#fatedchat

And with that, his day goes from kinda sucky to outright shit.

They shouldn't know about that. Nobody should– not to this extent. He was careful about what he researched or spoke about.

Not even his dad knows. He can’t know, because he would try to stop him.

Theo knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that his dad doesn't plan to live once they’re all gone. But Theo has spent a lifetime honing his skills to keep his stupid, idiot dad alive. If he's there, even if only a little longer, he can drag his dad through the grief.

Family first. No matter what.

Hearing that there are entities who know his goals to that extent…is distressing. More than that, it's insulting.

How dare they imply that he would abandon his dad to his grief? How dare they ask him if he's thought about the consequences of this?

The consequences of turning a blind eye to the future are too high to back down.

"Fuck you," he hisses. Rage curls the edges of his words despite knowing he can't murder who or what dared to ask him that question.

He starts to stalk off. He's going to do literally anything but humor these assholes.

"Do you want to know a secret, Theseus?"

Theo stops in his tracks again. There’s not much that unsettles him, but a cloying sense of wrongness is humming in the back of his head.

This voice isn't the same as the Observers. Who or what ever this one belongs to, they are not to be idly snubbed.

He swallows, but gives a slight nod of his head. He’s not thrilled at being singled out like this, even less so to learn 'a secret'.

And especially not coming off the heels of the last two things he heard.

Even the Fates go quiet, unsure what to make of this.

"Admins," the voice giggles, "don't age like you do! Would you really leave your poor dad and baby brother all alone? You'd break their hearts."

Something in Theo’s chest squeezes at the idea of knowingly damning the two of them to that kind of pain. If Lee does become an admin here, and he really does age differently, then there's no telling how long the two of them would live with that grief.

Sounds like a lie? We'd know, right? There’s no way we wouldn't have noticed by now. …Does Lucid look any older, though? It’s only been like, what, five years? Max? That's nothing. We could ask? No way. If it's true, he'd have too big a reason to get Lee to stay. But if it’s not true, we'd be worrying for nothing. We gotta know more, though. Could ask other people on the downlow? 

"It doesn’t matter," he says. "S' not something I'm fuckin' doing anyway."

The voice laughs. Something about it feels cruel. "Your loyalty is so…deep. But you don’t know anything else, huh?"

He wants to curse them. He wants to tell them to eat shit and die in a ditch. He wants to write this off as something toying with him.

He can’t, though. He keeps his damn mouth shut, because he knows that pissing off something powerful is a one-way ticket to regret and misery.

"God, you're so boring," the voice whines. "It's no fun when you're smart. Not when you're not the one who can figure it all out."

…The contradiction confuses him. He’s boring because he’s smart, but not smart enough? How the fuck does that make sense?

It sounds like the voice blows a raspberry. "You're not the reason I spoke up, anyway. Go run along and tell your dad what a fun chat you've had."

He grits his teeth. Even if he wants to demand more information, doing so is too dangerous.

Instead, he turns on his heel. He needs to talk to his dad– things have just escalated.

He waits until he’s gotten back home to begin to answer the new question. If Theo is around, he’s not anywhere in earshot.

…Though he’s pretty sure his eldest has been getting slightly better at stealth. It can be hard to judge, sometimes; Theo rarely bothers with being sneaky when he can instead bulldoze his way through whatever was stupid enough to stand in his path.

The flight back had given him time to consider the question. “There’s been a few cases like that,” Day starts with. “The one that comes up the most is someone named Grian. I have no idea why he just seems to show up every so often. If he’s there, we know it’s a more or less peaceful world. Other than that…”

He tries to remember some of the others, though can’t recall anyone else who appears with any sort of frequency in the Dream SMP. Sometimes people who are usually present are missing, but it’s much rarer that the reverse is true.

The question is complicated by what exactly counts as the Dream SMP being an unexpectedly murky issue.

When he, Theo, and Vio get the pull, they don’t always end up in anything Day can definitively say is a server at all. Whatever causes their ender chests to remain static doesn’t seem like it discriminates; the contents have yet to change, no matter how many non-server realities or places that otherwise definitely aren’t the Dream SMP they wind up in.

