Chapter Text
Portals, dimensions, voids, world — they’re a fickle thing. It takes an admin with a stubborn resolve and an immense familiarity with otherworldly magics to wrench the universe into place, to form a server. Multiple worlds are bound together like a patchwork quilt, nether portals and end strongholds threading between the cloth. Even an admin so renowned as Xisumavoid, able to shoulder the bugs, code, and the sheer capacity of the server, falters sometimes.
Maybe a reincarnated AI robot child of one of his server member’s, coming from an alternate dimension and winding up having them all thrown into a different server isn’t his fault, but Xisuma still has to repair the cracks. He tends to the weave and weft of the server like a gardener to his crop. He tends to the messy strands of code, he makes sure every player gets home in the end, and he keeps a distant eye on the flickering frame of the rift.
Energy still pulsates from the obsidian frame, but the matter strung between it is cool, solid. Sure, crying obsidian doesn’t normally bend and flex under his touch, but it shouldn’t be a problem. It’s entirely disconnected from anywhere beyond the server, and he gives Grian a gentle reminder to not make another one before he crosses the whole rift situation off of his to-do list, and moves onto the next task.
Life goes on for the Hermits; pranks are had, dragons are wrangled, and a new TCG hits the markets. The exchange between the Hermitcraft and Empires server settles into a fond memory. Grumbot and the rift slumber beneath the ground.
Deep in the night, the rift churns . The cooled substance within warps and bends, remnant energy clawing its way out. Fluid obsidian drips, spattering onto the stone cavern floor. It hisses and bubbles, rejecting… something from its inner depths.
It heaves , and a body is thrown from the mass.
Fuck .
His chest hurts . An inescapable, stabbing pain, as if his very ribs were rebelling against the flesh they’re held within. It’s a never-ending ache , of suddenly being thrust into an existence where he has to breathe .
He hasn’t had to breathe in so, so long. All he’s known for so long is the crushing yet weightless pressure of the void. His chest heaves from the act of breathing, molecules filtering into stale chambers. His chest expands. A singular breath is forced out, a Herculean task performed into the cold night. Then another.
Evil Xisuma pulls himself to his feet, shaky as a newborn fawn. His legs buckle. His face slams back into the stone.
He’s—he’s out? Blearily, he looks around, gaze flickering, unsteady. He doesn’t care about the details, mind racing in adrenaline, panic, the unquenchable drive for impossible survival—and sure , the first thing he sees is Grian and Mumbo’s weird robot son. That’s par for the course.
The towering, distorted portal is a different matter. He stares up at it, blood dribbling from his nose. Some weird experiment, perhaps? A freak accident? It’s not a new creation; there’s enough supports on the frame, nearby chests and signs, all indicating that it’s an established structure.
The air is cool, crisp.
He’s out of the void.
His breath hitches.
No. No! He—he didn’t do this! He didn’t break out! Ex stumbles back onto his feet, nearly toppling backwards before he lurches, fists hitting the pulsating rift. The inky black and mystical purple surface, obsidian in nature, bends and flexes under his hands. The warmth of its momentary activation cools just as quickly as it came, its quiet hum filtering into ominous silence.
He’s alone.
Xisuma… Xisuma wouldn’t just break him out, not like this . He—he had long since dashed the hopes of a peaceful, amicable release. Anything the admin would do, for one last bait of mercy, for a final trial? It would be done in an obsidian chamber, or at the world spawn where a legion of Hermits have their weapons drawn. Not… not just tossing him out of a random portal in someone’s basement.
They would think he broke out. Ex heaves.
He—he fucking gave up! He had been done! He had been fucking cast into the void, into his imprisonment, and he accepted that. He decided he was done trying, done fucking around, and done ruining everything! He had resigned himself into that timeless hellscape of a purgatory called the void, and that was supposed to be it. He should be good as dead.
And now? A hysterical laugh bubbles in his throat amidst the bile and blood. Xisuma and his Hermits are going to think he broke out, and they’re going to fucking remove him. X had made it clear that he wasn’t to be seen again, not when he was cast beyond the bedrock. They’re not going to take his reappearance kindly, no matter how much he could insist that he didn’t mean to break out.
He had given up, and by some freak accident of magic or divine intervention or whatever , his shackles had been broken against his own will, leaving him to reap the consequences. The scythe’s swinging down one way or another. Ex stumbles back from the portal, trembling as he vies for balance. He—he just has to get out of this cave-basement thing, and then he can go toss himself into the ocean, or the Boatem hole, or whatever else they’ve got going on.
Getting out of that fucking pit is a miserable experience. Ex knows the Hermits are high and mighty and advanced and all that, and that everyone has a stash of Elytra, but these fuckers need to consider accessibilty for unintentional fugitives. He stumbles around, leaving a bloody trail in his wake, until he finds a rough-hewn staircase. A one-block wide disaster that winds nonsensically around the walls, eventually leading to the surface.
He’s met with the stars. The void was so endlessly dark, infinite space without anything to inhabit it. It’s a place that serves as the antithesis of existence. The stars are beautiful , gleaming, speckled across their endless canvas.
Beauty is a luxury he can’t afford. He doesn’t have time . He takes a quick glance around— terraformed landscapes tower around him, jagged stones float weightlessly in the air— and he stumbles into the nearby forest.
The rift, far below his feet, hums one last time and settles for good.
In the dead of night, he stumbles onward for… what, an hour? It’s a pitiful distance he hobbles through, not even out of sight of the towering bases he emerged from. Not even a mile away, and he feels that fucking tug in his chest. That panicked dismay, a beast of many names. He thought he fucking left it, back when he was first lost to the void.
It’s a fucking cloying desperation that begs him to consider — consider what?! It screams, because… he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He can run. He can stumble his sorry ass to the furthest border, and then fucking what? Survive? Fat fucking chance. He’s weak, both in body and in spirit. He knows this.
He can’t just turn around and knock on the door to the nearest base and not expect to be sent right back where he came, or even permanently killed. His name is Evil Xisuma. He’s the whole antithesis to his brother! He’s only meant to be fucked up and evil and flawed, where his brother is responsible, sensible, caring, and fucking loved.
That word claws at his chest, wrenching itself up his throat before he can stifle the sob. Was that all it was? His crimes were just pitiful, unfortunate attempts for attention. He fucking knows that, no matter how much he defends himself against Helsknight or anyone else. He’s a desperate fucking fool who ruins everything in his path, and he still wants to be there.
…
Ex stands in a field, in the dim light of a torch randomly left there. It’s his only defense against the nearby mobs, spawning in the murky night. They don’t pay him much mind.
What did he do?
He’s frozen in place. Something wet and stinging runs down his cheek. What did he do wrong? What else could he do? Is… is he just meant to be a bad example? He’s left no mark but scorn on the Hermits’ grandiose world because that’s all he’s meant to do . His very nature, his default, is bad. He’s fucking inexcusable.
A deep, childish, tired part of his mind wants to sulk. To dig himself a hole and mope there, where not even the zombies and creepers can judge him for crying. Not much it’ll do; he doesn’t even know if he’ll have the strength to dig himself back out if he does. He barely has a grasp on his form, on keeping his body from breaking down into the raw celestial matter of a voidwalker. Staying conscious and staying human is hard.
…
…Why does he insist on being human?
For as long as he remembers, he followed Xisuma’s lead for their forms; he loved the standard human, and as his twin, Ex followed in line. A voidwalker holds customization over their shape and matter; it’s the nature of being a creature of the End’s hidden depths, a chaotic entity fished from a kinder void and wrenched in two. They called themselves twins, brothers , because there was nothing else to define them as. They’re the same eldritch matter split into two different people; almost literally cut from the same incorporeal cloth.
For as long as he remembers, they’ve been opposites, nemesis. Because Xisuma was so easily beloved and human, and Ex tried so very hard to be that too. He thought he was doing a good job, for a while. He was red where his brother was green. Crass where his brother was kind.
Hated where his brother was loved. Forgotten while his brother lived.
Fuck. Fuck! There’s nothing else but that desperate, pathetic sob that threatens to burst from his guts. He wants to throw it all away and he can’t. He’s barely here . He doesn’t know where he is, he doesn’t know when he is. He—he doesn’t think they’re in the same world with a hole gouged into bedrock and a moon bearing down upon the land. He can’t leave . He’s not even a true player; Xisuma had taken that privilege; why would he let his vile brother spread destruction elsewhere? Ex can’t say he blames him.
But he’s stuck . He’s tethered to the server’s very code. He can’t even hope to kill himself; he’d just reappear, somewhere else, with a noisy death message to announce his presence.
He needs to start over. He needs something , he can’t… be alone. He rushes himself past that thought as the ache in his head pulses . If he doesn’t want to die or be caught, then he’s going to need a disguise and resources. He needs establishment. He can’t just shift into a different looking human and expect it to last; he’d be caught within moments, and he’d probably die from the effort of creating a new form. Staying in this one is hard enough. What else, then, what else…!
An image comes to mind. He can’t tell if he wants to laugh or vomit.
It’s the image of a little gray and white cat who persists between seasons and dimensions.
Jellie . Scar loves that wretched little thing, as do all the Hermits. The important pets—they’re protected, they’re taken from world to world, so… he can buy himself some time, right? He can’t just kill and replace Scar’s cat; he has a peculiar bond with that thing, and killing a beloved pet definitely wouldn’t help his case. But , he can become one of those little bastards and pretend to be cute and get on their good side. It wouldn’t even be that suspicious; Jellie’s definitely more intelligent than the average cat, and there’s plenty of mobs a bit more sentient than the rest.
He can try this. He can hang up his dignity — he’s pretty sure he left it back in that basement, limping his way up a shitty staircase. Stumbling through the forest, he pursues the small village in the distance. He just has to make it there before day.
It’s a close call. The morning sun is creeping over the horizon, dawn’s hazy light casting blurred shadows. Being so close to the bases, it’s an obviously discovered village; there’s some redstone monstrosities hanging over pits; obsidian, lava, water flows, a caged zombie, and several trapped villagers. They grunt at him as he limps past, towards a row of chests bedside a pulsating nether portal, dust on its frame.
He blinks, eyes squinting on the horizon. There’s a giant fucking goat head jutting out from the neighboring mountain, because why wouldn’t there be?
Ex is pulled from his incredulousness by a meow. There’s a rough cat sitting on one of the chests, hackles raised. It’s a scraggly older tom, sandy pelt littered with scars and snarling over a snaggletooth. It growls when Ex’s arm clumsily swats it away to pry open the chest. His fingers fumble over the materials inside; two iron, a stick. The cat watches, hissing as he stumbles to the crafting table. The sword comes together in his hands.
It’s a simple motion. The hiss is cut off, twisting into a warbled cry before the cat disappears in a puff of particles. His sword is bloodied.
Xisuma’s magic is that of inspiration . He’s a perfect leader for this world of creatives. The act of creation, of borrowing, of developing gives him power. His form was conceived by admiration and study.
Ex’s are limited to taking. The cat dies easily by his hand, and he feels the form settling within him, blueprints of a body not his own. Xisuma had it fucking easy, being able to effortlessly stay human forever. Ex had to struggle for all those years, forcing his body into a mold that he shouldn’t have been able to sustain. He couldn’t create like his brother could.
He feels that stolen soul filter away, code disintegrating as it’s no longer needed. Ex reaches for that bodily blueprint, deep in his chest, and he forces it upon himself before he lets himself reconsider or even brace.
It hurts , of course. Shapeshifting felt like taboo, and the motion is unfamiliar, forbidden. His muscles contort, snapping like dry twine as they wrench themself into place. His bones crack, splintering into the cold morning air. He cries out — a miserable sound that distorts into a pained yowl. His organs resettle into new places, his teeth pierce through newly formed gums, he feels the scars carve themself over flesh and fur alike. He’s being gutted and healed in the same moment as he settles into the body of another.
But… he doesn’t feel the strain that comes with holding his very atoms together in a tenuous hold, so it’s better , he tells himself. The sword he slayed the cat with is lying on the ground, free from blood as the body despawned. Ex blinks at it.
The cat in the reflection blinks back.
Sure, there’s some voidwalkers who live their lives constantly shapeshifting, embracing their formless matter. X never liked to do so beyond his human form, and Ex tried to avoid it, because of course that’s where he felt the need to be a morally upstanding bastard. It never helped his case.
It was also miserable, painful, and incredibly disorienting.
He’s gotta say, it’s almost hysterical how the cat he stumbled upon bears a resemblance to his own prior body; those details don’t carry between forms, but the fucking cat looks back at him with many scars; notably, a couple that cross over his nose to form an ‘X’.
Hilarious. Great joke, universe: you can go fuck yourself.
From their cages, the villagers, zombies, and occasionally golems pay him no mind. The morning sun creeps onward.
… Okay .
Now what?
After miserable attempts to catch a fish in a nearby pond, and discovering the very important need for thumbs when it comes to opening chests, Ex is tempted to go through the whole ‘rip your body into pieces to become human and then back’ if it means he doesn’t have to try and fight a cow several times his size.
It’s a fair bit into the morning as he’s considering this, before his ears twitch on their own volition, angling to pick up on a distant sound.
Rockets. Someone—no, two someone’s— are coming this way. Ex limps his way into the threshold of one of the remaining houses, missing its door and several logs; its innards are gutted similarly. He peers through the entryway as two Hermits land; he nearly trips over his new paws because he thinks its Hels.
Helsknight would probably beat him over the head if he were caught mistaking the clone for the actual Welsknight, but these fickle eyes are hypersensitive and colors look wrong , so give him a break. The upright knight stands beside a tall figure that Ex recognizes as Doc.
His head pounds as he listens in; the heightened senses make every noise a stabbing pain, but he can’t afford to falter. He picks up the gist of their conversation, although he ends up missing most of it; Wels wants to refurbish a village that Doc happened to use for early season farms, and he doesn’t need it anymore. Welsknight offers Doc aid in getting his materials back to the ‘Perimeter’, but Doc waves him off.
The knight flies off in a shower of sparks. Doc gets to work.
… Well , Doc would be one hell of a Hermit to start with. To be honest, he was planning on going for one of the ZIT boys or Scar first—they’re all blind trust and love—but Doc’s interesting. Besides, if an abnormally intelligent cat were to randomly appear, it’d probably have been the product of the madman’s experimentation. He wouldn’t be surprised if Doc had tried to recreate Shrodinger’s cat and solve quantum physics just for a more efficient gunpowder farm or something.
Doc starts sifting through the contents of the chests, completely oblivious to the missing two iron (the man’s beyond rich, Ex knows; he had nothing to worry about anyway) as he packs the supplies away, ending up with two shulker boxes. Instead of trying to fly with the extra weight, it seems Doc decides to take a nice morning walk; he tucks a box under each arm, and starts his way back towards the towering buildings in the distance.
