Archive of Our Own ^beta

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.

Chapter Text

Fit packs up his things and starts moving in the morning.

If he wants to make it to the next stronghold soon and hopefully catch the cult before they leave (key word being “hopefully”; people move quick here, they have to for their own survival), he’s going to have to travel through the Nether. It’s been a while since he’s even stepped foot in the Nether, since the Federation always had it blocked off.

Oddly enough, he’s almost looking forward to going back in there, despite the heat and danger. He almost misses it.

He finds a Nether portal, crosses his fingers that he won’t be trapped in obsidian on the other side, and hops through.

He lucks out, appearing on the other side directly on the Nether highway. He glances back and forth to make sure there’s no one coming. Then he glances down at his compass to get his bearings, and starts walking north.

There’s a non-zero chance that he’s going to bump into other players somewhere along the highway; the Nether highways are the best method of travel around here, so they’re almost always occupied. They’re always the most crowded, and therefore the most dangerous. As he starts on his way, he gives his armor a quick once over to make sure it’s not going to break anytime soon, and keeps his sword in his hand and his shield on his arm. He needs to stay on his guard if he’s going to make it anywhere in one piece.

As he walks, he notices that the obsidian highways look mostly the same as they did before he left. The highway repair crews have clearly been working hard at their jobs to keep things functional down here. He’s grateful for that. They make 2b2t a lot easier to traverse.

He’s only walking for about ten minutes before he spots his first person on the highway. They’re clearly a repairman, decked out in decent armor, an elytra fixed to their back, wings spread as they stand poised on a piece of scaffolding next to the highway to replace some obsidian along the railing. Their movements are practiced and confident, despite hanging over the edge of the bridge with lava far below.

Fit keeps his head down and quickens his pace. The Highway Workers Union and the Motorway Extension Gurus have always been mostly neutral groups, so Fit has high hopes that this guy will let him pass without issue, but it’s best to pass by quick anyway.

The person looks up as he gets closer, and he tries to avoid eye contact as best he can, just in case.

“FitMC!” the person shouts, and he hears a smile in their voice, so he deigns to slow down and look up. The highway worker leans on the railing of the highway, grinning.

“You’ve been AWOL for a year!” they say, that wide smile still on their face. “Where you been? People thought you up and died!”

Fit gives them a smile back, relieved that he’s found someone friendly who won’t attack him. “C’mon, it’ll take more than this place to kill me! Just been busy, you know how it is. I’m back now though.”

“Good! I’ve missed listening to your broadcasts while I work.”

Fit starts moving past them. “New one coming soon, I promise.”

“Stay safe!” they call after him.

He lets out a sigh of relief as he leaves the worker behind. His luck has been decent so far today, but he’s not holding out hope for it to stay that way. Karma’s got to come around and kick him in the ass eventually. He knows it.

He keeps going, keeps his head down—he should have brought a cloak, his stupid bald head is too recognizable—and he passes through mostly without issue. A couple people pass him, most ignore him, and a couple ask where he’s been. He doesn’t recognize any of them, but his answer is always “busy, sorry, I’m back now though” and they leave him alone after that.

The trip takes at least an hour, longer than he’d like, certainly, but far better than the time he’d be making travelling through the Overworld.

When he pulls out his communicator and checks his coords to check if he’s almost there, that’s when things go wrong.

He’s coming up on someone on the highway. They’re walking across on the opposite side as him, headed in the opposite direction. They keep their head down, face mostly obscured by an iron helmet. Fit tenses as they pass, ready to swing his weapon, but luckily, they pass by him without issue.

Fit lets out the breath he was holding. He takes out his communicator to check his coords, just for a second.

He doesn’t even notice the footsteps behind him stopping as he checks his screen. Then he tenses when he hears iron boots clanging on the obsidian walkway behind him, rapidly getting closer.

He whips out his shield and whirls around to block the blow. An axe splinters the wood, the blade sticking in the surface. He automatically twists his shield, grimacing with the effort as he rips the weapon from his assailant’s hands. They gasp as Fit flings the axe over the edge of the walkway, plummeting to the sea of lava below.

The withers below all crowd around it, rapidly firing skulls at the thing that dared to enter their space. A skull hits the blade and it disintegrates into dust.

Fit’s assailant looks at him, eyes wide under their helmet, their hand twitching towards their inventory, and they could have another weapon they could have crystals ready to explode they could have friends ready to attack from the other way—

He acts on instinct.

He swings his sword directly for their head with all his might. The blade clangs against their helmet, leaving a sizeable dent in the weak iron. Blood spurts from their nose as part of their skull caves in, their inventory flashing away the moment his blade connects. They stumble and grab for the railing, clumsy like a newborn animal, eyes unfocused, blood pouring down their shoulders, staining their iron chestplate.

Heart pounding, vision tunneling, he drops his shield and grabs them by the straps of their armor. He lifts them, mechanical arm whirring under the weight, and heaves them over the edge of the bridge.

They fall.

They look up at him as they plummet, their face illuminated by the lava they’re rapidly approaching. Their helmet looks too big for them, as if they scavenged it from the body of an older player.

They look young.

Too young.

The withers in the lava below zero in on them and immediately begin to fire. Many of the projectiles miss, but one lucky skull hits them in midair, breaking against their back. The iron of their chestplate turns black from the wither, turning to dust before Fit’s eyes. They look up at Fit, eyes wide, surprised and dazed.

Their body lands in the lava. Their armor melts, flames licking at their face, disintegrating into ash as they’re swallowed by the ocean, withers crowding around their flaming body.

They don’t even have the time to scream.

His chest heaves, adrenaline roaring through his veins.

A bad taste settles in his mouth. He swallows.

They’ll come back. 2b2t doesn’t let its prisoners stay dead forever.

He glances back and forth along the highway. There’s no one else coming. It’s just him. Alone.

He wipes the sweat off his face. He’s not even sure why they attacked him. Sometimes people here just do that to anyone, trying to be a dick by killing people and resetting their progress. Maybe they were going for him specifically, trying to get a decent five minutes of fame by getting a kill on FitMC. Maybe they were just having a bad day and wanted to take it out on the first person they saw.

Whatever the case, the terrified look on their face has burned itself into his retinas.  

They looked young, maybe twenty at most. Their eyes were a blue-ish green he’d only glimpsed for half a second before they fell too far.

He thinks of Tubbo for half a second too long and his stomach turns with a sudden nausea.

He leans against the railing, breathing heavily, sword clattering from his hand to the floor. He’s sweaty from the adrenaline of combat. The Nether heat doesn’t help his nausea.

He puts a hand over his mouth and swallows back bile. This is nothing. This is a nothing issue. He’s killed dozens of players, almost all of whom have come back anyway, albeit with various disfigurements and injuries, but still alive. He’s killed too many people to get hung up on this one person.

This is nothing.

He glances over the side of the railing. There’s no sign of the other player, reduced to ash and swallowed up by the magma.

He inhales, exhales, and keeps walking.

***

The cult is gone when he gets to the stronghold.

Fucking typical. Honestly. He knew his good luck wouldn’t last.

He arrives and immediately starts looking around, searching for any trace of the Gatekeepers. Unfortunately, they seem to have completely cleared out all of their supplies and members, and he’s left standing alone in the stronghold, annoyed and frustrated, and with no leads.

He has no idea where they’re heading next. The next stronghold over? Do they have a secret base? They probably do. If he can find it, if he can track them down, he can get more information for his next broadcast.

He leans against the wall of the stronghold, puts his head in his hands, and heaves a world-weary sigh.

He should start asking around more, see if anyone else has seen them. They’re somewhat well known as far as he’s aware, so surely, surely someone has seen them around within the past twelve hours.

He shouldn’t have slept last night. He should have headed on his way as soon as that newspawn told him they were at the northmost stronghold. He’s forgotten the biggest rule of 2b2t: sleep is a luxury few can afford. And with Fit’s career, he is one of the ones who cannot afford it.

Unfortunately, his body is still accustomed to his Quesadilla sleep schedule, and even more recently, resting for far longer than typical to conserve his energy in that pit of fed worker corpses. He needs to get used to running on small one hour naps interspersed throughout the day.

But for now, he leaves the stronghold, digs a small hole in the ground, blocks it off with obsidian, and sets up his sleeping bag. A three hour sleep should be enough to get him back to the first stronghold.

***

His second trip through the Nether is uneventful, thank Hause. He doesn’t need to run into any more people, and he certainly doesn’t want to go around throwing more random college age kids into lava.

He makes it back to his starting point at the first stronghold just fine. That day trip was barely worth it, but it did tell him something: this cult is fast. They can move their members and all their supplies in less than a day. That’s an important thing to note, because it means he’ll have to be quick to find them.

He clambers into his small temporary base hidden in the ground, and he tries to plan.

***

The rose grew while he was away.

He checks on it the next morning. He should be checking the stronghold for the cult he’s searching for, but instead, he makes a detour closer to spawn, and he approaches the outcrop of land he planted it on.

It’s clearly taken root, because another stem has branched off from the first. Crouching down to look, he reaches out and gently runs his fingers along the red petals of the flower. It almost seems to lean into his hand, like it knows he planted it, and it wants him there.

He gives it some water from his canteen. The fact that it’s already branching off more stems is remarkable. That’s faster than any plant is supposed to grow.

It makes him think that maybe, just maybe, a goddess or two out there heard his prayers.  

Chapter Text

“You’re looking for the Gatekeepers?”

Fit nods, watching as the highway worker in front of him repairs a chunk of the Nether highway that’s been griefed. Fit would help, but he’s afraid he’d just get in the way. Better to let the guy do what he does best rather than try to help and make it worse. “Yep. You seen them anywhere?”

The worker hums. “Haven’t seen ‘em, but I’ve heard of ‘em. Chances are you’d find ‘em on the highways somewhere. They gotta be jumping between strongholds.”

“That’s what I’m thinking.” Fit reaches up and adjusts his goggles on his forehead. He could put them on, shield his eyes from the heat and smoke of the Nether, but he likes keeping them perched on his forehead, the way both Ramon and Tubbo used to wear theirs. “Problem is, I can’t be everywhere at once. Trying to catch them on the highways is gonna be difficult.”

The repairman pauses in his work, turning to glance at Fit. He’s not the same one Fit ran into a couple days ago. A shame, really. A fan of his work would be more willing to give him a hand.

“So, what? You want me to ask the rest of the HWU to keep an eye out for ‘em?”

Fit shrugs. “If you can. Wouldn’t need to go out of your way to find them or anything, just shoot me a message when you see them and let me know whereabouts they are or where they’re headed, that’s all.”

The worker narrows his eyes. “You know that’s gonna cost you.”

“I figured as much.”

The worker looks him over. “How about this; we do this for you, you do something for us.”

Fit doesn’t like the look in his eye. “Like what?”

“Get that suspicious look off your face, I’m not gonna ask you to give us all your shit and jump naked into the lava. There’s just a handful of newfags who’ve been fucking with the highways. Uppity kids, not really a danger or anything, but they’re trying to do what Ren did years ago, blocking up the highways with obsidian.”

“Trying?”

“That’s the key word. They’re so shit at it, it’s funny, and it’s really nothing to clean up their mess, but it’s annoying, you know? And if we let ‘em go unchecked, we’re worried we could have another Ren situation on our hands eventually. If you track ‘em down, give ‘em a scare, they might stop. They definitely seem new. Shouldn’t be too hard for you.”

Fit’s a little hesitant still, but he nods. “Sure thing. Where were they last?”

“Somewhere along the southern highways. I’ll send you the coords I last saw ‘em at.”

“Sure thing. And you’ll get the HWU to keep an eye out for my cult?”

“No problem.”

Fit nods. “Alright. Thank you.”

The worker turns and continues placing obsidian along the railing. “Stay safe.”

***

It’s not hard to find the newspawn trying to wreck the highways.

He goes to the coords he was told and finds a wall of obsidian blocking the highway. It didn’t even take long to get here, a couple hours at most. He stops and stares at the wall, leaning over the railing to peer past it. It’s not even that thick, really, just a few dozen blocks, and there’s a clearly half-finished section on the other end where someone must have run out of obsidian. Someone, likely a random traveller, has built a cobblestone path around it instead of bothering to dig out the obsidian.

Newspawn keep getting ideas to make it big, banking off things other people have already done in an attempt to ride off their coattails and become infamous for something that wasn’t even their own idea. He used to think it was annoying, and turns out, a year away hasn’t changed that sentiment.

“Hey!”

Fit heaves a sigh and turns around. Behind him is a group of people, clearly newspawn, decked out in iron chestplates and helmets, nothing else. It’s a small group, three people, and each of them are carrying a simple diamond pickaxe, no enchantments.

One of them jabs their thumb at the highway behind them. “Get away from our wall,” she says. Fit hates to think she might be a teenager, but she does look a little short, her armor hanging off her frame, too big for her scrawny body.

Fit crosses his arms, trying to look as intimidating as possible without drawing a weapon. “You’re the ones who have been trying to clog up the highways?”

“Yeah, now get out,” the second kid snaps, his voice high, cracking at the end of his sentence. Yeah, clearly a group of teenagers. Fit’s heart sinks at the realization, but he can’t back down.

The third kid jabs the second one in the side with his elbow. “Dude, that’s FitMC,” he hisses under his breath. “Like, the FitMC.”

His friend jabs him back. “Oh my god, stop being such a fag,” he hisses, still loud enough for Fit to hear. “I told you, he’s not gonna fuck your gay ass.”

“Shut up!” the third kid jabs his friend again, harder, his face flushed red under his helmet.

Fit sighs. “Look, just stop fucking with the highways. It’s annoying, okay?”

“The highways are too convenient,” the first kid says, crossing her arms. “This is an anarchy server. They should be disbanded. It’s not supposed to be easy.”

“Yeah, this is an anarchy server, which means people can do what they want, which means people are allowed to keep and maintain the highways.”

“Well, that also means that we have the right to mess with them,” the girl says, clearly smug, as if she’s caught him somehow by pointing that out.

“In turn, that means someone else is allowed to come along and tell you to knock it the fuck off, and if you don’t do what he says, he’s allowed to throw you into the lava,” Fit says. He tilts his head. “So are you gonna knock it the fuck off?”

The third kid pales, but the second laughs. “Make us!”

Fit takes a deep breath, steeling himself for potentially tossing a couple of these kids into the lava—he has to get used to the violence again, he can’t afford to make empty threats now that he’s back—but the third kid grabs his friend’s arm and yanks him back before Fit can do anything.

“Are you guys crazy?” he hisses. “This guy was the leader of Team Veteran in the Rusher War! Have you heard stories of when he’s been on the battlefield?”

The girl rolls her eyes. “That was like, eight years ago. Look at him, he’s fucking old.”

“I’m right here,” Fit says, but they don’t seem to hear him.

 “Let’s just go,” the third kid insists, sending nervous glances in Fit’s direction as he tugs on his friend’s arm. “We can keep going somewhere else.”

The first kid looks at the second, exchanging an exasperated glance. Fit mentally crosses his fingers in the hopes that they’ll decide to give in without a fight.

The girl whirls around to face him again and sprints for him at full speed. Fit startles, not expecting a sudden fight, but he manages to whip out his shield and bash her with it as soon as she enters his space.

She cries out, stumbling back. The second kid tries to free himself from his friend’s grasp to rush forward and help, but the third kid’s grip is like iron.

Heart pounding, Fit leans down and grabs the girl by the straps of her armor. She kicks and screams, flailing her limbs like a caged animal, but his metal arm is too strong to shake off. He drags her to the edge of the highway and holds her over the edge.

The girl freezes. She looks down at the bubbling lava far below and the withers that roam through it. A terrified squeak leaves her throat.

“Are you done?” Fit asks, his voice low.

The girl nods frantically. Despite her efforts to stay perfectly still so he doesn’t lose his grip, she’s visibly shaking. Her eyes are a brown so dark they’re almost black.

He’s reminded of Pac for half a second, and his heart seizes in his chest.

He turns and throws her roughly back onto the walkway. She lands on her back, a wheeze leaving her chest as the air is knocked out of her lungs. She immediately starts scrambling backwards before she even catches her breath, fear glinting in her eyes. The other two kids stare at him like he’s scarier than the devil.

Fit nods at the walkway behind them. “Get out.”

His voice is flat, deadpan, but they evidently take that as some form of anger, because they don’t even protest. They turn and book it, nearly tripping over each other in their haste to get away.

He thinks about the fear in that kid’s eyes.

A knot forms in his stomach.

He would have dropped her if she hadn’t agreed to stop.

He should have dropped her anyway, and then done the same to her friends. He can’t just let people go. That’s not how this place works. He can’t afford to slip up.

Nausea roiling in his gut, he turns to the wall of obsidian blocking the highway. His pickaxe slips out of his inventory and lands in his hand.

Might as well clean up their mess while he’s here.

***

“Found your cult.”

Fit tilts his head, watching the highway worker clear out a section of the highway that’s been blocked by cobwebs. “That was quick. It’s only been a day.”

The worker shrugs. It’s a different one than the last two, but it appears word spreads through the HWU pretty quick.

“And?” he asks. “Where are they?”

“Well, I can send you the coords of where they were last. But, fair warning; they sound like they’re expecting you.”

“Lemme guess, word got out that FitMC is back, and then it got out that I’m looking for them.”

The worker shrugs. “People are gonna talk. Can’t blame them for that.”

Fit nods. He almost makes a joke about fofoca spreading fast, but he remembers with a sudden ache in his chest that he’s not on Quesadilla Island anymore. This person probably doesn’t understand a lick of Portuguese.

“I’m used to it,” he says instead. “Send me the coords.”

“No problem. Oh, and we heard you took care of that little group that was fucking with the highways. Thanks for that. Haven’t seen hide nor hair of them since.”

Fit thinks about the girl with the deep brown eyes. He thinks about Pac. The ache spreads to his throat, forming an unexpected lump that he has to swallow back.

“It was nothing,” he lies. “Thanks for the help.”

“Good luck.”

***

It takes him half a day to travel through the Nether to the coords he was given. He expects a trap when he gets there, but he’s not too worried about it; if they kill him, he’ll come back. 2b2t won’t let go of him that easily.

Besides, as long as he can record a bit of information, the recording will stay in his arm. Even if things go south, as long as he gets some kind of information for his broadcast, he’ll count this as a win.

There’s already a Nether portal waiting for him at the coordinates. Not a great sign. They’re certainly expecting him, then.

He mentally prepares himself to be ambushed, and then he steps through.

He appears underground in the Overworld somewhere, in an area dimly lit with torch sconces on the walls. It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust from the brightness of the Nether.

It looks like he’s in a stronghold, in a room of stone bricks, but none of the strongholds are still this put together. This looks like it’s been built specifically to mimic the appearance of a stronghold. He’s in a stone hallway, the torches on the walls leading off ahead of him into the darkness.

He sighs. “That’s not ominous at all,” he mutters, but he trudges forward into the dark. He opens a panel on his arm and presses the button to start recording, just in case.

He takes one of the torches off the wall and carries it in his offhand, drawing his sword with his other. He keeps his footsteps low and light, ready to run if someone jumps out at him.

He reaches the end of the hallway. The torches aren’t enough to illuminate the room beyond it.

Maybe it’s stupid, but he takes a deep breath to steel himself and calls out a hesitant “Hello?”

He inhales sharply when he feels the cold press of a blade against the back of his neck. “FitMC,” says a voice behind him. “We heard you were looking for us.”

He swallows. He should have checked to make sure he wasn’t being followed. He’s been here ten years, and after one year of being absent, he’s back to making rookie mistakes.

“News travels fast, huh?” he says, trying to keep his tone light.

“That it does,” says another voice, this one in front of him. He hears the clinking of armor as someone approaches him from the dark. “You’ve been missing for over a year. A couple of broadcasts made it our way over the past twelve months, but no one’s seen any sign of you actually here on the server until a couple weeks ago. Why’s that?”

Fit shrugs, acutely aware of the blade at his neck. “Been busy, that’s all.”

“Too busy to show your face?” says a third voice. How many people are in here? “What were you busy with?”

“Private matters.”

“But why are you looking for us?” a fourth voice asks. “Why now?”

Fit takes a deep breath, acutely aware of the blade on the back of his neck. “You’ve gotten pretty well known, and I’m curious,” he admits. “You’re gonna be a part of history, and I’d be a shit historian if I didn’t at least try to talk to the ones keeping the rarest item on the server under lock and key.”

There’s a pause. He hears someone’s footsteps shuffle, and then light fills the room. He blinks furiously as his eyes adjust, and when they do, he sees that he is, in fact, in a room made to look like the portal room of a stronghold, only without the portal, and decorated to look nice, almost homey. There are redstone lamps in the ceiling to light up the room, and about five people inside, each one dressed in Netherite armor with eye trim. Six, actually, including the one behind Fit.

“You just want to talk to us?” one of them says, a note of confusion in their voice.

“Yeah. I’m not here to steal your armor or your trim or anything. I just want to learn how your leader found it, how you’re keeping it so hidden, and what this whole cult is really about. And, if your leader would permit it, maybe record a broadcast about you. That’s all.”

Each of them glance at each other, seemingly confused. The blade against the back of his neck disappears.

Fit turns to look at the person behind him. They look up at him, a hesitance in their eyes, as if they’re not sure whether to trust that a simple talk is all he wants.

“So, we could be in a broadcast?” they ask in a timid voice.

Fit shrugs. “Well, you wouldn’t be in it yourselves, but it would be all about your little group here. I don’t usually mention names unless the individual has done something remarkable, so your leader might get a namedrop, but that’s probably it.”

He glances back at the room to see a couple of the Gatekeepers muttering to each other, peeking at him from under their helmets.

“It’s not up to us,” one of them says. “We’ll ask our leader.”

Fit gives them a nod. “That would be appreciated. If they’re interested, they can send word through the HWU for a time and place for a meeting.”

One of the Gatekeepers nods back. “Alright. We’ll bring this to him and have him get back to you.”

“Thank you very much.” Fit gestures to the hallway. “May I leave, then?”

The Gatekeepers nod. They seem a little hesitant, a touch confused, as if they’d been expecting something other than a historian wanting to interview them for a radio broadcast; a fight, maybe, or a declaration of another war.

