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It’s quiet in the house.
With Aax and Caspian off working on assignments, Rae sits alone, looking over his notes again and again and again, looking for something, anything , to help guide him. The clock chimes against the hour for the fourth time since sitting down at his desk; his back aches from leaning over his books, eyes straining to blink away double letters from staring at the same words for too long.
He sits back with a defeated sigh, glaring up at the ceiling. How had everything gone so wrong? His mother was dead, his brother and father had turned against him, Strawberri was dying–everything was falling apart and he could do nothing .
A sneer builds on his face and with a start he stands up, legs pushing his chair back, its legs scraping against the floor with a screech. Reaching out, he grabs ahold of the nearest journal, and with a rage he was unaware he possessed, he pulls, ripping the spine in two. Pages fall slowly, surrounding him like a broken halo on the floor, and he sinks to his knees, falling onto his hands.
“What the hell am I supposed to do?” he whispers. His words linger in the air like a spell. “Mom… what am I… how am I supposed to do this? I…”
Silence falls.
“You can start by rebinding your journal.”
With a startled cry Rae shoots to his feet, already spinning on his heel before he’s even fully stood. His hands fly to his belt to grab his sword and–heterochromatic eyes meet familiar milky white.
“ Gods , Easton, you can’t do that!” Rae’s hands drop away from his weapon, instead moving to clutch at his shirt. “You–I–Fucking hell , I was about to– Easton I–”
“You wouldn’t have.” Easton pushes themself off of the wall, leaning their weight on their cane as they stand before Rae. “I wouldn’t have let you.”
Rae shakes his head. “I could have,” he stresses angrily. “How did you even get in here? I would’ve heard you open the door.”
“I have my ways,” Easton replies, a small smirk appearing on their lips only to slip away just as quickly as it came. “Is it a habit of yours to destroy your belongings?” Their free hand gestures to the pages littering the floor.
Rae breathes sharply through his nose. “No,” he states curtly, dropping down and starting to gather the pages. “I just…” he pauses as Easton bends to help, “never mind. I’m fine now.”
Easton snorts, and Rae shrinks under their distant gaze as their eyes linger at his shoulder. “Mm,” they hum. “Fine. I do love that word. So versatile, so many meanings… don’t you agree?”
“Why are you here?”
“Deflecting, are we?”
“Easton,” Rae warns as he gathers the final page. “Stop with the games; why are you here?” Each word is punctuated with an underlying animosity–the kid is too good at getting under his skin.
Easton straightens and turns their head to the side. “I am here,” they drawl, “because you, my friend, owe me a fight.”
“Not now,” Rae immediately says, shaking his head. “There’s too much work to do, more important things–”
Easton cuts him off with a disapproving click of their tongue. “Of course,” they say lightly, “because ripping apart your books is so incredibly productive.”
Rae’s jaw clenches, and he turns towards his desk to dump the pages without regard. He leans forward, hands gripping the edge of the wood, his chin hitting his chest. “I’m not the best person to hang around right now,” he admits, his voice low. “I just… I don’t know if I’ll… if I’ll…”
“...be able to stop?”
Rae sighs, rocking slightly on his heels. “Yeah,” he breathes out. “Yeah.”
Calloused fingers wrap around his shoulder and Rae turns towards Easton; somehow, just like every other damn time, unseeing eyes are the ones to see straight through him.
“I can handle it,” Easton says after a couple of seconds. “Come on, you can come back to mine–it’s very… secluded.”
. . . . .
The journey through the nether is quick, and soon Rae finds himself standing in the woods, his sword in hand and knees bent. The fresh air is heavenly in his lungs, and as he rings his hands around the hilt of his sword, he can feel the tension in his shoulders already melting away.
“Are you ready?” Easton calls out, the wind carrying their voice across the small clearing.
Rae swallows dryly. “Yes,” he replies. “You?”
A knowing smirk plays on Easton’s lips. “Absolutely.”