Might as well, Ex sighs. He waits a few moments, stretching his newfound limbs, and follows the creeper hybrid from a distance.
Notes:
this started bc i had a random idea in my notes app, about the rift spitting out ex and him having to deal with being an unintentional escapee.
i have no fucking clue why the cat stuff got in here
kinda inspired by a fic that i cannot find for the life of me where Helsknight is turned into a cat?? listen this was kinda crack and then in a matter of three days i planned out the entire fic in extensive detail.
also there's going to be less art than i do for 'a rolling stone gathers no moss' but still Some.
Visual reference for Ex's cat form
Chapter 2: Fighting Instinct
Summary:
Ex follows Doc.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
As it turns out, stabbing your vessel to death before taking on its form isn’t that great on the bones. Ex made this trek already as a stumbling human, and now he’s heading back along it as a stumbling cat. Sure, the effort to actually stay in his current form is practically nonexistent, having stolen the body directly, but the universe kindly decided to make up in the torture department, because he has to keep up with Doc’s brisk pace.
The creeper hybrid keeps glancing over his shoulder. That cybernetic eye keeps narrowing in on him, and … maybe Ex might be the reason for that pace. He’s tense .
It’s kinda hysterical. Ha! The big, intimidating Doc, renown mad scientist and redstone maniac, scared of a little kitty? Of course Ex knows about creeper’s natural aversion to cats, but of all the traits to carry over to the hybrid? Hilarious . Although, Ex muse, he might have to split off and find a better-suited Hermit to suck up to. His head throbs at the thought.
Doc has stopped walking. He didn’t necessarily expect Doc to turn tail and run or anything, but he’s surprised when the hybrid sets the shulkers down from each arm. His shoulders shrug. A deep breath, audible to Ex’s new senses, and he turns to face the cat that’s been trailing him. Ex tenses — if he decides to take out a bow, then… that’s it; he definitely doesn’t have the energy to run.
But instead, Doc crouches down, and extends a green, trembling arm. The back of his furred hand faces Ex, open and exposed. He’s muttering under his breath, gaze unyielding; Ex catches a “C’mon, fight it,” and a “You got this, it’s just a cat” .
Of fucking course. The mad doctor has decided that he’s going to personally fight his own natural instincts, and to do so with a fugitive in disguise.
…
Hels damn it, fine! Ex supposes he can see just how far this’ll go. Besides, it’s rather delightful to have this terrifying man, who had once faced him with a gleaming trident and no mercy in his eyes, reduced to this : a trembling, crouched form going ‘pspspsps’ .
He lets himself enjoy the sight for just a couple more moments before giving in. Ex drifts forward on limping paws, because there’s something building up in his chest. It’s — it’s not entirely that desperation for others that he’s tried to stomp out time and time again; it’s animal instinct. He’s always stifled it before; in the past, when shifting into another form, it was usually for a spy mission where such distractions couldn’t be afforded.
…But, if he’s going to be living as a cat for a while (perhaps indefinitely;he doesn’t know), then he might as well get used to it. It’ll help him blend in, after all. Ex feels that feline instinct well up, thick and nearly tangible, and he passes the reins of his own body to it. He steps forward; one, then another. It feels like he’s watching his own movements as an outsider, much in the same way that Doc is. His body tentatively approaches the hybrid, whiskers brushing against the back of his hand. His ears instinctually twitch and he sniffs—
An onslaught of information floods his mind. Scents, places, things . The sulfuric tang of gunpowder; the sharp, electrifying taste of redstone. There’s something cool and deep that he somehow knows is from the end, and there’s something else — musty and deep and fungal and ancient, something from far beneath that he doesn’t recognize at all.
And, above all that — there’s intent . It’s not as palpable as the physical traces, but somehow, he can just tell. There’s no other way to describe how he smells the nervousness within Doc. It’s a dense, unfamiliar empathy , the taste heavy in the back of his throat. There’s nervousness. Doubt. Determination. Fear.
Ex and Doc alike are caught off guard as his paws move forward and his back arches. The fur on his spine drags against Doc’s hand; the hybrid’s breath hitches. Ex quickly considers snatching the reins back from these stupid, nonsensical feline instincts —
And then, those fingers move, delicately scratching his back.
Internally, he protests — how fucking humiliating, he’s being pet! He doesn’t know what else he expected, but still! The indignity!
Yet, he can’t deny the feeling that bubbles in his chest, that newfound instinct utterly and wholly delighted by the sensation. It’s a buffet for a starved beast, feeding off these careful, intentional touches, and — he can’t . He can’t deny this softness, unfamiliar and needed . If he could, he’s laugh; is this what he’s been reduced to? It this what he’s given himself to?
No matter the spite lacing his thoughts, Ex can’t bring himself to move away. He knows it’s better than a fate in the void.
It’s better than being ‘Exil Xisuma’ for another moment.
Doc’s hand draws back and Ex has to restrain himself from chasing that soft touch. Instead, he watches the hybrid heft the shulker boxes back up, shifting them beneath each arm before he starts forward. He glances back. A smile twinges on the hybrid’s mouth as he clicks his tongue. He cocks his head forward.
Oh, this motherfucker! Ex pursues with an indignant meow. Doc only laughs at the irritated cat trotting by his feet, and leads the way to his base:
The Perimeter.
…
Ex stares .
What in the ever living fuck ?!
A giant, impossibly large hole has been gouged from the earth, down to bedrock. It’s — it’s so ridiculous that it’s utterly uncanny; this can’t be fucking real, but of course it is, it’s Doc! Farms float throughout the pit, hundreds of mobs dying each moment, and there’s so much noise , echoing within the carved expanse. His head whips around, trying to make sense of the sheer audacity that surrounds him. Doc talks aloud, oblivious to his panic, listing off his various projects to a random cat. He’s making crimes against the universe — a ‘world eater’, a fucking pet dragon, a charged creeper launcher, an arrow flinger that tears its way through space itself — and they villainized Ex?!
…What the fuck. The thought resounds through his head without flaming anger; it’s a hollow thought. What the fuck.
…What did he even do?
It’s at this moment that Ex learns that cats can’t cry. Instead, a distressed, unfamiliar warble rises from his throat. He–he fucked around, did a little arson, made a shitty currency, and for it got locked in the hellish void, presumably forever, and — where was the line he crossed?!
Was–was he just not nice enough? Empathetic enough? Foolish enough? Were those such atrocious crimes that it warranted an eternity in limbo while they fucking frolicked and carelessly broke the rules of reality? The wail grows. What did he do?
Cats can’t cry, he’s learned. In the mind of his stolen, innocent body, Ex sobs .
Doc doesn’t know what to do. The cat trailing him just froze , looking wildly around, and it’s making a noise he’s never heard a cat make before. Is it because of him? The Warden, stumbling around below? The dragon, circling far overhead? To be fair, it’s an entirely reasonable reaction to any of these.
The cat doesn’t react when he pets it, so… Doc reaches forward, scooping the cat off of the ground. It doesn’t resist, instead nestling into the crook of his elbow with a twisted cry. Doc’s heart sinks, because he doesn’t know what to do. He’s had a lot of firsts this morning, in regards to felines; first time getting close to a cat (he’s always gotten another hermit to herd them into his farms when need be), first time petting one (surprisingly soft), and apparently , first time witnessing a cat have a panic attack (relatable).
He doesn’t know where to bring it, though. The Perimeter’s not quite ideal for an injured, panicking cat, and the rest of his builds have far too many nooks and crannies that lead into deadly redstone, but he can’t just leave the little guy on its own.
Doc jolts. He’d smack his hand against his head if it weren’t supporting the weight of a cat.
Thank the coders that his own neighbor is the server’s resident cat expert. Doc cradles the trembling cat in his arms, flexes the wings of his elytra, and starts making his way to Scarland.
Notes:
fighting w a lack of artistic inspiration so im just gonna keep working at this indulgent cat fic
Chapter 3: Happiest Place On Hermitcraft
Summary:
Doc asks a neighbor for a favor. Ex gives in.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Ex is fucking humiliated, but the thought of tearing himself out from the first tender grip in so, so many years is far more unbearable.
That, and because it would be unwise to do so when the hybrid is flying with Ex in his arms. He’s had a rough day, forgive his dignity for not wanting to test if he can land on his feet from such a height.
The sensation of wind rushing through his fur is new , and it’s his only tell for what’s going on around them; his head is still tucked in the crook of Doc’s arm and he’s not keen on moving, thank you very much . He feels the impact of Doc’s landing through his body, the shudder of shock easily shrugged off by the hybrid. He doesn’t move; the deafening roar of the wind may be gone, but the world remains too, too loud, even while muffled.
There’s voices among the cacophony.
“Doc! What brings you ‘round here on this fiiiiine morning?” a loud, jubilant voice greets. Doc rumbles back, restrained, steady.
“This place is looking fantastic, man.”
“Thank you! It’s a lot of work, but I’m lovin’ it.”
A hum. “Good to hear. Sorry to interrupt your work—”
“Oh, you’re never interrupting, friend.”
“—But I need some help with this little guy.” The cradle of arms around him shifts. “I was at the little village that I claimed early on in the season, since Wels’ is planning to refurbish it, and… it started following me back to the Perimeter.” Ex feels fingers scratch down his back with care, carving a line of relief down his bony spine. He makes a noise, a disgruntled mrrp . “And… it just froze and started making some concerning noises? I’m far out of my depth and you’re the cat guy, so…”
“Here, let me…”
As the dancing touches leave his back, Ex feels a new set of hands move to scoop him from beneath his belly. He quickly stamps down the spark of panic that races through his mind; it’s Scar , the cat guy. He’ll be fine. He’s lifted through the air for just a moment before he finds himself cradled in a new pair of arms. Tanned, worn, littered with various scars. Their namesake smiles down at him.
“Hey little guy,” Scar coos. Even though he’s already held in his grasp, he offers the back of his hand to Ex; he simply plants his forehead against it.
Why’s he so tired ?
“I’ll take care of him, Doc — thank you for coming to me,” Scar says. His voice vibrates through his own chest and into Ex’s body. “I’ll keep you updated on his health; he’s probably just experiencing some shock, but might have some hidden injuries.” A laugh, warm and kind. “It’s not everyday you find a cat that you get along with.”
Doc laughs, further off than that traitorous instinct in his chest would like. Still, Scar holds him close against his own warm body, and Ex can’t bring himself to be mad. Footsteps make their way over a cobbled path, eventually changing into something softer as a door opens.
Another few steps, and the support beneath his paws disappear, replaced with the smooth grain of a wooden table. Ex peels open his eyes, and — there’s Scar’s face, looking at him with such genuine fondness that his gut turns.
“You’re rough around the edges, little guy,” Scar croons, soft and warm and gentle; instinct-brain listens in as if it’s gospel. “Gimme just a sec,” he says, turning to open various cabinets. Ex takes a quick, frantic look around.
It’s… nice. Like, really nice. It looks like he’s in the coziest, worn and well-loved cabin he could imagine. Light filters in through tinted windows, brickwork is lovingly laid, stacking high. It’s small and comfortable, but not claustrophobic in the slightest.
Ex stills.
He… He feels like he’s drifting , not quite in the same place his body is. It’s not his body . He’s a Voidwalker, crammed into the vessel of a man, and suddenly plunged into the battlefield of a cat’s mind. He’s battling instincts at every moment and they beg, beg him to give in, to let them chase that fleeting comfort. He wants to give in. He needs to deny it. This — this was supposed to be an appeal for pity and a way to get his strength up, to lie undercover until he can find a better plan.
And in this moment, he never wants to leave.
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, what he’s doing here .
Hours ago, he was drifting in the void, resigned to the torture of an endless, cold nothingness.
Now, he’s got a couple extra legs, no thumbs, is in the nicest, warmest kitchen he’s ever imagined, and has been treated nicer in a single hour than he has ever been.
Someone wiser than himself would probably say that he’s going through a lot, and that he needs time to process everything.
They’d probably be right. Suddenly being in a world of soft voices and gentle hands and fucking genuine care…. he can’t take it. Raw anguish wails in the forefront of his mind as he sits, frozen, because what the fuck?! He’s been this evil bastard the whole goddamn time, trying to antagonize his brother and the hermits, and this is what he’s been evading? He — he’s been fucking robbed! What, with their endless prank wars and death games and bloody fights and revenge killings, they couldn’t scrounge enough forgiveness for him?!
Ex knows he’s flawed and selfish and stubborn. He knows!
Next to Xisuma, he’s always been the imperfect one. His brother might’ve had an easier time sustaining his human form, but Ex has always been the one to act more human, more imperfect. So — so is that it? That X is responsible and selfless and everything that an admin should strive for, and Ex is just… mediocre? Was he actually an ‘evil twin’ or was he always just next to X? Always a near copy beside him, and clearly, there had to be the worse one of the two. Because so many people are horrible and flawed and have lapses of judgment, error in their pranks, and he bore the sole punishment. Isn’t he normal? A wretched, filthy normal that appears hideous and gauche in the presence of his brother?
Ex blinks. Scar’s in front of him. there’s a soft hand on his back, gently tugging him from his daze. His head raises, ever so slightly; Scar smiles like it’s a miracle.
“Hey, little guy,” Scar coos. “C’mon, this should make you feel better.”
A dish is set in front of him.
Y’know, all his woes and angsting and what-not can be forgotten for just a moment, because something far, far more captivating lays before him: a small dish of salmon, neatly filleted and cooked, bones removed with loving precision. To Ex, it might as well be the elixir of life. He stumbles forward, nearly planting his face right into the pile of fish. Scar laughs, a sound with no teasing, no malice. Just that endless, soft affection that feels utterly intoxicating .
…That, and the fish, too. Ex is willing to go back on all his worries and regrets about being a cat if it means simple foods can taste this good.
He snarfs down the bowl of shredded fish, barely resting to even breathe between bites. Maybe he should be embarrassed at what he’s stooped down to, but really , he doesn’t give a shit. Scar’s in the room, sifting through chests and cabinets, but Ex can feel his gaze always lingering. It’s not a suspicious supervision, waiting for him to fuck up and reveal himself, but something tender and gentle, as if there’s nothing else in the world to do but sit in this kitchen and wait for a scraggly cat to finish eating.
When he does, heavy and content, he simply leans into Scar’s gentle touch. Hands scoop him back up and he nestles into the touch.
…And maybe he goes a little back on his word, because cat-brain and Ex-brain agree that being led to a waiting bath counts as betrayal. Alas, the leaden weight in his limbs wins the argument, and he lets Scar guide him into the water. His paws flinch upward at the first contact, but soon enough they dip beneath the warm water, and he basks in it. Gentle fingers untangle the knots in his fur, cooing, whispering.
