Chapter Text
Something was wrong. Zedaph didn’t know what was wrong, but he definitely had the feeling that something was very out of place.
Well, not quite. He had a good idea of what it was. Namely, him. Being a Watcher made him very aware that he was an oddity among players. However, that wasn’t what was wrong here, although sometimes he thought it contributed. He was used to living among the Watchers, with their hivemind culture and the magical weaving between worlds.
Tango and Impulse had helped his transition from Watcher to player go as smooth as it did. It had taken some years of navigating player life and learning how to be a player until he felt like he had finally found where he belonged, living happily in Hermitcraft.
And then that wrong came crashing down on him in Season 8. All because of a plushie.
“Look! It’s a little me!”
Tango had handed Zedaph a soft toy fashioned to look like himself, grinning with giddiness. It was soft, giving way with a gentle squeeze, bouncing back like a pillow. Kid toys, much less plush kids toys, didn’t really exist in most vanilla servers, but Tango had made it happen anyway.
“And now you can cuddle with me every night,” Tango smugly teased.
Zedaph was entranced by the little plushie. His throat felt thick, nonsense noises and sounds wanting to escape his mouth, and he wanted to squeeze the plush tight and never let go. But that wasn’t logical. It was just a soft thing, and it didn’t even do anything. He couldn’t use it for anything. Why get so attached?
“Do you like it?” Tango asked, starting to get antsy. “I made a bunch for all the hermits.”
Not trusting himself to speak, Zedaph nodded.
His lack of speech made Tango hesitate. “You like it, right?”
Zedaph nodded, more insistent this time.
“Did I catch you on a bad day?” Tango’s smile faded a fraction. “It’s okay if you want me to leave.”
Zedaph pulled the plush friend closer, hiding the lower half of his face behind it. He forced himself to lower it.
“No,” he said, forcing his voice to remain level, trying to sound flippant. “You know how words are.”
Tango’s grin returned. “Yeah, language can be a jerk sometimes. But seriously, you like the plushie, right?”
This time, Zedaph needed to respond and reassure his friend, even if it came out awkwardly high-pitched. “Yeah!”
“Okay, don’t force yourself to talk on my behalf, dude.” Tango chuckled and patted him on the shoulder. “I’m gonna go see if I can jumpscare anyone with one of these. Shoot me a message if you need anything.”
They parted with waves and smiles, Tango launching off the mountain and into the sky with a flare of fireworks.
Zedaph took the plushie inside, not sure why it made his brain feel so mushy and happy.
—-
By Season 9, Zedaph had a slightly better idea of what he was dealing with. Ignoring the moon glitch that had everyone running around like headless chickens certainly gave him time for introspection and to keep a private journal. The “wrong” feeling came and went occasionally, seemingly at random, but the intensity varied.
The brain and mental feelings were hard to objectively track and study, so he noted physical signs; habits or actions he did almost unconsciously. His speech was the most obvious, turning into almost incomprehensible babbling. An embarrassing disaster, really. He was incredibly grateful the hermits accepted without question that he sometimes went nonverbal.
Other signs he noted were tripping, playing with blankets or pillows, crawling that wasn’t for redstone, knocking things over, sudden incomprehension of redstone and/or physics, and experiencing difficulty with clothes.
In a word, clumsy.
When listed all out, the symptoms seemed to point to tiredness, but Zedaph wasn’t satisfied with that conclusion. It didn’t fit. Not completely. Two observations kept cropping up in his journal that didn’t match up with a lack of sleep
First, it felt like he was searching for something in those moments. A sort of comfort or strong craving just out of reach that would fix everything, but he didn’t know what that was.
Second– and this was the part that scared Zedaph; he was losing time. The more intense periods, where he couldn’t resist the fog that overtook his brain and made him a clumsy mess, were fuzzy splotches in his memory.
“Am I ill? No, I can’t be ill. I don’t have a body outside virtual reality to get ill.”
