Chapter Text
Grian’s time with the Watchers is revealed slowly, in little moments.
Grian has been on Hermitcraft for twenty-three days, and every minute that passes feels like it will be the last.
Now–he knows that Xisuma won’t kick him out. Probably. Maybe. He’d seemed awful happy to have Grian join, and in the three-and-a-bit weeks since, he hasn’t shown any outward signs of changing his mind.
It doesn’t make him feel secure, though. Not when he’d been ripped from his last server so quickly, so efficiently, and not when he’s on the run-
No one knows about that, though. They know that he’s friends with Mumbo, and that he needed a server, and they probably know that there’s something he’s not saying, because when Cleo had tried to be friendly and ask about where he was staying last, Grian had panicked and said that it was none of her concern, before promptly apologizing and practically running away.
He doesn’t know if she’s a gossip, yet, but-
It doesn’t matter. No one knows, and that’s how he likes it, because no one knowing means that there are no prodding questions or concerned looks or quiet whispers or attempts to sell him out to them-
Which the Hermits wouldn’t do. Probably. Mumbo trusts them, and he trusts Mumbo as much as he can trust anyone, right now.
All he can do is build. Build, and try to get to know the others.
And if he tests them, a bit, touches the boundaries with a flagpole by wearing a mask and painting his tawny wings a flaking white, and egging their bases?
Well, Mumbo groans about the feathers in his machines for days after, but he laughs, too, and that’s something.
Grian doesn’t like it when others leave things on his builds. In–in EVO, when others would leave chests and signs and junk on his things, Grian would grumble and sigh as he struck them down.
It’s how Squiddy burned, how he became an inside-joke, it’s how—well.
There’s a history, there. So when Grian flies to his base, one day, to find a tree sprouting up out of it, taller than near any he’s ever seen, it’s… admittedly a bit annoying.
At least Ren did him the courtesy of blowing it up, so that he didn’t have to.
Grian hits four months on the server the same day that Iskall and Mumbo invite him to golf. He isn’t sure they know, if anyone realizes it other than him.
He’s keeping track, though.
The worry about the Hermits selling him out is near negligible, now. They’ve shown him that they care, with pranks and teases and murders, and accepting his pranks and teasing and murders.
(He doesn’t think the fear that he’ll one day be found will ever go away. The fear that one day, he will be Seen.)
“That was cheating!” Iskall protests from where they’re perched, their flag a few blocks away on a hill. They squint down at him with their organic eye.
“It was not!” Grian defends, loosely-bound wings puffing up against their restraints. He hefts an ender eye in his hand, feeling its cold, squishy surface. “That was perfectly legal!”
“No!” Iskall points at him. “I couldn’t see the target from there, and you were behind me!”
“I saw it through the trees!”
Iskall’s narrow gaze gets even narrower. “Mumbo!” they call, turning to the mustachioed man, who is far behind them. He lifts his head from where he’d been trying to calculate his next shot. “Mumbo, can you see the next goal from there?”
“Oh, very funny,” Mumbo deadpans at them, dropping his trident to his side.
“I’m serious! Grian says he could see it from over there!”
Mumbo’s face twists, before glancing back at where Grian is. He stares for a few long moments, before shouting rather unsurely, “Is it… is it that teal spot?”
“Yes!” Grian yells back, while Iskall throws their hands into the air, accidentally flinging an ender eye and letting out an aborted curse seconds before they teleport on top of a tree.
“Doesn’t count!” They yell, hurrying back to their flagpole.
With the shing of a trident, Mumbo tosses his own pearl, and lands a dozen blocks away from Grian. “Goodness,” he mutters to himself, glancing around the area. “I don’t think I would have seen this if they hadn’t said something.”
Grian shrugs as nonchalantly as he can, glancing away. “What can I say,” he says, and he doesn’t know if the water that trails down his back is a bead of sweat, or from the pools he’s landed in. His kilt is soaked through. “I’ve got great eyesight.”
Mumbo hums thoughtfully. “Or you cheated.”
“That’s what I said!” Iskall cries from the hill.
“Make your move!” Grian deflects back, and Iskall grumbles before throwing their trident.
(Grian tracks their enderpearl’s movement with sharp eyes, and is already laughing before they land spluttering in a lake.)
War is an odd thing.
