Chapter Text
“Dave Strider, you tell me everything. And you tell me now.”
Dave blinks at the clearly upset Jade Harley standing on his door step. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and checks the time. 4:13 am. Of fucking course, he thinks.
“Come in.” he says, yawning. She wanders through the door, glancing around his small Hollywood bungalow. Dave vanished into the kitchen and a few seconds later, the buzz and trickle of a coffee maker could be heard. He came back out from the kitchen, carrying a package of Little Debbie snacks and tossed them onto the table.
“Coffee will be done in a minute. And once I have my coffee, we’ll talk.” She nodded at him, standing awkwardly in the corner, one arm crossed over her torso, gripping her opposite elbow, her eyes red and swollen from crying. He frowns slightly, noting her bruised knuckles, and vanishes again, reappearing a moment later with a bag of frozen peas wrapped in a green dishtowel. He hands it to her without a word and she looks at him gratefully, pressing the cold vegetable bag onto her sore hand, wincing at the pressure. After another few minutes of awkward silence, Dave leaves and returns with two cups of coffee, a carton of half and half, and a jar of sugar, setting everything down on the end table in his living room.
“Well, take a seat. Trust me when I say you won’t want to be standing when you hear what I have to recount.” She nods, making up a cup of coffee, with too much cream and too much sugar, she needs something to get the bitter taste of forgetfulness out of the back of her throat. Settling into the arm chair, she look over at him, all lanky limbs and unbrushed hair and barely there, blonde five o’clock shadow.
“So we played a game together.”
“If you want to call it that. We started playing on John’s birthday. Well. Now, after the reset the game seems to have done to your brain, it’s your birthday too. Technically it’s all of our birthdays. We just got sent to earth later, you, me and my… sort of sister Rose. The game was called SBurb.” He stops for a second, glancing up at her. “Anything ringing any bells yet?” she shook her head.
“Well we all played SBurb. Or maybe it played us. I’m not sure yet. Essentially we destroyed the world, and then we had to fix it. It took us five years. Three of which we spent split in two. You and John, your sort of brother, zooming through space on a giant golden battleship” her eyes changed for a second, and he stopped. “Remembering something?”
“The-the boat. I dream about that boat. I started having weird dreams not too long after you started sending the flowers and the flower paintings. I dream about the boat, and a boy in blue… John?” Dave nods “And a blonde girl.. Rose?” he nods again. “And I… I dream about you but it’s never um… happy.” She shifts awkwardly, and Dave winces.
“That would be the one thing you remember. God fuck that game. “ he pauses “Maybe this isn’t right. Maybe I’m the one who fucked up. You were living your life, happily, not suffering all the bullshit the other three of us are, you got to be normal. And I ruined that for you. Shit, I’m a fucking asshole.” He rested his hands on his knees, running his hands into his hair in frustration.
“I don’t think so. I mean… I don’t know you, not anymore, but from the looks of it… once upon a time we were really close and looking at what you’ve done? Keeping your distance for years when you knew how to find me, when I’m somebody you care about and want to see again, settling for sending me beautiful paintings of my favorite thing, flowers, and just sort of sat back and watched my life move on while you remembered our friendship and I didn’t.”
Dave smiles at her slightly. She may not remember everything but she’s still Jade, just as she always was. Even when she doesn’t know him she can’t fault him for anything. She never could. So her pours himself another cup of coffee and sits back, telling her the whole sordid tale of SBurb. Every detail.
He tells her about all the times everyone died, about god tier, about the asteroid, he tells her things he never got to tell her before, like about Terezi hanging all over him on the asteroid and about the Mayor, and about the whole ordeal with Karkat and the dick Ouija. And every once in awhile he’d see those green eyes flash with recognition, and know that something had come back to her. She listened with interest, and neither of them noticed the sun come up a little after six am, nor did the notice the hours passing after that. Their reverie was broken only by a buzz at Dave’s door. He looked startled, as if he’d been awoken suddenly from a nap. A lightbulb goes off.
“Oh. Rose and John. I forgot they were coming over… You can leave if you want. But I’d like it if you stayed, and I think they would too.” Jade nods, yawning and reaching for the coffee, pouring more, still with too much cream and too much sugar. He smiles at her, and pulls on a t-shirt from the clean clothes hamper before opening the door.
“Hey guys. Come on in, but be warned, I’ve got some unexpected company.”
“What do you m-“ Rose started to speak but stopped when she saw Jade sitting in the arm chair, clutching one of Dave’s ‘ironic’ Aperture Science coffee mugs. “Dave Strider what the fuck did you do?” she whisper shouts at him.
“Um… I came here actually?” Jade offers from her seat. “He came to see me yesterday, I mean, but he didn’t tell me anything and he left when I asked him too, but I uh, I remembered some stuff while I was sleeping and sort of bolted over here in crazed panic and made him tell me everything.”
