[...sometimes he thinks it's easy to be Dave's best friend and slide right back into a life he never knew and doesn't fully remember. Then sometimes, like this, he's at a complete loss what to do and he grows quiet even as his grip on Dave's hand doesn't loosen.]
So let me ask you something. If you are busy taking care of the rest of us and making sure we live, who has your back?
You all did. Do. [ the tense is worse, because he's never sure what to use, or how much he can assume of them. ] I...there are people who would do that, if I asked. Or if they thought I needed it.
[ he wants to say dirk but can't. rose would, but she remembers almost nothing and he's told her only a little. he hasn't told john everything, either. he told dirk, he told yuri, he's hit and miss admitted to certain smaller things, but it's hard to have someone's back when you don't know a single thing about what you need to have their back for.
his free hand reaches up to fiddle with his shades. ]
...There are people who have my back without knowin' it.
...so what can I do right now? [About the nightmares, about whatever Dave's thinking. He doesn't elaborate but there's a lot in his head suddenly. He used to have a role here and a part to play but he doesn't remember it enough.
It's clear here that he thinks Dave needs something though.]
...When I wanted him to know I was dead serious. When I - when I wanted him to know it wasn't a lie.
[ because he actually had to prove that sometimes. ]
When it was too important to risk anything but absolute belief.
[ john still has one of his hands. dave breathes out slowly and with his other stops fiddling with his shades and carefully pulls them off. when he was completely and totally honest and he'd talked about things with dirk that hurt, he'd taken off his shades. yuri had asked him to do the same, just the other month.
it's still a thing that makes him tense up, but he works through that, ignoring the usual intense discomfort from the lack of a barrier to look john dead in the eyes. his eyes are of course not hazel: they're the same vibrant red as his text down to the very hexidecimal code. one-handed he folds the shades up to hook over the collar of his shirt. ]
So. [ so. ] Shut up for a second and...don't interrupt me, okay? [ and he hesitates for a moment, casting around for the right words, before dave gives up and just says whatever comes to mind as usual, soft-voiced and emphatic. he keeps his gaze steady despite the unease. ] You aren't important because we're best friends, or because the game was fucked up, or even because of the life we lived back then. You are, but like - please don't think that you matter to me only because of back then, or that you're...less important, or - less. What I said about not bein' as strong as you were, I didn't - I didn't mean it like that, or I didn't mean you to take it that way. It's true that John Egbert has mattered to me for a pretty fuckin' long time that varies depending on which chronological sequence of events you care to look at, all overlapped in a fucked up way that makes sense to probably no one else in the world.
[ over half a year; since he was ten; since a month and change ago. ]
But you, the you who is here right now, are my best friend - are who I want as my best friend - because of who you are and what you have done. Regardless of whether or not you ever remember why that was true then as well as now, you're responsible for the now, and I don't...want you to misunderstand that. It's...true the reasons are pretty damn similar, because you're still the person who says somethin' other people do not and makes it...okay, and...
[ "you do not have to tell me what you remember. and i will not bring it up unless you want me to tell you what i remember. okay?" ]
Just being you has always constituted havin' my back in ways other people do not. Okay? You...said it was fine not to tell you things. And played the piano for me even though you were givin' it up. And made me a stupid mix tape and gave me and quite possibly twenty other people flowers. And you wanted to stay and fight with me when it was safer to not. And you agreed to write music for literally the most random project ever, and let me drag you wherever, and - [ he trails off, and shrugs. ] You don't have to do anythin' extra here, John. You already help by virtue of existing as yourself. And even if I got the count wrong when I said "one of the three most important people", you're important because you're...you. Now. So...
[ so...right... ]
...So I'm sorry for upsetting you, and for how I said it, and for - I'm sorry. I just...you are too important to me to let you get hurt by my own damn mind. I don't...I couldn't be responsible for that. I'm sorry. It...wasn't better just because I made you look away, was it. Shit.
The first, of course, is that when Dave removes his shades John stares into his eyes and in a way he is and isn't surprised. The color shocks him into silence but it suits him and he realizes that it definitely matches the text. He knows his own eyes match his text color of choice and he vaguely wonders if that's a pattern. However, that thought gets shoved away almost immediately in favor of listening to Dave.
