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It’s just before they land the final blow on Caliborn that you realize the final fuck you the game has in store for everyone. Time slows down to thousandths of seconds. Everyone around you is still and only blinking reveals that anything is still moving. You stare at the combined efforts of twenty four trolls, eight humans, a disembodied Cherub, and too many doomed oddities. You realize that this is it and this is all SBurb is ever going to let you have. A few moments of victory and then… absolutely nothing.
You look at your other self, the one that will survive this game when it crumbles apart and takes you with it. Dave doesn’t realize. He doesn’t know because the innate knowledge of the game, the riddles of cheat codes and garbled walkthroughs don’t sing in his ears tenfold like they do yours. You can’t not know the truth.
You look at your orange hands. You’re the only one that knows. You’re the only one who can change this. You know what you have to do. You know what you can do. It’ll tear you apart, but why does that matter? You’d be going down with the game anyway if you do nothing, a collection of ones and zeros slowly getting saved over by newer, more useful files. You weren’t going to escape with all of them no matter what and you’ve been pretty good about doing what you have to anyway.
You even gave up being human to make sure the session progressed positively. Gave up any hope of surviving this miserable excuse for an MMO. You’ve already severed your ill fated relationship with Jade (which had been pure selfishness in the first place, you know that, you just wanted it for a little while) and you’d been careful not to get too close to anyone else without antagonizing them. They’ll get over you. They won’t miss you. They were all Dave’s friends anyway.
You take a strengthening breath and then you leave them. You have a second of real time to do this, unlimited subjective. You can do this. You can give them the ending they deserve.
There’s nothingness waiting for you when you reach out the first time. A void of space, even lacking in stars. It’s waiting to be built and none of them realized it had to be built directly by players, a contingency for the way five different sessions had clashed together into a tangled clusterfuck of who the hell even knows. They are too focused on Jack Noir and the Condesce and Lord English, but you can build this yourself. You can make sure this works.
You start at the beginning and finds John’s timeline. The ragged edges are easy to catch hold of and feel strangely familiar in your hands. You weave it into the space and heal the damage, coaxing it into becoming something real and alive again. It has to have a future and a long one at that. Your powers fight it because this is not what you are supposed to do but you bully it into working anyway. You use every cheat available to do the thing.
You look for Alternia but when you find it, it’s thready and unfamiliar. You can’t get a good hold of the slippery slick edges. They slide right through your fingers. Beforus does the same thing before merging oddly into Alternia’s timeline. You can see the way they wrap around each other and twist into something almost whole, even if it’s dead. You can’t wave them in easily but you at least connect them before turning to find more alternate Earths. There’s not much to salvage but you tug at strings you can reach and struggle to find their places within the surviving line, using them to boost and soothe the rough parts of the whole.
As you work, you feel bits and pieces of yourself disappearing. It’s the toll, you realize. You’re working outside your class. You’re changing your class. It’s tearing you apart, the way you knew it would.
The infinite cheat codes become less infinite and fade away with every subjective moment you spend on your task. A feather fades from existence and then another. Your tail shortens inch by numb inch. You’re losing yourself. It’s terrifying but you’d been a knight once and even if you aren’t anymore, you’re not about to let fear stop you from saving them. Your player will survive the game. Your friends will go with him. They’ll all survive.
Even straining your power, you know you don’t have much time. You don’t pause, don’t hesitate. You have to finish this, your greatest triumph. You have to make it viable. You aren’t Life aspected, but you make the new timeline live.
The last piece of you begins to fade the moment you finish.
You’re going
Going
Gone-
DAVE NO
There’s a flash of Jane and Feferi and Meenah and Jade but you’re not really seeing them so much as feeling them and it’s… It’s…
COME ON DAVE
It hurts and you don’t understand. You don’t know what’s happening. You feel like you’re being ripped apart all over again and you didn’t want this, you’re already done, why are they holding onto you. You’re not even their Dave. Why-
DON’T LET GO
You stop fighting.
