Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Void…

All he could see was void…

Not a void that fills your consciousness when depression overshadows every corner and thought in your mind…

But the void that you see when you close your eyes…

The one that you envision when falling into your nightly slumber…

The one you see when all the lights go out…

It’s one that would give anyone shivers at the thought…

But for Avery… his eyes were not only overwhelmed with this inky black void, but also his heart.

Chapter 1:

The Void In My Heart

Avery prides himself on being one of having quite superhuman reflexes, but when being pushed off a platform by a guy you just met that day, and is going to die because of you, for you, being a sacrifice for you, those reflexes that Avery prides himself on just don’t work when he needed them most. God, someone cared enough to sacrifice their whole life, having a future, being just alive, for him, for Avery. He doesn’t know if he should be feeling awestruck or even grateful, but all he can feel right now is anger that he can sense in every speck of his body. Almost warming him up in his cold, very dark room which inches closer every second to a new year. All he could do is frantically spam ‘?>wdaswadd’ into the Minecraft chat without a thought. He really had been playing this game for over 15 hours, and that's all he could come up with? God, how could someone sacrifice themself for such an imbecile of a man.

<TheMostMayo> WAIT

“WAIT! NO PLEASE!” Avery cried out into his dorm room along with what he spammed into chat. Other students across the hall probably could’ve heard that scream, but Avery’s heart was too flooded with the black void to even care about another soul; well maybe just one other. 

You Died!

Score: 0

Respawn

Title Screen

He wanted to destroy every part of his room, he wanted to throw that stupid computer he found in a locker awhile back all the way out the window, he wanted to scream on the top of his lungs until he couldn’t scream anymore. But most of all, all he wanted was to save him. All he could think about was him, his Minecraft character, his messages in chat, what he might look like, what he might sound like, who he was outside of being a knight, he just wanted to know everything about him. But now, he would never know, because that guy, that D3rlord3 guy, thought that Avery was worth sacrificing everything for, and was now dead because of Avery. Avery could think of a hundred, no, a thousand more people that were worth sacrificing for, not him. 

Avery pulled his knees up onto his chair and away from the ground, up close to his chest, and positioned them there for a moment before resting his chin on them and looking straight at that wretched ‘You Died!’ screen. That anger had now pooled back into his hands as he harshly clutched the front of his shins and plumped his face straight down into his knees to cry tears for a man he wished he had more time to talk with.

—<{~~~~~}>—

It now had been over 30 minutes of crying for Avery, 30 minutes of the knees parts of his favorite pajamas being soaked with salty tears. God, he was a disheveled mess. He contemplated grabbing his phone to text his best friend Reyn, maybe some comfort would be nice, but he decided against that, what would she do to help him in this situation? How would he even explain it? He would sound insane. Well, at least a bit more insane than was right now… What would he say? ‘Oh Reyn, I met this guy online that sacrificed himself for me in Minecraft after playing for over 15 hours and being hypnotized for like 80% of it, but hey, I could use some comfort right now, that sounds nice!’ That would be absolutely insane.

-BANG!-

He wished that he didn’t react the way he did to the fireworks that were supposed to signal the start of a new year, but that loud sound did not pair well with his overstimulated brain. He was violently thrown off his chair being startled by the sound, landing hard down on his wooden floors in his room. His head hit part of his desk, scraping in an instant, causing Avery to yelp in pain. He quickly covered his hand over the spot where his head made contact with the side of his desk, pushing into it as the pain began to radiate. He laid there on his floor, even more a disheveled mess than he was before. He slowly peeled back his right hand from his forehead to look at it in the light that radiated from the laptop on his desk. He was not too pleased to see red fluids plastered onto his hand, which definitely was from his head.

Avery laid there for a while before deciding to get up and inspect his head in his dorm room bathroom. He used to have a roommate, but when they dropped out, the college had failed to find another to fill the spot of his past roommate, leaving him alone in a dorm on New Year’s. Avery winced at the sight of bright light when he flicked on the bathroom light switch to look at himself in the mirror, which did not help with the pain he was already feeling on his forehead from his desk, and definitely not the pain of losing someone he never got to meet in person.

As Avery’s eyes adjusted to the new bright light in his bathroom, he studied his reflection in the mirror. He had dark circles under his eyes, probably from the 15 hours straight spent playing Minecraft, his hair was a mess, and his eyes were as puffy and red as cherry cotton candy from all the tears. When looking up towards the spot on his forehead that had been the source of the pain, he decided he should probably get in contact with Reyn. He had a large open cut starting from the middle top section of his forehead that followed all the way down to the outer side of his face near his eyebrows. Slowly oozing blood that traveled down to his chin, he glanced down back at his hand, which the blood from before had dried on.

Eww.

Avery reached for the faucet and slowly turned on the warm water to wash off his hands. He savored the comfort in its touch; it felt like a hug he desperately needed. However, Avery knew at this point he actually needed help, so he dried his hands, with his freshly washed towels now partially stained with his own blood, and reached into his pocket and clicked on the pinned contact, Reyn Reynolds, and clicked on the call button.

-dialing Reyn Reynolds-

…

…

…

-“Please… please… please pick up Reyn…”

…

…

…

-“Reyn… please, for the love of God, pick up…”

…

…

…

“Hi! This is Reyn! You’ve reached my voicemail, sorry I can’t get to the phone right now, you know me, I’ll try t-“

-“Reyn, you b-”

Call coming in from: Reyn Reynolds

-“I, um… take that back.”

“Ello? OH! AVERY!!! HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!”  violently screeched the voice on the other side of the phone, yet it was a voice so warming to hear after all the events that had happened to Avery over these hours.

-“Hi Reyn.” More monotone than Avery usually was when talking to her.

“Oh… my guy, are you hungover or something, you sound like something just died! Are you good?” Only if Reyn knew what had happened to Avery.

-“Hey, are you at your dorm right now, or at someone else’s place?”

“Avery, you know I don’t have any other friends besides you and Emily, come on man! But yes, I am at my dorm with my roommate Emily watching the fireworks, do you wanna come over?”

-“Actually, I need a bit of help from you, no rush at all, just cut my forehead a little open, just wondering if you could come over and help me? It’s okay if not, I completely understand!”

“DUDE WHAT THE ABSOLUTE HELL! OH MY GOD, I’M RUSHING OVER NOW! DON’T PANIC!”

-“I think you are panicking a little more than me right n-”

Call ended

-“-ow… okay, she hung up, just great… sigh…”

—<{~~~~~}>—

-“Maybe I should try and clean u-”

-THUD!-

-“HOLY CRAP!” Avery screeched as he watched and heard his bathroom door get blown open and slammed against the wall, which fit perfectly with the horrible day he was already having.

Avery quickly jolted around to see a shadowy frame of a person standing in the middle of his bathroom doorway. This time, it wasn't his eyes to blame for the poor vision of the person in front of him; it was just that the room out there had not been lit up for a while with only a stray light from his computer on his desk, leaving the bathroom to be the only room lit. The shadowy figure took a step forward to become visible in the light, and by just looking at their face, a wave of relief washed over Avery.

The light of the bathroom light perfectly lit them up, revealing a woman standing around 5’ 8”- only two inches shorter than Avery- still partially frozen after furiously throwing open the door. The light did not do her justice. Her red, sunkissed curly hair was pulled back and flowing, but there was an unflattering yellowish hue cast over it. He hated that stupid light. He not only had to only see the frame, but also the hair to immediately recognize that it was his close, and only, friend Reyn who whipped his door open at remarkable speed. At this point, Avery was more worried about his door being broken by the unnatural strength of his friend than his own forehead.

Avery’s puffy, swollen eyes made direct eye contact with Reyn’s sweet jade eyes that had a slight brownish color to them, which fit perfectly with the softness of her roundish-oval shaped face. Avery was never one to see a woman as any type attractive, as he himself was into his own gender, but could recognize that his friend was beautiful for a woman. With her face and soft eyes- which did not correspond with his friend's quite toned figure from working out and dedication to her passion of boxing- it was impossible not to notice

- “Oh, hey Reyn.”

-“OH MY GOD, YOU DID NOT TELL ME IT WAS THIS BAD!”

-“Well, I didn’t want you to rush over or anything.”

-“WELL, THIS IS RUSH WORTHY!”

Reyn made  haste over to Avery’s side before kneeling down to inspect the damage on his forehead. She slowly ghosted the spot with her left hand before putting her hand back on the ground for more support.

-“Hey, let's move you out of this cramped bathroom, I don’t think I can help you here when we are squeezed in this room. Wait, where are your medical supplies?”

-“Good idea, ummmm… I think right below the sink.” 

Avery slowly got up and moved around Reyn as she searched through his bathroom cabinets to find his first aid kit. He did feel quite light headed, probably from a mix of lost blood and looking at a screen for 15 hours, which could also be seen in his eyes. Avery made his way out of the cramped bathroom and into the main part of his dorm. Because his dorm was now only his, and not someone else’s too, it was quite a nice sized space for one guy. He carefully turned on some of his lights, closing his eyes to let them adjust a bit smoother than what he did to his eyes in the bathroom, and finally rested his body in the middle of his dorm sitting with his knees and legs pulled close to his chest. When Reyn finally found the first aid kit, she turned off the wretched bathroom light, closed the door and made her way over to him. She slowly kneeled down and ghosted her hand over the cut once again before sitting on her knees beside Avery and opening up the kit.

-“How much does it hurt man, give me a number on a scale of one to ten, with ten being I just got stabbed and one being I’m completely fine.”

-“Well I didn’t get stabbed.”

Reyn slapped her hand on her face and let out a loud sigh, “I know you didn’t get stabbed, just metaphorically for the pain scale, don’t mess with me.”

-“Like a seven.”

-“Okay, a little higher than I expected…”

-“Oh, I’m sorry, what did you expect?” Avery exclaimed with a hint of sarcasm to his tone.

-“It looks like a eight on the pain scale, but knowing you, you would probably say like a five, so glad you're being more honest.”

