His life is quiet.
In the mornings, he goes out to the farm at the back of his house, feeds the cows, scatters seeds for the chickens and picks up any eggs.
The breeze is crisp yet gentle, lightly stirring the leaves of the forest that surrounds his house. The path leading from the house to the farm weaves farther away into the trees, and he follows it under the cool shade of the leaves.
The trees come down to the banks of the river; his feet step from soft grass to sturdy oak wood, and he sits down on the edge of the dock, letting his legs swing over the water. He casts his fishing line, and as he waits, he watches the sun come up over the forest.
Some days he goes mining. Not far from his house is a cave system that leads deep underground, tunneling to ancient mineshafts and high-ceilinged ravines lit only by lava.
He's found a few diamonds, but he's never used them. They feel too precious to be used on a tool or weapon, though he isn't sure what else to use them for. Iron suits him well enough; he can always find at least half a stack on every mining trip. He usually picks up lava too, bringing home a bucket of subterranean heat to forge rough ore into smooth ingots.
They're still hot when he uses them to repair his pickaxe, his sword, his armor. Sometimes it's more worth it to craft them anew, but he prefers the familiar feel of the same tools. He doesn't take the time or effort to repair them perfectly, knowing that they'll soon be damaged again.
The village isn't far from his house, and he visits pretty frequently.
The people there are friendly. They don't talk, not like Steve does, and he doesn't really know their language either, but they can understand each other (though he's certain they understand him better than he does them). They're always happy to buy something from him—potatoes, wheat, coal, even rotten flesh—or to sell him something in return.
Some nights, he stays in the village. Not every night, of course, but he does it when he's feeling up to it.
As the sun sets, he strolls around, smiling and nodding as the villagers, one by one, bid him goodnight and go into their houses.
When the last one is inside, he climbs to the top of a house and waits. Usually the monsters aren't anything the iron golem can't handle, but he always feels better doing something to protect the village.
The monsters come, growling and hissing and clanking.
Silent on the rooftop, he nocks an arrow.
He watches it fly straight through a zombie's rotting skull, and something in him clenches with grim satisfaction even as he draws another arrow.
When his quiver becomes light (but not empty—never empty if he can help it), he puts away his bow and drops smoothly to the ground.
The weight of his sword is comforting and familiar in his hands, the cool glint of iron flashing in the corner of his eye as he twirls the blade into stance. Even surrounded by death, he feels strangely calm.
Spiders are fast, but he's faster.
Zombies are so sluggish that they're dead… well, dead again before they can even touch him.
The stark white form of a skeleton still makes something inside him flare up, and before he knows it bones are clattering apart and breaking into dust that floats away on the chill air.
It's exhausting, and yet it's effortless.
It's been like this for as long as he can remember.
Sometimes, at night, when he lies awake wondering what was before—sometimes he can reach a glimpse of a memory: sunshine warm on his face and arms, the quiet splash of deep cerulean water, the whisper of a soft salty breeze.
He knows where it is, somehow. Every time he visits the village, he stops to look; to stand there, feel the sun and the breeze, to lean down and touch the grass and sand, even though there's nothing really there.
The villagers seem to know the place holds some significance for him, though they know more from watching his visits than from their own memory.
(He's asked; all any of them seem to know is that he just walked into their village one day.)
He's walking in the forest, one rainy afternoon. He doesn't feel the need for armor; he's only wearing a leather tunic over his normal clothes, but as always, his sword is at his side.
And then he hears something ahead of him.
It's not the clank of a skeleton, nor the clumsy plodding of a zombie, the scuttling of a spider; he doesn't feel the strange feeling that seems to surround endermen. It could be a creeper, which… would be bad.
He draws his sword; slowly, silently, he begins to circle around, trying to look through the trees…
They both gasp and flinch back. Wide, deep green eyes stare into his, and he immediately knows she's not a monster. Monsters don't look this… this… well, monsters inspire fear. They aren't… afraid.
He releases a breath, letting his defensive stance slacken. "Hey," he says softly.
She's still wide-eyed, her shoulders rising and falling a little too quickly. There's a bow on her shoulder, glimmering with the purple-pink sheen of enchantment, but she doesn't seem to be making a move for it, and… for whatever reason, he trusts her.
(He doesn't have a bow; if she wanted to, she could've killed him already, but she doesn't want to, he knows somehow.)
Keeping eye contact with her, he lays his sword down on the grass where she can see it, the blade pointed away from her.
"It's okay." Slowly, he holds out his hand, palm outward. "I'm not going to hurt you, okay?"
"Steve?" she whispers.
He freezes. He's not used to hearing his name—the villagers know it, or at least he thinks they do, but they can't seem to say it in their language—but her voice nudges something in his mind.
And suddenly Steve remembers another rainy day, another forest, a sword forged not of iron but of stone, leather armor to protect against more than rain, a bow not enchanted but plain and brown.
And then he's bombarded—the brush of a soft wind, vast plains of grass, the radiant orange and gold of a sunset.
The silent glow of the moon.
Darkness, fear, desperation; hope, relief, safety.
