Chapter Text
He wakes to the phantom sensation of water in his lungs and an unfamiliar shadow standing over him.
He coughs, struggles to get the (non-existent?) water from his chest, coughs again and gasps for air.
“Wifies…?” The person above him ventures. They bend over, as though looking to help, but then withdraw, as though thinking the better of such an action.
Wifies looks up, straining his eyes against the bright glare of morning sunlight. “Who…?”
“I-It's me…” They scramble, moving left then taking a step right before finally collapsing onto the floor to meet Wifies’ eyes. “Hummer…? Hummer 5718.”
…Wifies eyes are not met. Instead he sees what had been obscured by light-blindness, the obvious rectangular box of a TV.
“Oh,” Wifies says. He coughs again for good measure, still not entirely certain there isn't water in his lungs (there had definitely been water, he's certain, he was drowning, right–) and rubs his eyes with a hand. “I… What happened?”
“I just found you here,” Hummer explains. “Passed out on the beach. You… Are you okay?”
“I'm… I'm okay.” Wifies breathes and marvels that he can do as much. “Did I drown…?”
“Mm.” Hummer dips his TV-head downwards in what can only be described as a nod. “With me. But…”
“But?”
“Nothing.” Hummer shakes his head. “You respawned and you passed out.”
“...Huh…” Wifies is sure something more happened, but he can't remember, can only think of water and drowning, drowning, drowning. “I… Don't know. Drowning sucks. It probably just knocked me out.”
“It's not that bad,” Hummer protests. He knits his fingers together, doing what Wifies thinks is staring down at them. “And I know why we didn't find Levi. I know.”
Wifies wants to loudly sigh, get up, and walk off. He really, really wants to. But somewhere along this wild goose chase he's come to like Hummer, a lot, and in his heart he just can't be mean to the guy.
“When we discarded the potions, one ended up in my inventory! I saw it right as we died! I'm sure that's it!”
“Did it…” Wifies pulls a knee up, holds it to his chest. “...Right. Yeah…” He's not sure what to say. No matter what happens, Hummer will just keep hunting the leviathan. Hes convinced it's real with such conviction…
Believe in me.
Damn. Wifies wants to leave so badly but he can't. He might not believe in Levi, but he wants to believe in Hummer. Desperately wants to. They've only known each other for a matter of days, really, but it feels like years, and it's really hard to find real friends in Wifies’ line of work, really hard to get to know people, especially after the last time he got to know someone…
He flinches at the very thought.
He's aware he's flawed. He's aware of how much it can ruin him. But Wifies is loyal to a fault, and when he likes someone, he'll follow them till the end of the earth.
And goddamnit he really likes Hummer.
“So.” He plants his hands on the sand. “What next?”
Hummer's screen fizzles a second, almost like a human expression of surprise. “I think… I think we need to start a new server. From scratch. And we don't make or touch any potions.”
“Sounds like a good idea.” Wifies runs his hand through the sand, feeling it fall through his fingers. “It'll probably take a while, though. To gather the materials for a new submarine. I can't just buy them, this time.”
“I think I'm okay with that.” Hummer turned, facing Wifies straight ahead. “Are you…?”
“...Okay,” Wifies says. “Yeah. We can do that."
It takes hours for them to get the materials to build the farms they need, let alone building the farms themselves. By the time they've set up the farms, it's already dusk, and mobs are beginning to spawn. Wifies lays on the floor, his back to a chest, and groans.
“I'm sick of this,” he says, quietly.
“Me too,” Hummer says. “Just a bit.” He turns around, sheepish, from where he'd been standing and watching the slime farm. “We’re almost done, though. We can set out in the morning.”
And in the morning, what will happen? Wifies will drown again, and Hummer will too (and god Wifies hates seeing Hummer drown, his last friendship was ruined by how much he hated even the idea of his best friend dying, and now he has to watch his new friend dying in front of him again and again…?). It all just seems pointless. Silly, even. They're hunting a beast that likely doesn't exist, and dying for the slightest glimpse of it.
“Don't you hate dying?” Wifies wonders. “I… I really don't like dying.”
