Work Text:
❀
Mumbo Jumbo was a very particular person. He doesn’t expect people to get it. He just doesn’t! He had a very particular way of living. Most of the Hermits did, really. He doesn’t expect people to understand why he peace-love-and-plantsed so hard he temporarily became a potato. Or how he turned Grian into a soul-smoothie afterwards. He especially didn’t expect anyone to understand his season ten story arc finale, where he intended to transfer his consciousness into a chicken, then into the large CRT television he built on the mountainside of his mega-build.
He also didn’t expect people to understand that he had Hanahaki at age nineteen, and that he opted to get the surgery immediately. And so he doesn’t tell them.
❀
Once you search why you’re throwing up flowers, and you see an auto-generated overview that says you have the love disease, it’s all downhill from there, honestly. At least, that’s how Mumbo felt.
Mumbo realized something was wrong on the evening of his nineteenth birthday, when he expected a call from someone that never came. The hurt, or betrayal, he felt started aching in his chest, over his heart, before it eventually fluttered upwards, and then he was throwing up the remnants of his birthday cake Cleo had made him. Mixed in were flower petals and, if you squinted, speckles of blood. It was hard to tell them all apart around the half-digested funfetti, to be quite frank.
He ended up asking Xisuma to accompany him off-server to urgent care, thinking that he had caught some stomach bug. Or maybe developed a sprinkles-and-buttermilk-frosting intolerance. His admin, who he hadn’t quite grown close with yet, towered over Mumbo’s slouched stature as they sat silently, waiting. His mechanical breaths through his suit nearly lulled Mumbo to sleep, a big change from the panic and nausea and heartache he’d experienced earlier.
They called him back eventually, once all the serious cases of botched respawns and post-hardcore syndrome had been seen. His name was called, and both he and Xisuma stood up. His pride and his chest hurt, and so as he walked briskly into the back, he didn’t look back at Xisuma, who was clearly waiting for Mumbo to ask if he’d like the admin to accompany him.
Now, it’s not any reasonable doctor’s prerogative to diagnose someone with Hanahaki. He just had the totally deliberate foresight to have another coughing fit after he’d been brought back, throwing up petals and such into a medical wastebin in front of the PA’s eyes. The medical team was shocked, really. Urgent care was simply not the place for a condition like this, they said, and so they contacted a specialist who could assist him further. All he was sent away with were medical-grade lozenges and a tub of Vicks VapoRub.
That evening was the end of Xisuma’s involvement. The idea of admitting you had the love disease was mortifying. At least, at his age, it felt that way. He was new and younger than everyone else, and he knew– he knew the subject wasn’t a Hermit, but they’d never believe that. How does a poor soul catch Hanahaki for a classmate they hadn’t seen in over two years?
The next day, after taking a bizarre telemedicine call in which the nurse asks him to preserve and bring along “the next three full blossoms you expel”, he’s scheduled to meet with his specialist. By the end of the week, he was in a room, face to face with real-life incarnations of the devil and angel on his shoulder.
It’s laughable, really. They bring in a counselor at the same time they bring in any member of the medical team, aiding in Mumbo’s diagnosis. After all, the most successful treatment is being open and honest with the people in your life. That’s simply not factually correct. And Mumbo spent the whole week prior reading up on this, to come to this point.
Sure, plenty of people with Hanahaki reported it being “resolved” by reciprocated feelings. Some patients even reported symptoms lessening or disappearing entirely, just by admitting their feelings, even if they weren’t reciprocated.
But Mumbo was not looking for a holistic approach here. He didn’t want to dilly-dally with telling someone he liked them. Someone who didn’t even find the time to call him on his birthday. His nineteenth birthday! Besides, confessing wouldn’t benefit him, no matter the outcome, because he was not a person who wanted or valued romantic relationships. This— moment— in his life was a fluke. He didn’t do romance, not typically. So any grand reveal, even if it resulted in reciprocated feelings, would only cause new problems for him. Better to nip it in the bud, he thought.
The counselor was nearly red in the face as he explained this to them. Mumbo always ran his mouth in the doctors’ office. Best to be honest, right?
“You may feel differently in the future, Mumbo,” they repeated. “You don’t want to try and resolve this without surgery first?”
