Chapter Text
He sat upon a hill in a pink brain tree with his legs curled up to his chest. White eyes remained fixated on a yellow helmet and a pair of red glasses. His lips twitched into a bitter smile.
“Thith ith what you were thinking of way back then,” he said to himself, fingers digging into his pants as he watched the interaction between them. Psiioniic could see the love in her eyes, he could feel the love from himself. The struggle between them was real, and it hurt. It hurt to remember so much of everything after so long of drifting between hate and love and apathy.
He pulled his gaze away, darted it off into the distance. He looked towards a set of dark clouds, a memory far, far away. Psiioniic’s smile tugged into a frown. He’d visited that memory once, he watched it play out over and over again once, unable to interfere. He sighed, closed his eyes, and buried his face into his knees. Psiioniic could remember so much with terrifying clarity, so many sweeps, an eternity beyond what he should have lived. The vastness of it wanted to tear is pan apart. He peeked another glance to the younger, carefree troll and his matesprit and sighed. It even had, once, torn apart his mind.
He buried his face back into his knees as his ears twitched faintly, catching the sound of booted feet upon the strange blue grass. He could hear the faint crunch of gravel, a soft, whispering sigh.
“You want to speak to them.”
He kept his head buried, but nodded once.
“It’s going to happen soon, isn’t it.”
“Yeth,” he rasped. “Thoon.”
“You want to warn them?”
He peeked over his knees and looked at them. “It wouldn’t do anything. It wouldn’t change anything. They’d thtill be here, like thith, broken.”
He could hear the other troll shift, listened to them lean their weight against the trunk of the tree.
“I don’t know baby doll. I don’t think they’re that broken.”
Psiioniic laughed bitterly and buried his head back into his knees. He said, “You don’t know me ath well ath you think. I am one giant athhole of a bulge. At that age I wath worth.” He breathed out into his knees. “At that age I thought I knew everything. I thought I wath doing thingth right. I thought…I only hurt her. I’ll keep hurting her.” He heard a sigh, then raised his head and looked down, face utterly serious. “I’ll only keep hurting you,” he said.
Redglare looked back up at him, cane stabbed into the ground and one hand fondling the dragon head as she peered at him over the rims of her glasses.
“You keep saying it, MT, but I have yet to see any proof,” Redglare told him, her lips twisting into a vicious grin. “It looks like baby me knows it too. See the way she’s smiling?” She waved her hand down at the two of them. “That means she knows. She knows you’re being an ass, that you're not telling her something, but she knows you’d never keep secrets from her unless you had a very good reason.”
“Ith not a good reathon,” Psiioniic spat. “If I’d juth open my mouth an tell her then maybe…” he looked away and sighed.
“You said it yourself,” Redglare pointed out. “It wouldn’t change anything. So go talk to them, while you still have the chance.”
Psiioniic looked over into the distance again. He scowled.
“There’s nothing more you can do for him, baby doll,” Redglare rolled her eyes and tugged her cane up to poke him in the leg. Psiioniic jerked and glared down at her with furrowed brows. “He’ll come around in his own time. Now quit stalling.”
“I’m not thtalling,” Psiioniic said petulantly and placed his chin atop his knees.
“Uh huh, of course your not.” Redglare poked him with the head of her cane again. “Come on.”
Psiioniic sighed. He said, resigned, “Fine,” and slipped from the tree. He kept his shoulders hunched, hands shoved into a pair of holes on the sides of his pants where wires once poked into his thighs. He trudged forward, Redglare leisurely walking behind him with a wide, shit-eating grin on her face. For a moment he resented that grin, resented that she’d gotten him to move when he’d been adamant that he not.
He sighed, then laughed. Who was he kidding? She could always get him to move. Psiioniic knew it the moment he’d first met her that if they ever did see each other again he’d do anything for her. He’d known it when she was nothing more than a wiggler and he’d handed over his cloak to stop her from burning. He hadn’t known what it was exactly that he knew, not at the time, but now with over two-thousand sweeps beyond how old Psiioniic knew he should be, he understood.