-“Well, I don’t want you to have to worry about me, Reyn.”

-“Well I should worry about you man.” She took her right hand and placed it softly on Avery’s shoulder. “That’s what friends are for, I just don’t want you to cover up the pain to make it ‘easier’ for other people, you need to focus on yourself too, you know?”

-“Yeah, I know”

-“Now, let's get this cleaned up.”

Reyn continued to search in the first aid kit before making a satisfied face that signaled she found what she needed; some medical tape, bandages, a small towel, and some hydrogen peroxide to slightly clean up the side of the wound. She carefully laid them out on the other side next to her legs and opened up the hydrogen peroxide and poured a small amount onto the small towel. Reyn pushed the lid back onto the bottle and looked down at the towel before looking back at Avery.

-“This is probably going to hurt man, so just don’t be afraid to tell me to stop if it gets too painful, okay? No tough guy act with me tonight.”

-“Okay, thanks.”

Reyn transferred the towel into her right hand and slowly touched the outer edge of the wound on Avery’s head. For Avery, it was not the best feeling in the world.

-“*wince* ow… *wince*” Avery quietly squeaked in pain, and all he could think about was how much it hurt like hell.

Reyn pulled back the towel a bit from his face. “I’m sorry man, I can stop if you want.”

Avery grabbed her wrist with his right hand. “No, please continue, I need it cleaned, and I trust you the most with this type of stuff.”

-“Okay, I’ll try and go a bit slower.”

Reyn lightly moved the towel around the wound as Avery made small winces every now and again.

-“So, are you going to tell me how you got this nasty wound on New Years? You texted me like over 15 hours ago that you were going to be playing some Minecraft and haven’t heard from you until now.”

Avery was not one to lie; he actually despised it, because that's all his parents did, so he was always making promises to Reyn to not lie. But at this instance, he was really contemplating lying to his friend's face.

-“Do you want me to lie, or do you want the truth? But fair warning, the truth will take much longer than the lie.”

Reyn looked back into Avery’s eyes after focusing on his forehead for the past minute with utter disbelief. Her friend had never told a lie, and was now asking her if she wanted the truth or a lie? Now she knew something was off.

-“A lie?”

-“Do you want a lie or the truth?”

-“I only ever want the truth from you Avery.”

-“Are you sure… we might be here a bit…”

-“Well Avery, this is going to take a while to fix you up, so I have all the time in the world.”

-“Okay… but it might sound crazy”

-“I don’t care if it is crazy, as long as it's the truth Avery.”

Avery could see the anger and almost pleading in Reyn’s eyes. He never wanted to hurt her, but he was scared she might not understand, yet they have time, and that is all Avery needs. Only, that's what D3rlord3 needed, too, but Avery couldn’t give it to him. Just the thought back onto D3rlord3 made Avery slowly tear up again. And Reyn could see it coming too.

-“Oh God man, I’m sorry if it is a touchy subject, but really, what happened to you?”

…

-“I think I might be the reason someone is dead, Reyn.”

…

—<{~~~~~}>—

-“—, and then he hit me off the platform as I opened up my inventory. So freaking stupid, I know! I have absolutely no clue why I didn’t see that coming. But then I fell off my desk after I got startled by the fireworks and got this nasty wound.” Avery tapped his hand against his thigh almost impatiently, as if he was trying to pass time, or distract himself. “I think that's about it.”

…

Reyn just looked at him, almost frozen in time.

-“Hey, you good, Reyn?”

Reyn applied the last set of medical tape on Avery’s forehead and quickly leaned back to be fully sitting down instead of sitting up. She laid her hands back to support her on the ground and laid there looking slightly below her legs at the ground, almost looking zoned out in Avery’s eyes. 

-“Avery… it’s not your fault”, she mumbled deeply and softly.

Avery was more confused than ever. “What?”

-“Avery… it's not your fault, "she repeated a bit louder this time.

-“What’s not my fault?”

Reyn finally pulled her face up to look at Avery and sat up a bit so she wasn’t fully relying on her hands to hold her up. “Everything man, you couldn’t change anything man! I don’t want you to dwell on this!”

-“Oh, you actually believe me, wow…”

-“Of course I do! Avery, you are the last person on Earth to lie, so of course I believe you man!”

-“Thank god, I thought you were going to send me to a mental hospital or some crap like that.” Avery let out a little sigh and laugh of relief, which was nice after venting and crying to a closest friend.

-“Now I will send you to the mental hospital if you let this get to your head man, there was nothing you could do to get this D3rlord3 guy to not sacrifice himself for you. Which honestly… is pretty sweet, and a little hot if I do say so myself…”

Avery’s face ran hot and red from embarrassment. “WHAT THE HELL REYN!”

-“WHAT! I'M JUST SAYING! LIKE IF A GUY DID THAT FOR ME, I WOULD PROPOSE TO HIM MYSELF!”

Avery had never been more embarrassed in his life. “REYN JUST STOP!”

-“OKAY! OKAY, SHEESH!”

-“Thank you, my god…”

-“Wait, did you ever find out his name… the D3rlord3 guy?”

-“Ummm… yeah, it was Derek…”

-“You have to admit that his name is at least a little hot…”

-“REYN!”

Reyn couldn’t even contain her laughter at the sight of Avery's red-hot face and broke into hysterical laughter. All Avery could do was glare at her as the red on his face slowly faded away while Reyn was trying to slow herself down from laughing herself to death. 

Reyn slowed her laughing down a bit to crack out a sentence, “It-it’s j-just your fa-ace is priceless!” and continued to laugh directly at Avery.

At this point, it was almost 1am and Avery couldn’t take it anymore. He slowly leaned back and plopped his back onto the ground behind him, keeping his legs bent the same as they were before. Now not only exhausted, but also embarrassed in every way possible, he admitted defeat by covering his face with his hands. By the time Reyn had stopped dying of laughter, she could finally see straight and realize Avery’s admitting of defeat. She cleared her mind and inched her way over to Avery’s side using her hands in front of her as support as she slightly leaned down to look at Avery. Lifting her right hand off the ground she grabbed both of Avery’s hands, moving them above his head to properly see his face. She was confident in expecting to see him red with embarrassment, but she was then shocked to see his eyes puffy again and welling with tears.

-“Oh, hey man, it’s going to be okay!” Reyn stated with confidence she didn’t even really have, just saying it because that’s all she could think to say. She let go of Avery’s left hand to properly hold his right hand to comfort him.

-“How do you know, Reyn?” Avery said with slight cracks in his voice, almost tearing up just saying anything. “I know you're my best friend and all, but I am the reason someone is dead, how do you think that feels?”

…

-“How do you know he is dead?”

…

What? All Avery could think was… What? Like of course Derek was dead, there was no iff-ands-or-buts about this; the King in Yellow killed Derek. That’s it. End of story. And Avery could have saved him, but Derek refused help.

-“Avery, how can we be sure this ‘Derek’ guy is dead? Like, do you have full confirmation he is dead? Cause we can’t ju-”

-“HE IS DEAD AND IT’S ALL MY FAULT!” Avery cut off Reyn and ran his left hand through his slightly greasy hair. 

-“Avery, what if he actually survived? Like what if someone heard him and called 911? He could be alive!”

-“Reyn, don’t give me false hope…”

-“No Avery, I’m being serious, man! Come on, you're a tech-y guy, you're working to have a major in cybersecurity. Can’t you just like, hack into his account or something and find out some info?”

-“Reyn, I’m being fully serious, I don’t want stupid false hope, there would be no reason to—. Wait, what did you say?”

-“You’re a tech-y guy?”

-“No, no, the last part.”

-“Oh, hack into his Minecraft account or something?”

-“Well, hacking into his Minecraft account might not be possible.”

-“Ohh…”

-“But he did send me a link earlier for me to read that was a google doc, but I just haven’t looked at it yet, but I could try and figure out how to track an IP address or maybe just a simple phone number or location from the account linked to the doc!”

-“Wait hold on, go back a bit, he sent you a google doc, and you haven’t looked at it yet?”

Avery started to look a little ashamed realizing what Reyn had said. “Well, ummm… yeah… I just have been so emotional since what happened, I haven’t thought to look at it, and to be quite honest, I was furious at him and couldn’t think of anything or even wanting to see what he sent.”

-“Dude! Go read it!” At the same time Reyn pretty much screamed that directly at Avery’s face, she jumped up offering him a hand. “If you don’t read it, I will, now come on!”

Avery sighed a bit at this stupid idea, but decided to take Reyn’s hand and be pulled up to be standing before being practically tugged over to his desk by Reyn and forced into his chair once again.

-“Come on tech-y guy, do your magic!”

-“Let me just read what is on the google doc first Reyn, then I will figure that stuff out later.”

-“Okay, okay. Why do I feel like I am more excited about this than you are.”

-“Probably because you are, I am dreading it because I don’t want to cry again.”

-“Dude, don’t be ashamed to cry, you're more of a man if you cry.”

Avery quickly swiveled around in his desk chair to face his friend behind him.

-“Don’t people usually say crying is less manly?”

-“In my eyes, it's more manly showing emotion and more human” She grabbed the side of his chair and swiveled Avery back to facing his computer on his desk. “Now get onto that doc.”

-“Okay, sure.”

Avery slowly put his hands back onto the keys of that dreaded computer and opened up the single Google doc file sent to his files, and slowly started at the beginning, reading it word for word:

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. God 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. And 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.

-“Oh wow,” Reyn just stared at the letter in awe, “He was a poet, God, I’m almost going to cry myself, isn’t that just stupid,” she cracked as she quickly wiped her eyes, trying to hide a tear that came from them. 

Reyn was too focused on the letter herself to realize Avery’s state and reaction to the letter written to him. As Reyn peered over the desk chair to look at her friend she realized her words were a little harsh compared to his own reaction. Avery’s eyes swelled once again and hot salty tears came pouring down, crying even harder than he was before. 

-“Oh Avery…” Reyn quickly took her friend into a tight embrace to comfort him. “I’m so sorry man, you are the last person in the world that deserves this.”