“No. I value my decision. And my life,” he smarmed. Lord, is this what it felt like for people to try to get their tubes tied? He hoped he’d never be put in that position and live through this level of condescension again.
“I really recommend you call this girl–”
“Who’s to say it’s a girl? Who’s to say it’s anyone at all?” Mumbo snipped. The doctor stared blankly as he chewed the counselor out. “There’s been plenty of Hanahaki cases over the years where the patients report no romantic or platonic turmoil before their symptoms presented. What do you tell those people? To go confess their love to every person they pass on the street, in case that’s the one and they don’t have to go through the simple surgery they’re requesting?”
The counselor stood up stiffly and passed their clipboard to the doctor.
“You have my recommendation to proceed, if you wish, Mr. Jumbo. I simply believe you should heed the warnings of the professionals who deal with cases like yours for a living.”
“Thank you,” he said through gritted teeth. It took everything in him not to correct them one last time that he was not Mr. Jumbo. But he much preferred that they leave, so he left it at that, and they stormed out, thinking they had the last word. Mumbo melted into his seat.
“I’m sorry,” the doctor offered sheepishly. “This is not an easy job.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not easy being unable to breathe,” he said. “I’m not trying to be difficult. I’m trying to keep myself alive.”
“Not everyone who comes in here is acting rationally,” the doctor offered. “This disease is known to impair rational decision-making. Your blossoms indicate that you came to us very early, which is good. Had the petals been a tad longer, you might’ve been granted a liaison with your power-of-attorney instead. Given you didn’t give us any emergency contacts.”
Mumbo ground his teeth and nodded. He knew all of this, of course. He’d pored over forums and videos of horror stories. He measured each of the flowers he sent painstakingly for length, vibrancy of colors, and whether there was any blood staining them. He very carefully omitted the emergency contact portion, thinking of his gentle giant of an admin who carted him to urgent care only a month prior. No ties to his personal life, the less chance they’d have at uprooting his life. He’d washed his internet image to the best of his ability; god forbid they decided to start calling any of his friends.
“Anyways, let's continue on,” the doctor said after it was clear Mumbo wasn’t going to give them any more reason to mark him as “volatile” or “incapable”.
They recapped the risks, which Mumbo’d already memorized. He could lose all memory of this person. He could lose the ability to feel romantic love for people of the corresponding gender of that person. He could lose the ability to feel romantic love for people of all genders. Not to mention, all the fun physical ones they seemed to gloss over: permanent scarring in the throat, difficulty speaking in the same range of tones, and chronic sore throat. And, finally, the one underlined in red pen, he could lose the ability to feel “love, or any strong positive emotion” permanently.
But Mumbo was a scientist, and he recognized medical hogwash and propaganda for what it was. A system that was built with some fictional teenaged girl in mind, one whose love grew too large for her chest. But this process was not built for just about anyone else. Couples where one had fallen out of love, and the other simply wanted to move on and live. People falling for their abusers. Children with puppy-crushes, who’d already tried confessing. The system failed them time and time again by the Hanahaki method: confess first, surgery later. Much, much later.
Then there were people like him. Aspec people, who found these feelings inconvenient, more than potential. Not to mention the hundreds of cases, teens and adults the same, who caught this illness and never reported unrequited feelings.
The reward outweighed the risks. And the risks were bull anyway. He’d live his life all the same with any of the lot.
He yes-and’ed his doctor another thirty, forty minutes or so, before he was escorted to a different office. Handed a bib to go over his shirt, rather than a gown, because “they didn’t usually make that much of a mess”. He was told to lie back, and that before he knew it, he’d be up and ready “to be wheeled out of here”.
His last thought before being put under was that he didn’t have anyone to pick him up.
❀
Now, here’s what Mumbo knew. There’s a lot about the friend who sparked his Hanahaki that he didn’t remember. That’s standard, really. He knew their name and how they met. Their face is harder to recall in his mind than the average grade school peer, though.
Whether he lost the ability to feel romantic love remained to be seen. Which is fine, and he was totally nonplussed about it. It’s the reason he opted for surgery off the bat, anyway: he was unconcerned with losing what he (pretty much) never had. Mumbo Jumbo was a very particular person, and so a situation came about in which he wanted to enter a romantic relationship but found himself lacking in some bits; he’d work it out, or he wouldn’t. Simple as that.
