#minecraft diaries is gay secret santa

[superioritycomplexes]

rewrite an ending or two

fandom : minecraft diaries, phoenix drop high

word count : 2175

ship : zoeymau

summary : zoey dies and wakes up in the body of a teenager. (also on ao3)

for : @vylance, this is your secret santa gift and i’m been dying to post it you don’t even understand,, anyways, i hope you like it!!

(It’s not simple to say

That most days I don’t recognize me)

The day Lady Aphmau left – the day she went through a portal that closed way too soon and not fast enough and both of those all at once – Zoey Fahenneral was six hundred and twenty-four, and she was on a ship that was headed in the direction of her homeland. It wasn’t where she wanted to be. She wanted to be with her, on the other side of a portal that lead Irene-knows-where, but she wanted them to be together. Together meant anything was possible.

(The children, Zoey. Levin and Malachi, please, I need you to take care of them until I come home. Aphmau, Lord and Protector and Mother and Friend, had begged her in a voice that sounded so heartfelt and so, so broken that there was nothing she could’ve said except yes, of course, you know I will.)

Ceasing her staring out the window, the elven woman turned to look at the sleeping boys behind her. Minutes after she’d put them to bed, she had come back into the room to find Levin had climbed into his big brother’s bed and curled up with him. Zoey smiled, sadly, and with one final look out at the ocean beyond them she decided it would be best if she went to bed as well. Maybe they’d have reached The Forest by morning.

/

(That these shoes and this apron

That place and its patrons )

I gave up my immortality to bring you back. I gave up my magic. Zoey whispers into the space between them while Aphmau – AphmauAphmauAphmau the chorus in her head repeats – throws her arms around her taller, elven frame. She’s crying and Zoey thinks she might be crying, too. Zoey, oh Irene, Zoey.

Lady Aphmau takes small, slow steps back and finally, she’s allowed to get a good look at what the Lord in front of her has become in the last fifteen years of being stuck in a dimension that was not her own. She finds that she has not changed, that she has not even aged, and it is both a blessing and a curse that she has lived long enough to see her again.

When she feels the strength flow out of her body, when she feels the painless slip into the dark unconsciousness that makes up her mind, when she crashes to her knees in the middle of the forest in front of the broken woman she has come to love – broken, broken and shattered just like her – Zoey has to stop herself from smiling.

It’s the first and last time she sees her Lord in fifteen years, and, as she lay on the ground withering away into nothing but whatever her next life would bring her, she doesn’t think she would’ve had it any other way.

/

(Have taken more than I gave them

It’s not easy to know)

Aphmau Matrona wakes up to her alarm going off far too quickly and falls out of her bed in the hurry for her to get dressed and get ready and get to school. She snatches her phone from the charger port on her nightstand so hard that she might have ripped it from the wall plug-in, and pulls her jacket on just as her mother’s voice rises up from the kitchen.

“Mija, come on! You’re already late as it is!”

“Coming, Mami!” She shouts back and almost trips again in her rush to get down the stairs. The door slams shut behind her and she only remembers that she didn’t grab the toast off the counter after she’s made it halfway to the school.

/

(I’m not anything like I used be, although it’s true

I was never attention’s sweet center)

Her head bangs against the open door of her locker and she listens to her friends stifle laughter as they approach. She doesn’t move, even as Cadenza nudges her with the tip of her shoe. “Aph? You alive in there, sister?”

Aphmau groans half-heartedly and her friends laugh again. This time, it’s Travis who prods at her sides. “Come on, Not-Alone-Buddy! We’ve got things to do, places to go, girls and guys and the like to woo – hey!” He’s hit in the head by Kawaii-Chan.

“Travis-Kun, that’s not helping! Tell Kawaii-Chan what’s the matter with you, Aphmau-Senpai, won’t you?”

She finally turns around, and leans the back of her head against the cool metal of her locker after it’s shut and brings her hands up to hide her face. “Guys, I have a problem.”

Blue hair is all she sees as Dante slanters over to their group and slings an arm around Travis’ shoulders. He grins down at her and she takes half a second to curse her shortness. “Is this a ’help me with the body’ type of problem or a ’people are pretty and I’m dying’ type of problem?”

“The second one, you freak.” She exclaims and he laughs, and he reaches up to flick her in the head. “Well, go on.”

/

(I still remember that girl

She’s imperfect, but she tries)

“She’s like, really, extremely pretty.” Aphmau breathes, and it seems to take a moment for the words to settle into her friend’s heads before she keeps talking. “And, y'know, she’s new so she could probably use someone to show her around and –”

“And, it would probably be best if someone in her own grade were to show her around, right?” Travis interrupts with a grin pointed at her and she ducks her head to hide the color coming into her face. “Yeah, exactly.”

Cadenza hums softly from the place she’s perched herself on the edge of the concrete bench, tapping away on her phone. She doesn’t know who she’s texting, but from the way the redhead barely looks up to add anything to the conversation she would normally be all over sends more than enough red flags to Aphmau’s brain that she drops her tiny – huge huge huge – crush on the new girl to prod at her friend’s brain. “Cade?”

Silence.

“Cadenza? You in there, girl?”

Cadenza looks up at last and grins lightly at her. “Yep, everything’s fine. Are you going to ask New Girl if you can show her around the school now or wait until tomorrow?”

Aphmau rakes a hand through her hair – it’s getting long again, she might ask her mom if she can cut it – and shakes her head. “I’ll ask her before school tomorrow, I don’t really know where she is right now anyways.”

