Work Text:
What does death feel like?
The short answer:
It feels like falling.
The long answer:
The first time you log into the server, you are alone.
Despite this, you still run away.
You run and run for a long time, through a forest, across an icy ocean, until you find yourself atop a snowy hill with no signs of other players. It’s quiet, and it’s cold. The snow stings your fingers, the chill sinks deep into your bones and numbs your skin.
It’s not somewhere you’d ever want to live.
It’s not somewhere you’d want to die, either, so you start work on a villager hall.
Over the next three months, you don’t die once. You get close - the closest is when you fall from a cliff near your base, hit the icy river below you with a terrifying crack - the ice doesn’t break, but maybe you do, a little - everything hurts, you can feel the bruises starting to form, blood thumping in your ears - it’s terrifying. Healing takes a while - you don’t have gapples, don’t have much at all really, but you make it back up the cliff anyway, collapse on the ground near the lava pool and lay in the snow.
Death is scary . It hovers at the back of your mind, an inevitability you can’t help but run from.
And you don’t want to keep running, so you start to think of options. You cycle through a few before messaging your teammate.
You discover death feels like falling, but it’s nowhere near as scary when you know there is someone there to catch you.
Death still feels like falling. Months go by and things change - it becomes familiar. Then it becomes bitter.
It starts to taste like guilt.
It feels like a broken promise every time you respawn in a base that isn’t yours, where you can taste ash on your tongue.
Guilt is a stone in your chest, heavy, weighted, and you want to run away but it holds you close.
Death still feels like falling when it’s Evi’s hand holding the weapon. You can’t help but feel like it should be different.
Because it is .
Where would death be, in a list of things that matter?
You can’t decide. I value death to the extent it gets me things , you say, once, but you’re not sure it’s true.
You value your deaths because it makes others sad. You value your deaths because it scares you. You value your death because it is symbolic of a betrayal.
And that leads you to a stronghold with a heart drawn on the walls, standing in a tiny room in the walls waiting for Evi’s response.
You’d been scared when you came up with the idea - you’re terrified now.
You almost feel like you’re already falling.
“I’m not - asking you to,” you say, and your voice shakes. “I don’t want you to, actually. I - really don’t want you to. But it’s something you could do. I’m giving you a choice.”
And Evi’s considering it. Evi’s considering it and there is solid ground under your feet but it doesn’t feel that way.
“I guess the question is. Can I trust you?” you say quietly.
Evi laughs, half turns away. “Lowkey you can’t trust me - I should so ban you.”
You don’t say anything. There are no words for someone who’s already dead.
“I love you!” Evi says, resting their head against yours. “Just another way of showing it.”
“Are you sure?”
They nod, beaming.
There’s a hole in your heart. This doesn’t feel like love.
But you can’t back out now. I don’t run away from consequences, even if I’m scared , your own voice echoes in your head.
You wish you could.
Why did you think it would end any differently?
Being dead feels like falling, but the longer you wait the colder it gets. The stronghold was cold - it was under a spruce forest, so deep underground no heat could reach, but this is worse.
It’s so cold all of you aches, and you can’t decide if you’re falling or stationary because there is nothing and no way out and what if this is forever? What if you went too far this time what if this is it you were warned you were warned and despite everything you’ve done you still thought you were right -
You are falling, and it is dark, and you are alone.
Being deathbanned feels like falling, until you’ve been falling so long it doesn’t register anymore. All you can feel is cold.
You somehow feel more dead than alive when you’re tugged back into the world. You’ve not been gone long enough to be buried, but it feels like dirt is smothering you anyway, limbs leaden, fragile.
It’s still cold. But you’re not alone.
For the remainder of your time on the server, death feels like a spectre. A figure that watches and watches and waits for you to slip up again. It feels like guilt and grief and the sensation of falling, but there’s so much to do and there are always people around you and that makes it easier.
And you keep your promises. You don’t die again until the end of the world, until you’re ready to move on.
What does death feel like?
It feels like falling. That's not always a bad thing.