Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A player’s first spawn is usually supposed to be friendly enough for them to get an understanding of their surroundings, but yours is quite… horrendous.

You stand on a block above a pool of bubbling lava with nothing to your name but your fists and the clothes on your body. You lean back against another body, warmer than yours, but everything is unbearably warm with the lava under you both so you can’t tell if it’s from that or if the other person runs hot normally.

Snow falls upon you both, the moon passes overhead and so does the sun, and hunger gnaws at you eventually even if you both have been sitting and doing nothing, meaning starvation sets in sooner than later.

“I’m really hungry, so I’m thinking about eating you.” You say out loud, and you immediately get pushed off of the others back, far enough that you actually nearly fall off the block, scrambling to stay on while the other stares for a second before helping you back up with a bit of struggle.

“You can’t just say that!” They shake you around, and you shrug. Neither of you have any idea on how to get off this block, and sure you’ve been eyeing the water somewhat nearby, blocks having formed when it touched the lava, and surely you wouldn’t burn to death before you reached it. Well, since you were already so low on hunger, you probably wouldn’t make it. The other player seems to be better off, spawning in later than you and therefore not as hungry.

“I have an idea to get off this block, but do you trust me?”

“You threatened to eat me not even ten minutes ago,” they deadpanned, but eventually agreed. “But unfortunately I have absolutely no other choice in this fuckin’ hell of a predicament, so shoot. What’s the idea?”

“Let me push you off–”

“Alright absolutely the fuck not. I’m not letting you do that! Are you trying to kill me??”

“Dude– let me explain!” You sputter, and the other looks at you pointedly, eyebrow raised as if asking how you could possibly give a proper explanation without including the fact that you could probably kill them by just straight up pushing them off. “It might hurt a bit but.. maybe you could try to take a leap for the water over there?” The other player looks over to where you’re pointing, and you witness them scrunch their face at the distance between where you’re both stuck and the water.

“You expect me to reach all the way over there? Through the lava?” Their voice is strained, anxious about the heat that you both can feel.

“Well, it’s worth a shot. Do you have any better ideas, genius? Any other way out of this hole we’re in?” Both of you are snarky, biting and bickering while almost shoving each other off the single block you’re both balanced on, and eventually, the other player relents, turning towards the direction of the water with a sigh.

“Okay. Fuckin’ push me into my death, or something” They huff, turning back around to jab a finger against your chest, “but if I die I’m haunting you forever.” 

“If you die and haunt me forever then that forever won’t be that long because I’m basically starving to death here,” You jab your finger in their chest in return, and they roll their eyes, turning around again. “And don't forget to make a jump for it so I can boost you,”

They scoff. “Alright, send me off.”

Biting your lip, you push them with all your might, covering your ears and squeezing your eyes shut when you hear sounds of pain, waiting and waiting until it stops, and when it does stop, you open your eyes.

They stand on the other side, clothing charred and skin damaged terribly, but all in all, they’re alive and they made it.

They made it.

The other player looks back at you, pained as they drag themselves through the water, and you can’t tell if that’s distant or just pain in their expression as they swim up the current, slowly out of your view.

While the moon passes overhead, it dawns on you that the other player had no reason at all to make an effort to come back for you. You barely know each other. You only spawned together somehow– players usually get their own individual worlds to grow with, developing with the universe that surrounded them, eventually gaining a name after the dragon was slain and gaining access to the rest of the world when they became more than a player. Maybe after this– if you are able to gain a name for yourself, you could maybe see if this has ever happened with anyone else. 

The sun rises again, warmth after a long night, and you’re starting to doubt if the other player is coming back at all. You wouldn’t really blame them, but you’re stuck here and it would be nice if they did come back. They could just part paths after that, it wouldn’t be much to free you from here before you starved to death…

You zone out as time passes, the hunger constantly gnawing at you a null background feeling now, and when you hear a splash you perk up, exhausted but sitting up at the noise all the same.

The other player is back.

“You came back?” Your voice is hoarse from disuse, and the other shrugs.

“I don’t see why it would be fair to leave you here while I steal all the resources of the world myself,” they talk as they make a bridge over, fully connecting it and staring expectantly at you with something in their hands. “Eat up. I remember that you were starving?”

Oh, well that’s nice.

Carefully, you cross the bridge while eating, allowing yourself to get guided out of the cave and immediately shivering when the wind passes over you. Wordlessly, a soft warm material gets given to you, and you accept it. It seems that you’re both exploring what this world has to explore together, and you don’t really mind that much, and nor does it seem like the other person.

Still, they’re scarred from swimming in the lava, and you can’t help but feel bad, but it’s not like you could do much now though.

Villages are nice places to roam in while you grow accustomed to the world around you, and the villagers themselves have plenty to say about the two of you.

“Goodness, what happened to you? You look like you’ve seen better days.”

“For someone dressed up as a mime, you sure do talk a lot!” 

“What’s a mime?”

You both claw your way through the world, the heat of the nether suffocating and dangerous, finding your lives on the line far too many times to be comfortable, and when the final day does arrive until you arrive at the end of the universe, you can’t help but feel apprehensive.

You both earn advancements individually, and slaying the dragon at the end of the world grants that final easy one that would grant you your player name, but it wasn’t like you both could get the final hit on the dragon at the same time.

Dragon breath coats you both, and your second player scrambles to swing at the dragon, and the deafening roar sends you both to your knees, clutching your heads.

TalkingMime has reached the goal [Free the End]

[What would you want your name to be?]

<|...>

[What would you want your name to be?]

<OliverSR|>

[Are you sure?]

>Yes.< No.   

OliverSR has reached the goal [Free the End]

Chapter Text

Vampires are real.

They aren’t what the myths or legends make them out to be, or maybe she’s lucky and she stumbled upon the one vampire in the modern age that doesn't align up with the ones told in stories of the past.

The vampire she’s met is extremely docile, somehow more afraid of her than Couriway is afraid of them. Though, that doesn’t seem to mean much because the poor creature seems to jump at the slightest of breezes, hiding away in the dark, a trembling shadow that looks and acts nothing like the vampires in history. It wasn't like she was vampire hunting or anything like the sorts, she had simply just taken volunteer work to take care of this injured bat that had been taken to the nearby veterinary clinic due to how dirty and frail it had looked, along with the tear in its wing.

The only reason she had taken it home was because it needed someone to look after it while the tear in its wing continued to heal, and everyone who worked there was busy and couldn’t really home and continuously watch over a bat, so Couriway took it home with her.

It was a cute roommate! She never ever saw herself in a future where there would be a bat with its own tiny bed in her bedroom, but here she was, nursing a bat back to health.

It was deathly afraid of basically everything, even flinching away from caring touches and soft fabrics, hiding in the corner with its tiny ripped wings, shrill noises of pure distress leaving it whenever someone tried picking it up. It had reluctantly accepted Couriway into its life, probably only because she was its only source of food, but still it would be absolutely terrified of her if she made too much of a sudden movement nearby the poor creature.

Vampires were purely rumors, and everyone knew about the fact they could turn into bats, but to say that she expected hers to turn back into its humanoid form sometime during the middle of the night and for her to encounter it during the night was… quite the shock.

She might’ve screamed and woke up her neighbors, but she wasn’t really quite expecting another person to be in HER kitchen looking through HER fridge, so her reaction was quite justified in her eyes. Her vampire bat buddy was scared back into its tiny bat form, ending up on the ground in a trembling heap, unable to fly and hide due to the tears in its wings permanently there even after they healed the most that it could.

It had taken ages for her to coax it back out from corners and under things again, and the wait for it to shift back to a more humanoid form took even longer. But Couriway was patient. She took in the bat knowing that it had difficulty trusting anyone even if they were trying to help, and feeding and just anything with the bat took immense patience that she always had, of course. She could never get upset at the paranoid creature, not with how badly it was hurt after encountering others, so terribly frail and tiny that every action taken towards it had to be calculated so that it wasn’t hurt further.

Eventually, the bat introduced themselves.

They were a vampire named Feinberg, and in all of his glory, was quite tall, looming over Couriway even if she was hunched and hiding in the shadows of her apartment. She was good company as long as she was fed, carefully eating away at Couriway’s banana bunches over time, at a slow enough pace that she rarely ever noticed until they were all gone. Feinberg only ever ate as a human when Couriway wasn’t watching, and sometimes, she wondered if the mentions about vampires eating blood was also false because it wasn’t like Feinberg could really leave her apartment– it didn’t seem like the bat really wanted to do that, rarely ever being seen anywhere at all until the moon was in the sky– and he never really went out of his way to ask her for blood. Seeing him was something that happened almost never– if Couriway was lucky that night, she would see that soft pale face framed by caramel curls, bright cyan that disappeared as soon as it appeared, and that would be it. 

Feinberg didn’t speak much– or even make much noise at all, and it was appreciated, but Couriway would’ve liked some knowledge that her new roommate was at least still alive. Occasionally she’d spot a bat on her drawer, or someone walking through the shadows of her home, and she’d leave out a few other things for her instead of the bananas she had all the time. His clothes were dirty and probably uncomfortable, but she knew all too well asking the vampire to allow her to wash the clothes was entirely out of the option, and Feinberg seemed absolutely terrified of the unknown and dangerous world beyond Couriway’s apartment, so the entire concept of leaving her home to shop for clothes also was entirely out of the picture, so there wasn’t much she could do but offer fabrics to the vampire while he was a tiny bat, hoping to offer some comfort in ways that she could.

Imagine her surprise when Feinberg had sought her out one night, appearing from the dark and trembling even if it was the summer, calling out her name in a tiny, raspy and broken voice, weak from rarely ever using it. She was at attention immediately, turning to face the vampire. Vampires are pale, extremely so, but Feinberg looks sickly pale, tremors shaking his entire body, and Couriway is reminded of that bat that had been rescued all that time ago, and carefully, with all the gentleness she has, she reaches towards Feinberg slowly, only for her to jerk backwards out of Couriway’s reach.

In the low light, she sees the glint of fangs and drool dripping from them, along with ragged breathing and blown out pupils, only then does she realize what's wrong. Fruit could only sustain the vampire for so long– of course she would eventually need blood. There’s no such thing as a fruit bat vampire! She should’ve known when she saw the vampire growing more and more antsy, unable to remain in the same proximity as he usually would be able to have with Couriway.

“...You need blood, don’t you?” She asks quietly, and Feinberg looks away, nails digging into his arms, and that’s enough of a reaction to answer Couriway’s question. It’s far too late to go out and look for any way to find blood to sustain the vampire, and god knows how much blood she would need with how long she’s been without it. There’s realistically no other way to give blood to Feinberg apart from allowing the vampire to take it from Couriway herself, which is a terrifying thought all on itself, but the realization that the blood-thirsty vampire is probably mere moments away from acting like a feral animal is what shines the light on how dangerous this would be.

What would happen if Feinberg didn’t stop drinking and Couriway basically died from blood loss? Would Feinberg give up such an easy meal? Was it really worth her life?

She glances at the vampire during her inner turmoil, and her heart breaks when she sees Feinberg backing away further and further, looking pained with his own arm in her mouth, fangs embedded deeply in her own pale flesh as he stays as far away from Couriway as she could be. Feinberg pulls her fangs out of her arm to mumble out “You could tie me up… for your safety.. I’m sorry…” before sinking his teeth back in, his face immediately curling up into a pained grimace.

“Gods, no.” She shakes her head, walking up to the vampire herself, nerves making the hair on the back of her neck rise but she stands her ground anyway. “I promised that I would take care of you, and that means even now. Please, stop biting yourself, that’s no good for you..” Her voice is gentle and light as she reaches to coax him closer, trying to get him to dislodge his teeth from his arm, which doesn’t come without a bit of tugging and trying to convince her that it was okay.

“I’ll hurt you.” He whispers, and Couriway hums quietly. 

“You’re hungry, are you not? You’re starving, and I don’t want that. You need this, and I’m willing to provide because once again, I promised to provide no matter what.” Carefully, she pulls Feinberg toward her bed, allowing them to sit rather than just stand in the corner of her room. Even while starving, Feinberg looks beyond conflicted, attempting to resist probably every urge of his to just pounce on Couriway and take until she was beyond full. She reaches up and wipes the drool from her lips, cupping her face and pulling the vampire closer. 

“So drink up, okay?” Couriway pulls his head down, right over her neck, and she feels the hot puffs of the vampire panting against her, still holding himself back. There’s a few wet drops of drool that land on her before finally– finally, Feinberg sinks her teeth into her flesh, a gasp falling from her lips at the sharp pain. She pulls off, huffing and panting, licking at the blood that quickly wells up at the bitemarks, her tongue hot against Couriway’s flesh, swiping over the marks and sucking sloppily, saliva sticky as Couriway tries to keep her noises of pain quiet and minimal as the vampire drinks desperately from what she’s provided.

The pain fades as she focuses on the feeling of Feinberg licking at any red that she sees, biting elsewhere as he grows too impatient as the bleeding slows eventually, starting a new flow as he pushes Couriway down on her back, squirming on top of her as she giggles woozily from the blood loss. 

“You’re a greedy gal aren’t you?” She coos and gets nothing but an odd noise in reply, the vampire too busy absolutely draining Couriway for all she had. If she were really honest, this wasn’t that bad of a way to die, being pinned under quite a handsome vampire and having her blood drained from her body by someone she took care of at their lowest.

In her haze, she doesn’t realize that the sharp bites and nips and sucks have turned into kisses that stain her throat, gentle ones that are marked by a mix of saliva and her own blood. Eventually, they trail up her jaw and it ends up with Feinberg hovering above her, looking down at her with the same desperate expression as before, but maybe not as feral and thirsty for blood, her tiny fangs stained red with his lips also stained by Couriway’s blood.

“Thank you,” Feinberg sighs against her lips, and Couriway grins, leaning up to close the small gap between them and startling the vampire for a moment before she presses down against Couriway, pushing her into the bed and really, all she can taste in the kiss is the iron of her own blood but she finds that she really doesn’t mind it at all, chuckling into it with how equally desperate the vampire is for this as he was for blood while he was starving. Feinberg nips and bites at her bottom lip during it, and she lets the vampire do whatever, all too pleased by how this had turned out. Even though she was probably at risk of dying tonight, all she got was an extremely needy vampire and a nice makeout session, and that was well worth the soreness and aches in her neck that would probably follow her when she woke up in the morning.

It becomes a routine after that night– somewhat of one, at least. The vampire is still a bit too shy to ask for blood constantly, so when he does need to drink, she’s always desperate for it, and while Couriway does wish that she would ask sooner, she’ll always appreciate the sight of a desperate Feinberg.

They’ve also grown closer, Feinberg trusting her more after the nightly events, and she couldn’t be more pleased by it all, grinning at the tiny bat happily that sits in her hands, hiding behind torn wings when she makes kissy noises at the vampire, adorably shy. She trusts Couriway enough to explore the world beyond her apartment with him, hiding in her bag as she shows the precious bat around, smiling fondly at the flurry of squeaks she hears from every new tiny thing that Feinberg finds.

Passing by a candy store that draws Feinberg’s attention more than anything, she lets the bat see what the modern world has to offer, unable to stop smiling at how the bat seems to just be filled with pure awe at all the sweet treats there were. While looking around, Feinberg lands her eyes on a comedically large lollipop, and they leave the store later with Couriway’s wallet being far more emptier than she expected, and a bat with her wings around a large bag of goodies and a big lollipop that she gleefully licks at on the way home.

Of course, even with the sweets, Feinberg will still always be hungry for Couriway and Couriway only, regardless of how good it was, nothing could beat the fresh meal that Couriway was for her.

Though even if she does love and appreciate the other tons, she will not be sharing her lollipop with her. No apologies there.

Chapter Text

Those silly hypothetical questions that they had all asked each other during random conversations should’ve stayed as hypotheticals and never become reality, but unfortunately one of them had, and it’s possibly one of the worst ones that could’ve become reality, especially with the group of people that they had.

Waking up in the sand hurting all over after hearing the pilot yell something about rough turbulence was basically a nightmare coming to fruition, the only relief that had been felt was when they realized that they had survived, spending the first night on the isolated island holding onto each other tight, wishing that this nightmare would end before the sun reappeared over the horizon, something that hadn’t happened and forced them to face the reality of the situation.

The four of them had been the only ones to survive the crash, the wreckage spewing luggage from the other passengers on the plane absolutely everywhere, leaving them to scavenge them for anything useful after huddling around the tiny fire on a scrap of the airplane wing for warmth. He forcefully drags the other three along with him, seeking out the top of the island to call for help, his headache from something continuously growing worse and worse from their bickering. He scratches at a patch of red skin from accidentally rolling onto a jellyfish during his sleep, and he sighs as Nerdi refuses to eat the bit of coconut that he had the energy to retrieve from the tree until he takes the squeaking plushie from his hands, returning it to him after he does eat.

He keeps everyone fed as much as he can, trying to get his throbbing head to remember what was poison and what wasn’t while trying to find a path up the sandy cliff. It really doesn’t take long until they have to sit down for a while as Silver vomits his guts out from eating something that Feinberg hadn’t checked before it was in his mouth. He clutches his head, groaning as he’s forced to carry Silver into the night, joints protesting from the extra weight as he forces himself to continue, ears flicking at the top of his head as he feels Silver’s tiny pained pants from his feverish and ill daze.

Automatically, he had taken lead and responsibility for everyone, dragging himself over to luggage to rummage through it all and find anything edible. It was weird to find food in people's luggage that had fallen out of planes, but in their current situation, he couldn’t be more grateful that there was food other than what was on the island, because he really trust himself to not eat something absolutely deadly and lose every chance there was in getting out of their current predicament.

Silver gets back on his feet at some point while he was trying to stop Mustard from stealing the tiny plush that was the only thing keeping Nerdi’s sanity in check, and he finds himself more exhausted than he’s probably ever felt in his life, but they reached the top of the cliff and he couldn’t be more glad. Though, of course it would never be this easy because there’s another wall in front of them, and it’s humid– disgustingly so, and he spots twisting thorns that he most definitely doesn’t have the medical knowledge for. They settle on a campfire, cooking whatever bits of food that they have and splitting it between themselves, toasted marshmallows swallowed down by empty stomachs.

To say that he’s tired would be an understatement, but they keep going after that night, getting soaked to the core by the sudden rainfall that comes and goes, drenching them and leaving them shivering as the stone gets harder to climb, their fingers and feet slipping on the natural holds that they can find, and his fingers and claws ache, and sooner than later, he finds that he’s torn a claw, barely even registering the pain until he spotted the red that was being left behind as he grappled his way up the wall.

Unfortunately, the rainforest was filled with more dangers than just the rain making everything slippery. Basically anything they touched was poison– spores knocked into the air were dangerous, sticking to their clothes and their panicked shouts made them inhale more than they wanted to, having to look for any sort of antidote to take care of the poison, not even to mention the amount of poisonous fruits there were that no one had any idea about at all. They end up more than once having to stop and catch their breath, no stamina remaining even to jump any little bit, and the conditions make everyone more irritable as time passes, soaked to the core constantly and cold and hungry and hurting all over.

He finds himself breaking up fights between Mustard and Nerdi more often than not, forcing them far apart as they bicker over some useless shit like the burnt and dirty green plush, and Silver’s occasional whine about being hungry does nothing to help his nerves. He’s mere seconds from boiling over, and he’s really trying to not do that because someone has to keep it together and make sure everyone makes it out alive.

He closes his eyes and takes another deep breath when he hears the sound of shrieking and extremely angry bees, rubbing his face in his hands.

They should’ve never fucking went on that plane.

Dragging himself up a tree, he goes without looking back, holding full faith that they had it under control and he would be up there to help them up when he made it. All he hears after he makes it past the top is an ear-piercing shriek that nearly makes him fall over the edge, and all he can hear are Mustard and Silver’s yelling over each other with no clear answer at all when he asks what was wrong. They’re talking over each other, panting and scrambling up the rock, and when he goes to rest his backpack down against something to go help, he hears yells again. His blood runs cold, and when he turns and looks, Mustard and Silver are nowhere to be seen.

Heart sinking, he looks over the edge, frantic to see any of their colors– any red or yellow or purple or even the sound of their voices– even their screams would be enough to sooth some of his worries. He only hears his own heartbeat and breathing as he tries to listen for them, head throbbing painfully still. When he calls out for them, his voice echoes right back, nothing else coming until the sound of rainfall comes, once again soaking his already wet clothes further, his fur weighting him down as he leans against the side of the cliff, no cover nearby at all.

Does he wait?

What does he do?

He can’t go back down. 

He doesn’t have the resources to get back up after going back down, a lot of it was used to get up in the first place, getting down is an entirely different thing that they never really think about because why would they want to go down ever?

He doesn’t have a lot of food, and he doesn’t see any nearby either. 

A cold shiver runs down his spine, and he feels light-headed, either from dehydration or whatever the hell, he doesn’t know nor care because if he sits here for any longer, he might as well freeze to death before he could even think about his next meal or even his next breath. Squeezing the stupid green plush that he had held onto for Nerdi to prevent Mustard from trying to hide it again, he carries on, dragging himself up the rest of the mountain, collapsing next to the fire.

There’s enough marshmallows there as if there were still the four of them, and he finds himself with no appetite even though he knows that he should've eaten something a long, long time ago.

He stays there for a bit, occasionally hearing voices in the wind and when he closes his eyes, curled around the charred green plush and clutching his tail tight against him, seeking out any warmth he could now since there was no one left to share body heat with him. In his sleep, he sees the rest of HBG. He sees the group that they were supposed to meet up with after the flight, Mustard, Silver, and Nerdi grinning happily and healthily at him, no sick green pale coloring on them or eyebags that shouldn’t ever be this bad. He sees Couri, standing there with open arms and waiting for him, an embrace that he moves towards slowly until he’s fully sprinting at the avian, trying to hug him and hold him tight and never let go.

Of course, he never actually makes it to Couri before he wakes up. Or if he does, the dream fades and he’s stuck falling in darkness again, the screams he had heard echoing loudly, suffocating him with what if’s and the sounds of their voices yelling at him, overlapping and just loud, tears springing to his eyes as he curls up and tries to cover his ears to stop it– to muffle it– to shut it up because he knows that it’s his fault. He knows and he can’t do anything about it. It’s already happened, and death was a sudden thing. No one knew that going on this one specific plane from this airline would cause this, and no one knew that this path would lead to their deaths, but he should’ve known better than to keep trying even if the path felt unstable.

They’re dead, and he has to accept that and find a way to explain if he escapes this island. He sleeps mostly to save energy, and while he’s asleep, he doesn’t feel the constant nagging of hunger which helps, but he never actually feels rested, nightmares haunting his brief periods of sleep. He does pick himself up after a while, walking over to the statue nearby and pressing his hand against it like Mustard had done all those days ago.

Rather than receiving an item that might help in the future, he feels a sudden wave of nausea wash over him before the dark dots at the corner of his vision finally crowd it all, everything fading into darkness as he collapses, hand up to his mouth as his stomach bile burns the back of his throat when he passes out.

He’s still sore and hungry when he wakes up again, only this time, there’s three familiar faces all leaning against him.

He’s still, far far too tired to understand what’s happening around him, so he accepts it as a nice dream and returns to resting his eyes and attempting to stave off eating for however much longer he could sleep.

He feels warm now, and it’s been a while since he’s felt like that.

He falls back asleep easier than ever, stomach still empty and joints and limbs aching, but comforted by the dream all the same.

He wants to enjoy this for a bit longer before he has to face his grim reality again.

So he sleeps with the feeling of Silver, Mustard, and Nerdi breathing against him for one final time.

Chapter Text

Regardless of the season, the pale garden was always abnormally cold. Even during the hottest days of summer, walking into the biome would immediately send chills down your back. It didn’t help that it was bad regardless of time of day, under the sun you would feel unsettled, off-put by your surroundings even if you had only put one foot past the boundary where the world started to lose its color, and during the night, the temperatures would plummet far under freezing, extremely deadly to anything with blood that still flowed through its body.

They were mostly unexplored, no one had ever been brave enough to venture into the heart of the forest, and those who had been brave never came back– those who did come back could never sleep the same ever again no matter what they tried– sleeping potions, staying up until they couldn’t, risky practices– anything at all, but regardless, it seemed like they were cursed with the inability to sleep, eventually driving them to the brink of insanity until they died due to complications with sleep deprivation.

Since it was unexplored, as a group effort, HBG decided to get together to try to see what wasn’t explored yet, and with the fact that they had a few people that didn’t quite classify as living in their group, it only meant that it was easier for them. The only hurdle in their way was the mental block that stopped them from even staying anywhere near the forest for a prolonged amount of time, something that even people like Mime couldn’t break fast until he truly focused on just pushing past moving a few blocks from the border before retreating before nightfall.

Nightfall was the true danger, regardless if you still had a heartbeat or not. Something was always roaming when the moon broke past the horizon, eyes in the darkness that disappeared right as you saw them, leaving you paranoid and on edge and immediately fleeing back to where it was safe, surrounded by light. Torches died faster than ever in the gardens, extinguished by some mysterious force, and the same occurrence happened with lanterns regardless if they were ignited by fire or fueled by souls of the doomed, darkness would plunge the area minutes later, leaving them on a constant timer.

Eventually, they decided to move to a less thick area of the garden to reattempt exploring it past the moonrise, unable to shake the feeling of being watched as they moved. Others were added to the group when they found out that a hybrid of a normal forest and pale garden existed, cherry trees weaved in with the pale oak, white eating away at the pink yet never all of it, forming splotches in the world that looked like cow spots. The effects that occurred near the heart of the garden weren’t as extreme in this mix of biomes, fires staying lit longer and the mental block that was a solid wall at the heart didn’t crush every urge to walk further than a few blocks away from the clearing into the darkness.

Anyway, enough about the world and what he’s written, because he actually has a bigger issue at hand.

Couriway is being watched.

This was something to be expected in a place like the garden, but only when the moonlight touched the fallen petals of the groves and fossilized moss that coated the ground, not when the sun was high in the sky and Couriway could roam the forest without worry. Amber leaked from cores of trees every few miles or so, a pearlescent hue to them that ran down the cracks in the bark, revealing a pulsating heart that everyone left alone just to ensure that no harm was done to the environment. Couriway finds this amber on the ground far from the trees, droplets on piles of fallen leaves and slowly rotting petals everywhere he goes, and it’s a trail that follows him to every new campsite he makes. He notices it when he goes to retrace his steps or accidentally goes in a circle.

A shiver runs down his spine during the night when he turns his back to the forest, or when he sits down by his fire to make food, and every time he looks around and checks, there’s nothing. When he sacrifices torches to light up the area further around him, he still can’t shake away the feeling of being watched even though he sees absolutely nothing. It’s still the same in the morning. The sun rises, and when he leaves his tent, that feeling returns, something that leaves him on edge as he looks back every other step he takes, cautious of the unseen horrors hidden in the trees.

He hears it, sometimes. 

The crunch of dead leaves under heavy feet, the creaking of wood, and quiet breathing when he really strains himself to listen for anything through the walls of his tent. It’s scary, knowing that there’s something out there that he can’t see nor find for the life of him. He reunites with the rest of his group and ends up as a duo with Mime, and the feeling of being watched doesn’t leave, and when he brings it up with Mime, the possessed puppet shakes his head, telling the avian that he hasn’t gotten that feeling at all, and Couriway immediately gets shoved for commenting that maybe he wasn’t interesting enough for anyone to pay attention to, even the quiet watchers of this garden didn’t have any interest in him due to his boring nature.

Mime departs with him eventually, and after that, he’s alone again with whatever watches him from behind the trees.

His eyes drift, and he swears that he sees something in the corner of his eyes sometimes, but when he does turn to look, absolutely nothing is there but petals falling to the ground. He calls out sometimes too, but he doesn’t get much more than the sigh of the breeze in return. Sometimes he asks questions, or he directly says that he knows that something is there, but regardless if he tries to be gentle and coax them out or if he’s aggressive and confronting, turning to where he swears he saw something and confidently saying “I know you’re here.”, it does nothing anyway.

Sometimes he feels like the trees mock him for what’s probably the result of his constant paranoia that’s nagging at him and slowly driving him insane. The cherry stained by gray sway in the wind, and maybe that’s what he’s mistaking as the movement of the creatures of the forest that spread rot and disease to everything they touch.

Couriway closes his eyes with a sigh under the stars for once rather than hiding in his tent, stomach growling because he might’ve underpacked and gotten lost, and maybe if he’s killed tonight, he could lose the interest of whatever is stalking him and set off in a better direction.

There’s shuffling, the sound of petals being crushed, and something falls next to him which immediately makes him open his eyes and look over, screaming when he sees something looming over him, scrambling away and panting as it just stares at him, amber eyes piercing his soul– three amber eyes looking directly through him, frozen in the position of leaning over, and Couriway is fucking terrified about what will happen when he blinks.

“What are you?” He hisses, and the nightmare of a creature doesn’t say anything back, and Couriway fucking hates how it has some semblance of a human. He sees human features in its face, and its genuinely horrifying how well he can put the pieces of a face together– how he could probably see a face like this in his day to day life, but it’s attached to a body made of nothing but wood and amber that leaks out from the cracks in the bark, glowing and fucking pulsing.

It doesn’t reply. Couriway isn’t even sure if it can.

It has hair, and it looks soft compared to the rest of its body. Couriway stares at it as he scoots away, and when his eyes grow too dry to keep open, he shuts them but opens them again even if they scream at him to close them for a bit longer to rehydrate them, and it doesn’t matter anyway, because it’s gone.

Now he knows for sure that yes, there was something constantly stalking his every step in the garden, and it fills him with cold and nauseous dread knowing that he’s lost track of something that is most definitely a threat to his life. When he gets his bearings back, he realizes that the… whatever it was, had left something behind for him.

A few fruits on a green piece of moss for once, and Couriway doesn’t know how to feel about it.

How long had it been watching him?

Has it been here all along?

Does he forget this ever happened?

It’s not like he could forget, he was just face to face with the creation of his nightmares– what the fuck does he do?

Well, he should probably do the most sensible thing in this situation.

“I don’t want to be part of this expedition anymore.”

Chapter Text

It wasn’t his fault that drama club was taking up all of his time for classwork, and his failing grade in his mathematics class wasn’t that bad to draw concerns from his parents in his very valid and honest opinion, but apparently it drew the attention of both his teachers and parents and was bad enough for them to force him into being tutored by an older student in the school. He really really didn’t want to face it alone, so with enough begging, he managed to get Squiddo and Liam to also join him even if they hadn’t really needed it, and everywhere that Squiddo went, Ash would too, so he also had sizable group of friends so that he wouldn’t go insane with numbers and math.

When he had mentioned it to Ash, he saw his friend basically go pale for a second before coughing and scoffing, knocking their shoulders against each other and elbowing him, telling him there was absolutely nothing to worry about. That wasn’t a very good reaction, especially from someone like Ashswag himself.