It feels like a dream, except not even his dreams — or the hallucinations in the sleepless void he considered dreams — were this kind.
“You’re a tough little guy, huh?” Scar muses aloud, fingers carding through his fur. A bucket scoops into the bath, pouring water along his back. Years of grime from a life he did not live is rinsed away.
It feels like the last respects for the cat he stole the body from. Ev lets the cat-brain sink into the gentle touch; it’s the least he can do, right?
Fingers brush over old scars; beyond what Ex was able to spot in the brief reflection earlier, it turns out the rest of the cat’s body is equally as marred. Scar hums. “Looks like we’ve got a lot in common.”
The drain for the tub is pulled, and Ex is promptly swaddled in the soft wrappings of wool. His limbs are bound to his sides. He’s wet and defenseless and he does not care.
In moments, he drifts off, feeling the rumbling hum of the selfless, foolish man who holds him close.
Consciousness comes back to him slowly, offered only in bits and pieces of sensation. He’s warm . His limbs stretch forward, digits flexing in the air to relieve their stiffness. His muscles ache, but in the way that lets him know they’re fading. His head is fuzzy in the soft cradle of sleepiness.
He feels well-rested. He feels okay.
Which means something’s wrong. Ex jolts upright, and—
It wasn’t a dream. He’s in a room he doesn’t recognize, in a home not his own. He’s still a cat.
He’s still comfortable .
It’s been… years since he’s slept well, let alone having slept at all. He didn’t need to — couldn’t, even—while he drifted through the void. He doesn’t even know how long he had spent locked in that hazy, disconnected state; it could’ve been months, it could’ve been years. Nothing existed there.
It was just him and his thoughts for a while.
And eventually, his head became quiet, and it was just himself alone in that endless descent.
He had assured himself, in the early days of the void, that he must’ve deserved it, he must’ve done something. Sure, he couldn’t quite remember anything egregious enough to warrant such a punishment, but… he was Evil Xisuma. He did evil acts. If the beloved admin Xisumavoid imprisoned him under such harsh conditions, then surely it was for a good reason.
Now, that argument feels far less convincing.
Ex’s whiskers twitch as he looks around, taking stock of the room. He’s sat in the middle of the bed, sheets slightly rumpled. It’s clearly a bedroom, and a simple one at that; it’s compact, much like the kitchen was, but unbelievably homey. It feels like a well-loved cabin, even though he can see glimpses of towering bases through a window, in varying levels of construction. He averts his gaze to avoid being blinded; the evening sun is creeping lower, shining through the window.
The sunbeam it casts shines through the window, creeping across the bed and over Ex.
…He falls limp in the soothing warmth.
Fuck.
Fuck pride and dignity and revenge—are you fucking kidding? Ex would’ve reformed and given everything up years ago for this sensation, this warmth. Golden light seeps into his very bones. Potentially years locked in the void only built fear and rage and despair, but a second in the evening sun has him longing to cling to this very moment, this peace , as the bloodied soldier yearns to lay his sword to rest.
He refuses to move, even when his ears flick and swivel; there’s footsteps moving elsewhere in this building, and they’re coming closer to… well, wherever he is. Picking through his fragmented, hazy memories, he supposes this would be the mentioned ‘Scarland’? Whatever that is.
Scar’s voice carries through the house, talking aloud to someone ; Muffled, but still decipherable. His ears twitch. “Jellie! Take it slow, don’t overwhelm the new guy,” he tries, voice gently pleading.
The ‘someone else’ meows back, and Ex realizes that he’s the new guy. He’s due for some visitors, and he knows exactly who it is.
Scar gently pushes open the door to the room — just barely wide enough for him to slink through, legs blocking the way to shuffle in. A gray and white blur still sneaks in, meowing loudly as the form jumps onto the bed.
Jellie . Scar’s beloved pet who Ex based his whole stupid operation around. Wide green eyes peer at him curiously.
She meows.
He — he can’t speak her language. He can’t understand her; it’s just a meow , right? He doesn’t even know what he’s trying to stay when his body instinctively meows back. There’s no words.
But Jellie meows back, again, and… he knows . There’s something there. The simple, meaningless sound translates into pure intent , pure meaning, unrestrained by any barrier of language and dialect. It lies thick and heavy on his tongue.
Familiar , carries her inquisitive meow. Another step closer. She sniffs the air. Scared — Ex can still by the silent tone that it’s an observational statement, looking down upon him. Pity. Care. Offer. The abstract translations flow easily into something more familiar. He… he doesn’t know how to respond. He doesn’t know the tongue they apparently share, but coders, he tries — that animal instinct is bubbling back up and he lets it speak in his stead.
It’s rough, scratchy, garbled, fucking pitiful; a kitten’s distressed warble. Please, lost , the warped mrow bursts out. Once it starts spilling out, he can’t — he can’t stop it .
Tired, Rest, Fear, Hiding, Desperate, Fear, Tired—!
Jellie leans forward, pressing a soft, gentle lick onto his forehead. Oh, fuck. Fuck . He goes limp, face pressing into the sheets, slumped as a peculiar wave of relief and safety wash over him. It’s a foreign, unfamiliar thing that he dares to think feels like peace—
Jellie curls around him like a mother to her kitten, smoothing down the ruffled fur.
Scar smiles. “I’ll leave you to it,” he says softly, and leaves the two cats alone.
Notes:
bc i have this fic a lot more planned im gonna keep workin on it, i've probably got to sit down and restructure 'a rolling stone gathers no moss' sometime but . busy :] so cat fic continues
Chapter 4: IOU
Summary:
Ex settles in. Doc and Grian visit Scarland and bring Ex along for some creeper herding.
Ex receives and cashes in an IOU.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The first week passes in a blur. Ex wakes. He sleeps. He eats. He doesn’t leave the small, cozy house.
Another week. Ex starts to venture out, a few feet at a time, into the towering, sprawling streets of ‘Scarland’. There’s… there’s no rush , none of that desperation to flee, to steal, to do anything . He only feels that drive to witness without intervention. The tender, endless care and soft words from Scar is the balm to soothe the fire he thought he had.
The third week. He goes to sleep every night in the same spot, and wakes up right where he remembers. A lasting indent is gradually formed in the rumpled sheets. Coders forbid, he’s happy . He’s happier than he can ever remember and it’s all by doing nothing . He’s… he’s not expected of anything, and he gets everything he could ever want in return.
If the lonely, cold void was purgatory, then he’s stumbled his way into heaven.
He—He tries not to think about the void, to not think about himself as Evil Xisuma or even Ex , the derivative of a better man. Because Evil Xisuma… might have been wronged, but he’s still tainted, irredeemable, the only alternative to perfect is flawed. But here? Here? He’s ‘little guy’ to Scar. He’s that abstract fondness to Jellie. He’s lost and hollow to himself; sure , that gnawing, hollow space in his chest doesn’t quite disappear. But, when he takes a midday nap under that blessed sunbeam, he feels it shrink.
Every time that wailing despair bubbles up, there’s a gentle touch to soothe it. Scar’s calloused fingers scratch along his back and under his chin until the woes drift away. Jellie curls around him, blanketing him in an ever-present, comforting purr until he forgets what he was panicking about.
He’s not alone, not even in the shadowed depths of the night. There’s never the silence of the void. There’s always sound , live and comforting. Gentle purrs, distant rockets, cricket chirps, bat chitters. His days are spent in the manicured streets of Scarland.
And he’s fucking happy. It’s that goddamn simple.
Some days, he’s trailing Jellie; she purrs and meows in vague explanations of the land she calls her own. The building that they live in is a simple two-story thing right near the entrance of Scarland; miniscule compared to the surrounding grandeur. There’s a sign on the outside that he once stared at; the text warped and swirled when he tried to read it, but eventually made out ‘Jellie’s Suite’.
(Scar caught him looking at him, scooping him up with a laugh and a smile. “‘Might need to change that sometime, lil’ guy.”)
Jellie makes for good company, he decides. She was very loud opinions on all the hermits and their antics, and she’s delighted to hear his own thoughts. He… he doesn’t know if she knows he’s Evil Xisuma.
He doesn’t think she cares if she does.
They spend their days together gossiping, lounging on the various artisan park benches and trash bins and chattering about the various hermits who visit Scar as he works. Gem ( Soft, Kind, Organic , Jellie purrs), Zedaph ( Chaotic , they agree, sharing a certain fondness for the ram), Pearl (Unfamiliar, Ex muses. Like Gem. Jellie seems to like her), and even Xisuma .
He spends the rest of that day hidden beneath the bed in Jellie’s Suite. Neither she nor Scar mind; soft hands pull him from the dusty shadows, setting him on Scar’s lap to rest while the builder works on blueprints from his wheelchair.
When not with Jellie, he follows Scar. His strength builds up over time, getting used to his new lighter body. It’s during the third week that he’s finally able to bound up the scaffolding, joining Scar as he works on the fantastical castle. It’s beautiful , and as a cat— he can’t ruin it.
Scar even seems to appreciate his company, despite him doing absolutely nothing but watching, meowing, and occasionally batting tools off the edge; he watches as the man leaps down after them, swiftly rocketing back up before Ex can send the next one down. And he’s not mad . Scar just smiles in response to Ex’s mischievous meow, ruffling his fur before going back to work.
He’s not cast into the void for a simple, harmless prank. Cracks are mended; slowly, but mended nonetheless.
Ex is up on the upper scaffolding, lounging as he watches scar lay long lines of planks between log support, when rocket fire draws near. There’s not enough time for him to scramble back down before the figure lands on the upper level, and—
It’s Doc .
Huh. The wave of relief he feels is unexpected.
“Doc! Good morning!” Scar cheerfully greets. Doc smiles back, stepping around Scar’s arms open for a hug, and promptly crouches down beside Ex. Ha! The hybrid’s green-furred hand pets over his head, the paw that dwarfs him in size gently scratching over his scalp. He sends a triumphant look towards Scar.
“Oh, I see how it is,” Scar laughs. Doc doesn’t turn his attention away, fingers moving to scratch beneath his chin.
“How’re you doing, little guy?” Doc rumbles softly. “Has Scar been treating you well? You look a lot better; a lot more meat on those bones,” he muses. Scar makes his way over, laying down more slabs as he goes and expanding the platform.
“He’s a resilient lil’ guy,” Scar agrees. “He’s settled in nicely and gets along just wonderfully with Jellie. I think she’s considerin’ him her kitten, which is just precious.” He smiles warmly. “Still pretty nervous of other hermits, but that’s to be expected. He’s gettin’ better about hiding, though.”
Hands scoop beneath his belly— one warm, one metal— and briefly considers struggling.
He doesn’t particularly feel like falling several stories, though, so he chooses (totally on his own, not cat-brain decision) to nestle into Doc’s arms, listening to the two men speak.
“Thank you, Scar.”
“Don’t mention it! Are you hoping to take him back now, or…?”
Doc rumbles in disagreement, no malice to the sound that reverberates through Ex’s body as it’s held against his chest. “If he’s comfortable here, I’m not going to pull him away. Might make a nicer path between here and the Hall of Goat if he wants to wander between, though.”
“Feel free to connect it wherever; I’ll work it into Scarland and can add some nice visual touches. Maybe mention it to Bdubs, too? He’d probably want to connect it to the horse track and his base, and from there to the rest of the shops.”
“There also might be enough space for him to walk beside the water highway that Grian made, but—”
Doc pauses. Ex’s ears twitch. “Speak of the devil and he appears.”
A new burst of rockets fire, rapidly drawing closer, a blur of feathers —
Grian lands flawlessly, before promptly tripping on his first step forward.
“Scar, Doc! What’cha up to?” he curiously chirps, brown wings ruffling behind him. To be fair, Ex hasn’t actually spent too much time with Grian before, but he liked him enough; chaotic and endlessly creative, he and Jellie had assessed. He… he tries not to think about the builder much; he’s a menace and a prankster and has some weird eldritch shit going on, but the hermits were perfectly fine with him running amuck.
Ex stamps that spiraling thought down — no point in holding that grudge now, his mind agrees easily.
Grian’s gaze turns from scar, the trademark mischievous glint in his eyes shifting towards Doc… and disappears as he notices the sandy cat in his arms. He blinks, surprised. Ex blinks back.
“You—” he starts. “You’re holding a cat!” Grian cackles, wings fluffing up as his voice twists into glee. Doc’s expression remains flat and stoic, but a smirk still sneaks its way in.
“He followed me back from a village and stuck around,” Doc answers as if it’s as simple as that. “Scar’s been taking care of him, since I don’t want him stumbling into the Perimeter.”
The feathers on Grian’s ears twitch in acknowledgement, but he’s focused on Ex, extending the back of his hand to him. It’s a weird gesture to Ex; they still do it to Jellie, who they’ve known for years, but it’s a strange, pleasant greeting between species. Jellie had tried to explain it as the humans letting them ‘read’ what they’ve been up to by scent, a symbolic lowering of defenses. So, Ex leans in, waits a polite second, and butts hit forehead against Grian’s hand, earning scratches in return as the hermit coos.
“Y’know, Doc: out of everything you’ve done for pets — the ghasts, the dragons, the warden, the charged creepers — I’m most surprised about the cat!” Grian cackles, Doc huffs, but smiles.
“Aw, don’t feel bad. I’m sure I can get you some more pet creepers,” Doc teases back.
“Then I’ll recruit your cat to scare them back to your base,” Grian replies with an easy grin. Then, a pause; “Is he allowed to wander, actually?”
Scar pokes his head up from amidst the next row of wooden slabs. “Yeah — he’s healthy, just still a bit nervous. Why?”
Grian chuckles. He averts his gaze. “Mumbo’s back and I don’t want him to stumble into one of the charged creepers or for them to wander into the vault. It’d set him back and I don’t want him to lose his momentum, y’know? So if your cat wanders over and helps drive ‘em off, I wouldn’t mind…”
Doc hums. “Very fair. We can head over now and herd some of them back; I could find a use for some heads,” he agrees. His grip on Ex steadies. “Hold on tight, little guy,” he warns softly before taking off, white sparks left in their wake. Scar waves them off with a grin, watching the two hermits glide towards the floating boulders.
It’s a mesmerizing sight. The world is so, so much bigger; he doesn’t know whether it’s because the hermits have become more ambitious, because he’s so much smaller, or both. It’s a stunning perspective either way.