Well–that’s a bit overdramatic. This… they call it war, but it’s not. People die and are killed, but at the end of the day they all will go home, laughing, together.
This is War, because they plot and they plan, and they double-cross one another. They call this war because there are limited lives. They call this war because there is a sword in one hand and a shield in the other, and bodies will throw themselves at one another until someone falls, until panting and sweating, someone comes out victorious.
This is not war, because the consequences are only as hefty as a wounded pride.
Grian treats it like it is, anyways. He’s- he hasn’t fought wars, really. More just little fights picked. Bickering with Taurtis, pushing him away at the same time as he tried to bring him closer. Tactical things, planting TNT and watching the world burn.
(He’s seen war, though. He’s watched as people grasp their chests, blood pooling out between their fingers, accusing eyes seeking out anyone, everyone, someone to blame. Shaking embraces as a life is lost for the final time. He’s seen real wars, where admins who were twisted and crueler than Xisuma could ever be, than Grian could ever even think of being, would twist a person’s code until death was death.)
(He didn’t want to see it. He saw it anyways.)
Grian tries to keep it in mind, that this war is not War. He keeps his suggestions light, cutthroat but not brutal. Being cunning, using traps, makes it easier.
Sometimes, he falls a bit short.
“Come on,” he says urgingly to Mumbo, heaving as many swords as he can. They have eight members, and twenty lives - they all have diamond armor for their first death, but after that, it’s mostly iron. “I need to get these enchanted, and stored in hideaways, and then it’ll be back to building, and-”
“Grian,” Mumbo tries to interrupt, “Have you-”
“Gotten the armor? Mostly, I’m a bit short on trousers, but-”
“No, no- Have you-”
Mumbo cuts himself off, this time, as Grian presses the button that opens their semi-secret tunnel, leading to the enchanters.
The building is finished technically, but it’s really nothing more than a fancy shell, at this point. The piston door opens and he starts for the stairs. Elevators, real water elevators, next. Perhaps even some trapped ones, which reminds him, he needs to talk to-
There’s a hand on his elbow, and Grian makes an aborted, startled noise in the back of his throat, whirling around with wide eyes.
Mumbo is there.
He must not like the expression Grian is making–though what it looks like, Grian doesn’t know–because Mumbo steps back, hands raising up in the air defensively. Or- not defensively. In surrender.
“Sorry, mate,” Mumbo says, and for the first time Grian focuses on the words. Mumbo has a genuine, apologetic tone, and-
And Grian is observant. He can see the way Mumbo’s eyebrows draw in, the way his eyes watch Grian carefully–and the gaze doesn’t burn with the intensity that Grian had come to loathe, that gaze that consumes you, that raises every single hair on your body.
It instead feels like he’s being flayed open, not with a knife, but with how Mumbo tries to gauge him. How he tries to peel Grian’s reaction apart. (Grian still doesn’t know what that reaction is.)
“Are you alright?” Mumbo asks quietly. He reaches out again, slow enough that Grian can watch the motion, though he wouldn’t miss it in the first place, and he rests two fingertips on Grian’s elbow. The touch makes him swallow, and that makes him realize that his throat is dry.
“What were you trying to ask me?” Grian asks. He’s never been good at lying. Mumbo certainly doesn’t miss the deflection.
He does, however, gracefully allow Grian to pretend. Somewhat. “When’s the last time you slept?” Mumbo asks him. “This is–a lot. There are other members of the team, G.”
Grian swallows again, pulls away, but keeps his eyes on Mumbo’s own. “I’ll go to bed after the swords,” he promises, and Mumbo’s shoulders slump.
“Alright,” Mumbo says. They walk the rest of the way to the enchanter silently.
Grian has not fought wars, no, but he recognizes the faces of those who do. Not by any sort of previous knowledge; but instead by how they hold themselves, eyes sometimes distant, words a little too forceful. The lines between fantasy and memory blurring together before them.
He can’t say he doesn’t relate. This isn’t war, but it carries a certain intensity that keeps his heart beating fast, that makes his chest tight and his mind single-focused.
When he can though, he tries to gently remind them. When he and False pass, he tries to do something silly–something he’d never seen on the many, many battlefields that he’d watched. Sometimes he tosses a slime ball at her, or pulls a funny face, or asks her a silly, stupid question that can be construed as him trying to distract her, if questioned.
