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The chorus of cheers and whoops from the reds filled the empty night air with a buzzing comradery.
Jimmy couldn’t bring himself to join in on the festivities. All the death did was startle him back to reality. This red comradery wouldn’t last forever. At some point, they’d run out of non-rednames to hunt, and their blades would need somewhere else to turn.
And of course, Jimmy knew the alliances he made here wouldn’t be strong enough to last. He knew Joel would turn on everyone but Etho in a heartbeat, they all did. But it wasn’t just him. If the kidnapping had proved anything, it was that no-one on the red team cared enough to actively protect his safety, only enough to not kill him themselves.
And they’d stolen his horse. It was a very small problem, all things considered, but it frustrated him because they were supposed to be on the same team. Yet apparently, no-one thought it worth Jimmy or Tango having a horse when Ren and BigB could have them instead. He’d left the others when he’d realised that and gone back to the ranch to sulk at Tango, who gave him a hug and a kiss and an angry rant about all the reasons the red team should value him, and shouldn’t steal his horse.
Jimmy grinned, watching him get all riled up with anger on his behalf like it was the most wonderful thing in the world. Still, as Tango insisted that he valued him, Jimmy could only nod and give a half genuine smile and a shrug that effectively ended the conversation.
He found the closer the end got, the more he preferred silent or distracted company over any kind of genuine conversation. Tango had noticed, and engaged Jimmy in meaningless discussions of a trap him and Impulse were planning.
The comfort of regular conversations in his soulmate’s arms calmed Jimmy and that evening, when the reds called the cavalry, he was eager to participate. If just to prove that he was a useful team member.
And now, he found himself suddenly exhausted and famished, and not at all inclined to join in the celebrations. The last green names were dead, and it was only a matter of time. Time that was very quickly running out. And Jimmy found the only thing he wanted in that moment that should have been triumphant, was to go home to his rancher.
He didn’t have any food either and he couldn’t remember the last time he ate. If he didn’t go home and get some food, he might starve to death. And that would be painfully embarrassing.
He left and no-one noticed. Fine. He’d let them deal with that situation without him then. He’d just about had it with fake alliances. At least people like Scott were very upfront about their intention, and how they felt. He’d rather that than people pretending they were on his side.
At least there were no more greens. They’d achieved what they set out to do. Though he was sure the red team would stay intact until there were no more yellows either. He wasn’t sure he wanted to stick around for that, but he also wasn’t sure he had an option. Would he only bring his own death closer by leaving them at this point, or could he safely let them finish off the other yellows before he had to fear for his own life?
It was these rather distracted thoughts, and the famished growling of his stomach that had him wandering through the woods in what little remained of the night, against his better judgement. But he did. Because he needed to make it home or he’d be a goner anyway. And because he was sick of following other people around, waiting for everyone else to decide his life.
He wanted to be with his soulmate and by void, he would be. Even if that meant the reds didn’t value him, meant he was out sooner and laughed at all the way to his grave, and probably beyond it. Because at least he would suffer such indignance with the brilliant consolation prize of Tango’s company. If these were to be his last days, he would rather spend them with the man he loved, and who loved him unconditionally, not trying to impress people who never gave a shit about him anyway.
He knew his mistake as soon as he made it. His eye unavoidably caught on the flash of purple in his vision. His instinct kicked in a moment too late, and his breath hitched with panic as he quickly averted his gaze. He already knew, abandoning his pack and darting forward for cover beneath the low hanging trees, that it had made no difference.
He scrambled to draw his sword, heart racing and palms sweaty. He bit down hard on his lip, focusing all his concentration on following the shrieking of the enderman as it darted around him.
He couldn’t, and it was suddenly behind him, its long, spindly arms wrapping tightly around his wrists. He screamed as pain spread like fire from the point of contact, alighting every nerve in his body. It was all he could do not to drop his sword. He grit his teeth, forcing his eyes to focus through the haze of pain reaped tears and swung desperately, not caring where he hit so long as it landed. There was a shriek that told him it did, and he stumbled backward, his back hitting the tree trunk hard and the pain settling into his bones. The searing stopped, but it still throbbed numbly. He scrambled about in the grass for his shield as the enderman zipped around him, shrieking for all the forest to hear.
He finally hooked it back onto his arm and stood up straight, setting his gaze fiercely. He would not go out like that. He refused. He would kill this damn thing, and he would get home to his soulmate, and he would laugh about how close it could have been.
Tango believed in him. And all he had to do was believe in himself.
He would not die here.
