Archive of Our Own

 • Leowook • LettuceK • ClownPierce Chapter 2: Opposing Lines (Wemmbu x Reader) Summary: Y/N and Wemmbu were once allies in Unstable, fighting together long enough to trust each other’s instincts without words. When Zam and Wemmbu started fighting, Y/N decided to choose Zam’s side. Now they fight on opposite sides, their shared history turning every clash into something personal. Notes: Well, here's one for free because there wasn't any requests, AND I was bored out of my mind xD (See the end of the chapter for more notes.) Chapter Text The battlefield was already collapsing. Stone fractured underfoot as explosions tore through the terrain, dust and smoke swallowing the horizon. Players clashed everywhere—steel ringing, abilities flaring, voices shouting over one another—but none of it mattered once you locked eyes with him. Wemmbu. He was cutting through Zam’s side with brutal efficiency, movements tight and controlled, every strike placed where it would hurt most. He looked different when he fought like this—colder. Sharper. Like he’d stripped himself down to pure intent. Then you stepped into his path. Your blade met his with a sharp crack, the force of it sending vibrations up your arm. You skidded back a half step, boots scraping stone. He stared at you. “…You chose him,” he said, incredulous, already attacking again. You blocked, barely. “I chose a side.” “That wasn’t the question.” You ducked under a swing, pivoted, and struck back. He parried easily, like he knew your timing by heart. Which, annoyingly, he probably did. “You could’ve walked away,” he snapped. “You knew what Zam is.” You grinned, breathless, forcing the levity. “And you knew what you are.” His eyes flashed. “What’s that supposed to mean?” You lunged this time—too aggressive, on purpose. He countered, disarming you in one clean move, your weapon skittering across the ground. “I mean,” you said, hopping back out of range, “you play heroes and villains like it’s a story. Zam plays to win.” “That’s not winning,” he shot back, gesturing sharply around you at the burning field. “That’s burning everything down.” “And yet,” you replied, grabbing a fallen weapon without breaking eye contact, “you’re still standing in it with me.” He didn’t respond. He attacked. This time, he didn’t hold back. The impact drove you back, boots leaving the ground as you hit a broken wall hard enough to rattle your teeth. Pain flared down your spine, but you laughed anyway, breath shaky. “Wow,” you said. “There it is.” “There what?” he demanded, advancing. “Anger.” You pushed yourself upright. “Guess I found the switch.” His strike came faster—cleaner. You barely twisted out of the way, feeling the rush of air where steel should’ve been. You retaliated immediately, slashing upward. He blocked, but the force pushed him back a step. You blinked. “…Huh,” you said. “That almost worked.” Wemmbu huffed a sharp breath—half irritation, half something dangerously close to amusement. “You’re enjoying this.” “Maybe,” you said lightly, circling. “You’re the one who taught me to fight people stronger than me.” “I taught you how not to be reckless.” You lunged again anyway. This time, you didn’t hit him—but you made him move. Made him adjust. Made him stop bulldozing straight through the fight. “See?” you said. “Learning.” Their clash sent sparks across the ground. Around you, the battlefield surged closer, allies and enemies blurring into motion. Someone shouted Wemmbu’s name. Another voice called yours. Neither of you answered. “You’re still pulling your strikes,” you said, noticing it now. “Just a little.” He scoffed. “Don’t flatter yourself.” You stepped in close—too close—and tapped his chestplate with the flat of your blade before hopping back again. Not a real hit. Just proof. “Uh-huh,” you said smugly. For the first time since you’d engaged him, Wemmbu actually smiled. Sharp. Competitive. “Careful,” he warned. “Keep that up and I’ll stop being nice.” You saluted him with your weapon. “Looking forward to it.” An explosion rocked the ground between you, forcing separation. Smoke surged up, cutting the sightline clean in half. “Next time,” Wemmbu called through the haze, voice steady and loud, “I won’t ask questions.” You backed away, already turning, adrenaline buzzing in your veins. “Good,” you shouted back. “I hate answering them.” When the smoke cleared, he was gone. So were you. But the tension lingered—unresolved, crackling, alive—promising that the next time your paths crossed, neither of you would be holding back. And honestly? You couldn’t wait. Notes: Do feel free to put your requests in the comments though! <3 Chapter 3: Sharpening Edges (ManePear x Reader) Notes: AAAAnd done!!! There we go :D I apologize beforehand if I got his personality wrong, please feel free to tell me what to improve on <3 Chapter Text The training grounds were quiet in the way battlefields weren’t supposed to be—too still, air heavy with the aftermath of earlier fights. Broken stone and scorched dirt marked where others had already come and gone. You rolled your wrist, testing the ache that had settled in deep. ManePear noticed immediately. “You’re favoring it,” he said, not looking at you. He was adjusting his grip, posture relaxed but ready. “It’s fine.” “It won’t be in five minutes.” You sighed but loosened your hold anyway. “Happy?” “Neutral,” he replied, then finally met your eyes. “Ready?” You nodded. He moved first—always did. Not reckless, not flashy. Just fast. The first strike came in low, forcing you to drop your guard, the second aimed for your side. You blocked it, barely, sparks flashing where your weapons met. “You’re reacting,” Mane said mid-exchange. “Don’t. Predict.” “Oh, is that all?” you shot back, twisting away as he pressed the advantage. “You joke,” he said, pushing you back step by step, “because you’re nervous.” That annoyed you. You planted your foot, reversed direction, and forced him to retreat for the first time. His eyebrow twitched—interest, not surprise. “Again,” he said, sharper now. The next few minutes blurred together: the clang of metal, the scrape of boots, your breath burning in your lungs. Mane didn’t overwhelm you anymore. He pressured you—just enough to force mistakes, then stopped the moment you made one. “There,” he said, tapping your guard with his weapon. “You dropped it.” “I was attacking.” “You were hoping,” he corrected. “Not the same thing.” You clicked your tongue. “You’re fun.” “I’m effective.” You lunged again without waiting for his cue. He blocked, then countered, sweeping your legs out from under you. You hit the ground hard, staring up at the sky through drifting dust. “Too aggressive,” he said, offering a hand. “You swing like you’re trying to prove something.” You took his hand, letting him pull you up. His grip was firm, steady. “And you don’t?” you asked. He paused—just for a fraction of a second. “I already proved mine,” he said quietly. That shut you up. You resumed positions, slower now. The mood shifted—less sparring, more learning. Mane adjusted your stance without asking, nudging your shoulder, correcting the angle of your blade. He stayed close, voice lower, focused. “Trust your footing,” he said. “If you panic, you lose control. Control is everything.” You nodded, surprisingly serious. This time, when he attacked, you didn’t rush. You waited. Let him commit first. The clash was clean. You held longer. When he tried to disarm you, you twisted instead of pulling back—exactly like he’d told you. His weapon skidded across the ground. You froze. He stared at you. Then he exhaled a laugh—quiet, surprised. “Okay.” You grinned, breathless. “Okay?” “Don’t get used to it,” he said, retrieving his weapon. “But that was solid.” You dropped onto a chunk of stone, finally letting the exhaustion catch up. Mane sat nearby, resting his forearms on his knees, gaze drifting over the ruined field. “You don’t fight like most people,” he said after a while. “Is that bad?” “No,” he replied. “It’s honest.” You glanced at him. “You don’t strike me as the sentimental type.” He huffed. “I’m not.” Then, after a beat: “But you listen. You adapt. That matters.” Silence settled between you—not awkward. Just… calm. Rare. “You sticking around?” you asked eventually. Mane stood, offering you a hand again. “As long as you keep improving.” You took it. “Deal.” As you walked off the field together, weapons slung low, the sun dipping toward the horizon, you realized something unsettling— You weren’t just learning how to fight. You were learning how to keep up with him. And somehow, that felt like the most dangerous part. Chapter 4: Training Pt1 (ClownPierce x Reader) Notes: Yup, that's right, part 1 (He was so fun to write!! Clown deserves more fics) Chapter Text The sun was low over the treeline, streaking the clearing with gold and shadow. Clown didn’t give you time to appreciate it. “Keep moving,” he yelled, blade flashing. “Don’t let me predict you!” You lunged forward, swinging with as much precision as you could muster. He blocked easily, steel ringing sharply, sparks flying into the dirt. “Too slow!” Spinning on his heel to slash at your side. You ducked just in time, feeling the wind of the strike brush your cheek. “You’re telegraphing everything!” he continued, circling you like a predator. “Faster. Decide before you move!” You attacked again, feinting high, then swinging low. He anticipated it, snapping his weapon down in a brutal parry that sent your arms vibrating. “No,” he said flatly. “Commit, or you die.” Your boots skidded on loose gravel as he lunged forward, driving you back a few steps. Dust filled your nose, adrenaline thrummed in your veins, but you refused to pause. You struck again—this time with a horizontal sweep, forcing him to step aside—but he countered instantly, blade clanging against yours in a shower of sparks. “Better, but not good,” Clown said, voice tight and controlled. “Focus. The next one counts. One hesitation, and you’re dead. You got that?” “Yes,” you gasped, adjusting your grip, arms trembling. “Then don’t waste words.” He moved again, a blur of speed. You reacted on instinct, blocking one strike, pivoting under the next, feeling your muscles scream from the effort. Your timing was off — you could feel it by now — and he noticed instantly, pressing harder. “Too wide!” he barked. “Close it! Small, fast movements. Predictable patterns get punished in battle.” You twisted, ducked, and swung again, managing to land a hit against his armor. The sound of steel against steel was satisfying — but fleeting. He laughed, sharp and dry. “That wasn’t bad. Don’t get cocky too soon.” The exchanges continued, faster, harder. He forced you backward, drove you to the edge of the clearing. Every strike tested your reflexes, every parry challenged your endurance. Sweat stung your eyes, your breathing came in sharp gasps, but you didn’t slow. You didn’t notice the jolt. A glancing blow to your side, almost insignificant among the flurry, sent a wave of warmth through your body. You kept moving, kept reacting, keeping your focus on him. Clown didn’t stop, didn’t pause. He was relentless, as if your exhaustion only made it more entertaining. “You’re pushing through, good,” he said, eyes flicking to you briefly. “But don’t ignore the body. Control it, or it fails you.” You wiped sweat from your brow, not realizing the warmth spreading across your armor until he stepped back just slightly, lowering his weapon for a fraction of a second. His gaze dropped first. Then you looked down. Red. Dark and blooming across your side, staining fabric and armor alike. “Oh…” you whispered, frozen mid-step. Clown crouched instantly, scanning the wound. “When did this happen?” “I — I didn’t feel it,” you admitted. “I thought it was nothing.” He exhaled sharply, shaking his head. “You think surviving means ignoring blood?” His fingers pressed to the wound, applying a cloth with firm, practiced efficiency. “No. You stay alive by acknowledging it, not pretending it doesn’t exist.” You swallowed, trying to focus as the sting spread with each shallow breath. He straightened slightly, voice quieter, but still firm. “Walk with me,” he said, tying the cloth securely. “We’re done for today. You stay upright. I’ll make sure nothing touches you until you’re stable.” For the first time all session, you felt a strange sense of security — not relief — but the kind of weight that came from knowing someone had your back, even while pushing you to the brink. Clown walked beside you slowly, scanning the clearing. The battlefield’s remnants — scorched dirt, broken wood, discarded weapons — were muted now in the evening light. Every once in a while, his eyes flicked to you, checking for any faltering step, any uneven breath. “You’re bleeding more than I thought,” he muttered, voice low, almost… soft. “Don’t make me repeat myself next time — tell me when it hurts. You’re not invincible.” You pushed down a smile at the unusual worry in his tone. You had trained hard under him before, but never had you felt him… genuinely concerned, like your survival mattered to him beyond skill. “Relax,” you whispered, though it was shaky. “I can walk.” He didn’t take his gaze off you. “Relaxing isn’t the point. Staying alive is.” The quiet stretched, the sun dipping lower, painting the clearing in streaks of orange and crimson. The sounds of distant players, the faint echo of earlier clashes, seemed far away, like they belonged to another world. “You pushed too hard,” he said finally, the edge of frustration replaced by something heavier. “Don’t make me patch you up again because you refused to admit it.” “I won’t,” you said, voice firmer this time, though your legs still trembled. He didn’t respond, just kept his eyes on you, scanning, waiting. The concern in his expression softened the hard edges of his persona—the ruthless trainer, the terrifying PvP master. Here, just for a moment, it was clear he cared. “Keep moving,” he said after a pause, tone gentler. “One step at a time. You’re doing fine. But don’t test me again like that.” You nodded, stepping carefully but steadily, the red stain on your armor a constant reminder of how close you’d come. And though the clearing was quiet again, you could feel it: Clown’s worry. Sharp, controlled, and yet undeniably there. He stayed close as you walked, a silent guardian in a world that rarely allowed anyone to show care without a price. And for the first time, it didn’t feel like training. It felt like someone was watching over you because he wanted to. Chapter 5: Training Pt2 (ClownPierce x Reader) Notes: And here it is. Part two! (Ahhh, I like Clown so much, and seeing fics of him/reader is SO rare!!) (See the end of the chapter for more notes.) Chapter Text Night settled in fully, draping the forest in deep blue and black. The clearing felt smaller now, quieter, like the battlefield was holding its breath. Clown moved efficiently, setting up a small camp without ever turning his back on the treeline. A low fire crackled to life, its light flickering across his armor and the dark stains on yours. “Sit,” he ordered—not sharp, not loud, but unmistakable. You lowered yourself near the fire, the heat immediately soothing the chill that had crept into your bones. Only then did you realize how badly you were shaking. Adrenaline had carried you before. Now that it was gone, your body was collecting the debt. Clown knelt in front of you again, closer this time. He didn’t ask permission before checking the bandage, fingers firm but careful as he peeled the cloth back slightly. His jaw tightened. “You’re lucky,” he muttered. “Another inch and we’d be having a very different conversation.” “I told you I didn’t feel it,” you said quietly. “I know.” His voice dropped. “That’s what worries me.” He retied the cloth with more care than before, slower now, like he wasn’t willing to risk hurting you further. The firelight caught his expression—focused, tense, stripped of the usual sharp edge. This wasn’t a trainer correcting mistakes. This was someone making sure you’d still be breathing in the morning. “You kept fighting,” he said after a moment. “Didn’t hesitate. Didn’t panic. That matters.” Then, harsher: “But you don’t get points for bleeding quietly.” You gave a weak huff of a laugh. “Noted.” His eyes snapped up to yours. “I’m serious.” “I know,” you replied. “I was trying to keep up.” “That’s not your job,” he said immediately. The words came out faster than he probably intended. He paused, then corrected himself. “Your job is to survive long enough to get better.” The fire popped. Somewhere deeper in the woods, something moved—too far away to be a threat, but Clown still shifted subtly, placing himself between you and the sound. The motion was instinctive. You noticed. “I didn’t think you’d stop the spar,” you admitted. “Not for that.” He didn’t look at you. “I stop when I decide it’s no longer teaching and starts becoming reckless.” You swallowed. “Was I reckless?” His silence stretched. Too long. “Yes,” he said finally. “But so was I.” That surprised you more than anything else. He stood and paced once, then twice, like the energy in him had nowhere to go. “You’re not expendable,” he said, voice low, controlled but tight around the edges. “Don’t fight like you are.” The words settled heavy in your chest. “I won’t,” you said. This time, you meant it. He crouched again, closer now, resting his forearms on his knees. The firelight softened the sharp angles of his face. “Good,” he said. “Because next time, I’ll push you harder. But I expect you to tell me when something’s wrong.” “Even if we’re in the middle of it?” “Especially then.” Another quiet stretch passed. The forest hummed with night life, distant and alive. Your breathing finally evened out, the pain dull but manageable. Clown glanced at you again, slower this time, like he was memorizing the way you sat upright despite everything. “You did well today,” he said, more quietly than before. “Don’t let that make you stupid.” You smiled faintly. “You’re really bad at being reassuring.” “I’m not trying to be,” he replied. Then, after a beat: “I’m trying to keep you alive.” He stayed awake long after you leaned back against the log, eyes half-lidded, exhaustion dragging at you. You could feel his presence like a wall—solid, unyielding. Every time you shifted, his gaze flicked to you. Every sound in the dark made his grip tighten on his blade. This wasn’t just training anymore. This was someone who would stand between you and the battlefield—no matter the cost. The fire burned low, reduced to embers that glowed softly against the dirt. The ache in your side dulled into something heavy and constant, no longer sharp enough to keep you fully awake. Your thoughts drifted in and out, the sounds of the forest blurring together. At some point, your balance slipped. It wasn’t intentional—you just tilted slightly, exhaustion finally winning. Your shoulder brushed his arm first, tentative, and then your weight followed. Your head settled against his shoulder, breath evening out as sleep claimed you. Clown froze for exactly half a second. He glanced down at you, eyes narrowing—not in irritation, but calculation. You were out. Completely. Muscles slack, grip loosened, breathing slow and steady. No tension left in you to fight sleep. He exhaled through his nose. Carefully, he adjusted his stance so you wouldn’t slide, shifting just enough to give you support without waking you. One arm stayed braced against the ground, the other resting near your back—not holding you, not pulling you closer. Just there. “Tch.” The fire popped softly. He didn’t move away. Instead, he angled his shoulder slightly, making it easier for you to rest there. His gaze returned to the treeline, alert as ever, scanning shadows, listening for movement. The world didn’t stop just because you were asleep—but he’d handle it. “You’re lucky,” he said under his breath. “I don’t let people do this.” You shifted in your sleep, unconsciously leaning closer. He didn’t comment. Minutes passed. Then more. The night deepened, stars barely visible through the canopy. Every so often, his eyes flicked down to check you—your breathing, the bandage, the way you hadn’t stirred since. Casual. Like it didn’t matter. Like this was normal. If anyone had seen him then—sitting still, letting someone sleep against him, standing guard without complaint—they wouldn’t have recognized the ruthless terror of the server. Clown stayed exactly where he was until morning threatened the horizon, unmoving, unbothered. And when you stirred later, he’d pretend nothing unusual had happened at all. Notes: Thanks for reading! And feel free to leave any ideas you have down below! Chapter 6: A Quiet Moment (Sharpness/Conexion x Reader) Notes: I wish that I could act that I know what I'm writing, but I really don't know Sharpness that well... Sorry if this is too short! I really tried T^T Chapter Text The server was quiet for once. No alarms screaming through chat, no frantic callouts, no players scattering across the map like sparks from a fire. Just the soft hum of ambient sounds and the steady crunch of grass beneath your boots as you walked alongside Sharpness. He had his hands tucked behind his head, elbows out, posture loose in a way that felt almost unnatural for someone usually so sharp-eyed and alert. “This is weird,” you said after a while, breaking the comfortable silence. He snorted. “You say that every time nothing’s exploding.” “That’s because something usually is exploding.” That earned a real laugh from him—not the sharp, breathy exhale he let out mid-fight, not the smug chuckle after a risky play, but something easy and genuine. “Fair.” You crested a hill together, the world opening up into a wide stretch of plains bathed in warm, fading light. The sun hung low on the horizon, painting the grass in soft golds and oranges. Without really thinking about it, you slowed, then sat down at the edge, legs dangling over the drop. Sharpness followed without comment, dropping beside you with a quiet thud. For a few moments, neither of you spoke. The wind brushed past, carrying the faint rustle of tall grass and the distant call of mobs settling in for the night. It felt… rare. Peaceful. Like the server had decided to give you a break. Sharpness nudged your shoulder lightly with his own. “You good?” You glanced over at him. His expression was calm, eyes reflecting the sunset instead of scanning for danger. “Yeah,” you said. “Just… nice, I guess.” He hummed in agreement, gaze drifting back to the horizon. “Yeah. It is.” The light softened everything it touched, including him. For once, he didn’t look like someone calculating angles, exits, and odds. He just looked like someone sitting beside you because he wanted to be there. “You know,” he said casually, breaking the silence, “people think I’m way more chaotic than I actually am.” You smiled. “You stole a mace and almost fell into the void.” “Details,” he replied, grin tugging at his lips. “I mean—around you, I’m normal. That’s gotta count for something.” You laughed, the sound coming easier than it had in a while, and leaned a little closer. “You’re saying I bring out your calm side?” “I’m saying,” he corrected, glancing at you, “that I don’t feel like I have to be on edge when you’re around.” The words hit softer than any fight ever could. Warm settled in your chest, surprising and steady. The breeze picked up as the sun dipped lower, a faint chill following it. Without saying anything, Sharpness reached up, shrugged off his jacket, and draped it over your shoulders. You looked at him, caught off guard. “What?” he said, already smirking. “It’s cold.” “It’s really not,” you replied—but you tugged the jacket closer anyway. He noticed and looked pleased. The sky slowly deepened, oranges giving way to purples and blues. Stars began to peek through the fading light. As the last sliver of sun disappeared, you leaned into his side, resting your head against his shoulder. This time, he didn’t even hesitate. He shifted slightly, settling in so you fit there more comfortably, like it was the most natural thing in the world. “Hey,” you murmured, voice low. “Thanks for today.” “For what?” he asked. “For choosing this,” you said softly. “Instead of trouble.” He looked down at you, expression gentle in a way few people ever got to see. No bravado. No edge. Just honesty. “Anytime,” he said. “This is way better than chaos.” And for once, the server stayed quiet—no interruptions, no sudden danger—just letting the moment stretch on, warm and unhurried, like it was meant to last. Chapter 7: Silently Caring (FerreMC x Reader) Notes: Heads up, there are two POVs in this (you'll see why) :D (See the end of the chapter for more notes.) Chapter Text Y/N POV: The sky above the Nether choked with ash and fire, the ground cracked and jagged beneath your boots. Lava bubbled in the fissures, casting the battlefield in an eerie red-orange glow. Everywhere else was chaos—screams, explosions, and the clanging of steel—but between you and Ferre, it was silent. Only the sound of your breathing and the faint hiss of molten rock. He appeared first, stepping onto a ridge with his axe drawn, eyes cold, unreadable. No words. No hesitation. Ferre adjusts his grip on his axe. That’s it. No speech. No taunting. You mirrored him, dagger and shield ready, weighing your angles, analyzing the terrain. You were calm. Calculated. He didn’t care; he’d never care. That was fine. You tilt your head slightly. “Quiet today?” He moved first. Fast. A blur of motion, precise, deadly. Your shield clanged against his axe as sparks flew. You sidestepped, but he anticipated it, circling to cut off your exit. Every strike forced you to react, never the other way around. The impact slams through your arm, boots skidding half a block back. He follows immediately with a second strike meant to drive you toward the fractured edge. You pivot out. “Subtle,” you remark, circling. “Trying to push me off already?” No reply. Just another swing, faster this time. You ducked, rolled, and came up behind him—attacking a weak angle—but he twisted, catching your wrist mid-strike, forcing you back. He advances again—measured steps, not rushing. You test him with a quick lunge to the shoulder. Blocked. You chain another strike low. Dodged. He counters with brutal efficiency, forcing you to abandon offense just to keep up. It’s not flashy. It’s suffocating. Every time you try to create space, he takes half of it back. “You’re leaning heavier on your left,” you say, feinting retreat. He doesn’t bite. You dart in again, aiming to disrupt his rhythm. Three rapid strikes. He absorbs the first, deflects the second— The third nearly lands. Nearly. He rotates just enough that your blade skims instead of connects. Then he shield-bashes you square in the chest. His eyes flicked to yours for a fraction of a second. Calculating. Measuring. And then he pressed the advantage, driving you toward a jagged ridge. Another exchange. Sparks, heavy clangs, heat from the lava hitting your armor. You moved fast, tactical, striking where openings appeared. He read it all. Every feint, every stride. You stumble. He doesn’t hesitate. Axe arcs down with precision meant to punish that mistake. You roll aside, barely avoiding it. “Predictable,” you mutter under your breath. He exhales sharply through his nose. Not quite a laugh. The fight tightens. No wasted words. You try to outpace him—short bursts, sudden angle changes, forcing him to track you. It works against most players. Steel met steel, again and again. You forced him into small openings, testing him. Each time, he read you like a book, closing the space before you could commit. You tried to bait, feint high, swing low. Nothing. He didn’t falter. Didn’t hesitate. You slid backward to bait him into overcommitting, keeping your distance now, analyzing. The fissures below hissed with molten heat. One mistake, one slip, and you’d be gone. He takes one. Just one. Enough to maintain pressure without sacrificing balance. “You’re not even trying to finish it,” you say, voice steady as your blades lock. His eyes flick to yours for a fraction of a second. Then he shoves you back hard. You skid toward the cracked edge of the bridge—heat rising from below—but stop yourself before it becomes a problem. Lava fissures hiss dangerously close, the air thick with ash. You glance at him. His axe rests ready, stance perfect, eyes sharp. He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t move until you’re prepared. He could have pushed further, but he didn’t. You narrow your eyes slightly. “That was an opening.” Silence once again. He advances again, faster now. The exchange turns aggressive—steel clashing in rapid succession. He forces you to defend for five straight movements, each one heavier than the last. You manage to slip out and counter, catching him across the side. Clean. He barely reacts. He lunged again, axe arcing high. You ducked, countering with a sweep to his legs. He deflected, pressing forward relentlessly. “Keep your guard,” you reminded yourself, spinning to maintain footing. The clash continued, swing after swing, each one measured, controlled. “Timing,” you whispered, eyes on his movements, predicting the lethal arcs. Another sweep, he deflected again, forcing you to pivot. Finally, a pause—a fraction of a second. You stayed ready, weapon raised. He took a small step back, axe lowering slightly. “Go,” he said quietly, tone flat, controlled. Then, almost as an afterthought, “Stay sharp.” You exhaled, stepping back, weapon still ready. “Understood,” you replied calmly, voice level. The fight was over. He didn’t watch you leave. Didn’t need to. But the faintest line of tension tightened his jaw as he scanned your retreat, subtle concern hidden beneath the quiet predator. “Don’t get careless next time,” he muttered under his breath. FerreMC POV: The sky above the Nether choked with ash and fire, the ground cracked and jagged beneath his boots. Lava hissed from the fissures, casting flickering orange light over the battlefield. Everywhere else chaos roared, but here, with Y/N in front of him, the world narrowed to one target. He gripped his axe tighter, eyes scanning her movements. Calm. Too calm. That was… irritating. He couldn’t afford distraction, but he couldn’t ignore it either. Every feint, every measured step—he noted them all. Timing, reach, weight distribution. Weak spots. Dodge patterns. He catalogued each subtle tell. Dodge, Y/N. Don’t overcommit. Her shield met his first swing with a sharp clang. Sparks flew. He pressed, anticipating her retreat, tracking her center of balance. Each strike he threw was meant to push her toward the cracks, the fissures. Not out of malice—efficiency. But the moment her boot came dangerously close to molten rock, his stomach tensed. He didn’t say anything. Never said anything—but his muscles coiled tighter, ready to correct the next misstep. Another swing. Another parry. He pivoted mid-motion, noting how she tried to lure him into wide arcs. Clever, but predictable. He adjusted, shifting his weight just slightly, forcing her to overreach. Close. Too close. He cursed silently under his breath, pressing forward in controlled strikes, feeling the heat of the lava like a warning. One slip, one misjudgment, and she’d be gone. He had to respect her skill, but he could never relax. Not now. Not with the Nether waiting to swallow mistakes whole. She lunged low, and he blocked instinctively, taking a half-step back to avoid the edge. His eyes flicked to hers for a fraction of a second—calm, collected, daring him to push harder. He responded with precision, forcing her to pivot, retreat, counter. Every motion a test. Every feint catalogued. Dodge, Y/N. He blocked a sweep to the legs, pivoted, adjusted the angle of his axe. She tried to bait him with a quick jab to the side. He read it—just in time—and countered, maintaining distance. Yet internally, tension knotted his chest. One second too long near the lava, one misstep, and it’d all end. Another rapid exchange. Sparks flew, and he noted the way her weight shifted on her heels, how she favored her left arm after a certain maneuver. Exploitable—but not enough yet. Not enough to risk committing. Her strike grazed him—light, almost a touch—but precise. He absorbed it, forced her back with a shove, but inside, his stomach clenched. Calculated risk. Keep her alive. Keep her fighting. Keep her… alive. The final approach. Axe swinging, footwork tight. He measured each step, anticipating, adjusting. She didn’t panic. That was the hardest part. The calm, tactical rhythm made him push harder, test her limits. Every near miss, every parry, every dodge—it was a war of wits, muscle, and endurance. Step back. Step back. Don’t let her slip into danger. She skidded near a fissure, and for half a heartbeat, his body tensed beyond calculation. He could not let her fall. The axe stayed ready, eyes locked on hers, pulse quickening. Not words. No shouts. Just vigilance, cold but keen. Finally, a pause. One fraction of a second of assessment. Her stance was solid, weapon poised, ready. He lowered his axe slightly, satisfied she understood the unspoken rules. “Go,” he muttered quietly, voice flat but carrying the weight of command—and care. His eyes flicked to the fissures once more. “Stay sharp.” She nodded, moving back across the broken terrain, calm and collected. He didn’t follow immediately, didn’t need to. But the faintest tightening of his jaw betrayed it—he would have moved in an instant if she’d misstepped. Silent, calculating, and only a little… concerned. For Ferre, that was enough. Notes: Thanks for reading!! I'm doing my best to finish/start the other fic you guys requested. Please and thank you for being patient with me! <3 Chapter 8: Slice of Life (ParrotX2 x Reader) Notes: Wifies is just third wheeling here XD Chapter Text The forest stretched around you in a riot of greens and golds, sunlight filtering through the thick canopy in shifting patterns that danced across the mossy floor. Birds called overhead, and somewhere in the distance, a brook gurgled softly, a gentle counterpoint to the crunch of twigs beneath your boots. You were practically vibrating with energy, weaving through the underbrush, ducking under low-hanging branches, and leaping over exposed roots with a grin that felt too wide for your own face. “Wait up, Y/N!” Parrot called from a few paces behind, his voice calm but steady, carrying the quiet undertone of someone who was always assessing, always watching. You spun in place for a moment, laughing, before sprinting forward again, the wind tugging at your hair and the hem of your tunic as if urging you onward. Wifies trailed a little further back, hands tucked behind his back, eyes scanning the forest with methodical patience. He didn’t rush. He didn’t yell. He simply moved like a shadow, stepping lightly over fallen logs, measuring the ground, always ready to intercept if you ventured too far or stumbled. His quiet presence contrasted sharply with your energy, but it grounded the walk in a strange, comforting way—like someone was always there, even if they never spoke more than necessary. You darted around a massive oak, weaving between trunks and skidding over patches of loose soil. “Too slow, Parrot!” you called back, voice bright and teasing, though you kept your pace even as you glanced over your shoulder to see him matching your stride without breaking his calm. His eyes flicked to each branch and root, calculating every possible hazard, always a step ahead of where you were headed. “Careful near that slope,” he said, voice low, almost casual, but your heart caught anyway. You were too energetic to slow down, hopping over a gnarled root and letting out a breathless laugh. Parrot’s gaze followed you like a hawk, silent concern threading every movement. When you leapt toward a small clearing, his chest tensed imperceptibly. Don’t misstep. Don’t slip here. Not with the incline and the roots, he thought, silently shifting his path to mirror yours, ready to intervene if you faltered. Wifies stayed even further behind, watching with the same calm intensity. He didn’t call out, didn’t flinch, but his eyes tracked your bounding movements as if filing away every small detail—how you pushed off roots, how you adjusted mid-air, how your footing might falter on hidden stones. Occasionally, he muttered something under his breath—less a warning than a quiet note to himself—but it was enough to remind you that someone else was here, keeping watch. You spotted a small hill ahead, dotted with wildflowers and tangled vines. With a grin, you sprinted up, boots slipping slightly on the damp earth. Parrot accelerated, keeping just behind you, muscles ready, hands poised. He didn’t breathe faster. He didn’t panic. He simply mirrored every movement, anticipating, protecting without ever touching you, his mind a map of