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Jesse stared into the night sky, her somber expression illuminated by the distant stars and the lava they hadn’t quite rid Beacontown of yet. She gripped the railing of the balcony, the one that jutted off one end of the Order Hall. A shadow fell beside her. Not sparing a glance at the newcomer, she asked, “Are we heroes, Petra?”
“We saved the world from the Admin,” Petra replied. “What more do you want?”
“It’s not about me. Well, it is, but it’s also about everyone we left behind. Everything we did.”
Petra rested a hand on Jesse’s shoulder. “You did everything you could.”
“And it wasn’t enough,” Jesse said softly.
“Who is this about?”
“It’s more ‘where.’ The Sunshine Institute.” A sick look came over Jesse’s face as she spoke the name of that horrific prison.
Petra bit her lip, about to ask something, but she held back. Instead, she said, “Jesse, that place was awful. I . . . this is going to sound terrible, but I would have done much worse than what we did to get out.”
Jesse shot her a distressed glance. “What would you have done?” It wasn’t what she wanted to say. She wanted to talk about all the things she wished she’d done better, but with a confession like that . . . maybe Petra needed her more than she needed Petra right now.
“Probably? Commit murder,” she admitted. “I wouldn’t have gone there immediately, and I’d try to only kill jerks like the Warden, but if I spent as long as some of those other prisoners . . .” Both of the girls’ minds wandered to Xara, the second Admin who’d spent years locked in a tiny cell and surrounded by lava. Petra shuddered, thinking of being so tied down and trapped. Jesse winced, thinking of all that time isolated.
“I hope I wouldn’t go that far,” Jesse replied.
Petra looked away, blinking back angry tears. “Thanks, Jesse. That really helps, knowing your standards are so much higher than mine.”
“Oh, I–I’m sorry, Petra. I didn’t mean it like that.”
She sighed. “No, I’m sorry. I just told you that I might be willing to commit murder. Honestly, is there any wonder you’re the leader and not me?” She smirked.
Jesse laughed at the callback to their early struggles, when Petra was sick of Jesse always taking the lead. They’d both grown, becoming more willing to listen to others. “Yes, we all know I’m the best at leadering.”
“You’re a huge dork is what you are,” Petra grumbled. She blew out a breath. “But maybe . . . talk to Lukas about this? About everything that went down? He’s–I assume he’s able to be more objective than me. He wasn’t there. Neither was Axel or Olivia, but they have their own towns to check on. And Lukas . . . he’s good at like, all this emotional junk. Me, I commit emotional murder.”
Jesse snorted. “What does that even mean? “Emotional murder”? I’m not the only dork around, Petra.”
Petra rolled her eyes and elbowed Jesse’s side. “Yeah, yeah, you know all my deepest darkest secrets: that I’m secretly soft and not the warrior with skin of diamond. But seriously. Talk to Lukas. He’s a good friend like that.”
“He believed the Admin,” Jesse whispered. “When Romeo pretended to be me.”
“So did Axel, Olivia, and all of Beacontown. People don’t think that their friend’s skin has been stolen. It just doesn’t happen.”
“Not until it did.”
“Hey, it took us–you–about three minutes to convince Lukas that you’d been impersonated. Everyone knows it makes more sense for you to have been impersonated by the guy who created the world than for you to suddenly go around throwing people in jail and blowing up cities. Wow, that’s . . . not something I’d ever thought I’d say. It wasn’t even in the realm of possibility six months ago. I barely knew the legends of an Admin, and now . . .”
“We destroyed a legend.” Jesse’s statement was powerful in its simplicity. They’d done it. They hadn’t just created a legend of which they were the centerpiece, they’d proved the existence of a different legend, one far stronger than they, but they’d stripped him of any power he’d held. Now he was off chasing redemption, and they were left to pick up the pieces he’d scattered when he treated the world like his plaything. He’d caused irreparable damage, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t try to make up for it in some small way. And there were people he’d hurt far worse than Beacontown. That’s where he was right now–attempting to help those whose world he’d stripped away and left behind.
You did the same, Jesse’s mind whispered. You stripped away the world of the prisoners of the Sunshine Institute and you didn’t stay to help mitigate the damage. You left them behind like Romeo left the Underneath behind. They’re still there, starving, fighting each other for anything to sustain them one more day, with no hope of escape.