The two hermits land on the stony bridge that reaches over the valley; Doc sets him down onto the mossy cobblestone as soon as they come to a stop. Doc raises an eyebrow at the distant clamor of shriekers, but Grian waves him off, because of course that’s just a normal thing. Ex has only just learned about shriekers and the deep dark literally the other day, and it’s just a casual horror ‘round here. Grian looks over the edge. “Most of them have tumbled off the bridge and wandered off, so…” He looks back at Doc. “Do you know how many you shot at my base overall?”
“Er… no?”
Grian sighs. “Oh, boy.”
The two split off, weapons in hand, but not before Doc ruffles his fur. “Don’t go too far,” he rumbles, sincerely , and darts off into the nearby woods. Ex stares after him before huffing. He gets to his feet, stretching — paws reaching forward, claws flexing, back arching — and takes a good look around.
It’s… familiar, he realizes.
His paws take him forward; he bounds down the terraformed slopes, into the flattened depths of the valley. There’s open hole. A pit.
There’s a bloodstain leading from it, dried and faded. It leads the way to a haphazardly constructed stone staircase.
Ex makes his way down, each step taller than him, and — he stares.
Sure enough, there’s the portal that spat him out. The bloodstain where he smashed his nose is still there.
It’s so, so much larger than he remembers, a gouge carved and blackened into the surrounding stone. It’s quiet, no longer humming; light pulses weakly, purple drops falling from the cracked obsidian, disappearing before they hit the ground.
He meows at it. It’s a fucking portal, obviously it’s not going to hear him.
Still, he meows thanks , because he doesn’t know what else to say.
His ears flick. There’s footsteps, as faint and quiet as can be, soft, padded footsteps against smooth stone. Ex crouches down immediately, belly fur brushing against the stone floor. He creeps forward silently, darting between the natural stone columns.
There’s a glowing, shining creeper in the back of the cavern. It’s surrounded by pulsating blue strands of electricity that snap and shudder in the air.
It’s looking at him, frozen in place. He steps forward. It steps back.
Oh, that’s hysterical. This thing could disintegrate him in an instant , and it’s scared of him.
To be fair, the same could be said for Doc.
…Well, might as well get into the hermits’ good books. Ex darts back the way back to the staircase, paws bounding up each step (ignoring the faint red stains below his feet), and pokes his head back into the valley.
He yowls into the afternoon, wordless and noisy. He’s pretty sure the words he’s trying to shout “ HEY BASTARDS!” in intent, but hey! No one else can understand that . It works, anyway; he spots Grian turn from across the valley, sword in hand. His face scrunches in brief confusion before he spots the tan head perked up, and starts towards him. Ex mrrows again, and bounds his way back down the staircase.
“Little guy! What…?” Grian calls after him, wings fluttering as he dives into the pit. Ex lets out a curt meow as the winged hermit passes him, landing on the ground; he waves to the giant robot (how'd he even get here?) before looking around.
His wings tense as he notices the creeper, right as Ex makes it to the bottom of the staircase. He follows as Grian approaches the back corner, steps careful and distanced as he nears the area illuminated by torches and… candles? He flies forward, sword quickly flashing into the electrified mob before dancing back. Once, twice; it falls, disappearing with a sizzle in a puff of particles and gunpowder.
Ex stares after Grian, who’s standing in the center of a summoning circle with his own fucking face on it .
These goddamn hermits…
Still, he can’t help but be happy as he hears Grian whoop, walking back towards him and scooping him off his feet. Grian’s wings extend out, and shoots into the air, giving Ex an express trip back out of the pit before setting him back down in the valley. He’s grinning. If he could, Ex would be, too.
“Well, little guy? Let’s try and find some more.”
An afternoon of creeper hunting later and they’ve got a dozen glimmering creeper heads between the two of them, counting them up atop the bridge. Ex is frowning at his paws; his muscles ache, his bones weary, but… it’s a pleasant exhaustion. His paws are muddy , though.
And that means that, when Scar sees him next, he’s going to get herded into a bath. He might have to find a shallow pond to wash himself off before Scar gets the chance, but the idea of voluntarily getting wet is equally terrible.
Ex tunes back into the conversation happening above him.
“Welp! Phew. That was a lot. Thanks for not leaving any creeper holes,” Grian says. “And for helping clear them out.”
Doc smiles back before it twists into a smirk. “Of course ,” he says. “Well, you owe me—” a dramatic pause. “Sorry, us.”
Ex meows.
“Oh, you’re sooooo right,” Grian smirks back. He slams an ender chest down, yanking a shulker box out from it. He fishes a couple items from within — a piece of paper, a pen — and uses the top of the box like a table.
‘IOU FROM GRIAN’ he writes on it with big, bold letters. Doc’s grinning wide.
“Does your cat have a name?” Grian suddenly asks. Doc blinks, caught off guard.
“Not yet?”
Grian shrugs a shoulder and quickly scrawls something on the paper, walking over to Doc —
and he sets it right at Ex’s feet. He stares at it — it’s a genuine, priceless IOU, addressed to ‘little guy’. Doc chuckles, crouching down and reaching for it.
Fuck you! He worked for this and he — he needs it. Ex snatches it with his teeth and dashes down the bridge, sprinting towards the neighboring skyline of Scarland. Grian’s cackles and Doc’s incredulous sputtering fade into the distance.
It’s a surprisingly easy trip, even without the suggested renovations and paths; before long, he’s jogging along the streets of Scarland, muscles burning . He darts into Jellie’s suite, bolting up the stairs. Jellie’s waiting for him, lying on the bed; her head perks up as he slinks through the door and hops up beside her. She mrows .
“Curious,” she meows. “You’re tense.” It’s more defined than the abstract emotion he first faced; he’s gotten better at understanding the new tongue, even though his responses are still raw, unrefined. He pads across the bed, tucking the piece of paper beneath the rumpled pillows.
“ Choice,” he tries. “Made a choice. Nervous.” he pauses. “Risk. Hopeful.”
Jellie’s head nudges beneath his own, guiding him to his indented spot as he curls up. She purrs, rough tongue lashing over his head. Ex tries — the rumbling is unsteady and harsh, but… it’s a purr .
Jellie’s gaze is fond, watching over him as he drifts asleep.
A few days pass, right near the end of week three. Ex sits atop the rising walls of Scarland’s grand castle, watching the sun disappear over the horizon. There’s a winged figure in the distance, only a blurred silhouette that swoops through the air, even with his enhanced vision. A couple phantoms circle overhead as the night creeps in, perched upon the floating boulders as they wait for their time to strike.
He wants to admonish the hermit, obviously working for days on end without sleeping (and still not managing to work on the back). Hmph . Jellie and Scar are rubbing off on him, and … he can’t bring himself to be upset at them .
Ex bounds back down the scaffolding, returning to the homey suite. He fishes the IOU out, grasping it in his teeth, and begins his trek to Grian’s base.
Grian’s going to sleep soon , he promises! He’s just got a few more shulker boxes to fill, preparing for the next day’s building. He fishes a handful of stacks of glass and dark prismarine from a chest, turning to deposit them into the waiting shulker box.
He turns back to the chest and comes face to face with a pair of narrow red eyes. Ex mrows .
“Ah sh—!” Grian stifles a swear, lurching back in surprise before he lets out a shaky chuckle. “Oh my god,” he gasps. “Little guy! What’re you doing here so late?” he asks, hand over his racing heart. He’s wide awake now —getting jumpscared by a cat was not on his to-do list!
In response, the sandy cat nudges something by his paws. Grian’s gaze follows downward, spotting a piece of paper with a familiar handwriting on it. He picks it up; it’s the IOU he wrote, just to jab at Doc. His brow furrows — maybe Doc or Scar sent him over to redeem it? That’s… not their style. It seems a bit too purposeful to be purely random, too. Still, Grian smiles — of course the first cat that Doc ever gets along with on his own is an intelligent one. “Aw, what’cha want? Did Doc send you over to distract me? Do you want something to eat?”
As deliberately, as obviously as he can, Ex rolls his eyes.
In the last few days, he’s tried to speak in human words when alone. He physically can’t . He lacks the vocal cords, muscle memory rendered ineffectual. So… he’s been taking it easy, resting up and preserving his energy. He’s got one shot for this interaction.
Otherwise, he’s done for. He couldn’t bear to wait any longer, anxieties eating him alive.
Ex reaches into himself, taking the reins that guide his physical embodiment and pulls. He stifles a gag, bile stinging on his tongue. Coders, it’s so, so much harder to be an original form, to wrench his atoms into their shitty approximation of a man, molding the shapeless matter that's uncooperative under his control.
But it does come together. He’s still in that shitty, chipped armor, missing his helmet; he’s too tired to care. The ‘X’ scar gashed across his face stings as it hits the air, white locks falling down his back. His eyes peel open, blinking; the world is far darker, far less detailed and vivid than his feline senses provided.
It’ll do.
Grian’s eyes are wide. Almost unconsciously, the avian — no, not quite — takes a step back.
Ex’s voice is coarse and unfamiliar as he reaches for it. He coughs, a wet sound. “Just want to cash that in,” he says. He tries to sound cool, collected, casual. Instead, his words are laden with sluggish exhaustion.
Grian doesn’t bolt, doesn’t reach for his communicator. It's a start, even as he sputters in shock. “You — you’ve been the cat?!” he squawks. That’s his first concern? “How long? Why?” Grian insists. He takes another step back, his hand settling on the sheathed hilt of his sword. That's okay.
Ex sighs. He coughs again.
“Three weeks, I think,” he says quietly. “One moment, I was — I was in the void,” he stutters. “The next, I found myself thrown out of the portal below your base. I — I ran, and couldn’t stay like this ,” he weakly gestures at his body. It’s trembling. “For long. Taking the body of a random mob was just… easier,” he offers. Grian’s hand doesn’t move from where it rests atop the hilt.
His eyes are no longer widened in shock — instead, they’ve steeled into a cool, level stare. “What are you doing here?” It’s not a here directed at the server, at the season —he… believes Ex? He’s not interrogating him about that. Here means his base on this night, in this form.
Ex’s hand weakly gestures to the IOU that grian holds. “I’m… I’m not here to do anything,” he rasps. “I just — I need you to go into my code.”
Obviously, Grian wasn’t expecting that. He jolts. his brow furrows in confusion.
“Listen, I know you’re a Watcher or whatever —” Grian tenses, bristling. “I don’t care about the details. Just… go in there and fuck around. Clear it, copy whatever’s in Jellie’s code, toss a name on there, and that’s it. Just get rid of any trace of… me, ” he exhales. Inhales. “Just get rid of ‘Evil Xisuma’.”
Grian’s staring. His hand has moved from the handle of his sword, now limply hanging to his side.
“Just… change whatever would appear if I die and let me pass under the radar, sometime before the next update or world.” His weakened fingers are clenched into shaking fists. Grian’s silent, a deafening presence. “I’m not planning anything, I'm not trying anything. I’m just — I’m so fucking tired , Grian. I’m done, okay? I’m done.”
Grian stands there. Ex looks away from his face, turning his gaze down. He's unsurprised to see droplets fall from his face, seeping into the ground.
He flinches as a hand rests on his shoulder. It’s gentle.
Grian’s looking at him, looking concerned.
“...You know what you’re asking, right?” he says quietly. “No player record, no self-respawn, no world-hopping on your own?”
Ex wetly laughs. “I didn’t even have that , birdie. Just register me as a barncat and let me go back to my little retirement.”
Silent seconds stretch on. Grian doesn’t remove his comforting hand, until he gives a gentle squeeze .
“Okay,” Grian agrees. “I — I can’t do it immediately — you don’t want me to mess with code when I’m already sleep deprived,” he explains when Ex scowls. “And anyway, I don’t think I have the power right now to do so; doing… that magic,” he tries. “is really draining. but I will, I promise. before the next update.”
Grian extends his hand — not unlike how he did when offering it to Ex’s cat form. Ex stares at it for a moment before shaking it. “Just keep it a secret between us, okay?” he asks quietly. Grian doesn’t hesitate to firmly nod, and the two part.
“I'm… gonna head back before Jellie gets mad at me,” Ex weakly smiles, and grian quietly chuckles. It feels like victory. Ex reaches into his own mind, his own body, finding the feline form waiting for him. He holds onto the reins with ease, eager to snap back into place.
“One last thing,” Ex adds, looking back. Grian’s wings flick as his head tilts.
“Don’t let them name me something stupid, alright?”
Notes:
next chapter: the hermits try to name ex something stupid
the watcher lore here is vv loose, the details not really relevant: grian is a watcher taking refuge on the server, ex doesn't care lmao
Chapter 5: To the Drawing Board
Summary:
Ex faces his brother... if only somewhat.
A name is decided.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Time passes, and Ex is entirely unconcerned with holding onto the details. With the same routine, without the daily drive of conflict and survival, time simply passes him by.
The world rises around him. Scarland grows. He and Jellie survey the growing castle day by day, often joined by wandering Hermits who pause to take a gander at the progress. Ex stops hiding — at least, less than he did before (sue him for being a little nervous still!). He even lets them pet him now and again, a gracious privilege (that he totally doesn’t give to everyone who tries).
Most mornings, however, are still spent trailing Scar.
But today? It’s Bdubs.
He’s interacted with the moss-covered man before, in this form; It was a fair while ago, when Scar and Doc were working on the path between their bases. The bombastic man had trotted up to them on horseback, helping carve an accessible path through the landscape.
He’s a delightfully fun man to tease, in this life without consequence. He’ll sleep wherever he happens to be when dusk falls, darting to the nearest bed.
Ex makes it a point to leap into said bed before Bdubs can, much to the gleeful delight of the other Hermits, and to the lighthearted anguish of Bdubs himself. In thanks for the torment he inflicts, he receives pets and treats.
This morning, Bdubs appears on horseback once again, hooves trotting loudly across the brickwork street. The chestnut brown horse gives him a wide berth, huffing as her rider dismounts. “Hey, little guy!” Bdubs greets, hefting a green shulker box out from his inventory. He reposits it right in the middle of Scarland’s main street, plopping down a player head atop it and a sign beside it. While he scrawls a message on it, Ex makes his way to Mi Amore .
The horse chuffs. Ex meows back. He steps a bit towards her side, and when she doesn’t react negatively, he leaps upwards. It’s a slight scramble, clamoring his way up the saddle. Mi Amore softly neighs as he nuzzles into her neck, back arching.
Sue him, it’s a nice thing between animals.
By the time that Bdubs finishes his note for Scar ( “Moss delivery! :D xoxo bdubs”) , Ex has curled up in the middle of the saddle and is very comfortable, thank you very much. Bdubs scoffs.
“Oh, you—” he yaps. “Well, now how am I going to get back?” His arms wave. “Get off, little guy!”
Ex doesn’t move. His tail flicks in amusement, staring down the man.
