Failure

Will felt his stomach twist into knots. He knelt to the floor in a jolt of pain, gasping for air. Hot tears burned his eyes as he shakily breathed in and out, in and out, desperately trying to keep himself from sobbing.

He… He lost.

It was over. The news had been spread. All the fighting that had happened, all the way that he’d come, and he’d lost.

He felt terrible. His hazel eyes turned to a muddy-brown and his chocolate hair stuck to his forehead with sweat. A ragged cough escaped his mouth, a cry for help and a cry of loss. With this final link of hope gone, he collapsed on his side.

Rapid sobs shook his body with every negative thought. The pain of his wounds seeped in from all sides, causing him to cry even louder. The pain of his loss was something that could not— that could never— be described.

His friends. They told him to stay inside, stay away from the threats lurking beyond. But the moment he heard commotion, he stepped outside his door and tried to fight. It was something that his sister always told him not to do.

No matter the situation, he was never to fight.

But he did. In the second he caught a glimpse of the war going on beyond the walls, he did.

What a terrible mistake.

Now, his friends were gone. Gone where? He didn’t know. He hoped, as he stared helplessly at the fading blue sky, that his friends were having fun in another place, a… a better place. A place where war did not have to happen, a place where they could do whatever they wished all day long, a place where they never had to get hurt or feel pain.

Tears rocked his body. Even trying to think about where they would go when they left this world didn’t make him feel any better.

He felt selfish. He felt like a fool. He wanted his friends back. He didn’t want them to go away, no matter how much better the Otherplace would be. He wanted them to stay with him…

But they were gone.

William’s eyes twinkled with glowing tears. The sadness inside of him left an empty, hollow hole, in which he would fall into any time he began to think about the demise of his faithful friends.

His stomach hurt… His arms hurt… His legs hurt…

Suddenly he felt exhausted. He breathed out a shallow sigh, letting a few more gentle tears fall, until he closed his eyes and saw nothing more.

…If that had been the case.

White eyes pierced him. Will shrieked in the darkness, flailing, trying to pathetically attack whatever creature was attempting to eliminate him. But it was no creature, and it was not trying to eliminate him.

The man looked down at the boy, his white eyes glowing bright. “William,” he said softly, “I will not hurt you.”

Will lay on the ground. He refused to answer. He never wanted to speak ever, ever again.

The man sighed. He lifted William off his back and set him on his feet. Will looked away from the eyes of his savior, his mouth turning to an unsavory frown, showing his clear distaste of the man and all that he did.

Nonetheless, the glitch took care of him. His friends had been the ones who had taken care of him, ever since his worldswapping incident and the separation from his older sister. But now that they had gone to the Otherplace, he had no one to take care of him.

The man refused to accept that fact.

He fed William. He hunted for food and cooked it and set it in plates in Will’s room, only to find them uneaten in the morning. When his attempt at getting Will to eat normal foods went moot, he started to make special kinds of cold soups that the boy would enjoy.

This time, his endeavor worked. The brown-haired boy gratefully slurped up the tasteful liquid. But he still was not the same as he was before.

He refused to leave the treehouse. He would stay in his room and stare at the leaves above his head.

He refused to speak. If he wanted to get his way, he would make motions with his hands and whine, but refuse to speak understandable words.

He wasn’t happy. Not even close. He barely drew anymore, which was concerning, and never climbed the ladder to the skylight deck where he used to sit and watch the sunset. He never did anything.

The sight was heartbreaking. The distant memory of Will’s bright smile, his laugh, his racing through the flower field… It all made the man’s head hurt. All he wanted to do was bring Will back to happiness, to keep the peace in the world that he ruled underground.

It seemed impossible. His hope slipped more and more every day. William seemed to be farther and farther away every time the sun rose.

Finally, one day, after William had changed out of his resting clothes, the man took him up to the roof of the house and set him right at the edge of the balcony. Then he let go of Will’s shoulders and waited for any reaction.

When there was nothing, he asked, “Are you scared?”

Will looked over the field in front of him. The cliff, far off in the distance, ran blue with a waterfall that frothed to a river at the bottom. At that particular moment, he didn’t know how he felt.

