Work Text:
Let's forget, for all can be forgotten, which is gone by already
Forget the time of misunderstandings and the time lost
Finding out how to forget those hours which sometimes,
Killed by blows of "Why?"
The heart of happiness, but,
Ne me quitte pas.
---
Life would be easier if everything were soap bubbles. But they're not, and she's standing in the middle of the room, confused and misty-eyed and looking more like Botticelli’s Birth of Venus than anyone should ever have a right to. She looks tired, she looks like a lost lamb, she looks like his fucking SISTER!
Orchid eyes lock with apple eyes. Good metaphor -- she is complex and a pain in the ass to make blossom accordingly. He is shiny and delicious on the outside, full of rat poison on the inside.
"Hey," Dave Strider says to Rose. "'Bout time. Here I thought you were busy signing treaties and having tea and knitting parties with the fucking cephalopod overlords."
"Pardon?" she asks plainly, blinking. She is acting peculiar. There was no subtle, Munchausen's cyanide against her tongue; her posture is that of a freshman's first day of high school, arms vaguely wrapped around her skeleton, head a tad down. Her gaze is unguarded. She is staring at him like he is both Jesus Christ and Ted Bundy; a mixture of curiousity and fascination and trepidation and hope.
Dave realizes. He realized something very bad. It would explain the clothes -- the ancient-history white t-shirt and plain skirt. It would explain the attitude.
Oh my god.
"Oh," Dave says dumbly. He nuzzles his toe against the floor of his apartment, frowning, and she looks disheartened. It's bizarre, and he is off-balance; dealing with a vulnerable Rose is something he has, literally, never dealt with. He didn't even know it was possible.
But whatever, it was cool. He'd make due. She'd pop out eventually, or hopefully just remember everything.
"Sorry. I thought... Yeah. Okay. Uh." Holy shit was this happening? She's staring up at him with these big, glossy-grape juice eyes, and he's actually choking. His smooth meter is empty. He musters up syllables and volume anyway, should I start with the basics, do I just tell her what's going on, what the fuck?
"I'm Dave," he begins. A healthy, normal start. "This is my apartment." Cool. She gives a faint gesture with her mouth that doesn't make a smile, but it's assuring anyway. "D'you... d'you know who you are?"
Ancient-history Rose gives an ambiguous head cock that he assumes means she doesn't even really know herself.
"Name?"
"Rose. I'm... I don't know my age. Nor my origin. I'm afraid I..." Her voice trailed off so softly like the last thing she wanted to say was 'I don't know much of anything at all'. Dave currently was fighting an extreme discomfort in his chest at seeing his close friend facing probably one of her worst nightmares without even knowing. Or maybe she did; perhaps, deep down, the core of all Roses was clenching her jaw and narrowing her eyes at the very prospect, and it was reaching this one somehow.
"It's cool," said Dave, brushing his hair back all calm and chill. "Not even a thing."
Maybe he could do this. Pretend that nothing was wrong at all. It was really fucking extremely wrong, but acting on that would probably be on a scale of 1-10 on counterproductivity, a raging 100,000 erection. After all, like he said, she'd probably just be gone in a flash or recall everything anyhow.
"Um, Dave, do you... know what I can do in this situation?"
"You stay with me. Look, I probably have an idea of what happened. You've got amnesia, no big deal, I can just camp out on the couch until you get your memory back. It probably, uh, won't last long. Look, are you hungry? Do you want that vegetarian shi-- I mean, do you dig vegetarian stuff, or?"
So Dave was standing against his slightly torn-up old couch, cracked leather and stuffing coming out, and he was expecting Rose to say that she thought she would prefer veg cuisine and he would whip up a salad or something for her (because in the Dream Bubble Kingdom of Heaven starring himself as O. Bloom, he didn't have to starve and could eat whatever the fuck he rightly wanted for once), but the problem was that he did not have as much of a handle on this situation as he thought. He had irons in the fire. He had forgotten to put that heat-proof glove on and here he was, pulling a fucking spectacular Betty Crocker cake out of the fucking oven and dropping that shit on the floor like it was dog food.
