Chapter Text
Waking up again felt oddly familiar, though instead of the fear he felt when he awoke on Hermitcraft the first time he was calm. He didn't have to hear or see who it was to know that it was Mumbo’s hand that rested on his own. Everything hurt like he'd been hit by a… well like he'd been hit by a tree and there was something strange feeling on his face.
“Morning mate, it's just Scar, Pesky Bird and I in here with you. Portal travel knocked you out pretty good. And the other hermits do know about the blindness, I know you said you wanted me to tell them so I thought it would be more comfortable for you if you didn't have to be there for it.” Mumbo’s voice was soft and warm in all the best ways.
“It’s great to have you back Grian. Sorry I couldn’t come on the rescue mission, we didn’t know what the floor situation would be like.” Scar’s cheerieness was particularly refreshing after everything he’d dealt with. “I need to check some vitals and administer some medication, is that alright with you?” He carefully nodded as well as he could while laying down. “And we do need to talk about some of your medical care going forward. Would you like Mumbo to leave or stay for that?”
‘Stay?’
“Of course, Mumbo you can keep a hold of that hand. I can use the other arm, do you mind lifting the arm he isn’t holding up a bit I just need to wrap something around it to check your blood pressure? It’s going to inflate and get a little tight but I can stop if you need me to, it shouldn’t hurt.” As he lifted his arm a strange and scratchy band was placed on his upper arm and something was placed on his finger, he assumed it had been modified to accommodate his claws given that it actually fit. “It doesn’t look like it’s improved much which worries me, I’m a little scared to ask but have you eaten at all?”
‘No, watchers don’t eat.’
“That makes the tests make a lot more sense, Grian you still have humanlike organs. That means because you haven’t been eating your body has been using what it has as energy, it started with your fat reserves and as those ran out your body started breaking down other things like muscle in order to keep you alive. It’s why I’m seeing high levels of myoglobin and CK in your blood work, that means in addition to other care we need to limit your calories and slowly increase them so we don’t cause refeeding syndrome. That’s going to mean TPK for a while and while we can’t make a lot of allowances if everything is measured out we should be able to let you still have the tea Mumbo mentioned you like.” He understood none of that, but it seemed like Mumbo at least understood the basics.
“What about wound care? I know he generally prefers to be back at our home, and I’m happy to help with any necessary wound care.” Their home, Mumbo called it their home.
“Nothing too exciting, cleaning them often with saline, keep an eye to make sure they aren’t infected. His wings are the most worrisome. Grian if you are okay with it he would need to check them a few times a day to clean the wounds, if that’s not okay we can go over the warning signs for you that something’s getting infected and find a solution for cleaning them.”
He squeezed Mumbo’s hand gently “Mumbo can do it.”
“Did he just? I’m not hearing things right?”
“You didn’t, Grian is selectively mute he’s just getting comfortable enough around you that his voice could turn on.”
“So I was right! I thought I heard someone else at the firework show but you three were the only ones at the park with me but I knew it wasn’t Mumbo’s voice and I was pretty sure Pesky Bird didn’t talk!” Scar sounded so gratified in that moment. “Well I think I’ve done everything I need to and can do. There are some others who want to chat, do you two mind if I ask about someone to show you two how to clean your wing injuries? I don’t know if it would be today but it would be sometime this week.”
“That’s okay, but maybe nobody who’s threatened me with a sword? If that’s okay… if not I’ll deal!”
“Would Skizz work for you? He’s the only other one with feathered wings who fits the criteria, though he does only have two and you have… wait how many wings do you have?” Mumbo seemingly hadn’t thought about it until that very moment.
“Ten, five on each side not counting the ear feathers that sort of work like wings, they have muscles and bones.” He explained to interested sounds from the two.
“I have so many questions about that for later, but I do really need to get going. Doc has been excitedly waiting to show you two his latest project, and I need to prepare the TPN dose schedule and calculations. Does two cups of tea a day work? Oh and Mumbo I’ll need measurements for the tea so I can account for it properly. Or rather the computer can, we don’t want me accidentally mixing up numbers.” The vex hybrid chuckled lightly.
“That should be good, thank you Scar.” His voice kept quiet but the gratefulness practically screamed from his words.
“Doc!” Mumbo practically cheered as the door opened.
“Grian, it’s good to see you back here. All of us hermits were worried about you. However that is not what I’m here to discuss, I’m here to show you this bad boy!” Doc presumably showed the item he had brought.
“What is it?” Mumbo responded curiously.