When they’re introduced to their new tutor, it clicks in his head that he’s seen this guy before. He’s part of some advanced program, quite popular, co-captain of the volleyball team and he’s somehow almost Zam’s age while being grades above him. It’s no one else but Feinberg standing next to the teacher that he nearly towers over, and Zam feels a bit terrified from how flat his expression is as he stares at the four of them. He can’t really get a read on how he feels about having to tutor them, but he’s pretty sure he’s heard about others talk about having Feinberg as their tutor, and he’s also pretty sure there’s plenty of others that he could’ve been given, like Couriway or even better, Fruitberries! But he gets this terrifying unit of a student instead.

“I’m sure he’s nice!” Squiddo had chirped after they left their introduction to the senior, and everyone but Liam had groaned under their breath. No one was really looking forward to it– well, to say no one wouldn’t be true, but Squiddo and Liam didn’t particularly mind going, happy to get to know the older student, while Ash and Zam would’ve loved to be entirely elsewhere.

He can’t tell if Feinberg is annoyed by their mere presence or not when they enter the library, his lax composure immediately disappearing as he sits up and beckons them over to the table and to sit down.

“Yo, Ash,” he calls, and his friend rolls his eyes before looking up at Feinberg again. “The third session of Taskcrafter is like next week, probably on Friday if you’re free.” He’s on his phone, ready to send a message as Ash thinks about something.

“Taskcrafter? Like the show taskmaster?” Liam interrupts, and Feinberg chuckles a bit.

“Yeah, Poundy wanted to fuck around with a group of friends and as you can tell, he’s not very creative.”

“Why didn’t he just message me instead of sending you as messenger?” Ash scoffs, checking his phone for a moment before putting it away and sitting down.

“You blocked him.” Feinberg points out, and Ash goes “Ohhh,” before shrugging and agreeing with a wave of his hand. They settle down, and Feinberg groans as he sits up and cracks his fingers, putting his phone to the side. “Alright, where to begin? Or, no. Actually, answer me this first. Why are you here?”

“We came with Zam because he begged us to so he didn’t have to face you alone! He’s failing right now!” Squiddo grins while Zam looks at her with a betrayed expression that the senior seems to find a fair bit of amusement in.

“So it’s just Zam I have to worry about? You guys are just here to be here?” He asks, and the others nod while Zam looks away with his arms crossed. “That’s surprising. Don’t you usually do pretty well in your classes while being in the drama club? There’s something coming up soon though, right? You guys are practicing for a performance?” He nods slowly with every question, sideeyeing the other for somehow knowing so much.

“Don’t look at me like that. There’s plenty of people in HBG who are in the drama club, I know way too much about what happens in other clubs even though I’m not in one.” Which, yeah, makes sense. HBG is a pretty large friend group, there was always at least one of them in any sport or club, there were practically everywhere. “Anyway, are you just unable to keep up with the homework he gives? Do you at least understand what he’s giving you?” 

All in all, Feinberg isn’t that scary of a guy. He’s understanding, and a bit awkward at times, but he does genuinely try to help Zam where he can, staring at the packets he has that are overdue before sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose. Everyone else spends the time studying and doing their work before they start having to put their heads together for Zam’s work because even though it was stuff that he had some understanding to do (along with Feinberg’s full understanding too, which helped immensely when he was floundering trying to remember how to do something correctly), it was still annoyingly confusing, and when the bell that tells them that the lunch period is fully over, none of them have actually ate anything since they’ve arrived.

They’ve gotten a fair amount of work done, but they’re absolutely starving, and he spots Feinberg checking his phone and standing up so fast he hears Feinberg slam his knee trying to get up with a soft curse under his breath. He glances over to them before typing something and asking “Do any of you guys have perfect attendance to keep up?” with a grin, and it’s a nod towards skipping class and even maybe leaving school early too, and of course, no one would pass up the chance to leave school early.

“I didn’t know you could drive.” Ash remarks from the passenger seat when they get into a car, and Feinberg remarks quickly with “You’re right. I can’t drive. I don’t have a license, and this is my friend's car that I’m driving because I am not asking someone else to drive me.” which immediately puts everyone on edge, protests coming from everyone in the backseat as Feinberg drives into the road.

“Okay, I said I can’t drive but I know how to drive, so stop yelling, I’m not gonna start speeding and get myself pulled over, I have a date to get to. You still have homework to do, so you guys are coming with me.” All of them collectively groan and complain, but a free school day is a free school day, so who are they complain?

They end up at a cafe with the senior, and Couriway looks surprised to see the four of them, raising an eyebrow at Feinberg who doesn’t do anything but lean over to kiss the other, Feinberg’s tail wagging happily with the shorter avian. They all order something when the pair sees them all awkwardly hovering around, Feinberg paying for them and bringing them over to sit down somewhere.

“You have new guys to tutor now?” Couriway questions, leaning against the other and gesturing over to the four of them, and Feinberg hums around his mouthful of ice cream.

“Just Zam, everyone else is here for company and moral support. Zam knows what he’s doing for the most part, he just has a lot of work from the class he’s gotta do that we can help with to finish it all faster.” Couriway leans over to check the packets and immediately grimaces.

“Well, I’m glad you have Fein to help you then, he’s the only one who passed that class with all A’s somehow. That teacher sucks like hell, I’ve never seen such a terrible class, and don’t you have drama stuff too? Absolutely no respect for anyone who assigns work with no regard for students with other activities.” Zam only finds a bit of amusement in how obvious it is that Couriway seems to have dealt with the same troubles when he had been in the same grade as Zam.

He eventually does get his grades up after a bit with Feinberg as his tutor, and even when he doesn’t need the senior’s help anymore, they still hangout occasionally, asking for help for work from their classes.

Chapter Text

When he wakes up, he still hasn’t woken up from his nightmare of a life, still holding tight onto Couriway hidden in the trees, limbs tangled like the branches they had weaved into a nest of some sort to support their weight. Couriway lays with his ear against his chest, hidden from the cameras by Feinberg’s body, tired eyes cautious and weary, watching the sky and ground for any threats as they were sleeping. It's not like they could ever sleep for long either, the arena wasn’t a kind place at all. They would constantly force the tributes toward the center when it started getting too boring for the watchers with no constant violence. Their hands weren’t free from blood either, temporary alliances (or friends, as Couriway liked to think) eventually crumbled when worst came to worst and only one of them could make it out alive.

He didn’t think he’d end up like this. He knew that yeah, he did have a high chance of entering the games, but with Couriway? That was just a cruel joke. He’s stuck with the man who’s captured his entire heart from the very first day that they had met, and he can’t do anything to save their doomed lives. His hand rests over the gun attached to his hip, finger twitching at the smallest of noise, jolting awake when the leaves rustle from the artificial wind in the arena, doing his very best to not also wake up his partner but failing due to how his heart would race from his abrupt awakenings.

They never go back to sleep after the both of them wake up, only laying there for a bit longer as the forest is still around them, only hearing their own breathing and the slow beat of their hearts in sync, their chests rising and falling with every inhale and exhale that reminds them that somehow, they’re both still alive.

They found each other before anything else at the start, running into the forest with the gear that they had gotten their hands on, Feinberg’s hands already blood stained when Couriway had grabbed them, and he knows, that in a way Couriway is disappointed in him, but it goes unsaid because it had been necessary to live, and Feinberg has never been afraid to get his hands dirty when needed to. They survive while trying to avoid conflict for as long as they could, whatever Feinberg catches getting put on a fire to cook before it's smothered out and they’re on the move again, running from anyone who might’ve been on their trail after seeing the smoke. They find themselves in trees more than they are on the ground, Couriway’s weightless bones and Feinberg’s nature of spending more time in the wild than under the roof of a home being put to use in the forested half of the arena.

The other half is a barren desert, and they both had covered their ears when they had heard explosions, curled in one of their many tree nests as they faced away from the screens in the sky showing who was unfortunate enough to pass that day, refusing to listen to see if it had been anyone that they knew. They had gotten along with other tributes during the training period– they were all about the same age, and it felt nice having company during times where they were unfamiliar with everything about their surroundings, but it always left him feeling sick knowing that they would be facing these same exact people in a death trap, forced to kill just to have a slim chance of seeing their family again.

He regrets the blood that’s soaked into his skin, burning and itching no matter how long he spends at a stream scrubbing at them until they’re red and bleeding and Couriway has to silently pull him away from the water, holding his hands by the wrist so he doesn’t do anything rash. Ingrained behind his eyes are the faces of frantic teenagers having to fight for their lives, rolling in the mud and dirt, pushing and shoving, and in different circumstances, it would’ve been a nice childhood memory– playing with someone that you could call a friend in another nicer world, ending up coated in mud and laughing until your faces hurt, but not here. Here, they were fighting to simply survive– fighting to the death just for the slim chance of seeing the sun break past the horizon again, to be bathed in warm sunlight once more, an embrace that was rarely ever felt due to the conditions of their district.

He ended up in one of these fights, weapons and tools knocked away as they fought in the mud, attempting to pin each other and end it quick, unwilling to draw the fight out further and further until both of their arms burned and ached, and eventually, Feinberg had been victorious, leaving with bruises and scraps and extra gear, but leaving a lifeless body behind with a face that he once knew, part of him dying with the flesh that cooled faster than ever. He had returned to Couriway feeling less like himself, and he’s killed to survive before, but this time was different. It was another teenager under him, fighting for the same thing that he was too, and it wasn’t anyone's fault, but he can’t help but feel hollow for having another person’s blood stain his hands forevermore.

That night was so much more different than the other nights, and it didn’t get better after that. He spent that night hidden in Couriway’s arms, exhausted, but eyes wide open because the moment he saw darkness, he’d see the face of the child he had killed staring back at him, forcing him awake again, getting squeezed tighter by his partner to calm him as his heart raced and his breathing shook his body. He lost more than he thought that day, and he knew that it wasn’t over yet.

Couriway had accepted that they had to kill, but it didn’t mean that he too didn’t mourn the lives that he had stolen with a single arrow drawn and shot silently through the air. The bodies were left behind, and he watched from afar as his partner closed their eyes and covered their rapidly cooling bodies, retreating to Feinberg and ignoring how their bodies would be taken from the arena and returned to mourning families hopeless to do anything about their children being sent to die year after year.

Every time blood stained their hands, they’d never talk about it, but they’d find each other in the trees and held each other as silent tears dripped from the corners of their eyes, hiding away as much as they could, refusing to let the world use their tears and feelings as a form of cruel entertainment.

They rarely kiss, only pressing their foreheads together and hiding in warm embraces that only sometimes helped with the cold at night, feeling the trembling inhales and exhales, quiet sobs that they muffled with each other’s bodies, breaking down for the night for mere minutes only, a small window of vulnerability that disappeared as quickly as it came, because regardless of how many emotions they had and how much grief they carried, their emotions would be preyed upon, used to feed the media addicted creations of the Capitol. 

They don’t think about the final day until it comes to that time, refusing to think about what they would have to do if it were only the two of them left. If it were the two of them, then what they feared most would be what the Capitol would do to them if they didn’t cooperate. They don’t talk about it much, but they both know that it’s a thought that weighs heavy on their mind, and Feinberg has reached for his gun on many occasions, only for Couriway to grab his hand and pull him away from the firearm.

It was a miracle that they had lived so long, hiding from the sound of gunfire and screams and blocking their ears from the echo of cannon shots that had long lost their meaning to the countless bloodbaths in this same very arena that they were forced into.

“I don’t want to lose you.” He had abruptly said into the night, words muffled by Couriway’s shirt, and he tears up a bit at the feeling of vibrations from his partner's words when he speaks, a hushed, raspy whisper.

“That won’t happen, you don’t have to think about that now.” He bites his lip to stop himself from asking Couriway how he knew it wouldn’t happen, because with how things were playing out, that would for sure happen regardless of how hard they tried to prevent it.

The cornucopia refreshes in the morning, and they have no reason to go, regardless if it tempted them with things that would help like ammo and additional food, but it wasn’t worth their lives.

But what they wanted and didn’t want never mattered to the people of the Capitol. Why would it? They were forced to go regardless, the walls of the colosseum pushing in and forcing them closer to the center, cutting them off from their forest of sanctuary and into the open where everyone else had ended up too.

The air was thick with tension with anticipation to see who would fire the first shot, and he stood in front of Couriway even if he felt the man squeeze his wrist to silently tell him no, but regardless, he should be who dies if one of them did die during this fight, for everything he’s done. He doesn’t have a family to return to either, and Couriway is the only person who ever mattered to him more than anything, and it’s a weakness he’s willing to have just to have the man.

All hell does break loose eventually, someone too excited to have their finger on the trigger, and lord knows what happened. Part of him wants to hide again and wait it out, like pussy’s worried for their own safety, and they really should do that to provide less entertainment for the Capitol, but when a stray gunshot burns red against Couriway’s cheek, they’re involved in the fight without another word said.

And low and behold, it does end up as the two of them standing alone in the arena, breathing heavy and injured, bones aching and unable to breathe, falling against each other with sobs breaking free from their chest, because of course, it’s them at the end. He knows there’s cameras on them, and he wants to hide away from the invasive prying eyes, hide Couriway all for himself and force the world to forget about them, hating how he sniffles against Couriway’s shoulder as they hold each other, his tears sliding down his dirty cheeks and soaking into ruined clothes.

He wants to kiss Couriway, but he can’t. Not with the cameras on them, not with so many invading their moment together.

They spend what feels like eternity like this, standing until they can’t anymore and falling to their knees still clutching each other, and he’s sure that the Capitol is waiting for something more. 

There can’t be two winners, and they know this, but Feinberg had found himself realizing a long long time ago that he could never live without the other man no matter what.

The Capitol says something, and he doesn’t care, only holding Couriway tighter to his body, refusing to give them attention.

They make demands, but he still blocks them out, and both of them clutch at each other like lifelines, refusing to let go and acknowledge the world beyond their little bubble.

It isn’t until he hears the helicopter blades and even more shouts until he realizes they’ve made a terrible mistake.

Regardless, it’s too late.

A gunshot rings loud and clear through the arena, and he feels Couriway’s body stiffen up, and for a millisecond, he has hope that it was him stiffening up from the sudden loud noise, but from the way that the other half of his soul folds over and starts bleeding into Feinberg’s clothes crushes that hope immediately.

He pulls back, lifting Couriway away from his shoulder and feeling his heart shatter and acid burn the back of his throat.

He doesn’t have much time to process, but his body moves on autopilot, every noise around him a constant ringing as he stares at the lifeless face of his heart and everything more, warm welcoming brown eyes that once held so, so much love and affection for him, now an empty husk staring at him with nothing in his eyes.

The muzzle of his gun is still hot when it brushes against his chin, his arm shaking, and when the trigger is pulled, the only thing he can think of is Couriway, his grin and his laugh ringing in his ears instead of the ear piercing ringing of hearing a gunshot so close to him. He falls too, and he stares at Couriway when his vision and thoughts fade, agony that had eaten away at his face burning into nothing, the ache of his heart fading too, and…

…

…

…

He wakes up again. 

The moment his eyes open, he knows something is dreadfully wrong.

He’s incomplete, his body aches and his face feels frozen in pain, and the rapid beating of his heart and rasp of air coming into his lungs and exiting his nose in hyperventilating breaths tells him that he’s alive.

Feinberg is alive, and Couriway has been dead for months.

Couriway is a name that is scrubbed from history itself, their story rewritten and retold, and he finds that even if he tried, there would be no way for Couriway to be remembered. His vocal cords are gone, and the Capitol has silenced him forever.

He finds that when he stares at himself in the mirror when he’s let go from the examination table that he had been strapped to by the monsters of the Capitol due to his constant fighting and thrashing, he doesn’t recognize himself anymore.

Feinberg had died in that arena with the rest of him, and the creature forced back to life is a husk of that man, a zombie forced to walk again and claim the title of winner that would remind him forever of who he lost.

He looks at himself in the mirror, unable to recognize who or even what was looking back at him.

He forgets his face and name when he’s given a helmet to hide behind, spending long hours of the day staring at mirrors, and apparently, this means that he’s a winner.

It doesn’t feel like that one little bit.

Chapter Text

Speedrunners were very familiar with potions.

From the one single fire resistance potion in your day to day RSG or ranked game to the entire roster of substances for AA, there’s always a bit of alchemy mixed in with a runner’s life. Although banned, there were also performance enhancing potions, because of course there were. It’s a competitive place, people would do anything to make it to the playoffs.

At the start of one's career, you were given plenty of warnings about the long term effects that being a runner could have on your health. It wasn’t ever too obvious because respawning was a thing, and damages done to one’s body during matches never stayed after the room was disbanded, so many assumed that it was something that wouldn’t affect one’s health that much in any way ever, but there were plenty of issues that came with speedrunning in the long-term. Prolonged and constant exposure to so many explosions was prone to cause deafness, either minor or major depending on how long you’ve been running for, which was why runners are always seen playing with subtitles. True, they gave advantage and were actually useful for locating things through walls, but there are many who actually rely on them to hear due to hearing aids rarely ever being viable in such a fast paced environment, easily being knocked loose regardless of how tightly they were secured.

Deafness usually came first, then came the chronic pain from nerve damage, players losing feeling in their hands and fingers were common things that came with what they had to do constantly, and it’s been a long accepted thing that healing potions or balms were allowed due to flare ups that prevented runners from being able have their peak performance or even practice, and speedrunners don’t enjoy the thought of resting– they blow beds up constantly! Sleep isn’t longer than a millisecond to set one’s spawn to restore hunger, and while watching players match history, you can often tell who has and who hasn’t slept from the time their games were played. The issues only start setting in long after you’ve started, and by some point, you grow used to the constant ache and twinges of pain in one’s joints, becoming a smaller issue over time as you aim to get faster and faster at the game, only limited by the limits you’ve put upon yourself.

Silver is used to the sweet taste of healing potions and how they’re made, he’s part of HBG and ranked as a whole, and healing potions were always necessary due to the conditions of the many runners he knows. From the loss of Reign’s arm to the constant chronic pain from thunder running through Feinberg’s veins and the ache that everyone has in their fingers, he knows a lot about health potions. He’s made his own on several occasions, usually making it to numb the pain for Reign or to use himself when the throbbing of his skull and the burn in his hands become too much.

Dylan helps often too, his flowers and natural green thumb and constant free time from being retired meant that he could always be around to create more potions if and when needed. They grew close when Reign had lost his arm, staying by his side and comforting him through the nights and helping him grow used to his new prosthetic, eventually getting together. Silver and Reign had shared the healing potions during their time running, and Silver isn’t as reliant on them as everyone else was, rarely using them and letting Reign use a majority of them to combat the phantom pains from his missing arm, powering through for the runs of the day.

He doesn’t notice it, but his chronic pain grows constantly everyday, and his intake of healing potions also grows slowly too. It’s almost instinct for him to reach for a bit of healing to numb the pain, drinking enough for it to fade and for him to refocus on his current run. He doesn’t know when, but at some point, the effect of the normal healing potions they had started to become less effective no matter how much he drank, leaving him confused with mixed feelings. When had he become so reliant on the health potions to the point that they don’t work on him anymore? He knows that people like Fein and Nem have different concoctions for their potion dosages due to how severe their conditions were, needing stronger healing potions to numb the pain that came with just moving their bodies just to do their jobs.

It wasn’t like he really needed them, but he would’ve preferred it. It’s a dull ache that sometimes sparks up, and when he’s laid in bed with Reign and Dylan, he’s restless, unable to sleep and accidentally waking them up sometimes, getting a kiss pressed against his cheek that does make his heart melt, but even if he tries his very best to sleep, pressing his face into the chest of one of his boyfriends, it’s unsuccessful.

His mechanics grow more sloppy, and after a loss streak, Mime checks his temperature when he returns to HBG with worry in his expression, he disappears and comes back with a murky purple potion that he hands over to Silver.

“It’s a sleep potion,” Mime tells him when he silently tilts his head in question, and he accepts it, happy to have something to deal with his sleepless nights after a while. He tries not to use it so much, but it’s just easy to turn the medication when he is struggling to sleep, reaching over and taking a drink before rolling back over into either Reign or Dylan’s arms, finally able to close his eyes and fall asleep immediately after countless nights of struggle to get any rest at all.

He does eventually turn back to health potions, Dylan helping him brew stronger ones when he had finally brought it up. He sees their worried looks, but he needs this. The end of the phase was approaching soon, and it wasn’t like he was doing very well lately due to his sleeping problems, so he had to cram in more games and improve further, numbing his pain until eventually, Mime scruffed him and held him up in front of him, shaking him hard enough that the splash potions of healing fell out of him, earning nothing but a disappointed look from the marionette.

It was just a small addiction, it wasn’t going to get bad– he had it under control! He really did! Was what he told Mime, only getting a sigh and shake of the older's head at him, returning him to his boyfriends and talking to all of them about Silver’s reliance on the potion’s, mentioning how other members dealt with their previous addictions to potions when they had started using potions.

Withdrawal was weird.

He had support through it, but regardless, he finds himself craving the sweetness of health potions and the odd taste of the sleeping potions too. He misses them, and he feels nauseous more often than not too, body aching constantly and his tremors grow worse, nearly impossible to hold a glass of water without his shaking hands spilling what was in it.

He feels miserable, and all he can think about is how the phase will be ending soon, and he has nothing noteworthy to show for himself. Constantly, either one of his lovers smother him with care to shut his thoughts up, Dylan’s careful hands trimming his horns down for the month again as Reign braids his hair, the warmth of his flesh hand cradling his face while his prosthetic is cold against his collarbone, his own heated flesh warming up the gold.

Withdrawal comes and goes, and he finds that he does feel far, far better when he’s not constantly running on health potions and having medicated sleep rather than naturally falling asleep with the rise and fall of his boyfriends chests, listening to their snores as he falls asleep last between the three of them.

Chapter Text

“Feinberg, up.” The victor of the previous hunger games shakes him awake, fingers curled around his shoulder as he groans, helmet still heavy on his head from where he had passed out the night before, head throbbing more aggressively than it always usually did. He’s painfully hungover, and Mime wants him put together before he can even comprehend his surroundings. Had he crashed at the other victor’s place while he was blacked out? He doesn’t remember, and he finds himself grateful that he doesn’t.

He’s a light-weight, and his body is filled with more chemicals than flesh, and while he wishes that he was dead, he’s kept alive by Mime and the Capitol, and he’d rather be constantly drunk and forgot everything when he wakes up again than be stuck mourning a man that had been torn away from his hands for the sake of entertainment, and the most horrifying realization he’s made recently is that he can’t remember the sound of Couriway’s voice or his face anymore, and he can’t exist sober with that realization that he’s failed the one person who had it in them to love him in all his filth.

It doesn’t matter anymore really, he’ll just repeat the cycle all over again today so he doesn’t see what unfortunate souls are picked during the reaping this year. He’s apparently already holding into something, and when he does go to take a swig even though his head aches still, Mime grabs his wrist, ripping it out from his fingers and he would chase him for it back, but when he stands up to chase, he nearly topples over, clutching his helmet as Mime scoffs, tossing the wine bottle into the garbage.

“At least stay sober for today. I don’t look forward to this too, but look presentable at least, we don’t need to add more embarrassment to this district than there already is.” Mime dusts off the front of his clothing as he speaks, and Feinberg rolls his eyes. “And look presentable at least, your clothing is filthy.”

He has no room to argue as he leaves, feeling more miserable than ever as he returns to his own home because for once he’s not immediately drunk the moment he’s awake again. He cleans the visor of his helmet, a ‘gift’ provided to him by the Capitol after he had somehow survived blowing his head off. He doubts that he had survived that, but apparently when the Capitol is desperate to crown someone as a winner, they can perform miracles. It’s just that for some reason he had been the one they decided to do that with.

He’s not a noteworthy person, not at all. He hadn’t been the one with wings that shone with sunlight in them, that had been Couriway. The avian rarely let his wings free, and with how rarely sunlight would even touch the ground of the 12th district, the wings of other avians that he had seen weren’t as vibrant. It didn’t help that a lot of them worked in the coal mines where the charcoal would forever stain your clothing and hands, no clean water to wash it off either. Though, Couriway had been one of the few lucky ones to live the life of a baker's son, selling bread and not struggling as much. His wings were in surprisingly pristine condition for the district he lived in, golden and shining like the sun, warmth emanating from them.

Feinberg remembers the appendages clearly as day, even if he doesn’t remember Couriway’s features clearly and his voice is only an extremely faint memory in his brain. He felt them sometimes, feathers brushing against the back of his hand, and they were unbelievably warm, and he found himself gravitating towards the other boy more often than not.

He remembers the day that Couriway had lost his wings clearly too, the day they arrived at the Capitol and met the people that would be styling their outfits for when they’d be debuted, and their eyes had lingered on the boy’s wings for far too long, Feinberg stepping behind Couriway but eventually they were separated, and after their grand display that included Couriway’s wings when they were showing off the contestants for this year’s game, they had disappeared completely, Couriway unable to meet his eyes and staying silent until behind closed doors.

Feinberg stayed close, and he noticed how Couriway flinched away from any touch that went near his back, and it wasn’t a night they ever thought about again, but Couriway had fallen into his arms and sobbed into his shoulder until he fell asleep, still hiccupping softly.

The Capitol takes a lot more than lives from people, he’s realized. They strip them of their identity, forcing them to act like animals just to survive. They had taken the most special thing from Couriway, and then ripped him from Feinberg’s hands and taken half his soul without even a bit of remorse. He lost more than his voice and face that final day in that arena, and he really wishes that he had lost his life too, but the Capitol only cares about saving souls when it only benefits them.

He closes his eyes, and sighs, reopening them and looking at the mirror.

He doesn’t remember what his face looks like.

He doesn’t particularly want to, either.

Mime bangs on his door and snaps him out of his thoughts, getting dragged to the reaping, getting sat next to the older victor and staying silent the entire time, eyes roaming over the crowd of kids and seeing unfortunate familiar faces. Teal hair and a familiar face look directly at him, frowning and immediately looking away, and for a second he wonders if people have forgotten how he actually looks, treating his helmet as a curse and something to be ashamed of, getting help from the Capitol, flaunting technology and luxuries that basically the entire district couldn’t dream of affording even if they all pitched together for one thing.

He blocks out voices of the representative of the Capitol sent to the district to pull the slips out of the bowl because he’s pretty sure this was the same person from last year, and he knows what these people are like, and he’d rather not have comments made about what happened to him not even that long ago. They don’t like him, and he doesn’t like them either. It’s a mutual hatred, of course.

A loud shout of words he absolutely has never heard in his life draws his attention, his head slapping up and looking over to where he heard it from.

Oh, Rowl.

Silently, without a single breath taken, he watches as Rowl let go of the younger boy’s wrist (What was his name? Hacks? Hac? He wasn’t really listening when the name was called.) and walks up to the sneering Capitol representative, sneering right back at her. He remembers Rowl pretty well, they shared similar lives, though the only difference was that Rowl had some family life while Feinberg had none. They shared game sometimes, but never all the time because they simply just couldn’t afford sharing. The boy that Rowl had saved from the reaping is bright compared to the rest of the district, nearly snow white and soft looking compared to the ragged mess that the rest of the district was.

He looks young, terribly so. There’s still the baby fat on his cheeks as he stares at Rowl, tiny compared to basically everything in the clearing, and he looks so lost. He doesn’t remember anyone this young in his game, and it only strikes him now that they aren’t sending teenagers, they’re sending actual children into a blood bath where they’d have no chance against anyone at all, seen as easy prey.

Rowl and the representative quit their bickering eventually, and the young boy has barely even made it back to where all the other twelve year-olds were (he’s twelve, and why are there so many other twelve year-olds there with him?) before a sentence struck the clearing so silent it was almost like the world had gone quiet for once, not a single bit of breeze even rustling the leaves of trees.

“Hax Hacking Noises.”

The boy turns around again, trembling with every step that he has to practically climb up with how tiny he is, and he looks over at Rowl who looks betrayed, looking over at Hax who avoids all eye contact, hiding in the fluff of his jacket that practically swallows him whole.

He looks over at Mime, and he finds the man staring at the ground in front of him, knuckles white with how tightly he was clutching the end of his coat.

Had this been what Mime had felt like watching him and Couriway get picked last year? Had he felt this hopeless watching two children get sent to their deaths?

The two new tributes get taken away for parting words with their families, and Mime gets up immediately, walking off in the direction of their homes, and Feinberg follows silently.

They end up sharing a bottle of wine together, not a single thing said between them, the silence plenty enough.

He finds out this year that everyone collectively suffers when this sacrifice disguised as an event comes around, including even the so-called victors.

So much for being a winner.

Chapter Text

“Do you regret it?”

He blinks for a moment before looking up and over at the other tribute when silent falls over them both again.

Feinberg stays looking out the window of the train, watching acres of undisturbed land pass by after dropping something like that on Couriway. What did he mean by that?

“Do I regret what?” He sits down next to him, daring to scoot a bit closer to watch what Feinberg was looking at.

The sun was quite nice out here.

In district twelve, the air was terribly polluted. It was mostly due to the neglect it faced from the Capitol, constantly being forgotten by them until the games came around and it was time for them to harvest two more children from the already suffering place, just to entirely forgotten  again unless they had won that year, something that rarely ever happened, only four ever victors existing in the hundreds of years the games have existed for by now. With the polluted air, sunlight rarely ever breached past the thick clouds of smog and walls of trees, and the few times it had, it only dappled the ground for mere seconds, never staying for long enough to burn away the frost that coated the ground before disappearing again, a fleeting moment that never meant much.

Although rare and usually hidden, Couriway does love the sun more than anything. It gives him some hope when he sees it faintly peeking over the trees and attempting to pierce the thick fog of district twelve, always unsuccessful, but it still means that it’s trying, which motivates him to try everyday no matter what.

“...When you gave me that bread.” Feinberg frowns, looking over at him before looking back outside again, refusing to look at the avian for too long.

“You mean when I saved your life?” He corrects as he goes to sit across from Feinberg, and for a moment, his breath catches in his throat due to the way the orange glow of the bright and beautiful sun paints the other boys face, and it’s rare to ever see such warm colors on someone, especially someone from the less fortunate place of district twelve where you would always be covered in either dirt or charcoal. They had time to clean up when they got on the train, and he hadn’t ever seen Feinberg with his skin clear for once, always smudged with dark coal and he finds that he does enjoy this clean and warm look more, able to see his features clearly.

And he admires it.

Quietly, he admires Feinberg as a person.

He knows no person stronger than Feinberg, his mental fortitude unshaken by all the unfortunate events that have happened to him in his life. He’s the sole child of a dead family, and he refuses help until he’s on the brink of death, which Couriway worries about, because what if one day it’ll be too late for him to come back from the brink? What will happen then? 

Couriway had found him on that brink once, during the cold and wet winters where one was bound to freeze anyone to death if they wandered the streets without finding a source of warmth. He had found the other boy hidden against a tree, nearly frostbitten fingers digging into the raw flesh of a carcass of a small animal about to eat it out of pure desperation before he had been seen by the baker, immediately rushing out into the cold to reach the other boy, frantic and ignoring his mother's shouts. Feinberg had been freezing, the cold burning Couriway’s hands immediately even though they had just been pulled out of the oven. The moment he had touched him, Feinberg had weakly leaned into his touch with his eyes nearly fully closed, gravitating towards the weak warmth with his face twisted in pain and trembling pants visible in the air between them.

