Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Just as Steve finished setting up the bed on top of the portal he heard a yell. Looking up, he saw Brian being thrown into the air by the dragon and falling.

Down. Down. Down.

He should have pearled by now.

Steve checked his com and saw the message.

[MOD] TheHeroBrian fell out of the world.

Steve couldn’t push back the twinge of worry that arose when he saw the message. Void deaths were never fun and Steve wouldn’t be there if he had a bad respawn until he killed the Ender Dragon. Above him, said dragon roared.

~~~

Steve’s voice was quickly gaining volume.

“What do you mean you never respawned him?”

Rusty shrugged again, he was a medium sized dog hybrid with brown floppy ears that would have been endearing if it wasn’t for the circumstances. His retrograde sunglasses were hiding a large portion of his face but Steve bet if he could see it, he still wouldn’t look apologetic.

“I don’t know what to tell you man. I was preeeetty busy last night if you know what I mean.”

Steve was near shouting now, his face turning red with anger.

“So you’re telling me, you didn’t respawn one of your own players, my brother, because you were fucking.” He spat the last word out with vitriol.

Rusty paused for a second and shrugged again, in a way that was becoming increasingly more irritating, before slowly saying,

“Yup.”

Steve shook, anger and grief warring in his mind.

“You know what? I’m done. I can’t stay on the server with the Admin that killed my brother.”

Rusty, The Admin at least had the decency to look taken aback.

“Aw man, you can’t do that, you’re the most powerful Mod we have now that Brian’s gone! If you leave Hopper will be head Mod and you know what she’s like. You just need a break, some time to cool your jets a little. You can leave dude, but I’m not gonna let you strip your rank.”

As he said this, his hands brought up an Admin panel. Before Steve could do anything about it, he felt a twinge of pain in the back of his head as the feeling of code locks sunk into place. Steve stared at him in an uncharacteristically blank expression and gave a tight smile.

“Goodbye Admin.”

[MOD] SteveTheVillain left the server.

Chapter Text

Ever since he left Rusty’s server Steve’s life had become relatively the same. He would wake up in his small perfectly sized apartment, get dressed, eat a healthy breakfast of stale Ocelot-O's with an apple, and go to work at his local Department of Glitch Control, which was the Mojang sanctioned office located in every hub world and was what investigated and deleted glitches. The building looked rather bleak compared to some of the more intricate and colorful structures less than five kiloblocks away with an almost completely gray exterior with only small hints of green and beige, decoration was similarly grim with only perfectly pruned birch trees.

The interior of the building had a similar gray interior, from the walls and carpets to even the employees hair. In fact, Steve privately suspected that he was the only worker that was below forty. Steve privately laughed at this thought as he took the elevator up to the fifteenth floor of the building, the Death Branch. 

~~

“So anyway Steve, if you could pop down to the server? We’re going to need it done by the end of the week. Okay?” 

Steve nodded at his supervisor without looking up or commenting (Edward was an Enderman hybrid) and plugged in the server ip to his comm. Within seconds he appeared in a grassy field, a mountain range was visible in the distance and Steve could hear a river gurgling nearby.

“Mornin’ Steve.”

Steve flinched and turned around. Behind him was Colin, a well dressed human in a white and blue button up and mostly gray hair still streaked with orange. He was wearing tinted sunglasses which Steve was thankful for- being blinded by the light of Creative mode was not something he wished to check off his bucket list. 

“What do we have today?” Steve asked.

“Someone managed to get approval for a Death Change. Something about three lives or whatever. Supposedly a Watcher was involved though so the details are a bit muddled…” Colin shrugged before continuing. “Anyways because it’s a mod we need all deaths. We’ll start with mobs if that’s good for you.”

Steve nodded. 

Whenever it was approved for a mod to be added to a server, they had to test the mod to make sure that nothing would endanger the players. The most important aspect would be to make sure that no glitch would inhibit an Admin from respawning their player. Unfortunately these glitches are particularly difficult to catch as there is the chance that the patcher would be affected and die as well.

 This is where Steve comes in. Being a Mod that’s untethered to any server, he can respawn without an Admin. 

“The Blessed are immortal, the guides of the impermanent souls, without the blessed we are simply strands of code in an infinite universe.”

“Which is why you don’t talk back to them!”

Steve felt the phantom sensation of a hand hit his cheek. Flashes of memories coming to the surface. He firmly shoved them back down.

“So, Colin, let’s start with Zombies.”

He knew the Brian would disapprove of this, but dying was kind of cathartic to Steve. The feeling of pain would subside and for a few seconds you could only see the darkness of the void and the smell of cloves. It was blissful, how quiet it was. Of course then he would be pulled back into the Overworld. 

And so he died.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Like the sound of raindrops hitting pavement.

It was okay though, as the trident went through his heart.

It was okay, even though the calm bliss of the void was stripped away and it hurt.

And it hurt.

And it hurt.

And it hurt.

But in the hurt he felt a tug, and another, and the feeling of someone hugging him and- and-

And the Universe L̴̨̨̡̻̘̘̰̓̃͒͑͛̀̃̀͝ǫ̸̤̗̟̱͔̰̬̬͚̙͎͋̉v̵̨̡̧͍̘̥̤̍͊̊̎̍̀̾̂̎̋͌̚͜͠͝ͅẻ̵̩̥̦̦͍̮̤̯̞̫̏̑͋̈́͌͐͋̐̾͘s̷̛͎͉̤̱̘̬̳͎͈̲̆͌̒̑̐̈͒͑̈́̌͆̅̚ ̷̤͐̎̊̅̍̆͗̅̇̕̚͝h̴̨̯̬̠̩̙̜̦̅̌̕ͅi̷̡̘͍̹̫̣͚̞͑͑͒m̸̝̰͉̈́̍̿