Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Grian wouldn't say that he was being bombarded with messages from the Dream SMP following his second excursion on the server under his new name. Quite the opposite in fact. There were so few messages that he considered for a distinct amount of time that one of the other Hermits had hacked his communicator to bury any messages originating from anyone living on the Dream SMP server. Except he did have messages from Sapnap, who claimed that the entirety of the server wanted to sit down and have a discussion with him. A real discussion this time, as they were all more or less aware of who and what he was now.

Sapnap had also included how unfair it was of him to send Awesamdude any photos of the grave he'd made for himself without also sending them to him and Karl. Which meant that everyone on the server had likely seen those photos now. They knew, and Sapnap had offered himself up as the spokesperson here to try and convince him to actually arrange a meeting.

Grian chose to ignore the messages for three weeks, leaving Sapnap on 'read'. During those three weeks, he acclimated to the fact that each and every one of the Hermits now knew about his past, but few were saying something about it. It went part and parcel with the general etiquette of the Hermitcraft server: you do not ask about something if it appears to make the person uncomfortable. Personal history is a personal matter that need only be shared if the Hermit wants to share or if their history is putting themselves or the server in danger. Considering his abduction, it was clear to everyone which side of that equation everything was weighted towards, and Grian couldn't quite bring himself to admit that he'd wanted to seed clues throughout the server this season to bring them into his secret more organically. At this point, it would sound almost like lying, and he didn't want to make any of his friends feel more guilty than they already seemed to.

He wanted everything to go back to the way it was before he'd gotten pulled back into the Dream SMP. He wanted to be able to ignore the messages indefinitely, or at least until they realized that he didn't want to be the person they wanted to make him anymore. But every time he had a moment to himself, a moment between projects or while he was mindlessly grinding for supplies for the Entity or one of his builds, Grian found his thoughts turning back to what had happened while he was trapped on the Dream SMP server.

He remembered Jack's face when they told him that Grian was Tommy, and he had never expected to see such naked hope and desperation. He remembered Eret's face in the museum, staring at him like he was something strange and beautiful. He remembered Quackity's face, the way his anger broke to confusion and shock at the suggestion that Grian was the one they had lost. Grian had known that Wilbur and Tubbo would care, and they would drag Ranboo, Phil, and Techno along with them. It had made sense that Fundy, who always looked for ways to make Wilbur and Phil proud, would come after him, but the others didn't have a reason. Grian thought he could definitively say that they didn't particularly care for him. They were willing to help him if he asked for that help, but they wouldn't go out of their way for him.

But Jack was at the bench. Quackity had shown up in armor. Eret had come when Jack sent out a message about him. People had dropped whatever they were doing at the promise of seeing him, and Grian honestly didn't know what to make of that. He was avoiding the Dream SMP mostly because of those who wanted the person he used to be back, but Karl and Sapnap and even Sam it seemed were more than willing to let him be who he was now. He couldn't afford to make the assumption that everyone else on the server was going to force him back into the role of TommyInnit, professional scapegoat.

His deliberation about whether or not to respond had been settled by the discussion with Tango, by the realization that if he laid out his boundaries in a way they couldn't misunderstand, then he'd be able to head off all of the arguments about why he should return to being the person he was when he was younger. They didn't know about him because he had been obscuring the truth for years, trying to avoid his history. But now that they had enough of it figured out that they wanted complete answers, he knew he couldn't leave them with their false conclusions.

Grian hadn't really imagined a day where he would sit his former server members down and tell them what had happened to him, but it had become necessary.

Xisuma agreed to his idea, to bring them to the site of his grave on the protected version of season 7, to see for themselves what he had given himself in death. The only stipulation he'd made was that Grian was not going to be alone with them this time. The whole of Hermitcraft was going to be there with him. So were his servermates from the Evolution server and Third Life, as he couldn't imagine telling the members of the Dream SMP without sharing his story with the people on the other side of the equation. If Grian was going to unite the two halves of his identity, he might as well do it properly.

To that end, he had come up with a simple invitation to send to the various people he knew, a sort of form letter that Mumbo had helped him write.

It read: You are invited to a meeting on the protected world of Hermitcraft Season 7. This meeting will explain my history and answer many of the questions I am sure people still have about what happened to me. As there will be a lot to discuss and I hope to answer as many questions as I can, please arrive as early as possible. The world portal will be available to visitors at 10am on January 14th, 2023.

It was so much harder than he'd been expecting to write something so simple. Grian had been tempted to mass send the date and time to people and see who decided to show up. Mumbo was the one who insisted that he needed to explain why they needed to be there. Especially for those who had no idea that there was something to learn about him, like Jimmy and Martyn.

His communicator rang and Grian answered without checking it. If it was someone from the Dream SMP, he was going to hang up, but he didn't want to take the time to check while he had his hands full of all the materials for his latest build. (No, it wasn't completely a distraction that was meant to get his mind off the upcoming meeting, and he wasn't trying to ignore that he'd set it for the end of the week. He just desperately needed a replica of his Grian Empire base out in the middle of an ocean in the middle of nowhere. For no reason whatsoever.)

"Grian," Scott drawled. "Do you want to tell me why in the name of all the colors of the rainbow I woke up to an invitation from you? And," he continued with an audible smirk in his tone, "it seems to be for a tea party."

"Hello, Scott. How are you?"

"Yes, hello. I'm doing well. But I was incredibly interested in this message I received." Scott paused, and Grian could almost see him situating himself somewhere comfortable to listen. "You see, I thought you weren't going to tell anyone about that if you had the chance. Especially since you went to such great lengths to avoid telling them the truth during the meeting they had me mediating."

"That was before they managed to smuggle me onto their server, and I made the mistake of saying things only a few people should actually know around the very people who knew why it was significant." Grian sighed, but the commiserating hum on the other end of the line was a bit comforting. Scott didn't know everything, after all, but he did know a lot, so he knew how much of a problem all of that was. "Unfortunately, they seem to think that I might not remember being Tommy because I kept denying things, so now I have to set the record straight."

"Yes, but that doesn't explain why I was invited. Or Jimmy, for that matter, because he mentioned that he'd need to be off the Empires server for the day, which put off a few of his plans." Grian could hear Scott shifting around, the creak of a bed and the distant cry of a rooster. "Since it was the same date as the one listed in your meeting, and there are few things that would actually change his plans about anything, I figured you had to have something to do with it."

"There's a question there, and you aren't saying it," Grian said lightly. "Just spit it out."

"What is this really about?"

Grian sighed, rubbing a hand down his face. "It really is about what I said in the invite. I'm answering questions. As many questions as I can, which will probably be a lot. I just..." He sighed again. "I'm tired of hiding from the people I care about. The Hermits know because they needed to know why certain members of the Dream SMP might have been stalking our portal or trying to message them. They'll be there, too, so you'll have good company in those who know what's going on."

"Grian, switch to a video call, please. I need to see your face for this."

"It'll be a minute. I'm in the middle of an ocean at the moment." Even as he said it, he was boosting himself out of the water with an empty firework rocket in order to glide over to the tiny sandbar working as his staging area for all of the materials he needed. It was yet another chest monster driving Pearl mad, or it would be if she knew it existed and where it was.

He sat down by the shore and let his feet dangle in the water of the warm ocean he had decided to build in before opening the call up to transmit video. A window with Scott displayed across it appeared hovering a little bit out over his left arm, where his communicator was situated. "Okay, I'm here. What do you need to say to my face?"

Scott sighed. "I should have known. You haven't been sleeping much lately, have you?"

"You say that like I sleep much anyway." Grian laughed, but there was hardly any humor in it. "I mean, you were there for Third Life and Last Life. You know what it was like."

"I also know that it was, at the end of the day, as much a game for you as it was for the rest of us. And," he added after a moment, "that was obviously a different sort of not sleeping."

"Scott..."

"Don't you 'Scott' me! I know that the other Hermits aren't letting you do this. I'm sure they're doing whatever they can to get you to rest. I'd even wager to say that you're hiding from them right now, since you aren't at your base or anywhere near the rest of the Hermit's bases!" Scott rubbed a hand down his face. "You know you don't have to do this. We wouldn't think any less of you if you decided to never interact with them again. In fact," he continued, "I think most of us would be happy to play interference when it came to your former server members, even without knowing the history there. I know Jimmy and Martyn would both be willing to back you right at this moment, no questions asked."

"But I don't want them to! That's the point!" Grian buried his hands in his hair, trying again to figure out what he wanted to say and how he was supposed to say it. "I don't like being the one sitting here with all of the information. It hurts people! It's always hurt people to keep secrets, and I didn't realize I was going to be keeping so many when I first started this! I just... It all spiraled out of control, and I hate that I can't just tell people myself without it being some great and terrible reveal of some kind. I hate that there are so many things that not even you or Mumbo or Xisuma know about. I hate that there are things I've been rediscovering about myself lately that I'd forgotten. I hate that I can't just figure out a stable place for myself that doesn't feel like I'm losing something."

Scott was silent for several moments. If he'd still been seventeen and allergic to the very idea that someone might worry and care about him, Grian would have been offended by the look in Scott's eyes. But he knew that it wasn't pity, it wasn't condescending. He was just concerned about his friend, the way he had always been.

"I think," Scott said carefully, "that this is something you should talk about with someone with a more professional capacity to help, because I'm afraid I might say or do more than a few things that would not be helpful at all. I mean, you know me. You know that sometimes I say things I know will make people uncomfortable just to see their reaction, and I don't want to do that with you. Not when it could cause a lot more harm than I could ever know."

"You're saying I should go to therapy." Grian closed his eyes and rubbed at his temple, sighing. "I'm not saying I haven't thought about it. I've even tried it before, albeit a little more informally. But that was before all of..." He waved a hand vaguely. "...this."

"I see. And of course, you would need to tell them about what happened to you as well. Eventually, anyway." Scott hummed, looking off into the middle distance on his end of their connection. "I can look into a few things, find someone you'd be able to trust with that knowledge, maybe. But only if you want me to, of course."

Grian considered the offer. He didn't doubt it was genuine. Scott never really said or did things without meaning to, which was why he was entrusted with creating the teams for MCC. He understood people and their characters, and he was an excellent judge of exactly how well people would be able to work together. It would probably translate well towards finding a therapist. "Okay, you can try. I can't make any promises about what I'll do or if I'll actually go anytime soon, but it would be nice to have a name if I ever do decide to go."

"Alright. I'll let you know after I've made a few inquiries. Take care of yourself, Grian. I'll be at the meeting, and I'll try to help in whatever way I can."

Grian managed a bit of a smile as the connection closed. Scott really was going further than he probably needed to for him, and he was grateful, but he also couldn't help feeling a bit guilty. Because it should have been his responsibility to find a therapist and figure out how to navigate everything. He'd had ten years to do that at this point—practically eleven, since the anniversary of his death was in just under two months—and he hadn't bothered to do anything about it because he was too busy trying to ignore everything that had ever happened to him.

Now that part of his life was coming to an end, far later than it probably should have, and not entirely because he wanted it to. Grian knew that he could continue to avoid people, continue to cut himself off from his life before and pretend like it didn't matter, but too many people knew about it now. Too many people were brought into the secret to even call it a secret anymore. And maybe, for a change, he wanted the chance to be seen as both Tommy and Grian at once without losing something. He wanted to be okay at the end of this, and to know that everyone else would be okay with that as well. Somehow, he wasn't sure how he was supposed to get to that point.

The only thing he could be certain about was that the meeting on Saturday was going to prove whether or not the life he wanted was even a possibility. In a way, that was more terrifying than anything he had gone through before because it was the true indication of whether or not his life could continue as it was. Looking out over the skeleton of the New Grian Empire, he hoped that it would all be worth it in the end.

The Hermits were all busy leading up to the meeting. Which, since they were helping set things up and securing the world for so many visitors, made a lot of sense. It did feel like Grian was getting shuffled around between his friends, though. It wasn't a bad thing, but it was odd because something was going on and no one was telling him anything about it.

It wasn't malicious. Whatever they were up to, it wasn't meant to hurt him. He was sure of that. Even if sometimes it didn't feel exactly easy to believe it. Those were old issues, wounds scarred over with time and different circumstances. If it mattered—and knowing his friends it probably would at some point—he would discover what they'd been up to at the right time. For now, he was content to shut down any speculation going on in his head for the sake of his own sanity.

When the day of the meeting arrived, Grian wished he could say he was ready for it. He didn't feel ready. He felt like an over inflated balloon just about to pop if exposed to the slightest pressure. He could feel code warping just a bit around him, turning the air ever so slightly warmer, as if that would make things easier.

