Work Text:
♫ 23 - Noah Kahan
♫ Hanging out to dry - Florence Road
They left on a Tuesday.
Now, there had been nothing about this Tuesday in particular that stood out as strange to Zedaph. In fact, it had seemed wonderfully simple. Boring almost.
He’d woken up (on the right side of the bed this time), brushed his teeth, and pottered around in his kitchen making tea just like any other day. Goodness, it had even been a productive morning!
He’d finally fixed the wiring on his giant, overhead clock, the inadequacies of which had been bugging him forever, and he’d even remembered to write his technique down this time! He didn’t burn his toast, and he remembered to drink his morning tea before it got cold.
So, yeah. Overall, not a bad start to the day.
Perhaps it had been because of this that he hadn’t taken it personally when Impulse missed their scheduled meetup in the afternoon.
Or when, a week later, Tango’s ‘grand opening’ of Decked Out was unattended by the Dungeon Master, causing it to be postponed indefinitely.
By the time it finally hit him that something was wrong, not just strange, prompted by a memo he’d missed in a meeting, Impulse, Tango and six other hermits had been missing for a week.
But it had been fine.
He was sure they were just busy.
⏱︎
But as weeks turned to months, and months turned into a year, a more hurtful reality began to intrude upon his day to day. A reality that morphed time into something dark and twisted and resentful.
He’d originally thought- well, he didn’t know what he’d thought. And, the more months that passed, the more he supposed that it…
Well, that it no longer mattered.
Perhaps his partners were upset with him. Perhaps he’d done something.
Perhaps they just didn’t want him anymore.
None of it changed the fact that they weren’t coming back.
⏱︎
Death was a… funny thing, especially in a Universe such as this. As a scientist, Zedaph liked to assume that he was familiar with most advanced concepts. He was well versed in code, he understood brewing intricately. Even the physics behind the Farlands was a topic within which he considered himself somewhat of an expert.
But death?
Well, on that, he was remarkably unexperienced.
At first, it had been nothing more than a theory, the ‘worst-case scenario’ the remaining hermits whispered about when they thought nobody could hear. But over time, well-
If death was a funny thing, then time- time was a hysterical one.
Time was torturous and death was hillarious and everything was backwards and his partners were dead.
Zedaph didn’t really know what to do with that.
⏱︎
Still, days passed all the same, unaware of Zedaph’s contempt for them. The rising moon and the setting sun were wholly unbothered by his desire for time to slow, to stop altogether.
Actually-
No.
Maybe that wasn’t right.
⏱︎
The days didn’t ‘pass,’ not in the way he’d said anyway.
But rather- Zed kept living, and time moved around him. Over the year and the months that followed, he felt endlessly stagnant, as if he were the earth watching planets revolve around his axis.
Powerless to intervene.
He was stuck, trapped, caged, imprisoned- whatever you wanted to call it. Point was, he couldn’t leave.
The worst possible reality had become actuality, and it was his home now.
Whether he chose to accept it or not.
⏱︎
He spent a lot of time with Mumbo after his partners had vanished. The engineer had lost his boyfriend too, and both men found a sort of quiet companionship in each other. Sure, he’d lost two partners where Mumbo had lost one, but the hermit understood Zedaph’s grief all the same.
It was easier- being with Mumbo. Mumbo made things make sense, Mumbo kept him grounded, stopped him-
Things were easier with Mumbo.
For as much as he loved his other friends, he couldn’t help the horrid resentment that so often rose in his chest when he was around them.
It was a putrid feeling, utterly vile. And yet, one he could do little to prevent.
The envy.
Xisuma got to keep Keralis, Beef still had Hypno and XB.
Even Etho and Bdubs had vanished together.
How was it fair? How was it-
Zedaph shook his head.
He hated those thoughts, the ones that only came at his absolute lows. The ones that hissed, that curled around in the pit of his stomach like a knot of snakes, the ones that would trade his friend’s happiness for his own in a heartbeat.
But just because he hated them, didn’t mean he could stop them.
He wasn’t strong enough.
And that was it, wasn’t it? Not strong enough, not involved enough, not present enough.
Maybe that was why they’d left.
⏱︎
Some days, he wished he’d gone too, gone with them- with his brilliant, bright blazeborne and his gentle demon. Even if they were-
Even if that meant the end for him too.
Death was-
Anything was better than this.
⏱︎
At least Tango and Impulse were together.
Wherever they were.
⏱︎
He kept experimenting.
