Dave paces back and forth in his cell. The trial didn't go well, to say the very least. The captain of the guard was there and read the entire list of his wrongdoings to everyone in that courtroom, with disturbing accuracy. He's surprised she didn't add kidnapping her horse, just for good measure. Anyone with eyes at yesterday's festival saw him and Karkat together doing all those odd jobs. Other than that, everything else from the first time he conspired with Dirk and Jake to assault against the captain of the guard with a frying pan was there. It took an hour just to read all that he did. He didn't even get the chance to defend himself: the bruises on Captain Lalonde's head were evidence enough.
He was sentenced to hang at sundown today.
Just before the last of the sunlight coming from his barred window disappeared from the opposite wall, he heard thrashing and yelling, the accent hitting a very familiar note, combined with someone else's voice, creating a disdainful chord in his brain. Sure enough, the two making such a horrible cacophony in the halls were his shitty roommates. Dave glares at them as they pass by his cell, hoping they could see, but they didn't even acknowledge him. The guard slams the gate just next-door, shouting at the other two to keep quiet, then stops in front of Dave's cell.
"Get up, you," he barks angrily. "Your time has come."
"Oh thank God, I was hoping to have at least one person here understand that I need to get out of here."
"You know what I mean, dumbshit." He motions for Dave to come, jingling handcuffs with his other hand.
"Ooh, bracelets, how ever did you know I liked blackened steel? You shouldn't have." He complies and turns his back to the guard and lets him put the shackles on. He tightens them around Dave's wrists roughly. "Ow! You really shouldn't have!" The guard just chuckles and unlocks the cage. As soon as he lifts the latch, Dave pushes the door as hard as he can, making the guard fly backward. Dave jumps straight into the air so his shackled hands were in front of him, which was really painful because that dumb guard made the wrists so tight, and rushes to the cell with his ex-roommates, grabbing the first one he saw.
"Dave?!" Jake squeaks. Dave guesses that even burly men have their times of squeamishness.
"Where is she?!" he yells.
"She who?"
"Jade, you oversized wallaby!"
"The girl with the long hair, right?"
"Gee, you think?"
"Her mum planned it all! We were going to get the tiara after we sent you off, but she knocked us out for real instead of pretend, now she's going to take the girl to another kingdom now that you're out of the way! Please let go!"
Dave lets go. Not because he wanted to, but because the guard had gotten reinforcements and forcibly pulled Dave off the bars.
"You ain't gonna try that again, that's for sure," the guard hisses.
Dave struggles as he is dragged out of the main jail all the way to the halls just outside the palace courtyard. The small windows told him as much. On the other side, the windows lead to the gallows. He stops struggling, and resorts to walking instead. One of the guards pushes him from behind, telling him to hurry up. If he dies now, and if Karkat failed, Jade's never going to leave her tower again. Her mother will make sure of that. Now that he's looking back on it, he wasn't sure if he could have done anything to prevent her from going back after her birthday anyway. It's just that… Dave could have visited her when her mother wasn't there, he had no problem with living in the forest if he had to. He could have had a good life with her in it. Even if he couldn't absolve his old sins, he could take her away someday and have a new life. With her. His old dreams of living on his own island meant nothing now. And yet, here he was, being dragged to his fate.
Something small catches his eye. He could have sworn it was a small, white ceramic horse, but…
All of a sudden, the door in front of them slams shut. Then the door behind them. The guards whip around to see, but Dave looks ahead of him. The guard that unlocked Dave from his cell storms right up to the door ahead and bangs on it.
"What's the big idea?!" he shouts.
The peephole opens up. "What's the password?" the woman in red glasses asks, then promptly slamming the tiny door shut. Was that Terezi? He's never been so happy to see a blind criminal in his life.
"Open up!"
The tiny door opens again. "What? Not even close!" The door slams shut again.
The door behind creaks open slowly, and Dave notices. He turns to see the largest one, Equius probably, grabbing the other two guards by their necks with his massive arms, choking them in a one-armed sleeper hold and muttering apologies as he drags them back to an awaiting accomplice, whoever it is then closes the door again.