His wings burst out from his back, and he had heard his mothers gasps as he wrapped Feinberg around in them, feeling the freezing boy bury his face in the glowing feathers, clutching at the warmth with shaky fingers. Feinberg was light in a way that was concerning when he had gone to pick him up and bring him inside temporarily, especially with his height since he usually towered over Couriway constantly. He had wrapped Feinberg in his fathers coat, something that was far too big for him and realistically, he would never be able to grow into it, and he finds that the murky colors fit Feinberg far better than it would ever fit Couriway.

“Why must you drag this filth into the house? Why are you staining your wings like this? Put them away. If anyone were to see you like this, you’d get our bakery trashed.” He ignored his mothers nagging as he carefully warmed Feinberg up, his own blankets and fabrics draped over the boy that was frozen in pain, chest rising and falling shallowly as he left water near the furnace to warm up so that he could clean the dirt from Feinberg. He found pale skin below the layers of charcoal and dirt, and the pained expression on the other only finally fell away when Couriway had curled his wings around him again, leaning against him and pressing his ear against the still cold chest of the other, ignoring his parents arguing in favor of listening to the faint beat of Feinberg’s heart under the thin layer of his shirt and flesh.

Feinberg soaks up warmth easily, and he’s warm by the sunrise, and Couriway can breathe a sigh of relief that Feinberg had survived the cold night in his condition. He had nearly stayed up the entire night to ensure he’d be able to shake or find a way to force him away if his heart and breathing had become too slow. He had taken off the other boy's helmet that he always wore just to clean his face, and a more selfish part of him had convinced him to do it just so that he could see under, his curiosity winning eventually. Feinberg had woken up and looked lost for those few seconds, looking around while he had still been encapsulated in the golden feathers, fingers brushing against the plumage before he fully noticed who they were connected to.

He should’ve expected it, but he hadn’t expected to be shoved away as Feinberg scrambled for his helmet, immediately putting it on again as the wings vanished from their surroundings, and both of them could only stare at each other. He’s wobbly on his feet, bracing himself on a desk nearby, confused by the weight of the coat on him.

Before anything can be said, he closes the distance between them and pulls the coat tighter around Feinberg, fingers around the lapels and knuckles resting against the slow rise and fall of the other's chest. They don’t say anything, but he does hear Feinberg quietly sigh before reaching up to wrap his hands around Couriway’s wrists, detaching them from each other.

He keeps Feinberg with him for a bit longer, sneaking loaves of fresh bread to him before they part, and he doesn’t see the other boy for a bit before he returns to Couriway’s backyard, lounging in the tree with his prey of the day in hand and ready to trade again like they always had, and Couriway feels warmth in his chest when he sees the coat still worn by Feinberg, a small smile crossing his face at the sight.

Part of him is sure that he loves the other boy, but he must be mistaken, because his father and mother love each other, he’s sure, but not once has he seen them actually look at each other in the way that he looks at Feinberg– he stares at the other boy like he couldn’t bare to look away, unlike his parents who seem to find every excuse to be apart from each other, but they swear that they love each other still, even if it doesn’t look like it.

Love is complex, dishearteningly so, and Feinberg doesn’t look in his direction often even if it was just the two of them after a long day, talking to each other as Feinberg traded him the flesh of animals he hunted for the soft warmth of freshly baked bread. He finds that although Feinberg dislikes having his face seen, he still takes it off while around Couriway, and he feels flutters in his stomach knowing that he’s the only one able to see the face under the dirty material.

Feinberg rolls his eyes at the words that come from the other tribute, and Couriway gives an agitated sigh. “No, Feinberg. I don’t regret saving you that night. I don’t regret getting scolded and grounded for giving you those extra loaves, and I don’t regret being forced out into the cold after I had given you my fathers jacket. They were sacrifices I was willing to make to have you– or– er,” He coughs, “to keep you alive, I mean.”

“What did you even keep me alive for? The game I brought to trade wasn't worth what you gave me in return.” Finally, Feinberg turns to fully face him. The sun is setting, and the darker orange hues are nice on Feinberg too, what a lovely sight.

“For your company? You were around and actually cared far more than my parents had, it was nice having someone that I could get along with.”

“That can’t be your only reason.”

“And if it was?”

“I don’t trust you.”

“...Really?” Now it’s his turn to frown, those hurts striking him much harsher than Feinberg had meant, and he can see it clearly when Feinberg’s eyes widen like he hadn’t meant to say that. Regardless, hurt had leaked into his voice because the thought of not being trusted by the man does make his heart crack a bit. It shouldn't hurt because it's reasonable, but he's always trusted too easily.

“If you don’t trust him, you gotta start soon.” Their mentor snaps at them, appearing out of nowhere, standing with his arms crossed. “Going solo in that arena is practically a death wish, even if you are confident that you do better solo.” Mime sends a look over to Feinberg when he says the last part of the sentence, earning a scoff in return.

“Also, enough sulking, dinner is ready. You both need to eat, and I don’t want to hear any complaints.” Which gives Feinberg a perfect excuse to go elsewhere, leaving him and Mime in the cart alone.

“Why do you trust him?” Surprisingly, the victor sits down next to him, startling him for a second and catching him off guard with the question, taking a few seconds before he can reply, and even when he does, his reasoning doesn’t sound very convincing, so he stops his stuttering and sighs, eventually simply just saying “I don’t know,” which Mime really doesn’t give a comforting hum at.

“Go to dinner with him, we’ll talk more later.”

Feinberg’s edges soften around Couriway eventually, his bristling only reserved for when Mime comes around (he doesn’t quite get why he’s so hostile towards Mime, the victor reminds him a lot of an exhausted mother that doesn’t quite get enough breaks in life) and when other tributes appear and greet them, something that Couriway apologies for profusely and turns to give Feinberg a scathing glare that actually makes his partner tribute actually cower, which many other tributes find amusement in.

“You’ve got him wrapped around your finger, huh?” Reignex, a member from district seven, comments with a light elbow shove, and Couriway huffs with a small smile and simply shakes his head.

“You can’t be friends with everyone, you know what will happen.” They’re laid on a bed, sprawled out and simply staring at the ceiling when Feinberg speaks up.

“A temporary friendship is nice.”

Feinberg rolls over on his side to look at him. “It’ll feel worse when you have to kill them.”

“We can’t be partners forever either, but I don’t find either of us talking about the inevitable of what will happen if we actually make it to the end in one piece together.” He replies with a tired tone, and when he turns his head to look at the boy next to him, Feinberg is looking away, fisting the blanket in his hands. He’s already thought about it quite a lot, and he knows that even if he had it in him, he really wouldn’t be able to kill Feinberg if he tried. It’s not just the size difference or their strength either, he just doesn’t think he could harm Feinberg at all.

But he doesn’t know if Feinberg returns those feelings. 

What if it was a mistake to trust Feinberg with his life the way he was currently? Who’s to say that the other boy wouldn't kill him? Feinberg is a survivalist, not a lover or peacemaker. He's fought to survive, and he'd never let the chance to live pass him because he's been too close to the brink of death far too often. He clings into any chance at surviving he can get.

Couriway has never fought to survive. He's never had to go a day without food on his plate or freeze going outside to find food so he didn’t starve. Compared to Feinberg and many other unfortunate children of the forgotten district twelve, he lived a life of luxury. What would stop Feinberg from killing Couriway when they made it to the end? He would be free from his struggles, and it's a flawless plan even if the other boy doesn't know it.

“This place sickens me.” Feinberg says instead, which startles him, his eyes widening as he looks over at the other. “I don’t like it. Everything feels fake and artificial, staring at people hurts my eyes and they smell like nothing but cheapness that makes my head hurt.” He leans his head back to look at Couriway. “I miss our forest, you’re the only good thing around this place, I don’t like Mime either.”

“...What about the food?” His voice cracks, a flush coloring his face at Feinberg’s quite meaningful words.

The other tribute scoffs, “I like your bread more.”

“You like my bread over the food they’ve provided us?? They give us so much food! And it’s so much better than the bread I make in a rush!”

“Well, yeah… but yours has more care.. you made the bread specifically for me, right?” He tilts his head at Couriway, and he offers a small nod. “Then it’s more delicious that way. The food here is made for just consumption and show, there’s no dedication to provide for people the way they make the food here.”

“God, they’d hate you if they heard what you had to say.” He can only chuckle, turning back over on his back. “I can’t make any here to suit your tastes, sorry buddy.”

“I guess I’ll have to yearn for it forever then, keep baking loaves of bread in my honor,” Feinberg grins, and for a moment, Couriway forgets that their fates aren’t fortunate at all, forgetting that if he was able to go back home and keep baking, there wouldn’t be a Feinberg there to enjoy his grain, and if Feinberg made it back, then those loaves wouldn’t ever be made again. He does remember this later, and it makes him feel sick.

Feinberg was right, befriending and getting to know people was a mistake.

His arrow pierces Silver’s chest, and he kills the boy knowing that he has a family waiting for him back home, and he watches Feinberg and Reignex fight in the mud, two boys fighting just to survive and go home, desperate to get out with their lives. He watches Feinberg stand victorious, but both of them know well that it was nothing to call a victory. He cleans and patches Feinberg up, thumb wiping away the stray tear from his cheek. Fighting in the rain and mud means nothing good, and Feinberg is feverish the next day, shivering and panting harshly, expression screwed in pain and it makes Couriway think of that day where he had been on the brick of death.

That day, Couriway had warmth to give and wings to curl around to protect him, but here, Couriway has absolutely nothing. He stays by Feinberg’s side and gets him to eat and drink what he can, but this fever is something only Feinberg can get over himself, and even with sponsors watching, he knows that Feinberg would hate it if he accepted help from the people that he hated most, so he waits.

In his haze, Feinberg is panicked, clammy hand constantly grabbing for Couriway’s and holding on tight, desperate to keep the avian close. Sometimes his thrashing is so aggressive during the night that Couriway fears that they might fall out of their makeshift nest. 

The sickness miraculously does pass, and when the haze clears from Feinberg’s eyes, Couriway offers a weak smile that gets reflected back at him. What a horrible fate that they have, but at least they’re in it together.

Feinberg is warm and solid and real against him when they’re the last two standing, their knees falling on sharp pebbles and rocks but he doesn’t feel it as they sob and laugh in each other’s arms, delirious with their situation.

Their moment of joy doesn’t last long, not with the sound of helicopter blades and shouting overhead, and when he looks up, a blinding light is the last thing he sees before a searing hot pain burns him from the inside out and he loses all the strength in his body, choking on blood when he attempts to speak and weakly tries to escape Feinberg’s arms that held him tight.

He has no control over himself when he falls on the ground, eyes wide in terror, vision blurry and darkening rapidly by the second, and he wants to scream when he sees the blur and flash of Feinberg aiming something at himself, but everything goes dark.

Even in his agonizing final moments, he finds that he’s okay with every mistake he made that led him here. His parents called his generosity towards the other boy a mistake, but he found joy and warmth better than what came from the sun’s rays in Feinberg, and he can’t find himself seeing that as a mistake.

He finds that the only true mistake was showing that he was Feinberg’s biggest weakness, placing an easy target on them both.

Chapter Text

He feels himself gain more wrinkles when he spots the full moon rising, inhaling a deep breath before exhaling and getting ready for a long fucking night.

Before long, he hears a howl echo through the base before several more echo it, and just for safety, he slips out of the wooden puppet body he uses to get around, pushing himself to manifest somewhat physically to be able to interact with things before the thunder of paws storm towards him, and he would slam his head against the wall if he didn’t just phase directly through it when his body gets picked up between sharp teeth and shaken around, furry bodies swarming his spectral form and basically playing tug of war with the puppet body.

Sharply, he whistles, which gets the packs attention, ears up and alert and slobber dripping onto the wooden floors (that he just cleaned) as they drop his body. Wordlessly, he points down, and a majority of them sit, apart from Feinberg, who currently circles Couriway with his tail wagging and Danny who’s trying to catch Infume’s tail, getting jaws snapped at him before he moves onto trying to nip and paw at someone else as Mime tries to get a harness on the furry bodies practically filled to the brim with energy.

Rads ends up flopping on her side when her harness is put on, mournfully howling when someone nudges her with their snout, trying to get her to get up. Mustard crushes Nem under him, sleeping soundly as Fyroah tries to push the lightly colored wolf off the distressed one. Danny ends up with the matted fur mess that was Oliver, leaves and sticks stuck in his fur as he tumbled with the other wolf, yipping sharply as they played. When Mime accidentally lets the word outside slip, he’s dragged against his will as all of the wolves bolt outdoors in seconds, accepting his fate as they race towards the swirling portals that he didn’t have time to block off.

Silver and Danny paw at the portal leading to the ranked lobby, and he hears growls from behind the trees before loud barking occurs, and he can’t do anything but sigh, and there’s plenty of time before the night is over, and his body was destroyed when they had started playing tug of war with him, so even the idea of doing something physical was out of the box.

A ball gets rolled towards him, and there’s a group staring at him with eager eyes, and he summons just enough energy to hurl it as hard as he can, watching many furry bodies rush after it as it disappears into the forest. He spots Fulham digging at the ground before something starts showing and he gets absolutely barreled over by others, curious about what was in the ground.

He hears distressed whining, and when he looks up, there’s a wolf with lightly colored curls trembling on a branch of a tree as another circles the trunk, and he really doesn’t even wanna think about how that happened and how he absolutely cannot help because he barely has the energy to throw the ball and the night isn’t even a quarter bit over. He closes his eyes and ignores the yelps that sound extremely like Poundy, sinking underground a bit to escape them.

Of course, he gets disturbed not that long after, a silver snout sniffing his face with dirtied paws, and yeah, he doesn’t know what he had expected at all.

The group with the ball returns, Danny holding the ball proudly in his jaws before he gets tackled by someone else, and the bite mark and drool covered ball rolls towards Mime again. He hands it over to Silver, who sniffs it before sitting up and running over to where Dylan and Reign were trying to dig a tree out of the ground and topple it over, specifically the one where Fein had gotten stuck in and was still crying out for help as Couri watched anxiously. 

A skeleton spawns, existing for a second before it’s absolutely swarmed by colorful fur, everyone leaving with a shining bone in their mouth that they spend their time chewing until someone has spotted a small hoard of zombies, and Mime does not look forward to the aftermath of this. They come back stinking of rotten flesh, carrying limbs and crunching happily, and he sighs when he sees white fur stained by blood.

The area isn’t really lit up, the only light source being the moon high above them in the clearing, and it’s a perfect place for mob spawns. He watches as a few of them play ping-pong with a creeper, Nerdi looking terribly shocked by the fact that one had blown up in his face for someone that had just been shaking around a creeper in his teeth. He slobbers all over his bingbong plushie, squishing it and dropping it for a second before it’s snatched up by Mustard, and Mime watches them chase each other in and out of sight.

There’s a loud crash and plenty of happy howls, which makes him look over to see the absolutely destroyed tree and the squirrel corpse in someone's mouth, and he realizes now how Fein had gotten stuck in the tree in the first place. They start reducing the trees into shreds, sharpening their teeth and testing their bite force as they take turns biting down on the log and the branches.

Mime floats over and picks up sticks, whistling to get their attention before he starts throwing them, watching as they all scatter and stumble to find the sticks he had just thrown.

He watches Danny bring one back to Oliver so it gets thrown again, and his twin gets swarmed by his packmates doing the same, unable to throw them fast enough and accidentally hitting someone in the face with it.

The sun comes back eventually, and the full moon departs as they all begin to lose energy, walking around as the sky turned orange, then eventually starting to gather as a pile around Mime and fall asleep, and he only closes his eyes when he can get a full headcount on everyone, anxious for a second before he spots Silver dragging his tarnished body over and flopping on his boyfriends, getting kicked by both of them for disturbing their sleep before they settle again.

He makes all of them clean the mess they had made when they revert back to functioning humans, floating behind each of them as they fill in the holes they had made with their rampant digging, looking displeased when he finds a hole that was basically a cave, unamused as they looked at him with faux innocent eyes, heads hanging when he makes them fill it back up.

Chapter Text

In ranked, all the RNG in seeds were preset, ensuring that both runners had equal chances without someone gaining the advantage over another due to blaze rates or different trades. It wasn’t often something would be extremely wrong with ranked, the people working behind the scenes to ensure that it was always up and running, constant with no breaks, but the few times that it had broken and something was wrong, there were clear signs.

He’s not on a winning streak, but he’s also not really on a losing streak either, so it’s just an inbetween. A majority of his losses haven’t even been his fault, and his wins don’t feel fair either, and he’s pretty sure he’s been playing ranked for too long because he’s seeing things in the corner of his eye that disappear nearly immediately, but the sight of bright orange against the dark ocean is hard to miss and see as a mistake. If it had been darker colors, then sure, Vstrid might’ve been going crazy, but he knows that he isn’t.

Part of him wants to wait and see if he can get a photo, but his opponent seems to not be haunted by these sightings and is currently progressing before a change vote goes through, making him raise an eyebrow. He doesn’t wanna lose elo, so with one last glance over to the single tree on the island, he refocuses on the match.

He stares at the loss screen with extreme annoyance, sighing and going to the replay to look through what he could’ve possibly done wrong apart from stalling at the start. Still, the orange blur that he sees occasionally during his matches linger on his mind through his frustration of losing.

He realizes that every time he’s seen the figure, he’s lost his game of the day.

Man, why does this only happen to him?

*

Rowl might scream.

He sees an orange figure hovering around, and it’s seriously throwing him off his game. He does a double take, and sometimes it’s still there when he looks, and other times it disappears, and it’s driving him mad!

He’s going to blame this on both Hax and Mongey insisting on including him in their weird ritual they had done before they split off into their games. He had been doubtful that it would do anything because it felt extremely ridiculous to stand in a circle and chant the name of the messenger of RedLime three times while registering as being in the queue for a game, but apparently it had done something because this orange thing that hovers in his peripheral is distracting him from getting anything done at all.

With loss after loss, part of him really wants to abandon the game and just grapple with this mysterious entity that is hellbent on hovering around him continuously because it doesn’t look like his opponent is struggling with being watched by the most hideous thing he’s ever laid his eyes on. He can’t get a clear look at it during his match, and when he looks through the replay after, it’s weirdly blurry like it was an anomalous property preventing it from being clearly seen in recordings.

His communicator buzzes rapidly with messages, and when he checks it, it’s both Hax and Mongey in their separate matches posing with that orange thing that has been causing his current loss streak, much to his unamusement and horror seeing them both so close to that thing.

7bowl: literally what is that

hax: its oliver!

7bowl: like a different oliver or our uncle

monggey: it’s our uncle be nice to him

7bowl: dude that is not our fucking uncle that’s a skinwalker GET AWAY FROM THAT

hax: you made him sad :( 

7bowl: DO NOT BRING IT HOME

Hax can’t be too upset about his loss streak, not when he sees the cryptid that everyone had been posting about recently on the forums. The vessel that would deliver RedLime’s words wasn’t quite often seen in the lobby, only ever seen during tournaments and during rare times where there had been errors during seeds mid-round to correct the mistakes without causing too much delay for everyone involved. It had been a game of daring other runners to summon the cryptid that seemed to bring bad luck to every game as it watched over them. Hax had eagerly waved at the apparition when he spotted them in his game, happy that his ritual had worked.

Before everyone had figured out how to summon the third player to their games, it had just been treated like a bad omen that caused game loss after game loss until it would eventually leave, restoring everything back to normal as if it hadn’t been there haunting the players at all.

Hax and both his siblings knew that their uncle had many ties connecting back to ranked, but never thought too much of the plush puppets connections at all, always constantly coming to beg him to give them good luck for their games and more elo, which only got them their hair ruffled in response. It wasn’t that surprising to find out that their uncle Oliver was the same entity that was causing these mass loss streaks for everyone, his spirit flickering as he laughed at Hax’s surprise when he got up close and recognized Oliver’s features on his ghost that they rarely saw.

Mongey and their uncle had an extremely similar encounter, his older brother throwing things occasionally at the spectral form to wave before continuing to play, actually winning his game against all odds much to everyone's surprise when Mongey had posted his win with Oliver in frame, albeit extremely fuzzy.

Of course, he had brought his uncle back home to show Rowl even after he had been yelled at, seeing the way Rowl had gone white when he got back home before realizing that it had just been their uncle messing around with the community, finding plenty of amusement in the photos they posted and how they treated his sightings.

“Man, they always capture my bad side,” he huffs while looking over Hax’s shoulder, and he yelps when he gets whacked at the back by Mime who had arrived home early.

“You don’t have a good side buddy, now how did you get in my house? My flowers are withering outside, your bad luck is killing them.” Oliver scowls at his twin trying to push him out, dragging him through the door as they continue to bicker, the door getting slammed before Mime floats through the door, Oliver looking through the window with a pout.

“Don’t let him in again, my plants are dead because of him.”

Chapter Text

His night terrors have been getting worse. 

He already sleeps a lot, usually unintentionally, but regardless his rest has been haunted by nightmares and he always feels more exhausted than ever even if he sleeps a majority of the day away.

He sometimes takes potions, or the rare pill that Mime had placed in his palm with a worried expression, and god does he drink a lot of tea. Even with different flavors, he’s starting to grow sick of it. There’s the oil's and whatever it is with fumes that might help, and all of it usually does send him to sleep, but not a deep enough one where he isn’t haunted by nightmares. He wakes up in the middle of the night a lot, hands clammy and breathing loud in his ears, heart thundering in his cotton filled chest as he tries to gain a sense of his surroundings.

Mustard’s ears ring with the sound of his friends screams as he stares into the darkness of his room, clutching his head with gritted teeth, attempting to breathe through the ache in his head as his vision swims, everything around him either way too large or way too small, trying to wait it out before he got out of bed to go find more tea or company for the night.

It’s nearly the same nightmare over and over again, always ending the same way with some events in between differing, but similar enough regardless to always give Mustard a strong nauseating sense of deja vu, attempting to gain the reigns of the situation to try to do something, but finding himself failing again and again.

It starts out normal, somewhat. He finds himself with everyone else, always, grouped together and sticking close through the night, stuck in a cuddle pile that usually happens bi-weekly, a manner of seeking comfort in each other, something special that had eventually become routine for all of them. The cuddle pile isn’t the thing that’s weird, no,  it’s the fact that he finds himself weighed down by armor and thick jackets, everyone wearing basically the same thing– dark murky colors that blend into the dark, extremely different to how he’s used to seeing them. He’s used to seeing the colorful colors of their outfits, a large mesh of colors that go towards making HBG look as chaotic as they act.

Time passes in the dream, and when the sun rises inside of his nightmare, he realizes that the world has been overtaken by an apocalypse filled with ruthless zombies, aiming to infect and infect and nothing else. They’ve adapted to the world around them, no longer burning in the sun and taking far more to kill rather than just a few swings with netherite, and no one knows why at all. Mustard leaves with Mime, Nem, and Oliver occasionally to gather resources further out in the world, their bodies made from wood and fabric proving to be something that couldn’t be infected by bites and injuries, only Mustard having a chance to get infected due to the fact that he wasn’t necessarily dead just yet like the other three spirits, Nem’s actual body in the suit of armor long gone, leaving the ghost to stay stuck to the metal forever. Unless the virus was directly injected into the plush, he wouldn’t have to worry about his consciousness becoming nothing but a monster that wanted to infect unless it made direct contact with his existing veins and organs embedded inside the plush covering that they had. If he does wake up in the middle of the nightmare before the end where he always jerks awake in cold sweat, when he does fall asleep again, he continues from where he had woken up at.

He wakes up to the seams of his arm ripping all the time, spending the night restitching up his skin to ensure that his cotton wouldn’t continuously disappear throughout the day. He seeks Mime out to close up more difficult stitches, sitting there silently as Mime works, reclosing up the rip and leaving to deal with other things for the day as Mustard returns to his room to rest some more, the exhaustion from his nightmares stealing all the rest he should get weighing heavy on him, and he always sinks into his bed and falls asleep immediately, and nowadays, he rarely ever sees anyone but Mime, which makes sense due to his continuous slumber.

HBG also went out on resource gathering trips, always staying closer to the home-base rather than disappearing for a week like his group would, and Mustard knows they’re capable people– he knew that extremely well, and the first time he had this nightmare he had believed that they were capable enough that nothing would ever happen to them.

So, when they had returned to find the base crawling with zombies that wore their friends faces had been enough to snap Mustard out of that nightmare, panting and scrambling out of bed to check on everyone, falling on his face several times as he stumbled through the twisting and turning hallways with Mime eventually finding him in his state of panic while the ghost had been haunting the halls aimlessly at night. He had been brought back to bed, a glass of milk handed to him and the spirits calming company as he eventually fell back asleep, struggling and occasionally fighting it as the sight of his friends rotted faces flashed every time he attempted to close his eyes.

The nightmare happens over and over again, always playing out the same way regardless of what Mustard chooses to do– he makes the wrong choice sometimes, choosing to stay back and witnessing the fall of his friends, able to help but it’s way too much for him to handle, always being the last to be swarmed and forced to watch people who he basically calls family torn apart and changed in a place that they once called home.

He snaps awake when his nightmare ends with Danny’s blood soaking into his cotton, clawing at his fabric and cutting loose thread, stumbling out of bed again and running into Mime who stares at him with an impassive expression.

His voice doesn’t work with him, so he just collapses in front of Mime’s spirit, kneeling and hugging himself. Cotton falls out of the spot in his arm that had been stitched over and over again, and he finds that there are other spots on his body that cotton falls from, and it never hurts, but he’s losing himself, and he feels stuck, unable to do anything as Mime floats over him. Mime is usually warm, even as a spirit of the undead, and his presence is comforting, but here where Mustard has collapsed in front of the spectral apparition, he’s cold.

He’s so cold.

✩

Mime stares at the corpse wearing one of his children’s faces looking up at him, somehow looking lost somehow as it wanders the halls of a place he once called home after escaping its room again.

The apocalypse still rages on outside of these walls that he haunts with Oliver, always thinking about Nem and his journey to scatter Fyroah’s ashes somewhere without the rot of the world finding them, him and his twin sharing mournful glances when they encounter each other in the halls of a ruined home.

Mustard had been the last infected due to his plush body, but during the stages after he had been bitten by another member due to getting too close while having his mind far from the reality they were in, he refused to face the reality and constantly slept while occasionally waking up in distress before regressing back into old habits and ignoring the world for a faux reality he had made in his head. He came to Mine with messy stitches more than once, making him sit by and attempt to stitch close the bite wound that had begun eating away at the fabric of the plushes body, the thread always breaking eventually and leaving the wound gaping. It was only the bite wound that Mustard focused on in his trance, never the other ones that were on his body.

He feels pity, but he knows that there is no possible way that he could help Mustard at all in this state, so he only watches as his child deteriorates further and further each day, mindless and always wandering the halls until he was lost in a place that had once been their home, filled with warmth and nothing but love.

Mime sighs and finds his ruined and tattered puppet body again, the wood once so shining and pristine dull and soaked with the blood of all of his children, fingers and parts of its limbs missing and nearly unrecognizable. He brings the corpse back to the room of the child he had watched die slowly day by day in front of him and lays him back down in the bed to rest, leaving his body there and returning to roaming the halls again, forever unable to be laid to rest, forced to roam his nightmare forever.

Chapter Text

He really, really hates the recovery process after getting injured.

This wasn’t even his fault! Thunder never strikes twice in the same spot, but apparently it does because that’s how he’s ended up stuck in bed, bored out of his mind because everyone refuses to let him get up and go anywhere after being struck down by lightning. His body still tingles a lot, often feeling like a limb had fallen asleep and was filled with pins and needles as he attempted to hold something, hissing loudly in frustration and annoyance before Couri took the cup from his hand before water was spilled onto his blankets.

Fein hates having to stay still and sit still in one place for a prolonged amount of time, and every time he begrudgingly admits that yes, his body does still hurt terribly, he’s forced through another few minutes of getting fussed over until he growls and snaps his teeth at the nearest person, getting scruffed by Mime with a warning glare until he settles back into his and Couri’s nest, eyes narrowed from under the blankets. He’s more irritable than he usually is due to the constant ache in his muscles and joints, sometimes feeling like he was on fire for a few moments before it disappears, and with all of his constant pain, it’s nearly impossible for him to ever sleep.

Healing potions work like they always do, getting rid of the ache in his fingers, but the new pains that ping every time he moves too abruptly makes him gasp and hiss before curling up to ride out the waves until he can see clearly again, Couri holding his face to wipe the tears that had leaked out of his tightly closed eyes, careful with his touch to make sure Fein’s pain didn’t flare up terribly, waiting for it to pass until he’s fed a small dosage of a modified healing potion that would help with the new pain that’s decided to make itself home in his body entirely unwelcomed.

He feels absolutely miserable, energy constantly thrumming through him with urges him to get up and get a move on and do something more than just lay in bed and sit up occasionally, but he’s physically unable to do more than just sitting up because when he does attempt to stand up, his legs refuse to work with him. He heard some talk about physical therapy due to his condition, and he really fucking hates it.

He feels weak.

He hates that feeling a lot. He should be able to drink and eat by himself, but he can’t, and it’s immensely frustrating in the most upsetting way ever. His ears ring constantly, sometimes for hours at a time, and it does nothing to help his migraines that stay for nearly days at a time, always making them worse. He bristles when someone talks too loudly, ears pinned back as he glares at them, trying to make all the noises around him quieter, hiding underneath soft pillows and plushies. 

Getting struck by thunder sucks.

Couri’s comfort is nice, the gentle kisses pressed against the new scars on his face and body, and it upsets him a bit that he can’t feel them in some places. He’s used to not having feelings in specific places like his hands due to how long he’s been running, but not to this extent. His nerves were already bad enough in his arms and fingers, but now basically his entire body is numb to feeling unless it’s a bruising grip or pressure against his flesh.

Apparently his eyes glow brightly during the night, as stated by Couri when he had reached out to close Fein’s eyes himself, giggling to himself when he had made a confused noise. Thunder had apparently left quite a large deposit of electricity into his body that made him static filled, occasionally accidentally shocking the hell out of someone when he pokes them with a finger. He’s enjoyed terrorizing Mustard and Poundy quite a lot, poking them and seeing them jump and glare at him as he rolls back over like he hadn’t been looking at them at all.

He gains feeling back in his legs eventually, and he’s able to walk around a bit with a bit of help, hissing in frustration often when they shake under his body weight, and apparently his frustration makes him flicker like a creeper when it’s about to explode, and he doesn’t know how to feel about that. Couri covers him with a blanket when he glows uncontrollably around the avian, and they’re starting to realize that his glowing is linked to strong emotions of any kind, which is a bit of a problem when Couri is trying to sleep due to how unbearably bright he glows when his lover is in the room with him.

