Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first one he finds half-dead in the woods, slumped against a rotten tree trunk, silkworms crawling at his back. Trevor, without a second thought, heaves him by his shoulders and helps him limp towards the house. He’s short and stocky, bald, clothes singed at the edges and bags marring his eyes. 

His name is Jeremy and he’s, “Fine. Just fine.”

“The fuck you’re not,” Trevor says back.

Then he drags him into one of the spare rooms of his lonely farmhouse and Jeremy’s out like a light the second his head hits the bed. 

Fine, my ass. 

The next one shows up in his garden, towering over Trevor as he tries to revive a withered tomato vine, to no avail. He’s tall, with an orange beard and kind eyes, clothes a mess of patches and mended rips. Jack, he says his name is. A friend of Jeremy’s.

Trevor believes it. There’s a strangeness in him he’s seen in Jeremy, the uncomfortable yet proud way he holds himself, the halting way he speaks, the intensity in his gaze. And then there’s the tiredness. How the blackened edge of his clothes and the shadows under his eyes speak of a tragedy.

Later, he’ll ask about it. For now, he offers Jack a bed and goes back to the garden to work with a vengeance. Because Trevor’s land is a ring of rotten trees, fields of withered crops, a stream empty of life, and he would never turn someone away if he didn’t have to. But he’s had to before. And if there’s not enough food, the simple fact of the matter is that he’ll have to do it again.

Someone up there must take pity on him, though, because a few of his seedlings sprout green. He hopes it lasts, though if history tells, the gods have never liked him. So he hopes instead that at least one of the strangers in his home has the gods' favour.

One shows up in his chicken coop. Not that the pen has any chickens now, just the two hogs who have free range of the place. Still, the man sitting cross-legged in the door of the coop is a strange sight to behold. 

His beard and clothes are scruffy, eyes drooped half-asleep. The pigs are snuffling at him, for once ignoring the bag of feed Trevor has slung over his shoulder. Trevor asks if he’s a friend of Jeremy’s, already knowing the answer before the man nods his head.

Geoff is his name and he wanders the barn and farm without an aim most days, a cloak of tiredness dragging his shoulders, heavier than even Jack or Jeremy’s. Trevor thinks to ask why and he does, but none of them offer answers, just avert their eyes and tell him not to worry. There’s nothing he can do for them anyway.

That stings a bit if he’s being honest, and plainly wrong seeing that he is doing something for them, he’s letting them stay in his home for gods’ sake. But he backs off, lets them have their privacy, gives them time to heal from… whatever it is they’re healing from.

Still, he can’t help but listen to the voices leaking through his open window as Jack and Geoff pass by, taking a walk together as they often do. Their words are worn by wind and distance, but there’s a sadness in their tone. They speak of regrets and worries and missing home. Trevor closes the window, but the voices linger.

The next two come in a pair. Trevor is foraging through his silkworm riddled trees, looking for fruits or herbs or anything not infected really, when one barrels straight for him with a blade in his hands. Thieves, or raiders, Trevor assumes, not a wholly unexpected thing. There’s a sword strapped at his waist for that reason, though his land’s been such an unappealing mass for so long he’s surprised someone is willing to fight him for it.

Well, fight is the objective term. Really, their blades meet once with a sharp clang and Trevor is thrown to the ground with just that. The man all but growls down at him, the bear skin pelt wrapped around his shoulders seemingly freshly killed. That’s when the second one runs up to them, winded. He’s slighter than the first and looks down at Trevor with a curious eye.

The second entertains for a moment that perhaps they don’t have to kill everyone they meet. The first one says why not. The second one shrugs, and ends his short bid for Trevor’s life. The first one’s blade catches the sun as it swings upwards.

Then, he sees it — torn fabric and the dark edge of burned clothes.

“Wait!” Trevor shouts, “I know Jeremy!”

They freeze. They stare. They grill him for details. And they don’t stick a sword in his chest which is the real icing on the cake.

Michael and Gavin, they say their names are, as they follow him to the house. Trevor’s tailbone is still sore and his heart is still pumping too hard in his chest, and he should really be angry about that, the almost getting killed thing, but Trevor can’t muster the energy. He’s naturally cheerful enough on his own and Gavin has such a sunny smile and Michael stops to look at every wildflower they pass, and they laugh and joke and try to rope Trevor into harebrained schemes along the way, and he just can’t stay angry.

They aren’t hushed or dejected or agonizingly tired like the others, and Trevor finds it odd, for a moment. It’s only later that he notices the dark edge still there. Notices something desperate in their antics. How they balk at silence, at being alone, at any question Trevor asks that doesn’t land firmly as convivial. The pair are fun-lovers, adrenaline-chasers, but more than that they are distraction-seekers. Looking for any way to fill their minds and ignore whatever tragedy lies in their wake.

Trevor opens his house to them and they take it as their home, all except Geoff, who whittles his hours away outside, in the chicken coop, in the barn, only to disappear at night

“Searching,” he says he’s doing, when Trevor questions him.

His searching doesn’t end until days later, when at midnight, he knocks at the door and stands there with a tired, tired air and a book clutched in his scraped, bloody hands.

“Excuse me,” he says, then breezes past Trevor and into the house for the first time.

The only other one in the room is Jeremy, sitting at the dining table and staring. Geoff lays the book gingerly before him. It’s inky black and leather bound and stamped on the front are the numbers 1-0-3. 

He looks at Jeremy and says, “I found it.”

Slowly, Jeremy nods. 

“Rest,” he says, and Geoff nods as well. His gaze flickers around the room, lost, and Trevor tells him to take the room up the stairs, Trevor’s own room, because they’ve long since run out of space and he isn’t sure who’s willing to share with who yet.

When he’s gone from sight, Trevor looks back to Jeremy. His eyes are soulless as he stares at the book, unmoving, and Trevor pushes down the need to ask what in the world that was all about. Instead, he asks Jeremy if he’s alright. 

“Fine,” he says, still not looking up. “Just fine.”

Fine, my ass. 

Trevor doesn’t say that though, just accepts the non-answer and makes to leave, only to remember that his room is occupied for the night. So instead, he heads outside, climbs up the ivy running down the side of the house, lies down on the roof and watches the stars till the sun chases them away. 

Days pass and they’re living in some modicum of peace. There’s food, just enough. Jack helps in the fields, Geoff tends to the hogs, Michael wanders the forest and somehow always returns with something worthwhile. Jeremy lucks out, finds a new vein in the mine close by, which Trevor had always assumed was picked dry. Gavin… helps, where he can. Mostly just drifts through the fields, trying with some success to get the others to converse, or sometimes taking a bow and joining Michael in the woods.

Settled, almost. Almost. But Trevor notices all the little cracks in their peace, the wistful stares to the sky, the hushed whispers of home. And the inky black book, still sitting on Trevor’s dining table.

Some of them avoid it like the plague. A few of them flick through the pages and leave more morose then they’d come. They argue about it, not in front of Trevor, but he can hear them through the walls.

We can’t. There’s no way. We’ll never make it. Why try?

Once, someone throws it at the wall — he hears the bang and finds it on the floor the next morning. And Trevor is willing to give them the time and space to figure out whatever it is they need, but he’s a curious little shit and can’t help but thumb through the pages as he picks up the book to put it away.

Trevor has never been an enchanter or alchemist or any of that sort, but even he can feel the magic in the pages. The words are written in stately lines, ink as dark as night, lettering inhumanly tidy. It looks like a checklist of sorts, every page a column of tasks with five blank spots beside them. Some are already marked by a pitch black checkmark — chop down a tree, smelt an iron bar, shoot a monster with a bow and arrow. Most are blank. He sets it back down on its usual spot, face-up on the table.

Trevor doesn’t know what to make of that. Then, one day, it clicks. 

“You need to finish this book, don’t you?” he asks, black cover under his fingertips, eyes flicking upwards. “To go home.”

Jeremy, the only one in the room, stares from across the dining table. When he turns away, he looks tired, so tired, like the day Trevor had found him mulching under the trees.

Jeremy never fully explains and Trevor never fully understands, but he knows he’s hit some grain of truth, and he chases that down with all his might. Drags out an old fishing rod, some mining tools, spares a bit of money for flour and eggs and has them help him bake bread. He leaves through the book without telling them and, like magic, inky black check marks stare back at him.

They catch on pretty quick.

“Why?” Jeremy asks, “Why are you doing this?”

Trevor shrugs. Same reason he let them into his home and let them stay — because he can. Because they've grown on him in the short time he’s known them, despite their strangeness. Because he wants to see them succeed, achieve everything they’re capable of and do everything they want to do. Trevor knows what it’s like when there’s nothing that can be done, when you’re completely and utterly at the mercy of the gods, and knows that isn’t now.