Rose's lips curled into a creamy smile and her brow furrowed and her eyes twinkled and then he saw wet shit start creeping out of the corners. He almost vomited. She walked toward him, though slowly, and hesitantly reached out and hugged him.
"Thank you, Dave," she whispered with the utmost gratitude and melancholy right against the nape of his neck. He robotically hugged her back, face clear as a brand new pane of glass, and nodded as all the blood rushed to his cheeks and then way too low and he heard his heart in his head and felt his stomach in his throat and that is when Dave Strider realized that she smelled like lavender and this might be very, very, very bad.
---
Rose Lalonde doesn't realize that she isn't dead. So it's weird meeting her again, let alone like this.
Dave had remembered a lot of what he was supposed to; he remembered dancing through thousands of timelines and dooming himself, over and over again, a constant game of the lady or the tiger with fate, and he was here now, a Dave who chose the tiger. The lady was here now, too late, and she had taken the tiger, too.
The last time he had seen Rose, she was resting. She was sitting outside by the river, peaceful as Ophelia, cradling a book with unintelligible text in her arms like her lover. She had woken as soon as he came too close, naturally, and immediately he became aware of how tired she really looked. How much older she really looked.
They had only spent a few short months (three months six days ten hours twelve minutes 56, 57, 58 seconds...) in this timeline abomination, but they felt like taxidermy. Looked like it. He was getting stiff around the neck and his hair felt frayed. She looked something the same.
It was the last conversation they had had. She murmured something about a new Horrorterror's name, and how she might attempt contact with this one instead, and how the book was helpful. He told her she looked like shit, and needed to go back to sleep.
She had given him a smile that was like cobwebs and her eyes were dark moors without violets and he instantly regret the words. Unthinkingly, she smoothed her hair, asked him something he didn't hear, and refused to repeat it when he asked her to.
"Whatever. Here, I picked something up for you. Merry Gristmas."
He slid over to her side and handed her a plain headband. Rose masked her emotions well, and thanked him, replacing it where it belonged -- she had lost hers some time ago (five weeks two days four hours twenty-nine minutes 2 seconds, 3 seconds). She did not ask the implications of how he had acquired it.
"Good luck," she said to him, knowing he was about to flit off again. He just nodded.
Then, her hand was suddenly touching his, wrapping around it, squeezing gently. He reactively glanced down to her and their eyes met and there were centuries of knowing malaise and melancholy, trapped in her, blanketed in long, droopy lashes and aching-for-a-good-night's-sleep gaze and something else he refused to identify, and then he disappeared into the ticking oblivion once more.
That was the last time he saw her.
---
Six days had passed. She was still there, she still remembered little to nothing, and he still lacked the instinct on how to approach her about everything.
Rose was lounging silently on the couch, nose in a book, the image attempting to bring back some dissonant memories of when they were alive and doomed. But old Rose had a crooked, beautiful back, achy with so much crouched reading, and this Rose looked more serene than he could've imagined Rose Lalonde looking. Still a little rabbit-hearted, but she looked up long enough to be surprised that he was staring at her, almost blushing (what) and offering a smile before returning to the novel. She had gotten pretty comfortable, was learning a routine, was gaining stability, and it was showing in her. She was getting some personality back, she was adjusting.
He was so thankful. Which was weird, but. She turned a page, and he tried to think of how to start a conversation.
Dave didn't read much, but Bro did, so they had a solid bookshelf stocked with some classics and whatnot. She picked The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway.
He liked Hemingway.
"Most of the books are my older brother's," he quipped casually, sliding onto the couch beside her, kicking up his feet on the coffee table and knocking over an empty Dr. Pepper can with a clatter like it was on purpose. "But I like Hemingway. He keeps shit simple."
Rose didn't look up from the book and just hummed in response. Dave frowned.
"Have you read it before?"
"No, I don't believe so." She was already halfway through the book. It was short, sure, but she was definitely a fast reader to boot.
"His, uh, poetry's more or less shit. Not big on them. But he has this one about fucking, like, farting, and that's pretty dope in a considerable amount of ways."
"How quaint," said Rose, monotone.
