Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"I'm sorry.

Please.

Let me go." 

The avian shook his wrists, rattling the chains that kept him captive. His captor stood in the shadows, smiling faintly at the struggle.

"Why should we?" they murmered, their quiet tone echoing around the room. The avian sighed, his macaw plumage fading into white as time went by. 

"I haven't done anything!" he cried, trying to stand, but his beaten body cried out beneath him and he stumbled back down to his knees, the chains tight behind him. His captor came to stand closer, their body draped in purple robes, and a white blindfold across their face covering their eyes. They wore a calm expression, as if they were totally at peace with the whole holding-people-captive thing. 

"You ran away," they said calmly. The avian's eyes narrowed. 

"I ran away," he spat, "because of you. You're twisted. Everything about you is wrong!" 

"We gave you a life, Xelqua," they defended, annoyance sleeping into their calm tone. "You had nowhere. We gave you a family, and we only had one rule. One which you broke." 

"I just wanted to be free!" Xelqua cried, a single tear tracing it's way down his cheek. "I don't mean any harm, please. Just let me go!" 

"No."

"No?!" 

"You could've been so much more, Xelqua," they said, their voice filled with a soft kind of sadness. "Now, you will watch. Just like you were always supposed to."

"Watch what?" 

"The games."

"Games?" 

"You will watch your friends turn on each other, suffering and dying on an infinite loop. It is the only way for you to truly learn what it means to watch," they explained. "What it means to be a watcher." 

"No!" he cried. "I won't! You don't control me!" 

But his captor wasn't listening. They were busy tracing patterns out of light, summoning in what looked like a huge screen. 

"You will watch," they said forcefully. "You will watch, and you will feed." They left the room, and left the avian Xelqua to struggle with his bonds before the giant portal-like screen. 

He sat there, watching the innocent people he recognised as friends going round their day-to-day lives on their various SMPs, unknowingly marked for the games that the Watcher had promised. Watchers feed off negative emotion, he remembered, so this game was simply a banquet. Not only a banquet, but entertainment, and a way to punish him for everything he'd done. 

Not knowing how long until these said games started, he sat there, watching without truly seeing, dreading for the moment when they would all wake up in a new world with a deadly game to play. 

Some of the players selected he barely knew, and although he knew he would hold the weight as he watched them perish, it wouldn't be as bad as if he knew them. But some of them... some of them were his closest friends, the people he considered family. And watching them die would be like losing the world. He watched sadly as Scar Goodtimes rushed around his hand-built Hermitopia base, hooting in laughter at one of his own stupid jokes. The ones that Xelqua would roll his eyes at with a frown. But now, all he wanted was to hear another stupid Scar joke. Now, he realised exactly what he was losing. 

There was one player, however, that Xelqua began to take an unexpected liking too. One he knew of, from his time as an Evo. His name was Martyn, and he inhabited the green void-like dimension known as the datastream. He would drift between SMPs, loving every one but belonging no where. His mistakes had left him isolated and alone in the bright green glare. But, unlike most people Xelqua knew or had known, Martyn had made the most of that opportunity, turning his misfortune into magic as he saved countless servers from corruption. Although he was stuck alone in the datastream, he still had friends, and he still had a life. Xelqua respected that, and he even envied it slightly.

The viewpoints of the screen where constantly shifting, viewing the world from that player's eyes. It would spend five minutes with that person, before jumping to another, with no particular order to the movements. Five minutes in Hermitopia soon turned to five minutes in Empires and back, and he explored many servers and SMPs of the time as he watched and waited for the games to begin.

Time passed alarmingly fast, and to Xelqua's utter horror he found himself drawn in by his watching. It just felt natural, and that pained him indescribably, knowing that he was something that he despised. He just sat there, watching, drawn in by the eyes he stared through.

So, when a flash of light illuminated the dreary room and obscured the screen, Xelqua turned his head sharply to see what had just occurred. A figure stumbled out of the flash, looking at everything with cautious yet curious eyes. Xelqua turned his eyes back to the screen, which had previously been showing the world from Martyn's perspective. That viewpoint had turned black, and was glowing purple at the edges. Something strange was happening. 

"What the..?" murmered the newcomer as they took a few tentative steps. They stopped and chuckled nervously, before continuing slowly forward into the room. Glancing up at the screen, the newcomer swore in confusion, for he watched the world through the eyes of his friend Jimmy. He recognised that it was him, and watching that from here was weird. Very weird. 

