Chapter Text
Your name is Dave Strider, and you’re farther in the closet than bros shitty swords. You’re so far in you’re finding Christmas presents.
No really this is a fucking big closet.
But at the moment you’re in a kitchen, which just so happens to be in an apartment you live in with your bro. And before anyone gets some mistaken idea about why you’re in a kitchen, no, it’s not because you’re hungry. Even if you were you wouldn’t go to this kitchen, you’d phone the pizza guy. This kitchen has a surprising lack of food of any kind; it in fact contains nothing but weapons and puppets.
At least with all of these smuppets you don’t get lonely. But a Strider doesn’t get lonely, not many make it to the top and you get used to solitude. Striders also don’t get sentimental, so you’re just going to stop thinking about it. Your bro’s probably hiding somewhere nearby, so you play it cool, like you’re just chilling. Which in a way, you are, but last time you were messing with your sylladex and you accidentally sent a sword flying through a window (it was an accident, everybody makes them, Jesus Christ, calm down, people) you swear you could hear your bro laughing. But you can’t be sure. You could put up a decent argument for pretty much everything a Strider is and isn’t, but you’ve really got nothing against “are all Striders paranoid?” Because to be completely honest you are paranoid. With your bro always showing up in the strangest places you’re always kind of tense, but you never show it through your poker face. You get the feeling your bro’s lonely sometimes, like he had more people in his life at one time and now all he has is you. You can’t help feeling a little hurt that you’re such a disappointment to him.
You run your hand through your hair, messing it up ever so slightly, and leave the kitchen. You really don’t have anything to do with yourself. None of your friends are online to screw with, you don’t have school. Never have, never will. And there’s nobody to talk to in reality except your bro. You could always go up to your room and mess around with your turntables in an affectionate yet professional manner but that seemed to require too much effort. You kind of just wanted to go die in a corner.
You make your way up the staircase to the roof. This is one of the only places you’ve ever seen your bro show any emotion. He’s always up here, looking at the sky. Once he took his shades off, and you were surprised by how sad he looked. How incredibly vulnerable he was without his shades to protect his emotions from the world. And his eyes were orange, which you found weird. You think about your relationship with bro. Shit, you don’t even know his actual name. You’re pretty sure the longest conversation you’ve ever had with him was when you asked him where the apple juice was and he responded “In your closet along with your sexuality.” Jesus this is probably the most times you’ve thought of closets for the past few years (and the last time needs no explanation). Closets aside you and your bro aren’t that close. You don’t know where you stand on that, whether you liked him staying out of your way or if you wanted him to be there for you. But you stop thinking about it because it makes you hurt on the inside. Hurt like… sadness. Except you’re not supposed to feel sad. It just doesn’t work that way. Life’s too short to care.
You’re so tired. You don’t even know how you got this tired by doing nothing for the majority of your life, but you can barely swagger without collapsing. You make your way to your room and sit down on the chair in front of your computer. It’s one of those swivel chairs, you love spinning around on them, pretending like you’re not having fun. The artificial light hurts your eyes even through your shades. You would go over and turn the lights off but that would require you to get up and there was no way in hell you were doing that.
You hear the whispering of laughter from somewhere in the hallway. Well that’s sort of a relief. If Lil’ Cal is out there laughing then at least it means bro isn’t in here. You can let your guard down for a minute, and you lean back in your chair thinking that you’ll only rest your eyes for a second…
When you open your eyes you aren’t in your room. It takes a minute for you to figure out what’s happening. You don’t feel as if you’re in any danger, in fact the clothes you’re wearing are really comfortable. And there’s a door and a window. Somehow you know you could just fly out that window or walk out that door anytime you felt like it. That’s something about dreams, how you know things without ever having to figure them out. You’re on Derse.
You lean out the window and look at the darkened streets below. Everything’s so… purple. It’s weird. You’ve never seen so much of one color in one place before. The room you woke up in seems made for you. There’s a purple bed, a few smuppets scattered around and lots of room to fuck around in. There’s a purple table beside your bed piled with random stuff. There’s a copy of Ranma ½ (you’ve actually never read that series…) some more smuppets, a dream type Lil’ Cal and a copy of Golden & Grey, a book you doubt the majority of the world has read. But you actually enjoyed that book, back when you actually read stuff.
