HOME | DD

Description
   There was a splattering sound and an eruption of cheering as he hit the ground. Bright blood spilled across the ground and stained the broken sword that had drawn it. With a battle-eager smile, David straddled the form of his alpha self and leaned in close. It was a common game they played, all of it; it never was so serious, it always ended in a draw. His own blood dripped from wounds on his face but he didn't seem to mind so much.
   "What's wrong, Davey~? Done fighting already?"
   Davey gave no response underneath him. It took David a moment to realize there was something amiss and another to recognize what it was – the familiar rhythm of Davey's breath under his thighs which pressed against the sides of his chest. His heart skipped a beat – was that glee or anticipation? He hadn't an idea in the faintest – and shot a glance at the others. Others like him, the 'tricksters', watching the fight in their typical joyfully gruesome way.
   "Answer me!" David demanded, pulling up his alpha by the collar.
He'd played dead before and soon enough would launch up like a spring coil, continuing the strife yet again. But this time, David realized, he wasn't. He slowly released his collar in wide-eyed disbelief, pastel and bloodstained hair falling over his eyes.
   "Davey?" There was something desolate in his voice. Maybe it was because the game was finally over. There was a long silence.
   "He's dead!" Exclaimed John, first to break the silence. With that, the others erupted into cheering as well.
   "You're finally one of us, Dave," Jade said musically, leaning to pat David's shoulder happily. "None of us are glitches anymore!"
David forced a grin and nodded at her, but something in his stomach felt unsettled. He lifted his bloody shades from Dave's lifeless hand and slipped them on, smoothing his hair back. He stood up and looked down. He was the alpha now. He was Dave.

*

It was a happy affair. The Trickster – the "glitches", the empty and "lifeless" game constructs – had won their right to exist. They'd killed all of their alpha – no, alternate – versions. It was a time for celebration. There were candies and pastries and songs. It was like the birthday party of every child's dreams.
Certain ones were making out atop the corpses. Nepeta and Terezi painted murals with the rainbow of blood whilst Gamzee nearly bathed in it. A chorus of giggling and frenzied speaking filled the air.
A lollipop in his hand, Dave couldn't seem to get into the mood to party. He wondered if the others felt the strange, implacable tightness seated in his chest. It was unfamiliar to him, not used to feelings apart from typical giddiness and a particular lust for bloodshed.
The others seemed rather unaffected, happily prancing about, gorging on candy, showing gross amounts of affection. Dave watched them from where he sat next to Davey's body, turning the lollipop in his hand. "Buck up, David," he told himself, smiling faintly and thinly. The knot in his stomach tightened itself. He wasn't 'David' – that was the 'cuter' name Dave (the Other Dave) called him.
He dipped his head and the strawberry fell out of his hair, his shades slipped a little off of his nose. He didn't feel like candy. He didn't feel like parties. He felt like someone had cut a watermelon-sized hole from his body.
He didn't like this.
Dave had never felt pain before, not really. Everything was a muted echo of a feeling, like his entire body was numb to anything except the rush of adrenaline in a good fight or the pleasure of his teeth clinking against Davey's when… no. He stopped that thought. But now he felt like he was feeling physical and mental pain. He thought maybe this was what headaches felt like.
"I feel so alive, hee hee!" he could hear Aradia saying just nearby. She and Feferi were sitting happily atop the bodies of the Other Sollux, Feferi, Equius and Aradia, like the most morbid sort of jam pile. Feferi let out a series of high-pitched giggles. "I feel reely whole!" Somewhere he heard Rose and Jade speaking horrorterror.
Dave laid back, sticking his lollipop in his mouth, and his head fell on his other self's stomach. That reminded him; he jerked up immediately and turned around. The candy splintered under his teeth and he spit it out.
"You!" He declared, grabbing his torn and bloodstained shirt to pull him up. "This was you!"
None of the others seemed to pay mind to him. Some of the others who felt more hostility towards their alternate selves had mutilated them. Gamzee's alternate was nearly unrecognizable; a bloody pulp. So no one thought it odd when he grabbed onto his alternate's shirt, pressing his face close.
