a lump in the throat

Chapter 1

A/N: This fic was inspired by this fanart! ceaderblocks.tumblr.com/post/186403135810/evil-x-havin-a-day-off-as-requested-by (If you know how to add links on wattpad, please tell me!!) Shout out to thestupidtrooper on tumblr for being my beta reader.

Lava hissed and bubbled on either side of the bridge, drowning out the echo of Ex's boots on the netherrack. His footsteps and poetry often shared a rhythm, but whether he matched his poems to his footsteps or his footsteps to his poetry, he couldn't say. Today, though, he had neither rhythm nor poetry.

"Stupid Xisuma," he muttered to himself. "Stupid Xisuma and his stupid Nether hub. Is he going to ban me from the Nether, too, then? Where the hell am I supposed to go next? The End?"

Still fuming, he entered the main part of his Nether fortress. The wither skeletons he passed on the way ignored him just as completely as he ignored them. He tossed his shulker boxes haphazardly against the wall and flopped down on the wool pile that served as his makeshift bed.

The moment his head touched the wool, he heard fireworks outside - the telltale sound of a hermit approaching. Probably Xisuma.

Resisting the urge to scream his frustration to the entire Nether, Ex got up and stalked over to the entrance to his Nether fortress.

"Xisuma, if you're here about that godforsaken Nether hub -"

"In fact, I am not Xisumavoid. Unless he somehow managed to place his consciousness in my body without me noticing, in which case I wouldn't know I was actually Xisuma."

The fact that his unwelcome visitor wasn't Xisuma was enough to surprise Ex, but the fact that it was Joehills was enough to shut him up. He'd never actually spoken to Joe before, much less had a visit from him.

"What do you want?" he asked, wary surprise making his tone even brusquer than usual.

Joe held out a piece of paper. "I believe this is yours, although I may be incorrect."

Ex recognized the paper instantly - it was a page from his poetry book. He snatched it out of Joe's hand. "How did you get this?"

"It was on the floor of the Nether hub."

Ex narrowed his eyes. "How'd you know it was mine?"

"Xisuma told me you'd been in the Nether hub recently, and I didn't recognize the handwriting, so I made an educated guess."

In his rush to leave the Nether hub, Ex must have failed to notice that the page had come loose from it's bindings. His poetry book desperately needed to be rebound, but slime and leather were hard to come by in the Nether.

"Thanks," he said gruffly. "Bye."

"Is it time to say goodbye already? Are we not going to exchange pleasantries that elevate our souls like a pleasant breeze?"

Ex scowled. "I don't do pleasantries."

Joe nodded thoughtfully. "It seems the breeze today is pushing us apart, but perhaps another day we'll have a chance at a brand new start."

He climbed up on the wall of the bridge and smiled back at Ex over his shoulder. "Bye!" He jumped off the bridge and activated his elytra.

Something small and white fluttered out of his pocket as he soared away.

"Hey!" shouted Ex. "You dropped something!" But Joe was already too far away to hear him.

Grumbling to himself, Ex climbed over the bridge wall and activated his own elytra. He drifted in lazy circles down to the ground where the white thing had landed.

It turned out to be a piece of paper. The bottom third of it was singed from where it had landed on magma blocks.

At first, he thought it was another page from his poetry book, but as he read the poem written on it, he realized that was absolutely not the case. For one thing, it rhymed; for another, Joehills' name was written in the top right corner.

Left behind as an accidental gift

And a clear sign of something gone amiss.

A speck of white against a sea of red:

A secret poem left for dead.

But it was the start to something

Here, the page had begun to burn away. He couldn't tell what came after the charred remains.

Had it been anything else, Ex probably would have tossed it straight into the lava or his storage room, but... well, he wanted to know how the poem ended.

The only problem was figuring out how to get to Joe. It wasn't like Ex could just pay him a visit in the Overworld. There was a chance that he'd be able to catch him passing through the Nether hub, but he was more likely to run into Xisuma there than anyone else. He could also just shoot him a message asking him if they could meet at Ex's Nether fortress, but that would draw Xisuma's attention faster than he could say "suspicious."

He sighed and folded the paper into a little square. As much as he wanted to know how the poem ended, dealing with Xisuma wasn't worth the trouble.

He ended up sitting the poem on his desk. He read it several times over the next few days, folding and unfolding it over and over.

It was a good thing he hadn't decided to throw it away, because a few days after Joe's visit, he remembered that there was a way to send one-on-one messages on the communicators. He felt a bit silly for not remembering it earlier, but he'd never had a reason to use that function before, so he gave himself a pass.

[Evil_Xisuma whispered to joehillssays: Can you come by my Nether fortress some time? You forgot something here.]

[joehillssays whispered to Evil_Xisuma: Is it okay if I come over right now?]

[Evil_Xisuma whispered to joehillssays: Yeah sure.]

Ex wasn't the greatest at time perception, what with living in the Nether and all, but he was sure it couldn't have been more than a few minutes before Joe appeared outside the main part of the Nether fortress.

"Howdy, Evil X."

"It's just Ex. Don't call me evil."

"Sorry. That was rude of me." He pushed his glasses up. "What did I forget?"

Ex handed him the poem. "It landed on magma, so the bottom of it is gone."

"Oh!" Joe took the poem. "So that's where it went. Thank you, Ex, I've been looking for this."

Ex shifted his weight to his other foot and cleared his throat. "How does the rest of the poem go? The bit that got burned away."

"Oh, well, I don't actually remember."

"What?"

"I don't usually remember my poems after I make them up," Joe explained. "And I don't like to rewrite them, so I guess this poem will be a mystery forever."

A very irrational anger swelled up inside Ex. He'd spent so much time stressing over how to contact Joe and learn the ending of the poem, and it turned out that Joe himself didn't even know?

"Hey," said Joe suddenly, "I've got a great idea! How about you write a new ending for the poem?"

"How abou- excuse me?"

"You should write a new ending for the poem," Joe said. "You write poetry, don't you? I read the poem I returned to you; it was very good. Go on, give it a try."

"I - you - I can't just make up a poem on the spot!" Ex spluttered. "Poems take planning, and - and editing - and I don't write rhyming poems, anyhow."

Joe shrugged. "Don't make it rhyme, then. I guess I'll give you a few days to plan and edit. I don't know how that stuff works. I don't do it, myself. Bye, Ex! See you in a few days!"

"Wait!"

But he jumped over the bridge wall and flew away, leaving Ex standing alone in his Nether fortress, feeling rather like he'd been - somehow - bamboozled.