Chapter Text
The Hermitcraft server was buzzing with news, but for the first time, it had nothing to do with the server itself or with the Minecraft Championship Tournaments. No, instead, the Hermits were talking about the recent news of TommyInnit's complete disappearance from the public eye, and Grian couldn't be more anxious. Because that was him they were talking about, not that any of them knew it. And while no one here had connected Grian to the disappearance of TommyInnit, the Dream SMP had. His only saving grace at the moment was that they were less inclined to tell anyone about his involvement than he was.
Unfortunately, the news about Tommy was big enough that the Hermits had called a meeting to discuss it, and Grian could only sit beside Mumbo and hope that his secrets would remain secrets at the end of it. Which wasn't to say he didn't trust Mumbo to keep quiet about everything. He was more afraid of one of the more perceptive members of the server picking up on his discomfort.
"I'm actually a bit concerned," Iskall was saying. "Some of you know that I was trolled by a member of the Dream SMP not too long ago. Although I think it was less a troll and more him trying to make it seem like he didn't need redstone help. Anyway, I asked Fundy about what was going on when I first heard about Tommy's disappearance, and he sort of broke down before he ended the call." A ripple of unease ran through the room and Iskall nodded. "I don't know what happened, but I know whatever it was, it was probably something bad."
"The problem is that no one on that server is talking to anyone about it," False Symmetry put in. "TommyInnit isn't a small name in the community. He's been part of MCC longer than any of us have, and more consistently, and beyond that he has lots of people who follow him and his exploits. Missing one tournament is understandable. Everyone has things that take them away for a while to deal with them. But at this point, it’s gone beyond a regular hiatus. He’s been absent for ten months, and it’s been that long since anyone has even heard from Tommy that’s willing to say something. If something happened to him, then his server members should let people know. Especially if it's something that could happen to someone else."
It's not. Grian knew it wasn't because it had only happened to him, and only because the Watchers exploited the unique circumstances of the Dream SMP. There were special bits of code that made the Dream SMP what it was, and few worlds were going to work off of that same framework because it could and did kill players. The fact that Dream had a revival book capable of bringing them back was almost incidental—or it would have been if the Watchers were not involved. The fact that the first time it was used was to attempt to bring Tommy back to life was evidence enough that the Watchers ensured all the pieces would be in place so they could get him where they knew they were going to.
And maybe he had affected the probabilities on that a little bit when he was in the Watching Space with Green and Blue. He didn't remember everything he had done to his own timeline, but he knew that he would always attempt to preserve his own life. He might have been the one to make sure Schlatt had the book in the first place to trade to Dream. He wasn't, after all, above meddling in his own way. It was why the Watchers were interested in him.
"There's not much we can do about it from here," Docm77 said. "We don't know anything about their server or how it works, and we can't force them to do anything they don't want to do. Either someone will come out and say what happened to TommyInnit, or they won’t, and we'll be left wondering. Either way, it's not up to us."
For a moment, the meeting seemed to be winding down. And then Scar spoke up.
"Didn't you work with Tommy and another member of the Dream SMP not that long ago, Grian? You and Mumbo both?"
Grian froze, glancing up to see if there was any suspicion in Scar's face. There wasn't, just honest curiosity. "Yes," he admitted slowly. "It was about four months before he dropped out of contact, though. Why?"
"Well, I was just wondering if either of you had heard anything, either from Tommy or from, uh, Jack Manifold, I think it was?"
Grian glanced down at the communicator on his wrist, full of accusations and questions and demands from people who didn't know who he was anymore. "No," he lied. "I haven't heard anything." Then, because he apparently wanted to punish himself, he continued, "Should I ask Jack about what's going on?"
Xisuma cleared his throat. "I don't think so. Like Doc said, we'll find out about what's happened on their terms or not at all, and we need to respect that."
Grian nodded, grateful for the excuse not to lie even more about what he knew. He leaned ever so slightly into Mumbo's space, needed the comfort of a friend who knew what was going on in the chaos of his old and new life colliding in this spectacularly horrible way.
"Now," Xisuma continued, "we may not know what's going on, but that doesn't mean we can't support the members of the Dream SMP should we see them around the Hub or during the MCC tournaments. If any of you see them getting overwhelmed by people wanting to know what's going on, I would hope that you'll offer them an out of some kind, or a distraction so they can collect themselves. I'm sure that if anything about what happened is a danger to others, the Hub Admins will have been notified and can let the admins of any at-risk worlds know about it."
The Hermits dutifully nodded. And truth be told, they didn't need to be asked to play interference with mobs of demanding people and their targets. Server-mates or not, Grian had discovered that Hermits were a social and caring bunch of people and would often go out of their way to help with a project if the slightest bit of help was asked for. Grian had adopted that philosophy for himself as well, relishing in the wonderful feeling of accomplishing something good for someone else. It was especially nice lately, when it felt like no matter what he did, he was always messing up something.
Once the meeting was adjourned, Mumbo followed Grian back to Midnight Alley, clearly to talk about all the things that he hadn't been able to say in the room with the other Hermits.
"You know it's not your fault, right?" Mumbo began. Which wasn't what Grian was expecting from him but was rather in character for Mumbo when he thought about it. "It happened, and it was bad, but it wasn't your fault, no matter what anyone thinks."
"I don't know," Grian confessed. "It might have been sort of my fault. I think I helped set things up the way I did when I was still acting as a Watcher."
