Chapter Text
“WAIT”
The chair clattered to the floor as Avery stood abruptly, slamming his fists down against his desk. His breaths were fast and erratic, tears threatening to spill. Fear turned to ice in his heart, which swiftly melted away into rage. What the hell had just happened?
Dull red light illuminated his room as Avery stared, transfixed on the death message on his laptop. Or not really his laptop. There was nothing but black behind the thick text, an endless void, the King’s domain. The King who was about to take Derek as his vessel.
“What the fu…” Avery’s voice trailed off, breathless as his anger erupted again. His mouse hurtled through the air, hitting the wall to his right and landing silently on his bed. Even while blinded by rage, he was glad it hadn’t broken.
Had he really just wasted hours searching for someone only to lose them to the very thing they’d been trying to protect him from? Why had Derek just done that? Surely, they could have figured something out.
With his hands gripping onto the edge of his desk, Avery sunk to the floor in defeat. His whole body was shaking. Whether from shock or exhaustion, he couldn’t tell.
He should have been out, celebrating with his roommates. Not locked away in his room, fighting an eldritch monster with someone he barely knew. It was New Year’s Eve, for Christ’s sake. Was this really what he’d chosen to do tonight?
A quiet ping from his laptop snapped Avery out of his thoughts, the taunting red light now interrupted by a small box of white. Hauling himself up from the floor to look, he realized the white box was a notification. Someone had sent him a link to a video and, staring at the username, his head began to spin; D3rLord3.
Almost tripping over his own feet, Avery rushed to retrieve his mouse. As he up righted his chair again, he sat down and began rapidly clicking on the notification, causing the screen to glitch as it tried to keep up. White overpowered red as the file opened, the title of the video catching his eye for an instant; Goodbye from D3rLord3.
Line after line, the ache in Avery’s chest grew heavier. With every word he read, any hope of getting Derek back faded away. The King in Yellow had him now and they were merging. It was over. He’d failed.
His vision blurred as a tear slipped down his cheek and was absorbed into his slime, a sob tearing its way out of his throat. He should have been celebrating tonight, watching fireworks, welcoming in the new year. Instead, he was crying at his desk in his room, exhausted and utterly alone. He’d barely even known Derek and now he was gone.
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The whirring off the bus paused as it stopped by the side of the road, a few passengers standing to leave. Avery sighed, forcing himself up from his seat to follow them. He’d been enjoying watching the scenery go by on the short ride home.
Thanking the bus driver briefly, he stepped onto the pavement and ventured into the towering building in front of him. He was lucky to have found a bus that stopped right outside his university accommodations.
He’d just returned from another session with his therapist, something his roommates had encouraged him to start attending when they’d found him in his room, sobbing about a King and a friend with infinite knowledge he’d only met a few hours ago. He understood how insane he’d sounded, but he honestly didn’t know what they’d thought a therapist could do to help. Every session began and ended with a pep talk about ‘coming to terms with reality’ and everything in between was just another one of her attempts to convince him he’d made everything up.
He couldn’t blame her for not understanding though. Why would he seem at all different from any other patients that went through something traumatic and made up elaborate stories to cope?
Finally reaching the third floor, Avery slid his key lazily into the door and shoved it open. He could hear voices in the kitchen and tried to ignore them as he wandered back to his room.
Two of his roommates were already home, grabbing something to eat between lectures. One was two years younger than him and had joined their dorm after a few of their roommates had left. It was a two year course but Avery and three of his original roommates had stayed to retake their last year. After everything that had happened, he was beginning to regret that decision.
“Avery, come eat.”
“Yeah, we stopped at the co-op this morning. Bought some bread and stuff.”
Avery groaned, leaning his head against his door. All he wanted right now was to lay down and forget about everything. But he did need to eat, and they’d just keep pestering him about it till he did.
Rolling his eyes and dragging a hand down his face, Avery turned and stumbled towards the kitchen. Even before he’d sat down at the table, there was already a plate of food placed in front of him. Mumbling a “thanks” beneath his breath, he picked up the small sandwich and took a bite, feeling it rapidly dissolving in his slime. At least it tasted good.
“How’d it go with Janice?” one of his roommates, Dylan, questioned. In the corner of his eye, he could see his younger roommate, Laina, averting her gaze. She’d always been very observant of people’s emotions and could clearly tell he wasn’t in the mood to talk about it.
Avery sighed, swallowing another bite of his sandwich. “Fine. But she still doesn’t believe me.”
Dylan gave him a pitying look that made his stomach churn. “Maybe she’d feel more inclined to believe you if you actually told her the truth.” Laina groaned as she cleared away her plate, knowing that hadn’t been the right thing to say right now.
