Author's Note:

This is my very odd and convoluted attempt to be artsy in writing sadstuck- the narratives are broken up and can relate to one another as the reader wishes (although a few of them are meant to directly relate, such as the main story.) The only reason it is broken up into chapters is because it is so very LONG.

Many of these mini-AUs are idealogically dark and deal with issues that might make some readers uncomfortable, primarily the main plotline- the "master story"- where seventeen-year-old Dave has fallen in love with twenty-something Jade, his adopted great cousin and eventually legal guardian. The idea behind all of these little glances into all of the "shattered windows" is that they are universes that have been tampered with so that nothing has happened as it was suppossed to, even when the changes of fate are incredibly small. The stories snowball and usually deal with subtle ties the characters have with time and space (or age and physical distance or timing and coincidental placement.) Still, everything is dealt with as tastefully as possible and I would really appreciate it if you gave this story a try and left feedback, even if just to say, "I took the time to read the whole thing."

When the entire story is finished, there will be an extra chapter that gives the reader the option to have a happier ending, just in case.

And if anyone wants to take any of these "AUs gone wrong" and make them "AUs gone right", feel free to- and link me! (I would be especially interested to see a happy resolution for the universe in which Dave and Jake are nursing the crow, like where Dave goes to Jake's family dinner and meets Jade.)

And a special thanks to the ao3 author dellaluce for inspiring all of this.

Nurse Maryam Kanaya held the baby and quietly shushed him as he reached out his arms and squalled, either from hunger or temperature or just because he could. He wasn't very old, but he certainly was vocal. "Doctor, what do you think about this?" she said, turning towards her friend and colleague Dr. Megan Aradya.

"I think he's certainly lucky to be alive."

"Certainly. But I was referring to his new inheritance."

"It isn't my place to say if that old woman did the right thing or not. But she didn't have any other use for her money where she was going. And so that's what I told her when she asked me."

"Your bedside manner is impeccable as always," remarked nurse Maryam.

Doctor Aradya smiled. "Was that sarcasm towards a superior, nurse Kanaya?"

"Of course not," quipped the nurse over the sound of the newly-christened David Strider's yowls.

"Oh, I am okay with it! Besides, Doctor Roseanne will be so proud of you," remarked the other doctor cheekily. "I think your friendship with her was the first good thing to come out of the psych therapy department."

"Doctor Roseanne does good work," nurse Kanaya defended.

"Oh, I know she does! I said that your friendship was the first good thing to come out of the psych therapy department, not the last and certainly not the only." Doctor Aradya shrugged. "In fact, the only bad thing to come out of it is that Pollux disagrees with me on that."

Kanaya muttered under her breath, "We all know your med tech boyfriend only thinks that because he needs her help the most but is too proud to admit she can help him." The doctor pretended not to hear her, but they both knew she had. Besides, Doctor Aradya knew that this was true.

Still, she kept her attention on the baby boy. "I have a feeling that the young man in your arms might be seeing Doctor Roseanne Valonde as well, once he gets older. Surely when the Harleys tell him that he isn't their actual son, he will need counseling."

"And I have a feeling he'll figure that out far before they have to tell him," the nurse remarked. "His last name isn't the same and he looks absolutely nothing like any of them, beyond the fact that they are all human beings. Then the similarities end, I am afraid."

The doctor laughed. "Well said! But old Jade Harley-Egbert saw him in the hallway and named him the primary heir to her fortune on the spot. If that isn't perfect timing on this little guy's part," she grinned at Dave, who had now fallen asleep, "I don't know what is!"

Nurse Maryam nodded. "I hear her great granddaughter is also named Jade. I wonder if the name is passed down," she wondered.

"Who knows! Mrs. Harley-Egbert certainly was an eccentric woman, and I believe she would have been whether she was a billionaire or not. But if the boy also marries a woman named Jade, then we will know destiny is involved."

"Or imprinting."

Doctor Aradya covered her mouth to hide her snickers. "This isn't Twilight and he is definitely not going to grow up to be any kind of Taylor Lautner, Maryam. He's more of an Edward type with that pale skin and those odd eyes. Like a piece of meat that crows pick at."

Nurse Maryam's chiseled eyebrows shot up to her hairline. "Normally I overlook your morbidity, but considering this preemie's circumstances, I feel like you went too far."

Little David was unaffected, though. He snoozed in nurse Maryam's arms without a care in the world. He didn't know that his teenaged mother, a victim of circumstance, had died penniless, alone, and in labor nor did he know that he had been born a month early. No, the fragile boy had been snatched up from the jaws of death by the insensitive Doctor Aradya and then again saved from the equally damning fate of social services by the dying Jade Harley-Egbert as she was making up her will. She insisted that her youngest son-in-law and daughter, his wife, a couple of about forty, file for adoption of the boy immediately and that tiny David inherit the largest portion of her inheritance.