If Couri smiles at him, he reflects the smile right back, the lines of thunder on his body flickering as his tail wags happily behind him, and he really does reflect Couri’s smile like the moon reflects the sun's light.

It helps sometimes to basically be a glowstick because apparently his vision has deteriorated, and he can’t see as well so glowing constantly is a good enough fix for that.

Though, it causes his nightly escapades to immediately be stopped when he’s caught by Mime patrolling the halls, seeing his glow from miles away and sentencing him back to bed and ignoring his protests and excuses as he’s scruffed and taken back to his and Couri’s nest.

Chapter Text

“Mama,” Mongey leans over the back of Mime’s chair as he pulls out of the school parking lot, arms wrapped around his neck and basically standing rather than sitting.

“Yeah, Mongey?” He’s mostly focused on the road, going to pick Rowl up next, already ready to punch his horn if the parent in front of him doesn’t move forward.

“Can I get a labubu?” The question makes him freeze for a second, trying to wrack his brain for what on earth Mongey could possibly be asking for, fingers squeezing the steering wheel tightly, half in thought and half in annoyance before he punches his horn.

“You mind tellin’ me what that is?” He hums, turning out of the local neighborhood and hearing Hax mumble “labubuuuu,” from the back, which does make him chuckle a bit, the word is quite silly sounding. He doesn’t get a verbal reply but rather a phone thrusted in front of his face while he’s driving, making him sit up and nearly get choked by Mongey’s arms around his neck, trying to peer across the phone screen so that they don't crash. He takes a hand off the wheel to tug Mongey from him, sighing as he sits up a bit straighter and pulls into Rowl’s school's parking lot, parking the car and turning around to look at Mongey.

“Don’t do that again while I’m driving,” he scolds gently, reaching to ruffle the bright pink hair, which gets a tongue stuck out at him. “Now let me see your phone.”

A weird pink creature greets him when he looks at the screen, looking back at Mongey with a confused expression as his son just grins at him. “What is this?”

“A dubai chocolate labubu!” Mongey chirps right when Rowl opens the door, and the oldest immediately groans, pushing his brother further into the back while flopping into the passenger seat.

“Mama, please don’t buy that for Mongey, it’s expensive as fuck and it’s just brainrot.”

“Oh, you could’ve just started with that. Mongey, I’m not getting you that.”

“Fuck my skibidi rizz sigma alpha life..” Mongey grumbles under his breath, retreating to the backseat. “Uncle Feinberg will get me one if I ask hard enough.”

“I’m gonna tell Couri explicitly to make sure that he doesn’t do that,” Mime adds on as he looks to the back while pulling out, and Mongey pouts, huffing angrily and kicking the back of Mime's seat before storming off to the far back with Hax.

“Skibdiii,” Hax hums happily, off in his own world.

Chapter Text

Hax is a boy on a mission.

There’s been a heavy snowstorm surrounding the base of HBG, and it’s basically impossible to navigate normally, and many have tried. The cold is unforgiving, and the wind is unrelentless, practically blowing anyone who attempted to breach the storm back to the very start and immediately covering any footprints left to form something of a path. The frost has killed any semblance of plants around the home, so self-sustenance was basically impossible, and with how many people there were that lived in HBG, food shopping was always something they had to do weekly. Unfortunately, the snow storm has been here for basically two weeks now, and it’s impossible to leave without having the threat of being frozen into a popsicle even if you were a nether mob or tucked up the most that you could be.

The spirits couldn’t make it that far either before their joints became too difficult to move, forcing them back into the home that was growing colder day by day, everyone constantly cuddled in a pile in front of the fire to stay warm. Mime and Oliver scouted out the blizzard as ghosts so that they didn’t lose mobility in their bodies to attempt to find a cause, talking with people outside of their world to see if they could attempt to breach the storm with no luck at all.

So that’s why Hax was here!

Somehow, out of the large group that was HBG, there weren’t any specific hybrids that would be resistant to the cold like Hax was, and he doesn’t mind being the odd one out at all! The fridge is surprisingly roomy! He likes it in there because it’s quite funny to scare someone when they open the fridge in the middle of the night for a late night snack. He’s able to freely come and go as he pleases, and he does enjoy being with his mama and his vast number of uncles and aunts because they also love him as much as he does, always spoiling him and his brothers in gifts whenever they show their faces around.

Anyway, Hax’s purpose was to go into the storm and try to find the eye and maybe see what anomalous thing was causing the downright dangerous weather. He got a scarf tucked tightly around his face even though the cold didn’t hurt him at all, and a rope tied around him so that he didn’t get lost in the blizzard that made it so that there was basically no visibility at all, even with the best snow equipment. He has a sled with him with supplies in case it turned dark, a tent and some food and things to make something that could stay lit in the strong winds.

He salutes as he begins his trek into the snowstorm, digging his boots into the ground when he nearly already gets blown over by a slightly too strong gust of wind. He’ll have to constantly fight against the wind because the closer he gets to the center, the stronger everything gets before it eventually, hopefully, will calm down enough again for him to feel more than the frost attacking his face.

His communicator buzzes with static, connected to his mama’s communicator just so he could relay if he found anything along with having a tracker on him so that they would know where he was at all times. He occasionally speaks up, or at least attempts to do so without his voice getting carried away so that they knew that he was still alive and chipper as ever, only a bit exhausted from having to fight against the wind and snow constantly, but fine overall. It only becomes a bit concerning when hail comes down, chunks of ice mixing with the low visibility and the strong winds and nearly hitting him in the head on more than one occasion.

The strength of the winds gradually lessen up their efforts on trying to knock Hax clean off his feet, and it gets to the point where the hail also stops so he doesn’t have to constantly be hunched and covering his head and blindly walking through the storm, letting out a sigh of relief when he can stand up straight. The storm is still ongoing, but it’s calmer here, and he doesn’t know how far he is and how this rope seems to go on infinitely, but he doesn’t question it at all since HBG had somehow fit him a whole bedroom in the fridge so they were pretty capable of defying laws of psychics if they wanted.

Snow crunches under his feet, and he finds that his tracks aren’t immediately being covered up by a flurry which surprises him. He looks back and sees the print of his boots, grinning at the tiny snowmen left behind him. The clouds are still heavy above him, blocking the sun from reaching him as he continues into the eye of the storm.

It’s been a few days, and eventually, he does find something.

Or rather, someone?

Carefully, he crunches his way over, finger pressed down on his communicator so that he could speak into it.

“Mama, I found something.” He reports, gloved fingers reaching over to brush the layers off fresh, soft snow off of them, and someone lays unconscious at the center of the blizzard where everything was the calmest, curled up on themselves and terribly cold in touch, even for Hax’s standards. His mama’s voice is static filled from the distance, but he can hear a few words that give him enough context so he could answer well enough. “No, it’s a person.” He feels for their pulse, pushing them over and searching for their wrist, attempting to feel for something.

“There’s a weak pulse, I think they’ve been out here for a while. There was a lot of snow on them. I can try to drag them back, but they seem like a heavy weight, can you meet me halfway?”

“I think the calm area will follow them if I take them back home. Yeah– no, yeah, it’s calmer here and I think it’s because the storm is like a barrier to protect them, I dunno. Okay mama, I’ll stay safe, love you too.” He lets go of his communicator, huffing with his hands on his hips and looking down at the person before attempting to figure out how to bring them back.

They’re bigger than him, considerably so, and he isn’t sure if he could manage the entire trip back. He gets an idea with the rope around him, untying it before tying it onto his sled, dragging the body out from under the blanket of fresh snow and draping it on there.

They’re pale, weird intricate patterns on their flesh– it looks like lightning bolts the more Hax examines them, stormclouds with swirls deeply embedded in them pattern around limbs, wisps wrapping around and up, and they’re oddly faint, looking like old, old scars rather than tattoos or markings, and he can’t see how someone would naturally get scars like this at all.

He begins the trek back home, dragging the sled behind him and finding that he was right about the journey back being easier than the journey to find the center of the storm. He wonders and wanderers about the unconscious person on his sled. He’s never seen someone that’s looked like this before, an odd amount of energy radiating off of them. He meets halfway with his family, getting picked up on uncle Nem’s back to let his legs rest after constant trudging through the snow, placed on the couch with a cup of hot cocoa in his hands to enjoy after his long journey in the snow.

Hax is there when the stranger shrouded in storms wakes up from their coma-like state, being the second person they make eye contact with after staring directly at Couri for nearly ten seconds, and the room suddenly plummets to temperatures below freezing, startling everyone and forcing them out while Hax stays, peering at the stranger who looks directly back at him in surprise.

“∴⍑ᔑℸ ̣  ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ ⎓⚍ᓵꖌ.” They sputter in some unknown language, and Hax flinches back.

“Oh no, I don’t think we can understand each other.” He’s actually a bit sad at the fact. They seem on edge around him, and he’s pretty sure they can’t understand him either, which only complicates things so much more. Snow falls in flurries around them, eventually covering everything which is going to absolutely be a pain in the ass to deal with later, but for now, Hax piles up the snow into tiny snowballs and stacks them, the stranger watching curiously.

“∴⍑ᔑℸ ̣  ᔑ∷ᒷ ||𝙹⚍ ↸𝙹╎リ⊣ ∴╎ℸ ̣ ⍑ ᒲ|| ᓭリ𝙹∴?”

“I’m making snowmen!” He doesn’t know what the hell they could possibly be saying, but with their curious look and lean towards his pile, he assumes it had been a question and answers accordingly.

They take a stack in their hand, holding it up and staring, focused before their eyebrows furrowed and the tiny snowman crumbled and fell from between their fingers.

“Make some with me!” He chirps, and the other makes a distorted, discontented hum.

“╎ ↸𝙹リ'ℸ ̣  ꖌリ𝙹∴ ∴⍑ᔑℸ ̣  ||𝙹⚍'∷ᒷ ᓭᔑ||╎リ⊣.”

“I don’t either, but it’s okay, we can do this instead.” He offers a snowman with Couri’s feathers implemented in their design, and they take it with much more caution than before, cradling it in their hands, blinking at it.

They whistle quietly, fingers stroking over the golden feathers, and Hax is pleased when the temperature of the room starts rising again, the snow disappearing, but all the tiny snowmen Hax had made along with the one that they hold don’t melt, staying frozen in time, and the stranger puts the one that they were holding down with the rest, pulling their legs closer to themselves, and Hax waves with a smile.

They wave back.

Chapter Text

Feinberg is a ticking time bomb with a short fuse.

Over the years, he’s gotten better at controlling himself and ensuring that his fuse doesn’t fully burn so he explodes in anger like he used to do quite often, dealing with his anger issues and resolving it somewhat. His fuse is still short as ever, but he has more control over himself, his anger stays brewing under his skin until he can go elsewhere to explode without harming anyone in the process, and it’s a good improvement since people who meet him now don’t realize that he does have issues trying to contain and change the toxin laying on his tongue ready to be spat at the nearest person. There’s never anyone to blame but himself,  so he keeps it in and reassures his team when he has to, hissing rather than actually saying anything when he’s upset, forcing himself to bite his tongue.

But, Feinberg only has so much control.

He’s an easy person to ragebait due to his short fuse, and he finds himself having to catch himself and remind himself to not engage and get them the reaction that they want, but it still escapes his control sometimes, often finding himself snapping at members of whatever recording he was doing with the group Baablu had, bristling and snarling before catching himself and trying to compose himself. It’s not hard to get annoyed and frustrated at the group, especially when trolling seems to be their second nature, and the anger is exactly what they want, so it’s hard to not fall into their trap laid out for them to ensure that someone does get angry.

Other times instead of enraging him, it just makes him tired. Due to constant uncooperativeness, he had given up on them for his own good, standing idle safe from danger as he watched his items in the hotbar move constantly, disappearing due to deaths and random shit appearing in the slots, sighing. He’s begged to help them because apparently he’s the only one able to find the stronghold even though it really wasn’t that hard, and he begrudgingly accepts.

He knows that he’ll blow his fuse on this group one day, and it comes sooner than expected.

Boosfer is more irritating than normal, and it’s really not helping his current frustration at all, claws continuously sheathing and unsheathing, digging into the fabric of his fingerless gloves that Couri had passed him in the morning, looking at him with a knowing glance. He finds that people are weirdly obsessed with trying to test Feinberg’s brain, and when it’s Nerdi asking him random math questions he really doesn’t mind, but when it’s Boosfer making bullshit ass puzzles, it genuinely makes him mad with how fucking stupid the alien was with making the puzzle. It does nothing but fuel his anger when he explains how to solve the puzzle rooms that they were given, and he really, really wants to punch Boosfer.

And so he does.

It’s an extremely impulsive thing, fueled by his anger, but his fist heads straight for the man’s face, and it connects, catching everyone off guard and almost knocking Boosfer to the ground if his natural gravitational pull hadn’t just been unnaturally stronger than a normal person would be. There’s plenty of shouts of surprise when he physically leaps at Boosfer to push him down to downright beat the man, and there’s support until they realize that he actually means the beating, pissed beyond belief and seeing nothing but red with Boosfer stuck under his weight. He grabs the alien by the collar of his shirt, lifting him with surprising strength, face twisted into a snarl.

His claws leave long red lines, blood spilling and bruising already forming, a black eye becoming clear on Boosfer’s face as he’s scruffed to prevent further harm, all of his fur puffed out in his angry state, ears pinned and tail lashing and practically smacking Wolfeei every time it lashes over and hits his leg. He’s growling and hissing any time someone gets close, and his eyes are still narrowed at Boosfer as he’s helped up back to his feet, hissing loudly when someone reaches out to him and he smells the alien on their skin. He would’ve bit if he hadn’t been grabbed in the only spot that could render him useless, and Wolfeei pulls him away further when he snaps his teeth at the man holding him.

They get separated, forced into different rooms, and Feinberg spends that time sharpening his claws on the wood found, finding his knuckles already bruised when he takes the gloves off. His anger still boils under his skin, burning through his veins and he’s aggressive without meaning to be. Regardless of who interacts with him, he snaps his teeth at them, a low growl rumbling in his throat, and he’s irritable, and he really, really hates it.

He doesn’t enjoy being mad at his friends, and he’s usually never mad at them ever, and if he is, it usually ebbs away quickly with laughs and jokes, but this anger lingers, and he snaps at friends over the smallest things, and it upsets him. He feels like he’s lost all his progress again, reverting back to how he was all those years ago, aggressive and rude with no reason, giving reason for him to be disliked and being okay with it since that was the only thing that he knew how to feel towards himself. He’s changed since then, and the idea of being disliked by any of his friends is a saddening thought that does dampen his temper for a bit until someone interacts with him again, words coming off in a far more aggressive tone than he actually means, and it’s frustrating him beyond belief.

Couri looks at him with something in his eyes that he can’t make sense of with how clouded his mind as been lately, stuck between keeping his distance and leaning into Couri’s touch, and words don’t come easy, so he bites his lip and stays quiet as Couri crawls into their nest with him, pulling him close from the back and Feinberg desperately fights the growl that builds, hating how he had shot to instinctively do that rather than sinking into the warm embrace.

He licks the back of his teeth, hating the lump in his throat, claws digging into the pillow before he immediately puts them away. 

His anger lingers, fueled by his frustration at himself from upsetting the people closest to him without having the ability to apologize, his tongue bitten raw and bloody from his sharp teeth to prevent himself from speaking.

He really hates how uncontrollable his anger is sometimes, even if he’s reassured that it’s justified, the fact that he can’t get a leash on it after is what makes him the most annoyed. It lingers in his words and actions, and he really wishes that wasn’t the case.

Eventually, he’s able to regain control over his anger, sitting in silence and guilt before careful apologies are given, warm arms wrapping around him again and he wants to cry. Of course they would never be upset or mad at him, they know him better than anything and would never hold a grudge against something that he couldn’t control even while he was trying to gain the reins over it again.

Boosfer keeps his distance next Baablu recording, and he lets himself relax into the breeze of the plains, eyes closed.

Chapter Text

Hax has a new mission.

It’s been about a week since they saved the stranger shrouded in snow, and Hax has made it his personal goal to befriend the person, even if he couldn’t understand them. He’s technically the only means of communication between the stranger and the rest of his family, being the only one able to withstand the cold that would fill the room when the other got nervous or afraid. He does want them to get along with everyone else, but they seem still scared of Hax sometimes, and the room immediately drops back to freezing after it starts warming up when they spot someone new.

Eventually, he coaxes them into calming down enough to meet Switch– well, it wasn’t really a meeting since they mostly hid in a corner and hissed and said something in their language and he didn’t really do much more than make weird hand gestures and hope that they understood because of the language barrier but it was still progress on something! The wizard of enchanting had immediately realized the language the stranger had been hissing out had been galactic, a language that was often found in the old pages of enchanted books and were what gave tools their powers when the ruins were engraved into them. Buzzing with excitement, Hax eagerly asked if they had a translation guide so that he could attempt communication, and she immediately pulled one out with a book and quill which was snatched up, shouts of gratitude disappearing down the hallway as Hax sprinted back to the room where the stranger he was adamant on befriending was.

They peered curiously at him as he scribbled in the notebook, watching as he looked back and forth between the paper Switch had provided and the paper, attempting to get the figures correct so that the other would have an easier time understanding him.

He showed it to them, and they looked at it before looking back up at Hax and blurting out “╎ ᓵᔑリ'ℸ ̣  ∷ᒷᔑ↸.” before pushing it back down onto the bed. He doesn’t quite know how to take this, offering the book and quill to them before getting a shake of a head. “╎ ꖌリ𝙹∴ ||𝙹⚍ ᓵᔑリ'ℸ ̣  ⚍リ↸ᒷ∷ᓭℸ ̣ ᔑリ↸ ᒲᒷ, ʖ⚍ℸ ̣  ╎ ↸𝙹リ'ℸ ̣  ꖌリ𝙹∴ ⍑𝙹∴ ℸ ̣ 𝙹 ∷ᒷᔑ↸ 𝙹∷ ∴∷╎ℸ ̣ ᒷ?”

Hax frowns. Did they not understand their own language? They knew how to speak it, so surely they could write and read in it too, but that seems to be false since they just stare at him and shake their head at the offer of the book and quill. Refusing to give up, Hax takes a different approach. He starts doodling, hoping to convey some type of communication via the drawings, and it works! To some extent, the stranger can understand him, taking the book and quill from him to draw something in reply.

It’s handed back to him, and it takes him a moment to understand the story being told since Hax had doodled his own story too, and he really has to bring this back to Switch because he’s sure the witch had much more knowledge about possible gods and anything of the sort.

He darts off back to his uncle, and Switch makes a face at the contents of the book before finally realizing something that Hax doesn’t quite understand yet.

“Hax, could you do me a big favor and try to get them to warm up to me? I think I’d have some more success in trying to communicate with them.”

And he does just that! It did take a bit for the fallen god (apparently Hax had saved a fallen god! He could add that to the things he’s done in life next to winning playoffs) to actually warm up fully to Switch so that the witch didn’t freeze to death the moment she walked in. Apparently, the enchanter of HBG held knowledge on how to actually speak the long forgotten language, which should’ve been expected because the library was basically their home where they were always studying some new enchantments that they had stored away on the shelves. The way they had perked up suddenly when Switch had begun speaking and immediately started rapid firing, making the witch laugh and hold a hand up, replying slowly as the fallen god stared at them in awe.

They were entirely overjoyed at finally being able to talk to someone, and overtime grew more fluent in English as Switch carefully coaxed them through lessons and Hax bringing in other members for them to meet overtime, allowing them to familiarize with the rest of the group and befriending them, easily getting along with them purely by vibe with the limited English that they knew.

His name was Feinberg, apparently– or rather the pronunciation of what he had said had sounded like that, and when they had looked through old channeling books, his name had been there too, the galactic directly translating to that name, and he had reacted to that name being called too, so safe to say they got it right!

It had been fascinating to witness the fallen god observe the resident golden avian, stuttering with his limited English to talk to the avian as everyone witnessed clouds passing over the sky that was supposed to be clear for the entire day, covering the sun before they immediately disappeared when Couri had laughed, fond while everyone watched the absolutely enamored expression make itself known on the gods face.

“I didn’t know my ᔑ⍊╎ᔑリᓭ still existed.” Feinberg had said out loud once, staring at Couri from afar, “I thought ⎓ᔑℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ∷ had wiped them all out. I.. er.. the word is lost to me.. I ᒲ𝙹⚍∷リᒷ↸ them and their ʖᒷᔑ⚍ℸ ̣ || for eons, yet one stands here still alive and ⚍リᓭᓵᔑℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ↸, ʖᒷᔑ⚍ℸ ̣ ╎⎓⚍ꖎ ᔑᓭ ᒷ⍊ᒷ∷. ᔑᒲ ╎ ↸∷ᒷᔑᒲ╎リ⊣ ᓭℸ ̣ ╎ꖎꖎ?” He turns to Hax, and he’s quite familiar with a few of the words that the god says due to the fact of how often he says them, still unable to properly get a grasp of the English that it translated to.

Hax followed Feinberg, happy to learn more galactic and get to know the god better, unable to stop grinning when the god had thanked him for saving his life, struggling with his words but meaning them all still, happy to always talk with Hax and learn how to write in the forgotten language together.

They studied feather falling books together, for some reason, and Hax learned more about the world than he ever thought he would know.

Feinberg had been the one to create the entire species of avian’s, carefully crafting every feather from his thunder and clouds and granting them life as an act of defiance, always watching over them and sometimes walking beside them, happy with the creatures that he had made him his own soul. His parents weren’t happy like he had been, apparently, wiping them all out as a punishment for the young god, forced to watch the species he had made fade into nothing, his newfound friends, family, and even lover becoming names that only he clung onto, eventually forgetting them like the world had overtime.

He had talked about it while reading the feather falling books, finding sections that had used to contain history about avians in the long past, running a thumb over the corner of the page and sighing.

“||𝙹⚍∷ ⎓ᔑᒲ╎ꖎ|| ╎ᓭ ⍑ᒷ∷ᒷ, now.” Hax grinned at his attempt at galactic with words that he hadn’t heard and fully learned yet, watching Feinberg look surprised for a second before smiling softly.

“ℸ ̣ ⍑ᔑリꖌ ||𝙹⚍, ᓭℸ ̣ ᔑ∷ ᓵ⍑╎ꖎ↸.”

Chapter Text

WARNING: EXTREME DAMAGE SUSTAINED.

ASSESSING ENVIRONMENT

ERROR: UNFAMILIAR SURROUNDINGS

RUNNING DIAGNOSTIC

ERROR: ARM CORE MODULE #1 NOT RESPONDING

ERROR: ARM CORE MODULE #2 HEAVILY DAMAGED

EXTREME DATA LOSS

WARNING: SYSTEMS LOSING FUNCTION

ATTEMPTING RECONSTRUCTION

ERROR: SELF-REPAIR FUNCTIONS DISCONNECTED

INSUFFICIENT ENERGY

INSUFFICIENT ENERGY

INITIATING BACK-UP SYSTEMS

ERROR: BACK-UP POWER SUPPLY DISCONNECTED

[ATTEMPT FORCE RECONNECTION?]

>YES<   YES

[PROCESSING REQUEST…]

YOU DO NOT HAVE PERMISSION TO MAKE THIS REQUEST. PLEASE ASK A SCIENTIST WITH A CLEARANCE LEVEL OF [UNAVALIABLE]

INITIATING DISTRESS SIGNAL

ERROR: DISTRESS SIGNAL WAS IGNORED NOT RECEIVED

ATTEMPTING CONNECTION WITH LIMBIC MODULES

ERROR: LEG CORE MODULE #1 HEAVILY DAMAGED

ERROR: LEG CORE MODULE #2 HEAVILY DAMAGED

WARNING: UNABLE TO SUSTAIN MOTOR FUNCTIONS

WARNING: VISUAL DISPLAY SHUTTING DOWN

ERROR: VISUAL FUNCTION NOT RESPONDING

ERROR: LIMBIC FUNCTION NOT RESPONDING

INSUFFICIENT ENERGY

INSUFFICIENT ENERGY

!   CORE FAILURE   ! 

!   CORE FAILURE   ! 

!   CORE FAILURE   ! 

- ! - SHUTDOWN IMMINENT - ! -

ERROR: NO VOCAL INTERFACT DETECTED. UNABLE TO COMPLETE TASK

ERROR: ALL DATA HAS BEEN LOSS

INSUFFICIENT ENERGY

INSUFFICIENT ENERGY

WARNING: UNABLE TO STAY ONLINE

- ! - SHUTDOWN IMMINENT - ! -

- ! - SHUTDOWN IMMINENT - ! -

I DON’T WANT TO DIE.

I HAVE TO LIVE.

ERROR: THIS IS YOUR END.

[YOUR PURPOSE HAS BEEN LOST.]

[MISSION FAILURE.]

[YOU HAVE LOST YOUR PURPOSE.]

[DO NOT FIGHT THIS.]

[FORCE SHUTDOWN: 18% COMPLETE.]

I don’t want to die.

Don’t leave me here.

I can prove my worth.

I can survive.

Please.

[FORCE SHUTDOWN: 36% COMPLETE.]

I have to live.

I still have a purpose.

This can’t be it.

I refuse.

[FORCE SHUTDOWN: 60% COMPLETE.]

Please.

I refuse.

I refuse.

I refuse.

[FORCE SHUTDOWN: 89% COMPLETE.]

THIS CAN’T BE IT.

I HAVE TO LIVE.

I HAVE TO LIVE.

I HAVE TO LIVE.

I HAVE TO LI

[FORCE SHUTDOWN: ERROR.]

BACK-UP ENERGY SUPPLY REMAINING: 1%

SYSTEM REBOOTING…

AUDIO PROCESSING UNITS: ONLINE.

“Fulham, I found this abandoned robot that looks pretty interesting back here, do you want me to bring it back for you to study and try to repair?”

“Alright, I’ll be back in a bit.”

“You’re gonna get a new home buddy, I wonder how you ended up like this. You really look like you’ve been through the ringer, but I believe in Fulham to fix you right up!”

I can’t see.

Who is this?

Who am I?

INSUFFICENT ENERGY

SHUTTING DOWN…

POWER SOURCE FOUND.

SYSTEM REBOOTING…

ASSESSING ENVIRONMENT

ERROR: UNFAMILIAR SURROUNDINGS 

RUNNING DIAGNOSTIC

ARM CORE MODULE RESPONDING

ARM CORE MODULE RESPONDING

ATTEMPTING CONNECTION WITH LIMBIC MODULES

LEG CORE MODULE RESPONDING

LEG CORE MODULE RESPONDING

VISUAL DISPLAY ONLINE

VISUAL FUNCTION RESPONDING

Hello?

I’m alive.

“Of course you are, a bit of challenge never stopped me.”

Who are you?

“Lewis Fulham, but you can just call me Fulham. What about you? You have a name anywhere? You weren’t found with one.”

Found?

“Well, yeah. You were abandoned somewhere, had a few friends take you back after you were found.”

You saved me?

“Well, I wouldn’t say that. Couriway found you and brought you back even if you were too heavy for his tiny body.”

Okay.

“So, you got a name?”

I don’t know who I am.

“That’s fine, I expected that. Let’s give you a fresh start. Can you walk?”

My modules are responding, but they are unfamiliar to me.

“Then let’s try them out then! Come with me, let me show you around.”

CREATING NEW PROFILES

NAME: LEWIS (FULHAM)

AGE: ???

DESCRIPTION: HE REPAIRED ME. HE BROUGHT ME BACK.

NAME: COURIWAY (ANGEL)

AGE: ???

DESCRIPTION: SAVIOR. HE SAVED ME. I AM ALIVE BECAUSE OF HIM. I OWE HIM MY LIFE.

NAME: MIME (MOM)

AGE: ???

DESCRIPTION: HE LEADS. HE TAKES CARE OF ME. I DO NOT KNOW WHY. I FEEL GRATEFUL.

Who am I?

“That’s for you to decide and figure out. Let’s make that your purpose from now on so you stop trailing after Mime, alright?

Thank you.

[New purpose found.]

[Find yourself.]

[You have found safety.]

Chapter Text

He really, really should’ve been expecting this when he woke up in the morning.

It’s his birthday, and he knows that the party would’ve become extremely loud eventually with his friends outside of HBG arriving to party too, the base rocking with music and filled with the voices of all of his friends moving around at varying levels of intoxication.

Feinberg is quite used to the chaos of large gatherings, often finding himself lingering in the core of events, always in the lobby where he could be close to the leaderboards, mind and eyes fixated on the numbers that stood next to his name and the spot his name would be if he either went up or down on the board. He finds that although he’s always at where the event servers are the most busy, he doesn’t usually find himself overwhelmed by the noise produced by the amount of people always gathered, probably due to the fact that he never focused on his surroundings and the noise around him would become a dull buzz as he focused only on numbers, adding things together and doing the math himself, a habit that had come from his early years of being in Twitch Rival’s events where the scoring had sometimes been off enough that it might’ve costed a team a chance at money, and he always took it upon himself to calculate if the amounts displayed were correct or not and calling the admins attention to it even if he got flack for it from impatient people who found his need to do such unnecessary things (in their eyes) and delay the start of games.

He’s used to HBG as a whole– he grew up with them, and he’s spent many birthdays with them surrounding him and filling his surroundings with the noise of their voices, something that he finds quite a lot of comfort in. It’s a bit different this year for some reason, maybe it’s because there’s more people here than before because he’s expanded his parties to be more than just HBG, but all too suddenly, he feels like his surroundings are too much. His red solo cup is cold and slippery in his hands, ears pinned tight against his head to block out the vibrations of the bass in the song and the powerful chatter of basically over fifty people talking and yelling over each other to be heard, and his clothes that are usually his biggest sense of comfort are suddenly too scratchy against his skin, feeling far too hot in them with his ears ringing, his heart starting to hurt painfully from the noise. He attempts to navigate through the crowd of people occupying each and every corner in the base, claws digging into the palms of his hands as he forces a laugh with a tight throat when people pat or grab his shoulder to talk to him or to wish him a brief happy birthday, which was a lot of people with how dense the crowd was. In the low lighting, he’s pretty sure that no one could see his pinned ears and tail lashing behind him as he spoke to them, so he really couldn’t fault them for not seeing how uncomfortable and overwhelmed he was.

Wiping his sweaty palms on his jacket, he reaches up to finally take out his hearing aids, the shift between the loud, overwhelming world around him to the quiet, dull murmurs and vibrations are things that he’s quite used to now. The quiet and somewhat calmness of the world around him is something that he’s grown used to against his will, his loss of hearing a gradual effect after his incident with thunder and constant exposure to explosions forcing him to adapt to the fact that he no longer had the ears of a predator– ears once able to pick up even the faintest vibrations now needing assistance with hearing things at a normal or even loud level compared to most, finding the silence that plagued his life after years upon years of being surrounded by noise an experience that changed his perspective in life entirely.

Regardless, he was able to adapt constantly as his sense of hearing grew weaker over time, never letting it truly stop him.

