Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

   Scar finds him in the garden.

Well - garden, farm. It’s all the same anyway. He tilts his head and frowns at the figure on the ground. He’s convulsing amongst the golden-ripe wheat, staining it a purplish red, barely awake, barely asleep. Vast white wings still fluttering - no, not fluttering, twitching, trembling, feathers bent and dirty and bloody, and muttering something unintelligible to himself. He wasn’t flying to begin with, then. He was falling.

   He bends down, heart racing, and pushes the hair out of the figure’s face. It’s golden-brown, with bright-white and tawny feathers interspersed throughout the scalp, matching those enormous wings. He’s stilled now, which Scar finds even more distressing. He hopes he isn’t dead. There’s blood around his pink lips and smeared over his cheekbones. He has a handsome face, androgynous, vaguely boyish, young, with cheeks tinted purple instead of apple-red, and scatterings of near-white freckles just dusting the skin underneath the outer corners of his eyes. Scar wraps his arms around him and carries him inside with difficulty. 

   Sits him on the couch. Stands in front of him, breathing quite hard, just staring. He isn’t sure the exact protocol for finding a man in your garden, especially one dressed in strange silk robes with large, curved wings. Perhaps he’s an angel, only Scar isn’t sure if they really exist, he’s only heard of them in fairytales, and not the kind that inform you of reality, like Voidwalkers or avian hybrids, or server Admins, or Updates. 

   There’s something in the back of his mind that prevents him from walking out into Boatem and telling anyone. Which is quite frankly stupid, because Mumbo’s a walk across the street from him, and Pearl and Impulse are even closer - but there’s something about this fragile, unconscious figure in front of him that makes him not want to tell anybody. Anybody, at all. Inside or outside of Boatem. 

   Scar swallows, wrings his hands, and pushes messy hair out of his face. He fetches his cane, because even a light figure like this little angel was a bit too much to carry. He stands there leaning on it for a few more seconds, and then he fetches a small damp towel and advances forwards. 

   “Hey, angel,” he tells him, deciding to ignore that he can’t talk back, “I’m just - yeah, I’m just going to,” and he falters and frowns as he starts to wipe the blood from the angel’s face, holding his chin as gently as he can. “This is weird,” he murmurs. “This is really weird.” He blinks. “So, what’s your name, handsome stranger?” 

   The angel does not respond to him. Obviously. He doesn’t know what he expected. He rolls his eyes, ready to go back in with the towel and finish wiping the blood off of his mouth. Unfortunately, that’s exactly when the angel’s eyes fly open and he rockets forwards into him, knocking them both to the ground - hands flying to his own throat, gasping for air that won’t come.

   The predictable outcome: Scar panics. The look of fear in Angel’s eyes is not a good look on him - he’s scrambling backwards, purplish fingers scrabbling at the couch as he backs away, still struggling to breathe. Like - really struggling. And what really freaks Scar out - his hair is changing, the white of his freckles rapidly disappearing - like he’s morphing between forms, some sort of glitch between yellow-blonde hair and big blue eyes and golden-brown strands and one stark purple iris. He says something in-between shallow gasps, and it doesn’t sound like Commontongue, too whispery and not enough vowels - and despite not understanding any of it, something clicks in Scar’s head.

   He shoots to his feet, ignoring the stab of pain in his leg - “I’ll be back,” he says frantically, staggers to the hook on the wall he hangs his elytra on with growing panic, straps it messily over his shoulders and waist, swipes a stack of old fireworks into his pocket - and climbs out of the window. There’s no way he can get to Xisuma’s on foot, not with his aggravated muscles, not in time for Angel to survive. Or - well, he still isn’t sure what exactly Angel is. Maybe he can survive without oxygen for a really long time. Maybe he was faking to get him to panic. 

   It didn’t look like he was faking. It didn’t look like he was faking at all. Scar swallows his panic and stabilises himself in the air, letting another firework loose. The wind is making his eyes water, so he pushes forward further, further, further. He’s at Xisuma’s base in record time, crashes through the window, he’ll replace it later, finds himself holding very, very tight to a wooden doorframe and gasping for air not unlike the angel in his house. The thought scares him even more, and Xisuma skids to a halt in front of him, big gravity-helmet only half-obscuring his surprise at the situation.

   “I need - fucking hell, I - I need a low gravity mask, Suma, like, urgent-”

The effort Xisuma spends on not chastising him for swearing is palpable. Scar’s panic must be serious-seeming, because Xisuma dashes into the next room immediately and retrieves what looks like a little gas mask, and holds it towards him. Scar snatches it and tears off towards the window, ignoring Xisuma’s cry of protest behind him. Are you going to tell me why yo-

    His Admin is cut off by the roaring of wind in his ears as he speeds back through the air to Boatem. He imagines coming back to a body in his base, limp and lifeless, a mouth wide open in helpless suffocation, and he thinks he might’ve made it back in an even shorter record, and wasted too many fireworks speeding himself up, because when he aims for the open window into his starter base, he clips his shoulder and swears the bruise is going to go black and shrivel up. 

   Legs like jelly, he stumbles over to the figure hunched over the couch. His shoulders are trembling just enough that he looks alive. Scar’s on his knees in seconds, holding his face, fumbling with the straps on the mask, and that’s when he sees those eyes, properly this time. Downturned, tired, widening in surprise as he can finally breathe again. One is bright blue, darker than a diamond but lighter than lapis lazuli, piercing. The other is a faint, pale lavender colour, almost unsettling paired with how full of life the other is. Scar gulps as he finishes strapping the mask on at the back. Angel’s hands come briefly and jerkily up to fumble with the straps holding the mask on, but he soon seems to realise that it helps.

   “Angel,” Scar says, “Hey. Hey, Angel? Are you there?” 

Those eyes blink up at him again, sleepily, bright blue and light lilac, and then close, and the figure goes limp. He jolts for a second, hands coming forward in panic - but realises, then, that he’s not dead. No, not dead, thank the gods. He’s sleeping. Deep brown eyelashes fan out over tired skin. There’s a sense of familiarity about the angel’s face, like he’s seen him in an old photograph somewhere.

   Scar ends up moving the angel into his own bed, standing uncertainly over him, wiping the towel as softly as he can over the rest of his face that he can reach with the mask on. He’s wearing long, silk robes, torn and bloody and dirty, code damage fraying the sleeves, and Scar finds himself wondering how he managed to get onto Hermitcraft at all. He might even be hostile when he wakes, might have been a hacker, or at least had malicious intent. It’s not smart to keep this from Xisuma, to keep this from anybody, but he’s doing it anyway. That’s not a good sign, is it?

   He eases thin leather shoes off of the angel’s feet, wipes wine-red blood from his ankles, and finds a long, thin cut running along his calf, dividing pale white skin into two. He bandages it, keeps looking up like the angel is going to wake up suddenly and freak out, but it doesn’t happen. The same treatment for those arms - the robe wraps around his body almost like a toga, leaving a large space of collarbone and neck open, evidently, to attack. He’s bruised all over his shoulders, some fading to brown, some purple and yellow and glaringly recent, and there’s dried blood caked over one arm in a code burn that makes Scar’s heart jump in his chest. It looks very, very painful, like skin scraped off. 

   So, feeling vaguely nauseous, Scar goes in search of potions, ends up gently cracking open a concentrated healing elixir over the wound, watching it fade into a knotted pink scar and then into a white stretch of faded scar tissue. He rubs a regeneration ointment into his arms and the violent bruising over the left of his collarbones, and ends up searching his wardrobe for an old jumper he can cut a hole in the back of. 

   Eventually, a soft grey MCC merchandise sweatshirt is unearthed, along with some old black sweatpants that got a tad too small as he grew up. He feels actually quite smug for never organising his wardrobe - his neat friends with redstone-organised systems only have clothes that fit them, that they wear all the time, so they’d never be able to find something for a stranded angel like this. He cuts off the ruined silken robes with sharp scissors, notes with palpable relief that the figure is wearing boxers underneath, and-

    Oh. More code burns, there, over his ribs and stretching down to his stomach. Scar swallows his growing anxiety and eventually finds another healing potion, and a regen just to make sure, because every new instance of fragility he finds when trying to treat Angel is freaking him out even more, and pulls the newly backless sweatshirt over his head, trying to ignore the way his heart beats in nervousness when the angel’s head lolls forwards in unconsciousness. He pulls the elasticated sweatpants over his legs, dumps a few blankets on top of him for good measure, and tries his very best to ignore those wings. 

   Only, it’s very difficult to ignore wings like that. And they look so dirty and overgrown, and there’s blood caked into them, and singed feathers as well, and Scar doesn’t know how to preen wings. He doesn’t know how to clean them at all. 

   So he makes a call. 

“Scar?” filters through the little speakers on his comm. He winces. “What is it - it’s the middle of the night, why are you calling?” 

   He laughs nervously. “Oh, I didn’t even notice the time! So so so great to talk to you Tango - I just had a little question, just a tiny, little question, just curious!” 

    “Uh huh,” Tango yawns through the comm. “Did you blow something up? Like - like, my shop? Please tell me you didn’t blow up Copper and Candles-”

    “No, no,” Scar says very quickly, nearly hits himself over the head for being so stupid - “Well, you know, er, Jimmy?” 

    “My… my boyfriend? Yes, Scar, of course I know Jim. What are you-”

“Well,” he continues, blinking hard, steering onward, “Well, Jimmy’s an avian, isn’t he? Like - a little songbird or whatever, and-”

    “Scar, where is this going?” 

“I need you to teach me how to preen wings,” Scar says in a rush, all pretence gone. He winces immediately, folding his lips into a tight line. “Like - well, sort of now kind of-”

   “I’ll be over in 20 minutes,” Tango says abruptly, and he hears shifting over the line, like he’s standing up, “But you’re explaining once I get there.” 

    And that’s how Scar ends up standing in his bedroom with Tango Tek, both staring at the angel lying on the bed. They’ve managed to flip him over on his back, exposing those folded over feathers, and they are much, much larger than Jimmy’s little yellow canary wings. 

   “Sorry, Scar - who is this?” 

He cringes. “I’m not sure,” he says. “I found him in my garden,” then looks up, sudden panic igniting in his chest, “Please don’t tell anyone.” 

   Tango looks up at him, frowning, but pats him on the shoulder anyway. “I won’t,” he tells him. “I’ve never had to preen wings as bad as this, but I’m better than nothing.” 

   And so they get to work. Scar washes the dried blood out of the feathers with warm water as Tango starts on the other wing, combing through each feather, pulling loose ones with stark concentration, realigning them perfectly. 

   And then the angel starts to cry. Really, that’s the best way to describe it - Scar drops what he’s doing immediately, scrambles forwards, looks at his face where it’s been placed gently on the pillow. He hasn’t woken, but his breathing’s gone all funny, and he’s making these noises like he’s in pain - Tango looks up from what he’s doing. “Scar, you alright?” 

   “He’s crying,” Scar says. His heart is beating very fast. He doesn’t like this. “Why is he crying? That’s not - why would he be crying?” 

   Tango frowns. “Sometimes avians have emotional responses to preening,” he says. “He’s probably dreaming.”

   Scar really, really doesn’t like the sound of that. But he continues combing the dirt and grime out of the wings, and it takes a very long time between him and Tango sweeping the dirt out of the feathers and combing them into place and removing bent or ruined ones… but eventually, the sun is just climbing over the horizon, painting the room with gold through the window, and Tango yawns and says they’ve done all they can. 

   “You promise you won’t tell?” Scar asks him, watching him pull on his shoes. 

“I won’t tell,” he responds, “But I wouldn’t be so quick to keep this a secret, Scar. It isn’t smart. Think about it, alright?” 

   And then he’s gone, leaving Scar alone with the angel once again. 

For a moment, he lets himself wallow, and he feels very, very frightened. Frightened for and of this mystery person, frightened of his own secrecy, and the presence now in his bed. Then he looks over, and sees Angel sleeping where they’ve turned him over onto his back, his chest falling and rising, the low-oxygen mask half-obscuring his face… and he feels even more scared.

   Angel, as Scar has named him in his head, doesn’t wake for the next week or so, but he does have nightmares. He sleeps in the bed still, and Scar on the couch, but nearly every night, and sometimes during the day, there’s a scream, or something like one, and Scar finds himself hovering over the angel as he mumbles unintelligibly. Usually, it’s begging. Incomprehensible pleas, sometimes not to hurt him, sometimes to take him back, to let him go home, once to please stop, please, please just stop, I’m scared. Please, wait - no, please don’t. Please just let me - let me stay, I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go. Don’t do it, don’t-

    Scar hadn’t been able to sleep at all that night. Sometimes Angel doesn’t speak in Commontongue, or he starts a sentence in it and ends in that same whispery, consonant-heavy language he can’t decipher or even recognise. But - well, he never speaks in it like he knows the ins and outs of each word, like they roll off of his tongue with joy or warmth or even familiarity. It isn’t his native tongue, it isn't even close. On the worst nights, he would say the same phrases, continuously, brokenly, like a foreigner clinging to the few words they’d been taught to get by with. Interspersed with Commontongue cries and pleas, words and little sentences of this new language were prevalent. On one of the worst nights by far, he only spoke in that language. And he cried much, much more than before. 

   The main issue with his current predicament is that Scar really, really doesn’t want to leave Angel alone. He hasn’t left his base in two days, and before then he could only go out for an hour at a time, nervous the whole time, Angel shrouded in blankets. He half considered begging Etho for a lesson on redstone security systems, just for the peace of mind.

