#and i dont have motivation to write my larger cleo and etho project i have going right now | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

birrdies · 6 months

Text

needs

last life fic (1.8k words)

Etho was good at mostly being alone.

Silences were easy things to fill with simple nothings: tinkering with faulty machinery, tearing his latest project down to its barest bones and starting all over (just for the hell of it), exploring as far as his tired legs would carry him. When hands are busy and a mind is occupied, it’s difficult to notice the nothingness close in on him.

Solitude. It didn’t matter the world or game. To Etho, it was as much a talent as it was instinct. To build a fortress up from the ground and pretend he didn’t care that he didn’t have enough to fill the empty rooms. To spend nights alone, because it’s for the best. Because he didn’t need it any other way. There was nothing he needed that he couldn’t wear nor fit in his pockets.

There were things he wanted, sure, but need and want were different things. Want was frivolous; it was a thorn in his side that he never could muster the courage to pull out. Need, was permanent. Need was saved for when things went bad. When the thorn was ripped from skin, when he needed to staunch the bleed.

This game wasn’t any different.

Want was a crumbling snowy castle resting like a tomb in the center of the end of the world. Want was a pair of twin staircases, a shield painted red and blue, and his name scrawled on the deed to his own freedom, handed straight into the hands of a madman.

Need was a fence splitting their home in two, the ravine and impossible task that separated them. Need was a burrow underground, a set of new faces, a message of death written in red.

Need was picking at the remains of what once stood as his home like a vulture.

Only one of the towers still stood. The moon hung low in the sky overhead, a silver spotlight on everything that he once had. The ground was upturned all the way through to the stone underneath. Dirt and wood and remaining pits of soul sand sunk into the holes dug and blown into the groundwork of the castle. Like it had tried burying its own body but couldn’t quite get the job done.

Etho skulked his way across the wreckage. This place belonged to the enemy now. It wasn’t his home anymore, no matter how much it masqueraded as such.

There wasn’t much left. A few potions he’d tucked away underground days before. A beaten set of iron armor. Scraps of gold and stale bread. Less than he wanted and more than he needed. The rest he could recover with time buried underground. That, he was used to.

Burying himself underground, gathering what he could to fool others into thinking of it as strength, only to rise from the dirt with a sword, bow, and the need to be the one to walk out of there. Not enough to be a phoenix rising from ashes into flames, but rather a body climbing out of the dirt to fight and survive.

He’d played more games than he could count that way, in the solitude and protection the caves and earth below had to offer. When he was alone, there was nothing that could truly hurt him— not in any way that mattered. Really, he should’ve been relieved. He should’ve felt lighter on his feet, a burden shed from his back.

But instead, he didn’t feel much like anything at all.

It hurt less than it should have, but more than Etho ever anticipated. The thorn had been pulled clean and he bled, but he felt less the pain and more the uncomfortable twinge. The calculated knowledge that skin had been broken but the detached thoughtlessness not to feel it.

He was alone again. But that was okay. At least he knew what to do with it.

“Find anything good?” Etho looked to the half-collapsed parapet above his head. Cleo leaned over the edge, her hair hanging in her face. Another need, if he wanted to survive. The more bodies the better. It didn’t make him any less alone, just more fortified. Etho wasn’t so prideful as to think that he’d last out there on his own. Not this late in the game. Not with the Reds out for his blood.

With a sigh, he shut the chest he’d been rooting around in. “Invisibility potions,” he said, packing whatever he could away in his pockets. “Extra armor I stashed. Some iron and gold. I bet Grian and Joel already picked up everything else worthwhile.”

Cleo hummed. Etho grasped the wrung of a rickety ladder to hoist himself up onto the parapet beside her. She stood with ease, hands on her hips and an amused quirk to her mouth as she overlooked what never belonged to her.

“We’re going to stick it out with Ren and his shadow freaks?” Cleo asked after a moment. He could feel her gaze on the side of his face, but he didn’t return it. “That’s our plan?”

We. Our. She was just as bad as Bdubs. Etho had the thought to be angry, but really all he could manage was confusion. Curiosity. How did they make it look easy? Like handing over trust was as easy and mindless as breathing? Meanwhile he was a machine short-circuiting between two ends of a binary: what his heart longed for and what his head demanded. The desperation to claw more out more lives for Bdubs from anywhere he could. Anywhere except himself.