Fit turns and walks down the hallway towards the portal.

Now he just needs to wait.

***

The rose is still growing.

It’s grown quite a lot, in fact, over the past couple days since he last checked on it. The second stem that’s branched off from the first is already forming a rosebud at the tip, and there’s a third stem growing on the other side of the first one.

He doesn’t know how fast it takes most flowers to grow, but he knows this is much faster than normal.

He didn’t even fertilize it with any bonemeal.

He sits on the ground in front of the rose, staring at it, flabbergasted. This should be impossible, shouldn’t it? What is making it grow like this?

He reaches out and runs a finger along a red petal. It almost seems to lean into his hand, but that could be his imagination talking. It is his imagination talking, because a flower moving like an animate thing is impossible.

Maybe it’s cruel of him to make this beautiful thing grow here in the wasteland.

Selfishly, he leaves it to grow anyway.

Chapter Text

He’s not sure quite how long it’s been since he got back.

Two weeks, maybe, but it could be longer at this point. He wants to say time passes by in a blur, but it’s more like a slow, sludgy drawl. Traversing the Nether highways as he waits for news from the Gatekeepers, searching his old bases to see which ones have been found and ransacked and which ones have been graciously left alone, avoiding people as best he can, stealing supplies and getting his old food and resource farms up and running again.

He’s honestly surprised some of his farms managed to stay hidden and that they haven’t been broken and stolen from for spare parts. Part of him likes the simplicity of the mechanics here. It’s not long before he’s got one of his old wheat farms up and running, which makes the problem of food pretty much obsolete.

He thinks of Ramon and how even here, he’d probably be able to put together a wheat farm the size of a battlefield complete with automatic harvesting, fertilizing, and planting. As it is, Fit has to plant all the seeds by hand. He’s lucky he managed to even get the automatic harvesting part of it implemented, and he only managed to make it work for a 9x9 square.

That’s more than enough for one person.

Still, selfishly, as he breaks a loaf of bread in half and takes a tasteless bite, he wishes he had someone to share it with.

***

“They want to meet with you.”

Fit tries not to show his surprise at the highway worker’s words. “They do?”

“Yep. They gave one of us a book to hand off to you. None of us have read it, but we’re all ninety percent sure they want to meet with you.”

“Do you have the book?”

The worker summons a signed book from their inventory. “We made like a million copies. Almost all of us have one. We’ll burn ‘em now that you’ve got it.”

Fit takes it and flips it open. Most of the pages are blank, but in the middle of the book is a page with coordinates, along with a date and time.

Honestly, he wasn’t expecting a response from the Gatekeepers at all. It’s been a few days since he met a few of them in that underground stronghold-looking base. He fully thought they had dismissed his request entirely, probably laughing at him in their base over the pretentiousness of historyfags like him who think a war-ridden anarchy server like this would have anything worth recording. He’s faced his fair share of dismissal towards his profession. It wouldn’t shock him.

This is a pleasant surprise. If they let him make a broadcast about him, he can really get to work, interviewing, gathering information, making a script. Anything to keep him busy.

Fit nods at the worker. “Thank you.”

“Stay safe,” they call after him as he turns and leaves.

***

On the day he’s been told to meet the cult, he enters the Nether and makes his way to the coordinates he was given. He’s prepared for a fight, just in case; one can never be too careful here in 2b2t. Even though he’s probably just been invited to talk, he has to stay ready for things to go south.

He packs gapples, three different weapons, and a full set of backup armor in case his breaks. For about a solid half hour before leaving, he sits in one of his bases and debates with himself over whether or not he should bring end crystals and TNT. (He eventually decides against the end crystals, but he’s got a stack of TNT in his inventory tucked next to a flint and steel, just in case.)

The only times he was this paranoid on Quesadilla Island were when the code monsters were at their worst, and during Purgatory.

He doesn’t really want to think about the implications of that.

He reaches the coords in the Nether, and just like last time, there’s already a portal there waiting for him. He pushes down his nerves, hits the record button on his arm, takes a deep breath, and steps through.

His eyes widen as he steps into what appears to be an ornate dining room, the walls made of dark bricks, the long table going down the centre crafted from the same material. The room is lit by candles all along the length of the table and delicate chandeliers crafted from End rods hanging from the ceiling. Carved spruce chairs line the table on either side, and at the end of it at the furthest side of the room, sits a player in Netherite armor with eye trim. Other people sit around the table, not enough to fill the entire table, but at least a half dozen, each one with an axe or a sword over their back.

The person at the head of the table stands. “FitMC!” he calls, and Fit can see the bright smile on his face even from here.

Fit smiles back, but he’s not quite put at ease, not yet, sending wary glances at the others in the room with weapons visibly strapped to their backs. “Hello! It’s nice to finally meet you.”

The person waves him over, gesturing to an empty chair next to him. “Come on, sit! We have a lot to discuss, I’m sure.”

Fit makes his way to the chair, walking past a couple other Gatekeepers in eye trim armor. He approaches the empty chair and gives it a quick once over. There are no trip wires that he can see, no pressure plates. He reaches down and touches the seat with his prosthetic arm. Nothing happens.

He pulls the chair out from the table and sits down. He doesn’t explode, doesn’t get immediately tied up or anything, so he takes a deep breath and lets himself relax a little bit.

“So,” Fit says, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the table. “You’re the leader here?”

“De facto leader, more or less. I’m IHackedWalmart. I’m the one who found the eye trim in the first place.”

Fit almost snorts at the name, but hey, he’s heard weirder. He nods and raises his prosthetic arm. “I’m recording. Is that alright?”

“Yeah, absolutely! Heard you wanted to make a broadcast about us?”

“If that’s alright with you.”

“More than alright. We’d love to be featured on your show.”

“You know the risks though, right? Hundreds of thousands of people listen to these things now, all across the universe. People on the server might come to fuck with you, or people from outside might purposely hack themselves in or join the queue with the intent to come after you, either to take your eye trim and dupe it so it loses its value or just to be assholes. You’re aware of all that?”

Walmart waves a hand nonchalantly, a grin on his face under his Netherite helmet. “Yeah, whatever. We know the risks. Let ‘em come after us. We can take it.”

He seems fine. Not harmless, not by a long shot; it must take a lot of firepower to keep the rarest item on the server under lock and key, and Fit thinks he recognizes the name from a while ago. He furrows his brow.

“Weren’t you one of Armorsmith’s followers?” Fit asks.

Walmart reaches up and takes his helmet off, setting it on the table, and then reaches into his inventory to take out a crown that he smugly places on top of his brown hair. And, yeah, without the armor and with the crown, Fit definitely recognizes him. Never fought him himself, but he’s seen him around for sure.

“Was, yeah. I remember you losing to him during the 6^th Incursion.”

A little bit of annoyance flares up in Fit’s gut, but he tamps it down. Years ago, he’d probably start a fight with this guy just because they were on opposite sides a long time ago, but Fit’s made up with a lot of his past enemies, Rusher included. No use starting up old beef, especially not now when he’s got a job to do.

“Armorsmith fought dirty, but he did win,” Fit says. “I’ll give him that much.” He gestures at Walmart’s helmet. “So, you want to do this interview or not?”

Walmart snorts. He takes the crown off his head and replaces it with the helmet, and Fit admits, it suits him better than the crown does.

“Yeah, fuck it. Let’s do this.”

“Alright.” Fit twists in his seat a little and positions his arm between them so it will pick up both of their voices. “Let’s get started.”

***

The interview goes well, much to Fit’s surprise. Walmart is surprisingly personable, which is not an adjective he would use to describe most of the people here in the wasteland. He laughs and jokes while he tells Fit the story of how he found the eye trim and formed this cult of people to keep it as the rarest item on the server. Fit finds himself invested, leaning forward to listen to every detail, despite the fact that he’s recording it to listen to it later.

Other Gatekeepers come and go, grabbing weapons from a side room, sitting down to scarf down some food, collecting potions, repairing their armor, before disappearing again. The only one who stays for the whole thing is Walmart, just as invested in telling the story as Fit is in listening to it.

When Walmart is done, Fit clasps his hands together on the table and sifts through the details in his head. “Okay, let me see if I’ve got this straight.”

“Go ahead.”

“So,” Fit starts, “Hause let a handful of people into a perfect copy of the entire server before rolling out the universal updates to make sure it would work, and you were one of the testers allowed into the copy. You opened a chest in a stronghold on the copy server, found the eye trim, and that’s how you knew where it would be when you came back?”

Walmart gives a sharp nod. “Essentially, yes.”

Fit nods, glancing down at his arm to make sure the recording light is still flashing. “You’ve done an insane job keeping this thing from the public,” he says.

Walmart shrugs. “The Gatekeepers are strong-willed. Everyone is sworn to secrecy. If the trim ever left the cult, we’d find the rat that let it out, strip them of their armor, and execute them in front of the entire group.”

“Making an example out of them.”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t suppose you’d let an outsider sit in on one of your cult meetings?”

Walmart barks out a laugh. The eye in the middle of his chestplate makes it feel as though Fit is being watched by something else, something greater. “No. Sorry, you may be a historian, but some things need to stay a secret.”

Fit nods. “Makes sense.”

“So, are we done here?” Walmart asks.

“If that’s all the information you’ve got for me, I suppose so.” Fit presses a switch on his arm, and the recording light blinks off. An idea pops into his head. “Um, so that copy server Hause sent you to...”

Walmart tilts his head. “What about it?”

Hause is powerful, everyone knows. If he can create a whole new world, send other people to it with no problem—

“Never mind,” he says, shaking his head. “It’s nothing.” The idea is stupid. He knows Hause can give people access to other worlds, but it’s a long shot. Hause isn’t exactly a generous guy. There’s no way he’d find it in the kindness of his own (probably non-existent) heart to send Fit out of 2b2t. Besides, everyone ends up back here eventually, no matter where else they go.

It’s not like there’s anything left for him back on Quesadilla Island, anyway.

“Say,” Walmart says, “now that I’ve told you some things, you mind telling me something?”

“Depends on what it is.”

Walmart steeples his fingers, and the gesture reminds him of Cellbit, sitting at the table in the Ordo and poring over photos and journals of mysteries. He tries to ignore that as Walmart begins talking.

“You’ve been away for quite a while,” he says. “Mind telling me where you were?”

Fit shakes his head immediately. “Sorry, that’s NYFB.”

Walmart tilts his head. “NYFB?”

“Nunya fuckin’ business.” Like hell he’d tell anyone here about Quesadilla Island, and he especially wouldn’t tell them about Pac and Ramon. He doesn’t need word getting out about any of it. Not here.

“Just one little hint,” Walmart insists. “It won’t leave this room, I swear.”

Fit glances around. He and Walmart are the only ones in the room now, but he can’t trust that there aren’t secret cameras or microphones anywhere.

“I’ve told you about our secrets,” Walmart says, a little whiny, like a kid asking their parents for ice cream. “Just a hint! Nothing big, it doesn’t have to actually tell me anything, but I just want a hint. The curiosity’s been killing me, man. Please?”

Fit sighs. “Off server. That’s it.”

Walmart’s eyes widen. “For a year?” he squeaks. “You managed to leave for a year?”

Leaving 2b2t isn’t exactly unheard of—many people have done it before, spent a week or two on other servers, in other worlds—but the players who have been here too long, especially the ones who have been banished here for some reason or another, have their code directly tied to the server. It’s hard to leave for too long. A week was Fit’s record time away from 2b2t before Madagio sent him to Quesadilla Island. Leaving for any longer than a couple weeks without returning is practically unheard of. He understands why Walmart is surprised.

“Not telling you more than that,” Fit says, his voice firm. “Like you said, some things need to stay a secret.”

Walmart nods, raising his hands in surrender. “Alright, alright. Understandable. We’ve got our secrets, you’ve got yours.” He gives Fit a once over. “Hey, you’re pretty on top of most news around the server, right?”

“I kinda have to be, considering my profession.”

Walmart leans forward into his elbows. “I was wondering if you knew anything about the rumours.”

Fit furrows his brow, his interest piqued. “Rumours?”

“Yeah. A couple days ago, some rumour started going around about a dragon sighting on the server.”

Eyes widening, Fit fumbles with his arm and clicks the record button again. “A dragon?” he repeats in disbelief. “Like, an End dragon?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. But I’ve been to the End recently, and another dragon definitely hasn’t spawned there as far as I know, unless it somehow ended up way out in the void. But it’s gone through the rumour mill that someone swears they saw some kind of dragon somewhere.”

“Holy shit. I’ll have to keep my ears open for that,” Fit says, a little mystified. The End dragon was killed years ago. If a new one has shown up somewhere, or even a different type of dragon, that would be the first dragon sighting on 2b2t in a long time. If he could look into this and make a broadcast about it...

“I haven’t heard much, which is why I was asking you,” Walmart says, “but if I hear anything else about it, I can shoot you a message, yeah? And likewise? I’m curious about it.”

“Yeah, please do. That’s—holy shit, if there’s another dragon on the server...”

“Someone else could officially hold the title of dragonslayer,” Walmart says. “Would you wanna go for it?”

Fit thinks about it for a moment. Over a year ago, he wouldn’t hesitate. He’d be all over the idea of going to kill a dragon alone, or at least joining a group intent on doing so and cementing himself as someone who killed a dragon on 2b2t. But now? He doesn’t really see the point in killing something for the glory.

“Probably not,” he says. “My glory days are past. But if someone else does, I’d love to interview them.”

Walmart grins. “You might be getting a second interview from me, then.”

“You’d go for it?”

“Don’t see why not. The Gatekeepers are strong, we could take it down.”

“I’m sure you could.” Fit presses the button on his arm again. “Well, is there anything else you’d like to tell me? Any more outlandish rumours or cult secrets?”

“Nope, that’s all I got.” Walmart holds out a hand. “Good talking to you.”

“Likewise.” Fit shakes his hand. “Thank you for your time.”

“No problem.” Walmart lets go of his hand and leans back in his chair. “So, any idea as to when this broadcast might come out?”

Fit shrugs, standing up from his chair. “Still gotta put all this together, make a script, all that jazz. Few days, maybe.”

“The Gatekeepers will keep our radios on.”

***

He starts talking to the rose.

He’s not sure why. Maybe he’s lonely. Maybe he’s fucking insane. He doesn’t know. But the next time he checks on it and sees that its second bud has bloomed and the main stem is getting thicker and longer and it’s sprouting a fourth stem, he sits down next to it and just... talks.

“I’m scripting a new broadcast,” he says, gazing out at the sunset as the wind sifts through the grass. “It’s about this cult. They’re actually pretty chill for a cult, not gonna lie. The leader seemed really cool.”

He picks at a piece of grass, listening as the wind carries distant sound of explosions and screaming. There’s not a quiet moment in the wasteland, that’s for sure.

He hopes this area stays quiet for a little longer, at least.

“There’s rumours about a dragon,” he says. “If it’s real, I’d like to see it before people hunt it down and kill it. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a dragon. I mean, we saw the eggs’ mom briefly before she flew away, back on the island, but that was over a year ago. I’d like to see one again.”

He glances over at the rose. It shifts in the breeze, almost like it’s leaning towards him.

Pac crosses his mind and a lump forms in his throat.

He swallows it down and stares out at the sunset, the warm breeze carrying with it the smell of smoke and ash.

Chapter Text

Fit sighs and leans back in his seat, shutting off his microphone. His broadcast system is covered in dust, having sat unused for over a year. He’ll have to clean the whole thing off eventually, but for now, just his mic and the tuning dials are dust free.

Thousands of people tuned in this time. Recordings of the broadcast are probably circulating now. He hopes the Gatekeepers liked what he had to say.

It’s unfair that radio broadcasts can cross worlds, but he can’t. He wonders how many of his friends—if they’re still alive—sat down to listen.

He remembers Pac and Mike telling him they used to listen to his broadcasts in their lab before arriving on the island.

He adjusts the goggles that rest on top of his head.

He wonders idly if Ramon was listening somewhere out there.

***

The broadcast is well received. Thousands of people from this world and others tune in for the release of it, and recordings are passed around until he’s certain almost the entire server has heard it, and that’s just within the first day.

Sometimes it takes him by surprise how well-known he is, and this is one of those times. When he enters the Nether the day after its release, tons of people he doesn’t know stop him to tell him they liked the broadcast, and when he finds a highway repairman to thank the HWU for their help in obtaining the information he needed, the repairman smiles and tells him they liked the broadcast and are already looking forward to the next one, whatever it’ll be about.

Fit already thinks he knows what the next one will be about, if the rumour Walmart told him about is true.

It’s been nearly a week since he spoke to the Gatekeepers, and less than a day since he actually made the broadcast. Time for him to get working on the next one.

There’s nothing else for him to do, really.

He decides to travel to the End. If the rumours about a dragon are true, that would be the most logical place to find one, although Walmart told him he didn’t see one when he was there last. Still, Fit is an archivist, and he needs to be as thorough in his research as possible.

He ransacks one of his bases for supplies, packing literally all of his gapples, loaves of tasteless bread (he wishes he had avocados so he could make avocado toast, it certainly wasn’t his favourite dish on Quesadilla Island but it was a hell of a lot better than plain old bread), spare armor, spare weapons, extra materials in case his weapons and armor break, and enderpearls in case he falls and needs to pearl to safety. He’s got an old pair of elytra he hasn’t used in a while, and he tucks it away next to some rockets, just in case.

He travels to one of the strongholds he’s already been to within the past month. He’s scouted them out recently in his search for the Gatekeepers, and yeah, a lot can change in a couple weeks, especially here, but he feels better visiting a vaguely familiar one rather than one that he hasn’t seen in over a year. He could try to use someone’s private portal that’s been hacked in, but he’s been gone for a year. Some of them might be inactive by now, and besides, he didn’t have a whole lot of close allegiances right before he left. Trying to get close enough to someone to use their private portal might be hard.

So a public portal it is for him. No problem; he can deal.

Lucky for him, the portals aren’t always busy. They’re usually more crowded at the crack of dawn, with people planning to make a long day trip to the End and return in the night, so if he gets there by afternoon, there shouldn’t be anyone running around the stronghold.

He arrives at the stronghold at about noon, sword in hand, keeping an eye out for any other people wandering around. He doesn’t see anyone, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Even with as fucked up as the terrain is around the strongholds due to constant griefing, he makes his way to the portal rather quick. It’s been a while since he’s been to the End, and it’ll be especially dangerous here of all places. All of 2b2t’s dimensions are dangerous.

He checks his inventory one last time to make sure he’s got everything he needs, and then he jumps in.

***

There are no dragons in the End.

He didn’t really expect to see any, to be honest. It was just a rumour, told to him through someone he barely knew, and even Walmart didn’t have enough information to make it credible at all.

He sighs as he walks along the barebones End highways. No one really maintains these as far as he knows. Maybe the HWU pops in from time to time to fix some things, but the Nether highways are much more important, and they’ve probably got their hands full dealing with those. The End highways are barely used by anyone.

He steps off the highway and onto an End island. There’s nothing in the sky, no signs of any kind of large animal—not even any sign of life at all, really. Players don’t typically spend time here because of how bare it is.

He’s probably chasing nothing but fabricated rumours.

He leans against a chorus tree and digs a loaf of bread out of his inventory. He’s not sure what time it is in the Overworld, but that’s okay. He can sleep when he gets back. No way he’s going to try sleeping here in the End. Sleeping bags don’t explode like beds do, but even then, it’s not exactly a comfortable place to sleep.

He breaks the loaf in half and takes a bite. He’ll keep looking for now, but he’ll have to start making his way back to the return portal soon. It’s been hours.

“Hey.”

Fit nearly jumps out of his skin, drawing his sword and whirling around, dropping his bread to summon his shield, ready to strike or defend.

His blade hits a shield, clanging against the metal. He skitters backward, and so does the person who spoke, wielding their own sword and shield. Fit readies himself for a fight as he sizes up the person who approached him.

He looks old, which is a shock; most people here don’t live to see their hair get grey, but this guy’s head is fully silver, hanging in knotted snarls down to his shoulders. He’s got an eyepatch, and one of his pant legs is rolled up to reveal a leg made of metal.

Fit’s immediately reminded of Pac, and he wavers.

A mistake, clearly, because the man takes the opportunity to jab at his hand, nicking it with his sword, and Fit drops his own blade in surprise. He raises his shield, cursing at himself in his head.

Fortunately, the guy straightens and sheaths his own blade. “Sheesh, can’t a man say hi?” His voice is raspy, as if he’s not used to talking.

Fit eyes him warily. “What do you want?”

“Look, I...” He glances down at the ground, almost timidly, and Fit follows his gaze to the bread he’d dropped. “I live here in the End. I like to stay away from other players, you know. I... I was just going to ask if you could spare some bread? I live off chorus fruit, and—and I don’t have...”

Relief washes over Fit like a wave. A few players set up their bases here in the End, the more private, introverted types who like hiding away from everyone. They’re typically harmless. If this guy lives here, he probably wouldn’t be talking to Fit if he didn’t genuinely want something.

He picks up his sword and stows it away, still eyeing the guy in case he’s lying, but he certainly doesn’t look like he wants to attack him or anything.

“Yeah, yeah. No problem.” He takes a loaf of bread from his inventory and tosses it to the man.

The man catches it, his eyes lighting up like Fit’s just given him diamonds. “Thank you, thank you so much. Chorus fruit... it gets old, you know? I’ve been living off it for years at this point.”

“Yeah. I mean, I’m living off just bread at the moment. It’s really all I’ve got. You have chorus fruit you can spare?”

“Yeah, yeah. Here.” The guy digs in his inventory for a second, and then he tosses a chorus fruit Fit’s way. He doesn’t feel like eating it now and teleporting somewhere random, so he tucks it away in his own inventory for now.

“So, do you travel around here a lot?” Fit asks.

The man gives him an inquisitive look as he takes a bite of bread. “Yeah. The trees here don’t always have fruit, you know. I gotta get around.”

Fit nods. “So... potentially, if any dragons spawned, you would have seen them?”

The man shrugs. “Yeah, probably. Hasn’t been one for years, though. Why?”

