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The first thing he said to you was "shit, I owe Rose a lobotomy".
You stared at him.
"What?"
"To be more precise, I owe her one hour prime time with my brain, a romantic one-on-one candlelit dinner overlooking the world we built together, spilling all our - or I guess, my - deepest darkest secrets out over the world's freshest wine. Fermented, centuries old, moldy wine, I mean. Fresh wine is just fucking grape juice."
Then he stared at you, your orange feathers and legless form, and you could do nothing but stare back. Haggard, yes; a whole lot fucking older, yes; but he was still the same goddamn sarcastic prick. He still clenched and unclenched his left hand out of habit, maybe reaching for a sword that wasn't there, and for all that he tried to keep a straight face, he still thinned his lips before letting it go and chewing on it in turn. But there were things he did that you (or any other Dave, really) never did: an unlit cigarette hanging from one corner of his mouth, waving in the air from his ministrations; face unshaven, a soul patch that you hope to God is ironic in some shape or form; a sort of resignedness in the way he pushed his shades up to look at you that reminded you more of yourself (but somehow not of Dave).
He was the most authentically Dave Dave you'd ever seen.
He opened the door.
"Come on. Get inside before some nosy jackass decides to take a photo and sell it to some shitstain paper. There's only so many times I can pretend that everything is somehow a part of some upcoming ironically shitty movie before people start realizing I'm the shitty movie. It's me."
"Shenanigans," you said, over a pizza you couldn't really taste. You weren't sure whether it was because the pizza was over a week old and tasted like cardboard either way, or because your piece of shit game construct brain insisted on breaking it down into lines of information instead of breaking it down into the mulchy shit that sits in your stomach, but you hoped it was the former, because if there was one thing you could count on, it was on there being dozens of bottles of apple juice in the fridge.
(You still haven't gotten around to drinking some.)
"That's a shitty fucking excuse," he shot back, chewing his slice of pepperoni with slightly more enthusiasm. You shrugged, taking the movement to readjust your position on the chair, which was just short of being uncomfortable enough to pass for a slab of rock. Technically, you could just float, but as it was, he kept looking at you like he couldn't really believe that you were there, or that he didn't really want to believe you were. He still does, sometimes.
"Look, I don't know how I got here. If I did, I wouldn't still be here. I floated off through paradox space, doing jack all, then suddenly the fabric of time and space is Joseph's technicolor dreamcoat and by the power of the good lord I got my ass dumped here." You punctuated your speech with a bite out of your pizza. "Miracles."
He groaned.
"No, I'm fucking done hearing about miracles. They're exactly what we need less of. Anyway, I only vaguely know what you're talking about from Rose, and she'd steeped it under a whole fucking city of metaphor and snarky horseshit. She'd never mentioned something like this happening."
Alright, so it turned out you were on much more uneven ground than you thought, but in the wrong direction.
"You know what happened?"
You could feel his gaze settle on you from behind his shades and he paused, fifth pizza slice hovering before his open mouth. There was a sodden piece of pepperoni cinched between his bottom teeth, but it was gone in a flurry of chapped lips as he started talking again.
"Rose does. Kind of. Wrote a whole book on it. Holy shit, chill out, obviously none of the names are the same, and like I said, a whole city of metaphor and shit. Seriously dude, what the hell do you take us for."
His shades had slipped down somewhat, and from above the golden rims you could see him squint at you.
"You're really me, though. From another universe. Another timeline."
You pulled your wings closer to yourself. He wasn't though. Not in the way that your alpha Dave was really you. He didn't have a pile of doomed Daves vying for the alpha position, wondering where the fuck they'd gone wrong and what they were supposed to do know. This Dave, from some weird alpha universe, was singular. Different. Someone you could never have become and someone who had never been you.
You're really not him at all.
"I could say the same about you."
The two of you fell silent.
Something buzzed faintly in the distance and he swore, and in a flash he was off. A door closed, and though he was speaking quietly, presumably taking a call, you could still make out the sounds. Words even, here and there. Probably some sprite bullshit. You took the moment to survey the apartment.