“The Greens and Yellows should stick together,” Etho said, detached and factual. “At least until we knock out the rest of the Reds. Joel and Grian are going to be a big problem… Tango, too, now that I think about it.”

“You’ve made a lot of enemies this go-around, haven’t you?” Cleo teased. He knew she was teasing, but suddenly he was punched by the first flare of something since he stood on the opposite side of that cliff face.

Etho scoffed and turned to overlook the rest of the hills. Lava burned far off, an orange glow that bled into the night sky. When that wither erupted from the heart of the snow castle, Etho thought that was the end of the world. But it was nothing compared to this: the damage left behind.

“I didn’t even do anything,” he said quietly.

“You didn’t have to,” Cleo retorted. She rested a hand on Etho’s shoulder and he lacked the grit to brush it off. There were few people he both feared and respected in equal parts, and the person standing next to him was one of them. “Surviving this long always puts a target on your back. Plus, you’re the lucky guy who’s left to clean up all of Bdubs’ messes.” “You know a lot about that, don’t you, Cleo?”

He didn’t know where it came from. The words were nasty and sharp but his voice was even and calm as ever; he wasn’t convinced he’d even said it. But Cleo only raised her eyebrows in surprise and turned her attention to the rest of the world. She pursed her lips.

Neither of them said anything. The longer he stood in the bones of something he loved, the more he felt the ache start to sink in. Like pins and needles it started to spread from the pinch in his side, through his chest, up the back of his throat, and behind his eyes. It didn’t hurt yet, but he knew it could. He knew it would, when the worst of the numbness receded. If it ever did.

He didn’t know if it would. He didn’t know if he wanted it to. It was so much easier to deal with like this.

“It‘s okay if it hurts,” Cleo said finally. The hand on Etho’s shoulder never wavered, only squeezed the tense muscle there. “I’d be more worried if it didn’t. You’re more human than you pretend to be, Etho.”

The center of the snow castle's been caved in. A bomb detonated by Martyn. The walls to the east were crumbled and resorted to nothing more than dust. A fatal blow from the wither. A large, steep drop between the gap under the walls and the bottom of the hill. The last time they fought side-by-side. A single fence post remained in front of the door to their bedrooms.

He was good at being alone. In fact, he was better off for it.

He didn’t need Bdubs. He never needed Bdubs. It was convenient. It was easy. But then it wasn’t. Bdubs kept dying. Bdubs needed more lives. And suddenly it wasn’t anything about needing him and everything about wanting him. About doing everything within his power to keep him.

It was silver-tongued lies and trigger-finger betrayals. Scar coiled in fishing line, an axe through his throat before he knew what happened to him. The curse was easy to blame, but the truth was it simply provided him an excuse. A loop-hole. He would’ve done it either way. He would’ve made a way.

Because he wanted Bdubs and his brain forgot where the line between want and need stood.

“I could’ve given him a life.” A stab of remorse. The numbness started to fade as the sun threatened to rise and reality set in over the remains of what he had. “Things could’ve been different.”

“Maybe,” Cleo relented. She sat leaning against an old pillar of wood that supported what was left of the parapet, staring at Etho with an unusually soft expression that he had a difficult time feigning strength in front of. “But we both know Bdubs was dead either way.”

“No.” Etho shut his eyes. He willed the burning behind them to fade. “I could’ve given it to him, Cleo,” he said again, because she didn’t understand.

It was his fault. He fought tooth-and-nail to protect the single thing he was foolish enough to let in. Only to shoot it right down in the same breath. A punishment for his mistakes, doled out by his own hand.

The wood beneath him creaked. Cleo shuffled behind him until he felt her body heat slotted against his back. Her arms wrapped around him, trapping him in her embrace and squeezing his shoulders and chest tight. He didn’t open his eyes. Because he feared when he did reality would come crashing down, and he’d be forced to remember that one of them would likely be dead by the end of the day.

Cleo hooked her chin over Etho’s shoulder. The side of her head pressed flush with his. Shakily he laid his hands on top of hers, afraid she’d let go.

“For what it’s worth,” she said against his ear. “I think he’s already forgiven you.”

#birdie writes #last life #etho #zombiecleo #cletho #last life fic #they've been constantly on my mind for weeks #and i dont have motivation to write my larger cleo and etho project i have going right now #so i feverishly just wrote this in an hour #enjoy #ethubs #etho fic #ethubs fic

69 notes · View notes