[Homestuck] Cities in Dust (shit let's be hardboiled)

[rampantrecs]

Title: Cities in Dust (shit let's be hardboiled)
Author: Cephied_Variable
Fandom: Homestuck
Rating: T
Story Links: AO3 | Homesmut
Author Links: AO3 | Livejournal
Summary: Newternia's streets are merciless, especially if you happen to be a hard-boiled human detective on your first case with a crazy Legislacerator.
Oh, your city lies in dust my friend. Your city lies in dust.

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Bad boy is a hard style to maintain indefinitely. It is an image with a definite EXPIRY DATE. Yours was two years ago when you nearly died in an accident you would RATHER NOT DISCUSS. As you lay on the pavement staring at the stars (Scorpio in Libra, a chilly autumn that bit through your clothes) you thought about your life and made a list of all the places it had gone wrong.

1. Bro arrested on obscenity charges. Lead to-
2. Life in the foster system. Assumption is made that-
3. You would be better off with your own kind. Placed with-
4. A religious man with a bottle wife and curious hands. You snapped both his wrists and they-
5.Sent you back to the Orphanage where you-
6. Met Jade. Then you-
7. Lost Jade. Now you-
8. Are dying on a cold October morning.

You get this feeling about decisions sometimes, like every outcome is a possibility waiting to germinate, waiting to punch free of the seeded implication and bloom bloody red. There’s another universe where Dave Strider died that day; this is not that universe.
===

Reccer's Notes: This is one of the more well-known fics, but it is just so damn good that it needs to be rec'd everywhere and anywhere possible. The characterization is stunning, especially the Dave-voice it is told in.