This time, there are still things that can be done, things that need to be done — one-hundred and three of them, actually. And if they want to finish them anytime in the next century, they really should get started now.

Chapter Text

The tasks are not simple or easy or quick. Some are — shear a sheep, bake a cake, forge yourself a new pickaxe — and those are cleared through promptly. Others take time or effort or concentrated planning — find diamonds, lay down a railway, craft a map that stretches from horizon to horizon. Some are kind — give 1000 emeralds in trade or charity — and some are cruel — find and kill the ender dragon. Twice.

As Trevor reads through the stream of trials, scheming and planning and preparing, he finds no connecting theme, no obvious virtue they want you to learn, no defining message. Just rigid tasks waiting to be checked off. Why someone would choose them, and why someone would make them the measure by which another could go home, is beyond him.

Michael snorts when Trevor phrases this to him, asking What does this even prove? Gavin laughs without humor. Jack tells him not to think about it. Geoff shrugs tiredly. Jeremy stares at the stars as if they’d done him a personal wrong.

“Hell if I know,” Michael answers, “I don’t even know why they tossed us out in the first place.”

There’s a bitter tinge to his voice — to all their voices, when the subject is brought up — and Trevor nods along. To be tossed aside, forgotten, cursed, without so much as a reason — he understands that.

Regardless, they press on, because despite the incomprehensibility of the situation, they still speak of home with a wistful, dreamy tone. 

Gavin tells him stories as they lay sprawled in the meadow, stiff grass poking their backs while the sun inches over the horizon. He tells him of a home so rich and sprawling that it couldn’t be contained. Of a house he and Michael built, board by board, and slowly filled up with all the things they loved. How they thought they’d live there forever. Gavin smiles a fond smile and Trevor swears the cold sun shines just a little warmer.

Michael tells him of all the mischief he got up to, and of the little garden he called his own. How he and his home were always the loudest, gaudiest of them all — decorated with strings of lights and vivid flowers and strange little masks. Trevor jokes how different it sounds from his own home — their home, really, they’ve been living under the roof for months at this point — with its crooked walls and loose shingles and peeling paint. Michael takes that as an invitation, and soon he’s painting the walls and filling the flower boxes and making Trevor a strange little mask — a wooden thing with an iron golem’s face.

Jack’s frown is deep when for the first time since he’s tended the crops, one of the patches withers. It’s small and it was inevitable, really — the soil and sun have been wrong for years and the fact it’s taken this long to fail is proof of Jack’s talent, but the man still holds the wrinkled vine as if he’s lost a dear friend. Back home, Jack tells him, his plants never withered. They grew and bore fruit and never stopped, and he watched over each like a proud parent. Trevor takes the vine from his hands and tells him he isn’t to blame. This is just the way of things here. Things fail. Things die. Trevor takes the plow, buries the husk under the earth and notes that nothing is lost. Those that die will nourish the soil again. Jack seems to take some comfort in that. 

Jeremy is halting when he speaks of home. What he used to do before this, Trevor’s not sure, but he apparently worked with forges for some time, though it was long ago and he’s rusty — is what he says, but Jeremy hammers out sturdy tools and perfect blades, so they seem to be working on different definitions of rusty. They’d be beside each other, deep in the mines or slaving in the forges, and Jeremy would start off with a Y’know , there was this one time back home where… and then mumble, mumble, mumble, like a school boy telling a story and stopping midway because they remembered what happened was illegal. Trevor catches the word altar once, and wonders for a second if Jeremy’s a religious man, but Jeremy laughs when he asks and doesn’t explain any further. 

Geoff winces when Trevor brings home a pair of chickens from the market. They have the money for it now and they’d need the eggs and feathers soon enough, and Trevor thought Geoff could handle a few more animals to care for. It seems he thought wrong. It’s fine, Geoff says, slowly losing the tension in his shoulders, though he still keeps his eyes from falling on the hens. He had chickens at home, is all, hundreds of them, and they remind him too much of a better time. A simpler time. Trevor says he didn’t know, tells him not to worry about it, says he’ll take care of the chickens himself. And he does, for weeks, though eventually Geoff lets the hens peck at his feet and roost in his lap and talks to them as if they could cluck back answers. 

He doesn’t get answers. Not clear ones at least. One night, after a fit of insomnia, Trevor finds his old telescope and carries it up to the roof on a whim. He finds Jeremy already there. They share the eyeglass and talk about the stars, the planets, the perplexity of the Universe. Even though he says it all with a shrug, Jeremy’s well of knowledge is deep and he turns the telescope dials with knowing hands. 

Trevor tells him how he used to calculate astronomical tables in the city a few towns over. The ‘astro’ part had tricked him into it — it turned out to be boring, boring work spent mulling over numbers and equations, but he was good at it and it paid well enough that he eventually left with some friends and bought the plot they’re standing on today. Jeremy tells him of his own home, how they tinkered and invented with metal and magic, how with their machines they could’ve solved any problem in the world. How he could’ve made Trevor’s old job obsolete with a few twists of steel. 

When Jeremy gets home, Trevor says, he’ll hold him to that. Silence slips into the air, and Jeremy’s eyes turn bitter. It’s a familiar expression.

“If you all miss home so much,” Trevor asks, “Why didn’t you try to go back?”

He knows why they didn’t start the book sooner — the tasks can seem impossible, not worth the effort, and they were never in the mindset to try — but that isn’t what he’s asking. Why didn’t they knock at the gates of their home and beg or apologize or parlay or something? With all the love they spoke of it, it felt like they would’ve done anything to get home. Or at least tried.

“We did,” Jeremy says, eyes locked on the sky. “It didn’t work.”

The weeks press on. They work through the pages, slowing down as the meatier tasks come to a head, but Trevor doesn’t falter.

It’s all-encompassing — the work, the trials, the five new faces that aren’t so new anymore, and the months slip away without Trevor realizing. Then one morning he hears a whoop from the trees, and Trevor’s mind flickers from confused to guilty to riotously happy, all in a few seconds, because how could he have forgotten?

It’s perhaps an exaggeration to say Alfredo rides down from the hillside like a knight in shining armor, but not by much. Main difference is that his armor is leather, lighter for all the traveling he does, but his beaming smile does most of the shining anyway. 

They call out each other’s names and Trevor knows the others are staring, but there’ll be time for introductions later. For now, he clasps Alfredo’s arm as he rides by and Alfredo leaps off his horse as it’s still moving — a dumb, dangerous move that Trevor will reprimand him for later, though for now he just wraps his old friend in a hug.

As they pull away, Alfredo finally seems to take a good look around. His eyes grow bewildered, catching on the green fields and the remodeled house and the one, two, three, four, five — five strangers staring back at him in the distance.  

“What the hell is going on?” Then he turns back to Trevor with fake heartache in his eyes. “You finally replaced us, Trevor? You know I expected it, but it still fucking hurts.”

“You shut your mouth.” And then they laugh and hug again. 

In the next few days, Matt rides in on old Sugarcube, and Lindsay and Fiona charge in together on fiery steeds, all in good spirits despite their long journeys. There’s more wide eyes and ‘What the fuck’ s as they take in the sight of home — well, they haven’t lived here in years, but Trevor likes to think they still somewhat consider it home — all green fields and clean water and not dying. Not to mention the five strangers carousing around the place.

The five don't ask too many questions — these are Trevor’s friends and they're here to visit and that's good enough for them. He catches them staring, studying, sometimes, but they never ask. The four are a little more curious.

“So what’s their deal?” Alfredo asks when it’s just them dotted around the dining table, and he gestures to the house, the green fields, the black book laying in the center of the table.

So Trevor explains as best he can. How they’d appeared, battered and bruised and he let them in because he could. How they were tossed from their home without so much as a reason, how they needed to finish one-hundred and three trials to return and how ever since they’d come, the flowers have bloomed, the crops have grown and the mines started coughing up ore. 

"That's a little freaky," is Fiona’s response, and yeah, she has a point.

“Sounds like aliens,” Lindsay says and Trevor scoffs. Not that he can refute it though. They did look up at the sky a lot now that he thinks about it.

Matt shrugs. "Hey, if they pull their own weight, who cares where they're from?"

And that seems to settle that. Any misgivings they might’ve had are dropped and they make first contact as smoothly as ten chaotic forces possibly can.

Fiona makes sure to assert her dominance by flicking Michael’s masks any chance she gets, but it’s all in jest. Matt and Jeremy bond over blueprints and building, and the inexplicable testing they do after said blueprints and building. Lindsay employs Jack and Geoff to help them cook things — arguably food — but really all they make is a mess in the kitchen. And don’t get him started on the chaos Gavin and Alfredo got up to at dusk.

By the end of a few short weeks, the ten act like they’ve known each other all their lives, full of easy laughs and playful jabs and warm moments. Trevor pins it on similar senses of humor and familiar pain. 

