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solaneceae · 1 year ago

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my battery is low, and it's getting dark.

a codebreakers fanfic about étoiles losing his sight. read on Ao3

It starts off with light blurriness — the kind you get when you forget to remove your contacts before bed, dryness and irritation welcoming you back to the waking world. Étoiles doesn’t wear contacts, although he does don a pair of sturdy, cheap rectangular glasses on occasion, whenever reports have to be read or written in thin leather-bound books for the Résistance’s upper echelon.

(Upper echelon he’s never caught a whiff off, by the way. Étoiles understands the need for secrecy, for compartmentalization — but damn, it does get lonely here in headquarters, with nothing but his own voice and long-dried ink speaking of codes going rogue and islander alignments to entertain himself with.)

He blinks, once, twice, rubbing at his eyeballs through the skin of his lids. No amelioration. He shrugs it off, readjusts the straps of his slime armor. It’s a shit one, not even the good enchants on it. But he’s been restless lately, antsy. Not quite worried, but something else, something in the negative shape of a beloved, beret-wearing egg. Ants under his greenish skin, a fire only the cold bite of enemy blades and a close brush with Lady Death can fix.

He likes Kristin. She’s funny, with her large brimmed hat and gentle smile and gentler words still. Philza’s a lucky man.

“You are sad,” she would say, in the space-between-spaces he would drift to when downed, just before the ‘doom-doom’ of revival. The crimson bud of her smile would twist into a scowl, as she watched him give her a two-fingered salute. “Is that why I see you so often, starling?”

“I’m not sad,” he would answer without fail — the ache inside his chest wasn’t sadness. Étoiles didn’t do sad. He killed, he destroyed, his body grown in a weapon meant to hurt and maim and be hurt in return. Meant to be wielded by someone worthy. (He thinks of pitch-black feathers and a wheezy laugh, the tingle of wither-decay dancing on his skin, the smell of bone. Claws digging into his bony hips, a litany of trills speaking of ownership-claim, great shadows trapping him in so effectively. His knee guards stained by fresh soil where potatoes are endlessly grown in honor of a great warrior he once crossed blades with. Worship, devotion.)

“I’m not sad,” he mumbles, jumping down the well and into the darkness of the dungeon below. Hopefully it wouldn’t be a shit one, and he could scratch that itch in the back of his mind that demanded blood be spilled, be it his or otherwise. “Maybe I die for real today, let’s goooo.”

He never does. He’s too good at dungeoning, too good at placing blocks and throwing splash potions at his feet, golden apples now a rare last resort because he knows what happens when he eats too many. Aaaah, what a pity, he thinks, as he loses himself in the clash of metal on metal and the grunt of mobs falling at his feet. What a pity, I feel nothing. Bad day for me, bad day.

***

The blurriness stays. Days go by, sluggish and quiet, too quiet on this shit island, and no amount of sleep or healing potions make it any better. His arm stings with static-burn where the black and green binary tar has spread, higher, creeping up his neck. But it does nothing to hinder his movements, doesn’t dull the sharpness of his mind. So he ignores it. “Maybe you should get that checked out or something,” Foolish pokes at it once, as they sit and talk atop the Titan’s head using the blue and green plush chairs the TazerCraft have sneaked in. Pac e Mike, wow wow, sings a little voice in Étoiles’ mind whenever he sees splashes of blue and green, because those two live rent-free in everyone’s builds and brains.

“It’s okay,” he smiles at the shark-totem, easy and casual and Étoiles. “It doesn’t hurt.” It doesn’t. “It’s not changing me.” He is changing, that softness that Pomme had made bloom inside him eroding away with every day she’s gone. It’s harder to stay still, harder to stop and talk to the others, because half of them are depressed and the other half are going insane. But none of that is the code’s doing. “Look, I’ll prove it! 1v1 stick?” he jumps to his feet, throwing a wooden stick at his friend with a fiendish grin. “1v1, right now, let’s go.”

