Chapter Text
They tell you death is natural but they’re lying, there was nothing natural about Mat’s death.
The one challenge where his brilliant mind was completely useless. Where everybody knew the way it would end from the moment it was announced as men only.
He stands in the middle of an endless void, a low heavy fog swirling over the ground so he can’t see his own feet.
He isn’t alone.
Over this way, he can watch his death repeating over and over. It’s on loop. It will never end, and his final words keep screeching while he watches his ‘friends’ run away. Mat holds a hand to the side of his head.
Is it possible to get a headache when you’re dead?
The game was rigged. The first purely physical challenge and half the group aren’t allowed to be voted for. Someone wanted Mat dead, and they wanted him dead now. Why? Who knows?
The death scene still looping, the fog clears a short distance away revealing a church. Everlock’s church. There’s something inside, something...off. But the longer Mat looks, the more he realises that it’s nothing. It doesn’t matter. It’s small fry.
“Get the Lazarus coin!” he hears himself scream again.
There are two people outside the church, and they’re beckoning to him. They want him to come closer. Trying to walk through the fog is impossible though. It’s like he’s in treacle. He can’t move closer.
And why should he? Who are they? And why should he trust them? Just because he was dead didn’t mean he was an idiot. Mama Patrick didn’t raise her no fool. No. He won’t go to them. That’s just what they want.
He turns and freezes.
Before Mat stands his double. His equal. His exact match. It’s like looking in a mirror, his ‘reflection’ raising its hand as he does. Pressing a finger to his nose, it matches him. No matter what motion he makes, it copies him. But something is wrong, something is off, because though this thing is his equal in every way, it has a worrying smirk tugging up at the edge of its lips.
“Stop.”
Mat’s voice reverbs around the void, and the reflection’s smirk draws wider.
“Stop it!” he snaps.
The reflection slowly shakes its head.
“Why not?”
Raising a hand, the figure reaches forward, breaking the illusion of a mirror and pressing a single finger to the centre of Mat’s chest.
There are no words; there is no threat; but the intent is unmistakable
Mat looks up to the emptiness above them as he hears three strums of some harp. When he looks down again the reflection is gone, everything is gone, it’s just him and the fog. Yet he can still feel it. Nothing’s really gone.
He flinches as a blinding light consumes the void and swallows him whole.
Like I said, death in Everlock is not natural.