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“Jesse… if what Gabriel said is true, I mean. Do you think…?”
You don’t want to hear it. You knew it was coming, knew from the moment the word ocelot had left Gabriel’s mouth. But you thought— you’d hoped you might have more time.
But of course you don’t.
You force yourself to sound like your heart isn’t breaking. “Lukas, your friends could still be out there!”
“I know!” For once, his smile isn’t infectious. “And that means I gotta go after them.”
Either you’re not as good of an actor as you thought, or he can read you better than you thought, because when he looks at you then his smile fades.
“They might need me, Jesse.”
He doesn’t wait for you to respond, just turns on his heel and walks away.
It's quiet in here. Some of the others are talking, no-one's arguing. It's nighttime, but you have enough light to keep the monsters from spawning too close to camp. For once, there's nothing to fight and nowhere to go.
You hate it.
Putting aside the terrifying Wither Storm and the constant infighting, you've actually kind of enjoyed being on a crazy adventure for the last few days. You haven't had a moment's rest, and now that you've got one you have no idea what to do with it.
It feels wrong to just be sitting here, when everything's this bad. Magnus is dead, Gabriel's still trying to remember his own name, and Petra…
Behind you, you hear her and Axel talking in low, worried voices. You try not to think about how gray she’s getting; you’d hoped that defeating the Wither Storm would heal her, but…
Well. You hadn’t defeated the Wither Storm. So maybe that theory’s not totally out. In any case, there’s nothing you can do for her now, and you hate that feeling. You know you should go talk to them, reassure her, but you also know what she’ll say: I’m fine. Stop babying me. No, I’m not dying from a rapidly worsening illness we know little to nothing about. No, I don’t want your help. Yes, I’m going to yell at you if you keep trying to give it to me.
So you head to Lukas.
He’s hunched over a chest by the edge of the cave, muttering to himself as he sifts through the sparse contents. When he’s gathered all the useful materials he’s going to get, which isn't much, he shuts the chest and stands— and then startles when he sees you standing right behind him.
You swallow. “Lukas, what are you doing?”
You know. He knows you know. Still, you can’t help from asking, just in case the Wither Storm smacked you in the head a little too hard.
But your vision stays frustratingly clear as he answers. “I told you. I’m going after my friends. I thought the other Ocelots were dead… but if they’re not, I need to go find them.”
To be honest, until Gabriel brought them up, you hadn't really thought about the Ocelots since the festival. Lukas is so different from the rest of them that it's easy to forget he's a member of a literal gang. Sure, he lets Aiden get away with being a jerk, but Lukas himself has never really been all that mean to you, or to the rest of the No-Names. Until now, you just assumed he stuck with you because he saw you were in trouble and wanted to help out.
But now you get it.
“Look,” Lukas says, and as hard as you try, you can’t look him in the eyes. “I’m grateful to you guys for bringing me this far, but I can’t leave them alone out there. Not with three Wither Storms raging.”
You know what you should say, you can almost see the words written in front of you. You’re supposed to say they need you, give a little nod, and let him go.
And if you change one of those words, you can see what you want to say.
You don’t say either.
“You’re part of our team.”
“Yeah, well. I left my team.”
He looks away, and you look at him at last, really look at him. His brows are tight, his jaw clenched. He doesn’t like this any more than you do. You definitely hate it more, but of course you can’t tell him that. You can’t hide it either.
“Lukas,” you say, like that’s going to convince him. You know it won’t, but what else are you supposed to say?
“Look,” he says, and his voice sounds so gentle and pitying that you want to throw up. “You and me, we’ve made a pretty good team so far. I’d even call us friends.”
He looks at you. You look at the wall.
“So, I hope you understand why I need to go help my old friends. They’d do it for me.”
It’s a choice, plain and simple. And he’s not choosing you.
You know it’s not fair to think of it that way, but you can’t help it. And you can’t tell him.
You want to, more than almost anything. Not more than you want to save the world, not more than you want him to be happy, but more than everything else.
“I understand,” you say. The next word stops on your tongue: go. You try, but it won’t budge.
You still can’t stop staring at the wall. Lukas is looking at you, you just know it, but you can’t, you can’t look at him. Not when he already sounds like he’s trying not to make you cry. God, you feel stupid. If Olivia wanted to leave to find her mom, or Axel wanted to find his half-brother, you’d let them go in a heartbeat. Hell, even if Reuben decided this adventure was getting a little too scary, you’d give him a set of custom-made pig armor and set him free.
And now, Lukas’s friends— his real friends— may or may not have escaped the new Wither Storms. They may or may not make it without him.
You just don’t know if you can make it without him. Like, emotionally.
“Jesse?” Lukas says quietly. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” you say, except you don’t say it, because when you open your mouth it’s dry and there’s no air left to come out.
Petra and Axel’s voices, which have been steadily murmuring from the other side of the cave, fall hurriedly quiet in the awkward silence, and you can feel their eyes on you without having to look.
Lukas must notice them too, because he grabs your hand and says, “C'mon, let's talk outside.”
It’s snowing. Outside of the cave, with its torches and its firepit, the cold sinks under your armor and into your bones. But Lukas's hand is warm.
He leads you to a patch of grass on the edge of the hillside, and for a few minutes you just look. The snow falls like a sheer curtain, trying and failing to hide the Wither Storms behind it. The blue tractor beams cut through the darkness, illuminating the hillsides in an eerie blue glow. It’s strange. You know how many people must be terrified right now, you included. You know how many people have lost their houses, their homes, even their loved ones. But you almost find the weird, terrifying light… kind of beautiful.
