Dave the Knight

by Lord Irish

In a medieval AU where everyone's Class is their role, a band of knights has just returned to their kingdom. Dave Strider has one day off, suitable perhaps for flirting with girls in a tavern (a very knightly pastime). But his careless, suave image is put to the test when he becomes attached to jade-eyed Jade Harley.

When I awoke they were lighting a fire in the center of town.

There were a few very big logs, which they carried in on horses. They spread them like an 8-pointed spark, leaning the ends together in the middle so that it held itself up in a cone shape. Then they added smaller branches and straw to fill in the gaps. It was all as dry as could be.

The Heir himself came out to light the fire, in his flowing blue robes and hood. He was handed a torch by an official torch-bearer, and he held it down to the eight giant logs stuffed with smaller tinder, and then he gave a great breath and the eight logs and smaller branches and straw blazed up and jumped toward the sky and the heavens, a beacon for God.

That was the morning, and the afternoon before was when I and my band had returned to the kingdom after our crusades against the pirates. We returned with Victory riding alongside us, and it had weighed us down not at all, perhaps even lightening our journey. We had killed all of them, hunted the ones who ran, and had lost not a man. We had returned with tales in droves and last night was a well-earned party at the Cairo Overcoat, where we drank and ate until we metaphorically exploded. Needless to say, there was much rejoicing.

I had a new dress code, being for the moment not out in the field, and it was much finer than a suit of armor and naturally much less suited for combat. It was bright crimson, like blood, with a gear insignia, for my knight band, and it had not a long, flowing hood, as did the Heir's, but rather a tightly fitting cap, symbol of the helmet I fought in.

Needless to say, I wore it with the utmost irony.

With the cape (did I already mention the cape?) sweeping back and forth due to my jaunty, ironically swaggering stride, I made my way through the dim hallways, those hallways nobody wanted to be in, only to get through to be somewhere else, and quite soon my somewhere else was the dining hall, where already waited His Holy Majesty, His Majesty's Heir, and some of my band and some of other bands also currently at home.

We all waited for more to arrive, I not impatiently as I was looking around at this dining hall, admiring it and repairing my faded memories of it. It was high of ceiling, of course, and the ceiling was tiled, and the pillars supporting the ceiling were four. A first was blue, like the garb of the royal family and the sky. A second was purple, like the uniform of the mysterious Seer, who had visions from God and was thus kept where few but the royal family could see her. A third was red, for the blood of enemies, and this represented the entire unit of knights of which my band was only a part. A fourth and final was green, and the origin of that I didn't know.

The ceiling too was magnificent because it was tiled, not in any picture or even repeating pattern but in swirls of color, starting at each pillar and blending together in the center and they were pretending with great skill to be strokes of a paint brush, and yet obviously not made in that way. It was this mix and subversion of mediums for which I labeled it a marvel. When I was younger I'd sometimes wished to create art like this, but that wasn't my path.

It was with a jolt I realized, helmetlike though my hood was, it did not obscure my eyes like I was used to having a helmet do, and any in the court could have seen me staring at the ceiling and its art with no regard for appearances (which is not to say I cared about most court traditions; but that is not the same as not caring what others think). I quickly turned my face frontwise, focusing on the people of the court, what few of them I knew. More were entering from their own bedchambers in their own court garb which they wore with varying degrees of irony, and standing behind their places at His Majesty's table.

Soon His Majesty deemed there to be enough, or maybe he saw it was the right time, or possibly he used another more complicated method for decision, but in any case His Majesty sat down, and so did the rest.

Across from me was Karkat.

"Oh boy," I muttered, maybe loud enough to reach his ears or maybe not. "Here we go again, I think."

He didn't react.

Let it stand that I take no issue with the Vantas house in general. They are nobles, after all, appointed as such by His Majesty and to the best of my knowledge they have served him faithfully. The problem came with the house's heir, who in total disregard of the rules was offered a position as a knight merely due to his blood. He can fight, certainly. He's brave and he can even lead, but one thing thing Karkat Vantas will never have is a level head. It takes a calm and cool demeanor to be part of a band, and especially to lead one, but if Karkat Vantas himself understands this fact he makes no attempt to show it.

