Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

There’s nothing stopping Avery from looking away. Nothing stopping him from up and leaving.

It’s New Years, nearly midnight and not a thing prevents him from dragging himself to his feet and stumbling from his apartment out onto the rain-striken streets. There must be somewhere he could go, to blend into the background and listen as already-drunks complain about the dreary weather, about it soggying the fireworks and their clothes, as their words slur together.

And yet there’s nothing that feels more wrong.

His laptop is jarringly bright, words sprawled cruelly across it, etching, driving, digging into his brain.

The display feels too normal, too familiar, it doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel respectful and Avery hates it entirely.

He doesn’t like the term dead being flung about so carelessly. He is dead and it means nothing. He is privileged in that way. He is only dead in the game, not that he feels particularly alive in the moment. Not that he has felt alive at all for the past hour.

He’s tired; time is passing violently quickly and the sky is getting darker and the noises from outside are getting louder.

The battery display at the bottom of his computer is red; it hurts his eyes to look at.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been staring, just that his brain has conjured nothing useful in the time. He wants to move, to do something, but that had started to feel completely impossible an immeasurable amount of time ago. His eyelids feel heavy but he’s afraid to shut them, his arms are weighted down by air.

There’s a few strands of hair over his forehead. They feel very obvious. He can’t see them because his fringe is cut a little too short, but he can feel them there. They itch. They’re irritating. He wants them to stop touching his face. But they won’t, of course, unless he moves them, so he lolls his head in the hopes they might stop sticking. They don’t stop sticking and they keep itching. He groans frustratedly, his hand comes right up to his face and then he lets out a half yell.

Crushing pressure wells up in his chest. He does something he maybe should have done sooner - maybe he would have, had he not been so stuck and felt so helpless. He clicks Respawn.

The screen changes. It feels like something has happened.

There’s a moment in which it almost might work, an indescribably dangerous second of hope. A spark in Avery’s head telling him that this is it. That it’s all okay. That his world will come back and d3rlord3 will just be there and it’ll all be alright.

The world doesn’t exist.

Of course it doesn’t.

This isn’t his world. It isn’t even d3rlord’s. It was the king’s. The king is gone now. The world is gone. So d3rlord must be gone too.

Derek must have died too.

Died. He is dead. He is not alive. He will never be alive ever again.

Avery will never play Minecraft with him again, will never talk to him virtually again, will never talk to him in real life at all. Will never see his face, hear his voice, know his last name or his favourite colour or the bands he listens to. He had that taken from him.

Something like rage suddenly builds in him, hot and really nothing pleasant. There’s a scream cresting in his abdomen and he swallows it down, afraid of releasing concrete evidence that this had really, truly happened. Any noise he could make would probably warrant extreme concern from anyone in a neighbouring apartment, anyway.

His throat feels tight, and there’s less anger and more frustration. He doesn’t know exactly who it’s towards; he considers himself, then the king, then the world, and then he throws himself backwards and lifts his pillow to exhale into it. A silent yell. He pushes it further down onto his face, pain burns the back of his mouth like he’s about to cry. And then he just breathes and breathes and breathes and it’s not calming, it feels like screaming. Like punching and hitting.

He scrunches his face up, hands kneading into his mattress and crumping his shirt, fiddling erratically. He can hear pounding in his brain, less like his heartbeat and more like a throbbing head. The noise melts and warps against the sounds of banging coming from outside. Fireworks. New Years. No Derek. Just Avery.

He doesn’t think he sobs, just writhes and screams which must look fucking idiotic from any perspective but his. And maybe Derek’s. Maybe Derek would have understood.

But he had done this, hadn’t he? He had killed Avery and sacrificed himself. Avery suddenly feels like all of his rage, all of his screaming, had been aimed at Derek. He was so angry at Derek for dying.

The thought horrifies him as soon as it appears. It isn’t Derek’s fault. It isn’t Derek’s fault. He has to stop this.

He falls still, opening his eyes carefully, throwing the pillow down against his floor, expelling remnants of anger that still exist, maybe, but quietly.

He inhales shakily, and sits up, rubbing at his forehead and combing his hands through his hair.

The error message flashes conflictingly as his laptop dies.

The room is dark. The room is so, so dark without the light from the screen and Avery can see his face in the reflection of his laptop, only faintly, but well enough that he can make out how tired his eyes look and how his hair is stuck to the sides of his face, and how his cheeks are stained with scribbles of tears he isn’t sure he can remember crying.

At least he is still here. He is alive. But he isn’t sure if that is enough. Not anymore. Maybe not ever.

He shuts his eyes and can no longer see himself. Just an infinite, inevitable darkness.

He doesn’t feel sad yet. Somewhere under the fireworks and between the hollow, plaster walls of the apartment, he’d stopped feeling angry and it had left a sort of consuming emptiness; like he wasn’t quite real. He’d felt like this hours ago, at the church - a time that seemed an eternity ago - where Derek had helped him.