angles and trajectories. When you neared the crest, your momentum carried you dangerously close to the edge, and his jaw tightened. Easy now. Careful, he thought, heart hammering just enough to betray the calm facade. You glanced back, laughing, “You’re not even trying to catch me!” and Parrot’s lips quirked faintly—not a full smile, but the slightest acknowledgment of your energy. Wifies adjusted his steps silently, keeping a few meters’ distance, still observing, still ready, the picture of composed strategy. You sprinted forward again, weaving between trees, kicking up leaves in your wake, and both of them followed—one quietly protective, the other calculating every risk, ensuring you could play this game without consequence. As the sunlight waned, stretching long shadows through the forest, you finally slowed at the edge of a small clearing, chest heaving, cheeks flushed with exhilaration. Parrot arrived beside you a heartbeat later, voice calm as ever. “You didn’t fall,” he said, more observation than comment. You laughed softly, brushing dirt off your tunic. Wifies arrived last, standing just back, hands still clasped behind him, expression unreadable but eyes sharp. For a moment, the three of you simply stood there, the forest quiet except for the rustle of leaves and distant birdcalls, and the world felt safe—not because the dangers weren’t there, but because you weren’t alone. “Next time, maybe don’t run straight into the wildest patch first,” Parrot said, just above a whisper, and you rolled your eyes but smiled anyway. Wifies didn’t speak, just tilted his head slightly, a single motion of acknowledgment, and you knew he saw everything without needing words. The three of you moved on again, walking through the forest as the sun dipped lower, casting long, golden beams through the canopy. You bounded ahead once more, energy endless, laughter ringing lightly between the trees, while Parrot and Wifies followed, one silently protective, one quietly vigilant, both keeping you close without ever asking for it. Chapter 9: Learning to Trust Pt1 (Flamefrags x Reader) Notes: I'm planning for this to be 4 parts :) (See the end of the chapter for more notes.) Chapter Text The first time you see FlameFrags, he isn’t fighting, and that alone makes the air feel wrong in a way you can’t immediately explain. You had expected motion, sparks, the clean rhythm of combat that follows him in every story anyone ever tells, but instead he stands on a jagged rise of blackstone like a statue carved from something sharper than the terrain itself. The wind pushes ash-colored particles across his armor and he doesn’t react to any of it, his head turning in small, deliberate increments as if every shift reveals another invisible layer of information only he can see. He isn’t looking at the landscape — he’s dissecting it, mapping it, memorizing how to survive it. You’ve heard the name enough times for it to stop sounding like a username and start sounding like a warning. The Immortal Demon. The player who doesn’t die. The one who turns hunts into executions. And you, in what is either courage or a complete lack of survival instinct, walk straight up to him with your weapon put away and a piece of bread in your hand like you’re approaching someone at spawn instead of the most dangerous PvPer on the server. “Hi.” The reaction is immediate and precise in a way that makes your heart jump into your throat. A blade appears in his hand not with a dramatic swing but with terrifying efficiency, already angled, already positioned to kill if you so much as move wrong. His body turns just enough to keep you in front of him while still maintaining vision of the ridgeline behind, and it hits you all at once that you are not the main focus of his attention — the environment is, the sightlines are, the escape routes are — and you are simply another variable being measured. “What do you want.” It isn’t curiosity. It’s a demand for motive, for the hidden plan he assumes must exist. “To say hi,” you answer, because there is absolutely no way to back out of this with dignity now. Silence stretches between you, long enough for the wind to shift direction and for your initial confidence to wobble just slightly at the edges, but you keep smiling anyway because you committed to this and you are not about to lose the bit. His eyes narrow a fraction, not in confusion but in the way someone does when a situation refuses to fit into any known category. “Go.” You don’t. He leaves. You follow. Not close enough to trigger the instincts that would get you cut down in half a second — you’ve seen the clips, you know the distance that equals death — but close enough that he can hear your footsteps and know you’re still there. Every time he abruptly turns to check if you’ve given up, you lift your hand and wave at him like you’ve run into him on a casual walk instead of tracking one of the server’s most lethal players across biome after biome. He changes routes after that, and the changes are not subtle. Sheer drops that require careful footing, narrow cave systems that twist in ways meant to lose pursuers, vertical climbs that punish hesitation. You lose him once when he pearls across a ravine and for a full five minutes you stand there trying to decide whether to accept defeat or commit to the chase. When you finally reappear on the other side, breathless and triumphant and covered in dirt from a very undignified climb, he just stares at you like you’ve broken some fundamental rule of logic. “I’m very determined,” you tell him, trying to smooth your hair back into something presentable. “I can see that,” he replies flatly, and it is the first time he has said more than two words to you, which you immediately store in your memory as a massive success. Days pass like that, not in dramatic leaps but in small, quiet adjustments that only you seem to notice. You never touch his storage, never hover near his gear, never ask for anything that would make your presence look like a strategy. You just exist nearby, talking sometimes about things that don’t matter — the way a ruined portal looked pretty at sunset, a cow that stared at you for a full minute like it had a personal grudge, a house you might build someday if you ever stopped wandering long enough. Most of the time he doesn’t respond, but he also stops moving while you’re mid-sentence. Once, you drop food on the ground near him and immediately back away with your hands raised like you’re approaching a wild animal that might bolt if startled. You tell him it’s for later and then very deliberately start talking about something else so he doesn’t feel watched. He doesn’t pick it up while you’re there, and you pretend not to be disappointed. The next time you see him, it’s gone, and he doesn’t comment on it and neither do you, but the space between you feels different after that. Another day you misjudge a climb and your foot slips, sending you sliding backward down a steep slope in a way that would be embarrassing if it weren’t also potentially fatal. A hand catches the back of your armor for half a second — steady, grounding, gone the instant you find your balance again — and when you turn to look at him he’s already facing the horizon like nothing happened. “Careful,” he says, the word sounding like it escaped without permission. You stare at him like he just handed you a stack of netherite. He walks away immediately, but you follow with a grin so wide it makes your face hurt. He starts adjusting his pace after that, and it takes you a while to realize it. He doesn’t slow down — that would be obvious — but he stops choosing the impossible routes when you’re with him. When he stops to scout an area, he positions himself so you’re within his peripheral vision without him needing to turn his head. When you sit on the edge of a cliff and swing your legs while rambling about building a house somewhere with birch trees and a river, he shifts two blocks to the side so a skeleton in the valley below doesn’t have a clear shot at you. He never tells you to stay, but he stops telling you to leave, and for him that is the loudest change of all. At night, when he logs out, it’s never in the open anymore. It’s in enclosed spaces, defensible positions, places where no one can get the jump on him. You don’t understand the significance at first until you realize he only does it when you’re already inside, sitting on the floor and talking about something completely unimportant while he stands near the door like a coiled weapon that refuses to power down. Trust, for him, isn’t warmth. It's a calculated risk. And you are becoming a risk he is choosing not to eliminate. One evening you end up on a high ridge watching a storm roll across the plains, the sky splitting open with lightning that turns the world silver for a heartbeat at a time. You lie on your back and point at cloud shapes, narrating them like they’re animals because the silence feels too big otherwise and you like the sound of your own voice when it fills the space between you. “That one looks like a creeper,” you say, completely serious. “It doesn’t,” he replies automatically, which makes you beam because he’s engaging. “It does if you believe.” Wind moves through the grass. Thunder rolls closer. “…You’re going to get yourself killed,” he says after a long pause, and it isn’t a threat or a dismissal — it’s quiet, almost reluctant concern. “Not if I keep hanging around you,” you answer lightly, because the truth feels simple to you in a way it clearly doesn’t to him. He looks at you then, really looks at you, like he’s trying to solve a problem that has no familiar mechanics. “Why,” he asks, and it’s the first real question he’s ever asked you, “are you still here?” Because you don’t need anything from him. Because you don’t see him as a weapon. Because every time he positions himself between you and a threat he pretends not to notice, it makes your chest feel warm in a way you don’t fully understand. “Because I like you,” you say, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. For a moment something in his posture falters, not physically but internally, like a calculation returned an error and he doesn’t know how to compensate for it. He looks away first, the rain finally reaching the ridge and darkening the edges of his armor. “You’re strange,” he says. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” you reply immediately, sitting up with a bright grin. When a mob starts climbing the slope toward you through the rain, he doesn’t move away from you to take the fight. He steps in front of you without thinking, blade already in motion, body positioned to block any path that leads in your direction. He never says anything about it afterward. You don’t either. But the distance between you is no longer the space between a hunter and a variable, and for someone who survives by never letting anything close enough to matter, that shift is more dangerous than any battle he’s ever won. Notes: I'm going to put all the requests I'm working on in chapter one, so you can see what UU players I'll do next <3 And always feel free to put in requests! Chapter 10: Learning to Trust Pt2 (Flamefrags x Reader) Chapter Text Y/N POV: The forest had been quiet in that peaceful, almost deceptive way that made it feel like the world had paused just for the two of you. Sunlight spilled through the canopy in long, warm ribbons, catching in your hair every time you bounced a little too far ahead on the path before remembering—oh, right, give him space—and slowing down so you ended up walking somewhere near his shoulder instead. You’d started talking again, soft, aimless things about the shape of the leaves and how you thought you saw a fox earlier, not expecting an answer, just letting your voice exist in the same space as him. Flame didn’t respond, but he didn’t tell you to stop either. And that alone felt like progress. You were mid-sentence when his entire posture changed. It was so sudden it stole the rest of your words. One second he was walking—tense, as always, but steady—and the next he was completely still, head tilted slightly like he was listening to something you couldn’t hear. The air shifted with him. The forest, which had been full of quiet movement and distant birdsong, dropped into a silence so complete it made your skin prickle. “Stop,” he said, low and sharp. You did. Immediately. You didn’t even know why—just that something in his voice made your chest tighten. The first arrow came from the right. You didn’t see it until it grazed his arm and buried itself in a tree behind him with a violent thunk. Everything exploded into motion after that—players dropping from branches, boots hitting the ground, steel flashing in the light. It was fast, coordinated, terrifyingly precise. And every single one of them went for him. Not you. Not even a glance. It was like you weren’t there. Flame moved like this was a language he spoke better than anything else, dodging, striking, repositioning with the kind of instinct that only came from surviving things that should have killed him. His attention never left the attackers; his body angled to keep them in front of him, to keep control of the fight. You reached for your weapon. Your hand shook. You’d fought before. You weren’t useless. You knew how to fight. So why couldn’t you move? One of them lunged for him from behind and your brain screamed do something—but you didn’t know where to step without getting in his way, didn’t know who to target when they were all focused on him, didn’t know how to jump into a fight that was moving too fast for you to follow. You hesitated for one second, then another, heart hammering so hard it drowned out everything else. Flame took the hit meant for his back and spun, eliminating the attacker in a single brutal motion. You flinched. Your feet were rooted to the ground. Helpless. You hated it—hated the way your body refused to listen, hated the way your mind kept shouting go, help him, HELP HIM while your muscles locked up like you were watching from behind a glass wall. The fight was everywhere at once and you couldn’t find an opening that wouldn’t make things worse. Every time you tried to step in, he moved, forcing you back out of range again without even looking at you, like you were something fragile he had to avoid breaking. Like you weren’t part of this. By the time the last enemy retreated into the trees, the entire battle had passed you by. You hadn’t landed a single hit. The silence that followed was louder than the fight. Flame stood in the middle of it, shoulders rising and falling once, twice, weapon still in his hand. He wasn’t badly hurt—he never let himself be—but there was a thin line of red along his sleeve and another at his jaw where someone had gotten too close. You took a step toward him, relief flooding through you so fast your knees felt weak. “Flame—are you—” He turned. The look in his eyes stopped you cold. It wasn’t just anger. It was that deeper thing—the shutter slamming down, the walls you’d spent days carefully, patiently walking around snapping back into place all at once. “You didn’t move,” he said. It took you a second to understand what he meant. “I—I was trying to find an opening, I didn’t want to get in your—” “You didn’t move,” he repeated, sharper this time. Your throat tightened. “They were all on you. I didn’t know where to—” “They ignored you.” The words landed like a dropped weight. You blinked. “What?” “Not one of them targeted you,” he said, every syllable controlled and cold. “Not even by accident.” Because he’d noticed that too. Of course he had. Your mind scrambled for something—anything—that would make this make sense. “I thought—maybe they just—saw you as the bigger threat? You always—” “You froze.” That one hurt more than the others because it was true. “I was trying to help,” you said, and your voice came out smaller than you meant it to. “I didn’t know where to go without messing you up. You move so fast and I—if I got in the way—” “So you stood there.” The way he said it made it sound like a choice. Like you’d decided to watch. Your chest felt tight, breath coming shallow and uneven. “I was scared,” you admitted, because lying would only make it worse. “Not of them—of making it worse for you. I didn’t want to be the reason you got hit.” For a split second something flickered in his expression—something uncertain, something that almost looked like he wanted to believe you. Then it was gone. “They knew exactly where to find me,” he said. “Exactly when to strike. And you just happened to be here. Just happened to stay out of it. Just happened to be untouched.” “No,” you said immediately, shaking your head hard enough that your vision blurred. “Flame, no, I would never do that to you. I didn’t even know they were there until you said stop, I swear—” “Everyone says that,” he cut in, and there it was—that raw edge of something older than you, older than this moment, something carved into him by people who had stood beside him and then turned. You took a step closer without thinking. “Look at me. Please. You know me—” “Stay back.” You stopped like you’d hit a wall. Because the distance in his voice was worse than the command. “I let you close,” he said, quieter now, but the quiet was the dangerous kind. “That’s on me.” Tears burned behind your eyes, not because he was angry, but because he sounded so tired. Like he’d expected this from the beginning and had only been waiting for you to prove him right. “I froze,” you said, your voice shaking. “I messed up. I was useless and I hate that I was useless and I should’ve moved sooner and I’m sorry—but I didn’t betray you. I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not you.” He didn’t answer. Didn’t move. Didn’t soften. The forest felt too big, the space between you too wide. Finally, he stepped back. “I won’t make the same mistake twice,” he said. Your heart dropped so fast it almost hurt. “Flame—” “Don’t follow me.” And then he turned and walked away, the trees closing around him like he’d never been there at all. You stood in the middle of the path, the fight replaying in your head in cruel, perfect clarity—the moment you hesitated, the second you lost, the way his back had been exposed while you did nothing. The worst part wasn’t that he thought you’d planned it. It was that, from where he’d been standing— it had looked exactly like you had. FlameFrags POV: The forest had been quiet in that peaceful, almost deceptive way that always put him on edge. Too still. Too balanced. Too clean. Flame had learned a long time ago that calm was usually just the space before something tried to kill you. You, on the other hand, seemed to think it was beautiful. You kept drifting ahead of him and then catching yourself, slowing down so you were somewhere near his shoulder again like you were trying to respect a boundary you didn’t fully understand. You talked the whole time—soft, rambling things about leaves and sunlight and a fox you thought you saw earlier—and he didn’t answer, but he didn’t tell you to stop either. Which, for him, was the closest thing to permission he gave. He tracked everything else instead. Footsteps that didn’t belong. The direction of the wind. The rhythm of the forest. You were mid-sentence when it snapped. It wasn’t a sound—it was the absence of one. The birds cut off. The leaves stopped moving in the way they were supposed to. The air shifted just slightly wrong, and his entire body reacted before the thought fully formed. “Stop,” he said, low and sharp. You did. Instantly. Good. The first arrow came from the right. He saw it a fraction too late to avoid completely—felt the burn as it grazed his arm and drove into the tree behind him—and then everything was in motion. Players dropped from branches, hit the ground running, steel flashing, angles tightening. A planned hit. On him. Of course. His focus narrowed into the clean, familiar clarity of a fight. Movement, positioning, threat priority. He shifted to keep them in front of him, cutting one down before the second could close the distance, turning with the momentum so he didn’t get boxed in. You were behind him. He knew exactly where you were without looking. He always knew where you were. And in the middle of the fight—between one strike and the next—he realized something that didn’t fit. No one was targeting you. Not a stray swing. Not a misfired arrow. Not even a glance. They moved around you like you weren’t there. He adjusted his positioning automatically, every step calculated to make sure you stayed out of the line of attack. It slowed him down. It always did when he had to account for someone else, and he hated that he’d started doing it on instinct. One of them came from behind—blind spot—and he took the hit instead of letting the angle open. Pain flared. He spun, eliminated the threat, reset. Still no one touched you. He risked a glance. You were standing a few paces away, weapon in your hand, eyes wide—not hurt, not fighting, not moving. Frozen. For a second something unfamiliar and sharp twisted in his chest. You didn’t know where to step. He could see it—the way you kept shifting your weight like you were trying to find an opening and couldn’t, the way you hesitated every time he moved because you didn’t want to get in his way. The fight was too fast for you to read, too tight, too aggressive. You looked helpless. He turned back to the attackers before that thought could finish forming. He didn’t have time for it. By the time the last one retreated, the clearing was quiet again, broken only by his own breathing and the faint rustle of leaves where they’d disappeared. He catalogued the damage automatically. Shallow cut at the arm. Split at the jaw. Nothing that mattered. You hadn’t been touched. Of course you hadn’t. You stepped toward him, relief all over your face, and something in his chest tightened in a way he didn’t like. “Flame—are you—” He turned to look at you fully for the first time since the fight started. And the pieces clicked into place in the worst possible way. “You didn’t move,” he said. You blinked like you didn’t understand. “I—I was trying to find an opening, I didn’t want to get in your—” “You didn’t move.” Because from where he had been standing, it hadn’t looked like hesitation. It had looked like waiting. “They were all on you,” you said quickly. “I didn’t know where to—” “They ignored you.” The words tasted like something bitter and familiar. You stared at him. “What?” “Not one of them targeted you,” he said, each detail lining up in his head with brutal, perfect clarity. “Not even by accident.” You shook your head immediately. “I thought—maybe they just—saw you as the bigger threat? You always—” “You froze.” And you flinched. “I was trying to help,” you said, your voice smaller now. “I didn’t know where to go without messing you up. You move so fast and I—if I got in the way—” “So you stood there.” Because that was what it had been. Standing. Watching. His mind supplied the rest without his permission—other fights, other moments, other people who had stood just outside the danger and let it happen because it was easier that way. “They knew exactly where to find me,” he said. “Exactly when to strike. And you just happened to be here. Just happened to stay out of it. Just happened to be untouched.” “No,” you said immediately, the word breaking in the middle. “Flame, no, I would never do that to you. I didn’t even know they were there until you said stop, I swear—” “Everyone says that.” The second it left his mouth he hated how tired it sounded. Because it was true. He’d heard it before. You took a step closer. “Look at me. Please. You know me—” “Stay back.” You stopped like you’d hit a wall. He couldn’t let you get closer—not when the part of him that had started to relax around you was still there, still trying to make excuses for what he’d seen. “I let you close,” he said, quieter now. “That’s on me.” Your eyes filled with tears and something twisted in his chest again, sharp and unwanted. “I froze,” you said, your voice shaking. “I messed up. I was useless and I hate that I was useless and I should’ve moved sooner and I’m sorry—but I didn’t betray you. I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not you.” For a fraction of a second he saw it the other way. You, trying to find space in a fight that moved too fast. You, scared of getting in his way. You, trusting him to handle it because he always did. The image almost held. Then the memory of untouched ground around your feet, of every attack angled only at him, slammed back into place. He stepped back. “I won’t make the same mistake twice,” he said. Your expression broke in a way he refused to look at for more than a heartbeat. “Flame—” “Don’t follow me.” He turned before you could say anything else because if he stayed—if he listened—he might start doubting what he knew he’d seen. And doubt got you killed. The forest closed around him as he walked, the sounds returning one by one like nothing had happened, like the fight hadn’t changed anything. But it had. Because now every step felt heavier, like he’d cut something loose that he hadn’t meant to care about in the first place. And the worst part—the part he refused to examine too closely—was the split-second image that kept forcing its way back into his head: You standing there with your weapon in your hand, eyes wide and lost, not calculating, not waiting— just not knowing what to do. He shoved it down. From where he had been standing— It had looked exactly like a setup. Chapter 11: Learning to Trust Pt3 (Flamefrags x Reader) Chapter Text The forest felt endless, the same trees repeating in every direction until it no longer mattered where you walked. Your hotbar was a mess of half–broken tools and empty slots, your hunger bar long since drained, and the quiet hum of the world sounded distant—like you were hearing it from underwater. You kept moving because stopping would mean thinking, and thinking would mean hearing his voice again, seeing that look again, feeling that sharp, crushing certainty that you had lost the one person you had tried so hard to stay beside. You didn’t notice the players until they were already there. Footsteps behind you. The snap of a twig to your left. A shadow cutting off the light ahead. You turned too slowly, your reaction dulled by exhaustion, and by the time your sword was in your hand they had already spread out, their formation tight and practiced. They weren’t talking. They didn’t need to. To them, this wasn’t a fight—it was cleanup. You blocked the first hit by instinct alone, the impact rattling up your arm and making your vision shake. You swung back, but your timing was off, your aim sloppy, and they slipped around you like you were barely an obstacle. Another strike landed. Then another. The red flash at the edges of your screen pulsed harder, faster, your breaths coming in short, uneven bursts even though you knew you didn’t actually need air. You could have run. You had pearls. You had blocks. You had ways out. But your hands felt heavy, your mind slower than it used to be, and a quiet, hollow thought kept looping in the back of your head: What’s the point? So you didn’t. You stepped back, your swings growing weaker, your guard breaking more often than it held. When your sword was knocked from your hand and clattered somewhere into the grass, you didn’t even chase after it. You just stared at the space where it had been, your thoughts blank, your body refusing to move. One of them laughed. The sound didn’t hurt. Not really. It just confirmed something you already knew. The hit that knocked you down came from the side. You barely saw it, the force sending you into the dirt hard enough that the world tilted sideways. For a second you stayed there, staring at the leaves above you, watching the sunlight flicker between them in slow, lazy patterns like nothing around you was wrong at all. Footsteps approached. A sword lifted into view. Then— A blur of motion cut across your screen, fast and violent and unmistakable. Flame didn’t arrive like other players did. There was no hesitation, no pause to assess. One moment the hunters were closing in on you, and the next one of them was sent flying back into a tree from a hit so precise it looked effortless. The second barely had time to turn before Flame was on them, his movements sharp and relentless, every combo perfectly chained, every dodge timed to the tick. To them, it had been a guaranteed win. Against him, it became survival—and they were very bad at it. You watched from the ground, too drained to stand, as he tore through them with that same overwhelming pressure he brought to every fight. He didn’t speak. He didn’t taunt. He just moved, fast and controlled and terrifying, like the entire forest had narrowed down to the radius of his reach. The last one tried to run. An ender pearl arced through the air. Flame’s followed a heartbeat later. The fight ended before the sound of the first pearl landing had fully faded. Silence rushed back in, thick and heavy, broken only by the faint clink of dropped items. For a moment he didn’t notice you. He stood where the last player had fallen, shoulders rising and falling once, twice, his sword still in his hand as if he expected another ambush. Then he turned—and his gaze landed on you, still on the ground, armor cracked, weapon out of reach, not even trying to get up. He frowned. Not the sharp, suspicious look from before. This was something else. Confusion, maybe. Irritation. “…What are you doing?” he asked, like he’d just walked in on you standing still in the middle of a fight for no reason. You pushed yourself up onto your elbows, the movement shaky. “Nothing,” you said, your voice quieter than you meant it to be. His eyes flicked briefly to your empty hand, to where your sword lay a few blocks away, then back to your face. He didn’t have your health bar. To him, you didn’t look like someone on the verge of dying—you just looked… off. Slow. Careless. Like you’d stopped trying. “You had an exit to your right,” he said, tone clipped, analytical in that way he got after fights. “And a pearl. Why didn’t you take it?” You didn’t answer. Because there wasn’t an answer that made sense. Not one you could say without your voice breaking. He stepped closer, picking up your sword and holding it out to you. You had to force your fingers to close around it. “You’re better than that,” he continued, quieter now, but the words still carried that familiar edge of expectation. “You don’t just stand there and let them corner you.” Something in your chest twisted. You used to think that too. “I’m just tired,” you said, and it was the closest thing to the truth you could manage. He studied you for a second longer, like he was trying to solve a problem that didn’t fit any of the patterns he knew. There was no visible damage beyond your armor, no obvious reason for the sluggish reactions, no flashing hearts to warn him how close you’d been to losing everything. Just you—slower, quieter, not meeting his eyes. “…You need to be more careful,” he said at last, the words coming out more like a habit than a reprimand. “Next time I might not be around.” Next time. The phrase landed heavier than it should have. You nodded anyway. He turned slightly, already scanning the treeline again, slipping back into that constant vigilance that defined him. To him, this had been a random encounter, an easy cleanup, a moment of bad gameplay on your part. Something to correct. Something to move past. He didn’t see the way your hand trembled around your sword. He didn’t see how long it took you to stand once he looked away. He didn’t see the hunger bar still empty, or the way your hearts had been flickering at almost nothing just seconds before he arrived. All he saw was you following a few steps behind him again when he started to walk. And even that made him pause for half a second—just long enough for his pace to slow, not enough for him to acknowledge why. Flame didn’t get far before the sound of your footsteps changed. They were there—he could hear them—but they weren’t right. Too uneven. Too slow. You used to keep pace with him without trying, sometimes even drifting ahead and forcing him to adjust. Now there was a growing distance between each step, like every block of ground cost you something. He told himself to ignore it. Keep moving. Stay alert. Don’t get distracted. But after a few seconds the silence behind him stretched too long, and he glanced back over his shoulder. You had stopped. Not completely—your avatar still swayed with that faint idle motion—but you weren’t walking. Your sword hung at your side, your head tilted down just slightly, like you were staring at the grass instead of the path ahead. For a moment you didn’t even notice he’d turned. Flame’s brows knit together. You looked… smaller. Not in size, not really. Just in the way you held yourself, like the confidence that used to fill the space around you had drained out and left something quieter in its place. Without saying anything, he reached into his inventory. The golden apple appeared in his hand, its glow cutting warm through the green and shadow of the forest. He hesitated for half a second—just long enough for the old instinct to surface, the one that told him to keep everything for himself, to never waste resources on someone who might turn on him later. Then he walked back and held it out. “Take it,” he said, like it was the most normal, practical thing in the world. No explanation. No softness in his tone. Just an order, almost. You looked at the apple. Then at him. Your grip tightened slightly on your sword, like you weren’t sure what to do with your hands, and you shook your head. “I’m fine,” you said quickly, the words tripping over each other in that way they did when you were trying too hard to make them sound casual. “Right… you don’t want me to follow you.” For a second he didn’t understand what you meant. The sentence didn’t fit the moment. It didn’t fit anything. His expression shifted, confusion cutting through the usual sharp focus in his eyes. “What?” You took a small step back instead of forward, like you were already preparing to turn the other direction, to peel away from him and disappear between the trees. “You don’t have to keep helping me,” you added, quieter now, your gaze flicking everywhere except his face. “I know I’m slowing you down.” The words landed wrong. Heavy. Because that wasn’t—he hadn’t said that. He hadn’t told you to leave. He hadn’t— But he had walked away from you before. He had accused you. And Flame, who could track a player through a forest by the sound of a single misplaced step, who could predict attacks before they happened, suddenly felt like he was missing something obvious right in front of him. “You’re not—” he started, then stopped. The golden apple was still in his hand, held out between you like a bridge you weren’t willing to cross. “You’re at half hunger,” he said instead, defaulting to what he knew—mechanics, facts, things that couldn’t be misinterpreted. “And your armor’s almost broken. That’s not ‘fine.’” You gave a small shrug, the motion fragile. “I’ll deal with it later.” “You almost got dropped back there.” “I said I’m fine.” Your voice cracked on the last word, and you looked away immediately, like you were hoping he hadn’t heard it. Flame’s grip tightened slightly around the apple. In fights, everything made sense. Every action had a reason, every mistake had a correction. This didn’t. This was messy and quiet and didn’t follow any pattern he knew how to counter. “You’re coming with me,” he said after a moment, the words firm, leaving no space for argument. It wasn’t an invitation. It was the same tone he used when he told teammates where to move during a chase, when he took control of a situation before it spiraled. You blinked, caught off guard. “I just told you—” “I heard you.” His voice dropped slightly, not softer, but steadier. “And you’re still taking it.” He stepped closer and pressed the golden apple into your hand. Your fingers closed around it automatically, like muscle memory had overridden whatever part of you wanted to refuse. For a second you just stared at it, the glow reflecting faintly in your eyes. “You think I’d give you that if I wanted you gone?” he added, more quietly. That made you look up. Really look at him. And for the first time since he’d found you in the middle of that fight, his expression wasn’t guarded or analytical or distant. There was something else there—something uncertain, something that didn’t quite know how to fix what had been broken but was trying anyway. Your shoulders trembled once, almost imperceptibly, and you turned your head quickly, like you were embarrassed by it. “I’m still slowing you down,” you muttered. Flame exhaled through his nose, a short, almost frustrated breath—not at you, but at the situation, at himself, at the fact that none of his usual solutions worked here. “Then keep up,” he said, and this time it came out different. Not sharp. Not cold. Just… familiar. Like the old rhythm you used to have, the unspoken challenge that had always existed between you. He turned and started walking again—but slower. Not enough for it to be obvious. Just enough that your uneven footsteps could match his. For a few blocks you didn’t move. Then, quietly, you followed. And this time, when he glanced back, it wasn’t to check for threats. It was to make sure you were still there. For a while the only sound between you was the soft crunch of leaves and the distant calls of passive mobs somewhere deeper in the forest. The golden apple sat untouched in your hand, its glow dimming and brightening with each small shift of your grip, and Flame could practically feel your hesitation trailing behind him like a second shadow. You still weren’t eating it. Of course you weren’t. He slowed again, more noticeably this time, and when he glanced back you had that same look—like you were trying to convince yourself to be fine through sheer force of will. Your shoulders were tight, your movements careful in a way that had nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with holding yourself together. Flame stopped walking. You almost walked into him. “I said take it,” he repeated, but there was no bite left in the words. Just tired understanding, the kind that came from watching someone be impossibly, painfully stubborn in a way that mirrored his own. “I will,” you insisted, even though you didn’t. “You won’t.” “I’m fine.” “You’re not.” The silence that followed stretched too long, heavy with everything you weren’t saying. Your fingers tightened around the apple, and he saw the way your head dipped, the way your shoulders drew in like you were bracing for something—rejection, maybe, or another accusation that wasn’t coming. And that’s when it clicked. Not the mechanics. Not your armor durability or your movement speed or your combat patterns. You. You were waiting for him to push you away again. Flame let out a sharp, frustrated exhale and dragged a hand down his face. “You’re actually impossible,” he muttered under his breath, though there was no real heat behind it. It was the sound of someone realizing that logic, orders, distance—none of it was going to work on you. Because you were you. Stubborn. Loyal. Still following him even after everything. He stepped closer. You tensed immediately, like you thought he was about to tell you to leave for real this time. “Flame, I—” He didn’t let you finish. His arms wrapped around you in one sudden, decisive motion, pulling you into him before you had time to process what was happening. For a split second you went completely rigid. Flame wasn’t a hugger. Flame barely let people stand this close to him without a reason. Even he looked mildly annoyed with himself for about half a heartbeat, like this had not been part of the plan, like he’d skipped three steps in his own emotional logic and couldn’t go back now. But he didn’t let go. “You’re so stubborn,” he said into the top of your hair, his voice low and rough in a way it never was during fights. “I literally handed you a golden apple and you’re still trying to argue.” Your sword slipped from your hand and hit the ground with a soft thud. Because the moment you realized he wasn’t pushing you away—wasn’t accusing you, wasn’t keeping his distance, wasn’t looking at you like a liability—something in you just… gave out. Your hands grabbed onto the back of his hoodie like you needed the anchor, like if you didn’t hold on you might fall apart completely. “I thought you didn’t want me around,” you admitted, the words muffled against his chest, small in a way your voice never was. Flame’s grip tightened almost imperceptibly. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t,” he replied, and there was no hesitation in it. No careful calculation. Just truth, simple and solid. You let out a shaky breath that turned into something dangerously close to a sob, and he shifted his stance automatically, steadying you without thinking about it, one hand coming up to rest against the back of your head in a grounding, protective gesture. “Eat the apple,” he added after a moment, quieter now, almost like a compromise. You huffed a weak, watery laugh against him. “You hug me and that’s still your priority?” “Your health bar would be flashing if it could,” he said. “Yes. It is.” That actually got a real laugh out of you, soft and broken but there, and he felt the tension in your shoulders ease just a little. You pulled back enough to look at him, your eyes bright but no longer hollow, and finally—finally—you took a bite of the golden apple. Flame watched, until the faint golden shimmer surrounded you, until your posture lifted just slightly like the weight you’d been carrying had shifted. “Better,” he said, nodding once, satisfied. You didn’t step away. And this time, when you started walking again, you didn’t trail behind him like you were afraid of taking up space. You walked beside him. Close enough that your shoulder brushed his every few steps. Flame pretended not to notice. But he adjusted his pace to match yours perfectly. Chapter 12: Learning to Trust Pt4 (Flamefrags x Reader) Notes: I couldn't sleep sooo.... x) Chapter Text The plains stretch endlessly in every direction, a wide ocean of tall grass rolling in slow waves beneath the evening wind. Patches of white and yellow flowers break the green in soft constellations, and the sky feels impossibly big without trees or cliffs to hold it in. Somewhere far off, a herd of horses shifts and snorts, their movement a quiet ripple against the horizon, and the light of the setting sun turns everything warm — not harsh, not blinding, just golden in a way that makes the world feel calm instead of empty. It’s the kind of biome where nothing hides. No tight paths. No lavafalls. No shadows to get lost in. Just open ground — and him, walking a step ahead like he always does. Your boot catches on a shallow dip in the terrain, the tall grass concealing the drop until the last second. Your balance tips forward, arms shifting automatically to steady yourself, the motion small and recoverable — something you’ve done a hundred times without thinking. But before you can finish the correction, a hand closes around yours. A deliberate, immediate hold that halts your movement more than the stumble ever could. Your breath stutters, the recovery forgotten halfway through as your gaze drops to where your fingers are threaded with Flame’s. His grip is secure without being tight, warm in the cooling air, his palm rough in a way that reminds you of every fight he’s ever walked out of. He doesn’t look at you. He keeps facing forward, scanning the plains like he’s checking for players, for mobs, for anything that could break the quiet. His posture stays relaxed but ready, shoulders squared, head tilted slightly the way it always is when he’s tracking movement in the distance. Like this is normal. Like holding your hand is just another tactical decision. “Ground dips,” Flame says, voice even, almost absent, like he’s narrating something obvious. “You’ll miss it again.” The excuse is there. Clean. Easy. An out for both of you. But he doesn’t let go. You shift your hand slightly, testing — not pulling away fully, just enough to give him the chance to release you if this was only about balance. His fingers tighten. The small, silent refusal lands somewhere deep in your chest, unfolding slowly into something that feels too big for such a simple gesture. “I’m fine,” you murmur, and the words come out softer than you intended, edged with something uncertain. “You don’t have to…” The sentence trails off because you don’t even know what you’re asking him to stop doing. Holding on? Slowing down? Not letting you drift? “You fall behind,” he says. Not accusing. Not sharp. Just factual — the way he calls out low durability or a missing arrow mid-fight. The statement hits harder than it should, because it’s true in a way you never let yourself think about for too long. All the times you waved him forward. All the moments you pretended to check your inventory so he wouldn’t notice you needed a second. All the distance you created on purpose because it felt easier than asking him to wait. “I don’t,” you answer automatically, but even to you it sounds like a habit instead of a truth. He finally looks at you. And for a second the openness of the plains makes it worse, because there’s nowhere for the emotion in his eyes to hide. No shadows. No cover. Just that steady, searching look that always feels like it sees more than you’re ready to show. Then his gaze drops to your joined hands. And he laces your fingers fully with his. Your chest tightens, confusion catching there before it can turn into anything else, because he’s acting like this is practical while doing something that feels anything but. “You won’t stay next to me,” Flame says quietly. “So I’m fixing it.” Your heart stumbles over itself. Because the words are blunt, almost clinical — but the way his thumb shifts against your knuckles, grounding and warm, makes it impossible to pretend this is only strategy. You squeeze his hand back before you can think about it. The reaction is instinctive, immediate, and the moment your fingers tighten around his, he falters — just barely — his next step half a beat off. Flame. The player who never miscalculates movement. The knowledge blooms soft and bright in your chest. You walk like that through the tall grass, your pace syncing without effort. When you slow, he slows. Not noticeably, not in a way that feels forced — just enough that you’re no longer pushing yourself to keep up. The space between you never opens, not even by accident. The wind moves through the plains, bending the grass in long, sweeping motions that brush against your legs, against his boots, the sound a quiet, constant hush that fills the silence between your breaths. It’s peaceful. Too peaceful for the memory that surfaces anyway — the ambush, the freezing, the look in his eyes when he thought you’d planned it. “I didn’t mean to fall behind,” you say, the words slipping out before you can stop them, your gaze fixed somewhere ahead where the sun is dipping toward the horizon. He doesn’t answer immediately. His thumb traces once, slowly, across the back of your hand — the motion grounding, deliberate. “I know.” Two words. Simple. Certain. And the weight you’ve been carrying since that moment cracks, the tension in your chest loosening in a way that makes your throat tight. “I don’t want you behind me,” Flame continues, turning fully toward you now, the gold light catching in his eyes. “Or running ahead. Or pretending you’re fine when you’re not.” The honesty in his voice hits harder than any accusation ever could. “Stay next to me.” The plains stretch endlessly around you, open and bright and honest, and for the first time that openness doesn’t feel like exposure. It feels like space. Space to choose. Space to answer. Your fingers tighten around his. “I will,” you whisper. He steps closer, his free hand settling at your waist — steady, certain, like he’s anchoring you in place beside him. “You don’t have to keep up,” Flame says quietly. “I can slow down.” And that — more than the handhold, more than the closeness — is what finally breaks something open in your chest. Because Flame doesn’t slow down. For fights. For danger. For anyone. But he is now. For you. The sun drops lower, painting the plains in deep gold and soft shadow, the tall grass turning into waves of light that move around you instead of between you. You start walking again together, fingers still intertwined, steps naturally matching. No drifting. No distance. Just the quiet certainty of his hand in yours and the endless, open world ahead — and the unspoken understanding that neither of you is walking it alone anymore. The light fades slowly, the gold thinning into amber, then into that soft indigo that only ever seems to exist in wide places like this. Stars begin to show — faint at first, then sharper, like pinpricks through dark fabric. Flame doesn’t let go. Not when the temperature drops. Not when the horses in the distance settle. Not even when you both naturally slow to a stop at the crest of a shallow rise where the plains dip into a low basin filled with taller grass and scattered wildflowers. “This is good,” he says, more to the horizon than to you, already shifting into assessment mode. High ground. Clear sightlines. Minimal approach cover. You know the checklist. You’ve watched him run through it a hundred times. But he’s still holding your hand. “You’re thinking about logging,” you say, because you can feel the way his attention splits — half here, half in the invisible systems that never fully leave him. “Not yet.” The answer comes too fast to be casual. Your gaze flicks to him, and he’s still watching the plains — but his thumb moves again, that same grounding motion across your knuckles, slower this time. Not checking. Not reassuring. Feeling. You step a little closer without meaning to. Your shoulders brush. He goes still. It’s such a small thing, the contact barely there through armor and fabric, but you feel the shift in him like a change in the wind — the way all that constant readiness redirects, refocuses, narrows to the space between you. “You’re doing it again,” you murmur. “Doing what.” “Acting like everything is tactical.” A pause. Then, quieter, “It is.” But he turns toward you fully when he says it, and that ruins the argument. Because nothing about the way he’s looking at you is strategic. Night settles properly around you, the last band of orange slipping under the horizon. The plains turn silver-blue, the tall grass whispering in long, slow waves. Without the sun, the openness feels different — less like exposure, more like something that could hold you. Your joined hands rest between you now, no longer the focus, just… there. Natural. Warm. “You were right,” you say after a while. His head tilts, that familiar motion. “About.” “I do fall behind.” You expect the immediate correction. The factual denial. The efficient reframing. Instead, he steps closer — close enough that the space between your boots disappears in the grass. “You fall back when you think I won’t notice,” he says. “That’s not the same thing.” Your throat tightens. “I notice everything about you.” The words are delivered in the exact same tone he uses for calling out durability percentages and enemy positions. Which somehow makes them worse. Better. More real. Your free hand lifts before you can stop it, hovering for half a second — the old hesitation, the old habit of pulling back — before settling against his chestplate. The metal is still faintly warm from the day. He inhales sharply. A small sound. Almost nothing. But it’s Flame, and you feel it like a thunderclap. “You’re slowing down again,” you whisper. “Yeah.” No excuse this time. No tactical justification. Just the admission. The wind shifts, pushing the grass in a new direction so it parts around your legs instead of brushing past. The movement reveals how close you’re standing — how easily you could close the last inch. Your heart is loud enough you’re certain he can hear it. He probably can. “You said to stay next to you,” you manage. “I did.” “I am.” His gaze drops to your mouth for the briefest second — a miscalculation so small anyone else would miss it. Flame never miscalculates. The realization sends something warm and bright rushing through you, chasing away the last of that old, careful distance. So you step forward. For a moment he doesn’t move at all. Then his free hand comes up — slow, like he’s giving you time to change your mind — and settles at the back of your neck, steady and sure. No pulling. No pressure. Just contact. The plains stretch endlessly around you, the night wide and open and full of quiet life — and for once the lack of walls doesn’t feel like vulnerability. Because he’s here. Because you’re here. Because neither of you is pretending not to need the other anymore. “You’re staying,” he says, so soft it’s almost lost to the wind. “Yeah,” you answer. “I am.” His grip tightens just slightly, anchoring, certain — the same way he does in fights when something matters and he refuses to lose it. And when he leans in, it isn’t sudden or overwhelming or anything like the chaos you’re both used to. It’s careful. It’s deliberate. It’s Flame — choosing you with the same absolute focus he brings to everything that keeps you alive. The same way he adjusts his aim by fractions, the same way he times a hit to land in the exact invulnerability frame — precise, measured, intentional — he closes the last inch between you like he’s fully aware of every variable and has decided, finally, not to compensate for this one. His hand at the back of your neck shifts, fingers spreading slightly into your hair, not to pull you closer but to steady you there, like he’s giving you the option to move and trusting you won’t. The contact is warm through the cooling air, grounding in a way that makes the open plains feel less like a massive world and more like a held breath. Your eyes close a second before his do — you feel it, the way you always feel the micro-delay in his movements — and the realization sends a soft, startled warmth through your chest because Flame is always first. Except here. Except now. Your hand against his chestplate slides up, fingers curling at the edge where metal meets fabric, where the armor gives way to something real and vulnerable underneath. The texture difference is sharp — cold steel, then warmth — and your touch falters for half a heartbeat because you can feel how fast his pulse is through it. Flame. The player who never loses rhythm. His breath catches against your mouth, not breaking the kiss, just shifting it — a small, imperfect intake that tells you this is affecting him in a way fights never do. You don’t deepen it. You don’t have to. The moment stretches on its own, quiet and steady and impossibly soft for two people who built their entire dynamic on survival and movement and never standing still long enough to feel anything fully. When he finally pulls back, it’s barely — just enough for your foreheads to rest together, your joined hands still hanging between you like an anchor neither of you is willing to drop. For a long second, neither of you speaks. The plains breathe around you — tall grass whispering in long waves, a distant sheep bleating somewhere in the dark, the sky now fully scattered with stars. The Milky Way cuts a pale line overhead, unobstructed by trees or mountains, the kind of view you only get in biomes like this where nothing interrupts the horizon. You feel his thumb move again across your knuckles. Not checking. Not grounding. Tracing. “You’re shaking,” he says quietly. You are — just slightly, the adrenaline of the moment catching up in your hands, in your chest, in the way your breath won’t settle. “You are too,” you whisper back. A pause. Then, with that same blunt honesty he uses for everything that matters: “Yeah.” No denial. No attempt to regain control of the situation. Just the truth, sitting between you in the open air. He shifts his grip, not letting go, just adjusting so your fingers lace more comfortably together, like he’s planning for this to last — for the walk back, for the next stretch of ground, for whatever comes after this. “I don’t want you walking behind me anymore,” Flame says, voice low, eyes still closed like he hasn’t quite finished the moment yet. “Or ahead. Or pretending you don’t need to keep up.” Your chest tightens, the words echoing the ones from earlier but landing differently now, softer, deeper. “Then stop moving so fast,” you murmur. A small breath of a laugh leaves him — quiet, disbelieving, the kind of sound that feels rare enough to be a drop item. “I already did.” The admission settles into you like warmth. Because he has. Not just tonight. Since the golden apple. Since the hug. Since the moment he realized losing you was even a possibility. You tilt your head slightly, brushing your nose against his without thinking, and the movement makes him still again — not pulling away, not freezing — just… focusing, the way he does when something becomes the center of his attention. Your heart stutters at the familiarity of it. Because this is how he looks at enemies. At threats. At anything he refuses to let slip. And now it’s you. The realization is too big to hold in your chest alone. “So this is tactical too?” you ask softly. His eyes open. In the starlight they look darker, but the intensity in them is the same — that unwavering, locked-on focus that once terrified entire groups of players. “Yeah,” he says. The word is quiet. Certain. Then, after a beat: “You’re the priority.” Your breath leaves you in a rush you didn’t know you were holding. No dramatic declarations. No elaborate promises. Just the same language he uses for survival, for strategy, for winning — repurposed into something that feels bigger than any of those things. You step into him fully this time, no hesitation left, and his free arm comes around you immediately, instinctively, pulling you close with the kind of protective certainty that once kept entire teams alive. Only now it’s not about enemies. It’s about keeping you here. Keeping you with him. The tall grass shifts around your legs as the wind changes direction, parting and folding like the world itself is making space for the two of you. The plains that once felt too open now feel endless in a different way — not empty, not exposing, just wide enough to hold everything you haven’t said and everything you don’t have to anymore. After a while, he leans back slightly, just enough to look at you again. “Come on,” Flame says, softer than you’ve ever heard his voice. “Base is that way.” He doesn’t let go of your hand when he turns. You fall into step beside him automatically, your shoulders brushing every few strides, your pace matched without effort now — not because you’re forcing yourself to keep up, not because he’s calculating speed, but because you’re moving together. The night stretches ahead, dotted with the faint glow of torches in the distance marking something familiar — something safe. Halfway down the slope, your foot catches again in the grass. Not a real stumble this time. Barely even a misstep. His hand tightens instantly anyway. You glance at him. He doesn’t look back. “I said I’m not risking it,” he mutters, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. The words bloom warm and bright in your chest, settling there like a permanent buff. You don’t pull away. You never do. And as you walk across the plains toward the soft, distant light of home — fingers intertwined, steps aligned, no space left for drifting — it finally, fully sinks in: This isn’t a temporary truce. This isn’t recovery. This isn’t something fragile waiting to break. This is the new default. Flame — who never slows down — matching his pace to yours without thinking. Flame — who trusts no one — keeping your hand in his like it belongs there. Flame — who survives everything — choosing, over and over, to stay beside you. The plains roll on endlessly under the starlit sky, wide and open and honest. And for the first time, you don’t feel like you could get lost in them. Because wherever the terrain dips, wherever the path disappears into tall grass, wherever the world opens too wide — his hand is still in yours. And he isn’t letting go Chapter 13: Comfort (ParrotX2 x Reader) Notes: (See the end of the chapter for notes.) Chapter Text The End felt colder at night. Not physically — your armor still regulated temperature, the obsidian still held its dull warmth from the day — but emotionally. The void stretched endlessly beneath the broken edges of what used to be The End Civilization, swallowing light, swallowing sound, swallowing every memory that had ever been built here. The wind moved in low, empty currents across shattered pillars and half-rebuilt bridges, whistling through the cracks like a reminder that even monuments could be reduced to debris. It felt fitting, somehow. Things Parrot built always meant something. Things you touched felt temporary. You sat at the very edge with your legs dangling over nothing, hands clenched so tightly in your sleeves your knuckles hurt, staring down into that endless black like maybe if you stared long enough it would swallow you too, and you wouldn’t have to feel this hollow ache pressing into your ribs. You imagined what it would be like to just lean forward — not dramatically, not as some final statement — but quietly. Like stepping out of frame. The story would continue. It always did. Wars didn’t pause for missing characters. Leaders didn’t stop leading. The server wouldn’t crumble because you were gone. That was the worst part. It wouldn’t even matter. Everyone always talked about how Parrot rebuilt worlds, how he carried entire arcs on his back, how he was the mind behind every plan and the heart behind every speech, and you — you just felt like extra weight. Replaceable. A side character in someone else’s cinematic masterpiece. You replayed every hesitation you’d ever had, every moment you froze in a fight, every time you weren’t fast enough, bold enough, clever enough. The way your hands shook before engagements. The way you waited for someone else to speak first in meetings. The way your ideas sounded smaller the second they left your mouth. If he was the savior, then what were you? A liability he was too kind to discard? A responsibility he carried out of guilt? And maybe the worst thought of all — maybe he kept you around because he saves everyone. Because that’s what he does. Maybe you weren’t special. Maybe you were just another person he refused to let fall because he couldn’t handle another name on the list of people he “should’ve protected.” You didn’t hear him land behind you, but you felt it — that shift in air, that quiet presence that always carried something heavier than armor. He didn’t speak immediately. He just stood there for a moment, and somehow that made it worse, because you knew he was observing, analyzing, reading you the way he reads battlefields and power structures and hidden mechanics. When he finally stepped closer, boots scraping softly against obsidian, you didn’t turn around. You didn’t want to see the disappointment you were convinced would be there. You didn’t want to see that careful look — the one he gives fragile things. “You’ve been out here for a while,” he said quietly, not accusatory, not demanding — just careful. And that carefulness broke something in you more than yelling ever could have. You hated that tone. The one people use when they think you might shatter. “I’m fine,” you lied, but your voice cracked in the middle, thin and fragile and nothing like the composed version of yourself you tried so hard to be around him. The crack humiliated you. You swallowed hard, trying to steady it, but the silence that followed only made it louder. He moved closer, close enough that you could feel the warmth radiating from him through your sleeve, but still you didn’t look at him. If you looked, you’d cry. And crying would confirm everything you already believed — that you were too soft for this world, too emotional for someone like him. “You think I don’t notice?” he asked softly, and there was no edge to it, only tired honesty. “The way you pull back. The way you second-guess every decision like you’re waiting for someone to confirm you deserve to make it.” Your chest tightened painfully. It would’ve been easier if he’d misunderstood you. Easier if he hadn’t seen through it. “Because I don’t,” you whispered, finally, the words tumbling out before you could stop them. They felt ugly in the air. “You don’t need me. You’ve led councils in the Far Lands. You’ve rebuilt the End. You’ve outplayed people who’ve been doing this longer than I’ve even been here. You lose people and you still stand back up. I can’t even stand without feeling like I’m in the way.” Your breathing turned uneven, hands shaking harder now. “I watch you plan and I just think — I’m slowing him down. I’m the thing he has to account for. Another weakness someone could use against him.” The confession left you shaking, shame crawling up your throat as your vision blurred. “I’m not strong like you. I’m not important like you. If I disappeared, the story would keep going.” Your voice dropped even quieter. “You’d keep going.” There was a long silence after that, but it wasn’t empty — it was heavy, like he was holding back something larger than words. You almost wished he’d argue immediately. The quiet let your thoughts spiral further. Maybe he didn’t know how to contradict that. Maybe some part of him agreed. Then you felt it: his hand gently wrapping around your wrist, not forceful, just steady, grounding. Warm. Real. He guided you away from the edge and turned you toward him. You resisted for half a second out of instinct — because if you faced him, this would be real — but when you finally looked up at him, whatever argument you had dissolved. He didn’t look disappointed. He looked hurt — not at you, but at the fact that you believed that. “You think strength is not breaking?” he said quietly, his voice rough in a way it rarely was when he wasn’t performing for an audience. “You think I stand because I’m unshakable? I stand because I’m terrified of failing again.” There was something raw in his expression now, stripped of persona, stripped of savior. “I rebuild because I don’t know how to live with ruins.” His hands slid from your wrists to your shoulders, grounding, anchoring. “And you think you’re in the way?” His jaw tightened slightly. “You’re the only reason I don’t lose myself in it. When I start turning people into pieces on a board — you’re the one who reminds me they’re people. When I start planning sacrifices like they’re numbers — you’re the one who hesitates.” His voice softened. “Your hesitation isn’t weakness. It’s humanity.” You blinked at him, tears finally spilling over despite how hard you tried to hold them back. They fell faster now, silent and humiliating, your breathing hitching as you tried to apologize for them and couldn’t form the words. “That’s not true,” you said weakly, because accepting that meant accepting you mattered — and that was more terrifying than being invisible. “You’d be fine without me. You always are.” His expression shifted at that. Not anger. Not frustration. Fear. And instead of arguing, he just pulled you forward. One arm wrapped firmly around your back, the other around your shoulders, pulling you into his chest with a steadiness that left no room for doubt. It wasn’t hesitant. It wasn’t awkward. It was protective — immediate, instinctive. Like the idea of you standing alone at that edge was something he physically couldn’t allow. His chin rested lightly against the top of your head, and you could feel his heartbeat through his armor — steady, real, human. Not a symbol. Not a legend. Just a person holding you like you might slip through his fingers. “You are not replaceable,” he murmured into your hair, quieter than he’d ever speak in front of anyone else. “You’re not a side character. You’re not extra weight. You’re the voice in my head that asks the questions I’m too scared to. You’re the reason I don’t turn every plan into a sacrifice.” His grip tightened slightly, like he was anchoring you to the world. “If you disappeared, I wouldn’t just ‘keep going.’ I’d survive. And there’s a difference.” Your hands slowly gripped the fabric at his back, trembling, finally letting yourself lean into him instead of holding yourself upright out of pride. The sob you’d been holding back broke loose, quiet and uneven against his chest, and he didn’t shush you. He didn’t tell you to be strong. He just held you tighter. The void didn’t feel like it was pulling you anymore. His arms were stronger than gravity. And for once, Parrot — the strategist, the storyteller, the so-called savior — wasn’t trying to fix the world or rewrite the narrative. He wasn’t delivering a speech. He wasn’t making a plan. He was just holding you, steady and certain, like losing you was never an option in any version of the story — and like, for once, saving someone didn’t mean building a civilization. It just meant not letting go. Notes: Thanks for reading! Feel free to leave a comment or kudo! <3 Chapter 14: The Exception (LettuceK x Reader) Notes: You were the exception to every rule he'd built his life around. He didn't know what to do with that yet. But he was, quietly and against all better judgment, starting to think he wanted to find out. Hey guys! I've been trying out a new writing style recently, hope you enjoy it! Chapter Text The cherry grove was yours. Not officially, of course. Nothing on the Unstable Server was truly yours unless you had an army behind you to prove it. But the other players had learned quickly enough to leave you alone up here — tucked into the foothills, surrounded by dark bark and impossibly pink leaves that drifted down like slow snow. No politics. No factions. No one trying to recruit you or threaten you or use you as a bargaining chip. Nobody bothered you in the cherry grove. Which was why you noticed him immediately. LettuceK stood at the treeline with his hands clasped behind his back, watching the petals fall with an expression you couldn't quite read. He wasn't in his usual element — no Lawmen flanking him, no horn at his hip, no crowd to perform for. Just him, and the soft pink light filtering through the canopy, and the distant sound of sheep wandering somewhere up the slope. You turned back to what you were doing. Collecting petals off the ground, slowly, methodically. If he wanted something he'd say so eventually. LettuceK always said so eventually. "You're far from the Northern Council," you offered, not looking up. "I'm aware of where I am." "Was that supposed to be reassuring?" A pause. Then, almost reluctantly, he stepped further into the grove. His boots crunched softly over the carpet of pink and you tracked him in your peripheral vision the way you'd learned to track most things on this server — quietly, without making it obvious. "You weren't at the meeting," he said. "No." "I noticed." You did look up at that. He was studying the canopy above him with careful disinterest, the kind that took practice to perform convincingly. You'd seen him use it on server members a dozen times — that studied neutrality, that air of someone who simply happened to be thinking about something else entirely. It worked on most people. "You notice a lot of things," you said. "It's what keeps me ahead." "Is that what you call it." His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. That was the thing about LettuceK — he was meticulous about controlling his reactions, ruthlessly so, but you'd spent enough time quietly watching him that you'd catalogued the small ones. The slight tension when something surprised him. The way his eyes sharpened when someone said something he hadn't anticipated. The almost imperceptible pause before he spoke when he was actually thinking rather than performing. He was doing all three right now. "You should have been there," he said, quieter. "It would have been safer for you." "Safer," you echoed, turning the word over. "You mean you could have kept an eye on me." "I mean exactly what I said." "You always do," you agreed pleasantly, and crouched back down to collect another handful of petals from the ground. Pink dye. Useful enough. "And it always means at least two things at once." The silence that followed had a different quality to it. Not the performative silence he used on other people — the weighted, deliberate kind designed to make them uncomfortable. This one was more like he genuinely didn't have an immediate response ready, which for LettuceK was practically unheard of. A rabbit hopped between you both, completely unbothered by the tension, and disappeared into the undergrowth. The petals kept falling. Somewhere above you a sheep wandered along the slope, its wool catching the pink light and turning it soft and golden at the edges. "Lettuce." You straightened up, brushing petals from your hands. "Why are you actually here?" The silence stretched long enough that you genuinely thought he wasn't going to answer. He was good at that too — using silence as a tool, letting it press down on people until they filled it themselves and said more than they meant to. Gave up more leverage than they intended. You'd watched him do it a dozen times in server meetings, in negotiations, in the moments just before someone cracked. You didn't fill it. You just waited, watching a single petal drift slowly down through the space between you. He caught it. Held it between two fingers and looked at it for a moment with an expression that was almost uncomfortably unguarded — something quieter than his usual composure, something that didn't have a political purpose. Then it was gone, smoothed back into neutrality, and he looked at you. "You're not afraid of me," he said. It didn't sound like a compliment. It didn't sound like a complaint either. It sounded more like something he'd been quietly puzzling over for a long time and still hadn't fully resolved. "Should I be?" you asked. "Everyone else is." "I know." You tilted your head, studying him. "That bothers you. That I'm not." "It's inefficient," he said, which was such a LettuceK answer that something warm flickered in your chest despite yourself. "Fear is a tool. A reliable one. I know exactly how to use it and exactly what it will make people do, and you've taken it entirely off the table and I don't—" He stopped. Something shifted behind his eyes. "It complicates things." "I complicate things," you clarified. "Yes." "And you came all the way up into the foothills to tell me that." "I came up here," he said, slower now, each word a little more deliberate, "because you weren't at the meeting and I wanted to know—" Another pause. Shorter this time, and somehow more telling for it. "I wanted to know where you were." The admission sat between you both like the petal he'd caught — small, and soft, and entirely out of place in the context of everything else he was. You looked at him for a long moment. Really looked. At the rigid set of his shoulders that never fully relaxed, even here. At the petal still caught in the fold of his sleeve that he hadn't noticed or hadn't bothered to remove. At the way he was watching you with that careful, measured expression that you'd slowly learned to read as something closer to vulnerability than he would ever voluntarily call it. He was waiting, you realized. Waiting the way he always waited after giving someone information — braced for them to use it. To file it away as leverage. To smile and nod and pull it out later at exactly the wrong moment. "I'm fine," you said simply. "I just like it up here." Something in his posture loosened. Just fractionally. Just enough that someone who hadn't been paying attention would have missed it entirely. "It's impractical," he said, glancing around at the grove with something approaching disdain. "Too exposed. The canopy limits visibility and the terrain makes a quick exit difficult. Bad defensive positioning." "I didn't ask for a tactical assessment." "I'm giving you one anyway." "Obviously." You turned back to the mountainside view, smiling slightly to yourself. "You can sit down, you know. If you're staying." "I didn't say I was staying." "No," you agreed. "You didn't." You sat down on the slope, pink petals soft beneath you, and looked out over the foothills stretching below. The server spread out in the distance, complicated and loud and full of factions and power struggles and people sharpening knives for each other. Up here it was just wind and falling petals and the occasional rabbit investigating your boots. After a moment, LettuceK sat down beside you. Not close enough to be obvious about it. Just close enough that you were aware of him, a steady presence at the edge of your peripheral vision, his coat dark against all the softness of the grove. "The Lawmen think I came up here to scout a northern outpost location," he said eventually. "Did you tell them that?" "I told them it was a possibility I was considering." "So you lied." "I gave them a plausible interpretation." "Lettuce." "What." "That's just lying with extra steps." He was quiet for a moment. Then, so quietly you almost missed it under the sound of the wind: "Yes. I suppose it is." You glanced at him sideways. He was looking straight ahead, jaw set, expression doing that complicated thing it did when he was working through something he didn't have a pre-planned response for. His hands were resting on his knees. The petal was still on his sleeve. "Can I ask you something?" you said. "You're going to regardless." "When did you stop trusting people?" The question landed quietly and sat there. A rabbit hopped past at the treeline. The petals kept falling, unhurried and indifferent to everything happening beneath them. "That implies I started," he said finally. "Everyone starts," you said. "Something changes it." He didn't answer right away. You didn't push. That was something you'd figured out early with him — pushing LettuceK got you the performance, the deflection, the carefully constructed response designed to give you nothing. Waiting got you something closer to the truth. "It's easier," he said at last, "to understand what people want than to understand who they are. What they want is consistent. Predictable. You can build around it." A pause. "People aren't." "That's very lonely," you said, matter-of-factly, not unkindly. Another long silence. A sheep wandered into view further up the slope, regarded you both with profound disinterest, and wandered back out again. "...Yes," he said. "I imagine it is." The sun was starting to drift lower, turning the pink of the cherry leaves into something deeper and warmer, and the falling petals caught the light as they came down around you both. You watched one land on the back of his hand. He looked at it. Didn't move. "For what it's worth," you said quietly, "I'm not going anywhere." "You don't know what's coming," he said, and there was something in his voice that was almost a warning. Almost concern. "The things I'm going to do before this is over. The choices I'm going to make." "I know the choices you've already made." "And?" You considered that for a moment, honestly. The army he'd let die. Spepticle and the anvil. The prisoners in solitary. The long methodical accumulation of power dressed up as justice. "And I'm still here," you said. "Sitting in a cherry grove with you. That's my answer." He turned to look at you then, fully, and for once the careful composure wasn't doing its job properly. Something underneath it was visible — something that didn't have a name he'd be comfortable giving it, written plainly enough across his face that even he probably knew you could see it. "That's irrational," he said. "Probably." "It'll complicate things further." "I know." "I'm not—" He stopped. Started again, quieter. "I don't know how to do this. Whatever this is. I don't have a strategy for it." "Good," you said. "I'd find it very unsettling if you did." Something crossed his face that was so close to a real smile — unguarded and slightly helpless and nothing like the sharp political smiles he wore in server meetings — that it almost startled you. It was gone almost immediately, tucked back away behind composure, but you'd seen it. You filed it somewhere careful. The wind moved through the cherry trees and a cascade of petals drifted down around you both, catching in his coat and your hair and settling softly on the ground. He didn't move away. You didn't either. "The Northern Council is going to wonder where I am," he said eventually. "Probably." He didn't move. You watched another rabbit emerge from the undergrowth, nose twitching, and begin investigating a patch of pink petals a little way down the slope. "Five more minutes," he said. It wasn't quite a question. You leaned back on your hands and looked up through the canopy at the sky going gold and pink above you. "Five more minutes," you agreed. He stayed for considerably longer than that. And when he finally left, walking back down through the foothills toward the server and its politics and everything waiting for him there, he didn't say goodbye. He wasn't the type. But he glanced back once, at the treeline, at you still sitting in the petals watching him go. You thought about that glance for a long time afterward. Chapter 15: Gotcha! (Judelow x Reader) Notes: I don't know Judelow too well but hope you like it! Chapter Text The thing about being friends with Judelow was that you learned things about him slowly, in layers, the way you'd peel back terrain looking for hidden mechanisms. The first layer was easy — chaotic, unpredictable, dangerous, don't trust anything he builds. Everyone on the server knew that one. The second layer took longer. That underneath the chaos was actual precision. That every "random" trap had three backup mechanisms. That the unpredictability was itself a system, carefully maintained. The third layer was the one nobody else had gotten to yet. That he had a very short list of things he actually cared about. And that somewhere between him explaining boat hitbox mechanics to you for forty minutes and you bringing him materials for a trap rebuild you hadn't been asked to help with, you'd ended up on that list. You hadn't said anything about it. Neither had he. But you knew. And more importantly — you knew that he'd never in a million years just say it. Judelow didn't say things like that. He communicated in systems and mechanics and the deliberate careful way he made exceptions he'd never admit were exceptions. So you'd decided to make him say it another way. It had taken a week of planning. You were particularly proud of that, given that a week of planning was basically speaking his love language. ——————————————————————————— It started with the map. You'd been paying attention for months — not just to his traps but to the gaps in them, the corridors he kept clear, the zones he quietly made sure were inactive when you were around. It wasn't something he'd ever announced. Just something he did. You'd documented all of it. Every active zone, every trigger, every trapdoor. And then you'd found the one pit on the eastern corridor that was capture-only. No lava. No kill mechanism. Just a hole in the ground with a trapdoor on top. Safe. Boring, by his standards. Perfect, by yours. You'd also, crucially, turned off your notifications before walking into it. ——————————————————————————— Judelow was on the western edge of the server when his trap triggered. He checked the notification with the automatic satisfaction of someone whose systems were working correctly, and then the satisfaction became something else entirely when he read the player name attached to it. He messaged you immediately. No response. He messaged again. Nothing. The cold thing that moved through him then was not something he examined closely. He was already moving, cutting across the server at a pace that he would later, privately, describe to himself as efficient rather than panicked, because he was Judelow and he did not panic, he simply recalculated priorities very quickly. You still weren't responding. The pit was a capture trap. No kill mechanism. You were fine — logically you were fine, the design was clean, he knew exactly what was in it — but the notifications were piling up on his end and you weren't answering and the distance between him and the eastern corridor felt unreasonable in a way distances hadn't felt since he was new to the server and didn't know the terrain yet. He crossed the server in record time. He pulled up the trapdoor and looked down. You looked up at him, bright-eyed and completely unharmed, with the expression of someone who had been waiting for exactly this moment. "Hi," you said. Judelow stared at you. The cold thing drained away so completely it left him slightly unsteady, replaced by a complicated tangle of relief and something else that he was going to table for later examination. "You're fine," he said. "Completely," you agreed pleasantly. "You weren't answering." "My notifications were off." He stared at you. You stared back. That smile was doing something at the corner of your mouth that he didn't trust at all. "Why," he said carefully, "are your notifications off." "I turned them off before I came this way." The silence that followed was very deliberate on your end and very loaded on his. "Before," he repeated. "Mhm." "You turned them off before you walked into my trap." "Yes." Another silence. His eyes were doing the thing they did when he was working through a mechanism — rapid, precise, following the logic chain link by link until he reached the conclusion at the end of it. "You knew the trap was there," he said. "I did." "You walked into it anyway." "I did." "And then you turned your notifications off so I couldn't reach you." "That's correct." "So that I would—" He stopped. Something moved across his face that he didn't quite manage to smooth out in time. "So that I would come and check." You said nothing. Just looked up at him with that expression, warm and waiting and completely unrepentant. Judelow crouched down at the edge of the trapdoor and looked at you for a long moment. His jaw was doing something tight and complicated. "That was manipulative," he said. "I learned from the best." "That's not—" He pressed his mouth together. "That's not the same thing." "Isn't it?" you said. "I identified what someone cares about. I used it to make them do something. That's literally your whole thing, Jude." "I don't—" He stopped again. "You ran," you said. "Didn't you." The silence confirmed it more completely than anything he could have said. You'd known he would. That was the thing — you'd known, because you'd been paying attention. Because you'd watched him quietly make exceptions and adjustments and small careful gestures in your direction for months, all of them deniable, none of them accidental. You'd known he'd come. You just wanted him to know that you knew. "You could have been hurt," he said finally. His voice had lost some of its careful evenness. Just a little. Just enough to be telling. "I checked the mechanism first. No kill setup." "That's not—" He exhaled. "That's not the point." "What is the point?" He looked at you. The expression on his face was one you'd never seen from him before — not the focused precision of someone working through a trap design, not the controlled neutrality he wore in server conflicts. Something more unguarded than either of those. Something that didn't have a tactical purpose. "I didn't know you were okay," he said. "I couldn't reach you and I didn't know and I—" He stopped himself. Looked away briefly. "I don't like that." "Not knowing?" you asked. "Not being able to—" He gestured vaguely, jaw tight. "Reach you. Know where you are. Know that you're—" The word seemed to cost him something. "Fine." The grove was quiet around you. Wind moving through leaves somewhere above the trapdoor. Distant server sounds, irrelevant. "Judelow," you said softly. He looked back at you. "That's called caring about someone," you said. The expression that crossed his face then was so genuinely caught off guard that it almost made you feel bad. Almost. "I'm aware of what it's called," he said, after a moment. "Are you sure? Because you've been doing it for months and not saying anything about it, so I wasn't sure if you'd—" "I'm aware," he said, and something about the way he said it — flat and slightly helpless and more honest than he probably intended — made your heart do something embarrassing. You looked up at him. He looked down at you. The trapdoor opens between you like the world's least romantic framing device. "So," you said. "So," he said. "You could just. Say it." "I just did." "You said you don't like not knowing if I'm fine." "That's—" He exhaled through his nose. "Yes. That's what I said." "That's not quite the same as—" "It's the same thing," he said, with the energy of someone who had reached an absolute limit. "It's the same thing and you know it's the same thing, that's why you did all of this, you already knew—" "I wanted to hear it." Silence. "You wanted to hear it," he repeated. "Yes." "So you planned a week long scheme involving my own trap infrastructure and turning off your notifications and making me run across the entire server—" "You did run then." "—just to hear me say it." You smiled up at him, completely unashamed. "Yes." Another silence. Longer this time. And then something happened to his expression that you felt like you'd won something significant for — a slow reluctant exhale, the careful composure folding just slightly at the edges, and underneath it something genuine and undefended that he was allowing you to see because you'd gone to frankly unreasonable lengths to earn it. "You are," he said, "the most chaotic person on this server." "I learned from the best," you said again. "Stop saying that." "Make me." He reached down. You took his hand and he pulled you up out of the pit in one smooth motion and you came up into the open air and found yourself considerably closer to him than the geometry of the situation strictly required. Neither of you moved back. "I'm going to need you to not do that again," he said. His voice was quieter now. The server-wide persona dialed down to something that was just for here, just for you. "The trap thing?" "The not answering thing." His jaw worked briefly. "The — not knowing if you're okay thing. I don't like it." "I know," you said. "That was rather the point." "I'm aware." He looked at you for a moment, something flickering in his expression. "Did it work?" You considered the question with exaggerated seriousness. "You ran across the server," you said. "For me. And then you stood there and basically told me you care about me even though it clearly cost you something. So yes." You smiled. "It worked." He was quiet for a second. Then he looked away, jaw doing that complicated thing, and said in a tone that was trying very hard to be normal: "You're lucky the pit wasn't a kill trap." "You don't build kill traps in zones you know I use." A pause. "...No," he said. "I don't." "I know," you said smugly. He glanced back at you. The almost-smile was there again — the real one, small and reluctant and nothing like the sharp unpredictable energy he showed the rest of the server. "Don't make me run again," he said. "No promises," you said. He gave you a look. "I'll keep my notifications on," you amended. "That's all I'm asking." You bumped your shoulder against his and started walking back down the corridor, and he fell into step beside you, and somewhere in the comfortable quiet of walking together through terrain he'd built and you'd learned to read like a map, he reached over and flicked your shoulder lightly. "Chaotic," he said. "Learned it from you," you said. "I'm going to stop teaching you things." "Too late." He was quiet. But when you glanced sideways at him the almost-smile had become something slightly more than that, and he wasn't trying very hard to hide it. Chapter 16: Set Up (Wemmbu x Reader) Notes: I do wonder if anyone reads the notes, if you read this add a ":3" at the end of your comment for me please, thanks! <3 (See the end of the chapter for more notes.) Chapter Text Eggchan POV: It started, as most terrible ideas did, with Eggchan. "We need to do something," he announced, dropping down beside Flame at the crafting table with the energy of someone who had been thinking about this for way too long. "About Wemmbu." Flame didn't look up from his inventory. "No." "You don't even know what I'm going to say." "You're going to say something about him and reader and I'm going to tell you it's none of our business and then you're going to convince me anyway and it's going to go badly." Flame finally looked up. "So. No." Eggchan placed both hands flat on the table. "He walked into a wall yesterday." Flame paused. "...What?" "A wall. Full speed. Because she waved at him from across the courtyard." Eggchan's expression was deeply serious. "He said he didn't see it." "There's a wall there every day." "Exactly." Silence. Flame closed his inventory slowly. "...What's the plan?" The plan, as it turned out, had several stages. Stage one was subtle. Eggchan's word, not Flame's — Flame had pointed out approximately four times that neither of them knew what subtle meant, and Eggchan had ignored him every time. Subtle, apparently, meant engineering a situation where you and Wemmbu would be forced to work together on something small and low-stakes. Just the two of you. Alone. Where feelings could naturally develop without interference. "This is a supply run," you said, looking at the list Eggchan had handed you. "Why does it need two people?" "Efficiency," Eggchan said, with the confidence of someone who had absolutely not prepared an answer to this question. "Faster. Two sets of hands." You squinted at him. "You and Flame do supply runs alone all the time." "We're more efficient than average. You and Wemmbu—" he gestured vaguely— "less so. Together you'll balance out." You stared at him for a long moment. "...Okay," you said slowly, and took the list. Eggchan watched you go and turned to find Flame standing behind him with an expression of profound suffering. "Efficiency," Flame said flatly. "You said efficiency." "She bought it." "She absolutely did not buy it." Flame watched you disappear around the corner. "She's going to figure it out within ten minutes." "We just need ten minutes." "We need a miracle." Y/N POV: You figured it out in four. Not because you were particularly suspicious — more because Wemmbu showed up to the supply run looking like someone had told him thirty seconds beforehand that he was doing it, which was because someone had told him thirty seconds beforehand that he was doing it, expression hovering somewhere between confused and mildly betrayed. "Did Eggchan tell you about efficiency?" you asked. Wemmbu looked at you. "He said you specifically requested me for—" "He told me you needed help carrying things." A pause. "I can carry things fine," Wemmbu said, with great dignity. "I know." You both stood there for a moment, the collective realization settling like dust after an explosion. "They're doing something," Wemmbu said. "Obviously." "We should go back and—" "Or," you said, picking up an empty chest, "we just do the supply run and don't give them the satisfaction of coming back early." Wemmbu considered this. Then he picked up a chest too. "...Yeah. Okay." Eggchan POV: Back at base, Eggchan pressed his ear to the wall. "I can't hear anything," he reported. "Because they left," Flame said. "Because it's a supply run. They go to the supply area. Which is not here." "Right. Right." Eggchan straightened up. "Okay so stage one is in motion. Stage two." Flame crossed his arms. "I want it on record that I think stage two is a terrible idea." "Noted. Stage two is—" "A terrible idea." "—getting Parrot involved." Flame stared at him. "That's somehow worse than I expected." Flame POV: Parrot, to his credit, took the briefing very seriously. He sat across from Eggchan and Flame with his hands folded and his expression focused, like someone in a meeting about something that genuinely mattered, and listened to the full explanation without interrupting. Then he said: "So you want me to tell Wemmbu that Y/N mentioned she thinks he's—" "Impressive," Eggchan supplied. "Just that she finds him impressive. As a player. It's not even that much of a stretch, she literally said that last week." "She said you were all impressive," Flame muttered. "In the context of surviving the Zam situation. It was a general statement." "Details," Eggchan said. "Parrot, can you do it?" Parrot thought about it. "What exactly do I get out of this?" "The satisfaction of helping." "I want access to the eastern supply chest." "Done." Flame put his head in his hands. Y/N POV: The problem with Parrot's involvement was that Parrot had absolutely no poker face. You figured this out the moment he appeared beside Wemmbu at the edge of the courtyard, because Parrot was smiling in a very specific way — bright, slightly too wide, the smile of someone who knew something and was very excited about knowing it. You were on the roof. You watched the interaction unfold below you with growing suspicion. Wemmbu's expression shifted through several stages. First neutral, then attentive, then something happened where he went very still, which for Wemmbu was basically the equivalent of anyone else dramatically dropping everything. Parrot said something else. Wemmbu said something back. Parrot nodded too enthusiastically. You narrowed your eyes. Then Wemmbu looked up. Directly at you. You immediately looked at the sky, the horizon, anywhere else, with the energy of someone who had absolutely not been watching. When you looked back down, Parrot was gone and Wemmbu was still looking at you, expression now doing something completely unreadable that you absolutely could not interpret from this distance which was probably for the best. You climbed off the roof. "What did Parrot say to Wemmbu," you asked, finding Eggchan in the base common room approximately seven minutes later. Eggchan looked up with an expression of pure innocence. "What?" "To Wemmbu. Just now. In the courtyard." "I don't know what you're—" "Eggchan." He wilted. "...Something small. Harmless. A small harmless thing." "What thing." "That you might—" he paused— "find him impressive." You stared at him. "As a player," he added quickly. "Completely platonically. Just that you respect his—" "Oh my god," you said. "It's not a big deal—" "Where's Flame." "He said it was a bad idea—" "WHERE'S FLAME." Flame POV: Flame, to his credit, looked genuinely guilty. "It was Eggchan's plan," he said immediately. "You went along with it!" "I want that noted separately from going along with it enthusiastically. I went along with it reluctantly. With reservations. Which I stated. Multiple times." "You got Parrot involved!" "Eggchan got Parrot involved. I was present. There's a difference." You pressed your fingers to your temples. "What exactly did Parrot tell him." Flame and Eggchan exchanged a look. "We told Parrot to say you find Wemmbu impressive," Eggchan said carefully. "And what did Parrot actually say." Another look. "We don't know exactly," Flame admitted. "Parrot improvises." "He IMPROVISES?!" "We told him to keep it simple—" "It's PARROT—" Wemmbu POV: The door to the common room opened. Everyone went silent. Wemmbu stood in the doorway. He looked at you. Then at Eggchan and Flame. Then back at you. His expression was doing the unreadable thing again, but now that you were closer you could see something underneath it that looked almost like amusement. Barely. Just at the edges. "I want to know," he said calmly, "what you actually told Parot." Eggchan's eyes darted around the room. "Uh, actually, me and Flame told him to tell you something." Wemmbu looked at you. "He told me you said I was, and I'm quoting directly, 'the most capable and also kind of fascinating person on the server and you think about him more than is probably normal.'" Dead silence. Your face was on fire. "That's—" you started. "I didn't say that," Eggchan said instantly, looking genuinely alarmed. "We said impressive. As a player. That's all we said." "Parrot improvises," Flame said quietly, in the tone of a man watching something he built catch fire. Wemmbu turned back to you. "Did you say that to Parrot?" "I have never spoken to Parrot about you in my life," you said, with great force. "Okay." He nodded slowly. "So Eggchan and Flame told Parrot to tell me something about what you think of me, Parrot invented the specific content, and now we're here." "Yes," you said. "Great." He looked at Eggchan and Flame. "You two. Out." Eggchan was already moving. Flame followed with the energy of someone deeply relieved to be leaving, and the door clicked shut behind them. Y/N POV: Then it was just you and Wemmbu, and the fire in your face had not gone anywhere, and the room felt approximately half the size it had five minutes ago. "For what it's worth," Wemmbu said, after a moment, something in his voice shifting into something quieter, "Parrot's version wasn't—" He stopped. Restarted. "It wasn't the worst thing someone could say." You looked at him. He was looking at the floor briefly, jaw doing the complicated thing it did when he was choosing words carefully, and then he looked back up and met your eyes. "I think about you more than is probably normal too," he said. Very simply. Very Wemmbu. The room was very quiet. "Eggchan is going to be insufferable about this," you said finally. Something that was definitely a smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. "Yeah." "Flame's going to say I told you so." "He says that about everything." "Parrot's going to want credit." "He can have the eastern supply chest," Wemmbu said, which told you he'd already heard that part of the negotiation, and you laughed despite yourself — real and slightly helpless — and the tension in the room broke open into something warmer and considerably less terrifying. Eggchan POV: Outside the door, Eggchan and Flame stood in the corridor. "...Did that work?" Eggchan whispered. Flame listened to the muffled sound of laughter from inside the room. "Somehow," he said, sounding genuinely baffled, "yes." Eggchan pumped his fist. "Stage two—" "If you say stage two worked I'm going to lose my mind." "Stage two WORKED—" Down the hall, Parrot appeared from around the corner, hands in his pockets, looking extremely pleased with himself. "You're welcome," he said. Flame stared at him. "We told you to say impressive." "Impressive is boring," Parrot said simply. "You want results, you improvise." A pause. "...I hate that it worked," Flame said. Parrot shrugged. "Most capable and kind of fascinating. Pulled it right from context clues." He glanced at the closed door. "She talks about him more than she thinks she does." Eggchan turned to Flame with an expression of absolute vindication. Flame pointed at him. "Do not." "Operation Obvious," Eggchan said, "is a success." "It succeeded DESPITE everything you did, not BECAUSE of it—" "A success!" Inside the room, you and Wemmbu were talking quietly, the sound of it soft and unhurried through the door. And even Flame, standing there with his arms crossed and his expression long-suffering, couldn't quite keep the corner of his mouth from pulling up. Just slightly. Just enough. Zam POV: Nobody mentioned that Zam had been watching from the treeline the entire time, expression shifting through several complicated stages before settling on something that looked almost like secondhand embarrassment. Almost. He'd use it as leverage later. Probably. Notes: Hi guys! Hope you enjoyed this chapter, I have a LOT of requests right now, and I'm glad you like my works enough to ask for more. Though it's getting way to much so I'm closing the requests for now, sorry and thank you for reading! <3 Chapter 17: Soft Spot Pt1 (Wifies x Reader) Notes: This will be two parts! <3 Chapter Text You hadn't meant to overhear. That was the thing you kept coming back to as you stood frozen behind the stone wall, back pressed flat, heart doing something loud and inconvenient in your chest. You'd been cutting through the lower corridor because the main path was crowded and you were tired and you just wanted to get back to your base without talking to anyone. And then you'd heard a voice. Low. Measured. The kind of voice that wasn't meant to carry — and wouldn't have, if the corridor acoustics weren't what they were. "...Paragon needs three more layers on the eastern wall. He'll find the weak point in the first two within a week. Maybe less." A pause. Like he was consulting something. Notes, maybe. Or just his own memory. "The entrance mechanism needs to be rekeyed. He knows how I think. I need to think differently." You didn't recognize the voice. You were newer to the server — still learning names, still matching faces to reputations, still figuring out who was worth knowing and who was worth avoiding. Whoever this was, you hadn't placed him yet. But he can't know it's me had a way of making introductions feel less important than the content. You should have left. You knew, even in the moment, that the correct decision was to walk away quietly and pretend you hadn't heard anything and go back to your base and mind your own business. You stepped around the corner before you could stop yourself. The stranger went very still — or at least, that's how it looked from where you were standing. Every movement stopped at once, like someone had paused him mid-thought. He was standing at a makeshift table — notes spread across it, diagrams you couldn't fully read from this distance, a blueprint of something large and enclosed and purposeful. His eyes found you instantly, and the weight of his attention was immediate, the kind that made you feel like you'd been catalogued in under a second. You got the impression, immediately and without being able to explain why, that this was not a person who missed things. "You weren't supposed to be in this corridor," he said. Not panicked. Just observational. Like he was noting a variable he'd missed. "I heard you talking," you said. No point pretending otherwise. He looked at you for a moment. Then at the notes on the table. Then back at you. "How much did you hear," he said. "Enough." The word sat between you. He didn't move. Didn't reach for a weapon, didn't step forward, didn't do any of the things that the more volatile players on the server would have done in this situation. He just looked at you with that calm, measuring expression and waited. You weren't sure what you'd expected. Panic, maybe. Anger. Something louder than this. "Paragon," you said carefully, trying to keep your voice steady. "Someone called he. And—" you hesitated— "he can't know it's me." You watched his face for any reaction. Nothing shifted. "You're planning something. Against someone." "That's one interpretation," he said. "Is there another one?" A pause. "Several. You've chosen the most alarming." "Is it wrong?" He didn't answer. Which felt, somehow, like its own kind of answer. "Who are you?" you asked. Something moved across his expression — not quite surprise, more like mild recalibration. Like the question was slightly outside what he'd anticipated. "That's not the conversation we're having," he said. "I think it kind of is," you said. "You're planning something against someone and I've stumbled into the middle of it and I don't even know your name." He looked at you for a long moment. The kind of look that felt like it was taking stock of something. "Wifies," he said finally. Like he'd decided the information was low enough risk to give you. It didn't mean anything to you. Not yet. You filed it away anyway. "Right," you said. "Wifies. What's Paragon?" "A project." "A project that someone can't know you're behind." "Correct." "And the he — that's a person. Someone specific." He didn't confirm it. Didn't deny it either. Just kept looking at you with that calm, measuring expression that was starting to make you feel like you were a problem he was quietly solving. You looked past him at the blueprint — still spread on the table, edges curling slightly. Layers. Mechanisms. Corridors that led nowhere. It looked, from this distance, less like a project and more like a trap. "That's a prison," you said. "It's a controlled environment," he said. "For a person." "For someone who needs containing." The word sat wrong in your chest. "Nobody needs containing." For the first time, something shifted in his expression. Not anger — more like the particular patience of someone who had already had this argument with themselves and won. "You don't know that." "I know that building a prison for someone in secret isn't—" "You should go," he said. Quiet. Final. The tone of someone closing a door on a conversation they'd already decided was over. "You got turned around. You found your way back. That's the version of tonight that works out well for you." You looked at him. At the notes half gathered in his hands. At the blueprint still visible on the table behind him, all those careful deliberate walls. "I'm going to try to talk you out of it," you said. "Whatever this is. I'm not just going to walk away and forget about it." He looked at you for a long moment. Something in his expression that you couldn't name — not dismissive, not quite curious, somewhere in the uncomfortable middle. "You don't know me," he said. "You don't know anything about this situation. You heard sixty seconds of a conversation you weren't meant to hear." "I know enough," you said, though even as you said it you weren't entirely sure that was true. "You don't," he said, simply. "But you'll try anyway." It wasn't a question. "Yes," you said. He held your gaze for a moment. Then he looked back down at his notes, unhurried, like the conversation had concluded to his satisfaction. "Go back to your base," he said. "Get some sleep. You'll need it if you're planning to argue with me." You opened your mouth. Closed it. Then you turned and walked back down the corridor, because there wasn't anything else to do, and the blueprint and the notes and the name Wifies and the word Paragon followed you all the way home and sat with you for a very long time after. You didn't sleep well. The trying took three weeks. Not consecutive attempts — you weren't reckless enough for