Wrote this months ago, but I just got around to posting it to FFN just now. I'll post it to AO3 once I figure out how it works. If I ever do that is. Argh.
Sometimes you feel just so goddamn lonely.
But you are alone; you remember that fact.
You are Dave Strider, but you're not the Dave Strider that these kids recognize as their friend, as their Knight of Time. You are Dave Strider, a Knight of Time, and you once thought of these kids as your friends through and through, but that stopped when your timeline split away from theirs.
It stopped when your John Egbert decided to claim the title of the "Biggest Retard in the Game that it's Not Even Ironic" by blasting to the Seventh Gate to go fight his Denizen (God, he is —was— fucking something up over there). It stopped when the boss burned your John and he had no extra life, no extra boost, to help him to his scorched feet. It stopped when your Jade Harley died from what you hope is impact because the other implication (fed to the fires until she stopped moving like John) makes you feel queasy.
It seemed like everything stopped when you realized that you're no longer part of the alpha timeline, but a doomed one instead (Your powers can undo shit, but even there's a limit to the shit it can undo and by the time you realized, you were swimming in turd). You were stuck in a doomed timeline in which all you can do is gather information as quick as you possibly can (but it's never fucking quick enough when you keep having to backtrack to make amends for some goddamn rookie mistakes).
But sooner or later, you and Rose (well, mostly you) decided that you two have all the information that can possibly be milked from this fucked up cow of a timeline and you told her to go to sleep. Go to sleep like the good little girl she is, and for a second she reminded you of a kid afraid of the uncertain, of being abandoned.
But she was just a kid –still is just a kid.
And you were afraid of the same uncertainty too.
But you wanted to see your John's derpy face again with that brilliant grin that you've come to trust and love, and you miss the way that smile made his eyes squint and showed off those buckteeth of his. Hell, you even miss that edge he was starting to develop because the game was much too harsh – much, much, much too harsh on all of them.
You miss your John.
And just for a fleeting second, you wondered if it was going to be your John there.
Probably not, your John is dead. Has been for four months.
You spun your turntables anyway.
You moved back and back and back in time, and you didn't stop even when your body started calling out for you. It hurts, it hurts, and it burned like the lava in Land of Heat and Clockwork, but fuck that shit – you can manage a little heat to see that beautiful smile again.