Chapter Text
Seawatt learns to wait.
It’s easier this time, since EMF writes to him on occasion, but it’s still absolutely infuriating how Evbo can come and go and leave him alone for so long. Every time he comes back he looks slightly worse; every time he leaves he looks more and more upset that he has to. Seawatt doesn’t… Seawatt’s not sure why. It infuriates him and upsets him in equal parts.
EMF tells him Evbo has been making a lot of changes, which Seawatt gathered from the small talk Evbo makes with him every so often (it’s days between visits and he doesn’t think Evbo realises. Seawatt misses being alive more and more every day, if only so he wouldn’t have to rely on that fucking asshole so much), but EMF is- would he consider them a friend? At the very least they don’t make him want to gouge his eyes out. Most of the time, anyway.
…Sometimes he mourns the fact that he is dead, though it’s hardly for long at all. Sometimes he misses the sun and the grass (he has grass here but he’s realising it looks dull and dead; he does, too.) and he misses being able to ambulate. He misses freedom of movement. He was never one for parkour before, but the more and more of it he does the more he laments his lack of movement space— for all the island is large, the only real space to move is up.
So, up he moves- he builds courses that scrape the roof of the sky. Fall damage doesn’t seem to have an effect, which is weird enough. He supposes dying twice is a bit idiotic; in fact, the more that he considers it, the more it feels as though he can’t sense his hearts at all- a constant zero. Or infinity. Maybe it’s the same thing.
He wonders if Evbo knows and won’t tell him. He knows EMF doesn’t, if only because they don’t tend to (or at least they don’t seem to) lie to him. They express mild annoyance over how long he takes to respond sometimes, but it all seems more vaguely amused than actual upset, so he tends to ignore it. Ah, and there it is again; he misses his ability to move freely, to walk, to live a life (afterlife?) beyond having God hold his hand and having his favourite apostle write to him aimlessly. Seawatt never wanted friends of his own before, but he realises now that talking to the same two people, forever and ever and ever (and EMF will die one day and then Evbo will probably ditch him for them, but whatever) is going to be miserable.
He remembers that girl from earlier- Tabi. He’d seen her a few times. He’d seen her the day Evbo appeared, actually- though only in passing, and with the same complete lack of interest he afforded everyone who wasn’t either the Champion or an obstacle. He sulks for a while about it– did she seem nice enough? Would he have wanted to be her friend?
...He really is bored, if this is what his mind drifts to. God.
He doesn’t need anyone. He doesn’t need anyone else.
He bites his lip and immediately pries open EMF’s book in frustration. Text awaits him on the page, as it often seems to. He’s been trying to wean himself off of it but it’s hard, alright? He’s not desperate for human connection, he’s just...
He’s...
He’s just- what, it’s just lonely being dead? What a pathetic excuse. He’s never needed anyone, he doesn’t, he...
He satisfies himself reading the words on the page like gospel, which works well enough.
“Have you seen Evbo?”
He frowns. It’s a weird inversion of the words he usually writes; though it’s annoying to have to admit how much both of them seem to rely on him. “No.” He presses the quill too hard into the page and tries to pretend he doesn’t notice the visible scoring he’s left in the paper.
There is a long pause; he can tell they’re thinking of something to write, quill poised above the page, because a blot of ink splatters onto it; he watches it soak into the paper and scowls at it until they write back. “That’s not good.”
“I’d argue that not having to deal with him is one of the highlights of my life.”
“Aren’t you dead?”
“You’re missing the point.” Seawatt really wishes EMF would ask him about something other than Evbo; doesn’t he think about the man enough? Is he even important without him? “What, did you need him for something?”
“Kind of. People keep asking me to do things for them and I,” They stop writing. Seawatt decides to interrupt.
“So? Do it yourself.”
“But what if I do something wrong?”
“Then do it wrong, who cares. If it’s really that bad then fix it after.”
“I don’t know how to do anything.”
Seawatt hesitates. What does he say to that? If it was a conversation maybe he would just stay silent and pretend he hadn’t heard, but this...? What is this? Something EMF won’t ever admit to Evbo, maybe. A genuine grievance; hints of insecurity, something he’d normally pounce on and sink his teeth into eagerly…
He frowns. He’s finding he doesn’t like being relied on as much as he used to. “You’re literally the champion. Isn’t it your job to?”
He can see the frown in their words. “I didn’t want this.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t want to die and look where I am now.”
Another pause. “You didn’t?”
“Do I look suicidal to you?”
“I just figured nobody makes a plan like that and assumes they’ll live, is all.”
Seawatt’s eye twitches. “Maybe it was just a bad plan.”
“Okay.” Good. Drop the topic; he doesn’t want to think about what EMF thinks of him, partly because he’s afraid it’s something bad, and mostly because he’s scared it’s something good. “Go deal with whatever the hell they want, then.”
“Fine. If it goes wrong I’m blaming it on you.”