Lukas, too, looks different out here. The snow lands in big, fat flakes in his hair, rustling gently in the night breeze, but his signature quiff stays intact. His jacket shines in the blue light, wet from melted snowflakes. Not for the first time, you wonder what it would feel like on your shoulders.
“I don’t want you to go,” you say.
If he looked now, he’d see you looking at him, and maybe he’d guess. Your heart thunders; you almost want him to. But he keeps his eyes on the Wither Storms.
“I know.”
His voice sounds duller out here than it did in the cave, the snow catching the sound and muffling it.
“If I pretend to convince you to stay, will you pretend to listen?”
He bites back a smile. “Sure.”
You didn't expect him to say yes. Quickly, you try to craft the bits and pieces of halfhearted reasoning into something resembling an argument.
“So Petra’s got some kind of Wither sickness, and Gabriel doesn’t know how to tie his shoes anymore, but—”
Wow. Great start. Very convincing.
“But everyone else looked okay, and— and even if your friends got taken again, the best way to help them would be to help us defeat the Wither Storm.”
That last part is really the only point you have. And it's pretty decent, but you can already tell it's not enough to convince him by the way he nods. It's not a thoughtful sort of huh, I never thought of it that way, more of a yeah, I know, but still.
“I had the same thought,” he sighs, “but…”
“But just because it makes sense doesn’t mean it feels right,” you finish for him, your heart sinking.
He nods again.
“I hate leaving you guys—”
“Oh, please.” You snort. “I’m sure you’ll be glad not to worry about Axel using you as a crash pad anymore.”
He laughs, and for a moment it almost feels like things are normal again. Well, whatever’s constituted as normal for the last couple weeks, anyway. If things were really back to normal, you’d be holed up in your old treehouse with Axel and Olivia trying to decide on your next build, and Lukas… wouldn’t. So maybe this new normal’s better.
But even if it is, it’s also gone. Because he’s leaving.
“Can I,” you say, and dart your eyes to the Wither Storm a split second before you feel him look at you. You still can’t do it, you can’t meet his eyes, but you can’t just say nothing. “Can I ask you something?”
You see him nod out of the corner of your eye. “Anything, Jesse.”
The snow’s falling harder. The sky was almost clear a few minutes ago, only a few heavy clouds shielding the stars, but now it’s completely overcast. The clouds catch and diffuse the Wither Storm’s light more than the empty sky; the snow catches it as it falls, reflecting it off the hillsides. It’s almost like sunlight; the blue glow illuminates the flowers, casts long, dark shadows behind the trees that sway as the Wither Storm’s tractor beams sweep over them.
You tear your eyes off the Wither Storm, and look instead at your lap. “Lukas,” you say. “Do you…”
God, you can feel him looking at you. It’s so cold out here but your face feels like it’s on fire, like his eyes are burning into your skull.
“Jesse?”
“Can I have your jacket?” you blurt out, before you can stop yourself. You look at him as you say it, and the second the words are out, you clap your hand over your mouth.
Lukas blinks in surprise, like he’d expected something different. He probably thought you were going to ask him why he came with you in the first place, or if he’s told Petra how he choked and failed to save her.
You open your mouth to say sorry, that was a stupid idea, but he’s already shrugging off his jacket. He folds it, which is kind of dumb because, what, does he think you’re just going to stuff it in a drawer, and for a moment he just looks at the ocelot logo.
“I’ve had this thing for a long time, y’know.”
“I shouldn’t have asked— you don’t have to,” you say awkwardly.
Lukas holds it out. “I know.”
You take it, wet with snow and heavy in your hands. It won’t fit over Magnus’s armor, but that’s okay. The boots and the pants will be enough for now, so you set the green chest-plate onto the grass before sliding the jacket over your shoulders. It’s still warm, and for a second, just a second, even though you know it’s stupid— when you close your eyes you can almost imagine he's holding you.
He whistles, and one of the brown horses comes trotting out from the cave. You don’t want to, but you make yourself watch him leap onto the saddle because it might be the last time you ever see him. The Wither Storm might not kill people, but there are plenty of other monsters out there who do.
He grabs the reins.
With a jolt, you get to your feet. “Lukas!” you shout, stumbling over to him. “Lukas, wait. Take this.”
And you hold up your sword.
It’s not an even trade, even you know that. Your sword’s pretty worn at this point, what with the constant mobs you always seem to find yourself fighting, and as soon as you hold it out you want to snatch it back again and offer Lukas something else, like… Well, okay, you don't have anything on you to give, but you really wish you could offer him something better than a dulled-down stone sword.
But he grabs it before you can pull it away, gives it an experimental swish in the air. “Never used one of these before.”
“Don’t worry. It’s pretty intuitive.” You try to smile, but it must not work very well because Lukas suddenly looks at you like he thinks you’re about to cry. To be fair, you are, but still.
“Hey,” he says. “I’ll find them. And then… I’ll find you again, too. I promise.”
Promises don’t mean anything when there’s every chance he might never come back, but his words still make something in your chest feel a little lighter. They also make something in your heart feel a little heavier.
You nod. “Thanks.”
Lukas nods back. He looks like he wants to say something. You can’t imagine what else there is left to say—well, at least on his end— but he keeps quiet as he tugs the reins, ushering the brown horse down the cliff.
You watch him until he’s gone below the hillside. You listen to the snow-muffled hoof beats until they fade into silence. You hold the edge of his jacket until the last of its warmth ebbs away and it's as cold as the snow beneath your feet.
And you turn back to the cave.