Psiioniic paused inside the treeline, just out of sight of his younger, stupider, more arrogant self and his matesprit. He stared down at them, and then glanced to Redglare who stood at his side with a raised brow.
“What?” she asked. “Second thoughts?”
He licked his lips, tugged his hair in nervous habit. “You know that...that when it happenth you...you won’t remember any of thith right?”
Redglare smiled sadly. “I know.”
“All theeth thweepth,” he continued, “all thith time, you’ll jutht forget. Everything.”
Redglare patted him on the cheek, then placed a kiss to his chin. “Doesn’t matter, MT,” she told him. “I’m happy, even if I forget the best sweeps of my afterlife, I am happy.”
Psiioniic sighed. He said, shakily, “I won’t be able to find you.”
“You will,” Redglare told him. “Eventually, you will. I know you will.”
He closed his eyes. “It won’t be like thith,” he warned her.
“I know.” She reached out a hand and wrapped her fingers with his. “I know.”
“Thith ith the latht time,” he said, his breath hitching, and he couldn’t finish the sentence.
“It’s okay.” Redglare pulled the hand up wrapped in his until it touched her chest. She held it there as she reached out with her other hand to turn his chin towards her, forced him to look at her. She smiled. “It’s okay,” she repeated. “I understand.”
“I wish you didn’t,” Psiioniic said honestly. “Thith wouldn’t be tho hard if you didn’t.”
“It was never going to be easy,” Redglare informed him. “You know that.”
“I do.” He towered over her. There’d been a time, once, where she towered over him. His glanced at them, at her tall and powerful and perfect and then back to Redglare, small, wonderful, understanding Redglare. “But I,” he started, then closed his eyes. “I wish it would be different, now,” he whispered. “I didn’t know….”
“You did,” she interrupted. “You just don’t want to admit it.”
“I did,” he admitted, and then cupped her cheek. “I’m thorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“Can’t,” he told her, then leaned down and kissed her on the lips. He cried, but they were bloodless tears.
“WHOTH THATHT, TULIP?”
Psiioniic pulled back and saw Redglare smiling at him, lips quirked up.
“I like it,” she said under her breath. “Tulip.” Psiioniic flushed.
Mituna stared at the two trolls, confused. He was further left in the dark when Latula turned and gasped, her eyes going wide behind her glasses.
“TULIP?” he shouted, then flailed and tripped but he didn’t hit the ground. He floated in the air. “THWOAH,” he yelped as he was set down back on the ground as if he’d never tripped in the first place. He looked between Psiioniic and Redglare with wide eyes.
“MT?” Latula asked, her voice a soft, almost shocked sort of hesitant.
“Hey,” Psiioniic said with a wave of his hand. “I...I’m thorry.” Redglare sighed and smiled at their younger counterparts.
“He’s being stupid,” she said.
“Am not,” Psiioniic muttered back, then sighed. “Okay tho I am.”
Mituna frowned, then stepped forward until he stood between Latula and the older him. He said, voice a bit sharper and clearer than before, “Why areth you fcuking here?”
They stared at each other, one face hidden behind a mask, the other with his lips tugged down into a sad frown. Psiioniic said, “To thay goodbye...and apologithe.”
“Why?” Mituna questioned.
“MT…” Latula said carefully.
“You know why,” Psiioniic said back. “We thcrewed up.”
“Nuh uh.”
“We didn’t have the right,” Psiioniic ground out. “Thith ith our fault. We should have left thingth ath they were. We should have left thingth alone.”
“Whao, okay, enough!” Latula quickly stepped in, eyes narrowed in thought. Redglare sighed and muttered a soft, “Baby doll, stop,” at the same time.
Both Captors sighed, then nodded, although the younger said, “It wathn’t a mithtake.”
“We had no right,” Psiioniic said and Latula groaned.
She walked up to the Psiioniic and stared at his face, she looked for something, something only Redglare knew, and then slapped him. Mituna yelped in surprise and Redglare just laughed while Psiioniic stared at Latula in shock.
“You deserved that,” Redglaree said cheerfully. Psiioniic reached up and rubbed his cheek and shot her a slight glare out of the corner of his eye, not that anyone could really tell. She laughed, then said, “Just tell them, baby doll. Don’t hide it anymore.”
