Greetings, people of Fanfiction! Yup. I'm finally back once again. Some of you might remember two years ago, I posted my first ever fanfic submission titled "With A Little Help From The Princess". And after it received such a warm reception, but simultaneously also left readers with the feeling of wanting to see more, I figured the last thing I'd wanna do is disappoint. And so a couple years later, I finally decided to finish what I started. As mentioned in the summary, this is a followup to my first story, so it is highly recommended that you head over and check that fic out before reading this one. Without further ado, let's begin…
Ever since Dave had visited and talked with Ella, the next few days remained fairly silent for the germaphobe. Aside from a few text interactions with the Snow White lookalike which included an exchange of phone numbers, he hadn't left his house, and his life remained mostly normal otherwise. At this point, he had felt much more relaxed than he had felt previously, with the comforting feeling of maintaining positive connections with at least one of his fellow Total Drama cast-mates.
In the middle of that day, he finally received another message. But this time, it was from a different person that had never reached out to him before. He pulled out his phone and couldn't help but put on a little smile when he saw the name attached to it: Shawn Bennett. "Hey man, I heard from Ella that you wanted to touch base with me. How have things been?" the message read.
Dave saw Ella's name in the message and briefly questioned in his mind why she never let him know this in advance, but regardless, he didn't hesitate for a moment to respond back, "Oh hey Shawn. Still not perfect, but definitely better than before, I'll say that."
The zombie nut saw this and sent, "Gotcha, I bet. Hey, I have an idea. If you're able to video chat, it'd be cool for us to catch up with each other that way if you're interested"
To which Dave then responded with: "Sounds good to me." Shawn liked that message shortly before they each exchanged their numbers. The Indian was already starting to fill up with a little excitement on the inside.
A few minutes later, they each got their computers ready as they began to call one another. Shortly thereafter, on Dave's screen, Shawn's face was seen behind what appeared to be some sort of zombie-proof bunker. Meanwhile, Shawn saw Dave in his bedroom as they each began their introductions.
"Hey Shawn!"
"Hey Dave!" They each happily said simultaneously.
"So, uh… it's been quite a while, hasn't it?" Dave asked.
"Yeah, sorry it had to end so awkwardly…" the zombie-slayer apologized.
The normal guy followed it up with an even bigger and more emotional apology. "Yeah," he sighed. "And for the record, I was NEVER trying to kill anyone, nor did I want you or Sky to die. And if I came off that way, I sincerely apologize. My satisfaction of getting revenge and thinking I won was the only thing on my mind at the time, and I didn't realize just how dangerous of a situation you guys were actually put in."
Dave attempted to hold back tears after saying this, before Shawn gave him some words of reassurance.
"Look man, if there's anyone who should be sorry, it's me. Chris was the one who put you and Jasmine in that position to take us down in the first place. And I take full responsibility for not realizing you were left behind after the fact. If anything, that makes me feel like the crappier friend," Shawn mourned as he hung his head in shame.
Now it was Dave's turn to offer the zombie nut some support. "Aw, don't say that about yourself, Shawn. At least you were trying your hardest to help me when I was down. And even if things didn't always work out, I could still tell that your heart was always in the right place."
Shawn smiled and thanked him in response. "Thanks, man. Means a lot," he uttered as he wiped a tear from his eye.
"No problem. And hey, that brief time I had spent trapped on the island did inspire me to toughen up and improve athletically," he added with a brief chuckle. "On a brighter note, I see you've already gotten yourself prepared for the 'apocalypse'," Dave pointed out, as he took notice of where Shawn was.
"Indeed. Thanks to Jasmine, my fear of the undead may have simmered down a bit, but that does not mean I've given up on preparing for the worst-case scenario. When it comes to these creepers, you always have to expect the unexpected. The bunker's still a work-in-progress, but I've gotten most of the areas set up so far," the zombie slayer explained.
"Nice. Also, how's Jasmine been?" Dave asked with interest.
"She's doing good. We did indeed end up splitting the money and we still talk to each other every day. Right now, she's still planning on saving up for her cage fighting school/flower shop hybrid, which is an idea that I may have found ridiculous at first, but it took time to grow on me. She also hopes to make plans to fly up here to Calgary so we can live together eventually," the zombie nut explained.
