d spent the last several hours dragging as many words out of him as you can because you’re smitten with the idea of not being alone. Maybe there’d been a ghost of something, taken from television and interviews and mutated into some feral isolated in the middle-of-an-ocean variant, but right now…

All you can hear is the ‘Better get ready, l’il man’ echoing in your head. The drawl you’d grown up with. The drawl you don’t really have anymore, you don’t think, not after three years and three sweeps and a whole ‘nother language stuffed in your head. Except that's a moot point, you realize, because you can’t have a drawl when you can’t speak and why the flock are you focusing on this, right here, right now.

You have a job to do. Bro needs a hand, or a wing since he’s oh so tragically not a god here (because he’s something else) so you handily keep your denial going. You snake your arms around that too-wide chest, under his pits, and tell gravity adios You fly up, ascending.

You find the rope. Bro latches on and pulls himself further while you hover nearby, ready to catch him if he falls.

You’re working with a single minded purpose, on fucking guard until he manages to squeeze through the groove cut into the wall. The little bird in the back of your brain stirs as the lighting conditions become increasingly less obscured, the canary sniffing out the smell of explosive gas ahead.

You hesitate--are you really going to bring that pickaxe down? On purpose? Condemning the little bird to death when you can see the danger ahead for yourself, thank you very much.

You should go.

Scurry on back into your room and put on your non-existent headphones and watch cat videos to enjoy the small sliver of peace before you’re dragged back out again.

He calls for you, and like a dog you eagerly go to him, easily fitting your much smaller body through the cracks. The added bulk of your wings does little to deter you—they are more flexible than a ribcage, you’d reckon. Even then, as your slippered feet touch down on the metal platform, sunlight filtering in through the hallway behind him, you’re fine.

You’re fine. You’re fine. You’re fine.

You... blank.

You fucking blank like you’ve been flash frozen, put on ice, turned all up into Dave-shaped popsicles. And you intentionally used that name because that’s who you feel like right now, trapped in one psyche that’s the entirety of one dumb little boy with too many goddamned problems.

You should go. You should just go.

Your fingers want to clench into fists, but no, no, that would be showing emotions, so you shove them into your pockets casually, slipping on a long-practiced mask. Only it feels wrong on your face, your fangs don’t want to let you settle into that thin-line, blank facade casually indifferent look you had down to a science, but you make it work. Thank fuck your Knight clothes have pockets. Nice li’l hand-shaped cubbies. Pockets are dope. Keep you warm and cozy and made for a good building block of a cool, uncaring persona. They weren’t for holding shit anymore. Rendered obsolete by the sylladex anyway unless you needed your phone readily available, so might as well repurpose that shit.

Why the fuck do you care so much about pockets?

Bro rolls himself over and onto his feet. Standing taller, almost a head taller than Dirk did. You feel so fuckin’ small next to him. Your feet are on the metal platform. Firmly rooted, because you can’t fly, silly. At least you have feet. Flying didn’t help Davesprite, all he did was fly, fly away when he failed. Fly off into the sun.

You should go. You need to– No, stop. You don’t need anything. But you should. Should go.

But you can’t. You can’t because he curses as he puts weight on one knee, and you blank again. One minute you’re ready to throw yourself into a pit, the next you’re practically heeling to him, instinctively shirking off gravity to offer a shoulder for him to catch himself on, a mobile hand-rail for your broirail, that too-big hand coming down hard. To lean on. Because he’s injured.

Bro’s injured.

Bro’s never injured.

(Bro’s dead.)

Fuck this.

No. You are not doing this. Bro isn't Bro, Bro is - -

"Thanks, jesus christ that’s annoying. I’m too fuckin’ young to be hobblin' around with a bum knee." Bro--no, Dirk, Dirk grumbles next to your ear, because you have to float to offer a decent support (you're too small now aren't you. You were always too small, in some way.) He uses you as an anchor, adjusting the weight distribution to where he can compensate for it.

Because of course Bro wouldn’t let something so trivial stop him. If it were Dirk he would have perhaps complained a bit more, about how maybe he should sue gravity or something, but he doesn’t, falling into silence as he puts a single minded purpose into forcing himself to stand on his own two feet.

You should go, but you find yourself dogging his steps as he manages to cross the elevator platform without your help, aiming for the light filtering through the single entry. Feathers drag in the dirt, the ground solid and real beneath your feet.

Feet. Not a tail.

Your recreated heart pounds in your ears, pumping off-olive green blood through your veins. Rushing to your head. You cling to those sensations because you aren’t a sprite.

Sprites bleed, too. Yellow.

You aren’t Davesprite. You aren’t--this isn’t LOHAC, where you spotted him doing who-knows what while you ran around doing the dirty work for Dave’s quest. This isn’t LOWAS, where you caught up to him and finally made him stop. Where you tried to make him listen, and failed. Where he--

You should go.

Say your goodbyes.

Bro’s dead.

You know that.

You’ve known that for years.

That doesn’t stop you from seeing him anyway, despite the lack of a hat. Despite the ridiculous square-shaped shades that had to be the cheap-ass pair he told you about. Despite the forest green sleeves, almost knight-like in the way they jut out from beneath one of Bro’s collared shirts.

Sun-protection. You think, almost hysterically. Of course he’d be fucking worried about that, coming to the literal equator of the planet. Why didn’t he bring the hat???

Like any Dave would, you follow him. Because you can’t stop following him. He hasn’t said you can leave yet. So that means you can’t leave yet. Simple Dave logics. Yea.

(He hasn’t said goodbye.)

You reach out to grab his sleeve from behind but--something--you--stop yourself.

He pauses at the mouth of the temple, leaning against the wall, looking out over--

The honest to frog sunlight has you freezing. Falling back. Bro is silhouetted against a blue sky, fluffy white clouds drifting in the distance. You’ve never seen a sky so clear, a sky so wide that isn’t the endless reaches of space. No cities or jungles to break up the line of the horizon and you can’t look at it but you also can’t look away. A serial alley-cat blinking in the afternoon sun for the first time. Twice-over light sensitive eyes, barely used to the dim light of a barely functioning meteor, born in a universe without even a sun...well…

To say you are uncomfortable is a fucking understatement. You push the lenses of tinted, almost opaque glass as close to your face as you can.

You fight back the instinct to surge forward as he sags against the stone wall of the passageway, right at the edge of the stairs. Instead of toppling forward, he slides to the dirty stone-brick floor, sunlight a stark line across his knees where they settle on the top step beyond. Limbs loose in a way that makes you think uncomfortably of someone cutting the strings. The angle of the sun is closer to the west, glancing off and past the passageway in which you take shelter.

“I’m...gonna take a couple minutes--just looking from here to the tower is enough to make me feel physically ill at the thought of walkin'. This is much harder to ignore when I can’t focus on a body that doesn’t feel like it wants to fall apart.”

The fact that it’s sighed out loud means it’s for your benefit. There’d be no need for him to talk otherwise. If you weren’t here. Admitting weakness. You creep forward at the signal, kitten paws through a dark hallway, marionnette eyes judging you--

--this is ridiculous, but you find yourself slinking the rest of the way, edging more and more into a different set of careful movements, as if you’re stalking some sort of beast through an Alternian jungle under a new moon, ten times larger than you, with full confidence that you could take it down if you wanted to.

Only you couldn’t bring down this one. You don’t want to bring down this one, fuck.

“I don’t wanna worry ya but you’ll have to cart my sorry ass back to the meteor, I haven’t been able to regain connection and the headache is killing me--Cal’s fuzzin' shit up, but I'd reckon it’s an improvement over--Davepeta?”

He’s looking back at you, the thin-plastic of those interim shades barely a barrier at all, especially with the light of the sun behind them. It’s so, so strange to see anything on your Bro’s face, even if that something is one of the micro-frowns you’d been studying for hours.

It’s Dirk.

Dirk is here. Dirk is waiting for you. Don’t you need to go back?

He tries to push back to his feet, but a sharp jerk of your head stops him. You crawl up behind him. Not beside him. You fold and curl yourself into the shadow of his back, head tucked up under the protection of your wing. You can’t see anything. You don’t want to see anything.

You can feel him shift, trying to turn around, but you refuse, wedging yourself into that space between the wall and his back. A hand hesitantly settles on the folded joint of your wing, and it feels too heavy. “Sorry, I knew you were sensitive, but you had your shades so--”

You shake your head mutely, not that he can see it with your wings making you a mobile tent, before pulling the phone out of your sylladex. Not sure what you’re going to say. What you’re going to type. How can you articulate what you’re feeling, the disconnect and pure levels of unresolved Dave you’ve been fucking ignoring and running around and hiding from that are punching you in the gut right now? Should you even say it at all?

It’s one thing to know Dirk’s a literal body snatcher. It’s another to actually see the face of your dead Bro right in front of you. Not in the younger, softer, close enough to being not-him that you can let that shit slide back into the past and bury that fucker out in the middle of the woods somewhere.

It hits you like a literal ton of bricks instead. A bucket of freezing cold water. The oppressive sweltering heat of your hellhole. You never--Bro is the one with a Dave. Dave is the one with a better Bro. You have Dirk. That is how it was going to work out, always.

A hand carefully rests on the joint of your wing, smoothing out the feathers, motions you’d just taught him a few hours ago. Only it’s too big. Too gentle to be that big, that heavy. It’s sickening, but it feels wrong. Not that you’re capable of making him stop.

“It’s not the sun, is it?” He’s quiet. “It’s me.”

You don’t know if he can see the miserable nod beneath the mass of feathers. But you’re curled around a useless phone without signal so even if you wanted to type something it wouldn’t mean anything. Wouldn’t go anywhere but back into the pit of your mishmash head.

“It’s okay, y’know.” It’s quiet, barely there between the pounding in your ears and the heartmusic you can’t ever tune out. Would Bro have the same song? Would it be different? “Dave makes as much fun of me for the rooster headed shit as you do about the bed-head, but there’s a reason I don’t primp my hair anymore. I can’t look at this shit in the mirror for long.”

It’s.

Not that.

It sort of is?

But not really.

Just shitty memories, bubbling up at the sight of that familiar, if leaner frame. The sound of that lower, rougher voice. The unconscious vocal patterns peppering his speech. The hands you can’t push away.

You think floating over his dead body was the first time you ever really fucking wanted to cry, and hated yourself for not being able to. Shorn wing covered in glowing yellow liquid, leaking from the gash in your gut and gap where your arm used to be, to find your amulet drenched in drying red and clenched in his fist.

Even now with this sideways Bro that is your mess of a moirail inhabiting the body that should have belonged to your brother, quietly preening your feathers while you fall apart, you can’t ask why because you know it’s not something he could answer. Even if he is a Bro, a Dirk. And he will always be a Bro. He’s still not your Bro.

Was it intentional, shielding your amulet? Or was it simply a dying man grasping for the only thing he cared about--the puppet--and finding nothing else?

You don’t think you want to know.

You can’t even find solace in a troll’s lack of concern for family, because you’re tainted by human sentimentality anyway, wanting to think Pounce-de-Leon would have tucked you under his bulk. Did, in fact, since he died protecting you from a cave-in of your den. But at least you’d known he’d chosen to do that. Chosen to give you a new beginning.

Beginnings that lead to an end.

Too many endings.

Over and over.

You’re a whole goddamn series of novels, aren’t you?

The back of your gloves rub desperately at your eyes, pushing up under your shades, the shadows of your wings and the natural sun-shield that is his too-wide shoulders protecting you from the reflective light rays bouncing their way down the hallway.

You aren’t crying this time. It would flush the emotions. Package them up into little fractal compounds and spew them out, leaving you tired and numb. You could do it before. Why can’t you do it now?

You know why.

You’d settle with being able to yell out your frustrations, and you can’t do that.

A small device is nudged through the curtain of feathers, the back light of the screen dimmed thoughtfully to not irritate your uncovered eyes, but the shift in light levels immediately draws your hand away from the watery ocular globes.

An open memo app with a message typed into it.

Do you want to talk about it?

The keys are awkward. Much smaller than the huge granny keys on your PDA, intended to make typing easier with your talons. But you peck out your note, and push it away into the sunlight. The preening pauses as he retrieves the device, but the weight of his hand on your wing doesn’t move.

what happened to your hat

if you cant look at yourself long enough to style it

a hat would at least give you the illusion of looking put together

The phone is pushed back beneath the veil of feathers, your bro’s short response rumbling through him and into you where your back touches his. “Dave doesn’t like the hat.”

of course dave doesnt like the hat

its a stupid hat

but dont you think theres a reason he keeps pointing that shit out???

You hesitate. Almost pushing it back out then and there. And then. You decide not to think and just type.

its never just about the hat

just like this doesnt have anything to do with the hat

except for the fact that my brain is fucking screaming at me that its wrong for you to not have a hat on

so wrong that if i had one id slam dunk it on your head right now just to make it shut up

just shitty memories that wont go back in their fucking box

its one thing to know and another to actually see him again

fuck its been 3 years

im over this

i decided i was over this when i realized there was more to life than wallowing in my own misery

“You dropped your quirk,” He points out quietly, and with a chill that penetrates you deep into your bones as you realize he’s right. You--you aren’t--

You aren’t a -peta at all right now and that terrifies you.

Bro continues as if he didn’t just quietly point out a thing to send you into an existential panic, blissfully unaware as he continues to chew on your original thought. “It sounds like you compartmentalized, pushed it all aside insteada actually dealing with it. That leaves shit to fester. Ain't healthy for you.”

Instead of waiting for him to pass the note back, like an impatient school girl you grab your own phone and find a similar function. Pre-installed office drone packaging, you suspect. Perfect for a business flunky on the go who needs to jot down appointment and memos.

you think i dont know that???

it worked fine

i was handling it

not that you can talk about dealing with shit

mr paragon of im not gonna think about this right now

like those fucking echoes

you were like a yodeler lost in a fucking mountain range down there

voice bouncing all over the place

thats not just nothing

You shove the completed message back out as his phone appears again. Swapping them.

“Shoulda known you’d hear that,” He mutters, and tries to shift again. You don’t budge. He turns enough so you’re no longer back to back, but resting against his side. Knees to your chest, wings a feathered tent blocking you from the sun-lit world, and from him. “Don’t deflect this shit onto me. I’m not falling for that trap. It’s--Is there anything I can do for you?”

you can drop it for one

im just tired

some time and space and ill be right as rain

i dont really want to talk about it

Except you do. You really do. And you think he knows that because he waits. Lets you squirm, methodically working his way through the feathers of your left wing. You don’t hold out long before you’re taking your phone back (and isn’t it stupid, without signal for either of you, you’re treating the high tech devices like glorified paper) and it all spills out. Like that fucking waterfall. Just all over the memo in a flood of indistinct, quirkless black.

okay thats not true

maybe i do

i really am fucking tired

tired of swinging wildly around like a metronome stuck in some stupid fast meter

so fast only robots can play that shit no mortal or formerly mortal being known to frog can keep tempo with my broken ass metronome

can i just smash it up against a rock and never have to deal with it again

first it was all peta-based crippling loneliness and manic need and now all of a sudden yanked back into horseshit questions and thoughts and even more birdshit i thought i buried with him three fucking years ago

all because of one voice and one pretty face

you dont even have the right shades your god-tier body should look more like him than you do right now but does that mean anything of course not

too much dave not enough peta

figures the only time i swing that far is coming face to face with my personal trauma

cant even bring myself to pun look at this its pathetic

sorry this is fucking stupid

you shouldnt have to deal with this

you arent even him

you cant help the fact that paradox space functionally blackmailed you into taking his place

theres no point in this

i dont want to make this all about me

and here i go doing that again

i got a whole buncha hours worth of primo cuddle time and as soon as you have to go i find somestupid reason to break down and prolong it like ssome uncool bby

fuck

dont you have better things to do

jades to humor

jakes to find

daves to take care of

not deal with my shit

He’s silent as he reads. You clutch his phone tightly--not too tight, you don’t want to scratch that shit. That’s exactly what you need to be thinking about, you think hysterically--to you after the swap occurs again.

“You forgot to include yourself in that list,” He answers slowly. Evenly. Fingers pick through your feathers. Not breaching the barrier you erected around yourself. Not yet. “I’ve told you before; ‘‘Dealin’ with your shit’ is very much somethin' I’m invested in, whether the source is a possessed juju or a dead brother or--fuck, anythin’. And if being like... this… is making it worse, we can go right back through that damn transportalizer and stuff this splinter into a closet long enough to properly talk. The only one who’d possibly complain is me, and I sure as hell ain’t gonna do it. I very much have a Davepeta to take care of right here, complainin’ ain’t worth my time.”

If you had access to properly working airways you’d probably let out a bitter laugh. Nothing could make it worse.

He’s already fucking dead and you’re falling apart.

no

no

theres fuck all you can do because this isnt your fault

its not fair to make it your fucking fault

and i know that

i got this shit handled

It isn’t. It really isn’t.

“We’re in the unique situation of being the only two people in the fucking universe to have the context to comprehend this. Even if it’s not my fault, even if I can’t help, if you feel like shit, you have every right to want to talk about it to someone who might even remotely understand, and if that’s me? I’ll take those lumps and try to make it easier for you because I fucking care about you.”

He doesn’t raise his voice. It stays fluttery, carefully soft. Somehow that makes things worse.

Your hands freeze, and then they start again, snatching up the swapped phone, uncaring of who it belongs to anymore.

i had this handled

maybe i only fucking thought i did

maybe i only managed to outpace this shit before because i was running away always kicking it back into the past so it doesnt even matter running forward running towards a destiny a goal or

goddamn it is there a difference between flinging yourself into a sun for a reason instead of a lack of one???

Maybe you didn’t change at all.

its all just another method of running away

escaping the shit that keeps hunting me

both mes

maybe clinging to myself was just making sure i didnt die alone

You grope for the memory of your Ultimate Self. Those many many Daves and even more Nepetas who lived and loved and died. That cumulative experience that made you think all your shit, all your losses were worth something. That there was something only you could do. Defeat Lord English. Be the hero your Bro raised you to be.

“Davepeta?”

You cling to your name. You shift unconsciously, peeking through the veil of feathers and mirrored glass. Looking up, because you have to look up don’t you and…

It’s Bro’s face. Uncared-for stubble clings to his sideburns and chin. The tired bags of his eyes and the wrinkles on his forehead when things hint toward a frown, something you’d always suspected was a reason he always wore a hat, even indoors. It's always been a warning sign. A crack in the mask. One that spoke to years of get the hell outta dodge and kept you within the confines of your room.

Those weren’t training days. He vanished onto the roof. Into the crawlspace. Somewhere. Anywhere. As long as it didn’t involve you. Didn’t want to drop the mask around you. Didn’t want to take out that anger on you. Wanted to protect you, in his own way.

Maybe.

Maybe that was being too generous. Maybe that’s just what you wanted to think, based on a shove, and a hand curled around a green and white spirograph, covered in blood.

But this frown is too soft. Too gentle. Too open, even as that’s only a matter of inches to anyone else it’s miles to you. He’s pushed the cheap shades up into his hair, turned away from the daylight behind him. “I’m going to hug you now. Is that acceptable?”

Miserably, hopefully, you nod.

And he does.

It’s a terrible hug, as far as hugs go, and as far as your limited hug repertoire is educated. Too awkwardly positioned. Too hesitant. Reminds you of Rose, your Rose, and ain’t that just a kick in the tailbone. Your wings get in the way and you don’t fit properly. He’s too big and you’re too small and two, three steps to the right. Nothing like the careful comfortable warmth you’ve been spoiled with by your own personal mini-Dirk. The one you left behind on Derse. The one you’ll apparently have to cart back, because he’s fallen unconscious again.

You turned down a magic carpet ride for that Dirk, what are you doing here still? Why have you folded yourself up in Bro’s shadow like this? (Maybe it’s all you surefire know how to do.)

“Even if you call it running, you managed to find the strength to keep going. That’s fucking admirable, dude. You’ve been through a literal ocean of shit. So much shit you could make bank off the resultant fertilizer. End world hunger all on the back of your own accumulated shit stock.”

You laugh. A strangled spasm that’s more air than anything else. Even when you can’t force the air out anymore, you laugh as you list sideways, gently nudged until you’re right where you started earlier, face smashed into his shirt, only this one isn’t a magically drying maroon cape. It’s a rough white collared shirt because Bro can’t be bothered to buy new clothes.

You aren’t crying. It’s a combination of the sun and your exhausted shaking that leads your eyes to water. You bury your face in his shirt anyway, half wishing it actually was your Bro, and yet mostly glad it isn’t.

Hesitantly, a hand rests on your head. Smoothing down your hair.

“I know it’s not enough. I’m sorry.”

His voice, Bro’s voice, vibrates through his chest. Through you. You fumble for your phone, any phone. One gets pressed into your claws. You can barely see through blurry eyes and honestly it probably came out a typo ridden mess.

“We’ll survive,” He reads out loud after a moment, and then sighs and rests his head back against the wall. You make yourself to look away and out, out into the uncomfortable sunlight beyond the lip of the hallway. Out over the water of a lagoon and an island you’ve only ever heard described in stories. “I’m kinda tired of just surviving. I wish we could live instead.”

Only broken by a white gash against the sky, a tear made by a giant claw barely visible beyond the edge of stone. Jade’s home. So far, far away. It’s the same you, just...focused differently--more orange, less green. Quieter--that ducks under his arm and doesn’t want to move.

You futility try to say his name, but it comes out as an almost soundless hiss of air and the click of a tongue on teeth. You doubt he’d hear it above the ocean breeze and the distant sound of water lapping against stone, but his arm gives your right shoulder a comforting squeeze.

You’re on the other side now. You could almost imagine yourself splitting in two. Nepeta curled up and purring on his left. Dave squishing his face into the crook of his arm on his right.

Too much. You’re asking for too much. This is stupid. It’s uncool. No one should have to deal with the astronomical levels of birdshit your very existence heaps onto this world.

You shouldn’t be here.

But you are.

And so is he.

Your wing curls around him, acting as a shade for you both. Your black feathers cut the impact of the direct sunlight, although you can see it playing in thin strips across his lap. The dim glow of your signal-less phone with its big keys and big screen sitting right in front of you as you type, him reading over your shoulder, no need for clunky note-passing now that you’ve lifted the veil.

you sound like him you know

i get that you got the same vocal cords and all that jazz

not that im jealous

but its like the way you speak

miniyou didnt have an accent

and now its all full on texan hootinanny up in here

i could hear the shift immediately

“It’s largely performative, I think, part of an act that’s become second-nature when in a specific environment. Unfortunately that environment includes residing in this particular meatsuit. I don’t even think about it ‘nymore,” He rumbles, voice rough with age even if he isn’t even fucking thirty yet. “Dave has one, Newt has one, the lady who occasionally says ‘Howdy’ in the hall when I go check the mail has one. My own shit sounded so out of place I had to adapt to survive. I’m pretty sure Dave already thinks I'm suffer'n brain damage, the last thing I needed was to sound different, too.”

thats kinda fucking impressive bro

pickin it up so easy like that without having to grow up immersed in that shit

You can feel the shrug. “I did grow up with it, in a way. My Bro had one in all his interviews; really played up the ‘twang. Dude probably thought it was hilarious to be all LA glitz and glam on TV in a suit and tie while soundin’ like he should be in a ten gallon hat and cowboy boots. Talking made Dave uncomfortable, so ...it was easy enough to not talk until I got used to it again; now that he’s used to the stoic, short sentences thing I can’t get a proper ramble on without him looking at me like I’ve grown a second head.”

That makes you wheeze. You think you catch a smile tugging at his lips.

That bit about his Bro sounds exactly like something a Dave would love to do.

Something you would do.

sounds like you accidently stumbled directly into bros bad habits and now youre stuck

my sincerest condolences the dude didnt know the luxury of just winding it up and lettin it roll unless it involved a rhyme

its all just a big fucking performance isnt it??

“Yeah.”

can you even stop???

The hesitation is palpable. “I try, with you.”

You.

Don’t know what to say about that. So you don’t.

You should go. You know that. He knows that. The sun knows that. Fuck, Jade miles away probably knows that somehow.

But he lets you poke around with his knee. You catalog the faintest signs of pain filtering through his closed off face and (selfishly) decide it’s too swollen to allow him to walk.

He protests, naturally.

You overrule them. Less naturally. But you latch on to those brooding feelings like a lifeline because they are something other than guilt and confused as fuck teenaged boy and you are thankful as hell when your mothercluckbeast tendencies go into override.

You can’t let him take the steep steps with his bum knee. You don’t know how he’s going to make it the several miles from the lagoon to the tower even after that. You might not know shit about mechanics, but you saw the displeased set to his face when he pulled out his rocketboard and laid it across his knees, examining the damage his descent had done earlier. You also may not know about the physics of aerodynamics, but you’ve got some idea of how tf wings effect stability and having one of those stickuppy flaps at an angle like that ain’t gonna help him fly safely at all.

He refuses to let you fly him out with the sun still so high in the sky, the Island’s tropical nature meaning it’s at least 10x as intense as Houston on a bad day, although you argue it’s got nothing on LOHAC’s hellscape or Alternia’s radiation days.

You’re at an impasse, trapped in the passageway between the frog’s feet while the afternoon shades toward evening, the tropical sun refusing to so much as abate to let you fly his ungrateful ass back to the tower. All the while vividly aware that the longer you stay here, the longer your Bro’s teenaged god of a self is probably lying exposed in a Dersite alleyway somewhere. While you don’t think he’s in danger of a Just or Heroic death while conked out in the street, it’s making you anxious.

You need to get back. But when you made the decision you made it without knowing the extent of his injuries.

You’ve already been selfish (stop that) enough.

Luckily, or unluckily, in the middle of a half-verbal (on his part), half-look-stubborn and gesture-wildly-at-him (on your part), argument, the choice is made for you.

You’re hit by the scent of fur and ozone. A flash of white, then a familiar, crackling green reminding you of those three years. Of Jade and her laughing, smiling face falling on yours like sunshine. Sunshine you felt like you could only see through a window and never touch. Sunshine you pushed away, because you didn’t fucking deserve it.

It might be Bec, but the strange white faceless beast does not smell like a dog--not that you would know what dogs smell like. You didn’t have an olive blood’s enhanced senses when you lived around Jade--and while it has the muzzle and the ear shape you recognize from seeing them fucking grow out of Jack Noir, it’s got these giant fucking horns and it smells like--

Your lusus, and that smug nonchalance in the lazily flicking tail is as feline as it can possibly be.

It looks you straight in the face from behind your Bro as you try to get him to look behind him, even if the First Guardian doesn’t have defined eyes to speak of, then hooks a claw into Bro’s pant leg just as he starts to turn around.

He’s gone in a flash, leaving you behind, pinned in by the streaming sunlight as you let out a distressed hiss. It doesn’t stop you, you barely think about the potential burning as you launch yourself into the air in protest, curling your wings into a make-shift sunshade that likely only succeeded in trapping the heat in with you.

Luckily, you can follow that telltale green, watching him land with a thump on the grassy shore on the other side of the lagoon, yanking the feet out from under sharp stab of panic. While Earth’s sun doesn’t hold a candle to the inferno that is Alternia’s, you’ll probably end up at least somewhat crispy in minutes, with a migraine on the side. You glance around, noting a second green and white flash closer to you, the lusus curling itself contentedly into a pleased pile on top of one of the broken stone plinths rising out of the water.

Watching.

You know what it’s watching.

Watching the speck of white and black and green of a little girl rush to your Bro’s side where you cannot, moments after his bum knee crumples on the landing.

That is not Bec, but why would it be Bec? Bec was lost in Jade.

The sun is sizzling through you, through the dubious protection of your hair, feathers and even the mostly complete coverage of your god-tier clothes. You’d think pulling up that tight little hood would let the self-regulating properties of the jammies get you closer to something within bearable range but apparently not, the heat already working to make you lightheaded.

You force yourself to float after them as Jade helps your Bro to his feet, dragging her rifle out of her strife-deck just to let him use it as a crutch and then glaring him down when he tries to refuse. You know Jade. Even minified Jade. You know her better than anyone but John or Bro at this point. She is pissed and that hunch of your Bro’s shoulders means he knows that and the sight wrenches a sun-drunk fractured wheeze out of you.

You stopped paying attention to the dog-cat-guardian-whatever in favor of single-mindedly pursuing your Bro and the tiny-fied version of your friend.

A weight lands on your back, the smell of fur and ozone surrounding you. Choking you. The island vanishes in a flurry of green fire that brings to mind the smell of charred feathers. You look out into the black abyss, expecting to see the sun you could always see through Jade’s afterimage only to find nothing but wide and yawning space.

But not silent.

The cacophony of noises builds around you. Millions of different songs at different points in your playback, you can’t focus on any one, not at all.

It only lasts a moment, as the Gcat-Bec hybrid smugly drops you back onto the top tier of the frog ruins, releasing the fabric of your cape and landing on the stone beside you. It doesn’t bother immediately vanishing either, proceeding to wash its canine-paws in a very feline way, before scratching at its wideset horns, curling around ears that are quite clearly trained on you.

Dirk hadn’t been kidding about the asshole cat, gotcha, but boy did that cat sure know how to fetch.

You glare at it. You can feel the weight of its gaze even without those visible eyes. Its nose wrinkles, once, tail lashing when you refuse to back down.

Leave.

The command digs into your mind, the birdbrained portion sitting up with a startled screech that gets caught in your throat. You can feel it, claws that slide off the human-troll parts but dig into that bit--that sizable bit--of you that’s all bird, bleeding into a bronze haze that you find it hard to think through. Lips curling back in a soundless hiss, baring your fangs, feathers fluffing the flock up as you draw back your wings.

It pushes at you again, standing up to its full height. Bec was as tall as Jade, and you’re shorter than she was at thirteen. It’s pretty fucking intimidating.

Calm.

Why are you fighting this thing, anyway? You trust Jade, even mini-fied. You trust Bro--you trust Dirk. They’ll be fine even if it sends your mothercluckbeast instincts a flaring to leave him alone and barely hobbling. And if this thing is partially Bec you should trust it too! It clearly just has Jade’s protection in mind. You’re an intruder from the Medium, as far as it’s concerned, and that isn’t allowed.

You’ve already messed shit up with Jade once. You have a broirail to pick up off the streets of Derse. They’ll be fine without you. You didn’t want to stay in the first place. You didn’t want to come in the first place.

You should just.

Leave.

Notes:

Sorry for the delay! This chapter was a bit of a monster. It was "complete" for a couple months, and then I suddenly decided to add that whole end section there. These were some emotions that needed to be faced, and unfortunately there was very little chance of delaying it once Davepeta ended up face-to-face with Dirk-as-bro.

And yes, I *know* I said dead is dead, but I figured out a cool way to work in at least some of tavvy's data ;) It's not just because I forgot about gcatvrosprite until someone asked about it several chapters ago. Nope.

Next chapter is a quick interlude back to Dave! Hope you enjoy <3

Chapter 69: Dave > Wake

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

You don’t wake up from a nightmare, so the day is already looking up.

Even if the day might as well be done for the fact that you can tell immediately that it’s way closer to evening than not. You don’t need to check the clock to know you’ve slept for over twelve hours. You’re pretty sure that’s not supposed to be a good thing, but you’re pumped about getting any in the first place, all things considered.

Despite the lack of dragon munchies, lingering feelings of unease cling to you as you push a single exploratory toe out of bed, like a balls-freezing draft is coming in through a cracked door.

It isn’t worth it.

You huddle in the dubious safety of your patterned sheets, but it does nothing to save you from the encroaching winter. Mammoths and sabertooth tigers yo. Dying all over the place.

This is apparently what happens when you stay up till the ass crack of dawn and then pass the fuck out without a care in the world about your sleep schedule.

Maybe you’d just been too tired to dream at all. You did kinda crash as soon as you were left alone, Rose passed out, John off to sleep land, and Data getting pulled away by their roommate asking them for a favor.

You didn’t know they had a roommate. That’s a tick in the “probably not your age” box for all that you get on like a house on fire. To be honest, one of you probably set the house on fire in the first place.

Mmm… at least it would be warm then.

The chill isn’t going anywhere, but you’re awake enough to realize it’s just an unease thing and you aren’t actually being haunted by the spirits of the damned, so you quickly cajole your reluctant baby self out of the covers with the mental promise of apple juice.

The post-wake up fugue weighs down on you, making each movement heavier than it should be, like you’re wading through the dreaded dino-eating tar pits. Threatening to drag you down and become a fossil yourself.

That might not be too bad. Least you’d have a first hand account of the process. That’s cool shit.

You roll yourself vaguely upright, squinting your unshaded eyes towards the dark shapes working as a partial sun-block for your window, the crows eagerly pecking at the glass trying to get the glistening suncatcher inside.

You itch to let them in, but you don’t. No way man, not today. The winter sun’ll be setting here in probably like all of twenty minutes, which is your designated no crow time. They’ll deal with it.

You follow your routine, popping your joints, turning a particularly loud one into a stretch, throw some socks on out of habit (even if Bro doesn’t leave potentially sharp objects lying around on the floor anymore, the tile in the kitchen is cold) and check your computer.

Quiet. Surprisingly so. Rose shows as idle, although you leave her a greeting to be picked up when she’s available. John’s on, although he’s apparently been in and out all day since he got home from school, going on about homework and other, mundane things that make you smile fondly even as you shake your head and pat yourself on the back that you don’t need to deal with that shit. You finished and mailed out your week’s assignments yesterday. Now all you have to do is write up random shit about what you read in your stupid log and get Bro to--

John can keep his homework. And his movie night with his Dad. You don’t need ‘em.

It’s not like you want to watch animated cartoon animals getting up to shenanigans with your Bro. Not at all.

Though that shit would be better than the slasher films he used to watch all the time. Fucked up stuff you’d catch minutes of, tough out until you’d casually escape to your room, a sleepless night on the internet awaiting you.

In the days since you added your Bro’s mysteriously feline focused friend, you’ve never seen them offline. Idle sure, but never completely greyed out. It’s a surprise.

You don’t know them enough to know if that’s intentional or not, but for some reason it makes you shiver like that aforementioned Ice Age is bearing down your neck. Hovering above you like a stooping hawk.

Clearly you just need to get your mind off shit.

You go over your potential avenues of entertainment as you wander out of your room, barely hesitating at the doorway of the hallway with a quick glance, but nothing more.

In the days following Bro’s departure it has been… strange.

Empty, even, for all the fact that Stevens makes a magnitude more noise than Bro does merely by existing.

You don’t like it. You don’t. But you can’t do anything about it and that fucking sucks.

At least Bro left you plenty of apple juice to drink away your troubles with.

You make a mental note to maybe not mention that particular joke around Rose. You don’t think she’d appreciate it.

The reason you don’t like it doesn’t look up at your entrance. He would have if he’d heard you. But you were trained by a master in the art of evasion in your own home. If Bro has a second sense for sneaky kids at least he didn’t swivel his head around and keep you in his sight at all times like Stevens does. And he’s also in Bro’s spot.

Even if you find yourself wanting to make that midnight journey, nightmare or no nightmare, you can’t even find Bro’s blanket and curl up on the futon and pretend because it’s unrecognizable. Steven brought this whole little computer cart thing, arranging it and TV trays and two whole laptops. What is he doing that he needs two whole laptops? Why not just get a second display??

You aren’t hungry yet, so you eye the space between the hallway and the kitchen. If you flash-step there, jump up on the counter, and then leap for the string…

It would make too much noise and would render Operation Avoid Stevens completely useless since the clatter of the crawlspace door opening would send the dude running anyway, and potentially risk knocking all his shit over which you’d feel a smidge guilty about and probably offer to clean up even if you don’t want to. Damn it, you can’t wait until you can get the height to master Bro’s sneaky transition trick and launch yourself up through the ceiling panels themselves.

Your sigh must have activated the Kid-dar regardless, because Stevens finally seems to hone in on your presence, his head swiveling to pin you in the doorway.

“Good to see you up and about, Dave. Did you sleep well?”

You don't freeze, continuing your journey across the room as if his attention wasn't stirring up the instinctual itch at your nape. Deliberately putting your back to him so you don't have to see him in your Bro's spot. Taking your Bro's place. “Yeah sure I guess, if you call collapsing into a state reminiscent of the waking dead 'well.'”

“Ah, yes, sleeping all day will do that to you. It seems good in theory, but in practice it can feel even more exhausting.” Stevens pauses, and you roll your eyes to the ceiling and consider making a break for the roof. At least you’d be alone up there. “Well, keep me posted should you start craving any brains.”

You do a double take. You hadn’t expected him to roll with that. “You’ll be the first to know, I can’t guarantee it won’t be immediately followed by a big ol’ chomp tho.”

“Any warning is forewarning.” A pause, then the soft sound of keys typing. Too quiet. It isn't click-y enough to be your Bro's keyboard. “Oh, that’s right. I got another email from your brother for you.”

“Yeah?”

“Mhm. I forwarded it to you.”

“A’ight.” You start rummaging through the fridge because it gives you something to do even if you aren’t really focusing on the food at all.

You literally just came back from the living dead, you didn’t think to check your email, which is usually only for school stuff and the spam you keep because it’s so terrible that it’s a wonder people fall for ads at all.

At least Stevens forwarded it to you this time, instead of just telling you Bro didn’t crash land somewhere in the middle of the ocean. You’d had to force him to do it, even if you were only a paragraph long foot-note at the end of an otherwise dry email, and you have it saved in your important shit folder just so you can pull it out and look at it because of how lame it is.

Really, communicating is not his forte, even if there’s a significant increase in syllable count through text.

Somewhere behind you, you hear a laptop lid click shut.

“Why don’t I take you out for dinner?”

“You know, I can totally take care of myself.” It’s a knee jerk reaction. The last couple days there’d always been something waiting for you in the fridge no matter how late you come to raid it—Stevens seemed to be a follower of the meal-prep rather than the last minute whatever the fuck you want. It bothered you. “I can grill me up some good ol’ fashioned mac’n’cheese for one day out of the week, it’s no big. Sure it aint no Egbertian feast but it’s fine.”

“Yes, well, I have some errands to run, and instead of leaving you alone I thought it would be nice to pick them up over lunch; but then you didn’t wake up for lunch. Not that it’s a bad thing! Dinner works just as well, and it’ll be a chance to get out of the house for a while.”

You suspect he’s the one going stir crazy, not you, especially considering the fact that he’s hella reluctant to leave you in the house unsupervised.

Even Bro didn’t get that anal about it. He constantly asked if you wanted to come, sure—you didn’t, although the mini-Lalonde voice at the back of your mind scolded you that you probably should—but he never seemed to think twice about letting you man the fort when he skipped out for an hour or two to the corner store or even further to the terrifyingly huge land of produce to restock the fridge and more importantly your AJ stash.

It was one of the few things that reassured you that Bro didn’t feel the need to hover because you were incapable. You started looking for them after your birthday, remembering what Rose said.

It’s not because he doesn’t trust you to take care of yourself. It’s because he’s responsible for you.

...perhaps that’s something you should be applying to this situation, huh, instead of getting all huffy because Stevens is treating you like a kid.

You set your prize—a bottle of AJ, what else?--on the counter and let the fridge door shut behind you. Free from the distractions, you finally allow your focus to settle on the not-Bro tidying up his work space, sliding the cart away from his knees and rolling his shoulders into a stretch. You cross your arms, adopting your best aloof manner, even raising one, questioning eyebrow.

This probably looks stupid coming from a ten year old. But Rose can pull it off, so why can’t you?

“You realize that before you dragged me outta here that time I’d never actually left the apartment before, right?”

“Really?” Newt gets this weird look on his face. “I’ll need to speak to Dirk about that. It isn’t healthy to stay inside so much.”

“We’d hang out on the roof a lot. Got all the exercise my growing body could handle without falling to itty bitty tired pieces.” More than it could handle, actually. Why are you defending this? Defending him? You hated the roof. He was the one to put a stop to it, even before you acknowledged that maybe the training was a little fucked up.

You still… kind of miss it. Not getting Li’l Cal’s plush limbs wailing away at you, nah, you’ll never miss that, but it was good to have a routine and sometimes you would just have so much energy you needed to burn it all out.

Not that that’s been a problem lately given the amount of sleep you’ve gotten over the last couple months.

Whatever. You don’t know. You say, “It’s not a big deal,” even though sometimes it feels like one.

“It’s the change in scenery, Dave.” He stands up, pushing his tall gangly shadow between you and the light coming in from the western-facing window, reaching for the coat hanging off the edge of the futon like the smuppets used to do. It's an improvement, you grudgingly admit. At least there isn't a plush ass hanging out at eye-level. “I know you’re smart, but growing kids need stimulation and recreation, and there’s only so much of that you’ll get in a box. You can’t honestly tell me you don’t get bored.”

Well shit. Of course you get bored. That’s why you fucking talk so much to whoever’s willing to share your webspace for more than two seconds. You keep your arms crossed.

You don’t really want to go out. You are tired. And grumpy. But fuck if he doesn’t have a point. It doesn't help that you can see that you aren't winning this one, not with the way he's already fucking dressed and raring to go as if you have no say in the matter, buck up kiddo you're going out whether you like it or not.

“I can take you to the place Dirk gets the fruit-tarts, if you want?” Stevens pauses, as if realizing that fruit-tarts are not an appropriate food to base a meal-choice around. “They have pretty good sandwiches.”

“Wait a minute—Bro gets those??? I thought you sent them home!”

“No, it’s all your brother.”

Is he laughing at you??

That's hella rude.

“Well damn I’ve been giving you more credit then you deserve.”

You are not above bribery, however. Those fruit-tarts are the fucking bomb. Regardless of who is responsible for them appearing in your fridge. It still smarts, though. That you were wrong. Someone has to pay, and Bro isn't here for you to grouch at. “I think I’m going to take away about two million brownie points in retaliation!”

Your threat only makes him laugh more.

“How many does that leave me with?”

“Negative 2 million and 56.” You respond primly, channeling your best Rose impression, and stomp away to get your shoes.

It’s the thought of the bribe that allows you to survive through the initial excursion. It’s like the grocery store, except worse because there’s way more people. You take one look at the mostly full parking lot and compare it to the empty ass-crack-of-dawn one from your one and only Produceland Expedition and declare that you’re going to wait in the car.

It’s apparently irresponsible to leave you alone like that.

Apparently.

Your ten years of largely being left alone with little more supervision than the glass eyes of your missing puppet-bro beg to differ.

Without Bro in the picture—or maybe Stevens is just used to dealing with kids when it’s not a fucking awkward life or death scenario like the one in which you met—the dude seems much less anxious, which means you end up dragged along inside anyway despite your totally reasonable protests.

At least Stevens looks fairly unruffled by the whole affair, which helps you relax—a little—and you even start to find your attention drawn by all the sights and sounds and colors around you. You don’t really get half of what Stevens is picking up, there’s some grocery part of the store, and some not-grocery part. He lets you wander down into the toy section when it catches your eye, all bright colors and inviting. He chuckles under his breath and mutters about effective marketing even as you find yourself drawn towards a figurine collection of prehistoric proportions.

Even if it’s obviously all for babies, you find yourself critiquing the selection of dinosaur toys on display—what was with people and their insistence on pushing the Jurassic Park idea? Dinosaurs were giant fucking birds. And why the fuck isn’t there an archeopteryx? There were way more, and cooler, dinos than the instantly recognizable. Didn’t anyone bother to read that shit? Jurassic Park was cool, but there’s a load more literature out there than T-rexs and raptors being terrifying as fuck and the hubris of man.

Thinking about Jurassic Park makes you nostalgic. You had a blast watching it with John and seeing him eye-roll while you burst out laughing as the dude was chomped while hiding on the toilet. It’s a classic.

Stevens offers to buy you one when you let your hands linger too long on a stegosaurus and you huff, turning your nose up at the meager selection. You don’t need no toys. Your wall full of dead shit is much cooler and more accurate.

Before you know it, you’re following a step behind Stevens while he waits in line in a small, dim cafe that’s fairly empty. You let your eyes rove the menu, feeling oddly anxious as you realize you don’t know exactly what you want at all.

You end up getting something vaguely generic with chicken and cheese because fuck if you know what fancy ass words like frontega and paninis are. You don’t actually care about the food, what you want is your reward, your bribe, the giant strawberry and whipped cream covered temptation sitting just beyond the glass display.

You’re briefly swayed into considering the mixed berry one, the multitude of colors catching and holding your attention, just like the aisle of misfit toys—but all your adventurous juice has already been drained and you want your fucking strawberries yo. You were promised this. It belongs to you. You will be in strawberry heaven. The display case is your pearly gate.

Stevens doesn’t hesitate when you order three. Only sighs and asks for the last one to be in a to-go box.

You’re already through one tart when the single waitress—who is also the lady running the counter. You may not go out much but you feel like there’s usually more people than this—brings your actual food out to the cozy table nestled in the back of the smallish--mediumish?--restaurant. It’s not like you’ve got that many reference points on the interior of business establishments. It feels cozy as fuck anyway. So you’re just gonna follow your gut on this one.

Anyway, the waitress slips the plate in front of you. Tiny, but with a simple floral pattern along the edges, that perfectly encapsulates the concoction of toasted, sliced bread and whatever it holds in its depths. You look back and forth between the hot sandwich and the second of your strawberry covered goodies—this one has the slices cut really thin and curled together like a rose it’s so fucking cute—and go for the tart instead.

Stevens looks on in muted horror. He does strike you as a ‘no dessert before dinner’ kinda guy. He gains a couple brownie points for not trying to stop you. “Remind me to never get between you and a fruit-tart. Dang.”

You respond by chucking the whole thing in your mouth.

“I’m not giving you the third one until we get home,” he says with a mild head shake.

You pout. Or try to. That’s a really big tart and you have only so much space to screw up your face unless you want to lose it. Which you don’t. Chew, chew like the wind!