Foolish chuckles, even though his smile doesn’t reach his emerald-carved eyes. (His features are hazy, fuzziness getting worse every time Étoiles wakes. Doesn’t matter.)

They fight, Étoiles takes it home with six hearts to spare. And he still feels empty.

***

Lilacs. Sunflowers. Cornflowers. Poppies.

Flower biomes were Pomme’s favorites. They’re hard to find, but Étoiles is one patient, stubborn cucumber. “T’aurais adoré ça, légende,” he hums, picking another poppy by the stem and stuffing it into his inventory, the frozen subspace keeping it suspended in time and fresh. He can almost hear the pitter-patter of her little cheeto legs in the grass, the rustle of the blades against her shell. The bomp of a red sign being placed, asking for more red, more blue, more of every color to make her siblings flower crowns and dye her trusty scythe like a rainbow.

He can barely make out their shape anymore, only differentiating roses from poppies by tracing their petals with gold-scarred fingers. He sees a blue blur somewhere at his right, oh, cornflower probably. Her secret code.

He lets out a deep, guttural groan and lets his body fall backwards, hitting the plush grass with a thump. A few butterflies flutter out of the way, one of them settling back on the bridge of the warrior’s nose. He glares at it, faded golden stars comically crossed. He only sees the yellow of its wings, stark against sky blue. “Hey, hey. Tu vas rien trouver ici, tu sais. J’ai pas fleuri depuis des plombes.”

The critter’s wings flap once, unbothered. Étoiles blows on it to make it go away, fails. (He’s a failure, at everything. Fails to keep his kid safe, fails to win a 1v1 against an insect.) Soon enough, there is enough butterflies on him to pin him to the ground under the would-be guilt of disturbing them. Étoiles whines, childish and unserious. “Vas-y, j’peux plus bouger. Pas juste. Même la nature me déteste, c’est bon.”

He’s missed this. The warmth of a sunbeam, the scent of fertile soil, the brush of grass blades, the call of the earth below pulling at him. Part of him wants to sink into it, curl up in Her embrace like a child would in their mother’s womb, forget about the world and the Federation and the Codes and all this shit. Maybe he could fall asleep right here. Let his body soak up the sun, let himself bloom again. Let that softness grow out of his skin for all to see, like he used to. Or, he thinks he used to. The memories of Before are static-fuzz between his ears, unreachable unless he looks at them at the corner of his eye, so to speak.

(The freezing cold, then heat as air exploded around him, an impact. Physicality, sudden and unexpected, the song of the stars loud in his ears as he opened his eyes for the first time in front of a bewildered human in a frayed straw hat. He was happy, wasn’t it? He thinks he used to be happy. What happened?)

But Étoiles is a warrior, a weapon, and weapons dull and rust and grow weak if left to rest. So he takes a deep breath, pushes himself up. “Désolé,” he hums to the butterflies as they scatter away. They are but bright, colorful blobs in his dulling eyes. “Désolé,” he says as he warps back home to forge yet another axe.

His inventory is full of flowers that he’ll forget about, wrapping him in a constant mix of herbal scents that has Cellbit recoiling next time they cross paths. Étoiles doesn’t notice it, the Brazilian’s bothered expression lost on his rapidly-decaying vision.

***

By the time the Code challenges him to what Étoiles knows will be their last duel for the foreseeable future, his sight is all but gone, everyone and their dog has taken notice, and he has brushed off their concern. “I don’t need to see to click good,” he boasts, slamming down deepslate to launch himself fast and run circles around a disgruntled Pac. “See, see! I’m strafing, I’m doing it, playing the game.” Pac makes a strange sound, one he struggles to guess the emotion behind without body language. “It’s okay, Pac. It’s easy. There’s no problem, at all.”

