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Etho had always been used to the quiet, for a very long time. The world had been quiet for a while, and as he moved and he grew, the world grew with him. It became noisy with life, the animals around him in every world, and it seemed to come to life. He got used to the noise and bustle, and still preferred to keep to the quieter corners of the world, some part of his code still longing for the days when it was him in a world, and nothing to hold him back.
He thinks he used to love the quiet of the world, and all he can think of now is how much noise the world has taken from him. Though he supposes, it was his fault for failing to follow the one rule the world had, Remember what you have, and remember what can be taken from you.
The trees whistle with the wind, and he swears in his own mind he can hear the sounds of ticking clocks. Etho remembers the legend of a world with a clock that ticks down from 1 to 12, just how close the world can come to doomsday, and the destruction of everything.
Laying on the wooden floor in the center of the Snow Castle, he hears the echoes of the morning’s conversations. His throat is lodged with a lump, and every word he wants to say to the Bdubs’s killers and Bdub’s himself stuck in there, choking Etho on his own misery.
“Can I just say, how glad I am that you were my partner? You know? You know?”
A piece of quartz is thrown across the room, leaving a comedic hole in the castle, and Etho has every reason to get up and wait for the beat where someone would charge at him, and die-. But some part of him doesn’t want to get up, wondering if the quartz was just a ghost causing trouble- and he remembers again, ghosts haunt their homes in death.
Bdubs sighs in relief, “Thank you so much.”
He shoots up, waiting for the moment the ghost shows itself and asks a thousand questions, bumbling around the place and energetic to the high heavens. Etho doesn’t get a response, only a wooden plank thrown at his head, and the scratching of nails on wooden chests, like the ghost of his former partner was angry at him. He supposes it’s warranted in some form or another.
“You always had my back, partner-”
“Yes”
“When it came time to killing sometimes.”
Etho attempts to scream out, asking if this was some cruel joke the remainder of the server wanted to play on him, but as he tries to, the word’s on the tip of his tongue, he finds he can’t say a word. Every word in his throat, I’m sorry I lied, and didn’t keep my promise, every word he wanted and needed to say, stubbornly refused to move or budge.
Even though he wasn’t choking, he felt like he was. Etho walked in a circle in the room, scraping his shoulder against the stacked chests with their- his supplies. Another item comes flying towards him, this time a golden apple comes flying, and he catches it in mid-air. A chest shuts next to him, and he sees the slight wisps of Bdub’s arms next to it, its shadow lined with the leaves from his moss jacket.
“You never killed me.”
“I would never kill you.”
It’s almost laughable how many times they could’ve ended their partnership, and choose not to. When Bdubs had gone red, all Etho had done in return was split their base down the middle, and pretended like nothing was happening, that they were safe and secure in the shabby build of the cobblestone and snow castle.
[ He dreams of the smell of wool burning in the dead of night, the haunted eyes of a grieving widow, and a red banner flying bloodied in the ashes of the desert. ]
-
“You know you and I, we handle this boogeyman thing pretty well.”
The sun is setting on the castle, the glow peaking through the decrepit holes in the snow.
“We both had it twice.”
He wasn’t the boogeyman then, but he feels like the boogeyman for doing nothing to stop Bdubs death.
“Both cured.”
Etho has half a mind to ask Grian if it’s possible to give a perma-death a new chance at living, and he knows the answer to it in his mind, “You can’t. The server can’t handle the corrupted data.” And he still wonders if the answer could be, “Maybe.”
“We’re like the veterans of the world.”
“Yeah yeah yeah the best boogeyman.”
He hears scratching on the chest, and a blurry figure standing in front of him in the dim moonlight. There’s a drop, and he sees the figure move and sees the words scratched in Bdubs’s writing,
< W H Y DI DN’T YO U KEE P TH E PROM ISE>
A salty tear drops onto the wooden floor, and he mutters to the air, “I don’t know.”
“I ain’t even worried, we’ll be fine.”
He wipes his eyes of the budding tears, and takes out the communicator in his back pocket.
His chat is still opened to the general world chat, and he sees red messages filling in between white ones.