Rae doesn’t hesitate to make the first move, crossing the clearing in quick strides, netherite raising high in the air. He jabs his weapon forwards, unsurprised when Easton easily blocks it with their own netherite axe, the customized steel hilt making Rae’s blade slide clean off. Easton ducks beneath another of Rae’s swings, moving quickly on light feet.
Together, they enter the all too familiar dance of combat; dodging, swinging, pulling, pushing, they go back and forth, back and forth. They’re barefoot, stepping on rocks and twigs, feet sliding in mud and stomping down flowers as they twist and turn throughout the clearing. Rae slices his sword towards Easton’s abdomen, and the blonde contorts in some fucked circusy move, effortlessly getting away.
It’s brutal and graceful, freeing and gut-wrenching. Skilled beyond their peers they dance and dance and dance.
“You’re done for!” Rae shouts gleefully when Easton’s axe finally falls out of their hands minutes later. He jabs his sword forwards again and again, backing his opponent into a tree. “Do you yield?”
Easton’s head falls back against the bark, blonde hair going everywhere as they shake No , and just as Rae brings their blade up once more to finally end the brawl, Easton drops straight to the ground, legs sweeping out Rae’s own, making the man fall hard against the dirt. Pale fingers are quick to steal away the sword, and before he even knows what’s happening, Rae’s own blade is being pressed to his neck.
“Do you yield?” is the breathless reply. “Do you ?”
“I yield,” Rae wheezes out, blade sharp against this throat. The sword pulls away and he lets his head fall back against the ground, sucking in deep breaths to fill his aching lungs.
“Lesson number one,” Easton begins, climbing off of Rae’s torso to sit next to him. “Never, ever, think you’ve won just because you’ve backed your opponent into a corner.”
Rae rolls his eyes. “Whatever,” he mumbles, throwing an arm over his face. “I totally almost had you.”
“Yet your throat would’ve been slit without a second thought in real combat,” Easton hums. They pat Rae’s thigh. “You’ll get there…eventually, I hope.”
“Oh shut up,” Rae laughs, sitting up to smack the back of Easton’s head before laying back once more. “You’re such an ass.”
“I do try.”
They sit there, basking in the calmness that settles over the clearing. The silence fills with rustling leaves and the symphony of animals nearby, and Rae finds himself dozing off beneath the setting sun when Easton drops down next to him.
“I need to ask a favor of you.”
“Hm?” Rae hums sleepily, turning and forcing heavy eyelids open. He watches Easton’s nose twitch.
“I…Back during the endstone reset,” Easton begins, and sleep has never left Rae so quickly, he’s scrambling to sit up, leaning forward on his elbow to stare incredulously.
“Easton-”
“No, let me talk.” Easton breathes out sharply through their nose. “Back during the endstone reset, I… I was ready to give everything up for glory… for power. It was…addicting.”
Rae swallows thickly.
“It was incredible, the feeling of raw power coursing through my veins. I didn’t have a care in the world. I was prepared to do anything, hurt anyone , to get what I wanted, what I thought I needed, and…” a watery laugh cuts through their words, “I almost killed my own brother to get there.”
“Easton, you weren’t in your right mind,” Rae says softly, reaching out to grip Easton’s shoulder. “You can’t blame yourself.”
Easton shakes their head, eyes staring blankly over Rae’s shoulder. “Maybe I wasn’t, but…” they pause, breath unsteady, “but whether or not I was being controlled doesn't change the fact that I hurt you guys, that I hurt Jamie .
“The fact of the matter is… is that even though I hurt people, even though I destroyed people’s possessions and I crushed their spirits, I… in the end Jamie didn’t give up on me, not entirely. And if I’m being honest, I don’t know what I would’ve done, what I would’ve been capable of, if they had .”
Milky white met heterochromatic blue and green, and Rae’s breath caught in his throat. “I know I’m asking a lot of you, Rae, but you can’t give up on Icarus. You just, you just can’t .”
“Easton, I–”
“They need you, whether they realize it right now or not. When they fall, and I know that they will, promise me that you’ll be there to catch them. Promise me, Rae.”
The wind picked up around them, forcing the tears welled in Rae’s eyes to fall.
“I… I promise.”