Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ah. I failed.

He thought that with a numb acceptance, drifting in the inky black nothingness. The void, space, what have you. No difference, really.

The thought that came after was: I’m going to die here.

Maybe he should have felt frustrated. Bitter. He’d failed, after all. He should at least have felt afraid. He didn’t know what would happen to him if he died, with the way things were currently. But the fear seemed to exist somewhere far away, as distant as the blue expanse of the world laid out beneath him. Or above. 

A beep sounded in his ear, muffled, as if he were hearing it underwater. A notification on his oxygen gauge–six more hours of air left. 

Tango doubted he would last that long.

He coughed, the noise coming from somewhere deep inside his chest, and the taste of bitter copper filled his mouth. It should hurt, he thought, but the pain was a distant thing too. 

Tango had been around enough explosions in his lifetime to know that even if he hadn’t been blown to bits by the TNT blast, he was already as good as dead. Organs all turned to mush by the overpressure. He coughed up another mouthful of blood, droplets left to float around inside his helmet, bouncing off the glass. It was getting hard to breathe, even though he still had ample oxygen. It wouldn’t be much longer now.

What would happen, when he died? He hadn’t given it much thought when he’d set off on this journey. He’d known from the beginning that it was more than likely a one way trip, but that didn’t change anything. If the moon crash turned out not to be a big deal and everyone respawned safe and sound, then he’d have an interesting story to tell if nothing else. If it was, and everyone’s lives were truly at risk, he still would have done this. For the small chance that he might save everyone. 

He liked to think that, anyway. 

It didn’t matter now, he supposed. He’d failed. The TNT had gone off prematurely, nowhere near enough to alter its course. It was still slowly descending towards the world below. Well, probably it was descending very, very fast, being up here really messed with the scale of things. 

He wondered if he’d live to see it make contact. He wasn’t sure if it mattered either way. Nothing could be done now. He could only wait to die.

It was hard to process his own level of consciousness in the darkness of space, but he could still feel it when he began to fade away. Distance stars blurred  into nothing and his helmet light dimmed.

I hope everyone made it out. He thought again, one last time. One last wish, before he thought nothing at all.

Scar was flying, or at least he was trying to. Invisible wings beat uselessly against his back, failing to catch any air, and he found himself falling face-first into the sand. It was a hard landing, one that left grit digging into the sides of his face and filling his nose. He tried to push himself back up, but his hand sank into the sand as if it were water. He tilted his face up, struggling to see through the sand caked in his eyelashes. His vision was blurry, but he could still make out the blotch of a red in the distance, like a bloodstain against the night sky.

He reached out a quivering hand. Useless. He was too far away. 

He needed to…needed to…

“Gri…an…”

The world slipped away from him.

He awoke some time later, in a place much quieter than his dreams. Consciousness slowly trickled in from somewhere out of reach. He could hear noises, voices perhaps, but they were fuzzy. Distant. So too was the pressure against his back, the soft weight on his cheek.

The first tangible thing he became aware of was the pain. It was a familiar sort of pain. That deep ache throughout his body, dull but still so heavy, that turned to hot knives if he dared to move. It was the pain that came when he pushed himself too hard, although it hadn’t been this bad since the big dig of Season 5. 

But Scar was used to pain, was used to its constant, nagging presence. He took a slow, steady breath, unconsciously reaching for his magic to help his lung expand and coming up empty. He was too tired, of course. He needed his oxygen concentrator, sooner rather than later, but his body felt far too heavy to move, much less go rifling through his inventory. 

He took another shallow breath and pushed the pain into the recesses of his mind, to focus on pushing his way through the thick fog of reality. 

Clarity came in the form of pale green eyes and a fuzzy face that he would recognize anywhere. Jellie looked down at him for a moment, before butting her head against the side of his face with a purr. She looked a bit grumpy, as if demanding to know why Scar had been sleeping instead of playing with her. He felt a tiny smile twitch onto his face. Seeing her always made him feel like everything was going to be okay.

“Scar?” A voice said, quiet and hesitant. 

“Jellie? You can talk? Why do you sound like Grian?” Scar said. Or tried to say, but all that came out was a wheeze. 

“Scar, are you…”

Okay, it definitely wasn’t Jellie. He looked away from her, eyes moving slowly around the room. It looked like someone’s base, he thought, which was reassuring. The only unfamiliar places he found himself waking up in at times were hub world hospitals, and he much preferred the planks and stripped wood to stark white concrete walls, or worse, those pale blue terracotta walls, a facade of homeliness and comfort. 

On one side of his bed was a table, topped with a pile of what looked like handmade cards. He couldn’t really move his head to look closer, but he thought he spotted a crudely drawn picture of Jellie on one of them. Another had “Hurry Up and Get Better” written on the front in Cleo’s handwriting. He felt himself smile again. He’d have to look through them all later, when he could move.

On the other side of the bed Scar found his friend, sticking out from the vivid red of his sweater. He was clenching the fabric tightly in his hands, as if he were nervous. His eyes were rimmed with red and black, dark circles of exhaustion underlining them. He almost looked as if he were pleading with someone, Scar thought, from that desperate look in his eyes.

“Grian?” he tried to say, but once again the words didn’t come out. His throat felt dry and rough, reminiscent of that long trek through the desert. It was hard to figure out how he’d gotten from there to here. Wherever here was.

Grian seemed to understand what he wanted in spite of his lack of words. He was good at that, at knowing what people needed. Something Scar had always respected him for.

“Water? Do you want water? Hold on just a second.” He vanished from Scar’s field of view in a blur of red.

Oh, water sounded so nice right now. Sweet, sweet water, even if it did have a slight taste of hat.  

Grian reappeared a second later, his movement so silent that Scar didn’t realize he’d gone anywhere. If Scar weren’t so weary, he might have jumped at the sudden appearance of his friend. Grian always seemed to have light footsteps. He was part bird after all. It just meant he could prank Scar more easily. Or spook him by accident

Scar couldn’t move his arm to take the water himself, so Grian helped to prop him up and pour water into his mouth. It didn’t even taste like hat this time. 

“Oh Scar,” Grian said in a shaky voice. “You came back. You came back to us.”

Scar swallowed a gulp of water, trying very hard not to choke on it. He wasn’t entirely sure what Grian was talking about, or why he seemed so distraught. It’s okay Grian, he thought. He’d have liked to give Grian a pat on the shoulder or something, if he were in better condition. As it was, this was a bad day. Best not to push himself further. 

The memories were beginning to return. The long trek through the desert. The husk attack. Grian’s death. His decision to use his powers, in spite of what it might cost. And nothing after that.

But it seemed to Scar that things must have worked out in the end. After all, he had found himself in a bed inside a cool room, far from the intense, open heat of the desert. He hoped that he’d managed to help at least in some way.

Scar cleared his throat and finally managed to speak in a somewhat clear voice. 

“Y’know…think I don’t like sand. ‘t’s coarse…and stuff...”

Grian stared at him, blank-faced, for a long moment, before he pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Really? You’ve been awake for five minutes and you’re already referencing Star Wars.  Clearly I shouldn’t have worried…”

Huh, that was… “You…worried ‘bout me?” Scar asked, feeling a pang of something in his chest.

“Was I–Scar, you’ve been in a coma for two months!” Grian said, loud enough to make Scar cringe. “Of course I was worried! Everyone was! Nobody knew if or when you’d wake up. We didn’t want to lose you t–to lose you.”

Scar stared into Grian’s eyes, trying to figure out if he was joking or not. It wasn’t difficult, there was a raw desperation on Grian’s face that he never would have dared to fake. But two months? Two whole months?  Scar blinked, struggling to wrap his mind around that. It didn’t feel like it had been that long since he’d collapsed in the desert. It felt closer to a day, maybe, or something like that. 

Two months. Two whole months. Scar winced internally at that. There was no way he hadn’t done some very permanent damage to himself this time. He’d really pushed too hard, hadn’t he.

Grian took a deep breath. “Sorry. It’s just…it’s been hard…”

Scar took a closer look at Grian, at  the bags under his eyes, his messy hair and slumped shoulders. What had happened, he wondered, while he was asleep?

“I’m just…” Grian said, voice cracking as if he were trying not to cry. “I’m just glad you came back to us.”

It wasn’t long before word got around, and the area was flooded with excited, eager hermits. Familiar faces that Scar felt like he hadn’t seen in so long.  They gathered at his bedside, eyes bright and hopeful, words all overlapping in an unintelligible stream. 

“Okay, okay,” Grian said. “Back up, give him a bit of space.”

The hermits obliged, although the room was too small for them to spread out much. Scar didn’t really mind. Seeing everyone all at once was a bit overwhelming, but more than that, he was just glad to see everyone again. As much as he loved the Boatem group, he’d still missed the others through all in those days trekking across the desert.

He didn’t really have the strength to talk back to anyone, but he offered them smiles and nods for all their words of concern. 

Things settled down after a time. Scar was still too tired to interact much with the large crowd of hermits who had gathered, and the numbers eventually thinned to the Boatem crew and Cub, who sat around the hospital room in quiet relief. He’d been asleep for a long while, and a lot had changed in that time. He could see it in the faces of his fellow hermits, the weariness that they had brought with them. There was Grian, of course, but he wasn’t the only one. Impulse sat in a corner, expression distant. His normally short hair and beard had grown out, making him look more Vintagebeef. Mumbo hovered at Grian’s side, looking even more jittery than normal. Pearl stood silently on the opposite side, a troubled expression on her face. Cub, too, looked worn and tired, leaning back in a chair with a crutch propped up on the side. 

Scar himself was no exception. He could see the changes in himself too, reflected in the window across from his bed. He’d grown paler and thinner, lost his normal tan that he’d gained from hours of terraforming work. His hair had grown out down his back. It didn’t look half bad, he thought. Would probably look better if he looked less like a walking corpse. Or…a lying corpse, he supposed.

There had been a lot for the other hermits to fill him in on over the last couple months. He learned the details of the situation, the recreated world that had sent them directly into a broken Season 9 and all the turmoil that had come with it. He’d seen a bit of that from the communicator death messages, the fates that had befallen Wels and Ren and XB and many of the others. He was relieved to know they’d made it out in the end. The worry for the safety of his close friends had lingered in his mind even as they fought their way through the desert.

Cub did most of the talking, seemingly the one who knew the most about the situation. He explained the setup at spawn, something with ender pearls that was way out of Scar’s wheelhouse, and how all the others had found their way back.

It was when he got to himself and Gem that he stumbled. 

“Well, I supposed everyone already knows,” he’d said. 

Gem had made a deal with the Vex. It was the thing that had allowed her to find Cub, and to in turn find the rest of Boatem through Scar. Cub’s  voice was calm and collected as he spoke about it, but Scar had known him long enough to see the turmoil in his eyes. The pain. A raw wound that had been reopened.

It hurt like a punch to the chest. Scar had hoped his friends were safe, now that the Vex had left Cub alone. He’d hoped it was only him still attached to the Vex. As beneficial as the Vex had been for him, they were far from that way for most. Cub was proof of that. 

So why now, why after all this…

It wasn’t fair, Scar thought. Not just to Gem. But to all of them. 

Cub reached the end, when everyone was reunited, hurt but slowly starting to rebuild. It was there that he faltered again.

“Well, it’s like Beef said, I guess. There are some things you just gotta say. Rip the bandaid off and all that.”

The pain and weariness in his eyes was no longer concealed now. Out of the corner of Scar’s eye, Grian winced and Mumbo’s eyes dropped to the floor. 

Cub turned to Impulse. “You don’t have to stay for this, you know.”

Impulse shook his head slightly. There was something dark and distant in his expression. Scar had never seen such a thing on the face of any of the hermits. Impulse looked as though a part of him had died, the corpse left lingering behind his eyes.

Perhaps that was the truth. A part of Impulse had died, lost with one of his closest friends. Cub told him the truth. About what had happened to them. To Bdubs and Tango.

It felt impossible to believe, the kind of thing that could only be beyond belief. But he knew it was true, because this wasn’t something the other hermits would ever lie about. And because he could see it in Impulse’s expression, in everyone’s expressions, the hole where something had once been.

Scar was too tired. His body felt heavy, painful, something not his own, and his mind was weighed down just as much by the cruel reality of circumstance. He had almost died to save his friends. But he hadn’t. He’d survived, barely hanging on by the barest thread.

Tango had tried to save them too. But he hadn’t been as lucky as Scar had. And Bdubs too had faced that same reality. Maybe he’d given up, no longer left with the strength to fight fate. Scar could understand that, to an extent. He’d always been determined to go on fighting. But there were always times when that felt impossible. 

Bdubs and Tango. They were his friends. They were everyone’s friends. It left behind a hole in all of them. A heavy weight settled in Scar’s chest and lingered there, even after Grian had helped him set up his oxygen concentrator and take his medicine. Like a slab of concrete had hardened there. 

He was too worn to do anything other than lie in bed, too worn to continue conversing with the others for long, and yet he couldn’t sleep. Even when night fell, he lay awake staring at the ceiling, feeling that inescapable weight on him. 

It was on reflex that he reached towards the Vex and the power they granted him, a habit built on years and years of practice. He knew it was probably a bad idea trying to use Vex magic in his state, but as the day came to an end and Scar grew more and more tired in spite of the fact that he’d done little more than lay in bed, he had absentmindedly tried to give his arm a nudge, just enough to reach over to Jellie and lay a hand on her head. 

He’d noticed it before, of course. But he’d chalked it up to exhaustion, to his poor state, to being in a coma for two months. It had seemed a pretty reasonable explanation for why he couldn’t use his powers. He’d stopped trying before he could tell that anything was amiss.

This time, he noticed it right away. The feeling that came over him when he tried to draw on that power and found nothing. It was jarring, like thinking there was one last stair on a staircase when you were already on solid ground, a shocking absence of something that should be there but wasn’t. 

It was gone. The Vex magic. He tried to grab for it, tried to send it rushing through his veins, tried to feel the invisible wings at his back, and found nothing. 

“Hello?” He said aloud, brow furrowed in confusion. He received no answer.

Grian, asleep in a chair next to Scar’s bed, didn’t stir. The sun had barely begun to set, but he was already deep asleep. Maybe he’d been just as tired as Scar, from however long he’d been keeping vigil at Scar’s bedside. 

Cub, who had also stuck around, sat in the corner reading a book, possibly his own journal of plans or redstone designs. He lowered the book slightly to peer over the top at Scar, expression questioning.

Cub. Cub would understand. He was someone Scar could talk to about this. 

“They’re gone,” he said. It was all he needed to say. He could see the recognition in Cub’s eyes immediately. 

Cub pulled himself up from his chair, tucking his crutch under one arm as he limped over to Scar’s bedside. He took a seat next to Scar on the bed, stretching out his injured leg with a wince.

“Did they say anything to you about it?” Cub asked. 

Scar shook his head. “No. No, they’re just…gone.”

“Hmmm,” Cub said, thoughtful. “They might still come back, though. Like they did with me. They might just be trying to spook you.”

“Oh, I guess that’s true.” But Scar didn’t really think that was the case. The Vex didn’t really mess with him like that. Or at least they hadn’t in the past. The pair of them had come to some sort of mutual agreement, to rely on each other lest they each end up hurting themselves.

Then, maybe, they’d seen his condition and decided it wasn’t worth sticking around until he’d recovered, and gone off to find some other unsuspecting victim on another world. 

Scar wasn’t sure how to feel about that. He’d hated the Vex, hated what they’d done to his friends, but had figured better him than someone else. At least he knew how to keep them in check. And they were undeniably useful to him. But, in the back of his mind, he’d always wondered. Was it really a good idea, using them this way? Was he really in control?

Now, unless they decided to come crawling back, he simply didn’t have that choice anymore. That bothered him the most, he thought. Not having a choice.

A thought crossed his mind, then, one he barely wanted to consider.

“Oh. Oh gosh, you don’t think–they didn’t decide to replace me with Gem, did they?”

“Don’t think so, don’t think so,” Cub said, confident enough that Scar’s worries were instantly alleviated. He would have been able to tell if Cub was just trying to reassure him. “Gem met the Vex in a mansion. They were going after her from the beginning, I think. Didn’t have anything to do with you.”

Scar was thankful, at least, for that. He didn’t want to be the cause of Gem’s situation, however indirectly. But he supposed it didn’t really change things. She was still indebted to the Vex.

“We should have told them. The new hermits, I mean,” Cub said. “Just because it was over for us didn’t mean they’d never approach any of our friends.”

Scar nodded in agreement. He thought he might have mentioned something about it to either Gem or Pearl, but if he had, it was just in passing. No serious warning to dissuade them from making a mistake. Gem had been in the same position Cub and Scar had, with no solid information to make an informed decision. No, it must have been even more difficult for her, faced with the situation at hand. She had just wanted to help everyone. The way Scar had. 

So many awful things had happened so quickly. Oh, how Scar hated it. Surely they were due a break now, weren’t they. After everything?

Maybe this was their break? Maybe all the bad stuff was over?

But between the loss of Bdubs and Tango, Gem’s situation, and everyone else’s struggles, Scar wasn’t so sure it was.

Chapter Text

Outside his starter house, Beef paused, taking a moment to look it over. It wasn’t his best work–in hindsight maybe it had been a mistake to try for a modern style starter base when both terracotta and concrete were hard to come by. He’d ended up having to use mostly smooth stone and a little bit of quartz, which didn’t look great, but fixing it wasn’t his top priority at the moment. He’d just wanted to whip something up quickly to replace the bare-bones shack he had been holed up in for the past two months.

In fact, Beef wasn’t really sure what his top priority was now. Before, it had been working towards bringing everyone back to spawn, but now that everyone was back…well, he supposed the goal now was to get the server fixed or unlocked or something like that. Beef didn’t have the technical skills to begin to help there. 

Then should he just start…getting back to normal? Start treating Season 9 like any other season of Hermitcraft? He wasn’t so sure. He’d had big plans for this season, plans that he’d been eager to get started on before everything went horribly wrong, but traveling several thousand blocks away so he could spend months working on trading cards seemed like a bit much. Who knew if they’d even be on the server for long enough to make it worthwhile.

Maybe he should think of another project, a smaller one. Or maybe there was something else he should be doing. Beef didn’t know. It felt like he didn’t know a lot of things these days. 

But he wasn’t here just to stare at his house and ponder the future. He had a meeting to attend, and he’d really rather not be late under these circumstances.

He turned his back on the house and started off down the narrow streets of spawn town, surrounded by other starter houses. It was pretty lackluster by Hermitcraft standards, and probably only passable by any other standards. That was to say, it didn’t look particularly nice. 

He passed by a handful of other starter bases–False’s stone tower, simple but with a nice gradient, Etho’s aesthetically lopsided house that he’d slowly added onto over the past two months, Doc’s sandstone house covered with leaves and vines, and Ren’s camper van parked next to it. Simple as their little spawn town may be, Beef thought that a bit of life was finally returning to it. It didn’t feel so empty, the way it had when it was only the seven of them, nor did it feel quite so miserable as the few weeks after they’d received that horrible news.

It still hurt to think about that. But it was a duller hurt, not so sharp and persistent. Maybe that was just what happened with time. He wondered if it was the same for the others as well. 

He hoped so. Hoped things were slowly getting better not just for him, but for everyone. 

Behind him, he heard footsteps on the cobble. Beef turned to see XB jogging down the path, slowing to a stop next to him. XB gave him a sharp-toothed smile, looking a lot more relaxed than he’d been when he’d first arrived at spawn, hands stuffed casually in his hoodie pockets and posture loose and open. Maybe it gave credence to Beef’s theory, that things were getting better for everyone. Bit by bit.

“Hey man, how goes it?” 

Beef hummed. “Oh, alright, I’d say, given the–well, given everything. You?”

“Pretty good. Here’s hoping it’s all uphill from here for all of us.”

“Oh goodness, I hope so. I don’t want to even think of how things could get worse.” Beef shuddered at the thought. 

“Hey, I’d say we’re due at least a bit of good luck from here on out. It’s only fair.” 

“The universe definitely owes us one. Hey, maybe Doc can even call in a favor from the Devs. That might be the closest we’d get to that.” 

XB chuckled at that. “Oh yeah? That’d be pretty sweet.” 

Then again, Beef wasn’t sure what exactly the Devs would be able to do for them. They weren’t gods after all. They couldn’t bring back the dead, or undo all the trauma everyone had gone through. 

Maybe they could make it easier to edit maps. But that felt like a rather selfish wish.

The pair of them continued on their way down the rugged street. It wasn’t a long walk, spawn town was pretty compressed after all.

Beef stopped at the door of Joe’s restaurant/dining hall/cafeteria/whatever that had gone from being an unofficial meeting place to an official one. He pushed open the door to be immediately greeted by Joe.

“Howdy Beef, Howdy XB. Welcome to HermEATS.”

Someone groaned from inside.

“We are not calling it that,” Grian’s voice said. “It sounds like–like some sort of meal-packing corporation. The hub world kind, not the fun kind.”

“Oh, you’re right,” Joe said, sounding only slightly disappointed. “We definitely can’t call it that then.”

]Ignoring the pair of them, Beef moved past Joe and into Not-HermEATS. He paused and took a moment to look around. The place had changed pretty substantially from the last time he’d been in here. Since the beginning of the season, it had been a pretty utilitarian place, all hard rows of tables and benches like something out of a medieval tavern. Now, the interior had been completely overhauled. The middle section had been turned into a circular meeting spot, with bright wool cushions in cyan and yellow mixed in with a handful of more traditional wooden chairs. In the center of the circle was a small table with a bit of yellow carpet underneath it. The cobble floor had been replaced with spruce planks.

The rest of the place had been segmented off into smaller nooks, separated by walls of azalea, leaving more private areas for a few people to gather, with a few spare tables and chairs off to the side of the meeting area. 

There were way more lights and greenery in general, and the place felt more inviting than it had before. It had more of a small coffee shop vibe than a tavern now.

“Like it?” Joe asked. When Beef nodded, he said, “Well, you’ll have to give your accolades to Pearl and Ren for that one. They did most of the work after all.”

“Looks really nice,” Beef said. Pearl and Ren, both already sitting in the circle along with a handful of others, beamed at him. 

A small group of hermits had gathered already. Stress and Iskall sat shoulder to shoulder, lounging on a pair of cushions. Next to them was Xisuma, sitting in a regular chair and looking rather uncomfortable. Doc was beside him, looking only marginally more relaxed, with Ren sprawled out on a cushion on his other side. Opposite them was Cleo, who sat next to an open space that was probably meant for Joe.

He and XB had arrived pretty much just on time, so Beef had expected most of the hermits to be there already. But as he looked around, it struck him just how small the group really was. It definitely wasn’t uncommon for hermits to miss meetings for one reason or another. Mumbo had a tendency to forget both the date and the time of meetings, Etho only attended if he thought it was important enough, and TFC and XB both disliked being in such a large group.

But Etho and XB were both here today, and still. So many missing faces.

He made his way over to one of the empty chairs at the circle, cushions all already taken. The others were still discussing the decor.

“I was thinking we might be able to make beanbags,” Pearl said. “With some melon seeds and bedsheets.”

“I mean, that’s a lot of melon seeds,” Ren said.

“True. But I’m sure someone has a melon farm. Or beetroot seeds could work too.”

“Melons, maybe. But trust me dude, no one has a beetroot farm.”

He settled into a seat next to Etho, who had pulled his chair a ways away from the circle. These sorts of round table meetings had never been comfortable for him, but there really wasn’t any other good way to have a meeting. Behind him, XB sat at one of the side tables, away from what little crowd there was.

Who all was missing? Beef took a quick look around. No Jevin, who was easy to spot in a crowd. No Wels or Hypno either. Or Keralis. Same with Gem, who had been at the last unofficial meeting and had seemed rather uncomfortable with it for some reason. Zedaph, too, was absent, although Impulse had arrived despite looking like he’d rather be anywhere else, sitting at one of the tables away from the group. TFC and Mumbo also weren’t there, but at least that wasn’t a surprise. 

And, of course…

Well, even if everyone had attended, there would still be faces missing. That was just their reality now. 

There was, at least, one face that had been missing for all the unofficial meetings thus far. Across the circle from Beef, in a spot left free of chairs, was Scar. He sat in his wheelchair, looking haggard and exhausted, although still in good spirits . At his side stood Grian, as if he were a diligent sentinel. Cub sat on his other side, looking far more relaxed, with his crutch propped up against the side of his chair. 

In spite of everything, Scar had come back to them. That was something to be glad for. Beef let the burst of positivity in his chest swallow the hole that had threatened to reopen, thinking about their missing friends.

“I guess we’ll give it a couple more minutes,” Joe said, watching the door. “Just to see if anyone else arrives.”

As if on cue, Mumbo came running through the door, sweaty and out of breath. “Sorry! I’m sorry! Lost track of time…”

He joined the rest of them at the circle, trying to surreptitiously wipe the sweat from his brow.

“Well, on that note,” Joe said, with one final glance out the door to check for stragglers. “Guess we ought to begin.”

The meeting began with what was, apparently, a very important topic–the name of Joe’s restaurant. 

“I mean, we can’t even agree on a name for the town.” Cleo sighed. “Not sure how we’ll agree on one for this place.”

“Ah, if only my very kind and supportive friend, Zombiecleo, hadn’t vetoed all my perfectly good names, such as, of course,  ‘ À la Joe-de’ and even ‘The Her-efectory’, then–” Joe was cut off by Cleo lightly elbowing him in the ribs. “Ouch!”

“So Joe’s no longer allowed to suggest names. Even for his own build,” she said.

While Joe pouted exaggeratedly in the background, the other threw out a few more lackluster names for the build. It didn’t help that nobody was really sure if it was supposed to be a restaurant, a cafe, a tavern, a dining hall, or a meeting room. Eventually, Ren chimed in with a suggestion.

“How ‘bout we call it ‘The Soup Bowl’?”

Pearl perked up at that. “Mmmh, soup. I like that.”

“Where in the world did that come from?” Doc raised an eyebrow at him, but didn’t seem to have any protests against the name.”

“Well, I figured, we’re all kinda in a bowl already, what with the mountains surrounding us and all. And this is where we go to eat. And there has been a lot of soup served here. Hence, Soup Bowl.”

“It’s not a horrible pun,” Cleo said. “Which I think makes it pretty good by our standards.”

“Alright!” Ren stretched out his arm towards the center of the table. “All in favor of ‘The Soup Bowl’, say ‘aye’!” 

There were enough ‘ayes’ to make the name more or less official.

“Awesome dude! Hey, maybe next week we can even decide on an official name for this here town.”

“Well,” Grian said, “that might be pushing it.”

With that matter settled, Joe shifted the conversation to an actually important topic.

Said topic was kind of the point of the meeting in the first place. To check in with everyone, to see if anyone needed help. Which wasn’t quite as useful as it had been in seasons past, as those who probably needed the most help hadn’t shown up in the first place. Still, probably good to check in. 

“It’d be nice if we could fix up the paths,” Scar said. “It’s a bit rough on the ole wheels, you know?”

“Oh geez, I’m sorry about dat,” Stress said with a wince. She had been one of the ones to do most of the path-making at the beginning of the season. They had been low on resources, and so the roads had been quickly thrown together with cobble to keep everything from getting too muddy. Nobody had thought to change it since, what with everything else going on. 

“We’ll get on it for sure,” Iskall added from beside her. 

“Maybe we can make them look a little nicer too, while we’re at it,” Cleo said. “No offense, but they’re pretty damn ugly.”

Nobody disagreed with that. 

“Hm, I could use a bit of help too, if anyone’s up for some fishing,” XB chimed in from the corner. “My little fella needs some tropical fishes, y’know. And me and water right now, it’s kinda…yeah.” He shrugged his shoulders with a chuckle, tinged with just a bit of nervousness.

There was a moment of awkward silence, nobody quite sure whether they should laugh too or not. It was broken by the voice of Scar, full of cheery faux-obliviousness.

“Oh! The asscolotl! I’ve heard all about this.”

At his side, Grian doubled over, fighting not to burst into laughter. 

“Yep, the asscolotl,” XB said, looking relieved that the atmosphere had lightened. “I’d rather he get some fishes to eat rather than my hand, yah know?”

Hearing Scar say it was funny. Somehow, XB repeating it was even funnier. The rest of the hermits burst into laughter.

It was good, Beef thought, for them as a group to be able to…bounce back, in a way. To share a laugh, in spite of everything. It was better, certainly, than wallowing in misery. 

That was what he thought, anyway. But Impulse in the corner, slumped down in his chair, caught his eye. His expression was dark, lips pressed together in a thin line. 

Beef wondered what he was thinking. Was he upset that the others could laugh and joke like that while he was still grieving two of his closest friends? Did it feel like they were dishonoring their memory, somehow? Or did he wish he could join in with everyone else? Maybe none of those. Maybe something else. Beef couldn’t know without asking him, and he got the feeling that Impulse didn’t want to be asked.

The laughter died down, with Joe and Cleo agreeing to take a fishing trip along with anyone else who wanted to come for the next Hermits Helping Hermits. The topic of conversation moved to the progress on Xisuma’s helmet.

“We’re getting there,” Doc said. “Figured we could substitute parts from an ender chest, which seems pretty promising. The mechanics are similar, but we’re still working on backwards engineering.”

“I don’t mean to pressure you or anything, man,” Ren said. “But you got any idea of when it might be fixed?”

“It’s hard to say,” Xisuma said. Beef had almost forgotten he was there, silent and slouched in his seat, as if he wanted to be invisible. “I don’t think it’ll be any less than a month. And that’s if everything comes together pretty quickly.”

“Oh, well, that’s not that bad,” Ren said, although he did look a little deflated. Beef understood the feeling. They all wanted to believe that a fix for the server was right around the corner, and they’d be able to go see their family and friends once again. Or that at least there’d be some definitive date when everything would be fixed.

“We really are making progress, though,” Xisuma said, although it sounded a bit like he was begging for them to believe him. “Really.”

“We know, it’s fine,” False said from beside him. Her eyes moved back and forth between X and the door, as if she were waiting for something to happen. What that might be, Beef didn’t know. “You don’t need to sweat it so much. You and Etho and Doc are the ones doing all the work, after all.”

Xisuma nodded, but it didn’t seem as if he was taking her words to heart. Etho shifted back and forth beside Beef, not very comfortable with being included in the conversation.

“Well, is there anything we can do to help in the meantime?” Joe asked X.

X thought for a moment. “I suppose…it wouldn’t hurt to have more materials. Iron, redstone, gold, and quartz, mainly. And, uh, more ender chests would be good. They’re a bit troublesome to craft and we’ve already broken a few.”

“I guess the best way to get ender chests would probably be mining obsidian over end raiding,” Cub added.”

“Well, if a bunch of us get together for it, it won’t be so bad,” Cleo said. “We can make it a Hermits Helping Hermits thing too.”

The discussion continued from there, working out ideas and schedules. Beef didn’t have anything particular to contribute, and so he silently listened until the talking began to die down. 

“I think that’s probably about all,” Joe said. “Unless anyone else has something to add?”

“I got something, I got something,” Cubfan leaned forward in his seat slightly, clasping his hands together. “I was thinking we oughta all get together and do something. Play a minigame, maybe? Unwind a bit, from all that’s happened.”

“Oh, I think that’s a great idea,” Scar said. 

“Any ideas for what to play?” Joe asked. 

“I’ve gotta few,” Cub said, leaning back in his chair. “But I figure we should go with something that’s not quite as intense as my games. I was thinking maybe a board game? We could probably make cards or something from paper. And Stat Poker is a classic. But if anyone else has any ideas?”

Beef decided to jump in, spur of the moment. “I sort of do. I was thinking of making a trading card game for this season, although that’s kinda gotten waylaid with, well, you know. But maybe I could get working on it, though it’s not gonna be ready anytime soon. So maybe we should have something else scheduled for the nearer future.”

He could hear various oohs and ahhs of excitement from the group, enough to make his ears flush red.

“Good idea,” Cub nodded. “Good idea. I’m hyped to see what you come up with.”

“Aww, thank you.”

“As for a quicker-to-make game, maybe playing cards? There’s a lot of different games you could play with just those.”

“Ooh, or monopoly! Hermopoly!” Scar cut in.

“Of course you want to play monopoly.” Grian rolled his eyes affectionately. 

“Cards would probably be easiest to make. But a super simple board wouldn’t be too bad,” Pearl said.

They continued bouncing ideas off each other, coming up with a short list of games to play and a time and date. And with that, the meeting concluded on what Beef thought was quite a nice note. 

Maybe. His eyes kept drifting over towards the corner. Impulse still didn’t look happy, he thought. Beef felt a bit bad, as if they had been ignoring him all this time. But he gave off the distinct air that he didn’t want to participate in this meeting and had dragged himself over out of a sense of responsibility and nothing more, and so Beef said nothing on the matter. He wondered if the others had noticed too, if they felt the same. Or if they had enough worries on their mind already and were just desperate to stick to lighthearted topics. 

“Well, that’s that,” Joe said. “I’d say, all in all, a good meeting.” 

“Gotcha. We gotta get going now,” Iskall said, standing up from their seat alongside Stress. “Gots our rounds to make.”

“Of course.”

“See yah later,” Stress said, giving the others a wave as she filed out of the meeting room behind Iskall. With the pair of them gone and the meeting officially over, everyone started saying their goodbyes and getting ready for whatever was ahead. 

Beef hung around, debating whether or not he should approach Impulse. Better now than putting him on the spot during the meeting, probably. But as soon as he’d made up his mind and turned towards the solitary table, Impulse instantly rose from his seat and made a beeline for the exit.

He brushed past Beef, who attempted for a moment to reach out to him, before faltering.

“Impul–” 

But before he could even finish, Impulse had pushed past the rest of the hermits and disappeared down the street. 

Well, if he just needed a bit of time to himself, Beef didn’t want to pester him.

Somewhat deflated, he left through the front door alongside the rest of the hermits at the meeting. Outside, the sun was just beginning to set. Most of the others would probably be returning home for the day, either to rest or work on some smaller details of their starter base. 

He walked down the road alongside a small handful of other hermits, hearing the wings overhead as the rest made their way to their more distant bases. He looked up to watch them and only barely managed to avoid tripping on a loose cobblestone.

It really was an awful road. 

But they could fix it. They could fix a lot of things, in some way. He hoped so, at least.

Beef thought maybe he’d check in early for the night. He had something to get to work on tomorrow, after all.

Chapter Text

The meeting must have lasted longer than Stress thought, as by the time she and Iskall stepped out onto the road, it was already early evening.

“Well,” Iskall said, stopping beside her. “It’s looking like we won’t be having much time for our rounds.”

“Aw geez. And ‘ere I was hoping we could get ta everyone today.” She thought for a moment, looking up and down the street at the other hermits filing out of the Soup Bowl. “We can probably make it ‘round the town, at least.”

“True, true. You’ve got the shulkers on you?” 

“‘Course I do. Easier just to bring it to the meeting, innit?” 

Iskall hummed. “I think Zed’s is closer.” They gestured down the road with a tilt of their head. “Wanna go over there first?”

“Sounds good ta me.”

She set off down the road alongside Iskall, keeping to a relatively leisurely pace. They only had two stops on their route, after all, and the area had been so thoroughly spawnproofed that there wasn’t a chance anything might come jumping out at them if they were caught out at night. Still, it wouldn’t be good to dawdle. It was just common courtesy not to go knocking on people’s doors in the middle of the night.

Thankfully, it was still quite light out when the pair of them reached Zedaph and Impulse’s cave, nestled off to the side of spawn town at the base of a mountain. Despite the exterior being mostly unchanged from the surrounding terrain, there was still a small, singular door installed at the entrance. Iskall stepped forward and knocked lightly on the wood, stepping back to wait.

A few moments later, the door creaked open to reveal the face of Zedaph. He looked better than their last visit, Stress noted, although his wooly hair was still a mess and there were dark circles around his eyes.

“Oh hey, Iskall, Stress.” He smiled faintly at them, opening the door wider. “Come on in.”

Zedaph’s cave looked the same as it had last time, messy and dark, which was apparently how he liked it. Most of it was still natural stone, with only the floor smoothed over. In one corner was a small living area, crammed with all the basic things a person might need–tables, chairs, cabinets, and the like. The rest of the area was a mess of redstone components and balls of yarn strewn about in piles. 

“Well, er, don’t look too hard,” Zedaph said, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly.

“Hey, no judgment here,” Iskall said, “But you know, if you do wanna clean up, we’d be happy to help.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Zedaph said with a wave of his hand. He leaned against the back of a chair, turning to face the pair of them. “I mean, I kinda like it a little messy.”

“Well, in that case, we won’t bother you about it.” 

As Stress looked about, a thought crossed her mind. “Is Impulse around?” She assumed he’d left with everyone else at the end of the meeting, although she hadn’t really been paying attention to who was coming and going. But she hadn’t seen him on the walk over, so either he’d rushed off awful fast or had yet to return home.

Zedaph frowned. “Yeah, he came back a few minutes ago. He’s not having a great day, so he’s off in his bedroom.” He gestured towards a door on one side of the cave, presumably that led to said bedroom. “I told him he didn’t have to go to the meeting, but, well.” He shrugged.

“Aw dear.” Stress tried to think back to the meeting, to if she’d noticed anything off with Impulse then. But she vaguely remembered that he’d been off to the side, and her attention hadn’t strayed much from those within the circle. 

It felt bad, to think that she might have been oblivious to what was going on with her friend.

“Is he okay?” Iskall asked.

“I think so, yeah. He’s just…not ready, you know? To get back into the swing of things. It’s hard to see everyone else moving on when you just can’t yet, you know?” Zed looked away, lips pressed together like he was trying to fight off the earliest hint of tears before they could form. “I mean, I kind of feel the same. And I don’t like these sorts of group meetings to begin with. It just makes it even harder, y’know?”

“Oh,” Stress said, not knowing what else to say. She felt guilty, like she’d stepped out of her lane just by being cheerful. Because the truth was, she didn’t know what Zed and Impulse were going through. She’d considered Bdubs and Tango her friends, of course, but if she were being honest with herself, she didn’t really know them that well. Sure, they’d talked a good number of times at meetings and occasionally met up for projects, but she hadn’t been close with them in the way she was with Iskall and False, the way Impulse and Zed had been with Tango and Bdubs. 

“I’m sorry,” she said at last. “I just…I guess I just don’t know what the right fing to do is.”

Zedaph gave her a weak smile and a shrug. “I don’t think any of us do. But I think that if you can laugh and be happy, you should. I mean, I wish I could. And it’s what those two would’ve wanted.”

“Still. Maybe it was callous, acting dat way in front of Impulse.”

“Maybe,” Zed said. “Or maybe I’d just be worse, going all quiet the minute he stepped into the room. Like I said, I dunno. This…doesn’t happen. It isn’t supposed to happen.” He clenched his hands into fists at his side. He looked like he might cry again. 

“Can I give you a hug?” She asked on a whim. Maybe it was too presumptuous, but it was just…he looked so lonely there, all of a sudden.

Zed nodded silently, and so Stress stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him. From the side, Iskall leaned in to embrace the both of them. 

Beneath her hands, Zed shuddered. She rubbed circles into his back. 

“It’s okay. You can cry, love.”

She felt Zed shake his head against her shoulder. “Don’t wanna. It just makes me feel worse. The crying.”

“Well, that’s okay too,” Stress said, pulling him a little tighter.

The three of them remained like that for a long moment before Zed pulled away, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.

“I’m oka–I’ll be okay now. Thanks.”

“Of course,” Iskall said. “If you ever want another hug, just say the word.”

“Okay,” Zed said. He gave his head a shake as if to banish the last hint of his sadness. “Oh, I guess you guys probably have places to be. Sorry to hold you up.”

“Aw, it’s no trouble at all,” Stress assured him. “We aren’t making many rounds today, not wif how late it’s getting.”

It was difficult to tell what time it was from inside Zed’s cave, but she guessed the sun was definitely on its way to setting right now.

“Speaking of which,” Iskall said, pulling a shulker box from his inventory. “Got your delivery right here.” He passed the box over to Zed, who stumbled slightly under the weight before hefting it up to his chest.

“Thanks, you guys.” He pushed open the lid with his chin to peer inside. “Wow! This all looks great.”

“Should be all sorts of stuff in dere. Bread and golden carrots and the like. For sharing wif Impulse, of course. Oh, and we found a couple of stick the other day dat seemed pretty good, if you wanna carve anymore knitting needles.” Stress looked around the messy cave, at the balls of yarn and half-finished hats and scarves. “How’s it going, by the way? The knitting?”

Zed perked up at that. “Yeah, yeah, it’s been pretty good.” He set the box down at his feet and pulled a couple of brightly colored scarves from his inventory. “Look, I finally figured out how to make them stop getting all curly at the sides. Turns out I just had to change the stitch I used. Felt a bit silly, but it was an easy fix. And I’m trying to add different colors now too, although I think I miscounted some of the rows here.” He held up one of the scarves, pink and magenta striped. It looked just fine to Stress, very lovely. “And I tried a pattern with cables for this, although it came out kinda rough. I wasn’t confident enough to mix in other colors.” He held up the lime green scarf in turn. “Really, I’d like to try more new things, but string is such a nightmare to work with. Ah, if only I could just hop on over to a hub world for some proper yarn and actual needles.” He sighed.

“Yeah, I imagine that’d be rough,” Iskall said. “Apparently X and co are making some good progress on getting the server open, but he says it’ll still be a month, at least.”

“Alas. Well, I guess it gives me something to look forward to that isn’t…sharing bad news, I guess?”  Zed said, shoulders slumping slightly. 

“Ya know, I’m curious. How’d you even git knitting patterns in the first place?” Stress asked, turning the conversation away from a place Zed clearly didn’t want it to go down. 

It worked, thankfully, and Zed perked up again. “Oh, a friend–er, a friend of a friend, I mean, kinda gave them to me a while back. He was really into knitting for a while, and I really wanted something to distract myself when I found them still in my kept inventory. I thought I’d be a bit of fun. I’ve always liked trying new things.”

“Aw, dat sounds lovely. I’m shore your friend would be glad to see wot you’ve done.”

“Maybe,” Zedaph said with a shrug. “Oh, by the way.” He held out the scarves in his hands towards Iskall and Stress. “These are for you. I’m thinking of trying to make one for everybody at some point.”

Stress took the magenta striped scarf out of his hands. It was softer than she’d expected, for something made out of string. “Aw, fank you Zed! I love it!” She cooed.

“Oh my goodness.” At her side, Iskall had taken their scarf as well. 

Stress wrapped the scarf around her neck with a flourish. “‘Ow do I look?”

“Perfect.” Zed gave her a thumbs up.

“Well, this is just wonderful Zed,” Iskall said, donning his own scarf.

“Aw…” Zed rubbed the back of his head, looking embarassed. “Well, since you two come by all the time, I figured I’d make them for you first.”

Those words got Stress thinking. “Does it bother you, that the others don’t come by so much?”

Zed thought for a moment before shaking his head. “No, no I don’t think so. It’s way too overwhelming, having everyone smothering you.”

Before, when everyone had only just arrived home, there had been a lot of hermits eager to shower those who were struggling the most with care and attention. They all wanted to do something to help, all wanted to offer something of themselves in some way, but it had all been too much when everyone had the same idea of the role they should play. It had taken longer than it should have for them to realize they were often doing more harm than good, until Ren had forced them to address the matter at one of their unofficial meetings.

“Can you please stop doing this?” He’d asked, clearly frustrated and stressed. “I don’t need to be treated like I’m gonna fall apart at any second. Or like I can’t do anything for myself. You aren’t helping.”

It had been an important wake up call, and had raised a lot of other questions. The very concept of “who were struggling the most” was flawed from the start, everyone had been affected severely by what had happened, and all in different ways, and it wasn’t as if everyone had the same needs. 

But just leaving everyone to their own devices wasn’t an option either, not when several of them were barely able to care for themselves. They couldn’t simply leave Wels and Jevin to start dying of starvation, even if the pair would rather be left alone. Even though none of them had any kind of training in how to help someone through that level of trauma, they hadn’t had any choice but to try, no matter how clumsy they might be. There just weren’t other options.

The imperfect solution they’d implemented was to have everyone check in for meetings, and to send a couple of hermits around to those who couldn’t or wouldn’t attend and make sure they had everything they needed. The plan had taken a bit of time to figure out, but that was how Stress and Iskall had come to be in their role, traveling around the server.

Not that the others wouldn’t show up, if their presence was wanted. It was just…some people needed distance. It was the best they could figure out, under the circumstances.

“I guess it’s good to talk to somebody, not just stay holed up in this cave. Impulse doesn’t really do much talking, these days.”

“Ah…” Stress said with a frown. She was worried about Impulse, too, but not sure what to do for him. She had her suspicions that he had only shown up for the meeting to ensure the two of them wouldn’t bother him. 

“It’s starting to get pretty late,” Zed said. “Don’t wanna keep you too long.”

Yikes, that was true. She’d lost track of time, getting caught up in the conversation with Zedaph.

“I mean, we can stay longer if you’d like,” Iskall offered, but Zed just shook his head.

“No, it’s fine. I’m kinda tired anyway, so I might turn in for the night.”

“Well, you take care, ok. If you ever need anyfing…”

“Of course.” Zed gave them a smile as he led them back over to the door. It was a small smile, a weak smile, but to Stress, it looked like a genuine one.

Hypno’s house, which was technically also Jevin and Wels’, though it was unlikely they would see them, was at the opposite end of town, at the end of a long street. It was never supposed to be a permanent residence for anybody, although it had quickly become one after Jevin refused to leave, and so the original exterior was simple and plain. Since then, Hypno had built up the outside to make more space inside, the structure formed around the original build like a shell. Still simple. Stress suspected that Hypno had other things on his mind than aesthetics. 

She knocked once on the wooden door and waited. The inside of the house was dark and silent, and if she didn’t know better, she might have thought nobody was home. But a minute later, the door opened to reveal the face of Hypno. 

He didn’t look well. Drained was the word perhaps, or exhausted, but it looked more like he’d been hollowed out. 

“Hi Hypno,” She said, suddenly hesitant about what to say to him. “...’ow are you doing?”

Hypno looked at her for a moment before giving a shrug that might have looked casual in any other circumstance. “About as well as I’m looking. Which is to say, great.”

His voice was casual too, and Stress might have believed it if not for the look in his eyes.

“Are you really?” Iskall asked, brow creased in concern.

Hypno grimaced, his expression accentuating the dark circles under his eyes. His voice was harder this time when he spoke. “Yeah, I am. I’m not the one who got stuck in a death loop.”

To Stress, it sounded like he was saying ‘my problems aren’t worth talking about.’ As if the only bad thing that could happen to a person was a death loop. 

“Even so,” Iskall said. “We’ve all gone through a lot here.”

Hypno shrugged again. 

“It can’t be easy for you either,” Stress added. “Taking care of two people all by yourself. If you need help–”

Hypno’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t talk about them like that. They aren’t some sort of–of burden. They’re my friends.”

“That’s not–I wasn’t…”

He sighed heavily, taking a moment to compose himself. “I know. It’s just…it’s weird. Wels and Jevin are my buddies. We used to laugh and joke and mess around together. But now–I dunno how I’m supposed to treat them anymore. What are you supposed to do, for someone who’s gone through…something like this?”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to know that,” Iskall said. “If everyone did, there wouldn’t be any need for therapists and the like.”

“Guess so. But therapy’s not exactly an option right now.”

“It’s not,” Stress admitted. “We’re all just stumbling around. But I don’t fink it’s anyfing to beat yourself up over.”

“Mhm.” Hypno leaned against the door frame. “I just don’t wanna do something wrong. Make everything worse.”

Stress hummed sympathetically. She really didn’t know what to say to him, when she didn’t have any more answers than he did.

“How are they doing?” Iskall asked, tentatively. As if they didn’t want to know the answer. Stress couldn’t blame them. The look on Hypno’s face wasn’t promising.

Hypno took a moment to answer. “The same as last time, pretty much. I thought it was a good sign, that Jev finally started moving from that corner. TFC said something to him, I think, that reassured him a little. So I thought maybe he’d start making progress. But it’s been a month and he still doesn’t want to leave that room. Still doesn’t want to turn the lights on. And Wels…he doesn’t want to do anything. Or talk about anything. I can’t even tell if he’s listening to me or not. Just getting him to eat and sleep is a challenge.” He slumped down the door frame slightly, looking something close to defeated. “Feels wrong, talking about them like they’re not here. But they won’t talk to you themselves.”

“You can let us help, you know?” Iskall said. “No offense Hypno, but you seem pretty worn down. Taking care of both of them, and trying to deal with everything else all alone…that can’t be good for you either.”

Hypno straightened up a bit, expression closing off again. “You’re not wrong, I guess. But Jev’ll get spooked if there are other people around. And I don’t…I don’t want them to think that I’m…giving up on them.”

“I don’t fink it’s the same fing,” Stress said. “Getting help and giving up.”

“I guess.” Hypno sighed. “But everyone else has their hands full as it is, dealing with all the grief and trauma. You guys are pretty much trying to take care of everyone too. As it is…I think I got off pretty lightly.”

Stress bit her lip. She didn’t agree with that assessment, but she wasn’t sure what to say to change his mind. She remembered just how desperate he’d been for those few days when XB and Wels had gone radio silent. It seemed in some ways that the feeling had never left him.

“You got hurt too,” Iskall said, seemingly on the same wavelength as Stress. “Besides, there’s really no point in comparing how much everyone’s suffered. There’s really no ranking things like that.”

“There is when you’re talking about who should take on what responsibilities,” Hypno said. “Isn’t it the same with you two?”

Stress didn’t have a good answer for that. He wasn’t wrong, she and Iskall had volunteered themselves specifically because they hadn’t been hit quite as hard by everything that had happened. But maybe even that idea had been flawed. Maybe there were just no good answers.

“Hypno,” She tried one more time. “Please. If you need help, we’ll be here for you.”

“I don’t,” Hypno said, and the finality of his words shut down the line of conversation completely. “It’s late. I’d like to try and get some sleep, so if we’re done here…”

“I guess we are,” Iskall said reluctantly, and so Stress pulled the shulker box from her inventory, stocked with food and potions. The weight of it felt heavy in her hands as she passed it off to Hypno, who wasted no time shutting the door, leaving the pair of them standing on the doorstep of the silent-looking house in the growing darkness.

“Well,” Iskall said, massaging the bridge of their nose. “That went…well, it went some way..”

“I wonder if there was somefing we should ‘ave done.”

The pair stood in silence for a moment. And it really was completely silent, with everyone asleep at home or off in their more distant bases. It was uncanny, Stress thought. While solitude wasn’t rare on Hermitcraft, there was almost always someone up and about for those who wanted company. Here, there weren't even the various mob sounds to distract from the silence.

“I guess we should turn in for the night, huh?” Iskall said at last.

“Yeah.” With the sun finally having set, she was suddenly aware of just how tired she was. We’ll continue tomorrow, I suppose.”

They set off down the street, careful not to trip over any of the misplaced stones on the road. Even though everything was well lit at nighttime, it was still easy to take a wrong step. They continued on to their adjacent starter bases, Iskall’s little modern house sitting beside Stress’s cottage with a mushroom roof. The two bases couldn’t have looked more disconnected. Not that Stress minded that much, she was just glad to live next to her closest friend.

She was glad she had the opportunity to do that. 

Iskall yawned, stopping at the door of their house. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“‘Night, Iskall.”

“Goodnight, Stress.”

And with that, the pair of them turned in for the night. Tomorrow, they would reconvene, and visit those who had been too distant to reach today. But for now, they would rest. Although Stress wasn’t sure just how much sleep she would get.

Chapter Text

The next morning seemed to come too soon, or maybe it had just been a restless night. Iskall awoke tangled in their sheets to sunlight streaming in through the big open windows. One of the downsides to having a modern house. Iskall yawned loudly, wiping the gunk out of their eyes, and sat up. 

There was something they had to do today, wasn’t there? Iskall, still groggy, searched through their memories for the answer. Ah, yes, they remembered now. The check-ups. They hadn’t gotten around to everyone yesterday, having been sidelined by the meeting. 

Iskall stood up from their bed, ambling over to the cauldron that served as a sink to wash their face. They’d slept in their clothes, although that wasn’t unusual. Iskall gave their shirt a sniff. It smelled clean enough, and it wasn’t like Stress would hesitate to tell them if they smelled bad. 

They scarfed down a quick breakfast of a boiled egg and sweet berry slathered toast that would hopefully serve to wake them up a little. It was at times like this that Iskall really missed the luxuries that came from having access to modded hub worlds with a few button clicks. What they would do for a cup of coffee! Maybe they could make some sort of substitute with cocoa beans, if they could figure out how. They were pretty sure Stress was already boiling spruce leaves to ease her tea cravings. 

Alas, one more thing to look forward to when they finally got unquarantined. Though knowing it was still a month or more off soured the mood, somewhat. 

They finished up their breakfast and headed out the door into the early morning sun. Stress was already wide awake, leaning against her cottage waiting for them. 

“Hallo, Stress. Good morning!”

Stress grinned at them, clearly in a better mood after a night’s rest. “‘Ello to you too, Iskall. You ready to get going?”

In response, Iskall yawned loudly.

Stress snorted with laughter, giving them a pat on the shoulder. “Well, dat’ll ‘ave to do.” They thought for a moment, hand on their chin. “I guess we should start with TFC. He’s at least got a house in town.”

“Well, assuming he’s at his house.” Which was highly unlikely. TFC probably spent a good 90% of his time down in the mines, and that was one thing that had stayed the same while everything else had changed.

Honestly, he probably didn’t need checking in on. But he hadn’t been at the meeting, and so Iskall and Stress dutifully headed to his starter house on the outskirts of town.

Unsurprisingly, he was absent, although he had stuck a sign on the front door presumably in anticipation of their arrival. 

Hey,

I’m doing just fine if you come by. Could use some coal as always. It’s a pain to gather now.

-TFC

Coal had been his request on their last visit as well, and so Stress pulled a shulker box full of it from her inventory, alongside food and iron. Iskall didn’t think TFC needed those, but there wasn’t any harm in it. He had left his box from last week at the door, which Stress swapped out for the new one. Honestly, even though they were giving out the shulker boxes for free, getting the hermits to return them might be a good idea. It wasn’t like they had an unlimited number of shells. A shulker farm wasn’t at the top of anyone’s priority list at the moment. Nor was end busting, for that matter.

“Well,” Stress said with a shrug. “I guess dat’s all?” She sounded unsure.

“Unless we wanna go wandering through tunnels for hours, that is,” Iskall said. Which hopefully wasn’t her plan. They had other hermits to visit. 

“It’s just a formality anyway, I suppose. Not like we talked to Jevin or Wels either.”

“True enough.”

The rest of the hermits all lived a fair distance apart, and so the pair of them donned their elytra wings. Out of the remaining hermits, Gem was closest, just over the mountain range to the south. 

She had based in a birch forest once again, still at least in close enough proximity to town to not have too much of a trip. She’d already done a lot of work on her base, or at least a starter base of sorts. A large, custom birch tree formed the centerpiece, having been hollowed out for an interior stairway and windows and branching out into a full tree house at the top. Most of the design work was in the forest below, however, many of the birch trees clearly designed by Gem herself, and the forest done up with crescent moon shaped light posts, mossy rocks, and what seemed to be fake gemstones made out of light blue glazed terracotta. There were some lanterns floating in the air and a “magical path” to repel monsters that led to Gem’s house. Said magical path was actually just bordered by a few layers of moss carpets, but Iskall thought it was a nice idea.

Before they could announce their presence, Gem flew out from inside. “Stress! Iskall! It’s great to see you!” She gave both of them a quick hug. “How are you two doing?”

“Hallo, Gem,” Iskall said with a smile. She seemed in good spirits, at least. They’d been worried about her, given the whole situation with the Vex, but was pretty sure she was working with Cub to handle it. 

“‘Ow are you doing?”

Gem bounced slightly on the heels of her feet. “I’m great, just fine! Thanks for stopping by. You don’t need to, but I appreciate the effort.”

“We’ll, it is our job,” Stress said. “But I’da stopped by anyway. Nice to see you again.”

“Oh, I guess that’s true. Sorry for missing the meeting. I kinda got caught up with my work, you know?”

Stress raised an eyebrow at that. “And it doesn’t have anything to do with avoiding False?”

The smile on Gem’s face turned into a nervous one. She fidgeted with the end of her braid, looking uncomfortable. “I’m not avoiding her. I just…she doesn’t want to be around me. And I can’t blame her for that, after…after everything.” She sighed. “It would just be invasive to approach her before she’s ready.”

Stress looked disappointed once again, but Gem changed the subject before she could push anymore.

“Oh, by the way, since you guys are delivering things to the other hermits, I’ve gathered up a bunch of stuff myself. I’m not sure how useful it’ll be, but maybe Pearl or someone could use it for the town?

She pulled a shulker box out of her inventory. “It’s got some melons and pumpkins. A bunch of wool too. I’ve got a little farm going.”

Iskall took the shulker from her. “Well, I think Pearl was looking for melon seeds. So she might appreciate it.”

“Oh, that’s good. I’m glad.”

Stress gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder. “‘Ow sweet! This is great, Gem.”

“Well, of course!” Iskall chimed in. “Gem is Great.”

“Thank…you.” Gem said, looking a bit sheepish. “That’s a nice thing to say…” 

“If you’d like, we’ve got stuff for you too. Nothing specific, but there’s food and stuff.”

“Oh, I don’t really need anything like that.” Gem looked around for a moment, seeming a bit unsure of herself. “Um…do you mind if I ask for something else? I mean, you probably don’t have it, but it’d be nice if you’d be able to deliver sometime.”

“Sure, what is it?”

Gem chewed her lip, looking nervous. “Um…I really would like some player heads of the hermits…for…reasons. I know Cleo collects some, so maybe if you could ask her if she has some spare? But you don’t have to go out of your way or anything.”

“I don’t think we ‘ave a lot of heads this season,” Stress said. “Most of the Hermits don’t really want to be killed, you know. And with the server as it is, it’s not like we have the wandering trader datapack. But I can ask around if you’d like.”

“No, no, that’s okay! I was just curious…it doesn’t matter that much anyway, so don’t worry about it.” 

He eyes darted back and forth between them, making her look very much like a spooked deer. “I…have to go! Sorry, it was nice talking to you two!” 

And she ducked back into the tree before either of them could say another word. 

Iskall and Stress exchanged looks. Stress just shrugged her shoulders.

Trying to fly out of the forest was a good way to break your skull open on a tree branch, and so the two of them set off down the path towards a more open area. 

“What was that about?” Iskall asked when they’d moved far enough from Gem’s house. 

“No idea,” Stress said. “Maybe somefing to do with her and False?”

“What’s going on between them? Are they having a fight or something?”

Stress shrugged again. “I really dunno. I know somefing ‘appened between them after I left, but neither of ‘em will tell me what.” She sighed. “Ah, I’d like to just knock their heads together until they finally talk it out. But I guess it’s not my place to do dat. Whatever ‘appened, I fink it was pretty serious.”

That got Iskall worried. There wasn’t a lot of genuine conflict between players on Hermitcraft, and any real disputes were usually settled with a conversation or two. The fact that both False and Gem were so unwilling to talk to each other…what could have gone down between them to cause such a rift? 

Iskall wasn’t so sure they wanted to know the answer.

That left one final Hermit to visit, and then they’d be done. All things considered, their visits thus far had been far quicker than the previous day’s. Iskall supposed it made sense–that those who’d remained in town were more inclined to talk things through than those who had been quick to leave. 

The final base to visit lay just east of town, in a continuation of the meadow biome worldspawn was situated in. It was easy enough to recognize, even without the telltale white concrete and cyan terracotta. Somehow, Keralis had made gray wool and quartz work well enough. They’d have to take notes for their own base.

Keralis’s starter house was still unfinished, although it looked like he’d made some progress from last time. It was a vaguely familiar design, possibly something he’d built up in a previous season? It made sense, Iskall thought. Designing a whole new house when they had no idea how long they’d even stay in this world seemed somewhat pointless.

Iskall approached the door, a beautiful design of dark oak framed with paned glass. It was hard to see inside from the way the midmorning light reflected off the windows. But Iskall didn’t really want to be snooping anyway.

“Coming~” A familiar voice sang from inside, before Keralis poked his head out through the door. “Stressmonster! Eeskall! What are you two sweetfaces doing here?”

He looked cheerful. Too cheerful, perhaps, given the circumstances. 

“We’re…checking in on everyone” Stress said. “Like last week, don’t you remember?”

Keralis gave himself a light smack on the head. “Aw, silly me! I remember! Well, I’m doing just fine, so no need to worry about little ol’ me.”

And just like that, he shut the door. 

“Keralis, wai–”

“Thanks for stopping by,” Keralis said from inside, voice slightly muffled.

Iskall hesitated. Technically, this was as much as they should be doing. Checking in on everyone while still giving them appropriate space to deal with things they’d rather keep to themselves. But something about how fast Keralis had shut the door in their faces rubbed Iskall the wrong way. It wasn’t like him. Keralis was about as much of an open book as a person could be. 

But then again, they’d all changed, hadn’t they? Still. It didn’t feel right.

They were saved from having to make a decision by Stress speaking up.

“We’re not–Keralis, we haven’t even gotten a chance to drop off supplies. And we need to know you’re okay.”

“But I am! I just told you so.”

“Then why’d you shut us out so fast?” Iskall asked. Their concern was growing, staring at that blank door. 

“Oh, you knows. I have things to do, mhm, lots and lots to do.”

Stress and Iskall exchanged looks, somewhere between panic and confusion.

“What are we supposed to do?” Stress whispered to them. Iskall shook their head in response.

“Seriously, just talk to us for a little bit.” Stress tried, turning back to the door. “Are you eating okay? Getting enough sleep?” 

“Yep and yep! I’m doing super duper fine.”

“Are you…is there something you’re hiding from us?” Iskall asked as the idea crossed their mind. When Keralis didn’t immediately answer, they pushed harder. “Would you rather talk to Xisuma? We can ask him to–”

At that, the door quickly swung open to reveal Keralis, who looked mildly panicked. 