At this point, all they can do is shrug and call it a weird quirk of the multiverse or executive meddling to make their job marginally easier.

“...I’d count Time, but I try not to potentially insult the entity who controls time and probably reality. We’re still not positive about that, and aren’t willing to stick our nose into their business to find out for sure. None of us are interested in pissing off someone who can unmake everything we know and love.” 

Idly, he raps his knuckles against the oak plank wall he’s passing next to. It’s a familiar superstition borne of a bone-deep terror at the idea of angering the deity. “In the event that they can see everything or are otherwise observing, that was meant as respectfully as possible.”

He shudders at the idea of invoking the wrath of a god who he still suspects created a reality from the tattered remnants of his own admin access.

For just a moment, his unease crests in a way he chalks up to the tangled knot of emotions around everything tied to his first life.

Things are better now, even if he wants to stop being one of the ones who has to shoulder the burden of keeping things that way.

Which is only going to get worse now that he has to try and navigate the idea of teaching Lee code. The idea of leaving any sort of vital education to Lucid makes Day break out in a cold sweat. The idea of leaving such an important part of his youngest son's education in his hands, though, adds near literal hives and roiling nausea to the mix.

Better is not perfect. Remorseful doesn't mean good. Day has sacrificed far too much to risk Lee being hurt in any capacity.

Given that nobody else knows code, that means that Day will have to try to figure out how the hell to teach it to a ten year old. It's not that he resents or even dislikes the thought of teaching his kids; hell, in most cases it serves as a good chance to bond with them.

It's just that code is incredibly complicated. Most of what Day knows is instinctual. Exposure to a wealth of new items, concepts, and needing to figure out how to fix crimes against morality have done a lot to increase his understanding, but…

Not for the first time, he wishes he had a sounding board for this sort of thing.

=========

Wherever it is that Theo is, it looks like some sort of workshop dedicated to bookbinding. The eldest Was-Taken sibling is slowly and methodically assembling a book with lovely, elaborate calligraphy and art.

While he's been caught off guard before, whatever it is he's making seems important enough that his only reaction for several moments is a soft twitch of his wings.

He gently sets his work down once he's at a good stopping point, and gives a long, steady exhale.

The sound makes Perce raise his head curiously. It's clear that he’s the one who did the calligraphy, though the art seems to have been by a third party.

He tilts his head slightly at his eldest brother. "...Something happen?" Theo’s wings ruffle slightly as he says, "Question about if we see people during fuckin’ travels that shouldn't be there. Which, yeah, sometimes. Multiverse is weird n’ whatnot. Still have trouble wrapping my head around how fuckin isolated shit is. SMPza was a shit place, but at least if you walked long enough, you'd end up in a different territory.”

Cosmic outlier cosmic outlier It was SO hard trying to act like we understood the weird stuff there– Yeah but D3 was technically an admin like, what, ten times over? Territory management, our beloathed.

“Dad was only admin ‘cause I didn’t want to deal with that shit. Besides, s’not the same as admins like Lucid is. Or…Lee, apparently,” Theo adds, a frown tugging at the corners of his mouth.

Perce, who at this point is used to only hearing half of a conversation, picks up on the general direction that the Fates are going in. “Or Daz,” he points out. Theo snaps his fingers and points at him. “Yeah, him too. Fuckin’ weird that he’s another one. Makes me wonder…” His thoughts trail off, brow creasing as he mentally goes back over when he had first met the now-obnoxiously bubbly Tommy.

Between what Daz had said and how the local Dream had acted, Theo now suspects that the later had not just known about Daz’s capacity for being an admin, but had needed it, somehow.

He hadn’t just been afraid, he had been terrified to the point of tears.

At the time, Theo had written it off as another instance of the unhealthy, unhinged obsession that has cropped up more often than he cared to dwell on during his traveling.

