Chapter Text
John didn’t mind being doomed. He just wished he didn’t have to do it alone.
Contrary to popular opinion (Rose’s), a doomed timeline doesn’t disappear instantly the moment its Time player travels away from it. It persists, slowly fading, like a candle flickering as the darkness slowly encompasses it.
The first things to go are the dreams. Skaia ceases to exist, as it no longer has any purpose, nothing more to see or know. With it goes Prospit, fading from existence, the yellow city vanishing into the non-being that permeates everything about the remainder of the session. Derse, no longer tethered by Skaia’s impossible gravity, drifts off into the domain of the horrorterrors, then, like its counterpart, it disappears, and with it goes any hope of escape, as the Furthest Ring has gone from here too. Or, rather, here has gone from it.
The planets and the veil remain in their illogical orbits, waiting for the encroaching darkness slowly filling this pocket of reality to consume them. Most game constructs, like the sprites, underlings, consorts, and carapacians, have already faded from the lands, and while the denizens have not gone, they are resigned from this timeline, focused on ones more worth their while.
John knew that last bit because he had been to see Typheus just moments ago. It wasn’t exactly a riveting conversation. John wasn’t entirely sure what it was, to be honest. He had stood there, in his clothes that Vriska had made him make not half an hour earlier. He had tried to ask Typheus what he was meant to do, now that everyone was gone, but the monstrous serpent hadn’t even noticed he was in the room. He was awake, sure, just... sort of not there. John remembered once seeing a snake on TV, hypnotised by the sound coming from a charmer’s flute. But there was no music here. The organ remained plugged with oil. John had tried playing his favourite haunting refrain on a keyboard he had passed earlier, but all it had elicited from the pipes was some half-hearted squelches.