WAKE UP
The first thing you notice is the weight, not the brightness. You’d gotten used to floating in a gravity vacuum and at first, you’re not even sure you can lift your fingers, much less move your body around. Your body is warm but buffeted by hard, rough surfaces that move faintly in the breeze that slides across your skin. You open your eyes and stare blearily through leaves and branches and cottony ex-flowers that tickle your nose. You swat at them when you start to sneeze but that throws off your balance and you topple off the limb you’d been resting on. You don’t manage to catch it afterward and when you hit the ground, pain streaks through your body. You curse and just lay there in the grass a second, wondering how you could have forgotten what pain was (why are you human again?) This is ridiculous you realize, and you start pushing yourself up but-
But-
You stare at it and then away and then you can’t keep your eyes off it because what- because how- because you can’t deny this and you knew there would be a consequence to what you’d done and how you’d gone against your own class, had actually forced a change of class, and you just… You didn’t think you’d survive to see consequences. You thought that would be it but now you’re looking at your left arm and it just ends halfway to your elbow and there’s nothing else there.
You don’t panic. You can’t. You’re a Strider. This is just… You’re a little unnerved. Maybe internally hysterical but you play it cool. You manage to get to your feet one handed and stumble because balance is a bitch and you’re not used to being grounded anymore. You kind of hate it. No, you really hate it. Your body feels heavy and wrong and the arm- You’re not going to think about the arm.
Can’t just keep standing here. You glance around and are so very grateful for your shades. You’d feel naked without them. There are people just walking around, cars on the street. It smells like heat and oil and asphalt. The afternoon sun beats down harsh and cruel on your skin and it is both sticky humid terrible and devastatingly wonderful. You feel alive again even if it’s not quite right. It’s okay. You’ll make it okay. You can do this.
You clench your fists and then realize you can’t because you only have one and you start to freak a little and then you don’t because you can’t. You can’t. You’re not allowed to freak out. You’re…
You need to get inside or you’re going to sunburn and that’ll hurt like a bitch. The grass strip you found yourself on is right outside your apartment building. You wonder if the elevator is still broken.
It is. You spend the next half hour swearing under your breath as you trudge up stair after stair after ridiculous goddamn stair and you are never leaving your room after this, not ever, not even if Bro fills it with smuppets. You will make a nest of them and park your skinny ass right in the middle of so much puppet dong and you will not be bothered at fucking all-
Bro.
You stumble over a step and lose your balance and end up leaning against the railing that you nearly topple over anyway. So not cool, but you don’t feel very cool right now. Even after three years, you can keenly remember watching Bro die and you… You just…
You take the last flight at a dead run even though you’re exhausted and you don’t want to face an empty apartment and what the hell are you even supposed to do without Bro around anyway? What the hell-
The door to the apartment opens just as your fingers reach it and you don’t manage to stop so you bounce right off a body and nearly topple right over the landing but a strong hand grips your wrist and steadies you. You’ve never been so humiliated.
You’ve never been so relieved.
Bro gives you a blank stare but you can see his brows flicker a micrometer above his shades. You recognize the quiet big brother glance over to make sure you’re alive and well and it lingers where you do not think about and then it’s over and you’re being dragged inside.
You’re almost immediately accosted by Terezi (what the hell is she doing here?!) and over her shoulder, you can see Dirk and- is that another Dirk? What? Tavros is on the futon looking as overwhelmed as you feel and there’s- you think that’s another Dave, an older Dave? And there’s Dave the original and wow, the apartment seemed crowded before but now it’s smothering. You kind of want to sneak past Bro and just run but you play it cool because hysteria does not equate Strider, no it doesn’t. You are still the coolest orange creamsicle. Well, you’re not orange anymore. You’re not sure why you feel wronged by that.
So, you must have gotten this right, sort of. You can deal with that. At least no one’s talking to you about it (you hope they don’t know because- well, then they might ask why and you can’t- you’d lose it if they ask you. You’re barely holding on right now.) You did it. You’re the hero.
You didn’t mean to survive this and now you’re going to have to figure out what to do with yourself.
Fan-fucking-tastic.