The first time Angel wakes up, properly, he rips the low-oxygen mask off his face and breathes easily. It’s the morning, and Scar has resigned himself to his (pitiful and humiliating) routine of sitting in the chair close to his bed, cradling his hot mug of coffee in both hands, sipping occasionally, and staring at him. There isn’t much else to do. Except then, suddenly, Angel shoots up, hands shoving frantically at the mask, and Scar spills hot coffee all over himself as he manages to pull and loosen the straps and rip it off, breathing heavily and staring wildly around the room. Scar’s close to him in two seconds, on top of the bed, fumbling with the mask, but Angel pushes it away from him and mutters, “I can breathe, I can - breathe,” all while sounding firmly like he can’t. 

    Scar just stares down at him. He isn’t actually quite sure what to do now. The hot coffee all down his front is very much not burning him, which is a testament to how long he’d been sitting there watching his guest. “Can you?” 

    Angel flushes, looks like he’s about to say something snappish, and then pauses. Waits. And… “You smell like coffee,” he says. 

    Oh. Scar blinks. “You… you scared me,” he responds slowly. He then realises how close he is to Angel, practically straddling him, having jumped in fear that he couldn’t breathe. Angel is looking at him in a way that makes him want to crawl out of his skin. Their faces are awfully close. He’s so pale, still so sick-looking-

   “Do you need anything?” 

“What?” 

   He thinks he’s probably gone quite red. “Well, is-” and he gestures to his ribs, his arm, “Like, does anything hurt? I was brewing yesterday, I have fresh potions.” 

   Angel frowns. “Who are you?” 

It’s at that moment that Scar scrambles backwards, sits way further back on the bed, hoping he doesn’t look as distressed and bedraggled as he feels. He flushes. “Is that any way to speak to the person taking care of you?” 

   Oh God. Angel gives him an unimpressed look. There it is. Scar is officially not funny.

“You - I found you in my garden,” he mumbles. He looks up. “Would you rather me have left you there?” 

   But Angel is already looking away, pulling at the soft grey sleeves of the sweatshirt. He pulls them up, looks at the scarred-over code burn on his forearm, a hiss of breath escapes him but it isn’t pain, Scar doesn’t know what it is, and he pulls the fabric up over his stomach with pale fingers and touches the healing burn very, very lightly with the tips of them. It’s like he takes in his surroundings for the first time, and then he looks up at Scar again, and his face has changed. “You-” and he stops, starts again, like a faulty disc in a jukebox. “You helped me?” 

   Scar frowns. “Of course, Angel,” he starts, tries to play off the slip of the name that is definitely not his actual name, “I mean, what else would I do, it’s not-”
  “Angel?” the figure repeats. 

He decides to just face it. “Well, you’ve got - like, the wings and everything. I needed something to call you in my head.” 

   Then, perks up. Smiles, “Will you tell me your name then?” 

Angel shakes his head. “Fat chance,” he says. Scar scowls. 

   There’s a short pause before Angel’s eyes drag down Scar’s front and back up to his face. He flushes dark red. “I’m going to - um, shower,” he says, strangled with embarrassment, and goes to flee the room. “Don’t get up, you’ll hurt yourself!” he calls.

   But by the time he’s back in the room in new clothes untouched by coffee stains, Angel’s unconscious again, looking even sicker, but somehow more comfortable in his surroundings. Scar takes his place in the chair again and sinks in, just watching. Maybe he’s used up all of his energy. The profile of his face is pressed against the soft white feathers of a wing. 

   Two days later, Scar falls asleep in the armchair next to him, thankfully without any hot coffee in his lap, and finds himself waking groggily to heavy breathing. His heart sinks. It’s another one. 

   Angel is muttering in the foreign language again, twitching, twisted in the blankets. His face is crumpled by fear. Scar goes to him, holds his wrists to keep his nails from scratching angry lines up his arms. “Angel,” he whispers, “It’s okay. Hey - hey, hey, it’s okay, it isn’t real.”

   He knows Angel can’t hear him. It only seems to get worse with the restraint, but he also knows it’s the only way to keep him unharmed. “It isn’t real,” he repeats, and then Angel starts to speak in Commontongue again. 

    “Please - no, wait, no-” and his breathing is laboured, voice barely coherent, “No-” and those mismatched eyes fly open and suddenly he’s shot forwards in sudden lucidity, and Scar’s caught him in his arms, and he screams again, and then again, and Scar decides the only thing he can do is keep talking. 

    “It’s okay,” he says, louder now, “It’s okay, Angel, you aren’t there, you’re - you’re safe, you’re completely safe, you’re fine. You’re - you’re safe, you’re on a server called Hermitcraft, you aren’t in danger,” and he notices with barely concealed panic that Angel, thrown over his shoulder, holding onto him very tightly, goes tense at the name of the server. “You’re fine,” he forces out again, and Angel chokes out an unintentional, unwanted sob, and he just keeps - keeps on going. There’s nothing else to do. “You’re fine,” he says. “You’re safe.” 

   He pulls back, then, suddenly, red-rimmed eyes, and he has the kind of fear in his face that’s more linked to humiliation than anything else. Scar reaches out and grabs his arm to inspect it, the scratches from before he’d intervened. He swallows. “I’ll get a healing pot,” he says, and goes to stand, and then a hand wraps around his shoulder very tightly, and Angel says in Commontongue, in a raspy, trembling, gasping voice that sounds undoubtedly like his native language, “Please stay.” 

   Scar’s convinced immediately. He thinks he might do anything that voice tells him to do, actually, which is a 100% normal, hinged, and okay thing for him to be thinking in this situation. “Okay,” he whispers.

   Angel leans just slightly forwards, closer to him, his shoulders trembling, and Scar finds himself looking over his arms again, surveying the white stretch of code burn scarring, the faded bruises, the angry red lines stretching across forearms. He traces alongside one, and Angel hisses, a light dusting of air let out.

   Scar speaks without thinking. “You needed low oxygen. Why?” 

When Angel doesn’t immediately answer, he looks up and meets his eyes. One bright, piercing blue, one glassy lavender. “Angel?” 

   “You keep calling me that,” Angel whispers. “Why?” 

Scar feels like there isn’t enough air in the world to satiate him; he sucks a shallow breath through his teeth. “I needed something to call you.” 

   Angel blinks, but he looks somewhat satisfied with the answer. Scar decides to push. 

“Why did you need the mask? Low oxygen? You seem fine now.” 

   And Angel looks like he’s mulling it over. He looks down, breaking eye contact for one brisk moment, and wets his lips with his tongue, blinking, looking up, then down, then up again. And then it comes, low and innocuous and completely, glaringly, false. “I don’t know,” he whispers.

Chapter Text

   Grian gasps, heavy jumping breaths, shoves his fist in his mouth and forces the tears back, choking on them, on his grief, on his shame his fear his terror - he shuts his eyes with all of the energy he has left, and cries silently, because he’s never able to stop it for long, it all comes out eventually. He’s weak, that’s why. He’s always been weak.

   He isn’t sure still how he managed to escape the Void, but he’ll take what he can get, doesn’t want to think about it, doesn’t want to think about the terror as the feathers forced their way out of his skin, doesn’t want to think about the marrow carved out of his bones, doesn’t want to think about the slow, gentle ache in his eye or the emptiness of the Void or the echoing voices and the constant knowledge, ebbing and flowing and pressing down on him until he cried, until he knew everything, all of the time- 

    Right now, Grian is in a warm bed with fleece blankets, and he’s in the house of a man who didn’t tell him his name, but didn’t have to. And, well. Hermitcraft. That familiar, sublime word falling from Scar’s tongue, and his heart had jumped so high, his stomach had flipped, his breath had caught, and for one simple moment he’d felt seventeen again. That was before his thoughts had plummeted downhill.

   Because Mumbo might have left Hermitcraft. Mumbo might not even be alive, might not remember him. And if Mumbo is alive, and well, and happy on this server, who is Grian to ruin it, storming back into his life with wings and scars and nightmares that won’t go away? How can he possibly do that to him?

   So he can’t speak to Mumbo. And he can’t let Scar know who he is, because he’ll recognise him then, won’t he, that old photo they published in the newspaper of his starry eyes and nervous grin and coding scholarship… He isn’t that boy anymore.

   Grian Moon died at seventeen, in a code glitch on his groundbreaking server, a code glitch that killed eleven, and Xelqua was born, and Mumbo will only suffer by knowing Xelqua. Mumbo cannot know Xelqua. 

   Scar isn’t here now as he cries in his bed, trying to ignore the persistent dread that comes from sleep. He isn’t here to hover above him with those green, worried eyes, and repeat those soft, simple phrases over, and over, and over again in that soothing accent, isn’t here to talk him through the fear and put him back together again like last time. Grian tells himself he’s okay with that. He’s dealt with the nightmares alone since they started. He’s fine. He’s fine.

    But he needs to get out. Gingerly, he extends one wing, takes in his body with his eyes. Scar’s dressed him in a very soft grey sweatshirt, with the back cut out. It’s massive on him, but he won’t complain, because it feels more comforting than those silken robes ever did. His wings have been preened, attentively, carefully. 

   He’s out of the window immediately. Really, it’s Scar’s fault for leaving it open while he’s alone. He flails in the air, wings suddenly feeling much heavier, foreign on his back. Right. There’s gravity here, wherever he is on Hermitcraft. He soars higher, much higher, then glides, thinks briefly to himself that well - isn’t Scar trying to keep him a secret, or something? He should be heading back, really, it’s the least he can do to repay him, you know, not be an idiot. But… 

   Just a little longer outside. It can’t hurt. He hasn’t had freedom like this in so long - glides in little circles, finds himself descending upon a mountain, soars lower, and sees several little wooden bridges crossing a beautiful waterfall.

   It’s lovely. All of his breath is suddenly gone. Grian descends lower, glides underneath an oaken bridge, and lands directly next to the pooling waterfall at the bottom. He’s craving it - the feel of fresh grass below his bare feet, on his hands, the cool flowing water, the soil of the riverbed - it’s everything he’s missed, all of those years stuck in the Void, all of those years empty, longing for the world he’d been taken from, hungering deep inside, stuck. 

    The grass is shiny, bright green. He runs his fingers over it, gasps at the feeling. He’s wanted this for so long. Greedily sinks his hands into the water, splashes it on his face, and leans over it, staring at his reflection. 

   He looks so different. Bright yellowish hair darkened to a golden-blonde, very nearly brown, and one eye that flimsy, glassy purple he’s grown to hate. His freckles have gone white. 

   He stares. For a moment, he thinks he might be sick into that beautiful clear water, ruin everything, just because he isn’t the person he was before they took him. 

   And then Grian blinks, and he has changed. 

Morphed - in his reflection, somehow, and he thinks his real, palpable self as well. His hair has been bleached, in moments, back to that bright gold colour, his freckles a coffee brown, his broken eye blue. It’s like a terrible insight into his life without the Watchers’ interference. He feels faint just looking at it. 

   Grian reaches out and drags his fingers through the water to disrupt it. He stands, nearly falls over himself with how unnatural such a normal, Player movement feels. His wings have affected his balance. He hasn’t been a normal Player in years.

   And then he looks up, and there’s a blurry figure standing on the bridge above him, staring at him. 

   The blood in his veins goes icy cold. It’s Mumbo.

It’s Mumbo. Everything inside of his head is screaming at him, go up. You have wings, use them. Please, fly up to him, speak to him, hold him, please-

    But all of his limbs have gone stiff. It’s like he can’t move. He just stares. It’s Mumbo.

And Mumbo has grown up. Mumbo has gotten taller. Mumbo looks so different and so the same. 

   And Mumbo looks at him for one more second, and Grian only registers the fear on his face when he takes two stuttering steps backwards, and runs back along the bridge, disappearing behind the side of the mountain.

   Scar sets his shulker box on the kitchen table, groaning at the weight of it. “Angel!” he calls, wondering if he’s sleeping again, if he’s woken… He tried not to be gone for long, but he needed food, potions, made a quick trip, anxious to leave him alone. He slots his cane carefully into the repurposed sheath on his belt for it as he pulls himself carefully up the ladder, twisting around to see his bed, empty. And the window open.

   His heart drops. 

“Angel,” he calls again, breathing now shallow - he isn’t here at all, isn’t crouching by the jukebox or pondering over the old, rusty ship controls - he climbs back down the ladder, hasty, finds himself on the main floor again, searches, frantic - maybe, just maybe, Angel had gone exploring, maybe he’d hidden somewhere, maybe Scar had just missed him - but it’s empty. It’s empty, completely empty.

   Breath won’t come right. Scar stumbles, hits his knee on the ladder on his way all the way down, and swears, shaky, he’s going too fast and now his legs hurt, shit - and Angel isn’t in the basement. Angel is gone. Angel is gone - and he gasps as a crash echoes from upstairs, wood scrapes roughly on his palms as he pushes himself up up up the rungs of the ladder, nearly falls - 

   Angel’s standing unsteady next to the bed, wind-swept, wings limp behind him, curled forwards like it’s killing him just to stand and not fall. Scar doesn’t save time to register if he’s breathing, if he’s injured, what’s happened, he just strides forwards as fast as he can on aching legs and puts his arms around him tight, holding him to his chest.

   He’s crying. Angel. He’s crying, his face is cold like it’s been bare to the wind. And he isn’t saying anything at all, which only scares Scar more. He pulls back, scrutinises his face, and blinks. It’s like it was before, when he was changing, when he’d first found him - his hair is yellow-blonde, both eyes that piercing, omniscient blue, those white freckles are tan now, just darker than his skin. Like this, he looks so definitely familiar that it throws him off for a moment. He’s seen him before. He has.