Rather than being outraged, the entire family had been almost delighted. (Male nurse Travis Nightram, the aging Jade's primary, had been absolutely astounded that the whole family had taken to the idea at all.)

David did not know how close to death and misery he had been, and he slept on, oblivious to the cruelty of the world, until he felt that the time was right.

Jade looked up from the travel brochure and shooed her dog away from the chewy paper. She knew he wanted it, but it was her favorite thing to look at and her parents weren't going to get her another one any time soon- they had picked it up back before the plane crash of 9/11, when they thought they might want to go on a trip. Now they banished the idea entirely and all but browbeat Jade into staying home for the remainder of her days.

But she had all the time in the world to watch her life fade away and she didn't want to waste it missing out on all the excitement. So she didn't.

She saved up her money and moved out of her rural home the moment she turned eighteen and shared a city apartment with her best friend. The plan was they live there for as long as it took to save up money to travel across the world on an adventure.

Her parents had even helped her even though they were afraid of the hustle and bustle of the urban jungle. After all, Jade's Aunt Jane had lost everything she owned when her studio apartment had been ransacked. Never would have happened had she not gone to the city.

But it was a wonderful new home, the little city apartment, even if her roommate had a clingy boyfriend and insisted that the walls be covered in pink and Sea World posters. Jade didn't mind at all- the city was an adventure. She even liked staying there for a while with nothing but an utterly a normal routine.

She thought time was no object and that she could see the world whenever she wanted. There was no rush to leave this city that felt like home.

And it would have stayed that way had her flatmate's boyfriend not had a nervous breakdown and killed his girlfriend in a fit of rage.

Her parents, who had been nervous about Jade living in the city from the beginning, were horrified and insisted both she and her brother, who had been living with his own city-raised girlfriend, moved back home. They kept their darling children close, where they couldn't get away and be hurt.

They were especially protective of Jade after her brother suddenly eloped and disappeared into thin air.

Jade was now their only child. If she left, their hearts would break in two. And Jade loved her parents and would never want to hurt them, even if it meant compromising her own happiness, so she always lived nearby and visited them as often as she could.

The money she had saved for travelling the world was put away until it was eventually used to help pay for the extra care her aging parents needed.

The only thing left for her was to live the best she could in the space she was given.

The radio alarm had been sounding for about forty minutes and the repetitive baselines of 61.2 the SIGN were starting to make the neighbors pound on the wall between apartments in annoyance. Dave slammed his hand down on the "off" button and sighed.

Finally, he rolled out of bed and let himself lie face down on the floor. Dave knew full well that his shift started in ten minutes and that it took him about twenty and a half to get dressed and to work, and he also knew that his boss had warned him that if he were late again, he would fire him.

This was the fourth job he'd had in six months and he needed to keep it if he planned to pay his rent before his landlord kicked him out for not having it for the third time in a row.

But he didn't show any of that with his actions as he groggily inched his supine body to the crumpled pile of his uniform pants he'd left on the floor and, with his body still quite decidedly in a sleeping position, pulled them over the underwear he'd slept in as to not exert any more effort than necessary to get dressed.

Unfortunately, he would have to actually stand up to retrieve his shirt-he'd left it on his desk chair and it was too high for him to reach up and grab.

He snorted and fixed the problem by pulling down the chair by its legs and snatching the shirt up as it fell. He was going to get up off the floor on his time and nobody else's, and his time was whenever he damn well pleased.

It's not his fault that the world didn't follow his schedule, he figured.

(But it was his fault that he just wouldn't get with the program and realized that the world would keep turning whether he was on it or not.)

On his way to work, he remembered that he hadn't had breakfast and stopped at a nearby mom n' pop bakery shop and blew the last of his cash on a couple of doughnuts he'd seen in the window that looked particularly appetizing. He cut off his lethargic conversation with the cashier when he remembered that he had a job that, logically, he should be trying to keep.

He moseyed over to the bus stop with all the urgency of a snail to a French restaurant that served escargot and waved at the bus he just narrowly missed, standing from about fifteen feet from the moving seat where his late ass should have been planted.

Then he plopped down on the empty, stationary bench to enjoy his breakfast, looking up just in time to see a little boy with black hair and glasses get pushed into the middle of the road by a girl with grey eyes and an unnervingly confident smirk.

