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They had a little more time than anyone else did, because he was the Knight of Time, and he wasn't afraid to use it. Besides, they had some paradoxes to create with some frogs to keep the slime coming. That took time, and making it easy (in the most complicated way possible) took time-travel.
They had a little more time than anyone else did, because they were Dave and Jade, and even though he knew, as he leaned against the wall and watched her idly coloring on the messy floor of her room, that there was a war going on all around and that they would have to pay for the stolen time later, he couldn't tell her no.
He'd lost track ages ago of who or what she was drawing with the bright, childish crayons that were spread in a circle of a million colors all around her, opting instead to watch her contented face and the impossible innocence there. She stuck her tongue out when she was fairly sure what she was doing, and whenever she came to an impasse where she had to think, it slid back into her mouth and her brow creased up. It was completely unironically adorable and he almost envied the way she was so open with her emotions on her face. But more than anything, it was surreal to finally see her for real, after ages of only communicating through colored text and all of the masks that they both wore (he knew that she wore them, now, in subtle ways), ages of thinking he was maybe falling for her but imagining (not worrying; Striders never worry) that she wasn't at all who she said she was (more than just a girl with masks; a middle-aged man preying on the ironically gullible), and he wanted to drink every bit of it in. It seemed fitting, in the most deliciously ironic of ways, that after all their chatting, their IRL meeting would be largely silent, enjoying the things they hadn't been able to share before.
A few words were exchanged, mostly along the lines of Jade asking what she should draw next and Dave answering in his usual fashion, with whatever borderline-pornographic bullshit came to his mind first. A few of them rhymed, and he was quite proud of those. She would always be torn between giggling and admonishing him, and she would always come up with her own idea soon enough, but she kept asking anyway.
The whole time, he couldn't wipe the smirk off of his face. Jade didn't know yet, but smiling—even smirking—wasn't something that Striders did lightly. And maybe she would never know, because even when he had just been talking to her, he had always had a hard time not smirking. Not almost maybe falling for the cute, aderpable girl with the green text and the free emotions. Harley was contagious, in all the best ways.
Terezi tried to troll him a few times, her turquoise text obnoxiously filling up his glasses and obscuring his view of Jade at her Harliest. (That probably wasn't true, actually; Jade was just Jade all the time, and it was hard not to appreciate that raw honesty.) As much as he enjoyed talking to Terezi, it was an entirely different experience, nothing but words and games of ironic chicken and double entendres out the wazoo, of chalk instead of crayons and jaded pseudo-justice instead of strong-in-the-face-of-danger innocence. This wasn't a moment for TZ to intrude on, so he just didn't answer. Some other Dave could answer it some other time, and he'd deal with her later or earlier or now in a different frame of reference. He didn't really care. Urgency didn't exist for the Knight of Time the same way it did for everyone else, a surprisingly fitting mantle.
He was actually considering moving to block her for now, momentarily distracted, when he suddenly had a piece of paper shoved in his face. He turned off the display on his glasses with one hand and grabbed the picture with the other, holding it back a bit further so that he could see it properly. Jade was beaming at him, eager to eat up his approval. In a picture made entirely out of a hundred different crayon-shades of orange and green, creamsicle past-Dave and the sobby Jadesprite that had given Jade a lot of stress were kissing, hands and floaty tails intertwined. It was actually a lot better than he realized Jade was capable of, especially with crayons, but more importantly it made something churn a little uneasily in his stomach. Maybe there was such a thing as too ironic for Dave Strider.
He wanted to say “nice, Harley” or “well, if it'd shut them up”, but all he could do was look from the picture back at her, and he somehow knew she saw the question there, even with his glasses still on. She sighed heavily and fell down onto her bed with a heavy-hearted thump.
“They're both just so sad. I hate her, because my sprite is more of her than Bec, and because she won't stop crying and I don't want any part of me to be like that, but I also feel really bad for her. Because she's that way because she was dead for thirteen years, and because she's my younger self, so it's all sort of my fault. She died a hero's death and thought she would stay dead, and now she's back. With all of my problems from back then and apparently not enough of my resolve to deal with them.
“And I also feel really bad for Davesprite... It's like he gave up a lot of things, maybe even everything that mattered, and now he doesn't have anybody to talk to them about.” Jade wrapped her arms tightly around her torso, like the very thought of having no solution for someone's problems made her feel tiny and scared and cold and alone. “I haven't really gotten a chance to talk to him, but I think he saw people die... and by people, I mean us. I know John had died in that timeline, and... I think I probably did, too. I tried talking to Rose about it, but she got all weird and evasive, and she almost didn't even psychoanalyze me. I think maybe it's a grimdark thing, and- oh, great. I just remembered that I have to be all worried about her, too.”