    “You can’t tell anybody I’m here,” he says then, and he sounds so scared that it makes Scar’s blood go all cold in his veins. “You can’t. Scar, please.”

   “When did I tell you my name?”
“Yesterday,” Angel says too quickly, but he’s still crying, and Scar busies himself with wiping the tear-tracks from his face, “Please. You can’t tell anyone, please.” 

    There’s a moment of silence, then, as Scar’s thumb traces his under-eye, and then a fast, desperate hand grabs his wrist tight. Angel’s lip is trembling. “Promise me,” he whispers.

   It’s warm, the hold on his wrist. Scar feels it clash with his freezing blood, the angel’s thumb grazing his veins.

   He wants the fear in his eyes to go away. He doesn’t think he can bear it staying for one more second. “I promise,” he says, mouth suddenly dry. The fear flickers, but it stays prominent in his face. One blue eye fades, goes pale. There’s red, then, invading. It turns to glassy lilac. 

   Angel’s hair is darkening, rapidly, to the golden brown he’s used to. The melanin is sucked from his freckles. He’s changing before Scar’s eyes. He still looks terrified.

   “I promise, Angel,” Scar repeats, and he grabs his thin wrist, holds it tightly as well, fuses them together, physical as well as verbal. “I won’t tell anyone.”

   He ignores the call records still on his phone reading Tango Tek. He won’t tell anyone. Anyone else.

   That night, Scar falls asleep in the armchair next to the bed, curled into himself, his cane leant up against the side of the chair, Angel dead to the world beside him. He sleeps like it’s luxury, like it’s the last time he’ll ever get to do it. He holds the softness of the blankets to his chest like he isn’t used to softness at all.

   In the morning, Scar sets a hot cup of coffee in front of him, with lots of cream and sugar. “Since you won’t be leaving, I store my books under the bed. You’re free to read, so you don’t get bored.” 

   Angel sips it, keeps it held in his hands without putting it back down. Like he doesn’t want Scar to take it. “Thank you,” he says very quietly.

   “I won’t be in for an hour or so, maybe longer,” Scar tells him. He has plans to visit Mumbo, he’s been acting so strange recently and it’s grating on him. It’s always this time of year that he withdraws, what with the freak accident all those years ago, it makes him shudder to think - but it seems worse now. He doesn’t like it. “I’m visiting my friend Mumbo,” he says as Angel goes to sip more coffee - he fumbles with the mug, nearly drops it - “Just to check in. I think he needs it.” 

   “That’s nice,” comes from Angel, somehow even quieter than before. He looks up, flickers. “He needs it?” 

   Scar clears his throat, motions with his hands. “He’s always a bit out of sorts this time of year. He lost someone, quite a few years ago, you know what grief is like. I usually go and help him if he needs it.”

   He ducks his head to drink his own coffee, vaguely aware that Angel is still staring at him. 

“Help with what?” 

Right. He’s curious. Well, whatever weird, fucked-up upbringing Angel had up in Heaven or wherever he’s from… he’s probably just wondering. “Sometimes I…” he shrugs, “I make him breakfast, or I help tidy up around the place. Get him out of bed, out of the house…”

   He looks up, and Angel’s gaze hasn’t moved. “Sometimes he needs it, is all. I haven’t seen him in a while and, well. Usually he reaches out to talk if he needs me. He hasn’t, which freaked me out even more, so…”

   He’s said too much. Angel drinks a long sip from his mug. “What’s he like usually?” he asks. His voice is very intentionally neutral. 

   Scar blinks. “Well,” he says, and smiles, almost by accident. “He’s one of my best friends,” he says. Angel shifts in his seat. “He’s incredible with redstone, not a bad builder. He’s always there when you need him. He joined Hermitcraft when he was really young, he’s been here longer than me. I think he was seventeen. That’s-” 

   He swallows, pushes his mug around on the wooden table. “I didn’t know him before… what happened, a few years ago. So while I’ve known him, he’s always had these moments, always late summer… I don’t know. He just seems more closed off right now, and I don’t like it. I don’t want him to be sad alone.” 

   Angel doesn’t say anything to that at first. When Scar looks up at him he’s staring into his half-full mug of coffee. Then he speaks, finally. “That’s good, that he has you,” he says.

   And it sounds distant. Scar finishes his own mug and stands from the table, the reassuring weight of his cane beside him. “I’ll see you later,” he says. “Don’t get too bored.” 

   Angel still doesn’t say anything. Scar goes to the door, and then pauses. “Angel?” 

A small smile plays on his lips, but he doesn’t look up. “Scar?”
  “Will you tell me your name?”

Half a second’s pause. Angel looks up at him. “Xelqua,” he says.

    Xelqua. Scar wants to whisper it, feel it roll off of his tongue. Xelqua. Xelqua. Xelqua. “Thank you, Xelqua,” he says. Something shutters in Xelqua’s face. He frowns. Decides he’ll try to fish for more information.

   “And what are you?” he asks.

Xelqua smiles then, with teeth. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes, but it’s soft enough. It’s not so much threatening as sad. “I’m an avian,” he answers.

   Scar frowns. “An avian who couldn’t breathe properly? I had to put a low gravity mask on you.”
  He shrugs. “I have asthma,” he responds.

Right. No more real answers. Scar smiles at him anyway. Xelqua. “Sure,” he says. “Whatever you say.”

   Grian only realises Scar’s left his comm on the table half an hour after he left. He picks it up, weighs it in his hands, feels the smooth cold metal. They’ve gotten so much lighter and thinner in the time he’s been missing. Modern .

    It isn’t locked, and when he opens it, among the various text messages, the reasonably active server chat, he sees a search function. 

    Bingo. The old comms never had the internet on them! He sinks further into his chair, knees up to his chest, and holds his breath as he types. Grian Moon.

    BREAKING: ELEVEN YOUTHS KILLED IN SERVER GLITCH ACCIDENT, 7 years ago

   ELEVEN DEAD IN SERVER GLITCH, TEENAGE PRODIGY AMONG THEM, 7 years ago

   GRIAN MOON’S GROUNDBREAKING SERVER, AND IT’S INEVITABLE DEMISE, 5 years ago

   HOW A YOUNG GENIUS’S RECORD-BREAKING SERVER LED TO HIS DEATH, 6 years ago

   GRIAN MOON - A STUDY ON RECKLESSNESS AND ITS CONSEQUENCES, 4 years ago

   It’s like he stops breathing. There are so many articles. So many, and they’re all about him. They’re all about him and the deaths he could’ve prevented.

   He doesn’t click on any of them. It’s obvious what the world thinks happened. Grian Moon got too confident too quickly, and killed ten of his friends. Killed himself as well. He should’ve just waited until he was a little bit older. It was too much for him to take on, and he couldn’t accept it, and now all of these lives have been lost. If only he’d thought a bit more about what he was doing.

   He closes the tab and leaves the comm in the same spot on the table. 

“Mumbo!” Scar calls as he walks through the front door, knuckles white on the handle of his cane, and Mumbo emerges into the kitchen as he walks in, and he’s pale, and his hair is mussed up, his eyes are red… Scar’s heart sinks.

   He crosses the room, hugs him before anything else. “I can help you clean up if you like,” he says, going to ruffle his hair, and Mumbo flinches. 

   Mumbo flinches. 

“Mumbo?” 

   He sighs, steps backwards, drags a hand down his face. “Scar,” he greets, weak. “I’m not… ah, I’m not really in the mood. I think I’m just…” 

   Scar forces a smile back onto his face. “Well,” he says, “You can have a nice day in, we’ll get a movie up and everything. I’ll make some soup, yeah? Go and-”

   Mumbo isn’t listening to him. His eyes are fixed on a point just over his shoulder, behind him. Scar trails off, tosses eyes over his shoulder. There’s nothing. “Mumbo?” 

   He sighs, sounding pained, tight. “Look, Scar,” he mumbles, there’s that rubbing at his closed eyes again, “You really don’t have to be here, or anything, I’m just going to get on with my day.” 

   Silence. 

Mumbo is standing in front of him, hunched shoulders evening out their heights for once, and his face is pale, drawn, red-rimmed eyes and what looks like dried tear tracks, his hair is ruined, he isn’t even wearing his suit, and he’s - he doesn’t want help. There’s a twisted panic arising in Scar’s chest. He chuckles nervously. 

   “Mumbo, you’ve-”
Stops. Starts again. “I came over because I’m worried about you.” 

   It comes out smaller than he’d expected. Mumbo grimaces. “Well,” he says, “You needn’t be, you didn’t have to, I-”
  You didn’t have to.

Getting desperate, Scar ploughs on, “You’ve been acting really strange,” he says, “Like, the past week, longer than that, and I - Mumbo, I’ve been really worried, and now I come over - I come over and you’re, you’re like this, and you don’t even - even-”
  “Scar,” Mumbo interrupts. He takes a step back again. His eyes keep glancing over at the corner. He sighs. “You - you can just, just go. Okay?” 

   “Mumbo-”
“Scar, leave.” 

   Scar leaves. 

This isn’t Mumbo. Mumbo tells him when he’s doing badly, smiles at him softly in the mornings when he doesn’t want to get out of bed, laughs self-consciously when caught overworking himself with redstone, lets himself be comforted when it gets to August and he has to cry sometimes - this isn’t him. 

    So Scar has to do something. He has to.

Chapter Text

    It’s a month, now, a month of Xelqua hiding in his house, lying on the bed reading all his books, now comfortable enough to ask for things (tea, at first, and then milk, of course he drinks tea with milk, is what Scar thinks until he indoctrinates him into it as well) and talk freely, but it still throws Scar completely whenever he gets too confident. 

   “I mean, it’s big enough for two,” Xelqua says to him while blinking his very wide, mismatched eyes, and they end up sharing the bed for weeks, starting out on opposite sides until one of those nightmares wakes him and Scar has to soothe him back to sleep, stroking the sides of his face with his hands, talking quietly, over and over again phrases seem to calm him the most, he likes to be reminded where he is and who he’s with, and then they end up very close to each other in the morning. Scar wakes up first every time, detaches himself from the angel in the bed with him, sneaks to the kitchen, makes hot tea or coffee, brings it back. 

   While he’s gone in the daytime, he can’t stay cooped up forever, Xelqua reads at first, then starts rearranging furniture, frustrated at the claustrophobia, and then… he finds an old notebook and burns a log to charcoal in the furnace. He doesn’t tell Scar at first, and Scar finds the notebook on the bed one morning. There are building plans, old houses, mansions, a futuristic tower, an alleyway… all drawn in smudged charcoal with careful fingers, tiny notes beside them on biomes and blocks and measurements. He flips the page and finds a portrait. It’s him.

   It’s a smudged likeness, he’s looking up, wide eyes, fingerprints in his hair, a mark next to his nose that has apparently been drawn and erased and drawn over again. The scars criss-crossing his skin have been pencilled in with the thinnest, most delicate lines. There is unmistakable care in the drawing.

   And then Xelqua walks out of the bathroom, damp hair, shrouded in his old grey towel. His eyes fall to the notebook open in Scar’s hands. He blinks, face twitching into surprise. “Scar,” he says.

   Scar doesn’t shut the notebook. “These are nice,” he tells him, and it comes out quieter than he expects.

   He thinks Xelqua might be embarrassed, because he doesn’t come across the notebook again. He’s been visiting Mumbo more frequently now, to no avail - he’s just as closed off as he was in the summer, and it’s scaring him more and more every day. The sadness is always gone by September, but it’s just broken into October now, and Mumbo isn’t happy again, isn’t messaging him and smiling and participating in server events… He accepts eventually that his first instinct was right. This isn’t normal. Something is wrong.

   He visits Mumbo again. He’s left his house, isn’t holed up there anymore, he’s working on the Ghast farm, fixing a malfunction. Scar doesn’t like the thought of him in the Nether right now. 

   “I’m just saying you could talk to me,” he says, feeling the lump in his throat grow as he looks down at Mumbo’s hands. They’re scraped red raw from the obsidian, the netherrack around them. They’re bleeding.

   “And I’m saying I don’t need to,” Mumbo says brusquely, another brisk hit to the obsidian. He looks tired, really tired, his skin is practically translucent and his eyes are ringed with red, purple, bluish veins, his shoulders are shaking despite the steadiness he’s holding his diamond pickaxe with. “Scar, this is unnecessary. Surely there are better ways for you to spend your time.”
  “Don’t be mean,” Scar tells him, hurt. “I’m - you’re acting weird. Of course I’m worried. There’s no-”
  “I’m not acting weird,” Mumbo interrupts, aiming another hit to the obsidian. “I’m just a little tired, okay? You can leave, it’s not a big thing at all. I’m just fixing-”

    “Mumbo,” Scar bursts out. His hands are shaking, white knuckles clenched on the handle of his cane in front of him. “Please, can you just talk to me-”

    “Scar!” and this hit to the obsidian isn’t so lucky, Mumbo’s hold on the pickaxe slips as his shoulders shake, and he falls forwards, careening to the side. Scar lurches forwards but ends up on the ground next to him as well, cane hitting the netherrack. He reaches out, grazes his hand over Mumbo’s shoulder, wants to check if he’s alright, and then Mumbo flinches, outwardly obvious, twitches forwards. Away from him.

   Scar recoils.

Mumbo is on his knees, hunched over, breathing very hard. Scar tries his best to arrange himself into a tidier heap on the ground and looks at him, waiting for another yell. But there’s nothing. 

   “Do you not-” 

He stops. He doesn’t know how to speak to Mumbo anymore. It isn’t natural like it used to be. “Do you not trust me anymore?” 

