Four months.
Five months.
Six months.
A whole half year. No word from the Patricks.
Seven months. One day, 'RIPMatpat' and 'RIPPatricks' began trending as the whole fandom collectively came to the same conclusion: the Patricks were dead. But there were still a few, those whose mental stability relied on the Patricks, on GTLive, a few who still held onto hope.
Eight months. The tags were still trending, people sharing memories of Game Theory, Film Theory and GTLive; sharing tales of how they'd found the channels, how much the channels meant to them. There was art and gifs and Vine edits of the crew. Gaijin began posting with the tag and the number of people still hopeful dwindled.
Nine months. The tag had stopped trending by now and had been replaced by 'PatrickHunt' as fans began scouring LA, scouring the whole country, looking for the theorists.
Ten months. The fans who were in other countries could only sit and watch as the reports rolled in from the American fans. They could only offer prayers.
Eleven months. Even the most dedicated of fans had given up hunting by now. Clearly they were either dead or they didn't want to be found.
Twelve months.
A whole year.
The Theorist crew; Gaijin, Ronnie, Drake, Ryder, all got together and made a video to announce that the channel was officially dead. They couldn't bring themselves to upload without Matt but the channel would remain as a memorandum to him and all his hard work.
Then the American Theorists were greeted with the most horrific news.
A breaking news story; a couple were found dead in their bed, the husband cradled in the wife's arms. Apparently they'd been found when the taxman had come to tell them their payments were long overdue, the front yard was overgrown and wild. They used their master key to enter and found the whole place caked in a thick layer of dust. A cat snaked past their legs, skeletal and with matted blood on its mouth. They ventured in further, calling for the residents, getting no response. The kitchen was filled with the scent of rotting food from an overloading trash can.
Then they went into the bedroom and staggered back in shock: in the bed were the near skeletal remains of two people. They called the cops and soon the place was crawling. There was a news report on it, a young couple whose identities hadn't yet been released had been found dead under unknown circumstances.
A young couple in LA.
Just a coincidence, some said. It couldn't be them.
Then the couple's identities were revealed to help solve the mystery:
Matthew and Stephanie Patrick.
The cries of anguish echoed across the Internet.
No.
No.
NO.
It couldn't be.
But it was.
Over time, the memorials in the Matpat and Game Theory tags were dug through and the cops found the abuse.
The coroner's report revealed that Matthew had died first. He'd crawled into his bed one day and just wasted away, dying from a mix of misery and dehydration.
Then Stephanie had followed, slowly sinking into despair herself. She'd lost the motivation to do anything, eventually running out of food. It'd lasted her a while though as she'd clearly lost the motivation to cook anything, leaving the raw meats to her cat or just letting them rot. She grew thinner and thinner and eventually crawled into bed with the body of her husband, dying of starvation and a broken heart, holding him in her arms.
The cat had grown hungry, routing through the trash and eventually beginning to feed on the corpses of its owners.
No one could believe it. There was an understandable surge of hatred toward the ones who'd posted the hate, the once friendly fandom turning bitter and turning on those people, sending them death threats of their own.
A life for a life. That was the cry.
Gaijin begged them to not, that Matt would never have wanted this. Some stopped, but some didn't. Some swore to get revenge.
So many accounts went dead after the news. So many people couldn't carry on. So many people ended their lives, unable to carry on without their anchor.
Two years. The channel was still there, as promised. The subscriber count had plummeted, only a few hundred thousand people still remained.
They couldn't let go.
They'd never let go.
They'd still be there, notifications on, praying that the channel would upload again.
They'd still check Matt's twitter every day, hoping beyond hope that something would change. But they were always greeted with the same tweet.
"Sorry guys, no #GTLive tonight, feeling a bit under the weather 😷"
His instagram had been memorialised, as had Steph's.
They'd never post again.
They were gone.
They were gone.
They were gone.