“are you guys happy together?” you ask like it doesn’t matter (and it doesn’t, because you have no history. none that he’ll remember, anyway).
and it’s strange, because he pauses like it does. “yeah!” he replies, but you see something in his eyes. not like he’s lying, but like there’s something he’s not saying.
“well, i’m glad,” you say, because you are. he should be happy.
“have you found your soulmate yet?” he asks like it doesn’t matter (and it doesn’t, because he doesn’t remember you much at all. not the parts that would change anything, at least).
“ah,” you say like you hadn’t been prepared for this. “no.”
you stare at him.
he stares back.
“not yet.”
and it’s strange, because he almost looks hurt.
it’s strange because he’s happy and in love and nothing is wrong because he doesn’t have this weight that you do.
you remember everything. you’re not sure if it’s a curse or a blessing or some sort of result of being tied to these worlds since their beginning, but you do. you don’t think you’ve met anyone else who remembers the way you do, who feels the weight of every world like a physical thing.
you remember the years and years and years and years of isolation and loneliness and how dark it all feels. felt. sometimes, you’re still there.
and it was nice if you squinted, but when you also almost half remember a time in the future where you’re surrounded by people who care, it’s hard to be satisfied.
you remember meeting people for the first time in a different iteration of the same sort of universe (because that’s what you called them at the time—universes, not worlds the way you do now) and how he was one of them, wasn’t he?
and you remember trying to be happy and light but how it was so hard when this new universe vanished like the lonely one and was replaced in the same way. that’s when you decided it probably wasn’t the universe that was being remade, but rather, the world.
you remember trying and trying to make each new world work and you remember the guilt in abandoning it before it would truly end, retreating to the familiar loneliness of a world that existed outside of time, frozen simultaneously in a moment before you knew how nice company could be and in one where you could feel very acutely what you were missing.
mostly though. you remember the heavy weight of guilt at your abandonment when you realized the jungle was eating him alive or the moon was about to destroy everything he’d created or anything else because you didn’t want to risk forgetting, even if forgetting meant not living with that weight that remembering always (always) brought. because you’re a survivor and you need that one fact to stay true if you are to maintain an identity in any capacity. so you leave. even if it means, sometimes—often (always)—leaving him.
it hadn’t mattered that much before.
and then you’d realized that you would give your life for him.
that was terrifying. that was a new feeling in a new world with new guilt at not having the bravery (to match his) to say, surrounded by people whose eyes you felt tear into your soul, that you could love.
that guilt is the strongest.
you’d killed him before (and he’d done the same), but this was different. it meant something, you sending him off (to die) when you could have saved him because this was permanent.
at least, for that world it was.
he’s alive here, obviously.
but with every breath you take in his presence, you can’t help but remember how you couldn’t even say what you’d meant (what you’d really meant) to say when you’d told him that he had to take a life to earn one of yours.
not until you were both already dead, at least. and you can’t help but remember that you did so deliberately, never intending for him to hear it. and even if he had by some miracle clung to a memory of a dead world, that truth was one thing he’d never be able to remember.
because you’re the only one who remembers.
so it’s strange, then, that his face betrays your own feelings.
the ones that whisper whenever you’ll listen that you’ve already found your soulmate. and that you’ll always find your soulmate. any time, and in any world.
the kind of person you would give every one of your lives to protect, not the kind whose life you share.
it’s different.
and you think he sees that?
you don’t know what he remembers. and you don’t want to ask.
but then he nods, smiles, and any confusion you’d felt vanishes. “you’ll find them soon.”
it’s waking up and realizing he’s not next to you but thinking that maybe he’s on a trip? he’s usually on a trip anyways, so it’s normal. and it’s not the empty bed, it’s the realizing the trip is never going to end.
it’s the standing up and seeing his slippers across the room. he always ran cold, you always ran warm. you want to feel if the slippers are as cold as he was, but it feels like sacrilege to touch anything that was his.
it’s opening the wardrobe and seeing a cloak left behind. he didn’t want to leave. he didn’t plan on leaving.
it’s walking into a silent, silent hallway and wondering if it will ever see life again.
it’s the passing glance at a room full of toys that he never saw his son in. and now he never will.
it’s thinking just a bit to hard about that cloak again while you’re eating breakfast. he didn’t want to leave.
it’s pretending that this is just an exceedingly long trip. maybe he’ll be back soon, you’d always thought. maybe this time he’ll stay a little longer, you’d always hoped.
it’s going about your day like everything’s normal, and then your ring hits against a part of the wall you were trying to build and it’s so so far from normal that you want to scream. but you don’t, because you’re visiting tommy and tommy is already dealing with so much. you want to know what, but you don’t think you could handle asking so instead you listen, blank eyes boring into a wall behind his head as you try to stop your ears from ringing with the sound of metal against obsidian and the ghost of a whispered voice.
it’s going home as the sun sets and making stir fry out of habit, looking at the amount you made too late and realizing you made too much. you feel a stinging pain with every word you write in the footnotes of a scribbled recipe, reminding yourself to cut the amount of each ingredient in half.
it’s the understanding that there’s no more of things once taken for granted. tomorrow is saturday, and he was always home by saturday because on saturday you had rice pudding together. and now you can’t stand the scent of it because it’s too much and you think you want to throw up thinking about the taste. it feels stupid.
it’s those “no mores” that haunt you. the scarf he’d been working on will always be three eighths of the way done, and the stitches in it will never get any cleaner. he’d been improving with each little centimeter, and now his progress will remain stagnant forever. no more knitting. no more days where you’d clip your nails together, and you think you might let them grown long until they break. the sound of cutting might just shatter your soul.
it’s the fact that you haven’t shed a single tear. not one. not until the door opens and you almost say his name and not until— oh. yes. not until you remember that he’s not the one at the door and he’s not going to run to you and lift you up and spin you around. not today, and not ever again. someone says hello and you barely hear it because you’re on the ground and you didn’t know your chest could hurt this bad without being physically stabbed through the heart with a burning sword or shot to death with fireworks.
it’s the fact that someone runs to you, face full of concern and you can’t hear them because your ears ring with his voice instead and you can’t see them because your eyes have gone blurry and you think it looks like his face but it’s not, oh it’s not it’s not it’s not. why did you have to lose him? why do you always lose? wouldn’t it have been better if you had been sacrificed three hundred and twelve (no. now it’s three hundred and thirteen) days ago? maybe then this wouldn’t have been drawn out for so long and losing now wouldn’t hurt quite so much. there would have been less to miss then.
it’s in the thought that maybe ranboo had the right idea in dying.
and it’s in the desire to join him.
but more than that, it’s getting up, wiping away tears and brushing off help.
it’s the need to move on while being forever haunted by those little, little things. the hoping and the slippers and the cloak and the silence and images of empty rooms and the echos of rings against half-built walls and imagined voices. the stir fry recipes and the rice pudding, the scarves and nail clipping.
the little things pin you in place with little needles, and you can’t move. you’re forever trapped by the memories of moments too small and a grief to big.