/

(She is good, but she lies

She is hard on herself)

Kawaii-Chan taps her on the shoulder and points excitedly behind Dante, bouncing up and down on the balls of their feet. “Found her, Aphmau-Senpai!”

She feels the way her feet have stuck to the floor before she even tries to take a step forward, and Dante throws out his hands to steady her. “Whoa, Aph. You’ll be fine, you did learn from the best.” And he grins, but then Kawaii-Chan pipes up from her other side and it falters.

“Oh? Kawaii-Chan didn’t know Katelyn-Sama was around.” He sputters and the Meif'wa only grins wider, and laughs. They place their hands against Aphmau’s back and pushes her towards the blonde at the other end of the hall.

/

(She is broken and won’t ask for help

She is messy, but she’s kind)

Aphmau turns and she sends her friends a scowl – she doesn’t mean it, they know, she’s just nervous – and then New Girl notices her standing there and wanders over. “Uh, hello?”

It takes a blink, a shake of her head, before she works up the nerve to speak. “Hi. I’m, uh, Aphmau!” Her hand shoots out, and she curses inside her head because really? Who shakes hands anymore?

But then the girl takes her hand lightly and smiles and Aphmau feels the ice that had covered her insides melt away. It’s warm – of course it’s warm, you stupid! It’s a hand.

“Zoey.” A pause. “Did you need something?”

She runs a hand through her hair and smiles lightly. “Well, I noticed you were new – I mean, obviously, since I’ve never seen you around here before… where did you transfer from, by the way? – and wanted to know if you needed someone to show you around?”

And the girl – ZoeyZoeyZoey her mind supplies – just smiles again, wider this time, and gives her the quickest of nods. “I used to go to Yggdrasil Prep, and uh, I’d love for you to show me around. But, uh,” she pauses again, and glances down the hallway at the group of kids who try to look as inconspicuous as possible while very obviously watching the two of them ( they fail spectacularly and Aphmau wants to groan ), “I think your friends want you back now. I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Aphmau parrots cheerfully and turns on her heel to go whisper-yell at her friends for everything that’s happened in the last five minutes. “See you tomorrow, Zoey!”

/

(She is lonely most of the time

She is all of this mixed up and baked in a beautiful pie)

Suddenly, it’s tomorrow and Aphmau grins at the tall blonde in front of her and tries not to stumble over her feet as she leads Zoey around the school before the first bell starts ringing. “Over there is the pitch field, where the soccer team, the volleyball team, and the baseball team like to have practices. My friend Dante is the captain of the baseball team this year, so we’ll probably hang out there a lot.”

“Do you play any sports?” Zoey questions lightly, trying to make conversation and she reaches up to rub a hand across the back of her neck, glancing away. “Uh, no, not really. I tried out for volleyball at the start of term but that didn’t really work out all that well.”

“I used to play volleyball, in like, seventh grade.”

“Yeah? Were you any good?”

She grins, her blue eyes glinting in amusement. “I was the best.”

“Oh, I’m sure you were.” Aphmau grins back, a swarm of butterflies waking up in the pit of her stomach.

There’s a pause, and then Zoey speaks again, just as the first bell rings. “So, you wouldn’t happen to know where the Biology classroom is, would you?” And she smiles again, a brief and blinding flash of white teeth, and leads her inside the building. “Yep. Come on!”

/

(She is gone, but she used to be mine)

When Zoey Fanenneral was six hundred and thirty-nine years old, she gave up her magic and all the years that would’ve made up the rest of her life to bring the only woman she’d ever loved back from a place that she could not follow. When Zoey Fanenneral was six hundred and thirty-nine years old, she died.

(Zoey! Lady Aphmau cries, as the elf crumbles to her age-weakened knees in surrender of this long life she’s lived, falling with her. Zoey, what’s wrong?

She could laugh – she might have, judging by the way her Lord’s face fell slightly – and she lifts her hand to brush the dark hair from Aphmau’s shoulders. I brought you home, Lady Aphmau. It was worth it.

It was worth it? There is panic to her voice and Zoey smiles. Zoey… what did you do?

Magic like that, like bringing you and everyone else home – she pauses and takes a deep, rattling breath ( it hurts, oh, how it hurts ) – there's  a price that comes with that kind of strain.

Zoey, what did you do? Her Lord repeats, pushing.

I gave up my magic for you, Aphmau, and I would do it again.

It is the last thing she finds herself able to say, and she watches the grief crumble across her Lord’s face until the great abyss of unconsciousness takes her.)

Zoey Fanenneral is sixteen the very first time she meets Aphmau in this lifetime, her dark hair hanging like a curtain over her shoulders as she tilts her head back to talk to her – she has a brief flash of memory go across her mind, memory of the same curtain of hair brushing the top of a wooden table in a house made of white and purple brick as she tilted her head down in laughter, shoulders shaking as Zoey leaned against the counter, a cup of tea warming her hands as she watched the way her… she didn’t remember that part, much, only that in some other life, some other time, years before now and yet not so long ago, the teenage girl standing in front of her with tinted cheeks and prettiest pair of amber eyes she’s ever seen in either life was oh-so-very important to her in a way no one else ever has been and ever would be. Zoey Fanenneral is sixteen when she listens to the laugh of the girl she loves for the first time in a thousand years.

And she doesn’t think she would’ve done a single thing different, to get here.