Tango knew it was dangerous to wander around at night. But the paths between bases were mostly lit these days and he really wasn’t going far. Just over the bridge to the relationship to borrow some things from the chests of his teammates. Trap ideas were all well and good, but he couldn’t exactly enact them with the stuff him and Jimmy had. At the thought of Jimmy, he let out a wistful sigh.
His rancher had been away most of the day and now into the night, apparently successfully given the death message, but still. Tango had hoped he’d be home for bed.
But he wasn’t, so instead Tango was up and doing things. He’d always been a bit of an insomniac, so he was used to the quiet lull of evening and the bouts of sleepiness that quickly went away if you pushed through them. He wouldn’t be able to sleep without Jimmy there anyway. He’d be tossing and turning all night, worrying for his safety when the bed felt empty without him.
In a lot of ways, he was glad they died together. He really didn’t want to have to mourn Jimmy. To live in an empty ranch, devoid of the light and energy he brought to it. The idea brought him a lot more distress than the thought of dying. He was used to dying. But actually having someone he cared about enough to mourn, that was new to him.
He was just pacing up the hill to the relationship when he felt the pain, racking his entire body with shuddering. He let out a scream and then drew in his breath in a terrified gasp. His hand reached on instinct for his sword, though he already knew there was nothing to fight. It was Jimmy’s pain; he was sure of it. His hair blazed, lighting up the surroundings further with his panic, and there was nothing there but the glow of his own crimson soulbound.
He gasped out strangled denials of the pain as it only increased. What was happening?!
“No!” They couldn’t go out this early.
“No!” He didn’t want to die alone, he wanted to die with Jimmy, wanted to be there to help him fruitlessly try to fight off the inevitable end.
“No!” It couldn’t end like this. It couldn’t.
Then there was an abrupt respite and the pain slowly settled. He let out a long sigh of relief and laughed through his panting breath. He moved shakily to the edge of the path to sit down for a moment. Whatever Jimmy was dealing with, it was still aching in his bones, and he wanted to give him the best chance possible to deal with it.
The enderman came again, the low hanging branches apparently not as much of a deterrent as Jimmy had hoped. He darted forward, sword raised and insistent. He landed a hit and grinned, pushing on further toward it. He could take it. He was better than panicking about a goddamn enderman.
He struck it again, gaining confidence, ducking through the branches with ease. It was just everyone else getting in his head, telling him he wasn’t good enough, telling him he was doomed until he believed it, until he was resigned to his fate. But he wasn’t. He was adequately skilled at defending himself when he needed to be, he knew how to think up a strategy on the fly, and he was perfectly capable of scraping his way through to wins through the entire world against him.
When the fabric of the game itself and all its players had it out for him, what was one enderman?
Then he heard a creak behind him, and he already knew he was too late in turning before the enderman’s cool skin hit his neck, hand that wasn’t quite a hand at all wrapping around his throat too quickly for him to do anything but take one last, desperate gasp of air.
He coughed immediately, which he knew was the worst possible idea, but he just couldn’t help it. Desperation swirled a desperate sandstorm in his brain, covering every rational thought with the need to get out. To breathe. Then the pain assaulted him again, sending shudders to every inch of him, and he writhed in its grip, swinging his sword in a hopeless and frantic attack. His fingers twitched with the convulsing pain and his sword fell with his final hope, to the damp and deadened grass.
He wished, despite himself, that he could scream, loud and clear into the night. That someone might come and rescue him, that someone might care. He could handle the embarrassment. He would go home to Tango who would reassure him it didn’t matter. But he needed to go home to Tango. He writhed and kicked and gasped out what cries he could.
His energy waned quickly, lack of breath rushing to his head, dizzying him and sending stars darting across his vision. His struggled slowly faded, eyes wide with panic not just from his desperate lack of oxygen but the searing torment racking every nerve in his body. His strength drained away along with any thought other than breathing.
Then his throat was free, and he crumpled to the ground. The enderman zipped away, apparently done with him. Which was probably a fairly good indication that he was done for. Not that any such rational thought occurred to him. He still couldn’t breathe through the warm presence of blood now clogging his throat.
He lay there helplessly on the forest floor, swaying leaves blurring in and out of his tear-streaked vision. For a moment, there was nothing but numb shock. He let out a small, pained wheeze and couldn’t afford anything more. Then the full force of everything hit him all at once and he gasped, scrambling with all the energy he could muster, trying to lift his head, trying to dig his fingernails into the world so he couldn’t be dragged away from it. He had to stay. He had to- needed- he needed to find his- Tango. His soulmate. His rancher, where was he? He needed him.
“No.” he breathed out, coughing and spluttering through his words, and gasping through the burning pain of existing. “No!”
