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The first time he meets her, he has just watched his family fall.
Fundy stares up at the woman with wide eyes, frozen in place. She smiles down at him, offering him a hand and carefully helping him up off the ground.
It is void all around them, the empty space stretching on and on and on. In the distance a white, spired castle seems to glow and shimmer, like a beacon cutting through the darkness. Fundy should feel scared, should feel panicked, but the only thing he feels is an overwhelming sense of safety. That even though she is a stranger, he can tell her anything, and she would listen.
“Hello, my dear,” she says gently, brushing his hair out of his eyes. Though she tries to hide it, Fundy has always been good at reading faces—and underneath the caring and calm, sorrow and pity lingers. “You fought well.”
His eyes prickle with not-yet existing tears. “Did I… Did we—“
She pulls him close to her in a hug, one hand on his back and one in his hair. “Yes,” she replies, and Fundy’s breath stutters. “I am so sorry.”
He tries to take a deep breath but can’t, chest heaving with the effort. His ribs twinge with phantom pain. Black—darker than the void—creeps at the edge of his vision.
She sinks down to the ground as he does, still holding him comfortingly. “I am so, so , sorry.”
Fundy sobs in her arms, gripping tight to the fabric of her deep violet dress as his tears stain it.
They stay like that for a long time, for not enough time, for all time and for none. He doesn’t know. But when his tears have calmed and his body has stopped shaking, he feels her pull back.
“You have to go back.”
He looks up at her, her face shrouded in a dark fog making it impossible to see her features save for her eyes—still warm yet pitying.
“Back?”
“You can’t stay here,” she says softly. “My realm is no place for mortals, not for long.”
“Wh… Huh?”
“Dream’s world is different,” she explains, though something in her expression shifts as she says the world admin’s name. “All of you have three lives, correct? This was your first. Staying here would only hurt you more.”
“I… I’m scared to go back,” he whispers, voice cracking. “We lost, what if— what if—“ Fundy forces himself to take a deep breath, tail tucked between his legs. “What if Dream is waiting for us? When we respawn?”
“He wouldn’t dare,” she says sharply, Fundy tensing in surprise at her sudden shift in tone. “He may have a great deal of power but messing with a life respawn is too far even for him.”
Fundy looks down, shoulders relaxing slightly. “Oh.”
There’s an odd ringing in his ears.
He realizes with a sudden jolt that he can see right through his feet, as if they’re translucent. “W-What’s happening?!”
The woman’s voice is echoey now, fading as the ringing grows stronger. “Be strong, Fundy.”
The last thought he has before his vision blackens is, how did she know my name?
Fundy gasps awake in his bed, coughing harshly. Everything feels wrong, uncomfortable, heavy.
“He’s awake!” A familiar voice shouts, relief evident.
“…Tubbo?”
“Hey,” Tubbo says with a relieved grin as footsteps thud outside. “Welcome back to the land of the living, boss man.”
Wilbur and Tommy push their way in, Wilbur’s face lined with the same panic Fundy remembers from the night Sally… Oh. “Hey dad,” he rasps. To his slight surprise, Wilbur immediately pulls him into a crushing hug. It…almost reminds him of something, but he can’t quite recall what. He must have dreamed about it or something.
“Don’t scare me like that again, Champ,” Wilbur whispers, voice heavy.
“Don’t call me that,” Fundy snips back, but there’s no real heat behind it. Wilbur just hugs him tighter with a choked laugh.
The second time, he doesn’t even have to die.
Maybe it’s the fact that death surrounds him, animals and plants and people all alike. Thick smoke rises into the air. The noxious gunpower gas burns his lungs with every breath. The slowly forming crater is shadowed with massive grid lines from the obsidian above. He can’t help but think, with half a mind to laugh, that it looks like a cage.
Someone, multiple people, are screaming.
There’s the red flash of Technoblade’s cape, Tommy’s high-pitched shouts, Tubbo’s scream, a firework shot.
