Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Staring up at the slowly breaking reality around her, Rose finds herself contemplating nothing and no one. Even with the now dull roar of eternal grimdark possession still enveloping her mind and form, there is somehow a sense of peace to finally seeing the End of her perceived reality.

It’s been too long to recall when she died, stabbed through the sternum and given no chance to avenge John’s death. She does not wonder if that particular John somehow survived or did indeed die. There are too many Johns to count in the dreambubbles; all of them potentially hers, likely none of them being so.

The cracks that lace the ground and sky are bright, searing white. The cloud of heavy grey-black power that cloaks her stands starker and starker against it, with each emergence of new shatters. Soon, she suspects it will be quite aesthetically appealing to look at. Herself against the blinding white world.

Shame she’s beyond indulging in that. Time has drug on too long and she stares each crack of oblivion down with a patience only endless waiting can bring.

Soon. She’s tired of wandering aimlessly and without interest. The dreambubbles are full to the brim with millions of dead players, and she wants to speak with none. Not that they would understand. Broodfester tongues tend to hinder one’s small talk.

Rose is thirteen and an eternity’s age, and she feels she’s existed long enough as a ghost of a person, trapped in a myriad of her own poor choices and failures. The end of the dreambubble’s existence are all she has left to look forwards to.

Perhaps there will be something else beyond the End, but she suspects (hopes) there is not.

A crack lances through the near horizon, leaving lightning bright void all through the ground. The rolling hills of green and red post and lintel structures are alight with the promise of Ending, and Rose waits silently where she stands; standing atop a hillside barren of Stonehenge-esque burials and calmly watching the Lord of Time’s destruction creep towards her.

Perhaps if she lets one open beneath her feet, she will be swiftly burned up and disintegrated. She can only hope so.

“Shit, this one taken?”

Rose blinks her blank eyes. She hasn’t heard another ghost’s voice in days. Let alone one so familiarly dear to her.

She turns.

A Dave dressed in a neon green suit stands on the edge of the hill’s top, sunglasses in place and a pinch to his lips.

Rose doubts he’s one of the doomed Daves of her timeline. There are too many dead Daves in existence to be so lucky.

“͇̙̙̗̱͑̐͝N̺͔̼̰ͯ̕o̟̰͗̎̏͐͗̇̐.̸̶̧͇̯̣̗̼̱̟͛̇͛͛̊"̰̫̒̎͐ She answers.

“Wow. Did not understand that,” Dave replies flatly. “Got a translation of Possessive Tentacle Godspeak  to good old American English?”

"̸̴̛̳̙̰̠͍̯̉̿ͨ̀N͈͈͚̖̼̥̱̟̥̽̊̔͋̈́̐ͧo̵̹͉̣̟͐̓͑̚͢.͚̑̃̿̈͘"̷̴̩̩̦͎͊̓͊́ͨ̊̕  She repeats.

“I’ll take that as a no.”

Rose rolls her nonexistent pupils. She can practically feel her ecto-brother do the same.

After a pause, he approaches without word. Footfalls absolutely silent, like he doesn’t dare draw attention to himself, despite how mouthy and occasionally antagonistic he was online. Rose has found that nearly every Dave is like so. She has sometimes wondered why that is.

There is no room left for wonderment; not as the End creeps along the crest of the valley their hill sits opposite of. Soon.

Dave settles into a casual slouch on her right; brilliantly colored suit is strong contrast against the tendrils of grimdark that writhe and slide from Rose’s form and feet. He seems to show no aggravation or disgust that some of those tendrils reach across the small space between them; loosely encircling his shoes and brushing ever so slightly against the hem of his pants.

Another lightning strike of cracks split the valley, more than halfway to their quaint empty grave. It won’t be empty much longer.

“…you think we’ll feel it at all?” Dave asks, light from the cracks reflecting off his shades. “Or is this whole thing gonna be like, instantaneous nerve destroying disintegration?”

Rose does not contemplate that. She doesn’t want to. She no longer wants to contemplate anything at all; she’s spent a life and eternity already doing so, and it has never brought her conclusion to anything in death.

How strange that this will finally be that. It feels an awful like a melodramatic cliffhanger that an author will never return to complete.

Rose is, to her distant surprise, grateful she will not face oblivion alone.

She reaches for Dave’s hand, and he takes her grey complexioned hand against his pallidly dead one. Fingers lacing as they stand side by side in the face of reality’s cruel but inevitable murder.

A crack splinters through the base of their hill, and Rose does not close her eyes as the light blinds them both.

Chapter Text

Rose’s needles are cold and weightless in her hands, hardly more than slivers of metal. The world is bright and airless, her steps lighter than they’ve ever been as her heels tap against the stone steps. She ascends from the parking lot she’s abandoned her car in, headed for the magnificent viewpoints available for the falls.

She won’t be needing it again, not according to the premonitions that have plagued her for years.

