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"For what it's worth, I was telling the truth when I said I enjoyed working with you."
Seawatt's final words were nothing less than a gut punch, digging into his flesh as acid rose at the back of his throat. It burns — tasting like the raw chicken he's eaten all his life until about a week ago, and something akin to anger. Anger that he couldn't just die, couldn't let Evbo hate him past the grave because fuck not speaking ill of the dead.
His last words burrow through a gash in his chest, past the mangled remains of flesh and muscle and sinew and bone, past the tangles of tendons and veins. It's painful, and Evbo hates it. He feels similarly about the person who said them, he supposes.
"For what it's worth-"
Nothing. It's worth nothing anymore, and maybe it never did because Evbo likes to believe he was never fooled by Seawatt. He likes to believe that there was an inkling of distrust, an unscratched itch under his skin that he brushed off as nerves because it means that he was never tricked into believing that they were maybe, begrudgingly beginning to get along.
He hates Seawatt, and he has no reason not to. It's easier that way—the way it's supposed to be.
What he misses is the mid-day sun filtering between the leaves and the idea of existing outside of civilization. It's an odd thing, to miss something you know was never real. He's starting to feel a lot of that recently, and it churns in his stomach with a sickening rocking. every breath he takes leaves him feeling a little more like curling up in a ball in the comforts of his former house on the noob level and rotting through the wooden floor into the endless void below.
"-I was telling the truth-"
It's easier to think that this is just another one of his lies. It's easier, but a fractured finger and a fractured femur are both broken anyway. He doesn't need closure. He's a god. The God. That's all the closure he could ask for. That's all he could ever ask for — more than that is ridiculous. All he ever wanted was to be someone. What did it matter who?
"-when I said I enjoyed working with you."
It's a pathetic excuse for a goodbye.
He's a god. He's supposed to be above this — better than this. That's what he tells himself, anyway. The netherite boots on his feet do little to make him feel better, a weight that keeps him tethered to the ground that he feels so disconnected from.
(A state of incompletion. Where do you rise when the only way up is into the licking flames of the sun, Icarus? What more is there past heaven? What more could you possibly ask for? He doesn’t know. Maybe he should, but he doesn’t.)
What more is past heaven? He’s the best person to answer that, isn’t he?
He falls, and he supposes it’s the same thing as flying.
(He falls, and it leads him to the defeat of the Parkour Villain. He falls and someone was there to catch him. This time, he catches himself.
The story of Icarus is one of hubris. This is a story of yearning — yearning for something more, something better to work towards. That has been his whole life, from Noob to Pro to Master to Champion to God. That’s all he knows how to do, how to jump for something he wants with his fingers burning from the stretch and his heart twisting in his chest. All he knows how to do is want.)
“For what it’s worth-”
(Come back.)
“-I was telling the truth-”
(Give me something to want.)
“-when I said I enjoyed working with you.”
(How do I live knowing there’s nowhere to go from here?)
…
“Seawatt?”
“Evbo.”
Death had done little to dull the golden jewellery that adorned his being, and even now, it shines with a warmth that the afterlife doesn’t have. It’s his warmth, his from when he was alive, and death had done little to dull him.
“I didn’t expect to see you so soon,” Seawatt drawls, amusement evident in his stupidly smug expression. There’s no reverence in his gaze, nothing pious about the way he lounges on the grass blocks he’s supposed to be parkouring on for the rest of eternity. Evbo finds that there’s a kind of comfort in it, the way that he finds comfort in the taste of raw meat. Not because he likes it, but because it’s familiar — safe and constant. “What, did you fail a 360 and get killed in a Parkour Battle?”
(That’s right. He doesn’t know. He wonders how long it’ll take for him to notice. Seawatt’s always been smart — that’s what allowed him to do any of this. He’s smart, smarter than most anybody Evbo knows, and so he wonders why Seawatt hasn’t mentioned the purple shine that envelops his boots.
It seems like the kind of thing he’d snarkily comment on, if nothing else. He was kind of counting on it.)
“Uh, sure. Something like that,” Evbo says. He’d never fail a 360, let it be known, but protecting his reputation — not his ego, he’ll have you know — can come later. “So… How’s death?”
“Boring,” Seawatt seems entirely content to lay around in Evbo’s company, which isn’t too surprising considering his track record. It’s nice to know that not everything changes, even if the only thing that stayed the same is Seawatt’s willingness to sit back and relax. The discs, this conversation. The discs, his betrayal. The discs, his death. He seems unphased by it — by him, too.
“I can see that.”
There’s nothing in the afterlife. Nothing but endless jumps. It’s not too dissimilar to Parkour Civilization. Evbo wonders if Seawatt feels bitter about it — if he tastes sand where Evbo sees home.
Evbo takes a seat on the grass block next to Seawatt, his legs dangling off the edge and grazing the void with the tip of his netherite boots. It ripples and the stars bob lazily as the disturbed fabric of space returns to its former state of stillness. He wonders what would happen if he jumped here, too.
“Nothing,” Seawatt says, and the sigh that heaves from his chest sounds heavy. Almost defeated. He turns curiously, tilting his head at the other man. “Nothing happens when you jump. You just return here. I’d know.”
“Obviously,” Evbo rolls his eyes. Annoyance creeps up the tips of his fingers and something in him is relieved by it. It’s an odd concoction of emotions, one he doubts anyone but Seawatt could bring out of him. That in and of itself is a can of worms he’s not willing to touch. “What, did you expect to come back to life that easily?”
“No, but I figured I’d stop you from doing something stupid.” A pause. “Seems a little late for that, considering you’re here.”
“I don’t think you can talk,” he responds, and Seawatt laughs.
It’s little more than a huff of air, something that could be passed off for a particularly heavy exhale, but Evbo knows. He’s the only one who has to know, anyway. He’s the only one who has to know that the sun rises in the afterlife, the only one who has to know how Seawatt’s gold shimmers in the dawn and how he almost seems to glow with it. Evbo stores the memory in a chamber carved into his heart, right between his fourth and fifth rib. It warms him from the inside out.
“Thank you. For being here, I mean.” Seawatt says, his eyes glued to the horizon. A part of him is glad for it, glad for the orange-y reds that wash over him like salvation — glad that he can’t see the sincerity (or lack of it). Seawatt had turned to look at him before he died, and despite the finality of his words, despite the lack of remorse, there was fear.
(“I suppose… I had this coming for me, didn't I?” he had said, but awareness is not acceptance.
Can anyone accept that they’re about to die? Maybe. Maybe, but not him. There’s something about Seawatt that is so painfully lonely, and maybe he wasn’t afraid of dying, but afraid that his parents had died for nothing.)
“Yeah,” Evbo says, because there’s nothing else to be said. “Don’t worry about it.”
(Icarus falls, and the depths of the ocean consume him to become one. Icarus falls, and he falls knowing that for a brief second, the sun had kissed his skin so gently before it burned away his wings. For a second, he has reached past the heavens. For a second, there was nothing more to want.
Was it worth it? The darkness creeping into the peripherals of his vision asks, and its voice is hauntingly beautiful. Death cradles his face with a love that only a dead man can know.
Icarus laughs, and his response is heard only by himself. Does it matter?)