Work Text:
When people speak of an Afterlife with the vicious, stubborn, unwavering dedication that can come from only a grief so intense that life and love quake and pale in it's face; you will likely picture a darkness of the most inky pitch, of fires that offer no warmth, little light, but burn with all the anger and rage the dead leave behind.
You will likely picture vast caverns with spires of stone and crevices into the heart of the earth; you will likely picture stalagmites and stalactites hung with moaning figures, you will likely picture chains and punishment and never-ending suffering.
You may envision spectres and spirits haunting endless barren valleys or perhaps monsters tormenting lost souls in fire and brimstone. You may hear the echoes of screams and cries of agony beyond belief.
…
Rat woke up in a field of sunflowers.
The earth was loose and sun-warm under her hands, the sky was bright and blue with nary a cloud to be seen, a gentle breeze blew warm through the wealth of green leaves and stems holding the true focus of this place: the sunflowers.
There were so many that without moving or even turning his head Rat lost count, dizziness taking hold at the sheer overpowering scent of earth and honey hanging like a fog over the land.
Their petals spun like pinwheels, endless seeds in their centres darkening to void as though to mock them.
Rat felt more than it had in the last three months in that single moment.
Gloved hands dug into the dirt as it gasped.
Their chest rose and fell in jagged bursts, staccato with grief and joy and relief that the plan had worked, feelings so acutely overwhelming that it was impossible to act, to stand, to think as the frigid hollow walls of obsidian put up to remain functional after the loss were shattered like glass. She lay in the dirt cradled with warmth and hope and a million sunflowers; their petals and leaves whispering with the breeze.
Time didn't seem to pass in the afterlife, the sky remained brilliant and blue and only the rustling leaves and flowers gave the impression that this place could change at all. Rat didn't know how long he remained like that, only that eventually—or perhaps only moments later—the crushing, smothering, weight of feelings eased, gravity settled, and he stood.
Dirt drifted to the ground like a gentle pair of hands were brushing it away, careful cascades to settle back amongst the roots.
As Rat looked around a creeping sense of unease began it's gentle scuttle down her spine; there were no landmarks, no signs of life—or un-life?—anywhere to be seen, nothing but endless sunflowers. They closed around Rat at nearly head-height; though a few brave ones climbed higher still, looming over them; whilst others settled small around waist height.
It was simple enough to pluck a flower or two and scrape the seeds free—they looked decidedly less like the void when in a small pile in her hand—then to take another deep breath of that earthy, overpowering smell and start walking.
Rat didn't know why it chose to walk this direction. There was no sun in the sky to follow, no ominous clouds on a horizon, no sounds of life or war, no beacon lit to guide it. Yet… As he walked he noticed that all of the sunflowers' faces were pointed toward the same direction he made for.
A good sign, even though that unease had grown, twisted itself around her heart into an uncanny wrongness. Not of this place, not of this blissful bright warm world, not of some hidden threat or angler's lure but simply- well, it was difficult to put in any way other than this:
Their heart was still beating.
Being alive in the afterlife… it set something crawling under Rat's skin; and as they walked they could only hope that the world would not sense the same and remove them as antibodies would a virus, at least not before they got who they came here for.
The sunflowers showed no signs of stopping, spreading out in rolling plains as far as the eye could see. No mountains or oceans graced the skyline, no birds flew through the skies, no trees broke the endless expanse of yellowed-gold.
Still, Rat walked on, and on, and on.
'This is better' He thought, pushing past a wall of taller flowers, 'This is better than the seven million blocks, but even if it wasn't I'd still do it for Lux.'
Eventually the petals started to turn and Rat followed as though chasing an eye to the End, moving from a walk to a jog to blind panicked hunting. Her heart raced, loud and violent in her chest, threatening to reveal her deception of this world with every beat. The loose warm dirt seemed to fall away behind her every step but Rat refused to look back to see if it was true, the sunflowers still felt like they were all encompassing in fact they felt taller, taller, taller until she was dwarfed by them.
Rat eventually growled and drew it's scythe, swinging it in a great arc to simply cut away the flowers that blocked it's path, razing a clear path to move forward, step by stubborn fucking step.
Each slash was a mistake flashing before Rat's eyes. A regret.
The Anchorblade. Sunflowers fell.
The Dusk Epitaph. Sunflowers fell.
The plan against Mouthpiece. Sunflowers fell.
The ink and storm and battle of Markhett. Sunflowers collapsed, bleeding petals, their warmth fading as they crumpled to dust in the face of Rat's unending grief.
But for all it looked like it, the sunflowers weren't endless. Rat stood and finally saw what all the flowers were pointing toward.
Lux stood waiting, golden, orange, blindingly bright as though the ink had never consumed her, as though the rain and pain had never burned away her smile, exactly the smile exactly the energy that Rat remembered but… The ink was still there, the pain was still there, her chest was a bloody and torn cavity, pulled apart as though the explosion had started around her heart and blown outward, ripping through muscle, lungs, skin, blood and bone. Burns freckled those places not shredded and worst of all- and worst of all- below all of the gore, below the pearly white ribs, below the cauterised holes still tinged charter-yellow, wrapped around their heart a writhing creeping mass of sunflowers.
They took root in the veins and arteries, splitting and twisting around one another, spreading to blossom further to constrict the lungs, hang the intestines, lattice over the ribs. While many were the same as the endless fields bristling behind Rat—radiant golden yellow with seeds black as pitch staring out from their centres, rimmed with red that he dearly hoped was just the natural stain—others were dark with blackened petals and cores that shimmered like they hid a star, hard-earned with their silver-white power.