Xelqua turned back towards the stranger. They were dressed in green and had long blonde hair that appeared to be tied back and pushed off their face with a headband. They noticed him suddenly, rushing into the center of the room to where he was chained. 

"Hello?" they said softly. "Are you okay?" Xelqua remained still, unanswering. "Can you tell me your name?" they asked. Xelqua thought carefully. Could he? In the end he decided yes.

"I'm G-" He caught himself on the first letter of his true name. He couldn't say that, scared that the Watchers would come and punish him for disobeying. 

"I'm Xelqua," he said, and the newcomer nodded. 

"The name's Martyn," he replied, moving closer to crouch down infront of Xelqua's huddled form. Martyn offered his hand to shake, which Xelqua cautiously took, his wrists heavy. Martyn look down at Xelqua's hand with shock.

"You're chained!" he remarked, and Xelqua looked down at his wrists. Drawn in by watching, he had forgotten. Despite that seriousness of the discovery, Xelqua just shrugged.

"Indeed," he replied calmly. Martyn just looked at him, his eyebrows raised, a spark of recognition flickering across his face.

"I know you," he said slowly. Xelqua remained deadpan. 

"Do you?" he replied, desperately trying not to give anything away to anyone who might be watching them right now. In a split second decision, Xelqua grabbed the collar of Martyn's green jacket, pulling him closer, placing a finger on their lips before he could cry out. He spoke quickly and quietly, making sure the Martyn heard everything.

"You need to get out of here," he whispered. "They see everything, and it won't be long until they find you and take you too. You need to go!"

"There's a group of players, you included. You're marked, destined for death games that they're creating. You'll be lucky if they don't take your memories, but I need you to try and keep everyone safe. I can't do anything from here."

Xelqua pushed him away, turning his head and pretending as if nothing happened. Martyn stood up, pulling a small device out of his pocket, and preparing to transport himself back into the datastream. The device beeped angrily, and Martyn frowned, shaking it slightly. When the numbers finally pinged, he smiled, satisfied, and prepared to dive back into the green void he had called home for many years. 

But, as he went to hit the final button and send him spiralling, he looked back over his shoulder at Xelqua. He sat on the floor, chained, his red sweater full of holes that showed cuts and bruises. His avian wings drooped behind him, some of the feathers torn and broken, the bloostains botching the pure white wings. Martyn's heart pulled, and his mind wandered to why the stream had sent him here. It had just been a new portal, like every other new SMP to welcome him. And, although this place had no seen connection to C.H.E.S.T or too the L.O.O.T shards, maybe the stream wanted him here for some other reason. 

He crouched back down infront of Xelqua, drawing a short green dagger from up his sleeve, the blade flickering with binary and the coded magic of the datastream. He raised the dagger, and Xelqua flinched back, preparing for a strike. That strike never came. Two precise slashes and the metal cuffs fell off his wrists with two dull thuds. Xelqua wobbled to his feet, grasping Martyn's arm for support as he nearly toppled, a panicked expression on his face. 

"They'll come! We have to go!" he hissed, his eyes wide. Martyn nodded understandingly. He pulled out his transporter, clicking in the numbers and hitting activate just as a figure appeared in a swirl of white feathers in the shadow of the room. But they were too late. Martyn grabbed Grian's arm, and the pair of them fell through the code and into the empty peace of the datastream. 

Chapter Text

They landed hard on the strangely solid floor, Xelqua's legs shaking beneath his weight. They gave out beneath him and he hit the deck, crying out in pain as he landed heavily on one of his wings. Martyn grabbed his arm lightly, trying to support him and bring him to his feet. Xelqua stumbled again, and Martyn held him tighter. Reaching out, he opened part of the datastream as if it were a door and lead Xelqua into a small room.

The room was bare, the same colour as the datastream, with a green desk in the corner and a small single bed against the 'wall'. Xelqua looked confused and turned to Martyn, gesturing to the furniture. 

"How did all this get in here?" he asked. Martyn shrugged.

"Sometimes i can just will things into existence I guess. Sometimes it just appears. Anything else I need Doc sends me from the otherworld." 

Xelqua nodded, pretending not to be confused. He winced, shifting his weight from one foot to another, still gripping Martyn's arm for support. Martyn frowned.

