Chapter Text
Cleo is messing with her balloon boy at the front of the gates to the zoo when False comes up to her. She’s not drunk anymore- Joe’s wine has barely any alcohol in it, and zombie bodies are shit with absorbing it anyways, but she is tired, and she vaguely considers that when she wakes up in the morning she’ll probably hate whatever changes she’s made. She stops fiddling with the balloons when she notices False fiddling with her hands.
“Cleo, do you mind if we, uhm-”
False gestures to the side, further away from the now dwindling bonfires and into the shadow of the temperate forest Joe built to harvest leaves. Cleo follows her, leans against a tall oak.
“Do you mind if, uhm, if you could maybe talk to X, or Joe, or someone, about Tommy. Uhm, staying? For the night? Maybe?”
False shoves her hair out of her face and then she more gently pulls it back over her face, but Cleo can still see the gathering red under her blonde hair.
Cleo turns around to survey the beach and the people left on it: Beef and TFC are still talking by the glowing ashes of one fire, and she can only identify them by their beards. Jevin has an end rod stuck in him, illuminating Hypno and a cackling Cub. Most people have long since left to sleep, or work on projects that require night/early, early morning.
She can’t see a blonde teenager.
She turns back to False and cocks her head.
“He can’t ask me himself?”
--
Tommy is still sniffling, a little, and he hates it, but False has been awfully nice, like literally awful, he feels sick that she’s being this nice to him. He’s going to say something, anything to diffuse the good wholesome feelings when she brightens up again.
“How would you feel about maybe staying another day, getting more of a tour?” She’s smiling so genuinely that Tommy feels even more ill, because it seems like she really wants to share her server with him, and she's so deep into this pity parade of convincing him that she wants to spend time with him that he’s starting to really want to let her.
He really is, and he hates it.
“Sure.” He’s looking at the ground because if he looks at her face he’ll see her smiling and he cannot deal with that right now.
--
False is nervous. She hates it. She really hates it. And Ren is all tied up with Joe because of that whole thing with Cub, and she doesn’t have anyone to bounce these nerves off of- Cleo knows when she tries to do it, and she judges her, and everyone else is too far away, all in their own little worlds that she’s loath to burst into.
But she’s nervous, and Tommy’s receded from the campfire groups, just like her, and she doesn’t know what to do, because she used up her big inspirational speech to get Tommy to stop crying and to feel more comfortable, at least, she had hoped at the time. But she was stupid to think that she could fix that- and now, she feels even stupider, like she wants to walk up to Tommy and say “Actually, I’m feeling quite abandoned right now, because my partner is off doing god knows what and I can’t ask anyone else for help, so maybe we are just a bunch of miserable people with no one to talk to.”
But she can’t do that, god no, because she is Falsesymmetry. She is one of the three Hermitgals, and she sets a damn good example and she will die before she gives that up.
So she fixes her hair, sticks her hand into the shallows of the river bank to shock her back to being a functional adult, and plasters one of the best fake smiles she has on and goes to talk to Tommy.
--
They stare at each other for a while in silence. It’s horrible, it really is. Tommy doesn’t like using that to describe his interactions, certainly not as much as he has recently. But it really is. There isn’t silence on Dream SMP, not like there is on Hermitcraft. They don’t “do” bits, really. And Tommy? All he does are bits. Maybe not as much as Wil, or Schlatt, who are always acting, even among friends. But still. Genuine interactions are something that Tommy is finding he’s startlingly uncomfortable with, and he’s not sure if he’s ok with that.
“Uhm. I should probably ask Phil, then.”
False looks up at him quickly, and her hair follows the motion of her head fast enough that it flies up before cascading down outwards, and she grabs the loose hair in two handfuls and stuffs it into a ponytail she throws behind her neck before looking down sheepishly.
“Yeah, yeah, you should.”
They’re silent again.
Tommy reconciles the fact that he’s going to have to be the person who steps up and communicates what needs to happen with the fact that Falsesymmetry is a good 3 times older than him at least, and has been on Hermitcraft since he was in grade 1. He pinches the bridge of his nose, which isn’t something he does, normally, it's something he had to have picked up from Fundy, or from Phil, who picked it up from Fundy.