The fuck? Was she made of concrete? She wasn't even looking up from the book. Was she bored of him? There was no possibility of it. Dave felt himself subconsciously biting the inside of his cheek, and checked himself. And he wondered why this bothered him. But it was obvious; it was Rose. He spent long, quiet months with only her company to depend on, and she was clever, and strong, and even when he felt like putting a sword through his chest and ending it, she could keep him calm as the dead. Rose would always pay attention to him. And care about him.
Her thin fingers had callouses from her violin, and she turned a page. Her eyes split-second side-glanced him with a secret. It almost made sense.
He kept with asking things he already knew. It would look real bad real fast if she found out he already knew her favourite colours and music and reading material and philosophy and...
"Who d'you like? To read."
Promptly, Rose shut the novel and placed it daintily on the coffee table, far away from the Dr. Pepper can. Her light cerise stare turned to his, and he flatlined.
Oh God. Dave knew that look. Maybe she wasn't so different, fuck damn shit; "S'wrong?"
"Well, it appears I will not be finishing the book anytime soon; which is fine. To answer your question, I enjoy Poe and Lovecraft and Tolkien, and most fantasy novels. I feel that psychology-based texts were probably dear to me, as well."
He had to stifle a laugh, even a lemon smile, hearing all of this from her. Of course he already knew she worshipped the Purple Prose like an OG worships the Purple Drank, but she just looked so snotty when she said it, it was difficult not to mock her about it.
"Ah," he said. "I see. Sorry we don't have, like, any of that wordy stuff stocked up. I am a man of simple pleasures."
"You're like, fifteen."
"So."
"And I'm curious as to what significant happening designated you as 'man' instead of boy or even young man or adolescent?" She was sneering in her eyes, but it wasn't malicious, just incredibly amused at the whole deal, and Dave was gritting his teeth silently and rolling his eyes from behind his shades.
"Would you believe me if I said I have every fucking right to call myself whatever I want."
"Ooh, ouch, I might need an ice pack and some ointment, truly, I am feeling the burn."
In response, he lounged back far too comfortably on the couch and snorted at her, acting totally indifferent. What was her fucking problem, making fun of him? She couldn't even remember who the president was, big fucking deal she was.
"...Are you mad at me?" Rose asked, sincerely interested. He took a deep breath and turned to her, and God, he was just never fucking prepared, she was so different and -- oh of course she would be leaning too close and her eyes large and wondering and some unwavering half-smile on her pretty mouth-- woah. Woah.
That didn't happen.
"N-no," he stuttered too quickly, which was super cool. Dave adjusted his shades, nervous tic, and shoved his hands in his pockets so he could get up and get a soda so he had any excuse to get out of the room, but.
"Where are you going?" Rose asked, voice almost sad.
So fucking full of questions! And why was he so irritated? Who gave a fuck? It was his apartment (his and Bro's his and Bro's) and he could be pissed if he wanted. This wasn't even the real Rose, so fuck it.
"Getting a soda," he snapped.
"You're angry? How come? Did I touch a nerve? I apologize, the jesting was not meant to wound--"
"Dude, just stop." He was halfway out of the room but he heard her stand up, and so he turned, and so he saw her clamping her hands together like a nun in front of her and all six days of progress were gone and she looked like a hurt bird.
Fuck. If there was ever a moment where he wanted to rewind.
"Dave, I..."
He clamped his hands to his face and swallowed oxygen to steady himself because he was a massive cock that didn't deserve to see the light of day. He decided to spit out the honest apology before he turned into parasitic piece of shit who couldn't.
"Don't. I'm sorry, I'm just, kind of dealing with shit, it's not your fault, don't worry."
He gauged her reaction hopefully, not thinking about how sad and broken she looked, how absolutely foreign the image was to him, and she said unsurely, "All right. Just, um... Would you mind coming back, post-pop? I would really enjoy the company."
Seconds ticked by, and he refrained from smiling at the word 'pop' because that would ruin his perfect composure, and instead he flicked her a salute with a nonchalant, "Yeah."
She relaxed. A building's worth of weight came off his shoulders that he didn't even know was there, so he rubbed them awkwardly. He was finally going to go get that damn soda, but a question caught his jaw, and before he left, swung on a heel to quip, "Why not finish the book?"