“NO!” Mituna shouted. “NO!” He quieted when Redlgare looked at him and smiled Latula’s smile. It said everything was okay, that she understood. Mituna looked down and scowled.
“Ith okay,” Psiioniic said softly. “I’m not. I’m thorry.” He looked off into the distance and then sighed and closed his eyes. “He’th coming. Ith time.” He opened his eyes. “I wanted to thay I’m thorry, that I wath thtupid.”
Latula opened her mouth, but Mituna grasped her hand and shook his head. He squeezed her fingers and pressed his lips together.
“Yeah,” Mituna said. “We arthe.” He swallowed heavily.
“I should never have tried…” Psiioniic shook his head as Mituna nodded it. “Ith gonna all end thoon.”
“Ith a better futhur,” Mituna said.
“Doeth that make it right?” Psiioniic muttered.
“Doeth it mathter?” Mituna replied. They stood in silence. Latula stared at them, then closed her eyes resigned.
“MT…” she said. “Oh baby doll.” She wrapped her arms around Mituna’s shoulders and placed a kiss to his helmet. Psiioniic smiled sadly. “Come on. Let’s go home.”
“Okay.”
They walked off. Latula had tears in her eyes. Redglare squeezed Psiioniic’s hand tightly. She said, “I told you I understand.”
“I’m tho thtupid,” Psiionic breathed, then rubbed at his eyes. “Fuck I’m tho, tho thtupid.”
Latula smiled and leaned into his side. She pressed her head into his arm and squeezed his fingers again, but didn’t do anything else. She didn’t go for another embrace. She just said, “Yeah, but then we all were, weren’t we? Back then. We were all pretty stupid.”
They stood together and watched the horizon.
“It’th coming,” the Psiioniic said after a moment.
“You’ll find me,” Redglare told him.
Psiioniic nodded once and closed his eyes. He breathed, “Alwayth, Tulip. Alwayth.”
The world flashed red. It swept through them both, ruffled their hair and their clothes. Psiioniic could feel himself jerked back, out of Redlgare’s arms. He could feel the pain burst into his pan, across his arms and his legs. It was familiar and ancient. He watched her swallowed into the red and he closed his eyes. His cheeks felt wet and warm.
‘I’ll find you Tulip, but it won’t be the same. It’ll never be the same.’
“Wata the shell you cryin’ fa, toy?”
Helmsman opened his eyes and sagged a little into his bonds. His eyes sought out hers beneath the goggles. He stared at her, looked her over, and sneered. He could see the lines, the twists and the cancerous black that rotted beneath her skin.
“Nothing that conthernth you, mathter,” he snarled.
She reached out and grasped his chin, poked him with the sharp ends of the prongs of her trident. “Everyfin is my coddamn business buoy,” she told him sharply. “Or did you forget? I own your pathetic shellf.”
He smiled, a lazy sort of cocky thing. It felt good to actually breathe, good to know that finally everything was falling into place. All of his sacrifices, all of his hard work, soon it would be done. Soon he could rest.
“How could I forget?” he said in the perfect, drawling, sarcastic tone that he’d perfected over two thousand sweeps of hate and love and apathy. “Oh mathter my mathter….”
She slammed her trident into the ground and huffed. “Very whale then,” she said, choosing to ignore the sarcasm. It sent a pang of disgust through him at how much of a pale imitation she was. “Set a course, Helmsman. I don’t care where, anyfin will do. I’m bored.”
“Yeth mathter,” he said and let his mind fall down the familiar paths. Half of himself was focused on something other than the ship. A small troll, unconscious on the boat of a ship, with nubby little horns and eyes slowly turning blood red. Psiioniic smiled.
It happened quickly and without warning. One moment they were in the dreams, enjoying the company of the long dead. Some of them were friendly, like Meenah and Aranea. Some of them were terrifying like Damara and Kurloz. It had been a reprieve during the time they traveled in the Void Space on a meteor rock. It was, honestly, surprisingly peaceful. For Trolls this phenomenon was knew, for the humans it was a relief.
