Your name is Dave Strider - or, well, it used to be.
You used to be a lot of things, not that it really matters anymore. You used to be "cool". You used to be clever. You used to have a following for some stupid comics and some stupid "jams". You used to be a younger brother, a best friend. You used to be a Knight of Time, a Hero in a game that changed everything. You used to be someone.
And now you are nothing.
Even when you were nothing, you used to be worth something. You used to have a purpose, having brought this fate upon yourself for that very reason. You used to be able to help out your friends. You used to be able to help out the one like you, to make her brave and not alone. You used to be too focused on everything to think about being nothing. You used to be able to forget everything else, and just do what you had to to.
But now there is nothing left to you.
Your name is Dave Strider - it was - and you are not sure what happens next. When the one who was like you - the one who used to be named Jade Harley but then wasn't and then was again - looks down at you, eye larger than the sun that you remember from the Dallas skyline, you feel a lot of things. You feel proud, mostly - proud that she swallowed her tears and her sobs, and that she was able to do what she had to do. You are proud because she is a hero - something that mere minutes before she would have never hoped to be. But at once you are empty, lonely - because you will never be that hero, and the only one who shared your fate has ascended beyond this doomed existence. You did what you had to do - but this deed comes with no glory, no Godly status. You have enlightenment much like what you assume she has now - but with knowledge you find no peace.
You wonder if they'll even remember you.
You hope they do - you need them to. But as the seconds click by, you find yourself realizing you might not have time to have that need. You aren't sure what happens next - you assume that with how things are going, you won't be necessary anymore. Bam, gone, like all the other Daves. But the others that used to be named Dave Strider - they should've gone to those dream bubbles, places where they could maybe see those who used to be John (your John), or Jade, or Rose, or even those extra-terrestrials that caused this fate upon you in the first place (even if you know it was necessary for your existence, it's a little hard for you to not be bitter). Will you go there too? For some reason you feel like you won't - like your existence isn't on the same plane, and you'll just fade away into orange dust (you want to make some really stupid joke about cheetos, but there's no one to tell the stupid "ironic" joke to).
And yet at once you'd prefer that - not to the dream bubbles, but to what else could happen. You could just be transferred with them, and you aren't sure you'd like that. If you have things to do, purposes to fulfill, you will take it. Even with your sunshine blood pooling down your feathers and your skin that isn't skin anymore, you will take those missions. But if you are simply there, in the shadow of the true Dave (the one who is a hero - and you are so, so proud of him), only existing for existence's sake, you don't think you'd like that. You think that maybe hugging John would be nice (even if he isn't your John), and the same for Lalonde (the sister you never got to really have), and of course Jade, she deserves a congratulatory pat on the head and bellyrub. You think about how you want to hold them close - physical affection still being something new to you - and you wonder if alpha Dave is the same after all this, or if you really aren't like Dave at all anymore.
But after those hugs, those instantaneous moments of bliss, you think you'd prefer it to end.
Your name was Dave Strider, and you close your eyes, hoping they will and will not open again.
