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Etho had fucked it all up.
Okay. So he'd never exactly encouraged the air of mysticism and intimidation that seemed to follow him in these games, but his bashful denouncements of his status were written off - as Skizz had so astutely pointed out - as humbleness and politeness. A quiet smokescreen of humanizing air to facilitate social integration. He wasn't scary. He said everything with a smile and playful lilt, from his coy ribbings to axe-sharpened, 13-fueled tests of nerve.
In reality, a cloth-hidden crooked smile and unfettered politeness was largely an easily maintainable cover for a mind going a mile a minute.
Did his inventory currently match his muscle memory? Gotta make sure there’s a pearl in hand to mitigate fall damage. Did he have his potion to- no, no potions in this one. Right. Have to keep reminding himself. Where was the best point of egress? Should he play this straight or pull out the crossbows? It's night, watch out for Creepers. Don't need a repeat of last life last time. Is Bdubs in the way? Are his allies? Can he count on his allies for this situation? Make sure you have the ender pearl. Make sure you have your food. Take it at a safe distance. Keep your bow arm true.
It was a lot to worry about. There was always so much to worry about.
So, if it so happened that his reputation of untouchable aloofness helped keep people off his back to limit the number of stressors and concerns buzzing around his head at any given second, it's a feature, not a bug. He’s been around long enough to know to let well enough alone.
All this to say, Etho has a lot of thoughts right now. They are not being helped by the blistering burns of another TNT minecart volley and the arrowhead only recently removed from Scar's latest advancement in hotguy technology and grinning spite.
God, where are his potions? Why does he keep whiffing? Gem's playful smiles and teaching moments play over in his head but they fall out of his ear like drops of blood the second he's bringing axe to bear on her wearing Zombiecleo's face. Outnumbered, outplayed. Why is he doing this without his team? Why is he taking this without an angle? Why is he picking this fight on a rock face with no easy outs? Why isn't he waiting?
Oh, right. He can't wait. Waiting means death.
He wakes up in his makeshift bed, crossbow loose of its explosive munitions in one hand and axe in the other. Keeping inventory on respawn is weird. His crossbow hand is trembling.
Aim was the one thing he was good at. Was, he thinks bitterly, is the operative word.
He sets the crossbow down, and reaches for a rocket. He hears an explosion in the far distance, stills, and then returns the item to his bag. Maybe trying to load fireworks into a weapon was not the best play when he had a shaky hand.
'Etho went out with a bang,' he mutters in his head, before tilting himself to rest his forehead on the stone to one side. It's wet and a little gross, what with being in a hastily dug underwater cave and all, but it's centring.
Deep breath, drip drop. Cold walls. White walls. Wool walls. Going up in flames. Tripping on gravel and being finished off by a skeleton. Where were his potions?
No. Shoot. Deep breaths. Like the ticking of a dropper. Like Giddy's hoofbeats. Like an argument about stairs. Like-
Another distant explosion. He groans, and knocks his head lightly against the wall. It's not soft like snow or wool, but it's what he needs right now.
He loads the firework into the crossbow and gets out of bed. The clock is literally ticking and he can’t waste a second.
As he manipulates the munition, he remembers Keralis, anvils, and shulker boxes. A headless goat and a job taken in jest. He remembers planning well ahead of time. Thinking about how to be clever and creative. How to wield death in a way that would make people smile on a server with no consequences. Load the crossbows with blue and white explosions. Load the shulker with the crossbows. Dump them all and unload, rapid fire.
He swaps spots, and loads the next crossbow.
Maybe someone had come up with it before him. Probably, to be honest; the Universe is a big place. But he came up with it himself at the time. He was good at that sort of thinking: little ideas, little hacks. Abuses of simple mechanics that relied on his creativity more than his dexterity.
It hadn't worked, but it had come damn close. Enchantments are a lot more powerful than they used to be. Even at the time, his mind had been racing with things that he could have done better: potions, poison arrows. Instant damage.
(He should have retreated. He should have waited for his team. He should have should have should have.)
Etho checks his inventory. Sword, shield, axe. Ender pearl, water bucket, food.
A scant couple weeks ago, they called him deadly. He's not stupid; he knows he's not been deadly in a long time. What he is, is intelligent. What he knows is when to pick his fights and when to back off. How to remain hidden, and how to read the signs.
He loads another crossbow.
What he is is a survivor.