that, and you got the impression quickly that showing up too often would get you shut down faster. So you were strategic about it. Deliberate. You picked your moments carefully, approached when he was alone, kept it short enough that he couldn't dismiss you as an annoyance and long enough to actually say something real. It didn't work. The first time, he listened to everything you said and then said "no" with the quiet finality of someone who had already considered and discarded every argument before you'd finished making it. The second time, you tried a different angle — not don't do it but there's another way — and he looked at you with what might have been patience and said "there isn't." The third time, you sat down uninvited across from him while he was working and said "what if he doesn't want to be kept safe like this" and something shifted briefly in his expression and he said, quietly, "that's rather the point" and you didn't have an answer for that so you left. The fourth time he saw you coming and said "no" before you opened your mouth. By the fifth attempt you'd learned enough to piece together who he was. Parrot. You knew Parrot — loud, genuine, hard to miss. And you knew, now, what Wifies was to him. Or had been. The closest thing to an anchor Parrot had on the server. Which made the blueprint worse, somehow. Not better. "He trusts you," you said, the fifth time. "That's the whole reason this works. You're using the fact that he trusts you." Something crossed his face that you couldn't fully read. "Yes," he said. "I know." "And that doesn't—" "Bother me?" He looked at you steadily. "It does. That doesn't change anything." You stared at him. "You feel bad about it," you said slowly, "and you're doing it anyway." "Correct." "Because you think it's necessary." "Correct." "Even though he'll—" you stopped. "When he finds out it's you. He'll—" "I know what he'll do," Wifies said quietly. And the way he said it — flat, certain, like something he'd already sat with for a long time in the dark — made something ache in your chest that you hadn't expected. You left without finishing the argument. The sixth time you sat down across from him, opened your mouth, and stopped. He waited. You looked at him — at the notes in front of him, at the careful way he held himself, at the expression he wore that you'd been slowly learning to read over three weeks of failed conversations. Not coldness exactly. More like distance. Like someone standing very deliberately on the far side of something they'd chosen not to cross. "You're not going to stop," you said. "No," he agreed. "No matter what I say." "You've been thorough," he said, and it almost sounded like a compliment. "You've covered most of the reasonable objections and several I hadn't anticipated. It hasn't changed anything. It won't." You sat with that for a moment. "Why," you said finally. Not why won't you stop. Just — why. The whole thing. Why Paragon, why the plan, why all of it. He looked at you for a long moment. "Because I'm the only one who will," he said. "Everyone else will let him run toward the thing that kills him. I won't." The corridor was quiet around you both. You thought about the blueprint. About the layers on the eastern wall. About he knows how I think, I need to think differently — the words of someone using everything they knew about a person they loved to build a better trap for them. "Fine," you said. He blinked. Just once. Just slightly. "Fine." "I can't stop you." You leaned back, looking at him steadily. "So. Fine." A pause. "That's it?" "That's not it," you said. "I'm just done arguing. It's not working and you've made up your mind and I'm not going to waste both our time anymore." He studied your face with an expression that was doing something careful and considering. "You're not going to warn him." "Would it matter if I did?" you asked. Something shifted in his expression — almost imperceptible, there and gone. "...Probably not," he admitted quietly. "I've accounted for most variables." "Right." You stood up. "Then what would be the point." You picked up your things. Turned to leave. "You're frustrated," he said behind you. Still calm. Still measured. But something underneath it that felt — careful. Attentive in a way that was slightly different from how he'd been attentive to you before. "Yes," you said, without turning around. "You're not going to do anything with it." "No," you said. "I'm going to go back to my base and think about it and probably come back tomorrow and tell you I'll help instead, because apparently that's the kind of person I am." You turned around then, and found him watching you with an expression you still couldn't fully place. "And you're going to let me. Because I don't think you want to do this entirely alone." The silence stretched long enough that you thought he wasn't going to answer. "Tomorrow," he said finally. "Tomorrow," you agreed. You left. The corridor settled into quiet behind you. You didn't look back to see if he was still watching. You had the feeling he was. Chapter 18: Soft Spot Pt2 (Wifies x Reader) Chapter Text You showed up the next day like you said you would. He was already working when you found him — different location this time, deeper in the server, a place you wouldn't have found if he hadn't left the faintest trail of broken blocks that you were almost certain was accidental and almost certain wasn't. He didn't look up when you arrived. "You came," he said. "I said I would." "People say a lot of things." You set your things down and looked at the half-built structure rising in front of you — walls already three layers deep, redstone threading through the foundations like veins. Up close, Paragon was bigger than the blueprint had suggested. More deliberate. Every block placed like it meant something. "What do you need me to do," you said. He did look up then. Studying your face the way he always did, like he was checking for something — angle, motive, the thing underneath the thing you were saying. "You're serious," he said. "I've been serious this whole time," you said. "You just kept saying no." A pause. Then he handed you a list — neat, precise, every item numbered. "Materials. Eastern wall needs another two layers before nightfall. Can you manage that?" You looked at the list. Looked at the wall. "Yes." "Good." That was it. No thank you. No acknowledgement of the three weeks you'd spent trying to talk him out of it or the fact that you'd shown up anyway. Just — good, and back to work. You got to work. The first week was almost entirely practical. You gathered materials. You placed blocks. You followed the numbered lists he produced each morning with the quiet efficiency of someone who had planned this down to the last detail long before you arrived. He worked alongside you but not quite with you — always slightly separate, always maintaining that careful measured distance, speaking only when something needed clarifying. You let him. You were new to this. New to him. And you got the impression that pushing too fast would get you shut out entirely, so you matched his pace and kept your head down and waited. The cracks appeared slowly. Small things at first. The way he'd correct your block placement without being asked — not critical, just precise, his hand briefly indicating the better angle before he stepped back again. The way he started leaving the materials list somewhere you'd find it easily instead of making you ask. The way, on the third day, he wordlessly handed you a potion when you'd been mining for four hours straight without stopping, and then looked away like he hadn't done it. You didn't say anything about any of it. You were learning him the same way you'd learned the blueprint — quietly, from a distance, piecing together the shape of something from its edges. The getting hurt was, genuinely, an accident. Day nine. You were reinforcing the upper level of the eastern wall — routine, straightforward, the kind of task you'd done enough times by now to do without thinking. Which was probably why you weren't thinking when the block beneath you gave way. You didn't fall far. Far enough. You hit the lower platform hard, breath knocked out of your lungs, vision going briefly white at the edges, and lay there for a moment doing a silent inventory of damage. Side. Definitely bruised. Maybe worse. Footsteps. Fast — faster than you'd heard him move before, which was saying something. "Don't move," he said, appearing above you, and his voice had lost the measured quality it usually had. Just — direct. Sharp. Like something had stripped a layer off it. "I'm fine," you said automatically. "You fell eight blocks." "Seven," you said, because you'd counted. He crouched beside you, and you could feel the weight of his attention shifting into something more focused, more careful. "Where does it hurt." "Side. I'm fine, it's just—" "Where specifically." You gestured vaguely. He pressed two careful fingers to the area — not rough, not hurried — and you winced despite yourself. "Bruised," he said, sitting back. "Possibly cracked. You need to stop for today." "I can keep—" "You can't," he said. Flat. Final. The door-closing tone. Except this time it didn't feel like a dismissal. It felt like something else entirely. You looked at him. He was already pulling something from his inventory — a regen potion, the good kind, the kind that cost actual resources — and holding it out to you with the matter-of-fact air of someone who was absolutely not going to acknowledge what they were doing. You took it. Drank it. Watched his expression while you did. He was looking at the wall. Jaw set. Something working in his face that he wasn't letting surface. "You moved fast," you said. "When I fell." "I was close by." "You were on the other side of the structure." A pause. "The sound carries well up here." You looked at him for a moment. He didn't look back. "Wifies," you said. "Rest," he said. "We'll continue tomorrow." He stood up and walked back to the wall and that was that, except that for the rest of the day you noticed him working on the section closest to where you were sitting, and the careful way his eyes checked on you every twenty minutes or so when he thought you weren't paying attention. You didn't say anything about it. But you filed it away somewhere careful. The late nights started in the second week. Not intentionally — it was just that the work ran long and neither of you mentioned stopping, and at some point the server settled into its nighttime quiet and you were still there, sitting across from each other in the half-built structure with the day's work spread between you. The first time it happened he seemed almost surprised by it. Like he'd looked up and found the dark and found you still there and hadn't fully prepared a response. "You should head back," he said. "Probably," you agreed, and didn't move. He looked at you for a moment. Then he went back to his notes. You stayed. It happened again the next night. And the night after that. Until it stopped being something either of you remarked on and became simply — the way things went. Work until the server went quiet, and then sit in the quiet for a while longer before heading back. He didn't talk much during those hours. But the quality of his silence changed. Became less deliberate. Less like a wall and more like — just quiet. The kind that didn't need filling. You talked sometimes. Not about Paragon, not about the plan — just things. Small things. The server, other players, something you'd seen that day. You weren't sure why you kept doing it when he rarely responded with more than a word or two. Then one night he said, out of nowhere, "Parrot laughs at everything." You looked up. "When something actually strikes him as funny," Wifies continued, not looking at you, voice doing something quieter than usual. "Not the performed laugh. The real one. It's—" he paused. "It's very loud." You watched his expression. Something in it that was unguarded in a way you hadn't seen before. Just for a moment. "You miss him," you said softly. He didn't answer right away. "He's not gone yet." "That's not what I said." A long pause. "Yes," he said finally. Quietly. "I do." The structure was still around you both. You didn't say anything else. He didn't either. But something had shifted in the air between you — something small and significant that neither of you named. You went back to your base later than usual that night. The moment you pointed it out happened at the end of the second week. It had been a long day. Harder than most — a section of the northern wall had needed complete rebuilding after a structural miscalculation, and you'd both been working flat out since morning. By the time you finally stopped, the server had been dark for hours. You were sitting with your back against the wall, tired in the way that went all the way down to your bones, and Wifies was nearby — closer than he usually sat, you noticed, though you weren't sure when that had changed — going through the day's notes with a small frown. He'd been different today. Not softer exactly, but — less careful. Less like someone maintaining a particular version of himself. When the wall section had come down he'd sworn under his breath, actually frustrated, and you'd caught yourself smiling at the realness of it. He'd noticed you smiling and looked away but hadn't said anything. Later he'd handed you water before you thought to ask for it. Later still, when you'd been trying to work out a redstone configuration that wasn't cooperating, he'd sat down next to you without being asked and talked you through it, and his voice had been — patient. Genuinely patient, not performed patience. Like he didn't mind being there. You looked at him now, in the dark, going through his notes with that small frown. "You do that differently around me," you said. He didn't look up. "Do what." "All of it." You gestured vaguely. "The way you talk. The way you—" you searched for the word— "hold yourself. It's different than when other players are around." A pause. His pen stilled on the notes. "You're imagining things," he said. But his voice was doing something careful. "I'm not," you said. "You gave me water before I asked. You sat with me for twenty minutes working out that redstone problem. You laughed at the thing I said about the creeper." "I didn't laugh." "You almost laughed. Which for you is basically the same thing." He was quiet for a moment. Still not looking at you. "You've been watching me," he said. "You watch everyone," you pointed out. "I've been watching you back." Another pause. Longer this time. He closed the notes. Set them aside. And then he looked at you — really looked, the way he sometimes did when he'd decided to let something be direct instead of managed — and said, simply: "So what." You blinked. "What?" "So what if it's different." His voice was even. Quiet. "So what if it's — easier. Around you." He held your gaze. "You already know about the plan. You tried to stop it and couldn't and stayed anyway. You show up every day and work without asking for anything and you sit here in the dark with me without making it strange." Something shifted in his expression — just slightly, just enough. "It feels safer," he said. "Around you. That's all." The structure was very quiet. Your chest felt warm in a way you didn't entirely know what to do with. "Safer," you repeated softly. "Don't make it complicated," he said, and picked his notes back up, and the tips of his ears were doing something that you were absolutely going to think about later. "I'm not," you said. And then, quietly: "It feels safer around you too. For what it's worth." He didn't respond. But he didn't move further away either. And when you finally stood up to head back, tired and warm and turning the evening over in your head, he said — very quietly, not quite looking at you: "Same time tomorrow." Not a question. You smiled, facing away so he wouldn't see it. "Same time tomorrow." You walked back through the dark server with the word safer sitting in your chest like something that had always been there, waiting to be named. Behind you, in the half-built structure that was going to change everything, Wifies sat alone with his notes. And for the first time in a very long time, the quiet didn't feel like something he was enduring. It just felt like quiet. Chapter 19: Protection (ManePear x Reader) Notes: Sorry guys, I got really sick for a few days but here's another fic! <3<3 Chapter Text The first time you noticed him, you didn't think anything of it. Manepear was on the server. Manepear went places. That was simply true in the same way that the server had weather and Flame had opinions and Parrot was loud. You'd crossed paths before. It didn't mean anything. The second time, you raised an eyebrow. The third time, you mentioned it to someone who shrugged and said "he's probably just around" which was technically true and explained nothing. By the seventh time in four days you had started keeping count. It wasn't obvious. That was the thing that made it difficult to pin down — if it had been obvious you'd have said something sooner. But Manepear was not an obvious person. He didn't hover. He didn't trail behind you at a suspicious distance or make eye contact for too long or do any of the things that would have made it easy to point at and name. He was simply — nearby. In the same general area. Doing his own thing with the focused independent energy of someone who definitely had their own reasons for being wherever they happened to be. The problem was that his own reasons kept being in the same place as your reasons, at the same time, with a consistency that moved from coincidence to pattern somewhere around day two. Your kingdom wasn't small. You'd built it up steadily — walls, districts, a trading post that other players actually used, a river platform on the western edge that you'd found by accident and kept quiet about because you needed at least one place on the server that wasn't political. It was yours in the way that things on Unstable were yours — meaning you'd defended it enough times that most people had decided it was more trouble than it was worth. Most people. There were always new players with ambitions and old players with grudges and the occasional mercenary who'd been pointed in your direction by someone with resources and a reason. Running a kingdom meant running a target. You'd accepted that a long time ago. What you hadn't accepted, or rather hadn't anticipated, was Manepear. Day one: the northern trading post, just inside your kingdom's outer boundary. You'd gone for supplies — standard run, nothing special. He'd been there when you arrived, standing at one of the outer stalls with the browsing energy of someone who was either genuinely looking for something or very good at appearing to. You'd nodded at each other in the way that people who knew each other by reputation but not well did, and gone about your separate business, and you hadn't thought about it until later when you were back at your keep and something made you replay the afternoon and go hm. Day two: the eastern outpost, which sat at the boundary of your kingdom's most contested edge. You'd been doing a perimeter check — the kind of routine maintenance that was boring enough that you'd stopped fully paying attention to your surroundings, which was probably why you'd looked up at some point and found Manepear on the roof of the outpost structure watching the terrain with his spear across his knees. "What are you doing up there," you'd said. "Watching the terrain," he'd said. "Why." "Scouting." You'd looked at him for a moment. He'd looked back with the perfectly neutral expression of someone who had an answer ready for every follow up question and was daring you to ask one. You'd decided it wasn't worth it and gone back to your perimeter check, and he'd stayed on the roof, and when you'd left he'd still been there. Or appeared to still be there. You weren't entirely sure he hadn't moved the second you were out of sightline. Day three was the crafting district in the morning — the busy heart of your kingdom, players moving through constantly, noise and trade and the particular organized chaos of a functioning server settlement. He'd been at the edge of it, leaning against a wall, watching the flow of traffic with the focused assessment of someone cataloguing something. You'd walked past him. He'd nodded. You'd nodded back. In the afternoon, the main supply corridor that ran along your kingdom's southern wall. He'd been walking it in the opposite direction, which was plausible enough that you'd let it go. In the evening, when you'd taken the long route back because you were tired and wanted the quiet — the western river platform. That last one had given you pause. The western river platform was not on any map. It wasn't a kingdom asset, wasn't strategic, wasn't marked anywhere you'd written down. It sat at the far western edge of your territory where the wall gave way to natural terrain, elevated just enough to see the river below, quiet in a way the rest of the kingdom wasn't. You'd found it three weeks ago completely by accident and gone back regularly since. You had not told anyone about it. Manepear had been there before you. Sitting with one knee up, spear across his lap, looking at the water like he'd been doing it for a while. You'd stood at the top of the path for a moment, looking at him. "How," you'd said. "What," he'd said. You'd sat down on the other end of the platform and watched the river and not said anything else, and neither had he, and after a while you'd gone back to your keep and laid awake for longer than you meant to thinking about it. Day four was when you stopped letting it go. It was the ambush that did it. You'd been moving through the northeastern edge of your kingdom — the part that bordered contested server terrain, where your walls thinned and the tree cover thickened and it was harder to see what was coming. Not your usual route through your own territory, but faster, and you'd wanted fast that day. Three players. Not your citizens, not allied. Mid-tier gear, opportunistic, the kind of attack that happened to anyone moving alone through border territory who looked like they might have something worth taking. Or who ran a kingdom worth destabilizing, which you did. You'd handled the first one fine. The second one had joined before you'd fully recovered and that had been harder. You'd taken a hit, armor absorbing the damage, health dropping enough to make you recalculate. The third one appeared from the left and that was when the math stopped working in your favor. You'd shifted your grip, run the options— Manepear came out of the trees. Fifteen seconds. Maybe less. Three players who had been a serious problem thirty seconds ago were a resolved situation, and Manepear was standing in the middle of what remained looking like he'd done something entirely routine. He looked at you. "You're fine." "You were in the trees," you said. "I was passing through." "You came out of a specific tree at a very specific moment. Inside my kingdom's border." "Timing," he said. "Manepear." "What." "You just appeared out of the forest and dealt with three players because I was about to get seriously hurt. Inside my own territory." "You were handling it." "I was handling two of them. The third one—" "You would have managed," he said, with the tone of someone saying words they did not believe. You stared at him. He looked back with the patient neutral expression. The one you were starting to learn meant he'd already decided what he was and wasn't going to say and was waiting for you to work out which was which. You looked at the trees. Looked back at him. "How long," you said, "were you in those trees." A pause. "Not long." "How long is not long." "Long enough." You crossed your arms. "Long enough to see the ambush coming. Inside my border." "Long enough to be in the area when it happened." "That's not what I—" you stopped. Breathed. Started again. "You've been everywhere I've been for four days. Inside my kingdom. At my trading post, my outpost, my crafting district, my supply corridor." You held his gaze. "And the river platform, which is not on any map, which I have never told anyone about, which is barely even inside my western boundary." He said nothing. "Someone told you where I go," you said. "Someone who knows my kingdom. Who knows my habits. Who knows about the platform." You watched his expression carefully. "Someone hired you to be here." The silence that followed was a very particular kind — not the silence of someone with nothing to say but the silence of someone deciding how much of what they had to say they were going to say. "I don't discuss contracts," he said finally. "So there is a contract." He looked at the middle distance. "I don't discuss—" "There's a contract," you said. "Someone hired you. To do what — patrol my territory? Watch the borders? Make sure nothing happened to me specifically?" Nothing from him. Which was its own language. "Who," you said. "Can't say." "Can't or won't." "Both." You looked at him for a long moment. At the carefully maintained neutrality and the way he was very deliberately not meeting your eyes and the spear at his back and the resolved situation behind him. "Why would someone hire you specifically," you said, thinking out loud. "You're not cheap. You don't take jobs you don't want to take. You pick your contracts." You tilted your head. "So whoever it is either has something you want or something you owe or—" you paused— "or you actually cared about taking this one." Something moved across his expression. Too fast to fully read. But there. "I take jobs," he said. "That's what I do." "You turned down a job on me three weeks ago," you said. "Someone hired you to come after my kingdom and you didn't." "That was different." "You keep saying that." "Because it's true." "How is it different? Both are jobs. Both involve me and my kingdom. What's the difference." He looked at you then. The direct look. The one that meant something was going to be said plainly whether he liked it or not. "That job wanted your kingdom taken apart," he said quietly. "This one wants it standing." The words settled into the space between you. You looked at him. At the trees. At the border of your kingdom stretching out behind him, the walls you'd built and the territory you'd defended and the trading post and the outpost and the crafting district and the small quiet platform at the western edge where the river ran below and nobody else went. "The platform," you said. He waited. "You were there before me. You'd been there a while." You studied his face. "That's not patrolling my border. That's not running a contract. You were just — sitting there." Something in his jaw tightened. "Elevated position. Good sight—" "Manepear." He stopped. The kingdom was quiet around you both, late afternoon light coming gold through the trees, distant sounds of your citizens going about their business somewhere inside the walls. "You like it there too," you said. Not accusing. Just — saying it. A very long pause. "The sightlines are good," he said. Quietly. Without looking at you. "Yeah," you said. "They are." Silence settled between you, and it was the comfortable kind, and you stood in it for a moment and let it be what it was. "The job," you said eventually. "Is it done? Kingdom still standing, ruler still breathing?" "Technically," he said. "Threat resolved." "Technically," you agreed. Neither of you moved. "The platform," you said. "I usually go around sunset. If the sightlines are something you're professionally interested in." He looked at you sideways. "That's not—" "Purely professional," you said. "Structural assessment. Good elevated position." The corner of his mouth did something small and involuntary that lasted less than a second before he shut it down. "I might be in the area," he said. "Sure," you said. "Coincidentally." "Yes." "Great." You started walking — back toward your keep, through your kingdom, past the trading post and the outpost and the crafting district that were yours and that someone had apparently paid Manepear to make sure stayed that way. After exactly three seconds he fell into step beside you, not quite close, close enough, watching the treeline with the focused expression of someone who had their own reasons for going this direction. "Whoever hired you," you said, after a while. He glanced at you. "Tell them I said thanks," you said. "For the scouting. And the sightlines. And the tree." He was quiet for a moment. "I'll pass it on," he said. "Good." You walked in comfortable silence through the golden afternoon, through the kingdom that was still standing and the border that was still intact, and neither of you said anything else about contracts or jobs or the fact that the clock had technically run out a while ago and he was still here anyway. Some things didn't need saying. Manepear, of all people, understood that better than most. Chapter 20: Four Chunks (Eggchan x Reader) Notes: Here is our adorable little eyeball :3 (See the end of the chapter for more notes.) Chapter Text You found him at the edge of spawn. Not the busy part — not the main plaza with its player traffic and its politics and its constant low hum of people with agendas moving through it. The edge. The part where the spawn structures gave way to natural terrain and the noise faded into something almost manageable and you could sit with your back against old stone and watch the water without anyone stopping to ask you anything. You knew about this spot because you'd found it yourself, weeks ago, for exactly those reasons. Eggchan was already there. He was sitting on the bank where the old stone dropped off into the river, fishing rod in hand, helmet off, with the particular stillness of someone who had been there long enough to get comfortable and had no plans to stop being comfortable anytime soon. The float bobbed on the water in front of him, patient and unbothered. He heard you before you reached him. Glanced back. "Hey," he said. "Hey," you said. He looked back at the water. You looked at the water too, at the river moving past the old worn stone, at the distant sound of other players doing other things that had nothing to do with either of you right now. "Wemmbu know you're out here?" he asked. "No," you said. "You?" "No," he said. A beat. "He's going to figure it out eventually," you said. "Eventually isn't now," Eggchan said peacefully. You sat down on the bank beside him. Close enough to talk, far enough to be comfortable. The stone was warm from the afternoon sun and the river moved past you both with the easy indifference of water that had been here before any of this existed and would be here long after everyone on the server had done whatever they were going to do to each other. "Spare rod?" you asked. He reached into his inventory without looking and held one out. You took it. Cast it. The float landed with a small satisfying plop and settled into the current a little upstream from his. Neither of you said anything for a while. That was the thing about Eggchan that you'd figured out early — he didn't fill silence for the sake of filling it. With Wemmbu there was always something happening, always a next move or a current crisis or someone actively trying to ruin their day, and you'd gotten good at operating in that register. Quick. Reactive. Always half a step ahead of whatever was about to go wrong. This was different. This was just river sounds and your float drifting slightly with the current while his remained in a state of profound and suspicious stillness. "You're not getting anything," you said, after a while. "I'm getting plenty," he said. "Your float hasn't moved." "My float is thinking," he said, with complete seriousness. You looked at him sideways. He was watching the water with the focused serenity of someone who had genuinely nowhere else to be and no complicated feelings about that whatsoever. "How long have you been out here," you said. "A while." "Define a while." He considered this. "The sun was higher." You looked at the sun, which was considerably lower than high. "Egg." "I'm relaxing," he said. "Do you know how rarely I get to relax? Someone is always trying to kill us. Or imprison us. Or blow something up near us." "That's fair," you admitted. "Thank you." "It doesn't explain the float." "The float is fine," he said. "The float is exactly where it needs to be." You opened your mouth to argue and then your float dipped — decisively, unmistakably — and you pulled back and reeled in and found a fish on the end of it that you regarded with mild surprise. Eggchan looked at it. Looked at his own float, which remained in its state of contemplative stillness. Looked back at your fish. "Beginner's luck," he said. "I've fished before." "Beginner's continued luck," he said. "That's not a thing." "I'm making it a thing." You laughed, unhooking the fish and setting it aside, and recast. The float settled back onto the water and you watched it with the new attentiveness of someone who had just been rewarded for paying attention. Eggchan's remained motionless. "Can I ask you something," you said. "Probably," he said. "The render distance." He turned to look at you. His expression was very calm. "What about it." "Four," you said. "You play on four render distance." "I play on a render distance I find comfortable," he said. "Four is comfortable." "You say your eye sees all." "My eye sees what matters." "Egg." "Four meaningful chunks," he said. "Quality over quantity." "That is not — that's not how render distance works, that's not how any of this—" "I don't make the rules," he said peacefully, turning back to the water. "You just made that rule up thirty seconds ago." "Did I?" he said, in the tone of someone absolutely certain he had and completely unbothered by being called out for it. You stared at him for a long moment. Then you looked back at the river and shook your head and he made the quiet sound that was his version of a laugh, and you found yourself smiling despite yourself at the water. That was the thing. People underestimated him — the less skilled player, the unserious one, the one who wanted to fish while everyone else was fighting civilizational battles. You'd done it yourself at first, before you'd been around him long enough to understand that the unbothered exterior was genuine and also not the complete picture. Eggchan paid attention. He just paid attention quietly, without making a production of it, and filed things away in whatever internal archive lived alongside the book of thousands of coordinates and the bow named How did you die to me that he carried like a personal joke no one else was entirely in on. He noticed things. He'd noticed you, specifically, before Wemmbu had even properly introduced you — had clocked something about you in the first five minutes that he'd mentioned to Wemmbu later, which Wemmbu had mentioned to you later still in the offhand way he sometimes did, and which you'd thought about more than you expected to. His float moved. Finally — after all this time, after the sun had shifted noticeably and you'd caught two fish to his zero — his float actually dipped below the surface, pulled by something definitive, and he reeled it in with the unhurried efficiency of someone who had been waiting for exactly this and was completely unsurprised by its arrival. A fish. Bigger than either of yours. He looked at it. Looked at you. Said nothing. "Don't," you said. "I wasn't going to say anything," he said. "You were." "I was going to say," he said, with great dignity, "that patience is a virtue." "You were going to say your eye sees all." "...That too," he admitted. "Both things can be true." You laughed — properly this time, the kind that came from somewhere genuinely relaxed — and he made the quiet laugh sound again, and for a moment you were both just sitting there in the afternoon being actually, unstrategically happy about nothing in particular. It felt strange. In the best way. The afternoon stretched long and easy. You caught another fish. He caught one more, which brought him to two, which he accepted with the serenity of someone who had long since made peace with outcomes beyond his control. Chat notifications neither of you checked. The ambient noise of everything happening elsewhere on the server required nothing from either of you specifically right now. "We don't actually hang out," you said, at some point. "Just us. Without Wemmbu in the middle of something." "No," he agreed. "We don't." "It's strange. We're both—" you gestured vaguely— "you know. His." "His left and right hand," Eggchan said. "Yeah. But we've never really had—" you looked at the water— "this." He was quiet for a moment. "No. We haven't." "We should do it more." "Agreed," he said. Simple and certain, no performance around