Chapter Text

Rose woke up with a pounding headache. This in itself was not unusual, but something else was off. She slowly sat up, realizing that she was in her own bed for the first time in three years. Her own room.

This was when she knew something was terribly wrong. They had won the game, hadn’t they? They were supposed to be gods, not mortals. She reached a hand up to the back of her head, expecting to pull down her familiar (if somewhat annoying) soft fleece hood. All she felt was the back of a properly-executed pixie cut, which she also hadn’t felt in three years. Trolls weren’t all that great at cutting hair, and Dave was no better. She had let it grow out almost to her shoulders. With a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, she stood up.

Almost immediately, she felt terribly off-balance. Something was off with where her center of gravity was. It was almost as if she had gotten shorter. She shakily made her way over to the mirror and looked into it.

Her thirteen year old self stared back at her.

Well, shit.

It seemed like they hadn’t quite fulfilled the conditions for the Ultimate Reward, but had still triggered the completion flags of Sburb. So the game had given them a non-standard game over- a full reset of their universe. They were back where they started.

Just to confirm, she ran her hands over her stomach, where there should have been a scar from her first death. Nothing. She lifted her shirt to visually confirm (because maybe, just maybe she had somehow been wrong the first time) and her stomach was smooth and free of scars. Upon closer inspection, she noticed a small lighter patch of skin (perhaps a strange birthmark- even though she had never been truly born). It was right where the scar from Jack’s sword would have been, and as she turned around to check in the mirror, there was a matching mark from the exit wound. Well, that was a confirmation of sorts. The scars of the game weren’t truly gone, which meant that not everything was exactly the same.

Glancing at her outfit, she realized she was wearing the same squiddle shirt from three years ago. That wasn’t her anymore. She stumbled over to her closet, gaining confidence with each step. At least she hadn’t grown too much during their meteor trip, if she had, she’d never adjust. Her mind slipped to the height of a certain Dave Strider, who had skyrocketed from 5’3” to 5’8” in three years. Teenage boys. She was sure this would put a serious dent in his ninja-type flashstepping skills, if he even kept them. It had become unclear which skills were truly theirs and which skills could be attributed to the gods they had become.

Her closet was mostly the same, many blacks and dark purples, but she noticed a splash of color in the back of her closet. She reached for it, nearly falling in her eagerness. A comfortable yellow hoodie with a bright vermillion hood and a familiar symbol in bright yellow on the front. Her god tier outfit, but not quite. When she pulled it off the hanger, a piece of paper fluttered to the ground. Cautiously, she grabbed it and read it.

“Thanks for playing”, it stated.

So then Sburb was truly over, and this wasn’t just some crazy Groundhog Day type loop.

If she had mentioned that to Dave, he would have scolded her because that’s not how time travel works, and then launch into a complicated metaphor that would invariably get out of hand.

She pulled off her squiddle shirt and put the hoodie directly over her bra. This was better than before. The Light hoodie reminded her of who she should be, while the squiddle shirt reminded her only of her younger, arrogant, and emotionally distant self. Looking down, she realized she was wearing leggings and ridiculously bright blue fuzzy socks. Kind of like her god tier shoes. She decoded to keep this outfit on for the time being.

In the distance, she heard a shrill scream she knew didn’t belong to any of her house’s occupants. She stepped out of her room, looking for the source of the scream. She almost stepped into the room next to hers (that certainly hadn’t been there three years ago), but decided there was nothing in there. Letting her intuition guide her, she ran (slowly and clumsily, but still ran) to an unfamiliar area of the house. This hadn’t been there three years ago. Carefully, she reached to open a door she had never seen before. It slowly swung open to reveal a young teenager sitting on the carpet next to a fallen bookshelf.

“Hey there,” Dave said in a voice that was a little higher-pitched than she was used to hearing from him.