“False!” Grian cries out as they trade sword blows on the river bank. “How many apples does it take to make Xisuma cry?”
“What?” she asks bewilderedly, squinting at him. Her sword nicks his side, and Grian jumps back with a hiss.
“One, if it’s really mean!”
It’s nearly worth the next stab. Grian gets away, and drinks a healing potion–and when he glances out, over the hills, he finds that False’s shoulders have loosened a little, as she fights with Joe.
He doesn’t know Wels as well, but he still tries, redirecting attention and hoping to draw him out of his head.
And when Cleo flicks Grian in the side when he can’t focus his eyes; when Mumbo says “Mate, join me for a few minutes,” even though he’s just going further into the base, which is arguably one of the safer places to be; when Jevin claps his shoulder and says “Good job, Grian,” and Joe quotes a line of a poem he’s working on while handing Grian a potion, asking him how the flow is, Grian finds himself a little more centered.
“How on earth did you spot that?” Mumbo asks, astonished, as Grian points out a witch stationed in the exact path Mumbo had proposed taking. All they can see is the very tip of her hat, poking out past a half-exploded tree.
“I told you, I have great eyesight,” Grian says, and rolls his eyes as Mumbo hums doubtfully.
They win.
Sometimes, Grian’s hands shake.
His base is large and glass, and usually he’s thankful for the visibility, that he can see everything around him. It’s a gorgeous, uninhibited view. He is undoubtedly contained, safe from the outside, and yet he can fly around; and yet the walls are glass, and even when it’s raining, Grian feels like it is less of a house, constraining and small and cozy, and more like a gazebo.
Something not-quite outdoors, not-quite indoors. Protective, and yet freeing.
He can see everything.
He can see the mountains, the shopping district; if he strains, he can see Mumbo’s base. He can see fire flickering and people building and pistons moving and the shell of Sahara and fish swimming in the ocean and-
Sometimes, Grian’s hands shake.
It wasn’t intentional, he thinks. The draw he’d had to glass, to open spaces. But maybe it’s not a coincidence. Maybe it’s not a coincidence how his starter base was a glass bottle, a place where he could watch the ocean (far more populated and complex than he’d ever seen) as fish swam by and boats paddled and drowned twirled stupidly.
It wasn’t intentional, and yet, Grian watches the windows daily. His eyes wander to them when there’s a ball of tension in his throat, and sometimes he curses the blind spots the pillars create. He loves the pillars. He’s proud of them, of how he made them appear symmetrical. It wasn’t easy. They inhibit the view, though, and sometimes that is an issue.
Right now, he isn’t cursing them, though.
He’s cursing the wide, expansive view, his own self-built panopticon, and sure- it is half a homage to his base in EVO with pearl-white walls and an ocean that makes the air taste salty, but he’s staring through glass walls and realizing that maybe it is just as much a result of them.
Grian closes his eyes, sitting on his bed with his knees pressed to his chest.
Sometimes, Grian’s hands shake.
He doesn’t know how to still them.
Mumbo doesn’t know–no one does–and that’s the way Grian likes it.
Sometimes, though, he needs help.
Sometimes he can’t be alone, because the Watchers were always alone, sitting in their towers and Watching others live their lives, and he can’t do that, he doesn’t want to do that, he can’t stare out of his glass windows-
Grian’s hiding in Poultry-man’s bunker, beside the large, pearlescent egg, and it’s cold and a little damp but at least he can’t see anything. At least here he’s surrounded by nothing, nothing to take in, nothing but himself and his build and-
Being by himself isn’t the best, either. Not when he can’t take in a full breath, not when he closes his eyes and all he can see is the End, the first time he’d ever seen it, all alone. The seconds of nothingness that felt like hours, like eternities, panic lacing his chest right before he was taken, before he saw everything.
He should be safe; Xisuma had assured him that the server was well-protected, and he’s a voidwalker, so surely he knows something about that.
But he can see nothing, and he can see everything, and it’s like a budget recreation, a cruel mockery. It’s nothing like when he was kidnapped, and yet, it is all he can remember. The suffocating air that sat heavily in his lungs. Tall figures, cowls and masks that gleamed in the realm of darkness, of distant stars and cold that seeped into everything, that stilled every heart it touched.
His hands are clammy when Grian calls Mumbo.
The communicator rings three times before a familiar, warm voice calls out. “Grian? Heya mate, how are you?”
