#esmp s2 au

[asterssunzephyr]

done anyone want a full esmp s2 Sun Duo (Jimmy & Gem) timeline

[appleeye07]

Patched up AU

Empires SMP s2 AUs have taken my soul and corrupted it with nothing but AUs so have this that I made at like- 1AM

Bare with me this is gonna be a bit confusing

I will be referring to s1 jimmy strictly as the codfather and S2 Jimmy as the Sheriff as to stop confusion on which season I am talking about

Before the Codfather had left the swamp empire forever, he thought about everything he was leaving behind, and than his sister, they had forgotten all their memories when separated from water based areas for long periods of times. As much as The Codfather wished to forget everything he ever did wrong, he couldnt let himself forget his friends, his family, his…lover. More than that, he wouldn’t let himself forgive himself by forgetting everything. Before he left the swamp, before he left everything. He made a doll of himself, infused with smile instead of stuffing, and used the little magic knowledge he had over heard from Lizzie about the properties of their memories and of her time at Gems school. Satisfied with his “doll” he tested it before leaving “Hello, what if your story?” The doll stat up, slime leaking out from the sides, eyes lit ip bright green as it answered, telling The Codfathers story. Satisfied, the Cod father left the doll and left, his memories left behind.

The sheriff has always made sure to stay in tip top shape, and never gotten into that serious of danger, only scrapping himself a couple of times on the rocks but never drawing blood, that was until he had, but he hadnt really had he? Because what was found seeping out of the new wound wasnt watery and red, but thick and green.

[appleblocks]

While writing chapter 3 I've had the oportunity to describe Yellow Life Hermes's appearance change, and I could not wait to draw it <333 Look at my boy!!!!! <3333

[mcytscienceside]

It hit so suddenly, and without warning, an infection that ravaged the minds of people; Turning them into twisted versions of themselves. They will not listen, they only want to hurt, and with all morals gone the players of the server have split between the infected looking to cause as much harm as possible and the survivors attempting to locate a cure. It is unknown how the infection started, only that it's here now, and the small group of survivors up in Stratos attempt to figure out some sort of cure with their limited communication with an equally infected Hermitcraft. ---- Woowww! okay these took a while!! Been discussing with @gearstorm an infection au for Empires and Hermitcraft; This infection mostly effects the mind, making the infected incredibly hostile and aggressive, looking to hurt anyone just for the fun of it. This is the Empires team! Led by Joel and continuing to survive as they communicate with the survivors of Hermitcraft in hopes of finding a cure for all of their friends. (And just to say anything over 2.5 level infection is too late to turn back, everyone is technically infected in their code already, but it only becomes dangerous after level 2. :D )

[10piecechickenmcnugget]

redid my designs for my empires superhero au cause the old ones sucked ❤️

[sawasourjuice]

You're gonna get sick, you don't know when-

I never doubt it, at 4 a.m!

[kiwibirbkat]

My idea for esmp2 highschool!

The highschool is for magic and anything associated with it. Witches, creatures, gods, all are welcome here.

The world has no overall authority and is full of tons of different kingdoms. The biggest authority is actually the school they all go to

Shubble:

A witch (obviously)

Went to the Academy for elementary and middle school

All witches are sent out to the regular world to test their competence and responsibility before they return to the Academy for college and getting their magic license

Shubble currently has what is essentially a magic learners permit (they can do small spells and potions, NO MAJOR SPELLS)

Academy provides them with a small fund for housing (and, for the first month, food (you are expected to either grow/conjure your own food or get a job to buy your own after the first month))

Stayed in a very small room in one of Dawn's taverns so she could afford to buy food with the fund at first, goes and builds her hut in the mangrove forest after they were kicked out of the Academy because she can't afford to stay in the tavern and can't be tracked (nobody but Shubble has gone into the mangrove and come back out again, so she's left mostly alone)

She is stressed af because they still made the villagers and now has to deal with getting kicked from the Academy, being a high schooler, AND taking care of the villagers

The Academy actually doesn't give a shit, Shubble is just incredibly paranoid and ran away after the first few letters reminding them to come back

And of course! Tortoise is their familiar still

Joel:

Still a god

Was raised by Saint Pearl but she kicked him out for being an annoying teen

Literally just 16

Still lives in one of his temples and is taken care of by the villagers that worship him

Has access to basically everything he did before (Pearl isn't cruel, she just got tired of his whining)

6'11 and still growing

WANTS a beard, it simply WILL NOT GROW!