He doesn't interrupt at all, thumb running over the back of Dave's hand to keep them both grounded and here and a reminder that this is real and not the dreamscape again. It's a lot to take in and he knows that he means a lot to Dave and that their friendship is important, but hearing it on this sort of gravity...it's a lot. It's a lot and he doesn't speak for a few moments even if his grip's tight.
Drunk John had sort of acted on his own volition before, but sober John is busy thinking the method might work just the same. He shifts a little, moving to lean against whatever available space and pulling Dave to him for a minute. He gets it. Dave doesn't ask for this kind of stuff even though he probably needs it, and the assurance that death isn't a thing helps.]
Okay. [It's very quiet but an acceptance of pretty much all of that. He still has them positioned so he can see Dave's eyes but also kind of holding onto him? It's sort of working, but he frowns lightly.] It's okay, I know. [Weirdly self-sacrificing.] ...it wasn't, no. But I get it. There was not really a whole lot of time to make a choice, was there.
[ john this is a weird position but okay. dave tenses then relaxes, still uncomfortable with his shades off but not immediately moving to shove them back on despite the impulse definitely existing. he barely thinks about the fact he wears them these days, but the second they're off it's hard to forget. ]
...Even if there had been that's kinda probably what I might have gone with, but like. Somehow I thought gettin' you not to look would make it better than making someone watch me let them kill me.
[He wants to be comforting and comfortable but also he wants to stare at Dave's rarely seen eyes, let him live!]
Which still does not help, but I know. [There's an uncomfortable pause.] ...I know I said I wouldn't ask, but I just...is that what it really means to scratch? [To die.]
...a scratch is a universal reset. But there are other ways to make certain things go as planned, without that level of undoing. I just have to be exactly as willin' to die as I am.
John, that's how time works. We fuck up, I go back and die, the timeline reverts and hopefully the next version of myself doesn't make the same mistakes. That requires every single version of me to be willin' to do that.
And that's where bird-you came from. A timeline that we fucked up and you had to die because of it. [This is kind of pissing him off, frankly.] Why you? Why were you the one who had to become the Time player? Why am I the heir? This goes back to us not having a choice in the game and that is bullshit, too.
[But he's shifting to lean against the headboard and more or less dragging Dave with him, so okay.]
Or the timeline Terezi killed me. Or any other timeline where something didn't go right, because time has a set…something? Like a way things are supposed to go, so we are constantly resetting. That is what the end of the universe was, right? And the scratch was something important.
[He chews his lip.] I remember your planet, I think. Ot at least fighting everything there. I had a different hammer, but there was a giant record and we broke it and then I disappeared but I saw Jade. We were on that ship. That was…before the three year journey? So that was a thing that had to happen.
[He's sort of just babbling to figure this out.] …the thing is. There is a difference between being willing to die and not valuing your life at all, and I am sorry but I kind of value your life a lot? I want you to be my best friend and that means staying here with me as long as you can. Even in dreams. [There's a short huff of a laugh.] Why do we keep meeting in dreams, Dave?
John, you’d make a terrible time player. Yeah you would have been willing to die for us - but I don’t think you ever made those offers with the completely finite knowledge it’d be permanent. And it isn’t always just being willing to die. You...have never been good with inevibility I think? And that’s a really, really good thing, because someone has to believe in somethin’ beyond paradox space bylaws. I am pretty sure though that the cyclical nature of time and death would have wrecked you.
[ his free hand goes for his shades, unfolding them deftly to slide on. he’s as careful as ever with them. ]
Megido doesn’t remember it yet. A thousandfold deaths or however many she wracked up, and why, and how it had to happen. She might get it someday; I kinda hope she does not.
[ it would be better if she didn’t. ]
And I don’t know. Maybe you keep showing up because I want you there even when I do not. You tell me.