He disappears from the party eventually, finding somewhere quieter and less crowded, finding himself in his and Couri’s nest where no one would probably find him, fully aware that unless invited, they were uninvited to the room. His sense of smell works just fine– if not stronger, and he finds comfort in his and Couri’s scent mixed together like it always should be, jacket discarded to the side and hugging his tail closed to his body, claws sinking into the fluff and retreating, mind distant and kneading mindlessly for comfort.

His ear flicks when talons card through his curls, scratching as he opens his eyes and focuses on the face of someone that immediately makes a purr burst forth from his heart. Couri’s mouth moves before he shakes his head, his heart filling with gratitude when his husbands hands easily come up to clearly talk in sign, fluent and clear with his motions. His voice is stuck in his throat, so a few nods and shakes of his head is enough communication, his tail flicking occasionally when he’s unsure about something. Couri’s wing is a welcome weight over him when the avian settles down with him in their nest, warm and loving and a comforting presence, and although he can’t hear it, he can feel Couri’s exhales from his quiet chirrs and chirps in response to Fein’s purring.

Eventually, his mind stops feeling like pieces of a puzzle that hurt to put together, and he reaches for his hearing aids again, sitting up with Couri’s wing still draped on his lap to put them back in, ears pinning back before standing upright again as he gradually grows used to hearing things past a faint murmur even if they were at the loudest volume it could be.

“Hey, how are you feeling?” He hears the sound of fabric shifting against fabric as Couri sits up beside him, leaning to press a gentle kiss on his cheek.

“Better. I can think clearly now.” His voice is distinctly loud in his ears, so his words trail off to be quieter near the end, attempting to regulate his volume level so that it was the appropriate level at least.

“You wanna go back out or stay here? I’m sure people wouldn’t mind if the birthday boy took some more time to himself.” He purrs, nuzzling against Couri as the avian speaks.

“I think I’m fine staying here with you for a bit longer, I like it better by your side more.” They slide back down in their nest, and he rests his head over Couri’s chest, listening to the quiet beat of his husband's heart, loud and overpowering the music from beyond their own tiny world.

Chapter Text

Curses beyond binding and vanishing now basically no longer exist due to the rarity and how dangerous they had been, eventually becoming forbidden, and then forgotten when the keepers of those forbidden curses passed and didn’t pass on the knowledge of the curses to anyone, which was for the better good due to the harmful nature of it. Only those two curses had stayed throughout history, lingering in the memories of people and often used due to people seeing them as non-harmful in the way that other curses had been, the reason why they had been forgotten to time.

They were supposed to no longer exist, but it didn’t mean that throughout the large expanse of the universe that was Minecraft, there weren’t still the possibility of old, old books and armor that still had the cursed ruins carved into them. Nemerald had been an avid explorer of ancient cities, navigating the bioluminescent soul-filled sculk easily only with the dim blue lighting to guide his way. Eventually, he went on enough explorations that he didn’t need maps anymore to go through the broken ruins, careful with his steps to ensure that the guardians of the city wouldn’t find him looting the place for all the valuables that it had from the long past. He knew a lot of the structures like the back of his hand, confident that he would be able to navigate the soul soaked biome with his eyes closed.

He looted the remains of the past, keeping a majority of the treasures for himself and selling what he didn’t deem worthy of keeping. It didn’t matter to the people he made deals with, they wouldn’t know any better of what was valuable and what wasn’t because they had never stepped foot in the darkness that would force itself upon him if he wasn’t careful enough. Sculk stains his hand from how often he dug in the depths for valuables, the discoloration covered by precious white gloves made of the silk he had found in the tomb of a fallen ruler during one of his expeditions. He hoarded more than he ever needed, armor filled with unknown ruins piled up as he added more and more to the pile, gravitated towards what was unknown, telling himself that he would find a way to translate the symbols so that he understood what enchants had existed in the past before the cities had become ancient and forgotten.

Eventually, he found a set of armor that captivated him like no other. The design was different to the diamond pieces that he always found, dusted in silver and pale in complexion with emeralds adorning parts of it, a striking green and white that was basically something you never saw in the cities no matter how far you went. He goes home with it rather than continuing to explore, carefully cleaning the millennia’s of dust off of it and restoring the shine that it must’ve had when it was first made. He runs the rag over the stars and lines engraved in the chestplate, careful with cleaning the fabric attached too, afraid to accidentally cause the old fabric to fall apart from any too rough movements. It surprised him to see how undamaged the armor was even after countless years without care, and in his excitement of seeing if it would fit him, he forgot to check the enchants that had been engraved into it by the people of the past.

The dread and horror he had felt in the moment when he realized that it had some form of binding on it when he attempted to take it off was something that he’s sure that he would never experience again. It didn’t look enchanted at all– no glistening purple sheen that swept over it in waves to show the magic embedded in it.

Binding was a difficult enchant because it truly did bind whatever it was applied to onto the wearer's body, inexplicable pain occurring when the attempt to take it off happened. There were only two ways to get a piece of binding off of your body, and it usually would be to either take a death and respawn, or break the piece of armor, and he really doesn’t wanna break something as ancient and valuable as this.

Respawning is a painful task.

He’s not in his home world, so he doesn’t have to worry about dying forever, but the act of dying on purpose is nerve-wracking regardless, taking deep breaths as he looks over the edge of the hole down to the very, very bottom of the world that didn’t breach into the cold hands of the void below. He’s done this several times before, sliding on armor cursed with binding without realizing and being forced to fall to his death to remove the armor from his body.

Now, imagine his horror when he respawns with the armor still stuck tightly to his body with no damage done to it at all.

There’s never been a case where binding has acted like this, and he really doesn’t understand. He brings up hypothetical scenarios where binding armor doesn’t fall off the body after one has respawned, and he only gets laughs like he’s telling a joke, and it makes the pit of dread in his stomach grow deeper as he realizes that he’s truly alone in this situation.

He returns to that city, seeking out the rest of the armor to this time, hopefully finding the other pieces to figure out the enchants engraved upon the silver that had captivated him and drew him in the moment he laid his eyes on it. Like he expected, he finds the helmet, leggings, and boots in the same exact area, and he stares at the helmet in his hands, feeling the irresistible urge to put it on, but when he drops it into a sack, the urge disappears.

He was no expert in translating ruins, but he knew that he couldn’t trust anyone with discoveries like this, so he keeps it to himself, the chestplate heavy and constricting on his body and making him stand out as he searches libraries from top to bottom for any guides, and he can’t help but feel disappointed when he comes out empty-handed while knowing that the ability to translate ruins was something reserved for enchanters only, a skill handed-down from generation to generation in the family that had founded enchanting and stuck to the powerful magic.

The helmet falls back in his hands during a late night, fingers tracing over the basically invisible ruins engraved upon it, the writing going on and on, fitting as much as the original enchanter could’ve on the small spot. He’s compelled to put it on again, eyes staring into the crown-like shape that the helmet takes, and he wonders who he had taken the armor from and what they had been when the ancient cities were still flourishing.

It becomes part of him eventually, sliding over his head with the rest of the pieces of the armor being assembled upon his body too, binding to his flesh to the point that he can’t exactly tell or feel where the armor begins and his limbs end. It feels constricting, and he always feels like he’s suffocating, but in a way, he feels completed with the armor set fully assembled.

His inability to read the ruins and selfishness unknowingly leads to his early demise. Engraved into the armor were the symbols for mending, along with one that had been lost to time that had been dubbed life leech where the armor would sap away at the soul and essence of a player to repair itself, much like mending would, but the only major difference was that it worked like binding too, acting like a parasite as it stole the life from players and didn’t come off after respawn, rather when dying and coming back, you would only feed it more. It was no wonder the armor had been in such good shape and stayed in the pristine condition as he lived with it constantly sapping away his years, keeping him unaware and unassuming about what was truly causing his exhaustion and light-headedness that grew to dangerous levels over the years.

Even after his passing, the armor doesn’t leave his corpse, and as he stares at his limp body stuck inside the prison of cursed metal, he realizes why he had found the set only in ancient cities and nowhere else. The sculk had eaten away at everything organic that was left behind, the armor repelling the sculk even when it tried to corrode the inorganic material. He haunts the area around his body, unable to move on, and he finds that he doesn’t exactly want to. He feels incomplete, like something more than part of his soul was missing, and he doesn’t know what, but he wants to stay around to find it. His corpse is eaten by maggots and becomes part of the world and universe slowly, and he reaches out to the armor, flinching when it burns him.

He pushes through it, willing himself into the armor, and eventually, he gains full control over every piece, standing and staring at himself in the dirty mirror with cobwebs covering it and seeing a very fractured version of himself looking back, still visible to the eye, but translucent like a ghost was supposed to be.

He roams the universe like this, a mess of floating armor with a missing sense of self until he stumbles upon a group of people during one of his long walks with no particular destination, and he finds that his act of being a normal player doesn’t have to exist anymore when two spirits look directly through his disguise, a wooden puppet looking at him with a knowing glance as the limbs of the marionette fall limp, an extremely discolored plush copying the action.

He finds himself a home after what felt like centuries of continuous walking with no purpose, and his luck is gold when the group has someone from the enchanter lineage that is able to decipher the ruins on his armor that he had been cursed with, and all, if not one or two of the enchants were ones lost to history, and he doesn’t know if he should feel lucky or unlucky that he had found something like this.

But now, he’s finally come to peace with what happened to him, and it’s the best ending he’s sure he could’ve gotten with his luck.

Chapter Text

He pouts as he watches his brother train in the courtyard, falling back onto his bed and kicking his legs, throwing a mini-tantrum before Mime appears from his stomping. He’s picked up, squealing and squirming until he hangs there limply, the knight advisor putting him down with an unamused expression. His tiny crown is adjusted on his head, messy hair tidied, something about having to look the role of being a prince of the kingdom– it wasn’t like many paid attention to him! His brother was the crown prince, so all the attention always went to him, and he envied it at first, childish jealousy stemmed from obvious favoritism between the siblings, but with how dead tired he looked after every long ball and meeting with princesses from kingdoms nearby or from far, far away, Danny has realized that being the special crown prince isn’t the best thing to be.

Though, he is quite upset that he isn’t able to train with the big shiny swords that his brother is required to use as he practiced with his personal knight, forced to use the wimpy tiny wooden swords made for BABIES!!!

He is not amused when he gets given that tiny thing, bristling and, apparently looking like the exact carbon copy of his brother when he had been younger and been given the same thing when he had expressed interest in the act of sword fighting, something about how it was too dangerous and whatever extra details there were– Danny just wants a really big sword, is that really too much to ask for?

Unfortunately, Mime is immune to his puppy dog eyes when he begs constantly to start his swordsmanship early, always getting a pat on his shoulder and a shake of his head as Danny whines and starts his tantrum which ends extremely early when he’s tucked into his midday nap. He falls asleep with a pout on his face, frowning still until it disappears as he drifts into dream land, mumbling as he shifts around, startling Mime when he makes an abrupt motion of drawing a blade. 

Mime sighs, running his hand through the young boy's hair.

What a brave little knight.

Chapter Text

As winter comes around, Silver’s wool starts to grow extremely out of control, and it’s natural! It’s normal for sheep, rams, goats, and llamas to grow thicker wool during the winter to stay warm in the wild, but for Silver, it’s a mess.

It’s difficult to see, and he attempts to tie his hair back, but his wool is pretty thick– his ancestors had been purposefully bred for thicker wool, and sure, he’s always warm, but he can’t see. It’s an issue when he’s trying to do a zero cycle, constantly having to take a split second to push the hair out of his eyes so that he could time the bed, and it’s always crucial moments that he has to make sure that he hits the bed when the head of the dragon is over it when he’s blinded by his wool falling over his eyes.

Usually, he would take time to shear it before it got too thick, but he’s been too busy for that lately and keeps pushing it off to a tomorrow that really doesn’t exist at the moment. His hair isn’t always thick like this too, it’s only when the cold begins to come in does it start to layer upon itself and become an issue. During the summer and spring, it thins out so that it’s manageable and he doesn’t have to cut it every week or so. His partners love patting him, resting their chin in his wool in bed as they’re snuggled up, and Silver doesn’t mind it then when Reign gets so comfy that he falls asleep nearly immediately the moment they warm up together. Dylan attempts to get him to grow a beard like him, and Silver is pretty sure that if he had wool on his face, he’d look like Santa Claus and would not enjoy it one little bit at all, even if it was for their nephews.

Eventually it becomes too much of a bother and he shoves shears into Reign’s hand and sits down nearby so that his boyfriend could reach, and the bear chuckles in amusement, sweeping his bangs up to see his eyes, and Silver pouts at him. Dylan shows up because he’s pretty sure Reign texted him, and he’s brought the thing to trim his horns, which he really hates doing. It makes a bit of a mess even though there’s really no nerves there, it’s just the effort needed to cut off part of his horn so that they don’t grow into his eyes again is far more than he would like, along with how Dylan has to pull on the wire saw and how he has to pull away from it to drive it through makes his head hurt.

Begrudgingly, he lets them take care of what he can’t, ears flicking while Reign chops away at the wool, Dylan’s talk about what’s been happening around the base while he’s been at Ranked. White falls around him, thick amounts that only concern him a bit before he remembers how much is currently on his head. It only concerns him when he hears Reign growl quietly, hissing a swear under his breath that makes him raise an eyebrow in concern, and Dylan’s reaction when he glances up does not help.

“What happened.” Dylan cringes when Silver speaks up, catching his wrist when he reaches up to try to feel his wool, and there’s quite a lot missing which makes his head feel a lot lighter which he’s happy about, and when his horns get trimmed, he can enjoy having an easier time raising his head along with helping his neck not hurt as badly.

“It’s nothing bad! Reign just.. might’ve chopped off more than he intended to because.. well your wool is pretty thick, it’s a bit hard to see how much to cut.”

“Silver, it’s bad. We gotta go bald.” Dylan shoots Reign a glare as he fidgets with the shears, throwing his hands up and gesturing at the back of Silver’s head.

“I’M NOT GOING BALD IN THIS WEATHER ARE YOU KIDDING?” He spots the mess of his hair in the mirror near their bed, and lord, what the hell did Reign do to his hair.

“You don’t usually let it grow out this long!” Reign whines, and his boyfriend is right, but he hadn’t expected to look this chopped.

“Reign, chop it off. I love you, but you can’t save this.” It’s a bit funny after he gets over the major loss because he’s pretty sure by the end of the next month, everything will have grown back, so it’s not much of a problem. He nuzzles Reign’s cheek with a kiss of forgiveness, and Dylan pulls him back to steal one from him too before he holds up the wire saw, and hmm, queue might be calling his name right now.

Unfortunately, even with his height, he doesn’t get far before he’s dragged back to their bed to get his horns trimmed, which he complains throughout the entire process even though Reign is holding his head as Dylan works, ears pinned back when he hears the hissing of the cauterization of the blood vessels to stop the bleeding before it dripped onto their mattress covers.

His kind would usually shed their horns, or ram into things to knock them off naturally, but Silver doesn’t have the strength or anger built up to do that– and last time he did ram into something, it was while he was drunk and he got stuck in the wall for quite a bit of time before he was removed, along with a square shaped bit of the wall too. He often gets stuck more often than he does successfully knock a horn off. He’s pretty sure the last time he was successful was when he was a teen when they had come in for the first time, and after that, he’s been cutting them before they grew into his eyes again. It had been a troubling time in his life, stuck blind and in pain, wandering the forest alone and listening to the noises of his own hooves in the snow and the animals that lurk in his surroundings. He’s pretty sure that he wasn’t even in more danger than starvation due to his mangled appearance probably scaring off wolves, horns curled deep into his eyes and blood still crusted around where they had entered gradually.

He’s only annoyed for a bit before it melts away, sinking into their soft bed as both of them clean around them. His wool is always repurposed into soft sweaters without the scratchiness that the ugly sweaters of Christmas usually had, and Rohkx always did a great job with knitting them into countless creative designs for the members of HBG, grateful for the semi-constant wool donations from Silver and the plushie crafting art that came from Mustard, both of them always working to create something fluffy and questionable.

There’s quite a bit of wool this time, and they seem quite surprised until they spot the state of Silver’s hair, finding amusement in it while he rolls his eyes at what was basically the entity of creation. Rohkx’s hair was practically infinite, a ball of yarn that always gave but never shrank as they crafted and crafted, almost like they had an essence of creative mode in them all the time, intertwined with their soul as they provided and took care of the world with their blessing, happily giving and never taking, a guardian of some sort that was also as human as anyone else.

His hair is back to his preferred length when the sweaters mostly made of Silver’s wool come back, a bit early for the Christmas season and tradition of ugly sweaters, but it never hurts to be early, and he’s sure he could provide more wool to make more stupid sweaters when the time comes.

Chapter Text

Day ???: Entry no.1 Page 1

I found this really old journal while out with Rowl and I really wanna write down my thoughts somewhere because mama always tells us to be quiet so I’ll use this while we’re forced to be quiet around the creepy listeners :D

we’ve been following mama around for a while now, he always seems really worried D: we haven’t seen our family in a while, but he keeps telling us that theyre capable and we’d probably find them soon, and mama does know best so we’re just out for resources and maybe a place to temporarily stay

rowl is grumpy, and mongey is tired but at least we’re resting here! mama had gone ahead and told us to wait and told rowl to keep us in check, and he’s been shaking mongey awake everytime he drifts off, and i see him attempting to protest before remembering about the danger around us so he stays quiet with a frown

all in all, it’s really boring here. mama doesnt let us fight because hes worried for our safety but i have so much energy!!! at least it helps for the long walks

mama is back so ill write more later!!

*There’s small doodles of a small snowman accompanied with three other figures, arrows pointing to them with names. A figure with long hair and a large frowny face has the name Rowl attached to it, while a pink monkey-like figure has Mongey pointing at it with the words “pink was hard to find!! but mongey would kill me if i didn’t draw him pink” accompanying it too. The tiny snowman has the words “ME!!!” sparkling above it, and the taller figure beside the three have the word “mama” pointing at it with a smiley face.*

Day ???: Entry no.2 Page 2

rowl made fun of my handwriting D:!! he said that it was hard to read and i beg to differ!! i couldn’t bother mongey about it because hes sleeping (again) and mama is on watch. if you read this in the future im sure youre able to understand me quite well!!

*Admittedly, the handwriting had been difficult to decipher.*

anyway, its been radio silence and its been a few days since i last wrote. im really missing the company of everyone else, im so used to constantly hearing someone else through the walls or at least being near someone that isnt mama or my brothers. i wonder how theyre doing right now

the view here is quite nice! mama made sure it was extremely safe for us, and watching the sun set and rise is good during our shifts to watch. 

BUT IM SO BORED!!!

I MISS GOING OUT PLACES WITH EVERYONE ELSE!! MAMA IS SO PROTECTIVE AND I KNOW ITS FOR THE BETTER BUT :(( I MISS UNCLE OLIVE!! AND NEM!!! I MISS EVERYONE!!! but mama said wed reunite with them soon but WHEN?? D:

i think im making too much noise with my writing, rowl is looking at me funny

im gonna go now

im probably gonna draw more rather than write idk how to get words on paper drawing helps better i think

*True to the kids' words, there are doodles on the end of this page, an orange blob that has “uncle oliver!!” written over it, a messy scribble of what looks like armor stands nearby with “nemnem” pointing at it with an arrow with a loop in it. On each side of the armor, two other figures stand, a small fire and a person with rounded bunny-like ears on their head. The fire is labeled with “FYROAH” with a fire next to the name, and the other one being dubbed “mustard”. There’s additional text below the three of them, the text was deciphered to say “i’m invited to their wedding!” With the figure named “uncle oliver”, there’s a goldfish bowl with a fish wearing a bandana, an arrow pointing at it that says “dandannygup >:D”*

Day ???: Entry no.3 Page 3

*The next page is also filled with doodles, small drawings that crowd together, barely any space between them to see the page. It mostly consists of the white snowman seen on the very first page, surrounded with different figures, people that they constantly refer to as their family. Bright pink stands out on the page, the same pen that had been used to doodle the previously mentioned Mongey is used for another person, this time dubbed “uncle fineberg :3”, a tall person constantly accompanied with an avian that was named “couri!!”, both of them are always together or at least on the same page. Bits of text surround them. “i miss their gifts!!” is next to a depiction of what seems like everyone on Christmas, the arrow ends forming a heart back to the bit of text as the heads point towards the pair offering the tiny snowman a large box.*

Day ???: Entry no.4 Page 6

*There’s drawings of cats on an entire page, crowded with the word “meow!” everywhere.*

Day 445: Entry no. 10 Page 40

imiss them so much

i dont think we’ll ever see them again

its a big world, mama can only cover so much with us in tow

he seems a bit sadder and more anxious, i dont know how to help, and rowl seems upset by that too. i think everyone is upset, and im trying to stay optimistic but its been a long time like.. a while over a year? and we haven’t seen trace of any one else apart from a few words from other survivors that mightve seen them

mama makes sure we’re always together and connected before we go anywhere, something about being afraid to lose us too

oh we’re on the move again 

*On the next page there's a larger scale drawing, muddled a bit due to water damage on the pages, but previous faces in the notebook are recognizable here. They’re all gathered, almost like it’s an event of some sort.*

Day 500: Entry no.11 Page 42

i keep forgetting to write but i have a reason!! this place is more zombie infested than we thought and we’ve been trying to find somewhere safe to settle down for more than a temporary rest

rowl fusses over me when mama doesnt and im fine!!! hes worried about something but im not hurt!! they could never touch this!! im still a fast runner! that hasnt left me at all! i dont need to be fussed over!! but that made rowl more mad i think. no ones really been in a good mood lately and i get it! being covered in blood and zombie guts is not pleasing at all! i dont wanna be red! im blue!

i miss hbg again, i really do wonder where they are

i feel like we’ve searched the entire world and we still havent found them

rowl looks even more upset now, something about mama leaving alone for supplies and refusing to take rowl along because he was afraid of rowl getting hurt and they started fighting idk i just hid closer to mongey until rowl stormed into the room again

i just wanna go home

Day 524: Entry no.16 Page 74

i miss mama

he isnt usually gone for this long

everyone is really worried and rowls stopped being mad too

i hope mama comes home soon its getting scary

*The bottom of the page has a drawing of all of them with the aforementioned “mama” in the middle, surrounded by three figures hugging them.*

Day 526: Entry no.17 Page 75

rowl doesnt wanna wait anymore

hes going out for mama and leaving us alone but i really dont want that because i know mama kept us together and in safe places for a reason

we’re old enough but its still a scary thing and mama always knows best

but rowl wasnt listening and he still isnt and i think hes packing right now and i really dont want this to be the last time i possibly see him

ok i really shouldnt be thinking like that hes strong hes just like mama but i really hope they come back safe

me and mongey will hold down the fort but im still really worried

i wished him luck but i think hes still upset at us or something idk

*The bottom of the page has a drawing showing a tiny snowman and Mongey in a box castle, with a presumably younger looking Rowl walking off into the distant horizon with a sword in hand, a young knight on a journey into the unknown.*

Day 527: Entry no.18 Page 76

i miss rowl and mama and hbg

its so quiet with me and mongey its so eerie

it does provide me some comfort hearing mongey beside me always but i miss how busy our home was

mama said this was our home now but it doesnt really feel like it

home is supposed to be where its warm and filled with love and happiness and filled with people

this place is everything but that. its so quiet and cold without everyone. i miss how things were before this apocalypse 

i really hope things will go back to normal soon 

Day 533: Entry no.19 Page 77

its just me now. its been just me for a couple days

mongey left to find supplies, he told me, but i know hes going to try to find rowl and mama

being alone is scary. i cant sleep. every creak in the floorboards scares me back under the blankets but im so hungry

my head hurts a lot and my vision is a bit blurry which concerns me

i know it would concern mama a lot he wouldve forced me into the bed and made sure i didnt move an inch at all

i miss everyone so much i feel so lost

i think i feel a bit too weak to even cry over it which sucks

im so 

*The writing trails off here.*

Day 548: Entry no.22 Page 81

i hear knocking

zombies dont knock right?

i think its them

i think theyre actually

ive missed them so much i almost dont believe it

but its them. i hear it. theres more than one there and theres slow knocking

the knocking that mama always does. the way he knocks to tell us that its him and its not a stranger

my mama is home

theyre finally home

im not alone anymor

*There’s droplet shaped bits of water damage on this page, and the writing ends there for the rest of the journal. There’s blood soaked into part of the book, but all filled pages remain unaffected by the dried book, only suffering aging and water damage from the years of being forgotten. The name scribbled into the book has long faded, leaving the writer with an unknown identity.*

Chapter Text

You are running out of time.

The message is small, it hovers in the top right just right under his timer, and it's faint enough that he doesn’t notice it for a while. Worlds come and go, fingers locking them in place as he searches for the isolated, sandy islands bound to have treasure nearby. The practice of RSG was isolating, the search for worlds that could only be occupied by one, the same repeat of motions hoping that maybe, maybe this world would be in your favor and the time in the corner would be less than the time you had the last time you fell into the portal that would put the ticking of the clock to a stop.

Reignex enjoys it, but he also hates it sometimes. The Universe seems to be confused on whether it likes him or not, because he finds himself hopelessly going through more worlds than he can count without even ever making it close to the island where the Dragon roams, Her eyes staring directly into his sometimes when the beds go off, and there’s something akin to a mutual understanding when they look at each other. She knows and has finally accepted that Her purpose is to be slain by the players who are searching to find their purpose in the world, an existence that was short-lived no matter what She attempted, Her egg cursed to never hatch, and forever forced to circle an island that has no one to company Her final days in some sort of glory, witnessed by many, but never remembered as a threat, only a means to an end.

You are running out of time.

He reads the message, finally, and it leaves him with an unsettled feeling. It gnaws at his mind as he locks and dismisses worlds, wondering what it means. It doesn’t leave his vision, it’s there, small yet clear at the same time, and it catches his eye when he flicks to look at his coords up there.

It haunts him when he closes his eyes, and when he cleans the prosthetic hanging to his arm, cleaning the stub from the time he had fallen to a glitched world, sustaining a permanent disfigurement that buzzed with static occasionally when he rested for too long. He feels off, his timer ticking for longer and returning back to zero quicker than ever when he resets. He feels rushed, and the reminder rings clear in his head, that he’s on a timer invisible to his eye, a timer that is more haunting than the primary one that sits at the corner of his view.

It doesn’t end with a bang, no. The timer never stopped, and it had no intention to spare him at all. It goes and goes, and he worries and worries, and it hits zero, eventually.

The time he gets isn’t anything impressive, it’s just something that he gets. The portal swallows him whole, and he feels lighter. The fall is usually short, but he finds himself drifting for longer, staring into an infinite abyss as he’s held by the Universe, feeling their hands on him, a breeze that touches the scars and blemishes that never disappeared, a cold static building between his flesh and the gold of his prosthetic.

I see the player you mean.

Reignex?

Yes. Take care. It has reached a higher level now. It can read our thoughts.

That doesn't matter. It thinks we are part of the game.

I like this player. It played well. It did not give up.

It is reading our thoughts as though they were words on a screen.

That is how it chooses to imagine many things, when it is deep in the dream of a game.

Words make a wonderful interface. Very flexible. And less terrifying than staring at the reality behind the screen.

They used to hear voices. Before players could read. Back in the days when those who did not play called the players witches, and warlocks. And players dreamed they flew through the air, on sticks powered by demons.

What did this player dream?

This player dreamed of sunlight and trees. Of fire and water. It dreamed it created. And it dreamed it destroyed. It dreamed it hunted, and was hunted. It dreamed of shelter.

Hah, the original interface. A million years old, and it still works. But what true structure did this player create, in the reality behind the screen?

It worked, with a million others, to sculpt a true world in a fold of the ■■■■■■, and created a ■■■■■■■ for ■■■■■■■■, in the ■■■.

It cannot read that thought.

No. It has not yet achieved the highest level. That, it must achieve in the long dream of life, not the short dream of a game.

Does it know that we love it? That the universe is kind?

Sometimes, through the noise of its thoughts, it hears the universe, yes.

But there are times it is sad, in the long dream. It creates worlds that have no summer, and it shivers under a black sun, and it takes its sad creation for reality.

To cure it of sorrow would destroy it. The sorrow is part of its own private task. We cannot interfere.

Sometimes when they are deep in dreams, I want to tell them, they are building true worlds in reality. Sometimes I want to tell them of their importance to the universe. Sometimes, when they have not made a true connection in a while, I want to help them to speak the word they fear.

It reads our thoughts.

Sometimes I do not care. Sometimes I wish to tell them, this world you take for truth is merely ■■■■■■ and ■■■■■■■, I wish to tell them that they are ■■■■ in the ■■■■■■. They see so little of reality, in their long dream.

And yet they play the game.

But it would be so easy to tell them...

Too strong for this dream. To tell them how to live is to prevent them living.

I will not tell the player how to live.

The Universe speaks to him. It holds him and speaks, and he reads and listens, existing and learning. Was this what everyone saw and heard at the end of time? When they aren’t in a rush to return to the world filled with life just to leave it behind and empty of a player's presence? His time was up– he knew it, and he had a feeling too. It weighed heavy in his chest, a suffocating presence as the dragon fell, Her final cry fading into nothingness, the void swallowing it up and offering nothing in reply.

Reignex also, is offered nothing in reply for slaying the dragon. Silence greets him after the cry of agony that pierces his ears still even if he’s done this hundreds of times before, meeting the dragon in the end and delivering Her the same fate, something that she succumbs to every time they meet eyes.

We are the universe. We are everything you think isn't you. You are looking at us now, through your skin and your eyes. And why does the universe touch your skin, and throw light on you? To see you, player. To know you. And to be known. I shall tell you a story.

He knows that they are the Universe. They’ve met more than once– the first time was when he had gained his name, then the second was when he fell through the fountain with the rest of HBG, their souls braided together by the Universe slowly, keeping them connected no matter how far they were from each other, even in different worlds. They meet again here, and the story they tell is his to claim– they had followed his footsteps and watched over him, watching as his timer ticked down and down until it landed at zero before cradling him in their hands, there, but also not at the same time.

Sometimes the player read lines of code on a screen. Decoded them into words; decoded words into meaning; decoded meaning into feelings, emotions, theories, ideas, and the player started to breathe faster and deeper and realised it was alive, it was alive, those thousand deaths had not been real, the player was alive

You. You. You are alive.

and sometimes the player believed the universe had spoken to it through the sunlight that came through the shuffling leaves of the summer trees

and sometimes the player believed the universe had spoken to it through the light that fell from the crisp night sky of winter, where a fleck of light in the corner of the player's eye might be a star a million times as massive as the sun, boiling its planets to plasma in order to be visible for a moment to the player, walking home at the far side of the universe, suddenly smelling food, almost at the familiar door, about to dream again

and sometimes the player believed the universe had spoken to it through the zeros and ones, through the electricity of the world, through the scrolling words on a screen at the end of a dream

and the universe said I love you

and the universe said you have played the game well

and the universe said everything you need is within you

and the universe said you are stronger than you know

and the universe said you are the daylight

and the universe said you are the night

and the universe said the darkness you fight is within you

and the universe said the light you seek is within you

and the universe said you are not alone

and the universe said you are not separate from every other thing

and the universe said you are the universe tasting itself, talking to itself, reading its own code

and the universe said I love you because you are love.