Sometimes he’d blow things up, creating large clouds of brightly coloured smoke. Other days, he’d rig the explosives and allow them to detonate around him, leaving him burned and bloody at the bottom of whatever pit he’d been trying to dig out.
He’d lie there, curls flat against the deep slate floor, and stare at the sky.
It was empty, usually, with the sun hidden behind the clouds and the moon nowhere in sight.
Sometimes he’d laugh at the irony.
⏱︎
One time, pretty early on, he’d tried to contact Skizz. They weren’t the closest of friends, and Zed had only met the man a handful of times, but still cared deeply about the man. He knew also that Impulse would want the pair of them to stick together if whatever happened had been truly unintentional and he and Tango hadn’t just-
Well, up and left him.
But the angel had been nowhere to be found, Zed’s search only resulting in the same blank screen and error message as the other men’s had.
At that, he remembered laughing, sharp and cold. He remembered Xisuma’s expression, the furrow between his eyebrows.
He remembered feeling absolutely hopeless.
Because it was all just absolutely ridiculous, wasn’t it?
⏱︎
He hoped they hadn’t intended for this.
Hoped beyond anything that they hadn’t meant to leave him behind, desperately picking up the pieces of the life he’d never expected to explode on a random weekday.
But if they had…
They’d really covered all the bases.
He could only applaud the effort.
⏱︎
He missed Gem. The thought hit him on a random afternoon, a kick to the chest so harsh and sudden he’d had to grab the arm of Mumbo’s chair to steady himself.
His sister’s absence was usually a vague itch, something constant but bearable.
But now? When he was broken and bruised and bleeding in more ways than one, he missed the woman as he would mourn a lost limb.
But Gem was happy. Content on her own single-player world.
He’d tell her the next time he saw her.
⏱︎
He stopped leaving the house after a while.
And- what was a while, anyway? It was such a vague measure of time. It meant so little that it was almost negligible.
At this thought, Zedaph tripped over his enchanting table, toppling over into the surrounding bookshelves.
Shocked, he grasped at the leather-bound books there, fingers scraping over their painted material.
What had he been saying?
⏱︎
He drank. In their absence. But you already knew that. At a certain point, it stopped being important. He wasn’t drinking for long periods of time, just a little bit.
Here and there.
And yet it wasn’t bad. He knew he didn’t have a problem because recently, his definition of what a ‘problem’ actually was had been re-evaluated in the worst way possible.
Zedaph didn’t have a drinking problem because Tango and Impulse were missing.
Now that-
That was a problem. Everything else became more of a… ‘vague concern’ by proxy, shoved out of the way by the elephant in the room.
Or rather- the elephant missing from the room.
Fuck, he missed the elephant.
⏱︎
“Y’know. I don't think they’re ever coming back.”
He lamented mindlessly to one of the chickens clucking around the Cave of Contraptions.
“Although- ‘coming back’ makes it sound like they’ve gone.”
He sighed as he turned over, lying on the cold floor in silence.
“-Come to think of it, being dead makes you pretty gone, doesn't it?”
⏱︎
It took him about a year to accept it.
It took another month for Mumbo to pull him out of the depression that took over as a result.
The misery was like a blanket. It was black and thick and taught as it consumed every moment of his life, making his movements sluggish and his mind ache.
He’d been creative once.
He’d been an inventor.
Now? Well, he just sort of existed.
He supposed that in itself was an achievement.
⏱︎
Sometimes he was better.
That was true.
That was-
That was what everyone kept telling him.
‘Glad you’re finding your feet.’
‘There’s more colour in your face.’
‘Keep going, man.’
Everyone said he was doing better, so he was.
Right?
⏱︎
Zedaph did all the correct things.
He smiled when he passed another hermit in the shopping district. He joked idly with his friends when they’d come round to visit. He’d manage not to scowl every time he saw two players exchange anything more intimate than a high five.
He even did stuff now! He built, actually. He spent a lot of time building, carving out intricate little pathways and landscapes.
It reminded him of Bdubs.
He made minigames too! He’d spend hours agonising over the redstone, allowing his boyfriend’s old rock music to blast around his base as he worked.
It reminded him of Tango.
Sometimes he even went on adventures! He wasn't usually an explorer, but every so often, when the thoughts got too loud, he’d hop into a boat and sail off into the sea, finding new structures and unloaded chunks just for the hell of it.
It reminded him of Etho.
It never quite struck him that somewhere along the line, he'd stopped being Zedaph.
