Chapter Text
Your name is Dave Strider, and you are getting the hell out of Dodge. Exiting the fuck outta Houston, Texas. Your bag is packed, sword is sheathed, shades in place. It’s sometime past 4am so technically you’re eighteen now. Technically, once you’re out the door, no one can make you come back.
Not even Bro.
You know that when he wakes up he’ll know everything that’s happened. The cameras are always recording. That’s why you put all of this together at the very last second, once you were certain Bro was asleep. Then it’s a simple matter of breaking your bedroom window (Bro had it sealed shut when you tried to run three years ago) and climbing down.
Plus side of constant strifing with Bro: you know how to get down a wall. Even from the top floor of an apartment complex.
There’s alarms going off as you make your hasty exit through the broken window, cutting yourself on the glass several times. You quickly make your way down, hoping, begging, that Bro won’t reach ground level before you.
He isn’t there when your feet hit the asphalt, and you don’t waste any time waiting. You run for the road and follow the bus stops until the first one comes rolling up to you, two hours later. The driver squints at you suspiciously as you fumble out change. You only have a vague idea of how money actually works, from watching movies. Bro always paid for things himself. This is all stolen from him.
“I need to get away from here,” you tell the driver.
She sees the blood dripping down your arm. You’d forgotten about it until now. You think, maybe she can see how young you are, too. Don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing.
“How old are you, son?” she asks you, voice soft. She isn’t pulling away from the curb. Your fingers twitch nervously.
“Eighteen,” you reply, keeping your face blank. “So how far can you take me?”
“That depends.” She’s still studying you. Actually seeing an adult's eyes is kinda disconcerting. “Do you have a passport?”
You have no idea what that is. “Um, no.”
“There’s a Greyhound station on my route. That’ll take you out of state.” She finally looks away from you, turning back to face the route. The lights at the end of the still-empty street change color. “Sound good to you, kid?”
“Yeah.”
You don’t say anything else. You think your voice might crack if you try. You’re doing this. You’re actually getting away.
You catch a railing when the driver pulls away from the curb, and when you glance back you can see Bro running up the sidewalk.
You can hardly breathe for how much the sight of him scares you.
You flip him off.
-
You are cold. You are stupid cold. Heading north in fucking December, what were you thinking?! Just that you remember John lives somewhere in Washington, your ex-best friend who you haven’t talked to since you were thirteen. You always thought his dad seemed pretty cool.
Now you’re freezing your ass off in Seattle. Nobody’s tried to steal from you, at least. Folks usually don’t seem to be prepared to fuck with a sword. But this is hard. You didn’t bring enough clothes. You didn’t think about shampoo. You didn’t look for a blanket or a tent or some-fucking-thing to use as shelter. You didn’t bring food. Your sword means nobody trusts you and you can’t go into a shelter, either.
You, Dave Strider, are an incompetent ignoramus.
And you’re down to your last greasy burger.
Your uselessly cold fingers eventually tear the wrapper off and you go in, thinking vaguely about how you might start using your sword tomorrow as some kinda highway robbery shtick. But your last greasy burger isn’t there.
Your last greasy burger is in the claws of a big, round, smug as fuck crow.
You swear, lurching up to your feet and sprinting across the street after it. Come on, a crow that fat can’t be fast, it just can’t, that would be way too humiliating--
You’re airborne.
And then you’re not.