Chapter Text
Your name is JOHN EGBERT, and, with the help of your friends, you have just claimed the ULTIMATE PRIZE. The first few minutes after this event are possibly some of the best in your life. You're in your room, and it is exactly as you remember it being when you went to bed on the night of April 12, 2009. Everything is in it's place, nothing is damaged, everything is peaceful; for a few moments, you just lie there and soak it in.
Eventually, though, you get fidgety with the need to check on the others. You roll off your bed and hop into your computer chair, bringing up Pesterchum. In quick succession, you see Dave's, Jade's, and Rose's chumhandles light up. You don't hesitate to open a memo (creatively titled "WE DID IT!!!") and invite them all in.
EB: oh my god, we're home!
EB: i mean, i'm home, are you guys home?
EB: tell me you guys are home!
GG: yup i am back home too!!!
TT: I seem to be home as well.
TG: shitty apartment: check
EB: we did it you guys! we have a planet again! and it's just like we left it!
TG: ...
TT: Is something wrong, Dave?
TG: bros not here
GG: come to think of it
GG: i havent seen bec or grandpa either.... :(
TT: Hmm. I have yet to catch whiff of Mother's gin. This bears further investigation.
TG: brb
EB: me too...
You push away from your desk, heart suddenly pounding in your chest. Of course Dad's here. You can't imagine a world without him, and it's obvious that your prize was built based on your wish for things to be back the way they were, as if the game hadn't happened. That had been everyone's wish, in the end. Hadn't it?
Almost like a ghost, you drift through the house, wandering from room to room and looking around. It only takes a few minutes to cover most of the house, at which point you decide to widen your search to include the yard and driveway. You spend most of this time holding your breath or chewing anxiously on your cheek, but Dad is nowhere to be found. The only sign of his presence you can find are the multitude of half-eaten birthday cakes lying around the house and a large, unscarred harlequin doll lying on the couch.
This leaves only one last place he could be (you know beyond the shadow of a doubt that he can't have left the house). Stiffly, you climb the stairs again. Your heart's still pounding, and the sound of the blood rushing in your ears drowns out everything else. The world narrows to that sound and the doorknob of the last door in the house you haven't opened. Your hand reaches for it, and you watch almost like you're seeing everything at a distance, like on a TV. Dad has to be in his room. He just has to.
The door swings open silently. The whole room is exactly like you remember it when you first dropped in to collect some grist.
Well, almost.
Dad's here. He's exactly like you remember him, too. Just not from April 12, 2009.
Your first thought is, strangely, I don't know the first thing about getting bloodstains out of carpet.
Your second thought is, not-strangely, There's no winning this game. It's only different kinds of losing.
Your third thought is, Where's that sobbing coming from?
Then you realize it's you.
*
EB: guys...?
EB: i
EB: i found dad
TG: what the fucking fuck
TG: what sort of shitty ass
TG: fucking
TG: FUCK
TT: ...
TT: I had somewhat hoped that it would have been easier the second time.
TT: I see I was incorrect.
GG: im so sorry :'''(
*
The next five years of your life are the darkest. You spend this period in and out of foster care while the court decides what to do with your father's estate. You know that Jade fairs all right; she lived alone on the island for most of her life, and she already had access to her grandfather's considerable assets. However, Rose and Dave also share your fate, and your contact with them is spotty at best.
The nightmares start almost immediately and come as absolutely no surprise. In the snippets of conversation with your friends that you're able to claim, you find that you aren't the only one having problems sleeping. Rose has night terrors any time she falls asleep when it's not daytime; Dave just can't fall asleep until he's run himself ragged because of the ticking he hears at all times; Jade can't stay asleep for more than an hour at a time before she's suddenly jerked awake by the sensation of falling. It's hard at first, but you quickly learn how to like coffee and avoid invitations to sleep-overs.
You stumble through high school, putting in enough effort to get you in the top fifty of your class. You try to make friends, but none of them particularly care for Nic Cage or fine cinema or (if you're being honest) you're solemn demeanor. This is not to say that you aren't cheerful, but there's an undercurrent of sadness that you can't ever seem to cover. It isn't helped by the major misstep you make in freshman year, when you decide to open up to an acquaintance about why you're so sad. The three weeks you spend hospitalized (due to a supposed "psychotic episode") almost send you to summer school, but you manage to dodge that bullet by buckling down the rest of the semester. It also teaches you not to talk about your experiences in Sburb to anyone who wasn't there. Which narrows your list of people you can really open up to down to Jade, Rose, and Dave.
You keep the trolls' trolltags in your Pesterchum window, but they never light up, and you know they never will. They claimed their own prize, separate from yours, and the connection to their universe through paradox space was severed. But you can't bring yourself to remove them. It feels like it would be betraying the memory of everything you did together. So sometimes you stare at them when none of your friends are online, and sometimes you send them messages anyway.