That every action, every build, every creation, was an incarnation of someone else, a shrine to one of his long-dead friends.
Impulse shone through in Zed’s personality.
He grew calmer, more reasonable. Where the old Zedaph might’ve engaged in a new, dangerous experiment, the new Zedaph would warn other hermits to be careful. He’d provide supplies for End-raiding missions, would help out tirelessly at their ‘hermits helping hermits’ events.’
He was good. He did good.
And if the two gold rings on his finger never moved, well then, that was nobody’s business but his own.
⏱︎
They left on a Tuesday.
And they came home on a Sunday.
⏱︎
Zedaph
He’d been heading back to his base when it happened, when everything changed.
He didn’t like change.
Not anymore, anyway.
His communicator vibrated once, twice, and then a hundred more times in his pocket, and Zedaph froze dead still in the middle of the path he’d been pottering down.
He didn’t pull the device out, not straight away.
No, for a moment, he just stood there, staring at the setting sun before him as his communicator continued to explode with notifications.
Blood thundered in his ears as his heart pounded. It was a foreign feeling, such a vast torrent of emotion. He hadn’t felt like this- well, ever.
Over the past year and a half, Zedaph wasn’t entirely sure he’d felt anything.
And now it was everything, now it was too much, now it was crushing and horrid and-
He pulled the device out of his pocket.
And stared.
BdoubleO100 joined the game
EthosLab joined the game
GoodTimewithScar joined the game
Grian joined the game
ImpulseSV joined the game
Rendog joined the game
TangoTek joined the game
Zombiecleo joined the game
It wasn’t possible.
They were dead. They were. They’d vanished into the void and they’d been lost-
Lost to time and space and everything between.
They’d all accepted it; all the hermits had. They’d done everything. Xisuma had nearly killed himself searching- Doc had done every experiment under the sun. Zedaph had helped him. He’d helped, he’d been good, he’d done everything he could’ve-
Five hundred and forty-eight days.
That’s how long they’d been missing.
That’s how long he’d been alone.
Distantly, he heard the sound of rockets accompanied by two sets of feet landing on the gravelly path he’d been working on.
“Zed?”
Oh, goodness, he felt sick.
“Hey, buddy! Over here!”
“No.”
His voice was faint, barely audible.
This wasn’t happening.
“Hey, dude! You alright?”
He could hear Tango’s combat boots clacking on the mossy cobblestone he’d mixed into the terrain, the low crackling of his blaze rods as they encircled his head like a wreath.
Impulse was a much quieter man, but Zedaph would recognise his voice anywhere.
It had been haunting his dreams for eighteen months, after all.
He couldn’t turn around. He couldn’t. So instead he just stood there, staring resolutely at the forest ahead of him.
He nearly toppled over as a hand came into contact with his shoulder.
“Zed?” Tango’s voice, weighed down by concern, came inches away from his ear, his breath faintly brushing the blonde’s neck.
“-What’s up?”
“Tango?” His voice came out high-pitched and pitiful as he finally forced himself to turn around.
“…Yeah?” The Blazeborne shot him a concerned smile.
Zedaph opened his mouth to respond, but cut himself off as he caught sight of Impulse over Tango’s shoulder.
They were both so beautiful.
He couldn’t stop the tears that sprang to his eyes as he took in the sight before him. The sight that he’d assumed- that he’d accepted he would never ever see again. The orange sun illuminated both men. The light hit their skin in a way that made them glow surreally, a pair of golden ghosts.
“You’re not- This isn’t-”
He took a step backward and felt his knees buckle, sending him straight to the ground. His back hit one of his custom trees, and he pressed himself into the bark.
Was it fear? Trepidation? Shock?
He wasn’t sure what force propelled him away from his partners. He just knew that he wasn’t ready. He hadn’t prepared for this- He’d never expected-
Impulse seemed to get it first, rushing over and falling before Zedaph.
“Tango…” The demon whispered. “-I think something’s wrong.”
The redhead laughed.
“I just took him by surprise! You’re alright, aren’t you, man?”
Zedaph felt his stomach flip as Tango turned to him, his wide grin revealing his pointed teeth.
He’d missed that look. The grin you got when a prank or a dirty joke was imminent, that let you know just how lucky you were to be bathing in the Blazeborne’s warmth.
The grin he’d never expected to see again.
And Zedaph… well, he couldn’t talk, couldn’t breathe. It was all he could manage to shake his head, biting his lip to stop himself from crying.
It was only then that it seemed to dawn on Tango that Impulse was right.
