Chapter Text
Grian was running for his life.
His wings itched to spread out behind him and take him off into the night sky, but the gash in his right wing stopped him from taking flight. His legs ached underneath each step. They weren’t built for running, and they were worn from a busy day building and tending to his farms.
His knees buckle underneath him without any given warning, and his palms are the first to hit the ground. His jeans sink into the mud at his feet, seeping into his clothes with an uncomfortable oozing. He gasps, shaking his hands off as he pushes himself back up to his feet.
He stiffens where he stands in the jungle. It’s dark where he stands. Scar’s base had been that way, so he must be headed towards his home. It must be around this corner, but Grian can’t see it.
The jungle is endless as he sprints past the trees of bamboo. His aching legs beg him to stop, maybe even to tend to his wounded wing, but he can’t stop running now. He can’t stop running.
Why was he running?
He wasn’t sure. He didn’t know, but he didn’t have time to stop. If he stopped to think about it, it’d be too late.
Too late for him? Too late for who?
Too late, his head tells him. His heart bangs around in his rib cage until his chest is sore with the effort.
He stops, catching himself on a tree.
His home. It was here, wasn’t it? Past the bamboo stalks Scar had planted to keep out those dreaded ‘meanie bears’ - as he dubbed them - out of his home. Past that was Grian’s hobbit hole. It was always here. Well-lit by the lanterns he had hung for dark, rainy nights like tonight.
His head tilts back to stare into the empty abyss of a night sky. There are no stars, no moon, no lights to show him the way home.
“Scar?” he calls out aimlessly. “Mumbo?”
He looks up to the sky, but it’s already too late for him. He can’t see anything except endless black.
The jungle trees reaching towards the sky disappear. They blend into the dark until they’re obsolete, and their outline is the same color as the agonizing pitch dark. He lifts his hand into the sky to grab it, to hold his hand against it, and he sees nothing.
His jeans were dirty from the fall. His sweater was sticky with mud and sweat, but when he drags his fingers across his sweater he doesn’t feel the dirt. He doesn’t feel wet.
He doesn’t feel anything at all.
“I didn’t want this,” Grian tells the sky. He didn’t even know what he wanted. He wanted, needed to run. He needed to go home, but his home wasn’t here. “I don’t want this!”
His home wasn’t anywhere.
His knees buckle underneath him, and his back hits the ground first. He doesn’t brace for impact as the back of his head crashes against a patch of rocks in the dirt. He doesn’t brace because it won’t hurt, and it doesn’t.
The jungle around him is gone. The trees, the bamboo stalks, Scar’s snail house he had ran past was no longer there. There wasn’t anything behind him, and there wasn’t anything before him.
There was nothing left for Grian. He was too late, too late, too far gone.
Where had he gone?
The jungle is silent as it fades away from the world. Grian lays in the dirt, with his head broken over the sharp rocks. Blood should be dripping down into the dirt, his body should disappear upon its death. He doesn’t bleed, and he doesn’t hurt.
His heart beats, races deep within himself. He should be dead, he should be far from here, but instead he’s still racing to catch his breath despite how far he’s ran. And he’s ran so, so far for so, so long. He’s never been able to stop running.
The dirt wraps around him. He sinks further into its clutches, and he fights it. His body is calm, broken even and clean in the mess of dirt and blood that doesn’t exist. His heart is a broken record, skipping over itself in a panic. It tells him he needs to get up, to keep running. Whatever he was running from has him now.
The dirt wraps around him until he’s being tugged deeper into the earth. He doesn’t feel any pain as he chokes, as dirt is shoved down his throat and he’s choking. He’s going to die here, afraid and broken in the dirt.
He was almost free, but he was too late. He didn’t run fast enough, far enough.
(He’d been running for so, so long.)
The ground wraps its ugly, filthy palms around him, over him, inside of him until he’s the same as corpse six feet under.
He doesn’t want to go. He doesn’t want to go. He doesn’t want to go, but the ground leaves him no choice. The hands pull him down when he pushes himself up. He knows they are bad, but they know his name and they call him in the voices of his loved ones, of the ones no longer here.
And, oh, how that had been so long ago. Where did they go? Could Grian find them?
He’d sure like to know.
The dirt swallows him down, filling his eyes. He can’t see anymore, but the insides of his eyelids look the same as that empty void, as that black night sky. He reaches to it, and a hand grabs him back.
“Grian,” the void, the loved one, the one who was no longer there, tells him. She speaks so softly, so warmly, and it sounds like laughter in the next room over. He’s asleep and it’s calm, and the party is still going on. He’s content to himself, knowing they will be there when he wakes.
But she isn’t there anymore, and he isn’t asleep. She’s dead, and he’s alive.
“Grian,” the void, the loved one, the one who was no longer there, tells him. He speaks brokenly. It had been a long time since he could hear, tormented by that gift. Grian thinks he could understand, but he wasn’t sure why.
“Grian?”
