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Z had a brother. Barely.
He never did know him. They were step-siblings, his mom having found a new boyfriend with his own kid, long after he'd moved out to college, but that didn't stop the kid. Even if they weren't close, even if he didn't even know the kid's name before the funeral, even if he never got to hear his baby brother's voice before it was too late, it didn't change the fact that out of everyone, he wanted his big brother to get his computer.
Z tries his best not to think about it often, the fact he's playing in the same place his little brother used to. He still doesn't know why out of everyone, he chose him to leave his games to. He wasn't the best sibling he could have been.
He didn't want to be around his mom, around her new boyfriend, so he up and left to college for some bachelor's degree he never did get. Z remembers how he wasted his time on a campus full of strangers, away studying on tests he'd later fail. How he missed the calls about his brother's new illness, the offers to see his brother on his hospital bed, how he missed out on everything that could have been because of his own stubbornness.
But that doesn't matter, he tells himself. Breathing out, his heart rattles in his chest, still shaking from that encounter.
Why now, he wonders, why now does he bother to think about him? It's been years. It's been— but then he thinks about the date a little longer, wonders why his throat tightens at his remembering, before he realizes, and it's like he's been shot in the chest.
It's the anniversary.
"Oh," he breathes out, voice smaller than he'd like against the silence. "Oh."
What an awful brother he is then, to have forgotten.
Z clutches his legs back to his chest, hunching over his knees again, trying his best to think past his guilt and that awful laughter.
How could he have not remembered? How could he have forgotten?
It must have been that entity, he reasons. It must have rattled him enough to have him forget, and with that holiday party too-excuses, excuses, excuses, and he closes his eyes as tight as he can, pretending he can't feel the moisture crinkling at his eyelids. He sits there, in the corner of the dining room longer than he's willing to recall.
The door creaks open without significance, and he swallows dryly at the sound of Moe's honking and Regect's muttering, grimacing at the aftertaste of fruitcake. He can't greet them. Not like this.
There's a honk, a call of his name, before Regect shushes her, and from his corner, Z can hear him whisper, "He's probably sleeping, Moe, c'mon. You've got to get to bed anyway, you can tell him about it later, okay?"
Z doesn't move to refute the statement. His mouth's wired shut, teeth grit, lips tightened into a line, he doesn't know if he could reply even if he wanted to.
He feels as if he hasn't left that darkness, like he's still staring back into the void. Is it still watching him?
His breaths are loud, too loud, in his ears, so he focuses instead onto the sound of Regect guiding Moe to bed, their twin steps up the stairs, how the distance muffles Moe's protests and Regect's steps, before it turns quiet. Z exhales, finally without needing to smother some embarrassing noise into his sweater.
Regect's anklet clicks with his every step. Z's noticed that before, the main way he manages to discern an entity from his, and it's how he knows that Regect's coming back down the stairs, the gold metal clicking against stone bricks. He'll ask about what he's doing down here, Z knows. He doesn't have enough energy to care about being presentable when he hears Regect walking towards the dining room.
"Z?" Regect murmurs, quiet like Moe's to wake if he doesn't be near silent. "Are you... are you coming to bed?"
Z resists the urge to laugh at the question. Trust Regect to avoid any type of vulnerability, even when he's just barely finished pitching a crying fit. He shakes his head instead, not trusting himself to answer without his voice cracking into another sob. To his credit, Regect doesn't push any further.
"... Okay," he murmurs, and Z can hear the doubt in his voice, but he'll take it over questions.
"Moe's asleep, or she should be, So—" Regect looks at Z again, and Z can imagine that he's using his nonexistent eyes to observe his pale face, his shaky wide eyes. "Msak__ gave us a gift before we left his place. You want a drink?"
Z blinks at him. "Isn't it 12 PM?"
"Is that a no?"
"That's what happened when we were gone, Ze? You're not pulling my leg?"
"Why the hell would I lie about that? Dude, I'm not— I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't lie. Not about this."
Regect takes in Z's dead expression, his blank eyes, before conceding. "So the entity trapped you in bedrock?" he prompts, and Z closes his eyes at the reminder, breathing heavily like he's trying to forget the memory that comes to mind.
"Yeah. Yeah it did." He exhales, opening his eyes tiredly to stare into the void that is Regect's face. "Brightly lit too, smelled like smoke and carbon monoxide poisoning from all the torches. The door, it disappeared man, you believe me, yeah? You know what I mean? I circled around for it so many times but it never showed up. I just—"
Z wipes back sweat with his palms, dropping his face into his hands for a tick before he's looking back up at Regect. "There was a staircase," he admits breathlessly, and he can't believe that he's telling this to Regect of all people. "There was a staircase and— and—" His heart beats faster and faster with every word, and— "God, I can't do this."
Rising from the couch, he covers his eyes with a hand, ignoring the feeling that tells him he can still see if he just opens his real eyes — ignore it, ignore it, ignore it — and tries his best not to listen to Regect's sorry attempts at reassurance or God forbid, comfort.
He inhales slowly, the aftertaste of wine still on his tongue.
Z spreads his fingers to peek at Regect on the couch, one of his shadowy hands wrapped around his own glass, still half-way full, like Regect had poured it. His rests on the table, empty.
"Refill my cup at least," Z tells him weakly. "I'm not telling you this on only two glasses."
Regect falls silent at that, pausing in his panic to stare up at blankly, before the words register and he goes for the bottle. In a swift motion, he uncaps it to refill Z's cup.