How is he.
How is he?
Grian wets his lips, and glances up at the ceiling. He can see every groove where his pickaxe met the stone. He can see the dimpled imperfections against the grey surface. He closes his eyes, and immediately opens them again.
“...Not good,” Grian finally, softly admits. “Can you–can you come here?”
Grian can hear the sharp intake of breath Mumbo makes across the line like it is a pin dropping in a silent room. “Sure,” Mumbo says, fainter than he had been. “Sure, absolutely mate, I can do that–where are you?”
Grian tells him.
He isn’t sure how long it takes Mumbo to arrive. On one hand, he is alone with his thoughts, his memories, the cool stone beneath him and the dust motes that he can pick out even with unfocused eyes.
On the other hand, it feels like there isn’t a second of pause between when his communicator beeps to let him know that their connection was lost, and when pistons fire overhead and Mumbo tumbles out of the ceiling Grian realizes that he doesn’t even know how late it is, how long he’s been down here.
It doesn’t take a sharp eye to tell that the beams of sunlight that chased him down into the bunker earlier have been replaced by the cool shadow of night that sinks into his base, past the sea lanterns and torches that line its insides, but it’s all Grian has to work with.
It’s night, and Mumbo still came for him.
The realization perhaps shouldn’t be as much of a surprise as it is.
“Hi,” Mumbo says, after he narrowly misses colliding with the ground, in favor of a clumsy tumble of too-lanky limbs. “Are you hurt?” Grian shakes his head mutely and Mumbo nods, shoulders slumping.
His eyes still wander over Grian for a moment, confirming that he isn’t hiding any sort of glaringly-obvious injury, before he glances behind him. “Huh, I didn’t think this was back here.”
“Poultry-man rents it out,” Grian explains, the excuse automatic–and Mumbo’s lips twitch up at that.
“Sure, mate,” Mumbo agrees, though he doesn’t seem to believe it, for some reason. He shifts on his feet for a moment before stepping beside Grian and sitting next to him. They don’t touch, but his presence feels weighty, rich, like an expensive dessert or perhaps a gravitational pull.
Grian’s eyes focus on the lint on Mumbo’s trousers. They’re suit pants, so either he changed before flying over, or never got out of today’s suit to begin with. It’s a nice thread-count, but Mumbo’s clothes always are. Grian thinks it has something to do with the texture. The lint is white, and string, so maybe he’d discarded the suit into the laundry hamper, before pulling it out. The slightly rumpled appearance lends to this, but then again, that could just be from day-to-day usage-
He’s doing it again. Shit.
Mumbo shifts, the sound of fabric against dust and grit and stone, and Grian glances up in time to catch his gaze. “Do you want to talk about it?” Mumbo asks him softly.
Mumbo doesn’t know, and–it’s… not how Grian likes it, necessarily, as it is more comfortable. It’s easier to live in mystery, no one knowing the soft and vulnerable and festering wounds that live with you. It’s easier to leave them guessing, to never clarify, to live with the discomfort and-
He can’t deny that sometimes, the other side is appealing, too. To have others that know. To not have to hold onto the memories weight alone.
Of anyone, Mumbo would understand–he would want to understand.
Grian shakes his head. He looks away, before his sharp eyes can make out how that makes Mumbo feel. His jaw is sore and quivers when he answers.
“I don’t think I know how to.”
Grian closes his eyes against the room, even though it takes him right back to the end, to the dark sky and pinpricks of stars that took his breath away.
More shifting. The sound of shoes on stone.
(For one, terrifying second, Grian thinks that Mumbo is leaving. He can’t blame him; Grian has given him no ins, no ways to help. He has offered no pound of flesh, of vulnerability, and yet asked anyways for help.)
When the fizzle of rockets doesn’t sound, though, and Mumbo doesn’t sigh in that way that means he’s frustrated, Grian slivers his eyes open again.
(He’s always been too curious.)
Mumbo crouches in front of him, one hand extended out to Grian, hovering. Palm up. There are creases along it, a semi-circle that encases his thumb, a line that goes a little over halfway across his palm, little divots and crosses covering near every inch, leaving his hands looking well-lived in.
“Come on,” Mumbo says softly. “Let’s get you out of here at least, yeah?”
Grian’s jaw works again, and he clenches it to stop the burning in his throat.
