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Secret Life session six has been over for nearly half an hour. The server is covered in craters and scattered dirt, and remnants of smoke still linger in the air. Almost all the players have departed to recover in their bases. The only people left at spawn are two battered, exhausted hybrids: a silent sentinel of a luna mothling and the sleeping fawn laying in her lap.
Pearl runs her fingers through Gem’s hair, humming a soft melody under her breath. Gem has barely stirred since she collapsed in Pearl’s arms at the end of the session, but there’s been the slightest hint of a smile on her face ever since. It’s enough to make Pearl dare to hope. In any case, Gem has nearly thirty hearts and is still breathing steadily, so Pearl isn’t worried about her health. All she can do is sit with Gem’s head in her lap, stay comforting, and wait for her to awaken.
A moment passes. Gem makes a soft sound, shifts a bit, and brushes her fingertips across the singed grass. Her eyes flutter open.
“You know what?” Gem murmurs. “I don’t think I’m all that good at keeping promises.”
Pearl bursts out laughing. Happy tears prick at the corners of her eyes. “Gem!”
Gem sits up and wraps her arms around Pearl, returning the hug Pearl’s been holding her in during her long rest. “I’m back! Like, for real back, I think. I remember now.”
Pearl hugs her even tighter. “Oh, that’s wonderful, Gem! We missed you.”
“Missed you too.” Gem buries her head in Pearl’s shoulder. The soft fabric of Pearl’s hoodie brushes against her cheek. It’s warmer than anything she’s felt in days. “Void, this has been the weirdest fucking week…”
“You said it.” Pearl puts her hands on Gem’s shoulders and looks her in the face, truly able to study her expression for the first time since Secret Life began. The portal matter in her eye is still there, as are the glowing stars twisting up her arm and face, but they aren’t growing anymore. They don’t look hungry. They’re simply a piece of her now, just as sharp teeth and wolfish claws manifest on Pearl’s scarlet form. The games leave marks. The players adapt. They make the broken beautiful.
“You like the look?” Gem says with that same sunshine smile Pearl’s missed so dearly. “It’s starting to grow on me.”
“It suits you.” Pearl takes Gem’s hand – soft, warm, familiar. She squeezes it. Gem squeezes back.
After a moment, Pearl looks away from Gem. “If you don’t want to talk about… all that, I’m alright with that. But I do wanna ask. What happened? All I know is it seemed like you were dying.”
Gem takes a moment to figure out what to say. She sighs. “When the Watchers took me, they said I wasn’t right for the games. That they needed to fix me. I listened to them. I don’t know why I listened, but they did something to my head so I wouldn’t be me anymore. I couldn’t do the things I wanted, I couldn’t really talk to people – all I could do was finish my tasks and try to accomplish their goals. And then they started taking more, and… do you promise to believe me? Because this sounds super weird.”
Pearl squeezes Gem’s hand again. “Of course I promise.”
“I think they wanted to use my body to win. That’s what the corruption was. When I opened the End portal, I think… this sounds insane, I know, but I think they started turning me into a puppet. I Watched with their eyes. And doing things they didn’t want made my arm feel too heavy. It was… I don’t know how to explain it.”
To her surprise, Pearl doesn’t look even a bit confused. “No, I understand. That’s… it’s so fucked, but it’s absolutely something they would do.”
“I thought Watchers could only Watch.”
“You’re right.” Pearl’s voice falters for a second. She clears her throat. “But no one expects how powerful it is to have all those eyes on you.”
Gem takes a deep breath. Her exhale releases the weight of a thousand unspoken thoughts. “You get it.”
“I’d like to think I do.”
Gem gazes at Pearl for a moment, soft and sincere. She puts her other hand atop Pearl’s, sandwiching Pearl in her grip. The slightest smirk appears on her face. “You think I still have a chance at winning this thing?”