They dive into the trials and blaze their way through the pages with newfound energy. Lindsay and Fiona offer their swords and a willingness to fight, Matt his knowledge in anything building or crafting, Alfredo all he knows of the lands past the horizon. Checkmarks dot the book’s pages, and for a moment, in a little valley that just a year ago was struggling to breathe, everything feels right.  

But it can’t last, Trevor knows. Alfredo and the rest have new lives that they’ve built over the years, lives they can’t risk letting go, and eventually, they’ll have to return.

So eventually, they leave — with a promise to return and lend a hand when they get down to dragons and Withers, but still. They leave. And just like the first time and the times after, the loneliness settles in Trevor’s chest at Alfredo’s last wave, as their silhouettes disappear into the treeline and the last of their voices ebb into silence. 

When he’s alone on the rooftop, under the stars that night, he can’t help but wonder if things could’ve been different. If perhaps he could’ve asked them to stay.

But no, he couldn’t have. Well, he could have, but it would’ve been reckless and selfish and ignorant. Things are good now, in this moment, in this bubble, but Alfredo and Lindsay and Fiona and Matt brought tale of the rest of the world, and the rest of the world still struggles. The droughts creep further and further. Wars rage for what usable land is left. The sun is sluggish, the winters long, the gods silent. 

Whatever miracle blessing them here is just that — a miracle. And those are fickle things. It means they’re working on borrowed time, and Trevor doesn’t know how long it’ll last or who they borrowed it from or what it’ll cost him. Just that it can’t last. 

He locks eyes with the unblinking stars, letting himself be bitter for a moment — for his friends, the five with him now and the four that can’t be — just for a moment, and then he shakes it off. There’s still work to be done, and he returns to it with a vengeance.

The five aren’t in any hurry, shrugging off the concern that their little paradise could possibly fall away. Gavin takes whole afternoons sunbathing in the meadow while Michael twirls flower crowns beside him. Geoff spends weeks working straw and wood into coops and nameplates for every hen. Jack talks of expansions to the farm and renovations to the house that they don’t need. Jeremy casts their excess iron into contraptions and machines that most times end up as shambles on the floor.

Perhaps before, Trevor would’ve joined them, but the image of Alfredo and the others fading into the treeline is reburned in his mind, and he’s been reminded that it’s best not to drag their feet. 

He says they should travel, work on a whole leg of tasks that they haven’t yet touched. Alfredo and the others gave them maps, marking down all the biomes and temples and villages they’d crossed in their travels, all the places the trials beckon them to find, and now is as good a time to start as any.

Trevor, Jeremy, Michael and Gavin head out — Jack and Geoff stay to watch house for now — and it all starts well, the worry and loneliness Trevor harboured beginning to fade as he travels and laughs besides the three. They’re a day and a half out when Trevor almost slips into an abyss.

Michael catches him, stops him from falling down the sheer drop like the stones that skitter down, down, down. Trevor means to say a thank you, maybe toss out a joke about his own clumsiness, but then his vision settles and the sight steals the words out of his mouth. It’s a pit, a crater, a void, large enough to fit Trevor’s house and farm and silkworm-riddled trees with room to spare, and so deep that the bottom is eaten by it’s own shadow. A jagged emptiness where acres and acres of land should be, a sort of silent devastation that cannibalizes his entire field of vision.

Trevor’s heart roars in his chest. “Holy shit. What the hell...”

Gavin peers across the abyss, frowning, but not shaken. He watches Trevor closely, before shrugging. “Maybe it was a meteor strike.”

It’s a compelling idea when Trevor manages to rip his eyes off the sight and process the words. There have been things falling from the sky over the last year, fiery streaks clawing through the air and crashing somewhere in the distance. Their paths are always close and short and violent, and Trevor’s never managed to catch them in his telescope but even with just the naked eye they make his breath catch. Not with wonder though, because there’s something in those red streaks, something in the chasm yawning in front of him, that makes a pit form in his stomach. There’s something to them. In the uniformity of the comets’ paths. In the sheer scale of the abyss before him. Something precise in the chaos. Calculated. Conscious.

“Meteors don’t make craters like that. ”

Gavin plays with the hem of his shirt. “Guess not.”

Jeremy walks up to the edge beside him, undaunted. He looks annoyed, if anything. Michael stays back, leaning against a tree with his arms crossed, resolutely ignoring the entire thing. No one offers another theory or explanation. Perhaps they know as much as Trevor what could have possibly caused this devastation. Or rather, who.

Looking to the sky, Trevor lets the anger bubble to his throat. His voice is quiet and his grin mocking. “Can’t give us a break, can you?”

No answer. Of course not.

Jeremy breathes a deep sigh. “Maybe it was an accident.” 

“I doubt the gods make accidents.”

“I think you’d be surprised,” Jeremy says with a little humor.

Trevor doesn’t laugh.

“Then they’re reckless. Selfish. All of this — gone, and they don’t blink an eye. They just take and destroy without a single thought about the people who have to live with what they do.”

Jeremy stares at him. “You don’t know that.”

“I think I do.” Trevor sets his jaw and turns away. “C’mon. Let’s go around.”

They’re all staring at him now, and Trevor takes five long paces before he hears them start to follow. For the rest of the day, there are no jokes being told or stories being shared or any playful bumps or jabs, and Trevor notices how the three lag behind, keeping their distance from him. It’s unsettling — the silence, the wariness — and once they leave the crater behind them and his anger wears away, Trevor can’t shake the feeling that he’s said something wrong.

It isn’t until night, when the others are sleeping and Trevor’s staring up at the stars peeking in through the leaves, that Jeremy shifts to look at him. Jeremy doesn’t say anything at first, just studies him before following his gaze up to the sky.

“What…” Jeremy starts, then stops. Trevor breaks his gaze from the stars and Jeremy meets his eyes before starting again. “What… what happened to you? To your farm? To Alfredo and Lindsay and the others?”

Trevor raises an eyebrow because isn’t it obvious, really? 

“Well, y’know...” He waves vaguely all around them. “ This .”

“But what happened?”

“You don’t remember?”

“I don’t know.”

Trevor stares bewildered but Jeremy just stares back. He looks almost scared, desperate for an answer, and Trevor knows he’s sincere.

“It was years ago. A few years before you showed up.”

He tells him how it started with a burst of light in the night sky, a dim red flare like a new star being born billions and billions of lightyears away, glowing for a minute before ebbing back into nothing. Then shortly after, five more bursts of light, though this time they streaked across the sky like comets and disappeared just as quickly.

Some say it was a supernova and a meteor shower all at one. The more religious have more fanatical theories.

Trevor doesn’t know what they were. Didn’t have his telescope out that night. Was too caught in the moment. He was sitting up on his roof after a fit of insomnia and Alfredo had followed him up, refusing to let him stay up alone. Trevor was pointing out constellations when the first glows started to light up the sky. Alfredo had looked at him for answers and when Trevor had none to offer, they just stared in wonder as the lights danced across.

It was beautiful, really. Or at least it would’ve been, if not for what came after.

He tells him how it wasn’t much at first. Just a few rows of corn failing to grow, just a smaller than average catch from the river, just one cow they had to put down after it went mad. How they thought the sun growing dim and the moon turning sickly yellow was just a dust cloud passing through. How those little things stacked, and those little things grew into big things, until whole fields were withering to dust.

He tells him how they tried to make things work. Rationing food and selling their livestock and venturing further and further into the forest for game. How they came back exhausted and empty handed, how they went to sleep hungry night after night, but how they struggled and fought as long as they could.

He tells him how it wasn’t enough. How people — even Trevor on one horrible, desperate night in the dead of winter — had looked up to the sky and begged the gods to lift the curse they’d cast. How all they got in answer were harsher winters and grueling storms and cold, cold, silence.

He tells him how when it was clear things weren’t going to change, Trevor divvied up what money and food they had left, saddled the last of their horses, and told the four to leave. To find work that could feed them and a home fairer than this one. And for days, weeks, months they refused but Trevor begged and begged because unlike the gods, there was some chance they’d listen. And they did.

Jeremy listens. He doesn’t recognize any of what Trevor’s saying, never notes what he’d been doing at the time, never goes Oh wait, I remember that. No, instead the more Trevor talks the more horrified Jeremy grows.

“That’s…”

“Shit. It all went to shit,” Trevor says, and sighs. “I don’t… I don’t know if the gods are really up there, Jeremy. But if they are, they’re a bunch of assholes.”

Trevor smirks a little but wipes it off when he sees Jeremy isn’t laughing. He looks grim.

Trevor feigns a cough. “Sorry. I sound like an ungrateful bastard. Forget I said anything.”

“No, you’re right,” Jeremy says, voice barely a whisper. “You’re absolutely right.”

Chapter Text

“ Agh , pickles. I hate pickles.”