“This device essentially functions as supplementary eyes. The other hermits and I with the exception of Mumbo have agreed on a form of on-call schedule to make it work. If you press the raised button on the side it contacts one of the two on-call hermits at that time who will be able to help you with tasks that might need vision, reading instructions, identifying colours, describing visuals, anything. And there’s three buttons on the bottom near the microphone for you to press to ask about different things. They each have a different raised symbol to help identify them.” That… that was so cool!
“Wait why am I not on the on call schedule?”
“We believed that since you two live together and spend so much time together you already help when you can so placing you on the on call schedule didn’t make sense.” Doc continued on for a while, demonstrating how to use it and helping him get used to it. He even got to be connected to XB who described Pesky Bird to him, apparently the parrot’s feathers were bright shades of red, yellow and blue with his wings starting as red at the base and transitioning through yellow to blue. After a bit he headed out to work on some research that both Mumbo and Grian were too scared to ask about.
“Mumbo can I ask you something?”
“Always.”
“I know they’re a part of something evil but I’ve never really been able to know what they look like, can you describe my wings to me? The only times I caught a glimpse of them they were covered in the purple glow that surrounds things watchers touched that apparently we were the only ones who could see.”
"Grian, buddy they're beautiful. I know you think they're something that proves you're evil but they're not. They shine like obsidian, black until the light hits them and then they suddenly shine a bright purple that almost glows. There is absolutely nothing evil about them, nor is there anything evil about you." Mumbo’s statement almost broke him fully, he had never had anything of his that wasn’t death or destruction complimented.
“Knock knock! It’s Impulse and Skizz! Do you mind if we come in, Scar mentioned you two needed a crash course in wing cleaning?” Did that mean Mumbo couldn’t hold onto his hand for comfort anymore?
“You alright if they come in?” He supposed he was.
‘Sure but mind helping me sit up?’ Mumbo was gentle with him, wrapping his hands around Grian’s shoulders and carefully rotating and lifting him to a seated position careful to not hurt him.
“Come on in!” Mumbo called out once he had gotten Grian properly situated.
“Hey dudes! Scar asked me if I’d be able to help teach Mumbo how to clean your wing injuries, Dippledop usually helps me when I need to clean mine since I get a little birdbrained. So he is going to show Mumbo how to do it using my wings, so if he makes any mistakes it won’t mess with your healing. And that means nobody else needs to touch yours, I know it took me a long time before anyone but Impulse could touch mine without me panicking.”
“I’m Dippledop, it’s Skizz’s nickname for me. There isn’t a third person here don’t worry.” It appeared that the confused look about the nickname had been spotted by Impulse.
“Dangit! I was trying so hard to explain things right that I forgot you’re blind! Sorry G!” And that honestly brought him a lot of comfort, he had been so worried that they would think he was weak that he hadn’t been expecting anyone to forget about it.
‘It’s okay.’ He couldn’t help but smile a bit.
“So usually the way we do it is I sit on the floor infront of Dippledop but your wings are a lot longer than mine, it might be easier for you if you sit on something without a back like a stool and have Mumbo sit on a chair for the top ones and the floor for the lower parts. What would make it easier for you to learn it?” Skizz was sweet in his tone.
“Floor I guess?”
“Sounds like a plan, Dippledop can walk you through it.” He heard a thump that he hoped was Skizz sitting on the ground and not him falling.
“You can take the wing closer to Grian, I’ve got a feeling you don’t want to be too far from him.” Impulse chuckled followed by two thumps.
“Thanks mate.”
“Of course, here you go! We usually use a slightly damp cloth to get any particularly bad spots, as a general rule you don't want to get them too wet without planning to dry it with a blow dryer on no heat or a towel. Water can mess with the natural oils on feathers too so if they get wet enough that you can't feel the oil you want to add a bit of wing oil, a ton of shops sell them so it's just a matter of preference.” Impulse’s normally energetic voice was shockingly calm.
“Like this?”
“Perfect, once we're done with that we are going to go over them to check for broken, ingrown and misaligned feathers. Broken and ingrown feathers need to be removed either with your hand or tweezers, for misaligned feathers it's easy you just need to readjust them.” Part of the way through Impulse’s explanation it became clear what Skizz meant by birdbrain, the man’s breathing relaxed audibly with a sigh and he let out a small and content trill. He hadn’t realised for a few moments after that it was him instead of Pesky Bird who trilled back, he genuinely didn’t know where it came from. As far as he knew he wasn’t actually an avian, despite the wings watchers much more closely resembled an alien species than avians and humans.