I hadn't thought about the man at all during our pirate raid, but now the memories came back.

He was spearing slabs of ham onto his plate. I took something from a different dish, hardly caring what (it was lamb), and at the same time asked him, "So, Sir Vantas, how are you enjoying that meat?"

He looked up at me with that permanent "you are lower than me, so I dislike you" scowl, still chewing his first bite, and then he swallowed and rasped, "Fine. Why?"

"Ah..." I stalled a bit, contrasting my smirk to his anger; that was the main contrast between us, after all. "Well," I said, "as you can see, it's quite bloody. I just thought someone with such noble blood as yourself, might not wish to soil it with the blood of a common swine."

"Put a sock in it."

He went back to chewing. I continued to smirk at him, until the exact point at which the joke got old, and then I got to chewing myself.

Some minutes later the doors banged open. It was the Bard, and he wore his clothes with the least irony and the most honest enthusiasm I had ever seen.

The Bard had aged a little since I'd been here. He had gained some height and a trio of scars across his face. The Bard as I remembered him was jovial, oft-drunk and sometimes obnoxious but usually amusing to watch, both during his official performances and throughout the rest of his day. In a way he served the role of fool or jester here in the court, in addition to bard, though by some unspoken rule this was not said to his face.

I watched him (this time more covertly) to see if he had changed any, for the scars interested me, and I hoped they carried a more interesting story than a scrap with a cat in an alleyway, but to my surprise he took a seat next to Karkat.

"Hey, my motherfuckah," he slurred, already drunk or just used to acting that way.

Karkat physically shoved him away, put a hand to his face and pushed. Obviously the new friendship they seemed to have was one-sided. It didn't surprise me a bit.

The Bard pulled his face back, turned it frontwise, and started shoveling ham and potatoes to his own plate.

"KK," he piped up a moment later, "what're ya motherfuckin' doing for yer day off? I'm thinkin'a going to the Midnight Bar, and maybe y-"

"In that case," Karkat snarled, "I'm going anywhere but the Midnight Bar. We're not friends, Gamzee, no matter what I had to say to calm you down."

I cringed within my mind, though of course I didn't show it. The bard looked just a little bit stunned, for an instant, and then he went back to eating. If Karkat felt anything for having spoken that way, he was as good at hiding it as me. There was silence in our area of the table.

These events had done one thing for me, in any case. I knew now that my destination for the day was the Midnight Bar, since Karkat would be anywhere but there.

Back during the recent pirate raids, we had at one point gotten in quite a fix, me and just one knight of my band, the knight of my band who happened to be my brother. My sword had been broken and made a useless hilt, and his was lost entirely, and as we huddled inside a beached ship and hid from the frenetically painted clothes and mad distant laughter, he confessed to me that he didn't think he would ever be really happy.

And I agreed that he was not a happy person, my brother. He did not find the jokes in life. I knew no one farther from the bard in personality. Dirk was too pragmatic and sympathetic and worried about making sure that everything went according to plan. And so I made him promise one thing, on the contingency that we left this situation without losing our lives in the process, and this was that he would let me show him how to have a good time.

At this point the tricksters were nearly upon us, and we said our goodbyes, but they proved unnecessary. On that day I discovered that a broken sword can still be incredibly deadly.

Skipping somewhat forward in time: I now marched ahead and led him through the streets of our hometown toward this unfamiliar tavern, the Midnight Bar, letting the sounds and smells reimprint themselves in my mind as I had with the ceiling. This city would be familiar again soon, and today, the returning knights' day of leisure, was just the time it took to get used to it. I flipped a coin to a young, lame beggar at the side of the road, who I remembered at one point being a promising page and a good jouster, and soon after I turned and led us west, where I had seen the bard turn a minute earlier. Indeed, we had been tailing him the entire time.

"Right, Dirk," I spoke as the Midnight Bar came into view ahead, "First thing to remember. Keep your cool. I know that's one thing you can do, though. You'll be fine there."

"Yes," he replied, tight-lipped. He wasn't looking forward to this.

