Chapter Text
Pearl sat on a half-rotted tree stump in the middle of a forest. Her knees were up against her chest as she tried to breathe.
She hadn't meant to storm out of the meeting like that; she'd just been too overwhelmed to stay. The Watchers would always be a touchy subject for her.
Touchy, she scoffed at herself internally. What a tame word to describe the bone-deep terror that rose up in her whenever she thought about those monsters. What a poor way to describe how the very thought of one on Hermitcraft chilled her to the core.
Xisuma's reassurance… it had helped, to some extent. Players and Watchers were so fundamentally different. The idea that one had become the other? It broke her brain a little.
Benevolence meant nothing. She'd seen what “blessings” from a Watcher could do to someone. When it came to Watchers, their kindness was worse than apathy; kindness from a Watcher meant they'd noticed you.
But a Watcher that could actually understand how players worked? It gave her the slightest sliver of hope. Maybe this one's form of benevolence was staying uninvolved. Maybe, just maybe, this wouldn't end in a shattered server and broken friends.
Still, being a player once upon an infinity ago didn't make this Xelqua character safe. As she'd told the hermits, simply being around a Watcher was dangerous. She only hoped her warning-slash-trauma-dump had been enough to scare the hermits out of their curiosity.
A wry smile crossed her face as she remembered her parting words before running off. At least her exit had been a dramatic one.
The crunching of leaves behind her alerted her to another hermit’s presence. She didn't move from her position, already fairly sure of the other's identity.
Her suspicions were confirmed when the armored form of her admin settled on the ground beside her. He didn't speak, waiting until she was ready.
Pearl took a deep, controlled breath, then let it out all at once. She never talked about Evo. She could barely say the name of the server out loud, and she wasn't the only one. Even with Grian, they never addressed it directly, always speaking around the issue.
But Xisuma was her admin. He had a duty of care, like all admins did, but he went beyond simple admin duties. He dedicated himself to caring for the players on his server with more heart and care than any other admin Pearl had met. If he knew their history… he would know just how suspicious Grian being missing was. He would do something. Or at least try.
Xisuma had met a Watcher; been altered by one.
If anyone outside of the Evo survivors could understand, it would be him.
“It was a long time ago,” she started. Her voice was distant. “Before Grian joined Hermitcraft. You knew we were on a server together, right?”
Xisuma nodded, the motion just visible in her peripheral.
“He mentioned it when recommending you as a new hermit, yes. It's also in both of your player data.” Xisuma paused for a moment. “The server name was redacted.”
Pearl pulled her knees a tiny bit tighter. It wasn't unheard of for a server to be redacted. It happened with quite a few glitches, and sometimes if a crime requiring dev intervention was committed.
In their case, the server redaction was partially to protect their privacy. It was the given reason when questions came up. The server was also redacted to protect them in general. It would do nothing against the real danger, should They show up again, but it kept them safe from the average malicious player.
“Have you heard of Evo SMP?”
By the sharp inhale, Xisuma had more than heard of it. Unsurprising. Everyone with even a passing knowledge of Watchers knew about Evo. An entire server held hostage by Watchers, and the admin vanishing for years afterwards. Evo SMP had become the canary in the coal mine. The cautionary tale against getting too experimental with servers and their code lest you draw the wrong sort of attention.
“It was exciting at first. None of us had ever heard of the Watchers, let alone how they… we didn't know.”
She swallowed, tugging on a strand of hair.
“We didn't know,” she repeated. “And by the time any of us noticed just how… bad it was getting, the server was locked down and we were stuck.”
Pearl dared not look at Xisuma. She could practically feel his eyes boring into her; she knew if she saw anything on his face - horror, sympathy, anything - she wouldn't be able to finish.
“Grian was the admin, you know. The server was his idea, his passion project…” bitterness leaked into her voice, “and it was him the Watchers took the most interest in.”
“Void…” Xisuma murmured.
“He just - you know how Grian is. The rest of us kept our heads down once it got dangerous, but Grian just kept pushing. I think he was trying to take the attention off the rest of us. When he didn't show back up after the dragon fight we…” Pearl gathers herself. “We honestly thought they got angry enough to destroy him, or force a permadeath.”
Here, Pearl's breath hitched. She tried to speak around the lump in her throat, but couldn't. Blessedly, Xisuma filled the silence, gently. “He came back.”
“He came back,” echoed Pearl eventually. “And we didn't talk about it. He was alive, he was sane, and Evo was… it was too hard to talk about. Nobody knows what happened to him while he was… gone. And it was over. It was supposed to be over.”
She chuckled darkly.
“What you need to know about Grian, X, is that he's like void-damned catnip to Watchers,” she said, voice as sharp and fragile as broken glass. “Gods know why, but even when he's pressing every button he can find, they can't stay away from him.”
Pearl forced herself to take a breath before she started yelling at Xisuma for something he had nothing to do with. Eventually, she got her emotions back under control.
“I don't think you understand just how terrified I was when I woke up feeling a Watcher and Grian's coms being deactivated. I was so sure they'd taken him, again…”
Finally, Pearl turned to look at Xisuma. Every line of his body was rigid with tension. They locked eyes, and she could see the same fear in his eyes that was in her own.
“I'm still not convinced they haven't.”
***