Chapter Text
Everything happens really fast. The Alpha and Beta kids join forces with the Beta Trolls and just like that Bec Noir attacks. One thing after another after another and suddenly, everyone is standing in front of a large, multi-colored… house that has twelve squares. The majority of it is green and red, but there are some squares that are purple. Actually… Three squares are green, four are red and five of them are purple, now that they truly look. Rose opens the door, whose handle looks mysteriously like Skaia from the outside.
Inside, there are twelve glowing panels. Jade, ever the most rambunctious and ready to jump into anything at any given moment, immediately goes out to investigate. Jake, of course, joins her. It doesn’t take more than three seconds for them to realize that the glowing panels trap them inside. She beats her hands against the glowing walls, fighting to get out, fighting to get free, to do anything, please, “get me out of here!” The others go to her and while their hands phase through, no amount of pulling and tugging will get them free.
Rose eventually calls for them to stop. “Don’t you see?” She mutters. “These are the things that are going to transport us to our universe. The new universe that we created with our joined sessions.” There’s a flurry before Jade barks and covers her mouth, embarrassed. Everyone has grown used to it, so everyone brushes it off. No one puts any thought into it until there are only two more positions left and there are four people standing outside of the panels. “Fourteen of us stand, though,” Jade whines from behind her glass wall. “We all fought against Noir! We all deserve to go!”
“We could just… double up,” Terezi offers. It’s only her, Rose, Dave and Karkat that stand outside of the panels. “Karkat and I could go in the same one and Rose and Dave could go in the same one. We’re genetically the closest to each other, anyway. So… why not? It’s not like we were ever given the rules here. For all we know, maybe The Game wants us to do that.”
“Good idea, TZ,” Dave comments. He gently takes Rose up and holds her bridal style. She clings to his neck as he gets his balance, but then he tells her that he has her and she can let go. She gives him a weird look but does just that. Dave glances over to see that Karkat has done the same to Terezi. She has her head cradled on his shoulder, even.
Dave walks Rose over to the panel closest to them and drops her in, feet first, careful not to be standing on it as he does so. She beats at the glass walls, attempting to get out. He hears Terezi’s feet touch the ground and a golden shhhink. He takes Rose’s face in his hands and gently kisses her cheek. “Take care of them, sis.”
“No—Dave! Dave you fought the hardest out of all of us! Get in here!”
He shakes his head gently and hugs her, yet again watching his feet. “You know I love you, right, Rose? So you have to take over for me and watch out for them.”
“You gotta admit,” Dirk mutters, “This is all pretty normal for him. I saw it coming a mile away.”
Roxy hiccups, grimaces and nods. “Yeah. I mean, his other life killed he presidents and then disappeared from the world. He was a hero then, too. Obviously,” she hiccups again and holds her hand in front of her chest. She punches the glass wall encasing her angrily. “Obviously he’s going to do something like that in this life.”
“C’mon,” Karkat says, calling to him. He’s already standing in front of the door, though, and his hand has it pushed open ever so slightly. “It’s time we sent them off.”
Dave smiles lightly at Rose and nods his head. He walks backward for a moment before he turns around and leaves. Karkat calmly closes the door behind them. It breaks both of their hearts to hear them screaming for them, telling them to stay, to just join one of them—
And it’s really quiet as the step further away on the plate in front of the door. It’s too quiet. Dave feels like the silence has wrapped him up so hard that he’s suffocating.
They turn and watch as, one by one, Rose’s face appears in one of the green squares. John’s and Jade’s take up the other two green ones. Kanaya’s, Terezi’s, Sollux’s, Gamzee’s and Aradia’s faces appear on the purple squares. Dirk’s, Roxy’s, Jane’s and Jake’s appear on the red ones. Karkat raises a hand to wave. Dave, slowly, takes off his glasses and does the same. They deserve a proper send off.
There are tears running down most of their faces as Jade’s face disappears and a ball of white light launches out of the house top. Kanaya’s disappears in the same manor. Dirk, Roxy, Sollux, John, Gamzee, Jake, Jane, Aradia, and then all that is left are Terezi and Rose. Terezi spreads her hand in front of her face and carefully draws out a heart on the glass in front of her. Rose sobs and waves. Rose and Terezi disappear and all that is left are Dave and Karkat.
They’re the last two.
They didn’t even get to win The Game and they were the ones that killed Noir. Dave doesn’t even realize he is crying until his knees hit the ground beneath them. His hands fist as his entire body shakes. He shakes. He sobs. He will never leave this game. But… But… But at least… at least the others. They left. It’s worth it. It’s worth it.
“Karkat, tell me it’s worth it.”
“I don’t even know if it is.” The other many confesses. He turns to see that the man has red tears running down his face, staining the collar of his shirt. The other man is on his knees, too, but he isn’t bent over like Dave. He’s just kneeling there, looking at the roof. Dave gently reaches out and puts his hand on Karkat’s shoulder. It’s the first time they have touched since the dick-drawing fiasco in Rose’s book. Immediately, Karkat turns into him and hides in his chest and sobs. Dave sobs over him.
This is it.
They’re going to die in this Game and there is no way they can stop it.
They beat the fucking game, but SBurb is still going to take their lives.
He… Dave wants to just die now and save The Game the problem of killing him. He’ll die of old age, won’t he?
Slowly, ever so slowly, Karkat stops crying into him, but they’re both exhausted. The only things they have left are what they have captchalogued, which isn’t much in the first place, but Dave just got DaveSprite’s deck, too, so maybe that’s something? He doesn’t know. He didn’t have the chance to look before he died. They don’t even have the asteroid anymore since it was destroyed in the fight, but this place appears to be part of another asteroid belt around Alpha Derse.
“Karkat?” He whispers once both of them stop crying. The other man makes a small noise. “What do we do now?”
“We… we keep living.”
“How?”
The other man shrugs and it occurs, rather belatedly, to Dave that this is the closest they have ever been in the history of ever. And, maybe, just maybe, this is… this is the end.
“I don’t know, Strider. S-Stop asking me these things. Everything I have lived for all this time just got rocketed off to a new universe. A universe we helped create. A universe that we aren’t even allowed into.”
“M-Maybe we should start walking… until we can find an asteroid where we can live.”
“How long will we survive? We don’t have any food or even an alchemiter.”
“…I just hope what we did was right.”
Karkat nods and, ever so slowly, the Knights pick themselves up and calmly take one step forward.
And one step forward.
They don’t even know where they’re going.
All they know is that they’re leaving behind the last thing that their friends—their lives—touched.
And they can’t return.