The world is ending, and Etho has someone he needs to save.
7466 words // minor violence/horror elements and canon last life deaths :) // ao3
a gift for the beloved prince @ranboocore for a server gift exchange given as targeted last life propaganda <3
---
Something is wrong. Etho’s head snaps around, holding his shield out towards the blazes as he looks behind him. There’s a tugging sensation in his gut, and something is terribly, horribly wrong. He freezes, holding his breath and tuning out the sounds of fire around him as he listens for any disturbance.
Nothing.
He shakes his head, unsure of what his instincts had been trying to tell him.
Twirling his sword in his hand to instill some surety back into it, he swings it at a blaze, killing it in one smooth motion. He stoops down to pick up the dropped blaze rod and fits it neatly into his inventory. There’s nothing to worry about, he assures himself, and then he hears a cry from below him.
Shielding himself from an onslaught of attacks from the newly spawned blazes as he turns, Etho nearly drops his sword in his rush to slide down the ladder to the level of the fortress he spots Tango on. Panting slightly as he lands, he asks, “What happened?”
Tango’s face is a mask of shock. He says nothing, merely pointing towards the nearest ledge. Carefully, Etho steps towards it, gripping the wall tightly as he peers down at the ground.
“Not here,” he replies, his voice a hoarse whisper. “I’m so sorry, I looked away for less than a second and then—”
Etho just nods, cutting off his rambling. “I see.”
“You’re not… mad at me, are you?”
He laughs, more out of surprise than anything. “Why would I be mad? It’s not like it was your job to look after him or anything, it’s—” Not mine either, he reminds himself sharply. Shaking his head, he shifts their focus to something else. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll figure something out, we always do.”
“Etho, he’s—” He’s red, Tango doesn’t finish. He’ll want to kill you. To kill us all.
“I know. But we’ll figure it out,” Etho says again, insistent. Deciding the conversation is over, he slides the rest of the way down the ladder until his feet hit the ground.
“C’mon,” he says, motioning for Tango to follow him down. “Let’s go find our Bdubs.”
Silently, they make their way through the heat of the nether, a sort of tension between them that neither particularly feels like addressing.
And there’s something else in the air too. A tugging wrongness that festers in Etho’s chest, an entirely irrational cocktail of fear and righteous fury. He doesn’t know where it came from, and he doesn’t particularly feel like addressing it either.
The world is ending, the acrid wind whispers in his ear, and Etho pretends he does not hear it.
“There,” Tango says finally, pointing towards the portal above them at the edge of a far-off cliff.
“Perfect.” Etho fishes around in his inventory for a few blocks, towering up the side of it and meeting Tango right by the portal. Taking a deep breath, he asks, “Ready?”
Tango lets out a sigh. “As I’ll ever be.”
As one last precaution, Etho grips an enderpearl in his hand. With one last glance at Tango, he shoots him a grin from behind his mask and says, “See you on the other side.”
“Etho!” There’s a familiar voice when Etho arrives on the other side of the portal, and he can feel his smile grow more genuine. “There you are!”
Stepping down from the portal, he has to hold himself back in his excitement as he replies simply, “Bdubs?”
“Yep! It’s me!” He pops out his head from beneath the nearby set of stairs.
“How… are you?” he asks tentatively, still keeping a safe distance between them.
“Oh, me? Just fantastic,” he says with a joyous little laugh.
Etho feels his heart skip a beat. “Yeah?”
“Mhm!” Bdubs has made his way up the stairs by now and is approaching uncomfortably close levels. “I’d be much better if you joined me though, I think.”
Etho takes a very unsubtle step back and feels a wave of cold wash over him. “We’re not doing that.”
“It’d be fun though, and you know it!”
Etho contemplates it, almost against his will. “Maybe,” he says, and it feels like the word is forced out of him. “Wouldn’t you like to come back to yellow instead though?”
“Why would I want that?” His eyes are too wide and his smile is too sharp and his teeth are too white and he feels wrong.
Etho hesitates, held in place by Bdubs’ intense stare. “I’ll have to kick you out if you’re red,” he finally settles on.
“What?” Bdubs’ grin turns to a look of concern. “Why?”
“Well, personally, I don’t want to die. I don’t think any other members of Team B.E.S.T. want to either.”
“No!” Bdubs insists. “I helped build this, I deserve at least half.”
“Half?”
“Yes.” He nods vehemently.
Etho considers for a moment, glancing briefly at the portal to see if Tango’s made it out yet. He doesn’t see him, but his eyes do catch on a hastily replaced snow block in the wall, so he can figure out what happened there easily enough. With Tango having safely escaped, he can make whatever compromises he needs to. “Fine,” he agrees, turning back to Bdubs. “But I draw the border.”
“Wh— no! That’s not fair, I want to draw the border.”
“It’s either that or I call Skizz and Tango for backup and actually kick you out. Which would you prefer?”
Etho tenses as he feels a hazy sort of anger emanating from Bdubs, slowly warping into outright bloodlust. Before it can get quite that far though, he blinks. “You draw the border,” he concedes.
Warily, Etho steps around him and towards the doorway of the storage tower. “Alright,” he says, “we’ll put it riiiight here.” Refusing to look up just yet, he continues placing blocks all across the fortress in a perfectly straight line.
“Hey!” Bdubs cries after a moment, realizing what he’s done. “Very funny, Etho, very funny.”
Chuckling, Etho looks up at him. “What, you don’t appreciate my border placement?”
“No,” he huffs, muttering to himself about being blocked out from their storage tower. “I’m going to have to ruin our walls to fix this.”