“Oh, no no no, no need to tell Shashwammy! He’s super duper busy, no need to bother him. I’m fine, see? Not hiding anything.”

He grinned again, his smile looking forced. But aside from that, there wasn’t anything about Keralis that suggested he wasn’t fine. No bags under his eyes, no signs he was losing weight. Really, he looked the same as he had before everything had gone down. Without any context, Iskall doubted he would be able to tell the difference between that Keralis and this one. 

Keralis twirled around once for them, as if putting on a show. “You can come inside if you’d like. It’s a bit of a mess, but nothing’s wrong. Pinkie promise!”

“Okay…” Iskall said. It was good, wasn’t it, that he was willing to invite them in. 

Keralis stepped aside and ushered them through the door. “Come in, come in. Mi casa es su casa!”

It was jarring, the change from before as soon as they’d mentioned getting Xisuma involved. What that meant, Iskall had no idea. 

The house was as Keralis had said. Messy and unfinished, but in the way that many starter house interiors were. There were chests and barrels piled up, presumably full of building blocks. He had an area for sleeping nestled in the corner, a bed and a table with a lantern resting on it. The only other part of the interior that had been finished was the kitchen area, made of sleek quartz counters complete with a sink, fridge, and furnace. Not that the fridge would actually function, but it was just to add to the modern feel of the house, after all. 

There were a few pairs of underwear scattered around, and he’d managed to spill a bunch of water from the sink onto the floor, but Iskall had seen how Keralis had lived in the past. Really, this was quite clean for him. 

“Aw, Keralis!” Stress yelped. “Don’t just leave your pants all over the floor. Dat’s gross!”

“Yous guys are the ones who wanted to come in,” Keralis said. “So no complaining about my undies.”

“That’s true, I suppose,” Stress said, sounding a bit ashamed. 

Iskall wasn’t surprised. Keralis had never been bashful, after all. 

“What about the roof,” They said, looking up. They could see the sky through the unfinished hole in the roof. “Don’t you get rained on, with it like this?”

“I’m building that up today,” Keralis said. “That’s why I’m in a hurry. Wanna finish before the baddies come out. Besides, it’s been a while since we’ve had rain, mhmm.”

That was fair. Iskall was starting to feel a bit embarrassed about demanding to come in here. They felt a bit like a building inspector trying to find some small issue with a tenant’s living space. It all seemed kind of invasive to Iskall. They didn’t want to just be looking for something wrong when there wasn’t anything to find. 

If Keralis’s way of coping with everything that had happened was by staying as upbeat as possible…well, it wasn’t really Iskall’s place to judge him. 

“Well, sorry to bother you,” Iskall said. “If you ever need help, we’re here.”

“Okie dokie,” Keralis said cheerfully. “Now it’s time for Papa K to get building, so much to do today, mhm. Lots and lots to do.”

And with that, he ushered them out of his house and once again shut the door behind him.

For a moment Stress and Iskall stood in silence, not knowing what to make of the whole situation.

“I mean,” Stress said. “I guess dat’s dat.” She shrugged.

It didn’t feel quite right to Iskall, but there wasn’t anything else to be done. They’d completed all their check ups. 

Had it actually helped anybody, though? Their visits? Zedaph, maybe, Iskall thought. But they weren’t so sure. Nobody seemed like they were doing especially great, but nobody seemed to need an intervention or immediate help. Hypno, maybe, but pushing the issue wouldn’t make things better. They’d already tried that, and it had brought them to this point.

What in the world were they supposed to be doing? Surely there had to be something.

As it was, Iskal couldn’t help but feel like they were spinning their wheels, thoroughly stuck and not going anywhere anytime soon. 

“I guess that’s that,” Iskall echoed. And on a note that felt more sour than not, the two of them flew off back towards town. 

On the way, they asked themself if they had missed something important. If there was something else they were supposed to have done. But they couldn’t think of anything.

Chapter Text

The most difficult part of their fishing trip was actually finding a warm ocean in the first place, without the luxury of a world map. Mumbo trailed along behind Joe, Cleo, and Pearl as they flew across the landscape of ragged hills and snow capped mountains. The new terrain sure did look lovely from up here, compared to how hostile it had felt from the ground. Elytras really did make all the difference.

The four had flown for over half a day, progressively searching through warmer and warmer biomes, until they at last found their way to a mesa, bordered by the clear teal water of a warm ocean. 

The red sand beach was blazing hot, with the sun high in the sky without a single cloud to block it. The perfect day, really.  Mumbo landed down next to the others, cringing at the feeling of loose sand beneath his shoes. Soon, the grains would seep in through the gaps and grind against his soles with each step. It was something he had always found bothersome, although now that bothersomeness came with a sort of dread. 

Maybe he should have borrowed a hat from somebody. They would probably be here long enough for him to get a nasty sunburn, and he really didn’t want another one of those. He was pretty sure that sunburns could be dangerous, especially if you kept getting them, and Mumbo would like to not keep getting them.

It was far too hot for a suit and tie, something else he probably should have considered, and so he shrugged his suit jacket down off his shoulders. Maybe there was some way he could wear it over his head and neck?

He was spared from that thought by something else falling onto his head, a light weight that instantly obscured the top half of his vision. Mumbo hadn’t been expecting it, and so he jumped with a yelp.

“Whoops, my bad,” Pearl said from behind him. “I just figured you could use a hat. I’ve been making some for just such an occasion, since we can’t exactly pop on over to a hub world shop for sunscreen. They’re a bit crude, but they should hold up.”

Mumbo chuckled, relieved that his dilemma had been solved. He reached up to feel the hat atop his head. It was made of straw, clearly from some wheat or hay bales, woven together and fraying at the ends. It seemed large enough to shield his entire face and neck. 

“Thanks Pearl, you’re a lifesaver,” he said. “I’m really not eager to get another sunburn.”

“If you want to go back, it’s fine,” Cleo said. “Nobody’ll judge you for that. After…everything.”

“No, no, it’s fine.” Mumbo was pretty sure that was the truth. It wasn’t as if he’d developed some sort of pathological fear of deserts. Should he have? He didn’t really know. 

“I’ve made some hats for you two as well,” Pearl said, offering one to both Joe and Cleo. She’d already planted a hat atop her own head. 

“Well, thank you very much Pearl,” Joe said as she passed a hat over to him. “For your thinking a-head has ensured that our heads be covered.”

“I’ve brought some fire res,” Cleo said. “But I’m sure a hat will help too. The sun and I don’t get along, after all.”

They and Joe donned their own hats, taking a moment to adjust them. Cleo took a few sips of potion before stowing the rest in the inventory.

“Should we…get fishing, then?” Mumbo suggested, shrugging in the general direction of the shore.

“Well…” Pearl’s eyes were on the terrain behind them, the cliffs of a mesa lined with brightly colored terracotta. “Everyone’s been complaining about not having building blocks, right? Maybe we should gather some of this up for everyone. The heat won’t be so bad if we tunnel into the wall, and I bet the water’ll feel way nicer when we’ve worked up a sweat.”

Oh, mining terracotta wasn’t Mumbo’s idea of a fun activity. Not one bit. Especially without a beacon. But as he looked at the cliffs, or were they plateaus, of the mesa, he began thinking of his build back home. He’d settled next to Grian and Pearl, who had both built lovely rustic farmhouses just outside of town after building and tearing down multiple other builds. Mumbo had tried to join in, but he’d found himself unable to make anything that even began to match up to Grian and Pearl. He was pretty sure he’d used all his organic-building creativity in Season 8, and so he’d gone back to a more comfortable style. Industrial and modern, at least that’s what he thought it was called. He didn’t know all those sorts of fancy building terms.

And, well, his build really could use some cyan terracotta. There was a reason it was a favorite of so many modern builders, and nothing else could quite replace it. 

“I’m fine with that.” Cleo shrugged. “I’m sure all of us could use some more building blocks.

They hollowed out an area of plain old terracotta, turning the side of a cliff face into an overhang. Pearl had been right, the shade of the terrain above them and the cooler interior of their steadily growing cave made the conditions far more bearable. They chatted amongst themselves for a while before they began to spread out as the mining area grew. After a time, Mumbo found himself close enough to talk only to Joe.

Joe had alway struck Mumbo as the kind of person to hum, or maybe even sing, while doing this sort of grindy work. But Joe mined along silently, looking as if he were lost in thought. Mumbo watched him for a few seconds, wondering what was on his mind, before he decided it was really none of his business, and he’d best get back to mining.

But as soon as he had turned back to the terracotta wall in front of him, Joe spoke up.

“It’s a good time to think, isn’t it? Doing this sort of mindless work. Though it’s certainly not mineless work.”

“I suppose,” Mumbo said, not sure what else he was supposed to say. Should he ask Joe what he was thinking about?

Joe continued anyway. Honestly, Mumbo wasn’t really sure if he was talking to Mumbo or to himself. 

“This all feels strange, doesn’t it? Mining up terracotta, it’s the sort of thing we do all the time. Even though so much has changed. I don’t quite know what it means, but I’m sure it means something.”

He paused for a moment, pick raised, as if frozen in thought. “I’ve been wondering…” he trailed off with a shake of his head. “No. Nevermind. It’s nothing.”

That just piqued Mumbo’s curiosity even more, although he thought it might be rude to pry if Joe didn’t want to share. 

How did he feel about the situation, Mumbo wondered to himself. He hadn’t really been thinking about things like that, what was normal and what was new. Was that something he was supposed to do, separate every action he took now from that same action in the past? He didn’t really like the thought of that. Honestly, it was kind of frightening to him. Sure, he knew a lot of things had changed, but the idea of everything, truly everything, changing was scary. 

He supposed it was probably different for everybody. Or maybe it was the same for everyone except him. He didn’t really know.

The thought stuck with him, even after the four of them had tired themselves out mining. It had only taken an hour or two at most, leaving plenty of daylight to go fishing.

Splashing around in the surf, trying to scoop up fish in buckets, was considerably more fun than mining was, especially when Pearl had proposed they make a game out of it.

“Let’s see who can catch the most, eh?” She said, tossing her shoes and socks onto the beach and wading into the water ahead of the other three as they kicked off their own shoes. “Oh, by the way, we’re starting…now!”

“Oh no you don’t!” Cleo took off after her across the sand, bucket in hand.

Mumbo lagged behind them, struggling out of his formal shoes and socks. After a moment of thought, he rolled his trousers up to his mid calf. No need to get unnecessarily drenched.

His precaution had lasted all of ten seconds before he got tackled into the water by Pearl, trying to scoop up a fish at his ankles.

He came up spluttering, momentarily confused, before he broke out into chuckles. He barely even minded getting wet, in fact, it felt quite nice after all that mining. 

Pearl offered a hand to him and pulled him up and out of the water. “Sorry, sorry. But I guess it’s better to get drenched as soon as—” She couldn’t even finish her sentences before she burst into a bout of laughter.

“What? What’s so funny?”

“Sorry Mumbo, it’s just…your mustache…it’s all droopy.”

He supposed he probably did, standing there in a formal shirt and suit trousers, mustache laying limp across his upper lip like a wet rag. 

He thought for a moment, and in a particularly daring move, at least for him, pushed Pearl back into the water. 

He was worried for a moment that he’d stepped out of line, even if she’d pushed first, but she came back up laughing, brushing wet hair off her face. “Yeah, I deserved that.”

Their fishing trip temporarily devolved into a splash fight before they all got somewhat back on track. Not that it was any less hectic, with everyone pushing and splashing around as they fought over the fish that swam closest to the shore. They weren’t super common, and so each batch became a fight to see who could scoop them up first without scaring any off. It was not a game Mumbo was particularly good at, but it was still good fun.. 

They’d ended up going for longer than intended, as Cleo kept insisting that they needed more time. At last, when mobs started spawning in and the water grew too cold to be enjoyable, the three of them packed up their catches and flew back to spawn. 

Far from being hot and sweaty as he’d been at the start, Mumbo found himself wondering if he’d catch a chill flying back in the cold night air. At least it served to dry off his clothes, although they’d need a far more thorough washing. His socks and shoes too, as both had gotten full of sand in spite of his best efforts.

They compared their hauls in spawn town. Pearl had won with 22 fish, with Cleo coming in just behind her at 20. Joe’s 14 put him a good bit behind, although he’d still beaten out Mumbo’s 11. 

Not that Mumbo was too upset by that. He’d more or less expected what the result would be. The main point wasn’t the competition, of course, but gathering fish for XB. 67 was a good haul for a single afternoon, Mumbo thought, especially given how troublesome it was to carry them. Hopefully their catch would last XB a good while. The terracotta, too, would be a big help to everyone. 

All in all, it was a good day, the kind of day that left Mumbo feeling satisfied when he lay down for the night, even when he’d surely find sand in his pillow come morning in spite of already washing up. Baring his brief exchange with Joe, it had just been a simple day of hanging out with friends, enjoying the outdoors. Mumbo might have come across as the sort of guy who didn’t get much sun, but he really did love being outside. And now, with the new terrain, it was a nicer place to be than ever.

 A nice place, even in this broken world. He was glad to have found something like that. Maybe the others, too, could find such a thing. Mumbo certainly hoped so.

Chapter Text

Thinking back, it wasn’t as though this was the first time the hermits had gone through hardship. In fact, Joe would say they’d gotten more than their fair share of it, even divided out over the course of ten years. He’d been there to see most of it. Although he didn’t consider himself a founding member the way Xisuma and Hypno were, especially with how he’d come to be on the server, everyone else seemed to think of him as such. When he thought about it, after Xisuma, he’d been here the longest. 

The start of things had been rocky at times, as everyone slowly got acquainted. Worlds had still been unstable back then, but they’d managed to dodge the most devastating of glitches. There had been a small handful of incidents, some lost work and near misses with a couple of corrupted worlds, but nothing particularly serious. The same had remained true of Season 2.

Joe hadn’t been around for much of Season 3, and so he couldn’t really comment on what had gone on before then. He knew something had happened with Keralis in the prior season, that he’d disappeared into some sort of portal and never came back. But things had been different back then, Hermits had come and gone far more frequently, and from what Joe had heard, most had assumed it was simply his way of leaving the server. The only reason Joe knew about it in the first place was due to Keralis’ sudden reappearance in Season 6 and all that had come of that. 

Then, there was whatever had happened in Season 4, something with Xisuma and Ren getting possessed. Joe still wasn’t sure if that had been a joke or a real issue. Either way, no one had gotten seriously hurt and so the whole thing had been put behind them quickly.

It wasn’t until Season 5 that things really took a turn, when Doc had started messaging everyone out of the blue, clearly panicked, begging to know where Bdubs, Etho, and Beef had gone. Joe remembered searching the jungle for hours, calling out for the three of them and never finding even a hint as to where they may have gone. He remembered the fear that had gripped the server for a time, the admins trying everything they could think of to find them. The only assurances X had been able to offer was that they were still alive. And yet, as weeks turned into months without a single sign of their missing friends, everyone had slowly given up on finding them. They’d tried everything. There was simply nothing else they could think of to do.

And so, with a heavy heart, the hermits had moved on to the next season, leaving behind desperate signs and messages for their friends, just in case. They’d all just held onto the hope that Bdubs, Beef, and Etho had decided they were ready to move on from Hermitcraft, however faint a hope it might be. Because surely, surely they would have at least said goodbye. 

Season 6 had been a chance to move on, to rebuild their lives even with the pieces missing. And everything had been fine, for a time. It wasn’t until late in the season that both Bdubs and Keralis had returned and the problems festering beneath the surface were finally revealed. 

It had been a stressful time, Joe remembered, with so much happening at once. He remembered being worried for Cub and Scar, for what would happen to them from there on out with the Vex’s influence hanging over their heads. But Cub and Scar had both seemed to have things under control, at least on the surface, and much of the group’s fear had been forgotten when Bdubs had led them back to Etho and Beef as well. It had felt like healing, an old wound that could finally close, and there had been a sense that the worst was over. That a bad thing had happened, but that they’d all gotten through it and came out the other side. 

Season 7 had felt like a fresh start, and the group had grown closer than ever after the end of the prior season. And Season 8 even more so, when Cub had appeared before the group as a young man to announce that the Vex were gone. And Scar had been fine with the status quo, had learned how to use the Vex magic in moderation. It had seemed like all of their worries had come to an end. Like the book had closed on a chapter of their life that had always been sitting in the background, noticed from time to time out of the corner of their eyes. 

And yet, just when things had settled down, all of that had been torn away. And in such an inexplicable way as well.  Just one glitch, just one thing had gone wrong, for everything to spiral into the horror it had become. 

What were the odds for everything to go so wrong at what seemed like every opportunity? Perhaps it was simply Joe’s own flawed perception of the world that made it seem so improbable. Bad things tended to stand out more than good things, after all. But still. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right. Well, besides the obvious. 

And as Joe worked silently in the mesa cave, lost in his thoughts or memories, that was something that stuck out to him the more he thought about it.

Because it didn’t make sense, where everyone had spawned. Why hadn’t some of them just ended up spawning in a plains somewhere, or a forest, or anywhere else a player might spawn on a random seed? How unlikely was it, for all of them to end up in some of the worst spots imaginable. Lethal, inhospitable places where it was near impossible to survive on one’s own.

Was that really just a coincidence? Just bad luck? Or was it something more? 

The thought sent a shiver down Joe’s spine, even in the heat of the mesa.

It left Joe thinking about the prior incidents as well. Had those, too, just been bad luck? A glitch that had hit them by pure chance, each time something had gone wrong? Or was there someone, or something, who had it out for them? 

Joe wasn’t sure which would be worse. 

Perhaps, he thought, it was the sort of thing it was best not to dwell on.

A few days after their fishing trip, Joe found himself up at the crack of dawn, tearing up the loose, uneven cobblestone paths that had formed the streets of spawn town for so long. Normally, he would have taken the opportunity to chat with Cleo about whatever came to mind, but she was still nursing the nasty sunburn she’d gotten in spite of the hat and potions at the beach. The woes of being a zombie, Joe supposed. 

And so he worked silently, trying not to eavesdrop on the conversation Iskall and Stress were having some 20 blocks away. It was harder than it seemed–they weren’t the quietest people around, after all. They were talking about the game night, the plans for which were slowly coming to fruition. Joe did his best to tune them out and focus on removing and replacing blocks for the road.

The agreed-upon design for the road was a pretty simple one, a mix of stone and cobblestone, with granite sidewalks to break up the gray. TFC had an abundance of both from his mining trips, and plenty of other hermits could offer a bit more left over from their own builds. 

The work went fast, with it being a simple matter of mixing up the blocks. Honestly, it was mining up the old road that took the most time, though Joe was certainly glad to see it go. 

It was plain but appealing. In hindsight, it might have been a good idea to have picked up a bunch of coral from their trip to the ocean. It had been right there, after all, and it would make a good addition to the road. But perhaps that was a bit too extravagant for them at the moment. Then again, they had collected all that terracotta.

Halfway through tearing out the old road, they were joined by Xisuma, who had presumably been kicked out of the workshop by Etho and Doc for a much needed break, although Joe suspected they didn’t intend “a break” to mean “paving a road”. But, well, you never knew. 

X gravitated towards Joe, perhaps out of habit or perhaps out of a desire to talk. Joe wasn’t sure which. He chipped away at the road diligently, head down. 

Maybe X would prefer to talk about something light, if he wanted to talk at all, but Joe couldn’t help but think this might be the best opportunity he got to voice his concerns. X didn’t show his face very frequently, these days.

“Howdy, X.”

X turned away from the street to look up at him. Joe couldn’t see X’s face through the bottom half of his mask, but he had known him long enough to recognize the crinkle around his eyes meant that he was smiling. He still looked strange to Joe without the rest of his helmet, even after 2 months. It made him look so much more vulnerable, in a sense.

“You doing okay?” Joe asked.

X hesitated, as if thinking more about what Joe wanted to hear rather than what he actually felt. A moment later, he sighed, as if uncurling from his shell ever so slightly.

“I guess. I…it’s still hard, not to blame myself for all of this. Doc’s been pretty adamant that I don’t go beating myself up over it, but…well, it’s not that easy.” He scrunched his shoulders up, as if retreating again. “I don’t really want to dwell on it.”

“Oh, of course. Feel free to give me a whack with that pick if I’m being a pest.”

X flashed him a small smile. 

“There is something else I’ve been thinking about,” Joe said, “If you’re okay with talking in general.”

“Go ahead.”

Joe found himself suddenly unsure of how to bring things up. Well, he could just dive right in. He was good at doing that. “About the circumstances of how we all spawned in. I just can’t make it make sense, how we all spawned in such inhospitable locations. I mean, surely, if it was all random, or even if it matched up with where everyone was in space, some of us would have spawned somewhere safe.”

X sighed. He turned his pick around, digging the handle into the pavement and resting his weight on the diamond head. So he was open to talking after all. “I’ve…had my suspicions. And the more I think about it, the less I believe this all happened randomly. Even the glitch with the moon…there’s no way it isn’t connected to what’s happening now. But it shouldn’t have been able to spread between worlds, not unless one of us, all of us maybe, were inflicted with a virus.

“I don’t think any of the hermits would intentionally infect us,” Xisuma continued. His brow was furrowed, as if he was thinking hard. Maybe he’d always done that, behind his helmet. “Of course they wouldn’t. But it’s not impossible that one of us picked something up off-world, was maybe a bit less careful than normal, or crossed paths with a truly devious piece of malware.”

X paused a minute, expression hardening. He gripped the head of the pickaxe with a bit more force than was really necessary. “But I don’t think that’s the case. I think I know exactly how a virus could have gotten into this server.” 

Well, that wasn’t what Joe had expected. X had been pretty open with them about everything after False had chewed him out for hiding things from them. Joe hadn’t expected that there was anything else X was keeping secret.

“I didn’t say anything, because I can’t be certain, and I don’t think it matters anymore,” X said, as if reading Joe’s mind. “But if I had to take a guess, I’d say it was Evil X.”

Evil X. Joe had completely forgotten about him, amidst all the chaos with the moon. But it seemed so obvious now that X brought it up. 

“He’s tried to destroy the server before, after all,” X said. “And if he hadn’t brainwashed me, maybe I could have done something…but by the time he left, it was too late. I’d like to say he wouldn’t go this far, that he wouldn’t try to permakill any of us, but…I just don’t know what he’s capable of anymore.”

He was scowling down at the ground. It was a strange look for him. X wasn’t the type to get mad easily. In fact, Joe couldn’t remember a time he’d ever seen X frustrated with anyone other than himself. “If he did this to us, I won’t…I won’t ever forgive him.”

X sighed, shaking his head as if he was shrugging off the anger. “Maybe things got out of hand. He wanted to mess with us but never expected things to reach the level they did. But it was too late to back out by then, and he’d already passed on the virus to one of us, and we carried it right along to Season 9. It’s not possible to know for sure, but it’s the most likely explanation, I think.”

He sighed. “Regardless, we’ll know once my helmet is fixed. There’ll be admins scanning all of our code. They’d be able to tell if we’re infected or not. I don’t think there’s much point in speculating before we know for sure.”

As much as X said that, it sounded like he’d already made up his mind. That Evil X was responsible. 

Maybe it was a comforting thought for X, the idea that he hadn’t made some tiny, seemingly insignificant mistake that had unraveled everything, but that someone had been pulling the strings the whole time. That he’d never had a chance in the first place to succeed, and so he couldn’t really say he’d failed. Joe thought that if he were in X’s shoes, he might find that idea comforting. No more looking back, if only he’d done this or that, everything would have been different. 

Joe didn’t think X needed to blame himself for the situation regardless. He’d taken on too much of a burden for anyone to bear. But he’d known X long enough to be sure saying as much wouldn’t make a difference. It was hard to change X’s mind when he was set in his ways.

“There’s something I wanted to talk to you about as well,” X said, to Joe’s surprise. He hadn’t been expecting X to say anything more. “It’s about what happened at the end of last season. Your…escape, as it were.”

Joe stood up straighter, listening closely to X. His work on the road had stalled, but that was fine. There was more than enough time to get it done before the day’s end.

“You remember how you joined the server, don’t you?”

“Yeah?” How could he forget? One moment he’d been cheerfully mining away on his single player world, and the next he’d found himself on a private, whitelisted server he really had no business being on.

He supposed it spoke to just how informal everything had been back then, that they had let him stay in spite of that. 

“Actually, I was the one who convinced Genny to let you stay,” X said. “I thought…well, it doesn’t matter now, but I thought at the time, we might share…experiences. That wasn’t the case, but we all got along with you anyway. So I didn’t think about it.”

“I don’t really get what you’re saying.”

“Joe, you’re probably part Voidwalker.”

Now that was something Joe definitely wasn’t expecting to hear. He figured he knew all there was to know about Joe Hills, being Joe Hills himself and all. Which involved being pretty strange, but presumably human. “X, are you sure? I feel like my parents would have told me if they weren’t human. At least, I think they would.”

“Maybe a grandparent, maybe one of your parents. I don’t know, Joe. But you’ve got Voidwalker in you. There’s no other way you could have gotten onto this server. There’s no other way you could have gotten out of Season 8 if you didn’t break your way through the quarantine.

“That’s probably how you were able to breathe so far up in the air as well. Space and the void are essentially one and the same. There is air to breathe out there, just not the kind that most people could make use of.”

Come to think of it, had Joe ever actually fallen into the void? He’d only gone end-busting twice, and his unfortunate deaths had all been from fall damage. He’d rejected the offers he’d gotten to throw himself into the Boatem Hole as a sacrifice. Even when he’d met Cleo again, he’d smashed himself into the ground rather than letting the void claim him. Maybe he’d died to the void at some point, but if he had, he couldn’t remember. 

“Woah,” Joe said, not sounding very surprised. The surprise had faded quickly, replaced by the acceptance from the go-with-the-flow nature that Joe possessed. Who really cared who or what Joe Hills was? Above all else, Joe Hills was Joe Hills. 

But he suspected that it meant something more to Xisuma. Xisuma, who was a Voidwalker who never spoke about his past, and who nobody had ever pushed to do so. There was a reason there were so few Voidwalkers around these days, and from what Joe had heard, it wasn’t a pleasant reason. Best not to prod old wounds. 

But maybe those wounds were already being prodded. Joe still remembered the Xisuma he’d met in Season 1. A quiet, sullen man who’d seemed afraid to speak louder than a whisper. How much that had changed over the years, as X had grown more and more confident and content. But the X Joe saw now reminded him more of his younger, scared self. 

Regardless, he didn’t share X’s experiences, he didn’t know anything about Voidwalker culture or what he might have gone through. Had X been disappointed, all those years ago, that Joe couldn’t be what he was looking for?

“Umm…” X looked like he wasn’t quite sure what came next. “Do you have any…questions?” 

Joe thought for a moment. “No, not really. It would be interesting to know who in my family was a Voidwalker, but I guess I’ll have to wait on that one.”

He thought for a moment.

“But doesn’t this mean we’re not really stuck on this server? Would it be possible to go out and get help?”

Joe was well aware that such a thing wasn’t allowed, but it might be worth it to help everybody out. And given that he’d broken in and out of servers at least twice with no consequences, could it really be that serious?

“It would be a bad idea,” X said with a grimace. “You’ve been very, very lucky this far, Joe. It was difficult to convince Genny not to report you. And you flying under the radar was probably a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. Maybe even a dev who looked the other way, out of some sort of service to Doc or Etho? But don’t count on it again.”

“What would happen? If I did get caught?”

X just shook his head. “A complete blacklisting, most likely. From every server, for who knows how long. It’s a very serious crime, breaking out of a quarantined server. If we had been affected by a virus, and you spread it to a hub world…Joe, you’re looking at who knows how many permadeaths.”

That was a chilling thought. This sort of thing happening on a hub world, with hundreds or thousands of people instead of a mere 25. A server full of families and children and innocent people who didn’t deserve to go through what had happened here. Joe shuddered, suddenly very grateful that he’d spent the time between seasons in a single player world.

But still. If he’d stayed on the Season 8 world, he very well could have died alongside Tango and Bdubs. Was it really fair, to just be left for dead like that, because it was too risky to let him go? That didn’t sit right with Joe one bit. No, it was downright cruel. Surely there should be some sort of moral obligation to rescue those in need? If they could even just hop over to a single player world the way Joe had, surely that was fair. 

“Sounds like a ridiculous system,” Joe said. “Punishing people who just want to survive.”

“Yeah,” X said. His voice sounded distant, hollow. “I don’t like it either. But…I’d rather…I’d prefer we all be stuck here than unleash something like this on the other worlds. It’s…Joe, you don’t know what it’s like…”

X trailed off, seemingly unable to speak on the topic any further. His eyes were on the ground and Joe couldn’t read his expression. But he got the feeling he really shouldn’t say anything more on the topic.

When X next spoke, it was in a voice devoid of emotion. “I have to go. Etho and Doc might need me.”

And before Joe could voice his objections, X had started off down the unfinished street, leaving Joe to stare at his back.

Joe dug his pick back into the road with a sigh. He wasn’t sure how he’d expected their conversation to go, but he certainly hadn’t expected it to end like that.

He felt like he’d learned so much. And yet he understood so very little. 

He was beginning to understand how Xisuma felt. No, that wasn’t right. He didn’t, couldn’t understand how X felt. That was the problem.

Chapter Text

It was sometime in the middle of the night when Hypno awoke. He wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence, these days, for him to sleep restlessly. At least this time he didn’t wake sweating and shaking, heart pounding from a half remembered dream, of funerals and memorials not for Bdubs and Tango. Instead, he was left with the taste of bitter frustration that came with having failed the really quite simple task of sleeping. It plagued him more than nervousness now, the frustration. At himself, mostly, for not knowing what to do. For being so unsure, so out of his depth. Hypno wasn’t used to it, that feeling. He was the type of person who liked to dive head first into the deep end, just to see what would happen. It was fun, it was interesting, and the consequences were never very severe. Or at least they hadn’t been.

Maybe the anxiety, the hesitation, was some sort of subconscious overcorrection. A fear that he didn’t know how to be careful when he truly needed to be. It sort of made sense, in a weird sort of way. But still. Frustrating.

Hypno rolled over in his bed to peer through the windows that were only ever opened on this side of the base. He couldn’t pinpoint what time it was, whether it was worth trying to get back to sleep or not. He doubted he’d be able to either way, laying in bed and trying to sleep would only leave him restless.

That was something else he felt a lot these days. Restlessness.

He pushed the covers off automatically. Stood up. Put on his jacket. His bandanna. Gulped down a bottle of water. Made his way out of the bedroom and into the rest of the base, or at least this side of it. The side with the windows and the lights where Jevin wouldn’t dare set foot. 

He wandered his way into the kitchen, or maybe it was more of a kitchenette. Something simple and rustic that he’d thrown together. Honestly, it was kind of ugly. The sort of ugly that Wels might have complained about, before. Hypno really wished he would. 

He’d been awake for all of five minutes, and he could already feel a headache coming on. He massaged the bridge of his nose. It didn’t help. Great. Just what he needed first thing in the morning. Or middle of the night. Whatever. 

In the makeshift fridge, which was really just a barrel filled with blocks of packed ice, he found the potions Stress and Iskall had brought him. Hypno fished around until he found the pale blue of a swiftness potion and swallowed it down in two gulps. As always, it tasted like sugar water, if the water part had been scooped up from a muddy puddle on the ground. How appetizing. 

But this time, there was no metallic tang of redstone powder to go along with it. Hypno frowned, wondering if Stress and Iskall had forgotten, or if this was some sort of intervention. Not that they had a reason to do that–drinking swiftness potions every day wasn’t any worse a habit than a daily coffee was. Or an energy drink. Well, okay, the redstone was somewhat toxic, but the amount of the stuff in a potion wasn’t anywhere close to a dangerous dose. He’d have to be chugging a dozen potions a day to poison himself, in which case the effects of that many potions would kill him first.

So that meant that in three or so hours, he would crash hard. Great. Hypno sighed, massaging his head again. He took a single sip of a strength potion to hopefully ease his headache, washing it down with several bottles of water to get rid of the overpowering acrid taste. 

With the world feeling a lot clearer, Hypno figured it was a good time to get some work done. Which, there really wasn’t a lot of. Neither Wels nor Jevin asked for much, and he was so often unsure of what they truly needed.

He figured it was as good a time as ever to begin preparing breakfast, hopefully a breakfast he’d be able to convince the two of them to eat. Stress and Iskall had brought plenty of food to choose from, but he always found himself unsure of what to make. Jevin and Wels weren’t picky eaters, or at least they hadn’t been. When Hypno had first taken over the task of looking after the two of them, he’d found that he didn’t know what either of their favorite foods were. It had made him strangely sad, the idea that he hadn’t even known that much about two of his closest friends. He wondered how well he’d ever known them at all.

He didn’t feel like he knew them anymore, a lot of the time. He hated how often he felt that way. It wasn’t their fault that they’d changed, that they’d endured such severe trauma that they’d had to change to survive. He should be thankful, really, that they’d survived, and come back to him in the end. Not everyone had gotten so lucky.

Sometimes, Hypno felt like they hadn’t come back at all. He hated that thought as well.

He turned back to the kitchen. Breakfast. Right. He’d had good luck getting both Wels and Jevin to eat toast before, and so he sliced up a loaf of bread and stuck it in the furnace for a few minutes. After a moment of thought, he filled up a small cauldron and set it atop the furnace, letting the intense heat of the furnace warm the water as well.

The toast came out burnt. The furnace had been too hot for it. Thinking about it, it had been silly to start making toast now in the first place. By the time morning came, it would be completely cold. But he hadn’t really thought of that, he’d just been going through the motions automatically. 

Holding the sad, burnt toast in his hands, Hypno realized he should probably have something to eat himself. If he was waking up now, he might as well eat now, he supposed. 

After a moment of thought, he stuffed the burnt piece of toast into his mouth and choked it down as quickly as he could. It tasted, predictably, burnt. 

Ah, well. Everything he ate these days tended to taste like nothing. At least “burnt” was something different.

Hypno leaned against the barrel cupboard. He was tired. He didn’t have any reason to be tired, not really. It was the worrying, probably, that made him tired. He wasn’t even sure what he was worried about anymore. That worry from two months ago that all of his friends might be dead simply had never left him. It hadn’t been alleviated when he’d learned he was wrong, and so perhaps his mind had simply assumed that there must be something else important to worry about in that case. 

And so he worried over things that had already happened. Looking back on things wasn’t a bad thing, not by itself. The past was a useful tool for learning, for seeing what went wrong and what could have been done differently. But the thing about the past was that it couldn’t be changed. Being frustrated at the way something had turned out, at some mistake he made, wasn’t ideal, but it was, at least, understandable. Dwelling on the horrible things that could have happened, if things had just been a little different, potential tragedies just narrowly avoided. There was truly no point in getting hung up on that. And yet his genius brain seemed to think it was a good idea to agonize over how everything could have gone wrong and all his friends could have died for good. What a productive use of his time and brainpower. 

He was probably a bad person, Hypno thought, for spending so much time and energy worrying. Nothing bad had happened to him, he didn’t have the right to be moping about, as if he had to bear some huge burden. It was Wels and Jevin who had suffered in ways that Hypno couldn’t even begin to imagine or understand. His anxieties didn’t deserve to even be mentioned alongside the torture they’d gone through. 

Hypno felt a stinging on his cheek. For a moment, he wondered if he’d started crying without realizing it. But it was just a drop of water from the cauldron, which had come to a boil. What had he even been heating it up for in the first place? Soup? That wasn’t really a breakfast food.

Eggs. It had been eggs, he thought. He found a couple of them and dropped them into the boiling water as gently as he could, then watched them bounce around along the bottom of the cauldron. He checked his comm–thankfully, even in this world, the clock still worked. He didn’t want to overcook anything else.

Not sure what else to do, Hypno idled around the kitchenette until enough time had passed, before draining the water into the cauldron sink and placing the eggs in a smaller bowl. It was hard to do without modern kitchen utensils. It would be nice if there was a simple crafting recipe for boiled eggs, so he could just pop them into the furnace and not have to worry that they might burn. 

The eggs, at least, would be fine even if they got cold. How long would it be until morning, Hypno wondered. He turned to check the window, to see if any light had begun to make its way through, and nearly jumped out of his skin.

Wels was sitting on a bench beside the window, watching Hypno with a blank look on his face. How long had he been there? Hypno was pretty sure he would have seen him when he’d first come in the kitchenette, and he hadn’t heard him come in.

Like a ghost, Hypno thought, before quickly pushing the unpleasant thought out of his mind. Wels was alive. He was here. 

“Hello, Wels,” he said, trying to sound normal. “You’re…up early.” 

He cringed as soon as he spoke. Of course Wels was up early. He always was. 

Wels tilted his head to the side in a way that might have made him look inquisitive if his face wasn’t still completely blank. “Well, you are too.”

Hypno didn’t exactly have a response for that. 

At least Wels was talking to him. Some days, a lot of days, he wouldn’t speak at all. Just stare into space or out a window, lost in his own mind. 

He was talking more and more lately, Hypno thought. That was good. That was progress. It must be, surely.

Although, his appearance here also meant he wasn’t sleeping right now. Which wasn’t good. Hypno really couldn’t tell how often Wels was actually sleeping and how much of the time he was just lying in bed to get Hypno to leave him alone. 

He always felt bad, trying to get Wels to sleep. Wels’ dreams were never good, it seemed. It was the only time he showed any emotion whatsoever, but Hypno really wished that emotion was anything other than…whatever emotion made someone scream like that. Fear, maybe? Or pain? Neither of those quite sounded right. 

Still, sleep was important. It was advice that Hypno should probably take himself, but as it was, he was likely getting more sleep than both of his housemates combined. That would have to do. 

Regardless, it was only a couple of hours until the sun came up, according to his comm. Which, come to think of it, could have told him the time better than his window could. Ah well. He wasn’t going to try to get Wels to go back to sleep at this point. 

“Do you want something to eat?” He said instead. “I made eggs. There’s bread too, I can toast it up.”

“Not really,” Wels said, and Hypno tried not to let himself be too disappointed. A vocal “no” was still better than nothing. Probably. 

Still, he couldn’t exactly let Wels starve himself. “You’ll need to eat at least a little for breakfast, okay? Please.”

Wels regarded him for a few seconds before replying, “Okay.”

It wasn’t an agreement, not really. It meant he wanted Hypno to not bother him about it anymore. 

Hypno rubbed his forehead. The potions were starting to wear off. He considered the pros and cons of taking another one, or at least the rest of the strength potion, before deciding that he didn’t want to give Iskall and Stress a reason to think he had a problem. 

He sighed, wondering what to do to pass the time while he waited for the sun to come up. He opted for sitting next to Wels on the bench, who gave him a look. As if he was wary that Hypno was going to try to talk to him more. Maybe it would be the right thing to do, trying to talk to Wels. Or maybe it would just annoy him. Was feeling annoyed better than not feeling anything? 

What did Wels think about, with all the time he spent staring off into space? Was he thinking of anything at all? He must be, Hypno thought, he couldn’t imagine spending all day doing and thinking nothing. But he also didn’t understand what was going on inside of Wels’ head to begin with. He’d never been able to get a clear answer.

Hypno sat in silence next to Wels for a long time, waiting for the sun to come up and putting off the time he’d have to finally try to get Wels to eat something. Eventually, when the light streaming through the window began to warm his back, he decided he was no longer passing time but simply being lazy, and got up. 

He made food for Jevin first, who was far more likely to actually eat it than Wels was. He managed not to burn the toast this time, at least. He added it onto a wooden plate alongside an egg and a dollop of the sweet berry jam that he was pretty sure Iskall had made. 

He did take a couple sips of a night vision potion before making his way to the other side of the base. It felt like a different base entirely, in a lot of ways. Like one of those semi-detached houses, if those houses had a door connecting them. 

Jevin wasn’t in his corner, which was good, but he also wasn’t in his bed, which wasn’t good. Instead, he was sitting on a chest, swinging his legs back and forth idly. It didn’t look like a very comfortable position, but Jevin was made of slime so it probably didn’t bother him. 

The shades were still closed. The lights were still off. Hypno hadn’t expected any different. 

Jevin’s head snapped up as soon as Hypno opened the door, eyes wide and frightened, but as soon as he realized it was Hypno, he relaxed. Hypno was glad, at least, that he wasn’t a frightening presence for Jevin. 

“I brought you breakfast,” he said, holding out the plate.

Jevin offered him a weak smile. “Thanks, man.”

His voice was still quiet, as if he was afraid of what would happen if he dared to speak too loudly, or too often. 

Like a ghost, Hypno thought again. 

But at least he was speaking more frequently and more clearly than before. Whatever TFC had said to him had really helped, it seemed. It had at least gotten him out of that corner. 

Maybe he should ask TFC if he had any other advice. But TFC was hard to find, and Hypno didn’t like leaving Jevin and Wels alone too long for the same reason he didn’t like sleeping for too long. Maybe he could ask Iskall and Stress to deliver a message?

It was worth a try. Nothing that Hypno had been able to do was as helpful as what TFC had done.

Jevin made his way across the room to Hypno, slowly and deliberately, as if he was trying to make as little noise as possible. But regardless of what he did, his steps always made a squishing sound. It looked like it bothered Jevin. 

“Do you want me to stay with you while you eat?” Hypno said. “Or, you know, for as long as you want.”

Jevin took the plate from Hypno’s hands, staring at it as if thinking through. “For a little while. Not too long.”

“Okay.”

Jevin didn’t seem to mind Hypno talking to him, so long as he kept his voice as quiet as possible. Not that Hypno really knew what to talk about. He’d already shared that Scar had come back, which was the most notable thing that had happened lately. But Jevin didn’t seem to mind his silence either. He slowly ate each part of his breakfast in turn, though it was less eating and more dissolving the food. Hypno wondered if he actually tasted it like that. 

“What’s your favorite food,” he found himself asking. 

Jevin took a bite of toast, head tilted to one side thoughtfully. 

“Pork,” he said after a long silence. “I like pork.”

It made sense, now that Hypno thought about it. He felt like he’d seen Jevin eat pork more often than most of the other hermits, had seemed more interested in the possibilities of hoglin farming. 

Had, before all of this had happened. Still did. Of course he did. He was still Jevin. He was different, but he was still Jevin.

“I’ll make some for you sometime,” he said.

“I’d like that.” 

A long moment of silence passed between them, as Jevin ate and Hypno sat there feeling awkward. Another thing he wasn’t very used to feeling.

To his surprise, Jevin was the first one to break it. “I’m sorry.”

Hypno tried not to let the surprise show on his face. “For what?”

Jevin shrugged, staring down at his nearly empty plate. “It’s hard for you, isn’t it? Taking care of me. It’s troublesome.”

“Of course it isn’t,” Hypno said. The words tasted like a lie on his tongue, and he cursed himself for that. It wasn’t a lie. Of course it wasn’t. 

“It’s okay if it is.”

“No. No, it’s not,” Hypno said, more harshly than he’d meant to. 

Jevin winced, shrinking up back into himself. 

“I’m sorry.”

Jevin shook his head. “It’s okay. If you say so.” He poked at the food on his plate. “But I think you should get out more or something. You’re not like me, you’re not–you can leave. Aren’t there others you want to see?”

It didn’t feel fair, Hypno thought, for him to want something like that. It really didn’t. Jevin and Wels should be enough. It wasn’t their fault that they’d gone through such horrible things, that they’d changed in so many ways. Hypno didn’t have the right to want to leave them, even for a little while. Like they were some sort of burden. He didn’t want to like that. 

Jevin sighed, as if sensing Hypno’s thoughts. He finished the last bite of food. “Just think about it, okay? Going out, doing something. Anything, really, that’ll get you some fresh air.”

Hypno watched Jevin for a moment, considering what to say.

“Okay,” he said at last. “I’ll think about it.”

The words once again tasted like lies.

Chapter Text

The magma block made for a nice wood stove, with a bit of work. A fake deepslate chimney and border, an iron trapdoor in front, and a bit of redstone underneath to keep it powered and bada bing, bada boom, a wood stove was created.

It kept the tent that served as Cub’s starter base nice and warm. The wool walls helped to insulate it and the place where an entrance flap should be was replaced by a sturdy spruce door. It took a bit away from the aesthetics of the base, but occasionally function had to outweigh form, as unfortunate as that might be.

Still, the cold found a way to creep in, especially at night, and lingered into the morning. Well, that was what Cub got from building on a mountaintop. 

He rubbed his hands together, attempting to bring at least some warmth back into them, but it did little good. His fingertips were still red and numb, which was probably not a good thing. He’d tried taking a break from the mountain, doing some work in warmer areas of the map, but even that hadn’t helped. Cub supposed it was just one more thing that would have to be pushed to the side until the server was open again. And really, it wasn’t that bad. Not compared to his leg.

He scooted forwards from where he was sitting on his bed, trying to move slowly enough not to cause himself too much pain. He was only moderately successful. 

It was horribly ironic, Cub thought, that out of all the times he’d died on that snowy mountain, it was his survival that had hurt him the most. If he’d split his skull open on the rocks below rather than his leg, he’d probably have been better off for it. Even if it took him that much longer to get down again, he’d rather have to deal with a few more numb digits than his leg.

His leg hadn’t gotten any better. It was still barely moveable, still not capable of bearing weight or even helping him balance. He reached for the crutches propped against his bed and began the laborious process of standing up. The pain in his leg, which settled into a dull ache when he was still, flared up at the movement. A wave of agony shot up from his knee and into the rest of his body like a bolt of lightning. He gritted his teeth, digging the crutches into the ground and pushing himself up as quickly as possible. 

Cub was a patient man, but even he had his limits. Really, he might have just lobbed the thing off with an ax if that didn’t sound like an incredibly reckless idea.  After all, it did nothing but weigh him down and cause him pain. But he knew it would be better to wait, to get a medical professional to take a look at it before doing anything rash. For now, he’d just have to bear with it. 

He slowly made his way over to the door, pushing it open with his shoulder, and stepped out onto the rocky terrain of his mountain. It had been a while since it snowed, and so the terrain was more or less clear.

The morning sun didn’t do much to warm him up, not compared to the blast of cold air that hit him as he left his base. It didn’t bother him, or at least it didn’t bother him any more than it would have before all of this. At least, he thought so. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to tell. That probably wasn’t the sort of thing that could be measured. 

He had places to be, but didn’t really need to rush, and so Cub took a moment to savor the progress he’d made on his base. It was still in its early stages right now, work was slow going, but he’d still poured a ton of time and effort into it. So far, all he’d done was dig a massive hole in the ground, but he had far bigger plans. An abandoned city, or at least the facade of one, centered on the hole. He thought he’d have some sort of monster coming out of it, although he didn’t have much experience with building organics. Maybe Gem would be able to help with that. Or not, given the circumstances. 

He was mostly making things up as he went. His plan for the season had been to forgo a base entirely, focusing on his plans for various minigames. But all his ideas tended to include a lot of death, which was probably not what any of them needed right now, and so they’d been put on the backburner for now. Maybe in the future, when things were different. Better.

He wouldn’t let it get him down, though. There were still games to be played, fun to be had. Speaking of which, it was probably time to get going. Even fun times required planning, after all.

He strapped his elytra onto his back as best as he could on crutches, and as he prepared to take off, he caught a glint out of the corner of his eye. For a moment, he thought it was just the sun, perhaps reflecting off one of the few snow piles still dotted about. But no, he wasn’t that lucky. Of course he wasn’t.

Cub sighed. He was tempted to rush off and hope they gave up chase, but that would almost be like letting them win. Letting them scare him out of his own home. Instead, he leisurely removed his rockets from his inventory as the voices echoed around him. 

“Have you considered our deal any further, gray one?”

“Yes, you surely must have. You care so dearly for your friend after all.”

“It would be selfish not to help.”

“Not after it’s lost so much.”

“Not after it’s lost so much for you.”

“All to save you. All because of you.”

“It’s our friend. Why don’t you be our friend instead?”

“We could be friends again, just like before.”

He ignored them. It was the only thing to be done, when they were taunting him like that. If he entertained their nonsense, they’d never go away. 

But still, he couldn’t help but grit his teeth, hand clenching tighter around the handle of his crutch. There weren’t a lot of things that made Cub angry. How dare they. How dare they flaunt what they’d done to Gem, what they were still doing to her. How dare they use it as leverage to get more out of him. 

There was a part of him that wanted to accept their deal. To help Gem in whatever way he could. She didn’t deserve any of this, and even if Cub hadn’t done anything himself, it was hard not to feel guilty for being the catalyst for Gem’s deal with the Vex. But he couldn’t. He knew he couldn’t. The Vex may not be lying, but only because it benefited them not to lie. To be trusted, at least on some level. But that didn’t stop them from talking circles around the truth, warping it into something only loosely resembling what it really was. If he accepted, if he took their deal, this wouldn’t be the end of it. They would no doubt find a way to keep Gem under their control as well, likely already had some sort of plan for it. 

And even if they did set Gem free, Cub would still hold on to his resolve. His self-sacrifice would help nobody. It would simply worry his friends further and push the guilt onto Gem and Scar. That was what made the Vex so effective. They could pray on the care players had for their close friends and the empathy and emotion that could be so difficult to ignore. He wouldn’t let them have things their way. He never would.

“You worry about your friend, do you not?”

“It  is suffering.”

“It  is losing what it holds dear.”

“It’s dear, dear friends. Gone forever.”

“How sad! How very sad!”

“It is sad too, that we no longer have you as our dear friend.”

“We are so lonely. So very lonely, without you. Without the scarred one.” 

“But we will not be lonely if we have you.” 

“Our dear friend, our old friend.”

“So join us, and we will let it go free. It will gain back what she lost.”

“It will be happy again.”

“Would you not do that for your friend? A friend who gave so much for you?”

He refused to engage, even as anger bubbled in his stomach. They wanted him to get angry, to talk back to them. Turn their one-sided whisperings into a conversation. Even if he was hostile to them, he was still engaging. 

And so he turned his back on them, tightening the straps of his elytra and pulling a stack of rockets from his inventory. He had places to be, and he refused to let them slow him down.

It felt good to take off from the mountain, leaving the Vex behind in the dust. They could have kept up with him if they’d wanted, but their conniving little voices would be drowned out by the air whipping past Cub’s ears.  

He tucked his good leg under the other to keep it from being jostled too much. It did little to help, flying was still an agonizing experience, but he’d bear it for the convenience of traveling quickly. 

The only thing worse than the flying itself was the landing. Cub did his best to glide slowly down, but he didn’t have the range of motion to land properly. Instead, he flopped as gently as possible onto his stomach, skidding a block or two along the newly-paved road. At least he was wearing enough layers to avoid getting a road rash. 

He came to a stop more or less in front of the Soup Bowl. Pearl, who was halfway through the door with a shulker box tucked under her arm, paused to look at him.

“You alright there?” She asked.

“Fine, fine.” Cub waved her off with a chuckle, slowly pulling himself to his feet. It was as difficult and painful as ever. “Heh, this is kinda the only way to land now.”

“Looks painful,” Pearl said with a frown.

“Eh, it is what it is.” He shrugged his shoulders, situating himself on his crutches as he entered the restaurant. Or whatever the Soup Bowl was supposed to be. 

Inside, Cub found the rest of the hermits, spread out into different groups as they worked and chatted amongst themselves. Stress was in the doorway, hanging up a banner reading “Game Night” in big, blocky letters. It looked like she’d made it themselves with sewn-together banners and ink, if the magenta fabric was any indication. Joe was in the back, cooking something that smelled relatively edible, which was a high honor considering some of the other chefs on the server. In the center of the room was Scar, sitting in his wheelchair in front of a table. He was working on what looked to be the Hermopoly board, or at least the start of it. He was still drawing in the squares, deep in concentration as he focused on making the black outline look clean. His efforts were thwarted by Jellie, who sat in his lap, rubbing her face against his arm. Grian was leaning over his shoulder, watching the scene with an amused look on his face. Cleo sat off to his side, trying to mold bits of clay into what Cub assumed were monopoly pieces. She was muttering under her breath about the lack of their statues mod. 

There were others gathered too. Beef was sat at a corner table, struggling to cut out squares of paper with a pair of shears. Ren was in the back, hanging a bunch of multicolored lanterns from the ceiling. He was joined by Pearl a minute later, setting down her box beside him. Iskall was also present, crouched under a table, probably setting up some sort of redstone device. 

It seemed fun. Lively. Everything that Cub had wanted this event to be. He found himself smiling at the scene, at the hermits chatting amongst themselves as they worked. 

He made his way over to Beef, curious at how his proposed project was coming. 

“Hey hey, how’s it going?”

Beef put down the shears to look up at him. “Oh, fine. It’s going fine. Well, actually, shears are really hard to use as scissors, so maybe not that fine, but it’s okay.”

He’d done a pretty good job, Cub thought, despite his unwieldy tool. A bunch of similarly sized pieces of paper sat in a stack on the table, all of them about the same size as playing cards.

“Working on your TCG idea?”

Beef shrugged. “Yeah, sort of. I mean, I was going to build everything out of maps, but that’d take forever. No way would I get that done before our game night. So I figured I’d just make some by hand, at least see if the game is gonna work. It’s…like a proof of concept sort of thing.”

“Makes sense.”

“I’ve started working on card designs, but I don’t know if they're going to come out this season. I mean, who knows how long we’re actually going to stay here. I don’t wanna start this massive project only to have to scrap everything, you know?”

“Yeah,” Cub said, thinking about his own Season 9 ideas. “I’m sure that, given the circumstances, X wouldn’t mind copying everything over. Once things are back up and running, that is.”

“I guess. But I dunno. Messing around with the server and stuff, adding things from old worlds. It seems kind of scary now, after everything.”

Cub could understand that. Even if there was no reason that editing in structures and chunks would damage the server, it made sense to be wary. After all, nobody knew what had caused all the glitches in the first place. 

“So, yeah. I think I’ll make some hermit cards and whatnot. No types or special cards or anything, just the bare bones. See how it works.”

“Sounds good, sounds good. I’ll leave you to it, then? Unless you want some help.”

“Nah, I think I’m good. I mean, this is my project so I kind of want to do it all myself.”

Cub could understand that too, wanting to have a level of creative control.

He turned his attention to Iskall instead, who was still under the table. Redstone was something he could probably help with. So long as he could avoid getting down on the ground, it would be bothersome to have to get back up.

He leaned over the table instead. “Hey Iskall, how’s it going?”

“We’re getting there,” Iskall said, voice slightly muffled. “I think.”

“What’re you working on?”

“Stat poker, of course!” They sounded excited, Cub thought. “You gotta have stat poker. It’s a classic!” 

“Too true, too true,” Cub said. In fact, he’d been planning on setting up a stat poker table himself. “You want any help.”

Iskall hummed thoughtfully for a moment, presumably thinking of ideas. “Oh! I know. Why don’t you start making the….hmmm, what do you call it? The cards? The papers that have what stat you’re looking for. You know?”

“Yeah, I got it.” There was already a stack of papers on the table, apparently ready for use. Cub didn’t have the levels to be renaming them, so he settled for simply writing out the stats required for the game, scrolling through his comm as he did so. The stats screen wasn’t messed up, at least, or the game would’ve been unplayable. He scrolled down the list, writing down each stat as he went. “Animals Bred”, “Chests opened”, “Items enchanted”. Common things. He skimmed over many others. Nothing to do with damage taking, of course. He also skipped the travel related ones–”Distance flown”, “Distance swum” and the like. Some would probably be harmless, but there was no reason to push it. He didn’t bother with the “mobs” category entirely. 

He paused on “Number of Deaths” when he reached it. Definitely not, that much was obvious. Nobody needed to be reminded of all the dying, not now. He would have just scrolled past it if he hadn’t caught the number beside it, his own stat. Number of Deaths: 48.

48. The number felt so low. It didn’t do justice to the days he’d spent wandering through the snow, those lit-up pixels behind the screen. Cub bit his lip. He’d put that behind him. Or was putting it behind him. No reason to dwell on such things. 

He continued down the list. It was quick work, more or less. Not like they needed anything fancy. 

As he was finishing up the last of the pages, a shadow fell over him. He looked up to see Stress smiling down at him. She must have finished the banner. He took a look over to the doorway where it hung.

“Looking good, looking good.”

“I know right.” Stress beamed. “It’s gorgeous!”

“That it is. That it is.”

Her smile faltered somewhat as she looked around the room, at the hermits working away diligently. “Do–do you fink people’ll come?”

The basic answer was yes. There was no reason that the hermits who had shown up today to help plan wouldn’t be there for the games night itself. But that wasn’t what Stress was asking, not really. She wanted to know if the others would come. The ones who didn’t show up to meetings. The ones that none of them knew how to help. But it felt wrong, singling them out as different than everyone else. He understood why she’d say it like that.

He looked down at the paper in his hand. He thought about Gem, about the things he couldn’t say to the others. Not without hurting her. 

What was she doing right now? Was she still cooped up in her tree, mourning what she’d lost. 

She wouldn’t come. Cub knew that. But he couldn’t say for sure about the others.

He sighed. “I hope so. I really hope so.” 

That was why he’d wanted to do this in the first place. To come together as a community, to make things a little less grim. But they couldn’t force anyone to join them. It didn’t work like that. 

The other hermits were finishing up their preparations, and so Cub helped Iskall load up the newly-installed dropper with papers. His thoughts remained elsewhere, however. Wishing there was something he could do to help. Knowing that he couldn’t. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Cub could see a flicker of blue. He turned ever so slightly to look.

Just a soul lantern. Of course. 

He swallowed down everything else and got back to work.

Chapter Text

XB didn’t enjoy being part of a large group. He never had. There were so many expectations, so much pressure to do and say the right thing, and with each extra person involved, that pressure only increased. XB had always felt out of place in situations like that. He never knew what to say, and when there were a whole lot of people all adding in their voice, he found it easier to say nothing at all, to linger in the background and try to act like he belonged.

It was exhausting, honestly, and so he avoided such situations as best as he could. And so a big, social games night was, in spite of how much he enjoyed playing games, not something he would usually be looking forward to or planning to attend. But this time, there was a reason that XB needed to go. An important reason.

“C’mon, man,” he pleaded, leaning against the door frame. “I don’t wanna go all by myself, y’know? And I bet you’ll have fun, too.”

“I don’t know,” Hypno said, not meeting his eyes. He hovered in the doorway like a protective guard. XB wondered if he saw himself as one. 

Hypno wasn’t much more sociable than XB was, but as of late he’d all but become a recluse. Well, that wasn’t quite true, he had Jevin and Wels with him, but it was a different sort of thing. Not a good situation for him to be putting himself in, at least in XB’s opinion. 

He’d changed so much in such a short time. There was a part of XB, perhaps a selfish part, that wanted the old Hypno back. The Hypno who would banter back and forth with him, who’d join him in casual competition or hijinks and who, at the end of the day, he could relax with. Could be himself with. But it was different now. Everything was.

But XB didn’t want to focus just on what he wanted. He had to look out for his friend too. Hypno wasn’t doing well, that much was clear. Really, he needed to take a step back, let the others help more. It would probably be better for Jevin and Wels in the long run, too. XB wondered what Hypno would think if he told him that. If he’d finally accept the help if only for the sake of his friends, or if he’d be angry about it. 

When XB was a child, his father had given him a warning. If he saw someone drowning, he shouldn’t try to save them. He should wait instead, to gather up their stuff in a chest for when they came back.

It had sounded wrong to XB. Sure, drowning wasn’t a huge deal, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience either. Even as a child, he’d known that. Surely, trying to help would be the right thing to do.

You’re too young, and too small, his father had told him. But even adults should avoid trying to save someone if possible. People didn’t think rationally while they were drowning. Even if they knew they would respawn, survival instinct overrode that conscious knowledge. A drowning person would cling to anything and anyone, push them down into the water to stay afloat. It wasn’t selfishness, it wasn’t cruelty, just panic and an instinctual drive to prevent death at any cost. 

It doesn’t do anyone any good if you both drown, his father had said. You can’t help anyone that way.

XB wondered if the same sort of thing applied here. Although, the possible damage to his friends’ mental states was a heck of a lot more serious than drowning. Funny, that, given what drowning had done to him. Well, not funny, really.

“Look, dude, you need to get outside at least a little bit. Interact with the others. Actually relax for once. Stress isn’t good for you, y’know?”

Hypno sighed. “Yeah, I know. It’s just…I can’t leave those two alone. What if…something happens?”

XB wasn’t sure what he expected to happen, but he guessed it wasn’t anything concrete. That Hypno was still frightened that he was one wrong step away from losing his friends.

But Wels and Jev were XB’s friends, too. They were everyone’s friends. And yet Hypno insisted on bearing that burden alone. 

“It’ll be fine. It’s not like you can be with those two 24/7. What about when you sleep?” He paused for a moment, looking Hypno up and down, at his patchy beard and sunken eyes. “You do sleep, right?”

“Of course I do,” Hypno said, a touch more defensively than XB thought was appropriate. 

XB silently planned to bring up the idea of an intervention at the next meeting. This had gone on too long. But at least for now, he just wanted to get Hypno out of there, for a bit.

“How much different is it to sleeping, then? It’s not like you’re keeping an eye on them all day every day as is.”

When Hypno said nothing, he kept going. “Look, you can even bring your comm and obsessively check it as much as you want. Even if something happens, it’s just down the street. Can’t do that while you’re sleeping, can you?”

“I suppose…”

“Look, it’ll just be for a couple of hours. I’m not gonna want to spend any more time there than that. Please?”

Hypno shuffled from foot to foot, looking uncomfortable. As if he were searching for an easy way to let XB down. “I’ll think about it,” he said, and XB got the sense that was the end of the conversation.

“Alright,” he said, trying not to let his disappointment show on his face. He had a feeling that “I’ll think about it” actually meant “no”.

Well, he supposed it wouldn’t do any good to push too hard. He didn’t want to be overbearing. And so he left Hypno behind, swallowing the sour taste in his mouth at the encounter. 

He headed back in the direction of his home, flying over the eastern mountain range that surrounded spawn town. He didn’t live quite as remotely as he had in the past. It was kinda important nowadays that everyone stuck together. But he’d still gone a little bit further than everyone else, just for a little bit of privacy and peace. 

