below is an alternate ending of a fic that I've been writing about secretlife!ldshadowlady ! I've been really enjoying it, and while this might not be the actual ending (or might it be??? we'll never know), i wanted to put it up to show it but also so that people get what the vibes of the fic itself are. I feel like I've been using a very particular, very metaphor - heavy writing style for this and I like it a lot! Enjoy! (also on ao3)
You say the whole world’s ending
Buddy, it already did.
You’re not gonna slow it, heaven knows you’ve tried.
Lizzie sighs into The Void, into the inky blackness that’s beginning to press down on her bones. Forcing her hair to float across her eyes. She lets it for a moment. There’s hardly anything left for her to see, and she could do with something bright and colorful in this vast expanse of darkness. Eventually, though, it itches at her cheeks and tickles her nose, and she gives up. She pushes it out of her face and stares upwards into the stars, one last time. She leans back, spreading her arms wide, palms up, the tips of her fingers dragging down towards the abyss. Like a fallen angel in Limbo, waiting for her fate. But her fate never comes. There is no death knell, no dramatic crack of lightning that scatters her belongings to the windless void. There is just silence and Lizzie’s breath, and the slightest clink of her axe against the empty glass bottles that held her invisibility potions. It sounds hollower than it would have in the Overworld, she knows that as a fact, somehow. Everything sounds hollower here. It all gets swallowed by the black. At some point Lizzie knows that she’s no longer falling, just trapped in a stasis at the edge of The Void, hovering infinitely. She can just barely see the edge of the island Scott (she’s convinced it was Scott, she desperately wants her death to go towards some kind of narrative… something) knocked her off of.
A few sessions go by. No one pays her a visit. Apparently they’ve no reason to venture into the End. They’ll all have red tasks, now, all hinging on murder and violence. They won’t be given trivial things like “find the stronghold,” or “kill the Ender Dragon.” They’ll’ve descended into Keeper-mandated bloodlust. Lizzie wishes she could watch.
Eventually, she hears a voice. It startles her, to hear someone else, something beyond the distant, meaningless vwoops of the endermen and the ambient noises of her own existence. She freezes, a hand going to her axe instinctively. The voice fades away for a moment. And then something… someone? Drops from the island above her.
She stares up at it, eyes wide in confusion and in fear, muscles tensing even further like a deer in headlights. Or a cat caught messing with something it shouldn’t be. Or a faery, realizing too late it was lured and trapped in honey.
Scar’s scarred face comes into her view, his arms spread in proper skydiving formation, his dark maroon cape flying out behind him. He yells something, but the words get swallowed by The Void. Lizzie rights herself, the most energy she’s spent while in The Void since the initial five minutes of screaming. She pats down her hair as best she can, tightens her space buns and adjusts the little, now dead, bits of holly she plucked from her berry bushes and stuck in them ages ago, straightens her axe. And then she waits for Scar to come within earshot. There’s no point in further destroying her voice to try and carry out whatever conversation he wants to have. They have all the time in the world.
Scar hurtles toward her impressively quickly. Did she fall this fast? She could have sworn it took her weeks to fall. Scar takes less than an hour. Maybe the gods really do pick favorites.
“I thought you might be down here,” Scar says once he knows she can hear him.
Lizzie raises an eyebrow at him. “Were you looking for me?” Maybe they do remember her.
Scar nods, but something dark flickers across his usually-peppy face. It lingers in his bloodstained irises. “I-“ He breathes out, hard. Pushes his hair back from his forehead. “We’re the only ones left. Everyone else- it was a bloodbath - Lizzie, they’re all dead.”
Lizzie wishes she could feel any kind of shock. She just takes the news with a calm, if a little cold, acceptance. “So you won.”
“That’s the thing. Everyone’s task was to win-“
“-how dramatic-“
“-yeah, Keeper’s got some flair- and so at the end of… everything… I walked up and hit ‘succeed’ and then it just gave me another book. Same task. ‘Win Secret Life.’”
“Right. And you think this has something to do with me.”
“I’m out of options.”
Lizzie frowns, biting her lip. “But I’m dead.”