He couldn’t move; he couldn’t do anything but lie there in the unbearable pain of his own impending death. He spluttered out sobs into the forest floor, blood spilling out onto the undergrowth, warm and sticky in his throat, his mouth, dripping down his chin. He couldn’t seem to close his mouth; he couldn’t seem to force his vocal cords to work so his mouth formed silent denials.
No. no. no. no. no! no! no!
The desperation clung to every nerve, fighting against the sheer lack of energy, of breath, of fuel. But he clung to life, he clung to the world. He clung to the one thought racing round his head that brought him any semblance of peace.
Tango. I need to get to Tango.
But the void pulled him away and despite his silent screaming and sobbing, his fingernails curled into the dirt like he could physically anchor himself to life, despite his own will, the void pulled. And in one last, terrifying second, he was gone.
There was a body, just off the path that led up to the relationship. Just out of the light, and no longer with any light of his own. The soulbound faded from its crimson significance, the flames died from his head, and the darkness of the damp evening grass consumed him.
Why.
That was his last thought, all-consuming as it was.
Why did they have to go out like that? Why couldn’t they be together, why couldn’t he have done anything. Why couldn’t he have told Jimmy one last time that he loved him.
Why. Jimmy.
Of all the people in the world, why did he have to fall in love with the one man he could never save? Why did Jimmy have to be so utterly perfect? So damn loveable? Why would anyone do such a man the disservice of such a curse? But that was just who Jimmy was. He was a man who would keep fighting, who would keep smiling, even when he was doomed, even when the world itself was against him, and Tango loved that about him.
He loved everything about him.
He sobbed through what little of his life remained, for all he had failed to do. For all the love he had no idea what to do with. For the man he loved whose pain he could feel clawing at his chest.
Why does it have to end?
And then it did, and he was gone.
There were two crackling stabs of lightning, on opposite sides of the server. Striking the earth with all the displeasure of the heavens and leaving charred and blackened soil around the untouched bodies of the fallen. A jagged display of bright white fury and crisp inevitability. A deafening beat to the canary’s call.
The first to fall, and the end was nigh.
The breeze swept in a gentle reassurance through the swaying wheat fields, the rustling grass and the whistling gaps in the walls of the ranch house. The afternoon heat wasn’t quite as oppressive as it should have been under the glaring sun, and even it’s golden light seemed somehow dimmed. The animals, nestled in the cosy walls of the ranch that had never hidden them as intended, didn’t make a sound, thought their presence could be accounted for in the faint smell of farmyard.
The ranchers were home.
But in the same way, they weren’t. The scene was dull, as though every sound was passing through a wall of water to get to them and the sun was wrapped in a thin cloth, dulling the colours of the world as though the perfectly sunny day were depressively overcast.
Still, there was an odd peace to it, a persisting quiet calm.
Tango saw Jimmy, sitting down near the stable, near the grave of ranchers’ revenge. The perfect spot, they’d found, with just enough shade from the stable, and just enough breeze, to be cool even in the toughest of heat. He hugged his knees to his chest and stared dejectedly at the ground.
He felt so awfully far away, and it brought tears to Tango’s eyes to be so detached from his soulmate’s pain. But he found as soon as he moved forward, he was at once beside him, and he could not possibly remember whether he’d walked the distance. He wasn’t sure the distance existed at all.
If Jimmy heard him approach, he didn’t look up. So, Tango paused, then sat down beside him with a heavy sigh.
There was no soulbound linking between them anymore, as they had both grown so used to. Just a gentle peace, a warmth of understanding each other better than anyone else had ever gotten the opportunity to, and a bridge of love that would never crumble with such ease as the soulbound had faded.
They sat in contemplative silence for what might have been several moments, or hours, and somehow felt like both. The weight of all that had happened filled the air around them with a stifling defeat. Tango just took a deep breath, and let it out in a contented, but almost wistful sigh. He had died in unison with Jimmy, he had lived with the man he loved, and he had died to the canary call. He had done something with his life, with his death. And that was all he needed.
Given that they were here, in this uncanny in-between, he supposed Jimmy didn’t feel the same way.
He spoke, and it was as though through water, as every other sound, though his mouth moved without effort, as though the words spoke themselves, directly from his heart. Without the complications his mouth usually caused for him.
“You’re still here?”
Jimmy glanced up at his soulmate, his rancher. Beside him, still always beside him. He couldn’t help wondering, through the odd fog in his brain, what he had thought, as he fell, as he died. Had he cursed Jimmy’s name the same way the world had? Had he regretted staying by him? Apparently not. Because he was still here. Despite everything.