Trevor’s knee deep in sea water and Jeremy’s wading towards him with a basket of the things in his hands. Plant four sea pickles in a cluster — another trial in their long, long list. 

A bit away, Gavin stumbles around them with a bucket, trying to catch one of the little fish darting between their legs. Geoff and Michael are a blur in the distance, rowing out to look at the reef, and Trevor hopes they don’t go much farther. With their sense of direction, who knows if they’d ever get back. Jack is at shore, sleeping in the sand, fishing rod propped beside him. The line tugs, but he doesn’t wake, and none of them plan on waking him either.

Jeremy plops the basket down and little flecks of pickle spill out into the crystal clear water. Trevor scrunches up his face.

Jeremy laughs, grabs a pickle, and says without looking at him, “You don’t have to, y’know.” 

“But I want to, y’know.” Trevor mimics the inflection, grabbing a pickle himself and sticking it in the sand.

Jeremy looks at him, smiles with that expression in his eyes that Trevor can never decipher. It’s a running gag, this little back and forth, said so many times Trevor’s not sure when it started.

It was serious at first, Jeremy or whoever catching his shoulder before they entered a desert temple or abandoned mineshaft or wherever the next trial waited, and telling him with furrowed brows: You don’t have to go, y’know. It’s dangerous, he could get hurt, something could happen, and there was no reason for him to follow them anyway. The trials weren't his fight. No one would blame him if he didn’t come with. 

Those first few times make him pause, deliberating, before shaking his head and brushing the worried hand off his shoulder. He was coming with, no matter the danger, and he was happy to do it. Whatever they did, Trevor wanted to be right there beside them. That’s the answer every time they turn to him and ask — a smile, an assurance and a charge forward into the fray. 

The others learn to expect the answer, and stop asking altogether. Jeremy still does, though half-jokingly, and even though he’s said a million times, Jeremy is still genuine when he asks, and likewise, Trevor is genuine when he answers. He’s sticking with them, through thick and thin and gross, gross pickle juices.

Michael and Geoff return at sunset. Gavin shows them the guppies he caught in his bucket. Jack wakes up with an empty line. They pack up, head to the boats, and make their way up river for home.

While they row, Trevor takes the book out from under the boards, opens it and sees the new ink-black check marks dotting the pages. He takes out a pencil and makes a few extra ticks on the margins, marking his own progress. The checks look crude in comparison, but the magic of the book doesn’t reject them, and seeing the row of six marks makes him smile. 

Entire pages are filled now and flicking through them has something like pride blooming in his chest. It's a long forgotten feeling. For so long he’s been defined by what he couldn’t do — help his friends, save his farm, stop the world from withering to dust — but the trials are an antithesis. Defining him by what he can do. What he has done. What he will do. 

They’ve taken him far — today, to a gentle sunset by the ocean — and they’ll be taking him farther. To the yawning doorway of a woodland mansion. Sailing for buried treasure. Scaling a mountain just to see what’s on the other side. Sparking flint and steel in an obsidian frame. 

There’s a pause at that last one. The air in front of him shivers, a sheen of purple spreading from the center out to the edges of the frame. The color deepens, the air pulses and swirls, and the finished portal glows faintly in the dark. Trevor stares. In theory, he knows what this is, knows what they’re getting into, is decked out in armor with a sword at his hip for that reason. But still. The sight catches him. Another dimension. It’s cause for a hush.

“You don’t have to, y’know,” Jeremy says beside him, and there’s nothing joking in his tone. Purple light reflects off his armor and he has that look in his eyes again, the one Trevor still can’t decipher. Trevor’s heart is hammering in his chest but he smiles all the same.

“I know. But I want to.” And he takes the step through. 

Enter the Nether. Another one in the books. It’s only uphill from there. 

Autumn brings blaze rods and ghast tears, winter brings the glow of potions and enchantments, and come spring, Alfredo and the others are riding down the hillside, ready to swing. Before they know it, there are 12 eyes of ender between them and an X on a map where a stronghold waits. It’s all a rush of motion and it’s the five who pull the reins back a bit.

There's those worried brows and hands catching shoulders. It’s a torrent of You don’t have to do this. It’s not your fight. You can always back out. It’s okay, really. You don’t have to. You don’t have to. It’s the back and forth they’ve been having with Trevor for years, except multiplied by four and concentrated into a few short weeks. 

And much like Trevor, the four brush the worries away.

“Uh... yeah?” Matt says when Jeremy takes him by his shoulders and asks Are you sure you want to do this?  

“Of course we’re coming with. Who else is gonna protect you dumbasses?” Says Lindsay, sharpening their sword the night before they depart for the stronghold.

“Oh my god, shut up.” That’s Fiona, eyes rolling after someone asks for the dozenth time as they trek the next morning.

“We’re with you, alright? Stop asking.” Alfredo, with an exasperated laugh, when they’re staring down at the dark, rippling surface of the portal, cutting off Jeremy who had his mouth open to ask one last time.

“Just making sure…” Jeremy says instead, and Trevor just shakes his head, laughs.

Trevor worries too of course, for all of them, but he knows he can’t stop them even if he tried. Lindsay and Fiona are warriors at heart, Lindsay for the thrill and chaos, Fiona for whatever cause she finds worthy. Alfredo has the soul of an explorer, Matt an architect, always looking for new lands to mark, new challenges to conquer. 

They’re all amazing in their own ways, and he expects nothing less when the four are the first to leap into the portal. The five follow quick behind. Trevor lifts a foot to join them, and falters.

The words catch him, a force of habit — You don’t have to, y’know. The swirling void whispers in harmony, words of danger and dragons and death. With no one else around, no joking tone, no watching eyes, the question makes his courage tremble.

But then he thinks of six checkmarks smiling up at him in a row. Of green fields and a house full of life and gentle sunsets by the ocean. Of the 9 others — his family — waiting for him on the other side of this portal. That’s answer enough. Trevor drops in and the world fades away.

They fight the dragon. Respawn it. Summon the Wither. It’s a whole thing.

It ends with another page filled and a drunken night to celebrate. They’re not done yet, far from it, but the worst of it is over, and the ten of them are here, alive, mostly unscathed. A few close calls still sticky in their minds, but alive nonetheless. 

The others are winding down, nodding off on couches, dining chairs, beds if they manage, but Trevor, well, he descends into a hyper state once he’s had a few, and now he’s bouncing around, busying himself by putting away glasses, wiping wither dust off armor, dragging people off to their rooms. When he’s done and everyone’s settled on at least a pillow, his head count comes up short. 

He peeks outside and finds the missing two — Geoff, who doesn’t drink, and Jeremy, who has the alcohol tolerance of a full grown bull, apparently. For some reason in his drunken haze, Trevor decides to go out and join them. It’s a decision he starts to regret as he gets closer, sees that he might be intruding on some solemn moment — the two of them, sitting on the bench they have against the barn, trading quiet words that Trevor can’t hear. Jeremy’s hunched over a little, shoulders drooped. Geoff has a tired look in his eyes and a comforting hand on the other man’s arm.

Before he can turn back, they spot him. Trevor waves. Geoff smiles, waves back. Jeremy straightens, and to Trevor’s relief, starts to smile as well. The two share a few more words, laugh, before Jeremy gets up and starts walking back towards the house. He clasps Trevor's arm as he passes, jolts him. Jeremy gives him that look again, the one he can’t decipher. Trevor’s brain functionality is too stunted to do more than blink at him. Then Jeremy keeps walking and Trevor stumbles forwards, landing on the bench beside Geoff.

They’re quiet for a long, kind of lazy, moment. Whatever force convinced him to come out here has left him, and Trevor’s just now realizing just how tired he is — perhaps a product of the night, or the battles before, or the weeks upon weeks spent planning and preparing before that. The chickens cluck in the distance and Trevor’s eyes threaten to droop shut.

Geoff breaks the silence. “You know… before this, before all of this, I used to be the one leading this pack of idiots.” 

“Yeah?” Is all Trevor’s muddled brain offers.

Geoff nods. “Long time ago, you can imagine. It was easier back then. Simpler. ” He smiles and Trevor can tell there’s a joke hiding there. The smile turns wistful. “Then we got thrown out and I definitely wasn’t leading anything after that. That’s when the others stepped up and they… they tried. They tried to get us back and we made mistakes. A lot of them.”

Trevor doesn’t know what to say to that. Definitely doesn’t know what to say when Geoff turns to him with this fond, fond look in his eye.

“And then you. You stepped into the picture and you let us into your home and you lead us and you didn’t have to do any of it and—” Geoff catches himself rambling, steadies his voice. “And thank you. I don’t think I’ve ever really said that so there it is.”

Trevor blinks once. Twice. “It’s… it’s nothing, really. You’ve done just as much for me.”