Lizzy:

Was someone's familiar at the Academy before getting hit by a spell gone wrong (was supposed to temporarily turn her human, it ended up permanently turning her into an anthropomorphic cat)

Literally just has a box on her head with her humansona glued to it and eye holes cut out

Lives in her own house outside of any of the kingdoms jurisdiction because not many people like to settle next to the smog of Gobland so it is quite literally free real estate

Was going to start Animalia but she couldn't get the spell that happened to her to happen again

Does not have Ariana Goate, she is her own celebrity with no affiliation to this random high schooler

Sausage:

His king has not turned evil yet!

Just lives the life he lived in the flashback but goes to highschool

Is only at the school because he can talk to animals

Also, he still has a beard! Joel, the god, only has a stubble, but this man just has a full beard because Eddie is a rabbit man and didn't teach him to shave

Katherine:

A princess! Her parents are really strict, monster hunting is her rebellion

Swears she shouldn't be at the school, because she's not magic in any way!

Cursed.

Really really buff but hides it with flowy sleeves and long skirts on her dress

Lives in the kingdom she did before she started GlimmerGlove (obviously, it's her parents kingdom)

Joey:

After their ship got attacked, he washed up

Seeing him screeching about a living skeleton, he was thrown into the school for technically having an association with magic

Due to a combination of never having education, ADHD, dyslexia, and dyscalculia (and generally not caring), he is very much struggling in school

Katherine was assigned to tutor him for being an all A student

He saw her roll up her sleeves one time and got a crush

Not "piratesexual" just pan with an attraction to strength and power

Lives on the ship that he built himself

Gem and fWhip:

Still twins, Gem just got really lucky with her genes

Both part human and part goblin

Gem is slightly shorter than average with a very light green tint to her skin, slightly bigger canines, and pointier ears

FWhip is literally just a little taller then the average goblin with slightly softer ears

FWhip lives with his mom (the queen of Gobland) and Gem lives with her dad (the king of Dawn)

Their birth finally lowered tension between Gobland and Dawn! They were only born because they had been at war before their parents got married at 18, which technically stopped the war, but the people of Dawn and Gobland were still very aggressive and tense before the twins birth

False:

Amnesiac still

Lives in the forest that she randomly woke up in one day?

Built her own house and decided to start mining iron to build machines

Some type of hybrid, but got her wings ripped off somehow, so they don't know what type

Pix:

A phantom hybrid

Lives with his parents technically, but they aren't home often

Still obsessed with history

Jimmy:

A toy that magically came to life!

A sheriff

Has Tumble Town because nobody wanted to live in the Mesa

He's the only one in Tumble Town other than his cat and his horse

Only the law in this land, he just ignores that.

Scott:

Has no parents

Adventured for most of his life before finally settling down

Technically has Chromia but all of his "citizens" are llamas

He just wanted an excuse to build cute buildings and gardens

His great great great great (lots of greats) ancestors were elves, which is why he's in the school (that and his magic eye

Oli:

From another universe

Climbed into the heavens for a dare because he got really reckless after his close friend died

Got bored immediately and jumped down

Just a normal guy. Only in the school because he literally fell from the sky

Never got arrested by fWhip

Homeless outside of his tent. Insists it's a kingdom called the Olipeligo

The other empires (concerned) keep offering to buy him a house or something but he insists he's fine in the Olipeligo

Hermes is Joel's childhood toy that came to life somehow after he got kicked out. He just got attached to Sausage, so now Joel and Sausage are teen dads that co-parent him

[snaky1ello]

Siren au my love. (Or pirate au)

Btw something I forgot to mention is that in this au, Xornoths Fake name is Marlon. They made it, in case anyone did in fact remember he could play it off as “you have the wrong person”. And stuff like that lol.

Idk who he is glaring in this lmao

I love this auuuuuuuuuuuuu

So much

[solidaritygaming-fanblog]

As we know, Xornoth is a demon from Empires S1. He likely has some form of anger issues and therefore would be ready to fight god at any given moment. He's an absolutely unhinged creature. And as we know, Sheriff Jimmy has issues with one god in particular. He's also kinda pathetic, which is relevant somehow, I'm sure! And that's where the main idea came from! They would both attempt to fight god if given a chance! Now, I've got two versions of this. I'll be listing a summary of both below. (Stars I hope asks don't have word limits)

V1- The same Xornoth from Empires S1 somehow gets sent to Empires S2 via magic or whatever!

• Jimmy is doing a regular survey of the area, because he's the Sheriff, and that's probably what a sheriff would be doing.

