Chapter Text
It's been one year. One full calendar year. 365 days, 52 weeks, 525,600 hours, or however the song goes.
Avery knows this because he is incredibly drunk and it is currently New Years Day! Which Avery knows because it was New Years Eve, like, a couple hours ago. A very nice couple of hours wherein Avery has been ignoring everything besides his new best friend: a six pack of mango pineapple cider.
His eyes drift towards his computer again.
Nope! Nope nope nope. Even if it has been a year. A year of literally nothing happening. A year of not playing Minecraft. A year of flinching from the color yellow. A year of searching through obituaries of people named Derek, wondering. Pretending like he'd even know, even if he was staring directly at Derek's face.
What, like he's gonna look like his Minecraft skin?
Yeah. No.
He swings his legs off of his bed, overcorrects, grabs at his Certified Gamer Chair(tm) which, due to its awesome Gamer-ness, spins out from under him.
Ok. Ouch.
Maybe he'll just stay on the floor. It's very nice down here. Even if it is spinning slightly.
His computer looms above him on the desk and he sighs, hauling himself up into the (Certified Gamer) chair and spinning- nope. Not spinning. Turning slowly to face his desk.
He pokes the power button like it's going to bite him.
It does not. The monitor blinks on. Avery feels the hair on the back of his neck stand up, which is stupid, again, 'cause it's been a YEAR (he clicks his mouse) and he never saw ANYTHING ANYWAYS (he clicks his mouse harder, for emphasis) and- oh hey the Minecraft launcher.
He stares at it. It starts automatically updating.
Ok, he's not stupid, right. This isn't that computer. It's not the laptop that sits half-buried in the back of his closet 'cause he couldn't bear to get rid of the one piece of physical evidence that proved he's not crazy.
It’s his regular desktop. The laptop was just meant to be something cheap and portable that he could mess around with anyways. But he deleted Minecraft off of this one too, back after... yeah. So he deleted it, uninstalled everything, 'cause even if it's not that laptop it's still the same account and saves transfer over. Worlds transfer over. Though…
It was harder, afterwards, staring at the YOU DIED screen, to believe that everything was real. When he respawned it was at spawn, and when he flew (back in creative mode) back to where the mine was, there was... nothing. He went through the whole area, enabled clipping, and - nothing. No strip-mine, no chest, no book, no giant golden doors, no impossible other realms, no giant eyeballs, no D3rlor-
Nothing.
If he's honest, the whole deleting-everything-thing was more about wanting to forget than anything else.
Which worked out great, by the way.
Avery tips the last of his drink down his throat, wipes the tears from his eyes so he can watch the progress bar as Minecraft boots up.
He just... He just wants to play his favorite game again. Losing a friend was hard enough, but usually when something like that happened he'd hop on and play some Skywars or start up a new world, but losing both, at the same time...
He sniffs. Clicks start. Types in the world name.
"Fuck. You."
Aaaand go!
Avery watches the world generation screen and waits for Something to happen. His head slides onto his arms and he tilts his head to keep his monitor in view. His eyes narrow as he squints at the brightness. Blinks once. Twice.
And just as the world pops into view, the green arm of his skin lined up on his right, bright blue sky above, oak trees all around, tooltips popping up everywhere, his eyes slowly… slide… shut.
[What’s heavier than flesh, worth more than blood, what have many fought over, but few have won?]