Your name is Dave Strider.

You grew up on the top floor of an apartment block in a sweltering Texas city, baking away in the merciless desert heat. You know every corner of that building, every nook and cranny and crack in the plaster on the walls and ceiling. You don't even have to count any more to know exactly how many paces it takes to circle your room, the kitchen, the living room, the entire apartment. You know by heart the exact number of stairs to reach the roof. You can't even remember how many times you've counted the seconds it takes the elevator to reach the ground floor from any other floor it happens to be on, and how many seconds it takes to make it back home. You know the contents of every impenetrable pile of junk in every room. You know the precise number of your brother's ridiculous fucking puppets and how many he has in each hideous, eye-jarring color, and you know exactly where he hides every single one.

You have been fighting as long as you can remember. Bro has always pushed you as hard as he could, and you have never really understood quite why. But you don't question it, because this is your bro, and he wouldn't do anything without good reason. You fight back, and he kicks your ass, time and time again. He's given you plenty of bruises for it. Even a few scars, although he always fixed you up and made sure you were alright afterward. You know he felt like shit about that, even though he was too cool to admit it to you, and you were too cool to admit to him that you knew it. And anyway, they don't even really show.

You could feel yourself growing stronger every time. Every battle lasted a little longer than the one before it. You were still nowhere near close to beating him, but you were beginning to hold your own. One day you would show him. One day you would finally beat him, and then he would nod his head and flash you the smallest, most relaxed ironic smile, more relaxed and ironic than you could ever hope to be, and that would be that.

Your name is Dave Strider.

You are thirteen years old, and all you cared about was your ill beats and phat rhymes. You had friends, purely for the irony of a cool dude like you having anyone he could call a friend. Or at least, that's what you told yourself, even when you began waking up at godawful early hours in the morning and logging onto Pesterchum to catch Rose, or hanging out hours and hours after you should have gone to sleep to keep up with Jade. That's what you told yourself, even as you poked merciless fun at John for the very essence of his being, and he took it all with a laugh and that big, derpy, buck-toothed smile emoticon of his.

You are playing a video game. You don't know what the game was about. You didn't care. You only got it because Bro did. Because it was ironic. And because your friends seemed so excited about it, you sort of wanted to know why. In a purely ironic, meaningless fashion, of course. You never expected it to be so important.

You never expected this.

Your name is Dave Strider, and you were playing for the fate of the world.

You didn't realize how serious it was until it was too late—and then there was no backing out. Not that you would have backed out, even if you had wanted too. You were too cool for that. Cool kids didn't run. And besides, you had been fighting. Training. Every battle you had ever fought against your brother empowered you for this, and you were ready for it.

You were so confident. You were so stupid. You know now that you didn't know what the fuck you were doing. None of you did. Even when you thought you were in control and understood, all four of you were stumbling around blind. Even you. You didn't realize what would happen if even one of you made a mistake.

You didn't realize the cost you would have to pay.

Your name is Dave Strider, and your best friend is dead.

You didn't know what happened to Jade. You could guess, and it wasn't a pretty picture. But you knew exactly what happened to John, and that was even less pretty. You couldn't reach him in time to save him. As usual, you didn't even know what was happening until it was too late. And when you finally did get there...

You made a deal with Rose, that you would keep going, but you could only hold out for so long. There was only so much you could do, so much you could keep on pushing, knowing that it was all meaningless. And then you had to fix it. You had to go back. Because the thought of losing them, the thought of losing... You couldn't take the thought of trying to go on when you already knew how useless it was.

You were going to save their lives.

Even if it killed you, you were going to save their lives.

Your name is Dave Strider, and you altered the course of time.

You went back. You made sure Rose would remember, and then you turned the tables and set things right. You went back and fixed everything. You saved your friend's life. You saved all of their lives. You made sure that John Egbert didn't go off and do something really fucking stupid like get himself killed, again. You saved everyone from their own fucking stupidity, and you expected to be greeted with laughs and smiles and open arms.

And then, just like always, you discovered a little too exactly what it was you had done.

You saved their lives, and then they forgot you existed. You didn't matter to them. They thanked you, because you did after all keep their entire game from going down the shithole—but then they wrote you off completely. Because you weren't the important one. After everything you did for them, you weren't the one that mattered.

Your name is Dave Strider.

You are thirteen years old. You remember everything you have ever done. Your life is laid out before your eyes like an open book, and you can remember it with crystal clarity. You remember meeting them, and you remember losing them, and you remember how much it hurt to keep it all in and stay cool when one of them was dead, the other was probably just as dead, and the rest of you were just waiting for it all to end. You remember everything he does, and more besides, because you had to live through it, and you are the one who fixed it all.

And they are his friends.

Not yours.

They call you Davesprite. The other Dave. The future Dave. The Dave from the doomed timeline who came back and made sure John didn't fuck everything up this time, so the real Dave could actually make something of his life.

The real Dave Strider.

Not you.

Your name is Dave Strider, and you have lost everything.

Your home.

Your friends.

Your identity.

Your name is Dave Strider, and you have lost.