• As he's doing this, he finds a random person unconscious in the sand and covered in their own blood (Why are they covered in their own blood? I don't know, it just seems in-character)

• He investigates because again, he's the Sheriff, and he probably brings them back to Tumble Town to make sure they don't die

• (I'll be honest, this one kinda has a few plot holes. Let's just skip to the more interesting parts)

• While Xornoth is recovering from whatever the hell happened to him, he only tries to fight Jimmy once, so Jimmy makes him some soup or something

• Xornoth is also scared of the cats around Tumble Town, so... there's that

• Eventually Xornoth finds out that Jimmy is being bullied by a god and violence against Joel likely occurs. Not that Jimmy's gonna find out about that, of course, because Xornoth probably blackmails Joel into not saying anything

• (Also eventually, Jimmy somehow gets Xornoth to start helping him with chores and stuff, and they become best friends! And everyone else starts being nicer to Jimmy! Crazy coincidence, huh?)

V2- This Xornoth is actually from Empires S2! He's Scott's older brother who likes exploring the nether, and very rarely actually leaves the nether, because he thinks the plants are cool.

• So if this Xornoth doesn't leave the nether, how does he meet Jimmy? Well, obviously, Scott invites him to the festival!

• (Xornoth tells Scott that he's not going to show up, but then he changes his mind last minute, and jumps out of a tree to scare him at the entrance)

• Jimmy and Joel are arguing about the Sheriff plushies when Xornoth meets them

• Long story short, Xornoth sees a tall god yelling at a kinda pathetic looking small man, and decides to fight said god!

• Jimmy obviously doesn't let a full fight happen, but Xornoth gets Joel to leave and they introduce themselves to eachother and all that :)

• Eventually they become friends! And this Xornoth would probably try and teach Jimmy how to use weapons and how to defend himself and stuff!

Additional details:

• Jimmy does recognize Xornoth, but he doesn't know where he's seen him before, and doesn't really bring it up much

• In the first version, Xornoth is taller than Joel. In the second, he's a bit shorter.

• I've got more on what Xornoth would do at the festival, but seeing as your interest revolves around Jimmy, I won't bother you with that!

There's a chance I have more to add onto this, but I'm tired and may have forgotten. So if I remember anything that involves Jimmy, I may share that with you if that's alright! :]

OH WAIT THIS IS COOL!!!!! Please I'd LOVE to hear more about Xornoth in either of these versions because I need to learn more about him in general (I watched lizzies esmp1 and saw him just once and was VERY confused). Gwahhh I love when characters are protective <3<3<3

[ordinaryartistt]

guess the crystals did sap all the color out

hey yo hey! sorry for not being as active as before just shifted interest that's all.

anyway, here's a little ref for mirror! Scott if interested:

[asterssunzephyr]

EPIC: The Musical empires season2 au but no one specifically is Odysessus/Poseidon/Circe/etc etc

but at the same time I did make the au sorta Joey-Centric but its NOT Joey centric at the same time and I present you with:

Just A Man lyrics with who I believes fits in the AU

"But, when does a comet become a meteor?" (ep1 s2 Sausage -> s2 end season Sausage)

"When does a candle become a blaze?" (s2 ep1 Gem -> s2 end season Gem)

"When does a man become a monster?" (s2 ep1 Fwhip -> s2 late season/obsessive arc Fwhip)

"When, does a ripple become a tidal wave?" (s2 ep1 Shelby -> s2 corruption arc Shelby)

"When does the reason become the blame?" (s2 ep1 Jimmy -> s2 late season Jimmy)

"When does a man become a monster?" (pre s2 Kat -> s2 ep1 Kat (being blamed for the curse her whole life)

[thetomorrowshow]

Whumptober 4 - Hallucinations

title: marked

fandom: empires smp

this is an alt pov of my fic hubris killed the god! i recommend reading it first

cw: blood, hallucinations, implied/referenced character death

~

Jimmy doesn't say a word when he feels something almost fuzzy brush against his wrist.

He just finishes drawing his chalk arrow and keeps going.

Pix isn't here. He's still clinging to a little shred of hope, the only thing that's stopping him from pulling the entire group out right now, the only thing keeping him from telling them he was touched.

If Pix was here, it all would have been worth it.

But Pix isn't here.

And the further they get, the clearer it is.

But there are plenty of those varmints around, and one of them appears out of nowhere to scare them, so Jimmy turns and makes a break for it, calling for them all to follow him.