He closes his eyes again, and takes Mumbo’s hand.
Mumbo was never in the End–that End.
Grian never had warmth to lean into, when he was.
It helps.
Mumbo doesn’t know, and Grian doesn’t tell him. But he doesn’t leave.
Grian can’t remember sleeping in the same bed with someone before. Maybe when he was a little kid.
It’s weird. His small mattress dips down, and Grian’s wings are already like an extra body, taking up most of the room.
But Mumbo borrows his loosest clothes, and offers his arms, and he doesn’t complain when Grian breaks, when he cries into his chest. He doesn’t complain when the small bed leaves them pressed up against one another, Grian forced into a half-sprawl against him, face tucked into his shoulder like he’s a lot younger than he is.
He just lifts his hand, and pauses, and asks if he can touch near Grian’s wings. And when he agrees, soft and small, Mumbo presses one palm beneath their base, against the cinched sleep shirt Grian wears. It’s not a hug, but it’s something in the realm of one; an embrace with no name.
It’s weird, because for the first time, in the dead of night, after five months of being on Hermitcraft, Grian feels safe.
Mumbo doesn’t know, but he’s a good friend anyways.
Grian has been on Hermitcraft for eight months when, for the first time, they update.
Xisuma brings it up at their semi-regular meeting, off-handedly, and Grian feels a spike of panic in his chest at the thought.
The first, actual update, in-
Well.
Before EVO, his home world had gotten them without much fanfare, but that had only lasted to one-point-eight.
And then- and then-
“What do you do?” Grian asks, before he can stop himself.
He’s been a hermit for eight months, and he knows the others, but it doesn’t make it any easier to have twenty-odd pairs of eyes glance at him. He shrinks back a little into his chair.
X blinks at him through his visor. “Well, we have our borders set, yes? During updates, we roll them back a bit more, to give space for people to explore.”
The feeling of others looking at him–though most have glanced away, or gone back to their notebooks–isn’t enough to deter him from confirming. Not that the others would want it to be. “No rituals, then? Any celebrations, or routines?”
X shakes his head. “No. Since it’s a big update, and will be bringing in a lot of new features considering villages, I was hoping to propose that we would gather for the border falling, but…”
“Oh!” Iskall says excitedly, clapping their hands together. “What if we find one village, and all stay together?”
“That would be great!” Zedpah exclaims from opposite the table. “Very fun idea, there–now, what about…”
Grian tunes out the planning, satisfied with X’s answer, to a degree. He didn’t want there to have been rituals, really, it’s just…
“Grian,” X calls to him, when they’ve dismissed. “Could I talk to you for a second?”
It feels not unlike being called on to stay back after class by a teacher, though X is very, very far from a teacher–and Grian is even further from a student. X is barely an admin, really, except for when he needs to be.
(It’s refreshing. They’re all adults, and friends–the respect, and trust, is nice.)
“Of course,” he says, and moves towards the admin, wings pulling together against his back to make room for the other Hermits to squeeze past. X dips his head in acknowledgement, and they wait semi-awkwardly for privacy as the room empties.
When Zed and Tango filter out after Impulse, the former sparing only a quick glance their way, the door finally swings shut.
X lets out a breath, and Grian finds himself mirroring the minute way he relaxes.
“They can be a lot, can’t they?” Xisuma says, glancing his way. Grian shrugs.
“Overwhelming, maybe,” he admits, and in the filtered indoor light, he can just barely see how Xisuma’s eyes crinkle at that.
“They sure can!” He agrees, before pausing. When he speaks next, his tone is more–sensitive is the only way to describe it, something cautious and trying not to sound like it is. “Grian, I just wanted to check–you were asking about rituals for updates, and such. I wanted to ask if there is something you feel would be missing, or anything you’d like to partake in?”
Grian blinks, wide eyed, before shaking his head. “No! No, that’s quite–I don’t want- ”
He definitely doesn’t want things to be like EVO. At some point, he had found it fun, but now the thought of Hermitcraft being anything like it brings a sickening feeling to his stomach. The thought of even just his admin, or fellow Hermits, puppeting out a mimicry of the Watcher’s games…
“No,” he says again, more firmly and less sharp. He glances away from X. “I’ve been in servers where there were, and I just… wanted to make sure.”
He rubs his hands together, and X doesn’t say anything.
After a moment, Grian admits, “It just feels… too easy, you know?”
