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“Beaming sun sways in peace on your shoulder.”

Summary:

It’d been ten minutes.

Fifteen.

Twenty?

Mumbo had offered to go out and mediate, but apparently that hadn’t been welcome. Or maybe welcome was the wrong word, more like Scar had felt the need to do this himself. The elf had made his way out the door with shaky footing, but moving all the same.

Toward Grian, the little avian whom both of them had grown to care about so terrifyingly much. And Mumbo knew he wouldn't be of much help in this situation...but stars above, that didn't mean he wasn't freaking out about it.

{In which Mumbo fidgets, Gem doesn't get the drama, Grian and Scar are making up we think...and well, it's all very chuffly}

(Hermitaday May 2025 Day 6: Mumbo Jumbo)

Notes:

Please enjoy~

(Title is from "One Summers Day" by Joe Hisashi)

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Mumbo

It’d been ten minutes.

Fifteen.

Twenty?

Mumbo had offered to go out and mediate, but apparently that hadn’t been welcome. Or maybe welcome was the wrong word, more like Scar had felt the need to do this himself. The elf had made his way out the door with shaky footing, but moving all the same.

Toward Grian, the little avian whom both of them had grown to care about so terrifyingly much.

And Mumbo didn’t really have much prior comparison, given his history with the Mercenary Guild before he ended up with Scar, but certainly, certainly this was something deeper for him.

He loved Grian. Loved Scar. The three of them going on their little adventures was something wanted, needed, to keep going, to keep happening, on this terrible continent where only the worse seemed to happen.

Grian’s big dark eyes wide and glazed over with fear and past conditioning.

I’d have put that man in the ground, if Scar didn’t do it for me.

Scar, kneeling on the porch after the accidental orders, trembling and weeping for all of his failures, all the accidents compounding into one ultimate sin for which he was on his way to confession.

I want to fix it.

Mumbo fidgeted his fingers together, grappling them together, then apart.

“You wanna sit down?” Gem offered vaguely, and Mumbo shook his head as he continued his pacing.

“I’m quite alright, I just…I get jittery when I’m nervous.”

“Ah.” Gem made the one-tone noise as she watched him from the dining room table with a raised eyebrow that gave about as much inclination as anyone could ask for, what she thought of this whole situation.

“…you could look out the window, maybe?”

“Window?”

“This is your house!” Gem huffed, sounding exasperated as she pointed toward the front door, which, sure enough, had a little window in it for peeking out at who was there.

Mumbo felt terribly foolish for all of ten seconds before he rather shamelessly bolted over to the door. He had to stoop to look through the window, the door to the Swagon was squat and rounded, but as his vision focused in through the thick pane of glass…there they were.

Grian was perched in front of the driver's bench, and Scar was sitting on it, and Scar…

…is preening his wings.

A sudden grand whoosh of relief rushed through the rogue, his shoulders slumping with the force of it as he laid his palm more firmly on the door.

“Oh…thank goodness…” He whispered to himself.

He hadn’t been sure what he’d do, if Grian never forgave Scar. He couldn’t abandon either of them, he loved them both to much.

But they loved each other. And he was reasonably certain they loved him.

“You good there, big guy?” Gem asked, mainly because it probably looked like Mumbo was about to topple over, and so, the crimson-eyed man stood himself up. He took a moment to straighten his tie and adjust the laces of the light leather rogues armor he wore, and then turned around. A smile, with ever so slightly misty eyes he’d just have to hope she wouldn’t notice, tugged at his lip and made his mustache quiver.

“…I’m chuffed, actually.”

Are you now?”

“Certainly. Chuffed to bits.”

Notes:

Y'all I struggle with writing short ;-; I'm trying SO HARD to keep the majority of the Hermitadays under 1k and it is a strugglebus let me tell you...but we carry onward! I hope you enjoyed this chapter, if you did, please drop a comment down below! I'd love to hear your thoughts, and they'd help Gem get what's up with all this hot nonsense, also, please come say hi if you're on tumblr! @amethystfairy1

Thanks for reading!