"Oh that's cool, hope that works out for you," the germaphobe responded.
The rest of their chat lasted for about a half-hour with them talking about other things that they've been up to and occasionally bonding over a few common interests. Afterwards, they each signed off happy about their finally rekindled friendship.
Shortly after Dave and Shawn had finished talking, the former couldn't help but ask Ella something… "Hey Ella, I'm curious as to why you never told me sooner about Shawn knowing how I was feeling and all that?" he typed and sent.
The fairytale princess quickly responded back. "Oh, I wanted you to feel surprised! After all, who doesn't love a surprise?" she wrote, before finishing it off with a smiling emoji with three hearts around it.
"Fair point, lol. Thanks" the germaphobe responded.
"My pleasure as always! Oh I forgot to ask, how did your chat with Shawn go?" Ella wrote shortly thereafter.
"It was nice. It started out a little heavy trying to pick up where we left off, but once we got past that, it felt just like talking with the friend I had back in Pahkitew", he explained to her.
"Oh, how wonderful! I'm so happy to hear you two are good friends again :)" the princess replied excitedly.
"Thanks again, have a good one" Dave left off.
"You're welcome! And you too, Prince Dave!" Ella replied with a crown and heart emoji.
Dave seemed to be in quite good shape so far when it came to rekindling things with others. Ella was the first to reach out to him and she forgave him for everything easily, only for Shawn to then talk to him resulting in them reviving their friendship days later. Things were turning out better than he could've ever expected. However, there was only one other person left on Dave's mind that he was hoping to eventually reconcile and make peace with one day. And that person's name was Sky. That was undoubtedly going to be the biggest challenge of them all. Their falling out was so huge that one would think they'd rather try their hardest to forget that experience ever existed and move on with their lives, or at the very least give themselves quite more time to recover. But deep down inside, Dave had just a little sliver of hope that someday, somehow, he'd have a chance to be able to at least come to better terms with the aspiring olympian.
Nevertheless, he couldn't let that thought bother him for too long, since his family was planning to finally go on a week-long vacation starting next weekend.
After the following week had passed by and the weekend arrived, Dave's family had already packed their bags before arriving at the airport. This was also one of the first times he'd ever be leaving his home country of Canada and making his way over to the United States. Having gone through check-in and security with their passports in hand, the threesome finally took flight towards their destination.
Aside from Dave always making sure he was staying clean, much of the flight was normal. As Dave had kept himself occupied for the next 4-5 hours, the family made their landing just past the afternoon. They had rented a house for a week down by the shore. Since they still had around an hour and a half before they were able to check in, they decided to make their way over to the beach to pass the time. Luckily for them, it was a bright and sunny day with a temperature that felt like just the right balance between not being too hot and not being too cold.
After they had found a place on the sand to set up their umbrella, blanket and chairs, Dave and his mother walked across the shoreline looking for shells, while his father just sat back and relaxed on his recliner in the sun. At one point later during the walk, he had miraculously passed by a familiar face.
A very familiar face.
A super-duper-hyper-mega-ultra familiar face.
Dave recognized it in an instant, in addition to her long black hair and red earrings. The only difference this time around is that she was in her bathing suit and she was not alone, as her sister Jane was also there, along with both of their parents who were just minding their own business. Dave and Sky both gasped at the exact same time at first sight, as they were each left absolutely flabbergasted. Neither of them wanted to make the first move.
Jane was the first person in Sky's family to catch her gasp. "What's wrong, Sky?" she curiously asked her younger sister.
"I-I-I... just saw Dave pass by," the petite gymnast stammered.
"Holy crap, are you serious?" Jane couldn't believe what she was just told. Needless to say, she knew about Dave due to being her sister's love interest at one point in time. But by the time the finale was over, she didn't exactly have a kind view on him for what he had done to her sister, to put things nicely. Even after she had heard about his current state thanks to Sky maintaining contact with Ella, she still felt rather skeptical.
The camera cuts over to Dave and his mother right after he had gasped.
"What's the matter, Dave?" the mom asked his son with concern.
"Y-y-you're not gonna believe me when I say this... b-b-but I looked over just now and saw S-Sky," the normal guy faltered in a similar manner to the athlete.
