doesnt matter really (2/?)
(part 1)
Later--much, much later--Bro will describe how, when he woke up after dying and found himself lying on hot stone in a vast cavern filled with shadows shifting as only those cast by fire can, surrounded by a cacophony of metallic clanking and the hiss and crackle of flames, with a massive burning serpent looming over him, he might have jumped to certain erroneous but entirely reasonable conclusions.
This explanation will shed some light on his reaction to Davesprite suddenly floating into his field of vision.
The first thing he says, after coughing out his first breath of smoky air, voice rough and raw, is: "What the fuck are you doing here?"
Dave is thrown. He couldn't have said what kind of reaction he was expecting, but that... that definitely wasn't it.
But Bro's alive, and he can talk, and he recognizes him, apparently, even if he doesn't--well. So on the balance, this is fine, this is good, this is--he'll be okay, Bro's fixed, that's the important thing.
His voice still comes out awfully small. "I, uh, brought you here?"
Bro's eyes have slipped shut. He shakes his head against the stone floor, mutters, "Doesn't make sense."
"Yeah, well, nothing about this fucking game makes sense," Dave says, "you got fucking killed by a teleporting dog monster, Bro, what kind of sense does that--anyway, there was a... I got to make a choice, it was this whole thing..." he trails off. He's not sure if Bro is even listening, but he's frowning, and just, like, lying there--
Bro opens his eyes.
"Cal?"
"Oh fuck no," Dave says, "no, no, hell to the utmost power of fuck that, NO, the puppet is gone, it's dead, you are never ever ever getting back together, no no no no no."
"...oh," Bro says after a long moment.
Dave thinks the frown looks more puzzled than upset, but it's kind of hard to tell. He can't recall seeing Bro exhibit either of those things using facial expressions before. Or at all, in the case of puzzlement.
This Bro, that is.
The one in the other timeline, before he died, well, Dave only ever saw him from a distance, so it's not much of a basis for comparison, but he was clearly a guy who was having some emotions. A lot of them. Not good ones.
"Well, come on, get up," he says, when the silence has stretched past awkward and into uncomfortable. "Hephaestus did us a solid bringing you back, but he probably wasn't counting on us hanging out in his living room--workshop? throne room? Denizens, man, I don't even know--all fucking day, and the decor is kind of huge and on fire, very impressive, but not really my style, you know?"
Bro is staring at him, now.
Dave hovers closer. It feels really, really weird to offer Bro a hand up, but he does it, and after a moment Bro lifts his arm and takes it, and sits up, and lets Dave pull him to his feet.
Dave leads, and Bro follows him silently along the winding path, up and out of Hephaestus' lair in the core of LOHAC, past creaking iron frames and grinding gears and lakes of lava to the closest return node, and through it, onto the roof of their familiar apartment building.
(Later, much later, Bro will tell him about that, too. Dave is--he knows he's a sprite, obviously, knows he's glowing orange and has huge fuckoff feathered wings--well, just the one, now--but he doesn't really have the perspective to notice the way he shines like a beacon in those endless caverns, how even on the surface he's the brightest thing in sight.)
Bro looks around at their apartment as though it's not entirely familiar. He studies the comics and posters tacked on the walls, glances at the puppets and weaponry strewn around, and turns back to Dave. He looks... thoughtful, perhaps? Dave keeps expecting him to vanish, to look up and find that he's rambling to thin air, but Bro stays put, quiet but not blank, weirdly attentive, though not especially responsive.
Bro sits on the futon, stiffly at first, relaxing gradually as Dave rambles about the mess the imps have made of the place--largely indiscernable from the preexisting mess--the ridiculousness of the terrain on LOHAC, the stupidity of the resident reptiles, Sburb's bizarre game mechanics, the deep weirdness of trolls, the potential of the alchemitry system to produce infinite hot pockets in infinite flavors.
He takes his gloves off and examines his hands, frowning. Dave's monologue falters as he looks down at his chest, puts a finger through the neat two inch cut in the center of his polo, right over his breastbone, and stalls completely when he pulls the shirt over his head and finds the matching hole in the back.
Dave hadn't noticed, before, the absence of familiar scars on his brother's skin.
Hephaestus did a thorough job, apparently.
But Bro still seems so... strange.
"Do you remember?" Dave asks. "What happened?"
Bro nods, sort of hesitantly.
"World ended," he says. "Came here, had to fight. Had to..." he frowns again. "Stuck my sword in that big record. Dog took it. We were fighting the dog. Lost."
Dave chuckles bitterly. "I don't know what the fuck that was, we were doing okay until--well, okay, we might've been getting our asses kicked just a little bit, but we could've taken that fucker before he powered up. That shit was definitely not within normal game parameters, so like, don't feel bad about the fact that we got creamed, dude, because I'm pretty sure beating him is literally impossible now."
Bro's brow furrows. Dave can't get over how expressive he's being. It's--okay, it's not actually all that expressive by regular dude standards, but this is Bro.
His words are halting, but that weirdness strikes him as pretty understandable, considering the circumstances.
Bro's never been much of a talker, not like Dave, anyway. Uncertainty is a new look on him, though.
"I died," he says, looking to Dave for confirmation. "You..."
"Thought I had, at first," Dave says. "He fucked me up pretty bad, couldn't get out of this... pendant thing... for a while. I think maybe I can only perma-die if it's destroyed?" He shrugs. "Being a game construct is weird."
"'M not a construct," Bro says. "Should be... perma-dead." He's looking at Dave, intense and intent, like he's trying to solve the hardest math problem ever, or, like, identify the secret ingredient in KFC. "You made a deal. Brought me back."
"Yeah." Dave nods. That sure is a thing he did.
Bro nods too, but the confirmation doesn't seem to satisfy him, doesn't smooth the crease out of his forehead.
He's silent for a long moment, and then--
"Why?"
