Well, not hard in actual pratice. It's hard fucking being there though.
All around him, he's hearing echoes of himself, seeing after images of dozens of Daves, seared on the fabric of space and time as though he'd stared too long at something bright.
The whole place has become a ghost town; no one home, but all the lights are on.
It feels weird, too. He's a fucking sprite, but it's like he's got gooseflesh, like a breeze brushing his body. Inhabiting the same space as various versions of himself feels like walking on your own grave.
He tries to ignore it, gritting his teeth while that molten gold blood oozes from the bandages he's wound around his skinny kid torso over his shirt. He hisses as he coils on the floor, his tapered body easing into a loose circle.
Somewhere in the vicinity of the stove, he distantly hears himself bashing Bro's cooking in some .
God what he wouldn't give to wolf down one of his bro's ungodly food creations right about now. He can't even feel hunger, and yet he reasons that Rose would probably give some mindfuck bullshit about the food fulfilling emotional needs as much as physical ones.
But moping isn't why he's here right now. Well, not all of it. Granted, he freaked on getting cut in half, more freaked at watching his sibling die, so the only thing he could think to do was come home.
He carefully severs one of the puppets from it's lifeline, leaving it partially crippled and dangling awkwardly at an angle. It looks like he's about to take a fall, suspended by a narrow margin between upright and the bottom of the pit.
He drops the puppet, letting it puddle at his feet, and he listens for a second, hearing echoes of himself, and straining to hear the other denizen of the apartment for the past thirteen years.
But he forgets that really, he's all alone in this apartment. It's no use listening for him here.
He looks down at his hand, at the fist-sized medallion still smeared with bro's blood.
He can't bring himself to wipe it off.
Most of it is on his chest and shirt, now, the darker red barely visible against the vibrant orange of his body.
As much as he proccesses things like any normal person, he half percieves things as data from the game, almost like the Matrix is embedded like some retarded ghost writing. It comforts him, just a little, to see flecks of his brother still there in the code, written across himself and the medallion.
Dave quietly loops the puppet string through the holes of the medallion, and ties the ends into a clumsy knot.
He remembers Bro's hand, swathed in red, reaching over and gripping his. Not in pain, not seeking comfort, but giving it. His grip stayed steady, stayed tight, for a while, and it took Dave a longer time to realize that he'd already died.
He sits there, in his old apartment, with what is left of his brother hanging against his chest.
And for a second, allows himself to wish that everything would be okay.
That none of this had ever happened.
And tries to hear, among the jumble of his voices, any of the older memories, and what is left of his brother's voice.