He flew over Keralis’ base, still half-finished, on his way, and found himself circling around to land in front of it. He hesitated in front of the door, considering.

XB really missed playing games with Keralis. He missed his friend’s trash-talking, his lighthearted accusations of cheating, his insistence that he get a chance to win. But as competitive as he was, he always seemed more upset than XB if XB didn’t also get a win. Funny guy. 

But Keralis wanted to be left alone. He’d made that very, very clear. And that was something that XB could respect–he knew the feeling all too well.

But maybe…maybe.

He knocked once on the door, lightly, almost hoping that Keralis wouldn’t answer. Just to avoid hearing that “no.”

He had expected Keralis to speak to him through the closed door, as he always did, and so the sound of the door creaking open made him jump in surprise. 

He looked different, XB thought. Better. Before, there had always seemed to be a tension to Keralis. As if struggling under the weight of trying to maintain his cheery facade. But his shoulders were relaxed now, his smile less forced. Or at least, that was how it looked to XB. 

“XB! Princess, how’s your sweet face doing?” Keralis said in a tone that almost sounded like his old self. 

It gave XB a sense of hope. Maybe a bit of time to himself really was just what Keralis needed to work through everything. 

“I’m doing alright,” XB said, a smile creeping onto his face. “You?”

“Oh, you know me! I’m doing just fine.” Keralis’ grin stretched a bit too far as he spoke. Just a bit. Small steps, XB thought. 

“Hey, so, um…” XB scratched the back of his head, suddenly feeling unsure of himself as he prepared the question in his mind. Games had always been an important part of his friendship with Keralis. And Keralis had always been ready to drop everything and dive head-first into whatever competition XB suggested to him, no matter how immersed in a project he was. It would feel wrong, somehow, to hear Keralis refuse. A painful reminder of how things had changed.

But Keralis was looking better now. So maybe, just maybe…

“There’s a game’s night coming up in a few days at the Soup Bowl–er, that’s what we’re calling that restauranty thing. I was thinkin’ we could go together, y’know?”

“Oooh, that sounds fun,” Keralis said, and for a moment XB’s hopes rose. “But I’m super duper busy. Gotta finish my house, you know?”

“Ah.” Once again, disappointment swelled in XB’s chest. He’d been hoping for too much, perhaps, for everything to just snap back to normal now that Keralis was doing better. “Maybe some other time then?”

Keralis’ smile flicked for a moment. Was he not even willing to consider that possibility, XB wondered? 

“Maybe.” 

Yet another maybe. Better, XB supposed, than an outright no. But not by much.

Keralis dropped his smile in full, eyes flicking down towards the ground. “I’m sorry XB,” he said in a voice that sounded far more honest than any of his prior ones. “I haven’t been a good friend to you. But I’m glad you asked anyway, even though I said no. Thank you.”

“Hey, it’s okay. You haven’t been a bad friend to me at all. You can take as much time as you need.” XB offered him a reassuring smile. “I’m glad you opened up to me. I’m always here to listen, okay?”

“Okay…” Keralis said, and then he was wearing his almost-natural smile again. “Well, I’ve got lots of things to do, like I said. Super duper busy. Goodbye XB.”

“See yah!” 

And with that, Keralis shut the door.

Like XB had thought, Keralis had said no. But still, he was glad that he stopped and asked. It felt good. It felt like progress.

I hope we can play games together again soon, Keralis, he thought to himself. Or at least, wherever you’re ready. 

XB would wait for him either way.

Wednesday afternoon, their set game night date, rolled around, and with the sun in his eyes, XB began making his way west to spawn town. He wasn’t quite sure why he was still going when he was more than likely to be alone. Maybe it was the principle of the thing. He’d asked Hypno and Keralis, so he should at least show up himself.

He flew over Hypno’s house, doing a double take at the sight of the figure stood in front of the door. XB swooped down a bit too fast to be safe, landing at Hypno’s feet with a smile.

“Hey, you decided to come?”

Hypno didn’t look as enthused as XB did. If anything, he looked like a scolded child. “Er, Jevin might have overheard our conversation before. He…kind of kicked me out.”

“Ah.” That…made a lot more sense.

Hypno was gripping his comm tightly in his hands, looking anxious. So much for relaxing, XB thought. He hoped his friend would at least lighten up a little when they got there.

“Well, ready to go?”

“Sure…” Hypno replied, sounding not sure at all. He gave the door one last worried look before turning to XB.

The pair of them headed up the street towards The Soup Bowl. There were other Hermits around, filing into the restaurant or chatting with each other outside. XB always wondered what people talked about during these sorts of things. They sure did seem to have a lot to say. 

Inside looked a little different than it had before, all decked out in decorations for their game night. There was a banner, various colored lanterns, and plate of cookies laid out on several of the front tables. In the center circle, what looked like a makeshift monopoly board had been set out, with Scar in his tycoon outfit drawn in the center, likely by the man himself. The tables each had a bunch of paper playing cards in the center, presumably for whatever games could be played with standard cards. One table had a sheet of plain paper, a shears, and a stone block in an item frame. It wasn’t hard to guess what that was for. On another one was a dispenser and a bunch of barrels for what might have been stat poker. Though their stats were all rather out of whack this season. Hey, if whoever had set it up had made the questionable decision to include Times Died, maybe he’d earn some diamonds for that. Paper ones, of course. There weren’t a lot of diamonds to go around, this season.

“Welcome, welcome,” Cub said, grinning at them as they entered. He was leaning against a table near the front. “We’ve got all sorts of fun things to do. Well, like three things, but we can improvise.”

“Schweet,” XB said, gravitating over towards the monopoly board. Even though it would probably end up having the most players, he really enjoyed these kinds of cutthroat games. Hopefully there wouldn’t be any actual throat cutting involved. He sat down on a woolen cushion, Hypno joining him after a moment’s hesitation in the adjacent seat. Next to the board, which was really just a bunch of papers glued together with slime, were an array of differently colored clay pieces. XB couldn’t tell what any of them were. He selected one covered in blue dye, turning it over in his hands. Hopefully it was fine to just take one if he was planning to play. He never quite knew what he was and wasn’t supposed to do for these sorts of things.

The pair of them weren’t the first ones to sit down. Scar was already there, with a red figure that was definitely meant to represent his season 8 self. He’d even gotten dressed up in the outfit he’d brought over from the prior season, big hat and all. Grian had joined him, looking more relaxed than the last time XB had seen him. He was tossing a tiny yellow figure from hand to hand.

Pearl, Stress, and Iskall were also already sat in the circle, each with their own pieces. They were carrying out a conversation amongst themselves. Stress was cackling about something that one of the others had said. As always, XB began to feel that familiar awkward feeling, of not knowing what to say or do. He turned over his piece in his hand again, pretending to be very focused on it. He only looked up when he heard movement next to him as someone else joined the group.

There were other Hermits present who weren’t in the monopoly circle.  Cleo, Joe, False, and Ren were sitting at the stat poker table, doling out piles of paper diamonds. Etho was hidden in a booth, joined by Beef who might have dragged him along, Doc, and Xisuma, who had definitely been dragged along from the way he was slumping down in his seat. Maybe Doc had gotten the same sort of idea XB’d had. At the entrance, talking to Cub, was an out-of-breath Mumbo, who was presumably running late again. 

That was everyone. XB tried not to let himself be disappointed that Keralis wasn’t there. It wasn’t like he’d expected him to be, anyway. He’d said as much.

With everyone apparently gathered, Cub shut the door and made his way over to the circle, accompanied by Mumbo. Presumably, both of them wanted to play monopoly. Although, XB thought, there might be too many people for that, at this point. 

As it turned out, there were enough pieces for all of them, which XB assumed meant it was fine for all of them to play. Cub took one, taking a seat next to Scar and propping his crutch on the back of it. Mumbo hovered above the group for a moment, as if unsure whether or not he should be joining in, before quickly sitting down next to Grian apparently before he could change his mind. 

“Well, if we’re ready,” Grian said, placing his own piece down on the board. “I guess we can begin.”

Hermopoly started slow, as such games tended to. All the different properties on the board seemed to be named after past places on the server. Horsehead Farms was among them, as was Casa, and XB quickly decided his goal for the game would be to get those two, rather than win. The “dice”, which was really just a pair of droppers with six items each, however, landed him on “Road Access Tax” right out of the gate. Great start. He grumbled incoherently as he moved his piece, getting a muted chuckle out of Hypno. Maybe he’d be able to relax and enjoy himself after all.

The game continued slowly, and XB got more and more into it. Nine players made the game kind of hectic, as well as the general environment, but being invested in something that wasn’t small talk made the whole thing a lot easier to handle. It was fun, really.

A minor-but-entertaining conflict arose when Grian landed on one of tiles meant to represent both Community Chest and Chance or something of the sort.

“Mycelium resistance raid: pay 10 diamonds! Scar!”

“Hey now, I don’t control what cards you draw, Grian,” Scar waved his hands in the air, dropping a few of his property cards as he did. He was employing the bold strategy of buying up every property he landed on, presumably so he could trade them to the others later at exorbitant prices. 

“You’re the one who included it. Besides, it’s my organization, I should be exempt from paying it.” Grian huffed. He still handed over a bunch of paper slips with crudely drawn diamonds on them to Cub, who put them back with the other paper diamonds. 

“Consider it payback for all the diamonds you took from my beautiful diamond throne.”

XB found himself chuckling along at their antics. It felt fun. It felt natural. And for a time, as they played, he forgot about everything that had happened to them. He just enjoyed the feeling of community, of something like normalcy. 

Even if he did get scammed out of 100 diamonds and his Three Fox Hole card to get his coveted Horsehead Farms from Scar. 

By the end of the game, Grian, Scar, and Cub were really the only ones in contention for victory, with a number of maxed out properties. The rest of them hobbled around the board trying not to land on anything that would bankrupt them. Mumbo was, unsurprisingly, the first to go, after many bad deals made to both Scar and Grian. 

Finally, XB landed on Scar’s maxed out Sahara St. and handed over the last of his diamonds and mortgaged properties. He never had gotten Casa. Grian had refused to trade, as it was part of his set.

XB leaned back and watched the remaining players continue on. Ren and Stress eventually fell to the overwhelming force of Cub, Scar, and Grian, who passed huge chunks of money around until a handful of bad rolls for Scar and a couple of very good ones for Cub sealed the game.

“Let’s go!” Cub cheered, collecting his stacks of fake money. 

“Good game, man,” XB gave him a shake of the hand as the others echoed his words. 

There were others who wanted to play, namely Joe, Cleo, and Doc, and so XB vacated the circle to play rock paper scissors with Ren for a few rounds. But it was starting to get late, and he was starting to get tired. Monopoly games did always go on for a while, after all. Especially with nine people.

 It seemed that others felt the same, as some hermits were beginning to wrap up their games and put things away. A few–Etho, Beef and False among them–had already left. XB wondered if the group playing monopoly would actually stick around for the whole game. They’d be there long into the night, if so.

Hypno had stayed the whole time, although he seemed like he was getting ready to leave as well, hovering around the edges of the Soup Bowl.

XB wasn’t going to leave before him, and so he helped himself to a cookie, watching the others finish up. He’d stay as long as Hypno did, but he really didn’t have it in him to play anything else. This much socializing wore him down. Still, it had been a fun time, XB thought. Not something he’d want to do that frequently, but fun nonetheless. 

He finished up his cookie and joined Iskall and Stress in tearing down some of the decorations. It was as he was tossing banners into a shulker box that he felt a tug on his jacket.

He turned to see Hypno, who was clutching his comm, face pale. XB froze. He knew that Hypno was paranoid about a lot of things right now, but he’d known his friend long enough to be able to tell that this wasn’t anxiety or stress. It was something else.

“Something’s wrong,” Hypno said, voice barely above a whisper. “Something’s wrong.”

XB turned his full attention to him. “What? What happened? Jevin and Wels, are they alright?”

Hypno shook his head. “Not them.”

Then what? XB pulled his own comm out of his pocket, hovering over the on button. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what had happened. It felt like before, when everything had seemed terrible and seeing that on a screen had only made it worse.

But he didn’t really have a choice. And so he switched his comm on and pulled up the chat.

It had been empty for a while now. Everyone was extra careful, and so there were very few deaths. And most of the easier to obtain advancements were already gotten. Since they couldn’t talk to each other, that meant that days or weeks often went by without a single message.

But there was one now. A new message.

< Keralis1 fell from a high place>

What? What? That didn’t, it didn’t make any sense. Why…?

As he stared at the chat, another message appeared. 

< Keralis1 drowned>

XB panicked. “Guys? GUYS?”

His tone got the attention of the remaining hermits in The Soup Bowl. They froze, halfway through picking up their games and saying their goodbyes. Waiting for him to say something.

XB didn’t know what to say. “Keralis…Keralis…something’s wrong.”

Something was wrong. Something was wrong and he didn’t understand it. 

No. No he did. He had a creeping feeling of dread in his gut. 

But it couldn’t be. It couldn’t be. They were all so careful to set their spawns. To keep the area as safe as possible. To only move their beds if they actually had to.

So there was no reason…

The others were pulling out their comms. The others were talking, voices raised in panic. They overlapped, until XB couldn’t tell who was who.

“HEY!” It was Grian who spoke up. And instantly silence fell over the restaurant. Grian was the type of person who people listened to, with the confidence and authority with which he spoke.

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to Keralis’ house to check on him. XB, Hypno, Iskall, Stress, Mumbo, you come with me. Ren, go get Etho. Tell him to turn on his mob switch. Doc, Xisuma, if there’s something you guys can do technically, do it. Everyone else search around this area just in case. We’ll be back in ten.”

Grian really knew how to organize people, XB thought as he followed behind him, heart pounding in his chest. On his comm, messages were still appearing.

< Keralis1 drowned>

< Keralis1 drowned>

< Keralis1 drowned>

Why? Why this, why now? When they’d all finally gotten back together. 

They’d all gotten back together, so it couldn’t be…it couldn’t be. He couldn’t be back there, in that cave. In that horrible place that haunted XB’s nightmares. It wasn’t fair. Not after everything.

He pushed the panic out of his mind, let it go blank as he took off after Grian and the others towards Keralis’ base. He wasn’t sure if they’d been chosen at random, or if Grian was guessing at who might know the most about whatever was going on. 

It was a quick flight. But it felt like an eternity before the group of them were landing hard on the grass in front of Keralis’ base. Thankfully, the area was vacant of mobs, even though the sun had long since set. Ren and Etho had been fast. 

Their panicked conversations were replaced by anxious silence as they stared at the dark house. 

Iskall was the first to move, ramming their way through the door and into Keralis’ base, the others trailing in after them. 

“Empty…” they said. 

XB stood in the center of Keralis’ base, looking up through the unfinished roof to the night sky.

“He said he was going to fix it…” Stress said. “The roof…he said…”

“I don’t think that matters right now,” Iskall said. “I think.”

The small room that formed the majority of Keralis’ base was unfinished. It was in disarray, clothes thrown about, water all over the floor, bits of crumpled up paper strewn about. That wasn’t weird, not for Keralis. Was it weird for this Keralis?

XB picked one of the papers off the floor and unfolded it. There had been something written on it at one point, but it had been scribbled over with ink so thick that XB couldn’t hope to read it.

“I don’t know what this is…it’s not legible.”

“Keralis? KERALIS?” Grian called out. “Where are you?”

But Keralis wasn’t here. XB knew that. He knew, he had known from the beginning, where Keralis was. 

“There was a bed here,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “Before.”

There was no bed anymore. 

“Nej…did he…”

< Keralis1 drowned>

< Keralis1 drowned>

It hadn’t rained lately. XB was pretty sure of that. But…

But they’d opened up an exit, a huge hole in the ground to get out. A hole that could let way more water in than the tiny cracks that had flooded the cave before.

And Keralis…he’d spawned in a pocket. He would have struggled to get out, if it was flooded. It might take too much time, more time than he had, before his air ran out.

“He’s in the cave. He has to be,” XB said, almost choking on his words. He didn’t need to specify what he meant. Everyone knew.

“That’s…it’s thousands of blocks away…hundreds of thousands…” Grian said. His face had gone pale. “How are we going to reach him?”

XB clenched his fists at his side. He knew what had to be done. The only thing he could do.

His heart was pounding in his chest. He didn’t…he was scared…

< Keralis1 drowned>

XB closed his eyes and breathed heavily. “I’ll go. Somebody. Kill me.”

All eyes turned to him.

“But you can’t!” Stress cried. “After–”

“I have to. It’s the only way. I–” he swallowed. “I’ll be okay.”

He hoped that was true. “Please. We need to hurry.”

Grian looked him dead in the eyes, expression intense. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” He wasn’t. But it didn’t matter.

He closed his eyes as he heard the sound of Grian drawing his sword, the sound of footsteps as the others backed away.

“We’ll come find you,” Iskall said. “Both of you.”

XB just nodded. He took shallow breaths as he heard Grian step closer, heard the sword swish through the air, and then–

< xBcrafted was slain by Grian >

He awoke with a gasp, in his bed at his base. It had been…a long time since he died.

< Keralis1 drowned>

He didn’t have time to hesitate. Not when Keralis was going through something so terrible.

He remembered what it had been like. He couldn’t let his friend endure that for even a second longer. He couldn’t stop and think, and let the memories of his time in the cave overcome him, as they had when he’d stood frozen by the sea, unable to make himself move. He couldn’t afford that now. 

From his bedside chest, XB drew a sword. He remembered just in time to break the bed first, brain frazzled, before turning the blade towards himself and plunging it into his chest.

< xBcrafted was slain by xBcrafted >

He braced himself. Wrapped his arms around his chest as if they could protect him from the water. The water that would engulf his body, flood his lungs. He wouldn’t drown. He wouldn’t drown, but still…

His feet splashed in the puddle as they hit the floor, and he nearly fell over, the stone rough in the spot where Keralis had dug him out. For a moment, he couldn’t comprehend what was happening. He’d prepared himself for what he would find in this place. He’d been certain of what he was walking into.

Water was seeping into his shoes. It was splashing against his ankles. He took a breath. His gills didn’t flutter.

It was dry. The cave was dry.

It didn’t make any sense. How could…why?

There was a heavy feeling in his stomach, one that had been growing as soon as they’d broken into Keralis’ house. No, as soon as the messages had started coming in. He just…he didn’t want to believe it.

Keralis was still here. He had to be. His bed was broken. 

XB took off in the direction of the stairs that they’d carved ever so long ago, shoes sloshing with water as he ran. He didn’t have time to hesitate, didn’t have time to get lost in a place he didn’t want to remember. 

He stepped outside into the night, feet sinking into the soft podzol. He didn’t stop. Nearby, he could hear the sound of the river. The one that had flooded, the one that had submerged him and sealed his fate. 

It was hard to see in the dim moonlight, but he could just barely make out a dark figure, low in the water. The figure moved slowly, languidly, beneath the surface. As if the swimmer was no longer strong enough to fight it. Or as if they were trying not to struggle. To give up and accept what would happen. 

XB hesitated, for just a moment, on the shore. He remembered the way he’d frozen, back then, the way he couldn’t force his body to take even a step into the sea.

No. No, that couldn’t happen now. 

But Keralis would…he would respawn, right? XB should wait here, meet him as he left the cave again. The way he’d been taught. He respawned before. He’d do so again. Wouldn’t he?

Wouldn’t he?

But as he stood there, watching, the horrible feeling in XB’s chest grew larger. He thought of Keralis and his too bright smile and the unfinished roof and the papers–the notes–all over the floor.

No. No. He couldn’t let Keralis drown again. Not even one more time. What if–what if it was the last time?

And that thought, that fear was even stronger than the terror that had kept him on the shore. He didn’t even have to think about it for one more second. He didn’t hesitate as he dove into the river.

Chapter Text

His braids were starting to come undone. It happened every few months, as time passed and his hair grew out and strands came loose from general wear and tear. Until, at last, he would return to Bdubs, who would gleefully set about fixing Keralis’ hair, boasting of his skills the whole while. Even when the blonde dye had faded from his own hair, he’d continued tending to Keralis’, replicating the same ridiculous style over and over. And when he had finished, Keralis would look at his reflection in one of Bdubs’ homemade mirrors and grin. He looked goofy and he loved it.

Bdubs would never fix Keralis’ hair again. Bdubs. Bubbles. He was gone now, and Keralis couldn’t take care of it by himself. He couldn’t take care of anything himself, really. 

Perhaps it would have been easier to say that Keralis had died as well along with Tango and Bdubs. Everything he had been was gone. The cheerful, optimistism, the passion for his work, the casual banter between him and his friends, his goofy antics. He had pretended, sure, but it had been a terrible impersonation of who he was. He’d known that. Everyone had known that. All that was left was an empty shell of a person, shamefully living on. If his body had died back in Season 8 along with his heart, Keralis thought that would have been better. He would have been with his friends. He wouldn’t have had any debt to pay, and so he could have died without regrets.

But Keralis had lived, clinging onto life by his fingertips. Shamefully, selfishly, after what he had done. Or what he hadn’t done. 

It was his fault. He couldn’t pretend otherwise, couldn’t lie to himself. He had seen Bdubs there on that night, the moon bright enough to illuminate him fully even across the bay. He had seen the fear in each of his movements, shrunk in on himself, backing away from the phantoms circling overhead. He’d seen it in the way Bdubs kept staring into the moon before quickly looking away. He’d been terrified. Even if he’d said he was going to stay, he’d been terrified, and Keralis had known that. 

If Keralis was a good person, he would have flown across the bay, seized Bdubs’ hand and dragged him to XB’s ship. It wouldn’t have worked. He hadn’t even made it inside by himself. But at least he would have tried. At least he would have died as a slightly less awful person. But only slightly. He’d still seen what was going on with Tango, knew he was heading off on what amounted to a suicide mission. And he’d done nothing.

If a person’s true character showed through at times like these, Keralis knew exactly what that said about him. He was a cowardly, selfish person who had thought only of himself. As he’d slowly fell away from the space station, he hadn’t thought even once about Bdubs. He’d only cared about getting himself to safety. 

He should have died instead of them. He wished he had. But it was easy to wish for death. A lot harder to follow through. 

When they’d first gotten back, him and XB, it had seemed like everything might be alright. He’d  really believed what XB had said, that it was good he’d been there. That he hadn’t failed him. He’d started settling down. Started working on a starter base. Putting his world back in order.

And then X and Wels and False had come back, and everything had come crumbling down. There wasn’t any putting it back together, this time. Nothing anyone could say to fix him. If XB understood, really understood, what Keralis had done, he never would have wanted him there at all. 

Bdubs and Tango were gone. Keralis had let them die. He’d saved only himself. Selfish. Cruel. 

It had started not long after that. He’d been washing his face in the sink that doubled as a cauldron in his small, unfinished home. He didn't deserve nice things like a large, clean place to live or the chance to interact with his friends. So he’d locked himself away inside, ignoring the many hermits who had come to offer him undeserved sympathies and well wishes. XB kept begging him to come out, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t. How could he face them all, after everything he had done?  

Staring into the dark cauldron water, face dripping and rippling over the surface, he thought of XB. How terrible it must have been for him, to die over and over again all because Keralis wasn’t smart enough to get him out. All because he’d been too stupid to realize the waterfall must lead outside. He should have done more. But he hadn’t, and because of that, XB had suffered.

He’d drowned too, desperately trying to help his friend, but he hadn’t been thinking about it at the time, not even noticing just how strained his lungs were right up until he was forced to inhale. He hadn’t truly felt the struggle that XB had gone through, unable to escape from that hell.

It was always other people who got hurt from Keralis’ failures, from Keralis’ inaction. Never Keralis himself. Never the one who deserved it. It wasn’t fair. 

That first time, it had been on a whim. He’d dunked his head into the water, holding his breath. The metal edge of the cauldron dug into his chest and hands as he pushed himself forward. And for as long as he could, he remained that way, until he could hold his breath no longer and panic set in. He pulled himself out, breathing hard. His lungs burned even as he shivered from the cold water dripping down his neck. 

He wasn’t sure what he’d actually been trying to do. If he’d been trying to kill himself or just experience for a second what XB had endured for so long. Either way, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to keep going, some automatic reflex in his mind had pulled him from the water. And, as he had realized in retrospect, he wouldn’t have been able to get away with actually drowning himself. The other hermits would worry. They would rush over to see what was wrong. 

They wouldn’t like it, him doing such a thing to himself. They wouldn’t let him do it again.

And, as Keralis sat on the floor, breathing heavily through pained lungs, he knew he would do it again. 

How many times had XB had to die?

The others couldn’t know. They wouldn’t understand. Keralis deserved to suffer. He needed to suffer. If he was too much of a coward to die, to permadie, at least he could do this much.

He didn’t want anyone to catch him. He had to pretend. To show everyone that he was fine. He smiled brightly when XB and Iskall and Stress came to visit, and reassured them that everything was fine, lying through his teeth. He wasn’t very good at it, he could tell they didn’t believe him. But with enough pushing, enough refusing to talk, he could always eventually convince them to go away. Maybe if he kept isolating himself they would all forget about him eventually. That way they wouldn’t have to be hurt when he died.

They shouldn’t be hurt anyway, if they knew what kind of person he was. What he’d done. But he couldn’t tell them. He wasn’t afraid that they would hate him or shun him. No, he deserved that. What frightened him most of all was how kind the Hermits were, how understanding, how accepting. If he told the truth, and they turned around and forgave him? Didn’t truly understand how selfish and cruel he’d truly been, because they hadn’t been there to see it? He couldn’t bear that.

But it wasn’t enough, shoving his head under the water, pretending like that was a fitting punishment. It wasn’t. He should die. He knew he should die. The fact that he didn’t have the will to do it gnawed at him more and more until one night, as he found himself lying in his bed staring through the open ceiling at the tiny dot of a moon, he finally decided to just pick a day and stick to it. 

There was no particular reason for the day he chose. Just one far enough in the future that he felt like he could prepare, soon enough that it didn’t feel like he was dragging things out. 

Although, he wasn’t really sure what he should do to prepare. How to minimize the harm he’d be causing the others with his actions. If he just vanished out of nowhere, with no explanation, he wasn’t sure what that would do to them. 

He should write a note, maybe. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t figure out how to explain it in a way that they’d understand. In a way that they’d know there was no reason to mourn him. 

In the end, nothing he wrote was good enough. And so he resigned himself to not leaving any note at all. It was selfish, perhaps, to do this to everyone, after all they’d been through. But he’d already known he was selfish. It made sense that his last action would reflect that. At least it really would be the last. At least he’d only hurt them this one final time. And never again.

It had felt like a dream, those final days of his life. He woke up late, drifting around his unfinished starter house, already feeling like a ghost. He ate food that tasted like nothing, then wondered why he’d even bothered. It wasn’t like he’d be alive for much longer.

It was a relief, being aware of that fact. That nothing else mattered at this point. Enough of a relief to ignore the rapid pounding of his heart, as if it wanted to squeeze as many beats out of him as it could in the little time it had left. 

“Maybe some other time, then?” XB had said when he came to visit. And Keralis smiled and lied through his teeth and agreed to consider it. 

The last day of his life felt the same as the rest. Keralis thought it should have felt different. But he didn’t care much. It wasn’t like it would matter. Nothing would anymore. 

Maybe he should watch the sun set, he thought. Was it okay to do such a thing for himself? Did he deserve any sort of comfort? He supposed that too didn’t matter. He wouldn’t have to worry about what he did and didn’t deserve for much longer.

And so he laid on the floor of his base, watching the sky through the unfinished roof as it changed from blue to purple. The unfinished part was to the west, and so he could see a bit of the horizon from where he lay. Not much, it would be clearer if he went outside. But it had been a long time since he’d done that, and he really didn’t want to be trying anything new at this point in his life. 

Finally, when the sky grew dark, Keralis got to his feet. His body felt heavy and stiff. Like he was wearing a big, bulky suit. Or maybe just puppeting a body that didn’t belong to him. 

The first thing he did was break his bed. It felt right. Final. A way to remind himself there was no turning back anymore. 

He stared at the empty spot on the floor, the silhouette of where the bed had been painted into the dust. It felt very hard to breathe, all of a sudden. Which was funny, in a morbid sort of way. Not like breathing would get easier from here.

It wasn’t as hard as he’d thought it would be, equipping his elytra and flying up into the night sky. Not like trying to drown himself in his cauldron had been, although he hadn’t been trying too hard back then. Maybe it was because death itself wasn’t really that scary. Just what came after, when you decided to make it permanent. 

There were a lot of stars in the sky, he thought. It was a nice, clear night. He wondered if he deserved to see such a nice thing when he died. He reminded himself again that it didn’t matter anymore. 

Still. They hadn’t gotten to see such a nice thing in their last moments, had they? Or maybe they had. The moon had been pretty, in an ominous sort of way. 

He hoped they died quickly. That they didn’t have to feel anything. 

And with that thought, he disengaged his elytra and let himself drop.

Falling was something Keralis was used to. All of them were used to it, to some extent. Wings broke all the time. So perhaps it was the meaning behind this fall that struck Keralis with such fear, that made his stomach turn so much harder than usual. 

This isn’t right. This isn’t right.

He couldn’t even figure out what he meant by that before everything came to an abrupt stop.

< Keralis1 fell from a high place>

The panic was still fresh in his mind, reeling from the experience, and so as his vision went black, he found himself suddenly paralyzed by indecision. 

I don’t want…

And then he was respawning on the hard stone floor, gasping for air. He didn’t even understand why. 

As the world came back into focus, blurs of gray and green and spots of lights dancing in his vision, Keralis realized where he was. 

The cave. That dreaded cave from the beginning of the season. It would have been too soon if he never saw it again. 

But it was fitting, wasn’t it? That he died in a place like this. It felt like a message from the universe. You don’t get to die peacefully. 

That was fair, Keralis thought. That was fair. 

He squeezed his way through the small hole in the wall, out into the rest of the cave, landing on his knees with a thud that echoed around the hollow chamber. It was dry now, but it hadn’t rained in some time, so Keralis supposed that made sense.

Here was the spot where XB had suffered so much. Where Keralis himself had been all but useless. A reminder of what he really was. That he never should have seen this place to begin with. He should have never seen anything of this world. 

Things began to feel dreamlike again as he made his way across the cave, sloshing his way through puddles, and up the stairs he’d carved in the stone. Like he wasn’t really here and was just experiencing deja vu. Or something of the sort. 

It was quiet in the taiga forest. Unusually so, for nighttime. But Keralis supposed it didn’t really matter. He would never know, and that was fine. It wasn’t like he would need to know things from now on.

Where would he go after he died, permadied? It wasn’t something he’d given too much thought before. Maybe it was like a permanent spectator mode, but Keralis really hoped that wasn’t the case. He didn’t really want to exist in any form. Maybe there was another universe that he’d end up in, an afterlife of some sort. If there was, Keralis knew he wasn’t going anywhere good. 

He didn’t think that was the case, though. He figured that he would simply…not exist anymore. He might have been frightened by that though, before all of this. Now it felt kind of comforting. The idea that he wouldn’t have to exist. 

It would be nice if there was an afterlife, though. For Bdubs and Tango. They deserved that much.

He put it out of his mind. Speculating wouldn’t matter. He’d know soon enough anyway. Or not, if there was nothing to know.

The forest floor sloped down into the riverbed, the stream that had originally flooded and filled the cave. It made sense, Keralis thought, that he died by drowning. Like XB had. Like he’d been trying to do all this time.

He walked past the house he had built, back at the start. It was a strange sight. Here he had fought to keep XB safe and alive. Here he had built up a terrible house with big windows in an attempt to keep his friend comfortable. Here XB had said so many kind things to him that he didn’t deserve. It seemed like a long, long time ago. No, that wasn’t quite right. It felt more that everything between those two points had been a long, miserable dream. It still felt like one now. 

The river wasn’t that deep, but it would have to be deep enough. Keralis watched the water flow, glinting in the light of the moon. He carefully made his way down the muddy bank, doing his best not to trip. He wasn’t sure why. If he got his pants muddy, it wouldn’t matter. 

As he came to a stop at the water’s edge, leather boots barely touching the flow, a thought snapped into his mind, clearer than anything else had been.

What am I doing? I shouldn’t. I should stop. XB wouldn’t want this. Bubbles wouldn’t want this.

He shook his head once and the thought vanished. It was too late for that now. Keralis could no longer turn back.

The water was ice cold, soaking through his shoes and socks and pants. At its deepest point, the water went up to his chest. Keralis felt the cold sting of the water, cold enough to almost shock him. He let his legs slip out from under him as he sank below the surface. Drowning this was so much easier. He no longer had to hold his head under. He could just…let go.

At least, he wanted to. His heart thought better of it. His body thought better of it.

He struggled involuntarily. But it was too cold, the water too strong.

< Keralis1 drowned>

No…I don’t…I…

And once again, he froze up. Once again, he respawned in the cave, this time with an actual reason to be gasping for air.

He had no excuse this time, about fate or anything else. He was just afraid. Afraid to make that one final choice he couldn’t take back. 

Keralis bit his lip, frustration coursing through him. He hated himself. He hated that he had to be like this.

Once again, he crawled out of the cave. He didn’t let himself get distracted this time by the world around him. He made a beeline for the river and waded into it without stopping to think.

< Keralis1 drowned>

It was frustrating, how hard it actually was to go through with it. It shouldn’t be hard. It wasn’t anything more than making a choice, deciding in his own mind to stop the respawn before it could start. And yet, his mind kept freezing before he could make the choice.

But it must be possible to do it. People had before him. He was just a coward.

< Keralis1 drowned>

If he kept doing it, maybe the fear would finally fade. Maybe he’d finally be able to let go. 

< Keralis1 drowned>

It didn’t. He repeated the motions in a trance, crawling out of the cave, climbing the stairs, walking through the forest, stepping into the river, wading to the center, letting the water cover his head.

Each time, he told himself it would be different. That he would finally be able to make that choice. 

Each time, nothing changed. 

< Keralis1 drowned>

Until it did. As he floated in the water, too cold to fight it, letting the water pull him along, something changed.

The world shifted and he was no longer being dragged down, but pulled up. He couldn’t understand it for a second, even as his head broke through the surface of the water. Something, a pair of arms perhaps, wrapped around him and he didn’t have the strength to resist. He sagged into the embrace, propped up in the water that flowed around them. In his ears, a familiar voice echoed.

“Oh Keralis…Keralis…I’ve got you…”

Chapter Text

XB clung tight to Keralis’ body, claws digging into the fabric of his shirt. He was heavy, waterlogged, and XB struggled to keep ahold of him without the current sweeping both of them away. 

He was saying words, he thought, though he didn’t remember deciding to speak. Didn’t even really know what he was saying.

"Oh Keralis…Keralis…I’ve got you, I’ve got you. It’s gonna be okay.”

Keralis was coughing into his shoulder, shuddering between each painful, choking noise. XB dragged him back through the water, focusing on nothing but his friend in his arms, until the ground sloped back upwards and with one final burst of strength, he hauled Keralis onto the shore. 

As soon as they were safe on solid ground, XB’s legs gave out beneath him. He sank to the ground, barely noticing the gravel of the riverbed digging into his knees. Keralis fell with him, so limp that it frightened XB. If he weren’t still choking up lungfuls of water, XB might have thought that he’d already died. 

XB was panting, although he wasn’t sure if it was the exertion or the panic that had caused it. A bit of both, maybe. As he tried to ease Keralis into a more comfortable position, he noticed just how badly his hands were shaking. Keralis was shaking too as he coughed, and XB gave him a couple of thumps on the back, not sure if he was actually helping or not. 

Finally, Keralis’ coughing eased into pained breathing to match XB’s own. The pair of them sat on the riverbank for a moment, but not a restful one. Adrenaline was still coursing through XB’s body, but now with nowhere to go, it flooded his chest with raw panic. Everything had happened so fast and his mind was still spinning, still catching up to the situation at hand. 

Keralis said nothing, not even acknowledging his presence. XB propped him up as gently as he could, hands on his shoulders. His voice shook as he spoke.

“Keralis? Talk to me Keralis? What’s going on?”

It wasn’t really a question, was it? XB wasn’t stupid. He just…he wanted there to be another explanation. Any other explanation.

Keralis looked up at him with glassy eyes, clarity slowly fading back into them. When his eyes finally focused in on XB’s face, his blank expression morphed into one of horror.

“XB…no XB, no…” he wheezed. “No no no, why are you here, you shouldn’t be here, not again…”

“Keralis…” 

Keralis pulled away from him. “Not this place, why did you have to…” He made a horrible sound, grabbing the loose strands of hair in his fists and yanking. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry, I can’t do anything right, and now you’re here because of me and I’ve hurt you again I keep hurting everyone why can’t I do anything without hurting someone why why why .”

XB reached for Keralis’ hands, trying to ease them away from his hair, but Keralis wouldn’t let go.

“Keralis, I–I’m okay, it’s fine. You don’t–I just…”

He didn’t know what to say. What were you supposed to say, in a situation like this?

“Keralis, you’re hurting yourself…please let go…”

But Keralis didn’t seem to be listening. “I hurt you again. I made you come here and hurt you again. That’s all I can do, hurt people, that’s all I can do…I’m sor–” his words were cut off by a ragged cough. 

XB closed his eyes, trying to collect himself. Trying not to sound as panicked as he truly was. He didn’t think that would help. “Keralis–look, I, you didn’t hurt me. I came here because I chose to, okay? You didn’t make me do anything.”

“You shouldn’t have come for me…you shouldn’t have come for me…I’m not worth it.”

“You’re worth it to me. You’re my friend, I don’t…I don’t want to lose you…” his voice broke, and as if his words had made it real, the weight of the situation finally caught up to him. The fear beyond the immediate moment in time. If he hadn’t been fast enough, if Keralis had died even one more time, would he have come back? How close had he come to losing his friend?

XB was still shaking, he realized. He pulled Keralis closer towards him, needing to feel that Keralis was there, that he was alive and breathing. Keralis finally let go of his hair, hands dropping limply to his sides.

“I’m not worth it, I’m not, I’m not. You should hate me, please, please hate me. I’m selfish, and I’m horrible, and I’ve hurt everyone…” Keralis’ voice was breaking too, his ragged breathing hitched against XB’s chest. 

XB shook his head. It took him a moment to speak without crying. He wasn’t sure that would be reassuring right now. “I can’t hate you, Keralis. I could never hate you.”

“You should,” Keralis whimpered. “It’s my fault…my fault…”

“It’s not. This isn’t your fault Keralis, you’re hurting. I’m not–”

“You don’t understand!” Keralis cried, cutting XB off. He curled his fists around the fabric of XB’s hoodie, as if in desperation to make him understand. “I let him die! I let Bdubs die! He was scared and alone and he needed help and I didn’t care and I just left him there! I let him die!”

Keralis burst into tears, his wailing like a knife through XB’s chest. He buried his face into XB’s shirt, raw sobbing barely muffled by the fabric. “Bdubs! Bdubs…Bubbles…” 

XB felt tears gathering in his eyes as well, mixing with the water dripping down his face. He gripped Keralis tighter, still afraid that if he let go his friend would disappear.

“Oh Keralis…you’ve been bearing that weight by yourself, haven’t you? This whole time.”

Keralis was unable to say anything, sobbing too violently into XB’s jacket. And XB didn’t know what to say to Keralis, how he could even begin to pick up the pieces of what had happened here. Instead, he held his friend tightly as they both cried, too paralyzed to do anything else.

Why hadn’t he noticed that things were this bad? He’d known Keralis wasn’t okay, he’d known that from the start. Why hadn’t he done something, before it got to this point? Why hadn’t he pushed harder? Would it have helped, if he had? If he’d been able to convince Keralis to open up about this before it reached a breaking point? 

It had been the wrong choice, hadn’t it, just leaving Keralis to his own devices and hoping he’d get better on his own? XB had told himself that he was giving his friend space, that he would open up when he was ready, but in the end hadn’t he seen Keralis was struggling and done nothing? What kind of friend was he, to just…abandon Keralis, like that.

He’d thought Keralis was doing better. He’d thought things were going to be okay if he just gave Keralis the time he needed. Why hadn’t he noticed something? 

He held Keralis for a long time, until Keralis’ tears gave way to coughing once more and XB realized that perhaps Keralis’ shivering wasn’t from emotional distress alone. They were in the taiga, at night, soaking wet, and while the temperature didn’t bother XB anymore, it surely wasn’t good for Keralis. 

“We should go inside,” he found himself saying. “While we wait for the others.”

Keralis didn’t say anything, but he did offer XB a silent, despondent nod. XB was able to take his hand and lead him up the slope towards the starter base they’d build back then. Keralis stumbled along behind him, all his energy having seemingly been sapped, and so XB looped one of his arms around Keralis’ back, half carrying him up the bank. 

The little wooden shack was still exactly as they left it, although dust had built up on all the surfaces in the past two months. XB gently sat Keralis down atop one of the beds, before stepping away to move the furnace closer. There was still supplies in the chest, and so XB threw some logs and charcoal into the furnace to get a fire going, before taking a blanket from the other bed to at least attempt to dry Keralis off. Keralis had slumped against the wall, seemingly still drained of energy, although he continued to shiver. It was starting to really worry XB. 

He wiped the mixture of water and tears off of Keralis’ face. He’d stopped crying, although his face had gone completely blank in a way that reminded XB of Wels. No, that wasn’t right, XB thought as he looked into Keralis’ eyes. He didn’t seem distant, more like half-conscious.

Shit. He wasn’t sure just how cold the water of the river had been, but in these conditions, it was probably cold enough to cause hypothermia. Not just that, but he wasn’t sure how much water Keralis had inhaled. He’d been coughing an awful lot. That couldn’t be good. It was the sort of thing that could be fixed with a respawn, but that wasn’t an option XB was willing to even consider. He had to keep Keralis alive. If he didn’t…

He didn’t really want to think about that.

He added more charcoal to the fire, then set about tending to Keralis. His soaked clothes probably weren’t helping his condition. 

“Gonna need to take your clothes off, buddy. You’re gonna freeze otherwise.”

Keralis didn’t respond, and so XB set about removing his wet clothes himself. It wasn’t that weird, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen Keralis naked plenty of times before. And besides, there were more important things to worry about right now than modesty.

He dried Keralis off as best as he could with the bedsheet, before helping him into some spare leather armor from a chest, from back when Keralis was using it to replace his clothes. XB supposed it would work just as well now, and hopefully keep him a bit warmer. Leather was good for that, wasn’t it? He didn’t really know. He’d never needed to think of these things before. Not even after everything that had happened at the start of the season.

There was extra leather armor in the chest, and so XB went ahead and changed as well. He didn’t seem to be experiencing any symptoms of hypothermia, probably thanks to his new form, but he didn’t want to drip water all over Keralis. 

XB took the blanket from the remaining bed to wrap around Keralis, before sitting down next to him by the furnace. Hopefully, even as a fish, he would have enough body heat to help warm his friend. He hoped it was enough–the blanket, the furnace, the dry clothes. He hoped he wasn’t screwing things up again. 

Keralis sagged against his shoulder, seeming only barely conscious. He hacked out a painful-sounding cough. XB wondered if he was going to catch pneumonia or something like that. But wouldn’t he need to be exposed to some sort of virus for that? XB didn’t really know. He put a hand on Keralis’ forehead. He couldn’t tell whether or not he was feverish.

With a tired sigh, XB wrapped an arm around Keralis’s back, holding his shoulder in the hopes of keeping him from falling off the bed if he slumped even further. The sound of Keralis’ pained breathing and the crackling of the logs in the furnace were the only sounds that broke the still night around the cabin. Thanks to Etho’s mob switch, no doubt. It was good, the last thing they needed right now was to be swarmed by mobs, but also somewhat eerie. It made the whole thing feel surreal, like a dream where things were just off enough to be uncanny. Or a nightmare, in this case. 

Less than an hour ago, XB had been off playing games with his friends, enjoying the moment and letting go of his worries for the future. Now he was here, back where they’d started, feeling more lost and afraid than ever before. Those two moments in time didn’t seem like they should be able to coexist so close to each other. 

He stared at the flames as they flickered in the belly of the furnace. He’d settled down now, the panic and fear replaced by a deeper dread. This situation that he really didn’t want to be real was real, and he would have to live in it, and keep living in it, and do his best to make things right. It felt like an impossible weight for a second, XB thought, before shoving that thought to the back of his mind. He couldn’t afford to think like that. Keralis needed him.

He glanced at Keralis, who seemed to have fallen into a restless sleep. XB had heard before that it wasn’t good to fall asleep in the cold, but Keralis didn’t seem to be shivering so badly anymore, and he was probably exhausted. If something seemed wrong, XB could always wake him up.

XB leaned back against the wall of the house, glancing back and forth between the furnace and Keralis, and tried to stay awake. He couldn’t afford to fall asleep, as exhausted as he was. Not when Keralis needed him. Even if he were to let go of Keralis for one second, or take his eyes off him for too long, it felt like he would disappear.

XB thought he was starting to understand how Hypno felt. 

Soon, they’d have to talk about everything that had happened. With the others, too–they’d all gotten caught up in this. Hopefully they’d be able to find the pair of them, out here. Everyone had done their best to mark where they’d come from, what direction they had gone to reach spawn, how long it had taken, etc, but the measurements were far from exact. Hopefully, the house and the light from the furnace would be easy enough to spot even in the daylight.

All of that could come later. Right now, he needed to be here for Keralis. If there was something else to be done, he didn’t know what it was. And he couldn’t bear to leave his friend’s side.

And so XB sat, Keralis curled up on his shoulder, as he watched the fire and waited for morning.

Chapter Text

Nobody had bothered to take the decorations down from the previous night, although at some point during the chaos, a few of the banners had fallen onto the floor. Cleo grabbed hold of one of them, clenching the woolen fabric in their hand, and stuffed it haphazardly into a shulker box. 

It almost felt wrong, being in here, doing something as mundane as cleaning up, when they’d come so close to losing another friend. But when Cleo had looked through the window at the remains of last night, they’d felt like they had to do something about it. 

The decorations had felt like a mockery. Did you really think it would be this easy? It seemed to say. That you could just start moving forward, that everything could just go back to normal? After all of this? After the end of the world, after the loss of two friends, after all the horror and trauma? How foolish. 

It made Cleo want to kick something, or maybe just scream as loud as she could. She was mad and she really didn’t know why or at whom. Keralis? Herself? This whole shitty situation? 

She channeled that anger into tossing the remaining decorations into the box, lanterns and scattered papers and leftover cookies and all. They could be sorted through later. It didn’t take long, but she wasn’t really focused on doing a thorough job. She tucked the shulker in a corner when she’d finished, stepping out into the still too bright sun of late afternoon. 

She found XB standing outside the door of what had once been Scar’s hospital room, empty ever since he had moved in with Grian. He looked dreadful, dark circles beneath his eyes and clothes stained with mud and algae. 

She sighed. “Go to sleep, XB.”

XB jumped, apparently not having noticed her approach. He gave her a look that almost seemed sheepish, though mostly he just looked tired.

“I’m gonna, don’t worry. I won’t just…hang around here and worry. That won’t do anyone any good. I’ve seen it, y’know? With Hypno.” He ran a hand through his hair, pulling out a strand of dried seagrass and tossing it to the side. 

“Good.” Cleo couldn’t help but feel relieved, that XB at least wasn’t going to throw aside his own wellbeing in some noble but misguided attempt to help. Too many of them were like that, Cleo thought. They wanted to help, but all they could give wasn’t enough. And so they gave away the parts of themselves they couldn’t afford to lose as well. 

It wasn’t healthy. But Cleo could understand where it came from. 

“But same goes for you right?” He gave her a pointed look. “I mean, you guys flew through the night, didn’t you? You’re probably just as tired as me.”

He wasn’t wrong. It had been a long night for nearly enough, as they’d scoured the wide area where Keralis and XB may have spawned, splitting up and flying around until Pearl had caught the glint of torchlight through the trees. The trip back had taken almost as long, even with their compasses. Cleo would be lying if they said they weren’t worn out by it all. The worrying hadn’t helped matters. It had only made them more tired, when the adrenaline had worn off.

“I will. I just wanted to wait until dark. Try to keep a sort of consistent sleep schedule at least.” 

“That’s fair. Think I might do the same.” He looked nearly dead on his feet to Cleo. She wondered if she looked the same. 

A moment of silence passed between them before XB spoke, in a voice too soft for Cleo to make out.

“What was that?”

“I just…” XB stuffed his hands into his pockets, shoulders slumped. “I wish I’d noticed. Before…before things got this bad. I mean, I know it’s not helpful to agonize over it, but, well, it’s kinda hard not to, y’know?”

He was too kind for his own good, Cleo thought. Most of them were. “What were you even supposed to do? Keep badgering Keralis until he told you what was wrong? Or do you think you should have magically known somehow?”

“I dunno.” XB dragged a shoe across the newly-paved road, not meeting her eyes. “There’s got to be things that I missed.”

“It’s easy to say that now. And besides, it’s not like you were the one solely responsible for looking after Keralis. If you’re to blame, then we all are.”

“Yeah,” XB said, nodding. Cleo got the sense he was speaking more to himself than to her. “Yeah, you’re right.” He turned his gaze back to the closed door before him, expression solemn. “I told Keralis once before, that he shouldn’t blame himself for trying. I guess I should take my own advice.” He sighed, sounding both exhausted and resolute at the same time. “You know what, I am gonna go get some sleep, sleep schedule be damned.”

He slipped his pair of borrowed elytra wings onto his back, rocketing up into the air. Cleo watched him go, flying out towards the darkening sky in the east in the direction of his base. They hoped he’d be okay, that he really would take his own advice and not get stuck in a spiral of guilt. It was, perhaps, easier said than done. But Cleo got the feeling that he’d seen enough of the consequences that guilt could have on a person to catch himself before he fell too far. 

They turned back towards the door, pushing it open before they could think too long about it, before they could hesitate. 

Keralis was looking a bit better than when they’d found him. A regen potion and some warm blankets had done him well. Or at least warmed him up some. Cleo couldn’t say whether he’d done any sort of damage to his lungs or not. Regen potions were good for healing external injuries and infected wounds, less so for internal damage. 

At least he was here, Cleo told herself. At least he was alive. 

Etho was sitting in the corner, idly flipping through the pages of a book. He looked up at her as she walked in, before his eyes flickered back down to the page in front of him. It didn’t look like he was actually reading, more that he was watching Keralis out of the corner of his eye. 

He’d taken on his role of watching Keralis due to being one of the few hermits who had slept the night prior, needing to stay behind to load his mob switch. Still, he didn’t look very well rested, so maybe he hadn’t slept after all. Cleo doubted she would be able to, in such circumstances.

She made her way over to Keralis’ side, hovering over his bed. Keralis didn’t look her in the eyes. He clenched the blankets in his fists. 

“Hey, Keralis,” Cleo said, trying to sound normal. She got the feeling that crying or gushing over him wouldn’t help anyone. “Feeling any better.”

Keralis squeezed the blankets tighter. His bottom lip was trembling.

“I’m sorry…” he said, in a voice barely loud enough for Cleo to hear.

What was the right thing to say here? Tell him he had nothing to be sorry for? Accept his apology, however unwarranted it was? Or maybe just listen to him.

“About what,” she said, deciding on the latter option. She took a seat at the side of his bed.

“I–” Keralis paused for a moment to cough. It was a wet, painful sort of cough that added to Cleo’s worry. “I upset everyone. I ruined your game night. If I had known–”

“Keralis,” she said, trying to keep calm. “I don’t give a single fuck about the game night. You’re so much more important to me than that.”

“I shouldn’t be,” Keralis’ voice was small, hesitant. “You shouldn’t care about me. Not after what I did.”

Cleo shook her head. No. No, she wasn’t going to just go along with that. “You don’t get to tell me how I should feel about you. That’s my choice. And I’ve chosen to care about you.”

Keralis flinched, clutching the blankets tighter. Cleo worried she’d crossed a line, said the wrong thing and made Keralis blame himself for something new on top of everything else.

She softened her voice. “Look, you could’ve personally pushed Tango and Bdubs out of the spaceship and I would still care about you. Because I know you, Keralis. I know you would never have hurt them on purpose. And no accident, no matter how bad, would make me hate you.”

“But it wasn’t an accident!” Keralis’ voice rose too high and he broke off into another coughing fit. “It wasn’t an accident, not really. I didn’t stop and think about Bdubs, not once. I only thought about saving myself.”

“That is an accident,” Cleo said, gently but firmly. “It really is. And it’s one you’ve already beat yourself up way too much for.” 

“No…” Keralis whimpered. “Not too much. Bdubs died because of me. That’s too–”

“Bdubs died,” Cleo said. “Because the moon crashed into the world and he didn’t make it out. Because we all got locked in by this stupid automated system. Because we didn’t think to do anything about it before it was too late. Can you really put all of that on your own shoulders?”

Keralis didn’t answer, and so Cleo kept going, still hoping they were saying the right things.

“You know, I left someone behind too. I knew Joe didn’t really have a plan and wasn’t interested in going with me, and so I just left him there. At spawn. Hoping he’d find his own way out. It could have been him, too, just as easily as Bdubs.” She swallowed. Just the thought was painful, that she might have lost her closest friend because she’d left him behind. She could hardly imagine what Keralis was going through.

“It wasn’t just me, either. Wels and Xisuma both ditched each other, as far as I know. And something happened between False and Gem. We were all panicked and confused and we all made bad choices. Just because we got luckier, it doesn’t make any of us any worse than you.”

Keralis shook his head. He stared down at the blanket in his hands. “It’s not the same. I knew Bub–Bdubs wasn’t leaving. I knew and I still left him.”

“I didn’t think Joe was leaving either,” Cleo said. “I don’t think any of us realized that dying in that place would mean permadeath. Even if we knew it was a possibility, it seemed…more like we were taking measures just in case. Bdubs’ made his choice with that information, and it was the wrong one. That’s not your fault. You’re not the sole person responsible for his safety.”

“But I should have tried…” Keralis mumbled. “I should have tried.”

He was set on blaming himself in one way or another, she supposed. “Maybe so. But that’s not some sort of unforgivable crime, not trying. It’s not something anyone should have to die for.“

Keralis went silent again. Cleo wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

“If you want to talk about what we should have tried to do,” they continued. “We should have all gotten together to talk about what was going on before things got dire. We should’ve had a meeting, we should have discussed all our options. And we should have agreed on an escape plan and stuck together. But instead we all just assumed that it was no big deal, or that someone else would take care of it, and we waited until it was too late to agree on any sort of plan. And so we all just…split up and left everyone to fend for themselves. That’s worth taking blame over, maybe. But it’s a blame we all share equally . If you hate yourself for messing up, then you should hate all of us just as much.”

“I guess…” Keralis said. He didn’t sound convinced. But Cleo supposed it wasn’t that easy to change your whole mindset. 

“Think about it, at least,” she said. “Okay?”

The group meeting the following day was, as Cleo had predicted, not a comfortable one. More Hermits had shown up than usual–Zedaph, False, Gem, and Hypno among them–but it was quieter than any of their previous meetings. XB was absent, looking over Keralis after he’d assured all of them that he’d slept well enough. 

It was kind of surreal, trying to jump right back into the swing of things after…something like this. It felt more comfortable to refer to it that way rather than, more accurately, Keralis’ suicide attempt. But thinking about it in such stark terms felt somehow jarring. Cleo considered herself a fairly blunt person, but that didn’t mean words didn’t hurt her. 

The atmosphere of the meeting felt uncomfortable. It wasn’t the kind of feeling from when they’d all first reunited, when they’d started building everything up from square one, easing into a new normal, but like they were trying to snap back into that new normal they’d worked so hard to establish. It gave Cleo a sort of whiplash, like surely it was too soon to do things like hold meetings and talk logistics. But what were they supposed to do, really? Spend every moment at Keralis’ bedside, trying to convince him that he should keep living? Mope around in their bases for some indeterminate length of time until it was “appropriate” to start doing regular things again. 

Still, from the quiet of the meeting, Cleo suspected that a lot of the others felt the way she did. Either that or it felt wrong talking about Keralis without him present. But he was asleep, and there wasn’t enough room in the hospital for all of them. And so they gathered in The Soup Bowl, as usual. Just two days ago, they’d been gathered here playing games and laughing. It felt like it had been weeks. 

“Okay,” Grian was the first to speak, in the sort of voice that made everyone want to listen. “Okay, things can’t go on like this. Sitting around and twiddling our thumbs while we wait for Xisuma to do all the work of fixing things, and then assuming everything’ll go back to normal when he does. Or that we can just walk into a therapist’s office and come out with all our problems fixed, just like that. It doesn’t work that way. We need to take charge of ourselves. We need to be the ones to make a change.”

The rest of the hermits were quiet. It must be hard for some of them, Cleo thought, to accept that there wasn’t an end to this. That they’d have to make their own. But it needed to be said. 

“Maybe we need to have some sort of plan,” False broke the silence. Cleo was glad for it. False was a good leader, more than she’d give herself credit for. It was something she shared with Grian. “In case…something like this happens again. Everyone’s struggling a lot, with everything that’s happened. But more than that, We need some sort of actual support system for each other. What we have now…well, it’s clearly not working, is it?”

There were some murmurs of agreement. 

 “I know none of us are trained therapists, but we can try our best. Maybe we could set up a group therapy sort of thing? Meet each week and discuss how we’re all doing, talk about what we can do to support each other. I think it’d do a lot of good.”

“I agree, I agree,” Cub said when it seemed False had finished saying her piece. “People might be hesitant to join, though. Talking about all your deepest problems with people you’re gonna see every day. I think we should do what actual therapists do, y’know? Leave what happens in group therapy in group therapy. No bringing it outside unless it’s an emergency.”

“That’s reasonable,” Pearl added. “But some people might want to talk about something they brought up in therapy with a smaller group, share more details or give updates. But I think talking about other people outside of the group shouldn’t be okay. Too gossipy.”

“Yeah, that works,” Cub said. He leaned back in his chair. “Basically, don’t bring up what other people discuss without their consent, but share as much as you want about yourself. Sound okay?”

“Maybe we should have emergency measures too,” Grian spoke. “If someone’s in crisis and can’t necessarily wait for help, I think we need some sort of signal to alert everyone.”

“We don’t have use of the chat, though,” Pearl said with a frown. “How would we do that? You know, without dying?”

“Fireworks, maybe?” Cub suggested. “It’s a good way to get the attention of anyone nearby.”

“They wouldn’t be visible from all that far away, though,” Grian pointed out. “Maybe we should all move back into town until we get the chat back?”

“We could,” Cub said, sounding reluctant. “We could. But it might feel like taking a step back for a lot of people. I think living in close proximity to at least one other hermit would be enough.”

“I guess that would work.” 

“We need to think of a color, too. Red would be the obvious choice, but I wonder if it might discourage people from setting one off. If they don’t think it’s enough of an emergency,” Pearl said.

“Orange, then? It would stand out against the sky.”

“Oh, we could do a Hermits Helping Hermits to craft them all up,” Joe said, adding his voice to the mix.

“Maybe we ought to do more things as a group in general. It could be good, leaning on each other, maybe improving our community too?” Scar said, taking the opportunity to jump in. 

“Someone would have to step up and plan it though,” Grian said. “Or we could do more game nights, but that feels like it’d be kind of tainted now…”

“That doesn’t mean we have to give up on games, though,” Cub said. “But maybe things could be restructured a little. If we were all playing one big game, that could be good.”

“Oh, or we could build something together. It could be something functional, like a farm, or even just something that looks nice. Or that’s fun to build.”

“We are seriously lacking in farms. I could use some more building supplies.”

“We could always just hang out and chat, too. Don’t necessarily need a plan.”

And so the discussion went on, brainstorming ideas before deciding that the rocket crafting would come first, and that later they’d get together to improve the look of the town some more. It sounded good to Cleo, though she couldn’t say for sure if it was progress. What did progress even look like? It was, perhaps, something not possible to measure.

It would be good for them, though, she thought. Hoped. It needed to. It was high past time for things to change.

Chapter Text

We need to take charge of ourselves. We need to be the ones to make a change.

Grian’s words echoed in False’s mind as she stood in front of the door, hesitating. Her hand hovered in front of the rough-hewn spruce door as she steeled herself to knock. She couldn’t put this off any longer. She’d known that for a long time now. She’d just…been pretending not to know. Running and hiding. But Grian had been right. She couldn’t keep running forever, she’d been doing so for much too long already. Better late than never, she supposed. But still, it was hard not to feel a sort of bitterness towards herself for just how long she’d waited. 

False took a quick breath, shaking the tension out of her shoulders, and brought her fist down to knock on the door.

Some three hours earlier, False had awoken, tangled in her bedsheets and shaking. She sat up in her bed, pushing the sheets off to the side and taking a moment to breathe, to come to her senses. It was still dark outside her window, and eerily quiet. Someone was still manning the mob switch, most likely. She preferred it to the normal sounds of the night, however. The growling and rattling and hissing that echoed from outside, muffled by the stone walls of her castle’s foundations.

It was those hisses that had haunted her in her dreams, as they had for the past few weeks. It was weird, False thought. She’d put her own spawn situation behind her pretty quickly, at least once she’d met up with X and Wels, rarely even thinking of it at all. All things considered, it hadn’t been that bad. She’d been stuck down in that mineshaft for twenty minutes at most. Pretty much every player had found themselves in a death loop of that length at some point. It was just par for the course in any normal world. 

But apparently something deep in her subconscious, after months of being fine, had decided it was time to start dwelling on that memory. To paint it in a different light.

Because in the dreams, it was terrifying. To have gone from riding on her mechanical eagle to being deep underground, wrapped in webs too tightly to move as half a dozen spiders sunk their fangs into her arms and legs. And she’d been able to do nothing but struggle in vain against the thick webbing as venom seeped into her veins, a painful burn of a slow death even as more fangs ripped at her. And then she had come back, as stuck as before, to desperately try to pull away as the process repeated. 

Not being able to move, not being able to fight back. In retrospect, that had been the worst part. A death she could do nothing to prevent, just hoping to have made a little bit of progress on the next go around.

