Chapter Text
Avery yelped as his knee slammed down at the edge of his knee, folding over himself. His hands braced on the upper railing, fighting to get air back into his lungs. Air that seemed to have fled immediately.
And for a moment, as he forces himself to his feet, white knuckles on the railing, he sees a flash of his face in the reflection. He gets one breath, only one, before he’s heaving himself up again, gritting his teeth and biting back the sweat that nearly slips out.
It’s fine. He’s fine. He can keep moving.
Out of the corner of his eye, Avery catches sight of himself in a window and winces so hard, he nearly stumbles again.
He’s a mess. That's the nice word. He could probably cosplay a raccoon with the bags under his eyes- when he shoved his laptop away, he had fallen on his ass with the sudden weight of fatigue setting in.
He had pulled all nighters before, but nothing like this, like stones settling on his shoulders. His hair is still a mess, greasy from not showering, and flattened on one side from a quick nap on the plane.
His eyes are still red. He’d cried so hard he burst a blood vessel in one of them, making it look bloody and terrifying. It had felt awful and ironic. He looks awful.
Avery cringes in embarrassment, turning away to tighten his grip on the railing. “He’d understand.” He tells himself. “It doesn’t matter if I look a little rough, he’d understand.”
What mattered was getting here fast enough.
He forced himself to limp up the last few landings, as fast as he could go.
But despite all the speed, he hesitated when he saw that door.
He hadn’t believed it when he saw the message, glittering in his Gmail account. He barely used the dog, missed too many events because he forgot it existed but nothing worked to remind him. It was only because he had mistakenly clicked into there instead of going back to the Google drive that he had seen it.
Stupid tabs. They always set them up to be as convoluted as possible.
An email. The heading just said Come. There was nothing but an address.
But the email address said d3rlord.
At first he thought it a cruel joke, but who else knew about d3rlord? He had reached out to one person to help with some of the videos, but they wouldn’t do something like this. Anyone who might be cruel enough, wouldn’t have known.
And maybe-
Maybe he just really wanted it to be real.
Please. Please. Let him have this.
He hopped the train as fast as he could, flying into the station at a sprint so fast that security actually stopped him. Hours folded into a too small seat that rattle so hard his teeth ached.
The door is nothing new. Ordinary wood. Honestly, looks like his apartment door. But it’s more terrifying than any of the gates.
What if it’s just his body?
The thought was only growing stronger. What if this is Derek’s way of getting him to report his death, or maybe one last final cruelty from that awful, cruel place?
No. No. Avery shook his head quickly. He was going to do this! He was going to knock and see him and it would be-
Boiled by endless confidence, Avery surged forward, one hand raised.
The door swung open.
Avery yelped as his momentum carried him forward, wounded knee buckling. The stranger made a strangled noise as he flopped into them, taking them both down to the floor.
“Sorry. Sorry.” Avery scrambles back up. “I’m looking for a Derek, do you know-“
“Avery?” The other whispered. Avery froze, looking at the other beneath him. The voice. He knew that voice. He could never forget that voice, the tiny snipped he had gotten of it.
“Derek?” He whispered. They blinked up at him, squinting against the light.
“In the flesh.” Derek said, because that was Derek. Avery groped for words, his mind narrowing on something very important.
“You’re not looking at the computer anymore.” Avery said, looking around for it. Derek had to look at the computer, he wouldn’t survive-
A hand tugged him back before he could fall over again.
“Calm down.” Derek said, shaking his head. “Whatever happened, it feels… better now. Not cleaner but quieter. Calmer.”
Avery let out a soft, shuddering breath. That had been his better thought, next to finding a dead body. That Derek would still be chained to the screen, to the remnants of that world.
And maybe deep down, he was hoping for this Derek. Free. Finally. A happy ending.
“I was planning to break you out.” Avery admitted.
It takes him a moment to realize the scratchy sound was Derek laughing, their shoulders shaky with the sound. “And your plan was to tackle the Yellow King? After knocking on the door?”
“I’ll have you know that I have quite the kill streak on Sky Wars.” Avery said. But he’s caught more, by the look on Derek’s face as they look up at him. “I can take him in a fight.”
“I’m sure you could but I’d rather you not.” And Avery wants to scream because he knows, he knows what Derek has done. That he took everything on himself, took a chance that would mean his death. Should have meant his death. And it isn’t fair.
He held the sides of their face, feeling the thrum of a heartbeat against the fan of his fingers. “You’re real.” He whispered. “I thought I had made you up.”
For a bitter moment, staring at the dark screen of his laptop, the first fireworks beginning to crackle, he thought he had. There had been a sense of unreality, a dissonance in the world.
How could any of that have been real? None of that could appear in a Minecraft world. It was just a video game. Something fun and easy that was supposed to be a little stress reliever with everything else in his life.
Not- earnings and mysteries and a stranger who warned him and fought so hard for his life. He had gotten up in a daze, already starting to convince himself it was a dream, especially as his body definitely noticed that he had just spent fifteen hours at a computer.