Then he arrived, or he’d already been there no one could be quite certain how or when it had happened, only that it did. He stood on the Meteor, laughing, cackling. His jaw opened wide and he fired out a blast of pure time energy and it jolted them all into action. Those that were asleep jolted up, those that were awake quickly got themselves their weapons and began the attack.
Karkat was brought back to the here and now as his back hit the wall with a sickening crack. He crumpled to the ground, and then forced himself to stand up with panting, painful breath. One arm was mangled, twisted and broken, and his side hurt to the point of his vision swimming. He swayed for a moment, looked to Dave who was grimacing with a shitty sword clenched between his hands. Rose danced with Kanaya, one darting in with a chainsaw while the other distracted with blasts of magic from two needle-point wands. Terezi cackled, dashed inbetween his legs and around his back and sliced with her cane, even Gamzee lumbered around with a club, eyes a sickening orange red. Karkat honestly had to hand it to the bastard, he brought the remainder of them back together just as they were drifting apart.
With a yell, Karkat rushed himself back in towards the fray just as English scooped Gamzee up by his neck and squeezed. Karkat didn’t flinch, and he ignored the way his gut twisted painfully at the sight of Gamzee being choked to death. He pushed himself forward, ignored the tingling, niggling feeling in the back of his pan that wanted to overtake him with dread and doubt. He already knew it, so why focus on the feeling when he already knew?
This entire thing was futile. They were going to lose. It was written in the way Rose actually limped as she moved, in the way Dave panted out of breath and swayed on the verge of collapse. It was in the way Kanaya’s glow dimmed and grew brighter with irregular frequency as her skin gained a sickly pallor. It was in the way Terezi cackled and laughed.
English tossed Gamzee aside the minute he lost consciousness. Gamzee smashed into the same wall Karkat had, but he would be okay. Gamzee was a highblood and they were a far more resilient sort than the rest of trollkind.
Karkat couldn’t tell you how long they’d been fighting. Hours, maybe? Or it could have been days at this point. At either rate, they were tiring, they were losing. Karkat panted.
Had it always meant to come to this?
English slammed a fist into Kanaya and she smashed into another wall and then slumped down, leaving behind a wet trail of jade green. Karkat breathed and took a step forward. He had to fight. He had to fight. It couldn’t end this way. It couldn’t.
Dave and Rose were knocked into one another and knocked over. Rose blinked out of existence and Dave scrambled to his feet. Karkat took another step as English focused on Terezi. It was so futile. Had it always been so?
English gripped Terezi by her hair and pulled her up. Her glasses knocked sideways, revealing working pale eyes instead of the blind and crusted red from before. She screeched at him, screamed, but English just laughed. He took her cane sword from her and snapped it in two. Karkat took another step. English roared, shot off a blast of energy at the ceiling. Karkat breathed, behind him Gamzee groaned.
One minute Karkat staggered towards English, Gamzee woke up, and Dave rolled to his feet and prepared to charge. One minute Rose raised her wands to fire at English’ hand, to get the beast to release Terezi.
It only took one moment. One. Fucking. Moment.
Terezi struggled, she gurgled and her eyes went wide. Her face screamed disbelief, like this couldn’t have been happening. English cackled, and when Terezi went still, he dropped her to the ground. Karkat stopped walking, he stared at the broken cane sword protruding from Terezi’s neck. He stared at Terezi, at her limp form. His gaze shifted to Dave, whose glasses were knocked askew. His red eyes burned, wide, terrified, infuriated.
“Terezi!” Dave roared.
Karkat choked. He realized, perhaps a second too late, what was going to happen. It unfolded before him like a train wreck. The yell of no got stuck in his throat and all he could do was stare, open mouthed as Dave stepped, and then appeared over English with sword raised above his head. He thrust it down, twisted out of the grasping hands, and landed on a crouch feet away with his hands braced out on either side of him. With a flash of red time his time tables popped into existence underneath each hand.
“Dave!” Rose screamed, but it was too late.
It was always too late.
Dave’s face was murderous, his lips pressed thin and his expression twisted with rage. Karkat dropped to his knees and closed his eyes. He couldn’t watch. He couldn’t see it happen.