There’s an inhumanly loud, elated cackle that can only be Dream, neon orange flames that can only be Sapnap.
There’s a burst of white hair followed by a streak of gold and maroon— Puffy and Eret, he realizes. Even they have joined the fight.
He can’t bring himself to.
Fundy stands on the edge of the crater, face like stone as he watches the destruction of his home. The piercing screams of Withers fill his ears, blasts tearing through stone and wood and concrete like they’re paper. He halfheartedly fires a shot at one, if only to scare it off so he can grab a few emeralds and an enchanted book from a chest inside what looks like the remnants of Ranboo’s house.
He knows he should feel something. He doesn’t.
A shadow of wings falls across him, and he looks up up up to see Philza, perched on the grid like a true bird of prey, launching Wither after Wither. The shadows on the ground don’t show his human body, though. Just a massive, torn wingspan stretching above dark solid lines.
He blinks, and then all he sees is white.
“Hello again, Fundy.”
Fundy whips around, armor blinking into existence as he scans wildly for the source of the voice. “Who’s there?”
A woman materializes in front of him. Shimmering black silk hangs from the wide brim of her black and white striped hat. A sheer black shawl hangs at her elbows, black floor length gown studded with silver and gold like the night sky.
He can’t see her face.
“I’m not surprised you don’t remember me,” she says, voice achingly familiar yet he can’t place it. “But you were easiest to contact now. I supposed it was time I introduced myself to my grandson.”
Grandson?
“Who are you?” Fundy whispers, taking a step back.
She lifts the silk in the front, letting it rest on the brim of her hat. Her face is impassive, lined with smile lines yet none of them in use. “My name is Kristin, and I’m the goddess of Death.”
She takes Fundy’s hand in hers, and he stands so frozen in shock that he doesn’t fight it. “Come with me for a moment.”
The world around him blurs, and when his vision clears he finds himself in a softly lit library of worn shelves and even more worn books. Bright light is still visible beneath the door, and dimly Fundy registers a long ago dream of a castle of white.
It’s a moment before he finds the words to speak. “Am I….y’know…”
Her mouth twitches at that. “You know, you asked almost the same question the first time we met. But no, you’re not dead, you still have two lives. However…the barrier between life and death thinned today, enough for me to contact you.” She settles into a chair Fundy hadn’t noticed, gesturing towards a second one. “Sit, please. I’m sure you have questions.”
Fundy takes a seat, fiddling with the zipper on his jacket. “How did you… Where am I?”
“It has no name, really. An in-between of sorts, between life and death, that doesn’t exist in a physical plane. Essentially being here means you no longer physically exist.”
His stomach drops, and she must have noticed his panic because she immediately backtracks. “What I mean by that is, as long as you are here. Once the barrier becomes too strong again you’ll return back to your life like you never left.”
“Oh.” They’re both quiet for a minute, before another question bubbles out of him. “Why me?”
Kristin blinks in faint surprise. “What do you mean?”
He shrugs, glancing away. “You could’ve contacted anyone but you chose me. I wasn’t even doing anything that would interest a goddess of Death, so…”
“Well, you wouldn’t know what interests me,” she chides lightly, “but is wanting to meet family not enough?”
Family…
“If...I’m your grandson...then…” Wait. No way . “Phil?!”
“Bingo!” The goddess of Death shoots finger guns at him with a grin.
Trying to wrap his head around that idea leaves him reeling.
“So Phil- and you- that’s why Phil is called the Angel of Death?”
She laughs, the sound bright and lively and not at all death-goddess-seeming. “Well, somewhat, yes, but he earned that title himself.”
“...How come he never mentioned you? D— Wilbur told me he barely remembered you.”
Kristin sighs at that, expression dimming. “It’s difficult for me to visit the mortal realm. When Wilbur was born, Phil, he… Well, that was around the time that he began to be known as the Angel of Death, as well as work with Technoblade and his Blood God. So much like where you were before, the barrier was very much reduced. Enough so that I was able to manifest my own form into the mortal world.”