Dave's slothful slump ended with a crash of pastry on concrete as, quick as a flash, he snatched the boy from the oncoming traffic in a rolling tackle, narrowly missing a semi-truck as it sounded its horn in alarm.

Dave heard the commotion from the bystanders around him and decided it was safe to open his eyes and examine the damage done to the boy currently sprawled on his chest.

The boy looked at him with eyes so blue that Dave swore that he was actually looking through holes in the boy's eyes and into the sky above his head. He reached out and patted the child on the shoulder to make sure he hadn't killed them both in the car crash and was left staring at some eyeless apparition. His hand was rewarded by the solid feeling of a live body beneath a cheap cotton shirt and he reached down to feel his own arms and chest.

"Oh, thank you so much! You're really cool, mister!" The boy's horrible teeth gleamed on his face.

"Whatever, kid, you just go home before your evil-eyed friend over there decides to make you play human Frogger again."

"Oh, I love Frogger! I play it all the time."

"Yeah, I used to-"Dave stopped. "How the hell are you old enough to know what Frogger is? That came out in, like, the eighties or something and it's 2001. You're, like, what, two?"

"He acts like it, but he's really seven."

"I wasn't talking to you, spiderbreath. And what is wrong with you, pushing him into the road?"

"Ha ha, he called you spiderbreath!"

The girl flung her azure jacket out, revealing a blue shirt that matched her denim jeans. "Whatever, John. You still have to do whatever I say because I'm a year older. Derpass."

"Look, smurfette. If what you say can be believed, you're eight. You don't get to call him "derpass". You don't even get to fucking say the word "ass" in any context except the Biblical one. And considering what a hellion you're provin' yourself to be, Biblical contexts ain't gonna apply to you. Clean up your damn language."

"Look at the shit that just came out of your mouth, assface."

"The power of Christ compels you."

Little John interrupted. "But Dad says neither me nor my friends should use bad words."

The girl rolled her eyes. "Like that matters. John boy, I'm gonna toughen you up so you can act like a grown-up and not talk like a little sissy."

"So being eight years old makes you an authority on everything?"

"Eight is the best age, asshole! Way better than fifty, old man!"

"Whoa, you obviously can't count more than your eight legs. I'm twenty four, spiderbitch."

"And obviously you feel the need to get into fights with beautiful girls sixteen years younger than you. Or is this your way of flirting with me? Ewwwwwww, pedophile!"

"What's a pedophile?" John asked.

"You know what, kid? John? That's your name? Don't worry about it. Don't worry about anything except for getting away from this girl as fast as the wind. Fly if you have to."

"Should I take my sister with me?"

"How old is she?"

"Jade's twenty three."

Dave's reply was totally unencumbered by her mention. If anything, it made his actions go faster and smoother, like he had been waiting for this moment his whole life to move forward and make time his to manage.

Still, the name didn't even ring a bell.

"Yes. Yes. Even a grown woman needs to keep away from your troublemaker friend. Take her. She needs all the space she can get."

"Jade's not a grown-up. Jade's my sister."

"Sisters can be grownups, little man."

John looked up with his shining blue eyes and Dave felt like he was living a lie. "But she's not quiiiite as cool and heroic and… grown up as you! And she's a whole year younger!"

Here he was, a screwup losing his latest job, and this boy was practically worshipping him. He was the scum of the earth.

He said a few words to the news crew that arrived on the scene (someone watching must have called in all of the excitement, he figured) and, as soon as little John and his blue friend were returned to their respective parents, excused himself as quickly as he could to face his boss. He might as well act the part of the grownup and take responsibility for his actions.

And he did.

But Dave wasn't fired. In fact, because he was hailed as a hero by the news, his manager decided that Dave had "strong priorities" and had "grown up a lot" and so gave him a promotion.

How ironic. Bumming around and wasting time had earned him a gig that consisted of sitting in an air-conditioned office for $8.50 an hour, which was way better than fishing frogs out of commercial pools for minimum wage he'd have had if he had decided to be a halfway decent employee.

Dave tried harder from then on, as if John were still watching him. He eventually created his own company that designed and installed commercial sprinkler systems, with most of his clients coming from pumpkin farms and plant nurseries.

He lived a moderately successful life and married a wonderfully clever woman named Rose, who he'd met in a coffee shop. They stayed together for four years until she quietly informed him that she had been seeing another woman and the guilt of it was too much for her to bear.

Dave had suspected as much as early as the day Rose had met Kanaya. He just hadn't wanted to cause a stir. He was angry, sure, but he knew lesbians weren't exactly welcomed with open arms anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line, and so he kept his mouth shut because he cared about her too much to let the wolves have her. He had actually been resolving the issue in his head for many years and the hurt had dulled, silently.