Avery wept into his friend's grasp, soaking the shoulder part of her pajama shirt, not trying to say anything but just cry, because that’s all he could do right now.

-“Hey man, you’ve been up for a while now, let me go down the hallway and get you some water so you can at least have something to drink.”

Reyn held her friend for a minute more before breaking the hug to rush out the door with Avery’s water bottle to find water, leaving Avery by himself once again in his own room and with his own thoughts and tears. Reyn frantically ran down the hallway to the water station she knew was there, but was disappointed to see an ‘Out of Order’ sign plastered over it.

-“Are you FREAKING KIDDING ME!” she cried out, almost throwing the bottle in her hands to the ground.

She continued to run around the hallways frantically searching for water, only finding a water bottle refill station two floors after over five minutes of looking like a lunatic on the first day of the new year. After completely filling Avery’s water bottle up, she rushed back up two flights of stairs and looked for the dorm room six doors down. 

-“Hey man I got that water for you, you need another hug?” 

Reyn slowly walked back over to Avery and turned around his desk chair, feeling surprisingly unshocked when she saw Avery’s head hunched over on his desk, fully sound asleep. Well, crying a lot makes you pretty tired. 

-“That’s good man, go to sleep" she whispered so as not to wake him up.

Reyn knew how badly Avery needed quality sleep, especially after what had all happened, and he could sleep in as long as he wanted because they did not have any classes tomorrow with it still being winter break. So Reyn carefully picked up her friend and princess-carried him over to his bed, laying him down and covering him up with a blanket. Reyn sat for a bit on the side of his bed before deciding to get up and look at his face one last time before settling for sleeping on his floor for the night. He wouldn’t mind anyway.

-“God man, I really hope this Derek guy is alive, because he seems like he cares about you a lot, especially with what he wrote in that letter, you need a friend, or just a guy like that in your life Avery. You deserve it.”

After wishing him goodnight, Reyn let her eyelids close while laying underneath a blanket, a carpet protecting her from the wooden floors, and drifted off to sleep.

—<{~~~~~}>—

As Avery slowly gained consciousness after being woken up by the light pouring into his room from his window, he lacked any sort of energy to even open his eyes. But knowing he needed to, he rubbed his eyelids and slowly opened his eyes to a well lit room illuminated by the light from his window. Avery slowly shifted to having his feet on the floor while still sitting in bed, making groggy morning noises before looking around his room.

-“Morning sunshine! Did you sleep well?” 

Avery, confused because he doesn't normally wake up to the sound of someone else in his room, turned his head to face the origin of the sound. Shockingly, the source was from Reyn, who was currently sitting in the middle of his floor eating pancakes doused in syrup. 

-“Why… *yawn* are you here, Reyn?” Avery said in his deeper, groggier morning voice.

-“Dang, I forgot you sounded like that when you woke up… sexy” she whispered just loudly enough for Avery to hear on purpose, knowing that he would understand she was joking, they were just like this.

-“Wow, thanks Reyn”

-“Don’t mention it! Now, do you want some pancakes?”

At this point Avery finally realized what happened last night, wanting to almost cry again, but holding his tears back.

-“Or maybe you would like a morning hug?”

-“Pancakes would be nice, and maybe a hug too.”

-“Coming right up!” Reyn made her way over to Avery to give him a quick hug before grabbing some more pancakes from the dining hall on the bottom floor. 

-“Hey, wait Reyn,” Avery asked before Reyn had made her way out the door, “What time is it?”

-“Oh, umm it's like 2pm or something…”

-“2PM?!”

-“Yeah, 2pm my man.”

-“Oh god, I slept for so long… wait… why are you having pancakes at 2pm, and why are they serving pancakes at 2pm at the dining hall.”

-“First of all, because I can and I like pancakes. Second of all, because I might have threatened one of the chefs downstairs to make me some” Reyn claimed with a slight giggle added to the end of her sentence, thinking that it was funny.

-“So typical Reyn…”

-“You know me!” And she headed out the door, closing it behind her.

Avery made his way out of bed, and picked some clean clothes to change into after his shower. He wasn’t very good at figuring out styles or a style for himself, so he just stuck with his typical green sweatshirt and dark blue jeans. Throwing his clothes onto his bathroom floor and getting into the warm shower- which he desperately needed- he slowly began massaging shampoo into his scalp and rinsing out his hair. After getting out of the warm shower, he dried himself off, got on his fresh clean clothes, and quickly dried his hair with another towel. He looked at his hair in the mirror realizing how much he needed to cut off; an inch or more. His hair had a partial wave pattern to it, somehow still being healthy after dying streaks of green into his dirty blonde hair which now flowed to reach his shoulders. Most of the time he would put half of it back, either into a small ponytail or man bun, but since he just washed it, he decided not to ruin it and keep it a little damp to air dry and fully down.

-“Hey Avery, I’m back, I brought chocolate chip pancakes, your favorite!”

Just hearing that she brought chocolate chip pancakes made Avery jump into a wild dash out of the bathroom to eat some of them, with them being his favorite breakfast, and with the dining hall kitchen knowing how to make a mean set of chocolate chip pancakes, it brought some joy into Avery’s morning. Running out of the bathroom he practically pulled the pancakes out of Reyn’s hands to start inhaling them at immense speed.

-“Woah man, I know you are obsessed with these things, but take it slow!”

As Avery shoved a whole pancake down his throat he attempted to speak with another package bite in his mouth, “*muffled* I h-haven’t eaten in over *muffled* 15 hours, *swallowing and more clear* I’m just so hungry and these are heaven on my taste buds!”

-“You’re gross”

-“I do not care,” Avery said sarcastically, spitting his tongue out at her like a little kid.

-“Ugh, why did I have to make friends with the weird guy?”

-“Hey! I’m not weird! You should look at yourself!” Avery yelped back.

-“On the topic of morning stuff, have you taken your ADHD medication yet?”

-“I’m going to in a bit, I just want to actually be able to eat some food before I stop getting hungry.”

-“Completely understandable man, go back to inhaling your pancakes, I guess… weirdo.”

-“Why thank you.” Avery stated with a hint of sarcasm in his tone and started inhaling another chocolate chip pancake.

With his whole plate of pancakes fully devoured, they both went back downstairs to put the dishes back in the dining hall and went to go take a walk on their favorite hiking trail outside of the city. If there is one thing these two love, it would be hiking with one another. Even though they have walked the same trail multiple times, they fully believe in the ‘nature therapy’ part of it. After hopping in Avery’s old little red mini cooper and driving to the hiking trail. And after less than 30 minutes they were there, and Reyn couldn’t contain her excitement. Reyn frantically jumped out of the car and ran to the entrance of the trail, pulling along Avery with her.

-“Man, I’m so excited to hike today! I’m so glad I could convince you to do this!”

-“There is really no convincing needed, Reyn, I love this trail as much as you do.” And they started down the trail.

-“I know man, but I really don’t want all this stuff from yesterday to get to your head, we will find him, I promise! Now, let's just enjoy the New Jersey scenery right now!” She headed more down the trail before realizing her friend was still stuck a couple steps behind her. “You coming man?”

-“You just made me remember Reyn…”

At this moment, Reyn’s face dropped, feeling awful for bringing the topic back up. She quickly ran back to where Avery was to grab his wrist and keep tugging him along the trail.

-“Avery, I’m sorry for bringing it up… but I know you. You're super tech-y and we will get it figured out. This trail is meant for people to relax, and no one is here today, so let's just enjoy it!”

-“Okay…”

-“Good! Now let's go!”

They both tried to relax a bit more while on the trail, so limited talking happened, just enjoying their surroundings. Gosh, Avery loved New Jersey so much, he knew how much hate his state got, but it really was amazing. They hiked for almost an hour, pretty much in full silence, the way both Reyn and Avery liked it, and then headed back to Avery’s car to get back to the dorms. But before Reyn got out of the car to head back up to her dorm, she quickly turned around to say goodbye to the friend she was deeply worried about.

-“Hey man, before I head back, I just wanted to say, you can work on trying to find this guy, just don’t obsess too much over it. Just fit some of your regular daily stuff in there with the research. But if you do find any information out, text me first, okay?”

-“Got it, thanks Reyn for everything.”

-“Of course man, that's what friends are for, right?’

-“Yep”

-“Okay, bye!”

-“Bye Reyn!”

And she shut the door, quickly running back up to her dorm to change into more fitting wear to head to the gym before the sun started to set. Avery took this day to relax a bit more after parking his car and heading up to his dorm, but at that point he realized what a mess it was, and had to hold off on relaxing for a bit longer. He had completed almost an hour of tidying up, cleaning his room and the bathroom, and finally letting himself slouch down on his bed and stared up at the ceiling. The sun had not set yet, but he could see the golden hour light start to fade in with every passing minute. Sunset lacked any joy for him anymore, just reminding him of the being who killed his friend, the one who made all of this an insane start to the new year. He jumped out of his bed to close the blinds and turn on some of his own lights in the room. After turning on the last lamp near the door, he turned back to look at that stupid computer. That computer he found in the locker was not his only one he had, for the past couple of weeks, he had been using it to play Minecraft, so he wouldn’t be using the same computer for school and gaming. But now, all he desperately wanted was to see his school computer out on his desk, not the one from the locker, not Derek’s. So he walked over to the laptop and closed it down, putting it on the shelf next to his desk, then unplugged his MacBook from the charging port and closed all the school tabs on it. He was on winter break, why have anything out that reminded him of school during a time meant for relaxation?

Avery started to close all the tabs for his other subjects, like math and history, before hesitating to close the tabs for the class he loved the most, programming, he loved that class. All day he got to work with tech to hopefully have a major in cybersecurity, which he fell in love with when one of his favorite high school teachers got hacked into and he helped them trace down the hacker and get all their money back. After seeing the joy on his favorite teacher's face, he knew he fell in love with helping others through technology, and putting up barriers so other hackers could not do the same thing to others that happened to his teacher. Programming was just one of the classes he had to take to get a major in cybersecurity, but for him, it didn’t feel like a ‘have to’ and felt more just like pursuing his passion. He had other passions he pursued too, like his love for archery and parkour, which corresponded perfectly with his favorite game, but his true love was anything tech-y.