/givelife @Bdouble0100
[ UNKNOWN COMMAND - PLAYER NOT FOUND IN WORLD LIST ]
/givelife @Bdouble0100
[ UNKNOWN COMMAND - PLAYER NOT FOUND IN WORLD LIST ]
/givelife @Bdouble0100
[ UNKNOWN COMMAND - PLAYER NOT FOUND IN WORLD LIST ]
/givelife @Bdouble0100
[ UNKNOWN COMMAND - PLAYER NOT FOUND IN WORLD LIST ]
/givelife @Bdouble0100
[ UNKNOWN COMMAND - PLAYER NOT FOUND IN WORLD LIST ]
He shakily holds his hand over the keyboard, and types out the command again, in some foolish desperation that maybe- possibly the command might work again.
/givelife @Bdouble0100
The message doesn’t pop up for a moment, and for a moment he thinks it might work;
[ UNKNOWN COMMAND - PLAYER NOT FOUND IN WORLD LIST ]
Etho hits the wall of the snow castle, a section of it coming down on his shoulders. The ashes and ruins of the castle sit behind him, ruined soul sand and broken snow, and he wonders for a moment, if this was karma for everything.
“This is fine! We can rebuild!”
His mind continues whirring, the words strangling him by the throat, Everything has been lost and hope is dead on the whims of another player. He thinks for a moment of dying nostalgia, about how Bdubs had happily assumed they would be fine by the end of the day, and how he had energetically wanted to kill the wither, thinking back to how he smiled about the other’s deaths, giving them a better chance of survival.
“Listen, you guys got lives to spare.”
He could’ve saved Bdubs, he could’ve saved him with all of the whims and thoughts of a partnership to the death, and a icarus falling from the sun. He could’ve done everything to save his partner and he did nothing in return.
-
“If you kill a single red, I’ll give you a life, that’s the deal.”
Etho couldn't stop thinking about it all, the way he had simply given Bdubs the directions to his death, and didn’t care a single thing about the words spilled on his poisoned lips, he was red. None of their conversations when the sun rose mattered anymore and it still did.
<Bdouble0100 was shot by Grian>
He had tried his best, he had said in the moment, he had tried his best on a godforsaken suicide mission. At the moment, he didn’t fully register what had truly occurred, that he was alone again in a world that had arrows aimed at his back.
“I lost Bdubs, that hurt me a lot actually.”
Etho doesn’t suppose there’s much in the way of sympathy for him, only looks of pity and curt nods at the missing half of him. He walks into their- his shabby cobblestone room, the cobble wall from a few days ago gone, and sits against the wall on his bed.
There’s no one on the other side of the room.
“I thought he would get his life back.”
There’s a thump and a scratch, before Etho has to dodge another item thrown at him; a white tulip from the edges of the forest. It falls to the ground, its leaves slightly bent and petals drifting onto the floor.
“Let’s never forget, he let you live.”
“He’s always had my back.”
He could’ve just handed him a life. He could’ve if he was confessing to his crimes here and now. He could still have a partner at the moment, the night could be almost cheerful in the death game with chattering at his side. He had to earn it back, didn’t he already do enough? He let you live. No, He had to earn it back, do something to gain back his trust, You could’ve been the first one to die, and yet you weren’t, because of him.
Etho looks distantly, away into the night sky. He’s distantly reminded of the days spent in cobblestone houses, with no life around him, nothing but mobs and danger,
And he’s reminded of what he’s lost.
-
Bdubs desperately wants to speak to Etho, or hug him, tell him it’s okay. Anything really at this point. He could compromise with Etho just being able to see him one last time, and know he was at peace somehow.
Etho sits lonely on the bed, on his side of the base. The ruins of the snow castle never truly got fixed, and they sit there like a graveyard, and Bdubs wonders if that’s Etho’s idea of mourning him. Etho always had a different way of looking at things.
He glided over to Etho’s side, and attempted to hug him, give him some sort of comfort in his last moments again. His hands went through Etho’s body, and his arms stuck out half way through Etho’s armored chest.
The night has never been quieter in his life.