The first guard then bellows, "IF YOU DON'T OPEN THIS DOOR, I'LL-"
"You'll what? Arrest me? You and what army? For all you know, I might have dragons with me."
"Guards! Get her!" He turns to see just Dave standing there. Dave shrugs, then plasters himself against the wall, letting a feral cat girl run past and claws at the guard's face. Dave winces, knowing that's gotta hurt. Eventually, the guard takes off running right at Dave, and Nepeta leaps up and pushes him right into the other wall, knocking him out cold.
"Nice," whispers.
"No time!" the girl informs him, pushing at his back. Terezi opens the door from her end, revealing herself dressed in the brightest outfit of red and teal, and Vriska holding a set of keys.
"Something tells me you all have done this before."
"Done what?" Vriska asks innocently, unlocking Dave's cuffs. He rubs them, soothing the pain they cause in the last five minutes or so.
"Breaking out of prison? I mean, it looked kind of staged."
"We've never done it for a girl before." Vriska looks up into Dave's eyes knowingly. "Just for ourselves."
"What girl?" Dave wasn't sure if he should trust them, especially because he now knows about Jade's magic hair.
"Deny it again and you're going back to the gallows."
Dave shuts up.
"Onward!" Terezi shouts, pointing her stick to the wall.
"Terezi, I know I told you this is your day, but that's a wall," Vriska snides.
"It must be this other wall that's a secret passage, then. I felt the breeze."
"As a matter of fact, it is the other wall. Now let's get to the courtyard, the others are waiting!" She drags Terezi while Nepeta pushes Dave right through the secret passage to the courtyard, where all the other criminals in their little organization were waiting.
Jade sits on her bed, deep in thought and clutching the blue and gold flag in her hands, making sure her mother doesn't see it. Her mother was talking about something, probably how evil Dave was or about thugs and ruffians, but Jade wasn't paying attention. The feeling of her hair being picked through was theraputic, though. Her mother had been diligently removing the flowers and unbraiding her hair all day, probably making sure Jade didn't miss any herself. She sighed every few minutes, not responding to any questions at all.
"There," her mother says, shaking Jade's shoulder lightly. Snapping out of it, Jade looks at her mother's hand, which lingered for a moment after she turned her head to look. "It's like it never even happened." Mother stands up and walks to the door. "I'm making your favorite."
"I'm not hungry."
"I'll warm up some goat's milk, then." She taps her nails on the doorframe and leaves.
Jade sighs again and falls backward to her bed. She unfurls the flag and put it over her eyes, hoping that somehow it will absorb everything she's seen over the past two days so she could forget about it. But things aren't that simple. Her glasses are blocking her eyes from touching the fabric. She removes the flag and takes off her glasses, the world becoming blurry. She starts to put the flag back on when she sees something weird. Over the years, she painted the ceiling above her bed with every little idea that came across her mind. She didn't know why she was drawing them, but they were all starting to look the same.
One time, she painted some fairies in a spiral because she had a dream about flying with them. Another time, her mother brought home some strange star-shaped leaves, which she added to the fairies. Around the same time, she started learning about stars and added them to the fairy wings. Other little things filled the spiral shape, then they morphed into what looked like rays coming out from the spiral, which were made up of various things, basically everything from ants to clouds. When she ran out of room on the walls, she painted the rest of the ceiling around it, but somehow, all of the drawings around the spiral and the rays were light blue.
She compares the ceiling to the flag, holding it close to her face so she could see it better, and gets a sudden headache. She closes her eyes, but the headache only gets worse.
She blacks out.
She wakes up, blurry-eyed, to a golden room, and unable to speak. When she does, it's incoherent babbling. She looks around to see sun and flower symbols floating above her bed, twinkling in the light from a sunset, or what she thinks is a sunset. Two shadows come above her bed suddenly, one dark-haired and one light-haired. They seem like giants to her. The light-haired one reaches down and picks her up, and she clutches onto the purple cloth tightly. The dark-haired one leans close to her face and comes into focus, smiling widely. He's wearing a crown on his head, and saying "beautiful baby girl" over and over.