How long would it have taken her to get out if she hadn’t managed to get the spider to break the string? How long would she have been struggling over, burning with the sting of poison and sharp pain of fang wounds? 

It didn’t matter. In the end, the cobwebs would have broken. That was how things worked, if she pulled at them a little more each time they’d eventually loosen. She hadn’t ever been in a hopeless situation. Not the way some of the others had been. It felt like an insult, almost, to compare her situation to theirs.

That wasn’t a good way to think, False knew. Trying to rank who had suffered more. It didn’t really matter in the end–knowing someone else had broken every bone in their body didn’t make a broken arm hurt any less. It would just do more harm than good, that mentality. She’d seen enough of what it had done to Hypno, at least. 

But still, there was a part of herself, a part she didn’t know what to do with, that staunchly believed she didn’t deserve to feel sorry for herself. Not after what she’d done. Not when she’d hurt someone else far more than she had been hurt. 

Because it hadn’t been the spiders that had woken her up. That nightmare had come and gone sometime during the night, subconscious terror fading out into nothingness along with the dream.

No, what had awoken her in such a panic had been the other dream. The one where she’d been standing in that quiet meadow, in the shade of a custom built tree. The one where she’d made her way, on heavy legs, towards three monuments that stood side by side, an all-too recognizable image. She’d had no control over her body as she stretched out a hand towards the first one, pushing aside dangling azalea vines to read the name printed there.

She hadn’t really needed to read it, though. She’d known what it would say. 

And then the dream had shifted, and she was outside her body in a world of pure chaos. The ground shook, chunks of stone falling from the low ceiling and embedding themselves in the wooden floor, the floor that was ablaze, flames licking at the pillars and threatening to collapse the entire bunker.

And there, in the midst of it all had been Gem, back against the wall as the blaze surrounded her, shielding her head with her hands as debris rained down. And as the shaking grew more violent, as the flames drew closer, as Gem curled in on herself, she’d spoken in a voice barely audio over the sound of the world breaking apart.

“False? False, where are you?”

And that was when False had woken up.

As she sat there in the bed, in a calm and quiet world, reminding herself again and again that Gem was okay, that she’d made it out, False had known for certain what she had to do. 

Maybe her nightmares would be something to talk about in therapy, when the time came. But it wouldn’t matter, not unless she could bridge this gap and finally begin making things right. And Gem, too, deserved the closure that False had denied her, all this time. But no longer. False was ready to do what was right.

False held her breath as she waited in front of the door, wondering if it would even open or not, and what she would do if it didn’t. She didn’t really have a plan for if Gem didn’t want to talk to her. Maybe she should have made one before coming all the way out here?

She didn’t have to worry for long, as a moment later the door swung open and Gem’s smiling face appeared before her. 

“False! It’s great to see you.”

“Um…” False hesitated, having not really planned out what to say. She hadn’t expected Gem to act so friendly to her right off the bat. “Well, I’ve come to apologize. I know, it shouldn’t have taken this long…” She shuffled back and forth in place, feeling a bit awkward. It seemed a little wrong to give a whole formal apology while standing on Gem’s doorstep. Like she was just trying to get it over with or something. “Can I come in? If that would be alright?”

“Oh, sure,” Gem said, voice bright and cheery. It seemed, at least to False, a little forced. But nothing like this discomfort of any of their previous few encounters, where Gem had seemed intensely uncomfortable even being around False. Maybe she’d moved on, and False was the one still caught up on all of this? But that might be too much to ask for. 

Gem opened the door wider and False stepped into her base, the hollowed out interior of a custom tree. It was lovely, False thought. Very Gem, in all the best ways. 

“I’ve made tea, if you want some,” Gem said, leading the way up a spiral staircase to what seemed to be a small living area. “Well, it’s made from spruce leaves, so I’m not sure if it’s actually tea, but it tastes pretty good with honey.”

“Oh. Sure.” 

“Great!” 

False took a seat at the small table in the room’s center, as Gem filled a pair of glass bottles with an amber liquid, holding them by their necks as though they were some sort of dubious potion. She sat them down on the table, taking a seat opposite False. 

“Thank you,” False said, moving to wrap her hands around the bottle when Gem stopped her.

“I wouldn’t touch the base of it, it’s really hot. But we have to make do until the server opens, I guess.”

“Ah.” Yeah, False guessed that glass wasn’t a very good insulator. She just hoped that the flask wouldn’t shatter in her face or anything. 

“So,” Gem leaned back in her seat, knitting her hands together atop the table. “What did you want to apologize for?”

Gem’s tone threw False off. It wasn’t a prompt, a polite way to get False to apologize for the one thing they both knew she had to apologize for. It was a genuine question, like she really didn’t know. 

But that didn’t make sense, False thought. How could she not have known? Why else would she have seemed so uncomfortable around False?

Or maybe she’d never been uncomfortable, False had just been projecting her own discomfort onto Gem? Maybe she’d been overthinking things the whole time.

No, that couldn’t be it. After all, they’d all talked about how they’d escaped. Gem would have known that False had left the bunker. That was why she’d left herself…wasn’t it?

“I, well, I’m sorry for leaving you,” False said. She guessed it didn’t matter if Gem knew or not. She should still apologize regardless. “Back at the end of Season 8, I mean. I left you in that bunker and flew off all by myself, without even saying anything. I abandoned you and didn’t even tell you I was leaving. And then I was too worried to bring it up for all this time, so I’m apologizing for that too. I should have talked to you about it so much sooner. I’m really sorry, Gem.”

She took a breath, looking up from the table to meet Gem’s eyes. She didn’t remember looking down in the first place, but she must have done so at some point. Ashamed of everything as she was.

There was no recognition in Gem’s eyes, no sense that she understood what False was talking about. No bitterness, nor forgiveness, nor anger, just blank confusion. 

“Oh,” Gem said after a moment. “Well, it’s fine. I forgive you. All of that is in the past, after all. I’m sure everyone has something they regret. It was an awful situation, after all. One none of us really knew how to deal with. We made mistakes, but that’s okay. I think we can move forward from it all.”

It should have been a weight off False’s chest, Gem’s easy forgiveness. A resolution to all that had been plaguing her. But it just felt…wrong, somehow. Not just Gem’s seeming confusion…all of it just felt…off in a way she couldn’t put her finger on.

“Did you–did you really not know? That I’d left, I mean?”

For a split second, something like panic crossed Gem’s face, before it was replaced by a somewhat strained smile. “Oh! Uh, no. I didn’t know. Should I have?”

But if that was the case, False thought, if Gem really didn’t know she’d been abandoned, why had she left?

Had she done the same thing as False and left without saying anything? Could that…really be the case, that they’d both betrayed each other and had been dancing around the issue all this time?

But Gem would have said so, wouldn’t she? Surely she would have, now that False had already confessed. There would be no reason not to, no reason not to clear the air and finally set things straight. Gem didn’t strike False as the kind of person to keep that a secret, at least not with everything out in the open.

Maybe it had been an accident somehow, Gem’s escape. Or maybe it had been a last minute decision, when everything was already breaking down and there was no time to go and get False. Or she’d searched for False and hadn’t been able to find her, but hadn’t assumed the worst, that she’d been abandoned.

She had to know. Because right now, as things were, nothing felt like it had been resolved.

“How did you leave? Or why? If it’s okay to ask.”

The panic returned to Gem’s face, and this time it didn’t fade. Her ears pinned themselves back against her head, as if she was a cornered animal.

False faltered for a moment. Had she overstepped, somehow, to have upset Gem this much?

But Gem wasn’t looking at False. Her eyes darted up and to the left, then to the right, then in False’s direction, but not truly looking at her. As if she was afraid to look too long at what lay in the corners of her vision.

False could guess what that might be.

“Gem…are the Vex giving you trouble? Have they done something?”

“Oh, no, no, not at all. I’m just fine, yep, sorry to worry you.”

Wrong. It was all so wrong. But before False could say anything else, Gem picked up her bottle of tea and chugged the entire thing in one gulp, breaking out into a fit of coughing as her face scrunched up in pain. 

“Are–are you okay?”

“Ooh ow, bad idea. That was a bad idea. Still too hot.” Gem fanned at her mouth with her hand, as if that would help. “Do you have a regen potion or something?”

“Oh, yeah.” Lots of hermits had started carrying them around, what with natural regen being off. False fished one out of her inventory and passed it over to Gem, who swallowed it down as quickly as the tea.

“Thank you.”

False didn’t know what to say in response to anything that had just happened.

“Well, anyway, I think we had a good talk,” Gem said, voice quick and anxious. “Um, I’m sort of busy right now with base building and stuff, but we could hang out some other time. And, uh, no need to worry about anything we talked about. It’s water under the bridge, right? So don’t feel too bad about it.”

“Right,” False said, not knowing what else to say.

“Anyway, I’ll see you around.” And, with more haste than False thought was necessary, Gem ushered her back down the stairs and out the door, giving her a cheery wave goodbye as she shut it.

And so, False once again found herself standing in front of the door, feeling just as anxious as she’d felt before. The weight of what she had done had lifted from her chest slightly, but it had been replaced by a deep discomfort, a sense of unease.

Because False had never seen Gem like that before, not even in those awkward months when they’d been avoiding each other. Gem had always seemed to have a casual sort of confidence about her, a security with who she was and whatever she was doing. It was something False had envied about her, honestly. Confidence wasn’t something that came naturally to False, but something she built up in layers and she was sure that it showed, somehow. Maybe Gem was the same, but if she was, she didn’t look it.

To see Gem so visibly anxious was…unnerving, and False had little doubt that the Vex were involved. But she couldn’t tell in what way, or why Gem had acted the way she had. Unless the Vex had taken control of her, but if that were the case, surely they would have used her to attack False. Or something of the sort. Not just push her away.

She didn’t understand any of it, and Gem didn’t seem eager to share with her. 

False stared at the closed door, dread gnawing at her, with no idea of what she should do. 

Gem, she thought to herself. What in the world happened to you?

Chapter Text

“Right,” Grian said. He shuffled a heart of the sea from one hand to the other, peering into it as if it was a crystal ball that might tell him what to do next. “Well, I’m not sure where to start.”

He seemed uncomfortable, Doc thought. Everyone did, himself included. It was only natural, really, to feel that way while preparing to bear the most vulnerable parts of oneselves for so many others to see. Doc hoped it was a good kind of discomfort, like airing out an open wound after letting it fester for far too long, not like picking at a scab that really should be left alone. It was hard to know. 

There were eight of them here, gathered in a circle around the center table of The Soup Bowl, which had basically become the one public gathering spot of the server. Across from Doc was False, sitting in a chair with her knees pulled up to her chest in a position that might have looked casual to someone who didn’t know her, but looked only defensive to Doc. Beside her was Cleo, who was sprawled out on a cushion, pointedly focused on pulling out bits of wool fuzz and rolling it around between their fingers. Next to them was Hypno, who reminded Doc of a rubber band pulled far too tight. He had his comm gripped in his hands, eyes never straying far from the screen. Doc couldn’t blame him, not after the past week. 

Between False and Grian sat Mumbo, who was fidgeting with his tie, sat ramrod straight in his chair. Beads of sweat had begun to form on his brow. He looked the spitting image of a business man about to give an important presentation. Doc might have found the sight amusing in a different situation. On Grian’s other side was Iskall, who was bouncing their leg, looking antsy. They were right next to Doc on his left, and Doc found the sound a bit distracting, though he wouldn’t dream of saying anything about it and making Iskall uncomfortable. 

On his other side sat Ren, but Doc refused to let his eyes linger on him for too long. Ren had only come along due to Doc’s rather persistent encouragement, and Doc didn’t want to make him any more uncomfortable than he already was. Truth be told, he wasn’t sure it had been a good idea to keep pushing Ren to confront his feelings. If he didn’t want to do so, then Doc forcing the matter would only make things worse. But Doc had known him long enough to know that Ren would probably never ask for help if nobody stepped in. And Ren did need help, however much he tried to deny it.

It wasn’t that it was impossible that a person could move on from such a traumatic experience on their own. Everyone was different, after all. But Doc knew when he was being bullshitted, and it was blatantly obvious to him that Ren was not nearly as okay as he wanted everyone to believe. And so he had pushed, perhaps a little harder than necessary. And Ren had finally agreed to come, after Doc had assured him that he didn’t have to say anything if he didn’t want to, but that he should just give it a try. 

It was only the eight of them, though Doc had expected as much. There were a number of others who had agreed to give therapy a shot, but getting everyone together at once posed several issues. Keralis couldn’t exactly be left alone, nor was he well enough to join them here, and Hypno had flat out refused to come unless someone would watch over Jevin and Wels. Adding to that, sixteen had seemed like too large a group to have any sort of real discussion that wouldn’t immediately descend into chaos , and some of them hadn’t wanted to share certain things with their closest friends. And so, after a bit of discussion, they’d split into two groups. It seemed far more reasonable to Doc.

“So, first off,” Grian said, snapping Doc’s attention back to him. “I brought this thing.” He held up the heart of the sea. “It doesn’t mean anything, I just thought it would be good to have a way to know who’s talking. Otherwise, it’ll probably get chaotic, and nobody’ll know who’s turn it is to speak, and some people will get drowned out, all that sort of stuff.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Cleo said, looking up from her cushion. She flicked a bit of fluff over her shoulder. “Though I do wonder–are we supposed to be giving advice to each other? Or just venting?”

“Huh. I hadn’t really thought about it. I mean, I kind of assumed we’d be giving each other advice and such, but I guess not everyone’ll want that.”

“I mean, we could just say what we want?” False suggested with a shrug. “If we want advice or just want to talk without judgment. That would work fine, wouldn’t it?”

There were a few hums of agreement from the group. 

“That’s good,” Grian said. “We can just say what we’d prefer before we talk, and then once we’re done, we can have a more open discussion, or some words of comfort or something? Or nothing at all, that would probably be fine too. It'd be good to get some of this stuff off our chests anyway.”

 He moved the heart of the sea between his hands again. “I should probably start, though. This was my idea after all. Unless anyone else wants to go first?”

“Go ahead,” Cleo said.

“Right. Guess I should just…jump right into it….huh….gosh, this is harder than I thought. Give me a sec.”

He gazed into the orb, as if once again expecting it to give him answers. He looked almost bashful, which was not normally a way one would describe Grian. Had Doc not seen Grian get flustered over being showered with praise on a few select occasions, he might have thought Grian incapable of shame.

“I guess there is something I’ve been thinking about–oh, I’m okay with advice on this by the way.” He furrowed his brow, seemingly both determined and hesitant to speak. “It’s about after we got back, all that time I spent at Scar’s bedside, like I could do something if I just waited long enough. Or like I was supposed to, that it was my punishment. Because he went back to save me.”

Grian paused. His eyes flicked between the others, and Doc wasn’t sure if he was looking for some kind of reaction or if he just didn’t know where he should be looking.

“I’m not still beating myself up for that, don’t worry. But I think a part of me is frustrated with myself, for letting it be that way in the first place. Like I set a bad precedent or something, spending all that time…wallowing. Not that I think everyone else who’s dealing with guilt of any kind feels that way because of me, but maybe I could have…I don’t know, done something productive. Because all that, all the waiting around. It did nothing. I should have known that, back then, but I just kinda felt like I messed up. I messed up, so I wanted to fix things, you know? The way we always do, when a prank goes a little too far, gets a bit out of hand. But this–yeah, it wasn’t something I knew how to fix. I guess I thought maybe it would give Scar some comfort, to know I was there. But I’ve already talked to him, and he doesn’t remember a thing. And in the meantime, I wasn’t doing anything to help build out the town, and I was worrying all my other friends, and I don’t know, it just feels bad. I know I can’t take it back, not anymore than I can take back dying in that desert. But it’s a bit hard not to get hung up on it when I could have done something differently and I chose not to. Now that frustrates me more than any of the terrible luck that got us into this situation to begin with. It was something I had control over and I flubbed it.”

Grian stopped, taking a couple of deep breaths, as if he’d forgotten to breathe as he talked. “Well, that’s it I guess. I could talk about my wing, I suppose, how much it sucks not being able to fly around. Elytras are so clunky. But I can’t really do anything about that myself, not without making the problem worse. But I can change my way of thinking. About all that stuff I talked about. So I’d rather focus on that.”

The room fell silent as Grian finish.

“Oh! Yeah, if anyone wants to speak now, they can,” Grian added. 

The silence continued, eyes of hermits glancing to and from each other anxiously. Nobody, Doc supposed, wanted to speak up. Not when they might say the wrong thing. They were all so out of their element.

Well, Doc would have to be the one to speak, then. He was good at that, he thought. Not the “giving advice” part, the “stepping in when no one else would” part. 

He cleared his throat. “Well, seems to me like you’re putting an awful lot of responsibility on yourself. You’re not our leader any more than X is.”

“I guess that’s true,” Grian said. He gave the blue sphere a flick, making a light plinking sound. “Something to keep in mind, anyway.”

“Plus, what were you supposed to do,” Cleo chimed in. “Do you think that if you left Scar’s bedside you would have been able to magically fix everything and everyone?”

“No, nothing like that. It just feels like there should have been something. Helped build out the town, maybe, or gather supplies. Even if it wouldn’t do much, it’d be better than what I actually did, you know?”

“Maybe,” Cleo said. “But it’s way easier to think of what you could have done differently after the fact. I think we all feel that way, at least to some extent.”

“Yeah…” Grian wrapped his fingers around the orb, studying it for a moment, before he abruptly threw both of his hands in the air, half-shielding his face. “Okay, okay, that’s enough. I’ve poured my heart out and this is starting to feel really uncomfortable. Can someone else go? Please?”

“I’ll go,” False said before an awkward silence could fall over them again. She unfolded her legs and held out a hand. 

Grian tossed the heart of the sea to her, looking relieved. It wasn’t a great throw, but False snatched it out of the air with impressive dexterity. 

“Okay,” she said, eyes on the orb as she tested the weight of it in her hands. She gave it a little toss into the air, as if evaluating it for some particular characteristic, or maybe just as a distraction. “Yeah, I’m not gonna lie, I’d kinda rather do this before I lose my nerve?” She gave a nervous chuckle, before her face fell into a more solemn expression.

“Uh, there’s something I haven’t told anyone. Well, hadn’t told anyone, up until now. About, you know, back at the end of the season. Gem and I, we were supposed to stay in the bunker, wait things out, but…” She swallowed hard, turning her gaze to the ground as if too ashamed to look anyone in the eye. “I left her. Gem, I mean. I left her in the bunker and ran off on my eagle and didn’t even say anything. And I don’t–I don’t, don’t really want to hear anything about that. Especially not if you’re going to reassure me, ‘cause that’s between me and Gem. I mean, you can tell me that I’m awful and selfish if you want, I guess, but I know you probably won’t. I don’t want advice on that, I just…it’s something I needed to share, alright?”

She took a deep breath, closing her eyes as if to center herself. “But here’s the thing, I finally went and talked to Gem about it. I waited way too long, but I finally did it. And things–things didn’t go at all how I thought they would at all. It was–well, it was just weird. Gem acted like she didn’t even know that I left her. But–but we talked about that, didn’t we? When we were all trying to figure out where we were when we left, to maybe calculate where we spawned in? All of that? And when I started questioning her, she seemed…scared. Of the Vex, I think. It’s gotta be. But she shooed me away before I could do anything. And now I don’t know what to do? It doesn’t feel like we’ve made amends, but like there’s an even bigger divide between us than before. And Gem doesn’t seem to want me to know what’s going on, or maybe the Vex have done something to her, but I don’t know what. I just don’t know.”

False sighed. She gave the orb another light toss. “So, if you guys have any advice on that, at least…”

“Yeah,” Grian said, “That’s probably something to talk to Cub or Scar about, right? None of us really know much about the Vex, but they’ve got experience with them at least. Yeah, I think talking to one of them is gonna be your best bet.”

“I…right. I was planning to. But I don’t know what to do about Gem in the meantime. Should I stay away from her, is that what she wants? But if it’s the Vex that want me to go away, then I should do the opposite, maybe?”

“I mean, I doubt that it’s Gem that wants you to stay away,” Cleo said. “But the Vex might have something hanging over her head, blackmail or something? If they even do that. Yeah, I second the ‘talking to Cub and Scar' thing.”

“Okay. Okay, I can do that. I think I just…needed someone to tell me to go ahead. I know that’s kind of, you know, outside stuff. Not so much what I’m feeling. But still, thanks.” False said. “I–I think that’s all from me. If we have another meeting, maybe there’ll be other stuff to talk about. But I already kind of feel like I’ve spilled out my guts.”

“I feel you on that one.” Grian nodded. “Anyone else want to go?”

This time there was a silence, as the other hermits nervously glanced around the circle. Doc was preparing himself to step in once again when Iskall beat him to it.

“I could go,” Iskall said, giving a wave to False, who tossed the heart of the sea at them. “I’m not sure how much I have to actually talk about, but it wouldn’t hurt, I suppose.”

They passed the ball from one hand to another rapidly, as if trying to juggle with a singular ball. “Hmmm. If there’s anything on my mind, it’s…the whole situation with Keralis. And I know, I know we’ve talked about this, not blaming ourselves for not seeing the signs. Keralis didn’t want us to know. I get that. But I–Stress and I, that is, we were visiting him all the time. And I–I knew that something was wrong. Like, instinctually. There were times…when he didn’t want to come to the door, didn’t want to let us in, and I don’t know…I knew that we had to check on him, make sure he was safe…but I guess I was just convincing myself that it was…just to be extra careful. Not that it was…a real risk. If that makes any sense. It feels like it doesn’t. But I guess I feel like I was…not guilty. Sloppy. Not the same thing, I know. But I feel like I didn’t do a good enough job.”

They stopped, still juggling the orb between their hands. “That’s all, yeah.”

“Did you want advice or…” Cleo began.

“Oh! No, no I don’t think so. I just kind of wanted to get it off my chest. I’d rather not talk about it any further. If that’s okay?” 

“Of course,” Cleo said. She held out her hand, gesturing to them. “Pass that here, I’ll go next. If that’s okay.”

Iskall tossed the orb to Cleo, who reached out to catch it, misjudging the distance and catching it with her forehead rather than her hands. She shot Iskall a sour look.

“Sorry, Cleo! Sorry!”

“It’s fine,” Cleo sighed. She picked the heart of the sea off the floor where it had fallen after bouncing off her temple. “Doesn’t really hurt, honestly. The perks of being a zombie.”

She brushed her hair out of her face and set the orb down on her lap. “Moving on from that, which I do not want to talk about, thank you very much. Honestly, I’m not sure I want any of you to say anything at all. No, no I definitely don’t.” 

They pursed their lips, scowling down at the orb in their lap. “I don’t think I want to share all that much. This isn’t very comfortable for me. Normally, I’d just talk to Joe. But I figure I can share a bit here.

“Keralis will probably be well enough to move around soon. Joe and I offered to let him stay with us and he agreed. That’s good, fine. It has to be that way, it’s not safe for him to live on his own. But I feel…nervous isn’t the right word. It’s just that Keralis seems so fragile now. And I feel so clumsy. But I can’t afford to be clumsy, I really can’t. There’s too much on the line, and I don’t feel equipped to deal with this. But I don’t trust anyone else any more than I trust myself and Joe. None of us are really qualified for this, after all.”

Cleo paused, hand hovering over the orb before they snatched it from their lap. “Anyway, no more. The rest is for Joe only. So let’s move right along before my heart falls out of my chest or something.”

 Doc wondered if that could really happen. Maybe, given that a good chunk of her ribcage was already visible. It could just be one of those zombie things.

“Anyone want to go next?” Grian asked. This time, it was Doc who filled the silence that followed.

“Sure, I’ll go.”

Cleo got up from their chair to walk the heart of the sea over to him, dropping it in his lap. It was heavier than he remembered hearts of the sea being. But then again, it wasn’t like he handled them that much. 

He didn’t bother picking it up, letting it rest in his lap as he considered what to say. 

There were a lot of things he could talk about, he supposed. But the one that came to mind was the thing that had been stuck in his head since the moon had begun to loom larger and larger over them.

Did I cause this? 

He’d told Xisuma that it didn’t matter what had caused it, that there was no point in them blaming themselves for what was over and done with. And he stood by that. Or at least, he tried to. It was very, very hard not to blame yourself at least a little bit, when you might be responsible for the permadeaths of two friends and the traumatizing of so many more. He wasn’t some perfectly stoic person who could brush off that sort of situation, much as he tried to be at times. 

If he were being honest with himself, more honest than he’d like to be, half the reason he’d told X off for his guilt was to hold himself accountable. Because if he told X not to feel guilty while he was feeling that way himself, then that would just make him a hypocrite. And that was something that Doc very much did not want to be. 

Maybe that was why he’d dragged Ren along too, he considered. Because if Ren was going, if he was putting himself out there, then Doc couldn’t very well avoid going himself. That, too, would have made him a hypocrite. 

Although, he hoped that hadn’t been his subconscious motive, that he hadn’t brought Ren here out of selfishness rather than concern. But it was a possibility. He couldn’t deny that.

Doc cleared his throat, mentally preparing himself to speak. “Ah, you can give me advice on this, I guess.”

A part of him regretted saying that as soon as he spoke. Doc wasn’t good at being told what to do, he knew that about himself. It wouldn’t be a very good look to get snippy with the others when they were just trying to help.

Well, he wasn’t going to take it back, though. That was a “him” problem, not a “them” problem. 

“Look, I know we’re all trying not to be too self-flagellating here. Is that the word? Well, anyway, as much as I try, I can’t help but dwell on the fact that this might be my fault. I went messing around with things that weren’t supposed to be messed with. Then the moon started getting bigger. Scientifically, that’s not enough to prove anything. There were too many factors at play. And there’s nothing clear to suggest that my…exploits and the moon were connected. But, well, it would be quite the coincidence. It just so happens that the season when I started pushing the limits of this world more and more was the same season that, well, we all know what happened. And as much as I want to say it doesn’t matter now, because I can’t change it, it does. If it was something I did, then I need to know that. Not to blame myself or anything of the sort, but to make sure it never happens again. And if that means living the rest of my life inside the lines, so to speak, then so be it. But it is something that I need to know.

“But aside from that, I don’t want to be a part of this problem that we have, of placing all this burden on ourselves. It’s not noble, it’s not selfless, and it doesn’t take that weight off of anyone else. If anything, it adds more to their burden when they worry about us. And it becomes a constant cycle of guilt and blame and misplaced responsibility. That can’t go on. It will destroy us if we don’t stop it. That’s what I think. But that’s easier said than done, isn’t it? There’s still a big piece of me that blames myself, and I don’t know how to get rid of it. It’s persistent, that guilt. Like an infection that just keeps coming back. I don’t know the cure for that, and it bothers me not to know.”

Doc sighed. He leaned back in his seat, feeling somehow drained even though all he’d been doing was talking. He’d shared more than he’d really wanted to, and he couldn’t tell if it felt good or bad, getting it all out in the open. If he was healing a wound or picking at it. It wasn’t very clear.

“For what it’s worth,” Cleo said. “Joe heard from X that the thing with the moon was almost definitely a virus. It doesn’t fit the profile of any sort of glitch. So you’re probably not behind this.”

“That’s true,” Doc conceded. He’d thought the same. No glitch he’d seen or messed with before had done something like bring down a moon on them. It was too consistent, for the moon to keep growing and then actually crash. If the moon had warped out of existence or merged with the world, that would be one thing, but everything had seemed far too elaborate for a simple glitch. 

Still, he had to admit that it helped to hear someone else say it. To know that he wasn’t just making excuses for himself.

“I think we could get into a whole other cycle of blame,” Grian added. “Blaming ourselves for blaming ourselves. Gosh, I don’t have the answer for that one. Maybe if we were better at treating ourselves the way we treat other people, you know? With compassion and forgiveness.”

“That’s a good way to look at it,” False said. “If we could forgive someone else for doing the same thing, we should be able to forgive ourselves.”

“That’s true,” Doc repeated. “Well, it’s something to think about, at least. I’ll keep it in mind. Though for now, I’d rather move on. This has all been a bit much for me.”

“I think we all kind of feel that way,” Grian said. “It’s very…vulnerable.”

“Anyone, er, want to go next?” Doc picked the heart of the sea off his lap, holding it out towards the center of the circle.

Silence again. Hypno was still watching his comm. Doc wondered how much of the meeting he’d even heard. Beside Grian, Mumbo was trying to wipe the sweat off his brow as discreetly as possible with the end of his tie. 

He snuck a glance at Ren, who was curled up on his cushion. He didn’t look terribly excited to be here, though he also didn’t look absolutely miserable. Doc had said that Ren didn’t have to talk, and he stood by that. He wasn’t going to ask.

“Mumbo?” Grian said, breaking the silence. “Do you…want to talk?”

“Oh? Me?” Mumbo sat up straighter, voice rising in pitch. “Uh, yeah, yeah, that’s fine. I can go.”

“Mumbo, you don’t have to talk if you don’t want to,” Grian said. “You don’t need to feel pressured. This isn’t some sort of…presentation.”

“Oh, yes, I know. I do, I do want to talk, I just, oh, this whole thing makes me nervous.” 

“Take your time,” Grian assured him. “You can say as much or as little as you’d like.”

“Okay,” Mumbo said, a little more steadily this time. “Okay, I can do this.”

He wiped his hands on his pants before stepping over to Doc to pick up the heart of the sea. He returned to his seat on shaky legs, holding the orb like it might break if he so much as looked at it wrong.

“Okay.” Mumbo said, and then said nothing more, staring off into the distance as rigid as a stone statue. Finally, after a long moment, he spoke again.

“Oh, Grian, I’ve changed my mind. I can’t do it! I, I can’t, I’m too nervous, and I don’t know what to say.”

He passed off the orb to Grian as if it was burning him to hold it. 

“Sorry, sorry!”

“It’s fine, Mumbo,” Grian said, giving him a few pats on the shoulder. “It’s fine. I’m sorry that you felt like you had to say something. I didn’t…I don’t want it to be that kind of environment.”

“I don’t think it’s anything you did, for the record,” Cleo said. “It’s pretty natural, when you’re in an environment with your peers, to feel like you have to do the same as them. That’s just our nature as players.”

“I guess.” Grian frowned down at the heart of the sea in his hands. “But still. I want to emphasize again. Nobody needs to say anything unless they want to. Agreeing to come here doesn’t mean you agreed to sharing anything. And you can change your mind at any time. Okay?”

He got a few murmurs and noises of agreement from the others, Doc included.

“Right. If nobody else wants to talk, I think we can call it for today. I don’t want anyone to feel pressur–”

“I’ll talk.”

Hearing Hypno speak was so unexpected that it nearly made Doc jump. He really hadn’t thought Hypno had been listening. Grian turned towards him, eyebrows creased in confusion. Doc assumed he’d had the same thought.

“I’ll talk,” Hypno said again. He set his comm down face-up on his lap, holding onto it with one hand. He raised the other to accept the orb, which Grian tossed over to him gently.

“If you’re sure…”

“I am, yeah,” Hypno said. He kept his eyes on the screen of his comm, shooting glances at the other hermits from his periphery. “I did plan to do that, coming here.”

He gripped the heart of the sea tightly, like it might offer him some sort of power. In the same way, perhaps, that his comm wouldn’t show him anything bad if he watched it closely enough.

“I.” Hypno paused, as if carefully considering what he truly wanted to say. “Do want advice. No, not advice. Uh, reassurance, maybe. Just so long as it’s not…empty words. Only if you really believe it.

“Everyone wanted me to come and play games with them, and relax, and, um, all that. I get it, I know you think I’m taking on too much. I’m not, I’m fine.” He frowned at the screen of his comm. “And it ended up being the right choice, wasn’t it? Bringing my comm along, keeping an eye on it. If it wasn’t for that…I keep thinking, what would have happened? How long would it have taken, for someone to see those messages? Maybe…too long.”

He squeezed the orb harder, hand shaking from the force behind it. It looked painful to Doc, gripping something that tightly.

“I kept thinking, over the past week. About back before, when everyone was still dying. And, um, when Wels and XB weren’t showing up, and we didn’t know anything about where Jev was, and I thought…” He inhaled sharply through his nose. “I, um, thought they were gone. Like that it had all been too much for them, or like they’d thought nobody would ever come to help, and so they…gave up. Stopped respawning.”

The expression on Hypno’s face felt to Doc like a punch to the gut. He–he hadn’t been here, back then. He hadn’t known.

He tried not to think of Ren. Long day after long day, wondering how many days would be too much, as he hauled sand out of the water. 

“I thought they were gone,” Hypno repeated, voice breaking as he spoke. “And when they came back, it should have been okay. It should have been a relief. But, um, it’s not, and now with Keralis, and I can’t stop thinking. Jev and Wels, they’re uh–they’re not–I don’t know what to do for them, and they’re not okay, they’re so far from okay, and it’s not–it’s not getting better, not really, but before, before, uh, I thought, at least it’s over, at least we’re safe, and I don’t, we won’t, don’t have to worry about losing anyone else. But we almost lost Keralis, even after all this, after it’s all over, and now I can’t stop thinking, with Jev and Wels, if things don’t–don’t get better, and what if, what if they, and I can’t–I don’t– fuck .”

Hypno slapped his hands over his face, taking quick, heaving breaths. The heart of the sea fell onto the floor with a thud, bouncing as it rolled along the floorboards. The sound seemed to echo in the quiet room, quiet except for Hypno’s heavy, rapid breathing. He curled in on himself, hands still over his face, shaking.

It was Ren who moved first. Already next to Hypno, he twisted around in his seat to face him. “Hey, Hypno, hey. It’s okay, you’re okay. Jev and Wels are safe, they’re going to be fine.”

His tone was softer than Doc was used to, calmer. But Doc wasn’t surprised that Ren had been the one to act. As much as Ren might not want to bear open his own heart, might not want to seek out help or comfort for himself, he would give both freely and generously. And for as loud and enthusiastic as he so often was, Doc knew that he could be just as gentle, if need be.

“Here, breathe with me, okay? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. And out. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. That’s good, you’re good. It’s alright… Can I touch you? Just your shoulder? No? Alright, that’s alright. Just keep breathing. It’s alright.”

Doc watched as Ren spoke to Hypno, feeling like he should be doing something to help, but not wanting to get in the way or overwhelm Hypno. And so he stayed seated, quiet, as Ren coached Hypno through what he assumed was a panic attack. He wasn’t quite sure. He felt very, very out of his element. 

Ren didn’t seem to be, though. It was odd, Doc thought, the dichotomy between how closed off Ren was about his own emotions and just how open he was now. Ren’s openness and earnesty and passion were things that Doc had always admired in Ren. And he’d worried, as Ren grew more and more closed off, as he pushed Doc further and further away, just how much he had changed. 

But no. Ren was Ren. Of course he was. Doc had known that, but maybe, maybe, he’d doubted it. Just a little. Ren was struggling, certainly, not ready perhaps to ask for help himself. But he was still the same person he’d always been. 

It took what felt like a long time for Hypno to calm down. Doc remained sitting, both feeling like he was intruding on a private moment while also feeling like it would be rude to leave. The others, Doc assumed, felt the same, as they remained in place as well. Or maybe they were all just imitating each other, nobody actually wanting to make the first move. 

“You feeling any better?” Ren asked softly as Hypno settled back down in his chair. He didn’t seem so tense anymore, though it was less that he looked relaxed and more that he looked drained. 

“Yeah,” Hypno said in a shaky voice. “But, um, I think I’m done for now. Please.”

“Of course,” Grian said. His brows were creased in concern. Doc wondered if he felt responsible in some part, though he had no reason to be. And they weren’t supposed to be blaming themselves anyway.

“Okay,” Hypno said. “Okay.” He fumbled around on his lap for his comm, jolting when he found nothing there. Ren snatched the device from the floor, where Hypno must have dropped it at some point, and passed it off to him. Hypno latched onto it like it was a lifeline. 

“If we have another meeting, we can talk about things further,” Cleo said. “Or not, if you’d prefer, Hypno. It’s up to you.”

“I’ll think about it,” Hypno said quietly. “Yeah, I’ll think about it. I just want to go home now.”

“Want to crash in my camper van for a while?” Ren asked. “It’s close by.”

Hypno furrowed his brow. He looked over towards the door. “I need to…I should get back…”

“XB’s with Wels and Jevin though, right? I’m sure he’ll be fine for a little longer. I can go check on him, if you’d like?”

Hypno lowered his eyes down to his comm, hesitating, before his shoulders slumped. “Okay. Fine.”

“Here, I’ll show you the way. Are you able to walk, you think?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”

It was less of an agreement, Doc thought, and more that he didn’t have it in him to protest. 

This, Doc thought, was also something that had gone on far too long. To say it wasn’t good for Hypno, to be carrying so much by himself, would be an understatement. It was time for someone to intervene. But not now. Hypno didn’t need any more stress today. 

He watched Ren and Hypno slowly make their way out of the Soup Bowl, door swinging shut behind them.

“Well,” Grian said with a sigh. “I can’t exactly say that went well, but…”

“But we know now,” Cleo said, finishing Grian’s sentence herself. “We can do something to help. Hypno was already feeling this way the whole time. This is just where it all came out.”

“Yeah,” Grian said, leaning back in his seat. “I mean, I don’t know why I was expecting this to be…painless, so to speak. I mean, it’s therapy. Sometimes you’ve got to dig up things that hurt, you know? Or something like that. Gosh, I don’t know. I’m not qualified for any of this.”

“Well, neither are we, for the record,” Iskall said. They stood up from their seat, stretching. “We’ve all just gotta do our best. Like you said, we can’t just wait around and hope thing’ll get better. We’ve got to take that into our own hands, even if it’s scary. Even if we might mess up. We don’t really have another choice, you know?”

“You’re right,” Grian said. He perked up a little as he stood from his seat, joining Iskall. “Right, I think we’re done for the day. Maybe I should say something? Like “meeting adjourned?”

“That’s way too formal,” Cleo said with a shake of the head. 

“Yeah. Maybe just…something like “see you next week?” False offered. “Generic, but, if it works?” 

“See you next week. Er, well, hopefully sooner. That reminds me, thought, remember, we shouldn’t go discussing each others’ problems outside of this circle. Yeah, Hypno needs help, but he’s got to be involved in that. Us talking behind his back isn’t right,” Grian said.

“That’s good to remember,” Cleo said, joining Grian in standing as the rest of them followed. “So. See you next week.”

The rest of them echoed the words. 

And with that, the first group therapy session on Hermitcraft came to a close.

Chapter Text

As soon as they made it through the door, Hypno had practically collapsed into the RV’s bed tucked away in the corner of the van. It had only taken a few minutes more before he was out like a light. Ren was kind of relieved, he’d expected it to take a lot more prodding to get the guy to actually lie down, but he guessed it spoke to just how exhausted Hypno really was. Ren wondered how long it had been since he’d gotten a full night’s sleep. Probably at least a week, before that ill-fated game night. 

Ren took a seat on the brightly colored sofa on the opposite side of the van, leaning back into the wool and thinking. 

Hypno had been dealing with a lot, it seemed. Ren hadn’t known. He and Hypno weren’t particularly close–they didn’t dislike each other or anything, they just hadn’t interacted much in the past. 

But then again, Hypno wasn’t the only one bottling up their pain. Everyone was, to some extent, if the therapy session was any indication. And Ren hadn’t known what Doc was dealing with, either. 

No, that wasn’t quite true. Ren had known Doc was hurting. That he’d been hit hard by what had happened to Bdubs and Tango. Everyone had been, Ren among them. He’d loved them, both of them, so much. It still felt like a gaping hole had been ripped in his chest whenever he thought of them, whenever he was reminded that he would never see them again. 

It was the little things that hurt the most. To never again see that message in chat–”BdoubleO100 went to sleep”. To never hear him protest and stammer over every short joke at his expense. To never see him galloping around the server on one of his treasured horses. And Tango, too. No more Tango games, both larger projects and smaller, one off ideas. No more silly inventions and sillier noises. No more watching Tango’s hair flare up brighter whenever he came up with a good idea.

It was all those small parts of his friends that added up to everything that he’d loved about them that seemed to flake off piece by piece as he thought of all the “never agains”, the “was” instead of “is”, as if he was losing them slowly instead of all at once. And it hurt. It hurt in a way that made it hard to imagine that it would ever stop, a way that he could push into the back of his mind and focus on something else, but never truly forget. And that pain was something that everyone on the server carried, in some form or another. And that included Doc. Of course it did. Doc had loved them too, Bdubs and Tango. Bdubs, especially, had been one of Doc’s oldest friends. He’d already almost lost him once, and found him again against all odds. How cruel it was, then, to lose him again. For good this time.

There was a memory that stuck in Ren’s head, the kind of memory that felt like an ice pick to the chest whenever he recalled it. It had been sometime after they’d all gotten back, once both Doc and Ren had headed off to start on their own megabases. Ren had been visiting Doc in the beginnings of his big blackstone tower. He’d been looking to borrow something, he thought. Copper, maybe? He didn’t remember, but it didn’t matter.

Doc probably wouldn’t have minded if Ren just took what he wanted without asking, but a little bit of manners never hurt anybody. And so Ren had gone over to the only enclosed room of Doc’s base so far, a little workshop crammed with redstone components and diagrams of ender chests.

He’d been about to announce himself, hand hovering in front of the door, when something had stopped him. His ears perked up, hearing good enough to pick up the sound coming from within the workshop, quiet but unmistakable. 

Doc was crying. 

Ren had never heard Doc cry. Never. Not even when the NHO had gone missing in the jungle. He’d just thrown himself headlong into searching for them, stoic and determined. Ren had rarely even seen him sad, Doc had more of a tendency to get irritated or cold when something bad happened.

He had frozen there, unsure of what to do, fur on the back of his neck standing up straight. Hearing Doc cry felt wrong, in a way that scared Ren far more than anyone crying ever should. But that wasn’t fair, Doc had feelings just like anyone else. He should be able to cry as much as he needed to without feeling judged. 

Ren hadn’t known at the time if he should go comfort Doc or just give him the space he needed. He’d settled on the latter, for what he hoped was a desire to do right by Doc and not his own discomfort, but couldn’t be quite sure. He’d figured that Doc, who prided himself on maintaining a certain image, would have felt embarrassed if he’d known Ren had heard him. Doc didn’t like being vulnerable, not in front of anyone. Not even Ren. 

So it had surprised him, then, just how much Doc had opened himself up at the group therapy session. It was something Ren had never seen before, never expected Doc to do. And now Ren found himself wondering if he’d made the right choice, all those weeks ago. Maybe he should have gone in. Maybe Doc had needed some comfort at that moment. Or maybe he’d just needed to be left alone. Ren thought he was normally good at these sorts of things, knowing what people needed from him. It hurt to think that he might have been so wrong about not just anyone, but his closest friend. 

Ren sighed, tucking both his paws behind his head to support himself. He took a glance over to the front of the van. Hypno was still sleeping soundly. Ren hoped he’d be able to do so for a while.

Ren wondered, if Hypno hadn’t had a panic attack, if he himself would have said anything. He certainly had things he could say. But it wasn’t really his place to share something so personal about Doc. He supposed he could have talked about his grief, but nobody else had, and he’d worried he’d be opening wounds for some of the others in the process. Doc included.

Really, the only thing he could have talked about was all the nonsense from when he’d spawned in. Unconsciously, Ren ran a paw down his back, poking at the jagged scar of his trident wound. He didn’t want to talk about that. Didn’t need to. He was fine. He’d moved past all that stuff.

The thought felt like a lie, and that bothered Ren more than it should. Why couldn’t it be the truth, that he’d managed to move on by himself and come to terms with everything? Why did he have to be hung up on it? He wasn’t. At least, he didn’t think he was.

There was a dark, bitter part of him that blamed everyone else for continuing to bring up the issue. Like they couldn’t believe that he wasn’t traumatized and that mentality had rubbed off on Ren somehow. But that was just making excuses. Wasn’t it?

Why was it so hard to understand what he actually felt? It should be easy, it was his very own mind. And yet, somehow, his thoughts sometimes seemed like more of a mystery to him than those of his friends. It was a weird feeling, one Ren didn’t like. One he didn’t want to dwell on. 

Wasn’t there something he was supposed to be doing? Something less uncomfortable than shuffling through his own thoughts? He thought for a moment, tapping a shoe on the copper floor, before it came to him.

He’d told Hypno he’d go check on Jevin and Wels. And even if that probably wasn’t necessary, it wouldn’t be fair to go back on that. Not when Hypno had trusted him with that much, even if it was more out of exhaustion than genuine trust. It would probably make things worse for Hypno if he betrayed that trust.

Ren stood up from the couch, stretching. He took one more glance at Hypno to make sure he was still sleeping before he headed out of the van. Hypno, Jevin, and Wels lived just down the street, close enough not to have to worry about an elytra, especially with the path now nicely paved. It was still midday, bright and sunny, but Ren didn’t let himself dawdle. He had a mission, after all. 

It was XB who opened the door to the house when Ren knocked. He offered him a sharp-toothed smile, weary but not forced. 

“Hey, my dude. How’s it going?” Ren asked.

“Alright,” XB said on reflex, before pausing. “Well, no, I’m not alright. Not after…everything. But that’s pretty normal, I think. I mean, it’d be stranger if I could just bounce back from that no problem.” 

Dang. Yeah, He felt for the guy. Ren had been stressed enough as it was, flying off into the night, hoping there was something he could do. He couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for XB. Not only had he needed to die, but he’d needed to return to the terrible place he’d spawned in, and that was on top of almost losing one of his best friends. That had to take a toll on anyone.

“I will be, though. At least, I hope so. Just taking it one day at a time, y’know?” XB laughed anxiously, scratching at the back of his neck, avoiding the area around his gills.

“Man, that’s a good way to look at things,” Ren said, wondering to himself if he could do the same, in XB’s shoes. “And if you need anything, we’re all here for you.”

“Thanks,” XB gave him another grin, before he stopped, as if remembering something. “Hey, where’s Hypno?” For a moment, something like terror flashed in his eyes. “He’s okay, right?”

“He’s fine, he’s fine,” Ren said quickly, and XB visibly relaxed, shoulders sagging. “He’s taking a nap in my RV right now.”

“Ah, good. He needed it pretty bad.” XB shook his head, his expression a mixture of fondness and frustration. “That guy. I love his face, but he can be so frickin’ stubborn. Guessing he sent you over to check on Wels and Jev?”

“Yep, you’ve got it. He seems pretty…” Ren paused, considering how much information it was right to share. “Pretty stressed about the whole situation.”

“Yeah. Guess I can’t blame him, given the circumstances.” XB sighed. “Man, I really thought that game night would’ve been a good thing for him. Would’ve shown him that Jevin and Wels would be okay on their own, that he didn’t need to be glued to his comm at all times. But it just did the opposite.”

“Yeah, that’s rough,” Ren said. As much as Hypno’s comm monitoring had helped at the time, it had also probably reinforced some not so great habits. How were you supposed to tell someone to stop doing something when them doing said thing had done genuine good? Ren sure didn’t know.

“Well, I’m sure Hypno won’t be able to relax unless you can confirm for yourself how Jev and Ren are doing. Come on in.” XB waved him through the door and into the little house.

It was silent and dark inside, though Ren could see fine at that light level anyway. Overall, the place was nicely decorated, a big, spacious room with a kitchen and seating area. Neither Jevin nor Wels seemed to be around, most likely in their own areas behind one of the numerous doors. It seemed like Hypno had tried to make the place look a little nicer with soft green carpets and a few flowerpots dotted around the area. But in spite of that, the air in the house still felt oppressive, somehow. Suffocating. So this was where Hypno had been spending all his time for the past few months. It couldn’t be good for him, and Ren doubted it was good for Jevin or Wels either.

“I’d offer you something to drink, but I don’t really know where anything is,” XB said, winding his way around the furniture. “Also, it’s not like we have anything besides water.”

“It’s fine.” There weren’t a lot of beverages Ren could drink besides water, really, not unless he wanted to spend the next several hours in the bathroom. “Hey, man, I can watch over Jevin and Wels for a while if you want. I don’t know how long Hypno’s going to sleep, but hopefully it’ll be for a while.”

XB shook his head, leaning back against a makeshift countertop. “Nah, that’s okay. Besides, it was hard enough to get Hypno to let me watch over them, and I’m his best friend. Ah, not that it’s a problem with you in particular. He’d probably be pretty upset if I left them with anyone else, especially when he’s not around to agree.”

That…it rubbed Ren the wrong way. Who, exactly, had decided that Hypno was in charge of Jevin and Wels. He wasn’t their parent, and he wasn’t the only one who cared about them either. Heck, Wels had been Ren’s friend long before he’d even met Hypno. What made Hypno qualified to decide that he wasn’t enough. 

Ren’s frustration must have shown on his face, because XB shook his head with a troubled look. “I think the guy’s just…holding onto whatever sense of control he can, in a situation like this. He couldn’t do anything to help when everyone was stuck in spawn, and even now it’s not like he can make everything better for Wels and Jev. It’s not good for him or for anyone else, but I guess it makes sense why he’s doing it.”

“Yeah,” Ren said. The more he heard, the more he felt this had all gone on for far too long. Why had nobody addressed it up until now? Had they not wanted to pry, or had they been too busy with the massive pile of other problems they had to face. Or, more likely, had they been like Ren, unaware that things were this bad. 

“It’s,” XB turned to the side, frowning down at the counter top. “I don’t know what to do for him, really. Hypno–the Hypno I knew, was always so confident. We’d banter back and forth, and it was all good fun. Keralis, too. He was always so bright and enthusiastic. A big open book. But Hypno and Keralis…they’re so different, almost like strangers. I…sometimes I feel like I don’t know either of them anymore.”

“Ah.” Ren thought about Doc, the Doc he’d never seen before, who’d been willing to open up his heart. He wondered how much of a stranger this new Doc was. 

“Well,” XB said, seeming to shake off the somber mood that had settled for a moment. “I think Wels is in his room.” He gestured to one of the doors. “And Jevin in his own,” he gestured to another. “Can’t say if they’ll want to talk or not. Jevin, maybe. Wels, not so much. But you know him a lot better than me.”

“Maybe,” Ren said. He wasn’t sure how well he knew this new Wels either.

Still, he made his way over to the door, giving it a gentle knock.

“Hey Wels? It’s Ren. Can I come in?”

Silence, for a long moment. Just when Ren was beginning to worry himself, a quiet voice came through the door.

“Sure.”

Wels was sitting in a seat by the window, seemingly not doing anything in particular. He gave Ren a long look as he entered, face void of any emotion Ren could identify. He wasn’t wearing his armor, and it didn’t seem quite right to see him without it. Wels had seemed to wear that stuff everywhere, before. 

He tried not to stare at the rough, pink scar tissue running up the sides of his face. He wondered if they hurt. They looked like they did. 

“Hey man, sorry if I’m bothering you. Just checking in ‘cause Hypno’s kind of worried, you know?” Ren scratched at the back of his head, feeling a bit awkward with Wels staring at him so intently. 

Wels’ eyes dropped and Ren had to admit he was a bit relieved. “Of course he is. Well, you can tell him that I’m fine.” 

There was something in Wels’ voice, a tiny stray string of emotion. Irritation. Ren was tempted to grab it and pull, unravel whatever Wels had built up to block his emotions. He settled for a gentle tug.

“Do it…bother you? That he’s worried, I mean?”

Wels looked back up at him, brows creased in something like confusion. There was something…not quite right about that. Like nobody had bothered to ask Wels how he felt about all this in the first place.

“It’s whatever,” Wels said with a shrug. “But it’s pointless. You all keep acting like I need to be fixed somehow. I’m fine the way I am. I don’t need everyone…pushing and prodding at me. You should stop. You should just leave me alone.”

Ren swallowed. He thought of all the time the others had spent tiptoeing around him, offering up soup and words of support and advice that he didn’t need. It had been frustrating, being treated like that. Like a child. Like he couldn’t decide what he needed or wanted for himself. Maybe Wels felt the same. Even if he wasn’t willing to admit that it bothered him, that anything could affect him at all anymore, Ren doubted that could truly be the case for anyone. 

“Uh, have you tried telling him that? Hypno, I mean?” 

Wels shrugged again. “Kind of. He gives me more space. But he still wants to fix me. Or at least make sure I eat and sleep properly.”

That, on the other hand, was a different situation. “Well, I mean, we can’t just let you…starve yourself or anything like that.”

“Why not?” Wels asked, eyes boring holes into Ren’s head. 

“Because…you’re our friend? We want you to be safe?” Ren stumbled over his words. He felt bad about the idea that they were all violating Wels’ boundaries. But at the same time, there were some things that couldn’t be ignored. Leaving Keralis all on his own now wasn’t an option, and Ren guessed the same had to be true for Wels, if he wasn’t going to take care of himself at least.

Wels’ eyes fell again. “I didn’t ask you to do that.”

What was Ren supposed to say to that? He wasn’t just going to stop caring about Wels because Wels didn’t care about himself. 

“Hey, uh, I mean, if you eat and sleep regularly on your own, then you wouldn’t have to…deal with us bothering you about it.” Ren cringed internally at his words. It sounded patronizing, saying it out loud. Like he was trying to convince a little kid it was time for bed. “Well, it’s, you know. An idea.”

“I guess,” Wels said. Ren couldn’t tell if he was actually considering it or not. He still just sounded slightly irritated. Ren got the distinct impression that each moment he spent in this room was a moment too long for Wels.

“Okay, look, I’ll give you some space. Sorry for…being pushy or anything like that.” 

Wels didn’t respond to that. He turned away from Ren, staring out the window. Ren wondered what he was looking at. 

But his presence here wasn’t wanted, and so he left as quickly and quietly as he could, shutting the door behind him. He felt weird about the whole conversation with Wels. Like there was something he should have done or said differently, but he had no idea what that might be. 

XB looked up at Ren as he entered. He was sitting on the couch, holding what seemed like a bucket of water in his lap. A moment later, a tiny golden head popped out, gills fluttering in a way that made it look curious.

“Hey, how’d it go?” XB asked.

Ren shrugged, still feeling a tightness in his chest. “I don’t…really know?”

“Yeah, I get that,” XB said. He held out a hand in front of the axolotl, who immediately began nibbling on him. 

“That’s the axolotl you took in, yeah? The one you wanted fish for?”

“The one and only,” XB said with a grin. “This is my little fella. My little guy. My little dude. Pick a name, I guess. I just use them all interchangeably.”

“Hey little dude,” Ren said. The axolotl ignored him, seemingly more interested in attempting to eat XB. Ren wasn’t sure if it was because XB was a guardian hybrid or if the animal was just curious. He decided not to ask. He wasn’t sure how touchy that subject was.

“If you want to visit Jev, too, go ahead,” XB said, turning his attention back to his friend. Ren got the message that XB probably was done with any socializing for the day. He was the kind of guy who liked his alone time.

Jevin answered as soon as Ren knocked on the door, voice even quieter than Wels’. “Yeah? Come in.”

Inside, Jevin was chilling in his bed, flipping through the pages of a book as best as he could when his fingers stuck to every page. “Hey Ren, my man. Here to save me from this very unhybrid-friendly piece of literature?”

“Something like that,” Ren said, trying to keep his voice quiet enough to match. Jevin seemed in much better spirits than Wels had, but there was still a nervous energy from him that Ren could feel from across the room. “Hypno wanted me to check on you. He’s taking a nap at my place.”

“Thank goodness for that,” Jevin rolled his eyes, but his expression was affectionate. He unstuck his fingers from the book and closed it on his lap. “I swear, getting that guy to destress even a little bit is something else.”

“Yeah, I can see that.” 

“Now, don’t get the wrong idea. He’s been a great help. But it's all to his own detriment, you know? I feel pretty crappy about that.”

Ren wondered how much of this Hypno knew about. He wondered how he’d feel if Jevin told him.

“Well, if you want a Jevin report to give Hypno, you can say I’m fine as ever. No changes on this front.” He sighed, a tinge of frustration in his voice. Ren wasn’t sure if it was at his own situation or at Hypno. 

He decided to try asking. It had worked with Wels, after all. Kind of.

“Do you want things to change?”

Jevin snorted quietly. “Oh no, I just love being cooped up here all the time, too afraid and stressed to even stick my head out the door. It’s just so much fun, flinching at any sound louder than my own voice. Great times.” Jevin sighed, seeming to deflate slightly, in a very literal way. “Yes, I want things to change. But it’s just all too much. Too loud, too bright, too…too everything. It’s dumb. I spent most of my life out in this environment, I got used to it, but a month in the dark and quiet with that–well, it messed me up, I guess. It’s kind of funny. You know, I’ve got great night vision. Slimes, we live deep underground. Or only come out at night. But even with that, you still need some light to see. If there’s none at all, well, it’s the same for everyone, I guess.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But it definitely doesn’t help now, being able to see so well.”

Ren noticed for the first time just how dark it was in the room. He, too, was more adapted to living in the dark. It was half the reason he wore sunglasses all the time. The sun was just too bright, even on cloudy days. 

That gave Ren an idea. He pulled his sunglasses off his face and held them out towards Jevin. “Here, give these a try. It might help with the brightness, at least.”

“Are you sure?” Jevin hesitated. “I mean, I’ll probably get them all sticky.”

“It’s fine, I can clean them. Just try it and see.”

Jevin looked a bit skeptical as he carefully took the sunglasses by their sides, turning them around and sliding them in front of his eyes. They didn’t fit very well, too narrow for the shape of Jevin’s head, and he had to hold them in place without a nose or ears to support them. He took a moment to look around the room, moving his head carefully and slowly, as if afraid he might damage Ren’s glasses. When he turned back to Ren, his expression was thoughtful.

“You know, I didn’t think it would help all that much. I mean, honestly, the sound thing is more of an issue. But it’s…it’s better. One thing that bothers me a little less.” He offered Ren a small smile that Ren couldn’t help but return. “Thanks, man.”

“I might be able to make you a pair.” Ren said as Jevin returned the glasses to him. They were only a little sticky. “Sorry you can’t keep mine. They’re prescription, anyway. Wolves can’t really see great at long distances.”

“Oh, is that what that was? I just assumed I got slime on ‘em or something. No idea what the world is supposed to look like through glasses.” He tilted his head, looking at Ren with restrained hope. “You sure? About making me a pair, I mean?”

“Of course, my dude, of course,” Ren said with a grin. He had to focus to keep his tail from wagging, unsure of how loud it would be to Jevin. “I’m glad to be able to help.”

“Thanks. That really means a lot. I hadn’t really thought of that, using sunglasses and stuff.”

“Yeah. I–well, it’s not quite the same situation, but I know what it’s like. To have everything just be too much.” Ren had a keen sense of smell, sharp hearing, and better vision in the dark than most people, or at least nonhybrids. Most of the time he enjoyed being able to hear and smell all the world around him. There were so many great things, like the smell of fresh chopped wood, or the grass after the rain, or the gentle sound of a babbling stream somewhere in the distance. But he’d also spent a fair bit of time on hub worlds, surrounded by people and sights and smells and sounds that crowded out his mind and made it hard to even think. Left him feeling frazzled and drained when he got back. Even a quick trip to and from a particularly busy server felt like a nightmarish journey, and basically made him too tired to do anything the rest of the day.  It was hard, and it really sucked sometimes. If he could make things better for Jevin, even a little bit…

“I wonder, do you think headphones or something would work as well?”

Jevin frowned. “I don’t think so. I mean, I don’t really hear much through my actual ears.” He gave the side of his head a tap. “It’s mostly my whole body absorbing vibrations.”

Ren guessed he didn’t know enough about slime anatomy to be much help with that, but he tried all the same. “Maybe getting all bundled up in clothes could help? Decrease the, er, surface area or something?”

“Maybe,” Jevin said. “It’s worth a shot. I’ll see if I can get some hermits to lend me clothes. Or, well, get Hypno to ask for me.”

He looked hopeful, and Ren was glad to have been a part of that hope.

“But, uh, speaking of which, you know Hypno’s gonna panic if he wakes up and you’re not around, right? He’s gonna think something terrible happened here and you’re trying to deal with it.”

“Oh, crap!” Ren had almost forgotten about Hypno, who was hopefully still napping. He didn’t want to cause the guy more stress than was necessary.

“Thanks for all the help, though. You can come visit again whenever you’d like.” Jevin gave him a smile and a wave goodbye, which Ren returned in kind. He bid a quick farewell to XB before hurrying back towards his RV.

As it turned out, there was no need to worry. Hypno was still sound asleep in bed. Ren flopped back onto his couch, considering whether or not he should make food for Hypno. If he wasn’t sleeping properly, he might not be eating properly either. And the same went for him as it did for Wels. Ren couldn’t really let that stand.

He found a bunch of golden carrots that someone had probably given him back when he’d first returned home. They still seemed in good enough condition, and they’d make for a solid meal. He was packing them up in a shulker box for convenience when Hypno began to stir. 

Ren, not wanting to wake him up, stopped. But it didn’t matter. One moment Hypno was groggily rubbing his eyes, the next he was sitting upright in bed, looking panicked. 

“Huh? What, where am I?”

Ren turned towards Hypno, waving his paws in front of him. “Hey, man, hey. It’s alright. You were pretty tired, so you came to crash at my RV? Remember?”

Hypno paused, as if sorting through his memories, his panic slowly fading into something more akin to a mix of dread and shame. “How…long was I asleep?”

“A couple of hours, maybe?” Not enough time, in Ren’s personal opinion.

Apparently Hypno didn’t feel the same. His face tightened. “Damn. I… I left them for too long. Stupid.”

“Hey, don’t worry. I check up on Jevin and Wels, they’re doing just fine. I was over there less than 10 minutes ago, honest.”

Hypno seemed to relax only marginally, but he didn’t lay back down. He stared at his lap, expression pinched in frustration. “Sorry.”

“What? What do you have to be sorry for?”

Hypno gestured vaguely at the air. Ren wasn’t sure what that meant. “Everything, I guess. Ruining your meeting. Making everything about me. I didn’t even go through anything and still…”

“Dude,” Ren said. “Dude. Don’t apologize for having a panic attack. It’s not like that’s something you could control, and besides, it was therapy. You’re supposed to talk about what you’re feeling.”

