Roxy exhaustedly collapsed on the floor of John’s new bedroom the moment he heard a knock on the door and let her in, and the only thing the two newly victorious heroes could do was laugh.

“Hey, Roxy!” said John, letting out a last little chuckle at Roxy’s Sweet Bro-esque arrival. Nice of you to drop by, all unannounced and stuff.”

“You fuckin’ know it, Johnny!” Roxy cackled. “You know I gotta visit ya sometime, right?”

“But it’s only been a couple days since we beat the game, and you told me that you wanted to spend some time with your friends and getting their drama all settled, right? That seems pretty important. Did they drive you out of their angst-session again?”

“Nah, as it turns out the three of em’ dealt with all the drama stuff in like five minutes while we were on the lily pad. It was all like, nothin’ happened at all? Pretty surreal if ya ask me, but I’ll take what I can get.”

“That’s a relief! Even if it’s really weird.”

Roxy stretched out her arms, yawned, and moved over to sit next to John on his bed.

“So what about you? Surely you got some crazy stories from beyond the victory door.” She poked him playfully, and grinned when she saw him blush a bit.

“Well, when we were all talking on the lily pad before we went to go fight the Condesce, I was talking with Dave and Karkat, and I think they were about to tell me that they were… dating? As weird as that sounds.”

“Aw, c’mon, John, they looked adorable together! I can give you the Lalonde Guarantee that even the gay couples from my wizard fanfics ain’t got nothin’ on ‘em.”

“I just couldn’t imagine the guy ever getting together with Karkat, you know? I mean, a lot can happen over three years, but it was still a bit sudden to see that my best bro was suddenly dating the egotistical shouty guy. But anyway, they haven’t brought it up since we got here! It’s like it never even happened, kind of.”

“John, it’s just been a couple days. Chill, everything’s normal. I’m sure your favorite gay couple will get back to the goo-goo eyes before ya can say ‘no homo.’”

“Maybe you’re right. I don’t know. Things have just been so weird . And not just in a ‘we just finally made it out of the game and back to actual civilization’ way. I mean, have you even seen Terezi at all since we made it out of the game? And why’d the SBURB house-door thing suddenly turn to white before we walked in? Karkat said that didn’t happen in his session. And…” John looked into her eyes with an uncharacteristic amount of fear. “Roxy, I’m worried.”

“John, you’ve been complainin’ about this for the last week. We went through the house dealie and all our problems that aren’t related to us all being a bunch a’ angsty teen dorkwads maaaaaagically disappeared!”

“How do you know that? We have no idea what was going on with all that “Lord English” stuff Vriska was talking about, and I kept thinking I’d run into that green jerk who makes terrible comics again… Doesn’t that all seem kind of dangerous to you?”

Roxy scooted closer to John so that their sides were touching, and softly patted him on the back.

“Ya know what? It is suspicious and pretty damn unsatisfying to not know so much of the shit that went on in P-Space back then. And I totally get ya feelin’ so… incomplete about the whole thing. But I guess with the way our whole sitch is, we really don’t have a choice about it. I mean, look at us! We don’t even have our powers anyway, probably. I dunno anymore. The point is, ya basically gotta accept that this was really disappointing and inconclusive and just be happy that we’re all fuckin’, you know, alive and together for once. ”

John’s face dropped even more than it already had.

“That didn’t help at all…”

“Jooooooohnnnnnny. Snap outta it. We all got stuff from the game that we’re gonna be unhealthily suppressing for a while. Might as well pretend things are normal for now. For us, they might as well be. I mean, we’re together! ”

At some point, during all of Roxy’s incessant faux-inspirational-speech hand gesturing, she put her hand to rest on John’s.

John, having been thoroughly disappointed by Roxy’s speech, decided to take up what she was probably implying by her advice the whole time anyway and grasp her hand in return. Maybe being frank about uncertainty wouldn’t be the best for his emotional state, but as they both came to realize in the next hour, sometimes cuddling is far more therapeutic than any words that can be said.

Maybe the ending didn’t have all the answers. It even left the new couple frightened for their futures. But it was an ending that, together, they just might find some happiness in.