There was then a one-of-a-kind, million-watt, sophisticated bitch Lalonde smile, and Rose replied, "I hate Hemingway."
Dave got to the kitchen, leaned against the fridge with his forearm against his forehead, and grinned like an ass.
---
I shall invent senseless words
That you will understand
I will tell you about those lovers, who saw, twice,
Their hearts go up in flames
I shall tell you the story of a king, dead, for not having succeeding
In finding you.
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas.
---
Three weeks later, she was still there. She had read a decent portion of the bookshelf, and remembered more. He incessantly dreamt of her.
It was still difficult, even though day by day, in lazy, long hours, she became more and more her. He spent the long hours in his room, typically, spinning discs with headphones, becoming lost in the void of music and shuddering bass drops.
Because she talked.
So much.
Old Rose never spoke this much. Like, well, she did talk, obviously, and when she did it was always floral and long-winded and biting like oleander, both beautiful and deadly. It made him love her, because in a world so endlessly trapping, she was endlessly an oasis of sense and the nutrition he needed to mentally keep going.
Bodies piled, circling his heart, cursing his own blood. It was a sick incestuous mobius of self-death and suicides for the Greater Good, and each time he retched his guts out before returning to light and rain, and each time she sat with him and talked about sleeping and old tales of simple people.
Sometimes he shut himself in his room, sobbing for a well-timed five minutes, and sometimes she would wait on the other side of the door in her plum-and-night dress, trimmed in gold, waiting for him. Sometimes her cheeks were pinched and pink and her eyes looked dampened. Sometimes he could not bear it and slunk in close and they embraced, chins resting on similar shoulders. Silent.
But this Rose wanted nothing more than to fill books with conversation. Dave found it so easy to overflow with language about adventures; he told her stories about a world of clocks and lava, and another of light and rain, and she said that they didn't sound like they'd match. Well they wouldn't, he replied, but they did anyway.
"One has often seen burst anew, the fire of an old volcano believed to be spent/There are, it is said, scorched lands, yielding more wheat than the best of April/And when the evening comes to make the sky flare up/Don't the black and the red wed?"
She would quote the most obscure shit that he could think of and he would try to understand and always fail to. That's what she said that time, and he went to Google it later, but couldn't remember anything, and nothing came up but bad, shitty poetry from petty teenagers.
Regardless.
She asked to listen to his music, frequently. She didn't like it, frequently. She complained of the volume and how it came across as messy. He would forcibly say that it was an acquired taste and very complex, and she actually nodded and accepted this answer, because, she said, orchestral music was much the same sometimes.
One day he came home with a violin and that was the day he accepted that Rose would be here for a very long time. She played a song he thought he recognized, but couldn't.
"Dave, may I hear more about the adventures of the Knight and the Seer? It's been a while."
"Dude it's been probably like fourteen hours."
"You're very good with time."
"Yeah. Music thing. Internal metronome. What d'you want to hear?"
"Were they happy? You recite in such an ambiguous and distant way I cannot tell sometimes."
Dave sighed and flumped back onto his bed. She had walked into his room to request this, and was smiling hopefully, pushing dirty laundry out of the way with her feet so she could make her way to him. At this point, her eyes did not question the jars of preserved creatures around the walls and the clothesline of photographs and extensive computer supplies. At this point, he did not struggle too much to stay totally complacent when she got on her knees on the sheets and crawled over to sit beside him.
Dave would never comprehend how alone she was in this dead world, and how he was all she had, forevermore. He knew she must have felt so naive and helpless and dependent on him, and it both endeared him and made him feel powerful and like he wanted to jump off the roof to get away from her and her poignant eyes and the familiar silk of her hair and her hands which had new callouses.
"Not really," he said, staring out the window at Houston's skyscrapers. "Sometimes."
She always sat too close to him as of late, he felt her warmth in the too-warm room, and forced himself to look at the smattered ceiling instead.
"But they were heroes, and they were so sure of themselves. Were they truly lost to the greater powers, fighting for no reason? I am indeed eager to find out what happens at the end."