   Mumbo’s now overgrown hair has fallen into his eyes. He doesn’t get up from the ground. Scar can’t see his face. He’s silent for a long, painful moment, and then he breathes slowly out. “Just go, Scar,” he says.

   He sounds more miserable, tired, pained, than angry or mean. Scar thinks it hurts more that way. He gets to his feet and limps away with his cane, back to the Overworld.

   When Grian sneaks out again, it isn’t so much desperation that fuels him, rather a sparkling curiosity burning bright in his chest. He puts on Scar’s old armour, sans a chestplate, fits a leather helmet over his hair, and determines while looking in the mirror that if anybody saw him from a distance, they would assume it was a hermit they knew, just with armour and an elytra on. He flies very, very high, overtop the clouds, sees a forest thick enough to hide him, and lands quickly, soars downward steep, catches himself at the last second, ends up crouched in the undergrowth, regaining his balance. He walks for a bit longer, exploring the forest, and that’s when he sees her, and stops walking, and ducks behind a tree, heart racing, a swallowed, stifled gasp in his throat.

   This isn’t how it was meant to go.

She’s humming to herself, swinging an axe into a tree. There’s a shulker-box on the ground beside her. He got acquainted with them when Scar kept bringing them back full of supplies, but they’re still eerily unfamiliar, and he hates them for reminding him of the End, and the Void. The girl in front of him looks similar in age, maybe slightly younger, and she’s swathed in a green-brown cloak , copper curls tumbling out into the hood. She kneels by the shulker-box and tumbles an armful of wood into it, and Grian chooses that moment to shift his feet, adrenaline racing, and hears - a crack. 

   She straightens, looks around, he sees her face. She frowns. Then calls out, “Pearl, is that you?” 

   It’s like something cracks. Grian lets out a breath, unintentional, slams his hand over his mouth, shuts his eyes. His heart is beating so fast. Pearl? No. No, he’s just being silly, there are plenty of people named Pearl, and it isn’t like-

   “Who are you?” 

She’s seen him. Grian’s eyes fly open, and his wings do too, he rips his back away from the tree and ends up backing away, glancing upwards, he springs vertical but then he’s stuck in the branches, he picked a forest so thick he couldn’t escape, and he can’t breathe, he doesn’t know if he can take anybody in a fight like this, even someone smaller than him, and he struggles where he’s caught, and then a shout echoes from below him, and he tries his best to calm himself, to calm his breathing. He wishes Scar was here. He would make it all go away.

    “Hey!” the girl has shouted. Her accent isn’t much different from Scar’s, but it’s still different, and he really wants him to suddenly be here and make everything go right again. He twists in the branches. The girl stares up at him for a moment, then holds one hand out as if to say stay right there, and goes to fetch a long branch from the felled trees. She holds it up, aims it, and pushes branches out of the way, unsnags something. Just like that, Grian finds himself tumbling down, onto the forest floor. He scrambles backwards, finds himself with his back to another tree now, still on the ground. 

   “Please don’t-” but his brain has short circuited, and he doesn’t even know what he’s begging for, just that it usually works at least a little bit, so he should at least try. He presses backwards again, but the girl is approaching. She has dark, rich green eyes, and he tries to focus on that, on some semblance of similarity to Scar, just to calm him down. It doesn’t work as much as he’d hoped. He thinks he might’ve said something else, but he isn’t sure what it is, and she’s come quite a bit closer to him now, and has crouched down, and holds out her hand like she’s encouraging a wild animal.

   “Please don’t tell anyone,” he chokes out, and she frowns, and tilts her head. The static in his brain is starting to fade, but only just.

   “Tell anybody what?” She’s speaking quietly, but very clearly, and in any other state Grian thinks he’d probably have a go at her for patronising him. But his heart is beating so fast, and he’s so frightened that he thinks he’s maybe, almost, sort of grateful for it.

   “That-” he blinks, tries to reorganise his thoughts, what was it? What was he trying to say? Scar flashes in his mind, and then Mumbo. “That I’m here?” he tries, and she nods, hums.

   “Are you okay?” she says then, and it’s a surprise. She’s found an outsider, and if she had any sense, she’d be capturing him. She would have her sword out. He saw it lying next to the shulker-box earlier, it looked shiny and well used and well loved. Why doesn’t she have it out?

   “I don’t-” he says, and straightens, and uses the sleeve of Scar’s stolen jumper (it’s burgundy, and this is the second time he’s taken it) to rub at his face, trying to breathe properly. It smells faintly of his cologne. “Um, I’m,” 

   Swallows. He doesn’t know what to say. “Sorry,” he whispers. “Sorry, I - please don’t, don’t tell anybody.”

   She sits back. Stares at him. “Who are you?” she asks. 

Grian nearly panics all over again. “That isn’t - that isn’t important.”

   She frowns. “You know Scar,” she says. Grian’s heart drops.

“What?” 

   “You said his name,” she tells him. “And I’m sure that’s his jumper. We’re good friends. I would ask if you’re a guest on the server, but we’re usually told about those.”

   “Please don’t tell anyone,” he whispers.

She frowns, and something sparks in her eyes. “I can make a deal with you,” she says. “If you tell me who you are, I won’t tell anybody you’re here.” 

   “My name is Xelqua,” Grian says immediately. 

She smiles. “I’m Gem. How do you know Scar?” 

    If you tell me who you are, I won’t tell anybody you’re here.

Grian swallows. “I’m staying with him,” he mumbles. “Don’t tell anybody. Please.”

   He looks up at her, but she’s got a funny, distracted look on her face for a second, and she doesn’t say anything for a long moment, instead scrutinising his face. “You…” and she pauses, blinking at him. “You kind of look like… no, no, I’m being silly. Why are you outside, if you’re hiding?” 

   He shifts where he’s sitting, and swipes a twig out of his left wing, twitching it. “I snuck out,” he confesses. “Scar’s in the Nether, so he’ll take a little longer than usual, so I have time. He doesn’t need to know.” 

Gem snickers. There’s a spark in her eye. It reminds him of Pearl, and he looks away instinctively, feeling a pang of hurt in his stomach. “How long have you been here?” she asks.

   He frowns, and doesn’t answer. He doesn’t want to think about how long he’s been here, because then he has to think about how soon he’ll have to leave. And well, he doesn’t want to leave, because he won’t get to see Mumbo at all, not even from an arm’s length, and he won’t sleep next to Scar at night or have tea with him in the mornings, and he doesn’t really know what he’ll live for then. And the Watchers… he’s protected from them here, and he doesn’t know if they’ll find him on a public server. He’s not sure he even wants to consider the idea of Pearl, somehow alive and somehow here.

   He doesn’t want to think about any of it, because soon he’ll have to leave, which will be equivalent to dying.

   “Xelqua?” Gem asks. She frowns. “What is Scar even doing in the Nether? He hates it there.”

   That’s true, and Grian feels a rush of something almost proud in his stomach, because he already knew it. Scar hates the Nether. The heat makes his legs hurt, and he doesn’t use the blocks very much for building, so there isn’t much point for him to be there for long. “He’s trying to talk to Mumbo,” Grian informs her. Her face falls.

   “Of course he is,” she mumbles. “Well, he’ll probably be back sooner then. I can walk you to the edge of the forest, if you can fly…”
  Grian frowns. “Back sooner?”

“Mumbo won’t talk to him,” Gem says, and stands, holding her hand out. He takes it, and she pulls him up with surprising strength. She scoffs, then. “Mumbo won’t talk to any of us.”

   “Oh,” Grian says. He droops. “But Scar was so confident this time.”

Gem sighs, and directs him to walk with her. “Yeah, so you better be back to console him when he comes back crying,” she tells him. “Mumbo’s only been lashing out at anyone trying to help him recently. And we’re all trying to help him, so you can guess how that’s been.” 

   Grian looks at the ground, at his socks. Scar’s shoes had been too big for him. “Oh,” he says again. 

   He thinks he might be sick. 

“Has Scar told you?” Gem asks abruptly. “I mean, you didn’t say how long you’ve been here, but…”
  “A month,” Grian mutters. “He said that Mumbo is grieving.”

Gem sighs again. “Seven years ago, Mumbo lost his best friend, among others, in a server glitch. It was a freak accident. He didn’t get to say goodbye properly. It was right after he joined Hermitcraft, and I barely knew him since I didn’t live here yet. But it… he hasn’t…”

   She pauses, and the painful, miserable ache in Grian’s stomach doesn’t. 

“He’s never gotten over it,” Gem settles on. “Scar really tries to be there for him, but he can’t replace what he lost. Mumbo’s been difficult lately. It’s getting to him, I guess. I mean, it’s getting to Pearl too, but she just - I don’t know. She tries not to think about it.” 

   They approach the edge of the forest. Grian’s heart is in his throat. Pearl. It is her, then - but he had been the only survivor, so how was she-

“You should get to Scar’s quickly, before he comes back and sees you’re gone,” Gem says. He nods, and takes off, hovering in the air a couple metres up. 

   “Xelqua?” she calls, then. He looks down, and she smiles at him. “I won’t tell anybody,” she tells him, before she disappears back into the forest, and he flies the rest of the way home at full speed.

* * *

   “I need a higher dose,” Mumbo says in a rush, before Xisuma can even say hello. “Sorry. They just aren’t working as well, I need to take them - more often, you know.”

   Xisuma blinks behind his helmet, elytra twitching behind him. “Are you sure?”

Mumbo grins, a nervous habit, really, and shifts between feet. “Yeah,” he says, “Hey, you know me, X, I’m always careful with meds. It’s not… yeah, they just haven’t been working as well.” The smile is becoming forced. 

   Xisuma fumbles in his inventory, and Mumbo takes the moment to spin his gaze around the room, checking all the corners. There’s a clink of glass, and Xisuma hands over a bundle of potions, watching as he shoves it into his own inventory. “Thank you, X,” and it comes out more genuinely than it should. “I’m just-”
  “I’ll accompany you home,” says Xisuma. “I need to speak to Scar, and the walk isn’t too far.”

   The walk. Mumbo’s heart sinks. 

“You haven’t told me why you aren’t sleeping,” Xisuma says after a minute or so of anxious silence. “I do need to know these things, when I prescribe potions.” 

   Mumbo laughs again. It’s stilted. “Well,” he mumbles. “You know how it is. Insomnia. Yeah.”

   Xisuma is quiet for a moment longer. “Yes,” he responds, “But these potions… they’re for dreamless sleep, Mumbo.”
  “The others just don’t work as well for me,” Mumbo says. “I’ve had insomnia before, I know how I react to potions. These ones are just better.” 

   Should he keep going? Xisuma’s still silent. It’s making him anxious again.

“The others make me feel awful, you know,” he says, a nervous chuckle, “No appetite, low mood, just felt proper bad. I haven’t had issues like that with these ones.”
  “Then how come you’re-” 

Xisuma stops talking. Mumbo pretends he didn’t hear the snap. He just keeps on walking, and Boatem is there, finally, and they’re nearly at Scar’s base. 

   “There it is,” he says, smiling mechanically. “I hope you have a good talk with Scar.”

He goes to speak, to ask something desperate and frantic like if you’re so fine, why is everybody so worried about you? but Mumbo is already gone, whisked away, and he’s left at Scar’s doorstep, alone. 

   Xisuma heaves out a sigh, and knocks, because there’s no rest, there’s always something else to do. There’s some shuffling behind the door, a voice, a voice that isn’t Scar’s. Who is that? It all sounds quite frantic, and then the door opens and it’s Scar, leaning on his cane, distinctly alone and looking quite awkward.

   “Xisuma!” he greets, swiping his hair out of his face, stepping backwards to let Xisuma in. 

He does so, but with a little caution. “Scar,” he smiles. “Sorry, did I interrupt something? I heard voices, I know I’ve come without warning. That was rude of me.”

   Scar beams at him. “No, don’t worry,” he says, “You didn’t interrupt anything, I was just having a quiet afternoon reading,” 

    Quiet? “That’s good, Scar,” Xisuma responds, uncertain. “I wanted to-”
“Ah, that’s right!” says Scar. “I have something of yours!” 

   He dashes into the kitchen, leaving Xisuma alone in the little hallway, interrupted, and is back in 10 seconds max with the low-gravity mask, pushing it into his hands. It’s clearly been used - the straps on a tighter setting, shiny like it’s been wiped down with a cloth. Xisuma’s heart sinks. Who else on this server could possibly need a low gravity mask? Scar wasn’t using low gravity - well, recreationally, was he?

    No. That was silly, out of character. So somebody had to have needed it. Xisuma probably stares down at it for a second too long, because then Scar is laughing nervously and pushing him towards the door.

   “Well,” he says, “Quite busy today, and I know you are too, I won’t keep you for long!”
“Scar, you said you were having a quiet afternoon.”
  Scar smiles too brightly. “Quiet doesn’t mean useless, Xisuma!”

“Scar.” 

    The facade flickers. Xisuma sighs. “Scar, I need to know who needed the low gravity mask. As your Admin, there’s medical information I have to know about our Hermits, and I can’t think of any reason you would’ve needed it other than…”

   Scar’s face has drained of colour. He’s gone very quiet.

“Look, I have no idea who would need it. There’s nobody other than me on Hermitcraft right now who needs a Void-like atmosphere to survive. And since you’re giving it back now, it has to be a temporary thing. I just - Scar, will you please tell me?”

   There is a very long pause. Scar’s face shutters. “No,” he says.

Xisuma’s shoulders drop. “Okay,” he mutters. “Okay.” He looks properly down at him then. Sighs. “You have a week.” 

   “What?” 