“Wouldn’t- uhm, wouldn’t you have to talk to your admin? About that?” Tommy grimaces, because of course you would, of course, admins have to be informed about these kind of things, to avoid world displacement and respawn issues and all of those things, and of course False had thought of that, because she’s a professional fucking minecrafter, and hes just a shit little kid.
False opens her mouth.
“-if I wanted to do that, of course. Which I’m not saying I do. Just if I wanted to. Or. You wanted me to. Or whatever you were saying. Because I’m not saying that I do-”
False closes her mouth.
Tommy wants to scream.
--
False really fucking wants Ren. Ren to make jokes, Ren to check in with her on the side, Ren to calm a team down, Ren to make it feel like a team in the first place.
But she doesn’t have him, so she steels herself and she faces Tommy with the renewed energy of a smile as fake as Xisuma’s lawn.
“I’m going to talk to Cleo, ok?”
--
“Cleo- don’t-”
She turns back to False, hand on her hip almost accusatory, at least in a way she knows False will take it as.
“Don’t what, False?”
False glares at her and then looks guilty for glaring at her and then gets angry again. False is like that. Easy with nerves, easy with anger. Easy to play.
“Don’t what False?”
She waits for a moment while False’s face continues to flip flop with emotions.
“Well, if you don’t have anything to say, I don’t think I have anything not to do, so I’ll be on my merry way-”
She turns around before she even finishes enunciating her last words because False hates that, hates not being given face value.
False can be angry all she wants. This isn’t about her.
And anyways, she won’t stay angry for long.
Cleo has another blonde to find, and False won’t get in her way anymore than she already has.
She doesn’t find Tommy for a while. Zombie eyes aren’t great with the dark, even after all of the modifications she’s made over the years. When she does find him, he’s alone, sitting on the sand with his arms wrapped around his knees.
He doesn’t look up when she grabs a piece of nearby driftwood, or when she sits down on it.
“So?”
He still doesn’t look up.
She tries again.
“So?”
Still silence, or really just the lapping of the waves on the beach.
“So?” Her voice is harder now, more edge, because people do not ignore her. “False is in quite a fuss, about something. Didn’t want me over here.”
She still isn’t getting a response, and she's getting just a tad angry, because people do not ignore her, even if theyre angsty little children. Her words have a definite edge now, one she couldn’t control if she wanted to.
“Can you tell me why?”
--
Zombiecleo is sitting on a piece of driftwood five blocks away from him and she is staring him down and she is angry, angry in a way he can’t really place; not even Techno gets angry like this.
It’s fucking scary, Tommy can admit to himself. He still can’t bring himself to answer.
They sit like this for a while- long enough that Tommy can’t really tell exactly how long it’s been, until the sun starts peeking up from the east, or the west, he never remembers which no matter how many times Techno tells him.
At one point Zombiecleo gets up, but he can’t look up to see where she goes because that would give up his gambit, and he would lose and she would win.
He can’t have that.
--
Cleo sits with him for far too long than she normally would, if this were X, or Joe, or anyone who she knows that she can deal with. But she doesn’t know Tommy, so he gets some freebies while she gets to know what works.
It's almost dawn when she gets up to find False, who curled up by one of her trees near the river and used her bomber jacket as a blanket for some undoubtedly uncomfortable sleep, even though she knows that Cleo’s beds are free to use. False is stubborn like that.
But who is Cleo to judge, after all.
She shakes False awake and hauls her up off the ground, fixing her hair as much as she can in the process. Hair has always been a unifying thing for the Hermit girls; Cleo rarely if ever takes her hair out of the tight braids she keeps it in, but if she does, it’s always Stress that braids it back up. False keeps her hair loose, but if she puts it up, for pvp and competitions and the like, she uses one of Cleo’s hair ties to do it.
False is barely awake, bleary and blinking when Cleo starts to speak.
“I’ll take your little one. He’s interesting. You go get some sleep, catch up with Ren. I’ll deal with him.”
False opens her mouth, ostensibly to speak, and Cleo shakes her head.
“I messaged Tango, he straightened everything out with the respawning and the like.”
False closes her mouth and opens it again.
“False dear, you look like a fish. Go home.” Cleo looks around at the people still on her beach. “Here, I can get TFC to give you a ride-”
False shakes her head, first to wake herself up, and second as a negative to Cleo’s offer.
“I- I’m fine, I’ll take the tunnels, I suppose-”
“Good.”