“Sure,” Hypno said, not sounding convinced, more like he didn’t care to argue the point. He pushed himself up from his bed, massaging the bridge of his nose with one hand.

“You got a headache?”

“Yeah, a bit,” Hypno said. “You got, like, a swiftness potion or something?”

“I, uh.” Ren winced. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

Hypno removed his hand from his head long enough to scowl at him. “You don’t need to make this an intervention or something. It’s a potion, not some modded world drug. Nobody would say anything if I wanted a cup of coffee.”

It wasn’t the potion itself that was the problem, but everything else surrounding it. None of Hypno’s behavior was healthy, socially acceptable or not. And Ren didn’t really feel comfortable enabling it.

“I mean, maybe it’d be better to go back to sleep? You didn’t really rest for that long.”

Hypno just shook his head. “It’s fine. I’ve slept enough.”

Ren did not agree with that. He shook his head, finished tossing carrots into the shulker box, and closed the lid. “No, no you really haven’t. It’s pretty clear to see.” He sighed, turning to look fully at Hypno, not sure if it was his place to speak but unwilling to hold his tongue on the matter. “Look, you can’t keep doing this. You’re destroying yourself! For goodness’ sake, you need to take a step back, actually take care of yourself for once.”

Hypno frowned at him, growing visibly more frustrated with every word Ren spoke. “I’m fine. Like I said, it’s not like I went through anything. I’ve been safe and sound here at spawn this whole time.”

“That doesn’t–no, that doesn’t matter,” Ren said, voice coming out louder than he expected it too, more harshly, but he couldn’t stop. Not after everything he’d talked about with the others. XB. Wels. Jevin. Something had to give. “And besides, it sounds like you did go through some stuff, wondering if your best friends were still alive. Don’t go saying that’s nothing! Or acting like you need to work yourself to death because you didn’t suffer enough. Didn’t you freaking hear what Doc said. It’s not noble, doing this sort of thing. You’re just hurting everyone else as well as yourself.”

Hypno’s expression faltered for a moment, before reforming into barely concealed anger. He glared into Ren’s eyes. “I’m not working myself to death. I’m looking out for my friends. That’s normal. People look out for those they care about.”

“Not like this they don’t!”

“Don’t act like it’s some sort of–of huge burden, taking care of my friends. ”

“You’re making it one, doing this to yourself!” Ren was yelling now. They both were. Something in the back of his mind told him that this wasn’t productive, but he pushed it aside. 

“I am not! What do you know about what I'm doing?”

“I know enough.” Ren spat. “I know that you’re making things worse not just for yourself, but for XB and Wels and Jevin too. XB’s not sure how to help, Jevin’s worrying himself sick over you, and you’re not exactly being a great example for any of them on how to “get better”. And you haven’t even bothered to ask them how they feel about all this, have you? Don’t you get it? You’re hurting them too, acting like this. And you still think you’re the one who should be in charge of who can take care of them or not. You can’t even take care of yourself! This isn’t kindness, it’s selfishness. And your selfishness is hurting people. Get that through your head!”

Ren finished with a hard breath. Somewhere, alarm bells were going off deep in his mind, but he was still too mad to pay attention to them. At least until he looked at Hypno’s face.

Hypno looked like he’d been punched in the gut. He opened his mouth once, as if trying to say something, before it snapped closed and his expression grew ice cold. When he finally spoke, it was in a low voice, calm on the surface but brimming with bitterness underneath. 

“You know. You have a lot of nerve, saying that. As if you haven’t been pushing away everyone who’s tried to help you. You think people aren’t worried about you? Fix yourself before going after me.”

The anger drained out of Ren’s body, replaced by a mix of horror and shame. Hypno’s words hit him like a splash of cold water to the face, but he was more focused on remedying the situation at hand than delving into that.

Or avoiding it, like a coward. Ren pushed the thought away quickly. 

“Hypno, I–I’m sorry, I–”

“I have to go,” Hypno said, voice still cold. He turned his back on Ren, pushing his way through the door and slamming it shut behind him. The sound of colliding metal echoed loudly in the small space. The shulker box of carrots sat untouched on a counter.

“Shit,” Ren groaned. He’d messed that one up, and he’d messed it up bad. Yeah, things needed to change with Hypno. But he’d gone about it in what might have been the worst way possible.

Stupid. And to think that he prided himself on being good at helping people. That just a few hours earlier he’d been genuinely trying to calm Hypno down. Now here he was, getting angry and yelling and pushing Hypno away. And with it, any chance of actually improving the situation even marginally. Stupid stupid stupid.

Hypno’s words rang in his ears. 

As if you haven’t been pushing away everyone who’s tried to help you.

That wasn’t–it wasn’t true, was it? He hadn’t been pushing people away, he’d just…just been dealing with things himself. Was that such a bad thing? It wasn’t like he was beating himself up over everything like Hypno was, or ignoring his own physical and mental needs. Hypno was just wrong. He had to be.

Then why had those words dug so deep?

Ren flopped back onto his couch, head in his hands. He felt awful in so many different ways. 

It sucked. He’d thought he was good at this, at helping people. He’d helped Jevin a little, hadn’t he?

But not Hypno. And not Doc. He hadn’t helped them. 

Ren stared through the window of his RV and wondered if the person he really didn’t know anymore was himself.

Chapter Text

Jevin stood in front of the door, hand hovering above the knob. It was shaking, his hand. He didn’t know how to make it stop. 

Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe he was jumping into the deep end here, too much too fast, and he’d only be making things worse for himself. He could wait, at least, until Ren got him his sunglasses. That would probably be the smart thing to do. But Jevin didn’t care much about being smart right now. Three days later and he was still riding the high of the possibility that the world could be made a little more bearable. That he wouldn’t be stuck like this forever, even if he never learned to adapt. That was what had given him the courage to reach this point, of actually considering leaving this room. And he didn’t want to squander that. 

Still, he couldn’t make his hand close around the door handle. The possibility of what lay beyond, a world of light and sound and too much of everything, bouncing around in his head, demanding his attention. And somewhere along the way, he’d lost the ability to filter out all the things that he shouldn’t, couldn’t pay attention to if he wanted to be able to function in any capacity. And the brightness cast everything into light so harshly, forcing him to pay attention to more, more, always more. 

It wasn’t fair, Jevin thought. He had been in the dark for one month, and out of the dark for five. By now he should have been able to relearn all the things that the darkness had stolen from him. 

But he supposed he hadn’t been trying very hard either. He’d spent those past five months within the confines of his tiny starter base, getting used to all the individual aspects of a room no more than 20 blocks in any direction. He’d learned what that room looked like, what was and wasn’t worth paying attention to. And in that way, he’d made his life here more comfortable. More like before.

But the outside world was full of all sorts of new things to see and hear and feel, new things he would have to teach his brain to recontextualize, and it sounded exhausting. It had been hard enough just to adapt to this room. Outside, he almost felt like he’d be starting over from scratch. And it was so very overwhelming to start from scratch, being bombarded by a million different things. Like there was a clogged drain in his mind, and everything around him just kept pooling up until he drowned in it. 

He was well aware of the problem, and that was somehow more frustrating than if he’d had no idea anything was wrong with him. Because he didn’t know how to fix it, didn’t know if it could be fixed. But he wanted so, so badly for it to get better, like it had been before. He didn’t like it, being like this. He wanted to change. It just felt like trying to do so would be a hopeless battle.

But Ren had shown him that it wasn’t hopeless. And just knowing that made his exhausting fight seem a little more worthwhile.

It was that thought that allowed him to close his hand around the doorknob. But still, he didn’t push.

There was still the matter of that thing . That monster that still haunted his nightmares. It was out there somewhere, he knew, or at least things like it. Opening the door would be like inviting it in to torment him once again.

Jevin closed his eyes and took a slow breath. He pulled the pile of clothes and blankets he’d draped over his head and body closer to him. He remembered what TFC had said. That he’d killed it. That it was something that could be killed. A mob, like a creeper or an enderman, scary but still just a thing. Something tangible and fightable and beatable. Heck, maybe one of the better redstoners out there could manage to farm it, if it even dropped anything worthwhile. 

It had seemed so inescapable back then, so absolutely powerful, that fighting against it had seemed as futile as fighting against the flow of time, or the universe itself. But perhaps it had simply been so powerful because Jevin had lost the part of himself that could have defeated it. The more he thought about it, the more likely that seemed. He had, after all, lost a lot of himself. It was hard to keep track of it all. 

Maybe he could find some of it again. But it would be out there. It had to be out there.

And so, before Jevin could change his mind, he pushed open the door. 

He kept his eyes closed, wincing at the creak of the wood as the door swung open. But a moment later the sound stopped, and the world outside was as quiet as the inside one.

Not that it was really the outside world, per say. Jevin was well aware that Hypno had built out a secondary house around Jevin’s. That was the only reason he was ready for this at all. True outside, with its vast blue sky and sprawling expanses and a million more sights and sounds and smells, was a different beast entirely–one he couldn’t even imagine facing. But this was something. A step forward, so to speak.

Slowly, cautiously, Jevin opened his eyes. Closing them hadn’t done much to block the light, but the blanket over his head, shadowing his face, did a lot to help. It wasn’t nearly as dark outside as it was in his room, but it wasn’t bright-bright either. He pulled the blanket a little lower over his face before he poked his head out the door.

The outside of his room was pretty similar to the inside, all things considered. Plain spruce wood and floors, a handful of sparse decorations. He took it all in, because he didn’t know how not to, and tried to force his mind to separate things into categories. The walls here weren't really different than those in his room. The table and chairs, they were basically the same few blocks of spruce. The potted plants were different, new colors and shapes, but he’d seen similar in his own room, something that had surely been added by one of those who had built it to make the place feel a little more comfortable. Even the furnaces and chests off to one side were the same as those in his room, added once it had become clear that he wasn’t planning to leave anytime soon. 

Yes, so many things were the same, when you looked at it like that. Jevin supposed that was mostly thanks to playing on a vanilla server. There was only so much variety, only so many things to learn. But the hard part was always piecing them together, like building blocks, in new ways that had to be identified. 

There were a few things out here that were starkly different from inside. The painting on the wall, for one, all blues and purples and reds that felt like too much to identify for now, so he tried not to look at it. The green rug on the floor, spread out to cover up some of that nice, familiar spruce. And worst of all, the window on the opposite side of the room. Jevin pointedly avoided looking at it at all.

He tried to push those aside and focus on another familiar thing, one he knew consciously was important. It was Hypno, sitting on the spruce wood couch, leaning his head against the back of it in a position that didn’t look very comfortable to Jevin. Maybe humans liked sitting in weird positions on hard surfaces. Not like he would know. 

Hypno didn’t seem to notice Jevin’s presence, so maybe he was taking a nap. Jevin hoped so. Not only did he need it, but Jevin thought Hypno would probably make a big deal out of it, him opening the door. And he didn’t really want that. He just wanted to do this and not have anyone point it out.

This was, Jevin decided, enough for today. That was good, he thought. It was good to draw boundaries. And so Jevin reached out, grabbed the doorknob, and shut the door in front of him as gently as he could.

Jevin had ended the day feeling exhausted, but awoke on the following one fully reinvigorated. He’d done it! He’d opened the door and looked outside and nothing bad had happened. His brain hadn’t broken any further, and he’d been able to piece everything together properly, cleanly. Heck, he wasn’t sure what he’d been so worried about in the first place. He’d built up this impression of the world right outside his door as a terrifying, chaotic place. But it had proved itself to be only one step from where he was now. 

Now that was something to give him a boost of courage. Jevin had ditched the bundle of blankets this time–it was too hard to move about–and settled for pulling the hood of his hoodie up over his head and tightening the drawstrings enough to cover all but his eyes. He cautiously approached the door, but this time he didn’t hesitate in front of it. After all, nothing out there was any more frightening than anything in here. Not really. 

It felt like such a relief, a burden he’d been carrying for so long in his chest that had turned out to be nothing at all. Maybe the same was even true of the outside-outside. But Jevin wasn’t ready to test that one yet.

But he was ready for this. He was confident of that now. And so Jevin took his first steps outside and into the rest of the base.

He found Hypno again, sitting on the uncomfortable approximation of a couch. He was in the same position, and if Jevin hadn’t heard him moving around the previous night, he might have thought he’d been there the whole time.

Jevin hesitated then, standing just past the entranceway. Out here wasn’t that scary, but confronting Hypno kind of was. He wasn’t even sure what he was worried about. It wasn’t like Hypno would be upset with him–he’d probably be pretty happy. But Jevin just wasn’t sure he wanted to deal with being perceived at all right now. 

But before he could decide what to do, Hypno lifted his head up from the back of the couch, passing over Jevin as he moved to get up, before he did a double-take, eyes going wide as he focused in on Jevin.

“Oh,” Jevin said. “Um. Hi.”

Hypno said nothing for a long moment. He blinked once, slowly. Jevin wondered if he thought he was seeing things. 

“Jev?” Hypno finally said, quietly, cautiously. 

“In the flesh,” Jevin said with a light but nervous chuckle. “Or slime, rather.”

“You’re…out here.”

At least he seemed calm about the whole thing. Jevin relaxed slightly.

“Uh. Yeah.” What else was he supposed to say?

Hypno’s brows creased in something like concern. “Are you okay? Is…something wrong?”

Ah. Jevin didn’t like that. For Hypno to believe that he wouldn’t leave his room with his own mental strength, but only in a moment of panic. That kind of hurt.

“No. No, nothing’s wrong. I just…I decided it was time, you know? I mean, I spoke to Ren the other day, and we talked about some stuff, and it got me feeling a bit more confident, I guess.”

Hypno’s expression shifted into something Jevin didn’t recognize. He looked down at his lap, bringing up a hand to massage the side of his head.

“Ren, huh?” Hypno sounded…not quite upset. Sullen, maybe? Jevin couldn’t quite tell.

“Yeah?”

Hypno fell silent again, still not looking at Jevin. His brows were still creased, but now less in concern and more in something like guilt.

“Jevin…am I…” Hypno frowned down at his lap. “Have I been…” He was silent for a moment longer, before gently shaking his head. “I–nevermind.” 

He looked so unsure. It was weird for Jevin, seeing him like that. Hypno had never been an anxious person, not before. In fact, Jevin had always envied him a little. Jevin had taught himself how to look confident more than how to actually be confident, and he always got the sense that it showed. But Hypno had always seemed genuinely self-assured. He was the sort of person that tried things just to see what would happen and didn’t get too hung up on the consequences. But Jevin supposed it was easier to be so confident when the consequences were so small. Lost items, lost games, minor injuries cured with regen or a respawn. Maybe Hypno didn’t know how to make decisions when there were consequences that he genuinely had to worry about. Maybe he didn’t know how to balance worry and caution now that it really mattered, the same way Jevin didn’t know how to balance everything in the world.

They were, perhaps, a bit alike in that way. Jevin had changed too, after all. Had changed radically, even more so than Hypno. It got him wondering at what point a person would change so much that they could no longer be called themselves. 

It was like one of those philosophical debates that Jevin had heard so much about growing up. It was only natural, he supposed. Slime children weren’t really children per se, but direct clones of a single parent. And so it became a question of if that made the child their own person, or if it was only once they began making their own memories and identity that they became themselves. It had never really mattered much to Jevin either way. He’d lived a different life than his parent so he could hardly be considered the same person. But if that was all it took to make someone different, he wondered if anyone could have a true identity at all.

It was all very complicated and nonsensical. Jevin tried not to dwell on it too much. He’d like to think that he was still enough of himself to matter. But sometimes he wasn’t so sure anymore.

It was as he shook away the thoughts that he’d found himself lost in that he realized Hypno had been awfully quiet.

Jevin forced his attention to turn back towards him, and as soon as his eyes settled on Hypno, he knew something wasn’t right.

Hypno was doubled over on the couch, one hand pressed against the side of his head and the other to his stomach. His eyes were screwed shut.

“Hypno? You…okay?” Jevin took a hesitant step towards him.

“Mmhuh…” Hypno mumbled. “Fine.” He curled further in on himself, like doing so would somehow hide his state from Jevin.

“Uh, no. Clearly you’re not.” Alarm bells were blaring in his head, loud enough to drown out every other overwhelming aspect of the world. It was just him and Hypno for the moment.

He made his way to Hypno’s side, crouching down next to him. Up close, he looked terrible, face soaked with sweat and expression tight with pain. He was shuddering ever so slightly. 

“Hey, Hypno, man. What’s going on? What hurts?” 

Hypno, it seemed, was in a bad enough state to have given up on pretending nothing was wrong. 

“Headache,” he managed to choke out, before pressing his lips tightly together again. “‘ight be sick.”

“Uh, shoot. Do you need, like, a bucket or something?” Jevin glanced around the room, looking for areas of storage. His mind felt sharp, as if the shock and adrenaline rush of seeing Hypno in this state had unlocked all the basic survival skills he’d thought he’d lost. 

Hypno nodded ever so slightly, and so Jevin left his side for a moment to go rummaging through the nearest barrel. It was filled to the brim with random junk, completely unorganized, something that might have been distracting to Jevin if he wasn’t zeroed in on what he was looking for. He found a bucket full of water, which he dumped into the cauldron sink nearby, before hurrying over back to Hypno’s side. Hypno took the bucket with a trembling hand, clutching it to his chest as if it were a lifeline. 

That was one immediate crisis solved, but it hadn’t done anything to make Hypno feel less awful. Jevin didn’t know what to do from here. He was so different from the rest of the server anatomy-wise, and while he’d spent enough time around human and humanoid players to have a basic understanding of what was good or bad for them, that didn’t mean he had any knowledge of how to deal with it. 

“What can I do for you?”

He noticed, this time, the way Hypno twitched ever so slightly when he spoke, pressed his hand a little hard to his head. He was pulling his bandanna down over his face, and something about that, about the way he looked right now, felt awfully, painfully familiar to Jevin.

“Is it bothering you? The light? My voice?”

Another barely perceptible nod. 

Jevin winced. Even if the chaos of the world hadn’t caused him physical pain, at least not once he’d been out of the dark for long enough to adjust, it had still been miserably unpleasant. Even in his room, he couldn’t be fully free of the noise and the light. But he’d been as close to it as was probably possible without going back there . 

Ah. He knew what to do now.

“Think you can walk?” His voice was already quiet, but he put in the effort to make it even quieter. “You can lean on me, if you need.”

Hypno shrugged, but he didn’t protest when Jevin looped an arm around his back and eased him to his feet. Hypno seemed unsteady, leaning fully against Jevin for support, but his legs worked well enough for the pair of them to walk the short distance to Jevin’s room. 

He helped Hypno onto his bed, pushing the blankets down to the bottom, not sure what to do with them, or if Hypno was too hot or too cold. Hypno lay on his side, still curled in on himself, bucket resting by his head. 

Jevin hovered at his bedside for a moment, not sure what to do. He didn’t want to leave Hypno alone when he was feeling so poorly, but he also knew all too well that just his presence and all the ambient sounds he made could be irritating to Hypno right now. And so he tiptoed to the door, shutting it behind him as quietly as he had the day prior. 

He stood on the other side, once again unsure what to do from here. How bad was Hypno’s condition, exactly? It seemed like humans got headaches pretty frequently, but not headaches like this. Had he come down with something that would resolve itself all on its own in a short while, or was there something seriously wrong?

It wasn’t off the table. Hypno hadn’t exactly been taking great care of himself, Jevin knew. He hadn’t been sleeping or eating properly, fueling himself almost entirely off potions for at least the past couple months, and that was on top of the sheer amount of stress he had piled upon him at any given time. That all seemed like the kind of thing that could make someone seriously ill. 

He was pacing back and forth, Jevin realized. He forced himself to stop. Hypno had done that a lot, that sort of anxious pacing, and it had always bothered Jevin. He didn’t know if Hypno was as sensitive to that sort of noise right now as he had been, but he didn’t want to risk it.

What was he supposed to do from here? He was probably the least qualified person on the server to be taking care of a sick person, especially as he was now–barely able to take care of himself. He needed…he needed help. 

Jevin turned towards the front door slowly, with the dread of a character in a horror movie turning to look at a monster. Which, probably, wasn’t far off. Jevin thought of the wide open blue sky, the sound of the wind, the vast stretches of land stretching out to the horizon, the blinding light of the sun. And the thing that might still be out there, if there were more of them. The thing that Jevin, as he was now, wasn’t strong enough to kill.

He couldn’t do it, he realized. He couldn’t go outside. Not even for Hypno. 

For a moment he felt paralyzed, totally helpless to do anything. He cursed himself and his own stupid, messed up mind that had seemed to right itself ever so slightly when he’d truly needed it to, but couldn’t be bothered to work properly the rest of the time. Or to do much beyond the bare minimum, apparently. 

But then, before the helplessness could truly set in, it hit him that there was already someone here who could help. Maybe not a lot, but in ways he couldn’t. Ways he needed to be able to. 

Hypno seemed to think that Wels was incapable of doing anything for himself, but Jevin knew that it was less that he couldn’t and more that he didn’t want to. And then there was Jevin, who wanted to but couldn’t. Maybe the two of them could connect all their broken parts enough to form a functional person, at least for a while. 

Wels was in his room, as he usually was, staring out the window with a distant expression. Jevin focused his eyes on Wels, trying to see as little of the outside world as he could. Wels returned his gaze, expression flickering with something like surprise for a moment before it vanished back into blankness. 

They’d spent a fair amount of time together, in a neither comfortable nor uncomfortable silence, Wels coming into his room to sit in the corner and do nothing besides provide his company. Jevin didn’t know if it was Hypno encouraging him to spend time with Jevin, or if he was doing so by his own volition. He hadn’t wanted to ask, preferring to assume it was the latter.

“Wels? Uh, I need your help,” Jevin said, somewhat breathless even though he didn’t really need to breathe with his lungs. Inconvenient, that. “It’s Hypno…he’s…something’s wrong with him. He’s sick, I think.”

Wels’ expression didn’t change to anything like worry or concern, and for a brief moment something in Jevin felt angry about that. It was one thing for him not to care about himself, another for him not to care about his friends. But that was dreadfully, horribly unfair, as if Wels could pick and choose his apathy to make it more convenient for Jevin. And it wasn’t like only caring only about others would have been any better. Hypno had shown him that.

“Can you go…outside, and get someone, anyone, really, who can help?”

Wels was silent for a moment, and Jevin feared that he wouldn’t respond at all. But then Wels gave a slight shrug. “Okay.”

“Great. Great. Thanks,” Jevin said, relief oozing through his voice. Wels picked himself up off the bench near the window and made his way out the door and through the house, perfectly aware of and yet entirely uncaring for his surroundings. 

As soon as the front door had shut behind Wels, Jevin feared he’d made a mistake. Would Wels be okay, out there, trying to get help on his own?

That was what Hypno would wonder, though, wasn’t it? Wels wasn’t helpless, he just didn’t care, and while that could certainly be dangerous in the right circumstances, Jevin was pretty sure that Wels would find someone and return back, if only because the simplest course of action was to simply do as he was asked.

Wels was just as messed up as Jevin was, just in a different way. But while Jevin was trying to get better, he got the sense that Wels didn’t want to do so. That he would prefer to stay as he was rather than face the horrors of what had happened to him. Jevin could understand that feeling, at least. That maybe Wels locking himself away inside his own head wasn’t so different to Jevin locking himself in his room. 

He wondered if, deep down, Wels was just as scared as he was. But he didn’t want to assume. He couldn’t truly know what was going on in Wels’ head.

It seemed to take an eternity for Wels to return, Jevin waiting anxiously at the door, though in reality it was probably no more than five minutes. He’d felt another burst of relief as the door creaked open, revealing the concerned face of Ren, Wels trailing along behind him.

“Jev? Wels said you needed help with something?”

Ah, so Wels hadn’t given any of the details. “Something’s wrong with Hypno. He’s sick, I think. It’s bad.”

A conflicted look flickered across Ren’s face. “I’m not…sure Hypno wants to see me right now?”

Jevin wasn’t sure why that would be, but decided it didn’t matter right now. “I don’t think he’s in a good enough state to care, really.”

Ren frowned. “That bad, huh?”

“I don’t know. I mean, you’re at least a lot closer to a human than I am, with all the bones and muscles and blood and stuff. So you’d know better than me. Uh, he’s resting in my room right now. Be quiet. I think the noise is bothering him.”

Ren was already being quiet, presumably on account of Jevin, but it wouldn’t hurt to mention. 

Jevin waited anxiously as Ren entered the room, forcing himself not to do any more pacing or bouncing in place. Ren was only inside for a moment or two, however, before he returned to the main area of the house, quietly shutting the door behind him. “He’s sleeping right now, doesn’t seem well, but I don’t think he’s like, in any danger or anything. Just feeling pretty crappy, I bet.”

“So you don’t know what’s wrong with him?”

“Just from looking? Nah, dude, I have no idea. I’m not exactly a doctor or anything.”

It made sense, Jevin supposed. It was pretty easy to tell what was wrong at a glance among slime hybrids. But humans had opaque bodies, and also lots of bones and organs and things that could go wrong. It seemed awfully inconvenient at times, being a human, Jevin thought. 

“He said his head hurts, and I think he’s kind of queasy. I don’t know.”

Ren hummed thoughtfully to himself. “I mean, that kind of sounds like a migraine sort of thing. My ma used to get them when I was younger. But I’m pretty sure that’s, like, a chronic condition? Not something you just come down with, like a flu or something. So I don’t know.”

“I mean, he hasn’t exactly been taking great care of himself, all things considered. He’s had a headache for a while now, just a way milder one, I guess. Maybe it’s the stress?”

“The stress, or his terrible sleeping habits, or all the potions. I mean, those aren’t that dangerous by themselves, but too much of anything like that can mess you up, you know what I’m saying?”

“I guess. I just hope it goes away.” 

“I mean, I’m sure it will. Headaches usually do. Hopefully he can just sleep it off.”

Jevin wondered how long that would take. At least if Hypno was asleep, he probably wasn’t consciously in pain. 

Wels had disappeared, presumably to his room. Jevin took a seat on the couch where Hypno had sat, unsure of what else to do with himself. After a moment, Ren joined him.

They sat in an uneasy silence for a time. As the adrenaline of the whole situation wore off, Jevin found himself feeling more and more fatigued. He’d done pretty well at wrangling the world around him, but it had taken its toll. 

At least it was something he could do, Jevin thought. He could think and act like the old Jevin enough to get things done. He hadn’t lost that part of himself, just broken it.

Thinking of it like that made Jevin feel a little more optimistic. He just wished he hadn’t discovered it like this. 

He was still worried for Hypno, even if Ren seemed to think it would be fine. Though he was pretty sure Hypno would worry himself into a panic if he knew he was causing Jevin to worry in the first place. Oh, they were all so very functional, weren’t they? 

As he rested on the couch, a thought resurfaced in his mind. “What did you mean? When you said Hypno wouldn’t want to see you?”

“Oh.” Ren shifted in his seat, looking uncomfortable. “Yeah, uh, we had a bit of a falling out. Or, more than a bit, I guess. I got pissed with him taking such poor care of himself and said some stuff that I probably shouldn’t have. Or at least that I should have said a whole lot more gently.” Ren scratched the back of his ear with a sigh. “It was dumb, the whole thing. And I…I think I kinda owe you an apology too. I kinda…er, well, I might have shared how you felt about the whole thing without your permission. I’m sorry about that.”

“Yeah, that kinda sucks. I mean, I feel like the guy is beating himself up enough without knowing that I worried myself.”

“I know, I just.” Ren sighed again. “I wanted him to see what it was doing to you and Wels, his behavior.  Because this all really needs to stop. Especially now, after this.”

“It does.” Jevin could agree with that. He hoped that, if nothing else, this incident would serve as a wake up call for Hypno that he couldn’t keep treating himself this way. 

“Still, it was a bad call. I think we can still help Hypno, but not like that. And I’m really not sure how much I should be involved.”

“Will you stay for now, at least?” Jevin found himself asking. “At least until Hypno seems better?”

“Yeah, of course man. I’m not just gonna bail. Plus, I was coming over here anyway–ah, that reminds me.” Ren began rummaging through his inventory. “I’ve got something for you.”

He pulled out a pair of what looked like False’s goggles, but the lenses were tinted dark. “Falsie lent me an extra pair, and I figured these would probably stay on your head better than classic glasses. Er, I hope.” He held the goggles out to Jevin. 

Jevin took them gently. He turned them over in his hand, careful not to touch the lenses, before sliding them over his head. It was a bit difficult to position them correctly, what without ears and a nose to balance them on, but once he’d gotten them in place, the goggle band and his own slimy body did the job of keeping them in place.

As soon as they were over his eyes, the comforting feeling of just a little bit of relief settled over Jevin, just as it had before. It didn’t magically make his problems go away, or make his mind stop fixating on things it shouldn’t, but it did soften the sharp, painful edges that made looking at anything a chore. And that was important, not just in the actual, tangible way it helped, but in what it meant. That there were ways to make the world less unbearable. That things would get better, even if he wasn’t able to actively push forwards. 

And that meant a whole lot to Jevin.

“Thank you, Ren. Really, thank you.”

“Oh, of course, dude. Of course.” Ren looked almost bashful, Jevin thought, rubbing the back of his head with one hand as his already reddish cheeks grew redder. Jevin found himself smiling slightly. It was so much easier to look at Ren through that wall of darkened glass. 

Jevin didn’t have anything more to say from there. He’d done an awful lot of talking in the past…however long it had been. But from then on, the silence between the two of them was a comfortable one.

Jevin didn’t remember falling asleep, and yet when he woke up, golden light was streaming in through the window he still couldn’t bring himself to look through. He didn’t feel very well rested, but equally didn’t feel like he could fall back asleep. He idly rubbed at one eye with his hand, smearing slime all over his new glasses. Jevin cursed in irritation, wiping at the lens with the sleeve of his hoodie, which only succeeded in smudging it more. 

He’d have to ask Ren how to properly clean them, he supposed. Speaking of which, Ren was no longer sitting beside him on the couch. The door to Jevin’s room was slightly ajar, and Jevin could put two and two together–Ren was probably in there. He’d said he would stay, after all.

Jevin took the time to wipe off his goggles with a damp cloth, which worked a lot better, before entering his own bedroom.

Hypno was sitting up in bed, Ren in a chair by his side. He looked worn out, Jevin thought, but not nearly as bad as he’d been before. He looked up when Jevin entered the room, but as soon as he caught sight of Jevin, his eyes dropped down to his lap. 

“Hypno? Feeling any better?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I just feel tired now.” Hypno sighed, rubbing at his head. “Still got a bit of a headache. Nothing like before, though.”

“Though, I was saying you should still go to a doctor, once we’re out of here. Make sure this isn’t a reoccurring sorta thing. Ah, Hypno and I were just…well, having an overdue conversation, I guess,” Ren said. “Making things right.”

Hypno nodded. Neither he nor Ren looked angry, which Jevin took as a good sign. 

“I–you were right,” Hypno said, eyes still on his lap. “Even if you said it in a pretty harsh way, you were right.” He bit his lip. “I’m sorry, Jevin. I’ve been worrying you, haven’t I? Especially after today.”

“Hey dude, don’t apologize for that.” Jevin frowned. So Hypno was still beating himself up about not being a perfect caretaker, then. “You were sick.”

Hypno shook his head. “No, it’s not that. I’m not sorry for getting sick, I’m sorry for… for making myself sick, not taking care of myself, acting like it was the right thing to do even when it was hurting you. I didn’t want to listen to anyone who told me otherwise. I…didn’t even listen to you. Never asked you what you wanted from me. I just assumed I knew best, and that if I just…worked hard enough, I could make things better. But it doesn’t work like that.”

Tears were beading in Hypno’s eyes, something that startled Jevin. He couldn’t  remember ever seeing Hypno cry before. But maybe it was a good thing that he wasn’t bottling everything up.

Hypno scrubbed the tears from his eyes with his jacket sleeve, sniffling, and Jevin found himself bending down to wrap his arms around Hypno. Hypno stiffened for a brief moment, before leaning into Jevin’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry. I wanted to make things better for you. I didn’t want to think that I couldn’t.” Hypno sniffled again. Jevin could feel dampness seeping into the fabric of his hoodie.

“Hey, it’s okay,” He said, rubbing at Hypno’s back. “I don’t need you to apologize, man. I just want you to take better care of yourself. Get outta this place, for a while.”

“Yeah, Hypno and I were talking about that,” Ren said. “We were thinking that I’d stay here with you two for a while, and that Hypno would go crash with XB. If that’s okay with you, of course.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s fine. Good, really.” He gave Hypno a light thump on the back. “You, my dude, need to take some time for yourself. For a good long while, got that?”

Hypno took a shaky breath. “Got it.”

“And you don’t have to worry so much about us, me and Wels. I mean, we handled ourselves today, didn’t we? It’s not like we’re totally helpless.”

“Yeah, I know. I’ll…try to keep that in mind. I’m sorry, I was so worried about you that I guess I stopped…treating you like my friends.”

“Hey, I said you don’t have to apologize. Idiot,” Jevin said fondly. “Just promise me that you’ll start taking care of yourself. That’s all I want.”

“Okay,” Hypno spoke into his shoulder, voice open and earnest, more so than Jevin had heard in a long while. “I promise.” 

Jevin got the sense it was a promise he would keep.

Chapter Text

Joe was in a bubble, a clear, glossy one. It was like a soap bubble, if soap bubbles could get large enough to hold a person. He was floating up into the clear blue sky, body weightless within the confines of the bubble. It all seemed very normal–floating off in giant bubbles was just a natural part of life, after all. 

He gave the side of the bubble a poke and watched, amused, as it sprung back into place like one of those educational world balloons. He wondered where it was taking him, the bubble balloon. He hoped it was somewhere fun.

Somewhere down below, on the ground, Joe could hear a familiar voice yelling at him. Cleo’s voice. He couldn’t tell what she was saying, muffled by the distance and the bubble walls, but she sounded upset. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to be in the bubble? Maybe the bubble was bad? Or maybe she was mad that she didn’t get to be in a bubble too?

But before Joe could deduce what the reason was, he found himself in his bed, in the quiet darkness of his empty bedroom. He was in that weird middle ground of not being asleep but not being quite awake either, where edges of his dream seemed to bleed through into the real world, where everything was hazy and out of focus. He could even still hear Cleo yelling.

It was still dark, which was enough to tell Joe that he should probably try to get back to sleep before he woke up too much. But the noise was kind of distracting, even faint as it was. Even quiet as it was in his bedroom, the bedroom he shared with Keralis. Quiet. Empty.

Oh. Oh no.

It was as if a bucket of ice water had been dumped over his head. In a moment he was awake and alert, throwing himself from his bed in a mess of tangled sheets. He kicked them aside, leapt to his feet, and barreled his way through the bedroom door and out into the upstairs hallway, jamming his glasses onto his face as he went.

He could hear Cleo’s voice clearly now, booming up the stairs. 

“-AT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN ‘IT’S NOT WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE’? WHAT KIND OF EXPLANATION IS THERE FOR THIS?”

Joe descended the stairs the same way he’d gotten out of bed, by more or less throwing himself down them. He stumbled, tripping over his own feet, but managed to stay upright long enough to reach the bottom.

In the tiny kitchen of the starter base stood Cleo and Keralis, face to face with each other. Cleo had her hands locked on his shoulders, her shirt sleeves thoroughly soaked. Keralis was shrunk in on himself, hands pressed to his chest and head turned away from her. He was even more drenched than she was, water dripping from his face and hair to form an ever growing puddle on the floor. 

“It’s not, it’s not,” Keralis was saying in a shaky, hoarse voice. “I swear, it’s just, I-I”

Before he could finish his sentence, Cleo’s head snapped towards Joe, no doubt having heard the amount of noise he must have made. “Joe! What the hell, how did you not notice Keralis leaving? How deeply asleep were you?”

Keralis’ head shot up at her words, panic filling his eyes. “No, Cleo, no, don’t be mad at Joe, don’t. I was being quiet, I was–it’s not his fault, so please don’t-” He was broken off by a fit of coughing, doubling over as he choked out painful-sounding coughs.

Cleo took a hard breath, steadying herself just a little. Not enough, though. 

She wasn’t mad, Joe realized. He’d known her long enough to see that. He knew what an angry Cleo looked like all too well. Cleo didn’t yell when she was angry, but quietly seethed, uttering out threats and scoldings in a calm but venomous voice. No, this was a Cleo who was terrified, terrified far beyond the point where she knew what to do, who was striking out at anything and everything around her in some desperate attempt to fix the problem. 

“What is this, then,” Cleo said, voice still lethally sharp. “If you’re not–If you weren’t trying to-to drown yourself again, explain why the fuck I found you doing exactly that? ”

Keralis shook his head, shrinking into himself further. 

This wasn’t good, Joe realized, Cleo’s reaction. He may not know all the details of the situation, but he could tell this wasn’t helping, was actively making the situation worse, and it was something they’d regret later, when they calmed down.

“Cleo–”

“No, Joe, not now.” 

“I-I wasn’t. I wasn’t.” Keralis’ expression was twisted with shame. He lowered his head again, picking at the skin around his thumbnail, shoulders scrunching up under Cleo’s hands. “I just, it’s, I was just–”

“Just what, Keralis? Just what?”

“Just, wasn’t trying to-to die, it’s not, not like that.” Keralis made a pained whimpering noise. “Just, XB, XB died, he died so many times and I couldn’t help, and I did, I did so many things wrong, so it’s only fair–only right, not fair that I don’t, that I don’t suffer too.”

“How is tha–”

“Cleo.” Joe’s voice was firmer this time, harder. He marched over to the pair of them, grabbing ahold of her arm and looking her straight in the eyes. “Stop. This isn’t helping.”

It was perhaps his tone, a tone he rarely, if ever, used, that seemed to bring Cleo down. She stared at him, first with shock, then shame, before she dropped her hands from Keralis’ shoulders. 

Joe turned to him. “Keralis? Are you okay?”

Keralis was very clearly not okay. He was shaking, his lower lip quivering, very clearly on the verge of tears. Joe reached out, slowly, carefully, but Keralis pulled away from him, covering his face with his hands as he broke into a fit of coughing and sobbing. 

“I, uh,” Cleo cleared her throat. Her voice was calmer now, softer. She sounded hesitant to even speak at all. “I’ll, uh, empty the cauldron here.” She gestured to the half-full cauldron sink. 

What she was saying, implicitly, was that Joe should be the one to help Keralis here, that she didn’t trust herself at that moment to be a positive presence. 

“Can you get some dry clothes too? For Keralis.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll do that.”

He turned back to Keralis. He didn’t seem to want Joe’s comfort, and Joe didn’t want to be pushy. But Keralis was also soaked, and when he was still feeling sick, that couldn’t be a good thing. Joe turned to one of the barrels in the kitchen, fishing around until he found a banner that could serve as a towel. 

“You need to dry off, Keralis, okay?” 

Keralis removed his hands from his face long enough to accept the banner from Joe, burying his face into it. He wasn’t doing much to dry himself, so Joe took out another banner, figuring he could at least put it over Keralis’ head to soak up some of the water. 

But as soon as Joe laid the banner over him, Keralis flinched away, sending the banner fluttering to the floor. “No! No, don’t touch my hair, don’t touch it! It’s from–it’s from Bubbles, please…”

“Okay, okay,” Joe said, taking a step back, hands held up in front of him in a placating gesture. “I won’t, I was just trying to absorb some of the water, maybe warm you up a bit. It’s too cold for you to be all soaking wet.”

Keralis sniffled, but he seemed to be listening to Joe, as he removed the banner from his face to gently pat at his hair. It probably wouldn’t do much to help, but Joe wasn’t going to go over there and start scrubbing at his head. This would have to be good enough. 

“I fucked up,” Cleo said. 

She was sitting on the couch, sagging into the handmade woolen pillows. Across from her was Keralis, asleep in the bed they’d quickly set up in the main area of the house. He’d been worn out from all that crying, and he still felt under the weather, and so he’d nodded off quickly. Joe hoped he’d get some good rest. It was still the middle of the night, after all, but Joe knew he wouldn’t be going back to sleep, and he suspected the same thing was true for Cleo.

“I mean, I think we all have, at some point in all this,” Joe said from beside her, eyes drifting from the sleeping form of Keralis to Cleo. 

“Sure, I guess. But this was, it was such a delicate situation, and I just made things so much worse.” They shook their head, eyes still filled with shame. “I wasn’t thinking. I came in there, tired, looking for a bottle of water, and Keralis was just there, head in the sink, and I thought, well, it scared the shit out of me. But I guess that doesn’t excuse it, yelling at him like that. As if that would make it all somehow better.” 

“Maybe not. But it is an explanation. Not reacting well to a stressful situation isn’t a crime. It doesn’t make you a bad person, either.”

Cleo sighed, running a hand through her hair. “It’s just, this is what I was afraid of. That I wasn’t good enough to be gentle, that I’d end up hurting Keralis. I knew that I might, and I still…” She shook her head again. “Maybe Keralis shouldn’t be here, with us, or at least me. Maybe someone else would be better. More capable. Kinder.”

“Maybe. Or maybe not, it’s hard to know.”

“XB was better.”

“And Keralis feels too guilty around him right now, after everything. Really, Keralis should be the one to get to choose, rather than have us pass him around.”

“Yeah, I guess so. But I just worry, what sort of choices he’ll make, given, well, his current state.”

“I don’t know, Cleo. I really just don’t.”

“That makes two of us, then,” Cleo said, settling back further into the couch. Joe sat at her side in silence.

Neither of them got any sleep for the rest of the night.

It was in the morning that Joe could really feel the exhaustion start to set in. He yawned his way through a light breakfast of jam and toast, before gathering everything he needed for the day. A coffee would be nice at a time like this, Joe thought, but alas. Even if he could get back to sleep at this point, he had places to be. Well, one place to be.

Keralis was milling about in the main room of the house, Cleo keeping a careful eye on him as she thumbed through a book. He stood up when Joe entered to look at him with red-rimmed eyes.

“I’m sorry, Joe,” Keralis said, fidgeting with his hands. “I woke you up, and you have that therapy thing today, don’t you? I messed it up.”

“Oh, I was already awake anyway,” Joe said, which was at least half true. “Besides, all I am is a bit tired. That’s not the worst thing in the world.”

“But I keep doing this,” Keralis said, eyes turning down towards the floor. “I keep messing up, and hurting everyone, and it’s all my own choices.” He wrapped his arms around himself.

Joe had hoped that Keralis would stop blaming himself for so much, even just a little. But he supposed it wasn’t that simple. “Do you want to come to the group therapy meeting with me? You’re welcome to, you know?”

Keralis shook his head. “No. I don’t, I’m not ready for that. Not right now.”

“Of course. Whenever you’re ready.” There was a lot to discuss, a lot that couldn’t really be put on the backburner, but now wasn’t the time. He really had to get going.

Keralis gave him a small, weak smile, and Joe offered a wave in return as he stepped out into the too-bright midmorning sunlight. He squinted against it, wishing he’d brought that nice hat Pearl had made him, but not enough for him to go back to grab it. The Soup Bowl was just a short walk away in the compact spawn village. 

All of the others were already gathered when he arrived, seated in various places in the circle. Scar waved to him from his wheelchair, joined by Cub at his side, who sat in a standard spruce seat, crutch leaning against the side. There was XB, who wasn’t in the circle but at one of the nearby tables, sitting backwards in a chair with his arms crossed over the back, resting his chin on them. Stress and Pearl were sitting beside each other on handmade cushions, talking about something in quiet voices. Beside them was Xisuma, hunched over in a chair as if he could make himself invisible. And then there was Beef, also on a cushion, his back to the door as Joe entered. He gave him a friendly smile as Joe took a seat in his own cushion beside him.

“Hey there, Joe.”

“Howdy, Beef. Howdy everybody.”

“Well, that’s everyone, yeah?” Cub asked, eyes moving around the circle. “If you’re all ready to get started.”

“Actually,” Joe said, rummaging through his inventory for the supplies he’d gathered. “I thought it might be a good idea to have something to do rather than just, well, sit in a circle and talk. Something simple that wouldn’t be too distracting. And you know Cleo and I love drawing together, so I figured it could be a good activity for everyone.”

“Drawing? Is that really a simple thing?” Beef asked. 

Cub shrugged. “Eh, it’s not like we’re gonna be creating masterpieces over here. Just a little bit of doodling.”

“Besides, I’m pretty sure art therapy is a thing,” Pearl said, scouching closer to the table, resting her elbows on it. 

“Also, it’s not like it’s mandatory,” Joe added as he laid out bowls of dye and pieces of paper on the table. “Only if you want to. I just thought it would be nice.”

“I think I’ll pass,” XB said from his chair with a wave. “Looks a bit too crowded over there for me.”

“It’s all good, it’s all good,” Cub said, taking a paper and leaning over the table in a position that didn’t look very comfortable. Scar, Stress, and Beef all drew closer as well, though X kept his distance.

And so, with the hermits gathered around the table, their group therapy session began. It was, predictably, extremely messy, given the number of dyes Joe had brought, and the fact that they weren’t really supposed to be used as paints. The cyan met a swift end when Beef bumped it while reaching for a different dye, spilling it all over the table and causing a brief panic as everyone tried to clean up the mess.

The others seemed to be enjoying themselves at least, Joe thought, even those who were just watching the mess. He figured he could count this as a success, even if it was certain to be a lot of clean up later. Given that it was his idea, he was pretty sure he’d be the one handling that.

“So,” Joe said, scribbling onto his paper with bright blue paint. It had soaked through onto the table, but that had happened to all of them by now. “How’s everyone been doing?”

“It’s been good, it’s been good,” Cub said, reflexively, before seeming to think better of it. “Ah, well, not quite. The Vex have been pestering me lately. Trying to convince me to make a deal with them, in exchange for leaving Gem alone. I’ll admit, it’s kinda tempting. ‘Specially since Gem got mixed up in all of this cause of me in the first place. But I know they won’t stop there. They’ll figure out how to get both of us in the end. The only way to win their game is not to play, even if it hurts.”

He hummed thoughtfully, ink dripping onto his piece of paper. It seemed as though he were drawing a picture of the monster he was building at his base, albeit a very crude rendition of it. “They don’t like me telling you guys about that. But at least right now they can’t do anything about it. I just worry about Gem.”

“‘ave they done something to ‘er?” Stress asked, expression laced with concern.

Cub frowned, turning away from the group. “Yeah, they have. But that’s not something I can talk about with you. They’re trying to cut Gem off from everyone as well, and they actually have the power to be able to hurt her. If I go spilling the beans, my Vex’ll go running to hers, and she could suffer for it. Or, actually, they might all be the same Vex. I don’t know.”

“That’s horrible…” Beef said. “They can just do that? Isn’t there some way to stop them?”

“I wish there was, I wish,” Cub said, in the voice of a man who’d already tried a million different things and long since given up hope of succeeding. “But they’re tricky. Can’t kill them with fire or water, can’t suffocate ‘em. You can try and shoot them, or stab them, but they’ll vanish long before anyone could get a shot off. They aren’t like regular Vex. They follow their own sorts of rules.”

“And we can’t, I don’t know, ban them or something?” Beef turned towards Xisuma with that question. 

X cleared his throat, looking startled to have been brought into the conversation at all. “Oh, uh. They’re mobs, not players. So it doesn’t work like that. It’s not like you could ban a random pig or something either, you know? And deleting them hasn’t worked before. It seems like they can enter any world they like, somehow. Seeing as they came to this one. Is that right, Cub and Scar?”

“Even Cub and I don’t know much about that. How they found us, how they cross worlds, oh, it’s all a big mess,” Scar said with a shake of his head.

“Dey shouldn’t ‘ave that sort of power over us,” Stress said, scowling down at her picture and the growing magenta blob on it. 

“They shouldn’t,” Cub agreed. “But I’ve been trying for years to get them to go away. Nothing’s ever worked.”

“They do die in the void, don’t they?” Xisuma said. “I think that’s how they’re supposed to work? Or is it different?”

“Yeah, they do. But try getting them there in the first place. It’s not like they have to follow their targets around all the time. Jump into the void or something like that, they’ll just fly out and leave you to die.”

Everyone fell into a frustrated silence, trying and failing to think of ways to combat the Vex. 

“Eh, let’s move on to something else,” Cub said at last. “Anyone else want to go?”

“Hm, well if we’re on the topic of the Vex,” Scar said, looking up from the landscape he was slowly building on his paper. “I could talk about that. They still haven’t shown back up, so I’m starting to think they’re gone for good. I’m not really sure how to feel about that. I mean, I hated the Vex. They were terrible creatures, and they hurt my friends, and I knew they didn’t have my best interests at heart. I always had to be on my guard, always had to be fighting with them to gain even a scrap of magic without getting hurt, and it was exhausting. But they also didn’t literally want to kill me, so to be honest, they were a lot easier to deal with than my homeworld companies when it comes to getting mobility aids.” Scar chuckled, but it was a mirthless chuckle, lips pressed tight together in a look of frustration, the kind of old frustration that had been with Scar long enough that he’d had no choice but to just accept it. “So it wasn’t hard to treat them like another medication with serious side effects, or a company who kept denying me treatment in the hopes I’d just give up and permadie, I guess. Messed up, but not a lot I could do.”

Joe wished often that he had the power to smite all the scummy, pay to win servers out there in the universe and all the slightly more decent servers that wouldn’t treat someone from a different homeworld. But he thought that if he did get such a power, he would like to give it to Scar instead. 

“Gosh, I’m sorry, Scar,” Beef said. “That’s really awful, having to deal with that.”

“It is what it is,” Scar said in the kind of tone that meant he wanted to move on without being showered in sympathy. “I think I still hate the Vex more, just on a personal level, because of what they’ve done to the people I care about. But I wish I’d had the choice, though, of whether to rely on the Vex or not. I don’t like having it taken away from me. I think that bothers me most of all.”

“For what it’s worth, for better or worse,” Cub said. “I think the Vex will probably come back to you. They did with me, after all. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is some sort of game to them, a way to feed off your frustration at losing them. That’s the sort of thing they would do.”

“It is, but that doesn’t make it feel any better,” Scar said. “I’ve just been trying not to agonize over it too much, you know? Don’t want to give them what they want.”

“That’s fair, that’s fair.” Cub nodded in agreement. 

“Well, it’s not like there’s any easy solution to all of that,” Scar said with a sigh. “So I’m fine with moving on. Good, actually. Yeah, better move on.”

There was silence, broken only by the sounds of quills scratching on paper. Joe wondered if now was the time for him to speak up. If he should talk about the previous night, or if that was too much personal information to be sharing with other people who knew Keralis. 

He kept quiet, and eventually Pearl began to speak, sharing how she felt like an outsider intruding on other people’s grief due to her newness on the server and was vigorously reassured that she wasn’t. Then there was Beef, who spoke about his worries for Etho, who was apparently distancing himself from pretty much everyone except for when helping Xisuma and Doc, and the others discussed ideas for a possible intervention, or at least some way to help Etho. Then went Stress, who worried that she wasn’t doing enough to help, that she felt there was little she could do in spite of her role as messenger, and learned that every one of them shared those feelings to some extent. And then it was XB’s turn.

“I’m really trying to, you know, move on from this,” XB said. “I mean, Keralis lived. He lived, and he can get better. Things can be okay, someday. But I just, I keep having these nightmares, you know? Where my legs don’t move fast enough, or my comm won’t load messages, or I just freeze in front of the river, and, well, it just haunts me. All the crap my mind can come up with, ways things might’ve gone wrong. It sucks. Sucks so bad. I wish I could just, you know, accept the reality that’s right in front of me.”

“I mean, you did go through a lot,” Joe found himself saying. “I think it would be stranger to be just fine after that.”

“Yeah,” XB said, dragging a claw over the back of the chair. “I kinda told myself the same thing. But it doesn’t stop, and I’m getting sick of it. I hope it’s the sorta thing I can just kinda ride out, but I dunno. It doesn’t feel that way, a lot of the time.”

Joe wasn’t sure what to say to that. He didn’t have the knowledge to assure XB one way or the other. 

“Hey, I mean, if it’s ever bothering you and you don’t want to be alone for the night, you can always count on one of us,” Scar said. He was putting the finishing touches on a pretty impressive piece of art, given the circumstances. It looked like a simple landscape with stylized trees. “I’m sure Grian won’t mind.”

XB chuckled. “Thanks for the offer, man, but probably not. You know how I am, I like my personal space. Even when I’m freaked out about something.”

“Oh, that’s fine too, of course. Just an offer, if you ever want it.”

“Besides, Hypno’s already staying with me, so it’s not like I’m all alone, y’know?”

“Really? Does that mean ‘e’s finally taking care of ‘imself?” Stress asked. “I was getting worried about ‘im.”

“More or less, yeah,” XB said with a small smile. “It’s progress, at least. I mean, he’s still worried sick over Jevin and Wels. I think it’s hard for him not to worry about them at this point, not like it’s a switch he can just turn off. And I get it, I mean, I kinda feel the same way. About Keralis, at least.” His face fell as he turned towards Joe. “How-How is he, Keralis?”

And, Joe, thought, as personal as Keralis’ problems might be, it wasn’t quite fair to keep XB in the dark. Besides, everything would stay between them. 

And so he told the group about the prior night’s events, or at least the broad details of them. It felt uncomfortable doing so, almost like he was gossiping about something really serious, but wasn’t therapy for discussing stuff like this?

It was XB who spoke first once Joe had finished, though a variety of expressions had spread across the faces of the other hermits. Anxiety, sorrow, horror, quiet concern. 

“Oh. That’s.” XB slumped forward in his chair, expression unreadable. “He, he knows I don’t want him to get hurt, right? That I don’t blame him for any of this?”

“I think he does know,” Joe said. “But he blames himself, and that’s enough, I guess.”

XB leaned his head down on his arms, taking a heavy breath. “Maybe I should come by to visit? Would he want that?”

“I can ask him for you, if you’d like?”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’d be good. This is all, it’s kind of a lot. Do you think it would be okay if we kinda wrap things up, you know?”

“Joe, X, that okay with you?” Cub asked as he set his quill down next to his crude drawing. 

“It’s fine by me,” Joe said.

“X?”

“Oh, it’s, er, it’s fine with me too,” X said. “I didn’t, I wasn’t really going to share anything anyway. But, uh, I should let you know that work is going well on the hermit. Really well, actually. I think we’ll have it up and running within two weeks.”

“Really, that soon?” Stress perked up slightly at that. She’d finished her picture of a large magenta flower, or at least Joe thought that was what it was supposed to be.

“Well, it’ll be fixed that soon. There’s still some red tape to deal with before we can get the server open again, but it shouldn’t be too much longer. A month total, tops.”

“That’s a relief,” XB said, finally raising his head. “I think Keralis needs more help than we can give him. It’ll be good to finally have access to actual mental health stuff.”

“For all of us too, really,” Joe added. “I think we could all use it.”

His final statement seemed to be the thing to end the session, as the rest of the hermits began to pack up their own artwork. Pearl had created a beautiful image of her starter base, Beef a messy blur of colors, and Joe himself a strange, abstract creation that he hadn’t thought too much of. He’d been pretty distracted, so it had just kind of happened. 

Cleanup took longer than he’d expected, with the dye soaking into the cushions and wood, and he’d ended up having to re dye a lot of things. Beef stuck around to help for a while, having spilled the most paint out of the group, but it still took until evening for Joe to finish. 

Still, he thought it had been a success, the paintings. They hadn’t paid too much attention to them, but that was sort of the point. Maybe there was something more that could be done with the idea, some way to represent how they were feeling? But that might be too much of a distraction. He’d have to think on it. 

He did indeed think about it as he made the short walk back to the base, though he didn’t come to any decisions.

He pushed open the door to be instantly greeted with conversation.

“But it’s not your fault,” Keralis was saying. He was seated on one corner of the couch, Cleo at the other. “You should have been upset with me. I scared you, and I woke up Joe, why is yelling at me over that so wrong?”

“I mean, it just kind–” Cleo began, stopping at the sound of the door opening. They turned to Joe. “Hey, if you’re up for it, you can join us. You’re part of this conversation as well.”

Joe was feeling pretty tired after everything, but he also didn’t want to leave things unresolved here, and so he took a seat between Keralis and Cleo. Keralis looked over at Joe once, before his eyes drifted back to his lap. His face was no longer red and puffy, but he still had that same distressed look from the night before.

“We were discussing what happened last night,” Cleo said. “Or, well, I was apologizing for how I acted.”

“But Cleo doesn’t need to apologize. I don’t deserve that.”

“What you don’t deserve is to be yelled at,” Cleo said. Her voice was soft but firm. 

Keralis said nothing to that, focusing on picking at his cuticles. 

“I don’t think there needs to be any blaming of anyone here,” Joe said, hoping he could mediate this situation well enough to diffuse any tension. “We can accept that it happened and move on from it. It doesn’t have to be Cleo’s fault or Keralis’ fault.”

“That’s fair,” Cleo said. “Let’s not get caught up in feeling guilty. I know you think you have a lot to feel guilty for Keralis, but you really don’t. No more than anyone else.”

“You keep saying things like that.” Keralis’ voice was quiet, pained. “Not just you, Joe and everyone else too. Nice things like that, like it wa sn’t my fault, or it was an accident, or we all messed up. And I don’t--I don’t know if I can believe them, or not. Everyone’s so nice. And they want me to get better. Of course you guys say it’s okay.”

“Keralis,” Cleo said in a soft voice. “I completely mean what I said, that you didn’t deserve to be yelled at. I don’t tell lies just to make people feel better. You know me. You know I don’t do that.”

“You would if it meant keeping me alive,” Keralis said, voice equally soft. 

Oh, that felt very much like a punch to the gut. Because of course they wanted to keep Keralis alive. Of course they would do whatever it took to help him. 

How could they convince Keralis of anything if that was the case?

“Do you want us to be honest with you? Or do you just want us to be mad at you?” Cleo’s voice was even. 

Keralis’ silence was answer enough.

Cleo took a deep breath. “Okay. I am mad at you. That’s true. I’m mad that you assume so little of us, that you think we’d all secretly resent you for this. I’m mad that you won’t let us feel how we really feel, because it’s not what you want to hear.”

Keralis looked startled. “That’s not–I don’t–”

“Cleo.” Joe warned.

“But you know what. I’m way more mad at myself than I am with you. I’m mad you didn’t feel like you could tell us about this. I’m mad that I didn’t realize you needed help until it was too late.”

Keralis’ lower lip trembled. He still wouldn’t look at either of them. “But that is my fault, isn’t it? You-you feeling mad at yourself. All of that is.”

“Keralis, my emotions are not your fault. They just aren’t. It’s like I said before, you know, you can’t control how I feel. That applies to last night too, you know.”

Keralis said nothing.

“Look, why do you think we’re not telling the truth when we tell you that it’s not your fault?” Joe prompted. “We can talk about that.”

Keralis chewed on his lip. “Because…I know that can’t be true. I know what I did and why I did it. I was selfish and I left everyone behind. Not just Bdubs, Tango too. I let him go off alone. And even if everyone else did the same thing, they’re the only ones who died.”

He wrapped his arms around himself, knees pulled up to his chest. 

“I’ll say what I said before,” Cleo spoke. “You didn’t do anything differently than any of us. You just got unlucky.”

“But it doesn’t make sense,” Keralis said, voice growing louder, more frantic. “It was just them. Just them, both of them, my neighbors. I-” He paused for a moment to cough. “I’m the only one who lived. That means something, it does! It wasn’t just random, it was…a whole sequence of events, that led up to that.”

“Events that weren’t your fault. You made mistakes no worse than any of us. The outcome being different doesn’t reflect on you.” Joe said.

“Then why me?” Keralis’ voice rose again. He wrapped his arms tighter around himself, shrinking into a ball. Cleo reached out as if wanting to put a hand on his shoulder, before pulling back with an anxious frown. “Why me? Why did I live and not them? It’s not fair!”

“It’s not,” Joe said evenly. “But I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you survived.”

“I’m not,” Keralis said. He sniffled. “I wish it was one of them instead.”

At that, Cleo stood from her seat to walk over to Keralis. For a moment, Joe was worried she’d react harshly again, but instead she crouched down to his level.

“Can I give you a hug?”

Keralis’ eyes flickered up to look at her, considering, before he gave a silent nod. Cleo sat down beside him, wrapping her arms around him and pulling him close.

“Dying won’t bring them back. It won’t make things better,” Cleo said in a quiet voice, rubbing Keralis’ back.

“I know…” Keralis said, barely loud enough for Joe to hear. “I’m sorry. I wish I hadn’t upset everyone so much. I wish you guys didn’t have to worry about me. I’ve hurt you too.”

“We worry because you’re our friend,” Joe said, putting a hand on his shoulder as he leaned against Cleo. “We made the choice to care about you.”

“If you don’t want us to worry so much,” Cleo added. “Then talk to us when you feel this way. Don’t hide it away all the time. Please.”

“I’ll-I try.” Keralis sniffled. He buried his face in Cleo’s shoulder and wept silently, Cleo rubbing his back. They sat there in silence, the three of them, for a long while. 

They would all sleep that night, at least. A restless sleep, but sleep nonetheless.

Chapter Text

It was raining again. Good for the crops, not so good for the hermits. Grian leaned on the windowsill, watching rain patter down onto the terraformed landscape beyond. He would rather be out and about, working on a build or something of the sort. Grian was an energetic person at heart, and a restless person when restrained. It sure did seem like there was more rain than usual, these days, after the brief dry spell of a couple weeks ago. It had been nice at first, returning from the harsh, hot desert and almost as hot savanna to the cool, pleasant sensation of rain on his head and wings. He might have even drank some of it, like a child catching snowflakes, when nobody was around to see. But now, the rain had grown stale and excessive. It made him feel antsy. There were so many things in his builds that he wanted to change and fix, building up in his mind as time passed. He struggled to keep hold of them.