"Next. Be assertive. Be dominant. Be in control."

"I don't really see why that one's important."

"Oh God, Dirk, look...if you're not in control, who is?"

"The other person, maybe?"

I laughed. "Look, I know you can do it if you try. You'd be a great leader if you tried. You're just always too scared that you'll be too controlling and overbearing. You need to start acting like a Prince, Dirk. I feel like you're the only one around here who doesn't live up to his potential."

We were just about at the door now. I hoped I had prepared the boy enough. But he wasn't actually a boy, after all, he was a man and it was far past time for him to have his first visit to a tavern as a knight in (currently metaphorical) shining armor and experience women being totally attracted to him.

As we entered, the light ducked from that of the sun to filtered dimness, and I somewhat ironically asked him if he was ready. He turned to me with a panicked look.

"Wait, but what do I actually say?"

I just smirked. I almost grinned. This would be good for him. "I'll lead the way," I called as I marched inside. "Just follow me!"

We plunged into the sea of people and the darkness made it seem more crowded than it was. I guessed this was the place you went if you wanted to pretend it was nighttime when it was still day. There were silhouettes of people with slices of reflected light on their edges, so they looked almost to be wearing smooth shells over their person. In reality they were mostly cloaks, and wide-brimmed hats, and I spied one suave-looking lady in one of the widest-brimmed hats and I covertly pointed her out to my brother. I took a moment to whisper to him a few more rules.

"Walk there casually, don't be clear where you're going - wait a little bit before speaking - have a good line ready, I know you've heard pickup lines before, yes?"

"Dave -" he stared at me, at a loss for words it seemed, then - "just what...is the point of this?"

"It's fun. You'll see."

I left him and slid through the crowd, hoping I would not bump into anything or knock anyone over, because it really was awfully hard to see, and suddenly I was up near the wall and almost face to face with the only green things I'd seen in the establishment yet, which were the luminous the eyes of a woman with a black hood and a white spiral symbol on her chest.

Her eyes stared at mine while the minds behind each pair took a moment to regain composure and then reassert themselves in controlling the body.

I leaned, very casually, against the wall, and said my personal invention of a line: "you come here often?"

"Oh...Not really." Her eyes were wide, her voice high and clear. It would carry, I thought, but that she was whispering. "Actually, I'm hiding."

"Really? From what, might I ask?" I leaned in like a co-conspirator.

"I don't think I should tell you that," she said.

"Well then, to start, how about merely your name?"

"It's Jade Harley," she said with an encouraging smile. She and her eyes were both jade.

"Dave Strider," I returned.

I was whispering too, because she had started it and because now that I thought of it it was a whispering kind of place. There was a soft sound blanket, made maybe of sonic velvet, overlaying the darkness. It muffled the outside and amplified the words of the girl right in front of me.

I had told her my name and we exchanged some personal details in a conversational way, but I wouldn't tell her I was a knight until later. Not until she had come to like me for my charm and wit, my sense of originality, my uniqueness. It would be only fat on the pig, a dessert topping, and also the final confirmation that this man was as amazing as she didn't think she should let herself think he was. It was part of my routine.

(Now, please don't mistake me for a heartbreaker. Any woman knows that this is a game, just as well as I do.)

Near the end of a story about Jade's grandfather and his overprotectiveness, I became aware of a presence low to the ground. She noticed me scanning for it despite my attempts to do so covertly, and introduced me to her ash-white hound, Becquerel. It didn't bound forward, either to lick me or menace me or any variation, but simply sat back at attention, motionless as an unused suit of armor. Knowing what it was I could make out the shape now, based on the slivers of highlight at the edges.

I asked Jade why, if she was hiding, she went to the bar where green and white would be most conspicuous.

"Because it's dark," she said, "and...I didn't really think of that. But nobody's found me yet. I think it works anyway."