"Did you plan it, though? Did you make Dream kill you?" Mumbo shook his head. "You don't get to judge yourself for the choices you made to survive."
"What about after? I didn't have to go back and see it. I didn't have to steal my own body and set the entire server after me. I didn't have to break in and take all of the things that mattered to me when I was that person back then."
Mumbo smiled, but it was a sad sort of smile, the kind that almost hurt to look at, especially on Mumbo's face. "No, I think you did need to do all that. You were giving yourself closure. Building up the sort of place you did to bury Tommy's body isn't the sort of thing you do out of spite. Guilt, maybe, and love, definitely, but not spite. And you've tried to give them closure, too, but they aren't ready to move on yet. You had ten years to get here. They've only had a few months."
"I suppose you're right."
"Of course I am!" Mumbo grinned smugly. "That's why I'm the CEO of Boatem."
Grian snorted. "No, you're the CEO of Boatem because you didn't show up for the meeting and we voted to make you CEO in absentia. Because not being there for the meeting was the most CEO thing we could think of."
"What? Grian!"
Giggling, Grian raced away out into the artificial hills and mountains of Boatem Village, knowing without looking that Mumbo was chasing after him. While he might have sworn off killing that season, Mumbo had proven he could be rather sadistic when it came to skirting around that, and maiming, as long as it didn't kill anyone, was not off the table.
A few weeks after the meeting about TommyInnit's disappearance from the public eye, things had more or less gone back to normal and Grian couldn't help but be grateful for that. He was so tired of having to stop himself from tensing up every time someone said his old name. No one had pressed him specifically about the matter, but Cubfan sort of looked at him like he suspected he knew more than the rest of them. Of course, he had been at MCC where a couple members of the Dream SMP were teleported away when they tried to get too close to him, and the fact that he had a server reinforced restraining order against members of the server Tommy had disappeared from was highly suspect.
But there wasn't a lot to do. They were moving from the season 8 Hermitcraft server onto season 9, and the start of a new season always required a lot of work, meaning that they would venture their own separate ways to establish themselves. Of course, it wasn't the start of the new season yet, as they were still trying to figure out what world seed they wanted to use, and Grian had involved himself in the search. For the time being, they were staying on a protected copy of the Season 8 world as the mishap with the moon and a few too many sleepless nights on Grian's part had accidentally warped reality a bit too far for the original server to cope.
Grian hadn't known that Watcher nightmares were worse than regular nightmares, but he was going to be better about regulating his sleep patterns moving forward. No one wanted another instance of MOON BIG. Xisuma said he hadn't figured out how the universe coding had become so warped, because there weren't signs of outside intrusion. Grian was just praying that he didn't start going over the copy of the code for internal access. Two seasons was apparently enough time for him to have become so comfortable with the Hermits that he stopped worrying about subconsciously messing with the coding strands of the universe.
In retrospect, a lot of the weird looks Pearl had given him when they started having meetings about the moon made a lot more sense. She knew that he was the one causing it. And he would have stopped, if he had realized he was the one causing it. By the time he realized it was his fault, they were on a spaceship taking them out of the server, as the Hub portal had accidentally collapsed and traveling through the void was the only possible way out. For that, Grian had consciously warped reality to make sure everyone got out okay. He was not about to risk his friends because he was being a bit stupid about sleeping or not sleeping. Thankfully, the credit had gone to the redstoners who built the rocket and not to the Watcher that only two people realized was standing in their midst.
Grian was just getting around to breakfast when his communicator chimed. It wasn't the special chime he'd set for the group chat for the world seed hunt, so he waited until he'd managed to find a stack of golden carrots tucked away in a shulker box before he bothered to check it.
Xisumavoid: Grian, there are a couple of Hub Admins requesting to speak with you. They said that you should know what this is about? I have them staying near the portal at world spawn.
Grian felt a sinking feeling settle in his gut. He had forgotten somewhere along the way that once the loop closed, he would actually have access to his name and information again. It had become less important as he became Grian, as he established himself fully outside of who he had been. And this was happening much, much later than he would have expected it to. Tommy had been dead for almost a full year now, and Grian made sure to let them know what happened and how the loop had closed immediately after it had.
He made his way to world spawn, an area he hadn't revisited often after he'd set up a bed in his starter base. The only reason to visit had been to go through the portal into the Hub, either to visit the Thoroughfare or to head to the MCC servers. Occasionally, he left to visit one of his building worlds to work out the design for one of his builds where he had infinite resources and a better idea of what the finished product was going to become.
Now, however, he was going to meet with Hub Admins, and he wondered if Parker, the one he'd first filed the report about his displacement with, was going to be there just to see it all finished. Grian had seen Parker a few times around the Hub, and they were clearly doing well for themselves.
It was a short flight and, as he was gliding in, he could see the familiar pink figure of Axolotl Xisuma standing beside a couple of other figures, both dressed in the dark blue and gold of Hub Admin uniforms. Banking around, he landed softly not far away from the group.
Parker waved from where they were standing beside Xisuma. "Sorry this is a bit late," they said. "There have been a lot of things going on, especially around the Hub for whatever reason. Because this is more of a routine thing than anything else, it sort of fell by the wayside when there were actual riots happening."
"Riots?" Grian asked. "Why? Over what?"