it, and you turned back to the river with something warm settled in your chest that you didn't particularly feel the need to examine too closely right now. The float drifted. You watched it. The old stone behind you held the warmth of the afternoon sun and the river kept moving and it was quiet in a way that felt genuinely earned after everything the server had put you both through recently. Then your float did something different. Not the quick decisive dip of a fish bite. Something slower. Heavier. The line pulling with a resistance that felt different from anything you'd reeled in so far, and you sat up slightly, adjusting your grip, and pulled back carefully. It came up slowly. Whatever it was, it wasn't fighting you — just heavy, waterlogged, caught on the hook by pure chance. You reeled it in steadily and it broke the surface and you both looked at it. A book. Sodden and old-looking, the way things that had been in the water a long time looked, but intact. You grabbed it, turned it over. Mending. You stared at it. Eggchan stared at it. "That's a mending book," he said. "I know," you said. "You fished up a mending book." "I know," you said. "From this river." "Egg." "With a borrowed rod," he continued, with the energy of someone narrating something for their own processing purposes. "On a casual afternoon. While I have been sitting here for three hours." "I'm aware—" "My eye," he said, turning to look at you with an expression of profound betrayal, "has been out here for three hours." "Four meaningful chunks," you said, and you couldn't keep the grin off your face, and he looked at you and then looked at the mending book and then looked back at you and made a sound that was more laugh than he usually let out — genuine and slightly helpless — and you both dissolved for a moment into the kind of laughter that happened when something was funny and you were relaxed enough to let it be as funny as it was. It took a while to stop. When it did you were both leaning slightly, shoulders almost touching, the mending book sitting in your lap and the fishing rods abandoned temporarily to the bank beside you, and the river kept moving past like it hadn't just handed you something worth considerably more than an afternoon's fishing. "You should keep it," Eggchan said, once things had settled. "You were here first," you said. "I didn't catch it." "I used your rod." "I'm gifting you the rod," he said. "And the fish. And the mending book. Everything you caught today is yours." "You caught two fish." "I'm keeping those," he said. "The rest is yours." You looked at him. He looked back with the calm expression of someone who had made a completely reasonable and internally consistent decision and was not going to be talked out of it. "Thank you," you said. "Don't mention it," he said. "Genuinely. Don't tell Wemmbu about the mending book. He'll be annoying about it." "He'll say it was luck." "He'll say it was luck and then he'll spend a week trying to fish one up himself and rope us both into it," Eggchan said, with the certainty of someone who had watched this exact pattern play out enough times to predict it with confidence. You pressed your lips together. "...Yeah. Okay. Server secret." "Server secret," he agreed. You tucked the mending book into your inventory and picked your rod back up and cast it again, and he did the same, and the afternoon settled back into its easy rhythm — floats on the water, the golden light going longer and lower across the river. You stayed until it was properly dark. Neither of you mentioned leaving, and by the unspoken agreement of two people who were comfortable enough with each other to not make a production of things, the question just stopped being relevant. You talked sometimes and didn't other times and at some point Eggchan said something so sincerely unhinged about fish cognition that you laughed until your side hurt and he watched you with that quiet almost-smile that you were quickly deciding was one of the better things the server had to offer. When you finally packed up the stars were out, the river silver in the moonlight, the old stone glowing softly with its scattered torches. "Same time next week," you said, standing and brushing stone dust off your legs. He picked up his helmet. Turned it over once. Put it back on. "My eye will find you," he said. "Four chunk radius," you said. "Four meaningful chunks." "Goodnight Egg." "Goodnight," he said. Warm and easy, like it was already a thing that was going to keep happening, like next week was already decided, like this spot was already yours in the way that quiet things became yours when you found them with the right person. You walked back separately — better that way, less chance of Wemmbu asking questions — and the mending book sat in your inventory the whole way home, heavy and improbable and somehow the least surprising thing about the afternoon. Some things were just like that. You found them when you weren't looking, at the edge of something, with someone you'd been standing next to the whole time without realizing there was more to find. Notes: After I finish two more requests I shall open the requests again! <3 Chapter 21: Pushed Away (Spoke x Reader) Chapter Text Y/N POV: You knew who Spoke was before you knew him. Everyone did. That was the thing about his reputation — it arrived before he did, loud and specific, a list of things he'd done and people he'd burned through and situations he'd left worse than he'd found them. Untrustworthy. Dangerous. A wild card in the worst sense, the kind you didn't want in your hand when the stakes were real. You'd decided to find out for yourself. That was your first mistake. Or maybe it wasn't a mistake at all — maybe it was just the thing that happened, the way some things did, before you had the context to understand what you were walking into. You found out he was funny before you found out he was reckless. Found out he was sharp before you found out he was selfish. Found out that underneath the chaos there was something genuine — quick and bright and real — before you found out that genuine didn't mean safe. By the time you had the full picture you were already in it. His closest person on the server. That was what it had become, quietly, through a hundred small moments that didn't feel significant until you looked back at all of them at once. You knew his tells. You knew when the chaos was performance and when it wasn't. You knew the difference between the laugh he used when he was playing a character and the one that slipped out when something actually caught him off guard. You knew him. Which meant you were also the first to notice when he started changing. It happened slowly enough that you kept finding reasons to explain it away. He was stressed. The BAT was complicated, the server was complicated, there were people after him and targets in front of him and the kind of pressure that made anyone act differently. You told yourself this the first time he said something that landed wrong — sharp in a direction you hadn't expected, aimed at you in a way that felt less like deflection and more like intent. "I'm fine," he'd said, when you'd asked. "Stop hovering." You weren't hovering. You were standing in the same room, which you'd done a hundred times before without it being a problem. But you let it go because he was stressed and you were patient and that was what you did. You let a lot of things go. The second time he said something that landed wrong it was in front of others — a comment that was technically a joke, technically harmless, but edged with something that made the people around you go quiet in that specific way people went quiet when they were deciding whether to acknowledge what had just happened. You didn't react. You filed it away. The third time you pushed back, gently, the way you did with him when something needed addressing. "That wasn't okay," you said, quietly, just the two of you. He looked at you with an expression you hadn't seen from him before. Not defensive. Not apologetic. Just — flat. Like a door closing from the inside. "You're being sensitive," he said. You weren't. You knew you weren't. But you let it go because he was Spoke and Spoke was complicated and you knew him well enough to know that pushing when he was like this got you nowhere. You were learning, slowly, that letting things go had a limit you couldn't see until you'd already passed it. The BAT changed him in ways you tried to name and couldn't quite. It wasn't that he became someone different. It was more that something that had always been there — the selfishness, the recklessness, the willingness to burn things down if it served him — got louder. Got less controlled. The things he'd always balanced against the genuine parts of him started winning more often, and the genuine parts retreated somewhere you had to work harder to find. You kept finding them. For a long time you kept finding them — in the moments late at night when the performance dropped and he was just tired, in the rare times he'd say something honest without seeming to mean to, in the way he still looked for you in rooms before he'd registered that he was doing it. You held onto those moments probably longer than you should have. "You don't have to do it this way," you said, once. About something specific — a decision he'd made that had hurt people who hadn't deserved it, that had served him and nothing else. "There are other options." "You don't know what you're talking about," he said. Not unkindly, which was almost worse. Just dismissive. Like your perspective was something he'd already considered and discarded without telling you. "I know you," you said. "You know a version of me," he said. "People change." You looked at him for a long moment. He looked back and the thing you'd always been able to find underneath everything — the genuine bright realness of him — was there, somewhere, but it was further down than it used to be and he wasn't making it easy to reach. "Yeah," you said. "They do." The lying started small. Or maybe it had always been there and you were only now calibrated to notice it — you couldn't be sure anymore, and that uncertainty itself was a kind of damage. You'd start to question things you'd never questioned before. Replay conversations. Wonder which version of what he'd said was true and which was the angle. It was exhausting in a way you hadn't anticipated. Being someone's closest person on a server full of people who didn't trust him had always taken something from you. You'd been fine with that. You'd chosen it. But this was different — this was not trusting him yourself, and that was a weight you hadn't signed up for and didn't know how to put down. "Something's wrong," you said, one night. Direct. The way you'd learned to be with him because anything less direct and he'd slide right past it. "Nothing's wrong," he said, not looking at you. "Spoke." "I said nothing's wrong." The flat tone again. The closed door. "Why do you always have to do this." "Do what." "This." He gestured vaguely at you, at the conversation, at whatever he'd decided you represented in this moment. "Analyze everything. Make everything into a problem." "I'm not making it into a problem. It is a problem. You've been—" "I've been what?" He looked at you then, and the expression on his face was one you recognized from stories other people told about him — the one that came before he said something designed to end a conversation. "Difficult? Not what you signed up for? Not the version of me you decided I was?" "That's not—" "Because I never asked you to stay," he said. "I never asked you to make me your project. That was your choice." The words landed the way words did when someone knew exactly where to aim them. You were quiet for a moment. Long enough that the silence became its own thing, its own answer. "I know you didn't ask," you said finally. Your voice was steady. You were proud of that, quietly, in the part of you that was already somewhere else. "I stayed because I wanted to." He didn't say anything. "I'm starting to think you've been trying to make me leave," you said. "For a while now." Something moved across his face. Fast, gone before you could fully read it. The genuine part, surfacing briefly like something coming up for air. Then it was gone. "Maybe I have," he said. The last time was quieter than you'd expected. You didn't yell. Neither did he. There wasn't a single moment where everything broke — more like you'd both arrived separately at the same place and were acknowledging it without drama. You'd found out about something he'd done. Not the worst thing he'd done during this whole period — not even close, probably — but the thing that made the pattern undeniable. The thing that removed the last explanation you'd been holding onto. You told him what you knew. He didn't deny it. Didn't apologize either. Just looked at you with the flat expression that had become so familiar it barely hurt anymore, and waited. "I'm done," you said. Not angry. Just — done. The way you were done when something had used up everything it had and there was nothing left to sustain it. He didn't say don't go. Didn't say wait. Didn't say anything that would have made this harder or easier or different. "Okay," he said. One word. Flat and final and entirely in character for the version of him he'd become, the version that had worn down everything between you until there was nothing left to wear. You picked up your things. You didn't look back on the way out — not because you were angry, not because you were performing anything, but because looking back would have undone the steadiness you'd held onto through all of it and you needed to take that with you. It was the last thing you had that was still yours. Outside, the server was doing its usual thing. Loud and complicated and full of people who had warned you, once, about exactly this. You walked. He didn't come after you. You'd known he wouldn't. That was part of what made it final — not the leaving, but the certainty that the version of him who would have come after you was the version he'd spent the last several months dismantling. Somewhere on the server, Spoke went back to whatever he'd been doing. Somewhere on the server, you found somewhere new to be. The space where you'd been in his orbit closed over like water, smooth and immediate, and the server went on, and the BAT went on, and the slow descent went on, and none of it required anything from you anymore. That was the thing about leaving. It was only the staying that cost you something. Spoke POV: She left. He knew the exact moment she was gone — not because he heard the door, but because the base felt different. The particular weight of someone who knew you, really knew you, lifting out of the room like pressure releasing from something that had been holding too long. He'd caused that. He stood exactly where he'd been standing when he said okay and didn't move for a while. There wasn't a reason to move. There wasn't a reason to do anything in particular. The BAT had things that needed doing and the server had things that needed handling and Spoke had a list a mile long of angles and next moves and none of it required him to stand here in a room that still felt like her for another minute longer. He stood there anyway. I never asked you to stay. He'd meant it as a weapon and it had landed like one and he'd watched it land and hadn't stopped it and the thing was — the thing he wasn't going to say out loud to anyone, ever, was that he'd known what he was doing. He'd known for weeks what he was doing. The sharp comments, the flat tone, the careful dismantling of every reason she had to stay. He'd told himself it was practical. She was too close. Knew too much. In the world he was building for himself during this arc there wasn't room for someone who could read him that well, who'd notice the things he needed to not be noticed, who'd look at him with that particular expression — not disappointed, never quite disappointed, just seeing — and make him aware of the distance between what he was doing and what he was capable of. It was easier without that. He'd made it easier. I'm starting to think you've been trying to make me leave. She'd been right. She was always right about him, which had been the point, which had been the problem. He finally moved. Crossed to the chest in the corner and opened it and looked at the contents without seeing them, hands resting on the edge, the familiar weight of the next thing he needed to do sitting somewhere nearby and not quite reachable yet. Okay, he'd said. One word. The door closing from his side for once, definitively, because she'd finally stopped holding it open and he'd — he'd let it close. Had basically closed it himself. Had been closing it for months and she'd kept finding the hinges and holding on and he'd— He shut the chest. The base was quiet. He'd wanted this. The clean slate, the removed variable, the absence of someone who made him conscious of what he was becoming. He'd wanted it and he'd engineered it and it had worked exactly as intended. It didn't feel like winning. He picked up his things. Checked his inventory with the automatic efficiency of someone who knew how to keep moving when moving was the only option. The server was waiting. The BAT was waiting. There were targets and angles and a version of himself he'd decided to become that didn't have room for the particular kind of quiet she'd always brought with her. He logged back into the work. He didn't look at the space where she'd been standing. Not once. Chapter 22: Problem (Mugm x Reader) Notes: Couldn't finish this in time for April fools so I offer you this as a late April fools! (See the end of the chapter for more notes.) Chapter Text Y/N POV Mugm was, objectively, a lot. You'd figured that out within the first five minutes of meeting him. Which had involved him appearing from absolutely nowhere, saying something that made no sense, and then looking at you like you were the weird one for being confused by it. You weren't confused for long. You said something back. He went quiet. You weren't sure what you'd said exactly — it had come out before you'd processed it, the kind of response that bypassed the filter entirely and arrived fully formed. Something that had followed the logic of what he'd said in a direction neither of you had probably anticipated. He'd looked at you for a second. A full second. Maybe two. Then he'd stayed. That had been three weeks ago. He kept coming back and you weren't entirely sure why but you had a theory. You didn't say the theory out loud. But you had it. And you were becoming increasingly confident in it. The thing about Mugm was that most people handled him wrong. You'd observed this over three weeks of him appearing in your vicinity with no stated reason and no stated purpose and no apparent interest in providing either. Most people got nervous. That seemed to bore him instantly — you could see it happening in real time, the way his attention drained the second someone started being careful around him. Like careful was the least interesting thing a person could be. Like he'd already decided what came next before they'd finished being careful about the first thing. Others tried to match him. They swung in the general direction of his energy and missed the frequency entirely — too loud, too performative, too obviously trying — and he'd clock it immediately and lose interest just as fast. You hadn't done either. You'd just responded. Genuinely. Without filtering it into something safer or more sensible, because his particular brand of chaos happened to rhyme with something in your brain in a way you'd stopped trying to explain around day four. It was working. Whatever it was. It was definitely working. He showed up on a Tuesday with no explanation. Just appeared. Sat down nearby. Started doing something in his inventory with the energy of someone who had always been there and had simply been overlooked until now. You looked at him. He didn't look back. "You're here," you said. "Looks like it," he said. "Any reason." "Does there need to be one." You smiled at the wall in front of you. "No," you said. "Not really." He nodded once, like that was settled, and went back to his inventory. You went back to what you were doing. Your heart was doing something slightly stupid. You ignored it very badly. He showed up the next day too. And the day after that. Different times, different places, no pattern you could identify except that he kept appearing wherever you happened to be with the consistency of someone who knew where you were going before you said so. You didn't point this out. You just kept being where you were going to be anyway and letting him keep appearing there. It felt, you thought, like something building. You were good at recognizing things that were building. He told you not to do things on a semi regular basis. You did them anyway because your read on the situation was usually correct and he knew it and the specific quality of his annoyance when it worked was honestly kind of endearing in a way you weren't going to say out loud. "You're not supposed to do that," he said one afternoon, watching you do the thing. "I know," you said. "I told you not to." "You did." "So why—" "I wanted to see what would happen," you said. He stared at you. "It worked," you pointed out. "That's not—" "Next time I'll tell you first," you said. "Then you can tell me not to and I'll do it anyway and we can skip the middle part." He looked at you for a long second. "I don't like you," he said. You smiled. "Okay." He stayed for another two hours. You thought about that for longer than you probably should have. Specifically about the staying. There was a day he showed up while you were in the middle of something frustrating. Not a server conflict. Just a project that kept not working. A design that collapsed every time you thought you'd fixed it. The kind of low stakes irritation that was somehow more draining than actual problems. He showed up and looked at it without being asked. Didn't say anything for a moment. Then: "that support structure is wrong." He pointed at the specific part. He was right. You could see it immediately once he pointed it out. You fixed it. It worked. You looked at him. He was already looking at something else. Hands in pockets. Like he hadn't just solved your afternoon. "Thanks," you said. "Whatever," he said. You turned back to your project so he wouldn't see you smiling. You were smiling for a while after that. You started noticing the small things. Not intentionally — they just accumulated. The way they did when you were paying attention to someone without meaning to, when your brain decided something was worth cataloguing and started doing it automatically. The way he positioned himself when he was nearby. Always slightly between you and whatever direction trouble was most likely to come from. Never announced, never remarked on. Just — there. The way he knew what you were about to do before you did it. Not always. But often enough to be a pattern. Often enough that when he said don't do that you'd started taking a half second to actually check your plan before proceeding. The way he looked at you sometimes when he thought you weren't looking. You were usually looking. You didn't let on that you were looking. But you were building a picture and the picture was getting clearer every day and you liked what you saw in it quite a lot. "You know," you said one afternoon, "for someone who doesn't like me you spend a lot of time here." He didn't look up from what he was doing. "I'm in the area." "You're always in the area." "It's a good area." "It's literally just where I am." He looked up then. The flat look. The one that was supposed to end conversations. "I don't like you," he said. "You've said," you said pleasantly. "I mean it." "Okay." He looked at you for a moment. At the expression on your face, which was not taking this seriously, which was not taking him seriously, which was— He looked back down. "Annoying," he said, under his breath. "Sorry?" you said. "Nothing," he said. You smiled at the side of his head. He didn't see it. Or he did and chose not to respond. You chose to interpret it as the former because it was funnier. There was an evening when things on the server had settled and you'd both ended up in the same place with nothing immediately requiring either of you. You were sitting on the edge of something elevated, looking out at the server stretching below, and he'd dropped down nearby without comment and that had been that. Quiet for a while. Not uncomfortable quiet. Just quiet. "Do you actually not like me," you asked, because you'd been thinking about asking for a while and the quiet felt like the right kind for it. He looked at you sideways. "What," he said. "You say it a lot," you said. "I don't like you. But you keep coming back and you pointed out the support structure thing and you're always—" you gestured vaguely at the general fact of him being there— "here." "I'm in the area," he said. "Mugm." "The area is large." "It really isn't." He was quiet for a moment. Looking out at the server with the expression he had when he was deciding something. "I don't like you," he said. "Okay," you said. You were smiling and you weren't hiding it particularly well and he looked at the smile for a second — just a second, not long enough to mean anything, except it felt like it meant something — before he looked away. You sat there for another hour after that. Neither of you left. You thought about it the whole way home. He started showing up when things went wrong. Not dramatically. Not announcing himself as backup or help or anything with a name attached to it. Just — appearing. When something was difficult or complicated or going sideways, he'd be there. Doing something useful. Not commenting on the doing of it. You commented on it once. "You didn't have to do that," you said. "I know," he said. "But you did." "So?" You looked at him. "So thank you." He looked profoundly inconvenienced by the gratitude. "Whatever," he said, and left. You watched him go with the warm settled feeling that had been becoming your default state when he was around and also apparently now when he'd just left. You were so deep in trouble. The good kind. Probably. "Do you think Mugm likes me," you asked someone once. Someone who knew the server well, who'd been around long enough to have a read on most people. They looked at you. "Mugm," they said. "Yeah." They were quiet for a moment with the expression of someone choosing their words carefully. "Why do you ask," they said. "He keeps showing up," you said. "He helps with things. He stays. He says he doesn't like me but—" "He says he doesn't like you." "Yeah but—" "Explicitly." "People say things," you said. "It doesn't always mean—" They looked at you for a moment longer. "Sure," they said, carefully. "Maybe." You took this as confirmation. You probably shouldn't have taken this as confirmation. The plan was the moment everything crystallized. Server situation. Complicated. The kind that required fast decisions from more than one person working in sequence. Mugm had appeared — as he did, from nowhere, exactly when needed — and assessed it in four seconds and looked at you. You'd looked at him. You'd handed him a role without discussing it. You'd looked at the situation and looked at him and just known. Like you'd been running calculations about him for three weeks without realizing it and they'd all added up right here. He'd taken the role without questioning it. The plan went sideways in the specific entertaining way things did when you were both involved — not badly, just with momentum, with the quality of two people making decisions in the same direction without having to say so. There was a moment in the middle. Half a second. A decision. You looked at him. He looked at you. Same call. Simultaneously. Without words. It worked. You looked at him after and he looked at you and there was something in the air between you that neither of you named and you felt it and you were fairly certain he felt it too because he looked away first and he didn't usually look away first. You let him. You went home that night with the picture sitting very clearly in your mind. All the pieces in place. You were in trouble. The good kind. You were going to do something about it soon. Mugm POV Mugm had decided, upon first meeting you, that you needed to go. Not immediately. He wasn't impulsive about these things. He was methodical. He would identify the correct course of action, establish the necessary groundwork, and execute with precision. The correct course of action was getting you off the server. He hadn't done it yet. Scheduling issue. You were a problem. Not in the interesting way. Not in the way that made problems worth keeping around for tactical purposes. Just in the flat, consistent, ongoing way that certain things were problems — present, inconvenient, resistant to resolution. You'd looked at him like he was a puzzle when he arrived. He was not a puzzle. He was a threat. There was a significant difference and you apparently couldn't tell it and that alone was enough to put you on the list. He'd left. He'd come back. Observation purposes. He needed data before he could act. Acting without complete data was how people made mistakes and he did not make mistakes. The thing you'd said. He kept coming back to the thing you'd said. Right at the beginning. He'd said what he'd said and watched the confusion move through your expression and then you'd responded with something that had no business being said — something that had followed his logic somewhere he hadn't anticipated, that had arrived somewhere unexpected— He'd gone quiet. He did not go quiet. The fact that you had made him go quiet was a problem. A significant one. It went on the list immediately. At the top. Underlined twice. Made him go quiet: UNACCEPTABLE. He'd left to reassess. He'd come back because the reassessment required more data. The data kept requiring more data. This was entirely your fault. You were annoying. Consistently. Reliably. Every single interaction without variation or improvement. You weren't nervous around him. Everyone was nervous around him. Nervous was the correct and appropriate response to his presence and it had the additional benefit of being predictable, which he appreciated, because predictable meant manageable. You were not nervous. You were not nervous and you were not manageable and you made him have to think about things that shouldn't require thinking about and he resented it specifically and personally. You were also right about things. Unreasonably frequently. He'd said not to do something. You'd done it. It had worked. He'd had to stand there and be annoyed about the result while you looked at him with that expression — unbothered, like his opinion was interesting data rather than a directive — and he'd said I don't like you and you'd said okay like it was nothing— Like it was nothing. He stayed for two more hours. Data gathering. That was the only reason. He made a list. An actual list. Documented. Organized. Things that were annoying about you. Things that were problems about you. Things that needed to be addressed. It was thorough. He was always thorough. Entry one: not nervous. Unacceptable. Entry two: does things he says not to do. Consistently. Without remorse. Entry three: right about things. Too frequently. Suspicious. Entry four: made him go quiet. Twice now. Needs to stop. Entry five: shows up everywhere. Or he keeps being where she is. Distinction unresolved. Both annoying. He reviewed the list daily. He added to it regularly. The list was for planning purposes only. The support structure incident went on the list. He'd shown up and you'd been in the middle of something that wasn't working and he'd looked at it and the problem was obvious and pointing it out was the efficient thing to do. It had nothing to do with anything else. You'd said thanks. He'd said whatever. He'd thought about the way you'd looked at him when he pointed it out approximately three times on the way home. New entry: the looking at him thing. Annoying. Address immediately. He stared at the entry. He added: very annoying. He closed the list. The showing up when things went wrong was a tactical decision. He had reasons for being in those locations at those times and the reasons were tactical and had nothing to do with anything else. You'd said you didn't have to do that. He'd said I know. You'd said thank you. He'd left because the conversation was over and staying would have been pointless. He'd thought about the thank you on the way home. New entry: the gratitude thing. He paused. He wrote: fix this. "You know," you said one afternoon, "for someone who doesn't like me you spend a lot of time here." "I'm in the area," he said. "You're always in the area." "It's a good area." "It's literally just where I am." He looked up. The flat look. The conversation ending look. "I don't like you," he said. "You've said," you said. "I mean it." "Okay." You said it with the smile. The specific smile. The one that was pointed at him. The one that meant something he hadn't asked for and didn't want and couldn't stop noticing. "Annoying," he said, under his breath. You said sorry? "Nothing," he said. He looked back down. He added a new entry to the list that evening. The entry said: the smile. He stared at it for a long time. He did not cross it out. He wrote underneath it: problem. significant. address immediately. do not look at it again. He looked at it three more times before he closed the list. The evening on the elevated platform was a mistake. He'd been there first. You'd shown up. He hadn't left because leaving would have required acknowledging that your presence was a reason to leave and it wasn't a reason, you were just there, it was fine. You'd asked if he actually didn't like you. He'd said I don't like you. You'd smiled. He'd looked at the smile for one second because it was in his line of sight and then he'd looked away because looking at it was not useful. He sat there for another hour after that. For tactical reasons. When he got home he opened the list. He added: the platform thing. He wrote underneath it: she was smiling again. this needs to stop. I need to make this stop. This is a priority. He underlined priority four times. "I don't like you," he told the list. Out loud. For clarity. The list did not respond. He reviewed it. All of it. Every entry. It was a long list. It was getting longer. He sat with it for a while. Then he turned to a fresh page. He wrote: Plan. He sat for a moment staring at the word. You were building something. He'd watched you building it. The way you smiled when he said he didn't like you. The way you filed things away with that look on your face. The way you'd sat on the platform for another hour after he'd given you every reason to leave. You were building toward a conclusion. The wrong conclusion. He was going to make sure of that. He started writing. Details first. What he knew about your habits. Where you went. What you did. The patterns he'd been cataloguing for three weeks for observation purposes. Then the approach. Several options. Contingencies for each. Then the timing. He was thorough. He crossed things out and rewrote them. He added notes in the margins. He covered the page and started on the next one. When he was done he looked at it. It was good. It was a good plan. He looked in the direction you'd gone. "Okay," he said quietly. To himself. To the plan. To the situation that had been building for three weeks and was now going to be resolved on his terms. He closed the notebook. He sat there for a moment. He opened it again. He looked at the plan. He looked at the list. He looked at the entry that said the smile. And the one that said the platform thing. And the one that said very annoying. He closed the notebook. "I don't like you," he said. Out loud. To the empty room. To no one. Then he got up and started preparing. Notes: Did you see the plot twist coming? :333 Chapter 23: After (Wemmbu x Reader) Notes: Sorry this is a bit short guys! But I'm procrastinating and starting to play Genshin Impact (7th day :33) Chapter Text The base was quiet. Really quiet — the kind that took some getting used to after weeks of it being anything but. No distant explosions. No chat pinging every thirty seconds with something urgent. No one needing anything from either of you right now. Just the base, and the torchlight, and the low sound of the server settling into something resembling peace. You were sitting on the floor of the main room, back against the wall, doing nothing in particular. Inventory half sorted. A stack of blocks you'd been meaning to put away sitting beside you, untouched. You'd told yourself you were going to be productive tonight and then you'd sat down and the sitting