Simple as that, and then another eight years passed. He went from child of the server to— well. Still the child of the server. But a peer, more importantly.
He doubted Xisuma even remembered the evening he carted his greenbean server mate to urgent care on his birthday.
❀
He’s meant to meet Gem at the dock, to do a bit of sparring. He needed more heads for the village people, and he didn’t want any additional people to be that keenly aware of his PVP ability.
But she didn’t arrive by their decided time, which was weird, because one, Gem loved fighting and maiming. Two, because she loved getting to places early so she could criticize others who were late.
Lastly, she literally lived just across the river.
Mumbo re-equipped his Elytra, not wanting to take a swim and get all soggy before their tussles. After taking a steep rocket up and down over the water, he could see that the front door to her lighthouse was cracked open.
“‘Ello? Gem?” he hollered, poking a head in. He heard a tumble and distant crashing.
“S-sorry! Out in just a—“ Her sentence was broken up by the sound of coughing, then retching, and something crashing. “—few minutes!”
Now, Mumbo was a particular person, and that meant that he valued his privacy. His, and others. But that did not sound great. He softly swung the door open to let himself in and shut it behind him. He quickly beelined to her cabinets, grabbing a glass and filling it with the tap: this must’ve been a sudden onset bug for Gem to not have canceled earlier.
He padded up to the bathroom door, also partially ajar. “Gem? You alright?”
More jostling and crashing could be heard. “Peachy! All good,” she called back, a waver in her voice.
“Can I come in?” he asked. “I’ve got a water for you. And I can go fetch anything. Anything for a Magic Mountaineer.”
“No-no, no need. I should— be able to do the heads thing— in just—“ she took large hiccupy breaths in between every couple of words, before breaking out into a wheezy cough again, then heaving.
“Alright,” he murmured to himself before nudging in.
She was sitting on the floor, slouched over the toilet. All the clattering he heard was the contents of her bathroom counter and medicine cabinet, maybe, scattered across the floor or in the sink. Did she try to pull herself up by the counter and fall instead?
“Oh, gosh, uh—“ Mumbo set the water beside the toilet, theoretically in her reach. “What’s the matter, Gem? Do you know what you caught?”
A beat passed before a sad, almost hysterical giggle bubbled up from her.
“Boy, do I?” she laughed for a second before it turned to another scratchy wheeze. Her eyes went wide, and she ducked her head back into the toilet bowl, retching. Mumbo, ever the awkward but committed friend, rubbed her back gently until she pulled her head back up. “I think that’s it,” she mumbled.
“Let’s get you somewhere more comfortable,” Mumbo said. Whatever she was sick with, she wouldn’t be getting better by sitting on the grimy bathroom tile. He held out a hand, which she took, and he vaulted her to her feet.
With this look of hers, pale and sweaty with her bright hair dangling in wet strands in front of her face, she looked so unlike herself. It was disconcerting, to say the least.
Upon being pulled to her feet, she let go of Mumbo and stepped out of the bathroom as quickly as she could muster, starting to mumble to herself (or Mumbo?) again. He reached down for the glass of water he’d brought her and glanced into the bowl.
Flowers. Full flowers. And bile and blood. Gem had Hanahaki. Gem currently had Hanahaki.
Mumbo stepped backwards and out of the bathroom, mind in a haze. How? How was that possible? How was she throwing up full flowers? A chill ran through his body, making his own breath hitch. Did she know she had Hanahaki? He glanced around the kitchen, looking for prescription medicine, or those disguisting lozenges, anything to indicate she'd been getting treated. His eyes latched on none of that, but did land on a musty bucket. That'll do, he thought, tugging it over.
He met her where she was sitting on her sofa, setting the glass on the table before he dropped it. She was hunched over herself, sat so far forward on the couch, as though she was waiting to make a break for it.
“C’mon, Gem, lean back. You’re clearly not well,” Mumbo said, finding his words.
“I’m sorry about our appointment,” was all she said in response. Her eyes were cloudy.
“I don’t care about that,” he said. “Get comfortable, but sit upright. Do you have the lozenges they give you?” She gave him a bewildered look. “At the doctor’s office, Gem.”
