Chapter Text
Neuroplasticity is a miracle, but is relatively simple. Two neurons that repeatedly communicate with one another form a stronger connection, a stronger synapse. Two neurons that don’t, lose that synapse. When a part of the cerebral cortex dies, it’s inevitable that the function that correlates one part to another loses its purpose.
A limb loses its function. Suddenly you lose your sense of speech. One day your fingers twitch, and your judgement is skewed, and you’ve lost what rationality you once had. And this is all because of a disconnect, a malice in a perfectly functional system.
But all you need is a reconnection.
Use it or Lose it.
There are ten principles to remember under neuroplasticity. The first is to use it, or lose it.
The principle is simple. Neglected circuits degrade. Connections that aren’t maintained wither and die. This principle is simple: if you don’t want the arm in that position, stop putting it in that position. If you don’t want your wrist to flex when your elbow does in this spastic synergy, then don’t and that wiring withers away.
Avery has that choice.
Avery is not one for puzzles, but he is a practical man. He’s lived this long alone, he’s gone this far on this little. He can afford to do a little more.
It’s intrusive, he knows. Stubbornly, selfishly, he knows that this couldn’t be legal but he knows that d3rLord3– Derek wouldn’t put him to any harm for trying. If anything, he would go to lengths to make sure he doesn’t get any more involved. That no one else gets involved, none but him.
He opens the browser. There are three browsers installed, Opera, Firefox, and Google Chrome. The first application he runs is Google Chrome. He mutters prayers to a God he’s known longer to be without influence in his life than the one who’d touched his soul, praying that if his pleas could be heard, that this would work. If there is one act of kindness or grace that would spare another from leaving him.
The first place Avery relies on is the browser history– he is so sorry, Derek, but this is for his own good.
The dropdown appears. It’s a list of websites visited in the last thirty days. Most of it is Minecraft-related: wiki pages, forum threads, Reddit posts about game mechanics and seed generation. There's a lot of YouTube, but nothing that Avery could maybe scan for a location.
Avery scrolls. His eyes scan past the familiar, looking for the unfamiliar.
Then he sees it.
GrubHub.
Thank anything left that is holy for the lack of privacy sometimes.
The page loads slowly, likely from the overused and beaten CPU and RAM from playing what could have been modded minecraft with a twist of an eldritch deity, but the account information remains cached. Derek is still logged in. Avery stares at the screen for a long moment, something tight in his chest.
Hope tainted with anxiety.
The Minecraft world is a game turned into a mystery. Avery plays Hypixel on his down time and survival when he wants the tirade of stripmining and subpar builds. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to play minecraft ever again after this, or any game for that matter. Beyond that, though, this is evidence of a life lived in the spaces between the horror.
This is personal. This is a real person outside the screen, someone Avery hasn’t even met.
Derek had sacrificed himself for someone he’s never met.
He owes this much to him.
Avery clicks "Account Settings."
His hands are shaking. He doesn't know when that started.
The page loads.
Name: Derek Hutchins.
Email: an address Avery doesn't recognize.
Payment methods: a credit card with most of the numbers asterisked out.
And then, under "Saved Addresses":
Thank anything left good in the world for the lack of password protection or encryption stuff because Avery knows absolutely nothing about decrypting beyond brute force password guessing. There seems to be mercy yet, because Avery finds himself staring blank-faced against a dimly lit computer screen with an address.
His breath hitches at the sight of the state, the city, the street number, the name Derek Hutchin above it as the owner of the address.
But Avery is scared of wasting time. He overthinks– what if this isn’t Derek’s home now? What if he’s elsewhere? What if he’s moved, and Avery wastes time searching the empty house where Derek has evacuated long ago?
He can’t afford to mess up.
He opens Firefox, and for a moment he fears that his worries have come true. There’s nothing on the autofill function. Nothing on Derek save for a few log in information. His mind races with that same worry.
Avery flinches at the sound of something exploding in the distance, and he realizes that it’s still New Year’s Eve. The world is celebrating the new life of a new year, while Avery will be mourning someone longer than he’s even known him.
But he will not let that happen.