He can't bear to let another one of them fall.

But he's too late.

When Shelby climbs onto the airship, the first thing she does is run to the staircase that leads to the stern, wedging herself in the little corner between the stairs and the captain’s cabin.

"I'm dying," she sobs, when Jimmy approaches her, hands out. "I'm going to die!"

"I know," he calls back, over the sound of the ship.

He doesn't know what else to say.

"I don't want to die," Shelby cries. Her hands tear at her face, at the place where a little red mark is already forming on her cheek.

Gently, Jimmy pulls her hands down, holding them in his own. She shakes, bends over just a bit, as if her body is trying to curl up without her input.

"We're here," he shouts, the wind whipping away his words. "We're not gonna leave. It's okay, we're right here with you."

"I didn't do anything wrong," she chokes out, tears running down her blotchy face.

Jimmy's heart twists.

She didn't. She only tried to survive.

He pulls her into a hug, sets his chin on her shoulder. He doesn't know what to say. He doesn't know what to do.

He just lets Shelby cry into his chest and stares at the wooden deck behind her.

-

Jimmy hugs all of them.

Quickly. Just a pat on the back, really.

But he hugs them. He hugs Shelby again, then Scott (Scott is close to tears, standing on his own by the railing), then Katherine (who stops in her pacing to acquiesce to an embrace). He takes the five steps up to the stern two at a time, hugs False briefly (she leans just slightly toward him), then heads belowdecks, to the little makeshift bed of False's.

That's when he checks for critters.

There aren't any. Of course there aren't.

But on his wrist is a tiny pink mark, an innocuous sign of the end. If he looks at it for long enough, it could just be a mark from pinching himself, a bruise about to form from bumping against a door jamb.

It isn’t that, though.

Jimmy has known for weeks that he's been living on borrowed time.

He started this. There was never any real hope that he would survive.

He's felt marked, almost.

Marked, ever since he stood over Joel's body, hands shaking and legs weak, covered from head to toe in the blood of a god.

He pushed his bloodsoaked hair out of his eyes, unable to look away from the tear down the god’s body from the enchanted axe that Jimmy had dragged from his collarbone to his waist.

Blood leaked from the bullet hole between Joel's eyes.

That had been the wound to take him out. He could have survived just the cleaving.

He was a god, after all.

Jimmy stared, even as dark clouds rolled in.

Even as the blood dried on his body.

Even as bile rose to his throat.

He stared, and with the first drops of rain, Joel's body began to go fuzzy around the edges of the wounds. Fuzzy and black, and Jimmy thought for a moment of mold before falling to his knees and vomiting.

And there he kneeled, trembling and ill, stained with blood and vomit, and screamed.

He screamed his apologies.

He begged the rumbling sky for restitution.

He buried his fists into the dry grass of the savannah, as his words dwindled hoarsely into nothing, and sobbed.

When nothing came, nothing but thunder and pouring rain, Jimmy hefted the crown off Joel's unmoving head and dragged it home.

Then he scrubbed the gore off his body, changed clothes, and replaced his hat on his head.

Despite the terrible storm, despite his people, Jimmy strapped the crown onto Bullseye and headed for Dawn.

Maybe Gem's god would pardon him.

But there had never been any pardon, had there?

It had all been a waiting game. It always had been.

Joel's blood marked him the first day.

And now, just like then, Jimmy can only stare.

He deserves this.

He deserves this, and he relishes in that.

He isn't stuck in that awful waiting phase, death looming over him like a dust storm over the horizon.

This can finally be over.

He can finally just be gone.

-

If there was anyone left to rescue, Jimmy would go do it now.

He's as invulnerable as he ever will be. It doesn't matter if they touch him. He could be in and out quicker than ever, able to defend without needing to worry about the vermin touching him.

But the only person to rescue is Shelby, and there's nothing he can do to help her.

All Jimmy knows to do is patrol. There isn’t anything else he can do, and everyone else is so busy with Shelby that they haven't been able to pick up their patrol shifts.

So Jimmy patrols, making sure nobody steps outside of the steadily shrinking border, keeping an eye on where the mites are piling up as a better reference point than their stakes in the ground.

He sees Scott, sometimes. Scott paces the border, marks precisely where it's changed, sometimes staring a long time out over the land beyond Sanctuary, as if he longs to leave from this place, as if he can see it as something of its former glory.

Jimmy does the same. He often finds himself wandering to his favorite place in all of Sanctuary, the flat boulder in the woods that looks out over the plains that remind him so much of the land where he grew up, before he was ever a sheriff in the beautiful mesa.

