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The sound of time travel was always a little grating. Dave couldn't help but flinch right at the beginning and right at the end. The sound of years creaking in reverse with rusted gears, the heat of his movement through a doomed timeline.
He knew that his alpha self would never be able to get away with this, but honestly, what consequences did he fucking care about?
His first hint would have been Terezi ceasing contact if he hadn’t been a complete dumbass all the damn time. The second clue was the uneasy feeling in his gut as he made decision after decision that would affect the timeline. The third was himself.
He had seen his body countless times, dead Daves were no anomaly, but this time when he saw blank red eyes under cracked shades he knew he would become that particular corpse. He knew it as surely as he knew he had fucked up somewhere along the way and doomed the timeline to oblivion.
So he took a deep breath, and he jumped. Dave jumped further back than he had ever jumped before, and knew instantly this was the reason he would die. A bitter part of him wasn't surprised.
All time players who travel back from a doomed timeline are slated for death, no big deal, not even saying that Ironically. For real. Its nothing...
He time travelled to before the game began, and he saw himself. A little twelve year old Dave was asleep at his desk, cheek smashed on the keyboard with a pesterchum conversation abandoned on the screen. His mind was probably on Derse now, unaware of his surroundings and lost in his own mind.
Dave looked over his younger self, swathed in the light from his computer screen and shades lopsidedly digging into his face. There would be marks in the morning. He knew this because he remembered that conversation on the screen with John, and he remembered waking up the next morning. He would probably never forget that conversation.
This had been the night he realized he was crushing on an online friend he had never met. Well, one of them at LEAST. Somehow he hadn't felt nearly as heavy about flirting with Jade here and there, but this one was a boy crush, so it was different. He felt ashamed somehow.
He remembered feeling guilty, and drowning in a sense of urgency. He had to keep it under wraps. Shove that realization into the fucking closet with empty bottles of apple juice and slam it shut. No, even that wasn't safe, Bro could find it there. Somewhere else, somewhere even David Strider himself wouldn't think to search.
Dave looked away from him past self, feeling his heart shudder, but keeping his face blank as ever. There was some sort of tug in his chest that lead him around his old bedroom. Wires strung over the carpet, open window with crows roosting on the sill and staring him down as if they knew he wasn’t supposed to be here.
Taller now, he had to duck to avoid disturbing the photographs hanging on a clothesline he had stolen too long ago to remember where he had stolen it from. He shuffled past his collection of dead shit in amber to his closet stuffed with granola bar wrappers and dried ramen noodles. His stash was getting low, little him was gonna have to fix that just in case he couldn't leave his room for awhile. Just in case he was too nervous or hadn't finished covering his cuts in band-aids yet.
He ended up leaning against his desk and looking sideways at his younger face. "Hey you dumb fuck." He muttered, reaching to slowly run fingers through his past-self's colorless hair. "I'd say you'll be alright...but I don't know if you will. Hopefully you won't grow up to become me, because I'm not supposed to be here...I don't know man, maybe you're the alpha us...but I kinda feel like you're not, because if you were then I wouldn't be considering throwing this stable time loop to shit just to leave you a damn note." He huffed, removing the glasses from the sleeping boy's face and setting them aside.
Fuck...he had done it without thinking but now this time loop was definitely unstable. There was no way he could put them back without waking his younger self, and he remembered waking the next morning with his glasses digging into his nose.
He also remembered going to the bathroom the next morning to examine that black eye in the mirror and checking to see if that tooth really was loose or if that was just his imagination.
It had been loose, he answers his thoughts while he tongues at the empty and warm spot towards the back of his own gums.
It kind of aches, the red and the purples, seeing it again but now from the outside.
How had he been so stupid? How could he not have realized what all of this really was?
He found himself wandering out of the room when the thoughts started burning. Out of the apartment, to the roof, and sure enough there was Dirk, sitting cross legged with that damn puppet in his lap.
Stable time loops be damned, (not that this one wasn’t already).
"Bro," he called, still making up his mind on whether or not to regret it.
Dirk doesn't move, not surprised or concerned. He had to of known Dave was coming.
"You fucked up," was the first thing he said.
"What?"
"You wouldn't be back here if you didn't, you're smarter than that at least. So yes, you fucked up." The man's sword drove into the roof and he used it to pull himself into a standing position. He still didn't look at Dave.
"Shut up," Dave's brow wrinkled. "You don't know anything-"
"I know everything, kid." He turned finally, eyes hidden behind his shades even at night. For a moment Dave thought of his younger self downstairs, and what would happen to him, but his attention was quickly drawn back to his brother due to a glint of metal in the moonlight.
He flinched, feeling the prickle of hairs standing up on his body, the feeling that told him that THING in Bro's hand was staring into his fucking soul.
"I spent all those years preparing you and you still managed to doom us all. Congratulations kid."
"Stop-"
"What? Why else would you come back here? What did you think I would say to you?"
Dave wasn't sure what he had wanted, or even what he had planned to say, but now it felt like it didn't matter. "It doesn't matter." he said his thought aloud because it was the best comeback he could think of.
"For once you're right," The man said, setting Cal gently on the edge of the air conditioner. "It doesn't." He crouched into a ready position and flourished his katana. "If you're going to come all the way back here, you really should be strong enough to beat me by now." His tone didn’t seem to carry much faith in that idea.
Dave listened to the creaking of gears pushing forward a useless existence. A doomed cast of characters on a hollow stage, and he knew it then: this was the reason he would die.
He took a deep breath, summoned his sword and ran at his brother with the blade raised over his head.
STRIFE!