The Hermits had arrived at the season 7 world copy early as a unified group, all of them sort of clustering around Grian as though he was a VIP or in protective custody. Which, considering what had happened the last time he was off the server, was almost justified. Especially since they were going to meet the culprits, along with several others. He didn't draw attention to the fact that he noticed what they were doing, if only because he knew they would double down on everything, taking his awareness as tacit permission.

Entering through the portal onto the Season 7 world was like going back to a house you had already moved out of. It was familiar, hauntingly so, but the atmosphere was different, emptier than it was supposed to be. Even with all of them there—including the Hermits who hadn't joined until Season 8—it still managed to feel empty.

"So," Xisuma said, gathering them at the Nether Portal built into the bottom of the stairs of Town Hall in the Cowmercial District. "Here's the plan. Grian is going to lead us to the gravesite, and we're going to build up a small meeting hall nearby. It doesn't have to be special although I know you all will probably do something about that anyway, but try to keep in mind we've only got a couple of hours before they're going to show up. Remember, ten o'clock is the time to be aware of. Ten o'clock is when the other people are scheduled to arrive, and we might be leading several groups from the spawn portal to here. Mumbo, Doc, Tango, Etho, Cleo, and I will work on creating a path in the Nether. Considering this was the season of the Upside Down community, I don't think that should be too difficult. That being said, it's a good thing we all have access to Creative, or this would take a lot longer."

"You know," Grian said. "I intentionally didn't create a Nether portal there because I didn't want any of you to find it. It's a bit weird leading you all to it now. And," he added, "I'm sorry in advance because it's a little far, even by our standards. As in, custom maps over the ocean kind of far."

"You can say that again!" Mumbo remarked. "I had to fly for more than thirty minutes by elytra to get there, and I was out at my industrial district when I started!"

"I guess we'd better get started then," Doc muttered, moving towards the Nether portal. "I assume that part of this trip is going to take us through the Nether to make it faster?"

"Right. I remember where the closest portal was," Grian said. "Although 'closest' might be overstating it a bit."

He led them through the Nether and up onto the Nether Roof, where they built most of the fast travel portals. Although the scenic route probably would have been a better view most of the way, with the Upside Down community and their bases as one of Hermitcraft's best show pieces, Grian knew they didn't have time to sit and reminisce about past seasons. Not when they were going to have nearly fifty visitors in a few hours. Xisuma and the Nether building group might decide to create a path through the main part of the Nether to give their visitors a show, but the Hermits had already seen what there was to offer. Or most of them had. For those like Pearl and GeminiTay who hadn't been part of Hermitcraft during Season 7, they could probably get their proper tours later. They might not even have to say anything since any one of the Hermits would love to show off their old projects just to get a different set of eyes on them to appreciate the accomplishment.

He found the nearest portal to the gravesite. He wasn't sure who the portal had been used by originally but given the desert that was missing nearly all of its sand nearby, he could at least determine why they'd made it. There were a few Hermits who might have been responsible for it—Cubfan and Ren coming most immediately to mind with their desert themed bases. Or it might have been him going to collect sand for the Barge, either to sell as sand or to make into TNT.

Now that he thought about it, the portal was probably one he'd made and forgotten about because he'd exhausted that particular desert. Whatever. It had meant that no one else needed to go out as far as he did, and it had been a form of security for the grave. A protected location that people weren't going to simply stumble across, exactly as he'd intended.

Once they were out of the Nether, it didn't take them as long as Mumbo said it would to get there. After only ten minutes, he saw the tree he had built, and the roof of the little cabin he'd cobbled together when he couldn't bring himself to go back to the main part of the server. He'd spent the better part of a week grieving something he thought he'd gotten over, and even now he still felt a distant but sharp pain in his soul.

"This is it," he said quietly, gesturing to the small area cultivated out of the wild growth. "This is where I buried my old body."

A hush had fallen over the others. Grian didn't dare look at any of them, but he couldn't help tasting the cocktail of emotions circling in the air. There was a hint of disbelief, some pity, some determination, and a flood of sorrow. He didn't have to look at their faces to know that they understood. That this was all of their worst fears about what had happened confirmed after what Xisuma had told them. This was his biggest secret, and he'd carried it into this moment alone at first. He'd held that knowledge close to his chest, kept the secret of his impending death and resurrection from the people he had learned to trust because he hadn't been able to trust them that much yet. He had hidden this from them because he hadn't been sure whether he could extend enough belief that he'd be safe with them, all because he'd been hurt before.

Between one blink and the next, Pearl was at his side. "We didn't know," she whispered, vaguely building horror in her voice. "We knew that something had happened. I knew that you wouldn't have left just like that, but we didn't— I didn't— I should have— Before—"

"No, it's fine. None of you knew about this because I didn't want you to know. I mean, I told Mumbo eventually when I told him how to find me, but this..." He waved generally at the area. "This wasn't something I was ready to explain to everyone. How do you explain away a grave for someone no one knows is dead yet? And Pearl, you weren't even a part of Hermitcraft when this happened. If you mean on Evo, you couldn't have known because they wouldn't have let you. And, to be honest, neither would I. I didn't want you all getting in the same kind of trouble with them. I'm... I'm glad they chose me. If they hadn't, it would have been a lot worse." Grian managed a weak smile as he glanced her way. "I mean, how many people do you think could have out-stubborned the auditors of reality?"

"Just you, you mad fool."

"And they're gone, by the way," he said, raising his voice for the rest of the Hermits to hear him. "The Watchers, even with all of the knowledge they thought they had, messed up, and they got eaten by one of their creations. Which was," he admitted sheepishly, "a poor attempt at creating a version of me that would make a better Watcher."

Doc sighed. "Only you, Grian, would accidentally destroy beings that have existed since the universe was born." A smirk lifted the corner of his mouth. "Only you should be so lucky."

"Well, if they tried to create a Grian without compassion," Mumbo cut in, "I'd say they got what they paid for. You're scary, dude! Even when you aren't trying to be."

"Eh, only a fluffy sort of scary." Impulse waggled a hand. "Not menacing, exactly, but like a cat you fully believe could and has committed war crimes."

Grian shrugged. "I mean, you aren't exactly wrong. But we aren't exactly bound by the Geneva Convention, so does it really count?"

Xisuma huffed a laugh. "Only if you don't help with the aftermath. Which you do anyway, so I guess not." He glanced around at the group. "Well, we all have our goals for this. Remember, we only have a couple of hours to prepare, so it doesn't matter how detailed a building you want to create for the meeting. We need enough space for roughly fifty people to have a place to sit down comfortably. Those of us working on the Nether bridge are going to make sure we've got a safe path to travel as we bring the guests over. I trust you all to take care of yourselves and collaborate like civilized adults. If you need any of us working on the Nether side, you have our comm info, but I'd rather not play mediator long distance because none of you can agree on how to build a single building."

Like a collection of contrite children, the group nodded, Grian among them because he knew it was partially directed at him. He had developed some very exacting building standards over the years, and the added stress from knowing that every minute that ticked by brought them closer to the arrival of his past to crash into his present was not going to do his attitude any favors. He almost wished he'd been assigned alongside Xisuma and Mumbo in the Nether, but he knew that it wouldn't be any easier. Especially since working his way back towards the Nether hub and the Spawn portal would only mean that he'd be present when everyone else arrived.

Scar seemed to sense exactly how frazzled Grian was, and took charge of the project with a single "Listen up!"

Once he had the attention of the other Hermits, he glanced around the area. "Now, the way I see it, we could do this one of two ways. We could make this meeting house look like a mausoleum or we could just make a Hermit-style meeting hall. Not," he added, looking over at Ren, "a throne room or anything like that, but the sort of building like where we held all of our server meetings in the past. I vote meeting house."

"Sounds good to me," Impulse said. "I mean, we don't want to take attention away from the grave itself, since it's the whole reason why we're having this here. Right, Grian?"

"Right," he muttered weakly. "And could we maybe make it a little bit further back? Just beyond the cabin?"

"That's just what I was thinking." Scar smiled. "Do you want to work on clearing the area with BDubs, Cub, Jevin, Beef, Stress, and Hypnotizd? The rest of us can figure out a block palette and the general style we want to go with while you're doing that. Considering how many people we're going to have, it would probably be a good idea to clear two square chunks of land to make sure we make a large enough building and have enough space for everyone."

Grian nodded, glancing at the Hermits who had been assigned to help him. It didn't escape his notice that Scar had given him some of the most laid-back people on the server. Or the ones who weren't afraid to drag him out of his own head by pulling him into some kind of competitive shenanigans. From the gleam in BDubs' eyes, he could already tell that this project was going to turn into a competition.

Sure enough, BDubs immediately proposed that whoever cleared the most amount of space would win. Ever the competitive type, Grian instantly threw himself into the task of eliminating trees and smoothing out the terrain for them to be able to build. While it was mostly flat already, given that they were in an oak forest biome, the small hills and valleys would make building a little bit difficult.

Clearly BDubs knew exactly what he was doing because focusing on the task of clearing and terraforming more land than the other six of his fellow Hermits had managed to silence the anxiety buzzing in the back of Grian's head. It wasn't gone by any means, but he could relax and enjoy himself a little more as he worked, even attempting to sabotage BDubs and Cubfan just because they were getting too close to his nice, clean, and perfectly level area. He was half sure they were letting him win, but that didn't matter.

It didn't take long to clear the area. Compared to most of their mega bases, two square chunks were hilariously small. It didn't account for a full block in Scarland, although it was probably about the same area as the wall around Mumbo's vault. Technically, the area wasn't small, but it could hardly be considered large in Hermit terms. Just by the regular player's definition.

Once they were finished with the terraforming, they went to rejoin the larger brainstorming group. Scar had a small bit of wall mocked up in three different styles, all of which looked vaguely familiar.

"Are—are you basing your design on my season 7 mega base?" Grian asked. Because the stone variants in the wall looked vaguely familiar, as did the warped wood, dark oak planks, and dark prismarine details.

"Maybe. We've included a few other things as well," Scar admitted, "but we can't decide which style we want to use. It has to be modular enough that we can recreate it easily enough that we won't have a problem making sure everything is put together on time. And then we have to figure out how to do the roof."

"I think this version is best," Pearl said. "It's easy enough to mock up pretty quick, and that's really what we need right now. Of course, this is all for the outside, and we still need to think about the inside. I say why don't most of you start making the building with this design," she waved at the wall with the simpler and cleaner details that still managed to incorporate a bit of depth and character reminiscent of all Hermits, "and I'll work with Gem, Stress, Scar, and Keralis to make the inside look good. We've got about two and a half hours until people start showing up, so we need to get started now."

The acknowledgement of their deadline seemed to have lit a fire underneath them, as the mad rush back to the clearing began. Grian decided to take on the entrance just so they would have that to work with as they built up the walls around it. It didn't need to be as grand as the entrance of the G-Mansion, nor did it have to have a door at all. In fact, given the rather paranoid personalities they were inviting into the space, it was probably better not to have an escape route cut off by a set of doors.

Marking out a basic archway in regular stone, Grian fiddled around with the shape until he was happy with it. Then he swapped the regular stone out for the materials they were actually using in the build. Stone was part of it, of course, but so was smooth stone, andesite, and—towards the base of the arch—mossy cobblestone. The result was something vaguely gothic, but it was made less sterile by the addition of dark oak wood, which invoked something reminiscent of dark academia instead. Scar was giving directions somewhere, but Grian was lost in the haze of creating, stepping back, reassessing, and moving back in to alter what he'd already created until he was happy with how well it meshed with the segments that had been built up on either side of the doorway he'd made.

He was aware, distantly, that the building was steadily becoming larger than they'd really intended, that the structure was fairly circular with the sharp corners of the original box sacrificed to the committee of builders and the module design altered to accommodate the curved edges. Grian was pulled into creating another entrance along one of these curves and saw False working on a third one on the other side, also attempting to fit into the curve of that corner.

And then, before he knew what was happening, Ren and BDubs were making a glass ceiling in rings that extended into a dome. The first layer, the one that Ren was working on, was purple, but BDubs was working with red glass. As he watched, they dragged in Beef and Hypno to finish filling in the centers of the rings they had created while they moved on to making another couple of layers in purple and red again. The intent was obvious, and probably why Scar was above them marking out a framework to give the free-floating glass platforms something to be connected to. The only reason no one had bothered to offer Scar any help was because he had clearly entered the state of mind he referred to as Super-Fast-Build-Mode. Anyone who tried to help him build would probably just get in his way.