Scar was still out drawing on the porch, Grian was pretty sure. It was something he did a lot on these sorts of quiet, rainy days. But Grian had no traditional artistic skills to speak of and wasn’t very interested in learning. He preferred the physical process of building, even though it was much harder now that he couldn’t fly. So he’d taken to baking, or at least trying to bake. He knew how, but he wasn’t going to win any baking awards anytime soon. Who was good at baking, come to think of it? Beef, he was pretty sure. He seemed to have been the one to prepare a lot of the food at The Soup Bowl. Joe, maybe, but Grian didn’t necessarily trust his tastes. 

Speaking of which, he probably ought to check on his cake. He could smell it wafting up from the furnace, though it was terribly flat when he bent down to look at it. Well, not like he could have expected much more with the limitations of vanilla materials. Which did not, in fact, include any actual vanilla. Amongst many other things. 

Still it was looking nice and golden around the edges, and so Grian donned his makeshift leather oven mitts and pulled the repurposed iron helmet out and up onto the counter.

“No waffles? Aww, you should make waffles.”

Grian jumped in surprise. He hadn’t heard Scar come up behind him in spite of the noise his wheelchair made on the hardwood floor. “Scar! You scared the life out of me.”

Scar giggled when Grian turned to face him. “Something smelled good so I wanted to come say hi. It’s only fair I get to scare you now and again too.”

Grian sighed in faux annoyance. Having Scar back was a profound relief. He’d been sorely missed on the server with his infectious optimism and friendly presence. Everything felt a bit warmer with him back. Well, at least for Grian. Plenty of the other hermits were still struggling so much. Grian was well aware of that. 

But life had to go on, and they had to move forward as best they could. Maybe even clear the way for those lingering behind. Though Grian couldn’t be the one to decide when anyone else could move on. They’d have to do so at their own paces. The Hermitcraft server carried with it a lot of grief, but Grian hoped it could still be the same warm, kind place that had taken him in when he had been alone and confused. Everybody here was a close friend. In time, together, Grian hoped they could find happiness.

He’d felt awkward around Scar at first, weighed down by the guilt of being the catalyst for Scar’s choice. And more awkward still when that had faded to disappointment with his own lack of action. But he was trying to move past all that, past his need to feel like he’d been anything other than helpless. Talking about it, with Scar and the others, in their group therapy sessions helped. Even if there weren’t any easy answers, just saying things out loud felt like a relief. 

“What are you making?” Scar asked, sniffing the air and wheeling over to the counter. “Smells like bread. Yum. You should open a shop. I can see it now. Grian’s Grains, best bread on Hermitcraft.”

Grian snorted. “Ah, been a while since I’ve heard a joke about my name. I’ve almost started to miss them.”

“You should bring back the bread with your face on it too.”

“It’s not even bread, it’s supposed to be a cake. Not sure if it’s a great look that you can’t tell.”

“Oh, a cake, of course, of course!” Scar corrected with a grin. “But if you need any of my great baking skills, I’m here to help.”

Grian raised an eyebrow at him. “Honestly, I don’t trust you anywhere near a furnace, Scar.”

He pouted in exaggerated defeat. “Aww, so mean. I just want to help.”

“Fine, fine. But you better not burn the house down.”

Scar did manage to accomplish that, despite one close call when he’d almost pulled the loaf of actual bread they’d been making out of the oven with his bare hands and Grian was forced to swoop in to save him. Scar did have a knack for getting into trouble and inevitably dying as a result. Death had a bit of a different connotation on the server than it had once had, and Scar had mostly managed to stop dying in spite of the lack of health regen on the server with the exception of one incident. He had rolled straight into a shallow ravine, panicked, and fired off a rocket directly into the side of said ravine.

The others had panicked in turn, until Scar had showed up in town to reassure everyone that he was okay, that it was just a standard Scar accident. Death could no longer be brushed off as it once had been, with a few “f’s” and “rips”, at least until everyone was sure that the dead hermit was okay. The hermits had always looked out for each other, but death normally meant an emergency in the sense that somebody might be losing their netherite gear. Now, it was a frightful thing between what had happened with Keralis and the potential result of an obstructed spawn point. Most of the hermits had become far more careful to avoid death, and so it had become a bit of an oddity in the chat rather than the norm it had been a few months ago. However, Grian suspected that Scar was physically incapable of being careful.

As if to prove his point, Scar nearly dropped a coal block on Grian’s foot. The bread was cooling on the table of their farmhouse. It was cozy and comfortable, a normalcy that might have been lost. 

Grian wanted that back. As something more than a fleeting thing.

May faded into June, and with it the rain began to abate. It was strange to think they’d been on this server for more than three months now. Even stranger was that they’d spent more time here, rebuilding their lives, than they had when they were still lost. 

The weather in the meadow was nice this time of year. Days neither too hot nor too cool, clear blue skies dotted with a handful of clouds. Great weather for building.

“And the boulder goes…there!” Scar waved at him, gesturing vaguely to his right. 

“...Scar, I can’t tell where you’re pointing.” He studied the sketch again, trying to figure out exactly what should go where while Scar looked on and offered advice. The mountains, as beautiful as they were, weren’t quite the perfect backdrop for Scar’s home. 

Even after a month, Scar still hadn’t regained much of his strength. Carrying around the blocks he needed to build could be done, but it would leave him completely exhausted for the next few days. And so Grian had taken to helping him, hoping his desire to do so wasn’t motivated too much by his guilt over the situation. But it turned out that Scar could be quite particular when it came to custom terrain. Sure, he wasn’t going to criticize Grian’s abilities when he was out here working hard to build for him, but he was very enthusiastic to give his input. 

Scar rolled over to him, the sturdy wheels of his chair absorbing the shock of the uneven terrain. “Right, here, see! This area’s pretty empty, so let’s add something to it. Just like painting!”

“But I don’t know how to paint.”

“Nonsense. You’re painting right now. Now, I’d say the boulder should be wider than it is tall, mix in some cobble at the side there, and this part should be a bit lower. See?” He gestured once again to his sketch. The detail was impressive, but it was on such a scale that it was tricky to make out certain parts.

Still, he thought the custom terrain he and Scar were designing was turning out pretty well. Terraforming wasn’t Grian’s favorite thing, too tedious for his liking. He would rank it only slightly above doing the back of bases. Which, as everybody knew, was pointless.

Still, he enjoyed getting to work with Scar. Especially since it meant he got to mess with him a little. 

“What do you think would happen if I set this tree on fire?”

“Ooooh no no no! Grian, the fire lick! …fire lick? Fire tick! Grian, the fire tick!”

“I’m gonna do it.”

“Grian noooo! Not the custom trees! Anything but that!”

“I see you two are having fun,” Pearl had appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, in one of her massive handmade straw hats. She pulled up the brim to get a good look at the two hooligans. 

“Oh, hi Pearl. I was just about to burn Scar’s tree down. Wanna watch?”

“Hmmm…you know what, sure. Let’s have a bonfire.”

“Noooo, Pearl! Not you too!”

It was all in good fun, of course. That was how Hermitcraft was, how it was supposed to be. Harmless pranking that everyone could laugh about in the end and never did anyone real harm. 

“Oh, where’s Mumbo with his peace, love, and plants when you need him!”

“Bold of you to assume Mumbo wouldn’t consider fire “natural destruction.””

“Also, I think he’s given up on that after he killed Grian. Last I heard, he had about a dozen mob farms going.”

That was Mumbo for you. He’d been pretty busy as of late. Grian got the sense that he felt completely out of his element, trying to offer any emotional support. Mumbo could be somewhat awkward and clumsy, however kindhearted he was, and was the type to worry about sticking his foot in his mouth and making things worse for everyone. Poor fellow.

Scar’s tree was permitted to live in the end, with a few new trees courtesy of Pearl. Just a bit of good fun between friends. None of them wanted to truly upset each other. There had been far too many upsetting things already.

The days grew longer and warmer, and with them Grian could sense the others growing restless. The end of June was approaching, the time Xisuma had tentatively given for finishing his helmet. All of that technical stuff was out of Grian’s wheelhouse, so he really didn’t know what X, Etho, and Doc were actually doing, nor what still needed to be done. Much less the sort of administrative work that might be needed to repair and reopen the server. 

It was a frustrating experience, having nothing to do but wait for other people. Grian liked to be involved in things. He liked to think he had some sort of influence on what was going on. And he really wanted the server to reopen.

Then, he could go and get his wing checked out by one of the few hybrid doctors out there, and figure out if he was actually ever going to be able to fly again. He was becoming more and more fearful that he wouldn’t, with how long the wing had gone untreated. He supposed he’d have to switch to elytra, were that the case. Those sorts of wings had never been comfortable to use, not with his own, organic wings tucked against his back. He doubted he’d be able to figure them out any time soon. 

Oh, how he desperately hoped to get the ability to fly back. It was the thing he missed the most, the ability to move around as he pleased. He wondered if Scar had the same frustrations, without the Vex’s powers to aid him. But their situations probably weren’t comparable. Scar had lived a very different life than Grian. 

“What’s the first thing you wanna do when the server opens up?” he asked Pearl and Scar. They were gathered together in Grian’s farmhouse, eating some of Scar’s bread. It actually wasn’t that bad, so long as you cut off all the burnt parts. 

Scar hummed thoughtfully, leaning back in his wheelchair. “Hm…I’m going to head to the nearest hub world. And buy all the new Star Wars merch that’s been released.”

Grian rolled his eyes affectionately. “Of course you are. Not sure why I bothered asking. You, Pearl?”

“Go visit my friends from Empires, probably,” she said, taking a bite of Scar’s bread, burnt bits and all. She had a far stronger stomach than Grian. “I’m not planning to come back for Season 2, but I miss Sausage and all the other guys.”

“Ah, right,” it had kind of slipped his mind, the idea of other small servers beyond Hermitcraft. He’d been doing a bit of brainstorming himself, before the moon fell and everything went crazy. “I guess it’s probably not the time for another life series, huh?” Dang. And he’d had a pretty solid idea, too.

“Yeah, probably. Too intense for a lot of us, right now,” Pearl said. 

And it wouldn’t be complete, would it? Not when they’d be missing at least two members. It hurt, thinking about it. He’d kind of wanted to try to team up with some of the others for the next season. He’d wanted to get to know them all better. Bdubs and Tango included. 

It didn’t matter how long he waited to start another life series. They would never come back. That…gosh, that really hurt to think about. It made Grian wonder if he should ever do another one at all.

Although, he was sure that Tango and Bdubs would be super pissed if he used them as an excuse not to. He could imagine the pair of them standing behind him, yelling in his ear.

The server was so much quieter without them. Not the good kind of quiet. 

“Maybe someday, though,” Grian said, more to himself than to Scar and Pearl. “Maybe someday.”

“Oh, definitely someday,” Scar countered. “Someday we’ll get to a place where a crazy death game will be fun again. Mhmm, I’m sure of it.”

Grian really hoped so. That someday, death wouldn’t feel like such a painful thing anymore. He doubted it would be anytime soon, though.

There was a lot of healing to be done first.

Chapter Text

Xisuma had to admit that the others had been right. It was a lot easier with three people working on the helmet, especially people like Etho and Doc, who picked up on most things long before X did. 

He wished he could see that as what it should be–something purely positive. But watching Etho and Doc dissect his helmet, piecing together bit by bit what made it tick and learning more than X ever could, disturbed him enough to keep him lying awake at night.

He twisted around under his bedsheets, sleep growing further and further away the more he reached for it. He was tempted to just spend the night tinkering by himself, but he knew Doc would notice and not be pleased. So he remained in bed. Dwelling.

It was hard to put his finger on what bothered him so much. Because it wasn’t just that his helmet was such a personal thing to him, but that it wasn’t right, wasn’t fair, for Doc and Etho to understand it better than him. It was his helmet. His people. His culture. He should have known all about it already, because he should have been taught. 

A helmet was essential for any Voidwalker who wanted to live in the overworld, as well as for server management and admin duties. And since a good 50% or so of all Voidwalkers ended up in some sort of admin role, it was the kind of thing that everyone was expected to learn.

His parents might have taught him, when he was old enough. If things had turned out differently. The headmaster of the children’s home should have taught him, but he wouldn’t have dreamed of asking her for anything beyond the barest necessities. 

Well, he thought, staring grimly up at the bare spruce ceiling, she had taught him one thing.

He could still hear her words in the back of his mind. Stop your crying. I’ve already told you what that screen means. They’re dead, it’s time for you to grow up and get over it. Everyone else here lost their family too. You aren’t special. 

It was an old memory, one old enough to barely even hurt anymore. But still, he never forgot. When he’d first gotten his helmet, first had to get a helmet, and had searched for the names of his parents and brother again and again. Maybe he’d entered their names wrong? Maybe there was an error? Because surely, surely, they couldn’t really be…

He’d been ten. The more he thought about it, the more it angered him. As a child, he’d believed her words. As an adult, however little he may have thought of himself, he knew no child deserved to be treated like that. 

But still, it was a dull anger. All that was a long time ago. Though he had to admit, it was hard not to dwell on it these days. Not with everything that had happened. It seemed so much like back then, not in terms of events, but in how it had felt. He hadn’t been any more prepared for it as an adult. 

X didn’t remember falling asleep, but he must have at some point amongst his reminiscing, because his past found his way into his dreams. One he’d had plenty of times over the course of his long life. 

It was always the dust he remembered first. Thick as fog in the air, billowing out of collapsed buildings, the ones torn apart when their foundations or supports had vanished out from under them. He buried his face into his mother’s shoulder, coughing, and he could feel her fingers digging into his back as she ran. He didn’t know why they were doing that, the running. There was nowhere to go. 

Another hand reached out, smaller, only able to reach far enough to brush his arm. He looked to the side, into the eyes of his brother, who clung to his father’s chest. He looked scared. As scared as Xisuma. Was he reaching out to comfort X, or to be comforted himself?

X would never know the answer, because somewhere in front of them was a deafening crash, and the street was blanketed with another thick cloud of dust. He returned to shielding his face, trying to hold his breath long enough for the air to clear, but as they emerged from the cloud, X found there was no longer anyone at his side. 

When X looked back he couldn’t see them. Either of them. He never would again. 

“Alright,” Doc said, twisting the ends of the wires into place and clamping down on it with a modified pair of shears. His hands were steady, precise, those of a man who had spent the last ten years building and maintaining his own cybernetic arm. From his side, Etho watched on carefully, checking and double-checking their work. 

Doc removed the shears and set them down on the workbench alongside an assortment of other makeshift tools. Hands on his hips, he stared down at the mess on the table.

“Well, that should do it,” he said without much enthusiasm. “But it should’ve done it the last ten times, too.”

That was the thing about this kind of work. Progress was sporadic, and oftentimes little changes would make things worse rather than better. Everything was trial and error, testing the system time and again to see if changes had occurred. It reminded X of coding in a way, of errors that seemed to keep multiplying even when checked thoroughly, and that broke everything else with them. Of knowing when you were making progress, but knowing too that each step forward would mess with something else. Of never knowing the full extent of the issue until it was fixed.

It had made it hard to give any kind of accurate estimate to the other hermits about when things would be done. He’d offered them the guess of under a month when they were already just finishing things up, or so he’d thought. But the end of June was approaching, and yet new issues kept cropping up. It made him nervous, that he might have lied to everyone again, even if it was by accident. 

Doc must have sensed his anxiety, because he gave X a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “Well, the only way to know is to try. Ready to give it a go?”

X nodded, leaning over the table where the guts of the helmet were laid out, and pressing his face to the cracked screen. He pushed the button on the side, his mental control over all of the features of his helmet had been sacrificed somewhere along the way and deemed unnecessary for the time being. 

He waited to see if it would turn on, or if they’d made some mistake that would need to be urgently fixed. It was about 50/50 either way. 

This time, the screen in front of him lit up, a mess of broken pixels but still barely legible if he moved the displays around. But bypassing that first hurdle didn’t mean anything to X anymore. The second one was never cleared.

The test was to try entering a simple command, to finally see if the helmet was pinging the server. The easiest command to enter was /give, as it didn’t affect anyone else on the server, and would be easy to validate if it worked or not. But it didn’t seem to matter. Each time, the same result came up. 

<An unexpected error occurred trying to execute that command>

Well, sometimes it was slightly different. 

<You do not have permission to use this command!>

Another sign that an urgent fix was necessary. At least the first one meant nothing had been made worse. 

The breakthrough had come late in may, when they’d finally narrowed down what sent the data from an ender chest to the server. They’d been narrowing it down more and more, until at last they found it. The part that, when altered or adjusted, meant any items deposited into an ender chest wouldn’t show up in any other ender chest. They weren’t being sent to the server.

But resolving that was easier realized than done, as it had turned out. Even though ender chests and Voidwalker helmets shared a lot of similarities, they were distinct enough that it wasn’t just a matter of removing the components from an ender chest and plunking it into the circuit board of the helmet. They could identify a piece that seemed to fulfill the same role, one that had been fried by the lava, but actually fitting it in proved even more difficult than identifying it. Plus, they had to be careful. X didn’t have any extra helmets to use if they accidently damaged this one beyond repair. If that were the case, they wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with. 

And so X didn’t let himself get his hopes up as he typed in the command again.

/give @s bread

And sure enough:

<An unexpected error occurred trying to execute that command>

X pulled away without a word, which was enough to tell Doc and Etho that it hadn’t worked. “The screen is still on at least. And we’re getting the error message.”

“Better than it could be, I guess,” Etho said. He scribbled something into his notebook, a record of every change and test they’d run, before turning to the table. He frowned down at the workbench, the guts of the helmet spread out across it for ease of access. Trying to fit it back in its case would be a waste of time and energy, and would likely break more things. 

His eyes roamed across the maze of components, until he honed in on something. “That wire’s coming undone, it looks like. Shears?” He held out his hand without looking up at either of them.

Doc handed them over to him, and Etho took on the job of clamping the stray wire back in place. He gave it one last look over before turning back to X.

“Okay, try it now.”

Once again, X leaned down over the table and turned the screen on. Or tried to, at least. It remained stubbornly dead.

He rose back up and shook his head. “It’s not turning on at all, now.”

“Verdammt,” Doc hissed. “Not again.”

“That’s weird,” Etho considered the parts again, crouching down to get a better look at everything. “Reattaching a wire shouldn’t have done that. So what went wrong–ah, I see. The other side’s attached in the wrong place. Let me just…” Gingerly, he detached the offending wire from one of the helmet’s many components, moving it to a different, identical-looking one, and clamping it again.

“Now try.”

X did so. This time, the screen turned on once again. That was a relief. Every time it didn’t, X feared that it would be properly dead this time. They’d been lucky, he thought, not to have that happen. Or maybe Etho and Doc were just that good.

Entering the command was muscle memory by now.

 /give @s bread

The thing about this sort of work was that there could be no moment of triumph, no point in which they knew all was fixed and ready to go. Just test after test, assuming it would go wrong somewhere. It didn’t matter how good everything looked, there was always something else wrong, always something else to fix. 

There was no error message after the command, which had excited him the first time it had happened. It was how things would look if the command did work, after all. That was until they’d all realized it just meant the helmet wasn’t registering that a command had been sent at all. An issue almost as bad as the screen not lighting up. And so the only thing X felt by now at such a sight was disappointment. He clenched his hand into a fist and found, strangely, that he was holding something. Something that crunched in his hand when he squeezed. 

He stared down at the loaf of bread, not really registering what he was seeing.

And then Doc was cheering, and even Etho had joined in, and even though his mind was still getting caught up, the excitement of his friends told him all he needed to know.

The command had worked. They’d done it.

Hadn’t they? X wasn’t sure he could believe it. It didn’t feel like anything had been done, not anything exceptional. It felt too good to be true.

And yet, there the bread was, in his hand, feeling as real as any bread could be. He hadn’t had any in his inventory. Nor had Doc or Etho, after an earlier incident when they’d gotten excited after someone had accidently dropped a piece onto the floor.

But this, this was here, in his hand, having been summoned into existence from nothing. It seemed pretty concrete, as far as proof went. But still, X couldn’t bring himself to feel excitement. He stood awkwardly beside the others, unsure of what to do from here. This had been the whole goal for him. He hadn’t really thought ahead of “ getting it fixed”.

Doc, perhaps realizing that X had frozen up, suggested, “Maybe start by figuring out what went wrong?”

That was a good idea, X thought. He turned back to the helmet, leaning over to see the screen better. The position made his back hurt, but oh well. He’d just have to deal with that until he got all the inner workings of the helmet back inside their case.

“Or maybe sit down first,” Doc said from behind him.

Ah, that too.

X took a seat at the table in front of his helmet. It was a bit hard to see the screen with the cracks and broken pixels in it, especially since it was meant to be much closer to his face. He still found himself hunched over in the chair, navigating through the various options and menus of the helmet. It was clunky, trying to do it via manual inputs. He was so used to controlling everything with his mind, and so it was slow going. But it worked, and responded to each of his inputs when he really hadn’t expected it to. 

What to do first? X tried to recall the various how-to manuals for admin work he’d read through over the years. It would have to be…troubleshooter first, right? That would be the best first step before he messed around with settings or gamerules. Something was inherently wrong with the code of the world itself. Cutting off access to the interserver communication wasn’t something that could be disabled via settings. That would just be rife with abuse potential. One corrupt admin could lock all their players into a world and cut off the ability to call for help. No, that sort of thing could only be a glitch or a virus. Almost certainly the latter. 

So he’d run the troubleshooter and go from there.

No. First, before that, he would change one gamerule. One that had already done far too much damage, one that he couldn’t bear letting do a second more.

/gamerule doNaturalRegeneration true

“I’ve turned on regen,” he told Etho and Doc, not taking his eyes from his helmet screen. “But I, well, I don’t know how to check if it will work.”

He felt like it wouldn’t. There was still a very pessimistic chunk of X telling him this was all far too good to be true. He had no idea if that was good intuition or an irrational gut feeling. 

“Well, there’s the obvious way,” Etho said with a shrug. “You got a sword on you or something, Doc?”

“Yeah,” Doc said, frowning. “Not sure I like where this is going.”

X turned away from his screen. “I’d agree with that, Etho. I don’t want anyone getting hurt.”

“I mean, if anyone has another way to test it?”

A moment of silence passed between the three of them before Doc sighed. “Okay, fair point. It’s not like we’ve gotta injure each other too badly, besides.”

“Okay,” X relented. “We can do this. But be careful.”

Etho nodded his agreement. “I’ve got a regen potion on hand. Several, actually. Just in case things go very wrong.”

“Always prepared, aren’t you?” Doc chuckled, fishing through his inventory for a suitable weapon. 

“It should probably be me, right,” Etho said, tone casual in a way that wouldn’t have seemed strange at all a few months ago. “Least risk with my spawn and all.”

It ought to be a good thing, X thought, that some of the others were feeling more…normal towards death and injury. That was the way it should be, after all. The way it had always been before. Getting hurt, dying. None of it was a big deal. None of it was supposed to be a big deal.

Etho took a golden carrot from his inventory, slipping it under his mask where it disappeared without so much as a crunch. 

“I can ping you with a bow.” Doc offered. “Less blood to get all over X’s floor.”

“That’s fine by me,” Etho said. He gave X’s bed a pat, presumably to set his spawn.

It was all very normal. And so very not.

It wasn’t like it would have bothered Xisuma either, before all of this. It had, at one point, long ago. When the sight of blood and gore had left him feeling sick and shaky, even when the injured person reappeared without a scratch a moment later. And nobody else made a big deal out of it, and so, overtime, he had adapted. But still. He hadn’t forgotten what real death looked like. 

There was nobody by his side anymore. Nothing but a smooth stone wall where air had been a moment prior. That had, in the blink of an eye, generated into existence. 

There was screaming, shoving, a street already packed cut in half. In a moment he was falling, then he was landing hard on the endstone below, his mother leaning over him. Through her arms he’d looked around at the feet racing by, searching for the shoes of his father.

He didn’t see them. But he did see something else. 

It was someone he didn’t know, and only half of him, the rest gone in an instant, everything from the waist down. He was still been alive and screaming as blood and intestines spilled out onto the streets and that smooth, perfect stone wall that had generated halfway through his body. 

X had seen death and violence before. There was plenty of it on the telly, records of Hypixel battles and other such things. It wasn’t real, not really, because at the end of the day, everyone was fine and it was all just a game, or a show, or a friendly spar. He’d seen death in real life too, those kinds of fake deaths, casual deaths. He’d gotten used to them.

It had been different then. Not in any visual way, but in the sense that he knew this was different. That this wasn’t death as he knew it, but true death. The end of a person.

And it would be the true end, on that broken world. Hardcore. Quarantined.

He had known, then, that he would die here too. And so he’d squeezed his eyes shut and covered his head with his arms and waited for the end. 

Everything had been a blur after that, in the harsh, blinding light of a new, empty world. He had been saved, whisked away to a safe place with a handful of others until it could be determined that they were clean. That they would not spread the virus. 

He hadn’t known anyone else there who had made it out. Not his parents, not his brother. He was alone.

X was shaken from his memory by the ping of an arrow as Doc shot it into Etho’s shoulder. It was an unenchanted bow, the string hardly pulled back at all, and Etho barely reacted to being shot. He looked down at the arrow, nonplussed, before grabbing the shaft and yanking it out.

X winced. He knew that was a bad idea. Even with an unenchanted bow, a person could bleed to death from that kind of wound. It was best to wait for the arrows to dissolve on their own as the world decided their data was no longer necessary. 

“Etho,” Doc said with a sigh. “What happened to not getting blood all over X’s floor?”

There was something weird about Doc’s voice, X thought, but he couldn’t tell what. 

“I figured it’d be a clearer demonstration without anything blocking the wound, you know?” Etho absorbed another golden carrot, pressing one of his hands to the slowly spreading bloodstain on his vest. A moment later, he removed his hand from the wound, looking it over before giving the injury an experimental poke. “It’s healed over now. Feels normal.” He wiped his bloody hand on his pants. “Normal for regen, I mean.”

“That’s a relief,” X said. He’d forgotten to breathe for a second. Even if Etho would have been fine and would have spawned back here anyway, still. Still.

“That’s great news, though,” Doc said, putting his bow away into his inventory. “You changed the settings and it worked.”

Oh. Right, of course. X had gotten so caught up in the moment that he’d almost forgotten what they were doing here in the first place. But Doc was right. It had worked. It had worked. 

Just like that, any thoughts of blood and gore were pushed from X’s mind as he zeroed in on his helmet, pressing his face back to the screen.

That had been the one thing he’d had to get done first. Changing spawn points was also a top priority, but with how careful everyone was being, it likely wouldn’t make a difference if he did that now or in an hour. But any extra second of natural regen might help Cub or Wels or Scar, even if it was just a little bit. That alone was worth it.

Now, for the main problem. 

He delicately navigated his way to the troubleshooter, a built-in function of Voidwalker helmets. “This’ll probably take a while,” he told Doc and Etho. “I think I can handle everything from here.”

“You sure?” Doc asked him.

“Yeah.” Now that he’d gotten started, he had a good idea of all the things he’d need to do from here. It would be easier without any outside distractions. And frankly, he just wanted a minute to himself. To have full control over his helmet again. And maybe settle down a little after watching Etho get shot. That might be a selfish wish, but it wasn’t a wish that would harm anyone. He could call them back if anything else went awry. They all had their fireworks after all.

“We could go tell the others the good news?” Doc suggested. “Even if we can’t fix everything completely today, the regen being back is probably enough of a mood boost for everyone.”

Xisuma nodded in agreement, before turning his attention solely back to the screen in front of him. In the background, he could hear the sound of his door opening and closing, of footsteps leaving his house. Then he was alone, and he could fully focus on his work. Not that there was much to do at the moment besides watch the troubleshooter window and wait for it to scan.  He took the time to try to convince himself that this really was happening. It was harder than it should be, he thought. 

He kept his eyes on the progress bar of the troubleshooter, irrationally afraid that if he took his eyes off of it for even a moment, everything would break again.

The scanning took a long time. When it had at last finished, automatically singling out and overwriting corrupted files with the default ones, X breathed a sigh of relief, giving himself a moment to lean back in his chair and stretch his aching muscles. There were still plenty of things to test, to see what had been directly altered by the glitch or virus and what was settings based. 

The first thing to do, then, was check the actual settings of the server. He navigated his way to the admin panel that listed all of them out in turn.

/gamerule doNaturalRegeneration true

It wasn’t hard to guess that it had been false just a short time ago. But there was more to do.

/gamerule doFireTick true

That checked out as well. Though it was a lot less devastating than the lack of regen. Still, he switched it to false. 

/gamerule reducedDebugInfo true

That was an interesting one. But it explained the lack of coordinates, he supposed. He switched it as well.

And those were the only three settings that had been impacted. Everything else–the corrupted world spawns, the lack of chat functionality, no outside communication–was all a direct result of whatever glitch or virus had infected the world.

And X was fully convinced that it was, in fact, a virus. It felt too…targeted. Like everything that had gone wrong wasn’t due to pure chance, but because someone had wanted it to go that way. It was just too much of a coincidence–the terrible spawns, being so completely cut off from each other, unable to even reach out for help. It all seemed rather…malicious to Xisuma.

And then there was Season 8. It was strange, wasn’t it? For the moon to slowly grow closer and closer, causing more and more chaos, before it finally crashed down and obliterated everything? A glitch would have meant corrupted chunks, broken lighting, something random and unprompted. But the moon falling down on them had seemed more like a spectacle. A series of events that all made sense in a way random glitches just wouldn’t.

He’d wanted to believe it was all just a glitch. That someone was out to get them to such a degree that they were perfectly fine with permanently killing everyone on the world was a terrifying thought. But it was getting harder and harder to believe that.

Had it really been Evil X’s doing? It sure seemed like it. He had, at the very least, ensured that Xisuma couldn’t fight back. Couldn’t stop the end of the world before things became critical. And it wasn’t like he hadn’t tried to destroy the server before. But this seemed too far even for him.

It was strange. None of it made sense to Xisuma. He wasn’t good at stuff like this. He was just the tech guy, and barely even that. 

Regardless, virus or glitch, the troubleshooter should have fixed things up. It was a pretty robust system, designed by the most talented Voidwalkers of the time. He’d still need to reach out to the Devs, get everything looked over by someone so the quarantine could be lifted. That could still take a bit of time. The Devs were always busy, after all. 

For now, he would do what he could.

While he didn’t know whether or not the world spawn had been fixed, that was something he could easily reset. He took the time to step out of his house into the quiet street and mark down an appropriate set of coordinates, checking and double checking them before he returned to his house to enter the command.

/setworldspawn 120 67 230

He’d have to test it out later, preferably with someone who would respawn in this general area regardless. Joe, maybe, would be the best bet. His initial spawn was different enough that it would be instantly clear if the reset had worked without really risking his safety. Not that X liked the idea particularly much, but his own hangups shouldn’t play a role in all this.

Then, the chat.

<Xisuma> Testing 1 2 3

He waited, watching the screen. For a moment, there was nothing. And then…

<Renthedog> no frickin’ way dude! no frickin’ way

<Renthedog> just like that? its back up and running 

<Renthedog> :DDDDD

<Cubfan135> lets goooooo

<xBcrafted> o/

<xBcrafted> aww yeah ive missed doing that

<Grian> o/

<Renthedog> me too  o////

<Zombiecleo> o/

<Cubfan135> o/

<Grian> ren

<Grian> why so many arms???

<Renthedog> its my tail! thats how you can tell im excited!!

<Cubfan135> oh is it now

<xBcrafted> yall stealing my ideas lol

As X watched the messages fly in, a smile formed on his face. Finally. Finally, they could contact each other again. As often as they saw each other in person, it had felt lonely. Knowing you couldn’t call on anyone. Not easily, at least.

It was almost over now. The server was nearly whole again. That fact was finally beginning to sink in.

Not that there wasn’t still a lot to work out. There was. But a safe, working server would go a long way towards making things better. That’s what X thought, at least.

The last thing to check was whether or not he could actually send messages off server. He switched over to a different tab, full of old messages sent across worlds and a handful of new ones.

He’d expected it, but it was still hard to see. People reaching out to him, trying to ask what was going on, why they couldn’t get in touch with their friends. Smajor, asking if something had happened, why none of the hermits had signed up for MCC. Skizzleman, wanting to know why his buddies were ignoring him. Pungence, asking about his brother.

He wondered who was going to tell them. Their closer friends, probably. He wasn’t good at that sort of stuff.

He might have to tell Pungence, though. Void, he might have to tell Pungence. 

X took a deep breath. There was time to dwell on that later. 

But as he scrolled down through the messages, something caught his eye. An earlier message, one sent back in February. Before the new server had even been made, but when they were still cut off from the outside. A message he hadn’t seen before. 

From: Tangotek  FEB.02.2022

Something heavy sank in his chest, seeing that name. He didn’t want to see it. He didn’t want to know. 

Maybe he should. 

Hand shaking, he clicked on the message. He read it once. Then again. Trying to understand what he was seeing.

From: Tangotek FEB.02.2022

X? X are you there? Please respond if you can see this. Please, we need your help. Xisuma, if you and the others are still out there, please know Bdubs and I are in trouble. Please help us. Please message us back. I’m begging you. Please.

Tangotek

Chapter Text

Ah. I failed.

He thought that with a numb acceptance, drifting in the inky black nothingness. The void, space, what have you. No difference, really.

The thought that came after was: I’m going to die here.

Maybe he should have felt frustrated. Bitter. He’d failed, after all. He should at least have felt afraid. He didn’t know what would happen to him if he died, with the way things were currently. But the fear seemed to exist somewhere far away, as distant as the blue expanse of the world laid out beneath him. Or above. 

A beep sounded in his ear, muffled, as if he were hearing it underwater. A notification on his oxygen gauge–six more hours of air left. 

Tango doubted he would last that long.

He coughed, the noise coming from somewhere deep inside his chest, and the taste of bitter copper filled his mouth. It should hurt, he thought, but the pain was a distant thing too. 

Tango had been around enough explosions in his lifetime to know that even if he hadn’t been blown to bits by the TNT blast, he was already as good as dead. Organs all turned to mush by the overpressure. He coughed up another mouthful of blood, droplets left to float around inside his helmet, bouncing off the glass. It was getting hard to breathe, even though he still had ample oxygen. It wouldn’t be much longer now.

What would happen, when he died? He hadn’t given it much thought when he’d set off on this journey. He’d known from the beginning that it was more than likely a one way trip, but that didn’t change anything. If the moon crash turned out not to be a big deal and everyone respawned safe and sound, then he’d have an interesting story to tell if nothing else. If it was, and everyone’s lives were truly at risk, he still would have done this. For the small chance that he might save everyone. 

He liked to think that, anyway. 

It didn’t matter now, he supposed. He’d failed. The TNT had gone off prematurely, nowhere near enough to alter its course. It was still slowly descending towards the world below. Well, probably it was descending very, very fast, being up here really messed with the scale of things. 

He wondered if he’d live to see it make contact. He wasn’t sure if it mattered either way. Nothing could be done now. He could only wait to die.

It was hard to process his own level of consciousness in the darkness of space, but he could still feel it when he began to fade away. Distance stars blurred  into nothing and his helmet light dimmed.

I hope everyone made it out. He thought again, one last time. One last wish, before he thought nothing at all.

From: Xisuma    JUN.27.2022

tango? bdubs? are you there?

please answre me as soon as you get thi smessage

were all safe. wr can help you

His fingers tapped against the side of his helmet almost automatically. It couldn’t be, he knew that, but some childish part of his brain that had survived all these years hoped so desperately that it was. He hit send without thinking, staring at the screen as if they’d surely respond a second later.

But then reality caught up to him, and all of his fragile hopes sank like a stone to the bottom of his stomach. He checked the date of Tango’s message again, and then one more time, as if it would change somehow. It didn’t.

He sank down and out of his chair, sliding down onto the hard wooden floor below. He wasn’t sure why that had happened. Had he been trying to move? To run away, subconsciously? He wanted to run, but there was nothing here he could run from. The knowledge was already there in his head.

He’d thought it would be better, if he at least knew. So he didn’t have to keep wondering, always tormented by the possibility. At least knowing would let him begin to move past it. Surely that would be less painful.

It wasn’t. 

He had his answer now, as clear an answer as he was ever going to get. It was him. He’d killed them.

He’d deleted the world and wiped them away along with it. They’d been there, they’d been alive. Calling out to him for help, and he hadn’t heard them. Couldn’t hear them, with the state of the server. 

He felt like screaming. Or crying, maybe. Instead he just wrapped his arms around himself and lay on the floor. He wondered if he even deserved that small comfort. 

His fault. It was his fault. 

Why had he even let himself feel that flicker of hope in the first place? It just hurt all the more, having it crushed out of him. He’d already seen the results, the missing profiles. Tango and Bdubs were gone, as much as he’d like to believe otherwise. It was the constant reality of the world.

He knew for certain what that meant, the lack of profiles. For absolute certain. A missing profile was as sure a sign as a corpse, perhaps even more so, because even some corpses could be resuscitated enough to respawn. But a missing profile was definitive, immutable. He knew that now, knew it better perhaps than anyone else on the server. Because he hadn’t believed it, as a child, alone in a world where he didn’t belong, with a home he could never return to and a family he would never see again. Of course he hadn’t been able to believe it. He’d cried and begged to the headmaster, to the hub world admins checking up on him, to the few elders of his old world who had survived, for a different answer. There had to be some mistake, surely? Some glitch in the system. He couldn’t be alone. He just couldn’t.

But he’d never received a different answer. He’d looked into it further when he was old enough, and found every source said the same thing. 

His family was dead. Tango and Bdubs were dead. No amount of blind hope would change that reality. 

Nothing had changed in that regard, really. The same somber reality that always was and always would be. 

No, that wasn’t true. Because he knew what had really happened now. He knew the true extent of his mistakes. His worst fears had been realized. It was like a knife stabbed in his gut, one that dug deeper with every breath he took.

He’d killed them. He’d killed them. The lives of two wonderful, brilliant people cut short. The pain their loss had inflicted on everyone else–Impulse, Etho, Zedaph, Keralis…everyone. It was because of him. Because he’d made that stupid, stupid decision to delete the world. 

There had to have been something else to do. Some way to get them out of that place, at least, before he wiped the slate clean. But he hadn’t thought to do that. That was the problem–he never thought these things through. Especially under stress. He was panicky and sloppy and unable to think on his feet, and it hurt people. Like Wels. Killed people. Like Bdubs and Tango.

And he didn’t know how to fix himself, how to somehow become the kind of person who could consider every situation, could think his way out of a problem and avoid careless mistakes. It was, he thought, some fundamental flaw in who he was as a person. One he didn’t think he could change.

Some things, X thought, couldn’t be forgiven. This was one of them.

…

[02:20:04] [Server thread/WARN] Failed to read chunk [-4, 0 ]

…

Consciousness returned to Tango abruptly, as if he’d been drenched in a bucket of cold water. His mind fumbled in the dark for a few seconds before coming up empty, with nothing but the knowledge that he could think, and therefore, presumably, was.

Beyond that, he had no idea where he was.

He could see nothing. He could feel nothing. He couldn’t move or speak or do anything at all.

Is this what permadeath is like, he thought for a horrifying moment. Oh, please don’t let this be the rest of eternity. Please please please.

There was the fear. Potent and primal in his chest, threatening to overtake his thoughts.

But it didn’t feel like death. It felt familiar, that sensation that left his body frozen in place while his mind kept right on moving. And with it, an uncomfortable tingling sensation, like a limb that had fallen asleep, but across his whole body. Not painful, exactly, but unpleasant.

It was something he’d felt plenty before, though never to this extent. Lag. 

His mind kicked into gear. Of course there was lag. Millions upon millions of blocks were being altered all at once as they were crushed under the weight of the moon. That was something that made sense. And so Tango seized onto it, onto the thread of rationality in a world turned upside down, and held on tight. 

Lag was something that stopped, eventually. One way or another. There was nothing to fear.

But still. The fear burned.

< Tango suffocated in a wall>

He didn’t feel his death. He might not even have noticed it, if not for the subtle shift between the blackness in his spawn and the blackness of the void.

…

[02:20:06] [Server thread/ERROR] Couldn’t load chunk [-4, 0]

java.util.concurrent.CompletionException: java.lang.IndexOutOfBoundsException…

It was probably supposed to hurt, dying that way. Even though he didn’t know how he’d actually died, he imagined it was painfully. If he’d lived long enough, it would have hit him all at once when the lag stopped. Maybe it was a mercy that he hadn’t.

But that lag would stop. Wouldn’t it?

< Tango suffocated in a wall>

…

[02:20:07] [Server thread/WARN] Failed to read chunk [-2, 0 ]...

[02:20:07] [Server thread/ERROR] Couldn’t load chunk [ -2, 0]...

[02:20:07] [Server thread/WARN] Failed to read chunk…

[02:20:07] [Server thread/ERROR] Couldn’t load chunk…

…

<Tango suffocated in a wall>

The lag may not have been painful, but that was little comfort. It was intensely unpleasant, but worse was the complete lack of agency. Tango could try to move as much as he liked, could strain his ears and his eyes, but it wouldn’t matter. The world wouldn’t load enough to let him sense anything, and it certainly wouldn’t register his attempts to move.

He was truly and completely helpless. And that was the worst part, to be honest. He’d almost rather be in pain.

How long was he going to be stuck here for? Until all the blocks had settled? It wouldn’t be long in real time. In lag time? Who knew how long it would take.

Tango hoped everyone else was okay. That they’d made it out safely and hadn’t relied too much on his half-baked plan. 

…

[02:22:01] [Server thread/WARN] Failed to read chunk [23,102 ]...

[02:22:03] [Server thread/ERROR] Couldn’t load chunk [ 23, 102]...

…

Was anyone there? Anyone who could help him? He wanted the others to be safe, of course he did. That was why he’d done all this in the first place. But…but he didn’t want to be here either. He was scared. Scared of being stuck like this, scared of permadying. 

He just wanted everyone to be safe. Himself included. But there was nothing he could do to save himself anymore.

Please. Someone, do something

It was a futile plea. Anyone else here would be just as trapped as him.

<Tango suffocated in a wall>

…

[02:22:58] [Server thread/WARN] Failed to read chunk…

[02:23:00] [Server thread/ERROR] Couldn’t load chunk…

…

Would the world crash, he wondered. It probably would. Sure the server was robust, but Tango doubted it was enough for this. He didn’t think any server would be able to handle this.

And what would happen then? 

…

[02:26:11] [Server thread/WARN] Can’t keep up! Is the server overloaded? Running 3206ms or 64 ticks behind

…Can’t keep up! Is the server overloaded? Running 3903ms or 78 ticks behind

…Can’t keep up! Is the server overloaded? Running 7608ms or 152 ticks behind

…

Normally it wouldn’t be a problem. They’d all just get ejected to the nearest hub world. But in this sort of situation, with the server in quarantine? It didn’t seem promising to Tango.

Was this it, then? He’d never thought his life would end like this. He’d expected to live as long as he’d wanted, until he was too old to continue on. A normal life. 

It wasn’t fair, he thought. What had he done to deserve this? What had any of them done? 

A childish thought, perhaps. The universe didn’t particularly care who deserved what. He knew that. But he didn’t care. He could curse the world if he wanted to. He figured he deserved at least that much.

Maybe there was still hope, maybe this could still end with everyone safe and sound, even if it took a miracle. But that was almost worse, that faint, unlikely hope. A hope that almost certainly wouldn’t come to pass. At least if there was no hope he could switch focus, come to terms with things. Instead, he felt the need to hold on. To cling to something in the darkness, no matter how much more fear that caused him.

He didn’t have to be afraid for much longer. Like the flip of a lever, his consciousness vanished. He didn’t even have time to register what was going on before he could register nothing at all. 

…

[02:31:23] [Server thread/FATAL] Preparing crash report…

[02:31:24] [Server thread/ERROR] Encountered an unexpected exception

…

…

[02:31:25] [Server thread/ERROR]: This crash report has been saved to…

…Saving players

…Saving world

…Saving chunks for level ‘ServerLevel[Hermitcraft 8]’ /minecraft:overworld

[02:31:25] [Server thread/ERROR]: Failed to save chunk [-3, 0 ]

…Failed to save chunk [-2, 0 ]

…Failed to save chunk [-1, 0 ]

…Failed to save chunk [0, 0 ]

…Failed to save chunk [1,0]

…

[02:31:25] [Server thread/INFO]: Saving chunks for level ‘ServerLevel[Hermitcraft 8]’ /minecraft:the_nether

…Saving chunks for level ‘ServerLevel[Hermitcraft 8]’ /minecraft:the_end

…Stopping server

[02:31:25] #@!@# Game crashed! Crash report saved to …\crash-2021-12-22_1.17.1-server.txt

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

[03:56:51] [Server thread/INFO]: Starting minecraft server version 1.17.1

[03:56:51] [Server thread/ERROR]: World file may be corrupted. Restoring from backup

[03:56:51] [Server thread/INFO]: Starting minecraft server version 1.17.1

[03:56:51] [Server thread/WARN]: Failed to read chunk [-2,0]

…Failed to read chunk [1,0]

…Failed to read chunk [2,0]

…

[04:02:51] [Server thread/INFO]: Loading properties

…Generating keypair

…Starting Minecraft server on 0.0.0.0:25564

…Preparing level "world"

[04:02:58] [Server thread/INFO]: ■■■■ joined the game

[04:02:58] [Server thread/INFO]: ■■■■ joined the game

[04:02:58] [Server thread/INFO]: ■■■■ joined the game

Somewhere, Tango opened his eyes.

Chapter Text

< Renthedog > good morning everyone!!!

< Renthedog > :D so nice to be able to say that again

< Joehillssays > Howdy Ren the Dog

< xBcrafted > o/

< Cubfan135 > o/

< Iskall85 > hallo

< Iskall85 > o/

< Stressmonster101 > hi luvs <3 hope ur aving a good mornin

< Stressmonster101 > o/

< Docm77 > just because the chat is back doesn’t mean you have to spam it, you know

< Cubfan135 > gotta make up for lost time man

< Joehillssays > It’s a little known fact that every server must have a minimum number of chat messages to continue operating

< GoodTimeWithScar > really??

< Grian > dont believe everything you hear online scar

< Grian > or in chat apparently

< GoodTimeWithScar > I cant belive Joe would lie to me

< GoodTimeWithScar > I would expect that from Grian not you

< Grian > >:(

< Joehillssays > apologies for my chicanery. I will reflect upon my actions and only lie to Zombiecleo from now on

< Zombiecleo > as if id believe you. 

< Cubfan135 > lmao got em

< Joehillssays > just to let everyone know, we’re testing out the new world spawn right now. So don’t panic if you see a death message, okay?

< Vintagebeef > gotcha. Be careful, okay?

< Joehillssays > it should be fine even if it doesn’t work, my spawn is right by here anyway

< Joehillssays was slain by Zombiecleo > 

< MumboJumbo > oh please be okay…

< Joehillssays > Well, i spawned in the plaza here instead of in midair. So i'm going to say it's all good

< Etho > im not sure our spawns would work the same as everyone else. they weren’t corrupted to begin with.

< Xisuma > it should work the same, i think

< Zombiecleo > i can test it. It’s not like it’ll be any trouble if it doesnt work

< Xisuma > I guess thats true. But still, i dont like it

< Zombiecleo > its fine, X. Better me than someone with a worse spawn

< Zombiecleo was shot by Zombiecleo >

< Zombiecleo > yep. All clear.

< Vintagebeef > thank goodness

< MumboJumbo > am i the only one who was really nervous about that??

< Grian > definitely not

< Vintagebeef > oh, i guess one of us who started at spawn should check too. Just to be extra, extra safe. 

< Xisuma > not sure that’s necessary, but maybe it would be good to cover all our bases. 

< Vintagebeef > i mean, it always sort of seems like things always turn out as bad as possible. Or something like that.

< Vintagebeef > i’d feel more comfortable, knowing for sure. 

< Docm77 > or you just want to do something to help

< Vintagebeef > I

< Vintagebeef > yeah, maybe. 

< Xisuma > beef, you dont have to do that

< Vintagebeef > is it really so bad? idk i feel like i haven’t done much of anything to help. And this is so low risk for me at least. 

< Vintagebeef > whatever, im committed to it now

< Vintagebeef fell from a high place>

< Vintagebeef > oh

< Vintagebeef > well this is awkward

< Xisuma > are you okay????

< Etho > you forgot to break your bed, didn’t you.

< Vintagebeef > i forgot to break my bed, yes. Give me a sec

< Xisuma > oh. nevermind

< Vintagebeef fell from a high place>

< Hypnotizd > seeing people dying again…kinda rough

< Vintagebeef > that’s better. Sorry hypno.

< Hypnotizd > nah its fine. I just think we should try to minimize unnecessary deaths

< Hypnotizd > it kind of feels different now. 

From: Methodz     DEC.04.2021

Hey Doc. Haven’t heard from you in a bit. Was wondering if you still wanted to work on optimizing your gold farm? Or any other projects, I’m sure you’ve moved onto something new by now. Either way, we miss you here on Scicraft. Would love to work with you on something

From: Methodz     MAY.30.2022

Everything okay over there? It’s been an awfully long while

From: Docm77     JUN.28.2022

Hey man. Yeah, some pretty serious stuff went down here. Only just got interworld comms back. Would love to work on something once we’re not quarantined anymore. In the meantime, I was wondering if you could look into something for me. Or maybe ask gnembom. We got hit by some sort of glitch or virus, made the moon crash into the world and wrecked everything. If you guys can help figure out what happened, that’d be helpful

From: Methodz     JUN.29.2022

Dang, I’m sorry to hear that. Hope everyone’s okay. Sure, I can look into the moon thing. Sounds like something that would be caused by a datapack or mod. It’s possible it was repurposed into malware. Doesn’t sound like the sort of thing a glitch would cause, but I can keep digging.

From: Docm77     JUL.01.2022

We’re not really okay, no. but thanks for the help man. 

< Docm77 > uh, i just realized we forgot to test if fire tick is working

< Docm77 > anyone want to start a fire?

< Zombiecleo > done

< Cubfan135 > that was quick…

< Docm77 > well? is anything else burning?

< Zombiecleo > Doesn’t seem to be

< Xisuma > what…what did you even light on fire?

<Zombiecleo> secret

< Joehillssays > don’t ask questions that you don’t want the answer to.

< Xisuma > ok

< Docm77 > lol

<Xisuma whispered to Joehillssays: can you come and meet with me later. There’s something I want to talk about>

< Xisuma > by the way, is the regen working fine?

< Cubfan135 > seems to be, yeah. 

<Joehillssays whispered to Xisuma: sure, X. Give me a couple hours?>

< Xisuma > oh! did it help your leg, then?

< Cubfan135 > nah. But i fell into my monster pit yesterday and started regening pretty quick

< Cubfan135 > so id say it’s working

< Renthedog > dude! Be careful!

< Cubfan135 > i am, i am. accidents happen tho

< Renthedog > i guess so yeah

< GoodTimeWithScar hit the ground too hard>

< Grian > SCAR!

< Grian > WHAT DID WE SAY ABOUT BEING CAREFUL

< Pearlescentmoon > uh oh

< Falsesymmetry > D: Do you need help or anything?

< GoodTimeWithScar > i’m fine guys! Thanks!

< GoodTimeWithScar > sorry grian

< Grian > i’ll go get your stuff…

< GoodTimeWithScar > yay! Thank you grain!

< Pearlescentmoon > grain?

< GoodTimeWithScar > Grian! I meant Grain!

< Grian > …

< Grian > who is this grain person?

< MumboJumbo blew up>

< Grian > Mumbo! 

< Grian > you too??

< Renthedog > ouch! You okay dude?

< MumboJumbo > noo….

< Zombiecleo > do you need help?

< Xisuma > What’s wrong?? Are you okay? Are you safe?

< MumboJumbo > Oh! No nothing like that

< MumboJumbo > sorry, I’m fine. Just sad my tunnel bore got blown up

< Grian > …

< Grian > Mumbo

< MumboJumbo > yes?

< Grian > why are you making a tunnel bore??

< MumboJumbo > i needed deepslate?

< Grian > this is not the time for tunnel bores

< MumboJumbo > it’s not??? Is there something wrong with tunnel bores??

< Grian > just, don’t we have more…pressing issues

< MumboJumbo > oh. But i don’t know what I should be doing. About pressing issues, that is

< Grian > yeah, that’s true

< Grian > fine.  make your tunnel bore, mumbo. Just…try to stay safe this time

< MumboJumbo > ok. sorry.

< Zombiecleo > you’re fine. Everyone’s just still on edge is all

From: PauseUnpause     APR.21.2022

Hey Beef, you there? Miss you buddy! I thought we were gonna do something with Team Canada again at some point. Etho won’t respond to me either, but that’s pretty typical for Etho, huh? Do you think he even checks his messages?

From: PauseUnpause     MAY.16.2022

Starting to get a bit worried over here. I know we don’t get together as much anymore, with you guys on hermitcraft, but you wouldn’t just ignore me, right? 

From: PauseUnpause       JUN.20.2022

Seriously, what happened to you guys? Both you and Etho. Can you just respond if you get this message so I know you’re ok?

From: Vintagebeef     JUN.28.2022

Hey Pause! Sorry for not responding and stuff. Things got really messed up over here. I couldn’t see your messages until now. There was this glitch, and the moon crashed I guess, and when I rejoined for Season 9 we were all locked in. Some really bad stuff happened, but things are starting to get better now. I think at least?

From: PauseUnpause     JUN.29.2022

Damn, that sucks! Glad things are getting better for you, though. You can always talk to me if you want. I know Etho’s not the most talkative type. Is he okay? He didn’t respond to me either?

From: Vintagebeef     JUN.29.2022

Etho’s fine. Well, he’s safe at least. I’ll remind him to check his comms

From: PauseUnpause       JUN.29.2022

…dang. Dont know what to say to that. Hope we can meet up again at least once you guys get out

< Cubfan135 > hey X? So, what’s the update on our quarantine situation? Is that going to get sorted out?

< Xisuma > I can’t reopen the server myself, but I sent in a request to the devs. They’ll need to approve it before we can be unquarantined. It might take a while

< Vintagebeef > the devs themselves have to clear it? Aren’t they, you know, busy with other thing?

< Xisuma > yes. But who else could clear us? An admin from another world wouldn’t have that authority. There’s kind of no one else.

< Grian > is there like a queue system or something?

< Grian > are we waiting in line?

< Xisuma > probably. worlds get messed up all the time.

< Renthedog > wait, I thought it was really rare for this sort of thing to happen.

< Xisuma > for something this severe? Yeah. But worlds get quarantined for little things all the time. Remember Season 6, with all the glitches after upgrading? When we got quarantined for a couple days? The devs patched out the glitches and mass unquarantined everyone who got hit, so it didn’t take too long.

< Renthedog > oh yeah! I totally forgot about that!

< Renthedog > but it’ll take more than two days this time? because it’s not just an issue with an update but something specific?

< Xisuma > essentially, yeah

< Xisuma > little bugs can cause a server to be locked down and it usually needs to be lifted manually. Plus, there are millions of players, and lots of them are all spread out over different worlds. And the devs are busy with everything else, too

< Grian > i wonder if it would be unethical for doc to call in a favor. 

< Grian > get us pushed to the front of the queue

< Grian > probably

< Docm77 > yeah. There could be other servers in just as bad a situation as we are. Or worse. At least all our glitches are fixed now. Don’t really feel right about us getting special treatment 

< Grian > that’s true. It’d be nice tho

< Renthedog > any idea how long we’ll have to wait for?

< Xisuma > A couple of weeks? But that might be completely off. Things have changed a lot since

< Xisuma > the early days

< Renthedog > dang. 

< Zombiecleo > i still think the whole system is bullshit. Trapping us on a world like this to die. They couldn’t at least let us travel to single player worlds. 

< Xisuma > then you’d have to be troubleshooting 10s or 100s of worlds rather than just 1. The increased workload could mean getting stuck in quarantine for years. 

< Zombiecleo > well, they should figure something out then. If they can mass unquarantine people who are affected by a certain glitch, they should be able to do the same for one not caused by an update.

< Xisuma > I mean, it’s possible to transfer everyone to a new world. That’s…sort of what I did here. And you can see how that worked out. 

< Xisuma > if it was a glitch, things probably should have been fixed in this new world. Unless it was set up wrong, or it was a virus carried over. 

< Zombiecleo > do you think the virus was carried over? If it was one, I mean. Cause whatever’s gone wrong here seems totally different than what happened with the moon

< Xisuma > i do think it was carried over. I think it was meant to be carried over. The moon issue gave us plenty of time to react, to get away. To all go off in different directions. What happened here, with the spawns? Maybe that was the second phase of the virus?

< Zombiecleo > thats fucked up. Who’d create something like that?

< Xisuma > I don’t know. But there are a lot of fucked up people out there, I guess

< Xisuma > i suspected it was caused by evil x.

< Xisuma > uh, that reminds me. Can we have a meeting tomorrow. Theres something important we need to talk about, i think it'd be better to do it in person

From: TheSkizzleman     FEB.03.2022

Hey, Homie Buddy! What’s up! Haven’t heard from you in a while, I thought we were gonna do more Naked and Scared pretty soon. Did you get caught up in another huge redstone project?

From: TheSkizzleman     FEB.12.2022

Uh, you mad at me or something? Cmon, you know we can talk about whatever’s going on. Or is Xisuma holding you hostage or something?

From: TheSkizzleman     FEB.27.2022

Dipple Dop! You’re starting to freak me out, dude! You never go this long without messaging me! And I know you read every message, even the spammy ones! Zeddle Bop and Top won’t respond to me either! So if you are ignoring me please at least let me know everything’s alright over there.

From: TheSkizzleman     MAR.01.2022

Dude, I really don’t know what to do. I doubt you’re getting these, but if you are and just cant respond, know that I’m trying to get you help. I contacted the devs but they didn’t message me back. One of the hub world admins says they won’t do anything unless they get a message from someone on the server. Which is stupid, ‘cause it sounds like you can’t message anyone right now! Dang it!

From: TheSkizzleman     MAR.29.2022

I hope you’re okay Dippy. I miss you and Top and Zed a whole lot. It’s so lonely without you three. Stay safe, wherever you are!

From: TheSkizzleman     APR.30.2022

Still no response from the devs. I can’t believe there’s no way to get you guys help when you’re cut off like that. It’s ridiculous! I think I’ll just start spamming the devs until I get a response

From: TheSkizzleman     MAY.12.2022

Update, I got a response. That response was me getting muted for spam. Sorry dude, I tried. I’m not giving up on you guys though! Just give me a little time, I’ll figure something out

From: TheSkizzleman     JUN.21.2022

Still haven’t given up. Hope you know you’ve got friends looking out for you. Hang in there homie buddy!

From: ImpulseSV     JUN.28.2022

We need to talk. I’ll tell you when i can get off this world

From: TheSkizzleman     JUN.28.2022

Dude what??? What happened over there???

From: ImpulseSV     JUN.28.2022

I really think this is something we need to talk about in person.

From: TheSkizzleman     JUN.28.2022

Dipple Dop…you’re freaking me out over here…

From: ImpulseSV       JUN.28.2022

Sorry. I just can’t do this over the comm.

< Cubfan135 > everyone okay after today’s meeting? I know it was a lot

< Renthedog > yeah…i guess

< Grian > dont forget that anyone is welcome at group therapy. this is definitely something we could talk about there

< Grian > joe, cleo, does keralis know. About the Bdubs and Tango thing

< Zombiecleo > no. I’m not sure how he’d react, hearing about them right now.

< Zombiecleo > besides, it doesn’t really make much difference, does it? Not like it changes the outcome

< Joehillssays > Not sure that’s fair to say. 

<Joehillssays whispered to Xisuma: X, you doing okay? Can I come over?>

< Zombiecleo > true. X, you know we don’t blame you for this, right.

< Xisuma > i guess

<Xisuma whispered to Joehillssays: I’m okay. Really, I am.>

< Iskall85 > Zedaph? Can we come visit you?

< Zedaph > no

< Zedaph > i want to be alone right now

< Iskall85 > okay…

< Stressmonster101 > you have the rockets, remember? You can use those if you don’t want to use chat

< Zedaph > Thanks guys. ill be okay, I just need some time to myself. Going to do some knitting, collect my thoughts. You dont need to worry

< Iskall85 > We’ll come over a bit later, then, okay? Everyone’s kind of worried, you know? After, well…feels wrong to talk about it in chat

< Zedaph > yeah…I get it. But im not gonna hurt myself or anything like that. You can come over later, thats fine

< Zedaph > …i just dont understand. why does this keep happening to us?

<Zombiecleo> …

<Joehillssays whispered to you: I’m still coming over>

< Xisuma > Good news, everyone. I got a reply back from the devs. We’re in the queue to get checked up on, we should have the results in 2 or 3 weeks

< Docm77 > What does that mean? Will it reopen or not?

< Xisuma > We can’t know until the results are finalized. But it sounds like the odds are good, they just need to double check everything to make sure I’ve cleaned everything up properly

< Xisuma > My helmet is pretty good for that, now that it’s working. So it’s unlikely that anything is still wrong. But they have to check, just to make sure.

< Xisuma > Otherwise a corrupt admin could just lie about it and reopen an infected world

< Xisuma> Sorry, I know it’s still a bit of a wait. 

< Zombiecleo > It does feel like we have to keep waiting and waiting. But that’s not your fault, X. 

< Joehillssays > I think it should go without saying that when the server does reopen officially, we should all go and get therapy

< Joehillssay > I know group therapy here has been pretty helpful, but none of us are professionals. And there are things that can’t really be talked about with friends

< Joehillssays > Even if you don’t think you need it, like with the group therapy thing, it’d be good for as many people to go as possible. So no one feels like they’re being singled out

< Xisuma > Joe’s right. There are mental health professionals out there who specialize in helping players through trauma associated with world glitches. Even though this sort of thing is rare, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. 

< Joehillssays > I, for one, will certainly be going. 

From: Smallishbeans     FEB.22.2022

Hey G-man! Oh gosh, never calling you that again. Anyway, whatever happened to that life series idea you were brainstorming. Gonna do another season or what? Let me know before I commit to anything with Empires ‘n stuff

From: Smajor1995     APR.02.2022

Hey Grian. Just to let you know, MCC’s started up again if you want to sign up. No pressure, it’s just that I haven’t gotten a response from anyone on Hermitcraft so I figured something might be going on. Just checking in.