After all the other tabs were closed besides his programming ones, he decided he could fit in a bit of research today, just like Reyn said, just finding a balance between crazy and calm. So he grabbed the locker laptop back off the shelf, opened it up to the google doc, and sent it to his MacBook. Avery had been working on a project since the start of his school year with his teacher that was a tool that helped run diagnostics on websites, texts, or even docs. And for Avery’s new job to find Derek only using a google doc and some other information, his project tool from school would be a big help. Avery put the doc into the tool and pressed the “run deep diagnostics” button, but today, luck was not on Avery’s side, and the tool popped up an ‘error’ screen.

Avery slowly placed his elbows on his desk and laid his head in his hands and made a deep groan of frustration, “why…..”, he looked back at his MacBook, “Why now! I don’t have the time to fix this or get help for it!” And without anything else to do, he knew he had to resort to the old methods of research.

-“I’ll send it over to Professor Robinson to see if he can help me fix my tool over this winter break, just a short email and I’ll do it the old fashion way in the time being…” Avery thought to himself and sent his professor a quick email.

He was only about 20 minutes into his own research before a message popped up on his screen.

Email Notification from: Professor Robinson

-“Well that was quick…”, Avery was not only astonished by the remarkable speed that his professor sent him back an email, but also that he even sent one back to him over winter break. So he opened the email notification to read the response from his professor.

Dear Avery,

I hope you are having a great winter break! Glad to see you are still working on anything programming related over this break, shows you have a true love and passion for it! I will be in my classroom tomorrow to do some cleaning if you would like to stop by at 10am so we can work on this together. Don’t worry about it tonight, just focus on coming to see me tomorrow. I look forward to helping you tomorrow !

Professor Robinson,

Just reading this simple email made Avery jump a bit with joy, not only was he going to be able to see one of his favorite teachers over winter break, but also get his tool fixed so he could possibly find Derek faster. All he could wish now was not that his tool would run smoothly, just that Derek was actually alive. That’s all he wants, more than ever.

After finding nothing but dead ends in his own personal research, he decided to call it a night. It took over an hour of looking deep into code and files, and Avery was drained from looking at a screen again for a long time. So he closed the locker laptop, plugged it into one of his old chargers and placed it back on the shelf. For his MacBook, he plugged it into its designated charger and left it on his desk, turned off, but still open, just in case any more emails or notifications came in on it that he wouldn’t get on his phone. He realized that it was 6pm, and he still had about 30 minutes until the dining hall dinner would end, so he quickly grabbed his phone to head down to get some dinner. He hated not knowing how to cook, especially in college, but no one ever taught him, and right now, he didn’t have anyone to teach him, because Reyn herself was not the best cook. He got the food for free at the dining hall, but it didn’t taste the best, but he never really had the experience of having a good home cooked meal, so he didn’t really have something to compare the dining hall meals to anyway. He knew many of his own teammates on his parkour and archery team got doctor notes from their own doctors saying that the food in the dining hall was ‘not nutritionally sound for an athlete’, giving them the excuse to move into their own apartments, but Avery didn’t have the time or patience to do that, and continued to stick with the dining hall food. 

Avery pushed open the giant dining hall doors to reveal a huge display of warm prepared food. Even though there were chefs hired to cook this food- and it did taste pretty good- Avery knew deep down that if he were to ever have a home cooked meal, it would taste 10x better than any of the food supplied here. To no surprise, there were a very sparse amount of students in the dining hall, with most of them being away with family over winter break or traveling. Most of the students still on campus either just wanted to stay on campus or had no family to actually be with during this time. Avery was no exception to the ‘no family thing’, being one who never was close to either of his parents, and wanting to keep his distance from them as long as possible. Avery grabbed a small salad and some pasta, and took a seat where he always did, towards the back. Usually, he was either here sitting with Reyn or with his teammates from either his archery or parkour team, but right now, all of his teammates were away and Reyn was probably getting takeout, so Avery was by himself tonight. He liked where he usually sat, it was near a huge window, and if he wasn't looking at something on his phone, he was looking out the huge window while eating and listening to some music. With all the recent screen time Avery has been having, he decided not to be on his phone eating dinner, and instead grabbed his wire headphones and pressed play on his playlist. He likes to listen to a full array of music, sometimes more grunge music, but today he was chilling with more beach-y type music. He knew if Reyn was here, she would be making fun of him for listening to his beach-y music, saying he looks like a surfer guy and listens to California surf type music, fully fitting into the stereotype. But for a man who lives in New Jersey and doesn't know how to surf, he is not too worried about any rumors going around about him being a surf-y type of guy.

After inhaling five chocolate chip pancakes earlier today, he didn’t have a huge appetite for any type of dinner, so he kept his portion size to a minimum and was back up in his room and laying in his bed before he even knew it. Before officially going to bed, he set an alarm for 7am to go work out and have breakfast before meeting Professor Robinson in the morning. God, he really hoped he could help him fix his tool, or he might be searching for a man that is probably dead for way too long.

—<{~~~~~}>—

Avery was usually one to wake up before his alarm, and be able to easily get out of bed in the morning, but today was not a usual morning for him. He groggily woke up to his blaring 7am alarm and took over ten minutes before fully getting out of bed and getting into his workout gear. He knew all this recent crap had affected his brain, and he needed more sleep, but being an athlete in college comes first for him than any type of sleep, so he instead set out for a 5 mile run, which was short for him because it was winter break. Sadly, both of his sports were all year round sports, so he couldn’t escape being out of shape even for a small amount of time. When he chooses to run 5 miles, he always chooses to do his morning run over to a specific lighthouse where he can see over the Hudson River to Manhattan and the Rockefeller park. He loved this run, even if it was in the downtown area of New Jersey cities, he still loved being able to look over and see Manhattan on the other side. He never really had the chance to go see downtown New York and Manhattan, even though he lived about 30 minutes away from it, he just wanted to go there when it was a special time, not just on a whim one day. So he always left that adventure for future Avery to see when he was ready. He and Reyn were now pretty accustomed to New Jersey cities and their downtown areas, but they both knew that New York was another whole adventure on its own, and they both felt kinda nervous to go there without a proper guide or someone to show them how not to die in that big city. 

After reaching the lighthouse, he sat on its grass lawn to let his mind wander a bit about the big city across the Hudson River, running already lets his mind clear and calms him down, but right now he also needed a full on distraction, so he let the big city consume his thoughts. Did the pizza actually taste better over there? How crazy were New York drivers? How big were the advertisements in Times Square? What would it be like to live there, and just look out at New York, just crazy. Even when just arriving in Hoboken in New Jersey for the first time, he was absolutely shocked by the huge buildings surrounding every corner. He himself grew up in a small town in Ohio, and was never used to seeing buildings taller than five stories max. Part of him still misses the small town vibes, but no part of him misses his family there, that's why he was ecstatic when he got into his university, he knew he would be far away from them, and he knew that's just what his family wanted too; distance. 

After letting his mind wander for a bit too long, he decided to start running back to his dorm to take a shower, and in the chilly 35°F weather, he craved a warm, welcoming shower. The cold temperatures must have given him some energy, because he made it back to his dorm pretty quickly and immediately jumped in the shower. He was so grateful for the warm shower in a cold New Jersey January, nothing felt better. After throwing on a long sleeve shirt and some pants, he grabbed a big puffer jacket, his phone, both his MacBook and the locker laptop, his water bottle covered in stickers, put them into a satchel bag and headed downstairs to get some breakfast. Just like last night the amount of students in the dining hall was sparse, even a bit less than last night, guess people weren’t as into breakfast as he was. He grabbed two chocolate chip pancakes and some eggs and headed over to his usual sitting spot.

While eating his breakfast, he played some music, looked out the window in awe with how the morning light beautifully decorated the grass outside and peered through the window, and occasionally looked at all of his water bottle stickers. Most of them were of bands he liked, like Blondie, The Beach Boys, Audioslave, and Tears for Fears, but there were some other random ones, like one of a little golden retriever he got from Reyn, which she said he gives off ‘golden retriever’ energy, whatever that was. There was a small gay pride flag one too that he got from Reyn’s roommate Emily, she tried to bond with him over this nice gesture, he knew she was trying to hard to try and become friends with him because Reyn was, but overall, he thought it was quite funny that it was the only thing she could think of him as. Just Reyn’s gay guy best friend. He also had some stickers related to his passions, tech, archery, parkour, and Minecraft. He also had one that said ‘I love New Jersey’, and his favorite one being the ‘I love NYC’ sticker, which just reminds him that he needs to go see the city one day.

After fully eating his food, he realized how long he had been sitting there, for almost over an hour! He reached in his bag to quickly find his phone, and forgot that he left his book in there, and decided to grab it out along with his phone, which he looked at the time for ‘9am’.

-“Okay, I have about an hour until my meeting with Professor Robinson, and it takes about 10 minutes to walk from here to his classroom, so I guess I can read for like 45 minutes…” Avery thought, opening up to where he left off in his book.

As Avery continued to read his book, the sun slowly peered even more into the dining hall, and students came and went with their breakfasts, and before he even knew it, it was 9:50am. And when Avery looked down at his phone for the time, he was not too happy.

-“HOLY CRAP! IT'S 9:50! I HAVE TO GO!” He screamed in his head.

Avery scrambled to put everything back into his bag, grabbed his plate, ran over to put it in the ‘dirty dishes’ bin, and started speedwalking to Professor Robinson’s classroom, keeping up with the steady pep in his step to make sure he arrived there on time. After coming up to Professor Robinson’s door, he pushed open the door at the same speed he was walking; a little too fast to be normal paced. The door swung open revealing a tall man standing around 6’ 4” in a long blue winter coat with his short fluffy gray hair being Professor Robinson, who was at his main lecture table, seeming to be working on his own laptop, and quickly looked up once Avery entered the room.