Jade suddenly opens her eyes, gasping. It was a dream. She flails for her glasses and shoves them on. She now remembers everything. The imposter warming up milk is not her mother. The queen is her mother. Now everything makes sense. The mural was about her. Black hair, but also gold, because it was glowing.
She stumbles to the door, flag in hand, and leans against the frame just as the imposter arrives to it.
"Jade! You startled me," the Condesce says. "Are you feeling alright?" Jade notices that the woman wasn't looking at Jade when she said that, but her hair.
"I'm not your daughter, am I?"
The Condesce balks at her. "Of course you are! Whatever gave you that idea?"
Jade thrusts the flag in her "mother's" face. "I'm the lost princess!"
"Don't be ridiculous. Drink your milk."
Jade swats the glass out of the Condesce's hand. The cup shatters and an oozing green pill sticks to the bottom of it. It was Jade's turn to balk.
"You were going to poison me!"
"Now you're being completely ridiculous! Why would your own mother kill you?"
"Because you're not my mother!"
"It's not poison, it's sleeping medicine."
"You were going to put me to sleep?!" Jade shrieks. She needs to escape. "Then you'll kill me!"
"I would never! I love you! You've had a long journey and you must be extremely tired. I'm just trying to help."
"You love my hair!" She takes a clump of it and protects it from the crazy woman in front of her.
"I love that, too."
Jade pauses, heart pounding uncontrollably with this new information. "You kidnapped me."
"I protected you."
"From what? A life of luxury?"
"From thieves that wanted to take you away from me."
"You're the thief! You're the one who took me away!"
"They stole you first!" the Condesce explodes. Jade cowers slightly, waiting for an explanation. "Before you were born, I found this magical flower. I took care of it for hundreds of years, singing to it, feeding it, and sheltering it from storms. In return, the singing gave me my youth. We were happy." Her mother notices Jade cowering and saunters a little closer. "Until one day, the king stole my flower, all to save his pregnant wife and child." She looks Jade dead in the eye. "People can have more children, but this flower was one of a kind, you see."
"That's no excuse!"
"I'm not done!" She takes a breath and leans away, looking down her nose at Jade, and crosses her arms. "Months later, you were born. They figured out that your hair glowed when you were sung to, but they had no idea how to use its power. They thought you were a miracle! But in truth, they had stolen mine. So in order to protect you, because the king and queen would have figured out its true potential sooner or later and then I would never be young again, I just took you back, because you, and that flower inside you, are mine. You always will be."
Jade covers her mouth. "That's why," she mumbles.
"Mumbling."
"That's why you lied to me all these years! Because you wanted to be young forever!" Jade turns and gathers up her hair. "Well, guess what! I'm not subjecting myself to you anymore! I'm taking my hair and I'm going home! My real home!"
She didn't hear the footsteps gain on her. She feels her hair getting yanked and pulled back. Jade cries out and almost loses her balance. "Guess again, sweetheart," the Condesce says through gritted teeth. "You're not going anywhere."
"Run that by me again?" Dave asks.
"No time for the long explanation," Vriska says. "Crouch." He does. "Elbows in." He does. "Legs apart."
"See, that's the part that I didn't really under-" Just then, he hears a wood cracking and he's being thrown into the air. "-STAAAAAND!" He stays in the posture that Vriska told him to make as he flies through the air, his sunglasses almost falling off. He lands on something, somehow not dead and his heinie suffering a great deal. He opens his eyes to a red horse. No way.
Karkat had done it. He snorts in Dave's face.
"Thanks," he mutters. Karkat gives Dave a dirty look. "No, for saving me. Thank you. Seriously." Maybe all this time they could have been friends instead of bitter enemies.
Karkat rolls his eyes and looks forward.
"Yeah, you're right, we should skedaddle."
Karkat doesn't move.
"Right, you don't know where to go, got it." He looks up and tries to remember where exactly he went when he was being chased by the entire guard of the palace about ten chapters ago. He sees the same exact bridge that Dave had run across to escape with the tiara. "That way!"