“But then the barrier stretched again?”
She offers him a sad smile. “Bingo. Phil took more time away from his earlier ways, and Technoblade ended up as a farmer for quite some time. So when Wil was young, I found one day that I just simply could not return.”
Fundy stays silent for a moment after she finishes explaining. It’s definitely a lot to take in, he’s really not sure what he could even say in response. But as he’s trying to form something, anything, to say...there’s a tingling feeling in his hands. His gaze snaps down, and he nearly jumps when he realizes he can see through his hands. And it’s slowly spreading.
“What—”
Kristin follows his gaze, nodding faintly. “The connection’s weakened again. I’m sorry we couldn’t talk longer, dear, but I'm glad we had a chance to meet.” She takes his hands in her own, squeezing gently. “Take care of yourself down there. We may not talk soon or again, but I will be watching over you.”
The third time, he just wants to get away.
He’s discovered something strange about boats in this world— Dream’s creation code was certainly not perfect, despite what the admin so clearly believed, but he’d never expected anything like this.
A glitch, that’s what it was. Not one of the only ones, for sure, but a startling one nonetheless.
A way to become invisible, taking no damage at all.
It had been a fun prank at first.
The void hangs around Fundy as he falls- or is he floating? There’s no sensation that comes with it, just the bedrock above him stretching further and further away. He feels weightless.
The last time he’d done this, he’d been with people. He’d been having fun, messing around with Sam and Ranboo and Hbomb. Friends. Sam had been the one to pull him back from the void’s grasp, teleporting him instantly back to where the other two were waiting excitedly.
Sam hasn’t messed around with anybody for months, and the bags under his eyes are almost as dark as Fundy’s own. Ranboo hasn’t spoken to him in Prime knows how long. Hbomb hasn’t been seen in Prime knows how long. Now, there’s no one there to pull him back. He’d made sure of that when he hid the boat his actual body was in, surrounded by torches and redstone that would activate a trap if anything came too close to him.
Fundy closes his eyes and lets himself sink.
He can’t die here, he knows that. No harm can come to him in this state. It’s just endless falling, endless floating for however long he decides.
When the inside of his eyelids becomes more the orange of having your eyes closed to light than the black of having them closed to darkness, however, he opens his eyes in confusion. Immediately he squints against the bright light that’s stronger than he would have guessed, raising a hand to block it out only to start in surprise at the feeling of hard ground at his back. Fundy sits up, the quick motion sending his head spinning. “Huh?!”
“Fundy,” a familiar voice says firmly, “what the hell are you doing?”
He pushes himself to his feet, blinking harshly to try and focus as the world swirls around him. “I…”
He’s not sure what to say, really. Had he meant to come here? ….Maybe. Fundy wasn’t sure.
“I just wanted to be alone. To...not have to...feel anything, I guess.”
Kristin sighs, pulling him into a hug. He stiffens, then melts into it desperately.
“I’m sorry, Fundy.”
It echoes with a familiarity that he swears he remembers from some distant memory.
“I just— I—” The words spill out of him now. It’s been so long since anyone’s listened, he just...can’t help it. “I can’t sleep , Kristin. I can’t sleep and I can’t do anything else because it’s all too fucking much , it’s too much !” His voice cracks into a scream, his knees giving out beneath him.
Kristin catches his elbows so he doesn’t fall, slowly lowering the both of them to the ground. “Shh, it’s alright. You’re alright.”
“I— And— Gh-! I just—“ His mouth matches his brain in a stuttering mess, tears spilling down his face as he chokes back the anguished noises. Kristin rubs a hand in soothing circles on his back, murmuring something under her breath that’s calming yet unintelligible.
For a moment, when he glances up, her hair is a fiery red and scales litter her cheeks until he blinks and the moment is gone. Something hangs heavy in his hole of a chest.
“I know you’re hurting, Fundy,” she says at last, brushing tangled, stringy hair out of his face. “I’m sorry that you feel you have to go through this alone, I truly am.”