He mutters, mostly to himself, “Dunno why they aren’t both being trained, seems fuckin’ obvious.”

There’s a noise of disagreement from Perce, who flicks his wings slightly. “Too many cooks can fuck things up, especially if those cooks ever disagree. That’s even before you get into how easily things can get messed up, or that Daz can be talked into just about anything.”

But he’s a golden retriever! He just wants to make everyone happy! Yeah, exactly. If someone seemed upset enough, he’d go along with whatever they wanted him to do He’d summon infinite items for everyone He’d make it rain candy because that seemed like a thing people might like He’s not THAT dumb– Who have YOU been watching? He’s an idiot. Idiot is harsh. He’s just a bit… He’s got a different kind of smart, stop being mean–

“If you’re all gonna bicker about the guy, do it more fuckin’ quietly,” Theo says, rolling his eyes at the chorus of grumbled not-quite apologies from the cluster of voices in his head.

Or…the old voices, anyway. He’s still not sure what the deal is with the new ones.

His little brother snorts softly, hiding a grin at the exasperated annoyance Theo has for the Fates.

Which just makes him point threateningly, but otherwise not mention it. “People who aren’t usually part of the Dream SMP…the fuck is your criteria for that, anyway? If you mean fuckin’ baseline, we all see tons of fuckin’ worlds with oodles n’ oodles more people in ‘em. Servers aren’t always a thing, or sometimes they’re weird as shit. Other times people’re just fuckin’...there. One dude pops up every so often, uhh…Wheat or Bran or something like that. Flown with a few of ‘em ‘cause sometimes they have fuckin’ wings, usually help him pull off a prank or two, have acted as a middleman for Caper n’ Spark to sell some of them the schematics for glitter TnT n’ for him to sell them some shit I don’t remember the purpose of. Always a new one, always too much technical shit for my taste.”

He racks his brain for other instances of repeated but non-baseline players, but draws a blank. Perce points out, “Haven’t there been competition worlds?”

Tournament worlds are fun! Vio subbing in for a last minute injury was amazing– I still can’t believe they looked at THAT bastard, then at Day and Theo, and really thought he’d be the least OP out of all of us–

“First of all, we all fuckin’ agreed that he needed a world to let off steam. Second of all, he is not more fuckin’ OP than me–” “Dunno, he sure seems to kick your ass a lot–” Theo abruptly grabs a thick rubber pad and chucks it at his little brother, who leans out of the way of it.

Smugly, Perce tells him, “You’re too obvious. Gotta be faster if you want to win against the reigning king of manhunts–” “Oh, I’ll show you fuckin’ fast–!”

Theo launches himself over the table, but his little brother is already darting away and out the door of their joint workshop. Both of them sport wide, toothy grins that make it clear they’re using the bickering as an excuse to take part in the familiar bonding ritual of mostly friendly fratricide.

=============

The last of the trio pauses in the act of reading out loud. He, along with Aver, are in Aver’s workroom. A sleeveless navy hoodie is being embroidered with dozens of tiny, shimmering stars in shades of silvery white and light blue.

There’s a noise of curiosity from Aver, but he doesn’t look up from the tiny, sure stitches he’s making. It’s not common that he does this sort of work himself any more, but Khons refused to let anyone but Aver have the thread spun from his wool.

Sure, the finished piece will be for Aster, and the thread was offered freely to him as a sign of Khons and Alephs’ friendship. Those didn’t magically erase his trauma.

Even now, Aver is always extremely careful to return any excess and to secure it in the meantime.

It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t think anyone would be stupid or greedy enough to take it even as a joke; the fact is that Khons, and by extension Aleph, have had issues with it being stolen in the past.

Aver, despite his fondness for causing light to moderate headaches, does genuinely want to help people learn to overcome, or at least learn to live with, the strife and misery that led them to end up in Sanctuary.

For all that Lucid is its admin, and all that the T3 are its shepherds, Aver will always be one of those who decided to dig his heels in to make it a home instead of a living hellscape.

