windeity | RECOLLÉ INBOX 2.0

[...SIGH.]

So do you remember when I played you Dave's song for the first time and you remembered the thing about your mom? This is kind of like that. Not that I remember that exact thing but it is the same caliber of "oh my god."

Oh, shit.

[She pauses, looking around.]

Do you want to duck out of here real quick to talk about it?

I don't...[HELP.] Maybe? Um. I have no idea how to even process this. [What if he serves more soup instead.]

[A small smile.]

I can tell the manager we need a bathroom break if you need, man.

I think I lost my mind. [He doesn't specify if he means the memory or here which doesn't help.]

...Okay. Well, I'm going to go tell the manager, and I'll meet you right outside?

Yeah. [He's just going to shut his eyes for a second and once the last person leaves their line he drops the ladle in the pot carefully and bails for the outside world byeeeee.]

[True to her word, she heads to the manager to tell him they'll need a while before she follows him outside, concern clear on her face.]

What did you remember?

[He's leaning against the wall outside, but he doesn't look like he's upset or anything. On the contrary...he's sort of flushed and staring at his feet in disbelief.]

Did I ever tell you about me, Jade, and Davesprite and our three years together? [He knows he told her about his sister (technical sister, whatever), but he doesn't recall if they spoke about the rest.]

[She shakes her head, coming over to lean near him on the wall, though she's careful to give him enough space.]

No, I don't think so. What happened?

Okay. I think I need to explain some things about the game we played. When we started the game, all of us ended up with sprites that were helping us. Mine took on the form of my Nanna and Dave's ended up being a version of himself that was combined with a bird somehow. His name's Davesprite, kind of like how my nanna was Nannasprite.

I'm still not entirely clear on everything that happened, but when the game started and we had to end the universe, Rose, Dave, Jade and I all split up to take a three-year journey to the new universe since we had to scratch ours. Dave and Rose stayed together which a bunch of our other friends, and Jade and I were on a battleship. Because all of us went godtier before we split up, we could use our powers and Jade had used hers to shrink down all of our planets. Davesprite was on one of the planets and so when Jade resized everyone again he joined us for the trip.

We were all thirteen. And we were on a ship traveling at the speed of light but we had no way of getting in contact with Dave and Rose and the others for those three years. Make sense so far?

[She nods along, her brow furrowing slightly as she makes an effort to keep up.]

I mean... I'm following, yeah. It sounds completely bizarre to me, but I'm following.

Okay, cool. Davesprite is some other form of Dave but he's not exactly Dave. It's a really long weird explanation that I do not quite know how to do myself, but he hung out with us on the ship. With Jade's space powers she could grow and shrink our planets and we had a bunch of other companions on the boat like our consorts and Jaspersprite and Nannasprite.

Anyway at some point in our long and strange trip, Jade and Davesprite started dating and it was maybe fine I guess but also I assume third wheel-y. But after that sometime around my fifteenth birthday Jade told me that they broke up and I apparently lost my shit about him being an orange feathery douche. I think I was contemplating how sex worked when he had a ghost butt? "Normal Dave was so much more level headed. I have to admit, I spend a lot of time wondering what he and Rose are up to." I was kind of an asshole to Jade, too, since I just lost it and started freaking out about how tired I was of being on the ship without our friends and blowing her off.

And then...there's Davesprite. Who played a prank on me at the wrong time and that's about when I went ballistic because I was determined to find a hammer and clobber him to death. Maybe I was hallucinating I don't know, but I went outside and just started yelling at the sky?

"Everyone on this boat is sick and tired of your bullshit. Why don't you just fly away and leave us alone? How can you be so much more of a prick than the real Dave? You are the most piss poor substitute for a best friend a guy ever had. I can't wait to meet up with the real Dave again. That way we can all go back to the awesome status quo of pretending you never existed in the first place." Only with a lot more yelling and pretty much throwing a fit in my driveway and then...[...] I think I fell asleep in the driveway, I'm not sure.

[There's something else in that memory, too, that he's just now realized but he's not sure how to approach that either.]

So... Your sister was dating a ghost version of Dave and you lost it because he wasn't the Dave you were used to. And then he played a joke on you and you wanted to murder him but then you just started screaming and passed out in your driveway?

[A pause.]

Just to make sure I'm getting this straight.

That's about the gist of it, yes. I was pretty mad he broke up with Jade, I think, and then...yeah. [This sounds stupid doesn't it.]

Okay. That must have been, um, a pretty bad joke.

[y i k e s]

Do you want to talk about what it was...?

Not particularly? [A half-smile.] It was...really poor taste even for us. And I think I just realized some things I didn't know about the world back there that I'm not sure I'm okay with. But at least the normal Dave would've known better.

[She thinks that over, giving a small nod.]

Is the stuff you're okay with stuff you can change, or...?

Not without probably fucking up timelines. It's all stuff from the past anyway which means it already happened? And Jade and Dave aren't dating anymore so it's whatever.

...I'm sorry, then. For whatever it was that happened.

[She hesitates, but then reaches up to put a hand on his shoulder quickly and give it a squeeze.]

[It's surprising but he gives a small smile, a hand reaching up to cover hers for a moment before he lets go.]

Thanks. It's maybe not as surprising as it should be, given how things worked out in this life, but it's whatever. I'll worry about it later. I have other things to do here.

[Like apologize to his best friend.]

Surprising or not, it still must be garbage, right?

[And there's a slight frown as she moves her hand away.]

You know you can worry about it now if you need to, yeah?

[He just bites at his lip.]

Yeah. It's garbage. [But that's all he says while he shakes his head.] It's okay. Really. We still have a lot of soup left to serve right?

I can handle it from here if you need me to... Or even if you want me to.

[She doesn't want to force him either way, but it's still pretty clear that she's Concerned.]

Natalie. [There's a grin.] I promise it's fine. It's all other-life stuff and I can handle it. I'm kind of pissed about the timing of everything but it's fine.

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