Chapter Text
It doesn’t mean a thing to you when he apologizes. Mostly because he’s pretending it was an accident, mostly because he’s only pretending because he’s in front of a crowd, mostly because you know he’s not sorry. He’ll just hit you more later for this. You accept the apology nonetheless—it doesn’t make a difference to him if you forgive him or not. He knows that you don’t forgive him. That’s okay. Nothing would change even if you didn’t hate him with a passion.
When everyone’s gone he never says he’s sorry. He never apologizes, just scowls and glares and blames and hits and swears. That’s okay. It’s been this way your whole life.
Sometimes you just want to climb up someplace high. You want to climb up someplace too high for him to ever follow you. You want to climb up so high that he can’t ever follow you anywhere again. Once you get that high he can’t hurt you anymore.
You want to fall asleep one of these times, you want to fall asleep as Dave Strider and you want to wake up as someone else. You want to wake up as a kid in a big house—or a little house, you’re not picky—and you want to wake up in a soft bed in a room with plenty of clothes and warm air in the winter and cool air in the summer. You want to wander into your new kitchen to find a kitchen stocked with food. You want to look on the counter and see dinner cooling off, not scattered unpaid bills and fines. You want to see your mom in the living room watching television, you want to see your dad walk into the kitchen and pour himself a glass of water. You want to see your parents kiss each other on the cheek, you want them to hug you and tell you to have a good day at school.
Every morning you wake up as Dave Strider. Every morning you wonder what would happen if you just… didn’t wake up as Dave anymore.
What happens when you die?
Do you wake up as someone new? Is rebirth a thing?
Or maybe take a more Christian approach—something along the lines of Heaven. Maybe you’d go to Hell, though. Maybe you’re already there.
Either way—heaven or rebirth—you’re willing to give it a shot. So what’s stopping you from never waking up as Dave Strider again?
Well, the never-ending fear that there’s nothing after this. Maybe this is it. Maybe there’s nothing more. Because all these beliefs—you wouldn’t have the Bible or Synagogues or any sort of religion at all. There would just be nothing and that would be that. So really, if you think about it, beliefs are just human creations to appease the inevitable fear of death.
When you never believed a goddamn thing, though, there’s nothing to appease that fear. It just lingers, stopping you from letting go, stopping you from falling completely.
You come so damn close so many times, but you never do.
And in that hot apartment in Texas you almost die more than once a week. In that hot apartment in Texas you wake up every morning only because you closed your eyes the night before. You tell yourself you have a reason to keep going, even if you never have. Every night you close your eyes, open them in the morning, keep going in a never ending and dull existence that never meant a thing.
Maybe one morning you’ll wake up and discover that you’re glad you kept going.
Maybe you’ll never do that, though. Maybe there’s a reason to keep going, someplace so, so far away in the future. Maybe someplace there’s some sort of glimmering cause in the middle of all of this. But—maybe you’ll never know. You’re already so tired, you’re already so close to ending it all right now.
You never do. You never can. You just keep going. You just keep pushing on and on.
Every morning you wake up. In your head you made a countdown. You’ve only got 1,460 days left until you can leave for good. Every morning you count down one more number. Someday it’ll hit zero. If you chicken out 1,460 more times then you won’t have to chicken out anymore. You won’t spend another night here in a cold, empty room. You won’t wake up to an empty fridge and an empty home. You won’t go to school and come home to swords and fights and blood and bruises.
You won’t have to come home, sometimes, to find him there with a sword in hand. And he sways, sometimes, when he’s there and waiting for you. That’s how you know that sometimes he goes out and has one too many and comes home to hit you harder than usual, to pin you up against a wall and get off on something more than puppets. That’s okay. He can’t do that forever. Someday you’ll get out of here, someday you’ll go to bed and you won’t wake up here again. Whether that’ll be because you finally got some guts or because you waited a whole 1,460 more days…well, either way you’ll be out of here.
You can do that. One way or another it’ll end.
You don’t think you can wait for another five years. You can’t do that. You can’t do that. You can’t do that.
You can’t keep doing this.