“I’m going to take that as a yes on him wanting to visit the flying course with the nest at the top once he’s healed up, I think Skizz and False would enjoy having another bird to fly with. Alright so usually each wing takes somewhere between ten minutes to an hour, so depending on the state of his wings you two might need to break it up into chunks of a few at a time. I’d recommend starting from the top so you don’t risk getting the ones you’ve already worked on dirty.”
“I’m not a bird.” His voice stayed quiet but it was clear the two fully conscious others in the room heard.
“I think they’ll consider you an honorary avian, especially considering the time Skizz tried to pick me up and put me in the nest in a feat of incredible sleep deprivation. I’m pretty sure they’ll count you as one of them.” The smile in Impulse’s voice was clear. “And Skizz still feels pretty bad that he was upset with you when he thought you didn’t like my traits, he gets pretty protective. We uh… we had a lot of people who thought I was some kind of monster growing up, so now he gets a little riled up if he thinks people are judging me for what I look like.” Mumbo had mentioned something about that before and he felt bad, he didn’t mean to upset anyone with his reaction.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologise it was a misunderstanding, they happen all the time. It’s not your fault or his, they’re a fact of life.” They continued talking even after Skizz’s wings were done, it started with things that mostly made sense to him except for the empathy they had for him but quickly devolved into technical discussions about how different pieces of technology worked. Eventually though Impulse decided to take Skizz back to his home for something called arranarr? And Mumbo got a message from Keralis asking if he and Xisuma could come by, the pair agreeing only after Mumbo grabbed back onto his hand with a comforting squeeze.
“Thank you for saying you would talk to us, we both wanted to apologise for everything and hopefully offer an explanation. You deserved better than the way your arrival was handled.” Keralis’ voice was soft as he spoke.
“He’s right, for the most part. My actions were my own fault and he had no responsibility my behaviour. And while not an excuse I hope that I can help explain some of why I did what I did.” Xisuma was apologising? Why was Xisuma apologising? “We had never had someone make it to our world who we hadn’t invited and it threw us for a loop.”
“And it didn’t help anyone that when confused, or most other emotions to be fair he has a tendency to not sleep until they have solved whatever happened. I have legitimately had to sedate void after a particularly suspicious fly was found and he started trying to fistfight a table for talking to them badly.” And that was both concerning and a little funny. “As it turns out injecting melatonin into the bloodstream is extremely effective.” That was just plain terrifying.
“Iiiiii- I didn’t know he did that.’
“I’m just going to head out.” Keralis’s footsteps quickly receded.
“Regardless it doesn’t excuse my actions, we hermits pride ourselves on our empathy for each other and you should’ve gotten that too. And I will never be able to apologise for that enough.”
'You came to rescue me even after I showed up out of nowhere and put everyone in danger. If anyone should apologise it's me. I'm sorry and if you want me to leave I will, no fight.' Grian pulled his hand away from Mumbo’s, his signs shaky and his mind fogged over with sadness over the possibility of leaving behind Mumbo and Pesky Bird
"Not nessecary we called a vote while you were out and I wanted to be the one to tell you, if you would like you are welcome to stay. And I for one can say we would love to have you and I hope we can show you that." Tears began to well up in his eyes, this had to be a trick right? He didn’t deserve that.
"But I'm a monster?”
"You are many things Grian but a monster isn't one of them." Xisuma didn’t even seem shocked that he’d spoken, voi spoke with a softness he didn’t expect. "Mumbo do you mind leaving the room for a minute?" Xisuma asked, Mumbo's footsteps not leaving until he was offered a nod. "May I grab your hand?" He nods again, hearing a hiss of air and feeling his hand gently grasped. "I know you can't see this so I thought you would benefit from feeling it instead." His hand is lifted to touch rough skin, feeling a raised area he assumes is the man's nose. Incomprehensively smooth sections that feel as if they crackle with electricity. "Monsters are defined by actions not appearance, I spent many years being called one for what I am. Most of the hermits haven't seen my face, and still believe that I'm a voidwalker. But once upon a time I was a human, touched by the void and permanently scarred." He feels the man's face dampen as tears slip from his eyes.
"Thank you Xisuma, even when I can't see your face I know it must be as lovely as you are." Xisuma had offered so much kindness and vulnerability in that conversation, it was more than even Mumbo had been able to offer. He and Xisuma shared something that even most hybrids didn’t quite have, because even hybrids felt they were monsters. But maybe if Xisuma wasn’t a monster then perhaps he wasn’t as much of one as he thought he was. “If the offer is still open, I would love to stay.”
“I’m glad, I think we were all hoping that would be your answer.”
He was still struggling to believe this was all real, and somewhere deep inside him he had to wonder... what happened with his memories when he was with the high watcher?