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The light drizzle of snow covered the blood-stained ground of Meriport, Lizzie leading Purpled by the arm. The snow was thin, but foggy, blocking Purpled’s view as he strained to look ahead, the six-year-old’s hand hovering over the hilt of his dagger, the other clutching onto Lizzie’s blouse. Lizzie looked down at him, something strange and sad in her eyes.
“You know,” Lizzie started, walking a bit faster, cautiously looking behind her as she gripped Purpled tighter, her lean fingers pressing into his skin, that was oh so cold, “Earth isn’t as different as this place as Meriport would suggest. They fight, their mean, they're just more subtle about it. The only thing they got right was not recruiting straight up children into their armies.”
Purpled, nodded, confused. He didn’t understand where Lizzie was going with this, why he wasn’t with Scar, training for a war. He didn’t understand why Joel had been so stiff while leading him away from his quarters, why Lizzie was so taut with caution.
Everybody loved Joel and Lizzie.
As he saw the UFO, he could piece together the puzzle, his eyes widening with panic.
“Did I do something wrong?” Purpled had whispered, tears ghosting his eyes as he pathetically blinked them away. Tears would get him killed, Martyn had hissed during a lesson. “I’ll be better, I promise.”
Something in Lizzie’s eyes broke as she crouched down, gently cradling his head in her hands. “No little moth, you didn’t do anything wrong,” she muttered, brushing his bangs away from his forehead, leaving a kiss on the crown, “You’re an alien-hybrid darling. Not full. You deserve to see the other half of your race.”
As she put him into the UFO, he couldn’t help but cry out when she started putting in the coordinates. Why wasn’t she coming with him? Why wasn’t Joel coming? What was going on? Lizzie had just smiled sadly at him, patting his head.
When he saw the planet of Meriport drifting away in space and time, when he started falling asleep, he couldn’t help but let the tears fall, silently mourning them both, the people that had felt more like his parents then others had ever.
—-
As the purple particles rained down on them, the concrete ground stained in blood, Purpled had to blink away the memories of snow falling down on him, landing on him, making him feel so so cold.
Earth isn’t as different as Meriport would like you to believe, Lizzie whispered in his thoughts, They're just better at hiding it.
Now, Purpled wasn’t stupid. Earth couldn’t be a perfect, sunshine and rainbow place. It had its ups and downs, he had seen it first hand in Hypixel.
But now, staring at Tommy, who was on his knees begging for none of what was going on to be true, that the country he had put his blood, sweat and tears into creating, was just soot and ash. That the brother that had promised to be right by his side through it all, had gone and blown it up, begging for his father to drive a sword through his chest.
I told you so, Purpled had wanted to say, the words getting stuck in his throat. He had warned Tommy about Wilbur the minute he had gone to his UFO to tell him about L’manburg, had warned him about how something about Wilbur was wrong , how everything about him felt like a facade. Tommy had sneered and said how he was paranoid, that Wilbur was his brother, he would never betray him! I told you so, Purpled wanted to shout, shake Tommy by his shoulders, trying to get Tommy back to what he had been just last week, painfully enthusiast with their chances, nothing like the sixteen-year-old kid, god he was just a kid, that was sobbing into the dirt, Tubbo trying to comfort him, his own tears spilling out of his eyes.
And yet, who was Purpled to tell him not to trust his own brother? How hypocritical of him to even say that, when yet, he held his own expectations for his brothers. He had thought, when he had sided with L’manburg, that Dream would back down, realizing that half the people he was fighting were just kids . But no, the bastard had recruited Punz, and the bitch had sided with him, telling Purpled that he was choosing the wrong side. Sapnap had been there at the beginning, helping Dream with game plans, but when Wilbur and Tommy had come to the courthouse for negotiations, Sapnap had shook his head, saying he didn’t want to have any part in this.
“That man,” Sapnap had whispered, “That man is not my friend.”