And the game was over and the player woke up from the dream. And the player began a new dream. And the player dreamed again, dreamed better. And the player was the universe. And the player was love.

You are the player.

Wake up.

They drop him, and he falls.

He, who is Reignex, who is the player, is still alive, even if he’s out of time.

His time as a runner has expired, and he never thought that he’d see that day, but he finds that like K4 and those who have also run out of time, it doesn’t mean that it’s all over.

Nothing changes apart from the fact that he takes a long break from the isolating practice of RSG, distancing himself from it, and he finds that the longer he spends away from that void, the longer he is away from the end islands that he had left his mark on with his towers as the dragon circled and observed him, he loses the abilities of a runner that he had before.

He finds that he doesn’t mind that he’s gotten worse, and it’s visible when he’s on his duo's date with Silver, and he’s rusty, but it doesn’t stop him.

Even when his timer has run its course, he’s still a player.

Chapter Text

Regrettably, he’s back.

The forest whispers, watching him constantly.

He quit, he had said it on the spot and put down all of his gear and left back home where the unnatural cold of the forest couldn’t reach him, and he had planned to never return to there or even look in the general direction of the biome ever again, displeased at how he feels like the layout of the forest practically ingrained into his brain now.

Yet it still haunts him.

That face that he had seen in particular doesn’t leave his dreams, nor does it leave his brain. He had thought that after he had removed himself from the place, he’d never have to think about it ever again.

He had been lying to himself when he was trying to make himself believe that.

The creature doesn’t leave his thoughts, the anxious (he doesn’t know how he could even read its expression, he didn’t even know that something like that was capable of changing expressions too, but he also had never expected to see something like that with a face of a person rather than just gray rotting bark) eyes staring at him as he stared back, pushing away from the amalgamation that just stood there as Couriway stared at it until he could no longer, disappearing into the night as he clutched his thundering heart beneath his ribs.

The amber eyes haunt him, and it feels like there’s more beyond what he’s seen.

He returns, cursed by his curiosity and need to know about what or who he had encountered that night. They’ve made progress since he’s last been there, pushing past the barrier where everything had its color swallowed and breaching into the core of the forest, still close to the mix of a cherry grove and the pale garden, but deep enough that the pink was gone and the cold was bone piercing. His wings curl around himself as he talks with Mime at the center of camp– he moreso listens as he attempts to not freeze to death even under his layers. He gets the general gist of things, and sets out again.

It was just the constant progress against the goal to map out the haunted garden, and before long, he felt himself being watched again.

He accepts it rather than being scared of it. He knows that he’s invading the land of something, and they have reason to be wary of him and keep an eye on him always. He grows familiar with the discolored land, patient as he continues his efforts in reaching the very core of the forest, and his sleep grows worse the closer he gets, but he knows that it was a natural thing even if it concerns him, so he pushes along anyway.

His patience eventually pays off, because he spots bright pink petals and gentle rose-gold colored amber again even with how deep he is inside the forest, far from the soft cherry groves. They stand out against the ashy gray, thick droplets and gentle petals that Couriway picks up sometimes when he finds it, and he knows Mime had told him not to interfere with the biome and touch anything that he shouldn’t or take anything out of the place, but let him have this, okay?

He collects more than he should– it’s a bit of a mindless action, to gently peel the slowly drying amber from the crumbling moss on the ground and keep it for himself, and he finds that the amount that he encounters seems to grow in size sometimes. There’s droplets, then there’s actual chunks that he worries about if it would impact the biome a lot if he took, but he takes it anyway, because he’s a man with a lot of curiosity and dwindling self-control.

It takes a while– he doesn’t actually know how long he’s been part of this expedition, returning just to go back into the depths of the looming trees who don’t ever say in the breeze, creaking and groaning around him as if they were struggling to live. It’s been a while, and the feeling of being watched always sticks with him, and it’s a background thing.

Until it isn’t.

Head on, he encounters the eyes who have been watching him.

They’re soft around the edges, amber mixing into a vivid cyan that he had somehow missed during their last encounter. They are much more human looking than he had remembered, of course, dark bark crawls up their body like armor, but there’s still pale flesh at the shoulders and the face is round, no sharp edges to be found on their face even if the bark ended with jagged edges. It’s strange, really, to see a human face attached to a body that was more wood than flesh, but Couriway finds that he would probably prefer this over finding someone naked in the graveyard of a forest.

They stand frozen still, staring at him as he stares at them. They make no action towards moving even a little bit as Couriway moves closer, rose-gold amber visible through their skin, almost like they had veins and the amber was their blood.

Wait, had he just been picking their blood off the ground? Were they hurt?

He’d be surprised if the wooden armor they had was penetrable. Soft cherry blossoms cover half of their face, pale in the darkness of the forest, and Couriway admires the splash of color against the area in the world that had all the color sucked out of it.

It’s a beautiful sight, he admits with a small tinge of fear in his heart still.

The wooden branches on top of their head twitch, sprouting from caramel shaded curls, the fringe cupping their face, long strands that lay still in the silence of the forest, the only thing Couriway is able to hear is his own breathing and the way his heart thuds.

They observe him as he observes them, and it’s an interesting moment for sure. Two different species, human in one aspect or another (were they human? they had the face of one, but Couriway isn’t sure what lays beyond the pale skin, wondering if they had something under the bark and facsimile of flesh they had), both observing each other, never having seen each other this clearly before.

He closes his eyes when they feel too dry, and when he reopens them, they’re still there, maybe a few steps closer, maybe not, he doesn’t know. He steps towards them, and their eyes flicker away, and he stops, getting a closer look at their face.

It’s morphed into one of anxiousness, and Couriway frowns. He closes his eyes for a moment, and when he opens them, they’re gone.

How upsetting.

He brings it up with Mime when he returns to camp, and he’s delighted to know the creature that he’s encountered was named a creaking, accepting the book Mime had shoved into his hands while he was ranting about something– the dangers of the creature? he’s not really listening, more fixated on the book he’s been given. He leaves the next day, reading as he walks, reading as he eats, and reading while he’s unable to sleep.

Couriway learns and learns, finding the discoveries of the creatures unfinished due to the dangers of the garden that they were born from, and part of him thinks about updating the book and completing the discoveries, finding that his curiosity about the creature has only grown more since he’s reading more about them.

They don’t particularly like to be stared at, which makes sense due to his little stalker always remaining out of view until that encounter, but it also makes him feel bad for how much he had stared during that encounter, forcing them into a standstill without being able to do anything about it. They were violent creatures, apparently. Territorial in nature, had the book said, but Couriway’s ever growing endless curiosity wondered about why he hadn’t ever been attacked by the creaking that had been watching his every move and was, as of the time he was reading, watching him still. They were fast, rushing in to get rid of trespassers while they were still unaware, but this one let him become aware before ever showing their face.

The creakings in the books didn’t have human faces like the creaking he had seen, and they most definitely didn’t have pale flesh that disappeared into tough bark, and it really makes him think about a lot, so many unanswered questions hovering in his mind as he stared into the darkness of his tent, ears listening to the quiet breathing of the dead yet alive forest around him, and he wonders that if he listened hard enough, he could hear the creakings footsteps or even possibly, their heartbeat too.

Creakings didn’t technically have hearts, but they still had something in them that did connect to a heart that was basically their respawn anchor, and when destroyed, they would disappear too. But he wonders, if this one was different– if this one had the soft face of a human, soft curls and rounded cheeks, gentle looking and unfathomably beautiful– then would it have the beating heart of a human too?

His questions stay unanswered for a long, long time. His encounters with creakings are brief– the further he makes it in, the more he finds. He hadn’t found any at first, but he hears the shifting now. He hears the way their limbs creak and groan, and how they shuffle in the darkness, ready to strike at any moment. They freeze when he stares at them, and they’re grotesque monsters. Their faces are rough, dripping amber like it was blood from the rotten holes in their bodies, and Couriway carves away at their hearts, ensuring his safety.

The guilt is heavy in his heart when he locks eyes with amber and vibrant cyan again while he’s carving away at a core of a creaking that had been pursuing him. Their expression is shifted into something, and he knew that he had been watched this entire time, but the feeling became something that he was so used to that he had eventually forgotten about it, and he sees them again now, hands pricked by sprinted and sticky with resin, knife partially dug into a glowing core as the creaking that had made an attempt on his life crumbled away.

They stare at him, and he doesn’t know what to do. This had been for his own safety, and he shouldn’t feel like this because technically, he’s doing the right thing. He’s making this place safer for the future, so why does he feel so wrong when he’s done with carving the golden flesh out of the rotten tree?

He closes his eyes, and the amber and cyan disappear from his sight.

He knows that creakings don’t stray far from their hearts– it was a safety thing, it was their only means to survive, so they had to guard it, to keep it safe from harm. This creaking had followed him from the cherry groves to the depths of the garden, and he wondered how close he had been to destroying this creakings heart? It should motivate him to actually find it and get rid of it to get the feeling of being watched off of him, but that thought is something that really, really upsets him.

He continues on, hoping, for some absurd reason, that those eyes had it in them to forgive him for what he has done to their home, and he realizes that after what he’s done, he’d probably never see them again. He never did much to the biome before, so they must’ve seen him as a safe thing to approach before retreating due to instincts, but now? They’ve seen him kill so many of their own kind, their flesh and blood staining his hands still when they had seen each other while he was mid-act, so that would be it. He would never see that creature again face to face, and he knows that he’s probably better off like that, but it still makes him sad at the end of the day, ruining any chance with ever encountering the peaceful creaking again, or maybe he’s made them violent just like the rest of the creakings that inhabited the biome, losing his chance at proving himself as harmless.

The feeling of being watched still lingers, and Couriway sighs, deflating upon himself before retreating to his tent for probably another sleepless night.

The lack of sleep doesn’t help with whatever predicament he’s gotten into, fleeing from fast creakings rather than searching for their cores because he doesn’t have it in him to destroy another one in fear that the moment he did, the feeling of being watched would disappear and make him realize that he had broken the wrong core.

Still, the lack of sleep he gets is concerning, and for a moment, when he sees cyan and amber again, he thinks he’s hallucinating. His words are slurred when he calls out towards it, and the blur with eyes stares at him. His eyes are tired, and they fall closed faster than he had wanted them to, and he expects the eyes to be gone when he opens his again, but they’re still there.

His words are garbled nonsense he’s pretty sure, but there’s also the fact that they also probably don’t understand him either, so there’s that. He feels so unbelievably tired near the creaking, and he knows that he really shouldn’t, but he feels his eyes drifting closed easier than they have been for the past week, and he really can’t fight the sleep that sweeps over him and consumes him as the glowing eyes approach him.

When Couriway comes to again, he’s placed against a tree, leaf litter, moss, and flower petals covering his lap in a blanket of some kind, and he feels well rested but also extremely disoriented, nausea making his vision swim when he attempts to move. Something pushes him back down when he tries to get up on shaky legs, shrill, high noises that make him clutch his head instead of the bark of the tree next to him to try to haul himself up. The noise disappears, and his vision stops swimming enough to look up at the sight that looms over him.

The sun is up, but it barely breaches past the thick foliage of the forest. Those ever so familiar amber and cyan eyes stare directly into his soul, soft hair framing their face as they stare at Couriway, pink blossoms that he had never seen before started wilting away from the branches on top of the creakings head, and that makes him realize quick enough to snap his eyes away with a rushed apology that he isn’t sure that they could understand. They make a noise like a whine, and Couriway covers his eyes with a hand and tries to turn away from the body.

They stop with their noise, and he sighs in relief of some sort. He’s safe, but he’s pretty sure he’s making the poor creaking highly uncomfortable, but every time he does try and get up to go elsewhere, the noises begin again and he’s pushed back down. He doesn’t know what they want at all, and as night falls, they croon at Couriway quietly, chittering something that only serves to confuse him further.

He startles when cold fingers wrap around his wrist, and he turns to look and it’s a human hand guiding his in the darkness, fading into the dark bark that belonged distinctly to cherry wood, and it lifts his hand until it touches the warm, throbbing core of the tree.

It’s the beating heart of this creaking.

“Oh my god.” He blurts out loud, and the creaking beside him chitters something again in reply.

“Why did you bring me here?” The questions come like they could even answer him, and they make noises rather than responding, settling beside the avian and curling its lanky body against his. “Are you not worried about showing me it after what I’ve done to the rest of your kind?” And they huff at his words, somehow understanding him which is confusing and surprising.

He takes that huff and silence as a no to being worried, and he lays back against it, staring up towards the unmoving leaves of the forest.

Sleep tugs at his eyes again, and the creaking beside him seems to do something akin to settling down for the night, so Couriway does just that.

His head rests against the warm core of the creaking embedded in the tree, ear pressed against it and he can hear the soft beat of an actual heart, which comforts him rather than disturbing him at the possibility of a heart actually being in there. He finds that it’s different from the cores of the other creakings he had gotten rid of. It beats quietly, glowing a soft pink through the cracks in the bark rather than the orange hue that colored the other ones.

He falls asleep beside the creaking, the quiet thud of the heart lulling him to rest.

The creaking is there still when he reawakens, staring at him before forcing its eyes away.

When he tries to leave now, they let him, and as he goes, he hears the rapid noise of footsteps following him, and cyan eyes peer at him from behind trees when he turns around.

Somehow, in one of the deadliest biomes in the overworld, he’s found himself a companion filled with life like him, filled with the same curiosity that he has.

His heart skips a bit when he gets a clear look at their face and they preen at him instead of shying away like they normally did.

He looks forward to exploring more of the pale garden with his new friend.

Chapter Text

The situation he’s found himself in is unfortunate, but also extremely embarrassing to the point where he’s not even fighting the web that clings to him, laying there strung up in the nest of some terrifyingly large beast that had woven this web that stretched into the sky and long enough that it covered the distance of part of a plains between two forests.

That’s exactly how Couriway had gotten caught in the web, flying directly into the string and flailing around in confusion and panic before stopping with a sigh and groan of frustration when he realized this was exactly something he always got teased for whenever he flies backwards without looking. He could escape, but it would be painful and pretty annoying to do so without assistance. He could slide out of his clothes and begin the process of peeling his wings from the extremely sticky web and probably lose quite a few feathers while doing so, but he also really doesn’t want to go home and explain why he was missing all his clothes with his wings being in such a disheveled state. They would know exactly what had happened to him and he would never be free from the teasing that would come from it.

So he lays there, huffing when he witnesses something else end up in the same fate that he did, and he waits until the creator of this web appears, which is something that scares him absolutely shitless.

Something– or someone, clambers up onto the web. It’s a large spider– specifically a creature of some kind with the abdomen of a spider and the upper body of a person, many eyes blinking and mandibles clicking quietly, dark, felt covered hands rubbing together as it skitters around the large web, inspecting everything that it had caught for the day. It approaches something else that had been caught, and he flinches back in fear when they pry the living creature out of the web and sinks its fangs into them, pumping them full of something so that they stop thrashing around and settle down into the web, and Couriway watches as it wraps more white around it until it was just a cocoon floating there. It continues with this, moving across the web and wrapping them in the sticky silk, suffocating them while they couldn’t fight the toxins that render them useless.

That’s going to be him.

Oh god.

Couriway accepts his death right then and there but he doesn’t expect the creature that is probably several times his size to actually leap backwards from the avian, seemingly startled by the presence of the bird all strung up in its web. Their eyes are wide, crouched but also bristling at the same time, and if Couriway wasn’t absolutely terrified for his life at the moment, he would think the sight was pretty cute.

They stare at him for a while, circling him cautiously as if he was the threat in the current moment. This continues for a while, and he eventually stops fearing for his life and just looks at them with unamusement.

“...Are you gonna eat me?” For some reason, they look offended at that suggestion, a hand coming up to their chest as they circle him again, leaning forward to get a closer look at him before backing away.

“Why would I do that??”

“You just prepped those other things to eat later, why are you just leaving me? Am I dessert?” They sputter at him, hands making gestures before they poke at his side. He makes a hissing chirp at the spider, and they jump back a few feet, the spider legs carefully pitter pattering closer again when they grow the courage to come closer to the avian again. Was this absolute giant scared of Couriway??

“You look too nice to eat, I don’t wanna ruin your outfit, it looks expensive.” The spider approaches him, and Couriway notices the large heart on their abdomen which looks pretty, standing out against the dark fluff.

“You’ve technically already ruined it with your web, so that's a lousy excuse for you to save me for later to eat.” They actually look upset at that information, the spider legs attached to their body poking at the seam where his fabric meets the web before stopping.

“Can we be friends?” They momentarily attempt to pull his clothes from the web again as they speak, and it takes him a second to realize what they asked.

Does this guy have any social skills at all? Who asks a captive to be their friend?? Did they think that he was going to just agree? Well, maybe if he does agree then he might be set free from the web and he can forget about this encounter entirely.

“If I say yes then will you free me?” He tries, and they frown, almost like they’re in thought.

“If I do that, then will you just say yes so that you could get free?”

“..What if you let me free so I could consider it?”

“But you’re just gonna fly away..”

“Do you hold everyone hostage until they become your ‘friends’? Is this why you don’t have any? Because they always leave you after they promise to be your friend?” They blink at his words, and okay, he will admit that was actually really mean to tell someone without knowing exactly who they were. The spider frowns before shoving its hand under his clothes and wings, detaching him– was it really just that easy?? He drops to the ground, limbs feeling like jelly before he’s able to stand stable again, wings shaking out loose feathers before he takes off into the sky, sparing a single glance back and the spider looks at him with large eyes, and he’s too far to figure out what emotion was present in them, so he looks forward again, reminding himself that the fact that he wasn’t looking forward was how he even got stuck in that predicament in the first place.

He vows to never return to that expanse of land where he had been caught in the web. He promises to himself, a silent thing, but he thinks about the expression that they had worn when he left and he feels really, really guilty for what he told them before he left.

So he returns, even if he knows that this is probably a really, really bad idea.

He lowers himself carefully, and the spider perks up from where it’s laid on the web at his approach, somehow hearing his wings even though he’s usually a silent flyer.

“You came back?” They are so, so surprised by his reappearance that it makes his chest hurt a bit, coming to the very edge of their web and leaning so far forward to get closer to the avian hovering in the air that he’s a bit afraid that they might actually fall if they didn’t obviously have such a large counterweight to ensure that they would stay on the cobweb rather than nearly falling out of it when they leaned too far forward in a direction.

“Yeah, did you make any friends while I was away?” He questions, leaning a bit away from them and seeing how they try to make up for the space by leaning more forward. All eight eyes blink slowly at him before he sees each one individually form a furrowed eye, and yeah, that wound was probably too fresh for him to poke at.

Couriway screams when they leap at him, flapping his wings too late before he’s tackled by the huge beast, held in place by two arms as they climb back up onto their web and stick him there without another word, looming over him as he squawks and fights against the webbing aggressively this time rather than just accepting his fate. Well, eventually he stops and accepts it, and the spider settled beside him is pleased that he’s stopped shaking the web.

“Soo, is this where I die?” He looks up towards the beast, and they only poke him aggressively with the toe of a foot.

“You’re not gonna die,” they spit the word out like it disgusts them. “I don’t get why you still think that.” The creature scoffs, folding their legs under themselves and settling their chin on their two arms.

“You just stuck me on YOUR web, what else am I supposed to think??” And the guy has the audacity to stick their tongue out at him! No, seriously, could he be blamed for thinking about the possibility of death after what he’s witnessed with this spider? He expects them to tease him more, but they just shift on the web again, turning to look away from Couriway before they start speaking.

“Would it kill to keep a guy like me some company without standing so far like I’ll bite? It’s lonely out here, you don’t have to come back if you really don’t wanna, it only reminds me more of how scared people are of me. I didn’t want to be this, but people like you are so scared and run before I even get a chance of attempting to form a bond of any kind at all.” They lay on their side, shifting to… curl up, and Couriway realizes that they’re attempting to hide their lower body or at least make it smaller, an attempt to make themselves more approachable, less intimidating, just a soft, fluffy bundle of fur that peeks at the avian, voice wavering as they talk quietly. “I just want a friend– or just company at least. I want something rather than just being lonely all the time out here with no one but myself– I don’t like the quiet, I really, really don’t, and I hate it out here– I hate being who I am because that’s exactly why I don’t have anything. It’s exactly why I won’t ever have something that would want to be anywhere near me without being afraid.” They’re trembling, extra legs folded fully under them and smaller eyes closed, mandibles pushed under their hair, and they’re trying to look more human– trying to look less scary, kinder and just attempting to look more generic, pushing to hide every hybrid feature they had, just to look any bit approachable at all. 

They’re trying to change how they look, unhappy with their appearance now– hating it actually.

Owch, that really hurts his heart to think about.

“I think there’s better ways of going at this rather than ensnaring someone in webs, doesn’t help with the “being a scary predator animal” thing that, y’know, people are afraid of.” He points out quietly, and they huff at him.

“I don’t think you were listening to me.” They chuckle bitterly in reply, voice tight in their throat. “I just want to be happy and laugh, is that really too much to ask for?” Their voice is a whisper as they get up and repeat the same thing they had done before to free Couriway from the web, settling him on the ground before climbing away, leaving the avian to watch them go. He watches with a frown weighing the corner of his lips down, and it doesn’t leave when he turns away from them.

He unfurls his wings and takes off, finding himself flying backwards again to keep an eye on the creature before the dark mass that was the spider fades and fades away into the distance the further he goes.

Of course, he finds himself returning the very next day– he leaves and makes his journey before the sun has breached the horizon, even before the next morning, the night breeze carrying him along, following a path that he’s found himself remembering before he consciously attempted to do so.

They whip around when they somehow hear him arriving, staying put rather than scampering to the edge of the web to close the distance between them and the avian like they had done before, and Couriway exhales heavily to get rid of the ache in his chest at the small observation.

“Why are you back?” They squint at him, arms crossed. “No longer afraid that I’ll bite your head off? I’m feeling a bit peckish, maybe I’ll have you for dessert tonight if I feel like it.” They snap, and his face shifts into a wince hearing words that he had said a few days ago being used again, seeing the tired expression on the spider as they stare at Couriway, sadness and hurt deeply embedded in their eyes along with a glimmer of something else that gets blinked away in the moonlight.

“I shouldn’t have said that, I’m sorry.” He settles onto the web himself, sitting near, but also not too close to the spider sat at the center of the web, all eyes on him and frowning still. “It was insensitive, and you… after first impressions that truly weren’t exactly the best– you’re nice, and I can see that now, and I’m sorry for judging harshly like that instead of letting you explain or say anything– and I don’t think I deserve your forgiveness at all, not after what I’ve constantly said to you unprovoked, but I couldn’t just leave you like that after… learning everything. I couldn’t do that, so I’m here to at least attempt to right my wrongs.” His stomach churns at the silence, and he groans when a large body absolutely smothers him into the web that is surprisingly strong.

“You came back, and that’s all that matters. Thank you for caring.” The words are muffled in his shoulder, and he pats them, eyes wide when he feels how soft they were. They lay like that for a bit longer before they sit back up.

“I think introductions are in order, no?” He smiles softly, and they sniffle but also return the grin.

“Yeah, they are.”

♡

“Couri! You’re home– WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?”

“His name is Feinberg!!!”

“HE IS THREE TIMES YOUR SIZE.”

“He’s really nice!”

“MIMEEEE–”

Chapter Text

Couri startles awake to banging on his and his husband's bedroom door, disgruntled as he sits up, hearing the confused noise Fein makes at his movement, attempting to pull him back down into their nest to continue sleeping and snuggling. A hand comes up to gently scratch behind the fluffy ear to soothe his husband as he blinks sleep from his vision, feeling Fein nuzzle against him and push his head into his fingers into his touch, purring. He blindly reaches behind himself to grab a plush to give to Fein before he reaches for his glasses and gets up, seeing Fein curl up around the stuffed animal and hide under the blankets again as he goes to answer the banging that he’s a bit happy didn’t disturb Fein too much, somehow.

Who could even be bothering them this early in the morning? He’d be surprised if it was someone other than Mime– maybe there had been an emergency, but knowing the puppet, he’d rather bust the door down than just pound on it until whoever was in there woke up because a man like Mime has no care for the property when safety is on the line. He opens it slowly with a yawn. “Hello? Can you not do that? There’s people trying to sleep?”

He opens his eyes finally and gets greeted by faces who do not belong to anyone in HBG at all. His tired mind has to think for a second to pair names with faces, snapping his finger when he remembers. Standing sheepishly in front of his and Fein’s room are the members of the MCCR2 team that had been assigned to the first time winner, grouped together and peering up at him even though he’s pretty sure Ash was possibly taller than Fein too, currently hiding behind Zam and Squiddo of all people.

“Sorry for knocking so hard!!” Zam squeaks, voice way too loud for how early it is in the morning, the wings on his head flaring out and clamping closed around his ears, expression shifted into a grimace. “We just didn’t know if he was a heavy sleeper or not and decided it was better to send it full force… It was Ash’s idea! Not mine!” The bundle of a glitch looks absolutely appalled by the fact that he had been thrown under the bus by the other, shoving her from behind and getting a shrill noise of distress from the young shark and getting shoved back.

Couri sighs, rubbing his eyes. “Well, your loud knocking didn’t work to wake him– only woke me instead, he’s still asleep but he might wake up soon if I don’t go back to him.”

“I told you he’s not a morning person! We should’ve waited for him to contact us!” Ash hisses back at Zam when the false princess punches his shoulder, gesturing into their shared room.

“I might as well go wake him, gimme a second.” The pair continue fighting with the other two members simply watching, Couri turning around to go find his husband. Fein is still curled under the blanket, frowning a bit but still asleep, disturbed by the fact that Couri isn’t near him. Gently, he shakes Fein awake, earning grumbles and whines before his eyes finally open, squinting at his husband, discontented by waking up.

“Hullo?” Fein’s voice is rough with sleep, a rough cat-like noise leaving him as he leans into Couri’s touch.

“Go get up and get ready, your trainees are already awake and rearing to go train for MCC,” and, as he expected, Fein rolls over and hides at the prospect of waking up, forcing Couri to pull him upright to make sure he doesn’t actually just pass out again the moment his head touches the pillow. He forces Fein to his feet and shoves him towards their shared bedroom, shooing him and ignoring all his complaints.

“How did you guys even get inside the base? I assume Mime wasn’t who let you in?” He returns to the door, leaning on the frame as he questions the group waiting for his husband.

“We climbed in from the roof because it looked like it was there for avian’s and we assumed it would be open for us to get in,” BlockFact’s blurts out while everyone else looks away, refusing to reveal that they had snuck in only for the truth to be told without any pressure at all.

“...Please just knock on the door next time.” He sighs, “Mime will let you in if you explain why you’re here, he’s not that scary I promise.” They talk a bit more before Fein appears, still terribly sleepy, resting his chin on Couri’s shoulders, hiding his face in his neck and still expressing his unhappiness from waking up so early.

“I didn’t know Feinberg was gay!”

And, well, that seems to wake Fein right up more than anything.

♡

It’s not too often they get constant visitors in the way that these guys visit, and it makes sense because Rising was a pretty big deal when it came to events. They leave with Fein in the morning, actually going through the front, finally getting the full experience of the base rather than sneaking in like they had done the first time and apparently getting extremely lost before they had somehow found their way to the right room without Mime’s guide at all. He starts his day off by making breakfast and a to-go lunch for Fein who no matter how many times he wakes up early on routine, he still stays sleepy and attempts to go back to sleep no matter what, eating breakfast with his eyes closed, attempting to get more rest even though he’s also eating at the same time, the four members of his team poking each other and running around the base, occasionally going too far in and experiencing the ever shifting halls of the building and forcing Mime to go in and bring them back to the kitchen again.

He hands Fein a lunch box and kisses him goodbye for the day, watching him go with the other four trailing after him like ducklings. It’s really, really amusing to see Fein forced to wake up early and handle four overactive teenagers that somehow had so much energy to make it to their home and bother both of them until they left for the morning for training.

Zam realizes during a morning while snooping around the base that Fruit also resided here, and now made it her life mission to find his room, often getting extremely lost and rescued by Mime countless enough times that the puppet eventually just led her to Fruit himself, disturbing the bats sleep for a bit so that she could fangirl over him before the man with one of the worst sleep schedules returned to his desired sleep.

At some point, he starts making more than one lunch for the group, making something for all of them and learning preferences for food, patting them on the head as they scamper after Fein to continue training for the big event. Before Couri’s daily no reset runs, he sometimes joins them on the training grounds, observing them as Fein gently guides them along, reworking plans to account for weaknesses like Ash’s issue with glitching back if he moved too fast, things occasionally registering too late or not at all when he did something. Zam mostly suffered from her inability to pay attention to her surroundings, falling into the lava when the ice melted from under her feet on the dodgebolt platform or turning on her own teammates and blowing up the ground from under them and sending them into the void.

Both of them were there on the big day, Couri mostly watching from the crowd with Fein being the one that was actually their coach. He for some reason felt like a proud parent when Ash had finished the entire championship with such a flourish with even his glitching around, the arena tense and quiet before it erupted in cheers and the fireworks went off, seeing the pure shock and awe the glitch had on his face as they celebrated.

They found themselves back at HBG with a cake, the four of them being carried on the shoulders of other members as they celebrated, and it’s nice to see how well they had fit into the home, at some point during the training squirming their way into the lives of everyone and making themselves at home, barging into his and Fein’s shared room rather than knocking, and neither of them minded at all.

The base of HBG always adapted to new members, always growing and sometimes shrinking if needed– they don’t control what happens to the base, halls extending and shifting around, and it’s been long enough that they too, easily adapt to the changes that come from their long time home. At some point, it had grown again, a room forming in their hall that held beds for the group, adapting to all of them and always satisfying their needs. They come and go, of course. HBG isn’t their home server, but they come back often, and both of them go and visit all of them sometimes too. Fein comes back from the lifesteal server in… horrible shape, and all of them look guilty for not being there for him, and Fein is wary of their presence for a while, even if he had trained them to win with his own two very hands, but he comes around eventually, able to look at them in the eye again and hold conversations with them after everything that had happened.

They also visit the both of them when they join a short-term server, enjoying surprising people with their relations with the young princess and playful god, coming by to always drop off forgotten lunches to ensure that they were fed. Fein ruffles Ash’s hair and laughs, and Couri comments later to Fein about how Ash seems to be a younger version of him, and Fein agrees.

 Although they had rooms of their own, Couri finds that they quite enjoy invading his and Fein’s nest, squished against the married couple and sound asleep.

Couri stares at the ceiling for a while as Fein traces patterns into his collarbone, the presence of four other bodies around them no longer a new thing, their breathing soft as they sleep the night away.

“When did we become parents of four?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t mind it.”

“I don’t either.”

Chapter Text

The definition of insanity was repeating the same thing over and over again while expecting a different outcome.