A minute later, Mi Amore is being guided forward by a lead, with Bdubs moving on foot. Ex triumphantly purrs all the way. Despite his loud protests, Bdubs… doesn’t actually seem to mind; he’s gentle as he leads his horse along the path, one that he decorated with tender care, one that Scar and Doc built with the sole intent of Ex being able to get around.
…They care about him, don’t they?
He’ll take that. He purrs — he’s gotten better at doing that.
Bdubs is perfectly happy to talk aloud to his animal companions, prattling about his various projects; about the sales of moss at his shop, about the horse race between him and Etho, about the ongoing TCG tourney. Bdubs bemoans his loss, but he’s still cheering on Etho. Beef’s been hard at work making a new set with a bunch of ‘alter’ versions, and Bdubs wants to get his grabby little hands on it.
Bdubs guides them to Moss O Menos , and only then does Ex decide to hop off Mi Amore. He carefully brushes against her leg, back arching, before he follows the mossy man as he restocks his shop.
It’s… nice and mindless.
By the time that all the barrels have been filled with their stacks of moss and bushes, it’s a couple hours later; Ex isn’t quite sure, and frankly, he doesn’t have to care. Bdubs is neatening the barrels by the front of the shop, working around Ex’s purposefully inconvenient lounging positions. Ex’s ears flick, eyes narrowing; a figure flies in the distance, rapidly approaching.
An arrow whizzes by, narrowly missing Bdubs as he leans down to open a lower barrel. Ex meows indignantly; it almost hit his whiskers!
But… Scar didn’t hit him. No matter how close a call, he never would, Ex knows . He’s never been more certain of anything.
Scar’s distant shout of “HAWKEYE!” is nearly lost to the wind as he flies past, eventually tumbling into the ground before jogging back to the cackling Bdubs. “You’re losing your magic touch!” Bdubs jabs.
“You ducked!” Scar retaliates. There’s no malice, no jeers, nothing — it’s just… warm. Fond. Scar reaches over, scratching beneath Ex’s chin.
“Does he have a name, by the way?” Bdubs asks, dusting the remnant dirt from his hands as he shuts the last barrel. “I’ve just been calling him ‘little guy’, and I don’t think I’ve actually ever asked.”
Scar hums. “Well… so have I. We, uh, haven’t really decided on anything yet. I’ve been so caught up in finishing the castle that I haven’t talked to Doc about it recently.”
Apparently , that answer is an affront enough for Bdubs to decide that he’s going to fix that, and says as much. He swiftly takes Mi Amore’s reins and guides the small group to his other shop. “A name is so important!” he insists, prattling on. “Come, come, we’re brainstormin’ tonight!”
The mud shop is… really nice, actually. Ex follows behind Scar, transitioning from a landscape of gigantic builds and insane structures to something small, something homey. It’s a bar-slash-cafe, with a pleasant vibe and a palette kind on the eyes. The smell of earth and mud and moisture and organic mustiness hits his nose. Quiet, ambient jazz flows through the air.
Somehow, in mere moments Bdubs procures a whiteboard from a back room. He wheels it onto the stage, nudging the mic aside, and dumps a handful of markers on a nearby table. Marker held between his teeth, Bdubs pecks at his communicator; Scar’s promptly buzzes.
“ Surprise open mic night: please help suggest pet names’,” Scar reads with a laugh, but is quick to grab a marker and stands beside Bdubs. Ex hops onto the table, sitting beside the pile of markers (and resisting the urge to bat them all onto the ground, no matter how insistent cat-instinct is). He might as well get comfortable if his naming is going to be a whole ass public event.
…
… Okay.
So, it turns out he’d really prefer it to be a public event, as Ex stares at the first ideas written on the whiteboard. He’d really prefer not to be named ‘Simba’ or ‘Mufasa’, thank you very much , and ‘Scar’, while cool and perhaps more fitting, is a name that’s very much taken around here. Bdubs still writes it on the board with gleeful delight.
Unfortunately, they get really into the Disney names, much to Ex’s bemusement. The list grows in its messy scrawls: Cheshire, Duchess, Figaro, Bagheera, Rajah, O’Malley — there’s a lot more Disney names than Ex remembers, and he’s not fond of any of them.
Thankfully, before the two start adding princess names to the list, the first hermits to respond to Bdubs’ message arrive at the mud shop: Mumbo and Grian. Ex peers at them over his shoulder. He had briefly met Mumbo on the streets of Scarland when he had showered Scar in diamond blocks, and left with a handful of balloons. If it had happened before he gave up on understanding the Hermits, he’d have lost his mind. Now, it’s the typical madness of this forsaken server. The mustached man coos at him, lanky fingers brushing over his back before he looks at the board. He sighs.
Ex and Grian share a look.
They… haven’t really progressed on the IOU situation, but Ex isn’t in any hurry; 1.20 is still a good distance away, and there’s no intent on wrapping up the season anytime soon.
There is , however, a much more pressing matter. Ex pointedly glances at the whiteboard, covered in the stupidest Disney names possible, and thank fuck Grian understands. The winged hermit acts casually, intentional; he walks up to the board, humming as he scans it over. “Shouldn’t we get Doc in on this?” He reminds them. A voice of reason!
Grian sends a message to Doc; he’s there in mere minutes after he’s told that Cats names are being added to the list, and he swiftly shoots down the additions of ‘Jellicle’ and ‘Rum Tum Tugger’, much to Ex’s relief. Keralis follows close behind the hybrid, cooing and petting Ex. The shop is getting full . More hermits trickle in, some only for a few moments, others settling in with a drink. There’s never not a gentle hand petting him.
His past life is easily forgotten, pushed entirely behind him, when he’s this full and content, drinking from this endless fountain of kindness and affection that demands no payment.
He won’t even need to be Ex for much longer.
Slowly but surely, the whiteboard gets filled with a myriad of names and varying handwritings. Mistoffelees does get added, despite Doc’s protests. Someone adds ‘little bastard’, although it's quickly erased (y’know, he liked that one, actually).
The names are sounded out; apparently, there’s a favoring towards the ‘M’ names — Mud, Moss, and Miette get added, but Macavity does sneak its way onto the list when he’s not looking.
Joe Hills stops in for a moment, adding ‘Midas’ and ‘Mephistopheles’ on before leaving. A goddamn enigma, buuut the best naming contender, in Ex’s opinion. The ‘M’ gimmick shifts, and another bit swiftly rises to take its place.
Doc adds ‘Katze’ to the board; several other hermits roll the German word around their mouths, feeling the harsh syllables. Keralis swipes the marker from the hybrid to add ‘Kotck’, and the bandwagon switches tracks to literally writing ‘cat’ in different languages.
Coders, these Hermits are ridiculous . Scar drifts close absentmindedly, his hand dangling by his side. Ex nudges his head against the open palm.
God, he’s pathetic. What would Helsknight say if he saw him like this?
Eh, Ex would tell him to go fuck himself, to give being a cat a try.
The mud shop, eventually, does begin to settle down as the evening grows dim; a few of the visiting Hermits leave, and the rest find themselves settling among the tables as they deliberate on whittling the list down. Thankfully, almost all of the Cats and Disney names get nixed, although Skimbleshanks stubbornly stays on the board for a while longer.
Amidst it all, Ex realizes that Grian’s still there, nudging the less silly names forward. He’s… he’s still following the request that Ex had tacked onto the IOU. He doesn’t have to. He could be taking petty glee in giving him a stupid name, could be letting the conversation run its course into stupidity.
But he doesn’t. He crosses out Skimbleshanks, he circles Joe’s cool suggestions.
Ex purrs, shutting his eyes.
The bell above the door chimes; the room’s attention briefly turns away from the board. Scar is the first to greet the newcomer.
“Hello, X!”
—Ex’s eyes snap open.
He doesn’t move. He can’t move. His heart thunders in his chest, threatening to escape through his throat, and he can’t get these stupid fucking paws to move . Bile stings on his tongue. The other Hermits, those he considered himself finally safe among, greet their admin cheerfully; they’re completely unbothered, as they should be. Xisuma’s their admin; Ex is their fugitive.
He’s been so fucking indulgent in this peace that he forgot his paranoia, he forgot to be harsh and calculating and forgot that he’s not allowed to be here — and look where it’s gotten him! He’s locked in.
He thought he’d have more time, because surely Xisuma is here because he knows , because—!
“What on Earth are you all doing?” laughs his brother, tone inquisitive, lighthearted.
Bdubs is first to answer, excitable, oblivious. “We’re workshopping a name for Scar-slash-Doc’s cat!” he pauses. Turns. “Hold on—whose is he, actually?” Bdubs looks towards the table that Ex sits on, where Scar and Doc discuss from either side.
Scar looks at Doc. Doc shrugs.
“I found him initially,” he explains. “ But , he lives at Scarland for the most part with Jellie. He’s free to wander, though, so he’s… communal?” Doc offers with a chuckle.
Faintly, through the haze and thunder of his heartbeat, he hears Grian chuckle along. It’s strained.
Grian moves to stand beside him. His fingers weave through his fur, scratching along his spine, and
he feels his soul shudder.
The hauntingly familiar, cold kiss of the void seeps into his chest.
X curiously hums. “Huh! You found a cat you can bear?” he muses, grinning. “Where’d you find him? Did you do any mad science to get the little fella?” he prods, but Doc only chuckles.
“No, no,” he rumbles. “I was clearing my stuff out from the village that Wels is renovating, and he kinda just… trailed me back? He’s smarter than the average mob, but that’s not my fault.”
Grian’s fingers are still, unmoving on his back. Ex feels his mind wrench and twist, his soul prodded and torn and bent , manipulated by a frantic grip.
X looks over him, and taps his fingers in the air. a screen of text appears — his code.
…
“Hm,” X muses, eyes scanning the text. “He’s got a lot more code than I expected — not modded, I don’t think, but more than a normal generation. He’s definitely intelligent, maybe fairly sentient?” His fingers flick in the air, scrolling down. “There’s a lot of code but it’s all scrambled — might be from a bad update. You’ll probably want to get the code cleaned up before 1.19.4,” X says. “Especially if you’re planning on keeping him between seasons.”
His gloved fingers swipe through the air; the panel of code disappears.
Faintly, he can hear Grian talk, offering to work on it soon. That he gave the little guy an IOU for helping deal with the creepers Doc fired at his base. X says sure, to just shoot him a message if he needs any special permissions.
Ex cannot move. His heart thunders , unrelenting.
What happened?
He can’t bring himself to react when X — when his brother — reaches towards him.
Xisuma gently pats him on the head, and walks over to talk to someone else.
Ex buries his head in his paws, and slips.
They’re back at Grian’s base.
Under the shroud of the early night, there’s no need to worry; no phantoms glide nearby, no pranksters sneak around. Their perch of choice, difficult for any passerby to spot, is atop one of the floating rocks. Ex is human again, just to be able to talk, even if for a short while.
He’s laying down, his head resting on Grian’s lap. They don’t mention it.
Letters and symbols alike float around Grian, glowing with a faint, ghostly lavender hue. His fingers twitch and dance where they hover in the air, twisting the intangible threads with delicate, thorough precision. Ex’s skin crawls at the sensation, as if it were his very veins being untangled between careful fingertips. It’s… it’s the very fiber of his being, as it’s perceived by the systems of worlds and servers, being probed and prodded, reworked and rewritten .
They sit there, within the pleasant company of the endless night.
Back at the mud shop, Grian had suggested that, since he’s getting pretty tired of socializing, that he can take the little guy back to his place and work out the code; to get that IOU out of circulation , he had joked. X agreed graciously, and Scar and Doc gave him their blessing; they’d update him on the final name. Bdubs agrees to let the night pass them by.
The open sky and endless stars watch over them.
Ex flinches as a fierce, piercing sting burrows itself into his skull as if a pin were pressed into the bone. Grian softly chirps. “Sorry, sorry,” he coos, a low, soothing tone. “I made quite a mess in there,” he admits. “I didn’t know what else to do in the moment and…” His wings flutter, as if shrugging. Purple sparks scatter in the air. “I kinda just encoded it into a bunch of gobbledygook to disguise everything, and… phew , I did a number on it.”
Ex’s face relaxes as the piercing pain begins to fade into a fainter ache. Still, his brow is furrowed.
“...Why’d you do it?” he quietly asks, gaze fixated on the stars. Grian blinks down at him curiously, with more than just two eyes. “The IOU wasn’t for you to… lie to your admin’s face like that,” Ex whispers, as if it were a secret confession. “You’ve only made more work for yourself, an–and you didn’t have to protect me, to encode it,” he says. Grian, that bastard, only softly smiles.
“You’re right,” he agrees. “I didn’t have to, but I wanted to.” He says it like it’s a simple undeniable fact. “The situation you’re in is complicated , and him finding out right then would’ve put us all in a tough situation.” Another sting ripples down his spine, nestling into his chest as he shudders.
“And maybe there’ll be a day when Xisuma finds out you’ve been a cat all along, or maybe he never learns. You… you deserve that agency, Ex,” Grian says. “Just as I was given when I first joined.”
Ex… doesn’t know what to say.
A quiet, childish part of his mind speaks to the stunned rest: that… he thought the kindness was only directed to him, the cat , who did nothing wrong to them. That Ex was exempt from that forgiveness.
He coughs — a quiet, wet sound. “ Thank you,” he murmurs quietly. Grian stills… before he smiles , and continues his work, untangling the hastily scrambled code like a knotted thread.
Code is a fickle thing. Grian’s only able to dabble into as much as he can due to his background , whatever that is — it’s none of Ex’s business, and frankly is out of his pay grade (nothing). Buuuut , Grian does possess that ability, to access the convoluted fibers and weave them into place. Code is one’s ability to exist in relation to others: to join servers, to make your own worlds, to adapt to an ever-changing universe. It’s independence, so long as it’s maintained.
Mobs have a much simpler code than players, only needing a few lines to define their species, sex, and any cosmetic details, names, or taming history. Custom entities, modded creatures, and entities that persist between worlds have much more, but still not nearly as much as a full player. Without a player’s lengthy code, their existence is far more dependent on another, usually the admin of the server they’re locked to.
They were both players, at one point.
Something changed, and Xisuma is an admin, holding those strings and snipping Ex’s own, like a gardener pruning an unruly tree, afflicted by rot that poisons the rest of the garden.
Grian works delicately. He doesn’t advertise himself as a coder for a reason, but that doesn’t mean he’s unfamiliar with it. Far from it!
It’s just that his expertise lies in bending the rules. He hides as much data as he can between the lines, in hidden text and unseen tags, safeguards against a misshapen update simply wiping Ex from existence. In that situation, a player would simply be booted to a hub world. Without that power, though…
The void would be kind in comparison to that type of annihilation.