"I want you to look at me!" He ripped the shades from the corpse's face, the eyes still open and staring blankly upward, stunning and red as they always were with a sort of cloudy film over the rest. For the first time Dave could ever think of, he wanted to throw up. He could engorge himself on as much candy and metallic-tasting blood as he wanted to, but seeing Davey's eyes roll back in his head, he wanted to vomit.
"This is your fault!" His voice turned harsh and grating like he'd never heard it before. He'd never been so angry so the distortion of his voice had never been so bad. "You took something from me! You took it and you didn't give it back! What did you take?! Give it back!"
Suddenly there was a sort of quiet. The noise around fell to a sort of murmur as Kanaya and Vriska broke their lip lock to glance over and share hesitant giggles, not completely sure if it was something to be laughing at. Aradia gave a passive glance from the body pile. Some others didn't notice, like John and Karkat, who were arm in arm and giggling over some sort of joke. But the volume dropped slightly still.
Tears pricked Dave's eyes and he dropped his alternate's limp body to the floor, which let out a moderately loud 'thump'. Blood from the wound that had finally killed the alternate – a swift cut too deep into the cardiac muscle that had before refused to stop pumping – coated Dave's hands. He brought those hands up to his face and closed the unnerving red eyes.
No, he'd come too far to want anything other than to live, to be the 'real' Dave, to be alive and complete for the first time. He grinded his teeth painfully as he leaned over the Other Dave still.
"I know what you took, Davey," he whispered mischievously as if he might answer, voice taking on that high-pitched and static-filled distortion. "You stole my happiness."
Suddenly he was sobbing. He was crying in the worst way; tears fell out of his eyes as if they were faucets, falling onto Davey's face and washing away red blood from his cheeks. His breath hitched hard in his throat, his inhalations coming as grating hiccups and loud sobs. His nose ran and his eyes stung, and he hardly noticed just how tight his hands were on his alternate's shoulders. It might have bruised him if the blood hadn't all either spilled or settled already.
A hush came over everyone. No one was kissing, no one was dancing. There was a strange and uneasy quiet, marred only with confused and slightly distorted whispers. Dave didn't care so much anymore. He couldn't manage to stop crying. He couldn't even remember having ever cried before. He couldn't remember ever feeling so empty, not even knowing he was just a glitch, not a playable character. Not 'real'.
"Back…" He said in between sobs. "Come back…"
Both of them had coexisted where the others had not. They'd gotten along and had fun and laughed, by some miracle. They hadn't killed each other. They'd beaten the hell out of each other, but neither one ever really destroyed the other. In the end they'd lay on the ground immobile or passed out and just laugh and be sore as hell the next day. They'd sometimes make out and leave bites and bruises on each other and the Other Dave always commented how he tasted like candy and it 'fucking sucked'.
In an instant John was at his side. He had his hand buried in sunshine-blonde hair, staring strangely at him from behind his glasses. Karkat stood just behind him, looking with mild concern at the normally-antagonistic cool kid. "Dave?" John asked.
Dave didn't respond. He bent further over the corpse, his knuckles white, hands shaking. He closed his eyes. His sobs had turned to quiet hiccups that he couldn't control.
"Dave's not… here… right now," he answered finally. "Leave a…  message."
John crouched down next to him, putting his arm around his thin back. "You don't seem very happy."
'No shit,' he could just hear the Other Dave saying. He didn't say it though. Still no one really spoke. John reached over and pried his fingers open, forcing him to let go of the corpse. Dave watched his hands as he grabbed the Ben Stiller shades and snapped them at the bridge. His stomach wrenched.
Almost involuntarily he reached up and slapped him straight across his sugar-sticky face, knocking his glasses off. Karkat jerked back in surprise, not sure what to think. John reached up in shock, holding his face.
"Do you feel complete?" Dave asked. He pulled his shades from his pink eyes to stare wildly at the other. "You're not! You're still just a glitch!"
John looked in confusion. The others burst into offended whispers that became loud chattering.