He can pretend that everything is normal, looking out there.

Sometimes, he can't see the darkness that runs through the grass.

Sometimes, he can see other things.

It's two days after the trip to the catacombs that Jimmy's forced to admit that the hallucinations are in full force.

He'd wondered morbidly, for some time now, what it was like. How long would it take to succumb to the illness? How gradual is the appearance of the hallucinations? How long until the fever starts?

He knows, now, that the hallucinations aren't gradual. He'd simply woken up by the campfire to find Lizzie standing before him.

"I can't believe you," she says disgustedly, arms crossed. "Sleeping on the job?"

"I'm dying, I think I deserve a bit of slack," he mutters. She scoffs.

"Why would you deserve slack? You caused this. You killed all those thousands of people."

 Jimmy goes to say something—he isn't sure what—but Lizzie is gone.

After that, the hallucinations are frequent. He sees long-gone friends—Lizzie, Norman, Pix—and abandoned buildings, forgotten memories and lost messages, and . . . dark creatures of shadow.

It’s unsettling and deeply disturbing, but not even the most bone-chilling hallucinations can keep him from sleeping.

He's so tired. He's been digging himself deeper and deeper into sleep debt every night for weeks, and now he can't find the strength to push through it.

Jimmy sleeps. All the time, everywhere. By the campfire, slumped in a chair in the inn, at the table in the planning room of the church.

So often he wakes up on that boulder overlooking the plains, the rock warm under his back and the sun pleasantly shining through the leaves of the tree behind him.

His body starts to ache.

His bones start to weigh down with exhaustion.

His hands start to shake.

His body is fighting, he can tell. Trying to put off being sick as long as possible. Trying to conserve his strength for healing.

There isn't any healing to come.

-

The others are going into the Rift.

Well, Jimmy's meant to be going, too.

He'd proposed himself going (he had spoken to them, laid out the plan in exactly the way he thinks he would have, but it's hard to remember how to act like himself when there's gaping black maws where everyone's eyes should be), even though he isn't planning on it at all.

Scott is going.

He doesn't know it yet, but he's going through the Rift. The spark in his eyes hasn’t died yet, and despite every doubt he has and the mistakes he’s made, Jimmy knows that the others look up to him. They’ll follow him, more willingly than they had ever followed Jimmy.

Jimmy isn't sure how to change the plans right after he presents them, though, so he just leaves, back to lie on his boulder to watch the wind ruffle the grass.

The sun is gently warm on his face.

His hat slips back, flopping off his head.

He closes his eyes, just for a moment. It isn't sleeping.

His body's just so tired.

Time passes.

It must pass.

Because the next thing Jimmy knows, the sun is not on his face and there's a scratching noise from beside him.

He blinks his eyes open, casts his gaze around.

fWhip is sitting beside him, writing in a journal of some sort. That's the source of the scratching noise—his tiny pencil going back and forth on the page, scurrying like a little mouse.

"Sorry," Jimmy mumbles, biting back a groan as he sits up.

It's so hard just to sit up.

fWhip chuckles a little. "It's cool. Just glad you're getting some sleep."

Jimmy doesn't respond to that.

"You know, you've been running yourself into the ground. You deserve a second to rest."

Definitely not a hallucination, then. Seeing as his hallucinations tend to hate him.

"What are you writing?" Jimmy asks, in lieu of arguing about his sleep habits.

fWhip shrugs self-consciously. "Nothing much. Just journaling." He gestures around at the plains. "Describing Sanctuary, us, the things we're doing. Just in case."

"In case of what?"

"In case . . . well, I dunno," fWhip says. "I keep imagining this scenario where we go through the Rift, and we end up in a different world, and we forget all of our history just two or three generations down. So I'm writing down all of this."

"Don't forget to mention Tumble Town," Jimmy says. "The most . . . uh, the best land for miles around."

fWhip shoots him a toothy smile. "Want to write something? I have pages for everyone."

Jimmy stares at his proffered pencil, then carefully takes it in his left hand, before transferring it to his right. He doesn't want his cuff to pull up even the slightest bit, revealing the mark on his wrist.

fWhip flips through his journal—a repurposed sketchbook, actually—until he finds the blank page he's looking for. He sets it in Jimmy's left hand.

"Just write anything. I'm planning on filling it in later with a bunch of biography type-stuff, but I can work around whatever you want to put."

Jimmy sets the pencil to the paper, willing his hand not to shake.