The hand pinches his skin. The claws dig into him until it hurts, and he squeezes back. A hand scratches at him back until there’s screaming - his throat burns. He feels. He hurts.
Is he screaming?
Dirt pours out of him - his eyes, his mouth. Endlessly, he coughs and chokes as the dirt in his lungs is expelled from him forcefully. His hands sting as he rubs them against his eyes. He’s forced over onto his stomach, on his knees, as he gags and coughs and blood splatters out onto the floor below him.
The dirt falls from his eyes until the void is gone. He blinks the extra bits of dirt out to examine the mess only to find red.
Red wool below him. There is no dirt, no mud, no blood. There are jeans, Grian’s own, but there is no mud.
“Grian?”
He wants to run, but he can’t anymore. He’s sick of running. He’s sick of running, but he can’t stay.
Pressure around his hand. He tugs, but it resists.
The void holds his hand, forcing his fingers between his.
“It’s okay,” the void tells him in the voice of his loved one, the one that’s no longer there. But how could it be?
“I’m scared,” Grian tells him, tugging his hand back. “I’m scared. I want to go home.”
“Grian, we are home.” Grian hasn’t had a home in a very long time. Maybe that’s why he was running. He needed to find it. No, he needed to get away from it.
That was right.
“You’re on Hermitcraft, your new home, remember? We’re not in, not your home exactly, but we’re in my base. You’re home, Grian. You’re safe.”
Grian starts laughing before he even fully processes the words. Safe, safe, as if anything was safe if he wasn’t running.
His old home was safe. He thought it had been, he thought he could keep them safe, and now look at them. Now look at what was left of them.
“I’m right here, Grian, and I’m not going anywhere.”
It’s raining, like it had been in the Jungle. But that was far away, not here. He didn’t run fast enough.
Grian couldn’t blame him if he left. He would go anywhere if it meant he could be safe, if he could stop running.
It isn’t safe, but there is a red blanket underneath him. He trails his fingers over it. It’s soft to the touch.
Grian’s tired.
His eyes are heavy, and his heart has beat in overdrive for so long it wants to stop. It wants to crumble to his knees and sink into the earth, but Grian had already done that once - and that’s what sent him here. He wants to wrap the red blanket around himself, but it’s far away.
“Here, shh,” the void tells him, starting to wrap around him. This time, it’s warm, unlike the dirt seeping into his skin. He protests, not wanting to go just yet, but the warmth envelops his body all the same. The void holds him, and he grabs it back.
The blanket sinks around him, but he doesn’t stop reaching until he’s sure he has him. The skin is warm underneath his touch. Alive. Alive.
How could Grian forget?
He had him.
“I couldn’t find you,” he tells Mumbo as he thinks back to the forest. “Or - or Scar.” He had looked for the others too, but they’re no longer here. They weren’t anywhere.
Mumbo’s eyes are blown wide and bloodshot. His skin is pale, and there’s blood trailing down his cheek. A small cut rests just below his eye.
“I’m right here,” Mumbo tells him.
Grian looks.
There is a bed underneath him. There’s a roof. No stars, no sky, no void. Four walls surround him, and there’s a candle burning on the bedside table.
There’s a knock at the door. Grian wants to Watch, see what’s behind it, but a sudden ache behind his eyes stops him.
He winces and covers his eyes with his hands.
“Is it the noise?” Mumbo hisses. “Ah, darnit, just - one moment, okay?” Grian holds his head as the bed shifts. Mumbo’s left him, scampered to the door. It opens.
Xisuma pokes his head in.
He stands at the doorway, but he doesn’t approach. His violet eyes are glazed over with concern, as if something’s upset him.
“Are you scared too?” He would be, if he was an Admin. He lost everyone once, and he wouldn’t do that again.
His eyes flicker back to Mumbo.
Mumbo, the only one who was still alive.
Ah, Grian thinks, that’s why I ran.
“I’m not scared.” Xisuma’s footsteps are heavy. He slinks into the room, but he doesn’t shut behind it. Grian wants to See beyond it, but he doesn’t also. He doesn’t want to see anymore.
He wants to leave.
Xisuma joins Mumbo at the foot of the bed. “How long has he been like this?”
Afraid? Lost? Grian isn’t sure what he means. He’s so, so tired. Is that what Xisuma means? Shouldn’t he know? He saw what he was like when he first escaped the Void, escaped the Watchers.
Escaped.
He laughs again.
He gave up on running from them ages ago. After all, he can’t part with himself, this wretched body of his that Watches, that makes him like them.
But then again, that’s his only fucking escape, is it not?
“Grian, do you know who I am?” Xisuma breaks away from Mumbo. He leaves the room, and it’s only the two of them. His visor hides his face. Grian wonders how many people he’s lost. Has he killed?
He wants to Watch Xisuma, so he closes his eyes.
“No, no, stay with me, Grian.” He can’t stay here. He can’t stay here, he can’t stay here.
“There’s nothing for me here.” The void stays, it always calls to him, and this time when it reaches out for him, he doesn’t run from it.