Etho shakes his head, almost fond as he finishes the line of cobblestone right down the middle of their base just as Bdubs bounds over to him. “We stay on our separate sides, and everything will be fine, okay?”
“Sure, sure. Anything you say.”
“Alright. Good.” Etho shifts from foot to foot for a moment, considering his options. “I’m going to… go out for a bit, actually. I’ll be back soon.”
“Sure thing! See ya, Etho!”
Etho squints at him. That was much too easy for him to be reassured about anything. “Don’t get into too much trouble while I’m gone,” he adds, eyes still narrowed.
“Oh, no. Of course I won’t! In fact, I would never!”
Etho just looks at him, his expression saying quite clearly, I know you’re lying.
Bdubs doesn’t seem to care much, and Etho just turns away with a sigh, deliberately waving away the unsettling feeling that had been lingering in the air ever since he’d gotten back from the nether. He’ll be back quickly, and it’ll be fine. But right now, he has a deal to make.
---
Scar’s mountain base is surprisingly pretty for something so impermanent. It seems silly for him to have spent any time and effort on ensuring its beauty, but Etho supposes he isn’t one to judge when Scar is the only one who has what he needs. He can cope with the irrationality of it all just for a few minutes.
“Scar,” he calls when he enters the wooden wizard hat. “Scar, are you there?”
“Etho?” Scar sticks his head down from the upper level, peering over a ladder.
“That’s me!” he replies with a small wave, tamping down the shock of fury he’d felt run through him at seeing Scar’s dark, dark green eyes.
Scar pulls his head back and begins clambering down the ladder. “Etho! So nice of you to drop by.” He steps behind the makeshift counter and rests his elbows on it casually. “What brings you here today?”
Etho takes a breath. No need to beat around the bush. “I’d like to make a deal.”
Scar’s eyes brighten immediately, glowing with an intensity that would have ordinarily made Etho hesitate. “Ooo, what kind of deal?”
Today, though, he’s willing to pay any price. “You’re selling souls, aren’t you?”
Scar begins to smile. “Three lives not enough for you?”
Etho shakes his head. “It’s not for me.”
There’s a beat of silence. “…What? Wait, who would you want another life for? Why are you here on their behalf? I didn’t think you even— y’know?” When he’s met with nothing but a cold stare, Scar just shrugs. “Never mind.”
Etho doesn’t particularly want to talk about how he’s here because how Bdubs acted on red unnerved him too much, nor does he want to say that he just wants his friend back. So instead, he explains, “It’s to save my alliance. I don’t know if you heard, but Bdubs went red and Team B.E.S.T. without the ‘B’ is just Team… E.S.T. Doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?”
Scar fixes him with a calculating look, the hint of a smile stirring just behind his eyes. Dark green to Bdubs’ red.
Etho thinks he might want to kill him.
“Alright,” he finally decides. “But you have to sign a contract for it, you know.”
And for the first time, Etho hesitates. “What kind of contract?”
“Oh, nothing much. Just, uh, here! Now, you don’t really need to look at the fine print, actually, it’s not necessary that you—”
Etho tunes him out and cracks open the spine of the book, and there it is. The very words he’d been worried about: I shall not kill Scar as a green or yellow name for any reason.
“—really. In fact, why don’t you sign right—”
“It’s a bit much,” Etho interrupts. “I don’t know about this.”
“I don’t think it’s that much at all! All I’m asking is that you—”
“I know what you’re asking, Scar. But I don’t want to be held to this.”
Scar tilts his head, tapping his chin a few times as he thinks. “Okay,” he decides finally, “how about this? You don’t have to sign, but Bdubs does.”
It’s all Etho can do to stop from lighting up so obviously that Scar would know that something strange was going on. “I can work with that. Deal.”
Scar grins. “Perfect! Break that crystal right there—” he gestures to a piece of what Etho is certain is just purple stained glass, “—and Bdubs’ new life will be transferred right to him.”
Silently, Etho walks over to the block of glass and in one swing, breaks it cleanly with his pickaxe. He turns back to Scar, and he can immediately tell that something is different. The world almost—almost—feels right. He senses Bdubs, miles away though he is, and he feels normal again. He’s yellow. But there’s also a tension, a dissonance in the very air he breathes and he feels dizzy with it. He fixes Scar with a narrow-eyed look. His eyes are still dark.
Scar gives him a smile in return. “Shall we go see Bdubs?” he offers.
Etho considers, wondering how easy it would be to slit his throat before smiling back. “Let’s go.”
---
“Scar! Scar, thank you!” Bdubs calls, running across a field of grassy hills towards the rock formation Etho and Scar had told him they’d meet on.
“Thank Etho,” Scar says, giving him the most charming grin Etho thinks he’s ever seen as Bdubs approaches them, panting slightly. “He’s the one that convinced me to make the deal, after all.”
“Did you? Did you really?” Bdubs’ bright, grateful eyes turn to him.
Etho clears his throat. “Couldn’t have a ruined alliance now, could we?”
Bdubs merely laughs. “Thanks, Etho,” he says with a less than subtle wink.
Etho turns away.
As though to remind the two of them that he’s still there, Scar coughs lightly. “So, Bdubs, we just have a quick contract for you to sign, and then all will be in order.”
“’Course! Anything.”
And Etho is snapped back to reality as Scar begins muttering to himself, digging around in his inventory for the contract he knows he has stashed away in there somewhere. Something cold flashes through Etho then, and he’s reminded of Scar’s green eyes. They were so dark—almost black when Bdubs’ are only yellow.
It’s not exactly fair, is it?
“Etho?” Bdubs asks quietly from the ground.
Etho looks down at him. He hadn’t even realized he’d been towering up, but he’s certainly not going to back down now, even if the height makes him dizzy. After all, what harm is there in evening the playing field a bit?
So he ignores him.
“Here it is!” Scar finally exclaims, oblivious to the fact that Etho has now moved several feet above him. He presents the book to Bdubs with a flourish, and Etho grips a fishing rod tightly behind his back. He feels a bit nauseous, and his vision starts to swim. But he can’t stop this. He can’t.
Bdubs signs it quickly, barely skimming the words on the page. He shuts it, and the book begins to shimmer with a purplish hue.
Scar claps, and it vanishes. “Perfect! And that, my friends, is what I call a deal well m— oh! Wh—”
He’s pulled into the air by the back of his robe and held there, kept free from death by the will of a single fishing hook.
