Work Text:
You think about death a lot. Your own, other people’s - it’s a constant, in this world. How could it not be? How could it not be, in any world like this, a world of straight lines and squares and ones and zeroes?
You think about life, too. Is it not one and the same?
A death doesn’t always refer to a person. In the aftermath of one such loss:
You find you can’t sleep. It’s - late, too late. You should. But you don’t know where to go. It - makes sense, after all. You don’t have much of your own - you find your way to your summer house, but you’d never had time to make a bedroom before having to abandon it, so…
It’s uncomfortable. You drag wool out of your e-chest and curl up by the pond, your dogs clustered around you like they’ll be able to keep you warm. They can’t. But it’s the best you can manage.
There’s nowhere else you can go. Even this isn’t safe. But it’s better than nothing.
You bury your face in one of your dogs’ fur and try not to think about it. Try not to think about any of it. Ari’s gone by now, to let you sleep, and Arch was only ever a voice in your communicator, you can’t ask him to come back -
You sit up, shake your head. You want to sleep but you can’t stop thinking can’t stop replaying that conversation - how did you fuck up that badly? How had you never seen it? How had you not been able to fix this?
You leave the room. You pace up and down the hall outside, but keep your footsteps light. You don’t want to wake the dogs.
It’s - this - it's all so stupid -
You spin around and punch the wall - the spruce planks splinter under the blow, a strength you hadn’t realised you possessed - and that’s the thing that makes you start crying.
Again.
You miss Arch and Ari, you miss having company, you miss -
You can’t finish the thought. You’d told her to leave, after all.
One of the dogs whimpers in the other room, a low keening noise. After everything, you’d woken them -
You leave the house, walk further into the forest. You don’t think you’re going to sleep tonight.
You’re right.
The next day, still sleepless and shaken, you talk to Katamari.
You laugh about it - sometimes things just don’t work out! Self-deprecating but - it’s better than tears.
It might be a little hysterical, and something in the look on his face makes you think he realises, but neither of you say anything about it.
Instead - the two of you end up talking about - fashion, and outfits, and ‘Death Valley Cosplay Nights’ and other such things. It’s fun. It makes you wonder if this might not be as awful as you think.
He says you can use his villagers, if you need. He asks you what you’re planning on doing next.
That thought trips you up a bit - you’d joked, yesterday, about what you’d build if things go badly. You don’t - where are you going to live, now?
It’s a little bit terrifying. What do you want?
You want to rest, you think.
And that’s not something you know how to do in isolation, you think. But the thought of sharing yourself with anyone else, anymore - it turns your stomach.
All you can do is shrug. “Build a new base, I guess.”
So you do - except it’s not really a base, really. Just a place to sleep, to store your things.
Not very homely - cold floors, dark colours - it’s not really you. There’s a tower in one corner and a pond in the other but it’s empty. It’s -
You put flowers by the pond, green carpet on the floor, but even that doesn’t brighten the space.
And it’s freezing - you still struggle to sleep, even under a pile of blankets, too many thoughts racing through your head.
You got - complacent, you think is the problem. You got comfortable. You thought it would be forever.
And it wasn’t. Few things are.
One day, you wake up from restless sleep to an ache behind your eyes. A cold pain, one that lingers. On instinct, you go to touch, and your fingertips come away bloody. That’s - great.
You jump from the top of the tower without bothering to break your fall, scoop water out of the pond to wipe your face. Your reflection, when the water stills again, is… different.
You’d avoided looking in mirrors, since. Something had been lost that night, something you can’t put your finger on.
Something has changed now, too - it takes you a moment to realise, still groggy with unsettled sleep. There’s blood smeared under your eyes, and your eyes are orange.
You laugh quietly.
Well, you wanted a change.
Anonymous asked:
[dismp] have you been cursed?
Even with - everything, you’re not expecting the clang of a sword against your armour, stumbling back against the obsidian wall behind you with a yelp. “Hey that’s -” you say, uncertain, then Paddy tries to hit you again and you fumble to press a chorus to your mouth as you dodge away -
Zwwp and you’re out in a cave outside, trembling and unsure - was that real, a joke, what is happening?
There’s the sound of breaking blocks and an invisible figure lunging towards you.
There’s a hiss of annoyance as you dart back.
There’s the dizzying disorientation of another chorus, then another - then daylight.
You can’t stop yourself from glancing back, though you know better, though you know what you’ll see.
A part of you thinks that the invisibility is cowardly - at least let me look you in the eye as you try to kill me.