[He watches him take the shades and just sort of allows it to happen.] Well, yeah. There has to be something bigger than time and space, that is the whole point. I know paradox space has set rules and stuff but…who said those rules cannot be broken to create a better offshoot? I don't know. I still think it isn't fair. For you or Aradia. She's fourteen, like. Who the fuck decides that a game exists for fourteen year olds to know they're going to die time and time again because it's just how things have to be?
[This goes for Dave, too. He frowns a little more because…well. Yeah. Fair.]
…you could have just told me they came from me. That would have made sense to me. [Thanks for being vague, John.]
The shades. You could have just told me they were from me. I would have understood why they were important. [Not the full extent, because even back then he never understood the full extent.]
Me, apparently. When I bought them off of Ben Stiller's weird, sort of gaunt face. [But suddenly he seems less sure and he blinks quietly.] Unless those are different shades.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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So let me ask you something. If you are busy taking care of the rest of us and making sure we live, who has your back?
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You all did. Do. [ the tense is worse, because he's never sure what to use, or how much he can assume of them. ] I...there are people who would do that, if I asked. Or if they thought I needed it.
[ he wants to say dirk but can't. rose would, but she remembers almost nothing and he's told her only a little. he hasn't told john everything, either. he told dirk, he told yuri, he's hit and miss admitted to certain smaller things, but it's hard to have someone's back when you don't know a single thing about what you need to have their back for.
his free hand reaches up to fiddle with his shades. ]
...There are people who have my back without knowin' it.
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It's clear here that he thinks Dave needs something though.]
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What do you mean?
[ it's. hard to imagine john needing to do anything other than...exist, and be john, so like??? ]
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[ not in the way john wants, probably, but dave's clearly thrown. ]
You're - why do you think you're important?
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I have absolutely no idea. Other than we're best friends and the whole game fucked us over, I have absolutely no idea.
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[ he pauses. ]
There’s something Dirk and I used to do.
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What was it?
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[ because he actually had to prove that sometimes. ]
When it was too important to risk anything but absolute belief.
[ john still has one of his hands. dave breathes out slowly and with his other stops fiddling with his shades and carefully pulls them off. when he was completely and totally honest and he'd talked about things with dirk that hurt, he'd taken off his shades. yuri had asked him to do the same, just the other month.
it's still a thing that makes him tense up, but he works through that, ignoring the usual intense discomfort from the lack of a barrier to look john dead in the eyes. his eyes are of course not hazel: they're the same vibrant red as his text down to the very hexidecimal code. one-handed he folds the shades up to hook over the collar of his shirt. ]
So. [ so. ] Shut up for a second and...don't interrupt me, okay? [ and he hesitates for a moment, casting around for the right words, before dave gives up and just says whatever comes to mind as usual, soft-voiced and emphatic. he keeps his gaze steady despite the unease. ] You aren't important because we're best friends, or because the game was fucked up, or even because of the life we lived back then. You are, but like - please don't think that you matter to me only because of back then, or that you're...less important, or - less. What I said about not bein' as strong as you were, I didn't - I didn't mean it like that, or I didn't mean you to take it that way. It's true that John Egbert has mattered to me for a pretty fuckin' long time that varies depending on which chronological sequence of events you care to look at, all overlapped in a fucked up way that makes sense to probably no one else in the world.
[ over half a year; since he was ten; since a month and change ago. ]
But you, the you who is here right now, are my best friend - are who I want as my best friend - because of who you are and what you have done. Regardless of whether or not you ever remember why that was true then as well as now, you're responsible for the now, and I don't...want you to misunderstand that. It's...true the reasons are pretty damn similar, because you're still the person who says somethin' other people do not and makes it...okay, and...
[ "you do not have to tell me what you remember. and i will not bring it up unless you want me to tell you what i remember. okay?" ]
Just being you has always constituted havin' my back in ways other people do not. Okay? You...said it was fine not to tell you things. And played the piano for me even though you were givin' it up. And made me a stupid mix tape and gave me and quite possibly twenty other people flowers. And you wanted to stay and fight with me when it was safer to not. And you agreed to write music for literally the most random project ever, and let me drag you wherever, and - [ he trails off, and shrugs. ] You don't have to do anythin' extra here, John. You already help by virtue of existing as yourself. And even if I got the count wrong when I said "one of the three most important people", you're important because you're...you. Now. So...
