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Sometimes, you wish you could convince yourself that it never happened. Or maybe some of it happened, but certainly not all of it. It all blurs together, all the timelines, all the memories of your other selves, and you don’t know how to sort them out. You have a vast, sprawling map of possibilities in your memory, and much of it is nonsense. These memories are yours, but of a you that died long ago, in a much more literal sense than just growing up. Sometimes, you want to cut out certain memories, burn them and say they belong to a dead Rose, that they aren’t real, that only the memories of the Rose who survived are real.
The problem with that is that none of the Roses survived. They all died, and here you are, with all these memories. None of these memories are real, or all of them are, and you don’t know which is worse.
Of course something had to have happened, or you wouldn’t be here. Thinking about it spins you around in circles and you wish… well, you don’t even know what to wish for. Alcohol.
It’s very nice here. It’s very peaceful, and you wish you could settle your mind into the place you’re in now. You wish you could be as lighthearted and carefree as the child this home was made for. That child was never you.
“Rose?”
You can see the top of Jade’s head poke out of the hole in the floor down through which stairs descend. There’s no trap door. It was her house, and she was all alone, and she didn’t need any doors. You’re up here, hiding away in her room, and she’s being very considerate to act as if this is your room, where you have your own right to privacy.
“Yes?” You say, putting on your sane, polite and composed Rose voice.
She takes a few steps up. Now she’s a head and shoulders emerging from the floor. You’re sitting on her bed, knitting. It was strange at first, to use needles for that. They’ve been weapons so many times. These are just normal knitting needles, the ones you had before the game, before you had any strange game magicks to transform things with.
“Are you okay?” She asks.
“I’m fine,” you say pleasantly.
She ascends the stairs and comes to sit next to you on the bed. "You don't have to pretend with us anymore."
You keep your eyes on your knitting. You feel bad for thinking it, but she wasn't there. She wasn't there on the meteor for those years that never happened. When the game started, the four of you were best friends but by the end, you and she hardly ever talked. She's not the one you want to talk to.
"I miss the trolls," you admit.
She nods. You can hear John laughing downstairs.
"And the other kids. I miss Roxy and Kanaya and Jane and Terezi and even Karkat." You laugh, a little bitterly. It's strange, missing an obnoxious little grey alien that might never have existed in the first place. It hurts in your chest to think about it like that.
Jade scoots closer and puts her arms around you. "Me too," she says. "And I miss the sprites. Our Dave isn't the same as Davesprite. But I'm happy to have you and Dave here with us now. And John, even though he's not entirely..."
She trails off, and lets go of you. You find you miss her touch.
"I'm glad to have my friends here," Jade says. "It's like my thirteen year old self's dream."
"It's a lot like that," you agree. You hesitate. You don't want to hurt her feelings, but you think she might be thinking the same thing. "It's almost like reuniting with old friends," you say, cautiously.
Jade nods. "We're not the way we were when we were thirteen."
"We're not friends the way we were then either," you say.
She stiffens for a second, then slumps, and nods. "Everything's like it was, but it's not. I want... I want to just be thirteen again, and enjoy all this the way I would have then."
You nod. It's not what you would have wished for. You want the others here to enjoy it too. You want everyone to be just one self, not an amalgamation of dozens of doomed timelines. You want to be here with the people you knew, the people who knew you.
You and Jade haven't been close for a long time. You wonder if she really understands, if she knows that you aren't friends anymore, not like you used to be. You don't want to tell her. She's so kind and sweet. Dave would never talk to you like this.
You set your knitting down and hug her. She wraps her arms around you and rests her head on your shoulder, and the two of you rest like that for a while. She smells like plants.
You feel like you should say something, but you don't know what to say. You scoot closer to her. It's strange. It's like intimacy with a stranger. But Jade isn't a stranger. She's one of the only three people in the world who could possibly understand.
"I waited so long," she says quietly. She sounds a little angry. "On the battleship, out here alone. I just wanted to be with my friends. I just wanted all of us to be together. And now we are, but..." She sighs, and starts to pull away. You hold onto her.
"I'd rather be here with you than pre-Game Rose," she said.
You smile. "I don't know what I'd do with pre-Game any of us. Dumb, innocent little teenagers."
You lie down, together, laying on your backs, looking up at her ceiling, decorated with glow in the dark stars. Your arms are touching.
"Do you ever think..." She begins. "What if we'd lost our memories when we came through? Or if we just reverted to the original versions of ourselves? What if all we knew was that we'd won the game?"
"I don't know if I'd want to be who I was then. Then all of it would be gone. We wouldn't remember the trolls, or who we grew up to be."
"Like a blank slate," she said.
"This me wouldn't exist."
"I like this you too," she said, and you smile.
"I like this you too," you tell her.