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redwinterroses · 3 years

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for requests how about: impulse, encountering some or all of the day one crew and getting Very Uneasy because oh shit, the 3rdlife memories are coming back hard

Hey! Sorry this took me SO long to finish. It was a hard one to write because between you asking this (I think?) and now, Impulse had that whole encounter with Bdubs on the path and I was like "Well I don't want to just write that" and then Cleo showed up? And I haven't ever written her before (except for a few lines in another hero, another mindless crime) so I had to go watch a ton of vids and streams and--

okay. Excuses over. Please enjoy this little "Impulse has a bad time but Friends Are Good" drabble. <3

~~~

Sweet Dreams

The Crastle was bigger than he remembered. Had this hallway always been here? This doorway? This arch that led to another hall…which branched and spiraled and led up stairs and down Escherian ramps in a labyrinth of stone walls and a floor dotted with pressure plates?

Impulse found himself running, breath coming in short, panicked gasps as he dashed down the halls, throwing open doors and darting around corners, leaping over the pressure plates—someone was chasing him.

They were coming for him, glowing red eyes and white teeth—fangs—glinting in the shadows. And over all, the ever-louder beat:

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

It pounded in his ears, deafening, and he stumbled to cower against a wall, hunching with his arms over his head, trying in vain to drown it out. But no—no, it was even louder now, thumping so close it rattled his teeth, and he looked down to see blood spreading across his shirt and at the center where his heart should be: a golden clock embedded in his chest.

“They gave me a clock, Impulse.”

His head snapped up. Bdubs, eyes blank and red like two burning embers, stared down at him, no expression on his grey face.

“Ride or die?” Cleo’s voice came from behind him, and Impulse spun to see her glaring down the length of a crossbow, her eyes as scarlet and expressionless as Bdubs’. “How about… die.”

She fired the crossbow, the bolt exploding into flames that swarmed toward Impulse’s face—

He shot upright in bed, gasping for air. He swallowed hard, rubbing his chest as he gradually caught his breath. His heart pounded so loudly that for one horrible moment he thought it might really have been replaced with a bloody golden clock.

But no. Around him, the night was cool and dark, the silence of the Boatem village broken only by the faint rattling of a distant skeleton and the lowing of cows.

Just a dream. Just a nightmare.

Just another nightmare.

Impulse slumped back against his pillows, flopping one arm over his eyes and letting out a long, shuddering sigh in the darkness. It had been months since they’d moved on from the 3rd Life server, months of good times and laughter and the excitement of new projects and builds… and yet at night, when the voices of his friends faded away and Impulse was left alone with himself—he found himself back. Time and again, his sleeping mind returned to the Crastle, or to Dogwarts, or to the sandy dunes of the Red Desert. And inevitably, he found himself face to face with nightmare versions of his day-one crew: Bdubs and ZombieCleo, red-eyed and vengeful.

“I never betrayed them,” he muttered to the darkness. “Never.”

So why did he feel guilty?

Well. If he was honest with himself… it wasn’t really guilt. Or it was, but not because of anything he’d done in 3rdLife—no, the guilt he felt was because the primary emotion associated with Bdubs and Cleo in his dreams was fear.

These were his friends! Being afraid of them went against every instinct he had, every good memory and inside joke and shared experience. And that was a different world anyway—different rules, different lives. It didn’t change anything here on Hermitcraft.

And yet…

And yet when he saw that clock on Bdubs’ belt the other day, or when he’d come up out of the mines that first morning in Boatem and Cleo had been standing right there, Impulse hadn’t been able to suppress the rising wave of panic that swept over him. Panic over being caught in his web of lies, panic that he might hurt the only people he trusted, panic that they didn’t trust him—

Enough was enough. He needed to get past this; he couldn’t spend the rest of the season (the rest of his life?) having anxiety attacks whenever he encountered any of the other Crastle crew members. Talking with Bdubs on the trail had helped, but… he hadn’t seen Cleo since the first days of the server.

That needed to change.

Impulse threw off the covers and pushed himself out of bed, padding down the stairs to the main level of his house. Grabbing his communicator from where he’d left it atop the crafting bench, he tapped out two quick messages:

<impulseSV> you whisper to ZombieCleo: hey, can we meet up and chat? Spawn egg, around noon?

He set down the communicator and turned to go to bed, but to his surprise, it buzzed with an immediate reply.

<ZombieCleo> ZombieCleo whispered to you: everything alright?

<impulseSV> you whisper to ZombieCleo: yeah sure, I just |

Impulse stared at the blinking cursor for a moment, then backspaced and started again:

<impulseSV> you whisper to ZombieCleo: not really. but it’s nothing major. just want to chat a few things over with you.

<ZombieCleo> ZombieCleo whispered to you: Impulse it’s 3 in the morning. you wouldn’t be messaging if it wasn’t major. want to talk now?

He blinked. That… wasn’t the response he’d expected. He hesitated, finger hovering over the touch screen.

<impulseSV> you whisper to ZombieCleo: sure.

<ZombieCleo> ZombieCleo whispered to you: i'll come to you.

///

Impulse was waiting on the roof when Cleo arrived, swooping in with the dry rustle of elytra wings to land on the cobble-and-slabs rooftop.