The Knight of Time let out a yell and then made Time spin. English roared, hands clenched into fists. Karkat could feel the energy blast, feel it wrap around all of them. His eyelids burned with the red, so much of it, and he felt a tug against him. He felt pulled, tossed, buffeted through the ensuing explosion of two clashing manifestations of Time.
It was inevitable. It was always going to be this way.
Karkat slammed into something hard but wooden. He bounced, and then fell flat onto his face. He opened his eyes, only slightly amazed he wasn’t dead. They were narrowed slits, his breathing ragged and broken. He couldn’t see anything but wood, and he couldn’t remember there being wood on the meteor, not like this.
His vision swam, twisted and curled and darkened at the edge. He could see bare gray feet and it reminded him of Gamzee and of Kanaya. Both trolls liked to go barefoot on the meteor although Gamzee more often than not wore socks and Kanaya would put on shoes if only because it was the proper thing to do.
They didn’t look like Gamzee’s feet though, Karkat thought dazedly. Still, the thought of his moirail acting like his moirail again made his chest burn. He choked out, “G-Gamzee…” just as the last of his consciousness left him.
Gamzee slammed back into a tree just as his eyes snapped open wide. Kanaya’s limp, unconscious form was tossed into his chest a moment later by a blast of red that faded until all he could see was the forest and the trees. Gamzee shoved Kanaya off of him and pulled himself onto his feet. His gaze darted around, searched for any lingering sign of English, or of Karkat, or of that fool Dave. He saw nothing but the forest.
Gamzee sat down, breathed out slowly, and closed his eyes. He focused on Karkat, focused on pressing his mind down and bottling the rage away. He learned this in between his and Karkat’s jam sessions as he slowly began to pull away, thinking about all the things he had to do. There had been so much to prepare for and barely a sweep of time to do it in. When he opened his eyes they were normal once more, and Gamzee breathed out a calming breath and finally took in his surroundings.
He stared at the forest with a frown, and then ran his hand along the bark of the tree he’d been knocked into. It was real, solid, but then the Dream Bubbles had been real and solid too. Gamzee looked over at Kanaya’s limp form. She still hadn’t woken up, the attack either knocked her completely out or killed her. She was paler than she should be, he noted, paler and sickly looking.
“Bitchin’,” Gamzee sighed. “Wicked sister’s been up and ignorin’ her needs.”
The small niggling sense of Karkat in his pan demanded he at least check on her, that Gamzee make sure Kanaya was still alive, so he dropped to his knees. He’d grown taller, nearing another molt, on their time on the ship. He fumbled with his fingers, trying to remember how to do this pulse checking thing. He pressed them against her neck, and then over her face, and then shook her lightly but she didn’t stir.
It felt like she had some sort of pulse, that her blood pusher was working even if weak. Gamzee let out a sigh of relief.
“Best motherfuckin’ thing is if you don’t up and be dead on me,” he told her. “My palest diamond ain’t needin’ any more shocks to his system, ya dig?”
Gamzee climbed back onto his feet and shifted around, looking for a low enough hanging of a branch that he could climb on. He knew he needed to get his bearings, to figure out where it is they were exactly and then figure out how to reach Karkat. He had a feeling, a twisting churning sense in his gut, that everything had just been thrown for a rather vicious loop.
There was a tree roughly a few feet from Kanaya with a branch low enough that he could pull himself up on it. He struggled, grasping the branch and then pulling until with a grunt he was able to get his legs around the branch and reach up for the next one. Tree’s werent Gamzee’s thing. Often he avoided them because the first few times he’d attempted anything he nearly broke his neck, and then there was the fact that his lusus lived in the sea, so often Gamzee was just on the beach instead of near the forest.
It took some work, and careful maneuvering, but finally Gamzee’s head breached the tree tops and he had to stop a moment and stare, wide eyed. He could see two moons in the sky, one a pale pinkish red and the other neon green. The red moon was closer, casting pink hues onto the foliage although the light dissipated enough that you couldn’t tell under the cover of the trees. He could even recognize the constellations in the sky, brilliant and achingly familiar.