The sentence annoys him, so he shuts the book and intentionally presses the pages into each other so the wet ink will stain the page across. Everyone always wants a scapegoat, huh? Seawatt is used to it. God. He is so fucking used to it.
He never understood the whole ‘unfinished business’ thing before, but he’s been thinking about it near-constantly. What is he, to these people– rather, to those two? What use does he have to two people who have everything they could ever want? He’s just a prize. Just a reward; it’s the same problem, ad infinitum.
He lays on the quartz floor and stares directly into the spectral sun. It does not burn into his eyes but he imagines that it does, burning a spot into his vision black as sin. What is there to do? What is there to do, from now until forever, except sit here and wait until someone comes along and tells him he’s worthy of attention? Of stimuli? He exists to supplement the living.
Seawatt wishes there wasn’t an afterlife. Or maybe he wishes he wasn’t dead; the ideas have been blurring together, as of late. He wants to be anywhere that isn’t here, anyone that isn’t him.
The sentiment isn’t an unfamiliar one. Maybe EMF was right. Who cares, though? He’s dead. He’s dead and he can’t tell Evbo ‘yes’ because he’s a horrible, petty person and he refuses to let Evbo win whatever game he thinks he’s playing— if he’s the prize, then he refuses to be an attainable one.
Sleep does not work as it used to, but he manages to fall asleep anyhow. He imagines the world as it wasn’t, in brilliant technicolour greens and blues; and if he wakes up and cries, it’s nobody’s business— if he buries his face in the crook of his elbow and the skin there steadily grows wetter then it surely means nothing at all.
***
Evbo keeps moving, perpetually.
The past- um, what, three— four? However many days it’s been- they’ve certainly been something.
He’s just been running. His feet hit block after block and the world just continues to unfurl beneath him, jump after jump, bound after bound. What can he do? The answer to that is easy: as he is? Not a thing.
Evbo has been thinking about second chances. The crux of it is the ability to choose, right? Seawatt seems to think so— god, Seawatt is really the crux of his problems. What to do with a man who died prematurely, but refuses to live? Why does he refuse to?
There’s a thousand questions Evbo wants to ask, but he thinks he’s figured Seawatt out, at long last— hours of thinking and wondering, theorising and replaying memories paying off.
Seawatt has nothing to go back to. Evbo may or may not have contributed to it— but the fact of the matter is Seawatt doesn’t feel like he has a life to go back to living. The only problem with that theory is that he’s been consistently moving closer to the one-block area, and if he doesn’t want to live as badly as he says then he should be moving away— only the desperate, yearning souls live there. If Evbo sees Seawatt amongst them he might not be able to stomach it, is what he means.
Does he miss Seawatt? Not really— not the person he was when he was living, bitter and angry and resigned, but he’s found himself growing genuinely attached to the person beneath the resentment, which is… probably a problem. He frowns.
The world stretches out near-infinitely beneath him— swathes of the universe transition easily between each other whenever he begins to run off the edge of the world. He stops on a block and then sits cross-legged, peeking over the edge into the void.
Hmm… it’s been a while since he’s seen Seawatt, right? It wouldn’t hurt. What else does he have to do, anyway, besides agonise and agonise and agonise over what to do about him? It’s almost like his entire life revolves around the guy, honestly. The one who got away, or something similar. Nice day out, he thinks, looking into the blue abyss. I wonder if he likes clear skies. It takes him a moment to realise Seawatt has never seen the sky. Ah, well. Maybe someday.
He slides himself off the block, and begins falling; this is the most boring part of the descent, in all honesty. All he has to do is die, and he shows up the same way everyone else does— the only difference is that he can actually get himself off of the platform he spawns on, bridging easily across the eight-block gap— he’d have jumped the last four blocks, but he does want to make sure he remembers to break the ones behind him. Can’t have people who are actually supposed to be dead getting out.
So, he jumps for a while, glancing side to side to make sure he’s not accidentally gone past Seawatt or something. Jeez, that’d be embarrassi—
“Evbo,” someone calls. The voice feels like an ice shard embedded deeply into his stomach; he turns, pretending it’s not the voice he hears in his wildest nightmares.
“It’s you,” he says. He sounds more shocked than he intends. The Parkour Villain (surely he has a name, but Evbo is... possibly too scared to ask for one) tilts his head, resting his cheek on his hand. “What do you want?”
“Do you really think letting everyone I killed go will solve a thing?” he asks.
Evbo blinks. “You know about that?”
“Doesn’t everyone?” He can hear the grin behind the mask. “Congratulations on becoming god, by the by. I’m sure the role suits you.”
“Sure,” Evbo says, trying to find himself an out. “Look, I’m busy, so I—”
“With what?” the villain asks. “Surely there’s not anywhere higher to climb.” He tilts his head. “Or are you onto something new, now? Find a little passion project you want to pour your heart and soul into?”
“Is it seriously any of your business?” he snaps, before he hesitates, blood draining from his face.
The villain clicks his tongue. “Oh, is that a sore spot?”
“Bye,” Evbo tells him stiffly, looking away.