“I don’t think we have.”

“Of— of course you have.”

Geoff shakes his head. Turns to face the stars. “You’ve done more for us than you can even imagine. You’ve opened our eyes more than you’ll ever know.”

Even in his drunken state, Trevor doesn’t miss the flash of sadness that crosses his face. It disappears just as quickly. Geoff clasps a hand on his shoulder and pushes him towards the house. 

“Go home. Get some rest.”

He nods and starts heading back. Trevor forgets most of the conversation by morning, though the warm feeling in his chest lingers for days after.

They’re in the home stretch now — all the tasks left are tallies of emeralds traded or iron stockpiled, or a waiting game for blind luck to strike. Alfredo and the others stick around for a few more days, helping where they can and they fall into an easy, lazy rhythm. Despite how close they are to the end, the five don’t fall into a frenzy — no, in fact they’re the most lax of them all.

They take their sweet time, enjoying each other’s company, pulling more shenanigans, tinkering with ideas. Sometimes, Trevor catches them just sitting on the porch, staring at life moving past. He can’t help but feel a tension to it, though — in Trevor’s experience, when someone hits the brakes, it’s because they see something looming up ahead. Something's changed. Trevor's known them long enough to see their tells. How they’re skirting around something. Can feel a question just hanging on the tip of a tongue, a stare that lasts a little too long, a crease of the brow that betrays just too much emotion.

“No harm in taking it slow,” is all Jeremy says when Trevor questions their pace.

Trevor opens his mouth, but no words form. Maybe before, he would’ve fought Jeremy on that — history tells of the dangers of taking things slow, of taking things for granted — but something stops him this time. Maybe it’s the calm. The high that comes from vanquishing primordial beings besides your friends. The green, green fields, that haven’t threatened to wilt in years. The news from Alfredo that though the outside world hasn’t been getting better, for once it hasn’t been getting worse, that battles still rage and the world is bruised, but the air has settled. That maybe they’re at the end of this downward spiral. That maybe, Trevor thinks, maybe for the first time in years, he can take it slow. Deserves it too, maybe.

It's a quiet — slow — few days before Matt has to leave, then Lindsay and Fiona. There’s somber goodbyes and that heavy weight that settles on his shoulder, but something new fidgets at the back of his mind. Before Alfredo rides off into the treeline, Trevor catches his hand.

Maybe it’s naive, maybe it’s foolish, maybe it’s brash, but Trevor's fought hard to keep himself from turning bitter, hopeless, and he won’t deny the feeling building up inside him. He doesn't know when it sprouted, but sometime in the last few years — tended by five new faces, watered by hundred or so check marks, a hundred and more memories — something hopeful has bloomed in Trevor's chest. He’s starting to think that this might be something more than a miracle. He’s starting to think this might last.

He tells Alfredo that if he wants to, if he’s willing to try, he’s welcome to stay. 

“I’d like that. Not today, but one day,” Alfredo says with a gentle smile. “But you know, I’m not the only one you should be asking that to.”

Well, of course not, Trevor says. There’s Matt and Fiona and Lindsay too. Alfredo shakes his head. Looks out to the fields and Trevor follows his eyes across the rows of corn and the ivy-threaded farmhouse and the silhouettes through the window and—  

Oh.

“I’ll think about it,” Alfredo says. “You should too.” 

And he does think about it, quite a bit, and can’t help but feel guilty for it. Because it’s selfish, isn’t it? Selfish to want them to stay — how can he expect them to stay when all they’ve ever wanted was to go home? Every day, every check mark, every gentle sunset by the ocean — it’s always been for one goal.

He can’t expect them to stay. To want to stay. But his thoughts linger on all the years they’ve spent together, the home they’ve built and this odd, slow pace they’ve taken up. The strange looks, the words unsaid. How maybe they’re realizing, just like Trevor, what the end means and maybe they’re realizing it’s not exactly what they want. That maybe home has started to mean something different.

Maybe it is a stupid question. Maybe they already know what the end is and it’s always been what they wanted. Maybe they’ll laugh in his face for asking. But whatever the answer, he has to ask. Let them know the option’s there. Waiting, always, should they ever change their minds.

Like Jeremy, catching his shoulder before they step into danger.

You don’t have to go, y’know? If you don’t want to, you don’t have to go.

Trevor imagines flipping the script, throwing away the joking tone and turning to him with nothing but sincerity in his eyes.

You can stay, y’know? If you want to, you can stay.

He’ll ask. Before this ends, he’ll ask. He never has the chance. 

Everything changes when Michael and Gavin run in from the woods with a pillager’s banner waving in the wind, though Trevor doesn’t know it at the time. Excitement courses through him at first, knowing that to defend against a raid was one of their last trials, a finicky one that banked on luck to complete. The kind that had Trevor tearing hair out trying to plan for. Now here they were, Gavin and Michael by some stroke of luck finding an outpost and nicking the banner for themselves.

They scramble, for armor, for bows, for weapons, throwing down benches and crates for barricades, because they could be here at any moment. Jeremy whizzes past him, too rushed to even catch his shoulder and ask. That should’ve been the first warning. It's too sudden. Too fast. Too many loose armor straps, too many dulled swords, a bit too much confidence. They’ve killed dragons after all. This shouldn’t be anything to worry about. 

They’re scattered, moving too quick yet too relaxed, when they first start to show. Pillagers — gray, dead-eyed beings that could encircle a village in a snap, drawn to the ripped banner that now hung from the farmhouse's roof — pouring out from the trees.

Six against waves and waves and waves. That should’ve been another warning.

He doesn’t know when exactly he realizes this won’t be as painless a fight as he’d thought. Maybe when one of the pillager’s beasts busts the fence of the barn and sends the animals screaming. When a stray flame catches the wheatfield and takes out a few rows before being put out. When he catches glimpses of the others tiring, staring wild-eyed back to him. It’s definitely gone awry when Trevor stumbles on the riverbank. He loses his breath and his blade and his muscles burn. Looks across the water to see a crossbow locked and drawn, staring back at him. 

It’s all gone to hell when he sees Jeremy in the corner of his eye. He’s lost his sword in the chaos. He’s not even wearing armor. Yet he stands between Trevor and the arrow like it’s the simplest thing in the world.

Trevor bolts like he’s the one who’s been shot. Wades across the river even as his legs scream at him to stop. Someone takes care of the pillager — Jack or Geoff or Michael, who knows. He’s too busy cradling Jeremy in his lap, hands pressing down around the arrow that hit too squarely in his chest, muttering curses under his breath.

Jeremy’s eyes are glassy. He lays a hand on Trevor’s bloodstained one and gives a little smile. “Just a little blood. Nothing wrong with a little blood.”

Then Jeremy's eyes roll to the back of his head and Trevor calls him a fucking dumbass bastard, get up, you absolute shithead— 

“Trevor, move!” Michael shouts in the distance.

The ground is shaking, whether from an evoker’s spell or a beast barreling this way, Trevor doesn’t know, doesn’t care. Someone yells at him to move again, and suddenly Gavin’s grabbing his arm and pulling him onto his feet. Trevor says something scalding when his hands are ripped from Jeremy. He’s dragged away, pushed behind a barricade as rubble flies. Gavin falls in beside him, poking his head over the barricade to shoot his bow, telling Trevor to “Just stay down, love,” and he loses time after that.

When he gets up again, the battle is winding down, pillager bodies dotting the ground, slowly turning to ash. Trevor's eyes trail across the horizon, along the riverbank and— 

And Jeremy’s gone. Just a spatter of reddish brown where he should be and Trevor stares and shakes and feels a little like screaming.

Jack grabs him by the shoulders, turns him away from the sight. “Trevor— Trevor calm down, he’s gonna be fine, okay? He’s gonna be fine.”

Fine, my ass.

The man all but hugs him, maybe to comfort him, maybe to stop him from shaking out of his skin. As if Trevor on the brink of breaking apart is the crisis here, not Jeremy who took an arrow for him, who’s lost and hurt or worse— 

“Let’s go inside, alright?” Jack says, and leads him away in a stupor.

He walks, dimly sees the burned fields, the hogs loose around the barn, the broken railings on the porch. The book on the dining table when he enters the house. That stupid fucking book.

The others make their way inside. Jeremy’s not there. Not limping in, not being carried in someone’s arms, not being hurriedly bandaged on the couch. Jack offers him a cup of water. Trevor pushes it away, gripping the edge of the table.

“Where is he?”

“He’ll be back,” Jack says.

Trevor makes a sound, something between a scoff and a sob. “What are you talking about? I saw him, he’s hurt, we have to go look for him.”

No one moves. Trevor drags himself forward. Michael blocks his path.