You swing your legs out the window and sit on the edge for a while. You’ve had this feeling before. You don’t want to jump, even though you know you won’t fall. You’re not afraid of hitting the ground, but you still can’t just throw yourself out the window. There’s no wind, and nothing to knock you off the window, so you might as well have just sat there forever. But you hear people in the streets below, laughing, crying, shouting to each other, and you really don’t want someone to notice you were up there, sulking. So you gently edged off the window ledge. You only fell a few inches before you started floating. You couldn’t bring yourself to go down to the streets below, and you couldn’t go back into the tower. It’s not that it wasn’t possible, it just didn’t seem right to you. Something was pushing you to just keep moving forwards. You almost laughed at that. It sounded so motivational.
The building and towers passed beneath your feet, and you began to think about what would happen if your dream self stopped flying. It would be a long fall, unless you landed on a roof. You wondered what you would think, before you hit the ground. Who would you wish was there with you? Who would you want to apologize to and who would you want to have apologized to you? You found that ever since the game was brought up you thought of the worst case scenario and you always thought of what you would say to you friends.
Jade, you are the most optimistic person I’ve ever met or talked to. I wish I could have known you longer, or just known more about you in general. You could imagine yourself smiling now. And have I ever told you I really like the color green?
You’d been floating for a while, and the landscape changed. The towers were taller and the points of a few almost scraped your feet.
Rose, I know I’ve done a lot of stupid things and I’ve probably offended you countless times, but I never really meant it. I know this is a cliché time for apologies, but I want to say I’m sorry for being such a douche. You’ve always kind of felt like a sister to me, and I’ve always kind of felt obligated to keep up this sibling rivalry. But after a while it… kind of turned into something else. And I just want to say I wish I could have stuck around for longer to see it through.
The towers had grown so tall that you were dodging between them; Dersites were staring at you, dropping whatever they were doing, whether it was filing papers or eating a sandwich. You heard a few cry out or exclaim something like “What the devil?” but you just concentrated on not hitting the windows. But now you needed to think about John, which was something you always found hard. He was your kind-of-bro who ticked you off a lot, with his constant quoting of movies and misunderstanding irony. You always found it hardest to think about how you would say good-bye to him. You don’t even know if you’ve ever actually done it before. You figured you might do that one later.
The towers were now growing smaller, the gaping Dersites less frequent and the black sky… well, blacker. It was obvious you’d been floating for a long time. But you had an entire planet between you and your tower where you could rest. And anyways, you didn’t need to rest. This was refreshing. It seemed like this was what you’d needed all this time. Not making sicknasty beats, not strifing with your bro, not making poorly placed Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff references. You needed to go to an entirely different planet to relax. But you were here now, and it was great.
The cold air caught in your throat and stung your eyes, but it was a sweet break from the normal Texan weather. “Sweet cold front, come back.” There had been a few days of cold weather last week, but it had gone. You wished it had stuck around for a bit longer. A few months would have been nice...
Your shades were getting really cold, and, as a result, so were your temples and the bridge of your nose. The wind was picking up and was somehow managing to sting your eyes despite your shades. Though only your face and hands were cold, the pajamas you were wearing were really warm.
Your thoughts begin to wander, from how cold your face is to how relaxed you are to why you don’t have your own brand of breakfast cereal. Come on, people. “Dave crunch” would be such a kickass cereal. But you bet it wouldn’t sell as much as “KARKAT KRUNCH” would. You permit yourself a smile. You’ll have to ask him about that later.
Now you’ve been floating for at least an hour, you wonder just how big Derse could possibly be. There’s a bright light shining somewhere in the distance. You wonder what it could be. Someone’s house? The sun rising? But you doubted the sun ever rose over Derse. The light was getting a lot closer and you could make out some towers in the distance… wait, is that..? No, it couldn’t be…
It was Prospit. All the shining glory and golden towers of Prospit linked to the darkness of Derse. It was like one huge representation of Yin and Yang, except with planets.
You can see yourself on the other side. Not metaphorically, there’s literally a clone of you floating towards you. But they’re still wearing Derse pajamas. That’s weird… You reach your arm out towards them, and they mirror your movement. It’s almost as if it’s just a reflection…
And then your palm touches cool glass and you realize it really is just a reflection. You are currently right in front of an extremely large-ass wall of glass. Your feel what you guess is disappointment. You really wanted to see Prospit. But you guess being this close to it is the next best thing.