The leader of that charge has been quiet for a few moments before he speaks again. “...A question about non-baseline people who show up in the Dream SMP,” he murmurs, looking thoughtful.

Aver is more than familiar with the faint crease of his brow, slightly narrowed eyes, and idle flicks of his tail.

His not-dad is trying to figure something out, but this is one of the rare times when he has no idea what he’s tripped up on.

“Talk to me, big man. You know I’m a good fuckin’ sounding board.” “...It feels like a weird question,” Vio says slowly, that furrow increasing.

“...Seems fuckin’ normal to me? Or not any weirder than any of the others you’ve mentioned.” “Yeah, exactly. I don’t understand why it feels so off.”

Aver hums, his stitching pausing for a few moments. Looking up at Vio without moving his head, he points out, “Might be weird eldritch radar. Dunno what you’d be picking up. God vibes?”

Vio visibly grimaces at the idea. “I don’t want to meddle in the affairs of the divine. I’ve heard enough horror stories from Theo to want nothing to do with any of that.” “Maybe you’re getting scoped out to be a fuckin’ prophet or some shit,” Aver says, mostly to see the way his not-dad’s face contorts in absolute horror.

If the alien had fur, Aver has no doubt it would be standing on end. As it is, he shudders violently. “Nope, no, do not tempt the universe with that sort of talk–” “Not that fuckin’ big of a deal, some of them are chill–” “Your experiences are not only not universal, but entirely unhelpful. Just because Lady Death looks kindly on you–” “Hey, Mumza is pog! Fuckin’ loves hearing about you, too, n’ is still bummed she can’t talk to you directly–”

“I wanted to molt a dozen times in a row being near Philza when he was used as her vessel. I don’t want to revisit that experience. I didn’t even know I could break out in hives, but damn if that isn’t what happened!”

Aver rolls his eyes. “Fuckin’ drama queen. For someone who talks to gods semi-regularly, you’re awfully fuckin’ anti-divine.” “I’m not against divinity, because I’m not suicidal, I just want to remove every layer of my skin and disinfect it in lava by being near them. My body evidently decided that gods are too close to magic, which I am allergic to.”

“Your fatal fuckin’ flaw. That, or being a stubborn bastard.” Vio’s eyes narrow, and he points a finger at him. “Pot, kettle. You wouldn’t keep calling me your dad if you weren’t just as bad–” “Not-dad, get it right,” Aver chirps smugly.

“Fuck you,” Vio retorts flatly. Aver’s smugness only grows as he says, “Not my fault you can’t remember the joke.” “I’m physically incapable of forgetting the joke without severe memory loss, because Day and Theo take every possible chance to tell everyone we meet about it!”

The reminder makes Aver cackle with laughter. “Yeah, Theo thinks it’s fuckin’ hysterical. Can’t blame him there, ‘cause it is. N’ now you have to vanish for the week around fuckin’ Father’s Day, otherwise the whole fuckin’ server lines up to dunk on you.”

The immortal folds his arms onto his desk and slowly lowers his face into it.

“...I know who Philza Minecraft is,” he manages after several moments of silence, his voice sounding oddly strangled.

The tone he uses makes Theo roll his chair so that he can curiously poke his head around the corner. He sees the posture his dad has taken and considers the possible causes. “...Got a weird-ass question again, huh?” He’s very curious what could have been asked to make his dad mention Phil in that tone.

Day lifts his head to look at his son. "What the fuck is their knowledge base?! Some of them know about the Vault and that I was in there! Some of them seem to think I don’t know who Philza is!"

Theo squints at him. "...What did they ask?” Day obtains a thousand-yard stare, which does nothing to lessen Theo’s curiosity. The Fates chatter in his mind, debating amongst themselves what it could be.

Did he get asked something about ocean monuments? Nah he’d be ranting if he had. Right, so it can’t be something like that. Oh, what if it’s asking how he’d feel if he had to wear Phil’s clothes– His outfit is fine though??? Exactly; out of everyone in baseline, he’s got one of the least bad outfits.