“Hey.” He said softly, slim, cat-like eyes widening in a way that only happened when one of them got hurt, properly hurt.
“-What’s up? Where’s your pink?”
He gestured at the curls at the front of Zed’s face, the ones he’d dyed rose pink for the past ten years.
“I lost it.” He whispered, casting his gaze to the ground.
There was a hand on his knee.
Zedaph stared at it.
Then, slowly, he reached out and prodded it.
Real. Tangible.
Here.
Impulse giggled sweetly at his strange antics, although his brow was still furrowed in confusion.
“You’re real.” The words fell from his mouth like a secret revealed, raspy and desperate.
“Of course we are.” Tango looked scared now, although he still grinned stupidly as he joked.
“-We weren’t gone for that long, were we?”
When Zedaph didn’t respond, his face fell.
“-Were we?” He turned to Impulse. “Grian said two hours-”
“Two hours?!” The blonde surprised even himself as a scoff of disbelief left him.
“Yeah!” Impulse’s smile was shaky.
“-We were playing a game! G didn’t want us to tell everyone yet because he was still ironing a few things out. We were testing it for him. It was supposed to be fun…” He trailed off, expression scared.
“Two. Hours.”
Zedaph repeated the words, gobsmacked.
He watched his partner bite down his lip before he spoke, hard enough to draw blood, as his blazerods stuttered.
“Has it- Been longer?”
“Has it- Tango, it’s been a year!” He snapped, unable to contain his emotions.
“-Eighteen months! I don’t understand- I don’t-”
Impulse froze, and Tango fell backward onto his hands.
“No.” He said simply. “-Don’t- That’s not funny, Zed!”
Impulse’s tail wrapped its way around Zedaph’s arm as he shut his eyes, and the sheep hybrid wondered vaguely if it was a conscious decision from his partner, or if it was a natural response to such news. Still, he reached towards the appendage regardless, laying his hand atop where it had coiled around his wrist.
A tiny sob left Impulse at the comfort, and he leaned against Tango for support. The redhead was no help, however, and he hardly registered the touch from where he was staring at his hands, digging his blackened nails into his palms.
Zed longed to slap at the man’s hand to get him to stop, but his body was unreceptive.
“Eighteen months.” He whispered instead, shaking hands clutching at the back of his neck which was growing hotter with ever word exchanged.
“-Five hundred and forty-eight days. You were gone for five hundred and-”
His voice cracked, and he had to stop, hanging his head as he blinked away molten-hot tears.
“I can’t do this, I have to find Mumbo-” He shuffled on the ground, trying to push himself back up onto shaking legs.
“Zedaph.” Impulse’s voice stopped him in his tracks.
He sounded devastated.
“-It’s only been two weeks for us.”
He hit the floor again.
“How?”
“G was playing around with some time stuff. He said we’d be gone for two weeks, but only two hours would pass here! That’s why we didn’t tell you- We didn’t even think you’d notice, not with your new project. It was going to be a surprise!”
Tears rolled down Impulse’s face as he spoke, and Zedaph, just like he had with Tango, battled with the urge to wipe them away.
He couldn’t even remember the project Impulse was talking about.
That was how much time had passed.
The blonde laughed softly.
“Well, you certainly surprised me.”
A whine left Tango, feeble and keening, and Zedaph turned to him, instantly feeling guilty.
“You’re serious?” The older man asked, tears shining on his cheeks, red eyes glistening.
His blaze rods had long since stopped spinning, and now they hung dead, barely even sparkling as both men stared at each other.
He nodded, and Tango looked as if he were about to vomit.
“Zed-” The blazeborne reached out toward him, but retracted his hand as Zedaph flinched.
“I’m sorry.” Tango sounded utterly defeated now. “-I’m so sorry, Zee.”
The sheep hybrid didn’t respond. Instead, he forced his hands to move, taking hold of Tango’s sleeve and fiddling with the leather of his jacket.
“You-” Tango didn’t try to touch him again, but Zedaph saw his fingers twitch as he spoke.
“-You’ve been alone for eighteen months?”
“I- kept busy.” He turned his head to the side, clenching his jaw as his voice broke.
“-I built a forest.”
“Zed-” Tango shoved a fist into his mouth as he convulsed with a silent sob.
“Can I touch you?”
Impulse’s voice was just as gentle as he was. And when Zedaph nodded, the relief that came with his embrace was immediate.
