Chapter Text
He remembers - faces, maybe.
Not eyes, but he remembers the smooth curve of porcelain, a heavy weight in his hands, now on his face. Comforting, except not really. Something like - glasses? Goggles? A strip of white cloth - a headband - arms slung around his shoulders, color and fire, laughter on the wind, being-
-happy? Happy.
Once. Maybe.
He’s not really sure anymore, but…
...once upon a time. What a fairytale thing, a phrase of cliche, except it wasn’t, was it? Because once upon a time there was a world of peace, and once upon a time there was a nation that just wanted to be free, and once upon a time there was a tyrant that shattered it all.
Once upon a time, there was…
...there was…
...he can’t remember what he was thinking.
...whatever - it doesn’t matter, anyways.
He tries to focus on the present, instead, but it’s like trying to return to the land of living when he’s very, very, dead - nearly impossible, evidently. He shuts his eyes and there are fragments, pieced shards, faltering threads of recollection, of better times - there's a flutter of something in him, a well of warmth, rising and spreading, burning starkly against the natural chill permeating through his flesh to his blood to his bones. And he remembers - what again? Does he?
(there is a mirror, shattered and cracked beyond repair, a distorted smiley face grinning back at him, jagged and red)
Everything is cold and heavy and dark and it presses down, presses in; he gasps against the weight of the world on his chest, choking him. It’s a weak thing, a connection just a fine thread, a sole fiber - but it burns where it touches him, wraps around him, sinks hooks into his sides and he’s drowning in it, his own skin simultaneously too big and too small for him, marred with marks that will never leave.
(like the scars dappling his face, twisted and snaking, like the weight of porcelain and pretend; insurmountable)
He jerks away from the teeth in him, twists upright and floats away from the ground - thick and blood-spattered, rust and metal and scarlet looming all around him. There’s black, too - obsidian walls, thick and looming, and he doesn’t know what it all means but it feels - wrong? Wrong. It feels wrong, he shouldn’t be here, where is he? He doesn’t know, doesn’t remember - but he’s here, caged within something horrible, something that shouldn’t be meant to hold a living creature and yet was supposed to. Yet did. And in the end t h e y
(dreams and nightmares, dripping blood, a sword held out, hands on shoulders)
He shuts his eyes against the red pooling in his mind and tries to think of the green again instead, bright against the poison in him. Like sitting back high on hills of windswept grass, looking over the world that they built with something like pride - like adventuring through hearth and hell, heat against golden boots and a sword in his hands, strength in loyalty by his sides kill them betray all, dethroning, relief and pain and horror and chaos and control-
like the rush power gives, don’t you see d̵̙̣̾̂͂r̴͈͗̐e̷̗͝ȧ̴̠̖m̷̞̌̎̌, no one can hurt us now
He turns away from the rotting husk in the corner of the room, the air filled with the acrid stench of raw magic and blood and rot and ender. It’s a familiar smell, he thinks - maybe? Maybe? Is it? He doesn’t remember - doesn’t know - but he turns away, reaches out, and presses his hands to the - very solid, very corporeal - wall, no doors, no nothing - and he closes his eyes and connects and rejoins, rejoices, becomes.
Outside, through layers of obsidian and blackstone and nether brick and iron bars there is - a world, bustling and happy, and he can feel it - life and nature, roots winding deep beneath, pulsing with a power that is all his own at the same time it isn’t at all. It's a tangling web of awareness greater than even them, a network almost sentient in nature, and he takes it in his heart and takes it in his hands, careful.
In an instant he is there, too - it’s a part of him and he’s a part of it, and he can’t tell anymore where he begins and this world ends. It whispers secrets into his ears, says your friends are happier without you, your friends don’t need you, they’ve never needed you. they don’t need a liar.
(And he can feel it’s very true.)
He can’t help the - desperation? Longing? Nostalgia? - that wells in him anyways - and then, before he knows what he’s doing - he’s sifting, seeking, searching - color - there, a familiar feeling he can’t quite place warm loved friend. A rabbit blinks open green eyes innocently a few feet away - fire friend is there too, he realizes with a start, and goggles george and headband pandas are talking together, laughing together without him, sitting under the shade of a tree and it makes that indescribable warmth swell in him again - but there’s a bitterness, too, a lingering sadness that tingles through, sweeps over and contaminates the happy scene - happy? Was he? Is he?
they never really needed you, huh?