The Sheriff, he writes, in his quick, sharp cursive. Then, just below:

Jimmy.

It's not his best. It definitely doesn't look quite like it normally does, when he signs warrants of arrest or bank notes. Not as careful, the lines not as straight.

The J has a little divot in the line. The second h falters just the slightest bit.

He doesn't want to write anymore.

Or, rather, he doesn't have any more that he wants to write.

He slides the book back into fWhip's lap. "There," he says. "Now you can sell it for lots of money, it has my signature."

He can tell that fWhip's laugh is more to humor him than anything else.

"If I ever get Katherine's hands on this, absolutely," fWhip says. "I want her to draw everyone—have you seen her sketches? Like, in her workshop?"

Jimmy shrugs.

"She's actually really good. Scott, too. I just . . . don't know if I'll see Scott again, so. . . ."

He trails off with a bit of a cough.

Jimmy looks back over the fields.

He can't stay here.

He can't stay here, sleeping and aching and hiding until he dies.

He can't convince them to let him stay here. fWhip, at least, would insist on staying with him, and if Jimmy’s learned anything, it's that he wants his friends to survive.

He's going to have to leave.

"Actually, Katherine is what I came here for, I totally forgot!" fWhip snaps his journal shut. "She was wanting to talk to you. Do you wanna come back with me?"

-

"I'm sorry," Katherine says after a long moment.

Jimmy blinks. "Sorry? About what?"

She shrugs. "Pushing us to go look for Pix. If we hadn't gone for him. . . ."

For a foolish, hopeful second, Jimmy thinks she's referring to the death mark on his wrist.

Then he remembers that she doesn't know it exists.

She's talking about Shelby's condition.

"Don't worry about it," he tells her. "It was my fault."

"No—you didn't want to go, you—"

"But I let it happen," Jimmy cuts her off. "It was my fault, okay?"

He can take the blame.

What's another sin on top of ending the world?

Katherine frowns. "Are you sure? Because I know Scott's beating himself up over this, too. And if you really thought that it was your fault over his, you would go tell him."

Her face has gone from open, apologetic, to practically glaring at him.

And, really?

Jimmy absolutely deserves it.

"Sure," he says, trying not to let show the exhaustion dragging on his bones. "I'll talk to him."

Katherine nods.

She looks like she's sparkling.

She looks like she has wings.

-

It's long past midnight when Jimmy slips into the chapel.

Scott is there, he notices immediately—curled up and asleep on a pew near the entrance. Scott hasn't ever slept in his own bedroom, as far as Jimmy's aware. Every night when Jimmy checks on everyone, he finds Scott here, wrapped up in a blanket.

He ought to tell Scott that he's leaving. That he wants Scott to be in charge. That it was his fault.

But he can't bring himself to wake him.

The candlelight is low, and at the front of the chapel, muttering under his breath and holding his hands to a sleeping Shelby's head, is Sausage.

Even from afar, he looks exhausted. His hair falls limply into his face, his shoulders are slumped and his clothing is rumpled. He doesn't even look up until Jimmy is right beside him, spurs clicking all the way down the long aisle.

"You should rest."

"So should you."

"I'll wake Shelby, all right? She can hold down the fort for an hour or so."

"I feel close."

"You feel tired."

"And you don't?"

"This ain't about me."

"I can't. I can't go to sleep. I can't fail them."

"I reckon I understand. But this won't get fixed lest you take a rest. Just an hour."

". . . Okay. Pero, necesitas dormir también, okay?"

"I don't speak whatever that was."

"Stay here and rest a little. Just pretend like I'm giving a sermon, then it'll be easy to fall asleep!"

"Right. I'll wake Shelby."

-

fWhip never locks his room.

So it isn't hard for Jimmy to sneak in and tuck the Deputy Norman badge into his packed backpack.

-

Dawn breaks early the next morning, and Jimmy feels surprisingly lucid.

He feels like—no, he knows, somewhere deep within—his body is giving him a brief respite before it starts fighting the next stage of the illness.

Jimmy lingers outside the chapel, absently twisting his hat between his hands.

The others still have a day to prepare.

But Jimmy had packed his satchel with a bit of food, his waterskin, and a couple of papers with a pencil.

He's ready to leave.

He just has one person left to speak to.

As expected, Scott heads out from the inn to the church soon after dawn, likely having grabbed something quick to eat before returning to his self-imposed work of watching Sausage and Shelby.

Jimmy catches him by the shoulder.

