#its just joe doing it to himself instead of x in a timeloop

[factorialsotherfandoms]

Joe day! This one is a bit long, and a bit nasty... It's also the only one so far I've prewritten anything for, even if the prewriting was done like... yesterday. So still within the month. Sorry Joe, I've known I wanted to do this to you since I realised I gave you time magic. It could have been anyone. But you use magic timeskips with a call in your videos, so its you.

This fic runs into the middle of Cleo's fic, but from Joe's PoV

TW: time loops, major character death (reversed), betrayal, guilt, referenced offscreen suicide (reversed), open ending

By my standards it isn't graphic, but I am not a good judge. I advise caution and if things like text injuries upset you, skip this one.

It could have had more scenes, or more long scenes. I got decided enough was enough at a point.

"Joe! Do something!"

Cleo's voice is desperate as she holds False's mangled corpse in her hands. Joe can do nothing but stare at it, even as the battle rages on. Danger is all around, but he knows his mortality was lost somewhere, and Cleo... Cleo Joe can always stitch back together again.

False, though...

"Joe!"

"I don't know," he whispers.

"Can't you go back?" they beg. "Or resurrect her or change history or-"

Cleo is crying.

She knows as well as Joe does that, when he time travels to places where he already exists, he remembers it. His memories do not lack meeting himself, nor do they change after doing so; he doesn't remember meeting himself here, he doesn't-

Joe has met thousands of people in the centuries he has been alive. And most of them have died. Cleo has, too, but this-

Neither of them ever stuck around to love them before; it was nothing like this.

He hears Scar's scream as someone kills Cub.

"I wasn't there," Joe tells her, in horror himself. "I wasn't- Didn't see myself."

The earth shakes as someone kills That-Which-Should-Not-Die.

"/Joe/, please!"

He hears Scar's scream silence as someone kills him.

There is a spell, he knows. One he has not tried. One he should never try, for it can splinter and fragment and destroy realities. Back when he worked in timeline stabalisation it caused all sorts of problems - he learnt it from one of the guys they stopped, after all. It's not just a travel but a do over, scratching out a history and replacing it with another - or possibly splitting the universe in twain, nobody has ever quite agreed on which.

It's not forbidden, exactly, just...

It's then that Rendog finds them, slipping in the bloody mud as he tries to stop running.

"False?" he whispers.

Overhead, lightning strikes.

Enough.

Enough is enough.

He'll do it, then, he'll do it-

"False! Cleo, why isn't False-?"

"Joe will fix it," Cleo sobs. "Joe always fixes it, he's like that, Joe, please-"

And he will, he will, if Cleo asks it of him, then god strike him down he /will/.

"Rewind."

"- I think we're hoping for rather more than a might."

Joe's fingers spasm into soft fabric as his eyes looks wildly around. Cleo, in their nightdress, sits beside the fire in the arcane common room. The clock keeps on ticking, and the cuckoo ducks out signalling a bit too late to still be awake. There's not a drop of blood on them - nor is there on him. No scrapes on his hands, no blood between his teeth, no-

"Joe?" She asks, voice suddenly anxious. "Joe, are you listening to me?"

"Cleo?" he whispers.

"Well, yeah? Who else was I gonna be?"

He throws his arms around their neck, clinging tight.

"We need to stop it!" he tells her. "Come on, come on, before it all goes wrong!"

He bounces back off the seat, pulling them to their feet as he stumbles to his own. No time for questions he pulls her towards Xisuma's office; they need to talk, and they need to talk now.

--- Tiiiiime Skip! ---

He told them. He told everyone. They made their plans and they tried their best, and yet-

And yet it wasn't that simple, was it?

This time it's Ren dead in False's lap, Xisuma dead by Evil Xisuma's gun, Evil Xisuma dead by Wels' blade. Others, too, Joe are sure there are others from the screams he has heard, but he doesn't know-

--- Tiiiime Skip! ---

A spear goes through Hypno's throat, wrists, ankles, stomach, wings-

Pinned again.

Like- Like... Like Joe isn't sure how many times before, but he cannot let it happen in his final ending.

Try again.

--- Tiiiiime Skip! ---

Everyone is dead. Not just them, not just the students - every one of their allies and enemies too.

Not even the Turtle survived.

"Where to now?" Cleo asks Joe, clearly trying to be strong.

They could leave.

They have left before.

Just a little hop across realities, Joe can just take them to another timeline - another world.

Joe takes her hand, and holds it tight.

He cannot do this.

Not even if it means leaving them behind.

"Rewind."

--- Tiiime Skip! ---

"You weren't supposed to die first," Scar sobs. "Please, please- Cub- This isn't funny! This isn't a good prank, you can stop now! Please, Cub, you were never supposed to die first…"

"Rewind" is Joe's reply.

--- Tiiiime Skip!---

Jevin crushed and baked and ground to fine dust.

Rewind.

Welsknight's helmet caved in, just like his skull.

Rewind.

Pearl eaten by her own dogs.

Rewind.