“No mother fuckin way,” Gamzee said. “What has Strider up and done now? This ain’t some miracle...that fucker is up and gettin’ us all culled.”
Gamzee felt sick. This couldn’t have been possible. He must have been dreaming. Carefully he scrambled down from the branches, tried to control his breathing and his emotions before they overwhelmed him and he lost control. As it was his horns sparked, his pan, broken and rotted that it was, filled up with thoughts of what Dave had up and done to him and Karkat. He scrambled down and then fell the rest of the way to the ground, crossed his legs, and stared dazedly at the world around him.
His sylladex beeped at him, the only sound to break the monotony. It started Gamzee for a moment, enough that he jolted and let out a shocked honk! He flushed faintly when he realized what he did and quickly scrambled for the deck, and then the card--he had a moment to lament on the state of his modus, wondering what he’d been thinking when he first chose it. He’d been wondering a lot on what he’d been thinking now that the sopor wasn’t clogging up his mind.
Gamzee twisted his wrist and the card instantly shifted into his husktop. The life was low, he noted, and then resolved to use the device sparingly as he wasn’t sure if there’d be enough supplies to properly bring it back online once it’d died. Carefully he tugged around until he found the alert, some sort of chat window with text written in black. It was familiar.
ii know thiis has got to be confusiing and iim sorry. ii diidnt have tiime to warn you. ii barely had tiime to warn anyone. at least be happy that you are aliive and so iis everyone else. except the liittle baby neophyte. she wont be comiing back. iim sorry. ii know you had a thiing wiith her. ii thiink.
Gamzee swallowed. Terezi, his beautiful pitch-sister was dead? He couldn’t remember that happening, he couldn’t remember anything much after hitting the wall and then coming around long enough to see Strider use Time against English who held a lordship over it. That fool Knight should have known better. He clenched his fist and read the words as they appeared.
you need to know that thiis changes nothiing. thiis was always goiing to happen. the only thiing iis you are not alone. you forgot that ii thiink. ii triied to fiind you to tell you. at any rate you should be okay. the sun wiill riise soon so you need to fiind shelter. ii do not know where you ended up, but ii am certaiin you wiill fiind somethiing. you have always been resiiliiant.
do not worry about hiim. he iis okay. she has found hiim. she wiill protect hiim. she diid thiis before. just keep yourself aliive for hiis sake and yours.
iit iis almost over. just a liittle longer. ii promiise.
and thank you.
At the last word, the text box closed down and Gamzee closed his eyes. He breathed out slowly, then sucked a breath in. Carefully he switched the husktop back into a card and slotted it into his deck, which he then put back into his pants pocket. Gamzee crawled over to Kanaya and checked on her again. He closed his eyes.
“Still alive? Good,” he muttered. “We best get to movin’ an’ then I’ll get you somethin’ to up and drink blood sister.”
He grabbed Kanaya by her arm and shifted her until her waist hit his shoulder and her head lolled at his back. He grunted faintly, she wasn’t light like Karkat, and then got to his feet. If this really was the place he thought it was, the trees would keep them safe from most of the sun’s rays. They’d still have to find a more permanent structure if they wanted to survive longer than a few measly hours though. Gamzee turned in a circle, rhymed in his head.
Eenie meenie mynie moe….
He stopped, and stared, and then started walking.
“Best be findin’ that shelter soon,” Gazmee said to himself. “Best be not out in the sun when it up and rises.”
Dave realized the moment he did it that it was the worst idea in the history of worst ideas and he should never have even tried. He realized it the moment the world washed red and English laughed, the moment he watched Karkat and Kanaya and Gamzee and Rose and Terezi, his heart ached at the sight of Terezi, disintegrate before his very eyes. He watched them vanish into nothing in the sea of red, tugged away by strands of Time. Dave turned wide, suddenly terrified eyes on English, but English was gone.
Dave was alone. He turned around, he stared at the red of Time, his tables still in his hand.
“Guys?” Dave called out, took a step forward, then stopped. “Okay this is one terrible ass dream I swear. Guys? Come on. Not funny.” He turned again, took a step, then stopped. “Really not funny.”