"Oh my goodness, you can't be serious?" she exclaimed.
"Dead serious," he assured her, still as shocked as ever. Her view on Sky may not have been as tainted as Jane's view on Dave was, though she didn't exactly approve of the gymnast's actions in their relationship either. Then again, she felt the exact same way about her own son and wasn't exactly one to choose sides anyway.
After having waited long enough, the two former Pahkitew Island contestants finally felt like ripping off the band-aid as they each slowly but surely started to approach each other.
"Wait Sky, what are you doing?" Jane questioned her younger sibling with a noticeably worried tone.
"This won't take long, but if there's any time to get this over with, it's right now," the Cree athlete answered with assertion.
"But Sky, I really don't think this is a goo-"
"Relax, Jane," the shorter gymnast interrupted. "I know what I'm doing. This will likely be the only ever time I'll have a chance to bury the hatchet. Trust me, I'll be fine."
If there's something Sky was good at aside from gymastics, it was her ability to remain as calm and collected as she could under serious or less-than-expected situations, along with influencing her friends and relatives to do the same. The only exceptions being whenever a big competition is on the line (obviously), or being put under lots of pressure. Sky started to walk over, Jane still looked heavily concerned and could only pray that nothing toxic comes out of this moment. "Best of luck, sis," she muttered with the same tone as she put her hands together in prayer.
The camera once again cuts over to Dave right as he started to walk towards Sky.
"Hey, where are you going?" his mother asked anxiously.
"This is it. This is what I've been waiting to do ever since I was briefly stranded on Pahkitew Island. I'm never gonna get this opportunity ever again," Dave told her mother with a similar tone of confidence that Sky had.
"A-are you sure?"
"Positive. I got this. See you in a little bit," he answered as he made his way over before her mother could even say anything back.
As the germaphobe and gymnast made their way towards each other, the levels of awkwardness for the both of them continuously escalated with each footstep they took, before they were finally standing face to face. Jane and Dave's mother had kept their eyes peeled the whole time. After a few more seconds of awkward silence, they each finally spoke up. Albeit very timidly.
"Uh... hey Dave," Sky greeted.
"Hey Sky..." Dave uttered, too nervous to even make eye contact. They each felt pretty emotional on the inside, but Dave especially so. The Skave fiasco took its toll on him harder than it did anyone else. This was especially apparent as he began to let out a few manly tears.
"Are you okay?" the athlete asked, as she took notice of this.
"Look, I know this probably isn't what you or anybody else asked for. A-And if you were hoping to forget about me completely after everything that had happened, I-I don't blame you one bit. But from the bottom of my heart, all I can say is... I'm sorry for everything," he apologized as he hung his head. "Whether that be for all the interruptions... the obsessions... or especially whatever it was that I turned into by the very end... all of that," he added on with a heavy heart. At this point, it would've felt like a miracle for him to have received any amount of forgiveness.
Sky gave a very small sigh before she spoke. "No Dave, I'm sorry."
"Huh?" Dave quietly emitted after not getting the response he was expecting.
"Listen. Please," Sky wanted to assure there would be no repeat of interruptions from their time on TDPI. "I understand your social skills and handling of emotions may not be the best, but my terrible communication is something I might not ever be able to forgive myself for with all the chances I was given." Dave nodded in agreement as the gymnast continued. "But if you wanna know the truth about Keith..." Dave cringed a bit at that name, but he held it in. "...I was already planning to dump him even before I came on the show. To make a long story short, he was just not a good boyfriend. He may have seemed cute and innocent at first, but he just ended up being selfish and overly controlling more often than not. And so before I arrived on the island, he was already erased from my mind, I thought I was done with him for good. But somehow, I must've failed to realize I hadn't actually dumped him properly before then until it was too late. And for that, I can't be any more sorry for giving you false hope," the Cree athlete apologized in return.
Dave seemed to mostly be accepting of her words of remorse, but he did have one more question. "There was one other thing I've been wanting to know ever since I started to self-reflect, but... what was your 'but' about?" he curiously asked.