From: Solidaritygaming     MAY.12.2022

Grian? Are we doing another life series? I know you were talking about it before so I was wondering what happened there? Or did you do it without me! You didn’t, did you???

Also, can you talk to Gem? We’re starting Empires season 2 pretty soon and I thought she was interested in joining up. I can’t get a response from her, though. Can you try asking her for me?

From: Solidaritygaming     MAY.28.2022

You aren’t ignoring me, are you? You better not be! If you message me back in a month to tell me you’re dusting your window panes or sorting all your shirts by color or something im going to lose it

From: Grian       JUN.28.2022

Okay. So, a lot has gone down. Give me a sec to chat with each of you individually.

<Xisuma> attached image v

Dear Mr. Xisumavoid,

Your server, Hermitcraft Season Nine Test Server, has been analyzed and approved for reopening by our team. The date for your quarantine barrier to be lifted is currently set to JUL.10.2022 and should be removed automatically on this date as long as your server experiences no further issues within this time frame. As server owner, it is your responsibility to report any potential concerns to our team following your server reopening. Failure to do so may result in fines or temporary blacklisting. Please continue to carefully monitor the functioning of your server for a minimum of two weeks time. We request that any server members avoid unnecessary travel outside of the server during this period.  Following your two week probation, you may return to normal operation within your server. Thank you for your assistance in resolving this matter. Please contact our toll free number for any further questions.

Approved by,

Dev Team, JUL.04.2022

< Falsesymmetry > Yeeeesssss!

< Cubfan135 > aw yeah

< Renthedog > SWEET!

< Grian > lol is that a form letter

< Grian > did the devs actually send us a form letter?? After all of this ??

< Xisuma > I imagine they’re too busy to send out individualized letters

< Grian > guess that’s true…but still…

< Renthedog > still, this is super exciting! Maybe we could hold a celebration?

< GoodTimeWithScar > yeah! We can count down like its new years

< Etho > so many parties…

< Vintagebeef > we can hang out together etho if you don’t wanna go to the party :)

< Renthedog > sorry etho…i know this isn’t your kind of thing

< Cubfan135 > i wouldn’t mind a quiet get together either. 

< Grian > we can always split up into groups

< GoodTimeWithScar > so no party?

< Grian > ill have a party with you scar. 

< PearlescentMoon > same :)

< Mumbo > me too

< GoodTimeWithScar > YAY Boatem party!

< GoodTimeWithScar > oh. I guess Impulse wont come, though …

< Vintagebeef > Doc wanna hang out with us

< Xisuma > you know, maybe we shouldn’t be organizing different meetups in the group chat.

< Renthedog > oh good point lol

From: Pungence       MAR.17.2022

Hey X. I haven’t been able to get in touch with my brother lately, any idea what’s happening with him? Tell him not to just ditch me like that, the jerk!

From: Pungence     APR.14.2022

Or, you know, at least let me know if everything’s okay over there. 

From: Pungence     MAY.05.2022

You haven’t blocked me or something, have you? 

From: Xisuma     JUN.30.2022

Pungence. I’m so sorry.

From: Xisuma     JUN.30.2022

There’s something I need to tell you

< Renthedog > Guess what day it is???

< Renthedog > ITS SERVER OPENING DAY! :D :D :D

< Docm77 > Dude, we know

< Docm77 > and its like 5 in the morning

< Renthedog > you’re just lucky i didn’t start at midnight

< xBcrafted > put your comm on mute you silly

< Docm77 > but what if it’s important??

< Renthedog > today is important! 

< Renthedog > we’ve been waiting on this for like three months now dude

< Docm77 > fine

< Grian > everyone shut up

< Grian > im sleeping

< Grian > come back in 5 hours

< Renthedog > fine

< Renthedog > Guess what day it is???

< Renthedog > ITS SERVER OPENING DAY!

< Renthedog > now at the correct time!

< Cubfan135 > he really waited exactly 5 hours

< Cubfan135 > absolute madlad

< Xisuma > uh, not to ruin the mood, but remember that we’re not supposed to be doing any travel yet.

< Xisuma > going to a single player world would probably be fine, though. 

< Renthedog > bummer…

< Xisuma > sorry

< Zombiecleo > again, not your fault X

< Docm77 > who wants to be the first to log off? 

< Renthedog > ooh, me me me

< Renthedog left the game>

< Docm77 > and there he goes

< Grian > it really worked. 

< Zombiecleo > i know. Hard to believe after all this time

< Cubfan135 > lets go!

< Cubfan135 left the game>

< xBcrafted > are we all leaving? to go where??

< Falsesymmetry > are we sure it’s going to be safe?

< Xisuma > oh, that’s a good point!

< Xisuma > we should probably test if we can actually get back in properly. 

< Xisuma > im not sure it would work if i did it. Since im admin

< Falsesymmetry > i can do it

< Falsesymmetry left the game>

< Falsesymmetry joined the game>

< Xisuma > well? 

< Falsesymmetry > well, im right back where i was before, so i think its all good

< Renthedog joined the game>

< Renthedog > I wanna stay with you guys though for now

< Falsesymmetry left the game>

< Renthedog > falsie left me :<

< Zombiecleo left the game>

< GoodTimeWithScar > everyone wants t o leave that bad?

< Docm77 > I think just to know its possible. 

< Docm77 > i mean, it seemed like we might never leave this world for a while there

< xBcrafted > it feels sort of wrong, leaving after all this time. 

< Grian > yeah, i kinda get that. we all got used to this

< Renthedog > I was so excited to finally be free. It felt like there must be so much to do and see and catch up on, all that stuff.

< Renthedog > but as soon as I logged into my single player world, i didn’t know what to do with myself. 

< Grian > still, just leaving for a moment. I think thats a step we all need to take.

< Grian left the game>

< GoodTimeWithScar > a roll for me though :)

< GoodTimeWithScar left the game>

< Docm77 > Guess I should as well. If we’re all doing it.

< Docm77 left the game>

< Vintagebeef > he gave in to peer pressure…

< xBcrafted > for real haha

< Renthedog > well, there everyone goes

< Renthedog > have fun, be back soon o/

< Iskall85 > we’ll all be back soon enough

< Iskall85 > hermitcraft is still home

< Iskall85 left the game>

< Pearlescentmoon > yeah, I don’t think I’m gonna be gone for all that long either. Just a couple of hours

< Pearlescentmoon > just to know we can

< xBcrafted > o/

< Pearlescentmoon left the game>

< Stressmonster101 left the game>

< Renthedog > well, come home soon. 

< Renthedog > and have fun! :D 

< Renthedog > we’ve waited a long time for this. Hard to believe it’s finally here, I guess.

< Renthedog > We can finally start getting back to normal

Chapter Text

Tango cracked open his eyes, groggy and disorientated, unsure of where he was or what had happened. He had been in space, and then somewhere else, and there’d been so much lag. And after that, nothing but the vague idea that some amount of time had passed and that his situation had changed, but with no more knowledge than that.

As the world came into clearer focus, Tango began the process of taking stock of his situation. He was face down, cheek pressed against something that felt like sand, in a dark world. From the flames on his head, he could make out the flat ground beneath him, carpeted in shards of what looked like tiny crystals that glistened in the firelight, and a sloping stone roof that rose above him from the ground. 

“Okay,” Tango said to himself. “Okay. Okay. Let’s stay calm. We’re alive, which is good.” Great, actually. Far better than he could have hoped for. The moon had crashed and he wasn’t permadead, or at least he figured he wasn’t. He’d make it out of wherever he’d ended up somehow.

Tango pushed himself up off the earth and up onto his elbows, and as he did so a million tiny fragments of something rolled off his back and onto the ground in a chorus of faint clinking sounds. The same crystals that lay all around him, he figured. Tango picked one of them up, holding it over his head to catch the light. It was black and sort of smooth with jagged edges, like a chunk of obsidian, but too translucent for that. Tango squinted at the crystal for a moment, turning it side to side, unable to tell what exactly it was supposed to be, before he picked up another piece. This one was flatter, clearer, and his mind pieced together what he was looking at as a shard of black stained glass. In that case, the other piece was glass too, just heavily melted, contaminated glass. The kind of thing you might get trying to make it from scratch rather than relying on a crafting table and furnace. 

So he was surrounded by a pile of glass. A bunch of tiny little shards of…pain and sadness. Or at least they would be if they ended in the wrong places. Carefully, Tango pushed himself up to his knees, shaking the remaining glass off his back before any of it could embed itself in his clothes, or worse, his skin. Once he was convinced that he was glass-free, he made to stand up and immediately slammed his head into the stone ceiling above him.

“Ow! Oh, c’mon.” Tango winced, giving his head a rub that didn’t really do anything to make it hurt less. He crouched back down, tilting his head up to study the stone, which sloped down on every side of him in a sort of bowl shape. That wasn’t really unusual, it was the same sort of ceiling you’d find in any cave.

But no, that wasn’t quite right. As Tango took a closer look at the dome of rock around him, he realized that this was definitely not a naturally generated cave. No, the walls were too smooth, too exact, like they’d been carefully crafted with just enough roughness to give the suggestion of something organic without the unsightly randomness of true natural generation. 

So this was hermit-made, then. Or at least something made by a person. He had no idea if he was even still on the hermitcraft server, though he didn’t really know where else he could be. Aside from maybe the afterlife, but Tango kind of thought that would be more…afterlifey. Whatever that meant. He just knew this wasn’t it.

He rapped his knuckles on the rock. “Uh, hello? Anyone there?”

As if in answer to his question, a boom came from somewhere above him, loud enough to shake the ground and drop bits of gravel onto his head and to make him yelp in surprise. It sounded like a mix of thunder and TNT, which didn’t seem to Tango like a good combination for his current situation. He was struck by the realization that this structure could collapse on his head at any moment. If it was hermit-built by anyone other than Etho, it was probably no more than one block thick and therefore not exactly resistant to anything explosive. 

Tango shuffled over towards one side of the dome, crouching down further to fit, as if the roof would somehow be stronger in that part. Feeling marginally safer for no real reason, he took a look around the space, searching for a way out. There was more than glass on the ground, he realized, bits of debris scattered around the small space, ones too misshapen to identify even as a certain material. But no holes in the rock. No exit.

Great, so then he was stuck in here until the place collapsed in on his head and turned him into a Tango pancake. And while he’d hopefully just respawn somewhere better, with everything that had gone on, Tango wasn’t eager to test that.

He took another look at the slope behind him, just as handcrafted as the rest, but at such a close distance, he could see something that he hadn’t before. This wasn’t a solid sheet of rock, nor a patchwork grid of blocks placed together by a careful builder. Instead the stone around him was fractured, like someone had taken a few pickaxe swings to it before they’d gotten tired and given up. 

Tango thought. If this stone was as thin as he assumed it was, and if it was already cracked like that, then maybe he could break his way through, even without a tool. 

From outside came another boom, as if urging him to hurry up and figure something out. 

“Well, here goes nothing,” Tango muttered to himself, bracing his feet against the ground, struggling for traction on the mix of glass and sand. It was an awkward position, crouched over in a sort of squat, but he figured kneeling would be a great way to get glass in his knees. He found a spot that looked especially cracked, and turned his shoulder towards it, throwing himself sideways into the stone wall with his full body weight before he could second-guess himself.

“Ow ow ow,” Tango pushed himself away from the wall. Pain radiated from his shoulder, as he’d expected it to, but to his disappointment, the wall remained intact. So he’d banged up his shoulder for nothing, then. 

But his disappointment lasted only for a moment. As the world shuddered again, the crack widened, dropping shards of loose stone and widening the gap. From between the cracks, Tango could see a faint orange glow. Outside, and hopefully, freedown. He gritted his teeth and this time rammed his other shoulder into it. Might as well bruise them both up equally, he figured.

The stone crumbled away beneath him, sending him sprawling out onto the ground outside. There was more glass out here, some of which dug itself into Tango’s side, though thankfully none of it seemed sharp enough to pierce through his clothes, melted and deformed as it was. He scrambled to his feet, brushing himself off again, as he took a look at the scene before him.

The world outside the cave was unrecognizable in every sense of the word. The air was choked full of dark gray smoke, dying the sky completely black. If Tango were anyone else, he doubted he’d be able to breathe at all. But he was a netherborn, one who had grown up along lava lakes and basalt deltas, and the smokey air in his lungs felt fresher than the normal air of the overworld to him. 

He doubted anyone else would be able to see a thing either, but Tango also had no such problem. Not that it helped much. The area he was in looked like a junkyard, with debris spread out over the landscape in tiny piles, too burnt and distorted to be identified. Much of it was on fire, adding a haze of hellish orange to the gray of the sky, which shouldn’t be possible with firetick off, but apparently nothing was off limits now.

Tango took a cautious step out into the landscape, shoes crunching on glass and stone and some sort of dusty soil. Nothing stood out in the sea of smoke as anything important, which baffled Tango. Surely if the moon had actually crashed into the world there would be, well, a moon. Somewhere. But all he found was a barren wasteland, and a mostly flat one at that.

As focused as he was on the horizon, Tango very nearly stumbled directly into a hole. He only just caught the inky blackness of it in the corner of his eye as he began to step forward, rearing back with a yelp of surprise.

The hole that he’d very nearly fallen into wasn’t merely a hole in the ground. It was a hole in the everything. Straight through bedrock and down into the void below. But that wasn’t what disturbed him the most. It was the fact that the hole was shallow. Just a few blocks between where Tango stood on the unfamiliar ground was that layer of bedrock, as if the entire top part of the world had been shaved away. It reminded him of one of those superflat worlds, the ones with only a couple layers of terrain before the bedrock base. It seemed so much stranger with the normal craggy texture of the bedrock.

And yet, despite that, the size and shape of the hole felt familiar. Like he’d seen it somewhere before, but in some context too divorced from this one for him to connect it to. He stared into the darkness for a few long moments before it hit him like a rocket to the face.

It was the Boatem hole. This was Boatem, or at least what was left of it after the moon had obliterated everything. And as he looked around, he realized with mounting horror that the debris all around him were vaguely recognizable. The area behind him, where he’d broken out of a cave, or rather a chunk of custom mountain full of black glass, that was Grian’s alleyway. He could see other bits and chunks of the mountain, none bigger than the one he was stuck under, all surrounded by glass and debris. Off to one side, another mountain reduced to rubble, were waves of spread out colorful powder, like dust thrown onto the ground, and piles of still burning charcoal, that was…was it Mumbo’s mountain? Scattered in another area were the broken remains of wagon wheels and tire treads, in another chunks of star shaped roofs surrounded by flames, all spread out and nowhere near where they ought to be. The mountain range of Boatem hadn’t been right up next to the Boatem hole, had it? If this even was the Boatem hole, and he wasn’t just making up what he expected to see from indecipherable ruins.

The only part of Boatem Tango was really super familiar with was Impulse’s factory, as tall and imposing as the mountains beside it. Or at least, it had been. There was still something like a wall and a handful of dark, blackstone towers that were in relatively large pieces. Blackstone was, after all, made to withstand the kind of heat and pressure that had obliterated everything else. That was what had happened, wasn’t it? The moon had crashed and made a big shockwave and explosion and blastificated everything into bits and then set it all on fire. That was how things had gotten this way, it had to be?

But that didn’t make sense. It didn’t make any sense at all. Sure, if the moon crashing into the world was an event that had been programmed to happen, but this wasn’t a natural event. Especially not with the lag, the loss of communication, the lockdown of the world. This disaster, this collision of the moon and the world shouldn’t care about what would and should happen in such a scenario. It wasn’t supposed to work like that, with such clear cause and effect, and especially not with actual physics. That was what made it a glitch.

In spite of the nightmare around him, the wheels in Tango’s brain had started turning. And now that they’d started, they wouldn’t stop.

Cause and effect. Natural results. Not just lag or a world crash but an aftermath, one that someone had needed to program in. But hadn’t that been happening the whole time? The earthquakes, the moon pulling blocks up from the ground, the levitation, the way it had slowly grown closer and closer. All along, there had been a logical progression, one thing to the next, steadily worsening calamities culminating in an explosive finale. 

It didn’t make sense. Not for a glitch. Not even for a virus. Why go through this sort of effort for that when you could just scramble the world data or shutdown the server or something? 

No, this wasn’t either of those things. It wasn’t a glitch. It wasn’t a virus either, or at least it hadn’t been one to start with. This was a mod. A proper, custom-designed mod. 

There were mods like this, out there. Apocalypse-type mods, where the sun would scorch the world or the surface would turn radioactive, things like that. Tango had heard about them here and there, though he hadn’t dabbled too much into them. There was a difference between a fun challenge that it was rewarding to overcome and something stupidly hard and miserable with no payoff but more discomfort, and Tango liked to stay on one side of that line with both his own work and play. But if he’d wanted to, it was more than possible. He hadn’t worked on a mod of his own in a long while, and the part of his brain filled with all things mod-related was a mess of rust and cobwebs. But still, he could feel the gears grinding together, thinking of how something like this could be put together.

But this being a mod raised far, far more questions than it answers. Questions Tango didn’t have time to consider.

He’d started to tune out the occasional thunderous booms from before, distracted as he was by the rest of the situation. That was until he caught something out of the corner of his eye, glowing bright orange, for only a fraction of a second before it slammed into the ground to his left. hitting him with a wave of pressure and heat, along with that same boom. Tango shrieked in surprise, startled out of his thoughts about mods and viruses and whatnot, throwing his arms up over his head far too late to have protected himself if the blast had been strong enough to do him any harm.

When nothing else extreme happened, Tango crept over to the source of the blast with caution, There, in a tiny crater on the ground, was a rock no larger than his fist. It was red-hot, nearly molten, but Tango could make out that faint yellowish tint that he’d seen on the surface of the moon, that porous, endstone-like material.

“Ah,” Tango said, voice coming out in a squeak. “There’s the moon.”

He tilted his gaze upwards. For a moment he saw nothing, then a flash of flames as something hurtled towards the ground, creating another explosive noise on impact. Then another. Then another. 

Was it just his imagination, or was he hearing more booms than before? A lot more booms. 

Another rock slammed into the ground somewhere behind him, close enough for him to feel the breeze. Then another. No mistake, there were more of them now than there had been even a second ago. He took another look at the sky. Like a meteor shower, flames streaked through the air, one after another. As soon as one hit the ground, two more took its place.

Tango watched the sky for a long moment, frozen in horror, before he did the only logical thing to do in such a situation–flee in terror.

He raced across the wasteland, zigzagging back and forth as if that would somehow make it less likely for him to be struck. Sure, he might be resistant to the heat and the smoke, but he was not immune to a rock to the head. Especially not at those sorts of speeds. He needed to find cover.

But there wasn’t cover to be found out here, in the flat expanse of destruction. He could crawl under another piece of mountain, but those weren’t strong enough to survive his shoulder, let alone a falling moon rock. None of the pieces of the builds that remained seemed any more stable.

The closest thing to a place with structures was Impulse’s base, and so Tango took off in that direction, hands over his head, which also wouldn’t save him but at least felt a little safer. He ran through what might have once been a gate onto what might have once been a path, though he couldn’t have identified either had he not known what should have been there.

As he looked around, frantic for some source of cover, his eyes landed on something perfect. 

It was Impulse’s garage, or at least what remained of it. Which was only the sawtooth, blackstone roofs that reminded Tango of old-school factories. Everything else was gone, but the pieces of blackstone had fallen atop each other like dominoes, leaving little hollowed-out areas beneath each one.

If the blackstone had been strong enough to survive the moon impact in almost-complete pieces, Tango could only hope it would be strong enough to protect from the remains of said moon. 

He knelt down on the rugged ground, pushing aside chips of stone path, before laying down on his stomach and wiggled his way into the gap beneath the most intact looking roof. It was a harder squeeze than he’d expected, but not tight enough that he might get stuck, and so he inched forward until all of his body was covered. Then and only then did Tango let himself relax, head flopping down onto the dusty ground as he gasped for breath. He was as safe as he could be under these circumstances, which would have to do.

As he lay there, catching his breath, he listened to the now constant barrage of booms, along with the faint sound of flames devouring something that had once been a beautiful work of art. Tango could hear the grunting of a zombie between the explosions, the kind of sound they made when taking damage. Impulse’s base didn’t have a lot of flammable blocks, and apparently that had made the area dark enough in places for things to spawn. Had it walked through some flaming debris, Tango wondered, and could it reach him under here if it were a baby? Was he actually safe?

There was sweat building on his brow from the exertion of his fleeing. He struggled to maneuver his hand into a position to wipe it off, staring down at the drops as they sizzled on his glove. The only time Tango got hot enough to sweat was around the lava pools in the nether. And it would have to be that hot to be boiling sweat. How hot exactly was it out here?

Hot enough to be almost uncomfortable for Tango. And hot enough to be fatal for everything else. Or everyone else.

Between the heat…and the smoke.

Something like terror pooled in Tango’s chest, though not terror for himself this time. Where was everyone else? What had happened to them? 

If they hadn’t all made it out…if he wasn’t the only one here.

It was difficult for Tango to reach his inventory in the cramped space. He fumbled for a moment, back pressed up against the roof, before he managed to get a hold of his comm and pull it up in front of him. Even though he had good vision in the smoky air, he still had to squint to make out anything on the screen.

The first thing he opened was the ingame chat, of course. And the first thing he saw there made his heart sink. 

<■■■■ burned to death>

So there were others still here. And just as Tango thought, this sort of place wasn’t survivable.

But as he watched the screen, that was the only message that came in. In this situation, surely anyone with the misfortune to still be on this world would end up in a death loop. To find safety after one death, especially in these conditions? It seemed unlikely to say the least. So what was happening here?

A horrible thought crossed Tango’s mind, and with shaking hands he switched to the world settings, hitting basically every wrong button he could in the process. His eyes snapped right to the part he wanted to see.

Difficulty: Hard

Tango let out a shaky sigh of relief. Hard. Not hardcore. Unless there was something else going on with the messed up world, he hadn’t lost any of his friends for good.

Maybe, then, the world wasn’t quarantined anymore. Tango hit the logout button, and only received the accompanying notification in response. World quarantined, can’t log out, contact the devs, yadah yadah yadah. Yeah, he would if he could. Stupid server with its stupid…mod virus or whatever.

Tango set the comm down in front of him where he could keep an eye on it, propping his head up on his hands as much as he could in the narrow space. Hopefully whoever else was here really had found somewhere safe to hide. They’d probably done something Tango wasn’t smart enough to think of. That made more sense than anything else.

But the rest of it still didn’t make sense. And as his panic died down, Tango’s thoughts circled back to the question at hand, the one he hadn’t been able to answer. What was happening here? 

If Tango had to guess, he’d say the moon and the aftermath, all of that, was a mod. It felt like a mod, and it ran like a mod, albeit one that obviously had not been optimized judging by all that lag. But it couldn’t just be a normal, non-malware mod that could do this. That wouldn’t explain the quarantine, or the lack of communication access, or even whatever had happened after the world lagged out. In that case, this was a trojan, a virus tacked on to what should have been a  normal, benign mod, if one that made worlds especially difficult to play. Maybe there was a version out there that was safe, or maybe it had been made specifically to carry this virus. He couldn’t know either way.

But that didn’t make sense either. The point of adding a virus into a normal-seeming mod would be to trick someone who wanted that mod into downloading it. And Tango didn’t think any of the hermits would have downloaded this mod, much less installed it on the server without telling anyone. Xisuma assembled the handful of mods for the season as a whole one at a time himself before the season started, so it couldn’t come from that far back. X was sharp, he would have noticed something as major as a moon-crashing mod. Someone would have needed to add it after the beginning of the world, when nobody would think to check what mods were and weren’t installed. And even if someone had done such a thing, they’d need to be Oped to do so. There weren’t many hermits who even had that power. There was Xisuma, of course, as the admin. And Joe and Hypno had access to Op as well, mostly by tradition, as Tango didn’t think either of them really used it. Aside from them, there was Doc, who had it in case one of his weird experiments went terribly awry, and Mumbo for the same reason after that time he’d crashed the server with a million or so melons and pumpkins. Then there was Scar, who had access so he could spawn in strength potions or replacement elytras when he was having a rough day health-wise. Etho had access as well, because he had the experience and know-how to spot potential problems before they arose. And Tango himself, due to his own past experiences, though it hadn’t done Xisuma any good and likely would be the same for him. There might be others, Tango didn’t keep tabs on who did and didn’t have Op or anything like that.

But none of that really mattered. Tango would sooner believe that he himself had slept-walked his way into downloading and installing the mod than suspect one of the other hermits. 

But was it possible that there was a non-malicious reason for the mod to be downloaded. Maybe it was supposed to be a prank, or the hermit in question thought they’d downloaded a totally different mod. But no, this was much too far for a prank, and Tango was sure that as soon as people started panicking and builds started being destroyed, anyone who had so much as touched the world data would have come forward in an instant. Tango trusted in that with his whole heart. 

But then, if nobody had added it, how had the mod and virus combo gotten on the server? It couldn’t just pop into existence out of nowhere. And the changes the moon mod would have made to the world data weren’t the kind of thing that could be added involuntarily by an infected player hopping between worlds. A standard virus, the player-infecting kind, wasn’t that sophisticated, at least as far as Tango knew. He had never made one before, of course. Maybe technology had progressed enough for players to carry around mod-sized viruses in their data without flagging any anti-cheat systems. But if something that major had been created, they all would have heard about it.

And again, there was the question of why. If the goal was to kill a server, there were so many more efficient ways to go about it. There was no need for all of this showy nonsense if you wanted to shutdown the server and hold it for ransom, or steal identities, or even just cause as much damage as possible. There didn’t seem to be a pragmatic reason for this, nor just a straightforward desire to hurt and destroy. This seemed more like someone’s idea of a sick game. They wanted to hurt them, scar them, ruin their home and their lives. But not kill them, not permanently anyway.

Why? What was the point of any of this? 

Tango lay beneath the roof, listening to the sounds of the moon rocks fall around him and the world burn. So showy. So much effort. And he couldn’t even figure out why. 

But even if he could, it was far too late to do anything about it now. And so Tango waited in his hiding spot, unable to do anything but hope that this would come to an end. Maybe then, when it was safe, he could find answers. 

Chapter Text

Zed hummed to himself as he worked, filling the quiet cave just enough to keep at bay the uncomfortable awkwardness of silence. It wasn’t that it bothered him, silence. He liked his alone time, and with that came the freedom from the noisiness of other people, but this wasn’t the peaceful kind of silence, but rather one that left him uneasy. Like something had gone wrong and he hadn’t noticed it yet.

Zed hoped that wasn’t the case. He felt like more than enough things had gone wrong already.

He paused his humming just long enough to grumble as he fought to push his needle through a too-tight stitch. Knitting with string really was a nightmare, not only did it make for a rough final product, but there was practically no stretchiness to it at all. Maybe he was doing something wrong, but he was pretty sure yarn was supposed to be nice and soft and stretchy, otherwise who would want to wear anything made out of it? String by itself was more suited to tripwires than to garments, at least before it was crafted into anything. He didn’t think anyone had intended for it to be used like this. 

Maybe if he crafted it up into wool than learned how to spin it, or even just used his own wool. Would it be weird to do that, basically giving someone a scarf made of your own hair? Probably. But it didn’t matter, Zed didn’t know how to spin wool into yarn and it felt like the kind of thing that would be hard to learn. 

Maybe he should just take a break for now, scrap what little he’d knitted and wait until the server opened fully in a week and a half? Then he could get some actual yarn, and needles that weren’t just sticks with the tips shaved down. That was probably the smart thing to do, better than getting too invested in another scratchy scarf that the other hermits would probably only wear to be polite. 

That was something to look forward to, at least, about the server being open. It was hard for Zed to feel especially excited for it the way so many of the others seemed to be. Like it would be some miraculous solution to their problems. The server opening wouldn’t bring back the dead, nor would it fix all the harm that had been done in some instant, magic way. 

But more than that, it was hard to feel too optimistic when moving forward felt like walking into the wind, getting knocked down over and over again. Starting a new world, and their spawns had all gone wrong. Xisuma came back and delivered the worst news they’d ever received. Even when they’d all reunited, they’d still almost lost Keralis. It was like they couldn’t have anything wholly good happen anymore, and Zed didn’t think the server opening would be an exception. And it had already come with some badness already, badness Zed had received a week prior, at the latest meeting. 

Zed normally didn’t attend meetings at the best of times, which this was definitely not. He considered them a waste of time, a lot of formalities and overplanning for silly things that might come up when they could have just as easily been solved on the spot. Zed liked silly things, but he liked silly silly things, not stupid silly things. Stupid silly things like meetings were painfully boring, and Zed hated sitting still for that long without something to occupy himself. Maybe now that he’d picked up knitting, he could just bring his project along and pretend to be listening while he worked, but he didn’t see much point in that.

But this meeting was an important one, and so Zed had made an appearance. X had a lot of information to share from his newly fixed helmet, and Zedaph, however isolated he might be, did still want to stay up to date on everything. 

Xisuma had seemed more nervous than usual, which in turn made Zed nervous. It reminded him of the day X had delivered them that awful news.

He’d started by going over the logistics stuff, the state of his helmet, his plans for getting in contact with the devs, what they could expect in that time. None of that meant much to Zed, and so he tuned most of it out, trying not to look too disinterested. At least until X changed the subject. 

“I figured I should tell you,” he said, ringing his hands, the same reluctance on his face from that day. “I, uh, I received a message from before I set up this world. From…Bdubs and Tango.”

That had gotten everyone’s attention, Zed’s included. His ears perked up. “Wait, Bdubs and Tango? Does that mean–”

X just shook his head sadly, cutting him off before his hopes could climb too high. “No, it’s…well, it’s from before I made the world. Before I… deleted it. I thought–it should have, should have been completely broken, that nobody could still be on that world, and so I…” He made a pained sound from the back of his throat, clenching his hands into fists in front of him. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

From beside him, Joe reached over to lay a hand on X’s shoulder. “It’s okay, we all know you didn’t mean for this to happen. It was a lot to deal with, and you didn’t have anyone to help you. You’re not to blame for that.”

X nodded slightly, but the look in his eyes told Zed that he didn’t believe it.

“But you’re sure they’re actually permadead?” Doc asked. “If you thought they couldn’t survive on the old world but did, who’s to say they couldn’t still be alive?”

“No,” X said, not meeting Doc’s eyes. “No, it’s not like that. I, uh, it’s not impossible that they could have survived somehow on the old world, even if it was messed up. But their profiles are gone, that’s…that’s definitive proof. It–it’s like a heartbeat, almost. If you’re alive, you have a profile. If you don’t have a profile, you can’t be alive. You don’t–to the universe, you don’t exist anymore.”

He wrapped his arms over his chest, shoulders sagging, as if he wanted to make himself invisible.

“I did send them a message. Maybe a part of me wanted to believe in some kind of miracle. But I guess it doesn’t work that way. Besides, it’s not like they’ve responded. It’s just…an old message I didn’t receive. If I had, if it weren’t for the virus inferring with the world, then maybe.” He shook his head, expression bitter. “But I guess it’s too late for that now.”

Zed understood why X had told them. It made sense, if he felt he was to blame, that to hide it would be lying to avoid taking responsibility. To Zed, though, it didn’t really matter if X was at fault or not. It didn’t change anything. It wasn’t like they could bring Tango and Bdubs back by finding the right person to hate. 

“About the virus, then,” Cleo said, filling the silence left in the wake of Xisuma’s confession. “You mentioned something about Evil X in the chat. You think he was behind this?”

That was the other reason Zed had shown up for the meeting. He’d wanted to know, even if it hurt, what part Evil X played in all of this, if at all.

It wasn’t exactly a big secret that he’d been Worm Man, or that Ex had been his sidekick of sorts. It had been a long time since then, but Zed still had fond memories of their escapades. He’d never quite understood what the problem with Evil X even was to begin with. The guy had never really been any worse than a cartoon villain, no more so than Doc or Cub. The Evil X Zed had known wouldn’t have done something like this, something that would cause so much trauma and harm. Not knowingly, at least.

But then again, the Evil X he’d known also wouldn’t have gone as far as to brainwash Xisuma. Maybe things had changed? Maybe in those years past, Evil X had become a different sort of person? The sort of person to do something this cruel.

But Zed supposed he’d never know now.

“It’s the only thing I can think of,” Xisuma said. “Him being behind this, I mean. I don’t think anyone else would be. But it doesn’t make sense. He, well, he died too along with Bdubs and Tango. In the moon crash. He’s not a hermit, so I didn’t know before now, but when I checked…” X shook his head. “If this was his doing, why wouldn’t he make sure he wouldn’t get caught up in it too?”

If Zed was being honest, the reaction to that news bothered him. Sure, the others had seemed shocked and upset, but not like before, not like they’d been with Bdubs and Tango. He supposed it made sense, none of them really knew Evil X that well, to them he was just an antagonistic outsider. No one could be expected to have the same reaction to the death of a virtual stranger than they would to their best friend. That wasn’t reasonable. Even Zed hadn’t been nearly as close to him as he’d been to Tango, and it had been years since they’d last spoken. And it wasn’t as hard to bear even for him. Tango was someone he’d seen every day. It was different. 

He wondered if there was anyone who saw Evil X every day, who cared as much about him as they’d all cared about Tango and Bdubs. If anyone would be making a memorial to him. 

It was at that point that he’d excused himself from the meeting, to the concern of everyone else present. He’d needed time on his own, time not spent trying to deal with the mental effort of being around people when he was at his limit. 

He’d dutifully replied to their messages, assuring everyone he was okay, and that had been enough. 

But it had been a blow, another instance in which trying to step forward was met with only pushback. He was sick and tired of this happening again and again. But there was nothing he could do besides keep his hopes low so it wouldn’t hurt so much when they fell. 

Zed was weighing the pros and cons of abandoning his scratchy, awful string scarf when the door at the back of the cave opened and Impulse appeared. 

Impulse looked as bad as ever, beard overgrown and hair a mess, as if he’d just woken up. Maybe he had. Zed wasn’t sure what Impulse was doing all day, but he was pretty sure it was sleeping. That was really weird and off putting in and of itself. The Impulse Zed had known was a workaholic. He’d be much more likely to collapse on the floor after working three days straight than get a full eight hours of sleep, or at least that was how it had been before. 

When Impulse had first gotten home, he’d spent the first few weeks working harder than ever, diving headlong into material gathering and building up infrastructure around spawn. At some point, Zed assumed, he’d hit a solid wall of what his body and mind were capable of, crashed, and just never got back up. Like he’d burned through a year's worth of energy and was now just flat out incapable of keeping up that sort of work. And so he’d started sleeping more than Zed assumed he’d ever slept in his life. He wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than the overworking. 

Impulse, Zed thought, should probably definitely go to therapy. He should go too, for that matter. Zed was well aware that neither of them were coping well with any of this. But in his defense, he’d never expected something like this to happen. It was like getting struck by lightning, he thought. Super duper rare, unless you were doing something reckless like standing around on a lightning rod. You didn’t just…get unlucky and have it happen by chance. Or, well, some people did, of course. But it was the sort of thing that happened to people you didn’t know. The kind of thing you’d read about in the news and think “wow, that’s really scary, that something like that could just happen.” And then either spend your life worrying about it happening to you, or remember that it was, in fact, a very rare occurrence and living your life being scared of all the bad things that could happen was pointless. He’d always figured the second one was the more healthy mentality to have.

He supposed it had to happen to somebody, for it to be the sort of thing people knew about. And that they were all somebodies to other people. He wondered if they’d end up on the news, now that they could talk with the outside world. Hopefully not, Hermitcraft was small and insular enough that even with celebrities like Etho, they could kind of stay out of the public eye. Zed didn’t think any of them would be running off to the press to tell the sensational story of horror the server had gone through.

“I’m going to visit Skizz,” Impulse said, snapping Zed out of his thoughts. His hands were in his pockets, shoulders slumped, like he wanted to melt into the floor. He sounded more like a man heading to his own execution than a man going to see his best friend.

Zed set down his knitting, deciding he’d figure out what to do with it later. “Wait, I thought we weren’t supposed to be traveling around yet? Did things change?”

“I’m just gonna convert one of my single player worlds into a small server.” Impulse said in that same flat, miserable tone. “Like we do for Naked and Scared. It should be fine, I think. And…Skizz deserves to know.”

Ah. Of course, Skizz wouldn’t know yet. He’d be crushed, Zed was sure. He loved Tango just as much as Impulse and Zed did. And it wouldn’t be easy news for Impulse to deliver either. No wonder Impulse seemed so reluctant.

“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” Impulse said, typing away at his comm. 

“No, no, I want to come. I want to see Skizz.” And support Impulse, at least as much as he could. It was the least he could do.

The server Impulse chose was clearly a redstone testing world, a flat expanse of land littered with half finished contraptions. There were also a few builds scattered around, designs for walls and color palettes, though nothing especially substantial. Impulse threw together a simple wooden bench to sit down on as he worked away on his comm, presumably configuring the server and messaging Skizz. Zed, unsure of what to do, loitered around, pretending to study the various redstone contraptions about the place. He knew a fair bit about redstone, but it was always a chore to try to decipher someone else's, and Zed didn’t really feel up to the task.

It took all of three seconds after Impulse finished setting up the server for Skizz to join. He spawned a few paces away from Impulse and Zed, and as soon as he spotted them, he barrelled directly into them, wrapping both of them in a hug.

“Dipple Dop! Zeddle Bop! Oh my gosh, I’ve missed you two so, so much, you have no idea!”

Zed had missed Skizz too. And his hugs. Being hugged by Skizz made him feel, even with everything going on, that it would all be okay. Even if only for just a minute. Even if it was a lie. Zed wrapped his arm, the one not currently being crushed into Impulse’s side, around Skizz’s back, clenching the fabric of his suit jacket in his fist and trying not to cry. Not that Skizz or Impulse would mind, he just…always felt like if he started crying, he’d never be able to stop again.

For a while, Zed thought Skizz might never let go until Impulse, who didn’t really like hugs to begin with, got antsy enough to squirm away and Skizz finally pulled back. He kept his hands planted on each of their shoulders though, as if he was afraid that they’d both vanish again if he let go.

“Let’s, ah, sit down,” Impulse said, gesturing to the crude wooden bench he’d made. “There’s a lot to talk about.”

“Of course.” Skizz rubbed his shoulder, picking up right away on Impulse’s discomfort. “Don’t feel pressured, though, man. If it’s too much to talk about–”

“No, it’s fine, it’s…you deserve to know.”

And so Impulse told Skizz about the moon, and the server shutting down and everyone leaving in a panic, and the nightmare waiting for them in the new world. Zed, who hadn’t been there for most of that, didn’t have a lot to add, so he sat silently and listened along with Skizz. 

And then Impulse got to the part they’d both been dreading. 

“Tango didn’t make it out. Neither did Bdubs. They’re both…they’re perma—they’re gone for good.”

For a moment Skizz was silent. He looked lost, Zed thought, and that was unnerving to see. Skizz wasn’t the sort of person who should look lost like that.

“No, no no no, you’re kidding right? Tell me you’re kidding, that this is all a bad joke? C’mon, man, please?”

It wasn’t a real question. Zed had no doubt that Skizz had known Impulse long enough to know when he was being honest. He was just searching for something, for some thin thread of hope to grab at because what else could you do when you heard something so impossible to bear. 

Zed remembered that feeling, when he’d first heard the news. Remembered the laugh that had forced its way from his throat, raw and desperate. He’d grabbed too for that thread, and it had only hurt worse when it snapped. Like a knife straight to the gut.

It didn’t feel that way anymore, not really. Not that sharp, stabbing pain, but a quieter one. Like he was being smothered. Zed couldn’t say it felt any more pleasant than being stabbed. They were both pretty awful.

He took hold of Skizz’s hand and squeezed. He wasn’t sure what he was trying to do, to be comforting, or just to say that he was here, and that he’d been where Skizz had been and knew just how much it hurt.

“I’m sorry,” Impulse said, and this time he was the one to pull Skizz into a hug, twisting his body around on the bench to do so. Skizz’s back was to Zed, but he could see Skizz’s shoulders were shaking, could hear the sound of his muffled sobs. Hearing Skizz cry was a million times worse than just seeing him look lost, and Zed found himself chewing his lip, unable to stop the tears from flooding his eyes. Skizz, as if he could sense Zed’s pain, shifted sideways to wrap an arm around Zed’s shoulder.

The hug didn’t feel so safe this time. It felt shaky, unstable. Of course it did. It wouldn’t be fair, Zed thought, to expect Skizz to be their pillar of strength when his world was crumbling. 

For a long time the three of them held each other, and nothing felt like it would be okay.

Chapter Text

Bdubs awoke coughing and spluttering, mind filled with panic before he could even begin to consciously process what was wrong. He flailed his way into a sitting position, choking up a mouthful of water until he could finally breathe again. When his coughing gave way to hoarse breathing and his mind had realized he was no longer about to die, he finally began to get his bearings.

He was in darkness, sitting in a pool of water just up to his waist, barely high enough to cover his head if he were laying down. Apparently he’d inhaled some of it before he’d woken up. That made sense. Not much else did.

Where was he, and how had he gotten here? He was too disorientated, still coming down from the panic of almost drowning to accurately analyze his situation. 

He thought back to the last clear thing he remembered. That was an easy enough way to approach the situation. It would be a hard thing to forget, after all.

The world was ending and Bdubs was the only one here to see it. Him and Squawkers and Lulu, everyone else off doing whatever they thought might help them escape. To Bdubs, there didn’t seem like much of a point in trying. Where was there to go, after all? They were locked in. The void, or space, he supposed, but where after? Were they just going to sit out there in an endless expanse of black and wait to die?

Bdubs wasn’t going to do that. If this was it, if it was truly the end of the server and all of their lives, he wasn’t going to spend it panicking and fighting. He’d done a lot of that over the course of his life, and so he knew all too well that sometimes there was nothing you could do.

He had once run for his life through the jungle, from those creatures wearing the faces of his friends. He had been scared, genuinely scared, of what they would do to him, the way they wouldn’t stop no matter how much he begged. And so he had run, pushed through vines and leaves that clung to his body along with all that had already accumulated, until the jungle had made him a part of it. It would have been better, he thought, to have faced Scar and Cub down. Waited for them to come back to their senses rather than lose two years of his life. 

And afterwards, he had found himself falling. For days? Weeks? It had felt like an eternity. He had tried to land in rivers and puddles, tried to find some way to break his fall, and never once had it worked. It was pure luck that he’d fallen into Keralis’ pool. He’d had no control in the end. Sometimes, the only thing you could do was wait, accept what was happening, and let come what may. This felt like one of those times, with the moon bearing down upon him. It was something far too big to fight against. 

He tried to tell himself he wasn’t scared. That even if he was, it didn’t matter, he had to just let go. He tried to tell himself that he hadn’t made a mistake by staying here until he’d missed any chance he might have had to get away. No matter what he might have told Tango otherwise, desperately screaming into the comm a message, Don’t come back here.

Bdubs was good at lying to himself. Just not good enough. 

He supposed he was going to spend his last moments afraid anyway. But it was far, far too late to do anything about it now.

The ground shook beneath his feet, the earth crumbling away under the force of the moon’s gravity. It lifted him up a bit, enough to put him off balance, enough that standing still felt difficult. Above him, Squawkers flew lazily in circles, entirely oblivious to the world ending. His mob ai probably wasn’t programmed for anything like this. Even Bdubs himself didn’t feel programmed for it.

The moon was bright, and looking into it felt like staring directly into the sun. Even though it must have been near midnight, it lit the sky up as bright as the start of a sunset, orange sky and all. Looking at the moon itself burned his eyes, but Bdubs told himself he wouldn’t look away. That he’d own this decision, in the end.

It was the heat that got him first, and it got him quickly. He had just enough time to feel the flames sear his skin before the rest of him was vaporized. It had been an unpleasant way to die, if a quick one. At least he’d only had to bear it once.

The thing about the moon, Bdubs realized somewhere in the middle of a long lag spike, was that it looked like it was moving slowly. But that was just a perspective issue. The moon was, in fact, moving very, very quickly. Too quickly for Bdubs to burn up more than once before the moon collided with the ground, disrupting millions upon millions of blocks and bringing the server to a standstill. A small mercy, Bdubs supposed. But it wasn’t, not really. It just meant he had an awful lot of time while the world was frozen to wonder just what would happen to him, at least in between being crushed to death by the full force of the moon obstructing his spawn. And that, Bdubs thought, had been scarier than the collision itself. 

He tried to tell himself that it would be okay. He was respawning, after all, and there was no reason he wouldn’t keep doing so until all the blocks had settled. And if the server was more than likely to crash before that happened? Well, there wasn’t anything he could do about it now. 

Let come what may, Bdubs had told himself. It hadn’t been very convincing. All he could do was wait and hope that all this would end eventually.

Which it must have done, given that he was here now, though Bdubs couldn’t remember at what point that might be. It was like falling asleep–you could never remember the exact moment you drifted off, barely even the vague awareness that you had. And now he was here, no longer suffocating and in a world free of the intense lag of before. Or at least, it didn’t feel like there was lag. He wiggled his fingers just to make sure. 

Still, that didn’t answer the question of where he was. Was this spawn? Inside some…moon cave or something? He looked around, eyes slowly beginning to adjust to the darkness enough to see his hands in front of his face. Some ten blocks away or so was a faint amber light, one barely bright enough to illuminate the dark stone around it. He could hear the sound of splashing water somewhere nearby, the continuous sound of some sort of waterfall, though it sounded echo-y, the way water might sound when flowing through a sewer. Was that where he was, a sewer? It didn’t smell like one, thank goodness, more like a mix of seawater and something burnt. 

Wherever he was, it was hot. Hot and humid, like a sauna, and the water around him tepid. So maybe he was in a warm ocean biome? But that didn’t make any more sense than moon cave.

Well, no way to figure that out by just sitting there! He could at least check out where the light was coming from. Bdubs made to stand up, only to discover two things. One, the ground beneath the layer of water wasn’t flat, but subtly curved in a way that made it difficult to stand. Two, it wasn’t on any kind of stable ground. The floor below him swayed one way, then the other. 

“Wahah!” He yelped in surprise, falling back into the water with a splash. He sat there for a few seconds, listening to the flowing water, before voicing his own confusion out loud. “Why floor move?”

He received no answer to the question. Not that he’d expected one.

He got to his feet again, more cautiously this time, reaching his arms out into the darkness for support. One hand found a wall, some type of rough-hewn stone caked with dirt. He could tell it was also curved inward. So then was he in some sort of pipe? 

He splashed his way through the water, one hand on the wall to support himself. Not that he was really still in danger of falling, the movement of the floor wasn’t that bad now that it hadn’t caught him off guard. 

Bdubs approached the light, and as he drew closer he could finally make out what it was. A glowshroom light, embedded in a curved wall of blackstone and basalt that capped off the tube Bdubs was in. So this place was a capsule shape, or at least it was on this side. He rapped his knuckles on the wall, and then, just in case, said, “Hello? Anyone home?”

No response but the steady rush of water. Bdubs turned back around, wiping a layer of sweat from his brow. His eyes had finally adjusted enough to properly see the rest of the area.

It was, indeed, a capsule shape, the opposite end closed off as well, though without another light source. He also found the source of the splashing, a stream of water was coming from one of the walls, flowing down and pooling inside the cylinder-spaced compartment where Bdubs had found himself.

He was in an enclosed space, one that water was steadily flowing into. The realization of that hit him like a punch to the gut.

“Hey! HEY! Lemme outta here!” He raced down the length of the capsule, stumbling on the unsteady ground, to find that the other end was indeed blocked off. He pounded on it a couple times with his fist. “I’m gonna drown in here!” 

Nobody answered, his voice echoing off the walls of the capsule. He ran a hand along the wall in desperation, searching for some kind of hidden entrance or trapdoor and finding nothing. But this was someone’s build, wasn’t it? It had to be, nothing like this existed naturally, and the closest things that did were in the nether, where he would not be having this specific sort of problem. 

“C’mon, there’s gotta be an entrance, right? Who doesn’t add an entrance to their builds?”

But as Bdubs examined the walls, unpolished and bare, still covered in dirt, he realized with a sinking feeling in his chest that this was probably not the sort of build you were supposed to be inside of. It was an outside-only build, hollow on the inside. And, well, Bdubs couldn’t complain about that, not when he had a completely hollow mountain to his name. If only they’d all listened to Etho and took structural integrity seriously. But then again, Bdubs didn’t think even Etho would be able to predict any of this. 

So he was well and truly trapped then. Doomed to wait here until the capsule filled up and drowned him. Where would he respawn after that? Back here, in a death loop? Or somewhere else, if there even was anywhere else to spawn. 

Was there really nothing else he could do? No way out?

No, there was a way out. An opening to this death trap. Bdubs eyes moved up to the top of the waterfall, where the water was pouring in. It wasn’t a crack or something, but an opening that was clearly designed to be there, one framed by the fractured remains of grindstones. Bdubs couldn’t tell how large it was between the darkness, the flowing water, and his low vantage point. Could he squeeze through it? 

He really, really didn’t want to try. If he judged wrong and he got stuck, he’d definitely drown.

But he’d definitely drown if he waited here long enough too, and Bdubs didn’t see any better options at the moment. 

“Okay,” He said to himself, steeling his nerves for what could be a very unpleasant death as best as he could. “Go on, Bdubs.” After a moment of thought, he removed his mossy jacket and tossed it aside. Hopefully that would at least make it easier to slip through.

He took a few deep breaths, hoping they wouldn’t be his last, and braced himself against the floor. And then, before he could lose his nerve, he lunged at the side of the wall, scrambling for purchase on the wet stone as water pummeled him in the face. 

He would have surely fallen had the wall not moved with him, not enough to completely turn on its side, but enough that he could hold on for just a moment longer. Bdubs put a lifetime of climbing custom trees to work and swung a hand up, grabbing hold of the slick edge, then using his other hand to get a stronger grip. He fought the urge to breathe from the exertion, squeezing his eyes shut from the stinging seawater pouring over him. The wall swung back and forth, and with a firm kick against it, Bdubs was finally able to cram his upper body into the opening. 

For a terrifying moment, he found himself wedged in the gap, water barraging his face. He felt something sharp against his cheek like a sword blade, sharp enough to cut him, and barely resisted the urge to cry out. Instead he did his best to suck in his stomach, using his arms to push against the exterior of the capsule until at last his body slid free and he swam upwards, lungs on the verge of giving out. The water was full of debris, sharp little bits of something digging into his skin, and larger chunks of something else he had to push out of the way. 

He broke through the surface, gasping for breath, and finally opened his eyes. Not that there was much to see. The air was thick with smoke, though it had risen far enough above sea level not to choke Bdubs, he still couldn’t see more than a handful of blocks around him. What he could see was murky water, full of what looked like bits of glass and wood, and the faint outline of the capsule below him in the water. He recognized it now for what it was, some sort of submarine. He didn’t know who had built it, he couldn’t remember ever seeing it before. 

Distracted by the urge to both breathe and know what was going on, it took Bdubs a moment for the pain to hit him, but when it did, it was instant and intense, the feeling of his flesh burning and blistering in a single moment. Bdubs shrieked in agony, ducking down back below the water on instinct and instantly regretting it. The agony of the salt water on his raw skin was enough to block out every thought and sensation besides itself.

And then he was waking up in the dark again, heart racing and with the phantom pains of burns still echoing in his mind. He took a moment to breathe, shuddering in spite of the heat and humidity. He’d died plenty of unpleasant deaths, and that one didn’t top the list, but it was definitely up there.

He was back inside the submarine, he realized instantly, a fact which filled him with a mix of relief and despair. So he would be stuck here until it filled up, but spawning outside would put him in a horrific death loop of a different kind. At least this one was on a delay. 

Well, he supposed that explained why it was so freaking hot in here. He was basically in an oven. Or, no, it was more like–what was it, sous vide? That sounded right. He was being sous vide inside this stupid sub. Then again, it wasn’t like it was nearly as hot as the surface. He supposed it had something to do with water and heat transfer and all that stuff. So maybe he wouldn’t be cooked alive. That was only a slight comfort. After all, he was still going to drown.

There was nowhere to go. Outside was death. Inside was death.

“Goodness sakes!” Bdubs snapped, trying to channel annoyance rather than despair. It was an  easier emotion to swallow. “Well, what am I supposed to do now?” 

Again, he received no answer. 

Holding onto one last thin thread of hope, Bdubs grabbed ahold of his mossy jacket, still lying sadly in the water where he’d abandoned it, and made the jump again to wedge it into the hole. It did absolutely nothing to stop the flow of water. Bdubs, all out of ideas, sunk down into the puddle, which was now up to his chest when he was sitting. So the water level was definitely rising. 

“What am I supposed to do?”  He asked again, hoping against all hope that there was something left, something he hadn’t yet thought of. But his mind came up blank. 

No, the only thing he could do now was wait. Wait and hope that it would magically be cool outside again by the time this place filled with water. Which didn’t seem likely. 

But Bdubs had stood his ground and waited for death once. He supposed doing it again wasn’t much different. 

It felt like it was, though. 

“I wonder where everyone else is,” Bdubs said aloud to the empty sub. “Hey, maybe they really all did make it out. Maybe they were right all along, and I was just being dumb by staying. Stupid ol’ Bdubs, too stubborn to run away with the rest of ‘em. I really hope that’s the case. I hope you guys aren’t all trapped too.”

He pulled his comm out, but the light was far too faint to make out anything on the screen. He had no way of knowing whether or not the others were safe, or if they were all in the same situation as well.  

Nothing he could do about it either way. He couldn’t even help himself, much less anyone else. All he could do was wait.

Let come what may, Bdubs told himself again. It was just as unconvincing as before.

Chapter Text

Joe waited, watching the window for any sign of X. It was still early morning, rays of sun streaming into the Safe Haven townhouse that Joe, Cleo, and Keralis called home. The latter two were out on a walk after Joe had not so subtly suggested that he needed the place to himself. From the fact that Xisuma had whispered to him in the chat instead of asking to meet outright, Joe got the feeling that this was supposed to be a private meeting.

It had been two days since Xisuma had gotten chat back up and working, though still no word on when the server would be reopening. Joe guessed there was some sort of approval process they had to go through. Maybe X would tell him more when he showed up.

Xisuma’s little shack was too cramped to hold a comfortable meeting–frankly, Joe had no idea how he, Etho, and Doc had managed to work in there for months on end without stepping all over each other. And so he waited in the comfort of his own house for X to arrive.

It had been some time since he’d last spoken to X, who had really gotten swallowed up in working on his helmet over the last month or so. It made sense, Joe supposed. He had more or less promised the hermits a deadline. Joe wished he could have done more to help. That sort of technical stuff was beyond the scope of Joe’s artistic soul. He may usually have admin access, but rarely did he know how to use it properly. Cleo would still mock him on occasion for that time he’d deleted his entire inventory from existence. 

He was started out of his thoughts by the sound of the doorbell, a pleasant little tune that had taken Joe several hours to figure out how to install. X was waiting for him at the door, looking as anxious as ever, still minus his helmet. Joe guessed it probably needed some more formal repairs to actually be wearable again. But the server wasn’t open yet, and so that was one more thing that needed to wait.

“Howdy, X. Welcome to the home of Joe of the Hills and Cleo of the Zombies. Please, do come in”

X offered him a faint smile, stepping through the threshold. “Hello Joe. It’s good to see you again.”

“And the same to you. Want to grab a seat? I’d offer you tea, but due to supply issues, we of course do not have any.”

X pulled a chair out from the table, taking a seat across from him. Joe waited for Xisuma to say something along the lines of “thank goodness for that, I’m not drinking your cold sugar water. It’s a crime against tea,” as he so often did. But from the slump of Xisuma’s shoulders, the distant expression on his face, Joe got the sense that this wasn’t a lighthearted meeting. He’d known Xisuma for nearly a decade now, more than enough time to learn to read him.

Joe dropped the humorous attitude, knitting his hands together on top of the table. “So. Would you like to talk about what’s wrong? I assume that’s why you’re here.”

Xisuma sighed. His eyes flickered to the corner of the table. “That obvious, huh?”

“Yes.”

For a long moment, X was silent, as if he was trying to work up the mental fortitude to actually start talking. When he did speak, it was in a quiet, pained voice.

“It was me.”

The words didn’t have any significance to Joe, but he suspected they did for Xisuma. “What do you mean by that?”

“It was me. Who killed Bdubs and Tango. They were still alive and I deleted the world. I murdered them.”

Oh. Oh. It was at times like this that Joe wished he was better at offering more genuine, helpful advice. Being a poet wasn’t as helpful for that as one might think.

“That’s not really murder, is it? Just… an accident.”

From the look on Xisuma’s face, Joe got the feeling that was the wrong thing to say. 

“That doesn’t make it better, really,” X said. He still wouldn’t look at Joe. “You know, there are cases every now and then, with admins and server owners who go and install sketchy modpacks on their servers without doing any research or testing. And people get hurt, other people who never had a say in it. It doesn’t matter if those admins didn’t intend to hurt anyone. They were being reckless and selfish and didn’t think about the harm they might cause. I’m not any better.”

“It isn’t the same, X,” Joe tried. “You aren’t in charge of this server. Every bad thing that happens here isn’t your responsibility.”

“But this is!” Xisuma raised his voice. “I’m–this is my job. Keeping the server functional, that’s my one job. And I couldn’t do that, and I screwed everything up, and I keep doing it over and over again. Why can’t I learn? Why can’t I stop messing up?”

He sounded as if he were about to cry. Joe opened and closed his mouth, not sure where to even start with this. What did X want from him? For Joe to agree that it was all his fault? Or for him to convince him otherwise. Maybe he just needed to tell somebody.

“That’s a lot of responsibility to put on one person. It isn’t fair to you. You came up with a solution that you thought would help at the time, didn’t you? Because you thought it was your responsibility to. None of the others had a solution beyond floating about in the void in the hopes that something would change. I didn’t even bother to do anything besides fly away, run away from the whole situation.”

Xisuma sighed. He wrapped his arms around himself, as if trying to give himself some small comfort. “Doc told me it doesn’t do any good, blaming myself. That I did my best, and that was enough. But I don’t know how to believe that. Not when I keep messing up again and again. I wasn’t able to fix the moon before the world broke, I killed Tango and Bdubs by overwriting the world. I tried to teleport everyone to the new world and it all went wrong. I hurt Wels because I was being careless. I hurt False by hiding the truth about what happened from her. And I don’t even know where I went wrong, what I could have done to stop this all from happening. To save Bdubs and Tango and get everyone to safety. I don’t know, so I can’t even start to do better. I don’t–”

X had been speaking fast, so fast it seemed he’d forgotten to breathe. He slowed down, took a few heavy breaths, and spoke again.

“I can’t be trusted as your admin. I shouldn’t be in this position.”

That was…what? What? X had been the admin for a decade now. It was something that had stayed consistent, from season 2 on all the way to the present day. Nobody else really knew how to manage the server, at least not the way Xisuma could.

Maybe, Joe thought, that was the problem. Like he’d said. Too much responsibility for one person, with no one who could truly help him. 

“I–this is what I really wanted to talk about. Sorry I got so caught up in…all this.” X brought his hands down to the table, knitting them together in a mirror of Joe’s pose. He sounded shockingly calm in contrast to before. Something about that unnerved Joe. 

“I shouldn’t be admin of this server anymore. I’m not responsible enough for it. So I wanted to teach you. I mean, you should be able to use my helmet. You’re part Voidwalker. And you’re more responsible and trustworthy than I am.”

Nope. Absolutely not. “That’s really not true at all,” Joe said. “Besides, I know nothing about admining at all. I’m completely hopeless with that stuff. I mean, you’ve seen me with Op. Pretty much anyone else would be better.”

X just shook his head. “They wouldn’t be able to use the helmet. It’s just not possible. And it’s a useful tool for managing the server, a very useful one. When it’s working properly, at least.”

“Do you…” Joe thought for a moment. “Do you not want to be the admin. I’d understand if you didn’t. We’ve…put a lot of pressure on you, not being able to help. If that’s what this is about–”

“No, it’s not like that.” X shook his head almost frantically. “Not at all. I’m the one who accepted all the responsibility. It’s not like I ever asked for help. Or ever thought I needed it, up until now. But you guys deserve better than this. Better than me.”

Joe couldn’t very well insist that Xisuma was the best fit for them. That would just be heaping on more and more pressure. If he didn’t want to bear that, it wasn’t fair for Joe to insist otherwise. He took a moment to compose himself, thinking things through, before he spoke again.

“You know, you suggesting this to me–the possibility of me being admin? It makes me think about if I was. What I would do, in your shoes, back at the end of Season 8. And you know what? I don’t think I would have known what to do at all. I might have done nothing at all, just hop from the server and hope things would sort themselves out, the way I actually did. Maybe I’d let everyone die out in the void, with nowhere to respawn. Get everyone killed. Destroy the whole server in one go. It’s not hard to see myself being paralyzed by indecision. I’m not as responsible as you think, X. I’ve just never had to bear the kind of responsibility you have. Of course I look better in that light. But it’s not a fair comparison. Not to you or to me.”

“I suppose…” X said. The tone of his voice, the hesitance in the way he spoke. It made Joe think he might actually be getting through to him.

“You say you killed Bdubs and Tango…” Joe paused for a moment when X flinched at his words. “The way I see it, you saved the lives of 22 people who wouldn’t have survived on their own.”

“You don’t know that…”

“And you don’t know that I would have done any better. Look, I’ll learn how to work your helmet. I’ll help you with the admin stuff. And if you want to leave it all to me because it’s hurting you, then that’s fine. But if it’s because you think you’d be helping us, then you’re wrong.”

Xisuma was silent. Processing his words, Joe hoped. 

“It would be so much easier if you guys just hated me. Maybe then I wouldn’t have to bother hating myself.”

Joe froze. Something in his tone, in his expression, reminded Joe of Keralis. It scared him, a reminder of the fear he’d felt when those death messages began to flood the comms. 

Maybe he was overreacting. It was just…X sounded way too hopeless for Joe. He thought about how insistent X had been that Joe learned how to use the helmet. His stomach twisted.