Your hand holds a katana that was just pressed against your neck. It’s heavy, but you’re anything but weak after all these years. You’re in the middle of the living room. You hope with sadistic grimness that he finds you here.
The cold metal touches your arm.
Remember kids—it’s down the road, not across the street.
You think to yourself that he won’t be home for another week. Well—that just makes this whole thing pointless, now doesn’t it?
You can make it another week.
You drop the shitty sword back where it belongs on the dirty ground and retreat to your little fortress of a room. You close your eyes.
1,459
//
You’re in the middle of a life-or-death game, yet you keep seeming to squirm your way out of things with your life still intact.
That’s funny, because you’re really not trying for that.
That’s funny, because you know some people in the other game were trying really hard not to die, but they’re dead, aren’t they?
You always manage to do this. Sometimes you wish you weren’t so goddamn talented. Here you are—alive and not even trying! God, you wish you were trying. God, you wish you were trying to make it out of this alive and not just counting down and down and down and down and down and down and –
1,200
//
You think that this shitty rock is a perfect representation of a lot of things. You’ve affectionately dubbed this rock, “the meteor of people who were perhaps not trying very hard to live but somehow managed to make it out alive to this rock where they will remain alive for another three years,” and it’s a long name but a good name.
And on this rock, there is several other people.
Among those people there is no one who would press a Kanata to your throat—you know that, of course you know that. You know that.
You know that you could scream at every one of them all you wanted, but no one would press a sword to your throat or beat you black and blue or do anything that he did to you. You know that everything he did was sick and twisted and wrong.
“Hey—Bro was cool, don’t fucking doubt that.” You assure them.
You know that everything he did was wrong in so many ways, you know that he fucked you up.
“Bro was a hero,” you inform them.
You know that you hate him so much, you know that when you curl up in your room on this stupid goddamn rock and breathe heavily that it’s because of him and everything he’d ever done to you.
“Trust me, Bro is like—an idol.” You tell them.
And even though you know that he’s not here, they’re nothing like him, you can’t help but doubt that. You like to play it off as a cool guy, you like to play it off as carefully as you can. You think they all believe you, no one ever says otherwise. And—excluding Gamzee, obviously, you think that you could do so many things that you couldn’t do to him to them, and they’d probably just send you to Rose for some therapist bullshit.
You don’t need to go to Rose for therapy bullshit. You’re Just Fine. This is Okay. Everything here and everything there was and is Okay and this is Just Fine.
And that doesn’t stop you from poking the metaphorical bear with a metaphorical stick. You stare right at Karkat for a solid half an hour just because you know it annoys the troll. You hover right next to Terezi for a whole hour because it annoyed him. She doesn’t seem to mind. She just snickers and invites you to go to Can Town.
You’re poking that bear still, though, testing metaphorical boundaries.
No one ever snaps at you. No one ever yells at you. No one ever stabs you or punches or holds any sort of weapon at you. No one ever forces you to do anything. The most anyone does is huff in irritation—and really only Karkat’s done that, and Karkat does that no matter what anyone says or does, so really you don’t think that counts.
You push the boundaries further, prying into things like a child. Curiosity drives you to continue poking the goddamn bear.
And you do, in the form of pestering Vriska—the most violent person you can think of—nonstop for a total of a solid day. She lets out several long rants throughout the day, but at the end of it all you close your eyes without a single bruise or harsh word spat at you.
You’re beginning to grow irritated.
You think Rose is on to you.
You don’t know what she’s on to, though, because you’re Okay and everything is Just Fine.
//
It takes a solid month before anybody snaps. And even then, it’s not any of them who snaps—it’s you. You snap at Rose, who’s been doing nothing but sitting peacefully and reading her book for the last hour. You’re sitting on the other side of the room minding business of your own. Your gaze settles on her, though, and she glances up and raises and eyebrow and goes back to her book.
You’re angry.