Ex… thinks he drifts in and out, his body flinching, trembling, threatening to break — but it holds. Grian eyes are shut, surveying his work, rereading the lines that X would see if he inspected it closely. Data fields left empty for a name, a brief server history, entity tags, player relations (tied to both Doc and Scar). With X’s earlier blessing, he’s able to add respawning tags — but something that’s technically a mob has its limitations. .
Ex shudders as he feels the new attributes being inserted; a sharper, burning pain… and then a wave of cooling relief, the grip of a strict mortality finally loosening. Grian sighs. “Your respawn ability is still subject to admin-approval,” Grian warns. “Just like Jellie. X would only see a notification that you died, under the assigned name, and he never lets a pet die,” Grian promises. Shakily, Ex inhales. Exhales. He nods.
“...Did they finally decide?” Ex asks instead. Grian had swiped him from the mud shop as soon as he told Xisuma that he was going to dive into the code, and left as the name deliberation remained in full swing. Drinks and potions were being served.
…And maybe it was getting to him, the anxious notion of the hermits deciding what he’d be known for… forever? Especially since his ‘anti-stupid name’ insurance is sat with him, even if Grian promised that Doc wouldn’t let something actually terrible be chosen.
Still not that comforting.
Grian opens his mouth to respond, and is interrupted by the timely ping of his communicator. His eyes scan the text, and Ex catches the sight of a relieved smile.
“Congrats, Ex: you’ve been saved from the Disney names,” Grian assures. “— and the Cats names,” he quickly adds at the first flicker of worry.
“You even get to stay mysterious and edgy,” he grins.
“Doc and Scar agreed on Joe’s suggestion: Mephistopheles.”
…Huh. Ex breathes the name aloud in a shaky exhale, sounding it out. Once. Twice.
That… that’s not bad.
The faint sound of typing rings in his ears distantly as the last of his code slides into place, and Grian removes his grasp on the fibers, untangled, orderly, and complete.
And at last, everything feels right.
Notes:
yippee!!! i feel like this holds up a little worse than the rest but ... it feels delightfully silly. something really indulgent and very fanfic-y, but its technically plot
(also also if its unclear at all: grian p much realized that x was going to take a peek at the New Cat's code bc thats just what he does, and rushed in to scramble it up bc otherwise ex's cover would be completely blown)
anyway. mephistopheles!! its a name that can be easily butchered into many different nicknames, it's edgy, it's from german folklore, and it's origin in faustian lore and themes reflect quite well on ex's past.
anyway next chapter is gonna be rough lmao get ready
Chapter 6: the void takes what it is given
Summary:
Ex gets used to his name.
Xisuma looks for something he cannot find.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
As it turns out, when the Hermits said they decided on the name “Mephistopheles”, what they really meant to say was that Doc decided to call him Mephistopheles, and every other hermit takes a detour. Scar says it once before he decides on “Mephi”, and calls him nothing else. Bdubs calls him “Mimi”. Keralis, in a cruel similarity to his nickname for X, calls him “Meshy” (or Meshimi, or Meshwammy — that man’s a menace and an enigma).
Grian, his savior, takes delight in getting about one syllable in before he butchers it. Currently, the nickname of choice is Memphis .
Y’know? Ex thinks he can forgive these crimes.
And… This is his life. He simply lives — there’s nothing more to it. He wakes up to his sunbeam, cuddled up alongside Jellie. He’s fed at the same time, same place, a reliable constant that never lets him down — even if he takes a morning to hunt instead. Sometimes it’s a wandering chicken, escaped from its pen. Other times it's a salmon or a cod that had drifted into the shallows, bringing it back to Jellie (or even dropping it off at Scar’s doorstep).
Ex spends his days among the Hermits.
Sometimes, he’s with Scar. Watching the elegant buildings rise from the landscape, hand-sculpted with loving care. Sometimes his days are spent wandering between the bases until a flying figure stumbles across him, and they carry him with them. He’s become quite fond of watching the TCG matches — Doc builds him a little walkway into the Perimeter, letting him watch the matches within the complex arena, delighted as cards are played and anvils rain down from above.
The Hermits learn very quickly that they can’t leave their cards out for long, because ol’ Mephistopheles will bat them off from his perch upon chests and shulkers, sending down a shower of cardstock to the bedrock below.
(And he even has a card based after him, when the ‘alter’ cards are released. He can’t bring himself to be mad about it, but he does steal one copy and hides it in the cat suite)
And above everything, maybe — just maybe — this new life is worth everything that’s happened to him.
The mornings that he wakes up with a panicked yowl become few and far between, nightmares of the void dragging him back starting to fade. He stops flinching at every rocket fire, at every new touch. He even — coders forbid! — gets used to Xisuma.
He… He wants to hate him so bad. He confided in Grian, and the winged hermit agreed that it would be a reasonable, warranted reaction, but…
He can’t. He just can’t . Not for long. Not when he finds the admin being trailed by phantoms night after night, refusing to sleep until even the most minor of bugs is ironed out. Not when Xisuma returns to the server, battered and bruised, after spending days exploring candidate seeds for their next season, making sure there’s not a chunk of out place. Not when he spends every full moon sleepless, hands trembling, gaze fixated and unblinking at the quiet code.
On one of those nights, Ex is there. The fear and anxiety is palpable , filling the air. He can’t hate him like this. Not when Ex leaps onto his brother’s lap, and purrs comfortingly as those trembling, scarred fingers card through his fur.
He should hate Xisuma. Hels would scorn at how soft he’s become, rightfully so. He’d tell him that he should be incensed, that every thought of the admin should be laced with bile and vitriol, to hiss and swear at the man who served as his judge, jury, and executioner.
He doesn’t.
He does worse. He spends time with him — an evening each week, at the very least, with his brother. The voidwalker vibrantly talks aloud when he’s not sifting through the complexities of the deep code, explaining builds and plans to the only pair of listening ears. To a weird little cat that his hermits stumbled across.
And for the time, there’s no woe, no misery; he wants for nothing. Every need sated, every comfort provided. Where forgiveness and kindness is ever-flowing, where his brother looks upon him and smiles.
He’s with Xisuma on another one of these rougher nights; a stranger one, where he can feel the distress radiating from him like a remnant tug between the split halves. It’s a night where the moon is high and bright, and yet he’s sifting through the deepest parts of the server code, where the lines are contorted, formatted strangely. It’s old, foundational code that’s not meant to be altered, the raw fabric of the world. It’s seemingly nonsensical, corrupted, and garbled; it doesn’t need to look pretty.
A few feet away, Ex sits on a table beside the admin’s helmet, paws tucked neatly beneath him. Ex watches his brother’s gaze flicker through the endless wall of data, looking for… something . He didn’t care about the details of code before he was a cat, and he certainly doesn’t care now. It’s weird admin business; he’s just here to be a distraction. Totally.
Occasionally, Xisuma’s brow furrows; he focuses on a certain passage, unblinking for several long moments… before he sighs. He releases the tension, and keeps scrolling through.
A knock gently sounds out through the room; Ex’s head whips around. X doesn’t move. The door pushes open, and Keralis walks into the room, a cup of tea held in each hand. His expression is soft, concerned.
It must be deep into the night.
Keralis walks over to the table, setting the cups down. Hands free, he scratches beneath Ex’s chin. “Hey, Meshy,” he quietly coos, but his attention is focused on Xisuma. He hasn’t moved, eyes dry and stuck open as he studies the code.
“Shishwammy,” Keralis says in that same, soft tone, used to soothe a distressed animal. “Take a break for me? Please?”
X glances back, as if considering declining… but he knows he can’t deny Keralis anything. He sighs. His shoulders slump, and with an exhausted stagger, he stumbles towards Keralis. The man catches him, guiding him into a seat before taking his own. One of the cups is nudged toward him. Ex narrowly avoids flicking his tail right into Keralis’ cup when he grabs his own.
“No luck?” Keralis quietly asks. One of Ex’s ears twitches, swiveling towards him. He… he knows that this something is distressing his brother, that it’s something a select few others know about, something hidden in the deep code. He doesn’t know what it is, besides that it’s something close to the admin. Something he doesn’t talk about aloud.
These evenings are always the quiet ones.
There’s been more of them since the latest update into 1.19.4.
X shakes his head, hands firmly clasped the mug like it’s a lifeline. Keralis doesn’t respond.
And… X sighs. It’s a defeated, worn, hollow sound. The tea ripples, his white-knuckled grip failing to suppress the tremors.
Quietly, he speaks:
“...What if he’s just gone?”
Ex blinks. Keralis is silent.
X laughs , a hollow, wet, incredulous sound.
“What did I do?” he breathes. “K, what — did I kill him?” he sputters. Keralis reaches forward. Xisuma flinches back. He withdraws.
“How— how can you trust me, Keralis?!” he gasps, and the dam has broken. Everything comes spilling out in shuddering heaves as if it were bile and blood alike. “I — I damned him! I put him in the void like that was a solution, like that was humane! It’s not ,” he sobs, he wails into the night. “And — what, I deluded myself, thinking it was the right choice, that it was the only thing I could do?! That shoving him out of sight, out of mind would make things better?”
Keralis manages to pull the mug from Xisuma’s violently trembling hands, clasping his own fingers into X’s.
“I believed my own fucking excuses! That I was too busy to think about alternatives, about reform, about anything—” he heaves. “And now — now?!” he chokes. “ Now I start to think about my own fucking mistakes and he’s gone — I can’t find any trace of him, K! He’s been wiped from the code because that’s what the void does! The void takes what it’s given and I still locked him in there and now he’s gone.”
“I’m a fucking coward ,” Xisuma breathes, shuddering. “A coward and a murderer.”
“I killed my own brother, Keralis.”
The room is quiet, occupied only by the uneasy, shuddering breaths of the admin.
By the cruelly quiet heartbeat of the Ex.
The tea is long forgotten.
“...I don’t know the best way to respond,” Keralis admits. “X — you’re a good man. You’re the best admin we could have ever asked for, and you did what you thought was best in a tough time. And it may have been wrong, but… weren’t we complicit, too? We knew him, too; less, but still — none of us bothered. None of us — not the hermits, not you — thought about it until we realized the extent.”
X opens his mouth to — to what? To protest? To sob? Keralis doesn’t let him.
“Good people can still fuck up,” he settles on, gaze level and steeled. “It — it doesn’t make you innocent, but it doesn’t make you irredeemable, either. You’re a good , dedicated, passionate man.” Keralis says it with as much certainty as the sun rising in the morning. “You’ve been living as a human for a long, long time, and humans? We’re flawed. It’s part of the package. Lapses in judgment, even if we think it’s the right thing, is an essential part of it.”
X mutedly nods.
“I didn’t give him that,” he says numbly. Keralis pulls him close.
He turns to the cat, sat upon the table.
“Thanks for keeping him company, Meshy,” Keralis says. His voice betrays his exhaustion. “It’s late — you should head back to Scar before he starts to worry.”
And Ex does. He sprints back down through the skeletal base, down the path carved into the land for him .
He returns home, and cries into Jellie.
Notes:
for all the adventure zone: balance enjoyers, yes the 'what if hes just gone' line is meant to have the same inflection as the That Line from the stolen century
anyway its my fic and i get to choose the weird upload schedule
I think theres going to be two or three more Main Chapters
buuuuuut then i think i . might make a couple alternate endings bc i can
Chapter 7: A Letter
Summary:
Ex writes a letter to Xisuma.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
They meet on the floating rocks once again — it’s become a ritual of sorts. That Ex can go to the only person who knows of his plight, and try being a human, if only for a little while.
Grian once tried to call him out on it — that he shouldn’t shift into a human if it hurts — but he doesn’t push on it. Ex still shifts, and Grian wordlessly sits with him.
Tonight, he braids the long, frayed locks as if he were preening his wings, fingers sifting through the ivory strands as he works on untangling them.
It’s… a strange, animalistic thing, the act of grooming. Of birds preening each other’s wings, of cats cleaning each other’s pelt. Of a silent bonding. Unfortunately, Ex has too much to bemoan to let the silence last.
“ —and I can’t just walk up to him and go ‘stop moping bitch, I’m alive’”! Ex scoffs, gesturing wildly.
“You could—”
“No,” Ex quickly interrupts. He doesn’t even have to look to know Grian’s grinning behind him. He feels those deft fingers graze against his scalp, and — even in this form, lacking the muscles to do so, he feels a purr bubbling up. Motherfucker. “But… I don’t want him to angst about it, y’know? It’s… it’s not my fault,” he says. He doesn’t quite believe that, but Grian’s drilled into him shit about not blaming himself and doesn’t want his hair yanked. “But if there’s something I can do about it, I want to.”
Grian ties off one braid and moves onto the next section.
“I… I want both worlds,” Ex tries. It’s not entirely what he means, but he doesn’t quite know how else to say it. “For X to rest easy… but for me to stay like this , without him knowing.”
“I don’t want to give up … this,” Ex says.
Grian hums in agreement. His fingers card through the hanging locks, and starts the next braid.
“How about a letter?”
After a couple more nights of deliberation, they don’t come up with anything much better, so… a letter it is. One that he can write himself and deliver under the guise of Meph, attaching it to a collar and delivering it himself. He can be assured that X and only X is receiving it, while staying anonymous. A double agent for himself.
Grian offers that he can deliver it himself, warping it in with some Watcher bullshittery; Ex declines.
It’d be easier, for sure.
It feels like something he needs to do.
Ex, a cat once again, bounds across the server. Elegant paths and breathtaking landscapes pass him by, dimly illuminated by the crescent moon. It hangs in the sky, small and normal. He weaves between bushes and fenceposts, slipping through gaps in the walls, and trots his way into Xisuma’s base.
Predictably, his brother’s at the admin console. Ex might not understand it, but he does recognize it; it’s the deep code. He’s still looking for him.
Perhaps, under different circumstances, Ex would find it funny; that the person he’s looking for is right beside him.
His gut rolls. He holds his tongue.
Ex leaps onto the console, and meows. X startles, jolting back — widened eyes barely visible through the visor — and reaches forward, trembling hand petting over his head. Ex nips a finger. His brother yanks his hand back… and blinks, noticing the letter. It takes a few tries, but he unties the cord from Ex’s collar (a vividly red, leather band that Doc commissioned from off-world) and tears the unlabeled envelope open.
It’s the only remaining copy; all the other ones, scrawled with ink or torn or sodden with tears were cast into the smoldering netherrack.
Xisuma’s eyes scrunch in confusion… before they widen. He reads the letter. Ex holds his breath.
Xisuma —
I’m… not sure how to start this letter. Perhaps, once, I’d start it with “hey asshole” — but I’m trying something new here.