“Just some rumours flying around in the Overworld. Heard a dragon was spotted somewhere. Thought I’d come here to see if it was in the End, but it doesn’t look like it.”

The man scoffs. “Probably just rumours. Part of the reason I left, you know? When one person says something, especially about you, it feels like the whole server knows. At least out here, I don’t have to worry about that.”

“Must’ve been pretty bad rumours if they made you leave to live way out here,” Fit says.

The man shrugs. “More like a secret that got out.” He reaches up to tuck his hair behind his ear, and Fit sees the glint of an earring on his right ear.

Recognition jolts through Fit at the small display. It’s a subtle symbol—a lot more subtle than the handkerchiefs Fit has in one of his bases but has been too scared to wear—but it’s easy to catch when someone knows what it means.

Fit swallows. “People found out, huh?”

The man shrugs, casting his gaze down, evidently a little surprised Fit knows what he means. “It happens. I was too proud about it.”

You should have been allowed to be, Fit wants to say, but he swallows it back. Even here, even alone, it’s an unspoken rule to not say the quiet part out loud.

He thinks about Pac and his shameless flirting with men, kissing Felps at Festa Junina when a dozen other people were nearby, declaring in front of everyone that he would kiss, marry, and kill Fit, bringing Fit his dry cleaned bathrobe in front of Quackity and a couple new players after he and Fit spent a night just sleeping in the same bed. He was always so open, like he never had a reason to hide it.

Fit can’t do that here.

It looks like this guy hasn’t been able to, either.

“Well, I don’t think it’s gotten much better since you’ve been hiding out here,” Fit says. He remembers what people used to do to people like him years back, especially during the Rusher War and during nearly every single Incursion. He’s seen the kind of shit people have done when they find out a person isn’t as straight as they thought.

He’s seen too many bodies with “fag” carved into their skin to count them on both hands.

“Never expected it to,” the man says, a little dejected. “This server’s not exactly kind to people outside the norm.”

“Yeah, yeah. Hey, uh, here.” Fit opens his inventory again, and he takes out a few more loaves of bread. “Like I said, I’ve got plenty back home. Take some.”

The man smiles, and he takes the bread. “Thanks. And here.” He passes Fit some chorus fruit. “I’ve got tons.”

“Thank you, thank you.” Fit tucks it away in his inventory next to the bread.

“It’s nice to see some of us are still alive,” the man says. “Haven’t seen many other people out here, much less another one of us.”

Fit laughs a little. “Yeah, yeah. It’s nice, actually. Clearly not all of us die young.”

The man smiles, and Fit smiles back, and despite the fact that they’re strangers, there’s a sense of comradery here.

“We’re pretty far out from a portal,” the man says. “If you wanna rest up, I’ve got a base nearby.”

It’s a proposition, Fit can tell. Out here, where there appears to be no one else, Fit would have probably accepted it over a year ago, but now he shakes his head.

“Nah, I’ve got someone,” he says. “Got a roommate to get back to.”

The man’s eyes brighten. “You found someone? Here?” He chuckles and shakes his head in disbelief. “Holy shit. Maybe things have changed since I’ve been down here.”

Fit doesn’t bother telling him that he found Pac off server, or that Pac is... gone. Let the guy have a little faith.

“Maybe, yeah.” Fit summons his sword and shield, readying himself for the journey back. “Gotta get home. You stay safe, alright?”

“You too,” the man calls after him as he leaves.

***

Fit returns in the middle of the night.

Well, more like early in the morning, so early the sun is only just beginning to lighten the sky. The sunrise just cracks the horizon, turning the sky a lovely pink. He stares out at it, and he’s reminded of the sun that set behind Pac on the evening of their first date, and his heart clenches in his chest.

He should return to one of his bases, but instead he makes a detour, trudging over hills, scrambling through small craters, hopping over ledges and ducking under overhangs.

It takes a while, but the silhouette of the rose he planted comes into view, and he smiles despite the exhaustion settling into his bones.

He clambers up the small hill it rests on and flops down next to it with a sigh. It’s grown since last time, the main stem growing thicker, more branch-like, with more stems sprouting off from it, tiny rosebuds blooming on the tips.

“Still haven’t found any signs of a dragon,” he says. “I looked through the End, but I didn’t find anything. If there was a dragon there, I think I would have seen it, or someone who lived there would know.”

He turns to look at the budding rosebush. “I’m kind of thinking that whole dragon thing was just a wild rumour, you know? Someone spreading something outlandish just for attention. I’m gonna keep looking, though. I’d be a shit archivist if I didn’t try. If there is one, even the smallest chance, I’ve got to record it.”

The rosebush doesn’t respond. There’s no wind today, nothing to rustle the rosebuds and make it look almost sentient, and Fit almost wishes there was a breeze, just so he can almost fool himself into feeling like he’s got some semblance of company. So he doesn’t feel quite as alone.

He heaves a sigh. “I should get back to one of my bases. Gotta get in a quick one-hour nap before I start my day, you know how it is.”

He goes to stand, and then, suddenly, there is a wind, just the slightest breeze, making the rosebush lean towards him for a brief moment. He can’t help himself from smiling, just a little.

“See you next time,” he says, before standing and walking away.

Chapter Text

Fit debates piercing his ear.

Handkerchiefs are a much less subtle way of showcasing... well, what he is, and he’s holding a dark blue one in his hands that he’s had for years but never worn outside, and he’s terrified that things have changed so much since he’s been gone that everyone would know the moment he stepped outside with it on.

There used to be a couple underground queer areas he would visit, way back in the day. But that was before the Rusher War, before he was well known, before people recognized him on sight as FitMC, the leader of Team Veteran, historian and journalist. He tried to visit one a couple years ago, and when someone showed they recognized him by complimenting his last broadcast, he turned and left immediately.

Being recognizable and gay on 2b2t is a death sentence.

He hasn’t tried to get involved in the community since. He doesn’t know if any old symbols and terms have been dropped, what signals are well known by the greater population.

Wearing this could lead to him being hunted down and executed, and he doesn’t even know it.

He takes a deep breath.

It takes him a little bit, but he manages to tie the handkerchief around his right bicep.

He tugs the sleeve of his shirt down to cover it, until just the smallest sliver of blue is visible. No one would see it unless they’re looking for it, but that’s still not exactly reassuring.

He’ll just... try to avoid people for the most part when he goes out today. If it goes well, if it’s not seen... maybe he’ll keep wearing it.

The blue is almost the same shade as Pac’s hoodie.

He tries not to think about that as he leaves his underground base and makes his way to a Nether portal.

***

“You think there’s a dragon on 2b2t?”

Fit leans against a wall of Netherrack as the highway worker in front of him turns from their work to stare at him. “I’ve heard rumours. Wanted to know if there’s any merit to them.”

The worker scoffs before turning back to the highway and shoving pieces of obsidian in a chunk that’s been destroyed. “It’s just a wild story. Someone just wants to stir shit up.”

“You know that for a fact?”

The worker rolls their eyes, but they don’t say no. “It’s ridiculous. No one believes it because they’re not fucking stupid.”

“Humour me.” Fit glances down at his sleeve—the handkerchief is still mostly hidden—and then back at the worker. “What do you know about it?”

The worker sighs. “Not much. I don’t even know where it was allegedly seen, just that someone apparently saw one flying above them and freaked the fuck out.”

“Do you know who it was?”

They shrug. “Some newspawn probably. I don’t fucking know. We’re not a paragon of knowledge here, man.”

Fit sighs, frustrated at his lack of progress on the dragon issue over the past couple days. “Okay. Thanks anyway.”

***

He doesn’t get punched or stabbed or hanged, and nothing else terrible or horrible happens to him by the time he returns to his base. The handkerchief around his arm feels like it’s burning into his skin at this point.

But he’s fine. He’s alive. Nothing happened.

He leaves it on when he crawls into bed in his main base that night.  

***

IHackedWalmart whispered to you: DUDE
IHackedWalmart whispered to you: FIT EM CEE
IHackedWalmart whispered to you: DRAGON
IHackedWalmart whispered to you: SEEN IT
IHackedWalmart whispered to you: IT’S FUCKING REAL
IHackedWalmart whispered to you: GET YOUR ASS TO OUR BASE RIGHT THE FUCK NOW I SWEAR TO GOD
IHackedWalmart whispered to you: THE COORDS WE GAVE YOU LAST TIME GET TO EM NOWWWWWWWWW

Fit stares at his comm groggily, having been woken up by the sound of it incessantly pinging. When he sees the messages, he bolts upright in bed.

Walmart better not be fucking with him.

He scrambles out of bed, grabbing a sword and shield, and then he’s out the door, making his way to the nearest Nether portal. The journey there will take at least half an hour if he’s really fucking fast. He books it as fast as possible, throwing enderpearls along the obsidian highway to speed up the process.

He gets there in twenty minutes flat.  

He reaches the Gatekeepers’ main base, stepping through the portal into the large dining room. At the end of the room at the table sits Walmart, armor off, bandaging a large cut on his arm. Other Gatekeepers bustle about, bringing bandages and healing potions to others.

“Got your message,” Fit calls across the room, beelining for Walmart. He’s pressing the record button on his arm the moment he leaves the portal.

Walmart looks up as he approaches and heaves a sigh. “Hey. We just got back.”

“Where were you?”

“Investigating something one of us found a while ago. We were just outside and the thing fucking divebombed us. I would have sent you our current coords at the time, but it flew away immediately.”

“We didn’t even see it coming,” says another Gatekeeper. “We just heard this loud screech and then it was on us. Then it was gone as soon as it came.”

Fit sits down in the seat he sat in last time. “But where exactly were you? Did it look like a dragon’s stronghold?”

Walmart shrugs. “We were just around spawn. One of us found this Ender portal looking thing blocked off by bedrock yesterday and we thought we’d take a look at it. We go out to investigate it today, and next thing we know, we hear this fucking... ungodly screech, like a creature from hell is coming down on us.”

A portal blocked off by bedrock. Could they have found the portal Fit came back from when he was forced to leave Quesadilla Island? Is that what they were investigating? And why would a dragon be around there anyway?

He hasn’t been back there since his return. Maybe he should go back and scout the place out. Probably won’t be of much use if the portal is still blocked off, but if the dragon was spotted there, it might be worth returning to.

“Did you see what it looked like?” he asks. “The dragon?”

“It was green,” another Gatekeeper says as they pass by with an armful of healing potions. “I think. Hard to tell, it all happened so quick.”

“I thought it was yellow,” another one pipes up from where they lean against the wall, getting their leg wrapped up in bandages.

“It had some yellow on it for sure,” Walmart says, “but fuck, it was so fast, I couldn’t even tell.”

“Fast?” End dragons aren’t known for being fast. Or green, for that matter.

“It was definitely small for a dragon,” another Gatekeeper says, slumping into a chair with a sigh and getting to work stripping off their armor. “Size of a foal maybe?”

“Do you know why it attacked you?”

“No clue,” Walmart says. He glances around at the other Gatekeepers. “But... I think it was trying to grab us. Like it wanted to pick us up and fly away.”

Fit’s eyebrows shoot up. “It was trying to kidnap you?”

“Maybe, I don’t know. But it was definitely trying to grab us, that’s for sure.” He reaches up and pulls down the collar of his shirt. His shoulder is completely wrapped in bandages, blood already soaking through. “It got my shoulders really fucking bad. Nearly ripped the armor right off me.”

“But why was it going after you guys specifically?” Fit mutters, half to himself. “Was it a random attack, or did it maybe see your armor and think it was pretty enough to steal and take away to its hoard?”

“Beats me,” Walmart says. “But I want to go back to that blocked off portal to look around. Maybe the dragon lives there, I don’t know, but if it does and we can get the jump on it, we could kill it. Capture it maybe, if all else fails.”

“Can I come?” Fit asks.

“You got Netherite armor?”

“Best I’ve got right now is diamond.”

“I don’t think that’ll cut it,” Walmart says. “We’ll lend you a set of ours. It’s got Curse of Vanishing though, so if you die, that armor’s gone. You can’t keep it.”

“That’s fine. I just want to investigate the area.”

“I’m not going,” another Gatekeeper says as they pass by, limping. “Fucker nearly took my leg. I’m not walking with a peg leg for the rest of my life.”

“We’ll take a small group,” Walmart says. “But we’ll wait a bit, get some potions on everyone’s wounds. We’ll head back out in a few hours.”

***

Fit has to admit, the eye trim armor he’s loaned looks good. If this cult had been around back in his hayday, he’d probably consider joining them. They’ve got supplies, they’re somewhat well known, and they’ve got cool looking armor.

But at the moment, he’s just trying to lay low and do his job. This isn’t his to keep.

Still, when they give him the dark purple armor, dark blue trim forming an eye on the chestplate, he has to admit, it does look pretty fucking sick.

They head out with a team of six, including Fit and Walmart, plus four others. The rest of them remain in the base, treating their various wounds, enchanting weapons, brewing potions. Fit doesn’t blame them for staying behind. Most of them look badly injured. Those claw marks on their skin are jagged and deep, and most of them will definitely need stitches.

The trip there is rather quick through the Nether highways. Fit finds that he helmet obscures his face quite well, because no one stops him to compliment the latest broadcast or ask when the next one will be out. The only one who gets any attention is Walmart, some asking if they can bribe him for a set of armor, others stopping to jeer at him for being selfish with the eye trim, some even calling him a “Fitfag” for letting himself be featured on Fit’s broadcast at all. Walmart ignores all of them, and Fit keeps his head low to avoid being recognized.

He's just a part of a group now, one of many, a small piece of a whole. He kind of likes that.

They step through a Nether portal and step out somewhere closer to spawn. It’s a place Fit knows well. He appeared around here when he was forced to return from Quesadilla Island.

He knows where the portal is, but he lets Walmart lead them. He doesn’t want to give away that he’s been here before. That would raise questions, and he’s not trying to stick out here. He just wants to look around and get some information.

Walmart slides down the side of a small crater, and Fit follows with the other Gatekeepers. “It was around here,” Walmart says. “I don’t know how the thing saw us from the sky when we were all the way down here.”

The crater is rather deep and wide, and it leads down into a large chasm. On the other side of the chasm, lava flows from towers of cobblestone that stretch into the sky, and Fit finds himself holding his breath as they get into terrain that’s more and more familiar.

When he sees the portal, he almost feels nauseous.

It’s right where he left it, nested against the wall of the chasm, bedrock covering the entire top of the portal. The portal frames themselves look scratched, as if someone had tried to destroy them and failed.

“We thought we could break the portal frames and take them, get our own End portal,” Walmart says, “but they can’t be broken. We tried everything, pickaxes, TNT, End crystals. And I don’t know who blocked it off with bedrock. Someone hacking, probably. Or Hause, but I don’t know why he wouldn’t just destroy it instead of blocking it off.”

Madagio blocked it off, Fit knows that for a fact. Still, he says nothing about it, responding with a quiet “Yeah, that’s weird,” instead.

He approaches the portal, ignoring Walmart ordering the other Gatekeepers to keep an eye out for any dragons or any flying creature in general. He reaches out and touches the bedrock. It looks just the same as it did when he appeared here weeks ago, banished back to the wasteland after probably the best year of his life.

There could still be an active portal in there, if the explosions the Gatekeepers tried to use didn’t break it. If... if he could remove the bedrock, there are hacks he could try, machines people have used to remove bedrock before, if he could—

“See anything?” Walmart says, approaching Fit from the side.

He shakes himself out of his train of thought. Useless ideas. No one’s gotten out of here on their own. He could never get off server again without help.

And he wouldn’t return to Quesadilla Island even if he could. There’s nothing left for him there.

“No,” Fit responds, tapping at the bedrock with his finger. Still hard and unbreakable. “Where did the dragon show up?”

“It was hard to tell. We were just here for like five minutes, poking around, and then we heard this fucking screech, and then we were getting divebombed. It came from above, so we gotta keep an eye on the sky.”

Fit nods. “So, why were you looking at this portal anyway?”

Walmart shrugs. “I mean, it’s right here in the middle of fuckass nowhere and it’s blocked off with bedrock and the frames are completely unbreakable. We even dug under it to see if we could access the portal from underneath, but that side’s blocked with bedrock too. We thought we could steal the frames and have our own portal, but it won’t budge. I think it might be something Hause made for shits and giggles. Not many other people could get bedrock to place.”

Fit hums to show he heard, but he doesn’t respond otherwise. He runs his hand over the bedrock, searching for any chip in the rock, any vulnerability. Nothing.

“Why would it come after you?” he mutters to himself. “And why was it here?”

One of the Gatekeepers gasps. “Wals,” they say, smacking Walmart’s back with one hand and pointing with the other. “Look. Up there.”

Fit follows their gaze. There’s a figure flying far above, dark against the blue sky. It’s hard to tell what it is, but he catches the vague shape of wings and a long tail. It’s the kind of silhouette he’s only seen once or twice in his life, and it immediately sets him on edge, goosebumps raising on the back of his neck.

“Shit,” Walmart hisses. He starts backing up. “Hide, hide, now.”

He grabs Fit’s arm and drags him to the wall of the chasm, where there’s a small overhang that looks like it was blown out by TNT. All five Gatekeepers huddle under it, Walmart yanking Fit in next to him to hide under the ledge of rock. Fit wants to peek out and look at the creature flying above them, but he stays where he is, perfectly still, and waits.

And then he hears it; a reptilian screech, loud and echoing, and then the flapping of leathery wings.

Across the chasm, on a cobblestone spire, lands a creature. It’s still quite far away, so it’s difficult to make out details, but the Gatekeepers’ earlier description was pretty spot on. It’s a bit small for a dragon, but bigger than they said it would be, just a touch smaller than a full grown horse. Its scales are a light grassy green with random little spots of yellow dotting its hide. There appears to be something tied around its neck, a yellow piece of fabric maybe, but he can’t quite tell. It’s too far away.

He steps out just a bit, leaning forward to get a better look, and then a hand grabs his shoulder and yanks him back. “The fuck are you doing?” Walmart hisses. “It’s gonna see us, and then we’re all fucking dead. That thing is feral. Stay here until it’s gone.”

The dragon moves, turning its head just a bit, and they all freeze. Fit hopes he’s still hidden enough in the shade of the overhang to keep himself from being seen.

The dragon takes off from the pillar, disappearing out of sight, and Fit slinks back with the rest of the Gatekeepers, all of them pressing themselves as close to the wall as they can. One of them whispers something, and someone else nudges them and snaps at them to be quiet.

The sound of wings flapping gets closer. Fit hears claws scrabbling on the rock face just above them and holds his breath, his heart pounding in his chest.

A green tail hangs down over the lip of the rock. Walmart sucks in a sharp breath.

The tail is pointed, little spikes running down the top of it, green scales shining in the sun. Fit watches it swing, back and forth like a pendulum. The dragon makes a sound, a mrrp that’s almost catlike, its claws scraping against the stone as it finds a handhold.

It just... stays there for a minute, its tail swinging down in front of their faces. All of them stay as still as statues. Fit doesn’t even hear any of the others breathe.

They all suck in a breath as the dragon suddenly flops onto the portal in front of them. Fit’s heart skips a beat before he realizes the dragon is facing away from them.

It sits on top of the bedrock of the portal, and with it this close, Fit can get a better look at it. It’s got spikes trailing along its spine, leading up to little horns perched on its head. It does appear to be wearing some kind of bandanna around its neck, but it’s facing away, so he still can’t see it well. Fit squints, and then his eyes widen when he sees what’s on the dragon’s back.

Is that a saddle?

He balks. Who in their right fucking mind would ride a dragon? Who would even be insane enough to get close to it in the first place?

The dragon scratches at the bedrock, leaning down to sniff at it. It licks the rock, then tries to bite it, its long, sharp teeth scraping against the stone. It huffs when it doesn’t get anywhere with its attempts, but it keeps gnawing and licking at the rock anyway like a horse with a salt block.

Someone behind him shifts, and Fit hears the faint clink of armor. His breath catches in his lungs.

The dragon’s ears twitch. It begins to turn towards them.

An ear-splitting taxicab whistle echoes through the air, all the way from the other end of the chasm. The dragon perks up, turning away just before it can see them.

It spreads its wings, and Fit nearly gasps at how beautiful they are. They’re a gorgeous rich emerald green, dappled with a shimmering yellow scales, like sunlight shining through the leaves on a tree.

It launches into the air, letting out a screech as it flies towards wherever the whistling sound came from. It disappears from view.

All six of them let out a breath at the same time. “Holy shit,” one of them says, bending down to rest their hands on their knees. “I thought we were dead.”

One of them smacks another upside the head. “Fucking dumbass, you almost got us eaten.”

“Sorry, sorry!”

Walmart runs a hand down his face, staring out at the bedrock where the dragon had perched. “What the fuck, man,” he whispers.

“It had a saddle,” Fit mutters.

Walmart nods. “Yeah. Yeah, it did. Holy shit.”

“That whistle,” Fit mumbles. “Someone out there whistled, and it flew away. It’s trained.”

“That’s insane. That’s literally impossible.”

Fit knows it’s insane. The idea sounds absurd—no one’s ever trained a dragon in recorded history. Captured them, maybe, but never trained.

But that’s what seems to be the truth, regardless of how wild it may be.

“It’s not feral,” Fit whispers. “It’s got someone, a rider. That’s why it tried to carry you away. Whoever its rider is wants you. It wants the Gatekeepers.”

“To steal our armor, probably.”

“Most likely.”

Walmart heaves a sigh. “We’re gonna have to go out in different armor if we wanna stay safe. What the fuck, man.”

“Can I keep this armor for a bit?” Fit asks.

Walmart raises a brow. “You want it to come after you?”

Fit shrugs. Maybe if he can meet the dragon’s rider, he can get more information. He needs to record this, write it down. It’s insane. This is something that belongs in the history books.

Walmart sees the look on his face and scoffs. “Your funeral, man.” He nods at the others. “C’mon, let’s go back. We’re not getting this portal, and we’re dead if we stay out here with that fucking thing flying around.”

The Gatekeepers all start making their way back the way they came. Fit glances back at the portal. He steps closer, leaning in to peer at the bedrock where the dragon bit it.

There are little scratches in the surface where its sharp teeth dug into the rock.