And, of course, its owner.
“Etho, what are you—”
Scar is dropped unceremoniously to the ground, and he dies.
Bdubs looks up at him with his jaw dropped. “Etho! What— what’s gotten into you? What was that for?”
Etho, for his part, just blinks.
“Etho?”
“I— I’m not sure. I don’t know what came over me.”
His mind has cleared now, and the wind’s dissonance has resolved into nothing. For the first time since Bdubs died, Etho feels at ease.
But the wind still insists, the world is ending. It’s louder now than it was before.
Bdubs looks stricken. “You should apologize to him.”
Etho shakes his head and tries laughing, waving him off. “Oh, come on. He’ll get over it soon. He had lives to spare anyway.”
Bdubs doesn’t look convinced.
“Look,” Etho continues, “I promise you, it doesn’t matter that much. Will you forget about it for me?”
Bdubs hesitates, still looking a bit put out.
Etho turns down his eyebrows and fills his eyes with as much pleading and vulnerability as he’s willing to show. “Please?”
Bdubs takes a breath. Then a second one. On the third, he sighs out, “Fine.”
Etho’s face breaks into a smile.
But— but. Something is still wrong.
The world is ending, the wind reminds him.
---
Even so, life continues.
Etho and Bdubs keep their distance from everyone else, the desire to stay safe overwhelming the need for human connection.
At least, that’s how it goes for a few days. Eventually though, Bdubs gets tired of isolation and greets the first people that have approached their fortress since news of Etho’s killing had traveled.
“Grian!”
“Why, hello there! It’s nice to see you again! How’ve you been?”
“Great, great. What are you doing here? Wait, no. Let’s get out of the fortress, actually. Etho doesn’t like having other people in here.”
“Etho is right here, and Etho doesn’t like being stolen from either,” he says from the top of the wall with a pointed look at Grian.
For his part, Grian at least has the decency to look somewhat ashamed.
“Let’s go outside, yeah?” Bdubs says quickly, looking more nervous than perhaps he needed to be upon seeing Etho at perfect fishing rod height to kill Grian.
Etho drops from the top of the wall, following quietly behind the two of them. “Wow,” he says, suddenly stopping short. “You really brought everyone here with you for this heist, didn’t you?” It’s a bit of an exaggeration; Grian had really only brought Mumbo and Martyn, but being outnumbered by even one person puts Etho on edge.
Grian, once again, looks somewhat ashamed and Bdubs elbows Etho. He mutters under his breath, “You don’t have to be so… mean. To them. Or stand-offish. Not everyone’s out to get us.”
Etho almost argues that they were in fact out to get them this time—see the fact that Grian had all but admitted to stealing from them—but he figures it’s not worth it. “Fine,” he murmurs instead. “I’ll be nicer.”
Bdubs smiles at him, and any qualms Etho’d had about not pressing the issue before vanish immediately.
Bdubs steps forward to join the conversation, and Etho stands beside him, merely observing.
The world is ending. The wind calls to him, and Etho turns slowly to his right.
His narrowed eyes meet Mumbo’s sharp ones, and the voice repeats itself. It’s faster this time, he thinks. Theworldisending.
Etho turns away. He doesn’t need his reputation being tarnished further by throwing suspicion onto someone with no discernable reason besides a voice on the wind. He almost convinces himself that nothing is wrong when Mumbo takes a step back from them.
It’s so small that if he hadn’t been watching obsessively out of the corner of his eye, he wouldn’t have seen it happen at all. But he had been watching, and it did happen and now gravity feels like it’s tilting and tilting and he’s being pulled to the left and then it’s switching again to the other side and it does it again and again and he’s being ripped apart and something is terribly, terribly wrong. He thinks he smells gunpowder.
“Mumbo?” he asks, cutting Martyn off midsentence.
Silence falls over the clearing. “Mumbo.” Etho repeats. “What are you doing?”
Mumbo steps off a short ledge. Still backing away, still unnervingly quiet.
“Etho,” Bdubs says, stepping between him and Mumbo. He doesn’t have his line of sight anymore, and he tries to step around Bdubs but he’s held firmly in place between his hands. “Etho,” Bdubs repeats, “what did I say about not everyone being out to get—”
There’s the sound of an explosion.
The smoke clears, and there are no hands holding him in place anymore.
Just a piece of obsidian and Mumbo’s eyes staring at him, just above it.
A shock of white hot fury passes through him before his body goes unnaturally cold. With shaking hands, he lifts up an axe. His vision narrows, a beam of absolute clarity focused entirely on the figure in front of him.
Mumbo’s eyes go wide, and he runs.
Mind empty of everything but a positively dizzying level of rage, Etho tears through the forest after him.
He blinks.
Once.
Twice.
And then Mumbo is shoved against a tree, diamond axe through his shoulder. He exhales, blood dripping from his mouth as the light fades from his eyes.
Then he’s gone. Etho pulls his axe free, and there’s nothing but a deep gash in the bark to indicate that anything had happened at all.
Silently, Etho walks back through the forest. He passes Grian and Martyn, but he doesn’t speak, doesn’t meet their eyes. He just sheathes his bloody axe and assumes they’ll understand what happened.
Bdubs is gone again. The thought finally registers as Etho sees him on the other side of the snow fortress, greeting him with a too-wide grin and too-empty eyes. He looks more inhuman than he had last time.
Bdubs steps closer to the cobblestone line that they hadn’t even had the time to remove, and Etho’s vision goes blurry with panic. He stumbles back.
And Bdubs laughs. “You should join me.”
Etho’s voice catches.
Another step closer. “I’ll get you to join me, Etho.” Another. “Oh, we’ll have so much fun together, won’t we?” Two more. He’s walking now. “We’ll—”
“The border,” Etho says hoarsely.
Bdubs stops. “What?”
“You can’t cross the border,” Etho says more clearly. “Or you’re out.”
“Oh,” he replies, expression souring. “So you… won’t? Join me?”
Etho shakes his head slowly.
“Oh,” Bdubs repeats, his lip curling in disgust. Etho can see gaps in his too-sharp, too-white teeth. He’s getting worse.
“I’ll see you later,” he says finally, unusually cold.
“Bdubs—”
He’s ignored.
The wind picks up again as Bdubs leaves, but this time it doesn’t have to tell him that the world is ending for him to understand that it is. He needs more lives. He needs to fix this. This is his fault. He needs—
He lifts his eyes to a breaking snow block. “Tango.”