And then Avery saw the letter in the Google Drive.
“Of course I was real.” Derek said. “You can’t make up faces in a dream, and imagine someone you never met. It’s not physically possible.”
“I don’t think I could have imagine someone like you.” Avery said. He had ideas, thoughts. He doesn’t think he could ever untie Derek from that golden armor, the red scarf.
And yet, he couldn’t imagine him looking any other way.
But the more he looked, the more he could see the signs of wear and tear. The circles around his eyes were even darker than Avery’s, his hair a greasy and tangled mess. And over all of this was an air of… exhaustion. Like someone had wrung him out to dry.
He’s scrawny too. Avery doesn’t know how long Derek was sitting there and if this is what he looked like before, or if nothing but the smoothies and water had taken their toll on him.
“You want to order a pizza?” He blurted out. “I could go for a pizza. We can split one.”
He could almost kick himself except Derek’s face melts into something open and enthralled. “Yes. Thousand times yes. I-“ He glanced back into his apartment. “Haven’t been able to get more food yet. I’m sick of smoothies. I usually have everything systemized to go to the grocery store once, but I didn’t exactly plan for… that. I’d kill for a pizza.”
We could do better than a pizza, Avery said, because Derek deserves better than a pizza. He’s not sure what you’re supposed to eat after getting trapped in a Minecraft world by a… monster? Maybe? He never really quite got it.
But Derek looks so enthralled by the idea, that Avery immediately decides he would kill to get this man a pizza.
“Yeah, I can imagine with the whole being stuck to a computer thing.” Avery said. He’d probably have died. There was nothing next to his computer but a can of markers and a half empty bag of Cheetos. Markers were… maybe edible? If desperate?
“Not just that.” Derek said. His eyes shifted back to Avery. “It’s more complicated.”
Avery freezes.
“Complicated.” He echoed. Complicated sounded bad. Complicated sounded like finally finding the person you were searching for, and they told you it was time for them to die again.
“There’s something you should know.” Derek said and Avery freezes. That sounded bad. Bad, bad. Like, he could almost hear the same text. “When I did that spell, when we merged and then… it’s like something broke. Like a rubber band snapping and whiplashing back. It threw me back.”
“And that’s how you woke up?” Avery said. Derek nodded, reaching up to pick the bridge of his nose.
“But whatever happened, it didn’t work… perfectly. It didn’t just send me back.”
“It’s fine.” He insisted, not sure it’s to Derek or to himself. “I can all this way to find you! I- almost lost you. I can’t watch you go again.”
“It’s- I’m not planning on dying. Probably.” Derek said, his face twisting. “It’s just. When it threw me back-”
“Vessel.” Avery’s head jerked to the side, his eyes widening.
See, like any normal person, Avery had been more caught up with the realization that Derek was alive. That the person he just watched carry out an effective suicide plan, was alive and well and real and in front of him.
He had been just a teensy bit more focused on that.
Then on the child that was sitting in one of those padded kiddie chairs.
They didn’t much like Derek was his first thought. Their hair was platinum blonde, oddly washed out against the garish yellow of the little onesie they were wearing. Their eyes, cold amber, were watching him.
Against the apartment, they almost looked out of place, oddly bright against their dim surroundings. Strange.
However, he could absolutely think that only a kid related to Derek could look that darn stern!
“So you walk this plane.” It said. “A lamb to the doorstep, following the trail-“
“Is that a toddler.” Avery blurted out, and the child made a sound so physically offended, it sounded like static.
“I think it’s five, actually. Or three, maybe. It’s hard to get a good age.” Derek said, looking back at it. Avery looked back at him, for a moment, groping for words he didn’t know how to find. Where to even start?
“You never said you were a single father!” He said. “Oh, heck, how long has the kid been without food, were they stuck in the chair too?”
Man, he had no idea what you were supposed to do with kids! They were supposed to eat pretty regularly, right? Like, at certain times. Not to mention he could imagine how bored the kid must be-
“Sorry about knocking over your dad.” Avery tries, moving to scramble back up, maybe offer a crisp high five.
Derek grabs him by the face, looking into his eyes. Avery let out a small squeak. “Avery.” He said quietly. “That’s not a child. That’s the King in Yellow.”
Avery freezes. Slowly, painfully, he turns his head back to the child. There’s something about those eyes. Familiar. He only saw them once but… there had been quite a lot of them. A bit unforgettable.
“A plan ruined by fools. Who now come to the dining table yet again.” The King in Yellow said. The image is a bit ruined by the words coming out in a high, childish lisp. Avery never heard the King speak. But he knows this is it speaking, like now that Derek has pointed out there’s something in his hindbrain that sits up and noticed that this definitely isn’t a normal child.
That this is something Other, now in the form of a child.
“Okay.” Avery said. “Okay. So, we’re ordering two pizzas then?”