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In all the worlds they’ve been brought to, of all the seasons they’ve done, questions have always been a constant.
The landscape seemed eerily infinite; they still didn’t know what the villagers actually were or how they’d gotten here in the first place; whether or not they failed, a select few of them always came back, the regulars, while the others seemed to fall away with the world, sometimes never to be seen again. The wizard was an enigma. There was so much they didn't understand, an all-consuming sense of confusion, desperation.
Answers are not always a constant, and Jeff finds questions without answers are far less a comfort than they are nerve-wracking, something to fear. Monsters and creatures of the night were one thing—he could handle monsters, defend and hide away from them. No blade in the world would allow him safety from the uncertainties of his own head.
It’s not so bad when there are people to distract him from it, but he’s alone so often now. And he’s been the sole survivor for a couple seasons in a row—he doesn’t know how he keeps doing it, but it’s getting to him, and it’s so quiet. Everywhere he goes, there’s ambient silence, nothingness. The house is empty. He faces winning by himself again when he knows he has no chance, no semblance of it even.
He lost Austin to a creeper again. It was always a creeper, somehow, like the entire species had some violent grudge towards the two of them. It might even be funny if it weren’t so soul-crushing, so disheartening—and y’know, traumatizing. Seeing your best friend die in front of you in horrifically gruesome fashion isn’t an amazing experience, especially more than once, but...
Fuck. They had a chance for a second there. They really did, but then...
God, this just keeps happening, doesn’t it? He wonders, he wonders, he wonders. Jeff wonders just how many more times he must see Austin’s remains splattered against the cobble, staining the grass, tools scattered and broken at their hilts. How many times would Austin’s name die on his lips before his body even hit the ground? Would he be alone by the end with nothing, no one, a sickening sense of hopelessness and despair twisting in his gut over and over again forever? How many sets of tombstones and graves he’ll dig out in the backyard before he won’t have to anymore, how many times would he fail them all?
It feels like it’s been millennia of this—more than that, even. Maybe it has been. Not like he’d know. Past day and night cycles, time isn’t really a thing.
Of all the regulars, pieces of Austin’s body make it to his grave the least. Jeff tries to give him the best burial he can manage every single time—it’s the least he deserves, the least Jeff can give Austin for all of his failures and mistakes—but his latest deaths haven’t been kind. Creepers rarely left the prettiest of pictures in their wake.
Out of respect for his fallen friends, he buries picks and swords in place of carcasses, never able to stomach scrounging through the messes of blood and shattered gear for anything else to take in memoriam. Not like he ever had much time to, anyway; he only ever had a few minutes at most to grab what he could before the corpses rot and the equipment he doesn’t bring with him disintegrates into thin air.
He swallows with his hands covered in sparkling red and torn-up, decomposing flesh, the glint of coated diamonds. Care is put into slipping fractured equipment into his own bag, his shaking fingers adding an extra level of difficulty to the act, but he’s well-practiced. The sight and the smell of rot is almost natural to him now, a concept he continues to find abhorrent, but he gets the job done. He looks no one in the eyes, but he takes special precautions to ensure he doesn’t look into Austin’s. He doesn’t understand why he does it, why Austin is seemingly so different to everyone else, but it feels right. As right as it could feel, anyway. Not much right in their situation to begin with.
But he wonders about it, like he always does, even though it doesn’t aid him in his quest at all. It’s a distraction, if anything, but he can’t stop thinking about it.
Like Austin always does, always will, he continues to occupy Jeff’s every thought.
Maybe it’s how frequently it’s Austin who’s bloodied and broken in front of him, the striking contrast of it. One second he’s energized and sporadic and alive, the next he’s lifeless and decaying in the grass. The pull of his lips that’s always just the slightest bit off-kilter, the way his eyes crinkle when he laughs and the ever-ruffled state of his hair, is that what it is? The honest-to-god, earnest hope being with Austin seems to give him, even when things seem hopeless, even when they are, is that why?
Sometimes it feels like he sees Austin dead more than he does alive, the smiles and the laughter and limited time they get together before each inevitable blow leaving him hollow but aching. It never doesn’t hurt, no matter how hard he tries to prepare himself for it, refuse himself the belief that maybe this time will be different, maybe things’ll change if he just believes they will.
They don’t. Jeff curses and screams at himself every single time he—if only for the split second he has before Austin’s gone again, torn straight from his grasp as the universe mocks him—almost thinks they might. It’s all a matter of when isn’t it? Regardless of if it is or not, it sure fucking feels like it. Like a sick game of chance. A game above all else, all of it nothing but entertainment to someone. He doesn’t know who that someone is, but it sure as hell isn’t him. And just like that, it’s all gone, Austin’s gone, and that feeble sliver of hope is gone, and he feels like an idiot for ever believing it meant something.
Austin stains his armor as he goes this time, its pale white surface becoming covered in a thin, clumpy layer of crimson. Jeff turns around just as the explosion happens, just in time to make horrified but knowing eye-contact and pull his shield up.
Drops of it hit his face somehow, even past his barrier. He spends the next few days trying to clean it off, scratch it off, but there’re marks and soiled spots on his skin that won’t go away no matter how hard he tries, no matter how invisible they appear, he knows they're there. He shuts his eyes and kneels in the sand for hours everyday with shaking, heaving breaths, nails scrubbing and pressing it raw. The salt-water burns like nether-fire—it hurts, God does it, but it isn’t until the sun falls beneath the horizon that he can pry himself away from the pool, drag himself to sleep so he can come back to the sea again.
Jeff tries to give Austin a good burial. He tries to give him a send-off speech, too, something he hasn’t done in a while, but he can’t get through his train of thought without breaking. All he kept this time was a diamond sword, the only thing of value in good-enough condition to move. With his sleeves rolled up and hair falling in his eyes, he sits on his knees in front of the open grave, leaning over it and setting the blade down gently into its damp tan encasing; his shoulders tremble as he barely holds it together, chest aching with uneasy, ocean-flavored breath. The waves audibly crash against the bay and the wind is cool against his skin, prickling. It's cold, freezing, but he doesn't want to move; he stares at the dirtied sword for one second, two, more.
He closes his eyes and, at least for now, lets himself rest.