(Kill a red. Prove your loyalty, even though we both know you've proven it ten times over. Do something in exchange. You may be precious to me, but nothing is as bone-rendingly harrowing as the thought of purposefully giving away what he has so closely guarded. (Why hadn't he just typed it it would have been so easy.))
The last crossbow is nocked. He repositions his shield-
(There is no E.)
- Shakes his head. He hears shouting in the distance. The game must continue: his timer certainly isn't waiting on him.
The next hours are quicksand. He puts an axe through Skizzleman's neck, the man’s day one words still echoing in his ears. He plans, he backstabs, he is backstabbed.
He thinks.
He can't slip up again. He can't roll himself into the momentum of another Gemini deathloop. He can't overestimate himself, or underestimate anyone else. He counts his inventory slots, he loads his crossbows. He aims, he flings TNT. He takes a calculated risk, rushing after Grian below the old mob farm, chasing the kill. Grasping a little bit of that sand and stuffing it hastily into his pockets. Honour has him offering himself up in a 1v1 he knows he'll lose after pushing Pearl off a cliff, and offering himself into Grian's brief service.
He has fun. He laughs, and he stresses. He thinks. It's fucking overwhelming how much he thinks.
No more pearls. Watch your water. Food is running low, so are rockets. I can get away here if needed. Should I chase?
People run out of time left right and centre. Alliances shift and scatter. He does his best to stay afloat. Red text runs through the corner of his vision, death messages and numbers that don't stay still. It's a game, but it doesn't feel like one. Something in these little excursions gets to them. Gets to all of them.
And yet, they keep coming back.
Without fanfare, he awakes in the purple and teal innards of his season 9 base, clutching at a wound that isn't there.
Wait, what? Where was Impulse? Surely he was right along with them. And Grian? Wait, no. Grian fell. What did he, why did he - pearl? No he'd been out. There were two of them, one of him. Why didn't he wait for his team? What made him think that was a good idea?
His breaths come rapidly, and he can't help but flick his gaze to the spot where the ticking timer had been. There's nothing there. Just his pulse, and a slew of messages from fellow Lifers returning from the server. Grian grousing about what Jimmy would say when he inevitably found out about his fall. Bdubs had sniped at Impulse, who was too busy laughing and cursing Martyn to be affected.
Back in season 9. No more timers. No more sand. No more hypervigilance. No wet cave with chests protected against blasting and a few stalwart cows. It had been traded for waterlogged soul speed raceways and carefully crafted and considered walls, adorned with his own language cypher he had built out of boredom.
He could... work on his projects, again, now. He could finetune the ice raceway. He could return to his single player world and work on any manner of things.
He lies in bed, and his eyes dart to the clock.
Hm.
Bdubs is doing great, actually. Thank you for asking.
He's fixing his perfect redstone that the stupid piston presser conveyor belt thing keeps destroying for some reason completely outside of his control. It doesn't take him long (the sun hasn't gotten that low, nope!) to sort out, and he victoriously grumpily dumps himself onto his grandmaster bed, turning off the flickering lights and settling in for the night before bothering to wash off the redstone and rust. Being so good at everything is hard work, and it doesn't take him long to fall asleep. Another thing he's amazing at.
He's awake not long after, fresh with the urgency of standing between Scar and Etho, ducking under bow shots and fireworks and treading water.
Gosh darnit. He huffs.
The moonlight falls through the window he designed for this exact purpose. He frowns at it. If he had a clock in his hand, he knows it would be ticking up instead of down. He sighs.
It's been almost a month since the last game. The Hermits never know when they're going to happen, and they know they're just that: games. In the moment, though, they're so immediate. So real. Everything else falls away. It had been hard to remember his moss shop, and the cafe, and his monolith while hunkering down in a cobblestone clocktower and nervously checking each step for the smell of gunpowder.
But things were fine now! Everything was perfect. Cleo was crowned in gorgon brilliance, and Scar toiled away on his illustrious theme park home. And Etho-
Hm. He hasn't seen Etho in awhile, come to think of it. Not that that's an irregularity. Etho takes frequent breaks to work on side projects on his near legendary personal world. Completely normal.
Bdubs flicks casually to the server list on his communicator. Etho's name is lit up in LED white. It often has been, lately.
He still hasn't actually seen him since the game, though.
He moves to type a message, slash W. His hand falls still. It seems weird. To message out of the blue. Especially at 3 in the morning. What is he going to say? "Hey Etho, had a bad dream. How goes?" Heaven's no! Bdubs doesn't have bad dreams! He's the sleep king! He's...