It hurts to look for some reason, an indistinct flutter of something in his chest that twists and chokes and trembles, weightless and unfathomable, so he leaves the rabbit’s body and rematerializes outside of the prison walls, back in his human form, separate from the world - his world? Was it his? Is it his? - once again.
(you could take my form, you know it’s more durable)
(shut up i don't need shit)
It's a lie, but he pretends.
He wanders for a little while, floats through the lush fields and tries to not think about the red rotting in his mind - it’s easier to stare at the waving green of the grass, bright in the sunlight, and he can’t help the - longing? Nostalgia? Sadness? - that rises in him, a feeling he doesn’t quite know the name of and doesn’t quite want to know the name of.
He’s dead, isn’t he?
He isn’t sure how he knows that, but he maybe remembers - dying? Clawing at obsidian until his nails were broken and bloody, ragged breaths - the echoing throb of repeatedly bashing his skull into the wall, get it off get it off I don’t want it I don’t want to be like this anymore, pain, overwhelmingly numb - and then the weird blankness of falling asleep, except forever. He thinks he remembers walls pressing in, the feeling of trapped trapped no chaos no control and - screaming - shouting? Aren’t those two the same thing? Maybe. He doesn’t remember.
...he doesn’t want to remember.
(Red sloshes lazily at the back of his mind. Waiting.)
And then he feels like he’s choking, he can’t breathe, wires wrapping around his throat. Suddenly the weight of his mask is so heavy he stutters through the air, edges blurring as his ethereal weightlessness slams into being all at once, drops abruptly like a stone to the ground with a cry and reaches up, grabs at the uncaring, smirking thing in a futile attempt to - get it off, get it away, trapped trapped trapped - breath he doesn’t need comes in ragged pants and he claws at the uncaring smile, mockingly painted, doesn’t dare think but - he feels the world rock beneath his feet, shudder and the red spills in, creeping and sticky and poisonous, muffles his cries and then - oh, how pitiful. He’d always been weak.
They blink open their eyes, feeling the world hum, all beneath their command, against their back. They’re lying face-up in the grass, the trees rustling in the wind, the world around them so bright and damn cheerful they’re forced to squint. They scowl at it all, sit up and rub their head, running a hand down the front of their mask to check for any cracks or fissures and-
A blinding pain rips through him and he gasps in a breath he doesn’t need, he’s dead, he’s a ghost, how are they still controlling him? Why haven’t they gone - why haven’t they left him, yet? It doesn’t make sense - he thought he’d be free-
The red sinks, simmers down, bubbling and restless, and he tries to calm himself by focusing on the artificial rise and fall of his chest instead. It’s no longer involuntary - he’s dead, after all, and he has to really focus to breathe - but it gets his mind off the feeling of no control no control that’s there, hissing sibilant in his ears and draping itself over his spine, making itself at home. Grinning, with too many teeth and a sentience he hates, doesn’t want, except it’s pointless to hate a monster when they can’t hate you back. (there’s no satisfaction to it.)
Every part of him hurts, with the distinct numb tingle like pins-and-needles poking into his spine and worthless soul, and he shuts his eyes and very consciously doesn’t remember. He tries to feel the world around him instead - his world? It feels weird calling it his world, even if they’re he’s the one who built it - it’s more their land than his, the frothing distance in his mind, a chasm cutting deep. Like a shiver down the back of his neck, an omnipresent sensation of unease that hangs. Waiting.
...what is he doing, again?
He sighs, again artificial, sits up. His world blurs briefly, and he feels a tug in his chest - towards a center he can’t identify, a home that doesn’t exist on this plane. Towards a portal of many eyes peering, dark and malicious; ender and magic oozing, thick and controlling. A sky, a void - of endless stars spanning infinity, purple and green and endless black, an altar formed of unbreakable bedrock at the center of it all. The center of the universe, some might call it - the end of all ends.
His beginning. His undoing.
(It starts, as always, in the End. An irony he can never escape - the fault is in himself, not in his stars, as much as he longs it to be so.)
He hates control. He loves it.
It’s so wrong that his sight spins, and once he rights himself again he realizes he’s floating again.
He’s flying.
(he doesn’t know where.)
-
Night falls, and with it comes a hushed quiet over the surface of their - his - world. Beneath, in the energy that rolls in calm currents, the network hums, never asleep - despite it being almost alive, in its own, almost-sentient, way.
He doesn’t remember sleeping when he was alive. Maybe periods of blankness when they took from him, memory gaps and gaping voids of thought he can never quite fill - but it’s distant, faint, tinged with unrest and displeasure, nothing close to the sleep he’s always craved.
