Chapter Text
Avery, what’s in your inventory?
Hitting E.
Scanning the items.
Falling. Scrambling to get back onto the platform. Falling. Falling. Falling.
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WAIT
What the hell? What the hell?
Avery stares back at his computer screen. He watches as he falls and falls for what seems like forever until everything collapses.
Game over!
Ah.
For a fraction of a second, Avery wants to kill Derek. The burning silence and the pit in his chest remind him that, oh, Derek is already dying.
For more than a fraction of a second, Avery wants to die. More than anything, he wants to die.
He isn’t sure how much time he spends staring back at the screen, sitting still and feeling his arms and legs go numb. He sits slumped over in his chair for long enough that he can’t feel his body or his face or, really, anything at all.
The clock on his bedside is louder than it usually is, Avery thinks. Tick. Tick. Tick. The hour hand inches closer to twelve, achingly slow.
When he looks back at the screen, he feels sick. He feels sick because he knows that it’s his fault, that all of it is his fault, that it’s because of him that Derek is probably dead and gone by now. What a joke. What an awful, cruel joke. Avery thinks he would be okay if it were pushed a little further, tipping him over the edge until there’s nothing left for him to take, jostling him into the realm of death that he’d begged so desperately to be let into.
That was what he’d wanted. He’d pleaded and pleaded and pleaded for Derek just to let him stay. Why hadn’t Derek listened?
He looks down at his hands; the faint light emanating from his computer screen just barely illuminates his palms. He feels like a monster.
His chest lurches and he thinks now that he’s coming down with something awful, so he peels himself off of his chair and carries all of his weight on his shaking legs before stumbling down the hallway and to the bathroom. Something gross crawls up his throat, so he rushes to the sink and catches himself on the counter’s ledge before it can catch up, coughing up mucus on the pristine ceramic.
It’s disgusting. He doesn’t want to look at it, so he cranks the faucet up until it’s all that he can hear.
He leaves the water running as he forces his head up to face the mirror. It’s dark. It’s so dark. The lights are off, but he thinks distantly that turning them on would drive him towards insanity, so he does not make any move to flick the switch. He bores into his own wide eyes, pupils trembling and scleras bloodshot even in the silent cloak of darkness, and he does not think that he can recognize himself any longer.
When he looks himself in the mirror, he wonders if he is real. He wonders if there is a world beyond what his mind is showing him, whether the universe is playing games with him and he is only dreaming or whether it is all real, all so painfully real.
Either way, he hopes that he is asleep. If he is only dreaming, he hopes he wakes up in a world where none of this ever happened and Derek is alive. If this is real life, he hopes that he remains asleep and never, ever awakens.
His image in the mirror remains static for long enough that it distorts, little shifts in his face making him into someone alien. The reflection twists his eyes and nose and mouth until he is no longer himself, no longer Avery, and he watches with a tired gaze as his limbs stretch and contort.
He looks down at his arms and legs and finds that they are quite normal. He brings a hand to his eyes and nose and finds that these, too, are quite normal. The version of him in the mirror does not reflect his motions. It smiles back at him slowly, lips stretching into something grotesque and horribly wretched, and Avery lifts his hand to his lips to find that they are trembling. His chin trembles with his fingers, and it feels a bit like he is already gone, like he has lost himself entirely.
The version of himself in the mirror is just like him, Avery realizes. It wears the same unwashed clothes and has the same unkempt hair and is just as cruel, for Avery has learned that he has never been good.
Avery killed Derek. That is but the simple, blunt truth. This creature, this horrid, vile creature, is no different from Avery. He is just as much of a monster. The entity in the mirror is but a reflection of who he has become.
You are real. You are special.
What a lie.
He claws at his face, and it is like this that he can feel the tears running down, and it is like this that the volume of his sobs overpowers that of the rushing sink. How obnoxious he is.
When his hands drop back down to his side and his palms press into his knees, he finds that it is hard to breathe. He’s disgusting. He’s a mess of tears and snot and sweat and he’s never felt more disgusting in his life. His breaths come in short and fast and he thinks he'll choke on his own sobs at any moment now.