Tango nods at him and turns back to help Skizz through the wall. “I heard about Bdubs,” he says as Etho walks towards him. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” Etho says, “but we’re going to bring him back.”
“We are?”
“Yes, we are. We’re all members of Team B.E.S.T., and we’re both light green now, Tango.”
Tango glares slightly. “Yeah, but you’re the one who—” Skizz places a hand on his shoulder, and he stops.
“You’re both light green,” Skizz agrees. “And one of you needs to give a life to Bdubs. So to make it fair, how about we, uh…” he hesitates, thinking.
Etho feels like a man possessed as he asks, “What about a game?” Even his voice sounds wrong. It rings through the air like thunder.
Tango blinks. “What do you mean?”
Skizz speaks up this time, his voice taking on the same quality Etho’s had. “I’ll close my eyes and spin and spin and spin and then I’ll stop. And when I open my eyes, and they will see you. You will know if they do, and your life will be his. If they don’t see you, your life will remain yours. If I don’t see either of you, I’ll spin and spin and spin and spin and spin and spin and I’ll spin and spin and spin and spin and spin—”
“…And then you’ll stop and open your eyes?” Tango eventually cuts in, looking just short of completely terrified.
“Yes.”
“…And if you don’t see any of us again, you’ll repeat until you do, right?” Etho prompts, feeling the way Tango looks.
“Yes. Follow me.”
Tango shoots Etho a concerned glance, but he can only shrug in response. It’s for Bdubs, so he follows Skizz despite the queasiness he feels upon hearing his voice.
“Opposite ends,” Skizzleman commands, standing in the center of the circular tower and staring them both down.
Tango quickly darts to the other side, and Etho watches as Skizz closes his unnaturally bright eyes. He starts spinning, and Etho holds his breath.
He keeps going and going, and for a moment Etho wonders if he’s ever going to stop or if he’s going to keel over at some point and just… die.
He doesn’t, thankfully, and when Skizz finally slows, his eyes open and stare in the opposite direction. Tango looks back, wide-eyed.
“It’s you,” Skizz says, and the words drive a spike through Etho’s skull with their echo. He winces, but at least he’s not Tango.
Tango looks to be in physical pain, moving in jerky motions as he mimes pulling out his own heart. His hand has formed into a twisted claw and when it pulls away, Etho can see a piece of his glowing aura grasped in it, light green shifting gradually to yellow. His mouth is open in a silent scream, and he hunches over as he shoves his hand forward.
“Take it,” he croaks.
Etho hesitates.
“TAKE IT!”
His heart stutters. Skizz is making no move to take the life from Tango, so Etho steps around him, deliberately avoiding his eyes. Tango’s hand loosens around the fragmented aura and it drops into Etho’s waiting hand.
In one smooth motion, both Skizz and Tango collapse.
Etho flinches, his eyes darting between them. He almost moves to help them up, but then Skizz exhales softly and begins snoring, so he decides against it.
Looking down at the life in his hand for one last moment, Etho breathes out and raises his hand towards the sky. It continues rising away from him and as he’s watching, it blinks out of existence. Immediately, Etho feels something in the world slot back into place.
Bdubs is safe again.
Something twists in his gut at that, something about no balance no justice no fairness, something about how this trading of lives is unnatural something about how he’s done this twice now and Bdubs should be dead, but he isn’t. Something about how he’s running and running, but someday he’ll be out of breath and whatever loopholes he’s diving through will close around him and he’ll be stuck. He can’t keep saving Bdubs forever. One day, there will be no more lives to drag from someone else’s unwilling corpse.
But that day is not today, and he’ll think more on that later. He’ll figure out what to do if it ever comes down to a choice between his life and Bdubs’, and only then will he think about the way it grips him with the sort of fear he doesn’t think he’s ever felt.
---
Etho had thought he was so clever when he’d figured out something had been wrong with Mumbo. He’d thought himself even more clever when he’d asked Tango to play a game with him, and more clever still as he’d continued to keep Bdubs safe against all odds and hold their alliance together with nothing but sheer willpower, even after Bdubs had brought one of their own down to yellow to join him.
But someone else thinks Etho is clever too.
That someone thinks he’s a bit too clever. Thinks that perhaps, he shouldn’t have as much life left in him as he does, and perhaps this someone feels just the smallest bit frustrated with the fact that Etho has escaped all these wild schemes entirely unscathed.
This someone believes that Mumbo just might deserve avenging and wonders whether or not a wither would be able to finally do the job no one else has been able to.
So Grian asks Impulse to help him collect a few blackened skulls and to place a few blocks of soul sand for him, praying as he places the last skull atop them that this will be what finally kills Etho.
When Etho hears the deafening sound signaling the creation of the wither though, he panics. He’s clever, but he’s not nearly as strong as Grian believes him to be. This reputation he’s created for himself was, of course, created on purpose, but he realizes now that it’s come back to haunt him in an incredible way.
So because he’s clever and because at this point he is skilled in cheating death, Etho wants to run. There’s no point in staying. It’s not like he has anything to prove and even if he did, proving a point is not worth more than life itself.
Bdubs, however, is foolish. His first instinct is not to run, it’s to destroy a creature that will cause others pain.
He’s too selfless, Etho thinks as he blocks Bdubs from an explosion. “Please leave with me,” he says instead. “If you die even once, I don’t know if I’ll be able to bring you back.”
Bdubs acts like he doesn’t hear. He’s going to stay no matter what Etho says to him, and Etho knows that. He’s Bdubs, and Bdubs doesn’t back down from a challenge.
Etho’s going to stay too because he’s Etho, and he cares a just bit too much.
So they stay, and the sky turns an ugly, charcoal grey and the clouds crumble into nothing. The sky stays dark though, and the sun goes all watery and Etho thinks once again that something is terribly wrong. The wither is just a wither, but the world it’s spawned into has gone all wrong, and Etho can hear it in the discordant pitch of the wind as it whips through the trees.
Bdubs keeps fighting, but maybe that’s because he’s the center of the wind that has visibly surrounded him and the center of the clouds that have descended only to create more darkness closer to him. From Etho’s vantage point, he looks like the eye of the storm.