Zedaph paced a near-empty hallway of his base, steadfastly not making eye contact with the plushie sitting on the lone shelf. After the Tango plush of Season 8, he had commissioned the same artist Tango had for one in his own likeness, getting the little piece of fabric art onto Season 9. It was currently the reason why he was fighting so hard against the fog in his brain now.
“Is there a glitch in my coding? No, I’m sure I haven’t made a mistake. But something is broken!”
He enunciated his words and listened to the rapt clip-clop of his hooves on deepslate flooring. He turned and kept pacing.
“Why can’t I think? I’m going to have this same conversation with myself tomorrow because this is at amnesia levels! This is all pointless!”
Zedaph plopped down on the floor outside the hallway, wincing at the sudden fall on the hard deepslate, even if it had been intentional. Thinking was pointless, so he pouted and pulled handmade chalk from his inventory. All he had was green and lime green left over from a cactus-smelting bonanza, but dyed, packed mud worked well as chalk, and it washed away with a splash of water.
Drawing big, messy things with big, chunky sticks he had to grab with his whole fist made him feel small, like a child. But it brought his brain so much joy.
Zedaph didn’t know why he wanted to feel like a child.
—-
“Heya, Zed!”
Tango flew down to meet Zedaph, who looked to be just discovering the shulker box he’d left at his Cube base. He couldn’t wipe the grin off his face when he saw Zedaph’s gobsmacked expression at the shulker contents.
“Thanks for getting the first elytra, by the way,” Tango started. “I know you don’t need ‘em — they’re backups for the rest of us ground plebs — but I wanted to show off part of my haul. I gave everyone boxes like that.”
Zedaph threw an elytra at him, and Tango scrambled to grab it before it could get any dirt on it.
“Whoa, hey, I spent ages getting those!” Tango expected a retort from Zedaph, but none came, and he looked up to see the rammling looked angry at him. “Dude, what the hell? You knew I was gonna go End City raiding! What did you expect?”
The anger on Zedaph’s face fell away to shock and hurt. He drew a fist to his throat and twisted his hand, as if turning a key.
Tango instantly softened. “Zed,” he sighed, putting away the extra elytra. “Are you doing okay? Like, stressed or anything? Eating enough on Hermitcraft? You’ve been going nonverbal a lot lately.”
Zedaph hesitated, then typed on his communicator. Tango glanced at his own wristwatch communicator.
Zedaph: This is so much stuff, how dare you
“I thought you were really upset with me when you just threw the elytra,” Tango pointed out, annoyed. “Don’t change the subject, Zed. Can you type out what’s going on?”
Instead of answering, Zedaph did something unexpected. He burst out into tears.
Tango froze. Okay, so definitely stressed. It looked like he had hit a sore spot somewhere in there.
“Hey, man. Hey, it’s okay.” Tango pulled Zedaph into a half-hug, unsure what was going on or what he was supposed to be at this moment. He quickly typed out an SOS into the chat.
Tango: help at zed cube???
He didn’t see if anyone responded. At least one other hermit had to be online.
“Zed, just, just tell me what’s going on,” Tango pleaded. “It’s fine if you type it.”
Zedaph shook his head, sinking to the ground, and Tango went with him, crouching on the grass and rubbing his arm.
“I can’t,” Zedaph mumbled out from between sobs.
Tango offered a smile. “Sure you can. We’re friends, it’s all good.”
That only got a whine and shake of his head. Tango resisted the urge to sigh.
“Help is here! Help is here!”
Keralis came over the hill, waving his sword as he ran over, but the enthusiasm fell from his face as he approached. He knelt in front of Zedaph to look at him. “Hello, Zedaph. What’s wrong?”
Zedaph tore out of Tango’s grasp, tackling Keralis in a hug.
“There, there, Zedaph, it’s okay,” Keralis shushed, rubbing Zedaph’s back as he cried. He looked up at Tango. “What happened?”
Tango hated that all he could do was shrug. “He was acting weird, so I snapped at him, and he just… broke. I think he’s stressed out over stuff, and that was the straw to break the camel’s back. I’m sorry for snapping, Zed, by the way.”
“We’ll, that wasn’t very nice.” Keralis addressed Zedaph, “Tango was mean to you, huh?”