Maybe this wasn’t the smartest idea you’ve ever had, but jegus does it taste heavenly.

You finish licking your fingers as Stevens starts on his soup, and then chase the sweet down with even more sugar by way of some good ol’ fashioned cola. “So. This is the place you and Bro always go to, huh?”

“We don’t always eat, but yes.”

“It’s uh, quiet. Cozy. Not really the type of place I’d think of when I think of my Bro. It’s too uh--”

“Nice?” He offers, gesturing with the spoon. It startles you into a small snort.

“Yeah, exactly. Maybe I’m just close minded, but I dunno, when I think about business meetings for a secret puppet porn website I don’t really think of a bougie lil cafe that looks right out of some romcom with floral patterned plates and cute little strawberry roses. Are there matching teacups? I bet there’s matching teacups. They even have parfaits and little mini cakes the size of your fist!”

Stevens shrugs, blowing on his soup for a moment.

“Your brother likes sweets. It’s one of the few things that I could ever bribe him with.”

Now isn’t that a shocker, and might explain why he glued himself to Mr. E’s hip so damn quickly. Man, all you apparently have to do is flash him a tray of cookies and away it goes.

It should be funny. And it is. But you feel like you can’t properly appreciate the absurdity when Stevens gets that oddly distant look again. You squint at it behind your—Bro’s shades until the dude finally mentally pep-talks himself into the continued thought. “I’m surprised Dirk was so upfront about his work. You’re a bit young for that.”

“You remember what the apartment was like, dude. He cleaned up some of that shit after… I guess you probably know about that. Being friends and all; but it’s not like he tried to hide it. It didn’t take a psychologist to notice that the noses were phallic as fuck. He didn’t really shove it in my face, it was just kinda there.” You pause, considering the statement and that particular wording. “Okay maybe I ended up with smuppet ass in my face if I wasn’t careful, because you know how Bro was with the practical jokes. Plush asses hanging out left and right. He shoulda put that sewing habit of his to work and made little pants for the dudes--anyway, I got real good at paying attention to where I was going so as to not disturb his set-ups.”

And the traps?

“Dave—” He cuts off, chewing on his lip. It reminds you of that awkward as fuck conversation over Christmas. You don’t trust that quiet, pensive look and the way his brow wrinkles beneath his slightly curling brown bangs.

You want to scowl, but lock it away behind practiced nonchalance, itching to reach across the table and swipe the box with your last strawberry treat. You pick up your sandwich instead, pretending like the tension isn’t suddenly thick enough you could cut that thing with the shitty sword you still have in your strife deck.

“I—don’t really know if we’re friends. If we were friends, I should have questioned the act of even filming that shit with you in the house.”

“Dude, it’s not like I was around for the actual filming.” You roll your eyes behind the shades, perfectly aware that he can’t see the gesture. “It’s cool. Whatever. I’m a big boy, I can understand making a product that rakes in the dough, gotta support that penthouse lifestyle and all that shit. It’s not like he--”

Ever filmed you.

Except he did? Didn’t he?

Webcams set up, all over the room—just in case the puppets got into some interesting shit while he was gone. Candid camera.

But they wouldn’t move, would they?

They couldn’t.

Shit no, that’s wrong, isn’t it?

A note pinned to the crawlspace. A cartoon straight out of a slasher film scrawled on white paper.

Do you want to play a game?

Roof. Now.

Your mind blanks.

That.

That never happened.

Of course it happened. It took you years to admit it fucking happened.

That it wasn’t just. Normal.

Being surveilled 24/7 and thinking nothing of it.

But it—it didn’t. It didn’t happen.

You wonder if he’s filming one of his videos right now and you get to be the fucking guest star.

Blood on the carpet. Pooling in the moonlight.

It’s not yours.

Bro won’t wake up.

Shit skips. You lose time. You’ve lost 43 seconds before Stevens verbally shoves a cattle prod into your side, “It’s not like he, what?”

Your mind skips like a scratched disk, and you blurt out, “How the fuck did you two meet anyway?? No offense, but you’re a little too fucking vanilla to be in on the whole puppet thing just for kicks, especially with the way you’ve been tap-dancing around the topic.”

He lets out a sigh that sounds suspiciously like an exasperated, Dave. “I’m tap-dancing around the topic because it’s not really one that should be discussed with a ten-year old, even if clearly that isn’t the case. I’d feel better if you didn’t know about it at all.”

“Dude, he didn’t talk about that shit. I’m nosy. I know his fucking passwords. It was easy to find the website.”

“Holy shit, Dirk.” Stevens exhales in a stream of nervous mumbling, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I will be talking to your brother when he gets back.”

You must let the growing panic at the mere thought slip on your face because that weird expression changes rapidly, tiny wrinkles almost invisible valleys in already darker skin smoothing out to shift from pensive unease to something more intentionally softer. Like he’s putting on a comforting mask for you.

“Not about you! Directly. Just. There are things we need to discuss. Things I didn’t realize needed discussion but in hindsight I really should have.” A sigh, the clink as a spoon settles against the ceramic edge of the bowl. That shit has to be lukewarm by now. “So! You wanted to know how we met?”

“Yeah.” You grab at that subject change. “So when was it? Five years ago? Ten? Twenty?? Probably not twenty cuz then he’d have been what, ten? Are we talking BD or AD??? That’s ‘Before Dave’ or ‘After Dave’, for the record, because of course I’m ground zero. Becoming the emergency godfather can’t have been that long ago.”

“That happened in ‘98 or ‘99, I can’t quite remember when we put the paperwork through. That would be about 2 or 3 AD, going by your preferred metric system.” He seems as relieved by the subject shift as you are, “But we met much earlier than that. We were on the same midnight bus route running from New York to Houston, when he first moved here. That would be about…3 BD?”

New York.

New York is where Rose is from.

Bro said he and Rose’s mom were childhood friends.

Were. Past tense.

“C’mon.” You whine, ramping up the totally lame pleading but you gotta know, “You gotta give me more detail than that. He couldn’t have been more than 18 back then--and probably younger if the impeccable timeline I’m building in my head is right and of course it is--why would a teenager be on a midnight bus to the middle of the fucking desert? Why were you there? Don’t you know how to tell a story, man? You’re leaving me hanging. If you’ve been orbiting around each other this long something must have happened on that bus ride.”

“It’s not really all that interesting, Dave,” Steven starts, picking at his napkin. Making tiny tears, shredding that shit slowly as he worked his way through the story in his head. “I had a seminar over winter break that ran right up against the start of my next set of classes so scheduling was tight. I learned early that you sometimes had to burn the midnight oil to get things done, and it’s not like I had—Scholarships don’t pay for auxiliary expenses, so a cheap cross-country bus round trip was the only real option.” He goes quiet, and then snorts, “They say it’s optional, but when it comes to networking, if you don’t participate you get left behind.”

The shredded napkin is beginning to look like a fucking snow drift up in here. “I don’t know why Dirk was there. He was a scrawny thing back then. A little shorter than me, if you’d believe it, clinging to this weird gangly doll like it was a life-line.”

A sigh. “I don’t know. I don’t know what it was. When you’re stuck next to someone for nineteen hours in the age before portable music devices, you just end up talking. Nerves and projected ‘stay the fuck away’ energy be damned. Here’s this kid. Two, maybe three years younger than me, clinging to this doll and talking big about having some gig lined up that required him to be in Houston for the next couple years, but I think most of that was bullshit. He didn’t have a place to stay, so I ended up getting him to crash at my parent’s for a few days. We had the extra room since my older brother… I don’t know what he was planning on doing.”

“He probably didn’t plan anything to be honest. He was running away.”

Stevens glances up at your interruption. You feel your face burn.

“If he was coming from New York, he was one hundred percent beating feet, is all I’m saying. Likely quickly, and without much consideration for the consequences. We met his uh, child-hood friend, over my birthday and boy were they not on good terms. I’ve never seen my Bro want to get out of dodge so fast. We gotta thank god for Mr. E because no one actually got their throats torn out. What’re the odds of that happening huh? That one of my two best—” only “—friends in the world just happens to be the daughter of what was probably essentially his ex.” God, no. Brain. Not again. You refuse. You probably wait way too long to add the, “friend.” to the end of that.

You can hear John’s giggle in the back of your mind. The whispered ‘parent trap’ rising from the dead to haunt you.

Stevens has the audacity to look amused.

“Looks like you have a little more information than I do about that. He never talked about where he was coming from.”

“Bro never talks about things, period.” You gripe, earning a laugh from across the table.

“Believe it or not, he used to be much more talkative.”

What the fuck. “You’re kidding me.”

“Not at all.” A small chuckle. “He was never a chatterbox, but if you got him started on something he was interested in it was hard to get him to stop.”

“Like puppets.”

“Yes, like puppets.” Stevens sighs. “He was much more into electronics back then, though. The first project we worked on together was a programmable graphing calculator, and it’s a damned shame the TI-series was so entrenched in public schools by the time we finished, it was literally impossible to break into that market—” He bites off the rest of that rant, likely seeing the spinning question marks revolving above your head. You can almost feel your eyes glazing over. You recognize the words but they don’t mean much to you. Stevens shakes his head, bringing a spoonful of that lukewarm soup up to his mouth for the first time in like twenty minutes and makes a face at it. “Anyway. I wish that shit had worked. Or the half-dozen other things. We might not have ended up with the puppets at all.”

“I can’t really imagine Bro without the puppets. It’s one of those things, like peanut butter and apples. You can’t have one without the other. It’s like defying the proper order of the universe or some shit.”

And then you pause, because, really, you can, can’t you? Aside from the smuppets in their shame corner, the apartment has been puppet free—Cal free—for almost six months now. Little bits of tech-shit litter the space instead. An about face you still don’t understand. Apparently a reversion, rather than some sudden interest shift. Where the fuck was Cal? Why did he just suddenly put all that shit away?

“Aren’t you supposed to be a business-dude?” You ask the question bobbing like a cork on the slowly building boil at the back of your mind, “Those little shits make hella money. Why would you wish them outta existence?”

“Money isn’t everything, Dave.”

“Says the dude with a business degree.”

“It’s in marketing.”

“Same diff. Still out there to maximize the profit intake in this capitalistic society.”

A raised eyebrow. “Do you even know what that means?”

“Not really but that’s not the point.” You jab your finger at him. “The whole point of a business is to make money. Why would you not want to make money?”

Stevens is quiet.

“Because… the Dirk who started plush rumps… turned out to be very different from the Dirk who asked me to be his bro’s Godfather, in less than three years.”

“And the Dirk,” You make a face at how the name feels in your mouth. It’s wrong, your mind whispers. It doesn’t belong to him, “here now?”

Stevens gives up, catching the barista’s eye with a raised hand and getting a box. Not for his soup, that would be stupid, but for your sandwich, which you realize you’d completely forgotten about over the course of story time, toasted bread cooled to not even room temperature where you’d just dropped it on your plate.

You figure he isn’t going to answer as you pack up your shit. Taking the bag with your boxed up tart and boxed up sandwich and all this new kind of information bouncing around in your brain that you don’t know how to deal-with. Might as well box all that up too.

It isn’t until you’re safely buckled in the passenger seat of his unremarkable car that he finally does.

“The Dirk here now reminds me a lot of that lost teenager, on that midnight bus.” His grip on the steering wheel is tight at ten and two. Skin around his knuckles discoloring with the force of the grip. “He hasn’t filmed a video in six months.”

That means something.

Maybe you aren’t the only one trying to reconcile the weird shit that’s going on with Bro.

You decide to give him back half his points for that.

He’s still negative a million though.

Admittedly, it’s nice to not be alone in navigating the wilderness this shit has become.

The car roars, engine coming to life with a twist of a key, a spark.

“Aside from the unexpected awkwardness, how did your birthday party go anyway? I realize I never asked.”

It’s small talk, meant to distract you for the ten-to-twenty minutes it’ll probably take to go the five miles through Downtown Houston’s crawling traffic, but you take the bait.

You’ll take any excuse to retell the Slushie From Hell story anyway.

Stevens is appalled by your lack of exposure to frozen desserts—why the fuck does that get everyone’s panties in a twist anyway—and you make a pit stop on the way home at this little ice-cream place nestled in the strip between two apartment buildings, all the while explaining the physics behind the hell that was brainfreeze to you as if you didn’t look that shit up as soon as you got home just to make sure you weren’t dying from slushie overexposure or something. You do know how to Google it, moron.

You’re a predictable creature. You see strawberry, you get it.

It’s pretty good, you’ll give him that. And maybe you’ll even need to nag Bro into taking you out here for it again. It’s only a couple blocks down the road. You could easily walk that shit.

But eventually, the sun is settling in to it’s early winter curfew, and you’re finally sitting in front of your computer again, the box containing your strawberry tart sitting by your elbow. Pal-ing around with John who just can’t shut up about the fact that his dad took one look at the synopsis and rating for “Chaos” and refused to take him to see it.

You try and point out that most movie theaters wouldn’t have let a nine year old (haha John was the baaaaaby) into an R rated movie anyway. Try, because you could imagine the resulting raspberry with startling clarity thanks to your recent visitation that accompanies the "That’s not the point Dave!"

If you’d been in meatspace and had the audacity to interrupt one of his totally valid rantfests, he probably would have punched you in the shoulder for that one too.

It’s not as if you’re ignoring your email—you’re not. Steven’s off-hand words have stuck with you all day, but now that you had access to it, and without even the slightest hint as to what’s inside that email sitting pretty in your inbox…

You hesitate.

It takes you an hour, maybe two, before you finally click on it.

When you do, your first reaction is to be offended at how short the email is. It’s barely even long enough to be called any definition of ‘mail’ at all.

And then you actually read the email.

You flip your fruit-loving shit.

turntechGodhead [TG]: rose
turntechGodhead [TG]: rose
turntechGodhead [TG]: earth to rose
turntechGodhead [TG]: bro gave me his pesterchum handle
tentacleTherapist [TT]: Many happy returns.
tentacleTherapist [TT]: Should I be expecting a wedding invitation?
turntechGodhead [TG]: hell no thats fucked up
turntechGodhead [TG]: you know that’s fucked up right rose
tentacleTherapist [TT]: Of course I do.
tentacleTherapist [TT]: It snapped you out of the beginnings of a burgeoning rant involving an obscure, likely reaching metaphor, did it not?
turntechGodhead [TG]: touche
tentacleTherapist [TT]: So, what are you going to do about it?
tentacleTherapist [TT]: Are you going to add him?
turntechGodhead [TG]: i dunno
turntechGodhead [TG]: should i
tentacleTherapist [TT]: I think you know what I think about that particular question.
tentacleTherapist [TT]: And in case the answer isn’t as obvious as I think it is:
tentacleTherapist [TT]: The answer is yes.
tentacleTherapist [TT]: Perhaps he misses you as much as you miss him.
turntechGodhead [TG]: i dont miss him
tentacleTherapist [TT]: Of course you don’t, Dave.
turntechGodhead [TG]: dont you roll your eyes at me lalonde
tentacleTherapist [TT]: You have no evidence I did any such thing.
turntechGodhead [TG]: i know you just did
turntechGodhead [TG]: the sarcasm is almost dripping off that text
turntechGodhead [TG]: even my taste dulled tongue could taste it
turntechGodhead [TG]: so intensely saturated that it condensed into drops of dew and seeped through the screen
turntechGodhead [TG]: all it takes it one good lick
tentacleTherapist [TT]: That sounds messy.
turntechGodhead [TG]: yea well its your own fault
turntechGodhead [TG]: that shit is an extinction level *EVENT*
tentacleTherapist [TT]: Capital letters, even. Why Dave, I am flattered.
tentacleTherapist [TT]: Did you do it?
turntechGodhead [TG]: shit rose of course i did

Of course you do.

It sits in your chumlist, taunting you.

Request Pending.

It takes several hours for it to turn green.

timeausTestified [TT] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG]

turntechGodhead [TG]: sup
turntechGodhead [TG]: hows jungle life treating you
timeausTestified [TT]: Hey li’l bro.
timeausTestified [TT]: It’s been a long day.
turntechGodhead [TG]: tell me about it
turntechGodhead [TG]: you realize its like 4 am right
timeausTestified [TT]: It’s not quite tomorrow yet here, although that doesn’t quite excuse you still being up.
timeausTestified [TT]: Are you still having trouble sleeping?
turntechGodhead [TG]: no
turntechGodhead [TG]: i mean yes but no not because of what youre thinking
turntechGodhead [TG]: i just slept late today
turntechGodhead [TG]: but im not the one in the middle of the jungle
timeausTestified [TT]: There is a surprising lack of jungle, actually.
timeausTestified [TT]: Unless you count fields of fucking wildflowers and shrubs that are tall enough to lose a small child in.
turntechGodhead [TG]: shit dude that still sounds rad i demand pics
timeausTestified [TT]: I’ll need to get them cleared first.
turntechGodhead [TG]: just tell roses hot mom its for me she likes me
timeausTestified [TT]: I will tell her that in those exact words. With screenshots.
turntechGodhead [TG]: dude these words are fucking copyrighted gotta get me royalties if you wanna use this rad red text
turntechGodhead [TG]: so whatve you been up to bro
turntechGodhead [TG]: huntin beasties in the middle of the not jungle
turntechGodhead [TG]: raiding tombs
turntechGodhead [TG]: building robots
timeausTestified [TT]: Would you believe me if the answer to all of those is: technically?
turntechGodhead [TG]: ok now you cant not tell me
turntechGodhead [TG]: spill the goddamn beans bro
turntechGodhead [TG]: do your bro-bound duty and tell me a bedtime story
turntechGodhead [TG]: bro
turntechGodhead [TG]: i dont see you typing
turntechGodhead [TG]: shit if you dont want to tell me thats cool too
timeausTestified [TT]: Sorry, I opened up the laptop to run a diagnostic on Jade’s robot. We’re trying to figure out why it won’t connect to the tower’s network.
timeausTestified [TT]: She says hi, by the way.
timeausTestified [TT]: With much excited waving.
turntechGodhead [TG]: hi person i dont know
turntechGodhead [TG]: my bro better be behaving himself over there
timeausTestified [TT]: I’m still reading this, by the way.
timeausTestified [TT]: I will admit, I didn’t expect you to be quite this enthusiastic to get my chumhandle.
timeausTestified [TT]: You seem more at ease this way.
turntechGodhead [TG]: yeah well maybe its your fucking eyesore of a color
turntechGodhead [TG]: better than the black thats for sure
turntechGodhead [TG]: too busy burning out my eyeballs to worry about anything
turntechGodhead [TG]: anyway were getting off topic its 4 am and i cant have a pillow so you owe me a bedtime story
timeausTestified [TT]: Alright; we’ve got some time while this process runs.
timeausTestified [TT]: For one: there’s a big-ass set of ruins here...

Notes:

*throws confetti*

Sorry, this took *forever*. I can't promise any sort of return to regular updating schedules--I'm about 3/4 through chapter 70 at the moment unless it runs away from me--but if you've seen my tumblr or my discord rambles, I started a new job! Yay! Which means my writing time is like severely reduced from previous levels. Boo. Defrag takes a lot more time and wrangling than Ersatz (my other fic) does, unfortunately. So while between the two I'll still have another month or two of weekly updates in my backlog, these chapters will be further apart than I wish they were :(

So yea. Sorry bout that. This chapter is going up today because it was supposed to go up last week, but I had some last minute edits to do! But hey, we got to see dave! And some stuff about bro! I think it's worth the brief break from the weirdness of the island.

Getting right back into that whenever I get chapter 70 finished though!

Hope it was worth the wait <3 Thank you for reading. If you're new, welcome! If you're not, welcome back :D I missed you all.

Chapter 70: Dirk > Pick a God and Pray

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Jade isn’t talking to you.

You realize that you aren’t the most astute person when it comes to reading the room. Especially when you aren’t at the top of your game because you got fucking smashed into yourself when you were tossed across spacetime like a chewed up tennis ball, sending shit spinning into tiny fractals that mixed you all up inside. But despite the hints of an echo that still clings to your thoughts hours later, you aren’t blind to the clear as fuck body language going on right now.

Jade is a bundle of disapproving glares sitting on the floor, bouncing up at the slightest indication that you’re going to move from the designated position on the guest bed, leg propped up on a pillow with a bag full of melting ice swaddled in faded squid-patterned sheets that is trying to keep the swelling reasonably in check. She hasn’t so much as said a word about the promise.

You have yet to apologize. Partially because the mere thought of doing so sends an unpleasantly rolling wave of guilt through your gut. You still have enough pride left to think it’s stupid for a grown ass adult to be apologizing to a kid for something you never actually promised to do. An excuse that rings hollow as hell even to you because obviously it was enough of a promise to have you drowning in remorse.

She should sulk. Maybe say some sharp words at you that would skewer you like tiny little knives. Leave. And then you could all get on with your lives.

But she doesn’t. Only continues to keep a laser focus on your injury, boasting a frightening amount of medical knowledge for a ten year old.

Jade regularly escapes the mountain via harpoon gun-originated zip-lines. You’d be surprised if she didn’t at least internet-search the fuck out of what to do with a twisted knee.

You’re honestly startled that you made it back, crutch notwithstanding. The pain is seared into your memory, faded as it has thanks to the Tylenol she shoved into your hands the moment you hobbled those final steps into the foyer.

Even with Jade’s help, the long walk back to the tower took forever, and probably made matters worse. You should have let yourself collapse into the grass and refused to get up, pride be damned. You know better than that. You’re lucky you didn’t tear shit and need to be medivac’d outta here. Do you really want to be responsible for another traumatized kid?

It’s not like you can get any work done, much less make it back to Prospit before your time is up, if you can’t so much as stand. It would be just your luck to ruin everything because you were too proud to let Davepeta fly your ass out of there before the Guardian asshole showed up and lobbed you across the lagoon.

You… didn’t want them to get hurt. That was all. The sun was burning them. That was why you protested. It had nothing to do with pride. They’d just had a meltdown for Christ’s sake.

Honestly, given the fact that the walk had taken you well into the evening hours without any sort of internet contact, you half-expected your catbirdtrollkid to swoop in and save your ass as soon as the noonday sun bled away into something a smidgen more tolerable, Jade or no Jade. When they didn’t, and you couldn’t find hide nor feather of your partner even as you let your eyes discretely travel the darkening sky…

Well, you have a bit more than only a little girl’s cold shoulder to worry about right now, even if that’s a problem you’re focusing on, and not the fact that you glanced at your chumroll as soon as you got back to your room and found Davepeta greyed out.

The damned guardian better not have done something to them. You can’t help the scenarios that pop up in the back of your head, brain overeager to feed them to you, dropping them at your feet like dead mice. It could have dumped them halfway across the planet. Or left them in the middle of that hungry void, detached from space and time. Or straight up hurt them.

If any of that is true, then there isn’t anything you can feasibly do about it right now. You never could catch gcat even on a good day—you’d be kitty kibble if you try to chase the thing down in the state you’re in. It’s not like you can do anything other than keep a discreet eye on your chumroll while you work on the rocketboard stabilizer that lay in pieces scattered across your lap.

It’s nearly fixed. Or as fixed as you can get with some scavenged parts and your emergency toolkit. Which isn’t much. You’re running out of shit to do.

With it goes your distraction, and you’ll be left with nothing but a frosty girl you can’t quite figure out and a generating series of increasingly worried orange inquiries that have only grown in length over the course of the time since you made it home. It’s not exactly like you can just reach out into the aether and ask them ‘sup’ from a particular vantage on Derse.

Jesus Christ, stop avoiding it and just look at her. She’s worried about you.

You force yourself to release the screwdriver you’ve been strangling, dropping it onto the bed. The accompanying frustrated hiss of your breath has Jade looking up at you from her guard post on the opulent carpet covering the floor of the guest suite. She sets aside what looks like an alchemized monstrosity of a laptop crossed with a brightly covered lunchbox and stands, doing that thing again. The unconscious motion of brushing dirt off her skirt that sends the band flashing on her fingers.

“Do you need more medicine?”

Worried, huh.

“No.” Maybe. You’ll stab yourself in the chest before you admit that particular weakness. You can see Jane in her, in the way Jade’s brows slant downwards and her eyes narrow behind her round, coke bottle glasses, pulling the classic Crocker skeptical response to you maxing out the bullshit meter.

You don’t get it, not really. For all that you keep seeing bits of your friend, if Jane were really here she’d be mothering the fuck outta you. Jade just yells at you every time you so much as move, and then hovers on the edge of your orbit with a set to her shoulders that obviously means, “I’m furious at you but I’m not gonna say anything,” and that irritates the hell outta you.

You wish she had fucked off. Just—Left until she cooled down. Or thawed. Whatever. You were at least used to that.

”Do you want to work on the robot?” Grasping for something, you let the words free. You don’t know where they came from. You don’t care. It’s a break. A distraction. The silence is killing you.

You move before you think about it, swinging your legs over the edge. Freedom squelches like the most fancy-ass fur rug beneath your metaphorical boot. “I dunno about you, but sittin’ here is borin’ as hell.”

“You shouldn’t be going anywhere on that leg, mister!”

The image of a ten-year old pulling herself up to her full height and “Mister-ing” you like she’s your non-existent mom (or a tiny Jane. Christ. Except Jane would pick you up and dump you back in bed anyway) is so profoundly alien you can’t help but laugh. It’d be ridiculous if you looked even half your age.

“I’m serious!”

“It’s not as bad as it looks.” You push yourself to your feet, the weight on your knee causing the equivalent of an ice pick to sink into the joint despite the countermeasures already taken to mitigate it. “It’s only a single flight of stairs and then I’d plonk my ass back down on the floor, promise.”

Jade isn’t impressed in the slightest. “You could have been– you could get more hurt if you aren’t careful! Worse, even!”

“Trust me, this ain’t anywhere near enough to kill me.” It takes you a whole three minutes plus a front row seat to watching her face shut down before you realize that perhaps flippancy and dismissal probably isn’t the way to go about doing this.

You haven’t known her for more than a handful of days, but you can tell that she’s a lonely kid. Your fledgling and sub-par parental instincts seem to be having a good day and you want to reach for her and ask if she’s okay.

You stop yourself.

Fuck.

Sigh.

“Okay. Okay.” With little reluctance, you back down. Sitting is better. For now. “Do you wanna talk about it? Is there a reason you’re dead set against me doing anything involving being upright right now?”

“What if you fall??” She blurts out, hands clenched behind her back. The majority of her face becomes hidden by a curtain of hair. A curtain that parts abruptly as her head jerks up, locking gazes with you. The glitter in her eyes isn’t fire now. Or curiosity. Or excitement. “I wouldn’t be able to catch you or– or– move you and we don’t have any doctors! You could have—”

The next word is so soft you barely hear it. Released like a butterfly to dance between breaths.

“Died.”

She bowls over any attempt on your part to stop her there.

“I got shot,” Jade bluntly states. “Once. When I was little. Grandpa told me I was playing with his pistols and figured out the safety. He fixed it. He knew what to do. How to stop the blood and bandage it all up and what to do ‘til the plane could get here with the doctor. I’m okay because grandpa was here. He’s always right. I’m– I’m not! I’m not right! If I was right then there’d be a city of gold in the sky and grandpa would still be here and I’d be dead in the attic! I wouldn’t be –”

She takes a step closer.

“I wouldn’t have known, you know?” She babbles, like the merest act of you asking has cracked open the damn floodgates that have been holding all this back. The consequence of that icy, silent, emotional isolation on one not suited for it. “If you kicked the bucket, could you have even made it back if the guardian hadn’t dropped you there? You said you fell. You fell and your board is broken—there’s no way you could make those jumps! I know it! Don’t lie to me. I’m not stupid.”

“You’re not,” You agree, “I couldn’t have made them in this condition. But I promise, I was fine. Even if I had to spend the night there, I would have been fine. I just pushed too hard. Pulled a stunt. That’s all.”

Your final flash-step to get past the Prospitian paparazzi was what did it, pushing an annoyance beyond its limits and turning it into an actual liability. One you couldn’t ignore anymore because ignoring made the problem worse.

A lesson you might be prudent to take to heart, considering this situation.

“You might have been fine, but I –” She cuts it off with a strangled “rrraaaagh!” and throws herself face-first onto the bed a few feet to your side. The force of the motion sends the entire mattress bouncing with a fairly strong recoil for someone so small.

She’s shaking, the trembles traveling through uncertain fingers as you lower them to her back in some brief, awkward attempt at comfort.

“It’d just be another person leaving.” It comes out a snarl, muffled by hair, but still entirely coherent. “You could have never come back. You could have died and I wouldn’t have known. Only wondered.

I wouldn’t have known.

Just another person leaving.

Could have never come back

Your own words, coming back to you.

Romps don’t last for years, Jade.

I’m not right.

She isn’t thinking about you at all.

Oh, the concern is genuine – she is too sincere in her dogged attempts to care for you despite your status as strange-but-cool dude with a rocketboard for it to not be. But that gut twisting anger and hurt you can hear in her voice, making yours clench in sympathy, it isn’t directed at you.

It’s for the tower of comforts and perhaps unrealistic convictions you’ve knocked down, like a flat footed goose tearing through someone’s town, meticulously built out of empty cans.

She isn’t mad at you – you’ve merely proven to her how easy it is out here to simply vanish. Gone, to a place where she can never follow. Into the ruins. Off the island. Out of this world, into the void beyond it.

It doesn’t matter. Anything outside this isolated prison, bigger and far more luxurious than your own, is out of reach to her.

Do something.

Say something.

Anything.

“Jade…”

It’s a good start. You’ve said her name. Like you didn’t already have her attention. Gold star.

When nothing more is immediately forthcoming, she laughs, but it’s a laugh one hair away from splitting into a sob. You don’t know how to comment on it, not without dragging the specter of her grandfather out from under the extremely thin sheet he’s currently hiding behind.

You carefully captchlogue the stabilizer’s components that you’ve left laying on the bed, looking for something to say in order to complete that utterly useless start earlier.

You are terrible at this. Every part of you agrees with that assessment wholeheartedly, but you find it doesn’t make you feel defensive.

It makes you feel sad.

You’re mentally carding through your sylladex, looking for a place to slot the final component, one hand on Jade’s back in a poor excuse for an attempt at comforting. You’re here. You acknowledge it. Whoop-dee-do. Bare minimum has been achieved.

You hesitate as you hover over the mental diagram you have of your modus. At the object you acquired what seems like a lifetime ago.

“Jade?” You say again, with purpose this time, as an improvised rhyme is mumbled under your breath and round, worn leather falls into your hands. “I found something for you earlier.”

You hold it up as if inspecting it, surreptitiously glancing down at her, thankful for the dubious protection of your trash-quality eye-wear. You see it as she squeezes out the last few shreds of emotion she can before taking a shuddering breath, rolling herself to the side.

That roll turns into a widening of reddened eyes behind bottle-shaped lenses, sitting up in a rush of limbs that reach out like a desperate maw, teeth digging into the throat of its prey. “Is that –”

You have to squash a flinch, fighting the instinct to recoil and pull the hat back to your chest because your brain– no, your Heart whines that it belongs to you. But it’s quickly snatched from your hands by way of a goddamn bounce that leaves the bed shaking.

“Christ, kid, you’re the one who’s gonna crack your fool head open if you keep doing that.”

She ignores you, clutching the hat close, taller than you now with her standing and you sitting, a halo of black hair still quivering with residual momentum. “You– I thought you weren’t allowed to snoop. This– this is Grandpa’s!”

“I found it in the ruins. Pinkie swear.” You don’t offer her your pinkie, but it’s the thought that counts anyway. The bed shifts as she settles, and you can’t help the snort that follows because Jade’s up and plonked the damn thing down on her head.

It’s too big for her. All you can see is a supernova of hair and the hint of glass lenses where it swallows her face. She pushes it back up, and you find yourself looking down into earnest green eyes. “Did you find anything else? With it.”

You think you know why she’s asking. You did think of it yourself, after all.

“Nah, just some sea rotted rope and a lotta dust. I reckon he dropped it a long time back and didn’t notice. It was dark as hell down there.”

Temporary silence falls.

“Where’d you find it?”

“I told you. The ruins.”

“You can’t leave it like that–!” She blurts out, the force of her vigorous hand motions causing her body to shift, leading to her inevitable cranium consumption by over-sized, old fashioned headgear.

Jade stubbornly pries her head from it’s jaws by pushing it back up again. “Please? I just—I want to imagine it.”

“I’m not a very good story teller,” you warn. Detective Pony-ing this situation would make shit worse, you think.

“That’s fine! Tell me?”

You do.

You describe the ruins. The tunnel leading down the frog’s throat. The elevator shaft. The bio-luminescent runes on the walls.

The groove cut into the shaft. The climbing hook. The rotted rope. Your broken board.

She gasps when she puts two and two together. “That’s how you fell?? How did you even get out? Did the guardian find you?? Is that why you weren’t alone??? Did you see it?”

You shrug, taking a moment to stretch out your aching knee before deciding it was a good enough excuse as any. “That thing has plucked me out of the belly of that frog twice now, and I haven’t seen so much as a lick of it. It’s unnerving as hell. I’d say you would’ve had a better shot at catchin’ sight of it since it likes to drop me in your literal lap.”

“I haven’t been able to see anything,” She admits. Her fingers linger on the brim of the hat, squeezing. She pulls it off her head and sets it in her lap. Hands trail along the dented dome, finding the seams in the old, worn leather. “I used to dream about a dog. He looked like Haley except bigger and not stuffed. We’d play fetch. I think– I think I was just lonely with grandpa gone.”

Gone.

Don’t tell her he’s alive.

Yet.

Don’t…

“Hey, kiddo...” Fuck. How are you even going to do this? “You don’t like to talk about the dreams, do you?”

“Not really,” She admits, those tired green eyes finding the bunched up cloud covered fabric utterly fascinating at this very moment. Colors flash as her hands move on autopilot. “It’s just… stupid, you know? Stupid to believe in a dream I barely even remember!”

Gold. And dreams.

You wonder if she remembers Prospit at all.

“I don’t think it’s stupid,” You offer honestly, “If it stuck with you this long, it has to be important.”

“It’s not sticking is the thing!” Frustration – but you can deal with frustration. “I made reminders so I don’t forget, but I forgot what the reminders were for! Reminders aren’t much good if you forget what they are even supposed to mean in the first place!”

She looks visibly uncomfortable, pinching a band between thumb and forefinger. It unravels with a couple careful twists, letting it pool in her palm. “I– it’s just– stories? It sounds like stories. Like a bed-time story Grandpa used to tell me, but one so vivid I would dream about it. I don’t– I don’t remember?”

She sounds so lost.

She was supposed to be the one who was awake. It was supposed to be her beacon. The proof that she could escape.

Just a kid trapped, and yet to find that glimmer of hope on the distant horizon.

She’s crying with a smile. Those same, tiny, beaded tears. Refusing to fall.

Or maybe she lost it, which is why she’s waiting for a rescue that won’t ever come.

You should hug her, probably. That’s what you’d do if Dave curled up like that. Or Davepeta. Or–

Aching. Exposed. Vulnerable.

They would hate her expression too, you think. They’d want you to fix it if you could.

You want to fix it. “I know how it goes.”

The words force themselves out of a throat that no longer wants to work. Like claws closing in around your windpipe. Cutting you off. But that isn’t fair. It isn’t Cal this time. It’s you. It’s you and yourself articulating the question in words that you can’t quite hear.

What the hell are you doing?

“It’s a world full of glittering golden cities, seen on a dark horizon.” You don’t fidget – you’re too tightly controlled right now, too bound up in yourself, in your thoughts, to fidget. The fabric of your shirt is twisted into knots between clenched fingers. “Above you, blue skies and white clouds drift over a sea of empty space beyond the window. You could fly out and meet them, if you wanted.”

You’re juggling bits and pieces of cotton-candy blue conversations from memory. You hadn’t even let AR take this conversation, you’d handled it yourself. Jane waking was a moment.

“It’s a world full of funny people with white carapace shells, looking up and pointing as you pass. It’s an eclipse, as the moon swings around the planet, into those sea of clouds, where you can see the darnedest things, but you know without a doubt they are important.”

“You’ve seen it!” It isn’t a question.

You’ve made your choice. Don’t hesitate.

Not this time.

“I haven’t seen the eclipse. A friend has, though,” You confess, managing to wrench your hand free of your shirt only to have it run through your fucked up hair. You exhale, letting the words fall with it, “You’re right, you understand?”

The quiet, barely whispered, “It’s real,” breaks your heart. She’s latching onto a thread, clinging to this one little tidbit you dangled in front of her like it’s a piece of ambrosia presented before someone lost at the sea and starving.

“Yeah.” You swallow. “It is.”

“If– if it’s real– why did they stop?” Arms wrapped tight around her knees. “Grandpa– he has to come back. Be in the living room. I was supposed to– he was– my friends –”

You don’t say anything.

“You know something.” You feel like you can almost hear her thoughts trapped into that small skull, twisting and folding upon themselves, picking up the pieces as her brows are drawn in deep, face scrunched up. “That’s why you’re here. You have the answers!”

“A bunch of broken pieces, maybe. I came here looking for answers, myself.” You really do mean it – you don’t have them. Not to her questions. Not even about what happened to Jake Harley.I don’t know why, or how, or what the fuck happened to screw everything up so badly. Shit broke.”

“...like my robot. The robot that broke when I stopped dreaming. The robot that you want to fix!”

The pointing finger, accusing, going along with the crowed exclamation makes you uncomfortable. Pinned under her gaze, you’re a butterfly with tweezers lightly gripping your wing. One minuscule movement away from tearing it off.

Good thing you don’t have wings.

“I don’t know if fixing it will actually help anything. The tech’s what I’m interested in. That ability to reach beyond the boundary of this instance and connect to the session… even if it’s on the fritz now, seeing what your grandpa did with the tech might give me an idea.”

The silence stretches. A moment. Two. Three. “What was your dream like?”

“I’d argue it was closer to an extended nightmare than a dream.” You close your eyes on the exhale. “How about this. Get the ‘bot, and we’ll talk more while we work if that’s what you want. Sound fair?”

“You won’t get up?”

Oh goodie, she hasn’t entirely forgotten the reason the argument started in the first place, even if you think the emotional wringers literally squeezed all that lingering anger out of her.

“Cross my heart and hope to cry.” You echo a motion and words you told Dave once, long ago. Irony, or sincerity. Both? “I have my tools. There’s a lot we can get done by snooping through the code. It’s my knee that’s screwed up, not my hands. Can your modus handle something that big? Do you need mine?”

“Of course it does. I just need to switch to tetris.” Jade huffs, tosses her hair, and marches out of the room.

...Then she marches back in. “We could have saved us both a lot of trouble if we’d just done this in the first place.”

You shrug. “I don’t like being cooped up here, and you – we – needed the talk, as emotionally exhausting as that shit is.” You hesitate, were you reading things wrong again? “Do you not feel better?”

“I guess. A little bit.” She unravels the golden band from around her wrist and stares down at it, before quickly threading it through the red and orange on her left ring finger. “It’s kinda strange! Like something sharp just snapped and fell off. It hurts, and Grandpa’s still gone, but...”

She hesitates. You let her have her moment.

“Thank you, Mr Strider.” It’s quiet. You can barely hear it from across the room.

“For what? I made the mess in the first place. You wouldn’t be worrying about him if I didn’t go and half-die on you.”

“...I’ll see Grandpa again, right? Like I saw in the clouds?”

You bite the inside of your lip, and nod.

“Even if– I’d at least know. I think– I think that’s enough.”

Even if as a corpse.

That’s fuckin’ morbid. “You’re too young to be thinking about that shit. Go get your robot. Shoo.”

She giggles when she goes – a little tired, a little strained, but it’s music to your ears.

You glance down at Pesterchum as you wait for her to return.

Grey. It’s all grey.

Luckily, you are quickly distracted by the fact that Jade soon comes bursting back through the doors, red-faced and breathing like she took the last flight of stairs with a flying leap. She seems surprised to see you where she left you, pushing the laptop off your lap and closing the lid to bury the grey feeling that haunts you.

“You didn’t move?”

“I promised, didn’t I?” You shrug. “Though moving to the floor isn’t going to kill me, and honestly it’ll probably be easier to spread things out.”

The bot, with it’s dull red eyes, becomes a sleeping beauty in the middle of the plush carpet as you slide down off the edge of the bed and stretch your aching knee out where you’ve plopped on the floor. Jade watches in fascination as you retread your footsteps from the night before, plugging that shit into the laptop and running all the diagnostics you can think of, and some you didn’t.

You already did this shit last night, before you got pied piper’d out of the tower by your own Heart and Jake English’s memory. It’s zen-like as you move through the motions, reconfirming your rush – but impeccably performed – job disabling the return-mechanism didn’t brick the whole thing. You don’t mind letting deja vu and the resulting disconnect hit as your hands tap-dance along the keys, moving through the well known patterns as you deftly navigate the digital landscape. It’s like a small window into another, familiar world.

Sitting on your floor with a screwdriver in one hand, your keyboard in the other, metal guts get cracked wide open. The nostalgia floods you, finally free of the specter of your bleeding Heart, you are able to indulge in your other love. Even if you haven’t actually broken into the bot’s chassis any further than uncovering the access port and plugging that baby in, it’s one step towards booting that shit up. You switch it into maintenance mode and hear Jade’s gasp as the eyes flicker into a bright red from its previous power-saving state.

It doesn’t move, of course, since you’re only bypassing the if ‘jade = sleep then power on’ condition, which would be frustrating as hell to work with if you had to troubleshoot anything.

“What are you doing??”

Of course Jade wants to know.

“Waking her up. What else? Unless you want to go take a nap, it’s the only way I’ll be able to access the program files.”

After a moment’s consideration, you decide that explanation, though adequate, isn’t enough to properly explain just what the fuck you are doing. So you decide to narrate it. It’s your move.

It’s nice to have an audience. A voice. She hangs on your every word, naturally, and you even shift to let her see the screen better, explaining what you’ve figured out from the proprietary software buried in the Skaianet-produced laptop.

You hadn’t expected to give a crash course on robotics when you suggested this distraction, but you really should have. It’s the hoverboard all over again, but you’re in your element this time.

Not that you weren’t in your element before, you know your designs inside and out. It’s the nostalgia talking. Two different muscles to stretch. Loose fractals settling into places where they shouldn’t be and yet frankly always belonged. The silt still unsettled from so many slingshots through your own goddamn brain.

You miss the instantaneous feedback of having it all at your fingertips. You’d know every inch of those programs, the same way you did Brobot, and Li’l Seb, and Squarewave.

Maybe not Sawtooth. That motherfucker was too mysterious, even for you, and you made the dude. In all fairness, you totally made him that way on purpose.

Harley’s code is remarkably structured and well commented. Simple, easy to follow. It’s child’s play. Where’s the challenge in unraveling the obfuscation inherent in your spaghetti code? That shit was functional art in that it was an asset in keeping your mainframe impenetrable when it came to cyber attacks from your friendly neighborhood fish hitler. You’re almost insulted at how easy this is.

It’s efficient. At least you don’t have to worry about screwing things up by shifting something slightly.

Not that you would, period.

Everything’s moving swimmingly, until it doesn’t, and you find yourself frowning.

“What’s wrong?” Jade asks, her voice causing the fractals to fall away. She anxiously shifts closer, leaning over your arm and squinting at the set of instructions you are carefully picking through, drawing on all your not-inconsiderable acumen to figure out the answer to that very question.

“I found the program that is intended to scan for a connection. I’ve brute-forced it. My working hypothesis is that a variable was shifted and I’d simply need to re-assign it, or that the scanner itself was busted. Everything else appears to be functioning normally. There’s…”

You hesitate, biting your tongue on the words with their honesty, and stifling the urge to keep going.

There’s nothing to find.

Jade looks up at you expectedly. Her eyes are still a little red. Tired. She’s nibbling on her lip, before blinking and the eyes slide off you and back to the laptop. Then to the robot. Harley’s hat sitting in her lap.

“I think it just needs calibration. I’m gonna see if there’s some other related variables to tweak.”

You don’t want to tell her there’s possibly another, far simpler reason she stopped dreaming.

You need to go back.

What the fuck are you going to do?

“It’s okay!” The sudden declaration is followed by a bright smile, tired eyes squinting up at you. “It’s okay, really. I’m not asleep. If I’m not dreaming then there isn’t any way she could find anything! HEY! If she’s awake now, and I’m awake now, does that mean she could work?? Even if I’m not dreaming???”

That would take a lot of work.

You can’t find it in yourself to say no, can you? Good thing you know a thing or a thousand about creating AI, right?

Jesus.

“Maybe. If it –” You swallow the word, “– she was taking direction from your dreams, and the controller is removed for whatever reason, we’d need to build everything from the ground up. But it’s possible.”

You aren’t sure how possible it is in less than a week, though. And you still have other work, too.

“Ooooh, can you teach me???”

You can handle it. “What about the rocket board?” You ask, amused.

She just smiles up at you, her glasses gleaming. “Oh I already have that figured out. I just need to build it!”

Of course she did. You aren’t even surprised.

A window in the corner of the screen flashes orange.

Your mood is still grey, but the red text that appears eases something inside of you.

Davepeta was right – he accepted.

turntechGodhead [TG]: sup
turntechGodhead [TG]: hows jungle life treating you
timeausTestified [TT]: Hey li’l bro.
timeausTestified [TT]: It’s been a long day.
turntechGodhead [TG]: tell me about it

You try not to think too hard about it as you type back, juggling the conversation with your brother and the variety of redundancy scans you’re trying to use to complete your mental picture before you crack the poor robotic girl’s head open and get a good look inside. Jade glances up from the schematics, noting the extra window flashing as you type.

“Oh! Who are you talking to??”