(and n̶̦̿i̴̗͊̀g̷͉̞̓͘h̴̟̊t̷̨̘͗m̵ͅa̸͇̓r̶̦̯̿́e̴̖̫̍̓s̶̢̺̓ he could never shake)
He doesn’t fully remember dying, just remembers that it wasn’t peaceful - the life in him, pulled and ripped and splintered away, screaming and howling and kicking and biting in him, desperate to remain but desperate, too, to depart - and he remembers - doesn’t remember - dying.
…maybe? It’s all foggy and floaty, he can’t tell.
(At least he can’t remember the pain - one thing he’s glad for. Numb, maybe, but not-)
pain
it hurts it hurts it hurts go away go away
It's such a childish thing, to be afraid of pain. At least now - now that he's - he's dead, he won’t have to - to - t-to-
-he's not going to think about it.
(It's such a childish thing, too, to ignore his problems, but - well. He'd never claimed to be brave.)
He wanders through the darkness of the woods, mobs briefly pausing upon sensing his presence but ultimately leaving him alone, the devil in him too dangerous for them to risk angering. It’s telling, how much of a monster he is, that the other monsters all leave him alone - ha. Ha, ha, ha. It feels like some sick joke, like something he should laugh at.
(is he going insane? oh, he's going insane.
somehow, he'd always thought that it'd be more... peaceful, to go insane. shows what he knows.)
...should he laugh? Laughing’s good, right? He remembers, vaguely, laughing when L’manberg was destroyed, laughing when it was destroyed again, and again, and again - he remembers being ecstatic. Remembers the euphoria of giving in, crossing the line, however briefly - however severe the consequences were.
(he remembers regretting once he had a chance to. remembers the relief of being locked away, that-)
Laughter's the best medicine, maybe, and he's not sure where he heard that from but - it's not, it can't be, he doesn't remember-
He remembers laughing - wheezing? His friend - who? Goggles? Color? He can’t remember their name, it’s just beyond his reach, it’s so frustrating - had always called him a tea kettle. What was a tea kettle? He remembers being - being happy - maybe? Hopeful? Happy? What’s the difference, again? - when a boy and the - the fox? He thinks it was a fox, a fox man - when they approached him - offered to kill exorcise him - remembers the weightlessness, the peacefulness-
-red red red- green? -red red red red red red-
-and then, and then, and then. Waking up, the dawning horror - the terms, he'd broken the terms. The slow-creeping realization that it's never, never ever that easy. Of looking down and reaching, registering finally that - the end never leaves you. Never, ever - an exorcism only does so much. Can do so much.
He remembers killing dragons. He remembers laughing, with his friends at his side, as he won world records - championships - manhunts. He remembers not regretting, because he never got a chance to, and when he did - he just, he just didn't. Why didn't he?
He wishes, now, that he did.
-
He floats aimlessly through the darkness of the woods at night, dark against the moonlight. He thinks he remembers - vaguely - another ghost in this world? He doesn’t know, can’t recall their name or face, but they emitted light and warmth despite being dead. He thinks.
He doesn't emit light or warmth - at least, not currently. Rather, he meanders purposelessly through the air, absorbs the light like a sponge soaking up water, emits cold and dark like a hallowed figure of death. Ghosts of legends do that, right? Does that mean he’s a good ghost? He hopes so. It’s good to be good, right? Right?
right?!
The thoughts burn in him, relentless, but he ignores them - he thinks he’s ignoring them, at least. Well, he’s trying. Is that good enough? He thinks so. He hopes so.
He doesn’t know. It’s terrifying not knowing.
when you were alive, you knew everything
He doesn’t remember, doesn’t want to, but the words come to mind regardless - no rest for the wicked, mocking laughter, and he’d been wicked, hadn’t he? He’d been bad. He’d been a bad person.
He’d been a really, really bad person.
(he remembers being lost, being raw, being unreasonably angry - hurting, hating, something else. something other.
he shouldn’t have gone.
moreover, he shouldn’t have come back.
not with them-)
He pauses, tries to think back. What does he remember, other than hurt pain anger stopstopstop goggles and headbands? Vague faces, perhaps - slaying dragons, winning records and championships, winning, always winning - and, he thinks, losing, too. Pink hair and a pig’s skull, a royal cape and blood for the blood god and the deafening crack of his mask shattering under the blow of a sword. Splinters and sunlight assaulting his eyes. Bright.
He doesn’t remember anything of that day after the mask breaking. Not really.