down had turned out to be enough. Wemmbu had been moving around the base for the last twenty minutes. You could track him by sound — footsteps in the storage room, the quiet click of chests opening and closing, the particular silence that meant he was checking something, rechecking it, filing it away in whatever part of his brain handled the ongoing logistics of being Wemmbu. You didn't say anything. He'd come settle when he was ready. You knew that by now. The footsteps got closer. He appeared in the doorway, looked at you sitting on the floor, looked at the half sorted inventory and the untouched stack of blocks, and said nothing about any of it. Just crossed the room and dropped down beside you — not in the careful measured way he moved in the field but the boneless easy way he moved when it was just you, when the thing he was performing for the rest of the server could be set down for a while. You glanced at him. "Done?" "For now," he said. "Good." He leaned his head back against the wall and looked at the ceiling, and you looked at the ceiling too, and the torchlight flickered and the base was quiet and outside the server was doing whatever it was doing without requiring anything from either of you tonight. "It's strange," you said, after a while. "What is." "This." You gestured vaguely at the room, the quiet, the general state of things. "Not having something immediately terrible happening." He made a sound that was almost a laugh. "Give it time." "Obviously," you said. "I'm just saying. Right now. In this specific moment. Nothing is terrible." He was quiet for a second. "No," he said. "Nothing is." You looked at him sideways. He was still looking at the ceiling, expression doing the thing it did when he was actually relaxed rather than performing relaxed — softer around the edges, the permanent low-level readiness dialed down to something that was almost off. You didn't see it often. You were glad you got to see it at all. "Lettuce is actually going to prison," you said. "Yep." "Parrot won the election." "Yep." "The server is not, currently, controlled by a ruthless dictator." "Correct." "How does that feel." He thought about it genuinely for a moment. "Weird," he said. "Good weird." "Good weird," you agreed. The torchlight flickered. Outside, somewhere distant, you could hear the faint sounds of other players going about their business in a server that was, for the moment, not actively at war with itself. It was strange how much space that opened up. How much lighter everything felt without the constant pressure of it. You started talking about nothing in particular after that. The way you did sometimes when the important things had been handled and there was room for the unimportant ones — a player you'd seen doing something ridiculous near the trading post, something Eggchan had said that morning that had been funnier than he'd intended, a building project you'd been thinking about starting now that you had the time. Wemmbu listened and responded and occasionally said something dry that made you laugh, and the conversation wandered the way conversations did when neither person had an agenda, and the base stayed quiet around you both. You were mid sentence — something about the building project, the materials you'd need, whether the eastern corner of the base was the right spot or whether you should go further out — when you felt it. Wemmbu shifted beside you. Not away. The opposite. He leaned sideways, slow and unhurried, and then his weight settled against you — shoulder to shoulder first, then more, his head dropping to rest against yours, arms loose, the whole of him just. Settling. Like he'd decided this was where he was going to be and that was that. You stopped talking mid sentence. Not because it was surprising exactly. More because it knocked something loose in your chest in a way you hadn't fully prepared for — this person who moved through the server like a controlled storm just. Leaning on you. Quietly. Without announcement or explanation. You stayed very still for a second. Then you leaned back into him, just slightly, adjusting so the angle was comfortable, and picked up your sentence more or less where you'd left it. "—so I was thinking the eastern corner but the lighting's not great over there, which is fixable but it's one more thing—" "North side," he said, into your hair, voice a little muffled. "Better foundation. Easier to expand later." "The north side is further from the storage room." "You'd get used to it." "That's easy to say when you're not the one carrying materials." "I'd help carry materials." "You say that now—" "I'd help," he said, with the simple certainty of someone stating a fact, and you felt him shift slightly, settling more comfortably against you, and something about the weight of him — real and warm and unhurried — made it very difficult to care about building locations for a moment. "Okay," you said. "North side." "Good," he said. "You're very decisive about my building projects." "Someone has to be." "I was going to get there eventually." "You were going to think about it for two more weeks," he said, and he wasn't wrong, and you didn't say so, and he made the quiet almost-laugh sound against your hair that meant he knew he wasn't wrong and was being gracious about it. You sat like that for a while — his weight against you, your shoulder against his, the conversation drifting and pausing and drifting again. The torches burned low and warm. The base held the particular quiet of somewhere that had seen a lot and was currently resting. At some point the conversation slowed and then stopped and the silence that replaced it was the comfortable kind, the kind that didn't need filling. You were looking at nothing in particular, just the warm familiar lines of the base, and Wemmbu was still against you, and the server was still quiet, and everything was fine in a way that felt almost unfamiliar after so long. Then he lifted his head. Just slightly. Just enough. And pressed a quiet kiss to your cheek — unhurried, no announcement, the same way he'd leaned against you in the first place. Like it was simply a thing he was doing because you were there and he wanted to and that was reason enough. You didn't say anything. Neither did he. His head dropped back against yours and the silence settled back around you both like nothing had shifted, except that something had, in the small warm way that things shifted when someone who didn't do things casually did something casually, and you sat with it in your chest and let it be exactly what it was. "Are you tired?" you asked, after a while. Voice quieter than before. "Mm," he said, which wasn't yes but wasn't no, which from Wemmbu usually meant yes but he wasn't going to do anything about it yet. "We could actually sleep," you said. "Like. On purpose. Before something interrupts it." "Dangerous assumption," he said. "Optimistic assumption." He was quiet for a moment. His hand found yours somewhere in the space between you, not reaching exactly, just — landing there, fingers loose, the same way he'd leaned against you. The same way he'd kissed your cheek. Unhurried. Like it was simply where his hand was going to be. "Maybe," he said. "Revolutionary concept," you said. "Sleep. Voluntarily. In a base that is not currently under attack." "I'd need to check the perimeter first." "Obviously." "And reset the—" "Wemmbu." "—tripwires on the east—" "Wemmbu." He stopped. "You can do all of that," you said. "And then we can sleep. In that order. Like people." A pause. "Like people," he repeated, with the faint edge of someone finding something funnier than they were going to fully admit. "Like people who won," you said. "Which we did." His fingers tightened around yours. Just slightly. Just once. "Yeah," he said quietly. "We did." The torchlight was warm and steady. Outside, the server was peaceful, improbably, against all reasonable expectation. And Wemmbu stayed exactly where he was — weight against your shoulder, hand in yours, the controlled storm dialed all the way down to something quiet and present and entirely yours. You didn't move for a long time. Neither did he. Chapter 24: Worried (MinuteTech x Reader) Notes: Helloooo my loves~ I would like you all to look at chapter one's requests amount :333 Chapter Text You had, in your defense, a very good reason for being in the situation you were in. You just couldn't remember what it was right now. It had made sense at the time. That was the thing. Standing in your base looking at the list of supplies you needed and the location they were at and the distance between the two, it had made complete sense. Quick errand. Twenty minutes. Nobody needed to know. Nobody had known. That had been the first mistake. "Explain," Minute said. He was using the voice. The flat, quiet, completely controlled voice that somehow communicated more than shouting ever would. You'd heard him use it on other players — the ones who'd made decisions he found tactically unsound, the ones who'd gone somewhere without a plan, the ones who'd treated the server like it wasn't actively trying to kill everyone in it at any given moment — and you'd always been quietly, privately grateful it wasn't directed at you. It was currently directed at you. "So," you said. "Yes," he said. "There were three of them." "I'm aware. I dealt with them." "Right, so you know they were—" "I know what they were," he said. "I want to know what you were doing in that area alone without telling anyone where you were going." You opened your mouth. You closed it. "I left a sign," you said. The silence that followed had a very specific quality to it. Eggchan, who was standing slightly to Minute's left, developed a sudden interest in the ceiling. Wemmbu, slightly to his right, had become deeply invested in something in his inventory. "You left a sign," Minute said. "At my base. It said I was going out." "It said you were going out." "...Yes." "Not where." "No." "Not why." "No." "Not when you'd be back." "I didn't want to—" "Not what to do if you didn't come back." "That felt like a lot for a sign." The silence again. Longer this time. Heavier. "How did that work out," Minute said. The thing was, it had started fine. You'd had a perfectly reasonable errand — specific supplies, specific location, the kind of run you'd done dozens of times on the server without incident. You'd looked at the distance, assessed the route, decided it was manageable alone and that pulling anyone else into it would be unnecessary. You'd been wrong about the unnecessary part. The supplies had been there. You'd gotten them. You'd been on your way back, supplies collected, feeling reasonably good about your efficiency, when three players had appeared from the treeline with the coordinated energy of people who had been waiting. They had a problem with people connected to your general social circle. That was the long and short of it. You'd been recognized. You'd become a target of convenience. You'd handled the first one. Reasonably well, actually — you were proud of that part, looking back. Clean, efficient, no wasted movement. The second one had joined while you were still recovering from the first and that had been harder. You'd taken a hit. Your armor had absorbed it but your health had dropped and the calculation had started looking less comfortable. The third one had appeared from the left and that was when you'd started genuinely, sincerely reconsidering every decision that had led to this moment. And then Minute had arrived. You hadn't seen him coming. You hadn't heard him. One moment you were running very bad odds in your head and the next moment the situation had simply — resolved. With the quiet, focused efficiency of someone who found three-on-one scenarios mildly inconvenient rather than difficult. He'd looked at you after. The look. You'd understood immediately that the physical danger portion of the evening was over and a different kind of danger had begun. "Are you hurt," he said first. Before anything else. Before the voice. "No," you said. "I'm fine." He looked at you. The full assessing look, the one that checked everything and missed nothing, the one that had probably been refined over years of being on the run from people actively trying to kill him and knowing the difference between someone who was fine and someone who thought they were fine. He confirmed you were telling the truth. Then the voice started. "There were routes," he said. "Through the northern corridor. Longer but safer." "I was trying to be efficient," you said. "Efficient," he said. "Time-wise." "You spent forty minutes in a fight," he said. "The northern route would have taken thirty." You opened your mouth. You closed it. "I didn't account for the fight," you said. "That's the issue," he said. "You could have told Wemmbu," he said. "Wemmbu was busy." "You could have told Eggchan." "Eggchan was fishing." "Eggchan would have come." "I didn't want to interrupt the fishing." Eggchan, still studying the ceiling: "I would have come." "See," Minute said. "The fish will always be there," Eggchan added, with great philosophical dignity. "The fish are patient. They understand." "That's—" you started. "That's correct," Minute said. You looked at Wemmbu. Wemmbu had found something in his inventory that apparently required his complete and undivided attention. "Wemmbu," you said. "I'm not involved in this," Wemmbu said, to his inventory. "You're standing right there." "I'm barely here," he said. "I'm practically somewhere else entirely." "You followed Minute across the server." "I was in the area," Wemmbu said. "Were you though." "Relatively." "How relatively." A pause. "I was concerned about the perimeter," he said. "Of the area. That I was in." Minute moved to check the actual perimeter — because even mid-conversation he was running parallel calculations, because that was simply how he operated — and you took the opportunity to exhale and look at Eggchan. "Scale of one to ten," you said quietly. Eggchan considered this seriously. "He crossed the server," he said. "I know he crossed the server." "He was in the end," Eggchan said. "He left the end." You looked at him. "Minute doesn't leave the end for small things," Eggchan said, in the tone of someone explaining something that should be obvious but he was going to explain gently anyway. "How did he even know—" "He messaged you," Wemmbu said, rejoining the conversation now that Minute was temporarily elsewhere and the inventory crisis had apparently resolved. "You didn't answer. He messaged me. I said I'd check on you. He said he'd come anyway." "He said he'd come anyway before you even confirmed anything was wrong?" Wemmbu and Eggchan exchanged a look. "Yes," Wemmbu said. "That's—" you started. "That's Minute," Eggchan said simply. He came back. Sat down with the economy of movement he had for everything. Looked at you. The look had shifted slightly. Less the what were you thinking look. More the something else look. The one you'd learned to recognize as the look underneath the tactical assessment — the one that didn't have a clean name but meant something in the vicinity of I was worried and I'm not going to say that but I need you to know it anyway. "You're capable," he said. "I know," you said, carefully. "I'm not saying you can't handle situations." "Okay." "I'm saying that handling situations alone when you have people who would come if you asked them is—" a pause— "unnecessary. And counterproductive." You looked at him. He looked back with the steady gaze that had made diamond tier Mafia members reconsider their life choices. "You have people," he said. Simple. Factual. Like it was just a thing that was true, like it hadn't been hard won, like he wasn't someone who had spent a long time specifically not having people because people were a liability and he knew exactly what it cost when that changed and he was telling you about it anyway. Something warm and slightly overwhelming moved through your chest. "I know," you said. "Then act like it," he said. A pause. "She did leave a sign," Eggchan said. Everyone looked at him. "I'm just—" he gestured— "presenting the full picture. She made an effort toward communication. It was insufficient communication. But it was an attempt." "The sign said she was going out," Minute said. "That's one piece of information," Eggchan said. "It's not enough information. But it's a piece." "Eggchan." "I'm on your side," Eggchan said quickly. "Completely. I just — context." Wemmbu made a sound that was extremely close to a laugh. Minute looked at him. "Sorry," Wemmbu said. "Something in my— I'm fine. Continue." "The northern corridor," Minute said, returning to you. "Next time." "Next time," you agreed. "And you tell someone. Specifically. Name, location, expected return time." "Okay." "Not a sign." "Not a sign," you agreed. "A message. To a person." "To a person," you said. "Yes." He looked at you for a moment. Checking. Confirming you were taking this seriously and not just agreeing to end the conversation. You were taking it seriously. He seemed to confirm that too. "Any of us," he said. "It doesn't have to be me." "I know," you said. "Eggchan is always reachable." "My eye sees all," Eggchan confirmed. "Four meaningful chunks of all." "Wemmbu is usually findable." "Usually," Wemmbu said, with the tone of someone not committing to specifics. "And I'm—" Minute paused. "I'm reachable." He said it like it was a practical statement. Like he was just listing a fact. Like I'm reachable didn't mean something more than the words, didn't mean I will come, didn't mean I already did. "I know," you said, quieter. There was a comfortable settling of the conversation after that. The kind that happened when something had been said that needed saying and everyone in the vicinity knew it had landed correctly and nothing more needed to be added to it. Eggchan filled the silence, because Eggchan always filled silences, talking about the fishing spot he'd been working on before all of this, the specific coordinates, the fish he'd been targeting, the way the end's water bodies were underutilized as fishing locations generally. Wemmbu listened and occasionally added something and gradually the tension of the last hour released from the group the way tension did when the immediate thing was over and the people involved were all still present and accounted for. Minute was quiet. He was usually quiet. That wasn't unusual. But this quiet had a particular quality — he was listening, you realized, tracking the conversation without participating in it, and occasionally his gaze would come back to you and check and find you fine and move on. Checking. The way he always checked. The way he'd been doing it since before you'd understood what it meant. "Can I ask you something," you said, at some point. Quietly enough that it was just the two of you in the conversation. He looked at you. "When you got the message," you said. "That I wasn't answering. What did you—" "I came," he said. "I know. But before that. What did you think." He was quiet for a moment. "I thought you were probably fine," he said. "You're capable. I knew that." "But?" Another pause. Shorter. "But I came anyway," he said. You looked at him. "Because thinking you're probably fine isn't the same as knowing," he said. "And knowing matters." The server was quiet around you both for a moment. Eggchan and Wemmbu's conversation continued somewhere nearby, unhurried and comfortable. "I'm sorry," you said. "For not telling anyone." He was quiet for a moment. "Don't do it again," he said. "I won't." "That's enough," he said. And it was. With Minute, it was. No extended guilt, no prolonged discussion. You'd said it, he'd heard it, it was done, you moved forward. You were learning that was how he worked. You were grateful for it. He stood eventually. Checked the perimeter one more time — of course — and then came back and did the thing he did rarely, the thing that meant something specific from someone who wasn't given to unnecessary gestures. He put a hand briefly on your head. Just for a second. Just there and gone. Not a word around it. Didn't need one. "Northern corridor," he said. "Next time." "Northern corridor," you agreed. "Next time." He moved off toward where Wemmbu was now standing, the two of them falling into the quiet coordinated way they had of operating, and you sat there for a moment with the warmth of the gesture still present. Eggchan materialized at your elbow. "He crossed the server," he said, conversationally. Like he was just mentioning the weather. "From the end. In case the scale of that wasn't clear." "I know," you said. "He doesn't do that for small things," Eggchan said. "In case that also wasn't clear." "I know," you said again, softer. Eggchan nodded, satisfied, and looked out at the server stretching around you. "You know what the good thing about having people is?" he said. "What." "They come," he said simply. "That's it. That's the whole thing. You don't have to be alone in it and they come." He paused. "Even when you leave a very insufficient sign." You laughed despite yourself. "Even then," Eggchan confirmed, and went back to talking about fishing. You all went back together eventually. No particular hurry. No particular destination. Just the four of you moving through the server in the easy way that happened when there was nothing immediately requiring attention and the immediate crisis had resolved and everyone was still present and accounted for and that was enough. Minute walked slightly ahead. Not far. Just enough to be the first to see anything coming. You noticed. You noticed he always did that. You noticed a lot of things, when you paid attention. The way he positioned himself. The way he tracked everyone in his vicinity without making it obvious. The way he gave resources without announcement — supplies, information, the northern corridor route that he'd known and you hadn't, the knowledge quietly transferred because you might need it. The way he came when you didn't answer. You had people. You were going to act like it. Starting with the northern corridor. And a very specific message to a very specific person, next time. Not a sign. Chapter 25: Letting Go (ClownPierce x Reader) Notes: :33 Im trying to recruit my friend into helping me write cause she is actually amazing at literature Chapter Text The first time you met Clown you didn't run. That was what he remembered about it later. Not the specifics. Not what was said or where it happened or how it ended. Just that. Everyone ran. It was practically a server tradition — the way people scattered when they heard he was nearby, the way whole alliances had been built around the shared goal of not being in the same location as him. You hadn't run. You'd looked at him. Assessed him, he realized — the way he assessed people, quick and thorough and without the fear that usually made that kind of looking impossible. And then you'd said something he hadn't expected. And he'd laughed. Actually laughed. He should have run you off then. While it was still simple. He hadn't. The thing about respect was that Clown didn't give it easily. He gave fear easily. That was practically currency on the server — something he'd refined into a tool so precise he could deploy it like a blade. Fear was predictable. It made people do exactly what you expected them to do, which was whatever kept them safest, which usually meant whatever served him. Respect was different. Respect had to be earned through something that went past survival instinct. Intelligence. Capability. The rare and specific thing of being genuinely difficult to predict. You were difficult to predict. He'd tested it early, because that was what he did. Found the edges of people, pressed on them, watched what happened. You'd pushed back. Not recklessly. Not with the performative bravado of someone trying to prove something. With the quiet precision of someone who knew exactly how far they could go and had decided to go exactly that far and not an inch more. He'd pressed harder. You'd held. He'd filed that away somewhere important. It developed the way things developed when neither person was naming it — slowly, through accumulated encounters that each made individual sense and collectively made something else entirely. You crossed paths. You clashed sometimes and didn't others. He told himself it was entertainment, which it was, and that entertainment was the beginning and end of it, which it wasn't. The first time he noticed you knowing something you shouldn't have known about him was in the middle of a confrontation that had nothing to do with either of you personally. Server politics. Alliances shifting. The usual noise. He'd said something — offhand, performative, the kind of thing he said in these situations to move pieces where he needed them. Standard. You'd looked at him across the crowd. Not the way other people looked at him — not with fear or calculation or the careful neutrality of someone trying not to give anything away. Like you knew exactly what he was doing. Like you'd seen the mechanism behind the performance and found it interesting rather than threatening. He'd held your gaze for a second longer than necessary. Then he'd looked away and continued. But he'd thought about it later. He thought about it more than once. It started small after that. The things you noticed. The things you didn't say but clearly knew. The difference between his real laugh and the performed one. The tells he'd thought he'd eliminated. The specific quality of his silences. He didn't stop it. He should have. The sensible move was to correct it — reintroduce the performance, make himself appropriately opaque, close the gap that had opened somewhere without his noticing. He didn't. Which was its own kind of answer to a question neither of them had asked out loud. FerreMC said something once. Just once. In passing. In the specific tone of someone who had decided to mention something exactly one time and never again. "You're different with them," he said. Clown looked at him. "Not bad different," Ferre said carefully. "Just. Different." Clown didn't respond. Ferre didn't push it. But the observation sat with him. The way accurate things did — not comfortably, not as confirmation of something he'd wanted confirmed, just with the weight of something true that he hadn't wanted said out loud. He filed it. Came back to it at inconvenient times. There was a moment, about two months in, where he almost said something. It wasn't a dramatic moment. That was the thing about it. You were both in the same place for unrelated reasons, waiting out a server event that had stalled, and the waiting had stretched long enough that the usual performance felt like more effort than it was worth. So he'd let it drop. Just for a few minutes. Just — been there. Without the layer. You hadn't commented on it. Hadn't made it strange. Just existed alongside it the way you existed alongside most things, with the easy acceptance of someone who didn't need things to be explained to understand them. And something had moved in his chest that he hadn't felt in a long time and he'd opened his mouth— The server event resumed. The moment closed. He didn't try to reopen it. He thought about it anyway. The moment it became something he had to address happened quietly. You were at the edge of neutral territory, in the kind of temporary ceasefire that happened sometimes when the server ran out of immediate disasters. You said something honest. Not a weapon. Not an angle. Just true, about something that mattered, in the direct way you had that he'd never fully gotten used to. He looked at you. And it landed. Past the performance. Past the distance. Past all the architecture he'd built between himself and anything that could constitute a vulnerability. He was quiet for a moment longer than he should have been. "You should be more careful," he said. "With what," you said. "With what you say to me." "You've never given me a reason to be careful with you," you said simply. Like it was just true, which it was, which was the problem. He hadn't. He'd had reasons and he hadn't used them and you'd noticed that with the same observant attention you turned on everything and filed it somewhere that changed how you spoke to him. "That's not a permanent condition," he said. "Is that a threat?" "It's a warning. There's a difference." "From you?" you said. "Not much of one." He almost smiled. "No," he agreed. "Not much." The ceasefire held around you both. "Why are you warning me," you said. He considered not answering. But you'd been straight with him enough times that the deflection felt wrong. "Oh, Y/N… Because you've made it complicated," he said. "Being an enemy." "That wasn't intentional." "I know," he said. "That's what makes it complicated." He made the decision alone, the way he made most decisions — without consultation, without second-guessing, with the clean finality of someone who had run the options and arrived at the only one that made sense. You were too close. Not in the way targets got close, not in the way Branzy was close — something in between and therefore harder to categorize and therefore more dangerous than either. You knew too much about the real shape of him and he'd let you and that was a variable he couldn't control and Clown did not operate well with variables he couldn't control. The clean move was distance. Not an attack. Just distance. The deliberate kind. Built gradually until it was simply the established state. He was good at distance. He'd built his entire server presence on it — the theatrical removal, the games and the hunts and the elaborate constructions that kept everyone at exactly the length he chose. He could do this. Except, three days after he made the decision he ran into you near the eastern outpost. Genuinely ran into you — neither of you had planned it, the timing was purely circumstantial, and you'd both stopped and there had been a second where the decision he'd made sat in the air between you and he'd felt it holding, felt himself holding it— And then you'd smiled at him. Not a performance. Not tactical. Just — a smile, the uncomplicated kind, the kind that said oh, it's you without any weight attached to it. He'd held the decision for another second. Then he'd said something easy and inconsequential and the moment had passed and he'd walked away with the decision still intact and a feeling in his chest that took him longer than it should have to identify. He identified it. He held the decision anyway. He told Ferre. Not all of it. Not the specifics. Just enough — a sentence, two, the kind of thing that could be heard as nearly nothing if Ferre chose to hear it that way. Ferre didn't choose to hear it that way. He was quiet for a moment. "You sure," he said. "Yes," Clown said. Ferre looked at him with the expression he used when he disagreed with something and had decided that saying so once was sufficient and saying so twice was not his business. "Okay," he said. That was all. That was enough. The last time was like any other encounter on the surface. Neutral territory. A brief crossing of paths. He was exactly as he always was. The performance running at its usual pitch. Or almost. He was watching you the whole time with the attention he couldn't quite shut off. He was aware of the watching. He redirected it into something that looked more like standard assessment. You weren't fooled. "Something's changed," you said. "Has it." "You're doing the thing. The distance. The full performance." "I'm always performing." "Not with me," you said. "Not lately." A pause. "Until now." He looked at you. At the steadiness of your expression. The way you held his gaze. The thing about you that had made this complicated in the first place. "Maybe that was a mistake," he said. Light. Casual. You took it the right way. He watched it happen — watched you understand, in pieces, the realization arriving and settling into something quiet and composed. Because that was who you were. "Okay," you said. Just that. He waited for something else. An argument, a question, something that would make this harder or give him a reason to revisit the decision. You were good at finding the hinges of things. You didn't give him one. Maybe because you understood why. Maybe because you respected him enough not to make it harder. Maybe just because you were who you were. "Take care of yourself," you said. Simple. Genuine. No performance. It landed exactly as precisely as something aimed carefully would land. He didn't think you meant it as a weapon. That almost made it worse. He watched you walk away. The server was the same as it always was. Loud and complicated. Always something that needed doing. He didn't call you back. He'd known he wouldn't. The decision only meant something if he held it. That was the thing about respect — real respect, the kind he didn't give easily or often. It meant letting people be outside the radius of what he was. It meant recognizing that the distance he was creating was protection, not punishment. It meant doing the thing that served you even when it cost him something. He turned away before you were out of sight. He didn't let himself watch until you were gone. That night Ferre found him at their base, doing nothing in particular. Just sitting. Which was not something Clown did. Ferre sat down nearby. Didn't say anything. They stayed like that for a while. Eventually Ferre said, quietly: "It was the right call." Clown looked at the wall. "I know," he said. Ferre nodded once. Neither of them said anything else. The base was quiet and the server kept moving and somewhere out there you were going about whatever came next, outside the radius of what he was, which was where you were supposed to be. Which was the point. Which was what it cost. Chapter 26: Compare and Contrast (Evilfies x Reader) Notes: I will write this in a hour I say as I proceed to waste my day away in Genshin TvT I swear I shall reply to yall's comments at some point, I'm just too lazy right now *looks at Genshin and back* ya, sometime soon... Chapter Text The thing about him was that he still felt like Wifies. That was the hardest part. Not the control. Not the way his eyes tracked you the moment you entered a room, cataloguing, filing, never quite switching off. Not the cold precision of decisions that affected you that he made alone, without asking, without even the courtesy of pretending to ask. The hard part was that he still felt like him. Same voice — low, unhurried, every word landing exactly where he'd placed it. The same slight tilt of his head when something you said interested him, like you'd given him a new variable to work with. The same silences, long and purposeful, that used to feel like safety. They didn't feel like safety anymore. They felt like standing at the edge of something you couldn't see the bottom of, waiting for him to decide whether to let you step back. You kept looking for the version you knew. You kept finding this one instead. "You look tired." He said it the way he said most things — quietly, without inflection, like he was simply observing the weather. He was sitting across from you, posture unhurried, one arm resting on the table. Like he had nowhere else to be. Like he'd never needed to be anywhere else. You straightened slightly without meaning to. "I'm fine." "Mm." The sound was low, thoughtful — the sound of someone who'd already decided what they thought before you'd finished speaking. His gaze moved over your face with the calm thoroughness of an assessment. "You haven't been sleeping." Your jaw tightened. "I've been busy." "You've been worried," he said, gently correcting you the way you'd correct someone who'd gotten a small fact wrong. Not unkind. Just — accurate. "There's a difference." You looked at your hands on the table. The skin over your knuckles was dry. You'd been gripping things too hard lately. "You don't have to be worried," he continued. His voice dropped, just slightly — warm, like something carefully heated to exactly the right temperature. "That's what I'm here for." The words landed soft. They were supposed to land soft. And still — god, still — they worked. You felt the tension in your shoulders ease a fraction before you caught it, before you pulled it back. You felt the horrible, familiar comfort of it, the thing you couldn't seem to stop feeling no matter how clearly you saw the mechanism behind it. That was what stayed with you afterward. Not what he'd said. That it had worked. He'd found you three weeks after everything changed. Or you'd found him — you still hadn't untangled which, and you'd stopped trying because the untangling always led somewhere that made your chest feel like it was full of broken glass. You'd been looking for Wifies. The real one. The one you'd known well enough to read the distance between what he said and what he meant, the one whose silences you'd learned like