"You're moronic. Just like moronic alphas." Dave stood up, drawing the pastel Caledscratch from his strife deck. "We're not any more real than we were before! We're still just errors! Not meant to exist!"
His voice took on its distorted quality, plus the cool indifference all Daves had mastered. Even his own visage appeared … glitched. As if his existence was beginning to fall apart.
"Liar!" John screeched, pulling his own Warhammer of Zillyhoo from his strife deck.
In a moment there was an uproar, everyone drawing their pastel-colored, candy-coated bastardizations of their alternates' weapons. Bows, clubs, sickles. People screeching and questioning. Dave's strawberry-themed sword met the hammer with a loud crash. Everyone fell over one another to get to Dave and John. It quickly broke to chaos as they began fighting one another as well.
"You don't exist!" Dave declared, voice almost entirely distorted. He sounded like a lost station on an AM radio, his words near indecipherable to a regular human's ears. By now all of them sounded that way. The entire room had turned to an explosion of static and clinking metal, set to a background sound of horror movie-esque hysteric giggles. "You're just a game construct!"
Blades and hammers met with stomachs and shoulders. Dave and  John's blood spill wildly as they beat each other with feral enthusiasm. More than they'd ever had for fighting their alternates. With an accurate and vicious slice and a sickening, wet crunch sound, that battle was over. John's head tumbled to the ground, losing his glasses on the way. His body poured blood from the neck as it collapsed forward.
From there it was a nightmare realized. Everyone kicked up their frenzy. The first Trickster had died, their leader at that. Karkat pounced on Dave in a murderous rage. Dave made quick work and tore through him and everyone, felling them with his advanced strength, courtesy of being a Dave. Candy-sweetened blood coated everything.
"Doomed timelines," he could hear Davey telling him in his head, "means basically everyone dies one way or another."
Swing. Down went Terezi.
"There's probably more copies of you and me out there than you could shove in a Mexican family reunion. I don't feel or know what every other Dave does but hell, maybe you feel and know what all the Davids do. You're sort of one-of-a-kind."
Crash, slice. Equius was more of a hassle.
"You know – you feel every death or something. You said you had nightmares before, huh? Sounds like a sucky existence if you ask me."
The empty pang in his chest hurt more than the dislocated shoulder and presumably cracked rib.
"The alpha timeline's the one where the good guys win. Or at least 'fulfill their purpose' or some vague bullshit like that. Sburb operates on the most evil clichés, I swear.
As soon as it's over I'm gonna live it up. Ask out the Egdweeb. DJ at clubs, the works. Find love and be famous. Live the American dream."
Down went the last one, Sollux. All dead. Quiet. But not really. How can something created by a game's error ever die?
"What about – wait. I guess I won't be seeing you after that, huh? You're pretty awesome for a psycho douchebag with a sugar fetish. I might even miss you around.
I'm kidding.
I wouldn't miss the guy who wanted to kill me. That's uncool. I'd just say something cool and deep as a final goodbye.
'See you around, David. Be me later.'"
Dave forgot there was another Sollux.

*

David awoke on the meteor splayed over Davey's plush-pile excuse for a 'bed' in candy-patterned boxers. Davey was sprawled similarly over the Trickster's stomach. His chest moved up and down in slow breaths indicative of deep sleep, whilst his own breaths were alarmed.
He dreamed about death a lot. The psionic blasts, the times Davey had gone too far with play time. Every single death. He still smelled the charring flesh from his dream, felt the vague echo of full-body sensation associated with burning alive, all under the feeling of the bruises and bites from Davey.
He reached down to touch the other boy's soft blonde hair. He was the alpha. The 'good guy' who had to live to reach the end of Sburb. Every David was a doomed David, because the game had to end one way or another. He was going to die or disappear. A skilled hacker could probably cut him out right at that moment with the right access.
But David had come to terms with the fact that he didn't care. He would stay until that happened. He had never felt anything like the feeling he had just at moments like that, knowing everything about it was wrong.
He loved his alpha. Even if he didn't love him back.

