Part of my gift exchanges as a member of the Homestuck Secret Santa 2012 project. This was for tumblr user kirayamidemon.

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Death isn't an ending. It's a new beginning. How many times had Dave heard that in shitty movies? Funny thing, he hadn't really believed any of that shit back then. Some well and true irony when he'd awoken in the first bubble, his throat still aching from the blade so recently drawn across it. It was almost as if a whole new life had begun.

Problem was simple: it was boring. The bubbles, the people, it only got old after a while. A few years here with John, a fling with Jade that lasted a few months or something, two nights with Rose before he'd grown tired of the psychoanalysis. Months of traveling from bubble to bubble, meeting friends, enemies, more than his share of raging nub-horned troll douche bags. Hell he'd met even more trolls than that. Strong trolls who broke all they touched, chipper trolls who asked him about his relationships, ones who spoke like British debutantes and others who stared at him with empty, dead eyes, and said nothing. He met the troll who spewed pathetic rhymes, even the blind girl who sniffed after him for hours and he'd had to hop about ten bubbles to lose her. There had been a fish troll, a spider troll, even a troll princess. Trolls he'd never even heard of who were from what he understood to be a whole other session. Dave Strider had been all over the dreamscape, met hundreds of assholes thousands of times in a multitude of ways. He'd met everyone in every way imaginable, and he'd never found the thing he'd been looking for. Never had to really look out, be aware, never to be ambushed in that familiar way.

Days, months, eons of searching and he'd never found Bro.

The search had led him here, as it had so many other places, to a bubble that he'd heard others warn each other off from. One of the fish faces in particular, Eridan, was adamant about people avoiding the place. Something about things moving of their own accord. Probably wouldn't pan out, but he was used to it. Still had to try. He'd dragged Dirk into this, he owed him... Well, something.

Except now that he stood here, this didn't look much like the kind of place Bro would be. A towering green structure studded with hunks of black that was oddly reminiscent of his old apartment building. This one, though, was surrounded by far more than there had been in Dave's neighborhood, and on its roof instead of some AC unit stood a kind of arch way. The sky above it was dark, studded with stars, and hanging in it full and glowing was a moon. Not an earthly moon either, but an Alternian one, glaring and green. It was a moon he'd seen about a hundred times before, in a variety of troll dream bubbles. Which made this a troll memory. Not too surprising. Chances of Bro hiding here weren't exactly high, but that didn't mean that Dave was about to give up. Even if this place was inhabited by a frustrated, dead, and highly touchy troll, it was hardly something that a Strider couldn't handle.

It didn't take long for Dave to figure out that whoever was remembering this place was a bit better at it than most of the other people he'd met in these bubbles. Most of the other ghosts he'd met had issues keeping things stable once doors came into the mix. Normally there was a risk opening a door. They didn't lead to what they should have. They lead most commonly into different bubbles, different memories, and so navigating was a difficult thing at best. But when Dave reached out, pulled on the handle of the apparent apartment's entrance door, it actually opened into a rather small entrance area. Complete with a desk for the management, rows of mail slots, everything and anything he would have expected to see. There was even an elevator at the end of the hall, and when he went and hit the button, there was actually a ping that announced that something had actually been summoned. Not that Dave intended to take it, though. Dangerous things in these bubbles, elevators. If you didn't watch them closely they spit you out into a bubble ten away from where you had been in the first place, and trying to get back was never fun. So, without waiting to see if the elevator would even arrive, Dave continued his search, making his way down a side hall and searching for the stairs that likely existed somewhere around here.

Except he only made it halfway down the side hall before the weird things started. The walls, for one thing, were etched with odd hieroglyphs that he recognized in passing as from some of the rare structures in the Land of Heat and Clockwork. At first it was little more than a turtle here, a lotus there, and then, as suddenly as they had started they were everywhere, covering every spare bit of wall. Even more disturbing, the hall seemed to continue on forever, no matter how far down it Dave walked it was always longer. Infinitely longer. Oddly enough, though, whenever he turned around the hall was short. It was almost as if he wasn't moving anywhere.

Still, it wasn't the kind of thing that a Strider gave in on. So what if a hallway decided it wanted to be infinite? Striders were more than capable of walking an infinite distance and coming to the end. Only a Strider had that kind of skills.

Another ten minutes, or maybe hours, and everything was setting into a routine. Dave had even gone so far as to remember up a pair of headphones to listen to some tunes. Would have been nice too if it wasn't for the fact that now, suddenly, they were torn from his head, wrapped in red-blue flashes of light. So here at last was the things moving of their own accord. Unless Bro had picked up some new moves, this wasn't him. Oh well, he'd tried, hadn't he?