The comparison hits him with painful understanding. Maybe he isn’t paying attention to it because he simply can’t see it. Maybe he is as much the source of this apocalypse as anything else Etho could point to.
He watches Bdubs fight against the wind and the beginnings of pounding rain and he wonders if their time is really and truly running out now. Lining up another shot, he lets his arrow fly and pretends the swelling of the storm doesn’t feel like death catching up to them at last.
“Etho! I’m getting low!”
With an immediacy that seems almost mindless, Etho shifts his bow to his back again and picks up his shield, sliding down their walls of snow to reach Bdubs.
The storm he saw from afar is much worse on the ground than he’d ever have imagined. He has no idea how Bdubs has even managed to stay upright in all of this, much less see well enough to dodge the wither’s incoming attacks for as long as he has. Etho can only just tell up from down, and that’s only because the rain is beating against his head, not his feet.
“ETHO!” Bdubs cries out, and Etho runs against the wind at a snail’s pace.
Briefly, he has to lean against a tree to catch his breath, arms wrapped as tightly around its trunk as he can manage just to stay in one place. This is too much. He should just run.
But then he hears Bdubs’ voice yelling something incomprehensible, and he knows he can’t. He pushes off the tree and braves the storm once more.
Then rain turns to hail around him in a shift so sudden even the wither screeches, and he hears Bdubs scream as the world around them explodes.
Etho is thrown back against the tree he’d left moments ago, groaning as he rubs at the back of his head. His ears ring, and it takes him a moment to realize that aside from that, the world around him is silent.
No more rain. No more wind. Even the wither seems to have frozen.
With a gasp, Etho shoots to his feet. This is wrong. If it’s silent, then where’s—
“Bdubs?” he asks hesitantly.
There’s no reply.
Etho feels dizzy. He leans against the tree again, and his vision swims. It warps incomprehensibly and this time, he can’t even tell if he’s standing on the ground or floating in midair. His heart feels tight and wrong, like it doesn’t fit in his chest anymore, like it’s gone all bloated and started beating too fast to make up for it. His lungs feel the opposite, like they had to shrink for his new heart to have enough space inside of him and thought he couldn’t possibly need that much air anyway.
He feels like he’s choking and he grasps at his throat as he tries to breathe properly but only ends up falling to his knees. And again, though the wind screams the words in his ear, he doesn’t need anything more to know that the world is still ending. He can feel that it is all on his own.
It feels like an eon has passed before his organs go back to normal. On shaky legs, Etho manages to stand up.
“Bdubs?” he calls again, voice quieter this time. In vain, Etho hopes he’s made it back here by now.
“Etho?”
It’s not Bdubs. Etho looks up at the wall and sees Scott standing upon it, Cleo and Ren climbing up behind him.
“Scott,” Etho replies, and even though it’s not Bdubs, he feels relief at seeing someone else. “D’you guys think you could… help me with this?” He nods at the rather obvious mass of the wither.
“Of course,” Scott replies, pulling his bow from his back without question and taking aim.
“Thanks,” Etho says, doing the same.
This time, there’s no storm to battle alongside the wither and with four people fighting, it becomes trivially easy to beat. The wither offers one final screech as Etho’s arrow finds its mark and vanishes into a puff of smoke, leaving only a glowing nether star behind.
As the only one on the ground now, Etho walks over to it and picks it up, pocketing it. He feels that he of all people deserves it most. This star cost him the life of his ally, after all.
No one objects. Maybe they can tell that arguing with Etho right now would be an incredibly ill-fated endeavor.
Though his body protests, Etho climbs the snowy wall to stand alongside everyone that had come to his aid. He doesn’t say anything, but his gratitude surrounds them.
Hesitantly, Ren asks, “…Do I want to ask where Bdubs is?”
Etho hides a wince, his faces schooled into neutrality. “He died before you got here,” he says, trying to find a balance between hiding how wrecked he feels inside and avoiding coming off as completely heartless.
Cleo looks at him, and Etho thinks he sees pity in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she says, and Etho doesn’t think he’s done a very good job of concealing his brokenness.
“It’s not your—” he shakes his head. “It’s fine. I—” he gives up after that. There’s no right thing he thinks he can say to them.
There is almost an awkward silence, but then, like a miracle, Bdubs is there, grin larger than life. “Etho!” he says, approaching them with a face full of such joy Etho can’t help but smile back.
Scott, though, holds out a hand. “Hold on, Bdubs. How are we supposed to trust that you won’t kill us?”
Bdubs merely shrugs, still smiling just a bit too wide. So Scott turns to Etho instead. “We can’t have him here.”
“I know,” Etho replies, not meeting his gaze. He’s watching Bdubs though, not taking his eyes off him as his mind moves a mile a minute trying to come up with a way to fix this all over again.
He can’t offer his own life, not when he’s surrounded by faces that when they turn to him look too smooth and too blank. He can’t trust them when he feels their breaths surrounding him and choking him out if he turns his back on them for too long. Etho isn’t one to get easily claustrophobic, but on this wall, he feels like he’s being buried alive.
But he can’t get a life out of someone else either, not when there are no more lives to take for free.
There has to be a way to save Bdubs. There has to be.
“How about a deal?” Scott offers as though he’d heard his silent plea. His voice has taken on a quality like thunder, and Etho’s blood runs cold. This can’t be happening again.
As though he’s a puppet on a string, Etho feels himself nod. “We’ll make a deal,” he agrees, mouth moving against his will.
No one on the wall says anything else, but their breaths are so loud that Etho can hardly come up with the terms before his head starts to throb.
“Bdubs,” Etho says finally, his voice cutting a path through his own hazy thoughts. “I’ll give you another life so you can come back to— to us, but you need to do something to help me—to help us—first.”
Bdubs nods, and it feels like the world tilts on its axis to match his movements. “Anything.”
When the ground doesn’t seem desperate to move anymore, Etho continues. “There needs to be balance,” he says in a voice that’s barely his own. “You can’t keep living like this, running from your ever-looming death, so you’ll have to kill someone to take your place. For me to give you a life, you need to kill another red.” It’s a desperate bargain, done both to appease whatever eldritch thing it was that had possessed Scott and to prevent the earth and sky around Bdubs from caving in.
But Bdubs agrees easily. “I’ll be right back,” he says with another world-altering nod.
“You didn’t seem so preoccupied with balance when you saved him the first two times,” Ren says sharply as soon as Bdubs is out of earshot.
