Archive of Our Own

It was another Friday for Avery. The crowds were excessively noisy, creating a chaotic atmosphere rather than a vibrant one. Conversations merged into something shapeless and meaningless. Words flowed past him as if he weren't there.

He went towards college, his hands full of goods he'd picked up for today's classes, including his phone and notebook. His steps dragged, heavy with tiredness that no amount of sleep could ever cure: the type that nestled somewhere deeper.

Perhaps something within him had already burned out.

Inside the school's chemistry lab, the air stung. A little. Maybe it was because of the ammonia he was forced to face for his assignment. The smell was sharp, it gives clean and clinical. It clung to the back of his throat, cold and sterile in a way that made his stomach twist. It should've been neutral, just another smell, he said. Its just another lab day with chemistry, a class where he's kind of stupid with.

Avery sat at his station, his movements stiff. The experiment was a qualitative analysis of Group III cations, a process designed to identify hidden elements within a solution. For Avery, it felt like digging for something he didn't want to find—like searching for something that didn't exist.

He picked up a dropper, his fingers trembling slightly as he reached for the small bottle of aqueous ammonia.

"Gold," the professor's voice droned from the front of the room, sounding distant, as if echoing from underwater. "–is one of the least reactive elements. It resists corrosion. It does not tarnish. It remains stable, regardless of its environment."

Avery's hand stalled. Stable. Unchanging?

He looked down at the beaker in front of him. It was filled with a concentrated solution of Ferric Chloride, or FeCl3. It was deep, rusted red kind.

His eyes stared at the liquid. The red was too true; it felt like blood for a heart that had stopped beating. It felt like the red for someone's love. But one thing that twisted his heart like a knife, that it was the exact shade of the cape that had stood between him and a god on new Year's Eve.

"Whatever you do at the crossroads—"

He could still hear the voice. The ghost of someone that was dear, too dear for him. He squeezed the rubber bulb of the dropper, drawing the clear ammonia into the glass tube. The smell hit him then—pungent, suffocating, and sharp. It clung to the back of his throat, mimicking the way his breath had been pulled away when the whispers started.

He leaned over the beaker and let the first drop fall. The reaction was instantaneous; as the base hit the acidic red liquid, a dark, gelatinous cloud began to bloom in the centre of the beaker. It was Ferric Hydroxide that he just created—a precipitate.

It looked like a glitch.

He added another drop, then another, then another and another. The "blood" in the beaker began to clump, turning into something thick and murky. It was a chemical decay, a transformation that Avery couldn't stop. His eyes watched the reaction continued.

"…stable," he murmured under his breath, his eyes fixed on the clumping red mass.

Because Derek hadn't been stable. He had been the opposite; he was a catalyst—something that changed the entire world around him while being destroyed in the process. He had allowed his own mind to corrode, inviting the King in so that Avery could remain untouched.

Pure.

The word made him feel sick. He watched the red precipitate settle at the bottom of the glass, leaving the liquid above it clear and hollow. The professor kept talking about the logic of the reaction, but unfortunately for him, Avery wasn't listening. He was thinking about something else.

Maybe about a golden knight—or lord?—who had stayed "nonreactive" against a digital infection, until his armour finally cracked.

By the time the lab ended, Avery didn't remember a single thing he'd written down, though the due date was just in few days.

Well shit.

He packed his bag with the same detached efficiency he used for inventory management in game—muscle memory, nothing more. After all, as a skywar pro player..

Everyone passed him so easily. No one stopped him. No one asked how the experiment went. No one noticed the way his hands were still shaking.

The walk back to the dorm was a gauntlet of silence. Doors stayed closed, light flickered, no one asked if he'd eaten, no one asked if he was—anything.

Avery unlocked his door and stepped inside, closing it behind him. The room greeted him with the familiar hum of the AC, and pretty much the same for the rest. His laptop rested on the table nicely, still sitting where he'd left it, waiting.

He exhaled slowly.

"…yeah. Right."

Of course not.

He washed up, changed his clothes to something comfortable, fed himself with whatever inside the fridge. Then, he sat down and opened a new single-player world. No server, no chat, no other players. It was just him and the mobs in the world. He moved through the world like a veteran—punching the nearest tree to get wood, then crafted a crafting table, then mining stones to get the three holy trinity (sword, axe, and pick axe), continued to mine until he got iron, and bed. It was a routine he grew on, a path he walked because he, yeah, that's his routine since he was a baby minecraft.

He continued to move his avatar—slime-like guy with a silly face—to wherever the wasd keys brought him to. Mountains, lands, forests, villages, caves, and wide seas. He managed to get some food, wools, and mostly woods and stones. He made a bed, basic white bed to pass the night.

After the night passed, he continued his journey. Visiting villages, cutting down trees, fighting mobs, getting food, getting chased by creeper..

Then he found a patch of yellow dandelions; bright, soft, and warm. Amidst the view of oak tree scattered across the land.

He stopped his avatar. He broke one, hesitated, then placed it again. Then another. Then another one. Then another one again. Twenty minutes passed in a trance of replanting. He adjusted them, moving them slightly to the left, then the right, spacing them out until they were perfect. He didn't realize he just wasted another day for a useless activity that he could've used for something else, like grinding.

"…what am I doing," he whispered to himself.

Avery continued, he went underground, the rhythm of his pick axe rising and falling against the stone. Block after block of grey stone, coal after coal, iron after iron, then he managed to break into a cave, met some mobs, until finally, gold.