“You have a week to figure this out and tell me,” Xisuma says. “Then I’ll have to open an investigation. It’s - Scar, it’s a health and safety issue. I have to know my hermits’ needs. Otherwise… otherwise, I can’t protect them. You.” 

    It’s like his throat closes. He tries to smile encouragingly, and pats Scar on the shoulder before he leaves.

    A week.

Scar tries to swallow down his panic as Xelqua emerges behind him, wide, frightened eyes. “It’s okay,” he says, before he turns and sees the full extent of his fear. “It’s okay. We’ll - it’s - we’ll figure something out, Angel. It’s going to be okay.”

   And Xelqua looks terrified. “You - you promised,” he rasps, “You promised you wouldn’t tell anyone.”
  Scar crumples. “You weren’t breathing,” he whispers. “I was scared. I hadn’t promised yet, we hadn’t - hadn’t even spoken.”
  Xelqua takes a step backwards. “Did you tell anybody else?” 

Scar doesn’t know what to say. He opens his mouth, and then closes it. Xelqua gasps in a breath, like it isn’t coming easy to him. The comfort leaves his mouth on instinct. “It’s okay. Angel, it’s - it’s okay, Angel, you’re safe. You’re not in danger here. You’re-” 

    “Who did you tell?” 

He closes his eyes. “I didn’t know how to preen wings,” he chokes. “He promised he wouldn’t tell anyone, and he hasn’t. It’s been over a month, he would’ve told by now if he was going to-”

   “How do you know that?” Xelqua asks. “How do you - he’s going to tell everyone, and they’re going to know who I am, and-” he cuts himself off with a sob, he’s started to cry now and Scar thinks he is as well, he can feel himself getting teary eyed.

   “Who you are?” 

“Stop it, you lied to me,” he gasps. “You lied to me, you lied-”
  Scar crosses the room and hugs him very tightly, scrunching his eyes shut. He returns it just as tight, he thinks he might bruise across the ribcage because Xelqua is clutching him and he’s crying, and saying you lied to me, you lied to me, you lied over and over again and he doesn’t know if he’s going to survive this. “I’m sorry,” he chokes out, he repeats it, he just keeps talking. He keeps talking because he knows that’s what helps, that’s what Xelqua likes, those repeated phrases, over and over again. “I’m sorry, Xelqua, you’re safe here. You aren’t in any danger. I promise. I promise, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m not going to let anything happen to you, I-”

   Scar has begun to notice Xelqua’s disdain for his name. He tenses in his arms when it sounds, his face shutters into a mask when it’s said. He doesn’t seem to like it. At all. Now, when Scar says it, he lets out a strangled sob into his shoulder, his arms go even tighter around Scar, his knees almost buckle. Scar thinks he might start calling him Angel full time now. It’s already too much of a habit, and he doesn’t seem to hate it.

   “It’s okay,” he whispers as Xelqua quiets. “It’s okay, Angel. I won’t let anything happen. You aren’t in any danger, you’re safe here. I’m - I’m sorry.”

   Not much changes as the days begin to go by, but the tension starts to grow. Scar can’t find an explanation that makes sense. He thinks he might fake-admit to being an addict, using low-gravity for a high, but he knows Xisuma would see right through him if that happened, and then he’d be under surveillance, and what would happen to Xelqua? 

   There’s nothing that works.
He doesn’t know what to do.

   And then, one day, amidst frantic searching on his comm, he sees it. In his search history. Grian Moon. He didn’t type it. Xelqua must have. And there was no way for him to know the name of Mumbo’s dead best friend, so how did he search for it? And Scar presses the link, and that old teenage photo of Grian Moon pops up, and he freezes.

   How did he not see it? This whole time - 

Angel fishing for information about Mumbo, asking if he was okay, asking what’s he like usually? and letting Scar tell him all about trying to help him. And all this time. All this time.

    Grian Moon. 

    He spends half the day brooding. He can’t put two and two together. It just doesn’t work in his head. Grian Moon. Angel. Xelqua. 

   It’s later that afternoon that he snaps. It’s when Angel (Grian, Grian, Grian) asks him from the next room if he wants tea. He says yes, and when Angel comes into the room, he’s holding two mugs, and smiling, warm but tired. He places them on the table with a gentle clink.

   “Thanks, Grian,” Scar says, it comes out harsh, and Grian freezes where he’s stood looking down at him, his breath catching in his throat. “What? Get used to the fake name or something?” 

   He waits a moment, for some sort of reply, and Grian backs away. Only a few footsteps, but he backs away, and something about it makes a fire ignite in Scar’s stomach. “That’s not…” he whispers, his eyes have gone so wide and so frightened, “I’m - how’d you-”

   “Were you going to tell me?” Scar asks him. His voice is sharp, hanging in the air like a clash, “Were you? Or were you just going to keep lying to me?” 

    “No, I-” Grian rasps, goes quiet. “I don’t-”

He presses one quivering hand over his mouth, then doesn’t speak again. The fire blazes.

   “You’re just - fucking hell, A - Grian, you’re just - you’re letting Mumbo suffer,” says Scar, it comes out in this raw, unbalanced, betrayed laugh. His voice cracks. “If he knew you were alive, it would… it would fix him, I think it would fix him, and you…”
  “Stop it,” Grian whispers. It’s worse than when Scar first found him. It’s like all of his shields are up and even more have been added. Scar remembers with a pang the drawing of him in the sketchbook. He doesn’t know how he’s meant to reconcile this with who he knows. Angel. Xelqua. Grian. Scar thinks he’s going to cry.

   “You have to tell him,” he forces out. “You have to.” 

“I can’t,” and Grian’s voice shakes. He looks wild. He looks terrified. 

   “Grian, you-”

“No-”
  “You have to,” and Scar’s shouted at him. He’s really gone and done it now. There’s no coming back from this, is there? Grian flinches again, and his wings flare out, he takes another step back. Scar covers his face with his hands, and breathes in, out, in, out, for five or so seconds, trying to regain what’s left of his composure. “You have to,” he repeats, and he looks up at him then, from across the room. “Tell him,” he says. “Or I will.”

    “You can’t!” rips from Grian’s mouth in protest. It’s like speech hurts him. His wings have raised even more, around him like a makeshift shield. He looks like a scared animal, backed into a corner, he shouldn’t look that frightened, not around Scar-

   “Do you want him to kill himself?” he asks. “Because that’s where he’s headed. And you, being…” he laughs, pained, “being alive, you could change all of that.”

    Grian’s lip wobbles. “You’re wrong,” he spits, snatching back some of his anger, and Scar’s grateful for that, he would rather that than anything else, “It would make it worse, you know that. He doesn’t-” 

   He looks about wildly, as if for an escape route. Scar aches. “He doesn’t want me,” Grian says, voice trembling, hiding behind those white feathers, “He doesn’t want me, he wants Grian, and I - and I’m-”
  “Grian,” Scar says, rolls it syllable by syllable around his mouth, closes his eyes and feels his face contort, looks up at him again, “Grian.” It tastes like the soil at a graveyard. “You’re-” nausea, some sort of loss, he doesn’t know who’s loss, “You’re dead. How are you-”

   Grian’s crying, properly now. “Yeah,” he bites out, “exactly.”

“But you’re here,” Scar says desperately, “You’re alive, you’re with me, you-”

“Stop it,” Grian manages through his sobs. “Stop, pleas-”

   “What the fuck happened on Evo?” Scar is vaguely aware of how loud he’s yelling. He feels like he’s only watching his body’s actions. “How are you alive?!”
  “You have no right to ask me that!” Grian screams, he’s heaving sobs through his whole body, slight shoulders shaking, “You have no - you don’t know, you have no idea, you don’t understand, you - you-”

   He drags the sleeve of his jumper (it’s Scar’s favourite, deep purplish red, it hurts so much) across his face to try and dry his tears, and then he turns on his heel and stumbles towards the window.

   “Angel,” Scar says brokenly, “Just - please-”
But he doesn’t say anything. He’s already gone. 

   Grian is flying, again. He doesn’t know exactly where he’s going, only that he lands in a forest just like before, and he’s stumbling again, scraping his palms on thorns and twigs in the undergrowth, he knows he’s probably bruised his knees, he knows he has nowhere to go anymore. He runs, then, runs further through the woods. He must look awful, pale with red eyes, he bets he’s covered in grime from landing, and then he hears that familiar voice and someone catches him, by the elbow, and he screams, struggles, falls backwards, and it’s Gem. 

   “Oh,” he manages. “Gem.”

She’s dressed for cold weather again, another one of those cloaks, heavy trousers, her sword slotted into her belt. Today, her copper curls are gathered at the top of her head, spilling out from a brown scrap of ribbon. She crouches to level with him, and swears, but it’s more with him than at him. “Shit, Xelqua,” she says. “What happened?” 

   He’s never wanted to be called that horrible name more in his life. He sniffs, then covers his mouth. “Scar found out,” he chokes. “He found out,” but Gem doesn’t know either, and if Gem knows, Pearl will find out, and Pearl will come and see him and realise her real brother is dead and this hollow, winged fake is here in his place, and he can’t let that happen. 

   “Hey,” Gem says, and louder, “Hey. What did Scar find out? Did you argue with him?”
“You can’t know,” Grian whispers, it comes out without him saying it can, it’s frantic, “You can’t - you’ll tell her, I-”

   He buries his face in his hands, trying to restrain himself from sobbing, and Gem stays next to him. “Xelqua, I won’t tell anybody,” she says quietly. “I won’t. I kept my promise last time, and I will this time. Do you hear me? I won’t tell anyone.” 

    “I know,” Grian says, his voice is aching from all the tears, he’s heard enough about Gem and her loyalty from Scar by now, “I know, so I can’t - I can’t do that to you.” 

   Gem sighs. “Can you go back to Scar’s?” she asks him, “Is that an option?” 

“I don’t-” there’s panic, flaring, “No, he’ll - Gem, I can’t, he’s going to tell everyone-”

    “Xelqua - hey, Xelqua-”
“I’m not - I won’t have anywhere to go, and they’re going to - they’ll find me again, I’m not safe anywhere but here - but Scar, he can’t - can’t know, he’s going to tell everybody-”

   Gem says his name again, but he can’t breathe and nothing is making sense anymore-
“- going to tell everyone - no, he’s going to tell M- stop it, stop it, no, he’s going to tell Pearl-” 

He hears Gem breathe in sharp, and he’s crumpled in on himself now, there’s nothing left for him. They’ll cast him out of Hermitcraft, and the Watchers will find him, and he’ll never be free. He’ll be alive, forever, in the Void, suffering - there is something soft around him. 

   It’s Gem. She’s hugged him, and that’s her cloak, brushing against his face. It’s soft. Everything goes quiet.

   “Xelqua,” she whispers, “What is Scar going to tell Pearl?” 

He doesn’t tell her. It takes all of the energy he has left not to tell her. She looks nearly as worried as he feels.

It’s night when Grian comes back to the house. His hands are trembling still, and he’s tried to be prepared for anything, but he isn’t for this. Scar is sitting on the couch. He’s fallen asleep waiting for him.

   Grian doesn’t know what to do. He approaches, looks down at him, green eyes hidden by exhaustion, knees pulled up to his chest, too vertical to have fallen asleep on purpose. Grian picks the blanket up from next to him and starts to lay it over him, and he blinks, eyes coming sleepily open, and a hand comes slowly out to grasp his wrist.

   “Angel,” he whispers, still half asleep. “You’re here.” 

Grian doesn’t know what to feel. Doesn’t know what to think. “Yeah,” he breathes, and the hand on his wrist pulls, gentle, asking.
  “Please,” Scar mumbles, and tugs him down next to him, shifting, pulling him down. Grian lands with his face in his shoulder, almost entirely on top of him. The blanket only half covers them, twisted, but Scar’s always run hot. Grian can feel him breathing underneath him, the unsteadiness a telltale sign he’s still awake. And then-

   “I was scared,” Scar whispers. “I’m sorry.” 

Grian blinks. He doesn’t know what to say. That ache in his stomach has come back, persisted, but Scar is right here, with him, so he can’t bring himself to panic, not at all. He doesn’t reply, doesn’t say anything, but he holds Scar just a bit tighter as he falls asleep.

Chapter Text

   It’s still dark outside when Scar wakes up, shifts, feels the familiar warmth and weight of Grian beside him, and can’t get back to sleep. The moon shines through the window, cool light, and illuminates his face in silver. 

   Scar has a lump in his throat. Grian is so beautiful like this, with dark eyelashes fanning out over his cheeks and the slight flush of sleep on his face, relaxed, unguarded. Scar’s thought him beautiful before, but it hasn’t quite hit him all at once like it is right now. He pries himself off of the sleeping angel, treads silently to the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea. He’s grown strangely fond of them since Grian’s come, and made him buy that specific brand from off-server, and encouraged him into trying it milky. He waits for the kettle to boil. 

   He should’ve told Mumbo immediately. Hell, he shouldn’t even have confronted Grian, he should have marched straight over the road to Mumbo’s, and told him everything, and watched the pain drip off of his face into calm relief. It’s irrational, the thought. In reality, everything would be so much more complicated. He wonders vaguely if Mumbo would even believe him. 

   Probably not. 

But the look of fear on Grian’s face, and the things he’d said, the things he’d blurted out in his panic. He doesn’t want me. He wants Grian. And I’m…

   You’re dead. How are you - 

Yeah, Grian had spat, exactly.

   Or - or, even worse, he’s going to tell everyone, and they’re all going to know who I am, Grian’s pure, unadulterated terror at Tango’s involvement, Scar’s ignorant confusion. He sips his tea, feeling hollow.