It was the first time Hermits had actively collaborated on a single build without one style or another taking prominence. Or, at least for as long as Grian had been a Hermit. He'd seen projects that everyone had contributed to, but there was usually a specific builder or designer in charge. But for this, Scar had used his Season 7 base as inspiration for the color palette and part of the design for the modules that filled the space in between each of the doorways. It was Scar's idea, with Grian's original design, and he could practically see the fingerprints of the others on everything as it started to come together into something cohesive. Zedaph had taken the example set by Ren and BDubs to tear out the black concrete that was meant to provide a sense of scale and depth to the window area on the G-Mansion and put purple and red glass panes in its place. Gem was creating a path from the Nether portal Xisuma had built to the first entrance Grian had created. Keralis had set himself to the task of recreating the framework Scar was building on the outside of the rapidly developing dome roof in the interior, albeit in a flatter form. It was a series of half arches that met at a ring in the middle that appeared to hold up the glass ceiling.

Like the column that formed the center of Mumbo's Season 6 base, the outer ring and the inner ring matched up, then continued to the floor of the building in negative space. Other than replacing the grass with a parquet floor of stripped dark oak and stripped spruce, the center of the building beneath that ring was entirely empty. Stress had created rows of seats around that empty space, all facing inward and in three distinct sections marked out by the entrances, and started making refreshment tables. Pearl had managed to rope Jevin and xBCrafted into helping create the internal facade so they didn't have to look at the undecorated side of the wall modules.

Grian was starting to feel almost obsolete as the activity narrowed down to specific jobs or details. There was still more than an hour before he had said the others could enter the server, which was an hour he could definitely lose himself in his own head to the anxiety of knowing he was going to tell literally everyone he cared about the truth about who and what he was. Deciding that there was a distinct lack of comfortable places to sit, he decided to revive an old hobby from the Dream SMP: sewing.

He'd made beanbag chairs before, stuffed them with cotton and beetroot seeds, because that was the most useful thing you could do with them. And, if a beanbag chair were left to decompose outside somewhere, it could even be a small source of food, but that was beside the point. He placed down a loom and started generating various banners to serve as the outer casing for the beanbag. First was the L'Manberg flag, both the old and the new versions. Then Kinoko, the Badlands, Las Nevadas, and every other faction he could remember. For Techno and Phil, he even made banners like the Antarctic Empire flags from Earth SMP. Then he created banners that represented certain things from Evo, since they didn't really have the chance to update to a version of the universe where banners were simple to craft. He created a blue approximation of an octopus for Squiddy, a red and white striped banner that looked a little bit like TNT, a skull and crossbones for the Mafia, and a two-color banner with a flower design using Martyn and Jimmy's main colors to represent the Property Police. Then, on a whim, Grian created a banner with a design that looked like a hot-air balloon for the player he couldn't remember, the one he desperately wished he still knew. He doubted any of the others would remember him, but he didn't intend to let anyone else get this particular beanbag chair. It was his, and it would always be his.

Hermitcraft had honestly made so many banners for their various projects over the years that he wasn't about to create all of them, but he did pick out a few memorable ones to turn into beanbags for the rest of the Hermits as he knew his attention to the other groups would make several people jealous. With an infinite supply of banners, wool, beetroot seeds, and a needle with an Efficiency 5 enchantment on it, Grian set himself up in a finished corner to complete his self-appointed task before any of their guests arrived.

It was easy to fall back into the mindless work of sewing something together, easy to remember all of the little tricks he had figured out to make it faster, cleaner, sturdier. Even when he was Tommy, they recognized that he was definitely good at one thing, and that was making something with fabric. The world sort of blurred when he was focused on this very specialized form of crafting, and he only slowed down when he finished one beanbag and needed to grab the materials for the next one.

Grian didn't realize that he'd been unconsciously warping time around him when he heard a familiar voice trying to say something, but what he was hearing was horribly distorted. Pausing to glance up, he saw Gem looking expectantly at him.

"Sorry," he said, letting himself fall back into normal time. "I didn't hear that."

"I asked if you wanted any help," she repeated. "You've kind of gotten yourself buried back here."

Sure enough, when he looked around, he was surrounded by a pile of completed beanbag chairs that he couldn't even see over. There was a narrow path that Gem must have created to get close to him, since she was standing in the middle of it, holding up a couple of the chairs on either side of her that threatened to bring the whole collection tumbling down.

"I suppose I could use a little bit of help," he admitted. "I just thought people might want more comfortable places to sit than wooden chairs. Especially newly built ones. They don't have any of the wear that makes them softer and easier to sit in."

"Oh, we've realized that. As soon as Iskall realized what you were doing, he started ripping out chairs left and right." Gem heaved the bundle of beanbags on one side over so Grian could see the empty space where rows of chairs had been. "It looks like you've got about thirty done, which is really impressive, because it's only been about half an hour!"

Grian rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, wincing as he accidentally pricked himself with the needle. "It's probably been a bit longer than that for me. I didn't... Sometimes I don't realize when I'm stretching time around me."

"That's cool, too. But do you want help? Most of us are done with what we were doing. Even the crew working on the roof is sort of just playing around now. I asked around, and there's a few of us who have basic sewing skills. Those who don't can still do the work of stuffing the beanbags before passing them onto someone who does know how to sew. It would be like an assembly line."

He glanced past her at the group of Hermits just idling nearby. Bored Hermits were dangerous Hermits, and far be it from him to cause that sort of chaos today of all days. "Alright. Just know that I'm probably going to stretch time again without meaning it, so things are going to be a little weird for a while."

"That's fine. As long as we get things done."

From there, the Hermits arranged themselves into small sewing circles. After Grian showed them how he was putting the banners together, those who were confident in their sewing abilities took up the job of starting the beanbags. They then passed the shell of it over to the person next to them, who filled it with Grian's wool and beetroot seed combination. The full beanbag was handed off to someone with the basic sewing skills of mending seams, and they closed the bag, passing it off to whichever Hermit was sorting and arranging the completed ones into the various sections laid out in the room so they wouldn't pile up the way they did before. By the end, he was almost certain they had created too many of them, but it was better to have too many than to have too little.

And then their communicators chimed as one with the notification that people were entering through the Hub portal. The distractions had done their job, but now Grian had to face the fact that he was going to stand up in front of all of his friends, both old and new, and explain why they had never really known him the way they thought they did. Joy.

Grian would admit that at his core he was both a little cowardly and a lot dramatic. He had learned from some of the best how to put on a show and let everyone come to the conclusions he intended them to reach. Unfortunately, since this meeting was about stripping away the masks, he felt he was just a little bit justified in hanging back out of sight—aided by invisibility potions—as the people he knew outside of Hermitcraft started arriving.

Wilbur searched the sea of faces for him immediately, something he had expected, which was another reason why he told himself he was justified in avoiding attention until everyone else was there. It seemed nearly the entire Dream SMP contingent had arrived together, and precisely at the 10am start time he had given them. It was a feat he doubted would be repeated in the future as even George was awake and standing with Sapnap, Karl, and Quackity. It looked like they had mended the relationship that had been shattered by Karl's mixed-up memories, which proved that fixing things the Watchers had done was exactly the right thing to do.

Glancing past most of the others, Grian's eyes caught on Ranboo, who stood taller and looser than he thought he'd ever seen him before. Without the uncertainty of his Swiss-cheese brain, Ranboo walked with a quiet sort of confidence and self-assurance that he should have had the whole time. The comparison was night and day to who he'd been before, and it further cemented the idea in Grian's mind that he'd done the right thing.

That, more than anything, was bolstering his spirit as more people trickled in. Martyn and Nettie arrived together, as they should have. Jimmy actually came with Scott, while several of the other Evo server members came in ones and twos. They must have come straight from the Empires SMP server, as Jimmy was still dressed up as an Old West sheriff, and Scott was wearing an utter riot of hyper saturated colors and displaying heterochromatic eyes, one of which sparkled with potentia. From the way Scott swiveled to look in his direction before turning his attention elsewhere, it was obvious that something more than a little strange was up with that eye, but it was nothing that was going to hurt him.

They had been followed by a couple of others from the Empires SMP, and Grian didn't feel the need to turn them away. Most of those who came from Empires were also part of the Third Life games, so they would probably benefit from the understanding he was going to give people about himself today. At the very least, they would probably understand how he came up with the games in the first place. Since he wasn't aware that they were coming, they weren't going to have a custom banner beanbag chair, and they did have more seats than they really knew what to do with after the frenzy of sewing and stuffing that he'd inadvertently kicked off before. And these were his friends as well. They may not have known all of the details of his past, but they knew how he acted wasn't exactly normal. If anything, it would put all of his eccentricities into context.

Invisibility couldn't last forever, and the meeting he'd called couldn't stall here, not with all of the preparations they'd made. He had the Hermits by his side, he had Scott here as someone who knew enough, and he had a beanbag that made him think of a friend he deeply missed but could not remember. There was no better time than this. Xisuma arrived with the last of the people they were expecting, and Grian chugged a bit of milk as they were passing by to their seats, using the distraction to make it look like he'd been there the whole time, which he technically had.

Waiting until everyone was sitting down, he said, "I bet some of you are wondering why you're here today. Which," he continued in the fervor caused by his sudden appearance, "is fair, because I didn't exactly say what was going on in the messages I sent out, did I? Of course," and here he turned to look at Sapnap and Karl, "some of you already know what's going on, but I forced you to keep quiet about my secrets. That changes today, because I've realized I can't really keep it a secret any longer. I've thought about what the easiest way to do this would be, and I think a demonstration would be best. For that, I need each of you to open up the player menu and watch my name."

Grian tried to pretend that his hands weren't shaking as he opened his own communicator and looked at the names on his identity page. Grian was highlighted but, with a single tap, that would change and TommyInnit would be the name everyone saw in place of his own. He flinched as a hand landed on his shoulder, turning to see that Xisuma had moved beside him.

"It will be okay," the admin whispered. "I will kick anyone who causes problems if you want me to." As proof, he leaned over to show that he had the admin panel for just that open beside the player menu. "My promise as a Hermit, and as your friend."

He managed a weak smile and turned back to his own communicator, tapping on Tommy's name. It lit up.

At first, there was silence. Then...

"What?" Jimmy stood up. "Grian, is this...? What?"

"That's...not a glitch, is it?" Joel asked, looking from the menu to Grian and back.

"No," Sapnap said from the middle of the Dream SMP group. "It's not. And I can finally admit that it's not the first time I've seen it." The whole of the Dream SMP cohort turned on him, but he stared them down. "What? Like Grian said, I was sworn to secrecy. And he closed the loophole I used to bring Karl into it with me."

"You've known the whole time?" Wilbur screeched.

"Of course, he hasn't," Grian cut in. "He's known for just about 10 months now. And considering it involved a lot of shoving each other into the void, I don't recommend his methods." He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "It was the start of a glaring issue that has only gotten worse, and why this meeting is happening in the first place. That reason being I can't seem to keep my mouth shut around the people I care about."

Wilbur turned to look at him, a stricken look on his face. "You still...?"

"Of course, I still care! What do you take me for?" He rubbed a hand down his face. "We're getting ahead of ourselves." He flicked his name between Tommy and Grian several times, before leaving it on Grian at the end. "The point I'm trying to make to start all this off is that I used to be TommyInnit before I died, and that's where everything gets complicated."

"That's an understatement," Scott snorted, just loud enough for Grian to hear him. But he smiled, and that was encouragement enough that he could go on with what he needed to tell them.

"Right. In order to understand this, you need to understand something about the Dream SMP. The code of that server is incredibly wonky. It exists with limited lives like in Third Life, but instead of getting stuck in Spectator Mode after you lose your last life, you get sucked into what is essentially a soul trap on the server. It's a pocket space known as Limbo that's only large enough to store consciousnesses, and sometimes not all of them." He took a deep breath. "The one saving grace for the people on that server is that for a death to count against the lives they have, it has to be lost in some significant way. Now, as Tommy, I lost my first life in the middle of a war. My side was betrayed, and every one of us lost a life that day. My second life, which I lost later that same day, was part of a duel, was sacrificed so we could keep what we were fighting for, the nation that we were creating. What an auspicious start, right?"