She was cute. She clearly wasn't an expert at hiding, but still she hid with the full force of her limited hiding knowledge, presumably ready to learn and do better next time. She wasn't like Dirk, who was afraid to use the knowledge he had, or me, who wouldn't do a thing until I knew how to do it well or could pretend I did. Jade was fun to talk to, and I asked her more about herself and reciprocated with information about myself, still looking into her green eyes in the Midnight Bar that didn't have any other green as the day/night progressed toward true night, and I could tell I was helping her forget what she was hiding from. I wondered if I might be starting to care about her more than most girls I picked up in a bar, and decided this was a nice feeling and not really a problem.

Some shades of black later, she was telling me about some things she had made.

"I think they're pretty cool," she said, speaking quickly. "They do things nobody has a way to do. Just little things, but they make life a little easier, I think. Or sometimes they're just fun."

"Sounds interesting. Think I could see some?"

"Yes!"

She'd been hoping for me to ask that. She wanted to share her work with someone, and maybe no one else wanted to see. I was glad I could provide the service.

Jade was rummaging through the pockets of her cloak, which it seemed were quite deep, and her hand emerging contained a wooden thing like a stringless bow, but shorter and farther curved.

"This goes on your hair-it pulls it back-keeps it out of your eyes and stuff, you can see better!"

"Cool. So then you don't need to pay for haircuts?"

"Yeah, not as often I think! But also it's like a different style - hairstyle - it can be a fashion accessory sort of! I don't think it looks very good on me, though."

"You're pretty enough without it," I told her. She blushed.

From another pocket came a little jester doll, dressed in bright colors, and she placed it on the floor and motioned for us to sit also, for what purpose I didn't know. I took the opportunity to shift around and sit with my shoulder close to hers. Becquerel now towered above us a little bit, still staring outward like a sentinel.

The arm of the jester she turned several times like a crank, and then put it back on the floor and to my astonishment it began to move of its own accord, a jerking waddle across the wood boards, as if it was possessed by a spirit or a demon or maybe the ghost of the jester killed in the thing's creation ritual.

"That's amazing."

"Thank you! It was inspired by the Bard."

We watched it edge a few more inches, then hit a bump and tumble to the floor, still moving its legs in the air. I giggled, and she did too. I could certainly see its resemblance.

She scooped the magic jester-thing back into her pocket, and then she turned directly toward me, and our faces ended up very close due to our current position on the floor.

"And here's the coolest thing," she whispered.

"I am intrigued," I told her.

The coolest thing was complicated. There were metallic-looking wires, and what could have been a magnet, and other pieces I didn't have a name for. Jade took great care with this, setting it up with precision and gently preventing me from touching any part of it.

"This is just a prototype, but I think eventually something like this will be able to cook things. As it is it can just char them a little..."

Then she gave the possibly-magnet a flick, so it began spinning, and kept hitting it at select intervals so it sped up, and at the end of the wires there was a crackle and then a flash of bright light, and I let out a little cry and jerked back involuntarily.

Then Jade twisted to look back at me in concern, and then I saw a little arrow click inside her mind, and she gave a little squeak of fear.

"Oh! I shouldn't have shown you that, please don't tell anyone oh my gosh-" she gasped, trying to pick up the pieces and stuff them back into her large pocket as if to get them out of my view as soon as possible, but I recovered from my own surprise and leaned forward and put a hand on her shoulder. She stopped her manic collection.

As she did my vision jumped to her hound Becquerel, now with hackles raised across from us and staring me down, as motionless as ever but posed ready to attack. Seeing his position, we both ceased to move.

In the moment of silence and stillness, I said to her, "It's okay. I was just surprised."

Her jade-colored eyes widened as they turned back to me. I saw they contained Hope, and in great quantities besides.

"You mean it?" She pushed the apparatus the remaining way into her pocket, but not in panic, and that was what mattered, of course.

"Unless I should be scared for some reason." I joked, and she returned a wide grin.

I almost told her I was a knight, then. But I didn't.

An then my chance was over because something had grabbed onto my arm and I was pulled away from her, dragged through the crowd and past a few legs until the direction changed from sideways to up and I ended up on my feet, and face to face with my (still?) panicked brother.

