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Grian doesn’t have a lot of time to Watch nowadays. With building, mini games, friends, there’s not enough time to Watch those he needs to. It still pops in now and again, checking on Martyn in his single player world and on Jimmy in Empires Season 2, the Sheriff of Tumble Town, and even Pearl even though she’s on the same server. It was a reflex at this point, just to check in on them, make sure they were okay.
But then rift things started happening, and Grumbot was there , so he got busy. Very busy.
That was a mistake, it seemed.
-
Martyn never really Listened. After… all that happened to him, and Jim and Grian, he just, didn’t like it. He never liked to Listen, to know. It always made him paranoid, like they were 1 step closer, closing in, going to find him and the others and ruin everything.
But-
They didn’t want them anymore. They were Fouvale, they weren’t Listeners or Watchers, not anymore. But they weren’t humans either, or hybrids in Jimmy and Grian’s case. He had always been human where Grian and Jimmy used to be bird hybrids, Grian a parrot and Jimmy a canary. And yes, the pair still had their wings and so forth, but they weren’t just hybrids anymore. Honestly, they weren’t even considered hybrids anymore, even with the instincts. Because they used to be Gods, Deities , and they still kind of were.
It was all complicated, but the green and purple deities called them Fouvale because that’s what they were now. And Listening reminded Martyn too much of everything that happened to him, so he never tried to listen.
Especially since Listening and Watching gave them all sensory issues.
He would do it occasionally though, just to make sure those he cares about were okay and alive.
But now? Now Martyn wishes he had done it sooner.
-
Pearl has never been a Watcher or a Listener. She doesn't have the capability to Watch like her brother or Listen like her friends. But she isn't human either. She's a demigod, daughter of a god and a mortal. And she's got wings, but they're moth wings. She gets those from her godly parentage, Grian's wings come from their mom.
So, she's half god. But she can't really do that much. She can just sense when things are wrong. Very wrong. Like moon big. She had sensed something was gonna happen that season, she just didn't expect their code to glitch and the moon to crash into their world.
It was all unexpected.
Pearl wishes for nothing more then to go back in time and listen to her gut.
-
“ Xisuma! ” His shout cuts through the throng of Hermits at spawn. It’s out of breath and a bit raspy, but it’s loud and commanding.
The people part easily at that, concern and confusion pouring off of them.
“Grian-” X starts, ready to tell him the exact same thing voi has told Tango, but Grian cuts void off before voi can.
"I need to get to him!" He exclaims, hands grabbing Xisuma by the shoulders.
"Grian, they aren't letting anyone on-"
This time it's Pearl who cuts void off, landing awkwardly, panting, dried tear stains on her cheeks.
" Please ," she begs, rushing forward, by Grian's side. "We need to see him, we need to help ," she insists, wiping at her eyes as more tears start to fall now that she's not flying.
"Guys, Scott said no visitors, fWhip’s orders and-" Xisuma gets cut off again.
"Xe will let us on, X, please!" Pearl exclaims, arms going to hold her front. "We need to get to him. Or Martyn or anyone but we need to be there."
"I can get them in," Gem steps forward, hands on her hips, determined. "Pearl's already whitelisted and Grian's been a guest in season 1, so it should be easy. Martyn? Not so sure! But we'll handle it."
Grian nods violently. "Please. I need to see him in person. They can't- they don't know! They don't know …" It clutches at its head, trying to stop .
Xisuma sighs and nods. Voi pulls up voids admin screen, and suddenly, the 4 of them are in the hub, outside a portal.
"You got this from here Gem?" Voi asks for confirmation.
Gem nods and voi teleports back. Gem taps the side of the portal a bit, humming a tune as she works on it. Eventually it lights up, glowing a greenish blue.
"Are we waiting for Martyn, or-” they start, but get cut off by a shout.
“I’m here, I’m here!” Martyn comes to a stop beside them, hunched over, taking a moment to catch his breath. “We’re seeing Timmy, yes?” He asks, standing up straight.
“Yes, Joel accidentally messed up,” Grian replies, feathers fluffing up.
Martyn nods, and glances at Gem. The witch offers a smile before stepping inside the portal, gesturing for the others to follow after her.
The 3 glance at each other, sighing in tandem, and then moving to stand into the portal.
-
The first thing they notice is that literally no one is at spawn. Which, in context, makes sense. But also, that includes Gem.
Geminitay: oops
Geminitay: sry, be right there
fWhip: gem-
fWhip: we said no visitors
Grian: jimmy needs us
Grian: as soona s possible
Pearlescentmoon: plus im whitelisted and martyn i smy plus 1
fWhip: thats not how whitelisting works pearl
InTheLittleWood: plz fwhip
InTheLittleWood: he needs us
fWhip: fine
fWhip: but only because we are lost on what to do
Grian can feel the teleport hum throughout his body and he lets it take him. It closes its eyes and only opens them when it is on solid ground. He glances around quickly, and notices many others. It resists the urge to take Joel and shake him by the shoulders. He hadn’t meant to do this to Jimmy, he knows the other hadn’t but he can’t help it.
