Work Text:
Avery’s screen lights up his room in red.
The last fifteen hours had slipped away. Somewhere in the middle of the twelve hours at the church the sun had set, casting the room in darkness, now lit only by the glow of his laptop screen.
His chest jumped as his eyes began to water, those incriminating words staring him in the face.
YOU DIED!
The Respawn button was greyed out. Avery hit it anyway, hoping that it was just a graphics glitch.
No response.
He hit his mouse again, harder, hoping that it was just a hardware issue - click - nothing. Click. Click.
Click.
Nothing.
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Okay - okay, could he maybe just re-open the world? Surely he could. He clicked the Title Screen button, paged through to his single player worlds, and - it was empty.
Where was Derek’s world?
Wait - wait, Derek’s world was gone.
The only thing Derek could look at without a skull-splitting headache was gone. The only thing stopping Derek from going completely insane had vanished. Avery’s vision blurred and his hands shook over his keyboard as his mind spun up new possibilities. Images of Derek - Derek’s minecraft skin, but still Derek - slumped over at his desk, collapsed somewhere, bleeding from his eyes, something dripping from his ears, screaming -
The sound of an explosion outside cut his thoughts off.
Avery turned to the window in time to catch the sparks of gold as the first firework lit up the night sky.
Okay. Okay, time to be logical about this.
Derek’s laptop was in a storage unit. A storage unit that was in the city Avery lived in. Derek lived in the city. Derek and he lived in the same city. Derek was nearby.
Derek was somewhere in the city and Avery was just sitting here instead of looking for him.
Avery just had to look.
He had Derek’s username, that would be a good place to start? NameMC said Derek’s account - d3rLord3 - had previously gone by d3hutchins, so maybe he had used the name elsewhere. A cursory search brought up nothing interesting, but dhutchens brought up a youtube account with the user dhutchens333.
It had one video, uploaded less than a minute ago.
A 39 second video.
A google doc.
The sound of Derek breathing in as the video started playing broke him. Tears began to drip down his face, blurring the words until he couldn't read them. Fireworks lit up the room as a thump sounded, and then the audio cut out.
Avery’s chest heaved as he buried his face in his hands and cried.