It was even worse than your apartment. Papers lying everywhere, shitty swords abundant and piercing the plaster and floors. You thought there were a lot of cables and wires lying around in your apartment; this guy made it look like yours was a patch of grass in the sidewalk compared to his Amazon Jungle. At the very least, there wasn't the danger of tripping over them; you floated over them with ease. Still had a sweet set of turntables, but you didn't touch them. There were cans and bottles scattered all over the apartment, and the smell of smoke was pungent. What the hell happened to Dave Strider?
(What a fucking joke.)
You picked up a paper.
You picked up on a sentence spoken in the other room.
"Why the fuck are you living in an apartment?" you said, the moment he stepped back into view. He stopped, and you couldn't tell if it was because of your question or because he'd almost stepped on a bottle. He flash-stepped into his seat and slowly, you went over to sit across him.
"What's the point of living in a mansion? I'm by myself. It's a waste of space and a waste of money. Plus, I don't need to draw more attention to this prime meat. I got everything I need right here."
You didn't feel like arguing; he's you, and you didn't see the point of having something ridiculously unironic like a mansion, either. You were still thinking about what he'd said earlier. You stared at each other, then he sat back, and shit did he look smug.
"You're not gonna find any copy of that book in this apartment, you can't leave the apartment to go get one, and Rose makes extra sure that any copies online are totally eradicated. Get. Wrecked."
You were gonna fucking strangle him.
"I can't believe you still make those shitty SBAHJ comics," you say, coming up behind him, and it's an entirely facetious statement because duh, he's Dave fucking Strider. It's practically part of the job description, regardless of make or model.
"They're ironic."
"They're shitty, and we both know it."
The sun is setting through the blinds, the orange glow setting his eyes aflame, and he looks tired as all hell, stubble worse than ever and the bags under his eyes looking more like a migrant's luggage, and maybe that's why he smiles for you then.
You've been stuck in this goddamn alternate universe for more than a few weeks at this point. He isn't in the apartment a lot; off rebelling against a sea troll or whatever. Running the presses, being famous. You're kind of impressed, and also kind of jealous, but not in the way you thought you'd be. When he is in the apartment, you'd expect him to grudgingly tolerate your presence and for both of you to go about your own business in an easy silence (or mumbled rapping), the same way any other Dave in your own universe would have done.
He doesn't.
He always stares at you like he's trying to break you into parts and trying to understand you by systematizing you. Well, you've got his work cut out for him; you're lines of code and a small part of a larger system that'll slowly take him, too. Sometimes you'll feel something brush against your wings or tail, but whenever you turn around, you'll see him at his table, tapping away at the wood casually with earphones in. Too casually. It's fucking rude, but you think if that's all he did, you would've been fine with it.
He talks to you.
Not even in that deliberately nonchalant manner that embarrasses the everliving shit out of you (and makes you wonder if you ever acted like that, and you realize yes, yes you fucking did and if you'll have one thing to say to Dave when you get back, it'll be 'do not'). It's as if he channeled all the mumbled rapping of every Dave in this universe that didn't exist and actually used it to talk instead. You can barely mumble to yourself as it is without him butting in with something that is somehow just slightly off-key, recognizably Dave but not and it bothers you that you're not bothered about it. He talks about himself a lot, what he's doing and what's going on with the world. It actually helps you understand what's going on a lot more, but you can't help but get the perpetual sense of 'I've already heard this, Jesus Christ, why are you telling me this', worse than you'd usually get with other Daves. His movies are shit, that's nothing new; the public is shit for not getting it, that's nothing new either, dude, come on; he's still technically kind of a knight, he's martial nobility, aren't you a knight, what the hell am I supposed to call you, and you'd reply no, he's not a Knight, you're not a Knight, jesus just call me Dave and he'd sputter and say that's fucking weird and you'd realize other Daves never called each other by name, either.
You're starting to realize you might be talking back to him even more than he's talking to you.
"If the public has anything to say about it, then it's clearly the best fucking piece of literature of the century. It's a cinematic masterpiece."
"You're shitting me."
"Nope. Got another film in the oven. Why'd you think I've been rolling in so much dough?"
"Dunno. Thought maybe you had some kinda puppet porn empire running in the back."
He turns to look at you then, coffee almost spilling out of his stained mug and he laughs, pulling you closer by the cheek and a thrill of terror runs through your spine, but he just smushes his cheeks into yours and that's even worse, this is completely unsalvageable and this is so far from being ironic that it is.
"What the fuck? I've never thought of that before."
It's kind of surreal to have another, older, different Dave tell you that.