There was a long pause, in which Dave almost didn't say anything (he was just as not-worried about Rose as she was; as they all were), but as he walked closer to the miserable, desolate, resolute Jade pouring her heart out in her childish room, he had to say something. Thank gog it wasn't offensive. “Well, you can take one person off of your worry-list, at least. Davesprite's a Strider, and we Striders don't let anything faze us. Cool as a family of fucking cucumbers, chilling at the bottom of the sea. The only thing colder than the bottom of the ocean is deep space, and the only thing chiller than both of them is a Strider. Dude doesn't need to put another wrinkle in your old granny brow.”
“Fuckass,” she mumbled, in a way that made him think she thought he couldn't hear.
“What?” he asked anyway, and she just shook her head.
“I don't think you Striders are always quite as immovable as you think you are.” And there was another long pause in which he didn't correct her and she didn't point this out. Jade apparently did have some sense of boundaries not to be crossed. The question lingered on her brow, but her eyes switched tracks to a different thought, from staring through his glasses into his red, red eyes and probably his soul to looking at the brightly-colored drawing he was almost clenching in his hand. Carefully, he eased up his grip. “I've seen them around together, once or twice, and I don't know exactly what they're doing, but they look so happy. I don't know, maybe I'm just being irritatingly optimistic, but they were at least not sad. They haven't been through the same things, but they've been through the same kind of things, and I think it helps them to be together. So I really just wish them the best, finding their own lives. Maybe even do things that we couldn't manage to do.”
Dave's mouth went a little bit dry at that, but he wasn't shaken up enough to miss such a wide open opportunity. “You're sure this isn't just you doing the whole furry thing?”
Jade didn't forget to laugh, but for some reason, something distinctly gave him the impression that she had to remember. “Ew, Dave! You are the worst possible person to talk to this about!”
Dave smiled again, only a smirk, but still more genuine than the parts of himself he gave to anyone else. “Well I'm not hearing a 'no', but to hell with it. I wish them the best, too. Especially if they can look this good in an amateur composition—I mean, damn. This masterpiece is worth hanging on a wall.” Oh, the things he, a Strider, would stoop to to make a derpy little Asian girl happy. “And not just any wall, but a 100%, bona fide piece of Strider real estate. With visual chemistry like that, their happy ending will probably even involve lots of little octarine bird-cat babies.”
“Do you really think so? Because that would be absolutely adorable! Oh, I should draw them next!” And, just like that, Harley was better, the mood was gone, and Dave found himself attempting to smooth out the piece of paper as best he could before captchaloguing it.
“Not so fast, Harley. I think our borrowed time is just about up. We have to get back to frog-hunting before you decide you give up on the game in favor of growing old wasting time with this perfect specimen of man and making some of the most complicated time-loops you'd ever dreamed of.”
“Well, Dave, you are pretty dreamy!” She giggled as she got up from the bed, and it was translated into his mind into a familiar green, buck-toothed smilie face. It was such a dumb smilie, really, because it meant that she was kidding, and that actually did sound kind of ironically rad. So ironic it was worthy of 'rad'. Still, there were frogs to be hunted, and a game to be won, and somewhere a few dozen trips back and forth later, between the moment he left that room and the inevitable moment of his death, he did find time to hang the damned thing in his room.
Best of luck, feathery asshole. You go get that fantastic dog girl.
*****
The Sprite formerly known as Dave decided pretty quickly after his release from the not-so-tiny face of the tiny battlefield planet that, so long as Dave wasn't going to be around for another three years, he might as well be Dave. At least in the sense that he could help himself to his own stuff.
The last version of his room that he'd gotten a good look at had been the doomed version (sure, he'd been in Alpha Dave's once on a quick errand, but he hadn't exactly had the borrowed time to be looking around), but Alpha Dave hadn't had much time to redecorate, apparently. Which made sense. He was too busy being the hero that a Dead Dave like himself could never be. All the glory for half of the work. (Bitter? What? Never!)
There was, however, a single thing that he wasn't expecting. Above his turntables, hastily taped onto one of the swords (an ironic haste, obviously, though it couldn't hide the spot's true, unironic symbolism of honor and importance from another Dave), was a picture. For a second, he thought that it was one of Terezi's, and he almost ripped it to shreds, regardless of its importance to the Alpha, just for that. Whatever bromance Alpha Dave might have with the troll, there was no way he could ever forgive her. Maybe he was just a feathery asshole, but she ripped his entire world apart by intentionally killing his best friend. That didn't fly.
Under further inspection, however, it was neither chalk nor a computer printout, but crayon, and he wasn't even sure that they had those on the freaky backwards troll planet. And, most perplexing of all, he was the star. Or at least the co-star. The quality was much better than what he would expect from a blind troll, and it didn't make much sense for her to be drawing it, anyways. It seemed like something that came right out of his head, now torturing him on the wall because it couldn't happen anymore.
He and Jade. Specifically, Sprite-Jade, but he was one too, so to him it was just Dave and Jade. Dave and Jade, the fucked up sequel in which two best friends cheat death again and again and basically just have each other. Take two. And then she still died, except he couldn't be sad about it, because she died in the way that both versions of her came back to life, to become everything that she should be. Jade got a happy ending, and he never would. He would always just be the one that was forgotten.