Purpled had choked on white hot rage when he saw the bruises on him.
Then, then fucking Technoblade had gotten involved, the man he had looked up to since he was a kid, the man who was supposedly Tommy’s brother , the man who dropped a wither on them all, saying that L’manburg was doomed from the start, that how could a country be run by one in the same man, a dictator in different fonts.
How could everything go to shit so fast? How come his one place of peace, of no fighting, had turned into this? Essempi was supposed to be better, Earth was supposed to be better. Why were there children fighting a war? Lizzie had promised, Lizzie never broke promises. So why were there children fighting a war to be heard?
Why did Tubbo, the boy who liked to shout and tinker, have a firework shot in his face? Why did Tommy, the boy who dreamed big and had ideas, get banned from the country he worked to create? Why did Fundy, the boy who was skittish yet snarky, have to watch his own fathers downfall?
Why did Purpled, the boy who escaped war, have to be sucked back in?
Prime, she had promised . It was never supposed to have gone this way, he was supposed to have a home . A home with Dream, Punz, Sapnap, Walli (fuck, Walli. Was he ever going to see his best friend again?) Tommy, Tubbo, Fundy, HannahBoomerSammy David —
Something slammed into his side, sending him tumbling into the ground, head slamming against the concrete. A wither blast struck the place where he had been just moments before, and Purpled came to the startling realization that he would have lost his first life if it weren’t for the person standing in front of him, head blocking the sun as she stared down worriedly at him, and Purpled had to squint his eyes to get a better look at her—
Lizzie?
“Hey,” The girl hissed, reaching down to shake his shoulders, her hair shades darker than it should be, “ He y. I know you're freaking out right now but this isn’t a time or place to have a panic attack. You were about to be killed .”
“ Niki?” Purpled blurted, half from shock, and half from the concussion that was surely going to be in full force once he was out of the red zone, and Prime that fucking hurt. He blinked away the last sights of blood-stained snow, letting his eyes scan around the battlefield. It was a mess. Jack, Fundy and Karl had teamed up to help get rid of one of the withers, Quackity and Sapnap were looking around the wreckage for people that might have been stuck in the rubble, and Tommy was still on his knees, staring at the place that Technoblade had once been, the soot staining his the skin on his face, and oh prime it wasn’t supposed to be like this, he was supposed to be carefree, a child, prime why couldn’t the lords let them be children —
“Hey,” Niki shouted, shaking his shoulders again, snapping her fingers in his face, “Your spacing out on me again. Are you going to help me get rid of this wither or are you going to go back to freaking out?”
Purpled blinked, and nodded his head, taking a deep breath in before hoisting himself up. He unsheathed his sword, and eyed the wither, glancing at Niki in the corner of his eyes.
“You take left, I take right?” He asked, a blank tone taking part in his voice, one that Walli had dubbed his ‘ dealt shit’ voice. Niki flashed a concerned look at him, and Purpled had to block her concern, hoisting up his walls higher.
“Never let therapists fool you,” Sapnap had once said, after an MCC game, his hair wild and his eyes crazed, “Compartmentalization will be your best friend here.”
Niki nodded shortly, unsheathing her own sword, leaping at the wither in time with Purpled. It felt nice to fight, Purpled had thought distantly, as if watching his own body do the movements. Niki was able to keep up, blocking every hit that could have hit him. Within time, the wither had disappeared in a flurry of purple particles, Purpled’s nose twitching when one of them landed on him.
“That was fun,” Purpled grunted, sheathing his sword again, ignoring Niki’s worried look. Walls Purpled, walls! “We should do that again another time.”
Niki opened her mouth to speak, her eyes shining with an emotion that Purpled didn’t even want to think about at the moment, before a look of shock replaced it.
Distantly, Purpled heard Fundy shout out his name in alarm. Not that it didn’t change anything, not that Purpled was too slow, too sloppy , to notice the second wither behind him until it was blasting his back, sending him flying.