“You know,” the villain calls after him, “We really aren’t different at all. Talk to me again sometime. We both know you will.”
Evbo... ignores him. Or tries to, anyway. But even as he passes from the one-block region into the two-block region, it weighs on him. We aren’t different at all. Evbo wants to deny it, really— truly, but the more he tries to find ways to refute it the more counterarguments he finds instead.
We’re not even remotely alike. Well, they are both ambitious…
He’s power-hungry and I’m satisfied with where I am. Well, yeah, but he’s god— there’s nowhere else to go. Would he have ever been satisfied as the Champion? He’s scared of what he knows is the answer.
I wouldn’t kill people like that. Not now, maybe, but maybe if he was alone for long enough.
But I’m a good person, and he’s—!
Evbo recognises the glint of gold, off in the distance, and his mind goes blank. What, is Seawatt in the two-block section? He doesn’t know if he should call it ‘progress’ or if he should be afraid it’s something worse. Seawatt, for his part, is lying face-up on the floor, so Evbo doesn’t think he’ll see—
Seawatt sits up abruptly practically the instant Evbo crosses into his field of view, shading his eyes from the sun with a hand (which is pointless, since it’s so weak— uh, well, whatever). “Evbo?” he asks, as though it’s a surprise to see him.
“Seawatt!” he says, genuinely delighted. For the most part, anyway- he’s sure he’ll remember how he low-key detests the man the moment he begins to speak.
Seawatt looks annoyed as he crosses his legs; Evbo belatedly notices he’s barefoot, dyed leather boots tossed into a corner. Geez, so much for being nice to the guy. “Don’t pretend you’re happy to see me,” he scoffs. “What do you want?”
Oh, there’s that old antagonism. Emphasis on old, though— seriously, weren’t they starting to warm up to each other?
Seawatt raises an eyebrow and he belatedly realises he’s taken too long to reply. “Don’t keep your mouth open like that, are you trying to catch flies?”
Evbo shuts his mouth with a click. “I’m not,” he protests.
Seawatt rolls his eyes and leans forward. “Oh, he speaks,” he sneers. “Mind answering that first question for me, or are you just going to drag me along like you seem so fond of doing?”
“Drag— what?” Evbo tries to gesture with his hands but gives up, frustrated. “I haven’t done any of that?”
“It’s one thing,” Seawatt corrects him, before he squints curiously. “What, do you seriously not get what you did?”
Evbo eyes up the eight-block gap between them and wishes he could jump across without— well, Seawatt would probably kill him if he tried, but it might make talking to him easier. Evbo has tried his best to forget the pains of loneliness, but it will stain him for an eternity or longer; the circumstances of his birth, and whatnot.
This is all to say that he wonders: does Seawatt also think about the texture of skin, sometimes? The sheer oddness of it; not leather but not meat, something covered in a casing, twitching and moving. He feels his face muscles twitch and he intertwines his hands behind his back self-soothingly, feeling his flesh against himself. “No?”
Seawatt’s lips curve into a grin that’s not-quite-cruel, but teetering on the edge of it. “You’re so stupid,” he sighs. “I can’t decide if it’s cute or infuriating.”
“What did I do?” he asks, again. Annoyance begins to spark in his chest, but he tries his best to ignore it.
Seawatt ignores him for a moment, toying with something in his inventory. His platform is near a standstill but still... moving. Which is good! If it keeps moving then... then no matter how long it takes, Evbo’s doing a good job. He thinks? He doesn’t actually know, which is the issue. “Dude. I don’t get it.”
Seawatt rolls his eyes. “Of course you don’t. You’ve never understood a thing, have you?” He grins. “Isn’t that kind of the premise of this whole thing? I mean– forgive me if I’m wrong, of course, but I—”
“It’s not funny,” he snaps, and when he sees something spark in Seawatt’s eyes he knows he’s triggered something he really should have let be.
Seawatt laughs and it’s not wrong, but it’s not the normal sort of cackle he’s prone to; rather, it’s too sharp and crackly in his throat, a little less elegant and a bit more deranged. “It is, you have to admit.” He pushes himself languidly to his feet. Evbo watches, not sure what to say- not sure what words he can use to make it better and not worse. A misread. That’s all it was; he guessed what Seawatt wanted to hear and he guessed wrong.
It hurts more than he expects. It feels how he imagines being gutted does, insides all jumbled and bloody and wrong.
“I don’t get it,” he repeats, and if his voice cracks when he does it’s intentional. “Dude. You can’t just– it’s– what did I do?”
Seawatt runs a hand through his hair- it’s more dishevelled than it was when Evbo saw him last time; he watches Seawatt’s fingers get caught in random snags strewn throughout. “What didn’t you do?” he muses. “I don’t know, maybe it’s just that you’ve been gone for- oh, how many days has it been? Three? Seven? Eight? If you and your little friend weren’t so generous I wouldn’t fucking know, would I?”