“I’ve just got a bug,” she said with a nervous smile. “Might be kraken-related. Not the cleanest base I’ve ever built.”
“You don’t have a bug, Gem,” he said quietly, as if that made it any better. Her demeanor changed immediately.
“You should leave, Mumbo. I don’t want you to get sick.”
“You’re not contagious, Gem. You have Hanahaki,” Mumbo continued. “You know that, right?”
“Leave!” she shouted. He was no stranger to the way Gem’s voice could carry: he’d watched her time after time play in MCC and shout with glee, or shout after a difficult run of Decked Out 2. But this made him startle.
“I’ll leave!” he said, holding his hands up. “Let me call your emergency contact, and they can come over here, and I’ll leave. But you seem really sick, Gem, I just don’t want to leave you alone.”
“I am fine on my own!” she insisted. “You’ve been very kind, but you need to go.”
“Tell me who to call, then!” he insisted, trying to keep his voice steady. “I know, I’m not— how about Impulse then? Or Pearl? Or Skizz?” One of them had to be close, right? He reached for his comm to see if any of them had chatted in general recently.
“No!” Her voice cracked. “You can’t call anyone!” She keeled over in her already-crouched position, holding her head in her hands. “I just need you to leave, I’m fine, this is all fine!”
“You’re throwing up full blossoms and blood,” he said, voice weak. “That’s— not great, Gem.” His mind was reeling, but he bit his lip to keep himself from saying more. Not the time.
“I’m— fine,” she said, a cry bubbling up. “Nobody can know.”
“Gem,” he said softly. She was sniffling, now, trying to hold back cries, so god knows if she heard him. “Your Hanahaki has progressed. I don’t know the details, obviously, the specifics. But it’s enough blossoms to warrant seeing your physician again, quite urgently, really. Do you have anyone I can call who knows, and can help you to your doctor?”
“No,” she sobbed.
“No, as in nobody who knows your physician details?”
“Nobody knows,” she hiccupped. “And I have no doctor.” Her stuttering breaths picked up, and her eyes went wide with panic yet again. Mumbo scrambled and set the bucket he’d pulled aside into her lap, just in time for her to heave again. This time, he did not reach over to rub her back. He couldn’t tell where they stood, the two of them.
After a minute or so, when she looked up again, Mumbo made his decision. “I’m going to step outside and make a call really quick, Gem. I’ll be right back.”
“No, no! You can’t, you can’t!” She reached out a hand to grab onto Mumbo’s wrist, but he stepped back, and it fell to her side again.
“I’m sorry. I’m not leaving, I’ll be right back.” He snuck out the front door, into the front yard, in a haze.
What— what would he want done in his position? Well, no, there was no time to delve into that. No, no, better yet. What would Gem do for another player?
She was a fierce friend and defender. But she was also a player of reason and rules. Hermit in danger, unwilling to give him their emergency contact information. That leaves him— escalating the issue to someone with more power.
He fished out his comm and looked at general. Xisuma was on-world and active.
He thought the unease he felt while dialing X would disappear once he answered. That it’d click and Mumbo would know he made the right choice. But as it rang, once, and twice, and then he was greeted with a “Hello?”, it never went away.
“Xisuma?”
“Yes, I do think so! How are you, Mumbo?”
“I— uh, well,” he lied. “X, do you have a moment?”
“Always, my friend.”
“Would you come over to Magic Mountain? Gem’s lighthouse, actually,” he said. “Don’t— don’t teleport in. Meet me at the front. It’s not urgent, but I do think I need you, so come now?”
“Oh, dear. Okay. See you soon,” X answered. He hung up with little fanfare, leaving Mumbo with just his thoughts and Gem’s hiccups through the cracked door.
The admin wasted little time, but it still left enough time for Mumbo to start wearing down a path in the grass from his pacing. Gem would scold him later, once she noticed. Scold him for quite a bit more than that, probably.
“Hi there,” a voice from above said. As if he wasn’t on edge enough, Mumbo nearly jumped out of his skin. X coasted over his head, folding his Elytra wings in and turning. “Sorry, sorry.”
“You’re stealthy,” is all Mumbo could find in himself to say.
“Wasn’t sure what we were dealing with here,” X said, voice still soft. “What can I do for you, Mumbo?”