It took her a bit for her to absorb what he meant, but once she knew what he meant, she knew. "Oh, my 'but' was that I liked you, but I wanted to put more focus on the game, since I feared that a relationship would get in the way of me achieving my ultimate goal of winning," she explained without any hesitation. "Little did I know that not making that more clear to you would come back to bite me this hard. I mean, I still had my supporters afterwards, but I wasn't exactly looked at the same way again by everyone," she continued. Dave nodded his head, knowing the painful feeling all too well.
"That pretty much applies double for me regarding my reputation," the germaphobe admitted in response. "All the backlash, hateful messages and many other negative things I got just made me more afraid to step outside into the world again. And I was just super stressed out for the next month or so as a result. At least I still had Ella who was willing to help me." Sky nodded in understanding of how that must've all felt.
"Seems like we both have quite a ways to go in terms of how we handle our relationships," the Cree girl noted.
"Yeah," Dave agreed, knowing that this meant them becoming lovers again was out of the question, but that thankfully wasn't what either person had in mind anyway.
"To be honest, I think Chris is to blame more than anyone else, including either of us. Aside from him obviously revealing my audition tape, when I got you as a partner, he like literally refused to let us talk things out whatsoever. And not only that, I was the first one who let Chris and Chef know that you were missing and needed to be picked up. Winning may have been my top priority during the last leg, but I was not going to let you be put in serious danger, even after the avalanche incident. I have my limits," Sky stated.
"Well thanks for letting me know. And the same goes for me too. Even when I was at my absolute lowest and ugliest point, I didn't want you or Shawn to die like some people made it seem," Dave tried to assure her.
"I believe you," she assured him back. "And once again, I hold that more against Chris than you since he was the one who put you in that position to begin with. He seems to love bringing out the evil and crazy in almost everyone. Jeez, you don't even know how badly I wanted to throttle him that day."
"Chris just loves to ruin lives, doesn't he?" We can only hope karma will bite him in the ass hard one of these days," Dave said.
"You said it," the gymnast agreed.
Jane and Dave's mother were still watching intently from a distance the whole time up until then. They were each somewhat surprised but also relieved at the same time at how civil their conversation had seemed to be going up until that point. A few more seconds of silence passed on by before Dave spoke again.
"So... does this mean we're good now?" Dave nervously asked in his most curious tone yet. If she said yes, then he'll have made his wish of coming to better terms with everyone on his ideal list come true. He waited a few seconds in anticipation before the gymnast gave her response.
...
...
...
"Yeah. We're good," Sky confirmed as she nodded her head. She and Dave both put their hands out and gave each other a handshake in reconciliation. Dave's mother couldn't help but let out a little tear of joy as she and Jane each took a picture (or two) of this rather wholesome, once-in-a-lifetime moment. Even some other people on the beach were catching onto the action. At this point in time, Dave and Sky's relationship seemed to turn back to what it had previously been at its absolute best, just without any romantic aspects getting in their way. And nobody could have felt any more relieved.
"So what made you wanna come down here?" Dave asked Sky in a very normal and relaxed tone.
"Oh, I just wanted to take a break from my training and finally give myself some time to relax," she answered. "How about you?"
"Same with me, pretty much. Just to escape and take my mind off of anything that might've been getting to me and stuff," he explained as Sky nodded in response. "How has your training been?"
"It's been going pretty well. And if anything, coming up just short of winning the grand prize in Pahkitew Island has inspired me to work smarter and harder than I ever have before."
"Yeah. As of now, I'm still thinking about my future, but if you ever end up making it into the Olympics somehow, you gotta let me know," Dave said while chuckling briefly.
"Will do. Anyway, I'm probably gonna head back to my house soon, so I'll start making my way back over to my spot. Hope you enjoy the rest of your trip," Sky told him.
"You too. And who knows? Maybe we'll end up catching each other again one of these days."
"Guess we'll just have to wait and see. Bye Dave."
"Bye Sky."
They each bid their farewells with a huge feeling of comfort and relief as they went back to their families. In an extraordinary turn of events, two former love interests-turned-toxic rivals had planned to spend some time down by the same shore and were each given just enough time to be able to mend what had been previously broken. With them each having learned their lessons, it was also by far the most mature interaction the two ever had together, putting any of their interactions on Total Drama to shame. All that time they had each spent to themselves following all of the chaos likely helped with that.