"Dave, help," he hissed, and turned me to the side and I found that we were in the middle of a space cleared in the tavern, and in it also were the woman I had left him with, and a shortish, livid-looking man. He was all but growling, his hand at his pocket sheath. Around us the cloaked and hatted crowd was tense, even quieter than before.

"You got yourself in a fight over a gal?" I whispered, "That's great! Just show this bricon who's the real prince of the heart and-"

"No!" he hissed, "that's not what's going on -"

Which was when the woman and the unknown man yelled and lunged at each other with knives.

There was an explosion of people outward, the fighting ring crumbling as everyone tried to get away. It seemed like no one one actually wanted to watch. I didn't know why, because this was unheard of, but then one man in a tattered hood yelled to me as he raced passed, "get out, fool! Don't you know that if Snowman gets hurt, the whole bar closes?"

Then me and Dirk took off as well, I glancing around for Jade and finding her nowhere near, and in a selection of seconds we were out and unexpected sun scorched into my eyes. I turned away and stumbled to the side, out of the way of the ocean wave of other bar patrons. Dirk was still with me, and we were pressed against the stone side of the next door building trying to get used to the daytime.

Inside I heard slams and snicker-snacks and bangs and fighting. I waited for the sun-spots to fade from my eyes, than took a moment to take a deep breath and compose my face.

Then I turned to Dirk and asked him how that was.

"The most awkward situation in my life," he answered flatly. "I think, frankly, that the kind of thing that affects you and most, just doesn't work on me."

He pushed off from the wall and I followed.

As we walked back down the road we'd come by, I turned to check again for Jade, and I saw the short man walk outside with a cut over his eye and a knife actually sticking out of his stomach. He set out a white-on-black painted wooden sign to lean against the wall: CLOSED FOR THE DAY.

"So not up for another bar, then?"

"..."

I thought originally that he'd just chosen not to answer the rhetorically ironic question, but then he did, not looking at me, and in a smaller voice than I was used to hearing from him. "...but it's different for most people, isn't it?"

"Flirting's awkward for lots of people," I assured him. "Maybe it's not for you. It's just usually part of the knight life. I thought it would go well."

We were alone in the street, and I couldn't guess where the rest of the fleeing patrons had gone. But I heard scrabbling paws on the stones then, we stopped to look and to my surprise it was Jade's dog Becquerel, dashing full-speed out of a back alley toward us. Then he was followed by the sounds of more running and an amount of shouting and I became worried.

That was when Jade herself tumbled out of the same alley, with a desperate look and a torn dress. A squad of of men appeared behind her in the outfit of a different band than mine. I called her name and in the same moment she was grabbed by a hugely muscled knight and her arms pinned to her sides.

A jolt of black anger scorched my chest and I stepped forward, demanding to know what was this, though I thought I knew. I was honestly ready to fight them or hopefully, use some manner of diplomacy because, well, I really liked Jade and-

"Stand down, Dave. This foul creature's confirmed as a witch."

"What?" this word preceding my thoughts, and when my thoughts did come they took much the same tack.

What?

I stood stunned.

All at once it was like the hatching of an egg or the sundering of a sword or some kind of splitting jagged scratch through the part of my mind recording memory and all that I knew about her, it was a burst of blazing realization, miles of understanding, shooting from memory to memory that I hadn't allowed connect because I really liked Jade, Jade who created tiny Bardlike simulations of life and produced sparks from nothing, hoped to produce flame. Jade the Witch.

I thought for just a minute the searing pain in my heart was a sword, because this was an impossible moment and it must be time for this version of me to die, and for us to focus on some other version whose world still worked how he wished it would -

She was staring at me, now with no form in her eyes but Pain and Fear, and I looked into her eyes one more time, and I whispered, "is he wrong?"

Knowing that there was nothing she could say that could undo the truth, and wishing with all my Hope that there was.

"Help me," she said, because there was nothing.

All the possible ways of saying "I'm sorry" flashed through my mind, and I said none of them. She was dragged away, and I didn't watch her go. I didn't hear her go, because my heartbeat drowned it out.

