"Can I ask you a question?" Dave's voice ripples through the silence, breaking Sollux out of his thoughts.
Sollux looks up.
"And will you answer it truthfully?"
He blinks, then nods. Dave's face is turned towards Sollux, his expression obviously unreadable. With his sleeve, he wipes at the circles of tainted glass on his gas mask, rubbing off the collected ash there.
"Do you think we'll find them?"
Sollux feels as if there is a lump of dust in his throat, as if he has swallowed a clump of it down, and he chokes. He wants to say yes. At the beginning of the journey, perhaps, he would have. But now? Now that he's seen one of 'them' die and known that one of 'them' is alone and that one of 'them' is dead, he isn't so sure. And no matter how he wants to say yes, he finds that he can't. So he shrugs.
Dave barks out a laugh and turns back to face the horizon, which is distorted with heat. "I don't know, either."
The road has given out to land that is... nothing, really. The occasional scorched tree and burned shrub will pop up, but other than that, it's all dry soil and boulders. Neither of the boys have any complaints, though. Both are prepared completely for whatever the world throws at them - or so they think. Of course, at the same time, they think that they've seen everything, which isn't true at all. They haven't seen death, yet, and they would prefer to keep it that way for years to come.
It is only when Sollux thinks this that he finds himself dwelling - for the first time - on what Dave said. That the sun is going to explode. It seems too big, too ridiculous to be true, seems like too much devastation for an already devastated planet to have to take. It just doesn't seem right.
Unconsciously, he moves on, thinking about what else Dave has said. When he said that he's seen loss before, that he knows what it looks like. It caught Sollux's ear, not because of what he said, but how he said it. He had sounded almost dreamy, uncertain, and for some inexplicable reason Sollux's thoughts went straight to the dreams. The game. All sixteen of them, versus the end of the universes.
Surely Dave hadn't-
No.
Sollux shakes his head and shakes the thought away. No, that's not possible. Next he'll be thinking that every single one of them had the dreams. Sollux is adamant that he was the only one. He's the only one that knows about the dreams, and it will stay that way.
Without Sollux really noticing, the sky grows dark. Thunder rumbles overhead, and both boys stop and look up. Before long, rain is sheeting down; the first rain that Sollux has seen since the world ended. It soaks them incredibly quickly, and both boys grab ripped anoraks out of their bags and throw them over their heads. Water runs down the banks, collecting in muddy puddles at their feet, and Dave decides to call it a night.
They pull over to a collection of gnarled, spindly trees. Dave throws down his bag and sits with his back against it. Sollux is about to do the same when there is a crack, ricocheting through the empty, sodden air. Both of them freeze.
It isn't thunder.
Dave looks down.
"Well," he says almost inaudibly. "Turns out Egbert isn't dead yet."
Sollux whips his head around, and sees Vriska striding towards them, her features contorted in the fiercest of angers, holding an old-looking shotgun. Her arms are shaking and her hair and clothes are soaked through with the rain, dust streaking down her face like warpaint.
"I'm not sorry," she calls over the showers.
Dave hasn't looked up.
And maybe Sollux spends a little too long looking at her, in shock, because there is a whisper beside him and he doesn't quite hear it because he had all but forgotten that Dave is there.
But it comes again.
"Sollux-"
Dave is holding out his pistol in a trembling hand.
But Sollux is not looking at that. Sollux is, in fact, looking at Dave's other hand, which is clutching at torn cloth, dappled white and scarlet, rain washing liquid away only for it to reappear and Sollux's eyes widen-
And he is caught between fire and flames because if he does not fight back then Vriska will surely kill him-
But if he does not save Dave then he is alone and he doesn't know where to go-
"I want my John back!"
Vriska's shouts break him out of it. His lips parted in a adrenalin-filled snarl, Sollux snatches the gun. He's never imagined himself as being good with guns, but he will sure as hell try his hardest. He thinks that, perhaps, this is one of those tricky little situations where you are given an either-or but actually if you time it just right you get an and.
Sollux is sure that he will not die. And Sollux is sure that he will not be alone, even as Dave's head falls back against the flaking bark of the blackened tree, even as more blood trickles down his hand and into his sleeve-
So he straightens. He holds the gun confidently in both hands, straight in front of him, looking down the simple sights and lining them up, just in front of Vriska's head, just as she calls out again-
"They won't give my John back to me!"
And pulls the trigger.