Chapter Text
Fit feels dead.
He’s not, but he feels like he should be.
All that... all that, and it ends with him back here.
He stares at the portal that brought him back—now covered in bedrock, unbreakable. He wants to scream, claw at the rock until it gives way, fight his way back into the life he built, but instead he just... stares.
He steps backwards until his back hits a wall, and then he lets himself slide down to the floor.
A year.
A year of fatherhood, gone.
He doesn’t feel anything, really. He knows it’ll hit him later, maybe tomorrow, in a week, a month, a year, but for now, he just sits with this numb feeling.
Pac is dead.
Mike is dead.
Richas is dead.
Ramon is... missing, somewhere. Might be safer for him to assume he’s dead, but if Fit starts thinking like that, he fears he may break, and it’s not safe to break down, not here, not now, not when any other player could see him crying and screaming and kill him while his defences are low.
Ramon is alive out there somewhere. He has to be. If he’s not, Fit will probably cry. And he can’t do that here, so Ramon is alive, he decides, and he’ll find Fit’s letter, and he’ll be safe, and maybe he’ll find someone better to take care of him.
Fit takes a shaky breath in. He exhales.
He stands.
It’s hard to stay on his feet. He’s still weak from the two months he spent in that pit, hungry and injured. He barely even ate anything during his brief day back at the island. In hindsight, he should have thought to do that, but in his defence, he spent half his time there sitting beside his first (and probably last) boyfriend’s grave. He should have eaten, but he’d much rather spend his last day on the island with Pac. He doesn’t regret it.
He had his day to grieve. Now he needs to find his old bases, ransack them for supplies, and survive.
There’s nothing else for him to do.
***
Getting his mechanical arm up and working again is difficult, as broken as it is from the fall two months ago. He’s only got one other hand to work with, and he’s not the greatest at mechanics, but huddled up in one of his old bases, hidden from the world, it takes only a handful of days to get it somewhat functional.
He tries not to think about how Ramon or Pac or Tubbo would do a much better job of fixing it.
He flexes his metal fingers for the first time in over two months. He can’t feel them, but it’s good to know they’re working again. Being one-armed in the wasteland is a death sentence.
This old base has very clearly been abandoned for over a year, a thin layer of dust coating every surface. He won’t have time to clean it up. He needs to keep moving, or he’ll be a sitting duck for raiders. The only reason this base stayed so hidden is because he dug it out of the ground and surrounded it with obsidian.
The important thing, though, is that his arm is working again, and he won’t immediately be guaranteed to eat shit and die in a fight.
He slings a bag over his shoulder and walks to the exit. He’s spent too much time in one place already.
***
“So, this cult?”
“The Gatekeepers,” says the person tinkering with a pair of goggles.
“The Gatekeepers,” Fit repeats, holding his mechanic arm in front of him to record everything they say. He managed to get his recorder working again, and as soon as it could record something without garbling the words beyond recognition, he jumped right back into work.
There’s nothing else for him to do, really.
“Do you know where they are?” Fit asks. “Any specific stronghold I should be looking for, or do they have people stationed in every one?”
The person messing with the goggles raises a brow. “Why do you wanna find ‘em so bad?”
Fit shrugs. “They’re well known. Gonna be a piece of history someday. I wanna learn about them, if they’ll let me.”
The person shakes their head with a sigh. “Alright, whatever.” They pick up a tiny screwdriver. “You can probably find them at any stronghold, but if you just pick one and wait, you might be waiting for a while. They jump around a lot, and you might not see them for months.”
“I can wait.” He’s got nothing but time.
The person shrugs. “Suit yourself. That all you needed me for?”
Fit glances down at the goggles.
They’re remarkably similar to a pair he used to see perched on the head of a tiny little egg.
“Actually, how much do you sell those for?”
The person glances down at the goggles. “Bring me the materials, and ten gapples.”
Pricey, but vendors and merchants always charge Fit for more when they know who he is. “I’ll get it to you tomorrow.”
“Cool.” They nod at the exit. “Now scram. If FitMC is here for more than five minutes, I’m gonna get swarmed and this place is going to be rubble before you can get me my shit.”
Fit leaves without another word.
***
Turns out, trying to find a secretive cult is a lot more difficult than Fit thinks.