“…I’m sensing a ‘but’ here,” Fundy whispers dejectedly in response, throat closing up.
Kristin sighs. “I can’t intervene. Dream’s walls have grown near impossible to crack even with my abilities. Death is a naturally determined process. Even I can’t fully control it.”
“I thought you were the Goddess of Death,” he points out. It’s only half-accusatory.
“I am,” she concedes with a faint bow of her head, “but I believe perhaps a more correct term I should have used would be Goddess of the Beyond. My reach extends to all deceased souls, but not necessarily to affect the living.” She offers him a faint quirk of a grin. “That was your grandfather’s job, once.”
He really doesn’t want to talk about Philza right now.
It must show on his face, because Kristin frowns at his silence. “I know about what’s happened between you and Phil, Fundy. I’m not taking sides in this, you boys need to figure it out yourselves.”
“You know Phil’s side.”
“He hasn’t mentioned it, actually,” Kristin says, a faint bite of anger in her voice. “I know because I watch over both of you. I won’t have my family torn apart over miscommunication, not again.”
Fundy’s ears flatten against his head. An apology sits on the tip of his tongue—he can't bring himself to vocalize it.
Kristin sighs, standing up and pulling him up to his feet. “Come on, come sit with me. You can stay here as long as you like,” she says, holding up a hand before Fundy’s thought even forms into words, “but not forever.”
“Alright, alright.” He follows her down a crystalline-etched path, the low walls on either side shimmering with their own glow. There’s a garden here, the long limbs of birch trees swaying in the non-existent breeze while lilies of the valley carpet the area. “Did… Did you make this place?”
“In a way,” Kristin shrugs, leading him to a white wrought-iron bench and sitting down. “A realm can’t exist without its keeper, but it’s taken on a mind of its own lately with all of the quartz and crystals. I wouldn’t mind some color, honestly. Mortal worlds are always so vibrant…”
“Only sometimes,” Fundy mutters. He sits opposite her on the bench, fiddling with the zipper on his jacket. He can feel Kristin’s gaze resting on him.
“Why do you want to stay here?”
The question catches him by surprise. “What?”
“You heard me.” Kristin’s voice is steady, non-accusing. Maybe that’s why he chooses to answer truthfully.
“I don’t have anywhere else to go. You’re the only one who’s cared about me since…” Fundy finds he can’t pinpoint a date. He swallows back the lump in his throat that comes with it.
“I don’t believe that,” Kristin says. “What about Eret? Or Niki?”
He scoffs slightly, glancing away. “Can’t remember the last time we spoke. They’ve both got their own problems anyways.”
“And you think everything would be fixed by removing yourself from the picture.”
Fundy shrugs somewhat uncomfortably. “I…guess you could put it that way.”
Kristin turns fully to face him, taking both of his hands in one of her own and reaching up to cup his cheek in her other. “Nothing is ever fixed by running away from it, dear. No matter how hard it may be to overcome. You are strong enough to persevere, that much I know.”
“How?” Fundy breathes, voice wavering. “How do you know ?”
“Believe me, Fundy, I do. Believe yourself .”
Kristin’s voice fades to the wind. Fundy wakes up inside a lonely boat above ground, with tears in his eyes and a lingering warmth on his cheek.
The fourth time…
The fourth time, he knows what will happen.
Fundy stands on the bridge above the crater where his home once was, staring at the father he once trusted, and wonders how he even ended up here in the first place. Visiting Pogtopia had been a mistake. Talking to Eret had been a mistake. They’d gone and told Wilbur and now he was here in front of him and Fundy never wanted to see him again but he did and why and how and why was he here —
Wilbur’s face is shell-shocked, and Fundy looks away in an attempt at ignoring it as he continues to speak.
“I appreciate it. I really do. I just don’t forgive you.”
I can’t. I can’t do it.