It feels wrong to introduce them like this. You wonder if you’re messing up some grand plan as you turn the laptop towards her and she leans in. Typing freezing as you stop mid-word when her weight settles against your arm. You half-expect some recognition to blossom in her eyes at the chumhandle, but her frown only widens when you answer with a short, “My li’l bro.”

“You have a brother??”

“His name is Dave. I reckon he’s about your age.” You know that he is.

“Tell Dave I said hi!! What’s he like? Does he like Manthro Chaps?? Oh, oh, oh, what about Squiddles???”

You don’t know. God, you don’t know. You have horrified visions of attempting to bullshit your way through this conversation, then the resulting shame of not knowing more than a couple of your own kid’s interests—or more specifically the potential differences in your Bro’s kid interests. You don’t think The Troll-busters, a spin-off of SkaiaNet’s Sponsored Squiddles and Friends existed in a non-fish-witch universe.

Fortune throws a bone right at your head though as she realizes exactly what story you’re telling. Her running commentary seeps into the conversation and it becomes almost a three-way chat between all of you.

turntechGodhead [TG]: teleportation dude are you fucking sure
timeausTestified [TT]: Yeah.
turntechGodhead [TG]: are you pulling my leg here bro
turntechGodhead [TG]: clutching my limb and tugging so much its getting fuckin numb
turntechGodhead [TG]: you arent telling me theres actually some sort of teleporting beastie out there waitin till its after your bed time and fetching you at the whim of some island princess

“I’m not a princess!” Jade exclaims, although the giggles betray the attempted consternation in her voice.

timeausTestified [TT]: Look, all I’m saying is it’s happened twice, and there’s no other explanation. Some things in this world are fucking bonkers.

“He has a point though, you gotta admit.” You’re thankful for the levity Dave’s personality throws into the entire situation. “That’s twice now I’ve been ‘fetched’ while you were specifically looking for me. I feel rather like a chewed up tennis ball – maybe you do actually have some sort of extrazoological dog lurking around.”

turntechGodhead [TG]: no shit dude fuck
turntechGodhead [TG]: just wait till john hears about this hell be the one to go nuts
turntechGodhead [TG]: completely flip his shit

“I always did want a dog.” She smiles, the emotional exhaustion of the earlier conflict clinging to her lips. “Do you think we could test that? Get it to show up again by going out there and ‘looking’ for you? Oh! What if we set up cameras and record it! Maybe we could actually see the thing! Like– like cryptid hunting!”

timeausTestified [TT]: Are you aware you’re getting me roped into some mad scheme to catch this creature, specifically as the bait.
timeausTestified [TT]: I hope you’re happy.

“Hey! It’s not a mad idea!”

turntechGodhead [TG]: tell her i demand pics as my price for giving her permission to use my bro as a sacrifice to this old god dog
turntechGodhead [TG]: but other than that hell yeah im happy

“DONE!” She beams up at you, the smile she shares with her extended family brightening up the room. Magnanimously she adds, “We’ll wait ‘til you feel better though! Don’t worry.”

“Jesus Christ,” You sigh. “I’m doomed.”

Jade’s giggles filling the silence doesn’t erase the remnants of your grey mood as you glance, once again, at your chumroll.

But it helps.

Notes:

It didn't take a month! Huzzah!

At least I don't think it did. I don't know anymore. The world has gone and tilted itself or somethin. I've already made some progress on the next chapter so there's that!

It might take me a bit but I promise I'll respond to your lovely comments <3 Honestly they gave me a huge boost of motivation last chapter and are probably the reason I'm about halfway through chapter 71 already haha.

Chapter 71: Dirk > Into the Unknown

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The weight on your shoulder and upper arm was enough to make precision typing difficult; the uneven clicking of keys crawl through the room like a smattering of tiny legs running and running and running. Your injury increases the frequency and probable chance of hitting the wrong keys and therefore invites the dreaded typo into the equation. It doesn’t help that your eyes are getting tired as shit.

Coding can be tedious even when you know what you’re doing. To someone like Jade who was already emotionally exhausted and only vaguely following you, she hadn’t stood a chance. Especially as the moon swung high and the ocean wind through the open window was cool and nippy. The girl’s hair spills around you, unkempt strands teased out of the mass on particularly strong gusts and threatening to tickle your nose for how thick and long it is.

What is with kids and falling asleep on you? Even with having lost plenty of muscle definition due to your stalled conditioning, you swear you’re more solid than particularly pillow-like. Maybe kids are like cats and can sleep damn well anywhere. First Dave and now Jade. You need to start charging a rental fee or something – they’re encroaching on your real-estate. The least they can do is sublet it.

Not that you’ve been particularly mindful of it—you can’t even remember when she fell asleep. Too focused on trampling all over your good sense and creating life from nothing. Again.

Because you both know how well that turned out.

Maybe Hal is a little close to the front of your thoughts as you let yourself wonder how you’ve gotten to this point, the glowing eyes of the robot’s surprisingly well sculpted face staring up at the ceiling and seeing nothing.

You promised yourself you wouldn’t do this again.

There’s no captchalogued brain being digitized and mapped this time. If anything, you’re approaching it like you would Squarewave or Sawtooth. The chances of you coughing up another splinter into Jade’s robot is astronomically low.

But you can’t help that lingering mood from clinging to your thoughts. Looking into those glowing red eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling and seeing the LEDs flickering in the depths of your own shades as you almost made the worst decision of your life.

You rub at your tired eyes, pushing your weak-ass hospital shades up in order to ineffectually ease the strain of staring at a screen for hours in a dark room—it doesn’t even have a blue light filter, that’s how old this shit is.

Even Dave, who was reveling in his new freedom and flexing his textual muscles, has gone silent, flicking from Available to Idle nearly an hour ago. You hope that means he’s met the same fate as the girl with her head half pillowed on your arm, although you don’t have a bony hip or side snuggle to offer him for his trouble.

Still, your grey mood refuses to lift.

You should check on Davepeta.

Unfortunately, your textual attempts at reaching them have essentially been as effective as yelling at the moon. You’re at their mercy right now, and normally that wouldn’t be a problem.

What if something’s wrong.

They were really broken up over…

You wish you’d thought about that.

You wish you’d thought about anything helpful at all.

You sigh and banish the useless square shades up into your hair. You blearily seek out the time in the corner of the screen, the lack of even a poor quality filter leading your eyes to water from the extended use.

5:32 am. The sun is definitely back up in Texas. Dave’s probably still passed the fuck out.

Your half-numb arm bursts into pins and needles as you wiggle it free from the weight trapping it, Jade letting out a sleepy mumble as the movement causes her head to loll. She wraps her arms tighter against the worn explorer’s helmet she’s currently snuggling like it’s a particularly uncomfortable plush toy.

“You’re ridiculous,” You sigh. You should have insisted on sending her to bed when she first trapped you in pillow-land. It would be downright illegal to interrupt a perfectly decent sleep cycle like that.

Just pick her up and move her. This isn’t any different from when Dave does it.

Yeah, well, you failed at that the first time too, remember?

You’ve had more practice now. What’s the problem? It’s not like she’ll break if you touch her.

You have to do it anyway, because you feel the urge to get up and she’s kind of stopping you from that. Reluctantly you save your work, having caught far too many syntax errors for your liking. Clearly your head isn’t in the game right now. At least you’re recognizing the signs this time. It doesn’t help that the previous sleepless night—your reckless behavior—is weighing down on you. Even if you—feel off there’s only so much you can do without a good ol’ proper defrag.

You’re worried about Davepeta.

You still don’t know where to find Jake.

You need to go the fuck to sleep.

You need to do a lot of things; first things first is unplugging the primordial-era USB data cable from the laptop, watching as the saturated red of the bot’s eyes fade back down to a duller standby ruby. The laptop then slides into your sylladex, neatly packed away.

One thing left.

“C’mon. I’m not just leavin’ ya on the floor.”

It’s something of an ordeal to slide out from under Jade without waking her, but you manage it. Practice, you suppose, from well over a month of on again, off again Dave-shaped burrs clinging to your side—though Jade picked your right instead of Dave’s preferred space on your left so you have to adjust on the fly.

Regardless of the methods, you end up free, and your knee doesn’t even buckle—although it does hurt like a bitch, but you can handle that. As long as it obeys you’re cool. You carefully lever the sleeping girl into your arms, then push yourself to your wobbly feet.

Maybe she plops more than settles into the sun-and-cloud covered comforter, but Jade’s too far gone into dream—not-so-dreamland she doesn’t even notice you being the responsible gentleman and giving her the bed.

Good. At least one of you deserves some fuckin’ sleep. You aren’t counting on it, yourself.

The dream-bot remains where it is on the floor.

You try to get comfortable, wedged once again into the window nook. The sea breeze, just a tease from the floor, splashes right up against your face. Your brain fills in the too-distant waves and the non-existent gulls. From your vantage point on the top of this fuckin’ mountain, you might as well be a million miles away. You push the window open further, filling your lungs. Imagining the salt on your tongue.

If you lean too far, you could fall clean out. Fall and fall and fall, plummet straight down the cliff. You haven’t completely fixed your ‘board yet. You won’t be able to catch yourself if you tip.

You don’t, of course, it’s just a thought, slipping through the utter mess of shit that is your brain.

Fuck.

You knock your head back against the window frame. An idea percolating.

You know better than to act on it, right?

That almost tickles a snort out of you. Of course you start questioning your sanity after that god-awful reckless stunt you pulled this time twenty-four hours ago.

Jade’s quiet snores falter. There’s a rustle of fabric. She shifts uneasily, a faint hitch of breath that causes you to peer towards the lump on the bed.

You might be overreacting, but you can’t help it when you’ve trained yourself to listen for the sounds of an oncoming nightmare.

Cal’s presence in your sylladex is a familiar yet distant one. You’ve largely shoved him aside since he can’t do any more to you than prowl at the edge of your mind, scratching in futility at the boundaries you have erected. Not unless you take that first step and leave that sanctuary willingly.

But that doesn’t mean his malaise isn’t capable of effecting someone else.

For all you know she’s dreaming about being chased by robot unicorns shooting rainbows out of their asses, not dragons or puppets or anything to do with your self-centric world view.

...Nevertheless, there is merit in being cautious when dealing with unknown, malicious entities. Some space may be prudent.

This is your room. She gave it to you. But you shouldn’t be here while she’s so vulnerable, even if she’s the one who fell asleep on you.

You can stand, even if it makes you grind your teeth. You can walk.

You slide off the window seating, tugging the window shut as an afterthought, before limping your way past the powered down chassis.

Across the guest room.

Through the hall.

The giant stuffed worm looks down on you with an unreadable expression as it guards the stairs, and you reassure it (sarcastically) that you don’t plan to go snooping.

Not yet anyway.

It takes you longer than you want to admit, fighting the urge to throw caution to the wind and flash-step. That was what pushed you over the edge last time and contrary to your own beliefs you do learn from shit. Sometimes. You force yourself through it, one hand on the fake wall that’s clearly intentionally paved with rough stone to fit with the atmosphere, and make it to the only other room on this floor that you’d feel comfortable camping out in for the night. You aren’t an idiot, even if the jury is deadlocked on that particular charge, you wouldn’t be able to make it out of the house.

There’s next to no way you’ll make it to the ruins in your condition. Rocket Board un-flyable, and with the dull pain in your knee flaring into phantom spikes as you remember the torture that was the walk across the island, you know you won’t even make it down the mountain.

The foyer is lit but empty, the fake fire dancing merrily amidst the perfume of simulated pipe smoke makes you want to hold your breath. Obviously, you keep breathing, as it’s a function to live. It’s just a fuckin’ smell. There’s no actual smoke coiling its way into your lungs, you’re fine.

It makes you think of Dan. Of standing with him on the balcony, of smoke clinging to the jacket as it warmed your shoulders. You still have his jacket at home—it somehow snuck its way into your luggage. It’s not like you needed it in Houston, but Dan hadn’t seemed surprised when you apologetically offered to mail it back and then told you to keep it for next time.

Goddamned Jake Harley. You wonder how much money he spent replicating the exact brand’s aroma without using tobacco and then making the thing self sustaining for it to last this long without refills.

It’s ridiculous. He’s ridiculous.

You still don’t know what happened with him.

Jesus Christ your brain needs to be getting to shutting the fuck up already. You can’t go back to The Medium on foot. You can’t reach your gameself with Lil’Cal being an asshole and cockblocking you, and even if you could, you already know item number one on the to-do list is not chasing down Harley’s wrinkly ass.

The laptop settles on the fancy couch beside you as you sit down.

DJ’s name is still grey.

Disgruntled, you sink into yourself the same way you physically sink into the garish, overstuffed cushion. You hold the image of the view from the window in your mind, the moon hanging over the dark ocean miles and miles beneath you, stretching out to where it becomes indistinguishable from the horizon. The sealed cracks in your mind gleam where there was once a comforting glow. The moon becomes a star, pink and familiar—the ugly mess of fractals that makes up your Self pushes up and reaches out as if to grasp it, Jade on your shoulders, grasping ineffectively for the body beyond her reach. It burns. Close enough to sense, but out of reach because of the puppet sitting in your sylladex.

You’d be able to reach it. You know you would, if Cal didn’t insist on trying to fucking swallow you. Wrapping his nebulous abyss of a self around your bubble like he could still claim you by proxy.

It’s disgusting.

If you could just…

Push.

Reach far enough to.

Open your eyes.

Goddamn sparks jump from mental fingers as you run straight into your own boundaries, a gold-toothed grin and poison green pressing up against the glass. Daring you to take that step. To stretch. To cross universes. To make yourself vulnerable for those claws, waiting to dig in anew. Click on the phishing link, Dirk.

God, it’s so tempting, feeling the pulse of your own heart in the distance.

Red eyes, red cheeks, green flames—you blink and it’s replaced with blue glass and painted clay, reflected light and deep shadows of the otherwise dark room. Li’l Cal flops his way out of your sylladex, settling himself primly across from you. You don’t feel a release of pressure like you had before. He isn’t just a physical presence. You know that now. Even with your cleaning house.

You haven’t been able to sever everything. You don’t think you can.

You imagine you can see them: the red threads, fraying, but still connected, stretching between the two of you. Gleaming in the light of the fake fire. Anger. Simmering. Ready to boil over.

You’re too tired for this.

“You need to let me go.” The statement hangs in the empty air. You stand at the edge of the red-pink fractal barrier, your shadow staring stone-faced at the sea of fire beyond it, trapped behind glassy blue eyes and a smile that laughs at you.

Your Cal wouldn’t laugh at you.

Your Cal wouldn’t be trying to goad you into snapping.

Your Cal was a bro.

Your Cal was empty.

This little shit is not.

You reach your hand through the barrier. The fire burns. Mental fingers wrap around the connections and you tug.

“Frankly, I’m not sure what you find so damn funny all the time.”

You aren’t a god here. Whatever rudimentary abilities you have in this world exist because, regardless of body, your soul has seen some shit.

Physical hands reach out to gently touch the blue tee, right in the center below the gold chain. When fingers pull away, the fire follows, a green snake-like dragon made of flames, coiling around your digits. Teeth bared wide in a manic grin, scraps of red, the threads that still bind you, hanging from it’s jowls. A piece of you, long since devoured.

A forgotten, unappreciated sacrifice.

You say, “Is that how you get your giggles? Harassing little kids and digging your tiny mitten hands in everything?”

SO QUICK. TO BLAME.

The snake sinks its green and gold fang into your thumb. You don’t feel it—it isn’t real. A manifestation of the power that still leaks through your meatsuit that allows your feeble brain to acknowledge what your soul knows. So tiny and unthreatening like this, but you’ve seen the true size of that ball of fire, had your soul caught in those same tiny jaws, a wound that left you vulnerable for months, letting that little shit seep through and press as if you were pliable clay beneath firm claws.

You shake your head at its posturing. “You know what? I don’t even care. I really, really don’t anymore.”

You’re fucking exhausted. Months upon months of unnatural sleep, cowering in the depths of your nebulous sanctuary, watching and being able to do nothing as Dave and Davepeta are repeatedly beaten down for no reason other than a bored puppet trying to get a rise out of you. If you asked, there would probably be a reason. Dave was too weak. You were failing in your duty. Cal was doing what you would not. Training him. Attempting to hone the dull blade to the point where it fucking breaks. Pushing you to be who you should be to fulfill some plan that is beyond your ken.

Despite that, even with those reasons, they would be little more than a thinly veiled excuse. Nothing more than a reason to be a bully. You can see where your splinterself got it, but you have to be fair, this behavior was learned from somewhere. Cal saw strength in you and sought to replicate it.

An ouroboros devouring its own tail. An endless cycle of terrible decisions.

Laughter echoes through the room. Empty. Silent save for the crackle of the fake fire. But the HAH HAH HEE HEE HOO HOO isn’t something you hear so much as feel. It vibrates through you, threatening to shake the increasingly precarious configuration that is yourself to pieces.

You miss the time when you would have described it as honed steel and sharp edges, melded together from the heat and pressure of your experiences. The last several days—weeks—months—have proven you’re nothing more than a million jagged slivers that fall the fuck apart when you aren’t careful.

It’s hilarious to imagine that the thing to break you was running smack fucking dab into yourself.

A Self you need to reach again.

“Look, Li’l Cal, or, fuck, whatever you are—I’m done, alright? The cards are on the fuckin’ table and I’m done pussyfooting around. You’ve been blocking me from the Medium for goddamn months, and I have shit to do.”

Red lightning sparks from your hand as the snake tries to gnaw, causing it to hiss silently and rear back. Wings of flame spreading wide. A winged serpent, where have you heard that before?

Why the fuck are you even doing this?

“You need to back off dude.” He’s not going to listen to you. You know that. “What do you even want?”

Tongues of flame flicker out of a tooth filled maw.

VICTORY. AT ALL COSTS.

Of course.

YOU. PUTTY IN MY HANDS.

THE PROPER. END TO THIS STORY.

The jaws yawn wide as he dissolves into haunting laughter.

THE CARNIVAL. COMES.

“Ask for the moon, why don’t you? Jesus Christ. I’m not sure why I expected anything less. You aren’t really one to settle, are you?” The snake is holding your usual hand hostage, but the other one ends up running through your hair as you knock your head back to stare up at the high ceiling, filled with shadows and flickering firelight against the rafters, reflecting on the antlers and fangs and eyes of mounted hunting trophies. “Just think about one thing, Cal. What happens to you if I kick it?”

Li’l Cal’s frozen grin doesn’t change, but the dragon on your hand does, burning hotter, a phantom heat against your skin, a soundless hiss or growl or whatever.

There are no words, not even the poison green ones that seep into your awareness, but you know the answer. You’ve always known the answer. Even without the connection afforded by the red threads shimmering around your fingers and the residual magic running through the veins of this stolen meatsack you’ve gotten the message loud and clear.

Soft.

Dull.

Useless without a guiding hand.

Nothing more than clay to mold. A dummy to make speak. A marionette to dance on his strings, buried into your psyche since childhood.

Except you aren’t that Dirk, and that history had gone up in ash when you first sank to the kitchen floor in a body that was not your own. Junk data, shoved into a dead dreamself and swept up and away. Or at the very least boxed up and filed away so deep you don’t know if you could ever find it again. That’s if it hasn’t gotten washed out in the chronic floods.

The snake of fire abandons your thumb and winds itself up your arm, trailing onto your shoulder. It grows longer, longer, leaving smoldering trails along your shirt. Wrapping itself around your neck, pink sparking as it tries to constrict.

YOU WILL DIE. AT THE PROPER TIME. NOT BEFORE.

“I hate to break it to you, but it ain’t gonna be in a blaze of glory against a space warping dog. That shark got jumped three acts ago. Whatever you have for a roadmap ain’t gonna cut it from here, you saw the proof of that today.” You close your eyes. Too tired to care as he pushes up against your boundaries, you don’t struggle. “Either you let me do shit my way, or you keep going down the road you’re on and you’ll end up with a set of dolls so broken there’ll be no one left to play with as the world ends. Those are your choices.”

PRINCES. EXIST. TO BREAK.

“And I’m already broken, so fuck off.” Sometimes it feels like there’s two of you, one settled right over top the other, like one of those old-fashioned 3D glasses, blue and red, except you wouldn’t be caught dead identifying with blue. That ain’t your color at all. Offset just enough to get that echo in your head. “Your plan will not work without serious revisions and an oversight committee. But go on, continue forward with out of date expectations and incomplete objectives. It’s not only my funeral anymore.”

Behind the dubious protection of your shades, you glance down, finding that green fire licking at your jaw. Red eyes boring into you. Threads of connection—of yourself—trailing from its maw, shimmering from where it’s wrapped around a golden tooth. You can’t see it with the winged serpent—a bonafide ouroboros—all up in your grill, but you know those threads wind their way around your hand and eventually into your heart.

You look past the tongues of translucent energy, locking eyes with the glassy stare glimmering in the contrast from the fire.

YOU. ARE HIM. THE FAKE.

Fake. Yeah.

You think you get a taste of what Hal felt like, once upon a time.

“I’m the one that’s left. Deal with it.” The warmth in your hand fades as the last of your energy seeps away, magic seeping from your hands. The visual manifestation of the literal monkey on your back vanishing to leave nothing more than a phantom burn around your neck, like someone grabbed you by the back of your shirt and tugged too hard. The cool leather of your glove sticks to your palm as you check the skin, rubbing at your throat, knowing there’ll be nothing for your searching fingers to find.

“I mean it bro,” Even without tugging on that connection, you can still feel him prowling along your edges, “I’m done. You want me angry? It ain’t happening. If you really want that victory you’ll need to let me play.”

He doesn’t say anything. Not that you would hear it if he did. He’s oddly distant. Thoughtful. The puppet’s malaise pulls back within itself, six feet away on the couch across from you. There isn’t even a pressure against your edges. Not a single scratch at the door. Only the puppet’s glassy stare into nothing.

You close your eyes and force yourself to stretch out on the long couch, pillowing your head with your arm. You regularly sleep on a couch, and this one with a fuckton more comfortable than your worn out futon. It’s so comfortable it’s almost alien.

You let the outside world fade completely. A shadow has its back to you, ringed in the cast off from crackling lightning. Right on the edge of the glowing red-pink fractal barrier.

Beyond the glass is a sea of fire. Burnt feathers.

Do you want to do this?

You step through that shadow of yourself and step through the glass as if it’s nothing.

The world shifts and you’re falling into familiar red cracks. You almost missed them, the comforting artefact seared into the periphery of your vision.

They flare as you plunge into the depths of your Heart.

And land on the other side.

Blue shadows flicker against your edges, forming a protective film against the yawning void beyond as you make your way along the frayed thread of connection as it stretches between instances. Cal is a heat at your back, a hot, moist breath on your neck as the maw stretches wide and hovering, ready to snap down and swallow you whole. Gold glints in your periphery—the single gold tooth. Longer than you are tall.

Don’t look back.

He’ll take it as weakness if you look back.

You grit your non-existent jaw, fortify yourself, and reach for the star, burning on the other side of the void between worlds.

The teeth crash down.

Blue shadows retreat. Red lighting sparks.

Fuck this, you're exhausted.

With a gasp, you open your eyes to a pitch black sky. Tall and foreboding spires rising around the alley surrounding you like spindly fingers reaching for the heavens.

Breathing feels like you’re sucking in Derse’s atmosphere through a straw, only the atmosphere isn’t actually air, it’s the thick as fuck and probably semi-poisonous levels of soup you remember from your land of stank and tombs. Attempting, and failing, to push it past the weight clinging to your chest isn’t even a shock. You imagine you look down and see translucent coils of fire hanging around your neck like some macabre necklace. Ruby red cheeks and burning eyes and a heat that won’t let you go.

There’s nothing there, of course, your fingers digging in to the comfy as fuck maroon fabric of your god-tier jammies, feeling your heart pulse beneath your dainty gloved fist. Even if Cal wanted to hitch a ride in your consciousness, he couldn’t. Didn’t.

You made it.

The world feels too big. You feel too small. Your sleeping body is so far distant, barely a glimmer in comparison to this one. So faint you fucking laugh as you wonder if you could make it back on your own at all. The path is frayed but it’s there, guarded by a winged beast.

You’d think it was all in your head, if it weren’t for the pink sparks jumping from your exposed skin, the weight of a planet spanning dragon sprawled possessively along the edge of your boundaries. As close as he can get without being able to wriggle though.

He’s not your problem right now.

You push yourself up, noting the disappearing scraps of cloth around the far edge of the alley way. Movement. The cloth covering the entryway shivering with the speed of someone’s retreat.

Fuck it, you’ve been lying here long enough, your unconcious body will certainly be in the gossip rags on the morrow. Maybe you’ll spawn a new legend. The drunken prince, found snoozing in an alley after some sick bender.

You’re lucky it’s too soon for assassinations. It’s not like Caliborn’s still around to sic Jack and his goonies on you.

You only have one care right now, and it’s the grey name hovering in the corner of your shades as you ineffectually try to shoot off another message.

You close your eyes and rise into the air, green slippers lifting off the cobblestone pavement, and you look with your Heart.

Maybe you can’t trace their light across time and space the way Davepeta had—you’re hella rusty, opening up your Heart like this after it’s been shut tight as a centuries’ old jar of pickles since Cal stuck his nose in your goddamn business—but their warmth is hard to miss. Fleece and feathers.

It helps that they haven’t gone very far, much to your surprise. You expected to have to steal Jane’s metaphorical slueth attire and track the fuck out of them. You discard your mental magnifier and shoot straight up. Up and up and up. The moon looms far above you, the chain tethering it to the planet is anchored not terribly far from Transportalizer Square. But you aren’t going that far.

No matter how high the Carapace build they never reach the moon. But they sure get pretty damn high. This high up you can see for fucking miles, see the curve of the planet despite the spires and towers and archways upon parapets and steeples dotting the horizon and disguising it poorly. Ornate as hell for such simple looking dudes. This means a lot of small holes and nooks to hide in.

You find Davepeta huddled on the edge of one such space on the edge of a nook. Perched in an odd crouch, wings folded and at rest, clawed hands curled into fists and pressing into their eyes. Shades pushed up into their hair, askew, half hanging off one horn.

Immediately, you know something’s wrong. A chill runs through you and you stop to hover, icy claws pressing into the muscle of your heart with each indecisive beat.

You don’t say anything because you haven’t managed to pick the words and shove them through the frog getting cozy in your esophagus. But it’d be wasted if you had them anyway, because their head shoots up the moment you get within speaking distance. Of course they knew you were coming. They listen. They listen and they know your song as easily as you found them.

What bothers you is their eyes: the bright, brilliant red is dull and glassy. Shading towards a muddy brown and unable to focus at all. Surrounded by a bright, radioactive green sclera

You let out a hissed breath.

The, “I’ve been fucking worried about you, dude,” gets caught in your throat, but the quiet, “Are you okay?” makes it through the amphibian quality assurance agent. They duck their head and pull back into their makeshift roost, eyes squeezing shut, their gloved, taloned hands pushing up into their hair and digging in.

A strangled croaking sound drags itself kicking and screaming from a mangled throat.

You’re at their side almost instantly.

Li’l Cal tightens his metaphysical grip on you possessively, but you ignore the fuck out of him other than the briefest of annoyed acknowledgements. He isn’t even actually here, just riding piggyback.

Davepeta doesn’t pull away like you were worrying, instead they let you into their bubble without much coaxing, pressing up into the space at your side before you can even try and pull them into a hug.

“Christ I—Davepeta? Are you hurt? I—worried—” The words get jumbled up as you lose them at a sudden harsh caw from above. “It’s okay, I swear, whatever the fuck this is, you’re okay.”

Davepeta curls up tighter.

That didn’t come from them.

Another caw. And then another. Echoing in the space between the spikes that make up the decorative protrusions on the roof of the spire. Your partner sparks pink in your arms.

The caws almost sound like words.

Leave.

Leave.

Leave.

Echoing around you. Vibrating through you. Davepeta flinches at each one. You hold them tight and scan the area the best you can, searching for a source, for something to fight off.

Shadows flicker against the black sky. Green-ringed brown eyes glare down at you from above. Soundless feathers rustling, sparking pink in response to Davepeta’s own.

Leave.

Leave.

Leave.

Normally you would reach for your sword, broken as it is, to fight off the encroaching threat, but you don’t. It isn’t a threat. Each one of those translucent crows reflect the light of your partner, shot through with the unknown. A spider’s web of black leading away from hastily gouged out holes, shimmering in the oppressive darkness of Derse, lit from within by a power that doesn’t belong.

You run your hands through their hair quietly, echoing the motion that always brought you comfort even if you can’t completely replicate it with your blunt human nails, thinking of the radioactive shade warping your partner’s troll sclera, like some crappy blending layer slapped on top.

It isn’t you, is it? You ask the disapproving presence lurking in the background, vibrating with barely contained jealousy and rage to see you so soft. You don’t get an answer, but you don’t expect one knowing your thoughts don’t reach outside your head, and knowing the answer all the same. He isn’t to blame for everything, as easy as it would be to pin it on the doll.

SO QUICK. TO ASSUME.

Green lightning. The product of a long dead sun. While the entity haunting your childhood friend is the immediate assumption, you are no stranger to being flung across space on the back of green lightning and coming out the other side more than a little screwed up. You were able to clean up your shit, even if you’re uncomfortably aware of how less stable the construct of yourself is than you once believed it to be, but clearly this is hitting Davepeta much differently if they’ve fragmented this badly, trying to literally shove a piece of themself out. The crow, for some reason. Why the fuck would Davepeta suddenly be rejecting the crow when they said themself that it’s litterally the most chill piece of them?

You’re doing that thing again, you realize, where you have tugged shit free just enough to see it. Because you have to see it. You have to figure it out. You have to help.

The web of trails swirl around you as the crows circle overhead, the tapestry of Davepeta’s identity encapsulating everything they are cupped gently in your hands and you’re suddenly terrified you’ll drop and break it. Rip it. Tear it. Snarl it. Shred it to pieces. You’re a Prince—even worse, you’re you. You are good at ruining the best things in your life.

But you’ve done this before.

They trust you.

You don’t know how you know it, but you do, feeling the certainty threatening to rattle you loose. You haven’t seen it, not like this, not since you burned the Sprite out of them. When they put their life in your hands.

When you killed them as they lay dying, finishing the job, given the option between watching them suffocate in their own blood and taking care of it yourself.

But that was before you loved them back.

That was before—

You can’t—

Fuck it Dirk you don’t need to. This isn’t the Sprite that was nestled into every bit of themself. This is a web of brown, clinging to their brilliance, sinking into the bits of crow that remain, spreading, blending into the rest of their precarious balance. Davepeta has already isolated the worst of the intrusion, channeling it into the fragments finally settling into an unnerving flock around you. The beginning of a horror movie, green and brown eyes glinting in the darkness. Sparks jumping from their wings.

Davepeta is a Knight. They preserve. Protect.

Your job is to destroy.

You pluck a string of that web with mental hands even as you whisper quiet, half-formed reassurances to the catbirdtrollkid who clings tighter, talons piercing your god-tier clothing and digging in to the side of your torso, wings twitching violently as all the crows take flight in flurry of translucent feathers screaming LEAVE at you.

Blood rolls down your side, the liquid an eerie dribble down your skin. Seeping into the fabric to never be seen again.

You dig your mental fingers back, locking the largest concentration of that foreign influence in your sights—and only that. You know them intrinstically. You refuse to hurt them—and you burn it all out.

A strangled hiss of air and warped sound is torn from their throat as they jerk abruptly, wings flaring and sparking with red lightning. Pink sparks. Your fault this time. Yours.

They go limp. Silence falls.

A weight lands on your shoulder, on your arm, on your head. You force yourself to look away from Davepeta, to meet the eyes of the crows peering beadily at you.

You almost collapse in relief when you meet familiar red-on-yellow.

It ruffles its feathers and fades away. One by one they all do, returning to where they belong, until it’s only you and Davepeta, alone on a rooftop in a universe on pause.

Even Cal is blessedly, silently thoughtful as you gently brush your trembling fingers through their hair. You wait for their dawn.

Davepeta finally wakes some time later. Not late enough that you’d be worried about Jade looking for you, but definitely more than enough time for an exhausted Knight to recover their strength from a deep snooze. The stirring and faint mrr-ing ends up pulling you out of your thoughts, wandering as they are, flitting through the files stored on your shades and overall trying to keep yourself from freaking out by focusing on organizing something.

“Welcome back,” Is the first thing you say, the second ‘are you okay?’ going unsaid yet clinging to your lips.

They move slowly and deliberately, disengaging their blood-stained talons from your aching side. They move to raise their head only to let out a silent groan, pushing their face back into the folds of your comfy god-tier cape and shirt combo.

You’re just glad they don’t have huge, sharp horns like some of the other trolls, short and softly rounded, so it’s only a little uncomfortable when they headbutt you in the side. “You feelin’ better after that catnap?”

They swat at you blindly, although this time they are aware enough to curl their talons into their palm and knock a knuckle against your chest. It makes you smile as the hand stays there for a moment, as if they don’t know what else to do with it, before flopping back down and getting pulled into the mass of feathers sagging in your lap. You return to your head scratching, an activity you admit to have let slack during the latter part of the nap, and you like to imagine they’d be purring for you if they could. As it is, you’ll settle for the deep sigh that shifts through their exhausted limbs, no longer pained.

They aren’t turtling completely. Or if they are hiding, you’re at least being allowed inside this time.

Then, as if realization is finally managing to filter through the dregs of exhaustion that likely comes after such an overblown mental procedure, their head jerks up, knocking into your arm. Rolling, blinking, red-on-yellow stares at you through messy white bangs.

Thank the stars—you don’t know if you can explain just how relieved you are to see their eyes. Sure, the crow had gone back to normal before ceasing to exist, but it’s one thing to assume that meant all was well and another to get confirmation.

You retrieve your arm as best you can to give them space but they don’t put distance between you two at all, although the sprawling mess of limbs and feathers is eventually accounted for and pulled back into the usual resting position at their back, if not tightened up fully. You can already anticipate the question they wanna ask.

“Yeah, it is me. In the god-bod. When you didn’t come online I decided to go looking for you. I was worried—” You bite down on the inside of your lip. You taste blood. It won’t last. “Are you ready to talk about it?”

Their shoulders hunch and they look like they want to bury their face in their hands. But then they notice their claws and the rust covered stains where the blood had leaked from your flesh and missed the absorbent properties of your god-tier cloth. You can see the way their eyes flick rapidly from their sharp as fuck talons to the rips in your shirt. They pull back in alarm.

“It’s already healed, I promise.” Christ no, not again. “Don’t you dare worry about that, it’s not important, you were in so much distress at the moment that distress broke fire codes for occupancy, and grabbed for the first thing you could. Totally normal and not worth being concerned over, period. The important question is: are you okay?”

They’re staring at their hands. At the flaking dried blood staring those long misshapen claws. They start to shake. You move to grab them, and then with a jerking motion a familiar device falls out of a pocket dimension within a pocket dimension. The world around you dims as the screen on your shades activates, the window in the corner popping over.

dataJammer [DJ] begins pestering timeausTestified [TT]

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im fine
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im mother furreaking fine
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< feline even
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< thats a lie
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i f33l like much more like a week old litterbox in dire n33d of a refresher

“Well, we can see if we can scoop some of the shit out and make it a bit less foul,” You offer an attempt at humour. Which works, as you can see the gleam of fangs better in the reflected light from the screen as human-esque grey lips pull back in a small widening of a smile. “At least it should be easy to find. I had to burn you out, so anything left over is probably smouldering.”

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< is that why I f33l like i got betw33n equius and his punching bags
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< beclaws you zapped me again
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i n33d a personal lightning rod if this is gonna k33p happawnin
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im goin out on a perch here to say it wasnt an accident

“Don’t you remember?” You ask hesitantly, “I only just got here. You were doing pretty bad. I hadn’t heard from you in hours. Did it—”

A beat. You cut off your own words and watch as their whole body stiffens, a ripple against the dark wall, the blue light cast off from the phone chilling their face, reflecting in their red-on-yellow eyes. The typing starts, then freezes, then slowly begins again.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< it wanted me to leave
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< just leave
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and i did and it wasnt bad at furst
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but it kept sticking gotta leave gotta go but where would i even go???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< it didnt care a whisper turned into a hiss into a growl into a yowl and it wouldnt stop screaming at me
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< just leave leave leave gotta go gotta leave but i couldnt leave because i n33ded to find you but it just kept sticking and birdbrain just went caw caw motherflocker and started goin apeshit
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< it just kept
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< circling
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< around and around
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< echoing
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and echoing
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and echoing
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and echoing

You close your fingers around their hands. Holding them, stopping them. “It’s okay now. I got rid of it. I promise.”

The quiet, breathless wheeze of distress breaks your heart.

“It’s okay,” You reiterate, because what else can you do? “You're okay. The dog, cat, whatever the fuck it was, isn’t here, and I burned out the rest that was clinging to you. I didn’t even know the little shit had fucking powers like that, Christ, that was a full blown mental attack I had to clean up. Gcat was an annoying troll of a bastard but he never pulled this shit before. I had assumed the Batterwitch suborned Jade, but if this is what happened who the hell knows it might have been the fucking cat—no wonder the spider girl had some weirdly specific plan to put him out of the picture.”

They flinch, and twitch their fingers abruptly as they try to type in your grip, causing you to let go as if you’ve been burned. You wanted to stop the spiral there, knowing how it feels with the echoing in your head, not actually silence them. Their text, their phone, is their voice.

It blinks into the corner of your shades.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the cat dog thing had horns bro
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< god
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< why didnt i notice befur
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its so flocking obvious
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< of course she would
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< their relationship was a furreakin mess but she was definitely something for him and likely thought it was giving him another chance to be useful
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< get the god cat out of the battle and get the pawers under control by giving them to someone she can control
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and now she’s got tavros furreakin nitram tangled up in a beast that doesnt know its anything more than a smart dog
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< what did vriska *do*

You don’t have an answer for that. All you can do is hold them while they shake and your ineffective words fly away into silence.

Notes:

>:33c

I told ya'll they'd be fine.

Probably.

Thank you so much for reading and leaving your thoughts and kudos <3 I spent a while going back through and reading a bunch today and--honestly, ya'll are a big reason I got this far ;w; It really, truly, makes me happy to know this monster of a story means enough to ya'll to keep coming back.

Next chapter will be a Davepeta chapter B33<

Chapter 72: Davepeta > Through a Jaded Lens

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Sitting at the top of the spire looking down on twinkling blue lights in purple structures and empty streets, Dirk stays with you a lot longer than you expected. Time might as well not exist here, when there’s no sun in the sky to mark the passing of days. Only a moon that always stays at the same spot on the horizon because it’s locked into a geosynchronous orbit by means of a giant furreaking chain.

Dave’s presence is a distant hum, one you can’t ignore, but it’s fine. You bury your head in the unique cadence of his brother and your moirail. It doesn’t entirely block out the constant echoing caw of Leave Leave Leave that still rings through your thoughts when you let them get too quiet, but that’s fine. It’s fine because your br– Dirk is doing a damn good job of dragging those human nubby nails of his through your hair.

He’s talking. Luckily, it’s the teenaged version of him at the forefront, the Texan drawl a mere echo in your own memories, and that’s all being monopolized by the distressed bird right about now anyway. Feathers fluffed and alert, even now that the immediate danger has passed.

You don’t so much as talk about it – it’s all Dirk, and while you know that monologuing without someone to play off of makes him hells of uncomfortable, you haven’t reached for your phone.

Maybe it’s not the monologuing, maybe it’s the fact that it’s you being silent that unnerves him, even if that silence comes in the form of a lack of clicking keys. But you can’t bring yourself to do much of anything except listen.

He tells you a little about Jade, about Dave. About the fact that they’re already planning mad ambitious adventures despite meeting literal hours ago.

It sounds familiar. It sounds like you chatting in a dark, dim, debatably dreamy bedroom late into the night, talking about all the things you’d do together when you arrive on her island. When she’d meet you in Houston.

It was all talk though. You know now that Jade never believed a word of it, but you think she appreciated it anyway. You wonder what Bro would have done if you’d ever asked to visit Jade for Christmas.

On the battleship, she’d tried to do that for you. Tried to paint you a picture of the future, a picture of words and friends and a bright smile, full of hope.

Hope that did little to pierce the haze of melancholy that lay heavy over that doomed Dave.

You’d been thinking about Bro then. About you. About what it meant to be doomed. To be a sprite. To be the Other Dave. To be the one who failed.

You’re thinking about another now. Thinking about those familiar horns, and a sharp but hesitant smile.

Also doomed.

You shiver as the memory of those mental fangs dig right back into your feathered throat and send the bird screeching.

“Do you want to talk about him?” Dirk had asked after you dropped your horrified realization. So horrified, you just shook your head against the soft fabric covering his side, and decided to distract yourself picking through the magenta folds, searching for the gashes you tore only to find nothing, God-tier PJs already mended, but you couldn’t stop thinking–

You hadn’t known what happened to your Tavros, exactly – there were a billion Tavros’ in the bubbles (a billion yous a billion everyones) but if the dogcat had his horns and the Leaves were dripping in bronze blood, you can guess prototyping was involved.

Dead body parts prototyping; you were a head, after all. You remember that disconcerting moment of connection and physical weight as you were dragged out of your merry little pirate band army whatever and found yourself at a tea party.

You think Tavros died – something about Vriska, because of course it was about vwhiskers.

You weren’t particularly close to him. Not the way you watched and wanted to be with Karkitty. Or roleplayed with Tz. And definitely not comparable to your relationship with Equius. But you were friendly! You didn’t have to be BFFsies to have a little pit open up in your stomach when you think about what probably happened. The results of Vrwhisker’s attempt at a gift. Dragged into a lusus with a mission and nothing around him to remind him of who he was.

You really hope he was dead first.

Vriska wasn’t good at giving you choices and letting you refuse them.

Your wings twitch and your feathers puff and the bird tries to let out a warning caw from a throat that doesn’t work. It needs to chill the hell out.

You need to chill the hell out.

Dirk asks, “You okay?” for the nth time today.

No, just freaking out over a memory of a thought turning over and over. No big deal.

It turns into a hiss and you shake your head. You bury it into his side again.

Eventually, you know the morning turns into day and he has to leave. Maybe not leave: more accurately, he has to go back to sleep.

“Jade will be getting up soon,” You hear him mutter, dredging you up from a fitful doze and eliciting a questioning huff. Claws fumble for your phone and light sensitive eyes peer blurrily down at the numbers, timezone changed to match his when he first arrived on that island.

Close enough to noon.

You’re surprised Jade wasn’t up already. You remember her scolding you for keeping her up all night when she’d normally wake with the sun.

Then again Dirk is even more a night owl than you are.

You finally force the words out of your own head, the clicking of your keys translating into text on the inside of his shades.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< do you have to go

You asked the same thing yesterday, under different circumstances. It’s selfish. And you already wasted his whole night doing flo– furreaking nothing.

But he came back. Somehow, he made it back for you.

“Yeah. She’s already going to be after me for moving. I don’t even want to imagine how freaked out she’ll be if she can’t wake me up when she finds me in the foyer.”

You’ll give him that.

“It’ll be fine. I promise.” He brushes his thumb on your cheek, under your naked eye, the proximity causing you to blink, all fluttery luxurious lashes at him. Not that he can really see it in the dark.

It’s kind of nice having the shades pushed up into your hair. Being able to see in an environment that doesn’t hurt your eyes. The soft blue light from the city of spires surrounding you is oddly comforting. The meteor is fine, but this is comfortable.

I mostly just have a shit ton of coding to do. The little princess won’t let me out of the tower today, but we can talk while I’m working.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< purrincess??? really???

“Dave started it.” His defensive grumble has a lazy smile fighting the melancholic mood. Words haven’t been easy for you for hours, with the bird on high furreaking alert, but you find the keys tapping away beneath your talons.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< mew know
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< trapping you in the tower
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< sounds like somefang a dragon would do
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< TO a purrincess
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< methinks mew have your metafur backwards
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< your highness
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< sounds like somekittys getting attached B33c

You expect something snarky in return, but it’s a soft exhaled sigh that displaces your hair.

“You aren’t wrong, Christ, I never would have seen myself as collecting kids of all the fucking things.”

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i dont blame you
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< jade was
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< is
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< purrtty
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< grrrrrrrreat

“Okay tiger, that’s enough.” You grin up at the gleam of his shades in the shadows and then stick your tongue out with a mental ‘nyah’ accompanying it, earning the flick to your ear quite fairly. You’re surprised he knows that one. “You might not blame me, but I blame me. You try having a brain that sees a reasonable target and then overshoots the goddamn thing on purpose. Perfectionism is a petty bitch.”

His head tilts away from you, out into the blackness of the veil. He’s looking past the moon. Given the faint whispers of the debris cloud is in the opposite direction, that’s back towards the incipisphere. The incipisphere and Prospit.

“It isn’t weird, is it? To care so fucking much. She isn’t even my kid. I’m not responsible for her. Not the same way I am for Dave.”

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< nah
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< jades just like that
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< she wiggles her way into your heart and then falls asl33p there
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and then you can’t bear to move her because shes just so damn purrecious curled up like that
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< sharp as a tack too

“Tell me about it. I’m gonna cut myself on that edge if I ain’t careful.” The arm resting on your shoulder moves, the weight lifting. He’s running his fingers through his hair, ruffling the once shaped hair-do. “Well, should we go somewhere a bit less exposed for this shit before I pass the fuck out again?”

...Right. He’s leaving.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< why cant mew just dualbox like you did earlier
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< obviously you can reach
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< even a doze of distraction is bettern a complete conk

Dirk stills.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< how did you manage it anyway
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< whats diffurent from befur

The hesitation lasts a little too long. The shrug when it comes is intentionally casual as muscles move against your back. “Well for one, I dealt with Cal. But even with that it’s more than a hop, skip, and a jump to cross the fuckin’ universes. The pathways I cobbled together from my own shit and the junk-data aren’t as stable as they were using Dave’s memory as a crutch. It’s one or the other with this one.”