He turns and leaves, following the Gatekeepers out of the chasm.

***

“So, the dragon’s real.”

The rose gently sways in the wind as Fit speaks. It’s grown even a considerable amount in the couple days he’s been gone for, more buds branching off from the main stem. It’s turning into a proper rosebush now. He can’t help but smile a little as he takes note of how big it’s gotten.

He’s taken off the eye trim armor. He’s not going to risk being seen by any god damn flying lizards, not here. He’s not putting the rosebush in that kind of danger.

“I saw it. Kinda small for a dragon.” He shakes his head. “Wild, though, that there’s one here at all. It was trained, I think. It had a saddle on and everything. Insane that we’ve got a fucking dragon rider on the server. No one’s ever managed to tame any kind of dragon, at least as far as I know. At least not here. Maybe in other worlds, though.”

He sighs, leaning back on his elbows, staring up at the setting sun. “Whole server probably knows by now. Told the HWU the dragon was real on our way back, and word spreads through ‘em fast. Bet you tomorrow there’ll be a million new rumours, how the Gatekeepers fucking fought it with a team of thirty players and the dragon was fifty feet long and they barely escaped with their lives, or whatever. People are definitely gonna be speculating about the rider, that’s for sure. Gonna start throwing around names, wondering who it is, if it’s someone well known or if it’s someone completely new.”

He glances over at the rose. It almost seems to lean towards him, as if it’s listening.

“I need more information before I make an official broadcast about it,” he says. “The thing seems to be after the eye trim armor for some reason, so I’ve got some from the Gatekeepers to use as bait I guess.” He snorts. “Maybe I should set it up on an armor stand and leave it out as a trap or something.”

He hums, thinking about it. “That’s not actually a terrible idea. Might be safer than wandering around out there myself with it on.”

He adjusts the goggles on top of his head. “You know, I wonder if the eggs would have hatched into dragons eventually. Maybe that’s what happened to Ramon. He hatched and flew away.” He sighs. “Probably wishful thinking, though. I hope that’s what happened.”

He sits up. “I’ll see you another day, yeah?”

The rose doesn’t respond, but the breeze rustles it for a moment, making it sway towards him as he stands up and walks away.

Chapter Text

Rumours start flying immediately.

The day after Fit and Gatekeepers saw the dragon, people will not stop yapping. The universal chat on his comms is going wild, and amidst the slurs and insults being flung around, there are people talking about how they heard the dragon was huge and midnight black and it killed twenty people before it flew away, how there’s more than one dragon actually and they massacred an entire group of people, how it is actually an Ender dragon and it’s already been killed by some particularly strong players and there’s nothing to worry about anymore.

With all the misinformation being passed around, it’ll be hard for Fit to get any real information on the dragon unless he sees it himself.

He places the helmet of the eye trim armor on his head. He’ll go out in the armor, and hopefully, with enough time, he’ll attract the dragon to him.

What he’ll do when it actually shows up, he’s not sure, but he’ll cross that bridge when he gets to it.

***

He finds nothing today.

Or the next day.

Or the next.

Or the next after that.

He heaves a sigh and takes the helmet off back at his main base. Maybe the dragon recognizes Walmart himself and is only after him. Maybe it’s not the armor, it’s the person. That’s the only reason Fit can think of as to why it hasn’t come after him yet.

He tugs on the blue handkerchief around his arm, fiddling with it with his mechanical fingers. He wonders how Pac would go about this. He’d probably figure out some way to track this thing down, as smart as he is—

Was.

As smart as he was.

Fit heaves a sigh and lowers his head.

He’ll try again tomorrow.

***

His wheat farm breaks. Because of course it fucking does.

It’s not a huge problem. He’s got enough stocked up to last him a good few days, and he can raid his other smaller bases for food if he needs to, but he will need to get it up and running again eventually.

He has to take off the armor to fix it, because as pretty as the armor is, it really restricts his movement. That frustrates him. It takes time away from him looking for the dragon, and he wants to find it again before some uppity player finds it in themself to kill it. If he wants to make a broadcast about this thing, time is of the essence.

But he also needs to eat, so unfortunately, dragon hunting will have to wait for a day.

Looking over it, he’s not even sure why it broke. Maybe some of the redstone is old, or the gears in the machines are rusted. He’s going to have to pretty much pull the thing apart to see what the hell is wrong with it, and that’s going to take forever.

He sighs rolling up his sleeves. “Ramon, could you get me a screwdriver, there should be one in—”

His words catch in his throat.

He swallows.

He doesn’t... have help here.

It’s been over a month since he came back. He should be used to being alone by now. He can’t believe he fucking forgot, just for a second.

His eyes sting.

He shakes his head, crouching down to bury his face in his hands. He is not crying here. He can’t. Not outside, not in 2b2t, not here at all, ever.

He takes a deep, shuddering breath. He lifts his head. In one swift movement, he takes the goggles off his head and throws them to the grass.

He’s fine.

He has to be.

He rolls up his sleeves and gets to work.

***

He feels sick when he picks up the goggles.

Part of him debates throwing them away, but he feels worse when he thinks about that. Instead, he puts them back on, perched on his forehead like Ramon used to wear his.

He’s wasted enough time.

He puts the eye trim armor back on. He needs to go out and look for this dragon as soon as possible. He packs up a bunch of supplies and sets out.

He has no set destination in mind, no particular path to take. He’s just going to wander around and see if anything approaches him from the sky. If he gets kidnapped by the dragon, that’s perfect, because then maybe he’ll get to speak to the person who tamed it.

The Overworld is much more treacherous to traverse than the End or the Nether. There are highways, but they’re poorly kept, and they’re mostly made of cobble or even dirt. Most of them aren’t even elevated like the Nether or End highways are. They’re just built directly into the terrain, which is overall griefed to hell and back.

He chooses not to even bother with the highways. Sure, they would make travel a touch easier, since they’ve evened out a little bit of the craters in their way at some points, but he thinks it’ll be much more efficient to just hop from each of his bases, keeping an eye on the sky as he travels.

It’s been a long while since he’s had to traverse 2b2t’s Overworld, and it’s been a while since he’s had to do this shit without a grappling squok. He really took that thing for granted back on Quesadilla Island.

He’d give his right leg for one right now, he thinks as he clambers through a large crater riddled with glass from an End crystal. Even a horse would be helpful, but with the amount of withers idly wandering the server, he’d need a skeleton horse, and that’s too hard to come by. Travelling on foot is, unfortunately, his best option right now.

He doesn’t see a lot of people as he travels. Most people travel through the Nether. Trying to traverse the Overworld on foot is left for only the stupidest adventurers, but Fit has never thought of himself as a genius anyway.

He passes by a few structures, some old griefed bases, some half-built bases with a handful of players bustling around them, some large towering resource farms. Fit gives each of them a wide berth. He’s not eager to be seen and confronted by some random players he doesn’t know the intentions of.

Besides, he’s alone. If he gets surrounded and jumped, he’s fucked.

As he walks, his mind wanders, no matter how hard he tries to focus on just moving forward. He wishes, selfishly, that he had someone here with him, an ally, a friend. He wonders who of his friends from Quesadilla Island would fare best if they were here.

A terrible thought to have, to wish one of them was here in this hellish wasteland, but just for a moment, he allows himself to consider it.

Tubbo was surprisingly resilient in Purgatory. He could probably have half the server under his heel if he tried hard enough. He knows Tubbo has visited 2b2t before, at least once or twice. Maybe if he’s still alive, he might come in and Fit might bump into him. Wishful thinking, but he allows himself to consider the possibility and he feels his chest fill with warmth at the thought.

Fit first met Phil here on 2b2t. Phil’s been here multiple times, and despite the fact that his wings no longer work, he would at least be a great travelling partner. The stories he used to tell Fit when they would traverse the wasteland side by side almost made Fit forget he was living in an actual hellscape.

Mike would probably thrive here, honestly. He’s a mad scientist. He could put together the kinds of resource farms that would have Hausemaster busting down his door.

Who else? Cellbit would surely fit in well here, just for the cannibalism alone. Bagi’s resilient enough, and plenty smart, just like her brother. Roier was insane in Purgatory, and with Cellbit by his side, he’d probably thrive. Bad could probably be king of the entire server if he really applied himself, but Fit thinks he’d be too busy scolding people for their language to get much done. Etoiles would survive for sure, and probably cement himself as a legend within no time; Fit doesn’t think 2b2t would be ready for The French Beast.

Pac crosses his mind and his heart clenches in his chest. He doesn’t want to think of Pac being here, stuck in this war ridden wasteland, but he has to admit, Pac would do well here. His combat skills are better than Fit’s, and he could outsmart or outplay just about anyone who tried to get the jump on him.

Despite himself, a smile tugs at his lips as he thinks about what Pac would be doing if he were here with Fit. He’d probably be walking right next to him, making observations about all the structures that pop up around them, jokingly threatening to hang any player who even so much as looks in their general direction. Maybe he’d hold Fit’s hand as they walked despite the danger of being seen together, and even though Fit knows what could happen to them if anyone saw, he wouldn’t pull away.

If Pac wanted to take his hand, even here, he’d let him.

His fingers twitch, as though itching for something to hold. He wraps his hand around the handle of his sword at his belt to keep them still.

His thoughts wander to the eggs. Sunny would hate it here; too gross and dirty, barely anything pretty and shiny to keep for herself, but Fit is certain Tubbo would find something shiny for her to have as a present. Richas, quite honestly, would probably have a blast in the chaos here, but Pac would be working overtime to keep him from getting himself killed.

And Ramon... well, he’d probably make a killing making and repairing redstone machines and farms for people. He’d probably have a small empire in no time. And of course he’d have no trouble with griefing. Fit taught him well in that aspect.

He keeps walking, his mind wandering with thoughts of his family, and he’s so lost in his own head, he doesn’t even register when the breeze begins to smell of ash and the air is filled with faint sounds of yelling.

That is, until something explodes.

He jumps, skittering back, snapped out of his thoughts. In the near distance, maybe a hundred metres away, a large cloud of ash and fire explodes from the ground. He’s nowhere near close enough to even feel the heat of it, but the sudden flash of the fire stings his eyes regardless.

Glancing around to get his bearings, he takes in the scene. Right around where the explosion happened is a small crowd of people, locked in combat, shouting and screaming, some scrambling away from the explosion site, others throwing their opponents into the rapidly dwindling fire. There are other smaller groups closer to Fit, broken away from the main battle to fight one on one or even two or three on one. He takes a deep breath and the air stinks of gunpowder and blood.

He's wandered right into a battle.

He begins backing away. He hasn’t even gotten close to any of the fighting, so hopefully if he leaves quickly, he should be able to avoid getting caught up in whatever conflict this is. People fight and kill each other all the time over random shit here, and he doesn’t need to be part of it.

He turns and starts running. Unfortunately, someone apparently assumes he was already part of the conflict and is running away from it, because he hears rapid footsteps approaching behind him and curses in his head.

He draws his sword and whirls around just in time to catch the blade of an axe on the hilt of his weapon. The person in front of him looks feral, pupils barely even visible in their eyes, blood coating the entire front half of their body, burns all over their arms.

They wrench their axe off his sword and swing for his legs. He summons his shield to his offhand and blocks it just in time, the force of the swing making him stumble back a little.

His attacker snarls like a rabid animal and swings their axe at him over and over, uncoordinated and wild. He has no trouble blocking the hits, as frantic and poorly aimed as they are, but they just keep coming, swinging at him over and over, and if he doesn’t do something to stop them, they may just overpower him.

With guilt and regret already settling in his gut like a stone, he sidesteps their next swing, and as they stumble past him from the momentum, he slashes his sword down at their neck.

He doesn’t look, just hears the thud of their body hitting the ground, and the second smaller thud as their head follows half a second after.

They’ll be back, probably. 2b2t doesn’t let people die so easily, not unless they choose to let themselves go, or unless Hause shuts off the respawn mechanics at random, like he’s done multiple times before just to fuck with people.

But when they do come back, that person will have trouble using their body for a while when they respawn, and there will certainly be a scar around their neck that won’t fade for years.

He hops over their body and starts running, but he skids to a stop when he sees another group of people that managed to circle around behind him. They’re not looking at him, too busy stabbing a single body over and over, as if to make sure they’re dead. But then the small group looks up, their gazes immediately latching onto Fit, and there’s a wildness in their eyes that makes his blood run cold.

Either he tries to run past these guys, or he runs toward the larger battle where the explosion happened.

In a possibly stupid decision, he chooses the latter. He turns and books it, armor clanking as he runs towards the column of smoke that’s clouding the sky. If he disappears into the larger crowd, maybe he can get out the other side somehow. Either way, he’d rather take his chances getting lost in the battle and smoke than take on four or so people at once.

He ducks into the crowd, and he’s suddenly very grateful for his borrowed armor, because he feels a sword hit his back. It barely even knocks the wind out of him, just clanging against the back of his chestplate and maybe leaving a small scratch on the Netherite at worst.

He ducks around people, dodging swinging blades and flying arrows as best he can. He’s nicked on his arm by a blade that clearly has fire aspect on it, because it burns when it makes contact with his skin. An arrow hits him in the shoulder where his armor doesn’t quite cover it, and he hisses, but he reaches back and snaps the shaft off so it doesn’t get caught on anything while he’s running. He skirts around the small crater where the explosion happened and spots a good handful of bodies in it, all of them either burned to shit or blown to pieces. He shoves past someone getting bashed with a shield, and he’s almost out the other side, hoping that no one will chase him through—

Someone crashes into him and he goes down hard, his back hitting the dirt. Multiple people trample over him, stepping directly on his chest, and if he wasn’t wearing this armor, it likely would have caved in and killed him. Someone tries to wrestle his sword from his hands, assuming he’s dead, and he flails his arm out to punch them away with his metal fist. He tries to grab someone nearby to pull himself upright, but someone steps on his leg, then someone else on his stomach, another foot landing halfway on his throat and making him gasp for air, the treads of the boot digging into his skin.

He's being trampled alive, and if he doesn’t move soon, he’s going to get crushed to death.

Someone steps directly on his head, and he silently thanks Walmart for the armor. He’d be dead without it by now. He may die regardless, he thinks as someone kicks him directly in the ribs with steel-toed boots, but if he can just get upright again, he might have a chance—

A deafening reptilian screech breaks the air.

The people all around him go silent almost immediately, everyone turning their heads up to look at the sky. Fit blinks furiously, trying to focus.

Far above them, blurry and half concealed by the smoke billowing into the air, is a shape flying through the sky, with two large wings and a long tail.

It screeches again, and the chaos resumes, but worse.

“DRAGON!”

People being running, many screaming, others crying, and Fit squeezes his eyes shut and curls himself into a ball, trying to make himself as small as possible, as feet trample over him. Someone steps on his ankle, another on his knee, and all he can do is try to make sure he doesn’t get stepped on hard enough to let his chest cave in.

The crowd disperses enough that he can finally scramble upright. Every muscle hurts, nearly every single one having been stepped on or kicked, but still, he stumbles through the throng of people, pushing past them, trying his best to run after the dragon as it flies away.

“Hey!” he yells after it, but the sounds of people screaming drowns out his voice, and when he tries to shout again, he get a lungful of smoke and his words devolve into a fit of coughing.

He struggles to run, limping along, and he knows his ankle is probably broken, but he forges on ahead regardless. He tries to shout, but all that comes out is a wheeze.

Everyone who had been engaged in battle have dispersed by now, the fight started and finished all too quick, people running off in different directions.

He tries to keep running, but his foot lands on an uneven dip in the ground and pain shoots up his leg. He goes down with a pained hiss, collapsing to his knees. He lifts his head to look up at the sky.

The dragon is flying away, half obscured by the smoke in the air. It lets out another screech as it slowly fades into the distance.

If Fit squints, he swears he can spot a humanoid figure sitting atop the dragon’s back.

***

“I miss you.”

He doesn’t know why he’s saying this to the rosebush. It’s not sentient, it can’t hear him, and it’s not who he wants to say this to.

But the person he’d rather talk to isn’t here, so this is better than nothing.

“There was so much I wish I got to tell you,” he says as he ties a splint to his ankle.

He didn’t have much time to do this right after the dragon flew away—easier to down a healing potion and walk on something that’s healed wrong but doesn’t hurt and then fix it properly later—so he’s doing it now. He had to rebreak the bone, which hurt like a bitch, but better than limping. Any sign of physical weakness can get a person killed here.

“I never got to tell you a lot of things,” he mutters. He has to keep his voice down. No one is around right now, but there could be people nearby, and he can’t risk them finding him just because he’s talking to a plant. “I never told you about the kind of things I’ve done in my past here. You probably know some of them, but there’s so much I never confided in you. You know I’ve eaten human flesh before, right? I feel like that would be a given, considering 2b2t in general, but... you know, I didn’t want to tell you that outright. Thought it might be a sore subject, you know?”

He tightens the bandages wrapped around his ankle and winces. “I never kissed you,” he whispers, maybe too quiet, but he doesn’t want to say it loud enough, just in case someone is eavesdropping. They wouldn’t know what he’s talking about, but he can’t be too cautious.

“I should’ve,” he admits. “I was too nervous. We never did much of anything, you know, and I... I wanted to. I should have, because I know you wanted to. I should have kissed you, and... and done a multitude of other things I was way too fucking nervous for. But you were the first...” He takes a deep breath. “The first real ‘roommate’ I’ve had. You were special, and I—I was scared.”

He looks over at the rosebush. It’s grown an obscene amount since he last saw it, the stems gnarling around each other, sprouting dozens of little buds that bloom into flowers with beautiful red petals.

“I never said I love you,” he whispers. “I’m sorry about that.”

The rosebush doesn’t respond. He almost wishes it could somehow.

He sighs. He presses down on his foot, testing how much weight he can put on it before it hurts. He winces.

“Gonna have to pearl home,” he grumbles. “Or find a horse somehow. I don’t know. Walking is gonna be hard. I’m gonna have to take it easy for a few days.”

He reluctantly stands, summoning an Enderpearl from his inventory. With one last glance at the rosebush, he throws the pearl and teleports away.

Chapter Text

Fit is lucky he’s got a lot of bases in a lot of different areas. Sure, his main base is a bit farther from the rosebush than he’d like, but he’s got another one relatively close that he can rest up at. He’s got food, supplies, and weapons.

He hates being confined to one place for too long. Anyone could find him, groups of scavengers, raiders, even just one particularly determined person with decent gear could fuck him up right now.

Still, it’s better to stay in one place for now while his ankle heals than to go running around looking for dragons.

***

He stays in one base for three days while his ankle fixes itself. He’s got gapples, which help a lot, and his foot is... okay, at least, to walk on within no time at all.

First thing he does when he can walk is find a blacksmith.

He’s been thinking about this for a while, and during his few days alone in one of his bases, he’s had nothing to do but think. He’s got... an idea, but he doesn’t know how to make these things himself, so he’s got to find someone who can.

He’s still wearing the handkerchief around his arm when he ventures out. It’s barely visible under the sleeve of his shirt, so he tugs it down a little more. The thought of someone seeing it terrifies him, but he takes a deep breath and leaves his base with it on anyway.

There are places and people he knows from before he went to Quesadilla Island. He hopes some of them are still around, and he’s got one in mind as he starts walking along the western x-axis highway. It takes a little bit of walking, but he pearls when he gets too tired to walk. Eventually he reaches a certain point on the highway, and then he deviates from the path and starts walking south.

He pauses when he finds it. There’s a large rock on the ground in the middle of nowhere. It’s surrounded by a bunch of smaller stones, and it looks almost inconspicuous, but he knows better.

He leans down and lifts the large rock. Beneath it is a tunnel that leads underground, metal ladder rungs stuck in the dirt.

He clambers down rather clumsily, his armor clanking with every step. He’s wearing his normal diamond armor right now. He doesn’t want to risk losing the eye trim armor to its Curse of Vanishing if he dies because of his ankle.

At the bottom of the ladder is a simple wall of stone. He raises a hand and knocks on it five times in quick succession.

A moment passes. Then he hears the grinding of redstone mechanisms in the walls, and the stone slides into the wall to reveal a doorway.

In the opening stands a muscular woman with buzzed black hair, a welding mask over her face and a blacksmith’s apron draped over her front. On her bicep is a tattoo of a double-sided battle axe. Her posture makes it very clear that she wants to tell him to fuck off, but then she suddenly straightens with a gasp.

“Holy shit, FitMC!” She lifts the welding mask, and she’s beaming under it, her narrow eyes crinkled at the corners with smile lines.

He nods in greeting. “Commander.”

She barks out a laugh and steps aside to let him in. “Fucking asshole, I haven’t been a commander since Team Veteran!”

He steps in, the warmth of the many furnaces lining the vast walls already making him sweat. “Expanded the shop, I see.”

“Shit changes in a year.” She reaches into a furnace bare-handed and pulls out a bar of copper that’s still glowing with heat. “Where you been? I almost started thinking you fucking died.”

“Off server.”

“For a year?” She mimes throwing the bar of copper at his head, and he laughs and ducks just in case she does. Wouldn’t be the first time. “Why didn’t you take me with you, asshole?”

“Didn’t know I’d be going! It was for a job, I had to do it alone and if I took everyone I knew from Team Veteran, I wouldn’t be able to get anything done because I’d be wrangling your sorry asses!”

“Fucker, I’ve had old soldiers coming to me asking where you fucked off to! We got a couple broadcasts, but nothing else.”

“Had to get shit done. Sorry Ember, I’ve had my hands full.” He walks along the lines of furnaces, peering in to see what’s smelting in them, catching glimpses of iron, gold, and copper. “Hey, how’s the wife by the way?”

She does throw the glowing hot copper bar then, and he ducks as it hits the wall. “Still six feet under!” she says, feigning an angry tone, but she laughs at the end of it. “How about you, still chronically single?”

His smile falters. “Ah... well.” He shrugs.

Her face falls, evidently picking up what he’s putting down without him having to say it. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry man.” She snorts. “Maybe you’ll stop joking about my dead basemate now you know how it feels.”

A smile cracks his face again. “Nah, never gonna happen.” He turns to face the other wall and looks over the various weapons and armor pieces that hang from displays. “Was wondering if you could make me something.”