Cleo softens, a little. False has had a hard time of it. False is one of her best friends, and she’s one of Cleo’s only female friends. Cleo loves her, she really does.
“Go get some sleep, False. You need it.”
She kisses False on her forehead and holds out her bomber jacket, abandoned on the ground as a forgotten blanket.
Her eyes are soft, far too soft really, but False already knows that Cleo loves her, so there's really no point in posturing.
“Take some time for yourself, love.”
Cleo has been spending far too much time with Stress.
--
False is sliding through the ice tunnels under Hypno’s base on one of the complementary boats when she really wakes up.
She’s not worried, that Cleo is- watching? Tommy? Babysitting? It’s not babysitting, really, because Tommy is nearly an adult. But Tommy didn’t really choose to hang out with Cleo, either. So she supposes it’s stuck somewhere in the limbo of watching and spending time, and this distinction has no meaning, really, anyways.
Cleo was right, she does need sleep.
But then again, she is worried, because Tommy is- well, he’s prickly, and he’s loud, and he’s willing to sabotage a lot of things to make himself feel ok. And Cleo, Cleo is- well, she’s Cleo, stubborn and angry and willing to do pretty much anything to get her way.
And she’s worried because Cleo just, shoved her out, and she doesn’t even have anyone to talk about it with, because Ren is probably asleep, or in the dog sanctuary, or god knows where, and where else would she go? Especially about Tommy, about Dream SMP. About all the shit that’s happened in the past few weeks.
--
It’s still dawn when Zombiecleo walks up to him again, this time offering him a hand.
Tommy stares for a little bit; he’s not completely lucid, not really. Zombiecleo’s hand is green, not as green as a normal zombie, or a drowned, but sort of a pale and washed out green, more sickly and fragile. Her fingernails are slightly ragged, like Techno’s or Phil’s when they come back from a long project, and there’s dirt under them, and slight bruises that are hard to distinguish from the rest of her skin.
He takes the hand.
She hauls him up off the ground with surprising strength, or at least surprisingly enough that Tommy has to consider what he previously thought about Zombiecleo was weak.
Cleo is built like a sailor; her arms are strong, and they’re where most of the visible stitches on her body are, along the lines of certain muscles and muscle groups. She’s not quite built like False, whose strength was cultivated by swinging a sword and by practicing parkour; Cleo is strong all the way through, strong with the grind, like Techno and Phil, not just with pvp. She’s built for lifting things, building things, in a way that Tommy never could be.
She cocks her head at him, before turning and waving for him to follow her.
He does.
She leads him through the big arch that’s presumably the entrance to her base- her. Zoo? It’s sparsely decorated, but there are buildings every so often with incredible detail- one building is full of small tadpole-like things that look like guardians but aren’t. Cleo steers him away from that building.
“Nasty fuckers, they are. Will eat your face if they get the chance.”
“You can swear?” Tommy doesn’t want to say it but he does because he says things faster than his brain can process them, and that’s why everyone hates him.
Cleo laughs.
“Nowadays we don’t swear, usually. Mostly for the kids, all that. Joe and X and the like aren’t too keen on it. But back when, like way back when, before most of the current Hermits were here, we had a grand old time.”
They move along the path, past some more exhibits, to a small sandstone building with a scaffolding block in the floor that Cleo descends without a word.
“Erm.”
“What.”
“Where are we going?”
“To find some breakfast, of course.”
Cleo pokes her head up out of the scaffolding to look at Tommy sardonically.
“You do need to eat, yes?”
Tommy nods in response on reflex, because he’s mostly focused on how unbelievably hungry he is. He never really understood how Techno forgets to eat when he’s working, but his stomach growling snuck up on him fast and he’s damn hungry, hungry enough to descend Zombiecleo’s rickety scaffolding into a mostly empty sandstone room filled wall to wall in chests and shulker boxes, some labeled, some not, all in a disarray that even Tommy finds a bit excessive. Zombiecleo shuffles through the boxes one by one, piling one’s she’s looked through to the side.
It takes maybe five, ten minutes of her searching before she turns around, orange lump in hand, and Tommy can’t tell exactly what she’s holding but it smells like shit and rotting fruit, and-
Zombiecleo looks at the rotten pumpkin pie in her hand and promptly throws it into the nearest cactus.
“We’re going to Joe’s.”