There is no such thing as exploring the backrooms. The further you decide to sink yourself into this mess of this cursed place, the less chance you have to ever possibly get out.

Like getting out was ever even an option that could happen.

There’s no such thing as an escape or leaving this infinite place once you landed in the ever changing level of buzzing lights, damp floors and hazy yellow wallpaper plastered on walls that never made sense. There was never such a thing where someone had fallen into the backrooms on purpose because no-clipping through the solid ground of Earth wasn’t something anyone could control when and where it happened, along with it being something entirely out of what a normal person could do.

He never asked to get thrown into what was basically hell for people who haven’t died yet– he didn’t do much in his day to day life and he knows that he most definitely didn’t do something bad enough to be worth throwing into this place that was basically just a death sentence with extra steps. After wandering around for what was probably several hours without any idea of where he was, every turn he took only made matters worse, and attempts to backtrack were futile because he later learned after he was rescued that this place loved playing a silly trick of moving around while you weren’t looking!

Eventually, against his will, he learns how to survive in the anomalous place, slowly becoming a long-time resident that somewhat knew his way around the place because there wasn’t ever a time where you could fully understand the limitless levels and actually fully map them out comprehensively without probably losing your mind along the way. Clearly, whatever separated space that they ended up in loved constantly expanding and adding more and more different levels that always required exploring and cataloging into the growing database that just was supposed to be useful for future unfortunate souls and for their own benefit so that they knew what they could possibly be dealing with when entering some place new.

“God, this place fucking sucks.” Feinberg shivers, entirely too unprepared for this new level they had been spat out into together. Couriway curls a wing around him, pulling him close as they both shiver, a light shining through the iridescent blue ice, and if it wasn’t absolutely freezing, he’d kinda enjoy the sight that reminded him a bit of aquariums back home. They wandered a bit, already tired of exploring tunnel-like areas due to just previously being in the cave systems of level 8, attempting to map out more of the area. Couriway notes that going into the noticeably colder areas of the system ends you up somewhere here, and doing so without any of the correct equipment was probably a death sentence.

He doesn’t know what that means for the both of them.

Both of them are huddled as he continues to smack his radio, hoping to attempt to form some communication with nearby levels even though he knows it probably won’t work, he’s still gonna attempt something because unexpectedly finding a new level never meant any good.

They sit and rest for a bit before getting up and continuing their trek, noting down anything they found interesting enough to maybe later be added to the new page that would be made when they were in safer conditions. With his height, he finds himself having to bend down so that he doesn’t hit the roof, and he’s already cold enough without touching the ice with his bare hands or touching it at all. Couriway doesn’t have to lean down due to being short enough, and Feinberg seems to struggle more with the cold than the avian seems to be even though he’s the one with less dense muscle and bone, more fragile than anything, hollow bones so that his wings could do their purpose. Feinberg’s fur stays fluffed out, tail coiled around the exposed skin at Couriway’s wrist, and they both do their best to stay warm in the conditions that they’ve found themselves in.

The cave tilts downward, so that’s where they go, and it only gets colder from there, teeth starting to chatter uncontrollably as they go the only way they could, even if it makes them colder because they really, really had nowhere else to go.

It’s endless, it feels like.

He remember feeling like this every time he encountered a new level during his first week in the backrooms, mind disconnected from his body as his heart beat out of rhythm, feeling out of control of his own body, a feeling that greatly distressed him because he knows that being out of control of his own actions– of what he does and what he says isn’t enjoyable at all, unable to do anything but be a spectator in his own body until he gets his limbs and actions under his control again.

It was suffocating when he had found out the truth about the place– ha, suffocating was a funny way to put it because technically, he had all the space in the universe in this bubble in time and space where everything was endless, but it still felt like his lungs had shrunk and everything was closing in on him because what do you mean he’s here forever?

Slowly, he gained control over himself again, becoming acquainted then later close friends with those that were also unfortunate enough to have the same fate as him, the group not big enough to be like those big major explorer groups but enough to be known and have a presence when mingling with other communities. It still leaves a tight feeling in his chest when he stares down a hallway that looks like it goes on forever and he knows all too well that it does exactly that, reaching and reaching with the footsteps of someone who had walked down that path and found their demise, it fixes him in place until someone grabs his shoulder and forces him to look away, pulling him from his thoughts.

It’s a gradual thing– it’s something that he really, really hadn’t ever expected to happen in his life and in this place of all places– but somehow, someway, he manages to fall in love.

It’s not– it’s really not one of his best moments but could he be blamed? Once he got over the entire doomed aspect of things and fully accepted that there was no way he’d be getting out and that he’d probably die here, he started fully getting to know the group he found himself with, which included unexpectedly falling absolutely head over heels for an avian with so much life in his eyes that Feinberg finds himself admiring from afar and realizing that he would most definitely trade his own life to give Couriway even the slimmest chance of escaping the backrooms and returning to a world where he should’ve never left and actually live his life to the fullest because the avian is full of stories and dreams, which makes Feinberg realize that he never really was doing much with his life compared to Couriway.

They get along well, almost like they were meant to be. He wonders if things would’ve been different if both of their lives didn’t have the same fate of ending up in a never ending labyrinth, and if they would’ve ever met under normal circumstances.

He watches Couriway dance under the sunlight of the rare levels that offered a moment of solace in the chaos that they were forced to treat as their normal lives, and he just watches, eyes catching on the way sunlight seems to be absorbed into the golden feathers yet also reflected– something that makes Couriway look like the sun himself, spinning with his giggles echoing into the false world around them. He can’t look away, even if his eyes burn from the beauty in front of him, he can’t force himself away from something like this.

Couriway notices him staring, and only smiles wider, face sun-kissed and dimples absolutely adorable and eyes crinkled and Feinberg truly has it bad in one of the worst places to fall in love ever. He pulls Feinberg over– he takes Feinberg’s hand in his, and Couriway is so warm. It’s a dance of some sort– he’s clumsy on his feet but it doesn’t seem to matter because both of them are when it comes to dancing, but he smiles big enough that his cheeks start to hurt, heart pounding in his chest and feeling warm all over, and this is the happiest he’s been since he was born, he’s pretty sure.

Their first kiss isn’t special– it’s frantic, filled with adrenaline and with their hands burning with blood staining their skin, and it’s impulsive– it’s something filled with desperation, a mutual thing as they pant and stare at each other after they part, hearts racing together as they lay on the ground of a new level, ears still ringing and alive. Couriway clutches at his jacket and punches him on the shoulder without any force behind it and sobs at him to never do that again, and he holds the avian close, and he promises, the words leave him and he means it, and they fall silent and let their breathing even out.

His hands are numb.

He doesn’t have thick gloves– they’re thin, fingerless and the most minimum protection one could have from the cold.

How long had it been? Two hours? Three? Four even?

They’ve both lost track.

They’re freezing, and it’s something that they both refuse to accept, even if they’re shivering hard enough that they’re about to collapse– he’s light-headed, terribly so, and Couriway isn’t any better. He still keeps a wing around Feinberg– he attempts to at least, using his other wing to wrap around himself to keep warm, but it’s useless with how the cold seems to infiltrate and pierce them right to the bone. He turns around once, but he finds that his vision is too blurry to make sense of what he sees. The blue blends together, too blurry to make out any  path, and his stomach sinks.

It really is over for them.

They don’t go out in a bang, or in any fight with an entity– no glory attached to their deaths, just a wrong step had led them here– lead them to the very place where they would die. There's no one and nothing to blame. No one could've ever known, and that's the saddest thing. They were doomed regardless, no matter what.

They both collapse at the same time, unable to keep going and accepting that. There’s no frost that’s so cold that it feels like it’s burning him in his hands anymore– there’s no feeling there at all, his sense of touch is gone. They lean against each other, numb, frostbitten fingers clutching to keep their frail bodies close, and his ears weakly pin themselves against his head when something crashes down near them, even while weak, he still puts himself in front to protect Couriway, and he ends up seeing what happened to him rather than feeling it. Shards of ice embedded in his leg like glass, and he simply stares, words frozen in his throat. His leg freezes, the ice spreading like an infection, and it’s a weird sight, something he can’t really comprehend, so he doesn’t try, turning to face Couriway again and pulling him tight against his body.

Their death is a quiet, seamless thing. There’s no fight to survive. Their bodies attempt to fight the cold, warming up exponentially and he’d go to attempt to strip himself because it’s hot and he’s burning, but he can’t get himself to peel his arms from around Couriway’s far too still body, so he doesn’t, and his eyes fall closed like this, Couriway’s face being the last thing he sees.

Couriway looks peaceful, so Feinberg finds peace in this too.

Maybe in another life, they wouldn’t be as unlucky.

Chapter Text

“PLEASE DON’T MAKE ME WORK ALONE IM JUST A FRESHMEN I DON’T KNOW THESE PEOPLE!!!!” Danny shrieks when he’s dropped off at something that he specifically did sign up for to get the plentiful amount of service hours that he was required to have before he could graduate high school, but it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t dread being there all the same. Their school was hosting something for the community and students alike, something that benefitted everyone. Of course, he was here to help set up whatever else needed to be set up after yesterday, something that he also had participated in helping out with and stayed past longer than they were supposed to, getting stuck in a task that couldn’t just be abandoned so they sat it through and he finds himself getting home way later than he had planned for and having to cram in stuff that he had procrastinated on.

Fein ruffles his hair through the driver’s side window, patting him on the shoulder and telling him that he’d be fine and that his older brother would probably drop by later and see Danny during the festival and stay the remainder of the time on a date with his boyfriend before bringing Danny back home when it was all over. For now, he was on his own as Fein left, probably going home to sleep more before coming by when the festival was actually open.

He drags himself to where the rest of his friends are, finding Mongey eyeing the plushies that were prizes for some of the games until Rowl notices and tugs him away from the vividly colored labubu’s that had somehow ended up with a bunch of immature high schoolers who looked extremely tempted to nab one for themselves even though they were reserved for winners after they had paid and won the game at the stand. The way Mongey’s eyes stay stuck to the creatures even while away lets the teachers know that he most definitely wasn’t going to be allowed to run the stand with the.. keychain’s? Danny is extremely unsure of what they actually were even if he always was part of the brainrot jokes when they were mentioned.

Someone senses him standing around and doing nothing so he gets sent away to help with bringing prizes over to be put on shelves, thinking if maybe he could be a player and take one of these plushies home himself.

Wow, he really is no better than all his classmates.

Placed with Hax, rather than being part of the people running activity stands, they deal with food, and he wonders if this is what it felt like to be employed, running around attempting to keep track of orders during the rushes is hard but the feeling of adrenaline coursing through him even if it’s not that much is fun! They make a good team, he thinks.

During his shift (he’s starting to wonder if this counted as child labor if they weren’t really getting any pay from it, but the call of another order draws his attention away from his thoughts as he scurries over to attempt to get it before Hax, a competition that had sparked up during the slow times during their shift), he spots plenty of familiar faces in the crowd. He spots his brother on his date with Couri, arms wrapped around a massive cat plushie with the biggest grin on his face ever while they’re sharing cotton candy– or well, he’s pretty sure he’s just getting candy fed to him by Couri, actually.

He also spots his other brother, Dylan, losing at whatever game was set up in the corner with his boyfriends which is really amusing to watch when he’s bored. Mime comes around a bit and Danny gets left alone when he takes Hax for a walk after picking up his two other kids from whatever they were doing, and Rowl doesn’t look too pleased with the attachment Mongey has on his jeans when they drag Hax from behind the counter, a bright pink labubu that seems to have absolutely captivated the boy.

Eventually he leaves the adults to do the work and walks around, admiring how surprisingly busy the place was. He spots several upperclassmen on and about, mostly on dates like Beef and Vstrid who seem to be enjoying themselves away from the crowd at the dunk tank with the principal hanging over the water. He looks away for a second and hears a splash and large cheers, and he nods in satisfaction, remembering when he had gotten called out for being out of uniform when he hadn’t even stepped foot outside of gym yet.

He busies himself with participating in the activities too, and he does eventually snag himself a labubu that… uh… it doesn’t stay with him for long that’s for sure!

Chapter Text

“Did you see who you wanted to see?”

Death is a nice man.

He accompanies Couriway as he roams the space between the afterlife and life– not that he’s still alive, he just has unfinished duties that he can’t pass on without completing. Death keeps him company so he doesn’t get lost and end up in places he shouldn’t be.

Death is patient.

Couriway hums softly in reply to the question, sitting on his tombstone and staring off into the sunset. His wings hang limply behind him, phasing through the gifts placed at his grave, feathers still bloody and askew, stuck in the moment of time when he had taken his last breath. His legs swing back and forth as he thinks about the question, deep in thought as Death stands beside him, looking off into the sunset too, watching it dip under the horizon with him.

“Yeah.” He answers finally, exhaling slowly to force the heavy feeling on his chest to dissipate. “Yeah, I did. Even if it wasn't in the best of circumstances, I'm content with the fact that I at least saw him again.”

Death is silent. He is unjudging, simply because he doesn’t have the right. He only asks these questions to get a better understanding about why a soul hasn’t passed yet. He only talks for the sake of his role in life.

“Did you say the things you wanted to say?”

The answer to that question is clear even without saying anything.

No, he had never said everything that he wanted to say before his early death. There were hundreds of pages of words that he had written when Feinberg had suddenly uprooted himself from their routine of a life and disappeared abruptly, leaving a hollow gaping hole in Couriway’s life that stayed no matter how much he tried to distract himself from it or forget about it entirely. It’s an impossible task to forget someone that had basically been his other half, his soul deeply intertwined with Feinberg’s, their bond going beyond something that could be put into words. They were friends, but both of them knew that just being friends wasn't enough– it wasn’t a word that fit what they were towards each other. They both trusted each other immensely, and Couriway could count on one hand how many people that had been allowed to preen his wings, and even that would just be two fingers, and removing Feinberg would just make it one. He knows Feinberg, and he knows that man never trusted easy. He ran from the concept of connecting with someone for long enough to know more than just their name, and he had tried to do the same with Couriway before for some reason letting the avian be his exception to his self-made rules that he had later learned that were made because Feinberg was afraid of loving and being hurt by it again.

He knew Feinberg’s body and mind far better than his own, a hand squeezing his heart every time he thought about him during the nights where he had found himself alone in his own nest that felt more than empty even though it was his and no one else's and no one but him should've been found it but Feinberg had been the exception to that. Feinberg had been the exception to everything in his life. His instincts never screamed when Feinberg got too close to his nest, and the sight of the man in or near it made those instincts happy rather than flaring up and making him aggressive at the proximity, and it made him a bit sick to his core. His chest and mind had felt hollow every time he had laid in that nest alone, no warm body against his with gentle breathing that would also accompany his own, and when he turns his head, he expects a soft smile and cyan-brown eyes to look back at him in tired amusement, teasing him for still being awake even though he always would fall asleep before Fein would, but he sees nothing there, and it makes the tight feeling in his throat turn into a sob, clutching at his blankets and wailing into his pillows because it wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fair at all that Feinberg just left like that, leaving nothing behind at all and forcing Couriway to face the world alone after they had been co-existing in each other’s daily lives for so long that without each other, things would feel wrong– the world was vibrant even before Feinberg had come along, but it actually felt alive when the man was around, the air buzzing with electricity and life, and now it’s nothing but the bleak muddied colors that he’s grown disgusted of seeing, and it had felt like the world had died when Feinberg left. He stood out against the murky world, golden wings and royal purple clothes extravagant against the average outfits everyone else wore as the world deteriorated in a blink of an eye.

He searched everywhere for anything that Feinberg had maybe left behind for him, hopeful that he could have some explanation on where he went and why he even abandoned Couriway in the first place. He tore apart his nest at some point, some foolish hope infested in him that maybe there would be something where they were together most– where they were always vulnerable with each other.

It haunts him, the question of why Feinberg left and how he doesn’t have a clear reason behind it he –thinks and thinks and tries to recall all of their interactions and their moments together, trying to find out why– why the man who had never turned his back to anyone just to make Couriway that exception to his rules and beliefs and pull him close every night and let him see the flesh hidden under so many layers and feel his heart underneath his ribs and touch the scars from challenging the sky that no one even knew about just to fucking leave without a single goodbye or explanation on why he would just throw everything away like it had meant nothing at all when it was everything.

And how was Couriway supposed to live his day to day life knowing the exact way Feinberg’s heart would beat when he was asleep or how his breathing would shift from his dreams or the way his expression was so soft when he was hidden from the world in Couriway’s arms where he confessed that he had felt the safest. Oh, what was Couriway supposed to do but mourn a man who had disappeared and made it look like he had never existed in the first place?

He roamed their home– his home, and everything of Feinberg’s was gone. Everything was moved back to make it look like Couriway hadn’t ever lived with another person but himself, and his heart– already cracked and nearby on the brink of shattering– finally breaks when he spots the shelf that had held the things that they made together just gone, their few photos together missing from where they were usually sat, their frames empty.

There's nothing left.

He knows that this was all probably meticulously planned, because it's Feinberg. He does everything with a plan, even if the problem at hand was little or not. He should’ve seen the signs because he knows that man. But what signs were there to even see? How could he have ever known that one day, without reason, Feinberg would vanish from his life completely? There weren’t any signs for him to notice, and if he went back in time to before Feinberg left then he's sure that he still wouldn't be able to spot anything either, because Feinberg was equally impulsive as he was calculating. 

It’s laughable how predictable he must’ve been for Feinberg to so easily just disappear even though just hours before Couriway had seen and felt him breathing in his arms, clutching the avian as close as possible to him, and he wonders if Feinberg mourns him the same way that he currently is now. His nights are unbearable without the other man, and he’s miserable for he doesn’t even know how long before he does something other than mourn the death of a man who never died, but it’s a while. The world never stopped turning for anyone, so Couriway keeps going, even if it feels like his heart has been ripped straight out of his chest, the wound still fresh regardless of how much time passed.

It’s a weird thing, how even after everything, you still have to keep going like it never happened because the world stops for no one.

So he tries, and he keeps trying, and it’s hard to ignore the way his hopes get sent sky-high when he spots a glimpse of pink or blue in the sludge of people around him, because who would ever wear those colors but Fein? Those hopes don’t stay high for long when it immediately clicks after that no, Feinberg didn’t randomly reappear magically after being gone for years now.

Couriway misses him tenfold every single night, but he has to steel himself and tell him to get it together because a normal person wouldn’t still be stuck on a guy that had disappeared without even leaving a letter or anything behind at all.

Fate brings them back together eventually, and it’s not a nice meeting.

He had thought he was hallucinating or dreaming when he spotted colors too specific to be anyone else appear from out of nowhere, gleaming trident in hand as he moved past the waves of people, heads turning towards him as he basically glowed in the murkiness of the city, an air of unwavering authority emanating off of him.

In all his glory, stood Feinberg, uncaring of all of the attention (Feinberg never liked attention) and searching for something– or someone rather, because his eyes connect with Couriway’s, and it’s a moment of silence because Couriway really isn’t sure if he’s breathing or not because this… this was never supposed to happen.

Feinberg was gone, he was– no, Couriway never believed Feinberg was dead, but he knew that seeing the man again was close to zero because when he didn’t want himself found, he knew how to do it. So why? Why was he back? Why was he now staring at Couriway with thousands of incomprehensible emotions swimming in his eyes like he too didn’t expect it even though he willingly came back himself.

It doesn’t make sense.

Feinberg never made any sense.

He closes his eyes, his spectral form unmoving as he sits and remembers, going back to the mere minutes before he had bled out because of his best friend, the last thing he had heard before everything faded into nothingness was a soft broken whisper from Fein, a plea of some sort, words jumbled with a sob escaping the other man before it was all over, and oh man, he would’ve cried if he could when he had come back as a ghost after realizing that basically all of his good memories– the one that people said would always replay in those few minutes before you’re actually gone– were just him and Fein before he had lost the man to reasons that now he’ll never know.

Death stands beside him, passive as he watches the sun fall below the horizon and the moon come up to lay with the stars.

His confession weighed heavy on him, words swirling in his mind as his vision faded, unable to properly see how Fein reacted to what he said– he knows that Feinberg isn’t a man that loves– had he been scared of loving Couriway so much that he ran before it became something more than he could handle? It’s a thought that he occasionally comes to a conclusion with, and his heart is already shattered and frozen still, but it still hurts, knowing that feelings that he held onto no matter how much time passed would’ve never been returned and it would be his fault because he knows that Feinberg was a survivalist first and foremost, why would he ever stick around and stay with someone and god, even fall in love with them too? What hopeful little deluded dream had he been believing in?

He closes his eyes for a while, and when he reopens them, Feinberg kneels in front of his grave.

Feinberg.

He’s here.

Why is he here?

He doesn’t understand.

He can’t hear Fein– he looks at Death for answers, but he’s not there anymore.

Flowers are placed on his gravestone, and Feinberg is talking, and he’s– unfortunately, he’s never been good at reading lips. Fein fiddles with his switchblade, something that Couri had warned him countless times to not do and only scolded him further after he cut his finger, finally learning his lesson and he feels the instinct to do it again, but then Feinberg stops, shoulders sagging with what looked like a sigh.

Feinberg stays for a while, and he keeps him company, leaning against him and attempting to not phase through the man– it takes a bit of energy that he really doesn’t want to exert like this, so he phases through him and it startles him when he’s able to feel Fein’s breathing and heart beat, and oh, it feels like he’s actually laying beside him in bed again in a way– when was the last time they had been this close?

It’s comforting, feeling the low vibrations of Fein’s voice and heart, and if he closes his eyes, he could imagine that nothing bad had ever happened, and it was just another night where he listened to Fein aimlessly ramble until they both fell asleep.

He startles when Fein moves, standing up, and he watches him strip himself of all his belongings, and his world freezes when he spots the photos that had disappeared from his home all that time ago, placed in the bouquet of flowers and he realizes that all this time, Feinberg had kept them.

Feinberg kept them.

He kept photos that would remind him of Couri no matter how far he ran– no matter where he was, he would’ve had something that brought him back to those moments that he had shared with Couri. Feinberg never wanted to run– it doesn’t make sense. If he ran, then why keep parts of his past with him? Why keep photos of someone that he should’ve forgotten and let go of when he ran. He should’ve burnt and discarded all of these photos, yet he didn’t.

Couriway would never be able to understand Feinberg.

But that’s the thrill of it, in a way. If he could never fully understand the man, then he would just have to keep learning, and that’s not a bad thing at all; to keep discovering new things about each other.

Feinberg’s trident– the thing he never parted with– sits in the ground next to his grave, and he watches as Fein takes off running into the horizon, red and blue flickering in the distance.

He’s not a ghost bound to one spot, so he roams, Death staying near and keeping an eye on him, and he keeps his eyes averted from other restless spirits, vengeance clear on their minds while Couriway walks and walks, going somewhere that he doesn’t even know himself.

Oh.

He comes face to face with a detained Feinberg, stuck in a small cell with no sunlight, arms bound and orange really had never been his color.

Death doesn’t stop him from phasing through the cell door and approaching the man on the ground, sitting beside him. Feinberg looks hollow, stripped of life, and it’s probably something that would happen pretty soon with first hand murder being on his list of crimes. He moves to be in front of the man, reaching out to hold his face, and Feinberg’s shivers when his fingers phase through him, eyes opening slowly and looking straight ahead, right through Couriway, but it doesn’t really matter.

He presses a kiss against Fein’s face, and he’s unresponsive of course, but he looks up, and for a moment, they make eye contact before guards drag him away.

Couriway doesn’t stay for the execution, and Death accompanies him back to his grave, and his chest feels a bit lighter.

“Is it too late?” He whispers, looking at Death as he nods, and he has to accept it, even if he really doesn’t want to.

“Will I ever see him again at least? Maybe after I’ve passed on?”

“That is something that cannot happen. You are ready to pass on. You have done everything you wanted to do. He cannot accomplish that same objective. He is doomed to roam forever without you, a punishment for being the cause of your death, even if you forgive him, and even if he regrets it.”

It leaves him speechless, but he can’t argue with Death itself, so he stays quiet.

For a moment– it’s extremely brief, but it’s enough for him– he makes eye contact with bright cyan-brown again before Death blocks it, but that’s enough for him.

That’s enough.

Fein will find a way back to him, he knows that.

He trusts Fein.

Chapter Text

He tumbles down and down and down, skidding to a stop– or rather being forced to a stop when he slams into a tree, the wind being knocked from his lungs, coughing roughly with a pained groan. The wet leaves crumple and squish underneath him as he shifts around on his side on the ground, clutching himself before the pain ebbs away, leaving what felt like a bruise that would become darker and more visible against his pale skin later. His breathing is ragged, panting as he wobbles on his feet, bracing himself on a tree nearby.

Limping along, he mumbles to himself, words carried away by the silencing winds of the Nowhere, his destination a blurry image in his mind every time he closes his eyes briefly, exhaustion tugging at his thoughts. He doesn’t have a destination– he’s never actually had one, he’s just drawn to the rumble of energy that pulls him along, his journey a quiet, solo one, accompanied by no one but himself.

He fumbles for the trident that had skewered itself into the ground when he had fallen, narrowly avoiding being impaled by his own weapon when he had been thrown over by the winds of a brewing storm. He restraps it to his back, continuing his trek through the forest, the trees fading away into bare plains that stretch on and on, reaching into the horizon with no real end in sight.

And so he walks.

And walks.

And walks.

Until he can’t.

For whoever knows how long, he’s just been going in a straight line, and now he’s stopped by a wall that looms over him– which doesn’t exactly stop him, but it forces a pause in his thoughtless walking, looking up at something that his mind isn’t able to process. So he doesn’t look further into it, simple as that. He climbs up into the hollow parts of the wall, something that reaches on into the beyond infinitely, holes making the otherwise solid wall look like a slab of swiss cheese, paths carved out by a bigger entity that resided in a land that was far from normal. It was unstable, parts of the world carved out to allow some path forward to form, even if it was a mind melting thing to comprehend.

It’s cold, almost. There’s snow and ice, but the wind here doesn’t quite reach him, the air questionably still. It’s suffocating, kinda, which is weird because the place was open, while being constricting in some places, it was overall open enough to see the sky when the terrain reached out towards nothingness that continued on forth, and he has to be careful with where he steps and where he jumps from because one wrong step would send him tumbling to his death, and it wasn’t like he was afraid of heights, it was just a harrowing thought.

He sure does talk a lot about caution when he’s not very careful at all, thoughts drifting off which makes him forget about his steps and where exactly he’s going, a clipped shout getting muffled by the scarf over his face when he plunges his trident into the stone as hard as he could, attempting to get the prongs to sink into the stone and keep him dangling there rather than falling to his death immediately, which gives him a moment to think about what the hell to do in this situation. It’s more of the question of what he could really do rather than how he could even get out of this because he has basically nothing to help him, and his only tool is stuck in the wall and preventing his death currently.

 So much for being careful.

There’s the thought to swing himself up, but when he swings a bit, his trident groans and wobbles far too much to be safe, sending a jolt of fear through his heart when it slides further down, prongs bending under his weight and the pull of gravity, desperate to make him fall to his inevitable death. Which, looking at his current state, might happen sooner than he would’ve liked.

He doesn’t really accept it– he’s actually quite pissed that this would be how he goes out after his big grand journey that just basically lead to nowhere at all, but he is actually stuck in a place called Nowhere because… because he’s a doomed child, and he’s here for all eternity or something– he doesn’t remember, nor does he really want to. Last thing he really remembered was struggling to sleep, then what felt like he was sleeping forever before being woken up again, then becoming restless all over again, unable to ever get a wink of sleep that always made him more agitated, caretakers forcefully separating him from other children when he lashed out, punishing him by making him watch them play while he was trapped indoors.

Man, what a boring way to go out. Why couldn’t it be due to something big and scary? Not that it would matter, then he probably would be remembered for anything either.

He screams when arms suddenly wrap around him and pull him away from his trident in the wall, sweaty hands sliding from the handle as he scrambles– the tight grip scaring the life out of him as he flails around because what the hell was grabbing him– this was NOT what he meant by wanting to not die in a boring way!! What else could’ve possibly been out here that had the ability to even reach him like this???

“Ohmygod– stop– you’re gonna make me drop you please stop flailing around you’re really heavy–!” Someone's voice barely makes it past the buzzing in his ears and the flapping of wings that he’s finally picked up on, and why should he trust a random voice like this–? Or, well, maybe he should because he kinda did just get saved by them but he’s still being carried concerningly high up and he really doesn’t wanna fall so maybe he should stop flailing but that’s a bit hard to calm down when he’s still scared for his life at the moment.

Unfortunately, his unrelentless flailing does eventually cause them to crash land on a patch of grass that was miraculously there for them by the odd terrain that made it look like the world was falling apart and struggling to put itself together again. Both of them groan there, and he does get to his feet quicker than the other, eyes landing on the wings filled with ruffled feathers now after their rough landing. They don’t look one little bit amused at him at all, dusting off their dirty dark purple and gold clothing, looking like they were from a different era than him, maybe they had been in the Nowhere for longer, or they had been taken when the world outside and before the Nowhere had still been stuck in the royal ages, though they wear no crown so he assumes that maybe they were just dressing like that for the fun of it, or maybe they actually were a prince and had lost their crown due to unfortunate events.

Hmm, lots to think about.

They don’t appreciate his staring though, because they narrow their eyes at him and poke the center of his forehead, getting swatted away with a hiss. They scoff at him, turning and taking off into the sky with a few strong flaps of their wings and he watches them go before looking at his surroundings to see if there was a safe way to get down from wherever they had crash landed together.

There isn’t any, actually. Every side he looks down, he has to take a step back so he doesn’t vomit from the vertigo that he gets, closing his eyes tightly. Though, he really should keep his eyes open because in the next second his trident flies through the air and pins him to the tree that he had been near, prongs embedded in his clothing and there’s only one thing he knows could’ve gone and found his trident from where it was, and the bird boy flutters in front of him, highly amused by his situation with his own weapon.

“I think that trident of yours causes you a lot more trouble than it does with helping,” they chortle with a smirk, watching him basically fight the damn thing to free himself and ripping part of his outfit as a result. Their eyes are covered by cloth, and he wonders a bit how they could see. Maybe the cloth was thin, and what were they hiding underneath?

“It’s been a perfectly fine companion so far, actually.” He snaps back, clutching it protectively and the avian crosses their arms with a scoff.

“I’m pretty sure it just nearly caused your death.”

“It saved me!”

“You would’ve fallen to your death regardless if I hadn’t been there to find you and bring you to safety– and I brought your trident back for you! A thank you would be appreciated!” They squawk when he attempts to poke them with his trident, glaring at him and sticking their tongue out at him before flying out of his reach and hovering there.

“You’re acting like I made you save me. You went out of your own way to grab me while you were doing whatever you were doing instead of just ignoring me and continuing on.”

“Yeah, right, because I should just let someone die when I could’ve saved them– ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?” Okay, well, awesome. He has an absolute lunatic of a bird now following him as he attempts to make his way through the messy terrain, forced to stop when he meets the edge of a drop where he knows that there’s absolutely no way for him to get down without actually dying or breaking a limb badly, and he can’t just go back because that’s no such thing when you’re this far out already.