The joke fell sort of flat, especially with the Hermits, most of whom were hearing this part of the story for the first time. Some of the Evo/Third Life/Empires group were looking a little sick because they knew the sort of games that Grian played, knew the sort of person he was and how he gave as much as he could for everyone regardless of what he got back, and it wasn't hard to read in between the lines what was going on. And Tommy had been the first person on the Dream SMP to lose two canon lives. He was also the youngest, and he didn't doubt that some of them were doing that mental math. The sixteen year old kid who sacrificed his life in a duel just to have a chance at freedom. It was the stuff of the worst sort of anarchy servers, and yet it was part of Tommy's life. Part of Grian's life.

"I was more careful after that, of course. We knew that there were limited lives, but we didn't know what would happen if you lost them all, and I wasn't in a hurry to find out. Of course," he admitted with a small laugh, "I was still reckless. I mean, what sixteen-year-old isn't reckless? But I did things that didn't matter, got myself involved in schemes that didn't seem like they were going to go anywhere or mean anything. I was... Well, I was Wilbur's vice president at the time, but no one really expected a lot of me because I was a kid. I did what I always did and dragged people into the games I was making up on the spot just to see how far I could push things until they pulled back or something interesting happened." Grian sighed. "In retrospect, that may have been one of the reasons why the Watchers decided I was interesting enough to interfere with."

"I'm sorry, but where did the Watchers come into this?" Martyn asked. "I know they were involved with Evo, but I never heard anything about them doing anything to the Dream SMP."

"Not," Jimmy qualified, holding up a finger, "that we've heard a lot about what happened on that server. I mean, I think I speak for most of us when I say that we don't really know any more than the average person."

"It's not like they announced their presence," Technoblade drawled, speaking for the first time since he arrived with the Dream SMP contingent. He shifted uncomfortably as most of the room turned to look at him. "What? They didn't. We didn't get signs saying that they were watching us. We didn't even realize they had anything to do with our server at all until we talked to Grian about how he managed to break onto the server."

"No, Techno," Scott cut in, crossing his arms over his chest. "Let's be honest with the rest of the room. That was not a talk. That was an excuse to hurl accusations you really had no evidence to support and demand things that couldn't be provided."

"It was." Techno sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "And we should have gone in with cooler heads than we did, but none of us really took a moment to actually sit and process the things we were feeling about what happened to Tommy."

"And you wouldn't listen when I tried to tell the version of events that I wanted you to know. You were determined to blame me for all of it—not just the parts that were my fault—and you wouldn't listen when I tried to tell you what I needed!" Grian huffed, one hand kneading the section of beanbag beside his leg. "But we're getting ahead of ourselves." Slumping back, he continued. "I shouldn't have mentioned the Watchers so soon, because that becomes more important later, but fine. Yes, the Watchers were involved with the Dream SMP, and not in an obvious way. I'll explain about that when it becomes relevant, but for right now, the important thing to know is that I was the vice president under Wilbur, and I ran in the election we held alongside him. An election that we ultimately lost."

It wouldn't be helpful to bring up the dodgy politics of the whole thing, the way Dream had enabled certain moves from the background that led to the powder keg of a situation that followed. It would take entirely too long to explain and was only tangentially related to his own circumstances.

"You won't have seen a lot of what happened, but I do think that the broadcast following the election results was public for long enough that people talked about it in the Hub for a while." Grian drew in a fortifying breath. "J.Schlatt won the election by pooling votes with another party since both were lacking a running mate, putting him in charge of the nation we had created. And his first act in office was to revoke Wilbur's and my citizenship. As anyone who knows me understands, that didn't sit all that well, so I did something I've become sort of infamous for in more recent history. Wilbur and I started a rebellion."

There were a couple of chuckles from the Hermits. Against King Ren, he had very specifically not started a resistance like he had done the previous seasons of Hermitcraft, but that didn't stop him from assisting one with all his experience, a loophole he abused to the delight of many and Ren's deep chagrin. But Pogtopia, the Dream SMP, that was where he learned to build them. To have a base and to protect it against intruders. To employ and be wary of spies. To gather people of a similar mindset and unite them towards a general goal, however serious or silly it may be. This was the context his newer friends were missing when they tried to figure out just what made him who he was, with all of the unusual tics that had never been explained before.

Some of those patterns of behavior had been sharper, more obvious on Evo and during Third Life because it was a similar setting with similar rules, and he tended to fall back on some of his more obscure coping mechanisms in order to manage. Like setting up a trap or prank but being as far as physically possible from it to observe the aftermath just in case it didn't go over as well as he hoped.

"It technically worked," Grian admitted. "I mean, we did manage to remove Schlatt from power and he lost his third canon life, but none of us actually killed him. It was just some health issue catching up to him. I thought that was the end of it, but apparently most of the people involved had different goals for what they wanted to get out of that war. Wilbur in particular, who had reached a point where he just wanted to destroy everything, and Dream got involved to help him do just that, supplying him with enough TNT to destroy L'Manberg. I survived, but Wilbur didn't, and that was his third canon life as well."

He wasn't sure how much detail to add, how much was relevant to the story he needed to tell them about his life. He didn't particularly want to discuss the intricacies of exile, which remained a secret from everyone, even Mumbo and Xisuma, though he had referenced it a couple of times when discussing what Dream had done to him. He glanced towards them, towards Scott, towards Tubbo, trying to figure out what he wanted to say.

"We rebuilt because it was the only thing we could do, and I went back to trying to do things that wouldn’t matter. Except I went too far and accidentally destroyed part of a house."

"We were both involved in that!" Ranboo was suddenly on his feet. "I'm not—! We were both responsible for that! It wasn't just his fault, but he wouldn't let me say anything because he didn't want me to get in trouble too!" He shifted a bit as he realized he'd drawn the attention of the entire room, but he straightened his shoulders, turning to Tubbo. "We were both involved in burning George's house."

Grian sighed, releasing the death grip on his beanbag chair. "It wouldn't have mattered, Ranboo. Dream was determined to isolate me because he realized that I was the key to his little power trip. In general, people did listen to me, enough that I was basically shouldering the whole morale of the Pogtopia resistance when Wilbur started to go all crazy and paranoid."

He looked down at his hands, at the callouses he had first built up in exile because he mined until it felt like his arms were going to fall off, just to watch everything he'd worked for turn to ash and dust. Sometimes the sound of a single piece of TNT exploding was enough to make him drop his tools on instinct, but sequential explosions stopped being a problem over the years.

Shaking his head, he turned back to the others in order to address some of the confused looks. "Dream wanted to have absolute control of the server. And yes, he is the admin, so he technically already had it, but he wanted to control the people, too. Naturally, the rest of us weren't all that happy with the notion of doing whatever Dream said the instant he said it, and that's why he was placed in the prison he had constructed on the server."

"I'm sorry, a prison?" Martyn asked. "I thought the Dream SMP was just supposed to be some kind of regular server. Why on earth would anyone even need a prison in the first place, outside of those factions servers?"

"Intimidation. Authority. A threat." Sam sighed, his breath huffing oddly through his mask. "He commissioned me to make a giant and intricate obsidian and blackstone block of a building that covered more area than L'Manberg ever had. There was no sky access, the only food produced to be used in the prison was raw potatoes, and the main cell was surrounded by lava pouring down from the ceiling. I managed to capture and keep Elder Guardians beneath the prison, so the area was covered in the Mining Fatigue curse. Dream intended to move Tommy into it after retrieving him from exile, but he ran away, and things sort of spiraled out of control."

"From the sound of it," Joel huffed, crossing his arms, "very little of it was in control in the first place."

"No, I suppose it wasn't." Grian managed a slight chuckle. "I've had the benefit of more time since all of that happened to me, so I've reached the point where I look back and realize that I was young, stupid, and hideously reckless in everything I was doing. Even when I was trying to do some good for people. And all that happened was that it was that much easier for Dream to lead me around by the nose."

"What I don't get," Jimmy cut in, "is that if Dream was in prison, how exactly did you lose your third life?"

"I made the decision to visit a psychopath in order to get some closure, and all I got was trapped." He paused, wondering if he should drop the harsh words sitting on the tip of his tongue. They were, after all, relevant to the story. He sighed. "Trapped and murdered. Because it was Dream, that was my third canon life lost. In a way, it was almost more significant because he was the one to take my other two lives as well."

A gloom fell over the group. He had already mentioned he'd died as TommyInnit, but it was still difficult knowing the circumstances that led up to it. Grian swallowed down the urge to accept some of the blame for his own death. He had turned the matter over and over in his head for years, the idea that he had pushed Dream into it, and it had never made the situation any better. It had never made any situation better for acknowledging that fact, and he knew that the Hermits weren't going to let him think such things if he bothered to voice them. Scott wouldn't either.

And maybe it was time to stop borrowing blame for that. He had done similar things to Hermits and to his friends on Third Life and they hadn't plotted extensively to get the chance to murder him. Scar likely had more reason than most to be upset with him over the shenanigans he spearheaded in Hermitcraft Season 7 and for that first death he'd caused in Third Life, but there had never been a grudge between them. They were still friends at the end of the day, and no amount of simulated betrayal or active rebellion had changed that. When it came down to it, Dream had not been a good friend to him, had probably never been a friend at all if he was so quick to turn on him.

"And you got kicked from the server after that?" Lizzie, Joel's wife, asked. "Or was it...?"

"Remember that soul trap I mentioned on the server?" Grian sat up, relaxing just a little as he'd passed the first hurdle of the conversation. They believed him. "I got trapped in that. From the inside, it felt like months had passed, but it was actually only three days by regular server time. Time in that void stretches like it doesn't matter at all, because it probably didn't since we were all dead. And nothing would have happened if Dream didn't have another trick up his sleeve, a book with a ritual capable of bringing the dead back to life. Or, at the very least, those who had died like we had, with souls that could still be brought back. It's not the same as someone who simply fades away. Dream decided he wasn't done with me, and that's when he tried to bring me back to life. To put it succinctly, it worked, and it didn't at the same time."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Jimmy asked. "Either it worked or it didn't, right?"

"You would think that, but that's where things get weird because that's where the Watchers first got involved with my life. Not that I knew this until later." Grian sighed, remembering how confused he was back then, the anxiety buzzing in the back of his head alongside annoyance. Then fear as he realized that the life he was trying to return to didn't exist anymore. "When Dream's ritual pulled me out of the void, I experienced the worst sort of pain I could have ever imagined in my life. It should have brought me back to my body, but instead I woke up in the Hub. As far as I knew, this was normal. I mean, when you die in a Hardcore world, you get shunted to the Hub. I thought this was the same. It took finding a different world in the Dream SMP portal housing to realize that something was wrong."

"And that's when you decided to become Grian?" Wilbur asked. His tone was less confrontational, more like he was trying to understand, which was a welcome change from before. A little late, but he must have realized that most of his crazy theories were wrong.

"It's not as simple as that. I didn't want to change my name at first. I was going to wait out the time until the Dream SMP started up, until the day I died arrived, and I was going to go back. But I could only live on individual worlds because my code was too corrupted by the resurrection and from trying to exist at the same time as my younger self for me to be able to enter any servers. I'm not—" Grian cleared his throat, trying to force the words out. "I don't do well on my own. I need to be around people. I need...interaction. I learned that before."

He could almost hear the way several people turned to look at him, could feel the swell of emotion from the Dream SMP contingent, confused and scared and curious and guilty all at once.

"I think you're going to have to explain that," Scott said gently. "What do you mean you learned that before? Before you died?"

"Well, yeah." He kept his eyes firmly locked on the ground, and not even Mumbo leaning into his side ever so slightly could get him to look up. "I said I was in exile. The second time, I mean. The one where I didn't have Wilbur there. Unless Dream was there, I was usually by myself, and I didn't..." He crossed his arms, holding on as tight as he dared as though that was the only thing keeping him together. "If I hadn't realized a few things about Dream and run away, I never would have left that beach."

"The tower," Jack whispered. "That tower you left behind. It was made with whatever blocks you had in your inventory, as high as you could go." He swallowed audibly in the silence. "You were desperate when you went up that tower."

Grian looked up, locked eyes with Jack as though they were the only ones in the room. "I had a lot of time to think while sitting on top of it. I realized a lot of things up there. But most of all, I learned that I can't really be on my own for long without bad things happening."

"How long did you wait?" Phil asked, pulling Grian's attention away from Jack. "Before changing your name. How long?"

