A/N: Wow, alright. So, here is the new chapter to a story that will also be gaining it's name this morning! I asked my followers on Tumblr, and the new name of this fic is The Illusion of Fate. I hope you all enjoy! Happy New Year, by the way!

The next two days seem like the longest days of your life. The morning after Jade, Dave, and you designed your plans, you woke up, late for your first class, and with your eyes crusted over from the tears of the night before. You get ready, making a mental note to thank Dave later for making you breakfast.

It's weird, the unspoken relationship the two of you have. Most days are quiet. If you have an earlier class than he does that day, you wake him up that morning and handle breakfast. He does the same for you. If there was time between classes, you both would hang out. Unless you had something else planned that is, or on days where one of you decided you needed some alone time to be creative with. You took turns cooking dinner and spent the evenings playing video games, studying, or occasionally watching a movie.

Normally the two of you took turns trying to come up the best way to poke fun at each other's quirks. Some days the insults would be light and playful, others had lead to a few fistfights, of which usually lead to one of you apologizing in some way ( the most notable being the time a comment went to far, and you ended up with a cracked rib and black eye. You apologized for what you'd said by sneaking on to Dave's computer and making a fairly shitty computer that filled his screen with "I'm sorry" any time he opened anything for the next twenty-four hours, and he? You found a cd of mixed songs about apologizing, most of them being remixes that Dave put together specially for you.).

'But that was all in the past.' you find yourself thinking. Now Dave, Jade, and yourself were doing the unthinkable. What you were going to do is dangerous. No one else would ever dare to do it. If you were caught, you weren't sure what would happen. You couldn't let that happen. You've resolved yourself to what you're going to do.

First, you were going to escape this society. Within the past week your eyes opened to just how imperfect everything was here, how corrupt every aspect of your life was until now. Next you were going to free the people of Prospit and Derse and free your friends. Then, you would disappear, off of any of the government's maps. After that you weren't sure what you planned on. But one thing was certain now, you were leaving and never coming back.

The next day, you stay home from classes. You and Dave started packing. You knew to only take what you needed and went about captchalouging what you would need. You captchalouge the clothing you would need, several maps, the book you had stolen, and after making an agreement with Dave, half of the non-perishable food you had stocked up on. The items fit nicely into the wallet modus you inherited from your dad, and when you realize it, you know there's still something you need to do before you leave.

Once you've cleared that everything was taken care of with Dave, go up to your room, take a poster down from your wall, and you sit down at the desk. Your Armageddon poster to be exact. A blue marker finds its way from a desk drawer into your hands. And then you write.

dear dad,

i know this is sudden and i'm sorry.
tomorrow i'm leaving, as in forever.
please know that it wasn't anything that you did.
i'm doing what i believe is right.
i dont want you to look for me.
i'm so sorry, but i have to fight for this.
i love you so much.

love,
john.

You know that he'll find it, you can feel it in your heart. Writing your note almost brings you to tears, but you hold them in. From now on you know you can't let yourself cry, you have to be strong if you were going to make it through this with your life.

When you check the clock, you realize it's not yet even past 5 in the evening. Jade would be returning from her last class and whatever she had to do afterward ( she hadn't given you any details aside from it being something important to your mission's success). You decide to calm yourself down by playing mindless video games.

When you make your way to the living room from your room and sit down on the couch, you catch Dave's eye. He must agree with your idea, because he's plopping down next to you and grabbing the second player controller. Without a word, you play through level after level of a game. You don't even know which one.

Your gaming comes to an end however, when Jade finally walks into your home. Dave pauses the game, "So? What's up Harley?"

"Well, I've got all of my stuff captchalouged. I also payed off a friend of mine to set off an explosion while we're leaving the city. And then I went and...um... convinced someone to let me borrow a mode of transportation for us! So we wont be stuck walking to God knows where." She says. She gives you and Dave a small smile, "I was hoping I could stay here tonight?"

"Of course!" you respond immediately. Dave shoots you a look that you can see even from behind his shades, but he doesn't object, "You can take my room."

"Oh no, don't worry about that!" Jade objected, "I'm perfectly fine on the couch!"

"That wouldn't be very gentlemanly of me. Seriously Jade, I've fallen asleep on the couch plenty of times." You tell her.

"If you're both going to be so damn insistent on this shit, Harley, you can have Egbert's room and Egbert can sleep in mine." Comes Dave's voice.

You hadn't expected him to speak up, but he did. And his idea was not going to fly with you, "Dave, no way. I'm not going to take your room. We have a perfectly good couch that I've offered to take!"

For a moment, you can read Dave's expression, even with the shades his brother gave him on. Just briefly it looked like he was going to argue about it, but he put his hands up in surrender, "If that's what floats your boat, whatever dude."

When that was settled, a silence settled over the room. The reality of what you were going to do the next day hit the three of you simultaneously. You took to watching the other two. Jade was visibly nervous, worrying her lower lip with her teeth, her eyes darting around the room as though someone was going to break in to the house and bust your plan in that very moment. Dave had gone back to looking as impassive as usual, but after living with him for the time you have, you're able to identify a tenseness in the way he sat that wasn't there before. You wondered slightly how you looked then, but you knew that no matter whether you looked outright scared or not, your eyes would betray you.

The silence remains for a few more minutes until you decided to break it, mumbling something about making dinner. You got up and went to the kitchen to start cooking for all three of you, and the task, something so mechanical, so exact, got your mind off of the situation as you prepared the meal. When the food is nearly done, you hear Dave enter the kitchen to set the table. It's just another thing about living with him that normally you wouldn't even notice, but that night, it makes you smile. Dave knows you, and you know him, better than any of your other friends, and knowing that he was going to go through with this with you made everything seem a little lighter. You knew you could count on him.

When dinner is served the three of you eat, trying to lighten the mood by talking about your final classes. It's almost as if nothing were different than before everything went to hell, minus Rose not being there with you. A few times you and Jade were even able to laugh at some of the quips made by one of the table's occupants. You enjoyed it as long as you could, knowing this would be the last time for a while you would have a moment like this.

After the three of you decided that you should probably try and get some sleep. Tomorrow was an important day and you weren't about to let being tired stand in the way of your plans. Dave helped you pull some extra blankets out of one of the closets to make a bed for you on the couch. You thank him and settled on to the makeshift bed, wishing both he and Jade good sleep. The said their good nights and disappeared up the stairs.

When you laid down to try to sleep, the clock read 8:11. It was the first time in a while you had tried to go to sleep before eleven, so sleep didn't come right away. Your sleeplessness left you with time to think. To think about your plans, your friends, your life. And upon contemplating all of these things, you found yourself content with that would happen when you opened your eyes the next morning.

Rewind

Time stops when John closes his eyes and goes into a reverse. The events of the evening rewind, but not from the blue eyed young man's perspective. Instead, you are seeing the events of the night in reverse from a dampened point of view, as though whomever this was had something obscuring their face. And they do. For as you rewind, you become Dave Strider and see the night through his point of view. The memories stop at the point where you (Dave) and your best friend John had sat down to play video games to let off some steam. When the memory starts you are pausing the game.

You paused the game when Harley had walked in to your apartment. The final member of your group not currently in a cell had joined you, and you knew that there were things to discuss. After hearing her report on her day and hearing the small skirmish about sleeping arrangements, in which you put in your own idea in to, a silence settles upon the group. You don't let any emotion flit across your face as you watch your friends. Being the cool kid, you couldn't let how you were feeling effect your judgment. Egbert looked as though he had everything under control, except when you looked at his eyes from behind the security of your shades, where you saw the fears he had cross his eyes. More important to you however was the look you caught Jade giving you. While she looked nervous, she managed to get your attention. Her eyes read clearly the message of: "We need to talk."

John is the first to break the silence, and his disappearance into the kitchen is the perfect opportunity for you to talk to Jade without him overhearing. You turned to Jade and she immediately began whispering, "Have you told him?"

You snorted, albeit quietly, "What the fuck was I supposed to tell him again?"

If there was anything you had to give Jade props for, it was the look she gave you when you said this, "You know exactly what I'm talking about. I know darn well that you remember the conversation we had the week after you and John moved in with each other."

You did remember this conversation with her. Quite perfectly. You remember every detail of it.

About a week after you and John had begun living together, you had asked Jade to join you at the small cafe that had been your group's meeting place for the past few months. She obliged you immediately and met you exactly on time. The two of you had ordered your coffee and a muffin for Jade before taking your usual table that was furthest away from prying ears. For a few minutes, you sat in silence, just drinking your coffee. Until she spoke up, "What is this about, Dave? Why did you only ask me here and not the others?"

You sighed and put your cup down, "Rose had already figured it out and John can't know. He wouldn't understand. But I trust you, so I need to tell you this."

She nodded and you took a deep breath before picking up where you left off, " I know you know how the Awakening happens. You learn your gender, parts of your future, your name, and your sexuality. And I know you know that some people have reason to fear the last one. Well when it came down to that for me, I promised myself that one day I would tell you guys. Especially because there was the possibility of it effecting you or John. It wouldn't effect Rose as much because I see her as a sister."

"Dave..." Jade had trailed off, "Are you trying to say that..."

You lowered your voice lower than it had already been, "Jade, when the voice told me my sexuality, it told me I was... it told me I was going to be a... fuck I can't even say it. But you know where I'm going with this. And it...it's becoming a bit of a problem. Fuck, Harley, the day we met John for the first time, I knew that I was going to be damned to hell. It's been a week, but we've known each other for a long time and...shit, what I'm getting at is that I...I think I may have fallen for Egbert."

Her eyes are wide and she just watched you for what felt like ages. But the shock on her face slowly dissolved into a shaky smile, "I understand. We can't help who we love. Besides, even if John had been a girl, I still wouldn't have had any chance, you still would have the same preference. All I can do now is back off and wish you luck.

You had nodded and the mood between you to lightened. And after the time that had passed between then and the moment Jade had brought it up, you knew it to be true. There was no helping it any more, you couldn't deny that you felt things for your best friend, no matter how illegal it was. But you had kept your mouth closed. You were not going to ruin anything by telling him. Instead you repressed your feelings, hoping, praying even that another guy would catch your eye. Because John was to important as a friend to lose. You would not let that happen.

However, when everything started falling apart and you began making plans to rectify the wrongs on your brother, Jake, Rose, and Kanaya, you knew that you would have to tell him. Because you needed him to know, if anything happened to you when everything went down, you wanted him to know that he had been loved. You wanted him to know exactly how much he meant to you, even if you didn't show it. And you had resolved to tell him that night that Jade had brought it to your attention. The night before everything would change.

But as the night moved on, until the point of the groups retirement to sleep in preparation of the next day, you found that even with Jade's prompting, you couldn't do it.

Because you couldn't deal with it if he ended up hating you for it.