Romeo didn’t say anything about the Sunshine Institute when he said he was going to try to repair all the damage he’d done, did he? Yeah, it’s probably because they’d kill him on sight, but not even a mention?
“Hey,” Petra whispered, looking Jesse right in the eye. “It’ll be okay. It turned out all right.”
Jesse wanted to tear her gaze away, but she was frozen. Not for everyone, she thought.
Not for everyone.
Lukas scribbled in his journal. Radar kept trying to peer over his shoulder, but Lukas would clutch the book to his chest and warn him away by saying, “Nope, not yet.”
“Aw man,” Radar would groan, disappointed.
“Hey guys,” Jesse said, entering the Order Hall. She was glad that Romeo seemed to have left the treasures and mementos alone. They’d had to clean out quite a lot of lava, but Ivor had been a big help with that. “Watcha doing?”
The boys sat on the staircase leading to where Jesse kept the armor. Radar hopped up and squealed. “Jesse! Hi! It’s so good to see you!”
Jesse chuckled. “I saw you yesterday, Radar, remember? And the day before that? And most of the days before that, too? Because we live in the same city? And you work for me?”
“It’s always good to see you, Boss!”
Huh. She’d need to give him a promotion soon. He’d done far too much–been willing to possibly sacrifice his life, or ever seeing the surface again–to stay just an intern. Plus, he had taken the lead in many of the rebuilding and beautification projects that Beacontown had going and was absolutely killing it–and he put a smile on everyone’s face with his overzealous enthusiasm for everything. (That, or a grimace because of how shrieky his voice became, but no one would tell him that. He was far too sweet. Besides, he’d probably gotten enough of that from Stella and maybe others in his Champion City days, not that many outside of the Order knew that he’d lived in Beacontown’s “rival” city.)
“Jesse!” Lukas set his journal down. His smile, genuine and beaming, warmed her heart after how ice cold he’d been when the Admin was pretending to be her. “I’m experimenting with some things,” he said mysteriously.
“He’s practicing drawing,” Radar supplied.
Lukas playfully whacked Radar in the head with his journal. “It was meant to be a surprise!”
“Ooh, let me see!” Jesse snatched the journal out of his hands. On it was a sketch of a horse in mid-jump, an ocelot crouching under it. He’d just begun adding hatching lines for the shading. She grinned mischievously and showed it to Radar. Lukas lunged to grab it back, but she leaped out of his reach. He sighed.
“Yeah, go ahead, show off my unfinished drawing,” he said dryly.
“It’s great, Lukas,” she replied sincerely. And it was. The lines were clean and smooth, the poses were dynamic, and the shading that he’d begun already added an astonishing amount of depth. “Have you been practicing?”
“Actually, yeah,” he admitted, scratching the back of his head. “I’ve always done art off and on to, y’know, complement my writing, but after everything that’s happened . . . it’s a pretty good stress reliever.”
“I actually wanted to talk to you about that. Everything that’s happened. I mean, not everything everything, but, y’know. Stuff. Petra suggested I talk to you,” she said awkwardly.
He reached for his journal and tucked it away. “I’m always here.” It was clearly an invitation. Jesse eyed Radar.
“What?” Radar questioned.
“I don’t want you here for this,” she said.
He frowned. “Let me stay, Boss. Please.”
“Radar–”
“I was there too. For all of it. I mean, not as much when you all came back to Beacontown, but . . . I was busy being bait for a giant Enderman, so I think that gets a pass? It does, right?”
“Yeah, that gets a pass,” she acknowledged. “Look, you were there. I know that. You went through a lot and you saw the same stuff we did and you saw my, uh, more questionable decisions.”
He glared at her. “What questionable decisions?”
“The ones I want to talk to Lukas about,” she retorted, her patience beginning to wear. “It’s just that I want to talk about some private things and . . . you don’t need to be exposed to all of my messes.”
“But Jesse–”
“We can talk about it later, Ray,” she said, using Petra’s nickname for him. “I promise, if you want we can talk about it later. Or never, if you don’t want to. Either works.”
Radar sighed and set off. He paused as he passed her. “You’re not going to talk about me, right?”