"That was quite an impressive display of courage. I probably wouldn't have had the guts to go for it if I were you," Jane complimented her younger sister. "I even got a good picture of you guys riiiight here..."
She showed Sky the best picture she had of her and Dave shaking hands. "Nice," she replied. "And what are the odds it would've happened at a time and place like this?"
Jane just shrugged in response, but she still felt proud of her as she was thanked by her sibling and the two went in to give each other a hug.
The camera then cut back over to Dave's mother who had a big smile on her face as her son approached her.
"Hey! Oh, that was beautiful! So happy it turned out for the best!" she gushed.
Dave couldn't help but chuckle at his mother's excitement. "Thanks. Me too," he added. She then showed Dave the three pictures she had on her phone and asked him which one he liked best. He picked the third one and then shortly after, she sent it to him as they went back over to their umbrella.
Minutes later, both Dave and Sky's families each returned to their respective houses after the former threesome finally got to check in. And not too long after, the news of the two former PI campers finally coming to better terms with one another started to spread like wildfire once their other friends knew about it, with Ella in particular being so proud of what she had seen, that she cried literal tears of joy. It had been the most uplifting thing she had seen in quite some time, which was saying something considering Ella is someone who likes to constantly provide herself with uplifting content. As to be expected, there were also some fans on the internet who felt like neither person deserved each other's forgiveness, but if this was the absolute best thing that Dave (and Sky to an extent) could have done in order to restore as much of his former reputation as he could, he'd take what he could get in a heartbeat. And the best part? His vacation was quite literally just getting started.
And thus, this wraps up the tale of the rise, then fall, then civil resolution of Skave.
THE END
End Note: And there you have it: my first ever Fanfiction submission in almost two years!
One of the bigger requests I've gotten when I made my first fanfic was for there to be some sort of aftermath following Dave's visit with Ella. And for a while, I had a few possible ideas in mind, but nothing ever really clicked hard enough with me to follow through with it. However, once the two-year anniversary of that story approached, many of these new ideas just came flying by, and I started making notes as fast as I could before finally writing it all out in this form. Some of my descriptions and layout may be a little rusty in places due to me having not written anything in almost two years, but hopefully I did a fine enough job fitting everything in.
Another thing I wanted to note is that while I would not call myself a fan of Skave by any means (at least in terms if how the pair was executed in canon), I also can't help but kinda feel a bit bad about how much the toxic aspects of the pair get bashed on nowadays. Particularly since I can't even say it's entirely their own fault that the relationship fell apart as hard as it did (even if they obviously still had their own faults). Jasmine, Shawn to an extent, and especially Chris were all noteworthy contributors in that. Shawn for giving Dave advice that he ended up misinterpreting and became even more obsessive towards Sky as a result, Jasmine for repeatedly convincing Sky that she "can't make friends with the enemy" on top of aggressively pressuring her into doing things that would sabotage Dave or put him in danger, and I don't think I even need to elaborate any further on Chris now, do I? But anyway, I took note that one of the things that made Skave unique from any other pairing was that it involved a pair of contestants that had a mutual attraction to one another, but ultimately weren't meant to be. And along with many others, I felt extremely disgusted at their lack of true closure by the end of the season. All of the contrived writing choices and unnecessary outside influences to force drama have always made the PI finale one of my least favorite episodes, if not my least favorite. And so I wanted to do everything that I could to give the relationship between these two characters a respectful and believable conclusion like many of us wished they could've gotten instead. It might not have been easy given how hard their falling out obviously was, but I tried my best.
A few extra notes:
1. Yes, I went with the classic idea of putting the last name of Shawn's VA as his last name. It was too big of a challenge to come up with anything else, so I figured why the heck not.
2. You might also be wondering what inspired me to go with the name of "Jane" for Sky's sister. While she was never given a name in Canada or the United States, in the Italian version of Pahkitew Island, her name was revealed to be Jane. This was one of the more interesting little fun facts I had come across, and you can find out more about it on an article by Flashlight237.
Once again, I need to thank many other great TD authors on this site for influencing my writing style. Thank you all for reading, and reviews are always welcome!
~Rockin' D-99