"Well..." Parker glanced over at Xisuma. "Let's just say that TommyInnit is apparently very popular in the Hub community."
Oh. He had forgotten about that. Yes, Tommy had done a lot of Hub-napping before Earth SMP and the Dream SMP, and he'd spent a lot of time building connections in that community. He hadn't even realized what would happen when the news about his disappearance—and about his death, whenever they got around to releasing that—dropped. Realistically, he should have known, considering how the topic had hung around Hermitcraft for weeks, and Tommy wasn't really connected to their group at all.
But riots. Riots because Tommy was missing, because he hadn't been seen in months by anyone and the Dream SMP was remaining silent on the matter. How was someone supposed to expect something like that? The group of players wandering the Server Hub was neither unified nor entirely cohesive. Rarely did he meet the same groups consistently back when he was still meeting with them, and he didn't try to inspire any sort of loyalty in them, so he wasn't sure where all of this sentiment was coming from. At best, he figured that Tubbo and Ranboo were going to miss him the most. Apparently, he had grossly underestimated what people thought about TommyInnit.
Xisuma stepped forward, gesturing for Grian to speak with him off to the side. Desperate for the distraction from his rapidly spiraling thoughts, Grian followed.
"Do you want me to stay for this meeting?" Xisuma asked. "Or is this something personal that you want to take care of alone?"
And that was the reason why Xisumavoid was the best possible admin in the whole of the Minecraft universe. Unlike Dream, he never tried to control the players under his care; he didn't even try to control his evil twin whenever he showed up. He made deals or negotiated or arranged some kind of compromise that would work for people to have what they needed or wanted. And here, he was offering Grian an out because he knew how little Grian liked to share about his life. Xisuma was giving him the option to keep his secrets yet again.
But no, Grian didn't want to be alone for this, and the people who knew about him weren't accessible at that moment. Scott didn't have an invitation to the server and Mumbo was puttering around on his redstone testing world with some of the recent creations from the Architects of Minecraft. While he would definitely drop everything and come back to be there for him, Grian didn't want to ask it of Mumbo. And it was Xisuma. Xisuma had more than earned his trust, and Grian was a little bit tired of keeping this particular secret from him.
"No, stay. Please," Grian replied. He knew he probably sounded a little pathetic, but Xisuma wasn't going to use it against him. "You'll have questions after this, and I'll answer them, but I need you here for this."
Every member of Hermitcraft had become adept at reading Xisuma's body language and tone since he was always wearing masks or helmets that covered his face, so Grian recognized the unnatural stillness in Xisuma's shoulders as the shock it was. He had fully been expecting Grian to tell him to leave.
"Okay," Xisuma said, his tone soft and open. "I'll be right here then."
Together, they walked back over to the Hub Admins, who had been waiting patiently. Or, at the very least, Parker had been waiting patiently. The other one was tapping his foot pointedly, though almost silently, and he had his arms crossed, looking dispassionately at the area around the Hub portal.
"Ready?" Parker asked. When Grian nodded, they sighed. "Alright. There's a couple of ways we can do this. First option, change your name back to TommyInnit and publicly link you as Tommy and you as Grian together."
"No," Grian replied flatly. He had known that was an option before. Technically speaking, he could have done that himself if he wanted to after the loop closed as it was about as easy as changing his name the first time. The name would be uncorrupted again, and it would recognize him as exactly what he was, so it wouldn't have stopped him. But he didn't want to be TommyInnit anymore. He had given up on that a while ago and stepping back into that fantasy was not something he thought he could cope with.
Xisuma had frozen beside him, his head tilting ever so slightly until he was looking rather obviously—to a Hermit, anyway—at the side of his face. Grian could almost hear the questions humming through Xisuma's mind at the speed of flying TNT. He shot the admin a meaningful glance, hoping it translated well that this was exactly what they were going to talk about after this meeting, that the questions needed to wait until this was done.
"I thought you might say that," Parker admitted. "Option two, we erase TommyInnit entirely, leave all of the information code-locked, even against you. This would make it so that you will never be tied in any way to who you were before." They sighed again. "I cannot stress this enough, if you go through with this option, it's going to be permanent. You can't change your mind about it later. The coding might technically still exist, but neither you nor anyone else would be able to access it. It would, essentially, finish killing off the identity of TommyInnit and archive everything related to that identity."
A lump caught in Grian's throat. That was one of his worst fears in the beginning, back before he'd taken the name of Grian. It was terrifying, after all, to be nameless and corrupted, to know that he technically didn't exist. As much as Grian kept repeating to himself and others that Tommy was dead, he wasn't ready to let go of everything that had once made him TommyInnit just because he had become someone else.
"We're not doing that either," he managed to choke out. He wanted his history back, all of the little pieces he'd held as only memories as he watched the corrupted text in his code shift to invalidate everything he had ever experienced.
"Why not?" the other Hub Admin huffed. "Isn't that what you wanted? You were perfectly content to throw it away before, weren't you? And clearly you don't want it back if you haven't done something before now."
Something heavy settled over Grian, an anger that reached to the deepest parts of him, dredging up things he would have preferred to keep hidden. Apparently none of his secrets were safe today, because the edges of his suddenly much expanded vision bled purple and Grian stared down at the unknown admin with hundreds of eyes at once, the call of the void pulling at his wings.