But despite your stupidity, you run to the ocean. You live.
You live, and you listen to the anger, because - Paddy is angry, but so are you. So are you.
You don’t think the person who left gets to decide how you respond.
The anger is easier, because -
You can’t think about it too much because if you do you start to hate yourself for it - she didn’t hate you before, you’d agreed on good terms but you hadn’t kept your mouth shut even if the stuff you were hearing wasn’t true you could have been the bigger person you should have stayed quiet and because of that you lost her completely -
How can you not hate yourself for that?
Except - there’s a part of you that feels like you lost her the moment she walked away. There’s a part of you that feels like you lost her before that - it feels like she was searching for a reason to leave, you’d said before.
So you cling to that thought, because it’s better than the other option.
You cling to the bitterness because you can’t live that self-loathing again. Because it’s easier than the heartbreak. Because at the end of the day, she left.
You cling to the bitterness with clawed fingers, with aching hands, and you fill the cracks in your heart with stone.
It’s easier than you’d hoped, when not one person offers you a word of comfort after what happens. If anything - Leoo tells you she wishes Paddy had succeeded, even though they’ve long logged out. She gains nothing from praying for your death, no goodwill from your would-be murderer. It just - is.
You wander to the gunpowder farm, sit with your legs in the water and listen to the voices in your communicator. It’s not a fun conversation. It gets worse when Paddy logs on again -
“Drop your coords BettyIsBaffled,” they say.
You look at the ocean around you. It’d be easy to run away. Still - you don’t want to? You don’t want to.
“I’m not doing that.”
“Coward.”
“I’m not suicidal,” you say, stupidly.
The entire vc bursts into laughter. It leaves a sour taste in your mouth as you protest - that’s not you, not now. You want to live more than anything, and there’s a part of you that tells you you’re weak for it, the fear that leaves your legs heavy, hands shaking.
You don’t want to die.
But that doesn’t really mean anything anymore.
You leave the vc soon after.
You whisper to sinoptics: i want uou where are you
sinoptics whispers to you: im in a wall i cam go somewhere
In an obsidian box at the bottom of the world, a little while later:
“I just - it’s easy for her to criticise me but - didn’t today just prove how alone I am? How alone she’s left me? No one cares -”
That’s not a fair thing to say, you know, when Sin’s sitting at the other side of the box to give you space to pace up and down and up and down - and he’s not the only person who cares about you. You know this. You know this.
But when the list grows shorter every day…
“Veni said we were friends,” you say, choke on the words. “I - I don’t expect them to defend me, not against their own teammate, but - I mean - you were there -”
“They didn’t have to join in,” Sin says.
“No one did,” you say bitterly.
It’s just words, the rest of them, but it still hurts. You keep thinking you’ll reach the limits of how much you can cry in one day. It’s - this -
Sin laughs bitterly. “You literally have no one you can rely on, and she’s still mad at you.”
“Yeah. Yeah.”
It’s your own fault that everyone hates you but also it isn’t and you don’t understand it you don’t understand why barely anyone wants anything good for you you don’t understand -
“I just - I don’t - I don’t know - I don’t know -”
You stop pacing, then let yourself collapse against the wall beside Sin, your head on her shoulder.
“I don’t know - what do I have anymore?” you say, desolate. “I don’t wanna do Nova Numina because that was ours even if it was my idea originally - all I have are my building projects that’s why I log on now but that’s not what I wanted to do -”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know. At the end of the day, she’s got people. And I - I’ve got you and Arch and Will. And that’s - it.”
“And we’ve got - different paths in life, you know,” Sin says awkwardly.
You have Harmony, most of them at least, but…
“Yeah. You’re not people I - rely on.”
“And keep it that way!”
You roll your eyes at her, but you can’t help but smile at the strange protectiveness of it. You sigh, try to get your thoughts back in order. “I don’t know. Everyone keeps asking me ‘what are you going to do now’ and it’s like -”
“You’re fucked,” Sin says.
“Yeah. Yeah.”
“I just don’t know what to do for you.”
“Yeah - I’m just - stuck. I don’t know. There was always going to be one of us who was worse off and it’s not gonna be Paddy -”
“It was never going to be Paddy.”
“Yeah.”
You press your face against her shoulder. What else is there to say?
“I’m not going to Love or Heart,” you’d said earlier in the week. “Why on earth would I want to listen to everyone tell Paddy how much they want her?” Why would you listen to that and know that none of them will ever want you the same -
You have some self-preservation.