Instinctively I darted into another street so I could follow the band without her seeing. I had a vague intention of meeting up again at their destination and then doing something to fix this. I had no idea what, but a large part of my mind was of the opinion that this was not okay, and the parts that would either have to actually make the plan to fix it or decide that such a plan was impossible were vehemently overruled. This was as close as I ever got to panic.

I dashed into the center of town, where they were tying her to the pole in the center of the 8-pointed spark of logs. There was a large crowd, still gathering, cheering and shouting. This to them was a moral victory, for they had never met the woman the witch could be. They saw no person there, but I could never stop seeing it. I imagined her eyes even while they were covered by her hood.

The Heir was emerging from the castle gates, torch in hand, light from it flickering along his regal hood. He'd lit the fire that morning but they must have cancelled it out again, after the witch escaped...and tried to hide.

I pushed aside two blue- and red-clad slave traders and broke into the circle calling "Wait!" in a tone of import, and the Heir did, looking at me quizzically.

Karkat sneered from the side. "What's with you, Strider? Don't tell me you were seduced by a witch?"

"What," I asked the Heir, "exactly is the evidence of witchcraft?"

I kept my face neutral and tried to hide my eyes in shadow. What could he see in my eyes?

"Satanic magic-item creation," the Heir answered promptly. "Binding some poor soul in a doll (which looks like the Bard). Attempting to unnaturally create fire, probably to burn down the kingdom or something. Partaking in a perversion of Glassworking, done not in service of church windows. And an utterly, suspiciously clean criminal record; just as a witch would maintain, in order to deflect suspicion."

Then he flung his arms up and called to the crowd, "Look upon how terribly cute she is! How can that not be a result of witchcraft?"

"Dave!"

It was the witch calling from her bound position. And as she repeated my name others called from the crowd:

"She is terribly cute!"

"How terrible!"

"Set her on fire!"

"Dave! Dave! Dave! Dave!" Desperately shrieking, rising in pitch to match the crowd clamoring for her ashes. The populace shifted forward and I wrenched myself backward, trying to look at nothing. What had I been thinking? There was nothing for me to do, there was no Jade to save, she was fake. I just had to keep that mentally repeating, turning back and back to start the phrase again. I wanted to hide behind something, lose the attention I'd drawn.

"Dave! Dave! Dave! Dave! Dave!"

I disappeared behind men. She couldn't see me.

"Dave! Daaave!"

No one was looking at me. Even though it was my name shouted.

"Daaaaave! Daaaaave!" There came a foom sound and orange-hot regret jumped high into the air like a dragon from its egg, and the execution was begun.

"Daaaaave! Daaaaave!" I didn't remember having sunk to my knees.

I waited behind the crowd, and the left of my chest was burning almost as much as she was. I could not see her, nor could I tell when her skin began to blister. I didn't notice when she wasn't cute anymore, though I did know when she stopped screaming my name coherently, and then at all. It would be some time after that that she no longer counted as a woman, and then no longer a person, no more than was the corpse of Becquerel at her feet, or the witch who'd been sent into the lake so many months ago.

The sword was still sliding through my chest, from that previous metaphor in which I died. I felt like it might have become a part of me. But then, I also know that all wounds fade. I finally breathed out, shakily. It was my bad luck I'd begun to care for a witch.

"Dave?" called a voice which was the Heir's. "You can come and purify yourself, if you like. I can that tell her spells affected you."

Stepping up I saw what he meant. From her cloak he had pulled her magic-items, and he was offering them to me.

"Throw them into the fire," he said, just to clarify.

There was the hair-regulation item. Was that actually magic? It didn't matter. I burned it.

There was the jester doll. It still looked like the Bard. I burned it. As I did I thought I heard the extremely faint sigh of a soul escaping captivity, and I smiled a little bit. Some good was coming out of this. A lot of good, actually; did I forget that we had just defeated a witch? Now her evil could be undone. I burned the spark-making tools. The project would never reach completion. I almost laughed. (Though it still would have hurt to laugh.)

There was another item I hadn't seen before. Two glass panes, about the size of eyes, held together on a wire frame that extended into hooks on the sides. I burned it. Smoke swirled. Heat licked at my face. Time blazed on, and would heal me.

It hurt to laugh.