"Oh, it was more than a year, I think." He tried to ignore the pitying looks, the tiny gasp of horror out of Tubbo, the grimace splitting Ranboo's face. "Like I said, I was trying to wait it out. And I kept looking up people I knew, seeing what they were doing. Some of the bigger worlds were just getting started then. Hypixel, it was still being put together because this was nearly eleven years ago now, almost exactly come March. I looked up people by name, read through their public profiles to see what they were doing and tried to keep myself sane by thinking about all of the things I was going to do when I got back." He chuckled dryly. "I made so many plans back then. I was going to give so many apologies, try to make things better around the server so we weren't fighting as much. I was even going to go back to Puffy for therapy. Well," he huffed, slumping back, "you can see how well that worked out."

"Why Grian, though?" Eret shuffled in their seat, fidgeting under the sudden weight of eyes. "Sorry, I just... You knew about Grian. Why become him?"

"That was exactly why. Because Grian was supposed to exist, and he was the one person I could never find when I went searching for him. After a while, it was getting closer and closer to when he was supposed to emerge as a player, and there was nothing. Nothing except the build I had created that Grian showed a picture of in one of his videos. A picture of a sunken city."

Grian tilted his head back to look up at the ceiling, at the foggy layers of purple and red glass placed by his friends in an effort to make this meeting hall look like something that would fit on Hermitcraft. He could feel the code of the universe thrumming around him, see between the dimensions that lay just beyond sight into the emptiness of the watching void, and he reached for the calm that emptiness could now bring him. "That was when I stopped ignoring all of the signs that connected TommyInnit and Grian. I had picked up this red sweater my first day in the past. I'd grown out my hair just a bit, and it had gotten darker. I was older, experiencing different versions of Minecraft like they were all new again, and I spent my time building just to have something to do. By then, I knew no one else was going to appear to take the name that was already there. So I began to make myself into the person I remembered."

"So that's how TommyInnit really died," Techno muttered, loud enough that everyone could hear him. "He turned himself into someone else."

"It still wasn't that simple," Grian admitted, sitting up again and stretching until his joints popped in his arms and wings. "I still thought of myself as Tommy for a while, even while saying that my name was Grian. I forced myself to give up certain habits, to apply myself to building until I could actually be called good at it, and I actually did it because I knew I had to. Because there was no other option. Because I was the only Grian people were going to get!"

"Personally, I like this Grian," Mumbo put in. "And I think I'm the person most qualified to say this because I've known about this for longer than anyone else. Except Parker, of course."

"You've always had more of the story than Parker had, too." Grian shook his head. "But that's beside the point. I didn't stop thinking like Tommy for a long time. I even carried all of that into the Evolution server."

And here was the other half of the story, the context for those who experienced the Dream SMP alongside him. As Techno had put it, this was how TommyInnit really died.

"The first thing you need to know is that, from a Watcher perspective, this is where the story really starts. It doesn't matter that they messed with my timeline because it was all about making sure that I created the Evolution server, an unprotected world experiencing sudden and rapid changes that we would have to adapt to as it shifted around us. In other words, the perfect testing ground."

The Evo members winced. They hadn't realized what was going on at first, and by the time they saw that there was something strange with all of the messages and the odd structures that appeared across the world, Grian was already gone. He'd denied being involved in them whenever they asked, and they hadn't believed him until he'd vanished without an explanation. All that was left behind in their minds was that the Watchers had something to do with it.

"I know some of you know about the Watchers, or at the very least you know more than others, and you've heard about a player who became a Watcher in old stories. I wish I could say that the story was actually as old as people think it is, but it's not. The Evolution server was supposed to be a clever little world that developed along the same path that the Architects facilitated over the years. It was supposed to advance versions around us, and it technically did. But I lost the ability to control that before I was even aware that it was an issue."

"So you weren't controlling the version shifts?" Systemzee asked. "You didn't create the puzzles? None of it?"

Grian shook his head. "When we found that first portal to the next version, I tried to revert the world, but I was locked out of those controls completely. I had played right into the Watchers' hands when I decided to become Grian. They knew I would create Evo. They knew who I was before and what I knew because they generally exist outside of the flow of time. If I stayed TommyInnit, I would never have become Grian, never would have more or less handed them the easiest testing ground for players and their loyalties, never would have become a Watcher, but they knew that had to happen. I knew that had to happen."

Xisuma turned to stare at him, shock and sympathy radiating off him like his normal voidwalker chill as he realized the implications of that statement. Mumbo scrambled to catch his hand and hold on as if he expected Grian to suddenly disappear. It wasn't surprising that they would react like this. It was, after all, the first time he had admitted outside the privacy of his darkest thoughts that he had played a part in the events that shaped him from the Watcher side of things.

"Are you saying that you were actually involved in making sure Tommy stayed dead?" Phil asked carefully. "Because you always put the blame on the Watchers before."

"Because I wasn't exactly Grian when I was with the Watchers. I'm not exactly Grian when I am a Watcher."

"That doesn't make sense," Wilbur complained, crossing his arms huffily.

"It's not easy to explain. Being a Watcher is different from being a person. The part of me that is a Watcher isn't separate from the rest of me, but it's like a frame of mind. A way of thinking that just happens to be interwoven with the code of the universe at every possible moment at once. And when the other Watchers existed, it was hard to keep the knowledge that I was a person as well when I was also aware of things that needed to happen, sequences of events that couldn't help but unfold exactly as they did in order to keep the universe in balance and on track. There's some fluidity to it, ways that the universe can be shifted in one way or another. That's what the other Watchers did, they experimented with how far they could push things, how difficult it would be to change moments that weren't meant to change. But there were other moments that they knew they couldn't touch, moments that could destroy Minecraft in its entirety if they were altered." Grian let go of Mumbo's hand, folding his hands carefully in his lap and staring down at them. "And my death was one of those moments."

He closed his eyes against the clamor, both the verbal and the emotional feedback that he couldn't really hide from anymore. It was like a tsunami wave crashing over him, a hundred different emotions pressing in. There were too many feelings to parse out or determine which belonged to which person, so Grian didn't bother to try. He held them, let them fill him up until the knowledge that his death meant something—even reversed—to every single person in the room finally felt real.

"Shut up, all of you!" Scott called over the cacophony. "You're all missing a very important detail here, and I for one refuse to be left in the dark about this." Grian glanced up to see Scott staring at him. "Grian, what did you mean by 'when the other Watchers existed'? That's a very ominous or auspicious past tense, and I can't decide which."

Grian managed a small grin. "It's exactly what it sounds like. The other Watchers managed to create the thing that destroyed them. The Egg that they planted on the Dream SMP."

Sapnap shot to his feet. "What the actual fuck?!"

"Language!" Bad shouted, joined by a couple of other voices. But the shout seemed to take most of the energy out of him, like the mere mention of the Egg was enough to exhaust him. He sighed, turning to Grian. "Was that another one of their experiments? See what it would take for friends to kill one another?"

"It was a test, but not for you. That was..." Grian clicked his tongue and hummed, hoping they wouldn't be too offended by the truth about the thing they had worshiped. "The Egg was their attempt to make a version of me that they could control. The only reason they placed it on the Dream SMP was because they hoped that the proximity to Tommy would be enough to make it stable. And technically it did, because what happened to all of you was the Egg's attempt to run an experiment of its own." He could feel the smile return to his face as the edges of his lips ticked up. "Unfortunately for the Watchers, they managed to leave it with an overwhelming instinct to survive and none of the qualms I have about destroying things beyond the ability to repair. It ate them out of sheer self-preservation, which I found out when I unraveled it and reabsorbed the pieces."

"They're gone?" Martyn asked. "Since when?"

"There's still echoes of them," Grian admitted. "But they've been gone for, oh, just over two years now."

"But I talked with one of them just a year ago! During the Last Life game!"

"And they don't exist in the same timeline as us. Who knows how long ago that was for them?" Grian sighed. "Actually, it's probably for the better that you haven't heard from them again. You haven't, right?"

"No, of course not."

Just to be sure, Grian took the opportunity to look deep into Martyn's code, to see if Green or Blue had left any nasty surprises there. But other than the slight traces that could have come from Evo, there was nothing to find. Clearly whichever had contacted Martyn had quickly lost interest in him for whatever reason. Probably because Martyn was not the sort of person who allowed himself to be pushed into the sort of things the Watchers would have wanted him to do. He cared about people, more even than Grian did, and that sort of love was completely unfathomable to the other Watchers. Every time they'd tried to find a way to quantify or limit it, it hadn't worked. And while they'd had Grian, he wasn't going to help them understand it, not when it was the main weapon he could use against them, holding onto his own mind through the sheer force of will inspired by the people he cared about and who cared about him. Given what happened with the Egg, it was clear that they had never fully understood the depths of the emotions and personalities they were attempting to manipulate.

"So you are a Watcher," Phil said. "You're a Watcher, the one who was a player first, and that only happened a few years ago. How?"

"Which are you asking: how I became a Watcher or how it only happened a few years ago?"

"How did it happen?"

"That's..." Grian swallowed past the lump in his throat that always formed when he tried to talk about the Watchers and what they had done to him. "I didn't lie to you when I said they thought I was interesting. It was a bit like what happened with Dream. They saw that I wasn't as impressed with what they were doing and I refused to let them dictate what I should do except when it threatened my own best interests. They build temples and monuments, and I mined out the iron blocks they used to build it. They created tests that I crashed right through just to see what would happen. I impersonated them in order to pull a prank on my friend. They had been watching me closely for far longer than I ever thought they would be—the fact that they pulled me through time like they did proves that—and I don't know why they would just let me—"

A sudden realization struck him like a bolt of lightning, and he sat up as the implications of it crashed over him.

"Grian?" Mumbo scooted closer. "What is it? What's wrong?"

"I thought it was luck or some kind of test or some stupid attempt to lull me into a false sense of security, but what if it wasn't?"

"What do you mean?"

"Mumbo, the Watchers never tried to get me back. I thought they had so many opportunities, so many moments where they could just swoop in and steal me again. But they didn't. I thought they could see that I was going to get away, I thought they could see my future on other servers the way I could, but they couldn't. They had no idea!"

Xisuma tipped his head to one side. "How is that possible, though? I thought Watchers could see into most spaces."

"Not the Hub," Grian corrected. "Not without some special permissions that the Hub Authority and the Architects would never give them. And both the Hermitcraft server and the MCC servers are built with the same permissions. No outside interference!" His head was still spinning with the rush of knowledge, dizzy with all of the new connections he was making. "But I saw myself in those places because I knew I would be in them. I knew because of what I knew about Grian when I was Tommy, and I knew because I already had those permissions! I am a member of the Hermitcraft server! My actions on the Dream SMP as Grian could be misconstrued considering I frequently took the form of a player to interfere with things that they didn't or couldn't do from a distance. I thought Green and Blue had known that I would get away from them, but I've been protected from their eyes since I got away from them. There's not a single moment I've been on an unprotected server or world while they still existed."

"But you were on the Dream SMP recently," Techno pointed out. "Unprotected and everything."

"Yes, but by then, the Watchers were already dead!" Grian laughed. "Not even the all-seeing Watchers can see beyond their own deaths! They didn't even see their deaths coming in the first place!"

"Hold on," Martyn cut in. "Is that why you disappeared? You were on the Dream SMP? And you didn't tell anyone?"

Techno raised a hand. "In fairness, we didn't exactly let him tell anyone." He actually looked and felt properly apologetic, which was surprising, as Grian had never known the man to compromise on anything without a fight. "We made a lot of wrong assumptions about what was going on when he appeared on our server and left with Tommy's body."

Jimmy sat forward suddenly, almost tumbling off his beanbag chair. "Hang on! Who said anything about a body? Grian's alive, isn't he?"

"I am alive, but my code was the only thing that was needed to rebuild my body in the past. My code with all of the memories and experiences attached to it. But the life rules on the Dream SMP left behind the physical form when the soul was shunted into that trap, and having the body is a key part of the ritual to resurrect someone. The body wouldn't just disappear just because my soul wasn't trapped on the server anymore," Grian explained, then paused, thinking. "At least, I don't think it would have. Obviously, I don't particularly want to test it. But I also didn't want to see what would happen if someone tried to repeat the ritual, so I made my way onto the server both to witness my own death and, when I realized what was happening, to remove the body I left behind. The grave you passed near the portal, it's not empty."

The Hermits and the members of the Dream SMP knew this. So did Scott. The others, however, did not, and stared at him in horror. Several turned to look back the way they had come, towards the custom tree with the small collection of flowers and the cobblestone grave marker. They came from worlds with unlimited respawn rules, or rules that were neither as rigid nor as appalling as the canon-lives rule of the Dream SMP. The idea that a permanent death would cause lasting harm and leave behind a body was practically unthinkable. Few people had ever created graves for players. Beloved pets, martyred villagers, something for a joke or a prank, sure, but almost no one had created a grave for a player who was truly gone.