"You have no idea what you're talking about," Grian accused. "You're a junior admin with delusions of mediocrity pretending as though you know everything there is to know about whatever situation you encounter. But you don't. You don't have a frame of reference for this. No one has a frame of reference for this because this is the first time it's happened." The day was turning dark around them, the stone was cracking under Grian's feet, but he didn't want to step back his anger. "You don't get to sit there and tell me what I should do about my own history. You don't get to decide how I feel about who I was and who I am now. You are here to learn and be evaluated, and you are failing that evaluation as we speak."
The Hub admin turned to Parker, who merely shrugged, which was confirmation enough that Grian was right. After this, he wasn't going to be a Hub admin for much longer, and there was nothing he could do to salvage it now.
"What the fuck are you?" The admin-to-be-fired hissed. "You're not fucking human!"
Grian scoffed, the darkness slowly starting to leech away. "Some people aren't. I'd say 'get used to it', but I highly doubt you'll ever learn." Then, because he didn't want to deal with them for the rest of the meeting, Grian twisted just one of the strings of code hovering in the corner of his vision, kicking the admin from the server while simultaneously adding him to the blacklist.
"Well," Parker said, straightening their jacket and running a hand through their hair. "That was a development."
Grian sighed. He was mostly back to normal, but his wings wouldn't go back to their usual red color for a bit and his mask kept trying to flicker into reality on his face. "Not a recent one," he admitted. "But certainly troublesome every time I get overly emotional over something. It's not— I don't—" He sighed. "That's not something that usually happens?"
"Are you okay?" Xisuma asked, suddenly focused. "Is anything wrong?"
"No, no, I'm fine, X." Grian smiled ruefully. "I have it under control."
Parker laughed. "Clearly! I'll be sure to let the Hub Authority know about him. Not that he knows it, but he was technically on watch for the last few weeks or so. I'll be honest, it's more convenient this way. He was going to be trouble any way we tried to throw him out. This way, we have a record of his unprofessional behavior while he is meant to be serving in an official capacity. He won't even be able to fight this one."
"I don't think I like being used as a litmus test for abuses of power and authority." Grian frowned. "I feel like it happens all too often." He turned to include Xisuma back in the conversation. "Not recently, obviously."
"No, I think I'm starting to understand that," Xisuma replied a little faintly. He shifted. "So, about the other options Grian has?"
"Right!" Parker let out a deep breath. "So, since options one and two are out, the rest are not as extreme. You could basically go on as you have now, but you have the capacity to switch between being recognized as TommyInnit and as Grian at will. Since you keep the majority of the information on your server history private, that shouldn't be obvious to anyone. Or, we create a code lock that does essentially the same thing that you have control over. The code lock, however, would enable you to separate the information that is unique to you as Grian and you as Tommy. It would be like switching between a couple of masks. You could put in appearances as TommyInnit, and you could have your server history information viewable by the public like you had it before, but it wouldn't show any of the information tying you to your Grian identity."
Both options were technically viable. Grian would get to keep his history, everything that tied him to TommyInnit and the life he'd had before, but he could make it so that no one would be able to find that out unless he let them.
"I... don't like the idea of a code lock, I'll be honest," Grian said slowly. "I mean, I know it would work and that I'd have control over it, but I don't want to have any sort of code lock on me. Can we— Is it alright to go with option three?"
Parker raised their hands. "Hey, this is your life we're discussing. I'm just here to facilitate the process of tying your identities back together again. If that's what you want, that's what we'll do. And," they paused, holding out a card, "if you change your mind, you can just let me know directly and I'll help take care of that. As far as I'm concerned, the decision is entirely in your hands."
There was a reason Grian had learned to ask for Parker directly rather than dealing with any of the other Hub admins. Parker was the one who knew the situation, knew Grian, and knew precisely how difficult everything was to cope with back when he first showed up resurrected nine years before his death. Parker was also the only one Grian had bothered to explain a little about how he had died on the server, as the details of his last moments in the Dream SMP were significant for the report, but not so necessary that everyone who looked at the file needed to be made aware of it. They had ensured that death being the initial catalyst of the temporal shift was hidden information, which was probably exactly why news of TommyInnit's death wasn't a hot topic in every gossip circle, just his disappearance.
"Thank you," Grian said, and it was for more than just setting things to rights. From the expression on their face, Parker knew that.
"Of course. I've been waiting to do this for years now." They held out a hand. "I will need to see your communicator, though. I'm sure you know the drill."
Grian handed over the beat up device he had salvaged from the Lost and Found bin back when he first arrived in the past. As Parker was working on it, Grian sat down on one of the benches nearby, right next to Xisuma. It was funny to realize that he had become one of those people he'd made fun of back when he was Tommy, someone who had gotten sentimentally attached to a device. Despite offers of a new and updated communicator, Grian had kept the one he'd found, preferring the simple and sturdy design over any of the newer ones. He had, at the time, justified it by telling himself he had already tested the newer models when he was Tommy, but the truth was that he wanted to hold onto every little thing he got. He wasn't a hoarder exactly, but he was slightly more possessive than the average person. Considering how much he had lost that was entirely out of his control, he thought this was sort of justified.
A rapid series of message notifications cut through Grian's thoughts, and he looked up as Parker jolted, almost dropping the communicator as they were trying to hand it back. The sound was still going, glitching just a bit with how quickly it was beeping.
"Finished," they said, smirking a bit. "Seems there was a backlog of messages, though, and they all came through at once."