"You can barely stand, Xelqua," he said, leading him over to the gaming chair by the desk. Xelqua resisted weakly, but he was in no state to stop Martyn. He gestured for him to sit, and Xelqua bowed his head, relenting. He sat, and Martyn nodded approvingly. 

"What happened?" Martyn asked, his brow creased. Xelqua shook his head and turned away, but not before Martyn caught the tremor in his lip. "We need to get you patched up," Martyn added, and Xelqua turned back to him. 

"I'm fine," he insisted, his eyes weary. Martyn raised his eyebrows, scanning the rips in his clothes and the many bruises and cuts they revealed. His blonde hair was encrusted at the edges by dried blood from a small gash above his left eyebrow. His eyes were dull, almost empty of life, but a spark of desperation and anger still lingered behind his iris. 

"I beg to differ," Martyn replied. "How are you going to compete in these games if you can't even walk on your own?" Xelqua shrugged.

"I'm not on the player list," he replied. "And there's no time. We should be focused on stopping them!" 

He said the statement with a sort of fierce determination, and he would never admit that he hardly believed it anymore. The watchers could never be stopped.

And if he wasn't on the player list, then he definitely was now. 

Martyn pulled a small communicator out of his pocket, pressing down the side button for a few seconds and smiling slightly when it emitted the familiar beep.

"Hey. You okay?" came the voice from the other end, deep and rustic yet full of compassion. 

"Hey Doc. Can you send me through a medical kit? Bandages, painkillers, plasters, the works?" 

The reply was instant.

"Of course. What have you done?" 

"It's not for me," Martyn replied, and the faint sounds of beeping echoed through the comm. 

"Done," Doc announced, and sure enough, a large medical kit appeared on the desk in a blur of static green. Martyn sighed in relief.

"Thanks."

"Any time Martyn. Take care of yourself."

Martyn smiled. "Will do," he replied, and clicked the comm off. 

"I said I'm fine!" Xelqua insisted, but Martyn paid no attention. 

"Give me your arm," he instructed. Xelqua thrust his arm forward, the base of it connected to his pure white wings, layered with feathers. Now he was free, the macaw colouring was begging to return, slowly, but returning nonetheless. 

"I don't need help," Xelqua kept insisting, yet he still held out his arm, wincing as Martyn checked the damage. Where his arm formed his wing he had cut a slit in his red sweater, but Martyn carefully cut the sleeve off entirely, promising to get him some new clothes. 

Martyn worked quickly and systematically, cleaning Xelqua's wounds and dressing them, spreading salve on the bruises. Xelqua hardly spoke as he worked, with only the occasional sharp intake of breath or pained mumble. As Marytn began work on his legs, gently cutting off the material below the knees so he could clean the scrapes, Xelqua spoke up.

"My name isn't actually Xelqua. It's Gri- Grian," he said, stumbling over his own name. It felt foreign on his tongue, a name that hadn't been spoken aloud for what felt like forever. Despite this, he felt slightly calmer, feeling the reassuring presence of the name that wasn't given to him by the watchers. 

Martyn nodded and smiled, looking up into the face of the avian. 

"Grian..." he said, rolling his tounge over the name. "I remember you." 

"Yeah," Grian agreed with a faint smile. 

"You were an evo, right? That one evo that got promoted..."

"...to watcher, yeah." 

Grian's eyes narrowed and he stared at the floor, their conversation dwindling into silence. 

They stayed silent for a while, until Martyn spoke up as he cleaned the cut on Grian's head, just beneath his dusty-blonde hairline. Luckily, the cut was fairly superficial, more of a scrape, by Martyn cleaned it up anyways. 

"So, these games," he started. "What do you know?" Grian sighed.

"Not much, but the Watchers are hungry. Ever since the disbandenment of the Evos, they've had no source of food, and this is their way of feasting. They- they chained me to the floor and placed a sort of screen in front of me that showed the world through the selected players eyes. They wanted me to watch - to become a true Watcher."

"Who were the players?"

"Some I know, some I know well, but the Watchers called them my 'friends', implying that I should know everyone. But it's hard to see who it is by just watching their SMP through their eyes," he explained.

"Yeah, that makes sense," Martyn replied, nodding. "Did you recognise anyone at all?" 

Grian thought hard, trying to recall the worlds he'd seen. 

"Scar Goodtimes," he started. 

Scar was a hermit, meaning he was a proud resident of the ever expanding Hermitopia. Himself and a large group of build-lovers expanded Hermitopia every year or so into districts they called seasons. They were currently building Season 8, and Scar Goodtimes was a proud member of the organisation Botem, Grian recalled, like himself before he was taken. He was also one of Grian's closest friends.