Mumbo vomiting blood onto the floor-

--- Tiiime skip! ---

One time, Joe grabs Cleo's hands, and drags them through a wormhole. He tells them nothing of what is happening as they play volleyball on the beach. Cleo laughs and Joe smiles, and the sun shines down on a beautiful day.

"What brought this on?" Cleo asks, lent over the sink as they wash salt from their hair. "Just a vacation? How very un-Joe hills of you."

"I take vacations!" he replies, and ignores the swirling pit of guilt in his stomach - the guilt that knows that as they laugh and play, their friends are dying on another continent. "There doesn't need to be another reason."

"If you say so," her eyes are bright as they pick him apart, squeezing out the last of the water. "Now, dinner. You can't bring me here and /not/ buy me dinner."

And so he takes them to dinner.

Later that night, once Cleo is asleep, snoring gently on her bed, Joe will get up. He will put things away then sit on the bed.

Take a deep breath.

Refuse to say goodbye.

"Rewind."

And get back to it.

--- Tiiiime Skip! ---

Joe Hills screams.

--- Tiiiiime skip! ---

At some point, he thinks he begins to hate Xisuma.

It's not a fair hatred, not really; Joe will feel guilty about it for the rest of his immortal life. But it is a true hatred.

He's worked out the root cause of all the death, the reason Joe can never save everyone - Xisuma could win the fight before anyone is hurt, but to do so he would have to be willing to kill his twin.

It's a useless argument, a pointless one. Xisuma understands but does not accept fate, and so everyone dies again and again and again. It's so much harder to survive, when you're trying to avoid injuring somebody, and they are there purely for the kill.

But Xisuma does not have the heart for it.

And so Joe has to save everyone the hard way.

--- Tiiime Skip! ---

Rewind.

Hypno pinned to the wall like a butterfly to a collection.

Rewind.

Keralis mad with grief and calling down the stars to kill the earth-

Rewind, Rewind, /REWIND/

---Tiiiime Skip!---

"Who was it you were looking for?" Joe asks the archangel before him.

A glare turns to Joe, eyes haughty and strict. Still he maintains his posture.

"I may look like a fool, but maybe I can help!" He offers. "Or at least be an appropriate distraction!"

He is not answered with words, but with pictures of two familiar folk.

He knows them he knows them he knows them he-

"This is your price?" He asks.

"If you want our help," the archangel tells him. "You will give us them first."

It isn't worth it.

Joe refuses to sell his own people out just for a change to change things.

He'll do it himself, lesson by bloody lesson.

--- Tiiiime Skip!---

Etho hung from a castle spire.

Rewind.

Bdubs crushed into the mud.

Rewind.

Gem's head tossed at Grian's feet.

Rewind.

Beef captured, tortured, posted back hacked into pieces, a jigsaw puzzle in a box.

Rewind.

--- Tiiiime Skip! ---

The field is a barren mess. Those who could walk have left, and those who could not have died, except for two who remain. Well, no, Joe left. Joe left and stood in the hospital and listened to the dying screams of some friends, and the desperate screams of others as they tried to save one another's lives.

He doesn't remember who is dead.

At this point, perhaps he should.

Still, he approaches the other figure, kenlt with wings stretched out in a strangely dry patch of battlefield.

The-Thing-That-Grian-Has-Become's back is to Joe.

A thousand eyes still watch his steps.

In the depths of his gut, Joe knows that Grian himself is very, very dead, even if his body breathes.

"You should have saved them," it accuses, the stolen voice echoing with the weight of ten thousand suns.

"I'm trying," he replies. And then, as he no longer knows fear, he asks, "what did you do to Grian?"

The two had existed in parallax for cycles upon cycles; it seems strange that the being has finally consumed Grian now.

Joe isn't really sure what it /is/, exactly, only that it has been there a long time, and is strange, and every time it takes control Grian grows a few more teeth.

"He offered me his flesh to keep," the being sniffs. "I won't stay in it much longer, but he didn't want to stay, not without his friends. And I've been peckish of late."

"So you ate him."

"So I ate him."

That-Which-Wears-Grian's-Skin does not know guilt or remorse, guilt or failure. It is not human, and - as far as Joe knows - and unlike Keralis it has never tried to be.

"Do you care, traveler?" it asks. "Is that why you fight?"

Joe does not reply.

"You can try again, you know? Not everyone gets that choice."

--- Tiiiiime Skip! ---

Joe sells out his own people just for a chance to change things.

They can rescue them later, right? Once the Lord of Evil is defeated and their alliance no longer useful, they can turn on the angels and rescue their friends. Joe can throw himself to the past or the future for his betrayal, but rescue was always in the plan.

Tango won't have it. Zedaph won't have it.

The first throws himself at Joe the moment he finds out, loosing his grip on the finer points of human form in his rage. Fingers of lava tear into his flesh, burning him, pulling him apart as Tango screams in rage and grief and pain.

Joe takes it - he knows what he did, but it was to save them. It was to save them. He's doing his best, he just wants to save them.

