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It's the knife of a friend that always cuts the deepest.
Jumper knew she was dreaming the moment she opened her eyes. Spawn looked beautiful - cherry blossoms draped the ground, the air was bright and fresh. It felt like spring.
Nowadays, Spawn feels like a death-trap. After the nuke, after the Abyss, it had never felt the same - she could feel the static clutch of the void around her heart the moment she set foot within its grounds, and the nuke had only made it worse - the air was bitter, chemical, like the vitriol in Wemmbu’s voice as they chased him to his death -
And now he was president.
But not in this dream. This dream was still peaceful.
She had missed this .
This is what she’d been fighting for, before -
before they did to her what she’d done to them, all those months ago
- before the… coup? Impeachment, Minute would probably call it, he with his delusions of democracy, like someone who didn’t know what this place was.
Jumper called it betrayal. A death sentence, for those old friends who’d stabbed them in the back - she’d seen it coming, but Minute hadn’t, and the tears in his eyes as his brothers turned their back on him and his dreams of peace wouldn’t leave her mind.
I want them destroyed .
Destruction. It had been her entire life, the last few months. From the destruction of her home in the frenzied aftermath of the Void Puzzle Hunt, Mapicc’s sword coming at her throat in the yawning cavern that even now still gaped under spawn, to the remnants of Vitalasy’s tomb, the amethyst shattered. No peace for the beautiful build her best friend had built her in his final days, before placing a sword in her hands and telling her to send him home. No peace for the dead, as it were for the living.
His tomb was but ash and dust, now. She tried to pretend it didn't hurt.
Now, looking across the beautiful dreamscape, she almost wanted to draw TNT from her inventory and blow it all up. Make it match the real world. Make it match what she’d been made to go through -
She always forget that the reason they hated her was because of her own actions. Because she’d hurt them first - the Void Ponies, the five of them, causing chaos and grinding gear and having fun and the entire time she’d never been on their side. The entire time she’d been betraying - laughing at their jokes then sending their plans to the other team. She’d been a hero, but she’d been a traitor, and now she knew what betrayal felt like from the other side. And she hated it .
She just wanted to enjoy this dream, but - she couldn’t. Not knowing how it was going to end.
“Oh! Jumper! I didn’t expect to see you here!” a familiar voice said, sunlight in the form of sound.
Jumper stilled.
Fact: PrinceZam was dead. She saw Minute’s blade find a home in his ribcage, saw his eyes dim, mouth still grinning that garish, terrifying grin.
Also dead: Woogie, Bacon, Planet. The latter had hurt - a little. They’d betrayed her, and Minute, but she still missed him, chest panging painfully as she thought of conversations, kind words - no more, not anymore.
Planet had suffered the consequences of their own actions. Betray a friend, bring a monster into power - become the first to fall .
She told herself it was deserved.
Fact: there were four banned players on Lifesteal Season Five.
Fact: PrinceZam was standing in front of her.
“I really, really didn’t expect to see you here,” he continued, tilting his head. That smile - she saw it in her nightmares, and now it was dripping blood, all of him was dripping blood - but none of it was hitting the red sand beneath their feet and she couldn't tell if any of this was real. “Does this mean you’re dead too? I thought this afterlife was just for me seeing as I know Bacon and Planet are dead - did you see I was the one who killed Planet? - but neither of them has come to visit me.”
“I’m not dead,” she said stiffly. “I’m - I’m just dreaming.”
Zam giggled. “Oh that’s funny , Jumper. You’re really funny. You’re definitely not dreaming - this is my afterlife! Do you like it? Maybe somebody killed you in your sleep - it would be a fitting death for a traitor , wouldn’t it?”
She wasn’t a traitor. She was a hero - her actions had saved the server. Leo and Clown and Planet were traitors - cowards, all of them, selling the server to the devil.
“I’m pretty sure I’m not dead, Zam,” she said, giggling awkwardly.
“But are you sureeeee ?” Zam pressed, grin growing wider. She hated his stupid joker outfit - - it should have looked dumb, purple and green against his golden eyes, but it just made him look even more insane. The blood certainly didn’t help.
“Yes. I’m sure.”
“Oh well,” he said, spinning away. “I’m sure Mapicc will kill you at some point. That’s the wonder of hardcore mode - he’s only got to get lucky once. No second chances for you, Jumper. Are you scared?”
Yes, she was. Jumper had never been scared of death before. She’d died enough times the thought failed to carry any sort of emotion. But that was just dying - impermanent, dangerous but not the end of the world, the only consequences being lost gear and a lost heart, easy enough to regain. Dying was the easy part. Death was something new.