Karkat seems to understand, and takes off.
"We're coming, Jade!" Dave says aloud.
Did he actually say that out loud? Karkat wonders.
He did his job. He got a bunch of ruffians to agree on something, and he doesn't even care if it's just for a girl. She's not just any girl, she's a sweet girl who didn't do anything wrong, and deserves freedom just like everybody else.
Karkat recognizes some of the paths that Dave leads him down. This is pretty much the same way that he chased Dave down about ten chapters ago. Two hours into their journey, they come to a cave covered by a curtain of vines. Seriously?
"Right through here, Karkat," Dave says quietly.
Karkat should have known he hid in there last time. They enter warily, because it's now dark and hard to see.
"Sorry, Karkat, I have to get there as soon as possible!" Dave says, launching himself from the saddle. He rummages through it and pulls out the satchel, which Karkat salvaged from Roxy's office beforehand, and pulls out two small blades, one broken, one not. Assuming that this mother of Jade's doesn't know how to use a normal weapon, like a sword, Dave should be fine with just those. He runs ahead of Karkat, knowing exactly where to go. You're welcome, Strider, he harrumphs mentally.
When Karkat finally gets to the end of the cave, Dave is already scaling the tower. Looking up at the sheer height of it, Karkat is grateful for being a horse for once.
Dave only gets ten feet off the ground when Jade's hair comes pouring out of the window. She must be okay! He puts both weapons into his boots before grabbing onto the hair and hauls himself up to the window.
"Jade!" He calls as soon as he enters, hoping for an immediate embrace or some kind of reunion. It's dark. Too dark. He gathers up the rope of hair and pulls the rest of it through the window.
"Mm!"
Dave turns to where he thought the sound was coming from, but sees nothing. He steps closer. "Jade?"
"Try again, loverboy," a thin voice says from behind. Before he could even turn, he feels a sharp pain right in his kidneys.
"Ahh, fff!" he cries out. At first, the pain is not as bad as breaking a bone, but it gets significantly worse when the woman removes whatever blade she used to stab him. He drops to his knees and holds onto the wound, now bleeding profusely through his fingers.
"Mm, mmmm!" The sounds again. That really was Jade then? His eyes focus on the darkness and he sees her bound and gagged, fighting against the ropes with tears in her eyes.
"Are you okay?" he manages to say.
"You, shut up," the mother orders.
"Pfft," Dave chuckles. "I'll shut up when I goshdarned well please."
"Good thing you're dying then," she sneers. "Come, Jade, the loose ends are tied." She reaches down to grab the excess rope that tied Jade up like a common animal. She resists with all of her might, planting her bare feet down and skidding across the cobblestone floor. Dave wants to cheer her on, but his body tells him that he'll die if he moves an inch.
"No!" Jade finally screams, resisting with all her might. She shook off the gag as soon as her fake mother started dragging her. "Let me heal his wounds!"
The Condesce looks at Jade like she just ate a roach. "Why on earth would I let you do that?"
"Because I will fight you for the rest of my days if you don't!" Jade answers tearfully. The fact that he's here proves that he has a good heart after all. "No singing, no youth!" She glances at him, still groaning. As far as Jade knows, she can only help those that haven't died yet. Bec was on the edge when she rescued him, and she hadn't tried using her hair on anything dead, because logic states otherwise. "But if you let him live, I will be yours forever."
"What?!" Dave yells, then groans again. "That's not what I came for. Don't sacrifice your freedom for me. I don't deserve to even be sitting here right now. You need to be free!" Her heart hurts at his kind words.
She looks back at the Condesce and she rolls her eyes at them. "Fine." She drops Jade's rope and takes a thick chain from one of the cabinets, the one they use to keep the roof intact for bad storms, and wraps his leg, locking it with the padlock. "Just in case he gets any ideas." She then releases Jade.
"Dave!" She runs to him and drops to her knees on the side where his wound is. She peels his hand away slowly, replacing his hand with her own and some hair. "I'm so sorry, Dave."