“I’m glad that, you know— I’m glad that you accept that you’ve fucked up, and I’m glad that you apologized for it! And I’m very happy that you’re supporting me even though I’m with, apparently , your rival! I’m happy that you are okay with it.”
“Yeah, I—” Wilbur practically bites his tongue cutting himself off so Fundy can continue, fingers clenching at his side like he’s just itching to say something. Fundy presses on.
“ I am not okay with you .”
Wilbur sucks in a sharp breath. Fundy can’t meet his eyes.
“I don’t— I don’t like this. I appreciate it, but I don’t like it. I don’t want anything to do with you anymore. I don’t want to see you anymore.”
It takes every ounce of strength, every ounce of willpower that he has to force the words out. To say what he’s been waiting to say for so long and to not let himself accept the apology he’s been dreaming of for even longer.
Ha. Dreaming. What a joke. It had always been nightmares, anyways.
He’s always been a follower. He knows that. He’s bounced from person to person, country to country, server to server—always joining some thing , doing some thing , but never being some one . He’s chased after every shred of acceptance, every withered string of loyalty, every conditional chance at belonging somewhere. He refuses to let himself chase this one any longer.
“Wil, I— I—“ He cuts himself off with an exasperated sigh, fighting back the tears that threaten to betray him. “I don’t want you here. Around me. Ever.”
Wilbur takes a step back, something fragile in his eyes that Fundy doesn’t remember seeing since…since after…Sally. Fundy finds he has to look away.
“That’s… That’s alright, I…” Wilbur’s voice is quiet, too quiet. ( Why is he making this so HARD?! This isn’t fair! None of it is!) “As long as you…you remember the playing catch, and— and fishing, and— you’ll..you’ll remember that, when I leave, right?”
“……Right.” He glances behind him, takes a step back. ‘ When I leave.’ The words buzz in his ears painfully, rattling around his brain. Of course he would say that. Of course he would, the coward. Fundy wouldn’t have expected anything less. The podium stretches out over the crater, nearly making him dizzy until he turns his gaze back to Wilbur. “Wil, I— I moved away. Entirely. I’m not even with Las Nevadas anymore, I called quits on everything that was around me. I set my bed and my house very far away—”
He thinks of the mesa biome, the dust blowing in underneath the door, the fluffy white fur of his son, his boy, growing tan every day, the walls of clay hills surrounding the tiny house in an achingly reminiscent way. The feeling of waking up every morning not knowing whether his surroundings are true or imagined.
…Maybe cowardice runs in the family.
“—and…and that was for multiple reasons, sure, but you know the biggest one?”
It’s a rhetorical question. But Wilbur still asks as if he couldn’t possibly yet be aware. “What?”
“I knew that you would come back. And I knew that I…I didn’t care for it.” His voice cracks and he hates it, hates the way he feels so weak and raw and open and wholeheartedly vulnerable, hates the way that the person who should have protected him from that is the one causing it in the first place. “I don’t want to deal with you!”
“I’m-I’m sorry,” Wilbur stutters out, taking a step forward now and Fundy feels his chest tighten the closer he gets, “I wish you’d told me, I… This feels so sudden; you’ve set your bed far away? How will people know where you are, how…if you respawn, then…”
Now you care.
“I don’t care about anyone around me,” Fundy says calmly. Matter-of-factly. Maybe once upon a time it would have been a lie. A falsehood wrapped in half-truths and deflections to try and desperately mend frayed bonds that he knew deep down were broken beyond repair. But he believes it now. “Because no one’s ever been. I don’t care for the people that I’ve met. I don’t care for the people that I know! And I don’t care for you.”
Wilbur is standing at the gateway to the outlook now, and Fundy freezes as he realizes he is blocking the exit. There is no way out but past him and he cannot do that. The backs of his knees hit the stone behind him.