Derek isn’t there to help him feel real again. He isn’t there to remind him he’s important. He isn’t there at all.

That realization makes the blood drain from Avery’s body. Sickness swells in his stomach, choking and acidic. He wants Derek here, if nothing but to know he’ll be alright, and the thought of that not being true feels heavy, like not being able to breathe.

He doesn’t expect this to kill him as much as it does. It’s less like having something taken from him and more like being hollowed out from the inside.

How on earth had he managed to intertwine Derek so strongly into his life? How had he come to lean on him so much in one day that he’d collapsed as soon as he disappeared?

There was something that came with knowing him. A light turning on gently. A familiarity somehow existing in a circumstance so strange.

And the light had turned out, faster than it had turned on. That hurt like nothing else.

Avery knew he’d have to do something at some point, even if it was just moving his laptop to the floor and rolling over to fall asleep.

But he realised he was afraid of tomorrow, when there would be light and everything would be real and he wasn’t sure if he was ready for it to be real just yet.

If he fell asleep, he’d have to wake up, and then he’d have to get through the day, and then the next day and the next and, fuck, every day for the rest of his life. What felt like fact two days ago suddenly felt like dragging a weight behind him until he died.

All that was left were thoughts. He’d have to remember Derek. He’d have to remember him for so much longer than he ever really knew him, and he knew him so barely. He didn’t know how he looked or how he smiled, he didn’t know how his laugh sounded or the expression he pulled when he was holding back a grin. Still, he missed him so much that his throat burnt.

Crying would just confirm it. He didn’t want to feel like he was grieving. He wasn’t good at grief, he supposed. He wasn’t meant to be. He wasn’t meant to lose someone like this.

Tears tug at his eyes and he suddenly feels all too vulnerable to them.

He can’t let them escape.

In a second, his laptop is in his hands and he’s on his feet, walking (with very little control over his own body) towards his desk.

He grabs ahold of his charger and stabs at his laptop port. It scrapes against the plastic a few times before he aims correctly, indicated by the small, circular power light turning on. It is green. If he unplugged it at this moment, it might turn orange or it might turn off, depending on whether or not he goes on to press the power button. This would turn the screen on, although it would likely turn off again pretty quickly due to having only been charging for a few seconds. In fact, it probably wouldn’t be charged at all. It always takes a moment, doesn’t it, for the battery to actually increase? For a short while, plugging the laptop in makes the same amount of change as not. It’s weird. There’s no delay when, for example, lights turn on. Well, strictly speaking that isn’t true, there technically is, but it’s so quick that we don’t really notice.

He places the laptop down, and it’s a clumsy motion but the laptop is fine so it doesn’t much matter. His fingers tap against his desk. There are multiple demography papers littered across it. One of them is about population distribution. It was a boring paper to write. He doesn’t particularly like his course.

He thinks that maybe he’s stopped drumming his fingers, because now his nails are digging into the wood on which they are sat. He should drum again. Maybe to a song, this time, although he isn’t really sure which ones are good accompaniments for the fine art of finger drumming.

Maybe he should start drumming properly. He’d probably be shit at that. It’d probably be expensive. The laptop has been charging for long enough now. He can open the laptop. He can use the laptop while it charges. So he does.

It’s been an hour since Avery died in Minecraft.

He doesn’t know exactly how long it’s been since Derek died.

He knows there’s none of him left, anymore.

Well, strictly speaking, that isn’t true.

It isn’t true.

He realises with thrilling clarity there’s a part of Derek left, that Avery hasn’t seen, not completely, and that Avery could see right this second.

Footage 2.

A Google folder that Derek saved everything to, a recording of all that played out, most of which he had seen, but that would be from Derek’s perspective.

He opens it, frantically.

There it is. The screen film.

Then there’s something else, a file that Avery didn’t expect to be there. A document containing a YouTube link.

He clicks on it without hesitation, without even considering a second to think about it.

It’s a video showing a doc, white noise and occasional breathing plays quietly in the background.

You know it's weird writing a final letter. Almost as if I have to come to terms with... whatever this is. Which is something I find quite displeasurable. But here I am. Why did I even record all this? I don't know. Well I do know. I just don't want to be forgotten. My head hurts like hell. I can feel myself slipping as we become one. And my mind becomes a prison. What a true shame it is. All the knowledge in the world and no way to use it. That's how it should be I suppose.

We stumbled into a world we have no business in. This is just the cost.

Please don't think you failed, Avery. When you read this, don't think you let me down. You didn't. It's thanks to you, and all that you did, that millions live to see another day.

And thanks to you, I got a chance to see all the beauty of the universe. Things I never even knew were in the world. Or could be. A chance no human will ever get again. I'm grateful that I saw it all. Even if it was just for a little.

You're capable of great things. You'll do great things. So believe in yourself. And I don't just say that because I saw it. It doesn't take a god for me to figure that out. I know it because I know you. Goodbye my friend.

Whatever you do at the crossroads. Keep going forward.

Or something like that (I was never really good with endings).