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“Do you believe all this paradoxical, ectobiological bullshit?” Dave asked her one day when they were both alone.
It had come out of nowhere, caught her off guard, and so the ever-talkative Rose was without a reply for what may have been the first time in her life. They were in her house—their house, sort of—taking a break from the work that had been consuming most of their lives since the Game Over, or whatever it was called. The Big Finale, La Fin Infinie, even simply just The End, although Rose would never allow herself to stoop to such dramatics. Game Over was an easy and concise way to say that the horrific game had ended and finally the survivors were left on a barren rock of nothing to rebuild again. To start from ashes.
Sometimes Rose thought that she might prefer to just stay in the ashes.
But they all pitched in, in a way. It was almost like the game had never quite ended. Like perhaps that even after Game Over, they were all still stuck playing a neverending game of SBURB and all they would ever be doing is the rebuilding and the moving around and the building again. Whatever they wanted, just a wish and it was theirs. Practically Gods, all of them.
Except here, in this quiet, stolen moment between them, Dave had asked a simple question, and Rose had been caught off guard and said the first thing that had come to her mind.
Her answer was quiet—not a whisper, but a half-thought. As if she were not quite finished with what she meant to say, only there wasn’t anything left to say and so she just allowed that to be her finished thought. In psychology, she knew, the first answer was always the most truthful one.
Red eyes glanced over at her in surprise. That hadn’t been what he’d expected. “So you don’t believe in the shipping grid?” He asked again, and Rose just wished that he’d leave it alone. Not because it was a sore subject, but simply because she wasn’t quite sure what to say.
“You mean, of course, the nonsense theory devised by Karkat of all people several years past?”
“Hmm?” he mused, “Has it been so long now?”
Rose shifted her weight, sinking lower into the mattress that they were both resting on, “Longer, probably. Who knows how many ages it’s been here? Years…millennia, they all sort of blend together after Game Over. That, and I’m not entirely sure that we’re all still human anymore.”
“But we must be.” He states.
“I suppose. In the very literal sense. Mothers. Fathers. Sisters.” She glances over at him for a split-second, “Brothers.”
“Yeah. I mean yes. That’s what I meant was the family thing.”
“Because of us?” she asks, and it seems to Dave as if she is a bit unsure.
He thinks for a moment, and his blond locks shift slightly against his face, crimson eyes deep with contemplation, “Because if we are not human than we have no end and no beginning. Because then we are separate entities and therefore have no connection—“
“We have mother and father. Dirk and Roxy are our parents.”
“My brother—“
“But he’s not your brother.”
“Then are you my sister?”
“I—“ she begins, and then remembers that she’s not certain. For a while it was the one thing she was most certain of, and now she is terribly uncertain. All of this time they’d all spent here doing nothing, having nothing and everything and each other. Not one of them felt as if they would ever end and yet their work wouldn’t be finished before they died. “I don’t know.”
Dave turned on his side to face her and wondered for a moment if this was even real, “I don’t know either. But sometimes I’m sure. Sometimes I’m so certain of it that I want to scream.”
She begins, “That can’t be—“
“Healthy? I know.”
“Healthy.”
She’s turned to face him as well now, and Dave reaches out to interlock their fingers. Neither one of them is sure why he’s here, with her, turning her space into their space as he has for so long now. Rose can’t remember being apart, when they were separate people.
“Maybe it’s not,” he continues, “But I feel it. I know you do too.”
Rose bites the corner of her lip, “We’re wrong,” She’s sure of it now, “We’re both wrong. There’s no knowing the specifics, but there’s no other rational explanation for all this.”
“You always did love a rational explanation.”