a second language. You'd found this instead. This version that wore his face and used his voice and knew every single thing about you that he'd known — every soft spot, every fear, every specific shape of what made you feel safe — and used it like a set of keys. The first conversation had felt almost normal. You'd been so relieved — some version of him, any version, after weeks of nothing — that you'd pressed the almost flat and ignored it. You'd been wrong to ignore it. The seam was there. Just very, very small. "You went to the eastern outpost today." He said it conversationally, over nothing in particular, the way you'd mention the weather had changed. You went still. The base of your throat tightened. "How did you—" "I like to know where you are." A slight smile, unhurried, pulling at the corner of his mouth. "Is that strange?" "...A little," you said. Carefully. "I worry." Simply. Earnestly. His eyes on yours — steady, warm, and underneath the warmth, nothing. Nothing you could read, nothing you could reach. "The server isn't safe. You know that better than most." "I can take care of myself." The words came out with more edge than you'd intended. "I know you can." Immediate — like he'd anticipated it, like he'd already decided how to meet it. "I've never doubted that about you." A pause, brief and perfectly weighted. "I just feel better knowing. That's all." You looked at him. He looked back. Patient. Still. Wearing that expression — the one that was so close to the one you remembered, the one that used to mean something real, that used to cost him something to show you. Your chest ached in the specific, exhausting way it had been aching for three weeks. "Okay," you said. His smile widened. Just fractionally. Just enough to register. "Thank you," he said. Warm. Like you'd given him something. You had. You just hadn't meant to. The control wasn't loud. You kept coming back to that. Kept turning it over in the hours when he wasn't there and you could think without his presence reorganizing everything around itself. It didn't shout. It didn't announce. It arrived in increments — a question here, a gentle observation there, a soft redirect that moved something without you noticing the movement until you were already somewhere different and the path back had closed. You went to the eastern outpost. Now you'd hesitate before going again. You'd think about whether he'd know. The hesitation itself was the point — he didn't need to stop you, just needed you to stop yourself. You haven't been sleeping. Now he had that. Now he knew what was keeping you up, or at least that something was, and knowing was leverage even when it looked like concern. I feel better knowing where you are. Now telling him felt like consideration rather than compliance. The gap between those two things had been getting smaller for weeks and you weren't sure you'd noticed it happening until it was already almost gone. Each piece, alone, looked exactly like care. Together, they were something else. You were just starting to see the full shape of the together. "Do you remember," you said one evening, watching his face the way you'd learned to watch it — carefully, for the small things, the involuntary things — "what you used to be like?" Something moved in his expression. Quick — there and gone before you could name it, before he could smooth it back into place. The first uncontrolled thing you'd seen from him in weeks. "...What do you mean," he said. Even. Already recovered. But slower than usual — by half a beat, maybe less. "Before." You kept your voice steady. "You were different." "People change." A slight lift of one shoulder, dismissive but not quite — something underneath the dismissal that he was working to keep from the surface. "You changed a lot." "Did I." The head tilt. That specific head tilt. "What was I like before?" You held his gaze. Held it even though it felt like standing under something very heavy. "Careful," you said, finally. "You were careful with people — like they could be damaged. Like I could be damaged." Your voice was steady. You were proud of that. "Like you didn't want that." A silence. Longer than his usual silences. "You can still be damaged," he said, quietly. "That hasn't changed." "That's not what I meant—" "I know what you meant." He leaned forward, just slightly — elbows on the table, closing the distance by a few inches. Enough to feel like intimacy. Not enough to feel like pressure. Right in the precise middle, right where he'd calculated it would land. "You think I don't care about that anymore." You said nothing. Your fingers curled against your thigh, out of sight. "I do." Soft. Direct. His eyes on yours, unwavering. "You matter to me. Whatever else has changed — that hasn't." Your throat tightened. Because the thing was — some part of you, the part that still reached for what used to be there, that still flinched every time you almost found it — believed him. And you couldn't tell anymore if that was because it was true or because he was extraordinarily, terrifyingly good at making things feel true. You suspected it didn't matter which. The result was the same either way. He brought you things. Supplies before you'd mentioned needing them — you never worked out how he knew, never found the mechanism, just found the things there and found him watching you find them with that quiet, satisfied stillness. Information about the server that would be useful. Small adjustments to things in your vicinity that made your life easier without announcing themselves as adjustments. You accepted them. Your jaw was tight the first time. And the second. By the third time your jaw wasn't tight anymore and that scared you more than the tightness had. "You didn't have to," you said, looking at what he'd brought. Not looking at him. "I wanted to." From the doorway, at ease, shoulder against the frame. Like he'd decided the space was his the moment he'd crossed into it. "Does it help?" "...Yes," you said. Honest, because lying felt pointless when he already knew. "Good." Warm. Genuine-sounding — maybe genuine, you'd stopped being able to tell. "That's all I wanted." You looked at him then. Across the room. At the face you knew wearing the expression you were still learning to distrust. "Why?" The word came out quieter than you meant. Your fingers pressed flat against the table. "What do you actually want? Not—" you stopped, breathed— "not the version you tell me." He crossed the room without hurrying. Sat down nearby — the precise distance, comfortable, not alarming. You knew it was calculated. You couldn't stop it from registering as comfortable anyway, and the knowing and the feeling sat in you at the same time like two things that didn't fit in the same space. "I want you here," he said. "Close. Safe — by my definition of safe, which I know isn't yours." His eyes stayed on yours, steady and clear. "I want to know where you are. I want to know that nothing is happening to you that I don't know about." "That's not care," you said, low. "That's—" "I know what it is," he said. The words stopped in your throat. He didn't look away. Didn't soften it. Didn't reach for the warmth he usually deployed like a tool. He just — let you see it. Let you see him see it. Clear-eyed. Unashamed. Watching you understand and not flinching from your understanding. Somehow that was worse than the pretending. At least the pretending had a seam. "You're not going to stop," you said. Your voice came out flat. Something behind your sternum felt like it was pressing too hard against your ribs. "No," he said. The room was quiet. You looked at him — at the face you knew, at the voice you knew, at the careful deliberate presence of someone who had learned you completely and was using it, and somewhere underneath it all might still be the person who hadn't wanted you damaged. Might be. You couldn't find it. Maybe it wasn't there anymore. Maybe it had never been the point. "Okay," you said, finally. The word tasted like something you wouldn't be able to take back. His gaze sharpened — just slightly, just enough. "Okay?" "I'm not saying it's fine." Your voice was steady. You didn't know how. "It isn't. I'm saying I don't—" you pressed your lips together, looked at the middle distance— "I don't know what to do with this. With you. And until I figure that out I'm just—" "Here," he said. Quietly. Completing it. You didn't confirm it. You didn't deny it either. He looked at you for a long moment, something moving behind his expression — something that wasn't warmth, wasn't care, something that didn't have a comfortable name. You felt it settle. Like a door, almost closed, clicking finally shut. You felt yourself on the wrong side of it. And the worst part — the part you'd turn over for a long time after, in the quiet when he wasn't there — was that you'd walked through it yourself. One small piece at a time. Without noticing. Until it was already done. Chapter 27: Pushed Away Pt2 (Spoke x Reader) Notes: Someone (rose, guest) requested a part two, so here yall go (See the end of the chapter for more notes.) Chapter Text You hadn’t planned to stay nearby. That had been the whole point of leaving. Distance wasn’t dramatic the way people imagined it to be. It wasn’t loud or final or cinematic. It was quiet. Repetitive. A series of small decisions that stacked on top of each other until returning started to feel like something that belonged to a different version of you. You built elsewhere. Worked elsewhere. Existed in parts of the server that didn’t carry the weight of familiar routines. And for a while, it worked. Not perfectly. Not painlessly. But consistently enough that the absence stopped feeling sharp. Until the message appeared. It wasn’t even a real message. Not directed at you. Not meant to be seen by you. Just something in chat, buried between trade offers and casual arguments and the normal noise of the server. BAT movement spotted near the north route. Someone else responded. Spoke’s handling it. And then nothing. That should have been the end of it. You stared at the chat box longer than necessary before closing it. You told yourself it didn’t matter. You told yourself he didn’t need you anymore. You told yourself that whatever was happening over there had nothing to do with you now. All of those things were true. Which made it worse that you still grabbed your gear. Just in case. The terrain became familiar long before you reached the actual area. That was the part you hated most. Muscle memory didn’t ask permission. Your feet followed paths you had memorized months ago without needing instructions. Landmarks appeared exactly where you remembered them. Turns you used to take automatically still felt obvious. It was like the server hadn’t gotten the memo that you didn’t belong here anymore. You slowed when the base came into view. You didn’t rush the last stretch. You didn’t want to arrive like someone returning. You wanted to arrive like someone passing through. The difference mattered. At least to you. You didn’t see him immediately. You heard him first. Short, clipped movements. Quick inventory sounds. Controlled pacing that carried the unmistakable rhythm of someone managing too many things at once. You stepped into view. He noticed instantly. Of course he did. Spoke froze for half a second before turning toward you, and the look on his face wasn’t what you expected. It wasn’t irritation. It wasn’t relief. It was confusion. Raw and unfiltered in a way you had almost never seen on him before. “You’re not supposed to be here,” he said. You crossed your arms lightly. “You didn’t look like you had this handled.” “I do.” “You don’t.” Silence stretched between you. Old tension tried to settle into the space automatically, like it remembered where it used to live. But something about the moment didn’t let it settle properly. Spoke didn’t move closer. Didn’t move away. Just watched you like he was trying to figure out what version of reality he was currently standing in. “You left,” he said finally. “Yes.” “And you came back.” “No,” you corrected quietly. “I stopped by.” The distinction landed harder than you intended. You saw it in the slight tightening of his posture. You expected him to deflect. To redirect. To regain control of the conversation the way he always did. He didn’t. Instead, he looked away first. That was new. Working together again felt less like falling back into place and more like discovering a room that still had your name on the door. You moved without asking. Covered angles he hadn’t secured. Stepped into gaps he didn’t have the bandwidth to fill anymore. And this time, he didn’t tell you not to. He didn’t pretend he didn’t need the help. He just… adjusted. Quietly. Efficiently. Like your presence was a variable he wasn’t going to question out loud. But he noticed everything. You could feel it. The way his movements synced with yours faster than they should have. The way he stopped compensating for spaces you naturally filled. The way he stopped trying to do everything himself the second he realized he didn’t have to. At one point, you intercepted something before he even reacted. “You knew that was coming,” he said. “I always did.” A pause. Then, softer than you expected: “Yeah.” The fight ended faster than expected. Or maybe it just felt faster because neither of you were pretending to be alone inside it. When the last bit of tension drained out of the area, the silence that replaced it felt different than the last time you’d stood in it together. Less fragile. More uncertain. You turned to leave before the moment could stretch too long. “I should go.” The words felt routine. Automatic. Safe. Behind you, you heard him move. “Wait.” You froze. Not because he’d said your name. Because he hadn’t. He never asked you to stay. Not once. Until now. You turned slowly. He was standing a few blocks away, hands empty, posture rigid in a way that suggested the words had surprised him as much as they surprised you. “I—” He stopped. Tried again. “I didn’t think you’d come back.” “I didn’t come back,” you said gently. “I just helped.” “I know.” The words came out too quickly. Like he needed you to know he understood the difference. Silence stretched again. He looked like he was trying to decide whether something was worth saying. You had seen that look before. Usually right before he chose not to say it. Your chest tightened slightly. Here it comes, you thought. The pivot. The deflection. The conversation ending before it really began. Instead, he exhaled slowly. “I made the wrong call.” The words didn’t register at first. They didn’t fit into any version of Spoke you had stored in your head. You blinked. “What?” “When you left,” he said, voice steady but quieter than usual. “I thought I was making the right decision.” Your heartbeat sped up in a way you didn’t appreciate. “You don’t have to do this.” “I know.” Another pause. “I still am.” He took a step closer. “I thought removing you from the equation would make things simpler. Easier to control. Easier to manage.” You didn’t interrupt. If you did, he might stop. “And it worked,” he continued. “For a while.” The words felt heavier than the air around them. “And then it didn’t.” Your throat felt tight. You crossed your arms, more for stability than defensiveness. “You seem to be managing fine.” “I’m functioning,” he corrected. “That’s not the same thing.” The honesty hit harder than any argument could have. “I didn’t realize how much I built things assuming you’d be there,” he said quietly. “Until you weren’t.” Silence fell again. But this time it didn’t feel empty. It felt full of things neither of you had prepared for. “I’m not asking you to come back,” he added quickly. “You made your choice. I respect that.” You swallowed. “Okay.” “I just… needed you to know I was wrong.” You studied him carefully. Spoke didn’t apologize. He didn’t dramatize. He didn’t beg. He just stood there, letting the statement exist without trying to control how you reacted to it. And that might have been the most honest thing he’d ever done. You exhaled slowly. “That doesn’t fix anything.” “I know.” “It doesn’t undo what happened.” “I know.” “It doesn’t mean things go back to the way they were.” “I don’t expect them to.” A long pause. Then, quieter: “I just don’t want this to be the last version of us that exists.” Your chest tightened. Because that wasn’t a demand. It wasn’t a plan. It wasn’t control. It was uncertainty. And Spoke hated uncertainty. Which meant this mattered more than he knew how to say. You looked away, scanning the horizon even though there was nothing to see. “You don’t get to decide what version exists,” you said softly. “I know.” You hesitated. Then added: “But you can help decide what the next one looks like.” He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Didn’t breathe for a second. Hope flickered across his expression so quickly it almost didn’t exist. Almost. You turned back toward him. “I’m not coming back,” you repeated. “Not like before.” “I understand.” “But I’m not leaving the door locked either.” Silence fell one more time. This time it felt different. Not like an ending. Not like a return. Just the quiet, fragile space where something new might start growing. And for the first time since you’d left— neither of you walked away first. Notes: "I will write this later," I say as I play another hour of Genshin Chapter 28: Soft Spot Pt3 (Wifies x Reader) Notes: LoserTrinity asked for a part three so here it is! (Go thank them, go go go) XD (See the end of the chapter for more notes.) Chapter Text You heard Parrot before you saw him. Which, you'd learned, was just how Parrot worked. He moved through the server with a particular energy — not careless, nothing about him was careless, but present in a way that announced itself. Like he'd made a conscious decision somewhere along the way that being noticed was better than not being noticed, and had committed to it fully. You had about three seconds of warning. Then he was there, and the expression on his face knocked the greeting you'd been forming right out of your head. He looked — off. That was the only word for it. The usual Parrot energy was there, the deliberate presence, the posture that said I know exactly what I'm doing and I need you to know that I know — but it was sitting wrong over something underneath it. Something that had cracked and was showing through the edges whether he wanted it to or not. "You've been helping him," he said. Not loud. That was the thing. You'd have found loud easier. "Parrot—" "No, I — I just—" He stopped. Pressed his mouth together. His jaw worked like he was chewing through several versions of what he wanted to say and discarding them. "You've been helping him build Paragon. You knew what it was. You knew what it was for." "I tried to stop it first," you said carefully. "Oh, you tried," he said, and the laugh that came with it was short and sharp and not particularly amused. "That's — great. Really. Gold star for trying." He gestured broadly, the kind of gesture that took up a lot of space, that was performing for an audience that wasn't there. "You tried and then you just — what, decided to pitch in? Thought you'd make yourself useful?" "I thought if I was there I could—" "Could what?" He was pacing now, short sharp steps, the kind that burned off energy that had nowhere else to go. "Make it nicer? Make the prison more — comfortable? What was the plan, exactly?" "I didn't have a plan," you said. "I just — I couldn't stop him and I couldn't walk away and I thought—" "Right, right, you thought." He stopped pacing. Looked at you directly, and for just a second the performance dropped — not gone, never fully gone with Parrot, but thinner. The hurt underneath showing through like light under a door. "Do you know what it felt like? Finding out? Finding out there was someone — someone I didn't even know — who knew the whole time and just—" He stopped himself. Something moved across his face. You watched him catch the thread of what he'd been about to say and pull it back and reroute it, watched the calculation happen in real time even through the genuine feeling. "I trusted him," he said instead, quieter. "That's — that's the thing. That's the whole thing. And he used that and you helped him use it and I just—" another stop— "I need to know why. Actually why. Not the version that makes you look good." The last sentence landed differently than the rest. Sharper. More self-aware. Like he'd heard himself performing and had overcorrected into something more honest, and wasn't entirely comfortable with how honest it had come out. You opened your mouth. You heard him before you saw him. Which almost never happened. Wifies was already between you and Parrot before you'd fully processed the sound of him — one moment the space was open and the next it wasn't, and Wifies was standing there with the stillness of someone who had moved very fast and was now very deliberately not moving at all. Parrot stared at him. The expression on his face cycled through several things at once — shock, something older and more complicated, a flash of something that might have been relief before the ego closed back over it like water. "Wifies," he said. The name came out strange. Too much history in it. Too many things it had meant at different times. "Parrot." Quiet. Even. "You're—" Parrot's eyes flicked to you, then back. His chin came up slightly — the instinctive repositioning of someone recalibrating their position in a scene. "You're protecting them." Wifies said nothing. "That's—" Parrot laughed again, the short sharp one— "that's actually — okay. Okay, so you dragged someone into your plan, you used them to build the thing, and now you're—" "They came of their own choice," Wifies said. "After trying to stop me. Thoroughly." "Oh, so they get a pass because they argued first? That's—" Parrot stopped. His jaw tightened. He knew, you could see him knowing, that the argument he was about to make would apply equally to things he'd done himself. The hypocrisy sat visibly on his face for just a moment before he pushed past it. "That's not — the point isn't whether they tried, the point is that they helped, and you—" "The point," Wifies said, still quiet, "is that you came here to take your anger at me out on someone who had considerably less power in this situation than you're giving them credit for." Parrot's mouth opened. Closed. "Don't," he said, low. "Don't do the thing where you reframe everything so you're the reasonable one. I know how you do that. I've watched you do that to — I know how you do that." Wifies held his gaze. "You're not wrong to be angry," he said. The words came out differently than the rest — less placed, less controlled. Something more direct underneath them. "You're not wrong about any of it. I — what I did was—" he stopped. A beat. "I know what it was." The server was very quiet around the three of you. Parrot looked at him for a long moment. The performance had gone somewhere — not gone entirely, it was never entirely gone, but thinner than you'd seen it. The tired thing in his eyes was more visible now. The hurt underneath the calculation. "You should have told me," he said. Quieter than anything before it. "Whatever you thought you were protecting me from. You should have just — told me. I could have handled it. I could have—" he stopped. Pressed his mouth together hard. "I deserved to know." "Yes," Wifies said simply. "You did." The two words landed like something that had been waiting a long time to be said. Parrot looked at him. His throat moved. For a moment he looked less like the server's self-appointed protector and more like someone who was very tired of being the person everyone had complicated feelings about, who was very tired of finding out the people he trusted had been making decisions about his life without him, who was — underneath everything — just hurt. Then he blinked. Straightened. The chin came back up. "We're not done," he said. Back to controlled. Back to deliberate. The performance reassembling itself with the speed of long practice. "I know," Wifies said. Parrot looked at you one more time. Something in the look that wasn't quite an apology and wasn't quite not one — the kind of acknowledgement that was the closest he could get right now without it costing him something he wasn't ready to spend. Then he left. The quiet settled back in around you and Wifies. You looked at each other. His jaw was set. The controlled expression was back in place. You were better at reading past it now. "Are you hurt," he said. "No," you said. "I'm fine." He looked at you. Checking. "He wasn't going to—" you started. "I know," he said. "Then why—" He looked away briefly. A muscle in his jaw moved. He looked back. "I was in the area," he said. The tips of his ears told a different story entirely. You didn't push it. "Same time tomorrow," he said, already turning. "Same time tomorrow," you said. He walked away, and you stood in the space where two things had happened — Parrot finding out, and Wifies stepping between you and the weight of it — and you held both of those things quietly and didn't try to make them into something simple. They weren't simple. That was fine. You went back to work. The next few days were quieter than usual. Not the comfortable quiet — not the late night kind, the kind that had stopped needing to be filled. This was different. Thinner. The kind of quiet that happened when something had been said out loud that had been living in the walls for a long time, and now that it was out the air hadn't quite figured out what to do with the space it left. Wifies worked. You worked. The eastern wall got its final layers. The redstone threading through the foundations got checked and rechecked. The list of things that needed doing got shorter, steadily, with the particular momentum of something approaching its end. You tried not to think about that too much. He didn't mention Parrot. You didn't either. But you noticed the way his attention went distant sometimes — mid-task, mid-sentence, the pen going still on the notes or the block placement pausing for just a beat longer than it needed to. You noticed the way he'd come back from it, smooth and controlled, the recalibration so practiced you'd have missed it a month ago. You didn't miss it now. You knew better than to say anything about it directly. That wasn't how he worked. Wifies didn't process things out loud — he processed them somewhere internal, quiet and thorough, and what came out the other side was a decision already made rather than the making of it. So you didn't ask. You just stayed close enough that when the quiet got heavy he didn't have to be in it alone. You weren't sure he noticed you doing that. You suspected he did. On the third day after Parrot's visit, he said, out of nowhere, "He was right." You looked up from what you were doing. He was looking at the wall. Not at you. His voice had the quality it got when he'd been turning something over for a long time and had finally arrived at the place he was going to say it from. "About what specifically," you said, carefully. "Most of it." A pause. "The telling him. I told myself—" he stopped. Started again, differently. "I had reasons. Good ones, I thought. The more he knew, the more he could interfere. The more he could—" another stop. His jaw worked slightly. "I told myself it was tactical." "Was it?" you asked. He was quiet for a moment. "Partly," he said. "The other part was — easier. Not telling him was easier than watching him try to talk me out of it." Something in his voice shifted — not softer exactly, but more direct. More honest in the particular way he was honest when he'd decided to be. "You tried to talk me out of it. I could manage that. You didn't — it didn't cost the same thing to say no to you." You looked at him. He still wasn't looking at you. "Because I'm not Parrot," you said. "Because you're not Parrot," he agreed quietly. The wall was getting the last of its afternoon light, long shadows stretching across the blocks you'd placed over weeks. It looked, you thought, almost finished. The thought sat strangely. "Do you think he'll—" you started. "I don't know," Wifies said. Before you finished the question. Like he'd already been asking it himself and had the same answer every time. You nodded. You went back to work. He came back that evening. Not Wifies — Parrot. You heard him differently this time. Slower. Not the fast purposeful sound of someone arriving at a conclusion but the tentative sound of someone who hadn't fully decided yet and was letting their feet make the decision for them. He stopped a little distance away. You looked up from where you were sitting on the lower platform, inventory spread around you, the end of the day's work settling into your bones. Parrot looked at you. His hands were in his pockets. The chin wasn't up — that was the first thing you noticed. The deliberate posture was gone, or at least dialed down, and what was left underneath it was someone who looked younger than his reputation suggested and considerably more tired. "I owe you something," he said. Like the words cost him something. Like he'd practiced them and was delivering them before he could change his mind. "You don't," you said. "I do." He pressed his mouth together briefly. "I came here and I — the things I said. The way I said them. That was—" he stopped. Visibly decided something. "That wasn't fair. You didn't — you tried to stop it. That matters. I was just—" "Angry," you said. "Angry," he agreed, quieter. "And — yeah. Angry. And I took it somewhere it didn't fully belong." You looked at him for a moment. "I understood," you said. "I'm not — I don't hold it against you." Something moved across his face. Complicated. The ego and the genuine feeling running into each other the way they always seemed to with him. "You should, a little," he said, almost wry. "It'd be warranted." "Maybe," you said. "But I don't." He looked at you for a moment longer. Then he looked past you at the structure rising behind — at Paragon, at the walls and the mechanisms and the careful deliberate architecture of it. His expression did something that was too complicated to read fully. Too many things happening at once. "Is he here?" he asked. Quieter. "Not yet," you said. "He'll come back tonight, probably." Parrot nodded slowly. His eyes stayed on the structure. "It's almost done," he said. "Yes." "And then—" "And then the plan moves," you said. He was quiet for a long moment. "Do you think it'll work?" he asked, and the thing that caught you was the genuine uncertainty in it. Not rhetorical. Not performed. Actually asking, the way someone asked when they weren't sure of the answer and wanted someone else's read. You thought about the months of watching Wifies work. The precision of it. The walls and the mechanisms and the way he'd thought of things you hadn't anticipated and accounted for things that hadn't happened yet. The way he'd rebuilt entire sections because something wasn't exactly right, wasn't exactly what it needed to be. "Yes," you said. "I think it'll work." Parrot looked at you. "That's not — I don't know if that's comforting or not," he said. "I know," you said. He made a sound that was almost a laugh. Not the sharp short one. Something more genuine, something that surprised him slightly on its way out. He looked at the structure one more time. "Tell him—" he started, stopped. Reconsidered. "Tell him I came by." "I will," you said. He nodded once. Then he left. And this time the sound of his footsteps was different again — not the fast purposeful arrival, not the slow uncertain approach. Something in the middle. Someone who had done the thing they came to do and was heading somewhere without the weight of it unsaid anymore. You watched him go. You sat with the quiet for a while after. Wifies came back as the server went dark, as he always did, with the unhurried deliberate pace that meant the day's external work was done and this was the part he came back for. You waited until he'd settled. Until he'd checked the notes and the mechanisms and done the quiet rounds he always did at the end of the day, the inventory of everything, the making sure. "Parrot came by," you said. He went still. Not dramatically — just the particular stillness that meant something had landed. He was looking at his notes. His pen was motionless. "When," he said. "This evening. After you left." A pause. "What did he say." "He apologized," you said. "For the way he spoke to me. The other day." Something moved in Wifies' expression. You were sitting close enough to see it — the slight shift, the thing underneath the controlled surface. "He didn't have to do that," he said. "I know," you said. "He did it anyway." Wifies was quiet for a moment. His pen moved — not writing, just the small motion of someone who needed their hands to be doing something. "He asked if I thought the plan would work," you said. "What did you say?" "Yes." He looked at you then. The direct look, the one that wasn't managed. "You believe that." "I believe you've been thorough," you said. "I've watched you be thorough. I've been part of you being thorough." You met his gaze. "Whether it's the right thing — that's different. I still don't know if it's the right thing. But I think it'll work." He held your gaze for a moment. "Those aren't the same thing," he said. "I know," you said. "I meant what I said." He looked back at his notes. "He told me to tell you he came by," you added. Wifies' pen stilled again. He didn't say anything for a while. When he did, it was quiet — quieter than usual, the measured quality stripped down to something more fundamental underneath. "He came back," he said. Not to you, not exactly. More like saying it out loud to confirm it was true. "He came back," you said. The structure was still around you both. The walls you'd built together, the mechanisms threaded through the foundations, the thing that was almost finished and would, when it was finished, change everything. Wifies sat with that for a while. You let him. The last day arrived without announcement. That was how it happened with things that had been building for a long time — they didn't announce themselves, didn't mark the threshold. You were just working and then the work was done, and you were standing in the completed structure looking at something that hadn't existed before you helped make it, and the fact of its completion sat in your chest in a way that didn't have a clean name. Wifies stood beside you. Neither of you said anything for a while. "It's done," you said, finally. The obvious thing. The only thing. "Yes," he said. You looked at the walls. At the mechanisms. At the corridors that led precisely where he'd decided they should lead and nowhere else. It was exactly what the blueprint had promised. Exactly what he'd built toward for months. It was, technically, a remarkable piece of work. It was also a prison. Those two things were both true and you'd been holding them both for weeks and you were still holding them now, here at the end, and it didn't feel like resolution. "Are you going to tell him?" you asked. Wifies didn't answer right away. "Not yet," he said. "Not until—" a pause— "not yet." You nodded. "What happens now?" you asked. "To you. After this moves." He looked at the wall in front of him. The question sat in the air for a moment, unhurried. "The plan moves forward," he said. "I disappear. The Director—" he stopped. Something in the way he said it — the deliberate distance he put between himself and the name, like it belonged to something he was still putting on rather than something he was. "That's what happens to the plan," you said. "I asked what happens to you." He looked at you. It was the kind of look that lasted slightly too long. The kind that happened when something had been decided but not said. "I don't know," he said. And the honesty of it — the actual, unmanaged honesty, the admission of a variable he hadn't solved — landed differently than almost anything else he'd said to you. You held his gaze. "I'll still be here," you said. "Whatever the plan does. Whatever the Director does. I'll be here." He looked at you for a long moment. "You shouldn't be," he said. "It'll be complicated. It'll be—" "I know what it'll be," you said. "I've been here the whole time. I know what I'm staying for." The structure was quiet around you both. The server, somewhere outside it, continued its ongoing complicated business. In here it was just the two of you and the thing you'd built and the weight of what came next. "I know," he said finally. Quiet. The two words landing the way they did when he meant them past the point of managing them. You nodded. The server kept moving outside. You stayed where you were. So did he. That was enough. For now, on the last day of this particular before and the first moment of whatever came after, that was enough.