Evbo scowls, which is probably another mistake- but he’s already in deep, and he’s– tired. God, he’s just so tired. Has he slept? He doesn’t recall. “It hasn’t been that long,” he says. It doesn’t feel that long. He feels every ounce of every moment with as much weight as he used to: if a few days went by he’d recognise it in any haze.
Seawatt doesn’t seem so sure. “It’s been more than a week!” he yells. “Seriously! You fucking abandon me outright and expect me to—?” Here he makes a hand motion Evbo doesn’t quite understand, though it does end with Seawatt tugging at his hair frantically, fistful of it in hand. He laughs again, as though he finds it all funny.
“I didn’t—!”
“Oh,” Seawatt says, smile too sharp to be genuine. “Oh, Evbo, you did. How bad do you manage to mess that up? How bad do you manage to— I thought, maybe, you weren’t just-” He cuts himself off. “I shouldn’t have expected a thing from you.”
Evbo feels lost. He’s stood on the brink of civilization and jumped off and he felt more sure of his survival then than he does about anything happening right now. It shows on his face because Seawatt looks genuinely angry with him. Evbo doesn’t know what he’s done. He doesn’t. All he remembers is the old fear of failure. “I… I was working—”
“On what?” Seawatt asks him. “Because I know you haven’t been doing a single thing about anything down here. Or up there, for that matter.” He jabs a finger in Evbo’s direction, down at his boots. “What’s the point of being god if you don’t do a single thing?”
“I was trying to think of what to do!” Evbo yells back. Seawatt laughs at him. Suddenly, he’s grateful for the chasm; some primal part of him is terrified of Seawatt, like he’s still that noob at the lowest layer looking perpetually upward. There’s a part of him that screams that he shouldn’t mess with a master, what is he doing?
He stamps that part down, or at least he tries to. Seawatt is dead and he is god. He shouldn’t feel any amount of fear. He shouldn’t but he does; as though Seawatt holds some part of him firmly in his hands, prepared to crush it and ruin him at any moment.
Seawatt, for his part, levels him with an expression he’s not seen a hint of in… however long it’s been since they began speaking. It’s something old and buried in his memory; the slight curl of his lip, the antagonistic glint in his eye. “Thinking isn’t doing, Evbo. You know how I know that? You want to know how I know?” He begins to pace. “I’ve spent— what, the past…” He mimes counting on his fingers. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve spent years trying to set up… so much. And you know what? You know what?”
He pauses, as though in need of a response. Evbo obliges him. “…What?” He can’t keep the suspicion out of his voice.
“Not a single thing I wanted worked,” he hisses. “You want to bring me back from the dead, Evbo? You think it’s ‘unfair’ that I died?” He smirks. “I’ll just bring myself right back here.”
“But you’re miserable,” Evbo points out. “You literally complain about it constantly, you—”
“So what?” Seawatt shoots back. “Nothing’s stopping me from killing myself, who even cares?” He crosses his arms and cocks his head. “Tell me one thing I have to go back to,” Seawatt tells him. “One thing. Just one.” He grins, wide and wolfish. “Evbo, there’s not a single thing for me up there.”
Evbo’s words fail him. It’s not that he can’t think of anything, but that he can think of too much. The taste of cooked meat. The taste of meat in general? The sun on your skin. The texture of sandstone. Water bucket clutching. But the problem is that he’s not sure a single one of them are things Seawatt likes.
It hits him very suddenly: he really doesn’t know Seawatt very well at all, for all they’ve spoken. “If you don’t come back you can never find something to live for,” he says, weakly.
Seawatt frowns at him. “You could at least try to pretend you care.”
“I do care,” Evbo hisses. “You’re just- I don’t know what you’re doing, but I- I don’t get it, I don’t.”
“Because you understand nothing!” Seawatt yells. It’s weird; he’s used to being the loud one, but Seawatt’s voice carries far and Evbo feels like he’s being unusually quiet. “What do I have? If I stay here there’s nothing, but there’s nothing for me there, it’s all the same. There’s no life for me to escape to.” His voice shatters in his throat and he scrunches up his face unflatteringly, turning sharply away. Evbo belatedly realises he’s not had to make a single jump for a long while. “Besides. It’s my plan that killed me, nobody else’s. I deserved it.”
Evbo watches Seawatt shove his face into his hands, body trembling, as his platform remains at a complete standstill. There’s a choice he has to make, he’s pretty sure. Something about this screams of finality.
“I’m sorry,” Evbo tells him.
Seawatt doesn’t turn back around and Evbo thinks he’s said the wrong thing yet again, but his body shakes and the platform slowly begins to slide itself back towards the one-block region. “You’re not,” Seawatt wails, voice sounding wet and heavy. “You’re not, you aren’t, you don’t get it! I’m not- I should have died, I did die, I’m not coming back so I can fulfill your little— fantasy of being able to call yourself benevolent or whatever, I don’t- I’m not a fucking trophy you get to put on your shelf. What life do I have to go back to? I hate living, I hate my life- I hated waking up and going to sleep and every moment in between. There’s nothing. I hate it all.” Seawatt curls into himself. “I died with the fighter layer.”