   But Grian had come back. He’d been so scared, had sat there on the couch waiting and stared into nothing and thought he’s gone. He’s gone. He’s gone, and what do I have now? 

   Grian had come back. Scar sighs, it’s probably too loud a sound. He stands, goes to carry his tea back to the couch, but when he emerges through the doorway, he sees Grian sat up, with a hand splayed out, palm pressed against his heart. 

   “Angel?” 

He twists, and his eyes are wide. He’s breathing heavily. “Scar,” he says. “Scar.” 

   Scar’s heart sinks. He sets his tea down on the coffee table, goes close to Grian and sits. “Hey, it’s okay,” he murmurs, but Grian is shaking his head, frantic, serious.

   “No,” he says, for a moment Scar thinks he can hear his heartbeat. “No, Scar, you have to go and see Mumbo.” 

   He frowns. “What?” 

“He’s in danger,” Grian says to him with such confidence he doesn’t feel it’s appropriate to doubt him at all. “I don’t know why. You have to-” 

   Something contorts inside of Scar. “In danger?” 

“Go,” Grian hisses.

   So Scar goes. He doesn’t know if he goes because he’s scared for Mumbo or if he goes because he’ll do anything Grian tells him to. It’s one of those two, it might be both, he isn’t sure entirely. 

   It’s cold outside. He never changed into pyjamas, but he was wearing vaguely comfortable clothes before, and at least they weren’t too airy, because he’s shivering even in sweatpants and a jumper. Mumbo’s house is silent. 

   He’s at the door. He opens it, there’s no lock, nobody in Boatem can be bothered, and at first, there’s nothing. 

   And then he hears it. Coughing.

“Mumbo?” he calls. “Mumbo?” 

   Coughing, then hacking. It’s from the bathroom upstairs. Scar turns and begins to climb. His heart has started to race. There is a small glass bottle lying on the ground at the top of the stairs, empty on the carpet. He doesn’t bother to read it. He can hear Mumbo in the bathroom, crying.

   When he finds him, it’s leant pathetically against the bathroom wall, gasping for air, with hair in his eyes and drained, sallow-white skin. He’s wearing old ratty pyjamas, slid down close to the wall. He’s clearly just been throwing up. He doesn’t look conscious. Scar drops to his knees in front of him, discarded cane rolling away on the floor, and takes his face in his hands. The action isn’t as gentle as it should be, but Scar can feel panic clawing at him, muddling the intricacies of careful motor function. “Mumbo,” he says again, repeats it louder, “Mumbo. What the fuck did you take?” 

   Mumbo mumbles something indistinct, raises dark eyes to blink at him. Scar shakes him, hard, by the shoulders, in his trembling grip. “What did you take?” 

   “Sle - sleeping,” he murmurs faintly, whines a high pitiful sound, then something else Scar can’t make out. It’s only then that Scar sees the bottles in the corner, empty ones, more than five. He can’t tell how many of them are old, or how many have just been opened. They’re sleep potions. Dreamless sleep potions. 

   It feels instinctual from then on. He swipes his cane off of the floor with one hand, leaning heavily on it, and hauls Mumbo up with his other arm, drags them together into the kitchen and stumbles as he sets his friend into a chair. Then, he limps to the fridge, leans on the counter and breathes heavy, hands shaking as he pours a tall glass of milk. There’s next to nothing in Mumbo’s fridge. 

   “Drink,” he says, his whole body burning, as he nearly knocks the glass over putting it in front of Mumbo, who makes it through half before slamming it back on the table and shivering. Scar sits across from him and puts his head in his hands. 

   “Finish it,” he mumbles, “Please, Mumbo.”

Mumbo swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing, Scar thinks he sees tears on his face, but he brings the glass to his mouth again and drinks the rest, nearly gagging as it goes down.

   “Why’d you do it?” he asks, suffocated. “You’re too smart for this. You know that - you know it isn’t-”

   “I just wanted him to stop talking,” Mumbo whispers.

“What does that - what does that mean, Mumbo?” 

   Evidently, the milk has done its job; Mumbo doesn’t look less sick, but he has surprising clarity in his eyes, and is at least somewhat coherent. But now he opens his mouth, and then shuts it, and then hesitates.

   Scar can feel tears pricking. “Please, Mumbo,” he says. “Please,” and it threatens to overtake him, like a tsunami crashing over him, over them both, “Please, I’m - I’m so scared.” 

   Mumbo lets out a strangled sob at that, and drags his hands over his face, trying to wipe away some of the tears. “Scar, I see him everywhere,” he says finally, with this edge of vaguely hysterical laughter attached to it. “He’s everywhere I look, but he isn’t real.” 

   Something dark and heavy like guilt settles in Scar’s stomach. He thinks he might vomit. “Grian?” 

   “Yeah,” Mumbo chokes out. “He’s in - he’s in every corner. When I wake up in the morning, he’s lying in bed with me. When I go outside to build, I see him run around corners like he’s trying to surprise me. I go to have lunch and he’s sitting where you are now. He’s following me.”

   And Scar just sits there and listens and feels the weight in his stomach grow. “I saw him,” Mumbo admits, haunted, “standing on the mountains, in the Utopia. I stopped walking that way. I haven’t been there since.” 

   The words fall from Scar’s mouth without consideration. “Do you see him now?” 

Mumbo shakes head. “No, but he’ll come back soon. He always does, after…” 

   He stops talking, looking into the glass of milk, the dregs. Scar feels like he’s been turned to porcelain, become a statue, become immovable. “After what?”
  And Mumbo sighs. “After I take too many sleep potions,” he mumbles. “It’s the only way to make him disappear. I-”
  “You’ve done this before?” 

Mumbo pauses, and nods stiffly after a short pause. Scar closes his eyes. He can’t bear it. “And - and, they’re dreamless,” he manages, “I read the label.”
  “He’s in my dreams as well,” Mumbo says. His voice is hollow. “I got Xisuma to prescribe them to me.” 

   “He didn’t - why didn’t he make sure you couldn’t-” 

Scar can’t keep talking. Mumbo sighs again. “No,” he says, “It isn’t X’s fault. I did everything I could to avoid his questions. He was trying to… to tiptoe around my grief, and I took advantage of that.”

   “Right,” Scar says slowly. “Right.” 

They’re both silent for a long moment, before Mumbo talks again. It’s like now he’s started, he can’t find a way to stop. 

   “I haven’t flown in weeks,” he admits, “because every time I do, I think about how he never - he never got to wear an elytra. I - God. There are so many things he could’ve - I remember him speaking about wanting to code electronic wings. There are so many things he could’ve done, but he…” 

   He never got to wear an elytra. 

Scar thinks his heart might stop, right then and there. 

*

   Grian sits there on the couch, and tries to breathe right. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since Scar left. It feels like an eternity. He hasn’t moved since.

   And he can’t stop thinking about Pearl. Scar confirmed it was her, Pearl Moon, on the server, and he looked at him and tried not to look too shocked, because how? Everybody had been killed, he knew that, he was the only one left alive from Evo. 

   The door opens. Grian’s up in half a second, frantic, stuttered footsteps, thoughts forgotten, his wings unfolded and hanging at his sides.

   “Grian,” Scar says, stunned.

“Scar,” he manages, standing there in front of him. “Is he okay? Mumbo, is he - he-”

   It falls flat, his heart is racing. Scar doesn’t say anything at all for a long moment. It’s torture. He just stands there. There’s this look of quiet devastation on his face. And then… so quietly Grian almost doesn’t hear it. “It’s your fault.” 

   He feels very cold, suddenly. It’s like all of the blood in his veins has frozen over, all of the air in his lungs like visible puffs of smoke. 

   Scar’s eyes flit down to meet his, finally, green on blue on purple, but they look lost, cloudy. “He could’ve died,” he whispers. “It’s your fault. If you had just - just told him.” 

   “We’ve had this conversation,” Grian says, strangled. “Don’t - please, Scar, you know it isn’t that simple.” 

   “Do you know what Mumbo said to me today,” Scar asks him, “When he started telling me about you?” 

   He advances. Grian shrinks back, instinctual, and it’s the kind of fear that always makes Scar jolt back himself in remorseful surprise, but he looks so scared, so wrapped up in his own anger, that he doesn’t notice at all. “He said he sees you, everywhere,” Scar tells him. “He sees you hanging around his builds, so he can’t build, he sees you sitting in his kitchen so he can’t eat, he sees you when he wakes up, so he - he-”

   Grian waits for him to finish his sentence, but he’s moving on already, stammering through his own anger and pain, “And he - he said-”

   He takes another step back. Scar’s voice swoops higher, verging on hysterical, like he can’t quite believe what he’s saying.

“He said that he couldn’t fly without thinking about you.”

   Silence. It’s all hanging there in the open, and something has to snap, something has to break. Grian doesn’t dare to breathe. He’s caught in a trap.

“Because you - because you would’ve loved elytras. And you never got to wear them.” 

   It’s like his whole world comes crashing down. He should’ve known this would happen eventually. He breathes out, a short gasp, and takes another step back. His wings feel heavy where they’re hanging down by his sides. Suddenly, it’s like they’re burning.

   “And I-” Scar chokes out, “I - I was confused, Angel, because you - can’t wear an elytra, when you already have wings.” 

   He steps closer. Grian leans back on instinct and finds his back brushes the kitchen counter, brushes the feathers on his back. There’s nowhere to escape. He thinks he might be on fire. 

   “Do you want to tell me what he meant by that?” Scar asks him. 

The world has gone blurry and vague. Grian looks up at Scar’s eyes, silent, his heartbeat echoing in his ears. They’re green, and wide, and emotion is muddling them with glassy, dreamlike tears. He wants to answer his question, wants to be good, so they won’t hurt him, but his mind is whirring so fast that he doesn’t know if he can. He parts his lips, waits for speech to come, and it doesn’t. 

   “Will you please just-” and Scar is frustrated, now, the panic starts to leak hot into Grian’s insides, settling like fire around his organs, his throat, his wings- “Just - just talk to me, Ang - Xel-”

   Grian short-circuits. He thinks it’s a sudden jolt backwards that makes it happen, because all of a sudden there’s something brushing against the base of his wings and that familiar, scared cry is springing unbidden to his lips- “Please don’t hur-” 

   His eyes are shut, now, and for one horrible moment he thinks he might be back in the Void, thinks he can feel the ache, the burn in his back, the slick, hot blood coating it, the protruding feathers that aren’t meant to be there. His bones ache again, they aren’t meant to be so light, so hollow, this isn’t how he was built, this isn’t how he was meant to be. He screams, reaches backward, claws at his back, it’s muscle memory to try and rip them off again. He’d tried so many times when it had first happened, but now suddenly something is stopping him, wrenching his hands away, holding them tightly. And then, a voice- 

   “Angel,” the voice says, distraught, and Xelqua stops breathing for a moment. He doesn’t know where he is, who’s talking to him anymore. The Watchers never sounded like that, their voices echoed, their voices were loud and flat and cutting, this voice is none of those. This voice is warm.

   “Angel,” the voice says again. It cracks. It sounds scared, and then it breathes in, like it’s trying to hold back tears, and it starts to speak again. Xelqua listens. 

   Grian blinks. 

He’s on the floor. There’s blood under his fingernails, the base of his wings aches. He connects the two in an instant. Scar is hovering above him, murmuring. He’s crying. 

   “Oh,” he whispers. 

Scar is right. He isn’t there. He hasn’t been for over a month. He escaped. 

   Scar is crying still. He puts his arms around Grian’s shoulders and pulls himself very close to him, holding him very tightly. Grian just sits there, at a loss. He feels somewhat hollow. 

   “I’m sorry,” Scar says. His voice comes from somewhere over Grian’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, I - I - I wouldn’t. I won’t.” 

   Grian curls his own arms around him at that. He thinks he might be in shock. It’s silence for one long moment, stretching on and on and on until he finds his voice again. “I don’t think you would,” he whispers, not quite all there. Scar sobs harder.

   “You have to tell me,” he manages to say, “Please, you have to. I don’t want to fight. Please.” 

   “It wasn’t a code glitch.”

Scar withdraws, looking at Grian with sorrowful, pleading eyes. He looks surprised. It occurs to Grian suddenly how uncomfortable the floor probably is for him. “Let’s go sit properly,” he says quietly, stands, helps Scar get to his feet, leads him to the couch. 

   “What do you mean it wasn’t a code glitch?” Scar whispers. His voice is raw.

“Can you-” Grian clears his throat. “Scar, you have to tell me about Mumbo first. Please.”

   Scar swallows, lets Grian push a blanket over him. “He’s been abusing potions,” he says roughly. “Sleep potions, dreamless ones. He started dreaming about you, and then seeing you when he was awake, so he made Xisuma get them for him. He overdosed. I made him drink milk and I left him with Pearl.” Scar looks up at him. “You haven’t asked me about Pearl,” he says suddenly.

   “I found out she was alive a few days ago,” Grian confesses. “I didn’t know… I thought they killed her too.”

   He pauses for a moment, something bitter in his throat, and when he looks up Scar is staring at him. He fumbles for a moment, goes to speak, pauses, stop-starts again. “What do you mean it wasn’t a code glitch?” he settles on. 

   “I was too good for a code glitch,” Grian tells him. “How did Pearl survive?” 

“She logged out,” Scar says. “Last minute. She thought something felt strange, and she logged out and got to a public server. By the time she found law enforcement, Evo was gone. You were - you were gone.” 

   Grian doesn’t say anything to that. He doesn’t know how to.