The mention of Cal sends you tensing automatically, and you think he notices because he speeds past it to the rest of the information. You nibble on your lip, careful to not let the sharp fang pierce the flexible membrane. In the end you decide not to ask. You don’t really want to think about Cal right now.

Although you are curious how the flock he got that bastard to shut up.

Oh hey, that particular pun isn’t making your brain skip a beat. You allow yourself to relax just a little.

Yeah, you’re just going to let him skate past the puppet. It’s better for the both of you. After all, you decided you were going to ignore the bastard when he wasn’t making Shorty’s life hell, didn’t you? If not for Dirk’s sake then–

The phantom smell of singed feathers makes you want to gag.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< well well welcome to the world of having a purroper dreamsmelf like all the rest of us alleycats
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you realize thats what you are now right
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< a bona fide derse dreamer cursed to unclawnsciousness whenever you have to pin your ears back and hit the real world
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< youre just ahead of the curve because you get to skip getting beaned in the head with a ball of yarn

You poke him hard in the arm with a talon.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< how does it f33l mr always awake

“Frustrating. I’m a fucking god. I’ve already gone through all this bullshit.” His fingers tangle with your hair. You want to let out a purr when you feel that pressure against your horn. “I managed just fine juggling my own dreamself. I bet it’s still got something to do with the hasty construction, not to mention the fact that I probably overload the fucking thing. Dreamselves aren’t built for the power I’m shoving through it. Davepeta, you are stalling.”

The smile fades from your lips and you look down at the dim light from your phone screen.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yeah i am
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< can we just
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< stay here
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< no ones gonna climb this furreakin spire to sneak up on mew while you get your beauty sl33p
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and if they do
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< your moirail will take care of it

“I wasn’t worried about that. I wanted to save you the indignity of carting my unconscious body around if you wanted to head home.”

Home.

The shadow of a dimly lit lab bubbles around you. Blood painting the walls, olive and purple and indigo.

...No. You don’t want to go home right now.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its feline B33c
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i rather like the view here
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its a nice change from the meteor

He’s still not convinced. You curl your talons into a paw and reach up, gently patting your knuckles against his jaw. You can’t do the shoosh, but you can do the pap. Pap away those anxieties. Pap. Pap.

His right hand catches yours and holds it, coaxing your paw open, lacing his fingers with yours. Squeezing.

You think you know why.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im sorry i scared you
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< things are better now
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ill be here when mew wake up
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< both times
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< in a few mewnutes and at the end of the day
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< purromise

“We’re kinda in the wrong position if you wanna play the pillow this time,” Dirk says, the forced even tone covering the worry you know you would be reading on his face if there was a more reliable source of light. But it’s fine. You’ll let him keep the shadows this time. “You’re the one leaning on me.”

You wave your free hand in the universal dismissive motion for ‘details.’

It’s gradual, but you listen as his breathing slows. Feel his head sink to rest on yours. He’s limp.

Pesterchum pings and the day begins.

It passes in a haze. You stare out over the expansive planet-spanning city, your head leaning against Dirk’s chest, his chin resting on yours, your wings curled around you both.

You pester the same, yet another, Dirk across the universal expanse.

You tease Dave about his new friend; you skirt the obvious “giiiiiirlfriend” jab no matter how amusing it would be to make him initiate foot-in-mouth mode. His song drifts on the wind, playing from the moon and its eight towers hovering on the horizon.

Phone clutched in your paws, you...

You… you don’t know.

You think. A lot.

Most of it doesn’t make it to the chat box. None of it does, really. Hidden behind cat puns and emoticons and a thin veneer of normal.

You think about the wide set horns and the echo of a command vibrating through your bones, digging into your brain and drilling in until you drown in a haze of blood. Bronze blood.

You think about how this fucking happened. You wonder what their name was. Tavrosprite? Tavcatsprite? Jade and Bec was just Jadesprite. You kicked seppucrow out of your name as soon as you fucking could. How would that even take the cat out of the battle? He’s still part cat. Still susceptible to the Condesce’s stolen Bronzeblood psionics.

Didn’t Dirk say she snatched and held Jade, gone straight up grimbark flipped her lid apeshit? The way the command echoes in your brain makes you think a bronzeblood backed by a first fuckin’ guardian would only make things worse.

And now Tavros is like that.

You weren’t particularly close. But there’d been no recognition, either in you, or in him. That bothers you.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you know you dont n33d to try so hard to be bait
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< id be pounced on the second i tried to leave the ruins
timeausTestified [TT]: And risk that shit happening again? Fuck no.

The mere thought of it makes you shudder.

Leave.

Leave.

The caw echoes, but it’s but a memory. A chill crawling down your spine. The bird has settled back into the weave of yourself, but one red eye is open. Wary.

You take a shuddering, ineffective breath, and squeeze your eyes shut.

You will have to face it again, probably. But you’ll figure out what to do then. Right now…

You’re just tired.

Maybe another cat-nap is in order. One, even a long one, isn’t anywhere near enough to make up for being caught in that feedback loop for hours.

It doesn’t take you long at all to doze off snuggled into Dirk’s side. Maybe it isn’t a pile, but the pile is where moirail is, or something like that. Dirk can be your pile. He’s warm enough.

Before you know it you’re being shaken awake. It’s an awkward shake that really ends up being more of a prolonged poke. You’d be grumbling – or maybe growling, you aren’t sure – if you could, so you catch the annoyance and pull the warmth of the hand to you and tuck it under your chin, trapping that sucker with your paws.

“I kind of need that.” Bro’s rumble filters through the sleepy haze. “I told you I’d be back.”

He did in fact tell you that. You don’t want to wake up though, and you have to jail this hand for daring to try and pull you out of the warm nothingness that allows you to not think about birdshit. Or any kind of shit for that matter. It’s a shit-free zone here in dream land. No shits around, little or otherwise.

“If you don’t let me go, I can’t fix your feathers. You’re looking kind of rumpled.”

Mrrr… He drives a hard bargain. You weigh your captive against getting your wings preened and, reluctantly, force your claws to release. You mourn the loss of your pale prey, until he starts working his way through the zip and pick motions you taught him just–

Was that really just yesterday?

He did this already. During your embarrassing meltdown in the throat of the stone amphibian. Meltdown after meltdown after– melts away. Melt what melt, you melt. You’re a puddle of metaphorically purring skin and bones and fur and... feathers you guess.

Fabric kneads under your talons, fabric and the skin beneath. Distantly, you hear Dirk laugh. “If I’d known it was this easy I would have done it this morning.”

This morning…

You don’t furreaking care.

Your pillow does; Dirk shifts, your head sliding down from where it’s been curled in his side until you’re lying half on his lap.

“You know, I did have shit planned to do tonight.”

No, that was shit. You banned all shit. Do you actually need to codify it into law?

Dirk doesn’t seem to appreciate your unheard protests, trapped inside your skull as they are, only continues as if you didn’t just ban any and all types of excrement wordlessly. “I wanted to see if you’d like to come to Prospit with me, but, well, if you’d rather have a preen and chill I guess we can do that too.”

Wait what.

Prospit?

Your eyes are gummy as a newborn kitten when you force them open, staring up at the vaguely unsettling gleam of Bro’s shades and profile against the blank black sky.

“Yeah, Prospit,” He continues as if reading your mind. “There’s a couple reasons, but I figure checking on the players might be a useful venture. Don’t you want to see John and Jade?”

Okay now that wasn’t flocking fair. You fumble for your phone, even the dim light making your eyes water as you push your shades down over them again.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< okay dude that was ch33tahing and you know it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< mew cant be serious

“All’s fair in love and war.” You can’t see the smile, but you can hear it in his amused voice, the preening continues as if he’s not discussing a postponement on the activity at this very moment. “I’m dead serious though. I already wanted to check on my friends’ towers, and I’m more convinced either there’s something wrong with Jade’s dreamself, or she straight up doesn’t have one.”

What???

You squint up past the light on your phone, at his blobby shadow beyond.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im still too asl33p fur this
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ok
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< one fang at a time
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< pawspit
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you remewmber what happawned the last time i went flyin
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i dont think its smart

“It’ll be fine. I think. I didn’t really plan to fly there.”

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< then what were you planning to do

You squint through the glare and flash him with the light spilling from your phone screen. He shrugs. “You’ll see.”

It turns out his plan leads you right back down the spire and to the teleporter square, leaving you freezing in mid-air as you process exactly what he intends to do. You–

Leave.

Leave.

Dirk turns to look back up at you, the soft blue light of Derse glowing around him. You–

Furreaking hell.

“You okay?”

Your claws are trembling.

Stop that.

You blank.

Gloved hands are covering yours. You snap out of it to your moirail’s heartsong vibrating through your scaled talons and through you. You would let out a shuddering breath if you could.

“It’s a quick stop. They won’t bother you. We aren’t leaving the ruins.”

You don’t know that, you want to say, but you only take a moment to nod, because what else can you do?

You want to go. You want to make sure Jade is okay. You want to see John. The crow’s raucous screaming continues to echo throughout the mess it made of your mind, rattling the cage with its beak, threatening to tear itself free.

Leave.

Leave.

You tell it to shut the flock up.

You want to go first, teetering on the edge, glaring down at the indentations carved into the smooth metal drawing out the concentric patterns etched into nearly every bit of SBURB-based tech somewhere, but you–

“I’m right here.”

Dirk’s hand is in yours, soft gloves and gentle fingers. He doesn’t let go.

You step through the teleportalizer together, landing once again in the belly of the beast. The surge of energy runs through you, feathers and hair feeling like they are sticking straight up as it deconstructs you and then puts everything back together on the other side.

The teleporter isn’t really intended for more than one person, you realize this, especially when Br– Dirk lands next to you a millisecond later and stumbles, his still young voice echoing red-orange in your ears and you catch him as he plummets into your arm, hand releasing yours to clutch at his head.

You want to ask. You desperately want to ask if he’s okay. You can’t. You know that. You just–

Pap, pap.

He detaches a hand from his head, and returns the gesture.

The troll in you melts, nuzzling your face into his shoulder.

“I’ll be– christ– God I’m echoing again aren’t I? Jolted straight awake like Cal fuckin’ bit me Jesus Christ. You’ll need to be ready to catch me or I’m just gonna drop like a rock the moment we step through. It’s likely going to take me a while to reconnect going the other direction.”

That’s fine. You’ll catch him. You’ll always catch him.

You take that moment and your position as his support and flip him into your arms like a blushing bride. Much to your amusement, a balm to the scorched earth of your mood, he sputters as you hook your arms under his knees and back.

This shouldn’t be possible, holding him like this. He has a multitude of inches and pounds on you, if not more. But you’re a god and he’s a god and you’re floating so physics means squat and you’ve done this before.

He was unconscious then. And maybe squirmed a bit less but you know he’ll break free if he really wants to.

You’re alone with him. Pride doesn’t matter here, and your moirail’s song is full of trust that calms you. It calms you even as your feathers fluff, waiting for the cat to pounce and the blood dripping fangs to sink into your psyche as each second draws out. The point between your shoulder blades itch, as if an unseen set of eyes watches you from the dark. Waiting. Watching. Stalking.

Like Bro used to when he decided he didn’t want to leave stealth mode.

Dirk must feel the tension in your arms, because he lets out a sigh and accepts his lot in life, a function on his shades flickers, and a cone of light shines out of a pinprick opening in the frames. Strong, but small, he sweeps the room for the glitter of gold.

You find it, paces away to your left, and dive.

You almost hear the thread snap, the active melody of your broirail vanishing into the aether and leaving you with the baseline you’ve grown accustomed to. One that sounds so empty after being so full of life. It’s one of those things you don’t furreaking appreciate until it’s gone.

You see, hear, feel the resulting flash as you’re broken down and reconstructed. The lack of weight in your arms barely has time to register before Dirk’s definitely limp body joins you on the other side and you regain feeling in your buzzing limbs.

Prospit is blinding, making your eyes water uncomfortably even with your shades on. Prospit is also not empty. Prospit is also furreaking loud as a small group of white carapaced chess dudes rush forward, little newsie hats and notebooks being waved in your face and chittering at you in the language you might have been able to translate if you still had the game’s manual downloaded into your head. The crowd is all kinds of uncomfortable so you clutch your baggage to your chest and shoot into the air without even checking on Dirk, leaving the stunned reporters behind in a flurry of feathers.

You know where you’re going – the moon is just over the horizon. Further away from the square than Derse’s, but the flight is nothing for you, even with sleeping beauty’s legs dangling over your arms and the glittering city-scape zooming by beneath you.

You almost make it to the base of the chain when you feel the shift – just like that, the music’s back. Humming away in your arms. Dirk stirs and groans, like he’s waking up all over again. You touch down on a nearby tower long enough to pull out your phone screen, scrambling to shift it to your free-er hand. Thank frog for obsidian nail-files. You’re getting better at it.

Even as he’s waking up, Dirk doesn’t pull away or bother to recover his autonomy, despite being caught in your arms.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you in one piece dude
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< or two techniclawly
timeausTestified [TT]: Technically.
timeausTestified [TT]: Shit.
timeausTestified [TT]: That took too fucking long.

You give him an awkward pat on the shoulder.

timeausTestified [TT]: It’s like the revenge of that fucking rubber band, but instead of slamming me back into the body, it yanks me out of this one. Why the fuck am I anchored there? timeausTestified [TT]: That’s not me.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< as fur as the game is concerned it is though
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< derse dreamurr club remewmber

“It’s fucking inconvenient.”

You feel the weight in your arms become nonexistent as he decides to start floating under his own power, and you finally let him go. Makes it easier for you to type this way, you tell yourself even as you mourn the loss.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< thats how the feathertoy flicks
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< sometimes its good ol fashioned pounce time
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< sometimes it sends mew crashing into a wall
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the game doesnt know what the flock to do with you
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and its not like it cares about how convenient it is or isnt fur one of the pawns in its game
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< youre the one breakin the rules afterall
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< mr i reject your dreamself and substitute my own

“If I hadn’t, you would have been up shit creek without handy dandy sprite remover. Don’t complain.” A hand tangles into his hair in conjunction with the sigh, although he does freeze when you make a face at him and then removes it with minimal disruption to the literal birdnest on his head. He adjusts his shades instead. “Even without Li’l Cal actively disrupting me, the whole mess is an adrenaline junky’s wet dream, which is entirely counter productive to a self-induced dissociation.”

You let out an amused wheeze as he turns away from you and sets his green slippered feet down on the ledge you’d landed on, craning his head to look up at the moon towering above the highest of Prospitian spires. “It looks like you made good use of the extra time.”

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< well yea
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< had to get away from the well meaning buzzards back by the square
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< didnt think id miss derse
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< prospit is

You hesitate.

“A little much?” Dirk offers humourlessly, his smile fading into a sigh as he continued to regard the moon drifting far above the spire upon which you perch. A whole atmosphere away, and yet nothing for a god. You can hear the sleeping Dreamers from here, and they awaken a visceral ache within you. Familiar, and yet entirely unknown since you’ve only managed to catch excerpts, snatches of songs overheard as someone hummed, from the pieces swept out beyond the veil.

Your friends.

John.

Jade.

You know her. You know her anywhere. Dirk was wrong, she had to have a dreamself. She sounds exactly as you remember, catching her in-between bubbles and swooping in for a peck.

Frogs above, you miss her.

And John. John’s there too. You didn’t catch more than a snippet of his sounds but he can’t be mistaken for anything else.

You threw your life away for John once.

You have to prove to yourself he’s still okay even after the world crumbled around you.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< should we get moving

“Yeah,” He answers quietly, and you take off after him shortly after. Orange text flashes on your phone, as he shifts seamlessly to Pesterchum with an ease that makes your olive green blood boil with jealousy. Not that you’d expect it to be any other color at this point, mind, boiling or not.

timeausTestified [TT]: Unless we want to waste the night away on royal audiences, we should continue to avoid the natives if at all possible.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< didnt mew plan to set somefang up
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< to find a lead on the old man

To your surprise he actually kinda jerks in the air. A momentary freeze and then restart not unlike a video that hit the end of its pre-downloaded data and has to get its buffer on. You start to type out a question about it, but the brain2shades – speaking of, did he finally get that working or does it work fine when he’s not echoing to hell and back – quickly toss you an answer the split second he starts moving again.

timeausTestified [TT]: I will.
timeausTestified [TT]: Eventually.
timeausTestified [TT]: There are more important things to worry about right now.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< jade right
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< shes ok right
timeausTestified [TT]: She’s demanding to be the dragon in your metaphorical scenario, but yes, she’s fine.

Oh my god you almost forgot about that. You’re losing your fool head at that on the inside, even as the pathetic wheezes are the only thing you can muster.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< god just let me waltz on up into daves nightmare next time and just tell the dragon hes canceled
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< fired
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< being let go
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< replaced
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< going our sepawrate ways beclaws theres a new dragon in town
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< jades upgrading furom wolf to dragon look out purrincesses here she comes
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< shell eat dave fur lunch n then run off with rose the moment she m33ts her dont mew wait

The transition from atmosphere to moon is almost seemless even as the realization hits you like a truck. It feels like one moment the moon and your friends are a distant speck, and now all of a sudden you can see the individual towers where they sleep. Their windows. Still so far away, and yet within reach. You could touch them.

Not that you would. That’d be weird. But you could and that’s the important thing.

You force yourself to match Dirk’s pace and not zip right past him.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< so if jades well enough to be making dibs on dragon rights why do mew n33d to check on her
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< just to make sure she didnt sl33pwalk off like psychomom or somefang
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< did she have a weird dream
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< does it have something to do with the dreambot
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< did you ever get what you n33ded furom that anyway
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< betw33n cryptids and island purrincesses i think we may have gotten distracted
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< just a tad
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< laser pointer into a wall levels of distraction
timeausTestified [TT]: Oh, yes. As of today I’ve achieved the primary objective of our visit. Jade is having me remove the system entirely that controls her dreambot in favor of building her a companion as it were.
timeausTestified [TT]: This has given me ample time to study the components and corresponding methodology, and I believe I can use a similar technology to get you a set of hand and voice free devices without running the risk of trapping another shred of yourself within them.
timeausTestified [TT]: It seems I have to give Harley credit, he designed a fairly foolproof detection system that actively captures and updates a ghost image of a person’s brain as the targeting template for his cross-dimensional neural map. I just need to scale it down for wearable use rather than bed posts, but that will be a good puzzle for the right brain to chew on. Keep it busy for a while.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< wait a mewnite
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you were worried about copying me???
timeausTestified [TT]: Ethics of wholesale copying a technology built on the back of my autoresponder aside, yes. My method of translation requires self-learning, self-evolving algorithms heavily based on a person’s full neural map. Doing so for you, much less my own planet side use, would be, and I quote, “Dangerous as fuck.”
timeausTestified [TT]: We are both Heart players. I was fracturing myself and very likely others before ever coming into any flashy zappy powers. You literally just broke yourself into a murder of crows this morning, even if they returned to you in the end.
timeausTestified [TT]: I think the caution is prudent.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< well damn

You don’t know what else there is to say to that.

Which, to be fair, is probably a good thing, because if you had some sort of witty retort or response, you would be texting while you’re driving and not have your eyes on the road.

Not that it helps you much.

You may see the incoming missile mere seconds before you hear the screamed name on the wind, arms crashing around your neck, body slamming into you, the smell of ozone and fur that makes the bird scream at you, bowling into you in a flurry of black and white and a crackle of green.

“DAVESPRITE!!!”

It rings through you like a bell, resonating in your bones. In your head. In your very soul. It sends you tumbling, physically and metaphorically, as you try to figure out which side is up and really does it matter when you’re getting your non-functional and probably ornamental lungs squeezed out of you at this point.

“It seems…” You hear Dirk distantly, the echo clinging to his voice, dripping red, “This is an alternative hypothesis I did not actually consider.”

Jade Harley, sixteen, taller than you, hangs around your neck, grinning up at you before shoving her nose into your hair and squeezing the ever loving life out of you.

Notes:

I got this chapter back today and put it to vote as to which fic I'd update and guess who ended up winning x3 Hope ya'll enjoyed the peak into Davepeta's head because as you can guess by the end there we might be here for another chapter or so :3c

Welcome to the new folks who recently caught up--I've been thuroughly enjoying watching you journey through it from the comments! I'm just always so worried about responding to in progress comments because I don't want to spoil a thing aaaaa. Anyway, to you welcome, to the old folks hi again! Sorry for the wait. It might be a bit longer for the next one because I'm so paranoid about not handling this particular meeting and the resulting FEELINGS correctly. It's intimidating aaaaaaa. *pokes jade with a stick*

Also watch as I continue to drag you all into my OTDiamond hell <3 that's not going away.

Chapter 73: Davepeta > Hug the Flock Out of Her

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“Sorry, sorry! I know it’s not Davesprite anymore--I just--I was trying to wait for you but I got so excited and I couldn’t help it--sorry, sorry--”

She’s talking into your hair.

Jade is talking into your hair.

She’s taller than you now. Not quite as tall as Bro but definitely at least half a head taller than you, but that’s probably fine, your wings make up the height and it’s not a contest anyway so why are you trying to make it one? Oh right, because the bird in your brain is flipping out at the green lightning sparking through her hair and the boy in your brain is flipping out even more because this is your flocking girlfriend--matesprit?--ex?--whatever you were an idiot to push her away--and she knows you???

Doesn’t matter that she’s babbling. Doesn’t matter that you’d be babbling right back if you could. Your arms raise and claws dig into the back of her witch’s frock, finally making this one-person glompfest into a mutual cling.

You have so many questions but no voice to ask them with so you try to translate it all into the ferocity of your hug, holding her close, tangling your claws in her hair. She’s all you hear, wrapped up in a bright and bubbly song, like rain on a sunny day, tapping merrily against the glass and dripping through cracks in stone and soothing your heart, drowning out the rest of the world as her voice falls into time with the music only you can hear.

“Not that I knew, knew you were coming! Not like once upon a time. Things have been really up in the air and it’s not like the future clouds still worked, but I saw the news yesterday, and the Queen sent word that someone had visited and that I should be ready for an arrival but I had no idea it would be you! Daves--peta right? I think that’s what you said--I’m sorry it’s been a while and our meeting was so fleeting and like a dream but I’d never forget--not that you haven’t changed! A lot! You look different, but it’s a nice different??? You look like you’ve finally settled in, if that makes sense. Oh I’m sorry, I haven’t let you talk at all, have I? Sorry! Sorry! I’d say I’d let you breathe but you’re kind of clinging tighter than I am now--oh my gosh are you okay???”

You.

Might be crying.

Maybe.

Just a little.

An extra hand, not Jade’s, settles on your shoulder. Steadying you.

You’re too furreaking emotionally exhausted for this.

Maybe you should have stayed home today.

‘Jade I missed you so much.’

‘Jade I’m sorry.’

Jade.

Jade.

Jade.

You want to say anything at all but you can’t.

“Do you want me to take this?” Dirk’s quiet voice in your ear.

You don’t want to let go.

You nod.

“Take what??? What happened??? You’re Dave’s Bro right?? Or, well, the alternate universe version of him. I’m afraid I slept through a lot of the explanations of what happened after the scratch and the note was only so detailed--I’m surprised to see you here! The queen said everyone else--”

Her arms tighten around you.

You can finish that thought

Everyone else didn’t make it.

At least not in one piece.

So.

How did she?

You don’t care. She’s here.

Dirk explains. Of course he explains. It’s not even a bad explanation, even if you note he skips over some of the pesky little details, brushing past the fact that you godtiering after he got the sprite out of you wasn’t necessarily intended and had to be helped along, and you’ve been hanging around since.

“Wow...” You work a hand free when Dirk produces your phone from his sylladex--holy birdshit Batman did you drop it in your startled bewilderment??? Did Dirk catch it for you? You go to type something but stop when you realize she has no way to read it. No phone. No computer. You have your voice and no way for her to hear it unless you wave it in her face.

Flock it, you shove the thought away and push the device into your sylladex, you’ll deal with communication later it is furreaking hug time up in here and you aren’t letting go until she does, and that’s not until long after Dirk finishes with his explanations.

Even when Jade finally releases you, and you let her. You just. End up staring at each other. She’s sizing you up--you’re shorter than her this isn’t fair--and you’re drinking her in. She’s exactly like you remember. Three years on the ship. Black and white and red witch’s frock against glittering cold surroundings. A spot of calm in the loud gaudy golds of the battleship. Fluffy white ears, swiveled toward you, giving you her undivided attention. Beautiful green eyes, sharp and curious, putting the pieces together--

Except.

Except there’s a ring of broken glass orbiting around her. Not the black and white and red and green you’d expect. But gold. Glimmering golden stars orbiting in a nebula around the witch. You can catch glimpses in those broken fragments. Of a silver moon and a blue sky and the view from a tower in the center of the ocean.

There’s no gold of a prospit dreamer slipping out of space’s black. No patchwork of once and again. It’s Jade. It’s all Jade.

She might not be your Jade. The one you loved. The one you pushed away. The one you broke up with. That Jade died, died with the session John unmade. Died without you, because you decided to sulk instead of fight.

But this is the Jade you met, briefly, in the bubbles. The one you kissed.

You know, instinctively, in that part of your brain that used to be connected. Still is, in the sense that you probably know the Game’s systems better than anyone still alive right now. You reach out to touch, brushing up against the shards only to hear a sample of a little girl’s laughter.

“You’re the reason she can’t dream, aren’t you?”

Of course Dirk can hear it too.

The smile on her face fades to one of a more bittersweet variety, even if it doesn’t vanish completely.

“Yeah, sorry, you’re here for her, aren’t you?”

Dirk’s quiet, “Originally--” is cut off by Jade forcing a grin and a chipper, “Well! There’s a better place to talk than just hanging out out here!” and grabbing for both your hands. Green crackles around you, through you, you--you--

Blank. Swallowed. Bird positively flipping its shit and screeching in the back of your mind, waiting for the bronze-dripped fangs to clamp down.

They don’t.

You come back to find yourself huddled in Dirk’s arms like a spooked kitten, the black and gold surroundings of Prospit’s moon replaced with the soft pinks and weird swirls of a dream room. Dirk is talking, talking to--

White fluffy ears pinned back against a sea of wavy black curls. She’s sitting morosely on cloud covered sheets, picking nervously at the fabric, surrounded in a sea of bright, flashing, brilliant gold that hurts your eyes. Tiny cracks in space through which another life can be seen.

”--it’s okay, probably, just ask first--holy shit--teleporting throws me for a loop de fucking loop and Davepeta’ll be better in a second probably, I think they instinctively shoved that bird out again--hey--” even the echoes are comforting as his fingers find their way into yours and squeeze, ”You got everything back in its place?”

Maybe. You think so.

Your throat feels raw even though you know it’s next to useless.

”The bird popped out and screamed at us again.” Dirk informs you first, and you realize that’s why it probably feels the way you do. Wrung out. You focus on his hands and his side and at least you didn’t claw him again. Dirk continues without your input, “Maybe we should teach your crows to speak for you, they sure seem to have a functional set of lungs and no reluctance to use them.”

You poke him in the side. Hard.

”I’m just making an observation.”

As funny as the mental image is, walking around with a parrot on the shoulder that speaks for you, it doesn’t do you any good since you can’t ever remember shoving them out or how you did it. It’s instinctive. You don’t like the fact that you’re teetering on a precipice where your only reaction is to violently reject a part of you thanks to half remembered trauma!

And no, there isn’t anything deeper than that there, thank you very much brain ghost Rose. No you aren’t allowed to consult with brain ghost Kanaya either. Holy shit you’re glad those two never teamed up against you, you’ve passively absorbed enough from your meteorbound counterpart to get a feel for what that would be like.

...And stop ignoring the rest of the world outside your head, Jade is nervously picking at her sleeves and trying to apologize. You’re being rude.

You...wave her apologies off as inconsequential, it’s not her fault. She didn’t know you’d flip your shit much less cough up a bird. Then you watch as she droops further and want to smack yourself in the face--You tug your phone out of the aether--and--

Pause. Because you have no idea how to do this. You drag open Dirk’s window.

dataJammer [DJ]: can you think of a way to do this that wont result in using my phone as a hot potato???
dataJammer [DJ]: itd work but i f33l like its a last ditch effort if you catch my drift

“Do you have a laptop of some kind lying around?” Dirk asks for you, the echo finally clearing from his voice.

“Usually?” Jade perks up a little at the prospect of opening communication lines, or perhaps its just at the fact that she has something to fix rather than dwelling on what happens. That was the direct result of the choice she made, even if you don’t think it was her fault. “I normally have my lunchtop but last night it was missing, I haven’t looked around yet today. Mini-me must have taken it somewhere else.”

“She fell asleep in the guest room last night,” You feel his sigh more than hear it, the exhale messing with your hair, “I made sure to send her packing before she fell asleep this morning, so it’s probably around somewhere.”

A nod and a quiet, self directed hmm, reaches you as the teenager begins to pace the way she used to do on the battle-ship, tapping her finger against her brown face, further darkened by the sun, “Hmm...if it’s not on the bed like usual, where would I put it--Oh I hope she didn’t captchalogue it, I know we always wanted to be better organized but that would be downright inconvenient to start now! Maybe the pile???”

While Jade gravitates toward digging through a pile of stuffed animals to your left, you start to try and relax yourself into your resting state of bonelessness that comes with the territory of having a moirail to sprawl on top of or against. About halfway to comfort you begin to debate whether or not you’ve overspent your cuddle tokens. Dirk hasn’t tried to push you off him yet, and you don’t really want to leave. But technically you aren’t alone, and Equius always scolded you for being too pale and affectionate in public, it’s just not proper.

Not that you care, but Dirk might. You peek up at his face, looking for any sign that your presence isn’t wanted now that you aren’t in danger of falling apart.

Of course you can’t see his eyes thanks to his shades, and honestly he’s directing the majority of his attention in Jade’s direction right now, “I take it you don’t receive any feedback from your waking self then?”

You type up a message.

dataJammer [DJ]: do mew want me to move?

His mouth twitches into the barest ghost of a fractured smile, and the orange text flashes back on your screen.

timeausTestified [TT]: Do you want to move?
dataJammer [DJ]: no
timeausTestified [TT]: Then we’re good.
timeausTestified [TT]: Between you and Dave I’ve come to accept my lot in life.

You choke back a snicker as he flicks your nose.

While your little secret back and forth is going on, there’s another, more immediate conversation going on around you while Jade pauses in her digging to respond to his verbal question. “Not really! Or, well, I can kind of catch--glimpses? If I look into the glass?”

In frustration she sweeps her hand wide, black bell-like sleeves fluttering, and the plushies get pushed aside, split in several places, revealing the pastel pink tinged lunch box stamped with what should be multicolored squiddles on the lid, but is overridden by dream shit and therefore the same hue as everything else in the room. “AHAH! Found you!--anyway, I could tell someone was visiting, but I didn’t know it was anything more than just another company guy--not until I saw this morning’s paper!--your arrival is going to be dominating the news cycles for weeks! Months even!”

“Christ, I’d been hoping I could avoid gettin’ a photo snapped.” Dirk’s groan makes you snicker, “Nosy as fuck carapace need to mind their own damn business.”

“Hey! It’s not their fault! Nothing changes here much anymore, and it likely won’t change for a while! Let them enjoy their gossip. It isn’t hurting anyone.”

“You say that, but I highly doubt you have seen Derse’s gossip publications. There is plenty of harm to be found there.”

You wait anxiously as Jade boots up the lunchtop, claws gripping the device in your palm. How are you going to do this? Should you send the friend request to her handle? Wouldn’t mini-Jade see it then? Are you going to have to worry about running into the same issue you had with Dave’s handle, only the reverse?

timeausTestified [TT] has opened a memo on board [Undefined]

timeausTestified [TT]: This should do for now.
timeausTestified [TT]: Jade insisted on adding me and Dave today.
timeausTestified [TT]: So the existence of a new person on her chumroll shouldn’t be particularly noticeable as long as you keep the memo read while she’s awake.
timeausTestified [TT]: Which she shouldn’t be right now.
gardenGnostic [GG]: oh!
gardenGnostic [GG]: yeah i get really sleepy when shes up and about! so i dont think it will be a problem!
dataJammer [DJ]: jade!!!
gardenGnostic [GG]: davepeta hi!!! :D
gardenGnostic [GG]: im so sorry about the teleporting thing! i didnt know :(
dataJammer [DJ]: its totally not your fault so dont mew be apologizin
dataJammer [DJ]: i remewmber enough about our thr33 years outside of spacetime to know that zippin around was as natural to you as breathin
dataJammer [DJ]: im sorry for coughing a bird up on you both
dataJammer [DJ]: hope they didnt leave any presents or claw out any eyes or anyfang
gardenGnostic [GG]: my eyes are untouched! :B
gardenGnostic [GG]: dont worry they were totally adorable!
gardenGnostic [GG]: very friendly once we got them calmed down!
gardenGnostic [GG]: i just wish i hadnt spooked them so badly :(
dataJammer [DJ]: im gonna stop you right there missy
dataJammer [DJ]: its just bad timing i got my brain chewed on by some nightmarish combination of your childhood best friend an asshole cat and a confused bronzeblood who also happawns to have zappy porty pawers
dataJammer [DJ]: the question that remains tho is why do you also still have zappy porty pawers
dataJammer [DJ]: the game did its damndest to yoink everyfang back to the way it was
dataJammer [DJ]: why are you here???
dataJammer [DJ]: how are you here???
gardenGnostic [GG]: what you arent glad to see me???
dataJammer [DJ]: dude jade i just spent the entirety of our first m33ting clinging to you like a kitten furst discovering that curtains exist and they can be climbed of course im so furreaking glad to s33 you
gardenGnostic [GG]: im glad to see you too!
gardenGnostic [GG]: between the queen and the other towers i
gardenGnostic [GG]: thought i was the only one left

Her breathing hitches and you look back to where she set up on the bed, shoulders hunched, her eyes looking too shiny in a way you know too well, anger or grief, because in your time you’ve caused both. You glance up at Dirk, who has been far too quiet all things considered, and then uncurl yourself. He gives you a silent squeeze before letting go, looking away as he shifts to give you an easier time to get up.

And you do. You get up. You feel listless without his warmth surrounding you, but Jade needs you so you cross the room on hesitant kitten paws, carefully dodging around the golden stars hanging throughout the room. They are at least in much larger, more intact pieces than the ones that litter Dave’s room, which were a fucking hazard before you went in and accidently swept up a ton of them in your pursuit of puppet based vengeance, and even if your wings brush up against a sharp, broken edge, they don’t get caught inside your own web like his did. Instead they just twirl and glitter in the soft pink light, reflecting hundreds of snippets of scenes back up at you.

The pieces of Jade’s new life get pushed aside as you sit down next to her on the bed. As Davesprite you would have curled your tail around her. You would be holding her hand. Before you got lost in your own head you would lean your head against hers and get lost in her eyes, wrapping your wings around you both.

You aren’t Davesprite though, and she isn’t your Jade.

You do still lay a claw delicately on her knee. The fine scales covering your fingers contrast sharply with her deep black dress. You type with your other hand.

dataJammer [DJ]: its okay

“It’s okay.” She repeats out loud, the green light from the lunch-top’s projected screen reflecting in her round glasses. The glassy look to her eyes doesn’t transition into any sort of actual tear flow, because she quickly scrubs at it with her hands and smiles, looking away from the screen and right at you. Her smile, so open, is the most blinding thing you’ve seen in what feels like years. It’s too bad you know it’s how she pretends sometimes.

You don’t like breaking it. “I know I said this a million times already but I missed you so much! Not just Davesprite, but the chance to get to know Davepeta, you! To think, I’ve just been sitting around all these months, when you were out there--somewhere! I didn’t--I assumed--there was only one place for the game to put you. And that wouldn’t have been fair!”

dataJammer [DJ]: believe it or not ive only b33n around for half of it
dataJammer [DJ]: i got caught in a mire of space time soup out there
dataJammer [DJ]: but the game definitely tried to pull me apawt and throw the rest out with the trash
dataJammer [DJ]: what did the qu33n say???
dataJammer [DJ]: i gotta tell mew betw33n the princes exile from the medium and his overall paranoia of the carapace authority figures we havent really gotten a chance to sit down and chat with any of them
timeausTestified [TT]: Hey.
timeausTestified [TT]: We had Derse agents assassinating us before the game.
timeausTestified [TT]: It isn’t paranoia if it’s founded upon fact.
dataJammer [DJ]: valid paranoia is still paranoia
dataJammer [DJ]: i may not be plugged into the matrix anymore but i remewmber enough to know that jack is an aberration on the face of this game and the Carapace Authority normawlly wouldnt interfere with the players outside the designated quest spaces ie doin their job!!!
dataJammer [DJ]: aside from jack the carapacians are furreakin sw33thearts who will bend over backwards to help you tie your shoes if you n33d it
dataJammer [DJ]: litterally
timeausTestified [TT]: I’m not talking about the pawns, I’m talking about the Queen.
dataJammer [DJ]: and your qu33n was dethroned by fish hitler right???
dataJammer [DJ]: ours probably got offed by jack since he ended up with her ring
dataJammer [DJ]: still no evidence she would be any less helpful before the whole cosmic game of good vs evil forces us to be on different sides
timeausTestified [TT]: Touche.
timeausTestified [TT]: I still don’t trust them.
dataJammer [DJ]: thats feline but i get to call mew paranoid
gardenGnostic [GG]: i have to agree with davepeta here the queen is my friend!!! shes always done her best to answer my questions no matter how weird they are!!!
gardenGnostic [GG]: and given ive had a loooooot of time to think up here ive spent a lot of it in her audience chamber talking things out
gardenGnostic [GG]: she doesnt remember our session at all but shes patient and she listened and apparently this matches up pretty well to some legendary prophecy thats been passed down through their civilization
timeausTestified [TT]: It isn’t the one about the towers being lit and the light of skaia returning, is it?
gardenGnostic [GG]: no! though we did find that one when looking through the royal library!
gardenGnostic [GG]: just that this world was built on the back of a grand sacrifice which well big duh
gardenGnostic [GG]: and something about laying to rest the ghosts of the past paving the way to igniting the spark of creation
gardenGnostic [GG]: skaia wasnt always gone you know
gardenGnostic [GG]: the prospitians have a lot of records! It was there in the sky one day and then poof! devoured by the dark
timeausTestified [TT]: Can I get a copy of the prophecy?
gardenGnostic [GG]: youll have to ask the queen! :B
gardenGnostic [GG]: im sure shell be willing to talk to another of the heroes!
gardenGnostic [GG]: even if you are from the wrong kingdom
dataJammer [DJ]: mew gotta face your fears dirk!
timeausTestified [TT]: Meh. I bet I just need to put on my badass ninja pants instead of these puffy monstrosities and I could steal it right out from under the guard’s noses.
gardenGnostic [GG]: but carapace dont have noses!
gardenGnostic [GG]: also wouldnt that take more effort than just asking?
dataJammer [DJ]: *dj whispers conspiratorially to jade behind a paw* mew dont know my broirail yet hes an overachiever in all the wrong ways

“I can still read you know.” Dirk’s deadpan suddenly breaking the (relative) silence sends you struggling for breath you don’t have and Jade giggling at your side. Not that its ever silent when you have your heart open to the songs of your relationships, new and old, and they fill you.

dataJammer [DJ]: doth thou protest the accuracy of my statement???

”No. Merely reminding you that I am a metagaming bastard and I WILL remember that you have divulged such a thing.

You stick your tongue out at him. You like to imagine there's some sunset orange eye rolling going on behind his shades when he sighs, exaggeratedly loud, at you. “I do plan on talking to the Prospitian royalty eventually, on my own terms. I merely prefer to be well informed before I do so. Jade--in your discussions have you come up with any hypothesis as to why you made it through? Davepeta’s unique circumstances aside, I only avoided fate by being temporarily dead at the right moment.”

“We thought the reason I was still here might be Bec?” She offers with uncertainty, “It’s the only different variable in our circumstances, but now I’m not entirely sure since you said there was someone else mixed up with your sessions version of Bec and they ended up squished. All I know is Something shielded me from the big crunch and I cant think of what else it could be! And besides that...”

But she doesn’t continue. Not in words. But her hands move against the glowing green hard light keyboard.

gardenGnostic [GG]: it felt dark
gardenGnostic [GG]: and cold
gardenGnostic [GG]: and lonely
gardenGnostic [GG]: like being lost in a vacuum
gardenGnostic [GG]: not knowing how to get home
gardenGnostic [GG]: and then i was here surrounded by stars and a sky that was swallowed by darkness
gardenGnostic [GG]: in the middle of a skaian eclipse except there was no skaia!
gardenGnostic [GG]: it happened that day, six months ago, and yet for the carapace it might have always been that way!
gardenGnostic [GG]: the books make my brain hurt
timeausTestified [TT]: Tell me about it. I spent all of yesterday holed up in an Information Repository trying to untangle Jake’s timeline and I still have a headache.

“Grandpa’s? Why???”

Dirk turns around from where he was standing near the window, his arms clasped behind his back, “You didn’t know?”

With a sinking feeling you suddenly realize--she doesn’t know.

You drag open a separate chat window just as Jade goes “Know what??? What about grandpa???”

dataJammer [DJ]: dont tell her
timeausTestified [TT]: That he’s alive? Shouldn’t that be a good thing?
dataJammer [DJ]: at least leave out the part where he didnt die but still left the kitten alone for years anyway
dataJammer [DJ]: oh who am i kidding
dataJammer [DJ]: shes smarter than me and dave combined
dataJammer [DJ]: shell figure it out instantly
timeausTestified [TT]: I’m not cruel.
dataJammer [DJ]: i know i just
timeausTestified [TT]: I understand.

“Four towers per moon means eight players.” His gaze drifts out the window, probably landing on the next satellite tower. John’s. And then the two after that. Ruined and in disrepair, if the pattern holds true. You didn’t really get to look considering you skipped that whole part of the ascent on the back of First Guardian based shenaniganary.

“Of course I didn’t know--why would that be any differ--oh…” She suddenly goes silent, to the point where you worriedly nudge her arm with a claw.

Yeah.

She.

Figured it out.

Goddamn it. Okay. Think Davepeta, think.

“We tracked him to Prospit, but I had trouble untangling the timeline from there.” Dirk adds, oddly gentle, leaning back against the swirl covered wall, “I don’t think it was a choice, if that helps at all. I think the game set it up that way.”

Okay. Details. Explanations. You can do that. Jade probably needs it. She’s stiff under your claws. You can feel the tension.

dataJammer [DJ]: furom what weve managed to figure out the defaults just got shifted a bit
dataJammer [DJ]: this instance didnt even go live till six months ago and we know its b33n at least a few years since mini-you was left there
dataJammer [DJ]: he wouldve been dumped in the middle of d33p space without a star chart unless he has a dreamself hanging around out here
dataJammer [DJ]: ...does he have a dreamself?
dataJammer [DJ]: youve been here since the beginning right??? have mew checked out the other towers???

“I--I checked on John! I thought he was awake since he’s been wandering the place! But--the other two towers were empty! I thought--Maybe we’d need to prototype Jake first? But without Grandpa--this means he’s alive right? This--At least--this version of me doesn’t have to live with--that’s good!”

The last words were forced. Chipper. She recoils the moment they drop into the room, white, fluffy dog ears pressed back against her head. She’s smiling. But the smile is forced, ugly, pupils far too wide, too dilated. A jerking motion shoves the lunchtop off the bed. You…

Can’t say anything.

Your words, useless.

Rejected with that one action.

She’s smiling. She’s bleeding. She’s shaking. Trembling. Vibrating with so much pent up emotion but she’s not crying.

timeausTestified [TT]: I’m…
timeausTestified [TT]: Going to go look at the other towers.
timeausTestified [TT]: Maybe their shards have some answers.
timeausTestified [TT]: She…
timeausTestified [TT]: Damn it.

Instead of ducking out the window, he sits down on the bed instead.

timeausTestified [TT]: I can’t.
timeausTestified [TT]: Fuck this I can’t just leave.
timeausTestified [TT]: You shouldIcan’t.

The orange text keeps scrolling as you set aside your phone. He isn’t talking to you. He’s leaking. Not paying any attention to you whatsoever. And that’s fine. You’re on her left. He’s on her right. Face as blank and unreadable and shut down as ever, but you’re both struggling to realize what to do, what to say, about the struggling girl between you.

You’ve never known for the mask to crack.

Davesprite, had never known.

Because you’d been too wrapped up in your own fucking head to care.

I’m here now. You want to say, but you can’t do anything but reach out to her, To touch her. Curl your wing around her and bump her shoulder and put a clawed hand on her knee, on her hand that’s digging into the black cloth stretched across her knees.

You can’t say anything.

“I’m-sorry! Sorry! This is stupid it’s all stupid. I should be happy.” She’s still smiling but it’s cracking. It’s cracking all the way down and you can see the depths of space, the lonely isolation. “Happy. He’s alive! She’s alone, but he’s alive! She doesn’t have to--to--live knowing she--I--They can be together! All she has to do is wait and wait and wait and wait and--god--

She shudders all the way down.

“I should be happy.”

It comes out as a whimper. A plea.

You can’t.

Say anything.

“You don’t have to be.”

Dirk’s simple statement breaks something in her. You can literally hear it. A discordant shattering of face and self as she turns around and snarls, “Well I sure as fuck can’t be angry can I??? I’m not allowed to be angry! Angry and tired and dwelling on the fact that I killed Grandpa and I killed Dave and I’m going to--you know what I almost did! I should have--would have--killed everyone! If she didn’t want you all alive and held the leash on all that bottled anger I--I wanted to!”