-“Hi Professor, sorry for being late!”

-“Avery, you're not late, it's exactly 10am.”

-“Oh perfect!” Avery said with a bit of excitement in his tone, and walked over to the main table. 

-“It’s nice to see you Avery, how has the break been?”

-“Pretty good, just pretty much stuck here besides taking some hikes and runs, nothing too exciting. How about you Professor?”

-“It's been nice, I went to Maine with my wife and son last week, and we just got back yesterday, and then I saw your email. But I must quickly ask, what happened to your forehead?”

Avery wasn’t really in the mood to describe everything in detail to his professor, so he decided to simplify things a bit, “I just hit my head falling out of my chair, nothing too serious Professor.”

-“Okay… I was just a bit worried, that's all! Now, what's wrong with your tool for your project?”

Avery set his bag down onto the table and grabbed out both of the laptops.

-“Oh, I didn’t know you had two laptops”

-“Oh, this is my one for school and this is my gaming one, but my problem requires both of them.”

-“Okay, show me what's wrong.”

Avery opened up his MacBook and opened back the tab with his tool.

-“I have no clue what’s wrong, it just keeps showing up in this ‘error’ message, and every time I try reputting in this doc from my other laptop, the message just keeps appearing.”

Professor Robinson peered down at the laptop to see the message and looked at Avery for permission to look deeper into it. Avery moved over the laptop so his professor could see it better and use it for himself to try and see what was wrong.

-“I will try and see what is wrong, but why don’t you do some more looking into this on my laptop to see what might be wrong.”

-“Oh, that's a good idea, but I can just use my gaming laptop instead of yours, I wouldn't want to use your own personal laptop Professor.”

-“Oh no Avery, I insist, my laptop works way faster and is built for this type of work, please use mine.” And Professor Robinson shifted over his own laptop to Avery, and Avery took his laptop and started working on looking up solutions.

They were there for over 30 minutes, sometimes breaking deep research silence to show a discovery they found, getting ever closer to fixing the ‘error’ message. And finally, the professor found something.

-“-aaand there we go!”

-“Wait, did you actually—”

-“Yes I did, it’s working now.” Professor Robinson shifted the laptop so Avery could now see, “The message is not showing up and the deep research is running now on that doc.”

Avery could not contain his excitement and peered over to take his professor in a lung crushing hug, “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you Professor!”

Professor sat there, being squeezed into Avery’s tight embrace, slowly removing his hand to pat Avery’s shoulder, “Your welcome Avery, it looks like it’s going to take a while though, it’s all still a bit slow, so don’t push the program too much, my guess is it will take over a day or two to fully be completed.”

Avery let go of his professor and was quite disappointed at the time it would take. Possible over two days? If Derek actually was alive, could he wait that long? But overall, he was just grateful to have it working.

-“Thanks Professor, I really can’t thank you enough, I hope you have a great rest of your break!” And Avery grabbed all of his stuff and shoved it into his bag before getting up and heading over to the door. But before he could leave, he was stopped by the voice of his Professor.

-“Wait, Avery.”

Avery turned around, “Yes?”

-“Why is finding information about that doc so important to you?”

Avery stood there, trying to think of what he should say back to his professor; only the truth, he thought. “Let’s just say you might be the reason someone could be alive, thanks Professor.” And before letting his Professor respond, he headed out the door and back in the direction of his dorm room.

As he walked the same halls he walked every day, and dangerously let his mind wander. If Derek is alive, where might he live? What if he did find out he was alive, but he lived in some far away place like Alaska? Did he even have the money to pay for a flight like that? No, if Derek did live that far away, he would dig into his savings to find him. Derek sacrificed himself for Avery, sacrificing a bit of his savings was the least he could do for Derek. He really hoped he didn’t live in Alaska, it was already cold enough here for him, Alaska would be too much.

With all this thinking Avery finally realized he had made it to his dorm, and opened up the door to the light pouring through his windows into his room. It was still decently early in the day, not even lunch yet, so he set down his bag and pulled out his two laptops and opened up his main one to his tool that was still slowly processing. Barely 1% complete, this was going to be grueling. He sat there just staring at the screen, would this be the death of Avery? Just pure boredom and waiting? He decided he didn’t want to waste his whole day just staring at that screen waiting for it to reach its next percentage, so he looked around his room, found his equipment, grabbed his satchel, kept the laptop open and headed out the door. Instead of heading to the dining hall, he headed outside to the back archery range where he usually warmed up with his team. But today, without a team, he knew he would feel quite alone, and he didn’t want to bother Reyn and make her come down just to watch him shoot a couple arrows, that would be wasting her time.

As Avery reached the range, he could see that no one was there. God, he really would be alone. All this alone time was dangerous for this man, giving his brain the time to overthink and drown himself in blame and worry. He grabbed out his bow and some of his own personal arrows and started shooting. He wasn’t as good as he usually was this morning, with everything that had been going on, he couldn’t properly focus. Just like other sports like tennis, running, and golf, archery was no exception to be a mental sport, requiring someone to be fully focused on the sport or their performance will be affected. He let himself just breathe, not really working on trying to hit it right in the dead center, just around that area, just letting his mind relax and shoot. He made a decent amount of bullseyes, but nothing too amazing for Avery’s standards, he was prone to being hard on himself with anything about his athletic abilities or classes in school. But as he was getting close to being out of arrows and needing to go over to the target to grab them, he could felt a bit off. He wasn’t sick or dizzy, but he knew when he was being watched. So before making his second to last shot, he turned around to see if his suspensions were true, and to no surprise, they were.

About a hundred feet away from him at the top of the large staircase, which connected the grass field to the building behind him was a figure, sitting perfectly perched in the middle staring directly at him. Just by the way they were sitting, he knew who it was.

-“WHATCHA DOING EMILY?” he shouted as for the person above to hear him.

-“OH, HI AVERY, I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU CAN RECOGNIZE ME FROM THIS FAR AWAY!”

-“I DO ARCHERY, WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?”

-“UM, I DON’T KNOW?”

By this point Avery could already feel his voice being affected by yelling so loud, “JUST COME DOWN HERE TO ME, I DON’T WANT TO KEEP YELLING!”

-“OH, SMART!”

Avery watched as Emily grabbed the bag next to her and quickly hopped down each step with a bit of light and excitement to each step. Emily wasn’t tall for a girl like Reyn was, being three inches shorter than her, which was a normal height for most of the girls at the university. She loved the sun, and you could see that even in her hair, which was a very light summery blonde pulled back into a long braid, which matched her purple striped winter dress. Below she had a white long turtleneck and was paired with her signature winter white boots and more toned down purple winter coat. Avery envied the bright and cheerful personality that she wore all the time, because he always had a bright personality, but it hasn’t been showing since New Years. 

-“Hey! Do you need a coat, it’s pretty chilly out here Avery!”

-“Nah, I’m pretty warm right now.” Avery looked at her coat, a huge puffy thing, then turned around to continue shooting more arrows. “What brings you out here to the archery range Emily? Where is Reyn?” 

-“She is upstairs in our dorm taking a nap, I just got bored and saw you here and decided to watch. I wasn’t trying to be creepy or anything, I swear!”

Avery didn’t have to turn around to face her to know that she was frantically waving her hands anxiously, trying to make sure Avery didn’t think she was a stalker. 

-“You're good Emily, you can sit here if you want, just don’t get too close.”

-“Oh, okay, thanks!”

He could hear behind him her rustling through her bag to find something, and then sit down on the grass.

-“I gotta go collect my arrows over there, I'll be right back.”

-“Okie dokie!”

Avery hurried over to collect his arrows on the target and turned around to walk back and saw Emily with a full easel and a watercolor pallet set out on the grass right in front of where she was sitting.

-“What's that Emily?”

Emily jumped a bit at the comment, not realizing Avery had already returned, “OH GOD! You scared me, Avery!”

-“Oh, sorry.” 

-“It’s okay, I’m just painting, it’s really pretty today!” 

Avery shrugged, turned around and grabbed an arrow from his quiver to start back up again.

-TWACK!-

-“WOAH! BULSEYE! THAT WAS SO COOL!” Emily screeched behind Avery

-“Oh, thanks! I’m usually better at this, just have not been myself recently.” He reached back, grabbed another arrow and shot it towards the target.

Avery could feel the uneasy and awkward energy in the air just following what he said, and he knew that Emily had no clue how to respond, so just chose to stay silent so as not to say the wrong thing. With every arrow Avery shot at the target, Emily followed it with brushes and strokes of watercolor on her canvas. Avery did not mind silence when doing archery, he actually preferred it so he could focus on the target, but when someone else is in his presence while he is shooting, and the air was filled with silent awkwardness, all he could wish for was a bit of noise to break the silence. 

-“You know… I never really have the time to get to know you Avery.”

Not a sentence Avery was expecting to break the silence. He stopped mid-shot to face Emily painting on the grass, which she looked up in return.

-“Oh, actually, can you stay facing the other way and keep shooting? I’m really almost done!”

Avery just looked straight into her eyes. He does this to make sure people know he is listening and that he cares about what they are saying, but some people, like Emily, get a bit frazzled by it. Making eye contact too long made Emily get a bit flustered and quickly look down to keep painting, he could see the rising red on her face behind the easel.

-“Oh, um… okay…” and Avery turned around to continue shooting.

-“It’s just that, whenever I am with Reyn, you are by yourself, and whenever you are with Reyn, I’m by myself. I just feel like we only know each other through Reyn, and she talks about you all the time. But, I never get to know anything about you, from you. It just feels weird to know so much about a person, but rarely or never see them in person. You know?” Emily stated, with fully fledged honesty, almost venting to Avery, and this made Avery have more respect for her. And even though Emily was just ending her sentence with ‘you know?’ just because, but for Avery, he knew exactly how it felt. He got to know a bit about Derek, but never got the chance to meet him in person, but Derek probably related even more to Emily. He knew everything about Avery, his whole life, but never got to see him in person. If Emily should be talking to someone about this, it should have been Derek. Maybe it could be Derek, one day.