This is a last stand, against an impossible enemy. Rose plans to take this final opponent down with her, like she did to the countless other cronies the Condesce sent her way the last week. A wave of final suppression to any who stand against her in the last hours of a formerly free world.

The world is ending. They’ve lost. Rose is going to burn down everything she can as they fall. For the sake of the two that will take their place, so far into the future.

Two kids. Their kids. Hers and Dave’s.

A son and daughter, who she’ll never meet.

Rose knows they’ll come, long after this is over, and she can only hope against hope something will be left for them to inherit.

She wonders if they’ll look like Dave. Like her. She wonders if they’ll be anything like them.

Rose hopes not. Failure is what’s come of their efforts, however much they dedicated their lives to the cause of resisting the troll witch. She hopes they’ll be better than either of them.

Fieri waits for her on top of the steps, the looming stocky shadow he casts blackening the stairway. He’s laughing, smiling, like all the other smugly successful servants of the empress have been.

Rose hasn’t had nearly enough vodka tonight to stomach the sight.

She doesn’t give him the courtesy of a greeting before she launches herself forwards, streaking upwards at him and trailing the white of her dress hem.

The strife is brutally paced, Rose’s feet skimming the concrete and barely touching down, the bastard she fights opting for terrifyingly heavy blows that shatter the ground just as she leaves it. He’s stronger than any she’s faced, and the ghost of power she possesses makes it ring true and clear this will be her final strife.

Her Bluetooth rings in her ear, because of course it does. 

“This is a bad time,” she answers.

“Shit yeah it is, but what can you do,” Dave replies, breathless. “Last goodbyes don’t usually happen when its convenient." 

He’s states away from her, and yet still somehow manages to find a way to be a buzz in her ear. Even now, even as they take up arms, separated in the last days only because of badly timed business trips. It’s terribly welcome.

"I didn’t take you for a sentimental romantic, Strider,” Rose says cooly, avoiding a snatching grip that would tear off her arm. 

“Read too many of your novels, Lalonde. It’s your fault I’m infected." 

"And yet my last gift from you was a child’s birthday card sharpied over to say ‘congratulations on the murder’.”

“Hey, that senator was a tough bitch. You deserved it.”

Rose nearly slips up and trips on the crater to her left. She pivots and narrowly avoids her neck being grabbed, snapped like a twig. She stabs two bright red holes through Fieri’s hand for it.

“Admittedly, the crudely drawn portrait of me slitting her throat was quite compelling,” Rose says, flicking the blood off her weapons.

“I spent a whole five minutes on it, it better have been,” Dave says. Something like tinny rancorous laughter comes over the line, along with metal against something solid. Then, “Hey, back on topic.”

“Yes?” Rose sprints across the platform, doubling back and delivering a whip of purple yarn that shreds Fieri’s side.

“I’m about to die, so just wanted you to know I love you and shit.”

Rose feels the disruption of air as Fieri’s punch misses her face.

“I love you and shit, too,” Rose replies, just like every other time Dave has said that to her.

“Cool.”

They’ve spent the better part of their lives fighting the overwhelming infiltration of their world together. It wasn’t nearly enough time spent with one another. And yet, no other words are required in this moment. They know what they mean to each other.

Dave, of course, has a few more anyway.

“Kinda wish we could’ve met them,” Dave says absently, sounding harder and harder pressed to be casual about it.

Rose feels her ankle break as its kicked. She swallows the scream and keeps going, numb with adrenaline.

“We only would have screwed them up,” she says, ignoring the inelegant rasp of her voice.

“Maybe. Still would’ve wanted to.”

Rose thinks they only would have passed on all their worst qualities, had they met. And yet.

“I suppose I feel the same,” she says, and the soft chuckle Dave lets out is one she commits to memory with all the others he’s given to her.

She wraps Fieri’s neck in strangling garrote yarn, stabs him through the eyes, and kicks him over the edge of the platform. Her weapons pull her with his flailing body, and she lets them.

The ride down is a roar of sound, but she hears the barely audible slice of vertebra and spine in her ear anyway.

Chapter Text

It’s easy enough to locate her. The roiling storm of black anger and furthest ring bullshittery is a giant obvious beacon, leading Dave directly to the person he’s been searching for.

He’s got John and Jade pinging in his pesterchum inbox, but he knows another Dave will probably take care of those conversations. He’s got a different job to handle right now.

The faint red glow of his Got Tier jammies stands out in the oppressive grey gloom of Skaia. It’s been getting darker and darker all around him the closer he ventures to the eye of the storm. It doesn’t really bother him; Derse has a similar kind of darkness, and he’s been awake there more than long enough to grow accustomed.

There’s a castle coming up on the horizon, the base source of all the grimdark clouding the atmosphere of Skaia. Dave stares at it for a moment, then decaptchalogues an unbroken sword. Better safe than sorry regarding what he’s about to walk into.

He flies up to the castle, which is wreathed in smog and thorns; things that resemble tentacles wrapped around stone and staining everything darker and darker. It’s pretty grim looking, hence the grimdark name.