Pearl bursts out laughing. “I don’t know. I mean, my Mounders are lookin’ pretty tough right now…”
“Challenge accepted!” Gem declares to the server, pumping her fist in the air. Both of them dissolve into uncontrollable giggles. Pearl sticks her tongue out at Gem, and Gem mirrors the gesture right back.
They’re distracted for a moment by a flash of light from Gem’s communicator. She checks it and sees a message from Impulse.
<impulseSV whispered to you>
<impulseSV> Heads up that the base is gonna be down two Scotts tonight
<impulseSV> Scott is at Martyn’s base and I want to go help Tango out now that he’s back
<impulseSV> So it’s all yours for the moment
There’s a pause, then one more message.
<impulseSV> Perfect place for a picnic dinner if you ask me
“Oh, shut up,” Gem mutters aloud with a playful eye roll.
“What is it?” Pearl asks, stealing a glance at Gem’s comm.
“Impulse wants me to bring you to the cherry blossom grove for a picnic.” She narrates typing a message in response. “And… what… exactly… is that… supposed to mean?”
<impulseSV> ;)
<GeminiTay> :P
Pearl’s heart flutters for a fraction of a second. “I mean, we never did finish that picnic back on Hermitcraft…”
The slightest pink blush spreads across Gem’s face. “And I haven’t eaten all day…”
Pearl stands and helps Gem to her feet. “Alright, then. A picnic it is! I’ve got a couple pieces of chicken and some bread, so we can probably put together a couple sandwiches, and I’ll bet anything we can find some apples to bake for dessert–”
She has an impromptu picnic prepared? “Pearl,” Gem says for the thousandth time, “you’re insane.”
“Aw, but that’s why you love me!”
Gem grins. “Of course I do.”
One perfect shady tree and two apples in a furnace later, Gem and Pearl settle down for a long-overdue picnic. Gem is amazed at how good a simple chicken sandwich can taste now that she’s back to her own senses. She rests her head on Pearl’s shoulder and takes another bite. They’ve spent over an hour this way already, catching up and talking about anything they can think of. The conversation has bounced from the properties of various art supplies (wither rose is the best black dye, this is obvious, but Pearl swears by beetroot instead of poppies for red, and Gem is insistent you can only make good magenta dye with lilacs) to the strangest mod they’ve ever encountered (lucky blocks) to their next ideas for Hermitcraft. It’s as though the rhythm of their relationship was never broken by the Watchers’ nightmare. And then Pearl playfully tosses a crumpled paper at Gem, and Gem blocks it with her shield, and Pearl gets her first glimpse of Gem’s new banner, and…
“Pretty colors,” Pearl says, as though that communicates anything of importance.
“You think?”
“Yeah. I mean…”
“Yeah, it was kind of an accident. I thought the colors looked good, and then I stepped back to look at it, and… total coincidence, y’know? Works, though.”
“It really does.” Pearl blushes and looks at some scattered cherry blossom petals on the ground. “So, is that… I mean, does it mean anything about… I don’t know what I’m asking.”
“It means what I want it to mean,” Gem says. Her face is nearly as red as the apple she’s eating. “You know how it is.”
“Yeah. It’s…” Pearl chuckles and buries her head in her hands. “Oh, I’m such a coward…”
Gem smirks as though her heart isn’t also racing. “How so?”
Pearl inhales deeply. Her heart, hands, and wings flutter in unison, flicking off nervous energy. “Alright, I’ve wanted to say this to you forever, but then everything happened and it wasn’t the right time, and… alright. Gem, you are the best person I know. You’re silly, and you’re clever, and you have so much energy all the time, and you make me feel safe whenever I’m with you. I’m so grateful we got to join Hermitcraft together, because I’ve loved every second of our adventures. And now we’re the Soup Group, and we get to spend even more time together, and it’s… it’s all so lovely. And when I saw you on Empires, in that sunrise dress with your castle behind you… even beyond that, just sparring with you or having sleepovers… void, I’m so bad at saying this. And you know, we’re both aroace, and we’re both weird down to our code, and I think you get me. And I get you. And I’d like to give you a part of my heart, if you’ll take it. I don’t know what to call it, if it’s a soulbond or a QPR or what, but I guess what I’m trying to say is…” She takes another deep breath. “GeminiTay, would you like to be my person?”