Now, wasn’t that the question of the hour? Really, what could X do for Gem that Mumbo couldn’t? That’s what the small part in his head was saying, at least. He knew it all. But it wasn’t about him. This wasn’t about him. He was out of his depth in a lot of ways. Emotional maturity, for one.
Xisuma was a good pick. So long as he wasn’t the person Gem had Hanahaki for. Lord, if that was the case, he’d pack his bags and leave Hermitcraft tomorrow. He wouldn’t be able to live with the blunder.
“Do you know what Hanahaki is?” Mumbo sputtered. It was the only way he could get it out of his throat, which was by spitting it. His throat ached.
X let out a short wheeze. Or cough. Stutter. Who knew, through the helmet and mic that piped his voice to the overworld. “The love disease?” he pressed. Mumbo tried not to flinch.
“Yeah,” Mumbo said, fighting the urge to correct him. Fighting the urge to run down the hill, swim across the river, and disappear into his storage system.
“I mean, yes, I’m aware. I, gosh, it was touched on during my admin medical training, I imagine?” The unspoken note there was that his admin training had been completed nearly ten years ago.
“Gem has it,” Mumbo delivered, words sour on his tongue. X tensed.
“Oh dear,” he said, the speaker emitting his words softer than before. “And you’re certain?”
“Very,” Mumbo said. “I think she’s known for quite some time as well. There was blood, a few bits of it, in the bowl. You may want to try to preserve the last couple of flowers she coughed up. Gross as that sounds.” Mumbo’s voice petered off awkwardly. “They ask for that.”
“I, well. Did she ask for me?” Xisuma asked, brain clearly moving a mile a minute.
“She wouldn’t tell me who her emergency contact was. You are the next best thing I could think of.” The two stood in silence for a moment. “She’s really torn up about this.”
“I can imagine,” X said. Truth of the matter was, Mumbo thought, X probably couldn’t. Not really. He didn’t voice that, though. “Yes, well, thank you, Mumbo. Uh, shall we?” He gestured to the lighthouse.
“I– no,” Mumbo blurted. Lord, collect yourself M. K. Jumbo, he reminded himself. “It’s just, she didn’t get the choice to tell me. I just stumbled in after she was late to something, and I could hear she wasn’t well,” he admitted weakly. “It’s sensitive business, this is. I think for the time being, she may be quite peeved with me for calling you. I broke her cover.”
“Oh,” X responded. “Yes, well, that does make sense. Well, thank you, Mumbo. You did very well, and I’m sure Gem will be very grateful down the line that she had your help.”
Flutters echoed through his chest. “I– um– of course. She’s our friend. It’s what anyone would’ve done.”
“Still worth saying, she’s lucky to have you as a friend. We all are.” X patted him on the shoulder, the weight of his armor leaving a phantom touch.
It’s with Xisuma’s back turned to Mumbo that the tidal wave of feelings came flooding in. It nearly took him off his feet, he felt so unsteady. That itch, the scratch that accompanied him everywhere, the one that made him croak on a particularly cold day, felt like it was closing in on him again.
It’s with X’s hand on the door handle that Mumbo realized he had chosen to deal with this alone, all those years ago. He could at least give her an option.
“X?” he called out. His admin turned, and Mumbo could see his own discomfort (terror, really) reflected back in the visor.
“Yes, Mumbo?”
He took a few wide steps, closing the distance between the two again. Mumbo picked a particularly unpolished corner of X’s helmet to stare at, rather into his visor; a bad habit of his, whenever they had to have chats over the years about lag.
“Would you– um. Tell Gem– if it would help– tell her that if she’d like to talk with someone who’s had Hanahaki, that I’m here? And I– only if she wants to. Or, even, if she just– I dunno. Could you just tell her I’m here if she needs me?”
The gears running in X’s head were nearly smoking at this point. Certainly, the axolotl or bees floating around in that helmet of his must’ve pulled the fire alarm at this point.
“I—” he paused. “Yes, of course. I’ll tell her. Thank you, Mumbo. For everything.”
His admin stepped into the lighthouse and gently closed the door behind him. He could hear more inconsolable cries through the walls. Mumbo turned away, mind swimming and lungs heaving, and started to walk.
❀
He got a message from Xisuma nearly four hours later.