He waves a hand in front of his face, trying to clear the air enough to see where he’s supposed to land. Finally he catches sight of where that is, as well as the true cause of all the gloom and doom cloaking the place.

Dave lands nonchalantly on the terrace, sneakers crunching stone debris underfoot. He avoids touching down on the multiple splashes of blood everywhere, especially the giant puddle coming from the dead dogman chess-guy to the side. Who is eviscerated to put it lightly, and looks very much like he’s met a meat grinder. Made of lightning. And been put through at least three times.

Dave can’t say he’s sorry for the thing. Considering the two corpses he created on the far side of the terrace; both figures lain out in a pool of their own blood.

The person he’s come for stands guard over them, crackling with ebony power and enough fury to make the air boil.

“Sup, Rose,” Dave says casually, placing his sword tip on the stone.

Rose snarls something archaic and inhuman at him, and the ground under her feet laces with cracks. Black tendrils of furthest ring energy whip around her body, slashing at the air and creating the scent of something salty and almost certainly poisonous. She’s got white fire burning in her eyes, steaming against the cold of the darkness that’s swelling from her.

Dave glances down at her mother, his mother as well, and at John’s dad.

The blood soaking them is long since dried. If time worked properly in this game- a rhythm that never quite steadies, doesn’t quite flow- they would have started decaying. There’s a distant horror attached to that sight, but after everything he’s seen in this godforsaken game, it can’t quite touch him anymore.

Dave sighs.

“You’re not going to want to hear this from anyone, let alone me, but Rose. Dude. We gotta move on.”

Rose screams at him, feral and echoing, like she’s yelling from deep inside a cave, and it reverberates through the air. Dave feels it in his bones, shuddering all the way through.

He lifts his sword, and steps forwards.

Rose backs up, heels nearly touching the dried pool of blood. She bares her teeth and points her needles at him, all threat and defense. Protective of what remains of her mother.

Dave can’t make eye contact with her- not with his shades, her complete lack of pupils- but he feels like they lock eyes regardless. He keeps walking forwards, stepping around the thick spider webs of cracks through the stone, left by the battle that raged here and the literal rage that still permeates it. Rose’s hollow howl doesn’t deter his path.

He stops right in front of her, setting the tip of his sword on the ground again. The glow of his God Tier is all that prevents him from being swallowed in the wealth of grimdark all around them.

Rose opens her mouth, letting out a scream that’s high like breaking glass and yet deep like a wall of water rushing towards you. Her needles crackle with black lightning, aimed to blast Dave into ashes.

Dave holds himself strong in the face of the threat. Rose doesn’t budge from her place in front of the corpses, and doesn’t lower her guard.

Dave thinks of how long it’s been, since he spoke with her. The crisp and clipped sarcasm of her purple text filling up their chatlog, interrupted now and again with a brief moment of silliness. Familiar and welcome, any time of day or night; especially when Rose was seeking companionship without admitting it, stuck in that big house of hers with a mother that rarely interacted plainly with Rose, and Dave was hiding from thoughts about whatever beat down Bro had thrown at him that day.

His Bro died not long before Jack came for Rose’s mom and John’s dad. Dave still hasn’t figured out what to think of that. How to feel about it.

He does know this, though.

He wants Rose back. Needs her back, from this well of despair she’s gone and sunk herself into. Their session literally can’t finish without her, can’t continue on without her.

Dave can’t continue on without her.

“Rose,” he says.

A wave of rage so cold it burns slaps him across the face, Rose’s voice filled with a thousand others, all discordant and broken sounding.

Dave captchalogues his sword.

He holds out a hand.

“Come on. Everyone’s waiting on you, Lalonde. We’ve been flying blind without our Seer. We need you back.”

Rose’s shoulder shake, power flaring so fast everything around them turns pitch black in the outburst. Dave can barely see her outline through it, focusing on the two white spots of her burning eyes.

He feels how cold, how deep, how all-encompassing her pain and anger is. He feels how much it hurts.

Dave takes a breath that stings his throat.

“Rose, please. I need you back.”

For a moment, the blackout continues. Then it slows it’s roil of energy, and begins to lighten. Bit by bit, the blackness of grimdark lessens, and the light of Skaia breaks through the storm of eldritch power.

Fingers brush against Dave’s, and Rose’s slim digits grasp his hand.

The cursed blessing of the furthest ring’s dwellers fades slowly from her skin, grey receding upwards from where Rose clutches his hand. The power blustering her pale hair and blinding her eyes drifts away, like smoke dissipating into the wind.

Rose’s darkly ringed eyes find his, finally, and are clear and pure violet once more.

As the first tear slips from them, Dave and Rose close the last space between them.

As the great destructive storm blighting Skaia’s atmosphere disappears, they hold onto one another. Seer and Knight reunited.

Whatever comes next, comes later. For now they just hold each other close, soothing the ache of loss.