“She doesn’t like to talk about it anymore,” Scar whispers. “At all. She swore it wasn’t a code glitch for the longest time. Everybody thought she was just in denial. Grief. And then one day, she just stopped. Stopped talking about it.” 

   His heart is in his throat. “Oh,” he whispers.

“Gem told me once that she has a box under her bed with your things in it. Photos of you. She said that it’s - it’s never dusty. I think she talks about you to Gem, but nobody - well, nobody else.”

   Grian doesn’t want to think about that. He bites the bullet. “Do you know who the Watchers are?”

He blinks. “Vaguely,” he says. “They live in the Void. They… watch.”

   “Yeah,” Grian responds. Hollow. “Yeah, well, they watched Evo. They loved Evo.”

Scar’s hand finds his. It’s warm. He laughs, sharp. “They just didn’t love me,” he says. “We found signs. They’d speak to us, in stupid rhymes and codes. They gave us gifts. Portals.” 

   He doesn’t want to think about it. He doesn’t want to think about it at all. It’s too much. He shuts his eyes. “They took me when we killed the Ender Dragon. They killed everybody. Just not me.” 

   His breathing’s gone backwards, resting in his throat, pulling, tense. It won’t let him calm down. Scar doesn’t move to hug him this time, but he’s still holding his hand. “I wished they’d just killed me with the others,” he confesses. “Because they took me, and they-”

   He breaks off. 

“They gave you those,” Scar whispers. 

   “They made me one of them,” Grian spits. “Like some sort of twisted punishment for hating them, for stealing from them, for being afraid of them. That’s why I-” 

   Scar catches his face in his hand, like he’s reassuring him. Grian’s heart sinks. “That’s why I can’t tell Mumbo,” he whispers, “or Pearl, that I’m not dead.”

   Something behind Scar’s eyes splinters.

“Because it’s worse,” Grian breathes. “Don’t you see it’s worse? It’s like losing me all over again. I don’t exist anymore.” 

   Scar doesn’t say anything. Something sinks in Grian’s stomach, because what if he doesn’t understand? He’s going to be angry again, and he’s going to tell them, and he’s going to make everything worse, isn’t he?

   But instead of an explosion, of hardening eyes and sharp words, Scar just keeps looking at him. His eyes are soft, and warm, staring with a gentle intensity that burns into him. And then his hand drops from Grian’s face to his shoulder, and he swallows. “Let’s go to bed,” he says quietly, instead of a real reply.

   They lie close together that night, pretense dropped. Scar lies with Grian tugged half overtop of him, wings like a blanket or a shield over the both of them, warmth shared. He doesn’t fall asleep first. He lies there for a very long time, and holds Grian very tightly.

Chapter Text

“You’re allowed to leave me alone,” says Mumbo bluntly, crossing his arms, feeling the steady itch of redstone crawl upwards from where it’s caked under his nails. Pearl levers a glare at him, somehow still imposing while looking up. “Seriously, Pearl. I-”

   “You’re grieving,” she says. Her voice is impossibly neutral, imperfectly perfect, so level that Mumbo sighs and pushes the rising hurt inside him down again. 

   “So are you,” he mutters.

“No,” Pearl tells him, her face a mask, “I’m not. I’ve moved on. You haven’t.” 

   “That isn’t true,” comes out without permission, and she stiffens in front of him. “Sorry.”

Pearl moves on. “I won’t leave you alone,” she says. “So, stop asking me to.”
  Mumbo scoffs, irritation coming up again. He bends down and pushes the exposed wires with his hands, content with hot redstone on his fingertips, refusing to budge when she leans down to peer at his work as well. “It’s not like it matters if I die. We respawn here.”

   “That’s not the point and you know it.”

“Anyway, you took all my potions. I’m not going to substitute with netherite to the wrists.”

“Are you seeing him right now?” 

   When he looks over, Pearl is staring at him intently. So much for not grieving. “What?” 

She follows as he straightens his back, redstone forgotten. “Are you?” 

   “What’s that supposed to mean?” 

Her face goes sharp. “Are you seeing my brother, Mumbo?” she asks him. “Where is he?”

   It isn’t what he expected at all. Maybe Pearl’s finally losing it. He sighs. “I’m not seeing him now,” he says. “Sometimes he goes away if somebody’s with me. I’m not complaining.”

   There’s a short moment of tense silence before she resumes her interrogation. “What does he do when you see him? What does he look like?”
  “I’ll tell you if you leave.”
“Done.” 

   Easier than expected – Pearl looks at him like she’s trying to peel back the layers of his skin with her mind, waiting. She looks like if he won’t tell her, she’ll faint. He sighs, drags a hand over his forehead, leans against the wall. “He’s exactly how I remember him. Massive blue eyes. His hair’s a bit longer than it was when he joined Evolution, so I know it must’ve been the times I video-called to see him. He always looks at me like he’s waiting for me to acknowledge him.”

   When he looks back at her, his stomach drops. He’s never seen a look like that on her face. But she doesn’t make any move to leave, so he continues.

“When I wake up, he’s either in the bed with me like he’s stayed the night, or he’s watching me from my desk. He doesn’t say anything, but he follows me downstairs, or outside. I stopped getting up in the morning because I don’t like seeing him walk. It’s easier when he’s still. He doesn’t look so real when he isn’t moving.”

   “Does he talk?” 

Pearl’s voice is only a rough, haphazard whisper. Mumbo doesn’t meet his eyes. “Not usually – not, not in the day. He speaks if he’s in my dreams.” 

   “What does he say?” 

“That I shouldn’t have let him go. That I shouldn’t have let him start Evolution without me, that it’s my fault he’s gone. I always wake up when he starts screaming.”

   He expects another interjection, but Pearl just looks at him.

“Thank you,” she says. Her voice is hollow. She leaves. 

   Mumbo doesn’t go to the spare potions stashed in the cupboard. He doesn’t take up the netherite sword like he had joked about before. Both would feel like slapping Pearl in the face. Instead, he sits down at his desk, away from the exposed redstone wires, puts his head in his hands, and breathes.

***

   Gem hears the flap of wings, feels the wind dancing closer, before she sees Xelqua coming. He flies down, breathless, stumbles over the cobblestone steps of the Palace, and when he looks up at her, he’s as wild as ever, overgrown tawny hair and mismatched, fraught eyes. She notes curiously that he hasn’t been here before, she’s only ever seen him in the forest, and he must have stolen one of Scar’s maps or gone looking for her some other way. 

   It really does strike her how much he looks like Grian. She’s seen the photos, courtesy of Pearl, she’s wiped her tears off of her face and stroked her hair gently down, she’s grown accustomed to the old possessions and keepsakes hidden in that box. Old notebooks full of code-notes, blueprints, the odd sketch of a rustic-style house or a friend’s smiling face. A broken pair of glasses the boy was too sentimental to throw away. Newspaper clippings about his achievements, and newspaper clippings about his death. And here Xelqua comes, the spitting image, only his hair is darker and his eyes are wrong and he has those great white wings sprouting from his back. 

   “Gem,” he gasps as he stumbles and gathers himself, loose open feathers still hanging behind him, dishevelled, distraught. “Gem, I - I-”

   And then he stops short, and his eyes are still very wide and almost frightened, and Gem swears that just for one moment, both of them are blue. It’s then she realises that they aren’t wrong in shape, in kindness, in downturned youth or lashes or bags. When Xelqua’s eyes flash blue, he looks so much like Grian that Gem’s stomach flips on the spot. It only takes one more moment for the blood in her veins to turn to ice.

   Pearl, she thinks, dazed. Pearl. Pearl leant up against the side of her bed, long strands of hair hiding her face, Gem, he’s gone, and I’ll never see him again, and the police didn’t do anything. They said it was his fault, Gem. Pearl on her shoulder, a steady weight shaking, feeling the underside of her nose brush the top of her head, arms like vines growing around each other. Pearl drawing back, the sharpness of her collarbones, the tip of her nose. Pearl taking Gem’s face in her hands, tracing her cupid’s bow with light fingers. Whispering he had a scar right here, when he smiled it creased, he got it from falling as a child, now I’ll never see it again. Gem entranced, horrified, in love, in pity, in pain. Pearl, I’m – Don’t say you’re sorry, Gem, don’t. He wouldn’t want you to say you’re sorry. I just-

   “It is you,” she breathes, and Grian looks like shattered glass, crumples like it too, shoulders folding in, wings dragging forwards… “No, it is. You are…”
  “I don’t know what to do,” he breathes. “Whatever happens, they – whatever I do, it just - it just,”

   “Whatever happens?”
“They suffer.”

   “They?”
Hands come up to his face, every movement is hitting Gem like hail now, she can’t believe she didn’t realise it sooner. “Pearl. Mumbo,” he confesses, that familiar yearning swallowing up his words. Gem’s seen it in Pearl as well. “Mumbo is going to kill himself if he keeps this up,” Grian says, and his voice is so dry and flat and cracked, “and Pearl. Pearl. But I can’t – just, I can’t. I can’t. If they find out what I am now…”

   His eyes close, he near folds in two. “I can’t leave, I can’t stay. I can’t fix it.”

Something drops in Gem’s stomach. “Why can’t you leave?” There’s such deep fear underlining those words that all her internal alarms are screaming. He looks down in sorrow, something like shame on his face.

   “Hermitcraft is the only place I’m safe,” he says slowly. “Your admin… he must’ve installed shields against-”

   It’s a sudden stop. A sudden gasp. Grian stops talking like hitting the brakes on a car, like seeing a deer in the road, no deceleration, no calming down, like pulling the disc out of a jukebox, like watching a person stop breathing. He stands there like a ragdoll, barely held up by his own skeleton. And then, so quiet Gem nearly doesn’t hear him: “She knows.”

   “What does that mean?” 

But Grian is already in panic, he looks up at her, frantic, “Where is Pearl?” he begs. “Gem – you-”

   And then, another hard stop. He looks frantic. Gem strides forwards and catches him by the shoulders. “Explain.”

   “I’m safe in Hermitcraft because there are shields against Watchers,” he tells her, uneven. “I thought Pearl must’ve told your admin to install them. But then… that doesn’t make sense, because I’m…”
  “A Watcher,” Gem murmurs, dawn and new light, a thrill going through her. “She made Xisuma code an exception.”

   “She knew I was alive,” Grian breathes. “And she knew – knew I was a Watcher. But I…”

There are tears in his eyes. Gem watches them refocus.

   “If Pearl knows,” he says, “and Pearl still wants me to be her brother, then – then Mumbo, he,”

   “Mumbo wouldn’t think you were any different,” Gem says. “He would love you just the same, Grian.” 

   Grian. It rolls beneath her tongue perfectly. She wonders what would’ve happened if the Watchers had never taken him. She wonders if they would have been friends. She clears her throat, and then she shuts her eyes and speaks again. “Pearl told me a lot about you,” she says.

   “Like what?”
“Like how she told the police it wasn’t your fault. That you couldn’t be dead. That it was something else, and it wasn’t a code glitch, you would never have let that happen. She gave up when they closed your case but she never forgot you.”

   His eyes have gone blue and glassy. He looks then like he never grew up. “She never forgot me?”

“There’s a box,” Gem breathes. It feels like betrayal but she lets it happen anyway. He needs this. “Under her bed. It has your old notebooks. Photos. Your glasses. She showed it all to me.”

   Grian’s face. She didn’t know one person could hold that much devastation. She pushes him, then, gently. “Grian, go to Mumbo. Please.”
  “Okay,” he whispers.

***

Piles of empty bottles in Mumbo’s bedroom, layers of translucent glass stacked in the corners, or thrown at the wall and shattered on the carpet. The place reeks of a distinct feeling – unfamiliarity and hostility. It’s like an unlit cave or a forest at night, hollow but thick with the possibility of danger. He thinks that Mumbo is in the bathroom, maybe, or the living room, if not here, and folds his wings to his back, careful, to avoid snagging the feathers on the mess.

   Then, Grian kneels and reaches tentatively outwards, to graze the skin of his fingers against cold glass. It makes him shiver, the temperature, but also the reminder of Mumbo’s suffering. The fear that had come over him when Scar had come back that night and said it’s your fault, that had dug its roots into him and refused to be ripped out, it’s present in him now. He picks two up, one in each palm, feeling their weight, and crosses the room to the bin, which is empty despite the piles of rubbish around it, letting them crash to the bottom. There’s no point to the action – the bin could be filled several times over with the sheer volume of glass here. He supposes it makes him feel like he’s doing something. He walks back to the pile and gets on his knees once again as footsteps come lightly up the hallway, echoing through to the open door. “Pearl,” Mumbo calls, “Just – look, you don’t need to… ah.”
  There’s a presence in the doorway, and Grian knows it’s Mumbo, and Grian knows Mumbo thinks he’s seeing him again, and he still can’t bring himself to move. Mumbo stands there for a moment longer before leaving the room. Grian lets his head drift forward in disappointment, and when his hair falls into his face, it’s yellow-blonde, and he suddenly feels a lot younger than he is. There’s clattering downstairs, from the kitchen, like a pan falling to the floor. He follows the sound.

   “I’ve decided I should just start talking to you like you’re real,” Mumbo says as he tumbles a chopping board of diced carrot into the pot. He’s feeling in dire need of nutrients, and still depressed from the encounter with Pearl this morning, and thinks that the only way to possibly recover from this is to engage, instead of ignore, now. The fake-Grian has been sitting at the kitchen table watching him cook for the past ten minutes. “You – eh, you – used to like this a lot, I remember us having it at a Hypixel food market once.”
  “The girl serving us fancied you,” Fake-Grian says distantly. “You had no idea, just stood there confused as she batted her eyelashes at you. That was a week before I left.”