“You deserve to live!” Evbo yells at the back of his head. “You’re still a person, you—”
Seawatt turns around with a fury in his eyes, arm covering the lower half of his face. Evbo can’t tell if he’s crying from rage or from sheer upset; but from what he can see Seawatt’s expression is contorted into something aflame with disgust and agony. “Leave me alone,” he spits, shoulders bunched up. “You don’t know a single thing about me.”
Evbo snorts derisively. “I think I do, actually?”
Seawatt sharply turns away from him again. “I said to leave me alone. You seem to enjoy doing that anyway. Is it not fun because I’m asking?”
Evbo deflates. “I lost track of time, I guess.”
“Yeah, right.”
There’s a heavy silence for about a minute. Evbo feels the weight of it like netherite on his shoulders. “I mean it, though.”
“What, seriously?” Seawatt snorts. His shoulders are a bit more relaxed than they were a moment ago. “You can’t change my mind, you know.”
“I’m not…” Evbo trails off. “I’m not trying to get you to come back.” It’s a lie. Seawatt doesn’t need to know.
“Then?” Seawatt’s head turns slightly towards him, but all Evbo can see of his face is the hint of his eyelashes. “What’s the point?”
“You’re…” We’re friends. I think. “You’re unhappy. I know you. So sue me for wanting you to be— not upset all of the time, I guess?”
Seawatt laughs, but there’s no emotion in it. He lays down on the ground, hair splayed out on the quartz beneath him. “Leave me alone, Evbo. I meant it.”
Evbo sighs. “Okay.”
And Evbo does. What can he do? There’s so much to think about, anyway. Something Seawatt said is giving him an idea, something sparking cold in the back of his mind until it burns into a flame and engulfs him, wholly and completely.
***
Seawatt tries not to think about Evbo. It’s hard.
His boots still lay in the corner; he glares at them like they’ve spat on his grave, or something similar. Well, he deserves it anyhow.
You deserve to live!
Seawatt buries his head in his hands, running his fingers through his hair over and over again just to feel the texture of it. He’s ruined something, he thinks. It’s been two hours and he still feels weird; empty and numb. His face is wet, but not really— his face feels odd and cold and he hates it, but not enough to do anything about it.
He spends a while just touching things, which is weird- but he’s dead, nobody is going to judge him. He spends a while running his hands against the quartz floor, and then when he tires of the cold smooth sameness, he breaks them and digs his hands into dirt. He spends a while building hills and jumping his fingers between them as though doing parkour; childish, sure, but… whatever. It takes him a while of waiting for the grass to spread before he realises grass will never grow here again; he’s covered it all with quartz. It’s all dirt now.
Seawatt sits there for a while, hands buried in the floor. He misses warmth, he thinks. Everything is cold. Everything feels the same and- he’s stuck on the fact that it’s cold, that his skin is the same temperature as the floor and the fact that when he lays on the floor face-up he’s unnerved by the lack of sensation in his chest; the lack of his heartbeat when he presses a hand to his chest or fingers to his wrist. What does a dead man do, once he’s killed himself? He clasps his hands together for a while to simulate human touch, but his body is so cold and clammy it feels like he’s touching a corpse. He supposes he is, but he’s still disappointed.
He walks back to the boots and considers kicking them off the edge. He doesn’t even know if he can kick them off the edge, or if that same mental block that prevents him from flinging himself into the void will stop him from doing that, too. He counts out the dimensions of his island for the umpteenth time (sixteen by sixteen; a full chunk, all to himself. Lovely.) and then bores himself with attempting to 360 again.
It would be easier with the boots on. He’d rather die than wear them again.
Seawatt is petty and he knows it, alright? But what else does he have, except a final fleeting attempt to best Evbo? What does he have besides one last-ditch effort?
(Nevermind that he’s never believed in things like god, not really; who watches an entire population get sealed away and does nothing? Nevermind the fact that the plan on the fighter layer was supposed to be the last-ditch effort. Anything to be remembered. Anything to never let his name die, anything to be remembered, for the sake of everyone who wasn’t. It doesn’t matter if he thought an eternity of nothing existed beyond the pain. It doesn’t mean a single thing.)
Seawatt groans, placing two planks beneath him before draping himself over them. He glares at the boots.
“What’s the point of coming back?” he asks them. He can hear Evbo’s annoying voice in his head, and tries to cut it out. “There’s nothing left.”
They’re just black leather, but Seawatt sees the glint of netherite in his mind’s eye. He groans and sits up again.
Not a thing left, nothing to do… it’s the same here, as it is everywhere else. Stagnant, without forwards motion— rather, without any movement at all. The sky is still red and the only thing that moves in this place are the dead and their ghost sun, cold and alone forever.
What’s the point? He’s dead but he knows there’s no point to living again. There’s not a single thing he wants up there, except…
Well. He misses warmth, he supposes.