Ember narrows her eyes. “What were you thinking?”

He digs a folded up piece of paper from his inventory and holds it out to her. “I’m not expert artist, but this is kind of the basic concept.”

She takes the paper and unfolds it. When she looks over the contents, she lets out a low whistle. “This’ll take a lot of delicate work, so it’ll be pricey. I don’t usually do jewelry. You’re lucky I still like you enough to give you the Team Veteran discount.”

“Yeah, I figured it would cost a bit.”

“Thought your basemate was dead.”

“He is, but this is more symbolic, I guess. It would be nice, you know? Neither of us were kind of the type for major commitment, but it’s the intent that counts.”

She nods slowly, still looking over the paper. “It’ll take a couple weeks, but I can do it. But I need payment up front.”

He opens his inventory. “Yeah, I know, I know. How much?”

***

Rumours about the dragon and its alleged rider keep running wild around the server. He hears outrageous things about an army of dragons, each with a rider that kills anyone in their vicinity without mercy, or a giant dragon the size of the Valley of Wheat that eats people, or an entire family of End dragons that broke into the Overworld somehow.

Fit scoffs at all of them. He’s seen the dragon, and caught a very small glimpse of its singular rider. None of them are true.

What he does hear, however, are common rumours of two dragons, and judging by the amount that he’d heard this, it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

“Has anyone seen the second one?” he asks a highway worker as they repair a small chunk of the Nether highway.

They shrug. “I haven’t, but my buddy says he did.”

“What did it look like?”

“He said it looked grey, or maybe white, he couldn’t tell because it was so fast, but it had, like, some kinda brown fur all along its spine. That’s all he saw before it flew away.”

“Where was it?”

“Way up to the north. Hasn’t been seen there since as far as I know.”

“Did it have a saddle on it, or a rider, anything?”

“He didn’t mention anything about that, no.”

Fit nods slowly. “Alright. Thank you.”

***

He potentially has two dragons to track down now.

He wonders if this alleged second dragon has anything to do with the first. Is there a way he can find either of them that doesn’t involve wandering outside like an idiot in his eye trim armor? He’s not sure.

Fit stops by the Gatekeepers base at some point to ask if Walmart’s seen anything, messaging him first of course to make sure the entire cult doesn’t panic at someone showing up unannounced.

He steps through the Nether portal and sees Walmart sitting at his usual seat at the far end of the dining table, his helmet off and his head in his hands. Other Gatekeepers sit at the table, bandaging wounds and downing potions, while others bustle about carrying weapons and armor.

Walmart looks up as Fit steps through the portal. “Great timing,” he mutters. “We just got back. I was just about to message you before you contacted me.”

“Where’d you come back from?” Fit slides into one of the seats, pressing the button on his arm to start recording. The Gatekeepers look like they’re in terrible shape, and Fit should feel bad about feeling excited about what the potentially ran into, but the historian in him is eager to hear what happened to them.

“We were just in the Nether. We didn’t think that fucking thing could follow us there so we were in our armor, but apparently the fucking—the dragons have access to the Nether.”

Fit leans forward. “Dragons? Plural?”

“Yeah. Yeah, there are two.” Walmart runs a hand through his hair and then puts his head down on the table. “They got one of us.” His voice is slightly muffled, speaking directly at the table with his head in his arms.

“It killed one of you?”

“No.” Walmart lifts his head to shake it. “Kidnapped. As far as I know, at least. I didn’t see what happened after it grabbed our best healer and dragged her away. They could have eaten her for all I know.”

Fit drums his fingers on the table as he takes in that information. “You think it’ll leave you alone now that it has one of you?”

Walmart spreads his hands helplessly. “I don’t know. But it has a rider. They were on the dragon we first saw, the green one.”

“What did they look like?”

“I didn’t get a good look at them. I don’t know.”

“I did,” another Gatekeeper pipes up as she walks by carrying an axe with a broke handle. “Here, hang on, I’ve got a video.”

Fit lights up. “You recorded it?”

“On my comm, yeah. The quality is shit, and I’m not the best cameraman, but here.” She takes her comm from her pocket and presses a few buttons, then slides it across the table to Fit. “Take a look.”

Fit peers down at the screen. The video quality is absolute garbage, and the camera won’t stop moving, but he takes in the sight of the Nether and its obsidian highway, multiple people in Netherite eye trim armor, and clinging to a large stalactite hanging from the Nether roof is a green reptilian figure. It looks bigger than when Fit last saw it in person, the size of a large horse, and its dappled wings flap as it roars at the Gatekeepers yelling and shooting arrows in its direction.

On the dragon’s back, feet hooked in the stirrups of the saddle, body bent over to keep their balance, is a person. Their entire form is hidden by a black cloak, and Fit swears he can see a set of red horns curling out of their head.

They let go of the saddle to draw a bow, and Fit’s eyes widen. It’s still hard to see, but the bow itself is pitch black, and it glows with a red light as they draw the bowstring back and fire.

There’s a flash of red and a burst of noise through the shitty speakers. The person holding the camera is running now, the camera swinging wildly, muttering little curses under breath which are then obscured by a loud reptilian screech. They turn, and instead of seeing the green dragon on screen, there’s a white one.

It looks different than the other one, with a thin, almost snakelike body. A line of brown fur trails down its spine between its large white wings, and it’s got two curled brown whiskers on its snout, almost like a mustache. Its wings are snow white, blinding in the otherwise dim light of the Nether.

The dragon lunges forward and grabs someone in its mouth by the straps of their armor. The person yells, thrashing around in a panic, but the dragon doesn’t let her go. It turns around, spreading those large, bright white wings, and it takes off into the hot, arid air of the Nether. The green one zips after it, its rider clinging to the saddle to avoid falling off.

The Gatekeeper reaches over and takes her comm again. “I’ve never seen a bow like that before,” she says. “Not even with hacks.”

Fit nods slowly. “That’s... yeah. Holy shit. I’ve never seen anything like that.” Not even on Quesadilla Island has he ever seen a weapon like that. Well, maybe he’s seen something similar? He can’t remember. It’s been at least a month since he’s been there.

“Someone needs to take those things down,” Walmart mutters. “Or we’re fucked.”

“You think maybe it’s someone Hause let on the server?” Fit asks. He doesn’t really think that’s the case, but he’s spitballing here.

“I don’t know. I don’t know who could have a bow like that without having some kind of magic we’ve never seen. This is—this is fucked up. We’re fucked. We’re dead. We can never go out with this armor again, and I’m probably going to have to change my name or something so they can’t find me.”

“Maybe,” Fit muses. He stands. “Thanks for the info.”

Walmart stands with him. “Dude, I know you want to learn more about those things, but I’m serious. Don’t go looking for them. They’ll tear you apart.”

Fit has no intention of leaving these dragons alone. Not if he can get some information for a good broadcast.

Regardless, he nods. “I promise,” he lies, and then he leaves the Gatekeepers to lick their wounds.

***

“There’s more than one,” Fit says when he sets down next to the rosebush later that same day. “Dragon, I mean.”

The rosebush doesn’t respond, because of course it can’t, but Fit doesn’t mind. It’s grown even more since he’s last seen it, vines sprouting from its roots and digging into the ground, stems curling upward with rosebuds blooming and reaching for the sky. It looks like it’s trying to expand to grow all over the little outcrop of land it’s perched on. If Fit looks over the side, he can see the roots poking out from the dirt, thicker and stronger than any roots he’s seen on any rosebush before.

He has no idea how it’s managed to grow like this. Part of him wonders if he somehow managed to plant some kind of magic super-growing rose, but that’s insane. It’s probably just some weird phenomenon that happens to plants sometimes. It’s not like he knows much about flowers and how they grow. Flowers aren’t exactly common here in the wasteland.

“I’m trying to look for them myself, but they’re kinda hard to find. The Gatekeepers keep running into ‘em, but I’ve only seen one of the dragons in person once.” He sighs. “I guess they can’t be everywhere at once. And neither can I. I think they must be looking for the Gatekeepers specifically. Hopefully the dragon rider will stop bothering them now that they got one of the Gatekeepers, you know?”

He reaches out and runs a finger along one of the vines sprouting from the rosebush. There are thorns trailing all along the length of it, still somewhat soft as they’re just growing, but he knows soon they’ll be sharp and pointy.

“I, um...” He clears his throat, suddenly oddly nervous, as if he’s speaking to a person rather than a plant. “I’ll have a surprise for you. Just a little gift I’ve got someone working on. It’ll be our six month anniversary in a few weeks, so I wanted to have something for you.” He furrows his brow. “At least I think it is. Time is hard to keep track of here.”

He takes a deep breath. “I should get going. I’ve got dragons to track down.”

He stands up and walks away, leaving the rosebush alone in the sunset.

Chapter Text

IHackedWalmart whispered to you: hey fit
IHackedWalmart whispered to you: come to the base
IHackedWalmart whispered to you: it’s important
You whispered to IHackedWalmart: is it about the dragons?
IHackedWalmart whispered to you: yeah
IHackedWalmart whispered to you: we learned more about the dragon rider
IHackedWalmart whispered to you: get over here quick

Fit stares down at his comm, eyes wide. Information about the dragons and the rider? If they’ve seen the guy’s face, or know their name, or anything, that would be insanely useful for his broadcast.

He’s so eager to get there he doesn’t even may much mind to how it’s the middle of the night, and sure, 2b2t never sleeps, but it’s still an odd time to be called out for a meeting—but who cares, they have information, and he’s starving for it.

He runs out of the base he’s staying in—it’s a small thing, little more than a hole in the ground, but it’s better than being out in the open—and he runs to the nearest Nether portal. He checks his inventory as he traverses the Nether highways, making sure he’s got supplies and weapons just in case he needs them, but the Gatekeepers have been kind to him so far. He has no reason to be wary except on the trip to their base.

It doesn’t take him long to reach the portal in the Nether that will take him to their base. He steps through, nearly giddy with excitement.

“Hey, I got your...” Fit trails off as he enters the base. It’s darker than usual in here, which he’d normally pay no mind to as it’s the middle of the night, but something feels... off.

He hears the glass-like sound of a portal shattering, and whirls around to see the Nether portal break behind him. A Gatekeeper stands there, their sword drove through the obsidian where the portal once glowed. He can’t see their face under their helmet.

Fit takes a step back, the hair on his arms standing on end. He turns around, scanning the entire room. Gatekeepers fill the room, each of them holding a weapon. Sitting at the end of the dining table taking up most of the room is Walmart. His hands are folded on the tabletop, his helmet obscuring half his face in the shadowy room.

“What is this?” Fit asks, keeping his voice as level as he can. Adrenaline begins to thrum through his veins, gearing up for a fight.

“The dragon brought our healer back,” Walmart responds. His voice is flat, but there’s a slight tinge of anger in it. “Dropped her off somewhere in the wasteland, alive and unharmed.”

“That’s good.” Fit glances around the room, watching, waiting for one of the Gatekeepers to attack.

“The dragon rider left her with a message.” Walmart stands, summoning a sword from his inventory. “They were only after us because we were on your broadcast.”

Fit bristles. “You knew the risks of being in a broadcast, this isn’t my—”

“They weren’t looking for us for our armor,” Walmart snaps. “They didn’t give a shit about the eye trim.” He lifts his sword and points it at Fit across the room. “They only wanted to find us because they wanted to find you.”

Fit’s stomach drops. He draws his own sword, summoning his shield to his offhand. “What, are you going to knock me out and bring me to them? You don’t seem the type to do someone’s dirty work for them.”

“Nah. Lucky for you, they specifically asked for you unharmed. Can’t fathom why, but they said they’d stop terrorizing us if they got their hands on you. And on top of that, they had a pretty decent sum of valuables they promised us a cut of.” Walmart summons his own shield. “There’s a bounty on your head, Fit. And if you don’t come with us, the whole server’s gonna know about it by tomorrow.”

Fuck.

Fit takes a deep breath. He glances around at the sheer amount of people in the room. There’s no way he could fight through all of them.

Steeling his nerves, he puts his weapons away and holds up his hands. “Alright. Take me.”

Walmart visibly jolts, surprised by his surrender, but he regains his composure quick and puts away his own weapons. “Grab him and relight the portal,” he commands to his followers.

Two Gatekeepers approach Fit from the sides and grab him by the arms. One of them presses a sword against his neck as another Gatekeeper relights the Nether portal.

He forcibly tries to relax as he’s led through the portal. Part of him thinks he should pull away, try to get through the portal a second quicker than his captors and be able to run, but he tamps down the instinct. He keeps himself still, obediently following along when he’s ushered to the portal.

As soon as he steps onto the obsidian highway in the hot air of the Nether, he wrenches his arm out of the Gatekeeper’s grip and ducks down as the blade that was against his neck immediately jolts forward, trying to decapitate him the moment he moves. He reaches into his inventory and grabs a chorus fruit, taking a large bite.

“Shit!” a Gatekeeper yells. They grab his arm and slam it against the floor, making him drop the fruit, but he swallows the bite too fast to really taste it, and then he teleports from their grasp.

Luckily, he doesn’t appear over the edge of the highway and plummet into the lava, instead reappearing a little further down the highway, but he has no time to thank his fortune. He scrambles to right himself and breaks into a sprint down the highway, unsure where he’s even going, but it doesn’t matter as long as it’s away.

“Get him!” he hears Walmart’s voice shout, and the sound of footsteps and clanking armor following follow close behind him.

Fit opens his inventory as he runs, scanning it for anything that may help aside from another chorus fruit that will only serve to either confuse both him and them at best, and teleport him right into their midst or right over the lava at worst. He has armor, sure, but he can’t fight them, and it’s not good enough to survive if he finds himself falling.

He spots a bottle full of orange liquid in the corner of his inventory, something he packs every time he enters the Nether, just in case. He thanks his past self for the foresight and grabs the fire resistance potion, uncorking it with his teeth.

Fit lifts the potion to his mouth and downs it in one go. He nearly chokes on it in his haste, but he swallows the burning liquid and tosses the bottle aside.

“He’s gonna jump!” one of the Gatekeepers yells as he veers toward the edge of the highway. A crossbow bolt whizzes past his face, someone in the cult evidently forgetting that the dragon rider asked for him unharmed in their panic, but it doesn’t even graze him. He hops onto the edge and leaps for the lava.

He chokes when a hand grabs his cape. He stops falling and swings down over the edge, crashing into the side of the obsidian bridge. Multiple hands starts grabbing at him, trying to pull him back up.

In a panic, he draws his sword and swings upward. Blood splatters as he makes contact with something, and he hears a scream, and then he’s falling alongside someone’s dismembered hand, his sword coated in a thin layer of red.

He plummets downwards. Withers roaming the lava look up as he falls, many of them screeching in excitement at the sight of a new target. Fit curls himself up into a ball, making himself as small as possible as he falls, wither skulls flying past him. One of them hits his mechanical arm, and he barely has to the time to register the mechanics withering, creaking, breaking down, before he’s in the lava.

Swimming in lava is always a strange sensation. It tingles against his skin like pins and needles, a warmth that feels so close to burning, like he’s dunking his entire body in water that’s just a little too hot to bear. He bears it regardless, kicking his legs and paddling with his arms as best he can, swimming blindly in the molten lava.

His lungs begin to strain from the lack of air, and he’s not sure how long it’s been, the adrenaline fueling him as he swims, but finally he forces himself up for air. He gulps down lungfuls of hot Nether air, and he just barely manages to catch his breath before a nearby wither turns to face him, and he’s forced to dive back down again.

He has no idea if the Gatekeepers are chasing him. Their armor shouldn’t have fire resistance—at least the set they gave him didn’t—but he doesn’t know what they all have. They could be swimming after him, surviving just with gapples and potions, or they could be trying to bridge out to him, waiting to catch him when he tries to come back up. He doesn’t know, but he keeps swimming, keeps paddling through the lava, occasionally breaking the surface for air, because it’s all he can do.

He breaks the surface for the sixth—seventh? eighth? he’s not sure—time, and takes one extra second to look around for withers. He appears to have ended up in a mostly wither-free area; the closest one in sight is a decent ways away, not close enough to latch onto him as a target, and nearby is a small outcrop of Netherrack.

He swims over to it and drags himself onto land, breathing heavily. He glances behind him. He can’t even see the highway anymore, and there doesn’t appear to be anyone chasing him.

He sifts through his inventory. He has blocks to build up with, but the highways will be dangerous now.

He’ll have to risk it.

His mechanical arm drags behind him like dead weight as he slowly places blocks and hops between them, steadily making his way up. Once he’s up high enough to be out of danger of being spotted by withers, he heaves a great sigh and starts looking around for nearby Nether highways he can get to. If he just steal some obsidian and make a portal and not risk walking along the highways themselves, that would be perfect.

Before he tries looking though, he just. Stops. Takes another breath. Crouches down on the shitty tower he’s built in the middle of the Nether and buries his face in his one working hand.

He thought Walmart and his little group could be decent allies. He nearly found himself trusting them.

Rookie fucking mistake.

He inhales deeply, then exhales. He stands up.

The trek home will be arduous and annoying. But he’ll fucking do it.

There’s nothing else for him to do.

***

He doesn’t leave his base for days after that.

He does, however, check the global chat, and Walmart has definitely made good on that threat of telling the whole server. There are people sending messages directly to Fit, demanding he show his face, people coordinating bounty hunting parties to come find him, people theorizing on why this person wants him—to use him for clout and fame, to humiliate him, kill him, torture him, do any manner of other horrible things that make him grimace when he reads over the theories.

None of it is good. But he’s seen people discussing the bounty, and apparently the price on his head is a metric fuckton of resources and treasure. Weapons, armor, potions, enchanted golden apples, diamonds and Netherite and piles and piles of gold. Where any one person could have gotten all of that, he has no idea. He’s ninety-nine percent sure the dragon rider is bullshitting people and lying about the amount of prizes they have in exchange for Fit, but no one else seems to catch onto that possibility.

Apparently the dragon rider, ever since releasing the bounty, has been terrorizing other people too. Not killing them, but chasing them down, roughing them up, and Fit sees multiple people talking about the dark red glowing horns, a cloak that seems to be made of pure darkness, and not two but four red eyes under the hood.

Something that he’s seen people mention in passing, something that fucking hurts to read about, is that the dragon rider, every single time they’ve demanded to have Fit handed to them, has pronounced his name as “Fitch.”

So the dragon rider is probably from Brazil, or at least speaks Portuguese as their first language.  

That’s...

...

fine.

That’s literally fine, it’s just a language, plenty of people speak Portuguese, literally millions of fucking people are from Brazil, it’s not a unique thing. It’s a coincidence. A really fucking stupid coincidence that makes him want to cry when he thinks of Pac and Mike and Richas and all his other Brazilian friends, but still.

But it does feel like a slap in the face to see people making fun of the rider’s accent in global chat, making fun of the way Pac used to say his name.

But. All that aside.

He spends most of those few days in his base trying to fix his arm. The wither broke down most of the inner mechanisms, and he doesn’t have the resources to replace most of it. Not to mention his redstone skills are absolutely abysmal.

He’ll need to go out and get replacements for the parts, and most definitely bribe someone into fixing the entire arm for him.

But doing that safely will be next to impossible. There’s a bounty on his head now. If he had any allies left before this, it’s unlikely they’ll have stayed loyal.

He reaches up and completely removes his arm, the mechanisms that keep it on him releasing with a pneumatic hiss. He’s lucky that part still works so he can take it off, because otherwise he’d be stuck lugging it around while it doesn’t even work.

He sets his arm down on a nearby crafting table and collapses on his bed. He heaves a world weary sigh.

More than ever, he wishes someone was here with him. An ally, a friend, family.

Anyone.

Anyone at all.

***

“I probably won’t be out here much anymore.”

He glances next to him at the rosebush. Terrible idea to risk coming out here to see it, he knows. He can’t wear the eye trim armor, because that’s too recognizable, but he can’t go out with nothing, so he settled for a diamond chestplate to cover up his shirt, turning his cape inside-out and using it as a scarf to cover the lower half of his face, and wearing a simple unenchanted diamond helmet to cover his head. He’s sure he’s got a cloak with a hood in one of his bases he can use, but he’ll have to go looking for it.

He puts his arm back on too. Better to pretend he has two working ones than to blatantly go out missing an entire limb. He covers it with a gauntlet in the hopes that it’ll hide most of the mechanical parts and make it look like armor.

The rosebush looks good. It’s growing more than he thought possible, vines digging into the soil, rosebuds blooming all along them, like it’s trying to cover its entire outcrop of land with sweet smelling flowers. Each one is a bright beautiful red. Despite his circumstances, he can’t help but smile as he lays eyes on it.

“There’s a bounty on my head now,” he says, and he keeps his voice quiet. There’s no one around to hear him as far as he knows, but he can never be too cautious. “It’s dangerous for me to even be out here right now. But... I don’t know, I wanted to see you.”

He looks out over the server, the towers of cobblestone, the lava, the destruction. It’s a miracle that this little area of land has stayed free of griefing. It must just be some uncommon stroke of good fortune for him.

“I’ll try to come out again soon, though. It’s supposed to be... our sixth month anniversary in about a week. I don’t know, I... I thought maybe I should... celebrate it somehow. Even though everything has gone to shit.”

He shifts, ready to leave, but then he pauses. He stares out at the sunset.

It couldn’t hurt to stay... maybe a few minutes longer.

He leans back on his elbows, the wind blowing the towering bush of roses so it almost seems to be leaning into him, and he gazes at the setting sun.

Chapter Text

Making his way to Ember’s again is a risk he really shouldn’t be taking.

For one, he could be seen and recognized by anyone he potentially sees along the way, and two, everyone has heard of the bounty at this point, thanks to the fucking Gatekeepers. Ember, for all her loyalty, may have decided that she’ll turn him in if he shows his face again.

But he’s willing to take that risk.

He manages to find a skeleton horse wandering the wild—it’s already got a saddle, so he’s probably stealing it from someone, but he doesn’t care—and he clambers onto its back, his armor covering most of his most recognizable features. He found a cloak somewhere in one of his bases, which is a godsend. He needs a hood over his face. Using his cape as a scarf just won’t work long term.