He mined the vein and held it in his inventory. He crafted a sword and a pick axe he didn't need. Gold tools were useless for durability; they were inefficient and fragile. But he kept them.

Somehow. But for what?

He stared at the screen, at the popup of his own inventory, at the two gold sword and gold pick axe.

The colour was vibrant, stood out the most from the blocks in his inventory. The bright yellow weapon with fragile durability.

He kind of staring at it weirdly at this point, as if Avery want to etch it in his mind.

Back on the surface, he built a small room he temporarily call as a 'home'—four walls made from oak planks and a roof made from cobblestone. At the centre, he placed his basic white bed and a crafting table next to it.

The night changed into day once again in the game, he exited the house to go on another journey. This time, he set a goal; more woods, more stones, at least a pet, and more iron or gold.

He spent hours on grinding and decorating his house. Woods stacked in a wood chest, stones stacked in a stone chest, he acquired a pet—a wolf he named 'mayo'—that now followed him everywhere he go.

MayoTheWolfie followed AveryTheMayo everywhere.

Ah, yes, iconic.

Tehee.

Now, Avery started to decorate his base with flowers, though it low-key gave him a flashback to the hours of emptiness. This time, he planted red and yellow: poppy and dandelion—all from his findings when mining. Can't resist beautiful flower to be decorated for his base.

Not only that, there's a field of flowers behind his house.

Perfect.

Now back to game, he stopped the mining session and started to build. His needed a place, bigger one, to put his gold. He needed a nicer place.

He then began to build, but the "BEST SKYWARS PRO GOD" in him was gone. He didn't build a fortress; he built a small, square room of oak planks with an oak planks roof, used the oak wood as edge corners. It was basic, "temporary" home that felt like.. something he was unsure to put a finger on.

When he stepped through the double doors, he hesitated. He looked down at his inventory and pulled out the yellow carpet he'd crafted out of nowhere. He laid it right at the threshold.

Right. It's just like a normal "welcome home" carpets people usually put in front of a door.

Except it was yellow.

"Whatever you do at the crossroads—"

The yellow was like a salt to Avery's open wound. Oh, poor soul. It was like a reminder of "gold so bright" that once guided him through a much darker server. Every time he walked into the house, he had to step over that colour, a silent tribute for the knight in red-yellow.

d3rlord3.

Then, he turned to the right side of the room. Sike, you really think he would turn left, don't you?

Funny joke.

He placed his basic white bed with a red one, near the window. He surrounded it with a sea of red carpet; a vibrant, bleeding patch of colour that stood out against the plain oak floor. It was the "red so true"—the colour of the cape that had stood between him and the King.

Avery stood in the midst of the room, his lime-green slime avatar appearing small and out of place. To his left lay the game's cold logic: furnace, tools, and chests. To his right was the ghost of a knight.

He stared at the red bed for a long time. The knife in his heart twisting as the game's music faded into a hollow silence.

"…this isn't real," he whispered to the empty room.

He had built.. what?

A place with a glimpse into the past, of the server that consumed his eve back then? A place packed with colours that would continue to haunt him at night and when he closed his eyes.

A place where left and right still matter because that universe was so deeply engraved in his mind that it has become a set rule for himself?

His words came out flat. It was just a game, just blocks, to be exact. But the silence of the room was pressing in on him, heavier than the stone he'd just mined. He exited the world and leaned back in his chair until he was lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling.

"…it's such.. a useless thing."

The words slipped out, soft.. and barely there.

"A nobody. Someone who owes his whole life to a person who—"

He cut himself off. He sat up abruptly, his mind screaming for a distraction; cleaning. Right, let's clean his computer. People tend to delete any traces of the past to forget it, let's try that.

He opened his files, scrolling through old screenshots and clips until his cursor stopped on a file labelled.. "behind the gates"

It was a fifteen hours video with "behind the gates" as the title. Right, he intended to.. upload it. It has been, how long?

His cursor hovered over the video, then it clicked. The video played, his own journey to find a player that both exist and existent at the same time. Then a loop of him wandering a church courtyard cleared of ferns. He skipped forward, faster and faster, until he paused at a frame he had almost forgotten.

Two signs stood in the grass, simple and plain.

You are real.

You are special.

Avery's breath caught. He stared at the next line until his vision blurred.

Remember who you are.

The room felt too still. Avery leaned toward the screen, his heart finally daring to beat.

"…you did that."

Not the game. Not the world. It was directed to him—Derek.

While Avery had been lost in trance, clearing ferns and filling wells, someone knew exactly what would happen to him beforehand and had cared enough to leave a message in a world that was about to disappear.

Avery laughed, a short, broken sound.

"…you're insane."

Who spends their last hours making sure a stranger wouldn't feel alone?

Avery's vision blurred, yet he didn't bother to blink it away. It was ironic to him. Because d3rLord3 was the only one who cared enough to ask and check on him. Because in fact, on eve, no one came to check on Avery at all. He was all alone with the goddamned laptop and a server that wants him as a vessel.

"A stranger," he whispered. "A complete stranger.. knew I was struggling."

Derek knew. He understood without being told.

Yet no one in the physical world—not the professors who saw his ID number, not the classmates who saw his face—even knew he was there.

Avery leaned back slowly as the video ended. The conversation beneath the library with d3Lord3.. and Avery insisting to help him out.

"You are real."

"You are special."

Those words lingered in the dark of his dorm room.

"…am I, though?"

The question was quieter than anything before it. He wanted to believe it. He needed to believe it, because it was the only thing he had left of the man who had traded a whole life for a "useless" slime.

"I wish you were here, Derek."