-“I actually do know a bit how that feels, I know a bit about this one person, but never got the chance to meet him in person…”

Emily immediately picked up the ‘never got the chance to’ from Avery, starting to feel bad for him, not knowing he went through a loss like that.

-“Oh, I’m sorry Avery, I didn’t mean to bring up a touchy subject or anything!”

-“No, it's fine, it wasn't your fault Emily, if anything, it was my fault.” His voice started fading at the end.

-“Oh… do you… um… wanna talk about it?”

-“Not really, if that's okay?”

-“Whatever you feel comfortable with.”

-“But, Emily, I do want to get to know you better too.”

Emily quickly lifted up her head in shock, “Really?”

Avery lifted back up his bow, loaded in an arrow and drew back the string, “Yeah, I do,” He released the pressure on the string,

 -TWACK!- Another bullseye

Avery slowly drew his bow downwards, looking down at his feet, then glanced back up to stare at the target, “It’s just… I never have been great at bonding with people, it took me a while before I fully trusted Reyn.”

Emily knew from Reyn that Avery was never one to lie, so hearing the truth from him gave Emily a feeling of connection with him. 

-“Well, I’m willing to wait as long as you need Avery, I also want to respect your boundaries, that's what friends do. But I don’t just want to be friends with you Avery because Reyn is, or because I think you're cool, but because I actually want to be your friend.”

-“Yeah, me too.”

Avery knew that behind him Emily was wearing a large grin, finally happy that she could be friends with Emily. So when he turned around to face Emily, he was not surprised to see his prediction as true. 

-“So… you think I’m cool?” Avery questioned Emily, with a bit of teasing to his tone.

Emily just directly stared into Avery’s green eyes and the red on her face re-appeared, more prominent than before. Her mind couldn’t think of a way to defend herself or come back in the same teasing way Avery did, and just admitted defeat. “Well… I think you can tell that I think you're cool.” And she hid her bright red face back behind her easel to continue painting.

Avery let the quirky, fun, teasing side of him come back out after a long time, just to mess with Emily. He set down his bow and quiver full of arrows on the grass, walked over to be behind Emily’s easel, and knelt down, putting his finger tips lightly on the top of the easel.

-“Nice to know I have a fan” Avery said as teasing as possible.

-“Oh shut up!” Emily put her brush down next to her so she could use her free hands to hide her eyes, “Don’t make me regret being friends with you now!” She pulled her hands back from her face to look directly back at Avery.

-“I might, I might not, you never know.”

-“Gosh Reyn was right…” Emily whispered thinking that he wouldn’t hear what she said, but he did.

-“Wait, what was Reyn right about?”

Emily just looked back at Avery, still a bit embarrassed and mad, which could be heard in her tone, “That you can be a stickler sometimes!” She took her right hand to flick his hands on her easel, to move them off of it but also just to come back at him, showing that she can be teasing too.

-“Oh, that burns!” Avery sarcastically said, putting a hand over his heart to show where her comment hit, “You and Reyn are so mean to me!”

-“Okay, sure Avery” saying as she rolled her eyes at Avery’s stupid comeback. “Can I ask a quick question, for real?” Bringing the tone of their conversation back to getting to know each other better.

Avery pulled his hand back, away from his heart, and sat down on his knees in the grass behind her easel. “Shoot.”

-“What happened to your forehead? Reyn told me when she came back from your dorm the other day that you had an emergency and you needed her help, but she didn’t tell me anything more. All she said was that it wasn't her story to tell. So, I’m wondering if you could tell me?”

Avery was glad that Reyn had respected him as a friend to not just go and tell people what happened to Avery, but she didn’t have to make it sound so secretive to Emily.

-“On New Years eve, I was working at my desk and got too focused on something and got startled by a loud sound. I fell and hit my head on my desk, nothing too serious.”

-“Oh, Reyn made it sound so ‘hush hush’ like as if you went on this super secret spy mission or something. Is your head feeling any better?”

-“Yeah, I can’t feel any pain right now from it, only when I touch it, but besides that, I’m all good.”

Emily tilted her head to the side so as to see Avery behind the easel, looking directly at his forehead and the bandages on it. “Do you need some help putting on some new bandages?”

Avery was a bit shocked at this gesture from Emily, even wondering if she knew how to apply medical bandages. Reyn usually helped him because she knows how to do simple medical bandages and how to deal with wounds, being experienced with multiple injuries from boxing, and having to do it on herself sometimes. But Emily? Does she know anything about helping with injuries?

-“What?”

-“Do you need help with new bandages?  I know what to do, trust me! I just thought it might be better if you get help instead of you doing it by yourself.”

Avery was still a bit weary about help from Emily, but he thought this might be a good test of trust with her, so he accepted her offer.

-“Ummm… sure, we can go up to my dorm to get some bandages.”

-“Okay! Let me just pack up my art things!”

While Emily quickly put all her supplies in her bag, Avery put all his equipment back in his bag, and she followed Avery up the stairs and into his dorm. Avery set down his equipment next to his closet, and looked back at Emily as she looked around his room. Avery told her she could set down her bag, and he went into the bathroom to grab the first aid kit, which he found right where Reyn had last left it, he could hear her washing her hands in the other room. He grabbed the bag, closed the door, and came back to see Emily staring at his large wall, which had his bed up against it.

-“Whatcha doing?” Avery came up behind Emily, partially startling her.

-“Oh sorry, I was just admiring your room, especially this wall, it's really cool!”

-“The wall… is really cool?”

Emily turned around to look at Avery as he walked over to stand to the right of her, “Not the wall silly. All the photos!”

Avery had covered his largest wall in the room full of movie and band posters, and thousands of polaroid photos which he had taken himself of memories he loved to remember.

-“Oh yeah, I like to have things that remind me of the good times I have had in my life,” he said, pointing to the left side of the wall, then moved his hand to point to the right side of the wall, which was still bare and had no photos, “–and also for the future memories I will have.”

-“That's a really cool idea!”

-“Oh, thank you!”

-“Okay, do you wanna sit on your bed while I help you with the bandages?”

-“Yeah, let's do that.”

Avery moved around Emily to take a seat on his bed, setting down the first aid kit right next to him, opening it up so Emily could use it. Emily followed him over, and started looking for all the things she needed.

-“I’m going to start with taking off the old bandages, it might hurt a little bit, but I’ll try to be slow, do you need some water or anything before I start?”

-“I’m good, but thanks. I’ll be fine with the pain.”

-“Okay!”

Emily carefully grabbed the edge of the medical tape and started pulling it off before the medical wrap. He was surprised with the care Emily had when working with the tape, moving very slowly and cautiously so as not to cause him any pain. After removing all the tape, and then the medical wrap, took them and walked into his bathroom to throw them away. When she returned, she was holding one of his headbands and went over to his bag to grab his water bottle and then set it down on the ground next to the bed.

-“Could you by chance just put this headband on? Just to keep your hair back so it doesn't get in the way? Also, you will need water later, so I just grabbed it even if you said you didn’t want it.”

-“Sure, I can do that, and thanks again Emily.” Avery grabbed the headband and put it on his head so his hair was not directly in his face.

-“Of course!”

Avery was still in awe with how much care Emily put into making sure it did not hurt Avery, looking at him every so often to check on his face to make sure he was not in pain.

-“I’m now going to use some hydrogen peroxide to clean the outer sides of the wound, is that okay?”

-“Yeah, please go ahead.”

Emily grabbed the towel, putting a bit of the liquid onto it and started wiping the outer edges of the wound, which did not hurt as much as last time.

-“I have to ask Emily…”

Emily leaned back a bit to look at his face, “Yeah?”

-“How do you know all this stuff?”

-“Oh, taking care of wounds? I’ve known how to do this for years, who do you think helps Reyn when she gets hurt during boxing, and how do you think Reyn learned how to do this too?”

Avery was quite shocked, not realizing that Emily taught Reyn how to do this, just assuming Reyn had always known how to help someone when they were hurt.

-“I… uh… didn’t know that.”

-“Yep, all me!” And Emily moved back closer to start wiping the wound again.

-“But if I may ask, how do you know how to do all this?”

-“Well, before I went here, to college, I did actually play a sport, and I got hurt quite a lot, and when someone wasn’t there to help me during my morning training, I had to do it myself.”

-“I didn’t know you did a sport, which one?”

-“Uhh… it was ice skating, I had been doing it pretty much since I learned how to walk, but stopped before I got to college because I wanted to pursue my writing career.”

-“Were you good? Like at ice skating?”

-“Hell yeah I was! I was a maniac on the ice, it was kinda scary not gonna lie!”

Avery let out a laugh at that comment, forgetting that Emily could come back at him like that, which led to her letting out a little laugh too.

-“Don’t doubt my abilities Avery, you might know some things about me from Reyn, but you don’t know everything!”

They kept up the conversation, every once in a while laughing at the others remarks while Emily cleaned and patched up the wound.

-“—I never knew you grew up in Washington, is it pretty over there?”

-“Yeah, it's gorgeous, where did you grow up?”

Avery didn’t like to bring up his past at all, but didn’t want to bring down the mood of the conversation, so he kept his response minimal and made sure to not look too uncomfortable about it.

-“Oh, I grew up in Ohio.”

-“Ohio, really? Gosh I bet it sucks there.”

-“Yeah, Ohio really sucks.”

Emily moved back in shock that he actually agreed with what she said, making her break out into laughter.

-“What did I say that was so funny?”

Emily tried to get words out, but failed and kept laughing hysterically. Avery just sat there, confused as ever, staring at her as she slowly pulled herself together.

-“Oh, sorry!” She wiped away a tear from laughing, “I actually don’t know why that was so funny to me, I’m done though!”

-“Oh thanks!”

-“Yeah, it was no biggie, I left some Ibuprofen in your bathroom. If you want to go take it, it should help with the pain.”