“I—” Etho sounds unsure, even to himself. “Would you have preferred if I asked him to kill someone every time?”
Ren shrugs. “Maybe I would have.”
Etho shakes his head. “I have no doubt that he’d be dead by now if I’d asked that of him.”
“Then maybe he should be dead,” Ren says, his voice turning cold and echoing just as Skizz’s had during the game he’d played with Tango, just as Scott’s had too moments ago. “You forget how inevitability works, Etho. What is meant to be will be, regardless of how fast you try to run from it.”
Etho shudders, feeling helplessly cold once more. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” he says despite his discomfort, a quiet strength behind his words. “Ren, are you alright?”
Ren blinks slowly. “…Yes.” He proceeds to collapse, and Etho rushes to catch him.
Scott and Cleo look on in abject horror.
“He’ll be alright,” Etho assures them. “This happened to Skizz and Tango before too, but they were perfectly fine afterwards, promise.” He doesn’t mention the fact that Skizz is now dead and that Tango is possessed by the same bloodlust he’s trying to save Bdubs from.
They don’t look convinced. “You don’t have to stay,” Etho tries. “I can wait here for Bdubs and you can go find somewhere safe.”
That seems to reassure them, as relief floods their faces. “Find us once you’ve gotten Bdubs back,” Scott says, shooting him a kind smile. “And we’ll take Ren too, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course not,” Etho nods, gently lifting him up and placing him in Cleo’s arms. “Take care.”
“You too.”
They leave, and Etho walks up the steps to the top of a tower Bdubs built, waiting there as patiently as he can.
Time ticks once, and Etho feels instantly that something has gone wrong. The world itself seems to cry out in anguish. Between one blink and the next, the world has from full to empty and Etho knows somehow that Bdubs is gone.
He doesn’t cry. He thinks for a moment that he might, but something catches in his throat and he finds himself unable to so much as breathe as grief like he’s never felt tears its way through him. He falls and the world falls with him, its very fabric ripped apart in jagged lines. The sky above him crumbles and the ground beneath him drops into nothing.
“The world is ending,” he says in unified horror with the screaming wind.
Bdubs. The one word is the only thing that cuts through his mounting panic. He has to find Bdubs. He has no idea why he feels such a need to, but somewhere deep in his heart he knows he must.
So he stands, fighting against gravity itself as he walks towards the force that’s wrapped around his every limb and tugs him away from the safety of the fortress. One step at a time.
The world seems to warp around him, and time dilates too. It takes him either seconds or years to reach Bdubs, and he can’t tell which. Maybe the ground had lengthened the distance between them, or maybe the earth had been compressed. He isn’t even sure if the shifting movements that surround him are real or if they’re all in his head.
But he keeps walking, taking one final step towards Bdubs that feels like it should have been five.
Slowly, Etho drops to the ground beside him, taking his head into his lap. His hands are gentle on Bdubs’ cold skin, as though if he’s careful enough he’ll be able to bring him back, good as new. And despite knowing that he’ll only be answered with stillness, Etho feels for a pulse.
Denial is a fascinating thing. Denial is what pushes Etho to question reality itself, what pushes him to wonder if, in this broken world, something like necromancy would actually work. Denial is what causes him to stare into Bdubs’ cold, empty eyes and think, it’s worth a shot.
He knows what lives feel like at this point, and he holds one of his own in the palm of his hand. It twists, bending his mind alongside it as his vision begins to cloud with an unfamiliar yellow.
He didn’t think it would hurt this much.
With a cry and the understanding that there’s no going back, he presses the life into the spot where Bdubs’ heart had been beating.
Everything goes still. Etho hadn’t realized just how loud the wind around him had been until it’s no longer roaring, and he hadn’t realized how cold it had made him until he starts shivering. He looks up and sees the sun setting in the sudden peacefulness.
It’s almost too much to bear. The normalcy of it all is more offputting than the way the world had been breaking around him before, and it makes Etho believe for a moment—just one moment—that when he looks back down at Bdubs, he’ll be breathing.
For his foolishness, Etho is thrown back by some force greater than anything he could possibly comprehend. He hears something crack as his shoulder makes painful contact with a piece of debris that’s been picked up by the returning wind, and he falls back to earth unceremoniously at the foot of the hill Bdubs had been lying upon.
His vision has returned to that familiar green, and Etho thinks it might be the ugliest color he’s ever seen.
There is no more silence, no more stillness. The world around him is screaming with wind and rain and lightning and thunder and darkness all in an indescribable vortex, and it repeats to him like a mantra: THE WORLD IS ENDING.
It’s nothing new to hear, but it’s so, so much louder this time. The noise of it rattles his brain around in his head, and it hurts. But if the world is ending, there’s only one thing left for him to do.
With the weight of the world pressing down on him and his right arm hanging limply at his side, he crawls back up the hill. One arm, one foot, another foot. Don’t fall. Careful of the branch flying past fast enough to cut him in half. Barely dodge the strike of lighting that sets his hair on end. He can make it.
All the while, there’s that voice like thunder that assures him, the world is ending.
It takes Etho longer to climb that hill than it’s taken him to do anything else he’s ever tried, but he doesn’t so much as consider giving up. He’s going to make it.
And then he does. He falls flat to the ground the moment he sees Bdubs, feeling the energy drain from his body in an instant.
It’s quieter here, at the top of the hill. Like the eye of a storm, like it’s been Bdubs all along that’s torn the world apart, like his escaping death displeased whatever god decided it wanted to watch this death game.
And still, Etho realizes, he doesn’t regret saving him. He drags himself closer to Bdubs and cradles his body in his arms, holding him as close to his heart as he can manage. The world can continue to crumble, and he’ll still treasure the few extra moments he had, still wish for more.
This is all a game. He gets it now, he thinks. It’s ending because he broke the rules, but it was always just that. A game.
This is all a game, and Etho played to win it his way.
So in the eye of the storm, on the last hill standing, he smiles.
The world goes dark, and Etho closes his eyes along with it.
“I love you,” he says, and the last words said as the universe collapses are ones of triumph.