***
EMF sits on their throne, rapping their fingers on the armrests as Evbo paces, occasionally jumping from command block to command block. “I don’t know what to do about him!” Evbo bemoans.
“I…” EMF says, trailing off. “I mean, have you tried talking to him?”
Evbo groans. “I tried but he told me to go away.”
They raise an eyebrow. “Seriously?”
“Why would I lie about that?”
They glance away and open their mouth as though to speak, but don’t say anything for a moment before they frown. “It just didn’t sound like he—” They cut themself off. “I don’t know, from what you said I don’t think he’d… do that.”
Evbo squints at them. “But he did? …So?”
They shrug and cross their arms. “So I was wrong, I guess. Sorry.”
He finally pauses his jumping, standing on top of one of the command blocks, looking down at them. “What’s your problem, man?” he asks, annoyed. “You’ve— you’ve just kind of been… playing devil’s advocate for the past thirty minutes, dude.”
They shrug again. “It’s…” Their shoulders drop. “I was… working on something, is all. It just had me thinking.”
“Oh,” Evbo asks, not entirely interested. “Cool?”
They interlace their fingers repeatedly as they speak, tail flicking nervously beside their leg. “I… was trying to deal with the people’s complaints, and such? Sorry for not telling you, but you were kind of… gone. And it was urgent, so I…” They gesture aimlessly with a hand. “Sorry.”
Evbo pauses and cocks his head as he looks at them. “Did you do something wrong?”
They jolt, like they weren’t expecting the question. “I don’t, I— I mean, I don’t think I did, but I might have? I’m not—”
“So… why’d you bring it up?” Evbo asks, uncomprehending. They open their mouth for a moment before they close it, hands dropping to their sides as they slump a bit.
“Sorry.” There’s a short pause. “I also, uh, made a book?”
“Oh yeah,” Evbo says. “I saw. You gave a dupe of it to Seawatt, right?” He mentally goes back through the log in his mind, but is immediately distracted by the records of his own /give commands atop all of EMF’s.
They frown. “Not exactly. It’s technically the same item— er, not the cover but the contents of the pages, I kind of learned that the hard way— so whatever I put in there… he sees, too?” They begin to interlock their fingers again. “So we’ve been talking.”
Evbo hums. “That’s cool,” he says. He does genuinely mean it, but his voice comes out a bit flat. It’s just… he has more important things to focus on! “I’ve been thinking about revival mechanics.”
EMF sits more upright, expression dropping sharply into neutrality. “Are you going to change them? Because I can—”
“Actually,” Evbo interjects, “I’m pretty sure you can’t help?”
They pause. “What?”
Evbo makes gestures with his hands. “So, there’s- you know there’s commands and stuff you can’t run, right? I… have an idea for something but I’m not sure you can help with it. At all.”
They digest this, expression pained. “Nothing?”
Evbo shrugs, hands in his pockets. “Sorry.”
They roll their eyes and pull out the book they previously mentioned from their inventory. “What are you even doing?”
That part is a bit harder to explain. There’s something that’s been playing in his head on loop ever since Seawatt yelled at him and broke down. I hate living, I hate my life.
Evbo knows it’s not true. He understands the afterlife better than anyone; while he doesn’t get it completely he still gets it more than anyone else does. Seawatt is still moving. That’s all Evbo needs to know. Sure, he’s weirdly resistant to being revived for a guy whose… how should he describe it? His platform; chunk, island, whatever you want to call it- is still moving towards the one-block area.
Seawatt is still moving to the exit, so Evbo is doing something right. He just doesn’t know what he’s done wrong.
So… what to do to save a man who claims he doesn’t want to be saved? “Trying to fix respawn mechanics,” he repeats. “Um… well, not fix, but… change?”
They glance up at him from where they’re writing. “What, so you’re going to make it completely different?”
Evbo bites his lip. “Basically? I have an idea.”
EMF pauses. “Which is…?”
Evbo kicks at the command block. “I don’t think Seawatt deserves to be dead.”
“But he doesn’t want to come back.”
“Yeah, he keeps saying that, but I don’t think it’s true?”
EMF frowns and scribbles something down. “So you’re just… doing all of this for him?”
Evbo looks out, over the rest of civilization. “I guess so?” He sighs. “It feels weird leaving him down there. Like- he’s clearly miserable.”
When he was younger, lower in the world, he used to pray at night for someone to save him. It’s a luxury to be able to speak to people and Evbo finds himself drowning in wealth, now. He doesn’t know why he ‘deserves’ to be god, but he is. He doesn’t hear prayers but he understands what it’s like to be alone- and he understands being dead is the loneliest thing in the world.
So, sue him. Sue him if this is more than altruism, if Seawatt might be a bit right and Evbo’s just doing it for his own sake. Maybe he just doesn’t want to see what he suffered through for so long (longer than he’s been free, memories and moments that still only just outnumber his days of freedom) replay in front of him for eternity.