"Thanks," he mutters, and Regect only hums back, shuffling back, making room on the couch expectantly. He takes the hint and sits back down.
Regect holds out his glass when Z reaches for it, and he takes a sip. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, making a face as he realizes; "This is the good stuff, isn't it?" he asks, and Regect only shrugs, unhelpful as always.
The glass goes back to the table as Z's taking a gander at the bottle's label, raising a brow at the brand sigil on top. "Jeez, Msak_ doesn't go cheap."
In the corner of his eye, he watches Regect come closer, an invisible chin resting on top of his shoulder as he does. "That's the expensive wine, right?"
"Mhm. Guess they don't gamble like you." Regect scoffs at the taunt, his weight leaving Z's shoulder as he Leans back.
"The deals are rigged."
"Sure man, whatever you say," Z retorts, managing to crack a smile and he feels better, he'll admit.
The moment, it's nice. Almost as if nothing's happened.
But something did. And he's not going to forget. He can't. Mindlessly, he reaches back for the glass, fingers clutching the stem tight. He can't keep this in. Z doesn't look at Regect when he starts again.
"At the top of the staircase, it was night. I don't know how so much time passed but it was night and it was raining when I got up there, and it— God, I don't know, but I had a brother. He would have been a teen by now. At the surface, there was a building."
"I wasn't a good brother," Z confesses impulsively, and the words make him feel worse than anything else. But he's not going to lie, not right now. "I wasn't a good brother by any means. But for some reason, he left me his computer, and I know what his worlds looked like. That was his build, from the world he used to play on in the hospital, the one he used to say was haunted-"
"Haunted?" Regect interrupts, voice faint.
"Yeah," he breathes out, looking at Regect curiously. "Some imaginary friend I think was what it really was. What, was it one of your coworkers or something?"
"Nevermind," Regect mutters. "What happened when you got to the surface?"
Z blinks at the change of subject, but he still moves on, desperatation to get this heard overriding unease. "I went inside the house, and there was the same things he had in his original world; a furnace, a bed, a crafting table, but when I went to see the chest, it— it glitched, and then I was there."
He takes a sip from his glass, before setting it down. His hands are shaking, he notes. He tries not to look at Regect. "It was dark, where it took me. Pitch black, I could barely see my own two feet. It's not from this world, Regect. It can't be. I know it's from somewhere bigger than here, bigger than anything I nor you have ever known; its eyes, its laughter— I don't even know if it's really left."
There's not an immediate response. Z's fine with that. In silence, he holds his head in his hands, breathing in and out methodically unbothered until his heart can beat normally and without pain.
"Your brother," Regect starts, and Z brings his head up to look at him.
"What was his name?"
"It was—" What kind of person can't remember their own brother's name? "It was Micha. Why?"
Under his stare, Regect seems to fold in on himself, like he's heard the worst news of his life. Z tries not to think about what that might say about him and his fate.
"I could know what that entity is. If it's really who— what I think it then..." Z notes his slip, but before he can ask, he's interrupted by Regect trailing off to look towards the window.
Z feels his heartbeat in his throat. Against his gut instinct, he turns too.
It was sunny today. When Z went out, before he went down into that hole, it was clear skies and warm air. But for some reason, now— "It's raining," Z notes under his breath, and behind him, Regect exhales a sigh.
"Of course it is," he mutters, but Z doesn't have time to ask about the resentment in his voice before Regect's moving on and asking, "Did the entity speak to you when you were there?"
"I wouldn't call it speaking," he retorts. "It was just laughing at me until you two came back. I still don't know what it wanted from me."
Regect makes a noise, a mix between a hum and a murmur; the latter being too low to discern. "Do you know how entities are formed?" he asks, and Z furrows his brow at the question.
"They're developed by some supernatural side-branch of Mojang?" he guesses, but Regect shakes his head.
"No, that's a different series. They're made from players; corruption. It's what we're— what entities are supposed to do with their players."
Z stares at Regect for another tick or two. "You ruined the old world on purpose?"
"I didn't— I didn't ruin it, Ze—"
"Well excuse me for picking up what you're putting down," he hisses back, and he feels his agitation like it's something physical. "What exactly is your point here, Regect? You want to bring up my dead brother, and now you want to go off and get side-tracked? Do you know what that entity I saw is, yes or no?"
"I'm getting to my point," Regect snaps, and Z closes his mouth. "The old world, it was your brother's, wasn't it?"
Z nods, already getting an idea of what he's suggesting, his gut twisting at the implications. "I didn't mean to," Regect murmurs. "I didn't mean to do it, but Em— but your brother, he—"
Pausing, Regect audibly inhales, reaching for the table, towards his glass. "I ruined it," he admits. The rain is pouring down harder, hard enough for it to be heard through the stone brick as Regect pauses to take a sip from his glass. It clicks against the table when its set down. "I ruined him, this world."
This isn't happening, Z tells himself, watching the glass's reflection of him and his horror in the corner of his eye. This isn't— "This world?" Z faintly hears himself repeat, feeling distant from his body at the current moment. That entity, Micha— no, no, it can't be. He's lying, he's lying, he's lying. He has to be.
"You haven't yet realized Ze?" Regect asks, and Z breathes in at his concerned tone, wishing so desparately he never asked at all. The rain is so loud. "Your brother, Micha, he's still here."