He felt… he felt…

A rush of emotions drowned him.

Sorrow. His friends were gone. As they had been for the past three months.

Happiness. He was back on the roof, finally able to watch the waterfall gush from the mountains.

Grief. A sense of morbidity hung around his head constantly.

Fear. Questions filled his head as he stared at the outside world, something which he had not seen for weeks. Would there be another war? Would the monarchs be murdered and the mobs massacred? Would he lose his life? Would his world— his wondrous, lovely, awesome world— be destroyed?

His breath caught in his throat. He refused to speak words, but the man could clearly see what he meant.

He didn’t know what his emotions were. Too many of them came rushing all at once. Memories of the war, of his determination to leave the safe confines and “rescue” his friends, of trying to be a hero, kept coming back to him.

He was only a kid. A child. Yet somehow he thought he could save his friends.

“You don’t have to keep living in this way,” said the man, walking up behind him, “This is the reason that I have taken care of you. Your life, though it seems dull, still has meaning to it.”

Will refused to speak. His throat felt like melting ice.

“You lost your old friends,” comforted he, “so that you could make new ones. You did lose something, but only to gain another thing.”

Still he refused to speak. A gentle whine escaped his mouth, maybe a quiet, quick inhale to try and keep himself from crying, but that was all.

“William,” said he, harsher, “Did the war end everything?”

It seemed like it. The moment his friends were taken to the Otherplace, the whole world collapsed on his shoulders. The war…

…Wait…

It wasn’t really a war, was it? It was a fight, yes. But it was not a war. It did not end everything. If it had ended everything, nothing would exist anymore. There’d be no trees, no grass, no… anything. It would all be withered and dead.

But it was still here.

Will wiped at his eyes. He whined something, as though trying to speak underwater. The man could make out what he meant to say.

“Yes,” he said, “There wouldn’t be anything left if the battle had destroyed everything. There are still people out there. There are still, perhaps, kings and queens and others who would be willing to take your companionship.”

Will lay his head on the railing. He sighed, then shifted, then contemplated how to speak again.

“What…” he muttered, his voice purely so young, “…but… but they’d just…”

“No,” refused the glitch, “They would be your friends— real friends. Not just taking up acquaintance with you to attract the attention of others. They would be real friends.”

William struggled with the idea. It’d been three months since the Loss, but it felt like merely a few hours ago. His pain for his friends’ moving on was everlasting. And yet he found truth in the man’s words.

Yes, he had lost. He had lost his friends. But he was still here, still breathing, still alive to make new friends. He could still have the memories of his old friends and the experiences with his new friends at the same time. He didn’t have to live this way.

William tried to make sense of the words forming in his mind. He tried to make them understandable. “I… I don’t want to…”

The man squinted his bright white eyes. “William,” he said, placing a hand over Will’s chest, “It is painful… to see you try to keep yourself from the world. Look.”

Will turned his head toward the waterfall.

“This… is the world you’ve decided to abandon?” asked the man, “I am the peacekeeper of this place, the only one that there is. I have seen everything that has occurred here. But throughout it all, this world has stayed the same. Wars have been fought, but it is untouched. Battles have been lost, but it is virgin. Cycles have ended, but it is beautiful. It is still what it always has been.”

William was about to retaliate. He was going to say that the man was wrong and the world wasn’t the same without his friends.

That, however, was untrue. The world was always the same, no matter what damage evildoers think they had done. The world would always be its beautiful, wondrous self.

Either if he won or if he lost, the world would stay the same.

Will didn’t retaliate. Instead he started to cry.

But for the first time in months, he wasn’t sad.

He was happy.

He did lose. And it felt like the whole world collapsed on him when he did.

But the world… it was still there. The imprint that he and all his friends had made was still there. The peoples still had their fighting spirit and the biomes still had their beauty.

Tears, slow, gentle tears, ran down his face. His friends, he knew, were safe in the Otherplace. And he was safe in this world. This untouched, unscarred world.

Suddenly, Will’s arms were wrapped around the man’s neck in a desperate hug. “Thank you,” he said quietly, sniffling.

Herobrine embraced him back.