And technically he wasn't completely gone, but he also wasn't the player he was before. Grian was irrefutably different from TommyInnit, so it was not without some merit to say that there was a piece of TommyInnit laying in that grave, never to be resurrected. Certainly by the time Grian had lived through to the time of his original death, he had sacrificed pieces of himself to become someone else. That was part of the acknowledgement he'd had in mind in making that grave. Even if he wanted those parts of himself back again, he wasn't likely to get them, being far too different from his teenage self to be able to step back into the life he had lost.

"Are you okay?"

Grian blinked, looking up until he met Lizzie's eyes. "What?"

She shifted in her seat. "You died. I know it happened a while ago to you, but I can't imagine that you'd be okay after that. I mean, I made some lore decisions in the last season of the Empires SMP that I needed time and space to process later, and none of them were nearly as real or as traumatizing as actually dying." She glanced towards his grave again. "Besides, I can't imagine it was an easy thing to build your own grave and bury your own body. That sounds horrible, to be honest, and I just thought... Are you okay?"

"I'm..."

He forced himself to stop and think about it for several moments. He'd reflected on a lot of things, especially over the last several weeks, but he hadn't actually thought about the implications of what he had done. If anything, he'd been avoiding thinking about the implications of being his own gravedigger since it happened. People had asked him if he was okay before, and Grian thought he was answering honestly when he told them he was fine. But to be asked directly about the circumstances of his own burial and all of the actions he had taken around it, it was a different matter. Yes, he was generally okay, but there was still something stalling in his mind whenever he looked at his grave, a longing and an emptiness that he'd never been able to fully quantify.

"I'm managing," he finally replied. "Usually by not thinking about it, but obviously that's not a long-term possibility. With everything that happened recently, I knew that not explaining certain things was only going to cause problems in the future, and I just reached a point where I wanted all of this out in the open."

He sighed. "On that note, does anyone have any other questions? I'm sure I missed a few things in the explanation, and I'd rather clear them up now than leave you to assume something like the last ludicrous theory about me."

Wilbur winced in his seat, but few others seemed to notice it as they were distracted looking at one another in thought.

"When did you decide that you weren't going to tell us what happened to you?" Wilbur asked. But behind it, Grian could hear the question he really wanted to ask: was it my fault you didn't want to come back?

"It wasn't a conscious decision at first. I was turning myself into Grian, accepting the fact that I was leaving my past as TommyInnit behind, and I knew that was going to change things. I didn't give up on the Dream SMP because of that, or for any specific reason," Grian admitted. "The Watchers were the first nail in that coffin, to be honest. I knew I would be too different to be believed if I tried to explain that I used to be Tommy. But I think the thing that really cemented in my head that I couldn't go back was Third Life."

The members of Third Life sat forward. There was something strange, something indescribable in the emotions fluttering through the group of them, and it was almost like loss and realization all at once. Because now that they had the context of who he was and what the Dream SMP was like, it wasn't hard to draw the parallels. For all of them except Scott, they were coming to the realization that they'd been taking part of the most significant progress he'd ever made towards coming to terms with everything he had gone through in his formative years. And they'd been part of the reason he'd decided not to go back.

"What about Third Life did that?" Ren asked quietly. "It wasn't... It wasn't because of Dogwarts, was it?"

Grian smiled sadly. "No, it wasn't Dogwarts. It wasn't anything in particular. I just...figured out that I was a different person than I'd been before. That I wouldn't react to things the same way, that I didn't want to be part of something like that when it wasn't a game. I didn't... I couldn't give up the friendships I'd made since becoming Grian, and rejoining the Dream SMP would force me to make a choice between one and the other." He sighed again, feeling an invisible weight slip off his shoulders. "Third Life made me realize I'd made that decision a long time ago."

It went without saying that he'd chosen the Hermits, the Third-Lifers, the Evo Crew. He had picked his new life over his old one.

"I have a question," Martyn said, raising a hand like they were in a classroom. "You were taken by the Watchers when you left Evo. What happened when you were with them?"

Grian felt the edges of his mortal form ripple and warp just a bit. "A lot of things. But it started by overwriting part of my code until I was more like them. It was their earliest and most ambitious experiment. The Evolution server, that was where they started manipulating things, but they could play with time like it was little more than a ball of clay in their hands. They could reach backwards and forwards to a certain extent, but they started at Evo and they ended on the Dream SMP. Everything in between was just details."

"Yeah, but what happened in that 'in between'?" Martyn pressed. "With all of the shenanigans you pulled on Evo, you must have done something!"

"I... may have accidentally gotten myself deified," Grian admitted sheepishly, scratching just behind his ear. "Several times over."

"What do you mean 'several times over'?!" Jimmy demanded. "I mean, I know you can get up to a lot of things, but people don't just become gods, Grian!"

"Watchers do, though."

"Hah! I know a bit about this," Techno said, lounging deeper into the Antarctic Empire beanbag he'd claimed. "Grian is the Blood God."

Practically the whole of the Dream SMP turned to stare at Techno. The only one who hadn't, BadBoyHalo, chuckled. "He's also Xelqua. And Wynndrake. And the Man at the Crossroads." He grinned, wide and joyful the way it should have been the whole time, were it not for the Egg's influence. "Just about the only pantheon he hasn't managed to trip into is the Architects themselves and the Mianite Triad."

Grian could feel his cheeks getting hot. "What? It's not like I tried to collect worshipers or anything! It just happened!"

"Damn," Quackity whispered, though it was hardly a whisper when the whole room could hear it. "When they said 'put yourself out there', you really went and did it, didn't you?"

Still trying to ignore the burning heat in his cheeks, Grian turned up his nose at the avian hybrid. "I'm not even going to dignify that with a response." Turning so he didn't have to see the amused smirk painted across Quackity's face, he addressed the rest of the room. "Does anyone else have any questions?" Then, after realizing just what he might be inviting, he added, "Any questions that don't have to do with dubious godhoods I've accidentally acquired?"

A couple of the Empires SMP crew who'd looked a little excited grumbled at his stipulation, flopping back in their seats with little frustrated sighs. Even some of the Hermits looked a little miffed that they couldn't ask him about what other names he stumbled into over the years. Of course, they'd still have the ability to ask him after this. It's hard to escape from his neighbors, after all.

"What I'd like to know," Joel said, glancing around at the people in the room, "is why you went to the trouble of telling any of us at all. I mean, it's your business who you are and who you were. No one needs to know any more than you want to tell them."

Joel couldn't see the smug look Scott was aiming at the whole of the Dream SMP, but Grian could, and that was probably exactly why Scott was so blatant about it. Techno was trying to pretend that he couldn't see it, though it was clearly making him uncomfortable, and Wilbur looked like he'd swallowed a lemon.

"I will admit, this wasn't my first choice," Grian said slowly, trying not to draw attention to the pocket of gloom slowly developing in the Antarctic contingent. "But I knew that some or all of this was going to come out eventually. Different parts mattered to different people, but at the end of the day, I wanted to have a little bit of control over the information." He looked down at his hands, picking absently at some peeling skin at the edges of his calluses. "I mean, there are still riots in the Hub over the disappearance of TommyInnit, so I have to do something about that eventually. I didn't want that to be the first any of you heard of it, because that would probably make me a bit of a terrible friend. I would have gotten around to this eventually, but recent events made it so I needed to have this meeting sooner rather than later."

"Recent events?" By Joel's tone, the question wasn't directed at Grian. And it wasn't really a question at all, as he stared down several members of the Dream SMP. He was not, after all, unintelligent, and even without the obvious cue of Scott being all smug in their direction, he could put enough of the pieces he'd been given in that meeting together. If Grian were in the business of getting revenge on the people who had hurt him, it appeared that he would have had a lot of help in achieving it between the Hermits, the Evo crew, and the larger part of Empires SMP.

If he were younger or more spiteful, he would have taken them up on it. If he wanted to completely destroy the person he used to be, he would have chosen to erase his past when given the chance. Grian didn't have to forgive them—not yet, and not at all if he didn't want to—but he had realized at some point that choosing to hold onto who he used to be was not a slippery slope to becoming that person again. He didn't have to go back, didn't have to entertain the people he knew before, didn't have to play the long-suffering scapegoat ever again. Even if he tried, he didn't think any of the Hermits would let him.

"Grian?"

Glancing up, Grian locked eyes with Jack Manifold, though this was a far different version than he'd ever encountered before. This Jack was hesitant, guilty, unsure. This Jack didn't have even an ounce of the anger he'd held before.

"You don't have to answer," Jack said, picking at invisible lint on his clothes. "But what happened during exile? What did Dream do to you?"

It took every bit of self-control Grian had not to gasp audibly at the question, to force himself to remain calm and keep the more eldritch parts of him from making an appearance again. He sucked in a long slow breath before he felt prepared enough to answer. "You all saw Dream's vault. Or, if you didn't, you heard about it, right?" When the various members of the Dream SMP nodded, he went on. "Dream was attacking our attachments, the things we cared about, in some cases the people we cared about. He wanted to be in control of everything, and he wanted to isolate me so that he could control me using those same methods. But Logstedshire was open and available for people to find. If someone really wanted to find me, it wasn't that hard, so he started cutting off connections. And then he was making me cut off those connections, convincing me that my friends had abandoned me, and that he was the only one who cared, the only one I could trust, the only friend I had. He wanted to make sure that I was totally and completely reliant on him, and he'd do this by forcing me to choose between my life and safety and the tools and armor I'd spent the last days or weeks collecting. I wasn't allowed to keep any of it if I wanted Dream to still be my friend."

An inaudible hum of displeasure lit up Grian's senses as people started to realize exactly what sort of position he'd been put in by that exile. Tubbo's emotions were tinged with no small amount of guilt for being the one to pass down that judgment on Tommy. Techno was shocked beneath his stoic facade, clearly thinking back over all of the things he had said and done after running to his cabin after escaping the lonely beach.

"And the worst part about it is that it almost worked. I didn't— I wasn't—" He broke off, knowing exactly how much this admission was going to hurt the people who understood what he was saying. "That tower wasn't the only time I tried, but it was the moment where I finally managed to break out of the mindset I'd gotten myself trapped in."

"Tried what?" Jimmy demanded, oddly insistent for someone who couldn't know the whole situation. Based on the context, he probably had enough of an idea to guess the answer. "Tried what, Grian?"

"What do you want me to say?" he asked instead. "I'm tired of sugarcoating or side-stepping things like this. I tried to kill myself while I was in exile. Dream realized that I wanted to jump into the lava, and he cut off my access to the Nether. Apparently I was valuable enough that he didn't want to get rid of me, but not so much that he wanted me capable of wanting to actually live, because he didn't do anything to convince me to stay alive other than basically saying that I wasn't allowed to die unless he let me." Burying both hands in his hair, Grian choked on something between a sob and a growl. "And then he killed me anyway, just to prove a point! To prove that he could! If I had come back the way he intended, nothing would have changed. The person you know me as wouldn't have existed, or he wouldn't have been me. And it wouldn't have mattered because no one would have known it any different!"

It did not ease his mind that Karl was nodding sadly near the back of the group, the bitter taste of familiarity wafting from his code. He had played with time, drowned in it before and forgotten half of what he'd done because the other Watchers were determined to make him powerless. Karl could never touch the events unfolding directly around him, but he could remember when they changed, and he had admitted to remembering something other than what had happened to Grian back when he was still Tommy. He remembered events where the resurrection worked as intended, where Tommy was brought back exactly as he should have been, and all of the chaos that had unfolded around that. It was the topic of one of the meetings they'd had in the small cafe on the Thoroughfare, putting all of his fragmented memories into context against what actually happened, and it seemed that he was capable of seeing the timeline in which Tommy never became Grian at all.

They were never entirely sure if Grian existed in that timeline, or if he had any connection whatsoever to the Dream SMP, but Tommy had been resurrected in that cell, had lived again after losing his third life, and it wasn't nearly as significant then as it had been this time. Life went on, Tubbo and Ranboo continued with their lives, the Eggpire did whatever they were doing, and Karl didn't really pay attention to what Tommy was doing. But, from what he did know, it didn't seem to be much. The only thing Grian was certain of independent of Karl's memories was that the version of Tommy in that timeline never got the closure he was looking for. Because really, how could it end except in a giant ball of flame and destruction? In the end, what else would Tommy be but another memory turned to ash in a world that was neither prepared nor willing to treat him as a person instead of a walking and talking liability?