“Where is he?” It turns to Scott, addressing xem first since, well, Scott is Jimmy’s flower husband.
“This way,” xe gestures for the group of 3 to follow xem to one of the houses in the town.
(If it was any other day, with anything else happening, then maybe the 3 could’ve taken the time to admire Jimmy’s town that he had built. But they didn’t have the time because their brother needed them as soon as possible.)
Jimmy is sitting in a corner. There’s a green aura around him, and he’s lacking the sheriff hat he usually wears. He’s rocking back and forth, muttering things. His canary wings are replaced with wide white and green ones and his ears bleed scarlet. One eye is normal besides that it glows green instead of its normal brown color, but the other? Replacing his eye is a bloody button, seemingly sewn into his skin of sorts. There’s strings wrapped around his wrists and they can faintly see them wrapped around his ankles as well.
“Oh, Jimmy,” Grian mutters, rushing forward, moving to cradle his cheek. He turns to look at Scott, still cupping Jimmy’s cheek. “What happened? All we heard was Joel went too far by accident.”
Peal and Martyn are at the pairs side as quickly as Grian was by Jimmy’s, both frowning. Green overtakes Martyn’s eyes and he starts looking over the blond, trying to help.
"Joel kept joking about him being a toy and he made this potion that would turn him into one, but then this happened. Healing and regen don't work and fWhip can't access his code," xe explains, rambling a bit at the end.
"No one can unless he wants them too," Grian explains.
Scott nods, worrying xyrs lip. "Will he be okay?" Xe asks quietly.
Martyn looks over, not caring that Scott can see his green eyes.
"Yes he will," he promises.
"But we're gonna need more space than this house, can we take him outside?" Grian adds, eyes starting to glow a faint purple, but still black. For now.
"Yeah, but I don't think I'll be able to get the others to leave," xe replies, moving to open the door.
"That's okay, Scott," Pearl reassures. "We just want to save Jimmy," she reassures.
Xe nods and heads out so the 3 have space.
Pearl, resident buff demigod, scoops Jimmy up, shushing him when he thrashes for a second. He stops muttering for about 5 seconds before it picks up again. Pearl sighs and brings him outside, Grian and Martyn on her heels.
"Anyone have a bed?" Grian asks, its wings folded against its back as it addresses the others.
"I do!" Shubble drops a bed for them with a soft smile, which Grian returns.
He then takes the bed and places it. Pearl sets Jimmy down on the bed, carefully moving the hair out of his face so they can see it.
Grian pulls up a purple screen, code popping up across it. Code is normally green, but this code glows faintly green, and it’s lighter, more lime when code is normally green.
“How are you doing that?” Sausage asks, confusion and curiosity lacing his tone.
It looks over at the group of rulers, eyes purple and glowing. “Accessing code is the easy part, fixing and altering it safely is what’s hard.”
Martyn walks closer, eyes green instead of blue and glowing as well. Pearl works on Jimmy physically, starting to untie the strings tied around his limbs. Martyn and Grian manage to hold onto their mortal forms as they work on the code, but power radiates off of them in waves. It lets the others know to let them handle it, even Lizzie, who had gotten there late.
“Do you know why they can do this, Scott?” fWhip asks xem, watching with confusion and amazement.
“That’s not my place to tell you,” xe replies honestly.
-
Everything hurt. And he couldn’t see. But that was normal. He wasn’t meant to Watch, he was meant to Listen. But it hurt, Listening always did. It wasn’t supposed to hurt like this, but it did. He can still hear them. The whispers. The Listening never stops and he doesn’t know why. Why can’t he stop? Why must he suffer? And void , why did his eye hurt so much?
Where is his husband? Where are his siblings, his Fouvale? Or his seabling, his sister? Why is he here alone?
Why is he alone? Why does that fact hurt so much?
He ends up just drifting in the sea of pain…
-
“Joel, what did you even do?” Grian speaks up, its temper slowly but consistently rising.
It has been 10 minutes since they’ve started, and he and Maryn have barely done anything. They don’t know what’s wrong, so they can’t fix it.
“I asked Shleby for a transformation potion and then I just tweaked it a bit, that’s all!” Joel replies.
Shelby’s eyes wide. “You altered my potion?” She asks, surprised.
“Altering potions!? Joel!” Lizzie scuffs the back of her husband's head, hands on her hips.
“I didn’t think this would happen!” The god insists.
“Potions affect Jimmy differently when he feels unsafe, what type of bit were you doing?” Martyn asks, sharply looking up and over, eyes narrowed.
“Just- he was a sheriff, so I was comparing him to Woody! Calling him a toy and such, ya know!” His shoulders go up defensively, arms crossed, boxing in his head.
Pearl's eyes widen, and she looks up. "You were doing what ?" She asks, a fist clenching.