“What’s wrong with you?” Trevor says, and his voice sounds too loud, too wild, even in his own ears. It sounds angry but he’s not, not really. No, he’s terrified, because he doesn’t know where Jeremy is and he’s falling apart and no one’s acting like they should be — they’re just staring at him, sharing these nervous little looks.

"Trevor, you know there's something weird about us," Gavin says.

A weak smile flickers on his face. "Well, I wasn't gonna say anything but now that you bring it up..."

"We're gods, Trevor," Geoff says.

The smile fades away. “...What?”

"We’re gods,” Geoff repeats, “We fell and we fucked up. I know you’re angry at us and dissapointed and we fucking deserve it but we know now and we’re sorry and we care about you, we wanna fix this—"

Jack lays a hand on his shoulder because he’s rambling, and Trevor’s not listening to anything he’s saying. Scratch that, he is listening, he’s listening too intently and everything feels like a tidal wave, suffocating him, every word slamming against his chest because it’s too much, it’s all too much— 

Trevor grips the back of the dining chair. “I need… I need a minute.”

“Trevor, wait—” Gavin says, cut off by Michael’s, “Let him go,” and then Trevor’s tumbling out the door and walking in a stupor towards the trees.

He doesn't know what he's doing. What he’s trying to do. Breathe. Think. Get away from everyone and everything and hide. That’s what he feels like doing if he’s being honest, but as he walks, he realizes how impossible that is.

They’re everywhere. In the animals calling for him as he passes the barn. The rows of corn standing guard in the fields. The water whispering down the stream. They're in the wildflowers grinning at his feet, the very blood that sings in his veins. He couldn’t get away from them if he tried.

Trevor’s never felt quite so small. But not angry, he realizes. Dazed, maybe a little anxious, but not angry. He looks at the green fields, the bright stars, the worried silhouettes in the windows of the house, and thinks, how could he be? After everything they've been through, everything they've done for him — how could he be?

He has questions. So many questions. Tries not to think about them too much right now because all they’ll do is drive him mad. But he’s not angry. For now, he lets that thought ground him. That, and one other thought.

As fate would have it, it’s Jeremy who finds him in the woods, slumped against a rotten tree trunk, silkworms crawling at his back.

“Trevor, I’m so sorry,” is the first thing out of his mouth.

He’s not angry. He’s not bitter. Far from it. The second he sees Jeremy, relief washes over him with such force that tears bead at Trevor's eyes.

“What are you apologizing for? You saved my life.”

Fresh from whatever rebirth he’s gone through, bathing in moonlight, his face so open and honest and vulnerable — Jeremy’s nothing short of godlike. 

He walks closer and falls to his knees beside Trevor.

“Thank you. Thank you,” Jeremy mutters like a prayer. “Whatever you need, whatever questions you have, I can answer them.”

Trevor nods. Gets Jeremy to stop groveling and just sit beside him. There are questions, so many of them, as many as the stars in the sky, but there’ll be time for them later. For now he just wants to stay here, breathe, take in the world and enjoy the company he's so lucky to have. But there’s one thing, one question, that bitters the moment.

“Just one thing,” Trevor says. “When you finish the book. What happens?”

Pain flickers across Jeremy’s eyes. Like a shooting star. Bright for a second and gone the next. 

“We go home.”

Trevor’s heart pumps slow in his chest. “Forever.”

He’s silent. That’s answer enough. Trevor looks down. Nods. Accepts it, just like that, even though it hurts.

“I can stay,” Jeremy's voice breaks the silence, “Here. With you.”

“The fuck you’re not.”

"Trevor—”

"No."

“No, listen to me. The gods— we— I let you down your entire life. I want to make it up to you.”

“You can’t .” The words are like glass shards in his throat.

Jeremy’s face goes slack. “Trevor… I’m— I’m sorry, please just let me show you—” 

“No. No, I mean you can’t stay. You can’t.”

“Why— why not?”

Trevor shakes his head. Looks up through the pale leaves to the yellow moon staring down. Thinks of cold winter nights and war raging past the horizon and silhouettes fading into the trees.

“Because the world needs you. It’s been dying ever since you fell. You need to go back.”

“But what about you?” Jeremy says like he didn't hear him.

“What about me?”

“You'll be alone. What if something happens? What if you get hurt? Think about today.” Trevor closes his eyes, not wanting to think of today, of Jeremy’s body falling to the ground, of the dried blood still beneath his fingernails. Jeremy presses on. “After everything you’ve done, you shouldn’t have to struggle anymore. You deserve to be safe and happy and do whatever you want for the rest of your life.”

"You’ve done enough for me.”

"But not even half of what you deserve." There’s conviction in his voice, so much Trevor knows he’ll never be able to tell him otherwise. “I don’t have to go.”

“Yeah. You do,” Trevor says, the same conviction in his voice. “If you want to make me happy, go home, Jeremy.”

It’s quiet, so deathly quiet. Jeremy stares and stares, trying to find words to say, something to argue, a way to refuse. But in the end he lets out a sigh. Gives the smallest, slightest nod.

Then he looks at him, with that expression in his eyes again, and Trevor finally realizes what it is. It’s wonder. Admiration. It’s the look Trevor gives the stars when the sheer magnitude of their existence catches him off guard.

“Okay.” Jeremy says, finally. “Just know… I don’t— I don’t want to, y’know.”

“I know,” Trevor echoes. “But you have to, y’know.”

Chapter Text

They work. They work and work and work, and Trevor knows the days are ticking away, but he will not let them slow. Every day is another wilted field, another poisoned river, another battle map drawn. Every day is one too long — and yet somehow never enough. 

It feels like seconds, the weeks they spend reaping the fields, picking the mines, carting their goods to market. It’s tiring, grueling work in reality, but no one complains. Never even think of it. Would happily haul wares all day if they could.

It must be worse for them, he thinks, the gods, who measure life in eternities and feel their time disappear in a blink. But then again, maybe that makes it easier — knowing that these years, these moments, Trevor’s entire existence, will be just a tiny speck lost in the grand scheme of things. It doesn't, they assure him.

It hurts Trevor too, but he keeps his head up and pushes forward. They’re not going away, not really, he consoles himself. They’re going where they need to go and he should be honored that he got to spend even some of his little human life with powers older and grander than anything he can even imagine. Every time the wind blows, every time the rain pours, every time the sun shines — it’s all them. They’ve always been there and they always will be — a part of his life, forever. He only wishes he could be a part of theirs, too. Be there to see every time Geoff fumbles a chicken egg, hear Gavin blurt out a nonsense word and get teased out of the room, be the one to make Jeremy go full belly laughing till he can’t breathe. He wishes, but Trevor will not prolong the suffering of others just to save his own heart. So he pushes forward. Cherishes what time they have left. Two empty rows in a leather bound book. That’s what they have left. 

They work, they do not slow. They work and the weeks pass in a blink. They work and soon they’ve traded and tallied 1000 emeralds. Another checkmark. One row. 

The final trial is to create a fully powered beacon. It’s gratuitously dramatic. And takes a staggering amount of iron and effort to complete. Long days in the mine, and toiling at the forges, and lugging solid blocks of metal into their precise places. It’s tiring, lonely work, and it saddens him that their final days are spent so apart, split between different branches of the mine, heads down in the dirt. But maybe that’s a blessing too. Maybe if he doesn’t see them, throws himself into the work, it will hurt a little less when they’re gone. Somehow, he doesn't believe it.

It comes fast, too fast, the evening he pours molten iron into two casts, makes a mental count in his head, and realizes that’s all they need left. That they’re done. That there are no more days to count down to. Trevor walks back to the house and tries not to let the stiffness in his limbs show.

Before he reaches the porch, he hears Jeremy call his name. He looks up to see him and the others all on the roof, a telescope passing between them, waving him up to join. He stutter-steps. His first instinct is to pass on the offer, refusing to slow no matter how much he wants to, because there’s always work to be done. But now there’s nothing left to do but wait for metal to cool. So he slows. Climbs up the ivy crawling up the side of the house and lets the world still, just this once. Because he knows, they all know, that this will be the last night.

They don’t waste time being sad about it. They laugh and joke and tell stories of the last few years. Bump shoulders and share the spyglass and near tackle each other off the roof, as if nothing had come between them, as if nothing were about to change. They tell Trevor of the times before this, of all their antics in their sky home, of building and creating and discovering as the Universe watched, and Trevor listens, enraptured. Listens and tries to imagine it — a home amongst the stars. It must’ve been beautiful. They’ll be back there soon, he says.

He gets quiet hums and solemn nods in answer. The thought brings mixed feelings, Trevor knows, but he will not dance around it. He catches the little wistful stares they cast up to the sky, the ones that defined them so many years ago, when they were just strangers stumbling into his life. He notes it without resentment, because somehow he knows, no matter how long they stayed here, there would always be a part of them that missed home. 

“Did you ever figure it out?” Trevor wonders out loud. “Why all of this happened?”