Avery hadn’t even known Derek, not really. He’d known d3rlord3, but hardly Derek.
And yet.
He looks back in the mirror and sees himself. He sees the red marks on his face from the scratches of his uncut nails and he sees the outlines of tears still flowing. It’s shameful.
His hands move shakily under the running water and splash it over his face, cold enough that it should be a wake-up call, but it isn’t enough. It isn’t enough, and Avery still can’t feel or think or breathe, so he splashes more and more water against his face until it’s dripping beneath his shirt and he’s shivering on the bathroom floor.
Despite it all, he still cannot feel. He cannot think anything other than you killed him. You killed him. You killed him.
Within seconds, he’s hunched over the toilet bowl and retching into it.
Avery washes his face again. It’s cold and he’s gross and he smells like everything awful. His vision is a little blurry, too, spots and blotches of black scattered everywhere, and he feels a bit lightheaded. But he pushes despite it all, wobbling back to his bedroom and staring blank-faced at the little analog clock on his bedside.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
The clock strikes twelve, and Avery laughs an empty laugh, just for a second.
“Happy new year, Derek.”
Avery dreams of falling.
He dreams of Derek’s avatar, a knightly figure clad in gold and crimson, so valiant in comparison to Avery’s own. He dreams of being pushed off a silver platform and of nearly tearing out his keys trying to cling onto the ledge. He dreams of falling into a pitch black void and he dreams of game over.
He dreams of a tall, golden gate at the end of the line, and he dreams of walking through.
Avery dreams of hope.
When Avery wakes up, his head is spinning and his ears are ringing, and he wishes nothing but that he had not waken up.
He doesn’t want to get out of bed. The bags under his eyes are heavy and weigh him down into the mattress; he feels as if he could sink.
And so, he stays. He stays there for a long, long time, until the clouds block out the sunlight streaming through his windows.
He doesn’t want to get up, not really. He wants to lie here until his body melts into the mattress and rots along with it, until flies come along to eat away at his corpse, but there is something odd about this day.
For a long while, he tries to brush it off. Maybe it’s just the reality of the new year, when everything feels so different but it really isn’t, because the truth is that it’s just another day. It’s just another day in the cycle of waking, living, and sleeping, repeating it over and over again and trying too hard to hold on.
There is nothing special about New Year’s Day.
But Avery cannot shake it. He cannot shake the throbbing in his head and he cannot stop himself from getting up, throwing away his plan of decaying in his own bed.
His feet take him to his desk. He does not know why, but they do. They seat him at his chair and before his dusty laptop, Derek’s laptop, and he feels a little more sick at the sight of it.
He doesn’t feel any more real than he had last night. He doesn’t, especially not as he’s met with the laptop that ruined it all, the laptop that he should never have kept for himself. He balls his hand into a tight fist and thinks distantly that he wants to punch the screen into bits until his knuckles bleed.
He does not.
Avery trembles as he boots up the laptop. There isn’t much for him to see here, not anymore, but he’s already here.
It takes a long time to turn on; it isn’t the fastest, after all. But Avery waits. He waits until the scenic background loads in and he sighs as he clicks past it, entering in his password absentmindedly.
He furrows his eyebrows. He swears that he saw something weird, something that didn’t add up, but it’s gone from his sight and mind before he can process it.
It hardly matters. He watches as his desktop loads in and purses his lips as Minecraft opens automatically. It makes his stomach twist in knots.
Despite himself, he clicks into the play screen and freezes up a bit at what he sees.
The world is still there, but it's… different, and he can’t place how until his focus shifts to the date in the corner.
10/18/2025.
But, what? That can’t be true. Avery played this world yesterday, spent fifteen hours in this world yesterday, ran around the churchyard in a trance for twelve goddamn hours yesterday so—
So why is his game telling him that he hasn’t played since October?
His forehead creases and, against his better judgment, he loads in the world, hoping silently that he doesn’t see anything that makes him want to die. It takes a minute and he’s holding his breath until—
Oh. What?
What the hell?
Avery is back. He’s back in that mine, back with that chest, with the stone and the torches and the damn book.
Why the hell is he back?
