Chapter Text
The heat of the lava beside them feels refreshing as the two brothers runn. In the silence of the nether, the picture wasn’t unusual. Two figures laughing as they sprint down the sharp rocks, even jumping into lava lakes and relishing in the heat. The image, such a familiar picture of fun and relaxedness, is at this time askew; distorted by the blood and the unmistakable sound of desperation.
The taller of the two, clearly older, pulls his brother forward across the wastes ignoring the blood running down his temple and into his face. He ignores the harsh beating of his own heart as it threatens to push out of his chest, it’s probably nothing other than adrenaline that allows him to run at the speed he does. It takes him little less than a few moments after speeding up that he notices his kid brother behind him struggle to keep the quick pace.
It doesn’t matter, the older one picks the other up and keeps running, now with his brother in his arms. The kid’s eyes, almost unnaturally blue, are shining with fearful tears, and his face doesn't need to wait until the blood running down the older’s face falls down on him to be covered in the red liquid. He has his own wounds, his own gashes that will soon turn to scars he’s far too young to own.
He is used to running, he loves it, the thrill of the hunt, the thick air blowing next to him. He was born to run in the nether, to thrive in its ambiance. It’s been too long, and at the same time not long enough, since the last time, he’s had to escape.
It takes a long time of them running until they reach the cave. It’s a simple thing, walls of netherrack, simply illuminated by the glowstone dust of its walls. It’s hidden, it’s home.
“We need to be fast,” The older grunts, in the rough tongue of piglins, “grab only the essential” He knows his brother is listening, hearing him go to the back tunnels of the cave to his room to grab his few possessions. It’s good, it gives him time.
It’s been a long time since the last time he used magic, magic as powerful as the spells he needs to cast now at least. And still, he knows that it will work. It flows through his veins naturally, the way that it should. It turns the gold nuggets in his hand into the simple chain as if it was obvious that, that was the shape it was always meant to take. He looks at the chain for a few seconds, so beautiful, and yet its existence is still so tragic.
He chants the spell over it softly, fighting back the tears that want to fall out of his eyes and join the now-dried blood that is already on his cheeks. He’s singing the last notes of it when his brother returns, none the wiser to the magic that will protect him. That will separate them forever.
They leave the cave, each carrying a sack of items, walking a short path into the clearing where the portal will stand. It is in complete silence that the oldest builds it, pushing the obsidian into place as his brother looks attentively at him. There’s a rush in his movements, the earlier running not being enough to escape forever, their chasers destined to catch up to them sooner rather than later.
The two brothers stand under the radiant purple gleam of the portal and the older one, for the first time that day, looks at his brother in the eye. The younger’s eyes are impossibly blue, shining like the overworld sky, he had seen only once, supposedly too young to even remember it. To him, his brother’s eyes shone like sapphires, sapphires that at that moment, shone with tears.
“It's okay,” he whispers kneeling in front of his brother. One of his hands is placed on the younger’s shoulder, rubbing it soothingly, before fastening the golden chain on his younger brother’s neck.
In the slight opening of his mouth, lie more words than he could ever start to say. The universe of everything he wants,
needs
, to tell his brother is drowned out by the screams growing closer as those chasing them enter the tunnels and their voices echo off of the walls. “This will protect you forever,” He says, “I promise that as long as this gold is around your neck you will be safe.”
“Why does it sound like you’re saying goodbye?” The blue-eyed piglin’s cries are hurled out with desperation, “You promised you’d stay with me, you promised you would never leave!”
“I’m not leaving you,” The older one says, with a melancholy smile. “You go through and I will be right behind you,” The lie leaves his lips simply, tainted with the betrayal of a broken oath between brothers. “But you have to promise me,” he asks finally, putting their foreheads together, trying to drown out the increasingly loud sounds of their hunters getting impossibly closer, “That once you’re out the other side, you’ll run and not look back, I will be right behind you, but I need you to Run, as fast as you can.”
“I promise,” The younger says before his brother places a last kiss on his forehead and pushes him through the portal at the same second as the hunters reach their clearing.
“Goodbye, my shining sunbeam,” He whispers to the portal before destroying it in one single hit.
The night in exile is cold as Tommy wakes up, too cold for him as the frozen air of the sea seeps through his fur, designed for the heated existence of the nether. He can't ignore the tears falling down his cheeks, even if he, as on most other nights, doesn’t remember his dream. There is a void feeling on his chest, a grief so profound that he knows for sure that in it, he lost something. He drowns in his grief before falling asleep, much like he’s done every other night when the same dream has plagued his slumber, and in the morning he won’t even remember having woken up at all.
In a different part of the world, in a comfortable warm bed, lies awake a man who like every night and day before, mourns his brother. Sapnap snaps away as his recurring nightmares of his brother shake him to his core and cries softly as Karl rubs his back like he’s done every night before. In his bed, in the quiet of the night, Sapnap mourns.
Karl asks no questions as his fiance’s face is run down by tears, tears that speak of grief that the demon refuses to describe. Grief for a brother that is so close, and at the same time so excruciatingly far. A brother who can’t remember him, and never will.