"Impulse SV and Skizzle Man."

He had seen them together through the screen, hosting their weekly show: the Imp and Skizz Podcast. And when they weren't busy with that, the pair lead completely separate lives. Impulse was a hermit like Scar, and he too was working on the Season 8 expansion of Hermitopia, and was also part of Botem. Skizzle, better known as Skizz, tended to live alone, doing his own thing out in his own world. He always said that he didn't want to live in Hermitopia if he didn't get to help with the expansions, but the Season expansions was a high-class invite-only thing, an invite which Skizz had yet to receive.

"There were other hermits too, but I couldn't tell who by looking through their eyes... sorry. If I remember, I-"

"It's fine. Anyone else?"

"Joel Beans," he replied with a faint smile. 

Joel was a part of many different SMPs that he would travel to on 'business trips', but when he wasn't travelling here and there he owned a small flat on the edge of Hermitopia with his wife Lizzie and their pets. He was a nice guy with so much good going for him, yet he still found space to complain. But really, he loved his life. Himself and Lizzie were currently scheduling their trip to Empires SMP, which was due to begin in a few months.

"Timmy Solidarity."

"He'd hate to hear you calling him that," Martyn remarked with a smile

"What? It's his name!" Grian replied, faking a puzzled expression, to which Martyn chuckled softly.

Timmy, most often known as Jimmy, was a Canary avian and a close friend of Grian. He wandered the servers, preferring to stay here and there rather than base in one location like Joel. Often found hanging at the small cafe in the heart of Hermitopia if he found himself passing through, Timmy always said it was because he liked the coffee, but Grian had always suspected that it had something to do with two of the barisas that worked there. Speaking of which...

"Tango Tek."

"Scott Major." 

Both worked as baristas in Hermitopia: Tango was a hermit who worked on expanding Hermitopia every season, and Scott was a SMP cruiser who was preparing to travel to Empires SMP in a few months. They were a nice pair, polar opposites, but still got along as friends. Tango was a blazeborn inventor, fiery but compassionate, while Scott was a deer-hybrid with only antlers, sweet and calm but occasionally icy. They were amazing baristas, which they used as a side job, and had caught the eye of Jimmy, as much as he tried to hide it. 

Grian fell into silence, his eyes glassy, and Martyn took a step back having finished patching him up. Grian looked up at him, looking suddenly spooked.

"I- I can't think of anyone else," he said, his voice quiet.

"It's fine. I won't press you. Just - if you do remember, let me know." 

"Okay," Grian replied with a small smile. 

Grian yawned suddenly, and Martyn noticed the darkness framing his eyes, and the way he drooped with exhaustion. Martyn gestured to the bed by the wall. 

"You need sleep," he said gently, and Grian shook his head.

"No- no, I'm fine," he replied, but Martyn shook his head.

"Please Grian."

"But what if it starts," he whispered, his voice tight. Martyn nodded almost understandingly. 

"Fine. If you won't sleep then at least lie down for a bit while we figure out what to do."

Reluctantly, Grian agreeded, and with no surprise was asleep within minutes. Martyn chuckled softly, sitting on his chair at the PC and gently clacking keys, filing reports for Doc. It was a soft, simple rhythm, and after the drama of the past few hours, he was glad to take a break from it all. 

A few hours later, Grian woke up, and Martyn presented him with a spare set of clothes practically identical to his old ones.

"Thanks," Grian whispered, and Martyn smiled.

"Don't thank me, it was all Doc." Grian nodded, and once he was changed, he sat on the corner of Martyn's bed, watching as Marytn finished typing up his report and checking his discord. When he was done, he turned to face Grian, and asked the questions that had been bothering him for hours.

"This game," he started. "Will we die?"

"Not unless you win," Grian replied. 

"When will it start?" 

"I don't-"

Grian gasped, his eyes burning purple, and white flashing through his macaw wings. He was pulled upwards about an inch off the floor, his fingertips glowing with an eerie purple light as he stared at Marytn, who took a few steps backwards in shock as he was faced with unblinking eyes. 

"Now," Grian rasped, before the light seemed to receed, rushing away as fast as it had come, and the world began to ripple like water, glowing that strange green that Martyn recognised from years in the datastream.

They were being pulled into a world.