Zedaph is quieter. He leaves, coming back only once Tango has burnt himself out.

He brings a bottle of acid and pours it on Joe's eyes, the only softness left him him is for how he scoops Tango up, and drags him back out.

Those two leave soon after, and nobody can stop them quitting. With them - with Impulse really - they take the alliance with the Dwarves.

Joe spends the loop in the infirmary, hoping it will work. And it does, after a fashion - the angels come, they fight, the casualty rare is much lower - Xisuma and Mumbo and Jevin and Scar - and Joe can work from that, its a better starting point, he might be able to do something with that-

His eyes heal just in time to see the corpses bought back from heaven.

Skizz alone remains, every part of him screaming as he cradles the charred remains of Impulse, Zedaph and Tango lying dead at his sides.

And Grian. And Gem. And False and Cub and even though alive xB will no longer even look at Joe and-

--- Tiiiiime Skip! ---

Joe doesn't try that again.

What he tries almost works - it almost, almost /almost/ works-

But then he finds Skizz cradelling Impulse's corpse, Tango and Zedaph already rushed to the infirmay and-

And maybe in an earlier timestream Joe could have lived with that.

But this isn't earlier, and Joe cannot, and he hears the broken, confused "Joe?" between Skizz's lips - one begging him for help, exactly the same as he did as when Joe betrayed him-

"I'll fix this," Joe promises. "This was just a trial run, I'll fix it."

--- Tiiime Skip! ---

Assassins in the night, half the staff dead before the fight even happens.

Rewind.

xB and Keralis, hand in hand this time, cut open and bleeding into the sea.

Rewind.

Joel's shield shattered, arrows tearing open his armour and his flesh.

Rewind.

Three cats on Scar's lap, meowing for him to wake.

Rewind.

--- Tiiiime skip! ~~~

Joe gathers the pieces of Cleo into his lap. There's not enough left to put her back together. If she's even still conscious, there's no splinter of flesh capable of speech. Their tongue alone is in seventeen pieces and Joe shatters, and he rewinds.

--- Tiiiiime Skip! ---

when does it end when does it end when does it end when does it end it has to end when does it end dear reader please tell me how many more chapters when will this end when does it end does it ever end please say it ends even if its a lie just tell me it ends

--- Tiiiiime Skip! ---

Tango dissolved to a pool of lava, burning his friends and absorbing their ash.

Rewind.

Doc screaming in agony as his magitek eye is used to force electricity inside his body.

Try again.

Rewind.

And Try Again.

--- Tiiiime Skip! ---

Everyone is dead. How can we accept this end? Joe Hills casts rewind.

--- Tiiiiime Skip! ---

It ends in ruins again.

It always ends in ruins.

Blood bubbles up between Joe's teeth as he laughs, the scene before him overlaid a thousand times. Blood, blood, blood... everywhere is death and blood. He doesn't look at the bodies - not xB run through with his own trident; not False's dead eyes as a vulture plucks them from her head; not the-thing-that-is-Grian, as it shrieks bound to the floor and feral, forced to watch the dissection of Mumbo's corpse; not Skizz begging for Impulse to live; not Zedaph lying butchered on an altar; not Xisuma-

Not any of them.

Both Xisuma's lie dead, but the fighting continues. Etho shows no concern for friend or foe as he summons corpses to fight, and Cub shows even less as he shrieks with unfiltered rage. All around skeletons fight zombies.

All around, the mortal soldiers lie dead.

Student upon student, peer upon peer, friend upon friend...

Joe's body is shattered in the mud, but he cannot die. He begs for your release, reader, but he cannot die. Shattered in the mud, bones broken, unable to move. There is pain in every part of him, and yet he no longer feels pain at all.

Cleo stands over him, protecting his broken body as though that even matters. He's like mycelium, you see - you cannot kill him in any way that matter, in any way that will stick. She knows this, and yet...

"Get up," Cleo's hisses break into a yell. "Joe, I swear to god, if you don't get up right now-!"

A tear chokes her throat.

She cleaves the skull of the approaching skeleton in two.

Joe doesn't have a jaw right now.

It would be a little tricky even if he tried.

Which he won't. 

Technically, they have won. Here stands all the Forces of Evil, their leader dead and their mine stop broken. He could take it, the idea of everyone dying, if not for the fact that they die.

Die, and might blame him, might-

"Joe! Joe, please!" Cleo's voice is broken as she begs it of him. "Joe, keep fighting! Just a little longer!"

How many times has he been told that.

How many times will he be told it again.

"/JOE/!"

He cannot stand, cannot do anything she asks, need a good few days for his shattered body back together.

He cannot.

He knows how to keep fight, he knows it, its just...

He's so, so, so tired.

But he cannot leave the end like this.

"Joe!" Cleo yells at him. "Get up!"

He knows that, at best, he is rewriting the timeline.

That at worst, he is leaving a corpse every time.

That he-

"Joe," Cleo must have seen his expression, for her voice drops, they reach for him, they- "No, no, Joe, don't leave me here, Joe-!"

"Rewind."