"It was just a joke! He knew that! Just a bit!" Joel looks as if he's on the verge of tears, which is unusual.
He doesn't cry often, but Jimmy is his brother in law and he truly does love him like a sibling. Usually when a bit goes too far, he tells him, but Jimmy didn't so he didn't know.
"He might've known, but he was an idiot and didn't tell you that," Grian murmurs in reply, starting to mess with the code. "Now that we know what's wrong, we can work on fixing it," it explains.
"Here," Martyn adjusts something, his form flickering slightly in the sunset.
Pearl readjusts Jimmy, shushing him softly. “He’s getting worse, he can’t stop Listening and it’s hurting him,” she explains quickly to the 2.
"If you're saying to hurry, Pearl, then we're trying, I promise," Grian replies easily, adjusting more code, form flicking just like Martyn.
"Listening?" Joey asks, perplexed.
"It's- have you heard of Listeners?" Pearl asks, turning to look at the group.
"The myths? Like Watchers?" fWhip asks.
"Yeah, well, they aren't myths, fWhip," the demigod explains with a sigh. "They're real, Listeners and Watchers."
"That's what we were," Grian looks over, form flickering a bit more. "And now we are Fouvale, not human/hybrids anymore, but not like the deities either. We're something in between, but we can still Listen and Watch. Too much messes with our sensory, but this? This is caused because he is being forced to Listen hard and for so long." She wipes at the blood in his ears, trying to not let it dry.
Dry blood can hurt to get off.
Scott sighs, running a hand through xyrs hair. Xe knew this, just, it's hard to listen to again. Makes xyrs heart hurt for xyrs husband. Xe just wants to wrap him up and hold him for a while.
"And you knew this, I'm guessing?" fWhip asks Scott and then Lizzie.
Both look away, guilty.
"Yeah, we did. Well, I didn't actively knew Scott knew, I just assumed xe did," Lizzie explains.
Grian has already turned back to its work, Martyn having turned them back to their focus. They 2 work quicker, eventually closing the panel and staring at Jimmy.
The world seems to pause, Jimmy especially. And then he changes.
-
Jimmy doesn't wake up, but he feels like he did. He sits up suddenly, with a gasp, breathing heavy. Everything hurts. But he can see. And he's not Listening anymore. He feels like he just woke up from a nightmare.
"Jimmy?"
He glances over, eyes focusing and widening at the sight of his sister by anything but blood.
"Pearl?" He asks, scooting closer before wincing.
"Oh, void, you scared us," she murmurs, reaching a hand forward to cup his cheek.
"Hey sis," he murmurs, looking around. "What happened? I don't-?" He clutches his head, pausing. "It was a potion, wasn't it? I can feel the code shifting," he looks up at Grian and Martyn. "You fixed it."
Grian nods. "Yeah, we did. Took us a long while, we didn't know what was wrong for the first few minutes." It moves aside. It takes him a second to realize Pearl has moved as well.
And then his husband is flying at him. Scott wraps xemself around him, holding him close but not too tight. Jimmy holds xem in return, burying his face in xyrs neck.
fWhip sighs and then turns to the others.
"Let's give them some space, we can talk to Jimmy later, okay?" He says.
The group all agrees, reluctantly, and leaves. Besides Lizzie, but she forces Joel away. She walks over and sets down another bed. The 6 of them sit down on them, forming a circle of sorts.
"So, what happened?" Jimmy asks. "Everything is… fuzzy," he holds his husbands hand, squeezing it softly.
"Well, Joel was doing the toy bit and then he had a tweaked potion that would specifically transform you into a toy temporarily. But Grian said when you feel unsafe, potions affect you differently and that happened," Lizzie explains.
Jimmy's eyebrows furrow.
"Was I feeling unsafe? I didn't really realize I was," he admits.
"You don't unless it's physically, honestly," Grian says with a sigh. "You need to tell Joel when you don't like a bit, Timmy, you know that," it chastistes.
"Well, yeah! I just- it was something we had agreed on and I didn't want to disappoint him," Jimmy explains.
"Jimmy," Lizzie scoots closer, eyebrows furrowed. "Joel could never be disappointed in you unless you like- started doing drugs or something. He's your brother, he loves you like a brother. If somethings is bothering you, just let him know, or if you're scared to, let me know and I'll put an end to it, okay?"
Jimmy nods slowly. "Okay, I will. Sorry."
"It's okay, poppy," xe reassures.
"We're just glad you're okay now," Pearl reassures. "But we should go talk to the Hermits about what happened," she stands, pulling her hair up into a ponytail. "Martyn can stay though, right?"
Martyn nods. "I can. I'll be Listening, so jusy say something if you need us."
"And I'll be Watching, so send a signal if you need me," Grian replies, also standing.
Jimmy waves and watches them log off. He leans against Scott anf starts to drift.
He's still in pain, and still kinda confused, but his family came when he needed them. So it's okay.