He opens Opera next with shaky hands and fingers that has misclicked at least five buttons by now.
Derek Hutchins. The same address as the one in Chrome.
Well, two out of three surely has to be a good sign, right?
Avery plots the address in his Google Maps and he rushes to get his keys.
Then he drives.
Derek’s address is eerily close to Avery’s own. It’s no surprise, considering that it’s Derek’s laptop that Avery has on his passenger seat. He brought it along just in case it had something he needs. Beyond that, Avery has a toolbox at the foot of the passenger seat and a flashlight in the dashboard drawer.
But it’s eerie how these all align. Derek is so close to Avery’s reach. It was planned. Derek was always meant to reach Avery, and Avery was meant to be reached. In the path to having Avery, Derek was involved.
This is Avery’s fault. This is Avery’s fault.
> Why Avery.
The King was cruel, that way. But it knew. It was smart. It knew Avery, and it knew that by involving Avery in Derek’s part of the conversation, it would inevitably lure Avery back to him.
Avery has never gone faster towards that last set of golden doors. He’d sped, he’d bridged using wood from the tree that Derek, that idiot, had told him so selflessly to climb up. All to save him.
> Why Avery.
It was then that Avery connected the dots. The king in yellow wanted him, and Derek was doing something against that.
A part of him was scared. Is scared. He could live a life beyond this. Could live a life forgetting Derek, a stranger he’s searched for longer than he’d even come to know him. It would be easy, to forget. It would be simpler.
But simple is New Year’s Eve spent alone at home playing minecraft off a laptop he’d picked up in a locker he was never meant to pry open. Simple is watching hours worth of video content, of the gameplay of a man solving puzzles in a seemingly impossible situation on that sandbox game. Simple is being alone.
Derek was always meant to reach Avery, and Avery was meant to be reached.
This time, Avery means to do the opposite.
When Avery pulls up to a standard apartment complex, he rechecks the address again and affirms that he’s got the right place. He takes the necessities: a flashlight, a wrench (because for some reason he has it in his car), a backpack with a bunch of random stuff he’s got packed that he’d stuffed in a hurry and panic and it it Derek’s old laptop.
Avery shuts and locks his car and he rushes towards Derek’s apartment.
Except he falters. He has to be smart about this. He isn’t a god in minecraft parkour or PVP or puzzles and the metagaming aspects of it but he could at least make up for it with something beyond the digital. This is the real world, where he couldn’t bruteforce it like that dumb netherite puzzle where he had to mine it by hand.
He realizes this by the time he stands at the base of the stairwell.
He should be smart.
But that way too fricking long.
He leaps. He takes the stairs, two at a time with his sneakers skidding every now and then and echoing off the walls in a discordant rhythm.
Derek’s in the third floor. Apartment 3b.
The door is a standard issue slab of painted wood and a door knob. It’s unsuspecting, and it’s so blaringly normal compared to the very skin Avery uses for minecraft. It seemed like a perfect representation of their being. Avery had a slime skin on, with a hawaiian shirt to signify his general vibe of just being a guy.
Derek had the skin of a protagonist. Intricate and golden with striking reds and blacks as accents.
He exhales at the dichotomy. It hurts to think that Derek might have been just a guy, one who is as scared as Avery but more capable of handling it than he is. It hurts to think that just like Avery, Derek spent New Years alone.
That unlike Avery, Derek didn’t have the choice to do otherwise. That Avery did.
This is it. This is where the choice matters.
He could leave. He could go back down, and he could live the life Derek wanted for Avery.
Avery ends up knocking at the door thrice.
Nothing.
He knocks again, this time at a faster cadence and with a bigger sound.
No answer.
Avery’s chest feels full with anxiety. What does this mean? What does he have to do? Does he go down and ask for keys? Should he find another way in? There’s those fire exit staircases, right? In apartments? Should he go through a window? But how– where–!
He doesn’t know what to do.
The backpack slinks off of his shoulders and he thinks. This can’t be any different than minecraft, right? He wouldn’t get in trouble for trying to get in. Avery looks around and he tries to see if anyone had started becoming curious over the ruckus, but as if something had meant for Avery to find Derek, no one peaks.