He stared at it for a while, taking it down from the wall so he could feel its insubstantial weight, that much less insubstantial than his broken dreams, and he realized that, almost hidden in one of his wings, was a sort of signature. Jade H-scribble. The l and the y were reasonably distinguishable, if he was willing to imagine them there, but it wasn't really necessary. There was only one Jade alive any more, and that was her. And now he had to know.
It was a good thing he was a Strider, because what he was about to do would embarrass any lesser being.
*****
She was waiting, like she said she would be, playing with the gears on LOHAC just outside of his dismembered apartment building. Instead of taking all the stairs down, he did a flip and landed, floating, next to a distracted Harley. The piece of paper was almost not-clutched in his left hand.
“Yo, Harley. Caw caw.”
She spun, barely surprised and smiling like the green sun itself, leaving the gear sculpture she had been idly building unfinished. “What's up, orange Dave?”
He was pretty sure she'd somehow picked up on the fact that he didn't really like being called Davesprite, because she didn't call him that any more. Usually it wasn't just Dave, and he didn't think he'd make her do that, but it was never the cold, callous “Davesprite”.
“I was sorta wondering what was up with this.” He held out the crumpled piece of paper, studiously not looking at her and utilizing the full chill aloofness powers of his glasses.
She took it curiously, and he thought about how much he had missed her malleable, open face, and then about how much he missed the version of her that could really relate to him, the version he was with in the garishly orange and green crayon drawing.
“Oh!” Her cheeks turned cherry red, the biggest blush he'd ever seen, and a stutter suddenly stumbled across her buck teeth. “Well... I don't really know what to say. I drew it when I was only... half of myself!”
Dave didn't say anything at all, and his silence eventually coaxed more out of her. “I don't know if you'll understand, but you're probably actually more likely to than anyone else, when I think about it. The thing is... I met another version of myself. One I didn't like a lot, and I didn't know what to do with her. I mean, she wouldn't stop crying! And... that's not really how I wanted to think of myself.
“But you two were so happy together. And I thought that that was exactly what she could use. Someone who understood what she was going through and was willing to just... hang out with her.”
Jade stopped and blushed a little, her smile turning into something less sad and a little more guilty. “Plus you guys were pretty cute.”
Dave took a long moment to phrase the next thing he wanted to say, because he already knew the answer and, fuck, it was going to sound needy and pathetic, even at his best, but just... if he's gonna spend three years on the boat with the damned Egbert-Harleys, he's gonna need to know a couple of things up front for the sake of his sanity.
“You keep calling her 'you'. I mean, I'm just an abstraction of the game that allowed any of this to happen, y'know, the kind meant to dish out cryptic information at regular intervals, so I could be wrong here, but isn't 'she'... you?”
Jade sort of jumped again, and then squirmed a little. She avoided his gaze. “Oh! Well... the thing is that I'm definitely not the same Jade I was before. I have new powers, and I feel more... complete. Like I've settled all of my issues with my past, and like I've grown up enough to realize that I can't control anything. Even though I can control a lot more now. But... still, I feel more like... player Jade than I do Becsprite Jade.” She looked back at him for a minute, and even though he knew his face was composed, she still seemed to see something there because her face twisted a little at it. “I'm sorry.”
Her offer was nice, but... “Oh, I see. You're suddenly getting cold feet. How could you, Jade? Is this about my creamsicle dream color palette? Because you always told me you loved that about me.”
She laughed a little, and it sounded more whole than his Jade's laughs ever had. It was much fuller and happier, more genuine even in the awkward situation. And he could hardly hate her for that. Whatever else it entailed, Jade was happy now. All the Jades were happy now. And that was definitely more than nothing, even if it meant that all the Daves weren't happy.
“Well, John tells me Jaspersprite is actually quite charming without the whole 'doggy instinct to chase' thing.” She winked at him, as silly as ever, and the way he fell back into their routine, back into his mostly-put on disgust, was like coming home again.
“Ugh, no way, Harley. I am not going to go out with a cat-squid, especially not one that used to belong to Rose, just so that you can get your furry jollies on. Motherfucker's trying to murder me anyhow.”
“Well, then unless you've suddenly developed a thing for nakkadiles, I think you're more or less out of options on our meteorite.”
“Don't get me wrong, the dudes can be hella sweet, but I think I'll just risk the blue balls.”
“Dave, that is way TMI!”
“Sorry, Harley. But Striders are too cool for censorship. If you can't handle the cool, get out of the fridge... Actually, maybe we should both get out of there. Dumb kitchen appliance is full of shitty swords anyway.”
“All right, creamsicle Dave. If we're getting out of the fridge, where are we going?”
“I think I could get a few kicks out of bugging Egbert.”
She laughed and bounced behind him as he floated, possibly to run into John and possibly not, not that it really mattered.
Being friends with a whole and happy Harley was better than being maybe-something-more with a broken one. And he'd just have to get over any parts of himself that said otherwise.
He was, after all, one feathery asshole.