"That... makes sense," Grian admitted. His communicator hadn't picked up on any of Tommy's messages while he'd been hiding on the Dream SMP waiting for his resurrection. But no one had realized what had happened right away. No one but Awesamdude. Naturally, there were a few who would have seen the notification about Tommy's death and asked if he was alright, assuming or hoping that it wasn't a canon death.
But really, it seemed like an excessive number of messages from people, who would have learned of his death fairly soon. It wouldn't have been connected to the general chat of the Dream SMP, so he wasn't receiving those messages without being on the server itself. Why then did he seem to have hundreds of messages from the last year or so to go through?
"I think that's everything you need me for," Parker said, nodding. "Like I said, if you want to change things a bit, just let me know. I'm in good enough standing with the Hub Authority that it shouldn't be a problem taking a day or two off to help fix any problems you might run into." They grinned. "Lovely world, by the way! I know from the videos you Hermits put out that there's more I'm not seeing, but it's honestly a bit of a dream just being here. I'm glad I could help you and see the world for myself!"
"Thank you," Xisuma replied for Grian, who couldn't seem to stop staring at his communicator. "It was a pleasure to host you for the little time we have."
Grian nodded absently. He couldn't tear his eyes off the screen. Parker had left the personal information page up, and Grian was staring at his name—his old name—settled right beside his new name. TommyInnit | Grian.
TommyInnit was highlighted and switching over to the messaging part of the communicator showed all of the chat groups he had been part of when he was Tommy, all of the conversations he had been locked out of when he was sent back in time. Business Bay was high on that list, with hundreds of unread messages. Tubbo had left him nearly a hundred messages on his own, and Ranboo had left about thirty. Wilbur was approaching something like five hundred messages, which didn't make sense because he knew Tommy was dead since he was brought back to life.
Grian didn't dare tap into any of the chat groups. While he was more than capable of hiding his status—which was the first thing he did—he also wasn't sure what sort of messages he would find. He was afraid to think what people might have sent him when he was dead. Business Bay made a bit of sense, because they didn't know he was dead. There were a couple of chat groups for the Hub-nappers, and their messages also made sense. Technoblade's three new messages, however, didn't make any sense at all. They didn't talk to one another, and they had parted on terrible terms. The best he felt he could expect from that chat was something about how stupid he was to die, especially to Dream. Unfortunately, he didn’t dare open the chat to read them, partially because Techno might receive a notification that he’d read them and partially because he didn’t want to know what Techno had to say after he was dead.
Parker was gone when Grian managed to pull his head back out of the clouds, switching his profile back to Grian. Like they had promised, he could change between them whenever he wanted, and he tried it several times in quick succession to make sure that everything was okay, and he wasn't going to get stuck in one or the other. If he did get stuck, he had Parker's card. And if that wasn't working, he could definitely brute force it with his Watcher powers, since they couldn't exactly be a secret anymore.
He owed Xisuma an explanation. Several of them, actually, and the admin of Hermitcraft had been waiting for nearly four years to get them, not that he was entirely aware of it. Grian had been lying to him from the moment they'd met, so he could only hope that this particular explanation would go well. If not, well, Xisuma wasn't the type to throw him off the server for something like this. It would be put to a vote, and Grian was certain that some of the Hermits would still want him around, regardless of the liability he represented. Because they were friends and he finally understood what that meant. Even Xisuma was his friend, which meant the admin was going to give Grian the benefit of the doubt.
"I'm sure you have questions," Grian said, putting his communicator away. "Is there somewhere we can talk?"
"Yeah, actually." Xisuma turned towards the nether portal standing opposite the Hub portal. "I have an office back in my base we can go to."
Grian smiled. "You always have an office, don't you? You had one on the season 5 world you showed me back when we met."
Xisuma laughed. "Of course. As the admin, there's a lot of official things I need to take care of. And it's always easier to do that in an office. Or, at the very least, a dedicated space away from the rest of the chaos that can occur around here. Come on. I'll show you."
Xisumavoid liked to think that he was a good admin for Hermitcraft. He knew that there were members of his server with pasts that they didn't want to talk about, things that could be following them across worlds and through time, and he dedicated his time and his effort to making sure that the Hermitcraft server was a safe place for them every season. He also knew that he may never get the full story from any of them about what they were running from.
He had expected it to be the same for Grian. From the moment he'd seen Grian standing beside the portal to the copy of season five, he'd known that Grian was running from something. He had pressed the issue as much as he dared, but he couldn't tell what Grian was afraid of. The questions about security were enough to tell that whatever he was running from was something that could potentially follow him across servers and worlds. Which was fine. Xisuma had managed to negotiate with the Architects and a small number of gods to ensure that the servers he managed to put together remained the safe spaces they were supposed to be. And if that required some of the same level of non-interference coding typical of the Hub itself, well, that was a matter for him and the Architects. Xisuma was fairly certain Notch knew exactly why he wasn't going to be allowed to touch Hermitcraft and considering some of the threats that Doc had leveled against the god the last time he tried to involve himself in matters that did not concern him, it wasn't all that surprising that he hadn't shown his face since.
It was not for nothing that Doc was known as a god-killer, so none of the threats he made were done idly. Doc was old enough, powerful enough, and skilled enough that he didn't actually need to worry about his own safety. The true miracle was that he trusted Xisuma to handle anything at all, much less the safety and security of the entire server, himself included.