--
They go to Joe’s.
It’s a boat trip across the ocean that the hermit’s world centers on, up to the north, to a warped and blackstone winery that's- honestly, it’s magical, there's no other way of putting it. It makes Tommy think of Niki’s bakery, back when it still existed, but in an entirely different way, like it was flipped upside down and inside out with all of the charm and coziness it carried inside it, became eerie and quiet and not full of baking bread and Niki yelling at him and Tubbo to stop tasting the frosting.
Cleo gets out of the boat, waits for him to do the same.
She walks up the path winding through the vineyard, all sweet berry bushes and the occasional fox scampering through them.
It reminds Tommy of Fungi.
He catches his palm on a bush and clenches his fist at the pain.
A man with dark hair, big square glasses, and a blue shirt wave to them from the porch of the biggest building.
He’s talking, or his mouth is moving, and he has a slight beard, like the one that Phil gets when he’s been away, or been working on something for a couple days, but it’s easier to see on blue shirt man because his hair is dark, not blonde like Phil’s.
Cleo responds to him, and he knows because her mouth is moving, he can see it out of the corner of his eye, and her mouth is making noise, and blue shirt man is saying something back, and they’re walking towards the porch, and his hand is tensed so tight-
Blue shirt man’s mouth is moving, close enough that Tommy can see that his lips are making shapes and his eyes are furrowing, and he’s reaching out, gesturing to Tommy-
--
“Howdy y’all, Joe Hills, here as I sometimes am at my home, my domicile, my place of residence-” He stops and looks out at Cleo, taller as he is even when he’s standing on the elevated porch 2 steps above her, and at the kid she’s brought with her.
He furrows his brow just a little bit.
“Cleo are y’all doin’ alright?”
“We’re doing fine, Joe, of course we are!” Cleo laughs a patented Zombiecleo laugh, and Joe should know because he patented it whenever patent law was first invented in Hermitcraft. “Why do you ask?”
He reaches his hands out to usher the kid inside, but brings them back because he doesn’t know this kid, and he’s clearly upset, and what does he do to comfort him other than wrap him in a big Joe Hills hug and then offer him sage but nonsensical advice?
Cleo glances down at the kid, down to his hands where Joe is looking, and she notices the clenched fist and the trickle of blood.
She has no qualms about gently but firmly grabbing the kid’s arm and moving him inside the winery, and Joe follows her lead, because that’s what he does best; what *they* do best, follow each other when they’re unsure.
She sits the kid down at the main table, and he goes off to find some of the bandages he keeps in the bathroom adjacent, and some disinfectant, and he goes to hand it off to Cleo when she shakes her head at him.
“Hands’ve been acting up lately. Too-” She holds her hands up, and Joe can see them shaking a little in the light coming through the open front door. “Too shaky.”
Joe nods and sits down next to the kid, holds his hand out and waits.
Cleo waits with him, hesitates a bit when the kid doesn’t put his hand out to be treated, and she takes his wrist and puts it in Joe’s hand, opens up his fist so that Joe can dab at the cut, which looks to be from one of the berry bushes.
Cleo is quiet.
So is the kid.
Joe Hills is a man who can appreciate quiet, what it can do for your soul, and all that. Joe Hills is also a man that has a strong but overcomeable need to be friends with most everyone, and he does not like this quiet one bit.
“Hi, I’m Joe Hills.”
He’s quiet for a bit as he dabs the cloth he’s using to clean the wound with disinfectant.
“What’s your name?”
The kid doesn’t answer.
“Tommy. TommyInnit, I think.”
Cleo speaks for him.
“Well then, Tommy, hello and welcome to the Joe Hills winery and to a lesser extent Joerassic Bark, the one and only dog sanctuary on Hermitcraft.”
He’s wrapping Tommy’s hand with bandages, making sure that the bandages aren’t too tight when he hears something other than the wind, and his steady breathing and Cleo’s wheezy breathing.
He can hear Tommy’s breathing now, too, a little too fast, too shallow, and when Joe ties the bandages off and looks away from his work, he can see that Tommy’s eyes are blank and he’s staring out into nothing.
“Tommy, can you hear me?”
Wind. Steady. Wheezy. Shallow.
“Can you hear me?”
Wind. Steady. Wheezy. Shallow.
“Tommy, son, you’re havin’ a anxiety attack.”