TommyInnit, at his very core, was a bundle of code cobbled together haphazardly, a tumultuous jumble of emotions and instincts with a crippling need to belong somewhere despite never really belonging anywhere. He was born and abandoned on an anarchy server, probably dying several times before he even realized he was a player in the first place, and since getting kicked for being too young by one of the emerging warlords who managed to have something of a conscience, he'd been looking for a home ever since. Charlie Slimecicle probably said it best when he called him TommyInnit from a bunch of places or TommyInnit from Nowhere; both were reasonably accurate.

"I think we're done here," Xisuma said. "It's getting late, and I am not going to sit here and let one of my players punish himself by letting you ask more questions right now."

When Grian glanced up, he was already on his feet and gesturing for the non-Hermits to head back the way they had come. Several of the Hermits were also on their feet and had closed ranks around him, Mumbo most notable of those. Grian looked around at his fellow Hermits, his friends, his people and wondered what it must look like to the others for twenty-four people better known for their building or redstone prowess to create what was essentially a protective barrier around the person with arguably the most amount of power in the room.

Sound went sort of hazy as Doc knelt down beside him, carefully grabbing at his hands to pull them away from his hair.

"Don't worry," the older Hermit whispered. "We will take care of everything from here."

And, sitting in the building they had created together, surrounded by the people he had come to trust with his life and sanity, Grian believed him. Hermits took care of one another, and he had been a Hermit for a while now. Even if they were only now getting the full story about him, they still cared whether he was safe and happy. He knew whatever else happened that day, his fellow Hermits would protect him, so he gave himself permission to relax into that assurance.

DocM77 was an old being, older than he let anyone know. Some were aware of his story, of the circumstances that shaped who he was and what he did, but he tended not to speak of such things. After all, he lived quite openly for one of the Architects' dirty little secrets. He even still used the name they had given him, not that anyone really recognized it for what it was. Mob-7, attempt 7. He'd added 'Doc' later, when he decided to reclaim some of his past, but the M77 had been his designation given by the Architects in the beginning, when they were still trying to shape the world into what it was meant to become.

He tried not to think about the fact that he was their seventh attempt at it or how he never met any of the other attempts to create something like him. If an earlier version had been successful, they would not have attempted his creation, so he was always conflicted about how he should feel about that distinction. His purpose, as he was originally created, was to be another type of monster for players to encounter in their worlds. An intelligent monster who combined the most powerful aspects of the other monsters into one.

Mob-7 had the accuracy of the skeleton archers, the stamina of the zombie, the maneuverability of the spider, and the explosive power of a creeper. When he actually took the time to think about it, Doc thought perhaps the reason he was the seventh attempt at creating such a thing was because the others fell victim to the weakness of one or several of the combined mobs. Skeletons and zombies burned in the sunlight, and sunlight also tended to impair a spider's vision, which was why they never attacked in daylight unless they were attacked first. Finally, creepers, despite their power, were the weakest of all as the explosive power they released was enough to kill them.

The Architects didn't know what to expect from him. It hadn't taken long for him to realize that, and it helped that they tended to talk carelessly around him, as though he wouldn't understand their words despite forming him with the intelligence to do just that. But, of course, he was not meant to be a unique being in their minds, just a replicable monster that existed to force players to grow and think and achieve beyond what they would normally strive for. He was a tool to them, and they had provided him with enough self-awareness to resent them for it.

He had known about Watchers from nearly the beginning, had heard the Architects talking about forces that affected their worlds without relating back to either their actions or those of newborn gods. The Watchers were the reason they had gotten careless with his maintenance, why they appeared less and less to try and fix him so he would fit whatever criteria they meant him to. Indirectly, the Watchers were the beings who made it possible for him to escape, but not before he destroyed all the records they had regarding his origins. To ensure that they wouldn't look for him, Doc cut off his own arm and forced it to explode, neatly faking his death. It wouldn't grow back, he knew, by he also wasn't going to die from the lack of a limb, not when part of his coding came from zombies and skeletons.

After that, he'd been hiding in the between spaces, in the areas where the Architects would never think to find something hiding. Doc had watched players emerge into the world and realized that somewhere in their experimentation that the Architects had given him just enough intelligence to be considered a player as well. Hybrids were born and he finally had a way out of the shadows and into the world that was meant to hold pale copies of himself, were it not for his escape. Apparently there was no Mob-7 attempt 8.

Doc did not use the designation they had given him at first. He was still hiding, and he didn't want their attention to fixate on him, didn't want the Architects to realize that he was still alive and try to take him back to the sterile lab. He went by the Doctor or the Professor first, capitalizing on his knowledge of how the coding of the universe worked from his time as an experiment to manipulate events to his whim. And when the universe shifted, he altered his methods, ran experiments of his own, found ways to accomplish whatever he needed to survive and thrive in a world he wasn't meant to truly change.

And it was due to this life, these years before he allowed himself to take back his designation and turn it into his name, that he was able to relate to Grian in a way he never had before. They were like echoes of one another, separate but distinct beings who were meant for a far different existence than what they had found themselves pulled into by circumstance. And yet they had each overcome their struggles by pressing forward until they found a place where they could rest. For both of them, that place happened to be the Hermitcraft server.

After the half-disastrous end of the meeting in which all of Grian's secrets were laid bare, Doc told Xisuma that he would stay with Grian while the rest of the Hermits escorted their guests off the server. He held onto Grian's hands, keeping him from pulling out more of his hair in stress, as everyone filed out of the building. Finally, it was just the two of them left and Grian relaxed that little bit more. Not completely, of course, but enough that Doc could let go of his hands knowing that they wouldn't end up buried in his hair again.

"You know," Doc said quietly, listening to the distant trill of evening birds and the low buzz of night insects starting to rouse. "If it were me, I wouldn't have been able to do it. I couldn't sit in a room with all of the people who had ever known and hurt me and simply talk to them."

"Are you saying I shouldn't have done it?"

Doc shook his head. "No. I'm saying you're a far stronger person than me. I've managed to kill gods, inspired people to bend and break the laws of the universe, break them myself, and still I wouldn't be able to exist in the same space as the Architects without trying to make them pay for everything they've done to me, much less have a civil conversation."

Grian looked at him, and although there were questions in his eyes, he was doing an admirable job of not asking them.

Doc sighed, looking up at the ceiling of the building. He wasn't sure which of the Hermits decided to use the fogged glass technique, but he wasn't about to argue with the effect. It was almost as though the room existed outside of space and time, in a special place where the only things that could affect the world beyond were the things they carried in there with them.

Grian had provided a lot of answers for a lot of people that day. It was probably only fair that Doc did something about returning the favor. "Do you know how I joined the Hermitcraft server?"

Grian frowned. "I assume that one of the Hermits suggested offering an invitation to you, and then Xisuma did."

Doc chuckled. "Yes, that's the general story for most of us, I suppose. But it was a little different for me. I knew who Xisuma was consulting for server security, and I involved myself in the project of helping create the stricter non-interference protocols. Of course, I created a way for me to access the server as well, and managed to suppress my player code for long enough that I had more or less ingratiated myself onto the server. Granted, even then it didn't take very long, as I'm sure you're aware."

He still remembered the dumbfounded expression in Xisuma's eyes when they came face to face for the first time, the utter shock that he had somehow missed an entire other player on the server.

"And they just let you stay after that? Even though you weren't supposed to be there?"

Knowing his history now, Doc knew where the sentiment was coming from. On most servers that Grian had been part of, any unexpected presences were destroyed immediately or they did enough damage that they should have been. And in some cases, there was no telling what would have happened if things were safe at the end of everything.

"Wait a minute," Grian said suddenly, cutting off the response Doc was about to provide. "What do you mean you suppressed your player code? Hybrid code is integrated into one's player code, so wouldn't that mean that you have..." Grian paused, scrutinizing him carefully. "Why do you have dominant mob coding?"

"Why don't you guess? I'm curious to hear what you think I am."

Doc watched as Grian's mind wandered, his wings twitching and flickering behind him as he applied himself to the question. He was muttering just a bit under his breath, proposing and discarding possibilities as fast as breathing. It was interesting how different Grian's thinking methods could be. When it was a build he was working on designing in his head, Grian stood perfectly still, his eyes shifting back and forth across his chosen terrain like he was painting the land with an invisible brush. When he had a problem to solve, however, there wasn't a force in the world that could keep Grian still. He paced back and forth, sometimes flew in circles as though that would get him to his conclusion faster and examined the source of his problem from every conceivable angle.

He was doing it now, pacing around Doc, staring at and sometimes through him as he tried to figure out the riddle that had been placed in front of him.

"Mobs aren't supposed to have Awakenings," Grian said, louder than all his muttering. "The Architects place a developmental block on their projects once they reach the level they were looking for because it makes it easier to replicate them. But you don't have one. You have dominant mob coding, but you don't have a developmental block. You were still... They were still trying to work on you when you had your Awakening." He frowned, then paled. "There's never been an Awakened mob before. Not that the Architects have ever acknowledged."

Doc just stared at him, neither confirming nor denying anything. Grian needed to come to the conclusion for himself. He had all the pieces he needed.

"The Architects only ever worked on one true hybrid mob. And all their experiments ended in failure. After the last one was destroyed, they gave up."

"But I wasn't destroyed," Doc admitted, watching the strange series of emotions play across Grian's face—familiarity, shock, pity, anger, and even longing. "I ran away and made sure that they wouldn't follow me."

Grian sighed, breath huffing out of him in something almost like a laugh. "And they blamed the Watchers for it! All of that work for blocking the Watchers from observing certain spaces, it all started there! They didn't even realize that you had Awakened!"

"And I've been running from them ever since."

The admission pulled Grian up short, eyes widening as he stared at Doc. It was clear enough that he understood the implications of that, as someone who had run from something himself. It didn't matter that they had different names, the Watchers and the Architects were beings that had maintained an unfathomable gap of power between them and had used that power to control the both of them. This was understanding at its most brutal.

It happened between blinks, the transition between player and Watcher, and Doc was suddenly facing the intensity of a being he had somehow managed to avoid directly encountering throughout his long life. "D̷̻̟̝̰̍́̐̆̓̔͝ȯ̷̖̂̆͗̒͐͝ ̴̘̼̙͛̎̃̌͠ͅỳ̸͉̼̱̥͕́̎͌̈͌́͑͝ő̷̢̱̫̺̠͉̬̘̏̄̂̚̚͜͝u̸̥͛̇ ̸̙̜͙̲̥̣͚͙̦̔̂̚w̴̧̗̏̆͒̃ā̷̧͙͉̦̊͌͑̃n̶͈̪̓̏̒̒͂͝t̸̨͉̝̹̮̓͑̓̇ ̷̫̏̏̑͐͋̾͘m̶̨̨̛̞͔̠̤̜͎̯̈̏̅̎́̍̀ȩ̷͚̭̭̣̜̺͖͊ͅ ̴̡̩̥̖̳͙͈͋̀̃́̀̑̕ẗ̵̨́͊͑̃̅́̀ͅơ̶̡͕̖̺̒̎͋́͜͝ ̷̧͔̞͖͇͓̞͋̏̽̓͐̽͘͜͝d̵̮͙͙͚̉̈́̓̍̏͘̕͠ë̴̞̱̗̱͍͇͓̰̉̄̃͛̋̑͌͜s̸̲͕̠̫͍̮̞̋͛̍̈́̊͜ͅt̵̢͔̓͆̎̏ŕ̴̬͈̱̰̟̙̪̾̎ȯ̴̘̼̗̫̈́̂͒́̒͐͒͜ẏ̷̼̫͈͚̏ͅ ̴͈̃̐̈́̿͋͋͑̓t̷̯̠͇͎̐̂̉͘̕ͅẖ̵̨̺̙̑̃͊̀͗̒͊͋͝è̵̘̝͎͎̤̅̓͑̿̚͘ͅm̷̱͚̘̂͗͆̀ ̴̺̬͉̣͗͑͗͝f̵̛͚͇͍̼̜̜̱̤͒̓͜o̸̢̥̮͎̔̊̏̊̃̃͊ŕ̶̨͉̻͙̺̜̲̩ ̵̨̗̹̭̲͐̃̌͛̽͘͜͝ͅͅy̴̝̫̹̑̓͛̄͑̇̈́̕͜ợ̵̫̱̪̪̠̺̼͔̐̇̓̄̚ừ̸̡͇͙͇͓̟̟̙̜́͌̂̚̕?̴̡͙͈̦͚̖͚͕͛͊͊̊͌̃̑̐̕"

Doc blinked, taken aback by the vehemence in Grian's voice. He could understand why the Architects were so worried about Watchers. They represented an outside entity capable of changing the local rules of the universe to suit their wants and desires, and they often cut off the Architects themselves from the servers they touched. One of the things he had heard about the Evolution SMP was that no communications came out of it. It was completely cut off, but no one on the inside realized that or thought it was strange until they left. Grian had gotten through the strange barrier to communicate with Mumbo a couple of times to consult on redstone wiring, but Mumbo could never start the conversation in return, something he'd mentioned more than once around others on Hermitcraft, which was why Doc bothered to look into the phenomenon in the first place. Knowing what he knew now about Grian, there was probably a reason why only he was able to get through to others. What a pity that he didn't think to mention what was going on with the Watchers to anyone on the outside.