She said this with such earnestness that he clenched his fist under the old quilt and said not a single fucking word for a long time. She assumed he was just thinking about the story. He was thinking about the moment he died.
"She was always there for him," he said after a minute and thirty-six seconds. "The Knight had it bad. Fucking awful, actually. With his powers, with all of the time bullshit where he was stuck doing temporal basket-weaving and watching his alternates die and having to harvest their bodies... it was pretty traumatizing, to everyone's massive surprise. So he came back after battles, sick to his stomach, and The Seer would be waiting, and they would just sit and talk about absolutely goddamn nothing. She could run her mouth about absolutely nothing like nobody in else in the damn world, probably because nobody else existed. It fucks with your head. She would get quiet for days and just study things and he couldn't stand being there too long because he'd kind of lose it. But even though she was probably spiraling like a little toy army parachute soldier man into Satan's fucking abyss, she would always, always, always waste her time making sure he was okay."
Dave's dead heart was racing like bullets and he had to steady himself. Rose was perfectly still on the bed, and her scent of lavender was slowly sedating him.
"And he didn't know what to do in return except be her fucking lapdog and run errands like she asked because he guessed if there was one fucking thing he could do to give her peace of mind, it would be to not give up and to just listen to her and let them feel like something was happening to make it better."
"He loved her, didn't he?" She whispered the words so softly the air did not even move with her breath.
He finally turned to look at her after what felt like a history but was only in fact three seconds and she looked so pale and so lost and a massive bang in his chest made him aware of the all-consuming desire to keep her safe and how he was so fucking incapable of making that happen. He realized suddenly that tears were pricking at his eyes and with great horror that she had kept him alive and kicking for so long, and now he could not do the same for her. He was too weak. Too pathetic. How could anyone ever love someone like him?
His gut wrenched as he thought the words and shut down any prospect of further introspection as heat ran down his freckled cheekbones like magma hitting air.
"Dave?" She whispered in the dark. A cloud had just run over the sun. "Do they die at the end?"
"Yes," he bit out like a dog, rubbing his face shamefully, bitterly. "Yes they do."
Suddenly, like ages before, she was in his personal space and consuming it, her arms trembling as they wrapped around his neck and shoulders, nudging his aviators and making them tumble to the bed. Her hands soothingly mussed down and ran through his hand and she hummed reassuring notes from her throat like a bird, and he choked down a sob, not wanting her to see him like this.
"Dave," she sang sweetly. "Dave. It's okay. It's only a story. Don't be scared any more, we are all safe and sound. I'm here."
His fingers resisted obeying him any further and he found himself clutching at the back of her shirt and her lips were suddenly pressed against his ear in a careful, feather light kiss, and then his wet cheek, and then his jaw, fingers still flattening his hair, and his hands crawled up to her perfect shoulder blades and rubbed them in slow circles like ticking gears. She nestled against him softly, somehow in his lap weighing nearly nothing at all and he found the nape of her neck, found her impossibly willowy hair and ran his fingertips against it and breathed in and in and in.
He wished he could die again.
"It's all right, Dave, it's all fine... I won't let the big bad wolf near you..."
Big bad wolf black dog green lightning sword Bro no Dave's head snapped up and his back slammed against the wall like a taut spring and he said, "What?"
Rose had nearly jumped out of her skin with shock and for a split second her beautiful eyes went fog white then back to violet. Their eyes met, unshrouded by sunglasses for the first time.
"Wh-what?"
"What did you just say?"
"I... I said I wouldn't let the big bad wolf get you? Was that wrong of me to say?"
Dave's breathing attempted regulating himself and he slowly ran a hand through his hair, shaking, eyes cake dry and slightly bloodshot, and he suddenly lacked the ability to keep the ruse up.
"Rose," he began slowly, monotone. "You need to remember. Right now. You need to remember what happened."
"I... wh-what?" Her voice was quiet and shaken and she was getting off of his lap now, looking scared and confused but attempting some sort of regalness anyway. "I, It's not as if I haven't been trying, Dave, I--"
"I can't keep fucking doing this, this, this is killing me, this is tearing my fucking insides out and tossing them in the paper shredder of the fucking office gods. Rose, remember your mom, and John, and Jade, and..."