Distant thunder; rain against the windowpanes.
Comfort.
Familiarity.
Warmth.
Heat.
Fire, burning, seething, screeching, the sky lost in endless unrelenting crimson.
Darkness.
Black, empty, terror, snarling, screaming, falling, falling
wake up
Steve blinks frantically and when he sees again he sees the trees and—he feels himself say her name, and Alex is crying, and suddenly he's crushed they're both crushed together in each other's arms, both crying and Alex is sobbing you were gone into his shoulder and right she's shorter and her face always ends up against his neck and his in her hair and it's all too much, it's like falling into the ocean, he can't breathe, he can't see, he's numb from the sheer waves of feeling crashing over him.
He doesn't know how long it is, but eventually it begins to calm. Breathing is easier, for both of them by the feel of it; the noise in his mind has subsided, but his head still aches with the sudden weight of everything that's just suddenly there.
"How…" Alex looks up at him through eyes still welling with tears. "How are you here?"
He doesn't know. There's… there's something, he can feel it; he knows she's his friend, he can feel something ancient and amazing and sad and beautiful, but it's all just flashes of feelings, images that evade him whenever he tries to grasp one.
She looks at him for a moment; then she sighs shakily, dropping her head and pulling back. "Here, I… would this…" Her words, already quiet, trail off. She's fiddling with her belt, or—belts, because she has two, two belts and two swords. She unbuckles the one on her right (she's right-handed, they both are), and holds the scabbard out to him.
A sense of right surges through him when he takes it in his hands; the hilt is flawlessly clean and intact, somehow still feeling worn under his fingers—no, not worn; it's that same feeling, though, that sense of long familiarity.
He pulls the sword out a few centimeters. Pure, hard diamond glitters a brilliant blue, and he can almost feel the power vibrating in it. The words Sharpness II, Mending I whisper in his mind.
"You insisted on me taking the diamond helmet and boots," says Alex softly. "So I made you take the sword."
It comes back as she speaks: him trying to put the helmet on her head, her laughing and playfully batting him away, trying to push it back to him.
A smile tugs at his lips at the memory; he draws the sword completely. Diamond is light, lighter than iron, but there's a weight to it that doesn't come from mass.
He remembers.
He remembers his sword clenched in his hand, Alex climbing the pillar silhouetted black on black, himself running the other way.
The slow flap of huge wings beating the stagnant air; a deafening snarl.
Then a smashing impact, blinding pain, sword torn from his hand.
More pain, cracking against hard hard stone, rolling, pain—then nothing. Arms scraping on cold slick stone, grasping frantically, still slipping too quickly.
A distant explosion, another snarl.
His name screamed across the emptiness of the void.
Hands slipping.
And then…
He exhales slowly, lets the memory pass over him like a freezing ocean wave; he still shivers.
"How…" He looks down at his hands, scattered with little beads of rainwater; tiny drops fall anew on his palms, and everything certainly feels real, but…
"I… I don't know." Alex's hands take his, squeezing gently; warm though soaked with cold and rain. "But you are."
He looks up to meet her eyes again, and at her smile he feels that that's the only thing that matters.
She sniffles, still smiling, and reaches up to wipe a few tears from his face. It's still raining, so it doesn't make much difference. But the tenderness behind the gesture means everything. Almost naturally, he reaches his hand up to return it, and—there's a scar across her cheek, a twinge of familiarity… and suddenly, another memory solidifies.
Lava. A cave. Mining.
The twang of a bow.
A scream.
The crack of shattering bone.
Blood, blood, so much blood.
He lets out a shaky breath, the word skeleton forming on his lips as he gently traces the scar with his thumb.
"Yeah," Alex chokes, smiling wetly.
And maybe she falls into him or he falls into her, but they hold one another tight again and everything feels right.
"I missed you," Steve whispers, and he knows it doesn't make sense, but it's as close as words can get to how beautifully complete everything feels.
"Missed you too," Alex whispers back, her voice breaking, and it makes him instinctively hold her just a little closer. How long had she been alone? And he had just forgotten about her, and he could've gone and found her so much sooner, if only he'd known, if only he'd remembered…
As soon as he thinks it, images flicker in his mind: a tall wooden house nestled among the oak trees, a quiet stream running through a garden lit with soft lamps, and he knows where she was, where they used to be, and he can feel how far it is, every one of the hundreds and thousands of blocks; he would've crossed every single one if he'd only known, but… then why is Alex here, how did she know?
Then that memory of the sun and the breeze and the ocean surfaces unprompted in his mind, and the memory of the other rainy day and the forest.
And he thinks he begins to understand.
The rain is starting to clear up by the time they get back to Steve's house, and they climb to the roof.
It's something he does a lot—something they would always do, he remembers, and maybe that's why they don't need to say anything now.
They perch together near the edge of the roof, comfortably close, heads resting against each other. The gentle glow of the sunset is just starting to spread golden across the sky; they stay there for a long moment, watching it fade into softer oranges and purples as the sun sinks below the mountains.
Neither of them can remember a sunset more beautiful.