If death has to be lonely, then Evbo is certain death needs to be changed. It’s selfish, but that’s all the world has taught him to be: and if his selfishness can give thousands of hypothetical people a second (and third and fourth and fifth and) chance, it doesn’t mean a thing if the person he’s doing it all for is himself.
EMF squints at him. “Didn’t I tell you to try leaving him alone? If you stop bothering him about it he might ask on his own, and…” They trail off.
“I haven’t really mentioned it in a while, though,” Evbo grumbles. “He knows what I want anyway so it doesn’t matter.”
They sigh. “I guess.”
They spend a while in not-so comfortable silence as Evbo jumps back and forth between command blocks— the commands he’s running are too long to fit in his head and he has to punch them in methodically. He can’t read but he doesn’t need to; the pressing of buttons is more of a symbolic action, it seems, considering all he really has to do is memorise what he wants and think it really hard.
When EMF speaks up again it’s with a bit more dejection in their tone. “You should take a break.”
“Why?” Evbo asks, curious.
Their expression is distinctly uncomfortable. “You’re running yourself into the floor?” They stand, scrolling through their hotbar until they’re at his feet, handing him a golden carrot. “Have you even eaten?”
He looks at it, glinting in the sun. “My hunger doesn’t go down,” he tells them. They remain unimpressed.
“But do you know if your body still gets nutrients?” they ask, tapping it insistently against his netherite boot. “Do you know if you’re just not feeling it anymore?”
He hesitates. “Do you have any steak?”
“Can’t you summon some?”
Evbo blinks before grinning. “Oh, right.” He extends his hand and a slab of raw (it looks fresh, the way he remembers from the meagre time he spent as a pro) beef pops into his hotbar, sitting cold in his hand. He looks out over the master layer as he bites into it, and flavour explodes into his mouth.
EMF looks distantly perturbed by the sight, but not enough to say anything about it, so Evbo spends a few minutes savouring the taste of not-quite-blood in his mouth, the texture of grainy meat. He shivers as it passes through his throat; the solid slide of iron-tasting, sanguine tissue down his oesophagus and into his stomach. He spends a moment relishing in the flavour of it, as he used to on the noob layer. It doesn’t seem that long ago.
For all he appreciates the flavours of steak, nothing will ever hold a candle to the one thing he’s spent an eternity craving.
He licks between his fingers for a moment before pausing, embarrassed. He turns back to face EMF, only to find them fully engrossed in their writing; they laugh at something on the page before their expression flattens back into a soft neutrality.
“I should apologise to Seawatt,” he says, slowly.
EMF squints at him, suspicious. “For what?”
Evbo inhales through his teeth. “I kind of sort of ignored him? For a while?”
They sigh. “So what are you apologising for?”
“Ignoring him? Like I just said?”
EMF stares at him, eyes narrowed, until it clicks. “Oh,” he says. “Sorry, EMF.”
“I’m still mad at you.”
Evbo winces. “Sorry?”
They sigh. “Go talk to Seawatt and I’ll decide if I can forgive you just yet.”
***
“Evbo’s acting weird,” EMF writes to him. Seawatt scowls at his page and writes back.
“He’s always acting weird, it’s Evbo.” He underlines it for good measure, just in case they manage to miss the point.
“You know what I mean,” they scribble back, letters a bit more hasty- as though they’re not exactly looking at the page. “I’m actively speaking to him and he’s essentially ignoring me.”
“Nice to know that’s not an enemy-exclusive behaviour.”
“You know he might consider you a friend, right?”
Seawatt hesitates. “What a comedian you are. Don’t quit your day job.”
“Sure.” A pause. “It’s just that he’s hardly ever said a single bad thing about you, and—”
Seawatt draws a sharp line through their sentence. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“Sorry. I asked him to leave you alone, you know.”
“Well, it didn’t work very well.”
“I know that!” A short pause, again. “He really does seem to genuinely want you back.”
“What, so he can finish his little collection?”
“You don’t see that look in his eyes.”
Seawatt hesitates with his pen poised above the page for long enough that a drop of ink splatters onto it. “Of disgust? Of course I do.”
“Do you seriously think I’ll drop it if you keep deflecting?”
“Well, you might.”
“Anyway.” They move on annoyingly swiftly. “Do you actually want Evbo not to speak to you? Because it sounds like he’s intending not to.”
Something like ice jabs him in the stomach. “What, seriously?”
“I wouldn’t lie about it.”
It annoys him, but he can’t think of a single reason why they would. “So?”
“I’m going to be honest with you, Seawatt. I… still kind of hate you.”
“Was the little conversation we had on the fighter layer enough to turn you off of me forever?”
“Evbo keeps ignoring me. For you.”
“What,” Seawatt scribbles, the trembling of his hands betraying his terror, “So you’re telling me you’re jealous?”
“He doesn’t seem to care about a single thing I say to him if it’s not directly related to your situation, you know that? It’s fine, I’m… getting used to it, but to be honest I wish it wasn’t like this.”
“It’s not my fault.”