Dirk noticeably flinches. You can feel it in the tremor on the bed.

“Conditional mortality.” Dirk mutters, because of course he does. “It wouldn’t have worked.”

“It doesn’t matter that it wouldn’t have worked!” She growls back, glaring up through glittering unshed tears and grit teeth. Too sharp canines biting into her lips and making them bleed. “The fact is that I did and I’m going to, and I don’t want to do it again. I don’t want to ruin another person’s life, take away her future, as some--plot-point in some story that has to be told all over again! We screwed up our shot! It’s not my turn anymore! I shouldn’t be here.”

“None of us should.” Dirk reads aloud, words you didn’t even think about typing you just did, as he stiffly stretches, hooking a foot around the edge of the lunchtop and nudging it, flipping it from upside down to right-side up, your words appear in orange and green as the hard-light screen flickers on and Pesterchum stares back at you all, projected in the air like a mockery of the old-timey drive in movies except sci-fi.

dataJammer [DJ]: none of us should be here
dataJammer [DJ]: but we are
dataJammer [DJ]: and were changing the story!!!
dataJammer [DJ]: we know whats coming!!!
dataJammer [DJ]: they wont be alone!!!
dataJammer [DJ]: they wont be forced to fight and claw their way through a clusterflock of game birdshit without preparation or guidance
dataJammer [DJ]: and i dont mean bros bs training regime
timeausTestified [TT]: I’m here because I replaced him, Davepeta.

Replaced--

You don’t even have to have a properly functioning throat to feel your heart get caught in it.

You--

She isn’t talking metaphorically at all, is she?

dataJammer [DJ]: that cant be right!!!
dataJammer [DJ]: bro was already gone when you found his splinter right???
dataJammer [DJ]: jade is still here!!!
dataJammer [DJ]: both jades!!!

“It won’t last.” She draws her knees up to her chest, and you’re forced to move your hand to save it from being caught in the bear-trap. She’s staring straight forward at the flickering screen, the green light being thrown off by the keyboard hovering in nothingness reflecting bright and lime green against her glasses. “That’s one thing we are sure of. I’m too much more than she is! She’s--too little. Too many missing pieces.”

Poison green lightning cackles through her black hair and you desperately try to shove the bird back and away, focus on the feel of the phone in your hands, at the way her hair blends with your feathers, Dirk’s pinched expression that speaks volumes because it’s so easy to see, and even the sound of Jade’s voice because she keeps speaking. Panicking right now isn’t helpful. “Why do you think the others are so broken??? We had to be smashed to pieces to even fit where we need to be because otherwise we’re too much. Too much power, too much life--we’d drown them! Even if I don’t want to, the moment she enters the Medium the game won’t be hers any more. It’ll be all mine and I don’t want that.”

I probably overload the fucking thing.

You wonder, in a flash of horror, what Bro was thinking in that moment before Dirk made that connection and ended up on the floor.

No, no, that’s...it’s different! There was never a Bro, because he was dead. The session came alive when Dirk got shoved into his spot. Filling the hole. Bro never had the chance to be alive. That’s why his dreamself had been thrown out, because he’d been dead--

Little Jade. Mini-Jade is alive. Right now.

Not in some hypothetical created instance before shit went live.

Right Now.

She’s been living.

Living and bleeding and hurting.

timeausTestified [TT]: I have to go check on Jade.

Dirk’s orange text pulls itself open on your phone. You ignore the garbled mess of his earlier spiral and just look over Jade’s shaking head at him. He grimaces.

timeausTestified [TT]: I need to see it for myself.
timeausTestified [TT]: No wonder she can’t trust in her own future. Especially since there’s clearly some indirect flow of information, and she’s likely getting at least a little bit of bleedthrough when it comes to this Jade’s resignation.
timeausTestified [TT]: The definition of a template is that they need to be filled.

Broken and in pieces, not knowing anything different, built up from building blocks and getting some of your Jade bleeding through the cracks. But never enough to be filled, because it’d been intentionally left empty.

You can stare into those cracks in space. In those shards orbiting around the frustrated girl at your side. Set apart, but caught in her own gravity. The gold of a prospit dreamer and the vibrant green of a new life. Glimpses of island views and squiddle toys and a dreadful loneliness created by the missing places in her soul.

You listen to your heart, and your Jade feels full. Complete. Untouched by the hammer blow that shattered the rest of your friends to make them fit into spaces too small. Because those spaces were designed to grow and become something new.

Full of life and despairing for it.

Grieving for what that means when the small, newly born star passes beyond the schwarzschild radius, and will never be seen again.

You don’t know the mini, but you already know Dirk loves her just as much as you love Jade.

dataJammer [DJ]: go
dataJammer [DJ]: ive got this

You flip back to the memo as Dirk stands up, the bed shifting with the lost weight. Jade doesn’t seem to notice at all, even as you let your flight feathers tighten, cocooning you both without obstructing her view of the projected screen. You don’t know where Dirk goes, but his song fades noticeably in your Heart as he slides along that universal boundary once more.

dataJammer [DJ]: jade
dataJammer [DJ]: listen
dataJammer [DJ]: we will fix this
dataJammer [DJ]: well figure out what happened to your grandpa
dataJammer [DJ]: dont worry about that
dataJammer [DJ]: dirk wont let anything happen to minijade
dataJammer [DJ]: i swear hes gone and adopted the little pipsqueak and hes only just met her
dataJammer [DJ]: trust me please
dataJammer [DJ]: even if the queen said its not possible
dataJammer [DJ]: fuck it
dataJammer [DJ]: were the gods of souls n identity and shit
dataJammer [DJ]: both of us
dataJammer [DJ]: im sure we can figure it out!!!

“You don’t understand, Davepeta.” She sounds. Tired. The anger still popping beneath the surface in a low growl but--she’s forcing it away. Wrestling it back behind that smile, even if it’s cloudy now. No longer blindingly brilliant and hiding the shadowed caverns beneath. “It’s not something that can be fixed. I’m supposed to be here. I know it, I can feel it. Even if skaia is dark, I can still feel the intent there! Something plucked me out of that mess and set me apart with nothing to do but wait and think and theorize once again caught at the edge of the world! Maybe it saved me for some stupid prophecy or maybe some other reason I don’t know, but it fucking doomed her and that’s not FAIR! She’s just a kid! She doesn’t--”

Sitting on the bed and the hunch in her shoulders means the height difference isn’t as massive, but she still has to look down to meet your gaze. Blood dribbling down her lip. Eyes reddened with unshed tears and hidden behind a green glare.

You can’t say anything.

She continues in a whisper.

“I’m so tired Davepeta. I’m tired of watching. I’m tired of reading our journal that no one else knows about. A journal I never kept. She has a working hoverboard, do you know that? Or she will as soon as she can get the parts together! I’ve read her notes, and she’s three years behind me and yet I think she’s done more in these last three days than I have in my whole life on that island! What will she be like in three more years?”

You can’t say anything.

“I don’t...I don’t think I can sit here and watch her grow up.”

You have to strain to hear it, even with your olive-blood hearing. It makes your heart run cold

“I called Jadesprite a whiny crybaby, you know? I think--I think I understand how Jadesprite felt, now. I was done. ”

I don’t want to be here.

I didn’t ask for this.

“I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, you know? About you--Davesprite. About how you weren’t just another Dave. About how you grew and learned and changed. Just look at you! The Davesprite I briefly knew on the ship was so very different from the Dave I grew up with, and then meeting you for that brief rendezvous--It made me wonder--did I take that away from Jadesprite? She’s--she’s the reason I’m like this.” Her clawed hands gently touch her fluffy white ears, even if they are pressed flat against her hair, a big, bold, blinking neon sign of distress, “I consumed her, to become a god. But I didn’t have a choice. Bec made that choice for me. And here I am, with some unknown entity--Skaia, Lord English, whatever--setting me aside like I’m a pawn. Forcing me to stare down this fate, watching her grow and knowing what will happen the moment we reconnect. Waiting to do it all over again, with nothing to do except think about what will happen if nothing changes and I--I don’t think I can do it, Davepeta. I really don’t.”

Your clumsy fingers manage to say something.

dataJammer [DJ]: fuck predestiny jade
dataJammer [DJ]: you wont have to do it
dataJammer [DJ]: i promise

“I wish that were true.” A sad smile. She raises her hands, fingertip to thumb, up to her glasses as one of the orbiting shards pass between her and the lunchtop screen. Pulling her hands apart, the shard expands with them to show the images clearly reflected in their depths.

Moonlight streaming into the tower. Glowing red orbs on top of four posts. A small--too small--cloud of black hair poking out from sun and cloud bed sheets. And a shadow, kneeling by the bed.

You have to force yourself not to look away, as Bro gently cups nothing but air, pullin a glowing cloud of black and green free from her chest.

Holes.

Gaping holes. You can see right through them. Spaces left to be filled. A bundle of traits and emotions and memories waiting for something more. Something substantial, to be poured into that space and make it whole. Clinging to itself by fraying threads.

You’re surprised they haven’t unraveled yet.

You’ve said you wouldn’t wish psychomom’s fate on anyone. With her cognitive dissonance and bleeding shards, sticking into and through her soul like shrapnel.

You can’t imagine what this could feel like.

The little girl doesn’t do more than shift quietly as Dirk freezes, and you can read fear in Bro’s face. Something you never wanted to see on his face. Ever. His hands are trembling.

He’s afraid of putting it back.

Like if he moves too fast, that delicate web will tear and she’ll fall apart.

“She doesn’t deserve this.” Jade admits quietly, “She deserves better than to be shoved into me. To wait for so long, cut off from anything that had once given her hope, only to have the thing that should have freed her consume her.”

Her hand reaches out, the image fuzzing and wavering as she passes through it. You know what it’s trying to do. You’ve seen it with Dave’s shards, getting swept up in yourself, slotting themselves away in the back of your mind. Not a part of your weave, but tiny stars, floating in the nebula. Not a part of you. Just memories. Memories of the dead, broken up, tossed away.

Not alive.

Not the way that little girl is.

Not like Dave is now.

You’ve wrapped yourself around him before, cloaking him in wings and claws and bared fangs to protect him.

But you always were able to let him go.

The shard splinters beneath Jade’s touch with a crack, and you see the faint, blurry image in Dirk’s hands flare.

She jerks back as if burned.

The shard, gold and green with its reflected image, unravels with a soft, discordant note.

“This is why I know.” Jade curls her claws into her witch’s frock, hugging herself, “If I try to get close, she crumbles. I just--I want her to have a chance. And it’s not possible while I’m here.”

You…

Know what she wants.

And it terrifies you.

Notes:

Note: this chapter ended up being largely unbeta'd due to situations but I've gone ahead and posted it anyway! Hope it was worth the (probably too long) wait. As some of you know I'm in the middle of moving right now, so I cannot say when regular updates for anything will resume. I hope this surprise was worth it though!

...also if you wanna bribe my brain into working, leave a comment. I have plenty of time to write this coming week...it's just a matter of motivating brain into doing the thing. Somehow.

Chapter 74: Dirk > Rack Your Brains

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

You can’t sleep.

This state of affairs is nothing new for you. It might as well be your middle name. Dirk “Insomniac” Strider. But…

Right now it’s being pretty damn inconvenient.

Lying in your borrowed bed--and Christ are you going to miss having an actual bed when you go back to the futon--with your eyes closed, trying desperately to wrangle your racing mind into something resembling relaxation so you can cross that precarious bridge to your dreamself where you’ve got your moirail waiting for you.

You can’t even blame Lil’ Cal for this. He’s actually behaving. This is 100% the fault of your overactive brain.

Well, ‘behaving’ might be a bit strong. He’s clinging to your soul like a jealous asshole, but what’s new there? At least he isn’t trying to carve out a space to slither in anymore.

Not that Lil’ Cal matters right now, he’s only peripherally on your mind, and only in the fact that you can feel the long body made of flickering flames coiled on your chest. Feel those burning red eyes staring down at you. The weight puts up resistance to every breath you take even if he’s not actively hindering you.

You wouldn’t put it past your fledgling fleshsuit powers to have manifested him to try and give you a target for your anxiety, because the actual target for your anxiety is so much more nebulous and you don’t know what the fuck to do about it.

Christ.

You’ve been here for days.

Why the hell didn’t you know there was something wrong with her?

Holding that gossamer web in your hands, feeling the stubborn sense of Self clinging to every strand. Feeling that dogged determination to be whole resonating through your burgeoning Heart-sense. A yearning that would find its completeness beyond the event horizon, never to escape again.

Almost like when you tore the sprite free. When that latticework of code holding Davepeta together was removed, leaving the disparate parts to pull together out of pure bull-headed stubbornness.

They were a god of Souls.

She wasn’t.

You should have known.

Why would you have a reason to check?

Shouldn’t you have sensed it or something? Sure, your god-bod has the bulk of your sparkly magic powers, but you have enough here to sense when Lil’ Cal’s bein’ a shit so why the fuck couldn’t you tell that Jade is literally one jenga block away from collapsing in on herself to create an honest to god black hole?

How the fuck are you supposed to just know when something is wrong with someone else?

That’s egotistical even for you. Like it or not, even if you’ve stolen most of it back, Lil’ Cal still has scraps of your soul. Or something close enough to it that it doesn’t matter. Jade doesn’t. Of course you can sense him. You couldn’t sense Davepeta when they were right next to you in this body, and you know their soul almost better than your own.

Get over yourself. You can’t know everything. You barely know anything.

You aren’t helping anyone with this, much less your efforts to fall asleep.

Fucking hell.

You open your eyes to a scaley snout and burning eyes. Red threads--call them what they are, scraps of your soul-- dripping from between the green and gold fangs bared at your throat.

“Fuck off,” You mutter. “I told you you got fired. Jade gets to be the dragon now, so scram.”

The projection looks almost insulted as it fades away. You ignore the eyes of the puppet sitting on the end of the bed. Watching you. You didn’t decaptchalog it, but fuck as long as it’s fixated on you and not creeping into any little kid’s dreams, you can deal, you suppose.

You get up and slide down to the floor, relinquishing the sleeping surface for the puppet to do as it wishes and reaching out with your long man-arms and pulling the clunky laptop over to you instead.

The movement tugs a bundle of wires along with it, and you find yourself unconsciously following the mass. This time the dimly glowing red eyes aren’t made of fire, but glass.

You pull up pesterchum. You don’t think Davepeta would be missing you considering the mess you left them handling, but you need to be a good moirail and check in before you bury yourself in work again.

It helps that you’re worried too.

timaeusTestified [TT] has begun pestering dataJammer [DJ]

timaeusTestified [TT]: Sorry. I can’t seem to get back to sleep. Even when I go full martial arts master meditation mode.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I don’t have your natural talent in the art of feline wrangling.
timaeusTestified [TT]: How are you holding up?
timaeusTestified [TT]: Is Jade okay?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i dont know
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< she bounced back and now shes introducing me to all her squiddles
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< jokes on her i already met them all befur
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< we had a big ol’ tea pawrty with irradiated steaks ‘n uranium gr33n tea
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< it was grrrreat
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< oh i should purrobably tell her about that
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< it might make her laugh
timaeusTestified [TT]: You didn’t answer my first question.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Are you okay?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< flock it dirk this is not about me
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im not the one who doesnt want to live to s33 the day when they murder an innocent child and theres nothing they can flocking do about it
timaeusTestified [TT]: No, but you’re the one who is clearly wracking your brain trying to solve the problem.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Trust me, I’m well aware of the lengths either of us will go to figure this shit out at this point.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I held her soul in my hands.
timaeusTestified [TT]: It’s so fragile.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i just
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i dont get it dirk
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< why her
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< why would the game do this???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< if its bec mindlessly trying to save her
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< hes a pawrt of her
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< he would know that this is the last thing she wants!!!
timaeusTestified [TT]: And if it’s something else?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< what else is there???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the carapace know diddly squat
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and they wouldnt have the pawer to change anyfang to this degree
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the horrorterrors either got themselves torn apart by lord english or just crunched in the crash
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< doc scratch is deader n a doornail thank frog
timaeusTestified [TT]: Skaia.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< flock skaia
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< thats gone too
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i met lord english
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< any scheming to get him that far must have been done by someone else beclaws he was just a big gr33n angry monster who couldnt string together a line of witty banter if it would save his life

You try not to let out a sigh, your fingers strumming against the fabric across your knee. Even if they couldn’t hear it. Couldn’t tell how frustrated you are, you still feel guilty for reacting in the first place.

timaeusTestified [TT]: Maybe she’s wrong.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Maybe it’s no one’s plan.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Maybe it’s just dumbass luck.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< then that dumb ass is getting my taloned foot right up in between its vulnerable ch33ks
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i just dont want her to hurt like that for the rest of eternity you know???
timaeusTestified [TT]: I do.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you saw it right
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< is it really as bad as it looks
timaeusTestified [TT]: Yes.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Her soul it
timaeusTestified [TT]: It’s a template forced to stand on its own.
timaeusTestified [TT]: A field dying of drought, ready to greedily drink up any water that comes its way.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Even if it drowns her.
timaeusTestified [TT]: And it will drown her.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< were living proof that you can live with a flocked up soul
timaeusTestified [TT]: We are also gods of--how did you put it in the memo?--soul and identity and shit.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m fairly certain we’re far more flexible by design.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Mine is a pile of broken bits and bobs but I’m designed to be that way.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m okay with being a fucking mess. I don’t like it, but I’ve come to realize it’s just how my identity fractures. My splinters are--were fully cognizant of their state as a Dirk Strider even if they didn’t like it because we all hate the entity that is Dirk Strider.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< do i n33d to find your body and pap you in the furreakin face fur that
timaeusTestified [TT]: No, that was not a thinly veiled cry for a feelings jam.
timaeusTestified [TT]: It was an example. My point is, my soul is a fucking mess because I made it a fucking mess. I’m used to it.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I don’t know if I’d be the same person if I wasn’t constantly a fucking mess.
timaeusTestified [TT]: She isn’t a Prince of Heart, though. It isn’t her fate to fracture and exist as three or four or fuck knows how many separate entities I had going at one point.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Little Jade has the barest framework of a soul. It yearns to be whole. And it will be whole, whether we want it to or not. Even if we add a kernel sprite into the equation, I’m not sure that could stop it if the gravity differential is too fucking big. Can’t even get a binary system goin’ long enough to chuck one of them in a kernel sprite because she’d fuckin’ sink.

Metaphorical elbows deep in the robot’s code. You could tweak the scanner program, you think, to pick up the other Jade. Not her brain’s ghost image, but her soul. To see for yourself, in a quantifiable fashion, exactly how large the gulf is. A map made of ones and zeroes, to overlay the ghost images of their two souls to see just how bad it could be. Not everyone survives getting smashed back together. Especially when one of them was never a full person anyway.

You were lucky. It says something about the nature of your splinters that they can all stand on their own. Full people, even if they weren’t necessarily real people.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dude mew sound like youre red right now
timaeusTestified [TT]: I have no idea what you are insinuating.
timaeusTestified [TT]: You can clearly see my text color. It did not change.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I am not an octopus, no matter what you decided for your comic.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I have no idea why you decided to give my cameo character mood-ring eyes. It’s utterly embarrassing.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< oh come on no one knows its you and moodring eyes works fur a unicorn purrince so nya
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< besides its fun mr octopus
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i woulda gone with chameleon but that works too
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ocean lover
timaeusTestified [TT]: I actually hate it.
timaeusTestified [TT]: The ocean, I mean.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I don’t actually mind the unicorn shit.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i know

Your eyes travel to the window. To the distant ocean. To the phantom memories of gulls and the sound of the waves.

You used to hate it, anyway.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yeah i guess bein stuck on it with nofang else would do that to a purrson
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< anyway
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i dont know what to do dirk
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< all i can do is hang out here with her so shes not left thinking about it for the rest of eternity

Eternity. The clock ticks in your ears as you stop, go back and tweak some code, before forging onwards again. One step forward. Two steps back. Three more retraced and revised. As you think. You open another window and chase a thought you had earlier. Souls are fuckin’ complicated. You wish you could just digitize the infuriating things and pick them apart piece by piece. Sure you have your godly intuition, but that’s sometimes even more infuriating because there’s no way to peer review it, even if that peer is yourself.

timaeusTestified [TT]: We could go to the archives.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< doth mine own eyes deceive me???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< Dirk Strider--the Exiled Prince, the most paranoid of anti-authoritarianistic Champions--suggesting to talk to a Carapace Queen?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you get some capital letters fur that
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< enjoy them
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the carapace are powerless remewmber
timaeusTestified [TT]: Laugh it up.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I don’t want to talk to the Queen.
timaeusTestified [TT]: If I thought I could get away with it I’d just fucking break in.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Their writings and history are the most direct clues we get into the workings of the game until our individualized quests.
timaeusTestified [TT]: And…
timaeusTestified [TT]: It might distract Jade for a little while.
timaeusTestified [TT]: If you’ve got a better idea that isn’t just spending all night staring up at the ceiling like that’ll change anything, I’m all ears.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< do mew think youd be able to knock yourself out to join us
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< jade doesnt s33m to mind the idea although shes b33n pouting at me about texting my bbbff during the middle of our own date
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< not that it is a date mind were legit just sitting here talking about what were talkin about now with a lil bit of explainin trollmance slipped in
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and now shes calling you my pale pal
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< would you be my pale pal dirk
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< my purrincess diamond
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< my diamond in the rough
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< my pastel purrince
timaeusTestified [TT]: Jesus Christ that’s enough.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Don’t push it. This soup can only has room for one label.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Choose wisely.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< broirail it is
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< might as well stick to the classics
timaeusTestified [TT]: Getting back on the actual topic: No, I don’t think I’ll be able to knock myself out short of banging my head into a fucking wall, and I don’t want to leave a bloody mess for Jade to find in the morning, nor do I want to clean up a bloody mess in the morning.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Just punch my gameself in the face or some shit when you two are ready. It can take it. I left it on the roof.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< that didnt work last time remeowmber
timaeusTestified [TT]: Last time I had a spiteful possessed puppet getting all up in my shit.

You glance away from the screen for a moment. To the gleaming blue eyes watching you from the bed. That lil’ shit’s orientation definitely changed to keep you in sight. It’s not even trying to blur your perceptions anymore.

Why bother when you’ve actually seen it for what it is.

The notion that you think that’s all it is, is laughable. But at least you are acknowledging a fraction of the truth now.

timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m betting things will be different now.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I told you I dealt with him.

You keep expecting them to ask about that. You’re oddly relieved when they don’t, even as it makes a part of you sit up with a concerned frown.

It isn’t right.

They should be pouncing on you about something. Weaseling the information out of you while you try your best to dodge it.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< if youre sure
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< how much time do mew have
timaeusTestified [TT]: Not enough, but I only have a few days left here.
timaeusTestified [TT]: If there’s something we can do for Jade, we’ll need to make them count.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dude
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< youre a flocking adult and bro was loaded down so heavy hed sink like a stone
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dont tell me mew couldnt hop on a plane and be back in the pacific befur mew know it if mew stumbled across some sudden revelation
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< take dave with you next time
timaeusTestified [TT]: I

That actually makes you stop typing, leaving that line unsent as you rub your aching and straining eyes so hard it leaves stars dancing in your vision.

You could. Couldn’t you?

Even if she’s destined to--

You could at least make sure her remaining time isn’t as cripplingly lonely.

Fuck that.

Jadebot’s red eyes glow dimly in the dark. You’re surrounded by the quiet hum of electronica. Almost a white-noise, quickly covered up by your noisy exhale.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< cmon i think itd be a pawsome vacay!!!
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i betcha theyll both be over the moon
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< jade agr33s
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< come oooooon

Of course they’d taken your silence as a cue to keep going. You press too hard on the backspace key to clear out the thought you’d evidently typed while you weren’t paying attention, and then jump back into it.

timaeusTestified [TT]: Maybe.
timaeusTestified [TT]: If I can jump through the proper approvals to even get out here.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Once I write that fucking report for Roxanne, there’s no guarantee she’ll pull the strings that let me out here again.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< since when would that stop mew huh???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< just get jadey to facetime her some of her pawtented puppy eyes
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< itll work
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< trust me
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’ll take that under consideration.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Just punch me in the fucking face already.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< alright
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< just remeowmber you asked fur it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< litterally

You have more than enough time to save your work and power down the robot, setting your messily concocted simulation, frankensteined as it was from some of Harley’s early work still existing on the hard drive, to run over the next however many hours. To lean yourself back against the bed and stretch the kink forming there, the result of poor posture and the fact that you should be using the desk and not the floor if you want to be hunched over the laptop for hours like a gremlin. Waiting. You even close your eyes to ease the eventual transition, pulling yourself as far into a meditative state as you can despite the fact that your brain keeps chewing on shit you would much rather it spit out. Chewed on them gross mud covered shoes so much there’s nothing left but scraps and a sour taste in your mouth.

It hits you like a punch to the face.

Because it is.

Despite the fact that you were prepared for it, the pain blossoms into a full blown sunflower in your jaw, the momentum jerking your head back, and popping your eyes wide open just in time to see Lil’ Cal’s baby blues peeking down over the edge, the shadowy figures of Harley’s trophies looming above you, dissolving into an abyss of darkness, with those eerily glowing eyes the last things to fade. Burned into your soul as your consciousness is literally knocked free and unmoored. Tongues of flame lick at your back, like they do when you walk this path under your own power, the fact that the world is spinning and you’re falling down it this time doesn’t mean 2-hoots, those claws almost reach out to snatch you. They flex, teasing, hot breath running down your neck. Threatening to close. To stop you. To tug on the strings and snap you back like they had so many times before.

But they won’t.

They don’t.

For a moment you hang between the two--

--and then you slam into your gameself so hard it makes your fucking head spin. Do the full blown possessed poltergeist schtick now all you gotta do is grow your hair out and let it dangle in your face. It’s unkempt enough for it at this point. You let out a groan as your jaw aches like a motherfucker.

You didn’t crash into the ground at least, like you’d feared. Maybe ragdolled a little, but while your groggy as fuck brain is rattling around in your skull, you’re being supported by hands on your shoulders. Davepeta, your abused brain supplies, only that doesn’t make sense because Davepeta is swimming in front of you, a hazy blob of color and feathers overlaid with feelings as your vision center kicks into overdrive to try and process all the information going on here, physical and metaphysical. If Davepeta’s in front of you, then--

timaeusTestified [TT]: Fuck I hate thatIhatethatso much. You disable the brain to shades immediately after you accidentally send it. Apparently forcibly recalibrating your cranium stirs up the goddamn soup and now you need to untangle your fucking brain. At least with all this practice you’re getting to be a pro at it. Just let all the silt settle back to the bottom and sweep it the fuck away. Jesus robo fucking christ what would you do if you weren’t anchored in--

“They didn’t hit you that hard, did they? Davepeta! Was that really necessary? Couldn’t you have, I dunno, smacked him or something? Are you okay??”

Davepeta’s wheezing laughter is the equivalent of them laughing their fool head off, and you wince, raising a hand to briefly touch the pulse of pain burrowed into your jaw, “As they will undoubtedly remind me, I did ask for this.”

“That doesn’t mean they need to go through with it!” Jade huffs, helping you up. Not that you need it, of course, but you appreciate the proffered arm regardless. Davepeta attempts to squirm their way into your good graces the way Gcat liked to twine itself between your ankles and trip you the fuck over shit.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< sorry
timaeusTestified [TT]: No you aren’t.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yeah youre right im not

You dig your elbow into their side and they snicker.

Honestly it’s a miracle the three of you don’t end up in a pile on the domed roof. It’d serve you all right to tumble right off the edge.

Not that a hundred meter drop would matter much when all three of you can fly.

“Alright! One pale pal retrieved!” Jade spins excitedly, ruby slippered feet leaving the ground without a thought, slipping away from you when the dust settles and you manage to realign your own fucking brain in your skull. “Now we need to go see the Queen! Oh, we should probably let her know that we’re coming in case she’s in the middle of queenly things but we’d beat any messenger. I could just zap us there but--oh no, that would throw you off again wouldn’t it? Or--”

Her hands shoot toward you during the ramble, but between your step back and Davepeta’s twitch you know that she realizes and uses the motion as a gesture instead. Never faltering. Hidden behind round lenses.

“You could go on ahead,” You offer just as green sparks crackle, traveling along her entire frame. “It’s not as if it will take all that long for us to fly there.”

Snap. Crackle. Pop. The smell of ozone tickles at your nose as she nods vigorously, curls bouncing with the motion. Smiling. Her teeth gleaming brilliantly in her dark face. Is it too wide a smile? You don’t know. You don’t feel qualified to judge. Especially since that modus operandi sounds just a tad too familiar doesn’t it? Bury it. Bury it beneath the task at hand. She hides it with a smile and you hide it with focus but it’s the same thing is it not?

“Yeah! I could just pop over and give her a pre-briefing! She might be able to point us to the right section and we could have it all ready for a good ol’ fashioned library crawl! You know how to get to the castle right??”

You merely look at her for a moment, before turning your head to gaze out over the expansive planet below. Even beyond the curved rim of the jagged, brightly glowing city-world spreading out in the far, far distance, you can see the edge of the giant pearl-topped parapets of the Prospitian royalty’s decadent abode. Given Davepeta’s silent laugh and Jade’s sheepish giggle you think your answer is quite plain even without saying a single word. “Yeah, you’re right. Silly question. Well! I’ll see you two in two shakes of a lamb’s tail!”

For a split second you lose sight of her. Familiar--achingly familiar--features bleeding into a silhouette of poisonous green into shivering black hungry nothingness into another room. Golden and gleaming. Chess people running to and fro--and then in an instant she’s gone. Only the lingering scent of a storm building on the horizon, with an afternote of burnt fur remaining to mark her passing.

You don’t remark on the fact that there are claws digging into your hand, cutting through the godly cloth that was supposed to protect you, but is nothing beneath the assault of another deity. You give Davepeta a once-over out of the corner of your eye, noting the stiff, unmoving stillness in their face and body.

They aren’t sparking, which is a good sign. There’s no black bodied, red-eye’d crow divebombing you and kicking up a racket this time.

“You alright?”

The words break something, the ice shard jamming up the gears shattered as they begin to grind again. Davepeta sucks in a wheezing, shuddery breath. Then nods. Their free thumb clicking against keys in an impressive one-handed show of texting mastery. At this rate you won’t even need to get them brain-to-shades.

You still will, of course, but you can appreciate the evolution of a skill level up.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< of course im ok why wouldnt i be
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< mew heard her chop chop we gotta get meowving if we dont wanna be late
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ive never met the qu33n befur this is gonna be fun!!!
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< pawnest to frog royalty here what is she gonna think am i underdressed i mean well be cruisin up in the p est of js hows my hair never mind that my feathers are purrobably out of alignment

You roll your eyes and tug them into the air after you, kicking off the gleaming golden roof of the dreamer tower and you are left to imagine the indignant squawk they would likely let out in protest. It must not do that much to unseat them, however, because the text just keeps scrolling across the blackened screen of your shades, even as you do little more than keep half an eye on the evolution of the rambling half rant, half roleplay they’ve got going on. Something about hissing in indignation at you. And getting catnapped. And witches and bubbling brews and kitty stew.

You fly under the empty sky. Back the way you came naught an hour before. The hungry void is to your back this time, the echo of a distant presence shifts with unease, chittering at the far end of a broken pathway but you do your best to ignore that lingering sense of wrongness.

“The sky is eerie,” You comment out loud, when you fail at last, as the itch on the back of your neck becomes almost unbearable.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< no shit
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< purrty sure theres suppawsed to be a giant chessboard in the sky

You shrug. “I wouldn’t know.” The tentative atmosphere buffets your words and steals them away as it whistles around your ears. You switch the brain-to-shades back on now that your mind isn’t rattling around your skull. It seems to work well enough when the orange text immediately leaps onto the semi-transparent window tucked up into the corner of your vision.

timaeusTestified [TT]: We didn’t have one. Null session and all that.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yeah jade gave mew ours
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< sometimes i wonder how she came up with that plan
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i asked her once
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< why she grabbed all that when we scratched shit to hell and back
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< do mew wanna guess what she said
timaeusTestified [TT]: I get the feeling you are going to tell me anyway.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< flock yeah im gonna tell mew
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but its no fun if you dont at least try
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< come ooooooon
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< play along bro
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< fur me???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< BCC
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< do mew s33 the sad face
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its double the sad face
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< bro are mew really gonna make me get down on my hands and kn33s here and beg???
timaeusTestified [TT]: We’re hundreds of, possibly thousands of feet away from any sort of flat surface. I’d be impressed if you could do so.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its called roleplay bro
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< *davepeta paws at the ground with emphasis scoopin up this totally real dirt and smushin it all up in their rad toe beans and then with a flick sends a shower of sentiment flyin into bros face*

You don’t even try to help the smile. It’s not like they can see it from where they’re trailing you by a few feet anyway.

timaeusTestified [TT]: I think you mean sediment.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< nah i mean sentiment
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< whats the point of bein a god if you cant materialize litteral emotional baggage to smack your smartass brorail in the face with when hes bein a furreakin pedant
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< wait a sec i actually can do that now cant i
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< just lemme get jade to zap me again so i can summon the flock to peck mew into submission youll be sorry just mew wait

That small smile wilts slowly back into a frown, as you force your attention away from the green words that continue their tirade across your vision. Past them. Into the distance at the towers rising ever higher. You can see more than just the distant orbs as the building itself begins to crest the curve of the planet you work to circumnavigate.

You aren’t proud of the fact that you just…

Detach. Working on autopilot as the orange text rolls out of your brain and into the seamless conversation you can’t remember having even as it continues to scroll.

It passes the time, and soon you’re there. The view from here is so familiar as you land in the courtyard before the palace. It’s gold, not purple, and the shadows in doorways and windows watching you are white, not black, but pawns all the same.

The prince is awake.

But there’s no banner with it’s bloodied head to plant. No message to deliver. Just you and the excited girl with her perked dog-ears running out to meet you. Behind her, a willow-y figure, tall and slim with narrow, shadowed eyes, stands atop the steps, waiting. The sharp points of the crown break the smooth silhouette, the most obvious declaration of the power and station wrapped up in that plain, featureless shift.

“Your majesty!” Jade wastes no time introducing you, turning around to face the White Queen hands flapping wildly with the force of her exuberance, “These are the friends I was talking about--”

You gladly keep your trap shut beyond a cool, indiferent nod as you feel those black eyes settle on you for a moment. Dirk Strider. Prince of Heart. Derse Dreamer. Same old same old. Yadda Yadda Yadda. Really plying on the visiting dignitary schtick there. Like you aren’t just a misplaced kid here on some half-desperate wish that there’s some scrap of information you haven’t found yet.

Davepeta, on the other paw, creeps forward, the curiosity of their chosen persona perking up their wings in place of ears as they sneak up behind Jade and then deliver the most righteous of pounces right in her blind spot. They cling to the taller girl’s back as they force her to derail her introductions into a laughing fit, affectionately barking out, "You're a menace!" as their lips curl into a smug smile, flashing fangs that leads you to suspect both the canary and the cream have simultaneously gone missing and they'll never be seen by man again.

You ignore the tightness in your chest at that. You aren’t going to be fucking jealous that they aren’t tied exclusively to your bony ass hip anymore. That they have someone else to be happy with or focus on. You’re used to being second fiddle. Always there, but never the focus. Never--

Fuck no, stop this shit. You can march right up there and snag that bird by the cape. The kitten by its nape. You could easily join the fun and drawl out something sarcastic to make them hiss at you. Something that would draw out a smile and a laugh from a dark face and kind green eyes. Why don’t you just grab that fuckin’ brush and paint yourself into the damn picture instead of just standing here waxing melodramatic about it if it’s so easy.

Your feet don’t move. You cross your arms. Watching the trolley approaching the switch. Davepeta’s happiness on one. Jade’s life on the other. One of them is gonna get run the fuck over.

It isn’t an easy fix, is it?

Not an easy fix, no. But an--easy choice? Maybe. But doing it will shatter them just as easily.

Jade gives up trying to shake off her new passenger, and instead curls her arms around magenta covered legs as Davepeta’s hang loosely around her neck, peering over her shoulder at the royal extending a hand toward you all in greeting.

You aren’t expected to take it. It’s just a gesture. A welcome. Your gift of gab godly level up allowing you that much insight into the non-verbal language of another sentient in lue of spoken words. It sweeps over you, and then towards the large, vaulted door, blanketed in golden standards, standing open at the top of the steps. It’s held open by two guards in yet another plain, white uniform. So plain, and so white it blends in to their silhouette, only distinguishable by the faintest of shadows in the folds and the lack of golden sheen dancing on too smooth carapace, the only thing indistinguishable between fabric and their bodies.

It’s all so fuckin’ boring. Devoid of even the modest individuality of the vultures you outran yesterday--christ was that just yesterday? A uniform in the purest sense of the word. Pawns on a playing field. A template. Waiting for input. For the pearls on the ring to light up and deliver unto them the edicts of their gods.

Jesus robo-fucking Christ, Dirk, you need to fuckin’ chill.

You can’t even pull yourself out of your own bullshit as Jade proceeds--Davepeta-burr stuck tightly to her curly hair--to go through her introductions. It’s all noise to you. It’s noise and meaningless performative pleasantries as you catalogue every detail you can. You were never bold enough to try and break into Derse’s castle, even without knowing who, exactly, was calling the shots, so this would be entirely new territory for you, even with the blinding paint-job.

The queen sweeps down the hall in a flurry of white cloth and bare, shiny, carapaced feet giving an oddly organic click against golden stone as she leads the way, the conglomerate entity known as Jadavepeta spins around to grab you by the arm and drags you, half-floating, into the depths of the structure before the guards pull the heavy doors shut, setting into its frame with a thud that resonates down the hall.

You can probably still move them if you need to. You do not need the anxiety of being trapped in (potential) enemy territory skittering down your spine.

“You’re being really quiet, are you okay?” Jade asks, concerned, and given the way you can feel Davepeta’s gaze through their green-tinted shades you know they’d be asking you the same thing if their hands weren’t occupied in maintaining their piggybacked status.

You nod. Maybe a bit too sharply. Turn it into a small smile. You can do it. “Can’t say I’m used to the knock on the fucking door approach. Unless that door was on a remote, time-delayed distraction for the purpose of more subtle penetration.”

“If it makes you feel any better, just remember I can get us out of here with a click of my heels if we need to!” She snaps the sparkling, ruby red shoes together, “A last ditch effort, of course! But I promise it’ll be ok!! I come through here all the time. I think there’s been days where I spend more time in here than I do on the moon just--hanging out. Or nights, I guess. Not that it really matters here.”

The Queen doesn’t say a word as Jade chatters. About days spent floating in the audience chambers. Watching the day-to-day proceedings of the carapacian court. It can’t have been all that interesting--a divine mandate and a society holding its breath means court politics and any potential intrigue would be strangled in the cradle. Stagnating. Waiting for the day a world ends and war breaks loose and shit can actually happen.

You’ve seen the gossip rags. The Dersite found much of their daily entertainment in mocking how boring the Prospitians were.

But she seems to find joy in it, speaking particularly fondly of the mail-carriers, and so you hold your tongue.

Whispers follow you as the delegation heads deeper into the winding maze. It isn’t particularly busy, but white figures cross your path more often than not and then duck into side passages and corridors to scurry out of your way.

You wish you could say the identical passageways become a blur and you zone out until something changes, but you don’t. The itch of eyes on the back of your neck and the stranglehold of mounting anxiety have you trying to split your attention a hundred ways the entire time.

The Archive room is huge, stacked floor to ceiling with shelves upon shelves. Books. Scrolls. The queen’s hand sweeps across it all, before pulling long, smooth fingers back to her chest, resting it lightly over her upper torso.

“Ooooh this is the section with all the mythology isn’t it! I think I remember where that book is--Davepeta please, I can’t do anything with you clinging to me like this. Get off!” Jade finally manages to shake her unwanted passenger loose and allows herself to float several feet off the floor, running her hands along the ordered spines on a nearby shelf. Davepeta meanders after her, the two pushing into the almost claustrophobic room.

It’s like the Knowledge Repository down on Teleportalizer street but on steroids and you’re torn between the presence of the Carapacian Queen at your back and the metaphorical salivation goin’ on at having even more shit to chew on.

The choice is simple as you bite the fuck down.

The Queen is dismissed even as her silent gaze is an itch behind your shoulders, and you quickly note the books left out in neat stacks on the table. Some of them have titles, others don’t, but you don’t look to these quite yet. If Jade is right then these are the materials the Queen wants you to look at, then you’re going to get a feel for what else was around here.

Jade chatters at the Queen. At Davepeta. Even a little at you although she soon gives up when you devolve into clearly disinterested humming noises. She may give up on you, but not on talking. She brought her lunchtop with her so even if you’re only (audibly) getting half a conversation, the cadence of the words in the background work still worms it’s way through your mind.

It’s oddly familiar, and you aren’t sure you like the ease with which you settle into a working rhythm, thumbing through books and skimming because you know you’re on a time limit. It’s almost familiar, the clock ticking down in the corner of your vision. Ticking towards dawn as you race it to find something, anything you can use to solve a conundrum. It lacks true urgency, because you know you’ll at least wake up this time. At least you know if you miscalculate and the kid wakes before you manage it you won’t end up in the hospital again.

Not that it’d be pleasant to get yanked back into that too-big body. Fuck no. Not at all. Still, it’s a steadily dwindling pile of sand in your hourglass. So you bury your nose in the fucking books.

Your--the little Jade wouldn’t have given in, a small voice whispers in the back of your mind. The bit of it not preoccupied with chewing through as much data as it possibly can. Not that you even can focus entirely on it. Not really. The books aren’t particularly informative.

She wouldn’t have given in. She would have dragged your attention back to her with an unrelenting ferocity and determination to capitalize on the concept of someone to interact with. Staring you down with bright, curious, sharp, glittering green eyes and an exuberant smile.

(You have to help her. You can’t let her--)

Granted, this Jade doesn’t need you in the same way. Not with the way she has a kitty-bird nearly hanging off her. Reading over her shoulder instead of finding their own book to look through and maximize the efficiency of three sets of searching eyes. You have to bite down a comment on the waste of manpower. You know why they’re so clingy. If it helps them, both of them, you shouldn’t butt in on that.

But Christ do you want to.

Eventually you concede defeat and drift back to the tomes placed out like an offering on the table. It pains you to pick up the carefully curated materials. You know, you could get off your jealous high horse for a minute and remember you’re doing this shit to save a life.

Could you live with yourself knowing your goddamn ego is stopping you from mining every resource. Including the primary source document staring you in the goddamn face.

Your eyes drift across the table, to the pale queen seated on a pulled out chair, smooth carapace almost expressionless in it’s serenity.

The unread book sinks to your tights-covered knees.

It’s almost as if she senses your attention, crown covered head inclining to acknowledge your scrutiny.

She doesn’t say anything, but you do understand, in a way, as her gaze slowly pans across the room to settle on the pile of catbird and dogwitch leaning against each other in a pile of books.

It is a sadness. A weight of what must be.

“Not everything is set in stone.” You can’t help the snapped rebuttal, your jaw clenching and teeth grinding as you resent the fact that this carapacian so readily dismisses your efforts, even as you find yourself loathe to admit you’ve been at this shit for three hours and you’re running down the clock and have nothing to show for it. “We broke shit once already. We can break it again.”

The Queen just shakes her head, somehow projecting that same sadness without any shift to her facial features.

You feel eyes on you. A glance under the protection of your shades telling you that your--admittedly not necessarily quiet, but you weren’t exactly yelling either--outburst wasn’t missed by the duo across the room.

You bury your head in the book, cracking it open where it splits, broken by a silk bookmark. A white ribbon marking a passage.

look not

to the clouds

skaia holds its tongue

secrets spent

close your eyes

listen

a melody from the void

teased by a conductor’s wand

a dirge for the lost souls

leading beyond the event horizon

never spoken of again

trapped forever in a broken heart

dashed

to ignite the spark

You refuse to look up, and turn the page, dutifully scribing the obviously signposted information onto a mental sheet of paper before shoving it in a fucking box where it belongs, leading your overworked filing system to sigh at your petulant carelessness and begrudgingly fix your sloppy sorting in the background. At least use a less antiquated storage medium for your metaphor, goddamn.

The book itself is a mixture of coherent and nonsense, and a glance at the preamble, which you should have done instead of opening right to the bookmark, reveals that it’s a collection of writings collected from those philosophers who make the ritualistic climb up the chain to try and glean some wisdom from Skaia’s light from the temples to the gods.

Or, they would do it.

Before, you know, Skaia was swallowed.

That’s not your vocabulary right there, even as it rings true with you, bringing with it an echo of hunger quivering along snatches of red thread and through the distant connection you have to the snake curled up on your chest.

That’s how they describe it.

Swallowed.

Wasn’t there some story somewhere about a snake that swallowed the moon?

You’re getting tired of snakes.

You flip through the pages after the bookmark, finding mostly nonsense, pursing your lips as the text seems to jitter and flash, grainy gritty, bright, incomprehensible color reminding you almost of--

You shouldn’t remember that glittery, glitchy mess should you?

You shake your head and jump back to the beginning and read.

A hand settles hesitantly on your shoulder. You look up. The space across the table is empty, and you soon find the Queen’s willowy form across the room, inspecting Jade’s lunchtop Davepeta furiously typing back at her.

The hand.

On your shoulder.

You turn to find yourself lost in Jake--Jade’s eyes.

“Sorry!!”

Flustered, she immediately pulls it back. Fiddling with her fingers in a way that makes your jaw clench despite the fact that she doesn’t have any colored rubber curling around each digit.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt! I mean I did, but you were so focused so I’m sorry for interrupting but...”