“Aw, and here I thought I’d get to ask you first.” Gem grins. “I would love to be your person, PearlescentMoon. If you’ll be mine too.”
“Aw, yay!” Pearl beams. She giggles, happy and hopeful and more full of starlight than ever. “Void, I don’t know how to follow that up. I, uh… high-five?”
Gem bursts out laughing, high-fives Pearl, and puts her head on Pearl’s shoulder, collapsing into even louder giggles. “Oh, we’re the worst at this.”
“We’re so bad!” Pearl leans back on her hands, grinning. “Oh, goodness. I love it.” It feels like nothing and everything has changed at the same time. It’s less butterflies in her stomach and more a hug from the inside out. From the look on Gem’s face, it’s clear she feels the same way.
“Okay.” Gem grins. “I have been waiting to ask you this for the longest time. Can I kiss you? I mean, I don’t really kiss people on the lips, but is there something that feels right?”
Pearl blushes. “I’ve always loved forehead kisses.”
Gem cups Pearl’s face in her hands and presses a kiss to her forehead. “Me too.”
“Perfect.” Pearl kisses Gem’s forehead in turn, then boops her on the nose. “How long do you think the server’s gonna take to figure this out?”
“Oh, they absolutely know. Martyn's been teasing me ever since I told him about the cheerleader costume from New Life.”
“Okay, good, you did like that. I was so nervous…”
“I knew you were flirting!” Gem grins. “The whole time, I was like, ‘fuck, she’s so pretty and I have no idea if she’s doing it on purpose…’”
“To be honest, I don’t think I knew I was flirting.” Pearl hides her face behind her hands again. “I just thought it was gonna make you laugh. But I liked the way you looked at me. Especially because you had just shown me your MCC uniform, and it looked so good, and I thought I was being so weird about it.”
“Oh, yeah, no, I’ve kind of had a squish on you forever,” Gem admits. “Since you came to my rescue during that WorldEdit workshop, really.”
“When you got yourself stuck in a hole in the ground?” Pearl giggles. “I remember that. Never would’ve thought of you as a damsel in distress.”
“Oh, shut up. I am perfectly capable, PearlescentMoon.”
“Sure, sure.” Pearl boops her on the nose again. “Still. It’s good to have some moth wings around when you need ‘em, right?”
“It is,” Gem admits, “occasionally nice to be rescued.”
A soft silence falls between them. Pearl takes Gem’s hand again, tracing her thumb across the portal matter intertwined with Gem’s skin. “And that’s what we do. We protect each other.”
“We protect each other,” Gem echoes. “For real this time.”
They keep holding hands in the midnight quiet, portal stars intertwined with glowing freckles, sapphire and emerald eyes meeting.
“This game isn’t right anymore. I’m not sure either of us can keep any promises for long. I don’t know what to do. But when we finally get out of here,” Gem says, “I’d like to bake bread together and sing and dance with you in my kitchen. That’s all I know.”
“I’d like that too,” Pearl says. She can’t hold back a sudden yawn. “Wow, today took everything out of me. I think I might have to head back to my mound now, unfortunately…”
“Or…” Gem shrugs. “We do have the grove to ourselves for the night. This sounds so sappy, but like… if you want to hang out in my base and cuddle tonight, I’d be glad to have you over.”
Pearl’s eyes brighten, even beyond the full moon’s reflection. “I’d love that, Gem.”
It’s not long before they’re curled up in Gem’s bed together, bodies curled against each other beneath soft blankets, wonderfully warm for the first time in far too long. Gem is asleep within moments, followed soon after by Pearl, still holding each other close.
It is, Pearl realizes in the morning, the first restful night of sleep she’s ever had in a Life Series game.