They share glances with each other, mumble, give a couple of shrugs. It’s not a question that they talk about often — think about, yes — but rarely talk of. Falling — they think they understand that part, at the very least. Understand their recklessness, their ignorance, the cruelty in their indifference. They’ve made mistakes — there’s no uncertainty in that.

The trials are harder to be sure about — why they were given and why those tasks in particular. A way to atone for past mistakes, maybe prove their worth. A retesting of their mettle, Michael offers. But most of the tasks aren’t anything remarkable, unless you consider sticking a sponge in a furnace a challenge only the strongest could conquer. Maybe it was all just a way to celebrate the spirit of achievement, Geoff says, before laughing the idea away. Gavin says perhaps there was no meaning to it at all. Why should there be? Jack thinks the Universe works with more coherency than that. That perhaps it wanted them to set foot on the world they’d built, experience the earth in all the ways it should be.

They can’t know for sure. The Universe works in strange ways, after all. Strange, but undoubtedly kind, Jeremy says.

“It let us meet you, after all.”

Trevor turns to look at him but his eyes are locked on the stars. The stars stare unblinkingly back. Gavin reminds them of the time they tied Trevor up to a tree using silkworm string, and then they’re back to recounting old stories, letting the laughter chase away the night

Hours pass. The stars fade. They watch the sunrise together. There's a lull in the conversation and with a steadying breath, Trevor says the metal should be cooled by now. They climb down the ivy and gather at the beacon while the sky is still painted orange.

Jeremy and Michael lug the last two blocks to their places, completing the base — a jagged pyramid that shines silver in the sun. The glass centerpiece sits on one of the iron steps, waiting to crown the top. Trevor opens the book in his hands and flips through the filled pages, like he’s checking through an exam before he passes it in. Sure enough, they haven’t missed a question, the last empty row staring up at him expectantly. He closes the book and looks around to see everyone waiting.

“Who wants to do the honors?” Trevor asks with a smile, because despite it all, he wants these final moments to be a happy one.

Geoff gives an amused shake of his head and smacks a hand on Trevor’s back.

“It’s all you,” he says, and no one argues. Just look at him expectantly, and Trevor warms under their gazes. Can’t refuse that, can he?

He lays the book down at the base of the pyramid, picks up the final piece and climbs the fours steps up to the top. He sets the glass on the center of the altar and holds his breath.

For a moment, nothing happens. Then, from deep in the glass, something glows, growing stronger and stronger until everything clicks into focus. Wind rushes out in a wave, pure energy fills the air, and a beam of light splits the sky in half. He lets out his breath. Stares up at the ethereal blue, at the shaft of light that goes on and on and on, reaching towards the sky for eternity.  

They're done. 103 trials complete. Trevor doesn’t have to flip open the book to know. He can feel it — a silent crescendo of power and magic building all around him. Trevor turns around, and sees gods.

If there was ever any doubt that that is what they are, it burns away in that moment. They glow, rise, their clothes replaced by shining armor and flowing robes, crowns alighting their heads, their entire bodies seemingly being unstitched then restitched with pure energy instead of flesh. Light bends and dances around them, the color of the sunrise looks dull in comparison, the center of the Universe seems to shift to where they’re standing.

And perhaps he should be afraid, terrified of the power radiating around him, magic like nothing he’s ever seen. But he isn’t. His heart swells, seeing them rise, glow, laughing and smiling because this is all they’ve wanted, what they’ve worked on for years and years and years. 

In the end he doesn’t feel fear. He doesn’t feel bitter. He doesn’t feel pain. Pride. That’s what he feels.

Just as it seems like their power would overwhelm him, burn his mortal body to ashes, they start to dim. Through all the light and glory, he sees their faces, still so very much like themselves. Frowns and fond eyes and creased brows.

Trevor waves goodbye.

The world sharpens as they fade away, one by one. Gavin fades and the sun shines brighter. Michael fades and the flowers smell sweeter. Geoff, and the birds look bolder as they fly. Jack, and all at once, the crops in the field stand straighter. Jeremy fades, and Trevor’s heart seems to beat a little harder in his chest. 

The morning is still and Trevor is alone — but not really.

He walks down the steps of the beacon. Picks up the book and flips through the filled pages until he finds the line he’s looking for. Ink as dark as night fills the row. He takes his pencil and makes the last tick. Five black check marks all in a line, and Trevor in crude lead right there beside them. He heads inside and lays the book gingerly on the dining table.

A day passes. Two. Three. A week, a month, and then another. 

Life goes on. Quiet in a way it hasn’t been in so long. It still gets him, walking down the stairs to an empty room. Looking out the windows to see no one in the fields, no one lazing in the meadow, no one to spot him and wave good morning. Sometimes he forgets to feed the animals because he still thinks it’s someone else’s turn to do it. Keeps messing up the ratios in recipes because he’s not used to cooking for one. Little things he still needs to adjust to.

Alone — but not really. Because they’re still here, there, everywhere. Watching, smiling, giving little gifts.

He steps outside and instantly the sun parts the clouds. Wildflowers bloom at the foot of his house like bouquets left on his doorstep. The trees bear the sweetest fruit and his animals lovingly butt against his legs when he passes. His tools never seem to rust or wear. And somehow, his telescope always points true when he looks through the eyeglass, like someone had told the stars to move light-years just for his convenience. 

Unless it’s coincidence, of course, in which case he must look like a right fool every time he thanks Jack for a good harvest, every time he tells the chickens to say hello to Geoff for him, every time he looks up to the sky and tells Gavin he looks radiant today. Not that it isn’t a little crazy, anyway, whether they’re listening or not. But he’s pretty sure they’re listening, so he doesn’t stop.

The others pass through. Alfredo and Fiona, Lindsay and Matt, riding in from the treeline. They scan the fields, smiles quickly fading as their eyes find Trevor and only Trevor. There’s confusion — where are they hiding? — then realization, then a twinge of sadness before, surprisingly, a flare of anger. Because how could they leave without even saying goodbye? And more importantly, how could they leave Trevor? Alone? After everything they’d been through? 

“To be fair, I’m the one who made them to go,” Trevor says. “And they’re not gone. Not really.”

He tells them what happened since they left. The pillagers, the battle, Jeremy giving his life for Trevor’s own. How he came back. How the five strangers he’d let into his home were gods in disguise. And how those gods are home now.

There’s sputters of disbelief and confused laughs because this has to be a trick, right? Some sort of twisted shenanigans the six must be colluding on. But Trevor is somber. And the sun is glaring uncomfortably harsh at them. And they keep tripping on tree roots that seem to come out of nowhere whenever they start to voice a doubt. Then a bird shits in Matt’s hair and yeah, maybe they can believe it, and yeah, maybe it all makes sense, come to think of it.

They were always a little weird. A buncha assholes too, just like the gods would be, Fiona teases — and then she spends the rest of the day inside because those birds are coming back in full force. But yes, it makes sense, it really does, all things considered.

“It figures that you'd be the one to save the gods," Alfredo tells him, one day.  

Trevor lifts a brow. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Whatever you want it to mean."

Trevor tries to extract any sort of meaning from the playful smile on Alfredo’s lips. It’s contagious. Trevor smiles back with a shake of his head. “It could’ve been anyone.”

“And yet it was you.”

“It’s not like I did anything.”

“Uh-huh. Sure. Except, y’know, save their asses.”

Trevor bumps his shoulder with Alfredo’s. “If that’s what you consider saving, then you saved the gods as much as I did.”

“Then I guess we saved the gods. But for the record, you did most of the work.”

Trevor lets him have that. He’s not presumptuous enough to think that he, quote unquote, ‘saved the gods’, but he certainly helped, didn’t he? And that’s more than most can say.

Alfredo and the others are still a little peeved that the five didn’t wait to say goodbye, but they understand why. The world’s been through enough pain. The faster it started healing, the better. 

And they feel it, they tell him. How the world has shifted. How the forests and fields Alfredo passes feel alive again. How Lindsay and Fiona have spent less time fighting for land, and more time protecting the villages springing back to life. How Matt has been getting requests for homes and temples instead of walls and watchtowers. How they’ve seen green sprout from burned fields, how once abandoned shrines are filling again, how the sun shines bright and the winds blow gentle. 

Trevor smiles at the news. Knows the world isn’t completely fixed yet — after a near decade of suffering, how could it be? — but it’s healing fast. He didn’t expect anything less. He’s so, so proud of his boys.

The four stay for a few weeks, and the days are somehow even fairer than before. Long days and calm nights that get wistful sometimes, for other friends they wish were here, but peaceful all the same, without fear that what they have would be taken away. Never again, the winds seem to say.