Phil isn’t here yet, can’t see any names on his comlink but Tubbo told him he wasn’t. Shame, shame he won’t be there to see him die, Étoiles thinks as the rain soaks through his shirt, the boom of lightning bothering him more than he lets show. His ears are ringing as he jumps, ducks, tugs at the string of his bow and sends an arrow flying where he knows the Code is, he can feel it, the only spot that doesn’t smell like anything but void. But there’s no feedback, no satisfying sound of health being chipped at, nothing.

This Code is too strong, his sword winging an off-tune melody as it goes through the binary without ripping or tearing. No damage. Ah, he thinks, so they have finally stopped playing. I see now.

The back of his chestplate shatters into a blast of broken enchant magic and diamond shards, some of them lodging themselves into his flesh. Something cold sinks between his ribs, brushing against his spine in a white-hot flash of pain that irradiates through his whole body, and oh, yeah, it’s over. It’s joever, as Tubbo would say. “GGs,” he gasps through a mouthful of dark green blood. He coughs it up, lets it splash down his neck and paint his shirt. Tubbo’s screaming somewhere, too far away for Étoiles to discern the words. “You- eugh, you slash-kill’ed me, good job you cheater. Easy win.”

The entity growls, a hum-buzz that makes his brain (or whatever he has for brains, maybe lettuce?) rattle inside his skull. The blade slides out, cutting away at him further on its way out, and his body falls into a puddle of rainwater and mud with a wet thud. It hurts, blackered arm buzzing, pain creeping up his neck and the right side of his face, extinguishing the last of his remaining sight.

He faintly realises that almost nobody knows about his respaw mechanic. Ah, et merde. He hopes they’ll have the presence of mind to ask Antoine, when they realise he wouldn’t just re-pop into existence seconds after his death… or when they noticed his body starting to wilt and decay, if they stuck around for long enough.

(Tallulah knows, he remembers. He told her. But had she told Philza, before she disappeared along with all the other eggs?)

Through his fading senses, his comm buzzes with what he knows is his first death message in a really long time. He can make out the sound of rapid footsteps, clickety hooves and heavy, leather work boots. Tubbo and Pierre. He closes his eyes, not that he needs to anymore for darkness to cradle him. He lets go.

He doesn’t see Kristin this time, only hears a faint sigh and a gentle breath sending him off into the void. He hopes they find his seed soon. He doesn’t wanna stay missing for too long, after all.

***

His personal death-void is not so bad of a place. Boring, obviously, but there’s a familiarity to it, to the way the darkness shrouds him like a heavy blanket, pushing against him from all sides. Not oppressive but comforting. Cradling, instead of crushing.

It reminds him of the dirt patch he was born in — he had been asleep and new, just ripe for the picking, dirt-stained hands pulling at his stem with the roughness of a long-repeated gesture. He had screamed, he thinks, not in pain, but to show the world he was here and alive, hello, hello sun, hello dirt, hello person! Had given poor old Théo a heart attack too.

Ah. He could remember, now. Théo, his leathered face and kind eyes with crow feet, wary at first before this walking, talking little legume with the night sky in his eyes, flower-covered vine-tail like some sort of umbilical cord trailing behind him as he follows the old farmer around, asking him endless questions in barely-legible French. But… yes, he’d been kind to him, Étoiles thinks. The first face his face saw. Makes sense it would be one of the first things that came back to him. Maybe remembering was easier in the void? Maybe he should die more often.

…Nah. Dying wasn’t his style. And having to regrow a whole new body over a week was annoying. He had things to do in the island! Like talking with people (eurgh), and giving them things (yes) and fighting with Philza (yes! yes! yes!) and have fun!

So he waits, oblivion pulling at him like gravity. The void is a quiet place, sometimes, but more often it’s not, with the song of supernovas and wailing stars far away keeping him aware, listening. He hums along to it with no mouth or vocal chords (not yet, still growing, still so small, unripe), and sometimes he swears he can hear another voice singing with him. Off-key, awful really, almost crow-like, but it sounds like someone he cares about, so he’s happy to listen to its drone.