✧ — gift (may be different from what i’d normally write)
mcyt:
one shots
tumblr || word count || brief description (ao3)
dsmp
✯ begin again || 1.7k || non-canon wish fulfillment where tommy is able to fight dream without help (x)
dream is doing just fine || 377 || a drabble/analysis about god-adjacent dream
think of all the years gone by || 1.7k || five years later, tubbo mourns the loss of l’manburg (ft. clingy duo) (x)
✦ the little things || 825 || pure angst; tubbo doesn’t deal well with grief, and moving on is harder than you would think
rpf
golden boy, golden smile || 5.7k || dnf keep finding each other, despite living an ocean apart (x)
last life
✦✧ bend the nightmare || 7.4k || (**includes subtle romantic ethubs) a reimagining of last life if it had more horror elements and if etho had caused an apocalypse by saving bdubs from death too many times (x)
the weight of memory || 811 || etho reminisces about soulmates.
analysis (link. character(s); timestamp || word count)
I. dream + tommy; dethronement arc || 491
II. tommy; end of exile arc || 371
III. tommy + techno; the green festival || 505
IV. ranboo; after a ranboo lore stream (jan. 2021) || 491
V. tubbo; tommy’s prison death || 619
VI. jack manifold + niki + tommy + dream; tommy’s prison death || 513
VII. dream + wilbur + techno; dream talks about red herrings || 1.1k
VIII. tommy + dream; tommy’s plan to kill dream || 778
IX. george; quackity seeing george outside the prison || 506
X. quackity + foolish; after quackity recruited foolish || 687
XI. ✯ tubbo + quackity; the cookie outpost || 216
XII. dream team; tina’s first dsmp stream || 341
sanders sides
(note that much has been left unfinished)
one shots: tumblr || word count || brief description (ao3)
anxceit
a falling star, least i fall alone || 4.1k || hurt/comfort with past and future platonic/romantic anxceit (can be read either way); happy ending (x)
anxceitmus
✧ from the gutter to the stars || 1.9k || for figurative-siren-song because he’s incredibly valid, trans virgil hurt/comfort with platonic/romantic anxceitmus (can be read either way); happy ending
loceit
butterflies || 8.3k || a human au with established loceit and unrequited but platonic logince; unhappy ending (x)
logince
✯ all of these stars (will guide us home) || 11.5k || a guardian angel!roman au with pining logince; happy ending (x)
iridescent || 500 || roman’s so very in love; happy ending (x)
multi-ship
(i could put) a little stardust in in your eyes || 12.5k || a soulmate au with platonic logince, platonic sleepceit, and pining losleep and roceit with hurt/comfort elements; happy ending (x)
no ship
a million dreams || 1.9k || roman angst with an unspecified relationship; unhappy ending (x)
falling victim to your fantasy || 2.6k || a murder mystery fic co-written with the incomparable heavenly-roman for the fandom games featuring many a platonic relationship and a lovely helping of roman angst; unhappy ending (x)
black tears || 300 || vent fic featuring a sad logan and color metaphors; unhappy ending (x)
prinxiety
✧ just like broken glass || 4.8k || for cloudsky331’s birthday in 2019, human au with past prinxiety written in first person; bittersweet ending (x)
roceit
watching the sunrise replace the moon || 2k || hurt/comfort with established roceit; hopeful ending (x)
the stars are fading (so am i) || 1.2k || post putting others first angst with past (and possibly future) roceit; hopeful/ambiguous ending (x)
kiss me goodbye (i’m defying gravity) || 1.5k || fic inspired by an art piece, guardian angel!janus tries to save prince roman; hopeful-leaning-happy ending (x)
ambition!roman || 1.1k || a headcanon about a corrupted version of roman, elaborated on more below:
ambitions taken to the extreme || 650
the aftermath || 1k
virgil’s relationship with him || 942
chaptered fics and series: tumblr masterpost || word count || brief description // chapter on tumblr (chapter on ao3) || etc
loceit
light up the dark || 1.3k || initially based on the tags on this post by coconut-cluster but then got out of hand and turned into some very prose-y loceit; my unfinished symphony, forever unfinished
see the stars (x) || empty sky (x) || spark of gold (x) || a night so bright (x) || city lights (x) || starlit kisses (x)
logince
feels like love || 7.3k || canon divergence, major character death and how that affects both the living and the dead, past (or present, depending on which part you read) logince, each could be read as a stand-alone one shot; unhappy ending
never enough (x) || two slow dancers (x) || missing you (x)
✧ to fall in love || 12.6k || for ari-the-anxious-ace’s secret santa gift, a siren!logan and prince!roman au, somewhat forbidden pining; unhappy ending (x)
✧ can’t help falling in love with you || 16.2k || for ren’s birthday, a ‘you’ve got mail’ inspired high school au with friends to lovers and enemies to friends to lovers logince (plus a side of platonic roceit consisting almost entirely of janus calling roman a simp); happy ending
only fools rush in (x) || like a river flows (x) || some things are meant to be (x)
roceit
devils don’t fly || 4.5k || dragon witch!deceit au featuring mutual pining and eventual roceit; my unfinished symphony, forever unfinished
when i’m gone, remember you’re the one (x) || and just because i fight (x) || don’t mean that i never learned how to love (x)
unspecified
brave the dark (hiatus of unknown length) || 3.4k || a victorian era murder mystery au featuring a whole cast of morally grey characters and major character death; my unfinished symphony, forever unplanned
the dark’s not taking prisoners tonight (x) || etc
100 follower celebration: tumblr || word count || who sent the prompt + brief description (ao3)
were you dazzled by the same constellation? || 1.1k || main-chive’s prompt, analogical getting together with obliviously pining logan; happy ending (x)
magic au || 600 || llumimoon’s prompt, world building for an au i will never write featuring (primarily) roman angst, roceit, and analogical
here, blinking in the starlight || 4.1k || sign-from-god-complex’s prompt, rivals to lovers roceit with platonic logince and analogical as well as brotherly anxceit; happy ending (x)
black hole sun || 6.5k || main-chive’s prompt, extremely self-indulgent superhero au featuring a whole cast of lesbians and eventual roceit or anaroceit (i’m still undecided); my unfinished symphony, forever unfinished (won’t you come (x), wash away the rain (x) )
other fandoms:
good omens; ineffable husbands
✦✧ sic semper ad astra || 5.4k || for a past friend’s birthday in 2020, featuring pining pre-fall crowley and slightly oblivious aziraphale; unhappy ending (but with the promise of a happy one since it takes place before the events of the show/book) (x)