Jimmy was still here as well. The world seemed to like keeping him around in every way but living. He knew he couldn’t move on. Not while guilt was still slowly corroding him from the inside out, not while miserable tears still streamed down his cheeks, not while every fibre of his being did all it could to cling onto the world. For Tango. For all he had denied him and all they had to do. For the sake of being together. For all the words he had yet to say.
He threw himself into Tango’s arms, clung to his soulmate as the anchor to life he didn’t have in that lonely forest. “I am so sorry,” he sobbed into his jacket, reassured by the way he was enveloped in his familiar scent. Words did not atone. They did not redeem him. He wasn’t sure anything could.
Tango wrapped his arms calmly around his rancher, pulling him closer and willing the peace within him to find Jimmy, to assure his troubled mind, the storm raging in his heart that all was okay. That his love, him, exactly as he was, was all Tango had ever needed. He gently took Jimmy’s hand,
“It’s over,” he pressed a soft kiss to his curls and lay his head on top of his, closing his eyes and drinking in the last moment of Jimmy he had.
His words carried nothing but peace, and Jimmy knew what he meant.
It’s over. Everything we had, all the beauty and the love, the simplicity of our life here, we have to let it go.
It’s over. All the pain and the suffering, the mockery and the mourning. All the tangled mess of awful emotions you’re carrying. You don’t have to hold that anymore.
It’s over. And it’s okay. I’m not angry, I don’t resent you. This was beautiful, and I still love you. And it’s okay. You can move on.
He drew back a little from the comfort of Tango’s arms and looked him right in the eye, making sure the calm peace in his voice was reflected there, that he wasn’t putting on a con for Jimmy’s sake. But there was nothing but the purest love and admiration. Still. After everything.
And Jimmy made a silent promise to himself. Always. After everything. Always Tango.
He took his other hand as well, squeezed them both tightly and stared at his soulmate with all the certainty reflected back at him, “You will always be my soulmate,” his voice broke and tears fell anew down his cheeks, but they weren’t of misery or loss anymore. Just of love so deep that it hurt in every vein and every nerve, tugged on his heart with the heavy intensity of it. But he smiled through his tears, despite everything. Because it was Tango. “My rancher,” he whispered, and he felt the glow awaken in his soulmate like their bodies were still linked, the pure pride at those words. He was proud. Proud of loving Jimmy, of being loved by Jimmy. To be a rancher, to be his rancher, meant all the world and more to him.
They sat there, staring into each other’s eyes with pure reverence, and with all the bittersweet mourning of not wanting to let go. Of not wanting to drift away into the empty void. Where they wouldn’t have their love to comfort and to guide them, wouldn’t have each other. Wouldn’t have anything at all.
“Go home.”
Tango’s voice was barely more than a whisper, but it struck Jimmy with all the absurd despair of the situation.
Home. What he wouldn’t give to know where home was. He knew what Tango meant, leave this place, go onward. Go to whatever comes after this strange in-between, go to a well-known oblivion that almost felt homely from the familiarity of his presence in it.
But it wasn’t really home. Was it? Home, to him, for months at least, had been these three walls and the familiar view across the ravine to the rest of the small world, the hum of the ranch and the presence of his soulmate’s company. But the ranch around them was fading, small elements just disappearing from sight, leaving behind the smallest blurred bubble of reality around him and his soulmate, who he knew any moment would fade as well.
He couldn’t stay here. This pale in between wasn’t home. He’d made that mistake once before. His home was out of reach now. And sooner or later, he would have to leave this place too. Tango was right. He had to go, or he’d be taken. And he would much rather leave on his own terms.
He stood on legs so shaky he feared for them carrying him. But then, he reasoned, they didn’t really exist, and neither did he. He wasn’t carried by them any more than he was at all. He was sure, if he willed himself to stand, he couldn’t fall.
Tango watched him, with all the calm love and affection one could possibly squeeze into two eyes Jimmy was sure. He turned away, to the abyss that waited patiently, teetering on the precipice of his own acceptance. But he couldn’t. He turned back to Tango, seeking one last glance at his rancher while he remained as such. Before he faded into oblivion and was dragged out someone else entirely.
Tango smiled and Jimmy returned it, laughing a little, though it might have been a sob really. Tango laughed too, standing from his place and raising a goat horn neither had realised was in his hand. He sounded it into their small bubble of reality. Jimmy raised his own horn, copied the sound. That beautiful melodic hum that was theirs and theirs alone. The team ranch horn.
For no-one but Jimmy, and his rancher, and Tango and his.
“Go.” He repeated firmly, nodding his acceptance, though tears glistened in his eyes.
Then they both turned once more, onto the precipice of their own abyss, to be truly separate for the first time in months.
And they made the same silent promise to themselves.
Always my soulmate. Always my rancher.
After everything.
And always.