Maybe it’s too early for this. Maybe the sun was playing tricks on him and it really hasn’t been long since the sun rose. He thinks this as his eyes dart down to his taskbar, navigating to the date and time and, oh.
12/31/2025. 12:47 P.M.
And maybe Avery really has gone insane. Maybe he really has lost it, because he remembers already having lived through New Year’s Eve and he remembers watching the clock strike twelve, so how the hell is could it possibly still be December?
It’s either that Avery has fallen into madness, or that yesterday was a nightmare, and he’s made it out. God, he hopes that’s the case. He hopes that Derek is alive and that he never made that stupid sacrifice and that—
Wait.
Avery frowns, scrolling through his inventory and down to the book before opening it up. It’s that same book, telling him the same thing: at the crossroads, don’t turn left. It isn’t any different than it was two months ago, or yesterday morning.
Or, well. Not really yesterday morning, because that didn’t happen, apparently. At least, that’s what it seems like.
He mines through that same spot on the wall and finds himself in the cave, navigates through the trees and the water and the maze, through hallways and deserted houses until he’s at the crossroads.
Naturally, he turns left.
And he passes through that yellow gate, finds the gold block, exits and, once again, finds himself standing before rows and rows of doors.
It’s all the same. All of it is exactly the same.
Avery is sure, now, that it was all nothing but a nightmare. He’s sure, even though he remembers it all so vividly, remembers the heavy thump thump thump of his heart against his chest and the pain, the heartache, the grief.
He’s sure.
And if this is all the same as that nightmare, then… maybe he can do something differently this time around, and maybe he can save Derek.
He’ll do whatever it takes.
Avery does it all over again. Like this, he just about slips into the game entirely, passing through mountains and deserts and yellow gates because he’ll be damned if he doesn’t get Derek out alive. He won’t let himself fail—not again. He won’t, not if it’s the last goddamn thing he’ll ever do, because it wasn’t he who deserved to be saved.
It was Derek. It’s always been Derek. Derek, who was too selfless for his own good, and Derek, who Avery absolutely will not let die.
Because Derek saved Avery in far more ways than one, and Avery owes him his whole life and more.
He ventures through the map with a bit of desperation, almost rushing forward, and it doesn’t take very long before he’s at the foot of the churchyard.
Ah. The churchyard.
Avery remembers. He remembers the church and the altar and the book, remembers you are safe here and nothing can reach you here, remembers you are nothing and the pounding in his head and the daze and drowning drowning drowning—
He can’t. He can’t let it happen again.
The churchyard is a lonesome place. It is scattered with graves and ferns that Avery only vaguely remembers tending to, despite having done it for twelve goddamn hours straight, but it is calm and peaceful nonetheless. The church stands across from the yellow gate, but Avery walks towards the gate instead.
He looks back at the church as he walks. It is tempting, so tempting, the idea of just peeking inside despite knowing damn well what awaits him on the altar, but what if it’s different? What if it’s different from his nightmare? What if it somehow holds the secret to saving Derek?
Reluctantly, Avery turns to face the gate, and there he finds the signs.
You are real. You are special.
Remember who you are.
He exhales shakily. What a foolish thought he’d had.
With a lump in his chest, he walks through the gate, leaving the church far behind him.
It isn’t long before he finds himself in the endless library at last, surrounded by rows and rows of books upon books. He passes through, hardly glancing at the abandoned books lying open on every table, adamant only on finding his way to Derek. The library is huge, and it feels like forever, but he rushes through the maze of shelves nonetheless.
There. Avery sighs with relief as he finds that familiar circular platform, with the book sitting on the lectern in the middle. He rushes down towards it and doesn’t even bother opening the book, this time waiting for Derek to break the blocks under him and—
“You’re not a very hard guy to catch, you know.”
Golden armor. Crimson accents.
“Avery.”
And it’s different this time. It isn’t it’s you. It isn’t I found you. No, it’s—
“You’re alive,” Avery says, a little breathless.
Derek does not say anything for a moment. And then, “I am.”
“Are you real?” Avery walks closer, as if trying to grasp it all, trying to make sure that Derek is real and alive and truly here. “Tell me I’m not dreaming.”