He rides across the Overworld, and although the highways would be the easiest way to travel, he avoids them. He needs to stay out of the public eye, and even though the Overworld highways are not nearly as used as the Nether highways, he’s not going to take that chance. He’s already risking it just by being outside.

He keeps his head low as he rides, growing closer and closer to his destination. When he finally reaches it, he hops off the horse and drops the reins. It would be too suspicious to keep it tied here. He’s not risking exposing Ember like that.

Besides, he’s only got one working arm. Too much effort to try tying the thing.

He lifts the rock that leads down to her forge and clambers down the ladder. He knocks on the door five times.

He hears footsteps, and then the door opens. Ember looks at him, brow furrowed. “Who are you?”

He tugs his scarf down. “I need help,” he says.

Ember’s eyes widen for a moment. “You’re not staying here.”

“That’s not what I’m asking.”

“Can you be in and out within an hour?”

“I’ll definitely try.”

She swallows. She peers out her door and up at the rock that covers her hideout. “Okay, fine.”

She turns and walks into her base. Fit follows her, shutting the door behind him. He tugs the scarf over his face again, just to be safe.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve coming here,” she says, approaching one of her furnaces.

“I know. I’m not trying to put you in danger.”

“Well, you are.” She sticks her hand into an unlit furnace, fire blazing to life along her fingers, and when she takes her hand away, the coal in the furnace is burning. She takes a handful of raw copper from the pocket of her apron and shoves it into the top of the furnace. “What did you need?”

“Just here to ask if what you made for me is ready.”

Her gaze softens. “Yeah. Here, lemme grab it.”

She turns and walks towards one of her chests and starts digging through it. She comes back up with something in her hand. She holds it out to him.

He takes it and stows it away in his pocket. His inventory would be too dangerous. If he kept it in there, it would be left with the rest of his belongings if he dies and has to respawn for any reason.

“Thank you,” he says.

She gives him a small smile. “Yeah, no problem. That all you needed?”

He hesitates. “Actually... my arm got busted. Do you have any spare parts? I can try to fix it on my own—”

“Lemme see,” she interrupts with a sigh. She reaches out and takes his left arm, untying the gauntlet around it and letting the armor fall to the ground. She looks over it, turning it in her hands. “Wither?”

“Yeah.”

She huffs. “Always fuckin’ getting yourself into trouble,” she mutters. She nods at her crafting table. “C’mere.”

He follows her and sits on the floor next to the crafting table, his arm resting on its surface. She takes out a bunch of small, delicate tools and starts unscrewing a panel on his arm. She hums as she looks over the withered broken parts inside.

“Shouldn’t be too hard,” she mutters mostly to herself as she fiddles with the inner mechanisms of his arm. “Just have to replace some basic redstone stuff. Won’t be perfect.”

“I’m not lookin’ for perfect, just functional.”

“That, I can do.” She opens a chest and pulls out a pouch of redstone, plus a bunch of small parts and mechanisms he couldn’t name even if he tried.

“Thanks for this,” he says quietly while she works.

She shrugs. “You’re fucking lucky I’m not throwing you to the dogs right now, Fit. For that bounty, I considered it.”

“For that much, just about anyone would.”

“I’m stupid for not doing it. I wouldn’t have to worry about anything else ever again if I had that.” She sticks a pair of pliers in his arm and yanks out a withered piece of metal. “Only reason I’m not is because whoever turns you in is sure to end up famous across the server, and I don’t want that spotlight on my head.”

“And you care about me.”

She snorts, a grin twitching across her face. “You wish. I’d sell you to Satan for one corn chip.”

He smiles a little, and the tension in the room dissolves. She’s not turning him in, at least not now. She’ll let him go this time. He’s not sure if that will hold up if he shows his face here again, but for now, he’s safe.

They’re quiet as she fixes his arm. She grumbles about the broken parts, how much she’s wasting in her own resources just to fix up his arm, but he knows it’s less a direct annoyance at him and more the situation he’s in. If she’s found with a wanted man in her base, someone can and will come after her too.

He lets his mind wander as her fingers poke around in his arm. Mostly just wondering who the dragon rider could be, why they want him so bad, how he can find them himself without managing to get captured for some bounty, but he’s interrupted in his thoughts when Ember speaks up.

“So, your basemate,” she says, one of her fingers glowing with heat as she uses it to solder a wire to a circuit in his arm. “Mind telling me about him?”

His heart aches just at the thought of Pac, his bright wide smile, his kindness, his openness, his determination... all things that only exist now in Fit’s memory. A lump forms in his throat. He swallows it back and coughs into his fist.

“Yeah, yeah. Sure.”

He spends the rest of his time there talking about Pac and the things they’ve done together, dungeons they’ve explored together, just... idly talking about little things. He doesn’t mention Ramon; Ember might have an aneurysm if she finds out he’s a father. But still, he enjoys telling her about Pac, having kept his mouth shut about him for the past month at least.

It's nice, being able to talk about his time away from 2b2t at least for a little bit.

He’s not even sure if she listens, too focused on messing with his arm to say much of anything in response as he speaks. Regardless, he tells her anyway, talking about Pac’s determination, his tendency to threaten hanging upon people who do much as mildly annoy him, the jokes he told and pranks he pulled.

He’s interrupted mid sentence when Ember suddenly shuts the panel on his arm. “Okay. Should be good to go now.”

Fit tries to flex his metal fingers. To his relief, it works, his fingers curling and relaxing when he tells them to.

“Thanks,” he says. “What do I owe you?”

She waves a hand. “Don’t worry about it. Just get out of here. I’m not putting myself at risk any longer with you being here.”

He nods, scrambling to his feet. “Thank you so much. For everything, not just the arm.”

She gives him a half-smile. “Don’t mention it. Now get out of here, you old fag.”

He barks out a laugh as he makes his way to the door. “Yeah, whatever. Say hello to the missus for me.”

He opens the door to the sound of her laughter, and he just manages to shut it behind him when a glowing hot copper bar hits the wall next to his head.

***

He refuses to travel along the Nether highways now.

He can’t, really. If any of the highway workers recognize him, he’s as good as found, and getting kidnapped and hauled away to somewhere he doesn’t know is the last thing he wants.

He has, however, thought of ways he could turn himself in for this bounty.

He still wants to talk to the dragon rider, but he doesn’t want to do it as a captive. If he’s going to find and talk to this dragon rider, he wants to do it on his own terms.

The only problem is finding the fucking dragons.

Walking around the server looking for them hasn’t done anything, and on top of that, his ankle still fucking hurts from when he got trampled in the middle of a battle while looking for them last time. Walking as much as he has been has strained it. Really, he should be wearing something to keep it protected when he walks, but he doesn’t have a brace or anything like that with him, so he’s been subjecting himself to just downing a healing potion every day in the hopes that it’ll keep his ankle from hurting too much.

He wishes he could make a brace or a boot or something to keep it from hurting too much, but his resources are low, and he doesn’t have munch of anything to spare, and on top of that, his general tinkering skills are less than average. He’d probably royally fuck it up somehow.

Ramon could have helped him with that, if he were here.

The thought makes his heart ache.

He ignores it as he sharpens his diamond sword, holed up in one of his bases. He needs to contact the dragon rider, but how?

An idea pops into his head. A stupid idea probably, but he’s got no other options.

***

Setting up a trap for a dragon is a lot harder than he thought.

He’s using the eye trim armor as bait—he’s not even sure if the dragons are even still after the Gatekeepers, but it’s all he’s got, and he doesn’t particularly care if it gets stolen now that they’ve betrayed him. He sets it up on an armor stand in a clearing in a forest and starts fucking around with nets and tripwires.

It’s fucking hard. Even the most basic redstone shit is like rocket science to him. He should know how to do this shit easy, especially after so long doing small stiff like this on his own, but redstone just seems to hate him.

On top of that, his arm still isn’t functioning quite properly. Ember’s a good redstone mechanic, but this thing was made by a redstone genius who got killed in one of the Incursions two days after Fit bought the thing. Fixing it perfectly would probably be next to impossible.

A couple of his fingers don’t move when he tries to use them, and it takes a couple tries to actually make them work, which makes this whole process slower. His elbow doesn’t bend all the way, and his hand can only move back and forth, not side to side. Some kind of irreplaceable mechanism in there must have been completely ruined.

It’s fine. It’s whatever. He’s lucky he even has his arm as is. He’s lucky Ember even bothered to help repair it at all.

Regardless, for the trap, he doesn’t have a lot of options, partially due to the creature he’s trying to catch and partially due to his own lackluster redstone skills, so a net covered in leaves is his best bet.

It takes him hours to set up a trap. He sets up the net, hooks it up to some mechanisms in the trees that will snap together upon activation, forming sort of a hammock out of the net and lifting it up, tangling the corners and pressing the edges together so hopefully whatever ends up in it can’t get out. He doesn’t need it to be super secure, he just needs to be able to get in there quick enough to properly secure it, or knock the dragon out somehow. That second option would be too hard, so he just needs to run in, secure the edges of the net when the trap goes off, and then...

He's not really sure what happens after that. Wait for the dragon rider to show up and barter with him? Ask for information? Hope he doesn’t immediately kill Fit with that otherworldly bow of his?

There are lots of things that could go wrong. But he doesn’t have a lot of options, so... whatever.

He’ll figure it out as he goes.

Hopefully, setting this up in a forest will keep regular players from coming across it, while still leaving it open to the dragons spotting it from the sky. It’s a long shot, and it’s more than likely to get discovered by some random people, but it’s all he can think of to do.

He finally gets the whole thing set up, setting up a pressure plate, draping a net over it, hiding the net with copious amounts of leaves and branches and grass, setting up the armor stand right next to the pressure plate, and then he hides behind a tree and waits.

He doesn’t have high hopes that this will work. He’s not good at this shit, and if the dragons are smart enough to be trained, they might be smart enough to recognize and avoid traps.

But he’s got nothing to lose, so fuck it.

***

He waits for a while.

He sits there for like twenty hours before he decides to call it quits and dig out a hole in the ground to set up a bedroll. He closes it off and goes to sleep.

***

He doesn’t find anything when he wakes up.

He sits outside, munching on bread, watching the trap he’s set up, waiting.

***

It takes a few days for anything at all to happen.

He spends most of his time watching the trap, sitting and waiting, circling the perimeter to make sure no one is nearby. Every time he leaves to get more food, he takes down the armor stand and hides the armor away in his inventory. He’d rather it not get stolen while he’s away.

It’s a few days into this plan when he starts to think he’s being fucking stupid.

This is a dumb idea, and he should never have expected it to work. The chances of either of the dragons flying over this specific spot is incredibly small, and there’s no way he’s going to get in contact with the dragon rider like this.

But it’s all he’s got, so he leaves the armor stand out, crawls into the small hole he’s dug in the ground, crawls into his bedroll, and goes to sleep.

He’s barely asleep for half an hour when he hears the sound of a pressure plate.

His eyes shoot open as the sound of a net snapping reaches his ears, and then a yowl like a frightened animal rings through the air. He scrambles upright, cloak around his shoulders, hood over his head, scarf tugged up over his face, and clambers out of the hole.

It’s dark, the half moon in the sky the only source of light. He scrambles closer to the clearing and peers out at it, hiding behind a tree.

In the net is a large creature, writhing, snapping at the rope with large, sharp teeth. Its wings are pinned to its sides by the net. It tries to wriggle out of the top where the two sides of the net connect, but its wriggling proves to be pointless, as it doesn’t even manage to get close to getting out.

Fit steps into the clearing. The dragon doesn’t appear to see him, too busy thrashing about in the trap. He squints in the darkness, and he sees shining white scales glinting in the moonlight, brown fur along its spine.

For a moment, he forgets what he’s meant to be doing. He barely saw any of this dragon from that Gatekeeper’s shitty video, but now he’s seeing it up close, albeit in very dim moonlight. It’s gorgeous, the white wings practically glowing in the moonlight, the feathers—feathers! since when did dragons have feathers, this is such an important discovery he needs to write down as soon as possible—along the wings puffing up like a frightened bird, and as it thrashes about it lifts its head to the sky as best it can and roars, deafening in the otherwise quiet night.

The sound jolts him back into action. He summons a rope from his inventory and begins to rush into the clearing, but then he hears another roar, this one far up in the sky, as if in response to the first, and he stops in his tracks and looks up.

The other dragon, the green one, a silhouette against the moon, flies down, closer and closer. Fit freezes in place, unsure if they’ve seen him or not, but he knows deep down, intrinsically, that if that dragon rider knows he was the one who caught this dragon, he is as good as dead.

He darts back into the trees, one hand holding his hood up to make sure it stays up, and he ducks behind a trunk. He peeks out around the side of it, praying the moon isn’t bright enough for him to be seen.

The green dragon, which looks almost blue-ish in the silver light of the moon, swoops down and lands. The rider hops off its back, their heavy black cloak barely even moving in the wind, and they rush to the net. He vaguely sees dimly glowing red horns curling from their head.

“Filho!” the person shouts, and Fit notices two things when they speak: one; their voice is unnaturally deep, reverberating like a demon’s, as though they’re using some kind of voice changer, and two; Fit knows that word.

Son.

His entire chest aches with the realization, and his shoulders curl in on himself almost involuntarily with the painful yearning that grips his heart like a vice. He knew the dragon rider spoke Portuguese, and he knows other people here know other languages, of course people know Portuguese, he’s met multiple people whose first language is not English, but this—this language paired with this word specifically feel like a kick to the sternum. It’s stupid, he knows, he shouldn’t associate an entire fucking language with one person, but all he can think of is Pac calling Richarlyson and Ramon filho, putting on a ski mask and giggling out a passa tudo, yelping out a meu deus whenever he got startled, uttering out a surprised eu gosto de você também when Fit said it first.

It fucking hurts.

And then he thinks about it for another second more, and he wonders...

Why the fuck is this guy calling a dragon their son?

He inches out from behind the tree a little further, his curiosity burning over the initial heartache. He wants to jump out, ask questions, wring some answers out of this guy now that he’s finally in the same vicinity as them.

But the other part of him, the one too afraid of being seen, too afraid to know what this guy wants from him because of this bounty, overpowers the other and forces him to stay put. Better to observe first, probably.

The person curses in Portuguese, and the voice sounds familiar, he knows it does, but he can’t place it. He grits his teeth, half of him wanting to run out there, the other half too scared to take action.

The dragon rider jumps up and grabs the bottom of the net where it hangs. They clamber up to the load bearing ropes, knife in hand, and they immediately begin sawing at them.

Fit knows he should intervene. He should have intervened before this guy even slid out of their saddle, tried to barter for information, but he’s already made the choice to stay hidden, so that’s what he does. He’s made his choice and he needs to stick with it.

He gets the feeling if he’s seen now, he’s as good as dead anyway.

The rope snaps, and the white dragon wriggles out of the net, landing on the ground with a yelp. The dragon rider lands next to it, sheathing their knife and running up to the dragon, lifting its wings and looking over its body for any sign of injuries. They say something else in Portuguese, something Fit can’t understand through the distortion in their voice, and for a moment—just a brief moment—he nearly finds himself reaching for his communicator to look for the translated words as they pop up on his screen before he remembers oh yeah, that’s not a thing here.

He watches as the rider reaches the white dragon’s head and gently cups its large face in their hands, turning it this way and that to check for wounds. They let out a sigh of relief, and then they say something in English.

“Who did this?”

The white dragon makes a sound that he swears sounds like an I don’t know while the green dragon gently nudges at the other’s side with its snout. The white dragon smacks the green one with its tail, and the green dragon retaliates, smacking the other one even harder. The white dragon yips and hips checks the green dragon so it goes stumbling, and the green dragon lets out a sound like a cackle, a laugh.

Fit leans out a little further, trying to see them better. He takes a step out from behind the tree, and then he flinches when he hears the snap of a twig beneath his boot.

The dragons’ heads whip around to look in his direction, as does the dragon rider’s. He inhales sharply at the sight of four bright red glowing eyes beneath the cowl of their hood.

He ducks back behind the tree, holding his breath, praying they didn’t see him in the darkness. He hears the sound of a bowstring being pulled back, and from the corner of his eye he can see a faint red glow.

A glowing red blast of energy flies past him, just narrowly missing the tree he’s hiding behind. Red light flashes right in front of him as an arrow makes contact with something, and he hears a deafening crack with it. He blinks the dots out of his eyes and squints through the darkness.

An arrow sits lodged in the trunk of a tree that looks like it’s been absolutely decimated, ripped from its stump and knocked over on its side, the wood singed to a charcoal black.

His heart skips a beat.

He does not want to be on the receiving end of that bow.

He gulps, holding his breath as he hears footsteps crunching on the grass. “Hello?” The rider’s voice rings out into the night. “Is anyone there?”

He says nothing, just stays as silent as he possibly can. He holds his breath, terrified to even make a sound. This plan was terrible, this backfired so fucking badly,  why did he ever do this, this guy could kill him with no effort, he shouldn’t be here—

“Where are you?” the rider calls out, their voice sounding no further than a few metres away. “Did you make this trap? If you did, I swear I will—”

One of the dragons snorts in a way that sounds almost annoyed, and the rider sighs. They mutter something in Portuguese before Fit hears them walking away.

He doesn’t move, doesn’t even breathe as he waits for the footsteps to stop, hears the sound of the rider clambering back into the saddle, and then he waits, agonizingly slowly, for the dragons to flap their wings and launch themselves back into the night sky.

Even after the leathery flapping of wings is gone, he stays there for an extra five minutes, just to be safe. He hesitantly peers out at the clearing.

One of the support ropes of the net is cut, leaving the whole thing dangling uselessly, the ropes frayed. The armor stand he’d set up is on the ground, the armor itself toppled over carelessly in the grass.

He takes a deep breath.

He didn’t exactly expect that to go well, anyway.

***

He collapses in bed in one of his bases, heaving an exhausted sigh. He needs to actually have a decent rest after a week of just sitting in a clearing watching a net.

He glances at the date on his comm. Tomorrow is the ninth of the month. His and Pac’s six month anniversary.

He pulls his thin blanket over him and falls into a fitful sleep.

Chapter Text

The rosebush is much more than a bush now.

It started off as a tiny rose, grew into an entire bush, and now? Now there are vines all over the outcrop of land it’s perched on, sprouting rosebuds that bloom a bright, beautiful red. Little thorns poke out of the vines and stems, razor sharp.

The sunset paints the land a soft orange, and he smiles when he sees the silhouette of the rosebush against the sky. He walks up to it, one hand in his pocket, and part of him feels oddly nervous, his stomach flipping as he gets closer and closer.

Despite how secluded this place is, he’s wearing his cloak and scarf. He can never be too cautious, after all.

He takes a deep breath and approaches the rosebush. He steps over twisting vines and curled stems, careful not to trample any rosebuds beneath his feet. He stops at the base of the little outcrop of land, looking up at the red buds.

He couldn’t get around to visiting the rosebush until now. Trying to traverse 2b2t with a bounty on his head is dangerous, so he’s been trying to switch up his route to avoid being followed.

“Hey,” he says. He sits down next to the rosebush, and it may be a coincidence, but the vines have grown in such a way that they’ve left a clear spot of ground right next to the main cluster of stems, the perfect size for him to sit on. He settles in his seat and takes a deep breath.

“It’s our six month anniversary,” he says, a little shakily. Why is he nervous? He’s not talking to a person here, just—it’s just a cluster of roses, for fucks sake.

“I, uh, I had something made for today,” he says. “To celebrate, I guess? Or to... I don’t know, mark the occasion somehow. It’s probably fucking stupid.”

He sighs. “No, it is stupid. You’re not... you’re not Pac. I don’t know why I’ve been talking to you like you are, because you’re just... you’re just a fucking rosebush.”

A lump forms in his throat. “I just miss him,” he says quietly. “And you’re kind of the closest thing I have to him, so... talking to you feels kind of like talking to him.”

Fit raises a hand to his face and wipes at his eyes. He’s not going to cry here, he’s not going to do it. He can’t.

“I know he’s dead,” Fit says, his voice cracking on the word. “And I... I’ve lost a lot of fucking people over the years here, but never someone like him. I’ve never been close to anyone like I was with him. I’ve... I’ve never lost anyone like Pac.”

He wipes at his eyes. “Fuck. Sorry, I shouldn’t be crying over this. It’s—it’s stupid, I’ve lost people before, this should be nothing.”

He takes a shaky breath. “I should have told you I love you,” he whispers. “I should have, I was just—I was scared.” He glances next to him at the rosebush. “But I do love you. I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving you. And maybe it’s—maybe it’s fucking cruel to wish you were here in this god awful wasteland with me, but I do. I wish you were here. I wish you were alive.”

He sniffles, and he lowers his head, hiding his face in his scarf. He can’t cry, because he may be alone right now, but if someone comes along and sees him like this, they’ll know he’s weak, an easy target.

“Anyway,” he says, rubbing the heel of his hand against his eye, “I, uh, I had a friend... er, ally, kind of, I don’t know, she’d probably turn me in for the bounty if she saw me again, but... I got her to make something.”

He reaches into his pocket, his hand closing around two small objects, but before he can pull them out, he pauses. He turns his ear to the wind and listens. He reaches up to turn up the sensitivity on his hearing aid.

He hears the pounding of hooves on the ground, and it’s getting closer, fast.

Before he can react, a flaming arrow shoots out of nowhere and hits the ground, right next to one of the rosebush’s vines. In a panic, he lunges forward to grab the arrow shaft and rip it from the ground before the fire can take to the plant, uncaring of how the thorns scratch up the skin of his arm.

He can’t let the rosebush burn. It’s all he has left.

He scrambles to his feet, heart already pounding with adrenaline, drawing his sword and shield, glancing around the plains until he spots them.

A hoard of people in eye trim Netherite armor, all on skeleton horses, riding across the plains towards him.

He whirls around to run the other way, but he skids to a stop before he can get very far. There are more of them on his other side, and as he glances around, he sees that they’ve formed a fucking circle around him, and he curses at himself.

He should have noticed, he should have been paying more attention! Were they following him? How did he not know?

Another flaming arrow flies at the rosebush, and he yanks it out of the ground almost as soon as it lands. He throws it down the hill and into the grass, away from the vines and rosebuds.