He's tired.
Etho's fine. Scar's fine. Cleo's more than fine. No bad blood. No family feud. No family, really, save for the Hermits as a whole.
Bdubs grumbles loudly and turns over in his bed.
Bdubs sets aside his shulkers and shulkers and shulkers of diorite and acacia, and every variation of every gradient he's lovingly arranged and travels light. It's been weeks since he took a minecart full of explosives to the back of the head, and he finds he's found himself in somewhat of an art block. Maybe it's just hard to focus because of the ringing in his ears and the way fireworks make him jump when they go off a little too close.
Art block happens to all creative types, he assures himself as he tightens the straps on his elytra. It would do him well to get some air that wasn't musty and wet like... on purpose. Maybe he’d went a little too hard on the atmospheric details of his building this time.
He smiles and drops into the heat of the nether. It feels like submerging himself in a particularly indulgent bath, especially with the twinkling stars and elegant arches Tango had crafted for their shared transit hub.
He doesn't quite know where he's headed as he mounts the steps to the nether roof. (He knows where he wants to be, but he lacks a compass that will point him there.) He'll just fly. It's been ages since he just went somewhere. Since he cast himself into a world with no goal other than to be the first to lay eyes on some new horizon.
The thermals of the nether are strong, even in the endless liminal space of its upper layer. He doesn't have to expend much energy to just fly. Past Doc's strange contraptions, past Tango's holding pattern of Ravagers. Just on.
And on. And on.
He finds a gold farm.
The gigantic glowing structure is a veritable jump scare with how deeply Bdubs' has zoned out several hours into the neverending white noise of the plane. He recovers, whistling to himself at the size of the thing.
Gold farms aren't something he's known to specialize in, so his exploratory circling of the structure doesn't yield much other than a vague appreciation of what those crazy redstoners could do.
Who would bother building a farm out this far though? Bdubs thinks as he lands at the base level of the monstrosity.
There's a huge hub space along the bottom that he isn't used to seeing in most gold farm designs. It's built with blackstone and basalt, simple but effective. He hears the snorting of piglins considering what they'd offer for the gold flowing above. So, a combination gold and barter farm? His muffled footsteps take him down another level of the structure. Storage. Not just a typical pile of chests leading vertically into one another, but some whole mess of icy pathways and shulkers that he doesn't even want to begin to understand.
It feels a bit awkward, to be at someone's build uninvited. Especially when it was built so far out. He takes back to the air, hovering in uncertainty. Was this meant to be a secret? It wasn't the first, or second, gold farm on the server. It wasn't even the first bartering farm.
But here it was, painstakingly created, and entirely empty.
He wants to pretend he doesn't notice the building style. The rigid yet flowing symmetry to the design. The unhidden redstone circuitry and lack of exteriors.
He breathes out a soft "Oh Etho..."
The man's name remained emblazoned in white on his communicator; still not offworld. The portal he finds nearby has all 4 corners intact. He steps forward.
Unlike his last portal, this one is a slap in the face. It's COLD. "Judas Priest," he hisses violently, shriveling into his cloak. "Freakin' idiot stupid." Uagh. Ugh. Gross.
He shudders miserably, but he doesn't head back into the portal.
The sky is clear of clouds, but only as a result of the stiff winds blowing through the mountains he has found himself on. The obsidian frame is standing unceremoniously on the edge of a snow covered mountain top. The drop off to one side is dramatic; an unwalkable cliff leading down towards a wide open lowland basin.
The sun shines clearly off an ugly row of jagged ice structures. Farms, he realizes belatedly. The kind Etho had made in season 7. Long icicles hanging and slowly accumulating down the rows. It doesn't appear to have been shorn in some time.
Bdubs braces himself against the cold and takes a breath before taking flight, fighting his elytra every step of the way as the wind buffets him. He coasts down into the basin.
There's no immediate sign of his friend, but Bdubs doesn't find he was expecting it. Something in these structures feels abandoned. Icicles turned to stalagmites. Lava bubbles in cauldrons, providing a brief bit of heat. A moss farm of familiar design, equally out of place amidst the snow.
Honey, iron, sugarcane, wool, bamboo, trees. Monuments to ingenuity that were almost too common on this server to be worth mentioning, but this didn't... feel like Hermitcraft. It was just... a Place.
And the farms with all their potential lie still.