With a glance toward where your moirail was unintentionally playing the perfect distraction, you slip the book into your sylladex, and focus your attention on the girl. You see her perk up almost instantly, the same way little Jade would, if perhaps a little more self consciously, a little less eagerly. “S’up?”

“Did you mean it?” She whispers quietly, fingers lacing and clenching. The slightest hint of claw digging into the back of each palm. “When you said you’d be willing to break it again?”

White ears flick forward, and you find yourself feeling…

Oddly small. And you don’t mean heightwise, even though you perhaps only have a single inch to spare over her. Technically those ears more than make up for it anyway.

The lingering unease only mounts as you see those green eyes flick behind round lenses, the same way you had. Back toward the Queen.

Or, perhaps, Davepeta.

You nod.

She’s quiet for a moment. There’s that strangely smooth mask again. The curtains shuttered as she tilts her head. Considering.

Then she nods, “I have a favor to ask. Come with me!”

She pulls you into the stacks. Out of sight. Out of earshot.

Later, you find yourself staring up at the ceiling, watching the reds and pinks of the rising sun playing across the ceiling, with a puppet curled up smugly in your arms.

Thinking.

Don’t think too hard.

It’s only when there’s a rapid knock on your door that you finally bring yourself to shove the cursed puppet back into your sylladex, your breathing hitching as you feel those mittens curling into you in protest, but it’s fine.

It’s fine.

You already gave her your answer, didn’t you?

Your voice cracks when you tell her to come in.

Little Jade bounds through the door with a brilliant smile.

Notes:

Huzzah! It is complete at last!

Fun fact, the two year anniversary of this fic (god) is on the 25th! I'm considering a special update for that. It's unplanned buuuuut I think I can do something both fun AND important to the plotline with it c: No promises, but I suppose keep an eye out for that.

As for the current State-of-the-fic, well, we're (hopefully) nearing the end of the island arc. The tension's gonna snap here in either chapter 75 or 76 (depends on if I manage that special chapter haha.) And tbh I can't wait because I want to get back to Dave ;n; Poor kid's been stuck with Newt this whole time.

...also can I say, I'm so happy you guys seem to like Newt??? I did not expect people to like him as much as some of you have indicated haha.

Anyway! Hope you guys enjoyed! And I'll (try) to not let another three months or so go between updates again.

Chapter 75: (Bonus) Dave > Peruse Your Chumroll

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

dataJammer isn’t responding.

It’s not a big deal.

Really.

You’ve literally just met the dude. Maybe the constant availability during those first few days was something special. A vacay or a particularly slow period in their life. That your bro’s bff isn’t giving you 100% of their attention isn’t what’s bothering you. Not really.

It’s just a feeling. Something crawling under your skin and pinching beneath the epiderm in the one place you can’t scratch.

So you try to ignore it. You’ve got plenty of people to talk to. Including NEW people! You’re currently in the middle of chatting it up with your newest added chum and you can already feel the lime green text filling an empty place in your soul, gossiping your socks so far off that they end up slam dunked into the laundry basket for the game winning goal by the biggest star on the team. You can even pull off a reenactment if you want right this minute, if the basket was actually several small piles littered around your room.

You don’t add the qualifier when you brag, so when Jade demands photo evidence, you quickly scrawl out a totally accurate drawing instead and clip that .jpg to the chat window.

gardenGnostic [GG]: oh wow dave!
gardenGnostic [GG]: actually this might sound a little weird but...
gardenGnostic [GG]: do you run a webcomic?

The question takes you off guard, your brain skipping, scratching, but your fingers keep going, elbow nudging the keyboard-turned-tablet tray back under your desk.

turntechGodhead [TG]: nah
turntechGodhead [TG]: i mean ive thought about it
turntechGodhead [TG]: ive got the best concept and if im gonna admit this shit is the perfect style
turntechGodhead [TG]: not to toot my own horn but im fucking hilarious
turntechGodhead [TG]: i just havent gotten around to actually doing anything with it
gardenGnostic [GG]: sorry!!! i guess it just looked familiar!
gardenGnostic [GG]: i think youd be good at it though!!! :D
turntechGodhead [TG]: maybe maybe
turntechGodhead [TG]: like i said ive been thinking about it
turntechGodhead [TG]: bro got me this rad tablet for christmas so its so much easier to just whip out a shitty drawing whenever the mood strikes
turntechGodhead [TG]: ive just been tossing them up on my blog n shit
turntechGodhead [TG]: people seem to dig it
turntechGodhead [TG]: been gettin all kinda of love from notes to hearts to full blown comments
gardenGnostic [GG]: oh my god dave!!!
gardenGnostic [GG]: is this you??? [Link]
turntechGodhead [TG]: uh
turntechGodhead [TG]: i plead the fifth
gardenGnostic [GG]: no no its really good!!!
gardenGnostic [GG]: i love your art posts the best!
gardenGnostic [GG]: i always like leaving silly emoticons in the comments :B
turntechGodhead [TG]: god youre the furry wolf princess arent you
gardenGnostic [GG]: :O
turntechGodhead [TG]: i mean
turntechGodhead [TG]: shit
turntechGodhead [TG]: thats just what i think of when i see your avatar
gardenGnostic [GG]: thats so cute!!!
gardenGnostic [GG]: its a goddess!!!
gardenGnostic [GG]: but its close enough so ill give you brownie points :B
gardenGnostic [GG]: its just so funny!
gardenGnostic [GG]: ive been following you for a while now and its so cool to find out its you you know???
turntechGodhead [TG]: i uh yeah its a small fucking world going through the dark tunnel music blaring and its firmly placed in the uncanny valley with the singing and dancing murder robots type way because its so goddamn insane but at the same time its like yea cool aight lets roll with it cmon destiny here we go
gardenGnostic [GG]: exactly!!!
gardenGnostic [GG]: i think...
gardenGnostic [GG]: i dont know you might have lost me in there somewhere haha
turntechGodhead [TG]: its ok just turn a right at the river full of grannys ashes and you couldnt miss it
turntechGodhead [TG]: so
turntechGodhead [TG]: how exactly did you find my shit anyway
turntechGodhead [TG]: like i said im hilarious
turntechGodhead [TG]: but i tend to keep that blog on the dl
turntechGodhead [TG]: just a lil place for all my bullshit if you can smell it from all the way across the fucking world
turntechGodhead [TG]: speaking of world
turntechGodhead [TG]: whats the fucking odds of my bro flying all the way accross the world on some lameass business trip only to end up in the home of one of my internet fans
gardenGnostic [GG]: well…
turntechGodhead [TG]: stop
turntechGodhead [TG]: dont answer that
gardenGnostic [GG]: just give me a minute and ill calculate it!!!
gardenGnostic [GG]: i just need to look up the current population of the world and a few other variables :B
turntechGodhead [TG]: no stop
turntechGodhead [TG]: it was rhetorical
turntechGodhead [TG]: i know youre smart as fuck youd have to be to live in some secret lab in the middle of the ocean surrounded by robots n shit and even have your own cryptid haunting the place
turntechGodhead [TG]: is it true
gardenGnostic [GG]: is what true?
gardenGnostic [GG]: the lab or the robots?
gardenGnostic [GG]: your bro already validated the cryptid didnt he???
turntechGodhead [TG]: bold of you to assume id blindly believe him
turntechGodhead [TG]: both
gardenGnostic [GG]: i dont know if id call it a lab but
gardenGnostic [GG]: yeah!!! i have a robot!!!
gardenGnostic [GG]: i mean i didnt make the robot. grandpa did...
gardenGnostic [GG]: but its still mine
gardenGnostic [GG]: do you wanna see???
turntechGodhead [TG]: fuck yeah gimme one sweet robo selfie up in this bitch
gardenGnostic [GG]: isnt that a little forward??? asking a girl for pics on the first date :B
turntechGodhead [TG]: uh

Fuck.

If that were Rose you might have had a witty comeback but it’s not so you’re just left floudering.

gardenGnostic [GG]: ah! sorry!
gardenGnostic [GG]: i guess that was a bit forward of me
gardenGnostic [GG]: sorry :(
gardenGnostic [GG]: i hope i didnt make you uncomfortable

That--

That isn’t how this is supposed to go--

You’re the one who’s supposed to tumble ass over teakettle into uncomfortable shit. And you’re the one who’s supposed to be apologizing.

So why does that--

hurt?

You crack the hesitation out of your fingers and do your best to drown out the static echoing in your brain with the loud mechanical clacks of your cherry red keystrokes. It’s not even marginally better than the ticks, those bastards just keep tocking on regardless of if you’ve got another spooky ass noise reverberating between your hear ducts.

turntechGodhead [TG]: nah its cool
turntechGodhead [TG]: nice job making me eat a concrete brunch
turntechGodhead [TG]: knocked me right off my tricycle do you know how hard it is to unbalance a three wheeler???
turntechGodhead [TG]: but nah you put that rock in my path and preempted my own uncomfortable joke and let me fall flat on my face
turntechGodhead [TG]: do you know what you did???
turntechGodhead [TG]: how rare a speechless strider is???
gardenGnostic [GG]: no actually!
gardenGnostic [GG]: im afraid my frame of reference is rather limited
gardenGnostic [GG]: your brother doesnt seem to have much trouble with silence!
turntechGodhead [TG]: yeah thats cuz he has the approachability of the worlds ugliest porcupine
turntechGodhead [TG]: and thats not fair to the porcupine
gardenGnostic [GG]: did you know porcupines are actually really soft and gentle if you pet along their spines???
turntechGodhead [TG]: did
turntechGodhead [TG]: did you just suggest petting my hypothetical porcupine bro???
gardenGnostic [GG]: no!
gardenGnostic [GG]: just putting out there that spikey things arent always spikey when you know how to handle them!
turntechGodhead [TG]: i know how to handle him

You’ve hit enter before you realize it, and you can’t edit or backspace as soon as your brain catches up with what you said. You examine it from every angle.

It looks innocent enough. Just a statement continuing the adventures of Bro the Hedgehog, the metaphor that really shouldn't have existed. Especially now that your bro gave up on the hair shwoop. Hard to point and laugh when he doesn’t have the ‘hog ‘do, and he’s definitely not blue. Quite the opposite of blue. Can’t really be a blue blur when you don’t wear the stuff. Even the color he’s been throwing into the mix with those smuppet sleeves is lacking the color blue. Mostly warm tones. With the occasional green.

This time you purposefully pick up the tonearm and move that cartridge back a couple notches and reset that groove again before you went down into the cursed zone of your own head.

There’s no reason for her to know that it was snapped out. No reason for her to guess that there was any sort of heat behind the innocuous words. Even as the ticking seconds stretch into minutes and you have the strangest creeping flutter start to build in your chest of christ you did it you said something to ruin this weird little thing you had going. Took that sprouting seed and ground it under your fucking heel, crushed all the potential for a friendtree when it was naught but a friend sprout.

You grab at the silence, let the anxiety bypass your mouth and flow from brain to hands to keys to text. Running with shit as the singular minute becomes plural becomes five becomes more, just leaving a mess of red text all over the Pesterchum window.

Maybe your mouth wasn’t bypassed, not entirely, because you mutter the words aloud to yourself even as they don’t penetrate your ears because the sound is something the sound and the typing is something other than the ticking and tocking--

It looks like your minor panic attack is all for naught, however, because bright lime green plonks an attachment down in the chat window without acknowledging your rambling rant at all. All that effort. Wasted. Thankfully.

And you’re totally okay with it because the preview that loads means you pushed your shame off the edge of the window and you unapologetically hope it fell to it’s untimely death. The world will never speak of it again.

gardenGnostic [GG]: tada! 20070128_032517.jpg
gardenGnostic [GG]: sorry! i had to go find a camera!
turntechGodhead [TG]: dude hold up thats rad as fuck but
turntechGodhead [TG]: first things first
turntechGodhead [TG]: thats not a selfie!!!
turntechGodhead [TG]: selfie has the word self in it
turntechGodhead [TG]: there is no self in this selfie
turntechGodhead [TG]: therefore it is not a selfie
turntechGodhead [TG]: not unless youre secretly a robot and this is your round about way of testing me to see if id believe the truth!
gardenGnostic [GG]: i wasnt the one who said anything about a selfie remember???
turntechGodhead [TG]: you didnt say i was wrong
gardenGnostic [GG]: my arm is right there!!!
turntechGodhead [TG]: yea thats an impressive joke arm im onto you harley i know how common that shit is they turn up all over the place
turntechGodhead [TG]: ill get you turing tripped up just you wait
turntechGodhead [TG]: expose you for the rad robogirl you are for all the world to see
gardenGnostic [GG]: ill just have to make sure i keep passing all your tests then :B
turntechGodhead [TG]: so like
turntechGodhead [TG]: whats the sitch
gardenGnostic [GG]: what do you mean???
turntechGodhead [TG]: like
turntechGodhead [TG]: whats he doing?
turntechGodhead [TG]: jackin all up into roboyous brain like that

Wire running from the side of the girl’s head, falling to the ground, looping around limp limbs and running back, vanishing behind the open door of a wardrobe. You instantly recognized the disastrous mop of hair sticking out from around the edge, and the glow of a screen lighting making it easy to guess there’s a laptop or some shit all plopped out on the floor.

gardenGnostic [GG]: i dont know honestly!
gardenGnostic [GG]: hes been really quiet today
gardenGnostic [GG]: i want to say preoccupied
gardenGnostic [GG]: i asked whats up and he just shook his head and kept working :(
turntechGodhead [TG]: i mean
turntechGodhead [TG]: thats kinda what bro does jade
turntechGodhead [TG]: gets all in too deep and then nothing short of the end of the world will pull him out of it
turntechGodhead [TG]: i dont know what you were expecting
gardenGnostic [GG]: its not though!!!
gardenGnostic [GG]: he said if it works hell tell me tomorrow :T
turntechGodhead [TG]: so he did tell you
turntechGodhead [TG]: damn you got an answer outta him
turntechGodhead [TG]: count yourself blessed
turntechGodhead [TG]: i never get shit when hes busy
gardenGnostic [GG]: he doesnt seem to mind answering my questions!!!
gardenGnostic [GG]: i even think he likes it??? having someone to explain things to i mean
gardenGnostic [GG]: all i have to do is give him a topic and he takes off!!!
gardenGnostic [GG]: usually anyway...
gardenGnostic [GG]: ever since this morning it just
gardenGnostic [GG]: i dont know! it just feels weird!!!
gardenGnostic [GG]: im worried

Don’t think about the way your jaw clenches as the image paints itself upon your overactive imagination. Shaking your head even as your fingers curl into fists. She thinks that’s weird? What’s weird is the idea of Bro--

Honestly? Even with the robot you can’t see why the fuck Bro is bothering.

Not that you don’t think it’s worth bothering. Jade is awesome and robots are rad it’s just…

You can’t imagine it. You can’t imagine it at all. You can’t imagine Bro with the patience to give a fucking robotics lecture to a little girl. You can’t imagine your Bro with the patience to deal with kids period. He fucking bolts if you spent more than twenty minutes in his presence--

No that isn’t quite right is it? You’re the one who can’t seem to exist in the same room for longer than an hour unless you’re exhausted out of your mind.

Of course he’d appreciate someone who doesn’t just fucking ditch him.

Stevens told you. He told you. Bro used to be different. Before you. Used to do shit. Used to get excited about robots and electronics and you couldn’t ever stop him if he started going, used to talk your fuckin’ ear off.

It’d make sense. Jade seems to love this shit. He loves this shit. Of course he’d take a shine to her. He never could leave a dull blade alone. Wasn’t that why he tried to sharpen you? Before he dropped that sword like it’s hot.

Why couldn’t it be you.

Why won’t you let it be you.

You shove that goddamn thought out the window like the snake it is. It isn’t worth the mental real estate. Nope. Nada. Not welcome here.

turntechGodhead [TG]: okay
turntechGodhead [TG]: so you dont know what hes doing now
turntechGodhead [TG]: but like
turntechGodhead [TG]: its your bot
turntechGodhead [TG]: shouldnt you have some say in the end goal here???
gardenGnostic [GG]: oh i do!!!
turntechGodhead [TG]: ok so
turntechGodhead [TG]: lay it on me harley
gardenGnostic [GG]: shes broken…
gardenGnostic [GG]: i told you grandpa made her right???
turntechGodhead [TG]: yea
gardenGnostic [GG]: she used to fly around when i slept!!
gardenGnostic [GG]: mr strider said something about her translating my brainwaves into actions and motions???
gardenGnostic [GG]: so like id sleep! and dream! and she spent her life acting out my dreams!
gardenGnostic [GG]: but then something went wrong :(
gardenGnostic [GG]: and we dont fit together anymore...
turntechGodhead [TG]: so she really is a robo you huh
gardenGnostic [GG]: yeah!!!
gardenGnostic [GG]: but like i said
gardenGnostic [GG]: we dont fit anymore
turntechGodhead [TG]: im sure bro could fix that
turntechGodhead [TG]: line up them targets and get it all working again
gardenGnostic [GG]: maybe he could!
gardenGnostic [GG]: but i dont…
gardenGnostic [GG]: really want him to?
gardenGnostic [GG]: i want her to live!!!
gardenGnostic [GG]: i dont want her to be tied to me!!!
gardenGnostic [GG]: even if we have to break her free!!!
turntechGodhead [TG]: goddamn sounds like a mess and a half
turntechGodhead [TG]: is bro even getting any work done or do i need to tell his handler hes slacking off to help the princess rehabilitate her robotwin
gardenGnostic [GG]: im the dragon! not the princess :B
turntechGodhead [TG]: do you plan on causing any mayham mx dragon
turntechGodhead [TG]: do i need to pull out my sword and go a hunting
turntechGodhead [TG]: im very experienced in slayage at this point
turntechGodhead [TG]: lots of practice gets in when youve got a big green monster rampaging through the countryside setting all the shit on fire
turntechGodhead [TG]: think of the peasants
turntechGodhead [TG]: they didnt deserve this
turntechGodhead [TG]: they didnt sign up for sleepless nights and constant pillaging
gardenGnostic [GG]: oh dont worry!!! im a very good dragon!!!
gardenGnostic [GG]: ill kick out the mean one!!!
gardenGnostic [GG]: bam pow bonked it right on the nose and send it packing
gardenGnostic [GG]: this is my countryside now and i decree the populous can live without fear!!!
turntechGodhead [TG]: oh?
turntechGodhead [TG]: so whats your price for this protection huh
turntechGodhead [TG]: theres always gotta be a price its a dragon thing
gardenGnostic [GG]: oh i don’t know!
gardenGnostic [GG]: i think shed be happy with a few friends coming to talk to her every now and then!!!
turntechGodhead [TG]: well
turntechGodhead [TG]: god i guess i gotta turn in my knight cred
turntechGodhead [TG]: hang that sord up on the gaudy ass purple wallpaper where itll gather dust for all of eternity
gardenGnostic [GG]: oh no why???
turntechGodhead [TG]: cause
turntechGodhead [TG]: you cant go slaying when youre giving yourself up for tribute
gardenGnostic [GG]: :O
gardenGnostic [GG]: really???
turntechGodhead [TG]: yeah
turntechGodhead [TG]: really
gardenGnostic [GG]: :D :D :D
turntechGodhead [TG]: one isnt a few but i might be able to rustle up a couple more for you too

Red and green. Red and green. Red and green but not like Christmas. Like--

Frogs and blood staining freshly hopped on snow.

The image is oddly crisp in your mind.

A familiar swoop of that hair. A smile sparkling up at you from a face you must have plucked from molded metal.

The conversation moves on, and purple and blue join you as you all step in and out of each other’s paths. Routines spinning and twinning and you find yourself wondering if the others were missing their fourth as much as you were.

turntechGodhead [TG] is pestering tentacleTherapist [TT]

turntechGodhead [TG]: so how do you feel about being fed to a dragon
turntechGodhead [TG]: im thinkin i need another person or two worth of tribute to satiate the bottomless hunger for the supple flesh of newborn friendships
turntechGodhead [TG]: you in???
tentacleTherapist [TT]: Since you’re asking for volunteers, I’d think I deserve at least the cliff notes about the entity to which you plan to sacrifice me to.
turntechGodhead [TG]: it involves a teleporting demon dog
tentacleTherapist [TT]: …
tentacleTherapist [TT]: I’m listening.

Your lips curl and you swap to another window, typing out a similar message for John.

If your eyes linger on the online list. On the greyed out name that feels so off.

Well. You’re soon distracted enough that it doesn’t matter.

Notes:

This fic's 2 year anniversary was yesterday (the 25th) and damn. I can't believe this is still going x3 Whelp. I'm sure there's still another couple left in me!

This chapter wasn't meant to be here, but it felt wrong not having something to put up this week! Plus, I know people probably wanted to see how the minis are doing c:

...it's not as if I'm letting that cliffhanger simmer. nop. not at all.

Special thanks to Alexharrier for doing the art for this chapter on such a short notice <3 Ilu <3

Chapter 76: Dirk > Figure it out later

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

It’s a long day.

Unbearably long.

Followed by another.

Followed by another.

You’re running out of time, despite having too much of it.

The time drags. Tick tick tick. You can’t do much to distract yourself, tower-bound as you are by your still aching knee, when staring unblinkingly at colored pixels on a screen inevitably starts to make your vision blur, drifting in and out of laser focus and diffused mist.

Little Jade, your Jade, dozes against the unfeeling, unresponsive metal robot plugged into the other end of the cord.

It’s both fitting and disconcerting, seeing them side by side.

It’s all the more obvious now that the girl cast in metal and glass was meant to be an older version of the one whose head rested on her chest.

It’d been strange when Jade showed up downstairs without a laptop this morning. Yawning. Barely keeping her eyes open even after a full night’s rest.

You knew why, of course. There’s a phone in your pocket. One that would be buzzing, blinking with incoming messages, had you not deliberately silenced it when it became too much to ignore. Half a conversation that you aren’t privy to.

It wasn’t really your place to get involved anyway.

They had a lot to say after the end of the universe, after all. A universe, anyway. How many have been torn to pieces at this point?

Not even Jade’s waking hours are enough to overcome two friends rediscovering each other. She’s been getting better at it, at pushing through despite the random bouts of narcolepsy you’ve observed over the past few days. But sometimes, it’s too much.

It’s not as if the god needs to sleep as a mortal does. She’d said she was the one to get sleepy, but now you can see exactly how weighted in the wrong direction the connection is.

It’s. Fi—

It’s not fine.

She’s been sleeping so much.

Curled in here.

With you.

You could reach out and brush the hair out of her face.

Inevitably, thoughts end up turning to the same problem you’ve been chewing on since you met the other Jade. The first Jade. To the request she’d made of you in that golden hall, dripping in lights and surrounded by the smell of ozone and musty parchment.

Jake’s eyes. Haunting you.

Please.

Break it.

She deserves better.

Nothing about her screamed that she wasn’t happy here. If anything, you’d determined she was still bound by that ever present feeling that she had to be here. You’d encouraged that. Given her the confirmation that her dreams were real…

The end of the road is freedom. The end of the road is hope.

She was strong. Self sufficient. And she’d finally made her connections, given the multiple colors you’d spied over her shoulder yesterday.

But, given who asked

It gives you something else to think about.

It’s not as if you can ask for input while Jade’s this out of it. Not if you want her answer. For all the elder’s good intentions, they are connected. The sleeping child in the middle of the fucking day is proof enough of that. Proof of the strength of that connection.

You don’t know how far that influence stretches. But you’d seen their souls.

A nebulae, wispy and tattered, full of stardust, is nothing in the wake of a larger body’s gravitational pull.

Even if it doesn’t muddy the waters, you know how disconcerting mixing soul shit is, how much it fucks with you. At least you don’t have someone else on the other side of the line. Just you, yourself, and pieces of a corpse.

What a thing to waste your time dwelling on.

Maybe you should just check. It would give you something to do. if only to see if more than one of the conversations are flashing. Dave knew you were working, but that doesn’t mean you won’t find something there.

Nothing.

Not surprising. But you’re glad you looked.

The sun is high in the sky, past noon and beginning the trek past the mountain and to the sea beyond, but that’s barely getting into the evening hours back home. Dave should be awake, but chances are he’s preoccupied with his friends, or drawing, or…

You’re surprised he hasn’t been asking you when you’ll be home.

For all you know he’s been harassing Newt about that. Why bother asking you when he can go to the source?

You’re.

Looking forward to going home, you think, as you examine that thought from every which way. Even if you feel as if.

So much remains unfinished.

While the latest iteration of the code is compiling, you work on digitizing the notes you made on your limited trips into the Frog Temple. Fucking busy work, considering your actual target was the neuro-tech and not the moldy old ruins, but Roxanne was going to expect something. You’ve got everything you’re going to get. It’s not like you can go prancing out there to scope the place out once more.

Maybe if you knocked yourself out and piloted your gameself through, but you aren’t entirely sure you wouldn’t just end up waking up here anyway.

Fuck, might as well get finished with these emails while you’re at it. Jane sent one and Newt sent five and there’s three others in here from various contacts you’d made when feeling out the supply chains required. Nothing important.

Maybe you could ask one. Reach out. See exactly what you’d need to do to add another seat.

Shadows twist and creep across the wall. Stretching like taffy splattered along the wall.

The whisper of a giggle brushes up against your thoughts, a mittened thumb pressing against a bruise, and you brush it aside.

It falls. You set aside the laptop, paper schematics spread out across the floor. Taking the place of half written emails and zip files. Nearly complete. Only missing some key components and that shit is all up in your head.

Glance up at the setting sun.

You’re running out of time.

Letting out a sigh, you close your eyes against the tension headache currently building itself like a thundercloud on the horizon. One of the really tall dark ones you’d come to learn meant batten down the hatches and close up the storm shutters unless you wanted to end up underwater. Calloused hands push back against the pulsing, but it feels like a futile effort.

You very carefully do not think about the flaming cloth arms and snake-like body that you feel draped over your shoulder, in spite of the dimensions between you and the puppet ensconced in your sylladex.

You refuse to leave him out when Jade’s asleep. Even if that means you bear the brunt of his pissy mood.

Given the way he snaps whenever you pay too much attention to anyone—anything other than the computer screen, it’s better that way.

Time passes. As it always does. The lack of keyboard tapping, previously a rhythmic accompaniment to the faint hum of active electronics, must have been enough of a change in environment, because the next thing you know, you’re interrupted by a yawn.

Not your yawn, of course. Bleary green eyes peer up at you from behind a curtain of black hair, glasses askew.

“Whaaaat—” Another yawn, and she shifts, pushing away from the bed of a robot she’d been curled against. Pushing out of the embrace of a distant god, “How long’ve I been ‘sleep?”

You wonder if Davepeta talked her into a nap. Gone and dragged her into that damn pile of squiddles and other stuffies you’d left your splinterself in.

“Not long,” You shrug. You could likely calculate it, but you don’t want to see the disappointment surface when she realizes exactly how much of the day burned away.

Not that it takes long before she glances towards the window and the shadows fall.

“Too long!” A frustrated little graaaah precedes palms being shoved up under round glasses, lifting them from their perch on her nose up into her hair as those hands end up pressed into closed eyes. It ends up trailing into a yawn, “I don’t know why I’m so tiiiiiired.”

She grumbles a bit more to herself, curling back into the side of the robot before pushing herself away forcibly, skirt covered knees dragging across the floor as she scoots toward the robot’s feet—or more importantly, toward your spread out papers, “What’re these?”

“Work, mostly.” You reach out to gather them up, starting from the ones furthest away, giving heavy eyes the opportunity to sweep from one to the other, absorbing the sketched images and chicken scratch calculations. “It may be hard to believe, but I do have a job aside from robot refurbishing.”

“I know that!” She hurmphs, the sharp burst of air sending wavey bangs flying every which way, most of which ended up bouncing back to fall in front of her indignant face. “You also make rocket boards.”

“Among other things.” The paper—so low tech, but Christ does it make getting your thoughts down easier. You miss being able to draw out your own blueprints with your fucking brain. Your handwriting is atrocious.

It takes you back. You had to start somewhere.

Jade makes a disappointed noise when you pull the last piece out from under her scrutiny, shuffling it into the small pile. You flick through them, edge of the surprisingly sharp, thin medium holding your thumb at knife point, threatening to cut it should you move it wrong. Finding the one you want, with a quick motion of your wrist you flick it in her direction.

It’s hard to make a piece of fucking paper fly like a shuriken, but you do your best. “What do you think it is?”

“Uuuhm…” Jade stares down at the now crinkled picture in her hands, eyebrows furrowed as her eyes flick from the overall sketch, to some scribble notes along the edge, to a cutaway cross section.

As is the nature of anything that comes from your fucked up brain it’s the furthest from methodical as you can get. Spaghetti splatters across the wall as you use the smeared sauce to connect the pieces together.

You wait patiently, saying nothing, until a quiet intake of breath indicates a decision. When fingers reach up to adjust the lenses that’d fallen down her nose during her scrutiny, you know she’ll be getting at least half a point.

“The picture looks like…glasses?” The statement has the sound of a question, followed by a confused noise. A red-wrapped finger fidgets, tapping against the cross section and your homegrown chicken-scratch, “But this is talking about processors and…hard dives? Computer things???”

“Wearable computers.” You nod, holding your hand out to accept the paper back, filing it away with the others. “It’ll be the next big thing if Newt has anything to say about it.”

Newt is also the reason you’d had that shit spread out. He’d needed an update on your ‘progress’.

Not that he knew you’ve been done with everything that mattered to them. For fucking months. The missing piece wasn’t going into the mass produced model anyway.

That would really cross the line into industrial espionage, wouldn’t it? You’d be straight up stealing the neural transmitters from SkaiaNet, since your own method wasn’t…

Even if it was feasible, it sure as fuck wasn’t ethical.

It didn’t stop you then, though.

Wearable Computers???” Her eyes just fucking light up, the confusion and uncertainty shifting into excitement, “You mean like my lunchtop? I mean not really like my lunchtop since it’s not portable and the screen would be in the lenses duh, but glasses don’t have keyboards so how would you control it? Would it be a hard light keyboard? Where would the projector be from? Ooooh, could it come from your wrist??? But then how would you type? One handed???”

All good questions. Ones you’d never bothered to figure out since you had little interest in the product beyond the ability to make your own without access to an alchemeter—fuck if you’d thought about the portal in the ruins before you could have just used the fucking alchemeter, couldn’t you?

It’d been a fun exercise, at least, and that’s about the only thing that makes you not feel like an idiot. Alchemeters made things so easy.

You would have still needed the components anyway. Six one way, half a dozen the other.

Your hands twitch, imagining the rounded shades complete and waiting for you to pull them apart and put them back together.

“Voice control initially. It’ll be limited at first, but I’ve got an algorithm cooking that’ll be able to handle most requests once it adapts to a user’s vocal patterns.” You respond, shake the thoughts away as unfuckingneccessary. It doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t care if it flops as long as you get one working pair. You’re almost done.

Your pride would care, you concede. Wincing, because Jade’s questions still echo in your head as your incorrigible brain turns away from done and towards making them better. “You have a good idea with the keyboard but I’m not super up on hard-light tech. I think that sh—’s a SkaiaNet original.”

“Yeah! Grandpa invented it!” There’s a proud puff to her chest, her smile wide and blinding. “I don’t think anyone else knows how it works. But I’ve had to take my lunchtop apart before and I’ve got a lot of Grandpa’s notes and it seems really cool! Hey! Maybe once he gets back you could collaborate??? I think that would be awesome!!!”

Aweso—

Your brain fucking shortcircuits. You can hear the dialup noises from here. It’s quite grating.

Seconds pass. Minutes. You can see her smile start to falter.

“That’d be cool.” You force the words out. Trying. Very. Very. Hard. And. Failing Not to think about what that would mean. “We can ask. When he gets back.”

“Yeah!!! I think it’d be awesome!!! I can show him my hoverboard and you can show him the robot and and and—ooooh.”

She’s so happy at the thought. Rising to her feet and nearly spinning in place.

When. Not if.

She.

It’s fine.

“How is she??? I’m gonna be so mad if you woke her up while I was asleep!”

Clip the papers together and shove them back into your sylladex.

Don’t. Think about it.

“However can I answer then? I’m afraid I cannot face your anger, Miss Harley.” The words get dragged out. Sarcastic. Playful. A.

A role.

You still have something left to do, don’t you?

Almost finished doesn’t mean done.

“Don’t worry.” You sigh when she pouts at you, shifting to relieve the pressure building on your bum knee, reaching over to nudge the touchpad on the laptop, waking the darkened screen to pull up the fruits of what, a week of labor?

It should have taken longer. It should have taken months.

“Everything looks like it’ll work, but I haven’t tried cutting her loose yet.” Time. Time. Time—Incline your head towards the robot, at her darkened eyes and her sculpted face. Is an inactive robot merely sleeping? Or.

“Do you want to try and say hello?”

Do they no longer exist at all?

You weren’t the one who had to find out.

Jade’s enthusiastic cry rings through the room. Color banded hands clapping together excitedly as she rushes forward. You check a few things on the diagnostics, confirming your deduction that, yes, shit had compiled correctly.

Almost.

“Go ahead and disconnect the cords.” Orange. Red. Blue. Purple.

Gold.

They dance against silver metal and dark hands. Following your direction.

“If everything works, once you secure the panel it should initiate the startup sequence.”

The hum of the active laptop is overtaken. Swallowed up by a louder current. Red eyes flicker to life as they’ve done before. Many times.

Only this time, they rise to meet green.

“Hi!” Jade’s hands reach out to clasp cold metal. “It’s so nice to finally meet you!”

That sculpted face can’t emote. There are no speakers with which to speak. You didn’t go in there and gut everything. You just.

Worked with what was there.

And coaxed it to life.

The head slowly turns, gaze traveling from her. To you. And back again. Tilting.

There’s a tightness in your chest, and for once you don’t think it has anything to do with Cal.

Jade forgoes dinner to show her new friend around, and you get dragged along. It’s interesting, being an afterthought for the first time since you’ve gotten here. Jade had already started leading the ‘bot out the door, hand in cold metal hand, leaving you alone for a few blissful minutes to pop your back before she ran back, glowing red eyes peering over her shoulder, yelling at you to “Come on Mister Strider!!!”

The excitement and animation is heartening to see after days of splintered lethargy. You can’t make more than a half hearted attempt to wave them off without you. With a (slightly) overdone sigh at her stubbornness, you end up pushing yourself to your feet and walking (if somewhat stiffly) after them.

Cal isn’t pleased, but when the fuck is he? Ever since your confrontation he has, in fact, backed the fuck off. Thank god. You reward him by dumping his grumpy puppet ass into the window now that you don’t have to worry about his sticky fingers stirring up any nightmares.

It’s better than the sylladex, at least. You can breathe, and fiery wings and claws just lurk over your fucking shoulder. Just out of sight.

If it were a conventional tower, with its spiraling stairs and multiple floors, requiring a fuck tone of climbing to get anywhere except the ground, you don’t think you would have gotten very far.

You don’t think Jade would have allowed you to get very far. And most certainly wouldn’t be tugging you along to oversee her new friend’s introduction to the place.

But time, for all that it haunts you, does offer some benefits. One of which is a return of your own mobility.

You won’t be pulling any fool flash chains or fighting a fucking drone on this knee, but at this point you can handle weaving in and out of the transportalizers to traverse floors, and lean against the wall when the aches begin to rise.

And if you were quietly keeping an eye on the behavior, taking mental notes and evaluating the efficacy of your work, well, there was a reason you didn’t protest too hard.

You aren’t going to chance leaving without.

Without.

Fuck.

“Jade?”

Your question catches her in the midst of showing off the greenhouse. The hues of the sunsetting sky throws the place into a huge contrast from your first visit, dragged on the whirlwind trip upon your arrival. A tour, just as she was doing now for another.

It’d been bright and sunny then. Surrounded on all four sides by vaulted glass windows. The sky, blue and the clouds a huge fluffy white. Now the distant horizon blazes a wide, bloody red along the edge of the sea, and if you turn you can see the march of night creeping from one side to another as it falls across the island.

The robot ignores your interruption even as Jade looks back at you, back towards where you’d waited, leaning against the spiral carved pillars near the inner stairwell. It seems entranced by the faintly glowing flowers rotating around strangely straight stems, located in the beds on the nearer edge of the wing. The first row of many, if you remember correctly, eyeing the taller green stalks that rise behind them.

Rows and rows and one little girl to care for them.

Jade says something you can’t quite catch, throwing a hand wide in an approximation of “Go ahead! Explore!” Before scampering back to you, reaching out and snagging a fruit off a little dwarf tree while she does so.

You watch the robot hesitate, swaying slightly as the flexible plates of her skirt adjust to the changing center of gravity, before it leans in, metallic fingers gently cupping an ethereal petal.

You’d built it from the ground up. The thought bubbles up within you, that tight feeling in your chest returning. But that didn’t mean you hadn’t…

Worked with what was there.

Fuck you’re tired.

She’d once been as close to Jade’s mind as any. Sharing it. Before the crash ripped them apart. No longer in sync with an exiled god.

You’d just finished cutting the frayed ends and let her loose.

Of course, trust you to end up pulling it off despite so called astronomically low chances.

If you look hard enough, reach within the magic blind shell of a meatsuit you wear, would you see a sliver of familiar green glittering from her uranium heart? Could another set of eyes see you back?

Could this be a solution?

For a later problem. Someone is attempting to get your attention.

“Uhm—Hello? Mister Strider? Uhm. Dirk??? Is everything okay???”

You blink. And then look away. Down. Toward the white cat—(or dog, as you now know)--eared headband nestled in black hair that comes up to your chest.

She’s a little taller than Dave.

You don’t know why you think of that right there.

Fucking focus.

“I’m fine. Just thinking.” From the narrowing of green eyes behind those round lenses, you get the feeling she doesn’t believe you. “It is a positive sign that she’s showing independent curiosity.”

The thrown bone works as a distraction, as you quickly fade from being the immediate target. The ‘bot has wandered back beyond the flowers, you can see the tip of her hair from between the green stalks beyond. Far more tame than Jade’s, given the lack of individual strands but still maintaining that general shape.

Much like a head, perfectly sculpted into the ideal ‘do, never to need the touch of gel.

It doesn’t do her justice, you think.

Jade follows your gaze easily.

“She likes the flowers!” Jade beams, smile widening, “I don’t blame her. I love them too. They’re special!”

“Are they now?” The flowers. Moving. Spinning. Petals creating almost. Familiar patterns.

You don’t know shit about plants except that you can eat them.

Mostly.

“Yeah!” She nods vigorously. “Grandpa said they’re from a reeeeaally faraway place. The golden place. He said they help you wake up, but I’ve always found they put me to sleep.”

Her nose wrinkles at the apparent contradiction, and you suppress the wince that Jake Harley always seems to drag out of you.

The shades help.

“They are really pretty, though.” But then those glittering green eyes turn back to you, the determined stance, hands on hips, almost makes you imagine there would be a wooden spoon (or red battle fork) soon to be waved scoldingly in your direction. “Was that all you wanted to say??? You really spaced out there!”

“One of the things.” You shrug, not knowing what else to do. It feels awkward like this. Towering over her, forcing her to crane her neck up to speak to you. There’s a reason you’ve spent most of the time on the floor.

…which is a wonderful idea. You arrange your knee in the least painful position you can find as you slide down to the tiled floor.

Jade blinks down at you. Positions reversed. You feel a bit less tense. a little less like there’s glass shards in your throat each time you consider saying a word. “It makes me less worried, for one thing. She’ll be fine once I leave. There must have been enough recorded in her memory banks from her time with you to give the algorithm something to build from so it’s not starting from scratch.”

“Wait a minute—what do you mean leave?”

“I’m. Done, Jade.” In your own body, your face would be stone. Here…you just look fucking exhausted, “I was here to do a job, and I did it. My flight back will be here tomorrow.”

“But—but—you promised.” She sounds increasingly distressed, band covered fingers digging into the gray cloth of her skirt. “We haven’t—the rocket board isn’t finished!!!”

“Because I fixed your robot instead,” You remind her. “You said you could handle the rest yourself. You knew I wasn’t staying for long. I’m sure Dave’s been complaining to you about how I’ve left him with Newt for this long already.”

“Yeah but I didn’t know how long!” Voice rising in both volume and pitch with each word. It definitely carries. To the point where a red eyed head peeks curiously over the top of a distant hedge of green. She spins on her heel, black slippers tapping against the tile floor as she begins to pace. “I thought we—I thought I—oh man I’ve been wasting so much time. If I hadn’t been sleeping so much maybe we’d be done by now…”

You listen. Saying nothing as the pacing grows more and more agitated. There are plenty of places to interrupt you think. Plenty of places to —

“Are you going to be okay?” And awkward pause as she stops mid turn, “By yourself.”

Ask. Not that. Christ. She wouldn’t be by herself.

Not any more. Mysterious cryptid aside, you’d at least seen to that.

That isn’t the point, however.

“I mean! Does it even matter if I say no?” Slipper scuffs against the floor. “You aren’t staying. You can’t sta.!”

Of course it isn’t too long before her bowed head raises, and she forces a smile.

“It’s only been a few weeks. I’ll be fine! It’ll just be quiet again.”

You have to ask. You have to break it.

The mask. Hastily reassembled, and oh so tenuous.

And thanks to her elder, you know exactly what to say.

“You’ve been alone for years.” Throat dry and crackling. The hair on your arms stand at attention, as if you can feel the crackling energy again. “I know you’ll get used to it. But. Do you want it to stay that way?”

Voice low and ears pinned back against black hair.

“No.” It’s barely more than a whisper. It cracks. She’s too tired to hold the mask for very long.

I at least had Bec. And Grandpa. And Prospit..

“I don’t. I don’t I don’t I don’t.” The ‘bot clearly heard you talking. Or more likely heard Jade. She’d wandered back over, quietly watching the trembling child. Plates shift. Metal upon metal. Until the taller one is on the same level. “I don’t. It’s so lonely here. Everything is wrong. At least when you’re here it’s different and new and! It’s not wrong if it’s new!

A metal hand reaches out. Brushing against the tiny pinpricks forming near the edges of her glasses.

Your eyes slide shut. For barely a second.

Don’t leave her there. Please! Green shards glimmer against the back of your eyelids. Twin sets. Tied together. Vanishing into the mist. Tied to.

You teeter on the edge. A whisper. On the edge of your consciousness. From a body supported in a pile of plush friends.

If it’s wrong, then try something new!

When you open them again, you see Jade curled in the robot’s arms, head tucked under her chin. Red eyes dimmed even as smaller ones are buried in her arms.

They look up. And you know who’s looking out at you. At least in that moment.

Life should be an adventure, right? Not a cage.

You swallow.

“You don’t have to stay.” A claw digs into your throat. Squeezing. You stumble forward, unfurling, placing a hand to steady yourself on the tile floor.

In for four.

It isn’t real.

And his opinion doesn’t matter anyway.

“You—You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.” You repeat, forcing the words out, “You could come with me. Go see Dave. Hell, Rox would take you in in a heartbeat. She’s got the space if her place is anything like I remember.”

“I—” A swallow. You can see the answer the moment she starts to unfurl. Balled up fists scrubbing vehemently at her eyes. Sniffles that hadn’t quite turned into sobs, held back, finally breaking free, “You’re not—You’re not kidding, are you? You’re serious!”

An answer you admit you’d already known. Because she’d told you.

Or some version of her had.

You’d needed to hear it from her, though.

You shake your head. “Yup. I know it’s weird but…”

You struggle to find the words.

“I don’t want to leave you here alone.” You offer at last. “Kids shouldn’t have to live like that.”

Kids that aren’t you anyway.

You’d done it.

You’d grown up alone, with you, yourself, some bots and some gulls. You didn’t mind it. You were fine.

But. She wasn’t you.

You’ve been made painfully aware that most people aren’t like you.

Thank god.

Most of them are better.

A black robed god hugging her arms, chewing on her lip as she watched a restless sleep.

I was lonely, She had admitted to you in confidence, pulled away behind the stacks. But I could escape it. I knew it would end.

I stole that from her.

Now she’ll never dream again.

“I want to leave.” A whisper. Metal arms draw back, as they go from supporting weight to supporting nothing at all. Supported by her own two feet. “I want to leave the silence and the empty space and the stupid trophies and the stupid temple and the stupid fireplace.”

A shaking breath, fists clench as a slippered foot stomps against the floor. “I. Want. To. Leave.”

And then a whisper.

“But I can’t.”

And why—

Space splits itself in twain. Warping. Twisting. The hole in space suddenly becoming filled with white fur and claws and fangs, throwing off green shit likes it’s a fuck ton of fireworks. Embers flying everywhere, a really bad occurrance considering you’re in a fucking greenhouse full of flammable materials.

Or it would be, if it were actual fire.

Jade is tugged back with a yelp, as red light flashes and the ‘bot’s thrusters activate, pushing them both back toward the rows of delicate flowers. Away from the hulking thing that just dropped itself in the middle of the floor. Right in your fucking face.

The instinctive flash-step drags you out of the range of loosed claws and snapping fangs, stumbling back towards the stairs.

Not quite a dog. Not quite the asshole cat that liked to trip you up at random intervals. Hugeass horns and teeth and shadowed features. Are there even any features? You can’t see the eyes in that snarling face. White on white on white. Laced through with crackling green.

You can feel them though. Glaring straight at you. Cal’s grip tightens around your muscles, tensing them even as they lock in place. No sign of the troll Davepeta swore was in there.

One wrong move and it’ll rip your goddamn head off.

(Again.)

That. Would be why the fuck not.

“Stop!!!”

It freezes. Arms wrap around the monster’s neck. Articulated metal, silver against white, dig into thick fur.

It seems almost as bewildered as you are. Watching as the recently activated robot took a moment to hug what was only moments ago a slavering beast. Burying her sculpted face into its back.