It’s not like he expected to find them immediately, of course. That would be too easy, and putting together pieces of major events for his broadcasts is rarely that simple.
He explores the nearest stronghold, a shiny new pair of copper goggles on his head, and he pokes around, looking for evidence that the cult he’s looking for has bene here recently. Of course, every stronghold is also frequented by other people, so it’s hard to tell what could be from a single group of people and what could have been left behind by the cult.
He figures he should just wait. Surely the cult will return to this stronghold eventually. They allegedly hold their initiations in the strongholds, but he’s not sure which one they frequent the most. How often to they have their meetings? Where are they now? Where are they headed?
He sighs, looking over the chipped brick and old dusty footprints on the stone brick floor.
Looks like he’ll have to wait.
***
He builds a small temporary base a few dozen chunks away from the stronghold. It’s a public place, frequented by all types of players, so building too close to it would basically be suicide. Better to keep his distance if he can.
It’s nothing more than a hole in the ground, pretty much. He doesn’t have the supplies to make much of anything else. Besides, he doesn’t need creature comforts. He just needs enough to survive.
He tries not to think about Quesadilla Island, with its soft beds, heating systems, and best of all, indoor plumbing.
He settles for washing his face in the nearest pond and sleeping in the cold underground in a sleeping bag.
***
He visits the stronghold every day.
Most of the time, it’s unoccupied. If there was a cult in there, he’s certain he’d have seen them go in, or that he’d have caught them in the middle of a meeting eventually. He barely sees any other people around, and when he does, he hides until they leave. He’d prefer to stay hidden, if possible. The less people know FitMC is back, the better, at least for now.
It’s about four days into waiting that he comes across someone. It’s a woman, decked out in beginner’s armor, heading on her way out of the stronghold. She looks jumpy and afraid, holding her shield in front of her with nothing but a dull stone sword to attack with.
Perhaps stupidly, he decides to approach her on his way into the stronghold.
“Hey,” he calls as he gets closer. That would be a terrible idea if she were an old player, or at least one with a group, but newspawn have nothing on his battle experience and stronger armor. Still, a terrified newbie can pack quite a punch. He’ll have to tread a little lightly.
She jumps, wielding her sword in front of her. “Stay back!” she shouts, shaking like a frightened animal.
He holds up his hands, unfazed. “Not here to hurt you,” he says, keeping his voice low. “Just askin’ if you’ve seen a group anywhere. Guys in netherite armor, eye trim.”
She furrows her brow, evidently confused, but she swallows and lowers her sword a little bit. She keeps her shield hovering over her chest. Smart of her. That caution will do her some good here in the wasteland, Fit thinks.
“Uh... yeah,” she says hesitantly. “They were in the last stronghold I tried to get to. Up north. They drove me away, so I came here instead.”
“Did you know if they were headed anywhere, or just planning to stay at that stronghold for a while?”
“No, no, I just—I just came here. I don’t know.”
Fit nods. “All I needed to know.”
He reaches into his inventory, and the girl lifts her sword, eyes widening. She blinks, surprised, when all he takes out is a gapple.
“Here. For your trouble.” He tosses it to her.
Her sword disappears in her inventory and she catches the apple in one hand. She nearly fumbles it, but she manages to tuck it to her chest and keep her grip.
Fit turns and starts walking away. “Take care,” he calls after him, and he’s gone as soon as he arrived.
It’s only when he’s back at his base when he realizes he should have killed her. Or would have killed her, had he bumped into her over a year ago. Old players typically don’t let new players just go, much less with a gapple.
He takes the goggles off his head to wipe down the lenses. They’re already a little bit scratched. That’s okay. He doesn’t expect them to last long in the wasteland anyway.
Maybe he’s gone soft.
***
Near the portal he came back through, he finds a small outcrop of land that no one seems to have claimed as their own, and he plants a rose.
He has one in his inventory still, and part of him wants to tuck it against his shirt and keep it there against his heart forever, but he’ll never forgive himself if he lets it die without giving it a chance to grow. He slices the stem so it’s a clean cut and plants it in the ground, giving it a little bit of water from a spare bottle.
He stares at the freshly planted rose. Its red petals look like fire in the light of the setting sun. It’s beautiful.
He hopes it takes root. It’s the only one he has.
He’s not particularly religious, but he prays to every deity he knows of that they’ll at least give him this.