"Get out!" a voice yelled echoing through the halls. "You aren't welcome here."

"I got that when the hallway refused to end," Dave countered, smirking. "Did you have to interrupt? I was getting really relaxed."

"Who gets relaxed in an unending hallway?" the voice asked, lisping outrageously. If Dave was any less chill of a guy, he might even have laughed.

"Who remembers a never ending hallway?"

"Just get out of here."

"Well if you didn't want company you should have just said something."

"Pretty sure an infinite hallway says it well enough."

Dave just shrugged, rolling his eyes, not that whatever ghost was here would see it through his shades. The voice, now that he was thinking on it, was a new one. One he hadn't encountered before. Not that there might not be a Dave out there that would know it, but he just wasn't one of them. But, if his memory served, there were two different members of the troll session he'd known that he'd never run into. The ICP hating clown, and a 'pissblooded waste of pan and attention from the royal bloods' as Eridan put it. Then again, anyone that bait breath hated probably couldn't be too bad if Dave really thought about it. From the sounds of it, this was the latter. Dave had heard little about him, other than the fact that the troll session had only existed because this guy had made the very code for the game. Some kind of computer wiz or something. Now if only he could remember the name...

"There are plenty of idiots who wouldn't take a hint like that?"

"Like you?"

"Like the loudass idiot. One of your kind I think."

That earned him a sigh, and a muttered something that might have been along the lines of 'fucking humans.'

"Well, as riveting as this conversation is, either let me advance, or give me a better reason to leave."

The better reason appeared almost immediately, in the form of doors appearing along the hallway and then being ripped form the walls by pulsing, red-blue energy. There was a long moment, where Dave was left staring at the obvious threat, and then the doors were flying towards him, barreling down the hall way and obviously meant to deal him some damage. Not that Dave even considered flinching. Striders didn't flinch. They dealt with the situation before them. Which in this case was most easily done by a quickdraw of his sword, which easily cut through the first hunk of wood-like metal. The pieces of the ruined portal cover went flying to either side of him, whatever power had been controlling them cut free with the stroke of Dave's unbelievably sharp blade.

The second, third, and fourth doors all went the same way, cut aside with the bare minimum of effort, a smile on on Dave's face.

"Really, is that all you've got? I can't even imagine why the other horn-heads are afraid of this place. Not like there's any real threat here. Tavros could get by here without any real issues!"

"You just don't get it, do you?" the voice asked, this time sounding far closer. In fact, it sounded like it was...

Dave whirled on his heels, broken shitty sword coming up in a rather loose defensive posture. Couldn't help but be paranoid about people who managed to sneak up on him. Bro had beat that one into his head far too many times in the past for him to forget the lesson. And, looking at the troll before him, he wasn't quite sure that the paranoia wasn't the right thing to have anyway.

This was indeed a troll he'd never seen before, one his height, and built just about a scrawny as Dave was himself. They were both skin and bones. Main difference was that Dave knew he was all wiry strength and speed under that skin, whereas he wasn't so sure about this guy. He was pretty sure this was a guy two. It was in the voice, the lack of any real assets under the shirt, but it wasn't always easy to tell with trolls. After all, Terezi had been a girl and she was flatter than John. Okay, so maybe not that bad, but still, there was a point here. And this troll was all points. Sharp corners and sharper attitude, enough to make Terezi look like a soft, fluffy puppy or something. This troll had two sets of horns, small curving things one inside another, and wore a pair of sunglasses with one red lens and one blue. Red and blue in the exact shades of the aura that had been around the doors and his headphones. Red and blue in the exact shades of the aura that held the troll hovering in the air. The exact shades of lightning that crackled around his shades and horns.

"Some people just got to make an entrance. But don't you see, ain't no way to be smoother than a Strider."

The troll may have rolled his eyes, but Dave really couldn't be sure. The shades may not have been dark like his, but for some reason he really couldn't see what was past them. It was almost as if the lenses were the troll's eyes.

"Idiot," the troll said, raising one hand before him. Dave gripped his sword tightly in hand, ready to take on whatever the troll threw at him. He was fast, too fast for this fool to catch off guard.

Or so he thought before he saw the red and blue tendrils of energy racing towards him. Even as he flashstepped away the tendrils kept coming, moving almost as fast as a thought. Or maybe actually as fast as a thought. He'd forgotten about that, which was really an Egderp kind of move. Something he'd head from Tavros and Terezi about trolls with psychic powers. Go figure he happened to get caught intruding on one he didn't even know the name of.