So now you’re pacing around at the portal of a probably safe ancient city, Sin leant up against the nearest wall, keeping a careful eye on his communicator.
“I kinda hope they all die, if I’m being honest,” you say. “Everyone there -” You stutter on a breath. “I just don’t think I care about them anymore. If they think of me so little they don’t realise this would hurt me, why should I -”
You turn around and shake your head rapidly, unwilling to finish the sentence.
He laughs. “Yesss become more cynical.”
You just wish it wasn’t so exhausting. You thought caring less would be easier, but -
It’s not.
[23:53:47] [Render thread/INFO]: [System] [CHAT] veni was slain by ssseriema
[23:53:47] [Render thread/INFO]: [System] [CHAT] Venicity ran out of hearts!
You’re not as good at this apathy thing as you’d like to be. You build them a memorial.
Anonymous asked:
[dismp]where is home for you?
You’ve been waiting to answer this one for a while. It should be easy - somewhere you feel loved, safe.
Now...
There’s a part of you that whispers that the world is your home - and in a way, it’s right.
But there’s also a part of you that doesn’t know why you’re logging on anymore. So you don’t really want to say that.
Instead, you collect images and writing and string them together in some parody of a story. A love story, a tragedy - something like that.
You don’t want it to end that way.
So you’re scrolling, scrolling, scrolling - land on a quote you’ve seen before. A quote you know.
A conversation you wish you’d had:
[?]
Why that quote? You said it has meaning.
[you]
Gods. So much meaning. It’s - I guess. Well - it’s a quote, by Death - the character, the presence - in the Discworld books Death is a force of nature but he’s also a… person. He’s - in this passage, he is - the question is asked as a trick, at first, but later, as he pleads for his job back, he says:
“ALL THINGS THAT ARE, ARE OURS. BUT WE MUST CARE. FOR IF WE DO NOT CARE, WE DO NOT EXIST. IF WE DO NOT EXIST, THEN THERE IS NOTHING BUT BLIND OBLIVION. AND EVEN OBLIVION MUST END SOMEDAY. LORD, WILL YOU GRANT ME JUST A LITTLE TIME? FOR THE PROPER BALANCE OF THINGS. TO RETURN WHAT WAS GIVEN. FOR THE SAKE OF PRISONERS AND THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS.”
[you]
Are you starting to get it now?
[?]
.....
[you]
It’s about care, and mercy, and it is about Death, but he is no longer Death, but he needs to be again.
[?]
Is it calling death a mercy?
[you]
I think, in a way.
pause
This isn’t me saying - I don’t think - I don’t…
[?]
.....
[you]
“WHY DOES THE PRISONER IN THE TOWER WATCH THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS?” Why? Because it represents freedom, I think. What does the prisoner want but freedom? What is flight but freedom? What is freedom?
There’s something I’ve been thinking of recently - being teamless is the closest you can get to freedom on Divorcesteal. When you have teammates, you lose a little bit of your identity - suddenly you’re sharing something. The easiest example of this is team shields, you know? People don’t tend to stick with solo ones after -
You lose a little freedom when you have teammates. I think it’s worth it, but - I’m rambling.
What is freedom? Why am I asking that? We’re all playing a game, after all. Why do I even care to ask these questions? Why?
[?]
.....
[you]
I don’t - know how I expect you to respond to that. I’m not sure I know the answer myself. I don’t even know if my interpretation of those lines makes sense! There’s strikingly little analysis to be found on Reaper Man, despite - it’s a beautiful book. I don’t know.
“Because we're all in this together, I suppose. Because we don't leave our people in there. Because you're a long time dead. Because anything is better than being alone. Because humans are human.”
It’s a beautiful book.
[?]
The webweave was about ‘home’.
[you]
The webweave was about loss. I didn’t have a home anymore. I had a base. Not a home.
[?]
And you ended the webweave with that. Why?
[you]
Because… I’m - I’m explaining this badly. But I don’t know any other way to. It’s - a quote about death, and freedom, and mercy. It’s a quote about caring despite it all - because of it all.
It’s - I joke, right, about going through an identity crisis on the server but - in all honesty it’s true - I don’t have anything left that is good for me anymore - half the server wants me dead the other half don’t care enough about me to make me feel like a person - I’m trapped! In a situation that I hate and I can’t fix any of it. If I think about any of it too much I start crying. I’m miserable and I don’t see any way it’s going to get better.
pause
But I still log on.
another, longer pause
There’s a tower in my private base, funnily enough. I wasn’t thinking of the quote when I built it, but - isn’t it funny how these coincidences happen?