“Oh, you are ,” Zam said, delighted. “That’s - wonderful, actually. It was really annoying being one of the first ones to die - not that I regret it, but I really wanted to see what it did to you. Have you come to terms with your impending mortality yet? I know it took me a while - well, to be honest, I died before I ever was able to.”
“I’m not like you, Zam,” she said tiredly. Even dead, he was trying the same old tricks.
“Really? Because you seem a hell of a lot like me in Season 4 - all alone against the world, betraying everyone who cared about me in search of some greater moral good, losing it all because I can’t possibly let go of those morals until I lost who I was entirely. That doesn’t sound familiar?”
“No. Because I’m not alone. I have Minute, and Pentar, and Ash. And I’m not going to lose my morals.”
“No? Jumper - you already have. You guys killed me - banned me for life - I’m dead because of you. What happened to a peaceful ending? What happened to not banning me no matter the atrocities I commit? What happened to peace and justice and redemption?”
Is that bitterness she hears in his last words? Were they supposed to save him?
Jumper scoffed. “You convinced half the server to betray us, Zam. It was made quite clear that no one cares about peace and justice other than us.”
His smile dimmed a bit. “But you still do care.”
Yes, she did. Not for Clown, or Leo, or Planet or Woogie or 4C or any of the people who’d voted against them - but for people like Spepticle, blameless, stuck in the middle of a war he didn’t know or understand.
She wanted those who’d hurt them gone. She wanted those who’d helped them safe, happy. She wasn’t sure how those two goals could align, but they were going to try.
She wasn’t going to turn into Zam.
“Yeah. I do care,” she said. “So does Minute, and Pentar. And probably Ash, but - well -” She paused, trying to work out how to word it.
“- he’s Ashswag -” they both said, simultaneously.
Jumper grinned. “Who knows what’s going on in his head, right?”
Zam laughed, a little less manic now. “I still don’t know. Wish I did - I want his confidence, sometimes. His ability to look at the world and go - fuck this, imma change things. For good or for evil.” A little quieter. “ I want to understand how he can suddenly decide he wants to be good, when he’s seen what this world does to good people .”
Just for a moment, Jumper thinks she can see tear-tracks on his cheeks, eyes puffy and red like he’d been crying for a while.
He said none of the other dead had come to see him. Had he been alone?
Jumper doesn’t want to feel guilty - his death had been a long time coming, encouraged by his own words and reckless actions, his nihilistic desire to destroy everything and everyone.
But he’d been alone for a long time before that. They’d all noticed how his - his crazed Joker Arc, as Minute called it - had drawn him further and further away from his team. Tormenting Jumper and Minute had been pretty much the only thing he’d done on the server for the last few months.
Since the Abyss, really.
He’d been alone for a long time. And Jumper - she wasn’t going to claim that what she had done was wrong, because it wasn’t. In betraying the Abyss, she’d saved the server.
But she’d also hurt her friends. That day, when she stood at the edge of the void and watched her teammates fall to their deaths, she’d only felt joy at finally being seen for her accomplishments, for the struggles she’d got through to get to this point. She’d won - and she’d lost one of the best teams she’d ever had. She might have hated their lack of morals, their bloodthirst, but she’d loved them . And they’d loved her.
Betrayal always hurts the most when it comes from the ones you love .
“I can’t understand what is going on in someone else’s head,” she said slowly. “But I know we all are able to make choices. And sometimes we make the wrong ones and sometimes we make the right ones and sometimes the ones we think are right end up to be wrong. And some people it doesn’t matter if they’re wrong or right because the strength of their conviction is enough. But I don’t think there are many people like that. I think the rest of us just have to - try and do the best we can.” She grinned, shrugged. “That’s what I’m trying to do, at least.”
“Do you think you’re succeeding?” Zam asked.
She laughed. “I guess we’ll see. Depends on how my story ends.”
“Yeah. I guess. Well, Jumper -” He says, and suddenly he’s only a few inches away from her. She can smell the coppery-tang of the blood on his clothes. “This has been an - illuminating chat. Fun, actually! I enjoyed myself! This has been the most entertainment I’ve had since I died!”
Jumper doesn’t mention the teardrops glittering on his eyelashes. She has some sense.
“But either way,” Zam continued, “You said this was a dream. Well, in that case - I think you need to wake up.”
In a small bed, in a small base, thousands of miles away from anything important, JumperWho stares at the ceiling and remembers.