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The ironies in death

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You have a lot of names, or technically a lot of variations of the same name, but the one you think you started off with was Dave. Dave Strider. First you were just Dave, but then it all became so complicated, at you were Alpha Dave and Beta Dave and Davesprite and Dave and Strider all at the same time, and it was just so confusing.

But right now you were just Dave Strider. It took a huge weight of your shoulders to know who you were for once, but not enough to ease the pain of finally seeing John. You guys used to talk so much, and then SBURB came and fucked it all up, and you lost contact with him completely. Next thing you know Jade is telling you John was killed by Jack, and all you could think was why the hell did he fly off into the lair of a boss he knew he couldn’t defeat.

And you hated him. Hated him for leaving you, hated him for being so lovable, hated him for getting the game. You hated Rose for making him play the game, hated Jade for helping, but most of all you hated yourself. You hated yourself for just sitting tight in your room, following everything on your computer, watching people fight, watching people die. You hated yourself right now, as your hand was pressed up against the cold, hard screen, watching the life draining out of John as he tried to do something with his life millions of miles away.

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Your name is Dave Strider and your John just exploded. Well, you guessed he wasn’t your John, but… Egbert just blew up. Blew up in his Wise Guy Slime Suit, blew up while talking to you. That was the worst part. He was trying to tell you something important and then BAM.

Disconnect.

You tried to talk to him for a few minutes, asking him what was up, but then you got a message from Rose. With the coolness of some kind of oblivious bastard, you opened her message.

TT: John’s rocket just exploded.

You didn’t respond to that, because honestly you had no response. You just changed back to John’s message, watching the little bar at the bottom change from Last message sent two seconds ago. To A few seconds ago. To A few minutes ago. Then you closed it, opened it and stared at his blue text, and then closed it again. You wanted to shout at him. You wanted to find where he was, grab him by the shoulders and scream at him. Ask him what the fuck he was doing, did he know how much this hurt you. How could he be so selfish as to just get himself killed like that wasn’t he thinking about you? But of course he wasn’t, he was dead. You laughed, a cold, bitter laugh, and turned off the monitor.

Fuck John.

Fuck Rose and Jade and SBURB. Fuck the meteors, fuck feeling and fuck caring.

Fuck all of it, you thought as you walked over to your turntables, running your hand along the smooth black surface. You went around your turntables, looking at the floor, your bed, opening your closet and giving a very thorough search for apple juice just to keep your mind off of things if only for a second. And then a letter fell to your feet. You looked at it, the faded blue ink, the messy hand writing, the shitty drawing, and you picked it up. Picked it up like it was the most fragile thing in the world. Read it over, the words meaningless to you now.

And then you ripped it in half with a satisfying motion, tearing it and tearing it until it was just little scraps of paper floating to the ground at your feet. You left your room, left the ripped up letter, left your computer and your thoughts of John.

No use caring about something you couldn’t have.

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Your name is Dave Strider, but you prefer the title “Knight of Time”, because sometimes you just need to be a pompous ass. Everybody should try being a pompous ass sometime, it’s really satisfying. But right now you’re not thinking about that, you’re thinking something more along the lines of ‘life is unfair’. Sure, you should probably be celebrating not being dead, even if you’re stuck on a fucking meteor for three years with a bunch of trolls, but celebrating is for pussies.

And besides, John’s on a different fucking meteor.

He’s with Jade, and you’re pretty sure he had the chance to travel to this meteor, but he decided to stay with Jade. Sure, valiant and all that shit but come on, John does he have any idea how long you’ve been waiting for him? Way too long. You’d kill to see him, just a glimpse of him just once before you all get killed. That’d be nice. But then again, you’ve killed a lot already, so it’s not exactly a good incentive for how much you want to see him. To give him a light punch on the shoulder, to steal his glasses and watch him stumble around with a confused look on his face as he blinked and tried to see. You laughed just thinking about it.