So I suppose I’ll be honest.
I’m… around. I’m alive. I’m enjoying a nice, peaceful retirement from ‘villainy’, tomfoolery, and other shenanigans — seriously. I don’t think I can bring myself to tell you the details, to reveal myself just yet, but I hope you can understand, that you can find it in yourself to forgive me for this.
I want to hate you, X. I feel like I should, that I deserve to hate you, but I can’t. Turns out you lot are pretty good at the whole ‘kindness and forgiveness’ thing and it’s rubbed off on me.
I’m not saying I completely absolve you of what you did. I can’t say that you did the right thing by locking me in the void — it’s a fate I wouldn’t wish upon anyone — but I don’t hold it against you, not anymore. I can’t say I’d do much better in your position. You were under a lot of stress and pressure, and there I was, wearing you down.
I know how much easier it is to push your issues away than to work through them.
And if you can believe it, I’d like to think I’ve changed recently.
You’re a good admin, X. I’m glad you have the hermits, and in turn the hermits are blessed with a fantastic leader. Balance and generosity imbue everything you create and touch, a world so kind and powerful that even I could thrive without your knowing.
I know it’s a hard ask, but if you could, try not to lose any more sleep over me. I’m not 100% a good person yet, let me be a little selfish still. I can’t tell you what my situation is, but I promise that I’m okay. I'm around. I’m happy. The hermits need you more. You need yourself more.
Forgive me for being too afraid to deliver this face to face, but I couldn’t stand to watch you burn yourself like this. I think I’d like to try talking someday. Perhaps we could try being brothers again.
Sincerely,
EX.
PS: if you want to respond (at anytime, doesn’t have to be now or ever), give it to mepht mephito mephistof Mephistopheles — I’ll eventually get it
PPS: how the fuck did the hermits get more insane while i was gone??? good luck with them holy shit
Xisuma is silent. His eyes flick from beneath the visor.
His hands begin to tremble, scrambling up to unlatch his helmet. Tears streak against the inside. His wrist swipes over his eyes, and he reaches forward for Mephistopheles.
He leans in and he sobs and sobs and sobs.
Notes:
:]]]]
Chapter 8: Penmanship
Summary:
Ex returns home.
Xisuma delivers a response.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Ex stumbles back to Scarland on unsteady feet.
He… he didn’t expect it to be an unemotional affair, but he didn’t expect… that. For his brother to cry for minutes on end, barely breathing through sobs of relief? His pelt is practically soaked through by the time he manages to slip away, scrambling out from his brother’s arms, darting back across the server. Back to home.
Scarland waits for him.
Jellie’s first to greet him, of course. He’s barely through the threshold of the cat suite when the soft gray form nearly bowls him over, mrowing loudly.
Grief, tears, sorrow, kitten— what happened? she presses, nudging her head beneath his chin and leading him through the home, up to the bed. Sure, Scar might be miffed to see muddy pawprints tracked over the sheets, but he’d get over it.
Finally in a place of his own, no matter how slight, has his own dam breaking.
Cats can’t cry, but he warbles anyway, burying his face into Jellie’s fur. Wordless anguish, years of misery and woe and fucking angsting finally seen to the exit. Of course, it’s not solved. He’s still a cat, his brother still doesn’t know it’s him.
But it’s more than anything he expected from the godforsaken universe. His limbs tremble.
Jellie purrs against him, tongue brushing over the sodden fur. He shudders.
I’m okay, he quietly murmurs. Jellie huffs. Brother knows I’m around, doesn’t know I’m Meph.
Ex… doesn’t know how much Jellie really understands. She’s fiercely intelligent for a cat, but he doesn’t really know if she understands shapeshifting, of he and X’s situation, or the range of human emotion.
If she really doesn’t know, she doesn’t need to. Patience and kindness, it turns out, fills gaps in understanding quite well.
Good , she purrs. Feeling?
He pauses. Gulps around a dry tongue.
I don’t know, he admits, the bitter tang of confusion resting on his palate.
That’s okay , Jellie provides. I’ll be here.
She never lies. She cleans the salty tears from his pelt, the scarred tom drifting into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.
Ex returns to whatever the fuck normalcy is. Scarland continues to rise as the polished blue tops of castle peaks are laid in place and giant flags balance on their spires. There’s… quite a flurry of activity going on these days.
There’s a soft, fond affection as he watches the flittering shapes of distant wings, of elytra spiraling and the bulking form of Doc diving down upon Grian and Scar. Frankly, Ex is quite happy that he’s in this weird joint custody bullshit, because he gets to be the perfect impartial spectator. Doc commits atrocities against the laws of reality, and Grian and Scar stumble along to accidentally grief it.
Before, he would probably have another crisis. That — yeah, there was definitely a major double standard going on between his actions and that of the hermits, but… the reservoirs of spiteful anger are running low. His brother… regrets what he did, even if he still did it in the first place.
Besides: it’s a fun show.
(He even gets to see ol’ Doc in a pair of gray cat ears, brooding far beneath the earth. If he had thumbs and a communicator, he’d be rich in blackmail material)
He’s perched on top of a trolley car, watching the trio jab at each other in the air in lighthearted warfare. Cleo’s working on the grandiose streets, arranging armor-stands into artistic facsimiles of people.
She’s totally doing it to be productive, and not because she wants a front row seat to the potential carnage.
There’s the closer sound of rocket fire, crackling behind him; Ex’s ears swivel to catch the sound, and casts his gaze on the descending figure as he stumbles to the brick road — Xisuma .
“Oh, boy,” X huffs, casting his gaze upward. Through the visor, Ex can catch a glimmer of that same fond exasperation.
He looks like he’s gotten a bit more sleep, too.
The admin hums, turning his gaze from the flying shapes to Ex, sitting atop the trolley car. He draws closer, clicking his tongue – tch, tch, tch, inviting him down.
He obliges immediately, dropping down several feet and effortlessly landing. He mrows .
Motherfucker. He can’t bring himself to deny X anything, and — what a fucking thought that is. He really has become soft.
X only smiles down at Mephistopheles, something pained, exhausted, bittersweet lingering in his gaze. He crouches down onto one knee.
“Hey, little messenger,” he coos, fingers curling beneath his chin, scratching at the soft fur with gloved fingertips. There’s something in his other hand, Ex notices, right as the gentle touch begins to creep towards his collar. A piece of string is threaded through it, and Xisuma deftly ties a knot around a rolled up piece of paper, leaving it securely dangling from his collar.
“Hopefully you understand, but — would you please deliver this to Ex?” Xisuma asks. If he weren’t a cat, he’d bark out a laugh. Sure , brother dearest! Where would such an innocent, unrelated cat find him? He’d jest and cackle if he weren’t shocked into silence.
Despite everything… he didn’t imagine a reply written in anything but fire and brimstone.
X stands up. Ex steps back. The weight around his neck is unobtrusive but present, bobbing slightly with every movement. He starts to walk off, only stopping when hesitant rocket fire announces the admin’s departure.
Well. Delivery received? Now, he just has to…
Ex pauses.
…
Shit.
He… can’t actually remove it by himself; the collar mysteriously vanishes whenever he turns back human, and the letter would go with it.
Ex slinks his way across the server, following the shadows of the flying shapes far overhead; the wings of the avian carve an easy path through the land as he retreats from Doc, returning to — finally — work on the back of his base.
And it only took the looming threat of getting nuked to encourage him.
Spotting the cat’s pelt against the green grass has Grian’s feathers perking up, as if thankful for an excuse to take a break from working when he literally just started a minute ago. He’ll leave that admonishment to the Hermits; he’s here for thumbs, thank you.
Grian swoops down to him. “Meph! What’re you doing here?” he asks, as casually a greeting as he would if it were Jellie or any other creature heading over. Despite his mischievous nature and loud personality, he’s quite good at keeping the whole secret up.
Ex meows . He glances between the ‘avian’ and the letter dangling from his neck, and back again. It’s enough for Grian to get the message — laugh at him just a little bit — and to reach down and snip the cord holding it in place, before offering it back; Ex grips it in his teeth.
“Go inside to read it,” Grian offers, gesturing with a thumb to the front of his base. “And find me if you need me to help attach a response.”
His wings flap, nearly bowling Ex over, and he flits back around to the back of the towering stone, leaving with a fading “ Don’t mind the shriekers!”
Ex rolls his eyes, and makes his way inside. It’s easy enough to find a nook out of sight of any passerby. He spits the letter out from his mouth, frowning at the tiny teeth holes in it.
He steels himself. He’s… done it more , recently, and it’s definitely become easier. It’s less of tearing himself apart, atom by atom, muscle by muscle, and instead it’s coaxing his body into place. He wills paws into hands, molding his skull into its innate shape. It still hurts . He doesn’t know if it ever won’t.
Besides, when he’s not being dramatic and presentational, he doesn’t need to be all man. No one’s around to see him keep the tail and ears, after all; no one he needs to defend against the fact that he likes the balance, the heightened senses.
Being able to hear anyone who comes his way is a salve to paranoia. His shaky fingers pick the letter up from where he dropped it; it nearly slips from his grasp before he peels a fancy wax seal open, unfolding the finely-pressed paper.
It’s… a lot. And it’s striking. His own was undeniably messier from disuse, but… despite not having seen his brother’s handwriting in many years, they’re… similar.
He reads.
Dear Ex —
I’m so fucking sorry.
It feels selfish, that I’ve been waiting desperately to be able to tell you that.
I’m sorry for so many things. I didn’t give you a chance and punished you when you lashed out, and that’s entirely my fault. I never gave you a proper chance, not since the early days of Hermitcraft. I… I went along with the lore that you’re my “evil twin” and pigeonholed you into something you were not.
I don’t want you to feel like you have to forgive me.
I’m overjoyed that you’ve found some semblance of peace, despite all I’ve done to prevent it. I don’t want you to reveal your secrets, to reveal yourself, to do anything you don’t 100% want to. I want you to continue living wherever you are, however you are, if you’re happy.
If you’d be alright with it — at some point, it doesn’t have to be soon or ever — I’d like to sit down and talk. Anywhere you want, I’ll have no weapons, no armor. If you want to kill me a few times you very well can.
Hopefully, this letter gets to you safely — I don’t know how you got Mephistopheles to deliver yours, but here’s hoping he finds you again.
All the best,
Xisumavoid.
P.S: please let me know if you don’t want to go by Ex anymore — I know it’s been a while, but… would you like to be Exis again?
Notes:
oooOooOoo we're getting close to the end! ish
i think... next chapter will be the penultimate chapter, then the ,,, "true ending". i want to have a couple alternatives after that but . :D gl
(also: exis is ex's actual name for this fic but ex just always went by ex anyway, just like xisuma always goes by x)
(also also: its pronounced like the latter part of "alexis", or kinda like "excess")
Chapter 9: Home
Summary:
The brothers reunite.
Exis returns home.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Ex and Xisuma begin an odd correspondence. Letters are sent through — and as — Mephistopheles, and would you believe it? It’s nice. He’s — he’s talking to his brother again as if it were before Hermitcraft, before the void and the seasons and the undeniable trauma.
It feels… bittersweet. He’s so, so desperate for this connection that he’s willing to put aside the transgressions against him. It doesn’t feel entirely healthy; he doesn’t quite care.
They talk .
Ex — and maybe, sometimes, he starts to think of himself as Exis now and then — writes in length, shaky handwriting becoming neater each time. He writes about his exasperation regarding the recent updates (what the fuck is up with the sculk? What’s a warden?!) , his marvel and sheer disbelief at the hermits, his bets on the outcome of the squabble between Doc, Scar, and Grian.
X always writes back within a few days, hunting him down at either Scarland or the Perimeter. He does figure out a way to get the letter without Grian’s help, finding a sharp edge in the cat’s suite that he can snap the thread with. He turns human in the room, and Jellie sits on his lap with a thunderous purr as he writes his response. X whines about code, about the upcoming 1.20 changes, about weird new glitches and his own fond exasperation at the Hermits. Talks about his own antics, about spawning dozens of withers deep beneath the earth to simply mine deepslate faster.
It feels like he’s really only getting to know his brother for the first time through these letters; both think this.
At the end of the most recent letter, a few weeks into their correspondence, Ex reads:
‘I mentioned in our first letters that if you’re willing and comfortable, I would like to meet up. As the server gets closer to 1.20, I would really like to update your code and make sure nothing can go wrong, but also just… to talk in person.
Please let me know.
-Xisuma’
And, like the absolute fool he is, Ex replies only with a hasty scrawl:
‘Tomorrow night, your base. I know the way.
-Exis’
It’s a pleasant night, as most tend to be on the Hermitcraft server. Some are sleeping; most are definitely not (and if you look skyward, it’s pretty easy to tell by the phantoms).
He knows the way to X’s base; he’s done the trip dozens of times at this point, sometimes under the midday sun, sometimes at the golden dusk.
He knows drastic action is not going to be taken tonight; his brother is horribly kind and honest, but… his heart still races , his gut rolling and threatening. No matter what, things are going to be different after tonight. Isn’t that something worth fearing?
He slows from his sprint as he draws near to Xisuma’s skeletal base. The lights inside are off, and a new, glowing point sits atop the head. Illuminated by a single lantern, he can see a lone figure, legs dangling off the edge. They’re wearing no armor besides the simple green bodysuit and helmet, and holds no weapons.
If he were truly of hels, then this would be a golden opportunity.
Instead, he’s the one fearing. He moves forward anyway.
Paws creep up the intricately polished and laid bone, harvested from the depths of the earth, reeking of age and care. Ex has to scramble a bit to pull himself over the curve of the skull, but settles over the skeleton base’s cranium. Self-consciously, he briefly licks a paw and swipes it over his head.
Xisuma sits before him.
It’s… it’s not unlike the other times in recent months, when he’s gotten close to offer comfort or to deliver a letter. There, he was a messenger and only that to X. He… he seemed to still have affection for him, but would that remain true face to face? Would he be betrayed and lash out at the deception?
He won’t, of course, because Xisuma is a good person.
Not like him.
…Not yet.
Ex steps forward; there’s a flicker of mischievous temptation, to dart forward and surprise the admin so that he topples over the edge. He doesn’t, because this is going to be much, much funnier.
He meows, announcing his arrival as Mephistopheles, rubbing his side against X’s arm as he settles beside him. The man jolts briefly before recognizing him, smiling warmly under the moonlight. A gloved hand scratches along his back.
“Hey, Meph,” he says softly. From beneath his helmet, Ex can see his eyes flicker to the side, before turning his head entirely to look around. The hand on his back tenses.
