Work Text:
Dave had a phase with Greek myths when he was in middle school. A fugue of obsessive reading and inspiration. He liked the stories of the gods’ wrath, the way innocent mortals had to make do with the chaos beyond their control. How they survived the consequences.
The thing people always forget about the Minotaur is that it came before the labyrinth. The maze was just a punishment for it daring to be born different. Born a monster.
Is that what Dave is? Born a monster, only building up more walls to the prison he’s been in since he can remember? Maybe that’s who he’s always been, both Minos and Minotaur, Daedalus and Theseus. Creator, harbinger, and victim.
It feels wrong to call himself a victim in all of this. He did it to himself, after all. Only… at first, the walls were so fun, a nice challenge to distract him from the things outside that he didn’t understand. A meandering pastime, a game.
Then he became protective. No, not just protective. Possessive. It was his maze, after all. He'd worked so hard on it-- others would only dirty it up and try to knock down the walls, barrel straight through to the center. He just wanted to keep them out. They weren’t supposed to die. He just… needed them to go away. They kept coming in and in despite his warnings, as polite as he tried to be, as much as he begged, until it became easier to just make it too dangerous to come in at all. The only way to keep people out that actuallly worked. And it worked so well. Even on himself, he thinks as he clenches his creaking cardboard hand.