The scythe hit the ground with a dull thud and—like staring down an eclipse—Rat could hardly move, only feel tears blur the world and slip down her cheeks, only feel the grief, relief, joy, guilt, pressure build in her chest until it felt like sunflowers were straining to bloom there too.
"Lux-" it's voice was broken, cracked, crushed, and it lifted a hand, hesitant and pained and heavy toward her face, just to feel that she was real, really and truly here, able to be brought back.
"Rat?!"
Ghosts were often depicted as cold, translucent, faded, incorporeal; but if Lux was a true ghost then that was all wrong; they were solid as Rat moved close enough to hold them, they were warm and solid and vivid and the universe must be kind because in that moment they jolted as though just noticing him and embraced him back and for moments, minutes, hours, they cried and laughed and held each other as though sunflowers weren't threaded around Lux's organs and Rat hadn't cried for months and so much more.
None of it mattered right now.
"You're here, you're real? Lux I-" a million words, a million sentiments, threatened to fall in a storm from Rat's mouth in that moment. 'I'm sorry' 'I'm a monster' 'I should be here rather than you' are only a few notable ones, "I'm going to get you out of here-"
Lux sighed like the rustling wind was moving through her, her lungs straining against the vines suffocating them and took Rat's two hands within her three. Her smile had turned sad. Sad like ink and storm and an item swiftly passed between them.
"Before we return, this has to be the last time you see me." They spoke with a knowledge more ancient than even Rat themselves, a knowledge of this place being fed through their unwitting vessel. "This place must release me at it's own pace," even as they spoke, more flowers—ones with jagged, grey petals; or ones who blossomed in clusters around joints like a slow growth—sprouted as if in agreement that these endless fields of sunflowers and warmth did not release beings easily. "If you see the process half finished… it will fail, so I'll walk behind you and you lead the way home."
It may have been Lux's voice, Lux's body, and they knew that this was truly her; but this speech, this information… it felt like knowledge from the sunflowers themselves, a warning, a guide, and a threat. Don't watch her return, don't interrupt our ritual.
Or you won't get her back.
"You'll talk to me though! Punch me from behind, chat about what you want to do when we get back, all- all of that right? I'll know you're still behind me, right?"
Lux nodded vigorously, petals around her neck rustling. "Yeah! Yeah of course! It won't-" a nervous laugh hiccuped from her as she released Rat's hands. "-It won't hurt or anything, probably, I mean I'm dead so probably not!"
Rat moved carefully then, taking slow steps around to examine her surroundings whilst keeping Lux in sight for as long as she could; but it was clear where to go: the sun now hung low in the western sky, painting the air with yellows and oranges and deep bloody reds as it began to set. Follow the sun, make it home… Simple.
Rat had never been one for offerings, so scooped up his scythe on the way past so as to not leave it behind in this strange golden space.
However long the hike had been to get there, it was as though the world itself had been made impossibly hostile for the return. Thankfully no mobs spawned in the fields, but the sunflowers grew thick and dense, pink and black and greyish-green ones all reaching for the setting sun in clusters amongst the yellow.
For the first while everything was fine, Lux was excited to see Astron and the rats again, wanted to kill Winsweep, had missed food and gardening and chorus and people. Rat couldn't wait to tear down the grave, blow up any sunflowers it saw, and also kill Winsweep.
They talked, they laughed, they walked, and it was as though nothing was wrong at all.
Then Lux's footsteps stopped.
Hacking coughs and violent tearing filled the otherwise quiet air and Rat froze.
"LUX??" They couldn't turn around, wouldn't turn around, couldn't lose her and yet- it sounded like she was dying, like the sound a gasping fish makes as it struggles to breathe in a land so foreign and harmful that it simply cannot survive.
Rat had coded dimensions, woven the world to his will, called upon gods to deliver messages, unleashed vengeance unlike the world had ever seen. This was the most difficult thing Rat had ever done.
Doing nothing, standing still, facing the slowly setting sun, and not helping Lux.
Eventually, painstakingly, the coughing subsided and in a broken and rasping voice Lux finally spoke up,
"That hurt…"
Her voice was almost inaudible over the growing wind.
"Shh, shh sh sh, don't- don't talk anymore, we're nearly there! I can see a portal up ahead we'll go through there and be back! Okay so just- don't strain your voice anymore, we'll go slower!"
Rat could've laughed with relief that they were alright, but though the strange stone portal was within sight it was still far too far away to be reasonable… They weren't safe yet.
So they walked again, the wind now howling through the sunflowers, vines and brambles and weakness and blindness clawing at his clothes, his arms, his legs, dragging further and further with every step.
Rat couldn't even hear her footsteps anymore, but she was there, she had to be, why would she have stopped? Unless this world was fighting harder to keep her than it was to keep it and she was too weak to push back and it was about to lose her again and-
No.
No. Lux was strong. Lux could fight through this. Lux was just behind them.
After days, weeks, months of walking slowly and painfully, finally Rat made it to the portal; bruised and bloodied and scraped and terrified.
Relief was overwhelming as Rat fell through the cracked and ruined archway onto real, living, grassy earth, the howling wind vanished and Rat turned to see Lux, just as she was before the ink, before the storm, smiling just on the other side of the gateway and then she was gone.