Chapter Text
Grian had never been worshipped, not in the way that Watchers were supposed to be worshipped.
It was a simple principle, really, that determined a deity’s power: The more prayers one would get, the more powerful they would become. The less prayers one would get, the more humanoid they’d stay. It was one of the main reasons the Watchers even bothered to mingle with Player worlds, making sure people remembered them. Making sure that they would stay powerful, that They could keep up their ignorant, decadent lifestyle. It seemed ironic to Grian, that the powers They used to control Players were so dependent on those same Players’ beliefs.
Then again, the Watchers had always had double standards.
Grian had figured that his lack of worship was why he was able to escape easily enough. He was weak enough to slip under the radar, just powerless enough that he wasn’t of any real use to the Watchers other than to exercise Their control over those beings weaker than Them. Oh, of course, he knew he would’ve ruffled a lot of feathers when They finally noticed he had up and left, but They knew he was too weak to be a threat to Them, so why bother chasing after him?
Grian liked his reasoning. It made him feel weaker, more like a Player.
And so Grian did what he could to stay under the radar. Sure, he heard a few prayers here and there. They would call him by his Watcher Name, Xelqua, and ask for strength and protection. He never answered them, never even Looked their way if he could help it. Still, he was able to figure out a lot about them from their prayers alone. Mostly it was the misfits and runaways who looked to him, Players who were steadily on the move and hadn’t yet carved out a place for themselves, who would move on to different places and start praying to different gods soon enough.
He would gladly send them off with a smile and secretly wish them good luck for their future.
Only a couple of believers ever stuck around.
Surprisingly enough, Xisuma was a common voice among them, and oh, had Grian been awkward when he first heard his future Admin’s voice outside of his own head. He had come to associate the power of X’s many small and exasperated prayers with a slight drizzle of rain, steady, sometimes annoying, but generally unobtrusive. At first glance, that picture did not seem to fit with the serious, armour-clad figure of the man in front of him.
In all honesty, had they been alone, that first time they met, Grian would have probably turned around and walked away right then and there.
Instead he had been scooped up into a hug by Mumbo and dragged along to celebrate his invitation to the Hermitcraft Server.
Even after he got used to living in close proximity to one of his believers, which had made him startle at first, always checking over his shoulder to see if X was talking out loud to him or if he had only heard the man’s voice in his mind, he’d still been anxious for months that calling Xisuma by his name would somehow give himself away.
Now, though, years later, as Grian soared over the current World of Hermitcraft, his home, his safe space, where he was able to live as just another Player and surrounded by many wonderful people, he only smiled whenever he heard his Admin’s voice praying to him, softly wishing for strength whenever their friends broke bedrock or built world-lagging machines.
Grian, of course, kept as tight a grip on his meagre Watcher powers as he ever had, but if sometimes he left some of Xisuma’s hard-to-get favourite tea in his base after days where the Admin’s patience was particularly tested, well, nobody was ever supposed to find out.
If one were to ask him, Grian would say things were going perfectly, especially now that he had been able to rekindle his old friendship with Pearl and get in contact with a bunch of his old crew, the Evolutionists.
Granted, from time to time he would be swamped by guilt for living a terrible lie, what with them never talking about what happened in their time apart, but Grian preferred not to dwell on it. He would block any and all conversations that were drifting too close to the times in between him running the Evo Server and joining Hermitcraft, telling himself that the others, too, must still hurt from those events, so clearly he was doing everyone a favour. Him rushing to slay the ender dragon alone first thing in Season Eight had nothing to do with his past, he was just setting up a game, no matter the worried looks Pearl sent him.
And it wasn’t like he was going to start doing Watcher things either – he was a Player on this Server, alright? He had even picked up adminning again for the Life Games.
Grian smiled as he thought back to the first meetings of the Third Life players, to how moved he’d been when Jimmy, BigB and Martyn had shown up all friendly and excited to join. How full his heart was as he realised they still trusted him to be an adequate Admin even after the absolute trainwreck that was Evo.
Pearl had told him over and over again, during the planning phase of her joining Hermitcraft, that she would have loved to join as well if she hadn’t been so involved in other projects at the time. Grian had just smiled, but he had struggled to believe her until she signed up for Last Life.
For some reason he could not fathom, Grian had been forgiven by his old friends.
They didn’t know the whole story though.
His life was going quite well recently, Grian thought as he swooped in low and landed in the middle of Boatem. He had the Hermits, his family, around him at all times, Mumbo at his side, sweet, understanding Mumbo, and a massive reciprocated crush on Scar that sent tingles down his spine at the thought of Scar’s pretty, lopsided grin.
His flock, distant memories would whisper, but he set them aside before he could reminisce on all he had lost. Watchers didn’t have flocks.
He would be quite content if life continued like this. That didn’t mean he had gotten rid of the horrible tension of keeping secrets from his friends though, the guilt or the self-hate. It did mean, however, that bad days were rare.
Even as the moon started getting bigger and bigger in the sky, doubts whispering in his mind that he could help if he truly wanted to, that he could manipulate the code and find out what was wrong with this world, Grian would simply swallow, tune out the voices in his head and let himself get distracted by the antics of his friends. And if he found himself checking his reflection from time to time like he’d often done at the beginning of Season Six, breathing in relief when he saw himself, with parrot wings and black eyes, staring back at him – well, he didn’t mind people believing him to be vain.
He closed his eyes and feigned a yawn as a prayer made his eyes glow oddly purple and sent prickling power through his body, then shook himself off, tucked his wings close to his back and continued on his way home.
The moon seemed to span half the sky now, rising menacingly behind the Midnight Alley. Grian forced down his goosebumps and glared up at it, the sign of unerring change, of another season coming to an end. He was well aware that this relative peace couldn’t last forever – but he could at least act like it would.
After all, if Grian was good at anything, it was being stubborn.