Her eyes flashed that ghost white again and all at once he needed to throw up. This was wrong this was so astronomically fucking wrong. He needed to regroup.
He took about two seconds to breathe and find a store of battle-hardened composure in him before he spoke.
With the little emotion left in his body, he apologized to her volumelessly, and begged for forgiveness with his eyes. She just stared like a deer in headlights, and he felt rocketing pain in his heart and wanted to hold her and kiss her head and hum to her that it would be okay, but he fumbled, blank-minded out of bed, and went to take a cold shower.
Rose lay on his bed for a long time. Soon, the pillow was damp, and she trembled, and said nothing, and finally was lost in sleep.
Feverous nightmares of octojellyfish monsters, and clouds that told you too much.
---
I'll weep no more.
I'll speak to more
I'll hide right here
To look at you dance and smile
To listen to you sing
And then laugh...
Ne me quitte pas.
---
They didn't talk. Rose played endless violin, making up songs that shifted between horrendous and resplendent. Dave locked himself in his room and slept.
When he realized what was inherently wrong with the situation, he nearly destroyed his sound system with the utter boiling fear and fury, but then recovered his smooth-as-fuck mastery, and decided henceforth he would be the epitome of cool for Rose Lalonde, because she deserved it. After ruining her life and ruining their chances at life, he could do that much for her.
It did not matter that he loved her, in all of the wrong, and all of the worst ways. For her, he would take the stake through the chest, and live on, even in her rosen world of false simplicity.
He took his headphones off after a long time of studious reminiscing and practising mentally for dealing with her, looked out the window to see the drizzle mist his windowpane, and stood, leaving his room. A solider walking to war. But the soundless walk through the shoddy hallway with peeling paint and painful photographs was mind-numbing, and it got much worse when he realized that he could hear crying. Dave found her on the couch, curled in a tight ball with her face in her knees with the History channel on.
"Rose?" he mumbled like a child, but she didn't hear him.
Like he was approaching a landmine, or perhaps the Virgin Mary, he crept toward her, ignoring the scene on the television of a child blowing bubbles merrily and some happy couple onlooking. He felt in his bones that it might burn him to touch her, but for Rose, he could roast in hell.
Dumbly, hesitating, he reached out and put his hand on her shoulder, murmuring again, "Rose?"
Her head tilted up at the speed of syrup, and she hiccupped, and her eyes were so reddened and her complexion splotchy, and she got out one fucking sentence, one small phrase, and yet, he felt it, the pain of an entire planet of people and stars and fireworks shattering and rupturing in his heart:
"Please don't leave me."
He felt himself shaking as he spoke automatically, "I would never leave you."
She buried her face back in her elbows and sounded like a dying animal.
"D-Dave," she wept, unable to look at him, unable to face the world. "I love you. I love you so much." The words were muffled yet he had never heard anything so clearly in his existence. "I can't remember anything, I feel useless, I’ve become a ragdoll in this world and I am so... so frightened... and everything feels wrong. I... I play violin, and I remember my mother, and it hurts, and when... when I l-look at you, I..."
She stopped, and took jagged, raw breathes of air, and he saw her nails dig into her skin. It made him sit down. It made him take her smoothly by the jaw, but instead slide his palms to her cheeks and force her to look at him, drippy nose and overflowing eyes and pink-and-white tulip garden skin.
Eyes wide and still drenching her skin with tears, she stammered, weak and shaky, "...I feel like I've known you. For so long. For too long. Like... like you are my oldest friend, and I've lost you, and found you, but it's all... mutated... some horrible mistake... Some sort of... mistake... That needs to be f-fixed..."
Dave kept a stone-smooth face and saw how her chest was jumping, and he took his sleeve and wiped away at her face, his own feeling slightly flushed, forehead sticky. He was okay, though. He was strong for her. He found strength through her, after all this time.
"S'okay, Rosie. S'all good. You'll remember. I'd tell you, if I could, but you know as fuckin' well as I do that would be some rude shit to do to your pretty little head," he crooned like nobody's business. What déjà vu. What ridiculous fucking kids they were; wasn't this happening like one act ago? He cracked some half-hearted smirk and pushed back the hair that was sticking to her temples, tucking it behind her ears, because her headband was missing. How It's Made was talking about the inner composition of old record players in the background.