It could easily escape. You know that. One zap and it’d be gone, appearing elsewhere. Leaving the robot hugging air.

But it doesn’t.

Growls and hisses trail off into confused noises. The furious stance shifts into an awkward hunch as the guardian tries to crane its neck to see exactly what has it caught. Only to get those unseen eyes caught on the little girl scrambling out from behind it and over to Dirk’s side.

“Did he get you???” She fusses, and you shake your head, lips pressed thin against the baretooth’d frown threatening to rise.

“See? This is why I can’t! I can’t! We tried. You know the lady right?”

That would have been right after the crash. When you were too busy freaking the fuck out over the little bother and extra decade you’d inheireted.

Of course she would try. Good on Roxy.

Fuck your thoughts feel so much like soup, with the adrenaline racing through you. Heard pounding. Ears pulsing. Knee fucking hurting because of a flash step you really should not have pulled. Cal’s nonexistent spitting and hissing in your ear.

Jade, your Jade. Little Jade is babbling now.

She’s pacing again. You shift, placing yourself surreptitiously between the giant dog-thing and the little girl. Not that you think you’ll need it.

“Jade.” You try to catch her attention, but she’s just going.

“I mean! I didn’t realize it was a dog! Thing! Like, remember, I thought it was a weird teleporter? I told you it snatched me from midair! Right out of the plane! But it was that same—that same green. I can’t leave because I’ll just come back—”

“JadeYou hiss. “He listened to you.”

The ‘bot couldn’t speak. You know that. It couldn’t have stopped it. Not before moving. And it had frozen in the seconds before silver dug into white fur. At the command.

“I—” It’s her turn to freeze, as Jade turns wide eyes back onto the radioactively glowly canine-adjacent held the ‘bot’s grip, “No! She stopped him!”

The hold isn’t even that hard. It’s more like she’s hugging the thing as if it was a long lost—

Fuck.

It probably is.

“You told him to stop. And he did.” You point out, trying to calm your fucking breathing so it doesn’t come out as an unconvincing wheeze. In for four. Hold. Then exhale. Ignore the fuck out of your knee and stand. Back straight. Uncowered by the display. “This wasn’t quite what I had in mind when you and Dave volunteered me as bait but it seems to have worked.

Okay, you’re smirking a little at that.

You’ve gotta find your humor somewhere.

“I—” She looks between you and the big cat dog thing. Jadebot had moved to scratch it behind the ears, near the base of those wide horns. It is staring at the thumping of the thin tail against the floor in confusion. As if even it isn’t sure what the fuck it’s doing.

Even with the tension rapidly dwindling—and with it going the extra puffed up volume of an angry feline—the thing looks a fuck ton shaggier than you’d expected. Especially with the way the fur sticks up along its head and neck. As if it has a fucking mane or something.

The robot isn’t even holding it anymore. Just petting the fuck out of it.

“I guess…he looks a little like Haley?” Jade offers with uncertainty, “Sort of? But she’s up in the attic and I haven’t had that dream in forev—” A violent shake of the head. She’s quivering. Likely the same reason you are. Maybe you’re old enough to have a fucking heart attack but damn you don’t want one. “I—why would grandpa…”

She reaches out to grab your hand, “Can we go upstairs? For a second? Please?”

You nod, starting to follow, when a whining noise rises behind you. A quick glance pins it on the guardian, attempting to struggle to its paws, leaning forward to follow despite the robot’s weight leaning against it.

Jade’s brow wrinkles before she whirls, voice shaking as she holds out a hand.

“Don’t follow!” She directs as sternly as she can at the dog. Cat. Thing. Pointed ears raise and swivel in her direction before, “Sit! Stay!!!”

It sinks back to the ground. Head on its paws.

It doesn’t follow.

Neither does the robot, for that matter. She was too busy patting the pouting pooch.

On the next landing, you shake free your hand, and give her a moment to fucking breathe. Gulping down the air as if it was drink to a dying fish.

You sit down on the stone steps. She quickly curls up against the one right below it, forehead to drawn up knees and color wrapped hands buried into wild hair.

Your hand settles hesitantly on her back. You can feel the hiccuping breathing.

She’s not crying but. That doesn’t make you feel much better. Anger is just as exhausting.

“It’s too much.” She mutters, when you ask if she’s okay. “It’s too—fucking much.”

The expletive is awkward in her mouth, and you feel pretty damned guilty because you think she picked that up from you.

It’s not like she wouldn’t eventually, anyway, especially if she came back to live with you and Dave.

If.

If.

You.

Unwilling to return to the conversation that set things to fall apart, you pick something else.

“This is the first time you’ve seen him, huh.” You coax, “Your temple cryptid.”

“Yeah.” Mumbles into her knees. “Last time I just landed back in my bed alone.”

Last time.

“You a’right?”

She nods. Slowly. Her headband has slipped free, white ears out of place. It hangs askew, only held on by plastic teeth clinging to black hair. You could reach out. Untangle it.

You try not to think about it as you carefully work it free.

You’ve done too damn much overthinking already. Days of it.

Jade quivers under your hand, but she leans back into it, into your leg. The back of her head presses up against your knee.

Doesn’t matter that it’s the bad knee. You just bite your cheek and don’t say anything.

“What’s it like?” She asks abruptly. Breaking the silence on the stairs, “Your home. Where do you live? Does it snow? I’ve always wanted to see snow. It’s never snowed here.”

So she wants to ignore the fuzzy elephant downstairs, huh? Deflect. Deflect. You can see the cracks. Never quite repaired after you’d torn them asunder.

She isn’t even pretending to smile.

Or maybe she knows she doesn’t need it, with you.

You’ll let it be. For once.

Everyone knows how hard that is for you.

“Nah,” Whispers of thoughts quiet as you think about a blanket of white, fallen on a little girl’s birthday. The grayness of the world. Feeling like you’d been wrapped in cotton.

Missing. Something.

“Gotta travel if you wanna see that. It never gets cold enough at home.”

It’d been the first time you’d seen it too.

“Have you?”

“Yeah. Dave wanted to visit a friend for his birthday. Kid’s birthday is right at the beginning of December. Prime snow season.” You amend, “Or so I’ve been told.”

“Oh! Oh! What day???” The genuine enthusiasm leeching back into her voice makes the deflection worth it, as does the sincere smile as she turns around on her step, sitting side-saddle, to look up at you, “Mine’s December 1st!”

You’d known.

The same as Jake’s.

You force a small thin lipped smile in response, “December 3rd.”

“Oooooh!! We were almost birthday buddies!!!” She stops abruptly, looking down at her hands with a confused as fuck expression. Not her hands. The colored reminders peppering her fingers, “I feel…like I knew that? I just…forgot? Did Dave tell me???”

Dreams. Reminders for something she couldn’t remember.

“Maybe.” Non-committal. Don’t go picking at that right now. That scab has barely healed from the last time. “It’s not like I can keep up with what you two are nattering on about all the time.”

“We aren’t nattering!” She pouts back, snatching at the headband you’ve been fiddling with between your fingers. It’s child’s play to move it out of reach, “It’s chatting!!!

“Same thing.” You don’t tease her with it very long, once the halfhearted strikes begin to come in earnest (accompanied by a “Not fair!”) you ‘slip up’. Move too slowly. Enough for a determined lunge to secure her prey.

“GOT IT!”

Plastic teeth rake against your palm as she reclaims her prize. Stinging, although no visible marks are left to mark their passing. Some applied pressure quickly suppressed the niggling pain, and you aren’t even rubbing it any longer when the white headband is neatly back in its place, ears poking out of black hair.

You never did finish answering her question.

“We live in Texas.” And fuck you if you know all that much about it. You’ve lived there all your life and yet less than half a year. “High-rise building near downtown Houston. Exclusive roof access, no noisy neighbors unless you count the flock of crows that live up there. Dave’s spoiled them rotten and I’m pretty sure I’ve caught him letting them into the apartment before.”

Not that you’d said anything. It’s not as if you could without being a hypocrite.

The gulls coming and going had made things feel less. Stagnant.

“It’s hot as hell throughout most of the year, though, and the AC tends to threaten to cut out during the worst of it. So if you wanna escape the heat, Lalonde would be your best bet. She’s up in New York.”

The silence that falls isn’t quite unexpected, considering the tangential nature of the topic to the one that you’d both never really finished.

It’s for sure as fuck not comfortable, but it feels more pensive rather than the earlier panic.

“I thought it would be fun to have a sister.” Jade admits, after time uncurls the blanket enough to allow the words to come through. “The lady said she had a daughter about my age. She talked a lot about the woods and the snow and she had a lab!!! A full blown lab!!! It was exciting to think about. It was only supposed to be a visit at first you know? To see if I’d like it.”

“Sounds like it woulda been right up your alley.” A shit ton of woods to explore. Access to all the sciencey tech and shit she could dream of. Not to mention Roxanne, who would have been all about sharing all those juicy sekrits with her.

Her eyes drift back towards the stairs. Followed by a shallow nod. Her color covered hands are wrapped around her knees once more, smoothing and scrunching the skirt’s fabric in turn.

“I’d never thought about leaving before. I was seeing the island slip away! Out the window! We were going! ” Jade leans back once more, curling into the step, resting against your leg. All you can really see is her mass of hair, spilling out over the white dress. “Only…”

Only to end up right back in her bed.

“I told her it wasn’t so bad. I had to wait for Grandpa anyway…” A flash of gold, shiny band twisting between her fingers, “And I thought I would have the dreams and the funny little people to keep me company.”

“Only you didn’t.” You finish for her, when she stalls. Unwilling to say the rest out loud. You’re right on the mark, however, because she snaps the golden band against her fingers. “That was the summer you stopped.”

Another nod.

“And now…Grandpa won’t be back.” It’s low. Resigned. “He won’t, will he? He won’t and you’re the only one to believe me about the golden city. That dog is wrong. The island is wrong. This place doesn’t even feel like my home anymore!”

When everything is wrong…

Try something new.

Phantom claws pick their way through your hair, and you let yourself echo the motion as you pick at some wayward strands on the head below you. Caught in the teeth of the band. Smoothing them out.

Not that they ever smooth out. It’s not the satisfying zip of a feather freshly neatened but.

They fall where they will. No longer hiding the potential of getting all knotted up.

“I want to leave.”

The words echo in the stairwell, with a note of finality. An undertone of determination.

“Okay.”

And you mean it.

You’ll figure out the logistics later.

Notes:

Hi! I'm alive! Again! Maybe!

I decided to focus on Defrag for camp nano and hey, it's already born fruit!! Don't expect a consistent posting schedule or anything--I'm just so excited to be posting a chapter of this again after so long that I just couldn't sit on it once I finished editing it.

I've definitely come to realize my writing style has changed in the last few years, so apologies of the tone/prose ends up feeling different. I'm trying my best! I've come to realize that all my Dirk all have slightly different voices oTL. Oh well.

Also uh. Be warned. Part of what got me thinking about working on this again is that I complete replotted the entirity of Act 2! To do something I said I wasn't going to do! Some of you might be able to figure out that was if you asked me a specific question way back when. This chapter VERY MUCH contradicts that answer.

Anyway! Welcome back! Hope you like it, and hope the me of now is able to do this fic justice despite the long wait.

Chapter 77: Dirk > Confrontation

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

When you both finally head down stairs, the sun has set. Not that it matters much. The sky might be deep and dark and full of stars beyond the vaulted glass of the green house, but the interior is still quite comfortably lit.

Or it was, once Jade pressed her palm to a panel on the wall, waking the overhead lights, and drawing the attention of both ‘bot and dog-thing alike.

It hasn't moved much from where Jade’d told it to stay. Obedient despite all the fucking trouble the thing had caused you. It was laying on the floor, head on its paws, as sullen and grumpy as Dave whenever you acknowledged his carrot stealing habits.

Quieter than Dave, however, although a growling hiss rises in its throat when it sees you coming up behind little Jade. Jadebot—J-bot? Dreambot? You’ll need to ask Jade how she’d prefer you refer to the ‘bot. You know that shit can get messy. Too bad you can’t ask the ‘bot herself.

Red eyes turn on the dog, and metal hands dig into the scruff of that neck.

The growling dies into a whine.

Even if the catdog thing hadn’t moved during your absence, the robot girl had clearly been under no such constraints. A variety of flowers scattered on the floor around her. Red ones. Purple ones. Yellow ones—there’s even a white-gold flower that looks like it came out of a planter box hanging off the side of a prospitian skyscraper. You can glance up to pinpoint a number of those particular blossoms as having originated in the greenhouses’ various hanging basket displays, far above what should be reachable for one of her size.

You wonder how she did it. Was it the extendable arms? Or did she use the propulsion system you’d spied in her schematics and just flown up there?

Even most ridiculous, is that these flowers have all been applied to the dog-thing’s mane. That extra long bunch of fur running down it’s head and neck, once buffed up and spikey as if someone had run their hands through it covered in gel, was now fucking covered in braids. Dotted with flowers. And if the length of flowers moving through the ‘bot’s surprisingly deft fingers was any indication, she was already working on a flower crown.

Or a horn lei. You note with amusement that one was already hanging off one of the intimidating looking things. Adding color to the otherwise colorless animal.

Braiding and weaving would be a good way to test for proper limb and digit dexterity. She seems to have put the time to good use.

Jade freezes the moment she sees them, losing some of her strident determination as her mouth opens in a little “Oh.” at the sight.

Just like that, the nightmare-ish memory should be fading, leaving behind both bewilderment and wonder.

“It seems to have ended well.” The observation, peppered with more than a little sarcasm, distracts Jade from her nervous gaping. Snaps her out of it even.

She takes a hesitant step forward. And then another.

All while glancing nervously back at you to make sure you’re following.

And you do. The ‘bot barely seems to notice you, or she’s ignoring you, or.

The dog thing definitely is not.

That unseen gaze would murder you on the spot, if it could.

“Look. Um...” Jade starts, trailing off, glancing between the dog, the ‘bot, and back to you. You give her what you think is an encouraging smile, although knowing you it likely comes off as a stupid grimace. Turns back to the pile of metal and fur. “I don’t know your name? Sorry. If you have a name. I can’t call you Haley because, well, Haley is Haley but you look like Haley and you’re a dog…”

“…I think…”

You can feel her draw in that deep breath through the rise and fall of her shoulders under your hand.

“Look! Whatever your name is. I— We’re going to make a rule, okay?” Her quivering seems to have stabilized during that breath. Because the voice that comes out is small, but firm. “No teeth!!! Or—or—even randomly teleporting someone into the ocean or something. Or just—no teleporting people in general unless they ask. It’s not nice, okay? And you scared me!”

The dog thing’s ears are almost so flat that the one disappears on the other side of the braided mane. All that comes out is a low, protesting whine.

“Oh stop that!” Jade releases the puff of air as her shoulders square, pulling away from you and standing on her own, growing more confident as evidence piles up as to the truthfulness of your earlier observation.

Or, perhaps, as old bits and pieces of memory or dream filter in through the haze caused by anxiety. You don’t think she’d be picky as to which it was. “Dirk said you’re probably doing what you’re doing because you think you should be protecting me but! Sneaking up behind people is mean! So is interrupting people!”

She footstomps the final explanation point. As her small slipper scuffs against the polished floor.

Space splits.

The beast is gone. Flowers falling forlornly to the cold tiles.

“Sorry…” Jade winces, as metal fingers brush against abandoned petals, “I think I just ruined all your hard work.”

If the robot girl is bothered, none of it slips free. Instead she reaches out to grab the one completed lei that had once adorned the horn of the beast, slips it over her wrist, and then picks up the largest, and most intact of those ethereal gold flowers.

Brushing petals and other detritus off her metal dress (and more importantly, out of the articulated grooves that allow her to bend in it at all) she rises to her feet.

It takes mere moments to close the space between, and gently reaches down to tuck the flower into Jade’s hair.

And then, without a word at all, she loses interest and wanders off. Back into the rows and rows of green and food and flowers. Seeming to glide more than walk, as if she were hovering a mere centimeter off the floor that’s tooo fucking miniscule for your eyes to bother noticing.

“...Short as fuck attention span if you aren’t a giant teleporting dog,” You note.

“Or flowers.” Jade tries to nod sagely, only to deflate. You don’t think she would have slid to the floor if you hadn’t reached out to steady her—with only minimal hesitation this time! You’re learning!--but now you don’t need to find out.

“Easy.”

The word slips free, the s sound slipping into a hiss. It’s an awkward as fuck mutter. The fact that you’re uncomfortable is as clear as day. It doesn’t help that your knee is screaming silently as it touches down on the floor.

“Sorry.”

But.

“No apologies. You did good.”

“But I didn’t do anything!” The frustration is accompanied by a sharp exhale, before small, clenched fists move to shove her glasses up into her face. “I just yelled a bunch.”

She’s going to smudge the fuck out of those if she keeps it up.

“You made it back the fuck off.” The bluntness of your statement—or perhaps more accurately the swear you don’t filter out—definitely catches her attention. Breaking the building momentum of self debasement and lowering her arms as she’s forced to look at you. “That’s more than something.”

The eye contact, lame square shades to round glasses, lasts all of two seconds before she immediately looks away again, ducking her head, and hugging her arms. Fingers digging into white sleeves.

“I guess…”

You take it as a win when she uncurls after a moment of self-soothing. Claw-like hands slowly loosening to smooth out the fabric of her skirt. Fingers linger on the lines of buttons.

“I…guess. Now that it’s gone, I mostly just feel mean. And tired.” Jade’s brow scrunches up, “Tired and mean. I don’t think I like being mean. I’m also tired of being tired.”

You get the feeling she would have stomped her foot again if it weren’t for the fact that the enthusiasm turned anxious energy propping her up is quickly fading.

The motion ends up being a quick scuff instead. Not that it leaves a mark on the tile. “I shouldn’t want to go crawl in bed. I slept aaaaall day already.”

If only it would pack its bags and take the anxiety with it, instead of leaving it bouncing around in the luggage compartment.

“They call it an adrenalin crash for a reason, it’s not like you had a good sleep. I’m surprised your neck isn’t sore from laying on a pile of metal.” Your sweat slick palms press against the floor and you push yourself up, pulling your legs up under you no matter how much one is complaining. “Anyway, you can’t call it a night yet. There’s still a literal mountain of work to be done.”

Jade’s brow furrows, and her face scrunches up, staring at you like you suddenly turned into the radioactive alien cat-dog-thing. “What do you mean???”

“If you’re coming with me tomorrow, you need to pack.” Her eyes widen almost comically behind her glasses, a comprehending “OH!” escaping before you continue, “Ride’s supposed to be here ‘round noon. I doubt you have a suitcase or anything but any kind of bag would work. Trust me, you don’t want to have a bunch of shit in your sylladex because you have to dump it all out in front of a crowd of people…”

Jade doesn’t want to leave before telling her ‘bot goodnight, and maybe thanking her for the timely intervention, not that you were close enough to overhear. It’s not as if you were one to make a habit of dropping eaves, especially when not knowing would drive you mad.

Once they finish their little girl-to-robot heart to heart (one sided as it was) you end up walking Jade the rest of the way up to her room. Each step has her moving more confidently. Less nervously, although you still see her eyes dart back down along the staircase behind you mostly as reassurance that the temple guardian won’t try and snatch anyone. Not that you could do anything to stop it if it tried. But the random glances slow and stop by the time you reach the top level, because by then she’s furiously running through what she absolutely had to take, even as you reassure her she can always come back if she forgets something.

It maybe stings a little when she turns down your offer to help once you’re dropping her off at the junction between the landing and the corridor leading to her orb shaped bedroom, but you don’t push it.

You’ve got a date with your own ratty duffel to deal with.

And travel arrangements to modify. Don’t forget.

You don’t think the uptight security guards would be very pleased with you smuggling a literal child on board.

…and given the tangible malaise you step into upon reaching the guest suite, you get the feeling someone else isn’t very pleased either.

Cal isn’t sitting in the window any more. He’s on the floor, right smack dab in the center once you open the door. Light from the hall spilling into the dark room and painting that clay face and glass eyes with harsh shadows.

And those orange suited arms are crossed quite pointedly over the closed laptop you’d left on there well over an hour ago.

…That’s another thing you’re going to have to deal with.

“Move the fuck over.”

Lil Cal doesn’t respond, of course. Nor does he move. You give him a sour glare when all you can read is faint amusement. Tempted to just fling your possessed pal up and onto the bed behind you.

You don’t, of course.

Even as hands reach for floppy arms they find their course shifting. Cloth, warm, almost burning, as they’re shrugged over your shoulders. Looping them around your neck as you settle in the spot previously guarded. The clay face leans against the side of your neck, sending chills through skin that almost feels feverish in comparison.

Maybe this isn’t a good idea.

Lil Cal looms over you like a fucking thundercloud.

Baby blue glints in your peripheral vision. Teasing you, even as it’s swallowed in a disturbingly familiar green.

You’re fucking committed now.

Now? You were committed before you were even asked.

Thumb presses up against the laptop’s latch, heavy screen rising with a click.

Pointedly ignoring the gathering clouds—even as the metaphorical wind begins to pick up, bringing with it that distinct, fresh, smell of rain except this time it’s the moist ass breath of a snake trying its best to be fucking intimidating—you take your borrowed internet signal and connect to the far wider world web. Reaching out electronic feelers beyond the limit of your usual haunts of email and pesterchum accounts.

You might be fine letting Newt take care of business shit, but that doesn’t mean you can’t figure out how to buy plane tickets yourself.

Half functioning search engines were how you learned to human, after all. Google, bing, ducks and foxes, and grainy ass video files. You’re a pro at that. Finding information, not being a functional human being. That’s still up for debate. Unfortunately, it’s the decade before everything became a video tutorial, but that just means you have to force your tired eyes to read shit. They’ll live.

At least trip aggregator websites exist by now. Newborn and still stumbling their way through the jank phase, but they exist, and that means you don’t need to wake up some customer support person at ass o‘clock in the morning.

It isn’t cheap. Not at all. Your carefully engineered itinerary is so damn tight so you don’t have many options. But you don’t fucking care. Last minute fees? The last available seat being the business section? The extra zero might as well be boonbucks for all it matters.

You’ll make it work. It’s not even the business account so Jane can’t even give you shit.

And you didn’t spend the last six months untangling your finances to balk at using them.

By the time you’re done the room is nearly crackling with tension. The ignored presence is starting to lose its patience with your stonewalling.

His opinion might not matter, but he can still have a tantrum and fuck everything up.

And you’ll soon have two kids in the house for him to try and fuck with.

The blue light from the laptop screen paints those suit sleeves a muddy shade of green in the dark. You don’t look at the puppet, or, whatever it becomes when you call out that presence within it. Sucky shades are still shades, and you’re staring straight ahead at the screen. “Cal?”

Change.

Things have to change.

A half token effort to keep them going the way they were will never work. Because that ship has already fucking sailed. Shoved off in the middle of the night without so much as a christening. It doesn’t even have a name to christen, that's how abnormal the procedure is.

You already know you have leverage. Caught in the dragon’s fangs, those soul threads run both ways.

Make him understand that there are benefits to the fake Dirk.

You hope you know what you are doing.

“We need to talk—”

The gathering tension splits with the force of a thunder strike. Not even metaphorically. Literally. Lightning crackling and coalescing into a very familiar shape. The eye-searing blindness dims quickly, leaving the bulky off-white form blocking the door to the room., crackling with cast off energy.

The exact same color, a part of you notes in the back of your mind—the most miniscule of pieces, given the rest of you is immediately instinctively throwing yourself back towards the bed—to the fire that unfurls around you, flaring, snakelike tongues hissing in response.

Fire versus lightning.

With you caught in the middle.

No you aren’t—

The dog thing takes a step back, clearly surprised by the hissing snake coiled around you.

It can…see it?

There is no sign of orange arms. A ceramic face. Or even blue eyes. Just.

Flames. Flames. And you are its fuel.

It goes two ways, indeed.

The racing of your heart, adrenalin pumping in your ears, red threads pulsing as they pull shit out of you to sustain itself.

You are the wood. It is you. And you’re clearly dry as fuck.

MINE.

The hissed possessive immediately annoys you, but it’s not directed at you, is it?

Ears pinned back. Green lightning crackling. There’s a growl rising in its throat.

And yet…

No teeth!!!

That jaw is quite firmly closed, even as the warning rises.

It still hasn’t taken a step forward.

Take a deep fucking breath. Try to dampen the fervor feeding those flames. In for four. Hold.

Push yourself to your feet.

You don’t even reach for the bed to support yourself.

“It’s her fucking choice.” Unrelenting. “Back off.”

The show of strength seems to please the fire at your back.

You feel sick.

Your reaction, standing up instead of backing down, or even your answer, since it seems to understand speech well enough, seems to have been the wrong one. The displeased growl turns into a snarl—a distinctly different tone, you note—as it pulls itself up. Seeming to loom in the dark, lit only by the distant moon streaming in through the window and its own generated sparks.

You can feel Cal uncoil. Hissing. Hating the energy leaking off the beast in arcs and sparks.

Fuck he’s really going to attack isn’t he???

No teeth.

You’re annoyed with the thing you don’t hate it—

Said nothing about claws.

It only lasts a moment. A second to try and decipher the wave of foreign emotion that crashes around you.

Wrong. Stolen. MINE.

And even less to figure out what to do about it. You could do with a few more nanoseconds but it’ll just have to do.

Cracks in the world flare as you reach back out. Red wrapped fingers, sparking with a familiar pink energy drawn from the channel deep within, close around a flaming neck and yank.

Green flame, throttled even as it lashes out, dashes like a wave upon metal supports. Splintering and scattering against a wall of blackened green. Green laced with pink.

All you can smell is the stench of burnt feathers.

The sound of beating wings fill the room, black shadows, red on yellow pinpricks like eyes in the dark, staring and glaring. Multiple echoes cry out from croaking throats.

None of which comes from the figure that flashed itself right between the temple guardian and its mark.

The silence is a glaring hole amongst the cacophony.

The snake hisses as a weight settles on your other shoulder.

The crow shrieks and you hear nothing at all.

Notes:

:D

This was not how this was intended to go!!! This is fine. A lot of it is not quite going to plan but it's fine. Plans change and those different routes unlock new pawssibilities.

And at least it means I get to write Davepeta again sooner!!! They're the POV next chapter.

Also, I know I haven't responded to many but I'm so touched by the outpouring of support from you guys ;n; I cherish each and every comment and the fact that ya'll are still interested in this messy story even like. What. Three years later? It's amazing.

Thank you so much!

Chapter 78

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Dragged tooth and claw through the flash of horrible, terrible green that had engulfed your once girlfriend's form, tearing open a window through the fabric of reality you see...

Yourself.

Over and over and over, eyes in spectral faces, shadows of dark green almost black feathers catching on each other like the worst kind of mirror, angled this way and that, over and over and over. A flurry of wings, sparking a warm, familiar pink, blossoms between scale covered talons, catching claws as the--GO AWAY--leaps at the--THREAT--

Leave.

Leave.

LEAVE.

Bronze smashes into your thoughts like a hammer, gone was the quiet calm intent. The seeping insidiousness of a gentle but firm and irresistable command, coercion backed by the power of two gods.

There was no need. You were—It was—

Leave or HELP.

You can’t fight it. A flood washes through the hastily dug levees. Burying everything as red eyes begin to fade and turn on—

The smell of burnt feathers clips your wings, but it is not as if you have far to fall.

The pain, green and burning with hate—for you? For the being before you? For everything?--burns more than just your soul. Like smashes into like, charring the layer of bronze netting threatening to entangle—

You. You are you. You are Davepeta. And you are not going to let this flocking mashup of a canine touch your moirail.

You couldn’t just crouch and watch until it’s too late.

Not this time.

The challenging shriek tears itself from spectral throats, shattering all the mirrors throughout multiple universes, wavering ghosts of one that will never speak again.

And the echo of a name, unintelligible to all.

Save one.

Bronze translates the meaning, if not letters and sounds. To control, one must communicate intent.

And communication can go both ways.

The message is received loud and clear.

Ears stand to attention as the entire body flinches. Troll born—bloodborne power slipping from you like water off a duck’s back as names and fragmented memories dig into furred scruffs and shake.

Fragmented memories and feelings. Friends once. Somewhere. Somewhen. A life entirely forgotten. A life never lived.

A being that never existed.

…A life you and you ruined. A tiny child, a wriggler staring death in the face. A death you caused.

…A child you couldn’t face, even as you knew you had to protect her.

Protect her.

Protect her.

Protect her.

What does he think you’re doing?

Fangs bared in an unheard hiss. Turning up into a grim smile at the fading whimper. Dig those talons in, sparking. Shards stirred up in a ghostly wake of a dozen wings.

He’s too big. You’re too small. But that doesn’t stop you from scruffing the hell out of him. Shake that dogdamned bronze by the scruff until he listens. Bullheaded wasn’t really his style, despite the bovine resemblance.

Shake. Shake. Shake.

Lightning crackles. You brace for the disorientation of the teleportation, refusing to release your talons from a patch of fur that looks suspiciously like Tavros’ mohawk.

And then. It dies.

A trembling child. Eyes red from crying. Holding her own. Placing the ground rules that had likely just saved Dirk’s life.

And your sanity, you suspect. It’s hard enough clinging to all these goddamn birds even as they turn the frozen dog into a proper roost. Can’t teleport people.

At least he’s listening.

Let go. The whisper of a suggestion brushes against your determination.

And it actually is a suggestion, a plea, lacking the crushing power of the earlier attempt.

Which is good. You don’t think Cal would be so kind as to burn you free again.

Your talons don’t so much as twitch until you decide to loosen them yourself.

She doesn’t want this.

You know she doesn’t. He’d be able to smell her all over you. You quite litterally dove headfirst through her portalified body to get here. You got sent as the metafurical newspaper roll. Doesn’t flocking matter if he’s styled himself her fairy cat-dog troll. He can’t decide for her.

You let him go when the room has fallen silent—oh, look, even Dirk’s attempts to get your attention have long since faded—when the struggles cease. He hunches his shoulders. Ears pinned back, he sinks.

And you swat him on the nose.

The whine mixes with the crackle of lightning. A murder shrieks as a dozen wings take flight.

And he’s gone.

“Davepeta—”

Dirk finds his voice.

Just in time for you to crumple into too big arms.

There’s two faces that stare down at you as half a dozen spectral birds dissolve into a cloud of feathers. Both out of your memories. Both out of your nightmares.

When you close your eyes your shattered vision shifts, all you can hear is the sound of the sound of their souls. The warmth of one. Sparking and broken. Familiar. Shot through with a growing river of red seeping into every crack.

Blending into another. One pulsing. Blue. Flash. Purple. Green.

Blue.

Blue.

He always was too rough. Even when he tried to help.

“Davepeta!!!”

Oh look, now it’s your turn to be shaken.

You’re fine. You’re just.

Dirk can’t read your mind the way a certain bronze blooded idiot could.

You swat at the worried dissonance, before pushing yourself into the air. It’s rudely disrupting your broirail’s usual soothing cadence.

You’re fine!

You don’t think he can see your reassuring (and fangy) smile in the light. Or lack of it. Sure there’s a splotch of color coming in from the window, and maybe a bit of blue from somewhere near your feet—oops, there’s a laptop. You must have kicked it to the side when you landed. The spots in your vision are fading, eyes adjusting to the far more comfortable darkness. The lack of lingering mirages does prove that there isn’t any sparks of green anywhere—no fire, no lightning. Nothing but you. And him. And.

Blue eyes glitter above a perpetually grinning face, and you get the feeling Li’l Cal isn’t grinning at all.

Wearing out your welcome, huh?

You don’t think Jade’s going to pick you up. Which is fine. It’s easy enough to just leave—

Through the.

“Get back over here.” A shiver runs down your spine, feathers puffing involuntarily even as that tone sinks in and you hear beyond the gruff clipped nature into the barely hidden panic lurking underneath the surface.

Aw. He’s worried about you.

The last remaining crow pecks affectionately at his hair. Your vision shivers, two perspectives over one, seeing nothing but shades and yet a glimpse of tired bag ringed orange from the side.

“C’mon, I know you got clipped. Cal wasn’t—” He must have seen the change in feather volume, because there’s a noticeable softening, intentionality twisting the accent peppering the word into something… Easier on your nerves. Fingers—too big, and clumsy trying very hard not to shake reach out and tug you, bobbing in the air, closer. Towards him. Towards Cal. Back towards—yourself.

“That shit was real enough to get the dog’s tail in a twist, you can’t tell me it didn’t hurt.”

You can’t tell him that, something that he sure as well knows.

“Davepeta please.” The exasperation would be comical. Should be comical. But you find it hard to focus as—the majority of you—you’re pulled and spun. Hands—Flesh and blood, not fabric reach up—and begin to methodically check your back over. Poor poor crispy wings. It’s uncomfortable as hell to have your back to—not him. Not even bro. To Cal. You twist in the air even as translucent talons tapdance on the rough collared shirt. Catching on threads as the wings beat, an annoyed wind eliciting a quietly yelped “Hey!” in response to the reflection of your unease. “Just let me do this.”

You trust him. You really do. You jumped through the furreakin universe to save him from getting unceremoniously dropped into the ocean. It’s just.

It takes nearly everything to have to not tear away, and it’s only the fact that you do have an eye on the problem that allows you to deflate enough that Dirk can make any sort of headway on picking through the charred remains of your wings. Muttering.

Muttering about recklessness, mostly. Which, rude.

The part of you that refuses to relax manifests itself in flickering red eyes narrowing in a shroud of black feathers. Beak snapping at striped orange curled tightly around his shoulders. Snaps, but not quite catches. Mittened hands shift with every movement, every breath of its perch.

The motion seems to draw Dirk’s attention. Worried expression shifting into a frown as he looks beyond the spectral crow and to the grip that hadn’t quite so tight before. Encroaching on the real estate you’d stolen.

“Shit.” A slow exhale, as feathers are reluctantly let fall to deal with another matter. Dirk begins the work of unwinding the cloth arms from his shoulders, holding the limp puppet on his lap and staring down at it with an expression you might have been able to read. Maybe. Once. Now it didn’t matter, because you can hear the mixed feelings screwing with the cadence of your broirail’s soul.

Flesh and blood trapping tricksy cloth. The agitated part of you strikes.

Green ripples through your mind’s eye even as the song in your heart quivers. That dissonance, subtly weaving through your Bro’s soul, seems to screech as shadowed feathers and talons drop from above and dig. Dig past the hated figure and deep into the flesh and soul of fire and hate and anger you’d seen staring at you over your Bro’s shoulder.

Beneath the rage of fire is a mess. Battered shreds of thread balled up and tangled. Dark purples and green all faded and molding together like days—years. So many years—old bruise. Red bleeds from your talons, a deep achingly familiar blue rising to the surface beneath the pressure.

You saw them torn apart. Thrown out like the rest of the garbage with nowhere else to go.

So why.

Why.

Why here?

That ugly, injured thing recoils from your touch and the rage burns up around you.

“Jesus fucking Christ don’t do that. Both of you go to your goddamn corners.”

That.

It’s torn from your crow’s grasp. The last remaining knot unravels in a flurry of spectral feathers and pink sparks, and you feel as if you’re finally able to settle as you nudge it back into place amongst your patchwork. Mending the final threads that you’d purposefully torn free.

You feel almost guilty when you open your actual fleshy eyes again and turn around, seeing exactly how pale and almost sick Dirk looks in the dim room.

Cal is gone. Stuffed into a sylladex in that moment between your bird being disintegrated and you picking up the pieces again.

Bruised.

Your communicator falls into clawed hands, the screen lighting up as you begin to type out an apology—but Bro’s shaking hand brushes hesitantly against your cheek.

Your eyes widen.

“No.” It’s almost a plea. “No apologies. Can’t we just. Make a goddamn pile or something? I’m not letting you leave until I can check you over.”

Leave.

You should leave.

But the echoes of that command are just echoes. More of a memory than anything else.

You’re just surprised he wants you to stay, after you antagonized the demon puppet.

It doesn’t end up being a pile. Not really. There isn’t enough shit for that. Too homogeneous for one thing. More of a nest of blankets and pillows and feathers on the floor while your bro methodically picks his way through your wings. It hurt more than a little to maneuver so one of the limbs lay stretched out across his lap, laptop screen placed on the bed behind you both to give some sort of directed light to allow him to work.

The burns have faded—Godtier healing for the flocking win, just had to wait for the combat clock to stop ticking before the passive regen kicked in—but the damage done still remains in broken pinions and soot stained barbs. And those don’t want to make shit easy.

One wrong tug and a sharp stab of pain shoots up the limb, resulting in a flinch and an instinctive hiss of inhaled air. Bro’s hands freeze, the feather slipping free to flutter to the floor to join the makeshift pile. The rest of him freezes too, you can straight up feel the tension spike. Through every point of contact.

“Sorry.”

If you don’t look at him, you could almost believe you’re back in your own pile, with Dirk.

Dirk. Not Bro. Despite the too big hands, and the too familiar voice. Knuckles brush against stubble, tickling the fine gray scales on the back of your talons, as you pap the shit out of that apology. Stopping anything more from coming out.

There’s nothing either of you can do about that. Something he well knows, considering the tightening of that too sharp jaw, before the preening is resumed. As light as a kitten’s paw. Sharp needle-like claws kept sheathed despite instinct screaming to bite.

The silence is comforting. A breeze filters in through the open window, bringing with it smells that you can almost taste. You slowly melt under the comforting motions, and it isn’t long before you throw the last of your own tension to the wind and find the most comfortable spot between blanket, bed, and bro, even if that spot is hella inconvenient for the bro you’re sprawled out all over.

“That can’t be comfortable.” Dirk mutters, seemingly offended by the odd way you twist to take up as much real estate as you possibly can.

It’s quite impurressive, if you say so yourself. Especially given how annoying your wings are to maneuver. He should be honored to have the chance to experience a top of the line, genuine feather blanket. The heat, warm, not burning, of someone you care for. Right there. Safe. And with you.

Despite the grumbles, Dirk makes no real effort to move you.

In the end, if Pounce had taught you one thing, it’s that falling asleep on someone you care for is the best thing in the world.

Notes:

*peeks in*

Hi.

I've been sitting on this for a little while but. I dunno I was trying to finish the next chapter and it's being stubborn but!

Well. I can't keep ya'll living in fear, I suppose haha. At least this one isn't a cliff hanger.

Thank you so much for reading <3 Wish me luck unstickying the next one!

Chapter 79: Dirk > Don't Think About It

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“Davepeta—” Black-green feathers ruffle at your prodding as you thread your fingers through the pinions, searching for the head tucked under it like a gull at sunrise. The sea doesn’t quite part, but eventually you bump up against the hard keratin-esque lump of a horn. Flicking it with your finger doesn’t do more than elicit an unintelligible noise and a twitch.

“Davepeta,” If there’s a smile tugging at your lips, it’s tiredly bemused. “The sun’s coming up.”

You don’t like what comes next, but you eye the gentle gradient that’s been creeping across the sky beyond the open window. “You have to go.”

The twitching comes again, and the weight trapping you on the floor shifts, although not enough to make any progress in freeing your numb leg.

They’d been kind enough to avoid your bum knee, at least. But now both are out of commission.

It leaves you at their mercy. Without so much as a single leg to stand on.

Not that you’ve done all that much to pry yourself free. You know they’re small enough and you’re strong enough to push them off if you really wanted to.

You didn’t really want to.

You hadn’t been surprised when they’d fallen asleep. You had been surprised when you’d fallen asleep yourself.

It’d been.

Easy.

Abnormally so.

Given you’d felt like you’d been scorched from the inside out, you’re thankful for that. You aren’t going to look a gift dragon in the mouth. Or peer too closely at the fact that even now, there’s a hollow ringing in your chest. An empty cavern.

The world feels gray. Distant. A thin layer of clay covering everything. Numbing everything.

Better than the fire.

Whatever happened.

Happened.

And you are so. Fucking. Tired.

“Come on.” Another nudge, even as that results in the bite of claws through your shirt as they knead deeper into your side. “I don’t know how you got here, but Jade will kill you if you get stuck here until nightfall because you were too busy napping.”

That makes you pause.

Your Jade will probably kill you,” You amend, placing the mental image of your new dog-eared acquaintance next to the visage you’re more familiar with. The size difference was so ridiculous you quickly toss a mental pebble through that particular looking glass. “If you stick around, you’ll be cursed to the fate of a talking stuffed animal and then we’d miss our goddamn flight. Do you want to explain to Dave why he has to deal with Newt for another week? Because that is how long it would take to charter another one out here. Do you want that on your conscience?”

The wing covering their head twitches violently, and what’s left of your reflexes are enough that you avoid getting beaned in the face by the limb’s elbow joint.

Not that it stops you from getting a face full of feathers. You take it in stride, like the Strider you are. Only the merest hint of a twitch gives away your bemusement, and your audience is too curled in on themselves to even see that much.

“I know you’re awake.”

Another prod.

And another.

“I am going to just stuff you into the closest closet if you don’t take responsibility for your wayward limbs.”

A pause.

There’s no sound, no groan, no grumbles as muscles shift, feathers puffing up noticeably in the predawn light. A gray hand emerges from the pile to swat at your face in revenge.

A tilt of the head and it misses, of course. Claws curled in or not, it’s a matter of pride at this point. They’re just being a brat.

Sigh.

“Fine. I’ll give you five more minutes. But that’s it. Any longer and I will use you for a laptop stand. I have shit to do.

If they could, you’re fairly certain there’d be a satisfied purr going on right now as they seem to nestle deeper into their chosen spot. Wayward claws curling against the flash of heart-maroon peeking through feathers.

You already know what the outcome is going to be. You don’t even give them the full five minutes. It’s barely two before you’re reaching for the chunky machine, making use of your limited range of motion to snag the edge and drag it back to your side.

Heat management is going to be a problem. You can already tell that. This shit is an older model, and you know it ran fairly hot when you had it crunching code for hours on end.

You don’t plan to do that this morning. But as heat resistant as these goddamn feathers seem to be, you’re kind enough to lean the side vents away.

Heat resistant, maybe. But not fire-proof. There’s evidence enough of that. Even from where you sit, you can pick out a dozen smaller charred pinions you’d missed in the dark, out of place and beginning to molt of their own accord as god-tier regeneration pushed out new ones.

If you hadn’t grabbed that damn snake and choked it off, singed feathers would have been the least of your worries.

That will never happen again.

A faint growl accompanies the pointed thought, echoing in the silent morning. Your eyes flick around the room, searching for a wayward flash of orange and glassy blue. A sign that the puppet had escaped its banishment to return to taunt you again.

Nothing. Davepeta doesn’t even so much as twitch, leading you to believe it’s all in your own head.

Or right outside of it. You flex your fingers, as if you could see the threads winding around them.

And then put them to work.

An email response goes out to Newt. Your changes to the itinerary hadn’t gone unnoticed. The longer layover in Hawaii sucks ass, but you made up for it with the direct flight from there to Houston, instead of routing through LA.

You hadn’t signed out of Pesterchum. Your eyes flick to the flashing window as if yanked. Given Davepeta is currently in your lap, there’s only two others that could be.

And only one it is likely to be.

A suspicion that is quickly answered. With a timestamp of less than three hours ago.

gardenGnostic [GG]: please tell me when you guys are okay!!!
gardenGnostic [GG]: i can tell bec left but that doesnt mean youre allowed to give me the cold shoulder!!! >:(
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i take your cold shoulder and spin that shit righ round thats exactly what were doing
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the cold isnt contained to the shoulder though
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< chillin
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i totally broke out the newspaper and spurray bottle and invented a whole new style of petfu mew shouldve s33n it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you can get the d33ts furom bro ive b33n grounded
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< propurr catnyap in a lap although the pile could use some work
gardenGnostic [GG]: fine
gardenGnostic [GG]: but ill be expecting a full report from you tomorrow!
gardenGnostic [GG]: dont think youll be getting away that easily

You remember the flash of light between cupped claws. Before they nodded off to sleep.

The chilling claws of guilt winds its way through your chest.

You hadn’t even thought to check.

It’s not too late now. It itches at you to leave it hanging like that. Without a response.

timeausTestified [TT]: We’re in one piece for what it’s worth.
timeausTestified [TT]: Someone is just being stubborn and refusing to get their feathered ass moving this morning.

There is a lack of immediate answer. Strange enough as it is, given the lack of other activities available to the god. Maybe she went out for a flight after having paced a hole into the golden carpet.

As the minutes tick by your mind starts to wander, back to the pages left open from your research last night, mentally ticking down the list of things you need to get through this exodus as painless as humanly possible. You’d planned to finish packing this morning—a morning that is quickly fleeing into the past, and therefore becoming unusable—

It should still be fine. You had brought minimal personal effects. Several of which were already stored away.

Lil Cal is a suspiciously silent weight in your sylladex, a chill of resigned dread creeping into the space above your heart. You can’t even feel the usual weight on your chest. Constricting it. Instead of being relieved, it just makes you feel antsy.

All preparations that would be moot, should either of your current non human factors decide to throw an otherworldly wrench into the mix.

The laptop shifts beneath you, one hand leaving its resting place on the keyboard and moving beneath one edge to steady it. The reason for the movement soon reveals itself, in a flash of orange, as the icon on the task bar flashes once more.

The shade of green isn’t quite right.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dont mew know the rules bro
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its illegal to wake a sl33ping cat
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< accept your fate
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< youve b33n doomed

Heat from the vents, rebounding from shiny green-black feathers, blasts against chilled fingers.

“Logic that no longer applies since you’re clearly awake.”

You could have typed it, but it’s the principle of the matter. The morning grittiness rolling into a far lower grumble than you’d intended.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< says you
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< mew cant purrove anyfang
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im fast asl33p with my face in a metafurical sunbeam
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< my claws are dug in i will not be moved

“It won’t be metaphorical for long, at the rate you’re going.” Window brightening little, by little. Colors inching its way across the sky. “Stick around, and the closet may well be your only option until after we leave.”