Your chest tightens.
"Then sit the fuck down and let me learn you something."
"Do you think he'll hate me?" he says one night, sitting on the edge of the roof. You're actually even more conspicuous in the dark due to your perpetual orange glow, but you really do not give a shitting fuck and fly over to sit next to him anyway.
"Aren't you worried you're giving me spoilers? Maybe I don't know what you're talking about."
He snorts. "I'm pretty sure we're good. Knight of Time and all. Though I guess I'm not."
"I'm not, either," you scoff back, nudging his shoulder with yours and he laughs. The headlights of the cars below reflect dimly in his shades.
You know nothing about his brother - alternate timeline Bro. Not anything he'd want to know, anyway; only what ARquiusprite told you. Beyond what he'd done in the game - managed to completely flip a dead session and go god tier - you know nothing about him. If he - Dirk - is anything like he said (or anything like ARquiusprite, really), then he may be an even bigger asshole than your own bro. You kinda want to tell him that. He probably doesn't need to be told.
You curl your tail around his ankle.
"My bro cut a meteor in half for me."
He looks at you. You stare at the cars passing below. You wonder if sprites can dream.
"He'd sometimes fucking attack me out of nowhere and he stuck swords in the microwave. I couldn't take a fucking step in that goddamn apartment without getting bombarded with shitty ass puppets."
You don't look at him as you take a deep breath. "He wasn't a normal kind of guy; he was fuckin' weird as all hell. He watched shows about ponies, he rapped and was generally a huge dick. We made forts out of bricks and he taught me how to fight and how to make music. Even after I got turned into some sort of game construct sprite feathery abomination he didn't treat me any different, he was still a major asshole and he fought next to me like I was still Dave. Maybe in a way he never would have with the actual Dave. He wasn't an affectionate type of guy and he was always busy but he was always there for me, and."
He wraps his arms around you tight and he's trembling, and you wrap your wings around him in turn.
"I thought game constructs couldn't cry," he says, but he's buried his nose into your hair and you hug him back.
"He cares," you say.
If you feel something seeping into your ruffled feathers, you say nothing.
After a long while, he says, "at least now I know what to do with all those fucking smuppets you made."
His credit card details are the same as Bro's. It'd be easy to get a hold of that book, but you don't.
It turns out you don't have to.
Wordlessly, he drops the book onto the table in front of you.
You've both come to the same conclusion. You've been here for months now, doing nothing but playing video games and watching shitty shows, unable to leave the apartment without drawing suspicion, trying to figure out how the hell you got here and how the hell you're supposed to get out. You're not the Knight of Time anymore; in any case, time travel wouldn't work. The logical conclusion was that something had gone wrong with the fabric of paradox space, and you'd been ejected here. You were out of your session and out of your power. You couldn't go back.
"But you can stay," he'd said, back when you argued. It was inevitable; there was no iteration with which Dave Strider couldn't argue with. He wanted you stay; you couldn't. It's fucking ironic that now he's the one leaving. He'd come back with blood on his sword and a dimness to his eyes one night, maybe forgetting that you didn't really have to sleep or maybe just not caring. You don't argue anymore.
"When the kids get born, the game will start. You'll be back where you left off."
You didn't say that two of the kids had already in fact been born, but you also didn't say that by this point in time they'd already made it into the game. You'd missed your chance. You didn't want to bring it up.
"Dirk doesn't get born for hundreds of fucking years. What the hell am I supposed to do until then? Twiddle my thumbs?"
"I don't know. I don't know," he said, pulling his hair, and the cigarette hanging from his lips was still unlit but more nicotine patches littered his arms than ever. "But there's nothing else we can do. I'm going to die,"
you clenched your fists,
"and there'll be no one to protect the apartment."
"You fucking selfish prick," and you were definitely shaking at this point, but if there was one thing you'd gotten better at since diverging from the alpha timeline it was keeping your voice steady regardless of how rattled you were, "you just get to throw your life away and throw away your responsibility and I'm stuck here, somewhere I'm not supposed to be?"
"It's what needs to happen!"
It's the closest he'd ever come to yelling, but you didn't flinch. His shades had been cast off, but he wouldn't look at you, couldn't bear to be reminded of what you represented, what he'd have to do. What he'd leave behind. He clenched and unclenched his hands, closed his eyes, and you both counted to three.