“Well, Strider, I can’t say I approve but… I guess I’m glad our Jade is back.” She smiles down at her softly. John nods in the background, seemingly struck quiet. Rose sits down next to Dave on the sofa, and questions Jade briefly for a few minutes, her therapist’s interests piqued, but soon their talking dissolves into idle chatter of four friends catching up on their lives and munching, slowly but surely, through all of Dave’s junk food.
The next couple of months are not easy for Jade. The nightmares still happen, so bad that at one point she sleeps on Dave’s sofa for a week. Whenever she wakes up, terrified and shaking, even if she hasn’t made a sound, he’s always right there, leaning against the sofa, waiting for her eyes to open. She’s not sure how he does it, but she’s grateful.
Bit by bit, she remembers more and more of her past life, all the bits that got replaced, the ones that were erased completely. It’s not always easy or fun, remembering finding your grandfather dead, or that your childhood pet became a murderous hellbeast. But her friends are there, and one of them is always willing to fill her in on something, or just hold her until the shaking stops.
October rolls around, and even though she sort of remembers now, the flowers come anyway, the biggest bouquet yet, and Dave is holding them, waiting for her to answer the door, and then he takes the four of them out to a nice dinner, and she rides shot gun in his red convertible, giggling as the wind whips her crazy hair around.
And she thinks that maybe she could get used to this. Yes, she has a lot more painful memories now than she did before, and she doesn’t know if her memories will ever be perfect, but she’s gained three best friends back. The night mares still come some nights, but Dave is always willing to talk her through it on the phone, or drive up there and lay down next to her until she calms enough to sleep again.
Eventually she moves out of her apartment and stays with Dave while she looks for a place to live nearer to him and John and Rose. By the time a year has rolled by, she more or less remembers everything, but something is nagging at her, so one day at lunch with Rose, she brings it up.
“Rose?”
“Yes?”
“Were Dave and I… together? At any point during the game?” Rose sighs, biting her lip and contemplating how best to answer a somewhat delicate question.
“No. Not together. Does Dave have feelings for you? Yes. He wants to be your knight in shining armor, but A. He doesn’t believe himself knightly enough and B. He doesn’t see you as a damsel in distress type. He will not, however, do anything untoward to you without your consent. He respects you, that I’ve never doubted a day in my life.”
“Okay. I wanted to check, because I wasn’t sure if my unresolved emotions were really just that, or if I had forgotten we were together.” Rose smirks slightly, nodding.
“I always knew you had feelings for that idiot.” Her smirk turns to a warm smile. “You suit each other well. I should get going, I have an appointment in less than an hour.” The girls rose to their feet, hugging briefly, and headed their separate ways. Jade flopped down onto the sofa back at Dave’s place and thought, staring up at his ceiling, with the mural of the night sky painted on it.
She was in love with him. She didn’t doubt that. Some of it remembered, some of it new, but regardless, it didn’t matter She wasn’t sure how to tell him or if she should or when or anything. People were not Jade Harley’s strong suit, that was science. People made less sense than science. About an hour later, the door swung open and Dave walked through, smiling at her and moving her feet to sit down in the sofa.
“Dave?” she pipes up suddenly.
“Hm?” he looks over at her, raising an eyebrow beneath his shades.
“I need to talk to you… but I want you to take your shades off first.” He looks at her, skeptical, but sees the serious set of her jaw and the worried squint in her green eyes and he nods, pushing them up and into his hair, skewing his artfully disheveled coif.
“What’s up, Miss Harley?”
“I didn’t forget, you know.” She whispers, reaching a hand out to rest on his face. “That’s why it was always your eyes I was dreaming about. Some part of me remembered it.”
“Remembered what, my eyes?”
“No. Some part of me remembered that I loved you.” She says it quietly, the confession without grandeur, and then she leans in to him, kissing him softly and slowly but soundly, and he leans into her, stroking her hair with one hand. “Just because I’m not some damsel in distress, doesn’t mean I don’t need a knight. Especially when said knight is my best friend.”
Dave says nothing and just smiles, because even a Strider knows that not all times are times for sarcasm and extended metaphors. Instead he laces his fingers into hers and wraps his other arm around her, leaning in to kiss her again.
Jade Harley had been lost for five years, wandering aimlessly through life because she didn’t see that she’d forgotten the people she used to live for.
It has taken her five years to get there, but when Dave wraps his arms around her, she is finally home again.
They plant a garden in the yard of his bungalow, and get a swing set and a grill, and she helps him with his murals sometimes. They even paint the door, black, with swirls of green galaxies and glowing white and green stars, weaving in and out of red gears. They both end up covered in paint and giggling, collapsed in the grass in a tangle of limbs. And in the garden they grow lilac, and red roses, and specially bred green orchids, and foxgloves, and even forget-me-nots.
There are now three days a year Dave gives her gifts. On her birthday she gets a new painting, on the anniversary of the game she gets a bouquet, and addition to whatever book or trinket he’s bought her, on their anniversary he gives her a packet of seeds to the latest breed of flower.
They fight on occasion, like any couple does, when Jade blames herself too much or Dave won’t express himself. But at the end of the day, they love each other.
And neither will ever forget that that is enough.