Project: Neverbound (A Double Life AU fanfic)

2 - Knight in Netherite Armor

It's been 16 years, yet Etho was reliving that day like it was yesterday.

He was barely in middle school, starting a new era of his life with the friends that were most dear to him.  And all of a sudden, like it all happened at once, he was standing on the edge of the bridge, his back turned away from the violent waters of the Great Ravine below.  The wooden bridge was now lit ablaze on either side, the flames to the left engulfing the two bodies Etho had once called his friends.  Someone stood directly in front of him, though he could hardly make out the face with his left eye injured the way it was, a whole chunk of glass cutting through it.  He had also gotten burns on his forearms, but that was his own fault when he tried to pull someone out of the fire.

"You... you should've stayed out of our business..." the figure in front of him spoke, though their voice sounded... confused.  It was like the words they were speaking weren't their own, like they were just an innocent victim attached to the strings of a puppeteer's cross.

He didn't notice it beforehand, but Etho was crying. From the grief or from the pain, he was too far along to tell. It hindered his ability to speak, to shout back at the person who had, in one fell swoop, killed the people he cared about. The bridge cracked beneath him, threatening to give out and send him plunging into the Great Ravine, but at this point, he didn't care.

"...what do you think you are?" The figure asked. "What makes you think any of this is worth it? What convinces you to stick your snout where it doesn't belong, Slab?"

After a long bout of silence, Etho still didn't answer.

"It doesn't really matter then, does it?" They said. "All that matters is that your little dream is dead. A team isn't much of a team when it only has one member, much less zero when you're gone. None of you could stop us anyway. What were a couple of humans and some furry kid going to do to something so powerful? Were you trying to get them killed?" 

Etho had a million things to say, but the quietness continued anyway.  He almost convinced himself to speak up, but the bridge finally gave way and fell apart, dunking the fox-boy into the rapid waters. 

For a while, the dream died here.  He was found washed up on a beach about a day later, and returned to his family the same afternoon.  Physically, he was okay for the most part.  He wasn't completely blind in his left eye, it was just blurry and hard to make out anything smaller than the palm of his hand.  The burns on his forearms healed to scars without an issue, and all he had to use to cover them up was a set of bandages. 

Mentally, everything was wrong.  He had shut himself out from the world for a long time, and even when he was finally coaxed out of his house, he had stopped speaking to anyone around him.  In all honesty, it was Tango and Bdubs that had brought him out of this state.  Their silly little mini soccer team had given him a new spark, a piece of hope that he could still solve this mystery on his own. 

Even if the BEST team didn't speak very often anymore, he still had Joel too.  As careless as his bound could be at times, he was the key to everything.  Etho wouldn't have been able to join the project had Joel not existed, and that on its own was like a sign from a higher power encouraging him to move forward. 

As Etho awoke in a cold sweat, having witnessed the nightmare of the incident once again in his dreams, he was filled with another sense of dread.  His thoughts often went back and forth on him.  One day he felt like he could do it, that nothing was in his way, then the next morning he would wake up like the way he was now; realizing how much work and effort and risk this was and wishing that he had never gotten involved.  He stared into the glass of warm milk he had made himself, hoping that in sipping it for a while, it would help him fall back asleep.