The horses all slow to a stop, and he expects the Gatekeepers to run up and grab him, but instead they just circle around him, keeping an eight metre distance, as if afraid he might try to teleport away from them with another chorus fruit like last time, and he curses them for their hindsight. He readies his weapons and glances around, searching for a way out.

“Fit,” says one of the Gatekeepers, and Fit grimaces when he recognizes the voice as Walmart’s.

“How did you find me?” Fit snarls.

Walmart snorts. “You come to this same fucking location, like, multiple times a week. Wasn’t that hard to have someone watch you to see where you went, and it was even easier to set up camp around here for when you would stop by next. Seriously, returning to the same coordinates multiple times while on the run with a bounty on your head is such a stupid fucking rookie move. Come on, did you forget everything while you were off server?”

Fit tugs his scarf down, baring his teeth like a cornered animal. “You don’t have to do this.”

Walmart scoffs. “Actually, yeah, we kind of do. That rider and his dragons won’t stop terrorizing us. They found and griefed our base just the other day. We’ve had to move everything.”

“They’re doing it to other people too,” says another Gatekeeper. “Not just us. They’re doing this to everyone. They’re tearing the server apart to find you.”

“We don’t know what the hell you did,” another says, “but it must have been something pretty fucking bad if they’re this determined to get you.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Fit says. “I don’t even know who that guy is!”

“He wants you anyway,” Walmart says. “You can either come with us and make this easy, or we can drag you there kicking and screaming. Your choice.”

In response, Fit raises his shield and tightens his grip on his sword, ready to fight.

Walmart sighs. “You’re fucking lucky this guy wants you alive.”

With that, he spurs his skeleton horse forward, drawing back a bow and firing. Fit dodges to the side before the arrow can hit him, letting it whizz past his shoulder. He lifts his shield as Walmart runs past him on his horse, and Walmart bashes his shield against Fit’s, making him stumble back.

Another horse races towards him and he ducks past it, but another runs in out of nowhere and a shield bashes him over the head. He cries out in pain, stumbling back, shaking his head to try regaining his composure, but two Gatekeepers hop off their mounts and sprint towards him, weapons drawn. He raises his shield to block them, but just as they’re about to swing their axes at his head, they feint past him, and pain reverberates through his skull as the flat part of an axe blade hit the back of his head, hard.

Black spots dance across his vision, and then he feel multiple pairs of hands grabbing at him, footsteps pounding on the ground, and he tries to struggle as someone forces his hands behind his back.

He thrashes, trying to break free from the hands gripping his shoulders, snarling like an animal, but then he pauses when the sound of crackling fire and the smell of smoke reaches him. He looks back, eyes wide, and his stomach drops.

The rosebush is on fire.

The first arrow Walmart fired at him must have been flaming, and it must have caught before Fit realized it and had the sense to remove it.

“No!” He tries to wrench himself out of the grip of the Gatekeepers holding him, but someone cracks a weakness potion over his head and the strength drains from his bones.

Still, he fights against it with all his might, desperately trying to pull out of their grasp so he can do something, anything, he can’t let the rosebush burn he has nothing else it’s all he fucking has—

Someone forces his wrists together behind his back and another person kicks him behind the knees, and he goes down easily in his weakened state, tears springing to his eyes as he struggles, watching red blossoms curl and blacken in the heat, green vines turning to ash, the stems withering into white charcoal.

“Please!” he yells, and he’s not even sure what he’s begging for, to be let go, to put out the fire, to go home to see Pac to see Ramon he doesn’t know.

He just doesn’t want to be here. He wants to be anywhere but.

A sob rips itself from his throat as someone ties his wrists together. Another one of the Gatekeepers lifts a firework to the sky and fires it off, and he barely registers the boom in the sky far above his head. He just watches, helpless, horrified, and devastated, as the rosebush burns, tears spilling from his eyes. 

“Stop fucking crying,” one of the Gatekeepers scoffs.

He doesn’t even listen. His heart feels like it’s being ripped in two. He wails like he’s not just watching a plant burn, more like he’s watching someone die, and he might as well be.

This was all he had of Pac.

He has nothing else.

“Sorry about this, Fit,” Walmart says as someone ties Fit’s ankles. “But I am not putting my group at risk just to let you keep running and hiding. If I had it my way, that guy would fuck off and you could have been an ally.”

“Please,” Fit chokes through his tears. He still doesn’t know what he’s begging for, but he’ll keep saying it until something happens, until something gets better.

Walmart sighs. “Get a fucking grip, dude.” He looks up. “Your ride’s on its way.” He nods at the other Gatekeepers, and they all step away, letting Fit go.

He can’t even find it in himself to try wriggling out of the bonds around his wrists and legs. Without the Gatekeepers holding him up, he slumps to the ground, sniffling and sobbing.

If his past self saw him now, he’d be ashamed of himself at the display.

Fit MC, The leader of Team Veteran, historian, journalist, soldier, reduced to a teary-eyed snot-nosed mess.

Pathetic.

He hears a reptilian screech, and he can’t even bring himself to look up at the sky, even as the sound of leathery wings flapping reaches his ears. He just tucks his face against the grass and quietly sobs.

He hears something land on the ground a few metres away. He squints, blinking through tears, at the green shape illuminated by the rising sun and the fire steadily spreading across the plain. The dragon skitters back when a stray flame spits a spark at it.

Walmart takes a step forward. “Our payment?”

The dragon huffs. It seems to look right at Fit, but he just looks away. He can’t look at that thing. How many people did it terrorize before finally getting what it wanted?

He hears something light and metallic clinking, almost like a large bag of coins hitting the ground, and he hears Walmart scoff. “That’s not the amount that was promised.”

He hears paper rustling, and Fit turns his head just enough to see the dragon holding a note in its mouth. Walmart takes it and unfolds it.

“‘You’ll get the rest tomorrow when we confirm it’s him and he’s unharmed,’” he mutters, reading the words on the page. “‘Don’t wait here. We’ll send you coordinates.’”

Walmart turns his head to look at the rest of the Gatekeepers. They all shrug.

He sighs and pockets the note. “Fine. But if we don’t hear from you, we’ll find you.”

The dragon snorts, but it nods.

Walmart picks up the sack of gold on the ground, dismissing it to his inventory, and then the Gatekeepers disperse to their skeleton horses. None of them even give Fit a second glance, aside from Walmart, who just looks at him and shakes his head.

The Gatekeepers run off, hooves thundering against the ground, leaving Fit alone with a dragon and a burning rosebush.

The grass rustles as the dragon approaches. Fit grimaces, wriggling until he’s turned over, facing away. He doesn’t want to look at the dragon as it kills him or does whatever it’s about to do to him.

He hears a curious chittering, and then the dragon’s face is right in front of his. He jolts, trying to squirm away, but he’s not able to do much in this state. The dragon looks at him with wide curious brown eyes, tilting its head as it watches him fruitlessly struggle.

“Look, if you’re going to kill me, just do it,” Fit snaps, still sniffling. “You and your fucking rider have ruined my life, there’s not much else you could take from me.”

The dragon snorts as if that’s funny, and then its gaze flickers to the burning rosebush behind him. It hops over him, feet padding against the grass, and he turns over to watch it. It approaches the rosebush, where there are very few rosebuds that aren’t burned. In fact, there appears to be only one, and the dragon gingerly takes it in its mouth by the stem and plucks it off the burning bush. It trots back over to Fit, its large tail swaying behind it, almost wagging like an excited dog.

The dragon sits down in front of him, rose in its teeth. It leans down, and Fit tries to flinch away from it. The dragon grunts. It sits back and looks down at him, tail still swishing across the grass.

Fit stares at it. What is it doing? Does it not want to kidnap him back to its rider, maybe only doing this out of a sense of loyalty, or maybe under a threat? Or is this some kind of taunt, pushing what he’s lost right in front of his face?

It’s cruel either way.

“What do you want?” he asks. He sniffles, turning his head to hide the way tears stream down his cheeks.

The dragon huffs. It leans down to nudge him with its nose, and its then that he notices the bandanna wrapped around the dragon’s neck. He thought it was just a handkerchief, but upon closer inspection, he notices something.

It’s not a bandanna.

It’s a small, yellow, child-sized soccer jersey, cut and sewn back together into the shape of a bandanna.

He’s immediately reminded of Richarlyson’s jersey and his heart pangs. Yeah, the dragon rider is Brazilian, makes sense they might be a soccer fan, but these fucking similarities are just hurting him at this point. Does the universe hate him? Do the gods have it out for him or something?

The dragon nudges against him hard, and then pulls away, and out of the corner of his eye he catches something red poking out of his armor. He looks down.

The dragon has tucked the rose into the straps of his armor.

He has no idea why. He guesses it looks nice? But there is something comforting about having this one rose, this one little thing that survived the fire. He wipes his eyes on his shoulder as best he can.

Then the dragon leans over him again, and he feels it begin to lift him by the back of his cloak.

He starts to flail, trying to wrench his cloak out of the dragon’s mouth. “Hey, wait!”

The dragon spreads its wings, and he screams as he’s lifted off the ground and into the sky. He keeps wriggling around for a moment, but then the sight of the burning rosebush gets smaller and smaller below him, and he freezes, trying his best to keep still. If he falls from this height, he’s dead.

Of course, if Hause still has the respawn mechanics on, he could just break free and respawn and that will get him away, but he doesn’t want to take that risk. He’s got too many tools and weapons on him that he doesn’t want to lose, and if the respawn happens to be off, he’s dead forever. Better to let this thing take him wherever it wants.

“Where are you taking me?” he yells above the wind.

The dragon makes a sound that sounds almost like a laugh, and his stomach flips. Surely the dragon rider has some kind of cruel plans for him, torture, slave labour, death—the possibilities keep piling up in his mind, and he once again debates the merits of just squirming out of the dragon’s grip and letting himself fall.

He keeps his mouth shut and keeps as still as possible as the dragon flies across the landscape. He looks down, trying his best to ignore the vertigo that makes his head spin from the height. From here, he can see spawn, with all of its cobblestone lavacasts, and the badly maintained highways that branch off from the zero coordinates, the abandoned bases and farms that have been griefed to hell and back.

Despite his situation, he has to admit, it's kind of beautiful up here, in a way. There’s a story to tell in each ruined structure, blueprints made and materials gathered to build each one, and TNT and end crystals placed to destroy it. If they were closer to the ground, he could tell which ones were griefed by TNT and which were end crystals, but from up here it’s hard to tell.

“Where are you taking me?” Fit tries again to call over the wind in his ears, but it’s a pointless question. The dragon can’t speak, but even if it could answer, he gets the feeling it would just laugh at him anyway, like it’s doing now.

They leave the spawn area quick, flying over less and less griefed craters and more untouched plains and meadows and forests, and Fit can’t help but wonder where he’s being carted off to. Some torture dungeon in some obscure corner of the map? A giant crowd of people ready to watch someone execute Fit MC in person? A giant chasm where they’re just going to drop him with no way out and leave him for a few months—oh god, he can’t do that again, if they’re going to do anything to him, it better not be that—

Fit wriggles in the dragon’s hold, testing to see how easy it would be to break free and fall—maybe he could pearl at the last second or eat a chorus fruit to teleport and keep himself from dying, fuck he wishes he had his elytra on him—but he stops short when the dragon lets out a deep rumbling growl.

He remembers suddenly that this thing has teeth and claws and is probably more than willing to use them if he doesn’t cooperate.

Okay. Staying still it is.

Still, it’s a trial to actually force himself not to squirm. The binds around his ankles and wrists are uncomfortable, digging into his skin, and he wants them off, please and thank you.

He’s not sure how long they fly for. It feels like half an hour, but it’s hard to tell. He’s always been bad at gauging the passage of time, even in short bursts.

Regardless, the dragon begins to descend, and Fit sees a small structure in the distance that they seem to be headed towards. He squints, trying to see what it might be, but it’s just a speck on the horizon, and he doesn’t have his glasses anyway, so trying to see it from this distance is pointless.

They get closer and closer, and eventually he can glean a general outline of the structure. It’s a small house, almost like a cottage, made of quartz with a simple roof made of dark oak. Next to it is a structure that looks a bit like a stable, but instead of having multiple stalls for horses, there are just two of them, much bigger than any horse would ever need.

The thing that catches his eye are the two rosebushes planted on either side of the door of the cottage. His heart aches at the sight.

The dragon swoops down and lands. It spits his cloak out of its mouth and he collapses on the ground face first, unable to use his hands to stop his fall. He grimaces and wriggles around, trying to turn over.

He freezes when he feels the dragon’s teeth graze against his ankle. He stays very, very still, praying it doesn’t bite his leg off, but then the ropes around his legs loosen and fall off. He stays as still as possible as the dragon moves to his wrists next, biting through the rope and freeing up his arms.

The dragon steps back and he turns over, sitting up and rubbing his flesh wrist where the rope dug into it. He sends a wary look at the dragon.

It sits there on its haunches like a dog, tail swishing back and forth through the grass behind it. It stares down at him as though expecting something, but he doesn’t know what.

“Uh, thanks?” he says.

The dragon snorts. It keeps looking at him.

He looks around. The place doesn’t look dangerous at first glance. There are no obvious traps, no dangerous mobs, nothing.

He turns back to the dragon. “Where’s your rider?”

The dragon huffs. It looks up at the sky. Fit follows it’s gaze, but there’s nothing but the clouds.

“Is he flying around with the other one?” he asks.

The dragon bobs its head in confirmation.

Fit nods slowly. It’s so weird that this thing understands words. It shouldn’t, no dragons ever have understood human language to his knowledge. If his arm recorder still worked, he’d be pressing the record button so he can get all of what happens here, but it doesn’t, so he can’t, which fucking sucks. The historian part of his brain is begging him to find a way to take all of this information down instead of just keeping it in his brain, but there’s nothing, not even a notebook in his inventory.

The dragon jogs over to the stable, and as it passes by him it grabs the end of his cloak and drags him along behind it. He yelps and tries to pull the cloak out of its grip, but to no avail.

The dragon drags him across the ground into the stable, and it hip checks one of the two stalls open. It drops him on the floor outside the stall, and he sits up to see the dragon in pawing at the blankets in its stall, moving them around as if searching for something.

Fit stands up and peers into the stall, curious. There are canvases and papers pinned to the wooden walls, each one covered in clumsy scribbles. Some of them vaguely resemble the dragon itself, but most of them look like a toddler just went crazy with crayons.

“You’re an artist, huh?” Fit mutters, mostly to himself.

The dragon huffs. It looks up at the drawings with an almost disappointed look on its face, like it knows they suck and it’s angry about it.

It finds something in the mess of blankets and chirps happily. It turns around to face him, and in its mouth, gingerly held between its teeth, is a stuffed animal.

The dragon jogs over to him and nudges him in the chest with its nose. He reaches up and takes the stuffed animal in his hands, hesitantly glancing up at its face to make sure he’s doing what it wants. The dragon steps back and he looks down at the stuffed animal.

It’s a mooshroom. It’s much too small for a creature of the dragon’s size to properly cuddle with, more like something for a child, but it looks well loved, the white spots on the fabric a bit grey, the seams a little worn. He turns it over in his hands.

“This is yours?” he asks.

The dragon chitters and nods. It looks at him expectantly, as though expecting him to make a connection he can’t fathom.

He nods. “Uh, cool,” he says.

The dragon huffs. It gently grabs him by the end of his cloak again and tugs him into its stall. He lets it pull him along, equal parts curious and confused.

The dragon nudges him hard enough to knock him over. He yelps as he falls and lands in a pile of soft blankets and pillows.

The dragon sits there, watching him, tail wagging. He looks around the dragon’s stall—room?—taking in all of the bad drawings. Most of them are just scribbles of green and yellow crayon, but there are some that look a little more articulated than the others, if that’s even the right word for it. They actually vaguely resemble figures. He guesses the more recognizable ones are more recent.

He looks at a few of the better drawings. In one of them in particular, he can clearly see the figure of the green dragon scribbled in there, along with a vague figure of the white dragon done in grey crayon—white crayon doesn’t show up on white paper, clearly they had to make do—and there are two other figures in between the dragons, little stick figures holding hands. One has a scribble of black hair on its head and what might be a blue shirt on its tiny stick body, and the other figure has no hair and is wearing... a green triangle? Is that a scarf?

He squints, trying to figure out what the hell it’s supposed to be a picture of, but then he hears a reptilian screech far up above them in the sky. He jumps, trying to peer out the window of the stable, but the dragon squeaks in surprise and grabs a blanket it its mouth. It tosses the blanket over his head, ignoring the indignant “Hey!” he yells out as his vision is obscured.

He hears the dragon trot out of the stable. He lifts the blanket a bit and sits up to look out the window as the dragon runs through the grass, squawking like a crow, jumping in place, tail swishing back and forth, excited. He looks up as the white dragon swoops down and lands in front of the green one, and his stomach flips when he sees the dragon rider on the white dragon’s back.

The green dragon runs up to them and immediately starts nuzzling against the dragon rider, nearly knocking them off the saddle. The white dragon huffs and smacks the green one with its tail.

Now that he’s seeing them up closer, the white dragon looks like it’s wearing a pair of goggles, perched right on its forehead. The similarity to Ramon’s goggles makes his heart ache.

The rider laughs as they slide out of their saddle. “Calma, calma, filho!” They reach out and scratch the green dragon under the chin. “Que isso?”

The green dragon grabs the rider’s cloak and starts pulling them over to the stable. The white dragon rumbles out a curious sound and follows, and fear washes over Fit when he realizes the dragon is trying to bring the rider to him.

He ducks under the blanket again, mooshroom plushie in his hands. What should he do? Should he fight? Draw his sword and shield? Or just wait to see what they’re going to do to him?

Fit waits with increasing nerves as he listens to the dragon pull its rider closer and closer to the stable. His mind begins to race. Why do they want him? What does he have that they need? Why him of all people?

He looks down at the mooshroom plushie in his hands, then peeks out from under the blanket to look up at the drawing of the two dragons and two humanoid figures.

There’s a connection here he’s just not making.

Why did the rider want him alive and unharmed? Why has the green dragon been treating him like a friend? Why did it pull him into its room and show off its drawings and hand him a stuffed animal like a kid showing things to its parents?

His heart skips a beat as his mind makes a connection, something impossible that shouldn’t be happening. That’s...

No.

No.

That’s literally not possible. He saw Richarlyson’s grave, he knows Richas is dead, he fucking saw it, there’s no way—

The stable doors burst open and he flinches, his shield appearing strapped to his offhand without him even thinking about it. No, this is just a bunch of horrible coincidences designed specifically to hurt him, this isn’t real, this can’t be—

He hears the green dragon’s excited chittering, feels the pillows dip as it trots into the stall, and he grimaces as the blanket is whipped off his head. The green dragons stands back, tail wagging so hard it’s knocking drawings off the walls, smiling like it just unveiled a prize.

And right in front of Fit stands the dragon rider.

He still can’t see their face under the darkness of their hood, as if the shadows themselves are trying to obscure their identity. The rest of their cloak hangs heavy around their body, and beneath it Fit can just barely glimpse the garb of an archer, hand guards strapped to their wrists, a quiver full of arrows at their hip. Their otherworldly bow is slung over their back. And, perhaps most terrifying, are the four red glowing eyes, the only thing visible of their face, and the red horns that curl back over their head. There’s an energy about them, something demonic and dangerous that makes Fit shudder in fear.

Fit skitters to his feet, the mooshroom plushie falling from his lap and landing on the blankets. “Who are you?” he demands, voice shaky, raising his shield despite how his damaged mechanical arm groans in protest at carrying even the smallest amount of weight. “What do you want from me?”

The rider splutters out something that might be a sob or a laugh. “Fitch?” they say, their altered voice catching on the single syllable.

A pang rips through Fit’s heart. “Don’t,” he mutters, backing up until his back is against the drawings on the wall. “Don’t come any closer. I—I don’t know how you are, I don’t know what they are,” he says, jerking his head at the two dragons looking at him expectantly, “but if you come any closer I’m going to fucking gut you.”

The dragon rider stares at him with their four bright red eyes. The white dragon stands behind them, gaze fixed directly on Fit, and it whines as it bounces on its feet, eager and excited, almost like it wants to jump right over the rider and pounce on Fit. He raises his shield higher in an attempt to discourage it. The white dragon lets out a whine that sounds pained, as if staying where it is physically hurts it somehow.

The dragon takes a hesitant step forward. “Fitch?”

“Don’t,” Fit says, a lump forming in his throat. “Please leave me alone, I just want to live.”

The rider hesitates. They pause, their hands half outstretched as if they want to reach for him—to grab him, to hurt him, Fit doesn’t know but it can’t be anything good—but then they step back again, inching closer to the white dragon. They glance at it, as if asking a silent question. The dragon just whines at them, skittering back and forth on its feet, restless.

The dragon rider reaches up, and Fit raises his shield, pressing himself flat against the wall, but the rider just takes the hood of their cloak in both hands. They push it down.

Fit’s stomach drops to his knees.

The shadows disperse from the dragon rider’s face, and the glow fades from his eyes. Without the red, his eyes are a dark, beautiful brown, so deep they’re almost black, and the extra two eyes beneath his first pair disappear like they were never even there. His hair is dark, tied up behind his head, revealing an undercut that’s dyed a deep blue. When the hood comes down, the horns that stick out of his head turn from red to a beautiful golden yellow.

Fit’s shield falls from his arm. It lands softly on the pillows and blankets beneath him.

“Fitchi?” Pac says—or, the guy who fucking looks like Pac, because it can’t be Pac, it literally fucking can’t be because Pac is dead, Fit saw his gravestone, but—but he’s the spitting fucking image of Pac, that soft little lopsided grin that always made him weak at the knees and the lovely deep eyes that stare at him like he’s the most important thing in the world and the little cowlick in his hair that makes it fall in his face. With the hood down, his voice even sounds like Pac’s, the deep voice filter gone, leaving just Pac’s shaky, uncertain tones.

Fit feels like his heart is skipping every second beat. He feels like he’s going to have a heart attack.

This can’t be real.

