Reunion
Chapter One: A Strange Encounter
He had faced countless enemies alongside his teammates, had faced the equivalent of the Chimera in their Sessions and had helped conquered it, had worked to bring their struggling three Sessions together to the final screen of the Game to break into the real world again; to go back to a (mostly) normal life. But when the rift opened to send them all back home, the Game played another cruel joke on them. It sent him back in, and, as if he'd never existed, never been a part of their lives, they forgot all about him. The Game patched up the holes in their memories with fabricated stories and lies. They lived normal lives together, coping with being Game survivors as best as they could. Never once did they realize what they were missing.
Not until a whole month after the Game ended did Karkat have his first strange dream.
…
He called them dreams because, strange as the Game had been, it couldn't possibly have control over him now, nor could these be his memories. He'd co-led his group to victory with Egbert. He'd always lived on Earth. He'd never even heard of "Alternia." He'd never been gray-skinned or horned. And he'd certainly never met a boy named Dave.
It was a month after they won. He found himself on a meteor, ash colored skin and small, nubby candy corn horns protruding just above his ears. He was in a spacious room, a library of sorts, and he was alone. Save for the boy in the cape. He'd laughed; the boy was wearing sunglasses indoors and a cape, of all things. It all looked rather silly to Karkat. The boy frowned and crossed his arms when he laughed at him, quirked an eyebrow above obscuring black shades. "What?"
Karkat shook his head and smirked, then moved to sit in one of the beanbags. There was a book on the end table beside him. He picked it up and skimmed the first few pages before setting it down, perplexed. What was a "quadrant?"he hadn't the faintest.
The robed stranger watched as Karkat made his way around the library, and Karkat couldn't help but wonder why the boy was there. After he'd made a full loop around the room, he ambled back to the sitting area and plopped down again. The boy shuffled over and took a seat across from Karkat's beanbag.
"Alright, Karkat, now that-"
"How do you know my name?" He blurted out.
The boy's stoic face faltered momentarily, quickly replaced with another. "What do you mean?"
"I've never seen you before in my life. How do you know my name? This is just a dream, right? So you're a figment of my imagination, not real."
"No way, dude, I'm just as real as you are," he reached out an arm to Karkat. The latter hesitantly pressed a finger to it. Warm and definitely tangible. "See?"
Karkat nodded slowly, but furrowed his eyebrows at the boy. " But that doesn't answer my other question," he pointed out. "How do you know me? And who are you?"
"You really don't remember?" Karkat shook his head. The boy let out a low slur which Karkat assumed to be mostly profanities.
"What?"
"I'm just wondering," the boy said, slight Texas drawl that Karkat had missed now becoming a bit more prominent. "I'd known the Game would make you forget a lot about what really happened, but a whole person is just ridiculous." He frowned again.
"What's going on?"
He let out a sigh and put his head in his hands. "Alright, get comfortable. This is going to take a while."
Karkat listened intently as he told him everything. He told him about the Game he'd played and the tricks it'd played on them all, about the trolls he'd played with (most of whom Karkat saw every day, including himself, but were all humans as far as he knew), about his friends and family (whom Karkat found he knew as well). It sounded a lot like the Session Karkat had played with his own friends. The only thing missing was the boy- Dave Strider.
Dave told him how the three Sessions of players from different universes had banded together to beat the bosses of the Game, how they had all won the Game together, how it had pulled him back alone to stay forever while everyone went back to a reset Earth. Karkat's head swam as he recounted so many events that he said Karkat had been present for, but Karkat couldn't recall doing some of those things at all.
Finally, when Dave finished, Karkat leaned back. The tale weighed heavily on his mind, etching itself into his memory. Karkat ran his tongue over his protruding, dulled fangs and fiddled with the end of Dave's robes, unsure of what to say. Dave stood after a bit, going back to the counter and stacking up some journals. When he was finished he brought the pile back. "These are some things from the Session," he explained.
They reminisced over old journals for a while. One was full of wizard stories, penned in Rose's neat, concise handwriting and Roxy's lighter scribblings here and there. Another of Rose's was full of the word "MEOW" written as if a code (Dave admitted that he never understood that one). Yet another was full of raps that Dave and Dirk had put together- Dave liked those; he added new ones occasionally, he said- during their free time. Dave recalled relationships to Karkat at that time as well. Karkat choked up when he told him about Terezi. He wasn't sure why.
Dave had just started talking about Karkat again when everything went fuzzy and Karkat was awake. He blinked in shock, startled by the sudden change of place, then squeezed his eyes shut and pleaded with his brain to let him go back to keep Dave company; but despite how much he wanted to, he couldn't will himself back to sleep again.
He lay in the dark, alone in his thoughts.
Next Chapter Choices:
Karkat: Consult With Friends
Karkat: Take A Nap ((This would take place in the next week or so))
If neither is picked or there is a tie, then I will pick.