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There was a cold seeping into him. There had to be anyway; humans were meant to generate warmth, and he was always cold, meaning it had to come from somewhere. The alternative should have been terrifying, but it would mean that he was alive again, for to die, one must be alive at some point.
His surroundings were dark, the emptiness running along all of the space’s theoretical walls until they ran out of space and decided to inhabit him instead. He wondered if the nothingness around him was sad when he left and glad when he returned, because then he could share the bit of warmth he had gained with it while it filled his brain with stories that were chilling to the bone.
Sometimes he thought he saw things out of the corners of his eyes. Black hooded figures with notes, interrogating him or shaking their heads or just passing by or shutting the door on him and the emptiness. The snails would come by, and he would have overlapping sentiments of fear of losing his memories and love for memories made with the snails. Soon, he knew, that would be gone too.
Lukey didn’t gasp for air or anything as he was pushed out of the test tube and placed in front of a snail carrying Tubbo. He was an actor, sure in all his actions despite knowing nothing of this realm. He entertained a presence he knew only subconsciously with stories of things he was sure he had done but had no memory of. His words ran wild, falling on what he was sure was receptive ears even if he couldn’t quite grasp what he was saying. It didn’t really matter what he was saying anyways. He was a jester, sent to entertain with the privilege to be in this realm extended to him by a figure in a black robe. When this was over, he would find his way back; he always did.
Ros killed him, and Lukey continued on. He didn’t know what the Null was, but did it matter? He criticised Foolish, and he joined Bad on green. He stayed and met Pangi. He followed the realm’s gimmick of leveling up, for what else was he to do? It was a test and a reprieve all in one; who was he to deny the gift of life?
And then he learned about the Null. It was knocking at his door, trying to seep back into him, and he didn’t know how to let it. He had become warm, friendships encroaching on the emptiness and replacing it. He was alive, and nothing could motivate him to return to the cold.
But then he got the ticket. He could trace its edges and feel the cool against his skin, his fingers slowly matching its temperature the longer he held onto it. It felt like something that he had lost somewhere between Newt pushing him out of the Null and Bad and Pangi picking him up. He wasn’t ready to go back. He decided only to go back to learn more of his past and if a friend was in trouble, a physical breaching of the emptiness inside by the warmth of outsiders.
But then the warmth was receding, at first slowly, then all at once. Aimsey, Pangi, and Bad hinted towards plans after the cure was made or his the world was blown up or the corruption took over. He let Bad return him to the cold, the warmth letting the emptiness back in graciously as it took steps toward the exit. And then the cold came all at once, the corruption eating the warmth around him until he was the only warm thing left. Everyone left to go back to where they were from or settled across the far lands of the new realm the Keepers had provided them with. He himself settled down, people he knew subconsciously flitting about him, showering him in raw materials in return for rations of bread. A town, a city even, was built around him, a new lab laying under his feet. And yet the emptiness had taken hold, and his presence got dimmer as he let others handle what he had catalysed.
He opened up an enderchest. He doesn’t know why he stored all of this sentimental stuff in there. The warmth burned him now that he was freezing, and it got wiped last time, did it not?
He pulled out the ticket, and he was gone.
The black faded from his vision, leaving only a vignette behind. He was walking beside Bad, hearing stories of wars, politics, red, destruction, books, and death. The information filled his brain, his subconscious agreeing on the broader points while what part of him was conscious accepted the warmth in the details. It felt like something he had lived before, just a step to the left: wars, politics, corruption, destruction, books, and death.
The warmth bled out of him once again, the ticket in hand and the cold once again claiming its territory.
He was sitting in a house, goggles on his forehead and a red suit on. He joked with the people around him, subconsciously throwing a joke at Bad about a book, but the warmth of all the lights was overwhelming. And yet, he was a performer, so he must endure the lights no matter their intensity. He knew they would turn off at some point.
But now he was running around frantically. The cornflower reminded him of when his blood ran warmer, but this realm was ending and the warmth was useless. The nothingness was preferable to the pain of being burnt; it had to have been since everyone always tried to avoid the pain and not the nothingness.
Where was the ticket? He always had it on him, but he couldn’t feel its cold against his chest or leg or whatever pocket he would choose to put it in. He was suffocating, and he couldn’t find the vessel he needed to give him air.
He ran through the maze of corridors and rooms, passing the group with quick words a few more times than a PR trained person like him might like, and then stopped to properly talk with them in order to observe them. Then he left, the warmth making him tired and sleepy.
He slid down the wall of one of the corridors, curled upright. He hadn’t even noticed he was still holding onto the cornflower until he tried to put his head into his knees, the flower tickling his face. He jumped at the cold petals, looking at them tiredly and mentally reprimanding them for being in his way.
And then he stopped. They were cold. The lights should have caused them to wilt and shrivel the same way he was now. And yet, they were cold. They reminded him of warmth, but they were cold.
And then he was burning due to the quick temperature change, but at last he was back home. As he fell back into the emptiness’s comforting embrace, he thought he could see a robed figure shaking its head as it spotted the cornflower until the smooth stem flattened in his hand and the colours shifted back to black and purple hues. He pulled the ticket closer to his chest so that it couldn’t be taken away, and in a seemingly unsaid exchange the snails drew closer as he closed his eyes contentedly.
He was back on a stage, the warmth of the lights burrowing under his skin as he acted out bits with people he subconsciously knew to be friends. He laughed at the parts of the script he remembered, watching Tommy walk off as Schlatt exiled him. Just as other realms followed his friends, his realm followed him, the thin suit providing only as much warmth as the person it was intended to impress had ever managed to directly communicate and the warm colour of the orange tie choking him with guilt of not being loyal to the emptiness.
