Chapter Text
Here is the story:
Purple is twelve when he meets them.
They're around his age, maybe younger, by the looks of their wide eyes and skinny frames. One is sky-blue from head to toe; the other is the green of young moss and lush grass. Sticks who have somehow made their way into a game he'd thought only he had ever entered.
They're alone, fists full of quartz, and Purple snarls at that, their audacity to enter his village and interfere with his work—GUARDS, SEIZE THEM, LOCK THEM AWAY—
Here is the story:
Purple arrests two strangers, then pardons them when their misdeeds turn in his favor. They smile at him, uneasy but trusting, a willing second chance, even as their knuckles still bleed from trying to break down the prison walls.
He looks at them, kids who hold more wealth than he does. He looks at callused hands, careful eyes, scars from surviving monsters he's never known.
(He recognizes fighters when he sees one—they always hold themselves the way his dad did.)
He thinks of the Egg, the greatest treasure of Minecraft, which will bring its owner the unquestioned glory over all others.
(He thinks of his dad's poisonous shame, wondering why his own son couldn't even raise his fists properly.)
He asks them to come with him.
They say yes.
Here is the story:
Purple brings two strangers into the End. They give every last effort they have to get him as close as he can to his trophy, and—
He thinks about turning back, at the sound of their screams, but he's not strong enough. He'll just have to make their sacrifice worth it.
Here is the story:
The Egg falls through the Portal, and Purple follows without a single look back.
Because he does not look back, he does not see the Dragon fall, silently screaming, to emerald lightning incinerating scale from flesh from bone until only violet blood and green light remained.
He does not see the radiant figure pulling two children out of certain doom, nor the shaking five-bodied hug pile, nor the cold glint in emerald eyes that lift to the Portal.
He does, however, see the storm that swallows his village—the twisted face, the glowing fists—the accusation because you almost killed them, my friends, your friends, they asked for nothing and you still killed them, liar coward traitor selfish I will make you sorry—
Orange, as their friends call them, tears up the statues, the houses, the castle, everything marked with his color, reduced into fire and dust.
They leave the villagers alive.
The villagers, alive, terrified, homeless, look at Purple.
The monster named him the target, they say. His greed had doomed them all, they say, these people who used to feed him and dance for him and teach him their traditions. Everything they have lost is because of him.
They tell him to leave. You are a curse, they say. Never come back.
(It is not my fault, he shrieks, and they don't believe him.)
(He doesn't even believe him.)
Here is the story he does not know:
Blue and Green bring back stories of unending space and colorless darkness and the sea of stars beneath their feet. How cold it had been, cutting to the bone, like liquid nitrogen in the blood. The beauty of the infinite void as they fell.
Yellow raises an eyebrow. Red leans forward, grinning. They pull out paper, ask questions, muse over piston schematics and TNT farms and ender pearls.
Orange stands in the doorway, worrying, always worrying, but for the sake of those smiles, they'd do anything.
They let them try.