-“Oh, thank you Emily, I’ll go do that now.”

Emily handed him his water bottle and he headed into his bathroom to see right on his counter two things of Ibuprofen set out. He was quite astonished with how amazing Emily was with medical attention, but appreciated knowing he could turn to another for help. He took the two pills and headed out to go help Emily collect her things before she left. What he was not expecting, was to see her directly looking at his laptop, which he left open to let his program continue to load while he was practicing outside.

-“Hey Avery, is this your thing for your tech class?”

Avery walked closer to be right next to her, being a bit nervous with her standing so close to something that was so fragile and important to him.

-“Yeah it is, it’s kinda important to me.”

-“Oh sorry for getting so close, I promise I didn’t touch anything, I swear!” She said a bit anxious herself, and backed away from his desk. “I just saw a message pop up and got interested.”

Avery’s mind didn’t catch up to his mouth, speaking almost as if it was instinct, “What message?”

-“You promise you won't get mad that I saw your personal stuff?”

Avery grabbed Emily by the shoulders instantly, needing to know more than anything, “Emily, what did it say?”

-“But, you won’t get mad?”

-“Emily, I will be mad if you don’t tell me, this is urgent!”

Emily just stood there in shock and was nervous to say anything, which caused Avery to grab down on her shoulders a little tighter.

-“Emily, I need to know now! Ple—”

-“Derek Hutchins!” Emily interrupted

Avery looked at her in confusion. “What?”

-“Derek Hutchins.” She said this time more straight forward, “The notification said the name ‘Derek Hutchins’ and said ‘Age 23, college student’.”

Avery let go of Emily, which was now a little less shaken up, and took a few steps back and was looking down at the ground. Now Emily was the one to be fully confused.

-“Who is ‘Derek Hutchins?’”

…

-“Avery, who is that guy?”

…

-“AVERY!”

-“YES? HUH?” Avery was brought back to reality.

-“You zoned out, just got a bit nervous.”

-“EMILY, THANK YOU!”

-“You're welcome?”

Avery quickly sat down at his desk to start working on his laptop.

-“Okay, well I guess I will head out, it was nice talking to you Avery, just text me if you need anything!”

-“Thanks Emily!” Avery shouted before he heard her close the door behind her, and could hear her walking down the hall.

Avery started analyzing everything that the tool had already picked up from the doc, somehow it started picking up speed while he was outside practicing and was already at 8% complete. By this stage the tool was able to pull out the owner of the doc, their age, and anything that it could with what might define the person. And for this, the tool was able to find Derek's last name, which seemed to be Hutchins. Derek Hutchins. Derek Hutchins. He repeated in his head, which had a nice ring to it. It also was able to find out his age, which was 23, only being 2 years older than Avery, and that he was a college student. Even though this information might seem minimal to a regular person, to Avery, this was a goldmine. He could at least now limit the amount of Derek’s in the world to one that had the last name Hutchins, was 23, and was in college. He was really mad that the tool wasn’t able to find the university he went to, which would have practically found Derek exactly, but he could work with the information he now had. 

Avery scoured the internet, looking at social media accounts, posts, news reports, blogs, anything that he could that might have the name Derek Hutchins on it. Most of the posts or articles posted by college students only had the first name and the last initial, so he ended up finding thousands of articles from college students with the name Derek H. on them, but couldn’t fully confirm them. He found hundreds of science articles from students in colleges in California, English ones in Texas, astrophysics ones from Florida, and a couple History ones in New York. But he didn’t know if they were from the Derek that he was looking for. At this point Avery started wondering what major Derek might be working on, it would help him substantially with at least limiting down the student articles he would be looking at, but also for his own curiosity. Would Derek be into science? No, he didn’t seem like a guy that would. Maybe math? How could he know, he really barely knew the guy, but Derek knew everything about him. Before he knew it, it was already time to have dinner, so he left his laptop open again and headed down to the dining hall. After grabbing a turkey paninis they had set out, he sat down in his usual spot and pressed play on his music. But what he wasn’t expecting was a tap on his shoulder, forcing him to take out his headphones and look behind him to see who it was. And just looking at them, brought a smile to his face.

-“Reyn! I’m so glad you are going to have dinner here tonight!”

-“Yeah of course!” She sat down and started eating her own sandwich, “Emily is coming over too, she told me you guys bonded today, so I thought it would be okay if she sat with us.”

-“Yeah, I don’t mind, I hope she isn’t mad at me at all, I kinda spooked her a bit before she left.”

-“I think she is okay, she came back to our dorm really happy that you guys bonded, so I think she is all good, or she would have told me she was frazzled.”

-“Okay, good!”

Avery saw Emily grabbing a sandwich and heading over to sit with them.

-“Hey Avery, Reyn thought it would be fine if I sat with you guys, is it still okay?”

-“Yeah, of course, you don't have to ask!”

-“Oh, fantastic!” And she sat down next to Reyn and started eating her sandwich. 

They all sat there eating their dinners as they talked, well, Emily carried most of the conversation with topics she wanted to talk about, but Avery or Reyn did not mind. Before, Avery might have been not the most comfortable with Emily there, feeling a little left out, but now, he felt a bit more comfortable with Emily around and now being able to talk to her more easily and being able to relate to her in some sense, Emily felt more like a friend to him now.

Reyn continued to be shocked with how Avery and Emily had now bonded, sometimes even feeling like she couldn’t add to their conversations, only making her laugh a bit on the inside and feel happy that now both of her friends were friends themselves. As their conversations continued as they ate, someone finally brought up the topic Avery could see a mile away.

-“So, Avery…” Emily started, “is it okay if I ask about that person's name that I saw on your laptop?”

Avery didn’t even have to look over at Reyn to see her moving from looking at Emily to slowly panning over to look at Avery.

-“Wait, what person’s name? Am I being left out again on this topic guys?” Reyn questioned, knowing that this must have been from Avery and Emily’s interaction earlier in the day.

Avery just set down his sandwich, put his elbows on the table, put his hands on his face and made a deep groan, almost sounding tired. This is when Reyn finally picked up on the topic

-“Wait a second… DID YOU FIND DEREK, AVERY?!” Reyn practically screamed, which could be heard from every corner of the room, luckily there were no other students in there besides them at the table.

-“Not so loud, Reyn!” Avery whispered loudly

-“Oh come on, there is no one else in here, we're fine!”

-“Okay… but you don’t have to scream.”

-“Okay, but you didn’t answer my question.”

Avery pulled his hands down to have them folded in front of him on the table, looking quite disappointed, “Not yet…”

-“Ohhhh… Wait, Emily.” Reyn turned to face Emily, “How do you know about Derek?”

-“I don’t know anything really, only that this random person on Avery’s computer from his program has the name Derek Hutchins, is 23, and is a college student.”

-“WAIT, HOLD UP, YOU FOUND OUT ALL THIS INFORMATION ABOUT DEREK AND YOU DID NOT INFORM ME, WHAT THE HECK MAN?!” Reyn screamed in at the table, throwing her hands down furiously on the table

-“Reyn, calm down!” Avery put a hand on her shoulder.

-“How can I be a calm man! I need to break this down!”

-“Break what down? I’m so confused…” Emily said, knowing she probably wouldn’t get any clarification.

-“I’ll tell you a summary in a bit, Em, I just need to go into overthinking mode, very important information that I just learned.”

-“Okay…” Emily answered back, still as confused as can be.

And this was the start of Reyn’s diatribe. 

-“First and foremost, HIS LAST NAME IS HUTCHINS?” 

-“Yep.” Avery said, not wanting to even try and fight Reyn anymore about this

-“Has a nice right to it I must say, Derek Hutchins, it rolls off the tongue so nicely.”

-“I thought that a bit too actually…” Avery admitted, which he knew probably was not the best idea to reveal his own personal thoughts.

-“Nextly, he is 23 and in college, so he probably has been there for a bit… I bet he is smart too…” Reyn said with a bit of playfulness to her tone at the last part, looking directly at Avery when she said that, even raising her eyebrows a couple times jokingly to annoy Avery, which it definitely did.

-“Reyn, just no.” Avery said sternly.

-“You are no fun Avery!”

-“Hey…um…guys… I’m still thoroughly confused… I really want an explanation.” Emily finally spoke up between Avery and Reyn’s bickering.

At this point, Reyn didn’t even ask Avery is she could share, just felt like Emily deserved to know a very simple summary of what was happening.

-“Okay, so Avery met this guy online in a video game, in which this guy somehow learned a decent amount about Avery and for some reason felt like he needed to save him, not just in the game, but also in real life. They don’t know each other at all in person by the way, and this all happened on New Year’s Eve. And for some reason Avery met this guy and they went through these weird puzzles together and then finally when the guy, whose name is Derek, got to the end, he needed to sacrifice himself to save Avery. And Avery got mad at Derek for doing this because they barely knew each other, but Derek sacrificed himself in real life for Avery. And now Avery is trying to find out if this Derek guy is still alive or not, hoping to be able to see him in person if he is.” Reyn finally finished, taking a deep breath as if that whole explanation was a workout for her,

-“Oh…” Emily stated plainly. “That’s almost really romantic, if I do say so myself.”

At this point, Avery had had his head buried in his arms, just letting Reyn explain everything, but his head jumped up red when he heard Emily’s response.

-“That’s what I thought too! But Avery is being so rude about it, like it's so cute!” Reyn replied to Emily, so happy she saw it the same way she did.

-“Yeah, it's so cute!”

At this point, Avery felt like a teenager being ripped apart by a group of friends, making fun of him for just having a conversation with someone, and people turning it into a big ordeal. And this made his face warm up and practically scream at the two girls, “OH MY GOSH, JUST STOP GUYS!”

-“Hehe, he’s getting a bit red on the cheeks, someone’s embraced!” Emily replied, fully teasing Avery.

-“Oh my gosh guys…” Avery said, fully slumping his hot, embraced face back down into his folded arms on the table.

-“Man, you know we're just teasing you!” Reyn stated, pulling her hand up to the top of Avery's head to ruffle his hair, “Don’t take our teasing too seriously!”