The vivid image of a block being pushed down on Radar’s head, crushing him, hearing him gasp for breath as the Warden stood there impassively, blocking her from getting to him . . . anything she was going to say caught in her throat. She curled her fingers into a fist, rage and bile rising in equal measure at the thought of anyone hurting this innocent boy, let alone straight-up torturing him.
“Jesse?” Lukas asked. There was concern in his voice, but it was also a question.
“Not if you don’t want me to,” she told her intern, a strained smile on her face.
Radar faltered. “I . . . I don’t think I do. Not yet. Maybe another time.”
“Hey,” Jesse said kindly, “you want a hug?”
He made a high-pitched noise and practically threw himself at her. She rested her chin on his head, comforted by how alright he was. They weren’t imprisoned with no guarantee of escape. They were here. They were home. They weren’t quite whole, but they were getting there.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “This is so much better than that high five. Wait, I didn’t mean it–you’re a good high fiver–it’s just–”
Jesse pulled away, making sure he could see her amused grin. “I get it, Radar. Really.”
“Maybe I’ll talk to Lukas next,” he said cheekily. He saluted and left the two of them alone.
“He’s really grown up,” Lukas remarked. Jesse knew their interactions must have left him with a whole lot of questions, but she also knew that she couldn’t answer them all right now.
“Yeah. He has,” she settled on saying.
“C’mon, let’s go to the kitchen. I don’t think anyone’s down there, and we can find a snack. Hard conversations are always better over snacks. There might be some cookies left over?” He mentioned, the two of them heading to the underground portion of the Order Hall. They’d all lived there for a while following the Wither Storm. Those had been good times. Jesse thought of Romeo and Fred and Xara, and the original Order, and the way the New Order’s lives had diverged and intersected in equal measures. Maybe even better times are ahead.
But what about the people you left behind?
“Probably not,” Jesse said, finally replying to Lukas. “Everyone knows your cookies are the best.”
“Ha, thanks.”
They entered the kitchen. There was the wall of furnaces that Olivia used to constantly upgrade, redstone trailing behind it, there were the chests of ingredients that Axel would raid, there were the crafting tables that Lukas would hover over as he perfected his recipes, and there was the seating area. Jesse missed the days when they would sit around the table, trading jokes and banter after a long day of adventuring. Yet she wouldn’t trade her life now. Those days were good. These days were good too.
Lukas rummaged in the chests while Jesse sat down. A few minutes later, he returned with a batch of eight cookies. He took his seat by her side and pushed half of them over to her. “So what did you want to talk about?” He said.
“Well . . .” She picked at the cookie, pieces of it crumbling off. “You know about what . . . that . . .” Her throat closed up. How could she tell him about all the horrible things she’d seen? The mistakes she’d made?
“You wanted to talk about what happened when the Admin zapped you to his prison? Or after that?” Lukas prodded.
She heaved a sigh. “Yeah. It’s . . . it was bad, Lukas. When we first got zapped, it was like . . . we’d never been through anything like this before. And yeah, a lot of our adventures were like that, but none of the other villains we’ve fought have ever been able to just do things like that. They used manipulation, technology, traps, stuff like that. We were underground with no way up, no way of knowing if there was a way up, and the prison itself . . .” A tremor ran through her body. She bit the insides of her mouth to keep from crying. She was barely able to force out her next words, and they were only audible because Lukas was right next to her. “I made mistakes, Lukas, and Petra says that we did the best we could, but I don’t know about that.”
Lukas placed a hand on her back and rubbed circles on it. It was surprisingly calming. “I . . . I’m listening,” he said.
“There were guards. They were called Associates. The Warden . . . he asked me to be one of them. I think they were all prisoners. I know they were all prisoners. He basically told me that everyone there was. I said no.” She wondered if Radar would have suffered less if she’d said yes. “You know that nothing grows underground, right?”
“I’ve heard of a new kind of berry that grows underground and glows, but yeah, I know,” he replied.
She’d have to check those berries out. Later. “Well, there was this pit. A mushroom pit. It was how the prisoners got food. Mushrooms would pop up and they’d make stew. But . . . there weren’t enough mushrooms. So they’d all fight for it.”