Other times, he sleeps. And he dreams of tiny hands and quiet chirps and clicks, of the yesyes uncle Phil taught her, of the chrr-chrr-peep that means him, when she calls Étoiles’ name in her own little language. And he curls around the memory, softness, and lets it carry him up into the stars glittering behind still-forming eyelids.

***

“Étoiles.”

He hums — warmth, the slow beating heart of the earth. The choir of stars constantly burning far, far away. He could listen to it forever, because he had been listening to it since the birth of the first star, he knew.

“Mate. You with me? C’mon, s’been a week already. Come up here, you can do it.”

The voice scratches pleasantly at the back of his brain. But the earth is so warm, so comfy, a cocoon of peace and respite he’s not sure he wants to leave. He sighs with no lungs to breathe, no need for them, when all he could ever need is right there — perfect temp, perfect moisture, glucose, carbon dioxide, rich nutrients all around. Who needs gapples, really. Or thoughts. Or responsibilities. This is the best.

“...Mh. Alright then.”

The voice grates on his ears, ears that try to flick but are stopped by the soil packed around them. He groans in drowsy irritation, curls in on himself in an attempt to shield himself from it and from the world. It seems to work, the noises fading into nothing, and Étoiles feels his thoughts scatter as a faint scratching sound seeps through the earth and into his mind like white noise. Sleep pulls at him again, and he lets it.

He’s startled back into wakefulness by something pulling harshly, somewhere that feels a bit away but is still part of him. His eyes fly open in pained surprise because ow, ow, that’s my— “Come here, you lazy fuck!” That voice — high-pitched, that heavy accent he’s come to love, amusement and exasperation combined, Phil, his Phil, his GOAT, his brother in arms, his Death-touched angel.

Étoiles blinks, unseeing. Étoiles remembers. And with awareness comes something else, something that shimmers and calls his name in gentle whisper-echoes, as he feels himself being pulled up, and up, dirt parting to let him ascend back to the surface. Aah. Goodbye mama. Hello problems. “Get harvested, idiot!” Philza Minecraft grunts with effort somewhere above him, and the tug gets stronger, prompting a pained ow out of him as the ground crackles and breaks above him, and he feels air-sun-outside on his back as he’s forcefully pulled from the ground like the fresh crop he is. He flails a little bit, kicking off dirt and soil (it’s everywhere, in his hair and between his toes and a little in his mouth and nose, bleh!), then rolls onto his back with a groan, frowning up at the sky he knows is there, blue and clear, because it doesn’t smell like rain and the surface soil is dry and warm.

He’s back. And he sees nothing at all. Welp, better close his eyes again then. He feels a shadow fall on him, feels a sandaled foot nudge his side. “Helloooooo. Hello Phil,” he greets the other leaning hard on the deadpan because he knows it makes his friend laugh when he does that. It lands. “What, that’s it?” the elytrian caws, kneeling beside him and poking at his face, talons dulled to a gentle roundness. Étoiles wishes he didn’t trim them, but Phil is too nice, too careful, too eager to smooth himself down for others, for the eggs. Docile.

Étoiles despises it, but he keeps quiet because he knows Phil doesn’t like to talk about those things. “You get yourself killed by a fucking Code of all things,” Phil keeps going, “make everyone freak the fuck out because you won’t respawn like a normal fucking person, and that’s all you have to say for yourself?”

“Antoine knows. And I’m here now, so it’s okay.”

“Antoine barely logs on, you absolute dumbass. You’re lucky Lullah told me about the seed thing, because you would’ve been fucked six ways to Sunday.”

He opens his eyes, if only to shoot Phil a halfhearted glare. And then immediately forgets about it, blinks owlishly. Sits up to get closer to the other man. “Phil. Why are you stars?”

“What.”

He sees stars. (And not in the sex way, because he doesn't do that.) It’s not night, but there are stars in his vision, where pitch blackness used to be, and the constellation is Phil-shaped.