“That’s okay man,” Wilbur says, hands raised in an attempt at non-threatening. “You don’t need to, I..I think it’s great that you found a way to be self-sufficient and live on your own, but I think that you— you’ve set your bed far away, you’ve left Las Nevadas, that sounds like… That doesn’t sound like self-help, at that point that sounds like you’re heading down a dangerous path, I just…”
Of course he would say that. Of course Wilbur would be the one to say that, in some cruel, ironic twist of fate. Of course it would be Wilbur, out of all people.
“Wil,” Fundy says again, backing up to the fence again as he fights the urge to grit his teeth and raise his voice and shout it to the heavens in hopes that maybe for once in both of their goddamn lives Wilbur will not just hear him but also fucking listen. “I am done with you! Leave! I don’t want you around me! I don’t! Just leave!”
“Okay,” Wilbur whispers, backing up, and Fundy finds himself blinking back tears. “I’ll… I’ll see you around, Fundy, I…”
The backs of Fundy’s knees hit the edge of the railing. His stomach clenches. He turns, glancing past Wilbur off to the side of the crater, to the area where he had once watched his father rise and twice watched his father fall.
There is nowhere to go. He’s out of Enderpearls and Wilbur is still blocking the entrance and he still cannot bear to face him that close. He needs to get out of here. Fundy pulls up his sleeve, looks at the three hearts tattooed on his wrist. Two red, one gray.
Fundy turns, and locks eyes with his father.
Fundy jumps.
He does not close his eyes. He watches as he falls, watches the podium shrink and fade above him as he plummets down, down, down into the bedrock remains of his birthplace. He thinks of his son’s face, in that cabin far away, and for once feels relief. (How fitting it is, that his life of three was given here and now two of them will be returned.)
The moment seems to freeze.
The cold metal cap of the massive flagpole brushes his back and he breathes out slowly.
And as everything goes black, a skeletal lavender hand tears through time and space in front of him.
Fundy jolts awake with a gasp into a sitting position, entire body tingling with the foreign sensation of the translucent hand wrapping around him. “Huh—?”
“Don’t ever scare me like that again,” a familiar voice snaps, a waver present in it that he’d never heard before. Kristin glares at him, tears glistening in her eyes. Fundy finds himself at a loss for words. He can only stare at her in shock.
Her hands tremble visibly. “Fundy, what were you thinking ?"
It sings like an accusation and soothes like a concern at the same time. Fundy finds he doesn't have the words to explain. His eyes burn suddenly and then Kristin is crushing him in a desperate hug as burning tears drip down his face.
"I—" His throat chokes up, acid bubbling up and threatening to tear out as he gasps sharply with a hand clapped over his mouth. His shoulders shake, tremors rocking his entire body as the reality of what he did sinks in. "Prime, I— Fucking hell — I'm…"
Kristin loosens her grip just barely to pull Fundy's head into her shoulder, and like a dam finally cracking he lets the tears flow.
An eternity later, he's too exhausted to cry any further. Something cool is pressed into his hands and he slowly, painfully looks down to see a metal cup with what looks like inky water inside. A hand rests on his back.
"It's a mix of Regeneration and Healing," Kristin says softly from where she's crouching next to him. "I know usually mixing potions is highly dangerous but luckily that's something I don't need to worry about."
He tilts his head.
Takes a sip.
Immediately his vision clears, and some of the ache fades away. "Wow," is all he says hoarsely in reply, shifting the cup in his grip.
"Keep drinking," Kristin urges. "Then we'll see about getting up off the ground, yes?"
“…Sure.”
It takes some time, but eventually he comes to a point where his head has stopped buzzing and his limbs no longer feel leaden. The cup clinks against the ground when he finally sets it down slowly. Kristin isn’t behind him anymore, he notices, but he finds he doesn’t mind the small moment of solitude. Fundy lets out a quiet breath, running a hand through his hair and tugging at the tangles he finds there. There’s an odd feeling he can’t quite shake now. Carefully he pushes himself to his feet—though not without a stumble that heats his face red with embarrassment—and finally takes a real look at his surroundings.