Bdubs grabs a golden carrot from an errant shulker absolutely full of them. He munches on it with a haughty sneer, as if to spite the man who absolutely didn't call him here. It’s getting even colder by the second as the sun has set early thanks to the raised cliff walls.
He continues to wander through the structures. No paths have been made between them, and he has to yank his boot out of the snow's clutches more than once. The chill and the long travel has his knees and back aching, and he casts around for somewhere to rest that would be at least marginally insulated.
The first indication that such a place exists at all was the sighting of a singular fencepost before a small cave; Bdubs knows a place to keep a horse when he sees one. He figures he's on the right track, and eventually, after fighting snow blindness for the better part of half an hour, he sees a wide open entrance in the stone. It empties into a roughly circular clearing with enough of a hole in its ceiling to let in soft snow and a view of the stars into its atmosphere.
Unlike the farms - all function, no form - this is just a little bit more. White snow sits purely one step above white wool which textures into diorite and eventually blends in with stone brick and cobble floors. It's almost set up like a cozy little courtyard with a more complete structure at its heart. A pair of dark oaks - out of place in this biome - sit on either side of the clearing. Dark oak plants and spruce have been tastefully interchanged to make sloping roofs to the little home.
When Bdubs passes into the courtyard, he is too tired to notice the eery electric hum of soul sand under his feet as he walks over to the structure, yawning. It would have a bed: it screamed a place with a bed. He opens the door, closes it behind him, and immediately thanks the universe for the campfire he finds. It’s easily rekindled and, despite being incredibly stupid building materials, wool and snow are excellent insulators.
He opens his pack and eats some of his rations. His shoulders ache from the long elytra flight and the rest of him is positively creaking in the temperature. When did he get so damn old? He scowls, but there's no heat in it.
There's a bed here with green covers, and it's only natural to slip in and let the sound of the crackling fireplace and roaring wind outside his door sing him to sleep.
Bdubs wakes up to a freezing nose.
He's alert nearly instantly, though he finds himself disoriented. The previous day's explorations return to his head as he blinks blearily at the smoldering ashes of the campfire. He burrows his head under the covers, trying to warm up his face situation. Can noses get this numb? Is this a thing?
Eventually he grouses loudly and sits up, instead opting to place the green duvet over his head and shoulders, wrapping himself up as he stands.
Right. Big farms. Middle of nowhere. Weird little pretty patchwork home.
Was his instinct off? He chews his lip as he more closely inspects his surroundings. This build really isn't Etho's. The man has a unique aesthetic style, but it sure isn't the subtle gradients Bdubs was more used to seeing in his own builds. Snow, wool, a gently sloping wooden roof with round portholes to let in the sun, almost like a ship, capsized.
He thinks he's reaching an epiphany as he walks out the doorway, and then he's ten feet in the air.
"EuaAAGHH!?"
The comforter flies off as he's ripped unceremoniously upwards. His furious keysmash of expletives echo against the mountains above.
"Hello there, Bdoubleo!"
Bdubs abruptly stops vocalizing as his swinging slows, and eventually he is swaying, upside-down, in front of a pair of mismatched eyes, crinkled in a smile.
"Have I ever told you you're the worst?" Bdubs spits out.
"Not in a while."
"You're the WORST."
"Mmhmm."
"Absolute idiot moron stupid."
His oldest friend simply smiles back, content to let him mouth off until he's red in the face. Which he is. Because he is upside down, attached to a fishing wire.
He flicks Etho in his stupid nose. "Let me down or I'll kill the dolphins in your highway."
Etho squints. He sighs. He lets the line go.
Bdubs makes another round of unique noises as he's dropped unceremoniously in the sand below. He scrambles up, rubbing the stuff off his face with a huff. "Your sheet's covered in dirt now. Good going, genius."
"Missed you too, Bdubs."
Bdubs glowers like only he can.
The shock wears off and Bdubs appraises his friend as Etho shores up his fishing line. His posture is terrible, but that's nothing new. Neither are the circles under his eyes, or the nervous lilt buried underneath his casual banter. He moves to busy himself immediately, resetting a tripwire in the home’s doorway that Bdubs hadn't seen. An ender pearl appears in his hand as he disappears behind a wall to deposit it.
"Freakin' weirdo. Trappin' your own place."
Etho comes back around the wall. Shrugs.
"Did you wait out all night for me?"
"I… cleared out the ice farm?"
"You really did. Unbelievable." Bdubs crosses his arms with a dramatic pout.