He realizes that is not a sign of life in Derek’s neighboring apartments, at least not on this floor.
Avery thinks twice, thrice about it. Something wants him to connect. Reasonably, he shouldn’t. If he were slightly rational then he should be as far away from Derek as it should be feasible to make sure that the king doesn’t come for Avery.
But he is only human. So was Derek– so is Derek, because that is what he is. Derek is still human, and he pulled him away from . He decides that he can’t live a life without knowing if Derek would be in it. “Derek!” Avery ends up calling. “Derek, are you in there!?” He cries out.
He tries to budge the door open. It shakes from where the knob locks, but it doesn’t open. Avery slams his shoulder against the door but nothing happens other than the door shaking, but otherwise it doesn’t do anything for his quest to get in.
“Derek!” He calls again, this time louder and uncaring if anyone starts peeking out of their doors to check on the ruckus. Let them, if it would save Derek.
But nothing. Not even the neighbors have noticed his mess. Avery takes a few steps back.
He looks. There’s nothing to help him. He checks below the mat of Derek’s door and finds no key either, which is a smart move on his part. He really shouldn’t be so shocked that Derek would be smart enough not to leave a spare key in obvious hiding spots.
Avery makes a frustrated noise, before he digs into his backpack and gets a tool. Maybe slamming the knob would work. He takes the wrench, which is thankfully something he’d packed beforehand.
The weight of the tool is unfamiliar in his hand. He shouldn’t have a reason to have this, he barely knows how to use it. He just has the thing because his dad thought he’d find a way to use it one day and at the time he thought that he was just hoping for the best, that somehow Avery would know how to be useful.
He’s never been more glad for that hope resting on him.
Avery raises the wrench, but he hesitates.
This is how you get arrested, a sane part of his brain whispers. This is going to put you in trouble.
He doesn’t listen.
He brings the wrench down against the doorknob.
The sound is sharp in his ear. It’s metal against metal, and Avery isn’t sure what he expected but he shouldn’t be so shocked by the sound. Despite the impact, the knob wobbles but doesn’t break.
Avery hits again, this time harder. This time, something gives. The wood splinters, but it doesn’t fall.
He hits again, and again, until the hardware starts to fail and soon enough it doesn’t take the wrench to open the door. Avery exhales, and he slams his shoulder against the door again.
This time it slams open.
Avery exhales, exhilarated by this impulsive decision and glad that something worked.
“Derek!” He calls out, this time from inside the apartment. “Derek! Where are you!” He rushes inside, and he finds that the apartment is decent. Better than his, even. Everything is neater and organized and Avery didn’t really expect it to be so…
The way Derek described his living environment since he first left his laptop with Avery by accident is that he’s been unable to leave his desktop for so long. Avery thought that everything would be a mess, things discarded, maybe some food scattered and rotting and things that Avery would be more than familiar with on odd days.
But everything is neat, if not for the thin layer of dust coating the surfaces of the room.
He shakes himself from this. He can’t be distracted. The implications of Derek being so well-put together and ruined, compared to the mess that Avery has always been just… is horrible to think about.
Avery enters the first door that looks like a bedroom.
And there he is.
Derek is slumped in a chair in front of a monitor, the screen dark, his head tilted at an angle that makes Avery's heart stop. For one terrible, eternal moment, he thinks Derek is dead. The way his body is folded, the way his hand hangs limp over the armrest, the way his chest doesn't seem to be moving–
Wait.
Avery crosses the room in three strides. He drops to his knees in front of the chair, hands hovering over Derek’s shoulders, afraid to touch and afraid not to. He swivels it so that he could see Derek more clearly and there it is. His chest is moving, slow, at an abnormal rhythm that staggers, but he’s breathing.
“Derek,” His voice cracks. “D3rlord3?” He calls, unsure if that’s more familiar to him, but he doesn’t respond to either.
Avery’s hand shakes as he reaches for his phone. He calls for an ambulance, he rattles off information as a dispatcher tries to get his attention away from the first friend that made him matter in a while now.
All the while he doesn’t leave Derek’s side.