Description
   There was a splattering sound and an eruption of cheering as he hit the ground. Bright blood spilled across the ground and stained the broken sword that had drawn it. With a battle-eager smile, David straddled the form of his alpha self and leaned in close. It was a common game they played, all of it; it never was so serious, it always ended in a draw. His own blood dripped from wounds on his face but he didn't seem to mind so much.
   "What's wrong, Davey~? Done fighting already?"
   Davey gave no response underneath him. It took David a moment to realize there was something amiss and another to recognize what it was – the familiar rhythm of Davey's breath under his thighs which pressed against the sides of his chest. His heart skipped a beat – was that glee or anticipation? He hadn't an idea in the faintest – and shot a glance at the others. Others like him, the 'tricksters', watching the fight in their typical joyfully gruesome way.
   "Answer me!" David demanded, pulling up his alpha by the collar.
He'd played dead before and soon enough would launch up like a spring coil, continuing the strife yet again. But this time, David realized, he wasn't. He slowly released his collar in wide-eyed disbelief, pastel and bloodstained hair falling over his eyes.
   "Davey?" There was something desolate in his voice. Maybe it was because the game was finally over. There was a long silence.
   "He's dead!" Exclaimed John, first to break the silence. With that, the others erupted into cheering as well.
   "You're finally one of us, Dave," Jade said musically, leaning to pat David's shoulder happily. "None of us are glitches anymore!"
David forced a grin and nodded at her, but something in his stomach felt unsettled. He lifted his bloody shades from Dave's lifeless hand and slipped them on, smoothing his hair back. He stood up and looked down. He was the alpha now. He was Dave.

*

It was a happy affair. The Trickster – the "glitches", the empty and "lifeless" game constructs – had won their right to exist. They'd killed all of their alpha – no, alternate – versions. It was a time for celebration. There were candies and pastries and songs. It was like the birthday party of every child's dreams.
Certain ones were making out atop the corpses. Nepeta and Terezi painted murals with the rainbow of blood whilst Gamzee nearly bathed in it. A chorus of giggling and frenzied speaking filled the air.
A lollipop in his hand, Dave couldn't seem to get into the mood to party. He wondered if the others felt the strange, implacable tightness seated in his chest. It was unfamiliar to him, not used to feelings apart from typical giddiness and a particular lust for bloodshed.
The others seemed rather unaffected, happily prancing about, gorging on candy, showing gross amounts of affection. Dave watched them from where he sat next to Davey's body, turning the lollipop in his hand. "Buck up, David," he told himself, smiling faintly and thinly. The knot in his stomach tightened itself. He wasn't 'David' – that was the 'cuter' name Dave (the Other Dave) called him.
He dipped his head and the strawberry fell out of his hair, his shades slipped a little off of his nose. He didn't feel like candy. He didn't feel like parties. He felt like someone had cut a watermelon-sized hole from his body.
He didn't like this.
Dave had never felt pain before, not really. Everything was a muted echo of a feeling, like his entire body was numb to anything except the rush of adrenaline in a good fight or the pleasure of his teeth clinking against Davey's when… no. He stopped that thought. But now he felt like he was feeling physical and mental pain. He thought maybe this was what headaches felt like.
"I feel so alive, hee hee!" he could hear Aradia saying just nearby. She and Feferi were sitting happily atop the bodies of the Other Sollux, Feferi, Equius and Aradia, like the most morbid sort of jam pile. Feferi let out a series of high-pitched giggles. "I feel reely whole!" Somewhere he heard Rose and Jade speaking horrorterror.
Dave laid back, sticking his lollipop in his mouth, and his head fell on his other self's stomach. That reminded him; he jerked up immediately and turned around. The candy splintered under his teeth and he spit it out.
"You!" He declared, grabbing his torn and bloodstained shirt to pull him up. "This was you!"
None of the others seemed to pay mind to him. Some of the others who felt more hostility towards their alternate selves had mutilated them. Gamzee's alternate was nearly unrecognizable; a bloody pulp. So no one thought it odd when he grabbed onto his alternate's shirt, pressing his face close.