Lukas’ face was ashen, but he kept a steady expression, maintaining a comforting presence. “That is just . . . so messed up, Jesse.”
“Yeah, it was,” she agreed. “But it gets more messed up. See, we decided that our best bet to get out was to get in trouble, because Prisoner X was on the lower levels. She was this prisoner who was always breaking out–she’s Xara, one of the Admins, in case you were wondering–so I followed this guy who had this very off vibe to him back to his cell. And yep, he had a mooshroom hidden behind his wall. I have no idea how it got there considering the mining fatigue and the fact that we were literally underground, but it was there. So we fed everybody.”
“But isn’t that a good thing?” Lukas questioned.
“There’s more. One of the guards alerted the Warden, who came up and was very mad and he told me . . . he told me . . .”
. . . and I promise not to hurt them.
And if I don’t?
Then I can’t promise to keep that promise.
“He threatened them. Just said he wouldn’t hurt the other prisoners if I sheared the mooshroom. Something about restoring the balance of the Mush Room? I think that’s what it was called. The Mush Room. Anyway, Oxblood was yelling about not shearing Geoff, the mooshroom, and I don’t know why but I listened to him. I couldn’t bear the thought of doing what the Warden said, but he threatened them . . .”
“What did he do?” Lukas’ tone was unbearably gentle. Jesse wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep from crying.
“He had the Associates, the guards, mine the pit up.”
“He . . . what?”
“But hey, we got what we wanted, so what does it matter that they’re still down there? Without any food?” Her voice dripped with venom. “The Admin basically canceled the prison when we got close to Xara. The Warden was fired, everyone was running around, all the prisoners went for revenge on the Warden and the guards . . . Xara shot the Warden. He was going to blow everyone up. But it was one piece of TNT, it wouldn’t have been enough to kill us, would it?” She looked at Lukas. “I asked Petra if we’re heroes. She asked what more I wanted than saving the world from the Admin. But I could have done better, couldn’t I? Could have saved them.”
“Maybe,” Lukas conceded, “but you don’t know that. I don’t know what I would have done in your situation. What happened sounds pretty darn terrible, but didn’t you do the best you could?”
“I don’t know,” she murmured. “Did I?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know if you made the right choice, but I trust you to have done what you thought was right.”
“But it wasn’t right! And now I have to live with that! Nearly every night, Lukas, it’s nearly every night. They’re in my dreams, and now I know what Gabriel meant when he said “I can’t save them” so many years ago. I’ve always known a little, but it’s . . . so much closer to home now.” Jesse recalled Gabriel mourning the victims of the Wither Storm that he couldn’t save as they raced to his temple. So many . . .
She hadn’t known what he felt then, but she’d become intimately familiar with it. The more time passed, the more she wondered what she could have done differently, who she could have saved, if she’d been just a little bit faster, stronger, smarter.
“You can’t carry the weight of everyone’s life, Jesse,” Lukas said. “You care about everyone so much, and we love that about you. I know you think it’s your job to save everybody, but . . . that’s not always possible. I wish that wasn’t true. I wish everyone got a happy ending. But sometimes, bittersweet is the best you can go for. And sometimes, tragedies and terrible things happen. You can’t prevent it all. You might have made mistakes, but you can learn from them and be better in the future. And your friends will be there for you to lean on. Like you’re doing now.”
Warmth spread through Jesse’s chest. “Yeah,” she choked out, “but it’s just so hard sometimes, y’know?” She couldn’t stop the tears now. They streamed down her cheeks and she tasted salt. Lukas pulled her in close and she sobbed into his shoulder. “I’m not okay,” she said, “I’m not okay. I want to be strong for everyone, but I’m not okay.”
Lukas held her, rocking the slightest bit. “You are strong. Jesse, you’re one of the strongest people I know. After everything you’ve had to be strong through . . . you deserve a break. You deserve to cry.”
“Thank you. Thank you,” she mumbled. “Thank you. You’re one of my best friends, Lukas.”
“Anytime,” he said.
And Jesse knew he meant it as they clung to each other.
Eventually, she pulled away. She wiped at her face. “Sorry for getting your shoulder all wet and gross.”
He smiled. “It was for a good cause. Now, cookies?”
She smiled back. “Cookies.”