<Xisumavoid whispers to you: Would you meet Gem and me at the lighthouse? If you’re free>
Mumbo wasn’t busy. He’d been staring holes into the wall at the Mined lab, thoughts and feelings coming to him in jumbled order. It was disorienting. He hadn’t thought about, well, his Hanahaki in quite some time. It surprised him how uneasy he felt about the whole thing, looking back, when he was so collected at the time.
And so he appeared outside Gem’s lighthouse yet again that day. No sobs could be heard through the exterior, but Mumbo stayed reserved. He knocked.
X answered the door a little too quickly. “Ah, Mumbo! Good to see you again.” He looked— flustered. “Come in, come in.”
Inside, the interior had transformed. For one, Gem received the Xisumavoid “stress-cleaning” special. The place was spotless, practically sterile. It had lost all the grimy, spooky atmosphere Gem had been going for. Or, well, that’s at least what Mumbo thought Gem had been doing with her base.
X wasn’t one to sit still for much. Tea and mealtimes were about it, so if you were to have a conversation, or many conversations, it was best you have something for him to busy his hands with. Today, that turned out to be Gem’s laundry, her floors, the countertops, and the little dustbunnies that’d collected in the windowpanes. He could’ve sworn a candle was lit somewhere, because it didn’t even smell fishy: it smelled like lavender.
Gem was in a similar, tidied state. Hair brushed and pulled back into a few braids, now bundled into a blanket burrito. Sat upright on her sofa, bucket at her feet and several unfinished drinks that X had fetched for her littering her coffee table. Ginger ale gone flat, tea gone cold, tap water gone stale, second cup of tea gone cold.
She looked up at Mumbo’s entrance, eyes wide. “Hi,” she said meekly.
“Hi,” Mumbo echoed. “How are you doing?”
“Fantastic. Just fantastic,” she snipped, before cringing. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said.
“No, no, I will. I was being really difficult earlier. I’m sorry you had to deal with that.”
“It’s no problem at all, for the person who patiently waits for me to put on different costumes and kill me repeatedly for heads,” he joked. She cracked a small smile. Beside him, he could see X slip into the kitchenette; not really all too far away, but clearly an attempt to give them room to talk.
“X said…” she paused, brow furrowed, as if she didn’t know how to phrase it.
“I had Hanahaki,” he supplied. “A really long time ago, but yeah.” He sat down in the armchair across Gem, deliberately turning his head so he didn’t have to watch X fail to snoop on them.
“How long ago?” she asked.
“Season three, I think. I was nineteen.”
“Oh, gosh, Mumbo. That’s scary. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you,” he said robotically. It was strange. He never had anyone say that to him. Most of the doctors and nurses he encountered during his case looked at him with pity or disdain, as though he’d chosen this suffering for himself. “But it’s alright now. I just— figured you should know. I get it, and I won’t blab to anyone, obviously. I get that it’s serious,” he said.
“I had it handled,” she said slowly, picking her words carefully. “But I’ll never blame you or X for caring. You’re sweet.” A chill went up Mumbo’s spine.
“How long have you had it, Gem?” Mumbo asked. Her poker face cracked slightly, and Mumbo felt the temperature drop.
“I don’t really want to rehash this all,” she mumbled. “X and I have run the situation in circles.”
“Would you humor me, for just a minute?” Mumbo asked. “You did have me over, after all. I figure there’s reason for that?” She snorted.
“Suppose I did do that,” she said. “Well. I’ve got it. Have had it for two months. It’s fine. I handle. It’s too busy in the season for off-server traveling and appointments. You must understand that.”
“Seems like a silly reason to delay going. If that is the reason,” Mumbo said.
“It is,” she replied curtly.
“Well, when you find the time, and they draft your care plan. Are you going for confession or surgery?”
“Surgery? Who in the world goes for surgery?” she said, pulling her blankets closer.
“I did,” Mumbo said plainly. “If it wasn’t obvious by the fact that I’m, you know, alive eight years later.”
“I—” Gem sputtered, eyes wide like a deer in headlights. “I didn’t mean—”
“It’s alright, Gem,” he repeated. “It’s a lot. I get it.” The two basked in the uncomfortable silence for a few. “You do know you need to go soon, right? You’re quite a bit along.”