But Grian... Well, Grian hadn't had that kind of faith. Not in himself or in anyone else. He was paranoid and desperate and lonely, but he wasn't doing anything about it. The formalities of their meeting aside, Xisuma knew that he was going to present the choice of adding Grian to the server to the rest of the Hermits as soon as he saw the look of naked awe on his face as he took in Scar's progress on Hermit City.
Unfortunately, Grian didn't seem to recognize how eager Xisuma was to add him to the roster for the next season and he didn't want to answer any of the questions Xisuma needed to best provide the sort of protection he needed. Which was fair. The eight month absence had been only a couple of months before they met, and something so fresh and clearly traumatizing was not something he would have wanted to dredge up in that moment. Grian had reacted like a feral cat to the questions, metaphorically hissing and spitting to try and chase him away, then despondent when he thought he managed exactly what he'd been trying to do. All Xisuma knew was that whatever had happened to Grian was bad, perhaps worse than almost anything any of the other Hermits had suffered before finding their way into their insular community.
It was strange to watch how Grian developed over season 6, slowly opening up to other members of the server that weren't Mumbo. It was subtle at first, moments of chaos and shenanigans that were new and unique, and yet no one had taken credit for them. Poultry man and the Salmon ghost were simple and harmless pranks that let the newest member of the server stretch his wings—both literally and metaphorically. Then the pranks started stepping up in scale and difficulty, but never destructive. Or, at the very least, never intentionally destructive. When the Demise game started, that was when Xisuma started to relax. Whatever Grian had been running from, whatever he had suffered before coming to them, he was starting to settle in enough to propose something that was highly chaotic, and to do it under his own name.
Xisuma hadn't stopped wondering about the things Grian had never explained, though. When, after the Demise game, Grian came to him for advice on setting up a small server for a similar event, Xisuma learned about the Watchers and what they had done to Grian's last server. It was just one piece of the puzzle—and not a complete piece either—but it was enough.
Xisuma had heard about Watchers, had studied everything he could get his hands on back when he was first starting Hermitcraft. Because it was supposed to be a protected place, he wanted to ensure that outside forces would not be able to interfere with it. And since the protections he had negotiated with the Architects to get his hands on were specifically designed to prevent Watcher incursions, they were built into what he was putting together. But because of his research, he knew the stories about the Red Watcher, the player who had become a Watcher through some mysterious circumstances. He fully believed them, though he chose to reserve judgment on whether or not the player had become a Watcher willingly until he found more information.
He didn't expect to find that information on Hermitcraft. Xisuma, like most, had thought that whoever the player was, they had come from the older generation of players, perhaps even the Hardcore generation, where life was quite a bit more fragile than it was now. Part of this was because there was an unconscious bias that they had chosen to become a Watcher, and they'd made that choice because the other option was to die. The Red Watcher was known by many names, but no one thought the player's actual name was one of them.
Apparently they were right. Never would Xisuma have guessed that Grian was the Red Watcher, not until he'd watched him metamorphose into the form of the Red Watcher and effortlessly twist the code of the server to kick out one of the Hub Admins. Grian was not a name associated with the Red Watcher, but clearly it should have been. And the name of TommyInnit.
Xisuma activated the hidden redstone door that opened into his office, leading Grian through. Like most of his offices he'd made, it had a desk he could connect his communicator to—thanks to some clever redstone engineering on Etho's part back when he joined the server in season three. It technically wasn't originally for Xisuma's use, but he'd paid Etho in diamonds for the schematics to make one himself because having something that could enlarge and organize the displays from his communicator was incredibly helpful for doing the job of admin. It made tracking down particularly damaging glitches that much easier.
"Go ahead and sit down wherever you want," Xisuma said. "You can even take behind the desk if you want."
Grian glanced at the chair behind the desk—which Xisuma had made nice enough that he could sit in it comfortably for a long period of time, but not so comfortable that he started to fall asleep in it—and turned away to sit on the couch instead. "Here's fine," he muttered, seemingly unaware of the nervous twitching in his wings. "I suppose you want an explanation for everything that happened back there."
"Only if you're willing to give it." Yes, Xisuma did want answers, but he knew that pressing anyone for information before they were willing to give it was only going to breed resentment, and he definitely didn't want to do that on his server. Especially not with Grian, who was still high on his list as one of the people most likely to run away from Hermitcraft if he thought something was going to go wrong. He had settled onto the server and into the community, but not so much that Xisuma was certain they would be able to convince him not to leave for a little while over a misunderstanding.
"After all this time, I think I owe you a bit of the truth," Grian admitted. "And while I can't say I'm entirely ready for this, I do want you to understand what happened." He took a deep breath. "As you picked up, I used to be TommyInnit. I know that doesn't make sense, especially since we've been in the same place at the same time before, and I'm quite a bit older than he was, but you have to understand that some very weird things happened. And, as I've realized fairly recently, it had a lot to do with the Watchers."
"Was that how you became a Watcher? Because they stole you from the Dream SMP?" It would explain the disappearance, and Watchers were known to interact with the rest of the world out of sync with the flow of time.