He’s in a marbled courtyard, tall quartz pillars ringing a rectangle-shaped walkway around the outer edges. Tall grasses and a mix of colorful wildflowers fills the ground with small brooks of crystal-clear water snaking through. There’s a dark oak bridge on one side where the water deepens, and a swing chair hanging from a large birch tree on the far side opposite. In the middle where he is, the marble under his feet is a smooth, slightly raised platform with a pergola roof above it—casting rays of shadow down onto the floor that crisscross into a solid grid pattern.
Something churns in the pit of his stomach at the sight. Fundy makes a beeline for the swing chair instead.
Sitting down in the creaky wooden chair held up by coarse ropes, a long-forgotten memory tugs at the back of his mind. Wilbur had hung a chair just like this one once, from a low branch of the L’Mantree.
Before they’d built proper homes, before those homes had been destroyed, they’d all shared bunks inside the Camarvan. On those sticky, humid days that came with living around a lake, by the time the sun began to fall the five of them would filter out slowly into the cooler night breeze. Tubbo had insisted on color-coding their hammocks after a brief spat with Tommy a few nights before over which hammock was who’s.
He could still remember the sight; Eret’s navy blue hammock made out of extra uniform material, Tommy’s patchy-dyed maroon and white hammock, Tubbo’s forest green hammock with a black and yellow-striped edge, and Wilbur’s orange hammock, a patch from an old jacket stitched into one corner. Fundy had never had his own—he’d been small enough to curl up inside Wilbur’s and occasionally Eret’s, and by the time he was big enough for his own they hadn’t been able to spare any supplies for something frivolous as comfort.
Instead, in the few small moments between potion brewing and weapon crafting and combat training and supply running, Wilbur had built the swing. It was old and slightly rotting and handed out splinters like candy if you sat in the wrong spot, but Fundy had loved that chair with all his heart. He’d cherished every small moment they spent there under the tree—him leaning against Wilbur in the chair, his father’s arm over his shoulders as Wilbur looked over notes or hastily-sketched maps, Tommy and Tubbo shouting playfully as their wooden swords clashed, Eret walking over with a tray of sandwiches and a newly-sewn pastel blue coat draped over one arm. (Wilbur had protested, but Eret had just winked at Fundy as they handed the mock uniform to him.)
The last time he’d seen the swing was the first time L’Manburg burned. Somehow the tree had survived, but the swing became nothing more than a pile of ash they’d never had the chance to rebuild.
Fundy hikes his knees up to his chest, hugging his arms around them. When will it end? When will he finally be able to see something and reminisce and reflect without the memories burning and shattering and exploding in his mind? When will he finally have good memories, and just good ones? Good ones without any hint of ties, any conditions, any terms or strings attached?
He is so, so tired.
Footsteps sound next to him, and Fundy slowly lifted his head to see Kristin heading back towards him. “Glad to see you found your way here,” she says in lieu of a greeting, one hand held behind her back like she’s hiding something. “Feeling any better?”
“...A bit,” he acknowledges, not uncurling his body just yet. “What’re you hiding?”
Kristin laughs. “Ah, I thought I was being a bit more subtle than that. Oh well.” She brings her arm forward, and in her hand is a jacket. It’s gray with a dark orange hood and cream-colored cuffs on the sleeves. Longer than his original jacket but shorter than a trenchcoat, it reaches just past his thighs and just above his knees. Kristin holds it up by the shoulders, the back facing him, and Fundy can make out a scattering of patches across it: a proud-looking geometric-style fox, a white castle, a blooming daffodil in green grass. A tricorn hat, a crown of silver. A North Star. A wooden swing.
His throat feels choked up. “You… You made this?”
“Most of it, yes. But a handful of these–” Kristin gestures at the patches. “–were suggestions by some friends of yours. You’re not forgotten, Fundy. Don’t ever think you are.”
Fundy breathes out slowly, shakily. “How…?”