He thinks - building. Creating, laughing, exploring - a world of his own, people by his side that he can’t remember - it’s so frustrating, god - and something like a new, fragile hope. He’d never settled before, then, but - maybe?
But he remembers - a boy, he can’t remember anything else. Red, a lot of red, the boy brought out the red in him, it made him them so angry. that was their world, how dare that boy disrupt the peace. he had to pay.
( t̵̠̞̓ͅo̴͈͔͒̌͑m̸̪̹̆͋͊m̸̝̜̓̅͑y̵̢̠͍̆͋ )
He doesn’t remember, just - red?
(he remembers a time before even then, a town that went mad, a place that wasn’t meant to be)
He thinks - a van. A book (torn pages, “independence, or death”). A crown - a traitor. A nation, maybe? Is that what it’s called? Faces, people shouting. Angry. Very angry at him. Always at him. Why was everyone so angry? It was his their world, they ran their pathetic lives, they should be goddamn grateful that they had let them even be there.
...it was scary.
He remembers being scared. Maybe? He remembers needing control, control meant they’d be safe, he’d be safe - but also the red in him longing for chaos - and blood, blood was red, right? A bow, in his hands. Looking down. Tracing the curves.
Arrows raining from the sky, death in droves, kill them all. no mercy. white flags.
A duel, in the dead of night. A disk, glittering. A deal, made and sealed.
He remembers a rippling flag, but he can’t recall the colors anymore.
a minecart bearing down on him, rattling against the tracks, eyes wide and terrified and red screeching up an unholy storm - him moving, trying to, please let me go -
-they wouldn’t let him, they never did.
Horns? Curved and glittering, horizontally-slit pupils, evil eyes. Like a - a - what? A goat? He thinks? Maybe, maybe. Shouting and yelling, the air thick with fear and despair, screaming. Horror, fear, something - something else. Something worse. Wrong.
he remembers hands that aren’t his handing over a stack of TNT, a smile shared between two diseased men. poisoned, because-
one had
everything left to lose. the other, nothing at all.
An - an alliance, maybe. That’s the word, right? Long nights pacing and turning, wondering over something he can’t remember now. He thinks he’d been mad, maybe. Sad? Disappointed.
There’s another word, something like guilt frustration regret on his tongue, something he can’t remember for the life (or death) of him.
He remembers white flags. Bottles. The stench of something ugly, poisonous, in the air - neither of them could stand it. A stage. Fireworks, glorious in the sky. Gorgeous. He remembers watching in awe at the display, red and blue and white and freedom, anarchy.
The world lighting up, the earth rocking beneath his feet, smoke and shrapnel. Gold and red fire. Death. Destruction.
chaos.
A heartbeat, stuttering and skipping. He felt it, too - a final death, taken in the heat of the moment and the held breath of karma and the poison of whiskey, exhaled, at last. they can’t say they were sad to see Schlatt go.
Wings - sleek and black and spanning wide. A god - a god? A sword. He remembers that, too - the network does, at least. This world - their world - will always remember the blood spilled on their grounds.
He remembers - that boy, again. he made them so goddamn angry . just - the gall of the child, to be there, to take what was theirs and twist it against them - their host loved that damn horse. their host loved them all. their host was a fool.
their host was going to get the both of them killed.
so they took control.
...he doesn’t remember anything else, after that.
He doesn’t remember. He won’t - them twisting the puppet strings until he choked on them, destroying and killing and blowing up and just - “bye l’manberg, bye l’manberg-”
(he’d been so happy. he’d been such a monster.
and for what, even, in the end? what did they even accomplish , in the end?
you don’t understand i was protecting you
i was protecting us
i was protecting them
i didn’t mean - i didn’t mean to - i didn’t know;
i didn’t know that they’d do that
i didn’t think
i didn’t
What did they even accomplish, other than hurting and killing and destroying - all just to end up locked away, alone in a cell, rotting and decaying and just - why were they even still here, in his body? Why hadn’t they left? He’d been trapped in that cell, all alone, for who knows how long - they could’ve left him to rot. They still can leave him to rot.
Why haven’t they?
What did they want from him?
what do you want from me?!
i don’t know
you fucking liar)
He doesn’t - he doesn’t remember. He can’t - he can’t. It’s - it’s not there, he’s just… he’s not them. He doesn’t want to be. He’s never wanted to be, but…
(why can’t you just let me go?
i’m sorry)
They’re really not, he knows. The red in him is almost absolutely remorseless, only wanting chaos and death and - and - and-
-and… he…
...what was his name again?