"Um..." Grian rubbed the back of his neck. "It's a bit more complicated than that. I was... When I was TommyInnit, I was killed by my admin. There's a limited lives rule on the Dream SMP, and that death was my last one. But Dream had a bit of a trump card, a book with a ritual that could bring a dead person back to life. Except, the first time he tried to use it was to bring me back, and that was when the Watchers first interfered with my life. That I'm aware of, anyway. Instead of coming back to my body, I was pulled back in time to roughly nine years before I was killed. I didn't know how or why or what was going on, and I didn't know anything until I watched to make sure the time loop that had been created could close."
And oh, that was so much worse. Xisuma tried to imagine it, tried to think of the person he had come to know waking up in a time he didn't understand, discovering that everything he had known was completely out of reach. All of this, of course, coming after the most traumatic experience of his life, a brush with death that came as close to permanent as one could truly get without crossing over. It was difficult to imagine what Hermitcraft would be without the inclusion of Grian, who brought about a chaotic sense of camaraderie and a sort of childlike play that they had more or less ignored while working on their various projects.
They had played games and enjoyed the community of the server before, but the addition of Grian had reminded everyone that progress didn't have to be about how big or detailed their bases became. Sometimes progress was about how effectively they managed to not do their work. Sometimes progress was chasing one another halfway across the server just to drop a nametag in someone's inventory. Sometimes progress was joining a cult started by a friend while trying to figure out why the moon had become gigantic. Sometimes progress was everything but finishing a project.
"So you decided to use a different name until this time loop closed?" Xisuma asked.
Grian rubbed the back of his neck. "No, you see, that's the thing. I was technically from the future, and I knew Grian and Mumbo when I was Tommy, and a bit about Hermitcraft. I knew about MCC, and I was just looking for people and things I recognized at first. Most of them had already emerged as players and I was checking up on them because what else was I supposed to do. I found everyone I'd known, everyone except for Grian." His wings flared a little before tucking close around him as he sat on the couch. "My code was corrupted. There was already a TommyInnit in the world, and I had gotten here second, so trying to use my name and information wasn't going to work. It wasn't like I could meet many people or go onto servers with my code practically unreadable. I just kept looking up names of people I knew while living in a single-player world, and still I couldn't find Grian. I knew about the time he started becoming popular, so it got to a point where I realized that he should have already emerged as a player. And that's when I started to realize that I was starting to look like the Grian I remembered."
As if it was the answer to everything, Grian tugged on his signature red jumper. He'd had it for as long as Xisuma had been aware of him, so perhaps it was the answer. "You took the name of Grian because you knew there needed to be a Grian in the future," he whispered.
"I became the person I remembered."
It should have been a shocking revelation to Xisuma. There was no previous indication that TommyInnit and Grian were the same person, but somehow it wasn't that surprising. Xisuma pulled up the last public image of TommyInnit, a photo from MCC 13, where he was dressed in a traditional Santa Claus outfit for the Christmas-themed event. Next to it, he pulled up a particularly nice photo of Grian from back when he first joined the Hermitcraft server. The similarities were there in the shape of Grian's face and nose. The hair was a little messier and darker, and Grian's eyes were a little greyer than Tommy's but that could be attributed to age and the undeniable trauma of getting killed by his admin.
It suddenly occurred to Xisuma that the admin on the Dream SMP was Dream himself, someone else who hadn't been seen in public in a while. Which, considering he killed one of his players with the full knowledge of the consequences that would entail, was not all that surprising. If Dream wasn't in some form of custody and removed as a person of power on the Dream SMP, then Xisuma was going to see to it that something happened, and quickly.
Grian fidgeted, drawing Xisuma's attention back to him. "Well, X? Aren't you going to say something?"
Xisuma blinked. "What is there to say? You are who you have always been. Knowing that you were TommyInnit does explain a few things, but it doesn't change who you are."
"And the fact that I'm a Watcher?" Grian leaned forward, and it was obvious that he was pushing for that same rejection he had been expecting back when they first met. He expected to be thrown out for not sharing things, for keeping secrets that he was well within his rights to keep. "I mean, you must have realized that I'm the reason Season 8 got corrupted the way it did."
"Oh. I hadn't been thinking that actually." It didn't change things, though. Xisuma had seen how shocked and dismayed Grian had been that the world was falling apart around them. That wasn't something he could fake. "I'm sure you didn't do that intentionally."
Grian slumped back into his seat. "I don't get it! All the things I've messed up by being here, and you don't care? You're just going to let it go without any sort of consequences? I've been lying to you for years!"
"Have you, though?" Grian opened his mouth to argue but Xisuma pushed on. "I have always been the sort of person who prefers to think that actions speak louder than words. You know this. So, what do your actions tell me?" Xisuma allowed just enough of a pause for Grian to try and interject again before forging ahead. "They tell me that you are the sort of person who cares deeply about people, who needs to be involved in things, and loves causing chaos just to be included. You aren't afraid of hard work or fighting when you feel like you need to, and you are fiercely loyal to anyone who extends even the slightest bit of friendship towards you. I have watched you go and drag people out of their own heads, force them to consider things from multiple perspectives, and build things for people just to see how they would react. You are competitive, but not to the exclusion of all else. And despite all of the things that have hurt you, you still choose to reach out and be the person that others can rely on."
Xisuma watched Grian's mouth open and close several times, a flush creeping up his neck. "You— I'm not—" Grian huffed. "That's cheating."
He couldn't help the snort that burst out of him. "How so? I just said what I honestly thought."