"I want you to look at me!" He ripped the shades from the corpse's face, the eyes still open and staring blankly upward, stunning and red as they always were with a sort of cloudy film over the rest. For the first time Dave could ever think of, he wanted to throw up. He could engorge himself on as much candy and metallic-tasting blood as he wanted to, but seeing Davey's eyes roll back in his head, he wanted to vomit.
"This is your fault!" His voice turned harsh and grating like he'd never heard it before. He'd never been so angry so the distortion of his voice had never been so bad. "You took something from me! You took it and you didn't give it back! What did you take?! Give it back!"
Suddenly there was a sort of quiet. The noise around fell to a sort of murmur as Kanaya and Vriska broke their lip lock to glance over and share hesitant giggles, not completely sure if it was something to be laughing at. Aradia gave a passive glance from the body pile. Some others didn't notice, like John and Karkat, who were arm in arm and giggling over some sort of joke. But the volume dropped slightly still.
Tears pricked Dave's eyes and he dropped his alternate's limp body to the floor, which let out a moderately loud 'thump'. Blood from the wound that had finally killed the alternate – a swift cut too deep into the cardiac muscle that had before refused to stop pumping – coated Dave's hands. He brought those hands up to his face and closed the unnerving red eyes.
No, he'd come too far to want anything other than to live, to be the 'real' Dave, to be alive and complete for the first time. He grinded his teeth painfully as he leaned over the Other Dave still.
"I know what you took, Davey," he whispered mischievously as if he might answer, voice taking on that high-pitched and static-filled distortion. "You stole my happiness."
Suddenly he was sobbing. He was crying in the worst way; tears fell out of his eyes as if they were faucets, falling onto Davey's face and washing away red blood from his cheeks. His breath hitched hard in his throat, his inhalations coming as grating hiccups and loud sobs. His nose ran and his eyes stung, and he hardly noticed just how tight his hands were on his alternate's shoulders. It might have bruised him if the blood hadn't all either spilled or settled already.
A hush came over everyone. No one was kissing, no one was dancing. There was a strange and uneasy quiet, marred only with confused and slightly distorted whispers. Dave didn't care so much anymore. He couldn't manage to stop crying. He couldn't even remember having ever cried before. He couldn't remember ever feeling so empty, not even knowing he was just a glitch, not a playable character. Not 'real'.
"Back…" He said in between sobs. "Come back…"
Both of them had coexisted where the others had not. They'd gotten along and had fun and laughed, by some miracle. They hadn't killed each other. They'd beaten the hell out of each other, but neither one ever really destroyed the other. In the end they'd lay on the ground immobile or passed out and just laugh and be sore as hell the next day. They'd sometimes make out and leave bites and bruises on each other and the Other Dave always commented how he tasted like candy and it 'fucking sucked'.
In an instant John was at his side. He had his hand buried in sunshine-blonde hair, staring strangely at him from behind his glasses. Karkat stood just behind him, looking with mild concern at the normally-antagonistic cool kid. "Dave?" John asked.
Dave didn't respond. He bent further over the corpse, his knuckles white, hands shaking. He closed his eyes. His sobs had turned to quiet hiccups that he couldn't control.
"Dave's not… here… right now," he answered finally. "Leave a…  message."
John crouched down next to him, putting his arm around his thin back. "You don't seem very happy."
'No shit,' he could just hear the Other Dave saying. He didn't say it though. Still no one really spoke. John reached over and pried his fingers open, forcing him to let go of the corpse. Dave watched his hands as he grabbed the Ben Stiller shades and snapped them at the bridge. His stomach wrenched.
Almost involuntarily he reached up and slapped him straight across his sugar-sticky face, knocking his glasses off. Karkat jerked back in surprise, not sure what to think. John reached up in shock, holding his face.
"Do you feel complete?" Dave asked. He pulled his shades from his pink eyes to stare wildly at the other. "You're not! You're still just a glitch!"
John looked in confusion. The others burst into offended whispers that became loud chattering.