Avery quickly listed up one of his hands below him and shooed away Reyn’s hand, which just made her laugh a bit. It prompted Avery to finally lift his head up from the table and he started eating away at the last bit of his sandwich.

-“Just let me eat in peace, please” Avery practically begged them to stop.

-“Can I at least ask one quick question?” Reyn commented looking at Avery.

-“Fine, shoot.”

-“Why didn’t you call or text me when you found out all this new information about this Derek guy? I want to be a part of this too, you know?”

Avery could tell that Reyn was a bit huffed that he didn’t immediately tell her, he just was so caught up, that he couldn't even think straight.

-“I’m sorry Reyn, it’s just that… When Emily informed me about it when she saw it, I practically ran to dive deeper and find more information. I know it was a slim chance, but I thought I could find him with only the information that my tool found so far.” Avery started looking down a bit at the table, “I just got too hopeful, that's all.”

-“It’s not bad to be hopeful Avery, I just want to not be left out.”

-“I know, I’m sorry.”

-“It’s okay, but if you do somehow find him, you have to get in contact with me asap!”

-“I will, I promise.”

-“Okay, good!”

After that, they all finished their dinners, Avery said goodbye to the girls, and headed back up to his dorm. Before going to bed, he changed into some more comfortable clothes, finished a chapter in his book, checked his laptop to see if any more information was found, but nothing had been updated since he went down for dinner. So he finally decided to call it a night, and head into bed.

—<{~~~~~}>—

For the next three days, Avery fell into a boring and less hopeful cycle of a repeating routine. He would wake up, go for a run, get breakfast, do some research, maybe go take a walk, read or go to the store, take a shower, go have dinner and go back to sleep. It was grueling for Avery, he would find more bits of information about Derek, but none of them would help him narrow down people by a huge chunk. He found out that he lived in the continental US, which helped him remove Alaska and Hawaii, thank god, but it barely did anything. He would just stare at the screen for days, hoping for something to come up, but nothing did. Until the fourth day.

Avery now hated sunset, but one thing he did love was sunrise. He wishes that sunrise lasted forever, cause he would not mind just sitting at his desk watching the sun rise until the world ended. But the sunrise had already ended this morning, but he was still at his desk even thirty minutes after the sun had fully risen. I guess his very early morning run over an hour ago, and the warm morning shower made it easy for him to just zone out at his desk looking out into the main quad area of the university. Almost every sound around him molded into one, just being in the background as he sat there, but one did bring him out of his trance. The sound of a notification on his laptop.

Just the sound made him snap out and jolt a bit backwards in his chair, which he steadied himself so as not to fall off his chair again. He quickly rolled his chair back up to his desk, and frantically shifted his laptop in front of him. He hastily clicked on his tool, and looked at the notification, which read:

New Information Uncovered:

Middle Initial: W.

Middle initial. Might seem like it would help, but not as helpful as you would think, which brought Avery’s hope down a bit, but he continued to read.

Gender: Male

Well… he already assumed that, so that was not new information.

University: Columbia, NY

Okay… Columbia University…

-“WAIT… COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY?!” Avery screamed, pushing his chair back and standing up quickly, slamming his hands on his desk. 

-“Oh my god… OH my god… OH MY GOD!” He screamed again, knowing that he was only screaming to himself.

This was huge for Avery. He felt his heart racing with not only pride in himself, but also in pure excitement, making his hands start to shake and he lifted them up to cup over his mouth. At this moment, the actual university that Derek attended didn’t fully render into Avery’s head, all he could think about was that he found a specific university that he attended. But that's when it clicked.

-“Wait a second, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN NEW YORK?! THAT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY?! HOLY CRAP!”

Avery not only realized that the university was in New York, which was crazy close to him, but also how insane going to Columbia was, it was a top ranking college in the US, it was an Ivy League school! Derek was attending a high ranking college. That astonished Avery, that meant that Derek was really smart.

Avery finally snapped out of his stage of insanity, and finally was able to think about the next steps he needed to do. Avery pulled back his chair, sat down, and started opening up tabs like a mad man. He first just started by typing in the name ‘Derek W. Hutchins’ into the search bar, and today was finally Avery’s day. There were no social media accounts under that name, but there were quite a few articles posted by a Derek H. from Columbia, which were the ones he found days ago by the same Derek H., which were about history. Avery had found a gold mine. Even though he wasn’t able to find a photo of him, Avery was certain that this student who posted these articles were from the Derek he was looking for.

But now, Avery was stuck. He didn’t know what to look up next. Social media was a no, and all he could find were the studies and articles that Derek had posted on Columbia's history program website. He hit a dead end. He sat there for over twenty minutes just trying to think, finally getting out of his chair to pace around his room, and started asking questions in his head to himself. He finally found the exact person, but what to do next? The school didn’t publicly release students' dorm numbers or living arrangements, so how could he find him now? He was playing cat and mouse in his head, finding ideas, but then realizing they won’t work. He was so close, he couldn’t just stop here. As he paced his room, his eyes made contact with the first aid kit sitting on his night stand that he left there the other day. He stared at it, almost looking at it as if it was going to give him an idea. But somehow, it did. 

-“Oh my god, medical records! Why didn’t I think of that!” Avery exclaimed, rushing back over to his desk, grabbing his chair and looking deeply into hospitals near Columbia University, and if someone were to be rushed to the hospital from the University, where they would go.

Avery finally located Mount Sinai Hospital, which was very close to Columbia, and was known for rushing injured student athletes to their hospital from Columbia. Avery started pushing the limits of the hospital's website, diving deep into the code to find anything about patient records. Finally he stumbled across an online pdf that was updated today titled ‘Patient Current Records’, which Avery knew he was not supposed to be able to access. He started scouring through the pdf, filtering through names like crazy. Finally, he found the names sorted alphabetically by last name. So he started searching.

A, B, C, D, E, F, G. At last, last names starting in the letter H. He quickly skimped over all the last names that did not start with the letters HU, because they wouldn’t match up with Derek’s last name. He found three people under the last name Hutchins, one was immediately crossed off because it was a woman, and he crossed off the second one because their first name was Jerry. But then, he found it.

Patient #408: Hutchins, Derek

Avery quickly clicked on the link to see the report of him.

Patient #408: Hutchins, Derek

Gender: Male

Age: 23

When Arrived at Hospital: January 1st, 2026. (Time not provided)

Status: Recovering

When Avery read the status report, he started breaking into tears. Recovering. Recovering. Oh my god, he actually was alive! Avery put his hands over his mouth, and started balling tears down his face, being filled with the joy and relief that he needed. He couldn’t be 100% sure that this was the same Derek he was looking for, but he could feel it in his heart and soul that it was, and that's all he needed. He could have just been content with the rest of his life knowing that Derek was alive, but he needed to see Derek, he wanted to know Derek. Before even thinking, Avery shot out of his chair, and started running around his room with crazy speed. He grabbed his phone, his bag, his water, and his keys, quickly running back over to close the laptop before running out his door to his car. But halfway down the hall, he stopped to grab out his phone and make a call.

…

-“Okay, so breathe in and slowly breathe out.”

-“I suck at this Emily!”

-“Just relax!”

Reyn and Emily were in their own dorm, with two yoga mats laid out on the ground while Emily was teaching Reyn warrior II pose.

-“Just hold it for a while longer, then we will be done!”

-“ughhhh…”

Ring, Ring! Call coming in from: Avery Murphy

Reyn looked down below her to see the call coming in from Avery on her phone, then looked back up at Emily.

-“Please can I answer it?”

-“No, stay in the pose, I will.” And Emily reached down and clicked the answer button on Reyn’s phone.

-“Hey Avery! What's up? I’m here with Emily!”

-“Hey Avery!”

-“I-I *huff* found h-him! *huff*” Avery screamed out of breath on the other side of the phone, which Reyn or Emily couldn’t fully pick up.

-“Sorry man, could you repeat that? Are you running?”

-“Yeah, I-I’m *huff* running t-to my ca-ar!” Avery screamed, still panting like crazy.

Both Emily and Reyn broke warriors II pose to get closer to the phone.

-“Avery, slow down! Just pause and tell us!” Emily said into the phone.

They could hear Avery stop running, and take a deep breath before screaming into the phone again.

-“I FOUND HIM!” Avery screamed.

Both Reyn and Emily looked up to look at each other in confusion before looking back down at the phone.

-“Found who?” Reyn questioned.

-“HIM! I FOUND HIM! I FOUND DEREK! HE’S ALIVE!” Avery finally let out.

Reyn matched Avery’s ecstatic energy, almost jumping up from the mat below her.

-“OH MY GOSH! YOU FOUND HIM?! OH MY GOSH!!!” Reyn screamed into the phone.

-“I just wanted to call and tell you before I headed over!”

Reyn was brought down to earth, back to being confused. “What? Head over, where?”

-“I found the exact hospital he is at, I’m hoping in my car now to go see him!”

-“Wait, you did? How far away is it?”

-“It’s like a 40 minute drive, he lives in New York! Reyn, HE LIVES IN NEW YORK!”

-“NEW YORK?!” Reyn and Emily both screamed at the same time

-“AVERY BE SAFE! YOU HAVE NEVER DRIVEN IN NEW YORK!” Reyn screamed at Avery.

-“I promise I will! I gotta go! Will call you back when I can!”

-“Okay, bye!” Reyn said, and hung up the phone.

At this moment both Reyn and Emily looked directly at each other, being on the same wave length.

-“How did he get so lucky? I can’t believe that guy lives so close!” Emily screeched, being ecstatic for Avery.

-“I know, right! I just hope that Derek guy is okay, you know?”

-“Yeah, I hope that too.”

…

As Avery unlocked his car, he felt something new. He felt like something he had wanted for so long had finally arrived at him. He felt his heart beating, and being filled with hope, filling the void that used to reside in his heart when Derek sacrificed himself for him. Derek was there for Avery, now it was time for Avery to be there for Derek