But Grian was the best of players and Watchers compressed into one being's code, with all of the world-warping power of the Watchers and the unfailing compassion and care and exuberance of the man who managed to push past all of his trauma and still be kind at the end. Well, kind to his friends, clearly. The cruelty was saved for those who might deserve it, those who had hurt his friends before.

"You don't need to do that," Doc finally said. "I don't want to talk to any of the Architects anytime soon, but I wouldn't want them to be destroyed on my behalf. It means they won't make any more updates for my friends and I to break, which would be the real shame."

Grian the Watcher nodded. "I̵̦͚̬̥̽̏͊͗͜ͅ ̶̧̹̞̦̯͝s̴̬͖͓͖͔͘u̵̙͝p̵̥̠͉̜͍͑̎̐͌p̷̢̤̦̥͖͑̋ͅơ̸̢̧̛̙̒͘š̷̖̋͋ề̸̢̛̩̩̥̊̃̚ ̸̢̗͔͔͖̉́́t̶͓̽̎̾̉̕͠h̷̡̲̼͉͕̉̽̂͂̀̀ͅã̴͓͈͆͆ţ̴̩͎̤̩͇̉́̏̂̅̚'̵̨̛̬̜̝̺̩͌̕s̵̺͇̎͂ ̴̻͎̏̈́̈͑̉t̶̢̙͔͈̩̿͗̍̕͝r̵̜͌̓́̽̇ͅų̶̃̊̾͜͠ĕ̶̻́͛͜͝." Then, like water dripping off him, the form of the Watcher melted back into the familiar and much preferred form of Grian the player. "Besides, I wouldn't want to be in charge of developing future updates. I have a hard enough time finishing the back of my builds. Can you imagine how utterly cursed an update from me would look like?"

"Vertical slabs."

Grian shivered. "Careful. That's starting to sound dangerously like incentive. Do you realize how many builds would be improved by the ability to place slabs vertically? How much more all of the building community would be able to do to put depth and texture into builds? If I were actually in the business of planting ideas in people's heads, I would have taken care of that ages ago."

Doc looked at Grian as he continued to describe all of the things he would change if he were to be put in charge of creating the next update. Some of it was brilliant, some of it was ludicrous, and the more he talked, the more Doc realized that Grian used talking to distract himself and everyone else from the things he was actually scared of. Here, Doc could see the opposite side of how he had reacted to his fear. Where Grian became louder and caused distractions and chaos, Doc had gone silent, spent hours, days, months even figuring out ways to destroy anyone who came after him, human, hybrid, or god. All he had discovered was that he was uniquely qualified to cause destruction, exactly as the Architects had originally designed him to be, even if they weren't anticipating or searching for his level of intelligence.

Doc knew better than anyone how terrifying it was to see yourself turning into the very thing you had learned to fear, knew what it was like to look in the mirror and fail to recognize the person you had become. And Grian... well, Grian had been living with that reality for a while now as well, stepping into a pair of shoes he didn't expect to be his own and making his home there.

"Grian," Doc said suddenly, cutting off the rant about block palettes and cohesive building techniques. "I want to tell you something that I wish I knew before, that I wish someone had known to tell me sooner than I first heard it." When he was certain that Grian was paying attention to him, head cocked to the side in the fashion of born avians, Doc continued. "It's okay to be scared of some things. It's okay to look at the person you are and not be able to recognize where you came from. At the same time, it's okay to recognize exactly where you came from because of the effects it had on you. But that doesn't make you a bad person, even if your history is bad. You can be made up of the things that hurt you, you can even hide them like a secret or wear them like armor, it doesn't matter. At the end of it all, the things that shaped you do not define you. You are defined by the things you do, by what you value, by the people you care about, by the causes you strive for."

Doc looked directly into Grian's eyes, saw the strange concoction of emotions he was sure not even Grian could fully parse out at that moment, and knew that his words were getting through. "You have shown everyone who you are today and before and always because you put so much of who you are into everything you do. You care about every single person who appeared today, enough that you were willing to give them the answers they thought they needed even though you clearly weren't ready to give them. On Hermitcraft, you have championed causes for freedom of choice, for chaos, for friendship, and for fun, and you've made the worlds you've been part of a brighter place for it. In doing all of that, you more or less forged the community we have, pulling us into stories and convoluted plots that many of us would not have embarked on if left to our own devices. You turned a bunch of Hermits into a family, and I don't think any of us have actually thanked you for that. So, I'm going to do it here and now. Thank you. Thank you for bringing life into Hermitcraft even as you shook everything up. Thank you for surviving the worst that life had to throw at you to be with us. Thank you for being Grian."

Grian's face scrunched up. "But I didn't do anything. I just caused a lot of problems and flew away without dealing with any of the consequences!"

"That's a lie, and I think you know it. You never would have approached Xisuma about having this meeting if you always flew away from the consequences. You would have left everything exactly as it was before, without letting anyone know about you. But," Doc admitted, "I think I'm beginning to understand where that comes from. What happened to you on the Dream SMP taught you to expect disproportionate retribution, and only for you specifically because your admin saw you as someone he could manipulate. But that's not how we Hermits approach things, as you know. If we use one another, we always provide some kind of compensation, some way to make the effort worth it because we still have to live with one another after the fact. Your admin, Dream, clearly didn't care about maintaining any relationships or goodwill, and I doubt that attitude was good for the server as a whole."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Well..." Doc sighed. "You know the amount of strain we put on our worlds, right? Hermitcraft usually has several dozen high output farms. However, we manage to keep glitches and world corruption to a minimum. From what I understand, the Dream SMP has one true farm built off a spider spawner, and yet there were a lot of glitches that affected the server. Since you've run a few servers at this point, you know that the admin's job doesn't just stop at keeping the server connected to the Hub and maintaining the local rules of the world. Admins are meant to reduce the strain of glitches and corruption on a server before they reach a point where the coding of the universe starts to break down completely. From what I've heard and seen regarding the Dream SMP, if something doesn't change soon, the world is going to collapse or uncouple from the Hub."

"What?!" Grian shot to his feet, practically shoving Doc out of his way as he moved towards the entrance. "We have to stop them from going back! If the world isn't safe—"

Doc grabbed his arm, pulling him back. "It's being taken care of. Obviously we weren't going to leave them in a situation where they could get stranded in a world decaying around them, even if they did steal one of our players for several weeks. Xisuma is taking care of it, letting the relevant people know. But thank you for proving my point."

Grian stopped trying to pull away. "What do you mean? What point?"

"You've somehow convinced yourself that you are a terrible person for all of the things you've done to survive, that surviving and overcoming all of the obstacles that were placed in your way but going around them instead of through them is somehow reprehensible. But what did you do when you heard that the people who hurt you in the past might be in danger?" He didn't bother to stifle the chuckle that rumbled out of him like a sort of purr. "You immediately tried to help them."

"Of course, I did! What sort of person would I be if I—?" Grian paused, realization dawning across his features. "Oh. That's what you meant. That's what... I just... Oh."

"Exactly. What sort of person would you be if you didn't try to help them?" Doc let go of his arm, spreading his arms just a bit to gesture at the space around them. "You wouldn't be Grian. You wouldn't be TommyInnit. You wouldn't even be the Red Watcher. You wouldn't be you, and that's the only thing you need to worry about. How to keep being yourself."

"That's... that's not fair." Grian's voice was a little watery, and his eyes were a little shinier than they usually were, but Doc chose not to mention it. Drawing attention to any tears would simply throw the man right back into his coping mechanisms, such as they were, and that wasn't going to help him right now.

"I think we're done here," Doc said instead. His comm buzzed several times with the notification of the guests and most of the Hermits leaving the world. "Is there anything else here you need?"

Grian glanced at the grave beneath the tree and the bench just beyond it. Then he looked around the room, grabbed the beanbag chair he'd been using, and made it vanish into his inventory. "I've got everything I need," he replied.

Doc didn't think it was his imagination that Grian was standing straighter than before as they made their way through the Nether to the Hub portal. He wasn't attempting to make his wings or his body look any smaller than it was, not the way he normally did. For the first time, it looked like Grian was letting himself fill up the space he was meant to have, and Doc almost wished he'd seen this sort of confidence and self-assurance from Grian sooner because it was like the rest of the universe was slotting into place around him.

It would have been breathtaking to have watched him grow up, to have seen this man develop into the person he was now through all of the hardships and false starts he'd suffered. Doc almost envied the Watchers for being able to bear witness to it, but even they couldn't have had the full picture. They never would have survived to see this, after all. Everything he'd heard about them told him they wouldn't have stood for it from one they had claimed as their own.

The Architects had it right when they called the Red Watcher the One Who Acts. Grian would never have been able to stand by and let bad things happen to anyone, not when he had the power to stop it, or to fight it where he couldn't halt it in its tracks. The Watchers never realized what they were creating when they made Grian into a Watcher, and that was perhaps the only real good they had ever done with the power they possessed. They stole the only person who could truly learn to love the Void for what it was, and everything else, too. Now that he was willing to be exactly what he was, there wasn't a force of the universe capable of stopping Grian from achieving whatever he put his mind to.

And in a small way, it sort of made Doc want to talk with the Architects, to have that level of clarity and confidence that Grian now possessed, to make them fully aware of the magnitude of what they did to him and finally be able to put it behind him. As much as he hated them for everything they had done, there was still a part of his being that longed for something that had taken several hundred years for him to be able to parse out in his own mind. Even if it was just one of the Architects, he wanted one of them to look at him, to know who and what he was, and to say that Mob 7 attempt 7 had ultimately been a success.

Grian had offered to destroy them for him. Maybe he'd be willing to play bodyguard if Doc ever decided to do anything about that errant thought.

"Ready to go back to Season 9?" Grian asked as they exited the Nether back into the shopping district.

"Of course," Doc replied, casting aside the thoughts before Grian could read them in his expression. "I have to fine tune my machine after all."

"What does your machine do, anyway? You've always been so mysterious about it, and that usually means it's going to break the rules of the universe more than I usually do."

"What? Nooo. Of course not. Nothing but a law abiding hybrid here." Doc grinned, well aware that his sharp teeth were on full display. "I just exploit the rules that already exist. You can't blame a man for that."

"Not without being a hypocrite, I can't." Grian sighed. "Can I find out in a way that doesn't include charged creeper messaging this time?"

"Of course."

"And without being on the receiving end of whatever it is you're creating?"

Doc's grin widened, and he knew more of his predator was showing, but Grian was technically a predator, too, so it wasn’t going to scare him away. "I can only promise the first one."

Grian huffed. "Surprisingly, I think I can live with that. Which is good, because I apparently have to. Now let's get back quickly. I have a feeling I need to restock the Entity again, even though I just did it the other day."

Doc stepped to the side, gesturing grandly to the Hub portal. "After you."

He watched the man step through the portal, still radiating that new confidence. Grian had found his future, had achieved if not a happy ending then one he could be happy with. And that, well... That meant that maybe there was still hope for someone like Doc, who had survived long past when he knew he should have been erased from existence entirely. He had been living life like a game, day to day striving to survive against the odds stacked against him, exploiting as much of it as he could. It was about time he took a leaf out of Grian's book and started actually living it.

Of course, all of that could happen as soon as they got back to the Hermitcraft server, the place where life had actually started for the two of them. With that, Doc stepped through the portal, leaving the protected version of the season 7 world behind. Progress, after all, didn't start in places where you couldn't actually grow, and he already had a giant space to fill with whatever his mind managed to conjure up, as well as a neighbor who was just as comfortable breaking the rules of reality as he was. With Grian fully back, Doc knew he was going to enjoy whatever came next in the history of Season 9 because, as the Pesky Bird himself always liked to say, things were going to get a little bit weird.