“I don’t,” Xisuma replies. A hand clasps on Grian’s shoulder, and he jumps, but doesn’t move away from it. “And I have no intention of organizing anything… elaborate, unless the other Hermits want it.” He pauses. “Is it misplaced to suggest that if such plans are proposed, I will bring it up with you?”
Grian swallows. The hand on his shoulder squeezes gently.
“No,” he finally admits. The answer lingers in his mouth like a foul taste that can’t be washed out.
“Alright,” Xisuma says, in a tone that is perfectly even, unjudging and unbothered. Factual. “Consider it done.”
The update goes by smoothly. It should be unsurprising.
(It’s… not, even with Xisuma’s assurances. Grian has a low-level thrum of nerves for days, and when the border finally falls, it doesn’t. He stays faintly on edge all the way into the new village, up until he’s in his house for the following weeks, safe and sound.)
After all that, though, he finds it- fun.
It really, really is.
For the first time, he’s in close quarters with the rest of the Hermits–and maybe that should put him on edge as well, but surprisingly, it doesn’t. The sense of community he’d found is just present, and refreshing.
(Hermitcraft has been his, for a while; he’s built too many things, formed friendships and played pranks and played war. But the close quarters make it harder for him to forget that it is.)
(He never wants to leave, and that’s a terrifying, painful thought. That once again, he has something to lose.)
Grian is perched up on his wooden, rickety tower. It would be a mistake to call him lost in thought; his mind is carefully blank. He doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting here, but he knows other things; he knows how Doc growled at a villager that wasn’t working with him, and how Scar has been working on his tower for a while, emptying shulkers worth of leaves as he made elegantly curling vines.
Xisuma has been making his cabin, and seems to be frustrated with the process. False disappeared into her house, and hasn’t been seen since. Iskall and Mumbo left in the nether portal to fetch materials from Sahara this morning, and probably won’t be back until after the sun sets. Cleo’s villager made an escape a minute ago, and she hasn’t noticed yet-
Grian’s head snaps to the left, sharply, to meet a pair of eyes. He’d felt watched for only a moment, but that’s more than enough.
Staring back at him is Scar, across the village. His eyes are a dark green, like moss teased with sunlight; golden enough to feel warm, but earthen enough to make you think of something wilder.
Scar gives him a lop-sided smile, and Grian can see the gleam of his teeth, the way his skin stretches over long-healed scar tissue. Grian gives a polite nod back, because it’s all he can manage.
It seems to be all the invitation that Scar needs, however.
Grian tracks Scar’s movements the way one might watch an inbound disaster; with a certain amount of dread, and an inability to do anything about it.
Scar flies like a disaster, too. Not as clumsily as Mumbo, or as shakily as Grian had, when he was just getting started; no, he flies quickly and recklessly, elytra narrowed as he divebombs Grian’s perch with a rocket still fizzling in his hand.
Grian barely flinches as Scar nearly crashes into the rickety tower with a ‘woah! ’ before circling up and around Grian twice. He finally loses enough velocity to land, and does so with a grin.
“Nearly died, there!” Scar says, inexplicably exhilarated. He shakes his elytra wings out, hands trembling slightly with adrenaline as he reaches for his cane. It slips out of his inventory with a faint blue light, and Scar puts weight on it. “Hel-lo, Grian.”
Talking right now feels like too big an ask; like trying to stretch out a stiff limb, when really all he wants to do is lay down and not think about it for a while. It takes a moment for Grian to work his throat. “What are you doing here?”
If Scar is offended by the lack of greeting, he doesn’t show it. “Well, I noticed a little bird was keeping an eye on the joint, and I wanted to see what you were doing!”
Grian shrugs in response. He tracks how Scar’s cheerful expression drops, just a little, how his bright eyes narrow slightly.
Scar steps forward, cane thunking in time with his footfalls. “Mind if I sit here?”
“Go ahead,” Grian says. He turns back to watching over the town. There’s movement in Cleo’s base, now. Her villager is hard to spot, but somehow, it made its way over to the very border of the town, near the bushes.
“How long have you been up here?”
Grian shrugs. He can feel the weight of Scar’s eyes on him. It’s light, comparatively, but not pleasant, either. It’s calculating. Grian waits all of five seconds, before it becomes too much. “I can’t remember,” he admits.