Step 1 for rebuilding your life: find a project
Twitch VOD Transcript 02/19/26
“Hi chat! Today we are searching for a [redacted] because I have been wanting to do a masquerade for a very long time -”
The second step is -
There’s a recording that’s too painful to listen back to, but it goes something like this:
There’s a meeting room, in a flower field, hastily put together.
There are two chairs, two people.
Distance.
There’s a bad start, a miscommunication - “Why didn’t you help?” “I did, though?”
There are words exchanged. Explanations. Things that had been misunderstood. Things that hadn’t been said.
At the end of it, you are once again left alone, the fading particles of an enderpearl in front of you.
You wait until you’re sure they’re gone before crumpling to the ground, sobbing.
How does it hurt more now?
But you can’t stop moving. Keeping busy is the only way you stay afloat.
The next day, you ask Void to help you with making a villager breeder. You’ve been procrastinating long enough, and though your eyes ache with tears and your body is stiff with tiredness - you hadn’t slept properly, again - you need to see it done. You need -
You ask, and they say they can log on tonight. Which is good! You need a distraction.
You get more of one than you expected when 30 minutes into your work, Death Valley appear from the caves.
Seri kills you before you even have the chance to react, and you’re left pulling out shulkers at your respawn point with shaky hands as you listen to Void escape - all you want to do is collapse into the corner and stay there, but there’s the phantom shape of Cog’s nametag in the walls when you blink too hard and you can’t stay here.
There’s - you don’t really know why you’re so upset by this. It’s not even - Death Valley have killed you before, if not Seri specifically. It’s not special.
Except - there’s the familiar sickening feeling of once again being blindsided by a person you cared about lodged in your throat - it’s -
Blue said they were your friend.
But what’s new there.
You convince Void to meet you in a snowy forest when they get out. The only thing worse than how you feel right now is the thought of them dying because they were helping you, so you give them potions, xp, and all the while you’re oh-so aware of how fragile you sound, voice shaky and quiet.
“Are you ready to go back?” Void asks, and you still.
“I don’t - I don’t wanna go -”
“Bettyyy,” they whine, grabbing your hand and tugging you a few stumbling steps forwards, your body frozen and unwilling.
“I - I really don’t wanna get jumped again -” you protest, pulling your hand out of their grasp and wrapping your arms around yourself. “I -”
“We gotta finish it,” they say pleadingly, but they don’t try to grab you again.
“I -”
You don’t know why you’re so scared. It’s - all motivation you had to - get started, work, get better is gone.
Void stares at you for a long moment. “I need to finish the breeder,” they say decisively, then start walking back towards the portal, quickly getting lost between the trees.
You don’t want to go back there, but you want to be alone even less.
You run after them.
Half of Death Valley are logged out at your base. Of course. But this time, though Void gets chased for ten minutes, neither of you die, and eventually the team logs off properly.
The pair of you finish the breeder with no more trouble.
You’re glad. You don’t think you’d have been able to stay living in this place if anything more had happened. Just as it is, you’re jumpy, nervous, every loud noise too much, yet still staggering from exhaustion.
But you’re not alone, and when Void goes to leave you drag them into a short hug, mumbling a thank you against their shoulder. It’s for more than just the help.
It’s a week later, and you’ve got infrastructure now, signs in the villager hall, farms, a ‘pit of despair’ in the floor. And you get visitors - Pneumono scares the life out of you when you open the front door and she’s crouched there menacingly, but it’s nice to be able to talk.
It’s nice to see people, despite everything. You and Pneumono build a fall trap under Void while he’s afk and in the process find a tunnel system under the villager hall - you make a mimicry of annoyance at the holes in your floor but you’re smiling all the while. It’s - this place is alive, in a way.
You feel a little more alive, too, now.
“I like the pale moss,” Pneumono says, as you rifle through the chests at the bamboo farm. “It’s still kinda - ruined feeling. But not in the ‘corrupted’ way like the sculk.”
You stop moving at that, then laugh, glancing up at her as she runs around the city, bright diamond against deepslate. There’s - a feeling at the recognition you can’t put into words.
“Yeah! That’s - exactly it, I think. I can’t… I can’t repair this place. But it’s a little more - it’s not destroyed anymore. It’s better.”
“Yes!”
“Or will be when I finish it,” you muse, giggling looking out at all the rest of the city that’s still covered in sculk. “But yeah. I like the symbolism.”