“You aren’t dreaming.”
“Okay. Cool.” Avery pauses. “You’re sure? You’re sure you’re alive? You didn’t die?”
Derek looks at him like he’s crazy. At least, that’s what Avery assumes he’s probably thinking, beneath that golden visor. “I am right here,” he says, “so, no. I did not die.”
“…Ha. Right. Okay.”
“Did you read the book?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Good.” Derek steps forward. “Do you know about the King in Yellow?”
Avery does. Now. “Yeah.”
“…Really?”
“Yeah,” Avery says. “You told me.”
Derek pauses. “No, I didn’t.”
Oh. “Oh.” Avery purses his lips. “In a dream, you did.”
Derek is silent for a long time. It’s more than a little awkward, until finally, he says, “Then, you know who he is?”
“Yeah. He’s, um,” Avery mutters, gesturing with his hands, “unknowable. Forces you to have infinite knowledge. And all that.”
When Derek does not respond for several seconds, Avery swallows and decides to continue.
“And we live… in an illusion,” he whispers. “In a world that doesn’t exist.”
But, that can’t be true. That can’t be true when all of Avery’s emotions are so raw, so overwhelming, so real. It can’t be an illusion if Avery is here, with Derek, and thinks he’ll lose him again if he does so much as glance away.
For a long while, Derek stares back at him. It’s a bit strange, and a bit scary, and Avery sort of wishes he could lift the visor above his head, but he waits. If all that he has to do is be patient in order for Derek to survive, then he’ll wait as long as it may take.
“Right,” Derek finally says. “That’s what I saw.”
Avery nods, a bit tense. “Yeah.”
“…Are you sure I told you that?”
“Yes,” Avery says quickly. “Positive. You told me everything.”
“Everything?”
“How you feel better here,” Avery continues. “Because, um, you know everything about the real world. But nothing about this place.”
Derek stares for a long, long time, and then he huffs, shifting a bit to the side. “Must’ve been some dream.”
Hell, it was. “More like a nightmare,” Avery quips, laughing just a bit, but there is not a single thing that is funny about this situation.
He feels a bit like he’s treading on thin ice, as if one wrong move will cause everything to fall apart all over again, as if Derek will die again before his very eyes.
But he can not. Let. That. Happen.
“Just so you know,” says Avery, “I’m not leaving.”
“I know,” says Derek. “You know, there’s no reason for you to get involved like this.”
Useless. Avery has heard it all before. “Yes, there is,” he counters, furrowing his eyebrows. “I have to save you.”
Derek sighs. “Save me? You’d be better off saving yourself. You’re putting yourself at risk for someone you don’t even know.”
“Stop it, Derek,” Avery says quickly, a bit heated. “I’m staying here. That’s final. You won’t be able to change my mind, so just quit it.”
And for the fourth time, Derek pauses. He is silent and still and at last, he asks, “Why do you know my name?”
Damn it. Avery slipped. It’s fine. “You, um, told me,” he says. “In the… dream.”
“Right.” Derek looks down for a moment before turning back up to face Avery. “So, what do you suppose we do?”
Maybe Avery should know this time. Maybe he should know, because everything today has gone down the exact way that it did in his nightmare, if not for little things he did differently, and it’s freaking him out. How can a dream be so… accurate? How could he have already lived this entire day within a dream?
He should know. He really should know. But he doesn’t, and he feels useless.
“Well,” Avery mumbles, masking his feelings with a laugh, “you’re the guy who knows everything now, right?”
Derek huffs out a laugh. “I guess that’s true,” he says. “Did you see what the book said?”
“Yeah,” says Avery. “Close the doors.”
Derek nods. “Right. But, I wager that the giant door at the end might be the more interesting one.”
Avery is about to say something, but he suddenly remembers it all. He remembers this very moment, remembers feeling lightheaded and watching it all going pitch black until he passed out.
It can’t happen again. It can’t, and maybe if he doesn’t say anything, then it will be different and he won’t lose sight of Derek, won’t let him slip through his fingers—
Wrong.
The room goes dark. All that Avery can see is Derek until he cannot anymore, slipping slowly in and out of consciousness until he’s gone.