From Keralis’s shoulder, Zedaph sniffled. “Meanie.”
Tango gawked. “Meanie? Wha—“
“He says he’s sorry, though,” Keralis hummed. “But maybe now isn’t the time for sorrys. He can say it later, hmm?”
“Uh-huh.” Zedaph nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“No sorrys from you, Zedaph,” Keralis lightly scolded. “You’re okay. You’re perfect.”
“Hey now,” Tango cut in. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, Zed. I mean, I feel bad now, but everyone needs a good cry sometimes. And maybe you can tell us what’s got you so wound up?”
He pitched it like a question, hoping Zedaph would answer. He heard him mumble something.
“What was that, Zedaph?” Keralis encouraged.
“Ill. I’m ill,” Zedaph confessed. “Brain’s being weird.”
Tango tried to cut in at that, taking Zedaph’s shoulder. He whined when Tango pushed him away from Keralis.
“If you’re sick, let’s get you back to Hermitcraft and back to bed.”
“Nooo.” Zedaph shook his head, and he covered his ears with his hands while he shut his eyes tight.
“You’ll feel better in a familiar space—“
“Wait, Tango,” Keralis stopped him. “If it’s brain sickness, that has to be treated differently, no? Ask what his brain’s doing, anyway, and then we can help out. Zed doesn’t really get body sick.”
Tango looked at Zedaph again, the rammling curled in a protective ball and blocking out the world. He sighed.
“Zed?” Tango crouched beside him again. “Zed, can you tell us what’s going on?”
Zedaph shook his head. Well, that wasn’t helpful.
“We can’t help you if you don’t tell us what’s wrong,” Tango coaxed. “C’mon. Anything you want us to do? Anything that would make you feel better?”
Zedaph shook his head again.
“Can we stay with you for a bit, Zed?” Keralis asked. “We just want you to feel okay.”
“Okay,” Zedaph mumbled. He was shaking, Tango realized, and wringing grass in his fists.
Silently, Tango opened up his arms, offering a hug. He no longer gave off as much heat as he typically did thanks to his frosty transformation, but he knew how to give a Zedaph-approved hug. As Zedaph settled into the embrace, he rolled his knuckles along Zedaph’s back in just the right way to coax his white wings to the surface. He wanted to reach out and surprise him with a preening, but he didn’t know if that was okay at the moment. Just having the wings out and stretching them probably felt good.
This had to be okay for the time being, Tango decided. He just needed to be patient, and Zedaph could explain later if he wanted to. Comfort came first.
When they parted, it was quiet, and Zedaph was rubbing his eyes.
“I’m gonna go back to bed,” he murmured, tapping at his communicator. Without waiting for either of them to say anything, avoiding their eyes, he logged out.
Tango wasted no time in tearing off his elytra and throwing it in the grass. He took a deep breath, gripping the hair on the back of his head.
“I want to help him,” he said, kicking loose grass. “I just don’t know how!”
“Is something going on with Zed?”
“That’s just it! Usually, when he goes nonverbal, he just needs some time alone to chill, recharge his battery, that kinda thing, but I swear there’s more going on this time.”
“So it’s stress,” Keralis concluded.
“Maybe? But he’s not bouncing back. He’s been quiet for a while now. Impulse mentioned it to me, too.”
“It’s rude to pry.”
“We’re his only family!”
Tango froze, realizing he had just snapped at Keralis.
Immediately, he said, “Sorry. I just— yeah. I just want him to be okay. It feels weird to have him close himself off to me when Impulse and I are the closest thing he has to family.”
“He’ll open up when he’s ready,” Keralis promised, unfazed. “But, well, it might not hurt to check in on him sometimes until then.”
Tango glanced at the elytra on the ground, thrown there after he had snapped at Zedaph for being careless with a pair of wings. He couldn’t stop the guilt at pushing his friend to the point of crying. And it was all a miscommunication when Zedaph had just wanted to jokingly tell Tango off for going overboard on End raiding, anyway.
“I still need to tell him I’m sorry,” Tango sighed.