Chapter Text
i. dont open this box until youre thirteen (im serious you little shit)
This is his legacy.
A collection of godawful pixelated movies, his masterpiece and his resistance. A few swords, handpicked, some with notes attached to them—haha this things a bendy piece of shit dont use it except for training or i almost lost my dick to this thing or her name is martha treat her with some fucking respect. A lifetime stock of orange soda, all different brands, filling up the pantries and any room otherwise left unused. Different boxes with different labels, instructing you when and where to open them. Alchemized jpeg pieces of shit and brief instructions on how to make them.
There's other stuff—your shades for instance, and Lil Cal, you suppose, since he was left here by your brother, and the fabric he's left you next to the TV—and most of it is shit you haven't found a use for yet.
But it's all you have, and loneliness is an odd feeling for a child.
Temerity, on the other hand, is not, especially when this brand of temerity comes with a fuck all attitude towards authority.
There is one box that you've been particularly curious about, if only because its DO NOT OPEN label is large compared to the others. It's all over the fucking thing, too; plastered with MY NAME IS stickers, only in the name part your brother has put various meanings of dont open this shit. Somewhere, there's a footnote adding: ok you can open it but you better have 13 years on that motherfucking clock got it junior
You do not have thirteen years on the clock. You barely have eight.
In creating the box, your brother must have wasted approximately fourteen rolls of scotch tape. It's taped haphazardly, overlapping at some points and crisscrossing this way and that.
It is two in the morning on a Tuesday in the middle of autumn. You have watched your brother's movies seventeen times each over the span of four years and have completed all the learning books and programs he left you. As you understand it, it was meant to bring you to the end of high school, or whatever the equivalent is now that the world doesn't quite work the way it used to.
Ever since you finished it about a week ago, you've been terribly bored. Swimming only provides so much entertainment and even at this age you know there's danger associated with it. Too many close calls in Atlantis.
It is two in the morning, and you really have nothing else to do. Scrounging up a pair of scissors doesn't take long—you cut your own hair—but opening the box does.
You settle for completely dismantling the box, tearing apart the flaps and cutting through layers of flaps and stickers and labels and post-it notes. Inside you find several items, but foremost, a DVD. Beneath it are books and folders, notebooks and binders, files and all sorts of thing that hardly interest you.
The DVD, on the other hand, is immediately put on play.
Static hisses across the screen for at least fourteen seconds before the movie plays. It isn't a movie, you quickly realize, as this is not your brother's creation. This is your brother.
He looks like he hasn't slept in weeks. Months, even. In his pictures, he's always had his shades on; now, they're off.
Your eyes with his make the color of the sunset.
He's been crying. He is crying, present tense, and he makes a hasty attempt to wipe his eyes with the back of his palm. The lighting is too low to make out what's behind him, but the camera occasionally shakes and static is frequent.
"I'm sorry," he starts, voice thick. It's not the first time you've heard him speak. You've seen interviews, heard him rap, used his voice to help you fall asleep.
But it was never like this.
"I'm so sorry, we tried so goddamn hard—Rose and me, we waited for you. For both of you. We thought you were gonna come, that we'd be able to protect you—and now I have to tell you this, and I'm sorry."
You cross your legs and pull Cal to your chest, hugging him tightly. Your eyes remain on the screen.
He begins to tell a story.
All the stories you've heard prior to this are simple ones. Fairytales. Not the original ones in their grotesque forms, the ones where the princess finds her love and everything is alright. Kid's stories, now that you think about it, unrealistic but reassuring nonetheless. Cartoons like those made you feel ready to take on the world, to fight a dragon and save everyone, to become a hero and be admired as one.
This is not one of those stories.
This is a story where he sometimes stops just so he can cry more. The tears clog his nose and throat and eyes, his voice goes nasally, his hiccups echo, and it's the most terrifying thing you've seen in your life.
The second is the story itself. He tells of an alien queen, of an earth that was once inhabited to the brim with humans just like you and just like him, and there was a cold-hearted woman named Rose Lalonde and a soft-hearted one named Jade Harley and a silly man called John Egbert. Out of all three, he talks the most about Rose, and even at this age you can tell that he loves her very dearly. Loved.
He tells you of a game he played with his friends and how it's the very same game you will play with yours. You know these friends. You have been speaking to them for two years and you like them very much, but this game sounds terrifying.
You don't want to play it.
Dave ends the video with a choked "I love you" and it takes four years for you to realize this video was taken the night before he went to fight the Condesce.