The red around him seemed to shift, and then like with Karkat and the others, tendrils appeared to snake out and grasp at him. Dave let out a shriek.
“No! Okay I fucked up but seriously no! I don’t wanna die! I’m too good to die!” He didn’t want to vanish into nothing, and neither did he want to be alone with all of Time. The tendrils snaked around him, tugged at him. “Seriously tentacle rape death is not my idea of fun, that’s Rose, go away!” He’d never actually seen Time react like this before, usually any use of it was instantaneous with a brief flash of red.
This was something new.
One of the tendrils knocked his glasses askew as they snaked around him, tugged him, pulled him, until suddenly Dave felt like he was flying. He had no control over his own movements, all he could see was red streaking by him and then the flying turned into falling and the red became a moon and a moon turned into a sky. Dave stared up at the stars with wide eyes as he tumbled down and down, his cape whipping around him. He tried to get a handle on himself, to make himself fly because it was something he could do except, for some reason, he couldn’t.
Dave screamed. He tumbled down, and down, and he screamed as he fell. He thought ohgodimgonnadie in a rush of panic right before his back hit something solid and mutable and wet. His head fell under the water, his mouth tasted salt. It got up into his nose and he kicked and flailed his arms until he broke the surface gasping and hacking. He nearly fell back under again, the wait of his cape dragging against his neck like a chain. Dave twisted, tugged his hands into the collar and tugged. He drifted downwards as he fought with the clasp, fought to get it off. It hung tight like a noose, but he eventually got his head free and he pushed himself toward the dwindling surface of light. His lungs burned with a need for breath.
His eyes hurt, the salt stung at them. He knocked his own shades off in the struggle just before he breached the surface again and tread in the water as best he could, hacking and wheezing and coughing. His feet were hard to move, his tennis shoes sluggish with the water, even waterlogged enough that for a moment Dave feared they would pull him back under just by their weight alone. He hastily tried to kick them off, flailing his arms. He ducked under the water twice more, once without able to get a breath and swallowed a near lungful of saltwater. Eventually though he was able to calm enough to tread and float and not sink.
Dave spun himself in a circle, but all he could see was ocean. The water glowed an eerie red from the reflected light of the moon, which Dave could see there were two. One pinkish red and one neon green. The stars, the constellations, none of it looked familiar. None of this looked familiar. Dave swam in a short circle, but otherwise just tried to keep himself afloat. His ears felt a bit cold, and his arms started to shake.
“Okay, okay, you’re okay,” Dave said to himself softly. “You’re okay. You’re in an ocean in the middle of the night on a planet you don’t recognize and are probably gonna freeze to death but bro, you’re okay. Yeah. We’re totally okay. Oh god I’m gonna die.” Dave fought down a whimper. “I’m going to drown and nobody is going to find my body shit this is terrible what was I thinking oh god.” He tried to calm down, tried to breath like Rose would tell him over the internet. “I’m gonna drown and nobody is gonna know what happened to me breathe Dave breathe god fucking dammit you’re okay.”
He sucked in a breath, tried to let it out, but he couldn’t. He just sucked in more breath, then tried to let it out. He shuddered. It felt so cold. Dave shut up and quit muttering to himself. He focused on breathing, on getting a hold of himself because no, Dave Strider was not going to die here, even if it looked likely to happen. He flooded himself with determination, with that one thought, and felt himself calm down slightly even if his limbs shook and it felt cold enough that he was certain his teeth would soon start chattering and his lips would turn blue.
“I just...gotta swim to shore,” Dave said to himself, and then his teeth started to chat. “Just keep moving.”
He pushed, started to swim. He picked a direction and then moved. A second later something wrapped around his ankle. Dave had the chance to shriek, and then he found himself pulled under the water. He struggled, he kicked his legs and he tried to see whatever it was but his eyes stung, and he felt cold and weak, and his teeth were chattering. He fought, held his breath and fought, but even that gave out and the need for air burned in his lungs. Dave had a moment, a terrifying, clarifying moment that this was how he died, at the hands of some sort of carnivorous fish, and wasn’t that just so ironic? For a moment he hated himself.
Dave gasped, sucked in a lung-full of seawater, and began to drown.