   At least he isn’t trying to convince Mumbo he’s real now. That was really quite horrible. “Ugh. If you’re my subconscious, is that something I understood deep down but just not…” he shrugs, “Properly?”

   Fake-Grian frowns at him and pulls his knees up to cushion his chin, bracketed in by the table. “Not your subconscious.”

   “Don’t kid yourself,” Mumbo tells him, and takes a very deep breath as he finishes chopping the celery. “My theory is, if I talk to you like you’re real, my subconscious will slowly realise you’re not acting like Grian at all, because you aren’t him, you’re me, and then you’ll… poof. Disappear.”
  “Not happening,” Fake-Grian says shortly. “You’re in a good mood today.”
He grimaces. “Not really. I’m trying to fool myself into being in a good mood, by forcing myself to actually do something. I feel just as shit as I did yesterday. But you know that already.”
  Fake-Grian doesn’t respond to that. Mumbo still isn’t sure why he has wings, but it’s definitely the final nail of why he’s fake and not somehow real. Grian would’ve loved elytra, he always did admire avian wings, and so perhaps it’s connected to that. 

   “If you’re my subconscious, do you remember what Grian’s favourite colour is?” 

“What?”

   Mumbo very purposefully does not look back at the table. He doesn’t want to engage with the hallucination that much. “I forgot his favourite colour two years ago. It wasn’t nice. But maybe I haven’t actually forgotten it.”

   A longer pause, filled with the sizzling coming from the pot on the stove. “It’s brown,” Fake-Grian says finally, sounding strained. “It’s always been brown.”

   And he’s right. Like a piece slots into place, a young Grian with torn green sleeves and a tendency to stammer, It’s brown, my favourite colour is brown. Mumbo grinning. I like blue. It’s always the little details that get him, that remind him of the magnitude of this loss. Mumbo forgets the soup. “Oh,” he murmurs. Yes, brown. Of course it was. Before he knows what his limbs are doing, he’s on the floor, and they’re folded haphazardly beneath him, and he can’t quite breathe. 

   “Mumbo?” behind him, followed by the scattered sounds of movement.

“Just – God, just fuck off. Just stop. Stop.” 

   Fake-Grian is standing above him, he feels the presence as he would a real person, but it isn’t, because he’s a hallucination, and now he feels high-pitched, flighty static collecting behind his forehead like nausea, and doubles over, heaving one pained sob out his chest. “I want him back,” he gasps, “I want you to go away. You’re making me want him back.” 

   The figure goes palpably still, stiff, before leaning down again, and then Mumbo feels steady hands on his shoulders, and feels woozy again, because hallucinations can’t touch, aren’t physical. One of Fake-Grian’s eyes has faded to a very light purple, and he looks away, can’t bear to see what the hallucination is going to distort into, because it’s all too much. “I should call Pearl,” he murmurs, only half-there, directed only at himself, a vain attempt at capturing his thoughts.

   “Don’t call Pearl,” Grian murmurs, “That will only complicate things.”
Mumbo looks very slowly up at him, and the tawny hair and feathers, and the mismatched eyes, and yet again feels an overwhelming wave of grief overtake him. “No,” he rasps. “If Grian was alive he would have come to me. It’s been years. He wouldn’t have left me.” 

   There are tears, clouding lilac and lapis. “I wanted to,” he murmurs, “Mumbo, I was trapped.”
  “No.”
“I was trapped. I couldn’t find you.”
  “No.”
“The Watchers took me from Evolution. They kept me locked in the Void for years, Mumbo, and they edited my code. They made me one of them.”
  Mumbo sobs, something rough and ripped. “No,” he cries, “That isn’t true, that isn’t true,” and Grian comes forward and wraps himself around him, around his shoulders and hands and soul. “That isn’t true,” Mumbo gasps out, but he’s holding him as well, burying himself in him, and he can see those great white wings, and it is true. There is no other explanation. Grian draws back and his eyes are red with tears.

   “I made Scar hide me,” he says like a confession. His hands are still hanging onto Mumbo’s. “I didn’t tell him who I was, and then I didn’t tell him what I was. I kept it from him, and when he begged me to tell you, I refused.”

   Mumbo’s heart is aching. “What? Why?” He reaches forwards, takes hold of Grian’s face, searches, heart racing.

Grian closes his eyes. “Because I thought…” he says, and trails off, and opens his eyes. “I thought that it would be better for you to grieve me as I was than to know me as I am now.” 

   “Why?”
“I’m sorry,” Grian whispers. When Mumbo looks closer at him, he sees misery etched into his face, and suffering, and all the things that weren’t there when they were still young. 

   “How did you escape?” he asks, and remembers they’re both still on the floor, and the soup must be half-cooked by now, and doesn’t care about either things. “You’re here now.”
  “I don’t know,” Grian tells him. “I wish I could remember. But I can’t remember much of anything from the Void. It’s just fear and darkness.”

“For how long?”

   Grian looks shocked for a moment, and considers something. “I came to Hermitcraft two months ago,” he says. “Crash-landed in Scar’s garden, covered in code burns, scared him half to death. I believe that I was in the Void up until that point. Seven years.” He purposefully averts his eyes, and Mumbo feels faint. “They can’t find me here,” he says. “They’re blocked from the server.”

   “Okay,” Mumbo whispers. “Okay,” and he blinks his eyes very hard and finds that Grian is still there in front of him. “I’m calling Xisuma. You’re going to join Hermitcraft. I’m not-” he chokes a nervous laugh, “Not giving you a choice in this, you don’t get to say no,”
  “Don’t be silly,” Grian says, smiling weakly, “I’m not saying no.”

Chapter Text

   Grian teaches Scar how to preen him properly.

It’s a difficult, quiet process, since Grian barely knows how to himself, and it ends up commencing over a matter of hours, with only Scar’s humming and the wind outside the windows. The first time it gets too much, Scar lets him put his head on his shoulder and sob until he can’t remember the Void anymore, and rubs circles into his back just above the feathers, whispering soothingly. It doesn’t happen to that extent again, and Scar is finishing the job when he speaks, very softly.

   “Grian?” 

“Hm?”
  “What was that language you spoke, when you first got here?” 

Grian pauses, confusion filtering over him. “What?” 

   Scar laughs quietly, but it’s strained. “It wasn’t Commontongue,” he says, “I didn’t recognise it at all. It was only while you were recovering, but sometimes I… Well, sometimes you still speak in it, when you’re asleep, that is.”

   The nightmares. Grian feels cold wash over him. “Oh,” he says slowly. “I didn’t realise I talk when I sleep.”

   “I didn’t want to bring it up, really,” Scar murmurs. “Didn’t want to bother you with it.” 

“I suppose it must’ve been Voidspeak,” he says. “When my abilities developed, I must have just learnt how to speak it. It makes sense.”

   Scar goes to say something again, and then bites the words back. “Spit it out,” Grian tells him. “I don’t want you to hold back when you speak to me.”

   He pauses, and breathes out very evenly for a long moment before he speaks, carefully: “Your nightmares always seemed worse when you didn't speak in Commontongue. That might’ve been that I was scared not understanding you, but…”

   There’s dread trickling down his back now. Grian twitches instinctively, feeling his feathers move in Scar’s hands. “What would I say? When you could understand me?”

   “I don’t want you to-” and Grian twists around, Scar’s hands falling off of his wings, and then they’re on his back again, hot skin touching. Scar falters. “I don’t want you to feel like you’re there again.”

   Like in the kitchen, with Grian unresponsive on the floor all because of an argument, and Scar crying and apologising for something he had no idea about. It must show on Grian’s face, because Scar relents. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I’ll – I’m sorry, I’ll tell you. It didn’t make sense to me at all until I found out who you were, but I suppose the Watchers were always in your dreams. You kept begging them to leave you alone, and not to take you away, and not to hurt you, to – to change you, but just to let you go back. You’d flip between Commontongue and Voidspeak, but you were always so frightened, I didn’t know what to do.”

   Grian’s gone still, but Scar is a constant, he’s trailed a hand up and it’s cradling his face, thumb gentle underneath his lips. He repeats his name a few more times in his mind to calm himself. “Remember how I told you about meeting Gem?”

   Scar swallows. “Yes.”

“I was scared, when I first saw her, and she figured out I knew you, because without realising I said your name.”

   There’s a shift in Scar’s expression. Grian can only describe it as lovestruck. The hand on his face feels so warm and so heavy, in the most perfect way. “What I’m trying to say is that you’ve always been so kind to me,” he manages. “Even when you didn’t know what to do. You always did what was right.”

   “Angel,” Scar breathes, like he’s about to confess something, and Grian kisses him. It’s soft and slow, and he moves his own hands up to Scar’s neck, and Scar is pulling him in with the hand pressed against his back, and pressing is what it is, it’s soft and moving but completely stable, which is exactly what he’s come to know Scar as. He pushes harder, wants to devour Scar, to know him entirely, all of his flaws as well as all of the things that make him want this. 

   Scar pulls back. His eyes are dilated, and he’s staring down at Grian like he’s everything. “I was going to say,” he starts, and then stops, just gazing at him for a moment more. 

   “Yeah?” Grian whispers.

“I was going to say that you ending up in my garden changed my life,” he says very quietly. “And I wouldn’t have stopped it from happening, ever. And I’m so glad I met you.”

   Their foreheads are touching. A surge of emotion comes over Grian, and he breathes out weakly, unsure if it’s real or just in his head. “When they took me,” he says, “I didn’t think I’d ever be happy again.”

   Scar is crying. Grian reaches forward and wipes away a tear from his cheek. “And now?” he murmurs, his voice sitting in his throat from emotion.

   Grian swallows down where his own tears might rise up. “Now, I’m really happy,” he chokes out, and Scar kisses him again.

That week, he sees his sister again, for the first time in years. They haven’t spoken properly yet – only through Gem – and the anticipation is like ocean-waves crashing against each other in his mind, turbulent. He walks to her house, so frighteningly close, he’s been right there for months and still hasn’t seen her, and when she opens the door, she can’t take her eyes off of him. It’s like she’s noting everything different about him down, like she’s categorising it in her head in case he disappears again. The way he walks, he knows it’s different because of the added weight of his wings, and the chronic nervousness that didn’t plague him as a teenager. The colour of his eyes, lapis and lavender. He knows his face has matured, that he’s lost some baby fat and filled out a little since he’d last seen her, and it had all added to that all-consuming terror of him being different that had stopped him from going to her as soon as he knew she was alive. 

   But then her arms are around him, and she’s holding him so tightly to her chest that he feels young again, and the sea in his mind goes quiet and calm, the wind stops, and his racing thoughts stop as well.

   “You’ve grown up,” she breathes, it’s so quiet he barely hears it, and the world suddenly stops, because instead of him having changed, having been ruined, broken, and distorted beyond recognition, he has grown up. There’s clarity. There’s clarity, and then suddenly he’s sobbing into her shoulder, and she is too, and she drags him upstairs to look at all the keepsakes stuffed into the box under her bed, and doesn’t have to blow the dust off of it because she never forgot him, and he tries on his old glasses and flips through that old notebook and finds all the old photos and slowly, slowly, stops crying.

   “You knew,” he says with great effort, “Didn’t you? You made Xisuma code an exception, for me.”

   She strokes his hair out of his face, tender. “I had my suspicions. I didn’t know for sure, but I couldn’t accept that you were dead. There were discrepancies in the code, yours wasn’t wiped out entirely like the others. It was just… misplaced.”

   “I thought I’d be stuck there forever,” he tells her. “I thought I’d never see you again. And then when I managed to escape, I still don’t know how, I ended up here. I couldn’t have done it if you hadn’t-”
  His voice is building up into a sob. Pearl shushes him, quiet. “It’s okay,” she murmurs, her voice is cracking but she’s holding him so tightly he knows it’s with relief. “It’s been so long. So long–”

He gets welcomed into Hermitcraft without question, only a short meeting with Xisuma to confirm it, only while in the meeting he realises Xisuma probably only organised it so he could talk code with a child prodigy. There are barely any questions about intentions, it doesn’t feel like a job or university interview so much as a friendly conversation, and at the end of it Xisuma hugs him very briefly instead of shaking his hand.

   “I wouldn’t have rejected you,” he says, and Grian sees his eyes crinkle in the gap of his helmet. “Besides, I had some idea that Scar was hiding someone. The oxygen? He isn’t very subtle.”
  “No, he isn’t,” Grian agrees, and he’s smiling so hard his cheeks hurt. 

A few months later, they have to make impromptu plans to switch season early, a problem with the code making the moon grow and the gravity weak. Grian is the only one accustomed to the changes in gravity, and finds himself grabbing onto Scar whenever it acts up to keep him rooted to the ground, or at least only a few inches above it. He helps him pack up belongings, and he finds that old notebook he’d drawn Scar in lodged underneath the bed in a corner. He hadn’t hidden it well, but Scar didn’t find it anyway. 

   Mumbo tells him the day they leave that he wants to base near him in the new season, and it’s the first time Grian realises that he’s going to get to build again. As a teenager, code had always been his priority, but building was like an escape. The world knew about his coding, and if he got anything wrong, there was the constant threat of judgement – but they didn’t know about his building, or value it, so he had taken solace in drawing up plans for houses and cottages and mansions and castles, and building them when he could. And now, a return to that. Cyclical. 

   Boatem leaves for Season 9 two days after most of the server, due to a delay in their code going through. He’s nervous, but Scar squeezes his hand and tells him that whatever they make of the new world, he’ll love it.

   When Grian lands in the new server, he finds himself lying in a wheat field under a bright blue sky.