You’re angry at everything and everyone. You’re so bitter. You’re bitter because she didn’t spit at you or threaten you when she caught you staring at her with a blank expression. You know he would have. You know he’d take any chance to hit you or snap at you or pin you up against a wall and—
“Why don’t you ever do anything else?” You snap. “You always just read a book and psychoanalyze everyone and everything and no one asked.” You realize later on that your whole rant probably sounded like you meant to reprimand her for reading, when really you’d meant to reprimand her for never snapping or hitting or—
“We’re all stuck on this stupid rock and yeah we’re all bein’ stupid and shit but there’s better things to do than getting drunk and reading all the time!” You’ve been ranting longer than you’ve been thinking and you’re glaring down at the couch and she’s not saying a single thing. You swallow back a sick feeling when your brain catches up with your words and you realize that you weren’t just poking a bear with a stick—you’ve probably just kicked the bear in the side with your goddamn foot.
You don’t look at Rose. You don’t apologize.
It wouldn’t matter if you apologized, nothing would change and he would keep doing the same thing that he’d always done. There’s no one else here and that means that there’s no reason for him to pretend to be nice and caring and gentle and that means that he’s probably just going to hit and hit and hit and hit and hit and hit and hit—
Can you keep doing it? Can you keep going? Do you even recall half of what you just said to him—her! This is Rose! This is Not Him. This is Them. This is Her. This is Rose, who has yet to hit or snap or threaten or pin you up against a wall.
But you’ve never gone this far before.
Your breathing hitches.
You want to apologize.
Apologies never meant a thing.
You stand up and let your laptop clatter to the ground. You abscond to your room. You lean against the door and breathe heavily, wrapping your arms around your legs. You can’t breathe—what did you just say? What did you just do?
You want to go back and—you can’t go back and—you can’t breathe and—
What do you do? What’s she going to do?
You’re terrified, terrified, terrified, terrified—
Why are you terrified? You snapped at Rose. Rose won’t hit, Rose won’t threaten, Rose won’t do anything like he did, she won’t—she won’t—she won’t—
You didn’t apologize—you’re supposed to do that. Even if it doesn’t mean a thing, it’s going to be worse because you didn’t.
He’ll come back here and he’ll hit and hit and hit and threaten and threaten and threaten—
You let a sob bubble out of your lips.
You’re so confused.
You’re so lost.
You ache.
No one comes to your room, which is good.
No one comes to help you breathe, which is good.
No one could, even if they wanted to.
You wonder if they want to.
You wonder if Rose is waiting for you to come back out so she can—
Rose is not Him, Rose is not Him, Rose is not Him—
You crossed a line.
You said too much.
Apologies don’t mean a thing, but apologies make it all at least a little bit better. Because if you apologize he’ll stop before he—
God, god, god, god, god, god, god.
You can’t breathe and you can’t think, everything aches so much.
Eventually you just stop and you let yourself crumple to the floor. You let yourself stop thinking, you let yourself fall asleep.
And when you wake up you don’t have your laptop. You drag yourself out of your room, drag yourself down to the commons room, down where you left it.
Down where the room is empty all except for one person in a chair in the corner. You aren’t sure if she’s waiting for you.
You mumble an apology and pick up your laptop.
“Dave,” she says to you.
She’s not him, she’s nothing like him, but somewhere in your twisted mind you recall that you still can’t convince yourself that there’s not a single line that you can cross that will make her do anything that she did. There’s nothing in your mind that can let you think that no matter how long you hover over Karkat’s shoulder—he hates that—that he still won’t draw out a sickle and stab you right through the chest. There’s nothing to tell you that you can’t bother Terezi for so long that she’ll draw back her fist and bop you right in the nose. You wish she would, that would make everything so much easier.
You shift your gaze to Rose’s. She doesn’t look mad. He never look mad, either, not unless he was shitfaced.
She’s got something to say to you. You take a deep breath and turn around, hand on the doorknob. Her cool fingers wrap gingerly around your wrist.
“It’s okay to not be okay,” she tells you, letting her fingers slip away and leaving you free to go. You don’t move for a minute.
“Who ever said I’m not okay?” You ask coolly. Your voice is hoarse and flat.
31
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//
You hit zero thirty-one days after the incident. You haven’t poked the bear with the stick since you snapped at Rose. Rose hasn’t brought it up. You think to yourself, when I hit zero I get to escape. When I hit zero I get away forever and he leaves me alone forever. Why won’t he leave me alone? Leave me alone!