Philza is a cosmic cluster, a nebula shining bright in the darkness that has become his world. He can see nothing beyond him, not the plants surrounding him, not the long vine attached to his lower back Phil used to pull him out. He can tell it’s there, though, lightly thumping at the ground in agitation. “You, are stars. That’s how I see you now.”

“Wait. Can you, like, see again?” Phil asks, uncharacteristically soft. “I know it was getting… bad. And your eyes are like, all greyed out. Did the code stuff on your arm do that?” Étoiles sees a cluster of stars approaching his face — hand — and feels fingers brushing just under his right eye. He’s a bit startled by the contact, the area usually covered by his trust bandana (he needs it back, needs his stuff back, hopefully someone held onto it for him). Phil draws away, an apology ready from the way his constellation-body shifts, but Étoiles doesn’t let him. “I can’t,” he answers, tilting his head, ear flicking in focus — the stars that make up Phil sharpen, and he can almost make out the shape of the wings bound behind his back. “But I can See. I think.” He also wouldn’t mind Phil’s hand on his face again. It feels nice. Scratches at something long-buried, and denied.

Philza makes a confused sound. “Okay, I heard that capital S there. What’s that mean? Are you pulling a Daredevil?”

Étoiles grins, sharp-toothed and playful. “Oh, oh! He thinks I’m a superhero? He thinks I’m cool, Felipe Minecraft? Big win for me.” Phil rolls his eyes, which Étoiles can tell because the crow always makes that low warble when he does. “But no, it’s not like that. I still need my eyes to see like this, and I don’t hear or smell better than before.” Although his status as a hybrid means his baseline is still higher than the average person’s, but that’s irrelevant. “FF.”

“So no cool blindfold for you, ey?”

“No cool blindfold. I will just do a Pomme and drown myself later, to make up for how uncool I am.” (He cannot drown. No lungs. But he can pretend.)

He squints. There’s a little cluster, right there at the side of Phil’s head. He can connect the dots, identify the shape of the elytrian’s bucket hat, but there’s something else there too. “What’s that on your head, Phil? I can’t make it out well.”

“Oh— here,” the other takes his hand and guides it towards his hair, and Étoiles feels a familiar texture under his pads. He makes a noise of surprise. “That’s. Mine.”

“Do you want it back?” Phil hums, brushing at the large cucumber flower tucked in the band of his hat. “It bloomed this morning, on top of the plant you were growing under. Took it as a sign you were, uh, done cooking.” Étoiles snorts. Good guess. “But uh, I guess the plant was also you, cuz it’s at the end of your tail now. Dragging.” Ah. Yeah. He really ought to cut it. “Is it weird? That I’m wearing a piece of you? I don’t know what… fuckin’... cucumber etiquette is.”

“It’s not weird,” Étoiles says, because he doesn’t think it is. “You can keep it.” He kind of likes it. That Phil’s wearing a piece of him. It makes him, happy? “You know, that I am your weapon. Yes? So it makes sense, that you show it.”

“You’re my friend. Don’t call yourself a weapon, man.”

“Same thing for me.”

Phil’s response is wordless, a simple, noncommittal mmh. But Étoiles can hear the hidden fondness in it. He pushes a little further, crudely imitates that one bird sound Philza makes when he’s happy. Whoops internally when Phil puffs out his feathers and trills out a yesyes in return. Héhé. “Yes yes, Philza? Fight me, right now?” he slips into his usual stance, just a bit offset by the lack of armor weighing him down. “1v1, no weapons, no armor? Fistfight, let’s go.”

Phil cackles, crow-like. “I am not fighting you right now, you little shit. You menace. What’s wrong with you?”

“Aww, Phil hates me,” the warrior whines. “He hates me. He won’t 1v1 me, he must hate me. Sad.”

“Oh my god, stop being a baby.”