“It’s not.” Hesitation. “I told you, though, I still kind of hate you for it. I told him how I made the book and all he had to say was ‘that’s cool’ and then he moved on.”
“It can’t be that complex,” Seawatt scribbles.
“I guess it might be easy for him. It took… a while.”
“How does it work?” An olive branch. He hopes they take it, because spending an eternity with someone who is obsessed with his life and someone who semi-despises him isn’t a very good plan.
“Your book and mine are essentially two books that directly share page contents. So… whenever you write in your book it’s shared in mine. They’re like the same item, basically, they just kind of have different covers.”
“If they’re the same item, how come the pages don’t lift on mine when you lift yours?”
“It’s just the page data that’s the same. I have a failed prototype where they,” A short pause. “kind of just clipped into each other. And another where they don’t keep the same position but the pages and the cover still open when the other one’s opened, which is annoying.”
“It’s just the words?” Seawatt flips the page over and runs his fingers across the back; he realises he can’t feel the indents of EMF’s writing, only his own— as though the former’s handwriting was printed onto the page. “That’s weird.”
“I guess. But it works, so.”
Seawatt tries to think of something to say. “The part that’s pissing me off the most about it is that I’m genuinely a bit impressed.”
“…what, really?”
“Yes?” The fact that he’s being questioned on it ticks him off more than it ought to. “Don’t fish for a compliment and then act surprised when I hand you one.”
“Should I thank you, then?”
“Yes. Obviously.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. I guess.”
They don’t reply for a bit, and then, when he’s about to close it— “Well, here’s some news for you, if you want it. Evbo’s doing some weird stuff with the command blocks I apparently ‘can’t help him with’, so there’s that.”
“What a good friend.”
“God, morelike,” EMF writes back; and there lies the chasm between the two of them. Seawatt still refuses to reconcile Evbo with the idea of god; he lays on some god-like level but Seawatt knows in his heart Evbo is as human as any of them. Selfishness does not a god make, in his eyes.
“Sure.” Seawatt hesitates. “You talk about Evbo too much.”
“Do I?”
“He’s all you ever want to talk about, so yes.”
“What else do I talk about? It’s not like I know you that well.”
That hurts more than it should. “I don’t know you well either, so…”
They don’t reply. Figures.
He spends a while doing three-block jumps back and forth, bored. After a while he picks up the book again to find a long string of text.
“Evbo is kind of working himself to death.
“Hello? Seawatt?
“So you’ve left. Fine. I’ll keep writing anyway, but just know I think you’re being petty.
“Evbo is still talking to me right now, actually. I keep telling him to stop bothering you but maybe I’ll tell him to go ahead because you deserve it.
Sorry, that’s rude of me.
What are you even doing? I thought there was ‘nothing’ down there.”
“None of your business,” he scrawls back. “What’s that first bit about?” He draws an arrow pointing to their first sentence.
“Oh, you know. I got him to eat, I guess.”
“Doesn’t he not need to?”
“I don’t know. He doesn’t get hungry, I guess. Not sure if gods can die but I don’t want to find out.”
“Hey, maybe you can usurp the throne. I can be your champion.”
“No way.” A pause. “What, so you’d go with me but not Evbo?”
“If he’s dead then it’s a victory in my books.”
There’s a moment of nothing, before ink begins to reappear on the page. “I laughed but you couldn’t hear it.”
Seawatt smirks at the page. “Tell him he’s stupid for me.”
“Sure.” A longer pause, then. Seawatt draws a turtle in the margins of the page. It looks god awful and he adores it, but he’s interrupted by EMF beginning to write again. “He’s headed your way, just so you know.”
“What the fuck did you say to make him do that?”
“It’s nothing bad. At least, if he doesn’t totally screw it up.”
“It’s Evbo. Isn’t that kind of what he does?”
“Well, yes, but I’m hoping I’ve been a good influence on him. Somewhat, at least.”
“How does it feel being god’s babysitter?”
“Fairly good, actually. Thanks.”
“No problem. Did he tell you what he’s up to?”
“He did, but I didn’t want to ruin his moment.”
“You’re so kind, EMF. How do I repay you?”
“Being revived?”
“Haha. No thanks.”
“Worth a shot, sorry. I think Evbo’s been messing with it anyway. Probably not safe.”
“What, resurrection? Can he do that?”
“I don’t know. He said I couldn’t really help him at all, so… maybe? I don’t know. There’s no way I can check.”
“It’s not like it matters.”
“It does. You know he says he’s doing it for you, right?”
“You say that like you don’t believe him.”
“Well…” A longer pause than usual. Seawatt glances up, scanning the mainland (why is it called that? It’s not exactly connected to itself, it’s just jumps.) for any hints of green in the distance. When he finds none, he glances back down at the page to find more writing. “I think it’s not the entire truth. You understand.”
Oh, he understands. “I guess.”
He sees movement and slams the book shut, head following his eyes upwards towards a man who really oughtn’t be god, but is anyway.