He doesn’t leave you alone. He lingers, invading your thoughts and influencing all of your actions.
You crawl back out of your room. You pass Terezi and Vriska on the way. You think Terezi greets you. You don’t think you greet her back. You turn the corner and stumble just a little—keep your cool, cool kid.
And there’s Rose, seated at the table like she always is, reading like she always is. You’re still sorry you snapped at her for that. You’re not bothered. You hope she knows that. You wonder if she does. You’re desperate for her to know that.
“I’m not bothered by you’re reading,” you tell her softly from the door. She pauses. You don’t think she knew that you were there. “And I don’t get bothered when you analyze people or anything—I don’t…” You trail off, shrugging slightly. You feel your face turn hot. She smiles a little to the book.
“I know,” she replies, flipping the page. Her voice is the same smooth voice that it always is, but it’s still reassuring. You wonder how much she knows. You wish she would tell you. You know you could ask. Cool kids don’t just ask. But what’s a cool kid?
Are you wondering if it would be cool to ask her to tell you that everything was going to be okay—or are you wondering if he would ask her to tell her it would be alright.
He wouldn’t.
He’d just think you stupid for doing so.
He’d snap at you, he’d tell you that he didn’t raise a pussy all those years, he’d hit and threaten and—
“You can sit down, if you’d like. There’s two seats at this table, after all. It’s easier to have a conversation with someone if you’re next to them.”
“We’re having a conversations now, are we?” You raise an eyebrow of your own. The façade is so much easier to play off when you’re across the room from her. You’re worried you’ll poke the bear with the stick if you sit down there next to her.
“Yes, we are indeed. So please do sit. I have a feeling there’s several things we need to discuss.”
“We need to discuss several things? Gosh, Hellen, I forgot to bring the cookies. What kind of PTA meeting will it be without cookies? Kim’s gonna be disappointed when she finds out.”
“Dave. Just sit.” You still grin to yourself and tell yourself that it was a good joke. You think He’d be satisfied with that response.
He’s not here.
He’s dead.
That’s Okay. This is Just Fine. You’re Just Fine.
You cross the room and take a seat.
You take a deep breath in.
And you fucking lose it.
Your breath leaves, you know she’s mad, why else would she want to discuss things with you? Rose is just calm, Rose has different ways of dealing with anger, Rose may not hit but she sure might yell, she may hit anyway, she may threaten or—
Her cool fingers are placed on your hand. You jerk your gaze over to where she sits. Oh, that’s so not cool, you totally just started panicking in front of her.
What would He have to say about that?
Probably nothing.
He’d probably just hit.
You’re breathing is irregular and off again but you really couldn’t fix it if you tried. Rose doesn’t say anything about it, though, even though you can tell she wants to. You’re glad she doesn’t point it out.
“I’m not mad,” she says instead. You raise your eyebrows.
“You’re not mad...” You repeat, voice trailing off to show her that you have no idea where this is going.
“I was getting the impression that you were—god forbid—worried that I may have been mad. Whatever the reason was that you felt the need to get several things off of your chest, though, I can respect that. I’m not mad.” Rose tilts her head slightly, her hair falling in front of her face just a little bit. You slide your eyes away. She can’t tell, of course. You’re wearing shades. This is why.
“I wasn’t getting anything off my chest. Rose, maybe the psychoanalyzing is a little bit intimidating sometimes, but it’s not annoying. You’ll have to try a little bit harder for that.” You slouch back in your chair. You’re still not looking at her.
“Dave.”
“Mm?”
“We are holding a serious conversation at the moment about several things that I feel we genuinely need to talk about. I would really appreciate it if you would-just for several minutes-tell me what you’re really thinking, without fear of how it may come across, whether that worry is about coolness or otherwise.”
The clock on the wall’s ticking is irritatingly loud. You would really appreciate it if it would respect your need for it to shut up.
“Well, Lalonde, I gotta say. The sarcasm is a part of my soul. For a charming young lady such as yourself, though, I think I can manage for a couple of minutes.”
You slouch further into your chair. You think back to when you were thirteen and you wanted to wake up as somebody else someday. You realize that you wouldn’t just be Not Dave Strider, you would be someone else completely.
