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[windeity]

JOHN EGBERT

"We came, we saw, we kicked its ass."

VOICE | TEXT | VIDEO | ACTION

aka




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also casually puts his font here for tagging not on my laptop whoops
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normal font too!

art by doomyz on tumblr, found via reblog here

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[windeity]

[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.]

[parodeity]

I...

[ 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.

[windeity]

[...]

The Scratch was a lot of effort. [But alas.] Why you? Why the Time player when the rest of us need you?

[parodeity]

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.

[ ... ]

I can't...turn it off.

[windeity]

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?

[parodeity]

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.

[windeity]

[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.]

[parodeity]

We were thirteen back then. And what do you mean?

[ he’s distracted for a moment from the discussion of death and whether or not it was needed by john’s vague aside. ]

[windeity]

[He'll latch onto the topic immediately.]

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.]

[parodeity]

And who says they’re from you?

[ dave why ]

[windeity]

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.

[parodeity]

...you didn’t mention remembering that letter.

[ CAUGHT OUT in his own lie god ]

[windeity]

What letter? [But his lips twitch into a grin anyway.] ...I didn't for a long time. This was really, really recently.

[parodeity]

I recognize the phrasing, jackass. [ he’s had the damn thing memorized for ages. ] And I don’t know if you would have.

[windeity]

I remembered because...I was talking to someone about you. [He nods toward the glasses.] Sort of bro equivalent of a friendship bracelet.

[parodeity]

[ - well those words get him to tense up for some reason, and after a second dave pulls back and slides off of his bed. once he’s standing he stretches his arms out and cracks his hands, apparently trying to cover the abscond as just...this. ]

That’s not what they are.

[windeity]

[Siiiiigh. He's just going to flop on his back and sprawl. On Dave's bed, apparently.]

Then? I only remember the letter. I do not have it. [He has another letter he hasn't told Dave about. He thinks for a minute.] ...good to know that even back then I thought you were cool.

[parodeity]

[ well yeah of course john doesn’t have the letter? dave flips through his inventory and tosses the card out at john. he keeps the things he is unwilling to lose in his sylladex, and he has had the card on him the entire time he has known john here. ]

[windeity]

--you've. Been carrying it around. [He sounds incredulous but he's also holding it up to squint at it before flipping on a low reading lamp to see.] I take that back, wow, my drawing really sucked back then.

[Trying to lighten the mood? A little. And yet...]

This sounds about right though. [In line with what he imagines he would have thought back then, in line with his thoughts now. He doesn't clarify which.]

[parodeity]

I carry most of the shit I get around. A lot of it is digital at this point, though, so that's not hard.

[ a vague hand gesture, but he doesn't call anything else out. ]

I remembered it in march, but I got it back in june.

[windeity]

[He seems to consider something.]

A memory, three months later the actual thing, three months later I showed up, three months after I showed up it'll be your birthday. Weird how it's in three, isn't it?

[It means nothing.] ...are you going to keep pacing, or are you going to sit down again?

[parodeity]

It's not a friendship bracelet.

[ so apparently that's the part he's objecting to. ]

[windeity]

Okay, it's not a friendship bracelet. Do you like. [Uh.] Is there something wrong with friendship bracelets or...?

[Dave, what the fuck.]

[parodeity]

They're great for people who aren't me.

[ look. ]

...I don't want you to forget about me, okay? So that's not what it is.

[windeity]

[Somewhere in the back of his head, he realizes that yes, he is a shitty father/babysitter because a hand comes up to flop over his eyes and scrub at his face.]

Okay. I have zero plans to forget you and I am starting to think you would not let me forget you either way. [Which he doesn't mind. He prefers remembering Dave.]