His sleeve rides up just slightly. He hopes Scott doesn't notice the pink mark.

"Could you walk with me?" he asks quietly.

Scott glances uncertainly toward the church.

Then he nods.

Jimmy leads the way, and perhaps he can sense how unwell he truly is by the way his boots land a bit heavily against the dirt path and his legs feel almost too tired to pick his feet back up.

He probably has . . . a week, at most. Maybe a bit longer, if he takes it easy.

Right. Take it easy.

He doesn't want to leave.

He can't stay.

"Nice out," Scott comments, and Jimmy jumps.

He'd forgotten that Scott was there, or maybe assumed that he'd imagined him.

"Yeah, I guess," he says, looking around. "Bit warm for this early, but I ain't complaining."

It is a bit warm.

Sanctuary has had fairly warm temperatures the whole time they've been here, but the morning is usually more moderate.

Maybe there's a heatwave building up—one last hurrah of summer, before autumn properly takes over.

Sanctuary has been looking rather fall-like of late. Orange and yellow leaves making up the majority of the trees. It's quite pretty, really. Jimmy's never been to Sanctuary in the fall.

They pass under the trees, down the winding dirt footpath that Jimmy's trodden into the ground almost on his own (although there were remnants of it that he followed those first times), so many days and nights out patrolling the same line. He goes just beyond the trees, right to his favorite spot.

The boulder is almost wavering in the weak morning light.

Jimmy pauses beside it, looks out over the plains.

His view is framed by red leaves, and out beyond is rolling green-and-yellow grass, long and waving, the sky still such a young blue behind it. It looks like it hasn’t been devastated by the apocalypse. It looks calm, welcoming, lovely.

It looks so much like home.

"This is the most beautiful part of Sanctuary, I think," he murmurs.

Scott shifts beside him.

Right.

Time to delegate.

That's all he's doing. Delegating. Adjusting a former command.

Jimmy takes in a deep breath, then turns, looks Scott in his mismatched eyes. "I want you to go through the Rift," he says, willing his voice not to falter.

Scott blinks. "Sorry, what?"

Jimmy sighs, then sits on his boulder, tugging one knee up to his chest. How can he present this? "I'm not going," he says, and prays that Scott won't ask why. "I want you to take my place."

"Wh-why?"

Shoot.

Jimmy doesn't want to speak.

So he doesn't.

He looks out over the plains.

It isn't just his childhood that he misses, he supposes.

He's a cowboy. A traveler. He isn't meant to stay in one place for too long.

He's meant to feel the grass underfoot, and the wind through his hair, the dirt on his face and the sun on his back, fresh air in his lungs and a horse at his side.

Jimmy has a chronic case of wanderlust, and Sanctuary only grows smaller by the day.

"I can't do that," Scott says suddenly. "I—you're the leader, I can't—I don't—"

"Scott," says Jimmy, and it comes out smaller, softer than intended.

Jimmy can see, out of the corner of his eye, that Scott freezes.

"I'm not going. And they'll follow you. Even False will follow you, if you can convince her." False doesn't trust easily, if at all. 

Jimmy doesn't think he ever really got her trust. Just her approval.

"But I can't go through the Rift."

"Why not?" Scott asks, nothing stubborn in his tone, nothing angry.

Jimmy can say he wants to find a way to protect everyone left.

He can say that he's going to go looking for Pix.

He can say that he left something important in Tumble Town, and he needs to go get it.

But Scott is a lover of truth. He’ll see through any lie that Jimmy tries to give him, so distrusting after everything he’s already put him through.

And honestly, he deserves the truth.

It's not going to be easy to say.

But Jimmy fixes his eyes determinedly on the horizon, and twists the loose button on his vest, and makes his choice.

"It was in the catacombs," he says, and he can't make his voice any louder than a near-whisper for some reason. "I was marking our path with chalk. And. . . ."

He can't say it.

Luckily, he doesn't need to.

Jimmy shakes back his right sleeve, just enough that death's mark shows.

Scott stares.

"I didn't know what to say," Jimmy says simply.

That's the most truthful of it all, isn't it?

"Not when we couldn't stop moving while we were down there. Not when Shelby needed comfort. Not when we needed to focus everything on her."

Jimmy supposes he ought to feel something about that—sadness that this is the end, that he'll never see his friends again. Or relief, that he can finally stop running. Or maybe even despair, knowing that there is nothing he can do to protect his friends anymore.

He doesn't feel any of that, though.

He mostly feels tired.