“Is it that bad for you?” Hummer sits down across from him, his head still turned toward the slime farm. “I… I don't mind dying. Or. No. I don't mind drowning. It's like… Returning home, when you've been gone a very long time.”
“We don't live underwater,” Wifies reminds Hummer. “And drowning hurts. It hurts a lot. Don't you detest the feeling of water in your nose, your lungs, your mouth… everywhere? Don't you hate that?” He hates it. He does. The horrific feeling as you gasp for air that never comes, as you clutch for the surface. The first time he’d drowned was when Hummer had abandoned him. It had sickened him to his core and he'd vomited multiple times the day after it happened. Sure, nothing quite compares to your body being blown to a million bloody pieces, but drowning…
Nothing quite compares to drowning, either.
“I don't mind it.” Hummer shrugs. “But I understand. If you- If you hate it. I’m sorry. This will be the last time. I promise.” He says it with such sincerity that Wifies almost wants to believe him. Or maybe he almost believes him. Or maybe he does believe him. …He doesn’t know anymore, truly. Hummer has him all messed up, or maybe it’s just the repetitive deaths getting to him. Either way there’s something wrong, because Wifies is a rational thinker, and the rational thing to do here is to give up and go home and ignore this delusional looney who wants to die in pursuit of a non-existent sea creature.
There’s a few issues with that, though. First, Wifies hasn’t had a home in a long, long time. Second, he’s barely a rational thinker, cannot call himself as such when he knows all rationality is thrown out of the window the moment he finds someone he cares about. And, well. The last point is simply that. He cares about Hummer5718. And if Hummer is going to drown to see Levi, Wifies wants to be there with him. (And maybe, just maybe, he believes that he too can see the Leviathan).
“So. Um. You’re a detective,” Hummer ventures. “What made you decide to do, uh. That.”
“I don’t know…” Wifies turns to stare at the slime farm with him. “I’ve seen a lot of things. In my life. And I thought it would be a good idea to keep seeing more. Along the way I kept finding these… These mysteries, I guess. And nobody really seemed to care. But I did, so.” He held his hands up. “I… I try to help with them.” He doesn’t want to say solve them. Because he hasn’t, not really. He’s publicised them, maybe explained them. But solving them implies that he actually did something meaningful. He watched D3rlord3 die and couldn’t help at all. He was useless, really. He has an email from AveryTheMayo that’s gone unread in his inbox for months; he figures Avery watched the video, where he made a spectacle of Derek’s death. Doesn’t want to know what Avery thought of it. Maybe he’s a little scared. Maybe.
“You make good money doing it?” Thankfully, Hummer doesn’t comment on what Wifies is sure is the sudden miserable aura surrounding them.
“Yeah. Yeah, I do.” He watches as a slime dies pitifully, its form melting into the hoppers. “What do you do, then?”
Hummer’s screen fizzles, and he turns to face Wifies. “I thought I told you..? I look for Levi.”
“Well, yeah, but.” Wifies frowns, “surely that doesn’t pay the bills.”
“I don’t have any bills.” Hummer shakes his head. “I live alone on my own server.”
“You don’t… Go out? Never buy anything at all?”
“Why would I? Levi is more important than any of that.”
Jesus. Hummer is fanatical to an extreme. Wifies considers himself to live a fairly spartan life, but he’s always needed money. Has never really considered the idea of shutting himself off in his own server, alone. He’s a lonely person, but he at least stays connected.
“Anyway,” Hummer says, cutting into his train of thought, “I’m not very interesting. I want to know more about you, Wifies. Mm… Hey. You said there was a long story about why you were banned from the largest hardcore server, right? Isn’t that Unstable SMP?”
Oh god. Wifies cringes. He knew that was gonna bite him in the ass. He tries his best not to mention that time, as best he can, but it’s such an important part of him he just can’t resist. He sighs, watching another slime die. “I died. The long story is about why I died, and honestly it isn’t very interesting. I just made a mistake and it blew up in my face.” Heh. What a joke.
“I’m interested,” Hummer presses.
“You shouldn’t be,” Wifies says. “It’s nothing important.”
“It’s about you,” Hummer protests. “That makes it important.”
