Chapter Text
Freedom.
To be seen. To be someone outside of the narrow scope of the invis mafia. That’s what she dreamt of, that confusing woman. He was happy for her—he was her friend after all. She grabbed him by the shoulder and told him that he was free, they were free. Their pearls were in the void, nobody held power of life or death over them anymore. They could finally show themselves to one another.
The invisibility began to fray.
There was a pair of hands. He looked down. There was another.
He was going to see her face. She was going to see him.
He grabbed a potion and threw it on himself. The dark hands disappeared immediately from view.
“What are you doing?” she said, “We’re free now. You don’t have to stay invisible.” There was a slight twinge of concern, as if he did something wrong.
-
They sat in the empty stretch of land, watching the sun rise. She handed him an extra shulker of invisibility potions. “We killed innocent people, Jumper.” He could see her face now, what wasn’t covered by her hair anyway. He tried to imagine that face wearing a gold trim. The incongruity between her face and it (which he was sure she held in her inventory) was paradoxically comforting. Jumper looked faintly surprised at hearing his voice for the first time, it was rougher than she expected. Using his helmet as a guide, she looked where his eyes would be.
“That wasn’t your fault. It was Ashswagg’s.” Jumper responded.
“It was all Ash.” He said moreso to himself than his companion.
“Yeah.”
Her helmet was off, sitting on the ground next to them.
-
“Derapchu!” She sounded so excited. He watched as she embraced her friend. The friend’s eyes wandered, and he stiffened slightly at the invisible netherite-armed soldier standing beside. The armor was hot and uncomfortable, the back of his throat was bitter with the taste of potions.
“Who’s this?”
“A friend,” she said, hugging him tighter, trying to squeeze the concern out of Derapchu. The friend watched, letting his emotions dance, hidden, on his face. Derapchu awkwardly returned the hug, and chuckled.
“Walking around visible with an invis player isn’t a good look.” Then he laughed. He thought he was being funny. So funny.
Jumper pulled away.
“Derap…”
“I’m kidding, I’m kidding.” He held up his hands, placatingly. “But really, who’s your friend?”
He tried to speak, to open his mouth and give a name. But his heart raced, nerves tingled. He looked at Jumper, who was clearly looking back. Eye contact could transcend invisibility. On their missions, they would glance at each other, and they knew when eye contact had been made. The slightest glance through one another’s invisible skin was enough to send any message across.
“He’s just paranoid that Ash still has his pearl.”
Derapchu looks up and down at him pensively. “Hmm.”
“We’re going to the stasis chamber to be sure. I’ll see you later?”
“No- wait. I’ll come.”
“Why?”
“We need to find Leo, don’t we?”
“You still wanna kill ClownPierce?”
“Kinda…”
“Hmmm. I haven’t thought about him in awhile. After Proton I realized he’s worse than we thought.”
“All the more reason to.”
She ignored the implicit offer.
“Look Derap, if you want to find Leo, go ahead. But you don’t need to come with us. I don’t think Leo would be near the stasis chambers anyway.”
He exhaled softly.
“I already talked to Leo. He wants us to team up again. He’s just worried about you.”
She opened her mouth, as if to speak, but said nothing. The words totally lost themselves on the tip of her tongue, the whole meaning of Derapchu’s sentence caught up to her in an instant. The amicable friendship seemed to dissolve.
“Why’d you just lie?”
“What?”
“You told me that we should find Leo, then that you already talked to him.”
Derapchu bit back a nervous chuckle.
“Leo told me to. He…” Derapchu glanced at him, the silent, invisible observer “I told him you joined the mafia. He wants you back but doesn’t know if he can trust you.”
She and him shared another glance. The encoded message was a reaffirmation, her promise that she would get them out. That Derapchu’s accusations wouldn’t bleed into their reality.
“I joined it for protection, Derap, you know that. I thought, if I stayed with District 13, we were either gonna die or stay cooped up in that mountain forever. I’ll talk to Leo when I get back.”
She waved him off and began walking. He looked at Derapchu, who was caught off guard, surprised and at a loss for words, then jogged over to Jumper’s side.
“Wht trim did you get up to?” Derapchu said, with total earnestness. Jumper continued with total nonchalance, though her companion froze and clenched his invisible fist.
“I didn’t get any. I’ll see you later.” She put on her elytra and flew off. He drank another invisibility potion and followed.
-
“What was that?” He sat against the wall of the cave.
“What?”
“You just lied to your friend.”
She slid against the wall opposite him. He tried to imagine how it felt. Cool stone against her back, covered not by armor, but a jumper that couldn’t be all that thick. His hands were totally uncovered, though invisible. She couldn’t see as he replicated the nervous fidgets of her hands.
“It was to protect you. Besides, he clearly didn’t trust me.”
“You could’ve just explained it to him.”
“I know, but…” She had no excuse.
“Who is he to you?”
-
Derapchu.
The lovable punching bag of their little ClownPierce hunting group. They were friends before, though she admitted that she played more than a few cruel jokes on him. He didn’t think she was much of a prankster. She avoided his eyes and tried to suppress the smile forming on her face.
They were in an anti-mafia group together. She didn’t offer much in the way of details. The mafia came and threatened them, and she was forced to join. She wasn’t sure what happened with Derapchu.
That was the story she told him
-
They stayed in the cave for a while, holed up and hidden. They would noncomitally wonder how to show themselves again, before stumbling back into silence or pointless recollections of Before.
They slept away from one another. It had to happen. He would otherwise be visible to her. So he crawled off to some hidden corner and curled in on himself to sleep. Jumper would dutifully not comment. When he woke, sometimes his memory was dull. He wouldn’t remember having gone to his own room. Sometimes they’d spend too much of the day running around—hunting animals, playing tag or hide-and-seed, fending off an intruder or two—and he'd fall asleep at their little table, or living room, or under the stars when they laid on top of the mountain and stared up. Even then, he would will himself to stay up until Jumper drifted off, and would rise before her. Every time he woke, the first thing he did was throw a potion into the air. Sometimes the splash and shatter of glass would wake Jumper immediately. She’d sit straight up and look around wildly, fumbling for a sword, then they’d have a good laugh. Sometimes she groaned and shuffled around, still solidly asleep.
But eventually they became bored of the mountain. Freedom without conflict was somehow the most taxing state of them all. There was nothing to do or see.
They traveled to the stasis chamber, as promised.
It was huge and grand. Rows and rows of empty chambers, now just little squares of water. Stripped of its power, it was almost beautiful. Each one was broken, a piece of obsidian sitting below the column of water. They wandered through the rows, staring at the signs; most were still intact. They played a morbid game which neither of them really enjoyed. Which stasises were pulled before the end? Who is still alive?
Out of the corner of his eye, she flinched up and looked with weary attention to some far off sign. He looked up from the sign he was reading, the name on it immediately fading from memory, and followed her gaze. He leapt over a few chambers, abandoning his previous methodical search, and knelt in front of his own chamber. He grabbed an ender pearl from his inventory and stared down into the well.
“What are you doing?” She placed a hand on his shoulder and stared down into the well. The void greeted them back.
They both knew what he was doing. It was becoming painfully—for truly it was painful—obvious to Jumper. The whole journey she hated standing visible next to him feeling like some terrible enforcer. He hated the invisibility, the sharp delineation it created between them, because, he could read it on her face, it was causing great discomfort. She couldn’t read something of his that was totally invisible. So they meandered around, with an unacknowledged but mutual understanding that they would leave soon.
Then they did.
Traversing through the untouched forests, Derapchu was again on his mind. Jumper spoke first, though.
“I want to talk to Derap again.”
Their course was set.