"We might be able to heal you," Scott suggests, and he sounds as tired as Jimmy feels. "If it works with Shelby, we can do it with you, right? We can just put off the Rift thing until you're both better."

Jimmy isn't going to get better.

He isn't going to give himself that chance.

"And if Shelby doesn't get better?" he asks.

Scott looks away.

He's about to say something placating. Something kind and fluffy, to make Scott feel better about not trying.

The truth. Jimmy needs to tell the truth, not soften the blows.

"I want to stay," admits Jimmy. The words tear from deep within, yet pull free almost easily—like tugging a barely-formed scab off a wound. "I do. But I can't. And maybe it's selfish, Scott, but I don't want them to know that . . . that I've been hiding this from them."

He doesn't want to face their anger, possibly their grief. He doesn't want them to force him to stay.

Because if they find out, and he's already gone, he'll be just another rescue mission.

Someone else could die.

And . . . he's kind of been lying to them this whole time.

People don't like being lied to.

"Like you hid the stuff about Joel from me," Scott's saying, and Jimmy grimaces.

"Yeah. I'm not really good with confrontations like that. You saw what happened. But I couldn't just leave without telling someone, you know?"

"So . . . you're leaving."

He is.

He has to.

"To—what, become like Oli? Instead of staying here, where we can help you . . . go peacefully, I guess?"

Jimmy shakes his head practically before Scott's done speaking. "I don't care much for the idea of staying in bed, all still and sick 'til it's over. I figure I'll just head out quietly, yeah? I already packed my bag. Just wanted to make sure someone could be in charge."

"I'm not a leader," Scott says, sounding a little bit panicked. "What about fWhip?"

Jimmy almost laughs. "fWhip's a follower. He gets too stressed to actually lead."

"Katherine?"

"I don't think she'll want to go through the Rift," Jimmy says thoughtfully. She'll want to stay with Shelby, he's sure of it. "She said she'd come, but I bet my bootstraps she'll back out last minute."

Scott opens his mouth, clearly about to suggest the next person in line.

"And not Gem, either," Jimmy cuts him off. "Scott, I chose you because you're the one who fought back when you thought I'd made a wrong choice. You spoke up. And not just then—you suggest your own plans all the time. You're a leader, even if you don't know it."

Scott doesn't respond to that.

Jimmy looks out over the plains. He can imagine that Scott is biting his lip, trying to think up some argument.

He can imagine that Scott has a lot of things he wants to say.

Somehow, Scott rarely ends up saying them.

After a moment, with a scraping of fabric against stone, Scott sits down beside him, quite gently leaning against him.

It's an invitation.

And he's so tired.

After a long moment, Jimmy lets his head fall onto Scott's shoulder.

It's peaceful, all quiet-like this early in the morning. The world feels almost sleepy, the sun rising but not blinding. 

Gem worships the sun, to some extent. Her kingdom of Dawn revered its rising, held festivals and services in its honor. Jimmy understands why every time he watches it rise, every time he sees the orange glow that slowly spills across the darkened world, softly letting more and more light into the day to gradually pull the lands into consciousness.

The sun isn't going to be able to pull him with it.

He's going to die.

He's going to die before he ever feels fully awake again.

He's never going to be entirely conscious before he sleeps forever.

“You should go.”

The voice belongs to Lizzie, he thinks. Or Pix. Or Oli.

“It’s time to go.”

That one belongs to Joel.

Jimmy swallows, gathers every bit of consciousness and strength that he can find, then pulls away from Scott, stretching.

“I should probably head out before the town wakes up,” he tells Scott, and he can see his eyes, mismatched and conflicted, through the shadow that tries to darken them. “Get away before anyone can stop me.”

“Sure. What do you want me to tell them?”

He wants Scott to tell them goodbye. He wants them to know that he loves them, that if he deserved any better he would stay.

But he won’t put that on them.

He tells Scott to convince them that he deserted them. He tells Scott he’s leaving without any sense of direction, that he’s going to go out there and hope for the best.

He doesn’t tell Scott goodbye, either.

He deserves better than that.

[amaraudermind]

someday i am going to remember to talk about my esmp2 au where scott can only see magic

[voidy-lux]

Nature Wives?Nature Wives.

[flashliiqhts]

Some more doodles of @pacificwaternymph 's western au!

Bounty hunter Pearl was such a good idea, I couldn't not draw her- and the list of 'things she has done' got me laughing a lot

[sawasourjuice]

(1.2) Introductions!!! They are.,. very stupid

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