“Plenty of people don’t go,” she said. “They never see a doctor. It just resolves itself.”
“Yes, Gem, with confession,” he said tersely. “But if you were itching to confess, you wouldn’t be throwing up two months later and screaming at me not to tell anyone. I imagine.”
Her face went hot, and she pulled the blanket tighter around herself. “Yeah, well, I made my decision. I’m going to lie with it,” she said.
“To die?”
“To let fate run its course,” she argued weakly.
“Gem. What you need to understand is that dying is not an option. And I’m not just saying that. You do understand that, right?” She stayed silent.
“Because your admin, who is a mandated reporter, now knows you have Hanahaki. But even if he didn’t know: eventually, you’d stop being able to breathe without assistance, and you'd stop being able to keep down any food. You’d either collapse somewhere around here, and we’d bring you to get medical assistance, or you’d check yourself in. And then, based on a bunch of hack science and pseudo-bull they use to determine how long you’ve been sick for, they’d deem you incapable of making this decision for yourself. Either they give your emergency contact a call and give them power of attorney over you, or they bypass that entirely, because they deem there’s not enough time. They’ll start cold-calling people in your life to see if you’ll confess your love to them.
“Only after they feel that they’ve tried hard enough to help the confession along on your behalf, they’ll do the surgery. You won’t get a choice in it. And by then, you’re more susceptible to the real side effects. Chronic breathing issues. Digestion trouble. Difficulty speaking.
Mumbo hadn’t noticed how worked up he’d gotten. He was staring into the coffee table as he rattled off all his fears, everything he didn’t want for her. Her eyes were wide and glassy.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be cruel.” He took a long breath, looking down at his hands, which he kneaded. “They aren’t kind to people who catch this, is all. I got off very lucky.”
“I just don’t want things to change,” Gem said, voice uncharacteristically uncertain. “I just got settled here, with you all. I don’t want to ruin that.”
“You could never ruin that,” Mumbo offered. “No matter the outcome of this.”
“You can’t just say that, though. You said it yourself.”
“There’s no way of getting out of this that isn’t going to be hard, Gem,” Mumbo said sadly. “I just want you to have a say in how it happens. I don’t want them to take away your say.”
She sniffled, breath catching. Her tight grasp on her blanket cocoon loosened, and she held out a shaky hand. Taking it was the easiest decision Mumbo had made all day. The whole day felt like near blunders, like he was teetering on the edge of his base’s cliffside.
Holding Gem’s hand as she cried, he felt steady. It felt like the first recognizable step forward.
❀
It was hard to read Xisuma’s feelings on the situation. Mumbo would say he’s usually really in-tune with Xisuma’s body language when the tint on his visor was turned up to the max. Several years of tormenting him with redstone mistakes, social blunders, and the like gave Mumbo lots of practice.
After getting another good cry out, Gem announced to the room that she wanted to talk to “the dads”, being Impulse and Skizz, about what she wanted to do moving forward, and that X and Mumbo needed to get lost for a while, and “she’d call in the morning with her decision”.
There were things rattling through Mumbo’s mind as he shuffled down and out of Gem’s lighthouse. Things he wished he had said. A lot of it was probably unfair and not applicable to Gem. Was all this bothering him more than he realized? He kneaded his hands together.
X, who had been walking in front of him, stopped only a few steps off the front porch, and Mumbo walked into him in his daze.
“Wh— sorry! Sorry, X,” he squeaked. God, he even sounded like a child again.
X turned, and the itch of panic fluttered back up at not being able to see his eyes. Had his visor been dialled to 11 all day, or did he just not want to meet Mumbo’s eyes?
“It’s alright, Mumbo,” he said softly, head tilting slightly. He saw the other move to open his inventory, with the strum of an invisible guitar, when Mumbo interjected.
“Would you like to come by mine for supper?” he offered meekly. “I mean— it’s not really supper. I think I’ve got— butter pasta, maybe. We could have tea.” He deflated with every additional word.
“That’d be nice, Mumbo,” X interrupted, saving him from himself. “Let’s.”
Leaving Gem’s with X, they passed Grian, who was lazily fishing across the river. Pole in a holster and annotating through some big book. He looked up at the ruckus that he and X made, hopping into a tiny boat together to get back across the water. They exchanged silent pleasantries, waving at one another from the shoreline.