Etho laughs. It's light, but it's a tired, worn thing. His eyes don't meet Bdubs'. His gaze casts around, and his gnawed down fingernail taps against the fishing rod pole he's putting most of his weight against. He manages to put off both the air of someone who owns the place and someone one tick from bolting.
"What'chu doin' all the way out here, anyway?"
"Oh, avoiding you, obviously." It's barely a joke but it's the most insincere of jabs. "No escaping ol' B-double-oh though."
Bdubs snorts derisively. "Wasn't on purpose. Was just traveling on the roof 'n saw your monstrosity."
"Ah," Etho says, and it's quiet and bitten off.
Bdubs looks at him, hard. He makes the smallest of gasps.
"Is this a coping mechanism?"
"W-what?"
"Aha, it IS!"
"What? I... What? I felt like building!" There's recovery in his tone, a forced smile. Bdubs can read through the easy charade though. He always could.
The wind's still blowing like it's got somewhere to be. An icicle creaks.
"Man, I knew you were emotionally constipated, but this is takin' it to a whole 'nother level."
Etho snorts in an undignified bark of a laugh, all shock and gangly limbs struggling to look natural. Bdubs takes pity on his fool of a friend and yanks him down by his shoulders, fixing him with a crushing hug.
Etho holds his breath, and then lets it out into a moss borne sigh. He clearly doesn't know what to do with his hands, so they dangle awkwardly at his sides. The fishing rod has fallen alongside the green comforter on the soul sand floor.
"You're hopeless."
His tone is dripping with scorn and a sincerity he feels reflected in the unargumentative silence of Etho's reply.
Absolutely and utterly hopeless.
Etho lures him away with a promise of snacks. They end up sitting on a ledge overlooking his strange industrial basin. Etho hands out a golden apple as if that will distract his friend. He chooses an ungilded fruit of his own and takes a bite, turning his face away out of reflex while pulling his mask down before replacing it. Bdubs politely keeps his gaze down over the mismatched builds.
The silence is amicable. It's also just a little too loaded. They manage it both at once, somehow.
"It's not like you're the only person come back messed all up by the death games. It's like... normal! Or whatever. "
Etho almost chokes on the apple, but manages to recover.
"Really?"
"That's right baby. We're going there. You and me. Whirlwind adventure full of whimsy and trauma. Lay it on me."
"Really."
"Y'said that one already. I stutter?"
Etho shoots him a glare. Bdubs seems equally as confused by his own dedication to the line of questioning, and he shrugs before taking another big bite of the apple.
The conversation sort of just... dies. Bdubs is all bluster, but this is new territory, and he doesn’t know how hard he should push. They sit, and the sun spins slowly in the sky. They've seen many suns and many skies together. It's just another day of another day. But it's also something else that's hard to broach.
"We didn't even talk after the snow fort. Why's this gotta be it?"
Etho's voice is so, so small. Bdubs has to do a second take to confirm he even heard it. He leans over and nudges his friend, shoulder to shoulder. He grins.
“Goodness gracious, you’re still caught up on that? Is that really the can of worms you’re eatin’ for dinner?”
Etho is silent. Bdubs grin stales.
"Sorry."
"Yeah."
Etho picks at his gloves. Bdubs watches him without watching him, holding himself careful as anything. Just there. He's always so quick to make himself the centre of attention for the comedy of others, but sometimes, with some friends, you have to just sit, and-
"I just. I wanted to keep my hands busy and my head only filled up with stuff I could control. I wanted to feel like I was using my time well. I wanted to do what I'm good at. I wanted to have the resources to do those things. I wanted to... I don't know. Be myself?"
That's an odd turn of phrase there. Etho winces at himself. Bdubs turns his head a little more, puzzled. "You're always you, Etho. Be a cold day in hell if I could get you to be someone else."
Etho’s hands twitch. He can’t help the next words that come out. "Am I though? Am I though. Really. I-" He looks down.
"Etho, you're-"
"Okay. So. Who is Etho."
Bdubs blinks. Slowly, he lifts a finger and points towards the man himself.
Etho swipes away the hand and continues to fix him with a Look. Bdubs mentally gathers himself up.
"Etho is a genius! Redstone legend, pvp master, survivalist extraordinaire."
Etho's glare does not yield, but it is a different, silent bile that fills the air. Bdubs blinks.
"That's what this is about? Etho, sweetheart. Light of my life. You realize no one thinks any less of you because you maybe, uh, had a few mishaps in the moment."