The tendrils wrapped around his legs before Dave could really even think of a way to avoid them, another coiled bit of red and blue slamming hard into his chest only a breath later, slamming him up against a wall that hadn't been there moments before. There was just enough time before his arms were caught for him to fling his sword with all his might at the hovering troll. Not that it helped much, with the energy catching up the sword and not letting up on him one bit. In fact, new waves of energy caught up his arms, pinning them hard against the wall at his sides. Just wasn't right, a dude like him having to fight someone with what amounted to magic powers.

"Do you get it now, you addlepanned moron?" the troll asked, hovering up to within arm's reach of where Dave was trapped. Not that Dave could reach him, thanks to the power the troll commanded. "I don't want to deal with you and your shitty alien kind."

"Yeah yeah yeah, I get it. Fucking recluse wants his privacy. Can't deal with the fact that death is a buffet for everyone to sample from."

"Fucking idiot," the troll hissed, shaking his head. "I can eject you from this bubble forcibly."

"But where's the fun in that?" Dave asked, smirking to himself. "And is it really forcibly if you use your powers to cheat? Well, I can understand that. It's hard to keep up with something as perfect as myself."

"Are you always this pan-numbing self-interested?"

"Do you always lisp like a nervous, blushing drunk?"

"What is that even supposed to mean?"

In truth, Dave wasn't sure, but he wasn't about to admit that. "Figure it out, nooksniffer."

"Ugh, you've wasted your after-life talking to Karkat, haven't you?" the troll asked, shaking his head. "Really, there are far better role models for troll culture than that murderous asshole."

"If you want murderous you should see..."

"Shut up," the troll snapped. "What do you know?"

A lot to be honest. After all, what was that Jack guy if not murderous?

"No, I can see you want to talk. Just shut up. I don't want to hear it. I got killed because my best friend was too stupid to realize that I was dying."

Dave wanted to respond, even tried to open his mouth, only to find that it was impossible to speak. Apparently the asshole troll had decided that conversation wasn't going to be the order of the day. Not that Dave needed to speak to convey his annoyance. All he had to do was deadpan and stare the troll down until he finally relented.

"You're one of those human things, right? That they, we, found after our game. Pretty pathetic shit aren't you? Couldn't even survive your own session. And now here you are, invading my home, and for what?"

The pressure was gone, and Dave knew that this guy actually wanted an answer. What was the harm in giving it?

"Looking for someone I lost."

"Lost? Lost how?"

Now that was something Dave was far less willing to discuss. So, for once, or maybe a second time, he kept his mouth shut.

Which wasn't exactly pleasing apparently to the troll. Not that the guy acted upon what was quite likely some pretty intense annoyance if the crackling of energy around his head was really any estimate.

"I can't even believe how insufferably maddening you are."

"Jealous?"

"Not likely," the troll responded, shaking his head.

Then, the red-blue energy holding Dave to the wall was gone, and he was falling to his knees. The troll had already turned away and was floating slowly down the hall. Which Dave really wasn't going to be having any of. There was no way he was leaving this bubble after getting his ass handed to him, so to speak, by a psychic troll. Not without coming out of it with something. His brother would never brook with that.

"You're just going to walk away? That really shows how impressive you are. No, wait, the word I was looking for was pathetic."

That got the troll to freeze in place. Even gave Dave a chance to get to his feet and brush himself free of imagined dust

"Which I really care about your opinions on," he grumbled, not even turning back to look at Dave.

"So you died. Big deal. We all did. I do more than most. I'm a time player, comes with the territory. So your friend killed you, big whoop. I've met mes that have dealt with that before. But, see, the difference between us is that Striders, we don't let it get us down. We keep on going. Nothing keeps a Strider down."

"Well I'm not one of you human Striders, now am I?" the troll snapped.

"So?"

"So it means I don't have to listen to what you have to say," he said, turning back around.

"Doesn't mean it isn't a good way to live."

"Like I need life lessons from you."

"Seems to me you do it all you do with your days is remember what life used to be and throw stuff at visitors. Where's the fun in that?"

The troll seemed to be glowering at him through their shades, not that Dave could really tell. Still, he smiled confidently and strode towards the troll and held out his hand.

"Dave Strider. Give me a few days and I'll teach you the value of the afterlife."

Silence, and then a hand in his, grip surprisingly firm for a spindly troll like this.

"Sollux Captor. How about I just hand you your ass in another fight."

"I don't want to embarrass you when it comes to a real brawl. You might recover better from me kicking your gray ass in some video games."

Sollux smirked. "I'd like you see you try."

This, Dave thought, could be the start of a rather beautiful friendship.