“I called in a favor from…well, let’s say a co-worker of mine that can influence dreams. He went to the people I suggested and, ah, adjusted their dreams, in a way. And what they thought of when they thought of you, in reduced to the simplest form of an image or a concept, created these.” Kristin holds the jacket out, and it takes a few seconds for it to click in Fundy’s mind that she’s handing it out to him .
“...Thank…Thank you,” he finally manages, voice caught up in the surprise of it all and the painfully strange yet achingly familiar feeling of warmth that fills his chest. Oh , he realizes, with the prick of tears in his eyes, this is happiness .
Kristin sets a hand on his shoulder. “I’m glad you like it.”
Fundy breathes out a slow, slow exhale as he feels himself settle back into himself. “I think it’s time for me to go back.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.” If there were sound effects, if someone was watching them or perhaps imagining this scene in their head, there would be some sort of freeze frame or record scratch as Kristin realizes how that sounds. But this is real life, and in the silence that follows it she scrambles to correct herself.
“Ah, what I meant, was, um– I wasn’t hoping you would leave, I’m glad you realized it yourself! Uh–”
Fundy snickers at that, smiling at her for real for the first time since they’ve met. “Don’t worry, I know you can’t wait to get rid of me,” he teases.
Kistin sighs dramatically, shaking her head with a fond laugh. “You know, you’re just like your father.”
And for once it doesn’t feel like an insult.
Her face sombers quickly, though. “Fundy… You know what you’re going back to, correct?”
He glances off to the side, letting the grassy field of flowers flood his vision. “...Yeah.” He swallows nervously, voice dropping until it’s barely a murmur. “Is it going to hurt?”
Kristin squeezes his shoulder, then once he looks back at her she begins to speak. “I honestly couldn’t tell you. I broke my own rules, Fundy. I tore through the fabric of space and time to bring you here. Whether I succeeded in preventing your death or not…that will, well. Remain to be seen.”
Fundy lifts his wrist, looks at the life tattoo that sits there innocently. His second heart is pure white, stark contrast to both the gray and the red on either side of it. Slowly, he lowers his sleeve. “I guess I’ll see, then.”
He stands, slipping off his old jacket stained with the blood, sweat, and tears of someone who never thought he would ever be anyone, and pulls on the new one crafted with love and care and belief .
“Thank you, Kristin.”
“Good luck, Fundy.”
The last thing he sees before the world fades to white is a warm smile and a waving hand.
EPILOGUE:
The first thing he sees when the world fades to color is blue sky, stretching far, far above with hardly a cloud to be seen. Fabric rustles and flaps near him, and as he slowly sits up Fundy looks to his left to see the L’Manburg flag blowing gently in the breeze.
There’s a dull ache in his chest, in his very bones, but he is alive to feel it and that is all that matters.
It takes some time, likely more than it should have, but Fundy eventually makes his way to the top of the crater that has been both his cradle and his grave. It’s a clear day above. It’s a good day above.
Fundy leaves the hole of L’Manburg behind along with the hole in his heart—not fixed, no, not repaired or scarred over, but on its path to healing.
(It will not be an easy process. He will still face those sleepless nights, those haunting thoughts. But he will take them in stride, he will allow himself to hope and to trust and to dream again, and he will forge his own happiness in this world so often void of it.)
*****
Sometimes the player dreamed it was lost in a story.
Sometimes the player dreamed it was other things, in other places. Sometimes these dreams were disturbing. Sometimes very beautiful indeed. Sometimes the player woke from one dream into another, then woke from that into a third.
*****
and sometimes the player believed the universe had spoken to it through the light that fell from the crisp night sky of winter, where a fleck of light in the corner of the player's eye might be a star a million times as massive as the sun, boiling its planets to plasma in order to be visible for a moment to the player, walking home at the far side of the universe, suddenly smelling food, almost at the familiar door, about to dream again
*****
and the universe said I love you
and the universe said you have played the game well
and the universe said everything you need is within you
and the universe said you are stronger than you know
*****
and the universe said you are not alone.