Scar hums. “Have you had anything to eat?”
“Breakfast.” Cleo’s door opens, finally. The zombie is wearing pajamas, still, and her red hair is braided back; her villager must have escaped while she was sleeping in. Grian considers pointing her in the right direction, but before he can decide if he should, or if it would be funny to watch her search, Scar speaks again.
“Why are you here, Grian?”
That’s a good question. It really is.
Cleo’s resorted to calling for her villager, too quiet for Grian’s unenhanced ears to pick up. She seems to be attempting to keep the escape situation on the low-down. She clambers on top of a hay stack, trying to get some height.
Grian watches her throat bob, her eyes flicking this way and that–but not up. Not towards the actual direction of the villager either.
His legs feel numb.
“I don’t know,” he says, except that’s a lie. He swallows thickly, and admits, “I can’t stop.”
He doesn’t know what Scar thinks of that. He doesn’t look.
Cleo is pacing, now, and Grian can see the muscles that tense and relax in her hands. She only has nine and a half fingers, but they ball up before releasing. Over and over again.
Her throat bobs with a seemingly louder call, but it’s still not audible this high up. Grian can read her lips. “Cleo-villager!” She calls. “Where are you? I’m-” the rest is cut off as her head turns.
Grian goes to glance at it, when-
Darkness overtakes him.
Grian jumps back in his seat, the most he’s moved in… a while, and Scar says, “It’s okay, hey-”
Grian blinks once, twice.
Calling this darkness was… a little overdramatic.
Sunglasses are perched awkwardly on his nose. They’re large and blocky, and the top and bottom are uncovered, leaving the unfiltered world alone. But the glass screens are shadowed, making the entire world turn from mid-afternoon to evening, the hour before the sun finally crests.
He reaches up. Scar says, “Hey, give it a chance.”
Grian pauses, hand hovering, before he gently pushes them into a more comfortable spot on the bridge of his nose.
Like this, the dark lenses filtering the world, he can’t see as much. It’s like things have gone faintly out of focus; not as bad as it was when he was human (he’d needed glasses then, up until he’d been magically kidnapped, and it was near the only thing he was grateful for having received from the Watchers) but considerably worse than before.
Now, the thin grain of blue-grey casts Cleo’s face into darkness, makes it hard for Grian to focus on the angles of her face, on the tension in her muscles and the minute changes in body language.
He watches, for a moment, as she wanders the streets–
But the fixation is gone. A little. It’s less intense.
He doesn’t remove the glasses.
It takes Grian three minutes to relax back onto his rooftop, diverting his eyes from the world below, and Scar sighs beside him. It makes Grian jump, a little, and his companion snorts.
“Better?”
Grian works his throat again, and realizes that it’s dry. He can’t remember the last time he drank something. “Yeah, I-” he stammers. “How did you know?”
“You seemed stuck,” Scar says, and there’s the rustle of fabric beside him that suggests the man shrugged. Grian looks to him. (He can see the details of Scar’s face crisply, still, but the darkness throws a lot of it into shadows.) “I figured they would either help, or you’d get frustrated and maybe yell at me, which would also work.”
Stuck. Huh. That’s not a bad word for it, almost.
(Grian knows what it was, though.)
(You can take the (half)watcher out of his realm, but it’s a lot harder to take the (half)watcher out of him. Grian hasn’t the foggiest of where to even start.)
“Close enough,” he says. And then he shifts forward, and now that he isn’t stuck watching, it’s a lot easier to cup his hands around his mouth and yell, “Cleo!”
The poor zombie startles, sword materializing as she glances around.
“Up here!”
Finally, she looks at Grian’s tower. She covers her eyes with one hand, and yells back (faint, with the distance,) “Grian?!”
“Your villager is by the south border!”
“What?!”
“Your villager-” Grian cuts himself off, sighs, and points in the correct direction. Cleo takes a moment, following the moment, before she jumps and runs towards her charge.
He watches for a moment longer before Scar says, “Hey, how about we get you inside, huh?”
Grian leans back, blinking up at the man. “What?”
Scar gestures to him with one hand, focusing on pushing himself up into a stand. His cane wobbles dangerously on Grian’s rooftop. “You’ve been outside for a while. You’re going to get sunburnt at this rate.” When Grian still doesn’t move, Scar holds a hand out to him, and says, “Come on, up you get!”