“I am!” Avery snapped, setting down his sandwich and staring at it. Nothing had changed, but it just didn’t look as appetising as it had before. “You don’t…None of you get it. You don’t understand.”
Dylan sighed angrily. “We’re trying to- “
Before he could finish his sentence, Avery had stood up and stormed out of the kitchen. He could still hear Laina scolding their roommate in a hushed voice as he retreated to his room. None of them believed him. None of them were trying to.
However exhausted he’d been before, it was so much worse now. Avery could feel his legs shaking as he stumbling over to his bed, collapsing against his mattress and cuddling into the smooth, waterproof sheets. His duvet was likely somewhere in the mess of items littered all over his floor and he couldn’t find the energy to pick it up.
Avery allowed himself to rest for a while, not really sleeping but giving his body the time it needed to regain its energy. He could feel himself melting slightly against his bed, a telltale sign of exhaustion for slimes. He was surprised he’d managed to hide it so well in front of his therapist and then all the way back home.
As he swayed on the edge of sleep, his mind began to wonder. Memories and emotions flooded his head, forcing him awake again as they latched onto his mind like parasites. He couldn’t forget. He wouldn’t let himself forget. He had to remember it all because, if not him, who else?
He could see Derek in his mind, or really just his Minecraft skin. His chest ached every time he thought about how he’d never know what Derek really looked like. He thought about the way Derek spoke, a mix of formal and informal, like he didn’t know how polite he was supposed to be so was trying to do both. And his voice, like…What did his voice sound like?
Avery’s eyes snapped open, forgetting his exhaustion as he raced to his desk. Adrenaline spiked in him as he typed the google drive link into his search bar and hit enter. There it was, Derek’s footage. Back when he was just exploring a strange cave he’d found. He spoke more in that video than he did in the others.
Avery wasn’t sure how long he’d been at his laptop for, just watching and rewatching clips of Derek’s first video, before the sound of his other roommates arriving stole his attention. He shut the laptop immediately, not even bothering to close the tab or turn it off. They hated it when he watched those videos, always acting like the only evidence he had was somehow fake and just him feeding into his own delusions.
But it was real. Derek and everything that had happened to them both was real.
A quiet nock at his door fully broke him out of his thoughts, a rough voice calling to him from the other side. “We’ve ordered takeout for tonight, mate. Dominos. We’ll call you when it’s here, alright?”
Alfie, the only one that had tried to understand. He’d been patient with Avery, giving him the benefit of the doubt and actually listening when he’d tried to explain what had happened to Derek. In secret, he’d backed up all of the footage to a USB stick when their other roommates had started discussing deleting the videos to help Avery ‘move on’. He still didn’t believe everything about the King in Yellow, but at least he believed in Derek. Avery trusted him because of that.
Alfie didn’t wait for an answer before the sound of his footsteps faded away, he knew Avery wouldn’t respond. It was a welcomed break from the pressure to speak he was used to.
Ever since New Year’s Eve, he’d struggled to get his words out the way he wanted to. After the trance he’d experienced in the courtyard, he’d never felt fully in control of himself again. He flinched when he turned to the next page of a book. There was a cemetery near their campus that he couldn’t even look at. What he’d seen haunted him and what was worse was that he couldn’t even remember it. There was a gap in his memories whenever he tried to think back to reading that book in the church and, as much as he hated not knowing, he also knew it was probably for the best.
Avery sighed, turning back to his desk and reopening his laptop. Typing in a new google drive link, two files appeared on his screen. One that contained footage of Derek exploring the worlds behind the gates and another containing a link to a video labelled ‘Goodbye from D3rLord3’. He never opened the second file.
The first caught his attention though. Usually, it displayed an image of the inside of the King in Yellow’s temple, but now it was blank. Assuming it was just his laptop lagging, he clicked on the file and waited for it to load.
White enveloped his screen and Avery froze when he saw the text at the top of the otherwise blank page; The footage in the folder belonging to ‘Derek Hutchins’ has been temporarily seized for investigation by the US D.M.S.. We thank you for your patience.
Panic and rage twisted in his chest till he felt like he might throw up. The US D.M.S.? What the hell was that? Why had they taken Derek’s footage?
Avery felt himself sway suddenly, having to catch himself on his desk and slow his breathing as his head swam from nausea. His slime was melting again, exhaustion making his body shake uncontrollably as he desperately tried to steady himself.
Derek’s footage was gone. Someone had taken it for ‘investigation’, and he didn’t even know who. What if they took all of his footage? What if he never saw Derek’s skin or heard his voice again?
His room spinning and going dark around him, Avery’s arms gave out, his hands slipping off his desk. He managed to stay conscious just long enough to feel his head hit the floor.