“...Thank you…?” Wifies doesn’t know what to say to that. “...Tell me something about yourself first. Anything. Even something small and silly. We can trade information.”
Hummer seems to think to himself, though it’s impossible to tell. He’s inscrutable by design. “...Okay. But let’s get some sleep. I’ll tell you anything you want about me after we find Levi. Deal?”
…After they respawn again, he means. Wifies stares at the slime spawner; two slimes bounce together, taking damage and then dying simultaneously, sinking into the droppers until no evidence of their shared existence is left beyond his own memory. “Deal.”
Sleep doesn’t find him easily. He has too many thoughts filling his skull: thoughts about Hummer, thoughts about the Leviathan, thoughts about drowning in a great sea, so impossibly deep…
It’s safe to say he won’t find sleep until he passes out of anything besides his own accord.
He busies himself by writing notes. Observations, really. They were supposed to be about Levi, the Leviathan, whatever, but they slowly drift to the sea, and then drowning, and then watching Hummer drown with him.
Death isn’t permanent and it isn’t even really that painful. You wake up cleared of all pain, it’s simply a spike and then nothing. A second of abyss and then life, glorious and painless life. But something about drowning follows Wifies. Into his mind and thoughts, into his attempts to sleep. And when he closes his eyes all he can see is his own hands in front of him, clawing mindlessly at water, can feel his lungs filling, and Hummer is there, he’s there, drowning too, but he doesn’t move a muscle. Just floats there, staring at him.
Why do you want me here, Hummer?
Why do you want me to believe in you so badly?
And why do I want to believe in you?
Wifies has none of the answers to the questions hastily scrawled in the back of his notebook. He chews on the lid of his pen and lets the letters swim as his eyes blur. He doesn’t want to drown. He really, really doesn’t want to drown. But he just can’t let Hummer do this alone. Hummer is so crazy, so incessantly fanatical. He’s totally irrational, the opposite of everything Wifies has ever believed in, because he’s long since upheld the ideal that everything, everything can be rationalised. The fact that he continues with this farce is, at its core, insanity.
But how does Hummer manage to do it? To continue on like this?
How does Hummer sit and drown, not even basic survival instinct kicking in as the water enters his lungs?
He wants to understand. He wants to sit besides Hummer and see what he sees. He wants to live in Hummer’s skin and feel that insanity, feel that incredible, beautiful, shining belief in the existence of the Leviathan.
He just wants to believe in something, maybe.
It’s been a long time since he last believed in something. Not since netherite trimmed armour and a thrown spyglass and the explosive pain of being blown up. And for a long time he hasn’t wanted to believe in anything. He’s seen so much pain and loss and heartbreak. He watched a man die, had the means to help him and was too late. He still can’t find it in himself to reply to that same man’s grieving friend. He’s a faithless bastard who’s let down everyone who’s ever believed in him and destroyed everything he’s ever believed in.
Belief is, in Wifies’ world, a sure-fire path to total ruination.
But seeing Hummer, he can’t help but feel an old spark ignited. That same spark he felt yelling at an old friend to make a move, to do something, anything, rather than run away alone and work himself into a slow suicide.
Isn’t that what you’ve been doing, Wifies?
There’s a voice in his head and he really doesn’t like who it sounds like and he really doesn’t like what it has to say.
Believe in me.
Wasn’t that what Hummer had said?
Hummer is the first person Wifies has spent a significant amount of time with in– a really, really long time. And maybe Wifies does believe in him purely on that basis. Because Hummer is his first friend since he lost everything, and maybe that means a lot to him, goddamnit. But also there’s something else there, something he can’t name, an emotion that he thinks he’s never felt before, and it’s that pushing him towards Believing, more than any old memory or stupid voice.
Hummer is something new. And Wifies, for all that he’s tried to make something of himself, has been stuck in the past. He’s been stuck ruminating and stewing in toxic hatred for himself for so long that he’s forgotten how to breathe and oh.
That’s why he doesn’t like drowning.
He opens bleary eyes and glances to the bed opposite his. Hummer is supposedly fast asleep, his screen a stark black.
Maybe it’s time he starts believing in something again.