Maybe I could talk to Grian about all this. When it’s all over, Mumbo had crop up as a stray thought. Hmm.
And so the duo found themselves squeezed between boxes in Jill and Bill’s. It had the most functional kitchenette of all the storefronts at the moment, just like how Ron’s had the better plumbing. Mumbo’s life was scattered across the town: dinners cooked here, showers done there, shower towels inexplicably stored elsewhere, causing him plenty of havoc.
X didn’t seem bothered, spinning his teabag around a bit as Mumbo started a medium saucepan of water.
“I used to think you had claustrophobia, with the scale you used to build at,” X offered, a lilt in his voice. Half of his helmet retracted, he could hear the jokes, the meanings behind his words, better than ever. He looked around and saw the walls of boxes and clutter that Jill and Bill’s accumulated. “But I see now that’s certainly not the case.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It’s a flaw of mine, really. I try to be observant, overly so, and I start seeing things where they aren’t. Or I miss the big things.”
“Yeah?” Mumbo’s voice cracked a bit, and he instinctively raised his hand to graze over his throat where the phantom scratch sat.
“Yeah.” He took another sip of tea.
“Did you know I had been sick?” Mumbo asked abruptly. He busied himself with searching around for the box of pasta he was certain was around here somewhere. Anything to keep him out of his seat, and looking into his own eyes reflected back from Xisuma’s visor. He must’ve looked a mess after the day they had.
“I do remember taking you off-world in season three,” Xisuma noted. “To be quite frank, I thought that maybe one of the other Hermits had slipped you too many adult beverages that night. It was your birthday, right?”
Mumbo let out a sharp laugh. “Are you being serious?”
“Yes, truly!” he insisted, smile visible. “But, all to say, no, I didn’t realize you had Hanahaki.”
“That’s alright,” Mumbo said. “I was pretty set on nobody knowing.” Xisuma hummed.
“Now, why was that?”
“Well, if I have to explain that to you after the day we just had, then—”
“No, no, sorry,” X interrupted. “I understand why there’s hesitance to be had. But it seems that you’d made your decision and knew what to do in order to make it happen. There was no— rallying that had to be done, like in Gem’s case. Why not call anyone, if the decision was made? Or after the operation?”
“It’s— embarrassing, really. I didn’t want it to define me.”
“Oh,” X said. He sat with that for a moment. “I don’t think it would have.”
“Well, who’s to say? Especially now, years later. We were three seasons in, sure, but I was a newcomer all the same. A young one, too. I didn’t want to be poor, heartsick teenaged Mumbo forever.” He didn’t want to be heartsick-Mumbo ever again, frankly. He was pretty sure that bit went unsaid.
“Mumbo, we were all too distracted by your talent and contributions to this server,” Xisuma mused. “Often, so much so, that I think others forgot that you were younger. Hence why I had figured the others had handed you one too many drinks at your birthday.”
Mumbo laughed again, avoiding X’s gaze as his face grew warm at the compliment. He found the pasta box, hidden behind a small collection of Rubik's cubes that’d made their way into the kitchen somehow, and shook some into his boiling water. “You don’t have to flatter me, X. We’re only eating butter pasta, after all.”
“Well. I just want you to know, I don’t think it’s embarrassing,” Xisuma said. “Seems that you were very brave and smart about the whole thing. I’m sorry you didn’t have one of us there to advocate for you. Or accompany you, at the very least. But perhaps it would’ve hindered more than it helped.”
Mumbo’s heart stuttered.
“W–well thank you, X.” He blinked rapidly, steam in his face doing nothing to stop his eyes from watering. “I do– I do think it would have been nice. In retrospect.”
“That damn hindsight,” X joked. “Why Mojang hasn’t made us players able to rewind time, I’ll never know!”
“You couldn’t pay me to go back to being nineteen,” Mumbo snarked. “But thank you.”
“Once is probably enough, you’re right,” he agreed.
The duo fell into quiet conversation in the carved-out paths of Jill and Bill’s kitchen, over a dinner of not-quite-al-dente noodles and butter. Mumbo couldn’t tell if X was just being polite or if he really didn’t mind his subpar cooking. He didn’t dwell on it too hard.
And for the night, Mumbo’s throat stopped aching.