“It’s okay to not be okay,” she says, and you remember the last time that she said that, when you said to her that no one ever said that you weren’t okay. You’re not Okay. This is not Okay. This is not Just Fine.
You think you’d want to live in a littler house, maybe an apartment, still. Small places are warmer than big ones. Everyone’s closer is small spaces. Maybe you’d have a dog, too. You think you’d want a big dog.
“Can you really not be okay if you’ve never been okay?” You ask, unable to slouch any further in your chair.
Maybe you’d live someplace in the Middle regions, too. Texas was way too hot sometimes in the summer and you’d really like to be able to see snow for yourself in the winter every year.
“Would you care to elaborate?” Rose’s voice is still soft, her book placed off to the side.
You think your mom would have a collection of classic movies, in old black and white. She’d be a sucker for those—she wouldn’t even have a reason. She’d just really like them.
“You can’t not be okay if you’re the same as you’ve always been. You can’t have never been okay. At some point you’re okay, at the time when you’re at you’re very best, or at the very least not your very worst. So if you’re always the same, then you’re always okay, I guess.”
Your dad wouldn’t be the kind of dad to really like sports. He’d like shows like Friends, and he’d be the kind of dad to have the entire Blu-Ray set in a big set that he’d keep up with your mom’s black and whites’.
“That doesn’t mean you’re okay. If you’re upset or at all displeased with your current situation, then you’re not okay. You’re simply being,” Rose pauses for only a second. “Would you say that you are okay, or would you say that you are simply being?”
And your house would be painted. It’d be painted a warm color, like red. You’re pretty good with a red house. You’d be an only child.
“…I wouldn’t say I’m not okay.”
“But you wouldn’t say that you’re okay, either?”
“I guess not.” You shrug from down where you’re slouched. Rose doesn’t pry any further for a long pause of silence. You aren’t entirely sure if she’s trying to prompt you on or if she’s simply at a loss for what to say. That’d make two of you, though. You aren’t sure what to say. You want to badly for her to know what all he did, to tell her everything that you’re afraid of. You want her to assure you that no one here is like that in a way that would make it so that you couldn’t deny it anymore. You have a feeling that’s all you’re going to say for now. You’re pretty sure Rose is getting that vibe, too.
She lets you off the hook without making you say anything else. You have a feeling the conversation isn’t over, though.
//
Online, offline, online, offline, online, offline, online, offline.
He’s been going on and off all day. You don’t know if he’s just periodically checking his messages and holding conversations or what, but he hasn’t remained online for more than twenty minutes all day.
You aren’t sure why you’re watching Pesterchum to see who’s online. Usually when you get in one of these moods you just talk to John or Rose or Jade.
You can’t really talk to John or Jade, though, so you’ve just been staring at Pesterchum all day in the futile hope that if you stare hard enough for long enough they’ll come online and you can chat with them like you used to and everything will be Okay and Just Fine.
Except they don’t come online.
And it would seem Karkat’s reached the end of his online, offline, online, offline game. So you take the next best option. You go and actually hold a conversation with him. He convinces you to watch one of his shitty romcoms. You actually have a Pretty Decent Time.
You have a whole lot more fun with him when you’re not constantly trying to pester the hell out of him, you realize. You’re no longer poking the bear with the stick.
Rose still hasn’t made you talk about anything.
Sometimes you bring things up when you’re around her. Nothing big yet, just little things, little things to let her know that you’re desperate for validation and that you long for just a little bit of affection. She gives more than is asked of her, offering you little words of support and affection in the form of little words and small things that she alchemizes and affectionate flicks and pokes.
One night you hesitate for a full minute before enveloping her in a hug and then absconding to your room.
The next time you saw her she’d wrapped you up in one back and hadn’t let you squirm away.
And the longer you spend lingering with Rose and watching bad movies with Karkat, the less you feel the need to poke the bear with the stick.
You still do, sometimes. And still, nothing ever happens.
You’re not willing to just let it go. You’re not willing to just forget everything that happened your entire life up until now, but you’re willing to stop thinking about that right now and just watch Much Ado About Nothing with your shouty new friend.