But that wasn’t going to happen, because John wasn’t here and you weren’t there and neither of you were with the other. Period. End of sentence, end of story.

And right now you were tired. Tired is bad for being a pompous ass, because you’re not fast enough to make snappy comebacks, so you just sink to the level of an asshole. Assholes are bad; no one’s ever amused by an asshole. So you kind of kicked off the ground, floated around until you reached a window and floated into it. It was a sparse room, basically nothing in it but a thick layer of dust, and you were okay with that. You didn’t really want anyone to bother you. So you sat on the ground, leaning your head against the wall and closing your eyes, thinking you’d only rest for a moment…

When you woke up, it was cold. Cold and wet and windy, and you jumped up, looking around. You were… genuinely excited, because you were sure this was the Land of Wind and Shade, which was pretty damn cool. And then you realized that you weren’t actually here. Or… this wasn’t actually here. This was a dreambubble.

You just sank to the ground again, feeling the wetness through your clothing and on your skin. It was just you here, and you guessed that was okay. And it made you feel the slightest bit better that John was in a place just like this once.

And then you wandered by, rubbing your forehead with the palms of your hands and muttering under your breath. Except it wasn’t really you, and you relaxed the slightest bit as you realized it was just a copy. Beta Dave or whatever. He wouldn’t bother you. And then another Dave walked by, and you sat up straighter. You really hoped a huge mob of Daves wasn’t about to walk by. That would just kind of fuck everything up. But it seemed to just be those Daves and you, and as they spotted your hunched, cloaked figure against a rock they wandered over.

“Yo.” One of them called as they approached.

“Hey.” You replied, eyeing them warily behind your sunglasses. You didn’t feel like talking, you just wanted to soak up whatever John was left in here.

“So. This is probably one of the nicest places I’ve ever been, to be honest. John has a sweet place.”

“I guess so.” You looked at the Daves again. They didn’t seem to be trying to take in the land as widely as you were, but they also hadn’t reached God Tier and were from different timelines, so maybe the had their Johns. One of the Daves seemed to be staring at you, kind of intensely, and you just tried to make yourself smaller.

“How’d he die?” He finally asked.

“What?”

“Your John, how did he die?” He seemed to take your silence as sadness. “It’s okay, can’t be much worse than mine. Egbert blew up while I was talking to him. Damn it, that was harsh.” He shrugged. “But I’m over it. The past is behind us, and shit. The game is over, John’s dead and I’m just waiting until Jack finds and kills me too.” He stopped talking and looked at the cold night sky for a few seconds.

“The end of the world can’t be so bad if you’re dead, right?”

The three of you lapsed into silence before the other Dave spoke up.

“Jack killed my John. Just a short and sweet stabbing, right in front of his God Tier bed, I think. It really sucked, because I didn’t even get a copy of SBURB. I can’t stop thinking of ways to blame people, to blame Rose for making him play, to blame my Bro for not letting me use his copy, to blame the game for it getting lost in the fucking mail.” He sighed; it was more annoyed than depressed. “But if I’d only gotten my hands on a copy of the game. Maybe I could have saved him.”

Silence again.

“Well… shit this is awkward.” You stared at them and their complete and total acceptance of John’s death. You couldn’t imagine you ever being able to cope with it like that. But technically there was evidence of you being able to do it right in front of your eyes.

“What?”

“Well my John’s not dead. He’s just… unimaginably far away, on a meteor, with a lot of people none of which are me.” You stared at them, trying to make your face completely deprived of emotion, as the Daves in front of you registered surprise and shock. Then one laughed, punching you on the arm harder than was necessary.

“Well fuck you, man. What the hell are you doing here, sulking? Get the hell back there and make his survival mean something!” And then he punched you again, all but grinning. The other Dave nodded to you too, and you felt the cold seeping away as you blinked your eyes open in the same dusty room you fell asleep in. You stood up, your throat dry and your eyes heavy, but you didn’t want to sleep again.

Because it was time to get the fuck out there and win this game.