“Xisuma,” he said, voice as even as he could make it. “I need you to answer me honestly, please. This is important. Are you going to do something to hurt yourself?”

Silence. After a pause, X shook his head, too late for Joe’s liking.

“I…I don’t think so. No, no I won’t. I don’t…I don’t want to worry anybody…I…”

“That’s…Xisuma…” His throat closed over before he could finish what he wanted to say. He wasn’t even sure what he wanted to say in the first place. Nothing that X had said was reassuring and it was hard for Joe to know exactly what he meant. Did he intend to die at some point down the line, when he’d left the server and distanced himself from everyone? Was he lying because he didn’t want to worry anybody? Joe wished again that he had all the answers, that he was the perfect, calm, reasonable person that he needed to be. But he was just trying his best.

X hunched over the table, resting his head on his hand so Joe couldn’t see his face.

“It’s not like…it’s not like I’m planning to do anything, Joe. I just…I don’t know. Maybe I deserve to die, after everything. I don’t want to. And I don’t want to hurt anyone else. But maybe I should. If I could just disappear from everyone’s lives without it affecting them…it feels like that would be the best thing.”

Joe breathed, steady, keeping himself as calm as he could. It had worked, to an extent, but his limbs felt strangely numb and tingly and there was an odd pit inside his stomach. He didn’t know why any of that was happening.

“X, even if it feels that way, that wouldn’t be the best thing. Not for us or for you. Dying won’t…it won’t heal everyone’s wounds. It won’t bring Bdubs and Tango back. They wouldn’t…they wouldn’t want that X. They never would.”

“I know,” X said. “I know that. And I don’t want anyone to get hurt but I…” He curled up into himself and Joe reached out across the table.

“Can I hug you?” he asked, and X shook his head, so Joe leaned back, giving him the space he needed.

“Nobody wants you to get hurt, X. And we want you to not want that as well. Everybody here is your friend. What’s happened in these last few months hasn’t changed that. It hasn’t gotten rid of all those years we’ve spent together. Nothing could.”

X’s shoulders sagged. Joe didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing. “I don’t know…I don’t…” Tears dripped from his heavy eyes. He looked so defeated, Joe thought, and he still didn’t know what to do. He hoped he’d gotten through to X in some way and been able to convey that the hermits cared about him. Really, X should talk about this with the others. Or in group therapy. Or in actual therapy. When he was ready, at least. And when it was available. The server couldn’t open soon enough.

“I need to know that you’re going to be safe, X,” Joe said. “I need you to be honest with me right now. Please.”

Please. I don’t know what to do for you. I don’t know what to do for Keralis. Please, don’t leave us. Either of you. 

“I will,” X said, and the tone of his voice was genuine enough that Joe believed him. “I really will. Promise.”

Was it the right choice, to believe him? Or should Joe push the issue harder, demand that X move in with them like Keralis. Keep him safe, in some way or another. He wasn’t sure. 

He did trust that X wouldn’t lie to him. That he would, at the very least, not want to hurt anyone. He’d seen what had happened before, with Keralis. What a blow it had been to all of them. Joe was confident that Xisuma was so afraid of causing anymore harm that he wouldn’t do anything to himself. It wasn’t a good reason. Joe would much rather have Xisuma want to live for himself. But it would have to be good enough for now. Like so many things were these days.

“We’re going to check in regularly, okay?” Joe said, settling on something that seemed reasonable enough. 

Xisuma hesitated for a moment, before nodding. “Okay,” he echoed. 

“And once the server opens up again, you’re going to therapy.”

“Okay.”

And that, too, would have to be enough.

Chapter Text

Tango couldn’t be sure how long he spent there, huddled under the debris of Impulse’s base and listening to the thunderous sound from outside as he turned things over in his head. Mods, viruses, when, why, how? He shuffled the pieces around, as if he could get them to fall together perfectly and it would all make sense. But he couldn’t, he realized with growing frustration. There were too many pieces missing, too many things he had no way of finding out on his own. 

But it was something to do while he waited, and it was better than agonizing over what had become of everyone else. He kept checking his comm, using his flames as a torch. For a long while the screen remained blank, save for the singular death message from before. That had felt worse somehow, having no idea what was happening than knowing something horrible was. At least until he checked again and found a new message on the screen, and Tango had realized that knowing was, in fact, much, much worse. 

<■■■■ drowned>

It had nearly stopped Tango’s heart, that message. There was nowhere to drown in his surrounding area, not with how desiccated the wasteland was, so he could only guess that the mystery person was somewhere far away. Worse, he knew this was a situation in which he was useless. He couldn’t even swim, let alone save someone from drowning. Immersing himself in water wasn’t painful, but it was unpleasant. Like swimming in a very weak acid that made his skin tingle and itch. And he’d never been willing to put up with it to learn to swim. He’d never thought he’d need to. 

<■■■■ drowned>

Another message. Tango nearly choked on his own breath when he saw it appear on the screen. How long after the first had that one appeared? It couldn't be that long since he'd last checked. A death loop? That was what this was, wasn’t it? 

He’d spent the next several minutes frozen in indecision, every fiber of his body demanding that he do something while his rational mind tried to remind him that there was genuinely nothing he could do right now. He’d just get pancaked if he tried to venture out right now, and even if he found the poor soul who had gotten stuck in such a position, all he’d be able to do was drown alongside them. 

But as the minutes ticked by, no more messages appeared. So perhaps the person had managed to find a way out of their situation, just as they had the first time. Or maybe it was someone else? He didn’t know how many people were still on this world, but it couldn’t be many. There’d be a lot more death messages in the chat, given the environment. Very few of the other hermits were suited for this. 

He felt a strange sense of guilt at that, which was silly. It wasn’t as if he’d chosen this type of environment, nor was he completely safe from danger, just…safer than anyone else would be. Which didn’t feel fair, but he supposed that things had just unfolded this way, and he had no real say in the matter. 

He continued to keep a side-eye on his comm while he waited, but no more messages appeared, and so he allowed himself to believe that things had worked themselves out somehow. That nothing else had gone horribly wrong, because who knew what was possible in a situation like this. Maybe players were being deleted from existence when they died. Maybe the whole respawn system was broken. There were a million possibilities he could think of, and he’d rather not think of any of them. And so he kept himself focused on the broader scope of the situation, those little pieces that didn’t quite fit together. 

He didn’t come to any incredible revelations, but it served well enough at passing the time. Gradually, so slowly he didn’t notice at first, the raining of fire and rock slowed from a torrent to a shower to a drizzle. And finally, when he could count nearly 20 seconds between each boom, he decided it was safe enough to come out. 

His arms had grown sore and stiff from holding his body upright for who knew how long, his forearms stinging from the gravel and sand digging into them. He carefully pushed himself up, ducking down so as not to hit his head, and shuffled his way backwards out from under the caved-in roof. 

Outside, the world was much the same as before, though with less fiery rock rain. Thick black smoke, scorching heat, and the scattered remains of buildings dotting the landscape. Without the explosive sounds of rock colliding with earth, the quiet was staggering. There was always some sort of sound on hermitcraft, be it wind through the grass and trees, or the chatter of mobs, both passive and hostile alike, or the voices of his friends. There was peace, certainly, but rarely silence. Here, the only sound he could discern was the low crackling of embers as they starved, the last of the wood burning away to nothing. 

 Tango found himself bending down to scoop some of the earth into his hands, a pile of sand and gravel and melted shards of glass, a twisted bit of what looked like metal. All that was left of their home. The remains of the structures around him were the same, just on a slightly larger scale. Charred wood and warped metal and cracked, caving-in stone, the remains of once-beautiful builds that were now unrecognizable to him, although he’d visited the Boatem area many times before. It made something twist deep in his gut. Eight months of work and passion and love poured into houses and mountains and vehicles, eight months of care and detail, all of it wiped away like they were nothing but sandcastles on the beach. Inpermanent and fleeting and so, so weak in the face of such a catastrophe. 

Tango was sure his own builds would be just as unrecognizable. Bdubs’ mountain, hollow as it was, would have crumbled and buried Fifi along with it. His tiny cottage, the Big Eyes Pas ‘N Gas, his wood and iron farms, none of them had even a prayer of surviving all this. 

There was a strength that came from carving out the landscape, from shaping the world into an image like a lump of clay. And there was a weakness that came from seeing that be dashed to pieces. To being reminded just how powerless and small they really were. How easily control of this world, something that had seemed so natural that Tango had taken it for granted, could be ripped out of their hands. Could their lives, their senses of self, their hopes and dreams, crumble just as easily as the things they’d brought into the world, the places that had been made into extensions of themselves?

It was different, he knew.  A person couldn’t be rebuilt, couldn’t be reassembled with a schematic and a block palette. But still, the loss of his home, and with it the idea of a safe home in general, left a wide, dark hole in his chest. 

But there was no time to dwell on that. Even if he was no longer in imminent danger, he was still alone and defenseless in a hostile world. And when it cooled down, when the rest of the fires went out, all sorts of badness would start spawning in. 

He needed tools, food, shelter, a bed. All the basic things that one would need when starting off in a new world. Under normal circumstances, he could have just torn up a tree or two and gotten started. But that obviously wasn’t an option here.

“Uh, okay,” Tango said aloud, filling the uncomfortable silence with his own voice. He rocked back and forth on his heels, restless. “So, we’re gonna, gonna figure something out here. I mean, there must be something useful here in all this junk, right?”

He made his way to a rather large looking pile where debris had gathered, broken chunks of gray concrete and lumps of gold that seemed to have melted and then rehardened into misshapen clusters full of sand and gravel. There were a few bricks that were more or less intact, and Tango picked one up, judging its weight. He didn’t think he could really do much to defend himself with it, he wasn’t a fighter as it was, much less with an improvised weapon. But there was nothing else of use, or even anything else identifiable, in the rubble. 

Even the parts of Impulse’s base that were still in one piece had fallen over or sunk into the ground. Very little of it had been built on stable foundations to begin with, and a good chunk of it had been hanging over the ocean, which Tango guessed had all been vaporized or something, as terrifying a thought as that was. There were a few walls, a few fallen towers. Those might at least serve as shelters, with cover from above and at least two sides. It wasn’t ideal, but it might be his best bet.

But it didn’t help him with getting tools or food. If it had been hot enough to melt gold, it had also probably gotten hot enough to set all the wood anywhere in his immediate vicinity alight. Maybe somewhere underground, in the mineshafts, perhaps, the layers of stone and dirt had been enough to protect the wood from the heat, but given how everything down to bedrock had gotten blastificated, Tango was somewhat doubtful of that. But it was a possibility, one Tango didn’t know enough about thermodynamics or whatnot to either prove or disprove. 

Well, there was the nether wood though, right? That wouldn’t burn, not even if it were immersed in lava, so that was something. But then again, neither would anything else if—”

“Hey!” Tango said aloud, surprising even himself. “What in the–what about fire tick? What happened to fire tick?”

It should have been off. It was always off on the Hermitcraft server. Nobody wanted to accidentally burn down their entire base because they’d decided they wanted a nice cozy fireplace. But now, now it was very clearly on. If it wasn’t, nothing would’ve been burning to begin with, or at least the flames wouldn’t have been able to eat through the wood.

The gears in his mind turned again. So the settings for the world itself have been overwritten on top of everything else. That made it even more likely for it to be a mod, Tango thought. It would need Op to be able to change the gamerules like that. Had it been an original part of the mod, or had it been added in later, along with the virus? Or had the mod only ever been a smokescreen to hide the true malware behind it? Tango didn’t think so. It seemed too…detailed for that. Who would make such an intricate mod just to slip a virus onto a server? In fact, if you wanted to have a virus go undetected, it would be better to have it in a mod that did nothing at all. Or at least not something as major as having a whole entire moon crash onto the server. It was basically screaming to be discovered. 

So then, the virus had probably been slipped into some random mod, someone’s little passion project. Something about that made Tango especially mad. There was probably some innocent modmaker out there with no idea their work had been hijacked for such a nefarious purpose. Tango would be beyond livid if someone did such a thing with his mods. 

Had whoever had added it onto the server been the one to add in the malicious code? Or had the mod been tampered with by a third party before one of the other hermits got their hands on it, not knowing what lay inside? It had to be the latter, Tango thought. The hermits were sensible, and he didn’t think any of them would do something like download a sketchy mod and upload it to the server without telling anyone. But he wasn’t willing to believe this had been an act of malice. Not in a million years. 

And it wasn’t impossible for there to have been some other third party who had gotten backdoor access to the server somehow. Maybe one of them had been scammed in some way, received a faked message purporting to be from another hermit asking for Op. That seemed to be the most plausible. It was easy to believe the best in people when you lived on a server like Hermitcraft. If the scammer was clever enough, Tango could imagine falling for such a thing himself.

But there wasn’t much point in speculating. He didn’t know, and he wouldn’t know until he reunited with the others and had a chance to ask them. Whenever that may be.

Until then, he needed to survive, to gear up and get to safety. Then he could worry about finding the others.

As he stood there, wondering what to do next, he felt the sand shift beneath his feet. He paused, keen ears picking up the faint sound of rumbling from beneath him as the ground trembled. He frowned, looking around for some cause, but found nothing. 

Was it an earthquake, then? No, more like one of the tremors from before the moon crashed. But now that the moon had landed and broken into a million pieces, he didn’t know what could have caused this. Unless there was more debris still falling to earth. He looked up at the dark sky but saw nothing but darkness.

His eyes moved across the flat plane of beaten-down sand and debris that had once been his home, and from the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of movement. He turned. There was smoke on the horizon, thick and swirling. At first, he’d thought that was all it was, the movement of the smoke attracting his attention. But no, no, something wasn’t right. The smoke that surrounded him, and the smoke he could see when he looked behind him, was dark. This smoke was closer to white, as far as he could tell from a distance, and it churned over itself with a heaviness that didn’t make sense to Tango. As he stared, he realized with alarm that the smoke cloud was growing larger.

No. Not larger. Closer.

Tango made a high-pitched squeaking noise. The flames on his head stood on end, a shiver shooting through his body. He didn’t know what this thing was, but he did know that it was moving towards him, and he really didn’t want to get caught up in whatever it was.

Frantically, he looked around, searching for some form of cover. The fallen towers, with their cracked walls barely hanging together, likely wouldn’t be able to protect him from anything. But the cloud was close to the ground. If he could just get up high…

There were a few towers left standing, but none of them more than 20 blocks tall. Any taller ones had tipped onto their side. Tango set his sights on the tallest of them, decided it was unlikely that he would find anything better in this wasteland, and raced towards it as fast as his legs would carry him. He leapt up, digging his claws in between the blackstone bricks and scrambling for purchase with his feet. Thankfully, the tower was beaten up enough that he could find plenty of handholds, holes of missing bricks or entire chunks of wall missing. He clambered to the top, where a once-molten pile of gold dripped down the sides like melted ice cream. He flopped down atop it, breathing heavily. From there he watched the massive cloud approach, and from his higher vantage point, he could finally make out what it was. 

A wave. A massive, frothing wave racing across the ground, leaving a flood of dark water in its wake. Of course, Tango thought. Of course there was a wave. This had once been an island before the ground had been flattened down to bedrock, well below sea level. And all that water, much of which had probably been displaced by the moon, was now flowing downwards into the crater. The island had become a giant bowl.

Tango sucked in a hard breath. If he wasn’t high enough, or if the water knocked the tower over, he would certainly drown. And then he’d respawn back down on ground level, in the remains of Boatem, and likely find himself in a death loop. Oh, if only he’d put his own discomfort aside and learned to swim. But it was way too late to start learning now. 

“C’mon…” he whimpered to himself. “Come on, let me be safe up here. Please please please.”

There was nothing he could do but hope. There was nothing he could do to save himself, not without any tools or blocks. If only he had a boat.

If only. But once again, he needed wood. His mind once again returned to nether wood. But could that even be used to make a boat? No, it couldn’t, right? Because then you’d be able to sail on lava and wouldn’t need striders. It probably wouldn’t even float in water, at least not in block form.

Tango groaned. Was there really nothing he could do but wait here and hope he’d be safe? Staring at the ominous wave, he liked his chances less and less the closer it got. 

As he scanned the environment for something to help in the indiscernible debris, his eyes landed on another structure less destroyed than many of the others. It was a crane, or at least he thought it was from its shape, though it was laying sideways on the ground, chains twisted around it. Attached to one end of the chain was a fractured deepslate box, also laying sideways and covered with streaks of melted copper. And Tango was hit at once by a realization of what it was.

The wood shop. It was the remains of Doc and Ren’s wood shop. Tango recognized it all too well, he’d been there many a time to purchase wood for building up until he’d made his own farm, and even then he’d kept using it for harder to acquire woods like dark oak. 

The wood shop. Would it even still have anything in stock? He doubted any of the shulkers would have survived the blast.

But it was worth a try, probably. He didn’t have any better options.

He moved towards the edge of the tower before he froze, turning towards the wave. It looked like it was moving slowly, but it was coming towards him. It would be faster than it seemed. Did he actually have the time to go searching for wood? Or would it be better to wait here and hope.

Tango looked back once again towards the wave. He…really didn’t think he was high up enough to survive it.

This was his only shot. One desperate shot.

Against all of his instincts, Tango lowered himself from the tower, leaping the last few blocks to the ground and dashing towards the crane faster than he’d thought his legs would carry him. He sprinted past it, looking for the barge that had once contained the wood supply. 

But the barge, like so many other builds, was in pieces. Tango frantically sifted through the wreckage, tossing aside chunks of deepslate and copper, but found nothing. Not even a single shulker box.

Until his eyes landed upon an ender chest, and a burst of hope flooded his body. He didn’t remember what he’d put in there, but there should be a backup set of tools. Some shulkers. An elytra and rockets. 

He raced towards it, throwing open the lid and found…

Nothing. There was nothing.

He stared at the barren interior of the chest for several long moments, eyes not really processing what he was seeing.

Why? What? How? He must’ve had an extra set of stuff in here. There was no reason not to. He, like every hermit, kept backup stuff in his ender chest so he could receive his main stuff if he died somewhere out in the wild. Had he taken everything out of it? Why would he even do that? Tango knew he was prone to doing silly, thoughtless things from time to time, but this really didn’t seem like the kind of thing he’d do.

And then he remembered the comm, and blacked out name of whoever else was in this world with him, and the game crashing, and his heart sank. If the name of the other person wasn’t showing up, then the same could be true of his own.

So it wasn’t just a visual error or some feature of the mod. No, something had gone wrong with his player data. And whatever that was meant that the server didn’t even recognize him as Tango.

He didn’t have time to contemplate exactly what that meant for him. He shot a frantic look towards the wave. It was growing larger, closer, and there was nothing to be found here. He had to get back to the tower and hope with all his heart that it would be enough.

But before he could return, his eyes landed on the crane again. There was smoke seeping out of one of the holes in the structure, drifting up to join the rest that choked the air. But that didn’t make sense. It was made of blackstone and deepslate. There was nothing there to burn. 

He shouldn’t get distracted. He didn’t have time.

Unless…

Seizing onto one last desperate hope, Tango sprinted to the fallen crane. Sure enough, embedded in the cracks of the blackstone, he found charred wood. It crumbled in his hand as soon as he touched it, a momentary let-down, but then Tango thought back to what he’d considered before. The possibility of wooden structures underground that might have survived. 

If it was protected by the blackstone, which was very heat resistant, then maybe…

Tango dug his fingers into the burnt wood, tearing out a chunk of it. Beneath it was more wood, still burnt, but not so badly. Still unusable, but it gave him the strength to keep going. As quickly as he could, well aware of the approaching wave, he ripped off charred wooden boards, ignoring the splinters digging into his skin. 

And then, as he ripped away another layer, he found it. Wood. Still burnt in patches, still smoking, but good enough to use. He wasted no time ripping the boards from the inside of the crane, stuffing as much as he could into his inventory. He glanced back and forth between his work and the wave as it drew closer. It was moving faster than it seemed. He could tell that now, as it tore through a pile of debris with the force of a TNT blast.

He had to go now. No time to even check if he had enough wood. Tango turned and sprinted back to the tower faster than he’d ever run before. Adrenaline pumped through his body. 

He scrambled up the side, reaching the top in record time, and dumped his collected wood from his inventory. His movements were clumsy, hands shaking as he threw together a crafting table, trying several times to get it right. And then he dropped the remaining wood into the crafting slots, scrambling to fit it all in the right place. 

And just as he’d finished his craft, the wave hit the tower. The force of it ripped the tower from the ground, sending it crashing over into the water and Tango along with it. Before he could even process what was happening, he was underwater, being tossed around by the wave like a ragdoll.

He held his breath, flailing wildly in the surf, but finding himself unable to move of his own free will with the strength of the water. The wave carried him deeper, spinning him around  and then back up to the surface. He seized the opportunity to take a breath, but before he could finish, the water was atop him again and he found himself coughing and choking. 

He was going to drown, he realized, and it would all be for naught. 

No. No, Tango couldn’t let that happen. He’d never make it back to where he died. He’d just be stuck drowning for who knew how long. This was his only chance to save himself.

With a burst of strength Tango hadn’t know he possessed, he pulled the boat from his inventory. And when the water carried him up near the surface again, he threw his arm upwards and placed the boat atop the water. Before he could be carried off again, he grabbed the edge of the boat, holding on for dear life as the water thrashed him about. The boat turned over from his own body weight, landing over Tango’s head, but he kept his grip even as his lungs screamed for air. 

And then the wave passed on by, leaving a trail of water in its place. Not calm water, but not nearly so violent anymore.

He pulled himself up and onto the underside of the boat, coughing up a mouthful of water. His throat burned and his lungs burned and his limbs burned.

 He collapsed on his back, continuing to gasp for breath, his whole body shuddering with fear and adrenaline before it promptly gave out, and he lost the strength to even raise an arm.

Tango laid there for a long while, breathing in the sweet, smokey air. He was alive, he realized. He was safe. He wasn’t in a death loop.

And more than that, he had a mode of transportation other than his own two legs. Something that would take him far from here. To a safer place.

No, more importantly, it would take him to his friend. The one who had drowned. He must be here somewhere as well, maybe closer to the coast. And now Tango had a way to help.

But not now. Not yet. He was utterly exhausted, too exhausted to even think of ducking back in the water to turn the boat over. And so he laid on his back and closed his eyes. He wasn’t going to sleep, he doubted he’d be able to in these circumstances. But he was going to rest. He needed it. He wouldn’t be able to do anything until then.

“And then,” Tango said to himself, voice hoarse. “Then, I’ll come and save you. Just wait for me.”

Chapter Text

Etho awoke to the sound of the ocean and the smell of salt in the air. The sun was already high in the sky, shining in through the window of his little safety shack. He’d camped out at his squidelpian (squid, kelp, and guardians) farm, far out in the ocean, his work having finished too late into the night to make the flight home. 

He rubbed his eyes, momentarily blinded by the sunlight. He was tempted to just go back to sleep, but he knew it was too bright to do so. Then again, he probably could use a bit more sleep, given how late he’d been up. He wasn’t sure how late it had been, he hadn’t bothered to check. He’d only stopped once his mind had started to feel too foggy to continue. It wasn’t a new thing–he’d never been good at taking breaks once he got started on something, even to eat or sleep. Having to wrench himself out of his headspace while his mind still churned with ideas was almost painful for him, and he knew that it would be even harder to jump back in again. And so it was easier not to bother, to just keep going until he crashed. It was what he had always done.

Bdubs would have scolded him for it, if he were here. Would have probably gone on a whole rant about how important it was to get a healthy eight hours of sleep. And then Etho would tease him for a bit, maybe say he must just be afraid of the dark, or offer to read him a bedtime story. And Bdubs would splutter and feign outrage until Etho agreed to go to bed at a reasonable time, though both of them knew he wouldn’t.

But Bdubs wasn’t here anymore, and he never would be again. And someday, all too soon, Beef and Pause and everyone else he loved wouldn’t be either. 

Etho pushed that thought out of his mind. He didn’t like thinking about it, not just because it hurt, but because it wouldn’t stop hurting. There was nothing he could say to himself that would be comforting, that would dull the pain that such thoughts drew from his heart, not when he already knew what the cold, hard reality of life was. Or his life, at least. He’d been here long before any of the other hermits, and he’d be here long after them. Forever, maybe. He didn’t actually know. Nobody had bothered to explain anything to Etho about who or what he was. 

Deciding that the effort of getting up and down to business was preferable to lying there with his thoughts, Etho pushed the woolen blanket off of him, giving his eyes another rub. He found some bread and carrots in his inventory and scarfed them down, wishing he had some coffee. A couple of days now and he’d actually be able to go get some. Or, more likely, one of the other hermits would buy up a large supply of the stuff that Etho could trade for. He didn’t like to go to hub worlds. They were crowded and loud, both things that Etho found exhausting. He’d rather devote his energy to more important things. Like making farms. 

Speaking of which, there was an issue with the kelp collection system that he needed to figure out before too much of it ended up in overflow lava. Not really an issue when supplies were infinite, but Etho didn’t like wasting the stuff. Plus, it was something he could focus all his attention on, and then he would have no need to think about anything else.

He did check his communicator once before he started his work. 

< VintageBeef > hey E, still out at your guardian farm? let me know when you’ll be coming home

< Etho > okay mom

< VintageBeef > dont you get cheeky with your mother young man

< Renthedog > lol XD

< Etho > youre not even my real mom

< Zombiecleo > why are you two like this?

He smiled slightly at the exchange, that taste of normalcy from the night before, and typed out a reply.

< Etho> ill be home this afternoon. got to fix kelp first

He didn’t wait to receive a message. If he dawdled too long, he’d miss what little daylight remained, and working at night was kind of a pain, even if the area was well-lit.

The kelp farm was an easy fix. A single misaligned hopper to reconnect, and a quick test to make sure everything was working fine again. It was. He checked it over several times, looking for something else to fix, until he finally concluded that there wasn’t anything more to do. It wasn’t like these farms were particularly complex. He gathered up the drops that had accumulated in storage while he was asleep. It should be enough to make a good deal of dark prismarine, maybe even enough to share with the other hermits, but then again, it was easy to underestimate just how many blocks you needed. Maybe he should make a tunnel connected to his home base for item transport. Maybe one for travel as well, an ice boatway or something. Things to add to a list of plans. 

The trip across the ocean took almost thirty minutes even on wings. The nearest ocean monument had been a ways away from spawn town. A tunnel for that would be a lot of work and a lot of water breathing potions. It was a good project, one that would take a lot of time and energy. Good. 

He landed on the road in the middle of town. It was quiet today, even though this was usually the busiest part of the server. Lots of Hermits were off-world, maybe enjoying a bit of peace and quiet on single player, or visiting friends and family on a temporary server. He should probably go talk to Pause at some point, but Etho was leaving that up to Beef. He was better at scheduling these sorts of things than Etho was. 

He came to his starter base, the one he’d built way back at the beginning of the season, now crammed between Ren’s camper van and Beef’s modern house. It wasn’t particularly good looking, a simple little thing of oak and cobble, a build that would have been outdated 10 years ago. But it wasn’t like that had been a good time to worry about aesthetics. Not when there were so many more important things to deal with. And even after everyone had returned, he’d been too busy helping out Xisuma and Doc to do anything with it. 

He should find somewhere to settle, start work on his own base, now that he had the time. That was something to add to the list of tasks to do.

He dumped his collected blocks into his incredibly lackluster storage system, something that was at the top of his priority list to fix, and grabbed some baked potatoes from a barrel.  Etho checked his comm as he ate to see if Beef had sent him anything else. 

<VintageBeef whispered to Etho: can you come visit me when you get back?>

There were messages in the chat after it, so it was probably a few hours old. He should probably head over then. Beef hadn’t specified where to meet, but Etho assumed it would be in his base. He’d moved out of the tiny starter house he’d built next to Etho some time ago, and so Etho equipped his wings and made the short journey over to Beef’s new base. It wasn’t a far flight, nobody’s base was that far away. 

He glided above the world for a while until he came to the outskirts of the spruce forest that Beef had chosen for his base. He’d built up a little cabin along a lakeside, easy to spot from the air with the smoke streaming from the chimney. Etho circled overhead once to slow his speed before drifting down to the ground, feet sinking into the squishy podzol below. 

He knocked on the door to Beef’s house and received a distant “come in” in response. Inside, sitting at a hand-carved dining table, were both Beef and Doc, apparently mid conversation.

Etho froze in the doorway. He hadn’t known Doc would be here too. It shouldn’t be a problem, Doc was his friend too, but he didn’t like being taken by surprise. And besides, seeing both Beef and Doc together, his two close friends sans the third, filled him with unease. It just wasn’t right. Not without him here.

“Hey Etho,” Beef said. His tone was casual, but Etho could tell it was forced. “Uh, is it okay if Doc’s here? He stopped by to pick up some netherwart, but then we got to talking. And I know he wants to talk with you too.”

Etho wasn’t sure he wanted to talk with either of them, but he felt like an animal who had already walked right into a trap. Anxiously, he took a seat at the table across from Doc. 

“I thought it was time we discussed some things,” Beef went on. “Sorry to take you by surprise.”

Etho’s eyes flicked back and forth between the two of them. For a moment, nobody in the group spoke, until Beef cleared his throat and continued.

“Look, I don’t wanna be overbearing, or put pressure on you, or anything. And I know you’re kind of a loner, but…I’m getting worried, you know? You’ve been avoiding everyone, haven’t you? Even when you were helping Doc and Xisuma, they were the only ones you were interacting with.”

“And even then, it’s not like we were doing anything besides working,” Doc added. “If you want to be alone, that’s fine. But with everything that’s happened, can you really blame us for worrying about you?”

Etho pretended to be very interested in the wood grain of the table. He was uncomfortable in serious conversations to begin with, and not the biggest fan of social interaction in general. The fact that the focus seemed to be on him only made the matter worse.

“Etho,” Beef said. “Look, we aren’t trying to, to put pressure on you or anything. But if something’s going on, if you’re hurting, you can talk to us, you know. We…we all miss them too.” His voice cracked on the last word. 

And what was Etho supposed to say? Of course he knew that Beef and Doc were also grieving, and that people got some relief in talking through their pain with others, but that wasn’t something he knew how to do. 

“Please talk to us, Etho. What’s going through your mind right now? You haven’t talked about any of this at all. It would be fine if you’d have worked things through by yourself, but clearly you haven’t. So please, talk to us. If you’re not ready, then say that. But this can’t go on.”

The interior of the room felt too warm for Etho, baking in the sun through the wide glass window. Sweat pooled underneath his bandanna and mask. “I…” What was he supposed to say? Etho didn’t know. He didn’t know how to go about talking about anything. He much preferred to keep everything tucked securely in his chest. Being emotionally open wasn’t just unpleasant, but painful, and he’d bear the dull pain of hiding everything inside if it meant not having to deal with that. If it meant nobody would look at him any differently.

Besides, It wouldn’t change anything. Wouldn’t bring Tango and Bdubs back to life. No, it would just draw up painful feelings as if that would be enough to make them go away. It seemed to Etho more like poking at a bruise. 

Beef and Doc were patiently waiting for him, but he didn’t know what to give them. 

“We can just hang out for a while if that would be better,” Doc said. “Just do something fun. I really need a break anyhow.”

“We could go for a swim.” Beef suggested. “I mean, I do have a lake out there after all.  We don’t have to talk or anything, but it’d be nice to just hang out. Oh, um…if that’s okay with you, Doc.”

“Not a problem. Etho, how about you?”

Etho nodded in response. He’d rather just work on something than float about in the lake, but it would at least be preferable to sitting at this table and waiting for Etho to say something.

The day was bright and clear, and it felt very much like an ordinary day. Just floating about in the water wasn’t most of the hermits’ idea of fun when there were minigames to be played and pranks to be pulled, but that didn’t mean that they couldn’t take the time to just relax and recharge. Nobody could stay on top of things all the time, after all.

Doc remained on the pier, setting up an apparent barbecue area with a campfire and some steaks. He might have avoided the water due to his recent experiences, but Etho had known Doc long enough to know that he wasn’t a big fan of swimming in general, given that he tended to sink pretty rapidly. Etho and Beef floated out in the lake, enjoying each other’s company in silence. 

It was normal and simple and fun. The water carried Etho’s tired, heavy body with ease, and seemed to soothe his thoughts into a quiet blankness. He didn’t need to think about anything out here. Everything could just be normal, for a little bit. 

They didn’t stay out long, it was already late in the day, and the taiga went from cool to chilly as the sun sank in the sky, too much so for the water to be comfortable.

In the evening, the trio ate Doc’s freshly barbecued stakes and watched the sun set on the horizon, casting a brilliant glow over the treetops. None of them had much to say. At times like this, it might have been nice to rest on the shore late into the hours of the night, but the area wasn’t well lit enough for that.

The three of them ended up collapsing in Beef’s house, resting on the variety of comfy chairs and sofas like kids at a slumber party. Etho almost felt like a kid again, spending a day just hanging out at the lake. There was nothing wrong with that, Etho thought. Maybe that was what he needed. Something light and simple and relaxing. He still felt tired.

What would happen tomorrow? Would he go back to his work again, distancing himself from everyone, trying to find other mindless activities to distract himself? Because at the end of the day, this too had been a distraction.

His mind felt eased. A little lighter. He might not get another chance to try.

“I think…I think I just don’t know how to face things,” he said softly. He could feel Doc and Beef’s eyes on him, their surprise that he had willing broached the topic. He’d even surprised himself, having spoken before he could fully think through what he actually wanted to say. He knew if he did, he’d lose his nerve.

“There’s nothing I can tell myself to make it hurt less. So I just…wanted to avoid everything.”

That was what it came down to, really. He’d ignored the issue, in the same way he’d ignored the moon as it grew on the horizon. Back then, he’d assumed somebody else would fix it. Back then, he’d figured that everybody would have banded together and overcome things. But he hadn’t even been there in the end. One trip to his precious old survival world and he’d been locked out, left to wonder what had happened on the other side. He hadn’t been worried. He’d just assumed things would be okay. And now that they weren’t, he wasn’t equipped to handle it.

“Even with you guys. It’s easier to avoid you than to think about…how I’m just going to have to say goodbye in the end.”

“Oh,” Beef said, his voice soft and sad. “That’s…I’m sorry, Etho.”

“It’s not like it’s your fault. It’s just the way I am.”

“I know, I know, I just…wish we could have talked about this sooner.”

Etho pulled his knees up to his chest. It hurt. Talking about this hurt. “I don’t see why we have to. It won’t change anything.”

“Still,” Doc said. “Hm, when you talk about things, it can help you realize a lot about what you really feel. And just sharing your pain, instead of keeping it inside. It hurts, but some things have to hurt more to get better.”

“I guess.”

“I think it’s important,” Beef said. “To talk about these things, if you can. I mean, we’re all going to have to say goodbye eventually. And I know it’s not the same thing, given your lifespan, but I think being afraid to lose the ones you love is a universal experience. And because it’s a pain we all share, in one way or another, it’s something we can work through together.”

He took a shaky breath. “Knowing that Bdubs is gone. That we won’t see him again. It hurts whenever I think about it. Everything that could have been, and now can never be. So I want to keep sharing my memories of him. And I want to make new memories with the people I love, with the time we have left. That’s what will matter the most, in the end.”

“I keep thinking about that,” Etho found himself saying. “If I’d have known, I would have done more. I would have spent more time with him. I would have made sure we at least completed one project, someday. But I didn’t, and now that can never happen. Tango, too. I wanted to see what he’d do for Decked Out 2. He was so excited about it, so excited for me to play it, but I won’t ever be able to now. And then I think about you and Doc and everyone else, and think that I need to go to you, to make new memories as quickly as I can. But then it all feels wrong, that I can’t make any good memories when I’m that desperate. So I end up doing nothing.”

He hadn’t meant to say all that. Hadn’t even known how much he felt that way, until Beef had started talking. He hadn’t bothered to probe his own feelings long enough to figure that out. Not until Beef had said his own piece. 

“This is a memory, right now,” Beef said. “Maybe not…not a happy one, but I don’t think it’s completely bad either.” His voice was thick with tears. Etho wasn’t the crying type, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d done so, didn’t think he could even if he’d wanted to. But he sank down and laid his head on Beef’s shoulder as Beef cried. And that felt, almost, like a relief for him too.

Chapter Text

Bdubs couldn’t be sure how much time had passed in the dark belly of the submarine. It felt like a long time. The salty water flowed in through the opening in a slow, steady stream, creeping up from his ankles to his calves to his knees. Bdubs himself alternated between sitting slumped against the wall, awaiting his fate, to banging frantically on the sides of the sub and yelling for help, to pacing back and forth through the rising water like an animal in a cage. He’d tried everything to plug the hole, stuffing both shirt and shoes along with his moss hoodie into the gap. It hadn’t helped a bit, and had only gotten him scratched up by the tiny glass shards that floated through the murky water, and so he’d left only his hoodie in the gap to catch any larger debris. 

A part of him honestly wished that the water would finish rising already and start drowning him. It couldn’t be that much worse than waiting to die like this. Well, actually, it probably could, and he was sure he’d be eating those words once he was stuck in an actual death loop. But it didn’t feel like that right now, okay? And besides, at least if he was actually drowning, he wouldn’t be stuck drowning in his own dread, the horrible anticipation of a fate he couldn’t avoid, and the knowledge that he was, very likely, completely alone.

He’d checked his comm a few times in the sickly amber glow of the shroom light, squinting to see the stupid screen. All that was there was his one death message from earlier, or at least he assumed it was his, his name wasn’t actually showing up for some reason. And nothing else. He shouldn’t be surprised, really. Everyone else had left, he knew that. They’d all been smart enough to book it out of here while they had the chance and it must have worked out for them. It better have, Bdubs wasn’t willing to consider any other alternatives to that, no thank you. 

He should’ve just gone with them. If he hadn’t been so stubborn, so determined to face the end of the world with a smile and without panic, so desperate to pretend like he wasn’t scared, then he wouldn’t be trapped here in this horrible situation that was growing ever so slightly worse by the minute. 

“It’ll be fine,” he told himself. “I’ll be fine. You know, I bet everyone else is up there above the world, waiting for things to settle down. And now that the moon’s gone and crashed, any minute they’ll be swooping down here to bust open this stupid thing and lemme out. Any minute now.”

The sound of his voice echoing around the submarine sounded rather pathetic. 

“They’re coming for me. Of course they’re coming for me. You know, since they all escaped just safe and sound, there’s no way they’d leave me here. I mean, they know I stayed, right? I did tell them I was staying. Didn’t I?”

He probed his memory, trying to figure out if he actually had told anyone outright that he wasn’t planning to leave. He’d sent a warning message to Tango, had he mentioned it then? And he’d declined Keralis’ offer to join him on his space station, but had he actually said he was staying here until the end?

He wouldn’t have just…not told anyone. Surely…surely not! 

“They know, of course they know! It’s just…erm, it’s too hot for them right now. They don’t wanna get all barbecued like Bdubs. Or maybe, maybe they’re letting me sweat a little, so they can all rub it in my face when they gotta bail me out like a–like a princess in a tower! Those jerks!”

They wouldn’t do that. They were too kind. Bdubs decided to ignore that fact. 

The water was up to his chest now, too deep for him to be pacing around or lying against the wall. It was pleasantly warm, the temperature of a nice bath, though the fact that it was filled with little tiny glass knives and who knew what else kinda killed any potential pleasantness. Also the fact that it was probably going to drown him. That, too.

He began passing the time by collecting glass in the folds of his shirt, careful not to cut himself up any further, and pushing it all off to one end of the sub. It was the kind of fruitless task that would never get him anywhere, like trying to scoop up an ocean with a single bucket, but it was something to keep him busy, at least. And so he did that for a while, until the water rose so high he had to stand on his tiptoes to keep his head above the water. Not because he was short or anything like that, he was sure anyone else would be having just as much trouble as he was. And, and besides, the water was still rising, so it wasn’t like a few extra pixels of height would’ve made that much of a difference. 

But balancing like that hurt his feet, and so he gave up and let himself float on his back, kicking off his shoes in case he needed to tread water. He closed his eyes, listening to the steady stream of water rushing in, and tried to imagine that he was floating in a tranquil pool beneath a waterfall, safe and relaxed. Maybe within a little hollow grotto. It was a difficult thing to imagine, given the circumstances, which was fine, because it meant he could devote all his energy to keeping up the illusion. 

“Ah lovely, so refreshing. Man, I’ve just been so stressed, I really–I really needed a nice lil’ vacation.”

The words sounded stupid to his own ears, and so he decided to just shut up and play pretend silently. 

And just when he’d nearly convinced himself of his own safety, or had nearly convinced himself that he’d convinced himself, the sound of flowing water abruptly stopped. Confused, Bdubs opened his eyes, rolling over to tread the water.

“What the–”

The water level had risen above the opening, just over halfway up the sub. Bdubs swam over to it, trying to determine if water was still flowing in. He put a hand to the opening, but didn’t feel any water pushing against it, nor were there any air bubbles flowing out. And it didn’t seem like the water was rising, but just in case, Bdubs grabbed a larger shard of glass and scraped it against the side of the sub near the shroom light, marking the water line. A genius idea, though he’d have to wait a while to see if the water level actually rose. But it didn’t seem like it would.

A laugh bubbled out of his throat, shaky with both residual terror and relief. His heart was hammering in his chest, he hadn’t even noticed how hard it had been beating up until then. 

“AHA!” he said, voice booming around the walls of the hollow sub. “I’m saved, oh yes, everything’s fine now! False alarm, everyone! Everything’s fine.”

Was it, though? Floating on his back hadn’t seemed too difficult, but surely it wasn’t something he could keep up forever. Otherwise, why would anyone ever drown? But then again, he could probably dig his fingers into the crevasses in the blackstone bricks and hold on that way if he needed to. 

Although, he was reminded by the dryness in his mouth and the growling of his stomach that he still needed food and water. Drinking the seawater would only make things worse, he knew that much, and he also didn’t really want to be eating any tiny shards of glass, no thank you. But that wasn’t the kind of horrible death loop that would leave him suffering indefinitely. If his hunger and thirst got too severe, he could just drown himself and buy a couple days of relative peace. 

It wasn’t a comfortable spot to be in, but compared to his worst fears, it was a survivable one. And so, with a relieved sigh to let out the worst of his dread, he settled back into the water and waited. At some point, he’d go and check if it was cool enough to survive out in the open. But he wasn’t really eager to test it just yet. It had been…an unpleasant way to die. Better safe than sorry and all that. Maybe when he got hungry enough, he’d give it a shot, and either die and reset his stomach or find himself safe. 

Now that he was no longer in imminent danger, he was starting to feel sleepy. How long had he been awake? He couldn’t be sure if it had been a full day, a few hours, or what. But if he slept, he might just end up rolling over and drowning. Which sounded preferable to staying awake for who knew how long, honestly. Bdubs needed his beauty shreep, after all! Everyone knew that.

He settled for doing his best to relax, which was easier than it had been before when he’d been distracted by the ticking clock counting down to his horrible fate. Now the only clock was the one inside his stomach, and at least that wasn’t a clock that was nearly as anxiety inducing than the one from before. And his newfound drowsiness made it much easier to relax. 

He didn’t fall asleep, but did slip into something close, like that period just before you fell asleep, the one it was nearly impossible to remember. He managed not to drown himself, thankfully, lazily drifting in the water, until he was hit by a stinging sensation radiating from his hand, like the barb of a pufferfish.

He pulled his hand free from the water, assuming that he’d hit a piece of glass or something. But when he held it up in the glow of the shroomlight, he realized something was very wrong with both his hands.

They were all shriveled and pruny, which wasn’t that strange. He’d been in the water for a good while, after all. The problem was that all that pruny skin seemed to be pulling itself free of his body, pale and loose like pieces of limp cloth dangling from his hands and arms. On one of his hands, the skin had split open on his palm, where the salty water had stung it. Surely it was only a matter of time until all his skin started flaking off, leaving him exposed to the terrible pains of the salt water.

“Okay,” Bdubs said, trying hard not to panic. “Okay, I can fix this. Just gotta, just gotta drown myself, yeah, and it’ll all be fine. I’ll be fixed up good as new.”

But he found himself hesitating. It wasn’t easy to just override your survival instincts, especially when it came to something like drowning. And besides, what if he didn’t spawn back here? Sure, he had before, back when he’d burnt to death, but that was before the water level was over his head. And worlds usually wouldn’t spawn players directly underwater, not if there were other viable spots.

Would the spawning algorithm take the outside temperature into account when deciding where to spawn him? It seemed unlikely. Drowning was a vanilla feature, something that the spawn location would be primed to avoid. Sudden, intensely hot surface temperatures…weren’t.

He was safe here, even if he wasn’t comfortable. He was in pain, but that pain could get worse. A lot worse. He remembered the excruciating agony of burning to death, the feeling of his skin searing off, the sting of the salt water on his burns a thousand times more intense than the sting of his flaky skin. 

He…really didn’t want to risk ending up in that kind of death loop. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to take it. 

And so he crossed his arms over his chest, doing his best to keep as much bare skin out of the water as he could, and waited. He’d put things off a little longer, give the outside more time to cool down before he did anything drastic. But the fear was back in his chest now, hammering away at his heart, and his breathing had picked up.

“C’mon now…don’t panic,” Bdubs said to himself. “Don’t panic, you got through everything before, when you thought you were gonna drown. This is…this is nothing. Seriously, get a hold of yourself.”

But he couldn’t slow his breathing. His head was pounding in time to his heartbeat, throbbing with pain.

It felt like both an eternity and an instant as he floated there, desperately trying to calm himself down, feeling so dizzy he feared he might just drown himself by accident.

“Okay…fine!” He finally wheezed out. “Fine, if…if I’m so freakin’ scared…I’ll just get it over with. I’m not…scared of nothin’.” 

And with that, he plunged his head into the water before he could think twice about it. He was out of breath enough that he didn’t even have to will himself to inhale the water.

It was, predictably, a terribly unpleasant experience. Bdubs had drowned before, certainly, and it was among some of the worse ways to go, at least in his opinion. Burning to death in fire was probably the worst, slow enough to feel everything, but most other methods of death were so quick there wasn’t even time to feel the pain through the adrenaline and shock, if death wasn’t instantaneous. He flailed about in the water, instinctual panic ironically the only thing that prevented him from saving himself. And then, then it was over and everything was dark and still and painless. 

And then he was back under the water. He took a gulp of air on impulse, but it didn’t matter. He’d just respawned, he had a few seconds of immunity. Etho had told him about that one time. He didn’t remember when.

Bdubs swam to the surface, taking a moment to inspect his hands in the faint light. The skin was no longer sagging off, no longer splitting open, which was a blessing, but his hands were still a bit pruny, the way they might be after a quick bath. Ah, too much time had passed to restore them completely, then. That might be a problem in the long run, but hopefully he wouldn’t be here that long. And dangit, he’d forgotten to go and check outside! Stupid Bdubs. Ah well, if he were being honest, he hadn’t wanted to remember anyway. He didn’t want to die that way again. 

There was one problem, though, Bdubs noticed. His heartbeat was still pretty rapid, and he was still struggling to breathe. Residual panic from a traumatic death? Maybe. But he’d never had a reaction like this before. Fear and discomfort and shock, sure, but nothing so…intensely physical.

He breathed in, feeling the budding beginnings of a headache pressing against his skull. Why?

“What is happening?” he asked aloud. It was hard to speak now. That wasn’t right, that wasn’t normal. He was safe, he’d respawned just fine, so why, why this? 

Maybe the stress of before, all that anxiety and fear, was trapped in here with him and had nowhere to go. 

And then it hit him like a brick straight to the chest, knocking what little air he had out of his lungs.

The water had stopped flowing into the sub, sure. But it was underwater, wasn’t it? Shouldn’t it fill up all this empty space regardless?

But it wasn’t empty space, oh no. The remainder of the sub that wasn’t full of water was full of air. Oxygen. And Bdubs was pretty sure it wasn’t getting more of that from anywhere.

Then, it wasn’t just anxiety trapped in here with him. It was also carbon dioxide. Which he was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to be breathing in. But what did he know, it wasn’t like he was a scientist. 

The aching in his head, the shallow breaths that refused to inflate his lungs all the way, seemed like more than enough evidence to confirm his theory. Maybe that made him a scientist after all.

So he was going to suffocate anyway. So much for being safe. Stupid oxygen! Stupid physics! He couldn’t even voice his anger at them without depleting what little oxygen was remaining.

Honestly, this was even worse than drowning, because it wasn’t so quick to kill him. No, this long and drawn out death was far worse. 

Why is this happening? Bdubs asked inside his head. Why me? What did I do to deserve this? Just because I was stupid and chose to stay behind. That’s not fair at all! 

But physics didn’t seem to be sympathetic to his plight. Stupid. It should be. This world was supposed to be theirs. It shouldn’t do this to him. To any of them.

It wasn’t their world though, was it? They just lived here. They could alter it, sure, shave away the sharp edges. But never change its shape completely.

Bdubs didn’t actually remember what happened next. The next thing he knew, he was under the water again, lungs full of air at least for the moment.

He’d died. Suffocated to death, or, more likely, passed out and drowned, and he hadn’t even noticed. Something about that disturbed him, though it was probably a mercy that he didn’t remember. It was…better than suffering, he supposed. But he’d been suffering prior to his death, and he’d keep suffering now. The spawn immunity timer ran out too quickly, and even faster than before, he found himself out of breath. How long had it taken him to die that first time? How much time did he have now? Not enough, that was certain.

Maybe, maybe enough time had passed that it was cool outside? Please, please let it be cool now. Cut him some slack, for goodness’ sakes! 

He was pretty sure nobody was cutting him any slack. But he didn’t have much of a choice. Stay here and keep suffering, or test his luck.

It was much easier to squeeze his way out now that the opening was under water, even without a full breath of air. He pushed his mossy coat aside, swimming out from the claustrophobic interior of the sub into the open water, thick with debris and muck. He couldn’t bring himself to break the surface, though his lungs screamed for air, still remembering the pain of before. He held his breath a moment longer and, with some reluctance, stuck his hand above the water.

For a moment, his hand was fine, warm but not painfully so, and Bdubs felt his spirits rise. Then he felt the heat on his skin and drew his hand back under the water before he’d even properly registered it. An instinctual reaction, like accidentally touching the top of a lit furnace, and one that had prevented him from getting too badly burned.

But, he realized, it hadn’t been instant. The burning, that was. He’d had a moment, almost a full second, even, where he hadn’t felt any pain. Was it a delayed reaction? No, holding his hand directly on a heat source for that long would’ve given him a pretty nasty burn. Milliseconds mattered when it came to things like that. It was more like that old trick, the one where you could wet your hand and run it through a torch flame. He’d played that one on Pungy, once, he remembered, back when they were kids. 

So then, the water protected him. Just for a moment, but maybe that would be enough.

He didn’t have time to think too hard on it. His lungs were bursting, and it was more instinct than active decision that sent him shooting to the surface. His head broke the water and he inhaled a gulp of air. The sky was still dark with smoke, but he was down at sea level, where the air was still clear. Physics in his favor, for once.

The air itself was hot, but seemed to cool as soon as he ducked back down into the water, before it could burn him. Fresh enough to fill his lungs, unpleasantly warm but not dangerously so, it was a luxury he would have once found miserable. 

 Could he keep doing that indefinitely? Probably not, he doubted he could get enough breaths in to be healthy. Otherwise, again, why would anyone ever drown? Maybe he just didn’t understand how drowning worked. 

He poked his head up again and took another breath, and with it a brilliant idea struck him. He dove back down, back to the opening of the sub, and pulled his mossy jacket from the opening. Draping it over his head, he pushed himself back out of the water. The air flowed through the material of the hoodie, cooled by the water that had soaked it as it vaporized into steam. Bdubs got a few good breaths in before he started to feel the heat and ducked back down again, holding onto the hoodie. 

This wasn’t sustainable, he didn’t think. Not long term, at least. But even if he drowned, he could at least come up here.

But how long would he have to do this? Sitting in the murky water, rationing his breathing. How long could a person do that?

He didn’t know. But he didn’t have any other choices. 

He pushed his head above the water again, grabbing a few breaths. He could only hope he could keep this up long enough for the world to cool down. 

And then…then he’d figure something out. Right now, he just had to focus on staying alive.

Chapter Text

Hypno was waiting for Wels in the lobby, flipping through a magazine–10 Quick and Easy ways to Improve Your Builds. He gave Wels the impression of an anxious parent, waiting on their child to finish whatever minigame they were playing. It wasn’t really a scenario Wels could relate to. He hadn’t seen much of his parents after he’d become a page, after all. But he’d picked up enough knowledge of modern servers over the years to recognize it.

As soon as he entered, Hypno’s head jerked up towards him. He stood up quickly, his movements jittery and anxious. He always seemed to be anxious these days, at least when Wels was involved. It wasn’t as bad as it had been before, back when it had been just Hypno staying with them. But that wasn’t saying much.

“How,” Hypno swallowed, looked away. “How did it go?”

Wels searched his face for what answer he wanted to hear that wouldn’t require any elaboration. “Fine,” he settled on, then after a moment, “good.”

Hypno’s face fell, so Wels guessed that hadn’t been the right thing to say. What had he wanted, then? For Wels to say it had all gone terribly and he was never going back? Or did he want Wels to play at being cheerful, pretend he was all better after one therapy session. As if there was anything to get better from. 

Hypno cleared his throat. “Well, that’s good. I guess.” He closed the magazine, placing it back on the table. Custom, from some furniture mod or another. The same went for the chairs and benches. It was a bit strange seeing them after so much time in a vanilla world. 

“We should be getting home, I guess. We’re not supposed to stay out for long. What was it the message said? Something about minimizing travel outside the server?”

Wels just nodded in agreement. He was glad Hypno hadn’t asked him any more questions–talking felt kind of weird right now, with the pressure bandages around his face and neck. It made it a bit hard to hear as well as speak, which felt as though it sort of limited the purpose of therapy. Well, nothing to be done about it, he supposed.

The therapy waiting room and general area were mercifully empty–Wels supposed that it was errors with updates that brought most people in. Outside was a different story. This was a hub world, after all, and even the least populated of those tended to be fairly crowded. Wels had never enjoyed places like this to begin with, and the amount of eyes on him now didn’t help matters. People stared when they saw something out of the ordinary, and with the compression garments around his face and hands, Wels supposed he counted as that. 

It might have actually bothered him, if he weren’t safe inside his own head. Hypno thought that was a bad thing, everyone did, as if being anxious and miserable was somehow better. 

The therapist he’d met with hadn’t said that, though. 

The quiet of the therapist’s office might have been uncomfortable had it not been for the soft sound of flowing water from the miniature fountain perched on the corner of the desk, water gently trickling down a wall of pebbles. Wels had seen fountains before, larger ones on his home world and on Hermitcraft both, had built a few in his time, but something of this size required modded blocks and various energy sources other than redstone. He wasn’t used to things like that. He’d spent little time on non-vanilla worlds.

The therapist-his therapist, he supposed, didn’t look much like how Wels had expected. He’d had the image of an older man with a crisp white coat and a serious face and an even more serious name. All professional and serious and down to business. Mobblingbobs, or Mr. Mobbles as he called himself, couldn’t have been much older than Wels himself, and his face was open and friendly. He offered Wels a smile and a piece of modded candy from a bowl on his desk. He wore a heavy cardigan with a decorative pattern knitted around the neckline. Maybe it was all meant to make him seem more approachable. Wels wasn’t sure. He’d never been to therapy before. 

Mr. Mobbles had listened as Wels told his story. He didn’t look at him with horror or cloying pity, but a neutral expression and a few nods of the head, which made it easier to talk about. Not that it was a difficult story to tell in the first place. Wels might as well have been summarizing the plot of some movie, the story of what had happened to someone else. It kind of had. He wasn’t the same person as he’d been before, and he didn’t have any desire to be that sort of person again, and so he said as much. 

He’d expected the therapist to push back, the way his friends had. To treat him like a child, like someone who couldn’t think for himself and didn’t know what was best for him. He’d prepared himself for that. That this would all be a waste of time, sitting through this to satisfy his friends and nothing more. 

Mr. Mobbles didn’t speak to him in that tone he’d gotten used to, that patronizing, gentle voice, like he was something fragile. 

“You don’t have to be the person you were before. It’s your choice if you want to change or not, nobody can force you to. You should decide for yourself. What matters most here is what you want to get out of our sessions. Not what your friends want, not what I want, what you want.”

It was strange. Nobody had asked Wels what he’d wanted for a long time, and why would they? It wasn’t as if what he wanted mattered. It would only be painful to wish for something when everything was out of reach. Why would he bother?

“It wouldn’t matter anyway. What I want.”

Mr. Mobbles hummed thoughtfully, as if turning over Wels’ words in his head. “It’s perfectly natural for you to feel that way after what you went through. You were placed in a traumatic situation, one you had no control over. Your brain may have learned that trying to change your circumstances would be a waste of effort. Does that sound right to you?”

It did, Wels supposed. Though it was strange to hear it put that way, like it wasn’t some fundamental truth but the result of his brain…what? Malfunctioning?

“It’s not an unusual reaction to such a situation, though perhaps the intensity of what you endured has worsened the impact. Our brains are wired, after all, to learn from our environment. When that environment is a traumatic one, what the brain learns may be beneficial for self preservation at that time, but it may not serve you nearly as well in a safer environment.”

Was this a safer environment? Yes, Wels was aware of that. But it didn’t feel safe. He wasn’t sure he remembered what it was like to feel safe. And besides, it really didn’t matter what the situation felt like. He’d felt safe enough up in the void. He’d had no reason to expect that in an instant he’d be thrust into a nightmare. How could there be safety in a universe where such a thing could just…happen? Without any warning, without a single sign anything was amiss. What would keep it from happening again?

Nothing. There was nothing. And so Wels couldn’t allow himself to think he had control. He couldn’t let himself feel safe. 

“I can’t think that way. I’d just get hurt.”

He expected Mr. Mobbles to lie to him, the way everyone else did. To tell him that he was safe now, that he didn’t have to worry about that, that it would never happen again. That was what everyone did. They lied and lied to him over and over. Telling him what they thought he wanted, or needed, to hear. How could they make a promise like that? There was no way to know that something like that wouldn’t happen again.

“If that’s what you want, then I can’t stop you from living that way. But it’s a difficult way to live, spending the rest of your life worrying about what might happen.”

“I’m not worried,” Wels said. “That’s the point.”

Mr. Mobbles looked as though he wanted to say something to that, but whatever it was, he decided against it. “Okay. Facing such a situation isn’t an easy thing. I can’t force you to change. But unless you try, you can’t know if this is what you really want. Would you be open to giving it some thought, at least?”

When Wels didn’t reply, he continued. “You don’t have to make any decisions right now. But if you feel up for it, maybe try thinking of something you want. Something small. Something that even if you don’t get what you want, it wouldn’t matter too much to you.”

“Okay,” Wels said. He supposed that wouldn’t hurt, then. At least having something to say would keep the therapist from pestering him about it.

Things felt more lively at the house, these days. Hypno rotated out with Ren and occasionally XB, and his nervous, stagnant energy no longer seemed to seep into the walls of the dingy building. It didn’t matter much to Wels, but it seemed to have done something good for Jevin, who moved around the house more easily, humming softly to himself as he decorated the house with a bunch of knicknacks Ren had brought back from some hub world, little fake plants and custom paintings. He still wouldn’t leave the house, but Wels was pretty sure he was talking to a therapist via his comm. Not a perfect solution, maybe, but better than nothing. 

Hypno was still anxious, there was no doubt about that. But he no longer quite seemed like he was caving in on himself, trying to be everywhere at once like a watchful parent looking after a pair of toddlers. He seemed to have accepted that Wels and Jevin wouldn’t immediately vanish if he didn’t have his eye on them, at least, and occasionally Wels would even find him taking a nap, looking genuinely at peace in his sleep, or at least at some approximation of it. 

As for Ren, Wels wasn’t sure what was going on with him, and he didn’t care enough to find out. Ren was always cheerful, it seemed, or at least pretending to be. He spoke softly around Jevin, but there was still a sort of manic energy to everything he did, one that felt more like compensation than anything. Wels didn’t bother probing into it.

XB seemed troubled. Wels wasn’t aware of all the details, but knew that he’d gone through something as well, back at the beginning of the world, and that now he was worried over Keralis. It would have probably been easier for him and Hypno both if they stopped worrying so much, stopped trying to control things that were far beyond their influence and just accepted whatever happened. Maybe they couldn’t, Wels didn’t know. Maybe he’d gotten lucky to be where he was now, where nothing hurt anymore. Or maybe that had just been the inevitable result of his situation. He didn’t know, and he didn’t really care either way. 

The days passed and Wels observed. There was a lot to do with the server reopened, and most of it Wels let himself drift through. It had taken some time and research from the others to find a place that actually specialized in treating burns. After all, it was rare anyone would have to worry about such a thing. Wels hadn’t asked them to do that, but they’d decided it was best for him, and so he went. 

Once a week, Hypno or Ren or XB took him back for a check up, leading him along as if he were a child who couldn’t be trusted. The rest of the days, Wels followed the exercises he’d been sent home with. They helped him with that, too.

He couldn’t decide if it bothered him or not, having to do the physical therapy, going in for treatment. But the idea that he could be in less pain, recover more function in his hands, didn’t sound bad to him, and so he dutifully went along with it. 

Was that something he wanted, then? To be in less pain? 

No, he refused to try to convince himself he wanted that. It was not a want that would be honored. He knew that. He knew it all too well. No matter how badly he wanted the pain to end, it wouldn’t. And the more he wished it would, the more it would hurt. This was a want he wasn’t allowed to have. 

There was something about the whole thing that bothered him though, something he decided was good enough to bring up in his next therapy session. 

“I want everyone to stop treating me like I’m a child,” he said. A note of something like bitterness was creeping into his voice. He pushed it down. “Or like I’ll shatter if they aren’t constantly watching over me. I understand perfectly well what’s going on around me, but they don’t care. I’m not acting how they want me to, so they’ve decided I’m not capable of anything.”