"Dave," she bleated, trying to smile back. "It feels like I haven't seen you in forever."
"Funny," he said. Because she was a Seer. "That's prime irony. You've outdone me, Lalonde."
And that was it. He had fucked up. He didn't even fucking comprehend that he had just referred to her as he did, she didn’t even know her own last name. He referred to her in that old way, when long ago, it was just him and her on a dying, spinning planet that whirled them closer and closer to the center of the spider's web. He blinked, still smiling wryly, and when he opened his eyes, hers were the colour of flour.
"Oh." Was all she said.
The television went off by itself. It was unreliable, it happened a lot. The spin of the ceiling fan creaked, just like it always did. It got quiet outside; the midsummer drizzle turned into a steady rain.
His lips parted in silent disbelief. He didn't dare believe it.
Suddenly, Rose looked so much more tired.
"Oh," she said again, because it was all she could say. "Oh."
He caught a white shape out of the corner of his eye; a headband. He picked it up deftly, and returned it to her hair.
Her hands slowly reached up to the headband and touched it, remembering the fabric as clear as day. Rose said nothing for a long time (three minutes and fifty-eight seconds) and then she spoke, as if they were sitting by the riverside and no time has passed at all.
"Do you remember the last time you gave this back to me?"
Swallowing subtly, he gave a minute nod. He forgot how to breathe, which was fine, because he was dead.
"I had said to you, as quietly as I could," and she paused, and her eyes brimmed with little shimmering lights that were tears, "That I would miss you so much, I would rather lose my mind than endure it."
The rain eased a little. Picked up again. Eight seconds passed, and lithely, the old Rose took Dave's hands in hers, with the tears now escaping blissfully, freely, though she could only look at his wrist and stroke it with her thumb.
"Thank you for taking care of me," she said in the same voice like the last fucking time he saw her and it was enough to make him snap out of his stupor and blurt out, "Ne me quitte pas."
Rose gave a big smile, eyes shut as it became an agonized grin.
"Oui," she replied, and he almost laughed. She looked like she was holding back a laugh, too. It was an ancient inside joke, he supposed -- a song she hummed frequently, a song she played on the violin too much. The fact that he could speak no French, but she tried to teach him when there was time. There was never time. But she did anyway.
"Must I go?" She asked suddenly, looking at the wall like it was oceans and seas away, and Dave realized, with pain, with saccharine contentedness, how much he didn't know he needed Rose back until this very moment.
There was quiet truth, presented in front of him, thin, vintage, blonde. Lalonde. He would never recognize a neck more slender and swanlike than hers, no chin as teacup-sharp, no hair so dollish and cropped, no pair of summer wildflower eyes. The faraway voice that would scream in his head at night that this was his sister and she was rotten and sick and lost to the world of Horrorterrors and trying to save the fruitless world, was silenced.
Dave Strider realized that this, this was finally the end of the long line. They had played the game. They had been the players and the fighters and the cheaters and the losers, and now, they found the exit sign, flashing above the door, and he was no knight, and she was no seer, and there was no tumor, nor question. They were only Dave and Rose. They were just dead.
He realized, and supposed, that there was peace in death after all.
"No."
The rain came down, hard, too hard, and lightning struck. Rose's head cocked, curious, and with a surging flash, the power went out. He felt like this had happened a long time ago, but the thought passed as quickly as he came, and he was then crawling over her, holding her wrists needingly, mouth searching out hers and finding it in dark heat and luxurious, hot tongues and desperate, despairing...
"No, no you may not leave," he mumbled, words sticky with saliva, and he felt her smile so faintly against the corner of his lips as if she could not believe this was happening either. He let himself smirk back. Let himself lay gently on top of her, kissing her jaw, her bridge of her nose, her eyelids.
She found his eyes, somehow in the dim light, radiating some kind of age-old pleasure he had never let himself accept. He was sure he looked the same.
Rose smiled, and reached out to touch his face. He took her hand and pressed it closer.
"Then I won't leave."