"You're going to make me blush," Grian muttered, as though his cheeks weren't already turning bright red under his hands. "And considering the fact that weird things start to happen when I'm feeling particularly emotional, I don't think that's such a good idea." He sighed. "It didn't used to be this hard to control the Watcher side of me. I used to be able to walk around like there was nothing different about me all the time. Now, I feel like if I move the wrong way, something's going to burst out of me."
The atmosphere sobered a bit. "Is there any way I can help?"
"I don't think so. It's just..." Grian sighed again. "It feels like I'm a cup just about to spill over all the time, like I suddenly became a lot more powerful overnight, and I don't know why. I can handle it—I am handling it—but I wish I knew what was going on."
"You don't have to handle this on your own, though." Even though he knew Grian was going to do whatever he wanted, Xisuma still felt obligated to say it. Because he didn't have to deal with anything on his own. All of the Hermits would be more than willing to work with Grian to figure out how to manage the power he was dealing with. There were ways he could put that power into shoring up server security, or powering one of Doc's crazy but genius inventions, or just by warping things a little bit to make the server a tiny bit weirder across the board.
Grian wouldn't go for it, though. He clearly wasn't the sort of person who liked holding that kind of power, which invalidated all of the awful stories about what the player-turned-Watcher was supposed to be like.
"I've got this," Grian assured him. "You don't need to worry about me."
"I will, anyway," Xisuma confessed. "If for no other reason but that it's part of my job." He glanced down at the side by side images of Tommy and Grian again. "When did it happen, if I can ask? When did you become a Watcher if it wasn't when you were brought back in time?"
"It was after Evo." Grian paused, sucking in a deep breath before continuing. "The Watchers interfered with the Ender Dragon fight. Everyone was fighting their own Ender Dragon instead of us collectively fighting one, and they'd already decided that they were going to take me at the end of it. All the puzzles and cryptic messages were arranged to lead us there, and they apparently found me the most interesting."
Something cold rushed over Xisuma. "The eight-month absence."
Grian nodded. "That's when I managed to get away. And I don't know how long it was exactly, but I know it was a lot longer than eight months for me. I just... That's just when I finally broke out."
It all made a sick sort of sense. There had been three Watchers for far longer than Grian had technically been alive. There were stories as old as the universe itself, and the story of the Red Watcher had existed for almost as long. Centuries of time had passed with some vague awareness of the Watchers, of three distinct figures that were never seen. There were cults that had survived for millennia worshiping whatever the Watchers did, and Grian should not have been old enough to be there.
But the knowledge that Watchers didn't exist in a linear time stream had been circulating around those who paid attention to the stories. They existed outside of it, observers like they always claimed to be, manipulating events because they knew they could.
Suddenly the coincidental timing of their escape from the crumbling remains of Season 8 made sense. Grian, as a Watcher, could also manipulate events so that they all escaped safely, so that they had enough time to save a version of the world that wasn't corrupted for them to live in until the start of Season 9.
He hadn't said anything, nor would he, even if Xisuma tried to thank him for it. He would accept the blame and not the praise, and it was starting to make sense why that was. Although he didn't know what all had happened on the Dream SMP, it was clear that Grian had learned from somewhere that he is at fault for more things than he managed to fix. It just seemed like the sort of thing that might happen on a server that was responsible for his near-permanent death.
"Well, I for one am glad you're here," Xisuma said. "And I know that all of the Hermits feel the same way about you. Whether you choose to tell anyone else about this or want to keep it a secret, know that you will always have a place here. I'll make sure of it."
"Thanks, X," Grian said, half melting into the sofa. "You have no idea what that means to me." He glanced at his communicator. "I should go get some food. We have that tour of another potential world later, and it's probably better if I don't accidentally clear a whole chunk because I didn't bother to eat anything. Goodbye!"
Without waiting for a dismissal or for Xisuma to offer a farewell of his own, Grian was flying out the upper windows, winging it back towards Boatem Village.
Xisuma looked back down at his desk. He pulled up photo after photo of Grian over the years since he first appeared on the scene. There was a clear progression looking through them. When he added the pictures of Tommy at the very beginning, it was even more distinct.
Tommy and then Grian had gone through cycles of good and bad things. For Tommy, the Dream SMP was clearly a factor in those cycles, as Tommy was suddenly paler and more exhausted in some of his MCC appearances. As Grian, he had been pale and drawn at first, but he slowly improved until he looked healthy and happy on the Evolution server. Then the disappearance happened, and he was back to what was clearly the image of a man dealing with recent and prolonged trauma.
The improvement in Grian had been slow at first, until about halfway through Hermitcraft season 6. After that, he was standing taller, with more confidence and pride. And while there was a minor dip in his mood and appearance in season 7, Xisuma could now tell why that was. It was when Tommy was killed, when the time loop that brought Grian to them closed, forcing him to confront all of the things that he'd probably tried to ignore. But Grian wasn't alone after that this time. He was surrounded by people who were willing to drag him into their lives and out of his own head just as much as he did for them. The dip in mood was minor, and he had become more settled with them after that, secure in the knowledge that he was exactly where he wanted to be.
"I don't know," Xisuma whispered to his empty office, smiling at the most recent image of Grian on the server, standing and grinning beside the Boatem Hole with the other members of Boatem Village. "I think I might have a little idea of how much being here means to you, Grian. But you're welcome anyway. We're glad to have you."