Etho thinks carefully, attempts to sort his feelings. They defy such simple verbalization as he can provide; feels like a chest monster and none of the shulkers are colour coded.
"I... Mm. I know that you don't think any differently." He says it but there's some uncertainty in his tone. Bdubs catalogs that for later. Etho continues to speak, slowly placing his words with care. "But for many of these people, that's all I am."
"Etho, c’mon man, how could you think that's true?"
"The way they look at me whenever I entered a room in the first game. And the second. Some of the thir-"
Bdubs huffs. "Point. Whatever. We've moved on though."
"It really doesn't feel like it." Etho clears his throat, backpedaling slightly. “I mean, not that I’ve been particularly open or anything - I understand why they don’t-”
"Listen, okay, listen." Bdubs holds his hand up in a gesture of silence. "All of us, and I do mean all of us, know that we are ALL more than we let on. Y'think Scar's really as guileless as he plays? We both know he's sharper than a tack. Cleo could kill a man at a thousand yards with her stare but couldn't fight her way outta a wet paper bag. Impulse is all lovey dovey but he holds grudges longer than most people remember the inciting incident. And I, of course, play the part of the lovable jester, graciously allowing myself to be destroyed in combat and in tests of verbal wits, but we all know I'm brilliant, handsome, and very tall."
Etho rolls his eyes, but his jaw is unclenching a little.
"Point is, Etho-the-legendary-this-and-that, everyone knows ya more than just some far spun reputation now. And if they don’t, they’re starting to. And that’s a good thing! Because, big shock, they actually like the Etho they see underneath. How's that for a revelation?"
Etho's tenses back up. He casts for words. "I didn't. I didn't imply that they didn't. I don't care if people like me...?"
"Etho," Bdubs says, seriously, "Everyone cares about people liking them. Stop lyin'."
Etho doesn't respond. The sun continues spinning. Bdubs tosses the apple core down the side of the cliff.
He thinks back to TIES, and their silly little smelly little cave. He thinks of Impulse and Tango, excited to be around him. He thinks of Skizz, who said such nice things that they couldn't possibly be about him. Humble. Not dangerous, not cunning. Humble.
And even after he died so many times, even after he tripped and kept tripping and dug himself a hole to trip deeper into, Skizz still offered up his life for time. Not because Etho had the best chance of winning in the group, because at that point, certainly he was the poorest choice.
But a choice Skizz had made all the same.
Shoot.
"S'not fair," he mutters; an hour later, by Bdubs' timekeeping skills.
"Hm?"
“You waltz up here - accidentally! Of all things! - and just somehow manage to have it all figured out.” He doesn’t say what ‘it’ is. “So gross.”
Bdubs' face lights up like a christmas tree. "A genuine compliment! From the legend himself!"
Etho shoves him so hard he almost falls off the ledge.
"You goin' to stay out here much longer?"
Bdubs eyes Etho. They've whittled away some time exploring. Bdubs has run his mouth about the new redstone in his base and his grand bed-throne room and the latest happenings of the shopping district and Etho nods along quietly. As it goes.
They pass by the bee farm. Bdubs mentions something about a new decorating trick with stained glass and honey. He tilts his head, and in the same conversational tone, asks a question about one of the technicalities of what Etho has built. Slowly, carefully, Etho begins to speak and explain. Soon it is Bdubs nodding along and Etho talking about spinning bees and dispensers.
Their tour is nearing an end though, the sun cresting over the mountain ridge and filling the lowlands with an even deeper pool of cold temperature. The question falls with it.
"Be a shame to not see your base finished. It's coming along well."
Etho waves his hand. "It's nothing." The 'compared to yours' is unspoken.
"Oh shush. At least come compliment Grian on how much he's extended your stupid water speed things. That man is trying so hard to get your attention it's getting a little sad - throw him a dang bone."
"Oh?" Etho's tone takes on a bemused smile. He remembers the unbelievably illogical day one diamond sword.
"Geeze! Master of mind games my butt. No wonder you couldn't recognize an attempt at genuine friendship if it slapped you in your stupid face. Ridiculous."
Etho blinks at that. Ah. Oh.
Fair enough.
"Awe come on now, didn't mean it that way-"
"You're a good friend, Bdubs."
It's Bdubs' turn to look taken aback. But then his face cracks into a grin that lights the whole damn canyon.
"About time I get some recognition 'round here!"