"You're moronic. Just like moronic alphas." Dave stood up, drawing the pastel Caledscratch from his strife deck. "We're not any more real than we were before! We're still just errors! Not meant to exist!"
His voice took on its distorted quality, plus the cool indifference all Daves had mastered. Even his own visage appeared … glitched. As if his existence was beginning to fall apart.
"Liar!" John screeched, pulling his own Warhammer of Zillyhoo from his strife deck.
In a moment there was an uproar, everyone drawing their pastel-colored, candy-coated bastardizations of their alternates' weapons. Bows, clubs, sickles. People screeching and questioning. Dave's strawberry-themed sword met the hammer with a loud crash. Everyone fell over one another to get to Dave and John. It quickly broke to chaos as they began fighting one another as well.
"You don't exist!" Dave declared, voice almost entirely distorted. He sounded like a lost station on an AM radio, his words near indecipherable to a regular human's ears. By now all of them sounded that way. The entire room had turned to an explosion of static and clinking metal, set to a background sound of horror movie-esque hysteric giggles. "You're just a game construct!"
Blades and hammers met with stomachs and shoulders. Dave and  John's blood spill wildly as they beat each other with feral enthusiasm. More than they'd ever had for fighting their alternates. With an accurate and vicious slice and a sickening, wet crunch sound, that battle was over. John's head tumbled to the ground, losing his glasses on the way. His body poured blood from the neck as it collapsed forward.
From there it was a nightmare realized. Everyone kicked up their frenzy. The first Trickster had died, their leader at that. Karkat pounced on Dave in a murderous rage. Dave made quick work and tore through him and everyone, felling them with his advanced strength, courtesy of being a Dave. Candy-sweetened blood coated everything.
"Doomed timelines," he could hear Davey telling him in his head, "means basically everyone dies one way or another."
Swing. Down went Terezi.
"There's probably more copies of you and me out there than you could shove in a Mexican family reunion. I don't feel or know what every other Dave does but hell, maybe you feel and know what all the Davids do. You're sort of one-of-a-kind."
Crash, slice. Equius was more of a hassle.
"You know – you feel every death or something. You said you had nightmares before, huh? Sounds like a sucky existence if you ask me."
The empty pang in his chest hurt more than the dislocated shoulder and presumably cracked rib.
"The alpha timeline's the one where the good guys win. Or at least 'fulfill their purpose' or some vague bullshit like that. Sburb operates on the most evil clichés, I swear.
As soon as it's over I'm gonna live it up. Ask out the Egdweeb. DJ at clubs, the works. Find love and be famous. Live the American dream."
Down went the last one, Sollux. All dead. Quiet. But not really. How can something created by a game's error ever die?
"What about – wait. I guess I won't be seeing you after that, huh? You're pretty awesome for a psycho douchebag with a sugar fetish. I might even miss you around.
I'm kidding.
I wouldn't miss the guy who wanted to kill me. That's uncool. I'd just say something cool and deep as a final goodbye.
'See you around, David. Be me later.'"
Dave forgot there was another Sollux.

*

David awoke on the meteor splayed over Davey's plush-pile excuse for a 'bed' in candy-patterned boxers. Davey was sprawled similarly over the Trickster's stomach. His chest moved up and down in slow breaths indicative of deep sleep, whilst his own breaths were alarmed.
He dreamed about death a lot. The psionic blasts, the times Davey had gone too far with play time. Every single death. He still smelled the charring flesh from his dream, felt the vague echo of full-body sensation associated with burning alive, all under the feeling of the bruises and bites from Davey.
He reached down to touch the other boy's soft blonde hair. He was the alpha. The 'good guy' who had to live to reach the end of Sburb. Every David was a doomed David, because the game had to end one way or another. He was going to die or disappear. A skilled hacker could probably cut him out right at that moment with the right access.
But David had come to terms with the fact that he didn't care. He would stay until that happened. He had never felt anything like the feeling he had just at moments like that, knowing everything about it was wrong.
He loved his alpha. Even if he didn't love him back.