Theo narrows his eyes slightly. “Really don’t want to think about Dad wearing Phil’s clothes, that’s just fuckin’ weirdchamp.” Day makes another strangled noise, looking absolutely haunted.

There’s silence for a few moments before Theo asks slowly and with a desperate hope that he’s wrong, “...Did you get asked if you’d date Phil?”

Day abruptly shoves a pile of things on his desk aside as he gets to his feet. "Nope. No, not discussing the idea of any version of this-me even considering dating any version of Philza, not ever and especially not with you!" With that, he literally dives out the window and, in a practiced move, uses the ledge outside of it to give himself the space needed to spread his wings and take off.

Theo notices he leaves the exact opposite way from the tundra. "...Well, thanks, now that's fuckin' gonna haunt me too," he mutters to himself as the Fates get over their shock to howl with laughter.

Oh PRIME that was amazing! Has he ever been that embarrassed before? He looked like he wanted the ground to swallow him whole lmao Phrasing! I–

Theo makes a face as he interrupts, "Nope, stopping that shit right fuckin' there! If you all devolve into being even more fuckin' weirdchamp than usual I'm going to get Lee to test experimental potions on me so I can be fuckin' unconscious for that."

Awww You're no fun No no he has a point…for once

The smug look on Theo’s face appears and vanishes as the full sentence registers. "What do you fuckin' mean 'for once'?!"

He's more than happy to get swept up in bickering with the Fates rather than let them or his thoughts linger on anything that just happened.

Sometimes, he had found, it’s best for his sanity to just…let things go.

Ooc::

Here's a post with visual aids for what that area looks like, for those who want that.

I'll probably do a series of posts for the places I built in the game; currently more or less done are the entire main house and the Council's meeting rooms because they are scrunklies.

Naturally, half of it is spat back out and a fourth of it exits via his nose. The last fourth feels like it went straight into his lungs. None of those should have any liquids going through them that way, much less a carbonated one.

Plus now his shirt, the couch, and the coffee table are going to be both damp and sticky. The later two can be cleaned fairly easily--and are marred by far more dubious stains anyway--but he does not want to admit to Aver that he may have fucked up another of his casual wear shirts.

Aver–Tommy Prime–was terrifying in a way that Theo never would have imagined he could become when he first met him. You just didn’t cross the guy, because he’s the single most powerful person on the server. Aver has a stranglehold on the entire clothing and fabric import, production, and export related to the server. Anything related to that goes through him at one point or another–up to and including employing at least a dozen other Tommys full time.

He also runs off of spite and probably-eldritch coffee. The guy is cool, but he also maybe scared Theo a tiny bit. Hard not to respect, or not be glad he adored Lee. Said little brother has been learning sewing and embroidery from him for years now; Lee has a voracious appetite for learning any and every skill he could convince anyone to teach him.

Not that any of that will help him when Aver pulls out Seam Ripper to run him through. "Fuckin'--why?!" He's irritated, despairing, and overall unhappy with this entire turn of events. The Fates chitter in amusement at him, though.

I'll take weirdest things a voice in someone's head has said for 500, Alex No no some of you have said WAY weirder shit! I agree, some of you are cringe as hell Lmao look at this guy, thinks cringe culture isn't even deader than Niki Yeah, what rock have you been living under?? Same one that Lucid's sense of style crawled out from, apparently Ooooh burn

Theo puts his head in his hands and sighs. At least this train of thought might distract them from examining what just happened too closely. "Some of you have said some real fuckin’ weirdchamp things before, agreed."

Rude Hey in my defense…the frog looked tasty It was bright red tho??? Yeah like candy! Cherry flavored frog!! Bright colors means poison you piece of soggy toast Okay but if it was one of the ones that gets you high, it would have been VERY funny– Double D would have been mad tho He would have probably found it funny Not if we got Theo killed?!

"A frog wouldn't have fuckin’ killed me, I'm too incredibly pog for that," Theo argues. He’s more than a little offended that they think so little of him. They've been in his head over a decade, they should know better by now. "I would simply not die. Nature fuckin’ quivers before me."