He tells them they’re welcome to stay. To retry the quiet little life they’d wanted so badly long ago. But that was so long ago, such a distant memory, so he’s not too surprised when they hesitate on the offer. They have friends, family, entire lives built out there and they’re not ready to let it all go yet. Trevor understands. Alfredo asks him to join them, go out and see the world and all it has to offer, but Trevor shakes his head. He’s not quite ready to let this all go yet, either. 

They leave, with promises to visit often and settle down one day, and Trevor smiles, waves happily goodbye, and the sight of their horses fading into the treeline doesn’t burn like it once did. Because he knows they’re not leaving forever. Knows he can follow them if he ever wants to. Knows that should they want to stay, his door is always open. For old friends or strange gods or whatever else the Universe brings to his doorstep. 

That’s all he’s ever wanted. To be able to provide for those he loves and those who need it. And on his journey to get here he’s traveled the world, crossed dimensions, battled dragons, completed 103 trials meant for beings greater than himself. He’s achieved more than he’d ever thought possible. Helped heal the world when once he wasn’t even sure he could heal himself. He’s saved the gods, as Alfredo put it. And that’s enough. He’s proud, happy, content with his lot in life.  

Could be proud, happy, content, forevermore. The Universe is undoubtedly kind, in that way. But strange, all the same. Gives and takes, hurts and heals, casts gods from the sky only to send them back up in due time. Makes a lonely heart a little less lonely before making it lonely once more. Let him be proud, happy, content, for one quiet moment, regardless — before taking it away. The Universe works in strange ways, and that’s not something to be forgotten.

It's his own fault for forgetting. Really, he should've known. That his little patch of land, literally blessed by the gods, wouldn't have gone unnoticed by the rest of the world. A world that had just been through years of war and famine and was desperate never to return to it. A world full of warmongers and raiders who wouldn’t turn a blind eye at healthy, undefended land. Really, he should’ve known.

When the raiders storm in on horseback, there’s little he can do. Because even with all he's done, all he’s achieved, Trevor is still just a man.

A peel of thunder shocks him awake. He smells it. Fire. Smoke. Out his window he sees the wheat fields ablaze, a black cloud rising into the sky. He hears the squeal of hogs as the burning barn crushes them. He has time to grab his sword, burst out the front door and skid onto his knees before his home is swallowed in flames behind him. Thunder claps without rain. Three men on horseback charge in from the treeline, a few others hanging behind, and Trevor fights to keep his heart from sinking. 

He heads for his trees — his dumb infected trees — where the horses may have to falter, but he only reaches the forest’s edge. The horses sound like they're about to trample him and he ducks just in time to miss the swords cutting for his head. Trevor hits one of the horses with the butt of his sword, muttering an apology under his breath. The horse throws its rider and runs for the hills. That's as far as his luck takes him. The other two fall upon him and they’re stronger than him, faster than him, Trevor can just barely deflect their strikes, doesn’t even think about trying to land his own. Each meeting of blades reverberates up his arms, down his spine, straight into his soul. He gives everything he has, regardless, because that’s what he does. Gives, even when he knows it won’t be enough. 

Rain breaks from the clouds. They’re watching, he knows. Thunder roars and wind howls. His enemies' horses buck and scream against their masters. The sword in Trevor’s hand refuses to bend under blows that should've shattered it. Lightning screeches down, a desperate bid to help, but all it does is set the fields alight again. So much power, yet so far away. He sends a silent thanks, for trying, but they must know as much as he does that even the gods can't save him now.

He slips on the riverbank. Topples into the water as thunder cracks. Doesn't even see the man who shoves a sword through his torso and rips it straight out.

He sinks and sinks and sinks, breathing water and blood and fire it feels like. The last thing he hears is the thunder and wind, howling, angry — and so, so sad. 

They storm out of the treeline, Lindsay and Alfredo, Matt and Fiona, all on horseback and with fury in their eyes.

Call it coincidence or godly puppeteering or whatever else, but all four had heard news on the wind — news that raiders were passing through the land they once called home. The land their friend still called home. In an instant, they break from their work, find each other, and ride like a crusade to the holy land.

They find the fields crushed to black and their old house caved into itself. They fall on the raiders with a wrath to rival the gods. They never prided themselves on being kind or merciful, and so the slaughter is bloody and quick.

They let one live, not out of mercy, no. There's crimson speckled on his armor and dried red staining his sword, and no, there will be no mercy for him.

Where is he? They demand.

I don't know, I don't know, the raider pleads, and offers nothing more. Yet there's the blade covered in blood and a gouge in the riverbank that tells of a struggle and the water that still runs brown. No sign of their friend, yet every sign of his end. They slaughter the man in frustration. 

Turning to the skies, they scream. Where is he? What happened? Why didn't you save him?

The skies should've been roaring in answer, tears pouring down in sheets, moon hidden in grief. Yet the night was still. Like the world was shocked into silence. 

Darkness. All around. Stretching on and on and on in every direction. Desolate, cold, empty, though to Trevor, who had spent most of his life looking out to the night sky, it was nothing short of beautiful.

Pinpoints of light start fading into sight — whether they’d just appeared or it was just his eyes acclimatizing to the dark, he isn’t sure. They peek in, one by one, then by the dozens, then by the thousands, until his entire vision is painted in starlight. Rainbow colored galaxies swirl to life in the spaces between. The planets, the ones he knows and some he doesn’t, crest in from the darkness.

It feels like he could reach out and catch a star in his hand. They’re close, so close, like they’re all leaning in to look at him. He’s not sure they aren’t. Trevor stares back — there’s not much else to do — though the skies are so vast he could’ve been lost in their gaze forever. 

Dimly, he knows he’s dead. Remembers the sting of the blade, the burn of water in his lungs, but the memory feels so far, far away. This moment, this sight, it fills his mind so entirely that everything else is left to the footnotes. He’s dead, but he’s not sad, not bitter, not afraid. Just curious, wondering where exactly he is and why the stars seem to have chosen him as the center of their orbit. 

He searches for answers in the eyes of the Universe. The stars stare unblinkingly back — until, they don’t. Until they burn and streak past, form patterns in the sky, billow into milky clouds, and somehow there’s a message in the chaos, images and memories shooting across his mind like comets. When the stars blink back, he sees himself. 

Sees himself help an injured stranger to his house. Sees himself welcome four more and give them what little he has, even though he fears it won’t be enough. Sees the years pass, fields grow, their lives intertwining. Sees himself walk through a Nether portal when he doesn’t have to, sees the five follow close behind. Sees dragons, and monsters, and busy weeks that go by in a blink. Sees five faces and their fond eyes, creased brows, hears their muttered apologies and quiet thank you’s. He sees a leather bound book filled with five columns of inky black checkmarks, and a sixth standing right beside them, every step of the way. He sees a beacon split the sky in half, watches as they rise and he stays because, despite everything else, they were gods and Trevor — Trevor was just a man. 

A man who proved himself worthy. 

He doesn’t know if the Universe could laugh or smile or be proud, but in that moment Trevor can feel an embrace surround him, warm and loving and all-encompassing, and the feeling settles into every fiber of his being. The stars twinkle in applause and entire galaxies dance as the darkness cradles him in its arms. Like space itself was celebrating his existence. He can think of no greater honor. 

Well, perhaps one, but the stars smile at the thought and the Universe shifts, carrying him down, down, down. 

Far below, a platform comes into view, a patch of land afloat in the open sky. Still, he drifts down, until he can see the trees peppering the ground and the little machines puffing steam at the edges. Tools lay on the floor, as well as some spilled dirt and an overturned bucket, like someone had dropped them in a hurry. Sloppy, he thinks fondly.

New clothes morph to his skin — faded green and white cloth threaded with ivy, light iron greaves, little golem mask hanging around his neck. Simple, yet fitting, and somehow regal, too. He floats still down.

Trevor sets foot on oak planks. There are others around, but they haven’t seen him yet. He prods the dropped bucket with his foot, and the dull clang echoes across the Universe.

"Bit of a fixer-upper you got here," the newest god says with a grin. "Have you boys been slacking without me?" 

They’re silent as the skies above, waiting for answers but too tired to ask.

Alfredo searches the ruins of the house, for something, anything. He lifts a split beam and sees something shining underneath. He falls to his knees, digging through the ash to find a leather bound book, untouched by the flames. 

Alfredo opens it with trembling hands. Flips through the filled pages. Something’s changed. Five inky black check marks with a sixth scribbled at the edge — except the crude pencil marks have turned the same inky black as the rest. A row or six, equal, standing side by side.

Lindsay gasps and points upwards. The stars have started dancing in the sky, twinkling like laughter, and the darkness swirls and ebbs like nothing they’ve ever seen before. They don’t know how, they don’t know why, but despite the pain, the sight sparks something joyful in their hearts. Alfredo is the one to read the stars. A smile falls on his lips.

“I think he's alright,” he says, “I think he's with them now.”