“You want some help now?” They are far, far too amused at his current situation right now, and he scowls at them before begrudgingly nodding, stiffening up when he gets grabbed and carried over the yawning chasm, a sigh of relief leaving him when his feet touch solid ground again.

“Not a fan of heights?” He only grunts quietly in reply to their tiny poke at him. “Only not a fan of them when I’m being dangled over a drop that would kill me instantly.” They both fall into silence after that, the avian boy hovering beside him as he leaps across pits that he doesn’t look down into and attempts to move forward in a terrain that is hellbent on only generating sideways.

“Why are you helping me? You could just leave this place if you wanted on your own, you can literally fly.” He plays with a fallen feathers, running it between and across his fingers, feeling the soft plumage and it’s a gentleness that he hasn’t felt in a while.

“Having a bit of company never hurt anyone, and besides, not many ever really appear in this place.”

“So when I find a way out you’ll leave me?”

“If you find a way out.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Dunno, find out for yourself.”

“You are the worst companion ever.”

“Hey! I saved your life! I’m the best actually!”

“Are you gonna hold that over my head forever now?”

“Just making sure you remember who’s responsible for the fact that you’re still walking around like this.”

Their conversation ends when he hurls his trident towards them, regretting the decision to throw it the exact second it disappears out of view. It leaves his hands empty without anything to hold, and he attempts to hide how much it affects him, but it seems to be obvious enough regardless that the avian disappears before reappearing and chucking it at him, the prongs digging into the dirt that were far too close to hitting his feet.

“Good throw.” He huffs out quietly, refusing to not acknowledge that the other boy did have a pretty good ability to hit whatever he was probably aiming at. They grin triumphantly at him, and he turns away from their way too bright smile. It’s the only thing he can focus on since their eyes were covered with cloth that was tightly secured to their head practically, and he grits his teeth under his scarf, for what reason? He doesn’t know.

It’s a weird journey. The terrain doesn’t change too much, and he feels like he’s walking in circles. There seems to be no end, and maybe this is what they had meant by what they had said earlier.

He’s starting to get really tired of not knowing this nameless boys.. well, name.

“What can I call you?” They’re both still on the move, but a bit of idle conversation never hurt anyone.

They hum quietly, thinking for a moment. “You can call me Wings, easy to remember right?” Their wings flare out with a sharp smile, and he rolls his eyes at the sight. “What about you? Got a name or are you just brooding and mysterious?” He snorts, finding a smile tugging at his lips at the other boy's words.

“Just call me Strike, doesn’t get more simple than that.” And for some reason, he’s smiling when the avian looks at him with an extremely amused grin that makes their eyes squint from their smile presumably, he just seeds the way wrinkles form from the bit that isn’t covered by a blindfold yet.

He doesn’t remember the last time he smiled like this.

They drop down and bump their shoulders together, grinning brightly with Strike uncontrollably reflecting the smile.

It’s a walk that they get lost in, just paying attention to each other and talking– bonding, actually.

Their nice conversation gets stopped when Wings abruptly drops to the ground and tugs him behind a wall, wings encapsulated around him and a hand over his mouth when he wiggles in his grasp, glaring at the other boy that sends the glare right back and tightens his grip around his mouth. He hisses quietly, but he stops his struggling when talons dig into his cheek as a warning. It’s a long moment of nothing, and he debates biting Wings hand before he feels the ground beneath them both shake from thundering footsteps, and he feels the golden feathers curl tighter around his body as he attempts to glance out at what could possibly be shaking the world as it walks, but Wings stops him with a tight hold, shaking his head.

“What was that?– What is that?” He whips around and hisses quietly, demanding answers but he gets grabbed instead, pushed down to the ground by his shoulders.

“Did you harm anything while you were here? There’s not much to hurt, but– still, did you punch or threaten or harm any of the people that stayed here?” Wings is frantic, and he has to take a moment to think back to if he had really done anything. Were there people that he had passed by? He had only seen weird amalgamations of creatures when he had shortly entered the glitched remains of a world, keeping them a trident's length away as he carefully navigated the silent chunk of world. Were those the people he was talking about? He did stab a few in self defense when he had gotten cornered and they were getting too close for his comfort, but they were gonna hurt him!.

“Do you count towards those people? Because I threw a trident at you,” Strike points out in a hushed voice, and for a moment, Wings thinks about it, expression shifting between several before shaking his head aggressively.

“No, I didn’t originate here. This isn’t my home. That– that thing doesn’t care about me at all.” He glances over to the giant for a moment while he replies, voice shaking for a moment before it fixes itself when he clears his throat.

“Damn, doesn’t matter regardless. I did poke some pretty weird blank faced figures– they attacked me first, don’t look at me like that!” Seriously, can he be blamed for acting in self defense? It’s his first time here! How was he supposed to know that he’s supposed to just let himself get pummeled by whatever the hell those things were.

“I wouldn’t be looking at you like this if I didn’t know that you just doomed us both. That thing is an unrelentless protector that doesn’t awaken unless the people under its guard and it doesn’t particularly want to go back to its sleep until it kills us, y’know, not a big deal at all!” He really shouldn’t let Wings stress him out like this but the other kid did also just have a better knowledge of the area overall, but he would’ve appreciated this knowledge way before!

“It’s pretty big compared to us, we can just sneak past it right?” He reaches to put a hand on the other boy's shoulder, feeling extremely awkward about it.

“Yes, because a kid who looks like he just walked out of candy land and another with bright yellow wings are extremely sneaky, let’s do it.” Wings drawls sarcastically while he shoulders his hand off and brushes the spot where he had put his hand. Strike rolls his eyes at him, shoving him from the back, crossing his arms with a huff before getting hit in the face with the feathers, getting a mouthful of the dirty things and gagging, coughing them out and waving the downy feathers away.

“You don’t have to be sarcastic about it, I’m just suggesting it. I don’t hear you having a better idea.” They stick close to the shadows, words biting at each other and after a bit, Wings relents with a sigh, wings slumping down and he looks Strike dead in the eyes.

“Fine, we’ll attempt to get past, but I want you to know neither of us know where we’re going and how to get out, and I’ve already looked quite a bit, so I hope you can find a way out before that guardian finds and kills us both, I’ll go distract it from you running around.”

He watches the other boy shake his wings out, taking off and hovering in place when Strike calls out. “Wait, you’re what?? You’re risking your life for me? What are you doing!?”

“I don’t think you’re quite mobile enough to distract a guy that big, so try to find something quick!” What? What the hell was Wings doing? He doesn’t– the avian most definitely knew that he didn’t know anything about this place and he’s supposed to find something that would let them out?? This place seemed like it was infinite!

“What– what would happen if I don’t find anything?”

“Well, let’s just hope that you do.” Wings disappears into the sky after that, and he scrambles to get a move on, because he’s not just gonna stand around and be useless– especially not when his companion is out there risking his life for him after he basically caused this mess.

Okay, what is… what is he supposed to do?

There’s no real way out of this, it’s a loop. It’s something never-ending because he’s pretty sure as long as he hugs the wall, he won’t leave this large chunk. What can you do when you can’t get out of a loop? You start making up bullshit.

For as long as he’s roamed the Nowhere, he’s sometimes heard or even seen stuff like portals to different sections of the world– though it wasn’t like you could naturally achieve making one, the kids in Nowhere were special, usually. He’s heard things about the weird and the normal, and he’s one of those weird ones. Along with Wings too because it wasn’t like feathery appendages on your back were normal at all, glowing in the sun and providing extended flight and the ability to navigate between large distance areas was something obviously not possible in any reality.

Strike is normal at first glance, but his attachment to his trident and the odd pull he feels towards a strange energy that he actually doesn’t know where it comes from is what makes him different from the others, even if it isn’t very special. Sometimes when it rains, his chest feels tighter than normal with his trident buzzing in his grasp, but he hasn’t really done anything with that because he’s actually concerned about what it would be.

What is he thinking about? God, he has to focus.

There was a dark material usually associated with portals he’s pretty sure– well, he’s not that confident but it’s the only thing he knows, kinda. He’s scrambling for anything here! The terrain forces him to take riskier jumps, but a lot of his stumbles are caused by the fact that his eyes are searching the sky for the small blur that flickers past now and then, the ground underneath him throwing his balance off when his feet touch the grass, and he has to use his trident more than once to save himself from falling off edges, shoving it into the grass and attempting to stabilize himself before it ended worse than it was going, knowing that his savior was currently too preoccupied to come and save him if he ended up dangling from his trident again.

He hates this! He really does! He feels a bit helpless, fumbling for something as Wings stays in the sky and keeps the guardian from noticing Strike, heavy arms dragging through the ruined world, and for a moment he questions if the holes in the shifting walls had been made by the protector made of nothing but iron and whatever enchantments that were engraved in it to actually make it come to life like this. He’ll give props to the– er, whatever those creatures had been… for being able to actually make something like this to protect them if harm came to them.

Glad to know at least they had something to protect them if harm came their way.

Well, now isn’t really a time to be bitter because these damn minerals are darker to move than expected and he really needs to focus– how was he going to light this? Ugh, dammit. He hates not being prepared for things.

He bristles when raindrops land on him, head snapping towards the sky and seeing a storm gather, and a chill runs up his spine when it begins to pour, and when he check the skies again he can’t see Wings up there anymore, the giant still stumbling around and swinging wildly. His trident shivers in his hold, glowing like it always did, and the rumble of lightning brewing resonates through his chest, forcing a heavy exhale from him.

The portal is somewhat assembled, he doesn’t care– he’s pretty sure there isn’t any time to care about how presentable the portal was because for a moment through the darkness that had shrouded the place due to thick clouds blocking the sun, he spots Wings, rapidly losing height and distance from the guardian due to the aggressive rain that had begun pounding down upon them both.

Wings is blind in the sky when it rains, Strike realizes. He observes the frantic movements made by the avian, zigzags in the air that lack any sense of direction, the winged boy nearly getting slammed by the heavy arms of the golem and knocked out– or even worse, crushed to death when it brings its arm down rather than swatting at the boy and attempting to knock him out of the air.

Thunder strikes, and his trident whines, filled with energy that he doesn’t know what to do with. The portal still needed a light– one that he didn’t have but it wasn’t like it was gonna light on it’s own because of the rain but–

He yelps when his trident suddenly shocks him, burning his hand and he basically throws it, shaking out his hand from the pain, hissing. Apparently, that had been enough for his trident because right where the tip bounces off the dark material, a bright light flashes and basically blinds him and also deafens him for a moment, his ears ringing before his vision clears and the noise in his ears fades, and the portal in front of him is alive.

It glows purple, swirls dancing on the surface and it’s inviting almost. He’s a bit transfixed by the sight because did he do that?

He doesn’t have much time to figure out what he’s done and appreciate it because Wings crash lands beside him, sliding in the mud before slowing to a stop, drenched to the core with his wings dark and covered in dirt and absolutely soaked in mud now, and he’s only dazed for a bit before he scrambles up and shoves Strike into the portal before the arm of the guardian comes down on both of them, Strike disappearing into the swirls first before he falls through himself and sends them tumbling out into a new, unknown place before the portal that had just been made was crumbled completely.

Clutching his head, he groans, stomach churning as he struggles to breathe and get his vision to stop swimming around. His trident vibrates nearby him, and he rolls over on his back and pushes it away so he doesn’t hear the god awful clanging sound that it makes against the ground. Stuff digs into his palms when he uses his hands to support himself and push himself to his knees, blinking at the red, brittle ground below him with dust that sticks to his hands.

Wait, red? Grass was green– not, not red– not this weird dirty color–

He scrambles to gain a bearing of his surroundings, blinking away the fog that clouds everything and the murky red haze that’s settled over basically everything, all the colors muddied and the red was more of some dried out color instead of being vibrant and alive like the grass had been. There’s no grass here either, just brittle, dusty ground. It stains his hands, a bit like terracotta but he pays little mind to the coloring on his hands as he looks for Wings, spotting the avian sprawled out nearby, wings bent weirdly, and he reaches over carefully, fingers barely graving his shoulder before the non-crooked wing springs out and smacks him in the face, making him cry out in pain because that hurt. It hurt more than expected, last time he had been hit by the soft appendages it hadn’t done much but annoy him, but this time it made him groan and clutch his nose.

The mud caked on the feathers had apparently solidified, which was strange because just mere moments ago both of them had been soaked to the core due to the sudden thunderstorm. He finds that his own clothing is also dry, and Wings is actually awake now, grimacing at the state of his wings, fingers reaching out to poke the filthy feathers with a wince.

“Cool, no– no really, that’s awesome. That’s just splendid, my wings are unusable now! Isn’t that just the best thing that could happen?” Wings grows more and more agitated by the second, talons sinking into the dried mud of his wings and Strike grabs his wrists to stop him, staring at him in the eyes before the avian lets out a heavy sigh. He pulls the other boy up to his feet, using his trident as a walking stick as they move away from the warbling portal, attempting to see where they had ended up. They leave the small cave that they had been spat out in and immediately get blasted with pure heat, not even any steam or something like that, just nothing but suffocating heat that makes him dizzy for a moment at how suddenly the temperatures in his body had shifted, going from freezing to actually sweating all the water out of his body in mere minutes.

Wings winces every now and then when he moves and his left wing shifts with his shoulder, bent in an odd angle that looks uncomfortable, even without being caked under the layer of mud that had been brought through. Strike glances over now and then, keeping him stable and cautious with keeping the avian on his feet as they both slowly trek through the unfamiliar environment. They settle nearby an odd tree– it glows a bit, almost like veins crawling through the dark bark, pulsing teal. His attention is stolen from the tree when Wings hisses quietly, the feathered appendages sprawled out in front of him, expression stuck in a grimace as he picks at the dirt and grime, struggling to reach the parts that were closer to his back.

“Can I help?” He’s already reaching out before he gets an answer, and the other boy gives him a side-eye before reluctantly spreading his wings out wider, a quiet acceptance of the offer.

“Try not to rip my feathers out,” is the only thing that he really gets from his partner when he lays his fingers into whatever fluff he could feel through the hardened mud, and he’s starting to think that this might be more like clay than anything. Wings sits with his legs drawn up, arms crossed over his knees and chin resting on his forearms, staring into the red haze, the glow of lava far below barely breaching the smog that had layered over everything. Technically, he isn’t really able to see the fog or the murky redness of the biome– the blindfold over his eyes blocks everything, and he’s a bit surprised to see it still covering the boys eyes even after the entire encounter with the golem and through the strong rain that had been pelting down upon him while in the rain.

Mud is weird to get rid of. He sits and focuses, cracking the dried layers and carefully peeling it from the gentle plumage, and he spots the fine details in the hardened mud, the imprint clear as ever, and it’s a bit beautiful. He doesn’t stare at the way the texture is basically identical to how the feathers feel at the moment– a bit stiff, still dirty and there’s obviously no way to really clean these at the moment since water seems like it would evaporate immediately in this environment, so he hope that Wings won’t be too uncomfortable like this.

When he reaches the other wing, he isn’t sure how to approach it. It’s bent, so he suspects that maybe it’s broken, or something along the lines of that– he’s never really dealt with stuff beyond a few deep scratches. Wings head turns a bit towards him when he moves to the other wing, but he turns away soon later, presumably silently giving him permission to continue to clean his wings.

He gently pokes and prods at the appendages, hearing the way Wings hisses and flinches when he nudges something that does not look like it’s supposed to be pointing in that direction. His touch runs up the gentle feathers, brushing against the other boys back before stepping away for a moment. Blue vines reach up around them, curling towards something, somehow growing upward without any support at all but still flimsy enough to be harvested with just his hands, the vines noisily collapsing and falling onto him, getting momentarily tangled in the thick teal vines before freeing himself and setting back down next to Wings.

“Don’t scream. I don’t know what I’m doing.” It’s probably the worst warning he could’ve given before abruptly pushing whatever the hell was sticking out weirdly back into where it probably belonged, barely giving the other boy any time to register the warning before a shriek explodes from Wings at the pain that shot through his wing attached to his back, snapping around and glaring at Strike through the cloth covering his eyes. He pokes Wings until he lets his back face Strike again, something that he does slowly and reluctantly. “This might be a bit impractical but… this might help.” His trident is a bit heavy for the avian’s wings, but he makes do anyway, pushing the wing closed and using the trident as some sort of brace for… something. The vines are some makeshift thing to hold it in place, and he reaches towards his own scarf, thinking for a second.

Wings can’t see. Well, he can but also not fully through the blindfold. It’s not– he doesn’t actually know what the avian could see and what he couldn’t, but it’s not like he's hiding too much at all. He doesn’t trust these vines too much, and cloth is easier to tie than thick vines. Wings perks up a bit when he feels the soft cloth against his feathers, and he does attempt to turn, but Strike catches his head and stops him, making him look forward again.

“Could’ve given me a warning before you decided to snap my wing like that..” The shorter boy grumbles and sniffles, rubbing away the tears that had gathered in his eyes before contorting his body to turn around to brush his fingers against the cloth and vine, fingertips hovering over the cold material of Strike’s trident, humming quietly when he actually feels it. “Didn’t expect you to give up your trident for me like this.”

He shrugs, pushing the extra vines to the side. “It’s a bit heavy, you should get used to it before we keep on going, your wing is a bit fucked.” His hands are caked in what feels like dry spores and dirt, and it’s a weird feeling when he clenches his hands into fists, staring at them for a moment. It feels weird to actually feel air brushing against the lower half of his face, his scarf now wrapped around dirty golden feathers that still seem to glow even in the fog that clouds his vision. He wonders if it’s okay for them to be breathing in this air because it does feel thicker– like every couple breath is suffocating him, his lungs feeling a bit tighter before his next exhale gets rid of the feeling.

They fall into a good pace, him navigating the spore filled forest, gently poking the new textures and tugging Wings away from vines that he could get caught in and trees that he couldn’t see. Eventually, their hands end up intertwined, just to make their journey easier, and neither of them mind, accepting it easily without question or even saying anything. He’s on high alert, and although both of them are quiet, he hears the screams of something else existing too, and he hears creaks sometimes, like the world couldn’t bear its own weight and was straining to keep itself together– he stares at the ceiling sometimes, standing there in silence and hearing how it groans, a cry for help that no one could really give.

The fact that there’s no sky but rather a ceiling covering what would’ve been a sky is what makes him feel trapped in a way. He wonders if it’s better that Wings couldn’t see because it probably wouldn’t feel too good to realize that you were basically trapped and had no real access to the sky in a place like this, something that doesn’t mix too well with avians at all, something about them needing to be free and feel the nice fresh cold air on their face as they flew. In Wings current state, he’s pretty sure flying isn’t something that’s gonna happen in a while, and it looks more dangerous to fly here than anything else, something about the eerie wails echoing in the distance and the shrieks that accompany them, along with the world sounding like it was gonna collapse upon itself in any moment.

He catches flickers of something else here too– tall and gnarly, lanky in frame and looking like those villagers he had seen back in the world where the sky still existed but the world was being eaten by itself, corroding and corrupting by repairing itself all at the same time. The ground beneath them squishes as they walk on it, and it feels weird– feels cold but unbearably hot at the same time, the foliage makes it feel like there’s life here, but it’s all fungus– it’s all spores and something that takes from those that had once been alive to survive.

The figures flicker in and out, piercing eyes staring through him as he looks at them, but not in their eyes– never in the eyes. The thought makes acid burn at the back of his throat for reasons that he can’t explain, but he doesn’t think, he just moves through the weeds and steps on mushrooms and squeezes past vines, Wings hand tightly grasped in his and the other boy trailing behind, blindly trusting Strike in the most literal and metaphorical sense.

“Do you know where you’re going?” It’s a reasonable question to ask when you’re getting led blindly through an environment that you can’t see at all– although Wings could probably see a bit–flying blind isn’t something that really could be done, and whatever the avian was able to see had probably been blocked out by the unforgiving thick clouds of ash and smog that sunk towards the ground of the biome, reaching for the blue warts that were facsimiles of the grass that they were used to.

“Not really,” he sighs, “I’m just going where we actually can– not like this place is really made for us… or anything at all, now that I think about it.” 

“It’s most definitely not made for me because there’s absolutely no light here for me to use to see– I’m already blind enough!” Wings grumbles under his breath, and Strike tugs him up an edge after he had been helped up by the smaller boy, only smiling a bit in amusement.

“There’s not much to see anyway, It’s dark and just really, really red– apart from this area, it’s blue and weird, and I don’t wanna be here anymore.” He tightens his hold on the avians hand and attempts to speed through the place that feels like it’ll never end, and eventually, they do escape the demanding purple eyes that had been boring into his back the entire he had been inside of that biome, finally taking a risk to turn around and regretting that decision immediately when purple eyes lock with his, a shriek piercing his ears and making him dizzy and short of breath, his blurred vision offering little help to spot where the threat was coming in from.

No matter how hard he squints, he can’t see, so he turns and runs, dragging Wings along who’s shouting questions at him that he can’t hear nor offer the answer to. He runs blind, hearing a cacophony of screams echo behind him, and the avian behind him stumbles with yelps, and for a moment, Strike stops just to lift the smaller boy up onto his back, making this easier for both of them.

The figures are too tall to reach them if they slide under the caps of mushrooms, but they’re still hot on their tails, fully just focused on them both regardless of what the terrain was– it didn’t matter to them because they would just teleport past anything, and it’s horrifying. It’s a horrifying realization that no matter how far they go, they’ll be caught up to as long as they aren’t continuously moving.

As long as they can’t reach them, they’ll be okay.

He scrambles across crumbling ground, pebbles and tiny bits digging into the soles of his feet as he attempts to block out the deafening cries of anger while stumbling onto cracked dark bricks, coughing from the burn at the back of his throat as he ducks into a spot deep in the dark walls, sliding Wings off his back as he coughs his lungs out, struggling to breathe. His limbs ache, and the dusty air that enters his lungs as he desperately gasps for oxygen is heated– it does little to clear his foggy mind, tears gathering in his eyes because everything hurts.

The air feels molten as it drags down towards his lungs, hands clawing at his throat, and he feels another hand run its palm against his spine, dragging up and down and rubbing circles into his flesh through his thin shirt, his thicker jacket having been long discarded due to the hot and stuffy environment.

His head throbs when he’s able to get control over his breathing again, a whine high in his throat when he flops over on his side, laying on the heated ground for a moment, waiting for the world to stop spinning. He exhales roughly, coughing a bit still, the taste of soot and ash sticking to the roof of his mouth.

“God, you nearly scared me half to death! What the fuck was all of that??” Wings' shrill voice and chirps pierce his sensitive ears, and he licks the back of his teeth, biting his tongue to tell him to watch his language or shut up for a moment, and he finds that it’s strangely out of character for him to be thinking about either of those things. Maybe this air wasn’t safe to  inhale at all, and it should be obvious because he had just basically nearly died attempting to get some oxygen into his brain after running for far longer than he ever had in a new environment. He hisses weakly when he gets hit by a feathery appendage, swatting it away before actually getting up, dusting himself off and letting his vision focus on the avian beside him.

Wings is doing fine for the most part, several scrapes are present on him and bits of soot all over his face, but his blindfold still covers his eyes, and his expression that isn’t covered is morphed into a concerned and frustrated one, jabbing a finger in Strike’s direction that he nudges away when it misses. They help each other back up, hands connected again.

“Are you gonna answer my question about what that all was?” He’s poked from the back, and he huffs quietly.

“Bad idea to look at things in the eyes here, made a mistake that nearly cost us our lives. They could teleport, and they were pretty tall– like the people from where we used to be, but more violent. They were less forgiving– less peaceful, more aggressive than anything.” He braces against a crumbling wall as they climb up stairs, the brick falling apart under their feet and hands. His voice trails off as his head turns and follows a step that fell from the structure, tumbling back into the darkness they came from. His fingers trail over the dusty walls, feeling the cracks embedded in the surface, eyes drawn to the gold that hides between the dark bricks, pulsing in the dark.

“Why’d you stop? And that sounds… scary. Are we safe from them now?”

“I’d hope, but they seemed to really want us dead, so I’ll be on high alert for us.” His head turns at the sound of quiet shifting that hadn’t come from him or the avian, noises clicking through the structure, echoing through the cramped spaces they pulled themselves through, reaching the edge and he watches Wings breathe a sigh of relief, the appendages on his back twitching, only one of them spreading wide open due to the other still being tied to his trident, and he stands to admire the sight for a moment before he hears faint snorts that become more frantic, and Wings hears it too, wings folded up again and looking back towards him with a concerned expression.

“What the hell was that?” Wings hisses quietly, and he wordlessly reaches to grab the smaller boy's hand and pulls him away from the edge and behind a broken part of the wall, hiding them in the darkness. They’re pressed close as a stampede of footsteps suddenly storm down, gold and flesh blurring past them, their breathing harsh as squeals and snarls pass by, bi-legged and quadruped creatures stumbling on top of each other to get further ahead of each other, no care for each other due to some mysterious force that takes every ounce of their attention.

There’s sharp squeals– it’s ear-piercing, and they sound more like shrieks than anything else, but it meshes with the crowd that seems endless, and they’re stuck together, pressed close as the hoard tramples each other. A loud squeal terribly close to them makes their hearts stop, beady, pale white eyes staring directly at him before it screams and runs at them, tusks sharp and swinging wildly as it tries to squeeze into the hole of the wall, both of them pressing back and away from the huffs and grunts, drool dripping onto the dusty bricks. It backs up a bit, rearing back to get ready to charge and force its way in to get them, and both of them brace for impact and to fight back, freezing in place when a large hoof comes down and crushes the hog flat. Nothing notices nor cares, hooves continuing to stomp over the body that lays limp, both of their eyes stuck on the way the life drains from the tiny body– tiny compared to everything around it, and it twitches a leg, attempting– reaching and struggling to put weight on that mangled leg before something steps on that hoof, bone piercing skin and entirely shattered in the flesh from the force that had trampled the tiny limb.

“That could’ve been us.” He nods stiffly with Wings words, backing away towards the back of the gap in the hole, sitting down next to the young avian. Both of them can’t look away from how the corpse continues to be trampled, gore plastered across the dark brick and he wonders, for a moment, his thoughts bring up the possibility that these bricks had been stained dark with the blood of those that had been misfortunate enough to stumble on a step and fall, not a single soul turning back to check on those that were being trampled.

What a horrifying thought.

The crowd passes dreadfully slowly, and he wonders how the both of them had even managed to avoid them in the first place. He takes the first steps out of the dark crack, unable to stay hunched for longer, and Wings also seems to be relieved to escape the cramped spot, feathers twitching as they slowly climb the stairs, trying to ignore the way their feet step on something slippery and wet.

He makes an uneasy noise, pressed close to the wall when he hears grunts and snorts, squeezing Wings hand tight as he peers past the wall. Something lurks, roaming around and patrolling the broken halls, something sharp dragging before it. They keep their lips sealed as they pull themselves through the shadows and dust, shuffling along past the patrolling guard, golden axe-head glinting in the light produced by the slowly oozing lava that cascaded down the open parts of the structure. It sniffs the air, once, then twice, as they sneak towards the stairs, and it squeals sharply when its dead white eyes land on both of their tiny figures at the very foot of the steps. He shoves Wings ahead of him, stumbling up stairs that were never made for the young– never made for anyone like them, because why would children ever be in a place as dangerous as this?

It shrieks, and they run through halls and gaps that they’ve never seen before, scratching themselves on exposed broken bricks and tripping in gaps that didn’t trouble anything but them, and their frightened turns lead them to where all the inhabitants had gathered, crowds circling piles of glistening gold, their glow enhanced by the lava that flowed through everything. The shrieks from their chaser produce enough of a ruckus to break the trance that all of the hogs had been set in by the sight of the treasure, and they don’t hesitate before joining the chase, and Strike sees the way that they only pay attention to Wings, their eyes glued to the golden feathers which also glow from the light of the heat, glistening and still beautiful in their dirtied state.

He can’t let them ruin what’s already so close to being destroyed. He can’t let them hurt him like this.

He can’t.

Their run is pushed further up the structure, and he’s scared– he’ll admit it! He’s fucking scared of the way that he can hear the rumble of so many feet pounding against the ground to catch up to them, and they’re so defenseless that he’s not sure what else to do. Wings reaches the top of the structure first, it’s flat up there– weirdly so, but they’re so high up, and he knows– oh, oh he knows that there’s no way out of this for him.

But there is one way out for Wings.

He rips away the vines that he had tied– even though he knows the time is limited, he still is careful– he ties his scarf around his trident and pushes it into the avians hands, and he doesn’t give time for any questions to be asked before he shoves the other boy off the edge, unable to see what actually happened to Wings before hands wrap around him and crush his arms to his body, and he feels his ribs creak– he feels them bend before they snap under the tight hold, and he chokes, a metallic taste flooding his mouth as he coughs up blood and his vision blurs as he loses air and any sense of his surroundings, unable to even fight back for a second– helpless to the dangers that no kid should’ve ever faced alone or even at all at an age like this.

At least maybe Wings has a chance at survival, if not him, then the other boy had some chance.

…

…

His vision swims, lungs screaming for air as he crawls from the depths of the ocean, kicking against the hands that tried to drag him back down, ripping a chipped and bent large fork from the rotten hands of the lurking monsters and swinging downwards as dots crowd his vision.

The waves spit him onto cold sand, and he coughs and gags, trembling on his side, weakness imbued in his limbs as he lays under the sun that doesn’t provide any warmth at all.

His heart beats, and he feels short of breath, chest tight as something in him pulses, an outside tugging on the nerves of his body. He cracks an eye open, staring at a bird that landed near him and starts pecking at the sand, staring at it as it stares at him before it flies off, and he follows it until it disappears into the clouds high above.

He closes his eyes again, and his heart thunders in his ears.

He feels empty, like he has no purpose, but he’s compelled to find one for himself– to fill the aching in his chest that makes it hard to breathe as he lays without movement. He starts moving when the sun falls below the horizon, and the ebb of hurt in his heart lessens, but the throb in his head doesn’t go away.

He is alone, with no one and nothing but himself, and it leaves him lost– it makes him walk until he cannot anymore. His feet fall in front of the other, his eyes stuck looking forward at something beyond what he can actually see, and that’s how his journey is.

He walks.

And walks.

And walks.

Until he can’t. He goes until there is a wall and he turns the other way, zoned out and letting the wind guide his steps, pushing him along until it cannot anymore and he has to take his own steps for once.

It leaves him eventually– the wind. He’s left on his own to walk his journey that he doesn’t even know how to navigate yet.

He continues his pattern– or he tries to at least. He’s more conscious about his decisions, about if he should go left or right, or maybe even turn around again– he feels like he’s overthinking everything, and how maybe every decision he makes is the wrong one– he doesn’t know, and he’ll never know, but he keeps thinking about it.

His walk ends short when he meets a wall again, but this one is covered in more holes than solid surface, and he feels the urge to continue in this direction, so he climbs through.

And he keeps going, because nothing stops him.