He shushes her. "No, don't be, I'll be okay." He lifts his hand and waves to come closer. "Can I get a hug?" he rasps.
"Sure, Dave," she replies. He probably figured that the Condesce wouldn't allow time for a hug after he was healed, so she allowed it. As he wrapped his hands around her waist, she kept the hand with her hair on his wound, and begins to sing.
Flower, gleam and glow,
Her hair begins to glow.
Let your power shine,
She tears herself away from Dave.
Make the clock reverse-
SHHKK!
"No," the Condesce mumbles.
Jade's hair starts to fade much quicker than it ever had before. That could only mean one thing. She looks behind her at the hair leading right to the Lady Condesce, who's frantically trying to collect it as the glowing fades. "Dave, you-!"
"No, not my youth! Come back!" The Condesce looks right at Jade, wrinkled and even more wiry and decrepit than ever, and launches herself at the pair. Jade cowers over Dave, protecting him as best as she could, but nothing happens. She opens her eyes and all that remains of the woman who raised her is a fuchsia dress on the ground.
Jade looks back at Dave, who's pale and actually managed to take off his stupid shades. He's still bleeding heavily and taking shallow breaths. "Uhm, okay," she mutters, taking her waist-length hair and pressing it to the wound again.
Make the clock reverse,
Bring back what once was mine!
"Why isn't it working!" she sobs. If her hair can't heal him, he'll die! "Come on, hair!"
"You're free now," Dave says.
"But what about your dream to have your own island and that other dream you almost told me about?" She pleads, but it doesn't change the fact that Dave is dying in her arms.
Dave shakes his head and reaches out to her head, bringing her close. He whispers, "My new dream is for your freedom, and hey look, it came true!" He smiles at her, and she tries to smile back, but her quivering lip makes it hard to do that.
Heal what has been hurt,
He lets his arm fall.
Change the fates' design,
Tears cloud her vision.
Save what has been lost,
She lets them fall as she kisses his cheek, lingering for a moment.
Bring back what once was mine...
She kisses his lips lightly.
"What once was mine," she whispers.
She leans back, sitting on her ankles. Bec crawls up on Dave's shoulder and sticks his tongue in, but nothing happens. Bec gurgles unhappily and starts crawling to Jade. Both of Dave's arms are limp and lying in the ground. It doesn't look right, so she leans forward to lift his hands to cross over his chest.
She lifts one arm, then she lifts the arm that was on his wounded side and sees that the blood was completely gone. She blinks, sure that he was bleeding a lot right there, but the wound was still there. Then right in front of her eyes, she sees the wound glow and heal itself, like stitches. Her jaw drops. The rest of him seems to glow, too, hopefully bringing him back to life instead of just healing him. He also deserved to be free, despite everything he has done. As a princess, she can pardon him, right?
"Why do I feel like crap?" Dave mumbles. "Why am I glowing?"
"Dave, you're alive!" Jade exclaims, pouncing on him and hugging him tight. "Don't you ever do that again!"
"I just died for you, and now you yell at me?" He hugs her back.
"Shut up, Dave," she mutters, her voice muffled in his shoulder.
"I'm sorry about your hair," he says apologetically.
"I was going to get it trimmed anyway," she laughs. She sits up. "I like it better this short anyway," she says, feeling the ends.
"Hey, this is still pretty long, according to the normal world," he points out.
"Now the question is, do you like it this way?"
"Uh..."
"Don't answer that." At that, she tackles him again and kisses him right on the mouth. He wraps his arms around her again and holds her close. She loves this. She loves him. She may or may not have said that last part out loud.
"How about we get this chain off me?"
"Good idea." She looks back at the fuchsia dress and finds the key, then unlocks the padlock. The chains drop to the ground heavily, cracking the floor. She doesn't care. She's never coming back to this tower again. Well, maybe to see her paintings, but that's it. She helps him to his feet and they hug again. "Dave, I have something to tell you."
"You're just full of surprises, Lady Jade," he says, separating himself this time.
She takes a deep breath. "I'm the lost princess."