Lukey could not be a guilty man, no matter his actions.
He mourned Schlatt appropriately, and he continued to push Tommy away. The emptiness was preserved at his core until he could get to colder areas. He went into a snow biome for a taste of home, but he realised that he didn’t want to be homesick before it was time to leave. Thus, he picked up a polar bear and called it Woogie, something warm in the name like the warm blood being shed that he subconsciously associated with it. He thought about asking it to teach him how to fight off the warmth that seemed to plague him everywhere he went, but a polar bear can’t fight, so it would be useless to try and train against its warmth. Maybe another time.
And then everyone slowly exited the stage, other stages opening up elsewhere where the lights were brighter and warmer. So, Lukey got out the ticket once again, and the cold was once again diffusing from his core and permeating through him.
He was burning. He was in a body too warm for him, and there was nothing he could do about it without his ticket. So, he fell back on acting, but the movement of his limbs was awkward and the voice not quite right, nevermind the fact he was in a French realm.
The switch over to the English realm allowed him to get his head right, the cool air between realms giving him just enough comfort to reorient himself. His own voice lost, he made a new voice, a deep Southern accent that would burn him if he thought too hard about who else he had used it with. He buried himself in a hole underneath Bad’s base, his subconscious trusting that his prank would be well received. He almost wished he had chosen someone not as warm though, for Bad’s kindness was burning while anyone else would have killed him, returning him to the cold for at least a split second.
He finally caught Abe after masquerading as Tubbo for long enough, asking for a return as his own body.
He panicked when he realised he didn’t have the ticket on him even as his own body, the fear burning through his veins worse than the warmth encasing him while acting as Tubbo. The situation felt familiar, the stage lights back on him though he no longer had a house. He decided to make that his first goal, taking Rex to Noah’s BattleARK with him. He subconsciously fell into an easy rhythm of banter with Foolish, trying to claim a corner of the boat in return for building a Magikarp statue. He might have felt good at the cold that came with the rejection if he couldn’t sense the underlying warmth in the sentiment.
He hoped that basing with Poe in the side of a mountain in a bathroom might be cooler in temperature, but clearly he judged incorrectly given the glow of the club’s lights were constant and the lab he started in the walls caused his eyes to burn a little even without fumes or handling blaze rods. He fought for Poe, explaining concepts he subconsciously knew from a realm he was sure he had never been in and claiming training from a polar bear, of all animals, the warmth of his loyalty making him uncomfortable. Even while Poe started to grow colder as his mistrust grew, Lukey was still growing warmer as Pili’s grudge burned him in ways he couldn’t seem to remember beyond his subconscious. He fell into practiced response against Pili the same way he had done for Bad and Foolish, and his lines perfectly rehearsed in a way that didn’t require him to understand the meaning of the words actually coming out of his mouth.
He plotted the world’s end with Sigma, though everything felt like molten lava in how the realm was going to come to an end before the fruition of the plan, other plans put in place by higher beings before their own could be executed. He basked in the cold chill of the flood as it came over him, the warmth of the realm pushing him to fight the oncoming wave against all odds despite the call of the emptiness for him to stop swimming.
But when the server came to an end, the frantic rush of fighting for a spot in the finals after only trying to prepare the previous night making him proud and uncomfortably warm despite not reaching it, he still hadn’t found the ticket. He stood in the ruins of spawn, battling poorly against the warmth of Sykkuno’s continued kindness, ready to give up the warmth his team had provided him with. Sykunno having teleported elsewhere, Lukey slowly started to release his Pokémon, until finally he was left staring into Rex’s eyes. Rex leaned down, and Lukey took his hands and pressed his forehead against him, and-
Oh.
Rex was cold, the orange taking up his vision was retreating, and he was left holding the ticket in the emptiness of the Null.
Lukey was warm, brotherly bonds connecting the crying half of his mask to Tubbo’s smiling half. He was a Jester, and he knew he had to do Owen proud, though there was more warmth attached to that sentiment than there should have been. He bounced around through the Red Kingdom, switching his accents freely among what should have been strangers. But then Sausage was saying things, and Lukey was subconsciously throwing out half-baked denials, and he was burning on the chaotic set he had found himself without ever having the time to internalise the script. He needed to cut off the inherent warmth of these strangers that came with being their jester, something to distance himself from Sausage, who knew too much about his home. He burned quietly under Tubbo’s directions, setting up the TNT with Tubbo. He would have been happy if he had been caught, as the warmth would have been quicker to dissipate with the Red Kingdom’s anger against him, but Tubbo was good at planning chaos.
He almost used his ticket on his way to the Blue Kingdom's castle, the thought of the clouds being fog injecting a fire into his veins that he couldn’t understand. He supposed it was karma for what he wrote in the sewers, though he had the sentiment that no one ever understood just how that reference burned him.
And then he was on a stage with Tubbo, who was talking about crimes from before this realm that Lukey didn’t remember committing and the need to become queen to pardon them. He was dragged to the dungeon with Tubbo, sentenced to a thousand years in the darkness. He thought it would feel homely enough, but Tubbo’s presence was too warm for him to bear.
He threw a box with a fake ticket to Tubbo as explanation for his exit from the stage, and then he was back in the darkness, the real ticket in hand.
39 million years chugged along slowly, dragging its favourite subject around. It would test the performer’s ability in all of its favourite plays, the robed figures acting as its scribes to note its favourite parts and the snails as its recorders to make sure the plays would be a fresh experience for the actor but never the audience. Then, the 39 million years had lived its life, and the subject would be a clean slate born anew with only the foggiest notion of its potential. The plays would be rerun for the next 39 million years, and the next 39 million, and the next 39 million, never to end even when the lights went out.
Lukey was simply a hamster on a wheel.