That’s what it takes for him to finally move. He doesn’t take Scar’s proffered hand, though, a little scared that the motion might unbalance the man. He wobbles to his feet, and grimaces, rubbing at his legs. “Oh, pins and needles,” he complains.
Scar snorts. “Come on, old man.”
“I–wuh–you’re older than me!”
“And yet I’m still limber,” Scar says, and twirls to prove it. He nearly falls off the roof. For the first time today, Grian smiles.
“Uh-huh,” he says doubtfully. “Sure you are.”
“Oh, you-” Scar shakes his cane at Grian. “Get inside, before I show you how limber I can be.”
“Sounds like a challenge.”
“No, it’s a threat!”
Grian takes a step, and nearly crumbles at the feeling of blood flowing back to his legs. It’s like walking on deadweights. “One I’m not particularly inclined to be afraid of.”
“Come back to me when you can support your own weight,” Scar tells him. He moves to support Grian with his free hand, guiding him gently to a fence gate Grian had used as decoration. “Otherwise, it’ll just be too easy.”
Grian sticks his tongue out at that, and grins when the other man sticks his own out right back at him. Scar accompanies Grian down to the front door, and then, surprisingly, inside. Villager Grian hrms at him, and Grian scowls. “Don’t judge me!”
It hrms again, just to be contrary. Grian sighs. Scar laughs.
“Come on,” he says. “Sit down. Or–stand, maybe, if you’ve sat enough for today. Are you hungry?”
“A little,” Grian admits. He settles for leaning against the wall, not-quite closing his eyes but not keeping them focused, like earlier. He hasn’t well-and-truly Watched, in a while. He certainly didn’t want to.
That he did, and it took someone else to snap him out of it was a little… upsetting. And something he really doesn’t want to think about right now.
He snaps out of the thought when Scar waves two shining carrots in front of him. They glimmer lowly, like gold next to torchlight, with the sunglasses darkening them. Grian doesn’t take them off.
“Are golden carrots okay?” Scar asks.
“Yeah,” Grian says. “They’re fine.”
They’re pressed into one hand, a cool water bottle following them, condensation making the glass slippery. Grian takes a sip, and sets it on the nearest chest.
“Thank you,” he says belatedly. It’s a small gesture, for the gratitude he feels–the gratitude he’s sure he’ll feel even more strongly, when he’s in the right mindset.
“No problem,” Scar says easily. Earnestly. Like staying by his side, helping Grian snap out of it, not being disturbed by his Watching, herding him down and making him eat–it’s all just… not a big deal.
Maybe it isn’t, to Scar.
“Do you want company right now?” he asks him quietly.
Grian shrugs. “I’m sure you want to get back to building,” he says. It’s a non-answer. He isn’t so sure if he wants to take up Scar’s offer, or to stay alone, or–what.
“I’m already ahead of you,” Scar says assuringly. “I don’t need the advantage.”
“Mumbo might beat you,” Grian points out. Scar laughs.
“And the nether might freeze over,” he counters. Grian snorts, and Scar’s face, darkened by the sunglasses, brightens. Grian thinks if he weren’t wearing them, his sensitive eyes might be blinded. “Alright, then. I’ll leave you be, but message me if you need something, yeah?”
“Sure,” Grian says, which really just means No. He takes a bite of a carrot, finally–and then winces, pushing it into his cheek so he can speak. “Do you want your sunglasses back?”
“Nah,” Scar moves to the door. “You can give them back to me later.”
That seems a little inconvenient, but also, Grian doesn’t really want to part with the dimming effect, either. “Okay,” he agrees, and chews on his carrot.
Scar doesn’t stay. But, two minutes later, there’s a cat meowing at Grian’s door. When he finally decides it’s not going to give up, he opens it, and a little gray blur darts out past his feet.
The nametag on her collar reads “Jellie”.
And maybe Grian didn’t want human company, really, but he decides that she makes for a pretty good companion. She must decide the same, considering how she curls up on his chest.
Scar was right.
Grian hands him off the sunglasses, along with the cat, who is apparently his cat, a few hours later.
“I hope she was good for you!” Scar says, and Grian isn’t sure if he’s hoping she was well-behaved, or helped him feel more centered.
Whatever it is, Grian smiles, something warm and present. “She was,” he says truthfully.
Scar grins. It’s a nice expression, on him.