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It was an especially rough night for Steve and Alex. They were short on food supply and had run out of potions, and it certainly didn’t help that they were entirely surrounded by mobs.
”Shit! you sure we can survive the night when our situation’s this dire?” Alex shouts as she shoots down a zombie.
"It's not too long until sunrise." observed Steve. “We can get through it, Alex.” His tone, however, betrayed a sense of dread not unnoticed by his partner.
They had been fighting these grotesque monsters for what they felt were hours, yet the moon up in the sky sat unbudging. Their enemies steadily grew in number, or maybe it was their strength that waned and their attacks that got less and less accurate. Neither could tell for certain.
It must've been the latter.
”Ssssss” A creeper sneaked up on Alex with its terrifyingly quiet footsteps while she was occupied with a pair of spiders, only spotting the hideous green form that had crept up on her after it began hissing and flickering.
The redhead swiftly closed her eyes, praying it would somehow protect her from the explosion.
Steve gave a piercing cry urging Alex to get away as he came in between the creeper and Alex, immediately followed by the explosion.
Alex opened her eyes and gasped in horror at the sight of her beloved dead on the dirty, disgustingly damp grass. The mobs didn't take their time at all. Skeletons tore off his iron armor; zombies slowly gathered and feasted upon him.
There was no time for her to mourn Steve or to fully pick up his materials, so she just starting running away from the mob. Fortunately enough, an opening to escape through has been created by the fact that the mobs were too occupied with taking care of Steve's corpse to chase after Alex. She sprinted as fast as she possibly could.
First it was through a Savanna, the same one where Steve’s body still lay. Did the zombies fully eat him? Have they left his body to rot out in the open like that? It made her shudder to think about it, about what could be happening to his dead body. Alex concluded she would try her best to not think about it until she was safe at home. She can't afford to get sloppy, not after her lover threw away his life so she could live.
As she went across the Savanna, she came across a pillager outpost that was abandoned and heavily vandalized.
"Oh. Have we already looted this outpost?" wondered Alex. "Seems like a safe spot to quickly heal myself. I know I can't be too far." She quickly tended to her wounds, ate some bread and cooked mutton that were already in her bag and went back on her way.
Soon after, she went into a forest. The deeper she went in, the more familiar it all looked. Finally! She's almost at the base. She had to fight a few monsters here and there, but luckily the night along with the thick Oak and Birch trees were concealing her from their sight for the most part. She got out of the forest.
And there it was.
A small house made out of Oak planks with a spruce roof sat amidst a sunflower plains biome. To its right was a river and a humble farm for growing wheat and carrots, overlooking the side of a mine entrance across the river. The whole area was well-lit, not leaving a strip of land where mobs could spawn.
Alex walked to her base with an air of defeat, She couldn't do anything about Steve's death just hours earlier, after all. It angered her how she couldn't really retrieve all his items and would almost certainly have not an ounce of luck if she went back; the coordinates were lost to her, and she felt hesitant about going to drag the corpse of her sweetheart across three different biomes.
She walked in and dumped all her items and armor in the chest, not caring to arrange them, and accidentally waking up her dog in the process who was excited to see her and ran up to sniff her and all the new items she threw into the chest.
"I'm sorry, Joey. I didn't think I'd wake you up." Alex apologized while petting him. "It's been a rough night so I'm heading to bed, okay?"
The next couple of weeks were really hard, to say the least. Even Joey noticed. He too seemed upset that his human dad just didn't come back. Alex had built a grave for Steve, even though there was nothing to bury. She decorated it with a couple of poppies and would sit in front of it for hours a day. Sometimes she pretended she was talking to him, other times she would silently think with an empty look.
Her life became easier, in a way. She didn't have to organize their chests as that's one of the things Steve got fussy about. Nor did she have to craft a spare sword because she knew her man, that he would sometimes completely drain his weapons' durabilities in record timing. Didn't even have to worry about preparing for holiday gifts, and whether he would like them or not.
It all made her feel so terrible.
One day she was out hunting for some items she needed. Alex was mindlessly searching, and just so happened to find something so much more precious than what all this semi-infinitely large world has to give: Steve!… albeit a much rougher and disheveled version, bathing in a river some eighty meters away.
The sight greatly confused the huntress. Scared her a little, too. “Seriously? I saw him getting, well… haha, what is this? His evil twin that he kept secret? An undiscovered skinwalker beast? Should I even…”
The man didn't give Alex time to finish her internal monologue as he finished bathing and took sight of her, sprinting naked towards her like a prehistoric maniac. This, of course, alarmed her, causing her to grip her weapon just in case.
He started going on on a nervous ramble. “Listen, Alex, I know this is crazy, I mean, I was dead and now I'm alive! I was,, it felt like I was in a coma. Nothing, right!? But I woke up; my brain told me I “respawned”, something like that, and now I'm alive…” he kept going on, most of it going in and out the other ear for his partner. She soon interrupted him:
"So you're the real Steve, and you're back, right?"
”…Yeah, I am.”
"You could've just said so!"
She hurriedly wrapped her arms around him, so tightly that they both lost balance and fell on the warm grass. Steve held her back just as tight.
”Never make me go through losing you again.”
”I promise I won’t. Trust me, my sunflower”
They continued silently holding each other until Alex broke the silence.
”Jeez, you smell extra earthy.”
”I was just cleaning myself in the middle of the river. Of course I do.”
”Let’s go home and bathe?”
”Nothing sounds better right now.”
The couple bathed together, although it was mostly them feeling each other instead of properly washing themselves. Steve especially spent most of his time playing with Alex’s red wavy hair as they both giggled like a high school couple.
”Hey, Steve… love?”
”What is it, sunflower?”
"You might've noticed… I made a grave. Me and joe, we really missed you."
"I really missed you too. I couldn't be more grateful about the whole 'respawn' thing."
”Wonder what that was about, really. I’m just glad you’re back. Truly.”
…
”Steve?”
”Yes?”
”I love you.”
”I love you too, sunflower.”