The sheep hybrid shattered the second Impulse wrapped his large, bear-like arms around him, face screwing up embarrassingly as he pressed it into his partner’s shoulder.
“I missed you both so much.” He whispered. “-We tried everything to get you back, nobody knew where you’d gone- Impulse-”
His body shook with every sob, utterly unable to process what was happening.
Beside them, Tango still didn’t move.
Perhaps he couldn’t.
“Eighteen months.” He muttered breathlessly.
He sounded just as insane as Zedaph felt.
“Zed-” Tango’s voice was as high-pitched as the sheep hybrid had ever heard it.
“-Zed, we didn’t- we wouldn’t-”
“I know.” The words were barely more than a whimper as he stared up at the blazeborne from Impulse’s arms.
Tango shook as his legs folded from where he’d been kneeling on them, falling to the grass. Wordlessly, he reached out, fingers brushing the wet skin of Zedaph’s tear-stained face.
“I don’t know what to say.” The redhead whispered the words as the sheep hybrid relaxed into his touch, allowing Tango to cup his face as Impulse rubbed small shapes into his back.
“Don’t say anything.” He murmured, leaning further into the warmth surrounding him.
“-Just stay here… please.”
⏱︎
He had no idea how they pulled him to his feet, how he went from a tiny Zedaph-shaped puddle on the floor to an actual walking human over the course of the next hour. But, aching and shaky and the happiest he’d ever been in his entire life, Zedaph allowed his partners to support him back to his base.
The sunset was still beautiful before them, it’s soft orange now morphing into a passionate red. But Zedaph hardly noticed this as the three of them made their way up his custom pathways, round the bends and past the delicate rivers and meanders he’d installed throughout.
He was too busy staring.
There, in the light of the dying sun, he re-memorized both men’s faces. The details of which had been gradually slipping from his mind over the past year and a half.
Of course, some things he could never forget. The straight line of Tango’s nose, the flecks of grey in Impulse’s beard. But other things- smaller things-
He’d forgotten just how many freckles the Blazeborne actually had.
“Is that a custom log? That’s awesome!” Tango’s voice was disproportionately chirpy, and Zed could tell he was putting it on for his sake. But right now he was too exhausted to care.
Instead, he smiled and thanked the red-haired man, returning to silence so he could watch the way his long, orange hair swayed as he walked, mimicking the actual flames encircling his blazerods.
Zedaph noticed that neither man commented on the abject transformation his base and surrounding area had overseen. The area had undergone a complete rework since they’d last been here, even if the smell of gunpowder still lingered in the air from some of his more self-destructive experiments.
Then, as if he’d heard his thoughts, Impulse plastered a fake smile on his face and turned to Zedaph dramatically.
“This place is beautiful, Zed!”
The blonde knew he meant it, knew he was being honest. And yet, the undercurrent of concern in his voice was evident, his smile not quite reaching his eyes.
Tango had far less tact.
“It’s not right.” The other counteracted, drawing stares from both of his partners.
He tried to recover quickly.
“I- sorry, Zed.” Tango stopped in his tracks. “-I didn’t mean it like that. It is beautiful! Really it is! It’s just…”
“It’s not me?” The sheep hybrid smiled softly as Tango nodded.
“-Yeah.” He said contemplatively.
“…I think I lost ‘me’ a while ago.”
There was a heavy silence, only interrupted by the ambient sounds of woodland creatures chittering around them.
“Do you think we can help find him again?” Impulse’s voice was light and hopeful, and his eyes, usually plain brown, shone with flecks of gold in the dying light of the sun.
Zedaph smiled. A genuine, real smile.
“I think so.”
Tango wrapped an arm around his waist as they continued their walk.
Then, he leaned in, whispering in Zed’s ear.
“I know so.”
⏱︎
“Zed?”
Mumbo’s accented voice echoed through The Cave of Contraptions. The cavern rarely seemed truly empty thanks to its endless moving parts.
The farms and machines that seldom ceased to make noise.
Still, just then, Mumbo wasn’t sure if the Cave’s owner was present. It was too noisy to tell.
And- oh.
It was only when his gaze fell upon what might’ve been the largest bed he’d ever seen that he breathed a sigh of relief.
His friend lay sandwiched between both of his partners. Tango lay on his chest, hand idly pressed against the man’s heart, and Impulse was curled peacefully into Zedaph’s side, one arm resting over both the other men.
Zed looked warm.
He looked happy.
Mumbo sighed contentedly as he turned around and left the base.
He had a sleeping avian to get back to.