Etho rolls his eyes as Bdubs punches his arm playfully. Their crunching snowbound steps have taken them near the entrance of the cave they met in, with one green comforter laying in wait, and Etho stops.
Bdubs stops a tick after, turns around and raises an eyebrow. Etho shrugs, then finally speaks. "I mean. Yeah I guess I'll probably head back. Or uhm might do some off-worlding?"
Bdubs takes note of his rushed wording and takes another step inward into the clearing. Etho's face twitches minutely. Interesting.
"Why'd ya stay on Hermitcraft? After?" Bdubs pushes another step.
Etho's words hurry out - a distraction successfully baited. "Wanted to be able to see. That everyone was ali- around. Just. Watching comms. Was. Nice?"
The taller man cringes into his fur-lined hood. Bdubs huffs out a laugh, but it's at the reaction, not the words. "You really are somethin' else."
He reaches out, grabs Etho's hand and pulls him towards the entrance of the cave.
"Eh?" he's just surprised enough to not dig in his heels.
"Oh come on. You spend this much time mimicking my build style - excellent job, by the way - and you don't want to spend a night freezing our butts off like old times?"
Etho's face might be a bit red. He knows better than to bother trying to speak now, so he acquiesces, letting himself be lead across the tasteful transition from snow, to dirt, to soul sand.
They don't talk about the snow fort, or the wool castle in the swamp. Not a word is said of equally flammable boats and elegant stone towers. The light of a campfire flickers off the underside canopy of twin dark oak trees. A bed is produced out of an ender chest and placed opposite. One last night sidestepping the rest of the world.
In an hour, while Etho stares at the ceiling and listens to Bdubs trying not to sound awake, Etho speaks very quietly.
"I should have given you the life."
Bdubs doesn't reply.
"I'm sorry."
His best friend sighs. Etho withers away in his bed, waiting for Bdubs’ reply.
"I told them you loved me, you know?"
No further explanation is given. Just the statement, out in the night air. Spoken between the parapets of another life.
"Well, you weren't lying...?" Etho whispers, voice turning up in a lilt as if attempting to sound helpful.
Bdubs loses it, laughter pealing through the room.
"I'm sorry!" Etho’s voice cracks embarrassingly.
"Oh man, you really do have a way with words, anyone ever told you that?"
Etho fights very hard not to just bury his whole head under the covers, mortified. "I'm sorry," his words are smothered by the sheets.
Bdubs eventually calms down, and the room lays quiet once more. At length, he speaks.
"I wish you gave me that life too. But I know that why you did it is part of who you are. And I wouldn't want you to be anyone else."
It's not an absolution, and it's almost a relief. Etho feels his eyes sting, and he blinks the feeling away, staring at the ceiling. There's a shifting, and he's turning, and Bdubs meets him on his knees beside the cot. Somehow his face is in his friends' hands and their foreheads are touching. It's more contact than he's felt in ages.
"I wanted to win it for you," he croaks. His fingers twine in moss cloak, clinging just slightly. Bdubs just laughs.
"Of course you did. You sap."
"I did want it to be us, until the end. It was going by so fast. You went before I could say anything-" and they're both thinking of clocks and timers and numbers going down again.
"I know, sweetheart, I know."
"And then I went and fought two on one and it was so stupid- but the time was so low- I wasn't thinking- there were too many things- I didn't have anything-"
"And then you stressed out and built farms for two months to compensate. I get it. I put every clock I owned in a shulker and hid it somewhere in Scar's storage system. I keep conveniently needing things in the nether during thunderstorms. I get it."
Etho gives a choked laugh. It’s… it’s suddenly shocking, to think all five foot question mark of his friends’ blustering confidence could be undershot by anything. But Bdubs had been right: people aren’t just what they put forward.
"We're all a little fucked up, aren't we." It's obvious, but it feels like the first time he's really gotten it. Bdubs smiles back.
"We're all a little fucked up."
It's a cloudy night, and the stars are all hiding. The world is limited to a few chunks of twisted machinery and one painstakingly crafted castle. There's a nether portal with all four corners filled that will see use tomorrow, and an extraneous gold farm through it. One long flight away there is a whole server, full of people, and builds, and decked out is almost done, and there's a tcg tournament coming up, and Scar is setting up fireworks, and Doc is committing sins against the Universe.
"But only one of us is washed up."
"You-"
Two old friends laugh harder than they have in years, and they're both okay.