Yeah okay, tell that to a box jellyfish Or a creeper Pfft you should go tell Sam he should quiver before you He DOES though???

His lip curls at the thought of the creeper hybrid. Sam never truly got off his shit list--his crimes may have been largely in his dad’s first life, but…well. Theo forgives nothing and no one for harming his family.

It didn't help that Theo had been forced to watch how the baseline version of the Vault went down at his dad's side. Or, more accurately, sat with him at the bottom of the lava wall and tried to ground him while they both did their best to block out Dream’s screams.

So, yeah, any Sam involved in shady shit related to the Vault was automatically on his bad side.

He's too wrapped up in his own thoughts to attempt herding the metaphorical cats in his head. This proves to be his downfall.

Wait…isn't that basically just selfcest? What the FUCK are you talking about Double D and Phil thing! Think about it, Double D is like…mostly Phil, right? I--no?? How does that make any sense??? I'm lost here too, actually No, no, that's a fair point. Double D is something like 4/5ths Philza, if we count memories as time he lived– DO we count them though??? He does! Yeah, see! Exactly! It TOTALLY counts, therefore we're entering very dangerous territory–

Desperately trying to reign in their bullshit before it ends with him needing to book a therapy appointment again, he tells them, "I'd fuckin’ appreciate if you all wouldn't discuss the idea of my dad n’ Philza being together or the--Dad is not mostly Philza, that's just fuckin stupid!"

Dee takes this exact moment to hop down from the level above and land right in front of his brother. His eyes are narrowed slightly in that way they get when he's trying to figure out if being nosy is worth the possible costs. He evidently decides they are because he asks, "...Care to explain?"

Theo isn't going to suffer through this alone; if this bullshit is being inflicted on him, he’s sharing that burden. He immediately says, "Dad got a real fuckin’ weirdchamp question asking how he would react to seeing a version of himself–him, not Dream–dating a version of Phil. His response was to just fuckin’ fling himself out the window. And now the Fates are fuckin’ debating if it counts as selfcest because of the ratio of memories that are Dad’s versus the ones from Phil. And now I got the same question for context because I was real fuckin’ confused."

After a moment to digest that, Dee gives a thoughtful hum. "I see." He pauses, and then adds, "I deeply regret asking. But since I did, I'm going to say for the sake of my sanity that it's not. As funny as it would be to tell Dad not to pull a Onceler on us, others are already doing that way more clearly. Fates, please stop creating cognitohazards. Theo is enough of one already."

Theo's outraged squawk is coupled with loud laughter from the Fates.

Dee saw where I was going with that!!! Theo tell your older brother he's the second best Wait you were thinking of Onceler??? In this day and age??? Some of us are haunted by those dark, dark times I thought it was all very entertaining, actually And that's why we keep a spritz bottle for YOU I've evolved beyond being afraid of that!! I'm stronger now. I am unstoppable– Yeah that's why there’s a second bottle with bleach. Oh that sounds painful actually. No thanks!

As always, Theo has very little clue what the fuck is happening with them. Is it a bit? Are they actually capable of spritzing wayward members of the chorus with bleach? Is he just trying to do anything to get the idea of his dad dating Philza out of his head?

Only one of those he knows the answer to for sure. He looks up at his brother and tells him, "I'm going to go find Lee and get him to test an experimental potion on me. Anything to skip past this fuckin’ bullshit." He gets up and starts to leave, when Dee shouts after him, "Clean up the soda first, you asshole!" "Sorry, can't hear you over the sound of trying to ignore the fuckin’ bullshit going in my head!" "Theo I swear to fucking Prime if you don't get back here–"

Theo hastens his pace to run and launch himself off the deck and into the air. "Nope! Go fuck yourself!" He throws a middle finger back at Dee as he gains height and, more importantly, distance from him. He curves away from that section of the house because Dee is a bullshit good shot with arrows.

…Though it may have been worth it to get shot a few times rather than deal with whatever Dee will come up with to get back at him for this.