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dirk
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< bro
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< how can you be so cruel
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< after all that time i spent watching over your sl33ping ass
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you wont even let me take my sw33t sw33t time???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< treasuring this monmewmental moment

The laptop slides onto the carpeted floor. The fibers aren’t great for the ventilation, but it’ll live, and you can still see the flashing chat box out of your periphery.

But most importantly it frees up your hands.

You like to imagine you can hear the squawk you can see as you—gently, you might add—shove them off your legs.

It’s barely a roll. And they land face first on the sun-covered blankets pulled from the bed. The flailing is definitely exaggerated.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i totally f33l the love in this here dennys dying with every minute i dont even n33d to know the time to know its draining away like a flipped glass

“Have you even been to a Denny’s?”

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< no but neither have you
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< this is a dennys now
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dennys island

“You’ll need to ask Jade before you give her home away to some douche named Denny.”

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< oh shell be totally on board wouldnt mew jade???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i know youre around here lurking in the memeow
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dont you think its a great idea???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< he sounds like a totally cool dude
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< deserves it even after witnessing the unbridled cruelty happawning under his new roof
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< witness to murder
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< jade???

Knock.

Knock.

“Mr. Strider???” Young. Muffled by wood and stone. But unmistakable.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Who’s there?

The bump on a log you’ve been trying to coax into movement for the last hour suddenly shoots straight up. Quite literally. Not to sitting. Not to standing. Floating. Two feet in the air. Feathers puffed, and wings curled protectively around themselves.

And in a rush of displaced air, and a swirl of feathers, they are gone. You scramble to your feet as best you can, sinking with a hiss back down when a sharp complaint makes itself known. Lodged and recorded, you file that shit in the dustiest corner of your mental crawlspace you can find. Don’t bother stamping the card noone will be checking it out again.

Maybe standing wasn’t the best option anyway, eyes drift across the floor. At the large and noticeable molted feathers scattered everywhere.

Orange and green flashes on the screen on the floor as you employ some serious moves to nab every single bit of black you can see. Quick glances allow their message to infiltrate your mind all the same.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< shit
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< wrong jade

“I warned you dawg,” Muttered, but the sentiment is there at any rate. “She would have responded by now if she were awake. It’s fucking obvious.”

A thump from somewhere to your right is your only answer as you shove the feathers into the blanket and then bundle everything up, pushing the screen of the laptop down with your foot to make the most efficient use of your limited time. Either they are under the bed or in the closet. If it’s the latter you are going to laugh after this is over.

And then strangle them for tempting fate in the first place.

“Mr. Strideeeeer.” The knocking continues, becoming quicker. “Oooh come on I know you’re awake I can hear you in there!!!”

It’ll have to be enough.

“Alright, alright.” The sigh raises in volume as you, struggling, push yourself to your feet, slinging the quite literal feather-stuffed comforter over the other side of the bed near the closet—and more importantly out of direct sight of the door. “You’re never up this early.”

“That’s because I have a question!” You’ve let yourself sink back onto the bed by the time Jade nearly tumbles into the room. “And you said we don’t have much time and I fell asleep last night instead of packing.”

“Nights are supposed to be for sleeping.” Christ, you are getting sick of this goddamn knee. You push that annoyance to the back of your mind and fully focus on the present. On her. On her wrinkling nose bordering on a pout that you translate as her being unamused by your entirely truthful statement.

“Unless you plan on bringing everything you’ve still got plenty of time.” You can’t help but eye the suitcase she’d dragged in with her, dark green has faded with time and more than a little dust. You don’t think you need confirmation that it’s second-hand. “That being said, space is somewhat of a limiter. The cessna taking us back is much smaller than the cargo ship I came here in since it actually needs to land. I’d stick to the essentials. Clothes. Computer. Emotional support plushes...”

You stop ticking down your fingers when you think of your own emotional support plush and the hell he made the flight.

You could just leave him here. The thought bubbles up, and a spike of dread gets hammered through your chest like it’s a goddamn ice pick. Let the dog chew on him.

Eyes flutter shut behind your weak ass shades. Red spiderwebbing across the darkness. Flickering.

Drained.

Threads caught in a dragon’s jaws.

It’s a nice lie.

Fuck, you can handle this.

Getting rid of Cal wouldn’t be worth what you’d be leaving behind.

Jade’s scoff was a welcome tug away from that particular rabbit hole.

“I know that! I was in the middle of an intensive set of interviews to decide which squiddles to bring and which ones will be happier here.” Some tension seems to bleed out of her as she crosses the threshold of the room, straightening up as she pushes the hair out of her face. The suitcase drops to a thump on the floor before her, before she begins to unzip the thing.

The silence that falls is somewhat surprising. Small hands slowing and pausing. Hesitating.

“I…” Jade is chewing on her lip, green eyes behind round lenses flicking up to you and then back to the open suitcase before her.

White cloth coils around dark hands. Familiar enough, even from just the cloth.

Moments turn into minutes.

You need to break it, or you feel as if it’ll last forever.

“It looks like you managed to get some done before the sandman came,” You nod cooly toward the suitcase, sliding off the bed and settling onto the floor as casual as you like, as if you hadn’t spent all fucking night on it. The open suitcase forms a gulf between you.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve done this! The stubborn determination following her reply shatters the odd unease, fingers curling around and then pointedly waving what is now confirmed to be one of the white, easily customizable via wardrobifier, dresses. “I didn’t unpack most of it. Why bother, when most of my clothes are the same???”

“Fair point.” They’d gotten all the way to the finish line. Packed and suited up and on the way to a new life. “So. Since you haven’t yet determined the final guestlist for the trip…even if you had a headstart…”

A beat of your heart. Or a hundred. You aren’t sure as you jerk your thumb toward that thumping organ deep in your too wide chest..

“What do you need from me?”

Fingers clench—bare fingers at that. She must have packed her reminders already. Such small little things. Easily lost—and then it’s a dive. A dive into the cloth obscured depths. Dredging up…

A packet of papers bundled together by a knotted sparkly pink bow.

Which are then promptly marched over and dropped unceremoniously in your lap.

“The lady—Miss Lalonde—” Jade corrects herself, confirming your suspected origin for the obnoxious packaging.

Right there on top is a letter.

You’re very few words in when you realize who it’s from.

“--said we’d need these at the airport. She had to dig through Grandpa’s things to find them. There was a lot of dust. And a LOT of cobwebs. I don’t go up there much. I don’t like it. It’s creepy.”

Forged, or genuine, you don’t know. But goddamn does it threaten to break your goddamn heart. You welcome the tonal shift dragging your attention away from the letter, and what you suspect is clearly Jade Harley’s equivalent of the “Legal Shit” folder to find an impish smile and sparkling green eyes.

It’s all you can do not to ask who Jane pranked this time.

That thought doesn’t help much.

“I felt bad for the spiders. There was this big bad monster rampaging through their homes! And a lot of swearing. She asked me if I heard her.” The conspiratorial whisper is failing to hide a giggle, “I lied!”

“Such a criminal, miss Harley.” You drawl, over exaggerating the shake of your head, “However will we get you through customs with that on your record? Lyin’ to an authority figure.” A beat. The dramatic pause might be a bit much. “Damn shame that.”

The dam fails right then and there, as she dissolves into giggles.

You can’t help but feel a little pleased at that, after the emotional rollercoaster she’d unwittingly signed up for. Emotional rollercoasters and fucking dogs.

Jade uses the following heartbeats to compose herself, before erupting into a bunch of questions about the airport while she re-folds the dresses disturbed by her digging. About security. Wondering if they’d have doggies. Don’t a lot of the movies have doggies sniffing everything? Should she pack treats?

The question of why she would have dog treats, when before last night she didn’t know she had a dog, isn’t lost on you. But you decide not to mention it. In fact you welcome the distraction with the ferocity of a drowning man. Any excuse to set the packet upside down on the bed and answer her questions the best you can, and where you can’t, quip a “Bribery now, Miss Harley?” Another shake of the head, “You just keep adding to your rap sheet.”

“It’s illegal to not give dogs treats!” She huffs, zipping the suitcase back up and pushing to her feet, hands slapping against her knees to smooth down her dress as she does so, “Everyone knows that.”

“I’ll let you explain it to Security.” She’s close enough for you to reach out and flick her forehead the same way you’d always wanted to do to Jane when she bulldozered over yet another batter covered clue you and Roxy were dropping all over the goddamn place. Her eyes are wide behind her glasses. Blue—

Green.

It’ll be awkward if you stop now.

That tired, drained part of you that can’t muster the energy to snark, heaves a sigh.

You’re too tired to continue down that spiral. It’s easier to roll with the punches like a wave rather than receiving one in the face like a rock. The world is gray not red and all you can do is give her a halfhearted shrug and rile her up instead. “I’m sure even the most hardened of cops will wilt in the face of such irrefutable logic from such a perfect little princess.”

The P’s pop quite distinctly, accompanying a deadpan that could be mistaken for sarcastic.

“Hey!!!” It works, as the startled expression turns into a pout. “I’m a dragon!!! Not a princess. Remember???”

“Whatever you say, Princess.”

With the drawled out word, you withdraw. You would go back to flipping through the papers and shit as if you had any idea what to do with any of them, but you can’t bring yourself to untie the bow. Just. Running your thumb along the rough edges. Tiny knives against skin.

If Roxanne thought that was what they needed, it was probably what they needed.

“I say I’m a dragon.” One, final shot. The wheels of the suitcase work well enough against the short carpet. “Just you wait. Dave will agree with me.”

Dave.

There’s a little voice in the back of your mind that sounds far too much like you. Too snide for your comfort.

Why can’t you do this for Dave? Why can’t you make him laugh?

Why can’t you just…

Fuck. Not the time for this.

Hand flicking casually in a motion best translated to, ‘yeah, yeah,’ you don’t stop her as she drags the suitcase back out of the room. Loudly declaring that she needs to finish packing and so do you, don’t you?.

It’s definitely not the time to do this.

Nor is it the time to stare down at this letter, What you can read of it above the thick, sparkly as fuck ribbon. Saying nothing even as the closet door creaks open. Or something shifts on the bed, crawling over it. The opposite of alarm bells go off, as a weight settles against your back, arms curling around your shoulder, a curious kitten using their upper ground to peer down at what has you so captivated.

Dear Sir, Messers, Gents! All the basic pleasantries.

I would be remiss to leave out a missus. It wouldn’t surprise me one ounce if Roxanne is the one to find this dusty old thing. No one else would think of looking in the old wyrm’s gut! Pump that ol’ feller full of formaldehyde and it’ll last forever. Jade hates the thing, so I reckon it’ll be safe enough until she needs it. She shouldn’t need it. But if she didn’t need it, you wouldn’t be popping open this barrel of delightful morbidity, would you?

Should this grand convoluted scheme crumble, I bequeath to you, mysterious gentleperson, everything needed to embark upon a far different adventure. A mundane, lackluster one to be sure, in comparison to the one promised by the golden moon.

I suppose for one unaccustomed to such things, even the mundane might become a realm of limitless wonder. Stories and pictures are grand old things but they never hold up to the joy of experience. Part of the reason I left home, you know? The old bat was stifling with her hovering, and the road to adventure was just right there on the back of good ol’ Haley. Nothing with me but hope and a lot of gumption, if you’ll believe it…

The sparkly ribbon falls to the floor. Tugged free. Another sheet slips out from the folded paper. Another letter below that. Handwritten all the same, if far, far harder to read.

Jake didn’t drink. You can’t imagine an older Jake doing anything else. But there’s something in the shaking hand and the rambling nature that makes you think of long, early morning conversations. Or monologues, before you’d had Hal keeping an eye on it at all times.

Sleep deprived, and unlikely to be remembered the next day.

You read in silence as he blathers on about nothing at all. Barely even touching on the girl whose fate he so readily debates. What was it to him? A late night thought experiment on predestiny and the futility of a contingency that will never be needed?

A contingency he dutifully fulfilled anyway. A crack left in the foundation, through which uncertainty seeps.

Your eyes burn.

In retrospect, I can’t say I’m offended at the idea that in some universe the trap doesn’t snap shut. It’s a real pickle, when everything points to the trap being the escape.

It’s done.

It doesn’t feel like it’s done. The next page doesn’t continue the thought at all, moving from handwritten to typed. Faded gray letters on slightly crinkled paper. Wrinkles that seem to stem from age rather than carelessness.

You flick past the birth certificate. And then past a notarized power of attorney. And then past a gun license of all things, the sight of which makes Davepeta scoff in your ear. The heat on the back of your neck threatens to make you shiver.

Identification and shit.

Everything necessary to start a new adventure.

The window into the past has closed.

“I’m fine.”

You can hear the unasked question as claws, real and solid and here threaten to sneak their way into your hair.

The disbelieving snort prompts you to set the papers aside stiffly, eliciting a defensive, “Really.”

Rustle of fabric, weight against the bed, feathers moving as they shift.

The sound of too sharp nails scraping against plastic.

Before you can check the clearly catty comeback they’ve picked out for you the door slams open once again.

“I FORGOT SOMETHING!”

You feel like a deer in the headlights. Frozen mid reach toward the closed laptop. It’s only the near silent rush of a flash-step displacing the air behind you that prevents everything from falling apart.

Would it be so bad if it had?

Jade’s breathing seemed to indicate she’d run down the steps at great pace. Small frame puffing to draw air into deprived lungs.

“I need—huff—I want to—” A deep inhale seems to steady her. “I want to take some stuff from the garden. Is that okay?”

“Sure. Why not.” You hear yourself saying woodenly.

The apartment doesn’t have room for that shit. Don’t—don’t plants need sunlight?

Your eyes hurt just thinking about it.

They can survive on the roof. Probably. “Be warned. It gets hot as hell.”

“That’s fine! The pumpkins are hardy!” She can’t have seen anything. Her thoughts turning from you to the stairs down the hall and the gardens several floors up even as her face turns away.

Memories bubble up. Standing in line. White-blonde hair bobbing at the edge of your vision, mumbling as he read every single sign aloud out of boredom before he started on complaining about baggy pantsed passerbys. That had been tame compared to the line you’d spotted in Hawaii. “There might be restrictions on what you can take through customs, unless you want to add plant smuggling to your rap sheet.”

Better than arms smuggling. The license might get her specibus through, especially as it’s labeled as an heirloom.

That snaps the rubber band right back. You can’t stand the way her face falls. You scramble for something to change that, eyes landing on the closed laptop.

“You can look it up. They probably have it posted online.”

“I gueeeeeesss.” The pout and exaggerated kick would have threaten to make you crack a smile, if it weren’t for the fact that your heart is pounding in your ears. Did you just hear something rustle?

Get her out of the room.

“Don’t you have packing to do?” You tap your fingers against your leg. “You’re burning daylight and now you need to interview both your plushies AND some plants for viable candidates. It’ll eat up your space too.”

“Maybe. I just.” The kick turns into a scuff, as the white sneaker pushes against the stone floor, “It’s not just the plants. I feel bad? A little? For the other Jade.”

Othe—

The robot, idiot. Not the god.

“I mean! We just woke her up and now we’re going to leave. Doesn’t it seem mean? She can’t come with us can she???”

“Does she want to?” Christ, you can only imagine trying to fit a fourth person, robotic or not, into your already too small pad, and you aren’t even touching the logistics of getting her through customs right now.

Jade shakes her head. “I mean she doesn’t seem upset that we’re leaving? But you know she doesn’t really talk and I can’t help but thinking I don’t want to be alone. And if she’s made from me then why would she???”

“She’s…it’s not quite like that.” You think, anyway. The long nights staring at the screen still feel like an endless haze. Tinted red by the lights from her eyes. She’s not like Hal. You would not do that again.

You don’t know exactly how you know that. But you do.

You sigh, reaching for the discarded glasses sitting somewhere near the laptop. Reaching fingers curl around cheap plastic frames as a glimmer of an idea begins to form.

“I wanted to check in with her before we left anyway. Is she still up on the Greenhouse level?” At the expected nod, you wave her on ahead, “I’ll meet you up there. Give me a minute or two to change.”

You wait even after the excited “Okay!”. After the door closes. One heartbeat. Two. Three.

And just like that, the moment passes, and the universe can stop holding it’s fucking breath.

“Jesus Christ.” You breathe out with it. The strangled groan behind you sounds in agreement. “You’re just lucky she didn’t come any closer that time.”

You glance backwards as the bedraggled white-haired head of the cat-bird-troll crests the wimpy ass hiding place that was the other side of the bed. Didn’t even make it to the closet that time.

They even lost their communicator in the scuffle, the black device left abandoned in the folds of the sheets, which they currently swipe up with the fervor of a dehydrated dude being proffered a freshly opened bottle of orange soda.

Time to get up off your ass if you don’t want a repeat experience. Take too long and she’ll come looking for you again.

You shuffle over to the nook near the window, squinting at the sun streaming in before you slip your cheapo sunglasses back into place. Your duffle and all its cloth filled glory sits half unzipped on the ledge. A decent place to put it at the time. When it’s dark and the sun wasn’t spitting fiery daggers at you.

“Looks like you missed your window. Looks bright as hell out there.” You glance over at Davepeta, who’d decided to sprawl out over the bed during your distraction. They aren’t typing on their phone—surprising, given the gusto with which they’d retrieved the device. They decide to wave your comment off with a careless flip of a wrist, dragging the blanket full of feathers up off the floor and around them into a little sun-shine-covered cocoon. You roll your eyes as the movement sends your collection of cast off feathers fluttering all over the floor again. “You are going to be cleaning that up while I’m gone. Right?”

The rude gesture you receive in response says everything. Before the talon’d hand draws back into the prison of fabric.

You grab whatever’s on top—a collared shirt, of course, although this one seems a tad greyer than most of the others—giving it a quick sniff to check the grody-ness levels. Adequate. You’ve worn all the shirts you’d brought with you by now, but some have experienced less perspiration than others.

The feeling of eyes on your back doesn’t fade even as you swap out the hand-sewn navy blue long-sleeved smuppet felt shirt you’d fallen asleep in for the much stiffer fabric of the commercially bought collar.

Something smacks against the back of your head. Or it would have, if you hadn’t caught the balled up sock. They can’t see you raising your eyebrow behind the cheapo shades, but they do catch it when you lob it back. Claws biting into fabric.

And then they drop it right next to their communicator. Which was laid out on the bed. Screen on and bright. Not yet dimmed due to inactivity.

You’ll bite.

You step closer, carding your hand through your hopeless ‘do since you can’t be bothered to dig out the comb.

“Leave Cal.” You read aloud, before glancing up at the cocoon of blankets. Eyes gleam from a small hole around their face. Red eyes, you note with surprise. Despite the sun filtering in through the window, they’d pushed the dark-green-almost-black shades up to sit on top of their head.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i purromise i wont commit a murrder
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i just dont want him near Jade after last night

“He’s going to have to live near Jade, if we go through with this.” You point out. “The apartment isn’t that big.”

Davepeta shrugs, and then surprises you by not making another move for the communicator.

That isn’t everything.

You know them better than that.

Beady red eyes from the ghostly crow on your shoulder. Talons and beak digging into plush and fabric and something much much more.

“A’ight.” There’s nothing else to say. “I trust you.”

You go in search of a girl and her robot, leaving a piece of yourself behind.

Notes:

I'm not entirely happy with the change in style near the end. It's not intentional! Just. A byproduct of not having written regularly for a while. But hey! It's done! At last! Months later lol.

Hopefully the next one won't be as bad. It's been nice to feel motivated again.

Speaking of, I just wanted to thank everyone who's read and commented over the last couple weeks. All the credit for that motivation goes to you guys :) Comments definitely do help, even if it's been a long time. It's nice, knowing people are still reading and still enjoying and still interested.

So yeah! Thank you!!! And an extra double, triple thank you to the two folks who decided to write AUs for this silly fic. I was floored when I got the notifications! Please go check them out if you haven't seen 'em in the tag.

Remembrance by JackSallyZeroSanta
Roxy ==> Get sum freakin ansrws by docmatoi

Chapter 80

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

You do what any good cat does when they’ve been roused unwillingly from a nap.

You roll over and go back to sleep.

Okay you’re being dramatic. There’s no way you could ever sleep that deeply with Cal around.

He never stops watching.

And yet that unease never again rouses to the level of hair raising. It’s a wary sense of discomfort, but the weight of the oncoming day and the warmth of the sun seeping in through the windows stacks the scales against you. It presses down heavily on your shoulders, and it doesn’t take long for your upright chrysalis to melt into a puddle of blanket covered ooze.

You never were one for a proper recuperacoon anyway. You barely even remember the thing. The scent of fur and body heat had long since replaced any memory of sopor and its sedative properties.

The blanket doesn’t have either of those, but eh, despurrate times, despurrate measures.

Bro’s lingering scent seems to be an adequate replacement. Although you wish he’d never left at all.

Not that you are alone.

Glass blue eyes itch at you from the end of the bed. They keep you tethered, stopping your consciousness from slipping its way free of your physical form and into the blank darkness, bereft of even the haunting cries that’d plagued those hours before your death.

Pure. Torture. Why can’t you dream like all the other idiots out there?

Time ticks, unheard, but seen in the morning sunbeam. Stretching inch by inch across the room. Nearer to your blanket cocoon. It’d stretch its way across the room. Throwing shadows and shapes onto the far wall. There it’d sit for hours, until midday pulled it out and away.

Or it would, if Dirk hadn’t had the decency to pull the curtains shut before he left. The diffusion of the straight up UV rays help a little. You get all of the warmth and none of the burn and you could sleep like this for—

Wait.

You feel yourself folding under the heavy weight of the blanket, leaden limbs tucked in close and even the ooze starts to sink into the soft and inviting

Dust built cobwebs tickle your unprepared face. Nose wrinkling in discomfort as the salty breeze drags in the scent of fur and burning wires.

Wait.

It reminds you uncomfortably of the mid-day flight you’d tried to take. Broken off in a flash of green as ‘tav kicked you back over the boundary you’d crossed.

The mattress dips, and that wrinkle turns into an unheard hiss.

The shrieks of an alarmed murder echo through the room, kicking off a very real growl sounding from somewhere beyond your sun-printed shade.

The kaleidoscope of spectral birds fracture the bronze webbing between them all, leaving the rest of you free to burst out of the trap.

The comforter, for all that it was innocent of all crimes, becomes a casualty of glowing magenta blades. Jade will forgive you.

Probably.

The faceless guardian rears back away from the bed, away from your crouched and hissing form. The growl echoes around orange fabric arms as they dangle freely from ivory fangs.

You barely have seconds as the metallic sickly sweet scent of ozone builds, and at least half of those lead to asking—

You don’t even have the chance to finish the question, much less come to the answer.

And in a way, that’s an answer in and of itself.

It would have been so easy to do nothing.

Claws slide in as your arms lock around the beast’s neck. The sparking green spreads, the darkest blankness of space to be seen in the depths of the guardian’s silhouette. The murder dives, talons digging into the patchwork soul as you struggle to hang on.

That green ripples over you through you and then.

The tear in space mends itself, and everything goes dark.

Your body lands with a hard thud against cold stone, arms still digging into white fur as your weight disrupts its landing, sending you both rolling in the dusty, cavernous space.

Release! the bronzeblood powered command beats down against you, but you’re prepared for it this time. Your claws spasm as if shocked, the cries of the spectral birds echo in the enclosed shaft as they are shaken free, but your arms are locked. The strangely shaped head, canine, and yet not, whips back and forth, giant bull horns whizzing overhead and stirring your already windswept hair into a flurry.

It would have beaned you in the face if you didn’t have it buried into white fur and muscle, straight up hyperventilating as you try and shrug off the echoes of the past shivering through you. You didn’t black out and drop. That’s a start. But as one by one your furious crows vanish from your soul, bright red eyes dulled to brown by an oppressive, if arguably well meaning force, you can’t help the crawling terror that it’s coming for you.

Even if you fractured that part of yourself into tiny pieces to try and slow it down, you are still a bird. And that bronze noose never stopped tightening.

You’d surprised him last time.

Bro isn’t here to put you back together this time.

You can’t let it get that far.

You.

Let Go!

The moment of weakness is enough. He breaks your grip with a grunt, leaving you a crumpled heap of feathers on the floor. The net closes around flailing wings. Binding them harshly. The command to stay down presses against you as you stumble. Red dims all around the room.

Green sparks travel along the dog-thing’s’ heaving body. Big paws pad across the stone floor, a mittened hand dragging drawing a trail in the disturbed dust. Stopping. Above you. The huff of satisfaction is blunted by the puppet squeezed between rows of teeth. You can even see stuffing springing from widening tears in the body. You would have thought it would be something else, after all the trouble that thing’s caused.

The glint of Cal’s eyes shouldn’t be visible in the darkness. With nothing to glint off them.

That thing.

The bruise of green-purple-blue-red beneath your crow’s talons flashes through your mind.

You should just let Tavros get rid of it.

A flinch shudders through the white form.

Sluggishly, your eyes narrow

It goes against everything you are but. You’re already in tatters. Scattered around the room. Dully glinting brown instead of bright red. You can’t see them. Can’t feel them except as an aching hole where you had ripped them free in an attempt to prevent this.

And you did prevent it. You’re still yourself. Even under the influence holding you down you can think for yourself.

And you think you can save yourself this time, by doing what you do best.

The past settles around you like a warm, long forgotten coat. Too big and too small in turns. Gloved hands curl against the floor, over-long sleeves catching on claws as they steady against the ground.

”Tavros!”

He flinches, watching warily from where he’d stepped back a handful of steps once she’d started moving. She settles into a crouch, shimmering coat splayed out around you. Tail curled around your feet. The weight of your wings fall away as she puffs up her cheeks in annoyance.

”You know that doesn’t belong to you. Put it down!!!”

The voice doesn’t pass through your throat, but it is you nonetheless, pulled from the troll you came from. Her life. Her memory.

Just like the crows, it’s real enough.

Sparks shudder through the guardian, the wave of dangerous resonating with who you are now, but the green quickly replaces it.

”That doesn’t mean you can go around stealing things! Just beclaws you have silly pawers doesn’t mean you can boss people around like that.”

The confusion in your prey is palpable. The smug satisfaction he’d gotten from beating you down so cruelly stripped away by your refusal to stay down.

Paw out, palm up. You can see the glimmer of olive out of the corner of your eyes but you don’t dare break that unseen gaze to check. “Give him back and I won’t tell Jade you broke your purrrromise already.”

The purr doesn’t rumble in your throat the way you remember it, and it makes you ache.

”You know she won’t like that! You’re already on thin ice, Tavros.”

”Tavros!”

Tavros

The name is what does it. It’s what punches up against the mess of what he’s become and digs its claws back into what he once was. Tearing at the smallest of cracks. It’s definitely not her voice. Or even the sight.

You’d only really known each other fur a few days, afterall. The competitive nature of your friends meant there wasn’t much fraternizing between teams until the end.

The puppet drops to the ground like it burned.

Cognitive dissonance is turning out to be one hell of a weapon.

With a flash, Tavros is gone.

And. So is she.

She unravels between your claws, the bronze grip on your crow breaking with the departure. The eerie silence suddenly bursts to life, raucous caws echoing over and over and over above you, around you until you corral them all back into place. One by one. Lights winking out as they get nudged back into the tapestry of your own self.

Talons hook into fabric and plush, hopping, dragging it into reach before it fades away.

You owe me. You think it directly at the puppet, even though you know the thoughts don’t travel beyond your head. The voice that you’d momentarily clawed back lost to the wind. You owe me so much.

Familiar laughter echoes in the back of your mind. A distant hah hah hee hee hoo hoo of a puppet given life by your own kernel.

Your kernel. Your bird. Your sprite.

Isn’t it ironic that, when given voice, the only thing it did was laugh at you?

Flock it.

There is not so much as a twitch as it’s pulled tight to your chest. Clay face against your fluttering heart.

The demon that has haunted you for so long lays limp in your grasp.

It isn’t laughing now.

You don’t know how long you lay there, listening to the clashing cacophony of confused ass beats coming from the ugly, bruised thing contained within the plush body of your once best puppet pal.

Minutes? Hours?

Tavcatdog doesn’t return.

If you know Tavros, he’d probably avoid you after that.

(You’d thought that last night, and look how it turned out.)

The blue light from your phone burns your unshaded eyes when you finally check. Your wings bunch uncomfortably, sandwiched between your weight and the stone floor.

A chat window is open.

timaeusTestified [TT]: Are you okay?

Nothing else. Nothing about Cal. Timestamps…

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yeah

You don’t even get halfway through a follow up response before the vibration of a reply rattles through your digits. You scrap it.

He must have been watching his phone like a hawk.

timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m coming to get you.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< no youre not
timaeusTestified [TT]: Yes I am.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< no youre not!!!
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im f33lin feline over here
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< just havent really looked around yet this is the first time ive b33n able to catch my breath
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ill just get jade to pick me up when she wakes up no big
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< we can purrobably drop cal off that way too come to think of it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< watch out!!! ill have her droppin me off on your roof for prime bro times befur you know it

The lack of response is worrying.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you better not be badgering jades robot for a ride
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you dont know where i am
timaeusTestified [TT]: Frog Temple.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im not even going to question how you know that
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< so you are badgering her
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< stop it >BCC
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< well get your other half back to you faster than a ch33tah at full sprint dont worry
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m not worried about Cal.
timaeusTestified [TT]: And I’m not badgering her. I asked.

Your claws hover over the keys, breath hitching.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< flock you <>
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the image of jadebot carrying the massive ass of my bro is utterly hilarious
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you still shouldnt though
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i purromise im f33lin feline cross my heart stick a pin in a smuppets ass
timaeusTestified [TT]: Fine.
timaeusTestified [TT]: But only because I have to clean up the mess you made.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Jade found your feathers, by the way. Some are now braided in her hair. At least it distracted her from the comforter.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< cool maybe ill convince her to change her fursona yet
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< tell her if she k33ps them shell have to smuggle them through customs
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< crow feathers are illegal
timaeusTestified [TT]: I doubt one more crime will matter in the grand scheme of things.
timaeusTestified [TT]: She’s already admitted to conspiring to bribe security personnel.

You flick the notification mode from vibration to sound, cradling the link to the outside world in one hand as you press another against the rough stone floor. Cal slides off your chest, falling to the ground in a baleful plop as you push yourself up.

His fabric body barely makes a sound. The lack deafening even the rattle of clay as his head settles on fabric arms.

You eye the puppet, your vulnerable eyes briefly meeting the unseen glass gaze, before turning abruptly, shaking the cramp out of your wings as they shimmer back into corporeality.

Nifty trick that. Troll gods could do it with their dainty ass butterfly wings so why the flock not???

You’d never even thought about it. You’ve never lived without them.

Goddamnit you ignore the itch of eyes on your back, restless wings not settling until you at least give a token effort at preening them. Flight feathers slipping through your scale speckled fingers.

Maybe it would be easier to banish them again, but the lack of weight feels wrong to that antsy bird brain of yours so you fold the flockers instead. The feathers are a comforting brush against your arms as you move as far forward as you can, using the flash on your phone to find the nearest wall.

Glyphs shimmer in the artificial light. Reflecting it? Activating it? You inspect them, a familiar tightness forming at the back of your brain in a place you juuuust can’t reach to scratch.

You never did manage to dump the whole encyclopedia. Just because you recognize them doesn’t mean you can read them though. You lost that particular encryption key when your bro yanked the sprite out of your chest. All that remains is the nagging feeling of forgetting something. Something you infuriatingly know you've forgotten.

Stupid game birdshit.

Nothing particularly useful, despite the warmth building in your palm as you run your hand along the wall, utilizing the mixture of touch and torch to determine a) how big the room is and b) that there’s no way out.

Oh, there’s a break in the wall. And very likely a hallway beyond. But that doesn’t help when chunks of stone seem to have fallen out of the ceiling. Blockading the path save for a couple arm-sized holes between broken stone and—roots? Feels like roots. Thick and gnarled and grainy between searching fingers.

You might be able to cut those free if push comes to shove, but you’re not quite in shoving range yet. Expurrience in den expansion and declawration warns that being reckless with roots risks even more cave-ins.

You’re already deep enough that the air is still. Stale. And likely unbreathable should you needed to do so. As it is, the dust you’re kicking up seems to hover in the air indefinitely, resulting in a tickle in your throat that inevitability yanks out some hair-ball worthy gags.

‘Tav sure hadn’t wanted his prize to be found when he picked the landing spot.

You couldn’t really blame the guy. (Dog. Cat. Friend. Thing. Man. You thought you had it bad.) You’d considered tossing Cal into the center of a volcano once. You’d only been foiled by the fact that they guy’d had wings and therefore the peace would have been shortlived.

A ping, sharp and loud, splits heavy silence with far more force than your quiet shuffling. The resultant notification throws the screen in your hand momentarily brighter indicating the receipt of a message.

timaeusTestified [TT]: Speaking of a criminal act: I’m going to call the police on you for wandering around without your shades.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Don’t you know that’s against all applicable laws of cool and comfort?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< oh dont worry theres not enough light in existence to bother my cones rn
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its dank as fuck
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i swear tav dropped me in the d33pest most inaccessible hellhole imaginable
timaeusTestified [TT]: …You are not doing a good job of convincing me to not call in the rescue party here.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dont you dare
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you would be zero help at best and at worst youd end up stuck here with me
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the halls already been blocked by a cave in
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< youd think sburbian buildings would be a bit more sturdy than that
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< theyre suppawsed to last till the next age not fall apawrt in this one
timaeusTestified [TT]: The island is volcanic. It could have been an earthquake.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< a very convenient earthquake that leaves a single room blocked in and clawmarks on the rubble???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< sounds more like a baby jail to me and i got myself locked up with the baby

The baby declines to make a comment.

There’s only so much poking about you can do in a room that is smaller than your bedroom.

You eventually end up back in the center, cross-legged, with your phone on your lap. Key taps of nails on keys echo deafeningly in the silence, even as words fail to make an imprint on the darkened screen. It’s more of a rhythmic ticking and a tocking and a ticking and a tocking and a—

It’s fine. You’re just thinking. Daydreaming like any good creative does, drawing pictures in the dusty remnants of an eon. You can’t see the images of course, but they’re there. In your head. Storyboarding.

Nails against stone.

Tick Tock Tick Tock Tick To—

It’s going to drive you mad.

And then grind to a screeching halt, metafuracle claws leaving grooves in the stone considering the force with which you just slammed on the breaks.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< this baby is being hella sus right now i gotta say
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the lack of a tantrum has me as on edge as having one would be
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< actually no itd be easier to k33p a paw on a tantrum i got real good at ignoring calsprites squawking
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< if he was kicking up a racket i could match that caw per cawcawphony even without my voice dont you doubt me i have an entire murdur of asshole birds at my disposal
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its the quiet simmering thats getting under my skin you know

What exactly is simmering you don’t know, and it’s picking at you. You can feel him. A burning bruised mass of disparate notes sitting just over there. An arms reach away. You could reach out and push watching with narrowed eyes as the tantalizing taste of nostalgia blossoms from your touch.

You won’t.

The worst part is he feels so miserable, and it’s making you feel miserable, and you just want to reach out and punch him in his falsely grinning face.

Or pap the flock out of him.

Given everything he put you through your fur bristles at the merest idea of extending even the smallest of paws to do anything other than to unsheathe your claws. Even as your instincts whisper that the whole evolutionary point of a conciliatory relationship isn’t the fluffy supportive one you’re trying to build, it's to stop someone from devolving into a deranged lunatic.

Feferi reigning in Eridan’s bloodlust.

Aradia allowing Sollux to loosen a string or two. Making the fuse more difficult to light.

Y—Nepeta…giving an uptight idiot a place where he doesn’t have to worry about hurting anyone else.

And you. Here. Now. Selfish.

Even ignoring the psychic damage, which you are only considering because of the universal catastrophe and all that, he lost even the benefit of a potential resurrection of nostalgic puppet pal privileges when he started going after Shorty.

You had to live through those nightmares too.

Or to stop someone when they are too far gone.

This wasn’t the first time you’ve dealt with burning feathers.

Reaching claws dig into abused stuffing, you shove the doll into your sylladex. Out of sight. Out of mind.

Or.

You try to do so.

The simmering dissonance rises to a screeching cacophony in a moment. There’s a resistance to the action, as if floppy, boneless arms grabbed against the intradimensional pawket dimension and held.

With a sigh you drop the dude back to the ground. Cloth and stuffing clinging to sharp points.

timaeusTestified [TT]: Shit that stings.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Did you try to ‘dex him?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< whoops sorry

Squinting through the blue light from your phone, Lil Cal’s smug face grins up at you.

It’s a reprieve from the waves of projected misery, you’ll give him that. But.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< wait you felt that???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< from all the way over there???
timaeusTestified [TT]: I wasn’t kidding when I told you the plane ride over was hell.
timaeusTestified [TT]: He hates the sylladex.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< so when you put him away last night… you were dealing with that???
timaeusTestified [TT]: No.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Well.
timaeusTestified [TT]: It’s different. I’ve never had him straight up refuse before.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Sulk the entire time? Sure. Squeeze me endlessly like everyone was all hopped up on a superpowered sugar rush and clinging together like a giant ball of tangled ass noodles and I’m at the center of it. Sure.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I got real used to my chest feeling heavy as fuck every time I took a breath.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< alright cool noted dont try to put the bastard baby in timeout
timaeusTestified [TT]: Are you going to tell me what happened?

No.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dont you have packing to do???
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m done. We’re just waiting on the plane now. It’s bright as shit out here.

Bright? You glance at the clock in the corner of the screen, synced up to the local time thanks in part to the convenience of a working network. Oh yeah. It IS closer to noon. Damn you aren’t used to being a part of a real-life timezone, piggybacking off all of that signal beaming its way down from space and into Jade’s own personal cell tower.

Not that said signal should be able to reach down here, considering you think you’re currently beneath several meters of stone at the very least. If not ten times that.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< thats beclaws youre using those catastrophically lame hospital ones
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you have mine dont you???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< do your eyes a favor and spare them the agony
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< theyre ten times no a thousand times more effective than those dinky hospital ones
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’m not just going to yoink a dude’s shades just because it’s convenient.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< no youre going to do it beclaws said dude is pulling the moirail card and is telling you to
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< put on the shades
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< now
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and then get the munchkin to take a picture of it so i can have it to warm the little flicker of diamond in my heart while im trapped in this cold and cruel underground purrison with my number one best puppet pawl
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and by best i mean worst
timaeusTestified [TT]: Jade’s busy.

timaeusTestified [TT] sent 20070116_0120855.jpg

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< your selfie game sucks shit
timaeusTestified [TT]: It does not.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< does too
timaeusTestified [TT]: What, are you really going to judge me on my fucking selfies now?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< flock yeah i am and you would deserve it
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but i will be merciful and give it to my ta to actually grade
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< itll be funnier to s33 shorty tear apawrt your terrible technique
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< but you look much better rocking some purroper eyeware B33<
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< does it help?
timaeusTestified [TT]: Yeah. Yeah it does.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dj purrs contentedly curling around the mental picture and holding it close
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< a warmth in these dark times
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< what is mini doing anyway
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< cant s33 much furom your horrendous angle but it looks pretty shitty out there
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< where is that anyway
timaeusTestified [TT]: It’s a cove around the back. Jade said it used to house a giant ass boat until it sank in a storm a few years ago.
timaeusTestified [TT]: She’s showing Jan around. It’s a fucking disgrace how badly it’s gone to weeds.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< jan?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< did the bot receiveth a name in mine absence???
timaeusTestified [TT]: It’s short for January.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I lobbied for June because it sounds better but was outvoted since it is quite literally January.
timaeusTestified [TT]: Don’t think I didn’t notice that full-body dodge of my question.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< its fine if you notice it as long as i dont have to talk about it
timaeusTestified [TT]: Davepeta.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< like for realsies its not a big deal!!!
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< tavros tried to make off with your pal for dog knows why
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< shit i cant use that expurression anymore can i
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< he is a god
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and a dog
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dont worry i saved him furom a second life as a chew toy
timaeusTestified [TT]: Not that, you feathery asshole.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< what else is there???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the baby threw a tantrum
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< and im tired of being not so silently judged by my worst nightmare
timaeusTestified [TT]: Why didn’t you let the dog take him, then?

Why…

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< ive b33n asking myself the same question and havent found an answer
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< hes
You look down from the phone and to the weight on your lap that wasn’t there before. Distance closed. The fabric of the guy’s tee clings to your claws, solving the unnecessary mystery of how the puppet got there.

Really look at him for the first time. The clay head blocks your vision. The backwards hat got lost somewhere in the tussle, leaving you to stare down at a lumpy bald head. That sick, twisted feeling rises in your gut, as you reach out and.

Tug. Tug the threads of red and orange into view. Wrapping the shimmering metaphors around your fingers.

Could you cut them? Casually summon the spark between your fingers and just.

Go.

Snip.

You hover over that tantalizing possibility…

What would it do to that which was left behind?

The swirls of red blood threading through the bruise of blue, purple and green left behind.

So.

Flocking.

Familiar.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< your other half
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< like i said
timaeusTestified [TT]: You sure did say that.
timaeusTestified [TT]: How did you know?

The resulting snort echoes in the small room.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im your flocking moirail
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< which is making me his moirail by techniclawlity and dude im not sure ill ever be ready for that realization
timaeusTestified [TT]: I know. That’s why I didn’t…
timaeusTestified [TT]: I know how you feel about him.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< felt
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i dont know what i f33l right now ill have to get back to you on that
timaeusTestified [TT]: I told you things changed.
timaeusTestified [TT]: But really, it was more I realized what has been going on for a while.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I can’t leave him behind.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i know

You know. He knows. The goddamn puppet knows.

Stop being coy and dancing around it.

The evidence is staring you in the face. Curled delicately around your claws.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you go red sometimes
timaeusTestified [TT]: Come again?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< red
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< like you got this echo when you talk
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i noticed it because it makes you resonate a little diffurently
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< like adding a harmony when youre in the middle of a mixing sesh and everyfang just clicks
timaeusTestified [TT]: Oh great.
timaeusTestified [TT]: The thing that makes me click is making my little brother’s life a living hell.

At least he isn’t denying that.

It makes you feel a little better.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dude you asked
timaeusTestified [TT]: It’s not like it isn’t something I hadn’t noticed. The confirmation just stings.
timaeusTestified [TT]: It is quite impossible to deny the fact that the dragon has a piece of my soul stuck between its goddamn teeth.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you could have a piece of his!!!
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< tradesies
timaeusTestified [TT]: Does that make it much better?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< idunno im not the expurrt on making deals with eldritch jujus you might need to consult rose on that
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< or feferi
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< i miss feferi
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dont tell rose but feferi was their favorite
timaeusTestified [TT]: I don’t know who the fuck you are talking about.

The time between messages elongates

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< dude!!! how could you furget feferi???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< hello??? fefetasprrrite???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< my darling other half???
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< quite litterally she woulda b33n me in another timefeline
timaeusTestified [TT]: You realize I have no memory of that timeline, right?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< thats not impurrtant
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< her purrfection transcends time and space and must be known by all n sundry that was a future empuress right there no question
timaeusTestified [TT]: Uh huh.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I have to say if she’s anything like your other empress I think I’ll pass.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< pshaw you wish fef had b33n the empurress none of that shit would have ever happawned

You bicker back and forth, the clicking of your claws against the keys the only sound in this silent tomb. The derailment only works to leven the discussion so much, as it ends up coming right back around to the puppet laying on your lap by the time it’s time to say goodbye.

dataJammer [DJ]: B33< im just going to address the big ol pink trunkbeast in the room
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< the elephant as it were
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< weve b33n dancing around it trying not to spook the thing to save on all the fancy teacups scattered around the place
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< are you gonna be okay?
timaeusTestified [TT]: I can think of several that would fit this bill. You’ll need to clarify which elephant you’re referring to so I can prep the cards to take care of the replacement costs of that fine goddamn china once it goes off.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< rip in pepperoni my metafurical fancy teacups
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< they arent made to stand up to all this abuse
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yknow the paradox of all trunkbeasts
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< mr cal himself
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you said you cant leave him but you are
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’ve left him behind before.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< oh yeah? name one time
timaeusTestified [TT]: Washington.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< that doesnt count
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< you didnt know
timaeusTestified [TT]: I still felt like shit so I’m making the executive decision that it does. Major ass brain fog. Inability sleeping. It fits the bill.
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< youre not makin me f33l any better about this you know
timaeusTestified [TT]: We’re both just going to have to agree to be uncomfortable then.
timaeusTestified [TT]: There’s fuck all we can do.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I can hear the cessna.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I need to go talk the pilot into letting me kidnap a child.
timaeusTestified [TT]: I’ll talk to you later?
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< yeah
dataJammer [DJ]: B33< later

You stare down at glass blue eyes. And then close your own.

Later.

Notes:

Remember folks, kind words go a long way :) This chapter is word for word fueled by kind words left in comments on this fic and the support of my friends who still haven't given up on me. I love you all <3

I will keep plugging away at this as long as I can!

Notes:

Congrats on reaching the (current) end! Do you want more to read? Check out [Refraction] where I explore some ideas that never made it into Defrag in an AU of my own AU :)

Related Artwork:

By me:
Davepeta > Ascend

Fanart:
By Spectral-Coyote - Home Sw33t Home
By Alex Harrier x2 Combo
-Dave > Prepare Yourself
-Dirk > Fail to Not Adopt Another Kid
By post-cal
-Davepeta Commission
By coolbrewed
By stitcheshatesstairs
By the-ironic-monster

Series this work belongs to:

Works inspired by this one: