Archive of Our Own ^beta

You are six years old the first time you hold a sword.

It’s far from the first time you see a sword. They’re everywhere you look— displayed on the wall, in your Bro’s hand as he marches up the stairs to the roof, lying haphazardly on the kitchen counter where they’re just close enough for you to reach out and touch them. You’ve cut your hands on them more than a few times, and each time Bro called you a dumbass but he still took care of your cuts.

In your earliest memories, you’re perched on his shoulders, watching his hands guide the blade through motion after motion. He’s practiced on his own (except for Cal, obviously) since you got bigger, but a few times, you followed him up to the roof. You tried to be all sneaky, the way he is, his footsteps inaudible if you’re not laser-focused on hearing them. You’re pretty sure he noticed you anyways, but he didn’t say anything about it. Just carried on and let you skulk in the shadows of the stairwell while he ran drills, slicing at the air with an almost robotic precision.

Today, you don’t have to sneak. Today, Bro tells you to follow him up to the roof, and when you get there he’s holding a sword, smaller than the ones he typically uses, in an outstretched arm.

The sight of it gives you a sudden burst of excited energy, and you get the urge to run and jump across the roof. You don’t, because that’s not cool, but you can’t help but crack a smile.

He nods at you. Bro has a language of his own, one spoken through brief motions and terse sentences and irony and and microexpressions so subtle you fail to notice them most of time, much less read them. It’s a language you don’t understand— not yet, anyways. You’ll become fluent in his language someday, just like you’ll become fluent in swordfighting.

This particular nod, you understand without much trouble. You do what he asks without asking; you take the sword. It’s heavier than you expected. The way Bro handles swords, you’d think they weigh nothing. Like he forged a blade out of nothing but sharpened air. This one seemed no different when he held it, but now that it’s in your grip, your hand shakes. You have to put both hands on the hilt, and even then it’s not completely stable. But you’re doing it, you’re holding a sword and it’s awesome. So you take a step back and give it a few practice swings. It flies in wide, unsteady arcs around you.

“Kid, you’re goin’ to lose a limb wavin’ it around like that.”

You freeze. Bro waits, arms crossed, for ten uncomfortably long seconds. Waiting for you to prove you’re capable of not waving your sword around like an idiot, presumably. And for your part, you prove just that, staying as still as you possibly can. Which isn’t that still— your hands continue to shake, your weight shifts from foot to foot— but Bro seems satisfied.

“So. You ready to learn how to actually use that thing?”

“I’m so ready.” You’re grinning now, a toothy smile unbefitting of a cool guy like yourself. “The ready train has left the station. And now it’s going to Ready City, which is where I live.”

You could go on, but Bro raises his hand to interrupt you. “Alright, I get it. Quit the babblin’.”

Here is an immutable, quintessential fact of your life: Bro is cool. The coolest guy ever, probably. Granted, you haven’t met that many people outside of him, but you doubt any of them could measure up in the coolness department. Yeah, maybe other kids don’t have fireworks in the sink and puppets whose function you don’t fully understand yet on the floor, but that’s because they don’t have the coolest Bro. This is the cool guy way, the Strider way, and if you follow it you’ll be as cool as him someday. So you do what he says. You always do.

He pulls his own sword out of his strife deck, and quick as blinking, he’s taken up a stance. One foot forward, blade held straight in front of him in an unwavering two-handed grip. You wait for directions, shifting your footing, adjusting your grip, resisting the urge to fill the silence with whatever comes to mind, but he doesn’t say anything. All he does is stare at you from behind his shades, expecting.

A minute and thirty-one seconds of him standing like that passes before he says anything. “Well?”

And it takes you another nine seconds to realize what he wants you to do. But you’re on it the second you figure it out, imitating his stance as best you can. There’s an apology and an accompanying ramble on the tip of your tongue that you barely manage to hold back.

Bro assesses you. Even though his shades obscure them, sometimes you can feel his eyes on you. You feel it now; that prickling on the back of your neck that says you’re being watched.

“Your blade should be straight out in front of you, and your back foot should be at an angle.” He’s still holding the stance, so you take another look and adjust your positioning to be more like his. “Relax your shoulders. You need to be able to change form quick.”

That, you’re not quite sure how to do. You try untensing the muscles in your arms as much as you can without loosening your grip. It must be good enough, because he offers no more criticisms. Instead, he switches to a new stance as fast as he did the first. This time, you know what to do. You copy him; he corrects you until he’s satisfied.

The process repeats itself for a few more stances. Just when you’re starting to get bored of it, he says, “You want to get to swingin’?”

He doesn’t wait for your response— probably because he knows the answer is yes— before he slashes his sword through the air. By now, you know what to do. You follow his lead as he goes through cut after cut.

“Again,” he says after a flurry of you-didn’t-count-how-many motions.

When you repeat the last strike he showed you, he shakes his head. “I meant all of them.”

It’s more difficult than you expect. You have to pause between movements to remember which one comes next, and each time you do, the corner of his lips twitches downwards the slightest bit.

“Again,” he says when you finish.

You go through that drill until your muscles ache, until sweat soaks through your shirt, until you’re panting for breath. The whole time, the sun beats down on you. It should be illegal, you think, for it to be this hot. The sun should be going to jail for this.

“Bro,” you whine after what feels like the thousandth repetition, “I’m tired.”

“Suck it up.”

“Can we be done for today? I’m melting. Really. I’m turning into a puddle. It’s going to be super hard to clean up.”

“Jesus, kid, shut up. Stop bein’ a wimp.” His voice is sharper than before, each word a blade. “Do. It. Again.”

You don’t want to be a wimp. You want to be cool. And most importantly, you don’t want to argue with him when he’s using that tone of voice. So you do it again, but your arms shake from the effort, the sword wobbling in your grip. Mid-slash, it slips out of your hands. The sound it makes as it clatters against the roof makes you wince.

The next thing you know, Bro’s katana is pointed at you.

“Never drop your sword. That’s the kind of thing that’ll get you killed.” He steps back. When the katana is away from you, you exhale, and you realize you’ve been holding your breath. “Pick it up. One more time, then we’re done for the day.”

You put all your focus into the last run-through. It’s still wobbly, but you don’t drop it, and you’re not pausing anymore. After, you try to hand it back to him.

“Nah, that’s for you, lil’ man. Put it in your strife specibus.”

Bro walks across the roof and leans against the air conditioning unit while you mess around with your sylladex trying to allocate your brand-new bladekind specibus. Distracted, you lose track of where you’re putting your hands, and you gasp as the blade makes a shallow cut across your palm. It’s not the worst you’ve had, it’s barely even bleeding, but still. It hurts. You grit your teeth and bite your tongue to keep from reacting any more than you already have, because you’re not a wimp. Once you’ve got your strife specibus sorted out, you go over to Bro and show him your injured hand, like you do whenever you need his help after a sword-related accident.

“About time you learned how to take care of that yourself. This one ain’t too bad, should be a good enough place to start. You’ve seen me do it enough times,” he says, peering at your hand. He always told you to watch what he was doing when he was bandaging you. You guess this is why. “First aid kit’s in the bathroom. Find me if you’re havin’ trouble.”

He flashsteps away, and six minutes later you’re sitting on the bathroom floor trying to, once again, copy him as best you can.

You think you got it; your hand hurts a bit less. But where his work is neat, yours is sloppy at best.

You look at it and see a cheap imitation of him.

(It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last.)

—

Three months of rooftop training sessions later, you have your first strife.

“What’re we doing today? Can we do something new?” When you get to the roof, you ready your sword as you have nearly every day. “I know how to block and cut and do all the poses. I’m like the boss of sword stuff. I walk into work at the sword shop and everyone’s like ‘look, it’s the sword boss.’ It’s me.”

“Nah, you ain’t mastered any of that shit ‘til you can actually use it in a fight.” In an instant, Bro’s sword appears in his hand. “That’s what you really got to learn.”

You don’t get so much as a second to process what he means before he’s lunging at you. In theory, you know how to block and how to dodge; it’s part of the sword stuff you claimed to be the boss of. But knowing the motions and running drills is one thing. Actually using them when you’re under attack is another thing. The months of training go down the drain. All you can focus on, all you can see, is the blade of his katana as it draws closer, sunlight glinting as it reflects against the metal. There’s less than a second until impact, and you can barely think, but your mind’s screaming at you to do something, anything, so you throw your arms in front of your face and brace yourself.

You are six years old, and this is not the first time you have felt the bite of metal against your skin. But it is the first time your Bro is the one holding the blade.

It’s over as quickly as it started. Lowering your arm, you look at the new cut, thin and candy-red and welling up with beads of blood. There’s a low noise like a whine (but it’s not actually a whine, you’re not a baby) building in your throat and tears gathering in the corners of your eyes. You’re grateful for your shades hiding the latter. Bro told you once that boys don’t cry, especially not Striders.

“Are you fuckin’ stupid? You could’ve blocked that.” His expression has barely changed, as stoic and badass as ever. Lil’ Cal, arms wrapped around his neck, stares at you from behind him with unblinking plastic eyes. Somehow, you get the sense that he’s laughing at you.

“You came out of nowhere. No fair, Bro.” You’re trying. You’re trying so, so hard to keep it together. To be tough. To not let your face betray anything. But your lip is wobbling, and your head is starting to hurt from holding back tears.

He scoffs. “I gave you plenty warning. More than you’ll get in a real fight.”

When he swings again, you frantically raise your sword to intercept it, looking away and squeezing your eyes shut. You don’t open them until you hear the clash of metal on metal.

“Stop cowering. Look at me, lil’ man.” The low, harsh tone of his voice makes it clear that this is an order, not a request.

So you, like always, do what he tells you to. He has never looked so tall, so foreboding, as he does now, framed by crossing swords.

“Bro, my arm.”

“What about it?”

“It hurts.” Your voice is trembling.

“Tough shit.” He pulls back, taking his sword with him. “You can’t let a scrape take you out. You’re stronger than that.”

It should feel good to hear him call you strong. The way he says it, though, makes your stomach drop. There’s a blur at the corner of your vision, you feel something on your legs, and—

— you hit the ground. The roof’s been baking in the sun all day, and you can feel the heat through your shirt. It takes you a moment to realize what happened, that he swept your legs out from under you. You’re still holding your sword, clenching the grip so hard you think it might fuse to your hands. After that first training session, you haven’t dared to let go of it when you’re on the roof. The mere idea makes you think of blades held to your neck.

“Never let your guard down. Get up, bro.”

Putting your fallen shades back on, you scramble to your feet. He’s in a fighting stance, so you take a matching one; a smaller, more scared, less practiced mirror to him. The fight resumes, though it consists entirely of him attacking and you attempting to not be attacked. To your credit, you block and dodge a decent amount of hits. The thing is, though, Bro is fast. He’s taking his sick ninja skills he uses to move around the apartment like a shadow and applying them to the fight. Which is to say that sometimes you can’t even see him, let alone avoid his strikes.

So you get hit. Scraped elbows when he knocks you down again. (And again, and again, and again.) A few small, shallow nicks on your arms and legs. Countless sore spots that’ll bloom into a whole garden of blue, purple, and green bruises come tomorrow.

If you weren’t so cool, you might be a little scared. Every time he hits you and you cry out, whimper, show any reaction, he comes at you again with more force. Faster, heavier. He’s using techniques he never showed you in your previous lessons. You’d try them out if you weren’t so busy trying to fend them off.

And then, he slows. You’ve got a straight shot, a place to aim your sword, an opportunity presented to you on a golden platter. Real 24-karat stuff. Shiny enough to see your reflection in. You—

hesitate.

The opportunity lingers for a moment longer, and then he flashes away and it’s gone. Poof. Flying away. Golden platter is out there flapping it up with the crows.

Something knocks into you. Lil’ Cal, you realize. Sure, he’s the man, you’ve got nothing but respect for him. But his plush limbs are wrapping around you, pulling you this way and that, and there’s a creeping feeling making its way up your throat. The only word you can think of to describe it is wrong.

You’re making one-handed grabs, trying to pry him off you, because you can’t let go of your sword (blade to your neck), but you can’t hurt the C-man. After a few tries, you get it. He falls to the ground, and then you blink, and he’s gone.

Bro reappears, Lil' Cal wrapped around his neck like he’d never left. He picks you up by the collar of your shirt before you can react.

And then he throws you.

There’s a second where you feel weightless. As your stomach jumps into your throat, you wonder if you’ll be falling forever. You get your answer immediately when your back hits the concrete and you go sliding across the roof. Friction tears through your shirt, leaving scrapes on your back. The only thing you can think to do is hold onto your sword.

When you skid to a stop, you don’t have a chance to get up. Standing over you, Bro puts his foot on your chest. Not quite stepping on you, but holding enough pressure to keep you down. “I gave you an openin’ earlier. Why didn’t you take it?”

You think back to your now-gone opportunity, the one you let slip away, and wonder the same thing. Why’d you hesitate? “I, um…”

“Out with it, lil’ man.” He shifts more of his weight to your chest.

(Because he’s a cool dude, he’s your brother, he’s your whole world, he’s all you know. Because he plays video games with you and shows you how to make the game glitch out in the funniest ways. Because a few days ago when he showed you how to use turntables he patted your shoulder and said you were a natural with them. Because you don’t want to risk hurting him. Because to land a hit on him is incompatible with the reality you know. Because Bro is untouchable, so if you took that opening and it worked, nothing would make sense.

(You don’t fully understand these things, much less how to articulate them.)

“I don’t know.”

“Bullshit. Listen. I know what I’m doin’, so don’t worry about me. Never hold back.” Captchaloguing his sword, he starts towards the stairs. “We’re done here.”

You try to get up, to follow him, but your entire body aches and burns. Every attempt ends with you in a sad little heap on the concrete. You are six years old, and this is the most hurt you have ever been.

Bro pauses at the door before walking back to you and hoisting you over his shoulder. All you do is captchalogue your sword as you close your eyes. Clinging to him, you focus on the steady bump-bump-bump rhythm of him descending the stairs.

He carries you all the way to the bathroom, where he tends to your scrapes and cuts. More and more often since that first day of training, he’s been telling you to take care of these things on your own, but he still helps you sometimes. You sit on the closed lid of the toilet, trying to ignore the way Lil’ Cal stares at you from the sink. Bro’s ministrations are mechanical and precise, silent save for giving you instructions on how you’d do this yourself and reminders to watch what he’s doing. He has to do the latter a lot, because something about the sight of your own blood makes you want to look away. You don’t know how he knows when you’re not watching. Shouldn’t your shades hide it, the same way his do for him?

Even so, he is careful. Gentle, almost.

“You better not pussy out like that again,” he says when he’s finished. “And for Christ’s sake, quit it with the cryin’.”

He leaves you alone in the bathroom after that, Cal flashing out the door with him. You bring your hand to your cheek, and sure enough, it’s wet. All those tears you built up during the strife must’ve come streaming down at some point without you realizing.

You don’t come out of the bathroom until you’ve wiped all of them away. Boys don’t cry, you remind yourself, especially not Striders.

—

You are nine years old when you stop leaving your room without a sword on you.

For the past three years, it’s worked like this: Bro calls you to the roof through writing a note, telling you to come up, or jerking his head in the direction of the door and assuming you’ll understand. (Which you do, except for the first time when he had to come back down to get you. But you’ve learned since then. You’re learning his language, like you intended to. Soon, you’ll be fluent in coolguy, and you’ll be another step closer to matching his coolness level.)

The rest of the time, sure, you’ve got to keep an eye out for traps, a coolkid’s got to stay on his toes, but you don’t need your sword for those. You keep it looking all sweet on the wall display until it’s time for a strife.

When you leave your room to grab a late-night snack, swords aren’t on your mind. Not more than they usually are, anyways. They’re still all over the apartment, and ever since you started your strife ninja training the number’s only been increasing. Breeding like goddamn rabbits, hopping around in their natural environment and pumping out sword babies.

Wait. Ew. That’s kind of gross, actually.

Sword rabbits and their families aside, everything’s more or less normal. You’ve been looking, but you don’t see any traps, just a few of Bro’s awesome ironic puppets hanging on the walls. Score. The feeling of being watched, of the puppets’ eyes following you, is in your head, you’re pretty sure.

The living room is quiet; a stillness in the air. You’re used to being accompanied by the sound of a movie, or a video game, or tapping at computer keys when you walk in here. Bro didn’t say he was going out for a gig tonight, but who knows. Maybe he forgot to tell you.

Whatever the case is, the coast is clear. You step forward. The floor creaks beneath you. And then—

There’s a click of a door opening, a whoosh of air, a blur of shadow, a burning pain in your shoulder as a blade strikes you from behind. When you turn around, you see Bro, blood on the edge of his katana, the door to the crawlspace open behind him.

He strikes again, and you barely manage to dodge. “Hey, what gives?”

Instead of an answer, you get a wide slash you need to duck out of the way of. Real men, real heroes, never run from fights, but you’ve got nothing to defend yourself with, it’s late, you’re tired, and you’re hungry— so you run. Scrambling, you try to flashstep around him and back into the hall. For a moment, you think you made it. That doesn’t last long, as you come to an abrupt stop when he grabs you by the back of your shirt, pulling you back into the kitchen-living room-bedroom combo.

“I keep tellin’ you. Can’t abscond, bro.” He keeps coming at you. All you can do is dodge while he chases you around the apartment. You’re jumping onto the futon to avoid a hit when he says, “What the hell are you doing? Fight back.”

“But my sword’s in my room.” You sidestep off the couch as he swings again.

“That’s why you never—” another swing, his blade leaves a cut on your jaw— “let yourself get caught unarmed. You got yourself into this, now what’re you going to do about it?”

You look around and find salvation lying propped up against the wall. One of those shitty swords he keeps around. Exactly what you need right now. It only takes seconds for you to transfer it from your sylladex to your strife deck. This sword isn’t as good as your usual one; the weight of it is heavy and unbalanced. That’s what you get for going out unarmed, you guess. Why you always have to be ready. It’s part of your training, teaching you in the coolest way possible. He nods at you in a way you want to believe is approving.

The fight continues. You’ve never actually managed to land a hit on him, and tonight is no different. But you make a few attempts anyways. They’re slower and sloppier than usual; he parries them easily as he pursues you through the apartment. The sword you picked must be of the shittier variety, because with a particularly forceful parry, the blade breaks with a grating sound that leaves you reeling. While the upper half of the blade lands on the floor, you keep your hold on the hilt and the bottom half still attached to it. Because you never drop your sword, and you never let yourself get caught unarmed.

With your weapon cut in half, you don’t last much longer. It ends with him knocking you supine, still clutching the half-sword as he pins your arm down with his foot. He stares down at you. You keep your face as neutral and stoic as possible despite the way your injured shoulder burns as it rubs against the carpet. Don’t show any emotion, don’t show any weakness; that’s what he taught you in lessons given at the edge of a blade.

You stare back, because two can play at that game. When you try to make out his eyes, you only see your own reflection in his shades. The rest of his face is blank, scrubbed clean of all expression with some kind of magic sponge. If he really had something like that, you wouldn’t be that surprised. And you’d ask if you could use it, too.

He flashsteps away, his parting gift to you a smuppet dropped directly onto your chest right before you hear the crawlspace door slam shut. Gross. Wait, uh. You mean awesome. Puppets are awesome. To let him know your ironic appreciation for the ironic gesture, you stuff it in the blender once you struggle to your feet.

Since you’re here, you figure you might as well do the thing you came to the kitchen for in the first place before you take the walk of shame to the bathroom. You open the fridge, and holy shit lots of sharp things headed in your direction.

Metal scrapes against metal as swords come tumbling out of the fridge. You sidestep, but not fast enough to avoid a few more cuts on your arms. Great, adding injury to injury.

(Out of the corner of your eye, you see Lil’ Cal on the counter. You’re pretty sure he wasn’t there before.)

Weapons in the fridge have always been a thing. Before, they’d be in there alongside food. Now, it seems like Bro went as far as taking out the shelves to make room for swords. All the sustenance a young Strider needs to survive.

Rooting through the cabinets for a snack would mean you risk having to deal with traps, more weapons, and more puppets. Frankly, you’re too tired for that. Your various wounds sting as they weep blood into your clothes. As time’s gone on, he’s held back less, gotten you way worse than he did in your first strife years ago and left you to handle damage control yourself. It’s cool, though. He’s going harder because you’re getting tougher. So you deal with it, just like you’ll deal with these strife injuries, just like you’ll deal with the hunger for a while longer. It’s chill. It’s whatever.

You make sure to have a sword equipped whenever you leave your room from now on. You start stashing snacks in your closet, too.

—

Birthdays aren’t a big thing for you like they are for other kids. Nah, you and Bro like to keep it low-key. So for your birthday you usually get a nice, chill day, maybe a gift or a snack. For his… you don’t actually know when it is. He’s a man of mystery.

While you’re hanging out in your room like usual, a ping from your computer tells you that someone’s pestering you. New message from gardenGnostic. She started messaging you a few months ago, and she introduced you to a couple other people. They’re all kind of lame, if you’re being honest, but you find yourself looking forward to their messages and going to them when you want to ramble. Beats talking to yourself by a lot.

-- gardenGnostic [GG] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] --
GG: happy birthday dave!!! :)
TG: thanks

You do not remember telling her your birthday.

TG: wait
TG: howd you know its my birthday
GG: um
GG: you told me?
TG: no i didnt
GG: maybe you forgot that you told me :P

That is almost definitely not what happened.

GG: anyways have you gotten your presents yet??
TG: how do you know im even getting presents huh
GG: well most people get presents on their birthdays
TG: i think weve established im not most people
GG: yeah youre a big shot coolkid B)
TG: you know it
TG: when im on the scene all the heads turn
TG: class is in session time to learn
TG: spitting rhymes like they grow on a tree
TG: ask anyone you know and theyll agree
GG: hehe
GG: i wish i couldve gotten you something :(
TG: how would you get it to me
TG: dont you live on an island in the middle of nowhere
GG: the mail silly!!
TG: oh
TG: yeah makes sense
TG: anyways its not that big a deal
GG: we should all do a gift swap sometime! you me tt and gt
GG: itd be fun i think!!!
TG: you know what
TG: you might be onto something
GG: :D
GG: by the way you should check outside your room in a minute or two
TG: what
-- gardenGnostic [GG] is now an idle chum! --
TG: goddamnit did you fall asleep again

Sure enough, there’s the sound of someone moving at your door. It’s quiet, but you take notice of it. Bro can move in near-complete silence, so if you’re hearing him, it’s because he wants you to. How she knew this was coming, you have no idea.

You approach the door with caution. Knowing him, it could be a strife invitation or a trap. He’s never done that kind of thing on your birthday before, but who knows, maybe he’s changing it up. When you open it, you brace yourself. Got to be ready for anything.

But all that’s waiting for you outside is a sword. A katana, its hilt wrapped in red leather. You’ve gotten a few upgrades over the years, bigger swords that you can handle now that you’re bigger. The old ones end up… somewhere. Either in your room or with the others scattered around the apartment. You’re still not sure where your first sword went after you got your second.

That’s beside the point, though. The point is that this one is the nicest you’ve gotten so far. There’s a note attached.

happy birthday lil bro.

You are eleven years old today, and your present is a sword.

This should feel good. Getting gifts should feel good, especially when said gift is sick as fuck. He doesn’t always get you gifts, you should be happy to be getting anything at all. And this is way cooler than something Jade or your other friends would get you, or something their parents would get for them.

You hold it in front of you— well balanced, good grip, fits nicely in your hands— and there’s a cold, crawling sense of dread that trickles through your gut. Like you just chugged a fresh can of Dread Soda, filled your stomach with nasty unease bubbles. If you’re not careful you might start burping up fear. Which would be so uncool of you.

Wait, what are you even talking about? Swords are awesome. That’s really all there is to say on the matter. You put it on the display rack above your turntables and try not to think about hot pavement, humid air, and blood.

—

It’s been a day since you got the note. A day since you heard the smack of a kunai embedding itself in your door, a day since you investigated and found a paper with I WANT TO PLAY A GAME written on it. Since you’re wise to the goings-on around here, you knew exactly what that meant. Usually, you’d be hauling ass to the roof the second you saw it. He always goes tougher on you when you’re late.

But for some reason, you weren’t feeling it yesterday. Chalking it up to being tired and sore from another strife the day before, you shut the door and went back to chilling. You weren’t sure what was going to happen next.

For a while, it was nothing. He didn’t come into your room, didn’t drag you up to the roof. You started to think you could actually get away with this.

Only to be proven wrong a few hours later. You started hearing his footsteps in the hallway, seeing his shadow in the gap under your door. It took you moments to realize what that meant: He’s letting you know that he’s waiting for you, in his own rad way. Hey, at least you’ve been getting better at decoding his language.

And now? You’re still in your room, waiting for each telltale sign of his presence. It’s been exactly thirty-nine minutes and twelve seconds since the last time he walked past your door. If you weren’t avoiding him, he’d tell you to go out there and face the challenge head-on like a hero. That’s what everything you’ve learned tells you you should be doing. A few times, you almost do it, one hand hovering so close to the doorknob you can almost feel it, the other gripping the hilt of your sword. You will yourself to get on with it already, just turn the fucking knob, and you…

You back away.

The fuck is wrong with you? Why can’t you do the thing you’re supposed to do? The thing you’ve done dozens of times before?

What you tell yourself is that it’s ironic. Just another trick in the coolkid playbook. Strife chicken or something. Seeing how long both of you can go before someone gives in.

(You already know it’s going to be you. The only question is when.)

To show how totally chill and unaffected you are, you do all the things you would on a normal day. Pester Jade, John, and Rose. Put together a new mix on your turntables. Come up with some bars. Make a shitty drawing or two. Take some photos.

School’s out for the summer, so you’ve got nothing to leave for. Great because you can do whatever you want. Bad because no free lunches. The former almost becomes a con, too. There’s only so much you can do to pass the time here. Eventually, you crack into that summer reading assignment you weren’t planning on doing. Bro doesn’t care much whether or not you get schoolwork done because he’s cool like that, so most of the time you just half-ass it.

Speaking of half-assed, no matter how hard you try to throw yourself into your various pursuits, you never manage to fully get into the zone with any of them. Every so often, you hear the footsteps, you see the shadows, and they remind you of what’s really going down here. Even when he’s gone, part of you is focused on waiting for the next time he swings by.

You are twelve years old, and there’s a sword hanging over your head. Most people who say that are using it as a metaphor, but for you, it’s at least partially literal.

By the end of the day, you run out of things to do and resign yourself to laying on the floor while time continues its march forward. No thoughts in your head, just you barely holding onto your own existence, with Bro’s footsteps the one thing keeping you anchored to the present moment. Whatever ironic game you’re playing here, he’s mastered it. If only you were that good.

A day passes, then another, then another. He keeps doing his rounds in the hallway. You keep waiting for it to all come crashing down on you.

Over the past few days, you’ve been trying your best to ration out your food stash, but you’re about to run out. And you know from experience how much it sucks to strife with a parched mouth and an empty stomach. That’s what leads to you to the same position you were in days ago, in front of your door with your sword in hand.

It’s been three hours, fourteen minutes, and thirty-three seconds since you last heard or saw him. That’s longer than he usually goes between appearances. You let yourself believe that maybe he stopped. Maybe you can go out, restock, and be back in your room before he notices.

“Took you long enough,” he says when you open the door. “Fuckin’ sissy.”

Yeah, that was never going to happen.

He chases you up to the roof, where the real fight begins. It’s also where you are thoroughly and completely owned. Thrown across the roof, tossed down the stairs, hit, knocked over, you name it. He’s absolutely wiping the floor with you. The floors here are going to be so shiny they’ll make headlines. People will ask him about his cleaning secrets and he’ll tell them it’s all thanks to his lil’ bro. You’re going to become the new hit cleaning product at this rate.

When it’s over, you collapse in the shadow of the AC unit panting for breath, Lil’ Cal restraining your legs, your fingers cramping up from how tight you’re holding your sword. He looks at you, tilts his head ever-so-slightly. It’s gotten easier for you to keep yourself expressionless when he’s watching, though you’re still not at his level. For five seconds, you think he might tell you to get back up for round two. But he lowers his weapon.

“Hidin’ is for cowards. You can do better than that.”

You want to tell him you weren’t hiding, it was ironic, but explaining it would probably lower its irony value. That is definitely why you aren’t saying anything. Besides, he’s more than cool enough to understand what you were going for without you having to say it. Maybe him not acknowledging it is another layer to the irony. Damn, he’s good.

Outlined in sunlight, standing on the roof like he owns the whole sky, his face nothing more than a mask of stoicism, katana at his side, he looks like the hero that you know he expects you to be. In that moment, you want to be like him so bad it aches.

“This is what bein’ a coward gets you, lil’ man.”

And then he’s gone, Cal disappearing with him. For thirteen minutes and twelve seconds, you lay there, crows circling overhead. You shoot John a few messages in that time. He yaps at you about some shitty Nic Cage flick he watched with his dad. A new want bubbles to the surface, one that rivals your want to be like Bro. You want to be with him, on his couch, making fun of a bad movie that he’s enjoying in a sickeningly sincere way, instead of here on this roof with this sword. He goes on to complain about his dad. You’ve both got some weird guardians, you guess. At least you got the cooler one.

You don’t start your trudge down the stairs until he stops pestering you. When you finish patching yourself up, you find a bag of fresh snacks in front of your bedroom door to replace the ones you used up. There’s even a bottle of apple juice. Picking it up triggers a smuppet trap, but still. The food’s intact and there for you to take.

Yeah, you have the cooler guardian for sure. The coolest ever.

—

You are thirteen years old. The sky’s on fire. Meteors are raining down on the world. And you’re holding a sword, because even in the endtimes, some things always stay the same.

Bro wants to get one last strife in before the world goes up in flames, and since apparently your friends’ lives depend on you getting his stupid beta, you go along with it. He’s pulling out all the stops, holding back less than usual. For your part, you give it your all, not counting your failed attempt at absconding.

At one point, in the heat of battle, you think that you might actually be getting close to his level. That you have a fighting chance. That you’re finally strong enough for him. And then, of course, he proves you wrong.

(You’re starting to think you will never be strong enough for him. You’re starting to think that might be kind of fucked up.)

When your sword breaks, you swear you feel it, like something in your chest snaps. He leaves you sprawled on the roof as he flies into the red sky. What happens next is pretty routine: You pester John, you pick yourself up, and you grab your now-halved sword, because you know better than to sit around unarmed.

It’s a good thing you’re not bleeding much; you don’t have time to lick your wounds.

—

You are thirteen years old when you watch Bro take his sword to a meteor, cutting it in clean in half like a real goddamn hero. It’s the moment you realize you were right: You’ll never be strong enough for him, and you’ll never be as good as him.

—

You are thirteen years old, and there’s another you with a sword through his chest.

—

You are thirteen years old and up to your ass in imps. Somewhere between fighting them off, it dawns on you that you’ve never actually landed a hit on an opponent until now. But from the way you’re killing them left and right, you guess you got something out of your past strifes.

(When you see Rose and John holding their own in battle despite their lack of training, you try not to question that.)

—

It’s like a scene out of a storybook. A golden dungeon, pillars, monsters, crocodiles. And its centerpiece is a sword, sticking out of a platform, ripe for the taking.

Or apparently not ripe for the taking, because the stupid thing won’t budge no matter how hard you pull. You should’ve seen that coming. You’re not King fucking Arthur, you’re thirteen years old. Round tables aren’t your style, anyways. You’re more of a square table guy. Hell, you’d even be fine with a rhombus table.

There’s more than one way to get a sword out of a stone; you know that well. It’s as easy as knocking over a pillar. Bam, brand-new legendary piece of shit, broken. Davesprite says that this is the way it had to be, the only way you could’ve gotten it. Sounds about right. If there’s one thing you’ve learned, it’s that you’re not a hero.

—

You are thirteen years old when you find Bro’s body with his own sword sticking out of his chest.

No matter what Terezi says, you’re not grieving, and you’re not sad. In fact, there’s a part of you that’s relieved. You don’t want to think about why that is. Mostly, though, you feel nothing. A big ball of empty. When she asks if you loved him, you say no without thinking. Love is sincere, love is unironic, so love isn’t cool enough for the Strider dictionary. Neither of you ever said it out loud. In your house, the equivalent of love is shown through silent nods and snacks outside your door and birthday swords.

Another part of you still hasn’t quite processed that this is real. Bro was supposed to be untouchable. If you were to try to take the sword, you’d expect his hand to shoot up and wrench you away from it. You don’t do that, because you know he won’t. Because you know that all it’ll accomplish is letting more blood gush out of his chest like he’s an overstuffed ketchup packet and LOWAS is a disgusting, moldy burger.

So of course, you try to break it. That’s your thing now, apparently. You’re like the boss of broken swords. You walk into work at the broken sword shop and everyone’s like ‘look, it’s the broken sword boss.’ It’s you.

It doesn’t work. All you get is the most acrobatic fucking pirouette off the handle. Even in death, he’s still getting your goat. Stupid fucking Bro and his stupid fucking unbreakable katana and his stupid fucking heroic demise at the hands of some demon dog.

Right now, you would be content to never get up, to lay here with a face full of LOWAS until you die. But Terezi is still trolling you. Maybe it’s a good thing. If you’re focused on talking to her, you don’t have to focus on the sword-skewered corpse that you keep expecting to get up like nothing happened. You let yourself get lost in conversation about the alien voice in your head urging you to be angry, her alien death lawyer fantasies, and whatever she’s got going on with Spidertroll.

She tells you that next, you’re going to pester her about reaching god tier. Since that’s how the timeline goes, that’s what you have to do. In truth, you are curious about the whole coin flip deal. At least it’s another thing to do that’ll hopefully get you away from his body.

Before you get back to messaging her, you look at him again. You haven’t looked at his face, not since you noticed his missing shades. That’s another reason why this whole scene feels wrong. You can’t remember if you’ve ever seen him without them. You force yourself to look anyways.

In the movies, when people die, their eyes are closed, like they’re sleeping. Bro’s are open and unblinking, staring at nothing. The first word you think of to describe them is orange. The second is glassy. Fake. Like Lil’ Cal’s. Like your own the one time you made the mistake of taking the shades off a dead Dave. A sudden, visceral awareness of the fact that he is dead knocks the air out of your lungs.

You clench your teeth, ball your fists, bite your tongue. Most importantly, you keep your face neutral. And you sure as fuck don’t cry. Boys don’t cry, especially not Striders. It would be wrong, weeping over him like some devastated Victorian widow whose husband perished in the war. He wouldn’t want you to break out the veil and the mourning gown, he’d want you to get your ass back in the game. This is how you’ll honor him, keep his teachings. This is grief, Strider-style.

So you’ll go pester Terezi and try not to think about him. But first, you close his eyes. You leave him with the sword still embedded in his chest. It’s what he would’ve wanted, you think.

A part of you is glad to never see it or him again.

—

Not much time later, you hold a sword as you stand over a lime-clad, sleeping, doomed version of you. Terezi tells you to kill him, even though it doesn’t matter. All doomed Daves become dead Daves, so in a way, he’s dead already. Which means killing him is nothing. Should be nothing. But

you can’t do it. You think about him covered in blood. You think about his blood splashing on your shoes. You think about how from here, you’ve got a great angle for stabbing him straight through the chest. Like Davesprite. Like Bro, who you were doing so good at keeping off your mind until now. You think about his eyes going glassy behind his shades. You think about how you could’ve been him if you’d said a few different words.

Terezi calls you a deadly weapon. You wonder where the blade ends and you begin.

Stepping away from the quest bed, you put your sword back in your strife deck.

—

You end up confronting your mortality again later, except now it’s you who’s on the receiving end of death. Though it kind of seems like a copout to call it confronting your mortality when you know you’re just going to be jumping ship to your dreamself. More like a fast-travel hack than death. You’re almost excited for it. After this, your time loops are all wrapped up with a neat little bow. Put that shit under the Christmas tree and tell little Timmy it’s time for presents. He’ll open it and see a bunch of complete, stable time loops. And he’ll be like ‘what the hell is this,’ and that’s because it’s not a present for him, it’s a present for you. It’s a sweet-ass gift, too: No more loops, no more worrying about dooming the timeline.

The bullets slam into your chest, and it’s a different kind of pain than you’ve felt before. It doesn’t fully set in until seven seconds after the impact, when you make a slight movement and suddenly your whole torso is throbbing. You look down at yourself, at the blood soaking your clothes. Jade’s saying something, but all you hear is ringing. If you could open your mouth, you’d say you’re sorry you couldn’t tell her.

Everything goes blurry at the edges, stars dancing in your vision. There’s an overwhelming feeling of cold, like the snow and ice came back but instead of the planet it’s coming from inside you. Like frost could start creeping up your skin any second now, even though the blood on it is warm.

The last thing you do is drop your sword.

—

You don’t make that mistake when you die for the second time.

Holding a newly-broken sword, you fly off to your fiery death. For real this time. No dreamselves, no second chances. You save Rose’s ass, and the two of you drift into space through dream bubbles and horrorterrors. You’re going to go out with a bang.

Even when the Dersite stowaway is dead as you’re going to be soon, you don’t let go of your sword. Not for a moment. This is how it has to be.

See, the thing is, you weren’t born when John ectobiologized you into being, you weren’t born when your meteor crashed down to Earth, and you weren’t born when Bro gifted you your first pair of shades and dubbed you Dave Strider.

No, you were born standing on top of a Houston high-rise at six years old. You were born the first time you held a sword.

You were born holding a sword, and you’re going to die the same way.

Maybe Bro would be proud of you if he could see this. A suicide mission to save reality itself is about as heroic as it gets. But you’re still not the hero he was.

The clock ticks down. You look at Rose. She’s your friend, she’s your sister, and if you have to die alongside anyone, you’re glad it’s her. You’re glad you’re not alone. You’re glad she’s not alone.

You think you’re ready for this whole mortality thing now.

Down to the last second, as radioactive heat sears your flesh, you keep holding your sword.

—

You are thirteen years old when you fail to die.

When you rise out of the Green Sun, you’re still holding your sword.

—

In another timeline, you die with two swords through your chest.

—

In this timeline, you spend three years on a floating space rock with Rose, Kanaya, Terezi, Karkat, and Vriska.

There’s no traps waiting for you when you sneak through the hallways not making a sound. There’s actual food in the kitchen. There’s no surprise attacks, no random strife invitations.

Still, you never leave your room unarmed.

—

You are fourteen years old, but your room looks exactly how it did when you were twelve. This is a dream bubble, you realize almost as soon as you become aware of your surroundings. It’s time that tips you off to that fact; the way it moves weird. Weirder than it usually does in the Outer Ring, anyways.

It’s been a few months, so you’re no stranger to the bubbles. Usually it’s a shifting collage of environments, beaches and forests and crystals and brains all pasted together like a third grader’s art project. Not now, though. This is just your room, no trollplanet landscapes or SBURB lands grafted on.

When you open the door, you’re careful to not make too much noise turning the handle. Instinct is a powerful thing. Outside, there’s still no other places to run off to. All the dream bubble gives you is your apartment, looking like you never left.

“Rose?” Nothing. “Terezi?” Nada. “Kanaya?” You’re getting a little desperate. “Karkat?” Really desperate. “Vriska?”

You consider calling for one of the dead trolls, or even the clown, before deciding against it. “If this is like, a dream surprise party, I’m going to be so pissed. I better not see anyone jumping out from behind the couch with a party hat. Don’t even think about throwing confetti. If I so much as hear one of those party horn things, I’m going to go ballistic. Ballistic missiles are going to be jealous of me, that’s how bad it’ll be. It’s going to be full-on nuclear war in this bitch. Wait, are ballistic missiles and nuclear missiles different? Is it like a rectangles and squares type situation? Or like a fucking, what’s it called… Venn diagram?”

Nobody answers your questions. Not that you actually cared about the answers.

“Also, my birthday was last week, so you missed your chance.”

Nobody is listening. The only things in this dream bubble are you and your memories.

You’re alone.

But you don’t feel alone, not with the way the puppets watch you as you walk down the hallway. Their eyes are piercing, prickling on the back of your neck. A coiled tension pulls at your lungs, the kind you haven’t felt since before SBURB. Since you lived here.

As you step out of the hallway, your foot catches on something. Tripwire. You’ve dealt with it before. You should’ve been looking out. You should’ve watched your step. You should’ve avoided it. Still, you fall on your face as shurikens go whizzing past you, an inch above your head. They land with a thunk, their blades pinning a smuppet (God, you hate those things) and a note to the wall. You don’t have to read it to know what it’s telling you.

Fuck.

Everyone you’ve talked to has made it clear that only players go to the dream bubbles after they die. So. He’s not here. He can’t be here. Except, when you were hanging out with the trolls in the bubbles, you saw their monster-animal-parent-things around. It wasn’t really them, Rose explained to you once while you half-zoned out, they’re dream constructs. Like their surroundings, they’re built from the memories of the dreaming and the dead. Like ghosts, but not in the way that the dead trolls (or the dead versions of you and your friends, though you tend to avoid them) are ghosts. Ghosts that come from your brain. Brain ghosts.

Something nauseating tears at your gut. You walk to the stairs because you don’t have a choice. This is the way it always goes, ascending the stairs, making your way to the highest point of the building. You were always going to end up on the roof.

Why are you so scared? It’s just Bro. You’ve done this hundreds of times.

You have your sword out and ready before you reach the top step. The second you open the door, you’re met with choking-hot air. Below you is not Houston but LOHAC, metal structures groaning and lava bubbling. You take a few hesitant steps forward.

Something moves behind you. You only know this because of the way the displaced air brushes against your neck. Whirling around, your sword meets another. An all-too-familiar katana. And the hand holding it…

The brim of his hat casts a shadow over his features to the point where it looks like his face got replaced by a sheet of darkness. He’s taller, you think. You’re not sure. Granted, it’s hard to tell when your focus is on blocking his rapid-fire flurry of attacks. Your swords clang together again and again and again. He doesn’t say a word. His mouth doesn’t move. You start to wonder if he has a mouth at all.

As you backstep to dodge a strike, you realize you could fly away from here. But that would be running and hiding. Coward shit. And you know what being a coward gets you.

In between dodges and blocks, you make attempts at attacking him. Each time, he avoids it, parrying your attacks like they’re nothing. You are a god, he is a fake brain ghost version of himself, and you still can’t land a single hit on him. You try again; he flashsteps behind you and kicks you square in the back, sending you stumbling forward. Without so much as a moment to recover, he reappears in front of you, and you have to fend him off while regaining your footing.

He moves in flashes, another strike headed straight for your face. You barely manage to duck out of the way. It turns out that was part of his plan, because he uses his elbow to shove you against the AC unit. Even though he leaves you coughing and gasping for air, you keep going.

Like always, it’s him who draws first blood, his sword cutting a red line across your arm. It’s been some time since you’ve been hurt like this. The feeling welcomes you back, invites you into its house, tells you to take your shoes off and get comfy, offers you chips and something to drink. You and the pain of a blade (this blade in particular) sinking its teeth into you are old friends.

While you dodge his next attack, he uses your own momentum to knock you off balance, his foot slamming into your knees. You try to get up, but he has you pinned before you can make a move. This placement— you on the ground, him looming over you, his foot on your chest— is one you’re familiar with. It’s as ordinary as puppets or cameras or cloying heat or swords.

He is still. Your arms aren’t pinned; you have an opportunity here. All it would take is one strike. Maybe he’d block, but it’d at least get him off you, give you a chance to stand back up. Your fingers tense around the hilt of your sword, and you—

don’t. Just like when you were six, just like with the doomed Dave on the quest bed, you can’t bring yourself to do it. He told you not to pussy out again, and yet here you are. If he asked, you still wouldn’t be able to say why.

He raises his sword, and you know what he’s about to do. You make no attempt to stop him as he brings the sword closer to your chest. As the tip of the blade breaks your skin, you wonder if this is how he felt. How Davesprite feels. How that doomed Dave would’ve felt if you’d gone through with killing him. You know you can’t die in dreams, and you don’t think this is HEROIC in any sense of the word, but maybe it would be JUST for you to die like this.

His blade tears through skin, muscle, organs, your chest lights up with a searing pain, you don’t scream, you don’t cry, you—

—

You wake up with a sword in your hand. By the time you come to awareness, you’ve jolted upright and decaptchalogued it on reflex. Blood roars in your ears as your heart pounds. Your chest rattles with the effort of forcing air in and out of your lungs. With your free hand, you check the place where he impaled you. Nothing. Not a single drop of blood.

It’s been four hours, twenty minutes (nice), and thirteen seconds since you fell asleep, which means it’s still the period of time that you and the others arbitrarily designated as night, which means you should go back to sleep. But the mere thought of laying back down seems impossible. Every part of you is tense, like a spring so tightly wound that if you released it it would go flying across the room, bouncing off the walls. So wound up that it’s got enough momentum to keep going like that for years. It’ll be a world record. They’ll make a tourist attraction out of your room. Just so you can say you tried, you lean back a little bit, close your eyes,

and you’re back there you’re on the roof it’s hot he’s standing over you he’s knocking you onto your back he’s watching you he’s raising his sword you can’t move you’re small you’re weak you

get out of bed. It’s safe to say that going back to sleep is not a thing that’s going to happen. A lost cause if you’ve ever seen one. So you float (because you really don’t feel like using your legs right now) out of your room, moving through the hallways all slow and lazy. You’d say you’re letting the breeze or the current or whatever take you, but there’s no wind on this meteor, so you guess you’re just moving wherever your body decides to take you.

With nobody around and only a few lights on, the whole place feels stranger than it usually does. Like a maze you could explore for years and never find the exit, hallways endlessly repeating. Whatever architect made this is one fucked up dude.

At a certain point, you stop, plopping yourself down in front of a door. It takes you thirty-two seconds to recognize it because all the doors here look the same, but it’s Rose’s. Of course your subconscious would bring you right to her doorstep. You think about knocking and telling her what happened. That’s a thing normal people do, they go to their family for comfort when they have nightmares. Neither of you have ever been normal, so you don’t. Sincerity isn’t part of the Strider or Lalonde playbook. And anyways, you wouldn’t want to cheat her out of some well-earned sleep.

You open Pesterchum and wish that you could talk to John. An argument about a shitty movie or fetch modi or Matthew McCona-however-you-spell-his-name always helped to take your mind off things you didn’t want to think about. Made you feel better, in some strange way.

Instead of anything else, you stay there on the cold metal floor, doing nothing. A few times, you almost drift back into sleep before the feeling of a sword in your hand and the phantom memory of a sword in your chest jolts you awake. There’s a sense of detachment that comes over you, like when you were twelve and spending days in a thoughtless haze. (Damn, not a bad rhyme. You’ll write that down later if you remember it.)

That’s how the next four hours, seventeen minutes, and forty-six seconds go. It could’ve been longer if Rose didn’t open the door to see you lying in a heap at her feet.

“Good morning, brother dearest.” She cocks her head. “I wasn’t aware you’d taken up residence in the hallway. Bold choice. I predict you will blaze great trails in the realm of interior design with these creative uses of space.”

“You see that in your Light visions?” Groggy, you rub your forehead and begin to stand.

“Yes, Dave, lately I have been plagued by visions of your overwhelming success as a master of feng shui.”

“Damn. And here I thought I’d get famous off my ill beats and mad art skill.”

There’s an uncharacteristic silence before she says, “I didn’t see you in the dream bubble last night. It’s a shame. You missed out on some truly riveting developments in the soap opera that is the interpersonal relationships of the pre-Scratch trolls.”

At the mention of dream bubbles, you stiffen. “So what you’re saying is I didn’t miss anything important.”

“Yes. The absence of your inane horseshit in addition to theirs was sorely felt, I assure you.” And she notices, because of course she notices. “I’d be interested in knowing the reason. What kind of spectacular dream adventures did you get into all on your lonesome?”

“Is this going where I think it’s going?”

“That depends. Where do you think it’s going?”

“69 Dick Avenue in Freud City. Pack your bags, kids, ‘cause it’s a one-way trip and there’s no refunds. This train only goes forwards.” Despite how cool you’re keeping it, your stomach is churning.

“Precisely. Mayor Oedipus welcomes you. Now, did you meet any exciting ghosts?”

Another silence. Fifteen seconds. Then, “Nah. Just me.”

“A bespoke dream bubble? How exciting. There’s little I wouldn’t give to examine the literal landscape of your psyche. It would enrapture the minds of psychologists for years to come. Perhaps the most sensational thing to happen in the field since our good friend Sigmund.” And she punctuates that by smiling a sardonic Rose smile.

You’re trying to think of something cool and ironic to shoot back at her with. That’s how your conversations go, that’s what you’re supposed to do. You open your mouth. Close it. Swallow down a thick bead of saliva. Come on, dude, you’ve spent your entire life unable to stop running your dumb fucking mouth, why would you gain the power to shut up now?

“Is something wrong? I never thought I would say this, but you’ve been quiet. Truly, this is a morning of endless surprises.”

“What, a guy can’t be quiet anymore without getting a whole-ass inquisition? Maybe I’m just in a quiet mood sometimes, did you ever think of that?” Your newfound inability to speak is turning into the opposite problem. “Maybe I wanted to introduce you to a new side of me. Like, hey, here’s my bro Quiet Dave, why don’t you two sit down, drink some gross meteor coffee, get acquainted. And you don’t even say hello before you straight-up deck him in the face. You’re being so rude to Quiet Dave and I will not fucking abide it.”

“You didn’t answer my question. Oftentimes, this kind of defensiveness is a method of avoidance, an indicator of issues left unacknowledged and repressed. Also, that? Your monologue just now? That is the exact reason that I considered your silence to be out of the ordinary, and thus warranting an ‘inquisition.’”

“Nothing’s wrong, Rose. You can quit the therapist shtick.”

“Are you sure? If you had an unsettling dream, I think unpacking it could be quite beneficial for both of us.”

You can’t tell her. What would you even say? That the horrorterrors cooked up a replica of your Bro for you? That you spent the whole dream getting your ass kicked by him? That you did nothing while he put a sword through your chest? That being in the apartment was like having a vice grip around your neck? That you feel safer on this fucking meteor than in your childhood home?

She wouldn’t get it. You know things between her and her mom were complicated to say the least, but her mom loved her. Her gifts were given often and lacked any sharp edges. And you know behind her front of cynicism and passive-aggression, Rose loved her, too. You heard her crying behind locked doors during your first month here while you waited outside, wishing you knew how to comfort her, wishing you were more than a Knight, a weapon, a blade. You see the wistful look in her eyes when she works on perfecting the alchemical formula for homemade booze and you try to pretend it doesn’t scare you.

She’d be jumping at the chance to see her mom again. You got what she wants, and you’re over here feeling bad about it like an ungrateful brat.

“Well?” She raises her eyebrows.

“Fucking hop off my dick already!” Your voice comes out louder and sharper than you intended.

Her eyes widen. She steps back.

You realize that you are still holding your sword. You realize that as you spoke, you raised it and took up a fighting stance without thinking. You realize that, though she hides it better than you ever could, she is afraid of you.

You realize that you are finally, after years of trying and trying, just like him, and you hate it.

“I— shit, I mean…” You captchalogue your sword even though you feel naked without it, even though your hand aches for something to defend yourself with.

But she relaxes when she sees you unarmed, so it’s worth it. “Alright. I will hop off your proverbial dick and eat breakfast. You can join me, and we can pretend this didn’t happen. Does that sound agreeable?”

You nod.

—

-- tentacleTherapist [TT] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] --
TT: I realize I may have overstepped earlier, and for that I sincerely apologize.
TT: If there’s something bothering you, please know that I am here for you, as your friend and sister.
TT: I will even try to refrain from psychoanalysis, as strange a concept as that sounds, if you so desire.
TT: Dave?
-- turntechGodhead [TG] is an idle chum! --
TT: You are under no obligation to respond, but I would appreciate it if you did.
[UNSENT] TT: For someone so dedicated to being nonchalant, you have quite the ways of worrying people.
-- tentacleTherapist [TT] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] --

—

It happens again. Same dream bubble, same memory of your apartment, same Brain Ghost Bro. And then it happens a third time, and a fourth, and something in you wants to make that five.

When you plop down on your bed for a midday nap, you tell yourself it’s because you’re tired. It’s not a lie— these days, you space out, your eyelids droop, you have to give yourself a pep talk to get up in the morning. You let yourself believe that that’s your main motivator. That you’re actually hoping that being asleep while everyone else is awake won’t fast-track you to your solo dream bubble, because what kind of deranged fuck would want to go to their personal horrorterror-crafted hell?

It takes some tossing and turning, but you wind up exactly where you weren’t jonesing to go: Your room, the way you remember it. Two competing impulses jolt through your nerves. One tells you to get your guard up, get a sword in your hand and be ready to use it. The other tells you that it’s finally over. New planets, apocalyptic video games, aliens and their alien weirdness, Green Suns, dreamselves, godtiers, shit that makes your head spin— all that’s behind you now. You’re back where things make sense and you know what to expect. You’re home.

And home is where your muscles go tense. Home is where your hair stands on end. Home is where you hear your heart beating out a rap-worthy rhythm. Home is where you have to look out for traps at every turn. Home is where you climb up the stairs knowing what waits for you at the top. Most importantly, home is where you hold a sword.

A stupid part of you hopes you’ll open the door and see the version of Bro that exists in your foggy memories of the years before you started strifing. The one who took care of you, fed you, held you.

(You’re not sure if he actually held you. If he did, you were too young to remember. You don’t know what you want to be true.)

Brain Ghost Bro is always the same. The real deal didn’t say much during strifes, but he threw in the occasional comment, critiquing your form and techniques. This version of him is no talk, all action. He flashes to your side and makes the first strike, you block, and the strife begins in earnest.

You are fourteen years old, but on this roof you are thirteen and fighting a battle you know you will lose. And hey, even if you now admit that the strifes sucked, what you can’t deny is that they’re responsible for your thirteen-year-old self’s mad sword skills. So maybe that’s the point of all this. A coolkid’s got to stay on his toes. These dream beatdowns will keep you blade-sharp. They’ll prepare you for the endgame Vriska’s always going on about. And for meeting that alternate timeline version of Bro, who you

You don’t want to think about him, so you don’t. You focus on the sword, on this version of Bro.

Though the choreography of the strife changes from dream to dream, there are constants you come to rely on. You always remember how you can fly away. You never do. He always gets the upper hand. You never get so much as a single hit on him. It always ends the same way: He kills you, and you wake up holding a sword.

This time, he cuts off your head.

You wake up clutching your throat with one hand and holding a sword with the other.

—

You go to sleep.

Bro knocks you off the roof. You burn in the lava of LOHAC.

You wake up face-to-face with your reflection in the polished metal of a sword.

—

You rest on the common room couch.

Bro throws you down the stairs so hard your neck snaps.

You thank every higher power in existence for nobody being there to see you swing your sword at nothing.

—

You doze off during a horrorterror-gazing session.

Bro slashes you and slashes you and leaves you to bleed out.

You wake up pointing your sword into the abyss.

—

Look, it’s fine. It’s just training. It’s just Bro. You can deal with it on your own.

The problem is, you don’t always fall asleep on your own.

You don’t mean for it to happen. It’s just that you’re so tired, and those troll movies that Karkat pick go on for so long, and sometimes a dude can’t help but fall asleep. When it’s happened before, you didn’t end up in that dream bubble. You woke up on the couch with a blanket over you and messages from Karkat about how you missed the best part. And then you meet up in Can Town and everything’s fine.

Except this time, you do end up in that dream bubble.

You go through the same routine. Go to the roof, strife, get dream-killed. Brain Ghost Bro stabs you through the chest, same as he did the first time. Of all the ways you’ve died in dreams, that’s the one that’s happened the most often. You like to think that it gets easier, that you learn to handle it over time. It doesn’t, and you don’t. When he sinks the blade into you, the pain is always the same. That’s another constant, you guess.

You jolt awake with a white-knuckled grip on your sword. Where you are, who you’re with, what’s going on— none of that matters. The only things you can hear are the rapid beating of your heart and the shallow pants of your breath. The only things you can think about are the lingering echo of the wound in your chest and the sword in your hand. You raise the latter, brandishing it at—

“What in the name of Bilious Slick’s slime-covered asscrack is your problem, Strider?!” Karkat decaptchalogues his sickles to intercept your blade. Metal clangs against metal, you pull away, and reality comes back to you. Fuck. Fuck. You nearly sliced his face open with your blind swing.

You should probably put away the sword. You don’t.

“Nothing? You’re not even going to explain why you’re sticking a sword in my face out of fucking nowhere? I’m going to miss the climax of the movie because of you and your inability to not be the biggest douchebag in Paradox Space.” Putting away one of his sickles, he leans over enough to hit pause on his crabtop. Then, he looks at you and goes still. “Dave. You’re shaking.”

“What? No, I’m not.” Yes, you are. You are shaking like a broken washing machine that’s about to explode.

“I can literally see you shaking. Put your sword away before you kill someone. Not all of us are immortal.”

You can’t.

“For fuck’s sake.” His remaining sickle disappears back into his strife deck. Then, he wraps his hands around yours, prying the sword out of your fingers and putting it on the coffee table. You’re defenseless. You let go of your weapon. You think about blades at your throat. You’re going to die. “Now can you chill out? Is that a thing you’re capable of?”

“Dude, you know who you’re talking to, right? I am literally so chill. Like the embodiment of chill. Leading chillologists have been studying me my whole life trying to figure out how I got this chill. They want to uncover my secrets, but they’re never going to. ‘Cause they’re not chill enough to comprehend the deep truth of chill that I know. It’s like the Library of Chill Alexandria up in my brain. Except this bad boy’ll never burn because it’s too chill for that.”

You keep rambling, barely conscious of what you’re saying. All you need is for Karkat to latch onto something stupid he can yell about, and then you can ironically argue about it, and then it’ll be normal. You’ll stop being in whatever weird state this is where your chest is caving in and you wonder if this is what drowning feels like and you’re still shaking, why can’t you stop shaking, fuck—

Karkat puts his hand on your face. Every instinct in you tells you to get away, to attack, to brace yourself for pain, but he doesn’t hurt you. His touch is light and gentle as he moves his hand across the curve of your jaw.

“Shut your shit-spewing ignorance gash,” he says. Even though it’s in his usual shouty Karkatian tone, it’s also somehow soft.

You shut your ignorance gash. You focus on Karkat, on the way he keeps tracing his hand across your face, until the fight leaves you. After four solid minutes and eleven seconds, you slump forward onto his shoulder, ignoring the voice in your head telling you how absolutely messed up this is and how much of a gayass sissy you are, ignoring that the voice sounds an awful lot like Bro.

(It occurs to you that, based on the position you were in when you woke up, you must’ve fallen asleep on his lap. You ignore that, too.)

“Dave,” he starts, hesitant. “What was that?”

“Nothing, dude.” He looks like he’s about to refute that, so you add on before he can say anything. “Let’s get back to the movie. I want to see what happens with Kyle’s alien hate boner for that other chick.”

“You’d know that if you had the miniscule amount of willpower needed to stay awake. Also, it’s Cylans,” he mutters. But he presses play on the movie, and he doesn’t ask again. You keep leaning on his shoulder until it ends.

—

You decide to stop wallowing in your own fear like a miserable turd after you get those dreams. After one that leaves you trying to one-handedly stem the bleeding of a wound that doesn’t exist, you go to Karkat’s room. He lets you in, even though it’s the middle of the night. He makes you put away the sword. He sits with you. He does the face-touchy thing again, and you’re not sure how but it calms you down.

When you keep coming back, he never asks why. You never explain.

There’s other places and people you go to when you wake up holding a sword, too. You help the Mayor with Can Town. You talk to Rose, and it doesn’t go as bad as it did the first time. Sometimes Kanaya is with her. You get a few chances to hang out with Terezi. Even Vriska is alright sometimes. And afterwards, you feel slightly less like shit.

Slowly, slowly, pieces begin to fit together. You question some things. About yourself. About the way you were raised.

But sometimes, you still do the wallowing in your own fear thing. Sometimes, you still take naps when everyone else is awake. Sometimes, you wake up holding a sword and the sight of it makes you sick.

And the sword that is the endgame, that is knowing you will have to fight again, that is meeting a new version of Bro hangs heavy over your head.

—

It ends the same way it begins: On a rooftop with your Bro. The difference is that those things are not accompanied by the presence of swords. It will be, soon, but not yet. Instead, your hands are open as you wrap your arms around Dirk Strider. The fabric of his godhood is soft against your cheek.

You expected the Bro from your memories. The Bro who taught you to use a sword, the Bro who you hid from in preparation for an inevitable battle, the Bro who fought you while meteors fell on Houston. Dirk is not that. You look at him and you see a kid like you. A guy who’s fucked up. A guy who’s trying his best. A guy who’s spent his life in the shadow of a hero. A guy who knows how heavy a sword can be.

When the Jacks Noir come, you fight not against him, but with him. You could not be more grateful for that. Well, actually, you’d be more grateful if you didn’t have to fight at all. Strife still makes your skin crawl with memories. You keep your grip on Caledfwlch strong and you push through, because wielding this stupid Welsh sword is what’ll save your friends.

Both Jacks trap Dirk in place, the three of them all lined up like bowling pins. Your eyes meet Dirk’s. He seems to come to the same realization as you. You have an opening. An opportunity.

This time, you take it.

You lunge. Only as your blade is inches away from Dirk and the Jacks does it occur to you what obstacle stands in your way. Dirk’s sword. The Unbreakable Katana, same as the one you left buried in Bro’s chest, the one you couldn’t break. You can’t stop; it’s too late to change course. Maybe (hopefully) Terezi will be able to cover your ass when you inevitably fail. But

this time, you do it.

You are sixteen years old when you shatter the Unbreakable Katana.

You are sixteen years old when you cut off your brother’s head, your sword passing clean through his neck, then Jack’s neck, then the other Jack’s neck. Death by HEROIC sacrifice. Bro would’ve liked that for his alternate self. You hate it. You hate that any of this had to happen.

Two of your future selves appear to catch the two parts of Dirk’s body so that John’s hot mom can bring him back.

Then you reach for Terezi, jump back in time, and pray you will never have to again.

—

In your new home, there are no puppets, no traps, and no swords. In your new home, the only sharp objects in the kitchen are the knives you use for chopping vegetables, not for strife. Vegetables. There’s real, nutritious food in your kitchen. Snacks, ingredients, and leftovers in the fridge. Utensils and cookware in the drawers. You’re not a great chef, but Jane’s been giving you tips and you’ve been getting better.

You still sneak around sometimes, even though you know you don’t need to. Force of habit, you guess. It scares the shit out of Karkat. When a floorboard creaks under your feet you freeze until you remember that you have not triggered a trap and nobody is coming to attack you.

Ever since you went through the Door, you haven’t been to a dream bubble. Neither has anyone else that you’ve brought it up with. So now you just have normal nightmares, no Brain Ghost Bro. The problem is that often, your normal nightmares look a lot like the ones you had with him. You dream about being a little kid again, about lava, about dead Daves, about strife, about blades.

The other problem is that you lied. There is a sword in your new home because no matter how hard you try, you can’t bring yourself to leave your strife specibus empty. After rough nights, you reach for it on instinct, protecting yourself the way you were trained to from things that don’t exist.

But when it gets bad, you’ve got options, even moreso than on the meteor. There’s photography, your mixes, and your new collection of dead things to take your mind off it. There’s Karkat, as always. Rose and Kanaya, too. There’s Jade, who always seems to have time and space (ha) for you. There’s John, who can make you laugh as hard as he did three years ago. There’s Roxy, who gives the best hugs and doesn’t mind that you keep accidentally calling her Mom. And there’s Dirk.

Your nightmares have new remixed versions. Like ones that end with you killing Bro. The second your sword touches his neck, he turns into Dirk, and then his head is in your arms and there’s blood on your hands, blood on your blade, blood pooling at your feet. You go to Dirk’s after those, just to remind yourself that he’s alive. His insomniac ass is always awake. Sometimes you talk about it. Sometimes the both of you just sit on the floor for hours.

The sneaking, the caution, the nightmares, the fear, the need to reach for a sword— you don’t know if it’ll ever go away for good. After a few months, you start to think it won’t. But you can learn to live with it.

—

Jade kept LOHAC. She kept all the planets, and now they float around at various places in her house. The offer of shrinking you down so you can go back, explore, and pick up anything you left there is always open. Your friends took it up within the first year on Earth C. John went to LOWAS and came back with an armful of trinkets from his house and an oddly distant look in his eyes. Rose and Roxy visited LOLAR together. Jake talks everyone’s ear off about how Jade took him to see LOFAF. All of them took belongings they’d left in their old houses to bring to the new.

It takes two years for you to follow in their footsteps. Being back in your old apartment wasn’t your idea of a good time. It still isn’t. But there’s reminders of it everywhere. You see them whenever you visit Jade. Your friends share stories about revisiting their planets. They show you the old keepsakes they’d forgotten about and rediscovered. They ask if you’re ever going to visit yours. So you’re going now, and then you can stop thinking about it and be done.

A flash of neon green, a crackle, and you’re standing on the roof. For a moment, you forget. You tense, prepare for an attack, go to your strife specibus and— right. He’s dead. When you walk down the stairs, you keep looking over your shoulder. Every noise and shadow puts you more on guard. Your hands itch for a sword.

The path to the apartment winds through stories of SBURB-made expansions, all of them empty. No amount of hyping yourself up along the way prepares you for when you get there. It’s the same as it was when you left it, the only changes being some dust and new funky smells. Under that, it’s the same furniture, the same Axe body spray and grease smell that he always said was part of the Strider brand. It makes you nauseous.

You open a window, dodging traps along the way. Falling back into your old instincts comes easy. Keep your eyes more peeled than a fresh banana, avoid setting them off when you can, get away with as little damage as possible when you can’t. You step over tripwires, duck to keep from getting sliced up by shurikens, and kick away stray puppets. It’s not worth it in the end. The window only lets in hot, stale air.

This was a bad idea.

You walk away from the window, back to the kitchen, and you see the cord dangling from the crawlspace door.

All you know for sure about the crawlspace is that he hid in there and he used it for traps. There was an unspoken agreement between the two of you— he wouldn’t barge into your room, you wouldn’t poke around in his shit.

Curiosity wins. You climb into the crawlspace. It’s bigger than you expected, but you still don’t have enough space to fully stand. You imagine him waiting here, sword in hand, ready to spring his next surprise attack. The thought makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end.

There are unlabeled boxes piled in the corners. You open them one by one, half-expecting them to blow up in your face. One’s full of now-expired food; you guess that’s where the smell came from. And how he fed himself all those years. One has tools and electronic parts. One has letters and documents. In one that seems to be a miscellaneous catchall, you find an old, faded photograph of a younger version of him with someone who looks a lot like Roxy. And then one, towards the very back, hidden by the others, has

lil bro

scrawled on it in the same handwriting that summoned you to the roof day after day. You open it without thinking. Inside, you find relics of your childhood. Candid photos from a bunch of different angles. Drawings that you assumed you’d lost. Flash drives whose contents you can only guess at. That horseleather bib. The tiny shades you wore when he carried you home. If anything, you thought he would’ve thrown this junk out, not give it a dedicated space.

Tucked away at the bottom is a sword, a small one. You pick it up, unsheathe it with trembling hands, and know what it is as soon as your fingers touch the hilt.

It’s the first sword you ever held.

At some point after it disappeared, you stopped wondering where it went. The best explanation you could come up with was that it got lost.

Your face, reflected in the metal, stares back at you. Something in you bursts. Something that has been waiting within you for years, boiling under your skin, comes rushing to the surface.

You cry. You cry like a big, dumb, stupid baby. You cry for every time he hit you, for every time you justified it to yourself, for every drop of blood you shed in this apartment. You cry for his death, for all the times he helped you. You cry for your six-year-old self, for the moment your hands met the hilt of a sword, the moment you were born, that horrifying, irreversible moment. You cry for the life you could’ve had if neither of you had ever held a sword.

The movies have ways of making crying look pretty. This isn’t a movie, and it’s not pretty. Tears and snot run down your face, your throat gets tight, an invisible hand rips gross choking noises out of you. He’d be pissed if he saw you like this, but he’s not here, and you don’t care. Not as much as you used to, at least.

Every time you think you’re done, a new sob wracks your body. But after ten minutes and seventeen seconds, it slows down. Pushing your shades up to your forehead, you wipe your eyes. You breathe. You pick up the sword.

You are eighteen years old, and you know what to do with the sword in your hands, the sword that is both lighter and heavier than it was when you held it for the first time.

You break it.