Scar blinks. “I don’t think your body got the memo.”
“Well, yes, but at this point I must be dead. You must be, too, I suppose, if we’re both actually having this conversation.” She looks back over Scar. He seems remarkably alive. His usual perkiness is a little dimmed, sure, but who can blame him? He’s just witnessed the death of everyone else in this horrible game, that’ll do something to a man. “Why are you here, anyway? I can only assume it’s not for pleasure.”
“To be honest, I thought you might have some answers.”
“I’ve been faffing around at the bottom of The Void for weeks, what information would I be able to give to you?”
“Again, I ran out of options. Not even Grian talks to me anymore.”
“I imagine not, you did say everyone died.”
“Well, yeah, but I could swear he talked to me after I-“ He swallows. “After, uh, after Pearl died.”
A pang of pity shoots through Lizzie’s chest. She doesn’t have the heart to shoo it away. “I’m sorry, Scar. I don’t have any answers for you.”
“Maybe…” He trails off. His eyes flick around The Void, searching. They land on the sword at his side, and Lizzie’s fingertips drift toward the handle of her axe. “If one of us dies, the other one would win… right? That’s how these gods-damned games work.”
“Games? Plural?” Lizzie asks, twitchy. She remembers, of course. She remembers the other death game, and the empires, and everything else. But if she can derail Scar’s train of thought, maybe he’d stop looking at her so murder-y and start thinking up alternate solutions.
“Yes, plural- I’m sorry, don’t really have time to explain, I just- It was always down to the last man standing, right? Even in the one with pairs,” One with pairs? Maybe she doesn’t remember everything. Scar keeps mumbling under his breath. His hand is gripping his sword fully now, Lizzie’s is tight around her axe. She’s mirroring him, even if he doesn’t fully realize what he’s about to do, the scope of the task he’s about to complete.
“Scar, listen to me-“ She starts, but he isn’t listening, he’s trying to pace in The Void. His sword slides an inch out of its sheath with a screech, and Lizzie’s axe is in her hands before she can open her mouth to warn him further. He looks at her with red-glazed eyes. “You don’t want this, Scar.”
“It’ll be over either way, won’t it? That’s what I want.”
“You don’t want this, Scar!” Lizzie gestures wildly at the nothingness around her with her free hand. “This isn’t winning. Not even the Keeper will know who wins if we die here. This isn’t a victory.”
“I don’t need to win. I just want to get out.” He lunges at her, sword sweeping dangerously close to her neck as she ducks out of the way, spinning slightly from the momentum having nothing to slow her in the nothingness. Strings of her hair float around her, now cropped close to her chin as Scar pulls back his sword again.
“I’m sorry, Scar.” She takes her axe in both hands and rushes at him, pulling it upwards above her head and kicking her legs out to add to the impact of it as it slams into scar. It cuts a gash through his cape, skin, and muscle, to the point where Lizzie can see where she’s chipped the bone that sits in the center of his sternum. He gasps, and the blood flows from him in a cloud. Lizzie has to rear back so she doesn’t get a faceful of it. Scar opens his mouth, but his eyes are already glazing over. His face isn’t angry. It’s open. It’s waiting. Lizzie senses a sizzle in the air, and his body is vaporized with a loud CRACK of lightning. His sword drifts out past him. So does a sunflower. Lizzie removes its head and places it gently against her ear. It’s just her and The Void, now. And whoever is left watching them. A voice whispers through her ears. Her shoulders roll back, eyes closing on their own.
You’ve completed your quest The world is restored. He killed all the rest And you reaped his reward. You’re our last man standing You’re no longer red; you’re purple It’s time to start planning Come join our winner’s circle.
She keeps her eyes shut as she feels the air heat up around her. Her hair floats up and off of her shoulders, flying loose from her space buns and tickling her forehead. The hairs on her arms stand up, and Lizzie feels her shoulders relax. Whatever happens now is over. She’s won. She did it.
As the death knell chimes, her eyes stay shut. She’s seen all she needs to. This world was done.
The lightning incinerates her, just as it did to Scar. In the end, all they are is just weapons, sunflowers, and berries, floating on the edge of nothing.
