DreamSMP and Hermitcraft Oneshots [By Request]

A chance, a promise, and two lifetimes of regret

Late night writing is the best you cannot change my mind. my late night brain decided we needed more emerald duo angst so i spewed this out please enjoy

Also tw are as follows:

non-gore death//non-gore violence//blood

I rarely write 'proper' angst so i thought i'd warn you guys just in case lol

=====

Sometimes, Techno regrets living. Living means that his debt to the Blood God has not been repaid. Living means that his body is not his, his soul trapped in a statue that was supposed to obey him but answers instead to a higher being. Living means that he is not himself.

Other times, he recalls that living let's him feel the soft silk of spring leaves and the gentle winds that feel like they caress his cheek with all the love that no one ever bothered to give him. Living is what let's him feel, see, breathe, yet he can't forget:

It is also what puts everyone around him in danger.

Because he is not himself, and he will never be - fated to carry out the desires of an immortal who has no care left for the people of the world.

He was so naive, so foolish, so idiotic. But he was young - a young, desperate child, breathing his last breaths upon a bloodied battlefield. And it was then that a god had descended before him, and offered him a way out.

A new life, to replace his old, fading one, in return for servitude. He would carry out tasks the God ordered.

Death had seemed like the single most terrifying thing to him. He had been too young to realize that it was not - that it might even be considered a blessing to some.

And because he was young and desperate, he had gasped, forcing a yes past his bleeding lips - a final exhale like a sigh - then his life had faded, dissipated into nothing along with the crimson that pooled around him and the wind that wove through his dulled pink hair, flickering like fire around the blade embedded in his chest and the frantic fluttering of his muscles as they spasmed desperately, trying to draw in air to a body that refused to work.

It had grown dark, so dark, yet for all the poetic nonsense he had seen written about the beauty of death, he had felt only white hot pain, and heart stopping fear at leaving the world all too soon.

And then nothing, although he couldn't have known.

Moments later, his eyes had snapped open, bright and startled and very much alive, the wounds that marred his skin healed over, the blood he had lost replenished.

He was alive.

~

Living was a miracle. In some ways, dying made him live more.

He used to hate the early morning birds as they cawed ceaselessly at dawn, jolting him out of his dreamless sleep and into the rushing stillness of a day so early it was still dark. Now, he simply opens his eyes and smiles, because he is here, existing, as the sun rises again.

The sunlight stains the walls gold and amber. He breathes in, then out, and wonders if he will live to see the same little miracle tomorrow.

~

It was a month later when the Blood God acted through Techno for the first time. True, he had been having nightmares, but they faded as soon as he woke up, melting like mist in the morning sun, too fleeting, too temporary to leave a mark on his waking hours.

This - this was different though.

He hunts in the nearby forests to survive - he keeps some of the meat to eat, and most of it he sells, fresh, to the butcher or the cook. He visits so often that they know him by the sound of his footsteps when he has a heavy catch slung over his shoulders - sure and firm, like always, but favouring one foot more than the other, with the slightest limp at his imbalance of a prey animal.