“I was literally born five minutes ago. I am baby, and Felipe Minecraft hates me,” he sasses back, and Phil throws his arms towards the sky in exasperation. “Oh come on. I spent a week protecting your green ass! Making sure you got enough sun and water and shit, it was like doing egg tasks all over again. Antoine even talked me into fucking singing, pretty sure he was pranking me with that one by the way, and still you think I hate you?”

“Nice caulk, Phil.”

He can’t see it, but Étoiles knows Phil’s eyelid is twitching. “Mate. I got a faceful of ass pulling you out of here, you’re on thin fucking ice.”

The cucumber snorts. “Héhé, got mooned by the stars.” That was kinda funny. “You were pulling me by the tail, I do not know what you expected. You’re lucky I’m a plant, or there would have been full cock and balls there.”

“Bruh. I thought it would be connected to your… plant belly button, or whatever, like an umbilical cord.”

“It’s an ass button, GGs.”

“Jesus Christ, please don’t call it that. I didn’t even know you had a tail. You didn’t before.”

“That’s because I always cut it,” the warrior huffs, said tail lashing behind him from the restless energy that always accompanies a new body. Its leaves drag around the loose dirt in little swish-y sounds. “Give me a sword, Phil, it’s already annoying me.”

The crow peers down at the vine, then back at him. “I dunno, man. You look kinda fun with it.” Étoiles squints. He can’t quite make out Phil’s expression like this, all stars and nothing between them, but he can hear the hidden laughter in his voice. “...I will cut it with my teeth then.”

“Won’t that hurt more than with a blade?”

“It doesn’t hurt. Only the base. Like when you pulled on it.”

“Why not keep it? It’s a part of you.”

Because it speaks for me, he considers replying. Because it says and shows things that I don’t want people to see. Even now, it wags, because Phil is here and now brushing stray dirt out of his hair and it’s very nice. (Is he touch-starved? He might be. Pomme is gone, and he doesn’t trust people to touch him, other than with blunt force and sharp diamond blades.) But Étoiles hasn’t kept his tail since he was a child, still wide-eyed and showing his innermost self to the whole world without any shield. He feels weird. Exposed. And it’s okay with Phil, because Phil is Phil, but it’s not okay because they’re out in the open and anyone could come and see. He doesn’t like that. “Because people can grab it, and it gets stuck in things, and it’s annoying. I cut it, now.” He tugs at the appendage, bringing it up to his mouth. “Nope,” Phil snatches it away, and Étoiles hisses at him. “Calm down, dude. At least let’s do it cleanly.”

“Eeeeuugh. Okay.”

”Then we’re getting your stuff back from Antoine’s, good god. You’re still butt-naked and I won’t have you strut around like that.”

“He has my things? Comms, armor, my backpacks?”

“All of it, yeah,” the older man huffs, and Étoiles can hear the telltale sound of an item being summoned of an inventory. Enchanted axe, he parses, recognizing the ozone-y smell of the sharpness enchant and the sound of the air being sliced downward. He doesn’t feel anything when the vine is severed, frowns when he realises Phil left a good… fifty centimeters of it, still attached to his body. “Phil. You misclick? You aim like shit today?”

“You said it hurts near the base,” the elytrian huffs, finality lacing his every word. “Keep it or cut the rest later, your pick, but I’m not hurting you.”

Étoiles’ ear flicks in confusion, and so does his tail. It moves faster, easier now without the rest of the plant weighing it down. “...We fight each other all the time, that hurts more. I don’t care.”

Phil stays silent for a few seconds. Nebula-Phil shifts before him. “It’s. Different.”

Étoiles hums. Philza has the Tone™ again, the one that means he’s thinking of things that hurt. He thinks of clipped feathers, of matted down that he wishes he could run his fingers through and fix, fix, let me fix it, let me do this for you. But he says nothing. Maybe another time, when they’re both ready for that conversation. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Maybe I keep it this time. Maybe.”

He can hear Phil’s smile in the next word he speaks. “Attaboy.” And he tries to ignore the way his tail wags with renewed enthusiasm at that.

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