“If—if this is some sick fucking joke, it’s not funny,” he chokes out, a lump forming in his throat, tears stinging at his eyes. “It’s just cruel.”

The guy who looks like Pac but can’t be Pac lets out a wet sounding laugh, tears springing to his eyes. “Fitch, is—is it you? We’ve been looking for you everywhere—”

The dragon rider steps forward and Fit presses himself against the wall, trembling like a newborn fawn. “Don’t,” he whispers. “Whatever you are, don’t, please, I can’t—I can’t do this.”

He steps closer to Fit, and he even smells like Pac, the faint sting of redstone and machine oil on his hands as he reaches up to Fit’s face. Fit keeps as still as possible as the hands come up to cup his face, soft and gentle, light as a feather as if he can’t believe Fit is actually here.

“Fit, it’s me,” he says, his voice soft and quiet.

Fit shakes his head. “You’re dead,” he whispers. This is impossible, this is not real, he has to be dreaming, right? He’s still in that chasm on Vaccus Island and the past couple months have been a fucking fever dream, this isn’t real.

“No, no, I’m here. Why...” He huffs, his smile widening. “Oh, the gravestones, oh my god. Mike made those because me and Richinhas were leaving Quesadilla Island. He just got sad. I think BadboyHalo made the one for Mike when he fell off the goddess statue. I don’t know, but we’re both alive. We’re fine, Fit.”

Fit stares at him, taking in the face, the voice, the soft touches, everything. It looks like Pac, sounds like him, feels like him.

It’s impossible.

But despite how impossible it should be, he’s here.

A sob rips itself from Fit’s throat. He lifts a hand to cover his mouth, because maybe it’s Pac, but he still shouldn’t cry here, it’s 2b2t, it’s dangerous, he can’t show weakness or he’ll be thrown to the wolves, but Pac doesn’t make fun of him, just tilts his head and furrows his brow in sympathy.

“Oh, Fitchi,” he whispers, and Fit breaks.

He presses his face into Pac’s shoulder, arms wrapping around him as tight as a vice, freely sobbing into Pac’s cloak. He doesn’t care if this isn’t real or if it’s just a dream. Pac is here.

He spent months grieving.

This shouldn’t be possible, but he’ll fucking take it.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Pac mutters, hugging him back just as tight. “I’m here. I’m alive.”

He feels the green dragon sidle up to them and nudge him in the side. He looks up from Pac’s shoulder, blinking tears from his vision. The green dragon stares at him with wide brown eyes, tail wagging behind it.

He chokes out a laugh and reaches down to pet the dragon on the head. “Hey Richas.”

The dragon—Richas, it’s fucking Richas, of course it is, holy fuck he’s stupid for not making that god dam connection—chirps happily, nudging his hand, playfully nipping at his fingers. He nudges Fit’s hand again and looks over at the entrance to the stall.

The other dragon stands there, skittering back and forth on its feet like it just can’t stay still, its gaze fixed on Fit like he’ll disappear if it looks away. It makes a loud keening sound when it notices Fit looking at it.

“Holy shit,” Fit says, pulling away from Pac—Pac, he can’t fucking believe that, he’s alive and here and breathing and yeah he’s got horns and a weird scary cloak and bow but holy shit he’s here—and stepping toward the dragon. “Ramon?”

The dragon yips, tail wagging so hard it’s whirling in a circle. It skitters forward, then back again, as if it can’t decide whether to charge forward or stay back and let him approach.

He opens his arms. “Ramon, come here!”

Ramon shrieks with glee, scampering forward and pouncing on Fit, knocking him to the ground, and Fit laughs, tears streaming down his face as Ramon nudges him and licks his face like an overexcited dog. He’s stepping right on Fit’s mechanical arm, but Fit can’t feel it so who gives a shit if it breaks, Pac can fix it, because Pac is here and so is Ramon and so is Richas and they’re all—they’re all alive, and here, and he could literally have a heart attack right here and now and he wouldn’t care because he would die happy.

“My beautiful baby boy,” he says, laughing as Ramon headbutts him a little too hard and makes his skull ache. “My beautiful baby boy made in heaven by God himself!” He grabs Ramon’s head and plants a kiss on his forehead.

Ramon chitters and nudges his head under Fit’s chin. Fit laughs, tears of joy spilling over his cheeks. “Oh, my boy, I thought I’d never see you again! My son, my beautiful baby boy.” He presses another kiss to Ramon’s head, and another, and another, and Ramon headbutts him every time, yipping happily.

“We’ve been wanting to find you for so long,” Pac says, crouching down next to them. “It took weeks. Where have you been hiding?”

Fit gently nudges Ramon’s head away so he can wipe his eyes. “I—You had a fucking bounty on me, how was I supposed to know it was you?”

“I asked for you unharmed!” Pac says, as if that was supposed to help.

“This is 2b2t, Pac, you could have been asking for me so you could torture me!” He can’t help but smile as he says it, because holy shit Pac is actually here in front of him, and he can barely believe it.

Pac laughs, bright and airy. Fit has to wipe his eyes again to clear his vision.

He sits up, keeping an arm wrapped around Ramon because no way in hell he’s letting his baby boy go now that he’s found him—and he’s a fucking dragon now, holy shit, he needs to ask Pac how that happened as soon as possible, but there are other questions he has that are a bit more important.

“How—how the fuck did you get here?” he asks. “Like, on 2b2t? The sign up queue is so long.”

Pac shrugs. “Wasn’t that hard actually, Tubbo taught me how to use hacks and we managed to get me, Richas, and Ramon in.”

“And—and these?” He reaches up, hesitant, and gently grazes a knuckle against the horns atop Pac’s head. “Where did these come from? And the whole demon thing with those eyes and the bow, what was all of that? I’ve never seen hacks like that.”

Pac grimaces, scratching the back of his neck. “Ah, long story. It was the bow and the cloak I found on Quesadilla Island. I almost got, like, possessed for a bit? But then after that, I almost died, so the Federation decided to save me by putting me in the body of an egg, and—like, you know what happened to the rest of the eggs,” he says gesturing to Richas, who is currently holding a crayon delicately in his mouth and trying to scribble on a piece of paper.

“They hatched, clearly,” Fit mutters. “So... wait, okay, hang on.” He raises a hand and pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to process what Pac just told him. “You turned into an egg?”

Pac laughs nervously. “Uh, yeah. It was weird. But after we escaped Quesadilla Island, we found Ramon and all the other eggs who ran away, and they eventually hatched, and I did too. Which was, like, really weird? Because I was actually a dragon like the rest of them, and they’re all kids, and I was a baby dragon for a bit so it was really weird, and—I don’t know. But we went back to Quesadilla Island to rescue Roier—oh, he was turned into a rat, I don’t know if you knew that.”

“He was what?”

“Yeah, that was weird to find out. His twin brother that we didn’t know he had switched bodies with him and then put his brain in a rat—and we found my body there too, and it wasn’t dead, they were just keeping it in some kind of stasis or something? But we got it and Roier’s body, and Tubbo and Mike and me started trying to make a machine to switch our bodies back, and we tested it on me, but it kind of just...” Pac puts his hands together, lacing his fingers, which Fit notices now are tipped with sharp claws. “It kind of merged my body with the dragon body I was in! So, uh, I have these.” He reaches up and taps his claw against one of the horns. “And these.” He wiggles his fingers, showing off his new claws. “And these.” He bares his teeth, showing off much sharper canines than Fit remembers him having.

“Holy fuck,” Fit mutters, staring directly at Pac’s claws.

“Oh, and these!” Pac lifts his cloak, and something moves under them, and then—

Wings stretch out from Pac’s back, a beautiful ultramarine blue with golden scales glimmering on the undersides. They’re not proportionate to the rest of his body; in fact, they’re rather small, stretching out a few feet on either side, clearly not big enough to fly with. Regardless, they shine in the light of the rising sun like a handful of gold coins.

“Holy shit,” Fit whispers, partially from the absolute bomb of information that was just dropped on him, and partially because his boyfriend is part dragon now what the hell, why is him having sharp teeth and claws actually really attractive—

Pac lets out a little laugh. “Yeah, it’s kind of weird, sorry. A lot happened while you were missing!”

“Yeah.” Fit can’t take his eyes off Pac’s wings. “That’s... yeah.”

Ramon nudges him. He turns to look and sees Ramon giving him the most bombastic side-eye he’s ever seen on a dragon’s face. Fit snorts and gently shoves Ramon’s face away from him, his face feeling very warm. “Not a word, kid, not a single word.”

“Maybe my wings will get bigger, you know?” Pac says, flapping them once, letting them glimmer in the light of the setting sun. “Then I can fly with Richas and Ramon! And maybe I can, like, carry you, Fit! I can take you out flying!”

Fit laughs at the image of Pac holding him by the arms, flying through the sky with Fit struggling to keep hold of him and trying not to fall. “That sounds great, Pac,” he says.

Pac smiles, bright and wide, and Fit almost feels like crying again. He takes a deep breath, sniffling and wiping at his eyes.

This feels like a dream. If it is, he doesn’t ever want to wake up.

“Everyone else is still back home,” Pac says. “They’re all waiting to hear if I found you yet.”

“Home?” Fit sits up properly, sitting criss-cross on the blankets. “Where... where is that now? I mean, if you’re not on Quesadilla Island anymore...”

“Oh, we went back to Brazil! Well, some of us did. Me and Mike and Cellbit and Felps are all there, and, like, Pierre and Maxo went to France, and I think they’re planning on travelling a bit before they figure out where they want to settle—and Phil went back to wherever he came from? I think? I don’t know where that is but he shows up from time to time. Etoiles and Pomme are travelling, going on adventures, all that. Tina and Bagi got married! They’re living in São Paulo with the rest of us, um... who else is still in Brazil? Tubbo’s there! He’s waiting to hear back from me. I’ve been calling him every day telling him our progress on finding you.”

Fit’s eyes widen. “You can call outside the server?”

Pac grins, sharp and mischievous, and Fit’s heart flutters at the familiar sight. “We figured out a way.”

Then he’s grabbing Fit’s hand and dragging him upright, and Fit follows, equal parts stunned and curious as he follows Pac out of the stall and into the other one. Ramon trails after them, still chirping excitedly and nudging Fit with his nose like he’s afraid he’ll disappear if he’s not touching him. Fit reaches out and rests his hand on Ramon’s back, just as unwilling to part with his baby boy as Ramon is to part with him.

The enter the stall, and it’s clearly Ramon’s. There are less blankets on the floor, most of them piled in a corner for him to sleep on, and there are a couple of Richarlyson’s drawings pinned to the walls, but most of the papers consist of blueprints, some notes scrawled in Pac’s shorthand, and there are a dozen small redstone machines, devices, and gadgets taking up most of the floor space, along with tools of varying sizes.

Ramon scampers into his room, picking up a gadget with a screen and shoving it into Pac’s hands. He sits down and picks up another device in his two front hands, and Fit notices that his fingers are a bit longer than Richarlyson’s, more dexterous, and he starts fiddling with the little device. It’s bigger and clunkier than his other old machines on Quesadilla Island, but Fit is overjoyed that Ramon has managed to keep up his tinkering hobby, even with his larger dragon hands. Paws? He doesn’t know what to call them.

Pac presses a few buttons on the gadget Ramon handed him, and the screen fizzles with static. Pac lengthens the antennae on top of it, and then he starts turning a few dials. Pac bites his lip in concentration, and Fit finds himself staring at the cute little fangs that dig into his skin.

Fuck, Fit missed him.

The static screen fizzles, and then a vague image appears through the static, a room full of radio and transmission equipment.

Pac lifts the device to his mouth and yells into it. “Tubbo!”

There’s a staticky scream from somewhere, and then a door on the other end of the room opens and—yeah, holy fuck, that’s Tubbo, shoving the door open, an energy drink in his hands, his hair sticking up like he just rolled out of bed, wearing a t-shirt and—are those boxers with hearts on them?

“Pac, just because the transmission is always going doesn’t mean you can fucking yell at me whenever you want,” comes Tubbo’s voice, tinny from the static, but it’s still clearly Tubbo’s voice. He walks up to where the screen is viewing him from and sits down in a desk chair, taking a swig of his energy drink. “It’s like 3 a.m. here man, what the hell?”

“If you don’t want me to yell at you, don’t leave the volume all the way up,” Pac shoots back, and Tubbo scoffs.

“What do you want, man? I was sleeping.” There’s a sound outside the door, and Tubbo sighs. “Man, you woke up Sunny. She’s gonna be pissed if she doesn’t have her fuckin’ beauty sleep.”

“Well, go get her! Because...” Pac turns the device so it’s facing Fit. “We found him!”

Tubbo spits out a stream of his energy drink, eyes wide. He hits his hand on the desk in front of him, setting the can on the desk to cough into his fist. “The fuck?” he chokes. “Holy shit, Fit MC of 2b2t?”

Fit smiles. He hasn’t seen Tubbo in months, and his messy hair and bright eyes are a welcome sight.

“Hey, Tubbo,” he says.

Tubbo stares at him for a solid five seconds, and then a surprised laugh leaves his mouth, smiling wide, and he leans forward until this face takes up most of the screen. “Holy fucking shit, Fit! Pac, you found him? How? What? Dude, you’re alive? Where the hell have you been, Pac’s been looking for you for fucking ages!”

Before Fit can even open his mouth to respond, Tubbo turns around and runs to the door, yelling as he goes. “Sunny! Sunny, get the fuck up! Pac found him! We’re so back! We’re so fucking back!”

Pac laughs and lowers the device. He turns to look at Fit, a sparkle in his eye, and Fit decides: fuck it.

He grabs Pac’s face and kisses him.

Pac makes a little surprised noise as their lips make contact, but he quickly melts into it, dropping the device on the floor and reaching up to cup Fit’s face in his hands. Fit still can’t shake the feeling that this might be a dream, that he’s going fucking crazy and imagining all of this, but Pac’s lips are warm against his and his claws graze against the back of his neck and he feels real.

He feels Pac smiling against his mouth, feels the gentle vibration of him humming out a sigh, feels Pac’s warm skin against his palms.

Tears sting at his eyes again. One slips down his face. He feels Pac’s thumb brush it away.

Tubbo’s voice emits from the speakers of the small device on the floor. “Oh my god, are you guys fucking making out right now? No, Sunny, look away, you don’t need to fucking see this. Oh my god. Oh my god, you guys are so fucking disgusting! I’m—I’m gonna become violently homophobic right fucking now if you don’t stop, oh my god you’re gross. Richas! Fucking—hit them or something, I don’t need to see this!”

Pac pulls away just to look down at the screen. “Then don’t look!”

“You guys are so gross. Fit, by the fucking way, is that a handkerchief around your fucking arm? Is that your right arm? Am I fucking seeing this correctly, or is that literally a fucking blue handkerchief tied around your right fucking arm?”

“You don’t need to look, Tubbo,” Fit says, a smile tugging at his lips, a laugh bubbling up in his chest.

“Oh my god. Oh my god, I did not need to know that Fit MC takes it up the ass. Sunny, get out of here, you don’t need to be seeing any of this shit, we can talk to Fit when he’s not about to get dicked down right in front of our fucking eyes—”

Ramon reaches out and bats at the device with his hand, causing Tubbo to curse and yell. Fit hears Richas laughing from the other room, and Pac plants a kiss on his cheek, and Fit feels at home.

Then he remembers what’s in his pocket, and he pulls away from Pac for just a second. “Wait, Pac, I have something for you.”

Pac’s eyes widen. “What? But—but you didn’t know I was—what?”

“I mean, I never planned on actually giving it to you because I... I thought you were dead, but I had someone make something for our six month anniversary. I was planning to celebrate it alone, but...”

He reaches into his pocket, praying they didn’t fall out on the way here, and luckily his fingers close around two small objects. He pulls them out and holds them in his open hands.

Pac’s mouth falls open. “Meu deus...”

In Fit’s palm are two rings. One made of copper, a simple band with a single small diamond embedded in the metal. The other is a little more detailed, made of lapis with gold detailing around the edges, and a diamond is pressed into the metal in the same place as the copper one.

“I didn’t intend on even giving it to you,” Fit says softly, “because... you know. And I know you’re not one for marriage, and neither am I to be honest, but I just—I wanted these to kind of show how much I...” Fit swallows, his stomach suddenly turning with nerves. “How much I love you.”

Pac raises a hand to his mouth to stifle a small sob. “Fitchi,” he mutters, sniffling. “That’s so sweet.”

“Yeah, um...” He takes Pac’s hand and places the copper ring in his palm. “The ring might not fit because I obviously couldn’t get your size, but you could maybe put it on a chain and wear it like a necklace. If you want! You don’t have to. It was just—a gesture, I guess. Mostly just for myself at the time, but... I don’t know, I guess I kind of hoped your ghost or whatever was out there somehow, and that you’d appreciate it. But you’re not a ghost, you’re here, and... I mean, that’s a lot better than trying to talk to ghosts, I guess.”

Pac’s bottom lip trembles. “Oh, Fitch, that’s—that’s so sweet. Thank you, Fit, you’re too good to me.” He tries to slide it onto his ring finger. It doesn’t quite fit, just a bit too big, so he tries his middle finger, and it slides on perfectly.

He reaches for the other ring, and Fit gives it to him. Pac takes Fit’s right hand, the flesh one, and slips the ring right onto Fit’s ring finger. He lift’s Fit’s hand to his mouth and presses a kiss to his finger, right over the lapis ring.

Fit hears shuffling behind him, and then Richas is walking into the room, a piece of paper held in his mouth. He trots right up to Fit, nudging his dad aside and ignoring the indignant “hey!” Pac gives him, and shoves the paper in Fit’s face.

Fit takes the paper and turns it over to look at what Richas has given him. It’s a crude drawing of the four of them, Fit and Pac in the middle holding hands, and in the space above the figures’ heads are words—very clumsily written and barely legible, but Fit squints at the lines and manages to make out the words “we missed you!!!!”

He smiles at Richarlyson and reaches out to pet him on the head. “I missed you guys too,” he mumbles. Richas makes a purring sound in his throat.

Ramon approaches from his other side, and he smiles as he runs a hand through the brown fur trailing down Ramon’s back. Ramon chitters and nudges his head against Fit’s shoulder.

“I’m still fucking here, you know,” Tubbo’s voice says through the device on the floor.

“Right, right.” Pac wipes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “Fit, do you want to go?”

Fit blinks, confused. “What? Go where?”

“Away. Out of here.”

Fit furrows his brow. “Pac... I can’t leave for too long. 2b2t is my home, its code is in my player data. It takes an insane amount of energy to keep me out of it for too long. That’s why I had to come back. I... I can’t leave. Not for any longer than, like, a week.”

Tubbo laughs. “What, you thought we wouldn’t have fucking thought of that? Mike’s been busy, man, he’s been workin’ on an infinite energy generator. It... kind of works? We’re working out the kinks. Maxo managed to put SOFIA back together before he and Pierre fucked off on their honeymoon and she has been crunching some insane fucking numbers, boss man. If me and Mike are ever taking a break and not working on it, she’s still going. She’s solving all our fucking problems as soon as they come up, pretty much. We’re gonna have this thing up and running in no fucking time. Even if you have to go back to 2b2t for a bit, eventually we’re gonna have a way to keep you here. If you want to, that is.”

Fit takes a shaky breath. Away from 2b2t? Permanently?

The thought is fucking wild. He never thought he’d get the chance to leave the wasteland forever.

It’s. It’s a lot to process.

He swallows. “Maybe... maybe in a bit. I need to process all of this.”

Pac nods, wiping his eyes. “Yeah, of course. How about we just... sit down and talk? For a bit? Relax?”

Fit smiles. “Yeah, sure.” He sits down on Ramon’s nest of blankets. Ramon curls up on the floor next to him, resting his chin on Fit’s leg and purring like a motor. Fit pets Ramon’s fur. It’s soft. “Why don’t you tell me about that cloak and the bow? I want to hear about everything I missed.”

Pac smiles. He sits down in front of Fit, the device Tubbo’s speaking through still clutched in his hand. “It’s kind of a long story.”

“We’ve got nothing but time, Pac.”

Pac takes a deep breath, Richas lays down next to him, scribbling on another piece of paper with a crayon in his mouth. “Well...”

As Fit listens to Pac’s story, he leans against the wall and gently pets Ramon’s fur. Tubbo keeps chiming in from the device in Pac’s hand, insisting on details that he says most definitely happened that Pac keeps correcting or denying—he did not immediately start making out with Etoiles the moment Fit disappeared, come on Tubbo, you tried this once and it didn’t work so it won’t work again—and sometimes when Fit glances at the screen, he can see another dragon there, a small thing with bright orange scales, a pair of sunglasses perched on her forehead, and Fit smiles and waves whenever Sunny pops into view, making her squeak in excitement and try to get as close to the camera as possible.

The sun dips below the horizon, and Pac’s wild hand movements get a little slower, and he begins to yawn in between his sentences. He leans against the wall next to Fit, still talking, in the middle of telling him about how Mike was revived by his wife. Fit reaches out and takes his hand. He gently runs his thumb over the ring on his finger. Pac’s claws dig into his skin a little, but he doesn’t mind.

Richas leaves the room, and then he comes right back in dragging three blankets with him. He drops them on the floor and curls up on top of them, resting his chin on Pac’s leg again, and he’s snoring within seconds.

Fit scoots over a little to rest his head on Pac’s shoulder. Pac falls quiet, and it takes Fit a moment to realize that Tubbo’s gone quiet too, a faint staticky snoring emitting from the speakers of the device that’s slipped from Pac’s hands and landed on the floor.

Fit takes a deep breath. He looks down at Ramon, gently snoring in Fit’s lap.

He turns to look at Pac. “Pac?” he whispers.

Pac’s eyes are half closed. He yawns. “Yeah?”

“Can we go home in the morning?”

Pac smiles softly. He places a tired, clumsy kiss to Fit’s temple.

“Of course, Fitchi.”

Fit squeezes Pac’s hand. Pac squeezes back. Fit shuts his eyes, the weight of his son curled up in his lap, head tucked into Pac’s shoulder, Richas snoring like a freight train just a few feet away.

He drifts into sleep with a smile on his face.