He demanded a divorce under a façade of outrage, but he really did it because he hated watching Rose suffer under her belief that she "needed to be punished for her actions instead of having her mistakes swept under the rug." (In reality, Dave knew divorce actually liberated her. He often wondered- and wonders- if the whole charade was one of Rose's head games designed to grant her the divorce and paint herself the victim rather than the criminal, but he dislikes thinking that she would be black hearted enough to such a thing intentionally. She was definitely crafty enough, though.)

They split up on surprisingly friendly terms, with Rose taking primary custody of their younger daughter and Dave acting as the primary guardian over his older son, who regarded his father's mediocre existence with judgmental disdain. The teenaged boy made no secret of the fact that he thought his father's heroic rescue of John Harley was the high point of his life and even that was a lucky result of being in the right place at the right time.

Sometimes, Dave wondered if he even got that much right.

Jade knocked on the office door. "Teresa, can I come in?"

The door creaked open with a whine. "Yup. I've just about gotten all of the files organized and there's now open space for visitors to walk on in. If I want them to," a singsongy voice replied.

"And do you want me to?" teased Jade.

"Nah. This dragon is content guarding its treasure without any more company."

"Aww, But I was just going to give my favorite coworker her favorite Twizzler candy," Jade whined, pulling the package from the bag on her arm and waving it in the air.

The door was open and Teresa was all but on top of Jade to get to the candy, papers flying everywhere. "You know better than to tease me when you've got red candy, especially red licorice," the woman mock-scolded when she finally had it, red ropes sticking out of her mouth every which way like flames from a mythical beast's mouth.

"I just wanted insurance to make sure I could get into my office to pick up my cousin," Jade joked. "Otherwise you might never let him go and there's no telling what you might do to him. You might decide to cook him and eat him like in Hansel and Gretel!"

Teresa grinned. "Of course I wouldn't do that, my favorite and dearest co-worker! You keep me too well-fed to do that to our favorite scoundrel." She gave Jade an over-exaggerated hug. "Besides, I love you too much to hurt you or your family."

"Teresa, you're crushing me!"

"See? I love you thiiiis much!"

"Teresa!"

"This much!"

"Ack!"

"Hee hee hee!"

Dave stepped out of the office, a stack of paperwork in his hands. "TS, I know you are half-blind, so I'm going to go ahead and clue you into the fact that my cousin is turning blue. Y'know, that color that it isn't healthy for a human being to be."

Teresa let go of Jade and squinted up at her face. "She's human? You mean she isn't supposed to be blue? But I thought she was a smurf! And blue is the color of so many tasty things!" she joked.

"You've saved me yet again, Dave!" teased Jade, ruffling his hair. "What would I do without you?"

"Be crushed by overzealous taxidermists, obviously."

Teresa elbowed Jade. "Me? Overzealous? Ha! It is only because I can appreciate the feeling of preserving things with my heightened senses- you could not understand, what with only what your eyes see!" Teresa's facetious tone dropped. "Besides, I'm nothing compared to this one. She loves sewing and stuffing dead things more than either myself or Kitty do. Sometimes I think she goes hunting just so she can have something to preserve even when we don't have clients."

"I do not!" Protested Jade.

"And to make me something for me to add to my collection," decided Dave. "Together, Jade and I are like the perfect morbid dead-shit congregators. In another life, we'd be an Adams-family style married couple, creepy and kooky in that we're the ones dressing dead people for funerals and then digging up their coffins to keep them as living dolls. She's like… Morticia the mortician and I'm her adoring assistant Gomez, trying to get her to put off her work and make love to me in the caskets."

Jade stuck out her tongue. "Eww, I think you went too far on that one, Dave!"

Teresa's ever-present smile dropped and she tilted her head to the side to look at Jade's younger cousin. She closed her Twizzler bag, suddenly not hungry.

He just grinned. "Yeah, all the dead people and casket details are more than a little sick and wrong. My bad."

Teresa's grin returned as quickly as it left, like its absence had only been a trick of the light. "Jade, there's something I want to talk to you about and it might take a while. Do you have time?"

Jade turned. "Yeah, I do. Is that okay with you, Dave? You'll have to wait a little bit longer before we can get home," she said. "But I already made dinner, so we can just serve it from the pan the minute we get there."

Dave shrugged. "I guess I can suffer for a little longer," he said. "I'll just wait for you here, wasting away into nothing from hunger and thirst. They'll tell stories about how I died waiting for you and that my ghost now haunts the taxidermy doll Kitty made from my remains."