Near the end of high school, shortly after your eighteenth birthday, Rose e-mails you, Jade, and Dave an address, a date, a time, and the confirmation number for a plane ticket. The date is three days after your graduation. You check the ticket through the carrier's website. It's one-way. You don't even bother reading the attached explanation before you start packing your things. (You do read it eventually, though, and it says everything that you'd hoped to hear: Rose has access to the trust fund her mother set up for her and has used that money to secure living space for the four of you in New York City. Together.)
After your graduation, you politely bid farewell to your foster family. They accept your goodbyes with bewildered expressions, and they wish you a safe trip. You thank them because they were never bad people and they always treated you kindly. But now, for the first time since you turned thirteen, you're going home.
*
You're the last to land in New York, but that's all right; it means that you have people waiting for you when you pick your way through the crowds to the baggage carousel. They don't need signs (though Jade has one anyway that is decorated in frogs and hearts and lots of shoutpoles) for you to spot them immediately, and you feel your heart fill up with all sorts of emotions you thought you'd forgotten how to feel since you beat the game.
Dave is the first one you see, and it's no surprise because he's gotten so tall since you were thirteen. He's shot up like a weed, but he hasn't filled out as much as you did and he's developed that unfortunate slouch that you've noticed some tall people have. He still has his trademark sideburns and shades, though, and he still dresses like an ironic douchebag. You notice Jade next, not because she's second tallest but because she is jumping up and down and waving her sign around. She hasn't changed that much either, other than being taller and having more boobs and hips, of course. Next to her is Rose, who comes up to Dave's shoulder (which would make her about even with you, you'd guess) and looks like an almost androgynous deity carved out of marble.
When you finally make it over to them, you're pulled into the biggest, warmest group hug you've ever experienced. Jade's arms are around you first, and she plants her lips firmly on your cheek and starts giving you the sloppiest of sibling smooches. Rose is next, pulling you and Jade close and resting her head so she's cheek-to-cheek with the both of you, and you can feel her smile against your face and it's probably the best feeling ever. Dave completes the group hug by just slinging his arms around all of you and resting his chin on the top of your head.
You can't help it; you start laughing. It's not that anything in particular is funny, it's just that you're so happy to be welcomed into the arms of your closest friends that you can't hold all the happiness inside anymore. You feel Rose's lips twitch, and Jade starts giggling, too. "All right, what the fuck is so funny?" Dave asks, and it kind of tickles because you can feel his voice vibrating in his throat, so you only laugh harder.
Eventually, you pull yourself away from your friends, giant goofy grin on your face, and really look at them. You can tell they've changed (other than the obvious things the puberty-fairy did for them), just like you know you've changed. Jade's grown her hair out and braided it so it hangs down to below her waist, and you can see where Rose has probably helped her hide the dark circles under her eyes with concealer. Rose grew her hair out, too, but the change isn't nearly as dramatic as with Jade, and her makeup is pretty much impeccable. She's so slender now, not the awkward pre-pubescent skinny you remember, like a graceful willow or something equally gothic and pretty. Dave's changed the most, though, you think. You all have scars from when you kept dying (you know because you asked when you noticed the knots of white scar tissue on your abdomen from where you got shown some stabs), but Dave... all of his visible skin is sprinkled with freckles or scars (except his face, which is just freckles, thank god), and it kind of scares you a little to think about all the ways he could've gotten them. He also has a little worry-line between his eyebrows that you know he didn't have before.
"Well," says Rose, politely clearing her throat to gather everyone's attention, "now that we're all present and accounted for, I motion that we load John's belongings with the rest and make our way back to our new dwelling. Then we can celebrate."
Jade nods vigorously, which makes her braid bounce in a way that makes you want to start batting at it like a cat. "Hell yes! Let's get this show on the road!" She shoves one of your bags at Dave, shoves another into your arms, and scoops up the last one herself, smiling.
You all walk out of LaGuardia into the early summer heat and catch a shuttle back to Rose's vehicle. You aren't sure what exactly you were expecting, but it definitely wasn't the shiny black SUV she unlocks with the push of a button. As if reading your mind (and maybe she can, since you still hear the call of the wind sometimes), she smirks. "It was a graduation gift from my adoptive parents. Not my first choice, but I am glad for the cargo space in this situation." At the push of another button on her keychain, the back hatch popped open, and you, Dave, and Jade pile your bags on top of the ones already inside.
Jade, now free of your bag, hops over to the passenger-side door. "Shotgun!" Dave groans.
"You are so lucky I don't get carsick, Harley," he grumbles, as if this is some sort of long-standing war and he's spent most of his time on the losing side. And maybe it is, or maybe it will be. There's no way to know for sure except to keep riding in the car with them, and that thought makes you smile. Dave shakes his head and opens the passenger-side rear door for you. "Get in, Egbert. Evidently, we got places to be." You can't help but smile even wider at hearing the warm burr his Texan upbringing gives his words.
"Pfft, you are so wrong," you say as you hop up into the back seat. "The only place I have to be is with you guys." And it's the truth.