[ so...right... ]
...So I'm sorry for upsetting you, and for how I said it, and for - I'm sorry. I just...you are too important to me to let you get hurt by my own damn mind. I don't...I couldn't be responsible for that. I'm sorry. It...wasn't better just because I made you look away, was it. Shit.
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The first, of course, is that when Dave removes his shades John stares into his eyes and in a way he is and isn't surprised. The color shocks him into silence but it suits him and he realizes that it definitely matches the text. He knows his own eyes match his text color of choice and he vaguely wonders if that's a pattern. However, that thought gets shoved away almost immediately in favor of listening to Dave.
He doesn't interrupt at all, thumb running over the back of Dave's hand to keep them both grounded and here and a reminder that this is real and not the dreamscape again. It's a lot to take in and he knows that he means a lot to Dave and that their friendship is important, but hearing it on this sort of gravity...it's a lot. It's a lot and he doesn't speak for a few moments even if his grip's tight.
Drunk John had sort of acted on his own volition before, but sober John is busy thinking the method might work just the same. He shifts a little, moving to lean against whatever available space and pulling Dave to him for a minute. He gets it. Dave doesn't ask for this kind of stuff even though he probably needs it, and the assurance that death isn't a thing helps.]
Okay. [It's very quiet but an acceptance of pretty much all of that. He still has them positioned so he can see Dave's eyes but also kind of holding onto him? It's sort of working, but he frowns lightly.] It's okay, I know. [Weirdly self-sacrificing.] ...it wasn't, no. But I get it. There was not really a whole lot of time to make a choice, was there.
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...Even if there had been that's kinda probably what I might have gone with, but like. Somehow I thought gettin' you not to look would make it better than making someone watch me let them kill me.
[ SORRY @ JADE................. ]
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Which still does not help, but I know. [There's an uncomfortable pause.] ...I know I said I wouldn't ask, but I just...is that what it really means to scratch? [To die.]
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[ time player death bullshit. god. ]
...a scratch is a universal reset. But there are other ways to make certain things go as planned, without that level of undoing. I just have to be exactly as willin' to die as I am.
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The Scratch was a lot of effort. [But alas.] Why you? Why the Time player when the rest of us need you?
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[ ... ]
I can't...turn it off.
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[But he's shifting to lean against the headboard and more or less dragging Dave with him, so okay.]
Or the timeline Terezi killed me. Or any other timeline where something didn't go right, because time has a set…something? Like a way things are supposed to go, so we are constantly resetting. That is what the end of the universe was, right? And the scratch was something important.
[He chews his lip.] I remember your planet, I think. Ot at least fighting everything there. I had a different hammer, but there was a giant record and we broke it and then I disappeared but I saw Jade. We were on that ship. That was…before the three year journey? So that was a thing that had to happen.
[He's sort of just babbling to figure this out.] …the thing is. There is a difference between being willing to die and not valuing your life at all, and I am sorry but I kind of value your life a lot? I want you to be my best friend and that means staying here with me as long as you can. Even in dreams. [There's a short huff of a laugh.] Why do we keep meeting in dreams, Dave?
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[ his free hand goes for his shades, unfolding them deftly to slide on. he’s as careful as ever with them. ]
Megido doesn’t remember it yet. A thousandfold deaths or however many she wracked up, and why, and how it had to happen. She might get it someday; I kinda hope she does not.
[ it would be better if she didn’t. ]
And I don’t know. Maybe you keep showing up because I want you there even when I do not. You tell me.
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[This goes for Dave, too. He frowns a little more because…well. Yeah. Fair.]
…you could have just told me they came from me. That would have made sense to me. [Thanks for being vague, John.]
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[ he’s distracted for a moment from the discussion of death and whether or not it was needed by john’s vague aside. ]
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The shades. You could have just told me they were from me. I would have understood why they were important. [Not the full extent, because even back then he never understood the full extent.]
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[ dave why ]
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[ CAUGHT OUT in his own lie god ]
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