"Speaking of Kitty, that paperwork in your smartassy, grubby mitts is stuff she needs to deal with. Will you take it to her for me?" Teresa asked.

"You might actually prefer to go hang with Kitty while Teresa and I talk about boring stuff," Jade added.

"That's true. She's a crazy gal," Dave muttered, walking out of the office are and towards the workshop in the back. "Oh, Miss Leijon…!" his voice faded as he shut the door behind him.

Teresa walked into the office and started neatening stacks of paperwork. Jade followed and sat down in the comfortable swivel chair, turning it around and around in circles before finally stopping to face her friend. "So, what's up?" she asked.

There was a clicking noise as Teresa closed the door to the office and slowly looked at Jade. Her grin was nowhere to be seen. "Have you ever thought about taking Dave to see a counselor or a therapist?"

"No. Why? Is something wrong?" Jade's mind reeled. "Is it about the fact that my family adopted him? He's never had and major life-crushing problems about that before, but he is getting to the age where-"

Terezi held up her hands. "No, no. Not about that. And not about the fact that your great aunt and uncle died two years ago, either."

"I don't understand. Is he not happy that he ended up living with me?" Jade fidgeted and her tone grew even more anxious. "I mean, I know we're sort of close in age and I'm not the best parent figure, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the worst. I mean, we fight sometimes, but he's never seemed to hate me or hold lasting resentment and he isn't really having any problems at school or anything. He has friends and they come over and he's in the photography club and-"

"Jade, stop babbling. It isn't anything you are doing wrong, I don't think. And it's not any of that."

"Do you think he's gay? It's completely okay if he is-"

Teresa cackled madly, but it didn't hold any mirth. "No. Jade, this is not that kind of situation."

"Well. Huh." Jade slowly raised her eyes to her friend's and presented her next words carefully. "I don't mean to come off as rude or uncaring, but I don't think he needs a counselor, Teresa. Why do you think he does?"

"If you would give me a second to try to explain myself, I'll-"

"Well, start explaining! Geez!" Jade teased, grinning at her coworker to try and break the tension.

Teresa didn't return the expression. Instead she pursed her full lips and held them against her fingers. Thoughtfully, she walked over to the stool across from Jade's swivel chair and sat down on it. "I'm not sure how to phrase this," she said. "And I'm not sure if I should, actually. It might make things worse."

Jade rolled her eyes. "Well, 'Resa, you've already opened this can of worms and made me curious. If you don't just tell me, I'll start acting like my little cousin and nagging you with entire soliloquies and novels made of nothing my own zany metaphors until you do." Jade brightened. "Then, I might need a counselor, too! Is that what you want to talk to me about? Did he make one too many graphic verbal images?"

For whatever reason, that made Teresa blanch. "No, thank God. He didn't… he didn't do that. Not past the reeking one that he just waved in front of our noses." She muttered under her breath. "Otherwise I'd need even more of what he calls "brain bleach"…"

"You are making me more and more worried and confused by the minute!"

"Jade," Teresa began, "I have been a friend to both you and Dave since practically the day I met you both. You know that." Jade nodded. "Please believe me when I say that if you have not figured out what I've figured out about your cousin, then it's better that you never know. But." She took off her red-rimmed glasses and cleaned them on her teal shirt, "I really think Dave needs to go see a counselor. I know a good one that would be ideal, and I know she is expensive, but I can lend you money if you need it. And I would be more than willing to, even if you never paid me back."

"Teresa, of course I'd pay you back. It's absurd that you would even-"

"I know you would. And you'd do it in creamsicles, lemon drops, and Twizzlers to show your gratitude. If you didn't, I'd be miffed. Still. It's the principle of me saying that you don't have to pay me back that matters." She grinned. "I might pay for it anyway just so I can expect snack food every day. Hee hee hee!"

Jade snorted but sobered quickly to address the issue once more. "How would I convince Dave to go to this… counseling thing? I don't actually have a reason besides "Teresa told me to take you." Not that your word isn't valid."

Teresa opened her mouth and then closed it. "Shit. That I do not know. Hmm!"

"I could just tell him that it's my own paranoid need to give him a check-up for his brain, kind of like you have check-ups for your body." Jade shrugged. "Now that you've told me all this, it's kind of the truth!"

"Actually, that's probably the best move."

"Well. Um, okay. But are you sure you can't just tell me what your suspicions are, Teresa?" Jade weakly smiled. "It would make this a lot easier."

"Jade," Teresa said replacing her coke-bottle glasses and looking long and hard at her friend, "it really wouldn't."