‘ Well shit,’ Purpled thought, ‘I’m going to die.’
He slammed into the ground on his back, hearing the ground crack underneath the impact, tasting the blood that had suddenly flooded his mouth, covering his canal as he struggled to breathe, choking on it. He shot up, ignoring the pain that quickly covered his back, as if on fire. He glanced up at his health bar, wincing at the one heart that stared painfully back at him, and he rummaged around in his inventory, hoping and praying that luck was on his side, that he would find a golden apple.
“ Heh!?” A baffled voice sounded behind him, the sound of horse shoes clomping coming to a complete stop, and nope luck was not on his side today. He slowly turned his head, carefully not jostling his injuries as he stared at Technoblade, his blood red eyes boring into his own cool purple ones.
And suddenly, compartmentalization be damned, this man was to hear all of his fury. He stood up, wobbling a bit, ignoring the blood staining his purple sweater, ignoring the sudden sharpening of Technoblade’s eyes.
“You're a real piece of work, didja know that?” Purpled hissed, jabbing a finger in his direction. He noted how Technoblade stiffened, how he immediately put his hands to the hilt of his sword. Purpled was no idiot, he couldn’t take Technoblade with full health, let alone one heart. He took a deep breath, forcing himself to unclench his fists and ease up the fury.
“If you’re going to tell me what I did was wrong, you might as well save the speech because–” Technoblade started, voice hardened, and Purpled could hear the pain in it, the slight regret .
“I’m a Hypixel kid,” Purpled interrupted, watching carefully as Technoblade startled, before all the fight in his stance disappeared, and his eyes softened. As the silence stretched into something uncomfortable, Purpled shifted his feet, his resolve hardening, “Bedwars.”
“Then you of all people should know why I'm doing this,” Technoblade whispered, something broken in his tone. And oh Purpled thought, Technoblade had just been a kid. A kid, who had to fight for his survival, who was trying to make something right in his own twisted way, “Sneeg, Scott, all of them. You should know why.”
“I understand why you're against a government,” Purpled mumbled, risking a step closer to the horse, “Hypixel used it against us, making our lives living hell. I understand that, Tommy doesn’t,” He paused, glancing up at Technoblade’s face and seeing the dilemma on it, deciding to soldier on, “He hasn’t seen what the horrors of government can do, and he still hasn’t seen it. What he just saw was his own brother destroy months of hard work.”
“Then how was I supposed to get my point across?” Technoblade asked, his whisper seemingly dissipating in the air, Purpled having to strain both his ears and antennas to hear it, “He wouldn’t stop, Wilbur wouldn’t stop. Look where that got him.”
“Tommy isn’t Wilbur,” Purpled stressed, “You could’ve sat him down and talked to him about your own experiences.”
“Still think I have a chance?” Technoblade muttered, staring up at the sky, a pained expression on his face.
“Give him time, the kid loves you. You’ll always be his brother,” Purpled said, flashing a thumbs up at him. Technoblade snorted at the sight, shaking his head slightly.
“You know,” Purpled sighed, the blood in his gums seemingly dripping down on his tongue, “You were my hero in Hypixel.”
He stepped aside, giving the horse a path to move. “Were?” Technoblade asked, his eyebrow raised, a shocked, maybe bashful look on his face.
Purpled looked up at the sky, tapping his chin, “Still are.”
“Cool,” Technoblade grinned, grabbing the reins of his horse and clomping down the path, “I hope we can meet again kid, without the blood leaking out of your ears.”
Purpled blinked and raised a hand to his ear, feeling wetness coating his fingers. He blinked again and saw that Techoblade was gone, and the sky was a few shades darker. Oh that wasn’t good. He attempted to take a step foreward, stumbling a bit, before collapsing on his back, his eyelids feeling heavy.
‘Ah shit,’ Purpled thought, ‘Sapnap’s going to kill me.’