He looked up at her with an automatic smile, but she didn’t even wait for a “hey” before plopping down beside him.

“Alright, Impulse,” she said, her brisk tone ordering, rather than inviting him to speak. “What’s going on?”

Pulling his knees into his chest, Impulse wrapped his arms around his legs, the cobblestone beneath him still radiating a bit of warmth from the day’s sun.

“I…” he let his voice trail off, not sure where to begin.

“Out with it.” Cleo held out her hand, palm up, as if waiting for him to drop something into it. “Spit it out. It’s not gonna get any better for stewing on it.”

This was a dumb idea. Impulse closed his eyes and, before he could talk himself out of it, let the words spill out in a rush:

“I keep having dreams. Nightmares. About being back… back there. At the Crastle, mainly. And, ah—” he chuckled nervously and opened his eyes, looking sideways at Cleo. “You and Bdubs are there. And you’re… mad. Yeah, you’re really mad. And you don’t trust me. And—" he took a deep breath. “I keep dreaming that you’re so mad you kill me.”

Cleo tilted her head, raising an eyebrow. “But we didn’t. Well,” she corrected herself. “I didn’t.”

“I know, I know—it’s stupid. It doesn’t make sense, and I know that, but…” he swallowed, and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I need to get it off my chest. Because even thought I know it’s not real, and I know this is an entirely different world, and I know that nothing from that server really changes anything, I can’t just… turn off what my brain does when I’m not paying attention to it. You guys are my friends and I’m getting real tired of feeling like I need to start running every time I see one of you. To be honest, sitting here right now even is making me antsy.”

Overhead, the stars continued on their paths in silence, and somewhere in the village a couple of sheep baa-ed at each other plaintively.

“Well. That’s… something. That’s certainly something, isn’t it.” Cleo was quiet for a moment, examining him. Impulse looked away, suddenly finding his fingernails deeply interesting.

“Impulse.”

She reached out and laid a hand on his arm, and he instinctively flinched away. Cleo raised both eyebrows at him this time, pulling her hand back—then deliberately replacing it, her fingers cool and firm through the thin fabric of his sleeve. “Impulse,” she repeated, her tone gentle but brooking no argument. “You… you know I’m not good at this stuff. But at the risk of getting in way over my pay-grade: we’re good. We’re your friends.” She gave him a shake. “We love you, you idiot. No amount of murdery games on another server gonna change that.”

Impulse gave a little laugh, pretending neither of them could hear the emotion that made his voice catch in his throat. “Wow, Cleo,” he said. “Love. Big word.”

“Bah.” She shoved him away, throwing her hands in the air. “I love everybody, you’re not special.” But there was a grin in her voice. “And anyway—why me? You’ve got a lotta nerve, Impulse, having nightmares about me killin’ you.”

“Hey, you were scary with that crossbow.”

“I was, wasn’t I.” Cleo sounded satisfied about that.

The knot in Impulse’s chest was slowly loosening, and he glanced over to see Cleo leaning back on her hands, staring up at the sky. The faintest tinge of pinkish-grey was starting to appear on the eastern horizon. The Boatem crew would be up and about soon—Grian in particular had a tendency to be up at an ungodly hour of the morning.

“Hey—” Impulse said, lowering his voice again. “Um. Thanks. For swinging by. Sorry for being weird about all this.”

“Impulse if you start apologizing for being weird you’re never going to stop.” She made a face at him. “Because you’re very weird.”

“Thaaaanks.”

Cleo gave him an easy punch on the shoulder. “You know you adore me,” she said. “And if it makes you feel any better, I can promise you this: I will kill you again at some point, I’m sure. And it’ll have nothing at all, whatsoever, to do with Third Life: it’ll be because you deserve it.” She paused. “Or because I just want to.”

Somehow, out of all the things she could have said, a casual threat of violence was the thing that did the trick. Impulse laughed—out loud, for real, a genuine laugh that shook loose the tension in his shoulders and chased away the phantom of Cleo standing over him with a crossbow.

“Thanks, Cleo.”

Cleo stood, and patted him on the head, ruffling up his hair. “There’s the obnoxiously-cheerful Impulse I know and loath,” she teased. “Can’t have you being all maudlin over here—I’m the gloomy one on this server.”

“I didn’t wake you, did I?” Impulse asked, smoothing down his hair and also standing.

She waved a hand dismissively. “Nah. You know me—I don’t do the sleeping thing much. Too much work to do: graves to dig, bodies to—” she grinned darkly “—find. ‘S a lot for an entrepreneuring zombie like myself.”

“Well, I guess I’ll let you get back to it.” Impulse tried to stifle a yawn. He wasn’t entirely successful.

“Go to bed, Impulse,” Cleo laughed, activating her elytra. “And try to only have normal nightmares about me for a while. Ya know—ones where I’m properly zombie-terrifying, not this Crastle nonsense.”

“I’ll do my best.” He watched her fly off, and yawned again, this time wide enough to pop his jaw.

Alright. Let’s try this one more time. Sleep.

He left the roof and reentered his house, which suddenly felt much more cozy and far less empty and cold than it had when he’d first awakened. Sliding back under his blankets, he tugged them up around his ears and closed his eyes with a sigh.

Something exploded outside, and his eyes popped back open.

Maniacal laughter echoed over the hills of Boatem, and Impulse deliberately rolled over, burying his head under the pillow.

Tomorrow’s insanity would come soon enough. For now: sleep.

((sweet dreams, Impulse.))

#here have some impulse hc #as a treat. and because impy deserves it #redwinterwrites #sweet dreams #impulsesv #hermitcraft

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