“Did — did he back out…?” Xisuma worries aloud, speaking quietly, as if the cat beside him would reply. X shifts, peering down at Meph’s collar — no letter. “Mephi, do you know where he is?”
What is with these Hermits and talking to animals who can’t (or so they think) respond? It’s kinda hysterical.
…Well, this is it, isn’t it? Ex looks back up at Xisuma, at the admin, at his brother… and holds the stare. Eyes to eyes, unblinking. X shifts in place; his expression begins to morph, and Ex doesn’t even need to smell the emotions, raw and powerful. It’s like he’s reading an open book laid out before him as he holds the eye contact. There’s worry. Sadness. Something bittersweet. Confusion, and it shifts into discomfort at the odd stare; X’s eyes dart to the side before returning. He glances around, down to his communicator, and back to the cat’s unwavering gaze.
The ‘X’ shaped scar on the cat’s face — what a hysterical coincidence that was, all those months ago — stares back at Xisuma, nestled between red, intelligent, knowing eyes.
X blinks, and — there it is. The emotion is delicious as it hangs in the air.
Realization.
“Oh my god,” X breathes.
And Ex smiles with that little cat mouth and snaggletooth and all. He reaches into himself, tugging at the bonds that hold his body together and pulling , and the pain as he returns to human once again is so, so worth it.
And Exis sits beside his brother, legs dangling over the edge.
“Hi ,” he says. His voice is still scratchy and unfamiliar and he’s smiling, weak but there , pulling at disused muscles.
Xisuma moves — his heart skips a beat, adrenaline spikes, he’s lunging for him —
and pulls him close.
If the two brothers sit there, crying wordlessly into each other’s embrace? That’s for them and the stars to know alone.
Xisuma hiccups, many minutes later, wiping his eyes with his wrist. His helmet has long since been abandoned, sitting forgotten beside him. Exis’ head rests on his shoulder, face nestled into the crook of his neck.
“How’d you do it?” he manages. He pulls himself upright, gentle hands taking his place to support Exis. He shudders.
“I didn’t,” he breathes. “One moment, I was just — I was just falling through the void.” He coughs, wet and shaking. “And then, the weird portal beneath Grian’s base just… spat me out.”
X’s fingers are sifting through his hair, brushing through the knots, grazing over his scalp. “The Rift,” Xisuma says. Then — “Do you know how long ago?”
Ex hums. “Months ago, at this point. I know it was after the last group that came through.” X’s face turns contemplative, a thoughtful expression that Ex has grown familiar with, watching the admin solve glitches long into the night. He has a theory, something to guard against a weak spot in the firewalls —
But it can wait.
There’s some things more important than being an admin tonight.
“I’m sorry.” Xisuma says it like a prayer.
“I forgive you,” Ex murmurs back. His head settles back onto his brother’s shoulder, looking over the land that sprawls before them, adorned in twinkling lights and grandiose structures. He’s come to think of it as home. “Would you forgive me?”
X’s hand settles into his. It squeezes.
“Always.”
And Ex smiles — weak, genuine — and murmurs its echo; “ Always.”
The stars hang far overhead. The moon is bright among them, and X does not fear it.
Under its watchful gaze, they talk.
“Why the cat?”
Ex laughs. “I… when I was tossed out of the Rift, I — I knew I couldn’t hold this form for long.” He gestures at himself. “Found a village, and… thought a cat would be a good disguise. It… got a little out of hand.”
X laughs with him. A pause.
“Grian knows, doesn’t he?”
Ex, before, would have feared such a question. A reveal . That admitting to his accomplice would doom the both of them.
Tonight, Ex nods. “He jokingly wrote me an ‘IOU’ after bringing me along to help clear out some charged creepers,” he admits, he smiles . “And I wasn’t going to let that go to waste.” X chuckles, too. “Cashed it in to ask him to mess around with my code, to… pretty much give me the same code as Jellie, then.”
X’s brow furrows; he looks over. “The Mud Shop,” he says. It’s not a question. Ex nods.
“ Apparently , he just scrambled my code right before you looked.” He remembers how it stung. “Took him hours to untangle.”
And — he can’t help it, can’t rationalize away the ripple of panic. “I didn’t — I didn’t ask him to do that, but he said he wanted me to choose on my own time, and—”
X’s hand squeezes his. “It’s okay,” X promises. “I’m glad he did. May I…?” His other arm raises, wrist held in front of him. Ex nods, and feels the cold running down his spine as his code is revealed.
Xisuma stares for a moment, eyes flickering over the text… before he whistles. “When did that pesky bird learn to properly code?” he grumbles, and oh , Ex can’t help but laugh.
X’s fingers twitch. Text moves faster than he could possibly read, paragraphs of code being pasted in, altered, new passages typed —
Just as quickly, the code window closes.
“There,” X breathes, shoulders slumping. The relief of burden is palpable. “If you want, you can leave. You can join a different server, you can make your own world, you can go. ”
Ex feels it, mysterious and nostalgic and so vaguely familiar, the magic of a player that hums beneath his skin.
Ex swallows. “Thank you.”
Xisuma smiles back, bittersweet, and… Ex knows that he’s thinking. Honestly, he’d expect it from himself, too, that he’d disappear as soon as he could.
Instead, he doesn’t act like he expects; it’s becoming a pattern.
“Can I stay?” X blinks. “I… fuck. I kinda like my little retirement as Meph,” he admits. “And… I know it’s probably not healthy, living as a cat.” He huffs. “Maybe I should go to the hub and find a therapist.” X can’t help but snort at the realizing, ‘ah, shit’ tone. “But I like it, I really do. I’m happy like that, and…” he shudders. “I’m not ready to be a person again.”
X nods. “Will you ever be?”
“...I don’t know.”
Xisuma pulls him close and he doesn’t let go. Not until the morning sun is rising over the horizon, spilling golden rays over the land, not until the foggy shroud of evaporating dew rises from the plains. Ex’s chest rises and falls, asleep in his brother’s arms, and his body shifts unconsciously. It molds and it moves, amorphous matter settling back into the form of a cat.
X carries him back to Scarland.
Jellie’s waiting at the entrance. She mrows into the morning air, and Mephistopheles wriggles from Xisuma’s grasp. He leaps a few paces forward — before he pauses. He comes back, he brushes against Xisuma’s legs with a loud, shuddering purr, and he looks up knowingly and meows.
“I love you,” Xisuma says.
His brother, Mephistopheles,
Exis —
smiles back, before turning and joining Jellie, tails intertwining as she leads him back inside.
X watches the pair disappear, standing under the new morning sun, golden and resplendent.
And Ex returns home.
Notes:
.... :]c
so! phew. that was something to write.
it's not done --- there's still an epilogue to come for the "true ending", and maybe a couple alternate possibilities i want to write.
but!! seriously thank you all for reading so far. this has been a lot of fun and a great way to procrastinate as finals approach :D
Chapter 10: Epilogue
Summary:
in front of the rift, where it all began, it all ends.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Epilogue
After the dramatic reveal, an unspoken night of the two brothers begging for and receiving forgiveness…
…Well, nothing really changes. He visits the other Hermits’ bases more, staying the night, solidifying his place as the communal cat. He can’t put a finger (or, well, paw) on it, but… after the talk with Xisuma, everything feels a bit more … okay. That it’s not going to be pulled from under his feet on some random day, that he… has a place. That his stay is voluntary and if he wants to watch a random hermit spend the night laying down redstone, he can .
Tango seems to appreciate his company, anyway.
That is, when Exis isn’t batting his tools off the edge of his redstone lines. In Ex’s defense, he really should learn better inventory management so that he doesn’t have to choose between one extra shulker box and a pickaxe.
Joint custody slowly slides into a division of fourths; he spends less time at Scarland — he doesn’t want to get caught under a random horse’s hooves, and there only seems to be more with each visit of Bdubs— and stays more at Doc’s, Grian’s, and Xisuma’s bases. Half his time is spent as a pure cat, and the other is him being tolerated as a cat but talked to like … just another Hermit, really.
X is really keen on making up for lost time, and… Exis can’t decide whether it’s touching or purely bittersweet. They talk about the lives they lived when they were butting heads — X talks a lot about Keralis, Exis talks a lot about Helsknight. Xisuma talks about magic, and when Ex admits his own shortcomings in the whole magic department, X promptly insists on helping.
Exis can’t bring himself to deny him that.
Their magic… isn’t as fundamentally different as they thought. Much like the two brothers are two sides of the same coin, the same matter divided, their magics are cut from the same cloth. Different applications, but the same core power.
The idea of gaining powerful, admin-level magic doesn’t feel as enticing to Ex anymore. He’s quite alright staying magicless and mortal, but… well, he won’t say no to a little help. Late nights are spent in the depths of Xisuma’s base, figuring out how to channel the magic of taking into the magic of creating , of giving. X lends him some of his own power, a direct tap of inspiration — and Ex refuses all but a drop. He needs all he can as an admin, Ex insists.
That taste is enough to start forming familiarity, anyway. It’s enough to start changing his own magic, to harness that well of greed and want into something more amicable. To change that churning want into desire, into gratification, and suddenly? Living starts to feel a bit easier. His body doesn’t feel stolen so much as it feels like his own, and he can’t place where that transition happened.
And being human doesn’t hurt so much anymore.
It’s a slow process, of course; he had spent months as a human years ago, and now it’s little bursts with a newfound brand of magic. He can only keep it up for a few minutes at first, but as the season creeps along… he gets better. Undeniably so. A few minutes turn into an hour, to two, and after a while he has the chance to spend a whole day, thousands of blocks away, learning how to build.
Inspiration comes easy.
When he was able to stay fully human for a whole afternoon, X takes him out of the server, to the world hub. A place that he hasn’t been in years .
Frankly, he’s not too fond of it, and — would you believe it, he thinks of Hermitcraft as refuge .
A lengthy first visit to a therapist later, and Exis tiredly stumbles back to the world portal with Xisuma, the promise of future appointments trailing behind him. Admin commands easily hide the incoming and outgoing messages on these afternoons, and while they’re gone, Grian takes the reins. Unfortunately for him , the little coding stunt from the Mud Shop means he can’t pretend to be bad at code, and X puts him to work. There’s no seriousness to the ‘punishment’, of course; Grian’s pretty eager to learn, and takes to guardianship over the code naturally. He even seems more comfortable and at peace after a typically stressful shift caring for the server, watching over it.
Xisuma, Exis, and Grian. Instead of warring twins and potential enemies, they feel… like brothers.
And Ex likes that. Inexplicably, undeniably, and intolerably so. Greedy for that bond, for peace , and the world gives it freely.
The three confer many times, and come to a final decision: that, at the turn of seasons, they’ll reveal the newest Hermit living among them.
And, when X promises everything will go well , Ex believes him.
Everyone’s assembled at the Rift . Everyone, every Hermit, chattering in the same subterranean cavern, standing before the portal as it hums with energy once again. It’s traditional and thematic, to step through an actual portal rather than just a command.
It’s symbolic; a departure without closing the door behind them.
Of course, new policy in recent seasons is that portals will always be active and lead to the newest world, and numerous other safeties lie in place, but… the Big Step is a valued tradition.
It’s time to go.
The room’s alive with chatter; most Hermits carry a bundle in their arms with whatever clothes and sentimental items they chose to carry with them; notably, a lot more card decks this time around. A cat sits atop each of Scar’s and Doc’s shoulders, chittering amongst themselves; the rest of the Hermits are equally chatty. The conversations focus on gossiping about the potential for new Hermits; X hasn’t given a clear answer yet, and they’re more than happy to explore the space of that maybe . A betting pool has started somewhere amongst the crowd.
The man of the hour arrives, a bit disheveled from teleporting. Xisuma is grinning; obvious exhaustion from preparations weigh on his face, but it’s far overshadowed by the admin’s excitement. He looks over the crowd, shouting their questions and greetings.
X laughs. “Alright, alright! Just had to get a few things wrapped up before announcing… that there’s a new Hermit joining us.”
Of course, the crowd erupts. A few groans from lost bets join the cacophony.
“ Kinda ,” X emphasizes. “He’ll be around, but not so traditionally active of a player. He’ll… well, he’ll simply be living with us, but will build here and there, or so I hope.” Xisuma smiles as the Hermits gleefully prod — who, who? and X laughs, full and warm. “You’re more familiar with him than you think.”
X reaches up, unlatching his helmet and shaking out his hair. Short white locks drift near his shoulders. “Trust me on this, alright?”
The Hermits’ response is unanimous, albeit slightly confused — of course they trust him.
X nods graciously.
“Alright, then; want to come out?” he asks.
A cat stretches, standing up atop Doc’s shoulder, and he leaps down to the ground. The movement is casual, effortless. His tail is held high in the air as he walks towards X. Some Hermits laugh; some coo. Scar clicks his tongue, chittering for him to come back.
Ex smiles , deep inside. He reaches into his own mind, and finds the body like a coat he’s hung on a hangar. He doesn’t pull , but rather slips it on, shrouding himself in a perfect fit, letting the energy in. It’s a smooth transition, the only discomfort coming from muscles settling into place, relocating their weave and weft. He rises onto two legs.
It’s… familiar, now, settling into the pale, scarred skin. He had already tidied up this form before today; brushed and braided his long, white hair before letting it drape down his back. He abandoned the armor a while back, instead wearing a softer maroon shirt and simple pants.
He stands beside Xisuma, smiling. Their hands clasp.
Side by side, the familial resemblance is obvious, undeniable. The brothers stand alike, cut from the same cloth, born from the same ether.
…That is, similar besides the anxiously swishing tail behind Ex, and the pair of ears that poke through his hair, twitching occasionally.
The crowd of Hermits have drawn silent, staring.
“Hi,” Exis says quietly.
It’s silent before footsteps stampede forward — a body slams into his. His mind races in shrill panic before he realizes it’s an embrace—
Scar holds him close.
A few moments later, two more arms — one furred, one metal — envelop them both.
In front of the rift, where it all began, it all ends.
The Hermits, newly grown, step through the portal as one.
They’re met with sunlight. A cool, refreshing breeze. Distant birdcall, the whistling of wind through untouched grasses.
Xisuma’s hand holds onto Exis’. The admin turns to his people.
“Welcome,” Xisumavoid grins, wide and teary-eyed.
“To Season 10.”
Notes:
:]
i'm not sure if I have it in me atm to bust out a few more alt endings, so at the moment... this is it. thank you all for being so kind and supportive as i returned to my foray into writing fic; its a lovely practice and i truly missed it. i've still got to finish 'a rolling stone gathers no moss' and then maybe i'll pick up some other hermitcraft stuff, but...
if you're reading this: thank you for reading! feel free to shamelessly copy this fic, or to make your own alt endings, or literally do anything with it!
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