"I'm not the Knight and you're not the Knight, but we both know this is the only way it can happen. How the hell else had the apartment lasted so long - in the middle of the fucking ocean, no less? How the hell else did he manage to raise himself on a planet with no fucking people? Don't pretend you don't care. We both know there's no other way."
And there wasn't.
Presently, he says, "no point withholding it now. Dirk'll have it, and you'll be there anyhow, so. Guess it can't hurt."
You don't move to take it.
"I'll save it for later. Got a lot of time on my side."
He tries to smile. He can't.
It's part of being the Knight of Time. There's an alpha timeline, and if you're not in it, you're fucked. But sometimes, even the alpha has to get knocked down, all according to some twisted plan of karma masquerading as fate, as if you're the butt of some cosmic joke everyone's in on except you, and this time, there's no god tier to save you.
"Maybe you can become a sprite," you say, drawing closer to him and sliding your arms around his waist. "Be part of the Feathery Asshole Brigade."
"Don't see the downside," he says back, murmuring into your hair. His fingers thread through the feathers in your wing and you sigh into his collarbone. "Get some nifty wings and some sweet powers. Don't have to keep bleaching regrowth."
"Still won't live forever."
He squeezes you tighter.
"No one does."
You don't move for a long, long time.
In the future, you'll meet Rose for the first time. She's still Rose in the same way Dave is still Dave, and she'll eye you curiously and ask you more questions than really seems necessary (which will be a whole fucking lot, because you're an alternate sprite version of an alternate universe version of her ectobiological brother), and will look extremely pleased with herself when you confirm them.
She'll talk to him in hushed tones, her feet barely touching his underneath the table and their brows creased, every once in a while glancing over to you and her voice will get louder when she does. You half expect the hug she gives Dave, which he returns with no hesitation, fingers grasping desperately at the stiff fabric of her coat, but you won't expect the hug she gives you, and you'll pretend you're not thinking of your Rose from your doomed timeline, pretend she's not a Rose that doesn't exist anymore, and you'll pretend you can't feel the tears.
You'll kiss him for the first time while he's bent over in the shower with a showerhead in his hand, washing the dye out of his hair and he'll stare at you, wide-eyed and awed, before laughing and fucking spraying you with freezing water. When you crawl into his bed afterward, there'll be no firsts about it; it's all routine.
Towards the end he gets busier and busier but the time you spend together becomes infinitely precious. You'll both become less reserved in your affections but neither of you can bring yourselves to say 'I love you'. You both will laugh just thinking about it, because seriously, how fucking narcissistic can you get?
You'll hear it anyway. God knows you need it.
You'll start taking birds into the apartment, saying you'll turn it into a conservation park or a Noah's Ark. He'll complain, but he doesn't look through the papers they shit on anymore. He'll get a faraway look in his eyes when you bring more crows in. You'll feel less lonely when you do, but will feel less like Dave than ever. You'll wonder about seagulls.
You drink apple juice for the first time in a long while.
In the future, he'll have left all his stuff inside but less haphazard, in a way that you couldn't lose it even if you'd decided to make a nest. The DVDs will be on the shelves, sometimes in alphabetical order and sometimes in order of release date, his clothes will be folded and arranged but his bed will constantly remain unmade. His swords will be stacked and his turntables polished. He'll go over again and again on how to maintain the house. You won't see the way he looks at you when you can't see him.
You'll kiss him for the last time as he walks out the door with only one sword in his hand, and you'll feel him shaking as he cups the back of your head and you'll remember a time when you played the game and stared out into a hopeless void.
In the future, Dave Strider will die.
For now, you don't think of the years you'll spend alone, watching a city sink and building upwards like you're still playing the game. You do not think of the drones you'll have to fight off, of an alien empress who has the power to bury you but never does. You do not think of the boy you will raise, and you do not think of where you'll go once you have.
For now, you content yourself with burrowing into his side, using your wings to keep both of you warm and to keep him closer. You coil your tail around his legs and he smiles, lines smoothed by the torpor of sleep and his hair mussed against the mattress, the pillow pushed off to the floor. He bumps his head to yours, and his gross ass soul patch is itchy as all hell, but you don't move. He pulls you closer by the waist and you breathe to the same slow, steady rhythm.
For now, you have this.
"Good night."